of his clothes and person that made Chris feel when he was walking with
him that he was “knocking about town” and “mixing with the world.” He
was himself apprenticed to a firm of wall-paper manufacturers, and he
felt that Mapleson would be able to enlighten him on the prospects and
the outlook of the furnishing and decorating trade. He talked gaily of
antique furniture till they came to a gaunt yellow brick station.
On enquiry there seemed to be no trains that went from it to any
recognizable or habitable spot, but outside were two melancholy hackney
carriages. By this time Mapleson was desperate and a strange feeling of
giddiness possessed him.
He got in and told the driver vaguely “to drive up to London.” Chris
came to the rescue and explained to him that he might drive to
Shepherd’s Bush first. They started off and rattled once more through
the wilderness of dreary villas.
The young man accepted the position he found himself in with perfect
composure. He attributed Mapleson’s silence to an expansive boredom, and
he talked with discretion and with a sort of callous tact. Before they
reached Shepherd’s Bush, however, Mapleson muttered something about
feeling faint, and Chris immediately suggested that they should go and
have a drink. “You might bring me something in,” said Mapleson. “I’ll
have a brandy neat.” They drove helplessly through neat avenues and
roads for nearly ten minutes without passing anything in the way of a
public house. At last they came to a grocer’s shop, licensed to sell
spirits not to be consumed on the premises. “Go and buy me a bottle of
brandy,” said Mapleson. The young man got out and soon returned with a
six-and-sixpenny bottle of Hennessy’s three star brandy and a corkscrew.
He paid for it himself, relying on the natural honor of Mapleson to
settle up afterwards, but the matter was never mentioned again.
He drew the cork, and Mapleson took a long swig and then wiped the mouth
of the bottle and offered it to Chris. Chris behaved like a man and also
took a draft but spluttered rather.
For the rest of the journey Mapleson at regular intervals took
thoughtful and meditative swigs and gradually began to revive. He went
so far as to ask Chris if he knew anything about the little birds and
how long White had had them. Chris said he knew he had had the canaries
for four or five years and the bull-finch for two years. He didn’t know
much about the little Australian bird. This information seemed to cause
Mapleson to revert to his former gloom.
When they reached Shepherd’s Bush the cabman refused to go farther. So
they got out and got into another cab, Mapleson carrying the brandy
bottle under his arm. He took it upon himself to tell the cabman--this
time a taxi--“to drive round the Outer Circle of Hyde Park and to take
the damned hood down.”
It was about half-past four when they reached Hyde Park and the rain had
ceased a little. It was the fashionable hour for the afternoon drive.
Magnificent motors and two-horse phaëtons were ambling round well
within the regulation limit. Their cab was soon almost hemmed in by the
equipages of the great world. But after they had completed the circle
once, and Mapleson lay back with his feet on the opposite seat, and his
hat all brushed the wrong way, and without the slightest compunction
held the large brandy bottle to his lips every few yards, Chris began to
feel that there was a limit to his desire to “mix with the world.”
He got the cab to stop near the Marble Arch, and explained to Mapleson
that he must get out and take the tube to business.
And then there was a scene. Mapleson, who up to that time had not
addressed a personal word to Chris, suddenly became maudlin. He cried,
and said that he had never taken to any one as he had to Chris; he was
the dearest fellow in the world; he mustn’t leave him; now that White
was dead he was the only friend he had.
But people began to collect on the sidewalk and Chris simply ran off.
The taxi-driver began to be suspicious about his fare which was
registered fourteen shillings. But Mapleson gave him a sovereign on
account and told him to drive to Cleopatra’s Needle on the Embankment.
By the time they reached there the brandy bottle was three quarters
empty and tears were streaming down his cheeks. He offered the driver a
drink, but the driver was not “one of that sort” and gruffly suggested
that Mapleson “had better drive ’ome.” So he got out of the cab
pathetically and settled with the driver and sat on a seat of the
Embankment, hugging his bottle and staring at the river.
Now it is very difficult to know exactly what Mapleson did the rest of
that afternoon between the time when he dismissed the cabman and
half-past eight when he turned up in the bar of “The Monitor.”
It is only known that he struggled in there at that time, looking as
white as a sheet. He was wet through, and his clothes were covered with
mud. He struggled across to the corner where he and White used to sit,
and sat down. The bar was fairly crowded at the time, and young Chris
made his début there. He felt that he would be a person of interest.
