In the outer office, the clerks consumed walnuts in quantity, pelted each other with the shells, and looked at their watches, or the clock half a dozen times in the course of an hour.
Business was, in a word, as bad as the weather, and that could not by any possibility have been worse. The sky, as regarded the physical world, was leaden; the streets, sloppy; the air, raw; east winds prevalent; in the City, things were drooping; stocks, heavy; rhubarb, a drug; indigo, blue; shares, flat; corn, falling; sugars, depressed; money, dear.
The only branch of commerce, the vigour of which did not seem impaired, was that of advertising. People advertised their wares in despair, thinking, if a smash were to come, they might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb,—as well face Basinghall Street with a creditable list of debts as go through the Court for a few hundreds.
It was sink, or swim, with a vast number of persons during the earlier months of the year in question, and yet the papers never were so full of advertisements. The Times came out with daily supplements, and the Telegraph with its extra sheet; the Standard curtailed its usual quantity of letterpress, and the weeklies raised their prices per line, and would not guarantee immediate insertion. Not to be out of the fashion, the Protector Bread Company, Limited, announced each morning in the columns of the daily papers, “that pure bread was obtainable nowhere excepting at the depôts of the Company;” and every now and then a copy of an analysis from Daniel Smith, Esq., M.B., Ph.D., M.A., F.R.S., &c., Professor of Chemistry in the College of the Home Counties’ Hospital, and Medical Officer of Health for Belgravia, was appended, stating that he had found a loaf of the Company’s bread to contain so much of so many things, and to be perfectly free from a certain number of other things; that all articles used were of the best quality, and that he considered the process of manufacture employed at the Stangate Works, to be highly cleanly, and satisfactory.
But all this could not make the bread sell. The tide of fortune had turned, and the waters of success were ebbing away from the goodly ship “Protector” more rapidly than they had ever flowed in on the commercial shore, where that once promising vessel now lay almost a wreck.
There was not a creature connected with it, however, who would admit that the venture was even in danger; and yet every person’s temper became, if Arthur Dudley’s report were to be believed, unbearable.
His own temper, never the most pliable, was severely tried; and now, instead of longing for each morning to dawn, in order that the business of the Protector might advance still further towards success, he hated to see day break—hated leaving his breakfast-room and going downstairs to meet those unpleasantnesses which had become of hourly, and momentary occurrence in his life.
Between his principals and the public, in fact, Arthur stood exposed to cross fires. He dreaded seeing a stranger enter the office; he looked forward to board-days with perfect horror.
His old enemy, General Sinclair, C.B., tormented him beyond all powers of expression. He seemed to think, that in Arthur’s hands lay the power of making the Protector a failure or a success. He frequently declared, their secretary was inefficient—his business capabilities below contempt. When once matters began to go a little wrong with the Protector, he commenced laying all the blame at Mr. Dudley’s door. He affirmed that Lord Kemms’ open repudiation of any connection with the Company, was owing entirely to the secretary’s lack of management; he called at the office, and told Mr. Dudley he considered a person, endowed with even the most moderate share of sense—an old friend and neighbour, moreover, of his lordship—might have arranged the affair without permitting it to be brought under the notice of the public; and, in the course of subsequent conversations, he more than once hinted his opinion, that, although the gentleman he had the pleasure of addressing might be a gentleman, he was not much better than a simpleton.
To which innuendo, delicately implied, Arthur, with more spirit than might have been expected, considering the state of his finances, replied, that General Sinclair had ample reason for thinking any person who relinquished his independence for the sake of becoming servant to a dozen masters, must be either foolish or mad.