oo late? Now that they had
been brought up sharp by service of this petition, had he not a lever
with which he could force them apart? 'But if I don't act at once,' he
thought, 'it will be too late, now they've had this thing. I'll go and
see him; I'll go down!'

And, sick with nervous anxiety, he sent out for one of the 'new-fangled'
motor-cabs. It might take a long time to run that fellow to ground, and
Goodness knew what decision they might come to after such a shock! 'If I
were a theatrical ass,' he thought, 'I suppose I should be taking a
horse-whip or a pistol or something!' He took instead a bundle of papers
in the case of 'Magentie versus Wake,' intending to read them on the way
down. He did not even open them, but sat quite still, jolted and jarred,
unconscious of the draught down the back of his neck, or the smell of
petrol. He must be guided by the fellow's attitude; the great thing was
to keep his head!

London had already begun to disgorge its workers as he neared Putney
Bridge; the ant-heap was on the move outwards. What a lot of ants, all
with a living to get, holding on by their eyelids in the great scramble!
Perhaps for the first time in his life Soames thought: 'I could let go if
I liked! Nothing could touch me; I could snap my fingers, live as I
wished--enjoy myself!' No! One could not live as he had and just drop
it all--settle down in Capua, to spend the money and reputation he had
made. A man's life was what he possessed and sought to possess. Only
fools thought otherwise--fools, and socialists, and libertines!

The cab was passing villas now, going a great pace. 'Fifteen miles an
hour, I should think!' he mused; 'this'll take people out of town to
live!' and he thought of its bearing on the portions of London owned by
his father--he himself had never taken to that form of investment, the
gambler in him having all the outlet needed in his pictures. And the cab
sped on, down the hill past Wimbledon Common. This interview! Surely a
man of fifty-two with grown-up children, and hung on the line, would not
be reckless. 'He won't want to disgrace the family,' he thought; 'he was
as fond of his father as I am of mine, and they were brothers. That
woman brings destruction--what is it in her? I've never known.' The cab
branched off, along the side of a wood, and he heard a late cuckoo
calling, almost the first he had heard that year. He was now almost
opposite the site he had origin