Since he was a superior employee at Jordan’s, it was the thing for Paul to offer Dawes a drink.
“What’ll you have?” he asked of him.
“Nowt wi’ a bleeder like you!” replied the man.
Paul turned away with a slight disdainful movement of the shoulders, very irritating.
“The aristocracy,” he continued, “is really a military institution. Take Germany, now. She’s got thousands of aristocrats whose only means of existence is the army. They’re deadly poor, and life’s deadly slow. So they hope for a war. They look for war as a chance of getting on. Till there’s a war they are idle good-for-nothings. When there’s a war, they are leaders and commanders. There you are, then—they want war!”1
He was not a favourite debater in the public-house, being too quick and overbearing. He irritated the older men by his assertive manner, and his cocksureness. They listened in silence, and were not sorry when he finished.
Dawes interrupted the young man’s flow of eloquence by asking, in a loud sneer:
“Did you learn all that at th’ theatre th’ other night?”
Paul looked at him; their eyes met. Then he knew Dawes had seen him coming out of the theatre with Clara.
“Why, what about th’ theatre?” asked one of Paul’s associates, glad to get a dig at the young fellow, and sniffing something tasty.
“Oh, him in a bob-tailed evening suit,fs on the lardy-da!”ft sneered Dawes, jerking his head contemptuously at Paul.
“That’s comin’ it strong,” said the mutual friend. “Tartfu an’ all?”
“Tart, begod!” said Dawes.
“Go on; let’s have it!” cried the mutual friend.
“You’ve got it,” said Dawes, “an’ I reckon Morelly had itfv an’ all.”
“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” said the mutual friend. “An’ was it a proper tart?”
“Tart, God blimeyfw-yes!”
“How do you know?”
“Oh,” said Dawes, “I reckon he spent th’ night—”
There was a good deal of laughter at Paul’s expense.
“But who was she? D’you know her?” asked the mutual friend.
“I should shay sho,” said Dawes.
This brought another burst of laughter.
“Then spit it out,” said the mutual friend.
Dawes shook his head, and took a gulp of beer.
“It’s a wonder he hasn’t let on himself,” he said. “He’ll be braggin’ of it in a bit.”
“Come on, Paul,” said the friend; “it’s no good. You might just as well own up.”
“Own up what? That I happened to take a friend to the theatre?”
“Oh well, if it was all right, tell us who she was, lad,” said the friend.
“She was all right,” said Dawes.
Paul was furious. Dawes wiped his golden moustache with his fingers, sneering.
“Strike me—! One o’ that sort?” said the mutual friend. “Paul, boy, I’m surprised at you. And do you know her, Baxter?”
“Just a bit, like!”
He winked at the other men.
“Oh well,” said Paul, “I’ll be going!”
The mutual friend laid a detaining hand on his shoulder.
“Nay,” he said, “you don’t get off as easy as that, my lad. We’ve got to have a full account of this business.”
“Then get it from Dawes!” he said.
“You shouldn’t funk your own deeds, man,” remonstrated the friend.
Then Dawes made a remark which caused Paul to throw half a glass of beer in his face.
“Oh, Mr. Morel!” cried the barmaid, and she rang the bell for the “chucker-out.”
Dawes spat and rushed for the young man. At that minute a brawny fellow with his shirt-sleeves rolled up and his trousers tight over his haunches intervened.
“Now, then!” he said, pushing his chest in front of Dawes.
“Come out!” cried Dawes.
Paul was leaning, white and quivering, against the brass rail of the bar. He hated Dawes, wished something could exterminate him at that minute; and at the same time, seeing the wet hair on the man’s forehead, he thought he looked pathetic. He did not move.
“Come out, you—,” said Dawes.
“That’s enough, Dawes,” cried the barmaid.
“Come on,” said the “chucker-out,” with kindly insistence, “you’d better be getting on.”
And, by making Dawes edge away from his own close proximity, he worked him to the door.
“That’s the little sod as started it!” cried Dawes, half-cowed, pointing to Paul Morel.
“Why, what a story, Mr. Dawes!” said the barmaid. “You know it was you all the time.”
Still the “chucker-out” kept thrusting his chest forward at him, still he kept edging back, until he was in the doorway and on the steps outside; then he turned round.
“All right,” he said, nodding straight at his rival.
Paul had a curious sensation of pity, almost of affection, mingled with violent hate, for the man. The coloured door swung to; there was silence in the bar.
“Serve him jolly well right!” said the barmaid.
“But it’s a nasty thing to get a glass of beer in your eyes,” said the mutual friend.
“I tell you I was glad he did,” said the barmaid. “Will you have another, Mr. Morel?”
She held up Paul’s glass questioningly. He nodded.
“He’s a man as doesn’t care for anything, is Baxter Dawes,” said one.
“Pooh! is he?” said the barmaid. “He’s a loud-mouthed one, he is, and they’re never much good. Give me a pleasant-spoken chap, if you want a devil!”
“Well, Paul, my lad,” said the friend, “you’ll have to take care of yourself now for a while.”
