“No,” he said, stepping back. “That is not right.”
“On the shelf?” suggested Mr Chilly.
Mr Beluncle and he considered the shelf.
“Too high,” said Beluncle.
“We must keep it dusted,” Mr Beluncle said. “How do you water them?”
The telephone bell rang and Mr Beluncle turned to scowl at it until Mrs Truslove answered it.
“We are colourful people,” said Beluncle, moving out of the room to get away from the telephone. “I said,” Mr Beluncle was speaking for the firm, “we are colourful people.”
Mr Chilly followed Mr Beluncle to the waiting-room.
“What a brilliant idea!” said Mr Chilly. And Mr Beluncle frowned again at the note of excess in Mr Chilly's diction. “For the customers, while they wait.”
“We do not want an expensive plant to die of neglect,” called Mrs Truslove from her office.
Out of politeness Mr Chilly would have replied, but Mr Beluncle prevented this. He allowed himself a general reflection.
“I should like a window in this room, a large window, Queen Anne, Georgian, Tudor, something really period-see the idea?-and a dozen, two or three dozen of these banked up with indirect lighting. Massed,” said Mr Beluncle.
“Like Claridges,” cried Mr Chilly.
“I like mass” said Mr Beluncle, opening his hands, and then Mr Chilly's phrase struck him. “You can't afford to go to Claridges,” he said.
“It was one thing I could not stand about the retail trade when I was young-there was no mass. It was all pennies and ha'pennies,” he said.
“Why don't we mass them?” said Mr Chilly, making a dart towards the table and waving his hands as if he were making passes over the flower in its pot, so that it grew into scores of plants.
But Mr Beluncle was already leaving the waiting-room and going back to his office. Unguardedly Mr Chilly followed him and said enthusiastically:
“Let us buy a dozen and bank them up to begin with, sir.”
Mr Beluncle walked before his assistant into his office, walked as far as the window, measuring his steps, and then turned round and gazed at Chilly.
“What did you say?” he said, in a quiet voice.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Chilly, noticing the change in Mr Beluncle's manner. “I fear I got thrilled. I am sorry, sir.
“Let us buy?” enquired Mr Beluncle.
“Us? You made use of a plural, Chilly,” said Mr Beluncle.
“A plural, sir? I am sorry, sir,” said Chilly. “Frightfully. Have I offended-sort of committed a solecism? I was just thrilled. Enthusiasm for a brilliant idea, just enthusiasm. Carried, as the accountants say,”—Mr Chilly's eyes seemed to be seeking the next word in the air—“forward.”
Mr Chilly gave a quick glance at Mrs Truslove as he said this. Mrs Truslove glanced at him. Was he being ironical?
“Don't let there be any misunderstanding,” said Beluncle. “In this House, we are never offended. Offended is a word we do not use. Surprised, perhaps. Interested always.”
Mr Chilly waited obediently. One of the things that always impressed him about Mr Beluncle, one of the things that he admired, was Mr Beluncle's ability to make a statement and then appear to lean physically upon it.
“I am a blunt man,” said Mr Beluncle.
“Blunt to the point of being plain-spoken,” said Mr Beluncle.
“Frank,” added Mr Beluncle, and at this word softened a little and put his hands in his pockets.
“Strictly speaking, Chilly,” said Mr Beluncle, “you are not 'us'.”
“Oh no, sir. I quite understand, sir,” said Chilly.
“I do not know what is, or shall I say was-if it was-in your mind. I don't want you to misunderstand me when I say that 'us' is not a word that has occurred to me or to Mrs Truslove as regards 'you' …”
“Oh, please, sir, I assure …” said Mr Chilly.
Mr Beluncle held up his hand.
“I do not know what was in your mind,” continued Mr Beluncle, “but I think you should understand this is, if I may say so, a very unusual firm. I doubt if there is any firm in England quite like it, perhaps not in the world. It is and always has been God's business-I won't go into that now. I feel, I should say we feel, Mrs Truslove and myself, that we are a family here and you are almost one of the family. A kind of adopted son. But not 'us'. I don't know if I have made my meaning clear.”
“But perfectly, sir, perfectly,” said Mr Chilly.
