Chapter VII

IT was a day of tears. Poor Mrs. Wilson and Florrie had every right to cry, the landlady had cried because it seemed the proper thing to do, the little man had cried, presumably because he could not help it, and when she reached home Mary had cried without any definite excuse. It was true that she had realised for the first time how gay, how clean, how spacious, her own house was, how refreshing warm water is, and plenty of soap, but a sensible person need hardly have made these an occasion for weeping. As a matter of fact she was crying where a more energetic woman would have rejoiced. Miss Percival, though she was coldly above the weakness of tears, had taken Florrie home. There was a spare bedroom in her flat for which she didn't consider Florrie too immoral, and in it the child was to spend the day which, in this industrious age, is sufficient concession to the filial grief of the lower classes. Afterwards she was to be apprenticed to a friend of Miss Percival's who was a dressmaker. Mary would pay for her support, for the necessary instruction, and for the funeral. The dressmaker was a lady with theories and perfectly able, said Miss Percival, to cope with such a poor attempt at a thief. Mary ought to have been gratified at the good her money was doing. Even Mrs. Wilson might be said to have come well out of the adventure. She herself had admitted that since heathens in Asia had learned to make crochet lace their rivals in England must feel themselves better dead; and as far as this one case went Mary agreed with her. The coarseness, the subservience, and the cruelty of Mrs. Wilson had shocked Mary. That being so, there was no one for whom to feel pity but the unhappy little man, and as a right-minded woman she knew that he deserved heavier punishment than a passing pang of sorrow. He was a wicked little man. Nevertheless she cried very heartily, and only recovered her self-control when she remembered that James might well be home early and would certainly be upset by visible traces of tears.

She did not now dread the return of James; the unwonted emotions of the day had exhausted her capacity for worrying herself. Florrie's cruder troubles made the subtleties of her former uneasiness seem a little ridiculous. She forgot that she had meant to greet James with a special compensating tenderness; she only felt a little excited when she realised that for once she had something of real importance to talk to him about.

But James had not forgotten. As soon as business released his mind he remembered that he wanted to be particularly loving. He hadn't had a chance that morning of kissing and reassuring poor little Mary; all the more reason to hurry home now and put an end to whatever thoughts might still be distressing her. He knew from experience that Mary, with no other imperative claims on her attention, let her mind dwell too long on such trifles. She would suffer all day because she had done or said something that had left his mind when the first thought of his day's work entered it. He had always tried to be very tender with her, since she was so harsh with herself--his last night's bad temper had been inexcusable. He could not imagine now what had provoked it. Nothing that she, poor darling, was responsible for, but that wouldn't have kept her--he knew her--from persuading herself all this time that it was entirely her own fault and nothing to do with him.

He hurried through the last batch of waiting papers, and decided to forego even his walk home. It was a sacrifice, because he felt in need of exercise. Instead he drove to a florist's and bought some roses. When he had first become able to afford it he had bought Mary rings. She had charming, slender fingers, and he had a taste for rings. But after some time he had noticed that though she thanked him delightfully she seldom wore them. She was afraid, she said, of losing them. So he had been forced to fall back on flowers. The dear little thing was fond of flowers.

He bought enough flowers to-day to satisfy five or six ladies of Mary's size. It was one of the troubles of being rich that she could, undoubtedly, procure roses for herself if she really wanted them. But he liked to think, so strong was the instinct that had made him give up his walk, that the roses he gave her were different from those that she merely ordered.

She was in her room when he reached home, and when he had thrown aside the florist's wrappings he went up to it. He didn't want to give her just an immense unwieldy roll of paper. She was to see, as soon as she saw him, the beauty which he had chosen to be the token of his love. She was leaning on the mantelpiece as he came through the door. There! Red eyes!--just as he had thought!

She seemed perfectly pleased, however, with him and his roses, and her mouth, as she lifted it to be kissed, had no wistful droop.

"How lovely, darling!" she told him, and rang the bell. "I particularly wanted some to-day. I've had no time to get any and the others are dying. And I'm so glad to see you so early, because really, James, it has been an extraordinary day, and I do want to hear what you think of it all!" She looked at him anxiously.

