The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Galsworthy

J >> John Galsworthy >> The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Galsworthy


Soames said: "You'll find it dry."

Cutlets were handed, each pink-frilled about the legs. They were refused
by June, and silence fell.

Soames said: "You'd better take a cutlet, June; there's nothing coming."

But June again refused, so they were borne away. And then Irene asked:
"Phil, have you heard my blackbird?"

Bosinney answered: "Rather--he's got a hunting-song. As I came round I
heard him in the Square."

"He's such a darling!"

"Salad, sir?" Spring chicken was removed.

But Soames was speaking: "The asparagus is very poor. Bosinney, glass of
sherry with your sweet? June, you're drinking nothing!"

June said: "You know I never do. Wine's such horrid stuff!"

An apple charlotte came upon a silver dish, and smilingly Irene said:
"The azaleas are so wonderful this year!"

To this Bosinney murmured: "Wonderful! The scent's extraordinary!"

June said: "How can you like the scent? Sugar, please, Bilson."

Sugar was handed her, and Soames remarked: "This charlottes good!"

The charlotte was removed. Long silence followed. Irene, beckoning,
said: "Take out the azalea, Bilson. Miss June can't bear the scent."

"No; let it stay," said June.

Olives from France, with Russian caviare, were placed on little plates.
And Soames remarked: "Why can't we have the Spanish?" But no one
answered.

The olives were removed. Lifting her tumbler June demanded: "Give me
some water, please." Water was given her. A silver tray was brought,
with German plums. There was a lengthy pause. In perfect harmony all
were eating them.

Bosinney counted up the stones: "This year--next year--some time."

Irene finished softly: "Never! There was such a glorious sunset. The
sky's all ruby still--so beautiful!"

He answered: "Underneath the dark."

Their eyes had met, and June cried scornfully: "A London sunset!"

Egyptian cigarettes were handed in a silver box. Soames, taking one,
remarked: "What time's your play begin?"

No one replied, and Turkish coffee followed in enamelled cups.

Irene, smiling quietly, said: "If only...."

"Only what?" said June.

"If only it could always be the spring!"

Brandy was handed; it was pale and old.

Soames said: "Bosinney, better take some brandy."

Bosinney took a glass; they all arose.

"You want a cab?" asked Soames.

June answered: "No! My cloaks please, Bilson." Her cloak was brought.

Irene, from the window, murmured: "Such a lovely night! The stars are
coming out!"

Soames added: "Well, I hope you'll both enjoy yourselves."

From the door June answered: "Thanks. Come, Phil."

Bosinney cried: "I'm coming."

Soames smiled a sneering smile, and said: "I wish you luck!"

And at the door Irene watched them go.

Bosinney called: "Good night!"

"Good night!" she answered softly....

June made her lover take her on the top of a 'bus, saying she wanted air,
and there sat silent, with her face to the breeze.

The driver turned once or twice, with the intention of venturing a
remark, but thought better of it. They were a lively couple! The spring
had got into his blood, too; he felt the need for letting steam escape,
and clucked his tongue, flourishing his whip, wheeling his horses, and
even they, poor things, had smelled the spring, and for a brief half-hour
spurned the pavement with happy hoofs.

The whole town was alive; the boughs, curled upward with their decking of
young leaves, awaited some gift the breeze could bring. New-lighted
lamps were gaining mastery, and the faces of the crowd showed pale under
that glare, while on high the great white clouds slid swiftly, softly,
over the purple sky.

Men in, evening dress had thrown back overcoats, stepping jauntily up the
steps of Clubs; working folk loitered; and women--those women who at
that time of night are solitary--solitary and moving eastward in a
stream--swung slowly along, with expectation in their gait, dreaming of
good wine and a good supper, or--for an unwonted minute, of kisses given
for love.

Those countless figures, going their ways under the lamps and the
moving-sky, had one and all received some restless blessing from the stir
of spring. And one and all, like those clubmen with their opened coats,
had shed something of caste, and creed, and custom, and by the cock of
their hats, the pace of their walk, their laughter, or their silence,
revealed their common kinship under the passionate heavens.

Bosinney and June entered the theatre in silence, and mounted to their
seats in the upper boxes. The piece had just begun, and the
half-darkened house, with its rows of creatures peering all one way,
resembled a great garden of flowers turning their faces to the sun.

