Part 20

Both George and Edna, however, unsatisfactory as their general outlook might be, seemed to be going on all right just then, and this too was a great source of pleasure to Mr. Smeeth, who saw them--and had seen them ever since they were babies--surrounded by snares and pitfalls without number. He had to worry for two, for their mother never seemed to worry about them or anything else, for all her fortune tellings and bottles from the chemist’s, and to listen to her, you might think life was a fairy tale. To Mr. Smeeth--though he did not say so--life was a journey, unarmed and without guide or compass, through a jungle where poisonous snakes were lurking and man-eating tigers might spring out of every thicket. Only when he saw a little clear space in front of him could he be easy in mind. His was a naturally apprehensive nature, and in a religious age he would never have overlooked the least comforting observance. But he did not live in a religious age, and he had no faith of his own. In his universe, the gods had been banished but not the devils. He saw clearly enough all the signs and marks of evil in the world, having a mind that could foreshadow every stroke of malice out of the dark, and so was surrounded by demons that he was powerless either to placate or to vanquish. If, desiring as he did to be honest, decent, kind, good and happy, his courage failed, he could call upon nobody, nothing--but the police. Thus he lived, this man who went so cosily from his little house to his little office, more apprehensively, more dangerously, than one of Edward the Third’s bowmen. He touched wood, and desperately hoped for the best. Just now, it seemed to be arriving. He was happier than he had been for some time.

II

The morning after Mr. Golspie’s departure, two things happened to Mr. Smeeth. The first seemed of little importance at the time, though afterwards he remembered it only too well. George rang up from his garage, with a message from his mother. “She’s here now, only she doesn’t fancy herself at the phone,” said George. “So I’ve got to give you the message. This is it. Do you remember hearing her talk about her cousin, Fred Mitty? Well, he’s here in London with his wife. She’s just had a letter from them, and they want her to go round and see them to-night, somewhere Islington way. She didn’t think you’d want to go.”

“No, I don’t want to go,” Mr. Smeeth told him. “But that’s all right.”

“Yes, I know it is,” said George, “but the point is this. She’s going there to tea, and she’ll be gone some time before you get home. What she wants to know is this, has she to leave something for you, she says, or will you have your tea out somewhere and amuse yourself for once----”

“Now then, George,” his father cried down the telephone sharply, “that’s enough of that.”

“I’m only telling you what she says,” George’s voice explained. “Keep cool, Dad. Nothing to do with me. You can either have your tea out and amuse yourself----”

“I don’t want to amuse myself. As I’ve told some of you before,” he added rather grimly, “I like a quiet life.”

“All right then, she can leave something for you. You’ll only have to warm it up yourself. I shan’t be in and Edna won’t be either.”

“Here, all right,” said Mr. Smeeth, who was not fond of warming things up for himself. “I’ll stop out for once. Tell your mother that’s all right. And tell her I hope she enjoys herself with Mr. Mitty.”

He had heard his wife talk about her cousin, Fred Mitty--she was rather given to talking about her relations--but he had never met him. Mitty had been living in one of the big provincial towns, Birmingham or Manchester, for the last few years. He could have stopped there, for all Mr. Smeeth cared. However, his wife would enjoy herself. She liked nothing better than going out for the evening and having a good old gas with somebody fairly lively, and Mr. Smeeth remembered now that Fred Mitty--what a name!--was supposed to be very lively, one of the dashing members of his wife’s family, the chief comedian at all the weddings, and all the funerals, too, for that matter. So long as Mrs. Smeeth’s lot could all get together and eat and drink and gas and kiss one another, they didn’t much care whether they were marrying them or burying them. The Smeeths, what was left of them, were different. When they met, it meant business. Four of them had not spoken to one another for ten years, all because of two cottage houses in Highbury. His wife’s lot would have sold the pair and eaten and drunk away the proceeds in less than a week.

“But it wouldn’t do for us all to be alike, would it, young lady?” he cried, almost gaily, to Miss Poppy Sellers, who came up to him at that moment with some invoices she had just typed.

“That’s what my dad’s always saying, Mr. Smeeth,” she replied in her own queer fashion, half perky half shy. “And my mother always says, ‘Well, you might try a bit anyway.’”

“And what does she mean by that?” asked Mr. Smeeth, amused.

Miss Sellers shook her dark little head. “I might be able to give a guess, and then again I mightn’t. I’ve done all these, Mr. Smeeth. Are they all right?”

“Well, now, let’s have a look,” he said, adjusting his eyeglasses. “I might be able to tell you--and then again I mightn’t.”

She laughed. She was a nice little thing, even though Turgis had kept on grumbling about her. But he had not grumbled so much lately. He had not done anything much lately, except get on with his work--he had done that all right--and then sit mooning. The only time he looked lively and brisk and up-to-the-minute was when Mr. Golspie came in and asked him to do something. A queer lad, Turgis. But he was beginning to smarten himself up a bit, that was something; he had taken to brushing his hair and his clothes and changing his collars a little more often; and about time too. Mr. Smeeth shot a glance at him over his glasses, then read through the invoices.

“Please, Mr. Smeeth,” said Stanley, returning from the private office, “Mr. Dersingham wants to see you.”

And this was the second thing that happened that morning, this little interview with Mr. Dersingham.

“What I feel, Smeeth,” said Mr. Dersingham, after a few preliminaries, “is that you’ve been doing your bit for the firm, and the firm now ought to do its bit for you. You’ve had a good deal of extra work lately, haven’t you, just as we all have?”

“I have, Mr. Dersingham. It’s been a very busy time for me--and I’m glad to say so, sir.”

“For me too, I can tell you. I’ve been putting my back into it these last few weeks. Jolly heavy going, if you ask me. Particularly this last week, with the big drive--and it’s not over yet, not by a long chalk it isn’t. However, what I wanted to say is this, you’ve stood by the firm, done your best and all that, and now I propose to give you a rise.” He paused, and looked at his employee.

“Thank you very much, sir,” cried Mr. Smeeth, flushing. “I didn’t want to say anything just yet, knowing how things have been, but Mr. Golspie did say something, just after he came----”

“Well, of course, this isn’t Golspie’s show at all. I mean to say, he has his work here and, to a certain extent, he’s in charge, but whether you get a rise or not or anybody else gets a rise or not has nothing to do with him. It’s my affair entirely.”

“Quite so, Mr. Dersingham. I quite understand that,” said Mr. Smeeth apologetically, though he was already silently thanking Mr. Golspie for this.

“Though it’s--er--only fair to tell you that Mr. Golspie did mention it to me. But, as a matter of fact, I’d practically made up my mind then. He mentioned you, and he also mentioned Miss Matfield. He seemed to think she had been doing some very good work.”

“Miss Matfield’s been working very well, sir. And she certainly isn’t getting as much as she might. We promised her a rise, if possible, after the first six months, when she was taken on.”

“Well, I thought from now on we’d give her three ten instead of three pounds. Perhaps you’ll tell her, Smeeth. Do it quietly. I don’t think I can give Turgis any more yet.”

“He’s improving, Mr. Dersingham.”

“He’ll have to wait, though. As for you, Smeeth, I thought we’d make it three seventy-five for you.”

This was a fine rise, well over a pound a week. “Thank you very much, Mr. Dersingham. I’m sure I’ll do my best----”

But Mr. Dersingham, large, pink, benevolent, cut him short with a friendly wave of the hand. “That’s all right, Smeeth. I hope it won’t be the last, either. You’ll rise with the firm, and at the present rate there’s no telling where we shall land. Mr. Golspie has suggested several side-lines, quite profitable, handled properly, and I propose to look into our end of it while he’s away. Oh--by the way--I think those increases, both yours and Miss Matfield’s, had better begin this fortnight, eh?”

