The Forsyte saga - Complete
up from you!' His second impulse therefore was to let sleeping
dogs lie. But she would surely question him. He gave her a
sidelong look, and found she was giving him the same. She said
softly:
“Why don't you like those cousins, Father?” Soames lifted the
corner of his lip.
“What made you think that?”
“Cela se voit.”
'That sees itself!' What a way of putting it! After twenty years
of a French wife Soames had still little sympathy with her
language; a theatrical affair and connected in his mind with all
the refinements of domestic irony.
“How?” he asked.
“You must know them; and you didn't make a sign. I saw them
looking at you.”
“I've never seen the boy in my life,” replied Soames with perfect
truth.
“No; but you've seen the others, dear.”
Soames gave her another look. What had she picked up? Had her
Aunt Winifred, or Imogen, or Val Dartie and his wife, been
talking? Every breath of the old scandal had been carefully kept
from her at home, and Winifred warned many times that he wouldn't
have a whisper of it reach her for the world. So far as she ought
to know, he had never been married before. But her dark eyes,
whose southern glint and clearness often almost frightened him,
met his with perfect innocence.
“Well,” he said, “your grandfather and his brother had a quarrel.
The two families don't know each other.”
“How romantic!”
'Now, what does she mean by that?' he thought. The word was to
him extravagant and dangerous—it was as if she had said: “How
jolly!”
“And they'll continue not to know each, other,” he added, but
instantly regretted the challenge in those words. Fleur was
smiling. In this age, when young people prided themselves on
going their own ways and paying no attention to any sort of
decent prejudice, he had said the very thing to excite her
wilfulness. Then, recollecting the expression on Irene's face, he
breathed again.
“What sort of a quarrel?” he heard Fleur say.
“About a house. It's ancient history for you. Your grandfather
died the day you were born. He was ninety.”
“Ninety? Are there many Forsytes besides those in the Red Book?”
“I don't know,” said Soames. “They're all dispersed now. The old
ones are dead, except Timothy.”
Fleur clasped her hands.
“Timothy? Isn't that delicious?”
“Not at all,” said Soames. It offended him that she should think
“Timothy” delicious—a kind of insult to his breed. This new
generation mocked at anything solid and tenacious. “You go and
see the old boy. He might want to prophesy.” Ah! If Timothy could
see the disquiet England of his great-nephews and great-nieces,
he would certainly give tongue. And involuntarily he glanced up
at the Iseeum; yes—George was still in the window, with the same
pink paper in his hand.
“Where is Robin Hill, Father?”
Robin Hill! Robin Hill, round which all that tragedy had centred!
What did she want to know for?
“In Surrey,” he muttered; “not far from Richmond. Why?”
“Is the house there?”
“What house?”
“That they quarrelled about.”
“Yes. But what's all that to do with you? We're going home
to-morrow—you'd better be thinking about your frocks.”
“Bless you! They're all thought about. A family feud? It's like
the Bible, or Mark Twain—awfully exciting. What did you do in the
feud, Father?”
“Never you mind.”
“Oh! But if I'm to keep it up?”
“Who said you were to keep it up?”
“You, darling.”
“I? I said it had nothing to do with you.”
“Just what I think, you know; so that's all right.”
She was too sharp for him; fine, as Annette sometimes called her.
Nothing for it but to distract her attention.
“There's a bit of rosaline point in here,” he said, stopping
before a shop, “that I thought you might like.”
When he had paid for it and they had resumed their progress,
Fleur said:
“Don't you think that boy's mother is the most beautiful woman of
her age you've ever seen?”
Soames shivered. Uncanny, the way she stuck to it!
“I don't know that I noticed her.”
“Dear, I saw the corner of your eye.”
“You see everything—and a great deal more, it seems to me!”
“What's her husband like? He must be your first cousin, if your
fathers were brothers.”
“Dead, for all I know,” said Soames, with sudden vehemence. “I
haven't seen him for twenty years.”
“What was he?”
“A painter.”
“That's quite jolly.”
The words: “If you want to please me you'll put those people out
of your head,” sprang to Soames' lips, but he choked them back—he
must not let her see his feelings.
“He once insulted me,” he said.
Her quick eyes rested on his face.
“I see! You didn't avenge it, and it rankles. Poor Father! You
let me have a go!”
It was really like lying in the dark with a mosquito hovering
above his face. Such pertinacity in Fleur was new to him, and, as
they reached the hotel, he said grimly:
“I did my best. And that's enough about these people. I'm going
up till dinner.”
“I shall sit here.”
