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<h2> CHAPTER IV—PROJECTION OF THE HOUSE </h2>
<p>Soames Forsyte walked out of his green-painted front door three days after
the dinner at Swithin's, and looking back from across the Square,
confirmed his impression that the house wanted painting.</p>
<p>He had left his wife sitting on the sofa in the drawing-room, her hands
crossed in her lap, manifestly waiting for him to go out. This was not
unusual. It happened, in fact, every day.</p>
<p>He could not understand what she found wrong with him. It was not as if he
drank! Did he run into debt, or gamble, or swear; was he violent; were his
friends rackety; did he stay out at night? On the contrary.</p>
<p>The profound, subdued aversion which he felt in his wife was a mystery to
him, and a source of the most terrible irritation. That she had made a
mistake, and did not love him, had tried to love him and could not love
him, was obviously no reason.</p>
<p>He that could imagine so outlandish a cause for his wife's not getting on
with him was certainly no Forsyte.</p>
<p>Soames was forced, therefore, to set the blame entirely down to his wife.
He had never met a woman so capable of inspiring affection. They could not
go anywhere without his seeing how all the men were attracted by her;
their looks, manners, voices, betrayed it; her behaviour under this
attention had been beyond reproach. That she was one of those women—not
too common in the Anglo-Saxon race—born to be loved and to love, who
when not loving are not living, had certainly never even occurred to him.
Her power of attraction, he regarded as part of her value as his property;
but it made him, indeed, suspect that she could give as well as receive;
and she gave him nothing! 'Then why did she marry me?' was his continual
thought. He had, forgotten his courtship; that year and a half when he had
besieged and lain in wait for her, devising schemes for her entertainment,
giving her presents, proposing to her periodically, and keeping her other
admirers away with his perpetual presence. He had forgotten the day when,
adroitly taking advantage of an acute phase of her dislike to her home
surroundings, he crowned his labours with success. If he remembered
anything, it was the dainty capriciousness with which the gold-haired,
dark-eyed girl had treated him. He certainly did not remember the look on
her face—strange, passive, appealing—when suddenly one day she
had yielded, and said that she would marry him.</p>
<p>It had been one of those real devoted wooings which books and people
praise, when the lover is at length rewarded for hammering the iron till
it is malleable, and all must be happy ever after as the wedding bells.</p>
<p>Soames walked eastwards, mousing doggedly along on the shady side.</p>
<p>The house wanted doing, up, unless he decided to move into the country,
and build.</p>
<p>For the hundredth time that month he turned over this problem. There was
no use in rushing into things! He was very comfortably off, with an
increasing income getting on for three thousand a year; but his invested
capital was not perhaps so large as his father believed—James had a
tendency to expect that his children should be better off than they were.
'I can manage eight thousand easily enough,' he thought, 'without calling
in either Robertson's or Nicholl's.'</p>
<p>He had stopped to look in at a picture shop, for Soames was an 'amateur'
of pictures, and had a little-room in No. 62, Montpellier Square, full of
canvases, stacked against the wall, which he had no room to hang. He
brought them home with him on his way back from the City, generally after
dark, and would enter this room on Sunday afternoons, to spend hours
turning the pictures to the light, examining the marks on their backs, and
occasionally making notes.</p>
<p>They were nearly all landscapes with figures in the foreground, a sign of
some mysterious revolt against London, its tall houses, its interminable
streets, where his life and the lives of his breed and class were passed.
Every now and then he would take one or two pictures away with him in a
cab, and stop at Jobson's on his way into the City.</p>
<p>He rarely showed them to anyone; Irene, whose opinion he secretly
respected and perhaps for that reason never solicited, had only been into
the room on rare occasions, in discharge of some wifely duty. She was not
asked to look at the pictures, and she never did. To Soames this was
another grievance. He hated that pride of hers, and secretly dreaded it.</p>
<p>In the plate-glass window of the picture shop his image stood and looked
at him.</p>
<p>His sleek hair under the brim of the tall hat had a sheen like the hat
itself; his cheeks, pale and flat, the line of his clean-shaven lips, his
firm chin with its greyish shaven tinge, and the buttoned strictness of
his black cut-away coat, conveyed an appearance of reserve and secrecy, of
imperturbable, enforced composure; but his eyes, cold,—grey,
strained—looking, with a line in the brow between them, examined him
wistfully, as if they knew of a secret weakness.</p>
<p>He noted the subjects of the pictures, the names of the painters, made a
calculation of their values, but without the satisfaction he usually
derived from this inward appraisement, and walked on.</p>
<p>No. 62 would do well enough for another year, if he decided to build! The
times were good for building, money had not been so dear for years; and
the site he had seen at Robin Hill, when he had gone down there in the
spring to inspect the Nicholl mortgage—what could be better! Within
twelve miles of Hyde Park Corner, the value of the land certain to go up,
would always fetch more than he gave for it; so that a house, if built in
really good style, was a first-class investment.</p>
<p>The notion of being the one member of his family with a country house
weighed but little with him; for to a true Forsyte, sentiment, even the
sentiment of social position, was a luxury only to be indulged in after
his appetite for more material pleasure had been satisfied.</p>
<p>To get Irene out of London, away from opportunities of going about and
seeing people, away from her friends and those who put ideas into her
head! That was the thing! She was too thick with June! June disliked him.
He returned the sentiment. They were of the same blood.</p>
<p>It would be everything to get Irene out of town. The house would please
her she would enjoy messing about with the decoration, she was very
artistic!</p>
<p>The house must be in good style, something that would always be certain to
command a price, something unique, like that last house of Parkes, which
had a tower; but Parkes had himself said that his architect was ruinous.