When Mapleson appeared he went up to him, but Mapleson didn’t know him,
and said nothing.
Several others came up and advised Mapleson to go home and change his
clothes and have a drink first, but he just stared stupidly ahead and
made no comment. Some one brought some whisky and put it before him, but
he ignored it. They then came to the conclusion that he was ill, so
they sent for a cab and two of them volunteered to see him home.
Just as they were about to lead him out, he stood up. He then stretched
out his arms and waved them away. He picked up the glass of whisky and
raised it slowly to his lips. But before it reached them he dropped it
and fell backwards across the table.
* * * * *
“Women, you know,” said Charlie Maybird the other day, addressing two
friends in “The Monitor,” “are silly creatures. They think love and
friendship is all a question of kissin’ and cuddlin’. They think
business is all buyin’ and sellin’; they don’t think men can make
friendships in business. Crikey! I reckon there’s more friendships made
in business--real friendships, I mean--than ever there is outside. Look
at the case of White and Mapleson! I tell you those two men loved each
other! For over twenty years they were inseparable; there was nothing
they would not have done for each other; hand and glove they was over
everything. I’ve never seen a chap crumple up so as Mapleson did when
White died; in fact, from the very day when White was took ill. He went
about like a wraithe. I’ll never forget that night when he came in here
after the funeral. He sat over there, look, by the fireplace. He looked
as though his ’eart was broken! Suddenly he stood up and lifted his
glass and then dropped it and then fell backwards crash on to the floor!
They carried him and took him to the ’orspital, but he never regained
consciousness. The doctors said it was fatty degeneration of the ’eart,
’elped on by some kidney trouble. But I know better! He died of a broken
’eart. Lord, yes; I tell you there’s a lot of romance in the furnishing
trade!”
“Did he leave any money?” asked one of the friends.
“My word, yes! More than White,” answered the genial Charles. “White
never left a bean, and it seems his missus had not only been paying the
rent out of her millinery but allowed White some. White was a card, he
was!”
“And what did Mapleson leave?”
“Mapleson left nearly four pounds!”
“’S truth! is that all?”
“Four pounds and a wife and five kids, the eldest twelve!”
“A wife and five kids! How the hell does she manage to keep things
going?”
“Oh, Gawd knows! Come on, let’s go over to the Oxford and see what’s
on!”
THE PACKET
THE PACKET
I
Mr. Bultishaw stood leaning heavily against the bar in “The Duchess of
Teck,” talking to his friend, Mr. Ticknett. Their friendship had endured
for nearly twenty-seven years, and they still called each other “_Mr._”
Bultishaw and “_Mr._” Ticknett. They were on the surface a curiously
ill-matched couple, and the other salesmen and buyers from Cotterway’s
could never see what they had in common. Bultishaw was a big puffy man,
shabbily florid. He had a fat babyish face, with large bright eyes which
always seemed to be on the verge of tears, but whether this condition of
liquefaction was due to his excessive emotionalism, or to the generally
liquid state of his whole body, it would be difficult to decide. He was
of an excitable nature, and though his voice seemed to come wheezing
through various local derangements of his system, and was always pitched
in a low key, it suggested a degree of excitement--usually of a
querulous kind--quite remarkable in a person of his appearance. He was a
man of moods, too.... He was not always querulous, in fact his
querulousness might generally be traced to an occasional revolt of his
organic system against the treatment to which it was normally subjected.
There were times when he was genial, playful, kind, sentimental, and
maudlin. His clothes had a certain pretentiousness of style and wealth,
not sustained by the dilapidated condition of their linings and edges,
and the many stains of alcohol and the burns from matches and tobacco
carelessly dropped. He was the manager of the linoleum department at
Cotterway’s.
Ticknett had a similar position with regard to “soft goods” in the same
firm. But in appearance and character he was entirely dissimilar to
Bultishaw. One of the junior salesmen one day called him “The Chinese
God,” and there was indeed something a little Eastern in his reserved
manner, his suavity, and his great capacity for apparently minding his
own business and yet at the same time--well, nobody liked Ticknett, but
they all admired his ability, and most of them feared him. He was
admired because he had risen from the position of being a “packer” in
the yard to that of great influence, and he even shared the confidence
of Mr. Joseph Cotterway himself. His skin was rather yellow, and he had
very heavy black eyebrows and mustache and deep-set eyes with a slight
cast. His clothes were so well cut that in the bar of “The Duchess of
Teck” they seemed almost assertively unobtrusive.
