第19章

His tea grew cold,his cigar remained unlit;and up and down he paced,torn between his dignity and his hold on life.Intolerable to be squeezed out slowly,without a say of your own,to live on when your will was in the hands of others bent on weighing you to the ground with care and love.Intolerable!He would see what telling her the truth would do--the truth that he wanted the sight of her more than just a lingering on.He sat down at his old bureau and took a pen.But he could not write.There was some-thing revolting in having to plead like this;plead that she should warm his eyes with her beauty.It was tantamount to confessing dotage.He simply could not.And instead,he wrote:

"I had hoped that the memory of old sores would not be allowed to stand in the way of what is a pleasure and a profit to me and my little grand-daughter.But old men learn to forego their whims;they are obliged to,even the whim to live must be foregone sooner or later;and perhaps the sooner the better.

"My love to you,"JOLYON FORSYTE."

'Bitter,'he thought,'but I can't help it.I'm tired.'He sealed and dropped it into the box for the evening post,and hearing it fall to the bottom,thought:'There goes all I've looked forward to!'

That evening after dinner which he scarcely touched,after his cigar which he left half-smoked for it made him feel faint,he went very slowly upstairs and stole into the night-nursery.He sat down on the window-seat.A night-light was burning,and he could just see Holly's face,with one hand underneath the cheek.An early cockchafer buzzed in the Japanese paper with which they had filled the grate,and one of the horses in the stable stamped restlessly.

To sleep like that child!He pressed apart two rungs of the venetian blind and looked out.The moon was rising,blood-red.He had never seen so red a moon.The woods and fields out there were dropping to sleep too,in the last glimmer of the summer light.