Джон Голсуорси
The Forsyte Saga, Volume I. The Man Of Property
CHAPTER VIII – BOSINNEY’S DEPARTURE
Old Jolyon was not given to hasty decisions; it is probable that he would have continued to think over the purchase of the house at Robin Hill, had not June’s face told him that he would have no peace until he acted.
At breakfast next morning she asked him what time she should order the carriage.
“Carriage!” he said, with some appearance of innocence; “what for? I’m not going out!”
She answered: “If you don’t go early, you won’t catch Uncle James before he goes into the City.”
“James! what about your Uncle James?”
“The house,” she replied, in such a voice that he no longer pretended ignorance.
“I’ve not made up my mind,” he said.
“You must! You must! Oh! Gran – think of me!”
Old Jolyon grumbled out: “Think of you – I’m always thinking of you, but you don’t think of yourself; you don’t think what you’re letting yourself in for. Well, order the carriage at ten!”
At a quarter past he was placing his umbrella in the stand at Park Lane – he did not choose to relinquish his hat and coat; telling Warmson that he wanted to see his master, he went, without being announced, into the study, and sat down.
James was still in the dining-room talking to Soames, who had come round again before breakfast. On hearing who his visitor was, he muttered nervously: “Now, what’s he want, I wonder?”
He then got up.
“Well,” he said to Soames, “don’t you go doing anything in a hurry. The first thing is to find out where she is – I should go to Stainer’s about it; they’re the best men, if they can’t find her, nobody can.” And suddenly moved to strange softness, he muttered to himself, “Poor little thing, I can’t tell what she was thinking about!” and went out blowing his nose.
Old Jolyon did not rise on seeing his brother, but held out his hand, and exchanged with him the clasp of a Forsyte.
James took another chair by the table, and leaned his head on his hand.
“Well,” he said, “how are you? We don’t see much of you nowadays!”
Old Jolyon paid no attention to the remark.
“How’s Emily?” he asked; and waiting for no reply, went on “I’ve come to see you about this affair of young Bosinney’s. I’m told that new house of his is a white elephant.”
“I don’t know anything about a white elephant,” said James, “I know he’s lost his case, and I should say he’ll go bankrupt.”
Old Jolyon was not slow to seize the opportunity this gave him.
“I shouldn’t wonder a bit!” he agreed; “and if he goes bankrupt, the ‘man of property’ – that is, Soames’ll be out of pocket. Now, what I was thinking was this: If he’s not going to live there…”
Seeing both surprise and suspicion in James’ eye, he quickly went on: “I don’t want to know anything; I suppose Irene’s put her foot down – it’s not material to me. But I’m thinking of a house in the country myself, not too far from London, and if it suited me I don’t say that I mightn’t look at it, at a price.”
James listened to this statement with a strange mixture of doubt, suspicion, and relief, merging into a dread of something behind, and tinged with the remains of his old undoubted reliance upon his elder brother’s good faith and judgment. There was anxiety, too, as to what old Jolyon could have heard and how he had heard it; and a sort of hopefulness arising from the thought that if June’s connection with Bosinney were completely at an end, her grandfather would hardly seem anxious to help the young fellow. Altogether he was puzzled; as he did not like either to show this, or to commit himself in any way, he said:
“They tell me you’re altering your Will in favour of your son.”
He had not been told this; he had merely added the fact of having seen old Jolyon with his son and grandchildren to the fact that he had taken his Will away from Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte. The shot went home.
“Who told you that?” asked old Jolyon.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said James; “I can’t remember names – I know somebody told me Soames spent a lot of money on this house; he’s not likely to part with it except at a good price.”
“Well,” said old Jolyon, “if, he thinks I’m going to pay a fancy price, he’s mistaken. I’ve not got the money to throw away that he seems to have. Let him try and sell it at a forced sale, and see what he’ll get. It’s not every man’s house, I hear!”
James, who was secretly also of this opinion, answered: “It’s a gentleman’s house. Soames is here now if you’d like to see him.”
“No,” said old Jolyon, “I haven’t got as far as that; and I’m not likely to, I can see that very well if I’m met in this manner!”
