The Forsyte Saga, Volume 2 (119 page)

‘With all this modern taste the nation mayn't want them; in that case I don't know. Dumetrius might take them off your hands; he's had a good deal out of most of them already. If you chose the right moment, clear of strikes and things, they ought to fetch money in a good sale. They stand me in at well over seventy thousand pounds – they ought to make a hundred thousand at least.'

She seemed to be listening, but he couldn't tell.

‘In my belief,' he went on desperately, ‘there'll be none of this modern painting in ten years' time – they can't go on for ever juggling in the air. They'll be sick of experiments by then, unless we have another war.'

‘It wasn't the war.'

‘How d'you mean – not the war? The war brought in ugliness, and put everyone into a hurry. You don't remember before the war.'

She shrugged her shoulders.

‘I won't say,' continued Soames, ‘that it hadn't begun before. I remember the first shows in London of those post-impressionists and early Cubist chaps. But they ran riot with the war, catching at things they couldn't get.'

He stopped. It was exactly what she –!

‘I think I'll go to bed, Dad.'

‘Ah!' said Soames. ‘And take some aspirin. Don't you play about with a chill.'

A chill! If only it were! He himself went again to the open window and stood watching thee moonlight. From the staff's quarters came the strain of a gramophone. How they loved to turn on that caterwauling, or the loud-speaker! He didn't know which he disliked most.

Moving to the edge of the veranda, he held out his palm. No dew! Dry as ever – remarkable weather! A dog began howling from over the river. Some people would take that for a banshee, he shouldn't wonder! The more he saw of people the more weak-minded they seemed; for ever looking for the sensational, or covering up their eyes and ears. The garden was looking pretty in the moonlight – pretty and unreal. That border of sunflowers and Michaelmas daisies and the late roses in the little round beds, and the low wall of very old brick – he'd had a lot of trouble to get that brick! – even the grass – the moonlight gave them all a stage-like quality. Only the poplars queered the dream-like values, dark and sharply outlined by the moon behind them. Soames moved out on to the lawn. The face of the house, white and creepered, with a light in her bedroom, looked unreal, too, and as if powdered. Thirty-two years he'd been here. One had got attached to the place, especially since he'd bought the land over the river, so that no one could ever build and overlook him. To be overlooked, body or soul – on on the whole he'd avoided that in life – at least, he hoped so.

He finished his cigar out there and threw the butt away. He would have liked to see her light go out before he went to bed –to feel that she was sleeping as when, a little thing, she went to
bed with tooth-ache. But he was very tired. Motoring was hard on the liver. Well! He'd go in and shut up. After all, he couldn't do any good by staying down, couldn't do any good in any way. The old couldn't help the young – nobody could help anyone, if it came to that, at least where the heart was concerned. Queer arrangement – the heart! And to think that everybody had one. There ought to be some comfort in that, and yet there wasn't. No comfort to him, when he'd suffered, night in, day out, over that boy's mother, that she had suffered, too! No satisfaction to Fleur now, that the young man and his wife, too, very likely, were suffering as well! And, closing the window, Soames went up. He listened at her door, but could hear nothing; and, having undressed, took up Vasari's
Lives of the Painters
, and, propped against his pillows, began to read. Two pages of that book always sent him to sleep, and generally the same two, for he knew them so well that he never remembered where he had left off.

He was awakened presently by he couldn't tell what, and lay listening. It seemed that there was movement in the house. But if he got up to see he would certainly begin to worry again, and he didn't want to. Besides, in seeing to whether Fleur was asleep he might wake her up. Turning over, he dozed off, but again he woke, and lay drowsily thinking: ‘I'm not sleeping well – I want exercise.' Moonlight was coming through the curtains not quite drawn. And, suddenly, his nostrils twitched. Surely a smell of burning! He sat up, sniffing. It
was
! Had there been a short circuit, or was the thatch of the pigeon-house on fire? Getting out of bed, he put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and went to the window.

