Hepplestall's

by Harold Brighouse

Which of us does not know the fearful joy of mental flirtation with crime? William, restraining his first sound impulse to tear up the letter and to put its fragments where they properly belonged, in the waste-paper basket, persuaded himself that his motive was simple curiosity. It had nothing to do with Gertrude, nor with her impatience of Rupert who was prolonging a holiday into a habit, and who, if he made no signal that her reign in Staithley Hall must end, made no signal, either, that his training for the Service must begin. By this time, William had, distinctly, his puzzled misgivings about Rupert, but he hadn’t quite reached the point of seeing in Rupert’s absence and his uncommunicativeness a deliberate challenge to the Service. He attributed to thoughtlessness an absence which was thoughtful.

He had at first no other idea than to calculate what fabulous figure would, in existing circumstances, be justly demanded for Hepplestall’s on the ridiculous hypothesis of Hepplestall’s being for sale. There was surely no harm on a slack morning in a little theoretic financial exercise of that kind. There wasn’t; but, for all that, he went about the collecting of data, alone in his office under the pictured eyes of bygone Hepplestalls, with the furtive air of a criminal.

For insurance purposes, in view of post-war values, they had recently had a professional valuation made of the mills, machinery, office and warehouse buildings in Staithley and Manchester. Providential, William thought, meaning, of course, no more than that he need not waste more than an hour or so in satisfying his natural curiosity. It was, he asserted, defiantly daring the gaze of the Founder on the wall, natural to be curious.

He had the valuation for insurance before him now: he applied the multiplication table to reach an estimate of the market value. He meditated goodwill. Guiltily he attempted to capitalize the name of Hepplestall’s, and it made him feel less guilty to capitalize it in seven figures. The total result was so large that, notwithstanding the national eminence of the chartered accountants whose letter was in his pocket, he felt justified in regarding his proceedings as completely extravagant.

So he might just as well amuse himself further. He might, for instance, refresh his memory of the distribution of Hepplestall’s shares, and he might turn up the articles of association and see if that document, usually so comprehensive, had anticipated this unlikeliest of all improbabilities, a sale of Hepplestall’s: and what emerged from his investigation was the fact that if he and Rupert voted, on their joint holdings of shares, for a sale at a legally summoned general meeting of Hepplestall’s shareholders, a sale would be authorized. He and Rupert! William found himself sweating violently. It was impure, obscene nightmare, but style his communings what he would, the pass was there and he and Rupert had the power to sell it.

He rose and paced the room. War disintegrates, but not to this degree, not to the degree of dissipating the tradition of the Hepplestalls. He, the Head, the Chief Trustee, had meditated treachery, but only (he faced the portraits reassuringly), only speculatively, only in pursuit of a train of thought started by an impertinent letter, which he had not torn up. No, he had not torn it up, he had preserved it as laughable proof of the insensibility to finer issues of these financial people. He would show it to his brothers or to Rupert: it would become quite a family jest.

To Rupert? Indeed he ought to show it first to Rupert, the future Head. He could, jokingly, good-humoredly, use it as a lever to make Rupert conscious of his responsibilities, he could say “if you don’t come quickly, there’ll be no Hepplestall’s for you to come to. Look at this letter. You and I, between us, have controlling interest; we could sell the firm, and the rest of the Board could not effectively prevent us. I’m joking, of course. That sort of thing isn’t in the tradition of the Hepplestalls. And, by the way, speaking of the tradition, when are we to expect you amongst us?”

Something like that; not a bit a business letter, not serious; genial and avuncular; but there was, manifestly, a Rupert affair, and this impudent inquiry of the eminent chartered accountants was the very means to bring the affair to a head. The boy was exceeding the license allowed even to one who had been in the war from the beginning; it was nearly a year since his demobilization.

William thought that his letter would seem more friendly if he addressed it from the Hall and looked in his desk for notepaper. He seemed to have run out of the supply of private notepaper he kept in his desk; then the spinning manager interrupted him. He put the letter in his pocket again: he would write to Rupert after lunch at the Hall.

He was busy for some time with the spinning manager, and went home convinced that the only serious thought he had ever had about the letter in his pocket was of its opportuneness in the matter of Rupert. It was nothing beyond a plausible excuse for writing to Rupert essentially on another subject and the figures in his note-book were not a traitor’s secret but the meaningless result of a middle-aged gentleman’s mental gymnastics.