and as we reckon up the disturbing influences that were stirring lady harman out of that life of acquiescences to which women are perhaps even more naturally disposed than men, we may pick out the conversation of susan burnet as something a little apart from the others, as something with a peculiar barbed pointedness of its own that was yet in other respects very representative of a multitude of nudges and nips and pricks and indications that life was giving lady harman's awaking mind. susan burnet was a woman who came to renovate and generally do up the putney curtains and furniture and loose covers every spring; she was mrs. crumble's discovery, she was sturdy and short and she had open blue eyes and an engaging simplicity of manner that attracted lady harman from the outset. she was stuck away in one of the spare bedrooms and there she was available for any one, so long, she explained, as they didn't fluster her when she was cutting out, with a flow of conversation that not even a mouth full of pins seemed to interrupt. and lady harman would go and watch susan burnet by the hour together and think what an enviably independent young woman she was, and listen with interest and something between horror and admiration to the various impressions of life she had gathered during a hardy and adventurous career.
their early conversations were about susan burnet's business and the general condition of things in that world of upholsterers' young women in which susan had lived until she perceived the possibilities of a "connexion," and set up for herself. and the condition of things in that world, as susan described it, brought home to lady harman just how sheltered and limited her own upbringing had been. "it isn't right," said susan, "the way they send girls out with fellers into empty houses. naturally the men get persecuting them. they don't seem hardly able to help it, some of them, and i will say this for them, that a lot of the girls go more than half way with them, leading them on. still there's a sort of man won't leave you alone. one i used to be sent out with and a married man too he was, oh!—he used to give me a time. why i've bit his hands before now, bit hard, before he'd leave go of me. it's my opinion the married men are worse than the single. bolder they are. i pushed him over a scuttle once and he hit his head against a bookcase. i was fair frightened of him. 'you little devil,' he says; 'i'll be even with you yet....' oh! i've been called worse things than that.... of course a respectable girl gets through with it, but it's trying and to some it's a sort of temptation...."
"i should have thought," reflected lady harman, "you could have told someone."
"it's queer," said susan; "but it never seemed to me the sort of thing a girl ought to go telling. it's a kind of private thing. and besides, it isn't exactly easy to tell.... i suppose the firm didn't want to be worried by complaints and disputes about that sort of thing. and it isn't always easy to say just which of the two is to blame."
"but how old are the girls they send out?" asked lady harman.
"some's as young as seventeen or eighteen. it all depends on the sort of work that's wanted to be done...."
"of course a lot of them have to marry...."
this lurid little picture of vivid happenings in unoccupied houses and particularly of the prim, industrious, capable susan burnet, biting aggressive wrists, stuck in lady harman's imagination. she seemed to be looking into hitherto unsuspected pits of simple and violent living just beneath her feet. susan told some upholsteress love tales, real love tales, with a warmth and honesty of passion in them that seemed at once dreadful and fine to lady harman's underfed imagination. under encouragement susan expanded the picture, beyond these mere glimpses of workshop and piece-work and furtive lust. it appeared that she was practically the head of her family; there was a mother who had specialized in ill-health, a sister of defective ability who stayed at home, a brother in south africa who was very good and sent home money, and three younger sisters growing up. and father,—she evaded the subject of father at first. then presently lady harman had some glimpses of an earlier phase in susan burnet's life "before any of us were earning money." father appeared as a kindly, ineffectual, insolvent figure struggling to conduct a baker's and confectioner's business in walthamstow, mother was already specializing, there were various brothers and sisters being born and dying. "how many were there of you altogether?" asked lady harman.
"thirteen there was. father always used to laugh and say he'd had a fair baker's dozen. there was luke to begin with——"
susan began to count on her fingers and recite braces of scriptural names.
she could only make up her tale to twelve. she became perplexed. then she remembered. "of course!" she cried: "there was nicodemus. he was still-born. i always forget nicodemus, poor little chap! but he came—was it sixth or seventh?—seventh after anna."
she gave some glimpses of her father and then there was a collapse of which she fought shy. lady harman was too delicate to press her to talk of that.
but one day in the afternoon susan's tongue ran.
she was telling how first she went to work before she was twelve.
