The intervention of Mr. Julian Burgetrode initiated one of the good
seasons of Tod’s career. Some big hand seemed to push open a heavy door
and draw back a curtain, and Tod stepped easily into a new and more
spacious life.
The office of Rathbone Cragg and Son, Auctioneers and Estate Agents, had
a certain Victorian calmness, a deliberate and leisurely way of doing
things that was decent and almost pontifical. The Craggs, both father
and son, were very polite people, and with a politeness that suited the
more civilised end of Shaston and the ritual beloved of the symbolists
who attended the church of St. Alban the Martyr. Mr. Rathbone Cragg,
lean, bald-headed, round shouldered, with that emaciated and
cartilaginous throat of his, and the head of a benignant vulture, served
as a sidesman at St. Alban’s Church, and also as a Justice of the Peace.
His son, a younger and more anæmic sort of vulture, with a queer
axe-shaped head, its edge fronting forwards in chin and nose, clove his
way into the intellectual life of West Shaston with an indefatigable and
supercilious seriousness that made more full blooded young men hate him
as buoyant savages must hate your irrepressible missionary. Frederick
Rathbone Cragg was for ever improving himself. He knew too much; facts
and figures rolled off him like turnips off an overladen cart. He was
the sort of young man who sat solemnly and grimly at breakfast with a
part of Handsworth’s Encylopædia in front of him, munching eggs and
bacon with teeth of virgin gold.
Tod discovered a new atmosphere. If you walked down Beacon Hill with the
western sun behind you, you had a vision of a fresh and vivid Shaston,
Shaston as the Georgians had schemed it, shorn of its base speculative
excrescences in yellow brick and grey stucco, a white town strung
between the blue of the sea and the green of the hills. In the beyond
loomed the White Cliff, a little hazy with the smoke of the Old Town,
the yellow sand making a dim gleam between it and the sea. There were
the masts of the Shaston fishing fleet, black and crowded like the ships
of the Greeks beached before Troy. Above the White Cliff the lighthouse
painted a white streak against summer skies. The parade in front of the
tall houses had breadth and dignity, and could stand and answer the roar
of a rough sea. On the hills above the town the beeches and holm oaks
and wind-beaten pines of Effingham Park, broke up and softened the firm
white lines, and spread a rolling frieze between the white houses and
the yet whiter clouds.
The Craggs had their office in Caroline Crescent, a bow of solid houses
with the parade as its bowstring. Caroline Crescent suggested the
Regency, gentlemen in gay coloured coats and white breeches,
high-stepping horses, “tigers” hanging on to the backs of yellow-wheeled
dog-carts, young gentlewomen with side curls, Pickwickian worthies with
Hessian boots, and solid, round, white-breeched stomachs. The houses had
balconies with long and steeply sloping green roofs, and from any of
these balconies one of Marcus Stone’s sentimental young ladies might
have thrown a red rose at some quite impossibly handsome and romantic
young man on a horse. Such things had ceased to happen in Caroline
Crescent. A little colony of doctors lived there, two solicitors and a
dentist. Brass plates were as thick as gold teeth in the mouth of a
nigger.
The Craggs were very discreet and restrained, and confined themselves to
gold letters on the lower windows of No. 10. Blatancy did not pay in the
west end of Shaston. Notice boards, posters and advertisements of houses
to be let and sold were to be found only in the big hall and in the main
office. Once upon a time there had been litigation in Caroline Crescent
over the keeping of a cockatoo that screamed. The Craggs did not scream.
You were careful of your manners when you practised your profession in
the company of gentlemen who felt pulses or drafted people’s wills.
Tod felt all boots and hands on that first morning when he entered the
establishment of the Craggs, and stood in the middle of the big office
with Mr. Burgetrode’s letter of introduction between thumb and
forefinger. A young woman with a high forehead and pince-nez was typing
at a table. Two clerks were busy at their desks, one of them making
entries in a ledger, the other sorting out a chaos of keys. Tod stood
and waited till the younger of the two clerks chose to discover him.
