The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Galsworthy

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He had been lunching with George Forsyte at the Haversnake.

Bosinney and Irene had arrived before them. They were standing in one of
the long French windows overlooking the river.

Windows that summer were open all day long, and all night too, and day
and night the scents of flowers and trees came in, the hot scent of
parching grass, and the cool scent of the heavy dews.

To the eye of the observant Dartie his two guests did not appear to be
making much running, standing there close together, without a word.
Bosinney was a hungry-looking creature--not much go about him.

He left them to Winifred, however, and busied himself to order the
dinner.

A Forsyte will require good, if not delicate feeding, but a Dartie will
tax the resources of a Crown and Sceptre. Living as he does, from hand
to mouth, nothing is too good for him to eat; and he will eat it. His
drink, too, will need to be carefully provided; there is much drink in
this country 'not good enough' for a Dartie; he will have the best.
Paying for things vicariously, there is no reason why he should stint
himself. To stint yourself is the mark of a fool, not of a Dartie.

The best of everything! No sounder principle on which a man can base his
life, whose father-in-law has a very considerable income, and a
partiality for his grandchildren.

With his not unable eye Dartie had spotted this weakness in James the
very first year after little Publius's arrival (an error); he had
profited by his perspicacity. Four little Darties were now a sort of
perpetual insurance.

The feature of the feast was unquestionably the red mullet. This
delectable fish, brought from a considerable distance in a state of
almost perfect preservation, was first fried, then boned, then served in
ice, with Madeira punch in place of sauce, according to a recipe known to
a few men of the world.

Nothing else calls for remark except the payment of the bill by Dartie.

He had made himself extremely agreeable throughout the meal; his bold,
admiring stare seldom abandoning Irene's face and figure. As he was
obliged to confess to himself, he got no change out of her--she was cool
enough, as cool as her shoulders looked under their veil of creamy lace.
He expected to have caught her out in some little game with Bosinney; but
not a bit of it, she kept up her end remarkably well. As for that
architect chap, he was as glum as a bear with a sore head--Winifred could
barely get a word out of him; he ate nothing, but he certainly took his
liquor, and his face kept getting whiter, and his eyes looked queer.

It was all very amusing.

For Dartie himself was in capital form, and talked freely, with a certain
poignancy, being no fool. He told two or three stories verging on the
improper, a concession to the company, for his stories were not used to
verging. He proposed Irene's health in a mock speech. Nobody drank it,
and Winifred said: "Don't be such a clown, Monty!"

At her suggestion they went after dinner to the public terrace
overlooking the river.

"I should like to see the common people making love," she said, "it's
such fun!"

There were numbers of them walking in the cool, after the day's heat, and
the air was alive with the sound of voices, coarse and loud, or soft as
though murmuring secrets.

It was not long before Winifred's better sense--she was the only Forsyte
present--secured them an empty bench. They sat down in a row. A heavy
tree spread a thick canopy above their heads, and the haze darkened
slowly over the river.

Dartie sat at the end, next to him Irene, then Bosinney, then Winifred.
There was hardly room for four, and the man of the world could feel
Irene's arm crushed against his own; he knew that she could not withdraw
it without seeming rude, and this amused him; he devised every now and
again a movement that would bring her closer still. He thought: 'That
Buccaneer Johnny shan't have it all to himself! It's a pretty tight fit,
certainly!'

From far down below on the dark river came drifting the tinkle of a
mandoline, and voices singing the old round:

'A boat, a boat, unto the ferry, For we'll go over and be merry; And
laugh, and quaff, and drink brown sherry!'

And suddenly the moon appeared, young and tender, floating up on her back
from behind a tree; and as though she had breathed, the air was cooler,
but down that cooler air came always the warm odour of the limes.

Over his cigar Dartie peered round at Bosinney, who was sitting with his
arms crossed, staring straight in front of him, and on his face the look
of a man being tortured.

And Dartie shot a glance at the face between, so veiled by the
overhanging shadow that it was but like a darker piece of the darkness
shaped and breathed on; soft, mysterious, enticing.

A hush had fallen on the noisy terrace, as if all the strollers were
thinking secrets too precious to be spoken.

And Dartie thought: 'Women!'

The glow died above the river, the singing ceased; the young moon hid
behind a tree, and all was dark. He pressed himself against Irene.

