The Forsyte saga - Complete
always been a pleasant thought, there was a certain distinction
about the Yeomanry; they wore, or used to wear, a blue uniform
with silver about it, and rode horses. And Archibald, he
remembered, had once on a time joined the Militia, but had given
it up because his father, Nicholas, had made such a fuss about
his “wasting his time peacocking about in a uniform.” Recently he
had heard somewhere that young Nicholas’ eldest, very young
Nicholas, had become a Volunteer. “No,” thought Soames, mounting
the stairs slowly, “there’s nothing in that!”
He stood on the landing outside his parents’ bed and dressing
rooms, debating whether or not to put his nose in and say a
reassuring word. Opening the landing window, he listened. The
rumble from Piccadilly was all the sound he heard, and with the
thought, “If these motor-cars increase, it’ll affect house
property,” he was about to pass on up to the room always kept
ready for him when he heard, distant as yet, the hoarse rushing
call of a newsvendor. There it was, and coming past the house! He
knocked on his mother’s door and went in.
His father was sitting up in bed, with his ears pricked under the
white hair which Emily kept so beautifully cut. He looked pink,
and extraordinarily clean, in his setting of white sheet and
pillow, out of which the points of his high, thin, nightgowned
shoulders emerged in small peaks. His eyes alone, grey and
distrustful under their withered lids, were moving from the
window to Emily, who in a wrapper was walking up and down,
squeezing a rubber ball attached to a scent bottle. The room
reeked faintly of the eau-de-Cologne she was spraying.
“All right!” said Soames, “it’s not a fire. The Boers have
declared war—that’s all.”
Emily stopped her spraying.
“Oh!” was all she said, and looked at James.
Soames, too, looked at his father. He was taking it differently
from their expectation, as if some thought, strange to them, were
working in him.
“H’m!” he muttered suddenly, “I shan’t live to see the end of
this.”
“Nonsense, James! It’ll be over by Christmas.”
“What do you know about it?” James answered her with asperity.
“It’s a pretty mess at this time of night, too!” He lapsed into
silence, and his wife and son, as if hypnotised, waited for him
to say: “I can’t tell—I don’t know; I knew how it would be!” But
he did not. The grey eyes shifted, evidently seeing nothing in
the room; then movement occurred under the bedclothes, and the
knees were drawn up suddenly to a great height.
“They ought to send out Roberts. It all comes from that fellow
Gladstone and his Majuba.”
The two listeners noted something beyond the usual in his voice,
something of real anxiety. It was as if he had said: “I shall
never see the old country peaceful and safe again. I shall have
to die before I know she’s won.” And in spite of the feeling that
James must not be encouraged to be fussy, they were touched.
Soames went up to the bedside and stroked his father’s hand which
had emerged from under the bedclothes, long and wrinkled with
veins.
“Mark my words!” said James, “consols will go to par. For all I
know, Val may go and enlist.”
“Oh, come, James!” cried Emily, “you talk as if there were
danger.”
Her comfortable voice seemed to soothe James for once.
“Well,” he muttered, “I told you how it would be. I don’t know,
I’m sure—nobody tells me anything. Are you sleeping here, my
boy?”
The crisis was past, he would now compose himself to his normal
degree of anxiety; and, assuring his father that he was sleeping
in the house, Soames pressed his hand, and went up to his room.
The following afternoon witnessed the greatest crowd Timothy’s
had known for many a year. On national occasions, such as this,
it was, indeed, almost impossible to avoid going there. Not that
there was any danger or rather only just enough to make it
necessary to assure each other that there was none.
Nicholas was there early. He had seen Soames the night
before—Soames had said it was bound to come. This old Kruger was
in his dotage—why, he must be seventy-five if he was a day!
(Nicholas was eighty-two.) What had Timothy said? He had had a
fit after Majuba. These Boers were a grasping lot! The
dark-haired Francie, who had arrived on his heels, with the
contradictious touch which became the free spirit of a daughter
of Roger, chimed in:
“Kettle and pot, Uncle Nicholas. What price the Uitlanders?” What
price, indeed! A new expression, and believed to be due to her
brother George.
Aunt Juley thought Francie ought not to say such a thing. Dear
Mrs. MacAnder’s boy, Charlie MacAnder, was one, and no one could
call him grasping. At this Francie uttered one of her _mots_,
scandalising, and so frequently repeated:
“Well, his father’s a Scotchman, and his mother’s a cat.”
Aunt Juley covered her ears, too late, but Aunt Hester smiled; as
for Nicholas, he pouted—witticism of which he was not the author
was hardly to his taste. Just then Marian Tweetyman arrived,
followed almost immediately by young Nicholas. On seeing his son,
Nicholas rose.
