Tod never knew when Edwin Rook blabbed of the affair at Melling Gap. He
did not see the man again till the Monday, and Rook went discreetly
about his business while Mr. Flowerdew was in the shop. There was a sale
at a house in Virginia Gardens, at eleven, and Mr. Flowerdew had decided
to attend it in quest of possible bargains.
Tod was extricating some books from under a mahogany sideboard when a
man’s hand struck him a resounding whack from behind.
“Hallo, Don Juan!”
Tod faced round. He had never known Rook to indulge in playfulness, and
there had been a vicious sting in that smack.
“Chuck that!”
“Well, Don Juan, how’s life?”
“What d’you mean?” said Tod.
Rook looked at him in a queer, mocking way, and began to rearrange some
china.
“Don’t be a young fool, that’s all,” he remarked suggestively.
Tod was getting red and combative.
“You keep your jokes to yourself, Rook.”
“Right-o, my lad, I shall. Why don’t you pick up a kid of fifteen;
that’s about your size.”
“Look here, you shut up,” said Tod, “don’t you say anything about Miss
Kitty Flowerdew.”
Rook turned on him with an insolent laugh, and bobbed a china cow up and
down in front of Tod’s face.
“Moo-moo, cocky! The boy’s on his dignity, by Jove! Why, you cuckoo,
she’s only practising on you.”
“She’s not,” said Tod fiercely. “She’s not that sort of girl.”
Mr. Rook addressed himself confidentially to the china cow.
“Hark at him, old girl. He knows all about you women. He’s a regular man
about town; Beautiful Bountiful Bertie, what! All done by kindness at
the age of eighteen.”
“I’m old enough to punch your head, anyhow,” said Tod.
And then Edwin Rook left him alone.
The man had all the cleverness of a mean beast who was jealous, and in
three days he had Tod helplessly and hopelessly enraged. The lad soon
discovered that there was some conspiracy between Lena Flowerdew and the
shopman. Rook had blabbed to the elder sister, and Miss Flowerdew had
told her father. And Tod saw that it was Kitty who was in disgrace. The
condemnation of that moral household was emptied upon her head, while
Tod was made to feel a silly young fool. The girl had her hair up; she
was old enough to know better.
But the true maliciousness of the two conspirators betrayed itself when
Eli Flowerdew happened to be out to meals. Lena hated her sister and
wanted to hurt her; Rook hated Tod and wanted to disgust the girl with
her lover by making the affair ridiculous and paltry.
“Going to do a little more practising to-day, dear? Why not take Mr.
Western to Melling Gap?”
Rook adopted a jocular tone and pretended to be very much afraid of Tod.
“Western’s a terrible fellow. I’d advise any girl to be careful of
Western. He’s a fascinator. He’ll be the Shah of Shaston, and you’ll
hear him boasting about it too.”
Tod, conscious of Kitty’s miserable and abashed face, and remembering
that he had heard loud voices, and had caught her rushing upstairs in
tears, did all that a shrewd boy could do by keeping the remnants of his
temper, and accepting the business as a joke. His hatred of Lena
Flowerdew was so fierce that he could not save himself from one or two
frank and deadly tilts at her, and perhaps he hurt her more bitterly
than he knew.
“Nice place, Melling Gap, Mr. Western. Suppose you take me there next
Saturday? Mr. Rook will look after Kitty.”
Tod was getting tired of the vulgarity of the thing.
“No, thank you,” he said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t like ugly women.”
Lena Flowerdew gave him one glare of the eyes, and laid that saying to
her sister’s credit.
Tod was alone in the room behind the shop that evening, sorting some
second-hand books that had been bought at a sale, when the door opened
and Kitty slipped in. They happened to be alone in the house for ten
minutes, and Kitty had waited for that chance.
“Tod——”
She stood there, downcast, dismayed, and he could see that she had been
weeping.
“Tod, don’t speak to Lena like that, dear, please.”
“Why not? And I couldn’t help it.”
“For my sake, don’t. You don’t know how horrible Lena can be. And
Father——”
She had more to tell him, but her heart failed her, as her courage
failed her in that moment of trial.
“You don’t understand, Tod, how miserable they can make me.”
Tod’s love could hold back no longer. Here was his most dear lady,
persecuted, humiliated, and all because of her kindness to him.
“Kitty! You know I love you, Kitty. I can’t stand them being such beasts
to you.”
He crossed over to her, his blue eyes alight, and tried to take her
hands, but she put them behind her suddenly, and began to weep anew.
“Tod, dear——”
“Why shouldn’t we be engaged? I’m eighteen. And there’s no one——”
“Don’t, Tod, oh—don’t—please,” she said brokenly. “You don’t
understand—and I—I can’t tell you. Father would be so angry, and they
would just mock at you.”
“I’m not afraid of that, dear.”
