The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Galsworthy

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


Turning on the gas, he heaved a deep sigh, as though amongst these
treasures, the backs of which confronted him in stacks, around the little
room, he had found at length his peace of mind. He went straight up to
the greatest treasure of them all, an undoubted Turner, and, carrying it
to the easel, turned its face to the light. There had been a movement in
Turners, but he had not been able to make up his mind to part with it.
He stood for a long time, his pale, clean-shaven face poked forward above
his stand-up collar, looking at the picture as though he were adding it
up; a wistful expression came into his eyes; he found, perhaps, that it
came to too little. He took it down from the easel to put it back
against the wall; but, in crossing the room, stopped, for he seemed to
hear sobbing.

It was nothing--only the sort of thing that had been bothering him in the
morning. And soon after, putting the high guard before the blazing fire,
he stole downstairs.

Fresh for the morrow! was his thought. It was long before he went to
sleep....

It is now to George Forsyte that the mind must turn for light on the
events of that fog-engulfed afternoon.

The wittiest and most sportsmanlike of the Forsytes had passed the day
reading a novel in the paternal mansion at Princes' Gardens. Since a
recent crisis in his financial affairs he had been kept on parole by
Roger, and compelled to reside 'at home.'

Towards five o'clock he went out, and took train at South Kensington
Station (for everyone to-day went Underground). His intention was to
dine, and pass the evening playing billiards at the Red Pottle--that
unique hostel, neither club, hotel, nor good gilt restaurant.

He got out at Charing Cross, choosing it in preference to his more usual
St. James's Park, that he might reach Jermyn Street by better lighted
ways.

On the platform his eyes--for in combination with a composed and
fashionable appearance, George had sharp eyes, and was always on the
look-out for fillips to his sardonic humour--his eyes were attracted by a
man, who, leaping from a first-class compartment, staggered rather than
walked towards the exit.

'So ho, my bird!' said George to himself; 'why, it's "the Buccaneer!"'
and he put his big figure on the trail. Nothing afforded him greater
amusement than a drunken man.

Bosinney, who wore a slouch hat, stopped in front of him, spun around,
and rushed back towards the carriage he had just left. He was too late.
A porter caught him by the coat; the train was already moving on.

George's practised glance caught sight of the face of a lady clad in a
grey fur coat at the carriage window. It was Mrs. Soames--and George
felt that this was interesting!

And now he followed Bosinney more closely than ever--up the stairs, past
the ticket collector into the street. In that progress, however, his
feelings underwent a change; no longer merely curious and amused, he felt
sorry for the poor fellow he was shadowing. 'The Buccaneer' was not
drunk, but seemed to be acting under the stress of violent emotion; he
was talking to himself, and all that George could catch were the words
"Oh, God!" Nor did he appear to know what he was doing, or where going;
but stared, hesitated, moved like a man out of his mind; and from being
merely a joker in search of amusement, George felt that he must see the
poor chap through.

He had 'taken the knock'--'taken the knock!' And he wondered what on
earth Mrs. Soames had been saying, what on earth she had been telling him
in the railway carriage. She had looked bad enough herself! It made
George sorry to think of her travelling on with her trouble all alone.

He followed close behind Bosinney's elbow--tall, burly figure, saying
nothing, dodging warily--and shadowed him out into the fog.

There was something here beyond a jest! He kept his head admirably, in
spite of some excitement, for in addition to compassion, the instincts of
the chase were roused within him.

Bosinney walked right out into the thoroughfare--a vast muffled
blackness, where a man could not see six paces before him; where, all
around, voices or whistles mocked the sense of direction; and sudden
shapes came rolling slow upon them; and now and then a light showed like
a dim island in an infinite dark sea.

And fast into this perilous gulf of night walked Bosinney, and fast after
him walked George. If the fellow meant to put his 'twopenny' under a
'bus, he would stop it if he could! Across the street and back the
hunted creature strode, not groping as other men were groping in that
gloom, but driven forward as though the faithful George behind wielded a
knout; and this chase after a haunted man began to have for George the
strangest fascination.

But it was now that the affair developed in a way which ever afterwards
caused it to remain green in his mind. Brought to a stand-still in the
fog, he heard words which threw a sudden light on these proceedings.
What Mrs. Soames had said to Bosinney in the train was now no longer
dark. George understood from those mutterings that Soames had exercised
his rights over an estranged and unwilling wife in the greatest--the
supreme act of property.

