The Forsyte saga - Complete
the time of my death shall last attain the age of twenty-one
years absolutely it being my desire that my property shall be
nursed to the extreme limit permitted by the laws of England for
the benefit of such male lineal descendant as aforesaid.”
Soames read the investment and attestation clauses, and, ceasing,
looked at Gradman. The old fellow was wiping his brow with a
large handkerchief, whose brilliant colour supplied a sudden
festive tinge to the proceedings.
“My word, Mr. Soames!” he said, and it was clear that the lawyer
in him had utterly wiped out the man: “My word! Why, there are
two babies now, and some quite young children—if one of them
lives to be eighty—it's not a great age—and add twenty-one—that's
a hundred years; and Mr. Timothy worth a hundred and fifty
thousand pound net if he's worth a penny. Compound interest at
five per cent. doubles you in fourteen years. In fourteen years
three hundred thousand-six hundred thousand in
twenty-eight—twelve hundred thousand in forty-two—twenty-four
hundred thousand in fifty-six—four million eight hundred thousand
in seventy—nine million six hundred thousand in eighty-four—Why,
in a hundred years it'll be twenty million! And we shan't live to
use it! It is a Will!”
Soames said dryly: “Anything may happen. The State might take the
lot; they're capable of anything in these days.”
“And carry five,” said Gradman to himself. “I forgot—Mr.
Timothy's in Consols; we shan't get more than two per cent. with
this income tax. To be on the safe side, say eight millions.
Still, that's a pretty penny.”
Soames rose and handed him the Will. “You're going into the City.
Take care of that, and do what's necessary. Advertise; but there
are no debts. When's the sale?”
“Tuesday week,” said Gradman. “Life or lives in bein' and
twenty-one years afterward—it's a long way off. But I'm glad he's
left it in the family....”
The sale—not at Jobson's, in view of the Victorian nature of the
effects—was far more freely attended than the funeral, though not
by Cook and Smither, for Soames had taken it on himself to give
them their heart's desires. Winifred was present, Euphemia, and
Francie, and Eustace had come in his car. The miniatures,
Barbizons, and J. R. drawings had been bought in by Soames; and
relics of no marketable value were set aside in an off-room for
members of the family who cared to have mementoes. These were the
only restrictions upon bidding characterised by an almost tragic
languor. Not one piece of furniture, no picture or porcelain
figure appealed to modern taste. The humming birds had fallen
like autumn leaves when taken from where they had not hummed for
sixty years. It was painful to Soames to see the chairs his aunts
had sat on, the little grand piano they had practically never
played, the books whose outsides they had gazed at, the china
they had dusted, the curtains they had drawn, the hearth-rug
which had warmed their feet; above all, the beds they had lain
and died in—sold to little dealers, and the housewives of Fulham.
And yet—what could one do? Buy them and stick them in a
lumber-room? No; they had to go the way of all flesh and
furniture, and be worn out. But when they put up Aunt Ann's sofa
and were going to knock it down for thirty shillings, he cried
out, suddenly: “Five pounds!” The sensation was considerable, and
the sofa his.
When that little sale was over in the fusty saleroom, and those
Victorian ashes scattered, he went out into the misty October
sunshine feeling as if cosiness had died out of the world, and
the board “To Let” was up, indeed. Revolutions on the horizon;
Fleur in Spain; no comfort in Annette; no Timothy's on the
Bayswater Road. In the irritable desolation of his soul he went
into the Goupenor Gallery. That chap Jolyon's watercolours were
on view there. He went in to look down his nose at them—it might
give him some faint satisfaction. The news had trickled through
from June to Val's wife, from her to Val, from Val to his mother,
from her to Soames, that the house—the fatal house at Robin
Hill—was for sale, and Irene going to join her boy out in British
Columbia, or some such place. For one wild moment the thought had
come to Soames: 'Why shouldn't I buy it back? I meant it for my!'
No sooner come than gone. Too lugubrious a triumph; with too many
humiliating memories for himself and Fleur. She would never live
there after what had happened. No, the place must go its way to
some peer or profiteer. It had been a bone of contention from the
first, the shell of the feud; and with the woman gone, it was an
empty shell. “For Sale or To Let.” With his mind's eye he could
see that board raised high above the ivied wall which he had
built.
He passed through the first of the two rooms in the Gallery.