Mr Chilly stood on the office carpet like one nailed there by the tips of his pointed shoes and swaying in a useless attempt to get away. Now Mr Beluncle released him. Mr Beluncle slipped away sideways to his desk, where he stood shuffling his letters into new arrangements, putting the urgent ones underneath, the ones which did not need to be answered on top. Among these letters were slips of paper in Mr Beluncle's own handwriting, slips that were propped against his inkstand for a day or two before returning to one of the heaps of papers. On these slips were written sentences like “All things come to him who waits” or the opposite sentiment, “Do it now.” Or “Don't let your work get on your mind; keep your mind on your work.” Sometimes the message was metaphysical: “Eternity = Now.” And Mr Beluncle might place it next to a letter beginning “May we draw your attention to the enclosed aecount” with the satisfaction of one playing patience with his correspondence.
“I do not say, of course,” said Mr Beluncle, covering a bill with a text, “that the question of your being 'cus' could not arise. I do not say it should not arise. I merely say that it has not arisen. There might be a time when it could, I don't say come up-but when it could be visualised.”
And Mr Beluncle had the sporting air of a yachtsman, looking through binoculars, at a very distant scene.
Mr Chilly's eyes shone and Mr Beluncle suddenly gave a sweeping, flashing smile that washed the subject out of the room.
“One hydrangea is enough, Chilly,” he said. “They cost you money.”
“You are right, sir,” said Chilly. “It was a silly idea of mine. Even two would have been too many.”
The surrender of Mr Chilly warmed Mr Beluncle; all surrenders made him generous.
“Ah,” he said genially, and coming from his desk and taking Chilly by the arm, he led him towards the door-“I'll give you a thought: there is no such thing as too much or too little. All we can do is to give-to give and give. There is only what is right.” They reached the door. Chilly opened it and Mr Beluncle patted him on the shoulder. “If it's right for you to come into partnership”-Mr Chilly was now going through the doorway—”nothing can stop you. Nothing. Nothing can stop what is right-provided, of course,” added Mr Beluncle briskly, “a proper agreement is drawn up and the terms are satisfactory. The world turns on terms.”
“I feel such a child in business,” said Chilly, from the darkness of the passage outside.
“It's all experience,” said Mr Beluncle. “There's nothing in business but experience. You're lucky: I had to buy mine.”
Then Mr Beluncle returned.
“Close the door. There's a draught,” said Mrs Truslove.
“I'm so sorry,” said Mr Chilly, coming back to close the door.
When Mr Chilly had gone, Mr Beluncle sat again at his desk.
“I have a lot to do this morning,” said Mrs Truslove. “Chilly wastes our time.”
Mr Beluncle took up some letters in self-protection. Mrs Truslove had the ability to work on her books, to add up figures and balance accounts, and at the same time, to complain about having to do this and keep up a running critical mutter. This faculty had been a sign of gaiety in their early days together. The lively fashion in which she could do three or four things at once had been his admiration and there had been an excitement in piling more and more work upon a widow so clever.
“So please don't interrupt me,” said Mrs Truslove, her pen running up the column on the page. “I think you ought to have a word with Lady Roads about Chilly
. He's an idiot. He's quite useless here.”
“That is prejudice,” said Beluncle, pretending to read a letter. “He comes of a very good family.”
“This business has always been run by people of very bad family,” said Mrs Truslove.
“Chilly has got a lot to learn,” said Beluncle. “When I was his age I was …”
“He will never learn. He has run through two fortunes already,” said Mrs Truslove.
“I would not call them fortunes,” said Beluncle, putting down his paper, to float about on a favourite subject. “I happen to know the figures. His father left him a bit, but what he had from his mother is in trust. He can't touch that. It's very hard that a man can't touch his capital. It is unjust. It is a denial of the Divine Law of Justice.”
“It's fortunate,” said Mrs Truslove, “because he is a fool.”
Mr Beluncle opened his eyes.
“I don't know what is in your mind. You seem to have got the hump or something. Anyone would think you thought his money was not safe with us.”
“Well, is it?” said Mrs Truslove.
