She was spared the watching of the branches jut out beyond the point of
balance. She could not look into the hearts of her followers. The same
law that had worked in her, bringing her up from a tall, straight-backed
slip of a girl to a woman strong and grown, from a woman grown to a
woman old, angular, feeble, almost witchlike, with individuality all
sharpened and sharpened, as all rounding from the world's contact fell
off from her--that same law would work, was working, in the family she
had watched like a mother.
She had seen it young, and growing, she had seen it strong and grown,
and before her old eyes had time or strength to see any more, she died.
She would have tried, and who knows but she might have kept it young
and strong, with her old fingers, her trembling kisses--a little longer;
alas! not even Aunt Ann could fight with Nature.
'Pride comes before a fall!' In accordance with this, the greatest
of Nature's ironies, the Forsyte family had gathered for a last proud
pageant before they fell. Their faces to right and left, in single
lines, were turned for the most part impassively toward the ground,
guardians of their thoughts; but here and there, one looking upward,
with a line between his brows, searched to see some sight on the chapel
walls too much for him, to be listening to something that appalled. And
the responses, low-muttered, in voices through which rose the same tone,
the same unseizable family ring, sounded weird, as though murmured in
hurried duplication by a single person.
The service in the chapel over, the mourners filed up again to guard the
body to the tomb. The vault stood open, and, round it, men in black were
waiting.
From that high and sacred field, where thousands of the upper middle
class lay in their last sleep, the eyes of the Forsytes travelled down
across the flocks of graves. There--spreading to the distance, lay
London, with no sun over it, mourning the loss of its daughter, mourning
with this family, so dear, the loss of her who was mother and guardian.
A hundred thousand spires and houses, blurred in the great grey web of
property, lay there like prostrate worshippers before the grave of this,
the oldest Forsyte of them all.
A few words, a sprinkle of earth, the thrusting of the coffin home, and
Aunt Ann had passed to her last rest.
Round the vault, trustees of that passing, the five brothers stood, with
white heads bowed; they would see that Ann was comfortable where she
was going. Her little property must stay behind, but otherwise, all that
could be should be done....