"INTERJECTION."
Settling the question of the butcher's shop had seemed to Andy Hayes
like a final solution of life's problems. Therein he showed the quality
of his mind. One thing at a time, settle that. As he had learnt to say
'on the other side,' "Don't look for trouble!" He had yet to realize
what the man of imagination knows instinctively--that the problems of
life end only with life itself.
An eight-ten train to town is not, however, favourable to such a large
and leisurely survey as a consideration of life in its totality. It
involved a half-hour's race for the station. And this morning the
Bird--standing at the door of his father's hostelry--delayed a
hard-pressed man who had absolutely no time to stop.
"Heard the news about Mr. Harry?" cried the Bird across the street.
Andy slowed down. "About Harry?"
"Engaged to Miss Wellgood!" shouted the Bird.
"No, is he?" yelled Andy in reply. "Hurrah!"
It was but two days after the great event had happened. Recently Andy
had seen nothing of his Meriton friends. He had been working early and
late in town; down at seven-thirty, up to work again at eight-ten. He
had been a very draught-horse, straining at a load which would not
move--straining at it on a slippery slope. Business was so "quiet."
Could not work command success? At present he had to be content with the
meagre consolation proffered to Sempronius. He must be at the office not
a second later than nine. If the American letters came in, replies could
get off by the same day's mail.
Yet the news of the engagement--he wished he could have had it from
Harry's own lips--cut clean across his personal preoccupations. How
right! How splendid! Dear old Harry! And how he would like to
congratulate Miss Vivien! All that on Saturday afternoon or Sunday. Andy
was one of the world's toilers; for them works of charity, friendship,
and love have for the most part to wait for Saturday afternoon or
Sunday; the other five days and a half--it's the struggle for life,
grimly individual.
He loved Harry Belfield, and stored up untold enthusiasm for Saturday
afternoon or Sunday--those altruistic hours when we have time to
consider our own souls and other people's fortunes. But to-day was only
Thursday; Thursday is well in the zone of the struggle. Andy's timber
business was--just turning the corner! So many businesses always are.
Shops expensively installed, hotels over-built, newspapers--above all,
newspapers--started with a mighty flourish of heavy dividends combined
with national regeneration--they are all so often just turning the
corner. The phrase signifies that you hope you are going to lose next
year rather less than you lost last year. If somebody will go on
supplying the deficit--in that sanguine spirit which is the strength of
a commercial nation--or can succeed in inducing others to supply it in a
similar spirit, the corner may in the end be turned. If not, you stay
this side of the magical corner of success, and presently find yourself
in another--to be described as "tight." A life-long experience of
questions--of problems and riddles--was not, for Andy Hayes, to stop
short at the felicitous solution of the puzzle about Jack Rock's
butcher's shop in Meriton High Street.
Andy had to postpone reflection on Harry Belfield's happiness and
Vivien's emancipation. Yet he had a passing appreciation of the end of
ordeals--of Curly, cross-country rides, and the like. Would the mail
from Montreal bring a remittance for the rent of the London office? The
other business men in the fast morning train were grumpy. Money was
tight, the bank rate stiff, times bad. No moment to launch out! There
were sounded all the familiar jeremiads of the City train. What could
you expect with a Liberal Government in office? The stars in their
courses fought against business. Nobody would trust anybody. It was not
that nobody had the money--nobody ever has--but hardly anybody was
believed to be able, in the last resort, to get it. That impression
spells collapse. The men in the first-class carriage--Andy had decided
that it was on the whole "good business" to stand himself a first-class
"season"--seemed well-fed, affluent, possessed of good cigars; yet they
were profoundly depressed, anticipative of little less than imminent
starvation. One of them explicitly declared his envy of a platelayer
whom the train passed on the line.
"Twenty-two bob a week certain," he said. "Better than losing a couple
of hundred pounds, Jack. Not much longer hours either, and an open-air
life!"
"Well, take it on," Jack, who had a cynical turn of humour, advised. "He
(the platelayer he meant) couldn't very well lose more than you do; and
you'll never make more than he does. Swap!"
The first speaker retired behind the _Telegraph_ in some disgust. It is
hard to meet a rival wit as early as eight-thirty in the morning.