Bultishaw was a prolific talker, and Ticknett was a patient listener.
This was perhaps one of their principal bonds of mutual understanding.
They had, of course, one common interest of an absorbing nature. It
bubbled and sparkled in the innumerable glasses which, at all hours of
the day, Mrs. Clarke and Daphne and Gladys handed to them across the bar
of “The Duchess of Teck,” which in those days was always crowded with
the salesmen and the staff of Cotterway’s.
On this particular morning, Bultishaw was holding a glass in his fat
fingers, and breathing heavily between each sentence. He was saying:
“’Sperience is the thing that counts in the furnishing trade, like
anywhere else--ugh! Take any line you like--ugh!--buying cork carpets,
eating oysters, or extending the Empire--ugh!--it’s the man with
’sperience who counts. These young fellers!... ugh!...”
Bultishaw shrugged his shoulders expressively, and glanced round the
bar. Immediately a change came over his expression. His eyes sparkled
angrily, and he shook the dregs of whisky in his glass, and drank them
off with a spluttering gulp. Ticknett followed the glance of his friend
and was quickly observant of the reason of Bultishaw’s sudden
trepidation. “Percy” had entered the bar. Percy was Bultishaw’s
assistant and also his _bête-noir_.
He was a slim young man dressed in a most extravagant manner. He had a
pale face, and a slightly receding chin. He wore a small bowler hat with
a very narrow brim, pointed patent leather boots, a very shapely
overcoat which almost suggested that he wore corsets, a pale lemon tie
held together by a gold pin, and a spotted green waistcoat.
Percy was a very high-spirited young person--an irrepressible--with a
genius for taking stage center. He was invariably accompanied by several
friends of his own age, and he had a habit of greeting a whole barful of
men, whether he knew them or not, with a cheering cry of:
“Hullo! hullo! HULLO! So here we all are!”
He would deliver this greeting with such a gay abandon that every one
would look up and laugh. Men would nod, and call out:
“Hullo! here’s Percy! How do, Percy?”
And even those who did not know him would be conscious of some
contagious fever of geniality. The conversation would grow louder and
livelier, and Percy would invariably become the center of a laughing
group.
In spite of his extravagance of manner, his irresponsibility, his
passion for misquoting poetry, he had been marked down by several
discriminating heads of the firm as “a smart boy.”
He was indeed a very smart boy, from his gay clothes to his sparkling
repartée with Daphne and Gladys. To Daphne it was known that he was an
especial favorite. He would hold her hand across the bar, and smile at
her engagingly, and say:
“And how is the moon of my delight?” And other enigmatic and brilliant
things.
And Daphne would look at him with her sleepy, passionate eyes, and say:
“Oh, go on! You are a one!”
She was a silent little thing, incredibly ignorant. She was not pretty,
but she had masses of gold-brown hair, and a figure rather
over-developed. There was about her something extremely attractive to
the men who frequented “The Duchess of Teck,” a kind of brooding
motherliness. She had an appealing way of sighing, and her eyes were
always watchful, as though in the face of every stranger she might
discover the solution of her troubles.
Bultishaw hated Percy for several reasons. One was essentially a
question of personality. He hated his aggressive exuberance, his
youthfulness, his ridiculous clothes, his way of brushing back his hair,
and incidentally of scoring off Bultishaw. He hated him because he had
the habit of upsetting the placid calm of “The Duchess of Teck.” He
created a restlessness. People did not listen so well when Percy was in
the room.
Moreover, he hated the way he took possession of Daphne. It is difficult
to know what Bultishaw’s ideas were with regard to Daphne. He was
himself a widower, aged fifty-six, and he lived in a small flat in
Bloomsbury with his two daughters, who were both about Daphne’s age. He
never made love to her, but he treated her with a sort of proprietary
sense of confidence. He told her all about himself. In the morning when
the bar was empty he would expatiate on the various ailments which had
assailed him overnight, his sleeplessness, his indigestion, his loss of
appetite. And he found her very sympathetic. She would say:
“Oh, reely, Mr. Bultishaw! I _am_ sorry! It’s too bad! Have you ever
tried Ponk’s Pills?”
