He walked sorrowfully away from the hospital towards his father's house,
reflecting that this death would break up the Forsyte family. The stroke
had indeed slipped past their defences into the very wood of their tree.
They might flourish to all appearance as before, preserving a brave show
before the eyes of London, but the trunk was dead, withered by the same
flash that had stricken down Bosinney. And now the saplings would take
its place, each one a new custodian of the sense of property.
Good forest of Forsytes! thought young Jolyon--soundest timber of our
land!
Concerning the cause of this death--his family would doubtless reject
with vigour the suspicion of suicide, which was so compromising! They
would take it as an accident, a stroke of fate. In their hearts they
would even feel it an intervention of Providence, a retribution--had not
Bosinney endangered their two most priceless possessions, the pocket and
the hearth? And they would talk of 'that unfortunate accident of young
Bosinney's,' but perhaps they would not talk--silence might be better!
As for himself, he regarded the bus-driver's account of the accident as
of very little value. For no one so madly in love committed suicide for
want of money; nor was Bosinney the sort of fellow to set much store by
a financial crisis.
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