The Forsyte Saga - Volume 1

But in thinking of his remaining guest, an expression like that of a

cat who is just going to purr stole over his old face: Mrs. Soames! She

mightn't take much, but she would appreciate what she drank; it was a

pleasure to give her good wine! A pretty woman--and sympathetic to him!

The thought of her was like champagne itself! A pleasure to give a good

wine to a young woman who looked so well, who knew how to dress, with

charming manners, quite distinguished--a pleasure to entertain her.

Between the points of his collar he gave his head the first small,

painful oscillation of the evening.

"Adolf!" he said. "Put in another bottle."

He himself might drink a good deal, for, thanks to that prescription of

Blight's, he found himself extremely well, and he had been careful to

take no lunch. He had not felt so well for weeks. Puffing out his lower

lip, he gave his last instructions:

"Adolf, the least touch of the West India when you come to the ham."

Passing into the anteroom, he sat down on the edge of a chair, with

his knees apart; and his tall, bulky form was wrapped at once in an

expectant, strange, primeval immobility. He was ready to rise at a

moment's notice. He had not given a dinner-party for months. This

dinner in honour of June's engagement had seemed a bore at first (among

Forsytes the custom of solemnizing engagements by feasts was religiously

observed), but the labours of sending invitations and ordering the

repast over, he felt pleasantly stimulated.

And thus sitting, a watch in his hand, fat, and smooth, and golden, like

a flattened globe of butter, he thought of nothing.

A long man, with side whiskers, who had once been in Swithin's service,

but was now a greengrocer, entered and proclaimed:

"Mrs. Chessman, Mrs. Septimus Small!"

Two ladies advanced. The one in front, habited entirely in red, had

large, settled patches of the same colour in her cheeks, and a hard,

dashing eye. She walked at Swithin, holding out a hand cased in a long,

primrose-coloured glove:

"Well! Swithin," she said, "I haven't seen you for ages. How are you?

Why, my dear boy, how stout you're getting!"

The fixity of Swithin's eye alone betrayed emotion. A dumb and grumbling

anger swelled his bosom. It was vulgar to be stout, to talk of being

stout; he had a chest, nothing more. Turning to his sister, he grasped

her hand, and said in a tone of command:

"Well, Juley."

Mrs. Septimus Small was the tallest of the four sisters; her good, round

old face had gone a little sour; an innumerable pout clung all over

it, as if it had been encased in an iron wire mask up to that evening,

which, being suddenly removed, left little rolls of mutinous flesh all

over her countenance. Even her eyes were pouting. It was thus that she

recorded her permanent resentment at the loss of Septimus Small.