Anne nodded grimly. “I’ll see he shapes,” she said, and Sam, silent witness of this pregnant interview, was hardly surprised by Anne’s first words on reaching home. “Get out those old arithmetic text-books of yours,” she said, “and look up mensuration. I’ve not forgotten it, if you have.”
CHAPTER VI—THE NEST-EGG
TOM Branstone had drawn a wage of a pound a week, and tips may have averaged ten shillings but more probably did not; your sixpenny tipper is a rare bird in Manchester.
Yet Anne had saved steadily, and she had not allowed a life-long habit to be interrupted by a little thing like the necessity of providing Sam with Grammar School books and clothes. I do not say that it was admirable in her, but merely that it was heroic. It was an incredible feat, but it can be done: it is done every day by people for whom the word “thrift” has meaning. Perhaps they are often unlovely in their lives or perhaps they have the robust satisfaction of those who live for an idea: opinion has always differed as to whether what they do is worth doing, and modern opinion inclines strongly to the belief that it is not. Life to these iconoclasts seems more important than the means of life.
To Anne it seemed abundantly worth while, and the proof was here now when she found that the interest on her savings amounted to three and four-pence weekly. They could live on Sam’s earnings and Anne’s “means” without pinching. Her forethought made all the difference now between too little and enough.
It was, of course, only to Anne that this seemed enough: Sam took a larger view, but found his vision cramped for some time to come by the conditions he met with in Mr. Travers’ office. Certainly that generous soul did not mean to humiliate Sam; he did not mean Sam to begin as office-boy; but, whatever his intentions, the clerks in his office defeated them. Sam was a newcomer, the latest arrival, in a minority of one against the old inhabitants; was there, moreover, obviously to do as he was told. He was told to sweep the floor in the morning, to copy letters and to lick stamps. He did these things rebelliously, bitter at heart that such menial service should be required of an ex-member of the Classical Transitus, certain that there was some mistake, that he had only to catch Mr. Travers’ eye when he was so shamefully occupied for that gentleman to take instant and drastic measures with the clerks who misemployed him.
Mr. Travers’ eye, even though caught at what Sam thought an opportune moment, While Sam copied letters, unexpectedly failed to disapprove. He seemed less preoccupied with Sam’s affairs than Sam was. As a matter of fact, he took a long distance view of Sam, and took it, unfortunately, rather muggily. Travers had the defect of his quality. A generous man, he was generous in the worst way to himself, and Sam soon learnt the meaning of a euphemism, current in the office, “Mr. Travers is attending a property auction.” Property auctions are, it is true, usually held on licensed premises, and whether Mr. Travers was or was not attending an auction he was certainly on licensed premises more often than was good for either his business or himself.
And it was bad for Sam, not because it left him to find his own feet in the office and to fight unbacked with his superiors (wherein, indeed, it was good), but because he had figured Travers from afar as a princely gentleman, without reproach, and the discovery of his failing took Sam a long way on the road to cynicism. In youth one’s faith dies hard, and, being dead, turns rapidly corrupt.