The Forsyte Saga, Volume II.

J >> John Galsworthy >> The Forsyte Saga, Volume II.


While he was standing there, a telegram was brought him.

"Come up at once, your father sinking fast.--MOTHER."

He read it with a choking sensation. One would have thought he couldn't
feel anything after these last hours, but he felt this. Half-past seven,
a train from Reading at nine, and madame's train, if she had caught it,
came in at eight-forty--he would meet that, and go on. He ordered the
carriage, ate some dinner mechanically, and went upstairs. The doctor
came out to him.

"They're sleeping."

"I won't go in," said Soames with relief. "My father's dying; I have
to--go up. Is it all right?"

The doctor's face expressed a kind of doubting admiration. 'If they were
all as unemotional' he might have been saying.

"Yes, I think you may go with an easy mind. You'll be down soon?"

"To-morrow," said Soames. "Here's the address."

The doctor seemed to hover on the verge of sympathy.

"Good-night!" said Soames abruptly, and turned away. He put on his fur
coat. Death! It was a chilly business. He smoked a cigarette in the
carriage--one of his rare cigarettes. The night was windy and flew on
black wings; the carriage lights had to search out the way. His father!
That old, old man! A comfortless night--to die!

The London train came in just as he reached the station, and Madame
Lamotte, substantial, dark-clothed, very yellow in the lamplight, came
towards the exit with a dressing-bag.

"This all you have?" asked Soames.

"But yes; I had not the time. How is my little one?"

"Doing well--both. A girl!"

"A girl! What joy! I had a frightful crossing!"

Her black bulk, solid, unreduced by the frightful crossing, climbed into
the brougham.

"And you, mon cher?"

"My father's dying," said Soames between his teeth. "I'm going up. Give
my love to Annette."

"Tiens!" murmured Madame Lamotte; "quel malheur!"

Soames took his hat off, and moved towards his train. 'The French!' he
thought.




CHAPTER XIII--JAMES IS TOLD

A simple cold, caught in the room with double windows, where the air and
the people who saw him were filtered, as it were, the room he had not
left since the middle of September--and James was in deep waters. A
little cold, passing his little strength and flying quickly to his
lungs. "He mustn't catch cold," the doctor had declared, and he had gone
and caught it. When he first felt it in his throat he had said to his
nurse--for he had one now--"There, I knew how it would be, airing the
room like that!" For a whole day he was highly nervous about himself and
went in advance of all precautions and remedies; drawing every breath
with extreme care and having his temperature taken every hour. Emily was
not alarmed.

But next morning when she went in the nurse whispered: "He won't have
his temperature taken."

Emily crossed to the side of the bed where he was lying, and said
softly, "How do you feel, James?" holding the thermometer to his lips.
James looked up at her.

"What's the good of that?" he murmured huskily; "I don't want to know."

Then she was alarmed. He breathed with difficulty, he looked terribly
frail, white, with faint red discolorations. She had 'had trouble' with
him, Goodness knew; but he was James, had been James for nearly fifty
years; she couldn't remember or imagine life without James--James,
behind all his fussiness, his pessimism, his crusty shell, deeply
affectionate, really kind and generous to them all!

All that day and the next he hardly uttered a word, but there was in
his eyes a noticing of everything done for him, a look on his face which
told her he was fighting; and she did not lose hope. His very stillness,
the way he conserved every little scrap of energy, showed the tenacity
with which he was fighting. It touched her deeply; and though her face
was composed and comfortable in the sick-room, tears ran down her cheeks
when she was out of it.

About tea-time on the third day--she had just changed her dress,
keeping her appearance so as not to alarm him, because he noticed
everything--she saw a difference. 'It's no use; I'm tired,' was
written plainly across that white face, and when she went up to him, he
muttered: "Send for Soames."

"Yes, James," she said comfortably; "all right--at once." And she kissed
his forehead. A tear dropped there, and as she wiped it off she saw that
his eyes looked grateful. Much upset, and without hope now, she sent
Soames the telegram.

