The intervention of Mr. Julian Burgetrode initiated one of the good seasons of Tod’s career. Some big hand seemed to push open a heavy door and draw back a curtain, and Tod stepped easily into a new and more spacious life.

The office of Rathbone Cragg and Son, Auctioneers and Estate Agents, had a certain Victorian calmness, a deliberate and leisurely way of doing things that was decent and almost pontifical. The Craggs, both father and son, were very polite people, and with a politeness that suited the more civilised end of Shaston and the ritual beloved of the symbolists who attended the church of St. Alban the Martyr. Mr. Rathbone Cragg, lean, bald-headed, round shouldered, with that emaciated and cartilaginous throat of his, and the head of a benignant vulture, served as a sidesman at St. Alban’s Church, and also as a Justice of the Peace. His son, a younger and more anæmic sort of vulture, with a queer axe-shaped head, its edge fronting forwards in chin and nose, clove his way into the intellectual life of West Shaston with an indefatigable and supercilious seriousness that made more full blooded young men hate him as buoyant savages must hate your irrepressible missionary. Frederick Rathbone Cragg was for ever improving himself. He knew too much; facts and figures rolled off him like turnips off an overladen cart. He was the sort of young man who sat solemnly and grimly at breakfast with a part of Handsworth’s Encylopædia in front of him, munching eggs and bacon with teeth of virgin gold.

Tod discovered a new atmosphere. If you walked down Beacon Hill with the western sun behind you, you had a vision of a fresh and vivid Shaston, Shaston as the Georgians had schemed it, shorn of its base speculative excrescences in yellow brick and grey stucco, a white town strung between the blue of the sea and the green of the hills. In the beyond loomed the White Cliff, a little hazy with the smoke of the Old Town, the yellow sand making a dim gleam between it and the sea. There were the masts of the Shaston fishing fleet, black and crowded like the ships of the Greeks beached before Troy. Above the White Cliff the lighthouse painted a white streak against summer skies. The parade in front of the tall houses had breadth and dignity, and could stand and answer the roar of a rough sea. On the hills above the town the beeches and holm oaks and wind-beaten pines of Effingham Park, broke up and softened the firm white lines, and spread a rolling frieze between the white houses and the yet whiter clouds.

The Craggs had their office in Caroline Crescent, a bow of solid houses with the parade as its bowstring. Caroline Crescent suggested the Regency, gentlemen in gay coloured coats and white breeches, high-stepping horses, “tigers” hanging on to the backs of yellow-wheeled dog-carts, young gentlewomen with side curls, Pickwickian worthies with Hessian boots, and solid, round, white-breeched stomachs. The houses had balconies with long and steeply sloping green roofs, and from any of these balconies one of Marcus Stone’s sentimental young ladies might have thrown a red rose at some quite impossibly handsome and romantic young man on a horse. Such things had ceased to happen in Caroline Crescent. A little colony of doctors lived there, two solicitors and a dentist. Brass plates were as thick as gold teeth in the mouth of a nigger.

The Craggs were very discreet and restrained, and confined themselves to gold letters on the lower windows of No. 10. Blatancy did not pay in the west end of Shaston. Notice boards, posters and advertisements of houses to be let and sold were to be found only in the big hall and in the main office. Once upon a time there had been litigation in Caroline Crescent over the keeping of a cockatoo that screamed. The Craggs did not scream. You were careful of your manners when you practised your profession in the company of gentlemen who felt pulses or drafted people’s wills.

Tod felt all boots and hands on that first morning when he entered the establishment of the Craggs, and stood in the middle of the big office with Mr. Burgetrode’s letter of introduction between thumb and forefinger. A young woman with a high forehead and pince-nez was typing at a table. Two clerks were busy at their desks, one of them making entries in a ledger, the other sorting out a chaos of keys. Tod stood and waited till the younger of the two clerks chose to discover him.

“Yes?”

“I’ve a letter for Mr. Cragg.”

“All right. Hand it over. Any answer?”

“I’ll wait and see,” said Tod.

The letter and the clerk disappeared through a glazed door on which “Mr. Rathbone Cragg” was painted in black letters. Tod noticed that there was a second and similar door with Mr. Frederick Rathbone Cragg’s name upon it. He stood and stared at the bills on the walls, at the maps and photographs of houses, at the typist clicking sedulously on her machine, until she stopped and stared at him in turn. Tod veered away, and felt uncomfortable. The young woman behind the table made him absurdly conscious of the fact that he was a creature that wore clothes.

The clerk reappeared with a new geniality towards Tod.

“Mr. Cragg will see you at once, Mr. Western.”