June had never before been in the upper boxes. From the age of fifteen
she had habitually accompanied her grandfather to the stalls, and not
common stalls, but the best seats in the house, towards the centre of the
third row, booked by old Jolyon, at Grogan and Boyne's, on his way home
from the City, long before the day; carried in his overcoat pocket,
together with his cigar-case and his old kid gloves, and handed to June
to keep till the appointed night. And in those stalls--an erect old
figure with a serene white head, a little figure, strenuous and eager,
with a red-gold head--they would sit through every kind of play, and on
the way home old Jolyon would say of the principal actor: "Oh, he's a
poor stick! You should have seen little Bobson!"

She had looked forward to this evening with keen delight; it was stolen,
chaperone-less, undreamed of at Stanhope Gate, where she was supposed to
be at Soames'. She had expected reward for her subterfuge, planned for
her lover's sake; she had expected it to break up the thick, chilly
cloud, and make the relations between them which of late had been so
puzzling, so tormenting--sunny and simple again as they had been before
the winter. She had come with the intention of saying something
definite; and she looked at the stage with a furrow between her brows,
seeing nothing, her hands squeezed together in her lap. A swarm of
jealous suspicions stung and stung her.

If Bosinney was conscious of her trouble he made no sign.

The curtain dropped. The first act had come to an end.

"It's awfully hot here!" said the girl; "I should like to go out."

She was very white, and she knew--for with her nerves thus sharpened she
saw everything--that he was both uneasy and compunctious.

At the back of the theatre an open balcony hung over the street; she took
possession of this, and stood leaning there without a word, waiting for
him to begin.

At last she could bear it no longer.

"I want to say something to you, Phil," she said.

"Yes?"

The defensive tone of his voice brought the colour flying to her cheek,
the words flying to her lips: "You don't give me a chance to be nice to
you; you haven't for ages now!"

Bosinney stared down at the street. He made no answer....

June cried passionately: "You know I want to do everything for you--that
I want to be everything to you...."

A hum rose from the street, and, piercing it with a sharp 'ping,' the
bell sounded for the raising of the curtain. June did not stir. A
desperate struggle was going on within her. Should she put everything to
the proof? Should she challenge directly that influence, that attraction
which was driving him away from her? It was her nature to challenge, and
she said: "Phil, take me to see the house on Sunday!"

With a smile quivering and breaking on her lips, and trying, how hard,
not to show that she was watching, she searched his face, saw it waver
and hesitate, saw a troubled line come between his brows, the blood rush
into his face. He answered: "Not Sunday, dear; some other day!"

"Why not Sunday? I shouldn't be in the way on Sunday."

He made an evident effort, and said: "I have an engagement."

"You are going to take...."

His eyes grew angry; he shrugged his shoulders, and answered: "An
engagement that will prevent my taking you to see the house!"

June bit her lip till the blood came, and walked back to her seat without
another word, but she could not help the tears of rage rolling down her
face. The house had been mercifully darkened for a crisis, and no one
could see her trouble.

Yet in this world of Forsytes let no man think himself immune from
observation.

In the third row behind, Euphemia, Nicholas's youngest daughter, with her
married-sister, Mrs. Tweetyman, were watching.

They reported at Timothy's, how they had seen June and her fiance at the
theatre.

"In the stalls?" "No, not in the...." "Oh! in the dress circle, of
course. That seemed to be quite fashionable nowadays with young people!"

Well--not exactly. In the.... Anyway, that engagement wouldn't last
long. They had never seen anyone look so thunder and lightningy as that
little June! With tears of enjoyment in their eyes, they related how she
had kicked a man's hat as she returned to her seat in the middle of an
act, and how the man had looked. Euphemia had a noted, silent laugh,
terminating most disappointingly in squeaks; and when Mrs. Small, holding
up her hands, said: "My dear! Kicked a ha-at?" she let out such a number
of these that she had to be recovered with smelling-salts. As she went
away she said to Mrs. Tweetyman:

"Kicked a--ha-at! Oh! I shall die."

For 'that little June' this evening, that was to have been 'her treat,'
was the most miserable she had ever spent. God knows she tried to stifle
her pride, her suspicion, her jealousy!

She parted from Bosinney at old Jolyon's door without breaking down; the
feeling that her lover must be conquered was strong enough to sustain her
till his retiring footsteps brought home the true extent of her
wretchedness.

The noiseless 'Sankey' let her in. She would have slipped up to her own
room, but old Jolyon, who had heard her entrance, was in the dining-room
doorway.

"Come in and have your milk," he said. "It's been kept hot for you.
You're very late. Where have you been?"