When he entered out of the black windy night, the big house was still as
a grave. Warmson's broad face looked almost narrow; he took the fur coat
with a sort of added care, saying:

"Will you have a glass of wine, sir?"

Soames shook his head, and his eyebrows made enquiry.

Warmson's lips twitched. "He's asking for you, sir;" and suddenly he
blew his nose. "It's a long time, sir," he said, "that I've been with
Mr. Forsyte--a long time."

Soames left him folding the coat, and began to mount the stairs. This
house, where he had been born and sheltered, had never seemed to him so
warm, and rich, and cosy, as during this last pilgrimage to his father's
room. It was not his taste; but in its own substantial, lincrusta way
it was the acme of comfort and security. And the night was so dark and
windy; the grave so cold and lonely!

He paused outside the door. No sound came from within. He turned the
handle softly and was in the room before he was perceived. The light was
shaded. His mother and Winifred were sitting on the far side of the bed;
the nurse was moving away from the near side where was an empty chair.
'For me!' thought Soames. As he moved from the door his mother and
sister rose, but he signed with his hand and they sat down again. He
went up to the chair and stood looking at his father. James' breathing
was as if strangled; his eyes were closed. And in Soames, looking on
his father so worn and white and wasted, listening to his strangled
breathing, there rose a passionate vehemence of anger against Nature,
cruel, inexorable Nature, kneeling on the chest of that wisp of a body,
slowly pressing out the breath, pressing out the life of the being who
was dearest to him in the world. His father, of all men, had lived a
careful life, moderate, abstemious, and this was his reward--to have
life slowly, painfully squeezed out of him! And, without knowing that he
spoke, he said: "It's cruel!"

He saw his mother cover her eyes and Winifred bow her face towards the
bed. Women! They put up with things so much better than men. He took a
step nearer to his father. For three days James had not been shaved,
and his lips and chin were covered with hair, hardly more snowy than his
forehead. It softened his face, gave it a queer look already not of this
world. His eyes opened. Soames went quite close and bent over. The lips
moved.

"Here I am, Father:"

"Um--what--what news? They never tell...." the voice died, and a flood
of emotion made Soames' face work so that he could not speak. Tell
him?--yes. But what? He made a great effort, got his lips together, and
said:

"Good news, dear, good--Annette, a son."

"Ah!" It was the queerest sound, ugly, relieved, pitiful,
triumphant--like the noise a baby makes getting what it wants. The
eyes closed, and that strangled sound of breathing began again. Soames
recoiled to the chair and stonily sat down. The lie he had told, based,
as it were, on some deep, temperamental instinct that after death James
would not know the truth, had taken away all power of feeling for the
moment. His arm brushed against something. It was his father's naked
foot. In the struggle to breathe he had pushed it out from under the
clothes. Soames took it in his hand, a cold foot, light and thin, white,
very cold. What use to put it back, to wrap up that which must be colder
soon! He warmed it mechanically with his hand, listening to his father's
laboured breathing; while the power of feeling rose again within him.
A little sob, quickly smothered, came from Winifred, but his mother sat
unmoving with her eyes fixed on James. Soames signed to the nurse.

"Where's the doctor?" he whispered.

"He's been sent for."

"Can't you do anything to ease his breathing?"

"Only an injection; and he can't stand it. The doctor said, while he was
fighting...."

"He's not fighting," whispered Soames, "he's being slowly smothered.
It's awful."

James stirred uneasily, as if he knew what they were saying. Soames rose
and bent over him. James feebly moved his two hands, and Soames took
them.

"He wants to be pulled up," whispered the nurse.

Soames pulled. He thought he pulled gently, but a look almost of anger
passed over James' face. The nurse plumped the pillows. Soames laid the
hands down, and bending over kissed his father's forehead. As he was
raising himself again, James' eyes bent on him a look which seemed to
come from the very depths of what was left within. 'I'm done, my boy,'
it seemed to say, 'take care of them, take care of yourself; take
care--I leave it all to you.'