He was not alarmed at the shuddering that ran through the limbs he
touched, or at the troubled, scornful look of her eyes. He felt her
trying to draw herself away, and smiled.

It must be confessed that the man of the world had drunk quite as much as
was good for him.

With thick lips parted under his well-curled moustaches, and his bold
eyes aslant upon her, he had the malicious look of a satyr.

Along the pathway of sky between the hedges of the tree tops the stars
clustered forth; like mortals beneath, they seemed to shift and swarm and
whisper. Then on the terrace the buzz broke out once more, and Dartie
thought: 'Ah! he's a poor, hungry-looking devil, that Bosinney!' and
again he pressed himself against Irene.

The movement deserved a better success. She rose, and they all followed
her.

The man of the world was more than ever determined to see what she was
made of. Along the terrace he kept close at her elbow. He had within him
much good wine. There was the long drive home, the long drive and the
warm dark and the pleasant closeness of the hansom cab--with its
insulation from the world devised by some great and good man. That
hungry architect chap might drive with his wife--he wished him joy of
her! And, conscious that his voice was not too steady, he was careful
not to speak; but a smile had become fixed on his thick lips.

They strolled along toward the cabs awaiting them at the farther end.
His plan had the merit of all great plans, an almost brutal simplicity he
would merely keep at her elbow till she got in, and get in quickly after
her.

But when Irene reached the cab she did not get in; she slipped, instead,
to the horse's head. Dartie was not at the moment sufficiently master of
his legs to follow. She stood stroking the horse's nose, and, to his
annoyance, Bosinney was at her side first. She turned and spoke to him
rapidly, in a low voice; the words 'That man' reached Dartie. He stood
stubbornly by the cab step, waiting for her to come back. He knew a
trick worth two of that!

Here, in the lamp-light, his figure (no more than medium height), well
squared in its white evening waistcoat, his light overcoat flung over his
arm, a pink flower in his button-hole, and on his dark face that look of
confident, good-humoured insolence, he was at his best--a thorough man of
the world.

Winifred was already in her cab. Dartie reflected that Bosinney would
have a poorish time in that cab if he didn't look sharp! Suddenly he
received a push which nearly overturned him in the road. Bosinney's
voice hissed in his ear: "I am taking Irene back; do you understand?" He
saw a face white with passion, and eyes that glared at him like a wild
cat's.

"Eh?" he stammered. "What? Not a bit. You take my wife!"

"Get away!" hissed Bosinney--"or I'll throw you into the road!"

Dartie recoiled; he saw as plainly as possible that the fellow meant it.
In the space he made Irene had slipped by, her dress brushed his legs.
Bosinney stepped in after her.

"Go on!" he heard the Buccaneer cry. The cabman flicked his horse. It
sprang forward.

Dartie stood for a moment dumbfounded; then, dashing at the cab where his
wife sat, he scrambled in.

"Drive on!" he shouted to the driver, "and don't you lose sight of that
fellow in front!"

Seated by his wife's side, he burst into imprecations. Calming himself
at last with a supreme effort, he added: "A pretty mess you've made of
it, to let the Buccaneer drive home with her; why on earth couldn't you
keep hold of him? He's mad with love; any fool can see that!"

He drowned Winifred's rejoinder with fresh calls to the Almighty; nor was
it until they reached Barnes that he ceased a Jeremiad, in the course of
which he had abused her, her father, her brother, Irene, Bosinney, the
name of Forsyte, his own children, and cursed the day when he had ever
married.

Winifred, a woman of strong character, let him have his say, at the end
of which he lapsed into sulky silence. His angry eyes never deserted the
back of that cab, which, like a lost chance, haunted the darkness in
front of him.

Fortunately he could not hear Bosinney's passionate pleading--that
pleading which the man of the world's conduct had let loose like a flood;
he could not see Irene shivering, as though some garment had been torn
from her, nor her eyes, black and mournful, like the eyes of a beaten
child. He could not hear Bosinney entreating, entreating, always
entreating; could not hear her sudden, soft weeping, nor see that poor,
hungry-looking devil, awed and trembling, humbly touching her hand.

In Montpellier Square their cabman, following his instructions to the
letter, faithfully drew up behind the cab in front. The Darties saw
Bosinney spring out, and Irene follow, and hasten up the steps with bent
head. She evidently had her key in her hand, for she disappeared at
once. It was impossible to tell whether she had turned to speak to
Bosinney.