A reddish, fitful light was coming from a window above. Great God! His picture gallery! He ran to the foot of the stairs that led up to it. A stealthy sound, a scent of burning much more emphatic, staggered him. He hurried up the stairs and pulled open the door. Heavens! The far end of the gallery, at the extreme left corner of the house, was on fire. Little red flames were licking round the woodwork; the curtains of the far window were already a blackened mass, and the waste-paper-basket,
between them and his writing-bureau, was a charred wreck! On the parquet floor he saw some cigarette ash. Someone had been up here smoking! The flames crackled as he stood there aghast. He rushed downstairs and threw open the door of Fleur's room. She was lying on her bed asleep, but fully dressed! Fully dressed! Was it –? Had she –? She opened her eyes, staring up at him.

‘Get up!' he said, ‘there's a fire in the picture gallery. Get Kit and the servant out at once – at once! Send for Riggs! Telephone to Reading for the engines – quick! Get everyone out of the house!' Only waiting to see her on her feet, he ran back to the foot of the gallery stairs and seized a fire-extinguisher. He carried it up, a heavy great thing. He knew vaguely that you dashed the knob on the floor and sprayed the flames. Through the open doorway he could see that they had spread considerably. Good God! They were licking at his Fred Walker, and the two David Coxes. They had caught the beam, too, that ran round the gallery, dividing the upper from the lower tier of pictures; yes, and the upper beam was on fire also. The Constable! For a moment he hesitated. Should he rush at that and save it, anyway? The extinguisher mightn't work! He dropped it, and, running the length of the gallery, seized the Constable just as the flames reached the woodwork above it. The hot breath of them scorched his face as he wrenched the picture from the wall, and, running back, flung open the window opposite the door and placed it on the sill. Then, seizing the extinguisher again, he dashed it, violently, against the floor. A stream of stuff came out, and, picking the thing up, he directed that stream against the flames. The room was full of smoke now, and he felt rather giddy. The stuff was good, and he saw with relief that the flames didn't like it. He was making a distinct impression on them. But the Walker was ruined – ah I and the Coxes! He had beaten the fire back to the window-wall, when the stream ceased, and he saw that the beams had broken into flame beyond where he had started spraying. The writing-bureau, too, was on fire now – its papers had caught! Should he run down and get another of diese things, all the way to
the hall! Where was that fellow Riggs? The ‘Alfred Stevens'! By heaven! He was not going to lose his ‘Stevens' nor his ‘Gauguins', nor his ‘Corots'!

And a sort of demon entered into Soames. His taste, his trouble, his money, and his pride – all consumed? By the Lord, no! And through the smoke he dashed again up to the far wall. Flame licked at his sleeve as he tore away the ‘Stevens'; he could smell the singed stuff when he propped the picture in the window beside the Constable.

A lick of flame crossed the Daubigny, and down came its glass with a clatter – there was the picture exposed and fire creeping and flaring over it! He rushed and grasped at a ‘Gauguin' – a South Sea girl with nothing on. She wouldn't come away from the wall; he caught hold of the wire, but dropped it – red hot; seizing the frame he gave a great wrench. Away it came, and over he went, backwards. But he'd got it, his favourite Gauguin! He stacked that against the others, and ran back to the Corot nearest the flames. The silvery, cool picture was hot to his touch, but he got that, too! Now for the Monet! The engines would be twenty minutes at least. If that fellow Riggs didn't come soon –! They must spread a blanket down there, and he would throw the pictures out. And then he uttered a groan. The flames had got the other Corot! The poor thing! Wrenching off the Monet, he ran to the head of the stairs. Two frightened maids in coats over their nightgowns, and their necks showing, were half-way up.

‘Herel' he cried. ‘Take this picture and keep your heads. Miss Fleur and the boy out?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Have you telephoned?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Get me an extinguisher; and all of you hold a blanket spread beneath the window down there to catch the pictures as I throw them out. Don't be foolish – there's no danger! Where's Riggs?'

He went back into the gallery. Oh – h! There went his precious little Degas! And with rage in his heart Soames ran again at the wall and snatched at his other Gauguin. If ever he
had beaten Dumetrius, it was over that highly-coloured affair. As if grateful to him, the picture came away neatly in his scorched and trembling hands. He stacked it, and stood for a moment choked and breathless. So long as he could breathe up here in the draught between the opened door and window, he must go on getting them off the wall.

