Macpherson, chief of the clerical staff—a dour loyal Scotchwoman of
forty, dressed in the usual blouse and skirt, the bad boots of her
order. She carried “the post” in one hand, her note-book in the other;
took the vacant stool next to Simpson; said “Your letters, Mr. Simpson,”
in a firm, tired voice.
Simpson began to dictate, hesitatingly; querying this; consulting her
about that.
“In reply to your favour of even date. . . .”
Peter got up; wandered out into the warehouse; began a leisurely
inspection of some newly-arrived dock-samples; pushed an oily _Corona_
from the centre of a ribboned bundle; lit it.
Came Elkins. “Smooth” is the only adjective applicable to the new-comer.
He had a smooth voice, smooth hair, smooth hands, a smooth manner and a
very smooth silk-hat. He was clean-shaven, jet-haired; looked more like
a junior clerk in Rothschild’s Bank than junior partner in a mercantile
business.
“Good afternoon, Peter,” he said. “What’s the trouble?”
“Afternoon, Elkins. Come inside, won’t you?”
Peter led the way into a tiny room off the warehouse: a room furnished
with two chairs, a small gas-stove, and many cedar cabinets of cigars.
“Coffin department?” queried Elkins, sitting down. . . .
“I wanted to speak to you about Beckmanns,” began Peter, not
acknowledging the trade jest.
“Oh, we’ve been doing very little with the brand lately. The stuff’s no
good, you know. Too strong. And the dollar-prices on current sizes too
high.”
“Really,” said Peter, who had for some years been drawing a small
clandestine commission on the imports of both his competitors. “Then of
course you won’t mind having to stop importing them.”
At this, it seemed as though little wrinkles creased themselves all over
Elkins’ smoothnesses.
“Stop importing them? What do you mean?”
Peter told him; not omitting to mention that “pending orders” would not
be shipped.
“But this is outrageous,” burst out young Elkins. “Positively
outrageous. Why, we’ve been handling their goods for years. For years
and years. Got customers for them. Customers who won’t take anything
else.”
“Yes, I know,” sympathized Peter: and named them.
Elkins changed his note. “You don’t really mean to cut us off, Peter.”
“Of course I do.”
“But we’d buy the goods from you; pay you cash for them.”
“Till you’d persuaded your customers to try something else. Not much.
Besides, I want _all_ the profit; not just a percentage.”
“But the pending orders. They’re mostly sold in advance. It will make us
look ridiculous. Positively ridiculous. I don’t know _what_ my father
will say. . . .”
It was five o’clock by the time that Peter—having reluctantly promised
to “think over” the matter of the pending orders—got rid of him; joined
Simpson for a cup of tea.
“You know,” said Simpson, “I simply can’t get over this contract
business.” He pulled a piece of scribbling paper towards him, started
figuring. “It means at least £1500 a year more profit. There’s the
Cunard Company—they’ve been buying from Beresfords. And Towle at the
Midland—that’s Elkins’ account. . . . I must talk to the travellers
about this. Hargreaves is in the suburbs today; he won’t be in till the
morning. I’ve written Mallabone to come up on Saturday. . . .”
“Oh, damn the travellers,” pronounced Peter. “They’re no good for this
sort of job. We’ll have to do it ourselves.”
* * * * *
He took the Tube as far as Oxford Circus; walked slowly down Regent
Street into Piccadilly Circus. All about him lights blazed, motors
thrummed and hooted, people jostled. London, London as she was towards
the end of the Great Peace! London,—tango-dancing, theatre-going,
night-clubbing London! London! City of the seven millions, where—scum
that floated upwards, glistening, utterly useless—loose women and
vicious politicians, emasculate authors and popularity-hunting actors,
rag-time dancers and company-promoters, preened and bloated, spent and
gambled, fooling away the night-time. Yet London—for all this scum that
fed upon her fineness—solid at heart, worthy if deceptive capital of an
Empire compared with whose achievements Rome was a weakling and Athens a
nonentity.
But Peter Jameson, worker, cared for none of these things!
He looked up at the electric signs that winked and glinted on the
darkness: at the “Paripan Paint” sign, and the two whirling clock-faces
over Saqui and Lawrences’s, at the snaky twirls of “Oxo” and the high
circles of “O. O.” Whisky. And he visioned—vaguely, for it was three
years since his last visit—Broadway, New York: Rosbach’s burning
fountain, “Owl” Cigars, “Anargyros” Cigarettes, the theatre lamps and
the drugstore lamps. “They, the Americans, understood advertising;
responded to it. Compared with them, we were only children,” thought
Peter Jameson. “Confound it, why should the home-trade of Nirvana lag
behind the export?”
