our
of oilcloth and herrings which permeates all respectable seaside
lodging-houses. On a chair--a shiny leather chair, displaying its
horsehair through a hole in the top left-hand corner--stood a black
despatch case. This he was filling with papers, with the Times, and a
bottle of Eau-de Cologne. He had meetings that day of the 'Globular Gold
Concessions' and the 'New Colliery Company, Limited,' to which he was
going up, for he never missed a Board; to 'miss a Board' would be one
more piece of evidence that he was growing old, and this his jealous
Forsyte spirit could not bear.

His eyes, as he filled that black despatch case, looked as if at any
moment they might blaze up with anger. So gleams the eye of a schoolboy,
baited by a ring of his companions; but he controls himself, deterred by
the fearful odds against him. And old Jolyon controlled himself,
keeping down, with his masterful restraint now slowly wearing out, the
irritation fostered in him by the conditions of his life.

He had received from his son an unpractical letter, in which by rambling
generalities the boy seemed trying to get out of answering a plain
question. 'I've seen Bosinney,' he said; 'he is not a criminal. The
more I see of people the more I am convinced that they are never good or
bad--merely comic, or pathetic. You probably don't agree with me!'

Old Jolyon did not; he considered it cynical to so express oneself; he
had not yet reached that point of old age when even Forsytes, bereft of
those illusions and principles which they have cherished carefully
for practical purposes but never believed in, bereft of all corporeal
enjoyment, stricken to the very heart by having nothing left to hope
for--break through the barriers of reserve and say things they would
never have believed themselves capable of saying.

Perhaps he did not believe in 'goodness' and 'badness' any more than
his son; but as he would have said: He didn't know--couldn't tell;
there might be something in it; and why, by an unnecessary expression of
disbelief, deprive yourself of possible advantage?

Accustomed to spend his holidays among the mountains, though (like a
true Forsyte) he had never attempted anything too adventurous or too
foolhardy, he had been passionately fond of them. And when the wonderful
view (mentioned in Baedeker--'fatiguing but repaying')--was disclosed to
him after the effort of the climb, he had doubtless felt the existence
of some great, dignified pr