James was a little cowed; when it came to the actual figures of a commercial transaction he was sure of himself, for then he was dealing with facts, not with men; but preliminary negotiations such as these made him nervous – he never knew quite how far he could go.
“Well,” he said, “I know nothing about it. Soames, he tells me nothing; I should think he’d entertain it – it’s a question of price.”
“Oh!” said old Jolyon, “don’t let him make a favour of it!” He placed his hat on his head in dudgeon.
The door was opened and Soames came in.
“There’s a policeman out here,” he said with his half smile, “for Uncle Jolyon.”
Old Jolyon looked at him angrily, and James said: “A policeman? I don’t know anything about a policeman. But I suppose you know something about him,” he added to old Jolyon with a look of suspicion: “I suppose you’d better see him!”
In the hall an Inspector of Police stood stolidly regarding with heavy-lidded pale-blue eyes the fine old English furniture picked up by James at the famous Mavrojano sale in Portman Square. “You’ll find my brother in there,” said James.
The Inspector raised his fingers respectfully to his peaked cap, and entered the study.
James saw him go in with a strange sensation.
“Well,” he said to Soames, “I suppose we must wait and see what he wants. Your uncle’s been here about the house!”
He returned with Soames into the dining-room, but could not rest.
“Now what does he want?” he murmured again.
“Who?” replied Soames: “the Inspector? They sent him round from Stanhope Gate, that’s all I know. That ‘nonconformist’ of Uncle Jolyon’s has been pilfering, I shouldn’t wonder!”
But in spite of his calmness, he too was ill at ease.
At the end of ten minutes old Jolyon came in. He walked up to the table, and stood there perfectly silent pulling at his long white moustaches. James gazed up at him with opening mouth; he had never seen his brother look like this.
Old Jolyon raised his hand, and said slowly:
“Young Bosinney has been run over in the fog and killed.”
Then standing above his brother and his nephew, and looking down at him with his deep eyes:
“There’s – some – talk – of – suicide,” he said.
James’ jaw dropped. “Suicide! What should he do that for?”
Old Jolyon answered sternly: “God knows, if you and your son don’t!”
But James did not reply.
For all men of great age, even for all Forsytes, life has had bitter experiences. The passer-by, who sees them wrapped in cloaks of custom, wealth, and comfort, would never suspect that such black shadows had fallen on their roads. To every man of great age – to Sir Walter Bentham himself – the idea of suicide has once at least been present in the ante-room of his soul; on the threshold, waiting to enter, held out from the inmost chamber by some chance reality, some vague fear, some painful hope. To Forsytes that final renunciation of property is hard. Oh! it is hard! Seldom – perhaps never – can they achieve, it; and yet, how near have they not sometimes been!
So even with James! Then in the medley of his thoughts, he broke out: “Why I saw it in the paper yesterday: ‘Run over in the fog!’ They didn’t know his name!” He turned from one face to the other in his confusion of soul; but instinctively all the time he was rejecting that rumour of suicide. He dared not entertain this thought, so against his interest, against the interest of his son, of every Forsyte. He strove against it; and as his nature ever unconsciously rejected that which it could not with safety accept, so gradually he overcame this fear. It was an accident! It must have been!
Old Jolyon broke in on his reverie.
“Death was instantaneous. He lay all day yesterday at the hospital. There was nothing to tell them who he was. I am going there now; you and your son had better come too.”
No one opposing this command he led the way from the room.
The day was still and clear and bright, and driving over to Park Lane from Stanhope Gate, old Jolyon had had the carriage open. Sitting back on the padded cushions, finishing his cigar, he had noticed with pleasure the keen crispness of the air, the bustle of the cabs and people; the strange, almost Parisian, alacrity that the first fine day will bring into London streets after a spell of fog or rain. And he had felt so happy; he had not felt like it for months. His confession to June was off his mind; he had the prospect of his son’s, above all, of his grandchildren’s company in the future – (he had appointed to meet young Jolyon at the Hotch Potch that very manning to – discuss it again); and there was the pleasurable excitement of a coming encounter, a coming victory, over James and the ‘man of property’ in the matter of the house.
He had the carriage closed now; he had no heart to look on gaiety; nor was it right that Forsytes should be seen driving with an Inspector of Police.
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 wash 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 in 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.