The startled Jolyon set down his barley-water, and began crumbling his
bread.
"It's what you appear to be doing," he said. "Do you realise whose
daughter she is?"
"Can't the dead past bury its dead?"
Jolyon rose.
"Certain things can never be buried."
"I disagree," said June. "It's that which stands in the way of all
happiness and progress. You don't understand the Age, Dad. It's got no
use for outgrown things. Why do you think it matters so terribly that
Jon should know about his mother? Who pays any attention to that sort of
thing now? The marriage laws are just as they were when Soames and Irene
couldn't get a divorce, and you had to come in. We've moved, and they
haven't. So nobody cares. Marriage without a decent chance of relief
is only a sort of slave-owning; people oughtn't to own each other.
Everybody sees that now. If Irene broke such laws, what does it matter?"
"It's not for me to disagree there," said Jolyon; "but that's all quite
beside the mark. This is a matter of human feeling."
"Of course it is," cried June, "the human feeling of those two young
things."
"My dear," said Jolyon with gentle exasperation; "you're talking
nonsense."
"I'm not. If they prove to be really fond of each other, why should they
be made unhappy because of the past?"
"You haven't lived that past. I have--through the feelings of my wife;
through my own nerves and my imagination, as only one who is devoted
can."
June, too, rose, and began to wander restlessly.
"If," she said suddenly, "she were the daughter of Philip Bosinney, I
could understand you better. Irene loved him, she never loved Soames."
Jolyon uttered a deep sound-the sort of noise an Italian peasant woman
utters to her mule. His heart had begun beating furiously, but he paid
no attention to it, quite carried away by his feelings.
"That shows how little you understand. Neither I nor Jon, if I know him,
would mind a love-past. It's the brutality of a union without love.
This girl is the daughter of the man who once owned Jon's mother as a
negro-slave was owned. You can't lay that ghost; don't try to, June!
It's asking us to see Jon joined to the flesh and blood of the man who
possessed Jon's mother against her will. It's no good mincing words; I
want it clear once for all. And now I mustn't talk any more, or I shall
have to sit up with this all night." And, putting his hand over his
heart, Jolyon turned his back on his daughter and stood looking at the
river Thames.