The Forsyte Saga, Volume 2 (44 page)

Soames was a good deal puzzled. He had never been in America. The inhabitants were human, of course, but peculiar and all alike, with more face than feature, heads fastened upright on their backs, and shoulders too square to be real. Their voices clanged in their mouths; they pronounced the words ‘very' and ‘America' in a way that he tried to imitate without success; their dollar was too high, and they all had motor-cars; they despised Europe, came over in great quantities, and took back all they could; they talked all the time, and were not allowed to drink. This young man cut across all these preconceptions. He drank sherry and only spoke when he was spoken to. His shoulders looked natural; he had more feature than face; and his voice was soft. Perhaps, at least, he despised Europe.

‘I suppose,' he said, ‘you find England very small.'

‘No, sir. I find London very large; and you certainly have the loveliest kind of a countryside.'

Soames looked down one side of his nose. ‘Pretty enough !' he said.

Then came turbot and a silence, broken, low down, behind his chair.

‘That dog!' said Soames, impaling a morsel of fish he had set aside as uneatable.

‘No, no, Dad! He just wants to know you've seen him!'

Soames stretched down a finger, and the Dandie fell on his side.

‘He never eats,' said Fleur; ‘but he has to be noticed.'

A small covey of partridges came in, cooked.

‘Is there any particular thing you want to see over here, Mr Wilmot?' said Michael. ‘There's nothing very un-American left. You're just too late for Regent Street.'

‘I want to see the Beefeaters; and Cruft's Dog Show; and your blood horses; and the Derby.'

‘Darby!' Soames corrected. ‘You can't stay for that – it's not till next June.'

‘My cousin Val will show you race-horses,' said Fleur. ‘He married Jon's sister, you know.'

A ‘bombe' appeared. ‘You have more of this in America, I believe,' said Soames.

‘We don't have much ice-cream in the South, sir, but we have special cooking – very tasty.'

‘I've heard of terrapin.'

‘Well,
I
don't get frills like that. I live away back, and have to work pretty hard. My place is kind of homey; but I've got some mighty nice darkies that can cook fine – old folk that knew my grannies. The old-time darky is getting scarce, but he's the real thing.'

A Southerner!

Soames had been told that the Southerner was a gentleman. He remembered the ‘Alabama', too; and his father, James, saying: ‘I told you so' when the Government ate humble pie over that business.

In the savoury silence that accompanied soft roes on toast, the patter of the Dandie's feet on the parquet floor could be plainly heard.

‘This is the only thing he likes,' said Fleur. ‘Dan! go to your master. Give him a little bit, Michael.' And she stole a look at Michael, but he did not answer it.

On their Italian holiday, with Fleur in the throes of novelty,
sun and wine warmed, disposed to junketing, amenable to his caresses, he had been having his real honeymoon, enjoying, for the first time since his marriage, a sense of being the chosen companion of his adored. And now had come this stranger, bringing reminder that one played but second fiddle to that young second cousin and first lover; and he couldn't help feeling the cup withdrawn again from his lips. She had invited this young man because he came from that past of hers whose tune one could not play. And, without looking up, he fed the Dandie with tid-bits of his favourite edible.

Soames broke the silence.

‘Take some nutmeg, Mr Wilmot. Melon without nutmeg –'

When Fleur rose, Soames followed her to the drawing-room; while Michael led the young American to his study.

‘You knew Jon?' said Francis Wilmot.

‘No; I never met him.'

‘He's a great little fellow; and some poet. He's growing dandy peaches.'

‘Is he going on with that, now he's married?'

‘Surely.'

‘Not coming to England?'

‘Not this year. They have a nice home – horses and dogs. They have some hunting there, too. Perhaps he'll bring my sister over for a trip, next fall.'

‘Oh!' said Michael. ‘And are you staying long, yourself?'

‘Why! I'll go back for Christmas. I'd like to see Rome and Seville; and I want to visit the old home of my people, down in Worcestershire.'

‘When did they go over?'

‘William and Mary. Catholics – they were. Is it a nice part, Worcestershire?'

‘Very; especially in the spring. It grows a lot of fruit.'

‘Oh! You still grow things in this country?'

‘Not many.'

‘I thought that was so, coming on the cars, from Liverpool. I saw a lot of grass and one or two sheep, but I didn't see anybody working. The people all live in the towns, then?'

‘Except a few unconsidered trifles. You must come down to my father's; they still grow a turnip or two thereabouts.'

‘It's sad,' said Francis Wilmot.

‘It is. We began to grow wheat again in the war; but they've let it all slip back – and worse.'

‘Why was that?'

Michael shrugged his shoulders: ‘No accounting for statesmanship. It lets the Land go to blazes when in office; and beats the drum of it when in opposition. At the end of the war we had the best air force in the world, and agriculture was well on its way to recovery. And what did they do? Dropped them both like hot potatoes. It was tragic. What do you grow in Carolina?'

‘Just cotton, on my place. But it's mighty hard to make cotton pay nowadays. Labour's high.'

‘High with you, too?'

‘Yes, sir. Do they let strangers into your Parliament?'

‘Rather. Would you like to hear the Irish debate? I can get you a seat in the Distinguished Strangers' gallery.'

‘I thought the English were stiff; but it's wonderful the way you make me feel at home. Is that your father-in-law – the old gentleman?'

‘Yes.'

‘He seems kind of rarefied. Is he a banker?'

‘No. But now you mention it – he ought to be.'

Francis Wilmot's eye roved round the room and came to rest on ‘The White Monkey'.

‘Well, now,' he said, softly, ‘that, surely, is a wonderful picture. Could I get a picture painted by that man, for Jon and my sister?'

‘I'm afraid not,' said Michael. ‘You see, he was a Chink – not quite of the best period; but he must have gone West five hundred years ago at least.'

