The lock-keeper’s daughter came out to take some garments off a line. Women in the country seemed to do nothing but hang clothes on lines and take them off again! Soames watched her, neat-handed, neat-ankled, in neat light-blue print, with a face like a Botticelli – lots of faces like that in England! She would have a young man or perhaps two – and they would walk in that wood, and sit in damp places and all the rest of it, and imagine themselves happy, he shouldn’t wonder; or she would get up behind him on one of those cycle things and go tearing about the country with her dress up to her knees. And her name would be Gladys or Doris, or what not! She saw him, and smiled. She had a full mouth that looked pretty when it smiled. Soames raised his hat slightly.
‘Nice evening!’ he said.
‘Yes, sir.’
Very respectful.
‘River’s still high.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Rather a pretty girl! Suppose he had been a lock-keeper, and Fleur had been a lock-keeper’s daughter – hanging clothes on a line, and saying: ‘Yes, sir!’ Well, he would as soon be a lock-keeper as anything else in a humble walk of life – watching water go up and down, and living in that pretty cottage, with nothing to worry about, except – except his daughter! And he checked an impulse to say to the girl: ‘Are you a good daughter?’ Was there such a thing nowadays – a daughter that thought of you first, and herself after?
‘These cuckoos!’ he said, heavily.
‘Yes, sir.’
She was taking a somewhat suggestive garment off the line now, and Soames lowered his eyes, he did not want to embarrass the girl – not that he saw any signs. Probably you couldn’t embarrass a girl nowadays! And, rising, he closed the handle of his shooting-stick.
‘Well, it’ll keep fine, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good evening.’
‘Good evening, sir.’
Followed by the dog, he moved along towards home. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth; but how would she talk to her young man? Humiliating to be old! On an evening like this, one should be young again, and walk in a wood with a girl like that; and all that had been faun-like in his nature pricked ears for a moment, licked lips, and with a shrug and a slight sense of shame, died down.
It had always been characteristic of Soames, who had his full share of the faun, to keep the fact carefully hidden. Like all his family, except, perhaps, his cousin George and his uncle Swithin, he was secretive in matters of sex; no Forsyte talked sex, or liked to hear others talk it; and when they felt its call, they gave no outward sign. Not the Puritan spirit, but a certain refinement in them forbade the subject, and where they got it from they did not know!
After his lonely dinner he lit his cigar and strolled out again. It was really warm for May, and still light enough for him to see his cows in the meadow beyond the river. They would soon be sheltering for the night, under that hawthorn hedge. And here came the swans, with their grey brood in tow; handsome birds, going to bed on the island!
The river was whitening; the dusk seemed held in the trees, waiting to spread and fly up into a sky just drained of sunset. Very peaceful, and a little eerie – the hour between! Those starlings made a racket – disagreeable beggars; there could be no real self-respect with such short tails! The swallows went by, taking ‘night-caps’ of gnats and early months; and the poplars stood so still – just as if listening – that Soames put up his hand to feel for the breeze. Not a breath! And then, all at once – no swallows flying, no starlings; a chalky hue over river, over sky! The lights sprang up in the house. A night-flying beetle passed over him, booming. The dew was falling – he felt it; must go in. And, as he turned, quickly, dusk softened the trees, the sky, the river. And Soames thought: ‘Hope to goodness there’ll be no mysteries when she comes down tomorrow. I don’t want to be worried!’ Just she and the little chap; it might be so pleasant, if that old love trouble with its gnarled roots in the past and its bitter fruits in the future were not present, to cast a gloom.…
He slept well, and next morning could settle to nothing but the arrangement of things already arranged. Several times he stopped dead in the middle of this task to listen for the car and remind himself that he must not fuss, or go asking things. No doubt she had seen young Jon again yesterday, but he must not ask.
He went up to his picture gallery and unhooked from the wall a little Watteau, which he had once heard her admire. He took it downstairs and stood it on an easel in her bedroom – a young man in full plum-coloured skirts and lace ruffles, playing a tambourine to a young lady in blue, with a bare bosom, behind a pet lamb. Charming thing! She could take it away when she went, and hang it with the Fragonards and Chardin in her drawing-room. Standing by the double-poster, he bent down and sniffed at the bed-linen. Not quite as fragrant as it ought to be. That woman, Mrs Edger – his housekeeper – had forgotten the pot-pourri bags; he knew there would be something! And, going to a store closet, he took four little bags with tiny mauve ribbons from a shelf, and put them into the bed. He wandered thence into the bathroom. He didn’t know whether she would like those salts – they were Annette’s new speciality, and smelt too strong for his taste. Otherwise it seemed all right; the soap was ‘Roger and Gallet’, and the waste worked. All these new gadgets – half of them didn’t; there was nothing like the old-fashioned thing that pulled up with a chain! Great change in washing during his lifetime. He couldn’t quite remember prebathroom days; but he could well recall how his father used to say regularly: ‘They never gave me a bath when I was a boy. First house of my own, I had one put in – people used to come and stare at it – in 1840. They tell me the doctors are against washing now; but I don’t know.’ James had been dead a quarter of a century, and the doctors had turned their coats several times since. Fact was, people enjoyed baths; so it didn’t really matter what views the doctors took! Kit enjoyed them – some children didn’t. And, leaving the bathroom, Soames stood in front of the flowers the gardener had brought in – among them, three special early roses. Roses were the fellow’s forte, or rather his weak point – he cared for nothing else; that was the worst of people nowadays, they specialized so that there was no relativity between things, in spite of its being the fashionable philosophy, or so they told him. He took up a rose and sniffed at it deeply. So many different kinds now – he had lost track! In his young days one could tell them – La France, Maréchal Neil, and Gloire de Dijon – nothing else to speak of; you never heard of them now. And at this reminder of the mutability of flowers and the ingenuity of human beings, Soames felt slightly exhausted. There was no end to things!