The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Galsworthy

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


A long, soft ripple of wind flowed over the corn, and brought a puff of
warm air into their faces.

"I could build you a teaser here," said Bosinney, breaking the silence at
last.

"I dare say," replied Soames, drily. "You haven't got to pay for it."

"For about eight thousand I could build you a palace."

Soames had become very pale--a struggle was going on within him. He
dropped his eyes, and said stubbornly:

"I can't afford it."

And slowly, with his mousing walk, he led the way back to the first site.

They spent some time there going into particulars of the projected house,
and then Soames returned to the agent's cottage.

He came out in about half an hour, and, joining Bosinney, started for the
station.

"Well," he said, hardly opening his lips, "I've taken that site of yours,
after all."

And again he was silent, confusedly debating how it was that this fellow,
whom by habit he despised, should have overborne his own decision.




CHAPTER V

A FORSYTE MENAGE

Like the enlightened thousands of his class and generation in this great
city of London, who no longer believe in red velvet chairs, and know that
groups of modern Italian marble are 'vieux jeu,' Soames Forsyte inhabited
a house which did what it could. It owned a copper door knocker of
individual design, windows which had been altered to open outwards,
hanging flower boxes filled with fuchsias, and at the back (a great
feature) a little court tiled with jade-green tiles, and surrounded by
pink hydrangeas in peacock-blue tubs. Here, under a parchment-coloured
Japanese sunshade covering the whole end, inhabitants or visitors could
be screened from the eyes of the curious while they drank tea and
examined at their leisure the latest of Soames's little silver boxes.

The inner decoration favoured the First Empire and William Morris. For
its size, the house was commodious; there were countless nooks resembling
birds' nests, and little things made of silver were deposited like eggs.

In this general perfection two kinds of fastidiousness were at war.
There lived here a mistress who would have dwelt daintily on a desert
island; a master whose daintiness was, as it were, an investment,
cultivated by the owner for his advancement, in accordance with the laws
of competition. This competitive daintiness had caused Soames in his
Marlborough days to be the first boy into white waistcoats in summer, and
corduroy waistcoats in winter, had prevented him from ever appearing in
public with his tie climbing up his collar, and induced him to dust his
patent leather boots before a great multitude assembled on Speech Day to
hear him recite Moliere.

Skin-like immaculateness had grown over Soames, as over many Londoners;
impossible to conceive of him with a hair out of place, a tie deviating
one-eighth of an inch from the perpendicular, a collar unglossed! He
would not have gone without a bath for worlds--it was the fashion to take
baths; and how bitter was his scorn of people who omitted them!

But Irene could be imagined, like some nymph, bathing in wayside streams,
for the joy of the freshness and of seeing her own fair body.

In this conflict throughout the house the woman had gone to the wall. As
in the struggle between Saxon and Celt still going on within the nation,
the more impressionable and receptive temperament had had forced on it a
conventional superstructure.

Thus the house had acquired a close resemblance to hundreds of other
houses with the same high aspirations, having become: 'That very charming
little house of the Soames Forsytes, quite individual, my dear--really
elegant.'

For Soames Forsyte--read James Peabody, Thomas Atkins, or Emmanuel
Spagnoletti, the name in fact of any upper-middle class Englishman in
London with any pretensions to taste; and though the decoration be
different, the phrase is just.

On the evening of August 8, a week after the expedition to Robin Hill, in
the dining-room of this house--'quite individual, my dear--really
elegant'--Soames and Irene were seated at dinner. A hot dinner on
Sundays was a little distinguishing elegance common to this house and
many others. Early in married life Soames had laid down the rule: 'The
servants must give us hot dinner on Sundays--they've nothing to do but
play the concertina.'

The custom had produced no revolution. For--to Soames a rather
deplorable sign--servants were devoted to Irene, who, in defiance of all
safe tradition, appeared to recognise their right to a share in the
weaknesses of human nature.

The happy pair were seated, not opposite each other, but rectangularly,
at the handsome rosewood table; they dined without a cloth--a
distinguishing elegance--and so far had not spoken a word.

Soames liked to talk during dinner about business, or what he had been
buying, and so long as he talked Irene's silence did not distress him.
This evening he had found it impossible to talk. The decision to build
had been weighing on his mind all the week, and he had made up his mind
to tell her.

