The house was a white elephant, but he could not conceive of his father
living in a smaller place; and all the more did it all seem ironical.
In his great chair with the book-rest sat old Jolyon, the figurehead
of his family and class and creed, with his white head and dome-like
forehead, the representative of moderation, and order, and love of
property. As lonely an old man as there was in London.
There he sat in the gloomy comfort of the room, a puppet in the power of
great forces that cared nothing for family or class or creed, but moved,
machine-like, with dread processes to inscrutable ends. This was how it
struck young Jolyon, who had the impersonal eye.
The poor old Dad! So this was the end, the purpose to which he had
lived with such magnificent moderation! To be lonely, and grow older and
older, yearning for a soul to speak to!
In his turn old Jolyon looked back at his son. He wanted to talk about
many things that he had been unable to talk about all these years. It
had been impossible to seriously confide in June his conviction that
property in the Soho quarter would go up in value; his uneasiness
about that tremendous silence of Pippin, the superintendent of the New
Colliery Company, of which he had so long been chairman; his disgust at
the steady fall in American Golgothas, or even to discuss how, by some
sort of settlement, he could best avoid the payment of those death
duties which would follow his decease.
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