The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Galsworthy

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Putting the bowl pettishly down on the piano, he let his eyes wander to
the group by the door.

"It's my opinion," he said unexpectedly, "that it's just as well as it
is."

Aunt Ann did not ask him to explain this strange utterance. She knew
what he was thinking. If Irene had no money she would not be so foolish
as to do anything wrong; for they said--they said--she had been asking
for a separate room; but, of course, Soames had not....

James interrupted her reverie:

"But where," he asked, "was Timothy? Hadn't he come with them?"

Through Aunt Ann's compressed lips a tender smile forced its way:

"No, he didn't think it wise, with so much of this diphtheria about; and
he so liable to take things."

James answered:

"Well, HE takes good care of himself. I can't afford to take the care of
myself that he does."

Nor was it easy to say which, of admiration, envy, or contempt, was
dominant in that remark.

Timothy, indeed, was seldom seen. The baby of the family, a publisher by
profession, he had some years before, when business was at full tide,
scented out the stagnation which, indeed, had not yet come, but which
ultimately, as all agreed, was bound to set in, and, selling his share in
a firm engaged mainly in the production of religious books, had invested
the quite conspicuous proceeds in three per cent. consols. By this act
he had at once assumed an isolated position, no other Forsyte being
content with less than four per cent. for his money; and this isolation
had slowly and surely undermined a spirit perhaps better than commonly
endowed with caution. He had become almost a myth--a kind of incarnation
of security haunting the background of the Forsyte universe. He had
never committed the imprudence of marrying, or encumbering himself in any
way with children.

James resumed, tapping the piece of china:

"This isn't real old Worcester. I s'pose Jolyon's told you something
about the young man. From all I can learn, he's got no business, no
income, and no connection worth speaking of; but then, I know
nothing--nobody tells me anything."

Aunt Ann shook her head. Over her square-chinned, aquiline old face a
trembling passed; the spidery fingers of her hands pressed against each
other and interlaced, as though she were subtly recharging her will.

The eldest by some years of all the Forsytes, she held a peculiar
position amongst them. Opportunists and egotists one and all--though
not, indeed, more so than their neighbours--they quailed before her
incorruptible figure, and, when opportunities were too strong, what could
they do but avoid her!

Twisting his long, thin legs, James went on:

"Jolyon, he will have his own way. He's got no children"--and stopped,
recollecting the continued existence of old Jolyon's son, young Jolyon,
June's father, who had made such a mess of it, and done for himself by
deserting his wife and child and running away with that foreign
governess. "Well," he resumed hastily, "if he likes to do these things,
I s'pose he can afford to. Now, what's he going to give her? I s'pose
he'll give her a thousand a year; he's got nobody else to leave his money
to."

He stretched out his hand to meet that of a dapper, clean-shaven man,
with hardly a hair on his head, a long, broken nose, full lips, and cold
grey eyes under rectangular brows.

"Well, Nick," he muttered, "how are you?"

Nicholas Forsyte, with his bird-like rapidity and the look of a
preternaturally sage schoolboy (he had made a large fortune, quite
legitimately, out of the companies of which he was a director), placed
within that cold palm the tips of his still colder fingers and hastily
withdrew them.

"I'm bad," he said, pouting--"been bad all the week; don't sleep at
night. The doctor can't tell why. He's a clever fellow, or I shouldn't
have him, but I get nothing out of him but bills."

"Doctors!" said James, coming down sharp on his words: "I've had all the
doctors in London for one or another of us. There's no satisfaction to
be got out of them; they'll tell you anything. There's Swithin, now.
What good have they done him? There he is; he's bigger than ever; he's
enormous; they can't get his weight down. Look at him!"

Swithin Forsyte, tall, square, and broad, with a chest like a pouter
pigeon's in its plumage of bright waistcoats, came strutting towards
them.

"Er--how are you?" he said in his dandified way, aspirating the 'h'
strongly (this difficult letter was almost absolutely safe in his
keeping)--"how are you?"

Each brother wore an air of aggravation as he looked at the other two,
knowing by experience that they would try to eclipse his ailments.

"We were just saying," said James, "that you don't get any thinner."

Swithin protruded his pale round eyes with the effort of hearing.

"Thinner? I'm in good case," he said, leaning a little forward, "not one
of your thread-papers like you!"

But, afraid of losing the expansion of his chest, he leaned back again
into a state of immobility, for he prized nothing so highly as a
distinguished appearance.

