The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Galsworthy

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In his great chair with the book-rest sat old Jolyon, the figurehead of
his family and class and creed, with his white head and dome-like
forehead, the representative of moderation, and order, and love of
property. As lonely an old man as there was in London.

There he sat in the gloomy comfort of the room, a puppet in the power of
great forces that cared nothing for family or class or creed, but moved,
machine-like, with dread processes to inscrutable ends. This was how it
struck young Jolyon, who had the impersonal eye.

The poor old Dad! So this was the end, the purpose to which he had lived
with such magnificent moderation! To be lonely, and grow older and
older, yearning for a soul to speak to!

In his turn old Jolyon looked back at his son. He wanted to talk about
many things that he had been unable to talk about all these years. It
had been impossible to seriously confide in June his conviction that
property in the Soho quarter would go up in value; his uneasiness about
that tremendous silence of Pippin, the superintendent of the New Colliery
Company, of which he had so long been chairman; his disgust at the steady
fall in American Golgothas, or even to discuss how, by some sort of
settlement, he could best avoid the payment of those death duties which
would follow his decease. Under the influence, however, of a cup of tea,
which he seemed to stir indefinitely, he began to speak at last. A new
vista of life was thus opened up, a promised land of talk, where he could
find a harbour against the waves of anticipation and regret; where he
could soothe his soul with the opium of devising how to round off his
property and make eternal the only part of him that was to remain alive.

Young Jolyon was a good listener; it was his great quality. He kept his
eyes fixed on his father's face, putting a question now and then.

The clock struck one before old Jolyon had finished, and at the sound of
its striking his principles came back. He took out his watch with a look
of surprise:

"I must go to bed, Jo," he said.

Young Jolyon rose and held out his hand to help his father up. The old
face looked worn and hollow again; the eyes were steadily averted.

"Good-bye, my boy; take care of yourself."

A moment passed, and young Jolyon, turning on his, heel, marched out at
the door. He could hardly see; his smile quavered. Never in all the
fifteen years since he had first found out that life was no simple
business, had he found it so singularly complicated.




CHAPTER III
DINNER AT SWITHIN'S

In Swithin's orange and light-blue dining-room, facing the Park, the
round table was laid for twelve.

A cut-glass chandelier filled with lighted candles hung like a giant
stalactite above its centre, radiating over large gilt-framed mirrors,
slabs of marble on the tops of side-tables, and heavy gold chairs with
crewel worked seats. Everything betokened that love of beauty so deeply
implanted in each family which has had its own way to make into Society,
out of the more vulgar heart of Nature. Swithin had indeed an impatience
of simplicity, a love of ormolu, which had always stamped him amongst his
associates as a man of great, if somewhat luxurious taste; and out of the
knowledge that no one could possibly enter his rooms without perceiving
him to be a man of wealth, he had derived a solid and prolonged happiness
such as perhaps no other circumstance in life had afforded him.

Since his retirement from land agency, a profession deplorable in his
estimation, especially as to its auctioneering department, he had
abandoned himself to naturally aristocratic tastes.

The perfect luxury of his latter days had embedded him like a fly in
sugar; and his mind, where very little took place from morning till
night, was the junction of two curiously opposite emotions, a lingering
and sturdy satisfaction that he had made his own way and his own fortune,
and a sense that a man of his distinction should never have been allowed
to soil his mind with work.

He stood at the sideboard in a white waistcoat with large gold and onyx
buttons, watching his valet screw the necks of three champagne bottles
deeper into ice-pails. Between the points of his stand-up collar,
which--though it hurt him to move--he would on no account have had
altered, the pale flesh of his under chin remained immovable. His eyes
roved from bottle to bottle. He was debating, and he argued like this:
Jolyon drinks a glass, perhaps two, he's so careful of himself. James,
he can't take his wine nowadays. Nicholas--Fanny and he would swill
water he shouldn't wonder! Soames didn't count; these young nephews
--Soames was thirty-one--couldn't drink! But Bosinney?

Encountering in the name of this stranger something outside the range of
his philosophy, Swithin paused. A misgiving arose within him! It was
impossible to tell! June was only a girl, in love too! Emily (Mrs.
James) liked a good glass of champagne. It was too dry for Juley, poor
old soul, she had no palate. As to Hatty Chessman! The thought of this
old friend caused a cloud of thought to obscure the perfect glassiness of
his eyes: He shouldn't wonder if she drank half a bottle!

