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Updated: June 12, 2025
After dinner, and wine, both of which, by their surprising and indeed unique excellence, fostered the prestige of Stifford as an authority upon hotels, Edwin was conscious of new strength and cheerfulness.
He sat in front of the fire, in the easy chair that had been his father's favourite. On his left hand were an accumulation of newspapers and a book; on his right, some business letters and documents left by the assiduous Stifford after a visit of sympathy and of affairs. The declining sun shone with weak goodwill on the garden. "Please, sir, there's a lady," said the servant, opening the door.
And he would completely give up the sale and delivery of newspapers and weeklies, and would train the paper-boy to the shop, and put Stifford in his own place and perhaps get another clerk. It struck him hopefully that Stifford might go forth for orders. Assuredly he himself had not one quality of a commercial traveller. And, most inviting prospect of all, he would stock new books.
He knew beyond fear that "The Light of Asia" was not in stock. "Oh!" murmured Janet. "I think you said `The Light of Asia'?" "Yes. `The Light of Asia, by Edwin Arnold." Janet had a persuasive humane smile. Stifford was anxious to have the air of obliging this smile, and he turned round to examine a shelf of prize books behind him, well aware that "The Light of Asia" was not among them.
Stifford could hear. Any person who might chance to come into the shop would hear. But Darius cared neither for his own dignity nor for that of his son. He was in a passion.
The next fragment that he recollected was the last. She stood outside the door in her mackintosh. The rain had ceased. She was going. Behind them he could feel his father in the cubicle, and Stifford arranging the toilette of the shop for the night. "Please don't come out here," she enjoined, half in entreaty, half in command. Her solicitude thrilled him.
I might run down there for the week-end if I don't come back to-morrow. But you needn't say anything." "No, sir," Stifford had discreetly concurred in this suggestion. "They say there's really only one hotel in Brighton, sir the Royal Sussex. But I've never been there." Edwin had replied: "Not the Metropole, then?" "Oh no, sir!"
But at five minutes past twelve just before Stifford went out to his dinner Darius entered the ebonised cubicle, and said curtly to Edwin, who was writing there "Show me your book." This demand surprised Edwin. `His' book was the shop-sales book. He was responsible for it, and for the petty cash-book, and for the shop till.
Stifford had become a great and wonderful man, and Edwin's constant fear was that he might lose this indispensable prop to his business.
Stifford, as he gazed diffidently at this fashionable, superior, and yet exquisitely beseeching woman on the other side of the counter, was in a very unpleasant quandary. She had by her magic transformed him into a private individual, and he acutely wanted to earn that smile which she was giving him. But he could not.
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