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Title: The Forsyte Saga, Volume II.
 - Indian Summer of a Forsyte
 - In Chancery
Author: Galsworthy, John
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Forsyte Saga, Volume II.
 - Indian Summer of a Forsyte
 - In Chancery" ***


FORSYTE SAGA: INDIAN SUMMER OF A FORSYTE, IN CHANCERY


By John Galsworthy



PART II



CHAPTER I--PROGRESS OF THE HOUSE

The winter had been an open one. Things in the trade were slack; and as
Soames had reflected before making up his mind, it had been a good time
for building. The shell of the house at Robin Hill was thus completed by
the end of April.

Now that there was something to be seen for his money, he had been
coming down once, twice, even three times a week, and would mouse about
among the debris for hours, careful never to soil his clothes, moving
silently through the unfinished brickwork of doorways, or circling round
the columns in the central court.

And he would stand before them for minutes’ together, as though peering
into the real quality of their substance.

On April 30 he had an appointment with Bosinney to go over the accounts,
and five minutes before the proper time he entered the tent which the
architect had pitched for himself close to the old oak tree.

The accounts were already prepared on a folding table, and with a nod
Soames sat down to study them. It was some time before he raised his
head.

“I can’t make them out,” he said at last; “they come to nearly seven
hundred more than they ought.”

After a glance at Bosinney’s face he went on quickly:

“If you only make a firm stand against these builder chaps you’ll get
them down. They stick you with everything if you don’t look sharp....
Take ten per cent. off all round. I shan’t mind it’s coming out a
hundred or so over the mark!”

Bosinney shook his head:

“I’ve taken off every farthing I can!”

Soames pushed back the table with a movement of anger, which sent the
account sheets fluttering to the ground.

“Then all I can say is,” he flustered out, “you’ve made a pretty mess of
it!”

“I’ve told you a dozen times,” Bosinney answered sharply, “that there’d
be extras. I’ve pointed them out to you over and over again!”

“I know that,” growled Soames: “I shouldn’t have objected to a ten pound
note here and there. How was I to know that by ‘extras’ you meant seven
hundred pounds?”

The qualities of both men had contributed to this not-inconsiderable
discrepancy. On the one hand, the architect’s devotion to his idea, to
the image of a house which he had created and believed in--had made him
nervous of being stopped, or forced to the use of makeshifts; on the
other, Soames’ not less true and wholehearted devotion to the very best
article that could be obtained for the money, had rendered him averse to
believing that things worth thirteen shillings could not be bought with
twelve.

“I wish I’d never undertaken your house,” said Bosinney suddenly. “You
come down here worrying me out of my life. You want double the value for
your money anybody else would, and now that you’ve got a house that for
its size is not to be beaten in the county, you don’t want to pay for
it. If you’re anxious to be off your bargain, I daresay I can find
the balance above the estimates myself, but I’m d----d if I do another
stroke of work for you!”

Soames regained his composure. Knowing that Bosinney had no capital, he
regarded this as a wild suggestion. He saw, too, that he would be kept
indefinitely out of this house on which he had set his heart, and just
at the crucial point when the architect’s personal care made all the
difference. In the meantime there was Irene to be thought of! She had
been very queer lately. He really believed it was only because she had
taken to Bosinney that she tolerated the idea of the house at all. It
would not do to make an open breach with her.

“You needn’t get into a rage,” he said. “If I’m willing to put up with
it, I suppose you needn’t cry out. All I meant was that when you tell me
a thing is going to cost so much, I like to--well, in fact, I--like to
know where I am.”

“Look here!” said Bosinney, and Soames was both annoyed and surprised
by the shrewdness of his glance. “You’ve got my services dirt cheap. For
the kind of work I’ve put into this house, and the amount of time I’ve
given to it, you’d have had to pay Littlemaster or some other fool
four times as much. What you want, in fact, is a first-rate man for a
fourth-rate fee, and that’s exactly what you’ve got!”

Soames saw that he really meant what he said, and, angry though he was,
the consequences of a row rose before him too vividly. He saw his house
unfinished, his wife rebellious, himself a laughingstock.

“Let’s go over it,” he said sulkily, “and see how the money’s gone.”

“Very well,” assented Bosinney. “But we’ll hurry up, if you don’t mind.
I have to get back in time to take June to the theatre.”

Soames cast a stealthy look at him, and said: “Coming to our place, I
suppose to meet her?” He was always coming to their place!

There had been rain the night before-a spring rain, and the earth smelt
of sap and wild grasses. The warm, soft breeze swung the leaves and the
golden buds of the old oak tree, and in the sunshine the blackbirds were
whistling their hearts out.

It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable yearning, a
painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand motionless, looking
at the leaves or grass, and fling out his arms to embrace he knows not
what. The earth gave forth a fainting warmth, stealing up through the
chilly garment in which winter had wrapped her. It was her long caress
of invitation, to draw men down to lie within her arms, to roll their
bodies on her, and put their lips to her breast.

On just such a day as this Soames had got from Irene the promise he had
asked her for so often. Seated on the fallen trunk of a tree, he had
promised for the twentieth time that if their marriage were not a
success, she should be as free as if she had never married him!

“Do you swear it?” she had said. A few days back she had reminded him
of that oath. He had answered: “Nonsense! I couldn’t have sworn any such
thing!” By some awkward fatality he remembered it now. What queer things
men would swear for the sake of women! He would have sworn it at any
time to gain her! He would swear it now, if thereby he could touch
her--but nobody could touch her, she was cold-hearted!

And memories crowded on him with the fresh, sweet savour of the spring
wind-memories of his courtship.

In the spring of the year 1881 he was visiting his old school-fellow
and client, George Liversedge, of Branksome, who, with the view of
developing his pine-woods in the neighbourhood of Bournemouth, had
placed the formation of the company necessary to the scheme in Soames’s
hands. Mrs. Liversedge, with a sense of the fitness of things, had given
a musical tea in his honour. Later in the course of this function, which
Soames, no musician, had regarded as an unmitigated bore, his eye had
been caught by the face of a girl dressed in mourning, standing by
herself. The lines of her tall, as yet rather thin figure, showed
through the wispy, clinging stuff of her black dress, her black-gloved
hands were crossed in front of her, her lips slightly parted, and her
large, dark eyes wandered from face to face. Her hair, done low on
her neck, seemed to gleam above her black collar like coils of shining
metal. And as Soames stood looking at her, the sensation that most men
have felt at one time or another went stealing through him--a peculiar
satisfaction of the senses, a peculiar certainty, which novelists and
old ladies call love at first sight. Still stealthily watching her, he
at once made his way to his hostess, and stood doggedly waiting for the
music to cease.

“Who is that girl with yellow hair and dark eyes?” he asked.

“That--oh! Irene Heron. Her father, Professor Heron, died this year.
She lives with her stepmother. She’s a nice girl, a pretty girl, but no
money!”

“Introduce me, please,” said Soames.

It was very little that he found to say, nor did he find her responsive
to that little. But he went away with the resolution to see her again.
He effected his object by chance, meeting her on the pier with her
stepmother, who had the habit of walking there from twelve to one of a
forenoon. Soames made this lady’s acquaintance with alacrity, nor was
it long before he perceived in her the ally he was looking for. His keen
scent for the commercial side of family life soon told him that Irene
cost her stepmother more than the fifty pounds a year she brought her;
it also told him that Mrs. Heron, a woman yet in the prime of life,
desired to be married again. The strange ripening beauty of her
stepdaughter stood in the way of this desirable consummation. And
Soames, in his stealthy tenacity, laid his plans.

He left Bournemouth without having given himself away, but in a month’s
time came back, and this time he spoke, not to the girl, but to her
stepmother. He had made up his mind, he said; he would wait any time.
And he had long to wait, watching Irene bloom, the lines of her young
figure softening, the stronger blood deepening the gleam of her eyes,
and warming her face to a creamy glow; and at each visit he proposed to
her, and when that visit was at an end, took her refusal away with him,
back to London, sore at heart, but steadfast and silent as the grave. He
tried to come at the secret springs of her resistance; only once had he
a gleam of light. It was at one of those assembly dances, which
afford the only outlet to the passions of the population of seaside
watering-places. He was sitting with her in an embrasure, his senses
tingling with the contact of the waltz. She had looked at him over her,
slowly waving fan; and he had lost his head. Seizing that moving wrist,
he pressed his lips to the flesh of her arm. And she had shuddered--to
this day he had not forgotten that shudder--nor the look so passionately
averse she had given him.

A year after that she had yielded. What had made her yield he could
never make out; and from Mrs. Heron, a woman of some diplomatic talent,
he learnt nothing. Once after they were married he asked her, “What
made you refuse me so often?” She had answered by a strange silence. An
enigma to him from the day that he first saw her, she was an enigma to
him still....

Bosinney was waiting for him at the door; and on his rugged,
good-looking, face was a queer, yearning, yet happy look, as though he
too saw a promise of bliss in the spring sky, sniffed a coming happiness
in the spring air. Soames looked at him waiting there. What was the
matter with the fellow that he looked so happy? What was he waiting for
with that smile on his lips and in his eyes? Soames could not see
that for which Bosinney was waiting as he stood there drinking in the
flower-scented wind. And once more he felt baffled in the presence of
this man whom by habit he despised. He hastened on to the house.

“The only colour for those tiles,” he heard Bosinney say,--“is ruby with
a grey tint in the stuff, to give a transparent effect. I should like
Irene’s opinion. I’m ordering the purple leather curtains for the
doorway of this court; and if you distemper the drawing-room ivory cream
over paper, you’ll get an illusive look. You want to aim all through the
decorations at what I call charm.”

Soames said: “You mean that my wife has charm!”

Bosinney evaded the question.

“You should have a clump of iris plants in the centre of that court.”

Soames smiled superciliously.

“I’ll look into Beech’s some time,” he said, “and see what’s
appropriate!”

They found little else to say to each other, but on the way to the
Station Soames asked:

“I suppose you find Irene very artistic.”

“Yes.” The abrupt answer was as distinct a snub as saying: “If you want
to discuss her you can do it with someone else!”

And the slow, sulky anger Soames had felt all the afternoon burned the
brighter within him.

Neither spoke again till they were close to the Station, then Soames
asked:

“When do you expect to have finished?”

“By the end of June, if you really wish me to decorate as well.”

Soames nodded. “But you quite understand,” he said, “that the house is
costing me a lot beyond what I contemplated. I may as well tell you that
I should have thrown it up, only I’m not in the habit of giving up what
I’ve set my mind on.”

Bosinney made no reply. And Soames gave him askance a look of dogged
dislike--for in spite of his fastidious air and that supercilious,
dandified taciturnity, Soames, with his set lips and squared chin, was
not unlike a bulldog....

When, at seven o’clock that evening, June arrived at 62, Montpellier
Square, the maid Bilson told her that Mr. Bosinney was in the
drawing-room; the mistress--she said--was dressing, and would be down in
a minute. She would tell her that Miss June was here.

June stopped her at once.

“All right, Bilson,” she said, “I’ll just go in. You, needn’t hurry Mrs.
Soames.”

She took off her cloak, and Bilson, with an understanding look, did not
even open the drawing-room door for her, but ran downstairs.

June paused for a moment to look at herself in the little old-fashioned
silver mirror above the oaken rug chest--a slim, imperious young figure,
with a small resolute face, in a white frock, cut moon-shaped at the
base of a neck too slender for her crown of twisted red-gold hair.

She opened the drawing-room door softly, meaning to take him by
surprise. The room was filled with a sweet hot scent of flowering
azaleas.

She took a long breath of the perfume, and heard Bosinney’s voice, not
in the room, but quite close, saying.

“Ah! there were such heaps of things I wanted to talk about, and now we
shan’t have time!”

Irene’s voice answered: “Why not at dinner?”

“How can one talk....”

June’s first thought was to go away, but instead she crossed to the long
window opening on the little court. It was from there that the scent
of the azaleas came, and, standing with their backs to her, their faces
buried in the golden-pink blossoms, stood her lover and Irene.

Silent but unashamed, with flaming cheeks and angry eyes, the girl
watched.

“Come on Sunday by yourself--We can go over the house together.”

June saw Irene look up at him through her screen of blossoms. It was not
the look of a coquette, but--far worse to the watching girl--of a woman
fearful lest that look should say too much.

“I’ve promised to go for a drive with Uncle....”

“The big one! Make him bring you; it’s only ten miles--the very thing
for his horses.”

“Poor old Uncle Swithin!”

A wave of the azalea scent drifted into June’s face; she felt sick and
dizzy.

“Do! ah! do!”

“But why?”

“I must see you there--I thought you’d like to help me....”

The answer seemed to the girl to come softly with a tremble from amongst
the blossoms: “So I do!”

And she stepped into the open space of the window.

“How stuffy it is here!” she said; “I can’t bear this scent!”

Her eyes, so angry and direct, swept both their faces.

“Were you talking about the house? I haven’t seen it yet, you
know--shall we all go on Sunday?”

From Irene’s face the colour had flown.

“I am going for a drive that day with Uncle Swithin,” she answered.

“Uncle Swithin! What does he matter? You can throw him over!”

“I am not in the habit of throwing people over!”

There was a sound of footsteps and June saw Soames standing just behind
her.

“Well! if you are all ready,” said Irene, looking from one to the other
with a strange smile, “dinner is too!”



CHAPTER II--JUNE’S TREAT

Dinner began in silence; the women facing one another, and the men.

In silence the soup was finished--excellent, if a little thick; and fish
was brought. In silence it was handed.

Bosinney ventured: “It’s the first spring day.”

Irene echoed softly: “Yes--the first spring day.”

“Spring!” said June: “there isn’t a breath of air!” No one replied.

The fish was taken away, a fine fresh sole from Dover. And Bilson
brought champagne, a bottle swathed around the neck with white....

Soames said: “You’ll find it dry.”

Cutlets were handed, each pink-frilled about the legs. They were refused
by June, and silence fell.

Soames said: “You’d better take a cutlet, June; there’s nothing coming.”

But June again refused, so they were borne away. And then Irene asked:
“Phil, have you heard my blackbird?”

Bosinney answered: “Rather--he’s got a hunting-song. As I came round I
heard him in the Square.”

“He’s such a darling!”

“Salad, sir?” Spring chicken was removed.

But Soames was speaking: “The asparagus is very poor. Bosinney, glass of
sherry with your sweet? June, you’re drinking nothing!”

June said: “You know I never do. Wine’s such horrid stuff!”

An apple charlotte came upon a silver dish, and smilingly Irene said:
“The azaleas are so wonderful this year!”

To this Bosinney murmured: “Wonderful! The scent’s extraordinary!”

June said: “How can you like the scent? Sugar, please, Bilson.”

Sugar was handed her, and Soames remarked: “This charlottes good!”

The charlotte was removed. Long silence followed. Irene, beckoning,
said: “Take out the azalea, Bilson. Miss June can’t bear the scent.”

“No; let it stay,” said June.

Olives from France, with Russian caviare, were placed on little plates.
And Soames remarked: “Why can’t we have the Spanish?” But no one
answered.

The olives were removed. Lifting her tumbler June demanded: “Give me
some water, please.” Water was given her. A silver tray was brought,
with German plums. There was a lengthy pause. In perfect harmony all
were eating them.

Bosinney counted up the stones: “This year--next year--some time.”

Irene finished softly: “Never! There was such a glorious sunset. The
sky’s all ruby still--so beautiful!”

He answered: “Underneath the dark.”

Their eyes had met, and June cried scornfully: “A London sunset!”

Egyptian cigarettes were handed in a silver box. Soames, taking one,
remarked: “What time’s your play begin?”

No one replied, and Turkish coffee followed in enamelled cups.

Irene, smiling quietly, said: “If only....”

“Only what?” said June.

“If only it could always be the spring!”

Brandy was handed; it was pale and old.

Soames said: “Bosinney, better take some brandy.”

Bosinney took a glass; they all arose.

“You want a cab?” asked Soames.

June answered: “No! My cloaks please, Bilson.” Her cloak was brought.

Irene, from the window, murmured: “Such a lovely night! The stars are
coming out!”

Soames added: “Well, I hope you’ll both enjoy yourselves.”

From the door June answered: “Thanks. Come, Phil.”

Bosinney cried: “I’m coming.”

Soames smiled a sneering smile, and said: “I wish you luck!”

And at the door Irene watched them go.

Bosinney called: “Good night!”

“Good night!” she answered softly....

June made her lover take her on the top of a ‘bus, saying she wanted
air, and there sat silent, with her face to the breeze.

The driver turned once or twice, with the intention of venturing a
remark, but thought better of it. They were a lively couple! The spring
had got into his blood, too; he felt the need for letting steam escape,
and clucked his tongue, flourishing his whip, wheeling his horses,
and even they, poor things, had smelled the spring, and for a brief
half-hour spurned the pavement with happy hoofs.

The whole town was alive; the boughs, curled upward with their decking
of young leaves, awaited some gift the breeze could bring. New-lighted
lamps were gaining mastery, and the faces of the crowd showed pale under
that glare, while on high the great white clouds slid swiftly, softly,
over the purple sky.

Men in, evening dress had thrown back overcoats, stepping jauntily up
the steps of Clubs; working folk loitered; and women--those women who
at that time of night are solitary--solitary and moving eastward in a
stream--swung slowly along, with expectation in their gait, dreaming of
good wine and a good supper, or--for an unwonted minute, of kisses given
for love.

Those countless figures, going their ways under the lamps and the
moving-sky, had one and all received some restless blessing from the
stir of spring. And one and all, like those clubmen with their opened
coats, had shed something of caste, and creed, and custom, and by the
cock of their hats, the pace of their walk, their laughter, or their
silence, revealed their common kinship under the passionate heavens.

Bosinney and June entered the theatre in silence, and mounted to
their seats in the upper boxes. The piece had just begun, and the
half-darkened house, with its rows of creatures peering all one way,
resembled a great garden of flowers turning their faces to the sun.

June had never before been in the upper boxes. From the age of fifteen
she had habitually accompanied her grandfather to the stalls, and not
common stalls, but the best seats in the house, towards the centre of
the third row, booked by old Jolyon, at Grogan and Boyne’s, on his way
home from the City, long before the day; carried in his overcoat pocket,
together with his cigar-case and his old kid gloves, and handed to June
to keep till the appointed night. And in those stalls--an erect old
figure with a serene white head, a little figure, strenuous and eager,
with a red-gold head--they would sit through every kind of play, and on
the way home old Jolyon would say of the principal actor: “Oh, he’s a
poor stick! You should have seen little Bobson!”

She had looked forward to this evening with keen delight; it was stolen,
chaperone-less, undreamed of at Stanhope Gate, where she was supposed to
be at Soames’. She had expected reward for her subterfuge, planned for
her lover’s sake; she had expected it to break up the thick, chilly
cloud, and make the relations between them which of late had been so
puzzling, so tormenting--sunny and simple again as they had been
before the winter. She had come with the intention of saying something
definite; and she looked at the stage with a furrow between her brows,
seeing nothing, her hands squeezed together in her lap. A swarm of
jealous suspicions stung and stung her.

If Bosinney was conscious of her trouble he made no sign.

The curtain dropped. The first act had come to an end.

“It’s awfully hot here!” said the girl; “I should like to go out.”

She was very white, and she knew--for with her nerves thus sharpened she
saw everything--that he was both uneasy and compunctious.

At the back of the theatre an open balcony hung over the street; she
took possession of this, and stood leaning there without a word, waiting
for him to begin.

At last she could bear it no longer.

“I want to say something to you, Phil,” she said.

“Yes?”

The defensive tone of his voice brought the colour flying to her cheek,
the words flying to her lips: “You don’t give me a chance to be nice to
you; you haven’t for ages now!”

Bosinney stared down at the street. He made no answer....

June cried passionately: “You know I want to do everything for you--that
I want to be everything to you....”

A hum rose from the street, and, piercing it with a sharp ‘ping,’
the bell sounded for the raising of the curtain. June did not stir. A
desperate struggle was going on within her. Should she put everything to
the proof? Should she challenge directly that influence, that attraction
which was driving him away from her? It was her nature to challenge, and
she said: “Phil, take me to see the house on Sunday!”

With a smile quivering and breaking on her lips, and trying, how hard,
not to show that she was watching, she searched his face, saw it waver
and hesitate, saw a troubled line come between his brows, the blood rush
into his face. He answered: “Not Sunday, dear; some other day!”

“Why not Sunday? I shouldn’t be in the way on Sunday.”

He made an evident effort, and said: “I have an engagement.”

“You are going to take....”

His eyes grew angry; he shrugged his shoulders, and answered: “An
engagement that will prevent my taking you to see the house!”

June bit her lip till the blood came, and walked back to her seat
without another word, but she could not help the tears of rage rolling
down her face. The house had been mercifully darkened for a crisis, and
no one could see her trouble.

Yet in this world of Forsytes let no man think himself immune from
observation.

In the third row behind, Euphemia, Nicholas’s youngest daughter, with
her married-sister, Mrs. Tweetyman, were watching.

They reported at Timothy’s, how they had seen June and her fiance at the
theatre.

“In the stalls?” “No, not in the....” “Oh! in the dress circle, of
course. That seemed to be quite fashionable nowadays with young people!”

Well--not exactly. In the.... Anyway, that engagement wouldn’t last
long. They had never seen anyone look so thunder and lightningy as that
little June! With tears of enjoyment in their eyes, they related how she
had kicked a man’s hat as she returned to her seat in the middle of an
act, and how the man had looked. Euphemia had a noted, silent laugh,
terminating most disappointingly in squeaks; and when Mrs. Small,
holding up her hands, said: “My dear! Kicked a ha-at?” she let out such
a number of these that she had to be recovered with smelling-salts. As
she went away she said to Mrs. Tweetyman:

“Kicked a--ha-at! Oh! I shall die.”

For ‘that little June’ this evening, that was to have been ‘her treat,’
was the most miserable she had ever spent. God knows she tried to stifle
her pride, her suspicion, her jealousy!

She parted from Bosinney at old Jolyon’s door without breaking down; the
feeling that her lover must be conquered was strong enough to sustain
her till his retiring footsteps brought home the true extent of her
wretchedness.

The noiseless ‘Sankey’ let her in. She would have slipped up to her own
room, but old Jolyon, who had heard her entrance, was in the dining-room
doorway.

“Come in and have your milk,” he said. “It’s been kept hot for you.
You’re very late. Where have you been?”

June stood at the fireplace, with a foot on the fender and an arm on the
mantelpiece, as her grandfather had done when he came in that night of
the opera. She was too near a breakdown to care what she told him.

“We dined at Soames’s.”

“H’m! the man of property! His wife there and Bosinney?”

“Yes.”

Old Jolyon’s glance was fixed on her with the penetrating gaze from
which it was difficult to hide; but she was not looking at him, and
when she turned her face, he dropped his scrutiny at once. He had seen
enough, and too much. He bent down to lift the cup of milk for her from
the hearth, and, turning away, grumbled: “You oughtn’t to stay out so
late; it makes you fit for nothing.”

He was invisible now behind his paper, which he turned with a vicious
crackle; but when June came up to kiss him, he said: “Good-night, my
darling,” in a tone so tremulous and unexpected, that it was all the
girl could do to get out of the room without breaking into the fit of
sobbing which lasted her well on into the night.

When the door was closed, old Jolyon dropped his paper, and stared long
and anxiously in front of him.

’.he beggar!’ he thought. ‘I always knew she’d have trouble with him!’

Uneasy doubts and suspicions, the more poignant that he felt himself
powerless to check or control the march of events, came crowding upon
him.

Was the fellow going to jilt her? He longed to go and say to him: “Look
here, you sir! Are you going to jilt my grand-daughter?” But how could
he? Knowing little or nothing, he was yet certain, with his unerring
astuteness, that there was something going on. He suspected Bosinney of
being too much at Montpellier Square.

’.his fellow,’ he thought, ‘may not be a scamp; his face is not a bad
one, but he’s a queer fish. I don’t know what to make of him. I shall
never know what to make of him! They tell me he works like a nigger, but
I see no good coming of it. He’s unpractical, he has no method. When he
comes here, he sits as glum as a monkey. If I ask him what wine he’ll
have, he says: “Thanks, any wine.” If I offer him a cigar, he smokes it
as if it were a twopenny German thing. I never see him looking at June
as he ought to look at her; and yet, he’s not after her money. If
she were to make a sign, he’d be off his bargain to-morrow. But she
won’t--not she! She’ll stick to him! She’s as obstinate as fate--She’ll
never let go!’

Sighing deeply, he turned the paper; in its columns, perchance he might
find consolation.

And upstairs in her room June sat at her open window, where the spring
wind came, after its revel across the Park, to cool her hot cheeks and
burn her heart.



CHAPTER III--DRIVE WITH SWITHIN

Two lines of a certain song in a certain famous old school’s songbook
run as follows:

’.ow the buttons on his blue frock shone, tra-la-la! How he carolled and
he sang, like a bird!...’

Swithin did not exactly carol and sing like a bird, but he felt
almost like endeavouring to hum a tune, as he stepped out of Hyde Park
Mansions, and contemplated his horses drawn up before the door.

The afternoon was as balmy as a day in June, and to complete the simile
of the old song, he had put on a blue frock-coat, dispensing with an
overcoat, after sending Adolf down three times to make sure that there
was not the least suspicion of east in the wind; and the frock-coat was
buttoned so tightly around his personable form, that, if the buttons did
not shine, they might pardonably have done so. Majestic on the pavement
he fitted on a pair of dog-skin gloves; with his large bell-shaped
top hat, and his great stature and bulk he looked too primeval for a
Forsyte. His thick white hair, on which Adolf had bestowed a touch of
pomatum, exhaled the fragrance of opoponax and cigars--the celebrated
Swithin brand, for which he paid one hundred and forty shillings the
hundred, and of which old Jolyon had unkindly said, he wouldn’t smoke
them as a gift; they wanted the stomach of a horse!

“Adolf!”

“Sare!”

“The new plaid rug!”

He would never teach that fellow to look smart; and Mrs. Soames he felt
sure, had an eye!

“The phaeton hood down; I am going--to--drive--a--lady!”

