The Forsyte saga - Complete
and that incorrigible commencement of whisker which, eluding the
strictest attempts at shaving, seems the mark of something deeply
ingrained in the personality of the shaver, being especially
noticeable in men who speculate.
Soames, in his capacity of executor, received the guests, for
Timothy still kept his bed; he would get up after the funeral;
and Aunts Juley and Hester would not be coming down till all was
over, when it was understood there would be lunch for anyone who
cared to come back. The next to arrive was Roger, still limping
from the gout, and encircled by three of his sons—young Roger,
Eustace, and Thomas. George, the remaining son, arrived almost
immediately afterwards in a hansom, and paused in the hall to ask
Soames how he found undertaking pay.
They disliked each other.
Then came two Haymans—Giles and Jesse perfectly silent, and very
well dressed, with special creases down their evening trousers.
Then old Jolyon alone. Next, Nicholas, with a healthy colour in
his face, and a carefully veiled sprightliness in every movement
of his head and body. One of his sons followed him, meek and
subdued. Swithin Forsyte, and Bosinney arrived at the same
moment,—and stood—bowing precedence to each other,—but on the
door opening they tried to enter together; they renewed their
apologies in the hall, and, Swithin, settling his stock, which
had become disarranged in the struggle, very slowly mounted the
stairs. The other Hayman; two married sons of Nicholas, together
with Tweetyman, Spender, and Warry, the husbands of married
Forsyte and Hayman daughters. The company was then complete,
twenty-one in all, not a male member of the family being absent
but Timothy and young Jolyon.
Entering the scarlet and green drawing-room, whose apparel made
so vivid a setting for their unaccustomed costumes, each tried
nervously to find a seat, desirous of hiding the emphatic
blackness of his trousers. There seemed a sort of indecency in
that blackness and in the colour of their gloves—a sort of
exaggeration of the feelings; and many cast shocked looks of
secret envy at “the Buccaneer,” who had no gloves, and was
wearing grey trousers. A subdued hum of conversation rose, no one
speaking of the departed, but each asking after the other, as
though thereby casting an indirect libation to this event, which
they had come to honour.
And presently James said:
“Well, I think we ought to be starting.”
They went downstairs, and, two and two, as they had been told off
in strict precedence, mounted the carriages.
The hearse started at a foot’s pace; the carriages moved slowly
after. In the first went old Jolyon with Nicholas; in the second,
the twins, Swithin and James; in the third, Roger and young
Roger; Soames, young Nicholas, George, and Bosinney followed in
the fourth. Each of the other carriages, eight in all, held three
or four of the family; behind them came the doctor’s brougham;
then, at a decent interval, cabs containing family clerks and
servants; and at the very end, one containing nobody at all, but
bringing the total cortege up to the number of thirteen.
So long as the procession kept to the highway of the Bayswater
Road, it retained the foot’s-pace, but, turning into less
important thorough-fares, it soon broke into a trot, and so
proceeded, with intervals of walking in the more fashionable
streets, until it arrived. In the first carriage old Jolyon and
Nicholas were talking of their wills. In the second the twins,
after a single attempt, had lapsed into complete silence; both
were rather deaf, and the exertion of making themselves heard was
too great. Only once James broke this silence:
“I shall have to be looking about for some ground somewhere. What
arrangements have you made, Swithin?”
And Swithin, fixing him with a dreadful stare, answered:
“Don’t talk to me about such things!”
In the third carriage a disjointed conversation was carried on in
the intervals of looking out to see how far they had got, George
remarking, “Well, it was really time that the poor old lady
went.” He didn’t believe in people living beyond seventy, Young
Nicholas replied mildly that the rule didn’t seem to apply to the
Forsytes. George said he himself intended to commit suicide at
sixty. Young Nicholas, smiling and stroking a long chin, didn’t
think _his_ father would like that theory; he had made a lot of
money since he was sixty. Well, seventy was the outside limit; it
was then time, George said, for them to go and leave their money
to their children. Soames, hitherto silent, here joined in; he
had not forgotten the remark about the “undertaking,” and,
lifting his eyelids almost imperceptibly, said it was all very
well for people who never made money to talk. He himself intended
to live as long as he could. This was a hit at George, who was
notoriously hard up. Bosinney muttered abstractedly “Hear, hear!”
and, George yawning, the conversation dropped.
Upon arriving, the coffin was borne into the chapel, and, two by
two, the mourners filed in behind it. This guard of men, all
attached to the dead by the bond of kinship, was an impressive
and singular sight in the great city of London, with its
overwhelming diversity of life, its innumerable vocations,
pleasures, duties, its terrible hardness, its terrible call to
individualism.
