The Missing Angel - Erle Cox (whitelam books .TXT) 📗
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The Missing Angel
by Erle Cox
“My Lords, there was an island of farewell,
Whence parted those things real
from those that only seemed to be.”
To
MOLL, KATH and HAROLD
All characters in this story, except that of Nicholas Senior,
are fictitious.
To-know all is to forgive all. So, therefore, if you would censure
Tydvil Jones because of what happened when he made the attempt to
recapture his lost youth, you should know why and how he lost his youth.
A biographical introduction to a story is always boring, but I cannot
help that. You must know how Tydvil was brought up or it will be
impossible to understand him. When you know he began life with a
handicap that not one man in a million could carry to the winning post
you will recognise that he might have been much worse than he was.
To begin with Tydvil was an only child. His father was middle-aged when
Tydvil arrived, and was a man deeply absorbed in his business. His
mother was a woman of iron will and an ultra pious disposition. That she
insisted on calling her son Tydvil because his father had been born in
Merthyr Tydvil, and had her way, is one proof of the inflexibility of
her purpose.
It was the boy’s good luck that with his mother’s will he inherited the
business ability of his father. As there was not room in one family for
two will-powers such as her own, Mrs. Jones, senior, did her best to
eradicate that of her son in his infancy; but never recognised that,
though suppressed, it remained latent.
Now, Mrs. Jones as the moving spirit in half a dozen societies for the
moral improvement of everybody and everything, obtained an insight into
aspects of life that are usually kept decently covered up. Not being as
wise as she believed herself to be, and seeing results without
understanding causes, she was firmly convinced that all men were brutes.
She asserted her belief so often that the natural brutality of man
became the basic axiom of her life.
She was determined, therefore, that her son would grow up an exception,
and took measures accordingly. It was the boy’s hard luck that; as an
only child, she was able to devote her entire attention to him while she
was not otherwise engaged in reforming society.
To give her her due, she was well equipped for the job. It would have
been better for Tydvil perhaps had she not been entitled to sign herself
M.A. By the time he was aged eighteen years he was better furnished
educationally than thousands of public school boys. Otherwise the
results of his home training were deplorable beyond words.
He knew no other boys of his age except at long range. His only sport
was tennis played with serious-minded seniors of either sex on the
family court. On the rare occasions when he came into contact with
youths of his own age, he could not understand them. He considered their
outlook on life to be sinful. Their opinion of him, expressed with the
freedom of youth, was far from flattering.
On one occasion, after reflecting on their manners and customs to two
amazed boys, he only escaped gathering the full harvest of his temerity
by one restraining the other on the plea that it was impossible to
strike a lady. They parted with him after giving him a brief, but lurid,
summary of his character that left him pink to the ears.
The truth was, that at this age, a more intolerable and obnoxious young
prig than Tydvil Jones could not have been found outside the pages of
“Sanford and Merton,” a literary masterpiece that is, fortunately,
forgotten by the present generation.
To his father, Tydvil’s belated arrival had been a cause of
embarrassment rather than pleasure. He felt secretly relieved when his
wife had undertaken to deal with a domestic problem with which he felt
himself unable to cope. He had his doubts as to the value of the boy’s
education at home. But he concealed them from his wife. Thirty years of
married life had made him a domestic diplomat.
It was a relief, too, when his wife decided that Tydvil had arrived at
the age when he should enter his father’s office. It was his unspoken
fear that his wife would demand a professional career for their son.
Away back in the ‘50’s of last century, there had been established the
firm of Craddock, Burns and Despard. The firm had flourished
exceedingly. Burns’s daughter had married a Jones in the ‘70’s.
Subsequently, through a series of vital and commercial dissolutions, the
father of Tydvil Jones became the sole partner and owner of the firm of
Craddock, Burns and Despard. The head office was housed in a vast
six-storied building, and the women of six States paid tribute into the
coffers of C. B. & D.
For the first time in his life, Tydvil Jones came into direct contact
with his father. It was a belated contact that led to a mutual respect,
based, although they did not recognise the fact, on mutual suffering.
The loosening of the apron strings, however, by no means meant
emancipation. In the warehouse, Tydvil experienced the isolation of “the
boss’s son.” It was the isolation of the man who would eventually take
the reins. Departmental heads who imparted information were courteous
but restrained. The general staff, both office and warehouse, viewed his
advent with suspicion.
The boy’s natural reticence increased, and, denied friendship, he threw
himself wholeheartedly into his work. He had sufficient sense not to
make his position too obvious to the staff. The natural ability he had
inherited from his father found a proper outlet, and it was not long
before Tydvil began to make his mark.
