The Forsyte saga - Complete
grey silk shot with palest green. He looked, sideways, at Fleur's
face. Rather colourless-no light, no eagerness! That love affair
was preying on her—a bad business! He looked beyond, at his
wife's face, rather more touched up than usual, a little
disdainful—not that she had any business to disdain, so far as he
could see. She was taking Profond's defection with curious
quietude; or was his “small” voyage just a blind? If so, he
should refuse to see it! Having promenaded round the pitch and in
front of the pavilion, they sought Winifred's table in the
Bedouin Club tent. This Club—a new “cock and hen”—had been
founded in the interests of travel, and of a gentleman with an
old Scottish name, whose father had somewhat strangely been
called Levi. Winifred had joined, not because she had travelled,
but because instinct told her that a Club with such a name and
such a founder was bound to go far; if one didn't join at once
one might never have the chance. Its tent, with a text from the
Koran on an orange ground, and a small green camel embroidered
over the entrance, was the most striking on the ground. Outside
it they found Jack Cardigan in a dark blue tie (he had once
played for Harrow), batting with a Malacca cane to show how that
fellow ought to have hit that ball. He piloted them in. Assembled
in Winifred's corner were Imogen, Benedict with his young wife,
Val Dartie without Holly, Maud and her husband, and, after Soames
and his two were seated, one empty place.
“I'm expecting Prosper,” said Winifred, “but he's so busy with
his yacht.”
Soames stole a glance. No movement in his wife's face! Whether
that fellow were coming or not, she evidently knew all about it.
It did not escape him that Fleur, too, looked at her mother. If
Annette didn't respect his feelings, she might think of Fleur's!
The conversation, very desultory, was syncopated by Jack Cardigan
talking about “mid-off.” He cited all the “great mid-offs” from
the beginning of time, as if they had been a definite racial
entity in the composition of the British people. Soames had
finished his lobster, and was beginning on pigeon-pie, when he
heard the words, “I'm a small bit late, Mrs. Dartie,” and saw
that there was no longer any empty place. That fellow was sitting
between Annette and Imogen. Soames ate steadily on, with an
occasional word to Maud and Winifred. Conversation buzzed around
him. He heard the voice of Profond say:
“I think you're mistaken, Mrs. Forsyde; I'll—I'll bet Miss
Forsyde agrees with me.”
“In what?” came Fleur's clear voice across the table.
“I was sayin', young gurls are much the same as they always
were—there's very small difference.”
“Do you know so much about them?”
That sharp reply caught the ears of all, and Soames moved
uneasily on his thin green chair.
“Well, I don't know, I think they want their own small way, and I
think they always did.”
“Indeed!”
“Oh, but—Prosper,” Winifred interjected comfortably, “the girls
in the streets—the girls who've been in munitions, the little
flappers in the shops; their manners now really quite hit you in
the eye.”
At the word “hit” Jack Cardigan stopped his disquisition; and in
the silence Monsieur Profond said:
“It was inside before, now it's outside; that's all.”
“But their morals!” cried Imogen.
“Just as moral as they ever were, Mrs. Cardigan, but they've got
more opportunity.”
The saying, so cryptically cynical, received a little laugh from
Imogen, a slight opening of Jack Cardigan's mouth, and a creak
from Soames' chair.
Winifred said: “That's too bad, Prosper.”
“What do you say, Mrs. Forsyde; don't you think human nature's
always the same?”
Soames subdued a sudden longing to get up and kick the fellow. He
heard his wife reply:
“Human nature is not the same in England as anywhere else.” That
was her confounded mockery!
“Well, I don't know much about this small country”—'No, thank
God!' thought Soames—“but I should say the pot was boilin' under
the lid everywhere. We all want pleasure, and we always did.”
Damn the fellow! His cynicism was—was outrageous!
When lunch was over they broke up into couples for the digestive
promenade. Too proud to notice, Soames knew perfectly that
Annette and that fellow had gone prowling round together. Fleur
was with Val; she had chosen him, no doubt, because he knew that
boy. He himself had Winifred for partner. They walked in the
bright, circling stream, a little flushed and sated, for some
minutes, till Winifred sighed:
“I wish we were back forty years, old boy!”
Before the eyes of her spirit an interminable procession of her
own “Lord's” frocks was passing, paid for with the money of her
father, to save a recurrent crisis. “It's been very amusing,
after all. Sometimes I even wish Monty was back. What do you
think of people nowadays, Soames?”
“Precious little style. The thing began to go to pieces with
bicycles and motor-cars; the War has finished it.”
“I wonder what's coming?” said Winifred in a voice dreamy from
pigeon-pie. “I'm not at all sure we shan't go back to crinolines
and pegtops. Look at that dress!”
Soames shook his head.
“There's money, but no faith in things. We don't lay by for the
future. These youngsters—it's all a short life and a merry one
with them.”
