The Forsyte Saga, Volume 1 Read online

  A tall woman, with a beautiful figure, which some member of the family had once compared to a heathen goddess, stood looking at these two with a shadowy smile.

  Her hands, gloved in French grey, were crossed one over the other, her grave, charming face held to one side, and the eyes of all men near were fastened on it Her figure swayed, so balanced that the very air seemed to set it moving. There was warmth, but little colour, in her cheeks; her large, dark eyes were soft. But it was at her lips – asking a question, giving an answer, with that shadowy smile – that men looked; they were sensitive lips, sensuous and sweet, and through them seemed to come warmth and perfume like the warmth and perfume of a flower.

  The engaged couple thus scrutinized were unconscious of this passive goddess. It was Bosinney who first noticed her, and asked her name.

  June took her lover up to the woman with the beautiful figure.

  ‘Irene is my greatest chum,’ she said: ‘Please be good friends, you two!’

  At the little lady’s command they all three smiled; and while they were smiling, Soames Forsyte, silently appearing from behind the woman with the beautiful figure, who was his wife, said:

  ‘Ah! introduce me too!’

  He was seldom, indeed, far from Irene’s side at public functions, and even when separated by the exigencies of social intercourse, could be seen following her about with his eyes, in which were strange expressions of watchfulness and longing.

  At the window his father, James, was still scrutinizing the marks on the piece of china.

  ‘I wonder at Jolyon’s allowing this engagement,’ he said to Aunt Ann. ‘They tell me there’s no chance of their getting married for years. This young Bōsinney’ (he made the word a dactyl in opposition to general usage of a short o) ‘has got nothing. When Winifred married Dartie, I made him bring every penny into settlement – lucky thing, too – they’d ha’ had nothing by this time!’

  Aunt Ann looked up from her velvet chair. Grey curls banded her forehead, curls that, unchanged for decades, had extinguished in the family all sense of time. She made no reply, for she rarely spoke, husbanding her aged voice; but to James, uneasy of conscience, her look was as good as an answer.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t help Irene’s having no money. Soames was in such a hurry; he got quite thin dancing attendance on her.’

  Putting the bowl pettishly down on the piano, he let his eyes wander to the group by the door.

  ‘It’s my opinion,’ he said unexpectedly, ‘that it’s just as well as it is.’

  Aunt Ann did not ask him to explain this strange utterance. She knew what he was thinking. If Irene had no money she would not be so foolish as to do anything wrong; for they said – they said – she had been asking for a separate room; but, of course, Soames had not –

  James interrupted her reverie:

  But where, he asked, was Timothy? Hadn’t he come with them?

  Through Aunt Ann’s compressed lips a tender smile forced its way:

  No, he had not thought it wise, with so much of this diphtheria about; and he so liable to take things.

  James answered:

  ‘Well, he takes good care of himself. I can’t afford to take the care of myself that he does.’

  Nor was it easy to say which, of admiration, envy, or contempt, was dominant in that remark.

  Timothy, indeed, was seldom seen. The baby of the family, a publisher by profession, he had some years before, when business was at full tide, scented out the stagnation which, indeed, had not yet come, but which ultimately, as all agreed, was bound to set in, and, selling his share in a firm engaged mainly in the production of religious books, had invested the quite conspicuous proceeds in three per cent Consols. By this act he had at once assumed an isolated position, no other Forsyte being content with less than four per cent for his money; and this isolation had slowly and surely undermined a spirit perhaps better than commonly endowed with caution. He had become almost a myth – a kind of incarnation of security haunting the background of the Forsyte universe. He had never committed the imprudence of marrying, or encumbering himself in any way with children.

  James resumed, tapping the piece of china:

  ‘This isn’t real old Worcester. I s’pose Jolyon’s told you something about the young man. From all I can learn, he’s got no business, no income, and no connexion worth speaking of; but then, I know nothing – nobody tells me anything.’

  Aunt Ann shook her head. Over her square-chinned, aquiline old face a trembling passed; the spidery fingers of her hands pressed against each other and interlaced, as though she were subtly recharging her will.

