”
“What a comfort!”
As if with each opening of his lips some gas of rancour had escaped, Eustace felt almost well disposed to the little family which oppressed his front.
“Wish I ‘ad my girl ’ere,” said one of the Jewish youths, suddenly; “this is your cuddlin’ done for you, this is.”
“Strike me!” said the other.
‘Better dead!’ thought Eustace, even more emphatically.
“‘Ow long d’you give it, Sir?” said the mechanician, turning his white face a little.
“Another hour and a half, I suppose.”
“I’ll kill that Kaiser.”
“Stow it, Milly, you’ve said that before. One can ‘ave too much of a good thing, can’t one, Sir?”
“I was beginning to think so,” murmured Eustace.
“Well, she’s young to be knocked about like this. It gets on their nerves, ye know. I’ll be glad to get ‘er and the missis ‘ome, and that’s a fact.”
Something in the paper whiteness of his face, something in the tone of his hollow-chested voice, and the simple altruism of his remark, affected Eustace. He smelled of sweat and sawdust, but he was jolly decent!
And time went by, the heat and odour thickening; there was almost silence now. A voice said: “They’re a – long time abaht it!” and was greeted with a sighing clamour of acquiescence. All that crowded mass of beings had become preoccupied with the shifting of their limbs, the straining of their lungs towards any faint draught of air. Eustace had given up all speculation, his mind was concentrated blankly on the words: ‘Stand straight–stand straight!’ The spindly child, discouraged by the fleeting nature of success, had fallen into a sort of coma against his knee; he wondered whether she had ringworm; he wondered why everybody didn’t faint. The white-faced mechanician had encircled his wife’s waist. His face, ghostly patient, was the one thing Eustace noticed from time to time; it emerged as if supported by no body. Suddenly with a whispering sigh the young woman, behind, fell against his shoulder, and by a sort of miracle found space to crumple down. The mechanician’s white face came round:
“Poor lidy, she’s gone off!”
“Ah!” boomed the whisky-taster, “and no wonder, with this ‘eat.” He waggled his bowler hat above her head.
“Shove ‘er ‘ead between her knees,” said the mechanician.
Eustace pushed the head downwards, the whisky-taster applied a bunch of keys to her back. She came to with a loud sigh.
“Better for her dahn there,” said the mechanician, “the ‘ot air rises.”
And again time went on, with a ground bass of oaths and cheerios. Then the lights went out to a sound as if souls in an underworld had expressed their feelings. Eustace felt a shuddering upheaval pass through the huddled mass. A Cockney voice cried: “Are we dahn-‘earted?” And the movement subsided in a sort of dreadful calm.
Down below a woman shrieked; another and another took it up.
“‘Igh-strikes,” muttered the mechanician; “cover ‘er ears, Polly.” The child against Eustace’s knee had begun to whimper. “Milly, where was Moses when the light went out?”
Eustace greeted the sublime fatuity with a wry and wasted smile. He could feel the Jewish youths trying to elbow themselves out. “Stand still,” he said, sharply.
“That’s right, Sir,” said the mechanician; “no good makin’ ‘eavy weather of it.”
“Sing, you blighters–sing!” cried a voice: “‘When the fields were white wiv disies.’” And all around they howled a song which Eustace did not know; and then, abruptly as it had gone out, the light went up again. The song died in a prolonged “Aoh!” Eustace gazed around him. Tears were running down the splotchy woman’s cheeks. A smile of relief was twitching at the mechanician’s mouth. “The all clear’s gone! The all clear’s gone!… ‘Ip, ‘ip, ‘ooraay!” The cheering swelled past Eustace, and a swinging movement half lifted him from his feet.
“Catch hold of the child,” he said to the mechanician, “I’ve got her other hand.” Step by step they lifted her, under incredible pressure, with maddening slowness, into the hall. Eustace took a great breath, expanding his lungs while the crowd debouched into the street like an exploding shell. The white-faced mechanician had begun to cough, in a strangled manner alarming to hear. He stopped at last and said:
“That’s cleared the pipes. I’m greatly obliged to you, Sir; I dunno’ ow we’d ‘a got Milly up. She looks queer, that child.”