You never knew where you were with those fellows; if they had a name they
ran you into no end of expense and were conceited into the bargain.</p>
<p>And a common architect was no good—the memory of Parkes' tower
precluded the employment of a common architect:</p>
<p>This was why he had thought of Bosinney. Since the dinner at Swithin's he
had made enquiries, the result of which had been meagre, but encouraging:
"One of the new school."</p>
<p>"Clever?"</p>
<p>"As clever as you like—a bit—a bit up in the air!"</p>
<p>He had not been able to discover what houses Bosinney had built, nor what
his charges were. The impression he gathered was that he would be able to
make his own terms. The more he reflected on the idea, the more he liked
it. It would be keeping the thing in the family, with Forsytes almost an
instinct; and he would be able to get 'favoured-nation,' if not nominal
terms—only fair, considering the chance to Bosinney of displaying
his talents, for this house must be no common edifice.</p>
<p>Soames reflected complacently on the work it would be sure to bring the
young man; for, like every Forsyte, he could be a thorough optimist when
there was anything to be had out of it.</p>
<p>Bosinney's office was in Sloane Street, close at, hand, so that he would
be able to keep his eye continually on the plans.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>'Yes,' he thought, 'I must have room to hang my pictures.</p>
<p>That evening, on his return from the City, he called at Bosinney's office.
He found the architect in his shirt-sleeves, smoking a pipe, and ruling
off lines on a plan. Soames refused a drink, and came at once to the
point.</p>
<p>"If you've nothing better to do on Sunday, come down with me to Robin
Hill, and give me your opinion on a building site."</p>
<p>"Are you going to build?"</p>
<p>"Perhaps," said Soames; "but don't speak of it. I just want your opinion."</p>
<p>"Quite so," said the architect.</p>
<p>Soames peered about the room.</p>
<p>"You're rather high up here," he remarked.</p>
<p>Any information he could gather about the nature and scope of Bosinney's
business would be all to the good.</p>
<p>"It does well enough for me so far," answered the architect. "You're
accustomed to the swells."</p>
<p>He knocked out his pipe, but replaced it empty between his teeth; it
assisted him perhaps to carry on the conversation. Soames noted a hollow
in each cheek, made as it were by suction.</p>
<p>"What do you pay for an office like this?" said he.</p>
<p>"Fifty too much," replied Bosinney.</p>
<p>This answer impressed Soames favourably.</p>
<p>"I suppose it is dear," he said. "I'll call for you—on Sunday about
eleven."</p>
<p>The following Sunday therefore he called for Bosinney in a hansom, and
drove him to the station. On arriving at Robin Hill, they found no cab,
and started to walk the mile and a half to the site.</p>
<p>It was the 1st of August—a perfect day, with a burning sun and
cloudless sky—and in the straight, narrow road leading up the hill
their feet kicked up a yellow dust.</p>
<p>"Gravel soil," remarked Soames, and sideways he glanced at the coat
Bosinney wore. Into the side-pockets of this coat were thrust bundles of
papers, and under one arm was carried a queer-looking stick. Soames noted
these and other peculiarities.</p>
<p>No one but a clever man, or, indeed, a buccaneer, would have taken such
liberties with his appearance; and though these eccentricities were
revolting to Soames, he derived a certain satisfaction from them, as
evidence of qualities by which he must inevitably profit. If the fellow
could build houses, what did his clothes matter?</p>
<p>"I told you," he said, "that I want this house to be a surprise, so don't
say anything about it. I never talk of my affairs until they're carried
through."</p>
<p>Bosinney nodded.</p>
<p>"Let women into your plans," pursued Soames, "and you never know where
it'll end."</p>
<p>"Ah!" Said Bosinney, "women are the devil!"</p>
<p>This feeling had long been at the—bottom of Soames's heart; he had
never, however, put it into words.</p>
<p>"Oh!" he Muttered, "so you're beginning to...." He stopped, but added,
with an uncontrollable burst of spite: "June's got a temper of her own—always
had."</p>
<p>"A temper's not a bad thing in an angel."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 ground, and out of these
the larks soared into the hate of sunshine. On the far horizon, over a
countless succession of fields and hedges, rose a line of downs.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"Your people," he said, "ought to come down in their price to me,
considering that I shall be the first to build."</p>
<p>Oliver shook his head.</p>
<p>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."</p>
<p>"Mind," said Soames, "I've not decided; it's quite possible I shan't build
at all. The ground rent's very high."</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>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.'</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>'Cheap or not, I mean to have it,' he thought.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Soames had to touch him on the shoulder before he looked up.</p>
<p>"Hallo! Forsyte," he said, "I've found the very place for your house! Look
here!"</p>
<p>Soames stood and looked, then he said, coldly:</p>
<p>"You may be very clever, but this site will cost me half as much again."</p>
<p>"Hang the cost, man. Look at the view!"</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>A long, soft ripple of wind flowed over the corn, and brought a puff of
warm air into their faces.</p>
<p>"I could build you a teaser here," said Bosinney, breaking the silence at
last.</p>
<p>"I dare say," replied Soames, drily. "You haven't got to pay for it."</p>
<p>"For about eight thousand I could build you a palace."</p>
<p>Soames had become very pale—a struggle was going on within him. He
dropped his eyes, and said stubbornly:</p>
<p>"I can't afford it."</p>
<p>And slowly, with his mousing walk, he led the way back to the first site.</p>
<p>They spent some time there going into particulars of the projected house,
and then Soames returned to the agent's cottage.</p>
<p>He came out in about half an hour, and, joining Bosinney, started for the
station.</p>
<p>"Well," he said, hardly opening his lips, "I've taken that site of yours,
after all."</p>
<p>And again he was silent, confusedly debating how it was that this fellow,
whom by habit he despised, should have overborne his own decision.</p>
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