Part 8

T. Benenden looked rather pained, and still nursed the two shillings change in his hand. “Well, what I mean is this. That’s a big combine, isn’t it? A year ago, they were bang at the top, like nearly all the big combines. All right. But what’s happening now? A slump. And why----?”

“I don’t know, and I’ll bet you don’t know,” said Mr. Golspie heartily. Then he gave a short bellow of a laugh. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he roared, “I’ve been puzzling my head for the last five minutes wondering what was wrong with you.”

“Me?” T. Benenden was startled.

“Yes, you. Didn’t you notice I was staring at you?” He turned to Mr. Smeeth. “Couldn’t make it out. I knew there was something wrong. You see it, don’t you?” He now returned to Benenden, at whom he pointed a thick brutal finger. “Why, man, you’ve forgotten to put your tie on. Have a look at yourself. I _knew_ there was something. Is that my change? That’s correct--two shillings.”

Mr. Smeeth followed him out of the shop, gasping. He had been visiting Benenden’s shop two or three times a week, year after year, and never once had he dared mention the word “tie.” And now this chap comes along with his “You’ve forgotten to put your tie on.” Mr. Smeeth began to chuckle softly.

Mr. Golspie piloted him across the road and into the private bar of the _White Horse_.

“Give it a name,” said Mr. Golspie.

“Thanks, Mr. Golspie. Oh--er--just a glass of bitter,” said Mr. Smeeth modestly, from behind his large cigar.

“Don’t have a glass of bitter. Too cold a night like this and after a hard day’s work, too. Have a whisky. That’s right. Two double whiskies and some soda.”

It was quiet and cosy in the _White Horse_. Mr. Smeeth had not been in for a long time, and he was enjoying this. The fire winked cheerfully over the grate; the rows of liqueur bottles glimmered and glittered; the glasses shone softly; there was a pleasant hum of talk; the cigars plunged them at once into an atmosphere of rich, fragrant, luxurious conviviality; the whisky tasted good, and washed away that foggy, smoky, railway tunnel flavour of Angel Pavement; and Mr. Golspie, still mysterious and masterful but genial now too, was obviously anxious they should be on friendly terms.

“You’ve got a fellow working in the Midlands and the North, haven’t you?” Mr. Golspie inquired, after they had both taken a pull at their whiskies. “What’s he like?”

“Dobson? He’s a decent young chap, and he’s got a good connection up there. He’s not sold much lately, but it’s not been for the want of trying.”

“We ought to be hearing from him soon, then,” said Mr. Golspie. “If he can’t sell these new veneers, he’d better be walking. They sell themselves. We’ve orders pouring in, just pouring. But, mind you, Smeeth, we’ve got to get a move on. We’ve got to pile up the orders now--make hay while the sun shines. We want another man for London and district, soon as we can get one. And one that’s alive, too, not like that dreary old devil I booted out the first day. You might as well send the dustbin round looking for orders. There ought to be three of us, me, Dersingham, and this other man, whoever he is, doing London and neighbourhood these next few months. Rush ’em. That’s the way, isn’t it?”

Mr. Smeeth, taking out his cigar and trying to look keen and aggressive, said it was.

“I’ll tell you what I believe in,” Mr. Golspie continued, not troubling to lower his voice, or rather to moderate it, for it was low enough. “I believe in working like hell and in playing like hell. If you’re going to work, for God’s sake--work. And if you’re going to enjoy yourself, well, for the love of Mike, enjoy yourself, get on with it.”

At this point, Mr. Smeeth started back, for suddenly a head, a large head wearing a very dirty cap, but only about the height of his shoulder, stuck itself between him and Mr. Golspie. “That’s all very well, gents,” it said, with an impudent whine, “but what if yer can’t get work, ’ow yer goin’ ter enjoy yerself then, eh? Wotcher goin’ ter do then, eh?”

“There’s one thing you can do,” said Mr. Golspie promptly.

“Wha’s that?”