“Yes?”
“I’ve a letter for Mr. Cragg.”
“All right. Hand it over. Any answer?”
“I’ll wait and see,” said Tod.
The letter and the clerk disappeared through a glazed door on which “Mr.
Rathbone Cragg” was painted in black letters. Tod noticed that there was
a second and similar door with Mr. Frederick Rathbone Cragg’s name upon
it. He stood and stared at the bills on the walls, at the maps and
photographs of houses, at the typist clicking sedulously on her machine,
until she stopped and stared at him in turn. Tod veered away, and felt
uncomfortable. The young woman behind the table made him absurdly
conscious of the fact that he was a creature that wore clothes.
The clerk reappeared with a new geniality towards Tod.
“Mr. Cragg will see you at once, Mr. Western.”
That interview puzzled Tod. Mr. Cragg stood up behind his desk and shook
hands with him, and Tod felt embarrassed. This hard-eyed old gentleman
who gobbled in his throat like a turkey, and was so jerkily and
parentally polite, made Tod wonder what Mr. Burgetrode had said
concerning him.
“Sit down, Mr. Western. So you want to be an estate agent?”
Tod sat down.
“I’m interested in houses,” he said.
Mr. Cragg appeared to approve.
“Enthusiasm is the great secret of success. I have this little note here
from Mr. Burgetrode, and it is possible that I may be able to oblige
him. I understand that you are an orphan, Western.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mr. Cragg tilted his head like a benignant bird.
“A great deprivation, Western. And—about your education?”
“I was at Chipperton’s school at Pentworth for five years, sir.”
“An excellent school too. Well, let me see, you wish to enter my office
immediately?”
“If you can take me, sir.”
“I think I may say that I can.”
It all seemed so absurdly easy. There were no clouds, no complications,
nothing but geniality and sunshine and an avoidance of all awkward
questions; no reference to Mr. Flowerdew or Mr. Snape. Mr. Cragg
suggested terms that made Tod feel a plutocrat. And then Mr. Frederick
Rathbone Cragg was called in and presented to Tod as though he were a
friend of the family.
Frederick Cragg gave Tod’s hand a hard and earnest squeeze. He stared
impressively at people when he was introduced to them, and he stared
very hard at Tod.
“Very glad to meet you, Western.”
Tod felt ten years older. He began to wonder whether he ought not to
have come in a bowler hat.
Two months later Tod had become an enthusiastic student of houses,
houses of all sorts and descriptions, stolid houses, frivolous houses,
snobbish houses, houses that were disreputable yet happy. And Tod too
was happy though he was in danger of being sucked over the edge of his
youth into that respectable and genteel world that is death and
destruction to any adventurous soul. Mr. Frederick Rathbone Cragg had
taken control of Tod; he had a penchant for cultivating boys and young
men as though they were puppies, and trying to teach them his own
tricks. He was interested in houses, but his interest was different from
Tod’s. He was a bit of commercialised intelligence, yet in spite of his
fish blood and flat feet he mimicked all sorts of strange people, like a
vain and clever ape who copies a gesture without understanding its real
meaning. Young Cragg was an intellectual. He had read Browning and Henry
James, Nietzsche and Bernard Shaw. In fact he had read a little of
everything, and he was the secretary of the St. Margarets Literary
Society. He posed. He liked to hand out queer and startling opinions.
Nothing pleased him better than to drag around a youth like Tod, let off
intellectual fireworks and see the little fellow skip and open his eyes
very wide.
Tod, in his innocence, was flattered. He was impressed by “Young
Supercilious,” as some of the scoffers called Mr. Frederick Cragg, the
energetic person who had an answer to everything. He trailed Tod round
with him and talked mediæval architecture with the dogmatism of a
Ruskin, and was so much the philosopher and the man of the world that
Tod had ears and no tongue.
