Читать книгу The Curious Quest - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 7

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Bliss, in his first unsuccessful efforts to sell the Alpha Cooking Stove, wore out a pair of shoes and spent twenty-six of the most miserable days of his life. He, who had been the spoilt darling of servile commissionaires, of theatrical door-keepers, restaurant pages, and obsequious maitres d'hôtel, was snubbed vigorously by small boys who looked at him through half-opened wicket holes and kept waiting for hours in draughty passages by inattentive clerks, only to have his card brought back from the buyer of some furnishing department, with a message more or less covertly insolent. He was at divers times informed, when he got a hearing at all, that his particular stove was the worst, the dearest, and the most out-of-date of all stoves that ever cumbered the ground. His face grew a little harder day by day. Distaste of this new career upon which he had entered, half in a spirit of bravado and half with a real though fleeting enthusiasm, deepened with his lack of success. His knees began to tremble, no longer from nervousness, but from actual weakness. He slept in a cheap lodging on the topmost floor of a house in a dingy neighbourhood, and he ate cheap food. He lived on his weekly two pounds, which he accepted after his fruitless labours with a groan; and each evening when he returned to the little warehouse in Fore Street to make his report, he went through a sort of purgatory. The moment his foot crossed the threshold, it began. The warehouseman, who was generally-engaged in polishing the model stove, stopped his work and looked at him expectantly. Mr. Masters always met him at the office door. His stereotyped question was delivered with an eagerness which it had become daily more hard to conceal.

"Any luck to-day, Bliss?"

The brown-haired girl, too, ceased her work and looked at him. Each time he had to make the same answer. It was becoming unbearable. On the twenty-sixth day he limped painfully in to face his ordeal. He had walked from Islington and was giddy. He spoke even before he could open the door, spoke with half-closed eyes. He felt that to-day he was bringing with him the culminating disappointment. He had been to keep an appointment upon which Mr. Masters had placed great hopes.

"No luck," he announced. "Not the ghost of an order! Bembers wouldn't even see me. Their clerk told me that they had placed a large contract for an American stove five per cent. cheaper than ours."

The girl's face was suddenly averted. Mr. Masters, with a muttered word, rose and went out into the warehouse. Bliss sank into his vacant chair and covered his face with his hands. The girl looked across the room at him and sighed.

"You seem tired," she said. "Shall I make some tea?"

The note of compassion in her voice was the most pleasant thing he had heard that day. He looked up at her gratefully.

"If you would," he replied. "I do feel pretty well done. I suppose I am a mug," he went on bitterly, "but I don't believe the Archangel Gabriel could sell those stoves."

"I am afraid," she sighed, as she crossed the floor with a cup of tea in her hand, "that the broker's man will have to."

He looked up at her quickly.

"What do you mean?" he asked. "I thought that we could not get them fast enough; that they were all being shipped for export."

"Bluff," she assured him. "All bluff! I don't suppose there's any harm in telling you now. Mr. Masters bought the whole bankrupt stock of an iron-founder in Sheffield. It was a great speculation for him, but you know how sanguine he is. He has nearly five hundred stoves made and not twenty sold. The first bill for the material was paid last week, and the next is due on Tuesday. We cannot meet it. We can only just pay the wages on Saturday. By next Tuesday we shall have five hundred stoves in stock, and not a penny in the bank."

Bliss could say nothing. He only sat and stared.

"I feel so sorry for Mr. Masters," she went on softly. "He was only a working man, and he saved the few hundred pounds he started with, week by week. He is so proud of his name and character. I think that it will break his heart if he has to fail, and there is no help for it that I can see."

"Five hundred stoves in stock," Bliss murmured, "at fourteen guineas. Why doesn't he sell some at a little less, just enough to pay this bill?"

She nodded.

"He has tried to do that, although he hated it because he did not think it was fair business. He offered two hundred to-day at actual cost to a firm, just to pay next week's bill. They declined. He is almost desperate about it."

"Great Csesar!" Bliss muttered. "And I have been kicking myself because I couldn't sell them at fourteen."

"That's a different thing altogether. You have been calling mostly upon retail people, and fourteen guineas is a very fair price. To tell you the truth, I am surprised that you haven't sold any," she added, a little unfeelingly. "You seemed so very confident when you started."

He set his teeth. There was a look in his face which would have astonished Sir James Aldroyd.

"There are two days left," he reminded her grimly.

The door was thrown open, and Mr. Masters bustled in with his accustomed air of exuberant energy. He was humming a tune to himself, but his affected cheerfulness was a little overdone. "Ah! there you are, Bliss," he exclaimed. "Afraid I must remind you that your time is up on Saturday. A month's trial, that was it, wasn't it?"

Bliss rose heavily to his feet.

"Sorry I've been such a failure, sir," he said slowly. "I have got two more days, however, and it's occurred to me—well, I have had an idea as I sat here. Perhaps it isn't worth much, but I want to make one more effort to-morrow."

Mr. Masters was mildly curious.

"Going to try a new district?" he enquired. "You've got the whole field to yourself, you know, and the finest stove in the world to sell. It's just a question of getting at the right people."

"That's exactly what I feel myself, sir," Bliss asserted thoughtfully. "By-the-by, if I wanted a stove to show a customer—"

"There's one in the packing case outside," Mr. Masters interrupted eagerly. "Tim hasn't gone yet. He can take it wherever you like. He hasn't had a stroke of work to do all day. Shall I tell him to put it on a truck?"

Bliss burnt his boats.

"If you please," he answered valiantly.

Mr. Masters hurried out, shouting for the warehouseman. Already his step was more buoyant. The girl looked at Bliss almost reproachfully.

"Do you think it's quite fair to give him false hopes like that?" she demanded.

"There's no false hope about it," Bliss replied, taking up his hat. "I'm going to sell that stove and a dozen more like it before this time to-morrow night."

She looked at him searchingly. She was forced to admit that the Ernest Bliss of to-day was somehow a very different being from the young man who had sat in that chair a month ago, and in whom, at that time, she had felt no confidence whatever. There was a new ring in his voice. His mouth seemed to have become tenser, and his manner more determined. A little thrill of hope crept into her reply.

"Oh, if you only can!"

Her eyes glowed. He was suddenly conscious of the birth of new powers within him. He felt like a Samson.

"I shall," he asserted. "And what then?"

It was amazing to him that he had not realised her charm before. She flashed a wonderful smile upon him and sat down before her machine.

"Well, we'll see!"