And the sunlight played through the leaves on that little party of the three generations grouped tranquilly under the pear-tree, which had long borne no fruit.
Old Jolyon’s furrowed face was reddening patchily, as old men’s faces redden in the sun. He took one of Jolly’s hands in his own; the boy climbed on to his knee; and little Holly, mesmerized by this sight, crept up to them; the sound of the dog Balthasar’s scratching arose rhythmically.
Suddenly young Mrs Jolyon got up and hurried indoors. A minute later her husband muttered an excuse, and followed. Old Jolyon was left alone with his grandchildren.
And Nature with her quaint irony began working in him one of her strange revolutions, following her cyclic laws into the depths of his heart. And that tenderness for little children, that passion for the beginnings of life which had once made him forsake his son and follow June, now worked in him to forsake June and follow these littler things. Youth, like a flame, burned ever in his breast, and to youth he turned, to the round little limbs, so reckless, that wanted care, to the small round faces so unreasonably solemn or bright, to the treble tongues, and the shrill, chuckling laughter, to the insistent tugging hands, and the feel of small bodies against his legs, to all that was young and young, and once more young. And his eyes grew soft, his voice, and thin, veined hands soft, and soft his heart within him. And to those small creatures he became at once a place of pleasure, a place where they were secure, and could talk and laugh and play; till, like sunshine, there radiated from old Jolyon’s wicker chair the perfect gaiety of three hearts.
But with young Jolyon following to his wife’s room it was different.
He found her seated on a chair before her dressing-glass, with her hands before her face.
Her shoulders were shaking with sobs. This passion of hers for suffering was mysterious to him. He had been through a hundred of these moods; how he had survived them he never knew, for he could never believe they were moods, and that the last hour of his partnership had not struck.
In the night she would be sure to throw her arms round his neck, and say: ‘Oh! Jo, how I make you suffer!’ as she had done a hundred times before.
He reached out his hand, and, unseen, slipped his razor-case into his pocket.
‘I can’t stay here,’ he thought, ‘I must go down!’ Without a word he left the room, and went back to the lawn.
Old Jolyon had little Holly on his knee; she had taken possession of his watch; Jolly, very red in the face, was trying to show that he could stand on his head. The dog Balthasar, as close as might be to the tea-table, had fixed his eyes on the cake.
Young Jolyon felt a malicious desire to cut their enjoyment short.
What business had his father to come and upset his wife like this? It was a shock, after all these years! He ought to have known; he ought to have given them warning; but when did a Forsyte ever imagine that his conduct could upset anybody! And in his thoughts he did old Jolyon wrong.
He spoke sharply to the children, and told them to go in to their tea. Greatly surprised, for they had never heard their father speak sharply before, they went off, hand in hand, little Holly looking back over her shoulder.
Young Jolyon poured out the tea.
‘My wife’s not the thing today,’ he said, but he knew well enough that his father had penetrated the cause of that sudden withdrawal, and almost hated the old man for sitting there so calmly.
‘You’ve got a nice little house here,’ said old Jolyon with a shrewd look; ‘I suppose you’ve taken a lease of it!’
Young Jolyon nodded.
‘I don’t like the neighbourhood,’ said old Jolyon; ‘a ramshackle lot.’
Young Jolyon replied: ‘Yes, we’re a ramshackle lot.’
The silence was now only broken by the sound of the dog Balthasar’s scratching.
Old Jolyon said simply: ‘I suppose I oughtn’t to have come here, Jo; but I get so lonely!’
At these words young Jolyon got up and put his hand on his father’s shoulder.
In the next house someone was playing over and over again La Donna è mobile on an untuned piano; and the little garden had fallen into shade, the sun now only reached the wall at the end, whereon basked a crouching cat, her yellow eyes turned sleepily down on the dog Balthasar. There was a drowsy hum of very distant traffic; the creepered trellis round the garden shut out everything but sky, and house, and pear-tree, with its top branches still gilded by the sun.
For some time they sat there, talking but little. Then old Jolyon rose to go, and not a word was said about his coming again.
He walked away very sadly. What a poor miserable place. And he thought of the great, empty house in Stanhope Gate, fit residence for a Forsyte, with its huge billiard-room and drawing-room that no one entered from one week’s end to another.