Chapter VI: No-Longer-Young Jolyon at Home

Trees take little account of time, and the old oak on the upper
lawn at Robin Hill looked no day older than when Bosinney
sprawled under it and said to Soames: “Forsyte, I’ve found the
very place for your house.” Since then Swithin had dreamed, and
old Jolyon died, beneath its branches. And now, close to the
swing, no-longer-young Jolyon often painted there. Of all spots
in the world it was perhaps the most sacred to him, for he had
loved his father.

Contemplating its great girth—crinkled and a little mossed, but
not yet hollow—he would speculate on the passage of time. That
tree had seen, perhaps, all real English history; it dated, he
shouldn’t wonder, from the days of Elizabeth at least. His own
fifty years were as nothing to its wood. When the house behind
it, which he now owned, was three hundred years of age instead of
twelve, that tree might still be standing there, vast and
hollow—for who would commit such sacrilege as to cut it down? A
Forsyte might perhaps still be living in that house, to guard it
jealously. And Jolyon would wonder what the house would look like
coated with such age. Wistaria was already about its walls—the
new look had gone. Would it hold its own and keep the dignity
Bosinney had bestowed on it, or would the giant London have
lapped it round and made it into an asylum in the midst of a
jerry-built wilderness? Often, within and without of it, he was
persuaded that Bosinney had been moved by the spirit when he
built. He had put his heart into that house, indeed! It might
even become one of the “homes of England”—a rare achievement for
a house in these degenerate days of building. And the aesthetic
spirit, moving hand in hand with his Forsyte sense of possessive
continuity, dwelt with pride and pleasure on his ownership
thereof. There was the smack of reverence and ancestor-worship
(if only for one ancestor) in his desire to hand this house down
to his son and his son’s son. His father had loved the house, had
loved the view, the grounds, that tree; his last years had been
happy there, and no one had lived there before him. These last
eleven years at Robin Hill had formed in Jolyon’s life as a
painter, the important period of success. He was now in the very
van of water-colour art, hanging on the line everywhere. His
drawings fetched high prices. Specialising in that one medium
with the tenacity of his breed, he had “arrived”—rather late, but
not too late for a member of the family which made a point of
living for ever. His art had really deepened and improved. In
conformity with his position he had grown a short fair beard,
which was just beginning to grizzle, and hid his Forsyte chin;
his brown face had lost the warped expression of his ostracised
period—he looked, if anything, younger. The loss of his wife in
1894 had been one of those domestic tragedies which turn out in
the end for the good of all. He had, indeed, loved her to the
last, for his was an affectionate spirit, but she had become
increasingly difficult: jealous of her step-daughter June,
jealous even of her own little daughter Holly, and making
ceaseless plaint that he could not love her, ill as she was, and
“useless to everyone, and better dead.” He had mourned her
sincerely, but his face had looked younger since she died. If she
could only have believed that she made him happy, how much
happier would the twenty years of their companionship have been!

June had never really got on well with her who had reprehensibly
taken her own mother’s place; and ever since old Jolyon died she
had been established in a sort of studio in London. But she had
come back to Robin Hill on her stepmother’s death, and gathered
the reins there into her small decided hands. Jolly was then at
Harrow; Holly still learning from Mademoiselle Beauce. There had
been nothing to keep Jolyon at home, and he had removed his grief
and his paint-box abroad. There he had wandered, for the most
part in Brittany, and at last had fetched up in Paris. He had
stayed there several months, and come back with the younger face
and the short fair beard. Essentially a man who merely lodged in
any house, it had suited him perfectly that June should reign at
Robin Hill, so that he was free to go off with his easel where
and when he liked. She was inclined, it is true, to regard the
house rather as an asylum for her _protégés;_ but his own outcast
days had filled Jolyon for ever with sympathy towards an outcast,
and June’s “lame ducks” about the place did not annoy him. By all
means let her have them down—and feed them up; and though his
slightly cynical humour perceived that they ministered to his
daughter’s love of domination as well as moved her warm heart, he
never ceased to admire her for having so many ducks. He fell,
indeed, year by year into a more and more detached and brotherly
attitude towards his own son and daughters, treating them with a
sort of whimsical equality. When he went down to Harrow to see
Jolly, he never quite knew which of them was the elder, and would
sit eating cherries with him out of one paper bag, with an
affectionate and ironical smile twisting up an eyebrow and
curling his lips a little. And he was always careful to have
money in his pocket, and to be modish in his dress, so that his
son need not blush for him. They were perfect friends, but never
seemed to have occasion for verbal confidences, both having the
competitive self-consciousness of Forsytes. They knew they would
stand by each other in scrapes, but there was no need to talk
about it. Jolyon had a striking horror—partly original sin, but
partly the result of his early immorality—of the moral attitude.
The most he could ever have said to his son would have been:

“Look here, old man; don’t forget you’re a gentleman,” and then
have wondered whimsically whether that was not a snobbish
sentiment. The great cricket match was perhaps the most searching
and awkward time they annually went through together, for Jolyon
had been at Eton. They would be particularly careful during that
match, continually saying: “Hooray! Oh! hard luck, old man!” or
“Hooray! Oh! bad luck, Dad!” to each other, when some disaster at
which their hearts bounded happened to the opposing school. And
Jolyon would wear a grey top hat, instead of his usual soft one,
to save his son’s feelings, for a black top hat he could not
stomach. When Jolly went up to Oxford, Jolyon went up with him,
amused, humble, and a little anxious not to discredit his boy
amongst all these youths who seemed so much more assured and old
than himself. He often thought, “Glad I’m a painter” for he had
long dropped under-writing at Lloyds—“it’s so innocuous. You
can’t look down on a painter—you can’t take him seriously
enough.” For Jolly, who had a sort of natural lordliness, had
passed at once into a very small set, who secretly amused his
father. The boy had fair hair which curled a little, and his
grandfather’s deepset iron-grey eyes. He was well-built and very
upright, and always pleased Jolyon’s aesthetic sense, so that he
was a tiny bit afraid of him, as artists ever are of those of
their own sex whom they admire physically. On that occasion,
however, he actually did screw up his courage to give his son
advice, and this was it:

“Look here, old man, you’re bound to get into debt; mind you come
to me at once. Of course, I’ll always pay them. But you might
remember that one respects oneself more afterwards if one pays
one’s own way. And don’t ever borrow, except from me, will you?”

And Jolly had said:

“All right, Dad, I won’t,” and he never had.

“And there’s just one other thing. I don’t know much about
morality and that, but there is this: It’s always worth while
before you do anything to consider whether it’s going to hurt
another person more than is absolutely necessary.”

Jolly had looked thoughtful, and nodded, and presently had
squeezed his father’s hand. And Jolyon had thought: “I wonder if
I had the right to say that?” He always had a sort of dread of
losing the dumb confidence they had in each other; remembering
how for long years he had lost his own father’s, so that there
had been nothing between them but love at a great distance. He
under-estimated, no doubt, the change in the spirit of the age
since he himself went up to Cambridge in ’65; and perhaps he
underestimated, too, his boy’s power of understanding that he was
tolerant to the very bone. It was that tolerance of his, and
possibly his scepticism, which ever made his relations towards
June so queerly defensive. She was such a decided mortal; knew
her own mind so terribly well; wanted things so inexorably until
she got them—and then, indeed, often dropped them like a hot
potato. Her mother had been like that, whence had come all those
tears. Not that his incompatibility with his daughter was
anything like what it had been with the first Mrs. Young Jolyon.
One could be amused where a daughter was concerned; in a wife’s
case one could not be amused. To see June set her heart and jaw
on a thing until she got it was all right, because it was never
anything which interfered fundamentally with Jolyon’s liberty—the
one thing on which his jaw was also absolutely rigid, a
considerable jaw, under that short grizzling beard. Nor was there
ever any necessity for real heart-to-heart encounters. One could
break away into irony—as indeed he often had to. But the real
trouble with June was that she had never appealed to his
aesthetic sense, though she might well have, with her red-gold
hair and her viking-coloured eyes, and that touch of the
Berserker in her spirit. It was very different with Holly, soft
and quiet, shy and affectionate, with a playful imp in her
somewhere. He watched this younger daughter of his through the
duckling stage with extraordinary interest. Would she come out a
swan? With her sallow oval face and her grey wistful eyes and
those long dark lashes, she might, or she might not. Only this
last year had he been able to guess. Yes, she would be a
swan—rather a dark one, always a shy one, but an authentic swan.
She was eighteen now, and Mademoiselle Beauce was gone—the
excellent lady had removed, after eleven years haunted by her
continuous reminiscences of the “well-brrred little Tayleurs,” to
another family whose bosom would now be agitated by her
reminiscences of the “well-brrred little Forsytes.” She had
taught Holly to speak French like herself.

