The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Galsworthy

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


In that carriage the Inspector spoke again of the death:

"It was not so very thick--Just there. The driver says the gentleman
must have had time to see what he was about, he seemed to walk right into
it. It appears that he was very hard up, we found several pawn tickets
at his rooms, his account at the bank is overdrawn, and there's this case
in to-day's papers;" his cold blue eyes travelled from one to another of
the three Forsytes in the carriage.

Old Jolyon watching from his corner saw his brother's face change, and
the brooding, worried, look deepen on it. At the Inspector's words,
indeed, all James' doubts and fears revived. Hard-up--pawn-tickets--an
overdrawn account! These words that had all his life been a far-off
nightmare to him, seemed to make uncannily real that suspicion of suicide
which must on no account be entertained. He sought his son's eye; but
lynx-eyed, taciturn, immovable, Soames gave no answering look. And to
old Jolyon watching, divining the league of mutual defence between them,
there came an overmastering desire to have his own son at his side, as
though this visit to the dead man's body was a battle in which otherwise
he must single-handed meet those two. And the thought of how to keep
June's name out of the business kept whirring in his brain. James had
his son to support him! Why should he not send for Jo?

Taking out his card-case, he pencilled the following message:

'Come round at once. I've sent the carriage for you.'

On getting out he gave this card to his coachman, telling him to
drive--as fast as possible to the Hotch Potch Club, and if Mr. Jolyon
Forsyte were there to give him the card and bring him at once. If not
there yet, he was to wait till he came.

He followed the others slowly up the steps, leaning on his umbrella, and
stood a moment to get his breath. The Inspector said: "This is the
mortuary, sir. But take your time."

In the bare, white-walled room, empty of all but a streak of sunshine
smeared along the dustless floor, lay a form covered by a sheet. With a
huge steady hand the Inspector took the hem and turned it back. A
sightless face gazed up at them, and on either side of that sightless
defiant face the three Forsytes gazed down; in each one of them the
secret emotions, fears, and pity of his own nature rose and fell like the
rising, falling waves of life, whose wish those white walls barred out
now for ever from Bosinney. And in each one of them the trend of his
nature, the odd essential spring, which moved him in fashions minutely,
unalterably different from those of every other human being, forced him
to a different attitude of thought. Far from the others, yet inscrutably
close, each stood thus, alone with death, silent, his eyes lowered.

The Inspector asked softly:

"You identify the gentleman, sir?"

Old Jolyon raised his head and nodded. He looked at his brother
opposite, at that long lean figure brooding over the dead man, with face
dusky red, and strained grey eyes; and at the figure of Soames white and
still by his father's side. And all that he had felt against those two
was gone like smoke in the long white presence of Death. Whence comes
it, how comes it--Death? Sudden reverse of all that goes before; blind
setting forth on a path that leads to where? Dark quenching of the fire!
The heavy, brutal crushing--out that all men must go through, keeping
their eyes clear and brave unto the end! Small and of no import, insects
though they are! And across old Jolyon's face there flitted a gleam, for
Soames, murmuring to the Inspector, crept noiselessly away.

Then suddenly James raised his eyes. There was a queer appeal in that
suspicious troubled look: "I know I'm no match for you," it seemed to
say. And, hunting for handkerchief he wiped his brow; then, bending
sorrowful and lank over the dead man, he too turned and hurried out.

Old Jolyon stood, still as death, his eyes fixed on the body. Who shall
tell of what he was thinking? Of himself, when his hair was brown like
the hair of that young fellow dead before him? Of himself, with his
battle just beginning, the long, long battle he had loved; the battle
that was over for this young man almost before it had begun? Of his
grand-daughter, with her broken hopes? Of that other woman? Of the
strangeness, and the pity of it? And the irony, inscrutable, and bitter
of that end? Justice! There was no justice for men, for they were ever
in the dark!

Or perhaps in his philosophy he thought: Better to be out of, it all!
Better to have done with it, like this poor youth....

Some one touched him on the arm.

A tear started up and wetted his eyelash. "Well," he said, "I'm no good
here. I'd better be going. You'll come to me as soon as you can, Jo,"
and with his head bowed he went away.