He stroked her hair, and then put a finger beneath her chin. "I don't think I like you to go through extraordinary days if they leave you looking like this--tired out, and red round your dear grey eyes! But as you are in this state it's quite right to tell me all about it!" He made her sit down on the sofa and sat down by her.

Mary, for once, was too full of her tale to notice that he looked a little disappointed. She did not usually entrust to a servant flowers that were his special personal gift. It was quite right--as he had said--that she should be eager to give him her confidence, but he had wanted to-day to be welcomed for himself, affectionately, intimately, not merely as a friendly audience. Nor did her story, when she told it, astonish him as much as it astonished her. He was accustomed to the idea that the lives of the poor are often tragic, and he was angry with these people for dragging Mary into their sordid affairs. When she came to the account of Mrs. Wilson's death he interrupted her.

"Poor little mother, no wonder you are distressed! You're not accustomed to these painful occurrences. But there's one thing I must say, you're not asking me, I hope, to take the girl back?" He softened the effect of his speech by stroking her hand.

Mary relieved his mind. "Oh no, of course I understand that you couldn't."

He might have left it at that, but it seemed a pity to waste arguments he had ready. "Because even if it were not for her dishonesty, my dear, a girl who had lied in that fashion would have to go. After all, the inquiries we make are just as much for the girls' own sakes as for ours. We owe it to those who come from decent homes that they shouldn't be asked to associate with girls of a lower class. From our point of view of course this business of the man, and of her having tried to steal, is a complete justification of the rule. The whole thing must be gone into. I'm not sure that the manager is free from blame. She ought to have reported the case. I'll send someone down to Chelsea to-morrow."

Mary gave a little cry of dismay. "Oh, James! please don't let anyone get into trouble through me! It would be dreadful! They'd think of me as a sort of spy! I shall never be able to do anything for them again!"

James did not see her point. "The getting into trouble, my dear, is my affair. And as for spying, surely this young woman doesn't imagine that you and I are dissociated, that you have secrets from me? She had no business to go to you at all, I didn't send you there to stand between thieves and their punishment, but as she has, she must take the consequences!"

This was impossible! James must be made to see--anything rather than this! "James!" she took his chin between her hands and turned his head towards her so that he was looking her in the face. "James--don't you understand? She came to me because she was in despair. She didn't think of me as Mrs. Heyham, only as someone who could help. And I'm not asking you to take her back, or to show anything but the most extreme official disapproval. What I've done for her I've done as a private person, because I was sorry for her. You mustn't--I can't have my sympathy turned into the means of disgracing poor Mrs. Black!"

James looked down for a moment on her urgent eyes, on the distressed quiver of her mouth. Then he turned away, pretending that he did not feel the faint pressure of the fingers that lay against his cheek.

"My dear," he said patiently, "I admit it's an awkward position for you, but put yourself in my place for a minute. You aren't asking me to take the girl back, I know, but you must see that you're asking something far more important. Mrs. Black is a manager, in a position of power and trust. I must know whether she has been deliberately winking at a serious breach of the rules. You can't expect me to leave her there without even knowing whether she is deceiving me!"

Mary tried another tack. "I don't see how you are to find out!"

"That's not the point. The point is that I must try. Even if I find nothing it will frighten her."

Mary did not speak, and after a moment he went on. "You know me well enough to know that I don't like punishing people. I had rather they did their duty honestly and simply, so that I could reward them for it. But on the day that I began, from whatever reason, to comply with abuses, to overlook corruption of this sort, the downfall of the business would begin. It is Mrs. Black's duty to see that the girls she employs are of good character and come from respectable homes. We don't take girls whose wages are their only means of support, for obvious reasons. Still less do we take girls who are supporting other people. Of course, we make it up to those we employ in other ways: they don't come to us merely to earn a living, but that is not the point. The point is that either Mrs. Black's methods of inquiry are at fault, so that she has allowed herself to be deceived, or that she has become party to a conspiracy to deceive the firm. It's clear that something is wrong, for she had no right to dismiss Wilson for theft without reporting the case."

Mary, bewildered, tried to gain time. Perhaps it had been reported without his noticing it.

