The Forsyte Saga Volume 2(151)

‘Start gradually; where there’s a will there’s a way.’

‘And won’t they just swell the big towns out there?’

‘Teach ‘em to want land, and give it ‘em.’

‘I don’t know if it’s enough,’ said Michael, boldly; ‘the lure of the towns is terrific’

Sir James nodded. ‘A town’s no bad thing till it’s overdone, as they are here. Those that go to the towns will increase the demand for our supplies.’

‘Well,’ thought Michael, ‘I’m getting on. What shall I ask him next?’ And he contemplated the cats, who were stirring uneasily. A peculiar rumbling noise had taken possession of the silence. Michael looked up. Sir James Foggart was asleep! In repose he was more tremendous than ever – perhaps rather too tremendous; for his snoring seemed to shake the room. The cats tucked their heads farther in. There was a slight smell of burning. Michael picked a fallen cigar from the carpet. What should he do now? Wait for a revival, or clear out? Poor old boy! Foggartism had never seemed to Michael a more forlorn hope than in this sanctum of its fount and origin. Covering his ears, he sat quite still. One by one the cats got up. Michael looked at his watch. ‘I shall lose my train,’ he thought, and tiptoed to the door, behind a procession of deserting cats. It was as though Foggartism was snoring the little of its life away! ‘Good-bye, sir!’ he said softly, and went out. He walked to the station very thoughtful. Foggartism! That vast if simple programme seemed based on the supposition that human beings could see two inches before their noses. But was that supposition justified; if so would England be so town-ridden and over-populated? For one man capable of taking a far and comprehensive view and going to sleep on it, there were nine – if not nine-and-ninety – who could take near and partial views and remain wide awake. Practical politics! The answer to all wisdom however you might boom it out. ‘Oh! Ah! Young Mont – not a practical politician!’ It was public death to be so labelled. And Michael, in his railway carriage, with his eyes on the English grass, felt like a man on whom everyone was heaping earth. Had pelicans crying in the wilderness a sense of humour? If not, their time was poor. Grass, grass, grass! Grass and the towns! And, nestling his chin into his heavy coat, he was soon faster asleep than Sir James Foggart.





Chapter Five



PROGRESS OF THE CASE



WHEN SOAMES said ‘Leave it to me,’ he meant it, of course; but it was really very trying that whenever anything went wrong, he, and not somebody else, had to set it right!

To look more closely into the matter he was staying with his sister Winifred Dartie in Green Street. Finding his nephew Val at dinner there the first night, he took the opportunity of asking him whether he knew anything of Lord Charles Ferrar.

‘What do you want to know, Uncle Soames?’

‘Anything unsatisfactory. I’m told his father doesn’t speak to him.’

‘Well,’ said Val, ‘it’s generally thought he’ll win the Lincolnshire with a horse that didn’t win the Cambridgeshire.’

‘I don’t see the connexion.’

Val Dartie looked at him through his lashes. He was not going to enter for the slander stakes. ‘Well, he’s got to bring off a coup soon, or go under.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Except that he’s one of those chaps who are pleasant to you when you can be of use, and unpleasant when you can’t.’

‘So I gathered from his looks,’ said Soames. ‘Have you had any business dealings with him?’

‘Yes; I sold him a yearling by Torpedo out of Banshee.’

‘Did he pay you?’

‘Yes,’ said Val, with a grin; ‘and she turned out no good.’

‘H’m! I suppose he was unpleasant afterwards? That all you know?’

Val nodded. He knew more, if gossip can be called ‘more’; but what was puffed so freely with the smoke of racing-men’s cigars was hardly suited to the ears of lawyers.

For so old a man of the world Soames was singularly un-aware how in that desirable sphere, called Society, everyone is slandered daily, and no bones broken; slanderers and slandered dining and playing cards together with the utmost good feeling and the intentions of re-slandering each other the moment they are round the corner. Such genial and hair-raising reports reach no outside ears, and Soames really did not know where to begin investigation.

‘Can you ask this Mr Curfew to tea?’ he said to Fleur.

‘What for, Father?’

‘So that I can pump him.’

‘I thought there were detectives for all that sort of thing.’