On the day that Kitty was buried Tod went to see Mr. Rathbone Cragg. He
coerced his pride, and walked with an air of briskness in the direction
of West Shaston, but when he reached the familiar doorway in Caroline
Crescent, Tod’s pride was taken sick and caused him a moment’s anguish
and indecision on the doorstep.
He was staring at the glass swing doors and at the notices of sales
pasted on the walls of the vestibule, when a girl’s figure appeared, and
pushing through, came face to face with Tod.
“Why—it’s Tod!”
And then she corrected herself.
“It’s a long time since we met, Mr. Western.”
Tod lifted his hat and looked into the fresh eyes of his old playmate.
Bertha Cragg had aged a little, not in any physical sense, for her
pleasantly plain face was still the face of a girl, but there was a
maturity about her, the purposefulness of a clever woman who had work to
do, work that she had learnt to love.
“It is a long time,” said Tod awkwardly. “Are you still in Shaston?”
“For a holiday. I work, you know; I’m helping to run a girls’ club in
London. Were you going in to see Father?”
“Yes,” said Tod, “I had thought of doing so.”
His eyes were the eyes of a man who was unhappy. Nor was he the Tod whom
she had known, the Tod of the sea and the tennis-court and the wild
tramps through Sussex gorse, but a troubled Tod, a man who was
shouldering his way through disillusionment, and looking for something
that he had lost.
She wanted to talk to him; she wanted him to tell her why he was
unhappy, but life had taught her the finer reticences of life, and to be
careful how she laid a meddling hand on other people’s pride.
“You’ll find Father in his room. I’ll take you in.”
It was a generous thought, a sensitive bit of intuition, a glimpsing of
Tod as a man who had fallen on evil times and who had come to ask some
sort of favour. She saved him the wait in the outer office, and all
those little paltry details that a proud man resents, and more
especially did she save him from falling into the supercilious hands of
her brother Fred. By her own judging “Fred had become impossible.” His
intellectual priggishness fitted him like a well-cut coat.
“Here is Mr. Western, Father. We just met on the doorstep. He wants to
see you.”
She smiled Tod into the inner office, closed the door on him, and walked
calmly past her brother, who was looking at her with the irritable eyes
of a man who had been too late to intervene.
Mr. Rathbone Cragg was embarrassed, but he was less embarrassed than
Tod.
“Sit down, Western. What can we do for you? Find you a house?”
“You can let mine if you like,” said Tod; “I’m getting out of it, and
selling the business.”
“Tired of it?”
“Partly that. I have private reasons for getting out of it.”
There was a pause. Mr. Cragg’s hands were fidgeting with his watch
chain, and Tod seemed to be interested in his own boots. Both men were
shy of each other, but Mr. Cragg was a tough old worldling and had
learnt not to mix sentiment with business.
“I was sorry when you left here, Western, but, of course, conditions are
different now. I should have liked you back in the office.”
Tod’s brightening eyes betrayed him to Mr. Cragg.
“I was very happy here,” said Tod, “and I was keen on houses, but I
suppose you have no room now?”
“None—none at all. Besides—I expect you are feeling too big for the
old terms, Western?”
“I couldn’t expect anything better.”
Mr. Cragg saw how it was with him. Old Cragg was a far better man than
his son, and he had mellowed of late years, but he was extraordinarily
cautious. Big Mr. Julian Burgetrode was still of considerable
importance.
“Why don’t you write to Mr. Burgetrode?” he asked Tod with sudden
directness.
Tod stared at him.
“What for?”
“Well, he was a little interested in you, Western.”
Tod’s eyes grew obstinate.
“I couldn’t do it; private reasons. I thought I would just come and see
if there was any chance.”
Tod got up, feeling himself mortified and superfluous.
“I don’t foresee anything at the moment, Western, but there is just a
chance that we may be opening a branch agency at Pentworth.”
“Pentworth! Why, I was born there,” said Tod.
“But it’s quite undecided,” Mr. Cragg went on, ignoring the sentimental
possibilities of Tod’s remark. “If anything materialises and there
happens to be an opening, I’ll write to you, Western.”
“Thank you,” said Tod, and made his escape, receiving a casual nod from
Fred Cragg as he passed through the outer office.
But old Rathbone Cragg was not suffered to go to bed before he had
reconsidered his attitude towards Tod. After dinner Bertha followed him
into the library, and sat on the edge of the table and smoked her
cigarette. Old Cragg was very fond of Bertha; also—he was a little
afraid of her. She was a young woman of surprise, a young woman with a
heart that was bigger and a head that was broader than the hearts and
heads of the Cragg family. She made her brother appear just a cocky,
conceited “swat” from school, and old Cragg loved her little finger
better than Fred’s whole body.
