Man of Property | Page 4

as to marry Septimus Small, a
man of poor constitution. She had survived him for many years. With
her elder and younger sister she lived now in the house of Timothy, her
sixth and youngest brother, on the Bayswater Road. Each of these
ladies held fans in their hands, and each with some touch of colour,
some emphatic feather or brooch, testified to the solemnity of the
opportunity.
In the centre of the room, under the chandelier, as became a host, stood
the head of the family, old Jolyon himself. Eighty years of age, with his
fine, white hair, his dome-like forehead, his little, dark grey eyes, and
an immense white moustache, which drooped and spread below the
level of his strong jaw, he had a patriarchal look, and in spite of lean
cheeks and hollows at his temples, seemed master of perennial youth.
He held himself extremely upright, and his shrewd, steady eyes had lost
none of their clear shining. Thus he gave an impression of superiority
to the doubts and dislikes of smaller men. Having had his own way for
innumerable years, he had earned a prescriptive right to it. It would
never have occurred to old Jolyon that it was necessary to wear a look
of doubt or of defiance.
Between him and the four other brothers who were present, James,
Swithin, Nicholas, and Roger, there was much difference, much
similarity. In turn, each of these four brothers was very different from
the other, yet they, too, were alike.
Through the varying features and expression of those five faces could
be marked a certain steadfastness of chin, underlying surface
distinctions, marking a racial stamp, too prehistoric to trace, too remote
and permanent to discuss--the very hall-mark and guarantee of the

family fortunes.
Among the younger generation, in the tall, bull-like George, in pallid
strenuous Archibald, in young Nicholas with his sweet and tentative
obstinacy, in the grave and foppishly determined Eustace, there was
this same stamp--less meaningful perhaps, but unmistakable--a sign of
something ineradicable in the family soul. At one time or another
during the afternoon, all these faces, so dissimilar and so alike, had
worn an expression of distrust, the object of which was undoubtedly the
man whose acquaintance they were thus assembled to make. Philip
Bosinney was known to be a young man without fortune, but Forsyte
girls had become engaged to such before, and had actually married
them. It was not altogether for this reason, therefore, that the minds of
the Forsytes misgave them. They could not have explained the origin of
a misgiving obscured by the mist of family gossip. A story was
undoubtedly told that he had paid his duty call to Aunts Ann, Juley, and
Hester, in a soft grey hat--a soft grey hat, not even a new one--a dusty
thing with a shapeless crown. "So, extraordinary, my dear--so odd,"
Aunt Hester, passing through the little, dark hall (she was rather
short-sighted), had tried to 'shoo' it off a chair, taking it for a strange,
disreputable cat--Tommy had such disgraceful friends! She was
disturbed when it did not move.
Like an artist for ever seeking to discover the significant trifle which
embodies the whole character of a scene, or place, or person, so those
unconscious artists--the Forsytes had fastened by intuition on this hat; it
was their significant trifle, the detail in which was embedded the
meaning of the whole matter; for each had asked himself: "Come, now,
should I have paid that visit in that hat?" and each had answered "No!"
and some, with more imagination than others, had added: "It would
never have come into my head!"
George, on hearing the story, grinned. The hat had obviously been
worn as a practical joke! He himself was a connoisseur of such. "Very
haughty!" he said, "the wild Buccaneer."
And this mot, the 'Buccaneer,' was bandied from mouth to mouth, till it
became the favourite mode of alluding to Bosinney.

Her aunts reproached June afterwards about the hat.
"We don't think you ought to let him, dear!" they had said.
June had answered in her imperious brisk way, like the little
embodiment of will she was: "Oh! what does it matter? Phil never
knows what he's got on!"
No one had credited an answer so outrageous. A man not to know what
he had on? No, no! What indeed was this young man, who, in
becoming engaged to June, old Jolyon's acknowledged heiress, had
done so well for himself? He was an architect, not in itself a sufficient
reason for wearing such a hat. None of the Forsytes happened to be
architects, but one of them knew two architects who would never have
worn such a hat upon a call of ceremony in the London season.
Dangerous--ah, dangerous! June, of course, had not