Free Brown on Resolution by C S Forester Page A

which convention compelled him to wear—even Albert could appreciate the hideous incongruity of a bowler hat on a fourteen-year-old head—and it was not until afterwards that he realized how much he detested everything connected with an office boy’s life. He left home (he called Mrs. Rodgers’s house ‘home’ still) at ten minutes to eight each morning, and he came back at half past six each night. He travelled on a tram to Blackfriars from Gamberwell Green and to Gamberwell Green from Blackfriars. He swept out the front office, he filled inkwells, he took messages (painfully learning his way about London in the process); he brought in cups of tea from the teashop next door (this was, of course, before the era of regular office teas); he copied letters; he was slightly initiated into the beginnings of book-keeping, he experienced the incredible boredom and occasional fierce spasms of work which everyone in an office experiences. And since ordinary diligence was habitual to him, and honesty was part of his mental content, and he had brains of a quite good average order, he was looked upon with approving eyes by the powers that were, and after six months his wages were raised from five shillings a week to seven and sixpence. This official recognition gave him no thrill of pride or pleasure; office life was a mere marking time before he took the tremendous stride towards the goal he not merely desired, but considered necessary and inevitable. The time came at length for him to take it.
    When Albert Brown was fifteen years and three months old all but one week he approached the chief clerk and gave him the week’s notice which the law demanded. The chief clerk looked Albert up and down and whistled softly in surprise. He remembered painful experiences with other office boys, Albert’s predecessors, who were one and all slack and unpunctual and dishonest and given to lying and who were intolerable nuisances to every one. He contemplated with dismay a renewal of these experiences and all the bothersome inconveniences of having to train another boy. He realized that stock-taking, the quarterly upheaval, was nearly due, and that Albert’s absence would be really tiresome.
    “What in hell do you want to leave for?” he demanded. “Or are you just playing up for another rise?”
    “Don’t want a rise,” said Albert. “I only want to give notice.”
    “Got another job, I suppose?” said the chief clerk.
    “No,” said Albert.
    “Well, you are a looney,” decided the chief clerk. “You’re getting on well here. In another six months—or any day, in fact, you’ll be junior clerk here. Look at me . I was junior clerk here, once. What in the name of Jesus do you want to give notice for? Had a fortune left you?”
    “No,” said Albert.
    “Well, what are you going to do, then?”
    “I’m going to join the Navy,” said Albert.
    “Whe-e-e-ew,” said the chief clerk; he was certain now that Albert was crazy.
    The office entirely agreed with him. Only boys who were suffering from an overdose of penny dreadfuls would ever dream of leaving the sequestered calm of an office for the uncertain turbulence of a fighting service—and they would not do more than dream of it. As for acting upon the dream, throwing up a safe job for a trifling whim, that was sheer lunacy. The Junior Partner himself saw fit to emerge from his Olympian seclusion and to discuss the matter with this extraordinary office boy; there were almost tears in his eyes as he besought Albert to reconsider his decision; in the end he utterly broke down—broke down far enough, at any rate, to offer Albert yet another half-crown a week on to his princely salary if only he would stay on and not blast his career in this fashion. But even this mighty condescension and this magnificent temptation left Albert unmoved. He hardly noticed them, although the storm of incredulous astonishment his announcement raised (quite unexpectedly to him, for he considered it