The Forsyte Saga John Galsworthy (hot novels to read TXT) đ
- Author: John Galsworthy
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George (it was he who invented many of those striking expressions still current in fashionable circles) voiced the sentiment more accurately than anyone when he said to his brother Eustace that the Buccaneer was âgoing it.â he expected Soames was about âfed up.â
It was felt that he must be, and yet, what could be done? He ought perhaps to take steps; but to take steps would be deplorable.
Without an open scandal which they could not see their way to recommending, it was difficult to see what steps could be taken. In this impasse, the only thing was to say nothing to Soames, and nothing to each other; in fact, to pass it over.
By displaying towards Irene a dignified coldness, some impression might be made upon her; but she was seldom now to be seen, and there seemed a slight difficulty in seeking her out on purpose to show her coldness. Sometimes in the privacy of his bedroom James would reveal to Emily the real suffering that his sonâs misfortune caused him.
âI canât tell,â he would say; âit worries me out of my life. Thereâll be a scandal, and thatâll do him no good. I shanât say anything to him. There might be nothing in it. What do you think? Sheâs very artistic, they tell me. What? Oh, youâre a âregular Juley!â Well, I donât know; I expect the worst. This is what comes of having no children. I knew how it would be from the first. They never told me they didnât mean to have any childrenâ ânobody tells me anything!â
On his knees by the side of the bed, his eyes open and fixed with worry, he would breathe into the counterpane. Clad in his nightshirt, his neck poked forward, his back rounded, he resembled some long white bird.
âOur Fatherâ ââ he repeated, turning over and over again the thought of this possible scandal.
Like old Jolyon, he, too, at the bottom of his heart set the blame of the tragedy down to family interference. What business had that lotâ âhe began to think of the Stanhope Gate branch, including young Jolyon and his daughter, as âthat lotââ âto introduce a person like this Bosinney into the family? (He had heard Georgeâs soubriquet, âThe Buccaneer,â but he could make nothing of thatâ âthe young man was an architect.)
He began to feel that his brother Jolyon, to whom he had always looked up and on whose opinion he had relied, was not quite what he had expected.
Not having his eldest brotherâs force of character, he was more sad than angry. His great comfort was to go to Winifredâs, and take the little Darties in his carriage over to Kensington Gardens, and there, by the Round Pond, he could often be seen walking with his eyes fixed anxiously on little Publius Dartieâs sailing-boat, which he had himself freighted with a penny, as though convinced that it would never again come to shore; while little Publiusâ âwho, James delighted to say, was not a bit like his father skipping along under his lee, would try to get him to bet another that it never would, having found that it always did. And James would make the bet; he always paidâ âsometimes as many as three or four pennies in the afternoon, for the game seemed never to pall on little Publiusâ âand always in paying he said: âNow, thatâs for your money-box. Why, youâre getting quite a rich man!â The thought of his little grandsonâs growing wealth was a real pleasure to him. But little Publius knew a sweet-shop, and a trick worth two of that.
And they would walk home across the Park, Jamesâ figure, with high shoulders and absorbed and worried face, exercising its tall, lean protectorship, pathetically unregarded, over the robust child-figures of Imogen and little Publius.
But those Gardens and that Park were not sacred to James. Forsytes and tramps, children and lovers, rested and wandered day after day, night after night, seeking one and all some freedom from labour, from the reek and turmoil of the streets.
The leaves browned slowly, lingering with the sun and summer-like warmth of the nights.
On Saturday, October 5, the sky that had been blue all day deepened after sunset to the bloom of purple grapes. There was no moon, and a clear dark, like some velvety garment, was wrapped around the trees, whose thinned branches, resembling plumes, stirred not in the still, warm air. All London had poured into the Park, draining the cup of summer to its dregs.
Couple after couple, from every gate, they streamed along the paths and over the burnt grass, and one after another, silently out of the lighted spaces, stole into the shelter of the feathery trees, where, blotted against some trunk, or under the shadow of shrubs, they were lost to all but themselves in the heart of the soft darkness.
To fresh-comers along the paths, these forerunners formed but part of that passionate dusk, whence only a strange murmur, like the confused beating of hearts, came forth. But when that murmur reached each couple in the lamplight their voices wavered, and ceased; their arms enlaced, their eyes began seeking, searching, probing the blackness. Suddenly, as though drawn by invisible hands, they, too, stepped over the railing, and, silent as shadows, were gone from the light.
The stillness, enclosed in the far, inexorable roar of the town, was alive with the myriad passions, hopes, and loves of multitudes of struggling human atoms; for in spite of the disapproval of that great body of Forsytes, the Municipal Councilâ âto whom Love had long been considered, next to the Sewage Question, the gravest danger to the communityâ âa process was going on that night in the Park, and in a hundred other parks, without which the thousand factories, churches, shops, taxes, and drains, of which they were custodians, were as arteries without blood, a man without a heart.
The instincts of self-forgetfulness, of passion,
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