A City Merchant's Love Story.
by Maxwell Ainge.
Originally published in The Novel Magazine (C. Arthur Pearson, Ltd.) vol.2 #10 (Jan 1906).
Telling of the great consequences which followed when a touch of sentiment crept into a busy office.
"The thing to do," said the Manager definitely, "is to cut down the office expenses."
The keen blue eyes, sharply-pointed beard and aquiline features seemed to lend colour to his words. He had the appearance of a man whose province in life was to cut his way through obstruction and opposition.
"Wouldn't be a bad idea to uproot 'em altogether, would it," said the Senior Partner, who seemed to treat the Manager's decision in a very flippant manner for so exalted a person. "If you cut things down they grow up again stronger afterwards. Let's eradicate 'em."
The Manager ignored the suggestion, and took some sheets of foolscap from his drawer:
"I have prepared a list," he began, "showing the salaries the staff are at present receiving, and what they will get under what I may call the new scale."
"The latter being the minor scale, I take it!" interrupted the Senior Partner.
"I have the list here," pursued the Manager, paying tribute to the joke by allowing a rapid smile to glide over his face. He would not have made this concession except that he had some drastic measures to propose, and rather feared the Senior Partner's soft-heartedness.
"A careful investigation into the matter," he began in his best company meeting manner, "has shown me that we can reduce the monthly office expenditure by a fairly considerable sum. Perhaps if you have five minutes to spare I could explain what I mean now."
Then the Manager began to read from his figure-bespattered papers, while the Senior Partner leant back in his chair and watched him admiringly. It was an involved scheme, and provided for a reduction to an extent varying from ten to forty per cent. of the salaries of the whole staff, extending with commendable thoroughness from the Office boy up to—and excepting—the Manager.
"I suppose it's all right," said the Senior Partner, when the stream of figures had ceased to flow, "but I don't half like it."
Then he saw a loophole. "Perhaps some of 'em might resign rather than have their salaries cut down like this," he said eagerly.
"That's a contingency that I don't think we need fear in the present state of the labour market," the Manager replied drily, and waited for any further objection the Senior Partner might have to make.
"It's rather rough on poor old Childs, isn't it!" he said, trying another line of attack. "From £3 to £2 a week is rather a sudden drop, and he's getting old. We shan't have to pay it at all much longer."
"He has been for years one of the most over-paid men in the office, and a reduction in his case is absolutely necessary in justice to the others," returned the Manager sharply. "My own course," he continued, "would have been to dismiss him altogether. He could with advantage be replaced by a youth on 18s., but in view of his long service I have stretched a point in his favour."
"He had a responsible position in my father's time," said the Senior Partner, sticking to his guns in a really wonderful way for a man of his indolence. "I don't think I can sanction any interference with him. Just look in the old books and see what he was getting, say, twenty years back."
"I don't think we can let such a precedent weigh in this case," said the Manager, consulting the old ledgers with evident reluctance. "Your father was a man of great—some people might say quixotic—generosity, and old Childs had evidently wormed himself into favour with him. Yes, just as I thought, £250 a year, reduced under the "new management" six years ago to £3 a week."
"And now proposed to be further brought down under the "newer management' to 40s. No, Mr. Henderson," said the Senior Partner, "I don't consider that a fair way of treating an old employé."
The Manager had not expected this reception of the scheme; he rode roughshod over the easy-going Senior Partner as a rule.
"Of course I bow to your decision," he said at length. "I might point out that now the interests of your partners ought to be considered. Your father was a law unto himself, and could pay what salaries he chose."
"That's very true," replied the Senior Partner, a little taken aback by the other's tone, "but—"
"There's one other thing," said the Manager, pursuing his advantage, "Childs appears to be living in a style very much above his means. I discourage gossip in the office, but it has come to my ears that Childs is in the habit of buying expensive bouquets and so forth from West-end florists. This is not mere hearsay, I myself have seen a bouquet costing I should say very little short of a guinea on his desk."
"If he brings it to the office it shows he is not ashamed of it," said the Senior Partner, still defensive. "Besides, I don't see how he could do it on £3 a week."
"Ah, that brings me to my point!" said the Manager triumphantly. "Either Childs has private means, in which case it is an obvious work of supererogation for the firm to waste £3 a week on him, or he is living beyond his means, which can most effectively be remedied by a cutting off of supplies on our part. Another aspect of the matter which I will not press," concluded the Manager virtuously, "is that Childs' character is not marked by that moral tone which has outweighed his mental defects and caused the firm to retain his services after they had ceased to be of value."
The Manager had clearly won the game. Left to himself the Senior Partner would have been quite as ready to double as to reduce the staff's salaries, provided neither process had given him any trouble, but his little flicker of fight for Childs was not proof against the steady douche of the masterful, cool-looking manager.
