The Forsyte Saga - Volume 3

Soames paused a moment in his march to lean over the railings of the

Row. A suitable spot for reminiscence, half-way between that house in

Park Lane which had seen his birth and his parents' deaths, and the

little house in Montpellier Square where thirty-five years ago he had

enjoyed his first edition of matrimony. Now, after twenty years of

his second edition, that old tragedy seemed to him like a previous

existence--which had ended when Fleur was born in place of the son he

had hoped for. For many years he had ceased regretting, even vaguely,

the son who had not been born; Fleur filled the bill in his heart. After

all, she bore his name; and he was not looking forward at all to the

time when she would change it. Indeed, if he ever thought of such a

calamity, it was seasoned by the vague feeling that he could make her

rich enough to purchase perhaps and extinguish the name of the fellow

who married her--why not, since, as it seemed, women were equal to men

nowadays? And Soames, secretly convinced that they were not, passed his

curved hand over his face vigorously, till it reached the comfort of his

chin. Thanks to abstemious habits, he had not grown fat and gabby; his

nose was pale and thin, his grey moustache close-clipped, his eyesight

unimpaired. A slight stoop closened and corrected the expansion given to

his face by the heightening of his forehead in the recession of his

grey hair. Little change had Time wrought in the "warmest" of the young

Forsytes, as the last of the old Forsytes--Timothy-now in his hundred

and first year, would have phrased it.

The shade from the plane-trees fell on his neat Homburg hat; he had

given up top hats--it was no use attracting attention to wealth in days

like these. Plane-trees! His thoughts travelled sharply to Madrid--the

Easter before the War, when, having to make up his mind about that Goya

picture, he had taken a voyage of discovery to study the painter on his

spot. The fellow had impressed him--great range, real genius! Highly as

the chap ranked, he would rank even higher before they had finished with

him. The second Goya craze would be greater even than the first;

oh, yes! And he had bought. On that visit he had--as never

before--commissioned a copy of a fresco painting called "La Vendimia,"

wherein was the figure of a girl with an arm akimbo, who had reminded

him of his daughter. He had it now in the Gallery at Mapledurham, and

rather poor it was--you couldn't copy Goya. He would still look at

it, however, if his daughter were not there, for the sake of something

irresistibly reminiscent in the light, erect balance of the figure, the

width between the arching eyebrows, the eager dreaming of the dark eyes.

Curious that Fleur should have dark eyes, when his own were grey--no

pure Forsyte had brown eyes--and her mother's blue! But of course her

grandmother Lamotte's eyes were dark as treacle!