With a parting look at her extended in a chair—a look
half-resentful, half-adoring—Soames moved into the lift and was
transported to their suite on the fourth floor. He stood by the
window of the sitting-room which gave view over Hyde Park, and
drummed a finger on its pane. His feelings were confused, tetchy,
troubled. The throb of that old wound, scarred over by Time and
new interests, was mingled with displeasure and anxiety, and a
slight pain in his chest where that nougat stuff had disagreed.
Had Annette come in? Not that she was any good to him in such a
difficulty. Whenever she had questioned him about his first
marriage, he had always shut her up; she knew nothing of it, save
that it had been the great passion of his life, and his marriage
with herself but domestic makeshift. She had always kept the
grudge of that up her sleeve, as it were, and used it
commercially. He listened. A sound—the vague murmur of a woman's
movements—was coming through the door. She was in. He tapped.
“Who?”
“I,” said Soames.
She had been changing her frock, and was still imperfectly
clothed; a striking figure before her glass. There was a certain
magnificence about her arms, shoulders, hair, which had darkened
since he first knew her, about the turn of her neck, the
silkiness of her garments, her dark-lashed, greyblue eyes—she was
certainly as handsome at forty as she had ever been. A fine
possession, an excellent housekeeper, a sensible and affectionate
enough mother. If only she weren't always so frankly cynical
about the relations between them! Soames, who had no more real
affection for her than she had for him, suffered from a kind of
English grievance in that she had never dropped even the thinnest
veil of sentiment over their partnership. Like most of his
countrymen and women, he held the view that marriage should be
based on mutual love, but that when from a marriage love had
disappeared, or, been found never to have really existed—so that
it was manifestly not based on love—you must not admit it. There
it was, and the love was not—but there you were, and must
continue to be! Thus you had it both ways, and were not tarred
with cynicism, realism, and immorality like the French. Moreover,
it was necessary in the interests of property. He knew that she
knew that they both knew there was no love between them, but he
still expected her not to admit in words or conduct such a thing,
and he could never understand what she meant when she talked of
the hypocrisy of the English. He said:
“Whom have you got at 'The Shelter' next week?”
Annette went on touching her lips delicately with salve—he always
wished she wouldn't do that.
“Your sister Winifred, and the Car-r-digans”—she took up a tiny
stick of black—“and Prosper Profond.”
“That Belgian chap? Why him?”
Annette turned her neck lazily, touched one eyelash, and said:
“He amuses Winifred.”
“I want some one to amuse Fleur; she's restive.”
“R-restive?” repeated Annette. “Is it the first time you see
that, my friend? She was born r-restive, as you call it.”
Would she never get that affected roll out of her r's?
He touched the dress she had taken off, and asked:
“What have you been doing?”
Annette looked at him, reflected in her glass. Her
just-brightened lips smiled, rather full, rather ironical.
“Enjoying myself,” she said.
“Oh!” answered Soames glumly. “Ribbandry, I suppose.”
It was his word for all that incomprehensible running in and out
of shops that women went in for. “Has Fleur got her summer
dresses?”
“You don't ask if I have mine.”
“You don't care whether I do or not.”
“Quite right. Well, she has; and I have mine—terribly expensive.”
“H'm!” said Soames. “What does that chap Profond do in England?”
Annette raised the eyebrows she had just finished.
“He yachts.”
“Ah!” said Soames; “he's a sleepy chap.”
“Sometimes,” answered Annette, and her face had a sort of quiet
enjoyment. “But sometimes very amusing.”
“He's got a touch of the tar-brush about him.”
Annette stretched herself.
“Tar-brush?” she said. “What is that? His mother was Armenienne.”
“That's it, then,” muttered Soames. “Does he know anything about
pictures?”
“He knows about everything—a man of the world.”
“Well, get some one for Fleur. I want to distract her. She's
going off on Saturday to Val Dartie and his wife; I don't like
it.”
“Why not?”
Since the reason could not be explained without going into family
history, Soames merely answered:
“Racketing about. There's too much of it.”
“I like that little Mrs. Val; she is very quiet and clever.”
“I know nothing of her except—This thing's new.” And Soames took
up a creation from the bed.
Annette received it from him.
“Would you hook me?” she said.
Soames hooked. Glancing once over her shoulder into the glass, he
saw the expression on her face, faintly amused, faintly
contemptuous, as much as to say: “Thanks! You will never learn!”
No, thank God, he wasn't a Frenchman! He finished with a jerk,
and the words: “It's too low here.” And he went to the door, with
the wish to get away from her and go down to Fleur again.
Annette stayed a powder-puff, and said with startling suddenness
“Que tu es grossier!”
He knew the expression—he had reason to. The first time she had
used it he had thought it meant “What a grocer you are!” and had
not known whether to be relieved or not when better informed. He
resented the word—he was not coarse! If he was coarse, what was
that chap in the room beyond his, who made those horrible noises
in the morning when he cleared his throat, or those people in the