The whole of one wall was occupied by an immense piece of furniture, all cupboards and drawers. Otherwise there was nothing in the room but a dressing-table with silver accoutrements, an electric radiator alight in the fireplace, and a bed opposite. Over the fireplace was a single picture, at which Soames glanced mechanically. What! Chinese! A large whitish sidelong monkey, holding the rind of a squeezed fruit in its outstretched paw. Its whiskered face looked back at him with brown, almost human eyes. What on earth had made his inartistic cousin buy a thing like that and put it up to face his bed? He turned and looked at the bed’s occupant. “The only sportsman of the lot,” as Montague Dartie in his prime had called him, lay with his swollen form outlined beneath a thin quilt. It gave Soames quite a turn to see that familiar beef-coloured face pale and puffy as a moon, with dark corrugated circles round eyes which still had their japing stare. A voice, hoarse and subdued, but with the old Forsyte timbre, said:
“Hallo, Soames! Come to measure me for my coffin?”
Soames put the suggestion away with a movement of his hand; he felt queer looking at that travesty of George. They had never got on, but–!
And in his flat, unemotional voice he said:
“Well, George! You’ll pick up yet. You’re no age. Is there anything I can do for you?”
A grin twitched George’s pallid lips.
“Make me a codicil. You’ll find paper in the dressing table drawer.”
Soames took out a sheet of ‘Iseeum’ Club notepaper. Standing at the table, he inscribed the opening words of a codicil with his stylographic pen, and looked round at George. The words came with a hoarse relish.
“My three screws to young Val Dartie, because he’s the only Forsyte that knows a horse from a donkey.” A throaty chuckle sounded ghastly in the ears of Soames. “What have you said?”
Soames read: “I hereby leave my three racehorses to my kinsman, Valerius Dartie, of Wansdon, Sussex, because he has special knowledge of horses.”
Again the throaty chuckle. “You’re a dry file, Soames. Go on. To Milly Moyle, of 12, Claremont Grove, twelve thousand pounds, free of legacy duty.”
Soames paused on the verge of a whistle.
The woman in the next room!
The japing in George’s eyes had turned to brooding gloom.
“It’s a lot of money,” Soames could not help saying.
George made a faint choleric sound.
“Write it down, or I’ll leave her the lot.”
Soames wrote. “Is that all?”
“Yes. Read it!”
Soames read. Again he heard that throaty chuckle. “That’s a pill. You won’t let THAT into the papers. Get that chap in, and you and he can witness.”
Before Soames reached the door, it was opened and the man himself came in.
“The–er–vicar, sir,” he said in a deprecating voice, “has called. He wants to know if you would like to see him.”
George turned his face, his fleshy grey eyes rolled.
“Give him my compliments,” he said, “and say I’ll see him at the funeral.”
With a bow the man went out, and there was silence.
“Now,” said George, “get him in again. I don’t know when the flag’ll fall.”
Soames beckoned the man in. When the codicil was signed and the man gone, George spoke:
“Take it, and see she gets it. I can trust you, that’s one thing about you, Soames.”
Soames pocketed the codicil with a very queer sensation.
“Would you like to see her again?” he said.
George stared up at him a long time before he answered.
“No. What’s the good? Give me a cigar from that drawer.”
Soames opened the drawer.
“Ought you?” he said.
George grinned. “Never in my life done what I ought; not going to begin now. Cut it for me.”
Soames nipped the end of the cigar. ‘Shan’t give him a match,’ he thought. ‘Can’t take the responsibility.’ But George did not ask for a match. He lay quite still, the unlighted cigar between his pale lips, the curved lids down over his eyes.
“Good-bye,” he said, “I’m going to have a snooze.”
“Good-bye,” said Soames. “I–I hope–you–you’ll soon–”
George reopened his eyes–fixed, sad, jesting, they seemed to quench the shams of hope and consolation. Soames turned hastily and went out. He felt bad, and almost unconsciously turned again into the sitting-room. The woman was still in the same attitude; the same florid scent was in the air. Soames took up the umbrella he had left there, and went out.
“This is my telephone number,” he said to the servant waiting in the corridor; “let me know.”
The man bowed.
Soames turned out of Belville Row. Never had he left George’s presence without the sense of being laughed at. Had he been laughed at now? Was that codicil George’s last joke? If he had not gone in this afternoon, would George ever have made it, leaving a third of his property away from his family to that florid woman in the high-backed chair? Soames was beset by a sense of mystery. How could a man joke at death’s door? It was, in a way, heroic. Where would he be buried? Somebody would know–Francie or Eustace. And what would they think when they came to know about that woman in the chair–twelve thousand pounds! ‘If I can get hold of that white monkey, I will,’ he thought suddenly. ‘It’s a good thing.’ The monkey’s eyes, the squeezed-out fruit–was life all a bitter jest and George deeper than himself? He rang the Green Street bell.
Mrs. Dartie was very sorry, but Mrs. Cardigan had called for her to dine and make a fourth at the play.
