Indian Summer of a Forsyte | Page 7

the little table and he spoke of Italy and
Switzerland, telling her stories of his travels there, and other
experiences which he could no longer recount to his son and
grand-daughter because they knew them. This fresh audience was
precious to him; he had never become one of those old men who
ramble round and round the fields of reminiscence. Himself quickly
fatigued by the insensitive, he instinctively avoided fatiguing others,
and his natural flirtatiousness towards beauty guarded him specially in
his relations with a woman. He would have liked to draw her out, but
though she murmured and smiled and seemed to be enjoying what he
told her, he remained conscious of that mysterious remoteness which
constituted half her fascination. He could not bear women who threw
their shoulders and eyes at you, and chattered away; or hard- mouthed
women who laid down the law and knew more than you did. There was
only one quality in a woman that appealed to him--charm; and the
quieter it was, the more he liked it. And this one had charm, shadowy
as afternoon sunlight on those Italian hills and valleys he had loved.
The feeling, too, that she was, as it were, apart, cloistered, made her
seem nearer to himself, a strangely desirable companion. When a man
is very old and quite out of the running, he loves to feel secure from the
rivalries of youth, for he would still be first in the heart of beauty. And
he drank his hock, and watched her lips, and felt nearly young. But the
dog Balthasar lay watching her lips too, and despising in his heart the
interruptions of their talk, and the tilting of those greenish glasses full
of a golden fluid which was distasteful to him.
The light was just failing when they went back into the music-room.
And, cigar in mouth, old Jolyon said:
"Play me some Chopin."

By the cigars they smoke, and the composers they love, ye shall know
the texture of men's souls. Old Jolyon could not bear a strong cigar or
Wagner's music. He loved Beethoven and Mozart, Handel and Gluck,
and Schumann, and, for some occult reason, the operas of Meyerbeer;
but of late years he had been seduced by Chopin, just as in painting he
had succumbed to Botticelli. In yielding to these tastes he had been
conscious of divergence from the standard of the Golden Age. Their
poetry was not that of Milton and Byron and Tennyson; of Raphael and
Titian; Mozart and Beethoven. It was, as it were, behind a veil; their
poetry hit no one in the face, but slipped its fingers under the ribs and
turned and twisted, and melted up the heart. And, never certain that this
was healthy, he did not care a rap so long as he could see the pictures of
the one or hear the music of the other.
Irene sat down at the piano under the electric lamp festooned with
pearl-grey, and old Jolyon, in an armchair, whence he could see her,
crossed his legs and drew slowly at his cigar. She sat a few moments
with her hands on the keys, evidently searching her mind for what to
give him. Then she began and within old Jolyon there arose a sorrowful
pleasure, not quite like anything else in the world. He fell slowly into a
trance, interrupted only by the movements of taking the cigar out of his
mouth at long intervals, and replacing it. She was there, and the hock
within him, and the scent of tobacco; but there, too, was a world of
sunshine lingering into moonlight, and pools with storks upon them,
and bluish trees above, glowing with blurs of wine-red roses, and fields
of lavender where milk-white cows were grazing, and a woman all
shadowy, with dark eyes and a white neck, smiled, holding out her
arms; and through air which was like music a star dropped and was
caught on a cow's horn. He opened his eyes. Beautiful piece; she played
well- -the touch of an angel! And he closed them again. He felt mirac-
ulously sad and happy, as one does, standing under a lime-tree in full
honey flower. Not live one's own life again, but just stand there and
bask in the smile of a woman's eyes, and enjoy the bouquet! And he
jerked his hand; the dog Balthasar had reached up and licked it.
"Beautiful!" He said: "Go on--more Chopin!"
She began to play again. This time the resemblance between her and
'Chopin' struck him. The swaying he had noticed in her walk was in her
playing too, and the Nocturne she had chosen and the soft darkness of

her eyes, the light on her hair, as of moonlight from a golden moon.
Seductive, yes; but nothing