In the board room the old clerk was still filling his inkpots from the magnum.
“Manager in?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Say I’m here, will you?”
The old clerk withdrew. Soames looked at the clock. Twelve! A little shaft of sunlight slanted down the wainscotting and floor. There was nothing else alive in the room save a bluebottle and the tick of the clock; not even a daily paper. Soames watched the bluebottle. He remembered how, as a boy, he had preferred bluebottles and green-bottles to the ordinary fly, because of their bright colour. It was a lesson. The showy things, the brilliant people, were the dangerous. Witness the Kaiser, and that precious Italian poet—what was his name! And this Jack-o’-lantern of their own! He shouldn’t be surprised if Elderson were brilliant in private life. Why didn’t the chap come? Was that encounter with young Butterfield giving him pause? The bluebottle crawled up the pane, buzzed down, crawled up again; the sunlight stole inward along the floor. All was vacuous in the board room, as though embodying the principle of insurance: “Keep things as they are.”
‘Can’t kick my heels here for ever,’ thought Soames, and moved to the window. In that wide street leading to the river, sunshine illumined a few pedestrians and a brewer’s dray, but along the main artery at the end the traffic streamed and rattled. London! A monstrous place! And all insured! ‘What’ll it be like thirty years hence?’ he thought. To think that there would be London, without himself to see it! He felt sorry for the place, sorry for himself. Even old Gradman would be gone. He supposed the insurance societies would look after it, but he didn’t know. And suddenly he became aware of Elderson. The fellow looked quite jaunty, in a suit of dittoes and a carnation.
“Contemplating the future, Mr. Forsyte?”
“No,” said Soames. How had the fellow guessed his thoughts?
“I’m glad you’ve come in. It gives me a chance to say how grateful I am for the interest you take in the concern. It’s rare. A manager has a lonely job.”
Was he mocking? He seemed altogether very spry and uppish. Light-heartedness always made Soames suspicious—there was generally some reason for it.
“If every director were as conscientious as you, one would sleep in one’s bed. I don’t mind telling you that the amount of help I got from the Board before you came on it was—well—negligible.”
Flattery! The fellow must be leading up to something!
Elderson went on:
“I can say to you what I couldn’t say to any of the others: I’m not at all happy about business, Mr. Forsyte. England is just about to discover the state she’s really in.”
Faced with this startling confirmation of his own thoughts, Soames reacted.
“No good crying out before we’re hurt,” he said; “the pound’s still high. We’re good stayers.”
“In the soup, I’m afraid. If something drastic isn’t done—we SHALL stay there. And anything drastic, as you know, means disorganisation and lean years before you reap reward.”
How could the fellow talk like this, and look as bright and pink as a new penny? It confirmed the theory that he didn’t care what happened. And, suddenly, Soames resolved to try a shot.
“Talking of lean years—I came in to say that I think we must call a meeting of the shareholders over this dead loss of the German business.” He said it to the floor, and looked quickly up. The result was disappointing. The manager’s light-grey eyes met his without a blink.
“I’ve been expecting that from you,” he said.
‘The deuce you have!’ thought Soames, for it had but that moment come into his mind.
“By all means call one,” went on the manager; “but I’m afraid the Board won’t like it.”
Soames refrained from saying: ‘Nor do I.’
“Nor the shareholders, Mr. Forsyte. In a long experience I’ve found that the less you rub their noses in anything unpleasant, the better for every one.”
“That may be,” said Soames, stiffening in contrariety; “but it’s all a part of the vice of not facing things.”
“I don’t think, Mr. Forsyte, that you will accuse ME of not facing things, in the time to come.”
Time to come! Now, what on earth did the fellow mean by that?
“Well, I shall moot it at the next Board,” he said.
“Quite!” said the manager. “Nothing like bringing things to a head, is there?”
Again that indefinable mockery, as if he had something up his sleeve. Soames looked mechanically at the fellow’s cuffs—beautifully laundered, with a blue stripe; at his holland waistcoat, and his bird’s-eye tie—a regular dandy. He would give him a second barrel!