‘Ah! Well, he had a great sense of animals.'

‘We think he had a great sense of human beings.'

Francis Wilmot stared.

There was something, Michael decided, in this young man unresponsive to satire.

‘So you want to see Cruft's Dog Show?' he said. ‘You're keen on dogs, then?'

‘I'll be taking a bloodhound back for John, and two for myself. I want to raise bloodhounds.'

Michael leaned back, and blew out smoke. To Francis Wilmot, he felt, the world was young, and life running on good tyres to some desirable destination. In England –!

‘What is it you Americans want out of life?' he said abruptly.

‘Well, I suppose you might say we want success – in the North at all events.'

‘We
wanted that in 1824,' said Michael.

‘Oh! And nowadays?'

‘We've had success, and now we're wondering whether it hasn't cooked our goose.'

‘Well,' said Francis Wilmot, ‘we're sort of thinly populated, compared with you.'

‘That's it,' said Michael. ‘Every seat here is booked in advance; and a good many sit on their own knees. Will you have another cigar, or shall we join the lady?'

SIDE-SLIPS

I
F
Providence was completely satisfied with Sapper's Row, Camden Town, Michael was not. What could justify those twin dismal rows of three-storeyed houses, so begrimed that they might have been collars washed in Italy? What possible attention to business could make these little ground-floor shops do anything but lose money? From the thronged and tram-lined thoroughfare so pregnantly scented with fried fish, petrol, and old clothes, who would turn into this small backwater for
sweetness or for profit? Even the children, made with heroic constancy on its second and third floors, sought the sweets of life outside its precincts; for in Sapper's Row they could neither be run over nor stare at the outside of cinemas. Hand-carts, bicycles, light vans which had lost their nerve and taxicabs which had lost their way, provided all the traffic; potted geraniums and spotted cats supplied all the beauty. Sapper's Row drooped and dithered.

Michael entered from its west end, and against his principles. Here was overcrowded England at its most dismal, and here was he, who advocated a reduction of its population, about to visit some broken-down aliens with the view of keeping them alive. He looked into three of the little shops. Not a soul! Which was worst! Such little shops frequented, or – deserted? He came to No. 12, and looking up, saw a face looking down. It was wax white, movingly listless, above a pair of hands sewing at a garment. ‘That,' he thought, ‘is my “obedient humble” and her needle.' He entered the shop below, a hairdresser's, containing a dirty basin below a dusty mirror, suspicious towels, bottles, and two dingy chairs. In his shirt-sleeves, astride one of them, reading
The Daily Mail
, sat a shadowy fellow with pale hollow cheeks, twisted moustache, lank hair, and the eyes, at once knowing and tragic, of a philosopher.

‘Hair-cut, sir?'

Michael shook his head.

‘Do Mr and Mrs Bergfeld live here?'

‘Upstairs, top floor.'

‘How do I get up?'

‘Through there.'

Passing through a curtained aperture, Michael found a stairway, and at its top, stood, hesitating. His conscience was echoing Fleur's comment on Anna Bergfeld's letter: ‘Yes, I dare say; but what's the good?' when the door was opened, and it seemed to him almost as if a corpse were standing there, with a face as though someone had come knocking on its grave, so eager and so white.

‘Mrs Bergfeld? My name's Mont. You wrote to me.'

The woman trembled so, that Michael thought she was going to faint.

‘Will you excuse me, sir, that I sit down?' And she dropped on to the end of the bed. The room was spotless, but besides the bed, held only a small deal washstand, a pot of geranium, a tin trunk with a pair of trousers folded on it, a woman's hat on a peg, and a chair in the window covered with her sewing.

The woman stood up again. She seemed not more than thirty, thin but prettily formed; and her oval face, without colour except in her dark eyes, suggested Rafael rather than Sapper's Row.

‘It is like seeing an angel,' she said. ‘Excuse me, sir.'

‘Queer angel, Mrs Bergfeld. Your husband not in?'

‘No, sir. Fritz has gone to walk.'

‘Tell me, Mrs Bergfeld. If I pay your passages to Germany, will you go?'

‘We cannot get a passport now; Fritz has been here twenty years, and never back; he has lost his German nationality, sir; they do not want people like us, you know.'

Michael stivered up his hair.

‘Where are you from yourself?'

‘From Salzburg.'

‘What about going back there?'

‘I would like to, but what would we do? In Austria everyone is poor now, and I have no relative left. Here at least we have my sewing.'

‘How much is that a week?'

‘Sometimes a pound; sometimes fifteen shillings. It is bread and the rent.'

‘Don't you get the dole?'

‘No, sir. We are not registered.'

Michael took out a five-pound note and laid it with his card on the washstand. ‘I've got to think this over, Mrs Bergfeld. Perhaps your husband will come and see me.' He went out quickly, for the ghostly woman had flushed pink.

Repassing through the curtained aperture, he caught the hairdresser wiping out the basin.

‘Find 'em, sir?'

‘The lady.'

‘Ah! Seen better days, I should say. The ‘usband's a queer customer; ‘alf off his nut. Wanted to come in here with me, but I've got to give this job up.'

‘Oh! How's that?'

‘I've got to have fresh air – only got one lung, and that's not very gaudy. I'll have to find something else.'

‘That's bad, in these days.'

The hairdresser shrugged his bony shoulders. ‘Ah!' he said. ‘I've been a hairdresser from a boy, except for the war. Funny place this, to fetch up in after where I've been. The war knocked me out.' He twisted his little thin moustache.

‘No pension?' said Michael.

‘Not a bob. What I want to keep me alive is something in the open.'

Michael took him in from head to foot. Shadowy, narrow-headed, with one lung.

‘But do you know anything about country life?'