Aunt Ann turned her old eyes from one to the other. Indulgent and severe
was her look. In turn the three brothers looked at Ann. She was getting
shaky. Wonderful woman! Eighty-six if a day; might live another ten
years, and had never been strong. Swithin and James, the twins, were only
seventy-five, Nicholas a mere baby of seventy or so. All were strong,
and the inference was comforting. Of all forms of property their
respective healths naturally concerned them most.

"I'm very well in myself," proceeded James, "but my nerves are out of
order. The least thing worries me to death. I shall have to go to
Bath."

"Bath!" said Nicholas. "I've tried Harrogate. That's no good. What I
want is sea air. There's nothing like Yarmouth. Now, when I go there I
sleep...."

"My liver's very bad," interrupted Swithin slowly. "Dreadful pain here;"
and he placed his hand on his right side.

"Want of exercise," muttered James, his eyes on the china. He quickly
added: "I get a pain there, too."

Swithin reddened, a resemblance to a turkey-cock coming upon his old
face.

"Exercise!" he said. "I take plenty: I never use the lift at the Club."

"I didn't know," James hurried out. "I know nothing about anybody;
nobody tells me anything...."

Swithin fixed him with a stare:

"What do you do for a pain there?"

James brightened.

"I take a compound...."

"How are you, uncle?"

June stood before him, her resolute small face raised from her little
height to his great height, and her hand outheld.

The brightness faded from James's visage.

"How are you?" he said, brooding over her. "So you're going to Wales
to-morrow to visit your young man's aunts? You'll have a lot of rain
there. This isn't real old Worcester." He tapped the bowl. "Now, that
set I gave your mother when she married was the genuine thing."

June shook hands one by one with her three great-uncles, and turned to
Aunt Ann. A very sweet look had come into the old lady's face, she
kissed the girl's check with trembling fervour.

"Well, my dear," she said, "and so you're going for a whole month!"

The girl passed on, and Aunt Ann looked after her slim little figure.
The old lady's round, steel grey eyes, over which a film like a bird's
was beginning to come, followed her wistfully amongst the bustling crowd,
for people were beginning to say good-bye; and her finger-tips, pressing
and pressing against each other, were busy again with the recharging of
her will against that inevitable ultimate departure of her own.

'Yes,' she thought, 'everybody's been most kind; quite a lot of people
come to congratulate her. She ought to be very happy.' Amongst the
throng of people by the door, the well-dressed throng drawn from the
families of lawyers and doctors, from the Stock Exchange, and all the
innumerable avocations of the upper-middle class--there were only some
twenty percent of Forsytes; but to Aunt Ann they seemed all Forsytes--and
certainly there was not much difference--she saw only her own flesh and
blood. It was her world, this family, and she knew no other, had never
perhaps known any other. All their little secrets, illnesses,
engagements, and marriages, how they were getting on, and whether they
were making money--all this was her property, her delight, her life;
beyond this only a vague, shadowy mist of facts and persons of no real
significance. This it was that she would have to lay down when it came
to her turn to die; this which gave to her that importance, that secret
self-importance, without which none of us can bear to live; and to this
she clung wistfully, with a greed that grew each day! If life were
slipping away from her, this she would retain to the end.

She thought of June's father, young Jolyon, who had run away with that
foreign girl. And what a sad blow to his father and to them all. Such a
promising young fellow! A sad blow, though there had been no public
scandal, most fortunately, Jo's wife seeking for no divorce! A long time
ago! And when June's mother died, six years ago, Jo had married that
woman, and they had two children now, so she had heard. Still, he had
forfeited his right to be there, had cheated her of the complete
fulfilment of her family pride, deprived her of the rightful pleasure of
seeing and kissing him of whom she had been so proud, such a promising
young fellow! The thought rankled with the bitterness of a
long-inflicted injury in her tenacious old heart. A little water stood
in her eyes. With a handkerchief of the finest lawn she wiped them
stealthily.

"Well, Aunt Ann?" said a voice behind.

Soames Forsyte, flat-shouldered, clean-shaven, flat-cheeked,
flat-waisted, yet with something round and secret about his whole
appearance, looked downwards and aslant at Aunt Ann, as though trying to
see through the side of his own nose.

"And what do you think of the engagement?" he asked.