“By the way,” he said, “Mont’s written a book. I’ve taken a copy.”
Not a blink! A little more show of teeth, perhaps—false, no doubt!
“I’ve taken two—poor, dear Mont!”
Soames had a sense of defeat. This chap was armoured like a crab, varnished like a Spanish table.
“Well,” he said, “I must go.”
The manager held out his hand.
“Good-bye, Mr. Forsyte. I’m so grateful to you.”
The fellow was actually squeezing his hand. Soames went out confused. To have his hand squeezed was so rare! It undermined him. And yet, it might be the crown of a consummate bit of acting. He couldn’t tell. He had, however, less intention even than before of moving for a meeting of the shareholders. No, no! That had just been a shot to get a rise; and it had failed. But the Butterfield shot had gone home, surely! If innocent, Elderson must certainly have alluded to the impudence of the young man’s call. And yet such a cool card was capable of failing to rise, just to tease you! No! Nothing doing—as they said nowadays. He was as far as ever from a proof of guilt; and to speak truth, glad of it. Such a scandal could serve no purpose save that of blackening the whole concern, directors and all. People were so careless, they never stopped to think, or apportion blame where it was due. Keep a sharp eye open, and go on as they were! No good stirring hornets’ nests! He had got so far in thought and progress, when a voice said:
“Well met, Forsyte! Are you going my way?”
“Old Mont,” coming down the steps of ‘Snooks’!
“I don’t know,” said Soames.
“I’m off to the Aeroplane for lunch.”
“That new-fangled place?”
“Rising, you know, Forsyte—rising.”
“I’ve just been seeing Elderson. He’s bought two copies of your book.”
“Dear me! Poor fellow!”
Soames smiled faintly. “That’s what he said of you! And who d’you think sold them to him? Young Butterfield.”
“Is he still alive?”
“He was, this morning.”
Sir Lawrence’s face took on a twist:
“I’ve been thinking, Forsyte. They tell me Elderson keeps two women.”
Soames stared. The idea was attractive; would account for everything.
“My wife says it’s one too many, Forsyte. What do you say?”
“I?” said Soames. “I only know the chap’s as cool as a cucumber. I’m going in here. Good-bye!”
One could get no help from that baronet fellow; he couldn’t take anything seriously. Two women! At Elderson’s age! What a life! There were always men like that, not content with one thing at a time—living dangerously. It was mysterious to him. You might look and look into chaps like that, and see nothing. And yet, there they were! He crossed the hall, and went into the room where connoisseurs were lunching. Taking down the menu at the service table, he ordered himself a dozen oysters; but, suddenly remembering that the month contained no “r,” changed them to a fried sole.
Chapter VIII.
LEVANTED
“No, dear heart, Nature’s ‘off’!”
“How d’you mean, Michael?”
“Well, look at the Nature novels we get. Sedulous stuff pitched on Cornish cliffs or Yorkshire moors—ever been on a Yorkshire moor?—it comes off on you; and the Dartmoor brand. Gosh! Dartmoor, where the passions come from—ever been on Dartmoor? Well, they don’t, you know. And the South Sea bunch! Oh, la, la! And the poets, the splash-and-splutter school don’t get within miles of Nature. The village idiot school is a bit better, certainly. After all, old Wordsworth made Nature, and she’s a bromide. Of course, there’s raw nature with the small ‘n’; but if you come up against that, it takes you all your time to keep alive—the Nature we gas about is licensed, nicely blended and bottled. She’s not modern enough for contemporary style.”
“Oh! well, let’s go on the river, anyway, Michael. We can have tea at ‘The Shelter.’”
They were just reaching what Michael always called ‘this desirable residence,’ when Fleur leaned forward, and, touching his knee, said:
“I’m not half as nice to you as you deserve, Michael.”
“Good Lord, darling! I thought you were.”
“I know I’m selfish; especially just now.”
“It’s only the eleventh baronet.”