Portraiture was not Jolyon’s forte, but he had already drawn his
younger daughter three times, and was drawing her a fourth, on
the afternoon of October 4th, 1899, when a card was brought to
him which caused his eyebrows to go up:
MR. SOAMES FORSYTE
THE SHELTER, CONNOISSEURS CLUB, MAPLEDURHAM.
ST. JAMES’S.
But here the Forsyte Saga must digress again....

To return from a long travel in Spain to a darkened house, to a
little daughter bewildered with tears, to the sight of a loved
father lying peaceful in his last sleep, had never been, was
never likely to be, forgotten by so impressionable and
warm-hearted a man as Jolyon. A sense as of mystery, too, clung
to that sad day, and about the end of one whose life had been so
well-ordered, balanced, and above-board. It seemed incredible
that his father could thus have vanished without, as it were,
announcing his intention, without last words to his son, and due
farewells. And those incoherent allusions of little Holly to “the
lady in grey,” of Mademoiselle Beauce to a Madame Errant (as it
sounded) involved all things in a mist, lifted a little when he
read his father’s will and the codicil thereto. It had been his
duty as executor of that will and codicil to inform Irene, wife
of his cousin Soames, of her life interest in fifteen thousand
pounds. He had called on her to explain that the existing
investment in India Stock, ear-marked to meet the charge, would
produce for her the interesting net sum of £430 odd a year, clear
of income tax. This was but the third time he had seen his cousin
Soames’ wife—if indeed she was still his wife, of which he was
not quite sure. He remembered having seen her sitting in the
Botanical Gardens waiting for Bosinney—a passive, fascinating
figure, reminding him of Titian’s “Heavenly Love,” and again,
when, charged by his father, he had gone to Montpellier Square on
the afternoon when Bosinney’s death was known. He still recalled
vividly her sudden appearance in the drawing-room doorway on that
occasion—her beautiful face, passing from wild eagerness of hope
to stony despair; remembered the compassion he had felt, Soames’
snarling smile, his words, “We are not at home!” and the slam of
the front door.

This third time he saw a face and form more beautiful—freed from
that warp of wild hope and despair. Looking at her, he thought:
“Yes, you are just what the Dad would have admired!” And the
strange story of his father’s Indian summer became slowly clear
to him. She spoke of old Jolyon with reverence and tears in her
eyes. “He was so wonderfully kind to me; I don’t know why. He
looked so beautiful and peaceful sitting in that chair under the
tree; it was I who first came on him sitting there, you know.
Such a lovely day. I don’t think an end could have been happier.
We should all like to go out like that.”

“Quite right!” he had thought. “We should all like to go out in
full summer with beauty stepping towards us across a lawn.”

And looking round the little, almost empty drawing-room, he had
asked her what she was going to do now. “I am going to live again
a little, Cousin Jolyon. It’s wonderful to have money of one’s
own. I’ve never had any. I shall keep this flat, I think; I’m
used to it; but I shall be able to go to Italy.”

“Exactly!” Jolyon had murmured, looking at her faintly smiling
lips; and he had gone away thinking: “A fascinating woman! What a
waste! I’m glad the Dad left her that money.” He had not seen her
again, but every quarter he had signed her cheque, forwarding it
to her bank, with a note to the Chelsea flat to say that he had
done so; and always he had received a note in acknowledgment,
generally from the flat, but sometimes from Italy; so that her
personality had become embodied in slightly scented grey paper,
an upright fine handwriting, and the words, “Dear Cousin Jolyon.”
Man of property that he now was, the slender cheque he signed
often gave rise to the thought: “Well, I suppose she just
manages”; sliding into a vague wonder how she was faring
otherwise in a world of men not wont to let beauty go
unpossessed. At first Holly had spoken of her sometimes, but
“ladies in grey” soon fade from children’s memories; and the
tightening of June’s lips in those first weeks after her
grandfather’s death whenever her former friend’s name was
mentioned, had discouraged allusion. Only once, indeed, had June
spoken definitely: “I’ve forgiven her. I’m frightfully glad she’s
independent now....”

On receiving Soames’ card, Jolyon said to the maid—for he could
not abide butlers—“Show him into the study, please, and say I’ll
be there in a minute”; and then he looked at Holly and asked:

“Do you remember ‘the lady in grey,’ who used to give you
music-lessons?”

“Oh yes, why? Has she come?”

Jolyon shook his head, and, changing his holland blouse for a
coat, was silent, perceiving suddenly that such history was not
for those young ears. His face, in fact, became whimsical
perplexity incarnate while he journeyed towards the study.