That interview puzzled Tod. Mr. Cragg stood up behind his desk and shook hands with him, and Tod felt embarrassed. This hard-eyed old gentleman who gobbled in his throat like a turkey, and was so jerkily and parentally polite, made Tod wonder what Mr. Burgetrode had said concerning him.

“Sit down, Mr. Western. So you want to be an estate agent?”

Tod sat down.

“I’m interested in houses,” he said.

Mr. Cragg appeared to approve.

“Enthusiasm is the great secret of success. I have this little note here from Mr. Burgetrode, and it is possible that I may be able to oblige him. I understand that you are an orphan, Western.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Cragg tilted his head like a benignant bird.

“A great deprivation, Western. And—about your education?”

“I was at Chipperton’s school at Pentworth for five years, sir.”

“An excellent school too. Well, let me see, you wish to enter my office immediately?”

“If you can take me, sir.”

“I think I may say that I can.”

It all seemed so absurdly easy. There were no clouds, no complications, nothing but geniality and sunshine and an avoidance of all awkward questions; no reference to Mr. Flowerdew or Mr. Snape. Mr. Cragg suggested terms that made Tod feel a plutocrat. And then Mr. Frederick Rathbone Cragg was called in and presented to Tod as though he were a friend of the family.

Frederick Cragg gave Tod’s hand a hard and earnest squeeze. He stared impressively at people when he was introduced to them, and he stared very hard at Tod.

“Very glad to meet you, Western.”

Tod felt ten years older. He began to wonder whether he ought not to have come in a bowler hat.

Two months later Tod had become an enthusiastic student of houses, houses of all sorts and descriptions, stolid houses, frivolous houses, snobbish houses, houses that were disreputable yet happy. And Tod too was happy though he was in danger of being sucked over the edge of his youth into that respectable and genteel world that is death and destruction to any adventurous soul. Mr. Frederick Rathbone Cragg had taken control of Tod; he had a penchant for cultivating boys and young men as though they were puppies, and trying to teach them his own tricks. He was interested in houses, but his interest was different from Tod’s. He was a bit of commercialised intelligence, yet in spite of his fish blood and flat feet he mimicked all sorts of strange people, like a vain and clever ape who copies a gesture without understanding its real meaning. Young Cragg was an intellectual. He had read Browning and Henry James, Nietzsche and Bernard Shaw. In fact he had read a little of everything, and he was the secretary of the St. Margarets Literary Society. He posed. He liked to hand out queer and startling opinions. Nothing pleased him better than to drag around a youth like Tod, let off intellectual fireworks and see the little fellow skip and open his eyes very wide.

Tod, in his innocence, was flattered. He was impressed by “Young Supercilious,” as some of the scoffers called Mr. Frederick Cragg, the energetic person who had an answer to everything. He trailed Tod round with him and talked mediæval architecture with the dogmatism of a Ruskin, and was so much the philosopher and the man of the world that Tod had ears and no tongue.

“You always want to know the right people, Western; it’s just the same as going into the right sort of house.”

Very soon he was criticising Tod’s clothes, and telling him with an air of great impressiveness that such and such things were not worn.

“You mustn’t do it, old chap. No pink or red ties, and don’t wear brown boots on Sunday. Good form, you know; it counts, it counts with the right people.”

Mr. Burgetrode had gone north again, and Tod was left to the earnest egotism of Mr. Frederick Cragg. Life in the office was not unpleasant, and Tod’s growing enthusiasm flattered the pride of the firm. Mr. Burgetrode had hinted that Clarence Todhunter Western was an original child, and with such a sponsor life in the house of Cragg and Son was bound to be easy. They had been very ready to make the best of Tod, and Tod the learner was keen and indefatigable.

“That boy has got a future,” Fred said to his sister.

Miss Bertha Cragg was always tripping up the toes of her brother’s impressiveness.

“Because old Burgetrode has taken a fancy to him? Nice sort of wet nurse you make, Fred!”

“You women don’t understand.”

But he continued to make a sort of East End Settlement of Tod and to cultivate that young heathen. Tod went to Hanson’s the gentleman’s tailor, and had a suit of clothes made to measure. His ties grew more conservative and refined. He ceased to wear a cloth cap on the back of his head. Frederick Cragg rescued him from the bathos of Mrs. Budd’s cottage, and persuaded him to take a bed-sitting room in St. Helen’s Terrace in the house of an impoverished gentlewoman who read Tennyson and genuflected regularly at the church of St. Alban the Martyr. He lent Tod books, went for country walks with him, declaimed Keats and Rossetti, and talked a lot of nonsense that sounded very clever and rather shocking.