But in thinking of his remaining guest, an expression like that of a cat
who is just going to purr stole over his old face: Mrs. Soames! She
mightn't take much, but she would appreciate what she drank; it was a
pleasure to give her good wine! A pretty woman--and sympathetic to him!

The thought of her was like champagne itself! A pleasure to give a good
wine to a young woman who looked so well, who knew how to dress, with
charming manners, quite distinguished--a pleasure to entertain her.
Between the points of his collar he gave his head the first small,
painful oscillation of the evening.

"Adolf!" he said. "Put in another bottle."

He himself might drink a good deal, for, thanks to that prescription of
Blight's, he found himself extremely well, and he had been careful to
take no lunch. He had not felt so well for weeks. Puffing out his lower
lip, he gave his last instructions:

"Adolf, the least touch of the West India when you come to the ham."

Passing into the anteroom, he sat down on the edge of a chair, with his
knees apart; and his tall, bulky form was wrapped at once in an
expectant, strange, primeval immobility. He was ready to rise at a
moment's notice. He had not given a dinner-party for months. This
dinner in honour of June's engagement had seemed a bore at first (among
Forsytes the custom of solemnizing engagements by feasts was religiously
observed), but the labours of sending invitations and ordering the repast
over, he felt pleasantly stimulated.

And thus sitting, a watch in his hand, fat, and smooth, and golden, like
a flattened globe of butter, he thought of nothing.

A long man, with side whiskers, who had once been in Swithin's service,
but was now a greengrocer, entered and proclaimed:

"Mrs. Chessman, Mrs. Septimus Small!"

Two ladies advanced. The one in front, habited entirely in red, had
large, settled patches of the same colour in her cheeks, and a hard,
dashing eye. She walked at Swithin, holding out a hand cased in a long,
primrose-coloured glove:

"Well! Swithin," she said, "I haven't seen you for ages. How are you?
Why, my dear boy, how stout you're getting!"

The fixity of Swithin's eye alone betrayed emotion. A dumb and grumbling
anger swelled his bosom. It was vulgar to be stout, to talk of being
stout; he had a chest, nothing more. Turning to his sister, he grasped
her hand, and said in a tone of command:

"Well, Juley."

Mrs. Septimus Small was the tallest of the four sisters; her good, round
old face had gone a little sour; an innumerable pout clung all over it,
as if it had been encased in an iron wire mask up to that evening, which,
being suddenly removed, left little rolls of mutinous flesh all over her
countenance. Even her eyes were pouting. It was thus that she recorded
her permanent resentment at the loss of Septimus Small.

She had quite a reputation for saying the wrong thing, and, tenacious
like all her breed, she would hold to it when she had said it, and add to
it another wrong thing, and so on. With the decease of her husband the
family tenacity, the family matter-of-factness, had gone sterile within
her. A great talker, when allowed, she would converse without the
faintest animation for hours together, relating, with epic monotony, the
innumerable occasions on which Fortune had misused her; nor did she ever
perceive that her hearers sympathized with Fortune, for her heart was
kind.

Having sat, poor soul, long by the bedside of Small (a man of poor
constitution), she had acquired, the habit, and there were countless
subsequent occasions when she had sat immense periods of time to amuse
sick people, children, and other helpless persons, and she could never
divest herself of the feeling that the world was the most ungrateful
place anybody could live in. Sunday after Sunday she sat at the feet of
that extremely witty preacher, the Rev. Thomas Scoles, who exercised a
great influence over her; but she succeeded in convincing everybody that
even this was a misfortune. She had passed into a proverb in the family,
and when anybody was observed to be peculiarly distressing, he was known
as a regular 'Juley.' The habit of her mind would have killed anybody but
a Forsyte at forty; but she was seventy-two, and had never looked better.
And one felt that there were capacities for enjoyment about her which
might yet come out. She owned three canaries, the cat Tommy, and half a
parrot--in common with her sister Hester;--and these poor creatures (kept
carefully out of Timothy's way--he was nervous about animals), unlike
human beings, recognising that she could not help being blighted,
attached themselves to her passionately.

She was sombrely magnificent this evening in black bombazine, with a
mauve front cut in a shy triangle, and crowned with a black velvet ribbon
round the base of her thin throat; black and mauve for evening wear was
esteemed very chaste by nearly every Forsyte.

Pouting at Swithin, she said:

"Ann has been asking for you. You haven't been near us for an age!"

