The little shop was not paying. The realisation came insensibly. Winslow
was not the man for definite addition and subtraction and sudden
discovery. He became aware of the truth in his mind gradually, as though
it had always been there. A lot of facts had converged and led him to
conviction. There was that line of cretonnes—four half pieces—untouched,
save for half-a-yard sold to cover a stool. There were those shirtings
at 4¾_d._—Bandersnatch, in the Broadway, was selling them at
2¾_d._—under cost, in fact. (Surely Bandersnatch might let a man live!)
Those servants’ caps, a selling line, needed replenishing, and that
brought back the memory of Winslow’s sole wholesale dealers, Helter,
Skelter, & Grab. Why! How about their account?
Winslow stood with a big green box open on the counter before him when
he thought of it. His pale grey eyes grew a little rounder, his pale
straggling moustache twitched. He had been drifting along, day after
day. He went round to the ramshackle cash desk in the corner—it was
Winslow’s weakness to sell his goods over the counter, give his
customers a duplicate bill, and then dodge into the desk to receive the
money, as though he doubted his own honesty. His lank forefinger with
the prominent joints ran down the bright little calendar (“Clack’s
Cottons last for All Time?”). “One—two—three; three weeks an’ a day!”
said Winslow, staring. “March! Only three weeks and a day. It _can’t_
be.”
“Tea, dear,” said Mrs. Winslow, opening the door with the glass window
and the white blind that communicated with the parlour.
“One minute,” said Winslow, and began unlocking the desk.
An irritable old gentleman, very hot and red about the face, and in a
heavy fur-lined cloak, came in noisily. Mrs. Winslow vanished.
“Ugh!” said the old gentleman. “Pocket-handkerchief.”
“Yes, sir,” said Winslow. “About what price—”
“Ugh!” said the old gentleman. “Poggit handkerchief, quig!”
Winslow began to feel flustered. He produced two boxes.
“These, sir,” began Winslow.
“Sheed tin!” said the old gentleman, clutching the stiffness of the
linen. “Wad to blow my nose—not haggit about.”
“A cotton one, p’raps, sir?” said Winslow.
“How much?” said the old gentleman, over the handkerchief.
“Sevenpence, sir. There’s nothing more I can show you? No ties, braces—”
“Damn!” said the old gentleman, fumbling in his ticket-pocket, and
finally producing half-a-crown. Winslow looked round for his little
metallic duplicate book which he kept in various fixtures, according to
circumstances, and then he caught the old gentleman’s eye. He went
straight to the desk at once and got the change, with an entire
disregard of the routine of the shop.
Winslow was always more or less excited by a customer. But the open desk
reminded him of his trouble. It did not come back to him all at once. He
heard a finger-nail softly tapping on the glass, and, looking up, saw
Minnie’s eyes over the blind. It seemed like retreat opening. He shut
and locked the desk, and went into the little room to tea.
But he was preoccupied. Three weeks and a day. He took unusually large
bites of his bread and butter, and stared hard at the little pot of jam.
He answered Minnie’s conversational advances distractedly. The shadow of
Helter, Skelter, & Grab lay upon the tea-table. He was struggling with
this new idea of failure, the tangible realisation, that was taking
shape and substance, condensing, as it were, out of the misty uneasiness
of many days. At present it was simply one concrete fact; there were
thirty-nine pounds left in the bank, and that day three weeks Messrs.
Helter, Skelter, & Grab, those enterprising outfitters of young men,
would demand their eighty pounds.
After tea there was a customer or so—little purchases: some muslin and
buckram, dress-protectors, tape, and a pair of Lisle hose. Then, knowing
that Black Care was lurking in the dusky corners of the shop, he lit the
three lamps early and set to refolding his cotton prints, the most
vigorous and least meditative proceeding of which he could think. He
could see Minnie’s shadow in the other room as she moved about the
table. She was busy turning an old dress. He had a walk after supper,
looked in at the Y. M. C. A., but found no one to talk to, and finally
went to bed. Minnie was already there. And there, too, waiting for him,
nudging him gently, until about midnight he was hopelessly awake, sat
Black Care.