  The eldest by some years of all the Forsytes, she held a peculiar position amongst them. Opportunists and egotists one and all – though not, indeed, more so than their neighbours – they quailed before her incorruptible figure, and, when opportunities were too strong, what could they do but avoid her?

  Twisting his long, thin legs, James went on:

  ‘Jolyon, he will have his own way. He’s got no children –’ and stopped, recollecting the continued existence of old Jolyon’s son, young Jolyon, June’s father, who had made such a mess of it, and done for himself by deserting his wife and child and running away with that foreign governess. ‘Well,’ he resumed hastily, ‘if he likes to do these things, I s’pose he can afford to. Now, what’s he going to give her? I s’pose he’ll give her a thousand a year; he’s got nobody else to leave his money to.’

  He stretched out his hand to meet that of a dapper, clean-shaven man, with hardly a hair on his head, a long, broken nose, full lips, and cold grey eyes under rectangular brows.

  ‘Well, Nick,’ he muttered, ‘how are you?’

  Nicholas Forsyte with his bird-like rapidity and the look of a preternaturally sage schoolboy (he had made a large fortune, quite legitimately, out of the companies of which he was a director), placed within that cold palm the tips of his still colder fingers and hastily withdrew them.

  ‘I’m bad,’ he said, pouting – ‘been bad all the week; don’t sleep at night. The doctor can’t tell why. He’s a clever fellow, or I shouldn’t have him, but I get nothing out of him but bills.’

  ‘Doctors!’ said James, coming down sharp on his words: ‘I’ve had all the doctors in London for one or another of us. There’s no satisfaction to be got out of them; they’ll tell you anything. There’s Swithin, now. What good have they done him? There he is; he’s bigger than ever; he’s enormous; they can’t get his weight down. Look at him!’

  Swithin Forsyte, tall, square, and broad, with a chest like a pouter pigeon’s in its plumage of bright waistcoats, came strutting towards them.

  ‘Er – how are you?’ he said in his dandified way, aspirating the ‘h’ strongly (this difficult letter was almost absolutely safe in his keeping) – ‘how are you?’

  Each brother wore an air of aggravation as he looked at the other two, knowing by experience that they would try to eclipse his ailments.

  ‘We were just saying,’ said James, ‘that you don’t get any thinner.’

  Swithin protruded his pale round eyes with the effort of hearing.

  ‘Thinner? I’m in good case,’ he said, leaning a little forward, ‘not one of your thread-papers like you!’

  But, afraid of losing the expansion of his chest, he leaned back again into a state of immobility, for he prized nothing so highly as a distinguished appearance.

  Aunt Ann turned her old eyes from one to the other. Indulgent and severe was her look. In turn the three brothers looked at Ann. She was getting shaky. Wonderful woman! Eighty-six if a day; might live another ten years, and had never been strong. Swithin and James, the twins, were only seventy-five, Nicholas a mere baby of seventy or so. All were strong, and the inference was comforting; Of all forms of property their respective healths naturally concerned them most.

  ‘I’m very well in myself,’ proceeded James, ‘but my nerves are out of order. The least thing worries me to death. I shall have
to go to Bath.’

  ‘Bath!’ said Nicholas. ‘I’ve tried Harrogate. That’s no good. What I want is sea air. There’s nothing like Yarmouth. Now, when I go there I sleep –’

  ‘My liver’s very bad,’ interrupted Swithin slowly. ‘Dreadful pain here’; and he placed his hand on his right side.

  ‘Want of exercise,’ muttered James, his eyes on the china. He quickly added: ‘I get a pain there, too.’

  Swithin reddened, a resemblance to a turkey-cock coming upon his old face.

  ‘Exercise!’ he said. ‘I take plenty: I never use the lift at the Club.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ James hurried out. ‘I know nothing about anybody; nobody tells me anything.’

  Swithin fixed him with a stare, and asked:

  ‘What do you do for a pain there?’

  James brightened.

  ‘I,’ he began, ‘take a compound –’

  ‘How are you, uncle?’

  And June stood before him, her resolute small face raised from her little height to his great height, and her hand outheld.

  The brightness faded from James’s visage.

