“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.

Having thus decided to enlist, the first step was naturally to have a night out; and they took train to the Metropolis. They put up at their usual quarters—a hostelry called ‘Malcolm’s’, of a somewhat sporting character in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden; and, after dressing themselves, went to dine at the ‘Cri.’ There they ate in silence, despatching the preliminaries of a ‘night out’—oysters, devilled kidneys, a partridge, a welsh rabbit, ‘a bottle of the boy,’ and a glass of old port, with only two lapses into conversation, the first when Jesse said:

“Those Johnny birds, the Boers, are getting above themselves!”

To which Giles replied:

“You bet.”

And the second when Giles said:

“Buller’ll stay the course.”

To which Jesse replied:

“Good old Buller.”

Having finished, placed cigars in their mouths, secured their coats, and put on their Opera hats, they went out into a mild night, to walk to the ‘Pandemonium.’

In old days when they were living in the Hayman house on Campden Hill and reading for examinations which, by some curious fatality not unconnected with brains, they never passed, so that they had been compelled to remain without professions, there had been few evenings when they could not be observed leaning over the balustrade of the Promenade at that establishment. Thence had they watched the acrobats, ventriloquists, conjurers, ballad singers, comedians, and ballet dancers of the period, never manifesting approbation, but not infrequently with a sort of smile bitten in on their faces. Generally they left as much with each other as they arrived, occasionally they left without each other, but with somebody else. It was not known even to each other whether they ever spoke to those others with whom they left.

Having been out of London since the Boer war broke out they had not yet heard ‘Tommy Atkins’ sung; and when this inevitable item was reached the effect on Giles was observed by Jesse to be as noticeable as the effect on Jesse observed by Giles. After a certain resistance to words and tune due to the need for maintaining ‘form’ their heads began almost imperceptibly to move in time to the refrain, and, a line or so behind the rest of the audience, their mouths began in a muffled manner to take up the chorus. The effect on them, in fact, was distinctly emotional, which to some extent explains what happened afterwards. The song was scarcely over and a ventriloquist had taken his seat on the stage with a midshipman on his knee when Jesse’s attention was diverted by smothered voices behind him. His hearing, trained by listening in coverts for the music of hounds or the flushing of birds, was sharp, and he distinctly heard the following conversation:

“If you don’t get me ten pounds to-night it’ll be the worse for you.”

“Ten pounds? How can I?”

“Well, don’t you come home without it.”

“Oh! You are a brute!”

“All right, my girl!”

Jesse turned round. He saw, moving away, a hulking fellow of an unpleasant type, and a young woman, rouged but rather pretty, under a big hat, looking after him.

“Hear that, Giles?”

Giles nodded. “Swine!”

Having thus registered their disapproval, they re-concentrated their attention on the stage. It was during the song of a gentleman in a kilt that Jesse felt his arm pressed, and heard a voice in his ear say:

“Oh! Beg pardon! He IS funny, isn’t he?”

The same rouged young woman in the big hat was leaning over the balustrade beside him.

She was really young; her mouth was pretty if somewhat artificial, and her eyes, which were dark, looked scared.

“Are you having a night out?” she whispered.

Jesse shrugged his shoulders. Then the strains of ‘Tommy Atkins’ moving within him, he said:

“I heard what that swine said to you just now.”

The professional smile died off the young woman’s lips. She crossed her arms on her breast, and air escaped her in a long: “Oh!” Jesse edged his arm away from hers. A minute passed; then her arm pressed his again, and out of the corner of his eye, accustomed to the observation of woodcock, he could see her glancing furtively round. The ‘swine’ in question was just behind again with two male friends; he was bending on the girl such a look that Jesse said with surprising suddenness:

“Send the swine to hell!”

“What?” said Giles.

“That swine behind us. Swine who live on girls!”

“Steady, old man!” said Giles.

The man and his companions moved on, muttering.

“Oh!” said the girl under her breath: “whatever made you? I’ll never dare to go ‘ome to-night. What shall I do?”

Jesse did not answer, having no idea. An objection to scenes, rooted in his type, caused him to resume his stare at the stage, now occupied by a male dancer with brisk and glancing legs; but he was conscious of a tear slowly trickling down the girl’s cheek, making a narrow track in her rouge and powder.

“You wouldn’t take me on, I suppose?” he heard her say.

Jesse shook his head.

“Only up for the night. Going to the war.”

“Oh!” said the girl, blankly. “HE WILL wallop me.”

Jesse stared.

“D’you mean to say—”

The girl nodded violently.

“Hear that, Giles?”

Giles grunted.