He had had one or two nights lately in that company, but this was much
worse. First came Messrs. Helter, Skelter, & Grab, and their demand for
eighty pounds—an enormous sum when your original capital was only a
hundred and seventy. They camped, as it were, before him, sat down and
beleaguered him. He clutched feebly at the circumambient darkness for
expedients. Suppose he had a sale, sold things for almost anything? He
tried to imagine a sale miraculously successful in some unexpected
manner, and mildly profitable in spite of reductions below cost. Then
Bandersnatch, Limited, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106, 107, Broadway, joined
the siege, a long caterpillar of frontage, a battery of shop fronts,
wherein things were sold at a farthing above cost. How could he fight
such an establishment? Besides, what had he to sell? He began to review
his resources. What taking line was there to bait the sale? Then
straightway came those pieces of cretonne, yellow and black with a
bluish-green flower; those discredited shirtings, prints without
buoyancy, skirmishing haberdashery, some despairful four-button gloves
by an inferior maker—a hopeless crew. And that was his force against
Bandersnatch, Helter, Skelter, & Grab, and the pitiless world behind
them. What ever had made him think a mortal would buy such things? Why
had he bought this and neglected that? He suddenly realised the
intensity of his hatred for Helter, Skelter, & Grab’s salesman. Then he
drove towards an agony of self-reproach. He had spent too much on that
cash desk. What real need was there of a desk? He saw his vanity of that
desk in a lurid glow of self-discovery. And the lamps? Five pounds! Then
suddenly, with what was almost physical pain, he remembered the rent.
He groaned and turned over. And there, dim in the darkness, was the
hummock of Mrs. Winslow’s shoulders. That set him off in another
direction. He became acutely sensible of Minnie’s want of feeling. Here
he was, worried to death about business, and she sleeping like a little
child. He regretted having married, with that infinite bitterness that
only comes to the human heart in the small hours of the morning. That
hummock of white seemed absolutely without helpfulness, a burden, a
responsibility. What fools men were to marry! Minnie’s inert repose
irritated him so much that he was almost provoked to wake her up and
tell her that they were “Ruined.” She would have to go back to her
uncle; her uncle had always been against him; and as for his own future,
Winslow was exceedingly uncertain. A shop assistant who has once set up
for himself finds the utmost difficulty in getting into a situation
again. He began to figure himself “crib-hunting” again, going from this
wholesale house to that, writing innumerable letters. How he hated
writing letters! “Sir, referring to your advertisement in the ‘Christian
World.’” He beheld an infinite vista of discomfort and disappointment,
ending—in a gulf.
He dressed, yawning, and went down to open the shop. He felt tired
before the day began. As he carried the shutters in he kept asking
himself what good he was doing. The end was inevitable, whether he
bothered or not. The clear daylight smote into the place and showed how
old, and rough, and splintered was the floor, how shabby the second-hand
counter, how hopeless the whole enterprise. He had been dreaming these
past six months of a bright little shop, of a happy couple, of a modest
but comely profit flowing in. He had suddenly awakened from his dream.
The braid that bound his decent black coat—it was a little loose—caught
against the catch of the shop-door, and was torn loose. This suddenly
turned his wretchedness to wrath. He stood quivering for a moment, then,
with a spiteful clutch, tore the braid looser, and went in to Minnie.
“Here,” he said, with infinite reproach, “look here! You might look
after a chap a bit.”
“I didn’t see it was torn,” said Minnie.
“You never do,” said Winslow, with gross injustice, “until things are
too late.”
Minnie looked suddenly at his face. “I’ll sew it now, Sid, if you like.”
“Let’s have breakfast first,” said Winslow, “and do things at their
proper time.”
He was preoccupied at breakfast, and Minnie watched him anxiously. His
only remark was to declare his egg a bad one. It wasn’t; it was a little
flavoury—being one of those at fifteen a shilling—but quite nice. He
pushed it away from him, and then, having eaten a slice of bread and
butter, admitted himself in the wrong by resuming the egg.
“Sid!” said Minnie, as he stood up to go into the shop again, “you’re
not well.”
“I’m _well_ enough.” He looked at her as though he hated her.
