To Let | Page 6

trees indifferent to the
generations and declensions of mankind. A democratic
England--dishevelled, hurried, noisy, and seemingly without an apex.
And that something fastidious in the soul of Soames turned over within
him. Gone for ever, the close borough of rank and polish! Wealth there
was--oh, yes! wealth--he himself was a richer man than his father had
ever been; but manners, flavour, quality, all gone, engulfed in one vast,
ugly, shoulder-rubbing, petrol-smelling Cheerio. Little half-beaten
pockets of gentility and caste lurking here and there, dispersed and
chetif, as Annette would say; but nothing ever again firm and coherent
to look up to. And into this new hurly-burly of bad manners and loose
morals his daughter--flower of his life--was flung! And when those
Labour chaps got power--if they ever did-- the worst was yet to come!
He passed out under the archway, at last no longer--thank

goodness!--disfigured by the gun-grey of its search-light. 'They'd better
put a search-light on to where they're all going,' he thought, 'and light
up their precious democracy!' And he directed his steps along the Club
fronts of Piccadilly. George Forsyte, of course, would be sitting in the
bay window of the Iseeum. The chap was so big now that he was there
nearly all his time, like some immovable, sardonic, humorous eye
noting the decline of men and things. And Soames hurried, ever
constitutionally uneasy beneath his cousin's glance. George, who, as he
had heard, had written a letter signed "Patriot" in the middle of the War,
complaining of the Government's hysteria in docking the oats of
race-horses. Yes, there he was, tall, ponderous, neat, clean-shaven, with
his smooth hair, hardly thinned, smelling, no doubt, of the best
hair-wash, and a pink paper in his hand. Well, he didn't change! And
for perhaps the first time in his life Soames felt a kind of sympathy
tapping in his waistcoat for that sardonic kinsman. With his weight, his
perfectly parted hair, and bull-like gaze, he was a guarantee that the old
order would take some shifting yet. He saw George move the pink
paper as if inviting him to ascend--the chap must want to ask something
about his property. It was still under Soames's control; for in the
adoption of a sleeping partnership at that painful period twenty years
back when he had divorced Irene, Soames had found himself almost
insensibly retaining control of all purely Forsyte affairs.
Hesitating for just a moment, he nodded and went in. Since the death of
his brother-in-law Montague Dartie, in Paris, which no one had quite
known what to make of, except that it was certainly not suicide--the
Iseeum Club had seemed more respectable to Soames. George, too, he
knew, had sown the last of his wild oats, and was committed definitely
to the joys of the table, eating only of the very best so as to keep his
weight down, and owning, as he said, "just one or two old screws to
give me an interest in life." He joined his cousin, therefore, in the bay
window without the embarrassing sense of indiscretion he had been
used to feel up there. George put out a well-kept hand.
"Haven't seen you since the War," he said. "How's your wife?"
"Thanks," said Soames coldly, "well enough."

Some hidden jest curved, for a moment, George's fleshy face, and
gloated from his eye.
"That Belgian chap, Profond," he said, "is a member here now. He's a
rum customer."
"Quite!" muttered Soames. "What did you want to see me about?"
"Old Timothy; he might go off the hooks at any moment. I suppose he's
made his Will."
"Yes."
"Well, you or somebody ought to give him a look up--last of the old lot;
he's a hundred, you know. They say he's like a mummy. Where are you
goin' to put him? He ought to have a pyramid by rights."
Soames shook his head. "Highgate, the family vault."
"Well, I suppose the old girls would miss him, if he was anywhere else.
They say he still takes an interest in food. He might last on, you know.
Don't we GET anything for the old Forsytes? Ten of them--average age
eighty-eight--I worked it out. That ought to be equal to triplets."
"Is that all?" said Soames. "I must be getting on."
'You unsociable devil,' George's eyes seemed to answer.
"Yes, that's all: Look him up in his mausoleum--the old chap might
want to prophesy." The grin died on the rich curves of his face, and he
added: "Haven't you attorneys invented a way yet of dodging this
damned income tax? It hits the fixed inherited income like the very
deuce. I used to have two thousand five hundred a year; now I've got a
beggarly fifteen hundred, and the price of living doubled."
"Ah!" murmured Soames, "the turf's in