At odd intervals throughout the day, Mr. Smeeth thought about this extra money and delightedly considered what might be done with it. He was, of course, all in favour of saving it. They lived comfortably as they were but they saved little or nothing, and now at last they had a chance of really putting something away. Insurance? That ought to be looked into, for they had all kinds of schemes. National Savings? A good safe investment. They might buy a house through one of the Building Societies. He saw himself looking into all these things, smoking his pipe over them and then making notes and putting down a few rows of neat little figures. It almost made his mouth water.

It was not until late afternoon, when they were finishing off, that he began to tackle the major problem, for, like most people, he preferred to examine the little problems, the pleasant, cheerful little fellows, first. Plump in the middle of this major problem was Mrs. Smeeth. If she was told about this extra money, she would want to spend it. That was her nature; she was a born spender. She was not a grabber and she was not a grumbler; if the money was not there, she made no complaint, and could make a little go a long way with the best of them, if there was no help for it. Tell her there was more money coming into the house, and she would never rest until it had been all frittered away, on clothes and ornaments and meals in cafés and visits to the theatre and the pictures and trips to the seaside and chocolate and bottles of port wine. Insurance and National Savings and Building Societies!--he could hear her telling him what she thought about _them_, and what she thought about him too for suggesting such a miserable way of spending their money. (She never understood the idea of saving, except when it merely meant putting a few shillings in a vase until Saturday. Giving money to an insurance company or a bank seemed to her simply spending it and getting nothing in return.) She would make him appear a mean ageing sort of chap, almost an old miser, cutting a contemptible figure in her eyes, and would refer to other men of her acquaintance, big, open-handed, dashing fellows. That would be so hateful that, finally, he would give in, and then what would they have for the future, for the rainy day? Empty bottles and chocolate boxes and old programmes and souvenirs of Clacton. It wasn’t good enough. He saw one way out, of course, and that was not to tell her at all, to say nothing about his rise until he had made a good start with his savings; but he hated the thought of doing that. It meant lying to her, not once but perhaps scores of times. It would be all for the best, but he had an idea that he would feel mean all the time. Some chaps seemed to think of their wives as people you always felt mean with, and to hear them talk you would think they had married their worst enemies, but though he and Edie were often pulling different ways, that wasn’t their style at all. So what was he to do?

His mind was still busy with this problem when he left the office for the night and called in T. Benenden’s, round the corner. As he watched Benenden take down the familiar canister, he wondered if Benenden was married. He had exchanged remarks with him all these years and never found that out. Surely Benenden couldn’t be married. A man who never wore a tie couldn’t possibly have a wife, unless of course he left home with a tie and then took it off in the shop.

“You a married man, Mr. Benenden?” he inquired casually.

T. Benenden stopped his weighing at once. “Now that’s a queer question,” he said, staring.

“I beg your pardon, I’m sure,” said Mr. Smeeth, rather embarrassed. “No business of mine at all.”

“Not at all, not at all,” said T. Benenden, still staring. “No offence taken, I assure you. What I really meant was it’s a queer question for me to answer. You say to me ‘Are you a married man, Mr. Benenden?’ Well, the only answer I can give to that is, I _am_--and then again I’m _not_. What do you make of that?”

Before Mr. Smeeth had time to make anything of it, a youth rushed in, flung some coppers on the counter, and cried “Packet o’ gaspers. Ten.”

Mr. Benenden contemptuously threw down a packet of cigarettes, contemptuously swept the coppers away, and watched the youth rush out again with even greater contempt.

