Seated at his table, looking through the morning’s letters, as he
was now, Howard Bromport Dersingham might have been accepted as a
typical specimen of the smart younger City man. At a first glance, he
seemed the brother of all those smart younger City men who figure in
advertisements, wearing unique collars, ties, suits, examining the
infallible watch, or looking at a vision of less successful men who
have never taken the particular correspondence course. He looked much
too good for Angel Pavement, where business is merely business and a
rather haphazard and dusty affair at that. He would not have seemed out
of place in one of those skyscrapers filled with terrifically efficient
and successful operatives and administratives, in those regions where
business is not at all a haphazard and dusty affair and takes on a
solemn air, even a mystical tinge, as if it really explained the
universe. It appeared absurd that such a fellow and all his concerns
should be sandwiched between the _Kwik-Work Razor Blade Co._ and the
_London and Counties Supply Stores_.
Another glance or two, however, would reveal the fact that he was only
a rough, weakly unfinished sketch of the type. The hard-boiled eye,
the chiselled nose, the severely controlled mouth, the masterful chin,
all these were missing, and in their place were ordinary masculine
English features, neither very good nor very bad, very strong nor
very weak. Mr. Dersingham was a year or two under forty, tallish,
fairly well-built but beginning to sag a little; his hair, which was
now rapidly taking leave of him, was light brown, and his eyes light
blue, and they neither sparkled nor pierced but just regarded the
world blandly and amiably; he had retained one of those short pruned
moustaches that crept under the noses of so many subalterns during
the War; and he looked clean, healthy and kind, but a trifle flabby
and none too intelligent. It was only after the War, during which he
had assisted, with rapidly diminishing enthusiasm, one of the new
battalions of the Royal Fusiliers, that he had joined his uncle at
Twigg & Dersingham’s. Before the War he had tried various things with
no particular success, though he liked to suggest that the War had
almost ruined his prospects. (In strict fact, it had improved them,
for his uncle would never have taken him into the business, and left
it to him when he died, if he had not taken pity on him as a returned
hero.) It had been the intention of his parents to send Howard Bromport
to Oxford or Cambridge, but they had lost money suddenly and Howard
Bromport, no scholar, had failed to obtain a scholarship, so he had
been compelled to stroll into business. In spirit, however, he went on
to the university, and thus he became one of those men who are haunted
by a lost Oxford or Cambridge career. These are not the scholars or the
brilliant athletes who have been denied their chance of distinction,
but simply the fellows who have been robbed of an opportunity of
acquiring more striped ties, college blazers, and tobacco jars
decorated with college coats-of-arms, in short, the fervent freshmen
who never had the freshman nonsense knocked out of them. They it is
who turn into the essential public school “old boys.” Dersingham was a
tremendous “old boy.” He never missed a reunion, never failed to renew
his stock of school ties. The public school spirit worked for ever in
him. He was always ready to do the decent thing--and this was not hard,
for he was really a decent, kindly soul, stupid though he might be--not
for your sake, not for his own, but “for the sake of the old school.”
Strictly speaking, that school, Worrell (one of the second-class public
schools, fatally second-class but terrifically public school) is not
very old, but it has turned out so many fellows like Dersingham that it
has acquired, by verbal association, the antiquity of Eton. Perhaps the
shortest definition of Dersingham--and he himself would have asked for
no other--was that he was an old Worrelian.
He did not play games very well and was not even a good judge of them,
but he liked nothing better than solemn long discussions about them, in
which minor pedantries could be thrashed out to the bitter end. Still,
he played golf nearly every week-end, a little lawn tennis, and when
the Charlatans had to turn out a third side at cricket, he sometimes
turned out with them, as a possible slow bowler. (For four weeks
every year he dropped the old Worrelian and wore the Charlatan tie.)
He smoked considerable quantities of _Sahib Straight Cut Virginia_
cigarettes, drank steadily but not too much for reasonable health
and decency, delighted in detective and adventure stories, humorous
anecdotes, jigging easy tunes, musical comedies, and good loud talk in
which everybody agreed with everybody else except about things that
could not matter very much to anybody, disliked literature, art and
music, cranks and fanatics of every kind, most foreigners, anything
or anybody really mean or cruel (when he could see the meanness and
cruelty), and all the opinions that newspaper editors asked him to
dislike. He had one or two real friends, a host of acquaintances, and
a wife and two children whom he did not understand but of whom he was
genuinely fond.
And now, after glancing through the letters, most of which were merely
offers to sell him something he did not want, he sat on, stroking his
ruddy cheek, looking puzzled and feeling puzzled. After a few minutes
of this, he took a sheet of paper and carefully made some notes upon
it. He did this all the more carefully because he felt that somehow by
writing down what was already in his head, he was really grappling hard
with the problem. Having frowned at these notes for another minute or
so, he shook himself, set his face in hard business-like lines, reached
out for a cigarette and then remembered that there were none, and rang
the bell.
Miss Matfield appeared, or rather a notebook and pencil appeared, with
a shadow of Miss Matfield in charge of them.
“I’m sorry, Miss Matfield,” said Mr. Dersingham, with true old
Worrelian courtesy. “I’d forgotten I’d told you to come in. I think I’d
better see Mr. Smeeth and Mr. Goath first, and you can take down some
letters afterwards. Will you ask them to come in--and then--er--just
carry on with something, eh?”
“Very well,” said Miss Matfield.
