The Forsyte saga - Complete
Soames turned from the vault and faced toward the breeze. The air
up here would be delicious if only he could rid his nerves of the
feeling that mortality was in it. He gazed restlessly at the
crosses and the urns, the angels, the “immortelles,” the flowers,
gaudy or withering; and suddenly he noticed a spot which seemed
so different from anything else up there that he was obliged to
walk the few necessary yards and look at it. A sober corner, with
a massive queer-shaped cross of grey rough-hewn granite, guarded
by four dark yew-trees. The spot was free from the pressure of
the other graves, having a little box-hedged garden on the far
side, and in front a goldening birch-tree. This oasis in the
desert of conventional graves appealed to the aesthetic sense of
Soames, and he sat down there in the sunshine. Through those
trembling gold birch leaves he gazed out at London, and yielded
to the waves of memory. He thought of Irene in Montpellier
Square, when her hair was rusty-golden and her white shoulders
his—Irene, the prize of his love-passion, resistant to his
ownership. He saw Bosinney's body lying in that white mortuary,
and Irene sitting on the sofa looking at space with the eyes of a
dying bird. Again he thought of her by the little green Niobe in
the Bois de Boulogne, once more rejecting him. His fancy took him
on beside his drifting river on the November day when Fleur was
to be born, took him to the dead leaves floating on the
green-tinged water and the snake-headed weed for ever swaying and
nosing, sinuous, blind, tethered. And on again to the window
opened to the cold starry night above Hyde Park, with his father
lying dead. His fancy darted to that picture of “the future
town,” to that boy's and Fleur's first meeting; to the bluish
trail of Prosper Profond's cigar, and Fleur in the window
pointing down to where the fellow prowled. To the sight of Irene
and that dead fellow sitting side by side in the stand at Lord's.
To her and that boy at Robin Hill. To the sofa, where Fleur lay
crushed up in the corner; to her lips pressed into his cheek, and
her farewell “Daddy.” And suddenly he saw again Irene's
grey-gloved hand waving its last gesture of release.
He sat there a long time dreaming his career, faithful to the
scut of his possessive instinct, warming himself even with its
failures.
“To Let”—the Forsyte age and way of life, when a man owned his
soul, his investments, and his woman, without check or question.
And now the State had, or would have, his investments, his woman
had herself, and God knew who had his soul. “To Let”—that sane
and simple creed!
The waters of change were foaming in, carrying the promise of new
forms only when their destructive flood should have passed its
full. He sat there, subconscious of them, but with his thoughts
resolutely set on the past—as a man might ride into a wild night
with his face to the tail of his galloping horse. Athwart the
Victorian dykes the waters were rolling on property, manners, and
morals, on melody and the old forms of art—waters bringing to his
mouth a salt taste as of blood, lapping to the foot of this
Highgate Hill where Victorianism lay buried. And sitting there,
high up on its most individual spot, Soames—like a figure of
Investment—refused their restless sounds. Instinctively he would
not fight them—there was in him too much primeval wisdom, of Man
the possessive animal. They would quiet down when they had
fulfilled their tidal fever of dispossessing and destroying; when
the creations and the properties of others were sufficiently
broken and defected—they would lapse and ebb, and fresh forms
would rise based on an instinct older than the fever of
change—the instinct of Home.
“Je m'en fiche,” said Prosper Profond. Soames did not say “Je
m'en fiche”—it was French, and the fellow was a thorn in his
side—but deep down he knew that change was only the interval of
death between two forms of life, destruction necessary to make
room for fresher property. What though the board was up, and
cosiness to let?—some one would come along and take it again some
day.
And only one thing really troubled him, sitting there—the
melancholy craving in his heart—because the sun was like
enchantment on his face and on the clouds and on the golden birch
leaves, and the wind's rustle was so gentle, and the yewtree
green so dark, and the sickle of a moon pale in the sky.
He might wish and wish and never get it—the beauty and the loving
in the world!
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