Aunt Ann's eyes rested on him proudly; of all the nephews since young
Jolyon's departure from the family nest, he was now her favourite, for
she recognised in him a sure trustee of the family soul that must so soon
slip beyond her keeping.

"Very nice for the young man," she said; "and he's a good-looking young
fellow; but I doubt if he's quite the right lover for dear June."

Soames touched the edge of a gold-lacquered lustre.

"She'll tame him," he said, stealthily wetting his finger and rubbing it
on the knobby bulbs. "That's genuine old lacquer; you can't get it
nowadays. It'd do well in a sale at Jobson's." He spoke with relish, as
though he felt that he was cheering up his old aunt. It was seldom he
was so confidential. "I wouldn't mind having it myself," he added; "you
can always get your price for old lacquer."

"You're so clever with all those things," said Aunt Ann. "And how is
dear Irene?"

Soames's smile died.

"Pretty well," he said. "Complains she can't sleep; she sleeps a great
deal better than I do," and he looked at his wife, who was talking to
Bosinney by the door.

Aunt Ann sighed.

"Perhaps," she said, "it will be just as well for her not to see so much
of June. She's such a decided character, dear June!"

Soames flushed; his flushes passed rapidly over his flat cheeks and
centered between his eyes, where they remained, the stamp of disturbing
thoughts.

"I don't know what she sees in that little flibbertigibbet," he burst
out, but noticing that they were no longer alone, he turned and again
began examining the lustre.

"They tell me Jolyon's bought another house," said his father's voice
close by; "he must have a lot of money--he must have more money than he
knows what to do with! Montpellier Square, they say; close to Soames!
They never told me, Irene never tells me anything!"

"Capital position, not two minutes from me," said the voice of Swithin,
"and from my rooms I can drive to the Club in eight."

The position of their houses was of vital importance to the Forsytes, nor
was this remarkable, since the whole spirit of their success was embodied
therein.

Their father, of farming stock, had come from Dorsetshire near the
beginning of the century.

'Superior Dosset Forsyte, as he was called by his intimates, had been a
stonemason by trade, and risen to the position of a master-builder.

Towards the end of his life he moved to London, where, building on until
he died, he was buried at Highgate. He left over thirty thousand pounds
between his ten children. Old Jolyon alluded to him, if at all, as 'A
hard, thick sort of man; not much refinement about him.' The second
generation of Forsytes felt indeed that he was not greatly to their
credit. The only aristocratic trait they could find in his character was
a habit of drinking Madeira.

Aunt Hester, an authority on family history, described him thus: "I don't
recollect that he ever did anything; at least, not in my time. He was
er--an owner of houses, my dear. His hair about your Uncle Swithin's
colour; rather a square build. Tall? No--not very tall" (he had been
five feet five, with a mottled face); "a fresh-coloured man. I remember
he used to drink Madeira; but ask your Aunt Ann. What was his father?
He--er--had to do with the land down in Dorsetshire, by the sea."

James once went down to see for himself what sort of place this was that
they had come from. He found two old farms, with a cart track rutted
into the pink earth, leading down to a mill by the beach; a little grey
church with a buttressed outer wall, and a smaller and greyer chapel.
The stream which worked the mill came bubbling down in a dozen rivulets,
and pigs were hunting round that estuary. A haze hovered over the
prospect. Down this hollow, with their feet deep in the mud and their
faces towards the sea, it appeared that the primeval Forsytes had been
content to walk Sunday after Sunday for hundreds of years.

Whether or no James had cherished hopes of an inheritance, or of
something rather distinguished to be found down there, he came back to
town in a poor way, and went about with a pathetic attempt at making the
best of a bad job.

"There's very little to be had out of that," he said; "regular country
little place, old as the hills...."

Its age was felt to be a comfort. Old Jolyon, in whom a desperate
honesty welled up at times, would allude to his ancestors as: "Yeomen--I
suppose very small beer." Yet he would repeat the word 'yeomen' as if it
afforded him consolation.

They had all done so well for themselves, these Forsytes, that they were
all what is called 'of a certain position.' They had shares in all sorts
of things, not as yet--with the exception of Timothy--in consols, for
they had no dread in life like that of 3 per cent. for their money. They
collected pictures, too, and were supporters of such charitable
institutions as might be beneficial to their sick domestics. From their
father, the builder, they inherited a talent for bricks and mortar.
Originally, perhaps, members of some primitive sect, they were now in the
natural course of things members of the Church of England, and caused
their wives and children to attend with some regularity the more
fashionable churches of the Metropolis. To have doubted their
Christianity would have caused them both pain and surprise. Some of them
paid for pews, thus expressing in the most practical form their sympathy
with the teachings of Christ.

