The Forsyte Saga, Volume 2

by John Galsworthy

  A familiar voice said: ‘This is a monstrous great thing!’

  And Michael saw his father-in-law staring up at the Lincoln statue. ‘What did they want to put it here for?’ said Soames. ‘It’s not English.’ He walked along at Michael’s side. ‘Fleur well?’

  ‘Splendid. Italy suited her like everything.’

  Soames sniffed. ‘They’re a theatrical lot,’ he said. ‘Did you see Milan Cathedral?’

  ‘Yes, sir. It’s about the only thing we didn’t take to.’

  ‘H’m! Their cooking gave me the collywobbles in ‘82.I dare say it’s better now. How’s the boy?’

  ‘AI, sir.’

  Soames made a sound of gratification, and they turned the corner into South Square.

  ‘What’s this?’ said Soames.

  Outside the front door were two battered-looking trunks, a young man, grasping a bag, and ringing the bell, and a taxi-cab turning away.

  ‘I can’t tell you, sir,’ murmured Michael. ‘Unless it’s the angel Gabriel.’

  ‘He’s got the wrong house,’ said Soames, moving forward.

  But just then the young man disappeared within.

  Soames walked up to the trunks. ‘Francis Wilmot,’ he read out. ‘“S.S. Amphibian.” There’s some mistake!’

  Chapter Four

  MERE CONVERSATION

  WHEN they came in, Fleur was returning downstairs from showing the young man to his room. Already fully dressed for the evening, she had but little on, and her hair was shingled.…

  ‘My dear girl,’ Michael had said, when shingling came in, ‘to please me, don’t! Your nuque will be too bristly for kisses.’

  ‘My dear boy,’ she had answered, ‘as if one could help it! You’re always the same with any new fashion!’

  She had been one of the first twelve to shingle, and was just feeling that without care she would miss being one of the first twelve to grow some hair again. Marjorie Ferrar, ‘the Pet of the Panjoys’, as Michael called her, already had more than an inch. Somehow, one hated being distanced by Marjorie Ferrar.…

  Advancing to her father, she said:

  ‘I’ve asked a young American to stay, Dad; Jon Forsyte has married his sister, out there. You’re quite brown, darling. How’s mother?’

  Soames only gazed at her.

  And Fleur passed through one of those shamed moments, when the dumb quality of his love for her seemed accusing the glib quality of her love for him. It was not fair – she felt – that he should look at her like that; as if she had not suffered in that old business with Jon more than he; if she could take it lightly now, surely he could! As for Michael – not a word! – not even a joke! She bit her lips, shook her shingled head, and passed into the ‘bimetallic parlour’.

  Dinner began with soup and Soames deprecating his own cows for not being Herefords. He supposed that in America they had plenty of Herefords?

  Francis Wilmot believed that they were going in for Holsteins now.

  ‘Holsteins!’ repeated Soames. ‘They’re new since my young days. What’s their colour?’

  ‘Parti-coloured,’ said Francis Wilmot. ‘The English grass is just wonderful.’

  ‘Too damp, with us,’ said Soames. ‘We’re on the river.’

  ‘The river Thames? What size will that be, where it hasn’t a tide?’

  ‘Just there – not more than a hundred yards.’

  ‘Will it have fish?’

  ‘Plenty.’

  ‘And it’ll run clear – not red; our Southern rivers have a red colour. And your trees will be willows, and poplars, and elms.’

  Soames was a good deal puzzled. He had never been in America. The inhabitants were human, of course, but peculiar and all alike, with more face than feature, heads fastened upright on their backs, and shoulders too square to be real. Their voices clanged in their mouths; they pronounced the words ‘very’ and ‘America’ in a way that he tried to imitate without success; their dollar was too high, and they all had motor-cars; they despised Europe, came over in great quantities, and took back all they could; they talked all the time, and were not allowed to drink. This young man cut across all these preconceptions. He drank sherry and only spoke when he was spoken to. His shoulders looked natural; he had more feature than face; and his voice was soft. Perhaps, at least, he despised Europe.

  ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘you find England very small.’

  ‘No, sir. I find London very large; and you certainly have the loveliest kind of a countryside.’

  Soames looked down one side of his nose. ‘Pretty enough !’ he said.

