The Forsyte saga - Complete
left only Jolyon and James, Roger and Nicholas and Timothy,
Julia, Hester, Susan! And old Jolyon thought: “Eighty-five! I
don’t feel it—except when I get that pain.”
His memory went searching. He had not felt his age since he had
bought his nephew Soames’ ill-starred house and settled into it
here at Robin Hill over three years ago. It was as if he had been
getting younger every spring, living in the country with his son
and his grandchildren—June, and the little ones of the second
marriage, Jolly and Holly; living down here out of the racket of
London and the cackle of Forsyte ’Change, free of his boards, in
a delicious atmosphere of no work and all play, with plenty of
occupation in the perfecting and mellowing of the house and its
twenty acres, and in ministering to the whims of Holly and Jolly.
All the knots and crankiness, which had gathered in his heart
during that long and tragic business of June, Soames, Irene his
wife, and poor young Bosinney, had been smoothed out. Even June
had thrown off her melancholy at last—witness this travel in
Spain she was taking now with her father and her stepmother.
Curiously perfect peace was left by their departure; blissful,
yet blank, because his son was not there. Jo was never anything
but a comfort and a pleasure to him nowadays—an amiable chap; but
women, somehow—even the best—got a little on one’s nerves, unless
of course one admired them.
Far-off a cuckoo called; a wood-pigeon was cooing from the first
elm-tree in the field, and how the daisies and buttercups had
sprung up after the last mowing! The wind had got into the sou’
west, too—a delicious air, sappy! He pushed his hat back and let
the sun fall on his chin and cheek. Somehow, to-day, he wanted
company—wanted a pretty face to look at. People treated the old
as if they wanted nothing. And with the un-Forsytean philosophy
which ever intruded on his soul, he thought: “One’s never had
enough. With a foot in the grave one’ll want something, I
shouldn’t be surprised!” Down here—away from the exigencies of
affairs—his grandchildren, and the flowers, trees, birds of his
little domain, to say nothing of sun and moon and stars above
them, said, “Open, sesame,” to him day and night. And sesame had
opened—how much, perhaps, he did not know. He had always been
responsive to what they had begun to call “Nature,” genuinely,
almost religiously responsive, though he had never lost his habit
of calling a sunset a sunset and a view a view, however deeply
they might move him. But nowadays Nature actually made him ache,
he appreciated it so. Every one of these calm, bright,
lengthening days, with Holly’s hand in his, and the dog Balthasar
in front looking studiously for what he never found, he would
stroll, watching the roses open, fruit budding on the walls,
sunlight brightening the oak leaves and saplings in the coppice,
watching the water-lily leaves unfold and glisten, and the
silvery young corn of the one wheat field; listening to the
starlings and skylarks, and the Alderney cows chewing the cud,
flicking slow their tufted tails; and every one of these fine
days he ached a little from sheer love of it all, feeling
perhaps, deep down, that he had not very much longer to enjoy it.
The thought that some day—perhaps not ten years hence, perhaps
not five—all this world would be taken away from him, before he
had exhausted his powers of loving it, seemed to him in the
nature of an injustice brooding over his horizon. If anything
came after this life, it wouldn’t be what he wanted; not Robin
Hill, and flowers and birds and pretty faces—too few, even now,
of those about him! With the years his dislike of humbug had
increased; the orthodoxy he had worn in the ’sixties, as he had
worn side-whiskers out of sheer exuberance, had long dropped off,
leaving him reverent before three things alone—beauty, upright
conduct, and the sense of property; and the greatest of these now
was beauty. He had always had wide interests, and, indeed could
still read _The Times_, but he was liable at any moment to put it
down if he heard a blackbird sing. Upright conduct,
property—somehow, they were tiring; the blackbirds and the
sunsets never tired him, only gave him an uneasy feeling that he
could not get enough of them. Staring into the stilly radiance of
the early evening and at the little gold and white flowers on the
lawn, a thought came to him: This weather was like the music of
“Orfeo,” which he had recently heard at Covent Garden. A
beautiful opera, not like Meyerbeer, nor even quite Mozart, but,
in its way, perhaps even more lovely; something classical and of
the Golden Age about it, chaste and mellow, and the Ravogli
“almost worthy of the old days”—highest praise he could bestow.
The yearning of Orpheus for the beauty he was losing, for his
love going down to Hades, as in life love and beauty did go—the
yearning which sang and throbbed through the golden music,
stirred also in the lingering beauty of the world that evening.