Swithin put his thumbs within the armholes of his waistcoat, and replied:

"Ann's getting very shaky; she ought to have a doctor!"

"Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Forsyte!"

Nicholas Forsyte, cocking his rectangular eyebrows, wore a smile. He had
succeeded during the day in bringing to fruition a scheme for the
employment of a tribe from Upper India in the gold-mines of Ceylon. A
pet plan, carried at last in the teeth of great difficulties--he was
justly pleased. It would double the output of his mines, and, as he had
often forcibly argued, all experience tended to show that a man must die;
and whether he died of a miserable old age in his own country, or
prematurely of damp in the bottom of a foreign mine, was surely of little
consequence, provided that by a change in his mode of life he benefited
the British Empire.

His ability was undoubted. Raising his broken nose towards his listener,
he would add:

"For want of a few hundred of these fellows we haven't paid a dividend
for years, and look at the price of the shares. I can't get ten
shillings for them."

He had been at Yarmouth, too, and had come back feeling that he had added
at least ten years to his own life. He grasped Swithin's hand,
exclaiming in a jocular voice:

"Well, so here we are again!"

Mrs. Nicholas, an effete woman, smiled a smile of frightened jollity
behind his back.

"Mr. and Mrs. James Forsyte! Mr. and Mrs. Soames Forsyte!"

Swithin drew his heels together, his deportment ever admirable.

"Well, James, well Emily! How are you, Soames? How do you do?"

His hand enclosed Irene's, and his eyes swelled. She was a pretty
woman--a little too pale, but her figure, her eyes, her teeth! Too good
for that chap Soames!

The gods had given Irene dark brown eyes and golden hair, that strange
combination, provocative of men's glances, which is said to be the mark
of a weak character. And the full, soft pallor of her neck and
shoulders, above a gold-coloured frock, gave to her personality an
alluring strangeness.

Soames stood behind, his eyes fastened on his wife's neck. The hands of
Swithin's watch, which he still held open in his hand, had left eight
behind; it was half an hour beyond his dinner-time--he had had no
lunch--and a strange primeval impatience surged up within him.

"It's not like Jolyon to be late!" he said to Irene, with uncontrollable
vexation. "I suppose it'll be June keeping him!"

"People in love are always late," she answered.

Swithin stared at her; a dusky orange dyed his cheeks.

"They've no business to be. Some fashionable nonsense!"

And behind this outburst the inarticulate violence of primitive
generations seemed to mutter and grumble.

"Tell me what you think of my new star, Uncle Swithin," said Irene
softly.

Among the lace in the bosom of her dress was shining a five-pointed star,
made of eleven diamonds. Swithin looked at the star. He had a pretty
taste in stones; no question could have been more sympathetically devised
to distract his attention.

"Who gave you that?" he asked.

"Soames."

There was no change in her face, but Swithin's pale eyes bulged as though
he might suddenly have been afflicted with insight.

"I dare say you're dull at home," he said. "Any day you like to come and
dine with me, I'll give you as good a bottle of wine as you'll get in
London."

"Miss June Forsyte--Mr. Jolyon Forsyte!... Mr. Boswainey!..."

Swithin moved his arm, and said in a rumbling voice:

"Dinner, now--dinner!"

He took in Irene, on the ground that he had not entertained her since she
was a bride. June was the portion of Bosinney, who was placed between
Irene and his fiancee. On the other side of June was James with Mrs.
Nicholas, then old Jolyon with Mrs. James, Nicholas with Hatty Chessman,
Soames with Mrs. Small, completing, the circle to Swithin again.

Family dinners of the Forsytes observe certain traditions. There are,
for instance, no hors d'oeuvre. The reason for this is unknown. Theory
among the younger members traces it to the disgraceful price of oysters;
it is more probably due to a desire to come to the point, to a good
practical sense deciding at once that hors d'oeuvre are but poor things.
The Jameses alone, unable to withstand a custom almost universal in Park
Lane, are now and then unfaithful.

A silent, almost morose, inattention to each other succeeds to the
subsidence into their seats, lasting till well into the first entree, but
interspersed with remarks such as, "Tom's bad again; I can't tell what's
the matter with him!" "I suppose Ann doesn't come down in the
mornings?"--"What's the name of your doctor, Fanny?" "Stubbs?" "He's a
quack!"--"Winifred? She's got too many children. Four, isn't it? She's
as thin as a lath!"--"What d'you give for this sherry, Swithin? Too dry
for me!"

