He had much to see to, that night and all next day. A telegram at
breakfast reassured him about Annette, and he only caught the last train
back to Reading, with Emily's kiss on his forehead and in his ears her
words:
"I don't know what I should have done without you, my dear boy."
He reached his house at midnight. The weather had changed, was mild
again, as though, having finished its work and sent a Forsyte to
his last account, it could relax. A second telegram, received at
dinner-time, had confirmed the good news of Annette, and, instead of
going in, Soames passed down through the garden in the moonlight to his
houseboat. He could sleep there quite well. Bitterly tired, he lay down
on the sofa in his fur coat and fell asleep. He woke soon after dawn and
went on deck. He stood against the rail, looking west where the river
swept round in a wide curve under the woods. In Soames, appreciation of
natural beauty was curiously like that of his farmer ancestors, a sense
of grievance if it wasn't there, sharpened, no doubt, and civilised, by
his researches among landscape painting. But dawn has power to fertilise
the most matter-of-fact vision, and he was stirred. It was another world
from the river he knew, under that remote cool light; a world into which
man had not entered, an unreal world, like some strange shore sighted
by discovery. Its colour was not the colour of convention, was hardly
colour at all; its shapes were brooding yet distinct; its silence
stunning; it had no scent. Why it should move him he could not tell,
unless it were that he felt so alone in it, bare of all relationship and
all possessions. Into such a world his father might be voyaging, for all
resemblance it had to the world he had left. And Soames took refuge from
it in wondering what painter could have done it justice. The white-grey
water was like--like the belly of a fish! Was it possible that this
world on which he looked was all private property, except the water--and
even that was tapped! No tree, no shrub, not a blade of grass, not a
bird or beast, not even a fish that was not owned. And once on a time
all this was jungle and marsh and water, and weird creatures roamed and
sported without human cognizance to give them names; rotting luxuriance
had rioted where those tall, carefully planted woods came down to the
water, and marsh-misted reeds on that far side had covered all the
pasture. Well! they had got it under, kennelled it all up, labelled it,
and stowed it in lawyers' offices. And a good thing too! But once in
a way, as now, the ghost of the past came out to haunt and brood
and whisper to any human who chanced to be awake: 'Out of my unowned
loneliness you all came, into it some day you will all return.'