Clayhanger - Arnold Bennett (best business books of all time .TXT) 📗

transformation of the former living-rooms upstairs into supplementary workshops, and also the jobbing builder was at work according to the plans of Osmond Orgreave. But at five minutes past twelve--just before Stifford went out to his dinner--Darius entered the ebonised cubicle, and said curtly to Edwin, who was writing there--

"Show me your book."

This demand surprised Edwin. `His' book was the shop-sales book. He was responsible for it, and for the petty cash-book, and for the shop till. His father's private cash-book was utterly unknown to him, and he had no trustworthy idea of the financial totality of the business; but the management of the shop till gave him the air of being in his father's confidence accustomed him to the discipline of anxiety, and also somewhat flattered him.

He produced the book. The last complete page had not been added up.

"Add this," said his father.

Darius himself added up the few lines on the incomplete page.

"Stiff;" he shouted, "bring me the sales-slip."

The amounts of sales conducted by Stifford himself were written on a slip of paper from which Edwin transferred the items at frequent intervals to the book.

"Go to yer dinner," said Darius to Stifford, when he appeared at the door of the cubicle with the slip.

"It's not quite time yet, sir."

"Go to yer dinner, I tell ye."

Stifford had three-quarters of an hour for his dinner.

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TWO.

Darius combined the slip with the book and made a total.

"Petty cash," he muttered shortly.

Edwin produced the petty cash-book, a volume of very trifling importance.

"Now bring me the till."

Edwin went out of the cubicle and brought the till, which was a large and battered japanned cash-box with a lid in two independent parts, from its well-concealed drawer behind the fancy-counter. Darius counted the coins in it and made calculations on blotting-paper, breathing stertorously all the time.

"What on earth are you trying to get at?" Edwin asked, with innocent familiarity. He thought that the Club-share crisis had been postponed by one of his father's swift strange caprices.

Darius turned on him glaring: "I'm trying to get at where ye got the brass from to buy them there books as I saw last night. Where did ye get it from? There's nowt wrong here, unless ye're a mighty lot cleverer than I take ye for. Where did ye get it from? Ye don't mean to tell me as ye saved it up!"

Edwin had had some shocks in his life. This was the greatest. He could feel his cheeks and his hands growing dully hot, and his eyes smarting; and he was suddenly animated by an almost murderous hatred and an inexpressible disgust for his father, who in the grossness of his perceptions and his notions had imagined his son to be a thief. "Loathsome beast!" he thought savagely.

"I'm waiting," said his father.

"I've drawn my Club money," said Edwin.

For an instant the old man was at a loss; then he understood. He had entirely forgotten the maturing of the Club share, and assuredly he had not dreamed that Edwin would accept and secrete so vast a sum as fifty pounds without uttering a word. Darius had made a mistake, and a bad one; but in those days fathers were never wrong; above all they never apologised. In Edwin's wicked act of concealment Darius could choose new and effective ground, and he did so.

"And what dost mean by doing that and saying nowt? Sneaking--"

"What do you mean by calling me a thief?" Edwin and Darius were equally startled by this speech. Edwin knew not what had come over him, and Darius, never having been addressed in such a dangerous tone by his son, was at a loss.

"I never called ye a thief."

"Yes, you did! Yes, you did!" Edwin nearly shouted now. "You starve me for money, until I haven't got sixpence to bless myself with. You couldn't get a man to do what I do for twice what you pay me. And then you call me a thief. And then you jump down my throat because I spend a bit of money of my own." He snorted. He knew that he was quite mad, but there was a strange drunken pleasure in this madness.

"Hold yer tongue, lad!" said Darius, as stiffly as he could. But Darius, having been unprepared, was intimidated. Darius vaguely comprehended that a new and disturbing factor had come into his life. "Make a less row!" he went on more strongly. "D'ye want all th' street to hear ye?"

"I won't make a less row. You make as much noise as you want, and I'll make as much noise as I want!" Edwin cried louder and louder. And then in bitter scorn, "Thief, indeed!"

"I never called ye a--"

"Let me come out!" Edwin shouted. They were very close together. Darius saw that his son's face was all drawn. Edwin snatched his hat off its hook, pushed violently past his father and, sticking his hands deep in his pockets, strode into the street.

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THREE.

In four minutes he was hammering on the front door of the new house. Maggie opened, in alarm. Edwin did not see how alarmed she was by his appearance.

