Chapter X: Passing of an Age

The marriage of Soames with Annette took place in Paris on the
last day of January, 1901, with such privacy that not even Emily
was told until it was accomplished.

The day after the wedding he brought her to one of those quiet
hotels in London where greater expense can be incurred for less
result than anywhere else under heaven. Her beauty in the best
Parisian frocks was giving him more satisfaction than if he had
collected a perfect bit of china, or a jewel of a picture; he
looked forward to the moment when he would exhibit her in Park
Lane, in Green Street, and at Timothy’s.

If some one had asked him in those days, “In confidence—are you
in love with this girl?” he would have replied: “In love? What is
love? If you mean do I feel to her as I did towards Irene in
those old days when I first met her and she would not have me;
when I sighed and starved after her and couldn’t rest a minute
until she yielded—no! If you mean do I admire her youth and
prettiness, do my senses ache a little when I see her moving
about—yes! Do I think she will keep me straight, make me a
creditable wife and a good mother for my children?—again, yes!”

“What more do I need? and what more do three-quarters of the
women who are married get from the men who marry them?” And if
the enquirer had pursued his query, “And do you think it was fair
to have tempted this girl to give herself to you for life unless
you have really touched her heart?” he would have answered: “The
French see these things differently from us. They look at
marriage from the point of view of establishments and children;
and, from my own experience, I am not at all sure that theirs is
not the sensible view. I shall not expect this time more than I
can get, or she can give. Years hence I shouldn’t be surprised if
I have trouble with her; but I shall be getting old, I shall have
children by then. I shall shut my eyes. I have had my great
passion; hers is perhaps to come—I don’t suppose it will be for
me. I offer her a great deal, and I don’t expect much in return,
except children, or at least a son. But one thing I am sure
of—she has very good sense!”

And if, insatiate, the enquirer had gone on, “You do not look,
then, for spiritual union in this marriage?” Soames would have
lifted his sideway smile, and rejoined: “That’s as it may be. If
I get satisfaction for my senses, perpetuation of myself; good
taste and good humour in the house; it is all I can expect at my
age. I am not likely to be going out of my way towards any
far-fetched sentimentalism.” Whereon, the enquirer must in good
taste have ceased enquiry.

The Queen was dead, and the air of the greatest city upon earth
grey with unshed tears. Fur-coated and top-hatted, with Annette
beside him in dark furs, Soames crossed Park Lane on the morning
of the funeral procession, to the rails in Hyde Park. Little
moved though he ever was by public matters, this event, supremely
symbolical, this summing-up of a long rich period, impressed his
fancy. In ’37, when she came to the throne, “Superior Dosset” was
still building houses to make London hideous; and James, a
stripling of twenty-six, just laying the foundations of his
practice in the Law. Coaches still ran; men wore stocks, shaved
their upper lips, ate oysters out of barrels; “tigers” swung
behind cabriolets; women said, “La!” and owned no property; there
were manners in the land, and pigsties for the poor; unhappy
devils were hanged for little crimes, and Dickens had but just
begun to write. Well-nigh two generations had slipped by—of
steamboats, railways, telegraphs, bicycles, electric light,
telephones, and now these motorcars—of such accumulated wealth,
that eight per cent. had become three, and Forsytes were numbered
by the thousand! Morals had changed, manners had changed, men had
become monkeys twice-removed, God had become Mammon—Mammon so
respectable as to deceive himself: Sixty-four years that favoured
property, and had made the upper middle class; buttressed,
chiselled, polished it, till it was almost indistinguishable in
manners, morals, speech, appearance, habit, and soul from the
nobility. An epoch which had gilded individual liberty so that if
a man had money, he was free in law and fact, and if he had not
money he was free in law and not in fact. An era which had
canonised hypocrisy, so that to seem to be respectable was to be.
A great Age, whose transmuting influence nothing had escaped save
the nature of man and the nature of the Universe.

And to witness the passing of this Age, London—its pet and
fancy—was pouring forth her citizens through every gate into Hyde
Park, hub of Victorianism, happy hunting-ground of Forsytes.
Under the grey heavens, whose drizzle just kept off, the dark
concourse gathered to see the show. The “good old” Queen, full of
years and virtue, had emerged from her seclusion for the last
time to make a London holiday. From Houndsditch, Acton, Ealing,
Hampstead, Islington, and Bethnal Green; from Hackney, Hornsey,
Leytonstone, Battersea, and Fulham; and from those green pastures
where Forsytes flourish—Mayfair and Kensington, St. James’ and
Belgravia, Bayswater and Chelsea and the Regent’s Park, the
people swarmed down on to the roads where death would presently
pass with dusky pomp and pageantry. Never again would a Queen
reign so long, or people have a chance to see so much history
buried for their money. A pity the war dragged on, and that the
Wreath of Victory could not be laid upon her coffin! All else
would be there to follow and commemorate—soldiers, sailors,
foreign princes, half-masted bunting, tolling bells, and above
all the surging, great, dark-coated crowd, with perhaps a simple
sadness here and there deep in hearts beneath black clothes put
on by regulation. After all, more than a Queen was going to her
rest, a woman who had braved sorrow, lived well and wisely
according to her lights.