"Yes, Yes," Soames whispered, "yes, yes."

Behind him the nurse did he knew, not what, for his father made a tiny
movement of repulsion as if resenting that interference; and almost
at once his breathing eased away, became quiet; he lay very still. The
strained expression on his face passed, a curious white tranquillity
took its place. His eyelids quivered, rested; the whole face rested; at
ease. Only by the faint puffing of his lips could they tell that he was
breathing. Soames sank back on his chair, and fell to cherishing the
foot again. He heard the nurse quietly crying over there by the fire;
curious that she, a stranger, should be the only one of them who cried!
He heard the quiet lick and flutter of the fire flames. One more old
Forsyte going to his long rest--wonderful, they were!--wonderful how he
had held on! His mother and Winifred were leaning forward, hanging
on the sight of James' lips. But Soames bent sideways over the feet,
warming them both; they gave him comfort, colder and colder though they
grew. Suddenly he started up; a sound, a dreadful sound such as he had
never heard, was coming from his father's lips, as if an outraged heart
had broken with a long moan. What a strong heart, to have uttered that
farewell! It ceased. Soames looked into the face. No motion; no breath!
Dead! He kissed the brow, turned round and went out of the room. He
ran upstairs to the bedroom, his old bedroom, still kept for him; flung
himself face down on the bed, and broke into sobs which he stilled with
the pillow....

A little later he went downstairs and passed into the room. James lay
alone, wonderfully calm, free from shadow and anxiety, with the gravity
on his ravaged face which underlies great age, the worn fine gravity of
old coins.

Soames looked steadily at that face, at the fire, at all the room with
windows thrown open to the London night.

"Good-bye!" he whispered, and went out.




CHAPTER XIV--HIS

He had much to see to, that night and all next day. A telegram at
breakfast reassured him about Annette, and he only caught the last train
back to Reading, with Emily's kiss on his forehead and in his ears her
words:

"I don't know what I should have done without you, my dear boy."

He reached his house at midnight. The weather had changed, was mild
again, as though, having finished its work and sent a Forsyte to
his last account, it could relax. A second telegram, received at
dinner-time, had confirmed the good news of Annette, and, instead of
going in, Soames passed down through the garden in the moonlight to his
houseboat. He could sleep there quite well. Bitterly tired, he lay down
on the sofa in his fur coat and fell asleep. He woke soon after dawn and
went on deck. He stood against the rail, looking west where the river
swept round in a wide curve under the woods. In Soames, appreciation of
natural beauty was curiously like that of his farmer ancestors, a sense
of grievance if it wasn't there, sharpened, no doubt, and civilised, by
his researches among landscape painting. But dawn has power to fertilise
the most matter-of-fact vision, and he was stirred. It was another world
from the river he knew, under that remote cool light; a world into which
man had not entered, an unreal world, like some strange shore sighted
by discovery. Its colour was not the colour of convention, was hardly
colour at all; its shapes were brooding yet distinct; its silence
stunning; it had no scent. Why it should move him he could not tell,
unless it were that he felt so alone in it, bare of all relationship and
all possessions. Into such a world his father might be voyaging, for all
resemblance it had to the world he had left. And Soames took refuge from
it in wondering what painter could have done it justice. The white-grey
water was like--like the belly of a fish! Was it possible that this
world on which he looked was all private property, except the water--and
even that was tapped! No tree, no shrub, not a blade of grass, not a
bird or beast, not even a fish that was not owned. And once on a time
all this was jungle and marsh and water, and weird creatures roamed and
sported without human cognizance to give them names; rotting luxuriance
had rioted where those tall, carefully planted woods came down to the
water, and marsh-misted reeds on that far side had covered all the
pasture. Well! they had got it under, kennelled it all up, labelled it,
and stowed it in lawyers' offices. And a good thing too! But once in
a way, as now, the ghost of the past came out to haunt and brood
and whisper to any human who chanced to be awake: 'Out of my unowned
loneliness you all came, into it some day you will all return.'

