The Forsyte Saga - Volume 1

He raised his head as old Jolyon came in, and muttered: "How are you,

Jolyon? Haven't seen you for an age. You've been to Switzerland, they

tell me. This young Bosinney, he's got himself into a mess. I knew how

it would be!" He held out the papers, regarding his elder brother with

nervous gloom.

Old Jolyon read them in silence, and while he read them James looked at

the floor, biting his fingers the while.

Old Jolyon pitched them down at last, and they fell with a thump

amongst a mass of affidavits in 're Buncombe, deceased,' one of the many

branches of that parent and profitable tree, 'Fryer v. Forsyte.'

"I don't know what Soames is about," he said, "to make a fuss over a few

hundred pounds. I thought he was a man of property."

James' long upper lip twitched angrily; he could not bear his son to be

attacked in such a spot.

"It's not the money," he began, but meeting his brother's glance,

direct, shrewd, judicial, he stopped.

There was a silence.

"I've come in for my Will," said old Jolyon at last, tugging at his

moustache.

James' curiosity was roused at once. Perhaps nothing in this life

was more stimulating to him than a Will; it was the supreme deal with

property, the final inventory of a man's belongings, the last word on

what he was worth. He sounded the bell.

"Bring in Mr. Jolyon's Will," he said to an anxious, dark-haired clerk.

"You going to make some alterations?" And through his mind there flashed

the thought: 'Now, am I worth as much as he?'

Old Jolyon put the Will in his breast pocket, and James twisted his long

legs regretfully.

"You've made some nice purchases lately, they tell me," he said.

"I don't know where you get your information from," answered old Jolyon

sharply. "When's this action coming on? Next month? I can't tell what

you've got in your minds. You must manage your own affairs; but if you

take my advice, you'll settle it out of Court. Good-bye!" With a cold

handshake he was gone.

James, his fixed grey-blue eye corkscrewing round some secret anxious

image, began again to bite his finger.

Old Jolyon took his Will to the offices of the New Colliery Company,

and sat down in the empty Board Room to read it through. He answered

'Down-by-the-starn' Hemmings so tartly when the latter, seeing his

Chairman seated there, entered with the new Superintendent's first

report, that the Secretary withdrew with regretful dignity; and sending

for the transfer clerk, blew him up till the poor youth knew not where

to look.