The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Galsworthy

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


Entering the scarlet and green drawing-room, whose apparel made so vivid
a setting for their unaccustomed costumes, each tried nervously to find a
seat, desirous of hiding the emphatic blackness of his trousers. There
seemed a sort of indecency in that blackness and in the colour of their
gloves--a sort of exaggeration of the feelings; and many cast shocked
looks of secret envy at 'the Buccaneer,' who had no gloves, and was
wearing grey trousers. A subdued hum of conversation rose, no one
speaking of the departed, but each asking after the other, as though
thereby casting an indirect libation to this event, which they had come
to honour.

And presently James said:

"Well, I think we ought to be starting."

They went downstairs, and, two and two, as they had been told off in
strict precedence, mounted the carriages.

The hearse started at a foot's pace; the carriages moved slowly after.
In the first went old Jolyon with Nicholas; in the second, the twins,
Swithin and James; in the third, Roger and young Roger; Soames, young
Nicholas, George, and Bosinney followed in the fourth. Each of the other
carriages, eight in all, held three or four of the family; behind them
came the doctor's brougham; then, at a decent interval, cabs containing
family clerks and servants; and at the very end, one containing nobody at
all, but bringing the total cortege up to the number of thirteen.

So long as the procession kept to the highway of the Bayswater Road, it
retained the foot's-pace, but, turning into less important
thorough-fares, it soon broke into a trot, and so proceeded, with
intervals of walking in the more fashionable streets, until it arrived.
In the first carriage old Jolyon and Nicholas were talking of their
wills. In the second the twins, after a single attempt, had lapsed into
complete silence; both were rather deaf, and the exertion of making
themselves heard was too great. Only once James broke this silence:

"I shall have to be looking about for some ground somewhere. What
arrangements have you made, Swithin?"

And Swithin, fixing him with a dreadful stare, answered:

"Don't talk to me about such things!"

In the third carriage a disjointed conversation was carried on in the
intervals of looking out to see how far they had got, George remarking,
"Well, it was really time that the poor old lady went." He didn't
believe in people living beyond seventy, Young Nicholas replied mildly
that the rule didn't seem to apply to the Forsytes. George said he
himself intended to commit suicide at sixty. Young Nicholas, smiling and
stroking a long chin, didn't think his father would like that theory; he
had made a lot of money since he was sixty. Well, seventy was the
outside limit; it was then time, George said, for them to go and leave
their money to their children. Soames, hitherto silent, here joined in;
he had not forgotten the remark about the 'undertaking,' and, lifting his
eyelids almost imperceptibly, said it was all very well for people who
never made money to talk. He himself intended to live as long as he
could. This was a hit at George, who was notoriously hard up. Bosinney
muttered abstractedly "Hear, hear!" and, George yawning, the conversation
dropped.

Upon arriving, the coffin was borne into the chapel, and, two by two, the
mourners filed in behind it. This guard of men, all attached to the dead
by the bond of kinship, was an impressive and singular sight in the great
city of London, with its overwhelming diversity of life, its innumerable
vocations, pleasures, duties, its terrible hardness, its terrible call to
individualism.

The family had gathered to triumph over all this, to give a show of
tenacious unity, to illustrate gloriously that law of property underlying
the growth of their tree, by which it had thriven and spread, trunk and
branches, the sap flowing through all, the full growth reached at the
appointed time. The spirit of the old woman lying in her last sleep had
called them to this demonstration. It was her final appeal to that unity
which had been their strength--it was her final triumph that she had died
while the tree was yet whole.

She was spared the watching of the branches jut out beyond the point of
balance. She could not look into the hearts of her followers. The same
law that had worked in her, bringing her up from a tall, straight-backed
slip of a girl to a woman strong and grown, from a woman grown to a woman
old, angular, feeble, almost witchlike, with individuality all sharpened
and sharpened, as all rounding from the world's contact fell off from
her--that same law would work, was working, in the family she had watched
like a mother.

She had seen it young, and growing, she had seen it strong and grown, and
before her old eyes had time or strength to see any more, she died. She
would have tried, and who knows but she might have kept it young and
strong, with her old fingers, her trembling kisses--a little longer;
alas! not even Aunt Ann could fight with Nature.