They would discuss Ponk’s Pills exhaustively, and their effect on the
system, but eventually Mr. Bultishaw would say that he thought he would
try “just a wee drop of Scotch.” And so he would start his day.
It must, alas! be acknowledged that the accumulated years of his
convivial mode of life were beginning to tell on Bultishaw. He was not
the man he was. At his best he was a good salesman. He knew the cork
lino industry inside out. He had had endless experience. But there were
days of fuddlement, days when he would make grievous mistakes, forget
appointments, go wrong in his calculations. And the directors were not
unobservant of the deterioration of his work and of his personal
appearance. There was a very big rumor that Bultishaw was to be
superseded by a younger man. This rumor had reached Bultishaw himself,
and he accepted it with ironic incredulity.
“How can any one manage lino without ’sperience?” he said.
Nevertheless the rumor had worried him of late, and had increased his
sleeplessness. He was conscious of himself--the vast moral bulk of
himself rolling down the hill. He knew he would never be able to give up
drinking. He had no intention of trying. He had been at it too long. He
had managed in his time to save nearly a thousand pounds. If he were
sacked it would bring in a little bit, but not enough to live on. About
fifty pounds a year, but he spent quite this amount in the bar of “The
Duchess of Teck” alone. He would have to hunt round for another job. It
would be ignominious, and it might be difficult to secure at his age.
This was, then, another reason for disliking Percy, for “the smart
boy’s” name had been mentioned in this very connection. And what did
this soapy-headed young fool know about cork carpets? What ’sperience
had he had? A paltry two years. He was, too, so insufferably familiar
and insolent. He had even once had the audacity to address Bultishaw as
“Mr. Bulky-chops,” a pseudonym that was not only greeted with roars of
laughter but had been adopted by others.
On this morning then when Percy made his accustomed entrance with its
bravura accompaniment: “Hullo! hullo! HULLO! So here we all are!” Mr.
Bultishaw’s hand trembled, and he turned his back and muttered:
“That young--!”
The yellow face of Ticknett turned in the direction of Percy, but it was
quite expressionless and he made no comment. He lighted another
cigarette and looked across the bar at Daphne. The girl’s cheeks were
dimpled with smiles. Percy was talking to her. Suddenly Ticknett said to
her in his chilling voice:
“I want two more Scotch whiskies and a split soda.”
The girl looked up, and the dimples left her cheeks. She seemed almost
imperceptibly to shrink within herself. She poured out the drinks and
handed them to Ticknett. Bultishaw continued his querulous complaints
about the insolence of young and ignorant men, trying to oust older and
more experienced men from their hardly fought for positions.
And Ticknett listened, and his dark mustache moved in a peculiar way as
he said:
“Yes, yes, I quite agree with you, Mr. Bultishaw. It’s too bad.”
II
A week later there was a sudden and dramatic turn of events in the firm
of Cotterway’s. Much to everybody’s surprise, Percy was suddenly sacked
without any reason being given, and Bultishaw was retained. In fact,
Bultishaw was given another two years’ contract on the same terms as
before.
To what extent Ticknett was responsible for this development or what was
really at the back of it all, nobody was ever quite clear. It is
certain that on the day of Percy’s dismissal these two friends dined
together, and spent an evening of a somewhat bacchanalian character. It
is known that at that time Ticknett had been conspicuously successful
over some deal in tapestries with a French firm, and that he had lunched
one day alone with Mr. Joseph Cotterway. It is doubtful even whether he
ever gave the precise details of his machinations to Bultishaw himself.
The result certainly had the appearance of quickening their friendship.
They called each other “dear old feller,” and there were many whispered
implications about “insolent young swine.”
The career of Percy was watched with interest. Of course he took his
dismissal with a laugh, and entertained a party of his friends to a
hilarious farewell supper.
But it happened that that summer was a peculiarly stagnant one in the
furnishing world. The brilliant youth did not find it so easy to secure
another situation. He was observed at first swinging about the West End
in his splendidly nonchalant manner, and he still frequented the bar of
“The Duchess of Teck.” But gradually these appearances became more rare.