The American mail was not in when Andy
reached Dowgate Hill, in which important locality
he occupied an insignificant attic. A fog off the
coast of Ireland accounted for the delay. But
on his table, as indicated by the small boy who
constituted his staff--the staff would, of course,
be larger when that corner was turned--lay a
cable. There was no other correspondence. Things
were quiet. Andy could not suppress a reflection
that a rather later train would have done as well.
Still there was a cable; no doubt it advised
the remittance. The remittance was a matter of
peremptory necessity, unless Andy were to empty
his private pocket.
"Incontestable--Incubation--Ineffective." So ran the cable.
Andy scratched his nose and reached for the code.
If ever a digression were allowable, if expatiation on human fortune and
vicissitudes were still the fashion, what a text lies in the cable code!
This cold-blooded provision for all emergencies, this business-like
abbreviation of tragedy! "Asbestos" means "Cannot remit." "Despairing"
signifies "If you think it best." (Could despair sound more despairing?)
"Patriotic--Who are the heaviest creditors?" Passing to other fields of
life: "Risible--Doctor gives up hope." "Refreshing--Sinking steadily;
prepare for the worst." "Resurrection--There is no hope of recovery."
"Resurgam--Realization of estate proceeding satisfactorily."
The cable code is a masterly epitome of life.
However Andy Hayes was not given to digression or to expatiation.
Patiently he turned the leaves to find the interpretation of his own
three mystic words.
The result was not encouraging.
"Incontestable--Incubation--Ineffective."
Which being interpreted ran: "Most essential to retrench all unnecessary
expense. Cannot see prospects of your branch becoming paying
proposition. Advise you to close up and return as soon as possible."
There was a fourth word. The "operator"--Andy still chose in his mind
the transatlantic term--had squeezed it into a corner, so that it did
not at first catch the reader's notice. "Infusoria." Andy turned up
"Infusoria." It was a hideously uncompromising word, as the code
rendered it; the code makes a wonderful effort sometimes. "Infusoria"
meant: "We expect you to act on this advice at once, and we cannot be
responsible for expenditure beyond what is strictly necessary to wind
up."
Andy did not often smoke in his office in business hours, but he had a
cigarette now.
"Well, that's pretty straight," he thought. The instructions were
certainly free from ambiguity. "Made a failure of it!" The cigarette
tended to resignation. "Needed a cleverer fellow than I am to make it
go." This was his usual sobriety of judgment. "Rather glad to be out of
it." That was the draught-horse's instinctive cry of joy at being
released from a hopeless effort. They were right on the other side--it
was not a "paying proposition." He was good at seeing facts; they did
not offend him. So many people are offended at facts--really a useless
touchiness.
"All right!" said Andy, flinging the end of the cigarette into the
grate, and taking up that fateful code again.
"Passionately" met his need: "Will act on instructions received without
delay and with all possible saving of expense."
"Yes," said Andy, his stylograph moving in mid-air. He turned over the
pages again, seeking another word, thinking very hard whether he should
send that other word when he found it.
The word was "Interjection." It meant: "My personal movements uncertain.
Will advise you of them at the earliest moment possible."
To cable "Interjection" would mean an admission of considerable import,
both to his principals in Montreal and to himself. It would imply that
he was thinking of cutting adrift. Andy was thinking terribly hard about
it. It might cause his principals to consider that he was taking too
much on himself. Andy was not a partner; he was only on a salary, with a
small contingent profit from commissions. It seemed complimentary--and
delusive--now to call the profit contingent; the salary was all he had
in the world. Such an independently minded word as "Interjection"
incurred a risk. Before he had done thinking about cutting adrift, he
might find himself cut adrift. The principals were peremptory men. In
view of his failure to make the London branch a "paying proposition,"
perhaps he was lucky in that he had not been cut adrift already. There
was a code word for that--"Seltzer." It meant, "We shall be able to
dispense with your services on the ---- prox."
"Seltzer thirtieth" would have thrown--and might still throw--Andy on
the mercy of the world. Turning up the code (if you are not thoroughly
familiar with it) may be interesting work--"as exciting as any novel,"
as reviewers kindly say of books of travel.
