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Forsyte Saga
Book 1 - The Man of Property - Part 2
Chapter 2 - June's Threat
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....
Soames said: "You'll find it dry."
Cutlets were handed, each pink-frilled about the legs. They were refused
by June, and silence fell.
Soames said: "You'd better take a cutlet, June; there's nothing coming."
But June again refused, so they were borne away. And then Irene asked:
"Phil, have you heard my blackbird?"
Bosinney answered: "Rather--he's got a hunting-song. As I came round I
heard him in the Square."
"He's such a darling!"
"Salad, sir?" Spring chicken was removed.
But Soames was speaking: "The asparagus is very poor. Bosinney, glass of
sherry with your sweet? June, you're drinking nothing!"
June said: "You know I never do. Wine's such horrid stuff!"
An apple charlotte came upon a silver dish, and smilingly Irene said:
"The azaleas are so wonderful this year!"
To this Bosinney murmured: "Wonderful! The scent's extraordinary!"
June said: "How can you like the scent? Sugar, please, Bilson."
Sugar was handed her, and Soames remarked: "This charlottes good!"
The charlotte was removed. Long silence followed. Irene, beckoning,
said: "Take out the azalea, Bilson. Miss June can't bear the scent."
"No; let it stay," said June.
Olives from France, with Russian caviare, were placed on little plates.
And Soames remarked: "Why can't we have the Spanish?" But no one
answered.
The olives were removed. Lifting her tumbler June demanded: "Give me
some water, please." Water was given her. A silver tray was brought,
with German plums. There was a lengthy pause. In perfect harmony all
were eating them.
Bosinney counted up the stones: "This year--next year--some time."
Irene finished softly: "Never! There was such a glorious sunset. The
sky's all ruby still--so beautiful!"
He answered: "Underneath the dark."
Their eyes had met, and June cried scornfully: "A London sunset!"
Egyptian cigarettes were handed in a silver box. Soames, taking one,
remarked: "What time's your play begin?"
No one replied, and Turkish coffee followed in enamelled cups.
Irene, smiling quietly, said: "If only...."
"Only what?" said June.
"If only it could always be the spring!"
Brandy was handed; it was pale and old.
Soames said: "Bosinney, better take some brandy."
Bosinney took a glass; they all arose.
"You want a cab?" asked Soames.
June answered: "No! My cloaks please, Bilson." Her cloak was brought.
Irene, from the window, murmured: "Such a lovely night! The stars are
coming out!"
Soames added: "Well, I hope you'll both enjoy yourselves."
From the door June answered: "Thanks. Come, Phil."
Bosinney cried: "I'm coming."
Soames smiled a sneering smile, and said: "I wish you luck!"
And at the door Irene watched them go.
Bosinney called: "Good night!"
"Good night!" she answered softly....
June made her lover take her on the top of a 'bus, saying she wanted
air, and there sat silent, with her face to the breeze.
The driver turned once or twice, with the intention of venturing a
remark, but thought better of it. They were a lively couple! The spring
had got into his blood, too; he felt the need for letting steam escape,
and clucked his tongue, flourishing his whip, wheeling his horses,
and even they, poor things, had smelled the spring, and for a brief
half-hour spurned the pavement with happy hoofs.
The whole town was alive; the boughs, curled upward with their decking
of young leaves, awaited some gift the breeze could bring. New-lighted
lamps were gaining mastery, and the faces of the crowd showed pale under
that glare, while on high the great white clouds slid swiftly, softly,
over the purple sky.
Men in, evening dress had thrown back overcoats, stepping jauntily up
the steps of Clubs; working folk loitered; and women--those women who
at that time of night are solitary--solitary and moving eastward in a
stream--swung slowly along, with expectation in their gait, dreaming of
good wine and a good supper, or--for an unwonted minute, of kisses given
for love.
Those countless figures, going their ways under the lamps and the
moving-sky, had one and all received some restless blessing from the
stir of spring. And one and all, like those clubmen with their opened
coats, had shed something of caste, and creed, and custom, and by the
cock of their hats, the pace of their walk, their laughter, or their
silence, revealed their common kinship under the passionate heavens.
Bosinney and June entered the theatre in silence, and mounted to
their seats in the upper boxes. The piece had just begun, and the
half-darkened house, with its rows of creatures peering all one way,
resembled a great garden of flowers turning their faces to the sun.
June had never before been in the upper boxes. From the age of fifteen
she had habitually accompanied her grandfather to the stalls, and not
common stalls, but the best seats in the house, towards the centre of
the third row, booked by old Jolyon, at Grogan and Boyne's, on his way
home from the City, long before the day; carried in his overcoat pocket,
together with his cigar-case and his old kid gloves, and handed to June
to keep till the appointed night. And in those stalls--an erect old
figure with a serene white head, a little figure, strenuous and eager,
with a red-gold head--they would sit through every kind of play, and on
the way home old Jolyon would say of the principal actor: "Oh, he's a
poor stick! You should have seen little Bobson!"
She had looked forward to this evening with keen delight; it was stolen,
chaperone-less, undreamed of at Stanhope Gate, where she was supposed to
be at Soames'. She had expected reward for her subterfuge, planned for
her lover's sake; she had expected it to break up the thick, chilly
cloud, and make the relations between them which of late had been so
puzzling, so tormenting--sunny and simple again as they had been
before the winter. She had come with the intention of saying something
definite; and she looked at the stage with a furrow between her brows,
seeing nothing, her hands squeezed together in her lap. A swarm of
jealous suspicions stung and stung her.
If Bosinney was conscious of her trouble he made no sign.
The curtain dropped. The first act had come to an end.
