The next day Mr. Smeeth struggled out of sleep to find himself faced
with one of those dark spouting mornings which burst over unhappy
London like gigantic bombs filled with dirty water. At the first sign
of the approach of one of these outrages, all clocks ought to be put
back three hours, so that everybody might stay in bed until their
fury is spent. There is no end to their malice. They sweep, lash, and
machine-gun the streets with rain; they send up fountains of mud from
every passing wheel; they contrive that fires shall not burn and water
boil, that tea shall be lukewarm, bacon fat congealed, and warranted
fresh eggs change in their very cups to mere eggs and dubious; they
make the husband turn on the wife, the father on the child, and thus
help to ruin all family life; and they lavishly sow all the ills that
townsmen know, colds, indigestion, rheumatism, influenza, bronchitis,
pneumonia, and are indeed the industrious hirelings of Death.
“Got your umbrella?” said Mrs. Smeeth. She had been out of bed over an
hour, but somehow looked as if her real self was still there, as if
this was a mysteriously wrapped wraith of herself she had projected
downstairs. “Goo’-bye, then. You’ll have to run for it, Dad.”
Dad did not run for it, but he managed to trot down Chaucer Road and
then along the neighbouring street, but after that he had a pain
over his heart and was reduced to a sort of quick shamble. Before
he reached the High Street and his tram, the bottom of his trousers
were unpleasantly heavy, his boots (one of Mrs. Smeeth’s bargains and
made of cardboard) gave out a squelching sound, and the newspaper he
carried was being rapidly reconverted into its original pulp. The tram,
its windows steaming and streaming, was more crowded than usual, of
course, and carried its maximum cargo of wet clothes, the wearers of
which were simply so many irritable ghosts. After enormous difficulty,
Mr. Smeeth succeeded in filling and lighting his morning pipe of T.
Benenden’s Own, and then--so stubborn is the spirit of man--succeeded
in unfolding and examining his pulpy newspaper. Before he had reached
the end of City Road, he had learned that the cost of a public school
education was too high, that the night clubs on Broadway were not
doing the business they had done, that a man in Birmingham had cut his
wife’s throat, that students in Cairo were again on strike, that an
old woman in Hammersmith had died of starvation, that a policeman in
Suffolk had found six pound notes in the prisoner’s left sock, and that
bubonic plague is conveyed to human beings by fleas from infected rats.
And Angel Pavement, when he arrived there, looked as if it had been
plucked, grey and dripping, from the bottom of an old cistern.
It was an unpleasant morning at the office. To begin with, the
situation was more puzzling than ever. Once more, Mr. Dersingham did
not appear, but telephoned about half past ten to say that he would
not be there until late afternoon and would Mr. Smeeth “just carry
on.” Goath did not reappear, and Mr. Smeeth felt sure now that he had
vanished for ever. Then Miss Matfield was haughtier than usual, and
very cross. Young Turgis, who had contrived to get wetter than anybody
else on his way up to the office, went slouching about with a long
pale face, and every now and then startled and intimidated everybody by
sneezing explosively. Stanley, at odds with the weather, the world, and
his present destiny, hung about and got in people’s way, and when told
to get on with his work, pointed out, not very respectfully, that he
hadn’t any work, and Mr. Smeeth did not find it easy to supply him with
any. Several inquiries by telephone could not be properly answered,
always an unsatisfactory state of affairs. Mr. Smeeth had sufficient
routine work to carry him through the morning, but he felt queerly
insecure, not at all happy with his books, his neat little figures, his
pencil, rubber, blue ink and red ink, now that he no longer knew what
was happening to the firm. It was like trying to post a ledger swinging
above a dark gulf.
Lunch time found him at his usual teashop, sitting at a wet
marble-topped table and waiting for his poached egg on toast and cup
of coffee. The wet morning had perished outside, where there was even
a faint gleam of sunshine, but it had found a haven in this teashop,
which seemed to be four hours behind the weather in the street, for it
was all damp and steaming. Mr. Smeeth was jammed into a corner with
another regular patron, a man with a glass eye, bright blue and with
such a fixed glare about it that the thing frightened you. Mr. Smeeth
was sitting on the same side as the glass eye, and as the owner of it,
who was busy eating two portions of baked beans on toast and drinking a
glass of cold milk, never turned his head as he talked, the effect was
disconcerting and rather horrible.
“Firm we’ve been doing business with,” said the man, disposing of a few
beans that had quitted their toast, “has come a nasty cropper--a ve-ery
nasty cropper. Claridge and Molton--d’you know ’em? Oh, very nasty.”
“Is that so?” said Mr. Smeeth politely, looking from his poached egg at
the glaring blue eye and then looking away again. “Don’t think I know
the firm.”