“You can mind your own bloody business,” said Mr. Golspie, pushing his face out in a most intimidating and disagreeable fashion. The intruder shrank back at once. “Here y’are,” Mr. Golspie said in a milder, contemptuous tone, “here’s threepence. Go away and buy yourself something.”

“Thank yer, mister.” And the head vanished.

“This city’s got more and more rats like that in it every time I come back to it.”

“There isn’t the work, you know,” said Mr. Smeeth earnestly. “I don’t say they all want it, but there isn’t the work. I’ll tell you candidly, Mr. Golspie, it frightens me sometimes to see all the chaps looking for work. If we’ve to take on a few new people, and we advertise for them, you’ll see what I mean. Crowds and crowds--ready to work for next to nothing. It’s a heart-breaking job interviewing them.”

“I dare say,” Mr. Golspie replied, in the tone of a man whose heart is not easily broken. “But I know this. A man who’s ready to work for next to nothing is no good to me. I wouldn’t have him as a gift. And that reminds me, Smeeth. What’s this firm paying you?”

Mr. Smeeth hesitated a moment, then told him.

“And do you think that’s enough?”

Mr. Smeeth hesitated again. “Well, if business was good, I was going to ask for a rise this Christmas, but as you know, it’s not been good.”

“No, but it’s going to be good, don’t make any mistake about that,” cried Mr. Golspie. “It’s going to be a dam’ sight better than Twigg and Dersingham have ever seen it before. Who the devil was Twigg? Never mind about him, though. I’m going to tell you straight out, I don’t think you’re getting enough. I know a good man when I see one, and when people stand by me--you know what I do?--that’s right--I stand by them. And I’m going to stand by you.”

“Very good of you, Mr. Golspie,” muttered the embarrassed Smeeth.

“The minute these orders that are coming now are turned into solid business--and, mind you, it means more work and responsibility for you all along the line--the minute they do, you’re going to get a rise, a good rise, a hundred or two a year right off, or I’m not Jimmy Golspie. And we shake hands on that.”

Mr. Smeeth, overwhelmed, found himself shaking hands on it.

“And now,” Mr. Golspie added masterfully, “we’ll just sign and seal that by having a little quick one.”

“All right. But--er--it’s my turn.”

“Not a bit of it. Not to-night. You haven’t a turn to-night. Wait till the big rise comes. Two singles, please. Married man, aren’t you, Smeeth?”

“I am. Wife and two children, boy just out of his teens and girl nearly eighteen.”

“All I’ve got’s a girl. I’m expecting her over soon. Does this girl of yours take much notice of you?”

“Not much. Seems to me they don’t, nowadays.”

“You’re right there. That girl of mine doesn’t--the wilful, artful little devil. She’s been spoilt all her life, and always will be. Too good-lookin’, that’s her trouble. Doesn’t take after her father, y’know,” and here Mr. Golspie disturbed the whole bar with a sudden deep guffaw. “Well, here’s the best! This is a dam’ rum business, y’know, Smeeth, when you come to think of it. I’ve had a finger in all sorts of trades, all over the place, and this is a bit more respectable than some of ’em. But when you think of it--it’s a dam’ rum trade--selling thin bits of wood to glue on to other bits of wood, eh?”

“I’ve often thought that,” said Mr. Smeeth eagerly, the philosopher waking in him too. “I’ve often thought--well, I dunno--but this trade’s like a good deal of the rest of life. Veneers? Well, Mr. Golspie, just think of them. They’re only there to make a piece of furniture look as if it was made of better wood than it is made of, a sort of fake. But everybody knows about it. There’s no deception. And I’ve often thought a lot of life’s like that, particularly when I’ve gone into company. You know, everybody setting up to be mahogany and walnut through and through----”

“And the lot of ’em veneered to hell,” cried Mr. Golspie jovially. “Never mind, let’s see if we can’t slap all our stuff on to their rotten chairs and wardrobes and sideboards, and make money and enjoy ourselves. That’s the game.”