Caroline Crescent was teaching Tod all sorts of things about real estate. Tod had no immediate vision of the financial aspect of the business, and he had lost some of the distrust that the world of Flowerdew and Snape had roused in him. The Craggs were polite people. They were always and ever your most obedient servants, and they appeared to let or sell you a house for the pure social joy of doing you a service. They taught Tod about leases and agreements, the writing up of houses, the making of inventories, the valuing of fixtures, the business of insurance and of rent-collecting; and all the ritual of a successful sale. They had little to do with the cottage property of old Shaston. They confined their activities to the gentlemen’s residences and the red villas of St. Margarets and the Grand Parade; moreover, they were the “county people” and much county property had passed through their hands.

Young Cragg had taken Tod in to tea at “Clovelly,” the Craggs’ house in Salisbury Road, but Tod’s real emergence from the caterpillar state dated from the day when he was invited to tennis.

“My mater wants you to come up on Saturday, Western, and play tennis. Just a little party, you know.”

Tod confessed that he knew nothing about tennis.

“You’ll soon learn,” said his mentor with his usual impressiveness; “come up half an hour before the other people, and I’ll put you up to the main points.”

This was very gallant and chivalrous, but Tod was worried about clothes.

“Suppose I had better buy a racket?”

“Yes, you ought to have a racket, Western. And shoes.”

“And shoes?” echoed Tod.

He wanted to ask Fred Cragg about the various details of his toilet, but shirked the confession of ignorance and in shirking it challenged his own imagination. What sort of shoes ought he to buy—white or brown?—and what should be the colour of a tennis-player’s trousers and shirt? And did one wear a belt or braces? That was a devil of a dilemma. He was so pestered and baffled by the whole problem that he dashed up to the St. Margarets Tennis Club that evening, and lifting his chin over the top of a wooden fence studied the details of dress as exemplified by the gentlemen of that club. Braces were not worn. You fastened your white flannel trousers with a coloured scarf or a leather belt. The shoes were white, so were the shirts, and any old coat that was not black seemed fit to complete the picture. Tod gave a gulp of spiritual relief. If he had turned up at the Craggs’ wearing those red braces of his, what a scandal he would have created!

Tod spent quite a respectable sum on a racket, buckskin shoes, two pairs of white trousers, two white shirts and soft collars, a chocolate and light blue scarf, and a straw hat with a black band. He began to dress about half-past one on the Saturday afternoon, and the business lasted an hour. He went downstairs, swinging his new racket, and met his landlady, the gentlewoman who read Tennyson and genuflected daily at the church of St. Alban the Martyr.

She liked Tod. He was such a fresh, clean, and considerate youngster, and rather shy.

“Tennis, Mr. Western?”

“Tennis,” said Tod.

“How nice. You ought to have those new clothes marked before they go to the wash.”

“Suppose I ought.”

“I will do it for you.”

And Tod went on his way, feeling cheered, and of the opinion that life was quite good and that people were awfully decent.

At “Clovelly” a maid showed him down to the tennis lawn where Frederick Cragg was sitting under a young lime tree and reading Zola’s “Paris” in French. Fred was a very shaky French scholar, but it was rather impressive to leave a book like that about.

“Hallo, Western.”

He looked Tod over comprehensively.

“Yes, that’s quite all right. But just one thing, old chap, you won’t mind——”

He got up, and gave a little jab to the rear portion of the brim of Tod’s straw hat; for Tod had tilted that hat too much on the back of his head.

“Like that, Western; excuse me, you know.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Tod, flushing, but the remedying of that defect dashed his self-confidence for the rest of the afternoon.

It was the first function of its kind that Tod had ever attended, and it reduced him to a state of stubborn shyness. There was that big red villa “Clovelly” in the background, a mysterious house half hidden behind a great pergola and masses of flowering shrubs. A curly path and a flight of stone steps led to the tennis lawn, and down this social highway a succession of people and things descended upon Tod, girls in summer frocks, elderly women who rustled, young men who looked surprisingly cool and unflurried, old Rathbone Cragg in a grey flannel suit and a white Panama hat, a gardener who carried deck-chairs, and later a couple of maids with tables and tea. Tod was introduced to one or two people by Frederick Cragg.

“Mr. Western, Miss Lavibond.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Tod, holding out a hand, and then remembering to take off his hat.

He stood by Miss Lavibond’s chair and tried to think of something to say to her. The frocks and the chatter and the puzzling and refined correctness of the business had him stifled. The Craggs were the leaders of a definite social circle, a coterie of well-to-do middle-class people whom a connection with trade had segregated in that little world of gentlemen’s residences. There were old Horrox’s two daughters, the Playles, who owned the biggest grocery in Shaston, Vintners the wine merchants, and many more. It is possible that they were a little more correct and polite and stiffly self-conscious than the class just above them, for they were not such old hands at the game, and they had to take great care of their manners.

“Weren’t the rhododendrons lovely this year,” said Miss Lavibond to Tod.