It was young Jolyon's turn to take his stand beside the dead man, round
whose fallen body he seemed to see all the Forsytes breathless, and
prostrated. The stroke had fallen too swiftly.

The forces underlying every tragedy--forces that take no denial, working
through cross currents to their ironical end, had met and fused with a
thunder-clap, flung out the victim, and flattened to the ground all those
that stood around.

Or so at all events young Jolyon seemed to see them, lying around
Bosinney's body.

He asked the Inspector to tell him what had happened, and the latter,
like a man who does not every day get such a chance, again detailed such
facts as were known.

"There's more here, sir, however," he said, "than meets the eye. I don't
believe in suicide, nor in pure accident, myself. It's more likely I
think that he was suffering under great stress of mind, and took no
notice of things about him. Perhaps you can throw some light on these."

He took from his pocket a little packet and laid it on the table.
Carefully undoing it, he revealed a lady's handkerchief, pinned through
the folds with a pin of discoloured Venetian gold, the stone of which had
fallen from the socket. A scent of dried violets rose to young Jolyon's
nostrils.

"Found in his breast pocket," said the Inspector; "the name has been cut
away!"

Young Jolyon with difficulty answered: "I'm afraid I cannot help you!"
But vividly there rose before him the face he had seen light up, so
tremulous and glad, at Bosinney's coming! Of her he thought more than of
his own daughter, more than of them all--of her with the dark, soft
glance, the delicate passive face, waiting for the dead man, waiting even
at that moment, perhaps, still and patient in the sunlight.

He walked sorrowfully away from the hospital towards his father's house,
reflecting that this death would break up the Forsyte family. The stroke
had indeed slipped past their defences into the very wood of their tree.
They might flourish to all appearance as before, preserving a brave show
before the eyes of London, but the trunk was dead, withered by the same
flash that had stricken down Bosinney. And now the saplings would take
its place, each one a new custodian of the sense of property.

Good forest of Forsytes! thought young Jolyon--soundest timber of our
land!

Concerning the cause of this death--his family would doubtless reject
with vigour the suspicion of suicide, which was so compromising! They
would take it as an accident, a stroke of fate. In their hearts they
would even feel it an intervention of Providence, a retribution--had not
Bosinney endangered their two most priceless possessions, the pocket and
the hearth? And they would talk of 'that unfortunate accident of young
Bosinney's,' but perhaps they would not talk--silence might be better!

As for himself, he regarded the bus-driver's account of the accident as
of very little value. For no one so madly in love committed suicide for
want of money; nor was Bosinney the sort of fellow to set much store by a
financial crisis. And so he too rejected this theory of suicide, the
dead man's face rose too clearly before him. Gone in the heyday of his
summer--and to believe thus that an accident had cut Bosinney off in the
full sweep of his passion was more than ever pitiful to young Jolyon.

Then came a vision of Soames' home as it now was, and must be hereafter.
The streak of lightning had flashed its clear uncanny gleam on bare bones
with grinning spaces between, the disguising flesh was gone....

In the dining-room at Stanhope Gate old Jolyon was sitting alone when his
son came in. He looked very wan in his great armchair. And his eyes
travelling round the walls with their pictures of still life, and the
masterpiece 'Dutch fishing-boats at Sunset' seemed as though passing
their gaze over his life with its hopes, its gains, its achievements.

"Ah! Jo!" he said, "is that you? I've told poor little June. But that's
not all of it. Are you going to Soames'? She's brought it on herself, I
suppose; but somehow I can't bear to think of her, shut up there--and all
alone." And holding up his thin, veined hand, he clenched it.




CHAPTER IX

IRENE'S RETURN

After leaving James and old Jolyon in the mortuary of the hospital,
Soames hurried aimlessly along the streets.

The tragic event of Bosinney's death altered the complexion of
everything. There was no longer the same feeling that to lose a minute
would be fatal, nor would he now risk communicating the fact of his
wife's flight to anyone till the inquest was over.

