Part 5 (2/2)
Maintaining the unshoplike character of the ground-floor rooms upon which the plate-gla.s.s windows looked, virtually no business, in the vulgar form of buying and selling, was carried on in the vestry, in the cla.s.sroom or in the book-lined study. Many modern and entirely worthy businesses are conducted under the strident banner of ”Cash Only.”
Fortune, East and Sabre's did not know the word cash. One would as soon look for or expect a till, to say nothing of one of those terrific machines known as cash registers, in the vestry, the cla.s.sroom or the study as one would look for a lectern or an adjustable school desk in a beer-house. ”Credit only” was here the principle, and accounts were rendered, never on delivery, but quarterly. One does not, after all, pay for a font out of one's trouser pocket and carry it off under one's arm; nor for a school desk out of a purse and bear it away on one's head.
Only in the book-lined study were trifling transactions occasionally carried out and these very rarely, const.i.tuting something of an event (and an event greatly deprecated by the Reverend Sebastian Fortune), the tactless misadventure of some pedagogue or student on excursion to the sights of Tidborough.
No one, in any case, committed twice the indiscretion of purchasing a single volume for cash. The book-lined study was in the care of a Mr.
Tombs, a gentleman who combined the appearance of a mute at a funeral with the aloof and mysterious manner of a man waiting for his wife in a ladies' underwear department, and the peculiar faculty of making the haphazard visitor feel that he had strayed into a ladies' underwear shop also. ”Have you an account with us, sir?” Mr. Tombs would inquire; and on being told ”No” would look guiltily all around (as it were at partially undressed ladies) and whisper, ”Except to the masters at the School, sir, who all have accounts, we are not supposed to sell single volumes. It is against our rule, sir.”
And no one, once escaped, made Mr. Tombs break the rule on a second occasion.
III
Business--on credit only--was conducted on the first floor whereon were apartmented the three princ.i.p.als--the Reverend Sebastian Fortune, Mr.
Twyning and Sabre. There was no longer an East in the firm. From the central, vestry-like showroom a broad and shallow stairway led to a half-landing, containing the clerks' office, and thence to the s.p.a.cious apartment of Mr. Fortune with which, by doors at either end, communicated the offices of Sabre and of Mr. Twyning. Many stately and eminent persons--and no ill-to-do or doubtful persons--pa.s.sed up and down this stairway on visits to the princ.i.p.als. It was not used by the clerks, the half-landing communicating with the outer world by the clerks' stairs leading to the clerks' entrance at the back of the building, and with the showrooms by the clerks' stairs leading at one end to the book-lined study and at the other to the model cla.s.sroom. The clerks' office, by the taking down of original walls, ran the whole length of the building, and accommodated not only the clerks, but the designing room, the checking room and the dispatch room. This arrangement was highly inconvenient to the performers of the various duties thus carried on, but was essential to the more rapid execution of Mr. Fortune's habit of ”keeping an eye” on everything. This habit of the Reverend Sebastian Fortune was roundly detested by all on whom his eye fell. He was called Jonah by his employees; and he was called Jonah partly because his visits to the places of their industry invariably presaged disaster, but princ.i.p.ally for the gross-minded and wrongly-adduced reason that he had (in their opinion) a whale's belly.
IV
He bore a certain resemblance to a stunted whale. He was chiefly abdominal. His legs appeared to begin, without thighs, at his knees, and his face, without neck, at his chest. His face was large, both wide and long, and covered as to its lower part with a tough scrub of grey beard.
The line of his mouth showed through the scrub and turned extravagantly downwards at the corners. He had a commanding, heavily k.n.o.bbed brow, and small grey eyes of intense severity. His voice was cold, and his manner, though intensely polished and suave, singularly stern and decisive. He had an expression of ”I have decided” and Sabre said that he kept this expression on ice. It had an icy sound and it certainly had the rigidity and imperviousness of an iceberg. Hearing it, one might believe that it could have a cruel sound.
The Reverend Sebastian Fortune had come into the business at the age of twenty-eight. He was now sixty-two. He had come in to find the controlling interest almost entirely in the hands of the Fortune branch of the firm, and in his thirty-four years of a.s.sociation, indeed in the first twenty, he had, by fortuitous circ.u.mstances, and by force of his decisive personality, achieved what amounted to sole and single control.
Coming in as a young man of force and character, he had added to these qualities, by marriage, a useful sum of money (to which was attached a widow) and proceeded to deal decisively with the East and the Sabre (Mark Sabre's grandfather) of that day. Both were old men. The East, young Mr. Fortune bought out neck and crop. The Sabre, who owned then a fifth instead of a third interest in the business, and had developed, as an obsession, an unreasonable fear of bankruptcy, he relieved of all liability for the firm at the negligible cost of giving himself a free hand in the conduct of the business. The deed of partners.h.i.+p was altered accordingly. It was to this fifth share, without control, that Sabre's father and, in his turn, Sabre succeeded.
V
Sabre had been promised full partners.h.i.+p by Mr. Fortune. He desired it very greatly. The apportionment of duties in the establishment was that Sabre managed the publis.h.i.+ng department. Twyning supervised the factory and workshops wherein the ecclesiastical and scholastic furniture was produced, and Fortune supervised his two princ.i.p.als and every least employee and smallest detail of all the business. Particularly orders.
He very strongly objected to clients dealing directly with either Sabre or Twyning. His view was that it was the business of Sabre and of Twyning to produce the firm's commodities. It was his place to sell them. It was his place, to deal with clients who came to buy them, and it was his place to sign all letters that went out concerning them.
Sabre, in so far as his publications were concerned, resented this.
”If I bring out a new textbook,” he had said on the occasion of a formal protest, ”it stands to reason that I am the person to interest clients in it; to discuss it with them if they call and to correspond with those who take up our notices of it.”
Mr. Fortune wheeled about his revolving chair by a familiar trick of his right leg against his desk. It presented his whale-like front to impressive advantage. ”You do correspond with them.”
”But you sign the letters. You frequently make alterations.”
”That is what I am here for. They are my letters. It will be time to bring up this matter again when you are admitted to partners.h.i.+p.”
Sabre gave the short laugh of one who has heard a good thing before.
”When will that be?”
”Not to-day.”
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