His fancy wandered in the fields of this situation; it impressed him; he
guessed something of the anguish, the sexual confusion and horror in
Bosinney's heart. And he thought: 'Yes, it's a bit thick! I don't
wonder the poor fellow is half-cracked!'

He had run his quarry to earth on a bench under one of the lions in
Trafalgar Square, a monster sphynx astray like themselves in that gulf of
darkness. Here, rigid and silent, sat Bosinney, and George, in whose
patience was a touch of strange brotherliness, took his stand behind. He
was not lacking in a certain delicacy--a sense of form--that did not
permit him to intrude upon this tragedy, and he waited, quiet as the lion
above, his fur collar hitched above his ears concealing the fleshy
redness of his cheeks, concealing all but his eyes with their sardonic,
compassionate stare. And men kept passing back from business on the way
to their clubs--men whose figures shrouded in cocoons of fog came into
view like spectres, and like spectres vanished. Then even in his
compassion George's Quilpish humour broke forth in a sudden longing to
pluck these spectres by the sleeve, and say:

"Hi, you Johnnies! You don't often see a show like this! Here's a poor
devil whose mistress has just been telling him a pretty little story of
her husband; walk up, walk up! He's taken the knock, you see."

In fancy he saw them gaping round the tortured lover; and grinned as he
thought of some respectable, newly-married spectre enabled by the state
of his own affections to catch an inkling of what was going on within
Bosinney; he fancied he could see his mouth getting wider and wider, and
the fog going down and down. For in George was all that contempt of the
of the married middle-class--peculiar to the wild and sportsmanlike
spirits in its ranks.

But he began to be bored. Waiting was not what he had bargained for.

'After all,' he thought, 'the poor chap will get over it; not the first
time such a thing has happened in this little city!' But now his quarry
again began muttering words of violent hate and anger. And following a
sudden impulse George touched him on the shoulder.

Bosinney spun round.

"Who are you? What do you want?"

George could have stood it well enough in the light of the gas lamps, in
the light of that everyday world of which he was so hardy a connoisseur;
but in this fog, where all was gloomy and unreal, where nothing had that
matter-of-fact value associated by Forsytes with earth, he was a victim
to strange qualms, and as he tried to stare back into the eyes of this
maniac, he thought:

'If I see a bobby, I'll hand him over; he's not fit to be at large.'

But waiting for no answer, Bosinney strode off into the fog, and George
followed, keeping perhaps a little further off, yet more than ever set on
tracking him down.

'He can't go on long like this,' he thought. 'It's God's own miracle
he's not been run over already.' He brooded no more on policemen, a
sportsman's sacred fire alive again within him.

Into a denser gloom than ever Bosinney held on at a furious pace; but his
pursuer perceived more method in his madness--he was clearly making his
way westwards.

'He's really going for Soames!' thought George. The idea was attractive.
It would be a sporting end to such a chase. He had always disliked his
cousin.

The shaft of a passing cab brushed against his shoulder and made him leap
aside. He did not intend to be killed for the Buccaneer, or anyone.
Yet, with hereditary tenacity, he stuck to the trail through vapour that
blotted out everything but the shadow of the hunted man and the dim moon
of the nearest lamp.

Then suddenly, with the instinct of a town-stroller, George knew himself
to be in Piccadilly. Here he could find his way blindfold; and freed
from the strain of geographical uncertainty, his mind returned to
Bosinney's trouble.

Down the long avenue of his man-about-town experience, bursting, as it
were, through a smirch of doubtful amours, there stalked to him a memory
of his youth. A memory, poignant still, that brought the scent of hay,
the gleam of moonlight, a summer magic, into the reek and blackness of
this London fog--the memory of a night when in the darkest shadow of a
lawn he had overheard from a woman's lips that he was not her sole
possessor. And for a moment George walked no longer in black Piccadilly,
but lay again, with hell in his heart, and his face to the
sweet-smelling, dewy grass, in the long shadow of poplars that hid the
moon.

A longing seized him to throw his arm round the Buccaneer, and say,
"Come, old boy. Time cures all. Let's go and drink it off!"

But a voice yelled at him, and he started back. A cab rolled out of
blackness, and into blackness disappeared. And suddenly George perceived
that he had lost Bosinney. He ran forward and back, felt his heart
clutched by a sickening fear, the dark fear which lives in the wings of
the fog. Perspiration started out on his brow. He stood quite still,
listening with all his might.

"And then," as he confided to Dartie the same evening in the course of a
game of billiards at the Red Pottle, "I lost him."

