Deprived of his wife and son by the Spanish adventure, Jolyon found the
solitude at Robin Hill intolerable. A philosopher when he has all that
he wants is different from a philosopher when he has not. Accustomed,
however, to the idea, if not to the reality of resignation, he would
perhaps have faced it out but for his daughter June. He was a "lame
duck" now, and on her conscience. Having achieved--momentarily--the
rescue of an etcher in low circumstances, which she happened to have
in hand, she appeared at Robin Hill a fortnight after Irene and Jon had
gone. June was living now in a tiny house with a big studio at Chiswick.
A Forsyte of the best period, so far as the lack of responsibility was
concerned, she had overcome the difficulty of a reduced income in a
manner satisfactory to herself and her father. The rent of the Gallery
off Cork Street which he had bought for her and her increased income tax
happening to balance, it had been quite simpl--she no longer paid him
the rent. The Gallery might be expected now at any time, after eighteen
years of barren usufruct, to pay its way, so that she was sure her
father would not feel it. Through this device she still had twelve
hundred a year, and by reducing what she ate, and, in place of two
Belgians in a poor way, employing one Austrian in a poorer, practically
the same surplus for the relief of genius. After three days at Robin
Hill she carried her father back with her to Town. In those three
days she had stumbled on the secret he had kept for two years, and had
instantly decided to cure him. She knew, in fact, the very man. He
had done wonders with. Paul Post--that painter a little in advance of
Futurism; and she was impatient with her father because his eyebrows
would go up, and because he had heard of neither. Of course, if he
hadn't "faith" he would never get well! It was absurd not to have faith
in the man who had healed Paul Post so that he had only just relapsed,
from having overworked, or overlived, himself again. The great thing
about this healer was that he relied on Nature. He had made a special
study of the symptoms of Nature--when his patient failed in any natural
symptom he supplied the poison which caused it--and there you were! She
was extremely hopeful. Her father had clearly not been living a natural
life at Robin Hill, and she intended to provide the symptoms. He
was--she felt--out of touch with the times, which was not natural;
his heart wanted stimulating. In the little Chiswick house she and the
Austrian--a grateful soul, so devoted to June for rescuing her that she
was in danger of decease from overwork--stimulated Jolyon in all
sorts of ways, preparing him for his cure. But they could not keep his
eyebrows down; as, for example, when the Austrian woke him at eight
o'clock just as he was going to sleep, or June took The Times away from
him, because it was unnatural to read "that stuff" when he ought to be
taking an interest in "life." He never failed, indeed, to be astonished
at her resource, especially in the evenings. For his benefit, as she
declared, though he suspected that she also got something out of it, she
assembled the Age so far as it was satellite to genius; and with
some solemnity it would move up and down the studio before him in the
Fox-trot, and that more mental form of dancing--the One-step--which so
pulled against the music, that Jolyon's eyebrows would be almost lost
in his hair from wonder at the strain it must impose on the dancer's
will-power. Aware that, hung on the line in the Water Colour Society, he
was a back number to those with any pretension to be called artists, he
would sit in the darkest corner he could find, and wonder about rhythm,
on which so long ago he had been raised. And when June brought some girl
or young man up to him, he would rise humbly to their level so far as
that was possible, and think: 'Dear me! This is very dull for them!'
Having his father's perennial sympathy with Youth, he used to get
very tired from entering into their points of view. But it was all
stimulating, and he never failed in admiration of his daughter's
indomitable spirit. Even genius itself attended these gatherings now and
then, with its nose on one side; and June always introduced it to her
father. This, she felt, was exceptionally good for him, for genius was a
natural symptom he had never had--fond as she was of him.