That morning he had risen early, before the postman came, had taken the
first-post letters from the box himself, and, though there had been none
from Irene, he had made an opportunity of telling Bilson that her
mistress was at the sea; he would probably, he said, be going down
himself from Saturday to Monday. This had given him time to breathe, time
to leave no stone unturned to find her.

But now, cut off from taking steps by Bosinney's death--that strange
death, to think of which was like putting a hot iron to his heart, like
lifting a great weight from it--he did not know how to pass his day; and
he wandered here and there through the streets, looking at every face he
met, devoured by a hundred anxieties.

And as he wandered, he thought of him who had finished his wandering, his
prowling, and would never haunt his house again.

Already in the afternoon he passed posters announcing the identity of the
dead man, and bought the papers to see what they said. He would stop
their mouths if he could, and he went into the City, and was closeted
with Boulter for a long time.

On his way home, passing the steps of Jobson's about half past four, he
met George Forsyte, who held out an evening paper to Soames, saying:

"Here! Have you seen this about the poor Buccaneer?"

Soames answered stonily: "Yes."

George stared at him. He had never liked Soames; he now held him
responsible for Bosinney's death. Soames had done for him--done for him
by that act of property that had sent the Buccaneer to run amok that
fatal afternoon.

'The poor fellow,' he was thinking, 'was so cracked with jealousy, so
cracked for his vengeance, that he heard nothing of the omnibus in that
infernal fog.'

Soames had done for him! And this judgment was in George's eyes.

"They talk of suicide here," he said at last. "That cat won't jump."

Soames shook his head. "An accident," he muttered.

Clenching his fist on the paper, George crammed it into his pocket. He
could not resist a parting shot.

"H'mm! All flourishing at home? Any little Soameses yet?"

With a face as white as the steps of Jobson's, and a lip raised as if
snarling, Soames brushed past him and was gone....

On reaching home, and entering the little lighted hall with his latchkey,
the first thing that caught his eye was his wife's gold-mounted umbrella
lying on the rug chest. Flinging off his fur coat, he hurried to the
drawing-room.

The curtains were drawn for the night, a bright fire of cedar-logs burned
in the grate, and by its light he saw Irene sitting in her usual corner
on the sofa. He shut the door softly, and went towards her. She did not
move, and did not seem to see him.

"So you've come back?" he said. "Why are you sitting here in the dark?"

Then he caught sight of her face, so white and motionless that it seemed
as though the blood must have stopped flowing in her veins; and her eyes,
that looked enormous, like the great, wide, startled brown eyes of an
owl.

Huddled in her grey fur against the sofa cushions, she had a strange
resemblance to a captive owl, bunched fir its soft feathers against the
wires of a cage. The supple erectness of her figure was gone, as though
she had been broken by cruel exercise; as though there were no longer any
reason for being beautiful, and supple, and erect.

"So you've come back," he repeated.

She never looked up, and never spoke, the firelight playing over her
motionless figure.

Suddenly she tried to rise, but he prevented her; it was then that he
understood.

She had come back like an animal wounded to death, not knowing where to
turn, not knowing what she was doing. The sight of her figure, huddled
in the fur, was enough.

He knew then for certain that Bosinney had been her lover; knew that she
had seen the report of his death--perhaps, like himself, had bought a
paper at the draughty corner of a street, and read it.

She had come back then of her own accord, to the cage she had pined to be
free of--and taking in all the tremendous significance of this, he longed
to cry: "Take your hated body, that I love, out of my house! Take away
that pitiful white face, so cruel and soft--before I crush it. Get out
of my sight; never let me see you again!"

And, at those unspoken words, he seemed to see her rise and move away,
like a woman in a terrible dream, from which she was fighting to
awake--rise and go out into the dark and cold, without a thought of him,
without so much as the knowledge of his presence.

Then he cried, contradicting what he had not yet spoken, "No; stay
there!" And turning away from her, he sat down in his accustomed chair on
the other side of the hearth.

They sat in silence.

And Soames thought: 'Why is all this? Why should I suffer so? What have
I done? It is not my fault!'

Again he looked at her, huddled like a bird that is shot and dying, whose
poor breast you see panting as the air is taken from it, whose poor eyes
look at you who have shot it, with a slow, soft, unseeing look, taking
farewell of all that is good--of the sun, and the air, and its mate.

