Soames always attended the General Meeting; it was considered better
that he should do so, in case 'anything should arise!' He glanced round
with his close, supercilious air at the walls of the room, where hung
plans of the mine and harbour, together with a large photograph of
a shaft leading to a working which had proved quite remarkably
unprofitable. This photograph--a witness to the eternal irony underlying
commercial enterprise till retained its position on the--wall, an effigy
of the directors' pet, but dead, lamb.
And now old Jolyon rose, to present the report and accounts.
Veiling under a Jove-like serenity that perpetual antagonism deep-seated
in the bosom of a director towards his shareholders, he faced them
calmly. Soames faced them too. He knew most of them by sight. There was
old Scrubsole, a tar man, who always came, as Hemmings would say, 'to
make himself nasty,' a cantankerous-looking old fellow with a red face,
a jowl, and an enormous low-crowned hat reposing on his knee. And the
Rev. Mr. Boms, who always proposed a vote of thanks to the chairman, in
which he invariably expressed the hope that the Board would not forget
to elevate their employees, using the word with a double e, as
being more vigorous and Anglo-Saxon (he had the strong Imperialistic
tendencies of his cloth).
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