Indian Summer of a Forsyte | Page 6

find everything." And closing the door behind
her he went back to his own room. Brushing his hair with his great
ebony brushes, and dabbing his forehead with eau de Cologne, he
mused. She had come so strangely--a sort of visit- ation; mysterious,
even romantic, as if his desire for company, for beauty, had been
fulfilled by whatever it was which fulfilled that sort of thing. And
before the mirror he straightened his still upright figure, passed the
brushes over his great white moustache, touched up his eyebrows with
eau de Cologne, and rang the bell.
"I forgot to let them know that I have a lady to dinner with me. Let
cook do something extra, and tell Beacon to have the landau and pair at
half-past ten to drive her back to Town to-night. Is Miss Holly asleep?"
The maid thought not. And old Jolyon, passing down the gallery, stole
on tiptoe towards the nursery, and opened the door whose hinges he
kept specially oiled that he might slip in and out in the evenings
without being heard.
But Holly was asleep, and lay like a miniature Madonna, of that type
which the old painters could not tell from Venus, when they had
completed her. Her long dark lashes clung to her cheeks; on her face
was perfect peace--her little arrangements were evidently all right again.

And old Jolyon, in the twilight of the room, stood adoring her! It was
so charming, solemn, and loving--that little face. He had more than his
share of the blessed capacity of living again in the young. They were to
him his future life--all of a future life that his fundamental pagan sanity
perhaps admitted. There she was with everything before her, and his
blood--some of it--in her tiny veins. There she was, his little companion,
to be made as happy as ever he could make her, so that she knew
nothing but love. His heart swelled, and he went out, stilling the sound
of his patent-leather boots. In the corridor an eccentric notion attacked
him: To think that children should come to that which Irene had told
him she was helping! Women who were all, once, little things like this
one sleeping there! 'I must give her a cheque!' he mused; 'Can't bear to
think of them!' They had never borne reflecting on, those poor outcasts;
wounding too deeply the core of true refinement hidden under layers of
conformity to the sense of property--wounding too grievously the
deepest thing in him--a love of beauty which could give him, even now,
a flutter of the heart, thinking of his evening in the society of a pretty
woman. And he went downstairs, through the swinging doors, to the
back regions. There, in the wine-cellar, was a hock worth at least two
pounds a bottle, a Steinberg Cabinet, better than any Johannisberg that
ever went down throat; a wine of perfect bouquet, sweet as a
nectarine--nectar indeed! He got a bottle out, handling it like a baby,
and holding it level to the light, to look. Enshrined in its coat of dust,
that mellow coloured, slender-necked bottle gave him deep pleasure.
Three years to settle down again since the move from Town--ought to
be in prime condition! Thirty-five years ago he had bought it--thank
God he had kept his palate, and earned the right to drink it. She would
appreciate this; not a spice of acidity in a dozen. He wiped the bottle,
drew the cork with his own hands, put his nose down, inhaled its
perfume, and went back to the music room.
Irene was standing by the piano; she had taken off her hat and a lace
scarf she had been wearing, so that her gold-coloured hair was visible,
and the pallor of her neck. In her grey frock she made a pretty picture
for old Jolyon, against the rosewood of the piano.
He gave her his arm, and solemnly they went. The room, which had
been designed to enable twenty-four people to dine in comfort, held
now but a little round table. In his present solitude the big dining-table

oppressed old Jolyon; he had caused it to be removed till his son came
back. Here in the company of two really good copies of Raphael
Madonnas he was wont to dine alone. It was the only disconsolate hour
of his day, this summer weather. He had never been a large eater, like
that great chap Swithin, or Sylvanus Heythorp, or Anthony
Thornworthy, those cronies of past times; and to dine alone, overlooked
by the Madonnas, was to him but a sorrowful occupation, which he got
through quickly, that he might come to the more spiritual enjoyment of
his coffee and cigar. But this evening was a different matter! His eyes
twinkled at her across