Chapter XII: On Forsyte ’change

Soames belonged to two clubs, “The Connoisseurs,” which he put on
his cards and seldom visited, and “The Remove,” which he did not
put on his cards and frequented. He had joined this Liberal
institution five years ago, having made sure that its members
were now nearly all sound Conservatives in heart and pocket, if
not in principle. Uncle Nicholas had put him up. The fine
reading-room was decorated in the Adam style.

On entering that evening he glanced at the tape for any news
about the Transvaal, and noted that Consols were down
seven-sixteenths since the morning. He was turning away to seek
the reading-room when a voice behind him said:

“Well, Soames, that went off all right.”

It was Uncle Nicholas, in a frock-coat and his special cut-away
collar, with a black tie passed through a ring. Heavens! How
young and dapper he looked at eighty-two!

“I think Roger’d have been pleased,” his uncle went on. “The
thing was very well done. Blackley’s? I’ll make a note of them.
Buxton’s done me no good. These Boers are upsetting me—that
fellow Chamberlain’s driving the country into war. What do you
think?”

“Bound to come,” murmured Soames.

Nicholas passed his hand over his thin, clean-shaven cheeks, very
rosy after his summer cure; a slight pout had gathered on his
lips. This business had revived all his Liberal principles.

“I mistrust that chap; he’s a stormy petrel. House-property will
go down if there’s war. You’ll have trouble with Roger’s estate.
I often told him he ought to get out of some of his houses. He
was an opinionated beggar.”

“There was a pair of you!” thought Soames. But he never argued
with an uncle, in that way preserving their opinion of him as “a
long-headed chap,” and the legal care of their property.

“They tell me at Timothy’s,” said Nicholas, lowering his voice,
“that Dartie has gone off at last. That’ll be a relief to your
father. He was a rotten egg.”

Again Soames nodded. If there was a subject on which the Forsytes
really agreed, it was the character of Montague Dartie.

“You take care,” said Nicholas, “or he’ll turn up again. Winifred
had better have the tooth out, I should say. No use preserving
what’s gone bad.”

Soames looked at him sideways. His nerves, exacerbated by the
interview he had just come through, disposed him to see a
personal allusion in those words.

“I’m advising her,” he said shortly.

“Well,” said Nicholas, “the brougham’s waiting; I must get home.
I’m very poorly. Remember me to your father.”

And having thus reconsecrated the ties of blood, he passed down
the steps at his youthful gait and was wrapped into his fur coat
by the junior porter.

“I’ve never known Uncle Nicholas other than ‘very poorly,’” mused
Soames, “or seen him look other than everlasting. What a family!
Judging by him, I’ve got thirty-eight years of health before me.
Well, I’m not going to waste them.” And going over to a mirror he
stood looking at his face. Except for a line or two, and three or
four grey hairs in his little dark moustache, had he aged any
more than Irene? The prime of life—he and she in the very prime
of life! And a fantastic thought shot into his mind. Absurd!
Idiotic! But again it came. And genuinely alarmed by the
recurrence, as one is by the second fit of shivering which
presages a feverish cold, he sat down on the weighing machine.
Eleven stone! He had not varied two pounds in twenty years. What
age was she? Nearly thirty-seven—not too old to have a child—not
at all! Thirty-seven on the ninth of next month. He remembered
her birthday well—he had always observed it religiously, even
that last birthday so soon before she left him, when he was
almost certain she was faithless. Four birthdays in his house. He
had looked forward to them, because his gifts had meant a
semblance of gratitude, a certain attempt at warmth. Except,
indeed, that last birthday—which had tempted him to be too
religious! And he shied away in thought. Memory heaps dead leaves
on corpse-like deeds, from under which they do but vaguely offend
the sense. And then he thought suddenly: “I could send her a
present for her birthday. After all, we’re Christians!
Couldn’t!—couldn’t we join up again!” And he uttered a deep sigh
sitting there. Annette! Ah! but between him and Annette was the
need for that wretched divorce suit! And how?

“A man can always work these things, if he’ll take it on
himself,” Jolyon had said.

