Читать книгу The Passionate Quest - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 5

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There was no man in Norchester more respected or less liked than Benjamin Stone. He had built the first factory of its sort in the town, and become the pioneer of an industry which now provided employment for the greater number of its two hundred thousand inhabitants. He had been mayor three times and would have accepted that office again but for the possibility of a royal visit. Benjamin Stone did not believe in royalty. He was a devout Nonconformist, and an occasional preacher in the chapel which he had built and endowed. He was charitable so far as regarded gifts to institutions, an abstainer from principle, a widower sixty years of age, whose private life was almost absurdly beyond reproach, and his existence would have been even more solitary than it was but for the singular accident of having had the charge of three young people thrust upon him at different times.

Matthew Garner was the orphaned stepson of his sister who had died out in South Africa. Philip Garth was the son of the only friend he had ever possessed, a photographer, unfortunate in business, deserted by his wife, and converted to Nonconformity during the last few months of his life. Rosina was the daughter of his other sister, who, whilst travelling with a Cook's excursion party in France, had committed the amazing indiscretion of falling in love with and marrying a French artist. Benjamin treated the affair as a bereavement, allowed his sister a hundred a year, and returned all her letters unopened until the last one, which came addressed in a strange hand-riting. Its contents were brief enough. It was dated from a small town in the southwest corner of France, and, whatever effect it had upon its recipient, he took no one into his confidence:

Dear Benjamin:

My husband is dead. They tell me that I am not likely to live for more than a week or two. You have allowed us a hundred pounds a year to live upon, for which I am grateful. I am sending you Rosina, my daughter. It will cost you little more than the hundred a year you will save by my death, to provide for her. I have had a hard life and I am glad to leave it. Are you as religious as ever?

Your sister,

Rose.

Benjamin Stone accepted his three charges, but, whether willingly or not, no man knew, for no one was in his confidence. He lived in a red brick villa which was built at the same time as the chapel, and which was situated next door to it. Both had been constructed on economical lines, and both combined the maximum of ugliness with the minimum of comfort. He himself was a big, lank man, with large bones but little flesh, a face which looked as though it were cut out of granite, cold grey eyes, and black hair only thinly streaked with grey. He generally wore a dark suit of pepper and salt mixture, an unusually high collar, and an inevitable black bow tie, arranged so that the ends neither drooped nor faltered in their task of ornamentation. He had bushy eyebrows which seemed to meet in a perpetual frown. His voice was hard and clear but almost singularly destitute of any human quality. He ate, drank and slept sparingly, he had apparently no pleasures, and his religion was a militant one. Occasionally, on Saturday afternoons, he played bowls. Even his debtors called him a just man.

Of his three wards, as they grew up, Benjamin Stone made as much use as possible. Philip Garth was his junior clerk, and, as his benefactor did not scruple to tell him, the worst he had ever employed. Matthew, who was two years older, held a more responsible post in the factory, and, but for living in constant conflict with his uncle on matters of administration, might have held a very different position. Rosina went to the office in the mornings, where she typed a few letters, and assisted her uncle's elderly housekeeper-domestic in the afternoons. She could never quite make up her mind which portion of her duties she found the more detestable.

The evening meal at Sion House, which Benjamin Stone had prayerfully called his villa, was served, on this particular evening, at seven o'clock, half-an-hour earlier than usual, by special orders from the head of the house. It was not an elaborate repast, and was accompanied by tea, served in an urn, over which Rosina presided. It was partaken of, as usual, almost in silence, after which the cloth was cleared by the elderly domestic, assisted by Rosina. Every one then resumed his place at the table whilst Benjamin Stone read a chapter from the Bible. When he had closed the Book, he knelt before the horsehair sofa and prayed. There was nothing fervent about his appeal to a Divinity whom he seemed to envisage as a heavenly prototype of himself. He prayed that sinners who fully expiated their sins might be forgiven, that wrongdoers who made full atonement might be received back into the fold. The word "mercy" never once occurred in his discourse. There was a geometrical exactness about his suggestions to the Deity, which took no account of anything outside the great debit and credit ledger. When he had finished, he rose and stood at the end of the table. It was as though he had some fore-knowledge of what was to come.

