Читать книгу The Staff at Simson's - Frederick Niven - Страница 14

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Robert Simson was often left alone in the private room by his brother after the morning's letters had been issued to the heads of departments, or after lunch when the later letters had been disposed of. He had a way, at such times, of listening to discover if Cashier Gilmore was also alone in the office. When there was prolonged silence there, neither speech nor movement, he would open the door and glance casually out.

Mr. Gilmore, who had been long in the Simson service, knew every nuance of the place and its people. He never, merely because of the sound of the handle being turned, looked round. There might be a summons for himself, or for Maitland, or for the office-boy. Or Mr. Robert might merely be going to pass through the counting-house, either on a visit to the warehouse or on his way to the street; or he might be coming to stretch his legs, literally, to stand in the office, hands behind back, rising on his toes and subsiding in a mild sort of callisthenics.

The cashier often theorised to himself on the life and character of the junior boss. He knew, being accountant, book-keeper, what his income was from the business. He knew the rent of his town house and what he had paid for the small villa he owned at Cove (doon the watter), and for the yawl yacht that was anchored in the bay there. He knew that he had now and then bought a picture by one of the young Glasgow painters. Of the existence of virgin spinsters Gilmore had no doubt whatever, but as for bachelors—well, he wasna just so sure. He wondered why Mr. Robert had never married and, considering him to be a confirmed bachelor, if he had a mistress. But only occasionally did Mr. Gilmore conjecture about that; and it was nane o' his business.

The fact that he sometimes talked to himself—which does not mean in long demented harangues as of one mentally queer, but just in ejaculatory fashion—helped to keep Robert in doubt as to whether his cashier was alone or not. On the day of this chapter—the day after the last of the season's overseas buyers had gone—Mr. Gilmore had more than once uttered a word or two aloud, as the afternoon progressed.

There was reason. The newsboys in the street were shouting about the boat-race—depressing news. On the issue of one edition Thomas Lipton's boat had been neck and neck with the American. On the issue of the next the newsboys wailed that the Shamrock was three lengths astern.

"Damn it! Damn it!" Mr. Gilmore rapped out, solitary in the counting-house.

In his room Robert Simson rose, opened the door, stepped out—stepped largely out. There he stood facing the window, staring up over the opaque green strip at the offices and warehouses across the street, hands behind back. As though he had only made exit to go through his flexing exercises, he rose upon his toes, descended, rose and descended, stretching his shoulders. Mr. Gilmore's pen scraped on in the ledger.

"Looks as if we are going to lose again," remarked Robert.

"Yes, sir. Too bad."

"The papers seem to be rushing out a lot of extra editions," Robert said, and turned round with his back to the window—which was a sign to the cashier that he might turn sidewise from his desk. "I don't know," the junior partner continued slowly, "that I've decided international sport is conducive always to international amity."

"No, Mr. Robert. Yet that is the object of it, isn't it?"

"No doubt. But it does not always achieve that result. Even the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race—I doubt if that rivalry is productive of good feeling."

"Maybe no'," said Gilmore. "And the Australian crick——" He interrupted himself in the middle of a word in a way of his, letting the subject of cricket go. "Do you know what I was thinking just now, sir?"

"No. What were you thinking, Mr. Gilmore?"

Gilmore laid his pen in its rack, took three feline-seeming steps towards the junior boss, his shoulders slightly hunched as though about to make assault upon him. Mr. Robert, rising a-tiptoe and settling again, looked down at his cashier with the faintest twinkle.

"Of course I know it wouldn't be cricket, as the saying goes, but I was just thinking that it would be wonderful if Thomas Lipton had a—had a——"

Gilmore's forefinger, which had been pointing before him, began to revolve in a tracing of circles in air.

The little light of amusement twinkled again in the centre of Robert Simson's eyes.

"Had a what, Mr. Gilmore?" he asked.

The cashier revolved his finger in air.

"A wheel," he brought out, "a wheel, screw, propeller—a secret propeller," he explained in a hushed voice, as though afraid lest some one might overhear, "a secret propeller in the hull of his boat!"

Having delivered himself of that merry and fraudulent notion, Gilmore stepped backward from his yachting boss, raised his head and crackled gaily. Then he was suddenly solemn. The dread took him that Mr. Robert might be considering seriously that here was an unscrupulously-minded employee, might be asking himself what manner of cashier the firm had been relying on these thirty years (thirty-two, to be precise), and considering that the fellow might cook the books, might at that moment be planning to abscond! Mr. Gilmore must have forgotten that his boss had a sense of humour, of fun, and a turn for nonsense.

"That," he added, "would not be fair."

On the declaration of the scheme the junior partner had only smiled—as much at the manner of its delivery as at the scheme itself—but at that addition he laughed outright. They were laughing together when the office-boy came in and on his heels the clerk, Maitland the farmer's son.

"You've nothing for me to sign?" asked Mr. Robert.

"Nothing more, sir," replied Gilmore.

As office-boy and clerk passed to their places, Robert Simson stepped largely back into his room and slammed the door. He sat down and, playing a light tattoo with his fingers, thought of the staff.

In a drawer of the table before him there was a small book with a label on it which read Employees. Formerly—or for some time, at any rate, since his father's reign—it had reposed in Gilmore's desk, but one day he had asked for it, having a private letter to write to a member of the staff who was ill, and wanting to know his address. Looking through it afterwards, he had noticed that in a column headed Remarks his father had entered a few, none of them impeachments, yet—as for some of them—somewhat personal. Gilmore was, to be sure, very much a confidential servant, but in his absence for lunch the clerk or even the office-boy might have to look into his desk for something and, seeing that book, might dip in it and come upon this or that which did not concern either of them. So he had put it in his drawer, and when the methodical cashier asked for it again had told him where it was.

