”
“Eh! In the Balkans, um?”
“I am ze ‘alf Italiano.”
At this moment Eustace, obeying a wink from George’s brooding eyes, rose, and said:
“Shall we go up and have some–er–music?”
Roger and George were left; nor was either of them seen again that evening.
In the drawing-room Mrs. Roger, placid by now to the point of torpor, had said to Francie:
“Of course, my dear, he is striking in a way, but he doesn’t look very clean, does he?”
“That’s only his skin, Mother.”
“But how do you know, dear?”
“Oh! Well, he comes from Ragusa.”
“I wonder,” said Mrs. Roger, “if that is where ‘ragouts’ originally came from. I felt that he didn’t care very much for the dinner to-night.”
“He’s all spirit,” said Francie. “Everybody here thinks so much about food.”
“Yes,” sighed Mrs. Roger, “if it weren’t for your father, I shouldn’t think nearly as much about food as I have to. I sometimes wish I could go where sheep and oxen are unknown, and there are no seasons.”
“Food is a terrible bore,” said Francie.
Her mother looked at her intently.
“I’m sure you had nothing but a bun for lunch.”
“A bath bun, dear.”
“It’s not enough, Francie.”
“I never have more if I can help it.”
“Your independence will ruin you one of these days. I’m certain your father won’t like you seeing much of THAT young man.”
“Father’s hopeless,” said Francie. “He ought to be stuffed.”
A faint smile appeared on Mrs. Roger’s face, as if she were thinking: ‘Perhaps he is,’ but she said:
“Don’t be disrespectful, dear.”
At this moment they came, Eustace exceptionally dandified as though to counterbalance his associate. Francie seated her ‘foreigner’ on the sofa, dark and sulky, and herself beside him. Eustace and his mother played piquet. The sound of George leaving (without his monkey) and soon thereafter of Roger going up to bed, brought a somewhat painful evening to its end.
In their bedroom, after holding forth on a son like George, Roger said abruptly:
“And as to Francie, what does she want to pick up with a fourpenny foreigner for! That girl will get herself into a mess.”
Mrs. Roger having exhausted her powers of palliation over George, did not reply.
“A fiddler, too,” added Roger.
“She can’t help being musical, dear,” said Mrs. Roger.
“No good ever came of music,” said Roger. “Wake me if I snore; it gives me a sore throat…”
Undeterred by the wintry nature of that evening, Francie continued to promote the fortunes of her ‘lover.’ She even took him to Timothy’s. It was at a period when the whole family was still slightly in mourning, over that “dreadful business of Soames, Irene and young Bosinney, my dear,” which had so nearly got into the papers. Extraordinary sensitiveness prevailed, and anything manifestly unForsytean was scrutinised as with the eyes of parrots.
What Francie was doing with a young man whose hair stood out round him like a tea-tray, whose complexion was olive and whose eyes were almost black, was an insoluble problem which all did their utmost to solve, shaking the head and wagging the tongue. Aunt Juley alone ventured the opinion that he was romantic-looking, and was stigmatised by Swithin as a ‘sentimental old fool.’
“The fellow ought to be jumping about on a barrel organ in a red cap,” he added: “Romantic!”
It was, indeed, the damning of faint praise among a family who felt that romance was the last thing they wanted to hear of for a very long time to come. The visit to Aunts Hester and Juley, at which only Swithin and Euphemia were present, lasted but twenty minutes and was ‘carried off’ by Francie’s bravura. She took her foreigner away in a bus and soothed him with broken Italian all the way home to her studio. Her protective feeling and something slightly rapturous had been roused in her by the sight of Swithin, block-like and portentous above his waistcoats, in a light blue chair. Guido was so delightfully unlike that! Her main energies were now concentrated on securing a concert for him. There was little she did not dare to this end. It took place just as the season closed in a small hall newly opened by a firm of piano-makers.