  Then came turbot and a silence, broken, low down, behind his chair.

  ‘That dog!’ said Soames, impaling a morsel of fish he had set aside as uneatable.

  ‘No, no, Dad! He just wants to know you’ve seen him!’

  Soames stretched down a finger, and the Dandie fell on his side.

  ‘He never eats,’ said Fleur; ‘but he has to be noticed.’

  A small covey of partridges came in, cooked.

  ‘Is there any particular thing you want to see over here, Mr Wilmot?’ said Michael. ‘There’s nothing very un-American left. You’re just too late for Regent Street.’

  ‘I want to see the Beefeaters; and Cruft’s Dog Show; and your blood horses; and the Derby.’

  ‘Darby!’ Soames corrected. ‘You can’t stay for that – it’s not till next June.’

  ‘My cousin Val will show you race-horses,’ said Fleur. ‘He married Jon’s sister, you know.’

  A ‘bombe’ appeared. ‘You have more of this in America, I believe,’ said Soames.

  ‘We don’t have much ice-cream in the South, sir, but we have special cooking – very tasty.’

  ‘I’ve heard of terrapin.’

  ‘Well, I don’t get frills like that. I live away back, and have to work pretty hard. My place is kind of homey; but I’ve got some mighty nice darkies that can cook fine – old folk that knew my grannies. The old-time darky is getting scarce, but he’s the real thing.’

  A Southerner!

  Soames had been told that the Southerner was a gentleman. He remembered the ‘Alabama’, too; and his father, James, saying: ‘I told you so’ when the Government ate humble pie over that business.

  In the savoury silence that accompanied soft roes on toast, the patter of the Dandie’s feet on the parquet floor could be plainly heard.

  ‘This is the only thing he likes,’ said Fleur. ‘Dan! go to your master. Give him a little bit, Michael.’ And she stole a look at Michael, but he did not answer it.

  On their Italian holiday, with Fleur in the throes of novelty, sun and wine warmed, disposed to junketing, amenable to his caresses, he had been having his real honeymoon, enjoying, for the first time since his marriage, a sense of being the chosen companion of his adored. And now had come this stranger, bringing reminder that one played but second fiddle to that young second cousin and first lover; and he couldn’t help feeling the cup withdrawn again from his lips. She had invited this young man because he came from that past of hers whose tune one could not play. And, without looking up, he fed the Dandie with tid-bits of his favourite edible.

  Soames broke the silence.

  ‘Take some nutmeg, Mr Wilmot. Melon without nutmeg –’

  When Fleur rose, Soames followed her to the drawing-room; while Michael led the young American to his study.

  ‘You knew Jon?’ said Francis Wilmot.

  ‘No; I never met him.’

  ‘He’s a great little fellow; and some poet. He’s growing dandy peaches.’

  ‘Is he going on with that, now he’s married?’

  ‘Surely.’

  ‘Not coming to England?’

  ‘Not this year. They have a nice home – horses and dogs. They have some hunting there, too. Perhaps he’ll bring my sister over for a trip, next fall.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Michael. ‘And are you staying long, yourself?’

  ‘Why! I’ll go back for Christmas. I’d
like to see Rome and Seville; and I want to visit the old home of my people, down in Worcestershire.’

  ‘When did they go over?’

  ‘William and Mary. Catholics – they were. Is it a nice part, Worcestershire?’

  ‘Very; especially in the spring. It grows a lot of fruit.’

  ‘Oh! You still grow things in this country?’

  ‘Not many.’

  ‘I thought that was so, coming on the cars, from Liverpool. I saw a lot of grass and one or two sheep, but I didn’t see anybody working. The people all live in the towns, then?’

  ‘Except a few unconsidered trifles. You must come down to my father’s; they still grow a turnip or two thereabouts.’

  ‘It’s sad,’ said Francis Wilmot.

  ‘It is. We began to grow wheat again in the war; but they’ve let it all slip back – and worse.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  Michael shrugged his shoulders: ‘No accounting for statesmanship. It lets the Land go to blazes when in office; and beats the drum of it when in opposition. At the end of the war we had the best air force in the world, and agriculture was well on its way to recovery. And what did they do? Dropped them both like hot potatoes. It was tragic. What do you grow in Carolina?’

