The Forsyte Saga, Volume 3(220)
Dinny bent over a drawer and arranged the things.
‘I can’t go into it, but he seems to be quite a beast.’
Lady Mont tipped the bag into the drawer, murmuring: ‘Poor dear Clare!’
‘So, Auntie, she’s just to be home for her health.’
Lady Mont put her nose into a bowl of flowers. ‘Boswell and Johnson call them “God-eat-yers”. They don’t smell. What disease could Clare have – nerves?’
‘Climate, Auntie.’
‘So many Anglo-Indians go back and back, Dinny.’
‘I know, but for the present. Something’s bound to happen. So not even to Fleur, please.’
‘Fleur will know whether I tell her or not. She’s like that. Has Clare a young man?’
‘Oh! no!’ And Dinny lifted a puce-coloured wrapper, recalling the expression of the young man when he was saying good-bye.
‘On board ship,’ murmured her Aunt dubiously.
Dinny changed the subject.
‘Is Uncle Lawrence very political just now?’
‘Yes, so borin’. Things always sound so when you talk about them. Is your candidate here safe, like Michael?’
‘He’s new, but he’ll get in.’
‘Married?’
‘No.’
Lady Mont inclined her head slightly to one side and scrutinized her niece from under half-drooped lids.
Dinny took the last thing out of the trunk. It was a pot of antiphlogistine.
‘That’s not British, Auntie.’
‘For the chest. Delia puts it in. I’ve had it, years. Have you talked to your candidate in private?’
‘I have.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Rather under forty, I should say.’
‘Does he do anything besides?’
‘He’s a K. C.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Dornford.’
‘There were Dornfords when I was a girl. Where was that? Ah! Algeciras! He was a Colonel at Gibraltar.’
‘That would be his father, I expect.’
‘Then he hasn’t any money.’
‘Only what he makes at the Bar.’
‘But they don’t – under forty.’
‘He does, I think.’
‘Energetic?’
‘Very.’
‘Fair?’
‘No, darkish. He won the Bar point-to-point this year. Now, darling, will you have a fire at once, or last till dressing time?’
‘Last. I want to see the baby.’
‘All right, he ought to be just in from his pram. Your bathroom’s at the foot of these stairs, and I’ll wait for you in the nursery.’
The nursery was the same mullion-windowed, low-pitched room as that wherein Dinny and Aunt Em herself had received their first impressions of that jigsaw puzzle called life; and in it the baby was practising his totter. Whether he would be a Charwell or a Tasburgh when he grew up seemed as yet uncertain. His nurse, his aunt and his great-aunt stood, in triangular admiration, for him to fall alternatively into their outstretched hands.
‘He doesn’t crow,’ said Dinny.
‘He does in the morning, Miss.’
‘Down he goes!’ said Lady Mont.
‘Don’t cry, darling!’
‘He never cries, Miss.’
‘That’s Jean. Clare and I cried a lot till we were about seven.’
‘I cried till I was fifteen,’ said Lady Mont, ‘and I began again when I was forty-five. Did you cry, Nurse?’
‘We were too large a family, my lady. There wasn’t room like.’
‘Nanny had a lovely mother – five sisters as good as gold.’
The nurse’s fresh cheeks grew fresher; she drooped her chin, smiling, shy as a little girl.
‘Take care of bow legs!’ said Lady Mont: ‘That’s enough totterin’.’
The nurse, retrieving the still persistent baby, placed him in his cot, whence he frowned solemnly at Dinny, who said:
‘Mother’s devoted to him. She thinks he’ll be like Hubert.’
Lady Mont made the sound supposed to attract babies.
‘When does Jean come home again?’
‘Not till Hubert’s next long leave.’
Lady Mont’s gaze rested on her niece.
‘The rector says Alan has another year on the China station.’
Dinny, dangling a bead chain over the baby, paid no attention. Never since the summer evening last year, when she came back home after Wilfrid’s flight, had she made or suffered any allusion to her feelings. No one, perhaps not even she herself, knew whether she was heart-whole once more. It was, indeed, as if she had no heart. So long, so earnestly had she resisted its aching, that it had slunk away into the shadows of her inmost being, where even she could hardly feel it beating.
‘What would you like to do now, Auntie? He has to go to sleep.’