"but i thought the board schools——" said lady harman.
"i had to go before the committee," said susan. "i had to go before the committee and ask to be let go to work. there they was, sitting round a table in a great big room, and they was as kind as anything, one old gentleman with a great white beard, he was as kind as could be. 'don't you be frightened, my dear,' he says. 'you tell us why you want to go out working.' 'well,' i says, 'somebody's got to earn something,' and that made them laugh in a sort of fatherly way, and after that there wasn't any difficulty. you see it was after father's inquest, and everybody was disposed to be kind to us. 'pity they can't all go instead of this educational tommy rot,' the old gentleman says. 'you learn to work, my dear'—and i did...."
she paused.
"father's inquest?" said lady harman.
susan seemed to brace herself to the occasion. "father," she said, "was drowned. i know—i hadn't told you that before. he was drowned in the lea. it's always been a distress and humiliation to us there had to be an inquest. and they threw out things.... it's why we moved to haggerston. it's the worst that ever happened to us in all our lives. far worse. worse than having the things sold or the children with scarlet fever and having to burn everything.... i don't like to talk about it. i can't help it but i don't....
"i don't know why i talk to you as i do, lady harman, but i don't seem to mind talking to you. i don't suppose i've opened my mouth to anyone about it, not for years—except to one dear friend i've got—her who persuaded me to be a church member. but what i've always said and what i will always say is this, that i don't believe any evil of father, i don't believe, i won't ever believe he took his life. i won't even believe he was in drink. i don't know how he got in the river, but i'm certain it wasn't so. he was a weak man, was father, i've never denied he was a weak man. but a harder working man than he was never lived. he worried, anyone would have worried seeing the worries he had. the shop wasn't paying as it was; often we never tasted meat for weeks together, and then there came one of these internationals, giving overweight and underselling...."
"one of these internationals?"
"yes, i don't suppose you've ever heard of them. they're in the poorer neighbourhoods chiefly. they sell teas and things mostly now but they began as bakers' shops and what they did was to come into a place and undersell until all the old shops were ruined and shut up. that was what they tried to do and father hadn't no more chance amongst them than a mouse in a trap.... it was just like being run over. all the trade that stayed with us after a bit was bad debts. you can't blame people i suppose for going where they get more and pay less, and it wasn't till we'd all gone right away to haggerston that they altered things and put the prices up again. of course father lost heart and all that. he didn't know what to do, he'd sunk all he had in the shop; he just sat and moped about. really,—he was pitiful. he wasn't able to sleep; he used to get up at nights and go about downstairs. mother says she found him once sweeping out the bakehouse at two o'clock in the morning. he got it into his head that getting up like that would help him. but i don't believe and i won't believe he wouldn't have seen it through if he could. not to my dying day will i believe that...."
lady harman reflected. "but couldn't he have got work again—as a baker?"
"it's hard after you've had a shop. you see all the younger men've come on. they know the new ways. and a man who's had a shop and failed, he's lost heart. and these stores setting up make everything drivinger. they do things a different way. they make it harder for everyone."
both lady harman and susan burnet reflected in silence for a few seconds upon the international stores. the sewing woman was the first to speak.
"things like that," she said, "didn't ought to be. one shop didn't ought to be allowed to set out to ruin another. it isn't fair trading, it's a sort of murder. it oughtn't to be allowed. how was father to know?..."
"there's got to be competition," said lady harman.
"i don't call that competition," said susan burnet.
"but,—i suppose they give people cheaper bread."
"they do for a time. then when they've killed you they do what they like.... luke—he's one of those who'll say anything—well, he used to say it was a regular monopoly. but it's hard on people who've set out to live honest and respectable and bring up a family plain and decent to be pushed out of the way like that."
"i suppose it is," said lady harman.
"what was father to do?" said susan, and turned to sir isaac's armchair from which this discourse had distracted her.
and then suddenly, in a voice thick with rage, she burst out: "and then alice must needs go and take their money. that's what sticks in my throat."
still on her knees she faced about to lady harman.