There it had lain. John (John the Second) had never made in it any Remark regarding any member of staff. Neither had Robert. Perhaps some day he might. At the moment he required no reference to any book to help him in these idle meditations on his employees.

Of Maxwell he thought who, as he was well aware, was wont to slip out to the back court sometimes to whiff a cigarette—he who was like a stage ambassador behaving like a furtive errand boy; of Andy Middleton, who had been there in the lifetime of the John Simson whose name was on the windows and the door, Andy Middleton who used to tell his boss about the wee wean, the bairn, how he said, "Dad-da," one morning, how he was so clever that instead of rubbing an itching or sleepy eye by poking a finger in it, he rubbed it with the back of his small hand. And now Andy, when Robert stopped for a talk, passing through the warehouse, would tell him of how the callant, the young man, was progressing with the veeolon.

There was nothing of affectation, mused Robert, in Andy. He was as unaffected as a thistle. Robert wondered if perhaps that pronunciation was due to old French influence in Scotland. Many a Scots word was markedly as much Gallic as Scots, he considered. The Minch, for example, and fash (dinna fash yersel'), and ambry, and cramosie. People of Andy's type, when some supposed they were merely mispronouncing a word, were often less doing that to the ears of a listening etymologist than speaking history, though themselves unaware of that. Veeolon—was that just a crotchet of Andy's, or had it come down so in his family from the days when Mary was Queen or Prince Charles Edward afoot in the heather?

But Robert was only a dabbler in philology. He let the subject go, let Andy go and thought, with a chuckle, of Sandy Bain who, when young, used to be somewhat of a tippler—amusing thereby to Robert when first he came to the warehouse, but not to his father. "That young man," John the First once remarked, "will have to be less intimate with his friend John Barleycorn if he's to stay here." Of Henry Braid he thought—clearly a pushing young man—and of Tom Huntley's laugh, of the laugh before Huntley, it seemed, if that were possible. Another non-communicative man, apart from business, was Tom Huntley, but not in the same way as Braid. Braid's manner was that of one who would not mix humanity and commerce in talks with his bosses. He was there to transact their warehouse affairs for them faithfully and courteously, and that was all. Tom Huntley Robert greatly liked, though undemonstratively. They had been assistants together when Robert was learning the business through the departments.

Of that scowling head porter and packer he thought, Duncan Ramsay, who did his work well and with an air as of annoyance at it. Never did there come a bad report from any consignee of a load faultily baled. He had heard a rumour—old Andy Middleton was inclined to gossip at times, and from him it came—that Ramsay was maybe whiles kind of thrawn in his manner because his wife and him didna pull it off ower weel. "So I hae reason to believe," Andy had said, without entering into detail regarding his reason for that belief; and for detail Robert had not inquired.

He pondered on that old bald-headed man down in the well. Once, during the lunch hour, he had seen him bending over the outside dips of a second-hand bookshop away up near Buchanan Street Station, the very picture of a scholarly bibliophile to whom the food of the mind is more than raiment, and had to glance again to be sure it was he. The Simsons' private wash-room was reached by going down the stairs at the far end of the Fancy Goods department, under the Flannelette gallery, and sometimes when Robert had occasion to go down there he would not return the same way, but, passing through the calender department into the packing basement, come up by the stairway there.

After having seen the calender-man—what was his name? Yes, Fenwick—Walter Fenwick, rummaging, lost to all else in that book-dip, he had passed that way several times and stopped to watch him at work, hoping for a chance to draw him out. When the machine was revolving talk was not easy, what with the whirr and the flying fluff, but when Fenwick was folding pieces at his counter there was opportunity for it. Once and again Robert (balancing up and down on his toes beside the old man), watching how deftly with his strong hands he could fold a piece and smack it flat with no uneven edges, had made attempts at conversation—abortive attempts. "Yes, indeed, sir," and "So I have noticed, sir," were not encouraging.

He could not put a name on the man's manner. It was not servile. Timid was not the word. Was he shy? When he looked up once, Robert was amazed at the gentleness in his eyes—tenderness almost. That nose of his was but an occupational nose and no more, to judge by those clear eyes. An odd fellow, Fenwick!

Robert did not care to come up that way often. He was satisfied with the staff's attention to work. Frequent transits below stairs might give the appearance of watching them, spying, to see that they were not wasting time when their duties took them there. Having been through the departments himself, in his father's reign, as an assistant (and, by the boss's special request, with a fair field for all and no favours), he knew well enough that there were occasional halts below when vivacious young warehousemen met vivacious young warehousemen, but he was no slave-driver.

"Result of the Boat Race! Result of the Boat Race! Spaycial! Spaycial!"

He leant back in his chair and opened the door.

"Boy!"

"Yes, sir?" Tommy Bruce dashed into the private room and stood with heels together, making his quaint juvenile bow.

Robert handed him a halfpenny.

"Get me a copy of the paper."

"Yes, sir."

The office-boy hurried out, got it, and delayed on his return to the corridor to read the result. His face was of misery as he re-entered the room. His expression broke the news. Only for confirmation had Robert to look at the paper to know beyond doubt that Lipton lost. There it was in plain print for office-boys and bosses.

The afternoon was well advanced. The elusive glory of that day was above the cornices on the buildings opposite, slipping upward off the chimney-pots. There was no more to wait for. He brushed his hat and passed into the counting-house.

"Nothing else you want me for to-night?" he asked formally.

"No, sir," replied Mr. Gilmore.

"Well, good-day, good-night."

"Good-night, Mr. Robert," replied the cashier.

"Good-night, sir," said Maitland and Tommy Bruce.