Affection? No, he did not suppose she had affection for him, but she liked her home, her bridge, her importance in the neighbourhood, and doing things about the house and garden. She was like a cat. And with money she was admirable–making it go further and buy more than most people. She was getting older, too, all the time, so that he had lost serious fear that she would overdo some friendship or other, and let him know it. That Prosper Profund business of six years ago, which had been such a squeak, had taught her discretion.
It had been quite unnecessary really for him to go down a day before Fleur’s arrival; his household ran on wheels too well geared and greased. On his fifteen acres, with the new dairy and cows across the river, he grew everything now except flour, fish, and meat of which he was but a sparing eater. Fifteen acres, if hardly “land,” represented a deal of produce. The establishment was, in fact, typical of countless residences of the unlanded well-to-do.
Soames had taste, and Annette, if anything, had more, especially in food, so that a better fed household could scarcely have been found.
In this bright weather, the leaves just full, the mayflower in bloom, bulbs not yet quite over, and the river relearning its summer smile, the beauty of the prospect was not to be sneezed at. And Soames on his green lawn walked a little and thought of why gardeners seemed always on the move from one place to another. He couldn’t seem to remember ever having seen an English gardener otherwise than about to work. That was, he supposed, why people so often had Scotch gardeners. Fleur’s dog came out and joined him. The fellow was getting old, and did little but attack imaginary fleas. Soames was very particular about real fleas, and the animal was washed so often that his skin had become very thin–a golden brown retriever, so rare that he was always taken for a mongrel. The head gardener came by with a spud in his hand.
“Good afternoon, sir.”
“Good afternoon,” replied Soames. “So the strike’s over!”
“Yes, sir. If they’d attend to their business, it’d be better.”
“It would. How’s your asparagus?”
“Well, I’m trying to make a third bed, but I can’t get the extra labour.”
Soames gazed at his gardener, who had a narrow face, rather on one side, owing to the growth of flowers. “What?” he said. “When there are about a million and a half people out of employment?”
“And where they get to, I can’t think,” said the gardener.
“Most of them,” said Soames, “are playing instruments in the streets.”
“That’s right, sir–my sister lives in London. I could get a boy, but I can’t trust him.”
“Why don’t you do it yourself?”
“Well, sir, I expect it’ll come to that; but I don’t want to let the garden down, you know.” And he moved the spud uneasily.
“What have you got that thing for? There isn’t a weed about the place.”
The gardener smiled. “It’s something cruel,” he said, “the way they spring up when you’re not about.”
“Mrs. Mont will be down tomorrow,” muttered Soames; “I shall want some good flowers in the house.”
“Very little at this time of year, sir.”
“I never knew a time of year when there was much. You must stir your stumps and find something.”
“Very good, sir,” said the gardener, and walked away.
‘Where’s he going now?’ thought Soames. ‘I never knew such a chap. But they’re all the same.’ He supposed they did work some time or other; in the small hours, perhaps–precious small hours! Anyway, he had to pay ’em a pretty penny for it! And, noticing the dog’s head on one side, he said: “Want a walk?”
They went out of the gate together, away from the river. The birds were in varied song, and the cuckoos obstreperous.