With that, they swung out into the little night of Angel Pavement, where the diapason of Mr. Golspie could be heard thundering out again that it was the game. With rich Havana still in his nostrils, the golden liquor of the glens wandering round his inside like an enchanted Gulf Stream, and Mr. Golspie’s promises singing their madrigals in his head, Mr. Smeeth felt for once that it really might be all a game.

Waiting for his tram that night, he bought two evening papers instead of one, and read neither of them.

_Chapter Three_: THE DERSINGHAMS AT HOME

I

By the middle of the following week, there were several changes at Twigg & Dersingham’s. The greatest change was in the atmosphere of the place. Even if you had merely opened the outer door, remaining on that side of the frosted glass partition, you would have felt the difference at once. No doubt the typewriters rattled and _pinged_, the telephone bell rang, voices came through, all in a new and bustling, optimistic fashion. The very chair you were invited to sit on, when you waited behind that partition, had been dusted. Mrs. Cross had not found herself immune from this new influence: she had given the general office a thorough cleaning. There was no question now of anybody not having enough work to do. Stanley still went out, indeed he went out more than ever, but he was compelled to speed up his “shaddering” methods and was only able to follow men who were in a tremendous hurry. Mr. Smeeth among his little figures was as busy and happy as a monk at his manuscript. Turgis, whose duty it was to see that goods were duly forwarded to and from Twigg & Dersingham’s, became both hoarse and haughty down the telephone to all manner of forwarding agents, and spoke to railway goods clerks as if they were strange and unwelcome dogs. Miss Matfield rattled off her letters with slightly less contempt and disgust, rather as if they were no longer the effusions of complete lunatics but were now merely the work of village idiots. And she had acquired an assistant. The staff of Twigg & Dersingham had been enlarged at the beginning of this week by the appointment of a second typist. Miss Poppy Sellers had arrived.

The girls who earn their keep by going to offices and working typewriters may be divided into three classes. There are those who, like Miss Matfield, are the daughters of professional gentlemen and so condescend to the office and the typewriter, who work beneath them just as girls once married beneath them. There are those who take it all simply and calmly, because they are in the office tradition, as Mr. Smeeth’s daughter would have been. Then there are those who rise to the office and the typewriter, who may not make any more money than their sisters and cousins who work in factories and cheap shops--they may easily make considerably less money--but nevertheless are able to cut superior and ladylike figures in their respective family circles because they have succeeded in becoming typists. Poppy belonged to this third class. Her father worked on the Underground, and he and his family of four occupied half a house not far from Eel Brook Common, Fulham, that south-western wilderness of vanishing mortar and bricks that are coming down in the world. This was not Poppy’s first job, for she was twenty and had been steadily improving herself in the commercial world since she was fifteen, but it was easily her most important one. She had been chosen out of a large number of applicants, had been started at two pounds and ten shillings a week, and had been told confidentially by Mr. Smeeth, who seemed to her a terrifying figure, that she had good prospects if she would only learn and work hard. This Poppy fully intended to do, for--as her testimonials were compelled to admit--she was a very industrious and conscientious girl. She was not sufficiently plain to escape entirely the attentions of the youths who hung about the entrance to the Red Hall Cinema in Walham Green (and Poppy frequently visited the Red Hall with her friend, Dora Black, for she liked entertainment), but nobody yet had said that she was pretty. She was small and slight, had dark hair and brown eyes, and she aimed, rather timidly, at a Japanese or Javanese or general Oriental effect, wearing a fringe and all that, but only succeeded in looking vaguely dingy and untidy. Whenever she despairingly made a special effort, plying hard the lipstick, being lavish with the Oriental-effect face-powder, and raising and keeping her eyebrows so high that it hurt, people asked her if she wasn’t feeling very well. This failure to achieve the exotic beauty that was--as both she and Dora Black believed--“her type,” tended to keep poor Poppy slightly depressed and out of love with herself. During her first few days at Twigg & Dersingham’s she was like a mouse. She was overawed by the newness and importance of everything, and she saw that it would be impossible for her to make a friend of the large, superior, infinitely knowledgeable, tremendously condescending Miss Matfield. But, like a mouse, she kept her eyes open, missing nothing, with her busy little Cockney mind fastening on every crumb of information and gossip. After three days, Miss Dora Black of Basuto Road, Fulham, knew more, though at second-hand, about the office staff at Twigg & Dersingham than Mr. Dersingham himself had learned in three years.

