The Forsyte saga - Complete
somewhere—strength and fidelity. But what business had young
Bosinney to have got run over and left her stranded like this!
“Well, you must come to me now,” he said, “for anything you want,
or I shall be quite cut up.” And putting on his hat, he rose.
“Let’s go and get some tea. I told that lazy chap to put the
horses up for an hour, and come for me at your place. We’ll take
a cab presently; I can’t walk as I used to.”
He enjoyed that stroll to the Kensington end of the gardens—the
sound of her voice, the glancing of her eyes, the subtle beauty
of a charming form moving beside him. He enjoyed their tea at
Ruffel’s in the High Street, and came out thence with a great box
of chocolates swung on his little finger. He enjoyed the drive
back to Chelsea in a hansom, smoking his cigar. She had promised
to come down next Sunday and play to him again, and already in
thought he was plucking carnations and early roses for her to
carry back to town. It was a pleasure to give her a little
pleasure, if it _were_ pleasure from an old chap like him! The
carriage was already there when they arrived. Just like that
fellow, who was always late when he was wanted! Old Jolyon went
in for a minute to say good-bye. The little dark hall of the flat
was impregnated with a disagreeable odour of patchouli, and on a
bench against the wall—its only furniture—he saw a figure
sitting. He heard Irene say softly: “Just one minute.” In the
little drawing-room when the door was shut, he asked gravely:
“One of your _protégées?_”
“Yes. Now thanks to you, I can do something for her.”
He stood, staring, and stroking that chin whose strength had
frightened so many in its time. The idea of her thus actually in
contact with this outcast grieved and frightened him. What could
she do for them? Nothing. Only soil and make trouble for herself,
perhaps. And he said: “Take care, my dear! The world puts the
worst construction on everything.”
“I know that.”
He was abashed by her quiet smile. “Well then—Sunday,” he
murmured: “Good-bye.”
She put her cheek forward for him to kiss.
“Good-bye,” he said again; “take care of yourself.” And he went
out, not looking towards the figure on the bench. He drove home
by way of Hammersmith; that he might stop at a place he knew of
and tell them to send her in two dozen of their best Burgundy.
She must want picking-up sometimes! Only in Richmond Park did he
remember that he had gone up to order himself some boots, and was
surprised that he could have had so paltry an idea.
III
The little spirits of the past which throng an old man’s days had
never pushed their faces up to his so seldom as in the seventy
hours elapsing before Sunday came. The spirit of the future, with
the charm of the unknown, put up her lips instead. Old Jolyon was
not restless now, and paid no visits to the log, because she was
_coming to lunch_. There is wonderful finality about a meal; it
removes a world of doubts, for no one misses meals except for
reasons beyond control. He played many games with Holly on the
lawn, pitching them up to her who was batting so as to be ready
to bowl to Jolly in the holidays. For she was not a Forsyte, but
Jolly was—and Forsytes always bat, until they have resigned and
reached the age of eighty-five. The dog Balthasar, in attendance,
lay on the ball as often as he could, and the page-boy fielded,
till his face was like the harvest moon. And because the time was
getting shorter, each day was longer and more golden than the
last. On Friday night he took a liver pill, his side hurt him
rather, and though it was not the liver side, there is no remedy
like that. Anyone telling him that he had found a new excitement
in life and that excitement was not good for him, would have been
met by one of those steady and rather defiant looks of his
deep-set iron-grey eyes, which seemed to say: “I know my own
business best.” He always had and always would.
On Sunday morning, when Holly had gone with her governess to
church, he visited the strawberry beds. There, accompanied by the
dog Balthasar, he examined the plants narrowly and succeeded in
finding at least two dozen berries which were really ripe.
Stooping was not good for him, and he became very dizzy and red
in the forehead. Having placed the strawberries in a dish on the
dining-table, he washed his hands and bathed his forehead with
eau de Cologne. There, before the mirror, it occurred to him that
he was thinner. What a “threadpaper” he had been when he was
young! It was nice to be slim—he could not bear a fat chap; and
yet perhaps his cheeks were _too_ thin! She was to arrive by
train at half-past twelve and walk up, entering from the road
past Drage’s farm at the far end of the coppice. And, having
looked into June’s room to see that there was hot water ready, he
set forth to meet her, leisurely, for his heart was beating. The
air smelled sweet, larks sang, and the Grand Stand at Epsom was
visible. A perfect day! On just such a one, no doubt, six years
ago, Soames had brought young Bosinney down with him to look at
the site before they began to build. It was Bosinney who had
pitched on the exact spot for the house—as June had often told
him. In these days he was thinking much about that young fellow,
as if his spirit were really haunting the field of his last work,
on the chance of seeing—her. Bosinney—the one man who had
possessed her heart, to whom she had given her whole self with
rapture! At his age one could not, of course, imagine such
things, but there stirred in him a queer vague aching—as it were
the ghost of an impersonal jealousy; and a feeling, too, more
generous, of pity for that love so early lost. All over in a few
poor months! Well, well! He looked at his watch before entering
the coppice—only a quarter past, twenty-five minutes to wait! And
then, turning the corner of the path, he saw her exactly where he
had seen her the first time, on the log; and realised that she
must have come by the earlier train to sit there alone for a
couple of hours at least. Two hours of her society missed! What
memory could make that log so dear to her? His face showed what
he was thinking, for she said at once:
“Forgive me, Uncle Jolyon; it was here that I first knew.”