"Rosina," he said, "and you, Philip, there is a lecture to be given in the chapel this evening on 'Moral Probity in Commercial Life.' It is my wish that you should both attend. Matthew, I believe, has a class at the technical schools."

Rosina looked at once towards Philip, but Philip, as he was so often to do in life, failed her. He hesitated.

"To-night?" he repeated, a little vaguely.

"You will do well to be there in half an hour's time," Benjamin Stone continued. "Representatives of my household should occupy the front pew. Do you hear, Rosina?"

She rose to her feet. Into the ugly room, with its closely drawn, green Venetian blinds, a ray of unwelcomed sunshine found its way between two of the slats. It happened to fall upon her face just as she was nerving herself for the task. She felt, indeed, something of the spirit of a modern Joan of Arc as she spoke the first words of rebellion which had passed her lips for many years, spoke them not fearfully but with a strange wonder that fear was not there.

"Uncle," she told him gently, "I am sorry I cannot go to the lecture—I shall be busy packing."

"Packing?" Benjamin Stone repeated, his eyebrows more than ever contracted. "Explain yourself."

"Philip and I, and Matthew too, I believe," she said, "have made up our minds to leave Norchester. I speak for Philip and myself. Matthew knows his own mind. We are very grateful to you for having supported us all these years, but the time has come when we cannot live here any longer. We are both unhappy."

"Why?" Benjamin Stone demanded.

"Because we both want things in life which Norchester cannot give us," Rosina went on. "It is very difficult to explain, uncle, and I am not good at explaining, but our minds are quite made up. We want to live somewhere and work somewhere, where for part of the time, at any rate, we can breathe the atmosphere which comes from being surrounded with beautiful things."

"In what part of the world, may I ask, do you intend to search for this atmosphere?" Benjamin Stone enquired, unmoved.

"In London at first," Rosina told him.

"Is London more beautiful than Norchester?"

"It is so difficult to explain," she repeated. "Spiritually, it is. There is music there, wonderful pictures to be seen; there is history, association, people working with big aims and big ideas, the heart of a great city beating in your ears night and day."

Benjamin Stone listened with the air of one who seeks to understand. There was no anger in his face, there was certainly no sympathy.

"Our picture gallery here is well supplied," he said. "We have acquired works—at a ridiculous price, in my opinion—painted by many well-known artists. Marshall's concerts are, I believe, found attractive by the musical element in the town."

Rosina made a little grimace.

"I knew that I could not make you understand, uncle," she sighed. "The pictures we have are just the sort that the great artists sell to the picture galleries of provincial towns, and the concerts—well, the musicians who come down here put their heads together and make an effort to give us of their worst, so that they may be understood. Norchester is typically provincial, uncle. So long as we are here, we are plodding in the mud, almost the slough, and I mean to get out of it."

Benjamin Stone turned to Philip.

"Have you anything to say for yourself?" he asked.

"I agree with everything that Rosina has said," Philip answered. "I am grateful to you for your help and support, but I hate my work here. I want to get away."

"You are the worst clerk," his uncle pronounced, "I ever kept in my office for twenty-four hours. You cannot add up a column of figures correctly, or post a single entry from the day book into the ledger to the right account. How do you propose to earn your living in London?"

"Not as a clerk," Philip declared, with a little burst of passion.

"Then how?" his uncle persisted.

Philip thought of his little box full of manuscripts, and a tinge of colour flushed his cheeks. It seemed irreverent to speak of them as the means by which he was to earn his living.

"I shall write stories," he announced. "I have written a few already."

"Have you made any money out of them?"

"Not yet."

"Have you tried?"

"Yes!"

"Why do you think you will do better in London?"