His nervousness about this disclosure irritated him profoundly; she had
no business to make him feel like that--a wife and a husband being one
person. She had not looked at him once since they sat down; and he
wondered what on earth she had been thinking about all the time. It was
hard, when a man worked as he did, making money for her--yes, and with an
ache in his heart--that she should sit there, looking--looking as if she
saw the walls of the room closing in. It was enough to make a man get up
and leave the table.

The light from the rose-shaded lamp fell on her neck and arms--Soames
liked her to dine in a low dress, it gave him an inexpressible feeling of
superiority to the majority of his acquaintance, whose wives were
contented with their best high frocks or with tea-gowns, when they dined
at home. Under that rosy light her amber-coloured hair and fair skin
made strange contrast with her dark brown eyes.

Could a man own anything prettier than this dining-table with its deep
tints, the starry, soft-petalled roses, the ruby-coloured glass, and
quaint silver furnishing; could a man own anything prettier than the
woman who sat at it? Gratitude was no virtue among Forsytes, who,
competitive, and full of common-sense, had no occasion for it; and Soames
only experienced a sense of exasperation amounting to pain, that he did
not own her as it was his right to own her, that he could not, as by
stretching out his hand to that rose, pluck her and sniff the very
secrets of her heart.

Out of his other property, out of all the things he had collected, his
silver, his pictures, his houses, his investments, he got a secret and
intimate feeling; out of her he got none.

In this house of his there was writing on every wall. His business-like
temperament protested against a mysterious warning that she was not made
for him. He had married this woman, conquered her, made her his own, and
it seemed to him contrary to the most fundamental of all laws, the law of
possession, that he could do no more than own her body--if indeed he
could do that, which he was beginning to doubt. If any one had asked him
if he wanted to own her soul, the question would have seemed to him both
ridiculous and sentimental. But he did so want, and the writing said he
never would.

She was ever silent, passive, gracefully averse; as though terrified lest
by word, motion, or sign she might lead him to believe that she was fond
of him; and he asked himself: Must I always go on like this?

Like most novel readers of his generation (and Soames was a great novel
reader), literature coloured his view of life; and he had imbibed the
belief that it was only a question of time.

In the end the husband always gained the affection of his wife. Even in
those cases--a class of book he was not very fond of--which ended in
tragedy, the wife always died with poignant regrets on her lips, or if it
were the husband who died--unpleasant thought--threw herself on his body
in an agony of remorse.

He often took Irene to the theatre, instinctively choosing the modern
Society Plays with the modern Society conjugal problem, so fortunately
different from any conjugal problem in real life. He found that they too
always ended in the same way, even when there was a lover in the case.
While he was watching the play Soames often sympathized with the lover;
but before he reached home again, driving with Irene in a hansom, he saw
that this would not do, and he was glad the play had ended as it had.
There was one class of husband that had just then come into fashion, the
strong, rather rough, but extremely sound man, who was peculiarly
successful at the end of the play; with this person Soames was really not
in sympathy, and had it not been for his own position, would have
expressed his disgust with the fellow. But he was so conscious of how
vital to himself was the necessity for being a successful, even a
'strong,' husband, that he never spoke of a distaste born perhaps by the
perverse processes of Nature out of a secret fund of brutality in
himself.

But Irene's silence this evening was exceptional. He had never before
seen such an expression on her face. And since it is always the unusual
which alarms, Soames was alarmed. He ate his savoury, and hurried the
maid as she swept off the crumbs with the silver sweeper. When she had
left the room, he filled his glass with wine and said:

"Anybody been here this afternoon?"

"June."

"What did she want?" It was an axiom with the Forsytes that people did
not go anywhere unless they wanted something. "Came to talk about her
lover, I suppose?"

Irene made no reply.

"It looks to me," continued Soames, "as if she were sweeter on him than
he is on her. She's always following him about."

Irene's eyes made him feel uncomfortable.

"You've no business to say such a thing!" she exclaimed.

"Why not? Anybody can see it."

"They cannot. And if they could, it's disgraceful to say so."

Soames's composure gave way.

