And when those Labour chaps got power–if they ever did–the worst was yet to come!
He passed out under the archway, at last no longer–thank goodness! – disfigured by the gun-grey of its search-light. ‘They’d better put a search-light on to where they’re all going,’ he thought, ‘and light up their precious democracy!’ And he directed his steps along the Club fronts of Piccadilly. George Forsyte, of course, would be sitting in the bay window of the Iseeum. The chap was so big now that he was there nearly all his time, like some immovable, sardonic, humorous eye noting the decline of men and things. And Soames hurried, ever constitutionally uneasy beneath his cousin’s glance. George, who, as he had heard, had written a letter signed “Patriot” in the middle of the War, complaining of the Government’s hysteria in docking the oats of race-horses. Yes, there he was, tall, ponderous, neat, clean-shaven, with his smooth hair, hardly thinned, smelling, no doubt, of the best hair-wash, and a pink paper in his hand. Well, he didn’t change! And for perhaps the first time in his life Soames felt a kind of sympathy tapping in his waistcoat for that sardonic kinsman. With his weight, his perfectly parted hair, and bull-like gaze, he was a guarantee that the old order would take some shifting yet. He saw George move the pink paper as if inviting him to ascend–the chap must want to ask something about his property. It was still under Soames’s control; for in the adoption of a sleeping partnership at that painful period twenty years back when he had divorced Irene, Soames had found himself almost insensibly retaining control of all purely Forsyte affairs.
Hesitating for just a moment, he nodded and went in. Since the death of his brother-inlaw Montague Dartie, in Paris, which no one had quite known what to make of, except that it was certainly not suicide–the Iseeum Club had seemed more respectable to Soames. George, too, he knew, had sown the last of his wild oats, and was committed definitely to the joys of the table, eating only of the very best so as to keep his weight down, and owning, as he said, “just one or two old screws to give me an interest in life.” He joined his cousin, therefore, in the bay window without the embarrassing sense of indiscretion he had been used to feel up there. George put out a well-kept hand.
“Haven’t seen you since the War,” he said. “How’s your wife?”
“Thanks,” said Soames coldly, “well enough.”
Some hidden jest curved, for a moment, George’s fleshy face, and gloated from his eye.
“That Belgian chap, Profond,” he said, “is a member here now. He’s a rum customer.”
“Quite!” muttered Soames. “What did you want to see me about?”
“Old Timothy; he might go off the hooks at any moment. I suppose he’s made his Will.”
“Yes.”
“Well, you or somebody ought to give him a look up–last of the old lot; he’s a hundred, you know. They say he’s like a mummy. Where are you goin’ to put him? He ought to have a pyramid by rights.”
Soames shook his head. “Highgate, the family vault.”
“Well, I suppose the old girls would miss him, if he was anywhere else. They say he still takes an interest in food. He might last on, you know. Don’t we get anything for the old Forsytes? Ten of them–average age eighty-eight–I worked it out. That ought to be equal to triplets.”
“Is that all?” said Soames. “I must be getting on.”
‘You unsociable devil,’ George’s eyes seemed to answer.
“Yes, that’s all: Look him up in his mausoleum–the old chap might want to prophesy.” The grin died on the rich curves of his face, and he added: “Haven’t you attorneys invented a way yet of dodging this damned income tax? It hits the fixed inherited income like the very deuce. I used to have two thousand five hundred a year; now I’ve got a beggarly fifteen hundred, and the price of living doubled.”
“Ah!” murmured Soames, “the turf’s in danger.”
Over George’s face moved a gleam of sardonic self-defence.
“Well,” he said, “they brought me up to do nothing, and here I am in the sere and yellow, getting poorer every day. These Labour chaps mean to have the lot before they’ve done. What are you going to do for a living when it comes? I shall work a six-hour day teaching politicians how to see a joke. Take my tip, Soames; go into Parliament, make sure of your four hundred–and employ me.”
And, as Soames retired, he resumed his seat in the bay window.