But why should he take the scandal on himself with his whole
career as a pillar of the law at stake? It was not fair! It was
quixotic! Twelve years’ separation in which he had taken no steps
to free himself put out of court the possibility of using her
conduct with Bosinney as a ground for divorcing her. By doing
nothing to secure relief he had acquiesced, even if the evidence
could now be gathered, which was more than doubtful. Besides, his
own pride would never let him use that old incident, he had
suffered from it too much. No! Nothing but fresh misconduct on
her part—but she had denied it; and—almost—he had believed her.
Hung up! Utterly hung up!

He rose from the scooped-out red velvet seat with a feeling of
constriction about his vitals. He would never sleep with this
going on in him! And, taking coat and hat again, he went out,
moving eastward. In Trafalgar Square he became aware of some
special commotion travelling towards him out of the mouth of the
Strand. It materialised in newspaper men calling out so loudly
that no words whatever could be heard. He stopped to listen, and
one came by.

“Payper! Special! Ultimatium by Krooger! Declaration of war!”
Soames bought the paper. There it was in the stop press...! His
first thought was: “The Boers are committing suicide.” His
second: “Is there anything still I ought to sell?” If so he had
missed the chance—there would certainly be a slump in the city
to-morrow. He swallowed this thought with a nod of defiance. That
ultimatum was insolent—sooner than let it pass he was prepared to
lose money. They wanted a lesson, and they would get it; but it
would take three months at least to bring them to heel. There
weren’t the troops out there; always behind time, the Government!
Confound those newspaper rats! What was the use of waking
everybody up? Breakfast to-morrow was quite soon enough. And he
thought with alarm of his father. They would cry it down Park
Lane. Hailing a hansom, he got in and told the man to drive
there.

James and Emily had just gone up to bed, and after communicating
the news to Warmson, Soames prepared to follow. He paused by
after-thought to say:

“What do you think of it, Warmson?”

The butler ceased passing a hat brush over the silk hat Soames
had taken off, and, inclining his face a little forward, said in
a low voice: “Well, sir, they ’aven’t a chance, of course; but
I’m told they’re very good shots. I’ve got a son in the
Inniskillings.”

“You, Warmson? Why, I didn’t know you were married.”

“No, sir. I don’t talk of it. I expect he’ll be going out.”

The slighter shock Soames had felt on discovering that he knew so
little of one whom he thought he knew so well was lost in the
slight shock of discovering that the war might touch one
personally. Born in the year of the Crimean War, he had only come
to consciousness by the time the Indian Mutiny was over; since
then the many little wars of the British Empire had been entirely
professional, quite unconnected with the Forsytes and all they
stood for in the body politic. This war would surely be no
exception. But his mind ran hastily over his family. Two of the
Haymans, he had heard, were in some Yeomanry or other—it had
always been a pleasant thought, there was a certain distinction
about the Yeomanry; they wore, or used to wear, a blue uniform
with silver about it, and rode horses. And Archibald, he
remembered, had once on a time joined the Militia, but had given
it up because his father, Nicholas, had made such a fuss about
his “wasting his time peacocking about in a uniform.” Recently he
had heard somewhere that young Nicholas’ eldest, very young
Nicholas, had become a Volunteer. “No,” thought Soames, mounting
the stairs slowly, “there’s nothing in that!”

He stood on the landing outside his parents’ bed and dressing
rooms, debating whether or not to put his nose in and say a
reassuring word. Opening the landing window, he listened. The
rumble from Piccadilly was all the sound he heard, and with the
thought, “If these motor-cars increase, it’ll affect house
property,” he was about to pass on up to the room always kept
ready for him when he heard, distant as yet, the hoarse rushing
call of a newsvendor. There it was, and coming past the house! He
knocked on his mother’s door and went in.

His father was sitting up in bed, with his ears pricked under the
white hair which Emily kept so beautifully cut. He looked pink,
and extraordinarily clean, in his setting of white sheet and
pillow, out of which the points of his high, thin, nightgowned
shoulders emerged in small peaks. His eyes alone, grey and
distrustful under their withered lids, were moving from the
window to Emily, who in a wrapper was walking up and down,
squeezing a rubber ball attached to a scent bottle. The room
reeked faintly of the eau-de-Cologne she was spraying.