A pretty woman would want to show off her frock; and well--he was going
to drive a lady! It was like a new beginning to the good old days.

Ages since he had driven a woman! The last time, if he remembered, it
had been Juley; the poor old soul had been as nervous as a cat the whole
time, and so put him out of patience that, as he dropped her in the
Bayswater Road, he had said: “Well I’m d---d if I ever drive you again!”
 And he never had, not he!

Going up to his horses’ heads, he examined their bits; not that he knew
anything about bits--he didn’t pay his coachman sixty pounds a year
to do his work for him, that had never been his principle. Indeed, his
reputation as a horsey man rested mainly on the fact that once, on Derby
Day, he had been welshed by some thimble-riggers. But someone at the
Club, after seeing him drive his greys up to the door--he always drove
grey horses, you got more style for the money, some thought--had called
him ‘Four-in-hand Forsyte.’ The name having reached his ears through
that fellow Nicholas Treffry, old Jolyon’s dead partner, the great
driving man notorious for more carriage accidents than any man in the
kingdom--Swithin had ever after conceived it right to act up to it. The
name had taken his fancy, not because he had ever driven four-in-hand,
or was ever likely to, but because of something distinguished in the
sound. Four-in-hand Forsyte! Not bad! Born too soon, Swithin had missed
his vocation. Coming upon London twenty years later, he could not have
failed to have become a stockbroker, but at the time when he was obliged
to select, this great profession had not as yet became the chief glory
of the upper-middle class. He had literally been forced into land
agency.

Once in the driving seat, with the reins handed to him, and blinking
over his pale old cheeks in the full sunlight, he took a slow look
round--Adolf was already up behind; the cockaded groom at the horses’
heads stood ready to let go; everything was prepared for the signal, and
Swithin gave it. The equipage dashed forward, and before you could say
Jack Robinson, with a rattle and flourish drew up at Soames’ door.

Irene came out at once, and stepped in--he afterward described it at
Timothy’s--“as light as--er--Taglioni, no fuss about it, no wanting this
or wanting that;” and above all, Swithin dwelt on this, staring at
Mrs. Septimus in a way that disconcerted her a good deal, “no silly
nervousness!” To Aunt Hester he portrayed Irene’s hat. “Not one of your
great flopping things, sprawling about, and catching the dust, that
women are so fond of nowadays, but a neat little--” he made a circular
motion of his hand, “white veil--capital taste.”

“What was it made of?” inquired Aunt Hester, who manifested a languid
but permanent excitement at any mention of dress.

“Made of?” returned Swithin; “now how should I know?”

He sank into silence so profound that Aunt Hester began to be afraid he
had fallen into a trance. She did not try to rouse him herself, it not
being her custom.

’. wish somebody would come,’ she thought; ‘I don’t like the look of
him!’

But suddenly Swithin returned to life. “Made of” he wheezed out slowly,
“what should it be made of?”

They had not gone four miles before Swithin received the impression that
Irene liked driving with him. Her face was so soft behind that white
veil, and her dark eyes shone so in the spring light, and whenever he
spoke she raised them to him and smiled.

On Saturday morning Soames had found her at her writing-table with a
note written to Swithin, putting him off. Why did she want to put him
off? he asked. She might put her own people off when she liked, he would
not have her putting off his people!

She had looked at him intently, had torn up the note, and said: “Very
well!”

And then she began writing another. He took a casual glance presently,
and saw that it was addressed to Bosinney.

“What are you writing to him about?” he asked.

Irene, looking at him again with that intent look, said quietly:
“Something he wanted me to do for him!”

“Humph!” said Soames,--“Commissions!”

“You’ll have your work cut out if you begin that sort of thing!” He said
no more.

Swithin opened his eyes at the mention of Robin Hill; it was a long way
for his horses, and he always dined at half-past seven, before the
rush at the Club began; the new chef took more trouble with an early
dinner--a lazy rascal!

He would like to have a look at the house, however. A house appealed to
any Forsyte, and especially to one who had been an auctioneer. After all
he said the distance was nothing. When he was a younger man he had had
rooms at Richmond for many years, kept his carriage and pair there, and
drove them up and down to business every day of his life.

Four-in-hand Forsyte they called him! His T-cart, his horses had been
known from Hyde Park Corner to the Star and Garter. The Duke of Z....
wanted to get hold of them, would have given him double the money, but
he had kept them; know a good thing when you have it, eh? A look of
solemn pride came portentously on his shaven square old face, he rolled
his head in his stand-up collar, like a turkey-cock preening himself.

She was really--a charming woman! He enlarged upon her frock afterwards
to Aunt Juley, who held up her hands at his way of putting it.

Fitted her like a skin--tight as a drum; that was how he liked ‘em,
all of a piece, none of your daverdy, scarecrow women! He gazed at Mrs.
Septimus Small, who took after James--long and thin.

“There’s style about her,” he went on, “fit for a king! And she’s so
quiet with it too!”

“She seems to have made quite a conquest of you, any way,” drawled Aunt
Hester from her corner.

Swithin heard extremely well when anybody attacked him.

“What’s that?” he said. “I know a--pretty--woman when I see one, and all
I can say is, I don’t see the young man about that’s fit for her; but
perhaps--you--do, come, perhaps--you-do!”

“Oh?” murmured Aunt Hester, “ask Juley!”

Long before they reached Robin Hill, however, the unaccustomed airing
had made him terribly sleepy; he drove with his eyes closed, a life-time
of deportment alone keeping his tall and bulky form from falling askew.

Bosinney, who was watching, came out to meet them, and all three
entered the house together; Swithin in front making play with a stout
gold-mounted Malacca cane, put into his hand by Adolf, for his knees
were feeling the effects of their long stay in the same position. He had
assumed his fur coat, to guard against the draughts of the unfinished
house.

The staircase--he said--was handsome! the baronial style! They would
want some statuary about! He came to a standstill between the columns of
the doorway into the inner court, and held out his cane inquiringly.

What was this to be--this vestibule, or whatever they called it? But
gazing at the skylight, inspiration came to him.

“Ah! the billiard-room!”

When told it was to be a tiled court with plants in the centre, he
turned to Irene:

“Waste this on plants? You take my advice and have a billiard table
here!”

Irene smiled. She had lifted her veil, banding it like a nun’s coif
across her forehead, and the smile of her dark eyes below this seemed to
Swithin more charming than ever. He nodded. She would take his advice he
saw.

He had little to say of the drawing or dining-rooms, which he described
as “spacious”; but fell into such raptures as he permitted to a man of
his dignity, in the wine-cellar, to which he descended by stone steps,
Bosinney going first with a light.

“You’ll have room here,” he said, “for six or seven hundred dozen--a
very pooty little cellar!”

Bosinney having expressed the wish to show them the house from the copse
below, Swithin came to a stop.

“There’s a fine view from here,” he remarked; “you haven’t such a thing
as a chair?”

A chair was brought him from Bosinney’s tent.

“You go down,” he said blandly; “you two! I’ll sit here and look at the
view.”

He sat down by the oak tree, in the sun; square and upright, with one
hand stretched out, resting on the nob of his cane, the other planted on
his knee; his fur coat thrown open, his hat, roofing with its flat
top the pale square of his face; his stare, very blank, fixed on the
landscape.

He nodded to them as they went off down through the fields. He was,
indeed, not sorry to be left thus for a quiet moment of reflection. The
air was balmy, not too much heat in the sun; the prospect a fine one,
a remarka.... His head fell a little to one side; he jerked it up and
thought: Odd! He--ah! They were waving to him from the bottom! He put
up his hand, and moved it more than once. They were active--the prospect
was remar.... His head fell to the left, he jerked it up at once; it
fell to the right. It remained there; he was asleep.

And asleep, a sentinel on the--top of the rise, he appeared to rule over
this prospect--remarkable--like some image blocked out by the special
artist, of primeval Forsytes in pagan days, to record the domination of
mind over matter!

And all the unnumbered generations of his yeoman ancestors, wont of a
Sunday to stand akimbo surveying their little plots of land, their grey
unmoving eyes hiding their instinct with its hidden roots of violence,
their instinct for possession to the exclusion of all the world--all
these unnumbered generations seemed to sit there with him on the top of
the rise.

But from him, thus slumbering, his jealous Forsyte spirit travelled far,
into God-knows-what jungle of fancies; with those two young people, to
see what they were doing down there in the copse--in the copse where
the spring was running riot with the scent of sap and bursting buds,
the song of birds innumerable, a carpet of bluebells and sweet growing
things, and the sun caught like gold in the tops of the trees; to see
what they were doing, walking along there so close together on the path
that was too narrow; walking along there so close that they were always
touching; to watch Irene’s eyes, like dark thieves, stealing the heart
out of the spring. And a great unseen chaperon, his spirit was there,
stopping with them to look at the little furry corpse of a mole, not
dead an hour, with his mushroom-and-silver coat untouched by the rain or
dew; watching over Irene’s bent head, and the soft look of her pitying
eyes; and over that young man’s head, gazing at her so hard, so
strangely. Walking on with them, too, across the open space where a
wood-cutter had been at work, where the bluebells were trampled down,
and a trunk had swayed and staggered down from its gashed stump.
Climbing it with them, over, and on to the very edge of the copse,
whence there stretched an undiscovered country, from far away in which
came the sounds, ‘Cuckoo-cuckoo!’

Silent, standing with them there, and uneasy at their silence! Very
queer, very strange!

Then back again, as though guilty, through the wood--back to the
cutting, still silent, amongst the songs of birds that never ceased, and
the wild scent--hum! what was it--like that herb they put in--back to
the log across the path....

And then unseen, uneasy, flapping above them, trying to make noises,
his Forsyte spirit watched her balanced on the log, her pretty figure
swaying, smiling down at that young man gazing up with such strange,
shining eyes, slipping now--a--ah! falling, o--oh! sliding--down his
breast; her soft, warm body clutched, her head bent back from his
lips; his kiss; her recoil; his cry: “You must know--I love you!” Must
know--indeed, a pretty...? Love! Hah!

Swithin awoke; virtue had gone out of him. He had a taste in his mouth.
Where was he?

Damme! He had been asleep!

He had dreamed something about a new soup, with a taste of mint in it.

Those young people--where had they got to? His left leg had pins and
needles.

“Adolf!” The rascal was not there; the rascal was asleep somewhere.

He stood up, tall, square, bulky in his fur, looking anxiously down over
the fields, and presently he saw them coming.

Irene was in front; that young fellow--what had they nicknamed him--’The
Buccaneer?’ looked precious hangdog there behind her; had got a flea in
his ear, he shouldn’t wonder. Serve him right, taking her down all that
way to look at the house! The proper place to look at a house from was
the lawn.

They saw him. He extended his arm, and moved it spasmodically to
encourage them. But they had stopped. What were they standing there for,
talking--talking? They came on again. She had been, giving him a rub, he
had not the least doubt of it, and no wonder, over a house like that--a
great ugly thing, not the sort of house he was accustomed to.

He looked intently at their faces, with his pale, immovable stare. That
young man looked very queer!

“You’ll never make anything of this!” he said tartly, pointing at the
mansion;--“too newfangled!”

Bosinney gazed at him as though he had not heard; and Swithin afterwards
described him to Aunt Hester as “an extravagant sort of fellow very odd
way of looking at you--a bumpy beggar!”

What gave rise to this sudden piece of psychology he did not state;
possibly Bosinney’s, prominent forehead and cheekbones and chin, or
something hungry in his face, which quarrelled with Swithin’s conception
of the calm satiety that should characterize the perfect gentleman.

He brightened up at the mention of tea. He had a contempt for tea--his
brother Jolyon had been in tea; made a lot of money by it--but he was
so thirsty, and had such a taste in his mouth, that he was prepared to
drink anything. He longed to inform Irene of the taste in his mouth--she
was so sympathetic--but it would not be a distinguished thing to do; he
rolled his tongue round, and faintly smacked it against his palate.

In a far corner of the tent Adolf was bending his cat-like moustaches
over a kettle. He left it at once to draw the cork of a pint-bottle of
champagne. Swithin smiled, and, nodding at Bosinney, said: “Why, you’re
quite a Monte Cristo!” This celebrated novel--one of the half-dozen he
had read--had produced an extraordinary impression on his mind.

Taking his glass from the table, he held it away from him to scrutinize
the colour; thirsty as he was, it was not likely that he was going to
drink trash! Then, placing it to his lips, he took a sip.

“A very nice wine,” he said at last, passing it before his nose; “not
the equal of my Heidsieck!”

It was at this moment that the idea came to him which he afterwards
imparted at Timothy’s in this nutshell: “I shouldn’t wonder a bit if
that architect chap were sweet upon Mrs. Soames!”

And from this moment his pale, round eyes never ceased to bulge with the
interest of his discovery.

“The fellow,” he said to Mrs. Septimus, “follows her about with his
eyes like a dog--the bumpy beggar! I don’t wonder at it--she’s a very
charming woman, and, I should say, the pink of discretion!” A vague
consciousness of perfume caging about Irene, like that from a flower
with half-closed petals and a passionate heart, moved him to the
creation of this image. “But I wasn’t sure of it,” he said, “till I saw
him pick up her handkerchief.”

Mrs. Small’s eyes boiled with excitement.

“And did he give it her back?” she asked.

“Give it back?” said Swithin: “I saw him slobber on it when he thought I
wasn’t looking!”

Mrs. Small gasped--too interested to speak.

“But she gave him no encouragement,” went on Swithin; he stopped, and
stared for a minute or two in the way that alarmed Aunt Hester so--he
had suddenly recollected that, as they were starting back in the
phaeton, she had given Bosinney her hand a second time, and let it stay
there too.... He had touched his horses smartly with the whip, anxious
to get her all to himself. But she had looked back, and she had not
answered his first question; neither had he been able to see her
face--she had kept it hanging down.

There is somewhere a picture, which Swithin has not seen, of a man
sitting on a rock, and by him, immersed in the still, green water, a
sea-nymph lying on her back, with her hand on her naked breast. She has
a half-smile on her face--a smile of hopeless surrender and of secret
joy.

Seated by Swithin’s side, Irene may have been smiling like that.

When, warmed by champagne, he had her all to himself, he unbosomed
himself of his wrongs; of his smothered resentment against the new
chef at the club; his worry over the house in Wigmore Street, where the
rascally tenant had gone bankrupt through helping his brother-in-law as
if charity did not begin at home; of his deafness, too, and that pain he
sometimes got in his right side. She listened, her eyes swimming under
their lids. He thought she was thinking deeply of his troubles, and
pitied himself terribly. Yet in his fur coat, with frogs across the
breast, his top hat aslant, driving this beautiful woman, he had never
felt more distinguished.

A coster, however, taking his girl for a Sunday airing, seemed to have
the same impression about himself. This person had flogged his donkey
into a gallop alongside, and sat, upright as a waxwork, in his shallopy
chariot, his chin settled pompously on a red handkerchief, like
Swithin’s on his full cravat; while his girl, with the ends of a
fly-blown boa floating out behind, aped a woman of fashion. Her swain
moved a stick with a ragged bit of string dangling from the end,
reproducing with strange fidelity the circular flourish of Swithin’s
whip, and rolled his head at his lady with a leer that had a weird
likeness to Swithin’s primeval stare.

Though for a time unconscious of the lowly ruffian’s presence, Swithin
presently took it into his head that he was being guyed. He laid his
whip-lash across the mares flank. The two chariots, however, by some
unfortunate fatality continued abreast. Swithin’s yellow, puffy face
grew red; he raised his whip to lash the costermonger, but was saved
from so far forgetting his dignity by a special intervention of
Providence. A carriage driving out through a gate forced phaeton and
donkey-cart into proximity; the wheels grated, the lighter vehicle
skidded, and was overturned.

Swithin did not look round. On no account would he have pulled up to
help the ruffian. Serve him right if he had broken his neck!

But he could not if he would. The greys had taken alarm. The phaeton
swung from side to side, and people raised frightened faces as they went
dashing past. Swithin’s great arms, stretched at full length, tugged at
the reins. His cheeks were puffed, his lips compressed, his swollen face
was of a dull, angry red.

Irene had her hand on the rail, and at every lurch she gripped it
tightly. Swithin heard her ask:

“Are we going to have an accident, Uncle Swithin?”

He gasped out between his pants: “It’s nothing; a--little fresh!”

“I’ve never been in an accident.”

“Don’t you move!” He took a look at her. She was smiling, perfectly
calm. “Sit still,” he repeated. “Never fear, I’ll get you home!”

And in the midst of all his terrible efforts, he was surprised to hear
her answer in a voice not like her own:

“I don’t care if I never get home!”

The carriage giving a terrific lurch, Swithin’s exclamation was jerked
back into his throat. The horses, winded by the rise of a hill, now
steadied to a trot, and finally stopped of their own accord.

“When”--Swithin described it at Timothy’s--“I pulled ‘em up, there she
was as cool as myself. God bless my soul! she behaved as if she didn’t
care whether she broke her neck or not! What was it she said: ‘I don’t
care if I never get home?” Leaning over the handle of his cane, he
wheezed out, to Mrs. Small’s terror: “And I’m not altogether surprised,
with a finickin’ feller like young Soames for a husband!”

It did not occur to him to wonder what Bosinney had done after they had
left him there alone; whether he had gone wandering about like the dog
to which Swithin had compared him; wandering down to that copse where
the spring was still in riot, the cuckoo still calling from afar; gone
down there with her handkerchief pressed to lips, its fragrance mingling
with the scent of mint and thyme. Gone down there with such a wild,
exquisite pain in his heart that he could have cried out among the
trees. Or what, indeed, the fellow had done. In fact, till he came to
Timothy’s, Swithin had forgotten all about him.



CHAPTER IV--JAMES GOES TO SEE FOR HIMSELF

Those ignorant of Forsyte ‘Change would not, perhaps, foresee all the
stir made by Irene’s visit to the house.

After Swithin had related at Timothy’s the full story of his memorable
drive, the same, with the least suspicion of curiosity, the merest touch
of malice, and a real desire to do good, was passed on to June.

“And what a dreadful thing to say, my dear!” ended Aunt Juley; “that
about not going home. What did she mean?”

It was a strange recital for the girl. She heard it flushing painfully,
and, suddenly, with a curt handshake, took her departure.

“Almost rude!” Mrs. Small said to Aunt Hester, when June was gone.

The proper construction was put on her reception of the news. She was
upset. Something was therefore very wrong. Odd! She and Irene had been
such friends!

It all tallied too well with whispers and hints that had been going
about for some time past. Recollections of Euphemia’s account of the
visit to the theatre--Mr. Bosinney always at Soames’s? Oh, indeed! Yes,
of course, he would be about the house! Nothing open. Only upon the
greatest, the most important provocation was it necessary to say
anything open on Forsyte ‘Change. This machine was too nicely adjusted;
a hint, the merest trifling expression of regret or doubt, sufficed to
set the family soul so sympathetic--vibrating. No one desired that harm
should come of these vibrations--far from it; they were set in motion
with the best intentions, with the feeling, that each member of the
family had a stake in the family soul.

And much kindness lay at the bottom of the gossip; it would frequently
result in visits of condolence being made, in accordance with the
customs of Society, thereby conferring a real benefit upon the
sufferers, and affording consolation to the sound, who felt pleasantly
that someone at all events was suffering from that from which they
themselves were not suffering. In fact, it was simply a desire to keep
things well-aired, the desire which animates the Public Press, that
brought James, for instance, into communication with Mrs. Septimus,
Mrs. Septimus, with the little Nicholases, the little Nicholases with
who-knows-whom, and so on. That great class to which they had risen,
and now belonged, demanded a certain candour, a still more certain
reticence. This combination guaranteed their membership.

Many of the younger Forsytes felt, very naturally, and would openly
declare, that they did not want their affairs pried into; but so
powerful was the invisible, magnetic current of family gossip, that for
the life of them they could not help knowing all about everything. It
was felt to be hopeless.

One of them (young Roger) had made an heroic attempt to free the rising
generation, by speaking of Timothy as an ‘old cat.’ The effort had
justly recoiled upon himself; the words, coming round in the most
delicate way to Aunt Juley’s ears, were repeated by her in a shocked
voice to Mrs. Roger, whence they returned again to young Roger.

And, after all, it was only the wrong-doers who suffered; as, for
instance, George, when he lost all that money playing billiards; or
young Roger himself, when he was so dreadfully near to marrying the girl
to whom, it was whispered, he was already married by the laws of Nature;
or again Irene, who was thought, rather than said, to be in danger.

All this was not only pleasant but salutary. And it made so many hours
go lightly at Timothy’s in the Bayswater Road; so many hours that must
otherwise have been sterile and heavy to those three who lived there;
and Timothy’s was but one of hundreds of such homes in this City of
London--the homes of neutral persons of the secure classes, who are out
of the battle themselves, and must find their reason for existing, in
the battles of others.

But for the sweetness of family gossip, it must indeed have been lonely
there. Rumours and tales, reports, surmises--were they not the children
of the house, as dear and precious as the prattling babes the brother
and sisters had missed in their own journey? To talk about them was
as near as they could get to the possession of all those children and
grandchildren, after whom their soft hearts yearned. For though it is
doubtful whether Timothy’s heart yearned, it is indubitable that at the
arrival of each fresh Forsyte child he was quite upset.

Useless for young Roger to say, “Old cat!” for Euphemia to hold up her
hands and cry: “Oh! those three!” and break into her silent laugh with
the squeak at the end. Useless, and not too kind.

The situation which at this stage might seem, and especially to Forsyte
eyes, strange--not to say ‘impossible’--was, in view of certain facts,
not so strange after all. Some things had been lost sight of. And first,
in the security bred of many harmless marriages, it had been forgotten
that Love is no hot-house flower, but a wild plant, born of a wet night,
born of an hour of sunshine; sprung from wild seed, blown along the road
by a wild wind. A wild plant that, when it blooms by chance within the
hedge of our gardens, we call a flower; and when it blooms outside we
call a weed; but, flower or weed, whose scent and colour are always,
wild! And further--the facts and figures of their own lives being
against the perception of this truth--it was not generally recognised
by Forsytes that, where, this wild plant springs, men and women are but
moths around the pale, flame-like blossom.

It was long since young Jolyon’s escapade--there was danger of a
tradition again arising that people in their position never cross the
hedge to pluck that flower; that one could reckon on having love, like
measles, once in due season, and getting over it comfortably for all
time--as with measles, on a soothing mixture of butter and honey--in the
arms of wedlock.

Of all those whom this strange rumour about Bosinney and Mrs. Soames
reached, James was the most affected. He had long forgotten how he had
hovered, lanky and pale, in side whiskers of chestnut hue, round Emily,
in the days of his own courtship. He had long forgotten the small house
in the purlieus of Mayfair, where he had spent the early days of his
married life, or rather, he had long forgotten the early days, not the
small house,--a Forsyte never forgot a house--he had afterwards sold it
at a clear profit of four hundred pounds.

He had long forgotten those days, with their hopes and fears and doubts
about the prudence of the match (for Emily, though pretty, had nothing,
and he himself at that time was making a bare thousand a year), and that
strange, irresistible attraction which had drawn him on, till he felt
he must die if he could not marry the girl with the fair hair, looped so
neatly back, the fair arms emerging from a skin-tight bodice, the fair
form decorously shielded by a cage of really stupendous circumference.

James had passed through the fire, but he had passed also through the
river of years which washes out the fire; he had experienced the saddest
experience of all--forgetfulness of what it was like to be in love.

Forgotten! Forgotten so long, that he had forgotten even that he had
forgotten.

And now this rumour had come upon him, this rumour about his son’s
wife; very vague, a shadow dodging among the palpable, straightforward
appearances of things, unreal, unintelligible as a ghost, but carrying
with it, like a ghost, inexplicable terror.

He tried to bring it home to his mind, but it was no more use than
trying to apply to himself one of those tragedies he read of daily in
his evening paper. He simply could not. There could be nothing in it.
It was all their nonsense. She didn’t get on with Soames as well as she
might, but she was a good little thing--a good little thing!

Like the not inconsiderable majority of men, James relished a nice
little bit of scandal, and would say, in a matter-of-fact tone, licking
his lips, “Yes, yes--she and young Dyson; they tell me they’re living at
Monte Carlo!”

But the significance of an affair of this sort--of its past, its
present, or its future--had never struck him. What it meant, what
torture and raptures had gone to its construction, what slow,
overmastering fate had lurked within the facts, very naked, sometimes
sordid, but generally spicy, presented to his gaze. He was not in the
habit of blaming, praising, drawing deductions, or generalizing at all
about such things; he simply listened rather greedily, and repeated what
he was told, finding considerable benefit from the practice, as from the
consumption of a sherry and bitters before a meal.

Now, however, that such a thing--or rather the rumour, the breath of
it--had come near him personally, he felt as in a fog, which filled
his mouth full of a bad, thick flavour, and made it difficult to draw
breath.

A scandal! A possible scandal!

To repeat this word to himself thus was the only way in which he could
focus or make it thinkable. He had forgotten the sensations necessary
for understanding the progress, fate, or meaning of any such business;
he simply could no longer grasp the possibilities of people running any
risk for the sake of passion.

Amongst all those persons of his acquaintance, who went into the City
day after day and did their business there, whatever it was, and in
their leisure moments bought shares, and houses, and ate dinners, and
played games, as he was told, it would have seemed to him ridiculous to
suppose that there were any who would run risks for the sake of anything
so recondite, so figurative, as passion.

Passion! He seemed, indeed, to have heard of it, and rules such as ‘A
young man and a young woman ought never to be trusted together’ were
fixed in his mind as the parallels of latitude are fixed on a map (for
all Forsytes, when it comes to ‘bed-rock’ matters of fact, have quite
a fine taste in realism); but as to anything else--well, he could only
appreciate it at all through the catch-word ‘scandal.’

Ah! but there was no truth in it--could not be. He was not afraid; she
was really a good little thing. But there it was when you got a thing
like that into your mind. And James was of a nervous temperament--one
of those men whom things will not leave alone, who suffer tortures from
anticipation and indecision. For fear of letting something slip that
he might otherwise secure, he was physically unable to make up his mind
until absolutely certain that, by not making it up, he would suffer
loss.