Their residences, placed at stated intervals round the park, watched like
sentinels, lest the fair heart of this London, where their desires were
fixed, should slip from their clutches, and leave them lower in their own
estimations.

There was old Jolyon in Stanhope Place; the Jameses in Park Lane; Swithin
in the lonely glory of orange and blue chambers in Hyde Park Mansions--he
had never married, not he--the Soamses in their nest off Knightsbridge;
the Rogers in Prince's Gardens (Roger was that remarkable Forsyte who had
conceived and carried out the notion of bringing up his four sons to a
new profession. "Collect house property, nothing like it," he would say;
"I never did anything else").

The Haymans again--Mrs. Hayman was the one married Forsyte sister--in a
house high up on Campden Hill, shaped like a giraffe, and so tall that it
gave the observer a crick in the neck; the Nicholases in Ladbroke Grove,
a spacious abode and a great bargain; and last, but not least, Timothy's
on the Bayswater Road, where Ann, and Juley, and Hester, lived under his
protection.

But all this time James was musing, and now he inquired of his host and
brother what he had given for that house in Montpellier Square. He
himself had had his eye on a house there for the last two years, but they
wanted such a price.

Old Jolyon recounted the details of his purchase.

"Twenty-two years to run?" repeated James; "The very house I was
after--you've given too much for it!"

Old Jolyon frowned.

"It's not that I want it," said James hastily; it wouldn't suit my
purpose at that price. Soames knows the house, well--he'll tell you it's
too dear--his opinion's worth having."

"I don't," said old Jolyon, "care a fig for his opinion."

"Well," murmured James, "you will have your own way--it's a good opinion.
Good-bye! We're going to drive down to Hurlingham. They tell me June's
going to Wales. You'll be lonely tomorrow. What'll you do with yourself?
You'd better come and dine with us!"

Old Jolyon refused. He went down to the front door and saw them into
their barouche, and twinkled at them, having already forgotten his
spleen--Mrs. James facing the horses, tall and majestic with auburn hair;
on her left, Irene--the two husbands, father and son, sitting forward, as
though they expected something, opposite their wives. Bobbing and
bounding upon the spring cushions, silent, swaying to each motion of
their chariot, old Jolyon watched them drive away under the sunlight.

During the drive the silence was broken by Mrs. James.

"Did you ever see such a collection of rumty-too people?"

Soames, glancing at her beneath his eyelids, nodded, and he saw Irene
steal at him one of her unfathomable looks. It is likely enough that
each branch of the Forsyte family made that remark as they drove away
from old Jolyon's 'At Home!'

Amongst the last of the departing guests the fourth and fifth brothers,
Nicholas and Roger, walked away together, directing their steps alongside
Hyde Park towards the Praed Street Station of the Underground. Like all
other Forsytes of a certain age they kept carriages of their own, and
never took cabs if by any means they could avoid it.

The day was bright, the trees of the Park in the full beauty of mid-June
foliage; the brothers did not seem to notice phenomena, which
contributed, nevertheless, to the jauntiness of promenade and
conversation.

"Yes," said Roger, "she's a good-lookin' woman, that wife of Soames's.
I'm told they don't get on."

This brother had a high forehead, and the freshest colour of any of the
Forsytes; his light grey eyes measured the street frontage of the houses
by the way, and now and then he would level his, umbrella and take a
'lunar,' as he expressed it, of the varying heights.

"She'd no money," replied Nicholas.

He himself had married a good deal of money, of which, it being then the
golden age before the Married Women's Property Act, he had mercifully
been enabled to make a successful use.

"What was her father?"

"Heron was his name, a Professor, so they tell me."

Roger shook his head.

"There's no money in that," he said.

"They say her mother's father was cement."

Roger's face brightened.

"But he went bankrupt," went on Nicholas.

"Ah!" exclaimed Roger, "Soames will have trouble with her; you mark my
words, he'll have trouble--she's got a foreign look."

Nicholas licked his lips.

"She's a pretty woman," and he waved aside a crossing-sweeper.

"How did he get hold of her?" asked Roger presently. "She must cost him
a pretty penny in dress!"

