The Forsyte Saga, Volume 2 (121 page)

‘A good cry,' he said, ‘would do you good, and I shouldn't blame you. But we mustn't say “die”; Mr Soames has a good constitution, and it's not as if he drank; perhaps he'll pull round after all.'

She shook her head. Her face had a square grim look that reminded him of her old aunt Ann. Underneath all her fashionableness she'd borne a lot – she had, when you came to think of it.

‘It struck him here,' she said; ‘a glancing blow on the right side of the head. I shall miss him terribly; he's the only –' Gradman patted her hand.

‘Ye-es, ye-es! But we must look on the bright side. If he comes round, I shall be there.' What exact comfort he thought this was, he could not have made clear. ‘I did wonder whether he would like Mrs Irene told. I don't like the idea of his going with a grudge on his mind. It's an old story, of course, but at the Judgement Day –'

A faint smile was lost in the square lines round Winifred's mouth.

‘We needn't bother him with that, Gradman; it's out of fashion.'

Gradman emitted a sound, as though, within him, faith and respect for the family he had served for sixty years had bumped against each other.

‘Well, you know best,' he said. ‘I shouldn't like him to go with anything on his conscience.'

‘On
her
conscience, Gradman.'

Gradman stared at a Dresden shepherdess.

‘In a case of forgivin', you never know. I wanted to speak to him, too, about his steel shares; they're not all they might be. But we must just take our chance, I suppose. I'm glad your father was spared this, Mr James
would
have taken on. It won't be like the same world again, if Mr Soames –'

She had put her hand up to her mouth and turned away. Fashion had dropped from her thickened figure. Much affected, Gradman turned to the door.

‘Shan't leave my clothes off, in case I'm wanted. I've got everything here.
Good
-night!'

He went upstairs again, tiptoeing past the door, and, entering his room, switched on the light. They had taken away the pickles; turned his bed down, laid his flannel nightgown out. They took a lot of trouble! And, sinking on his knees, he prayed in a muffled murmur, varying the usual words, and ending: ‘And for Mr Soames, O Lord, I specially commend him body and soul. Forgive him his trespasses, and deliver him from all ‘ardness of ‘eart and impurities, before he goes ‘ence, and make him as a little lamb again, that he may find favour in Thy sight. Thy faithful servant. Amen.' And, for some time after he had finished, he remained kneeling on the very soft carpet, breathing-in the familiar reek of flannel and old times. He rose easier in his mind. Removing his boots, laced and square-toed, and his old frock-coat, he put on his Jaeger gown, and shut the window, to keep out the night air. Then, taking the eiderdown, he placed a large handkerchief over his bald head, and, switching off the light, sat down in the armchair, with the eiderdown over his knees.

What an 'ush after London, to be sure, so quiet you could hear yourself think! For some reason he thought of Queen Victoria's first Jubilee, when he was a youngster of forty, and Mr James had give him and Mrs G. two seats. They had seen the whole thing – first chop I the Guards and the procession, the
carriages, the horses, the Queen and the Royal Family. A beautiful summer day – a real summer that; not like the summers lately. And everything going on, as if it'd go on for ever, with three per cents at nearly par if he remembered, and all going to church regular. And only that same year, a bit later, Mr Soames had had his first upset. And another memory came. Queer he should remember that to-night, with Mr Soames lying there – must have been quite soon after the Jubilee, too! Going with a lease that wouldn't bear to wait to Mr Soames's private house, Montpelier Square, and being shown into the dining-room, and hearing someone singing and playing on the ‘pianner'. He had opened the door to listen. Why – he could remember the words now! About ‘laying on the grass', ‘I die, I faint, I fail,' ‘the champaign odours', something ‘on your cheek' and something ‘pale'. Fancy that! And suddenly, the door had opened and out she'd come – Mrs Irene – in a frock – ah!

