Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (201 page)

“No,” he answered. “That’s what’s troubling me. I suppose I’m too young.”

His mother shook her head. “You’re too levelheaded, lad,” she said. “You’ll never make a fool of yourself; for that’s what it means, generally speaking. You’ll marry with your eyes open; and she’ll be a lucky woman, because you ain’t the sort to blow hot and cold and repent of a thing after you’ve done it. That’s what breaks a woman’s heart.”

She gathered together her work and rose.

“Don’t get sitting up too late,” she said. “Don’t do to burn the candle at both ends.”

She was bending down over him. She paused a moment with his head between her hands.

“I suppose you know how handsome you are?” she said.

She kissed him and went out.

CHAPTER VIII

THEY were walking on the moor. It was a Wednesday afternoon. Betty was on the way to one of her numerous pensioners, a bed-ridden old labourer who lived in what had once been a gamekeeper’s cottage on the edge of a wood, with a granddaughter to keep house for him, a handsome, wild-looking girl of about sixteen.

“What are you going to do when you leave school?” Betty asked suddenly. Since the discovery that she was two years older than Anthony she had adopted towards him a motherly attitude. She had laid it aside while she was learning to ride the bicycle. Anthony’s early mechanical training had given him a general knowledge of adjustments and repairs. He had assumed the position of instructor, and had spoken in tones of authority. Feeling her safety dependent upon his strength and agility, compelled so often to call to him for help, to cling to him for support, she had been docile and apologetic. But, the interlude ended, she had resumed her airs of superiority.

“Oughtn’t you to be thinking about it?” she added.

“I have been thinking about it,” he explained.

“My difficulty is that I’ve no one to advise me, not now Sir William Coomber’s dead.”

“Why don’t you have a talk with father?” she suggested.

“I did think of that too,” he said with a laugh. “But it seems so cheeky.”

“How would you like to go into his office?” she asked after a silence.

“Do you think he would?” he answered eagerly.

“I’ll sound him about it,” she said.

They had reached the path leading to the gamekeeper’s cottage. Anthony had vaulted over the stile. He had turned and was facing her.

“You are a brick,” he said.

He was looking up at her; she was standing on the cross-bar of the stile. She smiled and held out her hand for him to help her. She had beautiful hands. They were cool and firm, though in consequence of her habit of not wearing gloves, less white and smooth than those of other girls in her position.

He took it, and bending over it kissed it. Neither spoke again till they reached the old man’s cottage.

It was a week later that he received a note from Mr. Mowbray asking him to come to dinner. He found Mr. Mowbray alone. Betty had gone to a party at one of the neighbours. Mr. Mowbray put him next to him on his right, and they talked during the meal. Mowbray asked him questions about his school career and then about his father.

“Funny,” he said; “we were turning out some old papers the other day. Came across your grandfather’s marriage settlement. I suppose you know that the Strong’nth’arms were quite important folk a hundred years ago?”

Anthony had heard about them chiefly from his mother. His father had had no use for them.

Mr. Mowbray was sipping his port.

“My grandfather was a tailor in Sheffield,” he volunteered. He could afford to remember his grandfather. His father had entertained George IV, and his mother had been a personal friend of Queen Caroline. He himself might have been an aristocrat of the first water if manners and appearances stood for lineage.

“I shouldn’t have suspected it, sir,” said Anthony. He was looking at Mr. Mowbray with genuine admiration. Their eyes met and Mr. Mowbray laughed, well pleased.

“Don’t you mention that to Betty,” he said. “She hates to be reminded of it. I tease her about it sometimes when she gets on her high horse and starts riding roughshod over all the social conventions. I tell her it’s her bourgeois blood coming out in her. He was an awful Radical. It always stops her.”

He lit a cigar and pushed back his chair. Anthony did not smoke.

“And now to come to business,” he said. “What are you going to do when you leave school?”

“I thought of trying to get into an office,” answered Anthony.

“Any particular sort of an office?” demanded Mr. Mowbray.

“Yes, sir,” answered Anthony. “Yours, if you’ll have me.”

Mr. Mowbray was regarding him through halfclosed eyes.