“Good!” said Mr. Dersingham. He never felt sure how he ought to handle
Miss Matfield, quite apart from the fact that she seemed to him a
rather formidable sort of girl. Her father, he knew, was a doctor,
only a doctor in the country now, miles from anywhere, but he had once
played scrum half with the Alsations. Ordering about the daughter of a
scrum half of the Alsations, just as if she was some ordinary little
tuppenny-ha’penny typist, was a ticklish business. And that was why Mr.
Dersingham added “Good!”: it meant that he knew all about the surgery
and the Alsations.
“You fellows had better sit down,” he said to Smeeth and Goath. “We
may be some time over this. That’s right. Now wait a minute. Let me
see, Goath, you’re making--what? Two hundred, plus commission, that’s
it, isn’t it? And you, Smeeth, what are you getting now? Three-fifteen,
isn’t it?”
Mr. Smeeth, troubled, admitted that it was. He had seen what was coming
all along, had seen it for days and days and horrible nights.
“And what am I making?” Mr. Dersingham gave a short and embarrassed
laugh. “Well, you can imagine for yourself, Goath, and you know well
enough, Smeeth. Just lately I’ve been making nothing, not a bean. Just
paying expenses, that’s all.”
“Er,” Mr. Goath began with a pessimistic rumble.
“Just a minute. Don’t think I’m beginning like this because I think
you fellows are not earning all you make. I know you are. There’s no
question about that. But we’ve got to go into it all, haven’t we?--got
to see where we stand. I’ll tell you in strict confidence that if it
hadn’t been for my wife having a little money of her own, I couldn’t
have carried on as long as I have done. You’ve only to look at the
figures to see that for yourselves.”
Here he stopped long enough to give Mr. Goath a chance of describing
the state of the cabinet-making and wholesale furnishing trades. As
we have heard him already, we do not want to hear him again. It is
sufficient to say that his theme was that if the price was right, the
stuff wasn’t, and if the stuff was right, the price wasn’t, and that
this theme was elaborated by many variations in the minor key. And
something in the nature of a second subject, repeated continually in
the bass, was added by the statement that the speaker had been thirty
years in the trade. To all of which Mr. Dersingham and Mr. Smeeth
listened with gloomy attention.
“Well,” said Mr. Dersingham, looking at his miserable little notes,
“we’ll have to go into all that later on. We’re getting the wood from
all the same people we dealt with in my uncle’s time--and in some cases
we’re getting it on better terms than he did, isn’t that so, Smeeth?”
“Ah, but there’s more competition now, a lot more,” said Goath
dejectedly. “More and more competition, that’s the way it is. Some of
these people in the trade must be cutting it as fine as that”--and he
waggled a very dirty thumb-nail--“to get orders. Nearly giving it away.
Pay when you like, too. Foreigners,” he added darkly, “that’s what
we’re up against now, foreigners, coming over here to unload the stuff
like mad. I met one coming out of Nickman’s only yesterday morning,
coming out as I was going in, and looking as pleased with himself as
if he’d just backed a dozen winners. German he was. Speaking English
as good as you and me, and dressed all up to the nines, but German all
over him. And he had backed the winners all right, you bet he had.
Got a pocket full of orders, he had. What’s the good of having a war,
I say, if it only means Germans coming over here and pinching trade
right under our noses. Cor!--makes me sick--thirty years in the trade
and tramping round week in and week out, and nothing doin’ two-thirds
o’ the time, not a thing, and foreigners coming here with fur coats
on--fur coats! Taking the bread right out of your mouth, that’s all
they’re doing.”
“Quite so, Goath,” cried Mr. Dersingham. “I don’t say I’m not with
you there. But we can buy from Germany, just the same, and have been
doing for some time, but it’s beginning to look as if we can’t compete.
That’s what I was going to talk about, to begin with. We shall have to
try and do some cutting, too. It’s our only chance. And the only way
to do that--I think you fellows will agree, especially you, Smeeth--is
to reduce expenses. The--er--what’s-its-name--er--overhead charges
are too big.” Having found this word “overhead,” so suggestive of big
business, of keen men piling up fortunes in forty-two storey buildings,
Mr. Dersingham clutched at it thankfully: it was a floating plank on
the wide ocean of puzzle and muddle into which he had suddenly been
plunged. “That’s it. The first thing, the very first thing, we’ve got
to do is to reduce the overheads in this business.”
Mr. Smeeth tried to look very brisk and business-like, but he seemed
greyer than ever and there was a mournful droop in his voice. “Well,
we can try, sir. But it won’t be easy. We’re spending as little as we
can, here in the office.”
“Dash it all, Smeeth, I know that.” Mr. Dersingham rubbed his cheek
irritably. “But we shall have to spend less. I don’t want to do it--I
want to do the decent thing by everybody here--but you see how it is,
don’t you? Must cut something down. Now look here, to begin with,
there’s Turgis. What’s he getting? A hundred and seventy-five, isn’t
he? And Miss Matfield? We started her at three pounds a week, didn’t
we?”
“That’s right, Mr. Dersingham. It was less than she’d been getting
before, but she said she’d start at that with us, and then we’d see
about giving her a rise when she’d settled down with us. She’s a very
capable girl, very capable, and very intelligent, too, much better than
the last we had; no comparison at all.”
“And Turgis? What about him?”
“I can’t really grumble, sir,” replied Mr. Smeeth. “He does his best.
