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 proteges! 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: