and a sudden feeling–he didn’t know what–a longing for his own past, a sort of nostalgia–made him stop and mount the steps.
“Mr. George Forsyte in the Club?”
The janitor stared, a grey-haired, long-faced chap, whom he had known from away back in the ‘eighties.
“Mr. Forsyte, sir,” he said, “is very ill indeed. They say he won’t recover, sir.”
“What?” said Soames. “Nobody told me that.”
“He’s very bad–VERY bad indeed. It’s the heart.”
“The heart! Where is he?”
“At his rooms, sir; just round the corner. They say the doctors have given him up. He WILL be missed here. Forty years I’ve known him. One of the old school, and a wonderful judge of wine and horses. We none of us last for ever, they say, but I never thought to see HIM out. Bit too full-blooded, sir, and that’s a fact.”
With a slight shock Soames realised that he had never known where George lived, so utterly anchored had he seemed to that bay window above.
“Just give me the number of his rooms,” he said.
“Belville Row–No. 11, sir; I’m sure I hope you’ll find him better. I shall miss his jokes–I shall, indeed.”
Turning the corner into Belville Row, Soames made a rapid calculation. George was sixty-six, only one year younger than himself! If George was really in extremis it would be quite unnatural! ‘Comes of not leading a careful life,’ he thought; ‘always rackety–George! When was it I made his will?’ So far as he remembered, George had left his money to his brothers and sisters–no one else to leave it to. The feeling of kinship stirred in Soames, the instinct of family adjustment. George and he had never got on–opposite poles of temperament–still he would have to be buried, and who would see to it if not Soames, who had seen to so many Forsyte burials in his time? He recalled the nickname George had once given him, ‘the undertaker!’ H’m! Here was poetical justice! Belville Row! Ah! No. 11–regular bachelor-looking place! And putting his hand up to the bell, he thought: ‘Women!’ What had George done about women all his life?
His ring was answered by a man in a black cut-away coat with a certain speechless reticence.
“My cousin, Mr. George Forsyte? How is he?”
The man compressed his lips.
“Not expected to last the night, sir.”
Soames felt a little clutch beneath his Jaeger vest.
“Conscious?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Could you show him my card? He might possibly like to see me.”
“Will you wait in here, sir?” Soames passed into a low room panelled up to the level of a man’s chest, and above that line decorated with prints. George–a collector! Soames had never supposed he had it in him! On those walls, wherever the eye roved, were prints coloured and uncoloured, old and new, depicting the sports of racing and prize-fighting! Hardly an inch of the red wall space visible! About to examine them for marks of value, Soames saw that he was not alone. A woman–age uncertain in the shaded light–was sitting in a very high-backed chair before the fire with her elbow on the arm of it, and a handkerchief held to her face. Soames looked at her, and his nostrils moved in a stealthy sniff. ‘Not a lady,’ he thought. ‘Ten to one but there’ll be complications.’ The muffled voice of the cut-away man said:
“I’m to take you in, sir.” Soames passed his hand over his face and followed.
The bedroom he now entered was in curious contrast. The whole of one wall was occupied by an immense piece of furniture, all cupboards and drawers. Otherwise there was nothing in the room but a dressing-table with silver accoutrements, an electric radiator alight in the fireplace, and a bed opposite. Over the fireplace was a single picture, at which Soames glanced mechanically. What! Chinese! A large whitish sidelong monkey, holding the rind of a squeezed fruit in its outstretched paw. Its whiskered face looked back at him with brown, almost human eyes. What on earth had made his inartistic cousin buy a thing like that and put it up to face his bed? He turned and looked at the bed’s occupant. “The only sportsman of the lot,” as Montague Dartie in his prime had called him, lay with his swollen form outlined beneath a thin quilt. It gave Soames quite a turn to see that familiar beef-coloured face pale and puffy as a moon, with dark corrugated circles round eyes which still had their japing stare. A voice, hoarse and subdued, but with the old Forsyte timbre, said:
“Hallo, Soames! Come to measure me for my coffin?”
Soames put the suggestion away with a movement of his hand; he felt queer looking at that travesty of George. They had never got on, but–!
And in his flat, unemotional voice he said:
“Well, George! You’ll pick up yet. You’re no age. Is there anything I can do for you?”
A grin twitched George’s pallid lips.
“Make me a codicil. You’ll find paper in the dressing table drawer.”