So it was settled that the little stream of gold that descended from the coffers of the firm into the pockets of the clerks, to flow out again in discharge of rates and taxes and butchers' bills, was to flow in diminished volume for the future. In particular, one Childs was to discover that a third of the total had been diverted from his little stream.
The Senior Partner was sorry because Memory, who knew more than the Manager, and was a more trustworthy guide, showed him a bright, chubby-faced boy leaping from the carriage and pair drawn up in Cheapside and racing through "father's offices," to the complete confusion of all that in them were. Memory, taxed a little further, revealed a kindly, middle-aged man, who was wont to take the boy by the hand for an excursion among the ponderous safes and weighty ledgers when father was too busy to be disturbed.
Elderly book-keepers, their eyes dulled by the perpetual pursuit of figures up and down red-ink-ruled columns, would brighten up as the merry laugh rang out in the sombre office, and his advent was regarded as not much less important than pay day. And Memory reminded the Senior Partner of a thousand and one kindly traits of the middle-aged man who had grown into old Childs, such as the habit of producing apples from unseen pockets and tin soldiers from grim-looking deed boxes. For which reasons Memory was somewhat of a nuisance to the Senior Partner at this time.
* * * * *
To the little house in a dingy back street off the Kennington Road, where Childs, lonely, shabby, silent, in Cheapside, loving and beloved at home, lived with his only daughter, the old clerk bore the news with a downcast face; but the happiness of these two was not of the kind that depends on money.
Each was sorry for the other's sake, each burnt with indignation at the privation which would be felt by the other. Daddy might rage over the rapidly receding prospect of a new summer frock for Kitty, and Kitty might fume at the coming inroads on daddy's weekly consumption of tobacco, but no thought of self entered the head of either.
So, on the evening after the scheme had taken effect, they spent a happy time enlarging on the virtues of poverty and the danger that lurked in the accumulation of wealth.
Now, it fell out that about the middle of the following month the Manager took a short holiday. Only a few days, but it brought the Senior Partner more into the office than usual, and the staff were able to see that he was far less terrible than the worthy Manager represented him.
On the third day of the Manager's absence, the Senior Partner coming in from lunch passed through the clerks' office. As a rule he avoided this way, because, since the reduction of salaries, the cause of which the Manager had been careful to impute to him, he had been unable to face his clerks, and even lived in a vague fear of hearing that one of them had last been seen alive on the parapet of Waterloo Bridge, owing to the decline of his fortunes.
But, since the Manager had been away from his post of intermediary between the Senior Partner and his staff, there had begun to creep into his place a spirit, called by some Fellow-feeling, and by others Sympathy. And the spirit was so far asserting that the office was his rightful domain and not the Manager's, that the Senior Partner lingered on his way and chatted awhile.
This pleased the spirit very much; he sent smiles and cheery looks among the faces of the clerks, and incidentally he got better work out of them, which seems to show that he was a fairly practical spirit, although so many there be who call him sentimental and out of date.
As the Senior Partner turned away towards the room called "private" his eyes fell on Childs' empty desk. On the desk lay a small package which bore the name of a well-known West-end florist, the kind of name which makes one think of the Portman Rooms and the season. This, then, was the floral offering that Childs took monthly away to some unknown shrine, and his deprivation had not caused a cessation of what the Manager called his absurd extravagance.
Almost unconsciously the Senior Partner drew back the paper covering, but it was no triumph of the florists' art that met his eye. Lying in the big, soft basket, shrinking a little to the side, as if conscious of their unaccustomed environment, lay a little bunch of violets. And then in a flash the Senior Partner understood.
For a moment he stood gazing down on the table, the clerks watching, expectant of a sniff-accompanied comment, and then passed on, and although the door-handle was polished and shining it was noticed that he groped for it as if something obscured his vision.
At three o'clock there sounded through the door the hand-bell that stood always ready on the Senior Partner's table. "I want to see Mr. Childs," he said to the boy who answered the summons. The request sounded ominous, and the old man with trembling hand brushed his coat and knocked the knock of the dependent at the door of the rich relation, while the office began to discuss the question of his successor.
The Senior Partner was standing on the hearth-rug trying to assume a judicial air. As a matter of fact, he was overflowing with kindness, but he was a sad hypocrite, and was wont to perform his deeds of kindness with a well-meant effort at concealing them.
"I wanted to see you, Mr. Childs," he began, coming at once to the point in order to relieve his employé of the least suspense, "to rectify a little mistake. It has come to my knowledge that your salary has been reduced lately, and my object in calling you in was to tell you that this has been done by a—well, we will call it a misunderstanding. You will resume the old rate this week, and of course we shall make up what you have lost by arrears."
