The Forsyte Saga - Volume 1

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 woman's 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! She's eating, after starvation--taking her revenge! And Heaven

help her--for he'll 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 June's 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 'Mam'zelle'

with an ingratiating twinkle.

Towards the end of September, in spite of June's 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.