‘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 penalized 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 realizable.
‘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 Nine
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 Coué. 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 Coué who gave you that nice dream?’
Partly from fear of encouraging Coué, 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 tonight,’ he thought.
‘You know,’ Annette went on, ‘you are just the temperament for Coué, 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.
After an early lunch and twenty-five more assurances over his coffee, he set out for the city.
This Board, held just a week before the special meeting of the shareholders, was in the nature of a dress rehearsal. The details of confrontation had to be arranged, and Soames was chiefly concerned with seeing that a certain impersonality should be preserved. He was entirely against disclosure of the fact that young Butterfield’s story and Elderson’s letter had been confided to himself. The phrase to be used should be a ‘member of the Board’. He saw no need for anything further. As for explanations, they would fall, of course, to the chairman and the senior director, Lord Fontenoy. He found, however, that the Board thought he himself was the right person to bring the matter forward. No one else – they said – could supply the personal touch, the necessary conviction; the chairman should introduce the matter briefly, then call on Soames to give the evidence within his knowledge. Lord Fontenoy was emphatic.