The Forsyte Saga - Volume 1

Bosinney's office was in Sloane Street, close at, hand, so that he would

be able to keep his eye continually on the plans.

Again, Irene would not be to likely to object to leave London if her

greatest friend's lover were given the job. June's marriage might depend

on it. Irene could not decently stand in the way of June's marriage; she

would never do that, he knew her too well. And June would be pleased; of

this he saw the advantage.

Bosinney looked clever, but he had also--and--it was one of his great

attractions--an air as if he did not quite know on which side his bread

were buttered; he should be easy to deal with in money matters. Soames

made this reflection in no defrauding spirit; it was the natural

attitude of his mind--of the mind of any good business man--of all those

thousands of good business men through whom he was threading his way up

Ludgate Hill.

Thus he fulfilled the inscrutable laws of his great class--of human

nature itself--when he reflected, with a sense of comfort, that Bosinney

would be easy to deal with in money matters.

While he elbowed his way on, his eyes, which he usually kept fixed on

the ground before his feet, were attracted upwards by the dome of St.

Paul's. It had a peculiar fascination for him, that old dome, and

not once, but twice or three times a week, would he halt in his daily

pilgrimage to enter beneath and stop in the side aisles for five or

ten minutes, scrutinizing the names and epitaphs on the monuments. The

attraction for him of this great church was inexplicable, unless it

enabled him to concentrate his thoughts on the business of the day. If

any affair of particular moment, or demanding peculiar acuteness, was

weighing on his mind, he invariably went in, to wander with mouse-like

attention from epitaph to epitaph. Then retiring in the same noiseless

way, he would hold steadily on up Cheapside, a thought more of dogged

purpose in his gait, as though he had seen something which he had made

up his mind to buy.

He went in this morning, but, instead of stealing from monument to

monument, turned his eyes upwards to the columns and spacings of the

walls, and remained motionless.

His uplifted face, with the awed and wistful look which faces take on

themselves in church, was whitened to a chalky hue in the vast building.

His gloved hands were clasped in front over the handle of his umbrella.

He lifted them. Some sacred inspiration perhaps had come to him.

'Yes,' he thought, 'I must have room to hang my pictures.