What was this to be--this vestibule, or whatever they called it? But
gazing at the skylight, inspiration came to him.
"Ah! the billiard-room!"
When told it was to be a tiled court with plants in the centre, he
turned to Irene:
"Waste this on plants? You take my advice and have a billiard table
here!"
Irene smiled. She had lifted her veil, banding it like a nun's coif
across her forehead, and the smile of her dark eyes below this seemed to
Swithin more charming than ever. He nodded. She would take his advice he
saw.
He had little to say of the drawing or dining-rooms, which he described
as "spacious"; but fell into such raptures as he permitted to a man of
his dignity, in the wine-cellar, to which he descended by stone steps,
Bosinney going first with a light.
"You'll have room here," he said, "for six or seven hundred dozen--a
very pooty little cellar!"
Bosinney having expressed the wish to show them the house from the copse
below, Swithin came to a stop.
"There's a fine view from here," he remarked; "you haven't such a thing
as a chair?"
A chair was brought him from Bosinney's tent.
"You go down," he said blandly; "you two! I'll sit here and look at the
view."
He sat down by the oak tree, in the sun; square and upright, with one
hand stretched out, resting on the nob of his cane, the other planted on
his knee; his fur coat thrown open, his hat, roofing with its flat
top the pale square of his face; his stare, very blank, fixed on the
landscape.
He nodded to them as they went off down through the fields. He was,
indeed, not sorry to be left thus for a quiet moment of reflection. The
air was balmy, not too much heat in the sun; the prospect a fine one,
a remarka.... His head fell a little to one side; he jerked it up and
thought: Odd! He--ah! They were waving to him from the bottom! He put
up his hand, and moved it more than once. They were active--the prospect
was remar.... His head fell to the left, he jerked it up at once; it
fell to the right. It remained there; he was asleep.
And asleep, a sentinel on the--top of the rise, he appeared to rule over
this prospect--remarkable--like some image blocked out by the special
artist, of primeval Forsytes in pagan days, to record the domination of
mind over matter!
And all the unnumbered generations of his yeoman ancestors, wont of a
Sunday to stand akimbo surveying their little plots of land, their grey
unmoving eyes hiding their instinct with its hidden roots of violence,
their instinct for possession to the exclusion of all the world--all
these unnumbered generations seemed to sit there with him on the top of
the rise.