Edwin walked idly down Trafalgar Road in the hot morning sunshine of
Jubilee Day. He had left his father tearfully sentimentalising about
the Queen. `She's a good 'un!' Then a sob. `Never was one like her!'
Another sob. `No, and never will be again!' Then a gush of tears on
the newspaper, which the old man laboriously scanned for details of the
official programme in London. He had not for months read the newspaper
with such a determined effort to understand; indeed, since the beginning
of his illness, no subject, except mushroom-culture, had interested him
so much as the Jubilee. Each time he looked at the sky from his shady
seat in the garden he had thanked God that it was a fine day, as he
might have thanked Him for deliverance from a grave personal disaster.
Except for a few poor flags, there was no sign of gaiety in Trafalgar
Road. The street, the town, and the hearts of those who remained in it,
were wrapped in that desolating sadness which envelops the provinces
when a supreme spectacular national rejoicing is centralised in London.
All those who possessed the freedom, the energy, and the money had gone
to London to witness a sight that, as every one said to every one, would
be unique, and would remain unique for ever--and yet perhaps less to
witness it than to be able to recount to their grandchildren that they
had witnessed it. Many more were visiting nearer holiday resorts for a
day or two days. Those who remained, the poor, the spiritless, the
afflicted, and the captive, felt with mournful keenness the shame of
their utter provinciality, envying the crowds in London with a bitter
envy, and picturing London as the paradise of fashion and splendour.
It was from sheer aimless disgust that Edwin went down Trafalgar Road;
he might as easily have gone up. Having arrived in the town, a
wilderness of shut shops, he gazed a moment at his own, and then entered
it by the side door. He had naught else to do. Had he chosen he could
have spent the whole day in reading, or he might have taken again to his
long-neglected water-colours. But it was not in him to put himself to
the trouble of seeking contentment. He preferred to wallow in utter
desolation, thinking of all the unpleasant things that had ever happened
to him, and occasionally conjecturing what he would have been doing at a
given moment had he accompanied the jolly, the distinguished, and the
enterprising Osmond Orgreave to London.
He passed into the shop, sufficiently illuminated by the white rays that
struck through the diamond holes in the shutters. The morning's
letters--a sparse company--lay forlorn on the floor. He picked them up
and pitched them down in the cubicle. Then he went into the cubicle,
and with the negligent gesture of long habit unlocked a part of the
desk, the part which had once been his father's privacy, and of which he
had demanded the key more than a year ago. It was all now under his
absolute dominion. He could do exactly as he pleased with a commercial
apparatus that brought in some eight hundred pounds a year net. He was
the unquestioned regent, and yet he told himself that he was no happier
than when a slave.
He drew forth his books of account, and began to piece figures together
on backs of envelopes, using a shorthand of accounts such as a principal
will use when he is impatient and not particular to a few pounds. A
little wasp of curiosity was teasing Edwin, and to quicken it a
comparison was necessary between the result of the first six months of
that year and the first six months of the previous year. True, June had
not quite expired, but most of the quarterly accounts were ready, and he
could form a trustworthy estimate. Was he, with his scorn of his
father, his brains, his orderliness, doing better or worse than his
father in the business? At the election of 1886, there had been
considerably fewer orders than was customary at elections; he had done
nothing whatever for the Tories, but that was a point that affected
neither period of six months. Sundry customers had assuredly been lost;
on the other hand, Stifford's travelling had seemed to be very
satisfactory. Nor could it be argued that money had been dropped on the
new-book business, because he had not yet inaugurated the new-book
business, preferring to wait; he was afraid that his father might after
all astoundingly walk in one day, and see new books on the counter, and
rage. He had stopped the supplying of newspapers, and would deign to
nothing lower than a sixpenny magazine; but the profit on newspapers was
negligible.
The totals ought surely to compare in a manner favourable to himself,
for he had been extremely and unremittingly conscientious. Nevertheless
he was afraid. He was afraid because he knew, vaguely and still deeply,
that he could neither buy nor sell as well as his father. It was not a
question of brains; it was a question of individuality. A sense of
honour, of fairness, a temperamental generosity, a hatred of meanness,
often prevented him from pushing a bargain to the limit. He could not
bring himself to haggle desperately. And even when price was not the
main difficulty, he could not talk to a customer, or to a person whose
customer he was, with the same rough, gruff, cajoling, bullying skill as
his father. He could not, by taking thought, do what his father had
done naturally, by the mere blind exercise of instinct. His father,
with all his clumsiness, and his unscientific methods, had a certain
quality, unseizable, unanalysable, and Edwin had not that quality.
He caught himself, in the rapid calculating, giving himself the benefit
of every doubt; somehow he could not help it, childish as it was. And
even so, he could see, or he could feel, that the comparison was not
going to be favourable to the regent. It grew plainer that the volume
of business had barely been maintained, and it was glaringly evident
that the expenses, especially wages, had sensibly increased. He
abandoned the figures not quite finished, partly from weary disgust, and
partly because Big James most astonishingly walked into the shop, from
the back. He was really quite glad to encounter Big James, a
fellow-creature.
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