“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 wish 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.