Part 24 (1/2)

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 He could see places that had obviously not been touched for weeks, withdrawn places where the undisturbed mounds of stock and litter had the eternal character of Roman remains or vestiges of creation.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 polis.h.i.+ng of the stones; while up here in the ex-drawing-room were grotesquely mingled the final polis.h.i.+ng 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 polis.h.i.+ng a stone.