Be that as it may, his funeral at Highgate had been perfect, and coming
away from it Soames Forsyte made almost mechanically for his Uncle
Timothy's in the Bayswater Road. The 'Old Things'--Aunt Juley and Aunt
Hester--would like to hear about it. His father--James--at eighty-eight
had not felt up to the fatigue of the funeral; and Timothy himself,
of course, had not gone; so that Nicholas had been the only brother
present. Still, there had been a fair gathering; and it would cheer
Aunts Juley and Hester up to know. The kindly thought was not unmixed
with the inevitable longing to get something out of everything you do,
which is the chief characteristic of Forsytes, and indeed of the saner
elements in every nation. In this practice of taking family matters
to Timothy's in the Bayswater Road, Soames was but following in the
footsteps of his father, who had been in the habit of going at least
once a week to see his sisters at Timothy's, and had only given it
up when he lost his nerve at eighty-six, and could not go out without
Emily. To go with Emily was of no use, for who could really talk to
anyone in the presence of his own wife? Like James in the old days,
Soames found time to go there nearly every Sunday, and sit in the little
drawing-room into which, with his undoubted taste, he had introduced a
good deal of change and china not quite up to his own fastidious mark,
and at least two rather doubtful Barbizon pictures, at Christmastides.
He himself, who had done extremely well with the Barbizons, had for some
years past moved towards the Marises, Israels, and Mauve, and was
hoping to do better. In the riverside house which he now inhabited near
Mapledurham he had a gallery, beautifully hung and lighted, to which
few London dealers were strangers. It served, too, as a Sunday afternoon
attraction in those week-end parties which his sisters, Winifred or
Rachel, occasionally organised for him. For though he was but a taciturn
showman, his quiet collected determinism seldom failed to influence his
guests, who knew that his reputation was grounded not on mere aesthetic
fancy, but on his power of gauging the future of market values. When he
went to Timothy's he almost always had some little tale of triumph over
a dealer to unfold, and dearly he loved that coo of pride with which
his aunts would greet it. This afternoon, however, he was differently
animated, coming from Roger's funeral in his neat dark clothes--not
quite black, for after all an uncle was but an uncle, and his soul
abhorred excessive display of feeling. Leaning back in a marqueterie
chair and gazing down his uplifted nose at the sky-blue walls plastered
with gold frames, he was noticeably silent. Whether because he had been
to a funeral or not, the peculiar Forsyte build of his face was seen to
the best advantage this afternoon--a face concave and long, with a jaw
which divested of flesh would have seemed extravagant: altogether a
chinny face though not at all ill-looking. He was feeling more strongly
than ever that Timothy's was hopelessly 'rum-ti-too' and the souls of
his aunts dismally mid-Victorian. The subject on which alone he wanted
to talk--his own undivorced position--was unspeakable. And yet it
occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else. It was only since the
Spring that this had been so and a new feeling grown up which was
egging him on towards what he knew might well be folly in a Forsyte
of forty-five. More and more of late he had been conscious that he was
'getting on.' The fortune already considerable when he conceived the
house at Robin Hill which had finally wrecked his marriage with Irene,
had mounted with surprising vigour in the twelve lonely years during
which he had devoted himself to little else. He was worth to-day well
over a hundred thousand pounds, and had no one to leave it to--no real
object for going on with what was his religion. Even if he were to relax
his efforts, money made money, and he felt that he would have a hundred
and fifty thousand before he knew where he was. There had always been
a strongly domestic, philoprogenitive side to Soames; baulked and
frustrated, it had hidden itself away, but now had crept out again
in this his 'prime of life.' Concreted and focussed of late by the
attraction of a girl's undoubted beauty, it had become a veritable
prepossession.