'Pride comes before a fall!' In accordance with this, the greatest of
Nature's ironies, the Forsyte family had gathered for a last proud
pageant before they fell. Their faces to right and left, in single
lines, were turned for the most part impassively toward the ground,
guardians of their thoughts; but here and there, one looking upward, with
a line between his brows, searched to see some sight on the chapel walls
too much for him, to be listening to something that appalled. And the
responses, low-muttered, in voices through which rose the same tone, the
same unseizable family ring, sounded weird, as though murmured in hurried
duplication by a single person.

The service in the chapel over, the mourners filed up again to guard the
body to the tomb. The vault stood open, and, round it, men in black were
waiting.

From that high and sacred field, where thousands of the upper middle
class lay in their last sleep, the eyes of the Forsytes travelled down
across the flocks of graves. There--spreading to the distance, lay
London, with no sun over it, mourning the loss of its daughter, mourning
with this family, so dear, the loss of her who was mother and guardian.
A hundred thousand spires and houses, blurred in the great grey web of
property, lay there like prostrate worshippers before the grave of this,
the oldest Forsyte of them all.

A few words, a sprinkle of earth, the thrusting of the coffin home, and
Aunt Ann had passed to her last rest.

Round the vault, trustees of that passing, the five brothers stood, with
white heads bowed; they would see that Ann was comfortable where she was
going. Her little property must stay behind, but otherwise, all that
could be should be done....

Then severally, each stood aside, and putting on his hat, turned back to
inspect the new inscription on the marble of the family vault:

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ANN FORSYTE, THE DAUGHTER OF THE ABOVE JOLYON AND
ANN FORSYTE, WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE THE 27TH DAY OF SEPTEMBER, 1886, AGED
EIGHTY-SEVEN YEARS AND FOUR DAYS

Soon perhaps, someone else would be wanting an inscription. It was
strange and intolerable, for they had not thought somehow, that Forsytes
could die. And one and all they had a longing to get away from this
painfulness, this ceremony which had reminded them of things they could
not bear to think about--to get away quickly and go about their business
and forget.

It was cold, too; the wind, like some slow, disintegrating force, blowing
up the hill over the graves, struck them with its chilly breath; they
began to split into groups, and as quickly as possible to fill the
waiting carriages.

Swithin said he should go back to lunch at Timothy's, and he offered to
take anybody with him in his brougham. It was considered a doubtful
privilege to drive with Swithin in his brougham, which was not a large
one; nobody accepted, and he went off alone. James and Roger followed
immediately after; they also would drop in to lunch. The others
gradually melted away, Old Jolyon taking three nephews to fill up his
carriage; he had a want of those young faces.

Soames, who had to arrange some details in the cemetery office, walked
away with Bosinney. He had much to talk over with him, and, having
finished his business, they strolled to Hampstead, lunched together at
the Spaniard's Inn, and spent a long time in going into practical details
connected with the building of the house; they then proceeded to the
tram-line, and came as far as the Marble Arch, where Bosinney went off to
Stanhope Gate to see June.

Soames felt in excellent spirits when he arrived home, and confided to
Irene at dinner that he had had a good talk with Bosinney, who really
seemed a sensible fellow; they had had a capital walk too, which had done
his liver good--he had been short of exercise for a long time--and
altogether a very satisfactory day. If only it hadn't been for poor Aunt
Ann, he would have taken her to the theatre; as it was, they must make
the best of an evening at home.

"The Buccaneer asked after you more than once," he said suddenly. And
moved by some inexplicable desire to assert his proprietorship, he rose
from his chair and planted a kiss on his wife's shoulder.




PART II




CHAPTER I

PROGRESS OF THE HOUSE

The winter had been an open one. Things in the trade were slack; and as
Soames had reflected before making up his mind, it had been a good time
for building. The shell of the house at Robin Hill was thus completed by
the end of April.

Now that there was something to be seen for his money, he had been coming
down once, twice, even three times a week, and would mouse about among
the debris for hours, careful never to soil his clothes, moving silently
through the unfinished brickwork of doorways, or circling round the
columns in the central court.

And he would stand before them for minutes' together, as though peering
into the real quality of their substance.

On April 30 he had an appointment with Bosinney to go over the accounts,
and five minutes before the proper time he entered the tent which the
architect had pitched for himself close to the old oak tree.

