The Name of The Firm

“So you’ve lost your place,” said his mother.

She looked with tender thoughtful eyes at the lad before her, and smoothed his fair hair with a hand that had to reach up to touch it, for she was a little woman.

“Yes,” said the boy, with a lip that he could not keep from quivering a little. “Somehow I didn’t expect it. Of course, I know lots of the fellows have been turned off lately; times are dull just now, and the firm always cut down the force when they can. It’s easy enough to take on new men when they want them, and those who have been there longest have first right to stay. I know that. But somehow I had thought that father’s work with them——”

“Yes,” said his mother. She sat down in a low chair, and with a gesture drew the boy to her side. “You say you had not expected to be turned away, Francis. Neither had I thought of it! There were reasons—— Your father thought that your future was assured, at least, if only—only as an atonement to him. The firm did not promise me to take care of you, to be sure, but it was understood. They sent at once, you know, and offered you the position. It was only right that you should begin at the bottom of the ladder.”

“The bottom of the ladder is about under ground there,” said the boy with a whimsical shake of his head. “It’s pretty low down, I can tell you! Why there are firms not a quarter so rich as they who pay their boys more—enough for car-fare and shoes and lunch, anyway—of course, though that’s one of the ways they get rich. I’m not complaining. But I thought to-day if father were the head of the business, and I had been one of Mr. Nelson’s boys——”

“Your father loved Mr. Nelson,” said the mother, after a silence during which the two had sat with clasped hands. “And Mr. White too,” she added.

“And didn’t they love him?”

“Yes, once—before they began to make so much money, and after it,—perhaps—sometimes! I don’t know. Mr. Nelson was moved when he came to see me that first time; he meant to be kind about you. To your father he was always the friend he had loved even when he was cut to the heart with John Nelson’s altered ways. There are some people who are born constant.”

“But don’t you mind,” said the boy, a little wistfully, “that I am thrown out of the place? I walked around the town two hours this morning before I could make up my mind to come and tell you, though I knew it Friday. I was afraid it would be too great a shock to you; and yet you don’t seem to think anything of it at all.”

“You will be taken back with a larger salary,” said his mother quietly. “You need not look so startled, Francis. I know Nelson and White—what they used to be, and what they are now; I know them thoroughly. If there were any other way—— Dear, there are some things that I cannot tell you, but your father’s son shall not be turned from his old firm while I live. They must respect the honour of their name. No, don’t tell me not to go to them! I’ll not shame you. I am not going to beg them to take you back again, I have the right to demand it. Trust me, Francis!”

“I do, mother,” said the boy, but half doubtfully, as he stooped and kissed the face raised to his.

It was a pretty face, with a broad low forehead and clear grey eyes, dark now with a purpose that he could not understand. He felt uncomfortable without knowing why, as he met their gaze. There was something in them that was not like mother.

She looked a small enough figure going down the street in her plain black garments and little black bonnet—a small figure to hold the fate of a big business house in that white envelope in her hands. For two years past she had felt that it would come to this some day. The thrill of definite fulfilment tingled now in every tense nerve. The father’s fate should not be his son’s too.

She remembered her husband’s bright faith in the friends of his youth, when they were first married; how he had worked for them with all the powers of body and mind, the manager who ran the business machinery of the house and whose honesty was like the sun, radiating his every act, and whose justice was tempered with mercy. Heaven only knew—and heaven did know—how many boys he had saved from temptation by the kind word in season, how many men he had heartened by his prompt recognition of work well done. He was a man who gave of himself, unvaryingly, to those with whom he came in daily contact, and was a greater factor in the prosperity of the great house than the members of the firm. She remembered how proud he had been of their commercial honesty, and how he had kept his faith in their own personal friendship for him even after the benumbing influences of trade and the exigencies of prosperity had kept them really aloof from each other for months and years. When there was a child born, or a death in the family, the business mask dropped for a few minutes perhaps, to show the old time faces underneath, and the manager loved them, and talked about them long afterwards to his wife. Some day, when John Nelson and Harry White had time——

Then the policy of the house changed. The manager’s salary was cut down; he was no longer called into the confidences of the firm. His wife remembered with hot cheeks and clenched hands how that had hurt him. It was the thought that they could have done it; he would have lived on a pittance willingly if they had needed money. But he defended them, of course; it was his way. He was a very proud man, so proud that his friends’ honour was as his very own; who doubted it, insulted him.

And then—ah, that was hardest! to know that what you love is rotten at the core. That man had no business to tell her husband, but every one in the house told George more even of their own private affairs than he cared to hear. Nothing that went on, for or against their prospects, for or against the good of the business, nay, for or against himself, but was brought to his knowledge for comfort, advice, or denial. He had always borne his full freight of other people’s troubles.

But this thing—— His wife knew how the burden of it had brought the beginning of his illness. It struck at the life of the firm; they had survived, but the blow had killed him. They had used his honesty to cheat with, and had offered him as the sacrifice when they were on the point of detection. Johnson, who partly in horror, partly in protesting doubt, had shown him, with trembling adjurations to utter secrecy, the incriminating paper, did not know that George held the other half of the clue. To have used it in his own defense was to betray one who trusted him, and defile the fair name of the firm.

