Thus each leaf that fell was marked from the moment when it fluttered a good-bye and dropped, slow turning, from its twig.
But on that little pond the leaves floated in peace, and praised Heaven with their hues, the sunlight haunting over them.
And so young Jolyon found them.
Coming there one morning in the middle of October, he was disconcerted to find a bench about twenty paces from his stand occupied, for he had a proper horror of anyone seeing him at work.
But on that little pond the leaves floated in peace, and praised Heaven with their hues, the sunlight haunting over them.
And so young Jolyon found them.
Coming there one morning in the middle of October, he was disconcerted to find a bench about twenty paces from his stand occupied, for he had a proper horror of anyone seeing him at work.
A lady in a velvet jacket was sitting there, with her eyes fixed on the ground. A flowering laurel, however, stood between, and, taking shelter behind this, young Jolyon prepared his easel.
His preparations were leisurely; he caught, as every true artist should, at anything that might delay for a moment the effort of his work, and he found himself looking furtively at this unknown dame.
Like his father before him, he had an eye for a face. This face was charming!
He saw a rounded chin nestling in a cream ruffle, a delicate face with large dark eyes and soft lips. A black picture hat concealed the hair; her figure was lightly poised against the back of the bench, her knees were crossed; the tip of a patent-leather shoe emerged beneath her skirt. There was something, indeed, inexpressibly dainty about the person of this lady, but young Jolyons attention was chiefly riveted by the look on her face, which reminded him of his wife. It was as though its owner had come into contact with forces too strong for her. It troubled him, arousing vague feelings of attraction and chivalry. Who was she? And what doing there, alone?
Two young gentlemen of that peculiar breed, at once forward and shy, found in the Regents Park, came by on their way to lawn tennis, and he noted with disapproval their furtive stares of admiration. A loitering gardener halted to do something unnecessary to a clump of pampas grass; he, too, wanted an excuse for peeping. A gentleman, old, and, by his hat, a professor of horticulture, passed three times to scrutinize her long and stealthily, a queer expression about his lips.
With all these men young Jolyon felt the same vague irritation. She looked at none of them, yet was he certain that every man who passed would look at her like that.
Her face was not the face of a sorceress, who in every look holds out to men the offer of pleasure; it had none of the devils beauty so highly prized among the first Forsytes of the land; neither was it of that type, no less adorable, associated with the box of chocolate; it was not of the spiritually passionate, or passionately spiritual order, peculiar to house-decoration and modern poetry; nor did it seem to promise to the playwright material for the production of the interesting and neurasthenic figure, who commits suicide in the last act.
In shape and colouring, in its soft persuasive passivity, its sensuous purity, this womans face reminded him of Titians Heavenly Love, a reproduction of which hung over the sideboard in his dining-room. And her attraction seemed to be in this soft passivity, in the feeling she gave that to pressure she must yield.
For what or whom was she waiting, in the silence, with the trees dropping here and there a leaf, and the thrushes strutting close on grass, touched with the sparkle of the autumn rime? Then her charming face grew eager, and, glancing round, with almost a lovers jealousy, young Jolyon saw Bosinney striding across the grass.
Curiously he watched the meeting, the look in their eyes, the long clasp of their hands. They sat down close together, linked for all their outward discretion. He heard the rapid murmur of their talk; but what they said he could not catch.
He had rowed in the galley himself! He knew the long hours of waiting and the lean minutes of a half-public meeting; the tortures of suspense that haunt the unhallowed lover.
It required, however, but a glance at their two faces to see that this was none of those affairs of a season that distract men and women about town; none of those sudden appetites that wake up ravening, and are surfeited and asleep again in six weeks. This was the real thing! This was what had happened to himself! Out of this anything might come!
Bosinney was pleading, and she so quiet, so soft, yet immovable in her passivity, sat looking over the grass.
Was he the man to carry her off, that tender, passive being, who would never stir a step for herself? Who had given him all herself, and would die for him, but perhaps would never run away with him!
It seemed to young Jolyon that he could hear her saying: But, darling, it would ruin you! For he himself had experienced to the full the gnawing fear at the bottom of each womans heart that she is a drag on the man she loves.