June stood at the fireplace, with a foot on the fender and an arm on the
mantelpiece, as her grandfather had done when he came in that night of
the opera. She was too near a breakdown to care what she told him.

"We dined at Soames's."

"H'm! the man of property! His wife there and Bosinney?"

"Yes."

Old Jolyon's glance was fixed on her with the penetrating gaze from which
it was difficult to hide; but she was not looking at him, and when she
turned her face, he dropped his scrutiny at once. He had seen enough,
and too much. He bent down to lift the cup of milk for her from the
hearth, and, turning away, grumbled: "You oughtn't to stay out so late;
it makes you fit for nothing."

He was invisible now behind his paper, which he turned with a vicious
crackle; but when June came up to kiss him, he said: "Good-night, my
darling," in a tone so tremulous and unexpected, that it was all the girl
could do to get out of the room without breaking into the fit of sobbing
which lasted her well on into the night.

When the door was closed, old Jolyon dropped his paper, and stared long
and anxiously in front of him.

'The beggar!' he thought. 'I always knew she'd have trouble with him!'

Uneasy doubts and suspicions, the more poignant that he felt himself
powerless to check or control the march of events, came crowding upon
him.

Was the fellow going to jilt her? He longed to go and say to him: "Look
here, you sir! Are you going to jilt my grand-daughter?" But how could
he? Knowing little or nothing, he was yet certain, with his unerring
astuteness, that there was something going on. He suspected Bosinney of
being too much at Montpellier Square.

'This fellow,' he thought, 'may not be a scamp; his face is not a bad
one, but he's a queer fish. I don't know what to make of him. I shall
never know what to make of him! They tell me he works like a nigger, but
I see no good coming of it. He's unpractical, he has no method. When he
comes here, he sits as glum as a monkey. If I ask him what wine he'll
have, he says: "Thanks, any wine." If I offer him a cigar, he smokes it
as if it were a twopenny German thing. I never see him looking at June
as he ought to look at her; and yet, he's not after her money. If she
were to make a sign, he'd be off his bargain to-morrow. But she
won't--not she! She'll stick to him! She's as obstinate as fate--She'll
never let go!'

Sighing deeply, he turned the paper; in its columns, perchance he might
find consolation.

And upstairs in her room June sat at her open window, where the spring
wind came, after its revel across the Park, to cool her hot cheeks and
burn her heart.




CHAPTER III

DRIVE WITH SWITHIN

Two lines of a certain song in a certain famous old school's songbook run
as follows:

'How the buttons on his blue frock shone, tra-la-la! How he carolled and
he sang, like a bird!....'

Swithin did not exactly carol and sing like a bird, but he felt almost
like endeavouring to hum a tune, as he stepped out of Hyde Park
Mansions, and contemplated his horses drawn up before the door.

The afternoon was as balmy as a day in June, and to complete the simile
of the old song, he had put on a blue frock-coat, dispensing with an
overcoat, after sending Adolf down three times to make sure that there
was not the least suspicion of east in the wind; and the frock-coat was
buttoned so tightly around his personable form, that, if the buttons did
not shine, they might pardonably have done so. Majestic on the pavement
he fitted on a pair of dog-skin gloves; with his large bell-shaped top
hat, and his great stature and bulk he looked too primeval for a Forsyte.
His thick white hair, on which Adolf had bestowed a touch of pomatum,
exhaled the fragrance of opoponax and cigars--the celebrated Swithin
brand, for which he paid one hundred and forty shillings the hundred, and
of which old Jolyon had unkindly said, he wouldn't smoke them as a gift;
they wanted the stomach of a horse!

"Adolf!"

"Sare!"

"The new plaid rug!"

He would never teach that fellow to look smart; and Mrs. Soames he felt
sure, had an eye!

"The phaeton hood down; I am going--to--drive--a--lady!"

A pretty woman would want to show off her frock; and well--he was going
to drive a lady! It was like a new beginning to the good old days.

Ages since he had driven a woman! The last time, if he remembered, it
had been Juley; the poor old soul had been as nervous as a cat the whole
time, and so put him out of patience that, as he dropped her in the
Bayswater Road, he had said: "Well I'm d---d if I ever drive you again!"
And he never had, not he!

