“This first edition of one thousand copies is issued at sixpence. The price for future editions will be one shilling. Samuel Branstone, Publisher.”
Carter’s dingy office was decorated with the chief products of his firm, texts, the stock-in-trade of commercialized religiosity. Well handled, there was money in texts, but Carter was an old man with declining powers and a conservative mind. Meadowbank, who had looked after the distributive side of the business, was lately dead, and Carter’s nightly prayer was that the concern might last his time. As things were promising, it seemed unlikely, but here was Sam with an order for him and no disposition to beat him down in price. Carter did not like the instruction to describe five thousand copies as one thousand, and he didn’t like the subject of the pamphlet, but he wanted business, and he couldn’t conceive of a pirate sailing under the flag of Mr. Struggles.
Sam rammed that home, feeling the man’s hesitation. “I think it probable,” he said, “that Mr. Struggles will preach a sermon on this pamphlet. Perhaps I might tell you that I am going to be his son-in-law.”
That settled Carter, and he took the order. He knew, and was sensitive to, the influence of Peter Struggles, curate. He knew that in the parish of. St. Mary’s, Peter’s smile counted for more than the vicar’s weightiest word, and that while the vicar was unknown outside his parish, Peter had authority throughout Manchester—an authority which had lately growm through Peter’s refusal of preferment to an easy living in the country. It hadn’t, of course, been Peter who had told of that refusal, he had not told Ada. But it had leaked out, and Manchester, which despises selflessness in men, honoured it in the curate; Mancunians were flattered by his loyalty to St. Mary’s and by the thought that they were fellow citizens to saintliness.
Emphatically, the name of Peter Struggles on the pamphlet was a clou, but Sam had not told Peter of it yet, and he must do it. He could not afford an accident, and Peter, he considered, was manageable.
Ada met him at the door with a bright smile, and raised expectant lips, but he shook his head, touch ing her shoulder tenderly, and passed in front of her into the room so that, when she followed, her face expressed the anxiety he desired. He entered himself as a man crushed by grief.
“What is it, Sam?” she asked. “What’s the matter?”
Peter closed “Plotinus” reluctantly: he never found time enough for reading, and here was one of his few evenings interrupted. He had the thought, feeling it ungenerous, that interruptions of this kind would end when Ada was married.
“I’ve had sad news to-day. Mr. Travers died in the night. It’s... it’s rather a blow.”
Peter disdained priestly conventionalities. “He was a good friend to you, Sam.”