A lady and her husband

by Amber Reeves Blanco White

"Quite so!" he said. "But look at the other side of the thing for a moment. If Wilson had been a lady you wouldn't have doubted that what she said was said in confidence. We shouldn't have felt it possible to act on it."

James said nothing.

"As a matter of fact," his son went on, "if it had been anyone but my mother I shouldn't have thought much of that. We don't treat our work people as our social equals for the best of reasons. They aren't. And they wouldn't understand it if we did. I've very little doubt that Wilson meant to get Black into trouble for dismissing her."

James stirred—why hadn't he thought of that?

"But as it is I think we had better do nothing. We don't want to make my mother feel that she has been forced into an act she considers cruel, or even dishonourable. After all she has no experience of these people; she doesn't understand that the standards of cultured society don't apply to them. And really, it won't make much practical difference. We've only got to keep an eye on Black. If she's up to anything we shall soon catch her out. After all, Wilson's story isn't to be relied on there more than anywhere else!"

"But this isn't a question of Wilson's story, your mother saw the girl's home for herself!"

"Oh, well, as I've said, it needn't make any difference. I'll tell Forbes that he must give special attention to C. L. I don't think there can be anything much wrong. The returns are all right!"

James conceded the point. "Very well, very well," he said in a tone of dismissal, for he did not wish to prolong a disagreeable encounter. He wanted to tell Trent that he despised him for his manners, his morals, and his point of view, but his own manners would not let him. Moreover, in a sort of way, Trent had got him out of a difficulty. What he had said about Black was perfectly true, and it would be a relief, for once, to give way to Mary. When Mary considered a matter a point of honour she was as tenacious as he would have been himself.

Nevertheless it was an unpleasant business. As he sat thinking in his chair, after Trent had left the room, he realised how very unpleasant it was. Trent had lectured him in that damned superior way that roused all James's worst feelings, James himself had lost his temper, and Mary was probably sitting up there telling herself that her husband was a monster. And the thing that was to solve it all was Trent's assumption that the working classes weren't fit to lick his boots. James knew better. When he first went to his factory he had known a good many of his workmen intimately. They had their code of honour—James felt at this moment that it was as good a code as young Master Trent's, any day—and he had always flattered himself that they knew him for a man of honour, too. But this wasn't a matter of dealing as one man to another. For one thing Black was a woman, and though one does one's best to be generous to women it is not possible always to be square with them. But what was really the main point was that James was hardly, in this, a private man. He represented the business, the prosperity of the business. And the business had the right to demand honesty from all its employees, and constant, unswerving efforts from him to secure their honesty. Mary and Trent didn't seem to see that there was a principle involved. Mary was unable to look beyond the softness of her own heart—nobody expected Mary to understand business life, but she might have trusted him—and Trent thought nothing mattered as long as Black was found out before long. Meanwhile what of the impression in the minds of all the people who knew that the firm was being hoodwinked? No, no, what they ought to have had was a thorough inquiry, and then have shown mercy to the culprits afterwards.

This was only one trouble, but for all he knew it might be the first of a series. His faith in Mary's judgment was shaken. She ought to have realised that this was a matter for him. Perhaps after all his hands would be strengthened by following out a scheme that had been in his mind for some time, and turning the business into a public company. One is in a very satisfactory position when one represents not merely one's own opinions but the all-powerful interests of one's shareholders.