“No, well, you mightn’t,” the eye continued, as if it had its doubts
about that, though. “But they’ve been a well-known house in the
wholesale umbrella trade for donkeys’ years, specially for ribs,
handles, and tips. I remember the time when they carried a line of ribs
nobody else could touch--same with the tips. If you’d come to us ten
years ago, or five years ago, or even three years ago, and said, ‘We
can offer you a line in ribs and tips that’ll make Claridge and Molton
look silly,’ if you’d said that, we’d have laughed at you.”
“No doubt,” said Mr. Smeeth, quite seriously.
“And up to eighteen months ago, I’d have told you that Claridge and
Molton was one of the soundest concerns in the business. And look at
’em now. Properly in Queer Street. Absolutely down the river.”
Mr. Smeeth manfully faced the blue glare. “How d’you account for it?”
he inquired, not out of mere politeness but because he really wanted to
know.
“This milk doesn’t taste right this morning,” his neighbour remarked
mournfully. “They’ve had it near something. I’m giving it a miss. What
was that?” And here the eye turned balefully. “Oh, about Claridge
and Molton. Well, young Molton’s the one that’s upset their little
apple-cart. He took charge about a couple of years ago, then began
staying away all day--likes his whisky, y’know--drew heavily on the
firm--sacked their oldest man, old Johnny Fowler, for something and
nothing. Probably tight at the time--young Molton, I mean, not Johnny
Fowler--he never took a drop. And there you are! You can’t do it,
y’know, you can’t do it. Can you?”
“No,” said Mr. Smeeth sadly, “you can’t.”
“Course you can’t,” the eye concluded. “Not nowadays. It’s all too
keen, too much competition. You’ve got to watch yourself all the time.
Isn’t that so? Eh, miss, miss! My check, miss. And, I say, what about
this milk?”
Mr. Smeeth finished his coffee, mechanically filled and lit his pipe,
then pushed his way out of the place. He felt miserable. For all he
knew to the contrary, Mr. Dersingham might be following the example of
this young Molton. Hadn’t Mr. Dersingham just started staying away
from the office all day? Hadn’t he just sacked _their_ oldest man,
Goath? As he moved slowly along, sometimes staring into the windows
of shops that meant nothing to him, Mr. Smeeth found himself going
over all the possible ways in which a firm might come a nasty cropper,
arrive at Queer Street, go down the river, and they seemed so numerous,
so inevitable, that he saw himself joining the wretched army of the
hangers-on, the dispossessed, at any moment. And, at the corner of
Chiswell Street, he gave a man twopence for a box of matches.
When he let himself quietly into the office, he heard loud voices, and
thought for a moment that something exciting was happening. But then he
caught the words.
“I shaddered him all down Victoria Park Road,” Stanley was saying
triumphantly, “and he never knew.”
“Well, why should he?” Turgis demanded, contemptuously. “He didn’t know
you were following him, you little chump.”
“I know he didn’t,” cried Stanley. “That’s it. That’s where shadderin’
comes in----”
“Well, shadowing can come out,” Mr. Smeeth announced. “And if you don’t
get on with some work, my boy, you’ll be finding yourself shadowing
down those steps. Come on, Turgis, you ought to know a bit better.
Standing there talking a lot of nonsense!”
“I was telling him it was nonsense,” said Turgis, rather sullenly.
“He’s got this shadowing on the brain. He goes following some chap for
miles, and then because this chap doesn’t take any notice of him--he
doesn’t know he’s there, of course, and doesn’t care, anyhow--he thinks
he’s a little Sexton Blake.”
“No, I don’t,” said Stanley, wrinkling up his freckled face until it
achieved a look of intense disgust.
“The best thing you can do, Stanley,” said Mr. Smeeth, sitting down at
his desk, “is to drop these silly tricks. They’ll get you into trouble
one of these days. Why don’t you do something sensible in your spare
time? Get a hobby. Do a bit of fretwork or collect foreign stamps or
butterflies or something like that.”
“Huh! Nobody does them things now. Out of date,” Stanley muttered.
“Well, work’s not out of date, not here, anyhow,” Mr. Smeeth retorted,
in time-old schoolmaster fashion. “So just get on with a bit.”
Miss Matfield arrived, quarter of an hour late, as usual. “Don’t talk
to me, anybody,” she commanded. “I’m furious. Of all the foul lunches
I’ve ever had in this city, to-day’s was the foulest. It makes me
sick to think about it. Look here, is Mr. Dersingham ever coming here
again? It’s absurd--I’ve got umpteen things for him to sign. Can you do
anything with them, Mr. Smeeth?”
“I’ll have a look at them, Miss Matfield,” said Mr. Smeeth wearily. The
afternoon dragged on.