Andy had suddenly, and with some surprise, become aware how very much he
wished not to go back to Montreal, pleasant city as it is. When he was
puzzling about the Meriton shop, Canada had stood for freedom, scope,
and opportunity. Why should it not stand for them still, just as well
as, or better than, London? Canada and London had ranked together then,
in sharp opposition to the narrow limits of his native town. Nobody
could deny the scope and the opportunities of Canada. But Andy did not
want to go back. He was profoundly apologetic to himself about the
feeling; he would not have ventured to justify it; it was wrong. But,
after his long exile, his native land had laid hold on him--England with
her ripe rich sweetness, London baited with a thousand lures. He had no
pluck, no grit, no go; so he said to himself. There were fortunes to be
made over there--a mighty nation to help in building up. That was all
true, but he did not want to go. The stylograph hung longingly over the
cable form; it wanted to write "Interjection."
The fog had apparently been very persistent in the Irish Channel, for no
mail came; the principals in Montreal seemed quite right about the
London branch, for no business offered. At half-past twelve Andy
determined to go out for lunch and a walk. By the time he got back the
mail might have come--and he might have made up his mind whether or not
to cable "Interjection."
A man who has it in mind to risk his livelihood often decides that he
may as well treat himself liberally at lunch or dinner. Monte Carlo is a
terribly expensive place to stay at if you do not gamble; if you do, it
costs nothing--at least, what it costs does not matter, which comes to
the same thing. Andy decided that, having two hours off, he would go
west for lunch. His thoughts were on the great restaurant by the river.
If he were really leaving London in a week (obedient to "Infusoria"), it
would be interesting to go there once again.
Entering the grill-room, on his left as he came in from the Strand (at
the last moment the main restaurant had struck him as absurd for his
chop), he was impressed by the air of habituality worn by his
fellow-guests. What was humdrum to them was a treat to him, their
routine his adventure. They knew the waiters, knew the maitre d'hotel,
and inquired after the cook. They knew one another too, marking who was
there to-day, who was an absentee. Andy ate his chop, with his mouth
healthily hungry, with his eyes voracious of what passed about him.
He sat near a glass screen some six or seven feet high, dividing the
room in two. Suddenly from the other side of it came a voice:
"Hallo, is that you, Hayes? Come and have your coffee with us. Where
have you been all this time?"
There they sat--and there they might have been sitting ever since Andy
parted from them, so much at home they looked--Billy Foot, the Nun, and
Miss Dutton. Another young man was with them, completing the party. He
was plump, while Billy was thin--placid, while Billy always suggested a
reserve of excitement; but he had a likeness to Billy all the same.
"Oh, I say, may I come?" cried Andy, boyishly loud; but the luck of
meeting these friends again was too extraordinary. He trotted round the
glass screen with his tumbler in his hand; he had not quite finished his
lager beer.
"Chair and coffee for Mr. Hayes," said Billy Foot. "You remember him,
girls? My brother, Hayes--Gilly, Mr. Hayes. How did you leave Harry?"
"How awfully funny I should meet you!" gasped Andy.
"It's not funny if you ever come here," observed Miss Dutton; "because
we come here nearly every day--with somebody." She was more sardonic
than ever.
The Nun--she was not, by the way, a Nun any longer, but a Quaker girl
("All in the same line," her manager said, with a fine indifference to
the smaller theological distinctions), and now sang of how, owing to her
having to wear sombre garments (expressed by a charming dove-tinted
costume that sent the stalls mad), she had lost her first and only
love--the Nun smiled at Andy in a most friendly fashion.
"I'd quite forgotten you," she remarked, "but I'm glad to see you again.
Let's see, you're--?"
"Harry Belfield's friend."
"Yes, you're Mr. Hayes. Oh, I remember you quite well. Been away since?"
"No, I've been here. I mean--at work, and so on."
"Oh, well!" sighed the Nun (Andy ventured to call her the Nun in his
thoughts, though she had changed her persuasion). She seemed to express
a gentle resignation to not being able to keep track of people; she met
so many, coming every day to the restaurant.
"I ask five, I want four, but with just the right fellow I'd take
three," said Billy's brother Gilly, apparently continuing a conversation
which seemed to interest nobody but himself; for the Nun was looking at
neighbouring hats, Miss Dutton had relapsed into gloomy abstraction, and
Billy was thoughtfully revolving a small quantity of old brandy round a
very large glass. Gilly had an old brandy too, but his attitude towards
it was one of studied neglect. His favourite vintage had given out the
year before, so his life was rather desolate.