“Safe!” said Beluncle, his face becoming suddenly fierce with the smile of a cold, newly risen sun. “Is anything safe? What is safety? Has this business ever been run on safety?”
Mrs Truslove did not answer.
“I've never been safe,” Mr Beluncle declaimed radiantly. “I scorn safety. The world is risk, adventure, creation-in other words,” added Mr Beluncle, correcting his exuberance, “unfoldment.”
They were dangerously near their argument of Saturday afternoon in the empty house but Mr Beluncle, after the first shock of it, had soon persuaded himself that it had not been important and, in any case, hé liked talking. It was a way of turning realities into unrealities and that was rather urgent.
“You seem to suggest there is something not quite straight in our arrangement with Chilly. He is learning a trade. He is picking up all our business secrets. What is to prevent him from being another Cummings”—Mr Cummings had had a short stay in the firm some years before—“pumping us dry, and taking off all our customers?”
Mrs Truslove smiled as she worked.
“I think you were jealous of Cummings,” she said.
“Jealous, good God,” said Mr Beluncle. “Jealous of Cummings!”
“You said Ethel was jealous of me, you said I was jealous of you. But it was you-you were jealous of Cummings,” said Mrs Truslove.
Mr Beluncle blinked. He hated the past; if there was any one thing that astonished him more than any other it was the fact that he was married (so to say) to two women, entirely different in character, but alike in their love of the past and their skill in darting back into it. Mr Beluncle had a poor memory of the past. He could hardly remember one year from another. He was about to say “But you hated Cummings” when it unhappily struck him that a quotation from the Bible would transpose the dispute to the moral plane where it would become more congenial and more manageable.
“Let the Dead bury their Dead,” he said, and was so delighted by the aptness of the quotation that he scribbled it out on a piece of paper and propped it against Mrs Trus-love's side of their common inkstand. He was so busy doing this that he did not notice Mrs Truslove's pale stare. She dropped her pen.
“You heartless man,” she said. “Seventeen years ago today. Today. This very day. And you say that to me. Jack died seventeen years ago today. Don't touch me.”
For Mr Beluncle had got up.
“I'm sorry. I forgot. What date is it? The 17th? I didn't know …” stammered Mr Beluncle. And then, suspiciously, “Are you sure?”
“Am I sure?” she said coldly. “You forgot. What else have you forgotten?”
Mr Beluncle did not like this. The fact was that quite naturally he forgot everything. Sometimes in an insincere way he wished that he did not forget; it would be so useful, in small skirmishes of this kind, if he did remember; but in a larger way-he stuck to it-to let the dead bury their dead was the best thing. He had a suspicion, too, that Jack Trus-love had not died on the 17th; the more alarming suspicion that Mrs Truslove was saying he had died on the 17th for some particular convenience of her feeling that he had not yet penetrated. She had said this because she had something else on her mind. Tactfully Mr Beluncle put out his hand, moving to take back the text he had given her and to throw it away, but Mrs Truslove was too quick for him. She took the paper and put it into her handbag.
“I shall keep that,” she said. “I shall remember it.”
And then she said something which made Beluncle open his mouth.
“I saw Mr Cummings at the station this morning. He asked me to dine with him,” she said.
“To dine with Cummings!”
“Yes,” she said, “to dine with Cummings!”
“I hope he is sober,” said Mr Beluncle, for Mr Cummings was one of those efficient drinkers who seemed, to Mr Beluncle's astonishment, to run brilliantly on alcohol to the top of the ladder. He had long ago zigzagged upwards into financial worlds well out of Beluncle's reach.
“He has offered me a job,” she said.
Mr Beluncle studied his partner and his friend. So often she had spoken of leaving Bulux that he supposed it was one of the womanish threats that would go on for years. They had been serious enough to drive him to a forestalling move: the introduction of Mr Chilly. Mr Beluncle was certain that she would change her mind when Mr Chilly appeared and her tenacity since then had confirmed him in his adroitness.
“There are times,” Mr Beluncle said, “-there are times, Linda, when I do not understand you.”
“I will say it again,” said Mrs Truslove. “Mr Cummings has offered me a very good job.”
“You are taking it?” said Mr Beluncle coldly.