The latter came walking past their cab; both husband and wife had an
admirable view of his face in the light of a street lamp. It was working
with violent emotion.

"Good-night, Mr. Bosinney!" called Winifred.

Bosinney started, clawed off his hat, and hurried on. He had obviously
forgotten their existence.

"There!" said Dartie, "did you see the beast's face? What did I say?
Fine games!" He improved the occasion.

There had so clearly been a crisis in the cab that Winifred was unable to
defend her theory.

She said: "I shall say nothing about it. I don't see any use in making a
fuss!"

With that view Dartie at once concurred; looking upon James as a private
preserve, he disapproved of his being disturbed by the troubles of
others.

"Quite right," he said; "let Soames look after himself. He's jolly well
able to!"

Thus speaking, the Darties entered their habitat in Green Street, the
rent of which was paid by James, and sought a well-earned rest. The hour
was midnight, and no Forsytes remained abroad in the streets to spy out
Bosinney's wanderings; to see him return and stand against the rails of
the Square garden, back from the glow of the street lamp; to see him
stand there in the shadow of trees, watching the house where in the dark
was hidden she whom he would have given the world to see for a single
minute--she who was now to him the breath of the lime-trees, the meaning
of the light and the darkness, the very beating of his own heart.




CHAPTER X

DIAGNOSIS OF A FORSYTE

It is in the nature of a Forsyte to be ignorant that he is a Forsyte; but
young Jolyon was well aware of being one. He had not known it till after
the decisive step which had made him an outcast; since then the knowledge
had been with him continually. He felt it throughout his alliance,
throughout all his dealings with his second wife, who was emphatically
not a Forsyte.

He knew that if he had not possessed in great measure the eye for what he
wanted, the tenacity to hold on to it, the sense of the folly of wasting
that for which he had given so big a price--in other words, the 'sense of
property' he could never have retained her (perhaps never would have
desired to retain her) with him through all the financial troubles,
slights, and misconstructions of those fifteen years; never have induced
her to marry him on the death of his first wife; never have lived it all
through, and come up, as it were, thin, but smiling.

He was one of those men who, seated cross-legged like miniature Chinese
idols in the cages of their own hearts, are ever smiling at themselves a
doubting smile. Not that this smile, so intimate and eternal, interfered
with his actions, which, like his chin and his temperament, were quite a
peculiar blend of softness and determination.

He was conscious, too, of being a Forsyte in his work, that painting of
water-colours to which he devoted so much energy, always with an eye on
himself, as though he could not take so unpractical a pursuit quite
seriously, and always with a certain queer uneasiness that he did not
make more money at it.

It was, then, this consciousness of what it meant to be a Forsyte, that
made him receive the following letter from old Jolyon, with a mixture of
sympathy and disgust:

'SHELDRAKE HOUSE,
'BROADSTAIRS,

'July 1. 'MY DEAR JO,'

(The Dad's handwriting had altered very little in the thirty odd years
that he remembered it.)

'We have been here now a fortnight, and have had good weather on the
whole. The air is bracing, but my liver is out of order, and I shall be
glad enough to get back to town. I cannot say much for June, her health
and spirits are very indifferent, and I don't see what is to come of it.
She says nothing, but it is clear that she is harping on this engagement,
which is an engagement and no engagement, and--goodness knows what. I
have grave doubts whether she ought to be allowed to return to London in
the present state of affairs, but she is so self-willed that she might
take it into her head to come up at any moment. The fact is someone
ought to speak to Bosinney and ascertain what he means. I'm afraid of
this myself, for I should certainly rap him over the knuckles, but I
thought that you, knowing him at the Club, might put in a word, and get
to ascertain what the fellow is about. You will of course in no way
commit June. I shall be glad to hear from you in the course of a few
days whether you have succeeded in gaining any information. The
situation is very distressing to me, I worry about it at night.

With my love to Jolly and Holly.
'I am,
'Your affect. father,
'JOLYON FORSYTE.'

Young Jolyon pondered this letter so long and seriously that his wife
noticed his preoccupation, and asked him what was the matter. He
replied: "Nothing."

It was a fixed principle with him never to allude to June. She might
take alarm, he did not know what she might think; he hastened, therefore,
to banish from his manner all traces of absorption, but in this he was
about as successful as his father would have been, for he had inherited
all old Jolyon's transparency in matters of domestic finesse; and young
Mrs. Jolyon, busying herself over the affairs of the house, went about
with tightened lips, stealing at him unfathomable looks.

