‘Poor fellow!’ muttered Soames involuntarily, and turned to ‘Old Mont’.
‘Don’t mention what I said.’
‘My dear Forsyte, what was that?’
Good Heavens! And he was on a Board with a man like this! What had made him come on, when he didn’t want the money, or any more worries – goodness knew. As soon as he had become a director, Winifred and others of his family had begun to acquire shares to neutralize their income tax – seven per cent preference – nine per cent ordinary – instead of the steady five they ought to be content with. There it was, he couldn’t move without people following him. He had always been so safe, so perfect a guide in the money maze! To be worried at his time of life! His eyes sought comfort from the opal at his daughter’s neck – pretty thing, pretty neck! Well! She seemed happy enough – had forgotten her infatuation of two years ago! That was something to be thankful for. What she wanted now was a child to steady her in all this modern scrimmage of twopenny-ha’penny writers and painters and musicians. A loose lot, but she had a good little head on her. If she had a child, he would put another twenty thousand into her settlement. That was one thing about her mother – steady in money matters, good French method. And Fleur – so far as he knew – cut her coat according to her cloth. What was that? The word ‘Goya’ had caught his ear. New life of him coming out? H’m! That confirmed his slowly growing conviction that Goya had reached top point again.
‘Think I shall part with that,’ he said, pointing to the picture. ‘There’s an Argentine over here.’
‘Sell your Goya, sir?’ It was Michael speaking. ‘Think of the envy with which you’re now regarded!’
‘One can’t have everything,’ said Soames.
‘That reproduction we’ve got for The New Life has turned out first-rate. “Property of Soames Forsyte, Esquire.” Let’s get the book out first, sir, anyway.’
‘Shadow or substance, eh, Forsyte?’
Narrow-headed baronet chap – was he mocking?
‘I’ve no family place,’ he said.
‘No, but we have, sir,’ murmured Michael; ‘you could leave it to Fleur, you know.’
‘Well,’ said Soames, ‘we shall see if that’s worth while.’ And he looked at his daughter.
Fleur seldom blushed, but she picked up Ting-a-ling and rose from the Spanish table. Michael followed suit. ‘Coffee in the other room,’ he said. ‘Old Forsyte’ and ‘Old Mont’ stood up, wiping their moustaches.
Chapter Seven
‘OLD MONT’ AND ‘OLD FORSYTE’
THE offices of the P.P.R.S. were not far from the College of Arms. Soames, who knew that ‘three dexter buckles on a sable ground gules’ and a ‘pheasant proper’ had been obtained there at some expense by his Uncle Swithin in the sixties of the last century, had always pooh-poohed the building, until, about a year ago, he had been struck by the name Golding in a book which he had absently taken up at the Connoisseurs’ Club. The affair purported to prove that William Shakespeare was really Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. The mother of the earl was a Golding – so was the mother of Soames! The coincidence struck him; and he went on reading. The tome left him with judgement suspended over the main issue, but a distinct curiosity as to whether he was not of the same blood as Shakespeare. Even if the earl were not the bard, he felt that the connexion could only be creditable, though, so far as he could make out, Oxford was a shady fellow. Recently appointed on the Board of the P.P.R.S., so that he passed the college every other Tuesday, he had thought: ‘Shan’t go spending a lot of money on it, but might look in one day.’ Having looked in, it was astonishing how taken he had been by the whole thing. Tracing his mother had been quite like a criminal investigation, nearly as ramified and fully as expensive. Having begun, the tenacity of a Forsyte could hardly bear to leave him short of the mother of Shakespeare de Vere, even though she would be collateral; unfortunately, he could not get past a certain William Gouldyng, Ingerer – whatever that might be, and he was almost afraid to inquire – of the time of Oliver Cromwell. There were still four generations to be unravelled, and he was losing money and the hope of getting anything for it. This it was which caused him to gaze askance at the retired building while passing it on his way to the Board on the Tuesday after the lunch at Fleur’s. Two more wakeful early mornings had screwed him to the pitch of bringing his doubts to a head and knowing where he stood in the matter of the P.P.R.S.; and this sudden reminder that he was spending money here, there and everywhere, when there was a possibility, however remote, of financial liability somewhere else, sharpened the edge of a nerve already stropped by misgivings. Neglecting the lift and walking slowly up the two flights of stairs, he ‘went over’ his fellow-directors for the fifteenth time. Old Lord Fontenoy was there for his name, of course; seldom attended, and was what they called ‘a dud’ – h’m! – nowadays; the chairman, Sir Luke Sharman, seemed always to be occupied in not being taken for a Jew. His nose was straight, but his eyelids gave cause for doubt. His surname was impeccable, but his Christian dubious; his voice was reassuringly roughened, but his clothes had a suspicious tendency towards gloss. Altogether a man who, though shrewd, could not be trusted – Soames felt – to be giving his whole mind to other business. As for ‘Old Mont’ – what was the good of a ninth baronet on a Board? Guy Meyricke, King’s Counsel, last of the three who had been ‘together’, was a good man in court, no doubt, but with no time for business and no real sense of it! Remained that converted Quaker, old Cuthbert Mothergill – whose family name had been a by-word for successful integrity throughout the last century, so that people still put Mothergills on to boards almost mechanically – rather deaf, nice clean old chap, and quite bland, but nothing more. A perfectly honest lot, no doubt, but perfunctory. None of them really giving their minds to the thing! In Elderson’s pocket, too, except perhaps Sharman, and he on the wobble. And Elderson himself – clever chap, bit of an artist, perhaps; managing director from the start, with everything at his finger-tips! Yes! That was the mischief! Prestige of superior knowledge, and years of success – they all kow-towed to him, and no wonder! Trouble with a man like that was that if he once admitted to having made a mistake he destroyed the legend of his infallibility. Soames had enough infallibility of his own to realize how powerful was its impetus towards admitting nothing. Ten months ago, when he had come on to the Board, everything had seemed in full sail; exchanges had reached bottom, so they all thought – the ‘reassurance of foreign contracts’ policy, which Elderson had initiated about a year before, had seemed, with rising exchanges, perhaps the brightest feather in the cap of possibility. And now, a twelvemonth later, Soames suspected darkly that they did not know where they were – and the general meeting only six weeks off! Probably not even Elderson knew; or, if he did, he was keeping knowledge which ought to belong to the whole directorate severely to himself.