The Forsyte saga - Complete
charming face grew eager, and, glancing round, with almost a
lover’s jealousy, young Jolyon saw Bosinney striding across the
grass.
Curiously he watched the meeting, the look in their eyes, the
long clasp of their hands. They sat down close together, linked
for all their outward discretion. He heard the rapid murmur of
their talk; but what they said he could not catch.
He had rowed in the galley himself! He knew the long hours of
waiting and the lean minutes of a half-public meeting; the
tortures of suspense that haunt the unhallowed lover.
It required, however, but a glance at their two faces to see that
this was none of those affairs of a season that distract men and
women about town; none of those sudden appetites that wake up
ravening, and are surfeited and asleep again in six weeks. This
was the real thing! This was what had happened to himself! Out of
this anything might come!
Bosinney was pleading, and she so quiet, so soft, yet immovable
in her passivity, sat looking over the grass.
Was he the man to carry her off, that tender, passive being, who
would never stir a step for herself? Who had given him all
herself, and would die for him, but perhaps would never run away
with him!
It seemed to young Jolyon that he could hear her saying: “But,
darling, it would ruin you!” For he himself had experienced to
the full the gnawing fear at the bottom of each woman’s heart
that she is a drag on the man she loves.
And he peeped at them no more; but their soft, rapid talk came to
his ears, with the stuttering song of some bird who seemed trying
to remember the notes of spring: Joy—tragedy? Which—which?
And gradually their talk ceased; long silence followed.
“And where does Soames come in?” young Jolyon thought. “People
think she is concerned about the sin of deceiving her husband!
Little they know of women! She’s eating, after starvation—taking
her revenge! And Heaven help her—for he’ll take his.”
He heard the swish of silk, and, spying round the laurel, saw
them walking away, their hands stealthily joined....
At the end of July old Jolyon had taken his grand-daughter to the
mountains; and on that visit (the last they ever paid) June
recovered to a great extent her health and spirits. In the
hotels, filled with British Forsytes—for old Jolyon could not
bear a “set of Germans,” as he called all foreigners—she was
looked upon with respect—the only grand-daughter of that
fine-looking, and evidently wealthy, old Mr. Forsyte. She did not
mix freely with people—to mix freely with people was not Jun’s
habit—but she formed some friendships, and notably one in the
Rhone Valley, with a French girl who was dying of consumption.
Determining at once that her friend should not die, she forgot,
in the institution of a campaign against Death, much of her own
trouble.
Old Jolyon watched the new intimacy with relief and disapproval;
for this additional proof that her life was to be passed amongst
“lame ducks” worried him. Would she never make a friendship or
take an interest in something that would be of real benefit to
her?
“Taking up with a parcel of foreigners,” he called it. He often,
however, brought home grapes or roses, and presented them to
“Mam’zelle” with an ingratiating twinkle.
Towards the end of September, in spite of Jun’s disapproval,
Mademoiselle Vigor breathed her last in the little hotel at St.
Luc, to which they had moved her; and June took her defeat so
deeply to heart that old Jolyon carried her away to Paris. Here,
in contemplation of the “Venus de Milo” and the “Madeleine,” she
shook off her depression, and when, towards the middle of
October, they returned to town, her grandfather believed that he
had effected a cure.
No sooner, however, had they established themselves in Stanhope
Gate than he perceived to his dismay a return of her old absorbed
and brooding manner. She would sit, staring in front of her, her
chin on her hand, like a little Norse spirit, grim and intent,
while all around in the electric light, then just installed,
shone the great, drawing-room brocaded up to the frieze, full of
furniture from Baple and Pullbred’s. And in the huge gilt mirror
were reflected those Dresden china groups of young men in tight
knee breeches, at the feet of full-bosomed ladies nursing on
their laps pet lambs, which old Jolyon had bought when he was a
bachelor and thought so highly of in these days of degenerate
taste. He was a man of most open mind, who, more than any Forsyte
of them all, had moved with the times, but he could never forget
that he had bought these groups at Jobson’s, and given a lot of
money for them. He often said to June, with a sort of
disillusioned contempt:
“_You_ don’t care about them! They’re not the gimcrack things you
and your friends like, but they cost me seventy pounds!” He was
not a man who allowed his taste to be warped when he knew for
solid reasons that it was sound.
One of the first things that June did on getting home was to go
round to Timothy’s. She persuaded herself that it was her duty to
call there, and cheer him with an account of all her travels; but
in reality she went because she knew of no other place where, by
some random speech, or roundabout question, she could glean news
of Bosinney.