With the second glass of champagne, a kind of hum makes itself heard,
which, when divested of casual accessories and resolved into its primal
element, is found to be James telling a story, and this goes on for a
long time, encroaching sometimes even upon what must universally be
recognised as the crowning point of a Forsyte feast--'the saddle of
mutton.'

No Forsyte has given a dinner without providing a saddle of mutton.
There is something in its succulent solidity which makes it suitable to
people 'of a certain position.' It is nourishing and tasty; the sort of
thing a man remembers eating. It has a past and a future, like a deposit
paid into a bank; and it is something that can be argued about.

Each branch of the family tenaciously held to a particular locality--old
Jolyon swearing by Dartmoor, James by Welsh, Swithin by Southdown,
Nicholas maintaining that people might sneer, but there was nothing like
New Zealand! As for Roger, the 'original' of the brothers, he had been
obliged to invent a locality of his own, and with an ingenuity worthy of
a man who had devised a new profession for his sons, he had discovered a
shop where they sold German; on being remonstrated with, he had proved
his point by producing a butcher's bill, which showed that he paid more
than any of the others. It was on this occasion that old Jolyon, turning
to June, had said in one of his bursts of philosophy:

"You may depend upon it, they're a cranky lot, the Forsytes--and you'll
find it out, as you grow older!"

Timothy alone held apart, for though he ate saddle of mutton heartily, he
was, he said, afraid of it.

To anyone interested psychologically in Forsytes, this great
saddle-of-mutton trait is of prime importance; not only does it
illustrate their tenacity, both collectively and as individuals, but it
marks them as belonging in fibre and instincts to that great class which
believes in nourishment and flavour, and yields to no sentimental craving
for beauty.

Younger members of the family indeed would have done without a joint
altogether, preferring guinea-fowl, or lobster salad--something which
appealed to the imagination, and had less nourishment--but these were
females; or, if not, had been corrupted by their wives, or by mothers,
who having been forced to eat saddle of mutton throughout their married
lives, had passed a secret hostility towards it into the fibre of their
sons.

The great saddle-of-mutton controversy at an end, a Tewkesbury ham
commenced, together with the least touch of West Indian--Swithin was so
long over this course that he caused a block in the progress of the
dinner. To devote himself to it with better heart, he paused in his
conversation.

From his seat by Mrs. Septimus Small Soames was watching. He had a
reason of his own connected with a pet building scheme, for observing
Bosinney. The architect might do for his purpose; he looked clever, as
he sat leaning back in his chair, moodily making little ramparts with
bread-crumbs. Soames noted his dress clothes to be well cut, but too
small, as though made many years ago.

He saw him turn to Irene and say something and her face sparkle as he
often saw it sparkle at other people--never at himself. He tried to
catch what they were saying, but Aunt Juley was speaking.

Hadn't that always seemed very extraordinary to Soames? Only last Sunday
dear Mr. Scole, had been so witty in his sermon, so sarcastic, "For
what," he had said, "shall it profit a man if he gain his own soul, but
lose all his property?" That, he had said, was the motto of the
middle-class; now, what had he meant by that? Of course, it might be
what middle-class people believed--she didn't know; what did Soames
think?

He answered abstractedly: "How should I know? Scoles is a humbug,
though, isn't he?" For Bosinney was looking round the table, as if
pointing out the peculiarities of the guests, and Soames wondered what he
was saying. By her smile Irene was evidently agreeing with his remarks.
She seemed always to agree with other people.

Her eyes were turned on himself; Soames dropped his glance at once. The
smile had died off her lips.

A humbug? But what did Soames mean? If Mr. Scoles was a humbug, a
clergyman--then anybody might be--it was frightful!

"Well, and so they are!" said Soames.

During Aunt Juley's momentary and horrified silence he caught some words
of Irene's that sounded like: 'Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!'

But Swithin had finished his ham.

"Where do you go for your mushrooms?" he was saying to Irene in a voice
like a courtier's; "you ought to go to Smileybob's--he'll give 'em you
fresh. These little men, they won't take the trouble!"

Irene turned to answer him, and Soames saw Bosinney watching her and
smiling to himself. A curious smile the fellow had. A half-simple
arrangement, like a child who smiles when he is pleased. As for George's
nickname--'The Buccaneer'--he did not think much of that. And, seeing
Bosinney turn to June, Soames smiled too, but sardonically--he did not
like June, who was not looking too pleased.

