"I'm going with you," she said.
"Nonsense, my dear; I go straight into the City. I can't have you
racketting about!"
"I must see old Mrs. Smeech."
"Oh, your precious 'lame ducks!" grumbled out old Jolyon. He did not
believe her excuse, but ceased his opposition. There was no doing
anything with that pertinacity of hers.
At Victoria he put her into the carriage which had been ordered for
himself--a characteristic action, for he had no petty selfishnesses.
"Now, don't you go tiring yourself, my darling," he said, and took a cab
on into the city.
June went first to a back-street in Paddington, where Mrs. Smeech,
her 'lame duck,' lived--an aged person, connected with the charring
interest; but after half an hour spent in hearing her habitually
lamentable recital, and dragooning her into temporary comfort, she went
on to Stanhope Gate. The great house was closed and dark.
She had decided to learn something at all costs. It was better to face
the worst, and have it over. And this was her plan: To go first to
Phil's aunt, Mrs. Baynes, and, failing information there, to Irene
herself. She had no clear notion of what she would gain by these visits.
At three o'clock she was in Lowndes Square. With a woman's instinct when
trouble is to be faced, she had put on her best frock, and went to the
battle with a glance as courageous as old Jolyon's itself. Her tremors
had passed into eagerness.
Mrs. Baynes, Bosinney's aunt (Louisa was her name), was in her kitchen
when June was announced, organizing the cook, for she was an excellent
housewife, and, as Baynes always said, there was 'a lot in a good
dinner.' He did his best work after dinner. It was Baynes who built that
remarkably fine row of tall crimson houses in Kensington which compete
with so many others for the title of 'the ugliest in London.'
On hearing June's name, she went hurriedly to her bedroom, and, taking
two large bracelets from a red morocco case in a locked drawer, put
them on her white wrists--for she possessed in a remarkable degree that
'sense of property,' which, as we know, is the touchstone of Forsyteism,
and the foundation of good morality.
Her figure, of medium height and broad build, with a tendency to
embonpoint, was reflected by the mirror of her whitewood wardrobe, in
a gown made under her own organization, of one of those half-tints,
reminiscent of the distempered walls of corridors in large hotels. She
raised her hands to her hair, which she wore a la Princesse de Galles,
and touched it here and there, settling it more firmly on her head, and
her eyes were full of an unconscious realism, as though she were looking
in the face one of life's sordid facts, and making the best of it. In
youth her cheeks had been of cream and roses, but they were mottled now
by middle-age, and again that hard, ugly directness came into her eyes
as she dabbed a powder-puff across her forehead. Putting the puff down,
she stood quite still before the glass, arranging a smile over her high,
important nose, her, chin, (never large, and now growing smaller
with the increase of her neck), her thin-lipped, down-drooping mouth.
Quickly, not to lose the effect, she grasped her skirts strongly in both
hands, and went downstairs.