A CATASTROPHE

      First published in The New Budget, April 4, 1895

       Table of Contents

      The little shop was not paying. The realisation came insensibly. Winslow was not the man for definite addition and subtraction and sudden discovery. He became aware of the truth in his mind gradually, as though it had always been there. A lot of facts had converged and led him there. There was that line of cretonnes-four half-pieces—untouched, save for half a yard sold to cover a stool. There were those shirting at 4 3/4d.—Bandersnatch, in the Broadway, was selling them at 2 3/4d.—under cost, in fact. (Surely Bandersnatch might let a man live!) Those servants’ caps, a selling line, needed replenishing, and that brought back the memory of Winslow’s sole wholesale dealers, Helter, Skelter, and Grab. Why! How about their account?

      Winslow stood with a big green box on the counter before him when he thought of it. His pale grey eyes grew a little rounder; his pale, straggling moustache twitched. He had been drifting along, day after day. He went round to the ramshackle cash-desk in the corner—it was Winslow’s weakness to sell his goods over the counter, give his customers a duplicate bill, and then dodge into the desk to receive the money, as though he doubted his own honesty. His lank forefinger, with the prominent joints, ran down the bright little calendar (“Clack’s Cottons last for All Time”). “One—two—three; three weeks an’ a day!” said Winslow, staring. “March! Only three weeks and a day. It can’t be.”

      “Tea dear,” said Mrs. Winslow, opening the door with the glass window and the white blind that communicated with the parlour.

      “One minute,” said Winslow, and began unlocking the desk.

      An irritable old gentleman, very hot and red about the face, and in a heavy fur-lined coat, came in noisily. Mrs. Winslow vanished.

      “Ugh!” said the old gentleman. “Pocket-handkerchief.”

      “Yes, sir,” said Winslow. “About what price—”

      “Ugh!” said the old gentleman. “Poggit-handkerchief, quig!”

      Winslow began to feel flustered. He produced two boxes.

      “These sir—” began Winslow.

      “Sheed tin!” said the old gentleman, clutching the stiffness of the linen. “Wad to blow my nose—not haggit about.”

      “A cotton one, p’raps, sir?” said Winslow.

      “How much?” said the old gentleman over the handkerchief.

      “Sevenpence, sir. There’s nothing more I can show you? No ties, braces—?”

      “Damn!” said the old gentleman, fumbling in his ticket-pocket, and finally producing half a crown. Winslow looked round for his metallic duplicate-book which he kept in various fixtures, according to circumstances, and then he caught the old gentleman’s eye. He went straight to the desk at once and got the change, with an entire disregard of routine of the shop.

      Winslow was always more or less excited by a customer. But the open desk reminded him of his trouble. It did not come back to him all at once. He heard a finger-nail softly tapping on the glass, and looking up saw Minnie’s eyes over the blind. It seemed like retreat opening. He shut and locked the desk, and went into the back room to tea.

      But he was preoccupied. Three weeks and a day! He took unusually large bites of his bread and butter, and stared hard at the little pot of jam. He answered Minnie’s conversational advances distractedly. The shadow of Helter, Skelter, and Grab lay upon the tea-table. He was struggling with this new idea of failure, the tangible realisation that was taking shape and substance, condensing, as it were, out of the misty uneasiness of many days. At present it was simply one concrete fact; there were thirty-nine pounds left in the bank, and that day three weeks Messrs. Helter, Skelter, and Grab, those enterprising outfitters of young men, would demand their eighty pounds.

      After tea there was a customer or so—small purchases: some muslin and buckram, dress-protectors, tape, and a pair of Lisle hose. Then, knowing that Black Care was lurking in the dusky corners of the shop, he lit the three lamps early and set to, refolding his cotton prints, the most vigorous and least meditative proceeding of which he could think. He could see Minnie’s shadow in the other room as she moved about the table. She was busy turning an old dress. He had a walk after supper, looked in at the Y.M.C.A., but found no one to talk to, and finally went to bed. Minnie was already there. And there too, waiting for him, nudging him gently, until about midnight he was hopelessly awake, sat Black Care.

      He had, had one or two nights lately in that company, but this was much worse. First came Messrs. Helter, Skelter, and Garb, and their demand for eighty pounds—an enormous sum when your original capital was only a hundred and seventy. They camped, as it were, before him, sat down and beleaguered him. He clutched feebly at the circumambient darkness for expedients. Suppose he had a sale, sold things for almost anything? He tried to imagine a sale miraculously successful in some unexpected manner, and mildly profitable, in spite of reductions below cost. Then Bandersnatch Limited, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106, 107 Broadway, joined the siege, a long caterpillar of frontage, a battery of shop fronts, wherein things were sold at a farthing above cost. How could he fight such an establishment? Besides, what had he to sell? He began to review his resources. What taking line was there to bait the sale? Then straightway came those pieces of cretonne, yellow and black, with a bluish-green flower; those discredited skirtings, prints without buoyancy, skirmishing haberdashery, some despairful four-button gloves by an inferior maker—a hopeless crew. And that was his force against Bandersnatch, Helter, Skelter, and Garb, and the pitiless world behind them. Whatever had made him think a mortal would buy such things? Why had he bought this and neglected that? He suddenly realised the intensity of his hatred for Helter, Skelter, and Garb’s salesman. Then he drove towards an agony of self-reproach. He had spent too much on that cash-desk. What real need was there of a desk? He saw his vanity of that desk in a lurid glow of self-discovery. And the lamps? Five pounds! Then suddenly, with what was almost physical pain, he remembered the rent.

      He groaned and turned over. And there, dim in the darkness, was the hummock of Mrs.