  ‘Just cotton, on my place. But it’s mighty hard to make cotton pay nowadays. Labour’s high.’

  ‘High with you, too?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Do they let strangers into your Parliament?’

  ‘Rather. Would you like to hear the Irish debate? I can get you a seat in the Distinguished Strangers’ gallery.’

  ‘I thought the English were stiff; but it’s wonderful the way you make me feel at home. Is that your father-in-law – the old gentleman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He seems kind of rarefied. Is he a banker?’

  ‘No. But now you mention it – he ought to be.’

  Francis Wilmot’s eye roved round the room and came to rest on ‘The White Monkey’.

  ‘Well, now,’ he said, softly, ‘that, surely, is a wonderful picture. Could I get a picture painted by that man, for Jon and my sister?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Michael. ‘You see, he was a Chink – not quite of the best period; but he must have gone West five hundred years ago at least.’

  ‘Ah! Well, he had a great sense of animals.’

  ‘We think he had a great sense of human beings.’

  Francis Wilmot stared.

  There was something, Michael decided, in this young man unresponsive to satire.

  ‘So you want to see Cruft’s Dog Show?’ he said. ‘You’re keen on dogs, then?’

  ‘I’ll be taking a bloodhound back for John, and two for myself. I want to raise bloodhounds.’

  Michael leaned back, and blew out smoke. To Francis Wilmot, he felt, the world was young, and life running on good tyres to some desirable destination. In England –!

  ‘What is it you Americans want out of life?’ he said abruptly.

  ‘Well, I suppose you might say we want success – in the North at all events.’

  ‘We wanted that in 1824,’ said Michael.

  ‘Oh! And nowadays?’

  ‘We’ve had success, and now we’re wondering whether it hasn’t cooked our goose.’

  ‘Well,’ said Francis Wilmot, ‘we’re sort of thinly populated, compared with you.’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Michael. ‘Every seat here is booked in advance; and a good many sit on their own knees. Will you have another cigar, or shall we join the lady?’

  Chapter Five

  SIDE-SLIPS

  IF Providence was completely satisfied with Sapper’s Row, Camden Town, Michael was not. What could justify those twin dismal rows of three-storeyed houses, so begrimed that they might have been collars washed in Italy? What possible attention to business could make these little ground-floor shops do anything but lose money? From the thronged and tram-lined thoroughfare so pregnantly scented with fried fish, petrol, and old clothes, who would turn into this small backwater for sweetness or for profit? Even the children, made with heroic constancy on its second and third floors, sought the sweets of life outside its precincts; for in Sapper’s Row they could neither be run over nor stare at the outside of cinemas. Hand-carts, bicycles, light vans which had lost their nerve and taxicabs which had lost their way, provided all the traffic; potted geraniums and spotted cats supplied all the beauty. Sapper’s Row drooped and dithered.

  Michael entered from its west end, and against his principles. Here was overcrowded England at its most dismal, and here was he, who advocated a reduction of its population, about to visit some broken-down aliens with the view of keeping them alive. He looked into three of the little shops. Not a soul! Which was worst! Such little shops frequented, or – deserted? He came to No. 12, and looking up, saw a face looking down. It was wax white, movingly listless, above a pair of hands sewing at a garment. ‘That,’ he thought, ‘is my “obedient humble” and her needle.’ He entered the shop below, a hairdresser’s, containing a dirty basin below a dusty mirror, suspicious towels, bottles, and two dingy chairs. In his shirt-sleeves, astride one of them, reading The Daily Mail, sat a shadowy fellow with pale hollow cheeks, twisted moustache, lank hair, and the eyes, at once knowing and tragic, of a philosopher.

  ‘Hair-cut, sir?’

  Michael shook his head.

  ‘Do Mr and Mrs Bergfeld live here?’

  ‘Upstairs, top floor.’

  ‘How do I get up?’

  ‘Through there.’

  Passing through a curtained aperture, Michael found a stairway, and at its top, stood, hesitating. His conscience was echoing Fleur’s comment on Anna Bergfeld’s letter: ‘Yes, I dare say; but what’s the good?’ when the door was opened, and it seemed to him almost as if a corpse were standing there, with a face as though someone had come knocking on its grave, so eager and so white.