“You want to be a business man? You feel that’s your
métier?
So Betty tells me.”

Anthony flushed. “I hope she didn’t tell you all I said,” he laughed. “It was the night I came in to say good-bye to Edward. I got excited and talked without thinking. But I do think it’s my best chance,” he continued. “I like business. It seems to me like a fine game of skill that calls for all your wits, and there is enough danger in it to make it absorbing.”

Mr. Mowbray nodded. “You’ve got the right idea,” he said. “You’ve almost repeated word for word a speech I once heard my father make. It was he who first thought of coal in the valley and took the risk of getting all the land between Donniston and Copley into his own hands before a sod was turned. He’d have died a pauper if his instinct had proved wrong.

“We could do with a few more like him in Millsborough,” he went on. “Lord! The big things that are waiting to be done. I used to think about them. If it wasn’t for the croaking old fools that get in your way and haven’t eyes to see the sun at midday! It would take the patience of Job and the labours of Hercules to move them.” He poured himself out another glass of port and sipped it for a while in silence.

“What’s your idea of a salary?” he suddenly asked. “Supposing I did find an opening for you.”

Anthony looked at him. He was still sipping his port. Anthony had the conviction that Mr. Mowbray would, if the figure were left to him, suggest a hundred a year. He could not explain why. Maybe some forgotten talk with Edward had left this impression on his mind, or maybe it was pure guesswork.

“Eighty pounds a year, sir, I was thinking of, to begin with,” he answered.

The firm of Mowbray and Cousins acted for most of the older inhabitants of Millsborough, and Mrs. Newt was amongst them. Mr. Mowbray had had one or two interviews with Anthony in connexion with his aunt’s affairs, and had formed a high opinion of his acumen and shrewdness. The price he had just got his aunt for her bit of land in Moor End Lane, and the way he had played one would-be purchaser against another had, in particular, suggested to Mr. Mowbray’s thinking a touch of genius.

“We’ll say a hundred,” said Mr. Mowbray, “to begin with. What happens afterwards will depend upon yourself.”

“It’s awfully kind of you, sir,” said Anthony. “I won’t try to thank you — in words.”

He had been sure that Mr. Mowbray would insist upon his own figure. Mr. Mowbray liked doing fine, generous things that commanded admiration. But he was really grateful.

Mr. Mowbray had risen. He laid a kindly hand on Anthony’s shoulder.

“I should like you to get on and be helpful to me.” he said. “Edward’s a dreamer, as you know. I should like to think there would be always someone capable and reliable to give him a hand.” Edward had not returned home for the midsummer vacation. Betty had met him in London and they had made an extended tour on the Continent. Anthony had not seen him for over a year when they met a few days before Christmas. He looked ill. Oxford did not agree with him; he found it enervating, but he thought he would get acclimatized. He had been surprised at Anthony’s having been eager to enter his father’s office. From their talks he had gathered that Anthony was bent upon becoming a business man. He had expected him to try for a place in one of the great steel works or a manufacturer’s office.

“Your grandfather didn’t make his money out of being a solicitor,” explained Anthony. “Your father was telling me only the other day; it was he who set going all the new schemes; they were his idea. He got together the money for them and controlled them. You see, being the leading solicitor of Millsborough, he was in touch with the right people and knew all that was going on behind the scenes. Millsborough was only a little place then, compared to what it is now. If your father” — he checked himself and changed the words that had been upon his lips—”cared to take the trouble he could be a millionaire before he died.”

“I’m glad he doesn’t,” laughed Edward. “I hate millionaires.”

Betty was with them. They were returning home from a walk upon the moors. Edward had clamoured for wind. According to him you wouldn’t get it in Oxford. It was twilight, and they had reached the point where Millsborough lay stretched out before them.

“It depends upon what use you make of it,” Betty chimed in. “Money is a weapon. You can use it for conquering, winning more and more for yourself; or you can use it for freeing the chained, protecting the weak, fighting for the oppressed.”