He started for the Club in the afternoon with the letter in his pocket,
and without having made up his mind.

To sound a man as to 'his intentions' was peculiarly unpleasant to him;
nor did his own anomalous position diminish this unpleasantness. It was
so like his family, so like all the people they knew and mixed with, to
enforce what they called their rights over a man, to bring him up to the
mark; so like them to carry their business principles into their private
relations.

And how that phrase in the letter--'You will, of course, in no way commit
June'--gave the whole thing away.

Yet the letter, with the personal grievance, the concern for June, the
'rap over the knuckles,' was all so natural. No wonder his father wanted
to know what Bosinney meant, no wonder he was angry.

It was difficult to refuse! But why give the thing to him to do? That
was surely quite unbecoming; but so long as a Forsyte got what he was
after, he was not too particular about the means, provided appearances
were saved.

How should he set about it, or how refuse? Both seemed impossible. So,
young Jolyon!

He arrived at the Club at three o'clock, and the first person he saw was
Bosinney himself, seated in a corner, staring out of the window.

Young Jolyon sat down not far off, and began nervously to reconsider his
position. He looked covertly at Bosinney sitting there unconscious. He
did not know him very well, and studied him attentively for perhaps the
first time; an unusual looking man, unlike in dress, face, and manner to
most of the other members of the Club--young Jolyon himself, however
different he had become in mood and temper, had always retained the neat
reticence of Forsyte appearance. He alone among Forsytes was ignorant of
Bosinney's nickname. The man was unusual, not eccentric, but unusual; he
looked worn, too, haggard, hollow in the cheeks beneath those broad, high
cheekbones, though without any appearance of ill-health, for he was
strongly built, with curly hair that seemed to show all the vitality of a
fine constitution.

Something in his face and attitude touched young Jolyon. He knew what
suffering was like, and this man looked as if he were suffering.

He got up and touched his arm.

Bosinney started, but exhibited no sign of embarrassment on seeing who it
was.

Young Jolyon sat down.

"I haven't seen you for a long time," he said. "How are you getting on
with my cousin's house?"

"It'll be finished in about a week."

"I congratulate you!"

"Thanks--I don't know that it's much of a subject for congratulation."

"No?" queried young Jolyon; "I should have thought you'd be glad to get a
long job like that off your hands; but I suppose you feel it much as I do
when I part with a picture--a sort of child?"

He looked kindly at Bosinney.

"Yes," said the latter more cordially, "it goes out from you and there's
an end of it. I didn't know you painted."

"Only water-colours; I can't say I believe in my work."

"Don't believe in it? There--how can you do it? Work's no use unless
you believe in it!"

"Good," said young Jolyon; "it's exactly what I've always said.
By-the-bye, have you noticed that whenever one says 'Good,' one always
adds 'it's exactly what I've always said'! But if you ask me how I do
it, I answer, because I'm a Forsyte."

"A Forsyte! I never thought of you as one!"

"A Forsyte," replied young Jolyon, "is not an uncommon animal. There are
hundreds among the members of this Club. Hundreds out there in the
streets; you meet them wherever you go!"

"And how do you tell them, may I ask?" said Bosinney.

"By their sense of property. A Forsyte takes a practical--one might say
a commonsense--view of things, and a practical view of things is based
fundamentally on a sense of property. A Forsyte, you will notice, never
gives himself away."

"Joking?"

Young Jolyon's eye twinkled.

"Not much. As a Forsyte myself, I have no business to talk. But I'm a
kind of thoroughbred mongrel; now, there's no mistaking you: You're as
different from me as I am from my Uncle James, who is the perfect
specimen of a Forsyte. His sense of property is extreme, while you have
practically none. Without me in between, you would seem like a different
species. I'm the missing link. We are, of course, all of us the slaves
of property, and I admit that it's a question of degree, but what I call
a 'Forsyte' is a man who is decidedly more than less a slave of property.
He knows a good thing, he knows a safe thing, and his grip on
property--it doesn't matter whether it be wives, houses, money, or
reputation--is his hall-mark."

"Ah!" murmured Bosinney. "You should patent the word."