"alice goes into one of their ho'burn branches as a waitress, do what i could to prevent her. it makes one mad to think of it. time after time i've said to her, 'alice,' i've said, 'sooner than touch their dirty money i'd starve in the street.' and she goes! she says it's all nonsense of me to bear a spite. laughs at me! 'alice,' i told her, 'it's a wonder the spirit of poor father don't rise up against you.' and she laughs. calls that bearing a spite.... of course she was little when it happened. she can't remember, not as i remember...."
lady harman reflected for a time. "i suppose you don't know," she began, addressing susan's industrious back; "you don't know who—who owns these international stores?"
"i suppose it's some company," said susan. "i don't see that it lets them off—being in a company."
8
we have done much in the last few years to destroy the severe limitations of victorian delicacy, and all of us, from princesses and prime-ministers' wives downward, talk of topics that would have been considered quite gravely improper in the nineteenth century. nevertheless, some topics have, if anything, become more indelicate than they were, and this is especially true of the discussion of income, of any discussion that tends, however remotely, to inquire, who is it at the base of everything who really pays in blood and muscle and involuntary submissions for your freedom and magnificence? this, indeed, is almost the ultimate surviving indecency. so that it was with considerable private shame and discomfort that lady harman pursued even in her privacy the train of thought that susan burnet had set going. it had been conveyed into her mind long ago, and it had settled down there and grown into a sort of security, that the international bread and cake stores were a very important contribution to progress, and that sir isaac, outside the gates of his home, was a very useful and beneficial personage, and richly meriting a baronetcy. she hadn't particularly analyzed this persuasion, but she supposed him engaged in a kind of daily repetition, but upon modern scientific lines, of the miracle of the loaves and fishes, feeding a great multitude that would otherwise have gone hungry. she knew, too, from the advertisements that flowered about her path through life, that this bread in question was exceptionally clean and hygienic; whole front pages of the daily messenger, headed the "fauna of small bakehouses," and adorned with a bordering of blatta orientalis, the common cockroach, had taught her that, and she knew that sir isaac's passion for purity had also led to the old country gazette's spirited and successful campaign for a non-party measure securing additional bakehouse regulation and inspection. and her impression had been that the growing and developing refreshment side of the concern was almost a public charity; sir isaac gave, he said, a larger, heavier scone, a bigger pat of butter, a more elegant teapot, ham more finely cut and less questionable pork-pies than any other system of syndicated tea-shops. she supposed that whenever he sat late at night going over schemes and papers, or when he went off for days together to cardiff or glasgow or dublin, or such-like centres, or when he became preoccupied at dinner and whistled thoughtfully through his teeth, he was planning to increase the amount or diminish the cost of tea and cocoa-drenched farinaceous food in the stomachs of that section of our national adolescence which goes out daily into the streets of our great cities to be fed. and she knew his vans and catering were indispensable to the british army upon its manœuvres....
now the smashing up of the burnet family by the international stores was disagreeably not in the picture of these suppositions. and the remarkable thing is that this one little tragedy wouldn't for a moment allow itself to be regarded as an exceptional accident in an otherwise fair vast development. it remained obstinately a specimen—of the other side of the great syndication.
it was just as if she had been doubting subconsciously all along.... in the silence of the night she lay awake and tried to make herself believe that the burnet case was just a unique overlooked disaster, that it needed only to come to sir isaac's attention to be met by the fullest reparation....
after all she did not bring it to sir isaac's attention.
but one morning, while this phase of new doubts was still lively in her mind, sir isaac told her he was going down to brighton, and then along the coast road in a car to portsmouth, to pay a few surprise visits, and see how the machine was working. he would be away a night, an unusual breach in his habits.
"are you thinking of any new branches, isaac?"
"i may have a look at arundel."
"isaac." she paused to frame her question carefully. "i suppose there are some shops at arundel now."
"i've got to see to that."
"if you open——i suppose the old shops get hurt. what becomes of the people if they do get hurt?"
"that's their look-out," said sir isaac.
