The Forsyte Saga(70)

As though feeling that some danger threatened her younger brother, Aunt Juley suddenly offered him tea. ‘There it is,’ she said, ‘all cold and nasty, waiting for you in the back drawing-room, but Smither shall make you some fresh.’

Old Jolyon rose: ‘Thank you,’ he said, looking straight at James, ‘but I’ve no time for tea, and – scandal, and the rest of it! It’s time I was at home. Good-bye, Julia; good-bye, Hester; good-bye, Winifred.’

Without more ceremonious adieux, he marched out

Once again in his cab, his anger evaporated, for so it ever was with his wrath – when he had rapped out, it was gone. Sadness came over his spirit. He had stopped their mouths, maybe, but at what a cost! At the cost of certain knowledge that the rumour he had been resolved not to believe was true. June was abandoned, and for the wife of that fellow’s son! He felt it was true, and hardened himself to treat it as if it were not; but the pain he hid beneath this resolution began slowly, surely, to vent itself in a blind resentment against James and his son.

The six women and one man left behind in the little drawing-room began talking as easily as might be after such an occurrence, for though each one of them knew for a fact that he or she never talked scandal, each one of them also knew that the other six did; all were therefore angry and at a loss. James only was silent, disturbed to the bottom of his soul.

Presently Francie said: ‘Do you know, I think Uncle Jolyon is terribly changed this last year. What do you think, Aunt Hester?’

Aunt Hester made a little movement of recoil: ‘Oh, ask your Aunt Julia!’ she said; ‘I know nothing about it.’

No one else was afraid of assenting, and James muttered gloomily at the floor: ‘He’s not half the man he was.’

‘I’ve noticed it a long time,’ went on Francie; ‘he’s aged tremendously.’

Aunt Juley shook her head; her face seemed suddenly to have become one immense pout.

‘Poor dear Jolyon,’ she said, ‘somebody ought to see to it for him!’

There was again silence; then, as though in terror of being left solitarily behind, all five visitors rose simultaneously, and took their departure.

Mrs Small, Aunt Hester, and their cat were left once more alone, the sound of a door closing in the distance announced the approach of Timothy.

That evening, when Aunt Hester had just gone off to sleep in the back bedroom that used to be Aunt Juley’s before Aunt Juley took Aunt Ann’s, her door was opened, and Mrs Small, in a pink night-cap, a candle in her hand, entered: ‘Hester!’ she said. ‘Hester!’

Aunt Hester faintly rustled the sheet.

‘Hester,’ repeated Aunt Juley, to make quite sure that she had awakened her, ‘I am quite troubled about poor dear Jolyon. What,’ Aunt Juley dwelt on the word, ‘do you think ought to be done?’

Aunt Hester again rustled the sheet, her voice was heard faintly pleading: ‘Done? How should I know?’

Aunt Juley turned away satisfied, and closing the door with extra gentleness so as not to disturb dear Hester, let it slip through her fingers and fall to with a ‘crack’.

Back in her own room, she stood at the window gazing at the moon over the trees in the Park, through a chink in the muslin curtains, close drawn lest anyone should see. And there, with her face all round and pouting in its pink cap, and her eyes wet, she thought of ‘dear Jolyon’, so old and so lonely, and how she could be of some use to him; and how he would come to love her, as she had never been loved since – since poor Septimus went away.





Chapter Eight



DANCE AT ROGER’S





ROGER’S house in Prince’s Gardens was brilliantly alight. Large numbers of wax candles had been collected and placed in cut-glass chandeliers, and the parquet floor of the long, double drawing-room reflected these constellations. An appearance of real spaciousness had been secured by moving out all the furniture on to the upper landings, and enclosing the room with those strange appendages of civilization known as ‘rout’ seats.

In a remote corner, embowered in palms, was a cottage piano, with a copy of the ‘Kensington Coil’ open on the music-stand.

Roger had objected to a band. He didn’t see in the least what they wanted with a band; he wouldn’t go to the expense, and there was an end of it. Francie (her mother, whom Roger had long since reduced to chronic dyspepsia, went to bed on such occasions) had been obliged to content herself with supplementing the piano by a young man who played the cornet, and she so arranged with palms that anyone who did not look into the heart of things might imagine there were several musicians secreted there. She made up her mind to tell them to play loud – there was a lot of music in a cornet, if the man would only put his soul into it.