The child’s face, indeed, was whiter than her father’s, and her eyes were vacant.
“Do you live far?”
“Nao, just rahnd the corner, Sir.”
“Come on, then.”
They swung the child, whose legs continued to move mechanically, into the open. The street was buzzing with people emerging from shelter and making their way home. Eustace saw a clock’s face. Ten o’clock!
‘Damn these people,’ he thought. ‘The restaurants will be closed.’
The splotchy woman spoke as if answering his thought.
“We oughtn’t to keep the gentleman, ‘Enry, ‘e must be properly tired. I can ketch ‘old of Milly. Don’t you bother with us, Sir, and thank you kindly.”
“Not a bit,” said Eustace: “it’s nothing.”
“‘Ere we are, Sir,” said the mechanician, stopping at the side door of some business premises; “we live in the basement. If it’s not presuming, would you take a cup o’ tea with us?” And at this moment the child’s legs ceased to function altogether.
“‘Ere, Milly, ‘old up, dearie, we’re just ‘ome.”
But the child’s head sagged.
“She’s gone off–paw little thing!”
“Lift her!” said Eustace.
“Open the door, Mother, the key’s in my pocket; you go on and light the gas.”
They supported the spindly child, who now seemed to weigh a ton, down stone stairs into a basement, and laid her on a small bed in a room where all three evidently slept. The mechanician pressed her head down towards her feet.
“She’s comin’ to. Why, Milly, you’re in your bed, see! And now you’ll ‘ave a nice ‘ot cup o’ tea! There!”
“I’ll kill that Kaiser,” murmured the spindly child, her china-blue eyes fixed wonderingly on Eustace, her face waxy in the gaslight.
“Stir yer stumps, Mother, and get this gentleman a cup. A cup’ll do you good, Sir, you must be famished. Will you come in the kitchen and have a smoke, while she’s gettin’ it?”
A strange fellow-feeling pattered within Eustace looking at that white-faced altruist. He stretched out his cigarette case, shining, curved, and filled with gold-tipped cigarettes. The mechanician took one, held it for a second politely as who should imply: ‘Hardly my smoke, but since you are so kind.’
“Thank’ee, Sir. A smoke’ll do us both a bit o’ good, after that Tube. It was close in there.”
Eustace greeted the miracle of understatement with a smile.
“Not exactly fresh.”
“I’d ‘a come and ‘ad the raid comfortable at ‘ome, but the child was scared and the Tube just opposite. Well, it’s all in the day’s work, I suppose; but it comes ‘ard on children and elderly people, to say nothing of the women. ‘Ope you’re feelin’ better, Sir. You looked very white when you come out.”
“Thanks,” said Eustace, thinking: ‘Not so white as you, my friend!’
“The tea won’t be a minute. We got the gas ’ere, it boils a kettle a treat. You sit down, old girl, I’ll get it for yer.”
Eustace went to the window. The kitchen was hermetically sealed.
“Do you mind if I open the window,” he said, “I’m still half suffocated from that Tube.”
On the window-sill, in company with potted geraniums, he breathed the dark damp air of a London basement, and his eyes roved listlessly over walls decorated with coloured cuts from Christmas supplements, and china ornaments perched wherever was a spare flat inch. These presents from seaside municipalities aroused in him a sort of fearful sympathy.
“I see you collect china,” he said, at last.
“Ah! The missis likes a bit of china,” said the mechanician, turning his white face illumined by the gas ring; “reminds ‘er of ‘olidays. It’s a cheerful thing, I think meself, though it takes a bit o’ dustin’.”
“You’re right there,” said Eustace, his soul fluttering suddenly with a feather brush above his own precious Ming. Ming and the present from Margate! The mechanician was stirring the teapot.
“Weak for me, if you don’t mind,” said Eustace, hastily.
