In the board-room the old clerk was still filling his ink-pots 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 greenbottles 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 disorganization 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 everyone.’
‘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!