The Forsyte saga - Complete
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 “flies,” 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