In life, however, there were many occasions when the business of making
up his mind did not even rest with himself, and this was one of them.

What could he do? Talk it over with Soames? That would only make matters
worse. And, after all, there was nothing in it, he felt sure.

It was all that house. He had mistrusted the idea from the first. What
did Soames want to go into the country for? And, if he must go spending
a lot of money building himself a house, why not have a first-rate man,
instead of this young Bosinney, whom nobody knew anything about? He had
told them how it would be. And he had heard that the house was costing
Soames a pretty penny beyond what he had reckoned on spending.

This fact, more than any other, brought home to James the real danger
of the situation. It was always like this with these ‘artistic’ chaps;
a sensible man should have nothing to say to them. He had warned Irene,
too. And see what had come of it!

And it suddenly sprang into James’s mind that he ought to go and see for
himself. In the midst of that fog of uneasiness in which his mind was
enveloped the notion that he could go and look at the house afforded him
inexplicable satisfaction. It may have been simply the decision to
do something--more possibly the fact that he was going to look at a
house--that gave him relief. He felt that in staring at an edifice
of bricks and mortar, of wood and stone, built by the suspected man
himself, he would be looking into the heart of that rumour about Irene.

Without saying a word, therefore, to anyone, he took a hansom to the
station and proceeded by train to Robin Hill; thence--there being no
’.lies,’ in accordance with the custom of the neighbourhood--he found
himself obliged to walk.

He started slowly up the hill, his angular knees and high shoulders bent
complainingly, his eyes fixed on his feet, yet, neat for all that,
in his high hat and his frock-coat, on which was the speckless gloss
imparted by perfect superintendence. Emily saw to that; that is, she did
not, of course, see to it--people of good position not seeing to each
other’s buttons, and Emily was of good position--but she saw that the
butler saw to it.

He had to ask his way three times; on each occasion he repeated the
directions given him, got the man to repeat them, then repeated them a
second time, for he was naturally of a talkative disposition, and one
could not be too careful in a new neighbourhood.

He kept assuring them that it was a new house he was looking for; it
was only, however, when he was shown the roof through the trees that
he could feel really satisfied that he had not been directed entirely
wrong.

A heavy sky seemed to cover the world with the grey whiteness of a
whitewashed ceiling. There was no freshness or fragrance in the air. On
such a day even British workmen scarcely cared to do more then they were
obliged, and moved about their business without the drone of talk which
whiles away the pangs of labour.

Through spaces of the unfinished house, shirt-sleeved figures worked
slowly, and sounds arose--spasmodic knockings, the scraping of metal,
the sawing of wood, with the rumble of wheelbarrows along boards; now
and again the foreman’s dog, tethered by a string to an oaken beam,
whimpered feebly, with a sound like the singing of a kettle.

The fresh-fitted window-panes, daubed each with a white patch in the
centre, stared out at James like the eyes of a blind dog.

And the building chorus went on, strident and mirthless under the
grey-white sky. But the thrushes, hunting amongst the fresh-turned earth
for worms, were silent quite.

James picked his way among the heaps of gravel--the drive was being
laid--till he came opposite the porch. Here he stopped and raised his
eyes. There was but little to see from this point of view, and that
little he took in at once; but he stayed in this position many minutes,
and who shall know of what he thought.

His china-blue eyes under white eyebrows that jutted out in little
horns, never stirred; the long upper lip of his wide mouth, between the
fine white whiskers, twitched once or twice; it was easy to see from
that anxious rapt expression, whence Soames derived the handicapped
look which sometimes came upon his face. James might have been saying to
himself: ‘I don’t know--life’s a tough job.’

In this position Bosinney surprised him.

James brought his eyes down from whatever bird’s-nest they had been
looking for in the sky to Bosinney’s face, on which was a kind of
humorous scorn.

“How do you do, Mr. Forsyte? Come down to see for yourself?”

It was exactly what James, as we know, had come for, and he was made
correspondingly uneasy. He held out his hand, however, saying:

“How are you?” without looking at Bosinney.

The latter made way for him with an ironical smile.

James scented something suspicious in this courtesy. “I should like
to walk round the outside first,” he said, “and see what you’ve been
doing!”

A flagged terrace of rounded stones with a list of two or three inches
to port had been laid round the south-east and south-west sides of the
house, and ran with a bevelled edge into mould, which was in preparation
for being turfed; along this terrace James led the way.

“Now what did this cost?” he asked, when he saw the terrace extending
round the corner.

“What should you think?” inquired Bosinney.

“How should I know?” replied James somewhat nonplussed; “two or three
hundred, I dare say!”

“The exact sum!”

James gave him a sharp look, but the architect appeared unconscious, and
he put the answer down to mishearing.

On arriving at the garden entrance, he stopped to look at the view.

“That ought to come down,” he said, pointing to the oak-tree.

“You think so? You think that with the tree there you don’t get enough
view for your money.”

Again James eyed him suspiciously--this young man had a peculiar way of
putting things: “Well!” he said, with a perplexed, nervous, emphasis, “I
don’t see what you want with a tree.”

“It shall come down to-morrow,” said Bosinney.

James was alarmed. “Oh,” he said, “don’t go saying I said it was to come
down! I know nothing about it!”

“No?”

James went on in a fluster: “Why, what should I know about it? It’s
nothing to do with me! You do it on your own responsibility.”

“You’ll allow me to mention your name?”

James grew more and more alarmed: “I don’t know what you want mentioning
my name for,” he muttered; “you’d better leave the tree alone. It’s not
your tree!”

He took out a silk handkerchief and wiped his brow. They entered the
house. Like Swithin, James was impressed by the inner court-yard.

“You must have spent a deuce of a lot of money here,” he said, after
staring at the columns and gallery for some time. “Now, what did it cost
to put up those columns?”

“I can’t tell you off-hand,” thoughtfully answered Bosinney, “but I know
it was a deuce of a lot!”

“I should think so,” said James. “I should....” He caught the
architect’s eye, and broke off. And now, whenever he came to anything of
which he desired to know the cost, he stifled that curiosity.

Bosinney appeared determined that he should see everything, and had not
James been of too ‘noticing’ a nature, he would certainly have found
himself going round the house a second time. He seemed so anxious to be
asked questions, too, that James felt he must be on his guard. He began
to suffer from his exertions, for, though wiry enough for a man of his
long build, he was seventy-five years old.

He grew discouraged; he seemed no nearer to anything, had not obtained
from his inspection any of the knowledge he had vaguely hoped for. He
had merely increased his dislike and mistrust of this young man, who had
tired him out with his politeness, and in whose manner he now certainly
detected mockery.

The fellow was sharper than he had thought, and better-looking than he
had hoped. He had a--a ‘don’t care’ appearance that James, to whom risk
was the most intolerable thing in life, did not appreciate; a peculiar
smile, too, coming when least expected; and very queer eyes. He reminded
James, as he said afterwards, of a hungry cat. This was as near as he
could get, in conversation with Emily, to a description of the peculiar
exasperation, velvetiness, and mockery, of which Bosinney’s manner had
been composed.

At last, having seen all that was to be seen, he came out again at the
door where he had gone in; and now, feeling that he was wasting time and
strength and money, all for nothing, he took the courage of a Forsyte in
both hands, and, looking sharply at Bosinney, said:

“I dare say you see a good deal of my daughter-in-law; now, what does
she think of the house? But she hasn’t seen it, I suppose?”

This he said, knowing all about Irene’s visit not, of course, that there
was anything in the visit, except that extraordinary remark she had made
about ‘not caring to get home’--and the story of how June had taken the
news!

He had determined, by this way of putting the question, to give Bosinney
a chance, as he said to himself.

The latter was long in answering, but kept his eyes with uncomfortable
steadiness on James.

“She has seen the house, but I can’t tell you what she thinks of it.”

Nervous and baffled, James was constitutionally prevented from letting
the matter drop.

“Oh!” he said, “she has seen it? Soames brought her down, I suppose?”

Bosinney smilingly replied: “Oh, no!”

“What, did she come down alone?”

“Oh, no!”

“Then--who brought her?”

“I really don’t know whether I ought to tell you who brought her.”

To James, who knew that it was Swithin, this answer appeared
incomprehensible.

“Why!” he stammered, “you know that....” but he stopped, suddenly
perceiving his danger.

“Well,” he said, “if you don’t want to tell me I suppose you won’t!
Nobody tells me anything.”

Somewhat to his surprise Bosinney asked him a question.

“By the by,” he said, “could you tell me if there are likely to be any
more of you coming down? I should like to be on the spot!”

“Any more?” said James bewildered, “who should there be more? I don’t
know of any more. Good-bye?”

Looking at the ground he held out his hand, crossed the palm of it with
Bosinney’s, and taking his umbrella just above the silk, walked away
along the terrace.

Before he turned the corner he glanced back, and saw Bosinney following
him slowly--’slinking along the wall’ as he put it to himself, ‘like a
great cat.’ He paid no attention when the young fellow raised his hat.

Outside the drive, and out of sight, he slackened his pace still
more. Very slowly, more bent than when he came, lean, hungry, and
disheartened, he made his way back to the station.

The Buccaneer, watching him go so sadly home, felt sorry perhaps for his
behaviour to the old man.



CHAPTER V--SOAMES AND BOSINNEY CORRESPOND

James said nothing to his son of this visit to the house; but, having
occasion to go to Timothy’s one morning on a matter connected with a
drainage scheme which was being forced by the sanitary authorities on
his brother, he mentioned it there.

It was not, he said, a bad house. He could see that a good deal could be
made of it. The fellow was clever in his way, though what it was going
to cost Soames before it was done with he didn’t know.

Euphemia Forsyte, who happened to be in the room--she had come round to
borrow the Rev. Mr. Scoles’ last novel, ‘Passion and Paregoric’, which
was having such a vogue--chimed in.

“I saw Irene yesterday at the Stores; she and Mr. Bosinney were having a
nice little chat in the Groceries.”

It was thus, simply, that she recorded a scene which had really made
a deep and complicated impression on her. She had been hurrying to the
silk department of the Church and Commercial Stores--that Institution
than which, with its admirable system, admitting only guaranteed persons
on a basis of payment before delivery, no emporium can be more highly
recommended to Forsytes--to match a piece of prunella silk for her
mother, who was waiting in the carriage outside.

Passing through the Groceries her eye was unpleasantly attracted by the
back view of a very beautiful figure. It was so charmingly proportioned,
so balanced, and so well clothed, that Euphemia’s instinctive propriety
was at once alarmed; such figures, she knew, by intuition rather than
experience, were rarely connected with virtue--certainly never in her
mind, for her own back was somewhat difficult to fit.

Her suspicions were fortunately confirmed. A young man coming from the
Drugs had snatched off his hat, and was accosting the lady with the
unknown back.

It was then that she saw with whom she had to deal; the lady was
undoubtedly Mrs. Soames, the young man Mr. Bosinney. Concealing herself
rapidly over the purchase of a box of Tunisian dates, for she was
impatient of awkwardly meeting people with parcels in her hands, and
at the busy time of the morning, she was quite unintentionally an
interested observer of their little interview.

Mrs. Soames, usually somewhat pale, had a delightful colour in her
cheeks; and Mr. Bosinney’s manner was strange, though attractive (she
thought him rather a distinguished-looking man, and George’s name for
him, ‘The Buccaneer’--about which there was something romantic--quite
charming). He seemed to be pleading. Indeed, they talked so
earnestly--or, rather, he talked so earnestly, for Mrs. Soames did not
say much--that they caused, inconsiderately, an eddy in the traffic. One
nice old General, going towards Cigars, was obliged to step quite out of
the way, and chancing to look up and see Mrs. Soames’ face, he actually
took off his hat, the old fool! So like a man!

But it was Mrs. Soames’ eyes that worried Euphemia. She never once
looked at Mr. Bosinney until he moved on, and then she looked after him.
And, oh, that look!

On that look Euphemia had spent much anxious thought. It is not too much
to say that it had hurt her with its dark, lingering softness, for
all the world as though the woman wanted to drag him back, and unsay
something she had been saying.

Ah, well, she had had no time to go deeply into the matter just
then, with that prunella silk on her hands; but she was ‘very
intriguee’--very! She had just nodded to Mrs. Soames, to show her that
she had seen; and, as she confided, in talking it over afterwards, to
her chum Francie (Roger’s daughter), “Didn’t she look caught out
just?...”

James, most averse at the first blush to accepting any news confirmatory
of his own poignant suspicions, took her up at once.

“Oh” he said, “they’d be after wall-papers no doubt.”

Euphemia smiled. “In the Groceries?” she said softly; and, taking
’.assion and Paregoric’ from the table, added: “And so you’ll lend me
this, dear Auntie? Good-bye!” and went away.

James left almost immediately after; he was late as it was.

When he reached the office of Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte, he found
Soames, sitting in his revolving, chair, drawing up a defence. The
latter greeted his father with a curt good-morning, and, taking an
envelope from his pocket, said:

“It may interest you to look through this.”

James read as follows:


’.09D, SLOANE STREET, May 15,

’.EAR FORSYTE,

’.he construction of your house being now completed, my duties as
architect have come to an end. If I am to go on with the business of
decoration, which at your request I undertook, I should like you to
clearly understand that I must have a free hand.

’.ou never come down without suggesting something that goes counter to
my scheme. I have here three letters from you, each of which recommends
an article I should never dream of putting in. I had your father here
yesterday afternoon, who made further valuable suggestions.

’.lease make up your mind, therefore, whether you want me to decorate
for you, or to retire which on the whole I should prefer to do.

’.ut understand that, if I decorate, I decorate alone, without
interference of any sort.

If I do the thing, I will do it thoroughly, but I must have a free hand.

’.ours truly,

’.HILIP BOSINNEY.’


The exact and immediate cause of this letter cannot, of course, be told,
though it is not improbable that Bosinney may have been moved by some
sudden revolt against his position towards Soames--that eternal position
of Art towards Property--which is so admirably summed up, on the back of
the most indispensable of modern appliances, in a sentence comparable to
the very finest in Tacitus:

THOS. T. SORROW, Inventor. BERT M. PADLAND, Proprietor.

“What are you going to say to him?” James asked.

Soames did not even turn his head. “I haven’t made up my mind,” he said,
and went on with his defence.

A client of his, having put some buildings on a piece of ground that
did not belong to him, had been suddenly and most irritatingly warned
to take them off again. After carefully going into the facts, however,
Soames had seen his way to advise that his client had what was known as
a title by possession, and that, though undoubtedly the ground did not
belong to him, he was entitled to keep it, and had better do so; and
he was now following up this advice by taking steps to--as the sailors
say--’make it so.’

He had a distinct reputation for sound advice; people saying of him: “Go
to young Forsyte--a long-headed fellow!” and he prized this reputation
highly.

His natural taciturnity was in his favour; nothing could be more
calculated to give people, especially people with property (Soames had
no other clients), the impression that he was a safe man. And he was
safe. Tradition, habit, education, inherited aptitude, native
caution, all joined to form a solid professional honesty, superior to
temptation--from the very fact that it was built on an innate avoidance
of risk. How could he fall, when his soul abhorred circumstances which
render a fall possible--a man cannot fall off the floor!

And those countless Forsytes, who, in the course of innumerable
transactions concerned with property of all sorts (from wives to water
rights), had occasion for the services of a safe man, found it
both reposeful and profitable to confide in Soames. That slight
superciliousness of his, combined with an air of mousing amongst
precedents, was in his favour too--a man would not be supercilious
unless he knew!

He was really at the head of the business, for though James still came
nearly every day to, see for himself, he did little now but sit in his
chair, twist his legs, slightly confuse things already decided, and
presently go away again, and the other partner, Bustard, was a poor
thing, who did a great deal of work, but whose opinion was never taken.

So Soames went steadily on with his defence. Yet it would be idle to say
that his mind was at ease. He was suffering from a sense of impending
trouble, that had haunted him for some time past. He tried to think it
physical--a condition of his liver--but knew that it was not.

He looked at his watch. In a quarter of an hour he was due at the
General Meeting of the New Colliery Company--one of Uncle Jolyon’s
concerns; he should see Uncle Jolyon there, and say something to him
about Bosinney--he had not made up his mind what, but something--in any
case he should not answer this letter until he had seen Uncle Jolyon. He
got up and methodically put away the draft of his defence. Going into
a dark little cupboard, he turned up the light, washed his hands with a
piece of brown Windsor soap, and dried them on a roller towel. Then he
brushed his hair, paying strict attention to the parting, turned down
the light, took his hat, and saying he would be back at half-past two,
stepped into the Poultry.

It was not far to the Offices of the New Colliery Company in Ironmonger
Lane, where, and not at the Cannon Street Hotel, in accordance with
the more ambitious practice of other companies, the General Meeting
was always held. Old Jolyon had from the first set his face against the
Press. What business--he said--had the Public with his concerns!

Soames arrived on the stroke of time, and took his seat alongside the
Board, who, in a row, each Director behind his own ink-pot, faced their
Shareholders.

In the centre of this row old Jolyon, conspicuous in his black,
tightly-buttoned frock-coat and his white moustaches, was leaning
back with finger tips crossed on a copy of the Directors’ report and
accounts.

On his right hand, always a little larger than life, sat the Secretary,
’.own-by-the-starn’ Hemmings; an all-too-sad sadness beaming in his fine
eyes; his iron-grey beard, in mourning like the rest of him, giving the
feeling of an all-too-black tie behind it.

The occasion indeed was a melancholy one, only six weeks having elapsed
since that telegram had come from Scorrier, the mining expert, on
a private mission to the Mines, informing them that Pippin, their
Superintendent, had committed suicide in endeavouring, after his
extraordinary two years’ silence, to write a letter to his Board. That
letter was on the table now; it would be read to the Shareholders, who
would of course be put into possession of all the facts.

Hemmings had often said to Soames, standing with his coat-tails divided
before the fireplace:

“What our Shareholders don’t know about our affairs isn’t worth knowing.
You may take that from me, Mr. Soames.”

On one occasion, old Jolyon being present, Soames recollected a little
unpleasantness. His uncle had looked up sharply and said: “Don’t
talk nonsense, Hemmings! You mean that what they do know isn’t worth
knowing!” Old Jolyon detested humbug.

Hemmings, angry-eyed, and wearing a smile like that of a trained poodle,
had replied in an outburst of artificial applause: “Come, now, that’s
good, sir--that’s very good. Your uncle will have his joke!”

The next time he had seen Soames he had taken the opportunity of saying
to him: “The chairman’s getting very old!--I can’t get him to understand
things; and he’s so wilful--but what can you expect, with a chin like
his?”

Soames had nodded.

Everyone knew that Uncle Jolyon’s chin was a caution. He was looking
worried to-day, in spite of his General Meeting look; he (Soames) should
certainly speak to him about Bosinney.

Beyond old Jolyon on the left was little Mr. Booker, and he, too, wore
his General Meeting look, as though searching for some particularly
tender shareholder. And next him was the deaf director, with a frown;
and beyond the deaf director, again, was old Mr. Bleedham, very bland,
and having an air of conscious virtue--as well he might, knowing that
the brown-paper parcel he always brought to the Board-room was concealed
behind his hat (one of that old-fashioned class, of flat-brimmed
top-hats which go with very large bow ties, clean-shaven lips, fresh
cheeks, and neat little, white whiskers).

Soames always attended the General Meeting; it was considered better
that he should do so, in case ‘anything should arise!’ He glanced round
with his close, supercilious air at the walls of the room, where hung
plans of the mine and harbour, together with a large photograph of
a shaft leading to a working which had proved quite remarkably
unprofitable. This photograph--a witness to the eternal irony underlying
commercial enterprise--still retained its position on the--wall, an effigy
of the directors’ pet, but dead, lamb.

And now old Jolyon rose, to present the report and accounts.

Veiling under a Jove-like serenity that perpetual antagonism deep-seated
in the bosom of a director towards his shareholders, he faced them
calmly. Soames faced them too. He knew most of them by sight. There was
old Scrubsole, a tar man, who always came, as Hemmings would say, ‘to
make himself nasty,’ a cantankerous-looking old fellow with a red face,
a jowl, and an enormous low-crowned hat reposing on his knee. And the
Rev. Mr. Boms, who always proposed a vote of thanks to the chairman, in
which he invariably expressed the hope that the Board would not forget
to elevate their employees, using the word with a double e, as
being more vigorous and Anglo-Saxon (he had the strong Imperialistic
tendencies of his cloth). It was his salutary custom to buttonhole a
director afterwards, and ask him whether he thought the coming year
would be good or bad; and, according to the trend of the answer, to buy
or sell three shares within the ensuing fortnight.

And there was that military man, Major O’Bally, who could not help
speaking, if only to second the re-election of the auditor, and who
sometimes caused serious consternation by taking toasts--proposals
rather--out of the hands of persons who had been flattered with little
slips of paper, entrusting the said proposals to their care.

These made up the lot, together with four or five strong, silent
shareholders, with whom Soames could sympathize--men of business, who
liked to keep an eye on their affairs for themselves, without being
fussy--good, solid men, who came to the City every day and went back in
the evening to good, solid wives.

Good, solid wives! There was something in that thought which roused the
nameless uneasiness in Soames again.

What should he say to his uncle? What answer should he make to this
letter?

. . . . “If any shareholder has any question to put, I shall be glad
to answer it.” A soft thump. Old Jolyon had let the report and accounts
fall, and stood twisting his tortoise-shell glasses between thumb and
forefinger.

The ghost of a smile appeared on Soames’ face. They had better hurry up
with their questions! He well knew his uncle’s method (the ideal one)
of at once saying: “I propose, then, that the report and accounts be
adopted!” Never let them get their wind--shareholders were notoriously
wasteful of time!

A tall, white-bearded man, with a gaunt, dissatisfied face, arose:

“I believe I am in order, Mr. Chairman, in raising a question on this
figure of L5000 in the accounts. ‘To the widow and family’ (he looked
sourly round), “‘of our late superintendent,’ who so--er--ill-advisedly
(I say--ill-advisedly) committed suicide, at a time when his services
were of the utmost value to this Company. You have stated that the
agreement which he has so unfortunately cut short with his own hand was
for a period of five years, of which one only had expired--I--”

Old Jolyon made a gesture of impatience.

“I believe I am in order, Mr. Chairman--I ask whether this amount
paid, or proposed to be paid, by the Board to the er--deceased--is
for services which might have been rendered to the Company--had he not
committed suicide?”

“It is in recognition of past services, which we all know--you as well
as any of us--to have been of vital value.”

“Then, sir, all I have to say is that the services being past, the
amount is too much.”

The shareholder sat down.

Old Jolyon waited a second and said: “I now propose that the report
and--”

The shareholder rose again: “May I ask if the Board realizes that it
is not their money which--I don’t hesitate to say that if it were their
money....”

A second shareholder, with a round, dogged face, whom Soames recognised
as the late superintendent’s brother-in-law, got up and said warmly: “In
my opinion, sir, the sum is not enough!”

The Rev. Mr. Boms now rose to his feet. “If I may venture to express
myself,” he said, “I should say that the fact of the--er--deceased
having committed suicide should weigh very heavily--very heavily with
our worthy chairman. I have no doubt it has weighed with him, for--I say
this for myself and I think for everyone present (hear, hear)--he enjoys
our confidence in a high degree. We all desire, I should hope, to
be charitable. But I feel sure” (he-looked severely at the late
superintendent’s brother-in-law) “that he will in some way, by some
written expression, or better perhaps by reducing the amount, record our
grave disapproval that so promising and valuable a life should have
been thus impiously removed from a sphere where both its own interests
and--if I may say so--our interests so imperatively demanded its
continuance. We should not--nay, we may not--countenance so grave a
dereliction of all duty, both human and divine.”

The reverend gentleman resumed his seat. The late superintendent’s
brother-in-law again rose: “What I have said I stick to,” he said; “the
amount is not enough!”

The first shareholder struck in: “I challenge the legality of the
payment. In my opinion this payment is not legal. The Company’s
solicitor is present; I believe I am in order in asking him the
question.”

All eyes were now turned upon Soames. Something had arisen!

He stood up, close-lipped and cold; his nerves inwardly fluttered, his
attention tweaked away at last from contemplation of that cloud looming
on the horizon of his mind.

“The point,” he said in a low, thin voice, “is by no means clear. As
there is no possibility of future consideration being received, it is
doubtful whether the payment is strictly legal. If it is desired, the
opinion of the court could be taken.”

The superintendent’s brother-in-law frowned, and said in a meaning tone:
“We have no doubt the opinion of the court could be taken. May I ask
the name of the gentleman who has given us that striking piece of
information? Mr. Soames Forsyte? Indeed!” He looked from Soames to old
Jolyon in a pointed manner.

A flush coloured Soames’ pale cheeks, but his superciliousness did not
waver. Old Jolyon fixed his eyes on the speaker.

“If,” he said, “the late superintendents brother-in-law has nothing more
to say, I propose that the report and accounts....”

At this moment, however, there rose one of those five silent, stolid
shareholders, who had excited Soames’ sympathy. He said:

“I deprecate the proposal altogether. We are expected to give charity to
this man’s wife and children, who, you tell us, were dependent on him.
They may have been; I do not care whether they were or not. I object to
the whole thing on principle. It is high time a stand was made against
this sentimental humanitarianism. The country is eaten up with it. I
object to my money being paid to these people of whom I know nothing,
who have done nothing to earn it. I object in toto; it is not business.
I now move that the report and accounts be put back, and amended by
striking out the grant altogether.”

Old Jolyon had remained standing while the strong, silent man was
speaking. The speech awoke an echo in all hearts, voicing, as it did,
the worship of strong men, the movement against generosity, which had at
that time already commenced among the saner members of the community.

The words ‘it is not business’ had moved even the Board; privately
everyone felt that indeed it was not. But they knew also the chairman’s
domineering temper and tenacity. He, too, at heart must feel that it was
not business; but he was committed to his own proposition. Would he go
back upon it? It was thought to be unlikely.

All waited with interest. Old Jolyon held up his hand; dark-rimmed
glasses depending between his finger and thumb quivered slightly with a
suggestion of menace.