Tod didn’t know what rhododendrons were but he did not say so.

“Yes, very fine, weren’t they? Do you like the band we have got this year?”

“Just a little too much brass, I think. I heard them murder a thing of Grieg’s the other night.”

“Hard luck!” said Tod, and wondered why Miss Lavibond stared.

He decided that it was time to get away from the lady before she discovered that he was conversing in the dark. He felt she was dangerous, that she would denounce him if he launched into any more conversational ventures, and he seized the chance of going to hunt for a tennis ball that had disappeared in a bank of laurels. Tod took a preposterously long time finding that ball, and when he did find it he was confronted with Mrs. Rathbone Cragg and the ordeal of tea.

“Now you are going to help me, Mr. Western, aren’t you?”

She was a very large woman, a duchess of a woman, all black silk and white lace, and she had ideas about putting Tod at his ease. She sat at a wicker table with two big silver teapots and a crowd of cups in front of her, and all around him on other tables Tod saw a bewildering wealth of cakes, thin bread and butter in rolls, cucumber sandwiches, potted meat sandwiches, biscuits, little dishes of sweets, strawberries, cream pots, sugar bowls and plates.

“What’ll I do, please?”

“If you will hand round the tea-cups as I fill them, the maids will take round the sugar and milk.”

Tod disgraced himself over that tea. He spilt one of the cups over somebody’s dress and over his own flannel trousers, and ended by wishing that he was dead. He was glooming in the background, and contemplating making a bolt for it, when Miss Cragg swept in from somewhere and rescued him from himself.

“Do come and have some tea, Mr. Western.”

“I’m not at all hungry,” he said politely.

“But I am, and I haven’t had tea yet. Let’s get a little table all to ourselves and be greedy. Nearly all the other people have finished.”

Her frankness and her smiling brown eyes recovered the man in Tod. She was a dark girl of about five-and-twenty, neither pretty nor plain, the type of girl that is called a “good sort,” the girl whom no man marries. Moreover, she had a brain, and a pair of eyes that were learning to watch life with a rather wistful shrewdness. She had begun to realise that she had no lure for the average men of her class, nor had they any very great attraction for her. They were so obvious, and so very complacent, and so up-to-date and cheap. They had all the tricks and catchwords of the season. The weather was always “top hole” or “the limit”; “priceless” was the adjective in vogue for the moment and it was applied to everything, frocks, plays, flirtations, boots and drinks. If you were keen on tennis or golf you were a “tennis merchant” or a “golf merchant.” Everything that was unpleasant was “rotten.” Bertha Cragg had been listening for a new and original note from some unconventional male.

Tod had appealed to her. He was shy and unhappy, and there were possibilities about him that were lacking in the more complacent young men as exemplified by her brother. Bertha had a secret contempt for her brother, that infallible young man whose greatest joy was to create an impression.

“You haven’t had a game yet, have you?”

“No,” said Tod, “I can’t play tennis.”

“Let’s take this table. You’d soon learn; you are good at games. I remember seeing you play football last winter.”

Tod blushed.

“Did you?”

“You saved the match for Shaston. Yes, let’s have some of these mixed cakes, and we’ll take a teapot all to ourselves.”

Tod lost much of his palsied shyness. This girl was restoring his self-respect; she had seen him do something finely and well, and she did not make him feel a consummate and ignorant ass. He liked her frank brown eyes, and her broad white teeth when she smiled, and that simple white dress of hers. She was not so terribly fluffy and ornate as a lot of those other women.

“Do you like games?”

“I like anything that’s natural.”

“So do I,” said Tod; “I like my swim each morning, especially when it’s a bit rough. You feel you have beaten something.”

“I know just how you feel.”

Tod accepted her goodwill in the frank way that it was given. He was grateful to Bertha Cragg, nor did the vanity of the self-pleased young male suggest that the girl was “making up to him.” Tod was not fashioned in that way. In half an hour he was talking to her without any trace of self-consciousness, and towards the end of the afternoon he was playing tennis as her partner, and getting the feel of his racket with the natural quickness of a boy who had always been good at games.

They combined so well, and grew so merry and light-hearted over it that Tod managed to forget the incident of the tea-cup and the brown stains on his flannel trousers. And Bertha Cragg was kind to him with a new and subtle motherliness that was very pleasant to a rather plain girl of five-and-twenty. She liked Tod. The woman in her liked him very much indeed.

Her brother blundered against her at the close of the afternoon. “Thanks for looking after the kid, B. He was making rather an ass of himself. One can’t always be running round can one?”

Bertha Cragg bent down and retied her shoe lace.

“He was shy, that’s all. You are never shy, Fred.”

“Can’t say I ever felt that way.”

“Yes, it’s rather a pity.”