Out in the crowd against the railings, with his arm hooked in
Annette’s, Soames waited. Yes! the Age was passing! What with
this Trade Unionism, and Labour fellows in the House of Commons,
with continental fiction, and something in the general feel of
everything, not to be expressed in words, things were very
different; he recalled the crowd on Mafeking night, and George
Forsyte saying: “They’re all socialists, they want our goods.”
Like James, Soames didn’t know, he couldn’t tell—with Edward on
the throne! Things would never be as safe again as under good old
Viccy! Convulsively he pressed his young wife’s arm. There, at
any rate, was something substantially his own, domestically
certain again at last; something which made property worth
while—a real thing once more. Pressed close against her and
trying to ward others off, Soames was content. The crowd swayed
round them, ate sandwiches and dropped crumbs; boys who had
climbed the plane-trees chattered above like monkeys, threw twigs
and orange-peel. It was past time; they should be coming soon!
And, suddenly, a little behind them to the left, he saw a tallish
man with a soft hat and short grizzling beard, and a tallish
woman in a little round fur cap and veil. Jolyon and Irene
talking, smiling at each other, close together like Annette and
himself! They had not seen him; and stealthily, with a very queer
feeling in his heart, Soames watched those two. They looked
happy! What had they come here for—inherently illicit creatures,
rebels from the Victorian ideal? What business had they in this
crowd? Each of them twice exiled by morality—making a boast, as
it were, of love and laxity! He watched them fascinated;
admitting grudgingly even with his arm thrust through Annette’s
that—that she—Irene—No! he would _not_ admit it; and he turned
his eyes away. He would _not_ see them, and let the old
bitterness, the old longing rise up within him! And then Annette
turned to him and said: “Those two people, Soames; they know you,
I am sure. Who are they?”

Soames nosed sideways.

“What people?”

“There, you see them; just turning away. They know you.”

“No,” Soames answered; “a mistake, my dear.”

“A lovely face! And how she walk! _Elle est très distinguée!_”

Soames looked then. Into his life, out of his life she had walked
like that swaying and erect, remote, unseizable; ever eluding the
contact of his soul! He turned abruptly from that receding vision
of the past.

“You’d better attend,” he said, “they’re coming now!”

But while he stood, grasping her arm, seemingly intent on the
head of the procession, he was quivering with the sense of always
missing something, with instinctive regret that he had not got
them both.

Slow came the music and the march, till, in silence, the long
line wound in through the Park gate. He heard Annette whisper,
“How sad it is and beautiful!” felt the clutch of her hand as she
stood up on tiptoe; and the crowd’s emotion gripped him. There it
was—the bier of the Queen, coffin of the Age slow passing! And as
it went by there came a murmuring groan from all the long line of
those who watched, a sound such as Soames had never heard, so
unconscious, primitive, deep and wild, that neither he nor any
knew whether they had joined in uttering it. Strange sound,
indeed! Tribute of an Age to its own death.... Ah! Ah!... The
hold on life had slipped. That which had seemed eternal was gone!
The Queen—God bless her!

It moved on with the bier, that travelling groan, as a fire moves
on over grass in a thin line; it kept step, and marched alongside
down the dense crowds mile after mile. It was a human sound, and
yet inhuman, pushed out by animal subconsciousness, by intimate
knowledge of universal death and change. None of us—none of us
can hold on for ever!

It left silence for a little—a very little time, till tongues
began, eager to retrieve interest in the show. Soames lingered
just long enough to gratify Annette, then took her out of the
Park to lunch at his father’s in Park Lane....

James had spent the morning gazing out of his bedroom window. The
last show he would see, last of so many! So she was gone! Well,
she was getting an old woman. Swithin and he had seen her
crowned—slim slip of a girl, not so old as Imogen! She had got
very stout of late. Jolyon and he had seen her married to that
German chap, her husband—he had turned out all right before he
died, and left her with that son of his. And he remembered the
many evenings he and his brothers and their cronies had wagged
their heads over their wine and walnuts and that fellow in his
salad days. And now he had come to the throne. They said he had
steadied down—he didn’t know—couldn’t tell! He’d make the money
fly still, he shouldn’t wonder. What a lot of people out there!
It didn’t seem so very long since he and Swithin stood in the
crowd outside Westminster Abbey when she was crowned, and Swithin
had taken him to Cremorne afterwards—racketty chap, Swithin; no,
it didn’t seem much longer ago than Jubilee Year, when he had
joined with Roger in renting a balcony in Piccadilly.