  ‘How are you?’ he said, brooding over her. ‘So you’re going to Wales tomorrow to visit your young man’s aunts? You’ll have a lot of rain there. This isn’t real old Worcester.’ He tapped the bowl. ‘Now, that set I gave your mother when she married was the genuine thing.’

  June shook hands one by one with her three great-uncles, and turned to Aunt Ann. A very sweet look had come into the old lady’s face; she kissed the girl’s cheek with trembling fervour.

  ‘Well, my dear,’ she said, ‘and so you’re going for a whole month!’

  The girl passed on, and Aunt Ann looked after her slim little figure. The old lady’s round, steel-grey eyes, over which a film like a bird’s was beginning to come, followed her wistfully amongst the bustling crowd, for people were beginning to say good-bye; and her finger-tips, pressing and pressing against each other, were busy again with the recharging of her will against that inevitable ultimate departure of her own.

  ‘Yes,’ she thought, ‘everybody’s been most kind; quite a lot of people came to congratulate her. She ought to be very happy.’

  Amongst the throng of people by the door – the well-dressed throng drawn from the families of lawyers and doctors, from the Stock Exchange, and all the innumerable avocations of the upper middle class – there were only some twenty per cent of Forsytes; but to Aunt Ann they seemed all Forsytes – and certainly there was not much difference – she saw only her own flesh and blood. It was her world, this family, and she knew no other, had never perhaps known any other. All their little secrets, illnesses, engagements, and marriages, how they were getting on, and whether they were making money – all this was her property, her delight, her life; beyond this only a vague, shadowy mist of facts and persons of no real significance. This it was that she would have to lay down when it came to her turn to die; this which gave to her that importance, that secret self-importance, without which none of us can bear to live; and to this she clung wistfully, with a greed that grew each day. If life were slipping away from her, this she would retain to the end.

  She thought of June’s father, young Jolyon, who had. run away with that foreign girl. Ah! what a sad blow to his father and to them all. Such a promising young fellow! A sad blow, though there had been no public scandal, most fortunately, Jo’s wife seeking for no divorce! A long time ago! And when June’s mother died, six years ago, Jo had married that woman, and they had two children now, so she had heard. Still, he had forfeited his right to be there, had cheated her of the complete fulfilment of her family pride, deprived her of the rightful pleasure of seeing and kissing him of whom she had been so proud, such a promising young fellow! The thought rankled with the bitterness of long-inflicted injury in her tenacious old heart. A little water stood in her eyes. With a handkerchief of the finest lawn she wiped them stealthily.

  ‘Well, Aunt Ann?’ said a voice behind.

  Soames Forsyte, flat-shouldered, clean-shaven, flat-cheeked, flat-waisted, yet with something round and secret about his whole appearance, looked downwards and aslant at Aunt Ann, as though trying to see through the side of his own nose.

  ‘And what do you think of the engagement?’ he asked.

  Aunt Ann’s eyes rested on him proudly; the eldest of the nephews since young Jolyon’s departure from the family nest, he was now her favourite, for she recognized in him a sure trustee of the family soul that must so soon slip beyond her keeping.

  ‘Very nice for the young man,’ she said; ‘and he’s a good-looking young fellow; but I doubt if he’s quite the right lover for dear June.’

  Soames touched the edge of a gold-lacquered lustre.

  ‘She’ll tame him,’ he said, stealthily wetting his finger and rubbing it on the knobby bulbs. ‘That’s genuine old lacquer; you can’t get it nowadays. It’d do well in a sale at Jobson’s.’ He spoke with relish, as though he felt that he was cheering up his old aunt. It was seldom he was so confidential. ‘I wouldn’t mind having it myself,’ he added; ‘you can always get your price for old lacquer.’

  ‘You’re so clever with all those things,’ said Aunt Ann. ‘And how is dear Irene?’

  Soames’s smile died.

  ‘Pretty well,’ he said. ‘Complains she can’t sleep; she sleeps a great deal better than I do,’ and he looked at his wife, who was talking to Bosinney by the door.

  Aunt Ann sighed.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘it will be just as well for her not to see so much of June. She’s such a decided character, dear June!’