So they sat, by the firelight, in the silence, one on each side of the
hearth.

And the fume of the burning cedar logs, that he loved so well, seemed to
grip Soames by the throat till he could bear it no longer. And going out
into the hall he flung the door wide, to gulp down the cold air that came
in; then without hat or overcoat went out into the Square.

Along the garden rails a half-starved cat came rubbing her way towards
him, and Soames thought: 'Suffering! when will it cease, my suffering?'

At a front door across the way was a man of his acquaintance named
Rutter, scraping his boots, with an air of 'I am master here.' And Soames
walked on.

From far in the clear air the bells of the church where he and Irene had
been married were pealing in 'practice' for the advent of Christ, the
chimes ringing out above the sound of traffic. He felt a craving for
strong drink, to lull him to indifference, or rouse him to fury. If only
he could burst out of himself, out of this web that for the first time in
his life he felt around him. If only he could surrender to the thought:
'Divorce her--turn her out! She has forgotten you. Forget her!'

If only he could surrender to the thought: 'Let her go--she has suffered
enough!'

If only he could surrender to the desire: 'Make a slave of her--she is
in your power!'

If only even he could surrender to the sudden vision: 'What does it all
matter?' Forget himself for a minute, forget that it mattered what he
did, forget that whatever he did he must sacrifice something.

If only he could act on an impulse!

He could forget nothing; surrender to no thought, vision, or desire; it
was all too serious; too close around him, an unbreakable cage.

On the far side of the Square newspaper boys were calling their evening
wares, and the ghoulish cries mingled and jangled with the sound of those
church bells.

Soames covered his ears. The thought flashed across him that but for a
chance, he himself, and not Bosinney, might be lying dead, and she,
instead of crouching there like a shot bird with those dying eyes....

Something soft touched his legs, the cat was rubbing herself against
them. And a sob that shook him from head to foot burst from Soames'
chest. Then all was still again in the dark, where the houses seemed to
stare at him, each with a master and mistress of its own, and a secret
story of happiness or sorrow.

And suddenly he saw that his own door was open, and black against the
light from the hall a man standing with his back turned. Something slid
too in his breast, and he stole up close behind.

He could see his own fur coat flung across the carved oak chair; the
Persian rugs; the silver bowls, the rows of porcelain plates arranged
along the walls, and this unknown man who was standing there.

And sharply he asked: "What is it you want, sir?"

The visitor turned. It was young Jolyon.

"The door was open," he said. "Might I see your wife for a minute, I
have a message for her?"

Soames gave him a strange, sidelong stare.

"My wife can see no one," he muttered doggedly.

Young Jolyon answered gently: "I shouldn't keep her a minute."

Soames brushed by him and barred the way.

"She can see no one," he said again.

Young Jolyon's glance shot past him into the hall, and Soames turned.
There in the drawing-room doorway stood Irene, her eyes were wild and
eager, her lips were parted, her hands outstretched. In the sight of
both men that light vanished from her face; her hands dropped to her
sides; she stood like stone.

Soames spun round, and met his visitor's eyes, and at the look he saw in
them, a sound like a snarl escaped him. He drew his lips back in the
ghost of a smile.

"This is my house," he said; "I manage my own affairs. I've told you
once--I tell you again; we are not at home."

And in young Jolyon's face he slammed the door.






