The hall porter came out of his box. A gentleman was waiting.
‘What gentleman?’ said Soames, sidelong.
‘I think he’s your nephew, sir, Mr Dartie.’
‘Val Dartie! H’m! Where?’
‘In the little room, sir.’
The little room – all the accommodation considered worthy of such as were not Connoisseurs – was at the end of a passage, and in no taste at all, as if the Club were saying: ‘See what it is not to be one of us!’ Soames entered it, and saw Val Dartie smoking a cigarette and gazing with absorption at the only object of interest, his own reflection in the glass above the fire.
He never saw his nephew without wondering when he would say: ‘Look here, Uncle Soames, I’m up a stump.’ Breeding racehorses! There could only be one end to that!
‘Well?’ he said, ‘how are you?’
The face in the glass turned round, and became the back of a clipped sandyish head.
‘Oh! bobbish, thanks! You look all right, Uncle Soames. I just wanted to ask you: Must I take these screws of old George Forsyte’s? They’re dashed bad.’
‘Gift horse in the mouth?’ said Soames.
‘Well,’ said Val, ‘but they’re so dashed bad; by the time I’ve paid legacy duty, boxed them to a sale, and sold them, there won’t be a sixpence. One of them falls down when you look at it. And the other two are broken-winded. The poor old boy kept them, because he couldn’t get rid of them. They’re about five hundred years old.’
‘Thought you were fond of horses,’ said Soames. ‘Can’t you turn them out?’
‘Yes,’ said Val, drily; ‘but I’ve got my living to make. I haven’t told my wife, for fear she should suggest that. I’m afraid I might see them in my dreams if I sold them. They’re only fit for the kennels. Can I write to the executors and say I’m not rich enough to take them?’
‘You can,’ said Soames, and the words: ‘How’s your wife?’ died unspoken on his lips. She was the daughter of his enemy, young Jolyon. That fellow was dead, but the fact remained.
‘I will, then,’ said Val. ‘How did his funeral go off?’
‘Very simple affair – I had nothing to do with it.’ The days of funerals were over. No flowers, no horses, no plumes – a motor hearse, a couple of cars or so, was all the attention paid nowadays to the dead. Another sign of the times!
‘I’m staying the night at Green Street,’ said Val. ‘I suppose you’re not there, are you?’
‘No,’ said Soames, and did not miss the relief in his nephew’s countenance.
‘Oh! by the way, Uncle Soames – do you advise me to buy P.P.R.S. shares?’
‘On the contrary. I’m going to advise your mother to sell. Tell her I’m coming in tomorrow.’
‘Why? I thought–’
‘Never mind my reasons!’ said Soames shortly.
‘So long, then!’
Exchanging a chilly hand-shake, he watched his nephew withdraw.
So long! An expression, old as the Boer war, that he had never got used to – meant nothing so far as he could see! He entered the reading-room. A number of Connoisseurs were sitting and standing about, and Soames, least clubbable of men, sought the solitude of an embrasured window. He sat there polishing the nail of one forefinger against the back of the other, and chewing the cud of life. After all, what was the point of anything. There was George! He had had an easy life – never done any work! And here was himself, who had done a lot of work! And sooner or later they would bury him too, with a motor hearse probably! And there was his son-in-law, young Mont, full of talk about goodness knew what – and that thincheeked chap who had sold him the balloons this afternoon. And old Fontenoy, and that waiter over there; and the out-of-works and the in-works; and those chaps in Parliament, and the parsons in their pulpits – what were they all for? There was the old gardener down at Mapledurham pushing his roller over and over the lawn, week after week, and if he didn’t, what would the lawn be like? That was life – gardener rolling lawn! Put it that there was another life – he didn’t believe it, but for the sake of argument – that life must be just the same. Rolling lawn – to keep it lawn! What point in lawn? Conscious of pessimism, he rose. He had better be getting back to Fleur’s – they dressed for dinner! He supposed there was something in dressing for dinner, but it was like lawn – you came unrolled – undressed again, and so it went on! Over and over and over to keep up to a pitch, that was – ah! what was the pitch for?