And Soames, who felt the chill and the eeriness of that world-new to
him and so very old: the world, unowned, visiting the scene of its
past--went down and made himself tea on a spirit-lamp. When he had drunk
it, he took out writing materials and wrote two paragraphs:

"On the 20th instant at his residence in Park Lane, James Forsyte,
in his ninety-first year. Funeral at noon on the 24th at Highgate. No
flowers by request."

"On the 20th instant at The Shelter; Mapledurham, Annette, wife of
Soames Forsyte, of a daughter." And underneath on the blottingpaper he
traced the word "son."

It was eight o'clock in an ordinary autumn world when he went across to
the house. Bushes across the river stood round and bright-coloured out
of a milky haze; the wood-smoke went up blue and straight; and his doves
cooed, preening their feathers in the sunlight.

He stole up to his dressing-room, bathed, shaved, put on fresh linen and
dark clothes.

Madame Lamotte was beginning her breakfast when he went down.

She looked at his clothes, said, "Don't tell me!" and pressed his hand.
"Annette is prettee well. But the doctor say she can never have no more
children. You knew that?" Soames nodded. "It's a pity. Mais la petite
est adorable. Du cafe?"

Soames got away from her as soon as he could. She offended him--solid,
matter-of-fact, quick, clear--French. He could not bear her vowels,
her 'r's'; he resented the way she had looked at him, as if it were
his fault that Annette could never bear him a son! His fault! He even
resented her cheap adoration of the daughter he had not yet seen.

Curious how he jibbed away from sight of his wife and child!

One would have thought he must have rushed up at the first moment. On
the contrary, he had a sort of physical shrinking from it--fastidious
possessor that he was. He was afraid of what Annette was thinking of
him, author of her agonies, afraid of the look of the baby, afraid of
showing his disappointment with the present and--the future.

He spent an hour walking up and down the drawing-room before he could
screw his courage up to mount the stairs and knock on the door of their
room.

Madame Lamotte opened it.

"Ah! At last you come! Elle vous attend!" She passed him, and Soames
went in with his noiseless step, his jaw firmly set, his eyes furtive.

Annette was very pale and very pretty lying there. The baby was hidden
away somewhere; he could not see it. He went up to the bed, and with
sudden emotion bent and kissed her forehead.

"Here you are then, Soames," she said. "I am not so bad now. But I
suffered terribly, terribly. I am glad I cannot have any more. Oh! how I
suffered!"

Soames stood silent, stroking her hand; words of endearment, of
sympathy, absolutely would not come; the thought passed through him:
'An English girl wouldn't have said that!' At this moment he knew with
certainty that he would never be near to her in spirit and in truth, nor
she to him. He had collected her--that was all! And Jolyon's words came
rushing into his mind: "I should imagine you will be glad to have your
neck out of chancery." Well, he had got it out! Had he got it in again?

"We must feed you up," he said, "you'll soon be strong."

"Don't you want to see baby, Soames? She is asleep."

"Of course," said Soames, "very much."

He passed round the foot of the bed to the other side and stood staring.
For the first moment what he saw was much what he had expected to see--a
baby. But as he stared and the baby breathed and made little sleeping
movements with its tiny features, it seemed to assume an individual
shape, grew to be like a picture, a thing he would know again; not
repulsive, strangely bud-like and touching. It had dark hair. He touched
it with his finger, he wanted to see its eyes. They opened, they were
dark--whether blue or brown he could not tell. The eyes winked, stared,
they had a sort of sleepy depth in them. And suddenly his heart felt
queer, warm, as if elated.

"Ma petite fleur!" Annette said softly.

"Fleur," repeated Soames: "Fleur! we'll call her that."

The sense of triumph and renewed possession swelled within him.

By God! this--this thing was his! By God! this--this thing was his!