Soames took out a sheet of ‘Iseeum’ Club notepaper. Standing at the table, he inscribed the opening words of a codicil with his stylographic pen, and looked round at George. The words came with a hoarse relish.
“My three screws to young Val Dartie, because he’s the only Forsyte that knows a horse from a donkey.” A throaty chuckle sounded ghastly in the ears of Soames. “What have you said?”
Soames read: “I hereby leave my three racehorses to my kinsman, Valerius Dartie, of Wansdon, Sussex, because he has special knowledge of horses.”
Again the throaty chuckle. “You’re a dry file, Soames. Go on. To Milly Moyle, of 12, Claremont Grove, twelve thousand pounds, free of legacy duty.”
Soames paused on the verge of a whistle.
The woman in the next room!
The japing in George’s eyes had turned to brooding gloom.
“It’s a lot of money,” Soames could not help saying.
George made a faint choleric sound.
“Write it down, or I’ll leave her the lot.”
Soames wrote. “Is that all?”
“Yes. Read it!”
Soames read. Again he heard that throaty chuckle. “That’s a pill. You won’t let THAT into the papers. Get that chap in, and you and he can witness.”
Before Soames reached the door, it was opened and the man himself came in.
“The–er–vicar, sir,” he said in a deprecating voice, “has called. He wants to know if you would like to see him.”
George turned his face, his fleshy grey eyes rolled.
“Give him my compliments,” he said, “and say I’ll see him at the funeral.”
With a bow the man went out, and there was silence.
“Now,” said George, “get him in again. I don’t know when the flag’ll fall.”
Soames beckoned the man in. When the codicil was signed and the man gone, George spoke:
“Take it, and see she gets it. I can trust you, that’s one thing about you, Soames.”
Soames pocketed the codicil with a very queer sensation.
“Would you like to see her again?” he said.
George stared up at him a long time before he answered.
“No. What’s the good? Give me a cigar from that drawer.”
Soames opened the drawer.
“Ought you?” he said.
George grinned. “Never in my life done what I ought; not going to begin now. Cut it for me.”
Soames nipped the end of the cigar. ‘Shan’t give him a match,’ he thought. ‘Can’t take the responsibility.’ But George did not ask for a match. He lay quite still, the unlighted cigar between his pale lips, the curved lids down over his eyes.
“Good-bye,” he said, “I’m going to have a snooze.”
“Good-bye,” said Soames. “I–I hope–you–you’ll soon–”
George reopened his eyes–fixed, sad, jesting, they seemed to quench the shams of hope and consolation. Soames turned hastily and went out. He felt bad, and almost unconsciously turned again into the sitting-room. The woman was still in the same attitude; the same florid scent was in the air. Soames took up the umbrella he had left there, and went out.
“This is my telephone number,” he said to the servant waiting in the corridor; “let me know.”
The man bowed.
Soames turned out of Belville Row. Never had he left George’s presence without the sense of being laughed at. Had he been laughed at now? Was that codicil George’s last joke? If he had not gone in this afternoon, would George ever have made it, leaving a third of his property away from his family to that florid woman in the high-backed chair? Soames was beset by a sense of mystery. How could a man joke at death’s door? It was, in a way, heroic. Where would he be buried? Somebody would know–Francie or Eustace. And what would they think when they came to know about that woman in the chair–twelve thousand pounds! ‘If I can get hold of that white monkey, I will,’ he thought suddenly. ‘It’s a good thing.’ The monkey’s eyes, the squeezed-out fruit–was life all a bitter jest and George deeper than himself? He rang the Green Street bell.
Mrs. Dartie was very sorry, but Mrs. Cardigan had called for her to dine and make a fourth at the play.
Soames went in to dinner alone. At the polished board below which Montague Dartie had now and again slipped, if not quite slept, he dined and brooded. “I can trust you, that’s one thing about you, Soames.” The words flattered and yet stung him. The depths of that sardonic joke! To give him a family shock and trust him to carry the shock out! George had never cared twelve thousand pounds for a woman who smelled of patchouli. No! It was a final gibe at his family, the Forsytes, at Soames himself! Well! one by one those who had injured or gibed at him–Irene, Bosinney, old and young Jolyon, and now George, had met their fates. Dead, dying, or in British Columbia! He saw again his cousin’s eyes above that unlighted cigar, fixed, sad, jesting–poor devil! He got up from the table, and nervously drew aside the curtains.
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