The Forsyte saga - Complete
could, in some supersensitive way, of which he had not the
secret, feel the pulse of his thoughts; she knew by instinct what
he hoped and feared and wished. It made him terribly
uncomfortable and guilty, having, beyond most boys, a conscience.
He wished she would be frank with him, he almost hoped for an
open struggle. But none came, and steadily, silently, they
travelled north. Thus did he first learn how much better than men
women play a waiting game. In Paris they had again to pause for a
day. Jon was grieved because it lasted two, owing to certain
matters in connection with a dressmaker; as if his mother, who
looked beautiful in anything, had any need of dresses! The
happiest moment of his travel was that when he stepped on to the
Folkestone boat.
Standing by the bulwark rail, with her arm in his, she said
“I'm afraid you haven't enjoyed it much, Jon. But you've been
very sweet to me.”
Jon squeezed her arm.
“Oh! yes, I've enjoyed it awfully-except for my head lately.”
And now that the end had come, he really had, feeling a sort of
glamour over the past weeks—a kind of painful pleasure, such as
he had tried to screw into those lines about the voice in the
night crying; a feeling such as he had known as a small boy
listening avidly to Chopin, yet wanting to cry. And he wondered
why it was that he couldn't say to her quite simply what she had
said to him:
“You were very sweet to me.” Odd—one never could be nice and
natural like that! He substituted the words: “I expect we shall
be sick.”
They were, and reached London somewhat attenuated, having been
away six weeks and two days, without a single allusion to the
subject which had hardly ever ceased to occupy their minds.
II.—FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS
Deprived of his wife and son by the Spanish adventure, Jolyon
found the solitude at Robin Hill intolerable. A philosopher when
he has all that he wants is different from a philosopher when he
has not. Accustomed, however, to the idea, if not to the reality
of resignation, he would perhaps have faced it out but for his
daughter June. He was a “lame duck” now, and on her conscience.
Having achieved—momentarily—the rescue of an etcher in low
circumstances, which she happened to have in hand, she appeared
at Robin Hill a fortnight after Irene and Jon had gone. June was
living now in a tiny house with a big studio at Chiswick. A
Forsyte of the best period, so far as the lack of responsibility
was concerned, she had overcome the difficulty of a reduced
income in a manner satisfactory to herself and her father. The
rent of the Gallery off Cork Street which he had bought for her
and her increased income tax happening to balance, it had been
quite simple—she no longer paid him the rent. The Gallery might
be expected now at any time, after eighteen years of barren
usufruct, to pay its way, so that she was sure her father would
not feel it. Through this device she still had twelve hundred a
year, and by reducing what she ate, and, in place of two Belgians
in a poor way, employing one Austrian in a poorer, practically
the same surplus for the relief of genius. After three days at
Robin Hill she carried her father back with her to Town. In those
three days she had stumbled on the secret he had kept for two
years, and had instantly decided to cure him. She knew, in fact,
the very man. He had done wonders with. Paul Post—that painter a
little in advance of Futurism; and she was impatient with her
father because his eyebrows would go up, and because he had heard
of neither. Of course, if he hadn't “faith” he would never get
well! It was absurd not to have faith in the man who had healed
Paul Post so that he had only just relapsed, from having
overworked, or overlived, himself again. The great thing about
this healer was that he relied on Nature. He had made a special
study of the symptoms of Nature—when his patient failed in any
natural symptom he supplied the poison which caused it—and there
you were! She was extremely hopeful. Her father had clearly not
been living a natural life at Robin Hill, and she intended to
provide the symptoms. He was—she felt—out of touch with the
times, which was not natural; his heart wanted stimulating. In
the little Chiswick house she and the Austrian—a grateful soul,
so devoted to June for rescuing her that she was in danger of
decease from overwork—stimulated Jolyon in all sorts of ways,
preparing him for his cure. But they could not keep his eyebrows
down; as, for example, when the Austrian woke him at eight
o'clock just as he was going to sleep, or June took The Times
away from him, because it was unnatural to read “that stuff” when
he ought to be taking an interest in “life.” He never failed,
indeed, to be astonished at her resource, especially in the
evenings. For his benefit, as she declared, though he suspected
that she also got something out of it, she assembled the Age so
far as it was satellite to genius; and with some solemnity it
would move up and down the studio before him in the Fox-trot, and
that more mental form of dancing—the One-step—which so pulled
against the music, that Jolyon's eyebrows would be almost lost in
his hair from wonder at the strain it must impose on the dancer's
will-power. Aware that, hung on the line in the Water Colour
Society, he was a back number to those with any pretension to be
called artists, he would sit in the darkest corner he could find,
and wonder about rhythm, on which so long ago he had been raised.