“What did Tod Western want, Father?”
Old Cragg tried to take refuge in the daily paper, but Bertha extracted
him from its paragraphs and made him pay attention. There were times
when she “managed” him, and the hard old boy chuckled in secret, and
rather liked it. He disapproved of that cigarette of hers; but then—it
was Bertha’s cigarette.
“Western? Oh, young Western? Business—that’s all.”
“I wondered—I had an idea—and I’m just wondering whether I was right.
He wanted to come back to you?”
Mr. Cragg gave a little heave in his chin, a heave that said, “Confound
the girl!”
“Of course, I could not take him,” he admitted; “Reeves is very
satisfactory, and there is no room.”
“So he _did_ want to come back! He’s very unhappy, Daddy, about
something.”
“I don’t wonder,” said her father; “they say he’s bankrupt. That fool of
a wife of his.”
Bertha’s memories winced.
“I’m going away to-morrow, Daddy, you know. It would rather please me if
you tried to take Tod back.”
Old Cragg showed a certain testiness.
“I don’t think it is your—your business—to interest yourself in
Western, my dear. After all——”
“After all, I used to be rather fond of him, Daddy. You see, I’m not
ashamed of it. He had the making of rather a fine man.”
“Well, he shouldn’t have married that little——”
“We all do things we shouldn’t do. What about that new office at
Pentworth?”
“My dear Bertha!”
“There”—and she went over and kissed him—“I’m not going to worry you.
We have always been such good friends, you and I, and you can be—rather
generous sometimes.”
Mr. Cragg disbelieved her. He was not generous, and never had been
generous, but he supposed he would have to reconsider his attitude
towards Tod.
“If Reeves goes to Pentworth I might take Western in.”
“I don’t think you would regret it,” she said.
“There’s Fred to be considered. I don’t think that Fred would approve.”
“Fred approves of nothing but himself, Daddy.”
Old Cragg chuckled. There were times when he disliked his son.
Tod, meanwhile, was in search of rooms. He had arranged to have his
furniture sold, and to leave “Carnarvon” at the end of the month, and in
his quest for rooms he appealed to Tom Lavender, sitting on one of the
cane-topped stools in Mr. Lavender’s little shop and talking to him as
to a friend who understood.
The big, blond lover of birds was the very man to lay a cooling hand on
Tod’s feverishness.
“What kind of rooms do you want?”
“Something simple and cheap, with a bit of garden to look at. We should
have to do our own cooking.”
Mr. Lavender smiled at Tod.
“I have a couple of rooms upstairs that I never use; they would want a
little extra furniture. If you care to look at them——”
Tod’s worried face lit up eagerly.
“It’s awfully good of you, Tom. I’d try not to be any trouble.”
“Come up and have a look.”
They were pleasant rooms at the top of Mr. Lavender’s old house, with
lilacs in bloom in the garden below, and all Mr. Lavender’s roses ready
to celebrate June. The carpets were worn and the furniture casual and
decrepit, but Tod saw the possibilities of such a home. The atmosphere
of the house was so calm and clean, for it held the soul of a man who
was happy.
“Your wife could use the kitchen. I’ll arrange that with Mrs. Jelf.”
“And what shall I pay you, Tom?” Tod asked.
“I don’t see that you need pay me anything; just your share of the coal
and gas.”
“That won’t do, old man,” said Tod.
“Well, I don’t know what to ask?” smiled the lover of birds.
“Let Mrs. Jelf settle it.”
Mrs. Jelf was Tom Lavender’s cook-housekeeper. So Mrs. Jelf was asked to
arbitrate, after Tod had explained to her she was not to be called upon
to do any extra work, and that if she disapproved of Millie using the
kitchen for a short time each day, he—Tod—would buy an oil-cooker.
“Beastly things,” said Mrs. Jelf. “I don’t mind a little company.”
For Mrs. Jelf happened to be a foolish old woman who thought Mr. Tom
Lavender one of the greatest men on earth. Everything he did was right,
and everything he said was the essence of wisdom, nor were Mrs. Jelf’s
prejudices wholly contemptible. “He’s always doing kind things,” she
said, “and I’ve never known him out of temper, never even cross over his
food.” Mrs. Jelf thought him a saint.
Tod walked out of Mr. Lavender’s shop a very much happier man. He had
had a long talk with Tom, and he felt as though he had been for one of
those long tramps through the green ways of Sussex or climbing the downs
with the sea wind in his face. Tom Lavender was a healer. He lived for
the love of living and the love of all living things, and not for money.