The mechanician poured into three cups, one of which he brought to Eustace with a jug of milk and a basin of damp white sugar. The tea looked thick and dark and Indian, and Eustace, who partook habitually of thin pale China tea flavoured with lemon, received the cup solemnly. It was better than he hoped, however, and he drank it gratefully.
“She’s drunk her tea a treat,” said the splotchy woman, returning from the bedroom.
“‘Ere’s yours, Mother.”
“‘Aven’t you ‘ad a cup yerself, ‘Enry?”
“Just goin’ to,” said the white-faced mechanician, pouring into a fourth cup and pausing to add: “Will you ‘ave another, Sir? There’s plenty in the pot.”
Eustace shook his head: “No, thanks very much. I must be getting on directly.” But he continued to sit on the window-sill, as a man on a mountain lingers in the whiffling wind before beginning his descent to earth. The mechanician was drinking his tea at last. “Sure you won’t ‘ave another cup, Sir?” and he poured again into his wife’s cup and his own. The two seemed to expand visibly as the dark liquid passed into them.
“I always say there’s nothin’ like tea,” said the woman.
“That’s right; we could ‘a done with a cup dahn there, couldn’t we, Sir?”
Eustace stood up.
“I hope your little girl will be all right,” he said: “and thank you very much for the tea. Here’s my card. I’ve enjoyed meeting you.”
The mechanician took the card, looking up at Eustace rather like a dog.
“I’m sure it’s been a pleasure to us, and it’s you we got to thank, Sir. I shall remember what you did for the child.”
Eustace shook his head: “No, really. Good-night, Mrs. – er–”
“Thompson, the nyme is, Sir.”
He shook her hand, subduing the slight shudder which her face still imposed on him.
“Good-night, Mr. Thompson.”
The hand of the white-faced mechanician, polished on his trousers, grasped Eustace’s hand with astonishing force.
“Good-night, Sir.”
“I hope we shall meet again,” said Eustace.
Out in the open it was a starry night, and he paused for a minute in the hooded street with his eyes fixed on those specks of far-off silver, so remarkably unlike the golden asterisks which decorated the firmament of his Turkish bath. And there came to him, so standing, a singular sensation almost as if he had enjoyed his evening, as a man will enjoy that which he has never seen before and wonders if he will ever see again.

SOAMES AND THE FLAG, 1914–1918


1

On that day of 1914 when the assassinations at Serajevo startled the world, Soames Forsyte passed in a taxi-cab up the Haymarket, supporting on his knee a picture by James Maris, which he had just bought from Dumetrius. He was pleased at the outcome of a very considerable duel. The fellow had come down to his price at the last minute, and Soames had wondered why.
The reason dawned on him that night in Green Street, while reading his evening paper: “This tragic occurrence may yet shake Europe to its foundations. Sinister possibilities implicit in such an assassination stagger the imagination.” They must have staggered Dumetrius. The fellow had suddenly seen “blue.” The market in objects whose “virtue” varied with the quietude of men’s minds and the tourist traffic with America, was–Soames well knew–extremely sensitive. Sinister possibilities! He put the paper down and sat reflecting. No! The chap was an alarmist. What, after all, was an Archduke more or less–they were always getting into the papers, one way or another. He would see what The Times said about it tomorrow, but probably it would turn out a storm in a tea-cup. Soames was not in fact of a European turn of mind. ‘Trouble in the Balkans’ had become a proverb; and when a thing became a proverb there was nothing in it.
He read The Times journeying back with the James Maris to Mapledurham the following day. Editorial hands were lifted in the usual horror at assassination, but there was nothing to prevent him going out fishing.
