The Forsyte Saga Read online

  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 fiancé 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.

  “The 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 granddaughter?” 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.

  “This 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 tomorrow. 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:

  “How 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; the
y 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’s 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.

  “I 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, anyway,” 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 lifetime 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 woodcutter 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!”