The old man bowed and tried to express his thanks, which was not easy, for his thoughts were already busy devising surprises for Kitty. The arrears would amount to £4, which go a long way towards a new frock, and hold out dazzling prospects of lesser frivolities. There was a little silence while each man fumbled for words to frame what was in his mind. Speech seemed singularly shy of both.
The Senior Partner was the first to speak.
"I don't want to pry into personal matters, Mr. Childs, but I saw a basket on your desk this afternoon with—"
"They are only for Kitty," began Childs somewhat inconsequently, and then stopped.
"Who's Kitty?" inquired the Senior Partner kindly.
"My daughter, sir," the old man replied eagerly, suddenly finding it wonderfully easy to confide to this kindly-eyed man what he had never breathed to anyone else. "She's all I have left and I get her something like that every month."
"Why every month!" pursued the Senior Partner gently.
"Babies have a birthday on every one of the first twelve months, and she has always been a baby to me, so we reckon the seventeenth of every month a birthday for her."
"The—the flowers used to be rather more—more extensive, didn't they?" asked the Senior Partner, feeling his way.
The old man's face grew troubled. "The did indeed, sir. I used to get beauties, but this month I didn't see my way to much, so I got what I could, and she'll love them for her daddy's sake."
The smile of the Senior Partner was sunshine, wherein Childs had not basked for many years, and the confidences of a clerk were unknown to the Senior Partner. The clock on the mantelpiece made a revolution, and struck four rather snappishly, as if it were rather indignant that its notes, accustomed to respectful hearing from Napoleons of Finance, were being wasted on a person at 40s. a week, who, to crown the offence of his poverty, took no notice of their sonorous warning.
But the Senior Partner was learning much, and the old man, for the first time for many a year, was finding a listener while he dilated on the perfections of Kitty, of their simple life wrapped round with the all-powerful girdle of a self-sacrificing love, and of the one great hope in the hearts of both that they might one day, before it was too late, flee from the City that bound them prison-like within its walls, and make their home in the little Kentish cottage where as yet they could only dwell in fancy.
Longer and longer they talked till the clock, exasperated beyond all bearing, yapped five, and reminded the Senior Partner of an engagement.
* * * * *
A few months later, when the March winds had fled and the summer sun smiled down on the fields, a little party, mud-stained but merry, wended their way along one of the unfrequented roads out of Maid stone. The Senior Partner and the clerks were out for the day.
"Lovely road," said the thirstiest clerk, when they had travelled about three miles, casting, however, rather a vindictive look at a neat little cottage that in the distance he had mistaken for a wayside inn. "By the by, how far did you say to the next village, sir?" he added, apparently as an afterthought.
"Oh! Four miles at least, I should say," replied the Senior Partner cheerfully, striding on.
The thirst of the first clerk, rendered infectious by this news, began to attack the others, and the spirits of the party drooped somewhat.
"I daresay we might get a quencher without going all that way, though," consoled the Senior Partner, smiling mysteriously.
He spoke as one who knew, and the party quickened its pace, each man keeping one eye for enjoyment of the country, and the other for premises licensed for the sale of liquors to be consumed thereon.
A few hundred yards further on the road took a sudden curve, and a cottage was seen standing a little back from the road.
"Here we are," said the Senior Partner, his smile broadening, "I expect we shall find enough here." And the party walked on and in a few minutes reached the cottage.
A strangely familiar figure was standing in the porch, shading his eyes from the sun and peering down the road as if expecting someone. In the little front garden was a long table with glasses pleasantly plentiful and prominent.
"It's Childs," exclaimed the amazed clerks in one breath, but the Senior Partner did not seem to share their astonishment.
Childs it certainly was. The tail coat of rusty black and the aged chimney-pot hat had disappeared, a loose Norfolk jacket and a cap filling the vacancies. Kent had already removed the depressed look he used to wear in Cheapside, and, in appearance, at all events, had relieved him of about a dozen years, but there was no mistaking the old man.
There was a general rush for the porch, each anxious for the first welcome, and for the next few minutes the sound of many voices filled the little garden. The Senior Partner seemed to be a privileged guest, for he went into the cottage with a nod to the old man, passed through the house and into the back garden.
Afterwards somebody remembered Kitty, and the old man was prevailed upon to fetch her. He did not go to find her, though, but stepped inside the house and called through the open doors into the back garden: "She'll be coming soon, I expect," he said, as if experience had taught him not to look for a prompt obedience; and sure enough it was some time before Kitty, smiling and happy, came out in answer to the Summon.
And when she did, it was on the arm of the Senior Partner.