as much as to say:  ’One foot in the grave!’ He had seen the clerks dowsing the glim of their grins; and that young pup Bob Pillin screwing up his supercilious mug over his dog-collar.  He knew that scented humbug Rosamund was getting scared that he’d drop off before she’d squeezed him dry.  And his valet was always looking him up and down queerly.  As to that holy woman—!  Not quite so fast!  Not quite so fast!  And filling his glass for the fourth time, he slowly sucked down the dark red fluid, with the “old boots” flavour which his soul loved, and, drawing deep at his cigar, closed his eyes.

II

1

The room in the hotel where the general meetings of “The Island Navigation Company” were held was nearly full when the secretary came through the door which as yet divided the shareholders from their directors.  Having surveyed their empty chairs, their ink and papers, and nodded to a shareholder or two, he stood, watch in hand, contemplating the congregation.  A thicker attendance than he had ever seen!  Due, no doubt, to the lower dividend, and this Pillin business.  And his tongue curled.  For if he had a natural contempt for his Board, with the exception of the chairman, he had a still more natural contempt for his shareholders.  Amusing spectacle when you came to think of it, a general meeting!  Unique!  Eighty or a hundred men, and five women, assembled through sheer devotion to their money.  Was any other function in the world so single-hearted.  Church was nothing to it—­so many motives were mingled there with devotion to one’s soul.  A well-educated young man—­reader of Anatole France, and other writers—­he enjoyed ironic speculation.  What earthly good did they think they got by coming here?  Half-past two!  He put his watch back into his pocket, and passed into the Board-room.

There, the fumes of lunch and of a short preliminary meeting made cosy the February atmosphere.  By the fire four directors were conversing rather restlessly; the fifth was combing his beard; the chairman sat with eyes closed and red lips moving rhythmically in the sucking of a lozenge, the slips of his speech ready in his hand.  The secretary said in his cheerful voice:  “Time, sir.”

Old Heythorp swallowed, lifted his arms, rose with help, and walked through to his place at the centre of the table.  The five directors followed.  And, standing at the chairman’s right, the secretary read the minutes, forming the words precisely with his curling tongue.  Then, assisting the chairman to his feet, he watched those rows of faces, and thought:  ’Mistake to let them see he can’t get up without help.  He ought to have let me read his speech—­I wrote it.’

The chairman began to speak: 

“It is my duty and my pleasure,’ ladies and gentlemen, for the nineteenth consecutive year to present to you the directors’ report and the accounts for the past twelve months.  You will all have had special notice of a measure of policy on which your Board has decided, and to which you will be asked to-day to give your adherence—­to that I shall come at the end of my remarks....”