“It can’t be. And I have to ask you, Tod, not to look at me or talk to
me much. We can be just friends——”
“I see how it is,” he said sturdily, “they think I’m a silly kid, and
that I can’t be serious. If you would wait for me, Kitty.”
“I can’t, Tod, dear, I can’t. Father wouldn’t let me.”
“I’ll—I’ll make him,” but she fled out of the room and away up the dark
stairs, and Tod could hear her sobbing as she went.
Tod was puzzled, but he suppressed the hot chivalry of his youth and the
desire to do something heroic. The Flowerdews’ house was not a tilting
ground for heroism, and the more Tod pondered the matter, the less
sanguine he felt. Sir Galahad would have been met here with ridicule and
a shower of rotten eggs. The lad began to understand Kitty’s sensitive
dread and her shrinking from the malicious vulgarities of her sister’s
tongue.
Tod made up his mind to dissemble. If it helped Kitty and saved her from
further domestic storms, so much the better. He told himself that he
would wait. In three years he would have that £1,000, and could talk to
Mr. Eli Flowerdew as one man to another. And he found that his
self-suppression, cheerfully and shrewdly advertised, had a very
distinct influence upon the other members of the Flowerdew family. He
talked more to Lena Flowerdew and made it his business to pass her the
butter and the jam, and actually allowed her to take him out to a
tea-party at the Lagos’s who ran a big grocery shop in King William
Street.
Eli Flowerdew seemed to have made up his mind to approve of Tod, and Tod
encouraged that spirit of approval, even though it led him into the
dismal experience of being enrolled as a junior member of the local
Social Purity League. Eli Flowerdew took him to the men’s Wednesday
evening meetings in the Shaston Public Hall, where he listened to sacred
music as rendered by the Shaston Glee Singers, and heard sundry eloquent
gentlemen give flamboyant addresses upon civic and domestic virtue.
The whole crowd made Tod think of a lot of unwholesome people getting
into a stuffy corner and solemnly holding their noses because of the
smell. They were so drearily unhuman and self-complacent. Tod had a
feeling that they rather liked smells, and enjoyed holding their noses,
and gloating self-righteously over the iniquity of the other people’s
drains.
He asked Bod Twine about it, because he had come to regard that swarthy
young man as violently and savagely honest.
“I don’t see that it does anybody any good,” he argued.
“Course it doesn’t kid. It’s like telling a chap who’s healthy that he’s
got a worm. They like it, you know—makes ’em feel warm and good inside
like a glass of gin; they don’t want things to be different, not really.
Get outside; that’s my motto.”
“Outside what?”
“Why, out into the country, you pippin. There’s nothing wrong with the
sea, or the fields, or the open road, is there? And there’s nothing
wrong with a chap wanting to be in love with a girl. If so, what are we
here for? If a man tries to come the pious over me, I always think he
has got dirty feet. Say, when are you going to join our footer club?”
Twine had taught Tod to swim; he also taught him to box, and young
Western began to be one of the pets of the local football club. He had
shaped well as a half-back at Chipperton’s, and before Christmas he was
playing right-half for Shaston Town, and was beloved of the local crowd.
“Worry-’em-Western” was his nickname, and even Mr. Flowerdew approved.
It was an advertisement. “That’s young Western from Flowerdew’s.” The
commercial eye sees a placard everywhere, and pastes up a pious “poster”
whenever it looks publicly upon its God.
Yet even Clarence Todhunter Western had his worries. The Flowerdews
household had made inroads on his youth, and changed him from the
irresponsible boy to the young man who was finding life rather a queer
and puzzling business. His silent and restrained loyalty to Kitty made
him all the more jealous and observant. He began to notice that Edwin
Rook was always sneaking out of the shop and into the house when Eli
Flowerdew was not about. He noticed, too, that Rook’s eyes were for ever
watching Kitty during meals, but that she hardly ever looked at him in
return. Rook seemed to frighten her and to reduce her to silence.
Moreover, Miss Lena Flowerdew grew very snappy and sarcastic towards the
shopman, and Tod caught her watching him trying to ingratiate himself
with her sister. Miss Flowerdew’s face was never very pleasant or
amiable, but on those occasions Tod thought her the ugliest thing he had
ever seen.
Then Edwin Rook took to attending St. Jude’s church and sat in the
Flowerdew pew, displacing Tod, who was pushed to the far end by the
pillar. Tod was annoyed but contemptuous. He had a healthy scorn for
Rook, a fellow who wore glasses, never played any games, and was, Tod
suspected, a physical coward. Tod, the romanticist, blindly refused to
accept Rook as a serious rival, which wild faith of his betrayed how
ignorant he was of the real inwardness of the Flowerdew family.
