The Forsyte Saga(103)

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’s 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’s 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.

It was not – by George – as he (Down-by-the-starn) would have him know, for a whipper-snapper of a young fellow like him, to come down to that office, and think that he was God Almighty. He (Down-by-the-starn) had been head of that office for more years than a boy like him could count, and if he thought that when he had finished all his work, he could sit there doing nothing, he did not know him, Hemmings (Down-by-the-starn), and so forth.

On the other side of the green baize door old Jolyon sat at the long, mahogany-and-leather Board table, his thick, loose-jointed, tortoise-shell eye-glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, his gold pencil moving down the clauses of his Will.

It was a simple affair, for there were none of those vexatious little legacies and donations to charities, which fritter away a man’s possessions, and damage the majestic effect of that little paragraph in the morning papers accorded to Forsytes who die with a hundred thousand pounds.

A simple affair. Just a bequest to his son of twenty thousand, and ‘as to the residue of my property of whatsoever kind whether realty or personalty or partaking of the nature of either – upon trust to pay the proceeds rents annual produce dividends or interest thereof and thereon to my said granddaughter June Forsyte or her assigns during her life to be for her sole use and benefit and without, etc.… and from and after her death or decease upon trust to convey assign transfer or make over the said last-mentioned lands hereditaments premises trust moneys stocks funds investments and securities or such as shall then stand for and represent the same unto such person or persons whether one or more for such intents purposes and uses and generally in such manner way and form in all respects as the said June Forsyte notwithstanding coverture shall by her last Will and Testament or any writing or writings in the nature of a Will testament or testamentary disposition to be by her duly made signed and published direct appoint or make over give and dispose of the same. And in default etc.… Provided always…’ and so on, in seven folios of brief and simple phraseology.

The Will had been drawn by James in his palmy days. He had foreseen almost every contingency.

Old Jolyon sat a long time reading this Will; at last he took half a sheet of paper from the rack, and made a prolonged pencil note; then buttoning up the Will, he caused a cab to be called and drove to the offices of Paramor and Herring, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Jack Herring was dead, but his nephew was still in the firm, and old Jolyon was closeted with him for half an hour.