The Forsyte Saga - Complete - The Original Classic Edition. Galsworthy John
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He stopped, but added, with an uncontrollable burst of spite: "June's got a temper of
her own--always had."
"A temper's not a bad thing in an angel."
Soames had never called Irene an angel. He could not so have violated his best instincts, letting other people into the secret of her
value, and giving himself away. He made no reply.
They had struck into a half-made road across a warren. A cart-track led at right-angles to a gravel pit, beyond which the chimneys of a cottage rose amongst a clump of trees at the border of a thick wood. Tussocks of feathery grass covered the rough surface of the
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ground, and out of these the larks soared into the haze of sunshine. On the far horizon, over a countless succession of fields and
hedges, rose a line of downs.
Soames led till they had crossed to the far side, and there he stopped. It was the chosen site; but now that he was about to divulge the spot to another he had become uneasy.
"The agent lives in that cottage," he said; "he'll give us some lunch--we'd better have lunch before we go into this matter."
He again took the lead to the cottage, where the agent, a tall man named Oliver, with a heavy face and grizzled beard, welcomed them. During lunch, which Soames hardly touched, he kept looking at Bosinney, and once or twice passed his silk handkerchief stealthily over his forehead. The meal came to an end at last, and Bosinney rose.
"I dare say you've got business to talk over," he said; "I'll just go and nose about a bit." Without waiting for a reply he strolled out.
Soames was solicitor to this estate, and he spent nearly an hour in the agent's company, looking at ground-plans and discussing the
Nicholl and other mortgages; it was as it were by an afterthought that he brought up the question of the building site. "Your people," he said, "ought to come down in their price to me, considering that I shall be the first to build."
Oliver shook his head.
The site you've fixed on, Sir, he said, "is the cheapest we've got. Sites at the top of the slope are dearer by a good bit." "Mind," said Soames, "I've not decided; it's quite possible I shan't build at all. The ground rent's very high."
"Well, Mr. Forsyte, I shall be sorry if you go off, and I think you'll make a mistake, Sir. There's not a bit of land near London with such a view as this, nor one that's cheaper, all things considered; we've only to advertise, to get a mob of people after it."
They looked at each other. Their faces said very plainly: 'I respect you as a man of business; and you can't expect me to believe a
word you say.'
Well, repeated Soames, "I haven't made up my mind; the thing will very likely go off !" With these words, taking up his umbrella, he
put his chilly hand into the agent's, withdrew it without the faintest pressure, and went out into the sun.
He walked slowly back towards the site in deep thought. His instinct told him that what the agent had said was true. A cheap site. And the beauty of it was, that he knew the agent did not really think it cheap; so that his own intuitive knowledge was a victory over the agent's.
'Cheap or not, I mean to have it,' he thought.
The larks sprang up in front of his feet, the air was full of butterflies, a sweet fragrance rose from the wild grasses. The sappy scent of the bracken stole forth from the wood, where, hidden in the depths, pigeons were cooing, and from afar on the warm breeze, came the rhythmic chiming of church bells.
Soames walked with his eyes on the ground, his lips opening and closing as though in anticipation of a delicious morsel. But when he arrived at the site, Bosinney was nowhere to be seen. After waiting some little time, he crossed the warren in the direction of the slope. He would have shouted, but dreaded the sound of his voice.
The warren was as lonely as a prairie, its silence only broken by the rustle of rabbits bolting to their holes, and the song of the larks. Soames, the pioneer-leader of the great Forsyte army advancing to the civilization of this wilderness, felt his spirit daunted by the
loneliness, by the invisible singing, and the hot, sweet air. He had begun to retrace his steps when he at last caught sight of Bosinney.
The architect was sprawling under a large oak tree, whose trunk, with a huge spread of bough and foliage, ragged with age, stood on
the verge of the rise.
Soames had to touch him on the shoulder before he looked up.
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"Hallo! Forsyte," he said, "I've found the very place for your house! Look here!" Soames stood and looked, then he said, coldly:
"You may be very clever, but this site will cost me half as much again."
"Hang the cost, man. Look at the view!"
Almost from their feet stretched ripe corn, dipping to a small dark copse beyond. A plain of fields and hedges spread to the distant grey-bluedowns. In a silver streak to the right could be seen the line of the river.
The sky was so blue, and the sun so bright, that an eternal summer seemed to reign over this prospect. Thistledown floated round them, enraptured by the serenity, of the ether. The heat danced over the corn, and, pervading all, was a soft, insensible hum, like the murmur of bright minutes holding revel between earth and heaven.
Soames looked. In spite of himself, something swelled in his breast. To live here in sight of all this, to be able to point it out to his friends, to talk of it, to possess it! His cheeks flushed. The warmth, the radiance, the glow, were sinking into his senses as, four years before, Irene's beauty had sunk into his senses and made him long for her. He stole a glance at Bosinney, whose eyes, the eyes of the coachman's 'half-tame leopard,' seemed running wild over the landscape. The sunlight had caught the promontories of the fellow's face, the bumpy cheekbones, the point of his chin, the vertical ridges above his brow; and Soames watched this rugged, enthusiastic, careless face with an unpleasant feeling.
A long, soft ripple of wind flowed over the corn, and brought a puff of warm air into their faces. "I could build you a teaser here," said Bosinney, breaking the silence at last.
"I dare say," replied Soames, drily. "You haven't got to pay for it."
"For about eight thousand I could build you a palace."
Soames had become very pale--a struggle was going on within him. He dropped his eyes, and said stubbornly:
"I can't afford it."
And slowly, with his mousing walk, he led the way back to the first site.
They spent some time there going into particulars of the projected house, and then Soames returned to the agent's cottage. He came out in about half an hour, and, joining Bosinney, started for the station.
"Well," he said, hardly opening his lips, "I've taken that site of yours, after all."
And again he was silent, confusedly debating how it was that this fellow, whom by habit he despised, should have overborne his own
decision.
CHAPTER V--A FORSYTE MENAGE
Like the enlightened thousands of his class and generation in this great city of London, who no longer believe in red velvet chairs, and know that groups of modern Italian marble are 'vieux jeu,' Soames Forsyte inhabited a house which did what it could. It owned a copper door knocker of individual design, windows which had been altered to open outwards, hanging flower boxes filled with fuchsias, and at the back (a great feature) a little court tiled with jade-green tiles, and surrounded by pink hydrangeas in peacock-blue tubs. Here, under a parchment-coloured Japanese sunshade covering the whole end, inhabitants or visitors could be screened from the eyes of the curious while they drank tea and examined at their leisure the latest of Soames's little silver boxes.
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The inner decoration favoured the First Empire and William Morris. For its size, the house was commodious; there were countless