The Forsyte Saga Volume 2(56)

Michael bowed.

‘With this land depression your father’s hard hit, I should think.’

‘Well, he talks of being on the look-out for soap or cars; but I shouldn’t be surprised if he mortgages again and lingers on.’

‘A title without a place,’ said Soames, ‘is not natural. He’d better wait for me to go, if I leave anything, that is. But listen to me: I’ve been thinking. Aren’t you happy together, you two, that you don’t have children?’

Michael hesitated.

‘I don’t think,’ he said slowly, ‘that we have ever had a scrap, or anything like it. I have been – I am – terribly fond of her, but you have known better than I that I only picked up the pieces.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Today – Miss June Forsyte.’

‘That woman!’ said Soames. ‘She can’t keep her foot out of anything. A boy and girl affair – over months before you married.’

‘But deep, sir,’ said Michael gently.

‘Deep – who knows at that age? Deep?’ Soames paused: ‘You’re a good fellow – I always knew. Be patient – take a long view.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Michael, very still in his chair, ‘if I can.’

‘She’s everything to me,’ muttered Soames abruptly.

‘And to me – which doesn’t make it easier.’

The line between Soames’s brows deepened.

‘Perhaps not. But hold on! As gently as you like, but hold on! She’s young. She’ll flutter about; there’s nothing in it.’

‘Does he know about the other thing?’ thought Michael.

‘I have my own worries,’ went on Soames, ‘but they’re nothing to what I should feel if anything went wrong with her.’

Michael felt a twinge of sympathy, unusual towards that self-contained grey figure.

‘I shall try my best,’ he said quietly; ‘but I’m not naturally Solomon at six stone seven.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ said Soames, ‘I’m not so sure. Anyway, a child – well, a child would be – a – sort of insur–’ He baulked, the word was not precisely –!

Michael froze.

‘As to that, I can’t say anything.’

Soames got up.

‘No,’ he said wistfully, ‘I suppose not. It’s time to dress.’

To dress – to dine, and if to dine, to sleep – to sleep, to dream! And then what dreams might come!

On the way to his dressing-room Michael encountered Coaker; the man’s face was long.

‘What’s up, Coaker?’

‘The little dog, sir, has been sick in the drawing-room.’

‘The deuce he has!’

‘Yes, sir; it appears that someone left him there alone. He makes himself felt, sir. I always say: He’s an important little dog.…’

During dinner, as if visited by remorse for having given them advice and two pictures worth some thousands of pounds, Soames pitched a tale like those of James in his palmy days. He spoke of the French – the fall of the mark – the rise in Consols – the obstinacy of Dumetrius, the picture-dealer, over a Constable skyscape which Soames wanted and Dumetrius did not, but to which the fellow held on just for the sake of a price which Soames did not mean to pay. He spoke of the trouble which he foresaw with the United States over their precious Prohibition. They were a headstrong lot. They took up a thing and ran their heads against a stone wall. He himself had never drunk anything to speak of, but he liked to feel that he could. The Americans liked to feel that he couldn’t, that was tyranny. They were overbearing. He shouldn’t be surprised if everybody took to drinking over there. As to the League of Nations, a man that morning had palavered it up. That cock wouldn’t fight – spend money, and arrange things which would have arranged themselves, but as for anything important, such as abolishing Bolshevism, or poison gas, they never would, and to pretend it was all-me-eye-and-Betty-Martin. It was almost a record for one habitually taciturn, and deeply useful to two young people only anxious that he should continue to talk, so that they might think of other things. The conduct of Ting-a-ling was the sole other subject of consideration. Fleur thought it due to the copper floor. Soames that he must have picked up something in the Square – dogs were always picking things up. Michael suggested that it was just Chinese – a protest against there being nobody to watch his self-sufficiency. In China there were four hundred million people to watch each other being self-sufficient. What would one expect of a Chinaman suddenly placed in the Gobi Desert? He would certainly be sick.