This was not surprising, for she had just held the following conversation
with James:

"I stayed on the river on my way home, Uncle James, and saw a beautiful
site for a house."

James, a slow and thorough eater, stopped the process of mastication.

"Eh?" he said. "Now, where was that?"

"Close to Pangbourne."

James placed a piece of ham in his mouth, and June waited.

"I suppose you wouldn't know whether the land about there was freehold?"
he asked at last. "You wouldn't know anything about the price of land
about there?"

"Yes," said June; "I made inquiries." Her little resolute face under its
copper crown was suspiciously eager and aglow.

James regarded her with the air of an inquisitor.

"What? You're not thinking of buying land!" he ejaculated, dropping his
fork.

June was greatly encouraged by his interest. It had long been her pet
plan that her uncles should benefit themselves and Bosinney by building
country-houses.

"Of course not," she said. "I thought it would be such a splendid place
for--you or--someone to build a country-house!"

James looked at her sideways, and placed a second piece of ham in his
mouth....

"Land ought to be very dear about there," he said.

What June had taken for personal interest was only the impersonal
excitement of every Forsyte who hears of something eligible in danger of
passing into other hands. But she refused to see the disappearance of
her chance, and continued to press her point.

"You ought to go into the country, Uncle James. I wish I had a lot of
money, I wouldn't live another day in London."

James was stirred to the depths of his long thin figure; he had no idea
his niece held such downright views.

"Why don't you go into the country?" repeated June; "it would do you a
lot of good."

"Why?" began James in a fluster. "Buying land--what good d'you suppose I
can do buying land, building houses?--I couldn't get four per cent. for
my money!"

"What does that matter? You'd get fresh air."

"Fresh air!" exclaimed James; "what should I do with fresh air,"

"I should have thought anybody liked to have fresh air," said June
scornfully.

James wiped his napkin all over his mouth.

"You don't know the value of money," he said, avoiding her eye.

"No! and I hope I never shall!" and, biting her lip with inexpressible
mortification, poor June was silent.

Why were her own relations so rich, and Phil never knew where the money
was coming from for to-morrow's tobacco. Why couldn't they do something
for him? But they were so selfish. Why couldn't they build
country-houses? She had all that naive dogmatism which is so pathetic,
and sometimes achieves such great results. Bosinney, to whom she turned
in her discomfiture, was talking to Irene, and a chill fell on June's
spirit. Her eyes grew steady with anger, like old Jolyon's when his
will was crossed.

James, too, was much disturbed. He felt as though someone had threatened
his right to invest his money at five per cent. Jolyon had spoiled her.
None of his girls would have said such a thing. James had always been
exceedingly liberal to his children, and the consciousness of this made
him feel it all the more deeply. He trifled moodily with his
strawberries, then, deluging them with cream, he ate them quickly; they,
at all events, should not escape him.

No wonder he was upset. Engaged for fifty-four years (he had been
admitted a solicitor on the earliest day sanctioned by the law) in
arranging mortgages, preserving investments at a dead level of high and
safe interest, conducting negotiations on the principle of securing the
utmost possible out of other people compatible with safety to his clients
and himself, in calculations as to the exact pecuniary possibilities of
all the relations of life, he had come at last to think purely in terms
of money. Money was now his light, his medium for seeing, that without
which he was really unable to see, really not cognisant of phenomena; and
to have this thing, "I hope I shall never know the value of money!" said
to his face, saddened and exasperated him. He knew it to be nonsense, or
it would have frightened him. What was the world coming to! Suddenly
recollecting the story of young Jolyon, however, he felt a little
comforted, for what could you expect with a father like that! This
turned his thoughts into a channel still less pleasant. What was all
this talk about Soames and Irene?

As in all self-respecting families, an emporium had been established
where family secrets were bartered, and family stock priced. It was
known on Forsyte 'Change that Irene regretted her marriage. Her regret
was disapproved of. She ought to have known her own mind; no dependable
woman made these mistakes.

James reflected sourly that they had a nice house (rather small) in an
excellent position, no children, and no money troubles. Soames was
reserved about his affairs, but he must be getting a very warm man. He
had a capital income from the business--for Soames, like his father, was
a member of that well-known firm of solicitors, Forsyte, Bustard and
Forsyte--and had always been very careful. He had done quite unusually
well with some mortgages he had taken up, too--a little timely
foreclosure--most lucky hits!