"isn't it bad for them?"
"progress is progress, elly."
"it is bad for them. i suppose——wouldn't it be sometimes kinder if you took over the old shop—made a sort of partner of him, or something?"
sir isaac shook his head. "i want younger men," he said. "you can't get a move on the older hands."
"but, then, it's rather bad——i suppose these little men you shut up,—some of them must have families."
"you're theorizing a bit this morning, elly," said sir isaac, looking up over his coffee cup.
"i've been thinking—about these little people."
"someone's been talking to you about my shops," said sir isaac, and stuck out an index finger. "if that's georgina——"
"it isn't georgina," said lady harman, but she had it very clear in her mind that she must not say who it was.
"you can't make a business without squeezing somebody," said sir isaac. "it's easy enough to make a row about any concern that grows a bit. some people would like to have every business tied down to a maximum turnover and so much a year profit. i dare say you've been hearing of these articles in the london lion. pretty stuff it is, too. this fuss about the little shopkeepers; that's a new racket. i've had all that row about the waitresses before, and the yarn about the normandy eggs, and all that, but i don't see that you need go reading it against me, and bringing it up at the breakfast-table. a business is a business, it isn't a charity, and i'd like to know where you and i would be if we didn't run the concern on business lines.... why, that london lion fellow came to me with the first two of those articles before the thing began. i could have had the whole thing stopped if i liked, if i'd chosen to take the back page of his beastly cover. that shows the stuff the whole thing is made of. that shows you. why!—he's just a blackmailer, that's what he is. much he cares for my waitresses if he can get the dibs. little shopkeepers, indeed! i know 'em! nice martyrs they are! there isn't one wouldn't skin all the others if he got half a chance...."
sir isaac gave way to an extraordinary fit of nagging anger. he got up and stood upon the hearthrug to deliver his soul the better. it was an altogether unexpected and illuminating outbreak. he was flushed with guilt. the more angry and eloquent he became, the more profoundly thoughtful grew the attentive lady at the head of his table....
when at last sir isaac had gone off in the car to victoria, lady harman rang for snagsby. "isn't there a paper," she asked, "called the london lion?"
"it isn't one i think your ladyship would like," said snagsby, gently but firmly.
"i know. but i want to see it. i want copies of all the issues in which there have been articles upon the international stores."
"they're thoroughly volgar, me lady," said snagsby, with a large dissuasive smile.
"i want you to go out into london and get them now."
snagsby hesitated and went. within five minutes he reappeared with a handful of buff-covered papers.
"there 'appened to be copies in the pantry, me lady," he said. "we can't imagine 'ow they got there; someone must have brought them in, but 'ere they are quite at your service, me lady." he paused for a discreet moment. something indescribably confidential came into his manner. "i doubt if sir isaac will quite like to 'ave them left about, me lady—after you done with them."
she was in a mood of discovery. she sat in the room that was all furnished in pink (her favourite colour) and read a bitter, malicious, coarsely written and yet insidiously credible account of her husband's business methods. something within herself seemed to answer, "but didn't you know this all along?" that large conviction that her wealth and position were but the culmination of a great and honourable social service, a conviction that had been her tacit comfort during much distasteful loyalty seemed to shrivel and fade. no doubt the writer was a thwarted blackmailer; even her accustomed mind could distinguish a twang of some such vicious quality in his sentences; but that did not alter the realities he exhibited and exaggerated. there was a description of how sir isaac pounced on his managers that was manifestly derived from a manager he had dismissed. it was dreadfully like him. convincingly like him. there was a statement of the wages he paid his girl assistants and long extracts from his codes of rules and schedules of fines....
when she put down the paper she was suddenly afflicted by a vivid vision of susan burnet's father, losing heart and not knowing what to do. she had an unreasonable feeling that susan burnet's father must have been a small, kindly, furry, bunnyish, little man. of course there had to be progress and the survival of the fittest. she found herself weighing what she imagined susan burnet's father to be like, against the ferrety face, stooping shoulders and scheming whistle of sir isaac.
there were times now when she saw her husband with an extreme distinctness.
