The Balliols (15 page)

“I really would like to see them all in a body, once,” Balliol had remarked.

“It'll be a bad day when you do,” Prentice had retorted.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Shareholders, like most other people, keep quiet when they are grateful. It's only when they've got a grievance that you hear from them. A couple of bad balance-sheets and we'd be certain of a good audience for our annual orations.”

Which was the kind of remark that Balliol had come to expect from Prentice. Prentice was one of those men whose opinions on life, whose attitude to life, whose general attack on life, is in direct opposition to his temperament. In politics Prentice was a Fabian. He believed in democracy; he believed in the future. He believed in a Wellsian machine age; when men and women would work, without the incentive of competition, to establish the ideal state. The various proposals that he brought before the board were invariably of a
democratic tendency, built on a belief in a democratic future. He would say, “In ten years' time a different class of person will be drinking wine. Palates will be different. He will be less educated. We must consider that.”

In spite, however, of his belief in the future, he was extremely cynical. He invariably attributed the lowest personal motive to any suggestion that might come from one of the departmental managers. He was a tall, thin, bald-headed man, with a slightly blue chin and closely-pursed lips. He never laughed. Occasionally, when confronted with a particularly blatant example of commercial malpractice, he would smile wryly. He was the last person in whom you could imagine yourself confiding. He intensely disliked his fellow mortals. Though he was married, he spent most of his time in the United Universities Club. Privacy was respected there, he said.

In spite of, perhaps because of, his manifest unamiability, Balliol cherished for him an affection that he was extremely careful to conceal. He was convinced that there was nothing Prentice would have more disliked than the feeling that he was liked. Their relations were on the whole extremely cordial. They rarely met except in the board-room, where they discussed plans for the firm's future through the medium of the chairman. They never resorted to those informal conferences at which usually the business of a board meeting is decided before the directors meet. That Prentice would have considered, not dishonourable—he did not hold personal and commercial honesty to be the same commodities—but the statement of an alliance between himself and Balliol. Than such a tie there was little he would have disliked more. Consequently, when Balliol said to Rickman, “Nothing is, of course, decided till I've seen my board,” he was not playing a Spenlow-Jorkins gambit. He had no means of guessing how Prentice would receive his suggestion. Opposition from Prentice would be extremely difficult to combat. He was prepared, however, to press his point.

There were two points on the agenda besides his own. There was ‘Frank Walker's Wages.' And ‘Cigar Department.' The latter was a proposal from Prentice. The chairman took the question of Walker's wages.

“Frank Walker's Wages,” he read out. Then lifted his eyes, looking down the table as though he were saying, “Now, who is going to tell me about Frank Walker's Wages?”

The secretary spoke.

“Walker has applied to me for a rise. He is receiving thirty shillings a week. He has been in the company's employ three years. He is a packer. He has had no rise since he has been with us.”

“I see. And what would the average wage of a packer be?”

“From twenty-five shillings to two pounds.”

“And he has been with us three years. How old is he?”

“About twenty-eight.”

“It seems reasonable that he should be raised; if his work is satisfactory, that's to say. Do you know anything about him, Mr. Prentice?”

Prentice shook his head. He knew him by name. He knew him by sight. But he had never been made aware of his individual existence. Balliol was in the same position. He was conscious of a face and a name. That, and no more than that.

“In that case we had better see what the head of his department has to say.”

There was silence while Walker's immediate chief was summoned. A short, stocky man, with a nervous manner, a choker collar, a curl low-plastered on his forehead, he shifted uneasily on his feet.

The chairman greeted him as though he were the guest of the evening.

“Ah yes, Mortimer. Now, we want to ask your opinion about Walker. Frank Walker. As perhaps you know, he has applied for a rise of salary.”

“Yes, milord.”

“You would say, Mortimer, that thirty-five shillings a week was not an excessive sum for a packer: a man of twenty-eight who has been with us for three years?”

“No, milord.”

“Then that is the sum by which you would recommend us to raise Walker's wages?”

“Well, yes. Yes, I suppose that… well, milord, if you were—that's to say, going to raise his wage.…”

“Now, what are we to take that to mean?”

“Nothing, milord. I mean.…”

“Come, come now, Mortimer. You must mean something.”

The chairman's voice had neither sharpened nor quickened; but it had grown firm. Mortimer, his eyes on the ground, shifted his feet uncomfortably. His forehead had flushed to a damp crimson.

“Have you anything against Walker?”

For a moment further Mortimer hesitated; then suddenly he looked up and blurted out all in a rush: “I'm sorry, milord and gentlemen. It's no business of mine, I know, but Walker's the most difficult man a boss ever had to deal with. It's not that he's lazy, though he's that; or that he's clumsy or incompetent, though he's that too, in a way. It's his manner. There's a sneering, supercilious smile on his face the ‘ole of the time. I just don't know how to take 'im.”

He paused, hot and breathless. “I'm sorry, milord…” he started.

But the chairman cut him short.

“You've told us exactly what we needed to know. Thank you very much. You have given us the material on which to base our decision.”

As soon as the door had closed behind Mortimer, Lord Huntercoombe turned to the secretary.

“Would you be inclined to endorse Mortimer's opinion?”

“I can't say that I've found him very satisfactory.”

“Then it would seem that the question is not so much whether we should raise Walker's salary, as to whether we should retain him on our staff.”

There was a slight laugh at that.

“At one moment,” said Balliol, “we are deciding to raise a man's wages; the next, to sack him.”

“It only shows the incompetent are wise to remain inconspicuous,” was Prentice's comment. “If the fellow had only kept quiet, no one would have heard of him and, as far as he was concerned, all would have been well.”

But the chairman was not going to allow the meeting to drift into the discussion of an impersonal subject.