He addressed the strong, silent shareholder.

“Knowing, as you do, the efforts of our late superintendent upon the
occasion of the explosion at the mines, do you seriously wish me to put
that amendment, sir?”

“I do.”

Old Jolyon put the amendment.

“Does anyone second this?” he asked, looking calmly round.

And it was then that Soames, looking at his uncle, felt the power of
will that was in that old man. No one stirred. Looking straight into the
eyes of the strong, silent shareholder, old Jolyon said:

“I now move, ‘That the report and accounts for the year 1886 be received
and adopted.’ You second that? Those in favour signify the same in the
usual way. Contrary--no. Carried. The next business, gentlemen....”

Soames smiled. Certainly Uncle Jolyon had a way with him!

But now his attention relapsed upon Bosinney.

Odd how that fellow haunted his thoughts, even in business hours.

Irene’s visit to the house--but there was nothing in that, except
that she might have told him; but then, again, she never did tell him
anything. She was more silent, more touchy, every day. He wished to God
the house were finished, and they were in it, away from London. Town did
not suit her; her nerves were not strong enough. That nonsense of the
separate room had cropped up again!

The meeting was breaking up now. Underneath the photograph of the lost
shaft Hemmings was buttonholed by the Rev. Mr. Boms. Little Mr. Booker,
his bristling eyebrows wreathed in angry smiles, was having a parting
turn-up with old Scrubsole. The two hated each other like poison. There
was some matter of a tar-contract between them, little Mr. Booker having
secured it from the Board for a nephew of his, over old Scrubsole’s
head. Soames had heard that from Hemmings, who liked a gossip, more
especially about his directors, except, indeed, old Jolyon, of whom he
was afraid.

Soames awaited his opportunity. The last shareholder was vanishing
through the door, when he approached his uncle, who was putting on his
hat.

“Can I speak to you for a minute, Uncle Jolyon?”

It is uncertain what Soames expected to get out of this interview.

Apart from that somewhat mysterious awe in which Forsytes in general
held old Jolyon, due to his philosophic twist, or perhaps--as Hemmings
would doubtless have said--to his chin, there was, and always had been,
a subtle antagonism between the younger man and the old. It had lurked
under their dry manner of greeting, under their non-committal allusions
to each other, and arose perhaps from old Jolyon’s perception of the
quiet tenacity (’.bstinacy,’ he rather naturally called it) of the young
man, of a secret doubt whether he could get his own way with him.

Both these Forsytes, wide asunder as the poles in many respects,
possessed in their different ways--to a greater degree than the rest of
the family--that essential quality of tenacious and prudent insight into
’.ffairs,’ which is the highwater mark of their great class. Either of
them, with a little luck and opportunity, was equal to a lofty career;
either of them would have made a good financier, a great contractor,
a statesman, though old Jolyon, in certain of his moods when under
the influence of a cigar or of Nature--would have been capable of, not
perhaps despising, but certainly of questioning, his own high position,
while Soames, who never smoked cigars, would not.

Then, too, in old Jolyon’s mind there was always the secret ache, that
the son of James--of James, whom he had always thought such a poor
thing, should be pursuing the paths of success, while his own son...!

And last, not least--for he was no more outside the radiation of
family gossip than any other Forsyte--he had now heard the sinister,
indefinite, but none the less disturbing rumour about Bosinney, and his
pride was wounded to the quick.

Characteristically, his irritation turned not against Irene but against
Soames. The idea that his nephew’s wife (why couldn’t the fellow
take better care of her--Oh! quaint injustice! as though Soames could
possibly take more care!)--should be drawing to herself June’s lover,
was intolerably humiliating. And seeing the danger, he did not, like
James, hide it away in sheer nervousness, but owned with the dispassion
of his broader outlook, that it was not unlikely; there was something
very attractive about Irene!

He had a presentiment on the subject of Soames’ communication as they
left the Board Room together, and went out into the noise and hurry of
Cheapside. They walked together a good minute without speaking, Soames
with his mousing, mincing step, and old Jolyon upright and using his
umbrella languidly as a walking-stick.

They turned presently into comparative quiet, for old Jolyon’s way to a
second Board led him in the direction of Moorage Street.

Then Soames, without lifting his eyes, began: “I’ve had this letter from
Bosinney. You see what he says; I thought I’d let you know. I’ve spent
a lot more than I intended on this house, and I want the position to be
clear.”

Old Jolyon ran his eyes unwillingly over the letter: “What he says is
clear enough,” he said.

“He talks about ‘a free hand,’. replied Soames.

Old Jolyon looked at him. The long-suppressed irritation and antagonism
towards this young fellow, whose affairs were beginning to intrude upon
his own, burst from him.

“Well, if you don’t trust him, why do you employ him?”

Soames stole a sideway look: “It’s much too late to go into that,” he
said, “I only want it to be quite understood that if I give him a free
hand, he doesn’t let me in. I thought if you were to speak to him, it
would carry more weight!”

“No,” said old Jolyon abruptly; “I’ll have nothing to do with it!”

The words of both uncle and nephew gave the impression of unspoken
meanings, far more important, behind. And the look they interchanged was
like a revelation of this consciousness.

“Well,” said Soames; “I thought, for June’s sake, I’d tell you, that’s
all; I thought you’d better know I shan’t stand any nonsense!”

“What is that to me?” old Jolyon took him up.

“Oh! I don’t know,” said Soames, and flurried by that sharp look he was
unable to say more. “Don’t say I didn’t tell you,” he added sulkily,
recovering his composure.

“Tell me!” said old Jolyon; “I don’t know what you mean. You come
worrying me about a thing like this. I don’t want to hear about your
affairs; you must manage them yourself!”

“Very well,” said Soames immovably, “I will!”

“Good-morning, then,” said old Jolyon, and they parted.

Soames retraced his steps, and going into a celebrated eating-house,
asked for a plate of smoked salmon and a glass of Chablis; he seldom ate
much in the middle of the day, and generally ate standing, finding the
position beneficial to his liver, which was very sound, but to which he
desired to put down all his troubles.

When he had finished he went slowly back to his office, with bent head,
taking no notice of the swarming thousands on the pavements, who in
their turn took no notice of him.

The evening post carried the following reply to Bosinney:


’.ORSYTE, BUSTARD AND FORSYTE,

’.ommissioners for Oaths,

’.2001, BRANCH LANE, POULTRY, E.C.,

’.ay 17, 1887.

’.EAR BOSINNEY,

’. have, received your letter, the terms of which not a little surprise
me. I was under the impression that you had, and have had all along, a
“free hand”; for I do not recollect that any suggestions I have been so
unfortunate as to make have met with your approval. In giving you, in
accordance with your request, this “free hand,” I wish you to clearly
understand that the total cost of the house as handed over to me
completely decorated, inclusive of your fee (as arranged between us),
must not exceed twelve thousand pounds--L12,000. This gives you an ample
margin, and, as you know, is far more than I originally contemplated.

’. am,

’.ours truly,

’.OAMES FORSYTE.’


On the following day he received a note from Bosinney:


’.HILIP BAYNES BOSINNEY,

’.rchitect,

’.09D, SLOANE STREET, S.W.,

’.ay 18.

’.EAR FORSYTE,

’.f you think that in such a delicate matter as decoration I can bind
myself to the exact pound, I am afraid you are mistaken. I can see
that you are tired of the arrangement, and of me, and I had better,
therefore, resign.

’.ours faithfully,

’.HILIP BAYNES BOSINNEY.’


Soames pondered long and painfully over his answer, and late at night in
the dining-room, when Irene had gone to bed, he composed the following:


’.2, MONTPELLIER SQUARE, S.W.,

’.ay 19, 1887.

’.EAR BOSINNEY,

’. think that in both our interests it would be extremely undesirable
that matters should be so left at this stage. I did not mean to say that
if you should exceed the sum named in my letter to you by ten or twenty
or even fifty pounds, there would be any difficulty between us. This
being so, I should like you to reconsider your answer. You have a “free
hand” in the terms of this correspondence, and I hope you will see your
way to completing the decorations, in the matter of which I know it is
difficult to be absolutely exact.

’.ours truly,

’.OAMES FORSYTE.’


Bosinney’s answer, which came in the course of the next day, was:


’.ay 20.

’.EAR FORSYTE,

’.ery well.

’.H. BOSINNEY.’



CHAPTER VI--OLD JOLYON AT THE ZOO

Old Jolyon disposed of his second Meeting--an ordinary Board--summarily.
He was so dictatorial that his fellow directors were left in cabal over
the increasing domineeringness of old Forsyte, which they were far from
intending to stand much longer, they said.

He went out by Underground to Portland Road Station, whence he took a
cab and drove to the Zoo.

He had an assignation there, one of those assignations that had lately
been growing more frequent, to which his increasing uneasiness about
June and the ‘change in her,’ as he expressed it, was driving him.

She buried herself away, and was growing thin; if he spoke to her he got
no answer, or had his head snapped off, or she looked as if she would
burst into tears. She was as changed as she could be, all through this
Bosinney. As for telling him about anything, not a bit of it!

And he would sit for long spells brooding, his paper unread before him,
a cigar extinct between his lips. She had been such a companion to him
ever since she was three years old! And he loved her so!

Forces regardless of family or class or custom were beating down his
guard; impending events over which he had no control threw their shadows
on his head. The irritation of one accustomed to have his way was roused
against he knew not what.

Chafing at the slowness of his cab, he reached the Zoo door; but, with
his sunny instinct for seizing the good of each moment, he forgot his
vexation as he walked towards the tryst.

From the stone terrace above the bear-pit his son and his two
grandchildren came hastening down when they saw old Jolyon coming, and
led him away towards the lion-house. They supported him on either side,
holding one to each of his hands,--whilst Jolly, perverse like his
father, carried his grandfather’s umbrella in such a way as to catch
people’s legs with the crutch of the handle.

Young Jolyon followed.

It was as good as a play to see his father with the children, but such
a play as brings smiles with tears behind. An old man and two small
children walking together can be seen at any hour of the day; but the
sight of old Jolyon, with Jolly and Holly seemed to young Jolyon a
special peep-show of the things that lie at the bottom of our hearts.
The complete surrender of that erect old figure to those little figures
on either hand was too poignantly tender, and, being a man of an
habitual reflex action, young Jolyon swore softly under his breath. The
show affected him in a way unbecoming to a Forsyte, who is nothing if
not undemonstrative.

Thus they reached the lion-house.

There had been a morning fete at the Botanical Gardens, and a large
number of Forsy...’--that is, of well-dressed people who kept carriages
had brought them on to the Zoo, so as to have more, if possible, for
their money, before going back to Rutland Gate or Bryanston Square.

“Let’s go on to the Zoo,” they had said to each other; “it’ll be great
fun!” It was a shilling day; and there would not be all those horrid
common people.

In front of the long line of cages they were collected in rows, watching
the tawny, ravenous beasts behind the bars await their only pleasure
of the four-and-twenty hours. The hungrier the beast, the greater the
fascination. But whether because the spectators envied his appetite,
or, more humanely, because it was so soon to be satisfied, young
Jolyon could not tell. Remarks kept falling on his ears: “That’s a
nasty-looking brute, that tiger!” “Oh, what a love! Look at his little
mouth!” “Yes, he’s rather nice! Don’t go too near, mother.”

And frequently, with little pats, one or another would clap their hands
to their pockets behind and look round, as though expecting young Jolyon
or some disinterested-looking person to relieve them of the contents.

A well-fed man in a white waistcoat said slowly through his teeth: “It’s
all greed; they can’t be hungry. Why, they take no exercise.” At these
words a tiger snatched a piece of bleeding liver, and the fat man
laughed. His wife, in a Paris model frock and gold nose-nippers,
reproved him: “How can you laugh, Harry? Such a horrid sight!”

Young Jolyon frowned.

The circumstances of his life, though he had ceased to take a too
personal view of them, had left him subject to an intermittent contempt;
and the class to which he had belonged--the carriage class--especially
excited his sarcasm.

To shut up a lion or tiger in confinement was surely a horrible
barbarity. But no cultivated person would admit this.

The idea of its being barbarous to confine wild animals had probably
never even occurred to his father for instance; he belonged to the old
school, who considered it at once humanizing and educational to confine
baboons and panthers, holding the view, no doubt, that in course of time
they might induce these creatures not so unreasonably to die of misery
and heart-sickness against the bars of their cages, and put the society
to the expense of getting others! In his eyes, as in the eyes of all
Forsytes, the pleasure of seeing these beautiful creatures in a state
of captivity far outweighed the inconvenience of imprisonment to beasts
whom God had so improvidently placed in a state of freedom! It was for
the animals good, removing them at once from the countless dangers of
open air and exercise, and enabling them to exercise their functions
in the guaranteed seclusion of a private compartment! Indeed, it was
doubtful what wild animals were made for but to be shut up in cages!

But as young Jolyon had in his constitution the elements of
impartiality, he reflected that to stigmatize as barbarity that which
was merely lack of imagination must be wrong; for none who held these
views had been placed in a similar position to the animals they caged,
and could not, therefore, be expected to enter into their sensations. It
was not until they were leaving the gardens--Jolly and Holly in a state
of blissful delirium--that old Jolyon found an opportunity of speaking
to his son on the matter next his heart. “I don’t know what to make of
it,” he said; “if she’s to go on as she’s going on now, I can’t tell
what’s to come. I wanted her to see the doctor, but she won’t. She’s not
a bit like me. She’s your mother all over. Obstinate as a mule! If she
doesn’t want to do a thing, she won’t, and there’s an end of it!”

Young Jolyon smiled; his eyes had wandered to his father’s chin. ‘A pair
of you,’ he thought, but he said nothing.

“And then,” went on old Jolyon, “there’s this Bosinney. I should like to
punch the fellow’s head, but I can’t, I suppose, though--I don’t see why
you shouldn’t,” he added doubtfully.

“What has he done? Far better that it should come to an end, if they
don’t hit it off!”

Old Jolyon looked at his son. Now they had actually come to discuss
a subject connected with the relations between the sexes he felt
distrustful. Jo would be sure to hold some loose view or other.

“Well, I don’t know what you think,” he said; “I dare say your
sympathy’s with him--shouldn’t be surprised; but I think he’s behaving
precious badly, and if he comes my way I shall tell him so.” He dropped
the subject.

It was impossible to discuss with his son the true nature and meaning of
Bosinney’s defection. Had not his son done the very same thing (worse,
if possible) fifteen years ago? There seemed no end to the consequences
of that piece of folly.

Young Jolyon also was silent; he had quickly penetrated his father’s
thought, for, dethroned from the high seat of an obvious and
uncomplicated view of things, he had become both perceptive and subtle.

The attitude he had adopted towards sexual matters fifteen years before,
however, was too different from his father’s. There was no bridging the
gulf.

He said coolly: “I suppose he’s fallen in love with some other woman?”

Old Jolyon gave him a dubious look: “I can’t tell,” he said; “they say
so!”

“Then, it’s probably true,” remarked young Jolyon unexpectedly; “and I
suppose they’ve told you who she is?”

“Yes,” said old Jolyon, “Soames’s wife!”

Young Jolyon did not whistle: The circumstances of his own life had
rendered him incapable of whistling on such a subject, but he looked at
his father, while the ghost of a smile hovered over his face.

If old Jolyon saw, he took no notice.

“She and June were bosom friends!” he muttered.

“Poor little June!” said young Jolyon softly. He thought of his daughter
still as a babe of three.

Old Jolyon came to a sudden halt.

“I don’t believe a word of it,” he said, “it’s some old woman’s tale.
Get me a cab, Jo, I’m tired to death!”

They stood at a corner to see if an empty cab would come along, while
carriage after carriage drove past, bearing Forsytes of all descriptions
from the Zoo. The harness, the liveries, the gloss on the horses’ coats,
shone and glittered in the May sunlight, and each equipage, landau,
sociable, barouche, Victoria, or brougham, seemed to roll out proudly
from its wheels:

’. and my horses and my men you know,’ Indeed the whole turn-out have
cost a pot. But we were worth it every penny. Look At Master and at
Missis now, the dawgs! Ease with security--ah! that’s the ticket!

And such, as everyone knows, is fit accompaniment for a perambulating
Forsyte.

Amongst these carriages was a barouche coming at a greater pace than
the others, drawn by a pair of bright bay horses. It swung on its high
springs, and the four people who filled it seemed rocked as in a cradle.

This chariot attracted young Jolyon’s attention; and suddenly, on the
back seat, he recognised his Uncle James, unmistakable in spite of the
increased whiteness of his whiskers; opposite, their backs defended by
sunshades, Rachel Forsyte and her elder but married sister, Winifred
Dartie, in irreproachable toilettes, had posed their heads haughtily,
like two of the birds they had been seeing at the Zoo; while by James’
side reclined Dartie, in a brand-new frock-coat buttoned tight and
square, with a large expanse of carefully shot linen protruding below
each wristband.

An extra, if subdued, sparkle, an added touch of the best gloss or
varnish characterized this vehicle, and seemed to distinguish it from
all the others, as though by some happy extravagance--like that which
marks out the real ‘work of art’ from the ordinary ‘picture’--it were
designated as the typical car, the very throne of Forsytedom.

Old Jolyon did not see them pass; he was petting poor Holly who was
tired, but those in the carriage had taken in the little group; the
ladies’ heads tilted suddenly, there was a spasmodic screening movement
of parasols; James’ face protruded naively, like the head of a long
bird, his mouth slowly opening. The shield-like rounds of the parasols
grew smaller and smaller, and vanished.

Young Jolyon saw that he had been recognised, even by Winifred, who
could not have been more than fifteen when he had forfeited the right to
be considered a Forsyte.

There was not much change in them! He remembered the exact look of their
turn-out all that time ago: Horses, men, carriage--all different now, no
doubt--but of the precise stamp of fifteen years before; the same neat
display, the same nicely calculated arrogance ease with security! The
swing exact, the pose of the sunshades exact, exact the spirit of the
whole thing.

And in the sunlight, defended by the haughty shields of parasols,
carriage after carriage went by.

“Uncle James has just passed, with his female folk,” said young Jolyon.

His father looked black. “Did your uncle see us? Yes? Hmph! What’s he
want, coming down into these parts?”

An empty cab drove up at this moment, and old Jolyon stopped it.

“I shall see you again before long, my boy!” he said. “Don’t you go
paying any attention to what I’ve been saying about young Bosinney--I
don’t believe a word of it!”

Kissing the children, who tried to detain him, he stepped in and was
borne away.

Young Jolyon, who had taken Holly up in his arms, stood motionless at
the corner, looking after the cab.



CHAPTER VII--AFTERNOON AT TIMOTHY’S

If old Jolyon, as he got into his cab, had said: ‘I won’t believe a word
of it!’ he would more truthfully have expressed his sentiments.

The notion that James and his womankind had seen him in the company of
his son had awakened in him not only the impatience he always felt when
crossed, but that secret hostility natural between brothers, the roots
of which--little nursery rivalries--sometimes toughen and deepen as life
goes on, and, all hidden, support a plant capable of producing in season
the bitterest fruits.

Hitherto there had been between these six brothers no more unfriendly
feeling than that caused by the secret and natural doubt that the others
might be richer than themselves; a feeling increased to the pitch of
curiosity by the approach of death--that end of all handicaps--and the
great ‘closeness’ of their man of business, who, with some sagacity,
would profess to Nicholas ignorance of James’ income, to James ignorance
of old Jolyon’s, to Jolyon ignorance of Roger’s, to Roger ignorance of
Swithin’s, while to Swithin he would say most irritatingly that Nicholas
must be a rich man. Timothy alone was exempt, being in gilt-edged
securities.

But now, between two of them at least, had arisen a very different sense
of injury. From the moment when James had the impertinence to pry into
his affairs--as he put it--old Jolyon no longer chose to credit this
story about Bosinney. His grand-daughter slighted through a member of
’.hat fellow’s’ family! He made up his mind that Bosinney was maligned.
There must be some other reason for his defection.

June had flown out at him, or something; she was as touchy as she could
be!

He would, however, let Timothy have a bit of his mind, and see if he
would go on dropping hints! And he would not let the grass grow under
his feet either, he would go there at once, and take very good care that
he didn’t have to go again on the same errand.

He saw James’ carriage blocking the pavement in front of ‘The Bower.’ So
they had got there before him--cackling about having seen him, he dared
say! And further on, Swithin’s greys were turning their noses towards
the noses of James’ bays, as though in conclave over the family, while
their coachmen were in conclave above.

Old Jolyon, depositing his hat on the chair in the narrow hall, where
that hat of Bosinney’s had so long ago been mistaken for a cat, passed
his thin hand grimly over his face with its great drooping white
moustaches, as though to remove all traces of expression, and made his
way upstairs.

He found the front drawing-room full. It was full enough at the best
of times--without visitors--without any one in it--for Timothy and his
sisters, following the tradition of their generation, considered that a
room was not quite ‘nice’ unless it was ‘properly’ furnished. It
held, therefore, eleven chairs, a sofa, three tables, two cabinets,
innumerable knicknacks, and part of a large grand piano. And now,
occupied by Mrs. Small, Aunt Hester, by Swithin, James, Rachel,
Winifred, Euphemia, who had come in again to return ‘Passion and
Paregoric’ which she had read at lunch, and her chum Frances, Roger’s
daughter (the musical Forsyte, the one who composed songs), there was
only one chair left unoccupied, except, of course, the two that nobody
ever sat on--and the only standing room was occupied by the cat, on whom
old Jolyon promptly stepped.

In these days it was by no means unusual for Timothy to have so many
visitors. The family had always, one and all, had a real respect
for Aunt Ann, and now that she was gone, they were coming far more
frequently to The Bower, and staying longer.

Swithin had been the first to arrive, and seated torpid in a red satin
chair with a gilt back, he gave every appearance of lasting the others
out. And symbolizing Bosinney’s name ‘the big one,’ with his great
stature and bulk, his thick white hair, his puffy immovable shaven face,
he looked more primeval than ever in the highly upholstered room.

His conversation, as usual of late, had turned at once upon Irene, and
he had lost no time in giving Aunts Juley and Hester his opinion with
regard to this rumour he heard was going about. No--as he said--she
might want a bit of flirtation--a pretty woman must have her fling; but
more than that he did not believe. Nothing open; she had too much good
sense, too much proper appreciation of what was due to her position, and
to the family! No sc--, he was going to say ‘scandal’ but the very idea
was so preposterous that he waved his hand as though to say--’but let
that pass!’

Granted that Swithin took a bachelor’s view of the situation--still what
indeed was not due to that family in which so many had done so well for
themselves, had attained a certain position? If he had heard in dark,
pessimistic moments the words ‘yeomen’ and ‘very small beer’ used in
connection with his origin, did he believe them?

No! he cherished, hugging it pathetically to his bosom the secret theory
that there was something distinguished somewhere in his ancestry.

“Must be,” he once said to young Jolyon, before the latter went to
the bad. “Look at us, we’ve got on! There must be good blood in us
somewhere.”

He had been fond of young Jolyon: the boy had been in a good set at
College, had known that old ruffian Sir Charles Fiste’s sons--a pretty
rascal one of them had turned out, too; and there was style about
him--it was a thousand pities he had run off with that half-foreign
governess! If he must go off like that why couldn’t he have chosen
someone who would have done them credit! And what was he now?--an
underwriter at Lloyd’s; they said he even painted pictures--pictures!
Damme! he might have ended as Sir Jolyon Forsyte, Bart., with a seat in
Parliament, and a place in the country!

It was Swithin who, following the impulse which sooner or later urges
thereto some member of every great family, went to the Heralds’ Office,
where they assured him that he was undoubtedly of the same family as the
well-known Forsites with an ‘i,’ whose arms were ‘three dexter buckles
on a sable ground gules,’ hoping no doubt to get him to take them up.

Swithin, however, did not do this, but having ascertained that the
crest was a ‘pheasant proper,’ and the motto ‘For Forsite,’ he had
the pheasant proper placed upon his carriage and the buttons of his
coachman, and both crest and motto on his writing-paper. The arms he
hugged to himself, partly because, not having paid for them, he thought
it would look ostentatious to put them on his carriage, and he hated
ostentation, and partly because he, like any practical man all over
the country, had a secret dislike and contempt for things he could not
understand he found it hard, as anyone might, to swallow ‘three dexter
buckles on a sable ground gules.’

He never forgot, however, their having told him that if he paid for them
he would be entitled to use them, and it strengthened his conviction
that he was a gentleman. Imperceptibly the rest of the family absorbed
the ‘pheasant proper,’ and some, more serious than others, adopted the
motto; old Jolyon, however, refused to use the latter, saying that it
was humbug meaning nothing, so far as he could see.

Among the older generation it was perhaps known at bottom from what
great historical event they derived their crest; and if pressed on the
subject, sooner than tell a lie--they did not like telling lies, having
an impression that only Frenchmen and Russians told them--they would
confess hurriedly that Swithin had got hold of it somehow.

Among the younger generation the matter was wrapped in a discretion
proper. They did not want to hurt the feelings of their elders, nor to
feel ridiculous themselves; they simply used the crest....

“No,” said Swithin, “he had had an opportunity of seeing for himself,
and what he should say was, that there was nothing in her manner to that
young Buccaneer or Bosinney or whatever his name was, different from
her manner to himself; in fact, he should rather say....” But here
the entrance of Frances and Euphemia put an unfortunate stop to the
conversation, for this was not a subject which could be discussed before
young people.

And though Swithin was somewhat upset at being stopped like this on the
point of saying something important, he soon recovered his affability.
He was rather fond of Frances--Francie, as she was called in the family.
She was so smart, and they told him she made a pretty little pot of
pin-money by her songs; he called it very clever of her.

He rather prided himself indeed on a liberal attitude towards women, not
seeing any reason why they shouldn’t paint pictures, or write tunes,
or books even, for the matter of that, especially if they could turn a
useful penny by it; not at all--kept them out of mischief. It was not as
if they were men!

