“You’ve overshot it!” said Soames, and got out. “Wait here! I may be some time.”
Taking off his overcoat and carrying it on his arm, he went back to the gate, and passed through into a field of grass. He walked downwards to the hedge on the left, followed it round, and presently came in view of the sea, bright, peaceful, hazy, with a trail of smoke in the distance. The air beat in from the sea, fresh air, strong and salt. Ancestral! Soames took some deep breaths, savouring it, as one might an old wine. Its freshness went a little to his head, so impregnated with ozone or iodine, or whatever it was nowadays. And then, below him, perhaps a hundred yards away, above a hollow near the hedge he saw the stone, and again felt that thrill. He looked back. Yes! He was out of sight of the lane, and had his feelings to himself! And going up to the stone, he gazed down at the hollow between him and the hedge. Below it the field sloped to the beach, and what looked like the ghost of a lane ran up towards the hollow from the coombe. In that hollow then, the house had been; and there they’d lived, the old Forsytes, for generations, pickled in this air, without another house in sight–nothing but this expanse of grass in view and the sea beyond, and the gulls on that rock, and the waves beating over it. There they’d lived, tilling the land, and growing rheumatic, and crossing the coombe to church, and getting their brandy free, perhaps. He went up and examined the stone–upright, with another bit across the top–lintel of a barn, perhaps–nothing on it. Descending into the hollow, he poked about with his umbrella. During the war–the parson had said–they had removed the ruins. Only twelve years ago, but not a sign! Grassed over utterly, not even the shape visible. He explored up to the hedge. They’d made a clean sweep all right–nothing but grass now and a scrubble of fern and young gorse, such as would seize on a hollow for their growing. And, sitting on his overcoat with his back against the stone, Soames pondered. Had his forbears themselves built the house there in this lonely place–been the first to seat themselves on this bit of wind-swept soil? And something moved in him, as if the salty independence of that lonely spot were still in his bones. Old Jolyon and his own father and the rest of his uncles–no wonder they’d been independent, with this air and loneliness in their blood; and crabbed with the pickling of it–unable to give up, to let go, to die. For a moment he seemed to understand even himself. Southern spot, south aspect, not any of your northern roughness, but free, and salt, and solitary from sunrise to sunset, year in, year out, like that lonely rock with the gulls on it, for ever and for ever. And drawing the air deep into his lungs, he thought: ‘I’m not surprised old Timothy lived to be a hundred!’ A long time he sat there, nostalgically bemused, strangely unwilling to move. Never had he breathed anything quite like that air; or so, at least, it seemed to him. It had been the old England, when they lived down here–the England of pack-horses and very little smoke, of peat and wood fires, and wives who never left you, because they couldn’t, probably. A static England, that dug and wove, where your parish was your world, and you were a churchwarden if you didn’t take care. His own grandfather–begotten and born one hundred and fifty-six years ago, in the best bed, not two dozen paces from where he was sitting. What a change since then! For the better? Who could say? But here was this grass, and rock and sea, and the air and the gulls, and the old church over there beyond the coombe, precisely as they had been, only more so. If this field were in the market, he wouldn’t mind buying it as a curiosity. Only, if he did, nobody would come and sit here! They’d want to play golf over it or something. And, uneasy at having verged on the sentimental, Soames put his hand down and felt the grass. But it wasn’t damp, and he couldn’t conscientiously feel that he was catching rheumatism; and still he sat there, with the sunlight warming his cheeks, and his eyes fixed on the sea. The ships went up and down, far out–steamers; no smugglers nowadays, and you paid the deuce of a price for brandy! In the old time here, without newspapers, with nothing from the outer world, you’d grow up without any sense of the State or that sort of thing. There’d be the church and your Bible, he supposed, and the market some miles away, and you’d work and eat and sleep and breathe the air and drink your cider and embrace your wife and watch your children, from June to June; and a good thing, too! What more did you do now that brought you any satisfaction? ‘Change, it’s all on the surface,’ thought Soames; ‘the roots are the same. You can’t get beyond them–try as you will!’ Progress, civilization, what were they for? Unless, indeed, to foster hobbies–collecting pictures, or what not? He didn’t see how the old chaps down here could have had hobbies–except for bees, perhaps. Hobbies? Just for that–just to give people a chance to have hobbies? He’d had a lot of amusement out of his own; and but for progress would never have had it. No! He’d have been down here still, perhaps, shearing his sheep or following a plough, and his daughter would be a girl with sturdy ankles and one new hat. Perhaps it was just as well that you couldn’t stop the clock! Ah! and it was time he was getting back to the lane before that chap came to look for him. And, getting up, Soames descended once more into the hollow. This time, close to the hedge, an object caught his eye, a very old boot–a boot so old that you could hardly swear by it. His lips became contorted in a faint smile. He seemed to hear his dead cousin George with his wry Forsytean humour cackling: “The ancestral boot! What ho, my wild ones! Let the portcullis fall!” Yes! They would laugh at him in the family if they knew he’d been looking at their roots. He shouldn’t say anything about it. And suddenly he went up to the boot, and, hooking the point of his umbrella under what was left of the toecap, flung it pettishly over the hedge. It defiled the loneliness–the feeling he had known, drinking-in that air. And very slowly he went back to the lane, so as not to get hot, and have to sit all damp in the car. But at the gate he stood, transfixed. What was all this? Two large, hairy horses were attached tandem to the back of his car with ropes, and beside them were three men, one of whom was Riggs, and two dogs, one of whom was lame. Soames perceived at once that it was all “that fellow!” In trying to back up the hill, which he ought never to have gone down, he had jammed the car so that it couldn’t move. He was always doing something! At this moment, however, “the fellow” mounted the car and moved the wheel; while one of the men cracked a whip. “Haup!” The hairy horses moved. Something in that slow, strong movement affected Soames. Progress! They had been obliged to fetch horses to drag Progress up the hill!
