The Forsyte Saga - Volume 1

Other eyes besides the eyes of June and of Soames had seen 'those

two' (as Euphemia had already begun to call them) coming from the

conservatory; other eyes had noticed the look on Bosinney's face.

There are moments when Nature reveals the passion hidden beneath the

careless calm of her ordinary moods--violent spring flashing white on

almond-blossom through the purple clouds; a snowy, moonlit peak, with

its single star, soaring up to the passionate blue; or against the

flames of sunset, an old yew-tree standing dark guardian of some fiery

secret.

There are moments, too, when in a picture-gallery, a work, noted by the

casual spectator as '......Titian--remarkably fine,' breaks through the

defences of some Forsyte better lunched perhaps than his fellows,

and holds him spellbound in a kind of ecstasy. There are things, he

feels--there are things here which--well, which are things. Something

unreasoning, unreasonable, is upon him; when he tries to define it with

the precision of a practical man, it eludes him, slips away, as the

glow of the wine he has drunk is slipping away, leaving him cross, and

conscious of his liver. He feels that he has been extravagant, prodigal

of something; virtue has gone out of him. He did not desire this glimpse

of what lay under the three stars of his catalogue. God forbid that

he should know anything about the forces of Nature! God forbid that he

should admit for a moment that there are such things! Once admit that,

and where was he? One paid a shilling for entrance, and another for the

programme.

The look which June had seen, which other Forsytes had seen, was like

the sudden flashing of a candle through a hole in some imaginary canvas,

behind which it was being moved--the sudden flaming-out of a vague,

erratic glow, shadowy and enticing. It brought home to onlookers the

consciousness that dangerous forces were at work. For a moment they

noticed it with pleasure, with interest, then felt they must not notice

it at all.

It supplied, however, the reason of June's coming so late and

disappearing again without dancing, without even shaking hands with her

lover. She was ill, it was said, and no wonder.

But here they looked at each other guiltily. They had no desire to

spread scandal, no desire to be ill-natured. Who would have? And to

outsiders no word was breathed, unwritten law keeping them silent.

Then came the news that June had gone to the seaside with old Jolyon.

He had carried her off to Broadstairs, for which place there was just

then a feeling, Yarmouth having lost caste, in spite of Nicholas, and no

Forsyte going to the sea without intending to have an air for his money

such as would render him bilious in a week. That fatally aristocratic

tendency of the first Forsyte to drink Madeira had left his descendants

undoubtedly accessible.