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.