“You always want to know the right people, Western; it’s just the same
as going into the right sort of house.”
Very soon he was criticising Tod’s clothes, and telling him with an air
of great impressiveness that such and such things were not worn.
“You mustn’t do it, old chap. No pink or red ties, and don’t wear brown
boots on Sunday. Good form, you know; it counts, it counts with the
right people.”
Mr. Burgetrode had gone north again, and Tod was left to the earnest
egotism of Mr. Frederick Cragg. Life in the office was not unpleasant,
and Tod’s growing enthusiasm flattered the pride of the firm. Mr.
Burgetrode had hinted that Clarence Todhunter Western was an original
child, and with such a sponsor life in the house of Cragg and Son was
bound to be easy. They had been very ready to make the best of Tod, and
Tod the learner was keen and indefatigable.
“That boy has got a future,” Fred said to his sister.
Miss Bertha Cragg was always tripping up the toes of her brother’s
impressiveness.
“Because old Burgetrode has taken a fancy to him? Nice sort of wet nurse
you make, Fred!”
“You women don’t understand.”
But he continued to make a sort of East End Settlement of Tod and to
cultivate that young heathen. Tod went to Hanson’s the gentleman’s
tailor, and had a suit of clothes made to measure. His ties grew more
conservative and refined. He ceased to wear a cloth cap on the back of
his head. Frederick Cragg rescued him from the bathos of Mrs. Budd’s
cottage, and persuaded him to take a bed-sitting room in St. Helen’s
Terrace in the house of an impoverished gentlewoman who read Tennyson
and genuflected regularly at the church of St. Alban the Martyr. He lent
Tod books, went for country walks with him, declaimed Keats and
Rossetti, and talked a lot of nonsense that sounded very clever and
rather shocking.
Caroline Crescent was teaching Tod all sorts of things about real
estate. Tod had no immediate vision of the financial aspect of the
business, and he had lost some of the distrust that the world of
Flowerdew and Snape had roused in him. The Craggs were polite people.
They were always and ever your most obedient servants, and they appeared
to let or sell you a house for the pure social joy of doing you a
service. They taught Tod about leases and agreements, the writing up of
houses, the making of inventories, the valuing of fixtures, the business
of insurance and of rent-collecting; and all the ritual of a successful
sale. They had little to do with the cottage property of old Shaston.
They confined their activities to the gentlemen’s residences and the red
villas of St. Margarets and the Grand Parade; moreover, they were the
“county people” and much county property had passed through their hands.
Young Cragg had taken Tod in to tea at “Clovelly,” the Craggs’ house in
Salisbury Road, but Tod’s real emergence from the caterpillar state
dated from the day when he was invited to tennis.
“My mater wants you to come up on Saturday, Western, and play tennis.
Just a little party, you know.”
Tod confessed that he knew nothing about tennis.
“You’ll soon learn,” said his mentor with his usual impressiveness;
“come up half an hour before the other people, and I’ll put you up to
the main points.”
This was very gallant and chivalrous, but Tod was worried about clothes.
“Suppose I had better buy a racket?”
“Yes, you ought to have a racket, Western. And shoes.”
“And shoes?” echoed Tod.
He wanted to ask Fred Cragg about the various details of his toilet, but
shirked the confession of ignorance and in shirking it challenged his
own imagination. What sort of shoes ought he to buy—white or
brown?—and what should be the colour of a tennis-player’s trousers and
shirt? And did one wear a belt or braces? That was a devil of a dilemma.
He was so pestered and baffled by the whole problem that he dashed up to
the St. Margarets Tennis Club that evening, and lifting his chin over
the top of a wooden fence studied the details of dress as exemplified by
the gentlemen of that club. Braces were not worn. You fastened your
white flannel trousers with a coloured scarf or a leather belt. The
shoes were white, so were the shirts, and any old coat that was not
black seemed fit to complete the picture. Tod gave a gulp of spiritual
relief. If he had turned up at the Craggs’ wearing those red braces of
his, what a scandal he would have created!