“Then there’s something else the matter. You aren’t angry with me, Sid,
are you?—about that braid. _Do_ tell me what’s the matter. You were just
like this at tea yesterday, and at supper-time. It wasn’t the braid
then.”
“And I’m likely to be.”
She looked interrogation. “Oh! what _is_ the matter?” she said.
It was too good a chance to miss, and he brought the evil news out with
dramatic force. “Matter!” he said. “I done my best, and here we are.
That’s the matter! If I can’t pay Helter, Skelter, & Grab eighty pounds,
this day three weeks—” Pause. “We shall be sold Up! Sold Up! That’s the
matter, Min! SOLD UP!”
“Oh, Sid!” began Minnie.
He slammed the door. For the moment he felt relieved of at least half
his misery. He began dusting boxes that did not require dusting, and
then re-blocked a cretonne already faultlessly blocked. He was in a
state of grim wretchedness,—a martyr under the harrow of fate. At any
rate, it should not be said he failed for want of industry. And how he
had planned and contrived and worked! All to this end! He felt horrible
doubts. Providence and Bandersnatch—surely they were incompatible!
Perhaps he was being “tried”? That sent him off upon a new tack, a very
comforting one. That martyr pose, the gold-in-the-furnace attitude,
lasted all the morning.
At dinner—“potato pie”—he looked up suddenly, and saw Minnie regarding
him. Pale she looked, and a little red about the eyes. Something caught
him suddenly with a queer effect upon his throat. All his thoughts
seemed to wheel round into quite a new direction.
He pushed back his plate, and stared at her blankly. Then he got up,
went round the table to her—she staring at him. He dropped on his knees
beside her without a word. “Oh, Minnie!” he said, and suddenly she knew
it was peace, and put her arms about him, as he began to sob and weep.
He cried like a little boy, slobbering on her shoulder that he was a
knave to have married her and brought her to this, that he hadn’t the
wits to be trusted with a penny, that it was all his fault, that he
“_had_ hoped _so_”—ending in a howl. And she, crying gently herself,
patting his shoulders, said, “_Ssh!_” softly to his noisy weeping, and
so soothed the outbreak. Then suddenly the crazy little bell upon the
shop-door began, and Winslow had to jump to his feet, and be a man
again.
After that scene they “talked it over” at tea, at supper, in bed, at
every possible interval in between, solemnly—quite inconclusively—with
set faces and eyes for the most part staring in front of them—and yet
with a certain mutual comfort. “What to do I don’t know,” was Winslow’s
main proposition. Minnie tried to take a cheerful view of service—with a
probable baby. But she found she needed all her courage. And her uncle
would help her again, perhaps, just at the critical time. It didn’t do
for folks to be too proud. Besides, “something might happen,” a
favourite formula with her.
One hopeful line was to anticipate a sudden afflux of customers.
“Perhaps,” said Minnie, “you might get together fifty. They know you
well enough to trust you a bit.” They debated that point. Once the
possibility of Helter, Skelter, & Grab giving credit was admitted, it
was pleasant to begin sweating the acceptable minimum. For some half
hour over tea the second day after Winslow’s discoveries they were quite
cheerful again, laughing even at their terrific fears. Even twenty
pounds, to go on with, might be considered enough. Then in some
mysterious way the pleasant prospect of Messrs. Helter, Skelter, & Grab
tempering the wind to the shorn retailer vanished—vanished absolutely,
and Winslow found himself again in the pit of despair.
He began looking about at the furniture, and wondering idly what it
would fetch. The chiffonier was good, anyhow, and there were Minnie’s
old plates that her mother used to have. Then he began to think of
desperate expedients for putting off the evil day. He had heard
somewhere of Bills of Sale—there was to his ears something comfortingly
substantial in the phrase. Then why not “Go to the Money Lenders?”
One cheering thing happened on Thursday afternoon; a little girl came in
with a pattern of “print” and he was able to match it. He had not been
able to match anything out of his meagre stock before. He went in and
told Minnie. The incident is mentioned lest the reader should imagine it
was uniform despair with him.