"You're a pretty wife!" he said. But secretly he wondered at the heat of
her reply; it was unlike her. "You're cracked about June! I can tell
you one thing: now that she has the Buccaneer in tow, she doesn't care
twopence about you, and, you'll find it out. But you won't see so much
of her in future; we're going to live in the country."

He had been glad to get his news out under cover of this burst of
irritation. He had expected a cry of dismay; the silence with which his
pronouncement was received alarmed him.

"You don't seem interested," he was obliged to add.

"I knew it already."

He looked at her sharply.

"Who told you?"

"June."

"How did she know?"

Irene did not answer. Baffled and uncomfortable, he said:

"It's a fine thing for Bosinney, it'll be the making of him. I suppose
she's told you all about it?"

"Yes."

There was another pause, and then Soames said:

"I suppose you don't want to, go?"

Irene made no reply.

"Well, I can't tell what you want. You never seem contented here."

"Have my wishes anything to do with it?"

She took the vase of roses and left the room. Soames remained seated.
Was it for this that he had signed that contract? Was it for this that
he was going to spend some ten thousand pounds? Bosinney's phrase came
back to him: "Women are the devil!"

But presently he grew calmer. It might have, been worse. She might have
flared up. He had expected something more than this. It was lucky, after
all, that June had broken the ice for him. She must have wormed it out of
Bosinney; he might have known she would.

He lighted his cigarette. After all, Irene had not made a scene! She
would come round--that was the best of her; she was cold, but not sulky.
And, puffing the cigarette smoke at a lady-bird on the shining table, he
plunged into a reverie about the house. It was no good worrying; he
would go and make it up presently. She would be sitting out there in the
dark, under the Japanese sunshade, knitting. A beautiful, warm night....

In truth, June had come in that afternoon with shining eyes, and the
words: "Soames is a brick! It's splendid for Phil--the very thing for
him!"

Irene's face remaining dark and puzzled, she went on:

"Your new house at Robin Hill, of course. What? Don't you know?"

Irene did not know.

"Oh! then, I suppose I oughtn't to have told you!" Looking impatiently
at her friend, she cried: "You look as if you didn't care. Don't you
see, it's what I've' been praying for--the very chance he's been wanting
all this time. Now you'll see what he can do;" and thereupon she poured
out the whole story.

Since her own engagement she had not seemed much interested in her
friend's position; the hours she spent with Irene were given to
confidences of her own; and at times, for all her affectionate pity, it
was impossible to keep out of her smile a trace of compassionate contempt
for the woman who had made such a mistake in her life--such a vast,
ridiculous mistake.

"He's to have all the decorations as well--a free hand. It's perfect--"
June broke into laughter, her little figure quivered gleefully; she
raised her hand, and struck a blow at a muslin curtain. "Do you, know I
even asked Uncle James...." But, with a sudden dislike to mentioning that
incident, she stopped; and presently, finding her friend so unresponsive,
went away. She looked back from the pavement, and Irene was still
standing in the doorway. In response to her farewell wave, Irene put her
hand to her brow, and, turning slowly, shut the door....

Soames went to the drawing-room presently, and peered at her through the
window.

Out in the shadow of the Japanese sunshade she was sitting very still,
the lace on her white shoulders stirring with the soft rise and fall of
her bosom.

But about this silent creature sitting there so motionless, in the dark,
there seemed a warmth, a hidden fervour of feeling, as if the whole of
her being had been stirred, and some change were taking place in its very
depths.

He stole back to the dining-room unnoticed.




CHAPTER VI

JAMES AT LARGE

It was not long before Soames's determination to build went the round of
the family, and created the flutter that any decision connected with
property should make among Forsytes.

It was not his fault, for he had been determined that no one should know.
June, in the fulness of her heart, had told Mrs. Small, giving her leave
only to tell Aunt Ann--she thought it would cheer her, the poor old
sweet! for Aunt Ann had kept her room now for many days.

Mrs. Small told Aunt Ann at once, who, smiling as she lay back on her
pillows, said in her distinct, trembling old voice:

"It's very nice for dear June; but I hope they will be careful--it's
rather dangerous!"

When she was left alone again, a frown, like a cloud presaging a rainy
morrow, crossed her face.

While she was lying there so many days the process of recharging her will
went on all the time; it spread to her face, too, and tightening
movements were always in action at the corners of her lips.