“All right!” said Soames, “it’s not a fire. The Boers have
declared war—that’s all.”

Emily stopped her spraying.

“Oh!” was all she said, and looked at James.

Soames, too, looked at his father. He was taking it differently
from their expectation, as if some thought, strange to them, were
working in him.

“H’m!” he muttered suddenly, “I shan’t live to see the end of
this.”

“Nonsense, James! It’ll be over by Christmas.”

“What do you know about it?” James answered her with asperity.
“It’s a pretty mess at this time of night, too!” He lapsed into
silence, and his wife and son, as if hypnotised, waited for him
to say: “I can’t tell—I don’t know; I knew how it would be!” But
he did not. The grey eyes shifted, evidently seeing nothing in
the room; then movement occurred under the bedclothes, and the
knees were drawn up suddenly to a great height.

“They ought to send out Roberts. It all comes from that fellow
Gladstone and his Majuba.”

The two listeners noted something beyond the usual in his voice,
something of real anxiety. It was as if he had said: “I shall
never see the old country peaceful and safe again. I shall have
to die before I know she’s won.” And in spite of the feeling that
James must not be encouraged to be fussy, they were touched.
Soames went up to the bedside and stroked his father’s hand which
had emerged from under the bedclothes, long and wrinkled with
veins.

“Mark my words!” said James, “consols will go to par. For all I
know, Val may go and enlist.”

“Oh, come, James!” cried Emily, “you talk as if there were
danger.”

Her comfortable voice seemed to soothe James for once.

“Well,” he muttered, “I told you how it would be. I don’t know,
I’m sure—nobody tells me anything. Are you sleeping here, my
boy?”

The crisis was past, he would now compose himself to his normal
degree of anxiety; and, assuring his father that he was sleeping
in the house, Soames pressed his hand, and went up to his room.

The following afternoon witnessed the greatest crowd Timothy’s
had known for many a year. On national occasions, such as this,
it was, indeed, almost impossible to avoid going there. Not that
there was any danger or rather only just enough to make it
necessary to assure each other that there was none.

Nicholas was there early. He had seen Soames the night
before—Soames had said it was bound to come. This old Kruger was
in his dotage—why, he must be seventy-five if he was a day!

(Nicholas was eighty-two.) What had Timothy said? He had had a
fit after Majuba. These Boers were a grasping lot! The
dark-haired Francie, who had arrived on his heels, with the
contradictious touch which became the free spirit of a daughter
of Roger, chimed in:

“Kettle and pot, Uncle Nicholas. What price the Uitlanders?” What
price, indeed! A new expression, and believed to be due to her
brother George.

Aunt Juley thought Francie ought not to say such a thing. Dear
Mrs. MacAnder’s boy, Charlie MacAnder, was one, and no one could
call him grasping. At this Francie uttered one of her _mots_,
scandalising, and so frequently repeated:

“Well, his father’s a Scotchman, and his mother’s a cat.”

Aunt Juley covered her ears, too late, but Aunt Hester smiled; as
for Nicholas, he pouted—witticism of which he was not the author
was hardly to his taste. Just then Marian Tweetyman arrived,
followed almost immediately by young Nicholas. On seeing his son,
Nicholas rose.

“Well, I must be going,” he said, “Nick here will tell you
what’ll win the race.” And with this hit at his eldest, who, as a
pillar of accountancy, and director of an insurance company, was
no more addicted to sport than his father had ever been, he
departed. Dear Nicholas! What race was that? Or was it only one
of his jokes? He was a wonderful man for his age! How many lumps
would dear Marian take? And how were Giles and Jesse? Aunt Juley
supposed their Yeomanry would be very busy now, guarding the
coast, though of course the Boers had no ships. But one never
knew what the French might do if they had the chance, especially
since that dreadful Fashoda scare, which had upset Timothy so
terribly that he had made no investments for months afterwards.
It was the ingratitude of the Boers that was so dreadful, after
everything had been done for them—Dr. Jameson imprisoned, and he
was so nice, Mrs. MacAnder had always said. And Sir Alfred Milner
sent out to talk to them—such a clever man! She didn’t know what
they wanted.