Tod spent quite a respectable sum on a racket, buckskin shoes, two pairs
of white trousers, two white shirts and soft collars, a chocolate and
light blue scarf, and a straw hat with a black band. He began to dress
about half-past one on the Saturday afternoon, and the business lasted
an hour. He went downstairs, swinging his new racket, and met his
landlady, the gentlewoman who read Tennyson and genuflected daily at the
church of St. Alban the Martyr.
She liked Tod. He was such a fresh, clean, and considerate youngster,
and rather shy.
“Tennis, Mr. Western?”
“Tennis,” said Tod.
“How nice. You ought to have those new clothes marked before they go to
the wash.”
“Suppose I ought.”
“I will do it for you.”
And Tod went on his way, feeling cheered, and of the opinion that life
was quite good and that people were awfully decent.
At “Clovelly” a maid showed him down to the tennis lawn where Frederick
Cragg was sitting under a young lime tree and reading Zola’s “Paris” in
French. Fred was a very shaky French scholar, but it was rather
impressive to leave a book like that about.
“Hallo, Western.”
He looked Tod over comprehensively.
“Yes, that’s quite all right. But just one thing, old chap, you won’t
mind——”
He got up, and gave a little jab to the rear portion of the brim of
Tod’s straw hat; for Tod had tilted that hat too much on the back of his
head.
“Like that, Western; excuse me, you know.”
“Don’t mention it,” said Tod, flushing, but the remedying of that defect
dashed his self-confidence for the rest of the afternoon.
It was the first function of its kind that Tod had ever attended, and it
reduced him to a state of stubborn shyness. There was that big red villa
“Clovelly” in the background, a mysterious house half hidden behind a
great pergola and masses of flowering shrubs. A curly path and a flight
of stone steps led to the tennis lawn, and down this social highway a
succession of people and things descended upon Tod, girls in summer
frocks, elderly women who rustled, young men who looked surprisingly
cool and unflurried, old Rathbone Cragg in a grey flannel suit and a
white Panama hat, a gardener who carried deck-chairs, and later a couple
of maids with tables and tea. Tod was introduced to one or two people by
Frederick Cragg.
“Mr. Western, Miss Lavibond.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Tod, holding out a hand, and then
remembering to take off his hat.
He stood by Miss Lavibond’s chair and tried to think of something to say
to her. The frocks and the chatter and the puzzling and refined
correctness of the business had him stifled. The Craggs were the leaders
of a definite social circle, a coterie of well-to-do middle-class people
whom a connection with trade had segregated in that little world of
gentlemen’s residences. There were old Horrox’s two daughters, the
Playles, who owned the biggest grocery in Shaston, Vintners the wine
merchants, and many more. It is possible that they were a little more
correct and polite and stiffly self-conscious than the class just above
them, for they were not such old hands at the game, and they had to take
great care of their manners.
“Weren’t the rhododendrons lovely this year,” said Miss Lavibond to Tod.
Tod didn’t know what rhododendrons were but he did not say so.
“Yes, very fine, weren’t they? Do you like the band we have got this
year?”
“Just a little too much brass, I think. I heard them murder a thing of
Grieg’s the other night.”
“Hard luck!” said Tod, and wondered why Miss Lavibond stared.
He decided that it was time to get away from the lady before she
discovered that he was conversing in the dark. He felt she was
dangerous, that she would denounce him if he launched into any more
conversational ventures, and he seized the chance of going to hunt for a
tennis ball that had disappeared in a bank of laurels. Tod took a
preposterously long time finding that ball, and when he did find it he
was confronted with Mrs. Rathbone Cragg and the ordeal of tea.
“Now you are going to help me, Mr. Western, aren’t you?”