"It's awfully hot here!" said the girl; "I should like to go out."
She was very white, and she knew--for with her nerves thus sharpened she
saw everything--that he was both uneasy and compunctious.
At the back of the theatre an open balcony hung over the street; she
took possession of this, and stood leaning there without a word, waiting
for him to begin.
At last she could bear it no longer.
"I want to say something to you, Phil," she said.
"Yes?"
The defensive tone of his voice brought the colour flying to her cheek,
the words flying to her lips: "You don't give me a chance to be nice to
you; you haven't for ages now!"
Bosinney stared down at the street. He made no answer....
June cried passionately: "You know I want to do everything for you--that
I want to be everything to you...."
A hum rose from the street, and, piercing it with a sharp 'ping,'
the bell sounded for the raising of the curtain. June did not stir. A
desperate struggle was going on within her. Should she put everything to
the proof? Should she challenge directly that influence, that attraction
which was driving him away from her? It was her nature to challenge, and
she said: "Phil, take me to see the house on Sunday!"
With a smile quivering and breaking on her lips, and trying, how hard,
not to show that she was watching, she searched his face, saw it waver
and hesitate, saw a troubled line come between his brows, the blood rush
into his face. He answered: "Not Sunday, dear; some other day!"
"Why not Sunday? I shouldn't be in the way on Sunday."
He made an evident effort, and said: "I have an engagement."
"You are going to take...."
His eyes grew angry; he shrugged his shoulders, and answered: "An
engagement that will prevent my taking you to see the house!"
June bit her lip till the blood came, and walked back to her seat
without another word, but she could not help the tears of rage rolling
down her face. The house had been mercifully darkened for a crisis, and
no one could see her trouble.
Yet in this world of Forsytes let no man think himself immune from
observation.
In the third row behind, Euphemia, Nicholas's youngest daughter, with
her married-sister, Mrs. Tweetyman, were watching.
They reported at Timothy's, how they had seen June and her fiance at the
theatre.
"In the stalls?" "No, not in the...." "Oh! in the dress circle, of
course. That seemed to be quite fashionable nowadays with young people!"
Well--not exactly. In the.... Anyway, that engagement wouldn't last
long. They had never seen anyone look so thunder and lightningy as that
little June! With tears of enjoyment in their eyes, they related how she
had kicked a man's hat as she returned to her seat in the middle of an
act, and how the man had looked. Euphemia had a noted, silent laugh,
terminating most disappointingly in squeaks; and when Mrs. Small,
holding up her hands, said: "My dear! Kicked a ha-at?" she let out such
a number of these that she had to be recovered with smelling-salts. As
she went away she said to Mrs. Tweetyman:
"Kicked a--ha-at! Oh! I shall die."
For 'that little June' this evening, that was to have been 'her treat,'
was the most miserable she had ever spent. God knows she tried to stifle
her pride, her suspicion, her jealousy!
She parted from Bosinney at old Jolyon's door without breaking down; the
feeling that her lover must be conquered was strong enough to sustain
her till his retiring footsteps brought home the true extent of her
wretchedness.
The noiseless 'Sankey' let her in. She would have slipped up to her own
room, but old Jolyon, who had heard her entrance, was in the dining-room
doorway.
"Come in and have your milk," he said. "It's been kept hot for you.
You're very late. Where have you been?"
June stood at the fireplace, with a foot on the fender and an arm on the
mantelpiece, as her grandfather had done when he came in that night of
the opera. She was too near a breakdown to care what she told him.
"We dined at Soames's."
"H'm! the man of property! His wife there and Bosinney?"
"Yes."
Old Jolyon's glance was fixed on her with the penetrating gaze from
which it was difficult to hide; but she was not looking at him, and
when she turned her face, he dropped his scrutiny at once. He had seen
enough, and too much. He bent down to lift the cup of milk for her from
the hearth, and, turning away, grumbled: "You oughtn't to stay out so
late; it makes you fit for nothing."
He was invisible now behind his paper, which he turned with a vicious
crackle; but when June came up to kiss him, he said: "Good-night, my
darling," in a tone so tremulous and unexpected, that it was all the
girl could do to get out of the room without breaking into the fit of
sobbing which lasted her well on into the night.
When the door was closed, old Jolyon dropped his paper, and stared long
and anxiously in front of him.
'The beggar!' he thought. 'I always knew she'd have trouble with him!'
Uneasy doubts and suspicions, the more poignant that he felt himself
powerless to check or control the march of events, came crowding upon
him.
Was the fellow going to jilt her? He longed to go and say to him: "Look
here, you sir! Are you going to jilt my grand-daughter?" But how could
he? Knowing little or nothing, he was yet certain, with his unerring
astuteness, that there was something going on. He suspected Bosinney of
being too much at Montpellier Square.
'This fellow,' he thought, 'may not be a scamp; his face is not a bad
one, but he's a queer fish. I don't know what to make of him. I shall
never know what to make of him! They tell me he works like a nigger, but
I see no good coming of it. He's unpractical, he has no method. When he
comes here, he sits as glum as a monkey. If I ask him what wine he'll
have, he says: "Thanks, any wine." If I offer him a cigar, he smokes it
as if it were a twopenny German thing. I never see him looking at June
as he ought to look at her; and yet, he's not after her money. If
she were to make a sign, he'd be off his bargain to-morrow. But she
won't--not she! She'll stick to him! She's as obstinate as fate--She'll
never let go!'
Sighing deeply, he turned the paper; in its columns, perchance he might
find consolation.
And upstairs in her room June sat at her open window, where the spring
wind came, after its revel across the Park, to cool her hot cheeks and
burn her heart.