The Forsyte Saga, Volume 1 Page 16

  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 ‘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, felt sorry perhaps for his behaviour to the old man.

  Chapter Five

  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’s 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 thus 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’s face, he actually took off his hat, the old fool! So like a man!

  But it was Mrs Soames’s 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 intriguée – 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 new 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 Passion 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:

  309D, SLOANE STREET

  May 15

  DEAR FORSYTE,

  The 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.

  You 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.

  Please 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.

  But 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.

  Yours truly,

  PHILIP 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 inkpot, 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, ‘Down-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 today, 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 that 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 o
ld 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 tortoise-shell glasses between thumb and forefinger.

  The ghost of a smile appeared on Soames’s 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!