Dartie twirled complacently at his dark moustache. He had just put
together a neat break of twenty-three,--failing at a 'Jenny.' "And who
was she?" he asked.

George looked slowly at the 'man of the world's' fattish, sallow face,
and a little grim smile lurked about the curves of his cheeks and his
heavy-lidded eyes.

'No, no, my fine fellow,' he thought, 'I'm not going to tell you.' For
though he mixed with Dartie a good deal, he thought him a bit of a cad.

"Oh, some little love-lady or other," he said, and chalked his cue.

"A love-lady!" exclaimed Dartie--he used a more figurative expression.
"I made sure it was our friend Soa...."

"Did you?" said George curtly. "Then damme you've made an error."

He missed his shot. He was careful not to allude to the subject again
till, towards eleven o'clock, having, in his poetic phraseology, 'looked
upon the drink when it was yellow,' he drew aside the blind, and gazed
out into the street. The murky blackness of the fog was but faintly
broken by the lamps of the 'Red Pottle,' and no shape of mortal man or
thing was in sight.

"I can't help thinking of that poor Buccaneer," he said. "He may be
wandering out there now in that fog. If he's not a corpse," he added
with strange dejection.

"Corpse!" said Dartie, in whom the recollection of his defeat at Richmond
flared up. "He's all right. Ten to one if he wasn't tight!"

George turned on him, looking really formidable, with a sort of savage
gloom on his big face.

"Dry up!" he said. "Don't I tell you he's 'taken the knock!"'




CHAPTER V

THE TRIAL

In the morning of his case, which was second in the list, Soames was
again obliged to start without seeing Irene, and it was just as well, for
he had not as yet made up his mind what attitude to adopt towards her.

He had been requested to be in court by half-past ten, to provide against
the event of the first action (a breach of promise) collapsing, which
however it did not, both sides showing a courage that afforded Waterbuck,
Q.C., an opportunity for improving his already great reputation in this
class of case. He was opposed by Ram, the other celebrated breach of
promise man. It was a battle of giants.

The court delivered judgment just before the luncheon interval. The jury
left the box for good, and Soames went out to get something to eat. He
met James standing at the little luncheon-bar, like a pelican in the
wilderness of the galleries, bent over a sandwich with a glass of sherry
before him. The spacious emptiness of the great central hall, over which
father and son brooded as they stood together, was marred now and then
for a fleeting moment by barristers in wig and gown hurriedly bolting
across, by an occasional old lady or rusty-coated man, looking up in a
frightened way, and by two persons, bolder than their generation, seated
in an embrasure arguing. The sound of their voices arose, together with
a scent as of neglected wells, which, mingling with the odour of the
galleries, combined to form the savour, like nothing but the emanation of
a refined cheese, so indissolubly connected with the administration of
British Justice.

It was not long before James addressed his son.

"When's your case coming on? I suppose it'll be on directly. I
shouldn't wonder if this Bosinney'd say anything; I should think he'd
have to. He'll go bankrupt if it goes against him." He took a large bite
at his sandwich and a mouthful of sherry. "Your mother," he said, "wants
you and Irene to come and dine to-night."

A chill smile played round Soames' lips; he looked back at his father.
Anyone who had seen the look, cold and furtive, thus interchanged, might
have been pardoned for not appreciating the real understanding between
them. James finished his sherry at a draught.

"How much?" he asked.

On returning to the court Soames took at once his rightful seat on the
front bench beside his solicitor. He ascertained where his father was
seated with a glance so sidelong as to commit nobody.

James, sitting back with his hands clasped over the handle of his
umbrella, was brooding on the end of the bench immediately behind
counsel, whence he could get away at once when the case was over. He
considered Bosinney's conduct in every way outrageous, but he did not
wish to run up against him, feeling that the meeting would be awkward.

Next to the Divorce Court, this court was, perhaps, the favourite
emporium of justice, libel, breach of promise, and other commercial
actions being frequently decided there. Quite a sprinkling of persons
unconnected with the law occupied the back benches, and the hat of a
woman or two could be seen in the gallery.

The two rows of seats immediately in front of James were gradually filled
by barristers in wigs, who sat down to make pencil notes, chat, and
attend to their teeth; but his interest was soon diverted from these
lesser lights of justice by the entrance of Waterbuck, Q.C., with the
wings of his silk gown rustling, and his red, capable face supported by
two short, brown whiskers. The famous Q.C. looked, as James freely
admitted, the very picture of a man who could heckle a witness.