“Yes, yes; there it is for you whenever you like. You’re looking
a little Londony; you’re giving too many lessons.”
That she should have to give lessons worried him. Lessons to a
parcel of young girls thumping out scales with their thick
fingers.
“Where do you go to give them?” he asked.
“They’re mostly Jewish families, luckily.”
Old Jolyon stared; to all Forsytes Jews seem strange and
doubtful.
“They love music, and they’re very kind.”
“They had better be, by George!” He took her arm—his side always
hurt him a little going uphill—and said:
“Did you ever see anything like those buttercups? They came like
that in a night.”
Her eyes seemed really to fly over the field, like bees after the
flowers and the honey. “I wanted you to see them—wouldn’t let
them turn the cows in yet.” Then, remembering that she had come
to talk about Bosinney, he pointed to the clock-tower over the
stables:
“I expect _he_ wouldn’t have let me put that there—had no notion
of time, if I remember.”
But, pressing his arm to her, she talked of flowers instead, and
he knew it was done that he might not feel she came because of
her dead lover.
“The best flower I can show you,” he said, with a sort of
triumph, “is my little sweet. She’ll be back from Church
directly. There’s something about her which reminds me a little
of you,” and it did not seem to him peculiar that he had put it
thus, instead of saying: “There’s something about you which
reminds me a little of her.” Ah! And here she was!
Holly, followed closely by her elderly French governess, whose
digestion had been ruined twenty-two years ago in the siege of
Strasbourg, came rushing towards them from under the oak tree.
She stopped about a dozen yards away, to pat Balthasar and
pretend that this was all she had in her mind. Old Jolyon, who
knew better, said:
“Well, my darling, here’s the lady in grey I promised you.”
Holly raised herself and looked up. He watched the two of them
with a twinkle, Irene smiling, Holly beginning with grave
inquiry, passing into a shy smile too, and then to something
deeper. She had a sense of beauty, that child—knew what was what!
He enjoyed the sight of the kiss between them.
“Mrs. Heron, Mam’zelle Beauce. Well, Mam’zelle—good sermon?”
For, now that he had not much more time before him, the only part
of the service connected with this world absorbed what interest
in church remained to him. Mam’zelle Beauce stretched out a
spidery hand clad in a black kid glove—she had been in the best
families—and the rather sad eyes of her lean yellowish face
seemed to ask: “Are you well-brrred?” Whenever Holly or Jolly did
anything unpleasing to her—a not uncommon occurrence—she would
say to them: “The little Tayleurs never did that—they were such
well-brrred little children.” Jolly hated the little Tayleurs;
Holly wondered dreadfully how it was she fell so short of them.
“A thin rum little soul,” old Jolyon thought her—Mam’zelle
Beauce.
Luncheon was a successful meal, the mushrooms which he himself
had picked in the mushroom house, his chosen strawberries, and
another bottle of the Steinberg cabinet filled him with a certain
aromatic spirituality, and a conviction that he would have a
touch of eczema to-morrow.
After lunch they sat under the oak tree drinking Turkish coffee.
It was no matter of grief to him when Mademoiselle Beauce
withdrew to write her Sunday letter to her sister, whose future
had been endangered in the past by swallowing a pin—an event held
up daily in warning to the children to eat slowly and digest what
they had eaten. At the foot of the bank, on a carriage rug, Holly
and the dog Balthasar teased and loved each other, and in the
shade old Jolyon with his legs crossed and his cigar luxuriously
savoured, gazed at Irene sitting in the swing. A light, vaguely
swaying, grey figure with a fleck of sunlight here and there upon
it, lips just opened, eyes dark and soft under lids a little
drooped. She looked content; surely it did her good to come and
see him! The selfishness of age had not set its proper grip on
him, for he could still feel pleasure in the pleasure of others,
realising that what he wanted, though much, was not quite all
that mattered.
“It’s quiet here,” he said; “you mustn’t come down if you find it
dull. But it’s a pleasure to see you. My little sweet is the only
face which gives me any pleasure, except yours.”
From her smile he knew that she was not beyond liking to be