He began to walk on again toward Hyde Park Corner. No greater change
in all England than in the Row! Born almost within hail of it, he
could remember it from 1860 on. Brought there as a child between the
crinolines to stare at tight-trousered dandies in whiskers, riding with
a cavalry seat; to watch the doffing of curly-brimmed and white top
hats; the leisurely air of it all, and the little bow-legged man in
a long red waistcoat who used to come among the fashion with dogs
on several strings, and try to sell one to his mother: King Charles
spaniels, Italian greyhounds, affectionate to her crinoline--you never
saw them now. You saw no quality of any sort, indeed, just working
people sitting in dull rows with nothing to stare at but a few young
bouncing females in pot hats, riding astride, or desultory Colonials
charging up and down on dismal-looking hacks; with, here and there,
little girls on ponies, or old gentlemen jogging their livers, or an
orderly trying a great galumphing cavalry horse; no thoroughbreds, no
grooms, no bowing, no scraping, no gossip--nothing; only the trees the
same--the trees in--different to the generations and declensions
of mankind. A democratic England--dishevelled, hurried, noisy, and
seemingly without an apex. And that something fastidious in the soul of
Soames turned over within him. Gone forever, the close borough of rank
and polish! Wealth there was--oh, yes! wealth--he himself was a richer
man than his father had ever been; but manners, flavour, quality, all
gone, engulfed in one vast, ugly, shoulder-rubbing, petrol-smelling
Cheerio. Little half-beaten pockets of gentility and caste lurking here
and there, dispersed and chetif, as Annette would say; but nothing ever
again firm and coherent to look up to. And into this new hurly-burly
of bad manners and loose morals his daughter--flower of his life--was
flung! And when those Labour chaps got power--if they ever did--the
worst was yet to come.
He passed out under the archway, at last no longer--thank
goodness!--disfigured by the gungrey of its search-light. 'They'd better
put a search-light on to where they're all going,' he thought, 'and
light up their precious democracy!' And he directed his steps along the
Club fronts of Piccadilly. George Forsyte, of course, would be sitting
in the bay window of the Iseeum. The chap was so big now that he was
there nearly all his time, like some immovable, sardonic, humorous
eye noting the decline of men and things. And Soames hurried, ever
constitutionally uneasy beneath his cousin's glance. George, who, as he
had heard, had written a letter signed "Patriot" in the middle of the
War, complaining of the Government's hysteria in docking the oats of
race-horses. Yes, there he was, tall, ponderous, neat, clean-shaven,
with his smooth hair, hardly thinned, smelling, no doubt, of the best
hair-wash, and a pink paper in his hand. Well, he didn't change! And
for perhaps the first time in his life Soames felt a kind of sympathy
tapping in his waistcoat for that sardonic kinsman. With his weight, his
perfectly parted hair, and bull-like gaze, he was a guarantee that the
old order would take some shifting yet. He saw George move the pink
paper as if inviting him to ascend--the chap must want to ask something
about his property. It was still under Soames' control; for in the
adoption of a sleeping partnership at that painful period twenty
years back when he had divorced Irene, Soames had found himself almost
insensibly retaining control of all purely Forsyte affairs.