His widow clasped the envelope tighter in her hands. She had been to her husband the priestess of his heart’s inmost confessional; he had given her a sacred confidence.

But her whole soul rose in rebellion to the thought that her boy was to be sacrificed as her husband had been, with no hand upraised to help him. Her hand was small, but it held a mighty truth in it! All the sense of wrong, and yearning heart-break of years, surged within, to bring with them a fierce avenging joy. Her promise to her husband? He had not known to what it would bind her; she felt herself fully absolved. Nelson and White, Nelson and White, their day of reprisal had come at last. The powerful fetich of their name would crumble into dust, when she struck it!

The dingy brick building with its gaping doorway gave her a shock as she came suddenly upon it. She had not seen it for over two years. That was the doorway under which George used to pass, the steep, worn, wooden staircase, that up which he was wont to climb daily. She had sometimes stopped here for him on her way home. She held her breath with a sickness of heart as she traversed the familiar ways again, looking perforce in at the windowed door behind which his desk used to stand. She was to climb higher to-day, to the sacred rooms of the Firm, the mighty power that had brought into being those rows and rows of clerks at the desks below.

She took her seat on a wooden settle outside the door of the office, which, open at the top, was screened off with ground glass in one corner of the long room, and waited her turn for an audience. She hardly saw the inquiring glances given her from time to time by the clerks; she was full of an intensity of purpose that cut through conventions like a knife. But presently the conversation carried on by the rising voices of men within the office forced itself upon her consciousness unpleasantly.

“Mein Gott! then I lose twenty t’ousand dollar! Consider what that means to me, shentlemen. At this time, at this time, it is ruin!”

“You should have looked out for that before, Hartmann,” answered a cold voice, that the listener recognized as Nelson’s. “We gave you opportunity to examine the goods—you cannot say we did not. If your man was a fool it’s not our fault. We gave you opportunity.”

“Oh, oppo-chunity,” moaned Hartmann. “Mein Gott, what oppo-chu-nity! And the whole cargo rotten! Consider, shentlemen, that it is ruin.”

White’s high shrill tones broke in with an imprecation, “Consider—as you’re so fond of the word—that you tried to cheat us, and got caught; consider that you tried to cut our throat, and we’ve cut yours. You might have known you hadn’t a ghost of a chance with us. We know you’re ruined, and we don’t care. Understand that. We don’t care. Any one who thinks he can work that game on us gets left. You’ve got the rotten cargo, and we’ve got your twenty thousand dollars, and we’re going to keep it. If I were you I wouldn’t talk too much about the story, you don’t show up any too well in it.”

“But my wife, my shildrens,” moaned the man.

“See here, Hartmann,” said Nelson, with dignity, “this is business. Either you talk business, or get out of here. On second thoughts you get out of here anyway. We’ve had enough of you for one day. You think so, too, White? Shall I get somebody to put you out, Hartmann? No? Then go!”

He held the office door open, with a compelling gesture of his free hand and a little man, bowed together, weeping and mumbling by turns, came stumbling out as if blinded. As he did so, a boy with papers slipped into the office, and behind him came a tall, pale clerk, with shabby clothes, and a gentle, anxious face.

“Ah, Cramer,” said Nelson, half looking up from the papers as he scanned them quickly in turn before affixing his signature. “What can I do for you to-day?”

“I was told that you wanted to speak to me, sir,” said Cramer.

“Mr. White, I believe, takes your department in hand. White!”

“The fact is,” said White, “we shall not need you after the first of the month, Mr. Cramer. You asked for an increase of salary.”

“I cannot live on what I get now,” said Cramer. “I have others to support.”

“Exactly. We are sorry, but you must understand that we cannot run a charitable institution. This is strictly business. On inquiry, we find that other men in similar positions are willing to live on less than you are getting now, and it is our principle to reduce our expenses whenever we can. You must know that.”

The listener inferred that Cramer bowed. “My services have been satisfactory, irrespective of salary?” he asked.

“Oh, certainly. We shall be glad to recommend you. That is all at present, Mr. Cramer.”

He had gone. Mrs. Stannard sitting out there felt a strange discomposure—pity, and a helpless revolt against this iron system of injustice: an injustice that hurt her idea of the promoters of it more than those under them—they had been her husband’s friends.

“There’s a lady waiting outside,” said the boy, who was going out with the papers. She rose perforce.

“Mrs. Stannard! Nelson, here is Mrs. Stannard.” White handed out a chair from a dark corner, and Nelson came forward cordially. Both men looked worn and tired, Nelson tall and thin and dark, with deeply-lined face; White, short and slight and fair. Both gave an effect of trying to brush off an habitual and haunting care, to welcome this unexpected visitor. She had known them since her girlhood; Nelson used to write poetry, and White had even been in love with her sister once. He was such a tender-hearted fellow then, he couldn’t bear to have the least of God’s creatures suffer pain. She answered mechanically the usual inquiries as to her health, while she was thinking of these things.

