It was not till the morning of the longest day that Edward, singing like a wren in his bath, announced to her that he had completed the model of his invention. Looking at his emaciated form, she said drily: “And high time too.” After breakfast she wired to Albert (telephones were not yet installed) to come and dine that evening. Having carefully ordered a heating meal she awaited the crisis with a fluttering heart. All went well during dinner, even to the touching of her foot by Albert, to which she did not respond, so that his eyes became more than ever like the bull’s in connection with Europa. She brought up the subject of the new invention, and suggested to Edward that after dinner he should go up and bring the model down. Sitting there, opposite her, his face, though hollow and almost blue, had the shining happiness of one about to enter heaven; and a certain compunction seized on her for the shock she was going to give him. ‘It’s for his good,’ she thought, and passed the tip of her toe across Albert’s instep. Dear Edward, how blind he was! When, in the drawing-room, they had partaken of coffee, she said: “Now, Edward!” and looked at the clock. As Edward left the room, she left the sofa, and moved towards the clock. It was of ormolu, a wedding present from her Uncle Roger, and stood on the mantelpiece.
“Albert!” she said, “come here! I want your opinion on this clock.”
The Alderman rose. Through her lashes she could see the added flush on his fleshy face, and his quivering lips that almost seemed to slobber. He stood beside her, and with her eyes on the clock Marian pointed out its period. When exactly four minutes had elapsed her straining ears caught a sound on the stairs, and she moved awkwardly, so that her white shoulder came in contact with his chest. The rest was automatic; she found herself face to face with him, his arms round her waist and his lips inclining for her lips. She reined back and his mouth came forward, reaching for her neck. All was as it should be. Then the door opened, and there stood Patricia in her dressing-gown.
“Mummy!” came her treble cry, “Daddy’s lost his—Oh!” She vanished: and with a sensation as of vertigo Marian heard her shriller:
“Daddy, Daddy! Quick! Uncle Albert’s biting Mummy’s neck!”
Then it was that Marian showed her breeding. With inimitable presence of mind she lost it and fell on the sofa in one of those dead faints which are so difficult to see through. Edward, attended by the scared Patricia, found her with Albert standing by and running his fingers through his somewhat scant but well-pomatumed hair.
“Here, I say!” he said, “she’s fainted”; and with a certain aplomb, added: “It’s the heat.”
They revived her with some difficulty, and on Edward’s arm she went up to bed. Albert departed.
“If Albert hadn’t caught me,” she said on the stairs, “I should have fallen badly; it’s lucky he’s so strong. Patricia, Daddy’s model is in the top cupboard. I put it there for safety, and forgot to tell him.”
Three days later the model was patented by A. & E. Tweetyman. Edward had seen nothing. Patricia, who had seen everything, was young and easily gulled; but for some days Marian’s manner to her offspring, who had spoiled it all, was somewhat sharp. Her defeat had been so signal that, like the sensible woman she was, she accepted it completely. Edward was hopeless! She gave him up. A man of sorrows, who, until he died of it, would never know what manner of man he was. As for Albert, she gave him up too. With difficulty Edward noticed that his brother was never asked to dinner again.
It was in a mood of Forsytean humour, one day, that Marian told the story of her defeat to her sister Euphemia, whose squeaks on the occasion were notable; and through this source it became current on Forsyte ‘Change.
THE DROMIOS, 1900
When the Boer war had been in progress for some time and things were going badly, Giles and Jesse Hayman—commonly known in the Forsyte family as ‘the Dromios’—decided to enlist in the Imperial Yeomanry. Their decision, a corporate one—for they never acted apart—was made without unnecessary verbal expenditure. Giles, the elder by one year and of the stronger build, withdrew his pipe from between his teeth, turned a fox-terrier off his lap, and, pointing to the words ‘Black week’ in the Daily Mail said:
“Those beggarly Boers!”
Jesse, in an armchair on the other side of the hearth, took the fox-terrier on his lap, tapped out his pipe, and answered: “Brutes!”
There was again silence. Then Giles said:
“What price the Yeomanry? Are you on?”
Jesse put his empty pipe between his teeth and nodded. The matter had been concluded. They then remained a considerable time with their high-booted legs outstretched towards the fire, their grey thrusting eyes fixed on the flames, and no expression whatever on their lean red-brown faces.
Being almost majestically without occupations except riding, shooting and games of various kinds, they dwelt in a small timbered manor-house close to some racing stables on the Hampshire Downs. Each had five hundred a year and no parents; their mother—Susan, the married Forsyte sister—having followed Hayman to his rest at Woking in 1895. Neither of them had married or even dreamed of it, neither of them had a mistress; but periodically they went up to London.