Soames belonged to two clubs, 'The Connoisseurs,' which he put on his
cards and seldom visited, and 'The Remove,' which he did not put on his
cards and frequented. He had joined this Liberal institution five
years ago, having made sure that its members were now nearly all sound
Conservatives in heart and pocket, if not in principle. Uncle Nicholas
had put him up. The fine reading-room was decorated in the Adam style.
On entering that evening he glanced at the tape for any news about the
Transvaal, and noted that Consols were down seven-sixteenths since
the morning. He was turning away to seek the reading-room when a voice
behind him said:
"Well, Soames, that went off all right."
It was Uncle Nicholas, in a frock-coat and his special cut-away collar,
with a black tie passed through a ring. Heavens! How young and dapper he
looked at eighty-two!
"I think Roger'd have been pleased," his uncle went on. "The thing was
very well done. Blackley's? I'll make a note of them. Buxton's done me
no good. These Boers are upsetting me--that fellow Chamberlain's driving
the country into war. What do you think?"
"Bound to come," murmured Soames.
Nicholas passed his hand over his thin, clean-shaven cheeks, very rosy
after his summer cure; a slight pout had gathered on his lips. This
business had revived all his Liberal principles.
"I mistrust that chap; he's a stormy petrel. House-property will go down
if there's war. You'll have trouble with Roger's estate. I often told
him he ought to get out of some of his houses. He was an opinionated
beggar."
'There was a pair of you!' thought Soames. But he never argued with an
uncle, in that way preserving their opinion of him as 'a long-headed
chap,' and the legal care of their property.
"They tell me at Timothy's," said Nicholas, lowering his voice, "that
Dartie has gone off at last. That'll be a relief to your father. He was
a rotten egg."
Again Soames nodded. If there was a subject on which the Forsytes really
agreed, it was the character of Montague Dartie.
"You take care," said Nicholas, "or he'll turn up again. Winifred had
better have the tooth out, I should say. No use preserving what's gone
bad."
Soames looked at him sideways. His nerves, exacerbated by the interview
he had just come through, disposed him to see a personal allusion in
those words.
"I'm advising her," he said shortly.
"Well," said Nicholas, "the brougham's waiting; I must get home. I'm
very poorly. Remember me to your father."
And having thus reconsecrated the ties of blood, he passed down the
steps at his youthful gait and was wrapped into his fur coat by the
junior porter.