Then he glanced at the watch on his wrist; saw it was nearly half past
seven; remembered—for the first time since leaving Lowndes Square in
the morning—that he possessed a wife.
PART TWO
NIRVANA, LIMITED
§ 1
“Pretty” Bramson—black well-oiled hair, curled moustaches, blue eyes
and general dapperness had earned the nickname when, as East County
salesman for his cousin Marcus Bramson, owner of Bramson’s “Pulman”
Virginias, he had first gone “on the road”—sat pensive in the
sales-manager’s office of Nirvana Ltd., Manufacturers of High Grade
Cigarettes. The room was large, well carpeted, glinting with mahogany.
On the walls hung sales-charts, specimen advertisements for the Press,
show cards—gaudy but efficient—for tobacconists’ windows. Through the
thin partition, he heard the whirr of fly-wheels, subdued chatter of
work-girls, Turkovitch’s voice raised in sharp expostulation,
occasionally the thump which told him that the new “U.K.” machine—their
fourth—was being swiftly erected. But “Pretty” Bramson thought only
indirectly of Nirvana.
He had dined, the night before, with his cousin Marcus; and Marcus had
asked, quite casually, about the factory. “Were they earning dividends
yet? Why didn’t one see the stuff about more? How about the export
trade?” Marcus had hinted too, barely hinted, that if at any time. . . .
“Pretty” Bramson put the temptation resolutely behind him. Jamesons had
plenty of capital; could always find more if they wanted it. Besides, he
had a little money put by himself. Probably, if things continued to go
well, “young Peter” would let him in as a minority shareholder.
Afterwards, they would float it on the public. Meanwhile, £500 a year
plus a sliding-scale commission on the constantly increasing output was
not to be sneezed at by a man of thirty-two.
§ 2
Peter Jameson paid his taxi; threw away the stump of his after-breakfast
cigar; and walked straight through the open doors of the goods entrance
into his factory.
He was neither an over-imaginative nor a romantic person, this quiet
gray-eyed young man in the bowler hat and the well-cut tweed overcoat:
but he never could look at that big glass-roofed building, at the
work-girls in their clean smocks, at the vague forms of machinery
whirling away behind their frosted-glass partitions, at the men pricking
and soldering the vacuum export-tins (plunged base-deep in hot sand to
expel the corrupting air), at the great bins of sweet-smelling
tobacco,—at the whole paraphernalia of this living entity he was
creating—without a certain thrill of satisfaction. He had given up a
good deal for this same Nirvana—leisure, money, his gun in the little
Norfolkshire shoot, trout fishing, the possibility of a car. But
Nirvana, almost home! was worth it.
Ivan Turkovitch bustled out from behind one of the partitions; trotted
over.
“Vell, Petere. And how are you? Come overe and see de new machine. Ve
are just getting him put up. Peautiful!”
The small hands gesticulated satisfaction; the tawny beard waggled
accompaniment. Like the rest of his “vork-peoples,” Turkovitch wore a
smock. It made him a rather grotesque little figure.
But Turkovitch’s satisfaction, as an artist, with the growth of the
factory, was only superficial. As a man, a man of small ideas, he could
not grasp the ultimate scheme, the big conception which inspired Peter.
Frankly, it frightened him. More orders and more orders! More expenses
and more expenses! What would be the end? He—Ivan Turkovitch—had never
wanted a vast business; felt himself incapable of controlling it.
“Peautiful,” he said again, as they stood in the machine-room. Overhead,
fly-wheels whirled, driving-belts clacked. On the clean hardwood floor,
the three machines stamped and clicked at their endless tasks. Perched
on high seats, girls fed the hoppers with flocky golden armfuls of
tobacco. The machines swallowed it; spewed it forward, forcing it
through steel tubes into a rod: drew up paper from the slow-moving
reels; wrapped it about the tobacco; printed it; chopped the
paper-covered rod into cigarettes; delivered them to the waiting hands
of the girls who patted them into wooden trays. A shirt-sleeved mechanic
tended each machine, now this part, now that. Sparks spurted as deft
grindstone met swift-revolving knife. The fourth and newest “U.K.” was
not yet working: by it, adjusting, measuring, screwing up a bolt here
and there, stood a German workman.
For the “United Kingdom” Cigarette-machine was not made in this England,
where craftsmen starved while Free Traders preached to them!
Turkovitch spoke to the German; queried something.
“_Dass ist mir verboten_,” said the man. “_Es muss genau so gemacht
werden._”
“What does he say?” asked Peter.