“We are glad you happened to come in, Mrs. Stannard,” said Nelson. “We have just found that there was a little money due your husband still on that last patent. Write out a check for fifty-six dollars, if you please, White, for Mrs. Stannard. There, that’s right, I think. There is so much that’s disagreeable in the business that we’re glad to have something pleasant to communicate occasionally.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Stannard. She added after a moment, “Thank you.” She was looking at the appurtenances of the little office, and at the two men in it. This was where George used to stand when he came here to talk to them, in this dusty cramped space, the high office desks half shutting out the light. What had been his feelings? How he had loved them, Nelson and White—Nelson and White who had killed him!

Something hard in her eyes seemed to strike White.

“We are sorry that we had to dismiss Francis,” he said apologetically. “It is always hard to have to make changes of that kind, but we depend entirely on Mr. Ulmer’s arrangements in that department. As I understand, it was a choice between him and Griggs, and Griggs had the better handwriting. Francis should improve. It is simply a matter of business.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Stannard again. She sat there, a small, unpretending figure in her black gown, very fair and young looking in the dingy office surroundings. She was twisting the white envelope in her fingers, the weapon that George had unwittingly left her that she was to wield in behalf of his son—if she wanted to.

“We have missed George a great deal in these last two years,” said Nelson with a change of tone, and an obvious effort of recollection. “Nobody had the interest in the firm that he had, Mrs. Stannard. His only fault was that he was not quite up to date in matters of management; he was a splendid organizer, but he let his feelings run away with him too much. This recognizing individual ability is all very well in its way, but if you are going in to make money the interests of the house must come first. George never could drive a really sharp bargain—I don’t mind saying it, Mrs. Stannard, for he owned it himself—and it was a credit to his heart, of course—he could not keep up to date in that way. The modern methods of business require tremendous concentration of purpose. White and I”—he glanced at White, who stood near him, gazing seriously at the visitor—“have been quite worn out with our efforts lately, but we have been very successful. Of three firms who were in competition with us at the beginning of the year, two have broken up and had to give in to our terms already, and the third will before long. It’s a pretty fair record. George’s only fault—and that was a credit to his heart—was that he was not good at such transactions, he let his feelings run away with him.”

“Yes, that was his only fault,” said White.

Oh, if they only would not speak of George! She suddenly felt that it was the one thing she could not bear.

“How is your wife, Mr. Nelson?” she asked hurriedly.

“My wife? She was well when I last heard from her. She and the children have been in Dresden—she is there for their education, you know—expects to be gone three years.”

“It must be very lonely for you. Why don’t you go over, too?” she hazarded.

“Work, work! That’s what keeps me here. I give you my word, Mrs. Stannard, the business is so immense now, the operations of the house so large, that I can hardly take even a day off. Here’s White trying to get away to his sick boy up in Minnesota for a couple of weeks, and yet we can’t see how to manage it, just at this time, without losing the firm a deal that will give us enormous profit.”

“Is your boy ill?” asked Mrs. Stannard, turning sympathetically to White. His only child was the age of her Francis.

White nodded, with his boyish face suddenly turned grey and haggard, like that of an old, old man.

“He—he’s crippled,” he answered. “He had a bad fall. Didn’t you hear? Hurt himself racing. The doctors give us some hope, there’s no immediate danger, but his strength seems to be going. That’s the main point, you know—strength. I’ve thought if I could get up to Minnesota just now, to help his mother—— But I can’t seem to make it out Of course, business comes first.”

“God help you, Harry!” said Mrs. Stannard, softly. She had risen and he stretched out his hand and took hers in it, and held it for a moment in a tight grip, with his head turned away.

“You were always good, Clara,” he said huskily. “I hope He will.”

“You have dropped your letter,” said Nelson, coming forward. “Or perhaps you do not want it?”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Stannard. “No, I do not want it now.” Send Francis here, where if he would be successful he must learn to fight against every impulse of his higher nature? What would his father have said? She tore the paper into small pieces with fingers that were firmly tense. “May I put these in your scrap basket? I know that I have taken up too much of your time, Mr. Nelson, I will say good-bye.”

“I am glad to have seen you, Mrs. Stannard,” he said. He looked at his partner, who stood, turned from them, his arms resting on the tall desk, and his head buried in them, and then looked back again at her. She made a movement of comprehension, and slipped quietly out of the door, and pulling her veil quickly over her face, went down the long stairs again that her husband had been wont to traverse, feeling that the dear form was somehow at her side. But she saw nothing, for her eyes were blinded by tears, not for White’s sorrow, not for her husband’s death, but for another and irremediable loss; tears that overflowed and ran down her cheeks, and seemed to keep welling up exhaustlessly from her heart; tears from a pity so deep that it had its source in every happiness of high thought and noble aim and unselfish love that had made her life.

No need to break her faith with the dead! She would not have her boy back in that house of corruption, for all the gifts of Fortune. No need, no need, for her to strike at the name of the firm! That name, so loved, so honoured, slaved for, died for—God in heaven, for what did the Name of the Firm stand?