But it was the shop and the business that were puzzling the sportsman in
Tod. You bought as cheaply as you could and you sold as dearly as you
could; that seemed fairly obvious and reasonable, and yet Tod was not
satisfied. When some old woman received three and sixpence for an
article which Mr. Flowerdew sold to a wealthy stockbroker’s wife three
days later for five guineas, the gap seemed too greedy. Tod began to see
a good deal of this buying and selling, and it left him with an uneasy
and guilty feeling. Also it became very plain to him that in a shop you
were not supposed to tell the truth. You romanced, you exaggerated—in
short, you lied.
“Those candlesticks, madam? Yes, we picked them up only a week ago and
at a fancy price. They won’t remain with us very long; the first
connoisseur who sees them——”
Now Tod knew that these candlesticks had been bought at a sale three
months ago, and that Mr. Flowerdew had given exactly seven shillings for
them. The lady, a visitor to Shaston, bought them for three pounds ten.
Moreover, for subtle reason known only to himself, Edwin Rook set
himself to try and debauch and commercialise Tod. He was cynical,
jocular, and facetious, and he took a delight in airing all the trade
cynicisms, and flaunting them in front of Tod’s eyes.
“You’ve got to watch your customer, my lad. If it’s a ‘regular’ and one
who knows a bit, go easy. If it’s a stranger, why then you can do a bit
of fibbing and push the price.”
“Be jolly careful of duchessy looking ladies in fine clothes. They don’t
swallow things easily. They can be really nasty if they think you have
cheated them.”
“Always back down and eat dirt if you are found out.”
“Expert knowledge! What do we want to know for? Why, it’s the whole
game. You can score off the people who don’t know, get ’em to take
sixpence for something that’s worth a quid. That’s business.”
“Sentiment. There’s no sentiment in a shop. Only oil, my boy, oil.”
Tod disliked Rook all the more thoroughly for these cynicisms of his. At
first, he did not take them too seriously. Rook was a glib talker,
rather pleased with his own cleverness, but as the weeks went by, Tod
began to realise that Rook was telling him the truth. The discovery
depressed Tod very seriously. He felt that he was getting mixed up in a
sordid sort of game, a game in which your main endeavour was to cheat.
Tod called it “cheating” to himself, quite frankly and with no
reservations. If you tried to foul in the football field, the referee
dropped on you, and the crowd, if it was not too bigoted a crowd,
hooted.
And then came the incident of that book.
Mr. Flowerdew had been present at one of those “sales of necessity.” A
doctor had died and left a widow and three children, and a small balance
at the bank. Mr. Flowerdew bought a few lots at the sale, and among them
an odd number of books that cost him thirteen shillings. Tod was sorting
these books two days after the sale when he came across a queer old
volume that sent him running for Messrs. Porteous’s price catalogue of
second-hand books.
There seemed no doubt about it. That particular book was valued at
fifteen guineas.
Tod, full of enthusiasm, announced the fact to Rook.
“I say, there’s been a mistake. We have bought a valuable book mixed up
in a lot of rubbish.”
“Where’s the mistake?” asked the shopman with cynical sangfroid.
“But the governor only paid thirteen bob for the lot, and this book is
priced at fifteen guineas. The people who sold it didn’t know. We shall
have to send it back.”
“Do what?” squealed Mr. Rook.
“Why, send it back. It wouldn’t be fair or sporting to keep it. I don’t
suppose Flowerdew knew when he bought the lot.”
Rook stared at Tod, and then gave a queer laugh.
“Suggest it, old chap. If the auctioneers didn’t do their work properly,
and the governor had the luck——”
“You mean you’d keep it and say nothing?”
“You soft egg!” said Mr. Rook.
Tod was challenged. He said nothing more to Rook, but waited for Mr.
Flowerdew to give a judgment of Solomon. Rook was out when the interview
occurred, and he missed one of the most cynical comedies that had ever
been played in Mr. Flowerdew’s shop.
“Excuse me, sir, but you bought a valuable book the other day by
mistake.”
Mr. Flowerdew was totting up some figures in a notebook, and he looked
at Tod with interested approval.
“What’s that, Western? You are learning to use your wits, are you? What
about it?”
Tod explained, and Eli Flowerdew listened with fatherly satisfaction
until Tod made the extraordinary suggestion that the book should be
returned.
Mr. Flowerdew’s thin lips slipped back over his yellow teeth.
“Say that again, Western?”
Tod said it again.
And then Eli Flowerdew gave Tod a solemn and biblical description of
what business was and how it should be conducted. He expatiated on the
necessity for loyalty between master and assistant, and how that
his—Mr. Flowerdew’s—interest was Tod’s. He trounced Tod’s sentimental
obtuseness, and assured him that commerce and civilisation would be
impossible if people behaved in the way Tod had suggested.
“You have got to get the business spirit, Western,” he said grimly, “if
you want to rise in this world. Competition doesn’t say ‘After you,
please.’ If you hold yourself responsible for other peoples mistakes,
you are a fool, young man. Don’t you mix sentiment and business. And
don’t let me hear any more of this nonsense.”