The Chairman said:

“You put a pistol to our heads.”

“I am responsible to the shareholders,” said Soames, “and I shall do my duty by them.”

“So we all are, Mr. Forsyte; and I hope we shall all do our duty.”

“Why not confine the foreign business to the small countries—their currency is safe enough?”

‘Old Mont,’ and his precious ‘ring!’

“No,” said Soames, “we must go back to safety.”

“Splendid isolation, Forsyte?”

“Meddling was all very well in the war, but in peace—politics or business—this half-and-half interference is no good. We can’t control the foreign situation.”

He looked around him, and was instantly conscious that with those words he had struck a chord. ‘I’m going through with this!’ he thought.

“I should be glad, Mr. Chairman”—the manager was speaking—“if I might say a word. The policy was of my initiation, and I think I may claim that it has been of substantial benefit to the Society so far. When, however, a member of the Board takes so strong a view against its continuance, I certainly don’t press the Board to continue it. The times ARE uncertain, and a risk, of course, is involved, however conservative our estimates.”

‘Now why?’ thought Soames: ‘What’s he ratting for?’

“That’s very handsome of you, Elderson; Mr. Chairman, I think we may say that is very handsome of our manager.”

Old Dosey Cosey! Handsome! The old woman!

The Chairman’s rather harsh voice broke a silence.

“This is a very serious point of policy. I should have been glad to have Lord Fontenoy present.”

“If I am to endorse the report,” said Soames shortly, “it must be decided today. I have made up my mind. But please yourselves.”

He threw in those last three words from a sort of fellow feeling—it was unpleasant to be dragooned! A moment’s silence, and then discussion assumed that random volubility which softens a decision already forced on one. A quarter of an hour thus passed before the Chairman said:

“We are agreed then, gentlemen, that the report shall contain the announcement that, in view of Continental uncertainty, we are abandoning foreign risks for the present.”

Soames had won. Relieved and puzzled, he walked away alone.

He had shown character; their respect for him had gone up, he could see; their liking for him down, if they’d ever had any—he didn’t know! But why had Elderson veered round? He recalled the shift and blink of the fellow’s steely eyes at the idea of the question being raised at the general meeting.

That had done it! But why? Were the figures faked? Surely not! That would be too difficult, in the face of the accountants. If Soames had faith, it was in chartered accountants. Sandis and Jevon were tip-top people. It couldn’t be that! He glanced up from the pavement. The dome of St. Paul’s was dim already in evening sky—nothing to be had out of it! He felt badly in need of some one to talk to; but there was nobody; and he quickened his pace among the hurrying crowd. His hand, driven deep into his overcoat pocket, came into sudden contact with some foreign sticky substance. ‘Gracious!’ he thought: ‘those things!’ Should he drop them in the gutter? If only there were a child he could take them home to! He must get Annette to speak to Fleur. He knew what came of bad habits from his own experience of long ago. Why shouldn’t he speak to her himself? He was staying the night there! But there came on him a helpless sense of ignorance. These young people! What did they really think and feel? Was old Mont right? Had they given up interest in everything except the moment, abandoned all belief in continuity, and progress? True enough that Europe was in Queer Street. But look at the state of things after the Napoleonic Wars. He couldn’t remember his grandfather ‘Superior Dosset,’ the old chap had died five years before he was born, but he perfectly remembered how Aunt Ann, born in 1799, used to talk about “that dreadful Bonaparte—we used to call him Boney, my dear;” of how her father could get eight or ten per cent. for his money; and of what an impression ‘those Chartists’ had made on Aunts Juley and Hester, and that was long afterwards. Yet, in spite of all that, look at the Victorian era—a golden age, things worth collecting, children worth having! Why not again! Consols had risen almost continuously since Timothy died. Even if Heaven and Hell had gone, they couldn’t be the reason; none of his uncles had believed in either, and yet had all made fortunes, and all had families, except Timothy and Swithin. No! It couldn’t be the want of Heaven and Hell! What, then, was the reason of the change—if change there really were? And suddenly it was revealed to Soames. They talked too much—too much and too fast! They got to the end of interest in this and that and the other. They ate life and threw away the rind, and—and—. By the way, he must buy that picture of George’s!… Had these young folk more mind than his own generation? And if so—why? Was it diet? That lobster cocktail Fleur had given him the Sunday before last. He had eaten the thing—very nasty! But it hadn’t made him want to talk. No! He didn’t think it could be diet. Besides—Mind! Where were the minds now that equalled the Victorians—Darwin, Huxley, Dickens, Disraeli, even old Gladstone? Why, he remembered judges and advocates who seemed giants compared with those of the present day, just as he remembered that the judges of James his father’s youth had seemed giants to James compared with those of Soames’ prime. According to that, mind was steadily declining. It must be something else. There was a thing they called psycho-analysis, which so far as he could understand attributed people’s action not to what they ate at breakfast, or the leg they got out of bed with, as in the good old days, but to some shock they had received in the remote past and entirely forgotten. The subconscious mind! Fads! Fads and microbes! The fact was this generation had no digestion. His father and his uncles had all complained of liver, but they had never had anything the matter with them—no need of any of these vitamins, false teeth, mental healing, newspapers, psycho-analysis, spiritualism, birth control, osteopathy, broadcasting, and what not. ‘Machines!’ thought Soames. ‘That’s it—I shouldn’t wonder!’ How could you believe in anything when everything was going round so fast? When you couldn’t count your chickens—they ran about so? But Fleur had got a good little head on her! ‘Yes,’ he mused, ‘and French teeth, she can digest anything. Two years! I’ll speak to her before she gets the habit confirmed. Her mother was quick enough about it!’ And perceiving the Connoisseurs’ Club in front of him, he went in.

The hall porter came out of his box. A gentleman was waiting.

“What gentleman?” said Soames, sidelong.

“I think he’s your nephew, sir, Mr. Dartie.”

“Val Dartie! H’m! Where?”

“In the little room, sir.”

The little room—all the accommodation considered worthy of such as were not Connoisseurs—was at the end of a passage, and in no taste at all, as if the Club were saying: “See what it is not to be one of us!” Soames entered it, and saw Val Dartie smoking a cigarette and gazing with absorption at the only object of interest, his own reflection in the glass above the fire.

He never saw his nephew without wondering when he would say: “Look here, Uncle Soames, I’m up a stump.” Breeding race horses! There could only be one end to that!

“Well?” he said, “how are YOU?”

The face in the glass turned round, and became the back of a clipped sandyish head.

“Oh! bobbish, thanks! YOU look all right, Uncle Soames. I just wanted to ask you: Must I take these screws of old George Forsyte’s? They’re dashed bad.”

“Gift horse in the mouth?” said Soames.

“Well,” said Val, “but they’re SO dashed bad; by the time I’ve paid legacy duty, boxed them to a sale, and sold them, there won’t be a sixpence. One of them falls down when you look at it. And the other two are broken-winded. The poor old boy kept them, because he couldn’t get rid of them. They’re about five hundred years old.”