There was certainly a body of work! And now that the fellow was
dead it did not seem so trivial. The drawings were pleasing
enough, with quite a sense of atmosphere, and something
individual in the brush work. 'His father and my father; he and
I; his child and mine!' thought Soames. So it had gone on! And
all about that woman! Softened by the events of the past week,
affected by the melancholy beauty of the autumn day, Soames came
nearer than he had ever been to realisation of that truth—passing
the understanding of a Forsyte pure—that the body of Beauty has a
spiritual essence, uncapturable save by a devotion which thinks
not of self. After all, he was near that truth in his devotion to
his daughter; perhaps that made him understand a little how he
had missed the prize. And there, among the drawings of his
kinsman, who had attained to that which he had found beyond his
reach, he thought of him and her with a tolerance which surprised
him. But he did not buy a drawing.
Just as he passed the seat of custom on his return to the outer
air he met with a contingency which had not been entirely absent
from his mind when he went into the Gallery—Irene, herself,
coming in. So she had not gone yet, and was still paying farewell
visits to that fellow's remains! He subdued the little
involuntary leap of his subconsciousness, the mechanical reaction
of his senses to the charm of this once-owned woman, and passed
her with averted eyes. But when he had gone by he could not for
the life of him help looking back. This, then, was finality—the
heat and stress of his life, the madness and the longing thereof,
the only defeat he had known, would be over when she faded from
his view this time; even such memories had their own queer aching
value.
She, too, was looking back. Suddenly she lifted her gloved hand,
her lips smiled faintly, her dark eyes seemed to speak. It was
the turn of Soames to make no answer to that smile and that
little farewell wave; he went out into the fashionable street
quivering from head to foot. He knew what she had meant to say:
“Now that I am going for ever out of the reach of you and
yours—forgive me; I wish you well.” That was the meaning; last
sign of that terrible reality—passing morality, duty, common
sense—her aversion from him who had owned her body, but had never
touched her spirit or her heart. It hurt; yes—more than if she
had kept her mask unmoved, her hand unlifted.
Three days later, in that fast-yellowing October, Soames took a
taxi-cab to Highgate Cemetery and mounted through its white
forest to the Forsyte vault. Close to the cedar, above catacombs
and columbaria, tall, ugly, and individual, it looked like an
apex of the competitive system. He could remember a discussion
wherein Swithin had advocated the addition to its face of the
pheasant proper. The proposal had been rejected in favour of a
wreath in stone, above the stark words: “The family vault of
Jolyon Forsyte: 1850.” It was in good order. All trace of the
recent interment had been removed, and its sober grey gloomed
reposefully in the sunshine. The whole family lay there now,
except old Jolyon's wife, who had gone back under a contract to
her own family vault in Suffolk; old Jolyon himself lying at
Robin Hill; and Susan Hayman, cremated so that none knew where
she might be. Soames gazed at it with satisfaction—massive,
needing little attention; and this was important, for he was well
aware that no one would attend to it when he himself was gone,
and he would have to be looking out for lodgings soon. He might
have twenty years before him, but one never knew. Twenty years
without an aunt or uncle, with a wife of whom one had better not
know anything, with a daughter gone from home. His mood inclined
to melancholy and retrospection.
This cemetery was full, they said—of people with extraordinary
names, buried in extraordinary taste. Still, they had a fine view
up here, right over London. Annette had once given him a story to
read by that Frenchman, Maupassant, most lugubrious concern,
where all the skeletons emerged from their graves one night, and
all the pious inscriptions on the stones were altered to
descriptions of their sins. Not a true story at all. He didn't
know about the French, but there was not much real harm in
English people except their teeth and their taste, which was
certainly deplorable. “The family vault of Jolyon Forsyte: 1850.”
A lot of people had been buried here since then—a lot of English
life crumbled to mould and dust! The boom of an airplane passing
under the gold-tinted clouds caused him to lift his eyes. The
deuce of a lot of expansion had gone on. But it all came back to
a cemetery—to a name and a date on a tomb. And he thought with a
curious pride that he and his family had done little or nothing
to help this feverish expansion. Good solid middlemen, they had
gone to work with dignity to manage and possess. “Superior
Dosset,” indeed, had built in a dreadful, and Jolyon painted in a
doubtful, period, but so far as he remembered not another of them
all had soiled his hands by creating anything—unless you counted
Val Dartie and his horse-breeding. Collectors, solicitors,
barristers, merchants, publishers, accountants, directors, land
agents, even soldiers—there they had been! The country had
expanded, as it were, in spite of them. They had checked,
controlled, defended, and taken advantage of the process and when
you considered how “Superior Dosset” had begun life with next to
nothing, and his lineal descendants already owned what old
Gradman estimated at between a million and a million and a half,
it was not so bad! And yet he sometimes felt as if the family
bolt was shot, their possessive instinct dying out. They seemed
unable to make money—this fourth generation; they were going into
art, literature, farming, or the army; or just living on what was
left them—they had no push and no tenacity. They would die out if
they didn't take care.