“You won’t have to give him a chance over you, that’s all,” said the barmaid.
“Can you box?” asked a friend.
“Not a bit,” he answered, still very white.
“I might give you a turn or two,” said the friend.
“Thanks, I haven’t time.”
And presently he took his departure.
“Go along with him, Mr. Jenkinson,” whispered the barmaid, tipping Mr. Jenkinson the wink.
The man nodded, took his hat, said: “Good-night all!” very heartily, and followed Paul, calling:
“Half a minute, old man. You an’ me’s going the same road, I believe.”
“Mr. Morel doesn’t like it,” said the barmaid. “You’ll see, we shan’t have him in much more. I’m sorry; he’s good company. And Baxter Dawes wants locking up, that’s what he wants.”
Paul would have died rather than his mother should get to know of this affair. He suffered tortures of humiliation and self-consciousness. There was now a good deal of his life of which necessarily he could not speak to his mother. He had a life apart from her—his sexual life. The rest she still kept. But he felt he had to conceal something from her, and it irked him. There was a certain silence between them, and he felt he had, in that silence, to defend himself against her; he felt condemned by her. Then sometimes he hated her, and pulled at her bondage. His life wanted to free itself of her. It was like a circle where life turned back on itself, and got no farther. She bore him, loved him, kept him, and his love turned back into her, so that he could not be free to go forward with his own life, really love another woman. At this period, unknowingly, he resisted his mother’s influence. He did not tell her things; there was a distance between them.
Clara was happy, almost sure of him. She felt she had at last got him for herself; and then again came the uncertainty. He told her jestingly of the affair with her husband. Her colour came up, her grey eyes flashed.
“That’s him to a ‘T,’” she cried—“like a navvy! He’s not fit for mixing with decent folk.”
“Yet you married him,” he said.
It made her furious that he reminded her.
“I did!” she cried. “But h
ow was I to know?”
“I think he might have been rather nice,” he said.
“You think I made him what he is!” she exclaimed.
“Oh no! he made himself. But there’s something about him—”
Clara looked at her lover closely. There was something in him she hated, a sort of detached criticism of herself, a coldness which made her woman’s soul harden against him.
“And what are you going to do?” she asked.
“How?”
“About Baxter.”
“There’s nothing to do, is there?” he replied.
“You can fight him if you have to, I suppose?” she said.
“No; I haven’t the least sense of the ‘fist.’ It’s funny. With most men there’s the instinct to clench the fist and hit. It’s not so with me. I should want a knife or a pistol or something to fight with.”
“Then you’d better carry something,” she said.
“Nay,” he laughed; “I’m not daggeroso.”fx
“But he’ll do something to you. You don’t know him.”
“All right,” he said, “we’ll see.”
“And you’ll let him?”
“Perhaps, if I can’t help it.”
“And if he kills you?” she said.
“I should be sorry, for his sake and mine.”
Clara was silent for a moment.
“You do make me angry!” she exclaimed.
“That’s nothing afresh,” he laughed.
“But why are you so silly? You don’t know him.”
“And don’t want.”
“Yes, but you’re not going to let a man do as he likes with you?”
“What must I do?” he replied, laughing.
“I should carry a revolver,” she said. “I’m sure he’s dangerous.”
“I might blow my fingers off,” he said.
“No; but won’t you?” she pleaded.
“No.”
“Not anything?”
“No.”
“And you’ll leave him to—?”
“Yes.”
“You are a fool!”
“Fact!”
She set her teeth with anger.
“I could shake you!” she cried, trembling with passion.
“Why?”
“Let a man like him do as he likes with you.”
“You can go back to him if he triumphs,” he said.
“Do you want me to hate you?” she asked.
“Well, I only tell you,” he said.
“And you say you love me!” she exclaimed, low and indignant.
“Ought I to slay him to please you?” he said. “But if I did, see what a hold he’d have over me.”
“Do you think I’m a fool!” she exclaimed.
“Not at all. But you don’t understand me, my dear.”
There was a pause between them.
“But you ought not to expose yourself,” she pleaded.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“‘The man in righteous arrayed,
The pure and blameless liver,
Needs not the keen Toledo blade,
Nor venom-freighted quiver.’ ”2
he quoted.
She looked at him searchingly.
“I wish I could understand you,” she said.
“There’s simply nothing to understand,” he laughed.
She bowed her head, brooding.
He did not see Dawes for several days; then one morning as he ran upstairs from the Spiral room he almost collided with the burly metal-worker.
“What the—!” cried the smith.
“Sorry!” said Paul, and passed on.
“Sorry!” sneered Dawes.
Paul whistled lightly, “Put Me among the Girls.”3
“I’ll stop your whistle, my jockey!” he said.
The other took no notice.
“You’re goin’ to answer for that job of the other night.”
Paul went to his desk in his corner, and turned over the leaves of the ledger.
“Go and tell Fanny I want order 097, quick!” he said to his boy.
Dawes stood in the doorway, tall and threatening, looking at the top of the young man’s head.
“Six and five’s eleven and seven’s one-and-six,” Paul added aloud.