They received her most cordially: And how was her dear
grandfather? He had not been to see them since May. Her Uncle
Timothy was very poorly, he had had a lot of trouble with the
chimney-sweep in his bedroom; the stupid man had let the soot
down the chimney! It had quite upset her uncle.
June sat there a long time, dreading, yet passionately hoping,
that they would speak of Bosinney.
But paralyzed by unaccountable discretion, Mrs. Septimus Small
let fall no word, neither did she question June about him. In
desperation the girl asked at last whether Soames and Irene were
in town—she had not yet been to see anyone.
It was Aunt Hester who replied: Oh, yes, they were in town, they
had not been away at all. There was some little difficulty about
the house, she believed. June had heard, no doubt! She had better
ask her Aunt Juley!
June turned to Mrs. Small, who sat upright in her chair, her
hands clasped, her face covered with innumerable pouts. In answer
to the girl’s look she maintained a strange silence, and when she
spoke it was to ask June whether she had worn night-socks up in
those high hotels where it must be so cold of a night.
June answered that she had not, she hated the stuffy things; and
rose to leave.
Mrs. Small’s infallibly chosen silence was far more ominous to
her than anything that could have been said.
Before half an hour was over she had dragged the truth from Mrs.
Baynes in Lowndes Square, that Soames was bringing an action
against Bosinney over the decoration of the house.
Instead of disturbing her, the news had a strangely calming
effect; as though she saw in the prospect of this struggle new
hope for herself. She learnt that the case was expected to come
on in about a month, and there seemed little or no prospect of
Bosinney’s success.
“And whatever he’ll do I can’t think,” said Mrs. Baynes; “it’s
very dreadful for him, you know—he’s got no money—he’s very hard
up. And we can’t help him, I’m sure. I’m told the money-lenders
won’t lend if you have no security, and he has none—none at all.”
Her embonpoint had increased of late; she was in the full swing
of autumn organization, her writing-table literally strewn with
the menus of charity functions. She looked meaningly at June,
with her round eyes of parrot-grey.
The sudden flush that rose on the girl’s intent young face—she
must have seen spring up before her a great hope—the sudden
sweetness of her smile, often came back to Lady Baynes in after
years (Baynes was knighted when he built that public Museum of
Art which has given so much employment to officials, and so
little pleasure to those working classes for whom it was
designed).
The memory of that change, vivid and touching, like the breaking
open of a flower, or the first sun after long winter, the memory,
too, of all that came after, often intruded itself,
unaccountably, inopportunely on Lady Baynes, when her mind was
set upon the most important things.
This was the very afternoon of the day that young Jolyon
witnessed the meeting in the Botanical Gardens, and on this day,
too, old Jolyon paid a visit to his solicitors, Forsyte, Bustard,
and Forsyte, in the Poultry. Soames was not in, he had gone down
to Somerset House; Bustard was buried up to the hilt in papers
and that inaccessible apartment, where he was judiciously placed,
in order that he might do as much work as possible; but James was
in the front office, biting a finger, and lugubriously turning
over the pleadings in Forsyte _v_. Bosinney.
This sound lawyer had only a sort of luxurious dread of the “nice
point,” enough to set up a pleasurable feeling of fuss; for his
good practical sense told him that if he himself were on the
Bench he would not pay much attention to it. But he was afraid
that this Bosinney would go bankrupt and Soames would have to
find the money after all, and costs into the bargain. And behind
this tangible dread there was always that intangible trouble,
lurking in the background, intricate, dim, scandalous, like a bad
dream, and of which this action was but an outward and visible
sign.
He raised his head as old Jolyon came in, and muttered: “How are
you, Jolyon? Haven’t seen you for an age. You’ve been to
Switzerland, they tell me. This young Bosinney, he’s got himself
into a mess. I knew how it would be!” He held out the papers,
regarding his elder brother with nervous gloom.
Old Jolyon read them in silence, and while he read them James
looked at the floor, biting his fingers the while.
Old Jolyon pitched them down at last, and they fell with a thump
amongst a mass of affidavits in “_re_ Buncombe, deceased,” one of
the many branches of that parent and profitable tree, “Fryer _v_.
Forsyte.”
“I don’t know what Soames is about,” he said, “to make a fuss
over a few hundred pounds. I thought he was a man of property.”
James’ long upper lip twitched angrily; he could not bear his son
to be attacked in such a spot.
“It’s not the money,” he began, but meeting his brother’s glance,
direct, shrewd, judicial, he stopped.
There was a silence.
“I’ve come in for my Will,” said old Jolyon at last, tugging at
his moustache.
James’ curiosity was roused at once. Perhaps nothing in this life
was more stimulating to him than a Will; it was the supreme deal
with property, the final inventory of a man’s belongings, the
last word on what he was worth. He sounded the bell.