The Forsyte Saga, Volume 2 (45 page)

‘Not a blessed thing. Still, I've got to find something, or peg out.'

His tragic and knowing eyes searched Michael's face.

‘I'm awfully sorry,' said Michael. ‘Good-bye!'

The hairdresser made a queer jerky little movement.

Emerging from Sapper's Row into the crowded, roaring thoroughfare, Michael thought of a speech in a play he had seen a year or two before. ‘The condition of the people leaves much to be desired. I shall make a point of taking up the cudgels in the House. I shall move –!' The condition of the people! What a remote thing! The sportive nightmare of a few dreaming nights, the skeleton in a well-locked cupboard, the discomforting rare howl of a hungry dog! And probably no folk in England less disturbed by it than the gallant six hundred odd who sat with him in ‘that House'. For to improve the condition of the people was their job, and that relieved them of a sense of nightmare. Since Oliver Cromwell some sixteen thousand, perhaps, had sat there before them, to the same end. And was the
trick done – not precisely! Still they were really working for it, and other people were only looking on and telling them how to do it!

Thus was he thinking when a voice said:

‘Not got a job about you, sir?'

Michael quickened his steps, then stood still. He saw that the man who had spoken, having cast his eyes down again, had missed this sign of weakness; and he went back to him. They were black eyes in a face round and pasty like a mince-pie. Decent and shabby, quiet and forlorn, he wore an ex-Service-man's badge.

‘You spoke to me?' said Michael.

‘I'm sure I don't know why, sir; it just hopped out of me.'

‘No work?'

‘No; and pretty low.'

‘Married?'

‘Widower, sir; two children.'

‘Dole?'

‘Yes; and fair sick of it.'

‘In the war, I see?'

‘Yes, Mespot.'

‘What sort of a job do you want?'

‘Any mortal thing.'

‘Give me your name and address.'

‘Henry Boddick, 4 Waltham Buildings, Gunnersbury.'

Michael took it down.

‘Can't promise anything,' he said.

‘No, sir.'

‘Good luck, anyway. Have a cigar?'

‘Thank you, and good luck to
you
, sir.'

Michael saluted, and resumed his progress; once out of sight of Henry Boddick, he took a taxi. A little more of this, and he would lose the sweet reasonableness without which one could not sit in ‘that House'!

‘For Sale or to Let' recorded recurrently in Portland Place, somewhat restored his sense of balance.

That same afternoon he took Francis Wilmot with him to
the House, and leaving him at the foot of the Distinguished Strangers' stairway, made his way on to the floor.

He had never been in Ireland, so that the debate had for him little relation to reality. It seemed to illustrate, however, the obstacles in the way of agreement on any mortal subject. Almost every speech emphasized the paramount need for a settlement, but declared the impossibility of ‘going back' on this, that, or the other factor which precluded such settlement. Still, for a debate on Ireland it seemed good-tempered; and presently they would all go out and record the votes they had determined on before it all began. He remembered the thrill with which he had listened to the first debates after his election; the impression each speech had given him that somebody must certainly be converted to something and the reluctance with which he had discovered that nobody ever was. Some force was at work far stronger than any eloquence, however striking or sincere. The clothes were washed elsewhere; in here they were but aired before being put on. Still, until people put thoughts into words, they didn't know what they thought, and sometimes they didn't know afterwards. And for the hundredth time Michael was seized by a weak feeling in his legs. In a few weeks he himself must rise on them. Would the House accord him its ‘customary indulgence'! or would it say: ‘Young fellow – teaching your grandmother to suck eggs – shut up!'

He looked around him.

His fellow members were sitting in all shapes. Chosen of the people, they confirmed the doctrine that human nature did not change, or so slowly that one could not see the process – he had seen their prototypes in Roman statues, in medieval pictures…. ‘Plain but pleasant,' he thought, unconsciously reproducing George Forsyte's description of himself in his palmy days. But did they take themselves seriously, as under Burke, as under Gladstone even?

The words ‘customary indulgence' roused him from reverie; for they meant a maiden speech. Hal yes! the member for Cornmarket. He composed himself to listen. Delivering himself with restraint and clarity, the speaker seemed suggesting that
the doctrine ‘Do unto others as you would they should do unto you' need not be entirely neglected, even in Ireland; but it was long – too long – Michael watched the House grow restive. ‘Alas! poor brother!' he thought, as the speaker somewhat hastily sat down. A very handsome man rose in his place. He congratulated his honourable friend on his able and well-delivered effort, he only regretted that it had nothing to do with the business in hand. Exactly! Michael slipped out. Recovering his ‘distinguished stranger', he walked away with him to South Square.

Francis Wilmot was in a state of some enthusiasm.

‘That was fine,' he said. ‘Who was the gentleman under the curtains?'

‘The Speaker?'

‘No; I mean the one who didn't speak.'

‘Exactly; he's the dignity of the House.'

‘They ought to feed him oxygen; it must be sleepy under there. I liked the delegate who spoke last. He would “go” in America; he had big ideas.'

‘The idealism which keeps you out of the League of Nations, eh?' said Michael with a grin.

Francis Wilmot turned his head rather sharply.

‘Well,' he said, ‘we're like any other people when it comes to bed-rock.'

‘Quite so,' said Michael, ‘idealism is just a by-product of geography – it's the haze that lies in the middle distance. The farther you are from bed-rock, the less quick you need to be to see it. We're twenty sea-miles more idealistic about the European situation than the French are. And you're three thousand sea-miles more idealistic them we are. But when it's a matter of niggers, we're three thousand sea-miles more idealistic than you; isn't that so?'

Francis Wilmot narrowed his dark eyes.