Indeed, in the month that followed, even after the Austrian ultimatum had appeared, Soames, like ninety-nine per cent. of his fellow-countrymen, didn’t know what there was “to make such a fuss about.” To suppose that England could be involved was weak-minded. The idea, indeed, never seriously occurred to one born just after the Crimean war, and accustomed to look on Europe as fit to be advised, perhaps, but nothing more. Fleur’s holidays, too, were just beginning, and he was thinking of buying her a pony: at twelve years old it was time she learned even that rather futile accomplishment–riding. Besides, was there not plenty of fuss in Ireland, if they must have something to fuss about? It was Annette who raised the first bubbles of an immense disquiet. Beautiful creature as she was at that period–“rising thirty-five,” as George Forsyte put it–she did not read the English papers, but she often had letters from France. On the 28th of July she said to Soames:
“Soames, there is going to be war–those Germans are crazy mad.”
“War over a potty little affair like that? Nonsense!” growled Soames.
“Oh! you have no imagination, Soames. Of course there will be war, and my poor country will have to fight for Russia; and you English–what will you do?”
“Do? Why, nothing! If you’re fools enough to go to war, WE can’t help it.”
“We expect you to help us,” said Annette; “but you English we never can rely on. You wait always to see which way the cat jump.”
“What business is it of ours?” Soames answered testily.
“You will soon find what business when the Germans take Calais.”
“I thought you French fancied yourselves invincible.” But he got up and left the room.
And that evening it was noticed even by Fleur that he took no interest in her. All Saturday and Sunday he was fidgety. On Sunday afternoon came a rumour that Germany had declared war on Russia. Soames put it down to the papers; but he remained awake half the night, and, on reading of its confirmation in The Times on Monday morning, went up to Town by the first train. It was Bank holiday, and he sought his City Club as the only spot where he might possibly get City news. He found that a good many other men were there with the same object, among them one of the partners in the firm of his brokers, Messrs. Green and Greening–more familiarly known as “Grin and Grinning.” To him he detailed his views on the sale of certain stocks. The fellow–it was ‘Grin’–regarded him askance.
“Nothing doing, Mr. Forsyte,” he said: “The Stock Exchange will be closed some days they say.”
“Closed?” said Soames. “You don’t mean to say they’d let business stop, even if–”
“It will HAVE to stop, or prices will flop to nothing. As it is, there’s panic enough–”
“Panic!” repeated Soames, staring at his broker–‘a sleek beggar!’ “Cancel those orders; I shan’t sell anything.”
Not realising that in this he had voiced more than a personal decision, he got up and went to the window. Outside was a regular fluster. Newsvendors were crying: “German ultimatum to Belgium!” Soames stood looking down at the faces in the street. It was not his custom, but he found himself doing it. One and all had a furrow between the eyes. Here was a how-de-do! Down there, on the river, he hadn’t realised. And he had a sudden longing for telegraphic tape.
It was surrounded by men he did not know, and Soames, who had a horror of doing what other people were doing, and especially of waiting to do it, moved into the smoking-room and sat down. One of the least of club-men, he literally did not know how to get into conversation with strange members, and was confined to listening to what they were saying. This was sufficiently alarming. The three or four within earshot seemed suffering only from fear that “this damned Government” wouldn’t “come up to the scratch.” Soames’ ears stood up more and more. He was hearing more abuse of radicals and the working classes than he had ever heard in so short a space of time. The words “traitors” and “politicians” beat through the talk with a sort of rhythm. Though the general trend of the sentiments voiced might be his own, all that was reticent, measured and calculating within him was shocked. What did they think a war would be–a sort of water picnic?
“If we don’t go in now,” said one of the group, “we shall never hold up our heads again.”
Soames sniffed audibly. How? He didn’t see. Germany and Austria against France and Russia–if they chose to make such fools of themselves. Europe was always at war in the old days. And now that they had these thundering great armies, it was a wonder they hadn’t come to loggerheads long since. What was the use of having no conscription and a big navy, if one wasn’t going to keep out of war? Fellows like these! All they thought of was their dividends; and much good that would do them. If England lost her head now, and went in, there wouldn’t BE any dividends. War, indeed! The whole interior of one, who for all his sixty years had been at peace as a matter of course, rose against that grisly consummation. What had the Russians ever done, or the French for that matter, that they should expect England to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them? As for the Germans–their Kaiser was a “cock-snoop” of a chap, always rattling his sabre, and talking through his hat–but they were at least more understandable than the Russians or the French; as for Austria–the idea of going to war with her was simply laughable.