The accounts were already prepared on a folding table, and with a nod
Soames sat down to study them. It was some time before he raised his
head.

"I can't make them out," he said at last; "they come to nearly seven
hundred more than they ought"

After a glance at Bosinney's face he went on quickly:

"If you only make a firm stand against these builder chaps you'll get
them down. They stick you with everything if you don't look sharp....
Take ten per cent. off all round. I shan't mind it's coming out a
hundred or so over the mark!"

Bosinney shook his head:

"I've taken off every farthing I can!"

Soames pushed back the table with a movement of anger, which sent the
account sheets fluttering to the ground.

"Then all I can say is," he flustered out, "you've made a pretty mess of
it!"

"I've told you a dozen times," Bosinney answered sharply, "that there'd
be extras. I've pointed them out to you over and over again!"

"I know that," growled Soames: "I shouldn't have objected to a ten pound
note here and there. How was I to know that by 'extras' you meant seven
hundred pounds?"

The qualities of both men had contributed to this not-inconsiderable
discrepancy. On the one hand, the architect's devotion to his idea, to
the image of a house which he had created and believed in--had made him
nervous of being stopped, or forced to the use of makeshifts; on the
other, Soames' not less true and wholehearted devotion to the very best
article that could be obtained for the money, had rendered him averse to
believing that things worth thirteen shillings could not be bought with
twelve.

"I wish I'd never undertaken your house," said Bosinney suddenly. "You
come down here worrying me out of my life. You want double the value for
your money anybody else would, and now that you've got a house that for
its size is not to be beaten in the county, you don't want to pay for it.
If you're anxious to be off your bargain, I daresay I can find the
balance above the estimates myself, but I'm d----d if I do another stroke
of work for you!"

Soames regained his composure. Knowing that Bosinney had no capital, he
regarded this as a wild suggestion. He saw, too, that he would be kept
indefinitely out of this house on which he had set his heart, and just at
the crucial point when the architect's personal care made all the
difference. In the meantime there was Irene to be thought of! She had
been very queer lately. He really believed it was only because she had
taken to Bosinney that she tolerated the idea of the house at all. It
would not do to make an open breach with her.

"You needn't get into a rage," he said. "If I'm willing to put up with
it, I suppose you needn't cry out. All I meant was that when you tell me
a thing is going to cost so much, I like to--well, in fact, I--like to
know where I am."

"Look here!" said Bosinney, and Soames was both annoyed and surprised by
the shrewdness of his glance. "You've got my services dirt cheap. For
the kind of work I've put into this house, and the amount of time I've
given to it, you'd have had to pay Littlemaster or some other fool four
times as much. What you want, in fact, is a first-rate man for a
fourth-rate fee, and that's exactly what you've got!"

Soames saw that he really meant what he said, and, angry though he was,
the consequences of a row rose before him too vividly. He saw his house
unfinished, his wife rebellious, himself a laughingstock.

"Let's go over it," he said sulkily, "and see how the money's gone."

"Very well," assented Bosinney. "But we'll hurry up, if you don't mind.
I have to get back in time to take June to the theatre."

Soames cast a stealthy look at him, and said: "Coming to our place, I
suppose to meet her?" He was always coming to their place!

There had been rain the night before-a spring rain, and the earth smelt
of sap and wild grasses. The warm, soft breeze swung the leaves and the
golden buds of the old oak tree, and in the sunshine the blackbirds were
whistling their hearts out.

It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable yearning, a
painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand motionless, looking at
the leaves or grass, and fling out his arms to embrace he knows not what.
The earth gave forth a fainting warmth, stealing up through the chilly
garment in which winter had wrapped her. It was her long caress of
invitation, to draw men down to lie within her arms, to roll their bodies
on her, and put their lips to her breast.

On just such a day as this Soames had got from Irene the promise he had
asked her for so often. Seated on the fallen trunk of a tree, he had
promised for the twentieth time that if their marriage were not a
success, she should be as free as if she had never married him!

"Do you swear it?" she had said. A few days back she had reminded him of
that oath. He had answered: "Nonsense! I couldn't have sworn any such
thing!" By some awkward fatality he remembered it now. What queer
things men would swear for the sake of women! He would have sworn it at
any time to gain her! He would swear it now, if thereby he could touch
her--but nobody could touch her, she was cold-hearted!

