Chapter V. A Forsyte Menage

The happy pair were seated, not opposite each other, but rectangularly, at the handsome rosewood table; they dined without a cloth - a distinguishing elegance - and so far had not spoken a word. Soames liked to talk during dinner about business, or what he had been buying, and so long as he talked Irene's silence did not distress him. This evening he had found it impossible to talk. The decision to build had been weighing on his mind all the week and he had made up his mind to tell her. His nervousness about this disclosure irritated him profoundly; she had no business to make him feel like that - a wife and a husband being one person. She had not looked at him once since they sat down; and he wondered what on earth she had been thinking about all the time. It was hard, when a man worked as he did, making money for her, yes, and with an ache in his heart - that she should sit there, looking - looking as if she saw the walls of the room closing in. It was enough to make a man get up and leave the table. The light from the rose-shaded lamp fell on her neck and arms - Soames liked her to dine in a low dress, it gave him an inexpressible feeling of superiority to the majority of his acquaintance, whose wives were contented with their best high frocks or with tea-gowns, when they dined at home. Under that rosy light her amber-coloured hair and fair skin made a strange contrast with her dark brown eyes. Could a man own anything prettier than this dining-table with its deep tints, the starry, soft-petalled roses, the ruby-coloured glass, and quaint silver furnishing; could a man own anything prettier than the woman who sat at it? Gratitude was no virtue among Forsytes, who, competitive and full of common sense, had no occasion for it; and Soames only experienced a sense of exasperation amounting to pain, that he did not own her as it was his right to own her, that he could not, as by stretching out his hand to that rose, pluck her and sniff the very secrets of her heart.

Out of his property, out of all the things he had collected, his silver, his pictures, his houses, his investments, he got a secret and intimate feeling; out of her he got none. In this house of his there was writing on every wall. His business-like temperament protested against a mysterious warning that she was not made for him. He had married this woman, conquered her, made her his own, and it seemed to him contrary to the most fundamental of all laws, the law of possession, that he could do no more than own her body - if indeed he could do that, which he was beginning to doubt. If anyone had asked him if he wanted to own her soul, the question would have seemed to him both ridiculous and sentimental. But he did so want, and the writing said he never would. She was ever silent, passive, gracefully averse; as though terrified lest by word, motion, or sign she might lead him to believe that she was fond of him; and he asked himself: Must I always go on like this? Like most novel readers of his generation (and Soames was a great novel reader), literature coloured his view of life; and he had imbibed the belief that it was only a question of time. In the end the husband always gained the affection of his wife. Even in those cases a class of book he was not very fond of - which ended in tragedy, the wife always died with poignant regrets on her lips, or if it were the husband who died - unpleasant thought - threw herself on his body in an agony of remorse. He often took Irene to the theatre, instinctively choosing the modern Society plays with the modern Society conjugal problem, so fortunately different from any conjugal problem in real life. He found that they too always ended in the same way, even when there was a lover in the case. While he was watching the play Soames often sympathized with the lover; but before he reached home again, driving Irene in a hansom, he saw that this would not do, and he was glad the play ended as it had. There was one class of husband that had just then come into fashion, the strong, rather rough, but extremely sound man, who was peculiarly successful at the end of the play; with this person Soames was really not in sympathy, and had it not been for his own position, would have expressed his disgust with the fellow. But he was so conscious of how vital to himself was the necessity for being a successful, even a “strong” husband, that he never spoke of a distaste born perhaps by the perverse processes of Nature out of a secret fund of brutality in himself. But Irene's silence this evening was exceptional. He had never before seen such an expression on her face. And since it is always the unusual that alarms, Soames was alarmed. He ate his savoury, and hurried the maid as she swept off the crumbs with the silver sweeper. When she had left the room, he filled his glass with wine and said: “Anybody been here this afternoon?” “June.” “What did she want?” It was an axiom with the Forsytes that people did not go anywhere unless they wanted something. “Came to talk about her lover, I suppose?” Irene made no reply.

“It looks to me”, continued Soames, “as if she were sweeter on him than he is on her. She's always following him about.” Irene's eyes made him feel uncomfortable. “You have no business to say such a thing!” she exclaimed. “Why not? Anybody can see it.” “They cannot. And if they could, it's disgraceful to say so.” Soames' composure gave way. “You're a pretty wife!” he said. But secretly he wondered at the heat of her reply; it was unlike her. “You're cracked about June! I can tell you one thing: now that she has the Buccaneer in tow, she doesn't care twopence about you and you'll find it out. But you won't see so much of her in future; we're going to live in the country.” (Galswathy)