“Yes; it’s a great responsibility. I only hope he’ll be like you.”
Michael slid in to the landing-stage, shipped his sculls, and sat down beside her.
“If he’s like me, I shall disown him. But sons take after their mothers.”
“I meant in character. I want him frightfully to be cheerful and not restless, and have the feeling that life’s worth while.”
Michael stared at her lips—they were quivering; at her cheek, slightly browned by the afternoon’s sunning; and, bending sideways, he put his own against it.
“He’ll be a sunny little cuss, I’m certain.”
Fleur shook her head.
“I don’t want him greedy and self-centred; it’s in my blood, you know. I can see it’s ugly, but I can’t help it. How do you manage not to be?”
Michael ruffled his hair with his free hand.
“The sun isn’t too hot for you, is it, ducky?”
“No. Seriously, Michael—how?”
“But I AM. Look at the way I want you. Nothing will cure me of that.”
A slight pressure of her cheek on his own was heartening, and he said:
“Do you remember coming down the garden one night, and finding me in a boat just here? When you’d gone, I stood on my head, to cool it. I was on my uppers; I didn’t think I’d got an earthly—” He stopped. No! He would not remind her, but that was the night when she said: “Come again when I know I can’t get my wish!” The unknown cousin!
Fleur said quietly:
“I was a pig to you, Michael, but I was awfully unhappy. That’s gone. It’s gone at last; there’s nothing wrong now, except my own nature.”
Conscious that his feelings betrayed the period, Michael said:
“Oh! if that’s all! What price tea?”
They went up the lawn arm-inarm. Nobody was at home—Soames in London, Annette at a garden party. “We’ll have tea on the verandah, please,” said Fleur. Sitting there, happier than he ever remembered being, Michael conceded a certain value to Nature, to the sunshine stealing down, the scent of pinks and roses, the sighing in the aspens. Annette’s pet doves were cooing; and, beyond the quietly-flowing river, the spires of poplar trees rose along the further bank. But, after all, he was only enjoying them because of the girl beside him, whom he loved to touch and look at, and because, for the first time, he felt as if she did not want to get up and flutter off to some one or something else. Curious that there could be, outside oneself, a being who completely robbed the world of its importance, ‘snooped,’ as it were, the whole ‘bag of tricks’—and she one’s own wife! Very curious, considering what one was! He heard her say:
“Of course, mother’s a Catholic; only, living with father down here, she left off practising. She didn’t even bother me much. I’ve been thinking, Michael—what shall we do about HIM?”
“Let him rip.”
“I don’t know. He must be taught something, because of going to school. The Catholics, you know, really do get things out of their religion.”
“Yes; they go it blind; it’s the only logical way now.”
“I think having no religion makes one feel that nothing matters.”
Michael suppressed the words: ‘We could bring him up as a sun-worshipper,’ and said, instead:
“It seems to me that whatever he’s taught will only last till he can think for himself; then he’ll settle down to what suits him.”
“But what do YOU think about things, Michael? You’re as good as any one I know.”
“Gosh!” murmured Michael, strangely flattered: “Is that so?”
“What DO you think? Be serious!”
“Well, darling, doctrinally nothing—which means, of course, that I haven’t got religion. I believe one has to play the game—but that’s ethics.”
“But surely it’s a handicap not to be able to rely on anything but oneself? If there’s something to be had out of any form of belief, one might as well have it.”
Michael smiled, but not on the surface.
“You’re going to do just as you like about the eleventh baronet, and I’m going to abet you. But considering his breeding—I fancy he’ll be a bit of a sceptic.”
“But I don’t WANT him to be. I’d rather he were snug, and convinced and all that. Scepticism only makes one restless.”
“No white monkey in him? Ah! I wonder! It’s in the air, I guess. The only thing will be to teach him a sense of other people, as young as possible, with a slipper, if necessary.”
Fleur gave him a clear look, and laughed.
“Yes,” she said: “Mother used to try, but father wouldn’t let her.”
They did not reach home till past eight o’clock.
