The Pauper of Park Lane Part 24

"Oh! valuable man--eh? Then raise his salary, Rolfe, and send him back to Glasgow to make a few more engines."

"He's waiting outside at the counter now, and won't go away," exclaimed the secretary.

"Then go to him and say he shall have fifty pounds more a year. I can't be bothered to see the fellow."

Rolfe rose and went to the outer office, where Macgregor stood patiently. He had waited there for best part of two days and, with a Scot's tenacity, refused to be put off by any of the clerks. He wanted to see Mr Samuel Statham, "an' I mean to see 'im, mon," he told everybody, his grey beard bristling fiercely as he spoke.

He was evidently a man with a grievance. Such men came to Old Broad Street sometimes, and on rare occasions Mr Benjamin saw them. There were hard cases of men ignorant of the ways of business as the City to-day knows it, having been deliberately swindled out of their rights by sharks, concessions filched from their rightful owners, and patents artfully stolen and registered. But old Duncan Macgregor, with his white beard, was of a different type--the type of honest, hard-working plodder, out of whose brains the great Clyde and Motherwell works were practically coining money daily.

As Rolfe advanced to him he said:--

"I'm sorry, Macgregor, that Mr Statham is quite unable to see you to-day. He's engaged three deep. I've told him you wished to see him, and he says that he much appreciates the great services you've rendered to the firm, and that you are to receive a rise of salary of fifty pounds a year, beginning the first of last January."

"What!" cried the old man. "What--'e offers me another fifty pounds!

'E's guid an' generous; but I have na' come here for that. I've come to London to see him--ye hear!--to see him--d'ye hear, Mr Rolfe, an' I must."

"But, my dear sir, you can't!"

"Tell him I don't want his fifty pound," cried the old man so derisively that the clerks looked up from their ledgers. "I must speak to him, an'

him alone."

"Impossible," exclaimed Rolfe, impatiently.

"Why impossible?" asked the old fellow. "When Mr Statham knows the business I've come upon he won't thank ye for keepin' us apart. D'ye ken that, mon?" and his beard wagged as he spoke.

"I know nothing, Macgregor, because you've told me nothing," was the other's reply.

"Well, I tell ye I mean to see him, an' that's sufficient for Duncan Macgregor."

"Mr Duncan Macgregor will, if he continues to create a scene here, find himself discharged from the employ of the Clyde and Motherwell works,"

remarked Rolfe, drily.

"An' Duncan Macgregor can go to the North-Western to-morrow at a bigger rise than the fifty pounds a year. D'ye ken that?" replied the man from Glasgow.

"Then you refuse to accept Mr Statham's offer to you?"

"Of course, mon. Ye don't think that I come to London a cringin' for more pay, do ye? If I wanted it I could ha' got it from another company years ago," replied the independent old fellow. "No, I must see Mr Statham. Go back an' tell him so. I'm here to see him on a very important matter," and, dropping his voice, he added, "a matter which closely concerns himself."

"Then tell me its nature."

"It's private, sir. Until Mr Statham gives me leave to tell you, I can't."

"But he wants to know the nature of the business," answered the secretary, again struck by the old fellow's pertinacity. It was not every man who would decline a rise of a pound a week in his salary.

Rolfe was puzzled, but he knew old Sam well enough to be aware that even if a duke called he would refuse to see him. He only came to the City once a week to discuss matters with his brother Ben, and saw no outsider.

"I can't tell ye why I want to see Mr Statham; that's only his business and mine," replied the bearded Scot. The clerks were now smiling at Rolfe's vain attempts to get rid of him.

"Will you write it? Here--write on this slip of paper," the secretary suggested.

The old fellow hesitated.

"Yes--if you'll let me seal it up in an envelope."

Rolfe at once a.s.sented, and, with considerable care, the old fellow wrote some pencilled lines, folded the paper, sealed it in the envelope, and wrote the superscription.

