The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy (acx book reading txt) 📕

Baynes Bosinney was called three times by the Ushers, and the sound of the calling echoed with strange melancholy throughout the Court and Galleries.

The crying of this name, to which no answer was returned, had upon James a curious effect: it was like calling for your lost dog about the streets. And the creepy feeling that it gave him, of a man missing, grated on his sense of comfort and security⁠—on his cosiness. Though he could not have said why, it made him feel uneasy.

He looked now at the clock⁠—a quarter to three! It would be all over in a quarter of an hour. Where could the young fellow be?

It was only when Mr. Justice Bentham delivered judgment that he got over the turn he had received.

Behind the wooden erection, by which he was fenced from more ordinary mortals, the learned Judge leaned forward. The electric light, just turned on above his head, fell on his face, and mellowed it to an orange hue beneath the snowy crown of his wig; the amplitude of his robes grew before the eye; his whole figure, facing the comparative dusk of the Court, radiated like some majestic and sacred body. He cleared his throat, took a sip of water, broke the nib of a quill against the desk, and, folding his bony hands before him, began.

To James he suddenly loomed much larger than he had ever thought Bentham would loom. It was the majesty of the law; and a person endowed with a nature far less matter-of-fact than that of James might have been excused for failing to pierce this halo, and disinter therefrom the somewhat ordinary Forsyte, who walked and talked in everyday life under the name of Sir Walter Bentham.

He delivered judgment in the following words:

“The facts in this case are not in dispute. On May 15 last the defendant wrote to the plaintiff, requesting to be allowed to withdraw from his professional position in regard to the decoration of the plaintiff’s house, unless he were given ‘a free hand.’ The plaintiff, on May 17, wrote back as follows: ‘In giving you, in accordance with your request, this free hand, I wish you to clearly understand that the total cost of the house as handed over to me completely decorated, inclusive of your fee (as arranged between us) must not exceed twelve thousand pounds.’ To this letter the defendant replied on May 18: ‘If you think that in such a delicate matter as decoration I can bind myself to the exact pound, I am afraid you are mistaken.’ On May 19 the plaintiff wrote as follows: ‘I did not mean to say that if you should exceed the sum named in my letter to you by ten or twenty or even fifty pounds there would be any difficulty between us. You have a free hand in the terms of this correspondence, and I hope you will see your way to completing the decorations.’ On May 20 the defendant replied thus shortly: ‘Very well.’

“In completing these decorations, the defendant incurred liabilities and expenses which brought the total cost of this house up to the sum of twelve thousand four hundred pounds, all of which expenditure has been defrayed by the plaintiff. This action has been brought by the plaintiff to recover from the defendant the sum of three hundred and fifty pounds expended by him in excess of a sum of twelve thousand and fifty pounds, alleged by the plaintiff to have been fixed by this correspondence as the maximum sum that the defendant had authority to expend.

“The question for me to decide is whether or no the defendant is liable to refund to the plaintiff this sum. In my judgment he is so liable.

“What in effect the plaintiff has said is this: ‘I give you a free hand to complete these decorations, provided that you keep within a total cost to me of twelve thousand pounds. If you exceed that sum by as much as fifty pounds, I will not hold you responsible; beyond that point you are no agent of mine, and I shall repudiate liability.’ It is not quite clear to me whether, had the plaintiff in fact repudiated liability under his agent’s contracts, he would, under all the circumstances, have been successful in so doing; but he has not adopted this course. He has accepted liability, and fallen back upon his rights against the defendant under the terms of the latter’s engagement.

“In my judgment the plaintiff is entitled to recover this sum from the defendant.

“It has been sought, on behalf of the defendant, to show that no limit of expenditure was fixed or intended to be fixed by this correspondence. If this were so, I can find no reason for the plaintiff’s importation into the correspondence of the figures of twelve thousand pounds and subsequently of fifty pounds. The defendant’s contention would render these figures meaningless. It is manifest to me that by his letter of May 20 he assented to a very clear proposition, by the terms of which he must be held to be bound.

“For these reasons there will be judgment for the plaintiff for the amount claimed with costs.”

James sighed, and stooping, picked up his umbrella which had fallen with a rattle at the words “importation into this correspondence.”

Untangling his legs, he rapidly left the Court; without waiting for his son, he snapped up a hansom cab (it was a clear, grey afternoon) and drove straight to Timothy’s where he found Swithin; and to him, Mrs. Septimus Small, and Aunt Hester, he recounted the whole proceedings, eating two muffins not altogether in the intervals of speech.

“Soames did very well,” he ended; “he’s got his head screwed on the right way. This won’t please Jolyon. It’s a bad business for that young Bosinney; he’ll go bankrupt, I shouldn’t wonder,” and then after a long pause, during which he had stared disquietly into the fire, he added:

“He wasn’t there⁠—now why?”

There was a sound of footsteps. The figure of a