‘Are you waiting for Mr Forsyte? Won't you come in and have some tea?' And he'd gone in and had tea, sitting on the edge of a chair that didn't look too firm, all gilt and spindley. And she on the sofa in that frock, pouring it out, and saying:

‘Are you fond of music, then, Mr Gradman?' Soft, a soft look, with her dark eyes and her hair – not red and not what you'd call gold – but like a turned leaf – Um? – a beautiful young woman, sad and sort of sympathetic in the face. He'd often thought of her – he could see her now! And then Mr Soames coming in, and her face all closing up like – like a book. Queer to remember that to-night!… Dear me!… How dark and quiet it was! That poor young daughter, that it was all about! It was to be ‘oped she'd sleep! Ye-es! And what would Mrs G. say if she could see
him
sitting in a chair like this, with his teeth in, too. Ah! Well – she'd never seen Mr Soames, never seen the family – Maria hadn't! But what an ‘ushl And slowly but surely old Gradman's mouth fell open, and he broke the hush.

Beyond the closed window the moon rode up, a full and brilliant moon, so that the stilly darkened country dissolved into shape and shadow, and the owls hooted, and, far off, a dog
bayed; and flowers in the garden became each a little presence in a night-time carnival graven into stillness; and on the gleaming river every fallen leaf that drifted down carried a moonbeam; while, above, the trees stayed, quiet, measured and illumined, quiet as the very sky, for the wind stirred not.

SOAMES TAKES THE FERRY

T
HERE
was only just life in Soames. Two nights and two days they had waited, watching the unmoving bandaged head. Specialists had come, given their verdict: ‘Nothing to be done by way of operation'; and gone again. The doctor who had presided over Fleur's birth was in charge. Though never quite forgiven by Soames for the anxiety he had caused on that occasion, ‘the fellow' had hung on, attending the family. By his instructions they watched the patient's eyes; at any sign, they were to send for him at once.

Michael, from whom Fleur seemed inconsolably caught away, gave himself up to Kit, walking and talking and trying to keep the child unaware. He did not visit the still figure, not from indifference, but because he felt an intruder there. He had removed all the pictures left in the gallery, and, storing them with those which Soames had thrown from the window, had listed them carefully. The fire had destroyed eleven out of the eighty-four.

Annette had cried, and was feeling better. The thought of life without Soames was for her strange and – possible; precisely, in fact, like the thought of life with him. She wished him to recover, but if he didn't she would live in France.

Winifred, who shared the watches, lived much and sadly in the past. Soames had been her mainstay throughout thirty-four years chequered by Montague Dartie, had continued her
mainstay in the thirteen unchequered years since. She did not see how things could ever be cosy again. She had a heart, and could not look at that still figure without trying to remember how to cry. Letters came to her from the family worded with a sort of anxious astonishment that Soames should have had such a thing happen to him.

Gradman, who had taken a bath, and changed his trousers to black, was deep in calculations and correspondence with the insurance firm. He walked too, in the kitchen garden, out of sight of the house; for he could not get over the fact that Mr James had lived to be ninety, and Mr Timothy a hundred, to say nothing of the others. And, stopping mournfully before the sea-kale or the Brussels sprouts, he would shake his head.

Smither had come down to be with Winifred, but was of little use, except to say: ‘Poor Mr Soames! Poor dear Mr Soames! To think of it! And he so careful of himself, and everybody!'

For that was it! Ignorant of the long and stealthy march of passion, and of the state to which it had reduced Fleur; ignorant of how Soames had watched her, seen that beloved young part of his very self fail, reach the edge of things and stand there balancing; ignorant of Fleur's reckless desperation beneath that falling picture, and her father's knowledge thereof – ignorant of all this everybody felt aggrieved. It seemed to them that a there bolt from the blue, rather than the inexorable secret culmination of an old, old story, had stricken one who of all men seemed the least liable to accident. How should they tell that it was not so accidental as all that!

But Fleur knew well enough that her desperate mood had destroyed her father, just as surely as if she had flung herself into the river and he had been drowned in saving her. Only too well she knew that on that night she had been capable of slipping down into the river, of standing before a rushing car, of anything not too deliberate and active, that would have put her out of her aching misery. She knew well enough that by her conduct she had invited his rush to the rescue. And now,
sobered to the very marrow by the shock, she could not forgive herself.