A few moments later, when Rolfe handed it to the old millionaire, who was still at his table chatting with his brother, he asked, in the snappish way habitual to him:--"Who's this from--eh? Why am I bothered?"

"From the man Macgregor, from Glasgow. He won't go away."

"Then discharge the brute," he replied, and with the note in his hand he finished a remark he had addressed to his brother.

At last, mechanically, he opened it, and his eyes fell upon the scribbled words.

His jaw dropped. The colour left his cheeks, and, sitting back, he glared straight at Rolfe as though he had seen an apparition.

For a few moments he seemed too confused to speak. Then, when he recovered himself, he said, half apologetically:--"Ben, I must see this man alone--a--a private matter. I--I had no idea--I--"

"Of course, Sam," exclaimed his brother, leaving the room. "Let me know when he's gone."

"Rolfe, show him in," the millionaire ordered. The instant his secretary had gone he sprang to his feet, examined his face in the small mirror over the mantelshelf for a moment, and then stood bracing himself up for the interview.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

THE MAN WHO LOVED.

A few nights later Max Barclay was seated in the stalls of the Empire Theatre with Marion.

They never went to the legitimate theatre because she had no evening-dress. Even to be seen in one would have caused comment among her fellow employes at Cunnington's. The girls were never very charitable to each other, for in the pernicious system of "living-in"

there is no privacy or home life, no sense of responsibility or of freedom.

The average London shop girl has but little leisure and little rest.

Chronically over-tired, she cares little to go out of an evening after the long shop hours, and looks forward to Sunday as the day when she can read in bed till noon if she chooses, snooze again in the afternoon, and perhaps go to a cafe in the evening. It was so with Marion. The sales were on, and there were "spiffs," or premiums, placed by Mr Warner upon some out-of-date goods which it was every girl's object to sell and thus earn the commission. So she was working very hard, and already held quite a respectable number of tickets representing "spiffs."

In a dark blue skirt, white silk blouse and black hat, she looked extremely pretty and modest as she sat beside her lover in the second row of the stalls, watching the ballet with its tuneful music, clever groupings, and phantasmagoria of colour. She glanced at the watch upon her wrist, and saw that it was nearly ten o'clock. In half an hour she would have to be "in."

The bondage of his well-beloved galled Max, yet he could say nothing.

Her life was the same as that of a hundred thousand other girls in London. Indeed, was she not far better off that those poor girls who came up from their country homes to serve a year or two's drudgery without payment in order to learn the art and mystery of "serving a customer"--girls who were orphans and without funds, and who very soon found the actual necessity of having a little pocket-money for dress and for something with which to relish the stale bread and b.u.t.ter doled out to them.

The public have never yet adequately realised the hardships and tyranny of shop-life, where man is but a mere machine, liable to get the "sack"

at a moment's notice, and where woman is but an ill-fed, overworked drudge, liable at any moment to be thrown out penniless upon the great world of London.

Some day ere long the revelation will come. There are certain big houses in London with pious shareholders and go-to-meeting directors which will earn the opprobrium of the whole British public when the naked truth regarding their female a.s.sistants is exposed. In "the trade" it is known, and one day there will arise a man bolder and more fearless than the rest, who will speak the truth, and, moreover, prove it.

If in the meantime you want to know the truth concerning shop-life, ask the director of any of the numerous rescue societies in London. What you will be told will, I a.s.sure you, open your eyes.

The couple of hours Max had spent with Marion proved delightful ones, as they always were. Promenading in the lounge above were many men-about-town whom he knew, and who, seeing him with the modest-looking girl, smiled knowingly. They never guessed the truth--that he loved her and intended to make her his wife.

"Charlie is back from Glasgow," she was saying. "He came to the shop this afternoon to ask if I had seen you, and to explain how the other night he, by a most fortunate circ.u.mstance, missed the Continental train, for next morning Mr Statham wanted him to do some very important business, and was delighted to find that he had not left. Another man has gone out to the East."