"Harry's engaged," Andy volunteered to the Nun, glad to possess a remark
of such commanding interest.
"To a girl?" asked the Nun, absently and without turning her face
towards him.
"Well, of course!" said Andy. What else could one be engaged to?
"Everybody comes to it," said Billy Foot. "Take three, if you must,
Gilly."
"At a push," said his brother sadly.
"I hate that hat on that woman," said the Nun with a sudden vehemence,
nodding her head at a fat woman in a large purple erection. Hats moved
the Nun perhaps more than anything else in the world.
"Rot, Doris," commented Miss Dutton. "It's what they're wearing."
"But they aren't all as fat as that," the Nun objected.
"Flourishing, Hayes?" asked Billy Foot.
"Well, I rather think I've just lost my job," said Andy.
"If you're looking out for a really sound way of investing five thousand
pounds--" Gilly began.
"Four to a gentleman," said Billy.
"Three to a friend," corrected the Nun.
"Oh, what the devil's the good of trying to talk business here?" cried
Gilly in vexation. "Only a chance is a chance, you know."
Billy Foot saw that Andy was puzzled. "Gilly--my brother, you know--I
suppose I introduced you?--has unfortunately come here with a problem on
his mind. I didn't know he had one, or I wouldn't have asked him,
because problems bore the girls."
"No, they don't. It interests me to see you trying to think." This, of
course, from Miss Dutton. The Nun, now imbibing an iced green fluid
through a straw, was sublimely abstracted.
"My brother," Billy resumed, with a glance of protest towards his
interruptor, "has, for some reason or another, become a publisher.
That's all right. Not being an author, I don't complain. Having done
pretty badly--"
"The public's no good," said Gilly gloomily.
"He wants to drag in some unfortunate person to be his partner. I
understand, Gilly, that, if really well recommended, your accepted
partner can lose his time, and the rest of his money, for no more than
three thousand pounds--paid down on the nail without discount?"
"You've a charming way of recommending the project to Mr. Hayes'
consideration," said Gilly, in reproachful resignation.
"To my consideration," Andy exclaimed, laughing. "What's it got to do
with me?"
"It's a real chance," Gilly persisted. "And if you're out of a job, and
happen to be able to lay your hands on five--"
"Three!" whispered Billy.
"--thousand pounds, you might do worse than look into it. Now, I must
go," and with no more than a nod to serve as farewell to all the party
he rose and sauntered slowly away. He had not touched his brandy; his
brother reached over thoughtfully and appropriated it. "I may as well,
as I'm going to pay for it," he remarked.
Suddenly Andy found himself telling the Nun all about his cable and his
affairs. The other two listened; all three were very friendly and
sympathetic; even Miss Dutton forbore to sneer. Andy expanded in the
kindly atmosphere of interest. "I don't want to go back, you know," he
said with a smile that appealed for understanding. "But I must, unless
something turns up."
"Well, why not talk to Gilly?" the Nun suggested.
"Yes, you go round and talk to Gilly," agreed Billy. "Rotting apart,
he's got a nice little business, and one or two very good schemes on,
but he wants a bit more capital, as well as somebody to help him. He
doesn't look clever, but in five years he's built up--yes, a tidy little
business. You wouldn't come to grief with Gilly."
"But I haven't got the money, or anything like it. I've got nothing."
The Nun and Billy exchanged glances. The Nun nodded to Billy, but he
shook his head. Miss Dutton watched them for a moment, then she smiled
scornfully.
"I don't mind saying it," she observed, and to Andy's astonishment she
asked him, "What about your old friend the butcher?"
"How did you hear of that?"
"Harry Belfield was up one day last week lunching here, and--"
"We were awfully amused," the Nun interrupted, with her pretty rare
gurgle. "If you'd done it, we were all coming down to buy chops and give
you a splendid send-off. I rather wish you had." The imagined scene
amused the Nun very much.
"Jack Rock? Oh, I couldn't possibly ask him, after refusing his offer!"
"What did you say his name was?" the Nun inquired.
Andy repeated the name, and the Nun nodded, smiling still. Andy became
portentously thoughtful.
"We have sown a seed!" said Billy Foot. "I'll drop a word to Gilly to
keep the offer open. Now you must go, girls, because I've got some work
to do in the world, though you never seem to believe it."
"Heavens, I must go too!" cried Andy, with a horrified look at his
watch.
