It was all very amusing.
For Dartie himself was in capital form, and talked freely, with a certain poignancy, being no fool. He told two or three stories verging on the improper, a concession to the company, for his stories were not used to verging. He proposed Irene’s health in a mock speech. Nobody drank it, and Winifred said: “Don’t be such a clown, Monty!”
At her suggestion they went after dinner to the public terrace overlooking the river.
“I should like to see the common people making love,” she said, “it’s such fun!”
There were numbers of them walking in the cool, after the day’s heat, and the air was alive with the sound of voices, coarse and loud, or soft as though murmuring secrets.
It was not long before Winifred’s better sense—she was the only Forsyte present—secured them an empty bench. They sat down in a row. A heavy tree spread a thick canopy above their heads, and the haze darkened slowly over the river.
Dartie sat at the end, next to him Irene, then Bosinney, then Winifred. There was hardly room for four, and the man of the world could feel Irene’s arm crushed against his own; he knew that she could not withdraw it without seeming rude, and this amused him; he devised every now and again a movement that would bring her closer still. He thought: “That Buccaneer Johnny shan’t have it all to himself! It’s a pretty tight fit, certainly!”
From far down below on the dark river came drifting the tinkle of a mandoline, and voices singing the old round:
“A boat, a boat, unto the ferry,
For we’ll go over and be merry;
And laugh, and quaff, and drink brown sherry!”
And suddenly the moon appeared, young and tender, floating up on her back from behind a tree; and as though she had breathed, the air was cooler, but down that cooler air came always the warm odour of the limes.