He’s a bit careless sometimes, I’ll admit, and he’s not to be trusted
far with figures yet--you remember the terrible mess he made of the
books when I was on my holidays this year?--but as these boys go
nowadays, he’s as good as the next. He doesn’t take the interest in his
work and in the firm that I did when I was his age, but then they don’t
these days, and that’s all you can say about it. Miss Matfield’s just
the same, for that matter. She does her work all right, but she’s not
_interested_, doesn’t think of herself, you might say, as one of the
firm, but just comes in the morning, does what she’s told to do, and
then goes in the evening.”
“Thinking about young men, that’s what they are, all these
typewriters,” said Goath. “Young men and dancing and going to the
pickshers, that’s what’s running in their ’eads, and you can’t expect
anything else of ’em, not in _my_ opinion. Cheeky with it, they are,
too.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Smeeth, I really am, but I don’t see anything else
for it. One of them will have to go, either Turgis or Miss Matfield. We
can’t spare you, Smeeth----”
“Thank you, sir.” And as he said it--quite simply and not with any
touch of irony--Mr. Smeeth looked still greyer. Indeed, he shook a
little.
“No question of it at all,” Mr. Dersingham continued heartily,
“absolutely none. But we’ll have to get rid of one of these two and
divide the work between us. I’ll do something. I’ll begin to type my
own letters. I’ll have a good shot at it anyhow. It’s a question now
whether you’d rather keep Turgis and let him do some of the letters
or keep Miss Matfield and divide his work between the two of you.
Stanley might do a bit more, too, if he’s got any sense. In any case,
we must have a boy, so there’s no question of getting rid of him. Now
what d’you think, Smeeth? Turgis or Miss Matfield? Nothing much in it,
I know, but you ought to decide. You’ll have most of the extra work
yourself, I expect, when it gets down to brass tacks, though, mind you,
I’m going to do a lot more myself, if I’ve time, in the office.”
Mr. Smeeth did not feel quite so bad as he had felt a minute ago, but
he felt bad enough. He tried to give all his attention to the immediate
problem, which was serious enough for him, for he knew very well that
it was he who would have to do most of the extra work, but, try as he
would, his mind wandered darkly. He could not pretend to himself now
that such pitiful economies as these could stop the rot. He had seen
it coming for months. The firm, his position, his very living, they
were all crumbling away together. The next thing would be that he would
have to accept a cut in his salary. And the next thing after that would
be finding himself outside, in Angel Pavement, with a hat on his head
and no salary, no office, nothing. He hesitated, stammering something,
rather painfully.
“I didn’t want to spring it on you,” said Mr. Dersingham, “and I
suppose you’d really like a day or two to think it over.”
“Wouldn’t think a minute if I was you,” said Mr. Goath. “Get rid of the
girl, right away, without ’esitation. They never should have started
girls in the City. The place has never been right since. Powderin’
noses! Cups o’ tea! You don’t know where y’are.”
“I would like to think it over, Mr. Dersingham,” Mr. Smeeth told him
slowly. “I don’t want to get rid of the wrong one.”
“I’d like to get it settled to-day while we’re at it, but you think
it over between now and five o’clock, and then we’ll have another
talk about it. All right then.” And Mr. Dersingham examined his notes
again, and then looked very severe. “The next thing is this question of
what-d’you-call-it--these rotters who won’t pay up. You’ve made out a
statement, have you?”
But there was a knock at the door, and Stanley sidled in, a card in his
hand. “Somebody wants to see you, sir.”
“I’m busy. Who is it? Shut the door.” He examined the card. “Never
heard of this chap. Look at this, Goath. Anybody you know? What does he
want?”
“Wanted to speak to you, sir,” replied Stanley, looking very mysterious
and important, with a hint of the “shadderer” in his manner. “Very
important. That’s what he said.”
“I’ll bet he did,” said Mr. Dersingham, with a grin at the other two.
“Probably wants to sell me some ridiculous office gadget. If he did,
though, he’d probably have something about it on his card. This is
a private card. Golspie, Golspie? No, I don’t know him. Look here,
Stanley, just tell him I’m having a discussion--no, a thingumty--a
conference, just now, but if it’s something really important, not
trying to sell me typewriters and files and muck, I’ll see him soon. He
can either call again or he can wait there. Tell him that.”
Mr. Golspie decided to wait.
V
He was still waiting there, sitting in the little chair beside the door
and behind the partition, ten minutes later. Sometimes, Stanley and
Turgis and Miss Matfield heard him stir and clear his throat. They also
caught the fragrance of the excellent cigar he was smoking. Its fumes
seemed to turn the office into a dull little box and their duties into
the most mechanical and trivial tasks. There was something rich and
adventurous about that drifting luxuriant smoke. It unsettled them.
“Who is he?” Turgis whispered. “What’s he like?”
Stanley crept nearer and curved a hand round his mouth. “He’s biggish
and broad and got a big moustache,” he whispered in reply. “D’you know
what I bet he is?”
“No, I give it up.”
“Inspector from Scotland Yard.”
“You’ve got ’em on the brain, you little chump,” said Turgis. “Course
he isn’t.”
“Well, I’ll betcher. He looks just like one. You go and have a look at
him.”
But Turgis was saved from the necessity, for the visitor suddenly
marched into the office itself.
“Where’s that boy?” he demanded. “Oh, look here, just go in again and
tell Mr. What’s-it----”
“Mr. Dersingham, sir,” said Stanley brightly, proud to serve Scotland
Yard or anybody who suggested it.
“Mr. Dersingham. Tell him I can’t wait much longer--I’m not used to
hanging about like this--and that if I go, _I go_, for good and all,
and then he’ll be sorry. D’you get that? All right then, trot off and
speak out. Wait a minute, though. He doesn’t know what I want, doesn’t
know who I am, so I’d better show him I’m not going to waste his time.”
He took something out of the small despatch case he was carrying,
and the others recognised it at once as a sample book of veneers and
inlays, a few square inches of each specimen wood, thin as cardboard,
being fastened to each stout page. “Now give him this, tell him to look
it over, and say that’s what I’ve come to talk about. D’you understand?”
Having thus despatched the boy, Mr. Golspie stood there at ease, his
feet wide apart, his big chest thrown out, coolly enjoying his cigar.
It was one of the strictest rules of the place that casual callers were
not allowed beyond the partition, and Turgis ought to have ordered him
out of the office at once. But somehow Turgis felt that this was not a
man to be ordered out of the office by him.
“Not much of a place this, I must say,” Mr. Golspie observed, looking
about him, then addressing Turgis. “But they keep you pretty busy, eh?”
“Well, they do and they don’t,” Turgis mumbled. “I mean to say,
sometimes we’re busy and sometimes we’re not. It all depends, you see.”
“I don’t see, but I’ll take your word for it. Must be a dark hole,
this, a bit later on, when you get the fogs. Too dark for my taste.
Not enough air either. I like plenty of air, though God knows it’s not
worth having when you get it, in this neighbourhood. What do they call
this street? Angel Pavement, isn’t it? That’s a dam’ queer name for a
street, though I’ve known queerer names in my time. How did it get it,
d’you know?”
Turgis admitted that he didn’t.
“Didn’t suppose you would,” the stranger told him. “Perhaps this young
lady knows. They know everything nowadays.”
Miss Matfield looked up. “No, I don’t know,” she replied, with a hint
of distaste in her tone. Then she bent her eyes to her work again. “And
I don’t care.”
“No, you don’t care,” said Mr. Golspie, bluff, hearty, and completely
unabashed. “I don’t suppose you care tuppence about the whole concern.
Why should you, anyhow? I wouldn’t, if I were a good-lookin’ girl, not
tuppence.”
Miss Matfield looked up again, this time wearily, wrinkling various
parts of her face. Then she brought to bear upon this intruder the
full force of her contemptuous gaze, which would instantly have routed
Turgis, Mr. Smeeth, or Mr. Dersingham, and a great many other people of
her acquaintance. On this objectionable man it had no effect at all.
He stared hard at her, and then smiled, or rather grinned broadly.
Defeated by such complete insensitiveness, Miss Matfield made a gesture
of annoyance, and then went on with her work, without looking up again.
“Now what the devil’s that boy doing in there!” Mr. Golspie boomed to
Turgis. “You’d better go and see if they’ve killed him. You needn’t,
though. He’s coming.”
He came, followed by Mr. Smeeth, who said: “I’m sorry you’ve been kept
waiting. Mr. Dersingham can see you now.”
They waited until they heard the door close behind him before any of
them spoke again.
“What does he want, Mr. Smeeth?” asked Turgis.
“I don’t know what he wants exactly, Turgis,” Mr. Smeeth replied. “I
take it he wants to sell us some stuff. He sent some good samples
in; really first-class Mr. Dersingham and Goath said it was. I don’t
pretend to know much about it. But I expect the price will put it out
of the question.”
“He’s a funny sort of chap, isn’t he?”
“A loathsome brute!” cried Miss Matfield from her machine. “Imagine
working for a man like that! Ghastly!”
Mr. Smeeth regarded her thoughtfully, and then, after telling Stanley
to get on with his work and if he hadn’t any work to go and find some,
he turned to regard Turgis equally thoughtfully. One of them had to
go. Should he put it to them now? Miss Matfield would probably not
care very much--it was hard to imagine her caring, though she had
been anxious enough to get the job--whereas Turgis, who had an oldish
poverty-stricken father somewhere up in the Midlands, lived in lodgings
here in London, and was lucky if he had five pounds in all the world,
would be very hard hit and would not easily find another job. It would
have to be Miss Matfield. Yet Miss Matfield, who had a good education
behind her, was the more promising worker of the two, and would take
over some of Turgis’s work and be glad to do it. Well, well, this
wanted a bit more thinking about, and, in the meantime, there were a
hundred and one little things to be done.
The three in Mr. Dersingham’s room remained there for the next half
hour, giving no sign of their existence beyond an occasional rumble of
voices. At the end of that time, the door opened, louder voices and
a fresh reek of cigars invaded the general office, and Mr. Dersingham
called out: “I say, Smeeth, we’re all going out. Shan’t be back before
lunch. I’ll give you a ring if I’m going to be any later.” And then
they were gone, leaving Mr. Smeeth and Turgis staring at one another.
The various lunch hours, beginning with Stanley’s (he went to the
_Pavement Dining Rooms_ and had sausage and mash, after all), came and
went, the afternoon wore on, and still there was no message from Mr.
Dersingham or Goath. The crescendo of the last hour of the day, when
Stanley turned berserk with the copying press and Turgis snarled at the
telephone and then yelled into it, had begun when the message actually
did arrive.
“Hello! Is that you, ol’ man--I mean, Smeeth? Dersingham speakin’.”
Even through the telephone, a strangeness, a certain richness, could be
remarked in Mr. Dersingham’s voice. He seemed quite excited.
“Smeeth speaking, Mr. Dersingham.”
“Good, very good. Well, look here, Smeeth, I shan’t be back this
afternoon. Nothing important, is there? You just carry on then--and
then--er--you know, finish off, sign anything that wants signing, then
finish off, lock up, go home.”
“That’ll be all right, Mr. Dersingham. There’s nothing very important.
But what about that business we talked about this morning? Yes, Turgis
and Miss Matfield?”
“All done with,” and the telephone seemed to chuckle. “No need to
bother about that, not the slightest. Turgis stays. Miss Matfield
stays. D’you know, Smeeth, that that girl’s father played scrum half
with the Alsations? He did--same fella, Matfield. No, she stays. Both
stay.”
“I’m very glad, sir,” said Mr. Smeeth, who really was glad, though
perhaps he was mostly puzzled. There seemed to be no sense in all this.
“Explain ev’rything in the morning, Smeeth,” continued the voice of Mr.
Dersingham. “Only person who goes is Goath.”
“What! I didn’t catch that, sir.”
“Goath, Goath. We’ve done with him. Goath’s finished with. Don’t want
to see him again. If he comes for his money, pay him at once, d’you
understand, Smeeth, at once, up to end of month. Then tell him--to
clear--right out, right out.”
“But--but what’s happened, Mr. Dersingham? I don’t understand.”
“Explain ev’rything in the morning. But you understand about Goath, eh?
Pay the blighter off if he comes, finish with him. You understand that,
eh? Righto. Carry on then, ol’ man.”
Bewildered, Mr. Smeeth laid down the receiver and walked over to his
desk. He had hardly time to collect his thoughts and to begin to wonder
whether he ought to say something to the others, when the door flew
open, almost like a vertical trap-door, to shoot into the middle of
the office, where it suddenly stopped dead, the figure of a man. It
was Goath. His ancient overcoat was still hanging from his shoulders
as if it hardly belonged to him, but, on the other hand, his bowler
hat, instead of being at the back of his head, was now tilted forward,
giving him an unusual and almost sinister look. His face was purpler
than ever; his eyes were glaring; and his mouth was opening and
shutting, as if he were an indignant fish. To say of Goath that he had
been drinking was to say nothing, for he was obviously always drinking,
but this time he had plainly had more than usual or had been mixing his
liquors. And his appearance, his manner, everything about him, was so
extraordinary that everybody in the office stopped work at once to look
at him.
“Smeeth,” the apparition cried in a thick, hoarse voice, “you pay me
my money, d’y’ear. Sala’y to end of mun’ an’ commission to yesserday.
I’ve finished wi’ Twigg an’ Dersi’am, finished, finished--com-pletely.”
Here he produced a magnificent cutting gesture that nearly upset his
balance. “I’ve finished wi’ them. They finished wi’ me. All over.”
“Mr. Dersingham’s just told me, Goath,” said Mr. Smeeth, looking at him
in astonishment. “And I’ll give you your money if you really want it
now----”
“Mus’ ’ave it. Finished--com-pletely, com-pletely.”
“But what’s happened?”
“I’ll tell you what’s ’appened,” replied Goath with tremendous
solemnity, lowering his head so far that it looked as if his hat would
fall off. “Go--Golspie, tha’s wha’s ’appened--Gol-sss-pie.”
“Who’s that? Do you mean----”
“Feller came s’mornin’.”
“But what about him?”
Goath now threw back his head and looked defiant. “Mister Wha’sit
bloody Gol-spie,” he announced with great deliberation, “tha’s the
feller. An’ he’s a--devil. I tol’ him, I tol’ him ‘Thirry years--thirry
_years_--in the trade, tha’s me.’ An’ wha’ did he say to tha’? Wha’ did
he bloody well say?”
“Here, old man, steady, steady,” Mr. Smeeth cautioned him.
“Don’t mind me,” said Miss Matfield coolly. “Go on, Mr. Goath. What did
he say? Tell us all about it.”
“Never mind wha’ he said,” cried Goath aggressively, glaring round
at them all. “Does’n’ ma’er wha’ _’e_ said. Who is ’e? Where’s ’e
come from? With ’is drinks an’ cigars! All ri’--very nice--drinks an’
cigars--but anybody can buy drinks an’ cigars, an’ _do_ buy drinks an’
cigars _and_ big lunches. It’s wha’ _I_ say--thirry years, don’ forge’
tha’, thirry years--wha’ _I_ say tha’ ma’ers. An’ I say--wha’s the
game?--where’s’e get this stuff from?--who tol’ ’im to come here?”
“Yes, but what’s this chap doing?” Mr. Smeeth asked. “That’s what I
want to know.”
“Bullyin’ an’ twistin’, tha’s wha’ ’e’s doin’,” replied Goath promptly,
taking off his hat. “An’ he’s got Mr. Dersi’am like tha’, jus’ like
tha’.” And, to the intense delight of Stanley, one hand fell heavily on
the hat. “It’s jus’ like wha’s it--y’know--wha’s it, wha’s it?” And to
show what he did mean, Goath glared harder than ever and then wiggled
his fingers in front of his eyes, directing them at Miss Matfield, who
let out a sudden peal of laughter.
“Hypnotism,” suggested Turgis.
“Tha’s ri’, boy, tha’s ri’. Hyp-no-tism. Jus’ like tha’. But not me,”
he continued, speaking very slowly and more distinctly now, “not me.
I tell ’em what I think. Begins tellin’ me I oughter to do this an’
oughter do that, an’ I won’t ’ave it. I know the trade an’ I speak my
mind. An’ another thing. If I don’t like a feller, I don’t like ’im,
and that finishes it. That feller comes ’ere, very well, I don’t, I
finish.”
“Is he coming here?” demanded Mr. Smeeth.
“You’ll see, you’ll see, Smeeth. I say no more. Finish. You just let me
’ave my money.”
“All right, Goath,” said Mr. Smeeth, who had been jotting down some
figures for the last minute or two. “I won’t keep you a minute. Then
you’d better get straight home, old man----”
“Have no ’ome,” Goath announced. “Lodgings.” He lurched up to the desk,
which was high enough for him to rest his elbows on the edge of it.
“That’s the way, Smeeth, a nice lil cheque. I tell you, Smeeth, ol’
man, you’ve always been decent to me, an’ now I’m sorry for you.”
“Well, I’m sorry too, Goath, and I must say I don’t understand
what’s happening at all. Mr. Dersingham rang up and told me you were
leaving. Are you sure it’s not all a mistake? I mean, you chaps seem
to have--er--had rather a lot to-day, you know, and in the morning you
might all feel different about it.”
With an effort Goath stood erect, and then held out his hand to Mr.
Smeeth. “No, no, I’ve finished. Shake hands, ol’ man. See you again
sometime. Meet some day--still in the trade, y’know, can’t change after
thirty years--have to stick to the trade. Goo’-bye, all.” And Goath,
after removing the dent from his hat with one fierce jab, crammed it on
the back of his head and, with a final wave of the hand, departed.
“Well, this beats me,” Mr. Smeeth confessed. “I can’t make head or tail
of it, I really can’t.”
“It looks as if that other chap is taking his place, don’t you think?”
said Turgis. “Though I must say he didn’t look as if he wanted that
sort of job. I mean, he looked too smart and bossy.”
“No, I don’t think that’s it,” Mr. Smeeth told him.
“Thank the Lord, we’ve seen the last of Mr. Goath, anyhow!” cried Miss
Matfield fervently. “I loathed the sight of him, he always looked so
dirty and dilapidated. I’m sure he was a rotten man to have going round
calling on people.”
“But what if the other chap comes?” said Turgis, grinning. “You didn’t
like the look of him, did you?”
“I should think not! I never thought of that.” She groaned as she stuck
another sheet of paper into the typewriter. “What a life!”
“That’s right, let’s get finished. Turgis, Stanley, come on, get a move
on,” said Mr. Smeeth sharply. And down below, in Angel Pavement, now
a deep narrow pool of darkness sharply spangled with electric lights,
you could hear a little host of other people finishing for the night, a
final clatter of typewriters, a banging of doors, the hooting of homing
cars, the sound of footsteps hurrying up the street towards liberty.
_Chapter Two_: MR. SMEETH IS REASSURED
I
Mr. Smeeth, still puzzling and pondering over the sullen departure of
Goath and the arrival of this mysterious Mr. Golspie, put his books
away for the night, and, as his habit was, pulled out his pipe and
tobacco pouch. The others had gone, and the office was in darkness
except for the solitary light above his desk. His pouch, one of those
oilskin affairs, was nearly empty, and he had to take out the last
crumbs in order to get a decent pipeful. He had just lit up, blown
out the first few delicious clouds, and switched off his light, when
the telephone rang sharply, urgently, in the gloom. As he groped back
to the receiver, he felt almost frightened. What was coming now? He
found himself wishing he had gone earlier, just a little earlier, but
nevertheless he had not the strength of mind to ignore the telephone’s
peremptory challenge.
“Hello?” he began.
A huge voice cut him short, came roaring out of the dark. “Look ’ere,
Charlie, what abart makin’ it fifty? Carm on, yer gotter do it, ol’
son, yer can’t get away from it----”
“Wait a moment,” Mr. Smeeth told him. “This is Twigg and Dersingham.
Who do you----”
“I know, _I know_,” the voice continued, smashing its way across London
and entirely ignoring Mr. Smeeth’s protest. “I know wotcher goin’ to
say, but it’ll ’ave to be fifty this time. I been talkin’ ter Tommy
Rawson s’afternoon, an’ ’e says yer’ll be lucky if yer get it at that.
‘Tell Charlie from me,’ ’e says, ‘’e won’t touch it under fifty an’
’e’ll be lucky if ’e gets it at that.’ Tommy’s own words them. An’ I
agree, _I agree_. Nar then, what d’yer say, Charlie?”
“You’ve got the wrong number,” cried Mr. Smeeth.
“What’s that? I want Mr. ’Iggins.”
“There’s no Mr. Higgins here. This is Twigg and Dersingham.”
“Wrong number again,” said the voice, disgusted. “Ring off--for gord’s
sake.”
Mr. Smeeth, relieved, rang off with pleasure, and departed, chuckling a
little. Who was Charlie, and what was it he had to pay fifty for, and
why did Tommy Rawson think he’d be lucky if he got it? “Might easily
be crooks,” he concluded, with a little romantic thrill, worthy of
Stanley himself, and then smiled at himself. More likely to be fellows
buying second-hand cars, loads of scrap iron, or something like that.
