“And now,” said our young entrepreneur, after handing out his three cost price bicycles to his three associates, “I’ve only got to sell the other three at the market rate and I stand in to make....”
There were complications in the reckoning; the stationery and so forth had to be paid for. And there was a difficulty he had not anticipated in finding just the particular people in Camden Town who were disposed to buy a bicycle in a hurry at the market rate. He persuaded the newsagent to put one of the unsold machines into the shop, and marked it at a ten per cent reduction as “A bargain. Slightly shop-soiled”, but after a couple of days the newsagent insisted upon its removal because customers coming in for papers and cigarettes barked their shins against the treadle and swore something dreadful.
Buffin became almost wistful in his inquiries, “You don’t happen to know anyone who wants a brand new bicycle in splendid condition at very little over cost price?” He went about reading the faces of passers-by for the bicycle-buying look. Intimations of a transitory failure, of a lesson that would finally redound to his credit, came into his speeches. “It’s not such a good thing as I thought. This. I started undercapitalised. If it wasn’t for having to go to Mottiscombe I’d risk it now. I’d ask for three months’ credit on twelve more bicycles, twelve, mind you, hire a shop-window and make a splash. And when the credit was up I’d pay upon what I’d sold and have credit extended for more. They’d do it if I talked to them. I’m getting the hang of it.... Well, let me tell you a day will come when all you timid snipe will remember how Buffin bought his first experience for forty pounds—maybe it will come to that, s’much as that—bought it for forty pounds and sold it for a million.”
“And suppose ’e doesn’t sell his bicycles,” said Edward Albert, whistling after his fashion. “Suppose they don’t pay him at Mottiscombe. Nice ’ole ’e’ll be in.”
Which indeed was precisely what happened. Buffin went off to Mottiscombe and never more did the star of the Burleybanks rise above Edward Albert’s horizon. Anything may have happened to them except success. Maybe Burleybank and Son went in too deep for second-hand cars before they heard of the use of gauges in mass production.
Edward Albert watched this burst of enterprise with envious disapproval when, first of all, he felt it might succeed, and then with that “told you so” feeling which is one of our subtler pleasures in this vale of tears.
But Mr Myame’s transitory appreciation of Buffin’s cleverness wounded our hero profoundly. There was an element of worldliness about it. He had expected more other-worldliness from Mr Myame. He anyhow had got out of it very well, he and Nuts.... It set one thinking.
VI. First Steps in French
The feudal framework of Edward Albert’s ideas would admit of no gainful enterprises of this kind whatever; His disposition was to do nothing of any sort anywhere until he was told. Quite time enough then,
“Earning a living” meant for him finding a “place”, a “situation”, both definitely sessile words. You ceased to float dangerously along the stream of life at the very earliest opportunity and struck root. You found where you could get the best pay for the least work—if possible with fixed rises and a pension scheme—and you settled down, trusting, admiring, but at the same time avoiding the humiliating company of your betters as much as possible. You got a nice little household of your own—but of that later. You started a “hobby” to amuse you in your spare time, you watched cricket and played golf, and so backed slowly towards the grave in which you were to bury whatever talent you had ever possessed. Respectful but irresponsible dependence; “ordering yourself lowly and reverently to all your betters”, as the dear old catechism puts it; that was the feudal idea.
Before his mother’s death, Edward Albert had been induced to contemplate the problem of his social anchorage so far as to listen to a suggestion made by one of her friends that a Gas Works Clerk was one of the soundest possible positions to which a modest young Believer might aspire. To qualify for such a place in the world, he heard the lady say it was best to go twice a week to the evening classes of the Imperial College of Commercial Science for their Course of Training in Business Methods. They issued certificates of proficiency in all the clerkly arts, précis and book-keeping by single and double entry, commercial arithmetic, mensuration, long hand and shorthand. Elementary French—not French but Elementary French, whatever that may mean. This training was specially adapted to turning a crude human being into a Gas Works Clerk, and indeed she knew as a fact that the gas works people came to the College and accepted its certificates unquestioningly. The College, according to its copious prospectus, engaged in many other activities, the Lower Division Civil Service, London Matriculation and so on, but it was the Gas Works Clerk, one particular case she had known, that had seized upon the informant’s imagination. He was such a nice young man.
Edward Albert listened carelessly at first and then attentively, and reflected. The College was situated in Kentish Town; its hoarding made a brave show, and what he saw there was not so much the prospect of gumming himself down firmly as a Gas Works Clerk, as of going in the evening, unwatched and uncontrolled, through the magic of the lit streets to the college. One could start early and arrive late; he was already an adept in such intercalary freedoms. He had still much of the lingering levity of boyhood and the Hidden Hand in his make-up.
Then he would be able to loiter on his way outside the glittering temptations of the cinema theatre. He could stop and see and read everything there was to be read and seen, contemplate the lively “stills”, wondering. He could watch people going in. He wouldn’t go in. That would be wrong. Bat there was no harm in asking what it would cost to go in. What would you see? And if after all, someday he did go in. It would be a sin of course, a dreadful sin, disobedience, deceit, all that. You might be run over on your way home and go straight to hell with all your sin upon you....
But suppose you weren’t run over! Lovely ladies, quite close up, kissing. Fellers carrying them off on their saddles. Shooting. Throwing knives. What harm would it be to see it once? Those were the days of the early Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle, Mack Sennett; and dear Mary Pickford as “Little Pal” was dawning on a world that has always loved her. Magically silent they were, with a stirring piano accompaniment. Through those forbidden doors you could hear the music; you could get glimpses....
Of course he would repent very bitterly before he went to bed—for one cannot be too careful—and pray God to preserve him, and promise never to do it again. God was pretty good at forgiving anyhow if you set about it in the right way. Seventy times seven and all that. “ ’Ave mercy on me, a miserable sinner, God; ’ave mercy on me. I was led away. I was tempted.”
He felt he could get away with it. Those evening classes would be like a great door opening upon unknown mysteries and freedoms. You might stay out until after ten!
So that when the project was brought before Mr Myame, there was a very considerable discussion before it was deferred.
“I am all for it,” said Mr Myame, “in due course. When he is ripe for it. But that is not yet. You see, at times and in some subjects he will not exert himself. I have had to note that in his reports. His ability, I maintain, is considerable, but until he makes more progress in his Elementary French, in his Arithmetic, in his dictation and parsing and handwriting—Look at those inky fingers now, Mrs Tewler! Is he ready yet to benefit by a Commercial College?”