“You saw that, you ’eard it?” he said scornfully. “‘Packet o’ gaspers. _Packet o’ gaspers._’ Rushes in, rushes out, never stops to say _please_ or _thank you_, never stops to think. Just--packet o’ gaspers. Can’t even say _of_. A packet _of_ gaspers. Now that,” he continued gravely, his eyes fixed on Mr. Smeeth’s apparently without once winking, “is the ruin of the tobacco trade to-day. I don’t mean there’s no money in it. There _is_ money in it. That’s where the big forchewns ’ave been made--packets o’ gaspers. If you and me had had the sense to realise, when the War started, that this packet-o’-gasper business was bound to come, _bound_ to come--men smoking ’em, women smoking ’em, boys and girls smoking ’em--we could have made out forchewns, as easy as that. You watch for the big dividends in our trade--where are they? It isn’t tobacco that’s behind ’em--it’s packets o’ gaspers. Same with the shops. Quick turnover, in and out, throw ’em down, pick ’em up, outchew go. Easy money. All right. But I say it’s the ruin of the tobacconist to-day. And why? It takes the ’eart out of the business. Some of ’em have started putting rows of automatic machines outside at closing time. You’ve seen ’em. Well, I say they might as well keep ’em all day and have done with it. Packet o’ gaspers. Ten. There’s your sixpence. Twenty. There’s your shilling. Am I a man or am I an automatic machine?”

“Quite so,” said Mr. Smeeth, nodding his head.

“I’m a man, and what’s more, I’m a man with expert knowledge, I am. You come to me, and you say, ‘I want such and such a smoke, a bit of Virginia, a bit of Lati-kee-ya’--or you mightn’t say that because you mightn’t know so much about it--but anyhow you’ve got your idea of what you want and you come to me and I fix you up, just as I’ve fixed _you_ up with this mixture of mine. There’s some pleasure in that. But this packet o’ gasper business. I might as well stand in the door there, and every time you put sixpence in my mouth, a packet of ten drops out of my waistcoat.”

“You’d look well, wouldn’t you?” Mr. Smeeth watched him filling the pouch, and could not help thinking that T. Benenden’s Own looked dustier than usual.

“Getting a bit down with that,” T. Benenden admitted, rolling up the pouch, “though if you ask me, I’d tell you to give me the bottom of the tin every time. That’s not ordinary dust, y’know. That’s good short stuff, best Oriental. It’s rich, that, and the Prince of Wales wouldn’t want anything better than that in his pipe--and I believe he smokes one.”

“I believe he does,” said Mr. Smeeth, handing over his money. “But what was that you were saying about being married?”

“Ar, yes,” said T. Benenden, preparing to consume some of his own stock. “Well, my answer to that question of yours was, ‘I _am_ and I’m _not_.’ And how do you puzzle that out?” he asked with the air of a man who had produced a rare riddle. “Bit of a facer that, eh?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’d say--offhand--that you say you _are_ married because you’re still legally married and have a wife living, but at the same time you say you’re not married because you’re not living the life of a married man. In fact, you’re separated from your wife. How’s that Mr. Benenden?”

The other’s face fell at being robbed so quickly of the chance of explaining himself. “That was a bit of smart thinking on your part, Mr. Smeeth,” he said, brightening up. “There aren’t many men about here who could have got on to it like that. And you’re right. I’ve been separated for nearly ten years. She goes her way, and I go mine. We were only married three years, and that was quite enough for me, a regular cat-and-dog life that was. If she wanted to go out, I wanted to stay in, and if she wanted to stay in, I wanted to go out. Well, that’s all right, isn’t it? If she wants to go out, let her go out. If she wants to stay in, let her stay in. What’s the matter with that? Ar, but that’s a man’s point of view. This is where the unfairness of the sex comes in. I was ready to let her go out or stay in, just as she pleased. But what about her? Had she the same fair-minded attitude, the same broad principles?” Mr. Benenden here removed his pipe to make room for a short bitter laugh. “When she wanted to go out, I’d to go out too, and when she wanted to stay in, I’d to stay in as well. That was her idear. Dog in the manger, she was, all the time, and specially on Saturdays and Sundays, just when you wanted a bit of give and take. We didn’t get on. Why some men like to tell you they get on well with women’s a mystery to me. I never did get on with ’em, and I don’t care who knows it.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Mr. Smeeth, for no particular reason except that he felt Benenden ought to be encouraged.