Going up to his horses' heads, he examined their bits; not that he knew
anything about bits--he didn't pay his coachman sixty pounds a year to
do his work for him, that had never been his principle. Indeed, his
reputation as a horsey man rested mainly on the fact that once, on Derby
Day, he had been welshed by some thimble-riggers. But someone at the
Club, after seeing him drive his greys up to the door--he always drove
grey horses, you got more style for the money, some thought--had called
him 'Four-in-hand Forsyte.' The name having reached his ears through that
fellow Nicholas Treffry, old Jolyon's dead partner, the great driving man
notorious for more carriage accidents than any man in the
kingdom--Swithin had ever after conceived it right to act up to it. The
name had taken his fancy, not because he had ever driven four-in-hand, or
was ever likely to, but because of something distinguished in the sound.
Four-in-hand Forsyte! Not bad! Born too soon, Swithin had missed his
vocation. Coming upon London twenty years later, he could not have
failed to have become a stockbroker, but at the time when he was obliged
to select, this great profession had not as yet became the chief glory of
the upper-middle class. He had literally been forced into land agency.

Once in the driving seat, with the reins handed to him, and blinking over
his pale old cheeks in the full sunlight, he took a slow look
round--Adolf was already up behind; the cockaded groom at the horses'
heads stood ready to let go; everything was prepared for the signal, and
Swithin gave it. The equipage dashed forward, and before you could say
Jack Robinson, with a rattle and flourish drew up at Soames' door.

Irene came out at once, and stepped in--he afterward described it at
Timothy's--"as light as--er--Taglioni, no fuss about it, no wanting this
or wanting that;" and above all, Swithin dwelt on this, staring at Mrs.
Septimus in a way that disconcerted her a good deal, "no silly
nervousness!" To Aunt Hester he portrayed Irene's hat. "Not one of your
great flopping things, sprawling about, and catching the dust, that women
are so fond of nowadays, but a neat little--" he made a circular motion
of his hand, "white veil--capital taste."

"What was it made of?" inquired Aunt Hester, who manifested a languid but
permanent excitement at any mention of dress.

"Made of?" returned Swithin; "now how should I know?"

He sank into silence so profound that Aunt Hester began to be afraid he
had fallen into a trance. She did not try to rouse him herself, it not
being her custom.

'I wish somebody would come,' she thought; 'I don't like the look of
him!'

But suddenly Swithin returned to life. "Made of" he wheezed out slowly,
"what should it be made of?"

They had not gone four miles before Swithin received the impression that
Irene liked driving with him. Her face was so soft behind that white
veil, and her dark eyes shone so in the spring light, and whenever he
spoke she raised them to him and smiled.

On Saturday morning Soames had found her at her writing-table with a note
written to Swithin, putting him off. Why did she want to put him off? he
asked. She might put her own people off when she liked, he would not
have her putting off his people!

She had looked at him intently, had torn up the note, and said: "Very
well!"

And then she began writing another. He took a casual glance presently,
and saw that it was addressed to Bosinney.

"What are you writing to him about?" he asked.

Irene, looking at him again with that intent look, said quietly:
"Something he wanted me to do for him!"

"Humph!" said Soames,--"Commissions!"

"You'll have your work cut out if you begin that sort of thing!" He said
no more.

Swithin opened his eyes at the mention of Robin Hill; it was a long way
for his horses, and he always dined at half-past seven, before the rush
at the Club began; the new chef took more trouble with an early dinner--a
lazy rascal!

He would like to have a look at the house, however. A house appealed to
any Forsyte, and especially to one who had been an auctioneer. After all
he said the distance was nothing. When he was a younger man he had had
rooms at Richmond for many years, kept his carriage and pair there, and
drove them up and down to business every day of his life.

Four-in-hand Forsyte they called him! His T-cart, his horses had been
known from Hyde Park Corner to the Star and Garter. The Duke of Z....
wanted to get hold of them, would have given him double the money, but he
had kept them; know a good thing when you have it, eh? A look of solemn
pride came portentously on his shaven square old face, he rolled his head
in his stand-up collar, like a turkey-cock preening himself.

She was really--a charming woman! He enlarged upon her frock afterwards
to Aunt Juley, who held up her hands at his way of putting it.

Fitted her like a skin--tight as a drum; that was how he liked 'em, all
of a piece, none of your daverdy, scarecrow women! He gazed at Mrs.
Septimus Small, who took after James--long and thin.

"There's style about her," he went on, "fit for a king! And she's so
quiet with it too!"

"She seems to have made quite a conquest of you, any way," drawled Aunt
Hester from her corner.

Swithin heard extremely well when anybody attacked him.

