第54章

They wanted a lesson,and they would get it;but it would take three months at least to bring them to heel.There weren't the troops out there;always behind time,the Government!Confound those newspaper rats!What was the use of waking everybody up?

Breakfast to-morrow was quite soon enough.And he thought with alarm of his father.They would cry it down Park Lane.Hailing a hansom,he got in and told the man to drive there.

James and Emily had just gone up to bed,and after communicating the news to Warmson,Soames prepared to follow.He paused by after-thought to say:

"What do you think of it,Warmson?"

The butler ceased passing a hat brush over the silk hat Soames had taken off,and,inclining his face a little forward,said in a low voice:"Well,sir,they 'aven't a chance,of course;but I'm told they're very good shots.I've got a son in the Inniskillings.""You,Warmson?Why,I didn't know you were married.""No,sir.I don't talk of it.I expect he'll be going out."The slighter shock Soames had felt on discovering that he knew so little of one whom he thought he knew so well was lost in the slight shock of discovering that the war might touch one personally.Born in the year of the Crimean War,he had only come to consciousness by the time the Indian Mutiny was over;since then the many little wars of the British Empire had been entirely professional,quite unconnected with the Forsytes and all they stood for in the body politic.This war would surely be no exception.But his mind ran hastily over his family.Two of the Haymans,he had heard,were in some Yeomanry or other--it had always been a pleasant thought,there was a certain distinction about the Yeomanry;they wore,or used to wear,a blue uniform with silver about it,and rode horses.And Archibald,he remembered,had once on a time joined the Militia,but had given it up because his father,Nicholas,had made such a fuss about his 'wasting his time peacocking about in a uniform.'Recently he had heard somewhere that young Nicholas'eldest,very young Nicholas,had become a Volunteer.'No,'thought Soames,mounting the stairs slowly,'there's nothing in that!'

He stood on the landing outside his parents'bed and dressing rooms,debating whether or not to put his nose in and say a reassuring word.Opening the landing window,he listened.The rumble from Piccadilly was all the sound he heard,and with the thought,'If these motor-cars increase,it'll affect house property,'he was about to pass on up to the room always kept ready for him when he heard,distant as yet,the hoarse rushing call of a newsvendor.There it was,and coming past the house!He knocked on his mother's door and went in.

His father was sitting up in bed,with his ears pricked under the white hair which Emily kept so beautifully cut.He looked pink,and extraordinarily clean,in his setting of white sheet and pillow,out of which the points of his high,thin,nightgowned shoulders emerged in small peaks.His eyes alone,grey and distrustful under their withered lids,were moving from the window to Emily,who in a wrapper was walking up and down,squeezing a rubber ball attached to a scent bottle.The room reeked faintly of the eau-de-Cologne she was spraying.

"All right!"said Soames,"it's not a fire.The Boers have declared war--that's all."Emily stopped her spraying.

"Oh!"was all she said,and looked at James.

Soames,too,looked at his father.He was taking it differently from their expectation,as if some thought,strange to them,were working in him.

"H'm!"he muttered suddenly,"I shan't live to see the end of this.""Nonsense,James!It'll be over by Christmas.""What do you know about it?"James answered her with asperity.

"It's a pretty mess at this time of night,too!"He lapsed into silence,and his wife and son,as if hypnotised,waited for him to say:'I can't tell--I don't know;I knew how it would be!'But he did not.The grey eyes shifted,evidently seeing nothing in the room;then movement occurred under the bedclothes,and the knees were drawn up suddenly to a great height.

"They ought to send out Roberts.It all comes from that fellow Gladstone and his Majuba."The two listeners noted something beyond the usual in his voice,something of real anxiety.It was as if he had said:'I shall never see the old country peaceful and safe again.I shall have to die before I know she's won.'And in spite of the feeling that James must not be encouraged to be fussy,they were touched.

Soames went up to the bedside and stroked his father's hand which had emerged from under the bedclothes,long and wrinkled with veins.

"Mark my words!"said James,"consols will go to par.For all Iknow,Val may go and enlist."

"Oh,come,James!"cried Emily,"you talk as if there were danger."Her comfortable voice seemed to soothe James for once.

"Well,"he muttered,"I told you how it would be.I don't know,I'm sure nobody tells me anything.Are you sleeping here,my boy?"The crisis was past,he would now compose himself to his normal degree of anxiety;and,assuring his father that he was sleeping in the house,Soames pressed his hand,and went up to his room.

The following afternoon witnessed the greatest crowd Timothy's had known for many a year.On national occasions,such as this,it was,indeed,almost impossible to avoid going there.Not that there was any danger or rather only just enough to make it necessary to assure each other that there was none.

Nicholas was there early.He had seen Soames the night before--Soames had said it was bound to come.This old Kruger was in his dotage--why,he must be seventy-five if he was a day!

(Nicholas was eighty-two.)What had Timothy said?He had had a fit after Majuba.These Boers were a grasping lot!The dark-haired Francie,who had arrived on his heels,with the contradictious touch which became the free spirit of a daughter of Roger,chimed in:

"Kettle and pot,Uncle Nicholas.What price the Uitlanders?"What price;indeed!A new expression,and believed to be due to her brother George.