  Soames flushed; his flushes passed rapidly over his flat cheeks and centred between his eyes, where they remained, the stamp of disturbing thoughts.

  ‘I don’t know what she sees in that little flibbertigibbet,’ he burst out, but noticing that they were no longer alone, he turned and again began examining the lustre.

  ‘They tell me Jolyon’s bought another house,’ said his father’s voice close by; ‘he must have a lot of money – he must have more money than he knows what to do with! Montpelier Square, they say; close to Soames! They never told me – Irene never tells me anything!’

  ‘Capital position, not two minutes from me,’ said the voice of Swithin, ‘and from my rooms I can drive to the Club in eight.’

  The position of their houses was of vital importance to the Forsytes, nor was this remarkable, since the whole spirit of their success was embodied therein.

  Their father, of farming stock, had come from Dorsetshire near the beginning of the century.

  ‘Superior Dosset Forsyte’, as he was called by his intimates, had been a stonemason by trade, and risen to the position of a master-builder. Towards the end of his life he moved to London, where, building on until he died, he was buried at Highgate. He left over thirty thousand pounds between his ten children. Old Jolyon alluded to him, if at all, as ‘A hard, thick sort of man; not much refinement about him’. The second generation of Forsytes felt indeed that he was not greatly to their credit The only aristocratic trait they could find in his character was a habit of drinking Madeira.

  Aunt Hester, an authority on family history, described him thus:

  ‘I don’t recollect that he ever did anything; at least, not in my time. He was er – an owner of houses, my dear. His hair about your Uncle Swithin’s colour; rather a square build. Tall? No-ot very tall’ (he had been five feet five, with a mottled face); ‘a fresh-coloured man. I remember he used to drink Madeira; but ask your Aunt Ann. What was his father? He – er – had to do with the land down in Dorsetshire, by the sea.’

  James once went down to see for himself what sort of place this was that they had come from. He found two old farms, with a cart-track rutted into the pink earth, leading down to a mill by the beach; a little grey church with a buttressed outer wall and a smaller and greyer chapel. The stream which worked the mill came bubbling down in a dozen rivulets, and pigs were hunting round that es
tuary. A haze hovered over the prospect. Down this hollow, with their feet deep in the mud and their faces towards the sea, it appeared that the primeval Forsytes had been content to walk Sunday after Sunday for hundreds of years.

  Whether or no James had cherished hopes of an inheritance, or of something rather distinguished to be found down there, he came back to town in a poor way, and went about with a pathetic attempt at making the best of a bad job.

  ‘There’s very little to be had out of that,’ he said; ‘regular country little place, old as the hills.’

  Its age was felt to be a comfort. Old Jolyon, in whom a desperate honesty welled up at times, would allude to his ancestors as: ‘Yeomen – I suppose very small beer.’ Yet he would repeat the word ‘yeomen’ as if it afforded him consolation.

  They had all done so well for themselves, these Forsytes, that they were all what is called ‘of a certain position’. They had shares in all sorts of things, not as yet – with the exception of Timothy – in Consols, for they had no dread in life like that of 3 per cent for their money. They collected pictures, too, and were supporters of such charitable institutions as might be beneficial to their sick domestics. From their father, the builder, they inherited a talent for bricks and mortar. Originally, perhaps, members of some primitive sect, they were now in the natural course of things members of the Church of England, and caused their wives and children to attend with some regularity the more fashionable churches of the Metropolis. To have doubted their Christianity would have caused them both pain and surprise. Some of them paid for pews, thus expressing in the most practical form their sympathy with the teachings of Christ.

  Their residences, placed at stated intervals round the Park, watched like sentinels, lest the fair heart of this London, where their desires were fixed, should slip from their clutches, and leave them lower in their own estimations.

  There was old Jolyon in Stanhope Place; the Jameses in Park Lane; Swithin in the lonely glory of orange and blue chambers in Hyde Park Mansions – he had never married, not he! – the Soameses in their nest off Knightsbridge; the Rogers in Prince’s Gardens (Roger was that remarkable Forsyte who had conceived and carried out the notion of bringing up his four sons to a new profession. ‘Collect house property – nothing like it!’ he would say; ‘I never did anything else!’).