Aunt Ann looked up from her velvet chair. Grey curls banded her forehead, curls that, unchanged for decades, had extinguished in the family all sense of time. She made no reply, for she rarely spoke, husbanding her aged voice; but to James, uneasy of conscience, her look was as good as an answer.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t help Irene’s having no money. Soames was in such a hurry; he got quite thin dancing attendance on her.’
Putting the bowl pettishly down on the piano, he let his eyes wander to the group by the door.
‘It’s my opinion,’ he said unexpectedly, ‘that it’s just as well as it is.’
Aunt Ann did not ask him to explain this strange utterance. She knew what he was thinking. If Irene had no money she would not be so foolish as to do anything wrong; for they said – they said – she had been asking for a separate room; but, of course, Soames had not –
James interrupted her reverie:
But where, he asked, was Timothy? Hadn’t he come with them?
Through Aunt Ann’s compressed lips a tender smile forced its way:
No, he had not thought it wise, with so much of this diphtheria about; and he so liable to take things.
James answered:
‘Well, he takes good care of himself. I can’t afford to take the care of myself that he does.’
Nor was it easy to say which, of admiration, envy, or contempt, was dominant in that remark.
Timothy, indeed, was seldom seen. The baby of the family, a publisher by profession, he had some years before, when business was at full tide, scented out the stagnation which, indeed, had not yet come, but which ultimately, as all agreed, was bound to set in, and, selling his share in a firm engaged mainly in the production of religious books, had invested the quite conspicuous proceeds in three per cent Consols. By this act he had at once assumed an isolated position, no other Forsyte being content with less than four per cent for his money; and this isolation had slowly and surely undermined a spirit perhaps better than commonly endowed with caution. He had become almost a myth – a kind of incarnation of security haunting the background of the Forsyte universe. He had never committed the imprudence of marrying, or encumbering himself in any way with children.
James resumed, tapping the piece of china:
‘This isn’t real old Worcester. I s’pose Jolyon’s told you something about the young man. From all I can learn, he’s got no business, no income, and no connexion worth speaking of; but then, I know nothing – nobody tells me anything.’
Aunt Ann shook her head. Over her square-chinned, aquiline old face a trembling passed; the spidery fingers of her hands pressed against each other and interlaced, as though she were subtly recharging her will.
The eldest by some years of all the Forsytes, she held a peculiar position amongst them. Opportunists and egotists one and all – though not, indeed, more so than their neighbours – they quailed before her incorruptible figure, and, when opportunities were too strong, what could they do but avoid her?
Twisting his long, thin legs, James went on:
‘Jolyon, he will have his own way. He’s got no children –’ and stopped, recollecting the continued existence of old Jolyon’s son, young Jolyon, June’s father, who had made such a mess of it, and done for himself by deserting his wife and child and running away with that foreign governess. ‘Well,’ he resumed hastily, ‘if he likes to do these things, I s’pose he can afford to. Now, what’s he going to give her? I s’pose he’ll give her a thousand a year; he’s got nobody else to leave his money to.’
He stretched out his hand to meet that of a dapper, clean-shaven man, with hardly a hair on his head, a long, broken nose, full lips, and cold grey eyes under rectangular brows.
‘Well, Nick,’ he muttered, ‘how are you?’
Nicholas Forsyte with his bird-like rapidity and the look of a preternaturally sage schoolboy (he had made a large fortune, quite legitimately, out of the companies of which he was a director), placed within that cold palm the tips of his still colder fingers and hastily withdrew them.
‘I’m bad,’ he said, pouting – ‘been bad all the week; don’t sleep at night. The doctor can’t tell why. He’s a clever fellow, or I shouldn’t have him, but I get nothing out of him but bills.’
‘Doctors!’ said James, coming down sharp on his words: ‘I’ve had all the doctors in London for one or another of us. There’s no satisfaction to be got out of them; they’ll tell you anything. There’s Swithin, now. What good have they done him? There he is; he’s bigger than ever; he’s enormous; they can’t get his weight down. Look at him!’