The Man of Property

by John Galsworthy

T

he happy pair were seated, not opposite each other, but rectangularly, at the handsome rose­wood table; they dined without a cloth—a distinguishing elegance—and so far had not spoken a word.

            Soames liked to talk during dinner about business, or what he had been buying, and so long as he talked Irene's silence did not distress him. This evening he had found it impossible to talk. The decision to build had been weighing on his mind all the week, and he had made up his mind to tell her.

            His nervousness about this disclosure irritated him profoundly; she had no business to make him feel like that—a wife and a husband being one person. She had not looked at him once since they sat down; and he wondered what on earth she had been thinking about all the time. It was hard, when a man worked as he did, making money for her—yes, and with an ache in his heart—that she should sit there, looking—looking as if she saw the walls of the room closing in. It was enough to make a man get up and leave the table.

            The light from the rose-shaded lamp fell on her neck and arms—Soames liked her to dine in a low dress, it gave him an inexpressible feeling of superiority to the majority of his acquaintance, whose wives were contented with their best high frocks or with their tea-gowns, when they dined at home. Under that rosy light her amber-coloured hair and fair skin made strange contrast with her dark brown eyes.

            Could a man own anything prettier than this dining table with its deep tints, the starry, soft-petalled roses, the ruby-coloured glass, and quaint silver furnishing; could a man own anything prettier than the woman who sat at it? Gratitude was no virtue among the Forsytes, who, com­petitive, and full of common sense, had no occasion for it; and Soames only experienced a sense of exasperation amounting to pain, that he did not own her as it was his right to own her, that he could not, as by stretching out his hand to that rose, pluck her and sniff the very secrets of her heart.

            Out of his property, out of all the things he had collected, his silver, his pictures, his houses, his investments, he got a secret and intimate feeling; out of her he got none.

Notes and exercises:

1.   Learn the spelling of the following words paying special attention to the phonetic value of “u”: busy, business, businessman, minute, lettuce, minute (very small), minute-bell, minute-book, minute-glass, minuteman, minutiae.

2.   The suffix “–ity” is used to form nouns from adjectives: superior—superiority; major—majority, etc. It can cause doubling of the final consonant letter in a short syllable: tranquil—tranquillity. But there are many exceptions from this rule: formal—formality, equal—equality, solid—solidity. If the syllable is not a short one, there is no doubling of the final letter: sterile—sterility, senile—senility.

3.   The diphthong [e¶] is spelt “air” in the following words: hair, fair, air, airplane, pair, chair, stair, lair.

4.   Spell the words given in phonetic transcription:

a)       Knitting is her favourite [´pa:staim].

b)      Rachel has [soun] a new dress for her daughter.

c)       [æv¶d¶´poiz] is a system of weights used in Britain and the USA for all goods except precious metals, stones and medicines.

d)      To [sou] the wind and reap the whirl-wind means to suffer the disastrous results of one’s actions.

e)       The [´sa:(r)dz(¶)nt] complained to the [´s¶:(r)dz(¶)n] of a sore finger.

f)        Nowadays the word [vitlz] isn’t used as often as the word “food”.

g)      Nobody is allowed to drive a car when under the influence of [´lik¶(r)].

5.   The sound [k] is spelt “cq” in the following words: acquaint, acquaintance, lacquer, lacquey, racquet (also: racket), acquit, acquire, acquiesce.

6.   Word study:

rectangle               a plane four-sided figure with four right angles; rectangular—in the shape of the rectangle

competitive           full of the spirit of competition

exasperate              to irritate; to produce ill feeling in; to make ill feeling, anger, etc. worse: He was exasperated at/by her stupidity. It is exasperating to lose a train by half a minute. “Stop that noise,” he cried out in exasperation.

7.   Translate the following expressions and use them in sentences of your own:

to have a fair skin, to have a silky skin, to have a thin skin, to have a thick skin, to escape by the skin of one’s teeth, he can’t change his skin, to come off with a whole skin, jump out of one’s skin for, to get under someone’s skin (to irritate, to annoy), to be in someone’s skin (to be in someone’s shoes), to skin through (US colloq.), to keep one’s eyes skinned, skin-diving, a skinflint (a miser, a stingy person)