  ‘Mrs Bergfeld? My name’s Mont. You wrote to me.’

  The woman trembled so, that Michael thought she was going to faint.

  ‘Will you excuse me, sir, that I sit down?’ And she dropped on to the end of the bed. The room was spotless, but besides the bed, held only a small deal washstand, a pot of geranium, a tin trunk with a pair of trousers folded on it, a woman’s hat on a peg, and a chair in the window covered with her sewing.

  The woman stood up again. She seemed not more than thirty, thin but prettily formed; and her oval face, without colour except in her dark eyes, suggested Rafael rather than Sapper’s Row.

  ‘It is like seeing an angel,’ she said. ‘Excuse me, sir.’

  ‘Queer angel, Mrs Bergfeld. Your husband not in?’

  ‘No, sir. Fritz has gone to walk.’

  ‘Tell me, Mrs Bergfeld. If I pay your passages to Germany, will you go?’

  ‘We cannot get a passport now; Fritz has been here twenty years, and never back; he has lost his German nationality, sir; they do not want people like us, you know.’

  Michael stivered up his hair.

  ‘Where are you from yourself?’

  ‘From Salzburg.’

  ‘What about going back there?’

  ‘I would like to, but what would we do? In Austria everyone is poor now, and I have no relative left. Here at least we have my sewing.’

  ‘How much is that a week?’

  ‘Sometimes a pound; sometimes fifteen shillings. It is bread and the rent.’

  ‘Don’t you get the dole?’

  ‘No, sir. We are not registered.’

  Michael took out a five-pound note and laid it with his card on the washstand. ‘I’ve got to think this over, Mrs Bergfeld. Perhaps your husband will come and see me.’ He went out quickly, for the ghostly woman had flushed pink.

  Repassing through the curtained aperture, he caught the hairdresser wiping out the basin.

  ‘Find ’em, sir?’

  ‘The lady.’

  ‘Ah! Seen better days, I should say. The ‘usband’s a queer customer; ‘alf off his nut. Wa
nted to come in here with me, but I’ve got to give this job up.’

  ‘Oh! How’s that?’

  ‘I’ve got to have fresh air – only got one lung, and that’s not very gaudy. I’ll have to find something else.’

  ‘That’s bad, in these days.’

  The hairdresser shrugged his bony shoulders. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘I’ve been a hairdresser from a boy, except for the war. Funny place this, to fetch up in after where I’ve been. The war knocked me out.’ He twisted his little thin moustache.

  ‘No pension?’ said Michael.

  ‘Not a bob. What I want to keep me alive is something in the open.’

  Michael took him in from head to foot. Shadowy, narrow-headed, with one lung.

  ‘But do you know anything about country life?’

  ‘Not a blessed thing. Still, I’ve got to find something, or peg out.’

  His tragic and knowing eyes searched Michael’s face.

  ‘I’m awfully sorry,’ said Michael. ‘Good-bye!’

  The hairdresser made a queer jerky little movement.

  Emerging from Sapper’s Row into the crowded, roaring thoroughfare, Michael thought of a speech in a play he had seen a year or two before. ‘The condition of the people leaves much to be desired. I shall make a point of taking up the cudgels in the House. I shall move –!’ The condition of the people! What a remote thing! The sportive nightmare of a few dreaming nights, the skeleton in a well-locked cupboard, the discomforting rare howl of a hungry dog! And probably no folk in England less disturbed by it than the gallant six hundred odd who sat with him in ‘that House’. For to improve the condition of the people was their job, and that relieved them of a sense of nightmare. Since Oliver Cromwell some sixteen thousand, perhaps, had sat there before them, to the same end. And was the trick done – not precisely! Still they were really working for it, and other people were only looking on and telling them how to do it!

  Thus was he thinking when a voice said:

  ‘Not got a job about you, sir?’

  Michael quickened his steps, then stood still. He saw that the man who had spoken, having cast his eyes down again, had missed this sign of weakness; and he went back to him. They were black eyes in a face round and pasty like a mince-pie. Decent and shabby, quiet and forlorn, he wore an ex-Service-man’s badge.