“An’ you hear, do you!” said Dawes.
“Five and ninepence!” He wrote a figure. “What’s that?” he said.
“I’m going to show you what it is,” said the smith.
The other went on adding the figures aloud.
“Yer crawlin’ little—, yer daresn’t face me proper!”
Paul quickly snatched the heavy ruler. Dawes started. The young man ruled some lines in his ledger. The elder man was infuriated.
“But wait till I light on you, no matter where it is, I’ll settle your hash for a bit, yer little swine!”
“All right,” said Paul.
At that the smith started heavily from the doorway. Just then a whistle piped shrilly. Paul went to the speaking-tube.
“Yes!” he said, and he listened. “Er—yes!” He listened, then he laughed. “I’ll come down directly. I’ve got a visitor just now.”
Dawes knew from his tone that he had been speaking to Clara. He stepped forward.
“Yer little devil!” he said. “I’ll visitor you, inside of two minutes! Think I’m goin’ to have you whipperty-snappin’ round?”
The other clerks in the warehouse looked up. Paul’s office-boy appeared, holding some white article.
“Fanny says you could have had it last night if you’d let her know,” he said.
“All right,” answered Paul, looking at the stocking. “Get it off.”
Dawes stood frustrated, helpless with rage. Morel turned round.
“Excuse me a minute,” he said to Dawes, and he would have run downstairs.
“By God, I’ll stop your gallop!” shouted the smith, seizing him by the arm. He turned quickly.
“Hey! Hey!” cried the office-boy, alarmed.
Thomas Jordan started out of his little glass office, and came running down the room.
“What’s a-matter, what’s a-matter?” he said, in his old man’s sharp voice.
“I’m just goin’ ter settle this little—, that’s all,” said Dawes desperately.
“What do you mean?” snapped Thomas Jordan.
“What I say,” said Dawes, but he hung fire.
Morel was leaning against the counter, ashamed, half-grinning.
“What’s it all about?” snapped Thomas Jordan.
“Couldn’t say,” said Paul, shaking his head and shrugging his shoulders.
“Couldn’t yer, couldn’t yer!” cried Dawes, thrusting forward his handsome, furious face, and squaring his fist.
“Have you finished?” cried the old man, strutting. “Get off about your business, and don’t come here tipsy in the morning.”
Dawes turned his big frame slowly upon him.
“Tipsy!” he said. “Who’s tipsy? I’m no more tipsy than you are!”
“We’re heard that song before,” snapped the old man. “Now you get off, and don’t be long about it. Comin’ here with your rowdying.”
The smith looked down contemptuously on his employer. His hands, large, and grimy, and yet well shaped for his labour, worked restlessly. Paul remembered they were the hands of Clara’s husband, and a flash of hate went through him.
“Get out before you’re turned out!” snapped Thomas Jordan.
“Why, who’ll turn me out?” said Dawes, beginning to sneer.
Mr. Jordan started, marched up to the smith, waving him off, thrusting his stout little figure at the man, saying:
“Get off my premises—get off!”
He seized and twitched Dawes’s arm.
“Come off!” said the smith, and with a jerk of the elbow he sent the little manufacturer staggering backwards.
Before anyone could help him, Thomas Jordan had collided with the flimsy spring
-door. It had given way, and let him crash down the half-dozen steps into Fanny’s room. There was a second of amazement ; then men and girls were running. Dawes stood a moment looking bitterly on the scene, then he took his departure.
Thomas Jordan was shaken and bruised, not otherwise hurt. He was, however, beside himself with rage. He dismissed Dawes from his employment, and summoned him for assault.
At the trial Paul Morel had to give evidence. Asked how the trouble began, he said:
“Dawes took occasion to insult Mrs. Dawes and me because I accompanied her to the theatre one evening; then I threw some beer at him, and he wanted his revenge.”
“Cherchez la femme! ”fy smiled the magistrate.
The case was dismissed after the magistrate had told Dawes he thought him a skunk.
“You gave the case away,” snapped Mr. Jordan to Paul.
“I don’t think I did,” replied the latter. “Besides, you didn’t really want a conviction, did you?”
“What do you think I took the case up for?”
“Well,” said Paul, “I’m sorry if I said the wrong thing.” Clara was also very angry.
“Why need my name have been dragged in?” she said.
“Better speak it openly than leave it to be whispered.”
“There was no need for anything at all,” she declared.
“We are none the poorer,” he said indifferently.
“You may not be,” she said.
“And you?” he asked.
“I need never have been mentioned.”
“I’m sorry,” he said; but he did not sound sorry.
He told himself easily: “She will come round.” And she did.
He told his mother about the fall of Mr. Jordan and the trial of Dawes. Mrs. Morel watched him closely.
“And what do you think of it all?” she asked him.
“I think he’s a fool,” he said.
But he was very uncomfortable, nevertheless.
“Have you ever considered where it will end?” his mother said.
“No,” he answered; “things work out of themselves.”
“They do, in a way one doesn’t like, as a rule,” said his mother.