The Man of Property, by John Galsworthy

Chapter 2Old Jolyon Goes to the Opera

At five o’clock the following day old Jolyon sat alone, a cigar between his lips, and on a table by hisside a cup of tea. He was tired, and before he had finished his cigar he fell asleep. A fly settled on his hair, hisbreathing sounded heavy in the drowsy silence, his upper lip under the white moustache puffed in and out. From between thefingers of his veined and wrinkled hand the cigar, dropping on the empty hearth, burned itself out.

The gloomy little study, with windows of stained glass to exclude the view, was full of dark green velvet andheavily-carved mahogany — a suite of which old Jolyon was wont to say: ‘Shouldn’t wonder if it made a big price someday!’

It was pleasant to think that in the after life he could get more for things than he had given.

In the rich brown atmosphere peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte, the Rembrandtesque effect of his greathead, with its white hair, against the cushion of his high-backed seat, was spoiled by the moustache, which imparted asomewhat military look to his face. An old clock that had been with him since before his marriage forty years ago kept withits ticking a jealous record of the seconds slipping away forever from its old master.

He had never cared for this room, hardly going into it from one year’s end to another, except to take cigars from theJapanese cabinet in the corner, and the room now had its revenge.

His temples, curving like thatches over the hollows beneath, his cheek-bones and chin, all were sharpened in his sleep,and there had come upon his face the confession that he was an old man.

He woke. June had gone! James had said he would be lonely. James had always been a poor thing. He recollected withsatisfaction that he had bought that house over James’s head.