"What's that?" he said. "I know a--pretty--woman when I see one, and all
I can say is, I don't see the young man about that's fit for her; but
perhaps--you--do, come, perhaps--you-do!"

"Oh?" murmured Aunt Hester, "ask Juley!"

Long before they reached Robin Hill, however, the unaccustomed airing had
made him terribly sleepy; he drove with his eyes closed, a life-time of
deportment alone keeping his tall and bulky form from falling askew.

Bosinney, who was watching, came out to meet them, and all three entered
the house together; Swithin in front making play with a stout
gold-mounted Malacca cane, put into his hand by Adolf, for his knees were
feeling the effects of their long stay in the same position. He had
assumed his fur coat, to guard against the draughts of the unfinished
house.

The staircase--he said--was handsome! the baronial style! They would
want some statuary about! He came to a standstill between the columns of
the doorway into the inner court, and held out his cane inquiringly.

What was this to be--this vestibule, or whatever they called it? But
gazing at the skylight, inspiration came to him.

"Ah! the billiard-room!"

When told it was to be a tiled court with plants in the centre, he turned
to Irene:

"Waste this on plants? You take my advice and have a billiard table
here!"

Irene smiled. She had lifted her veil, banding it like a nun's coif
across her forehead, and the smile of her dark eyes below this seemed to
Swithin more charming than ever. He nodded. She would take his advice
he saw.

He had little to say of the drawing or dining-rooms, which he described
as "spacious"; but fell into such raptures as he permitted to a man of
his dignity, in the wine-cellar, to which he descended by stone steps,
Bosinney going first with a light.

"You'll have room here," he said, "for six or seven hundred dozen--a very
pooty little cellar!"

Bosinney having expressed the wish to show them the house from the copse
below, Swithin came to a stop.

"There's a fine view from here," he remarked; "you haven't such a thing
as a chair?"

A chair was brought him from Bosinney's tent.

"You go down," he said blandly; "you two! I'll sit here and look at the
view."

He sat down by the oak tree, in the sun; square and upright, with one
hand stretched out, resting on the nob of his cane, the other planted on
his knee; his fur coat thrown open, his hat, roofing with its flat top
the pale square of his face; his stare, very blank, fixed on the
landscape.

He nodded to them as they went off down through the fields. He was,
indeed, not sorry to be left thus for a quiet moment of reflection. The
air was balmy, not too much heat in the sun; the prospect a fine one, a
remarka.... His head fell a little to one side; he jerked it up and
thought: Odd! He--ah! They were waving to him from the bottom! He put
up his hand, and moved it more than once. They were active--the prospect
was remar.... His head fell to the left, he jerked it up at once; it fell
to the right. It remained there; he was asleep.

And asleep, a sentinel on the--top of the rise, he appeared to rule over
this prospect--remarkable--like some image blocked out by the special
artist, of primeval Forsytes in pagan days, to record the domination of
mind over matter!

And all the unnumbered generations of his yeoman ancestors, wont of a
Sunday to stand akimbo surveying their little plots of land, their grey
unmoving eyes hiding their instinct with its hidden roots of violence,
their instinct for possession to the exclusion of all the world--all
these unnumbered generations seemed to sit there with him on the top of
the rise.

But from him, thus slumbering, his jealous Forsyte spirit travelled far,
into God-knows-what jungle of fancies; with those two young people, to
see what they were doing down there in the copse--in the copse where the
spring was running riot with the scent of sap and bursting buds, the song
of birds innumerable, a carpet of bluebells and sweet growing things, and
the sun caught like gold in the tops of the trees; to see what they were
doing, walking along there so close together on the path that was too
narrow; walking along there so close that they were always touching; to
watch Irene's eyes, like dark thieves, stealing the heart out of the
spring. And a great unseen chaperon, his spirit was there, stopping with
them to look at the little furry corpse of a mole, not dead an hour, with
his mushroom-and-silver coat untouched by the rain or dew; watching over
Irene's bent head, and the soft look of her pitying eyes; and over that
young man's head, gazing at her so hard, so strangely. Walking on with
them, too, across the open space where a wood-cutter had been at work,
where the bluebells were trampled down, and a trunk had swayed and
staggered down from its gashed stump. Climbing it with them, over, and
on to the very edge of the copse, whence there stretched an undiscovered
country, from far away in which came the sounds, 'Cuckoo-cuckoo!'

Silent, standing with them there, and uneasy at their silence! Very
queer, very strange!