The Forsyte saga - Complete
spite of the rage roused within her championing soul at the
thought that the world should treat him thus, their disappearance
augured happily for the success of her plan.
It was while looking at the spot where the piece of Japanese
pottery had stood that she felt a strange certainty of being
watched, and, turning, saw Irene in the open doorway.
The two stood gazing at each other for a minute in silence; then
June walked forward and held out her hand. Irene did not take it.
When her hand was refused, June put it behind her. Her eyes grew
steady with anger; she waited for Irene to speak; and thus
waiting, took in, with who-knows-what rage of jealousy,
suspicion, and curiosity, every detail of her friend’s face and
dress and figure.
Irene was clothed in her long grey fur; the travelling cap on her
head left a wave of gold hair visible above her forehead. The
soft fullness of the coat made her face as small as a child’s.
Unlike Jun’s cheeks, her cheeks had no colour in them, but were
ivory white and pinched as if with cold. Dark circles lay round
her eyes. In one hand she held a bunch of violets.
She looked back at June, no smile on her lips; and with those
great dark eyes fastened on her, the girl, for all her startled
anger, felt something of the old spell.
She spoke first, after all.
“What have you come for?” But the feeling that she herself was
being asked the same question, made her add: “This horrible case.
I came to tell him—he has lost it.”
Irene did not speak, her eyes never moved from Jun’s face, and
the girl cried:
“Don’t stand there as if you were made of stone!”
Irene laughed: “I wish to God I were!”
But June turned away: “Stop!” she cried, “don’t tell me! I don’t
want to hear! I don’t want to hear what you’ve come for. I don’t
want to hear!” And like some uneasy spirit, she began swiftly
walking to and fro. Suddenly she broke out:
“I was here first. We can’t both stay here together!”
On Irene’s face a smile wandered up, and died out like a flicker
of firelight. She did not move. And then it was that June
perceived under the softness and immobility of this figure
something desperate and resolved; something not to be turned
away, something dangerous. She tore off her hat, and, putting
both hands to her brow, pressed back the bronze mass of her hair.
“You have no right here!” she cried defiantly.
Irene answered: “I have no right anywhere——”
“What do you mean?”
“I have left Soames. You always wanted me to!”
June put her hands over her ears.
“Don’t! I don’t want to hear anything—I don’t want to know
anything. It’s impossible to fight with you! What makes you stand
like that? Why don’t you go?”
Irene’s lips moved; she seemed to be saying: “Where should I go?”
June turned to the window. She could see the face of a clock down
in the street. It was nearly four. At any moment he might come!
She looked back across her shoulder, and her face was distorted
with anger.
But Irene had not moved; in her gloved hands she ceaselessly
turned and twisted the little bunch of violets.
The tears of rage and disappointment rolled down Jun’s cheeks.
“How _could_ you come?” she said. “You have been a false friend
to me!”
Again Irene laughed. June saw that she had played a wrong card,
and broke down.
“Why have you come?” she sobbed. “You’ve ruined my life, and now
you want to ruin his!”
Irene’s mouth quivered; her eyes met Jun’s with a look so
mournful that the girl cried out in the midst of her sobbing,
“No, no!”
But Irene’s head bent till it touched her breast. She turned, and
went quickly out, hiding her lips with the little bunch of
violets.
June ran to the door. She heard the footsteps going down and
down. She called out: “Come back, Irene! Come back!”
The footsteps died away....
Bewildered and torn, the girl stood at the top of the stairs. Why
had Irene gone, leaving her mistress of the field? What did it
mean? Had she really given him up to her? Or had she...? And she
was the prey of a gnawing uncertainty.... Bosinney did not
come....
About six o’clock that afternoon old Jolyon returned from
Wistaria Avenue, where now almost every day he spent some hours,
and asked if his grand-daughter were upstairs. On being told that
she had just come in, he sent up to her room to request her to
come down and speak to him.
He had made up his mind to tell her that he was reconciled with
her father. In future bygones must be bygones. He would no longer
live alone, or practically alone, in this great house; he was
going to give it up, and take one in the country for his son,
where they could all go and live together. If June did not like
this, she could have an allowance and live by herself. It
wouldn’t make much difference to her, for it was a long time
since she had shown him any affection.
But when June came down, her face was pinched and piteous; there
was a strained, pathetic look in her eyes. She snuggled up in her
old attitude on the arm of his chair, and what he said compared
but poorly with the clear, authoritative, injured statement he
had thought out with much care. His heart felt sore, as the great
heart of a mother-bird feels sore when its youngling flies and
bruises its wing. His words halted, as though he were apologizing
for having at last deviated from the path of virtue, and
succumbed, in defiance of sounder principles, to his more natural
instincts.