“He says he cannot do what I ask him. It is forbidden. Never mind, when
he goes back to Hamburg, we do it ourselves. They do not know
everything, these Germans.”
They passed on; through the drying-rooms; and the cutting-rooms where
girls picked-over the dried leaves and “blenders” fed them into presses
that forced the thick mass forward to the dropping knife; through the
label-printing room; into the main factory again; past the box-making
tables where more girls laboured with paste-brush and zinc-board; and
the packing tables, piled high with filled boxes waiting their seals;
into the stock-room.
“Rather low, aren’t we?” queried Peter, looking at the half-empty
shelves.
“Very low, Sir?” said the dispatch-forewoman, busy making up the day’s
orders.
“You go on with your vork, Mary,” snapped Turkovitch. The woman went out
of the room, leaving them alone.
“Look here, Turkovitch”—Peter’s gray eyes had grown just a shade
darker—“you know I won’t stand that sort of thing. I spoke to the girl;
and she answered me. You’ve no right to be rude to her.”
The little man became apologetic. . . . “But you do not understand the
vork-peoples, Petere. You have never been one of the vork-peoples. I
have. De vork-peoples they do not respect you ven you talk nicely to
them.”
“Don’t you believe it, Turkovitch”—the quarrel between them was an old
one—“the ‘vork-peoples,’ as you call them, respect a man who respects
them; who knows what he wants, and tells them how he wants it
done—decently.”
Ivan, inventing an excuse, went back to the machine-room. “How on earth
I shall ever be able to introduce the copartnership system into this
place with that Hungarian obstructionist in charge,” thought Peter, “the
Lord knows.” He stood there with his hands in his pockets for a minute
or two: then, lighting a cigar, strode off to Bramson’s room.
§ 3
“Bramson,” said Peter—greetings over—“how much do you know about the
manufacturing part of this business?”
“Well, Sir. . . .”
“Oh, never mind about the ‘Sir.’ You’re not a clerk.”
“Well, when I was with my cousin, I used to spend a good deal of time in
the various departments.” The Jew looked up shrewdly, intimately. “Why?
Is anything wrong with T.?”
“No. I was asking—for information. One-man shows are never safe.
Supposing Turkovitch were taken ill, could you run the place for—say
three months?”
“I ran it while he was on his holidays.”
“H’m. That’s rather different. Know anything about blending?”
“Not much.”
“We could get a foreman to do that,” remarked Peter reflectively. “And
I’m not entirely ignorant on the subject myself. How about the rest of
it—printing, box-making, looking after the girls? . . . That new
master-printer seems a pretty efficient kind of fellow.” He broke off;
said, “Don’t let this conversation go any further”; and took up the
routine of the day.
Bramson, in addition to his principal duty of sales-manager, acted as
Peter’s right-hand man in the not-always-smooth financing of the
concern: so that their discussion lasted—uninterrupted save for
occasional telephone calls—till the whistle blew, and a shuffle of
moved stools on the hard-wood floor presaged the midday break. Nirvana
provided free cooking for its employés; and the three principals shared
the facility.
“Vell,” said Turkovitch, peeling off his smock as he entered, “now ve
have some lunch. You join us, eh, Petere?”
One of the girls brought in a table; laid it; produced three chops,
potatoes, beer. The Hungarian had apparently got over his huff. “Orders
is plentiful, especially de export,” he said.
“Bramson and I have just been discussing that. Something’s got to be
done about the home trade. We must have two more travellers. The
press-advertising wants gingering up. I’ve telephoned for Higham to come
and see me this afternoon. And I think we ought to have one or two
electric signs. Big ones. Flashing, if we can afford them.”
“But the money? . . .” remonstrated Turkovitch.
“Oh, damn the money. Don’t you worry about that. I’ll find the money all
right, if you’ll only get the orders out quickly. That last big lot for
the Argentine took nearly six weeks.”
Turkovitch protested; and a wrangle ensued. Bramson sat very quiet. He
was not a shareholder in the concern—yet. But, if he knew anything
about anything, “young Peter” would get his own way; even if he had to
buy Turkovitch out. Then that thousand pounds of savings would go into
“ordinary” shares of Nirvana Ltd. . . .
“We’d better have all this out at the board-meeting next Monday,” said
Peter finally. “Reid will have the year’s figures ready by then.”
§ 4
Reid, Chatterton and Reid, Chartered Accountants, inhabited a cold
gloomy office on the fourth floor of Great Winchester House—an office
by no means in keeping with their status as one of the premier auditing
firms in the City. George Reid himself—a deliberate-looking middle-aged
man of University education, square-chinned, clean-shaven, lined of face
but twinkling of eye—welcomed Peter; led him into the “board-room”—a
shabby apartment furnished with twelve wood-seated chairs, an enormous
table and a rather gimcrack sofa.
“The others haven’t arrived yet. Have some tea?”
“Thanks,” said Peter. “Tell me,” he went on, after the two cups had been
brought, “has Turkovitch been to see you?”
“Unofficially,” grinned Reid. “Yes. What have you been doing to the
little man? He’s in a rare stew. Says he wishes he could get his money
out.”
“He can,” said Peter laconically. “I’m about through with friend Ivan.
It isn’t that I grudge him the eventual profits. But the chap’s no good
for a show like this. He hasn’t got the spunk.”
“Well, don’t lose your temper with him this afternoon,” warned Reid, who
knew Peter of old. “By the way, how’s Jameson’s getting on these days?
You really ought to have their accounts audited, you know.”
“Simpson won’t. He’s very old-fashioned; says he can’t stand outsiders
prying into his affairs.”
Bramson and Turkovitch came in, shook hands, sat down. Reid opened the
“minute-book,” gabbled off the minutes of the last meeting which Peter
signed perfunctorily. (Nirvana was a private company, the requisite
number of shareholders being made up by clerks.)
“And now,” began Reid, “for the accounts. As far as I can see—there are
one or two adjustments still to be made—we have managed, for the first
time, to pay all our expenses and earn a small dividend.”
“Do ve pay out de dividend?” asked Turkovitch.
“Of course we don’t,” snapped Peter, “the money’s wanted for expansion.”
“Den vot’s the good of making it?” growled Turkovitch.
“One moment, gentlemen,” went on Reid. “I find, on careful analysis of
the figures, that—had it not been for the high profits earned on the
export trade—we should have made, not a profit, but a loss.” He gave
details, and concluded, “I don’t think that’s a sound position.”
“Nor I,” commented Peter.
But here Turkovitch—tact thrown to the winds—boiled over. It was _his_
business; _his_ name was on all the brands; he knew quite well what
“Petere” wanted; “Petere” wanted to be a millionaire; “Petere” wished to
spend all the profit in some crazy scheme of advertising; why should
they advertise? the cigarettes were the finest cigarettes in the world;
he, Turkovitch, guaranteed them. . . .
“Oh, shut up,” muttered Peter, exasperated.
“I vill not shut up. You are always interfering. You interfere with me
and de vork-peoples. You interfere vith my tobacco merchants. And now
you vant to interfere vith de dividends.”
“Damn it, _you_ draw a salary of seven hundred a year; and I haven’t had
a penny piece out of the concern yet.”
Turkovitch became plaintive, even less intelligible than usual. “But vy
not pay out de dividend? A leetle dividend. Drei per cent on de
cabital.”
“Because, there’s no money to do it with: because we’re trading on
bank-credit: because. . . . Oh, you try and explain things to him,
Reid,” said our Mr. Jameson hopelessly.
Reid plunged into an exhaustive bath of facts and figures. There was big
money to be made out of Nirvana. Reid knew it; Peter knew it; Bramson
knew it. The hopeless period of an advertising business, the
pay-pay-pay-and-not-a-jitney-of-it-back stage had been passed. Now, all
they needed was work, a little more capital, and—supremely—confidence.
But the Hungarian didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t see it.
“Dis is not business, eet is gambling,” he kept on saying. “You spend
and you spend. And dere are no deevidends. I vish I had my cabital out
of de gompany. . . .”
Reid glanced at Peter, who took the cue, screwed the butt of his cigar
into the corner of his mouth, and said, very slowly:
“Look here, Turkovitch. You’re being a frightful ass. I don’t like to
see any man who has worked with me throwing away a fortune. . . .”
“Fortune?” sniffed Turkovitch. “Vith no deevidends.”
“_Do_ let me speak for a minute. As I was saying, you’re being very
foolish. But if you really mean what you say, you shall have your
capital out. _I’ll_ buy your shares off you. At a fair price.”
“Vot price?”
Peter, who had devoted the week-end (Poor Patricia!) to a careful study
of the anticipated problem, drew a piece of paper from his pocket.
“When I first consented to join you in this show,” he began, “you were
worth, at an outside estimate, two thousand pounds. For six years,
you’ve been drawing £700 a year.”
“Dat,” said Turkovitch, slightly mollified already, “vos for my vork,
for my experience.”
