The Balliols (67 page)

I must see her, I must, I must!

If only there were someone that he could turn to for advice. But there wasn't. There never had been. He had always had to do things for himself. In the calm that followed the Christmas rush he came to his decision. He had got to make a beginning. He had got to speak to her. He would avail himself, since there was no other way, of the privilege accorded to every human being beneath the sun who possessed two shillings, of making a purchase, however infinitesimal, across her counter. He would buy a bag for his mother. It would serve, anyhow, as an introduction.

In a mood of high adventure he strode out of the bleak cold of Orchard Street into the store's coloured warmth. For once his step did not slow down to a dawdle as he approached the high-hung placard “Bags and Scarves.” He walked straight up to the counter.

“I want …” he began, then stopped, speechless.

She was not there.

He extracted himself with some ingenuity from his confusion by a simulated paroxysm of coughing. He said something about January frosts. He purchased a bag for eighteen pence, without claiming the staff twenty per cent, reduction to which he was entitled, and
hurried quickly towards the ribbon and the cutlery department. Out of sight and earshot he paused and drew a long, slow breath. Then laughed. Well, that should teach him. He must go more cautiously next time. Charging up to the counter in that way. He was glad she hadn't been there. How silly he must have looked. It was a good thing she had not been there. The first visit should act as a dress rehearsal. He would manage better the second time.

Half an hour later, after a lunch consisting of a cup of coffee and a toasted sandwich that he left half eaten, he sauntered in his most negligently confident manner through the ribbon and cutlery department, looking to the right, his feet following his eyes, then pausing.

She was still not there.

He walked away, puzzled and a little worried. He could not understand her not being there. She would hardly be lunching at such a time. It might be that she was ill. He could think of no other explanation. He returned on the following day, anxiety mixed with eagerness. She was still not there.

Nor was she there the next day, nor the day after that. Nor that week at all. Nor the week after that. She must be really ill; or possibly she was on a holiday: winter sports, Monte Carlo… How long would she be away? A fortnight? Not more than that. A girl in her position. No, certainly she would not get more than that. But the third week came and she was still not back. She couldn't be on a holiday. She must be really ill; or possibly she had been moved to another department. Perhaps she had been promoted. For the next fortnight he devoted his luncheon hour to a steady search of the long, counter-clustered avenues. His lunch was of the scantiest: a sandwich bought at a coffee stall and munched on the way from Irongate. For thirty minutes every day he tramped systematically the innumerable departments of London's largest store. The exercise was admirable training for his weekly Rugger match but its immediate object was unachieved. At the end of a fortnight he was convinced that she was nowhere else. She must be ill then; really ill. “I've got to find out. They'll know in her department. I shall feel an awful fool among them. They'll ask me ‘Do you mean Miss So-and-so?' and I shan't know if that's her or not. I shall have to describe her. They'll think that I'm quite mad. I've got to do it, though. I must find out.”

He was spared that ordeal, however.

His mother had asked him to call and collect some theatre tickets for her at an agency in Bond Street. He was in a hurry. He walked quickly up to the counter.

“I want some tickets left here for Mrs. Balliol. It's for.…”

He stopped abruptly. From the other side of the counter the girl who had exercised so much of his time and thought was watching him, a smile of mockery and challenge in her dark, long-lashed eyes. He was so astonished that at first he could not speak. In his dreams he had rehearsed this moment a hundred times, but now that it had come he had no idea what to do. He stared at her stupidly, then blurted out:

“I used to see you at Selfridge's.”

“I know you did.”

“I've been looking for you for three weeks. I'd missed you.”

“They fired me. They said I was lazy. They were right, I guess.”

The smile in the dark eyes had grown more mocking and more challenging. So she'd noticed him. She'd been aware that he was watching her. She must have looked for him, then, as he'd looked for her. They didn't need any introduction, then. She knew—and she wasn't angry. It was heady knowledge.

“Will you come out to dinner with me to-night?” he asked.

“It's about time we got to know each other.”

To most demobilized officers whose accounts at Holt's and Cox's had been credited with a substantial war gratuity, there came during the last weeks of 1919 and the first days of 1920 the unwelcome surprise of a banker's letter stating that their account appeared to be overdrawn at a time when they imagined that fully a half of their gratuity was unexhausted. They stared at the letter incredulously. They could not believe it. Where had the money gone? They had never dreamt that it was slipping away like that.

A similar surprise attended the directorates of a good many businesses during the first four post-war years. One year they had declared a comfortable dividend; the board had voted a bonus to the staff. Business during the ensuing year had appeared to follow a course of identical good fortune. But the balance sheet at the year's end showed a profit so diminished that not only was there no bonus for the staff but an extremely minute dividend for the shareholders. In the following year there was no dividend at all. The directors stared at the balance sheet uncomprehendingly. They simply could not understand how it had happened.

It was in such a spirit that in the spring of 1922 the directorate of Messrs. Peel & Hardy considered the balance sheet with which the company's secretary had just presented them. They could not understand how it had happened. They had fancied that during the last year they had been fulfilling the Government's instructions of “Back to Work” and “Business as Usual” to their own and everybody else's profit. There had always been plenty on the agenda every Friday; plenty of cheques to sign; every indication of steady trading. But there the figures were. They would only just be able to pay their preference shareholders. The ordinary shareholders would have to be satisfied with a dividend of two per cent. Hugh alone examined the document with equanimity.

“I'm not surprised. I told you things were rotten. My commission down to nothing. You all thought it was because I was getting lazy. It isn't. People haven't the money to buy wine with. Things are bad.”

No one contradicted him.

Said Balliol: “I must have a talk with Smollett.”

