‘Val,’ she said, very softly; ‘Val! Don’t snore, dear!’…
A snuff-box may be precious, not so much for its enamel, its period, and its little brilliants, as because it has belonged to one’s father. Winifred, though her sense of property had been well proved by her retention of Montague Dartie ‘for poorer’, throughout so many years, did not possess her brother Soames’s collecting instinct, nor, indeed, his taste in objects which George Forsyte had been the first to call of ‘bigotry and virtue’. But the further Time removed her father James – a quarter of a century by now – the more she revered his memory. As some ancient general or philosopher, secured by age from competition, is acclaimed year by year a greater genius, so with James! His objection to change, his perfect domesticity, his power of saving money for his children; and his dread of not being told anything, were haloed for her more and more with every year that he spent underground. Her fashionable aspirations waning with the increase of adipose, the past waxed and became a very constellation of shining memories. The removal of this snuff-box – so tangible a reminder of James and Emily – tried her considerable equanimity more than anything that had happened to her for years. The thought that she had succumbed to the distinction of a voice on the telephone, caused her positive discomfort. With all her experience of distinction, she ought to have known better! She was, however, one of those women who, when a thing is done, admit the fact with a view to having it undone as soon as possible; and, having failed with Val, who merely said: ‘Awfully sorry, Mother, but there it is – jolly bad luck!’ she summoned her brother.
Soames was little less than appalled. He remembered seeing James buy the box at Jobson’s for hardly more than one-tenth of what it would fetch now. Everything seemed futile if, in such a way, one could lose what had been nursed for forty years into so really magnificent a state of unearned increment. And the fellow who had taken it was of quite good family, or so his nephew said! Whether the honesty of the old Forsytes, in the atmosphere of which he had been brought up and turned out into the world, had been inherited or acquired – derived from their blood or their banks – he had never considered. It had been in their systems just as the proverb ‘Honesty is the best policy’ was in that of the private banking which then obtained. A slight reverie on banking was no uncommon affection of the mind in one who could recall the repercussion of ‘Understart and Darnett’s’ failure, and the disappearance one by one of all the little, old banks with legendary names. These great modern affairs were good for credit and bad for novelists – run on a bank – there had been no better reading! Such monster concerns couldn’t ‘go broke’, no matter what their clients did; but whether they made for honesty in the individual, Soames couldn’t tell. The snuffbox was gone, however; and if Winifred didn’t take care, she wouldn’t get it back. How, precisely, she was to take care he could not at present see; but he should advise her to put it into the hands of somebody at once.
‘But whose, Soames?’
‘There’s Scotland Yard,’ answered Soames, gloomily. ‘I believe they’re very little good, except to make a fuss. There’s that fellow I employed in the Ferrar case. He charges very high.’
‘I shouldn’t care so much,’ said Winifred, ‘if it hadn’t belonged to the dear Dad.’
‘Ruffians like that,’ muttered Soames, ‘oughtn’t to be at large.’
‘And to think,’ said Winifred, ‘that it was especially to see him that Val came to stay here.’
‘Was it?’ said Soames, gloomily. ‘I suppose you’re sure that fellow took it?’
‘Quite. I’d had it out to polish only a quarter of an hour before. After he went, I came back into the room at once, to put it away, and it was gone. Val had been in the room the whole time.’
Soames dwelled for a moment, then rejected a doubt about his nephew, for, though connected by blood with that precious father of his, Montague Dartie, and a racing man to boot, he was half a Forsyte after all.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘shall I send you this man – his name’s Becroft – always looks as if he’d over-shaved himself, but he’s got a certain amount of nous. I should suggest his geting in touch with that fellow’s club.’
‘Suppose he’s already sold the box?’ said Winifred.
‘Yesterday afternoon? Should doubt that; but it wants immediate handling. I’ll see Becroft as I go away. Fleur’s overdoing it, with this canteen of hers.’