But at this moment occurred one of those sensations—so precious
at Timothy’s—which great occasions sometimes bring forth:

“Miss June Forsyte.”

Aunts Juley and Hester were on their feet at once, trembling from
smothered resentment, and old affection bubbling up, and pride at
the return of a prodigal June! Well, this _was_ a surprise! Dear
June—after all these years! And how well she was looking! Not
changed at all! It was almost on their lips to add, “And how is
your dear grandfather?” forgetting in that giddy moment that poor
dear Jolyon had been in his grave for seven years now.

Ever the most courageous and downright of all the Forsytes, June,
with her decided chin and her spirited eyes and her hair like
flame, sat down, slight and short, on a gilt chair with a
bead-worked seat, for all the world as if ten years had not
elapsed since she had been to see them—ten years of travel and
independence and devotion to lame ducks. Those ducks of late had
been all definitely painters, etchers, or sculptors, so that her
impatience with the Forsytes and their hopelessly inartistic
outlook had become intense. Indeed, she had almost ceased to
believe that her family existed, and looked round her now with a
sort of challenging directness which brought exquisite discomfort
to the roomful. She had not expected to meet any of them but “the
poor old things”; and why she had come to see _them_ she hardly
knew, except that, while on her way from Oxford Street to a
studio in Latimer Road, she had suddenly remembered them with
compunction as two long-neglected old lame ducks.

Aunt Juley broke the hush again. “We’ve just been saying, dear,
how dreadful it is about these Boers! And what an impudent thing
of that old Kruger!”

“Impudent!” said June. “I think he’s quite right. What business
have we to meddle with them? If he turned out all those wretched
Uitlanders it would serve them right. They’re only after money.”

The silence of sensation was broken by Francie saying:

“What? Are you a pro-Boer?” (undoubtedly the first use of that
expression).

“Well! Why can’t we leave them alone?” said June, just as, in the
open doorway, the maid said “Mr. Soames Forsyte.” Sensation on
sensation! Greeting was almost held up by curiosity to see how
June and he would take this encounter, for it was shrewdly
suspected, if not quite known, that they had not met since that
old and lamentable affair of her fiance Bosinney with Soames’
wife. They were seen to just touch each other’s hands, and look
each at the other’s left eye only. Aunt Juley came at once to the
rescue:

“Dear June is so original. Fancy, Soames, she thinks the Boers
are not to blame.”

“They only want their independence,” said June; “and why
shouldn’t they have it?”

“Because,” answered Soames, with his smile a little on one side,
“they happen to have agreed to our suzerainty.”

“Suzerainty!” repeated June scornfully; “we shouldn’t like
anyone’s suzerainty over us.”

“They got advantages in payment,” replied Soames; “a contract is
a contract.”

“Contracts are not always just,” fumed out June, “and when
they’re not, they ought to be broken. The Boers are much the
weaker. We could afford to be generous.”

Soames sniffed. “That’s mere sentiment,” he said.

Aunt Hester, to whom nothing was more awful than any kind of
disagreement, here leaned forward and remarked decisively:

“What lovely weather it has been for the time of year?”

But June was not to be diverted.

“I don’t know why sentiment should be sneered at. It’s the best
thing in the world.” She looked defiantly round, and Aunt Juley
had to intervene again:

“Have you bought any pictures lately, Soames?”

Her incomparable instinct for the wrong subject had not failed
her. Soames flushed. To disclose the name of his latest purchases
would be like walking into the jaws of disdain. For somehow they
all knew of June’s predilection for “genius” not yet on its legs,
and her contempt for “success” unless she had had a finger in
securing it.

“One or two,” he muttered.

But June’s face had changed; the Forsyte within her was seeing
its chance. Why should not Soames buy some of the pictures of
Eric Cobbley—her last lame duck? And she promptly opened her
attack: Did Soames know his work? It was so wonderful. He was the
coming man.