“Oh, yes; I know the theory,” replied Edward. “Robin Hood. You take it from the rich and give it to the poor. But Robin Hood must first feast with his followers; that’s only fair. And must put by a bit for a rainy day; that’s only common prudence. And then Little John puts in his claims, and dear old Friar Tuck. Mustn’t forget Friar Tuck, or the blessing of God won’t be with us next time. And Maid Marion must have a new kirtle and a ribbon or two to tie up her bonny brown hair. And one or two things Robin wants for himself. By the time it’s all over there’s nothing left for the poor.”

Anthony laughed. But Betty took it seriously. “You dream of the future,” she said to her brother. “I want to help the people now. A rich man — especially if he were a good business man — could lay the foundations of a new world here in Millsborough to-morrow. He wouldn’t have to wait for other people. He could build healthy, pleasant houses for the workers. I’m not thinking of charity. That’s why T want the business man who would go to work sensibly and economically; turn them out at rents that the people could afford. I know it can be done. I’ve gone into it. He could build them clubs to take the place of the public-houses, where they could meet each other, read and talk, play games, have concerts and dances. Why shouldn’t there be a theatre? Look at the money they spend on drink. It’s just to get away from their wretched homes. Offer them something worth having — something they’d really like and enjoy, and they’d spend their money on that. I wouldn’t have anything started that couldn’t be made to pay its own way in the long run. If it can’t do that it isn’t real. It isn’t going to last. He could open shops, sell food and clothes to the people at fair prices; could start factories that would pay decent wages and where the hands would share in the profits. It’s no use kind, well-meaning people attempting these things that don’t understand business. They make a muddle of it; and then everybody points to it and says, ‘See what a failure it was!’ It isn’t the dreamers — the theorists — that will change the world. Life’s a business; it wants the business man to put it right. He hasn’t got to wait for revolutions, nor even for Parliaments. He can take the world as it is, shape it to line ends with the tools that are already in his hands. One day one of them will rise up and show the way. It just wants a big man to set it going, that’s all.”

They had reached the outskirts of the town, where their ways parted. Anthony had promised his mother to be home to tea. The Tetteridges were away; and she was giving a party in the drawing-room to some poor folks who had been her neighbours in Snelling’s Row. Edward was a few steps ahead. Betty held out her hand. She was trembling, and seemed as if she would fall. Anthony put an arm round her and held her up.

“How strong you are,” she said.

The office of Mowbray and Cousins occupied a high, square, red brick house in the centre of the town facing the church. Anthony was given a desk in the vestibule leading to Mr. Mowbray’s private room on the first floor, with its three high, dome-topped windows. It seemed that Mr. Mowbray intended to employ him rather as a private secretary than a clerk. He kept Mr. Mowbray’s papers in order, reminded him of his appointments, wrote such letters as Mr. Mowbray chose to answer himself. Mr. Mowbray had never taken kindly to dictating; he was too impatient. Anthony, with the help of the letter book, soon learned the trick of elaborating his brief instructions into proper form. It was always Anthony that Mr. Mowbray selected to accompany him on outside business; to see that the bag contained all necessary documents; to look up trains; arrange things generally. Mr. Mowbray himself had a distaste for detail. It was plain to Anthony, notwithstanding his inexperience, that his position was unique. He was prepared for jealousy; but for some reason that at first he did not grasp Mr. Mowbray’s favouritism was regarded throughout the office as in the natural order of things. Even old Abraham Johnson, the head clerk, who had the reputation of being somewhat of a tyrant, was friendly to him from the beginning. It was assumed as a matter of course that he was studying for the law and would later on take out his articles.

“I meant to do so when I first entered the office,” old Mr. Johnson said to him one day. They were walking home together. Mr. Johnson also resided in Bruton Square. He was a bachelor and lived with an unmarried sister. “Forty-three years ago that was, in the first Mr. Mowbray’s time. But office hours were longer then; and when I got home I was pretty tired. And what with one thing and another — Besides, I hadn’t your incentive.”

He laughed, and seemed to expect Anthony to understand the joke.

“Come to me,” he added, “if you get tied up at any time. I expect I’ll be able to help you.”

They were all quite right. He was studying for the law. But it surprised him they should all assume it as a matter of course.

He had intended telling Edward himself and asking his help. But Edward anticipated him.