’.ittle Francie,’ as she was usually called with good-natured contempt,
was an important personage, if only as a standing illustration of the
attitude of Forsytes towards the Arts. She was not really ‘little,’ but
rather tall, with dark hair for a Forsyte, which, together with a grey
eye, gave her what was called ‘a Celtic appearance.’ She wrote songs
with titles like ‘Breathing Sighs,’ or ‘Kiss me, Mother, ere I die,’
with a refrain like an anthem:

    ‘Kiss me, Mother, ere I die;
     Kiss me-kiss me, Mother, ah!
     Kiss, ah! kiss me e-ere I--
     Kiss me, Mother, ere I d-d-die!’

She wrote the words to them herself, and other poems. In lighter moments
she wrote waltzes, one of which, the ‘Kensington Coil,’ was almost
national to Kensington, having a sweet dip in it.

It was very original. Then there were her ‘Songs for Little People,’
at once educational and witty, especially ‘Gran’ma’s Porgie,’ and that
ditty, almost prophetically imbued with the coming Imperial spirit,
entitled ‘Black Him In His Little Eye.’

Any publisher would take these, and reviews like ‘High Living,’ and
the ‘Ladies’ Genteel Guide’ went into raptures over: ‘Another of Miss
Francie Forsyte’s spirited ditties, sparkling and pathetic. We ourselves
were moved to tears and laughter. Miss Forsyte should go far.’

With the true instinct of her breed, Francie had made a point of knowing
the right people--people who would write about her, and talk about her,
and people in Society, too--keeping a mental register of just where
to exert her fascinations, and an eye on that steady scale of rising
prices, which in her mind’s eye represented the future. In this way she
caused herself to be universally respected.

Once, at a time when her emotions were whipped by an attachment--for
the tenor of Roger’s life, with its whole-hearted collection of
house property, had induced in his only daughter a tendency towards
passion--she turned to great and sincere work, choosing the sonata form,
for the violin. This was the only one of her productions that troubled
the Forsytes. They felt at once that it would not sell.

Roger, who liked having a clever daughter well enough, and often alluded
to the amount of pocket-money she made for herself, was upset by this
violin sonata.

“Rubbish like that!” he called it. Francie had borrowed young
Flageoletti from Euphemia, to play it in the drawing-room at Prince’s
Gardens.

As a matter of fact Roger was right. It was rubbish, but--annoying! the
sort of rubbish that wouldn’t sell. As every Forsyte knows, rubbish that
sells is not rubbish at all--far from it.

And yet, in spite of the sound common sense which fixed the worth of art
at what it would fetch, some of the Forsytes--Aunt Hester, for instance,
who had always been musical--could not help regretting that Francie’s
music was not ‘classical’. the same with her poems. But then, as Aunt
Hester said, they didn’t see any poetry nowadays, all the poems were
’.ittle light things.’

There was nobody who could write a poem like ‘Paradise Lost,’ or
’.hilde Harold’. either of which made you feel that you really had read
something. Still, it was nice for Francie to have something to occupy
her; while other girls were spending money shopping she was making it!

And both Aunt Hester and Aunt Juley were always ready to listen to the
latest story of how Francie had got her price increased.

They listened now, together with Swithin, who sat pretending not to, for
these young people talked so fast and mumbled so, he never could catch
what they said.

“And I can’t think,” said Mrs. Septimus, “how you do it. I should never
have the audacity!”

Francie smiled lightly. “I’d much rather deal with a man than a woman.
Women are so sharp!”

“My dear,” cried Mrs. Small, “I’m sure we’re not.”

Euphemia went off into her silent laugh, and, ending with the squeak,
said, as though being strangled: “Oh, you’ll kill me some day, auntie.”

Swithin saw no necessity to laugh; he detested people laughing when he
himself perceived no joke. Indeed, he detested Euphemia altogether, to
whom he always alluded as ‘Nick’s daughter, what’s she called--the pale
one?’ He had just missed being her god-father--indeed, would have been,
had he not taken a firm stand against her outlandish name. He hated
becoming a godfather. Swithin then said to Francie with dignity: “It’s
a fine day--er--for the time of year.” But Euphemia, who knew perfectly
well that he had refused to be her godfather, turned to Aunt Hester, and
began telling her how she had seen Irene--Mrs. Soames--at the Church and
Commercial Stores.

“And Soames was with her?” said Aunt Hester, to whom Mrs. Small had as
yet had no opportunity of relating the incident.

“Soames with her? Of course not!”

“But was she all alone in London?”

“Oh, no; there was Mr. Bosinney with her. She was perfectly dressed.”

But Swithin, hearing the name Irene, looked severely at Euphemia, who,
it is true, never did look well in a dress, whatever she may have done
on other occasions, and said:

“Dressed like a lady, I’ve no doubt. It’s a pleasure to see her.”

At this moment James and his daughters were announced. Dartie, feeling
badly in want of a drink, had pleaded an appointment with his dentist,
and, being put down at the Marble Arch, had got into a hansom, and was
already seated in the window of his club in Piccadilly.

His wife, he told his cronies, had wanted to take him to pay some calls.
It was not in his line--not exactly. Haw!

Hailing the waiter, he sent him out to the hall to see what had won
the 4.30 race. He was dog-tired, he said, and that was a fact; had been
drivin’ about with his wife to ‘shows’ all the afternoon. Had put his
foot down at last. A fellow must live his own life.

At this moment, glancing out of the bay window--for he loved this seat
whence he could see everybody pass--his eye unfortunately, or perhaps
fortunately, chanced to light on the figure of Soames, who was mousing
across the road from the Green Park-side, with the evident intention of
coming in, for he, too, belonged to ‘The Iseeum.’

Dartie sprang to his feet; grasping his glass, he muttered something
about ‘that 4.30 race,’ and swiftly withdrew to the card-room, where
Soames never came. Here, in complete isolation and a dim light, he lived
his own life till half past seven, by which hour he knew Soames must
certainly have left the club.

It would not do, as he kept repeating to himself whenever he felt the
impulse to join the gossips in the bay-window getting too strong for
him--it absolutely would not do, with finances as low as his, and the
’.ld man’ (James) rusty ever since that business over the oil shares,
which was no fault of his, to risk a row with Winifred.

If Soames were to see him in the club it would be sure to come round to
her that he wasn’t at the dentist’s at all. He never knew a family where
things ‘came round’ so. Uneasily, amongst the green baize card-tables,
a frown on his olive coloured face, his check trousers crossed, and
patent-leather boots shining through the gloom, he sat biting his
forefinger, and wondering where the deuce he was to get the money if
Erotic failed to win the Lancashire Cup.

His thoughts turned gloomily to the Forsytes. What a set they were!
There was no getting anything out of them--at least, it was a matter of
extreme difficulty. They were so d---d particular about money matters;
not a sportsman amongst the lot, unless it were George. That fellow
Soames, for instance, would have a fit if you tried to borrow a tenner
from him, or, if he didn’t have a fit, he looked at you with his cursed
supercilious smile, as if you were a lost soul because you were in want
of money.

And that wife of his (Dartie’s mouth watered involuntarily), he had
tried to be on good terms with her, as one naturally would with any
pretty sister-in-law, but he would be cursed if the (he mentally used
a coarse word)--would have anything to say to him--she looked at him,
indeed, as if he were dirt--and yet she could go far enough, he wouldn’t
mind betting. He knew women; they weren’t made with soft eyes and
figures like that for nothing, as that fellow Soames would jolly
soon find out, if there were anything in what he had heard about this
Buccaneer Johnny.

Rising from his chair, Dartie took a turn across the room, ending in
front of the looking-glass over the marble chimney-piece; and there he
stood for a long time contemplating in the glass the reflection of his
face. It had that look, peculiar to some men, of having been steeped in
linseed oil, with its waxed dark moustaches and the little distinguished
commencements of side whiskers; and concernedly he felt the promise of a
pimple on the side of his slightly curved and fattish nose.

In the meantime old Jolyon had found the remaining chair in Timothy’s
commodious drawing-room. His advent had obviously put a stop to the
conversation, decided awkwardness having set in. Aunt Juley, with her
well-known kindheartedness, hastened to set people at their ease again.

“Yes, Jolyon,” she said, “we were just saying that you haven’t been here
for a long time; but we mustn’t be surprised. You’re busy, of course?
James was just saying what a busy time of year....”

“Was he?” said old Jolyon, looking hard at James. “It wouldn’t be half
so busy if everybody minded their own business.”

James, brooding in a small chair from which his knees ran uphill,
shifted his feet uneasily, and put one of them down on the cat, which
had unwisely taken refuge from old Jolyon beside him.

“Here, you’ve got a cat here,” he said in an injured voice, withdrawing
his foot nervously as he felt it squeezing into the soft, furry body.

“Several,” said old Jolyon, looking at one face and another; “I trod on
one just now.”

A silence followed.

Then Mrs. Small, twisting her fingers and gazing round with ‘pathetic
calm’, asked: “And how is dear June?”

A twinkle of humour shot through the sternness of old Jolyon’s eyes.
Extraordinary old woman, Juley! No one quite like her for saying the
wrong thing!

“Bad!” he said; “London don’t agree with her--too many people about, too
much clatter and chatter by half.” He laid emphasis on the words, and
again looked James in the face.

Nobody spoke.

A feeling of its being too dangerous to take a step in any direction, or
hazard any remark, had fallen on them all. Something of the sense of the
impending, that comes over the spectator of a Greek tragedy, had entered
that upholstered room, filled with those white-haired, frock-coated
old men, and fashionably attired women, who were all of the same blood,
between all of whom existed an unseizable resemblance.

Not that they were conscious of it--the visits of such fateful, bitter
spirits are only felt.

Then Swithin rose. He would not sit there, feeling like that--he was
not to be put down by anyone! And, manoeuvring round the room with added
pomp, he shook hands with each separately.

“You tell Timothy from me,” he said, “that he coddles himself too much!”
 Then, turning to Francie, whom he considered ‘smart,’ he added: “You
come with me for a drive one of these days.” But this conjured up the
vision of that other eventful drive which had been so much talked about,
and he stood quite still for a second, with glassy eyes, as though
waiting to catch up with the significance of what he himself had said;
then, suddenly recollecting that he didn’t care a damn, he turned to
old Jolyon: “Well, good-bye, Jolyon! You shouldn’t go about without an
overcoat; you’ll be getting sciatica or something!” And, kicking the cat
slightly with the pointed tip of his patent leather boot, he took his
huge form away.

When he had gone everyone looked secretly at the others, to see how they
had taken the mention of the word ‘drive’--the word which had
become famous, and acquired an overwhelming importance, as the only
official--so to speak--news in connection with the vague and sinister
rumour clinging to the family tongue.

Euphemia, yielding to an impulse, said with a short laugh: “I’m glad
Uncle Swithin doesn’t ask me to go for drives.”

Mrs. Small, to reassure her and smooth over any little awkwardness the
subject might have, replied: “My dear, he likes to take somebody well
dressed, who will do him a little credit. I shall never forget the drive
he took me. It was an experience!” And her chubby round old face was
spread for a moment with a strange contentment; then broke into pouts,
and tears came into her eyes. She was thinking of that long ago driving
tour she had once taken with Septimus Small.

James, who had relapsed into his nervous brooding in the little chair,
suddenly roused himself: “He’s a funny fellow, Swithin,” he said, but in
a half-hearted way.

Old Jolyon’s silence, his stern eyes, held them all in a kind of
paralysis. He was disconcerted himself by the effect of his own
words--an effect which seemed to deepen the importance of the very
rumour he had come to scotch; but he was still angry.

He had not done with them yet--No, no--he would give them another rub or
two.

He did not wish to rub his nieces, he had no quarrel with them--a young
and presentable female always appealed to old Jolyon’s clemency--but
that fellow James, and, in a less degree perhaps, those others, deserved
all they would get. And he, too, asked for Timothy.

As though feeling that some danger threatened her younger brother, Aunt
Juley suddenly offered him tea: “There it is,” she said, “all cold and
nasty, waiting for you in the back drawing room, but Smither shall make
you some fresh.”

Old Jolyon rose: “Thank you,” he said, looking straight at James, “but
I’ve no time for tea, and--scandal, and the rest of it! It’s time I was
at home. Good-bye, Julia; good-bye, Hester; good-bye, Winifred.”

Without more ceremonious adieux, he marched out.

Once again in his cab, his anger evaporated, for so it ever was with
his wrath--when he had rapped out, it was gone. Sadness came over his
spirit. He had stopped their mouths, maybe, but at what a cost! At the
cost of certain knowledge that the rumour he had been resolved not to
believe was true. June was abandoned, and for the wife of that fellow’s
son! He felt it was true, and hardened himself to treat it as if it were
not; but the pain he hid beneath this resolution began slowly, surely,
to vent itself in a blind resentment against James and his son.

The six women and one man left behind in the little drawing-room began
talking as easily as might be after such an occurrence, for though each
one of them knew for a fact that he or she never talked scandal, each
one of them also knew that the other six did; all were therefore angry
and at a loss. James only was silent, disturbed, to the bottom of his
soul.

Presently Francie said: “Do you know, I think Uncle Jolyon is terribly
changed this last year. What do you think, Aunt Hester?”

Aunt Hester made a little movement of recoil: “Oh, ask your Aunt Julia!”
 she said; “I know nothing about it.”

No one else was afraid of assenting, and James muttered gloomily at the
floor: “He’s not half the man he was.”

“I’ve noticed it a long time,” went on Francie; “he’s aged
tremendously.”

Aunt Juley shook her head; her face seemed suddenly to have become one
immense pout.

“Poor dear Jolyon,” she said, “somebody ought to see to it for him!”

There was again silence; then, as though in terror of being left
solitarily behind, all five visitors rose simultaneously, and took their
departure.

Mrs. Small, Aunt Hester, and their cat were left once more alone,
the sound of a door closing in the distance announced the approach of
Timothy.

That evening, when Aunt Hester had just got off to sleep in the back
bedroom that used to be Aunt Juley’s before Aunt Juley took Aunt Ann’s,
her door was opened, and Mrs. Small, in a pink night-cap, a candle in
her hand, entered: “Hester!” she said. “Hester!”

Aunt Hester faintly rustled the sheet.

“Hester,” repeated Aunt Juley, to make quite sure that she had awakened
her, “I am quite troubled about poor dear Jolyon. What,” Aunt Juley
dwelt on the word, “do you think ought to be done?”

Aunt Hester again rustled the sheet, her voice was heard faintly
pleading: “Done? How should I know?”

Aunt Juley turned away satisfied, and closing the door with extra
gentleness so as not to disturb dear Hester, let it slip through her
fingers and fall to with a ‘crack.’

Back in her own room, she stood at the window gazing at the moon over
the trees in the Park, through a chink in the muslin curtains, close
drawn lest anyone should see. And there, with her face all round and
pouting in its pink cap, and her eyes wet, she thought of ‘dear Jolyon,’
so old and so lonely, and how she could be of some use to him; and how
he would come to love her, as she had never been loved since--since poor
Septimus went away.



CHAPTER VIII--DANCE AT ROGER’S

Roger’s house in Prince’s Gardens was brilliantly alight. Large numbers
of wax candles had been collected and placed in cut-glass chandeliers,
and the parquet floor of the long, double drawing-room reflected these
constellations. An appearance of real spaciousness had been secured by
moving out all the furniture on to the upper landings, and enclosing
the room with those strange appendages of civilization known as ‘rout’
seats. In a remote corner, embowered in palms, was a cottage piano, with
a copy of the ‘Kensington Coil’ open on the music-stand.

Roger had objected to a band. He didn’t see in the least what they
wanted with a band; he wouldn’t go to the expense, and there was an end
of it. Francie (her mother, whom Roger had long since reduced to chronic
dyspepsia, went to bed on such occasions), had been obliged to content
herself with supplementing the piano by a young man who played the
cornet, and she so arranged with palms that anyone who did not look into
the heart of things might imagine there were several musicians secreted
there. She made up her mind to tell them to play loud--there was a lot
of music in a cornet, if the man would only put his soul into it.

In the more cultivated American tongue, she was ‘through’ at
last--through that tortuous labyrinth of make-shifts, which must be
traversed before fashionable display can be combined with the sound
economy of a Forsyte. Thin but brilliant, in her maize-coloured frock
with much tulle about the shoulders, she went from place to place,
fitting on her gloves, and casting her eye over it all.

To the hired butler (for Roger only kept maids) she spoke about the
wine. Did he quite understand that Mr. Forsyte wished a dozen bottles of
the champagne from Whiteley’s to be put out? But if that were finished
(she did not suppose it would be, most of the ladies would drink water,
no doubt), but if it were, there was the champagne cup, and he must do
the best he could with that.

She hated having to say this sort of thing to a butler, it was so infra
dig.; but what could you do with father? Roger, indeed, after making
himself consistently disagreeable about the dance, would come down
presently, with his fresh colour and bumpy forehead, as though he had
been its promoter; and he would smile, and probably take the prettiest
woman in to supper; and at two o’clock, just as they were getting into
the swing, he would go up secretly to the musicians and tell them to
play ‘God Save the Queen,’ and go away.

Francie devoutly hoped he might soon get tired, and slip off to bed.

The three or four devoted girl friends who were staying in the house for
this dance had partaken with her, in a small, abandoned room upstairs,
of tea and cold chicken-legs, hurriedly served; the men had been sent
out to dine at Eustace’s Club, it being felt that they must be fed up.

Punctually on the stroke of nine arrived Mrs. Small alone. She made
elaborate apologies for the absence of Timothy, omitting all mention
of Aunt Hester, who, at the last minute, had said she could not be
bothered. Francie received her effusively, and placed her on a rout
seat, where she left her, pouting and solitary in lavender-coloured
satin--the first time she had worn colour since Aunt Ann’s death.

The devoted maiden friends came now from their rooms, each by magic
arrangement in a differently coloured frock, but all with the same
liberal allowance of tulle on the shoulders and at the bosom--for they
were, by some fatality, lean to a girl. They were all taken up to Mrs.
Small. None stayed with her more than a few seconds, but clustering
together talked and twisted their programmes, looking secretly at the
door for the first appearance of a man.

Then arrived in a group a number of Nicholases, always punctual--the
fashion up Ladbroke Grove way; and close behind them Eustace and his
men, gloomy and smelling rather of smoke.

Three or four of Francie’s lovers now appeared, one after the other;
she had made each promise to come early. They were all clean-shaven and
sprightly, with that peculiar kind of young-man sprightliness which
had recently invaded Kensington; they did not seem to mind each other’s
presence in the least, and wore their ties bunching out at the ends,
white waistcoats, and socks with clocks. All had handkerchiefs concealed
in their cuffs. They moved buoyantly, each armoured in professional
gaiety, as though he had come to do great deeds. Their faces when they
danced, far from wearing the traditional solemn look of the dancing
Englishman, were irresponsible, charming, suave; they bounded, twirling
their partners at great pace, without pedantic attention to the rhythm
of the music.

At other dancers they looked with a kind of airy scorn--they, the light
brigade, the heroes of a hundred Kensington ‘hops’--from whom alone
could the right manner and smile and step be hoped.

After this the stream came fast; chaperones silting up along the wall
facing the entrance, the volatile element swelling the eddy in the
larger room.

Men were scarce, and wallflowers wore their peculiar, pathetic
expression, a patient, sourish smile which seemed to say: “Oh, no! don’t
mistake me, I know you are not coming up to me. I can hardly expect
that!” And Francie would plead with one of her lovers, or with some
callow youth: “Now, to please me, do let me introduce you to Miss Pink;
such a nice girl, really!” and she would bring him up, and say: “Miss
Pink--Mr. Gathercole. Can you spare him a dance?” Then Miss Pink,
smiling her forced smile, colouring a little, answered: “Oh! I think
so!” and screening her empty card, wrote on it the name of Gathercole,
spelling it passionately in the district that he proposed, about the
second extra.

But when the youth had murmured that it was hot, and passed, she
relapsed into her attitude of hopeless expectation, into her patient,
sourish smile.

Mothers, slowly fanning their faces, watched their daughters, and in
their eyes could be read all the story of those daughters’ fortunes. As
for themselves, to sit hour after hour, dead tired, silent, or talking
spasmodically--what did it matter, so long as the girls were having a
good time! But to see them neglected and passed by! Ah! they smiled,
but their eyes stabbed like the eyes of an offended swan; they longed to
pluck young Gathercole by the slack of his dandified breeches, and drag
him to their daughters--the jackanapes!

And all the cruelties and hardness of life, its pathos and unequal
chances, its conceit, self-forgetfulness, and patience, were presented
on the battle-field of this Kensington ball-room.

Here and there, too, lovers--not lovers like Francie’s, a peculiar
breed, but simply lovers--trembling, blushing, silent, sought each other
by flying glances, sought to meet and touch in the mazes of the dance,
and now and again dancing together, struck some beholder by the light in
their eyes.

Not a second before ten o’clock came the Jameses--Emily, Rachel,
Winifred (Dartie had been left behind, having on a former occasion drunk
too much of Roger’s champagne), and Cicely, the youngest, making her
debut; behind them, following in a hansom from the paternal mansion
where they had dined, Soames and Irene.

All these ladies had shoulder-straps and no tulle--thus showing at once,
by a bolder exposure of flesh, that they came from the more fashionable
side of the Park.

Soames, sidling back from the contact of the dancers, took up a position
against the wall. Guarding himself with his pale smile, he stood
watching. Waltz after waltz began and ended, couple after couple brushed
by with smiling lips, laughter, and snatches of talk; or with set lips,
and eyes searching the throng; or again, with silent, parted lips, and
eyes on each other. And the scent of festivity, the odour of flowers,
and hair, of essences that women love, rose suffocatingly in the heat of
the summer night.

Silent, with something of scorn in his smile, Soames seemed to notice
nothing; but now and again his eyes, finding that which they sought,
would fix themselves on a point in the shifting throng, and the smile
die off his lips.

He danced with no one. Some fellows danced with their wives; his sense
of ‘form’ had never permitted him to dance with Irene since their
marriage, and the God of the Forsytes alone can tell whether this was a
relief to him or not.

She passed, dancing with other men, her dress, iris-coloured, floating
away from her feet. She danced well; he was tired of hearing women say
with an acid smile: “How beautifully your wife dances, Mr. Forsyte--it’s
quite a pleasure to watch her!” Tired of answering them with his
sidelong glance: “You think so?”

A young couple close by flirted a fan by turns, making an unpleasant
draught. Francie and one of her lovers stood near. They were talking of
love.

He heard Roger’s voice behind, giving an order about supper to a
servant. Everything was very second-class! He wished that he had not
come! He had asked Irene whether she wanted him; she had answered with
that maddening smile of hers “Oh, no!”

Why had he come? For the last quarter of an hour he had not even seen
her. Here was George advancing with his Quilpish face; it was too late
to get out of his way.

“Have you seen ‘The Buccaneer’.” said this licensed wag; “he’s on the
warpath--hair cut and everything!”

Soames said he had not, and crossing the room, half-empty in an interval
of the dance, he went out on the balcony, and looked down into the
street.

A carriage had driven up with late arrivals, and round the door hung
some of those patient watchers of the London streets who spring up to
the call of light or music; their faces, pale and upturned above their
black and rusty figures, had an air of stolid watching that annoyed
Soames. Why were they allowed to hang about; why didn’t the bobby move
them on?

But the policeman took no notice of them; his feet were planted apart
on the strip of crimson carpet stretched across the pavement; his face,
under the helmet, wore the same stolid, watching look as theirs.

Across the road, through the railings, Soames could see the branches
of trees shining, faintly stirring in the breeze, by the gleam of the
street lamps; beyond, again, the upper lights of the houses on the other
side, so many eyes looking down on the quiet blackness of the garden;
and over all, the sky, that wonderful London sky, dusted with the
innumerable reflection of countless lamps; a dome woven over between
its stars with the refraction of human needs and human fancies--immense
mirror of pomp and misery that night after night stretches its kindly
mocking over miles of houses and gardens, mansions and squalor, over
Forsytes, policemen, and patient watchers in the streets.

Soames turned away, and, hidden in the recess, gazed into the lighted
room. It was cooler out there. He saw the new arrivals, June and her
grandfather, enter. What had made them so late? They stood by the
doorway. They looked fagged. Fancy Uncle Jolyon turning out at this
time of night! Why hadn’t June come to Irene, as she usually did, and
it occurred to him suddenly that he had seen nothing of June for a long
time now.

Watching her face with idle malice, he saw it change, grow so pale that
he thought she would drop, then flame out crimson. Turning to see at
what she was looking, he saw his wife on Bosinney’s arm, coming from
the conservatory at the end of the room. Her eyes were raised to his,
as though answering some question he had asked, and he was gazing at her
intently.

Soames looked again at June. Her hand rested on old Jolyon’s arm; she
seemed to be making a request. He saw a surprised look on his uncle’s
face; they turned and passed through the door out of his sight.

The music began again--a waltz--and, still as a statue in the recess of
the window, his face unmoved, but no smile on his lips, Soames waited.
Presently, within a yard of the dark balcony, his wife and Bosinney
passed. He caught the perfume of the gardenias that she wore, saw the
rise and fall of her bosom, the languor in her eyes, her parted lips,
and a look on her face that he did not know. To the slow, swinging
measure they danced by, and it seemed to him that they clung to each
other; he saw her raise her eyes, soft and dark, to Bosinney’s, and drop
them again.

Very white, he turned back to the balcony, and leaning on it, gazed down
on the Square; the figures were still there looking up at the light with
dull persistency, the policeman’s face, too, upturned, and staring, but
he saw nothing of them. Below, a carriage drew up, two figures got in,
and drove away....

That evening June and old Jolyon sat down to dinner at the usual hour.
The girl was in her customary high-necked frock, old Jolyon had not
dressed.

At breakfast she had spoken of the dance at Uncle Roger’s, she wanted to
go; she had been stupid enough, she said, not to think of asking anyone
to take her. It was too late now.

Old Jolyon lifted his keen eyes. June was used to go to dances with
Irene as a matter of course! and deliberately fixing his gaze on her, he
asked: “Why don’t you get Irene?”

No! June did not want to ask Irene; she would only go if--if her
grandfather wouldn’t mind just for once for a little time!