“Albert has appealed to the Powers,” said a voice.
Albert! That was the King of Belgium. So he’d appealed, had he? Belgium! Wasn’t she guaranteed like Switzerland? The Germans would never be fools enough to–! This was a civilised age–treaties and that! He rose. It was no use listening to jingo chatter. He would go and lunch.
But he could scarcely eat–the weather was so hot. He shouldn’t be a bit surprised if that had a lot to do with the state of affairs. Put these Emperors and General chaps on ice, and you’d have them piping small at once. He was drinking a glass of barleywater, when he heard the waiter at the next table say to a member: “So it says, Sir.”
“Good God!” said the member, starting up.
Soames forgot his manners.
“What does it say?”
“The Germans have invaded Belgium, Sir.”
Soames put down his glass.
“Who told you that?”
“It’s on the tape, Sir.”
Soames emitted a sound that might have come from his very boots–so deep it was. He must think. But you couldn’t tell what you were thinking in this place.
“My bill,” he said.
When it came, he gave the waiter a shilling against club rules and the habit of a lifetime; for he had an obscure feeling that the fellow had done something unique to him. Then with a sudden homing instinct, he took a cab to Paddington, and all the way in the train read the evening paper, or sat staring out of the carriage window.
He said nothing when he got home–nothing whatever to anybody of what he had heard–the whole of him absorbed in a sort of silent and awful adjustment. That fellow Grey–a steady chap, best of the bunch–must be making his speech to the House by now. What was he saying? And how were they taking it? He got into his punt and sat there listening to the wood-pigeons, in the leafy peace of the bright day. He didn’t want a soul near him. England! They said the fleet was ready. His mind didn’t seem able to get further than that. To be on water gave him queer consolation, as if his faith in the fleet would glide with that water down to the sea whereon the pride and the protection of England lay. He put his hand down and the water flowed green-tinged through his opened fingers. By George! There went that kingfisher–hadn’t seen him for weeks–flash of blue among the reeds. He wouldn’t be that fellow Grey for something. They said he was a fisherman and liked birds. What was he saying to them in there under Big Ben? The chap had always been a gentleman, could he say anything but that England would stand by her word? And for the second time Soames uttered a sound which seemed to travel up from the very tips of his toes. He didn’t see what was to be done except agree with that. And what then? All this green peace, every home throughout the land, and stocks and shares–falling, falling! And old Uncle Timothy–ninety-four! He would have to see that they kept it from the old chap. Luckily no newspaper had come into the “Nook” since Aunt Hester died; reading about the House of Lords in 1910 had so upset Timothy, that he had given up taking even The Times.
‘And my pictures!’ thought Soames. Yes, and Fleur’s governess–a German, Fleur having always spoken French with her mother. Annette would want to get rid of her, he wouldn’t be surprised. And what would become of her–nobody would want a German, if there were war. A dragon-fly flew past. Soames watched it with an ache, dumb and resentful, deep within him. A beautiful summer, fine and hot, and they couldn’t leave it alone, but must kick up this devil’s tattoo, all over the world. This thing might–might come to be anything before it was over. He got up and slowly punted himself across. From there he could see the church. He never went to it, but he supposed it meant something. And now all over Europe they were going to blow each other to bits. What would the parsons say? Nothing–he shouldn’t wonder–they were a funny lot. Seven o’clock! It must be over by now in the House of Commons. And he punted himself slowly back. The scent of lime blossom and of meadow-sweet, the scent of sweetbriar and of honeysuckle, yes, and the scent of grass beginning to cool, drifted and clung. He didn’t want to leave the water, but it was getting damp.
The mothers of the boys going off to the war out there; young chaps–conscripts–Russia and Austria, Germany and France–and not one knowing or caring a dump about it.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18