It wouldn't take long to throw them out. The Bonnington and the Turner – that fellow Turner wouldn't have been so fond of sunsets if he'd known what fire was like. Each time now that he went to the wall his lungs felt as if they couldn't stand another journey. But they must!

‘Dad!'

Fleur with an extinguisher!

‘Go down! Go out!' he cried. ‘D'you hear! Go out of the house! Get that blanket spread, and make them hold it tight.'

‘Dad! Let me! I must!'

‘Go down!' cried Soames again, and pushed her to the stairs. He watched her to the bottom, then dashed the knob of the extinguisher on the floor and again sprayed the fire. He put out the bureau, and attacked the flames on the far wall. He could hardly hold the heavy thing, and when it dropped empty, he could barely see. But again he had gained on the fire. If only he could hold on!

And then he saw that his Harpignies was gone – such a beauty! That wanton loss gave him strength. And rushing up to the wall – the long wall now – he detached picture after picture. But the flames were creeping back again, persistent as hell itself. He couldn't reach the Sisley and the Picasso, high in the corner there, couldn't face the flames so dose, for if he slipped against the wall he would be done. They must go! But he'd have the Daumier! His favourite – perhaps his very favourite. Safe! Gasping, and avidly drinking the fresher air, he could see from the window that they had the blanket down there now stretched between four maids, holding each a corner.

‘Hold tight!' he cried; and tipped the Daumier out. He watched it falling. What a thing to do to a picture! The blanket dipped with the weight, but held.

‘Hold it tighter!' he shouted. ‘Look out!' And over went the Gauguin South Sea girl. Picture after picture he tipped from the sill; and picture after picture, they took them from the blanket, and laid them on the grass. When he had tipped them all, he turned to take the situation in. The flames had caught the floor now, in the corner, and were spreading fast along the beams.

The engines would be in time to save the right-hand wall. The left-hand wall was hopeless, but most of the pictures were beginning to get hold; he must go for that now. He ran as near to the corner as he dared, and seized the Morland. It was hot to his touch, but he got it – six hundred pounds' worth of white pony. He had promised it a good home! He tipped it from the window and saw it pitch headlong into the blanket.

‘My word!'

Behind him, in the doorway, that fellow Riggs at last, in shirt and trousers, with two extinguishers and an open mouth!

‘Shut your mouth!' he gasped, ‘and spray that wall!'

He watched the stream and the flames recoiling from it. How he hated those inexorable red tongues. Ah! That was giving them pause!

‘Now the other! Save the Courbet! Sharp!'

Again the stream spurted and the flames recoiled. Soames dashed for the Courbet. The glass had gone, but the picture was not harmed yet; he wrenched it away.

‘That's the last of the bloomin' extinguishers, sir,' he heard Riggs mutter.

‘Here, then!' he called. ‘Pull the pictures off that wall and tip them out of the window one by one. Mind you hit the blanket. Stir your stumps!'

He, too, stirred his stumps, watching the discouraged flames regaining their lost ground. The two of them ran breathless to the wall, wrenched, ran back to the window, and back again – and the flames gained all the time.

‘That top one,' said Soames; ‘I must have that! Get on that chair. Quick! No, I'll do it. Lift me! –! can't reachi'

Uplifted in the grip of that fellow, Soames detached his James Maris, bought the very day the whole world broke into
flames. ‘Murder of the Archduke!' he could hear them at it now. A fine day; the sunlight coming in at the window of his cab, and he light-hearted, with that bargain on his knee. And there it went, pitching down! Ah! What a way to treat pictures!

‘Come on!' he gasped.

‘Better go down, sir! It's gettin' too thick now.'

‘No!' said Soames. ‘Come on I'

Three more pictures salved.

‘If you don't go down, sir, I'll ‘ave to carry you – you been up ‘ere too long.'

‘Nonsense!' gasped Soames. ‘Come on!'

‘'Ooray! The engines!'

Soames stood still; besides the pumping of his heart and lungs he could hear another sound. Riggs seized his arm.

‘Come along, sir; when they begin to play there'll be a proper smother.'