“Well, I must be going,” he said, “Nick here will tell you
what’ll win the race.” And with this hit at his eldest, who, as a
pillar of accountancy, and director of an insurance company, was
no more addicted to sport than his father had ever been, he
departed. Dear Nicholas! What race was that? Or was it only one
of his jokes? He was a wonderful man for his age! How many lumps
would dear Marian take? And how were Giles and Jesse? Aunt Juley
supposed their Yeomanry would be very busy now, guarding the
coast, though of course the Boers had no ships. But one never
knew what the French might do if they had the chance, especially
since that dreadful Fashoda scare, which had upset Timothy so
terribly that he had made no investments for months afterwards.
It was the ingratitude of the Boers that was so dreadful, after
everything had been done for them—Dr. Jameson imprisoned, and he
was so nice, Mrs. MacAnder had always said. And Sir Alfred Milner
sent out to talk to them—such a clever man! She didn’t know what
they wanted.
But at this moment occurred one of those sensations—so precious
at Timothy’s—which great occasions sometimes bring forth:
“Miss June Forsyte.”
Aunts Juley and Hester were on their feet at once, trembling from
smothered resentment, and old affection bubbling up, and pride at
the return of a prodigal June! Well, this _was_ a surprise! Dear
June—after all these years! And how well she was looking! Not
changed at all! It was almost on their lips to add, “And how is
your dear grandfather?” forgetting in that giddy moment that poor
dear Jolyon had been in his grave for seven years now.
Ever the most courageous and downright of all the Forsytes, June,
with her decided chin and her spirited eyes and her hair like
flame, sat down, slight and short, on a gilt chair with a
bead-worked seat, for all the world as if ten years had not
elapsed since she had been to see them—ten years of travel and
independence and devotion to lame ducks. Those ducks of late had
been all definitely painters, etchers, or sculptors, so that her
impatience with the Forsytes and their hopelessly inartistic
outlook had become intense. Indeed, she had almost ceased to
believe that her family existed, and looked round her now with a
sort of challenging directness which brought exquisite discomfort
to the roomful. She had not expected to meet any of them but “the
poor old things”; and why she had come to see _them_ she hardly
knew, except that, while on her way from Oxford Street to a
studio in Latimer Road, she had suddenly remembered them with
compunction as two long-neglected old lame ducks.
Aunt Juley broke the hush again. “We’ve just been saying, dear,
how dreadful it is about these Boers! And what an impudent thing
of that old Kruger!”
“Impudent!” said June. “I think he’s quite right. What business
have we to meddle with them? If he turned out all those wretched
Uitlanders it would serve them right. They’re only after money.”
The silence of sensation was broken by Francie saying:
“What? Are you a pro-Boer?” (undoubtedly the first use of that
expression).
“Well! Why can’t we leave them alone?” said June, just as, in the
open doorway, the maid said “Mr. Soames Forsyte.” Sensation on
sensation! Greeting was almost held up by curiosity to see how
June and he would take this encounter, for it was shrewdly
suspected, if not quite known, that they had not met since that
old and lamentable affair of her fiance Bosinney with Soames’
wife. They were seen to just touch each other’s hands, and look
each at the other’s left eye only. Aunt Juley came at once to the
rescue:
“Dear June is so original. Fancy, Soames, she thinks the Boers
are not to blame.”
“They only want their independence,” said June; “and why
shouldn’t they have it?”
“Because,” answered Soames, with his smile a little on one side,
“they happen to have agreed to our suzerainty.”
“Suzerainty!” repeated June scornfully; “we shouldn’t like
anyone’s suzerainty over us.”
“They got advantages in payment,” replied Soames; “a contract is
a contract.”
“Contracts are not always just,” fumed out June, “and when
they’re not, they ought to be broken. The Boers are much the
weaker. We could afford to be generous.”
Soames sniffed. “That’s mere sentiment,” he said.
Aunt Hester, to whom nothing was more awful than any kind of
disagreement, here leaned forward and remarked decisively:
“What lovely weather it has been for the time of year?”
But June was not to be diverted.
“I don’t know why sentiment should be sneered at. It’s the best
thing in the world.” She looked defiantly round, and Aunt Juley
had to intervene again:
“Have you bought any pictures lately, Soames?”
Her incomparable instinct for the wrong subject had not failed
her. Soames flushed. To disclose the name of his latest purchases
would be like walking into the jaws of disdain. For somehow they
all knew of June’s predilection for “genius” not yet on its legs,
and her contempt for “success” unless she had had a finger in
securing it.
“One or two,” he muttered.
But June’s face had changed; the Forsyte within her was seeing
its chance. Why should not Soames buy some of the pictures of
Eric Cobbley—her last lame duck? And she promptly opened her
attack: Did Soames know his work? It was so wonderful. He was the
coming man.
Oh, yes, Soames knew his work. It was in his view “splashy,” and
would never get hold of the public.
June blazed up.
“Of course it won’t; that’s the last thing one would wish for. I
thought you were a connoisseur, not a picture-dealer.”