The family had gathered to triumph over all this, to give a show
of tenacious unity, to illustrate gloriously that law of property
underlying the growth of their tree, by which it had thriven and
spread, trunk and branches, the sap flowing through all, the full
growth reached at the appointed time. The spirit of the old woman
lying in her last sleep had called them to this demonstration. It
was her final appeal to that unity which had been their
strength—it was her final triumph that she had died while the
tree was yet whole.
She was spared the watching of the branches jut out beyond the
point of balance. She could not look into the hearts of her
followers. The same law that had worked in her, bringing her up
from a tall, straight-backed slip of a girl to a woman strong and
grown, from a woman grown to a woman old, angular, feeble, almost
witchlike, with individuality all sharpened and sharpened, as all
rounding from the world’s contact fell off from her—that same law
would work, was working, in the family she had watched like a
mother.
She had seen it young, and growing, she had seen it strong and
grown, and before her old eyes had time or strength to see any
more, she died. She would have tried, and who knows but she might
have kept it young and strong, with her old fingers, her
trembling kisses—a little longer; alas! not even Aunt Ann could
fight with Nature.
“Pride comes before a fall!” In accordance with this, the
greatest of Nature’s ironies, the Forsyte family had gathered for
a last proud pageant before they fell. Their faces to right and
left, in single lines, were turned for the most part impassively
toward the ground, guardians of their thoughts; but here and
there, one looking upward, with a line between his brows,
searched to see some sight on the chapel walls too much for him,
to be listening to something that appalled. And the responses,
low-muttered, in voices through which rose the same tone, the
same unseizable family ring, sounded weird, as though murmured in
hurried duplication by a single person.
The service in the chapel over, the mourners filed up again to
guard the body to the tomb. The vault stood open, and, round it,
men in black were waiting.
From that high and sacred field, where thousands of the upper
middle class lay in their last sleep, the eyes of the Forsytes
travelled down across the flocks of graves. There—spreading to
the distance, lay London, with no sun over it, mourning the loss
of its daughter, mourning with this family, so dear, the loss of
her who was mother and guardian. A hundred thousand spires and
houses, blurred in the great grey web of property, lay there like
prostrate worshippers before the grave of this, the oldest
Forsyte of them all.
A few words, a sprinkle of earth, the thrusting of the coffin
home, and Aunt Ann had passed to her last rest.
Round the vault, trustees of that passing, the five brothers
stood, with white heads bowed; they would see that Ann was
comfortable where she was going. Her little property must stay
behind, but otherwise, all that could be should be done....
Then severally, each stood aside, and putting on his hat, turned
back to inspect the new inscription on the marble of the family
vault:
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF
ANN FORSYTE,
THE DAUGHTER OF THE ABOVE
JOLYON AND ANN FORSYTE,
WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE THE 27TH DAY OF
SEPTEMBER, 1886,
AGED EIGHTY-SEVEN YEARS AND FOUR DAYS.
Soon perhaps, someone else would be wanting an inscription. It
was strange and intolerable, for they had not thought somehow,
that Forsytes could die. And one and all they had a longing to
get away from this painfulness, this ceremony which had reminded
them of things they could not bear to think about—to get away
quickly and go about their business and forget.
It was cold, too; the wind, like some slow, disintegrating force,
blowing up the hill over the graves, struck them with its chilly
breath; they began to split into groups, and as quickly as
possible to fill the waiting carriages.
Swithin said he should go back to lunch at Timothy’s, and he
offered to take anybody with him in his brougham. It was
considered a doubtful privilege to drive with Swithin in his
brougham, which was not a large one; nobody accepted, and he went
off alone. James and Roger followed immediately after; they also
would drop in to lunch. The others gradually melted away, Old
Jolyon taking three nephews to fill up his carriage; he had a
want of those young faces.
Soames, who had to arrange some details in the cemetery office,
walked away with Bosinney. He had much to talk over with him,
and, having finished his business, they strolled to Hampstead,
lunched together at the Spaniard’s Inn, and spent a long time in
going into practical details connected with the building of the
house; they then proceeded to the tram-line, and came as far as
the Marble Arch, where Bosinney went off to Stanhope Gate to see
June.
Soames felt in excellent spirits when he arrived home, and
confided to Irene at dinner that he had had a good talk with
Bosinney, who really seemed a sensible fellow; they had had a
capital walk too, which had done his liver good—he had been short
of exercise for a long time—and altogether a very satisfactory
day. If only it hadn’t been for poor Aunt Ann, he would have
taken her to the theatre; as it was, they must make the best of