And memories crowded on him with the fresh, sweet savour of the spring
wind-memories of his courtship.

In the spring of the year 1881 he was visiting his old school-fellow and
client, George Liversedge, of Branksome, who, with the view of developing
his pine-woods in the neighbourhood of Bournemouth, had placed the
formation of the company necessary to the scheme in Soames's hands. Mrs.
Liversedge, with a sense of the fitness of things, had given a musical
tea in his honour. Later in the course of this function, which Soames, no
musician, had regarded as an unmitigated bore, his eye had been caught by
the face of a girl dressed in mourning, standing by herself. The lines
of her tall, as yet rather thin figure, showed through the wispy,
clinging stuff of her black dress, her black-gloved hands were crossed in
front of her, her lips slightly parted, and her large, dark eyes wandered
from face to face. Her hair, done low on her neck, seemed to gleam above
her black collar like coils of shining metal. And as Soames stood
looking at her, the sensation that most men have felt at one time or
another went stealing through him--a peculiar satisfaction of the senses,
a peculiar certainty, which novelists and old ladies call love at first
sight. Still stealthily watching her, he at once made his way to his
hostess, and stood doggedly waiting for the music to cease.

"Who is that girl with yellow hair and dark eyes?" he asked.

"That--oh! Irene Heron. Her father, Professor Heron, died this year.
She lives with her stepmother. She's a nice girl, a pretty girl, but no
money!"

"Introduce me, please," said Soames.

It was very little that he found to say, nor did he find her responsive
to that little. But he went away with the resolution to see her again.
He effected his object by chance, meeting her on the pier with her
stepmother, who had the habit of walking there from twelve to one of a
forenoon. Soames made this lady's acquaintance with alacrity, nor was it
long before he perceived in her the ally he was looking for. His keen
scent for the commercial side of family life soon told him that Irene
cost her stepmother more than the fifty pounds a year she brought her; it
also told him that Mrs. Heron, a woman yet in the prime of life, desired
to be married again. The strange ripening beauty of her stepdaughter
stood in the way of this desirable consummation. And Soames, in his
stealthy tenacity, laid his plans.

He left Bournemouth without having given himself away, but in a month's
time came back, and this time he spoke, not to the girl, but to her
stepmother. He had made up his mind, he said; he would wait any time.
And he had long to wait, watching Irene bloom, the lines of her young
figure softening, the stronger blood deepening the gleam of her eyes, and
warming her face to a creamy glow; and at each visit he proposed to her,
and when that visit was at an end, took her refusal away with him, back
to London, sore at heart, but steadfast and silent as the grave. He
tried to come at the secret springs of her resistance; only once had he a
gleam of light. It was at one of those assembly dances, which afford the
only outlet to the passions of the population of seaside watering-places.
He was sitting with her in an embrasure, his senses tingling with the
contact of the waltz. She had looked at him over her, slowly waving fan;
and he had lost his head. Seizing that moving wrist, he pressed his lips
to the flesh of her arm. And she had shuddered--to this day he had not
forgotten that shudder--nor the look so passionately averse she had given
him.

A year after that she had yielded. What had made her yield he could
never make out; and from Mrs. Heron, a woman of some diplomatic talent,
he learnt nothing. Once after they were married he asked her, "What made
you refuse me so often?" She had answered by a strange silence. An
enigma to him from the day that he first saw her, she was an enigma to
him still....

Bosinney was waiting for him at the door; and on his rugged,
good-looking, face was a queer, yearning, yet happy look, as though he
too saw a promise of bliss in the spring sky, sniffed a coming happiness
in the spring air. Soames looked at him waiting there. What was the
matter with the fellow that he looked so happy? What was he waiting for
with that smile on his lips and in his eyes? Soames could not see that
for which Bosinney was waiting as he stood there drinking in the
flower-scented wind. And once more he felt baffled in the presence of
this man whom by habit he despised. He hastened on to the house.

"The only colour for those tiles," he heard Bosinney say,--"is ruby with
a grey tint in the stuff, to give a transparent effect. I should like
Irene's opinion. I'm ordering the purple leather curtains for the
doorway of this court; and if you distemper the drawing-room ivory cream
over paper, you'll get an illusive look. You want to aim all through the
decorations at what I call charm."