"All right, you go," said Miss Dutton. "We promised to meet a man here
at half-past three and go motoring."
"Did we? I don't believe we did," objected the Nun. "I don't think I
want to go."
"Then don't," said Miss Dutton. "I shall go anyhow."
"Well, I'll wait and see the car," the Nun conceded. She did not appear
to have any curiosity about its owner. "You really must come and see
me--and don't go back to Canada!" she called after Andy. Then, when she
was alone with her friend, she said, "No, I shan't come motoring, Sally,
I shall go home and write a letter. So much trouble is caused in this
world by people being afraid to do the obvious thing. Now I'm never
afraid to do the obvious thing."
"That's just what you said the night you found me--and took me home with
you," said Miss Dutton. She spoke very low, and her voice was strangely
soft.
"It was the obvious thing to do, and I did it," the Nun pursued, shaking
her head at Sally in mild rebuke of an uncalled-for touch of sentiment.
"I shall do the obvious thing now. I shall write to Mr. Jack Rock."
"You'll get yourself into a row, meddling with other people's business."
"Oh no, I shan't," said the Nun serenely. "I shall insist on a personal
interview before my action is condemned. I generally come out of
personal interviews all right."
"Arts and tricks!" said Sally scornfully.
"Just an innocent and appealing manner," smiled the Nun. "At any rate,
this very afternoon I write to Mr. Rock. He'll produce three thousand
pounds, Gilly will get a good partner, Andy Hayes can stay in England, I
shall feel I've done a sensible thing. All that just by a letter!" A
thought struck her. "I may as well write it here." She called a waiter
and asked for notepaper and the A B C railway guide. "Don't wait for me,
Sally. This letter will take some time to write."
"Not going to take it down yourself, are you?" asked Sally, pointing to
the A B C.
"Oh no. Messenger boy. With any luck, it'll get there before Andy Hayes
does. Rather fun if Jack Rock plays up to me properly!"--and she allowed
herself the second gurgle of the afternoon.
Sally stood looking at her with an apparently unwilling smile. She loved
her better than anybody in the world, and would have died for her at
that or any other moment; but nothing of that sort was ever said between
them. They were almost unsentimental enough to please Mark Wellgood
himself. Only the Nun did like her little plans to be appreciated. Sally
gave her all she wanted--a sharp little bark of a laugh in answer to the
gurgle--before she walked away. The Nun settled to her task in demure
serenity, seeming (yet not being) entirely unconscious of the extreme
slowness with which most of the young men passed her table as they went
out.
Billy Foot had walked with Andy as far as the Temple and had reasoned
with him. Yet Billy himself admitted that there was great difficulty in
the case. Asked whether he himself would do what he advised, he was
forced to admit that he would hesitate. Still he would not give up the
idea; he would see Gilly about it; perhaps the payment could be
"spread."
"It would have to be spread very thin before I could pay it," smiled
Andy ruefully. He gave Billy Foot's hand a hearty squeeze when they
parted. "It's so awfully good of you to be so interested--and of those
nice girls too."
"Well, old chap, if we can help a pal!" said Billy with a laugh.
"Besides, it's good business for Gilly too."
Andy went back to Dowgate Hill and climbed up to his attic. The staff
reported no callers in his absence; the baleful cable lay still in
possession of the table. But Andy refused to be depressed. His lunch had
done him good. Steady and sober as his mind was, yet he was a little
infected by the gay confidence that had reigned among his company. They
seemed all so sure that something would turn up, that what they wanted
would get itself done somehow. Spoilt children of fate, the brothers
Foot and the Nun! Things they wanted had come easily to them; they
expected them to come easily to their friends. The Nun in particular
appeared to treat fortune absolutely as a slave; she was not even
grateful; it was all too much a matter of course that things should
happen in the way she wanted. He did not appreciate yet the way in which
the Nun assisted the course of events sometimes.
Well, his reply to the cable must go. He took up the form and read
"Passionately." It was significant of his changed mood--of what the
atmosphere of the lunch-party had done for him--that he hesitated hardly
more than one minute before he added the possibly fateful
"Interjection," and sent off the despatch before he had time again to
waver.
"If they choose to take offence--well, I can make a living somehow, I
suppose."
Andy's confidence in himself was slowly but steadily ripening.