Indian Summer of a Forsyte-第74章

His second-to feel that he would look a fool if they refused.He reined his horse in behind a tree,then perceived that it was equally impossible to spy on them.Nothing for it but to go home and await her coming!Sneaking out with that young bounder!He could not consult with June,because she had gone up that morning in the train of Eric Cobbley and his lot.And his father was still in 'that rotten Paris.'He felt that this was emphatically one of those moments for which he had trained himself,assiduously,at school,where he and a boy called Brent had frequently set fire to newspapers and placed them in the centre of their studies to accustom them to coolness in moments of danger.He did not feel at all cool waiting in the stable-yard,idly stroking the dog Balthasar,who queasy as an old fat monk,and sad in the absence of his master,turned up his face,panting with gratitude for this attention.It was half an hour before Holly came,flushed and ever so much prettier than she had any right to look.He saw her look at him quickly--guiltily of course--then followed her in,and,taking her arm,conducted her into what had been their grand-father's study.The room,not much used now,was still vaguely haunted for them both by a presence with which they associated tenderness,large drooping white moustaches,the scent of cigar smoke,and laughter.Here Jolly,in the prime of his youth,before he went to school at all,had been wont to wrestle with his grand-father,who even at eighty had an irresistible habit of crooking his leg.Here Holly,perched on the arm of the great leather chair,had stroked hair curving silvery over an ear into which she would whisper secrets.Through that window they had all three sallied times without number to cricket on the lawn,and a mysterious game called 'Wopsy-doozle,'not to be understood by outsiders,which made old Jolyon very hot.Here once on a warm night Holly had appeared in her 'nighty,'having had a bad dream,to have the clutch of it released.And here Jolly,having begun the day badly by introducing fizzy magnesia into Mademoiselle Beauce's new-laid egg,and gone on to worse,had been sent down (in the absence of his father)to the ensuing dialogue: