The Balliols (73 page)

A minute or two later Victor was on his feet again.

“There is one more piece of business on the agenda, gentlemen; the two directors to retire in rotation are Mr. Smollett and Mr. Prentice. They both offer themselves for re-election. I need not enlarge on the devotion, the whole-hearted devotion of these two gentlemen to the interests of the company. I shall be very grateful if one of you will propose, and another second, their re-election.”

A shareholder rose to his feet.

“May we please take those names separately?”

“Certainly, if you wish it. Mr. Smollett offers himself for reelection.”

“And I very cordially propose it. Mr. Smollett is the kind of fellow we want upon the board. He knows what's what. He's been up against bad times in his own life, so he'll know the way to deal with bad times when it's a question of bad times in business. He'll know how to roll his sleeves up.”

Another shareholder arose to second him. “Does anyone oppose that motion? Very good. Will you show your assent in the usual manner? Thank you very much. Mr. Smollett is unanimously re-elected. Mr. Prentice offers himself for re-election. Will one of you please propose a motion to that effect?”

“Now that is exactly what I will not do.”

It was the original shareholder who was on his feet. Expectantly Balliol leant back in his chair. So that was their game, was it? He had suspected that something was in the air when they had asked to take the two names separately. His eyes brightened with curiosity.

“I will not propose Mr. Prentice's re-election to the board, because I do not believe that he's the kind of man we want there. I'm not saying anything against Mr. Prentice. I'm sure he's very good indeed at whatever it is he's good at. But what does Mr. Prentice know about this business, after all, except what he's picked up from his father? His father was a very good friend to the firm. He helped build it up. But that doesn't mean that his son's the kind of person we want here at a time like this. The kind of person we want now is someone who knows this business from the bottom, like Mr. Smollett.”

A gleam of understanding lit Balliol's eye. So that was their game then: or rather that was Smollett's game; to get Prentice voted off the board and his own man Jenks voted on. Smollett felt lonely on the board: overawed and overwhelmed. He wanted someone to back him, to give him courage and confidence. It must be Jenks, it couldn't be anybody else.

It was Jenks.

“You've a man in the firm now, junior to Mr. Smollett, but bred in the same school. A man who knows what's what. What I'm suggesting is that we should elect Mr. Jenks in place of Mr. Prentice. I say this because.…”

He elaborated his reasons. He drew the obvious parallel between the firm as it was now, and the firm as it had been in its prosperous days; when the directing managers working in the office had been responsible to a chairman working outside the office. That plan had worked in the past, why not try and see if some equivalent could not be found for it?

All that he said was sound enough. Balliol recognized that. Reaching forward for his agenda paper, he scribbled a note to Victor. “Suggest you contrive tactfully postpone vote on this point. Say board will consider matter. Another shareholders' meeting in a month's time. Possibly in that interval Prentice might resign.” He
folded the note and passed it over. Victor read it, caught Balliol's eye and nodded. Balliol sat back in his chair. With tactful handling, and his son-in-law was tactful, a serious situation might be headed off.

“And that's why I say,” the shareholder was concluding, “that Mr. Jenks is the man for us.”

Victor made a sign to Balliol. He placed the palms of his hands upon the table. He knew the dramatic value of slow movements. But before he could rise, from the other end of the table had come the shuffle of a chair being pushed back. “I don't know whether I'm in order. I don't care whether I am or not,” an angry, thickened voice was saying, “but I have been listening to enough nonsense from that side of the room this afternoon.”

There was a wild, unleashed light in Hugh's eyes that his father had never seen there before. His face was flushed unhealthily, his fists were clenched.

“I have never heard such nonsense talked, nor such impertinence. I don't know who this popinjay may think he is.…”

In a second the shareholder was on his feet, his face scarlet with outraged dignity.

“I'll soon let you know who I am, young man. I've shares in this business the same as you have. It's my money that.…”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen!”

Victor's voice even at its quietest had the commanding quality of those who for generations have been accustomed to exact obedience. And it was not quiet now.

“Gentlemen, I cannot allow this. You will both please be seated. All remarks will be addressed to the chair—to me. This is a shareholders' meeting, not a taproom.”

His voice could restore order, but it could not restore the situation to a plane on which tactful handling was possible. The shareholder, having resumed his seat in tribute to the chairman's authority, was on his feet again.

“I'm sorry, my lord. I forgot myself. I'm not used to being spoken to like that. I'll address the chair, and I trust he will, too. I'll go back to where I was. I oppose the re-election of Mr. Prentice. I propose the election of Mr. Jenks. I am in order in doing that, I take it?”

“You are perfectly in order.”

“Then that is what I do.”

Victor, looking down the table, caught Balliol's eye. Balliol was agreed, he could see that. There was no use attempting a tactful evasion of the issue. There was a baited-bull look on the
shareholder's almost apoplectic countenance. He was out for his pound of flesh. The motion must be put.

“Does anyone second that?”

“I do.”

“Does anyone oppose it?”

The three submerged members of the staff whispered together. They were so used to the routine of proposing and seconding motions, that they did not know how to behave in this unexpected situation. They looked for guidance towards the general director, received none, fell to whispering again. Finally one of them arose.

“Well, I think I'll oppose that. I don't think somehow that our old Chief's son is being treated rightly.”

“Does anyone second that?”

“I do.”

Victor looked steadily along the line of expectant shareholders.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “I am not going to declare this issue open to debate. Too many heated words have passed already this afternoon. I will take, however, a vote. But I must warn you, gentlemen, that no motion passed or rejected at this meeting can be taken as final. The board are within their power to demand a general poll. They may not accept this meeting as representative of the general body of shareholders. They may decide to give the shareholders as a body the right to override the decisions of this meeting. However, as I said, I will put this matter to the vote.”

Prentice was rejected by a considerable majority. A few minutes later Jenks' election to the board was carried without even the formality of an opposition. Victor declared the meeting at an end.

“The motions have been duly noted, gentlemen. The board will consider them. We will give you in due course our decision whether we are, or are not, ready to accept them.”

A meeting of the board always followed the dispersal of the shareholders. There was silence as the five directors and the secretary stood grouped round the fireless grate while the caretaker and a couple of office boys rearranged the room. It was in silence that they took their places at the table. Victor at its head, the secretary on his left hand, Balliol on his right, Smollett next to him, Hugh and Prentice opposite. There was a pause, each waiting to see who would be the first to speak. Hugh rose to his feet.

Thought Balliol: “He's going to apologize. That's very fitting.”

Not at all. There was the same wild look in Hugh's eyes, the
same mottled flush on his cheeks, the same aggressive manner, the same belligerent, thickened voice.

“Before we do anything else, I want to ask Mr. Smollett a question. I want to ask him whether he was aware that this assault was to be made on us to-day.”

Victor interrupted him.

“I don't think that is a point that concerns us as a board.”

“It is a point that concerns me as a member of the board, in my capacity as a member of this board. I want to put that question to Mr. Smollett.”

Smollett looked straight at Hugh, then turned to Victor. His face was very white, with the dappling of its pimples in pink protuberance.

“I am quite ready to answer that question. I did know that these particular criticisms would be made, and that the re-election of Mr. Prentice would be opposed.”

“Then I would ask Mr. Smollett why he did not inform the board of this.”

“I do not consider it part of my duty as a director to keep the board informed of every rumour that may reach me outside this office.”

“I do not call this a rumour. I would like to ask Mr. Smollett whether the chief speakers this afternoon were his friends.”

“Acquaintances.”

“I should like to ask Mr. Smollett whether it was on his advice that they became shareholders in this company.”

“Yes.”