They walked up to a bit of common land where there had been a conflagration in the exceptionally fine Easter weather. From there one could look down at the river winding among poplars and willows. The prospect was something like that in a long river landscape by Daubigny which he had seen in an American’s private collection–a very fine landscape, he never remembered seeing a finer. He could mark the smoke from his own kitchen chimney, and was more pleased than he would have been marking the smoke from any other. He had missed it a lot last year–all those months, mostly hot–touring the world with Fleur from one unhomelike place to another. Young Michael’s craze for emigration! Soames was Imperialist enough to see the point of it in theory; but in practice every place out of England seemed to him so raw, or so extravagant. An Englishman was entitled to the smoke of his own kitchen chimney. Look at the Ganges–monstrous great thing, compared with that winding silvery thread down there! The St. Lawrence, the Hudson, the PO-tomac–as he still called it in thought–had all pleased him, but, comparatively, they were sprawling pieces of water. And the people out there were a sprawling lot. They had to be, in those big places. He moved down from the common through a narrow bit of wood where rooks were in a state of some excitement. He knew little about the habits of birds, not detached enough from self for the study of creatures quite unconnected with him; but he supposed they would be holding a palaver about food–worm-currency would be depressed, or there had been some inflation or other–fussy as the French over their wretched franc. Emerging, he came down opposite the lock-keeper’s cottage. There, with the scent of the wood-smoke threading from its low and humble chimney, the weir murmuring, the blackbirds and the cuckoos calling, Soames experienced something like asphyxiation of the proprietary instincts. Opening the handle of his shooting-stick, he sat down on it, to contemplate the oozy green on the sides of the emptied lock and dabble one hand in the air. Ingenious things–locks! Why not locks in the insides of men and women, so that their passions could be damned to the proper moment, then used, under control, for the main traffic of life, instead of pouring to waste over weirs and down rapids? The tongue of Fleur’s dog licking his dabbled hand interrupted this somewhat philosophic reflection. Animals were too human nowadays, always wanting to have notice taken of them; only that afternoon he had seen Annette’s black cat look up into the plaster face of his Naples Psyche, and mew faintly–wanting to be taken up into its lap, he supposed–only the thing hadn’t one.
The lock-keeper’s daughter came out to take some garments off a line. Women in the country seemed to do nothing but hang clothes on lines and take them off again! Soames watched her, neat-handed, neat-ankled, in neat light-blue print, with a face like a Botticelli–lots of faces like that in England! She would have a young man, or perhaps two–and they would walk in that wood, and sit in damp places and all the rest of it, and imagine themselves happy, he shouldn’t wonder; or she would get up behind him on one of those cycle things and go tearing about the country with her dress up to her knees. And her name would be Gladys or Doris, or what not! She saw him, and smiled. She had a full mouth that looked pretty when it smiled. Soames raised his hat slightly.
“Nice evening!” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
Very respectful!
“River’s still high.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rather a pretty girl! Suppose he had been a lock-keeper, and Fleur had been a lock-keeper’s daughter–hanging clothes on a line, and saying “Yes, sir!” Well, he would as soon be a lock-keeper as anything else in a humble walk of life–watching water go up and down, and living in that pretty cottage, with nothing to worry about, except–except his daughter! And he checked an impulse to say to the girl: “Are you a good daughter?” Was there such a thing nowadays–a daughter that thought of you first, and herself after?
“These cuckoos!” he said, heavily.
“Yes, sir.”
She was taking a somewhat suggestive garment off the line now, and Soames lowered his eyes, he did not want to embarrass the girl–not that he saw any signs. Probably you couldn’t embarrass a girl nowadays! And, rising, he closed the handle of his shooting-stick.
“Well, it’ll keep fine, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good evening.”
“Good evening, sir.”
Followed by the dog, he moved along towards home. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth; but how would she talk to her young man? Humiliating to be old! On an evening like this, one should be young again, and walk in a wood with a girl like that; and all that had been faun-like in his nature pricked ears for a moment, licked lips, and with a shrug and a slight sense of shame, died down.
It had always been characteristic of Soames, who had his full share of the faun, to keep the fact carefully hidden. Like all his family, except, perhaps, his cousin George and his uncle Swithin, he was secretive in matters of sex; no Forsyte talked sex, or liked to hear others talk it; and when they felt its call, they gave no outward sign. Not the Puritan spirit, but a certain refinement in them forbade the subject, and where they got it from they did not know!
After his lonely dinner he lit his cigar and strolled out again. It was really warm for May, and still light enough for him to see his cows in the meadow beyond the river. They would soon be sheltering for the night, under that hawthorn hedge. And here came the swans, with their grey brood in tow; handsome birds, going to bed on the island!
The river was whitening; the dusk seemed held in the trees, waiting to spread and fly up into a sky just drained of sunset. Very peaceful, and a little eerie–the hour between! Those starlings made a racket–disagreeable beggars; there could be no real self-respect with such short tails!
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