"Because no one could write anything worth while in such an atmosphere as this," was the almost fierce reply. "I agree with Rosina. We are in the mud here, drifting into the slough. I would sooner starve in London than own your factory here."

"No one will deny you the opportunity," Benjamin Stone assured him coldly. "Now, Matthew, what have you to say? I understand that you, also, are concerned in this."

"I am quite as determined to leave Norchester," Matthew replied, "but my reasons are entirely different ones. I have nothing against Norchester, if there were any money to be made here, but I have made up my mind that there is no future for me down at the factory."

"Why not? You are a good worker, and, in some respects, capable."

Matthew came a step nearer. His somewhat heavy face was alight with interest. He had the air of a much older man discussing a carefully thought-out problem.

"Look here," he said, "you give me two pounds ten a week for superintending the warehousing of your stock. I am worth more than that, but the job itself is too insignificant. I have studied the organisation of your factory all the way through, from the basement to the clicking room, and you're getting altogether behind the times. You've made a lot of money your way, no doubt, but the one fact you won't recognise is that times are changing. I don't see your balance sheets, but I'm convinced of one thing. You can't make any more by your present old-fashioned methods, and I'm not at all sure that you don't stand to lose a good part of what you've made. If, instead of two pounds ten a week to look after your stock of leather, you will offer me a thousand a year and allow me to remodel the factory from the cellars to the attic, remodel your system of buying and scrap half your old machinery, I might consider staying. Otherwise, I shall be glad of that hundred pounds' legacy you propose to pay me to-night, and I'm off to London with the others."

Benjamin Stone turned his back upon them all, opened his desk and busied himself there for several moments. When he turned around, he had three oblong slips of paper in his hand.

"There is your hundred pounds, Matthew," he said, presenting him with a cheque. "As for you others, you have some small amounts, I believe, in the Savings Bank."

"We don't want any money from you, uncle," Rosina assured him hastily. "We just want to thank you for all you have done for us, and to ask you to forgive us because we are going away."

"I am sorry that I was such a failure in the factory, sir," Philip said, "but you can see for yourself that I am no use in business."

"You are useless in business because you are incompetent," Benjamin Stone replied firmly, "and you are incompetent because you are lazy, lazy in mind and lazy in body. I accept your thanks, and yours, Rosina, for what I have done for you. Here is a cheque for fifty pounds for each of you. Added to what you have, it may keep you from starvation for a few weeks longer. For the rest, leave this house when and how you choose. I shall ask you to remember only one thing—when you leave it, you leave it for ever."

Philip accepted his cheque readily enough. Rosina took hers with hesitation. There was no shadow of kindliness or regret in the face of the donor. It was impossible to tell from his manner whether the departure of his charges were a sorrow or a relief to him.

"We quite understand that, uncle," Rosina said, a little timidly. "It is very generous of you to give us this money, and, if we may, we should like to part friends."

There was a momentous, almost a dread silence, a silence of which the significance existed only for three of the little gathering. Matthew, with knitted brows, was gazing over Rosina's shoulder at the cheque which she held in her fingers. To him, the words had been said, the farewells spoken; he had no sense of anything unusual in the room. He was engrossed simply by the problem as to whether he had been fairly dealt with in the matter of these farewell gifts. But, in their different ways, the girl and the boy trembling on the verge of life, their revolt rather of the soul than of the body; the man of iron, the pedagogue of narrow places, three times mayor of the town, and every Sunday an expounder of Christian principles according to his lights—these three had left Matthew on planes beneath. It was with a momentary exaltation that Benjamin opened the door and dismissed his rebellious charges, an exaltation which they more than shared. It was with a sensation of boredom and some resentment that Matthew followed them. The door was firmly closed, the three climbed the stairs and went to their rooms to prepare for their forthcoming journey. Benjamin Stone resumed his chair and drew the Bible towards him. Where he opened it, he read—read aloud to himself—read as one seeking hungrily for comfort in a world which for the first time he failed wholly to understand.