Chapter XIV: Outlandish Night

Soames doggedly let the spring come—no easy task for one
conscious that time was flying, his birds in the bush no nearer
the hand, no issue from the web anywhere visible. Mr. Polteed
reported nothing, except that his watch went on—costing a lot of
money. Val and his cousin were gone to the war, whence came news
more favourable; Dartie was behaving himself so far; James had
retained his health; business prospered almost terribly—there was
nothing to worry Soames except that he was “held up,” could make
no step in any direction.

He did not exactly avoid Soho, for he could not afford to let
them think that he had “piped off,” as James would have put it—he
might want to “pipe on” again at any minute. But he had to be so
restrained and cautious that he would often pass the door of the
Restaurant Bretagne without going in, and wander out of the
purlieus of that region which always gave him the feeling of
having been possessively irregular.

He wandered thus one May night into Regent Street and the most
amazing crowd he had ever seen; a shrieking, whistling, dancing,
jostling, grotesque and formidably jovial crowd, with false noses
and mouth-organs, penny whistles and long feathers, every
appanage of idiocy, as it seemed to him. Mafeking! Of course, it
had been relieved! Good! But was that an excuse? Who were these
people, what were they, where had they come from into the West
End? His face was tickled, his ears whistled into. Girls cried:
“Keep your hair on, stucco!” A youth so knocked off his top-hat
that he recovered it with difficulty. Crackers were exploding
beneath his nose, between his feet. He was bewildered,
exasperated, offended. This stream of people came from every
quarter, as if impulse had unlocked flood-gates, let flow waters
of whose existence he had heard, perhaps, but believed in never.
This, then, was the populace, the innumerable living negation of
gentility and Forsyteism. This was—egad!—Democracy! It stank,
yelled, was hideous! In the East End, or even Soho, perhaps—but
here in Regent Street, in Piccadilly! What were the police about!
In 1900, Soames, with his Forsyte thousands, had never seen the
cauldron with the lid off; and now looking into it, could hardly
believe his scorching eyes. The whole thing was unspeakable!
These people had no restraint, they seemed to think him funny;
such swarms of them, rude, coarse, laughing—and what laughter!

Nothing sacred to them! He shouldn’t be surprised if they began
to break windows. In Pall Mall, past those august dwellings, to
enter which people paid sixty pounds, this shrieking, whistling,
dancing dervish of a crowd was swarming. From the Club windows
his own kind were looking out on them with regulated amusement.
They didn’t realise! Why, this was serious—might come to
anything! The crowd was cheerful, but some day they would come in
different mood! He remembered there had been a mob in the late
eighties, when he was at Brighton; they had smashed things and
made speeches. But more than dread, he felt a deep surprise. They
were hysterical—it wasn’t English! And all about the relief of a
little town as big as—Watford, six thousand miles away.
Restraint, reserve! Those qualities to him more dear almost than
life, those indispensable attributes of property and culture,
where were they? It wasn’t English! No, it wasn’t English! So
Soames brooded, threading his way on. It was as if he had
suddenly caught sight of someone cutting the covenant “for quiet
possession” out of his legal documents; or of a monster lurking
and stalking out in the future, casting its shadow before. Their
want of stolidity, their want of reverence! It was like
discovering that nine-tenths of the people of England were
foreigners. And if that were so—then, anything might happen!

At Hyde Park Corner he ran into George Forsyte, very sunburnt
from racing, holding a false nose in his hand.

“Hallo, Soames!” he said, “have a nose!”

Soames responded with a pale smile.

“Got this from one of these sportsmen,” went on George, who had
evidently been dining; “had to lay him out—for trying to bash my
hat. I say, one of these days we shall have to fight these chaps,
they’re getting so damned cheeky—all radicals and socialists.
They want our goods. You tell Uncle James that, it’ll make him
sleep.”

“_In vino veritas_,” thought Soames, but he only nodded, and
passed on up Hamilton Place. There was but a trickle of
roysterers in Park Lane, not very noisy. And looking up at the
houses he thought: “After all, we’re the backbone of the country.
They won’t upset us easily. Possession’s nine points of the law.”

But, as he closed the door of his father’s house behind him, all
that queer outlandish nightmare in the streets passed out of his
mind almost as completely as if, having dreamed it, he had
awakened in the warm clean morning comfort of his
spring-mattressed bed.

Walking into the centre of the great empty drawing-room, he stood
still.

A wife! Somebody to talk things over with. One had a right! Damn
it! One had a right!