The Forsyte Saga, Volume I.

J >> John Galsworthy >> The Forsyte Saga, Volume I.


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.