THE FORSYTE SAGA

By John Galsworthy

Part 2



Contents:
Indian Summer of a Forsyte
In Chancery

TO ANDRE CHEVRILLON



INDIAN SUMMER OF A FORSYTE

"And Summer's lease hath all
too short a date."
--Shakespeare
I

In the last day of May in the early 'nineties, about six o'clock of the
evening, old Jolyon Forsyte sat under the oak tree below the terrace of
his house at Robin Hill. He was waiting for the midges to bite him,
before abandoning the glory of the afternoon. His thin brown hand, where
blue veins stood out, held the end of a cigar in its tapering,
long-nailed fingers--a pointed polished nail had survived with him from
those earlier Victorian days when to touch nothing, even with the tips of
the fingers, had been so distinguished. His domed forehead, great white
moustache, lean cheeks, and long lean jaw were covered from the westering
sunshine by an old brown Panama hat. His legs were crossed; in all his
attitude was serenity and a kind of elegance, as of an old man who every
morning put eau de Cologne upon his silk handkerchief. At his feet lay a
woolly brown-and-white dog trying to be a Pomeranian--the dog Balthasar
between whom and old Jolyon primal aversion had changed into attachment
with the years. Close to his chair was a swing, and on the swing was
seated one of Holly's dolls--called 'Duffer Alice'--with her body fallen
over her legs and her doleful nose buried in a black petticoat. She was
never out of disgrace, so it did not matter to her how she sat. Below
the oak tree the lawn dipped down a bank, stretched to the fernery, and,
beyond that refinement, became fields, dropping to the pond, the coppice,
and the prospect--'Fine, remarkable'--at which Swithin Forsyte, from
under this very tree, had stared five years ago when he drove down with
Irene to look at the house. Old Jolyon had heard of his brother's
exploit--that drive which had become quite celebrated on Forsyte 'Change.
Swithin! And the fellow had gone and died, last November, at the age of
only seventy-nine, renewing the doubt whether Forsytes could live for
ever, which had first arisen when Aunt Ann passed away. Died! and left
only Jolyon and James, Roger and Nicholas and Timothy, Julia, Hester,
Susan! And old Jolyon thought: 'Eighty-five! I don't feel it--except
when I get that pain.'

His memory went searching. He had not felt his age since he had bought
his nephew Soames' ill-starred house and settled into it here at Robin
Hill over three years ago. It was as if he had been getting younger
every spring, living in the country with his son and his
grandchildren--June, and the little ones of the second marriage, Jolly
and Holly; living down here out of the racket of London and the cackle of
Forsyte 'Change,' free of his boards, in a delicious atmosphere of no
work and all play, with plenty of occupation in the perfecting and
mellowing of the house and its twenty acres, and in ministering to the
whims of Holly and Jolly. All the knots and crankiness, which had
gathered in his heart during that long and tragic business of June,
Soames, Irene his wife, and poor young Bosinney, had been smoothed out.
Even June had thrown off her melancholy at last--witness this travel in
Spain she was taking now with her father and her stepmother. Curiously
perfect peace was left by their departure; blissful, yet blank, because
his son was not there. Jo was never anything but a comfort and a
pleasure to him nowadays--an amiable chap; but women, somehow--even the
best--got a little on one's nerves, unless of course one admired them.