For all his experience, it so happened that he had never seen Waterbuck,
Q.C., before, and, like many Forsytes in the lower branch of the
profession, he had an extreme admiration for a good cross-examiner. The
long, lugubrious folds in his cheeks relaxed somewhat after seeing him,
especially as he now perceived that Soames alone was represented by silk.

Waterbuck, Q.C., had barely screwed round on his elbow to chat with his
Junior before Mr. Justice Bentham himself appeared--a thin, rather
hen-like man, with a little stoop, clean-shaven under his snowy wig.
Like all the rest of the court, Waterbuck rose, and remained on his feet
until the judge was seated. James rose but slightly; he was already
comfortable, and had no opinion of Bentham, having sat next but one to
him at dinner twice at the Bumley Tomms'. Bumley Tomm was rather a poor
thing, though he had been so successful. James himself had given him his
first brief. He was excited, too, for he had just found out that
Bosinney was not in court.

'Now, what's he mean by that?' he kept on thinking.

The case having been called on, Waterbuck, Q.C., pushing back his papers,
hitched his gown on his shoulder, and, with a semi-circular look around
him, like a man who is going to bat, arose and addressed the Court.

The facts, he said, were not in dispute, and all that his Lordship would
be asked was to interpret the correspondence which had taken place
between his client and the defendant, an architect, with reference to the
decoration of a house. He would, however, submit that this
correspondence could only mean one very plain thing. After briefly
reciting the history of the house at Robin Hill, which he described as a
mansion, and the actual facts of expenditure, he went on as follows:

"My client, Mr. Soames Forsyte, is a gentleman, a man of property, who
would be the last to dispute any legitimate claim that might be made
against him, but he has met with such treatment from his architect in the
matter of this house, over which he has, as your lordship has heard,
already spent some twelve--some twelve thousand pounds, a sum
considerably in advance of the amount he had originally contemplated,
that as a matter of principle--and this I cannot too strongly
emphasize--as a matter of principle, and in the interests of others, he
has felt himself compelled to bring this action. The point put forward
in defence by the architect I will suggest to your lordship is not worthy
of a moment's serious consideration." He then read the correspondence.

His client, "a man of recognised position," was prepared to go into the
box, and to swear that he never did authorize, that it was never in his
mind to authorize, the expenditure of any money beyond the extreme limit
of twelve thousand and fifty pounds, which he had clearly fixed; and not
further to waste the time of the court, he would at once call Mr.
Forsyte.

Soames then went into the box. His whole appearance was striking in its
composure. His face, just supercilious enough, pale and clean-shaven,
with a little line between the eyes, and compressed lips; his dress in
unostentatious order, one hand neatly gloved, the other bare. He
answered the questions put to him in a somewhat low, but distinct voice.
His evidence under cross-examination savoured of taciturnity.

Had he not used the expression, "a free hand"? No.

"Come, come!"

The expression he had used was 'a free hand in the terms of this
correspondence.'

"Would you tell the Court that that was English?"

"Yes!"

"What do you say it means?"

"What it says!"

"Are you prepared to deny that it is a contradiction in terms?"

"Yes."

"You are not an Irishman?"

"No."

"Are you a well-educated man?"

"Yes."

"And yet you persist in that statement?"

"Yes."

Throughout this and much more cross-examination, which turned again and
again around the 'nice point,' James sat with his hand behind his ear,
his eyes fixed upon his son.

He was proud of him! He could not but feel that in similar circumstances
he himself would have been tempted to enlarge his replies, but his
instinct told him that this taciturnity was the very thing. He sighed
with relief, however, when Soames, slowly turning, and without any change
of expression, descended from the box.

When it came to the turn of Bosinney's Counsel to address the Judge,
James redoubled his attention, and he searched the Court again and again
to see if Bosinney were not somewhere concealed.

Young Chankery began nervously; he was placed by Bosinney's absence in an
awkward position. He therefore did his best to turn that absence to
account.