“Either your father’s here, or mine,” said Michael, in the hall; “there’s a prehistoric hat.”
“It’s Dad’s. His is grey inside. Bart’s is buff.”
In the Chinese room Soames indeed was discovered, with an opened letter, and Ting-a-ling at his feet. He held the letter out to Michael, without a word.
There was no date, and no address; Michael read:
“DEAR MR. FORSYTE.—Perhaps you will be good enough to tell the Board at the meeting on Tuesday that I am on my way to immunity from the consequences of any peccadillo I may have been guilty of. By the time you receive this, I shall be there. I have always held that the secret of life, no less than that of business, is to know when not to stop. It will be no use to proceed against me, for my person will not be attachable, as I believe you call it in the law, and I have left no property behind. If your object was to corner me, I cannot congratulate you on your tactics. If, on the other hand, you inspired that young man’s visit as a warning that you were still pursuing the matter, I should like to add new thanks to those which I expressed when I saw you a few days ago.
“Believe me, dear Mr. Forsyte,
“Faithfully yours,
“ROBERT ELDERSON.”
Michael said cheerfully:
“Happy release! Now you’ll feel safer, sir.”
Soames passed his hand over his face, evidently wiping off its expression. “We’ll discuss it later,” he said. “This dog’s been keeping me company.”
Michael admired him at that moment. He was obviously swallowing his ‘grief,’ to save Fleur.
“Fleur’s a bit tired,” he said. “We’ve been on the river, and had tea at ‘The Shelter’; Madame wasn’t in. Let’s have dinner at once, Fleur.”
Fleur had picked up Ting-a-ling, and was holding her face out of reach of his avid tongue.
“Sorry you’ve had to wait, Dad,” she murmured, behind the yellow fur; “I’m just going to wash; shan’t change.”
When she had gone, Soames reached for the letter.
“A pretty kettle of fish!” he muttered. “Where it’ll end, I can’t tell!”
“But isn’t this the end, sir?”
Soames stared. These young people! Here he was, faced with a public scandal, which might lead to he didn’t know what—the loss of his name in the city, the loss of his fortune, perhaps; and they took it as if—! They had no sense of responsibility—none! All his father’s power of seeing the worst, all James’ nervous pessimism, had come to the fore in him during the hour since, at the Connoisseur’s Club, he had been handed that letter. Only the extra ‘form’ of the generation that succeeded James saved him, now that Fleur was out of the room, from making an exhibition of his fears.
“Your father in town?”
“I believe so, sir.”
“Good!” Not that he felt relief. That baronet chap was just as irresponsible—getting him to go on that Board! It all came of mixing with people brought up in a sort of incurable levity, with no real feeling for money.
“Now that Elderson’s levanted,” he said, “the whole thing must come out. Here’s his confession in my hand—”
“Why not tear it up, sir, and say Elderson has developed consumption?”
The impossibility of getting anything serious from this young man afflicted Soames like the eating of heavy pudding.
“You think that would be honourable?” he said grimly.
“Sorry, sir!” said Michael, sobered. “Can I help at all?”
“Yes; by dropping your levity, and taking care to keep wind of this matter away from Fleur.”
“I will,” said Michael, earnestly: “I promise you. I’ll Dutch-oyster the whole thing. What’s your line going to be?”
“We shall have to call the shareholders together and explain this dicky-dealing. They’ll very likely take it in bad part.”
“I can’t see why they should. How could you have helped it?”
Soames sniffed.
“There’s no connection in life between reward and your deserts. If the war hasn’t taught you that, nothing will.”
“Well,” said Michael, “Fleur will be down directly. If you’ll excuse me a minute; we’ll continue it in our next.”
Their next did not occur till Fleur had gone to bed.
“Now, sir,” said Michael, “I expect my governor’s at the Aeroplane. He goes there and meditates on the end of the world. Would you like me to ring him up, if your Board meeting’s tomorrow?”
Soames nodded. He himself would not sleep a wink—why should ‘Old Mont’?