At her look, so eager and so worn, old Jolyon had grumblingly consented.
He did not know what she wanted, he said, with going to a dance like
this, a poor affair, he would wager; and she no more fit for it than a
cat! What she wanted was sea air, and after his general meeting of the
Globular Gold Concessions he was ready to take her. She didn’t want to
go away? Ah! she would knock herself up! Stealing a mournful look at
her, he went on with his breakfast.

June went out early, and wandered restlessly about in the heat. Her
little light figure that lately had moved so languidly about its
business, was all on fire. She bought herself some flowers. She
wanted--she meant to look her best. He would be there! She knew well
enough that he had a card. She would show him that she did not care. But
deep down in her heart she resolved that evening to win him back. She
came in flushed, and talked brightly all lunch; old Jolyon was there,
and he was deceived.

In the afternoon she was overtaken by a desperate fit of sobbing. She
strangled the noise against the pillows of her bed, but when at last
it ceased she saw in the glass a swollen face with reddened eyes, and
violet circles round them. She stayed in the darkened room till dinner
time.

All through that silent meal the struggle went on within her.

She looked so shadowy and exhausted that old Jolyon told ‘Sankey’ to
countermand the carriage, he would not have her going out.... She was to
go to bed! She made no resistance. She went up to her room, and sat in
the dark. At ten o’clock she rang for her maid.

“Bring some hot water, and go down and tell Mr. Forsyte that I feel
perfectly rested. Say that if he’s too tired I can go to the dance by
myself.”

The maid looked askance, and June turned on her imperiously. “Go,” she
said, “bring the hot water at once!”

Her ball-dress still lay on the sofa, and with a sort of fierce care she
arrayed herself, took the flowers in her hand, and went down, her small
face carried high under its burden of hair. She could hear old Jolyon in
his room as she passed.

Bewildered and vexed, he was dressing. It was past ten, they would not
get there till eleven; the girl was mad. But he dared not cross her--the
expression of her face at dinner haunted him.

With great ebony brushes he smoothed his hair till it shone like silver
under the light; then he, too, came out on the gloomy staircase.

June met him below, and, without a word, they went to the carriage.

When, after that drive which seemed to last for ever, she entered
Roger’s drawing-room, she disguised under a mask of resolution a very
torment of nervousness and emotion. The feeling of shame at what might
be called ‘running after him’ was smothered by the dread that he might
not be there, that she might not see him after all, and by that dogged
resolve--somehow, she did not know how--to win him back.

The sight of the ballroom, with its gleaming floor, gave her a feeling
of joy, of triumph, for she loved dancing, and when dancing she floated,
so light was she, like a strenuous, eager little spirit. He would surely
ask her to dance, and if he danced with her it would all be as it was
before. She looked about her eagerly.

The sight of Bosinney coming with Irene from the conservatory, with that
strange look of utter absorption on his face, struck her too suddenly.
They had not seen--no one should see--her distress, not even her
grandfather.

She put her hand on Jolyon’s arm, and said very low:

“I must go home, Gran; I feel ill.”

He hurried her away, grumbling to himself that he had known how it would
be.

To her he said nothing; only when they were once more in the carriage,
which by some fortunate chance had lingered near the door, he asked her:
“What is it, my darling?”

Feeling her whole slender body shaken by sobs, he was terribly alarmed.
She must have Blank to-morrow. He would insist upon it. He could not
have her like this.... There, there!

June mastered her sobs, and squeezing his hand feverishly, she lay back
in her corner, her face muffled in a shawl.

He could only see her eyes, fixed and staring in the dark, but he did
not cease to stroke her hand with his thin fingers.



CHAPTER IX--EVENING AT RICHMOND

Other eyes besides the eyes of June and of Soames had seen ‘those
two’ (as Euphemia had already begun to call them) coming from the
conservatory; other eyes had noticed the look on Bosinney’s face.

There are moments when Nature reveals the passion hidden beneath the
careless calm of her ordinary moods--violent spring flashing white on
almond-blossom through the purple clouds; a snowy, moonlit peak, with
its single star, soaring up to the passionate blue; or against the
flames of sunset, an old yew-tree standing dark guardian of some fiery
secret.

There are moments, too, when in a picture-gallery, a work, noted by the
casual spectator as ‘......Titian--remarkably fine,’ breaks through the
defences of some Forsyte better lunched perhaps than his fellows,
and holds him spellbound in a kind of ecstasy. There are things, he
feels--there are things here which--well, which are things. Something
unreasoning, unreasonable, is upon him; when he tries to define it with
the precision of a practical man, it eludes him, slips away, as the
glow of the wine he has drunk is slipping away, leaving him cross, and
conscious of his liver. He feels that he has been extravagant, prodigal
of something; virtue has gone out of him. He did not desire this glimpse
of what lay under the three stars of his catalogue. God forbid that
he should know anything about the forces of Nature! God forbid that he
should admit for a moment that there are such things! Once admit that,
and where was he? One paid a shilling for entrance, and another for the
programme.

The look which June had seen, which other Forsytes had seen, was like
the sudden flashing of a candle through a hole in some imaginary canvas,
behind which it was being moved--the sudden flaming-out of a vague,
erratic glow, shadowy and enticing. It brought home to onlookers the
consciousness that dangerous forces were at work. For a moment they
noticed it with pleasure, with interest, then felt they must not notice
it at all.

It supplied, however, the reason of June’s coming so late and
disappearing again without dancing, without even shaking hands with her
lover. She was ill, it was said, and no wonder.

But here they looked at each other guiltily. They had no desire to
spread scandal, no desire to be ill-natured. Who would have? And to
outsiders no word was breathed, unwritten law keeping them silent.

Then came the news that June had gone to the seaside with old Jolyon.

He had carried her off to Broadstairs, for which place there was just
then a feeling, Yarmouth having lost caste, in spite of Nicholas, and no
Forsyte going to the sea without intending to have an air for his money
such as would render him bilious in a week. That fatally aristocratic
tendency of the first Forsyte to drink Madeira had left his descendants
undoubtedly accessible.

So June went to the sea. The family awaited developments; there was
nothing else to do.

But how far--how far had ‘those two’ gone? How far were they going to
go? Could they really be going at all? Nothing could surely come of it,
for neither of them had any money. At the most a flirtation, ending, as
all such attachments should, at the proper time.

Soames’ sister, Winifred Dartie, who had imbibed with the breezes of
Mayfair--she lived in Green Street--more fashionable principles in
regard to matrimonial behaviour than were current, for instance, in
Ladbroke Grove, laughed at the idea of there being anything in it. The
’.ittle thing’--Irene was taller than herself, and it was real testimony
to the solid worth of a Forsyte that she should always thus be a ‘little
thing’--the little thing was bored. Why shouldn’t she amuse herself?
Soames was rather tiring; and as to Mr. Bosinney--only that buffoon
George would have called him the Buccaneer--she maintained that he was
very chic.

This dictum--that Bosinney was chic--caused quite a sensation. It failed
to convince. That he was ‘good-looking in a way’ they were prepared to
admit, but that anyone could call a man with his pronounced cheekbones,
curious eyes, and soft felt hats chic was only another instance of
Winifred’s extravagant way of running after something new.

It was that famous summer when extravagance was fashionable, when the
very earth was extravagant, chestnut-trees spread with blossom, and
flowers drenched in perfume, as they had never been before; when roses
blew in every garden; and for the swarming stars the nights had hardly
space; when every day and all day long the sun, in full armour, swung
his brazen shield above the Park, and people did strange things,
lunching and dining in the open air. Unprecedented was the tale of cabs
and carriages that streamed across the bridges of the shining river,
bearing the upper-middle class in thousands to the green glories of
Bushey, Richmond, Kew, and Hampton Court. Almost every family with any
pretensions to be of the carriage-class paid one visit that year to
the horse-chestnuts at Bushey, or took one drive amongst the Spanish
chestnuts of Richmond Park. Bowling smoothly, if dustily, along, in
a cloud of their own creation, they would stare fashionably at the
antlered heads which the great slow deer raised out of a forest of
bracken that promised to autumn lovers such cover as was never seen
before. And now and again, as the amorous perfume of chestnut flowers
and of fern was drifted too near, one would say to the other: “My dear!
What a peculiar scent!”

And the lime-flowers that year were of rare prime, near honey-coloured.
At the corners of London squares they gave out, as the sun went down, a
perfume sweeter than the honey bees had taken--a perfume that stirred a
yearning unnamable in the hearts of Forsytes and their peers, taking the
cool after dinner in the precincts of those gardens to which they alone
had keys.

And that yearning made them linger amidst the dim shapes of flower-beds
in the failing daylight, made them turn, and turn, and turn again, as
though lovers were waiting for them--waiting for the last light to die
away under the shadow of the branches.

Some vague sympathy evoked by the scent of the limes, some sisterly
desire to see for herself, some idea of demonstrating the soundness
of her dictum that there was ‘nothing in it’. or merely the craving to
drive down to Richmond, irresistible that summer, moved the mother of
the little Darties (of little Publius, of Imogen, Maud, and Benedict) to
write the following note to her sister-in-law:


’.EAR IRENE, ‘June 30.

’. hear that Soames is going to Henley tomorrow for the night. I thought
it would be great fun if we made up a little party and drove down to,
Richmond. Will you ask Mr. Bosinney, and I will get young Flippard.

’.mily (they called their mother Emily--it was so chic) will lend us the
carriage. I will call for you and your young man at seven o’clock.

’.our affectionate sister,

’.INIFRED DARTIE.

’.ontague believes the dinner at the Crown and Sceptre to be quite
eatable.’


Montague was Dartie’s second and better known name--his first being
Moses; for he was nothing if not a man of the world.

Her plan met with more opposition from Providence than so benevolent a
scheme deserved. In the first place young Flippard wrote:


’.EAR Mrs. DARTIE,

’.wfully sorry. Engaged two deep.

’.ours,

’.UGUSTUS FLIPPARD.’


It was late to send into the by-ways and hedges to remedy this
misfortune. With the promptitude and conduct of a mother, Winifred
fell back on her husband. She had, indeed, the decided but tolerant
temperament that goes with a good deal of profile, fair hair, and
greenish eyes. She was seldom or never at a loss; or if at a loss, was
always able to convert it into a gain.

Dartie, too, was in good feather. Erotic had failed to win the
Lancashire Cup. Indeed, that celebrated animal, owned as he was by a
pillar of the turf, who had secretly laid many thousands against him,
had not even started. The forty-eight hours that followed his scratching
were among the darkest in Dartie’s life.

Visions of James haunted him day and night. Black thoughts about Soames
mingled with the faintest hopes. On the Friday night he got drunk, so
greatly was he affected. But on Saturday morning the true Stock
Exchange instinct triumphed within him. Owing some hundreds, which by
no possibility could he pay, he went into town and put them all on
Concertina for the Saltown Borough Handicap.

As he said to Major Scrotton, with whom he lunched at the Iseeum: “That
little Jew boy, Nathans, had given him the tip. He didn’t care a cursh.
He wash in--a mucker. If it didn’t come up--well then, damme, the old
man would have to pay!”

A bottle of Pol Roger to his own cheek had given him a new contempt for
James.

It came up. Concertina was squeezed home by her neck--a terrible squeak!
But, as Dartie said: There was nothing like pluck!

He was by no means averse to the expedition to Richmond. He would
’.tand’ it himself! He cherished an admiration for Irene, and wished to
be on more playful terms with her.

At half-past five the Park Lane footman came round to say: Mrs. Forsyte
was very sorry, but one of the horses was coughing!

Undaunted by this further blow, Winifred at once despatched little
Publius (now aged seven) with the nursery governess to Montpellier
Square.

They would go down in hansoms and meet at the Crown and Sceptre at 7.45.

Dartie, on being told, was pleased enough. It was better than going down
with your back to the horses! He had no objection to driving down with
Irene. He supposed they would pick up the others at Montpellier Square,
and swop hansoms there?

Informed that the meet was at the Crown and Sceptre, and that he would
have to drive with his wife, he turned sulky, and said it was d---d
slow!

At seven o’clock they started, Dartie offering to bet the driver
half-a-crown he didn’t do it in the three-quarters of an hour.

Twice only did husband and wife exchange remarks on the way.

Dartie said: “It’ll put Master Soames’s nose out of joint to hear his
wife’s been drivin’ in a hansom with Master Bosinney!”

Winifred replied: “Don’t talk such nonsense, Monty!”

“Nonsense!” repeated Dartie. “You don’t know women, my fine lady!”

On the other occasion he merely asked: “How am I looking? A bit puffy
about the gills? That fizz old George is so fond of is a windy wine!”

He had been lunching with George Forsyte at the Haversnake.

Bosinney and Irene had arrived before them. They were standing in one of
the long French windows overlooking the river.

Windows that summer were open all day long, and all night too, and day
and night the scents of flowers and trees came in, the hot scent of
parching grass, and the cool scent of the heavy dews.

To the eye of the observant Dartie his two guests did not appear to
be making much running, standing there close together, without a word.
Bosinney was a hungry-looking creature--not much go about him.

He left them to Winifred, however, and busied himself to order the
dinner.

A Forsyte will require good, if not delicate feeding, but a Dartie will
tax the resources of a Crown and Sceptre. Living as he does, from hand
to mouth, nothing is too good for him to eat; and he will eat it. His
drink, too, will need to be carefully provided; there is much drink
in this country ‘not good enough’ for a Dartie; he will have the best.
Paying for things vicariously, there is no reason why he should stint
himself. To stint yourself is the mark of a fool, not of a Dartie.

The best of everything! No sounder principle on which a man can base
his life, whose father-in-law has a very considerable income, and a
partiality for his grandchildren.

With his not unable eye Dartie had spotted this weakness in James
the very first year after little Publius’s arrival (an error); he had
profited by his perspicacity. Four little Darties were now a sort of
perpetual insurance.

The feature of the feast was unquestionably the red mullet. This
delectable fish, brought from a considerable distance in a state of
almost perfect preservation, was first fried, then boned, then served in
ice, with Madeira punch in place of sauce, according to a recipe known
to a few men of the world.

Nothing else calls for remark except the payment of the bill by Dartie.

He had made himself extremely agreeable throughout the meal; his bold,
admiring stare seldom abandoning Irene’s face and figure. As he was
obliged to confess to himself, he got no change out of her--she was cool
enough, as cool as her shoulders looked under their veil of creamy lace.
He expected to have caught her out in some little game with Bosinney;
but not a bit of it, she kept up her end remarkably well. As for that
architect chap, he was as glum as a bear with a sore head--Winifred
could barely get a word out of him; he ate nothing, but he certainly
took his liquor, and his face kept getting whiter, and his eyes looked
queer.

It was all very amusing.

For Dartie himself was in capital form, and talked freely, with a
certain poignancy, being no fool. He told two or three stories verging
on the improper, a concession to the company, for his stories were not
used to verging. He proposed Irene’s health in a mock speech. Nobody
drank it, and Winifred said: “Don’t be such a clown, Monty!”

At her suggestion they went after dinner to the public terrace
overlooking the river.

“I should like to see the common people making love,” she said, “it’s
such fun!”

There were numbers of them walking in the cool, after the day’s heat,
and the air was alive with the sound of voices, coarse and loud, or soft
as though murmuring secrets.

It was not long before Winifred’s better sense--she was the only Forsyte
present--secured them an empty bench. They sat down in a row. A heavy
tree spread a thick canopy above their heads, and the haze darkened
slowly over the river.

Dartie sat at the end, next to him Irene, then Bosinney, then Winifred.
There was hardly room for four, and the man of the world could feel
Irene’s arm crushed against his own; he knew that she could not withdraw
it without seeming rude, and this amused him; he devised every now and
again a movement that would bring her closer still. He thought: ‘That
Buccaneer Johnny shan’t have it all to himself! It’s a pretty tight fit,
certainly!’

From far down below on the dark river came drifting the tinkle of a
mandoline, and voices singing the old round:

’. boat, a boat, unto the ferry, For we’ll go over and be merry; And
laugh, and quaff, and drink brown sherry!’

And suddenly the moon appeared, young and tender, floating up on her
back from behind a tree; and as though she had breathed, the air was
cooler, but down that cooler air came always the warm odour of the
limes.

Over his cigar Dartie peered round at Bosinney, who was sitting with his
arms crossed, staring straight in front of him, and on his face the look
of a man being tortured.

And Dartie shot a glance at the face between, so veiled by the
overhanging shadow that it was but like a darker piece of the darkness
shaped and breathed on; soft, mysterious, enticing.

A hush had fallen on the noisy terrace, as if all the strollers were
thinking secrets too precious to be spoken.

And Dartie thought: ‘Women!’

The glow died above the river, the singing ceased; the young moon hid
behind a tree, and all was dark. He pressed himself against Irene.

He was not alarmed at the shuddering that ran through the limbs he
touched, or at the troubled, scornful look of her eyes. He felt her
trying to draw herself away, and smiled.

It must be confessed that the man of the world had drunk quite as much
as was good for him.

With thick lips parted under his well-curled moustaches, and his bold
eyes aslant upon her, he had the malicious look of a satyr.

Along the pathway of sky between the hedges of the tree tops the stars
clustered forth; like mortals beneath, they seemed to shift and swarm
and whisper. Then on the terrace the buzz broke out once more, and
Dartie thought: ‘Ah! he’s a poor, hungry-looking devil, that Bosinney!’
and again he pressed himself against Irene.

The movement deserved a better success. She rose, and they all followed
her.

The man of the world was more than ever determined to see what she was
made of. Along the terrace he kept close at her elbow. He had within him
much good wine. There was the long drive home, the long drive and
the warm dark and the pleasant closeness of the hansom cab--with its
insulation from the world devised by some great and good man. That
hungry architect chap might drive with his wife--he wished him joy of
her! And, conscious that his voice was not too steady, he was careful
not to speak; but a smile had become fixed on his thick lips.

They strolled along toward the cabs awaiting them at the farther end.
His plan had the merit of all great plans, an almost brutal
simplicity--he would merely keep at her elbow till she got in, and get
in quickly after her.

But when Irene reached the cab she did not get in; she slipped, instead,
to the horse’s head. Dartie was not at the moment sufficiently master
of his legs to follow. She stood stroking the horse’s nose, and, to his
annoyance, Bosinney was at her side first. She turned and spoke to him
rapidly, in a low voice; the words ‘That man’ reached Dartie. He stood
stubbornly by the cab step, waiting for her to come back. He knew a
trick worth two of that!

Here, in the lamp-light, his figure (no more than medium height), well
squared in its white evening waistcoat, his light overcoat flung over
his arm, a pink flower in his button-hole, and on his dark face that
look of confident, good-humoured insolence, he was at his best--a
thorough man of the world.

Winifred was already in her cab. Dartie reflected that Bosinney would
have a poorish time in that cab if he didn’t look sharp! Suddenly he
received a push which nearly overturned him in the road. Bosinney’s
voice hissed in his ear: “I am taking Irene back; do you understand?” He
saw a face white with passion, and eyes that glared at him like a wild
cat’s.

“Eh?” he stammered. “What? Not a bit. You take my wife!”

“Get away!” hissed Bosinney--“or I’ll throw you into the road!”

Dartie recoiled; he saw as plainly as possible that the fellow meant it.
In the space he made Irene had slipped by, her dress brushed his legs.
Bosinney stepped in after her.

“Go on!” he heard the Buccaneer cry. The cabman flicked his horse. It
sprang forward.

Dartie stood for a moment dumbfounded; then, dashing at the cab where
his wife sat, he scrambled in.

“Drive on!” he shouted to the driver, “and don’t you lose sight of that
fellow in front!”

Seated by his wife’s side, he burst into imprecations. Calming himself
at last with a supreme effort, he added: “A pretty mess you’ve made of
it, to let the Buccaneer drive home with her; why on earth couldn’t you
keep hold of him? He’s mad with love; any fool can see that!”

He drowned Winifred’s rejoinder with fresh calls to the Almighty; nor
was it until they reached Barnes that he ceased a Jeremiad, in the
course of which he had abused her, her father, her brother, Irene,
Bosinney, the name of Forsyte, his own children, and cursed the day when
he had ever married.

Winifred, a woman of strong character, let him have his say, at the end
of which he lapsed into sulky silence. His angry eyes never deserted
the back of that cab, which, like a lost chance, haunted the darkness in
front of him.

Fortunately he could not hear Bosinney’s passionate pleading--that
pleading which the man of the world’s conduct had let loose like a
flood; he could not see Irene shivering, as though some garment had
been torn from her, nor her eyes, black and mournful, like the eyes of a
beaten child. He could not hear Bosinney entreating, entreating, always
entreating; could not hear her sudden, soft weeping, nor see that poor,
hungry-looking devil, awed and trembling, humbly touching her hand.

In Montpellier Square their cabman, following his instructions to the
letter, faithfully drew up behind the cab in front. The Darties saw
Bosinney spring out, and Irene follow, and hasten up the steps with
bent head. She evidently had her key in her hand, for she disappeared
at once. It was impossible to tell whether she had turned to speak to
Bosinney.

The latter came walking past their cab; both husband and wife had an
admirable view of his face in the light of a street lamp. It was working
with violent emotion.

“Good-night, Mr. Bosinney!” called Winifred.

Bosinney started, clawed off his hat, and hurried on. He had obviously
forgotten their existence.

“There!” said Dartie, “did you see the beast’s face? What did I say?
Fine games!” He improved the occasion.

There had so clearly been a crisis in the cab that Winifred was unable
to defend her theory.

She said: “I shall say nothing about it. I don’t see any use in making a
fuss!”

With that view Dartie at once concurred; looking upon James as a private
preserve, he disapproved of his being disturbed by the troubles of
others.

“Quite right,” he said; “let Soames look after himself. He’s jolly well
able to!”

Thus speaking, the Darties entered their habitat in Green Street, the
rent of which was paid by James, and sought a well-earned rest. The hour
was midnight, and no Forsytes remained abroad in the streets to spy out
Bosinney’s wanderings; to see him return and stand against the rails
of the Square garden, back from the glow of the street lamp; to see him
stand there in the shadow of trees, watching the house where in the dark
was hidden she whom he would have given the world to see for a single
minute--she who was now to him the breath of the lime-trees, the meaning
of the light and the darkness, the very beating of his own heart.



CHAPTER X--DIAGNOSIS OF A FORSYTE

It is in the nature of a Forsyte to be ignorant that he is a Forsyte;
but young Jolyon was well aware of being one. He had not known it till
after the decisive step which had made him an outcast; since then the
knowledge had been with him continually. He felt it throughout his
alliance, throughout all his dealings with his second wife, who was
emphatically not a Forsyte.

He knew that if he had not possessed in great measure the eye for what
he wanted, the tenacity to hold on to it, the sense of the folly of
wasting that for which he had given so big a price--in other words,
the ‘sense of property’ he could never have retained her (perhaps never
would have desired to retain her) with him through all the financial
troubles, slights, and misconstructions of those fifteen years; never
have induced her to marry him on the death of his first wife; never have
lived it all through, and come up, as it were, thin, but smiling.

He was one of those men who, seated cross-legged like miniature Chinese
idols in the cages of their own hearts, are ever smiling at themselves a
doubting smile. Not that this smile, so intimate and eternal, interfered
with his actions, which, like his chin and his temperament, were quite a
peculiar blend of softness and determination.

He was conscious, too, of being a Forsyte in his work, that painting of
water-colours to which he devoted so much energy, always with an eye
on himself, as though he could not take so unpractical a pursuit quite
seriously, and always with a certain queer uneasiness that he did not
make more money at it.

It was, then, this consciousness of what it meant to be a Forsyte, that
made him receive the following letter from old Jolyon, with a mixture of
sympathy and disgust:


’.HELDRAKE HOUSE,

’.ROADSTAIRS,

’.uly 1. ‘MY DEAR JO,’

(The Dad’s handwriting had altered very little in the thirty odd years
that he remembered it.)

’.e have been here now a fortnight, and have had good weather on the
whole. The air is bracing, but my liver is out of order, and I shall be
glad enough to get back to town. I cannot say much for June, her health
and spirits are very indifferent, and I don’t see what is to come of
it. She says nothing, but it is clear that she is harping on this
engagement, which is an engagement and no engagement, and--goodness
knows what. I have grave doubts whether she ought to be allowed
to return to London in the present state of affairs, but she is so
self-willed that she might take it into her head to come up at any
moment. The fact is someone ought to speak to Bosinney and ascertain
what he means. I’m afraid of this myself, for I should certainly rap
him over the knuckles, but I thought that you, knowing him at the Club,
might put in a word, and get to ascertain what the fellow is about. You
will of course in no way commit June. I shall be glad to hear from you
in the course of a few days whether you have succeeded in gaining any
information. The situation is very distressing to me, I worry about it
at night.

With my love to Jolly and Holly.

’. am,

’.our affect. father,

’.OLYON FORSYTE.’


Young Jolyon pondered this letter so long and seriously that his
wife noticed his preoccupation, and asked him what was the matter. He
replied: “Nothing.”

It was a fixed principle with him never to allude to June. She
might take alarm, he did not know what she might think; he hastened,
therefore, to banish from his manner all traces of absorption, but in
this he was about as successful as his father would have been, for
he had inherited all old Jolyon’s transparency in matters of domestic
finesse; and young Mrs. Jolyon, busying herself over the affairs of
the house, went about with tightened lips, stealing at him unfathomable
looks.

He started for the Club in the afternoon with the letter in his pocket,
and without having made up his mind.

To sound a man as to ‘his intentions’ was peculiarly unpleasant to him;
nor did his own anomalous position diminish this unpleasantness. It was
so like his family, so like all the people they knew and mixed with, to
enforce what they called their rights over a man, to bring him up to the
mark; so like them to carry their business principles into their private
relations.

And how that phrase in the letter--’You will, of course, in no way
commit June’--gave the whole thing away.

Yet the letter, with the personal grievance, the concern for June, the
’.ap over the knuckles,’ was all so natural. No wonder his father wanted
to know what Bosinney meant, no wonder he was angry.

It was difficult to refuse! But why give the thing to him to do? That
was surely quite unbecoming; but so long as a Forsyte got what he was
after, he was not too particular about the means, provided appearances
were saved.