“I am considering it,” said Mrs Truslove.
Mr Beluncle studied Mrs Truslove's person, beginning with her black hair parted in the middle, moving down her face. Mr Beluncle's journeying eyes stopped at the edge of her blouse, as at the edge of a precipice.
Mrs Truslove's dangerous blouse took his memory back to a scene of years ago when he walked into the office and had found her lifting Mr Cummings's hand from her shoulder when she was bending near the safe.
“I suppose,” said Mr Beluncle, who would have liked to have been offered a job, too, it was such a pleasure, “he is f offering you a large salary.”
“I suppose so,” said Mrs Truslove. “There would be no point in a small one.”
“Well,” said Mr Beluncle, separating his hands as if he had just washed them and was now going to dry them. “If there is one thing I am proud to say of myself, it is that money has never governed my life. Money has never entered my calculations. I have seen the hell it creates, the lives it wrecks. I thank heaven that, in my small way, I have run my life not on money …”
“What have you run it on?” said Mrs Truslove.
“What?” said Mr Beluncle.
“I say, what have you run your life on?”
“On love. Love, that is it! On giving, not getting. On love” said Beluncle, with feeling.
“Philip,” said Mrs Truslove, “that kind of talk doesn't work with me any more.” She got up and pressed a bell by the fireplace. “I have rung for coffee. You have never loved anyone but yourself. You are a hypocrite.”
Mr Beluncle did not smile, but his face, which had become very pale, began to gleam and even to glister like a round cheese with spectacles on it. He had been wrong. He had supposed that in the calm of Sunday their quarrel of Saturday was forgotten.
“Hypocrite,” he said aloud. “I am a hypocrite. Thank you very much. So that is how it is.”
He went to the office door, put on a bowler hat and took down a white dust-coat and put it on, and then walked, exalted, strangely satisfied in the desire for unjust punishment, out of the office. He went down the passage under a cliff of cheap piled-up chairs, the unsold surplus of a large foreign order, then through a pair of clean swing-doors and afterwards t
hrough a pair of thumbed and dirty doors into the factory, where the air was suddenly as hot as a drinker's face too near. The smell of varnish and timber was evident. On the first of the three steps going down to the factory he stopped.
Mr Beluncle's white dust-coats were longer than those garments usually are and his stout figure looked womanish and like a priest's in them. He had these coats slightly starched and they were blindingly clean.
“His nibs,” one of the men whispered.
Mr Beluncle did not hear this but he was aware of it. The sight of him put a furtiveness in the movements of his workmen and Mr Beluncle found a pleasure in this. His eye discovered at once who was pretending to work, who was talking about horses, who had just come back from a stolen smoke. But, as he stood there now, Mr Beluncle was really standing in an imaginary pulpit and he was saying to them all:
“I have just been called a hypocrite. What do you think ofthat? Would you agree? I doubt if you would. You are not women, you are men. You are large and tolerant. You know the world. But let me tell you this: it doesn't matter what I think or what you think, or Mrs Truslove, or my wife, or my sons. The question we ought always to ask ourselves is, What does God think? God sees into the heart, and when He looks at me and you does He say 'There's a hypocrite' or 'There's a murderer' or 'There's a thief? How could the Divine Mind think such a thing? Unimaginable, isn't it?”
The exultation of a moral victory rose in Mr Beluncle and, in the midst of it, it seemed to him that he heard a voice, as clear as the inner voice of conscience but much friendlier, speaking to him. Mr Beluncle's father had heard such a voice, after being stripped of his rank and thrown out of the army when he was young. “Come ye out from them and be ye separate,” the Voice had said to his father. “Preach the kingdom.”
Mr Beluncle senior had heard the call; and he had been in the furniture trade too. So it did not surprise Mr Beluncle junior that a Voice should speak to kim; on the contrary he would have raised an enquiring eyebrow if It had not. What the Voice said to Mr Beluncle junior were words as enlarging as those his father had heard.
“Go to the West End,” the voice said. “You are wasted here. You cannot breathe. Get outside, have a shave, go to the bank. Go to the West End.”
Mr. Beluncle: A Novel (Modern Library Classics) Page 16