Soames went in to dinner alone. At the polished board below which Montague Dartie had now and again slipped, if not quite slept, he dined and brooded. “I can trust you, that’s one thing about you, Soames.” The words flattered and yet stung him. The depths of that sardonic joke! To give him a family shock and trust him to carry the shock out! George had never cared twelve thousand pounds for a woman who smelled of patchouli. No! It was a final gibe at his family, the Forsytes, at Soames himself! Well! one by one those who had injured or gibed at him–Irene, Bosinney, old and young Jolyon, and now George, had met their fates. Dead, dying, or in British Columbia! He saw again his cousin’s eyes above that unlighted cigar, fixed, sad, jesting–poor devil! He got up from the table, and nervously drew aside the curtains. The night was fine and cold. What happened to one–after? George used to say that he had been Charles the Second’s cook in a former existence! But reincarnation was all nonsense, weak-minded theorising! Still, one would be glad to hold on if one could, after one was gone. Hold on, and be near Fleur! What noise was that? Gramophone going in the kitchen! When the cat was away, the mice–! People were all alike–take what they could get, and give as little as they could for it. Well! he would smoke a cigarette. Lighting it at a candle–Winifred dined by candle-light, it was the ‘mode’ again–he thought: ‘Has he still got that cigar between his teeth?’ A funny fellow, George–all his days a funny fellow! He watched a ring of smoke he had made without intending to–very blue, he never inhaled! Yes! George had lived too fast, or he would not have been dying twenty years before his lime–too fast! Well, there it was, and he wished he had a cat to talk to! He took a little monster off the mantelboard. Picked up by his nephew Benedict in an Eastern bazaar the year after the War, it had green eyes–‘Not emeralds,’ thought Soames, ‘some cheap stone!’
“The telephone for you, sir.”
He went into the hall and took up the receiver.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Forsyte has passed away, sir–in his sleep, the doctor says.”
“Oh!” said Soames: “Had he a cig–? Many thanks.” He hung up the receiver.
Passed away! And, with a nervous movement, he felt for the codicil in his breast pocket.
Chapter XI.
VENTURE
For a week Bicket had seen ‘the job,’ slippery as an eel, evasive as a swallow, for ever passing out of reach. A pound for keep, and three shillings invested on a horse, and he was down to twenty-four bob. The weather had turned sou’-westerly and Victorine had gone out for the first time. That was something off his mind, but the cramp of the unemployed sensation, that fearful craving for the means of mere existence, a protesting, agonising anxiety, was biting into the very flesh of his spirit. If he didn’t get a job within a week or two, there would be nothing for it but the workhouse, or the gas. ‘The gas,’ thought Bicket, ‘if she will, I will. I’m fed up. After all, what is it? In her arms I wouldn’t mind.’ Instinct, however, that it was not so easy as all that to put one’s head under the gas, gave him a brainwave that Monday night. Balloons–that chap in Oxford Street today! Why not? He still had the capital for a flutter in them, and no hawker’s licence needed. His brain, working like a squirrel in the small hours, grasped the great, the incalculable advantage of coloured balloons over all other forms of commerce. You couldn’t miss the man who sold them–there he was for every eye to see, with his many radiant circumferences dangling in front of him! Not much profit in them, he had gathered–a penny on a sixpenny globe of coloured air, a penny on every three small twopenny globes; still their salesman was alive, and probably had pitched him a poor tale for fear of making his profession seem too attractive. Over the Bridge, just where the traffic–no, up by St. Paul’s! He knew a passage where he could stand back a yard or two, like that chap in Oxford Street! But to the girl sleeping beside him he said nothing. No word to her till he had thrown the die. It meant gambling with his last penny. For a bare living he would have to sell–why, three dozen big and four dozen small balloons a day would only be twenty-six shillings a week profit, unless that chap was kidding. Not much towards ‘Austrylia’ out of that! And not a career–Victorine would have a shock! But it was neck or nothing now–he must try it, and in off hours go on looking for a job.
Our thin capitalist, then, with four dozen big and seven dozen small on a tray, two shillings in his pocket, and little in his stomach, took his stand off St. Paul’s at two o’clock next day. Slowly he blew up and tied the necks of two large and three small, magenta, green and blue, till they dangled before him. Then with the smell of rubber in his nostrils, and protruding eyes, he stood back on the kerb and watched the stream go by. It gratified him to see that most people turned to look at him. But the first person to address him was a policeman, with:
“I’m not sure you can stand there.”
Bicket did not answer, his throat felt too dry. He had heard of the police. Had he gone the wrong way to work? Suddenly he gulped, and said: “Give us a chance, constable; I’m right on my bones. If I’m in the way, I’ll stand anywhere you like. This is new to me, and two bob’s all I’ve got left in the world besides a wife.”
The constable, a big man, looked him up and down. “Well, we’ll see. I shan’t make trouble for you if no one objects.”
Bicket’s gaze deepened thankfully.
“I’m much obliged,” he said; “tyke one for your little girl–to please me.”
“I’ll buy one,” said the policeman, “and give you a start. I go off duty in an hour, you ‘ave it ready–a big one, magenta.”
He moved away. Bicket could see him watching. Edging into the gutter, he stood quite still; his large eyes clung to every face that passed; and, now and then, his thin fingers nervously touched his wares. If Victorine could see him! All the spirit within him mounted. By Golly! he would get out of this somehow into the sun, into a life that was a life!
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