“That’s a good horse!” he said, pointing to the biggest.
“Ah! We call ’im Lion–’e can pull, Haup!”
The car passed on to the level ground, and the horses were detached. Soames went up to the man who had said “Haup!”
“Are you from the farm back there?”
“Yes.”
“Do you own this field?”
“I farm it.”
“What do you call it?”
“Call it? The big field.”
“It’s marked ‘Great Forsyte’ on the tithe map. D’you know that name?”
“Farsyt? There’s none of the name now. My grandmother was called Farsyt.”
“Was she?” said Soames, and again felt the thrill.
“Ah!” said the farmer.
Soames controlled himself.
“And what’s YOUR name, if I may ask?”
“Beer.”
Soames looked at him rather long, and took out his note case.
“You must allow me,” he said, “for your horses and your trouble.” And he offered a pound note. The farmer shook his head.
“That’s naught,” he said; “you’re welcome. We’re always haulin’ cars off this ‘ill.”
“I really can’t take something for nothing,” said Soames. “You’ll oblige me!”
“Well,” said the farmer, “I thank yeou,” and he took the note. “Haup!”
The released horses moved forward and the men and dogs followed after them. Soames got into the car, and, opening his packet of sandwiches, began to eat.
“Drive back to the vicarage–slowly.” And, while he ate, he wondered why he had felt a thrill on discovering that some of his own blood ran in a hard-bitten looking chap called Beer–if, indeed, that WAS his name.
It was two o’clock when he reached the vicarage, and the Vicar came to him with his mouth full.
“I find a great may entries, Mr. Forsyte; the name goes back to the beginning of the register. I shall have to take my time to give you the complete list. That Jolyon seems to have been born in 1710, son of Jolyon and Mary; he didn’t pay his tithes in 1757. There was another Jolyon born in 1680, evidently the father–he was church-warden from 1715 on; described as ‘Yeoman of Hays–’ he married a Bere.”
Soames gazed at him, and took out his note case. “How do you spell it?” he said.
“B-e-r-e.”
“Oh! The farmer up there said that was his name, too. I thought he was gammoning me. It seems his grandmother was called Forsyte, and she was the last of them here. Perhaps you could send me the Bere entries, too, for an inclusive seven guineas?”
“Oh! Six will be ample.”
“No. We’ll make it seven. You’ve got my card. I saw the stone. A healthy spot, right away from everything.” He laid the seven guineas on the table, and again had an impression, as of glad eyes. “I must be getting back to London now. Good-bye!”
“Good-bye, Mr. Forsyte. Anything I can find out I shall make a point of sending you.”
Soames shook his hand and went out to the car with the feeling that his roots would be conscientiously pulled up. After all, it was something to be dealing with a parson.
“Go on,” he said to Riggs; “we’ll get the best part of the way home.”
And, lying back in the car, thoroughly tired, he mused. Great Forsyte! Well! He was glad he had come down.
Chapter XII.
DRIVING ON
Soames spent the night at Winchester, a place he had often heard of but never seen. The Monts had been at school there, and Kit’s name had been put down automatically. He himself would prefer his own Marlborough, or Harrow, perhaps–some school that played at Lords–but not Eton, where young Jolyon had been. But then one wouldn’t be alive to see Kit play; so perhaps it didn’t matter.
The town seemed an old place. There was something in a cathedral, too; and after breakfast he went to it. The chancel was in activity–some choir practice or other. He entered noiselessly, for his boots were rubbered against damp, and sat down at the point of balance. With chin uplifted, he contemplated the arches and the glass. The place was rather dark, but very rich–like a Christmas pudding! These old buildings certainly gave one a feeling. He had always had it with St. Paul’s. One must admit at least a continuity of purpose somewhere. Up to a point–after that he wasn’t sure. You had a great thing, like this, almost perfect; and then an earthquake or an air-raid, and down it went! Nothing permanent about anything, so far as he could see, not even about the best examples of ingenuity and beauty. The same with landscape! You had a perfect garden of a country, and then an ice-age came along. There was continuity, but it was always changing. That was why it seemed to him extremely unlikely that he would live after he was dead. He had read somewhere–though not in The Times–that life was just animated shape, and that when shape was broken it was no longer animated.
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