Money in the Bank

R.
Shoesmith, the well-known solicitor, head of the firm of Shoesmith, Shoesmith, Shoesmith, and so on, of Lincoln's Inn Fields, leaned back in his chair and said that he hoped he had made everything clear.

He accompanied the remark with one of those short, quick, roopy coughs by means of which solicitors announce that a conference is concluded, and Jeff Miller came out of his meditations with a start. Mr. Shoesmith always reminded him of a bird, and in the attempt to decide just what kind of a bird he had allowed his attention to wander.

However, what he had missed must presumably have had to do with some aspect of the forthcoming case of Pennefather
v.
Tarvin, in which he had been briefed to appear for the plaintiff. That was what he had come here to discuss, and that was what Mr. Shoesmith had been talking about at the moment when he had ceased to hang upon his lips. So it seemed safe to nod intelligently.

"I think I have covered the various points?"

"Oh, rather."

"You agree with me that the case for the defence appears to rest upon the evidence of this witness, Lionel Green?"

"Absolutely."

"Your task, therefore, will be to endeavour to discredit his story. You must shake Green."

"Leave it to me."

"Unfortunately," said Mr. Shoesmith, "I am obliged to."

He sighed. You would have said that he was not in sympathy with Jeff, and you would have been right. Jeff had his little circle of admirers, but Mr. Shoesmith was not a member of it. About the nastiest jolt of the well-known solicitor's experience had been the one he had received on the occasion, some weeks previously, when his only daughter had brought this young man home and laid him on the mat, announcing in her authoritative way that they were engaged to be married.

He had said "Oh, my God!" or something civil of that sort, but it was only with difficulty that he had been able to speak at all. He could see in Jeff little or nothing of a nature calculated to cause a father, receiving such news, to wave his hat in the air and dance about on the tips of his toes. He disliked his hair, which looked like straw; his character, which he considered unbalanced; and his manner, which struck him as flippant and slangy. He could think of no detail in which his future son-in-law's deportment during the interview which was just terminating had not differed from that of the ideal young barrister, receiving instructions for his first appearance in the courts, and he felt a sort of detached pity for this Pennefather, whose fortunes were to rest in such hands.

But Myrtle had insisted that her betrothed be given his chance of winning forensic fame—or as much forensic fame as can be won by appearing for a taxi-driver who is suing an interior decorator for hitting him in the stomach—and he had long ago become aware of the futility of trying to oppose Myrtle's wishes.

So now he merely sighed, and rose to his feet, to indicate that he had had as much of Jeff as he could endure.

"Well," he said, with a wintry contortion of his facial muscles which might have passed in a dim light for a smile, “we must hope for the best."

"That's the spirit," agreed Jeff cordially. "Quiet confidence, and no weakening. You remember what Hengist said to Horsa before the battle of whatever it was?”

Mr. Shoesmith's face betrayed surprise at this erudition.

"Why, er, no, I do not. What did he say?"

“’Horsa, keep your tail up!' Good afternoon," said Jeff. "Good afternoon."

He left the office and made his way westward, walking with a long, swinging stride. For, whatever might be his spiritual shortcomings, Jeff Miller was a finely-built, athletic young man, one who did not have to call weakly for cabs to
take him from Lincoln's Inn Fields to Halsey Court, Mayfair, where he had his modest residence, but was able to move thither under his own steam. A representative both of his University and of his country on the football field, with an impressive record at Twickenham, Cardiff Arms Park and other centres, he could have managed an even longer walk without distress.

As he threaded his way through the streets, he found himself once more brooding on Mr. Shoesmith—not this time on his appearance, for his research work at the office had left him pretty straight in his mind that what the other looked like was a cassowary, but on his character and disposition. A cold, aloof, non-bonhomous old blister, he decided, one whose soul his own must always fail to touch. He tried in vain to think of a single subject on which it would be possible for Pop Shoesmith, on the one hand, and himself, on the other, to see eye to eye.

And yet there was such a subject, and that of the first importance. Jeff's engagement to his daughter Myrtle was, as we have seen, one of which Mr. Shoesmith heartily disapproved, and it was one of which Jeff disapproved pretty heartily himself. Indeed, it is not too much to say that the thought of putting on a morning coat and sponge-bag trousers and accompanying Myrtle Shoesmith up the aisle chilled him to the marrow and made him feel as if he had been swallowing butterflies.

He was still quite at a loss to understand how the ghastly thing had happened. The facts seemed to suggest that he must have let fall some passing remark which had given the girl the impression that he was proposing to her, but he had no recollection of having done anything so cloth-headed. All he knew was that at a certain point of time at an evening party he had been a happy, buoyant young fellow, making light conversation to Myrtle Shoesmith behind a potted palm, and at another point of time, only a moment later, or so it seemed to him, he was listening appalled to Myrtle Shoesmith discussing cake and bridesmaids. The whole thing absolutely sudden and unexpected, like an earthquake or a waterspout or any other Act of God.