Standing by the french-window, looking out across the terrace at
the oak tree, were two figures, middle-aged and young, and he
thought: “Who’s that boy? Surely they never had a child.”

The elder figure turned. The meeting of those two Forsytes of the
second generation, so much more sophisticated than the first, in
the house built for the one and owned and occupied by the other,
was marked by subtle defensiveness beneath distinct attempt at
cordiality. “Has he come about his wife?” Jolyon was thinking;
and Soames, “How shall I begin?” while Val, brought to break the
ice, stood negligently scrutinising this “bearded pard” from
under his dark, thick eyelashes.

“This is Val Dartie,” said Soames, “my sister’s son. He’s just
going up to Oxford. I thought I’d like him to know your boy.”

“Ah! I’m sorry Jolly’s away. What college?”

“B.N.C.,” replied Val.

“Jolly’s at the ‘House,’ but he’ll be delighted to look you up.”

“Thanks awfully.”

“Holly’s in—if you could put up with a female relation, she’d
show you round. You’ll find her in the hall if you go through the
curtains. I was just painting her.”

With another “Thanks, awfully!” Val vanished, leaving the two
cousins with the ice unbroken.

“I see you’ve some drawings at the ‘Water Colours,’” said Soames.

Jolyon winced. He had been out of touch with the Forsyte family
at large for twenty-six years, but they were connected in his
mind with Frith’s “Derby Day” and Landseer prints. He had heard
from June that Soames was a connoisseur, which made it worse. He
had become aware, too, of a curious sensation of repugnance.

“I haven’t seen you for a long time,” he said.

“No,” answered Soames between close lips, “not since—as a matter
of fact, it’s about that I’ve come. You’re her trustee, I’m
told.”

Jolyon nodded.

“Twelve years is a long time,” said Soames rapidly: “I—I’m tired
of it.”

Jolyon found no more appropriate answer than:

“Won’t you smoke?”

“No, thanks.”

Jolyon himself lit a cigarette.

“I wish to be free,” said Soames abruptly.

“I don’t see her,” murmured Jolyon through the fume of his
cigarette.

“But you know where she lives, I suppose?”

Jolyon nodded. He did not mean to give her address without
permission. Soames seemed to divine his thought.

“I don’t want her address,” he said; “I know it.”

“What exactly do you want?”

“She deserted me. I want a divorce.”

“Rather late in the day, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Soames. And there was a silence.

“I don’t know much about these things—at least, I’ve forgotten,”
said Jolyon with a wry smile. He himself had had to wait for
death to grant him a divorce from the first Mrs. Jolyon. “Do you
wish me to see her about it?”

Soames raised his eyes to his cousin’s face. “I suppose there’s
someone,” he said.

A shrug moved Jolyon’s shoulders.

“I don’t know at all. I imagine you may have both lived as if the
other were dead. It’s usual in these cases.”

Soames turned to the window. A few early fallen oak-leaves
strewed the terrace already, and were rolling round in the wind.
Jolyon saw the figures of Holly and Val Dartie moving across the
lawn towards the stables. “I’m not going to run with the hare and
hunt with the hounds,” he thought. “I must act for her. The Dad
would have wished that.” And for a swift moment he seemed to see
his father’s figure in the old armchair, just beyond Soames,
sitting with knees crossed, _The Times_ in his hand. It vanished.

“My father was fond of her,” he said quietly.

“Why he should have been I don’t know,” Soames answered without
looking round. “She brought trouble to your daughter June; she
brought trouble to everyone. I gave her all she wanted. I would
have given her even—forgiveness—but she chose to leave me.”

In Jolyon compassion was checked by the tone of that close voice.
What was there in the fellow that made it so difficult to be
sorry for him?

“I can go and see her, if you like,” he said. “I suppose she
might be glad of a divorce, but I know nothing.”

Soames nodded.

“Yes, please go. As I say, I know her address; but I’ve no wish
to see her.” His tongue was busy with his lips, as if they were
very dry.

“You’ll have some tea?” said Jolyon, stifling the words: “And see
the house.” And he led the way into the hall. When he had rung
the bell and ordered tea, he went to his easel to turn his
drawing to the wall. He could not bear, somehow, that his work
should be seen by Soames, who was standing there in the middle of
the great room which had been designed expressly to afford wall
space for his own pictures. In his cousin’s face, with its
unseizable family likeness to himself, and its chinny, narrow,
concentrated look, Jolyon saw that which moved him to the
thought: “That chap could never forget anything—nor ever give
himself away. He’s pathetic!”