And he peeped at them no more; but their soft, rapid talk came to his ears, with the stuttering song of some bird who seemed trying to remember the notes of spring: Joy tragedy? Which which?
And gradually their talk ceased; long silence followed.
And where does Soames come in? young Jolyon thought. People think she is concerned about the sin of deceiving her husband! Little they know of women! Shes eating, after starvation taking her revenge! And Heaven help her for hell take his.
He heard the swish of silk, and, spying round the laurel, saw them walking away, their hands stealthily joined.
At the end of July old Jolyon had taken his grand-daughter to the mountains; and on that visit (the last they ever paid) June recovered to a great extent her health and spirits. In the hotels, filled with British Forsytes for old Jolyon could not bear a set of Germans, as he called all foreigners she was looked upon with respect the only grand-daughter of that fine-looking, and evidently wealthy, old Mr. Forsyte. She did not mix freely with people to mix freely with people was not Junes habit but she formed some friendships, and notably one in the Rhone Valley, with a French girl who was dying of consumption.
Determining at once that her friend should not die, she forgot, in the institution of a campaign against Death, much of her own trouble.
Old Jolyon watched the new intimacy with relief and disapproval; for this additional proof that her life was to be passed amongst lame ducks worried him. Would she never make a friendship or take an interest in something that would be of real benefit to her?
Taking up with a parcel of foreigners, he called it. He often, however, brought home grapes or roses, and presented them to Mamzelle with an ingratiating twinkle.
Towards the end of September, in spite of Junes disapproval, Mademoiselle Vigor breathed her last in the little hotel at St. Luc, to which they had moved her; and June took her defeat so deeply to heart that old Jolyon carried her away to Paris. Here, in contemplation of the Venus de Milo and the Madeleine, she shook off her depression, and when, towards the middle of October, they returned to town, her grandfather believed that he had effected a cure.
No sooner, however, had they established themselves in Stanhope Gate than he perceived to his dismay a return of her old absorbed and brooding manner. She would sit, staring in front of her, her chin on her hand, like a little Norse spirit, grim and intent, while all around in the electric light, then just installed, shone the great, drawing-room brocaded up to the frieze, full of furniture from Baple and Pullbreds. And in the huge gilt mirror were reflected those Dresden china groups of young men in tight knee breeches, at the feet of full-bosomed ladies nursing on their laps pet lambs, which old Jolyon had bought when he was a bachelor and thought so highly of in these days of degenerate taste. He was a man of most open mind, who, more than any Forsyte of them all, had moved with the times, but he could never forget that he had bought these groups at Jobsons, and given a lot of money for them. He often said to June, with a sort of disillusioned contempt:
You dont care about them! Theyre not the gimcrack things you and your friends like, but they cost me seventy pounds! He was not a man who allowed his taste to be warped when he knew for solid reasons that it was sound.
One of the first things that June did on getting home was to go round to Timothys. She persuaded herself that it was her duty to call there, and cheer him with an account of all her travels; but in reality she went because she knew of no other place where, by some random speech, or roundabout question, she could glean news of Bosinney.
They received her most cordially: And how was her dear grandfather? He had not been to see them since May. Her Uncle Timothy was very poorly, he had had a lot of trouble with the chimney-sweep in his bedroom; the stupid man had let the soot down the chimney! It had quite upset her uncle.
June sat there a long time, dreading, yet passionately hoping, that they would speak of Bosinney.
But paralyzed by unaccountable discretion, Mrs. Septimus Small let fall no word, neither did she question June about him. In desperation the girl asked at last whether Soames and Irene were in town she had not yet been to see anyone.
It was Aunt Hester who replied: Oh, yes, they were in town, they had not been away at all. There was some little difficulty about the house, she believed. June had heard, no doubt! She had better ask her Aunt Juley!
June turned to Mrs. Small, who sat upright in her chair, her hands clasped, her face covered with innumerable pouts. In answer to the girls look she maintained a strange silence, and when she spoke it was to ask June whether she had worn night-socks up in those high hotels where it must be so cold of a night.
June answered that she had not, she hated the stuffy things; and rose to leave.
Mrs. Smalls infallibly chosen silence was far more ominous to her than anything that could have been said.