Jolyon, Swithin, Roger all gone, and he would be ninety in
August! And there was Soames married again to a French girl. The
French were a queer lot, but they made good mothers, he had
heard. Things changed! They said this German Emperor was here for
the funeral, his telegram to old Kruger had been in shocking
taste. He should not be surprised if that chap made trouble some
day. Change! H’m! Well, they must look after themselves when he
was gone: he didn’t know where he’d be! And now Emily had asked
Dartie to lunch, with Winifred and Imogen, to meet Soames’
wife—she was always doing something. And there was Irene living
with that fellow Jolyon, they said. He’d marry her now, he
supposed.

“My brother Jolyon,” he thought, “what would he have said to it
all?” And somehow the utter impossibility of knowing what his
elder brother, once so looked up to, would have said, so worried
James that he got up from his chair by the window, and began
slowly, feebly to pace the room.

“She was a pretty thing, too,” he thought; “I was fond of her.
Perhaps Soames didn’t suit her—I don’t know—I can’t tell. We
never had any trouble with _our_ wives.” Women had changed
everything had changed! And now the Queen was dead—well, there it
was! A movement in the crowd brought him to a standstill at the
window, his nose touching the pane and whitening from the chill
of it. They had got her as far as Hyde Park Corner—they were
passing now! Why didn’t Emily come up here where she could see,
instead of fussing about lunch. He missed her at that
moment—missed her! Through the bare branches of the plane-trees
he could just see the procession, could see the hats coming off
the people’s heads—a lot of them would catch colds, he shouldn’t
wonder! A voice behind him said:

“You’ve got a capital view here, James!”

“_There_ you are!” muttered James; “why didn’t you come before?
You might have missed it!”

And he was silent, staring with all his might.

“What’s the noise?” he asked suddenly.

“There’s no noise,” returned Emily; “what are you thinking
of?—they wouldn’t cheer.”

“I can hear it.”

“Nonsense, James!”

No sound came through those double panes; what James heard was
the groaning in his own heart at sight of his Age passing.

“Don’t you ever tell me where I’m buried,” he said suddenly. “I
shan’t want to know.” And he turned from the window. There she
went, the old Queen; she’d had a lot of anxiety—she’d be glad to
be out of it, he should think!

Emily took up the hair-brushes.

“There’ll be just time to brush your head,” she said, “before
they come. You must look your best, James.”

“Ah!” muttered James; “they say she’s pretty.”

The meeting with his new daughter-in-law took place in the
dining-room. James was seated by the fire when she was brought
in. He placed, his hands on the arms of the chair and slowly
raised himself. Stooping and immaculate in his frock-coat, thin
as a line in Euclid, he received Annette’s hand in his; and the
anxious eyes of his furrowed face, which had lost its colour now,
doubted above her. A little warmth came into them and into his
cheeks, refracted from her bloom.

“How are you?” he said. “You’ve been to see the Queen, I suppose?
Did you have a good crossing?”

In this way he greeted her from whom he hoped for a grandson of
his name.

Gazing at him, so old, thin, white, and spotless, Annette
murmured something in French which James did not understand.

“Yes, yes,” he said, “you want your lunch, I expect. Soames, ring
the bell; we won’t wait for that chap Dartie.” But just then they
arrived. Dartie had refused to go out of his way to see “the old
girl.” With an early cocktail beside him, he had taken a “squint”
from the smoking-room of the Iseeum, so that Winifred and Imogen
had been obliged to come back from the Park to fetch him thence.
His brown eyes rested on Annette with a stare of almost startled
satisfaction. The second beauty that fellow Soames had picked up!
What women could see in him! Well, she would play him the same
trick as the other, no doubt; but in the meantime he was a lucky
devil! And he brushed up his moustache, having in nine months of
Green Street domesticity regained almost all his flesh and his
assurance. Despite the comfortable efforts of Emily, Winifred’s
composure, Imogen’s enquiring friendliness, Dartie’s showing-off,
and James’ solicitude about her food, it was not, Soames felt, a
successful lunch for his bride. He took her away very soon.

“That Monsieur Dartie,” said Annette in the cab, “_je n’aime pas
ce type-là!_”

“No, by George!” said Soames.

“Your sister is veree amiable, and the girl is pretty. Your
father is veree old. I think your mother has trouble with him; I
should not like to be her.”

Soames nodded at the shrewdness, the clear hard judgment in his
young wife; but it disquieted him a little. The thought may have
just flashed through him, too: “When I’m eighty she’ll be
fifty-five, having trouble with me!”