Michael went to the Chinese tea chest.
“Bart? This is Michael. Old For—my father-inlaw is here; he’s had a pill… No; Elderson. Could you blow in by any chance and hear?… He’s coming, sir. Shall we stay down, or go up to my study?”
“Down,” muttered Soames, whose eyes were fixed on the white monkey. “I don’t know what we’re all coming to,” he added, suddenly.
“If we did, sir, we should die of boredom.”
“Speak for yourself. All this unreliability! I can’t tell where it’s leading.”
“Perhaps there’s somewhere, sir, that’s neither heaven nor hell.”
“A man of HIS age!”
“Same age as my dad; it was a bad vintage, I expect. If you’d been in the war, sir, it would have cheered you up no end.”
“Indeed!” said Soames.
“It took the linch-pins out of the cart—admitted; but, my Lord! it did give you an idea of the grit there is about, when it comes to being up against it.”
Soames stared. Was this young fellow reading him a lesson against pessimism?
“Look at young Butterfield, the other day,” Michael went on, “going over the top, to Elderson! Look at the girl who sat for ‘the altogether’ in that picture you bought us! She’s the wife of a packer we had, who got hoofed for snooping books. She made quite a lot of money by standing for the nude, and never lost her wicket. They’re going to Australia on it. Yes, and look at that little snooper himself; he snooped to keep her alive after pneumonia, and came down to selling balloons.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Soames.
“Only grit, sir. You said you didn’t know what we were coming to. Well, look at the unemployed! Is there a country in the world where they stick it as they do here? I get awfully bucked at being English every now and then. Don’t you?”
The words stirred something deep in Soames; but, far from giving it away, he continued to gaze at the white monkey. The restless, inhuman, and yet so human, angry sadness of the creature’s eyes! ‘No whites to them!’ thought Soames: ‘that’s what does it, I expect!’ And George had liked that picture to hang opposite his bed! Well, George had grit—joked with his last breath: very English, George! Very English, all the Forsytes! Old Uncle Jolyon, and his way with shareholders; Swithin, upright, puffy, huge in a too little arm-chair at Timothy’s: ‘All these small fry!’ he seemed to hear the words again; and Uncle Nicholas, whom that chap Elderson reproduced as it were unworthily, spry and all-there, and pretty sensual, but quite above suspicion of dishonesty. And old Roger, with his crankiness, and German mutton! And his own father, James—how he had hung on, long and frail as a reed, hung on and on! And Timothy, preserved in Consols, dying at a hundred! Grit and body in those old English boys, in spite of their funny ways. And there stirred in Soames a sort of atavistic will-power. He would see, and they would see—and that was all about it!
The grinding of a taxi’s wheels brought him back from reverie. Here came ‘Old Mont,’ tittuppy, and light in the head as ever, no doubt. And, instead of his hand, Soames held out Elderson’s letter.
“Your precious schoolfellow’s levanted,” he said.
Sir Lawrence read it through, and whistled.
“What do you think, Forsyte—Constantinople?”
“More likely Monte Carlo,” said Soames gloomily. “Secret commission—it’s not an extraditable offence.”
The odd contortions of that baronet’s face were giving him some pleasure—the fellow seemed to be feeling it, after all.
“I should think he’s really gone to escape his women, Forsyte.”
The chap was incorrigible! Soames shrugged his shoulders almost violently.
“You’d better realise,” he said, “that the fat is in the fire.”
“But surely, my dear Forsyte, it’s been there ever since the French occupied the Ruhr. Elderson has cut his lucky; we appoint some one else. What more is there to it?”
Soames had the peculiar feeling of having overdone his own honesty. If an honourable man, a ninth baronet, couldn’t see the implications of Elderson’s confession, were they really there? Was any fuss and scandal necessary? Goodness knew, HE didn’t want it! He said heavily:
“We now have conclusive evidence of a fraud; we KNOW Elderson was illegally paid for putting through business by which the shareholders have suffered a dead loss. How can we keep this knowledge from them?”
