II

When he reached the shop, he sat down at his old desk in the black-stained cubicle, and spied forth and around for the alleged dust which he would tolerate in business but would not tolerate at home. It was there. He could see places that had obviously not been touched for weeks, withdrawn places where the undisturbed mounds of stock and litter had the eternal character of Roman remains or vestiges of creation. The senior errand-boy was in the shop, snuffling over a blue-paper parcel.

"Boy," said Edwin. "What time do you come here in the morning?"

"'A' past seven, sir."

"Well, on Monday morning you'll be here at seven and you'll move everything--there and there and there--and sweep and dust properly.

This shop's like a pigstye. I believe you never dust anything but the counters."

He was mild but firm. He knew himself for a just man; yet the fact that he was robbing this boy of half-an-hour's sleep and probably the boy's mother also, and upsetting the ancient order of the boy's household, did not trouble him, did not even occur to him. For him the boy had no mother and no household, but was a patent self-causing boy that came miraculously into existence on the shop doorstep every morning and achieved annihilation thereon every night.

The boy was a fatalist, but his fatalism had limits, because he well knew that the demand for errand-boys was greater than the supply.

Though the limits of his fatalism had not yet been reached, he was scarcely pleased.

"If I come at seven who'll gi' me th' kays, sir?" he demanded rather surlily, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

"I'll see that you have the keys," said Edwin, with divine a.s.surance, though he had not thought of the difficulty of the keys.

The boy left the shop, his body thrown out of the perpendicular by the weight of the blue-paper parcel.

"You ought to keep an eye on this place," said Edwin quietly to the young man who combined the function of clerk with that of salesman to the rare retail customers. "I can't see to everything. Here, check these wages for me." He indicated small piles of money.

"Yes, sir," said the clerk with self-respect, but admitting the justice of the animadversion.

Edwin seldom had difficulty with his employees. Serious friction was unknown in the establishment.

He went out by the back-entrance, thinking:

"It's no affair whatever of hers. Moreover the shop's as clean as shops are, and a d.a.m.ned sight cleaner than most. A shop isn't a drawing-room.... And now there's the infernal programme."

He would have liked to bury and forget the matter of the programme. But he could not. His conscience, or her fussiness, would force him to examine into it. There was no doubt that Big James was getting an old man, with peculiar pompous mannerisms and a disposition towards impossibilism. Big James ought to have remembered, in speaking to Hilda, that he was speaking to the wife of his employer. That Hilda should give an order, or even make a request, direct was perhaps unusual, but--dash it!--you knew what women were, and if that old josser of a bachelor, Big James, didn't know what women were, so much the worse for him. He should just give Big James a hint. He could not have Big James making mischief between himself and Hilda.

But the coward would not go straight to Big James. He went first up to what had come to be called "the litho room," partly in order to postpone Big James, but partly also because he had quite an affectionate proud interest in the litho room. In Edwin's childhood this room, now stripped and soiled into a workshop, had been the drawing-room of the Clayhanger family; and it still showed the defect which it had always shown; the window was too small and too near the corner of the room. No transformation could render it satisfactory save a change in the window.

Old Darius Clayhanger had vaguely talked of altering the window. Edwin had thought seriously of it. But nothing had been done. Edwin was continuing the very policy of his father which had so roused his disdain when he was young: the policy of "making things do." Instead of entering upon lithography in a manner bold, logical, and decisive, he had nervously and half-heartedly slithered into it. Thus at the back of the yard was a second-hand "Newsom" machine in quarters too small for it, and the apparatus for the preliminary polishing of the stones; while up here in the ex-drawing-room were grotesquely mingled the final polishing process and the artistic department.

The artist who drew the designs on the stone was a German, with short fair hair and moustache, a thick neck and a changeless expression.

Edwin had surprisingly found him in Hanbridge. He was very skilled in judging the amount of "work" necessary on the stone to produce a desired result on the paper, and very laborious. Without him the nascent lithographic trade could not have prospered. His wages were extremely moderate, but they were what he had asked, and in exchange for them he gave his existence. Edwin liked to watch him drawing, slavishly, meticulously, endlessly. He was absolutely without imagination, artistic feeling, charm, urbanity, or elasticity of any sort,--a miracle of sheer gruff positiveness. He lived somewhere in Hanbridge, and had once been seen by Edwin on a Sunday afternoon, wheeling a perambulator and smiling at a young enceinte woman who held his free arm. An astounding sight, which forced Edwin to adjust his estimates! He grimly called himself an Englishman, and was legally ent.i.tled to do so. On this morning he was drawing a ewer and basin, for the ill.u.s.trated catalogue of an earthenware manufacturer.

"Not a very good light to-day," murmured Edwin.

"Eh?"

"Not a very good light."

"No," said Karl sourly and indifferently, bent over the stone, and breathing with calm regularity. "My eyesight is being de-stroit."

Behind, a young man in a smock was industriously polishing a stone.