And with the tip of his cork-soled, elastic-sided boot he
involuntarily stirred the ribs of the dog Balthasar, causing the
animal to wake and attack his fleas; for though he was supposed
to have none, nothing could persuade him of the fact. When he had
finished he rubbed the place he had been scratching against his
master’s calf, and settled down again with his chin over the
instep of the disturbing boot. And into old Jolyon’s mind came a
sudden recollection—a face he had seen at that opera three weeks
ago—Irene, the wife of his precious nephew Soames, that man of
property! Though he had not met her since the day of the “At
Home” in his old house at Stanhope Gate, which celebrated his
granddaughter June’s ill-starred engagement to young Bosinney, he
had remembered her at once, for he had always admired her—a very
pretty creature. After the death of young Bosinney, whose
mistress she had so reprehensibly become, he had heard that she
had left Soames at once. Goodness only knew what she had been
doing since. That sight of her face—a side view—in the row in
front, had been literally the only reminder these three years
that she was still alive. No one ever spoke of her. And yet Jo
had told him something once—something which had upset him
completely. The boy had got it from George Forsyte, he believed,
who had seen Bosinney in the fog the day he was run
over—something which explained the young fellow’s distress—an act
of Soames towards his wife—a shocking act. Jo had seen her, too,
that afternoon, after the news was out, seen her for a moment,
and his description had always lingered in old Jolyon’s
mind—“wild and lost” he had called her. And next day June had
gone there—bottled up her feelings and gone there, and the maid
had cried and told her how her mistress had slipped out in the
night and vanished. A tragic business altogether! One thing was
certain—Soames had never been able to lay hands on her again. And
he was living at Brighton, and journeying up and down—a fitting
fate, the man of property! For when he once took a dislike to
anyone—as he had to his nephew—old Jolyon never got over it. He
remembered still the sense of relief with which he had heard the
news of Irene’s disappearance. It had been shocking to think of
her a prisoner in that house to which she must have wandered
back, when Jo saw her, wandered back for a moment—like a wounded
animal to its hole after seeing that news, “Tragic death of an
Architect,” in the street. Her face had struck him very much the
other night—more beautiful than he had remembered, but like a
mask, with something going on beneath it. A young woman
still—twenty-eight perhaps. Ah, well! Very likely she had another
lover by now. But at this subversive thought—for married women
should never love: once, even, had been too much—his instep rose,
and with it the dog Balthasar’s head. The sagacious animal stood
up and looked into old Jolyon’s face. “Walk?” he seemed to say;
and old Jolyon answered: “Come on, old chap!”
Slowly, as was their wont, they crossed among the constellations
of buttercups and daisies, and entered the fernery. This feature,
where very little grew as yet, had been judiciously dropped below
the level of the lawn so that it might come up again on the level
of the other lawn and give the impression of irregularity, so
important in horticulture. Its rocks and earth were beloved of
the dog Balthasar, who sometimes found a mole there. Old Jolyon
made a point of passing through it because, though it was not
beautiful, he intended that it should be, some day, and he would
think: “I must get Varr to come down and look at it; he’s better
than Beech.” For plants, like houses and human complaints,
required the best expert consideration. It was inhabited by
snails, and if accompanied by his grandchildren, he would point
to one and tell them the story of the little boy who said: “Have
plummers got leggers, Mother?” “No, sonny.” “Then darned if I
haven’t been and swallowed a snileybob.” And when they skipped
and clutched his hand, thinking of the snileybob going down the
little boy’s “red lane,” his eyes would twinkle. Emerging from
the fernery, he opened the wicket gate, which just there led into
the first field, a large and park-like area, out of which, within
brick walls, the vegetable garden had been carved. Old Jolyon
avoided this, which did not suit his mood, and made down the hill
towards the pond. Balthasar, who knew a water-rat or two,
gambolled in front, at the gait which marks an oldish dog who
takes the same walk every day. Arrived at the edge, old Jolyon
stood, noting another water-lily opened since yesterday; he would
show it to Holly to-morrow, when “his little sweet” had got over
the upset which had followed on her eating a tomato at lunch—her
little arrangements were very delicate. Now that Jolly had gone
to school—his first term—Holly was with him nearly all day long,
and he missed her badly. He felt that pain too, which often
bothered him now, a little dragging at his left side. He looked
back up the hill. Really, poor young Bosinney had made an
uncommonly good job of the house; he would have done very well
for himself if he had lived! And where was he now? Perhaps, still
haunting this, the site of his last work, of his tragic love
affair. Or was Philip Bosinney’s spirit diffused in the general?
Who could say? That dog was getting his legs muddy! And he moved
towards the coppice. There had been the most delightful lot of
bluebells, and he knew where some still lingered like little
patches of sky fallen in between the trees, away out of the sun.
He passed the cow-houses and the hen-houses there installed, and
pursued a path into the thick of the saplings, making for one of
the bluebell plots. Balthasar, preceding him once more, uttered a