The maid Smither, who had been in her service since girlhood, and was
spoken of as "Smither--a good girl--but so slow!"--the maid Smither
performed every morning with extreme punctiliousness the crowning
ceremony of that ancient toilet. Taking from the recesses of their pure
white band-box those flat, grey curls, the insignia of personal dignity,
she placed them securely in her mistress's hands, and turned her back.

And every day Aunts Juley and Hester were required to come and report on
Timothy; what news there was of Nicholas; whether dear June had succeeded
in getting Jolyon to shorten the engagement, now that Mr. Bosinney was
building Soames a house; whether young Roger's wife was
really--expecting; how the operation on Archie had succeeded; and what
Swithin had done about that empty house in Wigmore Street, where the
tenant had lost all his money and treated him so badly; above all, about
Soames; was Irene still--still asking for a separate room? And every
morning Smither was told: "I shall be coming down this afternoon,
Smither, about two o'clock. I shall want your arm, after all these days
in bed!"

After telling Aunt Ann, Mrs. Small had spoken of the house in the
strictest confidence to Mrs. Nicholas, who in her turn had asked Winifred
Dartie for confirmation, supposing, of course, that, being Soames's
sister, she would know all about it. Through her it had in due course
come round to the ears of James. He had been a good deal agitated.

"Nobody," he said, "told him anything." And, rather than go direct to
Soames himself, of whose taciturnity he was afraid, he took his umbrella
and went round to Timothy's.

He found Mrs. Septimus and Hester (who had been told--she was so safe,
she found it tiring to talk) ready, and indeed eager, to discuss the
news. It was very good of dear Soames, they thought, to employ Mr.
Bosinney, but rather risky. What had George named him? 'The Buccaneer'
How droll! But George was always droll! However, it would be all in the
family they supposed they must really look upon Mr. Bosinney as belonging
to the family, though it seemed strange.

James here broke in:

"Nobody knows anything about him. I don't see what Soames wants with a
young man like that. I shouldn't be surprised if Irene had put her oar
in. I shall speak to...."

"Soames," interposed Aunt Juley, "told Mr. Bosinney that he didn't wish
it mentioned. He wouldn't like it to be talked about, I'm sure, and if
Timothy knew he would be very vexed, I...."

James put his hand behind his ear:

"What?" he said. "I'm getting very deaf. I suppose I don't hear people.
Emily's got a bad toe. We shan't be able to start for Wales till the end
of the month. There' s always something!" And, having got what he
wanted, he took his hat and went away.

It was a fine afternoon, and he walked across the Park towards Soames's,
where he intended to dine, for Emily's toe kept her in bed, and Rachel
and Cicely were on a visit to the country. He took the slanting path
from the Bayswater side of the Row to the Knightsbridge Gate, across a
pasture of short, burnt grass, dotted with blackened sheep, strewn with
seated couples and strange waifs; lying prone on their faces, like
corpses on a field over which the wave of battle has rolled.

He walked rapidly, his head bent, looking neither to right nor, left.
The appearance of this park, the centre of his own battle-field, where he
had all his life been fighting, excited no thought or speculation in his
mind. These corpses flung down, there, from out the press and turmoil of
the struggle, these pairs of lovers sitting cheek by jowl for an hour of
idle Elysium snatched from the monotony of their treadmill, awakened no
fancies in his mind; he had outlived that kind of imagination; his nose,
like the nose of a sheep, was fastened to the pastures on which he
browsed.

One of his tenants had lately shown a disposition to be behind-hand in
his rent, and it had become a grave question whether he had not better
turn him out at once, and so run the risk of not re-letting before
Christmas. Swithin had just been let in very badly, but it had served
him right--he had held on too long.

He pondered this as he walked steadily, holding his umbrella carefully by
the wood, just below the crook of the handle, so as to keep the ferule
off the ground, and not fray the silk in the middle. And, with his thin,
high shoulders stooped, his long legs moving with swift mechanical
precision, this passage through the Park, where the sun shone with a
clear flame on so much idleness--on so many human evidences of the
remorseless battle of Property, raging beyond its ring--was like the
flight of some land bird across the sea.

He felt a--touch on the arm as he came out at Albert Gate.

It was Soames, who, crossing from the shady side of Piccadilly, where he
had been walking home from the office, had suddenly appeared alongside.

"Your mother's in bed," said James; "I was, just coming to you, but I
suppose I shall be in the way."

The outward relations between James and his son were marked by a lack of
sentiment peculiarly Forsytean, but for all that the two were by no means
unattached. Perhaps they regarded one another as an investment;
certainly they were solicitous of each other's welfare, glad of each
other's company. They had never exchanged two words upon the more
intimate problems of life, or revealed in each other's presence the
existence of any deep feeling.

Something beyond the power of word-analysis bound them together,
something hidden deep in the fibre of nations and families--for blood,
they say, is thicker than water--and neither of them was a cold-blooded
man. Indeed, in James love of his children was now the prime motive of
his existence. To have creatures who were parts of himself, to whom he
might transmit the money he saved, was at the root of his saving; and, at
seventy-five, what was left that could give him pleasure, but--saving?
The kernel of life was in this saving for his children.

Than James Forsyte, notwithstanding all his 'Jonah-isms,' there was no
saner man (if the leading symptom of sanity, as we are told, is
self-preservation, though without doubt Timothy went too far) in all this
London, of which he owned so much, and loved with such a dumb love, as
the centre of his opportunities. He had the marvellous instinctive
sanity of the middle class. In him--more than in Jolyon, with his
masterful will and his moments of tenderness and philosophy--more than in
Swithin, the martyr to crankiness--Nicholas, the sufferer from
ability--and Roger, the victim of enterprise--beat the true pulse of
compromise; of all the brothers he was least remarkable in mind and
person, and for that reason more likely to live for ever.

To James, more than to any of the others, was "the family" significant
and dear. There had always been something primitive and cosy in his
attitude towards life; he loved the family hearth, he loved gossip, and
he loved grumbling. All his decisions were formed of a cream which he
skimmed off the family mind; and, through that family, off the minds of
thousands of other families of similar fibre. Year after year, week
after week, he went to Timothy's, and in his brother's front
drawing-room--his legs twisted, his long white whiskers framing his
clean-shaven mouth--would sit watching the family pot simmer, the cream
rising to the top; and he would go away sheltered, refreshed, comforted,
with an indefinable sense of comfort.

Beneath the adamant of his self-preserving instinct there was much real
softness in James; a visit to Timothy's was like an hour spent in the lap
of a mother; and the deep craving he himself had for the protection of
the family wing reacted in turn on his feelings towards his own children;
it was a nightmare to him to think of them exposed to the treatment of
the world, in money, health, or reputation. When his old friend John
Street's son volunteered for special service, he shook his head
querulously, and wondered what John Street was about to allow it; and
when young Street was assagaied, he took it so much to heart that he made
a point of calling everywhere with the special object of saying: He knew
how it would be--he'd no patience with them!

When his son-in-law Dartie had that financial crisis, due to speculation
in Oil Shares, James made himself ill worrying over it; the knell of all
prosperity seemed to have sounded. It took him three months and a visit
to Baden-Baden to get better; there was something terrible in the idea
that but for his, James's, money, Dartie's name might have appeared in
the Bankruptcy List.

Composed of a physiological mixture so sound that if he had an earache he
thought he was dying, he regarded the occasional ailments of his wife and
children as in the nature of personal grievances, special interventions
of Providence for the purpose of destroying his peace of mind; but he did
not believe at all in the ailments of people outside his own immediate
family, affirming them in every case to be due to neglected liver.

His universal comment was: "What can they expect? I have it myself, if
I'm not careful!"

When he went to Soames's that evening he felt that life was hard on him:
There was Emily with a bad toe, and Rachel gadding about in the country;
he got no sympathy from anybody; and Ann, she was ill--he did not believe
she would last through the summer; he had called there three times now
without her being able to see him! And this idea of Soames's, building a
house, that would have to be looked into. As to the trouble with Irene,
he didn't know what was to come of that--anything might come of it!

He entered 62, Montpellier Square with the fullest intentions of being
miserable. It was already half-past seven, and Irene, dressed for
dinner, was seated in the drawing-room. She was wearing her
gold-coloured frock--for, having been displayed at a dinner-party, a
soiree, and a dance, it was now to be worn at home--and she had adorned
the bosom with a cascade of lace, on which James's eyes riveted
themselves at once.