The Forsyte Saga - Volume 1

He pondered this as he walked steadily, holding his umbrella carefully

by the wood, just below the crook of the handle, so as to keep the

ferule off the ground, and not fray the silk in the middle. And, with

his thin, high shoulders stooped, his long legs moving with swift

mechanical precision, this passage through the Park, where the sun shone

with a clear flame on so much idleness--on so many human evidences of

the remorseless battle of Property, raging beyond its ring--was like the

flight of some land bird across the sea.

He felt a--touch on the arm as he came out at Albert Gate.

It was Soames, who, crossing from the shady side of Piccadilly, where he

had been walking home from the office, had suddenly appeared alongside.

"Your mother's in bed," said James; "I was, just coming to you, but I

suppose I shall be in the way."

The outward relations between James and his son were marked by a lack

of sentiment peculiarly Forsytean, but for all that the two were by no

means unattached. Perhaps they regarded one another as an investment;

certainly they were solicitous of each other's welfare, glad of each

other's company. They had never exchanged two words upon the more

intimate problems of life, or revealed in each other's presence the

existence of any deep feeling.

Something beyond the power of word-analysis bound them together,

something hidden deep in the fibre of nations and families--for blood,

they say, is thicker than water--and neither of them was a cold-blooded

man. Indeed, in James love of his children was now the prime motive of

his existence. To have creatures who were parts of himself, to whom he

might transmit the money he saved, was at the root of his saving;

and, at seventy-five, what was left that could give him pleasure,

but--saving? The kernel of life was in this saving for his children.

Than James Forsyte, notwithstanding all his 'Jonah-isms,' there was

no saner man (if the leading symptom of sanity, as we are told, is

self-preservation, though without doubt Timothy went too far) in all

this London, of which he owned so much, and loved with such a dumb love,

as the centre of his opportunities. He had the marvellous instinctive

sanity of the middle class. In him--more than in Jolyon, with his

masterful will and his moments of tenderness and philosophy--more

than in Swithin, the martyr to crankiness--Nicholas, the sufferer from

ability--and Roger, the victim of enterprise--beat the true pulse of

compromise; of all the brothers he was least remarkable in mind and

person, and for that reason more likely to live for ever.