And when June brought some girl or young man up to him, he would
rise humbly to their level so far as that was possible, and
think: 'Dear me! This is very dull for them!' Having his father's
perennial sympathy with Youth, he used to get very tired from
entering into their points of view. But it was all stimulating,
and he never failed in admiration of his daughter's indomitable
spirit. Even genius itself attended these gatherings now and
then, with its nose on one side; and June always introduced it to
her father. This, she felt, was exceptionally good for him, for
genius was a natural symptom he had never had—fond as she was of
him.
Certain as a man can be that she was his own daughter, he often
wondered whence she got herself—her red-gold hair, now greyed
into a special colour; her direct, spirited face, so different
from his own rather folded and subtilised countenance, her little
lithe figure, when he and most of the Forsytes were tall. And he
would dwell on the origin of species, and debate whether she
might be Danish or Celtic. Celtic, he thought, from her
pugnacity, and her taste in fillets and djibbahs. It was not too
much to say that he preferred her to the Age with which she was
surrounded, youthful though, for the greater part, it was. She
took, however, too much interest in his teeth, for he still had
some of those natural symptoms. Her dentist at once found
“Staphylococcus aureus present in pure culture” (which might
cause boils, of course), and wanted to take out all the teeth he
had and supply him with two complete sets of unnatural symptoms.
Jolyon's native tenacity was roused, and in the studio that
evening he developed his objections. He had never had any boils,
and his own teeth would last his time. Of course—June
admitted—they would last his time if he didn't have them out! But
if he had more teeth he would have a better heart and his time
would be longer. His recalcitrance—she said—was a symptom of his
whole attitude; he was taking it lying down. He ought to be
fighting. When was he going to see the man who had cured Paul
Post? Jolyon was very sorry, but the fact was he was not going to
see him. June chafed. Pondridge—she said—the healer, was such a
fine man, and he had such difficulty in making two ends meet, and
getting his theories recognised. It was just such indifference
and prejudice as her father manifested which was keeping him
back. It would be so splendid for both of them!
“I perceive,” said Jolyon, “that you are trying to kill two birds
with one stone.”
“To cure, you mean!” cried June.
“My dear, it's the same thing.”
June protested. It was unfair to say that without a trial.
Jolyon thought he might not have the chance, of saying it after.
“Dad!” cried June, “you're hopeless.”
“That,” said Jolyon, “is a fact, but I wish to remain hopeless as
long as possible. I shall let sleeping dogs lie, my child. They
are quiet at present.”
“That's not giving science a chance,” cried June. “You've no idea
how devoted Pondridge is. He puts his science before everything.”
“Just,” replied Jolyon, puffing the mild cigarette to which he
was reduced, “as Mr. Paul Post puts his art, eh? Art for Art's
sake—Science for the sake of Science. I know those enthusiastic
egomaniac gentry. They vivisect you without blinking. I'm enough
of a Forsyte to give them the go-by, June.”
“Dad,” said June, “if you only knew how old-fashioned that
sounds! Nobody can afford to be half-hearted nowadays.”
“I'm afraid,” murmured Jolyon, with his smile, “that's the only
natural symptom with which Mr. Pondridge need not supply me. We
are born to be extreme or to be moderate, my dear; though, if
you'll forgive my saying so, half the people nowadays who believe
they're extreme are really very moderate. I'm getting on as well
as I can expect, and I must leave it at that.”
June was silent, having experienced in her time the inexorable
character of her father's amiable obstinacy so far as his own
freedom of action was concerned.
How he came to let her know why Irene had taken Jon to Spain
puzzled Jolyon, for he had little confidence in her discretion.
After she had brooded on the news, it brought a rather sharp
discussion, during which he perceived to the full the fundamental
opposition between her active temperament and his wife's
passivity. He even gathered that a little soreness still remained
from that generation-old struggle between them over the body of
Philip Bosinney, in which the passive had so signally triumphed
over the active principle.
According to June, it was foolish and even cowardly to hide the
past from Jon. Sheer opportunism, she called it.
“Which,” Jolyon put in mildly, “is the working principle of real
life, my dear.”
“Oh!” cried June, “you don't really defend her for not telling
Jon, Dad. If it were left to you, you would.”
“I might, but simply because I know he must find out, which will
be worse than if we told him.”
“Then why don't you tell him? It's just sleeping dogs again.”
“My dear,” said Jolyon, “I wouldn't for the world go against
Irene's instinct. He's her boy.”
“Yours too,” cried June.
“What is a man's instinct compared with a mother's?”
“Well, I think it's very weak of you.”