“The point, gentlemen, is this: are we to dismiss Walker here and now, or are we to have him up and give him the warning that apparently he deserves most richly?”

The motion was so put that the chairman was able to state his opinion without appearing to. As he phrased it the administration of a reproof from the board was a higher punishment than dismissal.

“Then it is agreed that we see Walker. Very good. Send for Walker.”

A couple of minutes later there entered into the room a bright-eyed, red-haired young scamp; with a confident manner and an open grin. He was not in the least nervous. It was abundantly clear
what Mortimer had meant by his “supercilious sneering smile.” It was what his feminine acquaintance described as a “naughty twinkle.” He was the kind of person who knew how to make a superior look a fool.

The chairman considered him ruminatively.

“Walker,” he said at length, “you have asked for your salary to be raised. You are receiving thirty shillings a week. You are not worth thirty shillings a week. You are idle, clumsy, and impertinent. You represent thirty shillings amount of nuisance. I propose, therefore, to raise your wages to two pounds. Unless you manage to prove yourself to be worth forty shillings a week during the next two months, you will be dismissed instantly. You may go.”

“I'm sorry, gentlemen,” said the chairman turning to his colleagues as the door closed behind the reproved packer. “I couldn't help it. There was something about the look of that man I liked.”

The incident put the board in a cheerful temper. They turned to the next subject on the agenda. It was the question of the cigar department.

“This, I believe, concerns Mr. Prentice. Mr. Prentice?”

In a calm, cold voice Prentice laid out his thesis. As the board was no doubt aware, they in company with other wine merchants, kept a stock of cigars and cigarettes. It was quite a side line but certain conservative customers made a point of ordering brandy, liqueurs and cigars at the same time. How long they would continue to do that, he was doubtful; in fact, very doubtful. He foresaw a time when that side line would cease to be a line at all. In his opinion that would be a pity. They had their foot, or rather their toe, over the threshold of the tobacco trade. It was a question of advancing or retreating. His idea was to advance that toe; to make the cigar department gradually, tentatively, watching results, separate and independent. He foresaw a time when it would be the general, rather than the exceptional thing for a woman to smoke cigarettes. That would mean that man would smoke more in women's presence. He foresaw a great future for the cigarette and for the cheap cigar. He would like to use the tobacco department not as an embellishment for their brandy sales, but as a lure to the main wine business.

“I would like to see one of our windows set with tobacco jars; with cabinets of cigars; with pipes, with cigarettes; to be, in fact, a shop.”

“And how do you propose setting about this?”

“I am proposing, with the board's approval, that we should take on to our staff a young man who has worked in a tobacco shop, who understands tobacco, who will organize tobacco as a separate department.”

There was a silence while the various directors considered the problem. A great deal depended, Balliol knew, on the attitude that he himself adopted. He could not say it was a scheme that he particularly liked. He believed in specialization; he did not like the idea of a firm being split up among departmental managers. At the same time, he did not see that the scheme could do any particular harm. If it failed, it would have wasted a certain amount of Prentice's time, but very little of the firm's capital. It would not require any particular outlay, beyond the addition of a name to the salary list. At the same time, on any ordinary occasion he would have opposed, though not very heartily, Prentice's suggestion.

To-day, however, he had a scheme of his own that he wished to press. And though he knew that Prentice was not the kind of man to oppose another's scheme merely because he had been himself opposed, the fact that he had been supported by a man who had a scheme of his own to put forward would give him material for cynical deliberation. He would smile that wry smile. “We are all venal,” he would think. “Balliol scratches my back so that I may scratch his in return. What creatures we are. Well, we'll play his game.” Prentice would never have attempted such a plan himself, but it pleased him to think that others did. He would be glad of the opportunity to say, “We do evil that good may come. In order to get my own sound scheme through, I have to further another's shoddy one. That's the price honest men have to pay in a world like this.” Balliol was quite certain that by supporting Prentice's scheme, he could insure the success of his own. As, in reply to the chairman's question, he stated his reasons for approving of Prentice's motion, he was conscious of Prentice's wry smile. That wry smile returned twenty minutes later as Prentice in his turn expressed his approval of Rickman's trial.

“We seem to be adding very considerably to our expenses,” one of the directors remarked. “We have raised a packer's salary and made two additions to our staff in the course of one afternoon.”

“It is lucky that we are in a position to be able to afford it,” said the chairman.

Which, in a different sense, was Balliol's own opinion as he walked from his office towards the bus stop at Piccadilly. Most problems in his opinion resolved themselves into mercenary equations. You could buy your way out of anything. Since his firm was flourishing he had been able to get young Rickman sent abroad. He would be able to get this house started so that Jane would have something to think about. If he had not been able to get Rickman out of the way or to afford a house, he might have found himself in a confoundedly difficult position, with Lucy's future hampered by a domestic scandal at the very moment when it was essential for her to make an effective entrance on an adult stage. It might all have been extremely difficult. As it was, all would be plain sailing now. With a jaunty step he climbed the steps of the bus, seating himself on a front seat, so that he could watch the horses.

I wonder what Jane'll say. He shrugged his shoulders. She had not had the time to realize what she felt about young Rickman. She would probably be glad that he had this chance of self-advancement.

On one point he was resolved: he was not going to let Jane feel that he suspected anything; that it was on Rickman's account that he had yielded to her whim and bought a house; that it was on her account that he had offered Rickman the job that would take him out of her life for years. When he returned to his home that evening he made his announcements in the most casually off-hand manner.

“As a result of to-day's work two people are going to have very nice surprises,” he informed her.

She fixed her vague, bland look on him; waiting for an explanation.

“In the first place I've decided to build a house in Hampstead. In the second I've fixed up young Rickman with a first-class job.”