The Forsyte saga - Complete
other day: 'They want my money.' It gave me such a turn, because,
as I said to him, nobody wants his money, I'm sure. And it does
seem a pity he should be thinking about money at his time of
life. I took my courage in my 'ands. 'You know, Mr. Timothy,' I
said, 'my dear mistress'—that's Miss Forsyte, Mr. Soames, Miss
Ann that trained me—'she never thought about money,' I said, 'it
was all character with her.' He looked at me, I can't tell you
how funny, and he said quite dry: 'Nobody wants my character.'
Think of his saying a thing like that! But sometimes he'll say
something as sharp and sensible as anything.”
Soames, who had been staring at an old print by the hat-rack,
thinking, 'That's got value!' murmured: “I'll go up and see him,
Smither.”
“Cook's with him,” answered Smither above her corsets; “she will
be pleased to see you.”
He mounted slowly, with the thought: 'Shan't care to live to be
that age.'
On the second floor, he paused, and tapped. The door was opened,
and he saw the round homely face of a woman about sixty.
“Mr. Soames!” she said: “Why! Mr. Soames!”
Soames nodded. “All right, Cook!” and entered.
Timothy was propped up in bed, with his hands joined before his
chest, and his eyes fixed on the ceiling, where a fly was
standing upside down. Soames stood at the foot of the bed, facing
him.
“Uncle Timothy,” he said, raising his voice. “Uncle Timothy!”
Timothy's eyes left the fly, and levelled themselves on his
visitor. Soames could see his pale tongue passing over his
darkish lips.
“Uncle Timothy,” he said again, “is there anything I can do for
you? Is there anything you'd like to say?”
“Ha!” said Timothy.
“I've come to look you up and see that everything's all right.”
Timothy nodded. He seemed trying to get used to the apparition
before him.
“Have you got everything you want?”
“No,” said Timothy.
“Can I get you anything?”
“No,” said Timothy.
“I'm Soames, you know; your nephew, Soames Forsyte. Your brother
James' son.”
Timothy nodded.
“I shall be delighted to do anything I can for you.”
Timothy beckoned. Soames went close to him:
“You—” said Timothy in a voice which seemed to have outlived
tone, “you tell them all from me—you tell them all—” and his
finger tapped on Soames' arm, “to hold on—hold on—Consols are
goin' up,” and he nodded thrice.
“All right!” said Soames; “I will.”
“Yes,” said Timothy, and, fixing his eyes again on the ceiling,
he added: “That fly!”
Strangely moved, Soames looked at the Cook's pleasant fattish
face, all little puckers from staring at fires.
“That'll do him a world of good, sir,” she said.
A mutter came from Timothy, but he was clearly speaking to
himself, and Soames went out with the cook.
“I wish I could make you a pink cream, Mr. Soames, like in old
days; you did so relish them. Good-bye, sir; it has been a
pleasure.”
“Take care of him, Cook, he is old.”
And, shaking her crumpled hand, he went down-stairs. Smither was
still taking the air in the doorway.
“What do you think of him, Mr. Soames?”
“H'm!” Soames murmured: “He's lost touch.”
“Yes,” said Smither, “I was afraid you'd think that coming fresh
out of the world to see him like.”
“Smither,” said Soames, “we're all indebted to you.”
“Oh, no, Mr. Soames, don't say that! It's a pleasure—he's such a
wonderful man.”
“Well, good-bye!” said Soames, and got into his taxi.
'Going up!' he thought; 'going up!'
Reaching the hotel at Knightsbridge he went to their
sitting-room, and rang for tea. Neither of them were in. And
again that sense of loneliness came over him. These hotels. What
monstrous great places they were now! He could remember when
there was nothing bigger than Long's or Brown's, Morley's or the
Tavistock, and the heads that were shaken over the Langham and
the Grand. Hotels and Clubs—Clubs and Hotels; no end to them now!
And Soames, who had just been watching at Lord's a miracle of
tradition and continuity, fell into reverie over the changes in
that London where he had been born five-and-sixty years before.
Whether Consols were going up or not, London had become a
terrific property. No such property in the world, unless it were
New York! There was a lot of hysteria in the papers nowadays; but
any one who, like himself, could remember London sixty years ago,
and see it now, realised the fecundity and elasticity of wealth.
