“What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing.”
Here was a man Mr. Perriam admired. He had not expected this. It was very good. Colet was a stouter fellow than he had imagined. Anyone who coolly ignored the aggressiveness with which Mr. Perriam disguised his own simple hesitances was sure of his secret approbation. A sly smile moved round his set mouth, but Jimmy did not see it. Still, this young man would have to be disciplined, to get him back to his place. When Mr. Perriam swung about his face was flushed and grim, and even fanatical in its assumed determination. The principal of that important house began, with sonorous sententiousness, for his task was not easy, to advise his assistant what young Colet was, when he came there, and what he had become in that fostering office. Mr. Perriam had all the command of rhetoric of a romantic man of affairs luxuriating in the waywardness of fools. He was solemn, and eloquently reasonable. He was enjoying this. He moved hither and thither with the energy of his warm periods, as if this was a meeting, and he could not help an appeal to the better feelings of a thoughtless generation, which might, nevertheless, do well, if it would but listen to him.
Colet hardly heard him, after the initial outburst. There was but a continuous and strenuous noise. He was meek and enduring. The room grew hot. This must end some day. But Perriam, he could see, was a figure of lasting power, able to continue, and the logic of his monomania was unanswerable. Jimmy merely waited patiently for silence to fall. It did not occur to him that he might laugh and walk out of the room and away. Nothing occurred to him.
But his meek submission to ill-luck, which to Mr. Perriam seemed but a show of proud and enduring reserve, caused his chief to believe that this appeal for gratitude and common sense was in vain, a further offence that made Mr. Perriam flounder in his periods. He was convinced by his own eloquence. His sense of an injustice became genuine, and too quick for his words. They were not ready for his heartfelt sincerity. He began to accuse Colet with an emphasis which he felt was all too weak. He saw that this was because he was not near enough for his assistant to get a full impression. He approached Colet, with his voice raised. Jimmy looked at him then, in dreary apprehension of a puerile but menacing apparition.
“A man like you,” Mr. Perriam was saying, “has no right to be here. There are better men. I’ll tell you what it is to take a place you can’t fill. It’s swindling. You are a fraud. That damned quietness and good-nature cheats the people who pay you.”
Jimmy was not listening. His principal, close to him, raised an arm in trenchant reprobation. Colet glanced at the threat with indifference, and then an uncalled surge of abhorrence turned him black. He saw Perriam’s near mask as the front of all arrogant swinishness. He struck it.
Mr. Perriam behaved as though he had no bones. He dropped, face downwards, and his unexpected falling weight, which his assistant tried to catch, sent Colet floundering. He sat on the floor, legs spread out, deferentially waiting, as it seemed, for Mr. Perriam to rise first. But Mr. Perriam did not move. Colet eyed his chief in astonishment. The room was silent. Mr. Perriam remained on the carpet, with one arm awkwardly folded under him. His bald head, resting on the Axminster roses, was absurdly out of place. His boots with their spats were spread unnaturally. The assistant scrambled to his chief’s aid, and turned him round. Some effort was necessary; and Jimmy was as surprised as if, succouring the figure of a man, he found it had the head of a tailor’s dummy. Mr. Perriam’s face was a bad parody in wax. His mouth was open, and his teeth looked dry. His tongue was large and fatuous. Mr. Perriam stared at the ceiling.
Jimmy shook him, and called to him, in the sudden anger of dismay. Mr. Perriam continued to stare at the ceiling. Jimmy loosened his chief’s collar in fumbling haste, swore at the knot of the neckcloth, tore roughly at the starch which held the collar-stud; but Mr. Perriam did not object. His big rough chin was warm but docile. His limp submission was horrible. Jimmy saw that he was dead; and waited on his knees, hoping that someone would come in. The church clock chimed nine. Only the cat looked in at the door, in round-eyed surprise, but did not enter.
Jimmy went to his own room, grabbed his hat to hurry for assistance, yet returned irresolutely to his principal’s room, because, naturally, one would expect to see Mr. Perriam in his chair. But he was still on the floor. Colet left the office, in the confused intention to escape from that object, to get help, to think it over, to call the police.
VI
Colet was surprised to find that the night outside was in cool and spacious repose. Its indifference stopped his rush. The Avenue was empty. He could hear the traffic as usual in Leadenhall Street. It was still there. And then he could hear also the lonely sound of his footsteps quickly following him. That sound startled yet steadied him. As he approached Billiter Street a policeman strolled into view, paused, and yawned. Jimmy was looking for a policeman, but not for one who yawned. That sign of boredom confused him, for he was nearing the constable. His distress would have checked him with an impulse to confide, but his legs did not know that, and so he was carried on.
He found himself in Fenchurch Street. He was walking east, but without any reason. He had merely turned to the left. He was just walking, and somewhat too hurriedly, so he slowed