‘It is,' he said. ‘The farther North we go in the States, the more idealistic we get about the negro. Anne and I've lived all our life with darkies, and never had trouble; we love them, and they love us; but I wouldn't trust myself not to join in lynching
one that laid his hands on her. I've talked that over many times with Jon. He doesn't see it that way; he says a darky should be tried like a white man; but he doesn't know the real South. His mind is still three thousand sea-miles away.'

Michael was silent. Something within him always closed up at mention of a name which he still spelt mentally with an ‘h'.

Francis Wilmot added ruminatively: ‘There are a few saints in every country proof against your theory; but the rest of us, I reckon, aren't above human nature.'

‘Talking of human nature,' said Michael, ‘here's my father-in-law!'

SOAMES KEEPS HIS EYES OPEN

S
OAMES
, having prolonged his week-end visit, had been spending the afternoon at the Zoological Gardens, removing his great-nephews, the little Cardigans, from the too close proximity of monkeys and cats. After standing them once more in Imogen's hall, he had roosted at his Club till, idly turning his evening paper, he had come on this paragraph, in the ‘Chiff-chaff' column:

‘A surprise for the Coming Session is being confectioned at the Wednesday gatherings of a young hostess not a hundred miles from Westminster. Her husband, a prospective baronet lately connected with literature, is to be entrusted with the launching in Parliament of a policy which enjoys the peculiar label of Foggartism, derived from Sir James Foggart's book called
The Parlous State of England
. This amusing alarum is attributed to the somewhat fantastic brain which guides a well-known weekly. We shall see what comes of it. In the meantime the enterprising little lady in question is losing no chance of building up her ‘salon' on the curiosity which ever surrounds any buccaneering in politics.'

Soames rubbed his eyes; then read it again with rising anger. ‘Enterprising little lady is losing no chance of building up her “salon”.' Who had written that? He put the paper in his pocket – almost the first theft he had ever committed – and all the way across St James's Park in the gathering twilight he brooded on that anonymous paragraph. The allusion seemed to him unmistakable, and malicious into the bargain. ‘Lion-hunter' would not have been plainer. Unfortunately, in a primary sense ‘lion-hunter' was a compliment, and Soames doubted whether its secondary sense had ever been ‘laid down' as libellous. He was still brooding deeply, when the young men ranged alongside.

‘Well, sir?'

‘Ah!' said Soames. ‘I want to speak to you. You've got a traitor in the camp.' And without meaning to at all, he looked angrily at Francis Wilmot.

‘Now, sir?' said Michael, when they were in the study.

Soames held out the folded paper.

Michael read the paragraph and made a face.

‘Whoever wrote that comes to your evenings,' said Soames; ‘that's clear. Who is he?'

‘Very likely a she.'

‘D'you mean to say they print such things by women?'

Michael did not answer. Old Forsyte was behind the times.

‘Will they tell me who it is, if I go down to them?' asked Soames.

‘No, fortunately.'

‘How d'you mean “fortunately”?'

‘Well, sir, the Press is a sensitive plant. I'm afraid you might make it curl up. Besides, it's always saying nice things that aren't deserved.'

‘But this –' began Soames; he stopped in time, and substituted: ‘Do you mean that we've got to sit down under it?'

‘To lie down, I'm afraid.'

‘Fleur has an evening tomorrow.'

‘Yes.'

‘I shall stay up for it, and keep my eyes open.'

Michael had a vision of his father-in-law, like a plain-clothes man in the neighbourhood of wedding-presents.

But in spite of assumed levity, Michael had been hit. The knowledge that his adored one had the collector's habit, uid flitted, alluring, among the profitable, had, so far, caused him only indulgent wonder. But now it seemed more than an amusing foible. The swiftness with which she turned her smile off and on as though controlled by a switch under her shingled hair; the quick turns of her neck, so charming and exposed; the clever roving, disguised so well but not quite well enough, of the pretty eyes; the droop and flutter of their white lids; the expressive hands grasping, if one could so call such slim and dainty apprehensions, her career – all this suddenly caused Michael pain. Still she was doing it for him and Kit! French women, they said, co-operated with their husbands in the family career. It was the French blood in her. Or perhaps just idealism, the desire to have and be the best of whatever bunch there was about! Thus Michael, loyally. But his uneasy eyes roved from face to face of the Wednesday gathering, trying to detect signs of quizzicality.

Soames followed another method. His mind, indeed, was uncomplicated by the currents awash in that of one who goes to bed with the object of his criticism. For him there was no reason why Fleur should not know as many aristocrats, Labour members, painters, ambassadors, young fools, even writing fellows, as might flutter her fancy. The higher up they were, the less likely, he thought with a certain naïveté, they would be to borrow money or get her into a mess. His daughter was as good or better than any of them, and his deep pride was stung to the quick by the notion that people should think she had to claw and scrape to get them round her. It was not she who was after them, but they who were after her! Standing under the Fragonard which he had given her, grizzled, neatly moustached, close-faced, chinny, with a gaze concentrated on nothing in particular, as of one who has looked over much and found little in it, he might have been one of her ambassadors.

A young woman, with red-gold hair, about an inch long on her de-shingled neck, came and stood with her back to him, beside
a soft man, who kept washing his hands. Soames could hear every word of their talk.

‘Isn't the little Mont amusing? Look at her now, with “Don Fernando” – you'd think he was her only joy. Ah! There's young Bashly! Off she goes. She's a born little snob. But that doesn't make this a “salon”, as she thinks. To found a “salon” you want personality, and wit, and the “don't care a damn” spirit. She hasn't got a scrap. Besides, who is she?'