How should he set about it, or how refuse? Both seemed impossible. So,
young Jolyon!

He arrived at the Club at three o’clock, and the first person he saw was
Bosinney himself, seated in a corner, staring out of the window.

Young Jolyon sat down not far off, and began nervously to reconsider his
position. He looked covertly at Bosinney sitting there unconscious. He
did not know him very well, and studied him attentively for perhaps the
first time; an unusual looking man, unlike in dress, face, and manner
to most of the other members of the Club--young Jolyon himself, however
different he had become in mood and temper, had always retained the neat
reticence of Forsyte appearance. He alone among Forsytes was ignorant of
Bosinney’s nickname. The man was unusual, not eccentric, but unusual;
he looked worn, too, haggard, hollow in the cheeks beneath those broad,
high cheekbones, though without any appearance of ill-health, for he was
strongly built, with curly hair that seemed to show all the vitality of
a fine constitution.

Something in his face and attitude touched young Jolyon. He knew what
suffering was like, and this man looked as if he were suffering.

He got up and touched his arm.

Bosinney started, but exhibited no sign of embarrassment on seeing who
it was.

Young Jolyon sat down.

“I haven’t seen you for a long time,” he said. “How are you getting on
with my cousin’s house?”

“It’ll be finished in about a week.”

“I congratulate you!”

“Thanks--I don’t know that it’s much of a subject for congratulation.”

“No?” queried young Jolyon; “I should have thought you’d be glad to get
a long job like that off your hands; but I suppose you feel it much as I
do when I part with a picture--a sort of child?”

He looked kindly at Bosinney.

“Yes,” said the latter more cordially, “it goes out from you and there’s
an end of it. I didn’t know you painted.”

“Only water-colours; I can’t say I believe in my work.”

“Don’t believe in it? There--how can you do it? Work’s no use unless you
believe in it!”

“Good,” said young Jolyon; “it’s exactly what I’ve always said.
By-the-bye, have you noticed that whenever one says ‘Good,’ one always
adds ‘it’s exactly what I’ve always said’. But if you ask me how I do
it, I answer, because I’m a Forsyte.”

“A Forsyte! I never thought of you as one!”

“A Forsyte,” replied young Jolyon, “is not an uncommon animal. There
are hundreds among the members of this Club. Hundreds out there in the
streets; you meet them wherever you go!”

“And how do you tell them, may I ask?” said Bosinney.

“By their sense of property. A Forsyte takes a practical--one might say
a commonsense--view of things, and a practical view of things is based
fundamentally on a sense of property. A Forsyte, you will notice, never
gives himself away.”

“Joking?”

Young Jolyon’s eye twinkled.

“Not much. As a Forsyte myself, I have no business to talk. But I’m a
kind of thoroughbred mongrel; now, there’s no mistaking you: You’re
as different from me as I am from my Uncle James, who is the perfect
specimen of a Forsyte. His sense of property is extreme, while you have
practically none. Without me in between, you would seem like a different
species. I’m the missing link. We are, of course, all of us the slaves
of property, and I admit that it’s a question of degree, but what I
call a ‘Forsyte’ is a man who is decidedly more than less a slave of
property. He knows a good thing, he knows a safe thing, and his grip
on property--it doesn’t matter whether it be wives, houses, money, or
reputation--is his hall-mark.”

“Ah!” murmured Bosinney. “You should patent the word.”

“I should like,” said young Jolyon, “to lecture on it:

“Properties and quality of a Forsyte: This little animal, disturbed
by the ridicule of his own sort, is unaffected in his motions by the
laughter of strange creatures (you or I). Hereditarily disposed to
myopia, he recognises only the persons of his own species, amongst which
he passes an existence of competitive tranquillity.”

“You talk of them,” said Bosinney, “as if they were half England.”

“They are,” repeated young Jolyon, “half England, and the better half,
too, the safe half, the three per cent. half, the half that counts. It’s
their wealth and security that makes everything possible; makes your art
possible, makes literature, science, even religion, possible. Without
Forsytes, who believe in none of these things, and habitats but turn
them all to use, where should we be? My dear sir, the Forsytes are the
middlemen, the commercials, the pillars of society, the cornerstones of
convention; everything that is admirable!”

“I don’t know whether I catch your drift,” said Bosinney, “but I fancy
there are plenty of Forsytes, as you call them, in my profession.”

“Certainly,” replied young Jolyon. “The great majority of architects,
painters, or writers have no principles, like any other Forsytes. Art,
literature, religion, survive by virtue of the few cranks who really
believe in such things, and the many Forsytes who make a commercial use
of them. At a low estimate, three-fourths of our Royal Academicians
are Forsytes, seven-eighths of our novelists, a large proportion of the
press. Of science I can’t speak; they are magnificently represented in
religion; in the House of Commons perhaps more numerous than anywhere;
the aristocracy speaks for itself. But I’m not laughing. It is dangerous
to go against the majority and what a majority!” He fixed his eyes on
Bosinney: “It’s dangerous to let anything carry you away--a house, a
picture, a--woman!”

They looked at each other.--And, as though he had done that which no
Forsyte did--given himself away, young Jolyon drew into his shell.
Bosinney broke the silence.

“Why do you take your own people as the type?” said he.

“My people,” replied young Jolyon, “are not very extreme, and they
have their own private peculiarities, like every other family, but they
possess in a remarkable degree those two qualities which are the real
tests of a Forsyte--the power of never being able to give yourself up to
anything soul and body, and the ‘sense of property’.”

Bosinney smiled: “How about the big one, for instance?”

“Do you mean Swithin?” asked young Jolyon. “Ah! in Swithin there’s
something primeval still. The town and middle-class life haven’t
digested him yet. All the old centuries of farm work and brute
force have settled in him, and there they’ve stuck, for all he’s so
distinguished.”

Bosinney seemed to ponder. “Well, you’ve hit your cousin Soames off to
the life,” he said suddenly. “He’ll never blow his brains out.”

Young Jolyon shot at him a penetrating glance.

“No,” he said; “he won’t. That’s why he’s to be reckoned with. Look out
for their grip! It’s easy to laugh, but don’t mistake me. It doesn’t do
to despise a Forsyte; it doesn’t do to disregard them!”

“Yet you’ve done it yourself!”

Young Jolyon acknowledged the hit by losing his smile.

“You forget,” he said with a queer pride, “I can hold on, too--I’m
a Forsyte myself. We’re all in the path of great forces. The man who
leaves the shelter of the wall--well--you know what I mean. I don’t,”
 he ended very low, as though uttering a threat, “recommend every man
to-go-my-way. It depends.”

The colour rushed into Bosinney’s face, but soon receded, leaving it
sallow-brown as before. He gave a short laugh, that left his lips fixed
in a queer, fierce smile; his eyes mocked young Jolyon.

“Thanks,” he said. “It’s deuced kind of you. But you’re not the only
chaps that can hold on.” He rose.

Young Jolyon looked after him as he walked away, and, resting his head
on his hand, sighed.

In the drowsy, almost empty room the only sounds were the rustle of
newspapers, the scraping of matches being struck. He stayed a long time
without moving, living over again those days when he, too, had sat long
hours watching the clock, waiting for the minutes to pass--long hours
full of the torments of uncertainty, and of a fierce, sweet aching; and
the slow, delicious agony of that season came back to him with its
old poignancy. The sight of Bosinney, with his haggard face, and his
restless eyes always wandering to the clock, had roused in him a pity,
with which was mingled strange, irresistible envy.

He knew the signs so well. Whither was he going--to what sort of fate?
What kind of woman was it who was drawing him to her by that magnetic
force which no consideration of honour, no principle, no interest could
withstand; from which the only escape was flight.

Flight! But why should Bosinney fly? A man fled when he was in danger
of destroying hearth and home, when there were children, when he felt
himself trampling down ideals, breaking something. But here, so he had
heard, it was all broken to his hand.

He himself had not fled, nor would he fly if it were all to come over
again. Yet he had gone further than Bosinney, had broken up his own
unhappy home, not someone else’s: And the old saying came back to him:
’. man’s fate lies in his own heart.’

In his own heart! The proof of the pudding was in the eating--Bosinney
had still to eat his pudding.

His thoughts passed to the woman, the woman whom he did not know, but
the outline of whose story he had heard.

An unhappy marriage! No ill-treatment--only that indefinable malaise,
that terrible blight which killed all sweetness under Heaven; and so
from day to day, from night to night, from week to week, from year to
year, till death should end it.

But young Jolyon, the bitterness of whose own feelings time had
assuaged, saw Soames’ side of the question too. Whence should a man like
his cousin, saturated with all the prejudices and beliefs of his class,
draw the insight or inspiration necessary to break up this life? It was
a question of imagination, of projecting himself into the future
beyond the unpleasant gossip, sneers, and tattle that followed on such
separations, beyond the passing pangs that the lack of the sight of her
would cause, beyond the grave disapproval of the worthy. But few men,
and especially few men of Soames’ class, had imagination enough for
that. A deal of mortals in this world, and not enough imagination to go
round! And sweet Heaven, what a difference between theory and practice;
many a man, perhaps even Soames, held chivalrous views on such matters,
who when the shoe pinched found a distinguishing factor that made of
himself an exception.

Then, too, he distrusted his judgment. He had been through the
experience himself, had tasted too the dregs the bitterness of an
unhappy marriage, and how could he take the wide and dispassionate view
of those who had never been within sound of the battle? His evidence was
too first-hand--like the evidence on military matters of a soldier who
has been through much active service, against that of civilians who have
not suffered the disadvantage of seeing things too close. Most people
would consider such a marriage as that of Soames and Irene quite fairly
successful; he had money, she had beauty; it was a case for compromise.
There was no reason why they should not jog along, even if they hated
each other. It would not matter if they went their own ways a little so
long as the decencies were observed--the sanctity of the marriage tie,
of the common home, respected. Half the marriages of the upper classes
were conducted on these lines: Do not offend the susceptibilities of
Society; do not offend the susceptibilities of the Church. To avoid
offending these is worth the sacrifice of any private feelings. The
advantages of the stable home are visible, tangible, so many pieces of
property; there is no risk in the statu quo. To break up a home is at
the best a dangerous experiment, and selfish into the bargain.

This was the case for the defence, and young Jolyon sighed.

’.he core of it all,’ he thought, ‘is property, but there are many
people who would not like it put that way. To them it is “the sanctity
of the marriage tie”; but the sanctity of the marriage tie is dependent
on the sanctity of the family, and the sanctity of the family is
dependent on the sanctity of property. And yet I imagine all these
people are followers of One who never owned anything. It is curious!

And again young Jolyon sighed.

’.m I going on my way home to ask any poor devils I meet to share my
dinner, which will then be too little for myself, or, at all events,
for my wife, who is necessary to my health and happiness? It may be that
after all Soames does well to exercise his rights and support by his
practice the sacred principle of property which benefits us all, with
the exception of those who suffer by the process.’

And so he left his chair, threaded his way through the maze of seats,
took his hat, and languidly up the hot streets crowded with carriages,
reeking with dusty odours, wended his way home.

Before reaching Wistaria Avenue he removed old Jolyon’s letter from his
pocket, and tearing it carefully into tiny pieces, scattered them in the
dust of the road.

He let himself in with his key, and called his wife’s name. But she had
gone out, taking Jolly and Holly, and the house was empty; alone in the
garden the dog Balthasar lay in the shade snapping at flies.

Young Jolyon took his seat there, too, under the pear-tree that bore no
fruit.



CHAPTER XI--BOSINNEY ON PAROLE

The day after the evening at Richmond Soames returned from Henley by a
morning train. Not constitutionally interested in amphibious sports, his
visit had been one of business rather than pleasure, a client of some
importance having asked him down.

He went straight to the City, but finding things slack, he left at three
o’clock, glad of this chance to get home quietly. Irene did not expect
him. Not that he had any desire to spy on her actions, but there was no
harm in thus unexpectedly surveying the scene.

After changing to Park clothes he went into the drawing-room. She was
sitting idly in the corner of the sofa, her favourite seat; and there
were circles under her eyes, as though she had not slept.

He asked: “How is it you’re in? Are you expecting somebody?”

“Yes that is, not particularly.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Bosinney said he might come.”

“Bosinney. He ought to be at work.”

To this she made no answer.

“Well,” said Soames, “I want you to come out to the Stores with me, and
after that we’ll go to the Park.”

“I don’t want to go out; I have a headache.”

Soames replied: “If ever I want you to do anything, you’ve always got a
headache. It’ll do you good to come and sit under the trees.”

She did not answer.

Soames was silent for some minutes; at last he said: “I don’t know what
your idea of a wife’s duty is. I never have known!”

He had not expected her to reply, but she did.

“I have tried to do what you want; it’s not my fault that I haven’t been
able to put my heart into it.”

“Whose fault is it, then?” He watched her askance.

“Before we were married you promised to let me go if our marriage was
not a success. Is it a success?”

Soames frowned.

“Success,” he stammered--“it would be a success if you behaved yourself
properly!”

“I have tried,” said Irene. “Will you let me go?”

Soames turned away. Secretly alarmed, he took refuge in bluster.

“Let you go? You don’t know what you’re talking about. Let you go? How
can I let you go? We’re married, aren’t we? Then, what are you talking
about? For God’s sake, don’t let’s have any of this sort of nonsense!
Get your hat on, and come and sit in the Park.”

“Then, you won’t let me go?”

He felt her eyes resting on him with a strange, touching look.

“Let you go!” he said; “and what on earth would you do with yourself if
I did? You’ve got no money!”

“I could manage somehow.”

He took a swift turn up and down the room; then came and stood before
her.

“Understand,” he said, “once and for all, I won’t have you say this sort
of thing. Go and get your hat on!”

She did not move.

“I suppose,” said Soames, “you don’t want to miss Bosinney if he comes!”

Irene got up slowly and left the room. She came down with her hat on.

They went out.

In the Park, the motley hour of mid-afternoon, when foreigners and other
pathetic folk drive, thinking themselves to be in fashion, had passed;
the right, the proper, hour had come, was nearly gone, before Soames and
Irene seated themselves under the Achilles statue.

It was some time since he had enjoyed her company in the Park. That was
one of the past delights of the first two seasons of his married life,
when to feel himself the possessor of this gracious creature before all
London had been his greatest, though secret, pride. How many afternoons
had he not sat beside her, extremely neat, with light grey gloves and
faint, supercilious smile, nodding to acquaintances, and now and again
removing his hat.

His light grey gloves were still on his hands, and on his lips his smile
sardonic, but where the feeling in his heart?

The seats were emptying fast, but still he kept her there, silent and
pale, as though to work out a secret punishment. Once or twice he made
some comment, and she bent her head, or answered “Yes” with a tired
smile.

Along the rails a man was walking so fast that people stared after him
when he passed.

“Look at that ass!” said Soames; “he must be mad to walk like that in
this heat!”

He turned; Irene had made a rapid movement.

“Hallo!” he said: “it’s our friend the Buccaneer!”

And he sat still, with his sneering smile, conscious that Irene was
sitting still, and smiling too.

“Will she bow to him?” he thought.

But she made no sign.

Bosinney reached the end of the rails, and came walking back amongst
the chairs, quartering his ground like a pointer. When he saw them he
stopped dead, and raised his hat.

The smile never left Soames’ face; he also took off his hat.

Bosinney came up, looking exhausted, like a man after hard physical
exercise; the sweat stood in drops on his brow, and Soames’ smile seemed
to say: “You’ve had a trying time, my friend.... What are _you_ doing in
the Park?” he asked. “We thought you despised such frivolity!”

Bosinney did not seem to hear; he made his answer to Irene: “I’ve been
round to your place; I hoped I should find you in.”

Somebody tapped Soames on the back, and spoke to him; and in the
exchange of those platitudes over his shoulder, he missed her answer,
and took a resolution.

“We’re just going in,” he said to Bosinney; “you’d better come back
to dinner with us.” Into that invitation he put a strange bravado, a
stranger pathos: “You, can’t deceive me,” his look and voice seemed
saying, “but see--I trust you--I’m not afraid of you!”

They started back to Montpellier Square together, Irene between them. In
the crowded streets Soames went on in front. He did not listen to their
conversation; the strange resolution of trustfulness he had taken seemed
to animate even his secret conduct. Like a gambler, he said to himself:
’.t’s a card I dare not throw away--I must play it for what it’s worth.
I have not too many chances.’

He dressed slowly, heard her leave her room and go downstairs, and, for
full five minutes after, dawdled about in his dressing-room. Then
he went down, purposely shutting the door loudly to show that he was
coming. He found them standing by the hearth, perhaps talking, perhaps
not; he could not say.

He played his part out in the farce, the long evening through--his
manner to his guest more friendly than it had ever been before; and when
at last Bosinney went, he said: “You must come again soon; Irene likes
to have you to talk about the house!” Again his voice had the strange
bravado and the stranger pathos; but his hand was cold as ice.

Loyal to his resolution, he turned away from their parting, turned
away from his wife as she stood under the hanging lamp to say
good-night--away from the sight of her golden head shining so under the
light, of her smiling mournful lips; away from the sight of Bosinney’s
eyes looking at her, so like a dog’s looking at its master.

And he went to bed with the certainty that Bosinney was in love with his
wife.

The summer night was hot, so hot and still that through every opened
window came in but hotter air. For long hours he lay listening to her
breathing.

She could sleep, but he must lie awake. And, lying awake, he hardened
himself to play the part of the serene and trusting husband.

In the small hours he slipped out of bed, and passing into his
dressing-room, leaned by the open window.

He could hardly breathe.

A night four years ago came back to him--the night but one before his
marriage; as hot and stifling as this.

He remembered how he had lain in a long cane chair in the window of his
sitting-room off Victoria Street. Down below in a side street a man had
banged at a door, a woman had cried out; he remembered, as though it
were now, the sound of the scuffle, the slam of the door, the dead
silence that followed. And then the early water-cart, cleansing the
reek of the streets, had approached through the strange-seeming, useless
lamp-light; he seemed to hear again its rumble, nearer and nearer, till
it passed and slowly died away.

He leaned far out of the dressing-room window over the little court
below, and saw the first light spread. The outlines of dark walls and
roofs were blurred for a moment, then came out sharper than before.

He remembered how that other night he had watched the lamps paling all
the length of Victoria Street; how he had hurried on his clothes and
gone down into the street, down past houses and squares, to the street
where she was staying, and there had stood and looked at the front of
the little house, as still and grey as the face of a dead man.

And suddenly it shot through his mind; like a sick man’s fancy: What’s
he doing?--that fellow who haunts me, who was here this evening, who’s
in love with my wife--prowling out there, perhaps, looking for her as I
know he was looking for her this afternoon; watching my house now, for
all I can tell!

He stole across the landing to the front of the house, stealthily drew
aside a blind, and raised a window.

The grey light clung about the trees of the square, as though Night,
like a great downy moth, had brushed them with her wings. The lamps
were still alight, all pale, but not a soul stirred--no living thing in
sight.

Yet suddenly, very faint, far off in the deathly stillness, he heard
a cry writhing, like the voice of some wandering soul barred out of
heaven, and crying for its happiness. There it was again--again! Soames
shut the window, shuddering.

Then he thought: ‘Ah! it’s only the peacocks, across the water.’



CHAPTER XII--JUNE PAYS SOME CALLS

Jolyon stood in the narrow hall at Broadstairs, inhaling that odour
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 principle crowning the chaotic strivings, the
petty precipices, and ironic little dark chasms of life. This was as
near to religion, perhaps, as his practical spirit had ever gone.

But it was many years since he had been to the mountains. He had taken
June there two seasons running, after his wife died, and had realized
bitterly that his walking days were over.

To that old mountain--given confidence in a supreme order of things he
had long been a stranger.

He knew himself to be old, yet he felt young; and this troubled him. It
troubled and puzzled him, too, to think that he, who had always been
so careful, should be father and grandfather to such as seemed born
to disaster. He had nothing to say against Jo--who could say anything
against the boy, an amiable chap?--but his position was deplorable, and
this business of June’s nearly as bad. It seemed like a fatality, and
a fatality was one of those things no man of his character could either
understand or put up with.

In writing to his son he did not really hope that anything would come
of it. Since the ball at Roger’s he had seen too clearly how the land
lay--he could put two and two together quicker than most men--and, with
the example of his own son before his eyes, knew better than any Forsyte
of them all that the pale flame singes men’s wings whether they will or
no.

In the days before June’s engagement, when she and Mrs. Soames were
always together, he had seen enough of Irene to feel the spell she cast
over men. She was not a flirt, not even a coquette--words dear to the
heart of his generation, which loved to define things by a good, broad,
inadequate word--but she was dangerous. He could not say why. Tell him
of a quality innate in some women--a seductive power beyond their own
control! He would but answer: ‘Humbug!’ She was dangerous, and there was
an end of it. He wanted to close his eyes to that affair. If it was, it
was; he did not want to hear any more about it--he only wanted to save
June’s position and her peace of mind. He still hoped she might once
more become a comfort to himself.

And so he had written. He got little enough out of the answer. As to
what young Jolyon had made of the interview, there was practically only
the queer sentence: ‘I gather that he’s in the stream.’ The stream! What
stream? What was this new-fangled way of talking?

He sighed, and folded the last of the papers under the flap of the bag;
he knew well enough what was meant.

June came out of the dining-room, and helped him on with his summer
coat. From her costume, and the expression of her little resolute face,
he saw at once what was coming.

“I’m going with you,” she said.

“Nonsense, my dear; I go straight into the City. I can’t have you
racketting about!”

“I must see old Mrs. Smeech.”

“Oh, your precious ‘lame ducks!” grumbled out old Jolyon. He did not
believe her excuse, but ceased his opposition. There was no doing
anything with that pertinacity of hers.

At Victoria he put her into the carriage which had been ordered for
himself--a characteristic action, for he had no petty selfishnesses.

“Now, don’t you go tiring yourself, my darling,” he said, and took a cab
on into the city.

June went first to a back-street in Paddington, where Mrs. Smeech,
her ‘lame duck,’ lived--an aged person, connected with the charring
interest; but after half an hour spent in hearing her habitually
lamentable recital, and dragooning her into temporary comfort, she went
on to Stanhope Gate. The great house was closed and dark.

She had decided to learn something at all costs. It was better to face
the worst, and have it over. And this was her plan: To go first to
Phil’s aunt, Mrs. Baynes, and, failing information there, to Irene
herself. She had no clear notion of what she would gain by these visits.

At three o’clock she was in Lowndes Square. With a woman’s instinct when
trouble is to be faced, she had put on her best frock, and went to the
battle with a glance as courageous as old Jolyon’s itself. Her tremors
had passed into eagerness.

Mrs. Baynes, Bosinney’s aunt (Louisa was her name), was in her kitchen
when June was announced, organizing the cook, for she was an excellent
housewife, and, as Baynes always said, there was ‘a lot in a good
dinner.’ He did his best work after dinner. It was Baynes who built that
remarkably fine row of tall crimson houses in Kensington which compete
with so many others for the title of ‘the ugliest in London.’

On hearing June’s name, she went hurriedly to her bedroom, and, taking
two large bracelets from a red morocco case in a locked drawer, put
them on her white wrists--for she possessed in a remarkable degree that
’.ense of property,’ which, as we know, is the touchstone of Forsyteism,
and the foundation of good morality.

Her figure, of medium height and broad build, with a tendency to
embonpoint, was reflected by the mirror of her whitewood wardrobe, in
a gown made under her own organization, of one of those half-tints,
reminiscent of the distempered walls of corridors in large hotels. She
raised her hands to her hair, which she wore a la Princesse de Galles,
and touched it here and there, settling it more firmly on her head, and
her eyes were full of an unconscious realism, as though she were looking
in the face one of life’s sordid facts, and making the best of it. In
youth her cheeks had been of cream and roses, but they were mottled now
by middle-age, and again that hard, ugly directness came into her eyes
as she dabbed a powder-puff across her forehead. Putting the puff down,
she stood quite still before the glass, arranging a smile over her high,
important nose, her chin, (never large, and now growing smaller
with the increase of her neck), her thin-lipped, down-drooping mouth.
Quickly, not to lose the effect, she grasped her skirts strongly in both
hands, and went downstairs.

She had been hoping for this visit for some time past. Whispers had
reached her that things were not all right between her nephew and his
fiancee. Neither of them had been near her for weeks. She had asked Phil
to dinner many times; his invariable answer had been ‘Too busy.’

Her instinct was alarmed, and the instinct in such matters of this
excellent woman was keen. She ought to have been a Forsyte; in young
Jolyon’s sense of the word, she certainly had that privilege, and merits
description as such.

She had married off her three daughters in a way that people said was
beyond their deserts, for they had the professional plainness only to be
found, as a rule, among the female kind of the more legal callings. Her
name was upon the committees of numberless charities connected with
the Church-dances, theatricals, or bazaars--and she never lent her name
unless sure beforehand that everything had been thoroughly organized.

She believed, as she often said, in putting things on a commercial
basis; the proper function of the Church, of charity, indeed, of
everything, was to strengthen the fabric of ‘Society.’ Individual
action, therefore, she considered immoral. Organization was the only
thing, for by organization alone could you feel sure that you were
getting a return for your money. Organization--and again, organization!
And there is no doubt that she was what old Jolyon called her--“a ‘dab’
at that”--he went further, he called her “a humbug.”

The enterprises to which she lent her name were organized so admirably
that by the time the takings were handed over, they were indeed skim
milk divested of all cream of human kindness. But as she often justly
remarked, sentiment was to be deprecated. She was, in fact, a little
academic.

This great and good woman, so highly thought of in ecclesiastical
circles, was one of the principal priestesses in the temple of
Forsyteism, keeping alive day and night a sacred flame to the God of
Property, whose altar is inscribed with those inspiring words: ‘Nothing
for nothing, and really remarkably little for sixpence.’

When she entered a room it was felt that something substantial had come
in, which was probably the reason of her popularity as a patroness.
People liked something substantial when they had paid money for it; and
they would look at her--surrounded by her staff in charity ballrooms,
with her high nose and her broad, square figure, attired in an uniform
covered with sequins--as though she were a general.

