第83章 SALVATION OF A FORSYTE(13)

Adolf's face was covered suddenly with crow's-feet."You have no business to ask me question like that! I am not paid, sir, to answer question like that."Swithin said faintly: "You're a peppery fool! Open a bottle of champagne!"Adolf took a bottle of champagne--from a cupboard and held nippers to it.He fixed his eyes on Swithin."The doctor said--""Open the bottle!"

"It is not--"

"Open the bottle--or I give you warning."Adolf removed the cork.He wiped a glass elaborately, filled it, and bore it scrupulously to the bedside.Suddenly twirling his moustaches, he wrung his hands, and burst out: "It is poison."Swithin grinned faintly."You foreign fool!" he said."Get out!"The valet vanished.

'He forgot himself!' thought Swithin.Slowly he raised the glass, slowly put it back, and sank gasping on his pillows.Almost at once he fell asleep.

He dreamed that he was at his club, sitting after dinner in the crowded smoking-room, with its bright walls and trefoils of light.

It was there that he sat every evening, patient, solemn, lonely, and sometimes fell asleep, his square, pale old face nodding to one side.

He dreamed that he was gazing at the picture over the fireplace, of an old statesman with a high collar, supremely finished face, and sceptical eyebrows--the picture, smooth, and reticent as sealing-wax, of one who seemed for ever exhaling the narrow wisdom of final judgments.All round him, his fellow members were chattering.Only he himself, the old sick member, was silent.If fellows only knew what it was like to sit by yourself and feel ill all the time! What they were saying he had heard a hundred times.They were talking of investments, of cigars, horses, actresses, machinery.What was that?

A foreign patent for cleaning boilers? There was no such thing;boilers couldn't be cleaned, any fool knew that! If an Englishman couldn't clean a boiler, no foreigner could clean one.He appealed to the old statesman's eyes.But for once those eyes seemed hesitating, blurred, wanting in finality.They vanished.In their place were Rozsi's little deep-set eyes, with their wide and far-off look; and as he gazed they seemed to grow bright as steel, and to speak to him.Slowly the whole face grew to be there, floating on the dark background of the picture; it was pink, aloof, unfathomable, enticing, with its fluffy hair and quick lips, just as he had last seen it."Are you looking for something?" she seemed to say: "Icould show you."

"I have everything safe enough," answered Swithin, and in his sleep he groaned.

He felt the touch of fingers on his forehead.'I'm dreaming,' he thought in his dream.

She had vanished; and far away, from behind the picture, came a sound of footsteps.

Aloud, in his sleep, Swithin muttered: "I've missed it."Again he heard the rustling of those light footsteps, and close in his ear a sound, like a sob.He awoke; the sob was his own.Great drops of perspiration stood on his forehead.'What is it?' he thought; 'what have I lost?' Slowly his mind travelled over his investments; he could not think of any single one that was unsafe.

What was it, then, that he had lost? Struggling on his pillows, he clutched the wine-glass.His lips touched the wine.'This isn't the "Heidseck"!' he thought angrily, and before the reality of that displeasure all the dim vision passed away.But as he bent to drink, something snapped, and, with a sigh, Swithin Forsyte died above the bubbles....

When James Forsyte came in again on his way home, the valet, trembling took his hat and stick.

"How's your master?"

"My master is dead, sir!"

"Dead! He can't be! I left him safe an hour ago.

On the bed Swithin's body was doubled like a sack; his hand still grasped the glass.

James Forsyte paused."Swithin!" he said, and with his hand to his ear he waited for an answer; but none came, and slowly in the glass a last bubble rose and burst.

December 1900.