James smiled. "We don't dismiss people for theft every day, my dear, and when we do we make a full enquiry. It is only fair to the culprit. Besides a trouble of that sort is often a sign of something wrong."

"Perhaps she was sorry for Florrie--she knew that if she reported her Florrie would be ruined. It's a great responsibility, James, and after all she hadn't actually stolen anything."

James turned to her again, but not, this time, to study the entreaty of her face, he wished to give force, on the contrary, to his own attitude. "Really you're not very logical, Mary! The only responsibility of my managers is to perform the duties that I pay them for. I undertake that my employees shall not be dismissed unjustly, and it is for me to decide whether or not they shall be prosecuted. And as for not actually stealing, I gather from you that by the girl's own admission she was caught in the act of trying to open a cash-box. Five minutes later she might have opened it. For all I know she did--you'll hardly ask me to place much faith in the word of a person who lies so fluently. You told me that she told lies even to you, and her story of the man and the bracelet strikes me as a pure fabrication. It's exactly the sort of story such a girl would be likely to invent; if there was a man and a bracelet at all she probably stole it from him. If she was innocent, why was she so much afraid of being charged? It's not probable, to say the least of it, that an honest girl would commit a real theft--and a theft on her employer--in order to escape being charged with one that she hadn't committed." Mary did not speak, and, after a moment, he left the sofa and walked over to the window. There he felt more at ease; the near presence of her emotion had troubled him. It was creditable emotion, and though in this case he could not give way to it he would deal with it as gently as he could. His face cleared, "I understand your feeling, little mother. You are sorry for her, and you don't want it to seem that you have taken advantage of her confidence. But if you think it over you will see that the results of my action can't now affect Wilson, and I undertake that your name shall not be connected with the matter in any way. You can't seriously have thought that I should bring you into it. And as a concession to you I am prepared to behave with every possible leniency towards Mrs. Black. Beyond that I think you must leave it to me."

Mary looked up at him as he stood dark against the waning light. Her protest against his words was mingled with the excitement of a discovery. She had been right last night--the mood she had chanced upon had neither been an accident nor unimportant. It had sprang from some deep essential in his mind. To-day it was overlaid with patience and with kindness, but none the less it shut him away from her, made him impervious to her entreaties, insensitive to whatever truth might lie in her point of view.

She felt now that she had suspected all her life the existence of this baffling quality. It was what she had feared when she had not wished to touch his business life. She had not only been afraid of herself, she had been afraid of him. As she had known him he had made her, their children, their relation to one another, the pivot of his life; here she was discovering another principle of loyalty, another axis round which his judgment and his ideals might revolve. He didn't misunderstand her now because he wished to wound her, or even because he would not take the trouble to examine what she said. Her wishes, potent as they were, had run counter to something stronger than themselves--she had not merely then to persuade him, she had to overcome his resistance.

Her mind was so busied with this thought that for a moment or two she did not speak. James, believing that she was considering the force of his words, did not hurry her. Then she made one more attempt to reach him.

"Perhaps I didn't explain very well, James. I didn't mean that what I minded was Mrs. Black's knowing that I had betrayed her to you, if it turns out that I have. I should mind that, because it would make all these women hate me when I only wished to do them a kindness. But what I mind most is being used, in actual fact, as an instrument of misfortune, as the channel of your displeasure--you force me to become a spy in fact, whether anyone knows it or not. And, you know, I resent it, I'm not prepared to be made use of in such a manner. It's a thing between me and you James, not between me and them--" She stopped, her eyes fixed on his face for some sign of comprehension.

James turned away a little, evading her gaze. "I'm very sorry," he said, "I'm exceedingly sorry. I had no more idea than you that this unhappy position would arise. Normally one couldn't have supposed that information of this sort would come into your possession. But since it has I do not see that I can be expected to disregard it. This girl must have known perfectly well that in telling you she was as good as telling me."

"I don't suppose, poor little thing, that she thought about it!"

James was annoyed. It seemed to him that for Mary after what he had said, to call Florrie a poor little thing was to display a wilful, provocative obstinacy. But he had determined not to give way to irritation, so he said nothing. After all, these lying impostors were new to Mary.