Oh, yes, Soames knew his work. It was in his view “splashy,” and
would never get hold of the public.

June blazed up.

“Of course it won’t; that’s the last thing one would wish for. I
thought you were a connoisseur, not a picture-dealer.”

“Of course Soames is a connoisseur,” Aunt Juley said hastily; “he
has wonderful taste—he can always tell beforehand what’s going to
be successful.”

“Oh!” gasped June, and sprang up from the bead-covered chair, “I
hate that standard of success. Why can’t people buy things
because they like them?”

“You mean,” said Francie, “because _you_ like them.”

And in the slight pause young Nicholas was heard saying gently
that Violet (his fourth) was taking lessons in pastel, he didn’t
know if they were any use.

“Well, good-bye, Auntie,” said June; “I must get on,” and kissing
her aunts, she looked defiantly round the room, said “Good-bye”
again, and went. A breeze seemed to pass out with her, as if
everyone had sighed.

The third sensation came before anyone had time to speak:

“Mr. James Forsyte.”

James came in using a stick slightly and wrapped in a fur coat
which gave him a fictitious bulk.

Everyone stood up. James was so old; and he had not been at
Timothy’s for nearly two years.

“It’s hot in here,” he said.

Soames divested him of his coat, and as he did so could not help
admiring the glossy way his father was turned out. James sat
down, all knees, elbows, frock-coat, and long white whiskers.

“What’s the meaning of that?” he said.

Though there was no apparent sense in his words, they all knew
that he was referring to June. His eyes searched his son’s face.

“I thought I’d come and see for myself. What have they answered
Kruger?”

Soames took out an evening paper, and read the headline.

“‘Instant action by our Government—state of war existing!’”

“Ah!” said James, and sighed. “I was afraid they’d cut and run
like old Gladstone. We shall finish with them this time.”

All stared at him. James! Always fussy, nervous, anxious! James
with his continual, “I told you how it would be!” and his
pessimism, and his cautious investments. There was something
uncanny about such resolution in this the oldest living Forsyte.

“Where’s Timothy?” said James. “He ought to pay attention to
this.”

Aunt Juley said she didn’t know; Timothy had not said much at
lunch to-day. Aunt Hester rose and threaded her way out of the
room, and Francie said rather maliciously:

“The Boers are a hard nut to crack, Uncle James.”

“H’m!” muttered James. “Where do you get your information? Nobody
tells me.”

Young Nicholas remarked in his mild voice that Nick (his eldest)
was now going to drill regularly.

“Ah!” muttered James, and stared before him—his thoughts were on
Val. “He’s got to look after his mother,” he said, “he’s got no
time for drilling and that, with that father of his.” This
cryptic saying produced silence, until he spoke again.

“What did June want here?” And his eyes rested with suspicion on
all of them in turn. “Her father’s a rich man now.” The
conversation turned on Jolyon, and when he had been seen last. It
was supposed that he went abroad and saw all sorts of people now
that his wife was dead; his water-colours were on the line, and
he was a successful man. Francie went so far as to say:

“I should like to see him again; he was rather a dear.”

Aunt Juley recalled how he had gone to sleep on the sofa one day,
where James was sitting. He had always been very amiable; what
did Soames think?

Knowing that Jolyon was Irene’s trustee, all felt the delicacy of
this question, and looked at Soames with interest. A faint pink
had come up in his cheeks.

“He’s going grey,” he said.

Indeed! Had Soames seen him? Soames nodded, and the pink
vanished.

James said suddenly: “Well—I don’t know, I can’t tell.”

It so exactly expressed the sentiment of everybody present that
there was something behind everything, that nobody responded. But
at this moment Aunt Hester returned.

“Timothy,” she said in a low voice, “Timothy has bought a map,
and he’s put in—he’s put in three flags.”

Timothy had...! A sigh went round the company.

If Timothy had indeed put in three flags already, well!—it showed
what the nation could do when it was roused. The war was as good
as over.