“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.”
“I dare say,” said Jolyon, “I dare say.”
And that was all she got from him; but the matter rankled in her brain. She could not bear sleeping dogs. And there stirred in her a tortuous impulse to push the matter towards decision. Jon ought to be told, so that either his feeling might be nipped in the bud, or, flowering in spite of the past, come to fruition. And she determined to see Fleur, and judge for herself. When June determined on anything, delicacy became a somewhat minor consideration. After all, she was Soames’ cousin, and they were both interested in pictures. She would go and tell him that he ought to buy a Paul Post, or perhaps a piece of sculpture by Boris Strumolowski, and of course she would say nothing to her father. She went on the following Sunday, looking so determined that she had some difficulty in getting a cab at Reading station. The river country was lovely in those days of her own month, and June ached at its loveliness. She who had passed through this life without knowing what union was had a love of natural beauty which was almost madness. And when she came to that choice spot where Soames had pitched his tent, she dismissed her cab, because, business over, she wanted to revel in the bright water and the woods. She appeared at his front door, therefore, as a mere pedestrian, and sent in her card. It was in June’s character to know that when her nerves were fluttering she was doing something worth while. If one’s nerves did not flutter, she was taking the line of least resistance, and knew that nobleness was not obliging her. She was conducted to a drawing-room, which, though not in her style, showed every mark of fastidious elegance. Thinking: ‘Too much taste — too many knick-knacks,’ she saw in an old lacquer-framed mirror the figure of a girl coming in from the verandah. Clothed in white, and holding some white roses in her hand, she had, reflected in that silvery-grey pool of glass, a vision-like appearance, as if a pretty ghost had come out of the green garden.
“How do you do?” said June, turning round. “I’m a cousin of your father’s.”
“Oh, yes; I saw you in that confectioner’s.”
“With my young stepbrother. Is your father in?”
“He will be directly. He’s only gone for a little walk.”
June slightly narrowed her blue eyes, and lifted her decided chin.
“Your name’s Fleur, isn’t it? I’ve heard of you from Holly. What do you think of Jon?”
The girl lifted the roses in her hand, looked at them, and answered calmly:
“He’s quite a nice boy.”
“Not a bit like Holly or me, is he?”
“Not a bit.”
‘She’s cool,’ thought June.
And suddenly the girl said: “I wish you’d tell me why our families don’t get on?”
Confronted with the question she had advised her father to answer, June was silent; either because this girl was trying to get something out of her, or simply because what one would do theoretically is not always what one will do when it comes to the point.
“You know,” said the girl, “the surest way to make people find out the worst is to keep them ignorant. My father’s told me it was a quarrel about property. But I don’t believe it; we’ve both got heaps. They wouldn’t have been so bourgeois as all that.”
June flushed. The word applied to her grandfather and father offended her.
“My grandfather,” she said, “was very generous, and my father is, too; neither of them was in the least bourgeois.”
“Well, what was it then?” repeated the girl. Conscious that this young Forsyte meant having what she wanted, June at once determined to prevent her, and to get something for herself instead.
“Why do you want to know?”
The girl smelled at her roses. “I only want to know because they won’t tell me.”
“Well, it WAS about property, but there’s more than one kind.”
“That makes it worse. Now I really MUST know.”
June’s small and resolute face quivered. She was wearing a round cap, and her hair had fluffed out under it. She looked quite young at that moment, rejuvenated by encounter.