Soames said: "You mean that my wife has charm!"

Bosinney evaded the question.

"You should have a clump of iris plants in the centre of that court."

Soames smiled superciliously.

"I'll look into Beech's some time," he said, "and see what's
appropriate!"

They found little else to say to each other, but on the way to the
Station Soames asked:

"I suppose you find Irene very artistic."

"Yes." The abrupt answer was as distinct a snub as saying: "If you want
to discuss her you can do it with someone else!"

And the slow, sulky anger Soames had felt all the afternoon burned the
brighter within him.

Neither spoke again till they were close to the Station, then Soames
asked:

"When do you expect to have finished?"

"By the end of June, if you really wish me to decorate as well."

Soames nodded. "But you quite understand," he said, "that the house is
costing me a lot beyond what I contemplated. I may as well tell you that
I should have thrown it up, only I'm not in the habit of giving up what
I've set my mind on."

Bosinney made no reply. And Soames gave him askance a look of dogged
dislike--for in spite of his fastidious air and that supercilious,
dandified taciturnity, Soames, with his set lips and squared chin, was
not unlike a bulldog....

When, at seven o'clock that evening, June arrived at 62, Montpellier
Square, the maid Bilson told her that Mr. Bosinney was in the
drawing-room; the mistress--she said--was dressing, and would be down in
a minute. She would tell her that Miss June was here.

June stopped her at once.

"All right, Bilson," she said, "I'll just go in. You, needn't hurry Mrs.
Soames."

She took off her cloak, and Bilson, with an understanding look, did not
even open the drawing-room door for her, but ran downstairs.

June paused for a moment to look at herself in the little old-fashioned
silver mirror above the oaken rug chest--a slim, imperious young figure,
with a small resolute face, in a white frock, cut moon-shaped at the base
of a neck too slender for her crown of twisted red-gold hair.

She opened the drawing-room door softly, meaning to take him by surprise.
The room was filled with a sweet hot scent of flowering azaleas.

She took a long breath of the perfume, and heard Bosinney's voice, not in
the room, but quite close, saying.

"Ah! there were such heaps of things I wanted to talk about, and now we
shan't have time!"

Irene's voice answered: "Why not at dinner?"

"How can one talk...."

June's first thought was to go away, but instead she crossed to the long
window opening on the little court. It was from there that the scent of
the azaleas came, and, standing with their backs to her, their faces
buried in the golden-pink blossoms, stood her lover and Irene.

Silent but unashamed, with flaming cheeks and angry eyes, the girl
watched.

"Come on Sunday by yourself--We can go over the house together."

June saw Irene look up at him through her screen of blossoms. It was not
the look of a coquette, but--far worse to the watching girl--of a woman
fearful lest that look should say too much.

"I've promised to go for a drive with Uncle...."

"The big one! Make him bring you; it's only ten miles--the very thing
for his horses."

"Poor old Uncle Swithin!"

A wave of the azalea scent drifted into June's face; she felt sick and
dizzy.

"Do! ah! do!"

"But why?"

"I must see you there--I thought you'd like to help me...."

The answer seemed to the girl to come softly with a tremble from amongst
the blossoms: "So I do!"

And she stepped into the open space of the window.

"How stuffy it is here!" she said; "I can't bear this scent!"

Her eyes, so angry and direct, swept both their faces.

"Were you talking about the house? I haven't seen it yet, you
know--shall we all go on Sunday?"'

From Irene's face the colour had flown.

"I am going for a drive that day with Uncle Swithin," she answered.

"Uncle Swithin! What does he matter? You can throw him over!"

"I am not in the habit of throwing people over!"

There was a sound of footsteps and June saw Soames standing just behind
her.

"Well! if you are all ready," said Irene, looking from one to the other
with a strange smile, "dinner is too!"




CHAPTER II

JUNE'S TREAT

Dinner began in silence; the women facing one another, and the men.

In silence the soup was finished--excellent, if a little thick; and fish
was brought. In silence it was handed.

Bosinney ventured: "It's the first spring day."

Irene echoed softly: "Yes--the first spring day."

"Spring!" said June: "there isn't a breath of air!" No one replied.

The fish was taken away, a fine fresh sole from Dover. And Bilson
brought champagne, a bottle swathed around the neck with white....