“Then, gentlemen, I have this to say to you. In my opinion Mr. Smollett, on his own evidence, is convicted of the most treacherous behaviour. He has engineered this attack this afternoon. He encouraged his friends to take shares. He directed their tactics. It was at his instigation that they opposed the re-election of Mr. Prentice and proposed the election of his own friend, Jenks. He has engineered this behind his colleagues' backs. A man capable of such disloyalty, such treachery, is not fit to associate on equal terms with a board that is composed of gentlemen.”

It was the last word, the word “gentlemen”, that flooded with a sea of scarlet the glistening pink peaks on Smollett's forehead. He rose to his feet. He drew a long, slow breath through lips that were drawn tightly. He was desperately anxious to control his voice. There was a definite pause while he recovered his composure.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “I never expected to be addressed in that manner, in this room. For the seventeen years that I have worked for this firm, I have put the firm's interests before my own. The chief speakers this afternoon were acquaintances of mine. I encouraged them to buy shares because I believed in the firm's future. I told them why I believed that. When the firm ceased to pay dividends, they were naturally angry; they blamed me. I knew that they would complain this afternoon. Originally they proposed to demand that the firm should be offered for sale; so that they might recover some of the money they had invested. I discouraged them from that. I told them that the firm was sound; that they must have patience. They asked me why, if the firm was sound, they were not getting dividends. They asked me whether the system on which the firm was run after the war was as effective as the system on which it was run before the war. I was doubtful of that; I told them so. They asked me whether I considered Jenks would be a good man on the board. I said yes. I plotted nothing. I schemed nothing. My conscience is quite clear.”

He paused. He was standing on his dignity; but he was not without dignity. Yes, you've a good case for yourself, thought Balliol. You haven't answered the main criticism—why you didn't warn the board that this attack was coming. But you've answered so much of Hugh's criticism that you won't realize that you've left that one point unanswered; nor, probably, will the others. You've done no more than what ninety-nine men in a hundred would have done in your position. You can acquit yourself in your own mind. That's about as much as any of us can expect to do. But I must say I'd be glad to know where all this is leading.

He was to know in a second.

“I have been subjected to an accusation,” Smollett was continuing, “that no gentleman can overlook. I have no alternative but to resign my directorship and my post as manager.”

Stooping forward he gathered up his papers, pushed back his chair and walked in silence from the room.

In most quarrels there is a point where the anger that caused the quarrel subsides abruptly. A man and a woman are arguing face to face, hating one another. A blow is struck, and the hatred that inspired the blow is dead for ever. There is a horror-struck recovery of sense; the thought “What have I done? How could I have done it? How can I make amends?” Such a moment came to Hugh as the door closed behind Smollett. The anger that had been simmering all day, that swelling to self-expression in the
meeting, had come to a final head, collapsed like a lanced abscess. “What have I been doing? What was it all about? What happens next?”

The exhilaration to which hours of drinking had contributed, subsided, leaving him limp, weak, apathetic. He sat forward, his head on his hands, scarcely listening to the low-toned discussion of the day's events between Victor and his father. “Of course we can't allow him to resign.” “He's indispensable to us.” “Shall I lunch him or will you?” “We'll get him round all right.” “We'll be able to fix the poll.” “We'll have to consider bringing Jenks on.” “Next year, not this.” “We must save our faces.” “Let the shareholders know who's master.” The low-toned buzz of conversation was punctuated by an occasional futile academic interruption from Prentice. Once Hugh lifted his head to look at him. No wonder he had got Smollett's goat. So trim and donnish. To think that they should have bothered to quarrel about him.

“So I think,” Victor was saying, “that we'll leave the matter there. There is nothing more to be done about it now.” Prentice and Balliol were agreeing. Balliol was rising to his feet. “Well, I'm glad that's over. Now we can ring for tea.” But Hugh did not want to wait for that. He wanted to get away, out of this room, into the clean air. He walked over to his father. He placed his hand on his arm. “I'm sorry, father. I was a damned fool.” His father smiled, with detached indulgence. “Don't worry. We'll put things straight.”