Soames moved along Piccadilly deep in reflections excited by his cousin’s words. He himself had always been a worker and a saver, George always a drone and a spender; and yet, if confiscation once began, it was he–the worker and the saver–who would be looted! That was the negation of all virtue, the overturning of all Forsyte principles. Could civilisation be built on any other? He did not think so. Well, they wouldn’t confiscate his pictures, for they wouldn’t know their worth. But what would they be worth, if these maniacs once began to milk capital? A drug on the market. ‘I don’t care about myself,’ he thought; ‘I could live on five hundred a year, and never know the difference, at my age.’ But Fleur! This fortune, so wisely invested, these treasures so carefully chosen and amassed, were all for her. And if it should turn out that he couldn’t give or leave them to her–well, life had no meaning, and what was the use of going in to look at this crazy, futuristic stuff with the view of seeing whether it had any future?
Arriving at the Gallery off Cork Street, however, he paid his shilling, picked up a catalogue, and entered. Some ten persons were prowling round. Soames took steps and came on what looked to him like a lamp-post bent by collision with a motor omnibus. It was advanced some three paces from the wall, and was described in his catalogue as “Jupiter.” He examined it with curiosity, having recently turned some of his attention to sculpture. ‘If that’s Jupiter,’ he thought, ‘I wonder what Juno’s like.’ And suddenly he saw her, opposite. She appeared to him like nothing so much as a pump with two handles, lightly clad in snow. He was still gazing at her, when two of the prowlers halted on his left. “Epatant!” he heard one say.
“Jargon!” growled Soames to himself.
The other’s boyish voice replied:
“Missed it, old bean; he’s pulling your leg. When Jove and Juno created he them, he was saying: ‘I’ll see how much these fools will swallow.’ And they’ve lapped up the lot.”
“You young duffer! Vospovitch is an innovator. Don’t you see that he’s brought satire into sculpture? The future of plastic art, of music, painting, and even architecture, has set in satiric. It was bound to. People are tired–the bottom’s tumbled out of sentiment.”
“Well, I’m quite equal to taking a little interest in beauty. I was through the War. You’ve dropped your handkerchief, sir.”
Soames saw a handkerchief held out in front of him. He took it with some natural suspicion, and approached it to his nose. It had the right scent–of distant Eau de Cologne–and his initials in a corner. Slightly reassured, he raised his eyes to the young man’s face. It had rather fawn-like ears, a laughing mouth, with half a toothbrush growing out of it on each side, and small lively eyes, above a normally dressed appearance.
“Thank you,” he said; and moved by a sort of irritation, added: “Glad to hear you like beauty; that’s rare, nowadays.”
“I dote on it,” said the young man; “but you and I are the last of the old guard, sir.”
Soames smiled.
“If you really care for pictures,” he said, “here’s my card. I can show you some quite good ones any Sunday, if you’re down the river and care to look in.”
“Awfully nice of you, sir. I’ll drop in like a bird. My name’s Mont–Michael.” And he took off his hat.
Soames, already regretting his impulse, raised his own slightly in response, with a downward look at the young man’s companion, who had a purple tie, dreadful little slug-like whiskers, and a scornful look–as if he were a poet!
It was the first indiscretion he had committed for so long that he went and sat down in an alcove. What had possessed him to give his card to a rackety young fellow, who went about with a thing like that? And Fleur, always at the back of his thoughts, started out like a filagree figure from a clock when the hour strikes. On the screen opposite the alcove was a large canvas with a great many square tomato-colored blobs on it, and nothing else, so far as Soames could see from where he sat. He looked at his catalogue: “No. 32–‘The Future Town’–Paul Post.” ‘I suppose that’s satiric too,’ he thought. ‘What a thing!’ But his second impulse was more cautious. It did not do to condemn hurriedly. There had been those stripey, streaky creations of Monet’s, which had turned out such trumps; and then the stippled school; and Gauguin. Why, even since the Post–Impressionists there had been one or two painters not to be sneezed at. During the thirty-eight years of his connoisseur’s life, indeed, he had marked so many “movements,” seen the tides of taste and technique so ebb and flow, that there was really no telling anything except that there was money to be made out of every change of fashion. This too might quite well be a case where one must subdue primordial instinct, or lose the market. He got up and stood before the picture, trying hard to see it with the eyes of other people. Above the tomato blobs was what he took to be a sunset, till some one passing said: “He’s got the airplanes wonderfully, don’t you think!” Below the tomato blobs was a band of white with vertical black stripes, to which he could assign no meaning whatever, till some one else came by, murmuring:
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