With her mother, her aunt and the two trained nurses she divided the watches, so that there were never less than two, of whom she was nearly always one, in Annette's bedroom where Soames lay. She would sit hour after hour, almost as still as her father, with her eyes wistful and dark-circled, fixed on his face. Passion and fever had quite died out of her. It was as if, with his infallible instinct where she was concerned, Soames had taken the one step that could rid her of the fire which had been consuming her. Jon was remote from her in that room darkened by sun-blinds and her remorse.

Yes! She had meant to be killed by that picture. She had stood there under the window in a moment of passionate recklessness, watching the picture topple, wanting it all over and done with. Distraught that desperate night, she did not even now realize that she had caused the fire, by a cigarette flung down still lighted, not even perhaps that she had smoked up there. But only too well she realized that because she had wanted to die, had stood welcoming sudden extinction, her father was now lying there so nearly dead. How good he had always been to her! Incredible that he should die and take that goodness away, that she should never hear his flat-toned voice again, or feel the touch of his moustache on her cheeks or forehead. Incredible that he should never give her a chance to show that she really loved him – yes really, beneath all the fret and self-importance of her life. While watching him now, the little rather than the great things came back to her. How he would pitch a new doll down in the nursery and say: ‘Well, I don't know if you'll care for this one; I just picked her up.' How once, after her mother had whipped her, he had come in, taken her hand and said: ‘There, there. Let's go and see if there are some raspberries I' How he had stood on the stairs at Green Street after her wedding, watching, pale and unobtrusive, above the guests clustered in the hall, for a turn of her head and her last look back. Unobtrusive! That was the word – unobtrusive, always! Why, if he went, there would be no portrait – hardly
even a photograph, to remember him by! Just one of him as a baby, in his mother's arms; one as a little boy, looking sceptically at his velvet knickers; one in '76 as a young man in a full-tailed coat and short whiskers; and a snapshot or two taken unawares. Had any man ever been less photographed? He had never seemed to wish to be appreciated, or even remembered, by anyone. To Fleur, so avid of appreciation, it seemed marvellously strange. What secret force within that spare form, lying there inert, had made him thus self-sufficing? He had been brought up as luxuriously as herself, had never known want or the real need of effort, but somehow had preserved a sort of stoic independence of others, and what they thought of him. And yet, as none knew better than herself, he had longed to be loved. This hurt her most, watching him. He had longed for her affection, and she had not shown him enough. But she had felt it – really felt it all the time. Something in him had repelled feeling, dried up its manifestation. There had been no magnet in his ‘make-up'. And stealing to the bed – her mother's bed where she herself had been conceived and born – she would stand beside that almost deserted body and drawn dun face, feeling so hollow and miserable that she could hardly restrain herself.

So the days and nights passed. On the third day about three o'clock, while she stood there beside him, she saw the eyes open – a falling apart of the lids, indeed, rather than an opening, and no speculation in the gaps; but her heart beat fast. The nurse, summoned by her finger, came, looked, and went quickly to the telephone. And Fleur stood there with her soul in her eyes, trying to summon his. It did not come, the lids drooped again. She drew up a chair and sat down, not taking her eyes off his face. The nurse came back to say that the doctor was on his rounds; as soon as he came in he would be sent to them post-haste. As her father would have said: ‘Of course, “that fellow” wasn't in when he was wanted!' But it would make no difference. They knew what to do. It was nearly four when again the lids were raised, and this time something looked forth. Fleur could not be sure that he saw anything particular, recognized her or any other object, but there was something there, some flickering
light, trying to focus. Slowly it strengthened, then went out again between the lids. They gave him stimulant. And again she sat down to watch. In half an hour his eyes re-opened. This time he
saw
! And for torturing minutes Fleur watched a being trying to
be, a
mind striving to obey the mandate of instinctive will power. Bending so that those eyes, which she now knew recognized her, should have the least possible effort, she waited with her lips trembling, as if in a kiss. The extraordinary tenacity of that struggle to come back terrified her. He
meant
to know and hear and speak. It was as if he must die from the sheer effort of it. She murmured to him. She put her hand under his cold hand, so that if he made the faintest pressure she would feel it She watched his lips desperately. At last that struggle for coherence ceased, the half-blank, half-angry look yielded to something deeper, the lips moved. They said nothing, but they moved, and the faintest tremor passed from his finger into hers.