He seemed nervous lest, in thus announcing his intentions, he
should be setting his granddaughter a bad example; and now that
he came to the point, his way of putting the suggestion that, if
she didn’t like it, she could live by herself and lump it, was
delicate in the extreme.
“And if, by any chance, my darling,” he said, “you found you
didn’t get on—with them, why, I could make that all right. You
could have what you liked. We could find a little flat in London
where you could set up, and I could be running to continually.
But the children,” he added, “are dear little things!”
Then, in the midst of this grave, rather transparent, explanation
of changed policy, his eyes twinkled. “This’ll astonish Timothy’s
weak nerves. That precious young thing will have something to say
about this, or I’m a Dutchman!”
June had not yet spoken. Perched thus on the arm of his chair,
with her head above him, her face was invisible. But presently he
felt her warm cheek against his own, and knew that, at all
events, there was nothing very alarming in her attitude towards
his news. He began to take courage.
“You’ll like your father,” he said—“an amiable chap. Never was
much push about him, but easy to get on with. You’ll find him
artistic and all that.”
And old Jolyon bethought him of the dozen or so water-colour
drawings all carefully locked up in his bedroom; for now that his
son was going to become a man of property he did not think them
quite such poor things as heretofore.
“As to your—your stepmother,” he said, using the word with some
little difficulty, “I call her a refined woman—a bit of a Mrs.
Gummidge, I shouldn’t wonder—but very fond of Jo. And the
children,” he repeated—indeed, this sentence ran like music
through all his solemn self-justification—“are sweet little
things!”
If June had known, those words but reincarnated that tender love
for little children, for the young and weak, which in the past
had made him desert his son for her tiny self, and now, as the
cycle rolled, was taking him from her.
But he began to get alarmed at her silence, and asked
impatiently: “Well, what do you say?”
June slid down to his knee, and she in her turn began her tale.
She thought it would all go splendidly; she did not see any
difficulty, and she did not care a bit what people thought.
Old Jolyon wriggled. H’m! then people _would_ think! He had
thought that after all these years perhaps they wouldn’t! Well,
he couldn’t help it! Nevertheless, he could not approve of his
granddaughter’s way of putting it—she ought to mind what people
thought!
Yet he said nothing. His feelings were too mixed, too
inconsistent for expression.
No—went on June—she did not care; what business was it of theirs?
There was only one thing—and with her cheek pressing against his
knee, old Jolyon knew at once that this something was no trifle:
As he was going to buy a house in the country, would he not—to
please her—buy that splendid house of Soames’ at Robin Hill? It
was finished, it was perfectly beautiful, and no one would live
in it now. They would all be so happy there.
Old Jolyon was on the alert at once. Wasn’t the “man of property”
going to live in his new house, then? He never alluded to Soames
now but under this title.
“No”—June said—“he was not; she knew that he was not!”
How did she know?
She could not tell him, but she knew. She knew nearly for
certain! It was most unlikely; circumstances had changed! Irene’s
words still rang in her head: “I have left Soames. Where should I
go?”
But she kept silence about that.
If her grandfather would only buy it and settle that wretched
claim that ought never to have been made on Phil! It would be the
very best thing for everybody, and everything—everything might
come straight.
And June put her lips to his forehead, and pressed them close.
But old Jolyon freed himself from her caress, his face wore the
judicial look which came upon it when he dealt with affairs. He
asked: What did she mean? There was something behind all this—had
she been seeing Bosinney?
June answered: “No; but I have been to his rooms.”
“Been to his rooms? Who took you there?”
June faced him steadily. “I went alone. He has lost that case. I
don’t care whether it was right or wrong. I want to help him; and
_I will!_”
Old Jolyon asked again: “Have you seen him?” His glance seemed to
pierce right through the girl’s eyes into her soul.
Again June answered: “No; he was not there. I waited, but he did
not come.”
Old Jolyon made a movement of relief. She had risen and looked
down at him; so slight, and light, and young, but so fixed, and
so determined; and disturbed, vexed, as he was, he could not
frown away that fixed look. The feeling of being beaten, of the
reins having slipped, of being old and tired, mastered him.
“Ah!” he said at last, “you’ll get yourself into a mess one of
these days, I can see. You want your own way in everything.”
Visited by one of his strange bursts of philosophy, he added:
“Like that you were born; and like that you’ll stay until you
die!”
And he, who in his dealings with men of business, with Boards,
with Forsytes of all descriptions, with such as were not