Edwin beheld with pleasure. It was a joy to think that here was the sole lithography in Bursley, and that his own enterprise had started it.

Nevertheless he was ashamed too,--ashamed of his hesitations, his half-measures, his timidity, and of Karl's impaired eyesight. There was no reason why he should not build a proper works, and every reason why he should; the operation would be remunerative; it would set an example; it would increase his prestige. He grew resolute. On the day of the party at the Benbows' he had been and carefully inspected the plot of land at Shawport, and yesterday he had made a very low offer for it. If the offer was refused, he would raise it. He swore to himself he would have his works.

Then Big James came into the litho room.

"I was seeking ye, sir," said Big James majestically, with a mysterious expression.

Edwin tried to look at him anew, as it were with Hilda's eyes.

Certainly his bigness amounted now to an enormity, for proportionately his girth more than matched his excessive height. His ap.r.o.n descended from the semicircle of his paunch like a vast grey wall. The ap.r.o.n was dirty, this being Sat.u.r.day, but it was at any rate intact; in old days Big James and others at critical moments of machining used to tear strips off their ap.r.o.ns for machine-rags.... Yes, he was conceivably a grotesque figure, with his spectacles, which did not suit him, his heavy breathing, his mannerisms, and his grandiose air of Atlas supporting the moral world. A woman might be excused for seeing the comic side of him.

But surely he was honest and loyal. Surely he was not the adder that Hilda with an intonation had suggested!

"I'm coming," said Edwin, rather curtly.

He felt just in the humour for putting Big James "straight." Still his reply had not been too curt, for to his staff he was the opposite of a bully; he always scorned to take a facile advantage of his power, often tried even to conceal his power in the fiction that the employee was one man and himself merely another. He would be far more devastating to his wife and his sister than to any employee. But at intervals a bad or careless workman had to meet the blaze of his eye and accept the lash of his speech.

"It's about that little job for the mistress, sir," said Big James in a soft voice, when they were out on the landing.

Edwin gave a start. The ageing man's tones were so eager, so anxiously loyal! His emphasis on the word 'mistress' conveyed so clearly that the mistress was a high and glorious personage to serve whom was an honour and a fearful honour! The ageing man had almost whispered, like a boy, glancing with jealous distrust at the shut door of the room that contained the German.

"Oh!" muttered Edwin, taken aback.

"I set it up myself," said Big James, and holding his head very high looked down at Edwin under his spectacles.

"Why!" said Edwin cautiously. "I thought you'd given Mrs. Clayhanger the idea it couldn't be done in time."

"Bless ye, sir! Not if I know it! I intimated to her the situation in which we were placed, with urgent jobs on hand, as in duty bound, sir, she being the mistress. Ye know how slow I am to give a promise, sir.

But not to do it--such was not my intention. And as I have said already, sir, I've set it up myself, and here's a rough pull."

He produced a piece of paper.

Edwin's ancient affection for Big James grew indignant. The old fellow was the very mirror of loyalty. He might be somewhat grotesque and mannered upon occasion, but he was the soul of the Clayhanger business.

He had taught Edwin most of what he knew about both typesetting and machining. It seemed not long since that he used to call Edwin "young sir," a to enter into tacit leagues with him against the dangerous obstinacies of his decaying father. Big James had genuinely admired Darius Clayhanger. a.s.suredly he admired Darius's son not less. His fidelity to the dynasty was touching; it was wistful. The order from the mistress had tremendously excited and flattered him in his secret heart.... And yet Hilda must call him names, must insinuate against his superb integrity, must grossly misrepresent his att.i.tude to herself.

Whatever in his pompous old way he might have said, she could not possibly have mistaken his anxiety to please her. No, she had given a false account of their interview,--and Edwin had believed it! Edwin now swerved violently back to his own original view. He firmly believed Big James against his wife. He reflected: "How simple I was to swallow all Hilda said without confirmation! I might have known!" And that he should think such a thought shocked him tremendously.

The programme was not satisfactorily set up. Apart from several mistakes in the spelling of proper names, the thing with its fancy types, curious centring, and superabundance of full-stops, resembled more the libretto of a Primitive Methodist Tea-meeting than a programme of cla.s.sical music offered to refined dilettanti on a Sunday night.

Though Edwin had endeavoured to modernise Big James, he had failed. It was perhaps well that he had failed. For the majority of customers preferred Big James's taste in printing to Edwin's. He corrected the misspellings and removed a few full-stops, and then said:

"It's all right. But I doubt if Mrs. Clayhanger'll care for all these fancy founts," implying that it was a pity, of course, that Big James's fancy founts would not be appreciated at their true value, but women were women. "I should almost be inclined to set it all again in old-face. I'm sure she'd prefer it. Do you mind?"

"With the greatest of pleasure, sir," Big James heartily concurred, looking at his watch. "But I must be lively."

He conveyed his immense bulk neatly and importantly down the narrow stairs.

III