“Yes, well, as I say, we’d three years of it, and she left me three times and I left her twice during them three years. Interfering relations always ‘brought us together’--as they called it--but it was a miserable business. One of us was always packing up. I never knew whether I was going home to find a bit of supper or a note to say she’d gone to her sister’s at Saffron Walden. So the last time, I left a note saying she’d better stay for good at Saffron Walden and I went into lodgings down Camberwell way for a week and didn’t go back for over a week. When I did go back, she’d just gone again to Saffron Walden--she’d been back, you see, and waited a few days--and she stayed there.”

“And don’t you ever see her now?”

“Let me see,” said T. Benenden, tickling his beard with the stem of his pipe. “Last time I ran across her by accident, a year or two ago, or it might be three years ago. I was walking round the Confectionery and Grocery Exhibition at the Agricultural Hall, and I suddenly saw her and her sister--they’re in that line--and another woman all eating free samples of custard or jelly or potted meat or something, which is what I might have known they _would_ be doing. I gave them one look and then went the other way.”

“Didn’t you stop at all?” said Mr. Smeeth.

“If I’d gone up to them there,” said Mr. Benenden earnestly, “what would have happened? A lot of argument. ‘You did this--Oh, did I?--Well, you did that.’ What she wouldn’t have said, her sister’ud said for her. Her sister had a tongue a yard long, noted for it up in Saffron Walden. I know that because a man from there came into this very shop one morning. Well, you can’t have that sort of argument at a free custard and jelly stall, can you? I had a picture postcard from her last year, from Cromer--all show-off, y’know. No, I’m better without them. Let’s see, Mr. Smeeth, I think you’re married, aren’t you? I seem to recollect you’re a family man.”

“That’s right,” said Mr. Smeeth, feeling very much at that moment the affectionate father and husband. “And I like it.”

“Oh, it suits some people,” said Mr. Benenden judicially. “They have the knack or an inclination that way. I’m not laying down any rules about it. But it never suited _me_. I like a quiet life of my own, to do _what_ I like _when_ I like, and have time to think things over. Good-night.”

As Mr. Smeeth walked away, he came to the conclusion that he had solved the mystery of the absent tie. Benenden did not wear a tie just to show his independence. Mr. Smeeth, however, did not envy him, although the question of Mrs. Smeeth and the extra money had yet to be settled. He was glad that he was not going home for once and would not have to meet his wife until late that night. He dismissed the problem and asked himself instead how he should spend the evening. The first thing to do was to have a meal and as he had once or twice had a respectable sort of high tea in a place in Holborn, he decided to go there again, so turned down Aldermanbury and Milk Street, caught a bus in Cheapside and, ten minutes later, was seated snugly at a little table in the teashop.

He could not help feeling richer than he had done that morning. Now he was practically a four-hundred-a-year man instead of a three-hundred-a-year man. He felt that he was entitled to celebrate this promotion in his own quiet way. So he began by ordering a good solid high tea, and then searched his paper to discover what was happening that night in the world of entertainment. There was a symphony concert at the Queen’s Hall. He would go there. He had never been to the Queen’s Hall, had always thought of the concerts there as being a bit above his head. Symphony concerts at the Queen’s Hall--it did sound rather heavy, rather alarming too, but he would try it. After all, though he didn’t pretend to know much about it, he did like music, indeed liked nothing better than music, and there would sure to be something he could enjoy, and the Queen’s Hall, expensive and highbrow as it sounded, couldn’t kill him. So far, he had got his music from gramophone records and the wireless, bands in the park or at the seaside, popular concerts in North London or occasionally at the Kingsway Hall and the Central Hall, and nights in the gallery in the old days to hear the Carl Rosa Company do _Carmen_ and _Rigoletto_ and that one about the pierrots, _Pag-lee-atchy_ he supposed they called it. Well, this would be a new move, this symphony concert in the Queen’s Hall, a bit of an adventure. He ate his tea deliberately, as usual, but with a little inner glow of excitement.

He arrived at the Queen’s Hall in what he imagined to be very good time, but was surprised to find, after paying what seemed to him a stiffish price, that there was only just room for him in the gallery. Another ten minutes and he would have been too late, a thought that gave him a good deal of pleasure as he climbed the steps, among all the eager, chattering symphony concert-goers.

III