Mary, meanwhile, thinking the matter over, had resolved to make one more effort. She too got up, as these things are more easily said when one is standing, and went over to him. "Will you do one thing for me," she asked, "will you, before you take action, consult Trent, and let me, if I want to, tell him what I feel about it? I'm almost sure, though I don't know why, that he will agree with me."

James paused. Then he took her hands. "Yes," he said, "I'll do that, if you'd like me to. But look here, little woman, you put it to yourself fairly. Have you, even for a minute, tried to look at this thing from my point of view?"

Mary looked down at the floor for an instant's reflection. What he said was perfectly true. She had made no attempt to consider his position. Then she looked up and met his eyes. "No," she admitted, "I haven't."

He said no more, but kissed her and left her to think it over.

It did not occur to him that his leaving her would annoy Mary. He had acted instinctively upon the principle of making the most of an advantage. Moreover, he was tired, he had had a long day's work, and he had not expected to find an argument of such gravity awaiting his return.

Mary, unfortunately, was annoyed. She had not finished telling James about her adventures, and it hurt her to feel that he took no interest in what she had been doing. He would have taken all the interest she could wish if she had made them into a funny story; he liked what he called her witty way of commenting on events, but as it was true and important and serious he only considered its possible effect upon his business.

She tried to conquer her displeasure by telling herself that this was very natural. If a man has worked hard at a business for thirty years one should not be astonished that it has dominated his mind--one should be grateful if he has any mind left to be dominated.

Mary set herself to consider this, so that she might turn from her sense of personal grievance. What would she feel if she had spent the years of her working life serving, not individual people, whose happiness was a simple and obvious end, but an elaborate machine? In James's case the use of the machine was easy to see, people must be fed, and in some ways James fed them better than they had ever been fed before. But that, and he would have admitted it, wasn't the reason why he fed them. He had provided tea-shops because he saw in them the chance of a business opening. Other business men jumped just as eagerly at a chance to make cotton blankets and paper boots, even the tea-shops encouraged women to gad about and spend money instead of making their jams and jellies at home.

He didn't do his work to serve the country,--after all, if James hadn't built his shops one of his rivals would have built them instead,--but neither, Mary felt sure, did he work purely from a love of money. He liked money, but he had as much money now as he would ever care to spend. He liked a beautiful house, and a beautiful garden, he used a car to make journeys more convenient, he liked all the things that join with these to make life run free from hampering anxiety. And it cost money, immense sums of money, to have fresh air and flowers and cleanliness and books. But these, after all, did not provide a bottomless pit for wealth; in Rosemary's ideal state--Mary smiled--they were to be the common pleasures of the crowd. And these were, on the whole, all that James wanted. He had not been vulgarised to the point of demanding a hundred servants or jewels in the heels of his women's shoes.

He worked, in the long run, she supposed, for power, and for the flush of success. He did not trouble very much about ultimate aims, he found happiness in the achievement of transient immediate ends that sprang up in the course of events, and were accepted without question. Chance had thrown him into a factory; being there, he made the best of it and proceeded to think in terms of factories. He wanted a clean factory--an efficient factory--a larger factory--then some tea-shops, some more tea-shops, more and more, this site, that site, a distinctive appearance, a reputation for the best tea--so it went on. Of course he came to care about it, to depend on its success. Of course he came to regard the human beings who worked with him as factors in its success. He saw it as an end to be furthered for its own sake, not as a means to the building up of happy lives--though he liked, of course, after dinner, to dwell on its national usefulness.

It was all very obvious, she had known it all for years, but she had not, until that moment, taken it into account. She had thought of the business remotely as the source of their income, as a career for Trent, and immediately as a source of worries, a disturber of James's meals. She had never considered it as a great influence on James's mind, teaching him to look away from the primitive things of life to which women sit close, teaching him to think first of methods, of institutions, of organisations, the moulds and forms into which human emotion and energy are poured.

That was what Miss Percival must have meant when she talked of a man's world. It was a world that cared more for things, for arrangements, than for people. Women didn't come so easily to care for things. She thought of women she knew who were restless, and whose husbands gave them diamonds to keep them quiet. They had no children, or the world had taken their children away from them, spoiled them perhaps--or, worst of all, they had lost the gift of loving. There they were, unhappy--not that it mattered much to anyone. They had no work, no broad enthusiasms, to carry them over their personal failures. She had felt the poverty and insecurity of that when she had given Laura and Rosemary a better education than most girls of their class. She had trained their intellects to give them a second, a firmer hold on life. And they, having got it, were of opinion, that they should have more. They wanted, through politics, to regain their hold on a world that the modern craving for size and complexity had taken away from women. She had never troubled to follow them there. She had said that she wanted a vote because James believed that she ought to have one, and Trent believed she ought not. Anyhow, that, for the moment, was a side issue. What she was faced with now was this discovery that James and she held different points of view. He wanted the business to be a success, and, to his credit, an honest success; she wanted that too, but she wanted more that it should make the people who worked for it happy. How were they--James and she--going to surmount these opposing attitudes?

As she wondered she was overcome by her old timidity. The best thing to do, probably, would be for her to drop the whole thing. Already she and James had been more divided by it than she could remember their having been by anything. They had differed before, but not in this fundamental way. It wasn't worth it--better let all the girls in London be overworked than lose the happiness of her love for James.

She might have acted on this impulse, so much was she afraid of her own reflections, if she had not remembered that, as a matter of fact, half of the business was hers. It had been given to her, and she had enjoyed its profits for years. She had left it to James, and he had been willing that she should leave it--to his eyes it was a man's, not a woman's work--but then she had not realised that anything more than James's brains were needed. Now it seemed to her quite probable that her brains were needed too. She was responsible whether she washed her hands of it or not. She wished with all her heart that her father had given James the whole concern. Then she need have had nothing to do with it. But he hadn't, he had given it to her; she would not gain anything worth gaining by being selfish.

She differed from James; very well, then, she differed. She must accept it. But she needn't differ irritatingly, ignorantly. As long as she had meant to let her own ideas follow her husband's, she had refrained from seeking information from other people. Now that she saw that she and James might very well not agree she decided that she had better know what she was talking about. When Rosemary came back she would find out the names of some books. After all, something might come of this--if she were forced to dispute with James she might find a closer relation to Rosemary.

Meanwhile James was losing his temper with Trent. There was no sensitiveness in Trent that need be considered, a little sarcasm did the young man good, and James was ruffled at having to consult him. However, he had said he would, and no use would be served by putting the matter off. If Trent had wanted his father in a better humour he needn't have entered the door at the moment when James was passing through the hall.

"Trent," he called, "come into the library for a moment!"

Trent came, lamblike but dignified.

"Your mother has unearthed a pretty condition of affairs at C. L." James had his back to the fireplace and his chin in the air.

Trent was attentive. "Yes?"

"The manager--name of Black--there engaged a girl called Wilson, who seems to have had no references but a bedridden mother without means, and subsequently the girl tried to steal money out of the cash-box, says she got herself tangled up with a man, pawned a bracelet he gave her, or she stole from him, and wanted the money to redeem it because he threatened to prosecute her. The girl wrote to your mother, who went down to see her, and found her living in one room with an old woman and almost starving. I suppose your mother is seeing after her now, but the point is, what are we to do about Black?"

Trent did not understand why he had been brought into the matter. It was not the sort of thing that would normally have needed any discussion. "Why do you ask me?" he said.

"I told your mother I would."

That did not make things any clearer.

"My mother has some definite idea as to what should be done?"

"Your mother does not want anything done."

"About Black?"

James did not answer for a minute. Even if Mary had not been convinced by his arguments she might have kept up a decent pretence of agreement--she need not have sent him to Trent to explain that his father and mother had fallen out. James couldn't imagine now why he had been such an idiot as to undertake this unpleasant task. Mary was not, as a rule, so careless of his dignity.

"I don't find you very intelligent this evening," he said.

Meanwhile Trent had had time to understand.

"When you said 'unearth' you meant 'unearth by accident'--I see--" he began.

"What the devil does it matter how she found it out?--it certainly wasn't by accident. The girl came to her and told her--you can't call that an accident!"

Trent squared his shoulders with the priggish, dogmatic air that his family disliked in him. "I can quite understand that my mother doesn't want to get the woman into trouble," he said.

"Don't preach at me, sir!" would have relieved James's mind, but it would also have been to admit himself in the wrong. He drove back the tempting phrase.

"Your mother never wants to get anyone into trouble--that's not the point," he retorted. "The point is"--he spoke with a vague, oppressive sense of repetition--"that I am in possession of some valuable information about one of the managers--and I am asked to become an accessory to at least one crime, possibly to a number, by ignoring it!"

Trent laughed.

"Well, what should we be doing but acquiescing in deceit and dishonesty?" James was furious.

Trent told himself that his father was showing signs of age. He was behaving absurdly, a thing he did not often do. Trent was not offended or frightened by this ridiculous conduct because he felt himself safe on ground where his judgment could not be challenged. Trent had received an education which enabled him to know when a thing was honourable and when it wasn't. He felt perfectly sure of himself.

"Quite so!" he said. "But look at the other side of the thing for a moment. If Wilson had been a lady you wouldn't have doubted that what she said was said in confidence. We shouldn't have felt it possible to act on it."

James said nothing.

"As a matter of fact," his son went on, "if it had been anyone but my mother I shouldn't have thought much of that. We don't treat our work people as our social equals for the best of reasons. They aren't. And they wouldn't understand it if we did. I've very little doubt that Wilson meant to get Black into trouble for dismissing her."

James stirred--why hadn't he thought of that?

"But as it is I think we had better do nothing. We don't want to make my mother feel that she has been forced into an act she considers cruel, or even dishonourable. After all she has no experience of these people; she doesn't understand that the standards of cultured society don't apply to them. And really, it won't make much practical difference. We've only got to keep an eye on Black. If she's up to anything we shall soon catch her out. After all, Wilson's story isn't to be relied on there more than anywhere else!"

"But this isn't a question of Wilson's story, your mother saw the girl's home for herself!"

"Oh, well, as I've said, it needn't make any difference. I'll tell Forbes that he must give special attention to C. L. I don't think there can be anything much wrong. The returns are all right!"

James conceded the point. "Very well, very well," he said in a tone of dismissal, for he did not wish to prolong a disagreeable encounter. He wanted to tell Trent that he despised him for his manners, his morals, and his point of view, but his own manners would not let him. Moreover, in a sort of way, Trent had got him out of a difficulty. What he had said about Black was perfectly true, and it would be a relief, for once, to give way to Mary. When Mary considered a matter a point of honour she was as tenacious as he would have been himself.

Nevertheless it was an unpleasant business. As he sat thinking in his chair, after Trent had left the room, he realised how very unpleasant it was. Trent had lectured him in that damned superior way that roused all James's worst feelings, James himself had lost his temper, and Mary was probably sitting up there telling herself that her husband was a monster. And the thing that was to solve it all was Trent's assumption that the working classes weren't fit to lick his boots. James knew better. When he first went to his factory he had known a good many of his workmen intimately. They had their code of honour--James felt at this moment that it was as good a code as young Master Trent's, any day--and he had always flattered himself that they knew him for a man of honour, too. But this wasn't a matter of dealing as one man to another. For one thing Black was a woman, and though one does one's best to be generous to women it is not possible always to be square with them. But what was really the main point was that James was hardly, in this, a private man. He represented the business, the prosperity of the business. And the business had the right to demand honesty from all its employees, and constant, unswerving efforts from him to secure their honesty. Mary and Trent didn't seem to see that there was a principle involved. Mary was unable to look beyond the softness of her own heart--nobody expected Mary to understand business life, but she might have trusted him--and Trent thought nothing mattered as long as Black was found out before long. Meanwhile what of the impression in the minds of all the people who knew that the firm was being hoodwinked? No, no, what they ought to have had was a thorough inquiry, and then have shown mercy to the culprits afterwards.

This was only one trouble, but for all he knew it might be the first of a series. His faith in Mary's judgment was shaken. She ought to have realised that this was a matter for him. Perhaps after all his hands would be strengthened by following out a scheme that had been in his mind for some time, and turning the business into a public company. One is in a very satisfactory position when one represents not merely one's own opinions but the all-powerful interests of one's shareholders.

He was considering this plan with a fresh interest when he was interrupted by the dressing-bell.