"Ann tells me," replied Nicholas, "he was half-cracked about her. She
refused him five times. James, he's nervous about it, I can see."

"Ah!" said Roger again; "I'm sorry for James; he had trouble with
Dartie." His pleasant colour was heightened by exercise, he swung his
umbrella to the level of his eye more frequently than ever. Nicholas's
face also wore a pleasant look.

"Too pale for me," he said, "but her figures capital!"

Roger made no reply.

"I call her distinguished-looking," he said at last--it was the highest
praise in the Forsyte vocabulary. "That young Bosinney will never do any
good for himself. They say at Burkitt's he's one of these artistic
chaps--got an idea of improving English architecture; there's no money in
that! I should like to hear what Timothy would say to it."

They entered the station.

"What class are you going? I go second."

"No second for me," said Nicholas;--"you never know what you may catch."

He took a first-class ticket to Notting Hill Gate; Roger a second to
South Kensington. The train coming in a minute later, the two brothers
parted and entered their respective compartments. Each felt aggrieved
that the other had not modified his habits to secure his society a little
longer; but as Roger voiced it in his thoughts:

'Always a stubborn beggar, Nick!'

And as Nicholas expressed it to himself:

'Cantankerous chap Roger--always was!'

There was little sentimentality about the Forsytes. In that great
London, which they had conquered and become merged in, what time had they
to be sentimental?




CHAPTER II

OLD JOLYON GOES TO THE OPERA

At five o'clock the following day old Jolyon sat alone, a cigar between
his lips, and on a table by his side a cup of tea. He was tired, and
before he had finished his cigar he fell asleep. A fly settled on his
hair, his breathing sounded heavy in the drowsy silence, his upper lip
under the white moustache puffed in and out. From between the fingers of
his veined and wrinkled hand the cigar, dropping on the empty hearth,
burned itself out.

The gloomy little study, with windows of stained glass to exclude the
view, was full of dark green velvet and heavily-carved mahogany--a suite
of which old Jolyon was wont to say: 'Shouldn't wonder if it made a big
price some day!'

It was pleasant to think that in the after life he could get more for
things than he had given.

In the rich brown atmosphere peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a
Forsyte, the Rembrandtesque effect of his great head, with its white
hair, against the cushion of his high-backed seat, was spoiled by the
moustache, which imparted a somewhat military look to his face. An old
clock that had been with him since before his marriage forty years ago
kept with its ticking a jealous record of the seconds slipping away
forever from its old master.

He had never cared for this room, hardly going into it from one year's
end to another, except to take cigars from the Japanese cabinet in the
corner, and the room now had its revenge.

His temples, curving like thatches over the hollows beneath, his
cheek-bones and chin, all were sharpened in his sleep, and there had come
upon his face the confession that he was an old man.

He woke. June had gone! James had said he would be lonely. James had
always been a poor thing. He recollected with satisfaction that he had
bought that house over James's head.

Serve him right for sticking at the price; the only thing the fellow
thought of was money. Had he given too much, though? It wanted a lot of
doing to--He dared say he would want all his money before he had done
with this affair of June's. He ought never to have allowed the
engagement. She had met this Bosinney at the house of Baynes, Baynes and
Bildeboy, the architects. He believed that Baynes, whom he knew--a bit
of an old woman--was the young man's uncle by marriage. After that she'd
been always running after him; and when she took a thing into her head
there was no stopping her. She was continually taking up with 'lame
ducks' of one sort or another. This fellow had no money, but she must
needs become engaged to him--a harumscarum, unpractical chap, who would
get himself into no end of difficulties.

She had come to him one day in her slap-dash way and told him; and, as if
it were any consolation, she had added:

"He's so splendid; he's often lived on cocoa for a week!"

"And he wants you to live on cocoa too?"

"Oh no; he is getting into the swim now."

Old Jolyon had taken his cigar from under his white moustaches, stained
by coffee at the edge, and looked at her, that little slip of a thing who
had got such a grip of his heart. He knew more about 'swims' than his
granddaughter. But she, having clasped her hands on his knees, rubbed
her chin against him, making a sound like a purring cat. And, knocking
the ash off his cigar, he had exploded in nervous desperation:

"You're all alike: you won't be satisfied till you've got what you want.
If you must come to grief, you must; I wash my hands of it."

So, he had washed his hands of it, making the condition that they should
not marry until Bosinney had at least four hundred a year.