His father’s face, dusky red, twitching as if he were going to cry, and words breaking out that seemed rent from him by some spasm in his soul.
“There’ll be a scandal; I always said so.” Then, no one saying anything: “And there you stand, you and your mother!”
And Emily’s voice, calm, rather contemptuous: “Come, now, James! Soames will do all that he can.”
And James, staring at the floor, a little brokenly: “Well, I can’t help you; I’m getting old. Don’t you be in too great a hurry, my boy.”
And his mother’s voice again: “Soames will do all he can to get her back. We won’t talk of it. It’ll all come right, I dare say.”
And James: “Well, I can’t see how it can come right. And if she hasn’t gone off with that young Bosinney, my advice to you is not to listen to her, but to follow her and get her back.”
Once more Soames felt his mother stroking his hand, in token of her approval, and as though repeating some form of sacred oath, he muttered between his teeth: “I will!”
All three went down to the drawing-room together. There, were gathered the three girls and Dartie; had Irene been present, the family circle would have been complete.
James sank into his armchair, and except for a word of cold greeting to Dartie, whom he both despised and dreaded, as a man likely to be always in want of money, he said nothing till dinner was announced. Soames, too, was silent; Emily alone, a woman of cool courage, maintained a conversation with Winifred on trivial subjects. She was never more composed in her manner and conversation than that evening.
A decision having been come to not to speak of Irene’s flight, no view was expressed by any other member of the family as to the right course to be pursued; there can be little doubt, from the general tone adopted in relation to events as they afterwards turned out, that James’s advice: “Don’t you listen to her, follow her and get her back!” would, with here and there an exception, have been regarded as sound, not only in Park Lane, but amongst the Nicholases, the Rogers, and at Timothy’s. Just as it would surely have been endorsed by that wider body of Forsytes all over London, who were merely excluded from judgment by ignorance of the story.