One of Miss Poppy Sellers’ first tasks had been to copy out replies to the letters answering Twigg & Dersingham’s advertisement in the _Times_ and the _Daily Telegraph_. This was for another man, to take Goath’s place, though he would have to spend much of his time further afield. He had to be as unlike Goath as possible in character, but not unlike him in experience. In short, he had to be “young, keen, energetic,” and “with some connection in furnishing trade and knowledge of veneers and inlays.” And the change brought about by Mr. Golspie was such that Twigg & Dersingham were able to declare that for the right man there was “a good opening.”

It has been said that the modern English do not like work. It cannot be said that they do not look for it and ask for it. The day after this advertisement appeared, the postal heavens opened and a hurricane of letters fell upon Twigg & Dersingham. Into Angel Pavement all that day there poured a bewildering stream of replies. It seemed as if street after street, whole suburbs, had been waiting for this particular opening. There were, it appeared, dozens of men with vast connections in the furnishing trade and the most thorough, the most intimate knowledge of veneers and inlays, and most of these men, though they had apparently refused scores of offers recently, were only too willing to assist Messrs. Twigg & Dersingham. Then there were men who had not perhaps exactly a connection, but had been for years, so to speak, on the fringe of the furnishing trade, men who had sold pianos, who had given removing estimates, who had done a little valuing, who knew something about upholstering. Then there were older men, ex-officers many of them, who knew about all kinds of things and were ready to enclose the most astonishing testimonials, who admitted that the furnishing trade and veneers and inlays were all new to them but who felt that they could soon learn all there was to know, and in the meantime were anxious to show how they could command men and to display their unusual ability to organize. And, last of all, there were the public school men, fellows who knew nothing about veneers and inlays and did not even pretend to care about them, but pointed out that they could drive cars, manage an estate, organise anything or anybody, and were willing to go out East, being evidently under the impression that Twigg & Dersingham had probably a couple of tea plantations as well as a business in veneers and inlays. These correspondents expressed themselves in every imaginable sort of handwriting and on every conceivable kind of notepaper, from superior parchment to dirty little pink bits that had been saved up in a box on the mantelpiece, but in one particular they were all alike: they were all keen, all energetic.

“This tells you something about the old country, doesn’t it?” said Mr. Golspie, who always talked as if he came from some newer one. He and Mr. Dersingham and Mr. Smeeth had been going through the pile.

“It’s only the slump,” said Mr. Dersingham, who was feeling optimistic these days. “It’s not so bad as it was, is it, Smeeth?”

“I suppose it isn’t, really, Mr. Dersingham.” But Mr. Smeeth sounded rather doubtful. These letters had given him another glimpse of the dark gulf. It was a sight that left him feeling shaky.

Mr. Golspie grunted. “Far as I can see from this lot, you can have the pick of England’s talent for four or five quid a week. There isn’t a dam’ thing these fellows can’t do--except find work. Well, I’ve got about four likely ones here. What have you chaps got?”

After a good deal more trouble and talk, they finally narrowed the possible applications down to ten, and these ten were asked to appear at the office in the early afternoon, two days later. They all came at once, and so had to wait their turn on the landing outside, while Stanley, enjoying himself hugely, dashed in and out to summon them. Mr. Smeeth, going round to the bank, had to make his way through this little crowd, and at the first moment, when he stepped outside the office and the two or three of them nearest the door made way for him with almost ostentatious smartness, he felt triumphant, proud, a solid and successful man among a lot of failures. But the very next moment, this feeling disappeared. They were all very well brushed, in their best clothes, and were already looking keen and energetic, especially those nearest the door, who looked the keenest and most energetic, their faces having already taken on the expression most likely to impress the mysterious powers within the office. A few of them were young and had an easy confident look, that of men merely seeking a change of job. Others were older, less confident, tense or wistful. Mr. Smeeth bumped into one, the last in the group, who was standing at the corner near the top of the stairs.