“There’s just one other house of my relations I must take you
to,” he said; “you’ll find it funny, but we must get it over; and
then we’ll dine and go to the theatre.”

In this way he prepared her for Timothy’s. But Timothy’s was
different. They were _delighted_ to see dear Soames after this
long long time; and so this was Annette!

“You are _so_ pretty, my dear; almost too young and pretty for
dear Soames, aren’t you? But he’s very attentive and careful—such
a good hush....” Aunt Juley checked herself, and placed her lips
just under each of Annette’s eyes—she afterwards described them
to Francie, who dropped in, as: “Cornflower-blue, so pretty, I
quite wanted to kiss them. I must say dear Soames is a perfect
connoisseur. In her French way, and not so very French either, I
think she’s as pretty—though not so distinguished, not so
alluring—as Irene. Because she was alluring, wasn’t she? with
that white skin and those dark eyes, and that hair, _couleur
de_—what was it? I always forget.”

“_Feuille morte_,” Francie prompted.

“Of course, dead leaves—so strange. I remember when I was a girl,
before we came to London, we had a foxhound puppy—to ‘walk’ it
was called then; it had a tan top to its head and a white chest,
and beautiful dark brown eyes, and it was a lady.”

“Yes, auntie,” said Francie, “but I don’t see the connection.”

“Oh!” replied Aunt Juley, rather flustered, “it was so alluring,
and her eyes and hair, you know....” She was silent, as if
surprised in some indelicacy. “_Feuille morte_,” she added
suddenly; “Hester—do remember that!”....

Considerable debate took place between the two sisters whether
Timothy should or should not be summoned to see Annette.

“Oh, don’t bother!” said Soames.

“But it’s no trouble, only of course Annette’s being French might
upset him a little. He was so scared about Fashoda. I think
perhaps we had better not run the risk, Hester. It’s nice to have
her all to ourselves, isn’t it? And how are you, Soames? Have you
quite got over your....”

Hester interposed hurriedly:

“What do you think of London, Annette?”

Soames, disquieted, awaited the reply. It came, sensible,
composed: “Oh! I know London. I have visited before.”

He had never ventured to speak to her on the subject of the
restaurant. The French had different notions about gentility, and
to shrink from connection with it might seem to her ridiculous;
he had waited to be married before mentioning it; and now he
wished he hadn’t.

“And what part do you know best?” said Aunt Juley.

“Soho,” said Annette simply.

Soames snapped his jaw.

“Soho?” repeated Aunt Juley; “Soho?”

“That’ll go round the family,” thought Soames.

“It’s very French, and interesting,” he said.

“Yes,” murmured Aunt Juley, “your Uncle Roger had some houses
there once; he was always having to turn the tenants out, I
remember.”

Soames changed the subject to Mapledurham.

“Of course,” said Aunt Juley, “you will be going down there soon
to settle in. We are all so looking forward to the time when
Annette has a dear little....”

“Juley!” cried Aunt Hester desperately, “ring tea!”

Soames dared not wait for tea, and took Annette away.

“I shouldn’t mention Soho if I were you,” he said in the cab.
“It’s rather a shady part of London; and you’re altogether above
that restaurant business now; I mean,” he added, “I want you to
know nice people, and the English are fearful snobs.”

Annette’s clear eyes opened; a little smile came on her lips.

“Yes?” she said.

“H’m!” thought Soames, “that’s meant for me!” and he looked at
her hard. “She’s got good business instincts,” he thought. “I
must make her grasp it once for all!”

“Look here, Annette! it’s very simple, only it wants
understanding. Our professional and leisured classes still think
themselves a cut above our business classes, except of course the
very rich. It may be stupid, but there it is, you see. It isn’t
advisable in England to let people know that you ran a restaurant
or kept a shop or were in any kind of trade. It may have been
extremely creditable, but it puts a sort of label on you; you
don’t have such a good time, or meet such nice people—that’s
all.”

“I see,” said Annette; “it is the same in France.”

“Oh!” murmured Soames, at once relieved and taken aback. “Of
course, class is everything, really.”

“Yes,” said Annette; “_comme vous êtes sage_.”

“That’s all right,” thought Soames, watching her lips, “only
she’s pretty cynical.” His knowledge of French was not yet such
as to make him grieve that she had not said “tu.” He slipped his
arm round her, and murmured with an effort:

“_Et vous êtes ma belle femme_.”

Annette went off into a little fit of laughter.

“_Oh, non!_” she said. “_Oh, non! ne parlez pas Français_,
Soames. What is that old lady, your aunt, looking forward to?”

Soames bit his lip. “God knows!” he said; “she’s always saying
something;” but he knew better than God.