The next morning, and the next, after the discovery, Winslow opened shop
late. When one has been awake most of the night, and has no hope, what
_is_ the good of getting up punctually? But as he went into the dark
shop on Friday a strange event happened. He saw something lying on the
floor, something lit by the bright light that came under the ill-fitting
door—a black oblong. He stooped and picked up an envelope with a deep
mourning edge. It was addressed to his wife. Clearly a death in her
family—perhaps her uncle. He knew the man too well to have expectations.
And they would have to get mourning and go to the funeral. The brutal
cruelty of people dying! He saw it all in a flash—he always visualised
his thoughts. Black trousers to get, black crape, black gloves,—none in
stock,—the railway fares, the shop closed for the day.
“I’m afraid there’s bad news, Minnie,” he said.
She was kneeling before the fireplace, blowing the fire. She had her
housemaid’s gloves on and the old country sun-bonnet she wore of a
morning, to keep the dust out of her hair. She turned, saw the envelope,
gave a gasp, and pressed two bloodless lips together.
“I’m afraid it’s uncle,” she said, holding the letter and staring with
eyes wide open into Winslow’s face. “_It’s a strange hand!_”
“The postmark’s Hull,” said Winslow.
“The postmark’s Hull.”
Minnie opened the letter slowly, drew it out, hesitated, turned it over,
saw the signature. “It’s Mr. Speight!”
“What does he say?” said Winslow.
Minnie began to read. “_Oh!_” she screamed. She dropped the letter,
collapsed into a crouching heap, her hands covering her eyes. Winslow
snatched at it. “A most terrible accident has occurred,” he read;
“Melchior’s chimney fell down yesterday evening right on the top of your
uncle’s house, and every living soul was killed—your uncle, your cousin
Mary, Will, and Ned, and the girl—every one of them, and smashed—you
would hardly know them. I’m writing to you to break the news before you
see it in the papers—.” The letter fluttered from Winslow’s fingers. He
put out his hand against the mantel to steady himself.
All of them dead! Then he saw, as in a vision, a row of seven cottages,
each let at seven shillings a week, a timber yard, two villas, and the
ruins—still marketable—of the avuncular residence. He tried to feel a
sense of loss and could not. They were sure to have been left to
Minnie’s aunt. All dead! 7 × 7 × 52 ÷ 20 began insensibly to work itself
out in his mind, but discipline was ever weak in his mental arithmetic;
figures kept moving from one line to another, like children playing at
Widdy, Widdy Way. Was it two hundred pounds about—or one hundred pounds?
Presently he picked up the letter again, and finished reading it. “You
being the next of kin,” said Mr. Speight.
“How _awful_!” said Minnie, in a horror-struck whisper, and looking up
at last. Winslow stared back at her, shaking his head solemnly. There
were a thousand things running through his mind, but none that, even to
his dull sense, seemed appropriate as a remark. “It was the Lord’s
will,” he said at last.
“It seems so very, very terrible,” said Minnie; “auntie, dear
auntie—Ted—poor, dear uncle—”
“It was the Lord’s will, Minnie,” said Winslow, with infinite feeling. A
long silence.
“Yes,” said Minnie, very slowly, staring thoughtfully at the crackling
black paper in the grate. The fire had gone out. “Yes, perhaps it was
the Lord’s will.”
They looked gravely at one another. Each would have been terribly
shocked at any mention of the property by the other. She turned to the
dark fireplace and began tearing up an old newspaper slowly. Whatever
our losses may be, the world’s work still waits for us. Winslow gave a
deep sigh and walked in a hushed manner towards the front door. As he
opened it a flood of sunlight came streaming into the dark shadows of
the closed shop. Brandersnatch, Helter, Skelter, & Grab, had vanished
out of his mind like the mists before the rising sun.
Presently he was carrying in the shutters, and in the briskest way; the
fire in the kitchen was crackling exhilaratingly with a little saucepan
walloping above it, for Minnie was boiling two eggs—one for herself this
morning, as well as one for him—and Minnie herself was audible, laying
breakfast with the greatest _éclat_. The blow was a sudden and terrible
one—but it behoves us to face such things bravely in this sad,
unaccountable world. It was quite midday before either of them mentioned
the cottages.