"I should like," said young Jolyon, "to lecture on it:

"Properties and quality of a Forsyte: This little animal, disturbed by
the ridicule of his own sort, is unaffected in his motions by the
laughter of strange creatures (you or I). Hereditarily disposed to
myopia, he recognises only the persons of his own species, amongst which
he passes an existence of competitive tranquillity."

"You talk of them," said Bosinney, "as if they were half England."

"They are," repeated young Jolyon, "half England, and the better half,
too, the safe half, the three per cent. half, the half that counts. It's
their wealth and security that makes everything possible; makes your art
possible, makes literature, science, even religion, possible. Without
Forsytes, who believe in none of these things, and habitats but turn them
all to use, where should we be? My dear sir, the Forsytes are the
middlemen, the commercials, the pillars of society, the cornerstones of
convention; everything that is admirable!"

"I don't know whether I catch your drift," said Bosinney, "but I fancy
there are plenty of Forsytes, as you call them, in my profession."

"Certainly," replied young Jolyon. "The great majority of architects,
painters, or writers have no principles, like any other Forsytes. Art,
literature, religion, survive by virtue of the few cranks who really
believe in such things, and the many Forsytes who make a commercial use
of them. At a low estimate, three-fourths of our Royal Academicians are
Forsytes, seven-eighths of our novelists, a large proportion of the
press. Of science I can't speak; they are magnificently represented in
religion; in the House of Commons perhaps more numerous than anywhere;
the aristocracy speaks for itself. But I'm not laughing. It is
dangerous to go against the majority and what a majority!" He fixed his
eyes on Bosinney: "It's dangerous to let anything carry you away--a
house, a picture, a--woman!"

They looked at each other.--And, as though he had done that which no
Forsyte did--given himself away, young Jolyon drew into his shell.
Bosinney broke the silence.

"Why do you take your own people as the type?" said he.

"My people," replied young Jolyon, "are not very extreme, and they have
their own private peculiarities, like every other family, but they
possess in a remarkable degree those two qualities which are the real
tests of a Forsyte--the power of never being able to give yourself up to
anything soul and body, and the 'sense of property'."

Bosinney smiled: "How about the big one, for instance?"

"Do you mean Swithin?" asked young Jolyon. "Ah! in Swithin there's
something primeval still. The town and middle-class life haven't
digested him yet. All the old centuries of farm work and brute force
have settled in him, and there they've stuck, for all he's so
distinguished."

Bosinney seemed to ponder. "Well, you've hit your cousin Soames off to
the life," he said suddenly. "He'll never blow his brains out."

Young Jolyon shot at him a penetrating glance.

"No," he said; "he won't. That's why he's to be reckoned with. Look out
for their grip! It's easy to laugh, but don't mistake me. It doesn't do
to despise a Forsyte; it doesn't do to disregard them!"

"Yet you've done it yourself!"

Young Jolyon acknowledged the hit by losing his smile.

"You forget," he said with a queer pride, "I can hold on, too--I'm a
Forsyte myself. We're all in the path of great forces. The man who
leaves the shelter of the wall--well--you know what I mean. I don't," he
ended very low, as though uttering a threat, "recommend every man
to-go-my-way. It depends."

The colour rushed into Bosinney's face, but soon receded, leaving it
sallow-brown as before. He gave a short laugh, that left his lips fixed
in a queer, fierce smile; his eyes mocked young Jolyon.

"Thanks," he said. "It's deuced kind of you. But you're not the only
chaps that can hold on." He rose.

Young Jolyon looked after him as he walked away, and, resting his head on
his hand, sighed.

In the drowsy, almost empty room the only sounds were the rustle of
newspapers, the scraping of matches being struck. He stayed a long time
without moving, living over again those days when he, too, had sat long
hours watching the clock, waiting for the minutes to pass--long hours
full of the torments of uncertainty, and of a fierce, sweet aching; and
the slow, delicious agony of that season came back to him with its old
poignancy. The sight of Bosinney, with his haggard face, and his
restless eyes always wandering to the clock, had roused in him a pity,
with which was mingled strange, irresistible envy.

He knew the signs so well. Whither was he going--to what sort of fate?
What kind of woman was it who was drawing him to her by that magnetic
force which no consideration of honour, no principle, no interest could
withstand; from which the only escape was flight.

Flight! But why should Bosinney fly? A man fled when he was in danger
of destroying hearth and home, when there were children, when he felt
himself trampling down ideals, breaking something. But here, so he had
heard, it was all broken to his hand.