Trees take little account of time, and the old oak on the upper lawn at
Robin Hill looked no day older than when Bosinney sprawled under it and
said to Soames: "Forsyte, I've found the very place for your house."
Since then Swithin had dreamed, and old Jolyon died, beneath its
branches. And now, close to the swing, no-longer-young Jolyon often
painted there. Of all spots in the world it was perhaps the most sacred
to him, for he had loved his father.
Contemplating its great girth--crinkled and a little mossed, but not yet
hollow--he would speculate on the passage of time. That tree had seen,
perhaps, all real English history; it dated, he shouldn't wonder, from
the days of Elizabeth at least. His own fifty years were as nothing
to its wood. When the house behind it, which he now owned, was three
hundred years of age instead of twelve, that tree might still be
standing there, vast and hollow--for who would commit such sacrilege as
to cut it down? A Forsyte might perhaps still be living in that house,
to guard it jealously. And Jolyon would wonder what the house would look
like coated with such age. Wistaria was already about its walls--the new
look had gone. Would it hold its own and keep the dignity Bosinney had
bestowed on it, or would the giant London have lapped it round and
made it into an asylum in the midst of a jerry-built wilderness? Often,
within and without of it, he was persuaded that Bosinney had been moved
by the spirit when he built. He had put his heart into that house,
indeed! It might even become one of the 'homes of England'--a rare
achievement for a house in these degenerate days of building. And
the aesthetic spirit, moving hand in hand with his Forsyte sense of
possessive continuity, dwelt with pride and pleasure on his ownership
thereof. There was the smack of reverence and ancestor-worship (if only
for one ancestor) in his desire to hand this house down to his son and
his son's son. His father had loved the house, had loved the view, the
grounds, that tree; his last years had been happy there, and no one had
lived there before him. These last eleven years at Robin Hill had formed
in Jolyon's life as a painter, the important period of success. He was
now in the very van of water-colour art, hanging on the line everywhere.
His drawings fetched high prices. Specialising in that one medium with
the tenacity of his breed, he had 'arrived'--rather late, but not too
late for a member of the family which made a point of living for
ever. His art had really deepened and improved. In conformity with his
position he had grown a short fair beard, which was just beginning to
grizzle, and hid his Forsyte chin; his brown face had lost the warped
expression of his ostracised period--he looked, if anything, younger.
The loss of his wife in 1894 had been one of those domestic tragedies
which turn out in the end for the good of all. He had, indeed, loved
her to the last, for his was an affectionate spirit, but she had become
increasingly difficult: jealous of her step-daughter June, jealous even
of her own little daughter Holly, and making ceaseless plaint that he
could not love her, ill as she was, and 'useless to everyone, and better
dead.' He had mourned her sincerely, but his face had looked younger
since she died. If she could only have believed that she made him happy,
how much happier would the twenty years of their companionship have
been!