‘Yes, sir.’
He was always saying ‘Yes, sir’, without having an idea of where places were.
‘You’d better ask,’ he said, as the car moved up the rutted lane. Sooner than ask, the fellow would go back to London! Not that there was anyone to ask. Soames was impressed, indeed, by the extreme emptiness of this parish where his roots lay. It seemed terribly hilly, and full of space, with large fields, some woods in the coombe to the left, and a soil that you couldn’t swear by – not red and not white and not brown exactly; the sea was blue, however, and the cliffs, so far as he could judge, streaky. The lane bent to the right, past a blacksmith’s forge.
‘Hi!’ said Soames, ‘pull up!’ He himself got out to ask. That fellow never made head or tail of what he was told.
The blacksmith was hammering at a wheel, and Soames waited till his presence was observed.
‘Where’s the vicarage?’
‘Up the lane, third ’ouse on the right’
‘Thank you,’ said Soames, and, looking at the man suspiciously, added:
‘Is the name Forsyte known hereabouts nowadays?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Have you ever heard the name Forsyte?’
‘Farsyt? Noa.’
Soames heard him with a disappointed relief, and resumed his seat. What if he’d said: ‘Yes, it’s mine!’
A blacksmith’s was a respectable occupation, but he felt that he could do without it in the family. The car moved on.
The vicarage was smothered in creeper. Probably the vicar would be, too! He rang a rusty bell and waited. The door was opened by a red-cheeked girl. It was all very rustic.
‘I want the vicar,’ said Soames. ‘Is he in?’
‘Yes, sir. What name?’
But at this moment a thin man in a thin suit and a thin beard came out from a doorway, saying:
‘Am I wanted, Mary?’
‘Yes,’ said Soames; ‘here’s my card.’
There ought – he felt – to be a way of enquiring about one’s origin that would be distinguished; but, not finding it, he added simply:
‘My family came from hereabouts some generations back; I just wanted to have a look at the place, and ask you a question or two.’
‘Forsyte?’ said the vicar, glancing at the card: ‘I don’t know the name, but I daresay we shall find something.’
His clothes were extremely well worn, and Soames had the impression that his eyes would have been glad if they could. ‘Smells a fee,’ he thought; ‘poor devil!’
‘Will you come in?’ said the vicar. ‘I’ve got some records and an old tithe map. We might have a look at them. The registers go back to 1580. I could make a search for you.’
‘I don’t know if that’s worth while,’ said Soames, following him into a room that impressed him as dismal beyond words.
‘Do sit down,’ said the vicar. ‘I’ll get that map. Forsyte? I seem to remember the name now.’
The fellow was agreeable, and looked as if he could do with an honest penny!
‘I’ve been up to the church,’ said Soames; ‘it seems very close to the sea.’
‘Yes; they used to use the pulpit, I’m afraid, to hide their smuggled brandy.’
‘I got a date in the graveyard – 1777; the stones are very much let down.’
‘Yes,’ said the vicar, who was groping in a cupboard: ‘one’s difficulty is the sea air. Here’s the map I spoke of;’ and, unrolling a large and dingy map, he laid it on the table, weighting down the corners with a tin of tobacco, an inkstand, a book of sermons, and a dog whip. The latter was not heavy enough, and the map curled slowly away from Soames.
‘Sometimes,’ said the vicar, restoring the corner, and looking round for something to secure it, ‘we get very useful information from these old maps.’
‘I’ll keep it down,’ said Soames, bending over the map. ‘I suppose you get a lot of Americans, fishing for ancestors?’
‘Not a lot,’ said the vicar, with a.sideway glance that Soames did not quite like. ‘I can remember two. Ah! here,’ and his finger came down on the map, ‘I thought I remembered the name – it’s unusual. Look! This field close to the sea is marked “Great Forsyte”!’
Again Soames felt a thrill.
‘What size is that field?’
‘Twenty-four acres. There was the ruin of an old house, I remember, just there; they took the stones away in the war to make our shooting range. “Great Forsyte” – isn’t that interesting?’
‘More interesting to me,’ said Soames, ‘if they’d left the stones.’