He could not but fear--he said--that his client had met with an accident.
He had fully expected him there to give evidence; they had sent round
that morning both to Mr. Bosinney's office and to his rooms (though he
knew they were one and the same, he thought it was as well not to say
so), but it was not known where he was, and this he considered to be
ominous, knowing how anxious Mr. Bosinney had been to give his evidence.
He had not, however, been instructed to apply for an adjournment, and in
default of such instruction he conceived it his duty to go on. The plea
on which he somewhat confidently relied, and which his client, had he not
unfortunately been prevented in some way from attending, would have
supported by his evidence, was that such an expression as a 'free hand'
could not be limited, fettered, and rendered unmeaning, by any verbiage
which might follow it. He would go further and say that the
correspondence showed that whatever he might have said in his evidence,
Mr. Forsyte had in fact never contemplated repudiating liability on any
of the work ordered or executed by his architect. The defendant had
certainly never contemplated such a contingency, or, as was demonstrated
by his letters, he would never have proceeded with the work--a work of
extreme delicacy, carried out with great care and efficiency, to meet and
satisfy the fastidious taste of a connoisseur, a rich man, a man of
property. He felt strongly on this point, and feeling strongly he used,
perhaps, rather strong words when he said that this action was of a most
unjustifiable, unexpected, indeed--unprecedented character. If his
Lordship had had the opportunity that he himself had made it his duty to
take, to go over this very fine house and see the great delicacy and
beauty of the decorations executed by his client--an artist in his most
honourable profession--he felt convinced that not for one moment would
his Lordship tolerate this, he would use no stronger word than daring
attempt to evade legitimate responsibility.

Taking the text of Soames' letters, he lightly touched on 'Boileau v. The
Blasted Cement Company, Limited.' "It is doubtful," he said, "what that
authority has decided; in any case I would submit that it is just as much
in my favour as in my friend's." He then argued the 'nice point'
closely. With all due deference he submitted that Mr. Forsyte's
expression nullified itself. His client not being a rich man, the matter
was a serious one for him; he was a very talented architect, whose
professional reputation was undoubtedly somewhat at stake. He concluded
with a perhaps too personal appeal to the Judge, as a lover of the arts,
to show himself the protector of artists, from what was occasionally--he
said occasionally--the too iron hand of capital. "What," he said, "will
be the position of the artistic professions, if men of property like this
Mr. Forsyte refuse, and are allowed to refuse, to carry out the
obligations of the commissions which they have given." He would now call
his client, in case he should at the last moment have found himself able
to be present.

The name Philip Baynes Bosinney was called three times by the Ushers, and
the sound of the calling echoed with strange melancholy throughout the
Court and Galleries.

The crying of this name, to which no answer was returned, had upon James
a curious effect: it was like calling for your lost dog about the
streets. And the creepy feeling that it gave him, of a man missing,
grated on his sense of comfort and security-on his cosiness. Though he
could not have said why, it made him feel uneasy.

He looked now at the clock--a quarter to three! It would be all over in
a quarter of an hour. Where could the young fellow be?

It was only when Mr. Justice Bentham delivered judgment that he got over
the turn he had received.

Behind the wooden erection, by which he was fenced from more ordinary
mortals, the learned Judge leaned forward. The electric light, just
turned on above his head, fell on his face, and mellowed it to an orange
hue beneath the snowy crown of his wig; the amplitude of his robes grew
before the eye; his whole figure, facing the comparative dusk of the
Court, radiated like some majestic and sacred body. He cleared his
throat, took a sip of water, broke the nib of a quill against the desk,
and, folding his bony hands before him, began.

To James he suddenly loomed much larger than he had ever thought Bentham
would loom. It was the majesty of the law; and a person endowed with a
nature far less matter-of-fact than that of James might have been excused
for failing to pierce this halo, and disinter therefrom the somewhat
ordinary Forsyte, who walked and talked in every-day life under the name
of Sir Walter Bentham.

He delivered judgment in the following words:

"The facts in this case are not in dispute. On May 15 last the defendant
wrote to the plaintiff, requesting to be allowed to withdraw from his
professional position in regard to the decoration of the plaintiff's
house, unless he were given 'a free hand.' The plaintiff, on May 17,
wrote back as follows: 'In giving you, in accordance with your request,
this free hand, I wish you to clearly understand that the total cost of
the house as handed over to me completely decorated, inclusive of your
fee (as arranged between us) must not exceed twelve thousand pounds.' To
this letter the defendant replied on May 18: 'If you think that in such a
delicate matter as decoration I can bind myself to the exact pound, I am
afraid you are mistaken.' On May 19 the plaintiff wrote as follows: 'I
did not mean to say that if you should exceed the sum named in my letter
to you by ten or twenty or even fifty pounds there would be any
difficulty between us. You have a free hand in the terms of this
correspondence, and I hope you will see your way to completing the
decorations.' On May 20 the defendant replied thus shortly: 'Very well.'