“But the mischief’s done, Forsyte. How will the knowledge help them?”
Soames frowned.
“We’re in a fiduciary position. I’m not prepared to run the risks of concealment. If we conceal, we’re accessory after the fact. The thing might come out at any time.” If that was caution, not honesty, he couldn’t help it.
“I should be glad to spare Elderson’s name. We were at—”
“I’m aware of that,” said Soames, drily.
“But what risk is there of its coming out, Forsyte? Elderson won’t mention it; nor young Butterfield, if you tell him not to. Those who paid the commission certainly won’t. And beyond us three here, no one else knows. It’s not as if we profited in any way.”
Soames was silent. The argument was specious. Entirely unjust, of course, that he should be penalised for what Elderson had done!
“No,” he said, suddenly, “it won’t do. Depart from the law, and you can’t tell where it’ll end. The shareholders have suffered this loss, and they have the right to all the facts within the directors’ knowledge. There might be some means of restitution they could avail themselves of. We can’t judge. It may be they’ve a remedy against ourselves.”
“If that’s so, Forsyte, I’m with you.”
Soames felt disgust. Mont had no business to put it with a sort of gallantry that didn’t count the cost; when the cost, if cost there were, would fall, not on Mont, whose land was heavily mortgaged, but on himself, whose property was singularly realisable.
“Well,” he said, coldly, “remember that tomorrow. I’m going to bed.”
At his open window upstairs he felt no sense of virtue, but he enjoyed a sort of peace. He had taken his line, and there it was!
Chapter IX.
SOAMES DOESN’T GIVE A DAMN
During the month following the receipt of Elderson’s letter, Soames aged more than thirty days. He had forced his policy of disclosure on a doubting Board, the special meeting had been called, and, just as, twenty-three years ago, pursuing divorce from Irene, he had to face the public eye, so now he suffered day and night in dread of that undiscriminating optic. The French had a proverb: “Les absents ont toujours tort!” but Soames had grave doubts about it. Elderson would be absent from that meeting of the shareholders, but—unless he was much mistaken—he himself, who would be present, would come in for the blame. The French were not to be relied on. What with his anxiety about Fleur, and his misgiving about the public eye, he was sleeping badly, eating little, and feeling below par. Annette had recommended him to see a doctor. That was probably why he did not. Soames had faith in doctors for other people; but they had never—he would say—done anything for HIM, possibly because, so far, there had not been anything to do.
Failing in her suggestion, and finding him every day less sociable, Annette had given him a book on Coue. After running it through, he had meant to leave it in the train, but the theory, however extravagant, had somehow clung to him. After all, Fleur was doing it; and the thing cost you nothing: there might be something in it! There was. After telling himself that night twenty-five times that he was getting better and better, he slept so soundly that Annette, in the next room, hardly slept at all.
“Do you know, my friend,” she said at breakfast, “you were snoring last night so that I could not hear the cock crow.”
“Why should you want to?” said Soames.
“Well, never mind—if you had a good night. Was it my little Coue who gave you that nice dream?”
Partly from fear of encouraging Coue, and partly from fear of encouraging her, Soames avoided a reply; but he had a curious sense of power, as if he did not care what people said of him.
‘I’ll do it again to-night,’ he thought.
“You know,” Annette went on, “you are just the temperament for Coue, Soames. When you cure yourself of worrying, you will get quite fat.”
“Fat!” said Soames, looking at her curves. “I’d as soon grow a beard.”
Fatness and beards were associated with the French. He would have to keep an eye on himself if he went on with this—er—what was one to call it? Tomfoolery was hardly the word to conciliate the process, even if it did require you to tie twenty-five knots in a bit of string: very French, that, like telling your beads! He himself had merely counted on his fingers. The sense of power lasted all the way up to London; he had the conviction that he could sit in a draught if he wanted to, that Fleur would have her boy all right; and as to the P. P. R. S.—ten to one he wouldn’t be mentioned by name in any report of the proceedings.
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