“Quite right. I wasn’t asking you to give it me back, was I? Then
there’s six years’ compound interest at, say, five per cent. Call it two
thousand eight hundred. I’ll give you”—Peter hesitated for a moment,
went up two hundred in his mind—“Three thousand pounds for your shares
in Nirvana. The lot, of course.”
* * * * *
And so—after about a fortnight of negotiation—they got rid of the
obstructionist. He went, in the end, quietly; delighted with his cheque;
saying: “Now, I and my wife, ve take a little trip to Salonica. Perhaps,
ven I come back, ve do some business in de leaf-tobacco, eh, Petere?”
“Right you are,” said our Mr. Jameson, who had no patience with fools
but never bore malice.
PART THREE
THE CREST OF THE WAVE
§ 1
“Limousine-Landaulette body would be best,” said Peter. “We want
something that will do either for town work or touring.”
“How about a cabriolet?” asked Patricia.
“If it’s not too heavy for you to drive.”
It was a Saturday afternoon, the first in July; and they were lunching
in the low-roofed, cabin-like grill-room of the Carlton Hotel. The brass
clock on the white mantelpiece pointed a quarter to three; most of the
tables had emptied; but Peter and his wife sat on. The choice—that of
their first automobile—needed careful discussion.
It pleased her to see him sitting there, boy-like for the moment,
liqueur-glass poised steadily in his firm hand, inevitable cigar between
his lips. The six months since his return from Hamburg had not been
over-happy ones for Patricia. Always, she had felt the City pulling
against her, taking him from her. Always, he grew more absorbed, more
reticent. But now it seemed as though, just for a flash, the pal she had
married was hers again.
“Aren’t I getting a little old to drive a car?” she asked.
He looked at her carefully before he spoke; took in at one glance smooth
complexion, perfect teeth, the clear eyes and the glossy hair under the
gray toque. Then he said, “Don’t talk rot, old thing.”
“And either way,” she went on, “it’s an extravagance.”
“An extravagance we can afford.”
For, really, it looked as though dreams would come true. Turkovitch’s
defection—owing to Bramson’s application for shares—had only meant two
thousand pounds instead of the anticipated three. Nirvana’s bank,
approached with a profit-earning balance-sheet and guaranteed by Peter,
had loaned the five thousand for their new advertising campaign.
Jamesons, in sole control of the Beckmann brand, were making more money
than ever before. Only that morning, Hagenburg had placed an order on
which the profit made even Peter a little dizzy.
Of course there had been difficulties. Elkins and Beresford did not
surrender their customers without a struggle. The re-organization of the
manufacturing staff proved a shade less simple, Bramson a shade less
capable, than anticipated. Home-trade climbed a trifle too slowly.
Still, it climbed; and Peter was winning, winning all along the line.
Now, only the finest of hairs divided gamble from certainty.
“An extravagance we can afford,” he repeated.
“I’m so glad,” she said, “not for the sake of having a car but
because. . . .” For the first time in their married life, she almost
felt shy with him.
“Because of what?”
“Because I know you can’t bear failure.”
“Failure,” he laughed; then, growing serious, “No. I’ve no use for
failures. The man who ‘goes under’ doesn’t strike me as pathetic—only
as idiotic.”
“You mean the man who fails to make money.”
“Good Lord, no. Money’s nothing. At best, only the counters with which
we are paid for winning certain games. Mine, for instance. By failure, I
mean not getting what you go for. Never mind what it is—fame, money,
tranquillity, distinction. A girl or a seat in the House of Lords. As
long as you know what you want, _and get it_, you’re a success.”
“But some people don’t want anything in particular.”
“I’ve no use for that kind.”
Her trained mind told her that the man had voiced his whole creed. Her
woman’s instinct resented it. “He didn’t want _her_ like that. She was
only a side-issue. ‘Something better than his dog, a little dearer than
his’—cigarette-factory.”
“Idiot” said her reason. “Idiot! You’ve been married eight years. . . .”
“If we want to be with Francis in time for tea,” said her voice, “you’d
better ask for your bill.”
Peter paid; and they passed out, picking up his hat and stick from the
cloak-room; climbed the carpeted stairs into the Haymarket.
It was the zenith of London’s last, maddest “season”; but her pleasure
crowd—the dancers in her night-clubs; the befeathered scantily-draped
women of her Opera House; the placemen, the panderers and the
nincompoops who made pretence of governing her—had departed; were
“week-ending” in pseudo-rusticity, twenty, thirty, a hundred miles away.
And real London, heart of Empire, rested quietly in the soft
sunshine—glad to be free of such parasites—as Peter and Patricia made
way through her empty streets to Bloomsbury.
§ 2