esultory 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 indifferent 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 for ever, 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 gun-grey 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