"What--"

"Father thinks I've been stealing his damned money!" Edwin snapped, in a breaking voice. The statement was not quite accurate, but it suited his boiling anger to put it in the present tense instead of in the past. He hesitated an instant in the hall, throwing a look behind at Maggie, who stood entranced with her hand on the latch of the open door. Then he bounded upstairs, and shut himself in his room with a tremendous bang that shook the house. He wanted to cry, but he would not.

Nobody disturbed him till about two o'clock, when Maggie knocked at the door, and opened it, without entering.

"Edwin, I've kept your dinner hot."

"No, thanks." He was standing with his legs wide apart on the hearth rug.

"Father's had his dinner and gone."

"No, thanks."

She closed the door again.


VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER SIXTEEN.


THE SEQUEL.

"I say, Edwin," Maggie called through the door.

"Well, come in, come in," he replied gruffly. And as he spoke he sped from the window, where he was drumming on the pane, to the hearthrug, so that he should have the air of not having moved since Maggie's previous visit. He knew not why he made this manoeuvre, unless it was that he thought vaguely that Maggie's impression of the seriousness of the crisis might thereby be intensified.

She stood in the doorway, evidently placatory and sympathetic, and behind her stood Mrs Nixon, in a condition of great mental turmoil.

"I think you'd better come and have your tea," said Maggie firmly, and yet gently. She was soft and stout, and incapable of asserting herself with dignity; but she was his elder, and there were moments when an unusual, scarce-perceptible quality in her voice would demand from him a particular attention.

He shook his head, and looked sternly at his watch, in the manner of one who could be adamant. He was astonished to see that the hour was a quarter past six.

"Where is he?" he asked.

"Father? He's had his tea and gone back to the shop. Come along."

"I must wash myself first," said Edwin gloomily. He did not wish to yield, but he was undeniably very hungry indeed.

Mrs Nixon could not leave him alone at tea, worrying him with offers of specialities to tempt him. He wondered who had told the old thing about the affair. Then he reflected that she had probably heard his outburst when he entered the house. Possibly the pert, nice niece also had heard it. Maggie remained sewing at the bow-window of the dining-room while he ate a plenteous tea.

"Father said I could tell you that you could pay yourself an extra half-crown a week wages from next Saturday," said Maggie suddenly, when she saw he had finished. It was always Edwin who paid wages in the Clayhanger establishment.

He was extremely startled by this news, with all that it implied of surrender and of pacific intentions. But he endeavoured to hide what he felt, and only snorted.

"He's been talking, then? What did he say?"

"Oh! Not much! He told me I could tell you if I liked."

"It would have looked better of him, if he'd told me himself," said Edwin, determined to be ruthless. Maggie offered no response.

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TWO.

After about a quarter of an hour he went into the garden, and kicked stones in front of him. He could not classify his thoughts. He considered himself to be perfectly tranquillised now, but he was mistaken. As he idled in the beautiful August twilight near the garden-front of the house, catching faintly the conversation of Mrs Nixon and her niece as it floated through the open window of the kitchen, round the corner, together with quiet soothing sounds of washing-up, he heard a sudden noise in the garden-porch, and turned swiftly. His father stood there. Both of them were off guard. Their eyes met.

"Had your tea?" Darius asked, in an unnatural tone.

"Yes," said Edwin.

Darius, having saved his face, hurried into the house, and Edwin moved down the garden, with heart sensibly beating. The encounter renewed his agitation.

And at the corner of the garden, over the hedge, which had been repaired, Janet entrapped him. She seemed to have sprung out of the ground. He could not avoid greeting her, and in order to do so he had to dominate himself by force. She was in white. She appeared always to wear white on fine summer days. Her smile was exquisitely benignant.

"So you're installed?" she began.

They talked of the removal, she asking questions and commenting, and he giving brief replies.

"I'm all alone to-night," she said, in a pause, "except for Alicia. Father and mother and the boys are gone to a fete at Longshaw."

"And Miss Lessways?" he inquired self-consciously.

"Oh! She's gone," said Janet. "She's gone back to London. Went yesterday."

"Rather sudden, isn't it?"

"Well, she had to go."

"Does she live in London?" Edwin asked, with an air of indifference.

"She does just now."

"I only ask because I thought from something she said she came from Turnhill way."

"Her people do," said Janet. "Yes, you may say she's a Turnhill girl."

"She seems very fond of poetry," said Edwin.

"You've noticed it!" Janet's face illuminated the dark. "You should hear her recite!"

"Recites, does she?"

"You'd have heard her that night you were here. But when she knew you were coming, she made us all promise not to ask her."

"Really!" said Edwin. "But why? She didn't know me. She'd never seen me."

"Oh! She might have just seen you