The Forsyte Saga - Volume 1

Years and philosophy, of which he had his share, had dimmed the

recollection of his defeat at the 'Hotch Potch'; and now in his thoughts

it was enshrined as the Queen of Clubs. He would have been a member all

these years himself, but, owing to the slipshod way his proposer, Jack

Herring, had gone to work, they had not known what they were doing in

keeping him out. Why! they had taken his son Jo at once, and he believed

the boy was still a member; he had received a letter dated from there

eight years ago.

He had not been near the 'Disunion' for months, and the house had

undergone the piebald decoration which people bestow on old houses and

old ships when anxious to sell them.

'Beastly colour, the smoking-room!' he thought. 'The dining-room is

good!'

Its gloomy chocolate, picked out with light green, took his fancy.

He ordered dinner, and sat down in the very corner, at the very table

perhaps! (things did not progress much at the 'Disunion,' a Club of

almost Radical principles) at which he and young Jolyon used to sit

twenty-five years ago, when he was taking the latter to Drury Lane,

during his holidays.

The boy had loved the theatre, and old Jolyon recalled how he used to

sit opposite, concealing his excitement under a careful but transparent

nonchalance.

He ordered himself, too, the very dinner the boy had always chosen-soup,

whitebait, cutlets, and a tart. Ah! if he were only opposite now!

The two had not met for fourteen years. And not for the first time

during those fourteen years old Jolyon wondered whether he had been a

little to blame in the matter of his son. An unfortunate love-affair

with that precious flirt Danae Thornworthy (now Danae Pellew), Anthony

Thornworthy's daughter, had thrown him on the rebound into the arms

of June's mother. He ought perhaps to have put a spoke in the wheel of

their marriage; they were too young; but after that experience of Jo's

susceptibility he had been only too anxious to see him married. And in

four years the crash had come! To have approved his son's conduct

in that crash was, of course, impossible; reason and training--that

combination of potent factors which stood for his principles--told him

of this impossibility, and his heart cried out. The grim remorselessness

of that business had no pity for hearts. There was June, the atom with

flaming hair, who had climbed all over him, twined and twisted herself

about him--about his heart that was made to be the plaything and beloved

resort of tiny, helpless things. With characteristic insight he saw he

must part with one or with the other; no half-measures could serve in

such a situation. In that lay its tragedy. And the tiny, helpless thing

prevailed. He would not run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, and

so to his son he said good-bye.