At the bottom of the stairs, he ran into the tall fellow with the
broad-brimmed hat, who was just coming out of his _Kwik-Work Razor
Blade_ place.
The tall man nodded. “Turning colder.”
“Just a bit,” replied Mr. Smeeth heartily. These little encounters and
recognitions pleased him, making him feel that he was somebody. “Not so
bad, though, for the time of year.”
“That’s right. Business good?”
“So-so. Not so good as it might be.” And then Mr. Smeeth let the tall
man stride away down Angel Pavement, for he remembered that he was out
of tobacco and so turned into the neighbouring shop, the one occupied
by T. Benenden.
Mr. Smeeth was one of T. Benenden’s regular customers, a patron
(perhaps the only one) of T. Benenden’s Own Mixture (_Cool Sweet
Smoking_). “No,” he liked to tell some fellow pipe-smoker, “I don’t
fancy your ounce-packet stuff. I like my tobacco freshly mixed, y’know,
and so I always get it from a little shop near the office. It’s the
chap’s own mixture and so it’s always fresh. Oh, fine stuff!--you try
a pipeful--and very reasonable. Been getting it for years now. And the
chap I get it from is a bit of a character in his way.” Saying this
made Mr. Smeeth feel that he was a connoisseur of both tobacco and
human nature, and it gave an added flavour to his pipe, which could do
with it after being charged with nothing but T. Benenden’s own mixture.
It was hardly possible that he was right about the tobacco being
“freshly mixed,” for though mixed--and well mixed--it may have been,
it could not come from T. Benenden’s little shop, with its hundreds of
dusty dummy packets, its row of battered tin canisters, its dilapidated
weight scales, its dirty counter, its solitary wheezing gas mantle, its
cobwebs and dark corners, and still be fresh. On the other hand, he was
certainly right when he described T. Benenden himself as a bit of a
character in his way.
T. Benenden’s way was that of the philosophical financier turned
shopkeeper. He was an oldish man who wore thick glasses (which only
magnified eyes that protruded far enough without their help), a
straggling pepper-and-salt beard, one of those old-fashioned single
high collars and a starched front, and no tie. When Mr. Smeeth first
visited the shop, years ago, he was at once startled and amused by
this absence of tie, jumping to the conclusion that the man had
forgotten his tie. Now, he would have been far more startled to see
Benenden _with_ a tie. He had often been tempted to ask the chap why
he wore these formal collars and fronts and yet no tie, but somehow
he had never dared. Benenden himself, though he was ready to talk on
many subjects, never mentioned ties. Either he deliberately ignored
them or he had never noticed the part these things were now playing
in the world, simply did not understand about ties. What he did like
to talk about, perhaps because his shop was in the City, was finance,
a sort of Arabian Nights finance. He sat there behind his counter,
steadily smoking his stock away, and peered at old copies of financial
periodicals or the City news of ordinary papers, and out of this
reading, and the bits of gossip he heard, and the grandiose muddle of
his own mind, he concocted the most astonishing talk. It was difficult
to buy an ounce of tobacco from him without his making you feel that
the pair of you had just missed a fortune.
As soon as he recognised Mr. Smeeth, T. Benenden very deliberately
pulled down his scales and then placed on the counter the particular
dirty old canister set apart for his own mixture. “The usual, I
suppose, Mr. Smeeth?” he said, picking up the pouch and then smoothing
it out on the counter. “I saw your chief this morning, the young
fellow--Mr. Dersingham. Came in for some _Sahibs_. Got somebody with
him too, new to me, well set up gentleman, with a good cigar in his
mouth, a very good cigar. You’ll know who I mean?”
“He called this morning at the office,” said Mr. Smeeth.
“Well, I didn’t say anything,” Benenden continued, very seriously as
he weighed out the tobacco. “It’s not my business to say anything.
I _don’t_ say anything. But I keep my eyes open. And I said to
myself, the minute they went out, ‘This looks to me as if Twigg and
Dersingham’s are moving on a bit. This has the look of a merging job,
or a syndicate job, or a trust job. And,’ I said, ‘if Mr. Smeeth does
happen to come in for the usual, I’ll put it straight to him. It’s no
concern of mine, but he’ll tell _me_. I’ll test my judgment,’ I said.”
“Sorry, Mr. Benenden,” said Mr. Smeeth, smiling at him, “but I’ve
nothing to tell you. I don’t rightly know what’s happening, but you can
depend on it, it’s nothing in that line.”
“Then,” cried Benenden, quite passionately, rolling up the pouch and
then slapping it down on the counter, “you’re wrong. I don’t mean you,
Mr. Smeeth, I mean the firm. That’s the way things are going all the
time now, Mr. Smeeth, big combinations--merging away till you don’t
know where you are--and sweeping the deck, until--dear me--there isn’t
a picking, not a crumb, left. You see what I mean? Now there’s a bit
here in one of the papers--I was just reading it when you came in--and
I don’t suppose you’ve seen it. Just a minute and I’ll find it. Now
here it is. Suppose, Mr. Smeeth, just suppose,” and here T. Benenden
leaned across the counter and his eyes seemed colossal, “I’d come to
you a fortnight since, a week since, and said to you, ‘What about
picking up a bit on South Coast Laundries?’--what would you have said?”
“I’d have said it takes me all my time to pay my own laundry bill,” Mr.
Smeeth replied, much amused by this retort of his.