Among many others, the whole Forsyte family were sent cards of invitation written by Francie. Even Swithin received one at his Club. This was probably the first time he had ever been invited to a concert and he announced his intention of going and seeing what it was all about. In his opinion the girl was spending a pretty penny on this fourpenny foreigner (Roger’s phrase having become current). From uneasy curiosity, in fact, rather than from love of music, a considerable number of the clan attended. Swithin found himself situated between his niece Winifred Dartie, whom he always found personable, and his niece Euphemia, who was too thin and squeaked. He slept heavily during the second number and woke just in time, with a snore so loud that it elicited from Euphemia one of the most outstanding squeaks that even she had ever let escape. During the applause which followed, he turned to her, so far, indeed, as he was able, and enquired: ‘What on earth she had made that noise for?’ To which Euphemia replied:
“Oh! Uncle Swithin, you’ll kill me!” She had a great, if inconvenient, sense of humour.
During the third number Swithin remained awake, staring, pop-eyed, at the young man’s agility and wishing he had remembered to put cotton-wool in his ears. In the interval which followed he manoeuvred himself out of his seat, and not waiting for his carriage, took a four-wheeled cab to his Club, where he lit a cigar and instantly fell asleep. It was his opinion, afterwards recorded, that the fellow had made a lot of noise–a capering chap!
The concert, which produced the sum of thirteen pounds, three shillings and sixpence, cost Francie practically all her savings. Far more serious, however, was its spiritual effect. The notices were bad. Francie was furious. Guido, who had borne one bad notice beautifully with a curl of his lip, broke into imprecations at the second, tore at his hair after the third, and dissolved into tears with the fourth. Greatly moved, Francie took his head between her hands and kissed him above the tears. And with that kiss was born in her a serious feeling, not exactly bodily, but as if he belonged to her, and must be sustained through thick and thin. A fortnight later–a fortnight spent in storm and shine, during which she gave him a pair of silver-backed brushes, some special hair shampoo, some new ties, and an umbrella–she announced to her mother by note that she and Guido were engaged. She added that she was going to sleep at the Studio till father had got over the fit he would certainly have.
There again she went wrong in her psychology, incapable, like all the young Forsytes, of appreciating exactly the quality which had made the fortunes of all the old Forsytes. In a word, they had fits over small matters, but never over large. When stark reality stared them in the face they met it with the stare of a still starker reality.
Beyond the words: “The girl’s mad,” Roger, to the infinite relief of Mrs. Roger, said absolutely nothing. His face acquired a sudden dusky-red rigidity, and he left the dining-room. He went into his sanctum–the room where he had thought out the future of countless pieces of house property–took up a paper-knife and sat down in an armchair. He sat there for fully half an hour without a sound except the dull click of the paper-knife against his lower teeth still firm as rocks. Francie was his only daughter, and in his peculiar way (not for nothing was Roger considered eccentric in the family) he was fond of her; fonder than of his mere sons Roger, George, Eustace, and Thomas; and he sat, not fuming–the matter was too serious. Presently he arose and returned to the dining-room where Mrs. Roger was in distraction over the composition of a letter to her daughter.
“Do you know where that young fellow lives?” he said.
“Yes, Roger, at 5, Glendower Mews, Kensington.”
“Write a note asking him to lunch here with Francie today week. Do the same to Francie. Where’s The Times?”
Mrs. Roger produced The Times, and faltered out:
“What are you going to do, Roger?”
“Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies; don’t get into a fantod, leave it to me!”
He took The Times to his sanctum, scanned a page carefully, looked at his calendar, and wrote a note. Then he got up and stood with his square back to the fireplace and his head bent forward. His full, rather bumpy forehead was flushed. He alone of the old Forsytes had become entirely clean-shaven–another sign of eccentricity at that period–and his rather full lips were compressed into a straight line. The die he was going to cast was momentous even for one who had been bidding at auctions all his life. Ten minutes to ten! Taking up his cheque book, he signed a cheque form, tore it out, put his cheque book into his pocket and rang the bell.
The broad and cheerful butler stood within the doorway.
“Yes, Sir?”
“Come in, Smith, and shut the door. I want you to do a job for me. Take this note down in a cab at once, get what I’
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