“There's a hat!” said Winifred. “I don't know—when you come to
think of the people killed and all that in the War, it's rather
wonderful, I think. There's no other country—Prosper says the
rest are all bankrupt, except America; and of course her men
always took their style in dress from us.”
“Is that chap,” said Soames, “really going to the South Seas?”
“Oh! one never knows where Prosper's going!”
“He's a sign of the times,” muttered Soames, “if you like.”
Winifred's hand gripped his arm.
“Don't turn your head,” she said in a low voice, “but look to
your right in the front row of the Stand.”
Soames looked as best he could under that limitation. A man in a
grey top hat, grey-bearded, with thin brown, folded cheeks, and a
certain elegance of posture, sat there with a woman in a
lawn-coloured frock, whose dark eyes were fixed on himself.
Soames looked quickly at his feet. How funnily feet moved, one
after the other like that! Winifred's voice said in his ear:
“Jolyon looks very ill; but he always had style. She doesn't
change—except her hair.”
“Why did you tell Fleur about that business?”
“I didn't; she picked it up. I always knew she would.”
“Well, it's a mess. She's set her heart upon their boy.”
“The little wretch,” murmured Winifred. “She tried to take me in
about that. What shall you do, Soames?”
“Be guided by events.”
They moved on, silent, in the almost solid crowd.
“Really,” said Winifred suddenly; “it almost seems like Fate.
Only that's so old-fashioned. Look! there are George and
Eustace!”
George Forsyte's lofty bulk had halted before them.
“Hallo, Soames!” he said. “Just met Profond and your wife. You'll
catch 'em if you put on pace. Did you ever go to see old
Timothy?”
Soames nodded, and the streams forced them apart.
“I always liked old George,” said Winifred. “He's so droll.”
“I never did,” said Soames. “Where's your seat? I shall go to
mine. Fleur may be back there.”
Having seen Winifred to her seat, he regained his own, conscious
of small, white, distant figures running, the click of the bat,
the cheers and counter-cheers. No Fleur, and no Annette! You
could expect nothing of women nowadays! They had the vote. They
were “emancipated,” and much good it was doing them! So Winifred
would go back, would she, and put up with Dartie all over again?
To have the past once more—to be sitting here as he had sat in
'83 and '84, before he was certain that his marriage with Irene
had gone all wrong, before her antagonism had become so glaring
that with the best will in the world he could not overlook it.
The sight of her with that fellow had brought all memory back.
Even now he could not understand why she had been so
impracticable. She could love other men; she had it in her! To
himself, the one person she ought to have loved, she had chosen
to refuse her heart. It seemed to him, fantastically, as he
looked back, that all this modern relaxation of marriage—though
its forms and laws were the same as when he married her—that all
this modern looseness had come out of her revolt; it seemed to
him, fantastically, that she had started it, till all decent
ownership of anything had gone, or was on the point of going. All
came from her! And now—a pretty state of things! Homes! How could
you have them without mutual ownership? Not that he had ever had
a real home! But had that been his fault? He had done his best.
And his rewards were—those two sitting in that Stand, and this
affair of Fleur's!
And overcome by loneliness he thought: 'Shan't wait any longer!
They must find their own way back to the hotel—if they mean to
come!' Hailing a cab outside the ground, he said:
“Drive me to the Bayswater Road.” His old aunts had never failed
him. To them he had meant an ever-welcome visitor. Though they
were gone, there, still, was Timothy!
Smither was standing in the open doorway.
“Mr. Soames! I was just taking the air. Cook will be so pleased.”
“How is Mr. Timothy?”
“Not himself at all these last few days, sir; he's been talking a
great deal. Only this morning he was saying: 'My brother James,
he's getting old.' His mind wanders, Mr. Soames, and then he will
talk of them. He troubles about their investments. The other day
he said: 'There's my brother Jolyon won't look at Consols'—he
seemed quite down about it. Come in, Mr. Soames, come in! It's
such a pleasant change!”
“Well,” said Soames, “just for a few minutes.”
“No,” murmured Smither in the hall, where the air had the
singular freshness of the outside day, “we haven't been very
satisfied with him, not all this week. He's always been one to
leave a titbit to the end; but ever since Monday he's been eating
it first. If you notice a dog, Mr. Soames, at its dinner, it eats
the meat first. We've always thought it such a good sign of Mr.
Timothy at his age to leave it to the last, but now he seems to
have lost all his self-control; and, of course, it makes him
leave the rest. The doctor doesn't make anything of it,
but”—Smither shook her head—“he seems to think he's got to eat it
first, in case he shouldn't get to it. That and his talking makes
us anxious.”
“Has he said anything important?”
“I shouldn't like to say that, Mr. Soames; but he's turned
against his Will. He gets quite pettish—and after having had it
out every morning for years, it does seem funny. He said the