T. Benenden made a slight gesture of contempt to show that this was
mere trifling. Then he looked very solemn, very impressive. “You’d have
said, ‘I can’t be bothered with South Coast Laundries. I’m not touching
’em--don’t want ’em--take your South Coast Laundries away. And you’d
have been right--as far as you could see, _then_. But what happens,
what happens? Read your paper. It’s there, under my very ’and. Along
comes a big merger--a bit of syndicate and trust work--and up they
go, right up to the top--bang! Now--you see--you can’t touch ’em. And
there’s a feller here--you can see it in the paper--who’s been clearing
anything out of it--a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand--a clean
sweep, made for life. And he’s not the only one, not a bit of it! And
we sit here, pretending to laugh at South Coast Laundries or whatever
it might be, and what are we doing? We’re missing it, that’s what we’re
doing, we’re missing it.” Here, a dramatic pause.
“And if your Mr. Dersingham isn’t careful,” Benenden concluded, still
impressive even if a trifle vague now, “_he’s_ going to miss it. He
wants to keep his eyes open. There’s one or two bits in this paper I’d
like to show him. Let’s see, what was it you gave me? Half a crown,
wasn’t it? That’s right then--one and six change. And good-night to
_you_, Mr. Smeeth.” And T. Benenden, after stooping down to the tiny
gas-jet to relight his pipe, retired to his corner to ruminate.
Mr. Smeeth made his way to Moorgate, where, as usual, he bought an
evening paper and then climbed to the upper deck of a tram. There,
when he was not being bumped by the conductor, jostled by outgoing
and incoming passengers, thrown back or hurled forward by the tram
itself, an irritable and only half tamed brute, he stared at the
jogging print and tried to acquaint himself with the latest and most
important news of the day. An excitable column and a half told him
that a young musical comedy actress, whom he had never seen and had
no particular desire to see, had got engaged, that it had been quite
a romance, that she was very very happy and not sure yet whether she
would leave the stage or not. Mr. Smeeth, not caring whether she left
the stage or dropped dead on it, turned to another column. This
discussed the problem of careers for married women, a problem that
had been left absolutely untouched since the morning papers came out,
ten hours before. It did not interest Mr. Smeeth, so he tried another
column. This reported an action for divorce, in which it appeared
that the petitioning wife had only been allowed a hundred and fifty
pounds a year on which to dress herself. The judge had said that this
seemed to him--a mere bachelor (laughter)--an adequate allowance, but
the paper had collected the opinions of well-known society hostesses,
who all said it was not adequate. Mr. Smeeth, who found he could not
share the editor’s passionate interest in this topic, now tried another
page, which promptly informed him that evening gowns would certainly
be longer this winter, and then went on to tell him, to the tune of
three solid columns, that the modern business girl (with her latch-key)
had quite a different attitude towards marriage and therefore must
not be confused with her grandmother (Victorian, with no latch-key).
Mr. Smeeth, feeling sure that he had read all this before, passed on,
and arrived at the sports page, where the prospects of certain women
golfers were discussed at considerable length. Never having set eyes on
any of these Amazons and not being interested in golf, Mr. Smeeth next
tried the gossip columns. The tram was swaying now and the print fairly
dancing, so that it was at the cost of some eye-strain and a slight
headache that he learned from these paragraphs that Lord Winthrop’s
brother, who was over six feet, intended to spend the winter in the
West Indies, that the youngest son of Lady Nether Stowey could not only
be seen very frequently at the Blue Pigeon Restaurant but was also
renowned for the way in which he painted fans, that the member for the
Tewborough Division, who must not be mistaken for Sir Adrian Putter,
now in Egypt, had perhaps the best collection of teapots of any man in
the House, and that he must not imagine, as so many people did, that
Chingley Manor, where the fire had just occurred, was the Chingley
Manor mentioned by Disraeli, for it was not, and the paragraphist, who
seemed to go about a great deal, knew them both well. Indeed, he and
his editor seemed to know all about everybody and everything, except
Mr. Smeeth and all the other staring men on the tram, and the people
they knew, and all their concerns and all the things in which they were
interested. Nevertheless, Mr. Smeeth reflected, as he carefully folded
the paper, there were a lot of things in it that his wife would like to
read. They seemed to have stopped writing penny papers for men.
Mr. Smeeth occupied a six-roomed house (with bath) in a street full
of six-roomed houses (with baths), in that part of Stoke Newington
that lies between the High Street and Clissold Park--to be precise, at
the postal address: 17, Chaucer Road, N. 16. Why the late Victorian
speculative builder had fastened on Chaucer is a mystery, unless he
had come to the conclusion that the Canterbury Pilgrims, who have
never vanished from this island, might come to rest in the twentieth
century behind his brick walls. But there it was, Chaucer Road, and
Mr. Smeeth had once tried his hand at Chaucer, but what with one thing
and another, the queer spelling and all that, had not made much of
him. All that he remembered now was that Chaucer had called birds
“Smally foulies,” and to this day, when he was in a waggish mood,
Mr. Smeeth liked to bring in “smally foulies,” only to be countered
with “You and your ‘smelly foulies!’” from a delighted Mrs. Smeeth.
Towards 17, Chaucer Road, Mr. Smeeth now stepped out, swinging his
folded newspaper, through the alternating lamplight and gloom, the
crisping air, of the autumn evening. Dinner, with a cup of tea to
follow, awaited him, for during the week, Mr. Smeeth, like a wise man,
preferred to dine when work was done for the day.