But, blurred though his mind might be with respect to many essentials of the affair, on one point it was crystal clear—to wit, that the emotion which her personality inspired in him was not love.

Love, he felt, and he was a man who had thought about these things, should not manifest itself in such a strongly-marked inclination, when in the presence of the adored object, to stand on one leg and twiddle the fingers. In the days of his boyhood, he remembered, at his preparatory school, the retired sergeant-major, who came twice a week to teach the elements of drill and physical culture, had afflicted him with just the same nervous diffidence which he experienced in the society of Myrtle Shoesmith, and it would be straining the facts absurdly to say that he had loved that sergeant-major.

With a growing sense of being a good man snared in the toils of Fate, like somebody out of Shakespeare, he crossed Berkeley Square and arrived at Halsey Court.

The day was a smiling and gracious day, early June at his best. In a hundred thousand homes, barometers, tapped by a hundred thousand knuckles before breakfast, had declined to budge from Set Fair, and the blue sky showed how sound their judgment had been. Yet over this stuffy little backwater there brooded a sort of bilious twilight, as if an eclipse were in progress. Kalsey Court never bothered much about sunshine. What it specialised in was the smell of cooking cabbage. And for the first time, Jeff found himself disliking this aroma and yearning for something more on the lines of roses and lavender.

This change of heart he attributed to the fact that he had been musing on his approaching nuptials, for hitherto he had been well content with Halsey Court. It might be dingy, but it was quiet, and quiet was of importance to him. For though he had passed his Bar examinations to please a wealthy godfather, and was about to plunge into active practice because Myrtle Shoesmith insisted on it, he was also, and primarily, a man of letters. He wrote stories about mysterious Chinamen and girls with hair the colour of ripe wheat and the corpses of baronets in panelled libraries, and he found the cloistral peace of Halsey Court assisted the composition of these.

He passed through the court's narrow entrance, and turned to the right. This brought him to Halsey Chambers, on the third floor front of which he lived. He climbed the stairs, and let himself into his flat, to be greeted by Ma Balsam, his stout and motherly housekeeper.

"Oh, there you are, sir," said Ma Balsam, with that air of welcoming a prodigal son which always endeared her to her employer. "Miss Shoesmith was wanting to speak to you on the telephone just after you went out."

Jeff started.

"She's not back in London?"

"No, sir. She was talking from the friends in the country where she's staying. I told her you had gone to see her papa, and she said she would ring up again later. I hope everything turned out satisfactory, sir?"

"Eh?"

"Your talk with the young lady's papa."

"Oh, yes. Quite satisfactory. Let me see, how deeply did I take you into my confidence about all that?"

"You told me you thought the gentleman was going to give you a job as a mouthpiece."

"Well, he has. Yes, it's all settled, Ma. I appear for Ernest Pennefather, a licensed taxi-cab driver, who has invoked the awful majesty of the Law to help him pound the stuffing out of Orlo Tarvin, an interior decorator, claiming that in the course of a dispute about his fare Tarvin gave him a blow or buffet—whereby the said Pennefather goes in fear of his life. Interesting, of course, as showing what highly-strung, nervous men taxi-drivers are, but a bit on the minor side, one would have thought, for a man of my gifts. Still, the disemboweling of Green may give me some scope."

"Sir?"

"It appears that a second interior decorator, of the name of Lionel Green, was present during the proceedings and maintains that the alleged blow or buffet was not a blow or buffet at all, but in reality more in the nature of a playful prod or tap. And the attitude of the defence, I gather, is 'Laugh that off, J. G. Miller.' Well, we shall see. I have been instructed to shake Green, and I propose to do it till he feels like a cocktail. I shall be very courteous, of course, very polished and suave, but by the time I've finished with him Green will know he's been in a fight. But what rot all this is, Ma. Pennefather
v.
Tarvin, forsooth! What have I to do with the petty squabblings of these fretful midges? I ought to be at my desk, immersed in literary composition. Was that the telephone?"

"Yes, sir. Miss Shoesmith, I expect."

"You take a morbid view, Ma, but you are probably right."

It was Miss Shoesmith. The voice which spoke was immediately recognizable as hers both from its beautifully clear diction and the note of authority which it conveyed. One of the things which prevented any real communion of soul between this girl and Jeff was the fact that she always addressed him like a governess talking to a problem child.

"Geoffrey?"

"Hullo?"

"I rang up before, but you were out."

"Yes. Ma Balsam told me."

"I wish you would not call Mrs. Balsam
‘
Ma.' It's vulgar, and it must make her familiar. Is everything all right?"

"Fine this end. How are conditions where you are?"

"You know perfectly well what I mean. About Father. Has he given you the brief?"

"Yes, I've got it."