The Forsyte Saga, Volume 3(243)
‘Just eleven stone,’ he said; ‘do you go up or down, Mr Croom?’
‘I keep about ten twelve.’
Sir Lawrence scrutinized his lean figure.
‘Well, you look very fit. Extraordinary what a shadow can be cast on life by the abdomen. However, you won’t have to worry till you’re fifty.’
‘Surely, sir, you’ve never had any bother there?’
‘Not to speak of; but I’ve watched it darken so many doors. And now I must be getting on. Good night to you!’
‘Good night, sir. I really am awfully grateful.’
‘Not at all. My cousin Jack doesn’t bet, and if you take my advice, you won’t either.’
Young Croom said heartily: ‘I certainly shan’t, sir.’
They shook hands and Sir Lawrence resumed his progress up St James’s Street.
‘That young man,’ he was thinking, ‘impresses me favourably, and I can’t think why – he appears to be going to be a nuisance. What I ought to have said to him was: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife.” But God so made the world that one doesn’t say what one ought!’ The young were very interesting; one heard of them being disrespectful to Age and all that, but really he couldn’t see it. They seemed to him fully as well-mannered as he himself had been at their age, and easier to talk to. One never knew what they were thinking, of course; but that might be as well. After all, one used to think that the old – and Sir Lawrence winced on the kerbstone of Piccadilly – were only fit to be measured for their coffins. ‘Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis’; but was that true? No more really than the difference in the pronunciation of Latin since one’s youth. Youth would always be Youth and Age would be Age, with the same real divergence and distrust between them, and the same queer hankering by Age to feel as Youth was feeling and think as Youth was thinking; the same pretence that it wouldn’t so feel and think for the world, and, at the back of all, the instinct that, really given the chance, Age wouldn’t have its life over again. Merciful – that! With stealthy quietude Life, as it wore one out, supplied the adjustment of a suitable lethargy. At each stage of existence the zest for living was tailored to what man had before him and no more. That fellow Goethe had attained immortality to the tunes of Gounod by fanning a dying spark into a full-blown flame. ‘Rats!’ thought Sir Lawrence: ‘and very German rats! Would I choose the sighing and the sobbing, the fugitive raptures and the lingering starvations in front of that young man, if I could? I would not! Sufficient unto the old buffer is the bufferism thereof. Is that policeman never going to stop this blamed traffic?’ No, there was no real change! Men drove cars now to the same tick as the old horse-bus and the hansom-cab drivers had driven their slipping, clattering gees. Young men and women experienced the same legal or illegal urge towards each other. The pavements were different, and the lingo in which those youthful hankerings were expressed. But – Lord Almighty! – the rules of the road, the collisions and slips and general miraculous avoidances, the triumphs, mortifications, and fulfilments for better for worse, were all the same as ever. ‘No,’ he thought; ‘the Police may make rules, Divines write to the papers, Judges express themselves as they like, but human nature will find its own way about as it did when I was cutting my wisdom teeth.’
The policeman reversed his sleeves, and Sir Lawrence crossed, pursuing his way to Berkeley Square. Here was change enough! The houses of the great were going fast. Piecemeal, without expressed aim, almost shamefacedly, in true English fashion, London was being rebuilt. The dynastic age was gone, with its appendages, feudalism, and the Church. Even wars would now be fought for peoples and their markets. No more dynastic or religious wars. Well, that was something! ‘We’re getting more like insects daily,’ thought Sir Lawrence. And how interesting! Religion was nearly dead because there was no longer real belief in future life; but something was struggling to take its place – service – social service – the ants’ creed, the bees’ creed! Communism had formulated it and was whipping it into the people from the top. So characteristic! They were always whipping something into somebody in Russia. The quick way, no doubt, but the sure way? No! The voluntary system remained the best, because when once it got hold it lasted – only it was so darned slow! Yes, and darned ironical! So far the sense of social service was almost the perquisite of the older families, who had somehow got hold of the notion that they must do something useful to pay for their position. Now that they were dying out would the sense of service persist? How were the ‘people’ to pick it up? ‘Well,’ thought Sir Lawrence, ‘after all, there’s the bus conductor; and the fellow in the shop, who’ll take infinite trouble to match the colour of your socks; and the woman who’ll look after her neighbour’s baby, or collect for the waifs and strays; and the motorist who’ll stop and watch you tinkering at your car; and the postman who’s grateful for a tip; and the almost anybody who’ll try and pull you out of a pond if he can really see you’re in it. What’s wanted is the slogan: “Fresh air and exercise for good instincts.” One might have it on all the buses, instead of: “Canon’s Colossal Crime,” or “Strange Sweepstake Swindle.” And that reminds me to ask Dinny what she knows about Clare and that young man.’