The Complete Five Towns Collections. Bennett Arnold

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СКАЧАТЬ and temperate ornamentation gave it a dignity and comeliness sufficient to distinguish it from other buildings in the locality. In the centre of the court was an oval patch of brown earth, with a few trees whose pale-leaved tops, struggling towards sunlight, reached to the middle of the third storey. Round this plantation ran an immaculate roadway of wooden blocks, flanked by an equally immaculate asphalt footpath. The court possessed its own private lamp-posts, and these were wrought of iron in an antique design.

      Men and boys, grave and unconsciously oppressed by the burden of the coming day, were continually appearing out of the gloom of the long tunnelled entrance and vanishing into one or other of the twelve doorways. Presently a carriage and pair drove in, and stopped opposite Richard. A big man of about fifty, with a sagacious red and blue face, jumped alertly out, followed by an attentive clerk carrying a blue sack. It seemed to Richard that he knew the features of the big man from portraits, and, following the pair up the staircase of No. 2, he discovered from the legend on the door through which they disappeared that he had been in the presence of Her Majesty's Attorney-General. Simultaneously with a misgiving as to his ability to reach the standard of clerical ability doubtless required by Messrs. Curpet and Smythe, who did business cheek by jowl with an attorney-general and probably employed him, came an elevation of spirit as he darkly guessed what none can realise completely, that a man's future lies on his own knees, and on the knees of no gods whatsoever.

      He continued his way upstairs, but Messrs. Curpet and Smythe's portal was still locked. Looking down the well, he espied a boy crawling reluctantly and laboriously upward, with a key in his hand which he dragged across the bannisters. In course of time the boy reached Messrs. Curpet and Smythe's door, and opening it stepped neatly over a pile of letters which lay immediately within. Richard followed him.

      "Oh! My name's Larch," said Richard, as if it had just occurred to him that the boy might be interested in the fact. "Do you know which is my room?"

      The boy conducted him along a dark passage with green doors on either side, to a room at the end. It was furnished mainly with two writing-tables and two armchairs; in one corner was a disused copying-press, in another an immense pile of reporters' note-books; on the mantelpiece, a tumbler, a duster, and a broken desk lamp.

      "That's your seat," said the boy, pointing to the larger table, and disappeared. Richard disposed of his coat and hat and sat down, trying to feel at ease and not succeeding.

      At five minutes past ten a youth entered with the "Times" under his arm. Richard waited for him to speak, but he merely stared and took off his overcoat. Then he said,—

      "You've got my hook. If you don't mind I'll put your things on this other one."

      "Certainly," assented Richard.

      The youth spread his back luxuriously to the empty fireplace and opened the "Times," when another and smaller boy put his head in at the door.

      "Jenkins, Mr. Alder wants the 'Times.'"

      The youth silently handed over the advertisement pages which were lying on the table. In a minute the boy returned.

      "Mr. Alder says he wants the inside of the 'Times.'"

      "Tell Mr. Alder to go to hell, with my compliments." The boy hesitated.

      "Go on, now," Jenkins insisted. The boy hung on the door-handle, smiling dubiously, and then went out.

      "Here, wait a minute!" Jenkins called him back. "Perhaps you'd better give it him. Take the damn thing away."

      A sound of hurried footsteps in the next room was succeeded by an imperious call for Jenkins, at which Jenkins slipped nimbly into his chair and untied a bundle of papers.

      "Jenkins!" the call came again, with a touch of irritation in it, but Jenkins did not move. The door was thrust open.

      "Oh! You are there, Jenkins. Just come in and take a letter down." The tones were quite placid.

      "Yes, Mr. Smythe."

      "I never take any notice of Smythe's calls," said Jenkins, when he returned. "If he wants me, he must either ring or fetch me. If I once began it, I should be running in and out of his room all day, and I've quite enough to do without that."

      "Fidgety, eh?" Richard suggested.

      "Fidgety's no word for it, I tell you. Alder—that's the manager, you know—said only yesterday that he has less trouble with forty Chancery actions of Curpet's than with one county-court case of Smythe's. I know I'd a jolly sight sooner write forty of Curpet's letters than ten of Smythe's. I wish I'd got your place, and you'd got mine. I suppose you can write shorthand rather fast."

      "Middling," said Richard. "About 120."

      "Oh! We had a man once who could do 150, but he'd been a newspaper reporter. I do a bit over a hundred, if I've not had much to drink overnight. Let's see, they're giving you twenty-five bob, aren't they?"

      Richard nodded.

      "The man before you had thirty-five, and he couldn't spell worth a brass button. I only get fifteen, although I've been here seven years. A damn shame I call it! But Curpet's beastly near. If he'd give some other people less, and me a bit more...."

      "Who are 'some other people'?" asked Richard, smiling.

      "Well, there's old Aked. He sits in the outer office—you won't have seen him because he doesn't generally come till eleven. They give him a pound a week, just for doing a bit of engrossing when he feels inclined to engross, and for being idle when he feels inclined to be idle. He's a broken-down something or other,—used to be clerk to Curpet's father. He has some dibs of his own, and this just finds him amusement. I bet he doesn't do fifty folios a week. And he's got the devil's own temper."

      Jenkins was proceeding to describe other members of the staff when the entry of Mr. Curpet himself put an end to the recital. Mr. Curpet was a small man, with a round face and a neatly trimmed beard.

      "Good morning, Larch. If you'll kindly come into my room, I'll dictate my letters. Good morning, Jenkins." He smiled and withdrew, leaving Richard excessively surprised at his suave courtesy.

      In his own room Mr. Curpet sat before a pile of letters, and motioned Richard to a side table.

      "You will tell me if I go too fast," he said, and began to dictate regularly, with scarcely a pause. The pile of letters gradually disappeared into a basket. Before half a dozen letters were done Richard comprehended that he had become part of a business machine of far greater magnitude than anything to which he had been accustomed in Bursley. This little man with the round face dealt impassively with tens of thousands of pounds; he mortgaged whole streets, bullied railway companies, and wrote familiarly to lords. In the middle of one long letter, a man came panting in, whom Richard at once took for Mr. Alder, the Chancery manager. His rather battered silk hat was at the back of his head, and he looked distressed.

      "I'm sorry to say we've lost that summons in Rice v. The L. R. Railway."

      "Really!" said Mr. Curpet. "Better appeal, and brief a leader, eh?"

      "Can't appeal, Mr. Curpet."

      "Well, we must make the best of it. Telegraph to the country. I'll write and keep them calm. It's a pity they were so sure. Rice will have to economise for a year or two. What was my last word, Larch?" The dictation proceeded.

      One hour was allowed for СКАЧАТЬ