CHAPTER XVII
PEOPLE
For six months Philip continued to give rope to his esteemed colleagues Messrs. Atherton and Murgatroyd, and within that period the pair duly hanged themselves.
Mr. Murgatroyd went first. For a whole winter he waited patiently for Philip's reforming zeal to spend itself; and then, finding that things were no better but rather grew worse, he retired from the conflict like a prudent man, and invested his not inconsiderable savings in a wayside garage upon a lonely stretch of the Great North Road, where motorists, who are always in a hurry, would not be disposed to haggle over the price of petrol or the cost of tyre-repairs.
He parted from Philip without rancour, and another and younger man was sent up from headquarters to take his place.
Mr. Atherton was not so easy to eject, and was only disposed of in the fulness of time and by the process of filling up the cup. But he went at last, and the change of atmosphere throughout the entire establishment was most noticeable. The two clerks and the office-boy carried out their duties with what is known in transatlantic business circles as "a punch"; the books were put in order; accounts were straightened out; business increased; headquarters said encouraging things. For the present Philip decided not to ask for a successor to Atherton. He felt that he wanted to run the whole Universe single-handed in those days.
Of course there were still crumpled rose-leaves. There was Brand, for instance—Brand of the repairing-shop. He was a strenuous worker and an admirable mechanic, but he suffered intermittently from a severe form of the popular disease of the day—the disease which has its roots in the British national policy of educating a man sufficiently to make him discontented with his lot and then leaving off. Brand was a Socialist, or a Revolutionist, or an Anarchist. Philip could never find out which, and the muddled but pertinacious Brand could never enlighten him. The most noticeable feature of his malady was an over-copious supply of what the repairing-shop as a whole termed "back-chat." Mr. Brand was a stalwart upholder of what he called the dignity of labour. He declined to be patronised; he smelt patronage as an Orangeman smells Popery. He also refused to accept an order with any degree of cheerfulness; though, to do him justice, once he had expressed his opinion of it and the degradation which he incurred in accepting it, he usually carried it out with efficiency and dispatch. To one who knows his job almost anything can be forgiven. We shall hear of Mr. Brand again.
Then there was Alfred, the office-boy. He was a stunted but precocious child, with a taste for music of a vibratory nature. He believed firmly in the adage that a merry heart goes all the way, and whistled excruciatingly from dawn till dusk. His tremolo rendering of "All That I Ask is Love" appeared to afford him the maximum of human enjoyment. The departure of Mr. Atherton involved him in some financial loss, for he had been employed by that vicarious sportsman to execute turf commissions on his behalf with an unostentatious individual who conducted his business in the private bar of an unassuming house of call in Wardour Street. Consequently he considered it only just to make things unpleasant for the new manager. This object he accomplished in divers ways, which will be obvious to any schoolboy. Philip suffered in silence, for he was disinclined to further dismissals, and, moreover, could not help liking the impudent youth. His patience was rewarded; for one day, with incredible suddenness, the nuisance ceased, and Master Alfred became almost demonstrative in his assiduity and doglike in his affection. Presently the mystery was unfolded. Alfred had discovered that that usurper, that tyrant, that slave-driver, Mr. Meldrum, was the identical P. Meldrum who had scored the winning try for the Harlequin Football Club against Blackheath on the previous Saturday afternoon. One day, after office hours, almost timidly, he approached his employer and presented a petition from his own club, the Willesden Green Vampires, humbly praying that the great Meldrum would honour this unique brotherhood by consenting to become one of its Vice-Presidents. Philip's heart warmed at the compliment, and he complied gladly. He achieved further and lasting popularity among the Vampires of Willesden Green by officiating as referee in their annual encounter with the Stoke Newington Hornets. Verily the road to the heart of healthy young-manhood is marked in plain figures.
A third and by no means unattractive rose-leaf was Miss Jennings, the typist. She troubled Philip considerably at first. He found her presence disturbing. To him it seemed fundamentally wrong that a man should sit in a room with his hat on while a young and ladylike girl stood waiting at his elbow for orders. He endeavoured to remedy these anomalies by removing his hat in Miss Jennings's presence and rising from his seat whenever she entered his private room—courtesies which his typist secretly regarded as due to weakness of intellect rather than the instinct of chivalry, though she valued them in her heart none the less.