She was a very large woman, a duchess of a woman, all black silk and
white lace, and she had ideas about putting Tod at his ease. She sat at
a wicker table with two big silver teapots and a crowd of cups in front
of her, and all around him on other tables Tod saw a bewildering wealth
of cakes, thin bread and butter in rolls, cucumber sandwiches, potted
meat sandwiches, biscuits, little dishes of sweets, strawberries, cream
pots, sugar bowls and plates.
“What’ll I do, please?”
“If you will hand round the tea-cups as I fill them, the maids will take
round the sugar and milk.”
Tod disgraced himself over that tea. He spilt one of the cups over
somebody’s dress and over his own flannel trousers, and ended by wishing
that he was dead. He was glooming in the background, and contemplating
making a bolt for it, when Miss Cragg swept in from somewhere and
rescued him from himself.
“Do come and have some tea, Mr. Western.”
“I’m not at all hungry,” he said politely.
“But I am, and I haven’t had tea yet. Let’s get a little table all to
ourselves and be greedy. Nearly all the other people have finished.”
Her frankness and her smiling brown eyes recovered the man in Tod. She
was a dark girl of about five-and-twenty, neither pretty nor plain, the
type of girl that is called a “good sort,” the girl whom no man marries.
Moreover, she had a brain, and a pair of eyes that were learning to
watch life with a rather wistful shrewdness. She had begun to realise
that she had no lure for the average men of her class, nor had they any
very great attraction for her. They were so obvious, and so very
complacent, and so up-to-date and cheap. They had all the tricks and
catchwords of the season. The weather was always “top hole” or “the
limit”; “priceless” was the adjective in vogue for the moment and it was
applied to everything, frocks, plays, flirtations, boots and drinks. If
you were keen on tennis or golf you were a “tennis merchant” or a “golf
merchant.” Everything that was unpleasant was “rotten.” Bertha Cragg had
been listening for a new and original note from some unconventional
male.
Tod had appealed to her. He was shy and unhappy, and there were
possibilities about him that were lacking in the more complacent young
men as exemplified by her brother. Bertha had a secret contempt for her
brother, that infallible young man whose greatest joy was to create an
impression.
“You haven’t had a game yet, have you?”
“No,” said Tod, “I can’t play tennis.”
“Let’s take this table. You’d soon learn; you are good at games. I
remember seeing you play football last winter.”
Tod blushed.
“Did you?”
“You saved the match for Shaston. Yes, let’s have some of these mixed
cakes, and we’ll take a teapot all to ourselves.”
Tod lost much of his palsied shyness. This girl was restoring his
self-respect; she had seen him do something finely and well, and she did
not make him feel a consummate and ignorant ass. He liked her frank
brown eyes, and her broad white teeth when she smiled, and that simple
white dress of hers. She was not so terribly fluffy and ornate as a lot
of those other women.
“Do you like games?”
“I like anything that’s natural.”
“So do I,” said Tod; “I like my swim each morning, especially when it’s
a bit rough. You feel you have beaten something.”
“I know just how you feel.”
Tod accepted her goodwill in the frank way that it was given. He was
grateful to Bertha Cragg, nor did the vanity of the self-pleased young
male suggest that the girl was “making up to him.” Tod was not fashioned
in that way. In half an hour he was talking to her without any trace of
self-consciousness, and towards the end of the afternoon he was playing
tennis as her partner, and getting the feel of his racket with the
natural quickness of a boy who had always been good at games.
They combined so well, and grew so merry and light-hearted over it that
Tod managed to forget the incident of the tea-cup and the brown stains
on his flannel trousers. And Bertha Cragg was kind to him with a new and
subtle motherliness that was very pleasant to a rather plain girl of
five-and-twenty. She liked Tod. The woman in her liked him very much
indeed.
Her brother blundered against her at the close of the afternoon. “Thanks
for looking after the kid, B. He was making rather an ass of himself.
One can’t always be running round can one?”
Bertha Cragg bent down and retied her shoe lace.
“He was shy, that’s all. You are never shy, Fred.”
“Can’t say I ever felt that way.”
“Yes, it’s rather a pity.”