Portraiture was not Jolyon's forte, but he had already drawn his younger
daughter three times, and was drawing her a fourth, on the afternoon
of October 4th, 1899, when a card was brought to him which caused his
eyebrows to go up:
Mr. SOAMES FORSYTE
THE SHELTER, CONNOISSEURS CLUB, MAPLEDURHAM. ST. JAMES'S.
But here the Forsyte Saga must digress again....
To return from a long travel in Spain to a darkened house, to a little
daughter bewildered with tears, to the sight of a loved father lying
peaceful in his last sleep, had never been, was never likely to be,
forgotten by so impressionable and warm-hearted a man as Jolyon. A sense
as of mystery, too, clung to that sad day, and about the end of one
whose life had been so well-ordered, balanced, and above-board. It
seemed incredible that his father could thus have vanished without, as
it were, announcing his intention, without last words to his son, and
due farewells. And those incoherent allusions of little Holly to 'the
lady in grey,' of Mademoiselle Beauce to a Madame Errant (as it sounded)
involved all things in a mist, lifted a little when he read his father's
will and the codicil thereto. It had been his duty as executor of that
will and codicil to inform Irene, wife of his cousin Soames, of her life
interest in fifteen thousand pounds. He had called on her to explain
that the existing investment in India Stock, ear-marked to meet the
charge, would produce for her the interesting net sum of L430 odd a
year, clear of income tax. This was but the third time he had seen his
cousin Soames' wife--if indeed she was still his wife, of which he was
not quite sure. He remembered having seen her sitting in the Botanical
Gardens waiting for Bosinney--a passive, fascinating figure, reminding
him of Titian's 'Heavenly Love,' and again, when, charged by his father,
he had gone to Montpellier Square on the afternoon when Bosinney's
death was known. He still recalled vividly her sudden appearance in the
drawing-room doorway on that occasion--her beautiful face, passing from
wild eagerness of hope to stony despair; remembered the compassion he
had felt, Soames' snarling smile, his words, "We are not at home!" and
the slam of the front door.
This third time he saw a face and form more beautiful--freed from that
warp of wild hope and despair. Looking at her, he thought: 'Yes, you
are just what the Dad would have admired!' And the strange story of
his father's Indian summer became slowly clear to him. She spoke of old
Jolyon with reverence and tears in her eyes. "He was so wonderfully kind
to me; I don't know why. He looked so beautiful and peaceful sitting in
that chair under the tree; it was I who first came on him sitting
there, you know. Such a lovely day. I don't think an end could have been
happier. We should all like to go out like that."