Albert Tremmel’s father was a West End dairyman who had the misfortune to marry above him, as the saying is. He had a small shop in Hanover Street and carried on a profitable business, but his wife despised it from the first, and refused to allow their only child to assist her husband when he became old enough to do so. She wished him to be a clerk, and, as she had a way of getting what she wanted, young Bert at the age of eighteen had entered, in that capacity, the office of Messrs. Ennidge and Pring, house and estate agents. He was then, as later, a cadaverous, unpleasant-looking youth, with a surly, combative temper and a strongly marked tendency to look on most people as his natural enemies. This in itself did not bring him friends, and he made matters worse as often as he could by adopting a dictatorial manner of speech and the habit of pointing out to comparative strangers his opinion that they erred in thinking they knew their own business. He would also mention their duty as another thing they were ignorant of. This line of conversation he varied by assuring them that if it were true, as they would have him believe, that they knew both better in any case than he did, it was still more to be regretted that they should mismanage the one and fail to do the other.
Boys of his own age frankly refused to have anything to do with him, and he found his most congenial surroundings at a Socialistic Club, where all the members shared his disapproval of the world in general, and descanted as much as they pleased on the shameful conduct and character of those who were not of their own way of thinking. Here all ranks and parts of the community were equally denounced, and if one could hardly find words strong enough to censure the attitude of the rich who wished to retain control of their own wealth, neither could one sufficiently display one’s anger and disgust at the behaviour of the poor who showed themselves so regardless of the socialistic movement as to take benefits from the capitalist classes. Fond as these young men were of employing the words “give” and “take,” the meaning generally conveyed by their joint use was peculiarly repugnant to them. Take, in their view, should always come first in any case, and a thing taken lost half its value in their eyes if it came as a gift. They would have abolished both generosity and gratitude from a world that can ill afford the loss of those virtues.
Bert drank in every tenet of this creed, and revelled in the discussions and execrations as much as he delighted in the wishy-washy sentimentalism. He was an unhealthy, discontented, miserable boy, his hand against every one; and his club was the only place where he felt himself more or less at his ease.
There was, however, one spot which he liked better to be in, and that was the household of the Querterots.
He had gone to school with Julie Querterot, for it so happened that Bert’s father was a Lancashire man and a Roman Catholic. It is true that when he died, as he did when Bert was only thirteen, the boy’s mother immediately removed him to another school and saw to it that he imbibed her hatred of Rome; but he did not take any more kindly to her own church, and when she herself died five or six years later he was going pretty much his own way, which was a way devoid of religious belief of any kind. In spite of this, he never lost touch with his little schoolfellow; and, as the Querterots dealt at Tremmels’ shop and the children were always together, the two families became acquainted, and a certain friendship even sprang up between Madame Querterot and Mrs. Tremmels. These ladies drank tea together, and smiled over the devotion of Bert for little Julie. This was in the days when prosperity reigned in both houses.
It was different after Mrs. Tremmels’ death, when Bert discovered that the business, of which he had never been allowed to learn the details, was on the verge of bankruptcy, Mrs. Tremmels having conducted it since her husband’s death with an eye more to her own aggrandisement than to profit. She had opened two large branches and started milk carts drawn by Shetland ponies; and, having no capital, had borrowed money to do it. Custom under her management had fallen off; the branches had had to be closed; the smart ponies sold; and, at the time of her death, she could no longer find the interest on the borrowed money and the mortgagees were at the point of foreclosing.
Bert, who spent half his evenings in advocating the redistribution of wealth, did not at all enter into the spirit of the thing when he found himself quietly set on one side while his own wealth, that is to say, the competency to which he had always believed himself heir, was redistributed without anyone consulting him. He took it very ill indeed, and said things about his dead mother which would have brought him his dismissal from the office if they had come to the ears of either Mr. Ennidge or Mr. Pring. He had been in their employment about a year when she died, and had done fairly well in it, for he was not a bad worker, nor even without intelligence of a kind. Still, he only kept his post by the skin of his teeth, for he had been in the office more than long enough for Mr. Pring to take a violent dislike to him, and if it had not been for the extremely kind heart of Mr. Ennidge, who argued that he could not dismiss the youth to whom Fortune had already dealt so severe a blow, Bert would have been sacked a dozen times a week. He had, however, no idea of this, and considered himself indispensable and miserably underpaid.
He certainly was not paid a great deal, though more than he was worth to Mr. Pring, at all events, and Madame Querterot ceased abruptly to invite him to her house. He continued, however, to visit it from time to time, and a couple more years went by without further event. Then came the sudden and tragic failure of the Querterots. Eugène Querterot shot himself; and in the fallen state of their fortunes the two impoverished women he left behind him were glad of any friend who stood by them. The sudden dropping off of their old acquaintances created a new bond of sympathy between them and the young man, and when they moved to Pimlico and he was the only person who ever went to see them, he received a much warmer welcome, at all events from the mother, than he had lately grown to expect.
Gradually he went more and more often, until he formed the habit of dropping in at least every other evening. He had always been fond of Julie, and perhaps of no one else in the world, since he had shown little affection for his parents; now, as he saw her with increasing frequency, his feelings for her became more intense, till every day he seemed to see in her new and more entrancing perfections, and even his enthusiasms for Socialism faded under the continual protest of her aversion to it. He admitted to himself with a kind of thrill of self-defiance that Julie was so clever, so sensible, so wonderfully reasonable and clear-sighted, that her opinion on any subject could not be despised, and it became more and more plain to him that if she thought badly of Socialism that doctrine would find difficulty in retaining his complete loyalty. To be short, by the time she reached her eighteenth birthday Bert was head over ears in love with the girl, and had scarcely a thought in which she did not predominate. Madame Querterot watched it all from beneath her heavy eyelids. She said nothing, but the idea that here was one who in time might be useful to her crept into her brain and took deep root there as the weeks went by.
Julie was pious and devout. It was about this time that she began to speak about entering a religious sisterhood, but the storm of reproach and upbraiding that this desire provoked in her mother caused her to relinquish the idea for the time being, and, more particularly, not to talk of it any more. The only visible effect of the suggestion was that Madame Querterot welcomed Bert more effusively than usual, and now often invited him to stay to supper.