As the months went by he began to lose a little of his self-assurance
and swagger, and it is even to be regretted that his gay clothes began
to show evidences of wear. He once secured a situation at a small firm
in Bayswater, but at the end of three weeks he was again dismissed, the
proprietor going bankrupt owing to some unfortunate speculation. It
would be idle to imagine what Percy’s career would have been had not the
war broken out in August when he was still out of employment. He
volunteered for service the morning after war was declared, and then
indeed there was a great scene of bibulous enthusiasm in “The Duchess
of Teck.” He was toasted and treated, and every one was crying out:
“Well, good luck, Percy, old man.”
And Percy was in the highest spirits, and borrowed money from every one
to stand treat to every one else. And Daphne cried quite openly, and in
the corner of the bar Bultishaw was whispering to Ticknett:
“This’ll knock the starch out of the young swine.”
And Ticknett replied:
“He’ll get killed.”
There was at times a certain curious finality about Ticknett’s
statements that had a way of making people shudder.
Bultishaw laughed uncomfortably and repeated:
“It’ll knock the starch out of him.”
The departure of Percy was soon almost forgotten in the bewilderment of
drama that began to convulse Europe. Others went also. There was
upheaval, and something of a panic in the furnishing world. Every man
had his own interests to consider, and there was the big story unfolding
day by day to absorb all spare attention. Perhaps the only man among all
the devotees of “The Duchess of Teck” who thought considerably about
Percy was Bultishaw. It was very annoying, but he could not dismiss the
young man from his thoughts.
When the autumn came on, and the cold November rains washed the London
streets, Bultishaw would suddenly think of Percy and he would shiver.
Percy had been sent to some camp in Essex for his training, and often in
the night Bultishaw would wake up and visualize Percy sleeping out in
the open, getting wet through to the skin, possibly getting rheumatic
fever. He was a ridiculously delicate-looking young man, quite unfitted
to be a soldier. It occurred to Bultishaw more than once that if he and
Ticknett hadn’t ... if Percy had secured _his_ position, which everybody
said was his due ... he wouldn’t have been sent out into all this.
And “all this” was a terrible thing to Bultishaw. During the fifty-six
years of his life he had made a god of comfort. He loved warmth, good
cheer, food, drink, security. The alternative seemed to him hell. He
could not believe that there could be any sort of compensation in
discomfort, and hardship, in restraint, and discipline, and
self-abnegation. It was the thing he could not understand. And then at
the end was the Awful Thing itself. He could not bear to dwell on that.
He drank more prodigiously than ever.
The firm of Cotterway’s was reorganized, and Bultishaw would undoubtedly
have had the sack if it had not been for his two years’ contract. As it
was, expenses in every respect were cut down, and Bultishaw’s royalties
only amounted to a very small sum. He lived above his salary, and broke
into his capital. He seemed more and more to rely on Ticknett. The
manager of soft goods seemed to him the one stable thing in a shifting
world.
When Percy one day made his sudden, meteoric, and final appearance in
“The Duchess of Teck” the whole thing seemed like a dream. The usual
crowd was gathered just before lunch, drinking gins and bitters, and
whisky, and beer, and talking about “_our_” navy, and “_our_” army, and
“_our_” Government, and what “_we_” should do to the Germans, when the
level hum of conversation was broken by a loud and breezy:
“Hullo! hullo! HULLO! So here we all are!”
And lo! and behold, there was Percy, looking somehow bigger than usual,
the general gaiety of his appearance emphasized by a pink complexion, a
distinct increase of girth, and a beautiful khaki suit. And Bultishaw
found himself clapped on the back and the same voice was exclaiming:
“Well, ’ow are you, Bulky-chops? Lookin’ better than ever, ’pon my
word!”
And then the bar was immediately in a roar of conviviality. Everybody
struggled for the honor of standing Percy drinks, for he explained that
he was off the next day to France. It is to be feared that during that
afternoon Percy got rather drunk. He certainly indulged in violent moods
between boisterous hilarity and a certain sullen pugnacity. At intervals
he would continually ask for Ticknett, but to Bultishaw’s surprise,
Ticknett had disappeared almost immediately Percy entered the bar, and
was not seen again that day. While, on the other side, Daphne stood
cowering against the mahogany casings, looking deadly pale, with great
black rings around her eyes.