He arranged an interview with him for the following morning. Smollet came into the room with the brisk, confident, abrupt manner that, acquired during the war, had been accentuated during the last two years. He was still, Balliol noticed, wearing expensive clothes. He seemed to have abandoned the sub-manager's idiom of “an office suit.”

“Now, Smollett, about this balance sheet.”

“Exactly, sir. I had hoped that you would raise that matter.” He paused; took a gulping breath; then started.

Balliol had imagined that Smollett would produce some practical suggestions for reducing overhead expenses, increasing sales, blocking leakages. Not at all.

“The shareholders will certainly be very disappointed with the balance sheet. In my opinion it will be necessary to give them some proof that the board is doing its best to ensure improvement.”

“You think the shareholders are going to make a fuss?”

“Yes, sir.”

“My dear Smollett, I have addressed shareholders' meetings for over thirty years. I've never known more than three shareholders attend.”

“The balance sheets have been invariably good.”

“For that very reason I doubt if old friends will turn against us as the result of one bad year.”

“They are not all old friends. Our recent balance sheets have encouraged a good many speculative investors to take shares in the company. They'll feel they've made a bad investment. They'll be angry with themselves. They'll work their ill temper off on us.”

“I see.”

Balliol looked thoughtfully at Smollett; so thoughtfully that Smollett began to flush. Thought Balliol: “I wonder what your game is. I wonder how you knew that. Shares have been changing hands; quite large blocks during the last two years. Who told you that? How much more do you know?”

He asked: “What proof of our good intentions do you suggest that we should proffer to the shareholders?”

“My election to the board.”

“What!”

His astonishment was as complete as it had been seven years earlier when Smollett had applied for a commission. Into Smollett's face came the same defiant flush; the same precise, tight-lipped, self-controlled statement of his case.

“I am presenting the matter as I see it from the shareholders' point of view,” he said. “Before the war this business was run by two experienced wine merchants, working under the nominal leadership of a chairman whose title conferred prestige upon the firm. The two men who ran the business worked a full working week inside the office. The firm paid steady dividends. To-day there is the still nominal leadership of the chairman. You realize of course, sir, that I am setting this matter out simply as it would appear to a shareholder?”

“I realize that.”

“As I was saying, sir, the shareholder might say to himself, ‘There is the same nominal leadership. There is Mr. Balliol working at half pressure. The other two places on the board are filled by men who have actually no offices in the building. The working of the firm is therefore only represented on the board with a quarter of its pre-war strength. The firm is declaring a poor dividend.' I feel, sir, that the shareholder, mistakenly, no doubt, would put two and two together. He would like to see the office more strongly represented on the board.”

“I see, Smollett. Well, I will discuss the matter with the board. I will let you know what they decide.”

Balliol had no doubt as to what Smollett had done or what Smollett was intending. Nor had the board when the facts were placed before them.

“There is absolutely no doubt what he has done,” said Balliol. “Smollett has persuaded a number of his friends to buy up shares. As long as our balance sheets were good, he was content to have found a good investment for them. When things went badly, he put his friends' irritation to good use. Of this we can be very sure: if we do not elect him to the board, he will be proposed at the next shareholders' meeting. He will probably be elected there. If we on the board decline to accept that vote at the shareholders' meeting, and demand a poll, well, gentlemen, we are embarking on a contest from which We may not emerge with success. Very certainly we shall break that spirit which we heard during the war so variously described as
esprit de corps
”

As Balliol paused, young Prentice rose to his feet in a gale of academic indignation.

“But this is preposterous; this is outrageous. This man has been working against us, behind our backs. There is only one thing to be done: dismiss him; find another man to take his place. Damn those
shareholders, they are only a minority. Demand a poll; make a fight of it.”

Simultaneously Hugh and Victor interrupted him. They both stopped, looked at one another. “You go on,” said Hugh.

In detail, in minor transactions, Victor made small contribution to the board's debates. He conducted the deliberations, but did not direct or lead them. When, however, a broad problem, dealing with general strategy, with the human factor, was presented, it was his voice that led, his opinion that was followed.

“This isn't a question of what's right or of what's wrong. It's a question of what's happened, what's going to happen next; of a choice between the lesser of two evils. We have made three mistakes. We have allowed the business to get into a bad position; we have not realized what Smollett was planning. But the greatest of all mistakes was: we did not foresee that such a situation was like to arise, that Smollett was ambitious; that he meant to be a director. We ought to have then asked ourselves: ‘Is he a fit man to be a director?' If the answer was yes, we should have asked him to join us. He would then have been on our side. We would have unarmed him. If, on the other hand, he was not a fit man to be a director, we should have prepared our defence long ago against whatever attempt he might have made. The consequences of that last mistake we cannot assess. There are only two questions for us to decide now. Is Smollett or is he not the kind of man that we could work with on this board? Is he indispensable to the office?”

Balliol hesitated. Yes, he supposed that Smollett was indispensable. He was capable, energetic. He understood the business. He and Jenks worked well together. If Smollett went, Jenks would go as well. To replace them would be difficult, if possible, at short notice. The firm's position did not allow the year's slackening of energy that would be entailed by the teaching of a new man his job. Yes, as far as anyone was indispensable, Smollett was. And as for the other point: yes, he supposed that Smollett
was
the kind of man that one could work with on a board. Before the war he would not have thought so. If he had been told fifteen years ago that the nervous young man whom Prentice had introduced into the firm to enlarge its tobacco side would one day occupy a seat upon its board, he would have laughed. But there had been a good many changes in the last ten years. There were still class barriers; but they were different barriers. He had often recalled the afternoon of Hugh's return from leave; of how Hugh had said after Smollett as he had walked towards the door: “I wonder how he'll feel going back again, when it's all over.”
Well, they knew now, but it was for men of Hugh's type, not Smollett's, that the going back had been most difficult. Smollett on the board indeed!