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!