Mr. Petre

by Hilaire Belloc

It was all very well to defend himself with isolation, but he had been too lonely, and so long as they dined where no one could see them he was glad of companionship. The dinner was in his own rooms; small, simple and bad. After the meal Terrard said to him casually, “What do you think of Magnas?”

“Don’t mention them!” Mr. Petre answered angrily. Terrard looked up astonished. He had never heard that emotion in Mr. Petre’s voice before. But, indeed, that excellent man was overtaxed. He had a feeling of being driven, a feeling that if he was to do anything more he would do it on his own. He had had enough.

Charlie Terrard obeyed the implication and was silent; then talked of other things. He gave him the date when the whole of the Paddenham Site affair would be wound up, and the Government money paid over. He asked him whether he would care to look at the figures. Mr. Petre sighed, said he would, meaning that it had to be done; but how willingly he would have foregone the task! He said it vacantly enough, for indeed he was weary of the thing, now that it had come to fruition, and not even yet had he grasped the full meaning of that enormous affair. Rather did his mind continue to dwell on Magnas, like an ache; and while Charlie Terrard was putting scattered sheets out upon the table with sundry jottings upon them in pencil the older man was wondering whether he could not be rid of all, now that his future was more than assured. With the end of the session—when the end of the Paddenham Site purchase had gone through—he would bolt and be at peace. Till then the less doing the more his chafed soul was eased. This and nothing but this occupied that poor afflicted mind, even while Terrard was trying to call his attention to the vast sums before him.

Mr. Petre made an effort, looked wearily at the penciled marks, and grasped the figures they conveyed, but not their social meaning.

“There is the net,” said Charlie Terrard, and he pointed to the scribbled, but legible seven figures. “That of course is after deducting your purchase price, plus the commissions and stamps and all the rest of it; only from the balance, apart from the frills you have got to take, of course, what Bannister’s bill will come to, and then there are the 1932 duties, as we call them.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Petre blankly.

“So with what the completion will have come to, and what this Government purchase comes to, and the stamps and the rest, the total is here. That is where you stand on it,” and Mr. Petre read with weary eyes the penciled marks which meant £1,032,405 8s. 10d. He did not add to it mentally the lump that remained out of the original £73,000 odd. He did not contrast that original lump with the very much larger lump that would be through by August when Parliament had risen and the deal had gone through to its last detail; he simply saw the figures, and he was tired of them.

“It’s just possible,” said Terrard, “that you may be questioning some of these items,” and he pointed to another litany of figures and frowned intelligently. “Now this little separate batch of deductions....”

Mr. Petre waved him off; he was not questioning those deductions, or anything else. They were the pickings that the crowd had made—out of his money; and they were welcome. He nodded solemnly as one item after another was ticked off for him—commission this, commission that; expense this, expense that; and traveling and printing and advertising. He heard Terrard’s voice concluding after the litany:

“It might have been simpler to put the whole thing down in a lump and then give you the details for inspection; but I thought you would like to see all the items.” And poor Mr. Petre said, “Yes,” though he would willingly have given ten shillings or even a pound to be free of the bother and know simply that it was—what was it? He looked again, £1,032,405 8s. 10d. He continued to nod mechanically as the pencil went on ticking off. Terrard had expected no opposition; he knew by this time the strange mentality with which he had to deal; yet even he was surprised. I am sorry to say that in his heart of hearts he wondered whether that litany might not have been swelled and the pickings increased. Indeed, they might have been for all Mr. Petre would have cared.