Far-off a cuckoo called; a wood-pigeon was cooing from the first elm-tree
in the field, and how the daisies and buttercups had sprung up after the
last mowing! The wind had got into the sou' west, too--a delicious air,
sappy! He pushed his hat back and let the sun fall on his chin and cheek.
Somehow, to-day, he wanted company--wanted a pretty face to look at.
People treated the old as if they wanted nothing. And with the
un-Forsytean philosophy which ever intruded on his soul, he thought:
'One's never had enough. With a foot in the grave one'll want something,
I shouldn't be surprised!' Down here--away from the exigencies of
affairs--his grandchildren, and the flowers, trees, birds of his little
domain, to say nothing of sun and moon and stars above them, said, 'Open,
sesame,' to him day and night. And sesame had opened--how much, perhaps,
he did not know. He had always been responsive to what they had begun to
call 'Nature,' genuinely, almost religiously responsive, though he had
never lost his habit of calling a sunset a sunset and a view a view,
however deeply they might move him. But nowadays Nature actually made him
ache, he appreciated it so. Every one of these calm, bright, lengthening
days, with Holly's hand in his, and the dog Balthasar in front looking
studiously for what he never found, he would stroll, watching the roses
open, fruit budding on the walls, sunlight brightening the oak leaves and
saplings in the coppice, watching the water-lily leaves unfold and
glisten, and the silvery young corn of the one wheat field; listening to
the starlings and skylarks, and the Alderney cows chewing the cud,
flicking slow their tufted tails; and every one of these fine days he
ached a little from sheer love of it all, feeling perhaps, deep down,
that he had not very much longer to enjoy it. The thought that some
day--perhaps not ten years hence, perhaps not five--all this world would
be taken away from him, before he had exhausted his powers of loving it,
seemed to him in the nature of an injustice brooding over his horizon.
If anything came after this life, it wouldn't be what he wanted; not
Robin Hill, and flowers and birds and pretty faces--too few, even now, of
those about him! With the years his dislike of humbug had increased; the
orthodoxy he had worn in the 'sixties, as he had worn side-whiskers out
of sheer exuberance, had long dropped off, leaving him reverent before
three things alone--beauty, upright conduct, and the sense of property;
and the greatest of these now was beauty. He had always had wide
interests, and, indeed could still read The Times, but he was liable at
any moment to put it down if he heard a blackbird sing. Upright conduct,
property--somehow, they were tiring; the blackbirds and the sunsets
never tired him, only gave him an uneasy feeling that he could not get
enough of them. Staring into the stilly radiance of the early evening
and at the little gold and white flowers on the lawn, a thought came to
him: This weather was like the music of 'Orfeo,' which he had recently
heard at Covent Garden. A beautiful opera, not like Meyerbeer, nor even
quite Mozart, but, in its way, perhaps even more lovely; something
classical and of the Golden Age about it, chaste and mellow, and the
Ravogli 'almost worthy of the old days'--highest praise he could bestow.
The yearning of Orpheus for the beauty he was losing, for his love going
down to Hades, as in life love and beauty did go--the yearning which sang
and throbbed through the golden music, stirred also in the lingering
beauty of the world that evening. And with the tip of his cork-soled,
elastic-sided boot he involuntarily stirred the ribs of the dog
Balthasar, causing the animal to wake and attack his fleas; for though he
was supposed to have none, nothing could persuade him of the fact. When
he had finished he rubbed the place he had been scratching against his
master's calf, and settled down again with his chin over the instep of
the disturbing boot. And into old Jolyon's mind came a sudden
recollection--a face he had seen at that opera three weeks ago--Irene,
the wife of his precious nephew Soames, that man of property! Though he
had not met her since the day of the 'At Home' in his old house at
Stanhope Gate, which celebrated his granddaughter June's ill-starred
engagement to young Bosinney, he had remembered her at once, for he had
always admired her--a very pretty creature. After the death of young
Bosinney, whose mistress she had so reprehensibly become, he had heard
that she had left Soames at once. Goodness only knew what she had been
doing since. That sight of her face--a side view--in the row in front,
had been literally the only reminder these three years that she was still
alive. No one ever spoke of her. And yet Jo had told him something
once--something which had upset him completely. The boy had got it from
George Forsyte, he believed, who had seen Bosinney in the fog the day he
was run over--something which explained the young fellow's distress--an
act of Soames towards his wife--a shocking act. Jo had seen her, too,
that afternoon, after the news was out, seen her for a moment, and his
description had always lingered in old Jolyon's mind--'wild and lost' he
had called her. And next day June had gone there--bottled up her
feelings and gone there, and the maid had cried and told her how her
mistress had slipped out in the night and vanished. A tragic business
altogether! One thing was certain--Soames had never been able to lay
hands on her again. And he was living at Brighton, and journeying up and
down--a fitting fate, the man of property! For when he once took a
dislike to anyone--as he had to his nephew--old Jolyon never got over it.
He remembered still the sense of relief with which he had heard the news
of Irene's disappearance. It had been shocking to think of her a
prisoner in that house to which she must have wandered back, when Jo saw
her, wandered back for a moment--like a wounded animal to its hole after
seeing that news, 'Tragic death of an Architect,' in the street. Her
face had struck him very much the other night--more beautiful than he had
remembered, but like a mask, with something going on beneath it. A young
woman still--twenty-eight perhaps. Ah, well! Very likely she had another
lover by now. But at this subversive thought--for married women should
never love: once, even, had been too much--his instep rose, and with it
the dog Balthasar's head. The sagacious animal stood up and looked into
old Jolyon's face. 'Walk?' he seemed to say; and old Jolyon answered:
"Come on, old chap!"