They had only to keep their heads, and go at it steadily. Why! he
remembered cobblestones, and stinking straw on the floor of your
cab. And old Timothy—what could he not have told them, if he had
kept his memory! Things were unsettled, people in a funk or in a
hurry, but here were London and the Thames, and out there the
British Empire, and the ends of the earth. “Consols are goin'
up!” He should n't be a bit surprised. It was the breed that
counted. And all that was bull-dogged in Soames stared for a
moment out of his grey eyes, till diverted by the print of a
Victorian picture on the walls. The hotel had bought three dozen
of that little lot! The old hunting or “Rake's Progress” prints
in the old inns were worth looking at—but this sentimental
stuff—well, Victorianism had gone! “Tell them to hold on!” old
Timothy had said. But to what were they to hold on in this modern
welter of the “democratic principle”? Why, even privacy was
threatened! And at the thought that privacy might perish, Soames
pushed back his teacup and went to the window. Fancy owning no
more of Nature than the crowd out there owned of the flowers and
trees and waters of Hyde Park! No, no! Private possession
underlay everything worth having. The world had slipped its
sanity a bit, as dogs now and again at full moon slipped theirs
and went off for a night's rabbiting; but the world, like the
dog, knew where its bread was buttered and its bed warm, and
would come back sure enough to the only home worth having—to
private ownership. The world was in its second childhood for the
moment, like old Timothy—eating its titbit first!
He heard a sound behind him, and saw that his wife and daughter
had come in.
“So you're back!” he said.
Fleur did not answer; she stood for a moment looking at him and
her mother, then passed into her bedroom. Annette poured herself
out a cup of tea.
“I am going to Paris, to my mother, Soames.”
“Oh! To your mother?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“I do not know.”
“And when are you going?”
“On Monday.”
Was she really going to her mother? Odd, how indifferent he felt!
Odd, how clearly she had perceived the indifference he would feel
so long as there was no scandal. And suddenly between her and
himself he saw distinctly the face he had seen that
afternoon—Irene's.
“Will you want money?”
“Thank you; I have enough.”
“Very well. Let us know when you are coming back.”
Annette put down the cake she was fingering, and, looking up
through darkened lashes, said:
“Shall I give Maman any message?”
“My regards.”
Annette stretched herself, her hands on her waist, and said in
French:
“What luck that you have never loved me, Soames!” Then rising,
she too left the room. Soames was glad she had spoken it in
French—it seemed to require no dealing with. Again that other
face—pale, dark-eyed, beautiful still! And there stirred far down
within him the ghost of warmth, as from sparks lingering beneath
a mound of flaky ash. And Fleur infatuated with her boy! Queer
chance! Yet, was there such a thing as chance? A man went down a
street, a brick fell on his head. Ah! that was chance, no doubt.
But this! “Inherited,” his girl had said. She—she was “holding
on”!
PART III
I.—OLD JOLYON WALKS
Twofold impulse had made Jolyon say to his wife at breakfast
“Let's go up to Lord's!”
“Wanted”—something to abate the anxiety in which those two had
lived during the sixty hours since Jon had brought Fleur down.
“Wanted”—too, that which might assuage the pangs of memory in one
who knew he might lose them any day!
Fifty-eight years ago Jolyon had become an Eton boy, for old
Jolyon's whim had been that he should be canonised at the
greatest possible expense. Year after year he had gone to Lord's
from Stanhope Gate with a father whose youth in the
eighteen-twenties had been passed without polish in the game of
cricket. Old Jolyon would speak quite openly of swipes, full
tosses, half and three-quarter balls; and young Jolyon with the
guileless snobbery of youth had trembled lest his sire should be
overheard. Only in this supreme matter of cricket he had been
nervous, for his father—in Crimean whiskers then—had ever
impressed him as the beau ideal. Though never canonised himself,
Old Jolyon's natural fastidiousness and balance had saved him
from the errors of the vulgar. How delicious, after bowling in a
top hat and a sweltering heat, to go home with his father in a
hansom cab, bathe, dress, and forth to the “Disunion” Club, to
dine off white bait, cutlets, and a tart, and go—two “swells,”
old and young, in lavender kid gloves—to the opera or play. And
on Sunday, when the match was over, and his top hat duly broken,
down with his father in a special hansom to the “Crown and
Sceptre,” and the terrace above the river—the golden sixties when
the world was simple, dandies glamorous, Democracy not born, and
the books of Whyte Melville coming thick and fast.
A generation later, with his own boy, Jolly, Harrow-buttonholed
with corn-flowers—by old Jolyon's whim his grandson had been
canonised at a trifle less expense—again Jolyon had experienced
the heat and counter-passions of the day, and come back to the
cool and the strawberry beds of Robin Hill, and billiards after
dinner, his boy making the most heart-breaking flukes and trying
to seem languid and grown-up. Those two days each year he and his
son had been alone together in the world, one on each side—and
Democracy just born!
And so, he had unearthed a grey top hat, borrowed a tiny bit of
light-blue ribbon from Irene, and gingerly, keeping cool, by car
and train and taxi, had reached Lord's Ground. There, beside her
in a lawn-coloured frock with narrow black edges, he had watched
the game, and felt the old thrill stir within him.
When Soames passed, the day was spoiled. Irene's face was
distorted by compression of the lips. No good to go on sitting
here with Soames or perhaps his daughter recurring in front of
them, like decimals. And he said:
“Well, dear, if you've had enough—let's go!”
That evening Jolyon felt exhausted. Not wanting her to see him
thus, he waited till she had begun to play, and stole off to the