The only thing against her was that she had not a double name. She was a
power in upper middle-class society, with its hundred sets and circles,
all intersecting on the common battlefield of charity functions, and
on that battlefield brushing skirts so pleasantly with the skirts
of Society with the capital ‘S.’ She was a power in society with the
smaller ‘s,’ that larger, more significant, and more powerful body,
where the commercially Christian institutions, maxims, and ‘principle,’
which Mrs. Baynes embodied, were real life-blood, circulating freely,
real business currency, not merely the sterilized imitation that flowed
in the veins of smaller Society with the larger ‘S.’ People who knew her
felt her to be sound--a sound woman, who never gave herself away, nor
anything else, if she could possibly help it.

She had been on the worst sort of terms with Bosinney’s father, who had
not infrequently made her the object of an unpardonable ridicule. She
alluded to him now that he was gone as her ‘poor, dear, irreverend
brother.’

She greeted June with the careful effusion of which she was a mistress,
a little afraid of her as far as a woman of her eminence in the
commercial and Christian world could be afraid--for so slight a girl
June had a great dignity, the fearlessness of her eyes gave her that.
And Mrs. Baynes, too, shrewdly recognized that behind the uncompromising
frankness of June’s manner there was much of the Forsyte. If the girl
had been merely frank and courageous, Mrs. Baynes would have thought
her ‘cranky,’ and despised her; if she had been merely a Forsyte, like
Francie--let us say--she would have patronized her from sheer weight of
metal; but June, small though she was--Mrs. Baynes habitually admired
quantity--gave her an uneasy feeling; and she placed her in a chair
opposite the light.

There was another reason for her respect which Mrs. Baynes, too good a
churchwoman to be worldly, would have been the last to admit--she often
heard her husband describe old Jolyon as extremely well off, and was
biassed towards his granddaughter for the soundest of all reasons.
To-day she felt the emotion with which we read a novel describing a hero
and an inheritance, nervously anxious lest, by some frightful lapse of
the novelist, the young man should be left without it at the end.

Her manner was warm; she had never seen so clearly before how
distinguished and desirable a girl this was. She asked after old
Jolyon’s health. A wonderful man for his age; so upright, and young
looking, and how old was he? Eighty-one! She would never have thought
it! They were at the sea! Very nice for them; she supposed June heard
from Phil every day? Her light grey eyes became more prominent as she
asked this question; but the girl met the glance without flinching.

“No,” she said, “he never writes!”

Mrs. Baynes’s eyes dropped; they had no intention of doing so, but they
did. They recovered immediately.

“Of course not. That’s Phil all over--he was always like that!”

“Was he?” said June.

The brevity of the answer caused Mrs. Baynes’s bright smile a moment’s
hesitation; she disguised it by a quick movement, and spreading her
skirts afresh, said: “Why, my dear--he’s quite the most harum-scarum
person; one never pays the slightest attention to what he does!”

The conviction came suddenly to June that she was wasting her time; even
were she to put a question point-blank, she would never get anything out
of this woman.

’.o you see him?’ she asked, her face crimsoning.

The perspiration broke out on Mrs. Baynes’ forehead beneath the powder.

“Oh, yes! I don’t remember when he was here last--indeed, we haven’t
seen much of him lately. He’s so busy with your cousin’s house; I’m
told it’ll be finished directly. We must organize a little dinner to
celebrate the event; do come and stay the night with us!”

“Thank you,” said June. Again she thought: ‘I’m only wasting my time.
This woman will tell me nothing.’

She got up to go. A change came over Mrs. Baynes. She rose too; her lips
twitched, she fidgeted her hands. Something was evidently very wrong,
and she did not dare to ask this girl, who stood there, a slim, straight
little figure, with her decided face, her set jaw, and resentful
eyes. She was not accustomed to be afraid of asking questions--all
organization was based on the asking of questions!

But the issue was so grave that her nerve, normally strong, was fairly
shaken; only that morning her husband had said: “Old Mr. Forsyte must be
worth well over a hundred thousand pounds!”

And this girl stood there, holding out her hand--holding out her hand!

The chance might be slipping away--she couldn’t tell--the chance of
keeping her in the family, and yet she dared not speak.

Her eyes followed June to the door.

It closed.

Then with an exclamation Mrs. Baynes ran forward, wobbling her bulky
frame from side to side, and opened it again.

Too late! She heard the front door click, and stood still, an expression
of real anger and mortification on her face.

June went along the Square with her bird-like quickness. She detested
that woman now whom in happier days she had been accustomed to think
so kind. Was she always to be put off thus, and forced to undergo this
torturing suspense?

She would go to Phil himself, and ask him what he meant. She had the
right to know. She hurried on down Sloane Street till she came to
Bosinney’s number. Passing the swing-door at the bottom, she ran up the
stairs, her heart thumping painfully.

At the top of the third flight she paused for breath, and holding on to
the bannisters, stood listening. No sound came from above.

With a very white face she mounted the last flight. She saw the door,
with his name on the plate. And the resolution that had brought her so
far evaporated.

The full meaning of her conduct came to her. She felt hot all over;
the palms of her hands were moist beneath the thin silk covering of her
gloves.

She drew back to the stairs, but did not descend. Leaning against the
rail she tried to get rid of a feeling of being choked; and she gazed
at the door with a sort of dreadful courage. No! she refused to go down.
Did it matter what people thought of her? They would never know! No one
would help her if she did not help herself! She would go through with
it.

Forcing herself, therefore, to leave the support of the wall, she rang
the bell. The door did not open, and all her shame and fear suddenly
abandoned her; she rang again and again, as though in spite of its
emptiness she could drag some response out of that closed room, some
recompense for the shame and fear that visit had cost her. It did not
open; she left off ringing, and, sitting down at the top of the stairs,
buried her face in her hands.

Presently she stole down, out into the air. She felt as though she had
passed through a bad illness, and had no desire now but to get home as
quickly as she could. The people she met seemed to know where she had
been, what she had been doing; and suddenly--over on the opposite side,
going towards his rooms from the direction of Montpellier Square--she
saw Bosinney himself.

She made a movement to cross into the traffic. Their eyes met, and he
raised his hat. An omnibus passed, obscuring her view; then, from the
edge of the pavement, through a gap in the traffic, she saw him walking
on.

And June stood motionless, looking after him.



CHAPTER XIII--PERFECTION OF THE HOUSE

’.ne mockturtle, clear; one oxtail; two glasses of port.’

In the upper room at French’s, where a Forsyte could still get heavy
English food, James and his son were sitting down to lunch.

Of all eating-places James liked best to come here; there was something
unpretentious, well-flavoured, and filling about it, and though he
had been to a certain extent corrupted by the necessity for being
fashionable, and the trend of habits keeping pace with an income that
would increase, he still hankered in quiet City moments after the tasty
fleshpots of his earlier days. Here you were served by hairy English
waiters in aprons; there was sawdust on the floor, and three round
gilt looking-glasses hung just above the line of sight. They had only
recently done away with the cubicles, too, in which you could have your
chop, prime chump, with a floury-potato, without seeing your neighbours,
like a gentleman.

He tucked the top corner of his napkin behind the third button of his
waistcoat, a practice he had been obliged to abandon years ago in the
West End. He felt that he should relish his soup--the entire morning had
been given to winding up the estate of an old friend.

After filling his mouth with household bread, stale, he at once began:
“How are you going down to Robin Hill? You going to take Irene? You’d
better take her. I should think there’ll be a lot that’ll want seeing
to.”

Without looking up, Soames answered: “She won’t go.”

“Won’t go? What’s the meaning of that? She’s going to live in the house,
isn’t she?”

Soames made no reply.

“I don’t know what’s coming to women nowadays,” mumbled James; “I never
used to have any trouble with them. She’s had too much liberty. She’s
spoiled....”

Soames lifted his eyes: “I won’t have anything said against her,” he
said unexpectedly.

The silence was only broken now by the supping of James’s soup.

The waiter brought the two glasses of port, but Soames stopped him.

“That’s not the way to serve port,” he said; “take them away, and bring
the bottle.”

Rousing himself from his reverie over the soup, James took one of his
rapid shifting surveys of surrounding facts.

“Your mother’s in bed,” he said; “you can have the carriage to take you
down. I should think Irene’d like the drive. This young Bosinney’ll be
there, I suppose, to show you over.”

Soames nodded.

“I should like to go and see for myself what sort of a job he’s made
finishing off,” pursued James. “I’ll just drive round and pick you both
up.”

“I am going down by train,” replied Soames. “If you like to drive round
and see, Irene might go with you, I can’t tell.”

He signed to the waiter to bring the bill, which James paid.

They parted at St. Paul’s, Soames branching off to the station, James
taking his omnibus westwards.

He had secured the corner seat next the conductor, where his long legs
made it difficult for anyone to get in, and at all who passed him he
looked resentfully, as if they had no business to be using up his air.

He intended to take an opportunity this afternoon of speaking to Irene.
A word in time saved nine; and now that she was going to live in the
country there was a chance for her to turn over a new leaf! He could see
that Soames wouldn’t stand very much more of her goings on!

It did not occur to him to define what he meant by her ‘goings on’. the
expression was wide, vague, and suited to a Forsyte. And James had more
than his common share of courage after lunch.

On reaching home, he ordered out the barouche, with special instructions
that the groom was to go too. He wished to be kind to her, and to give
her every chance.

When the door of No.62 was opened he could distinctly hear her singing,
and said so at once, to prevent any chance of being denied entrance.

Yes, Mrs. Soames was in, but the maid did not know if she was seeing
people.

James, moving with the rapidity that ever astonished the observers
of his long figure and absorbed expression, went forthwith into the
drawing-room without permitting this to be ascertained. He found Irene
seated at the piano with her hands arrested on the keys, evidently
listening to the voices in the hall. She greeted him without smiling.

“Your mother-in-law’s in bed,” he began, hoping at once to enlist her
sympathy. “I’ve got the carriage here. Now, be a good girl, and put on
your hat and come with me for a drive. It’ll do you good!”

Irene looked at him as though about to refuse, but, seeming to change
her mind, went upstairs, and came down again with her hat on.

“Where are you going to take me?” she asked.

“We’ll just go down to Robin Hill,” said James, spluttering out his
words very quick; “the horses want exercise, and I should like to see
what they’ve been doing down there.”

Irene hung back, but again changed her mind, and went out to the
carriage, James brooding over her closely, to make quite sure.

It was not before he had got her more than half way that he began:
“Soames is very fond of you--he won’t have anything said against you;
why don’t you show him more affection?”

Irene flushed, and said in a low voice: “I can’t show what I haven’t
got.”

James looked at her sharply; he felt that now he had her in his own
carriage, with his own horses and servants, he was really in command of
the situation. She could not put him off; nor would she make a scene in
public.

“I can’t think what you’re about,” he said. “He’s a very good husband!”

Irene’s answer was so low as to be almost inaudible among the sounds of
traffic. He caught the words: “You are not married to him!”

“What’s that got to do with it? He’s given you everything you want. He’s
always ready to take you anywhere, and now he’s built you this house in
the country. It’s not as if you had anything of your own.”

“No.”

Again James looked at her; he could not make out the expression on her
face. She looked almost as if she were going to cry, and yet....

“I’m sure,” he muttered hastily, “we’ve all tried to be kind to you.”

Irene’s lips quivered; to his dismay James saw a tear steal down her
cheek. He felt a choke rise in his own throat.

“We’re all fond of you,” he said, “if you’d only”--he was going to say,
“behave yourself,” but changed it to--“if you’d only be more of a wife
to him.”

Irene did not answer, and James, too, ceased speaking. There was
something in her silence which disconcerted him; it was not the silence
of obstinacy, rather that of acquiescence in all that he could find to
say. And yet he felt as if he had not had the last word. He could not
understand this.

He was unable, however, to long keep silence.

“I suppose that young Bosinney,” he said, “will be getting married to
June now?”

Irene’s face changed. “I don’t know,” she said; “you should ask her.”

“Does she write to you?”

“No.”

“How’s that?” said James. “I thought you and she were such great
friends.”

Irene turned on him. “Again,” she said, “you should ask her!”

“Well,” flustered James, frightened by her look, “it’s very odd that I
can’t get a plain answer to a plain question, but there it is.”

He sat ruminating over his rebuff, and burst out at last:

“Well, I’ve warned you. You won’t look ahead. Soames he doesn’t say
much, but I can see he won’t stand a great deal more of this sort of
thing. You’ll have nobody but yourself to blame, and, what’s more,
you’ll get no sympathy from anybody.”

Irene bent her head with a little smiling bow. “I am very much obliged
to you.”

James did not know what on earth to answer.

The bright hot morning had changed slowly to a grey, oppressive
afternoon; a heavy bank of clouds, with the yellow tinge of coming
thunder, had risen in the south, and was creeping up.

The branches of the trees dropped motionless across the road without the
smallest stir of foliage. A faint odour of glue from the heated horses
clung in the thick air; the coachman and groom, rigid and unbending,
exchanged stealthy murmurs on the box, without ever turning their heads.

To James’ great relief they reached the house at last; the silence and
impenetrability of this woman by his side, whom he had always thought so
soft and mild, alarmed him.

The carriage put them down at the door, and they entered.

The hall was cool, and so still that it was like passing into a tomb;
a shudder ran down James’s spine. He quickly lifted the heavy leather
curtains between the columns into the inner court.

He could not restrain an exclamation of approval.

The decoration was really in excellent taste. The dull ruby tiles that
extended from the foot of the walls to the verge of a circular clump
of tall iris plants, surrounding in turn a sunken basin of white marble
filled with water, were obviously of the best quality. He admired
extremely the purple leather curtains drawn along one entire side,
framing a huge white-tiled stove. The central partitions of the skylight
had been slid back, and the warm air from outside penetrated into the
very heart of the house.

He stood, his hands behind him, his head bent back on his high, narrow
shoulders, spying the tracery on the columns and the pattern of the
frieze which ran round the ivory-coloured walls under the gallery.
Evidently, no pains had been spared. It was quite the house of a
gentleman. He went up to the curtains, and, having discovered how they
were worked, drew them asunder and disclosed the picture-gallery, ending
in a great window taking up the whole end of the room. It had a black
oak floor, and its walls, again, were of ivory white. He went on
throwing open doors, and peeping in. Everything was in apple-pie order,
ready for immediate occupation.

He turned round at last to speak to Irene, and saw her standing over in
the garden entrance, with her husband and Bosinney.

Though not remarkable for sensibility, James felt at once that something
was wrong. He went up to them, and, vaguely alarmed, ignorant of the
nature of the trouble, made an attempt to smooth things over.

“How are you, Mr. Bosinney?” he said, holding out his hand. “You’ve been
spending money pretty freely down here, I should say!”

Soames turned his back, and walked away.

James looked from Bosinney’s frowning face to Irene, and, in his
agitation, spoke his thoughts aloud: “Well, I can’t tell what’s the
matter. Nobody tells me anything!” And, making off after his son, he
heard Bosinney’s short laugh, and his “Well, thank God! You look so....”
 Most unfortunately he lost the rest.

What had happened? He glanced back. Irene was very close to the
architect, and her face not like the face he knew of her. He hastened up
to his son.

Soames was pacing the picture-gallery.

“What’s the matter?” said James. “What’s all this?”

Soames looked at him with his supercilious calm unbroken, but James knew
well enough that he was violently angry.

“Our friend,” he said, “has exceeded his instructions again, that’s all.
So much the worse for him this time.”

He turned round and walked back towards the door. James followed
hurriedly, edging himself in front. He saw Irene take her finger from
before her lips, heard her say something in her ordinary voice, and
began to speak before he reached them.

“There’s a storm coming on. We’d better get home. We can’t take you, I
suppose, Mr. Bosinney? No, I suppose not. Then, good-bye!” He held out
his hand. Bosinney did not take it, but, turning with a laugh, said:

“Good-bye, Mr. Forsyte. Don’t get caught in the storm!” and walked away.

“Well,” began James, “I don’t know....”

But the sight of Irene’s face stopped him. Taking hold of his
daughter-in-law by the elbow, he escorted her towards the carriage. He
felt certain, quite certain, they had been making some appointment or
other....

Nothing in this world is more sure to upset a Forsyte than the discovery
that something on which he has stipulated to spend a certain sum
has cost more. And this is reasonable, for upon the accuracy of his
estimates the whole policy of his life is ordered. If he cannot rely
on definite values of property, his compass is amiss; he is adrift upon
bitter waters without a helm.

After writing to Bosinney in the terms that have already been
chronicled, Soames had dismissed the cost of the house from his mind.
He believed that he had made the matter of the final cost so very
plain that the possibility of its being again exceeded had really never
entered his head. On hearing from Bosinney that his limit of twelve
thousand pounds would be exceeded by something like four hundred, he had
grown white with anger. His original estimate of the cost of the house
completed had been ten thousand pounds, and he had often blamed himself
severely for allowing himself to be led into repeated excesses. Over
this last expenditure, however, Bosinney had put himself completely
in the wrong. How on earth a fellow could make such an ass of himself
Soames could not conceive; but he had done so, and all the rancour and
hidden jealousy that had been burning against him for so long was now
focussed in rage at this crowning piece of extravagance. The attitude of
the confident and friendly husband was gone. To preserve property--his
wife--he had assumed it, to preserve property of another kind he lost it
now.

“Ah!” he had said to Bosinney when he could speak, “and I suppose you’re
perfectly contented with yourself. But I may as well tell you that
you’ve altogether mistaken your man!”

What he meant by those words he did not quite know at the time, but
after dinner he looked up the correspondence between himself and
Bosinney to make quite sure. There could be no two opinions about
it--the fellow had made himself liable for that extra four hundred, or,
at all events, for three hundred and fifty of it, and he would have to
make it good.

He was looking at his wife’s face when he came to this conclusion.
Seated in her usual seat on the sofa, she was altering the lace on a
collar. She had not once spoken to him all the evening.

He went up to the mantelpiece, and contemplating his face in the mirror
said: “Your friend the Buccaneer has made a fool of himself; he will
have to pay for it!”

She looked at him scornfully, and answered: “I don’t know what you are
talking about!”

“You soon will. A mere trifle, quite beneath your contempt--four hundred
pounds.”

“Do you mean that you are going to make him pay that towards this
hateful, house?”

“I do.”

“And you know he’s got nothing?”

“Yes.”

“Then you are meaner than I thought you.”

Soames turned from the mirror, and unconsciously taking a china cup from
the mantelpiece, clasped his hands around it as though praying. He saw
her bosom rise and fall, her eyes darkening with anger, and taking no
notice of the taunt, he asked quietly:

“Are you carrying on a flirtation with Bosinney?”

“No, I am not!”

Her eyes met his, and he looked away. He neither believed nor
disbelieved her, but he knew that he had made a mistake in asking; he
never had known, never would know, what she was thinking. The sight of
her inscrutable face, the thought of all the hundreds of evenings he
had seen her sitting there like that soft and passive, but unreadable,
unknown, enraged him beyond measure.

“I believe you are made of stone,” he said, clenching his fingers so
hard that he broke the fragile cup. The pieces fell into the grate. And
Irene smiled.

“You seem to forget,” she said, “that cup is not!”

Soames gripped her arm. “A good beating,” he said, “is the only thing
that would bring you to your senses,” but turning on his heel, he left
the room.



CHAPTER XIV--SOAMES SITS ON THE STAIRS

Soames went up-stairs that night with the feeling that he had gone too
far. He was prepared to offer excuses for his words.

He turned out the gas still burning in the passage outside their room.
Pausing, with his hand on the knob of the door, he tried to shape his
apology, for he had no intention of letting her see that he was nervous.

But the door did not open, nor when he pulled it and turned the handle
firmly. She must have locked it for some reason, and forgotten.

Entering his dressing-room, where the gas was also lighted and burning
low, he went quickly to the other door. That too was locked. Then he
noticed that the camp bed which he occasionally used was prepared, and
his sleeping-suit laid out upon it. He put his hand up to his forehead,
and brought it away wet. It dawned on him that he was barred out.

He went back to the door, and rattling the handle stealthily, called:
“Unlock the door, do you hear? Unlock the door!”

There was a faint rustling, but no answer.

“Do you hear? Let me in at once--I insist on being let in!”

He could catch the sound of her breathing close to the door, like the
breathing of a creature threatened by danger.

There was something terrifying in this inexorable silence, in the
impossibility of getting at her. He went back to the other door, and
putting his whole weight against it, tried to burst it open. The door
was a new one--he had had them renewed himself, in readiness for their
coming in after the honeymoon. In a rage he lifted his foot to kick
in the panel; the thought of the servants restrained him, and he felt
suddenly that he was beaten.

Flinging himself down in the dressing-room, he took up a book.

But instead of the print he seemed to see his wife--with her yellow hair
flowing over her bare shoulders, and her great dark eyes--standing like
an animal at bay. And the whole meaning of her act of revolt came to
him. She meant it to be for good.

He could not sit still, and went to the door again. He could still hear
her, and he called: “Irene! Irene!”

He did not mean to make his voice pathetic.

In ominous answer, the faint sounds ceased. He stood with clenched
hands, thinking.

Presently he stole round on tiptoe, and running suddenly at the other
door, made a supreme effort to break it open. It creaked, but did not
yield. He sat down on the stairs and buried his face in his hands.

For a long time he sat there in the dark, the moon through the skylight
above laying a pale smear which lengthened slowly towards him down the
stairway. He tried to be philosophical.

Since she had locked her doors she had no further claim as a wife, and
he would console himself with other women.

It was but a spectral journey he made among such delights--he had no
appetite for these exploits. He had never had much, and he had lost the
habit. He felt that he could never recover it. His hunger could only
be appeased by his wife, inexorable and frightened, behind these shut
doors. No other woman could help him.

This conviction came to him with terrible force out there in the dark.

His philosophy left him; and surly anger took its place. Her conduct
was immoral, inexcusable, worthy of any punishment within his power. He
desired no one but her, and she refused him!

She must really hate him, then! He had never believed it yet. He did not
believe it now. It seemed to him incredible. He felt as though he had
lost for ever his power of judgment. If she, so soft and yielding as
he had always judged her, could take this decided step--what could not
happen?

Then he asked himself again if she were carrying on an intrigue with
Bosinney. He did not believe that she was; he could not afford to
believe such a reason for her conduct--the thought was not to be faced.

It would be unbearable to contemplate the necessity of making his
marital relations public property. Short of the most convincing proofs
he must still refuse to believe, for he did not wish to punish himself.
And all the time at heart--he did believe.

The moonlight cast a greyish tinge over his figure, hunched against the
staircase wall.

Bosinney was in love with her! He hated the fellow, and would not spare
him now. He could and would refuse to pay a penny piece over
twelve thousand and fifty pounds--the extreme limit fixed in the
correspondence; or rather he would pay, he would pay and sue him for
damages. He would go to Jobling and Boulter and put the matter in their
hands. He would ruin the impecunious beggar! And suddenly--though what
connection between the thoughts?--he reflected that Irene had no money
either. They were both beggars. This gave him a strange satisfaction.

The silence was broken by a faint creaking through the wall. She was
going to bed at last. Ah! Joy and pleasant dreams! If she threw the door
open wide he would not go in now!

But his lips, that were twisted in a bitter smile, twitched; he covered
his eyes with his hands....

It was late the following afternoon when Soames stood in the dining-room
window gazing gloomily into the Square.

The sunlight still showered on the plane-trees, and in the breeze their
gay broad leaves shone and swung in rhyme to a barrel organ at the
corner. It was playing a waltz, an old waltz that was out of fashion,
with a fateful rhythm in the notes; and it went on and on, though
nothing indeed but leaves danced to the tune.

The woman did not look too gay, for she was tired; and from the tall
houses no one threw her down coppers. She moved the organ on, and three
doors off began again.

It was the waltz they had played at Roger’s when Irene had danced with
Bosinney; and the perfume of the gardenias she had worn came back to
Soames, drifted by the malicious music, as it had been drifted to him
then, when she passed, her hair glistening, her eyes so soft, drawing
Bosinney on and on down an endless ballroom.

The organ woman plied her handle slowly; she had been grinding her tune
all day-grinding it in Sloane Street hard by, grinding it perhaps to
Bosinney himself.

Soames turned, took a cigarette from the carven box, and walked back to
the window. The tune had mesmerized him, and there came into his view
Irene, her sunshade furled, hastening homewards down the Square, in a
soft, rose-coloured blouse with drooping sleeves, that he did not know.
She stopped before the organ, took out her purse, and gave the woman
money.

Soames shrank back and stood where he could see into the hall.

She came in with her latch-key, put down her sunshade, and stood looking
at herself in the glass. Her cheeks were flushed as if the sun had
burned them; her lips were parted in a smile. She stretched her arms out
as though to embrace herself, with a laugh that for all the world was
like a sob.

Soames stepped forward.

“Very-pretty!” he said.

But as though shot she spun round, and would have passed him up the
stairs. He barred the way.

“Why such a hurry?” he said, and his eyes fastened on a curl of hair
fallen loose across her ear....

He hardly recognised her. She seemed on fire, so deep and rich the
colour of her cheeks, her eyes, her lips, and of the unusual blouse she
wore.

She put up her hand and smoothed back the curl. She was breathing fast
and deep, as though she had been running, and with every breath perfume
seemed to come from her hair, and from her body, like perfume from an
opening flower.

“I don’t like that blouse,” he said slowly, “it’s a soft, shapeless
thing!”

He lifted his finger towards her breast, but she dashed his hand aside.

“Don’t touch me!” she cried.

He caught her wrist; she wrenched it away.

“And where may you have been?” he asked.

“In heaven--out of this house!” With those words she fled upstairs.

Outside--in thanksgiving--at the very door, the organ-grinder was
playing the waltz.

And Soames stood motionless. What prevented him from following her?

Was it that, with the eyes of faith, he saw Bosinney looking down from
that high window in Sloane Street, straining his eyes for yet another
glimpse of Irene’s vanished figure, cooling his flushed face, dreaming
of the moment when she flung herself on his breast--the scent of her
still in the air around, and the sound of her laugh that was like a sob?




*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Forsyte Saga, Volume II.
 - Indian Summer of a Forsyte
 - In Chancery" ***

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