Gradually the staff recognised he was not presumptuous. Moreover, to
their great and abiding joy, they discovered that he was innocent of the
world and the flesh to an extent that was unbelievable to a horde of
average business pagans.
The typists found with delight that, on being spoken to by one of them,
he would blush a rosy pink. Therefore, they made opportunities to
approach him, and the eyes of a dozen other minxes watched for the
tell-tale blush.
There grew up around Tydvil legends of his innocence, that lost nothing
in the telling. “Have you heard Tyddie’s latest?” became a stock
question. None the less, while the staff grinned joyously at his
blameless life, they began to have a real respect for him as a business
man.
Said one departmental head to another: “He may be a mug in many
respects, but there was nothing of the mug in the way he handled that
old swine Graham of Graham and Stone over those contracts. You know the
old man’s gift of language when the spirit moves him?”
The other nodded, and laughed.
“Well,” the narrator continued, “he cut loose on young Tyddie. He had
hardly got his first ‘damn,’ when the lad pipes up, ‘You will be good
enough not to use obscene and blasphemous language in my office. It does
not impress me, and it is offensive. Kindly confine your remarks to
business.’”
The listener laughed. “That must have improved the atmosphere.”
“A close-up of old G’s face would have been worth a fortune. He gulped
out, ‘I’ve done business with this house for five and thirty years, and
have never been spoken to like that.’ ‘Hump,’ snapped Tyddie, ‘then it’s
about time someone took you in hand. If you don’t like the way I talk to
you, you can get out and close the account.’”
“That, to old Michael Graham?”
“Just that! And believe it or not, he bullied the old devil till he
didn’t know whether he was awake or enjoying a nightmare. He signed up
for all the allowances we asked for and agreed to replace the defective
stuff. Tyddie may be a perfect lady, but he is no mug.”
In his twenty-fifth year, Tydvil Jones married. Had he been asked at the
time, he would have said he had made free selection. Really, the choice
had been his mother’s. That matron was somewhat disappointed at the
result of her matchmaking.
She knew Amy to be very pious and serious but she under-estimated her
generalship and fighting strength. Amy suddenly developed a will that
was more inflexible than her own. In the several ruthless but brief
battles fought for the ownership of Tydvil Jones, Amy was signally
victorious.
The bone of contention knew nothing of the war that had been fought. He
found he had merely exchanged one domestic ruler for another. To him the
gynecocracy that would have driven another man to drink or crime, was a
normal state of affairs. The only effect of the change was that he
noticed Amy talked a good deal more than his mother did.
After his marriage his home life took on a new aspect. Under his
mother’s rule Tydvil had been able to avoid taking part in her
activities for the reformation of society.
Amy had other ideas.
First, she waged war on her motherin-law to obtain control of several
of her pet societies. To give the elder woman her due, she put up a
perfectly willing fight. Outside of actual physical violence, there was
no limit to their endeavours. The war was waged under Rafferty’s rules,
and Amy was again victorious.
What Mrs. Jones, senior, said about Mrs. Jones, junior, though in the
main true, was libellous and scathing. Indeed, there was no need to
embroider the stories, the facts were more scandalous than anything she
could have invented. Amy’s methods were new and atrocious beyond the
wide experience of her vanquished motherin-law.
Who but Amy would have thought of telephoning to every one of her
motherin-law’s supporters, on the morning of a vital meeting, that the
meeting had been postponed? But Amy did that, and came down with her
own gang and elected all her own nominees for office unopposed.
Partly to irritate his mother, and partly for her own convenience, Amy
enlisted Tydvil for social service. Having no other interests outside
his business, he found the work an outlet for his surplus energies. Amy
found his clear judgment no small assistance in her campaigns.
Therefore, in certain circles, Tydvil Jones became a somewhat notable
figure. He studied social questions and spoke from many platforms. He
also subscribed to causes the value of which he doubted, though at that
period his doubts were kept to himself.
At the age of thirty an avalanche smote the life of Tydvil Jones. In the
one six months he lost both his parents. Early in the year, a moment of
indecision settled the fate of his mother. The driver of the motor car
was severely censured by the coroner, though the jury brought in a
verdict of misadventure.
Just six months later, his father relinquished his life as unobtrusively
as he had lived. Their actual loss had little effect on their son.
Neither had been demonstratively affectionate. None the less, the result
was to sweep Tydvil from a harbour of comparative calm
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