The Forsyte Saga - Volume 1

With my love to Jolly and Holly.

'I am,

'Your affect. father,

'JOLYON FORSYTE.'

Young Jolyon pondered this letter so long and seriously that his

wife noticed his preoccupation, and asked him what was the matter. He

replied: "Nothing."

It was a fixed principle with him never to allude to June. She

might take alarm, he did not know what she might think; he hastened,

therefore, to banish from his manner all traces of absorption, but in

this he was about as successful as his father would have been, for

he had inherited all old Jolyon's transparency in matters of domestic

finesse; and young Mrs. Jolyon, busying herself over the affairs of

the house, went about with tightened lips, stealing at him unfathomable

looks.

He started for the Club in the afternoon with the letter in his pocket,

and without having made up his mind.

To sound a man as to 'his intentions' was peculiarly unpleasant to him;

nor did his own anomalous position diminish this unpleasantness. It was

so like his family, so like all the people they knew and mixed with, to

enforce what they called their rights over a man, to bring him up to the

mark; so like them to carry their business principles into their private

relations.

And how that phrase in the letter--'You will, of course, in no way

commit June'--gave the whole thing away.

Yet the letter, with the personal grievance, the concern for June, the

'rap over the knuckles,' was all so natural. No wonder his father wanted

to know what Bosinney meant, no wonder he was angry.

It was difficult to refuse! But why give the thing to him to do? That

was surely quite unbecoming; but so long as a Forsyte got what he was

after, he was not too particular about the means, provided appearances

were saved.

How should he set about it, or how refuse? Both seemed impossible. So,

young Jolyon!

He arrived at the Club at three o'clock, and the first person he saw was

Bosinney himself, seated in a corner, staring out of the window.

Young Jolyon sat down not far off, and began nervously to reconsider his

position. He looked covertly at Bosinney sitting there unconscious. He

did not know him very well, and studied him attentively for perhaps the

first time; an unusual looking man, unlike in dress, face, and manner

to most of the other members of the Club--young Jolyon himself, however

different he had become in mood and temper, had always retained the neat

reticence of Forsyte appearance. He alone among Forsytes was ignorant of

Bosinney's nickname. The man was unusual, not eccentric, but unusual;

he looked worn, too, haggard, hollow in the cheeks beneath those broad,

high cheekbones, though without any appearance of ill-health, for he was

strongly built, with curly hair that seemed to show all the vitality of

a fine constitution.