When Tod returned to the garage in Duke Street, he found a bumptious
little man very busy in his shirt-sleeves, standing by one of the taxis,
with his right hand all grease. It was Mr. Charlie Britt of the firm of
Pumpelly and Britt, who had been puddling in the car’s gear-box to
satisfy himself as to the state of the gears. Love was crouching at the
back of the car unscrewing the nuts holding the inspection plate of the
differential, so that Mr. Britt could take a look at the crown wheel.
“Morning, Western. Don’t mind me poking my nose into things, I suppose.”
“What’s the reason?” Tod asked.
“We may make an offer for your show. It’s for sale, isn’t it?”
“It is,” said Tod.
Mr. Britt wiped his hands on a lump of cotton waste.
“No pig in a poke for me, thank you. Those gears aren’t so bad, but your
man tells me one big-end wants seeing to.”
“She knocks awful,” said Love from behind the car.
Tod felt annoyed, and yet he realised the inevitableness of Mr. Britt’s
suspicions. Moreover, he was not pleased to think of old Pumpelly buying
up his business. The thing smacked of defeat and of failure, and Tod’s
teeth were on edge.
“There’s not much wrong with the cars. I’d tell you if there were.”
“Oh, no doubt,” said the little man, pushing rudely past Tod and joining
Love at the rear of the car.
Tod stood there listlessly, telling himself that it was sheer
foolishness for him to resent Charlie Britt’s casual scepticism. Britt
believed in disbelieving everybody and trusting to his own sharp wits;
and he had found that it paid. Especially was it necessary to believe
that most of the men who worked for you were liars.
“Yes, not so bad,” said the brisk voice from behind the car, “but those
back springs look a little bit wheezy. Rock her, will you?”
This was to Tod, but Tod did not move. Britt stood up and gave him a
quick look.
“Sulky,” he thought. “Well, we’ve smashed you, anyway.”
When Pumpelly’s partner had looked at the cars, he bustled round the
whole place with the air of a prospective proprietor. Tod went into the
office and sat down at his desk. Charles Britt was making him feel very
sore.
The little man hunted him out.
“You’ve let your chaps slack pretty badly, Western.”
“Have I?” said Tod, resenting the tone of patronage.
“Some of your petrol cans are only two-thirds full. A bit of private
trade been going on somewhere. And I should think half your tools must
be missing.”
“Well, you’re not buying the missing ones.”
Britt pulled out a pair of nail-scissors and cleaned his nails. He
believed in a smart exterior.
“There’s only one way to handle the English workingman, and that’s to
keep him under, Western, keep him afraid. Fear’s the only thing that
keeps ’em afraid. You’ve been too soft on your men.”
“Much obliged,” said Tod. “Have a cigarette.”
Britt polished the nails of his left hand by rubbing them on the back of
his right-hand fingers.
“Always calling themselves skilled men too, and their bally trade union
tosh! Why, I learnt more than most of ’em know and learnt it in two
months. Booze and no-brain-piece; that’s what’s wrong with most of them.
Good morning to you.”
“Good morning,” said Tod, realising in a dull sort of way why he had
been unable to compete with such an alert and cynical little devil.
At “Carnarvon” that evening Tod was able to tell Millie that he had
found rooms, and she received the news with the sulky bitterness that
had characterised her since his discovery of her intrigue with Maurice
Goldstein. She accepted all Tod’s plans for the future, apathetically
and without comment, as depressed as a cat that had been turned out into
the rain. A natural indolence made her surrender all the more easy. She
had no alternative to offer. She would sit at the closed window of her
fate till someone came and opened it.
“Tom Lavender’s such a sportsman, and they’re quite jolly rooms,” said
Tod, “a sitting-room and a bedroom, and the use of the kitchen.”
“I can’t cook,” said his wife.
Tod stared. He had thought that all women could cook.
“Well, you’ll soon learn, and I dare say Mrs. Jelf will help you to
begin with. We can live quite quietly there, while I look around. No
more building of top stories until we have made sure of the
foundations.”
His cheerfulness amazed her, even though she guessed that his
cheerfulness was artificial. To the sensual and richly coloured young
woman the picture that he painted of life in Shaston lodgings was
utterly dreary and banal. Making beds, emptying slops, messing in the
kitchen, going out with a basket to buy food, getting meals ready,
always meals with a hungry man waiting for them, and then the disgusting
business of washing up. It was plain that Tod expected her to do all
this and saw nothing strange in her doing it.
And then—her clothes. Where was she going to put them all? For her
wardrobe had been something of a Pandora’s box, and Tod was not supposed
to know the whole extent of her extravagance. And he would always be
messing about in her bedroom. Even at Horrox and Horrox’s she had had a
little room of her own.
“Beastly!” was her verdict.
But to Tod she said nothing. For the future she would sit like a cat,
waiting.