“I beg your pardon,” the man cried, eagerly, anxiously. He was indeed an anxious man, about Mr. Smeeth’s age and not unlike him, greyish, lined, brittle; a man with a wife and family and vanishing possessions; a man who time after time had found himself the last in the group, waiting at the corner, with the hope inspired by the letter, the letter that came thunderingly, triumphantly, that morning, like an act of deliverance, now dying in him.

“My fault,” Mr. Smeeth assured him, stopping, and offering the smile of a polite culprit. But when their eyes met fairly, this smile trembled, then fled, leaving Mr. Smeeth himself grave, anxious. He suddenly felt for this man a swelling sympathy, a deep stir of pity, that he had not known for many a month. They might have been brothers; and, indeed, brothers they were for a second or so, peering at one another in some darkened house of tragedy.

“Good luck!” Mr. Smeeth heard himself saying.

“Thanks,” and there came the ghost of a smile.

Mr. Smeeth never saw him again. He had no luck. The successful applicant was very different, much younger, a tall fellow with a remarkably small head, an inquisitive pink nose, and a very wide mouth that opened to show about twice the ordinary number of teeth. His name was Sandycroft, and he knew the trade, for though he had never sold veneers and inlays, he had bought them, having been at one time with Briggs Brothers. This set him apart from all the other applicants. Moreover, he appeared to be all keenness and energy, and threw the most passionate emphasis into the slightest remark he made.

“Mr. Twigg,” he cried, addressing Mr. Golspie, “and Mr. Dersingham, you can rely on me. I know the trade. I know the people. I know the ropes, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

“All right,” said Mr. Golspie with his usual genial brutality. “But don’t go knowing too many ropes. Eh, Dersingham?”

“Oh, quite!” replied Mr. Dersingham, who did not quite follow this, but looked knowing all the same.

“I understand, sir. I know what you mean. I couldn’t do it, sir. It’s not in my character. Honesty isn’t everything, but I believe it’s the first thing. And I’m straight. I believe in being straight, sir.”

“Good!” said Mr. Golspie heartily, for he, too, believed in Sandycroft and his like being straight.

“And if it’s possible, gentlemen,” Sandycroft continued, looking from one to the other of them, “I’d like to stay on now and just pick up the threads, so that I can start right away on the road to-morrow morning. I’m keen to get going, desperately keen. You know what it is, sir. After only a week or two doing nothing much, a man like me feels rusty. I want to get on with it. My wife laughs at me. ‘Have a rest,’ she says. But no, I’m not like that. I must be getting on with something.”

“Good man,” said Mr. Dersingham approvingly.

“Well, I think we’ll have to be getting on with something, too,” said Mr. Golspie. “He’d better come round here in the morning and learn what there is to know about it then, before we send him out.”

“I think he had,” replied Mr. Dersingham. “Look here, you’d better go home now--break the news to your wife and that sort of thing, eh?--and then be down about nine or so in the morning. If we’re not here then, you have a talk to Smeeth--that’s the cashier, out there--and he’ll be able to tell you something.”

“Very good, sir,” and you would have thought the speaker was about to salute smartly before retiring. He did not, however, but threw a keen and energetic glance at Mr. Golspie (whom he had recognised at once as the dominant partner), then a keen and energetic glance at Mr. Dersingham, picked up his hat (and in such a manner as to suggest that he could do some wonderful things even with that, if he wished to), brought his hat in front of the second button of his overcoat, gave three brisk nods, then wheeled about and made an exit like a torpedo from its tube.