As soon as Gerald entered the firm, the convulsion of death ran through
the old system. He had all his life been tortured by a furious and
destructive demon, which possessed him sometimes like an insanity. This
temper now entered like a virus into the firm, and there were cruel
eruptions. Terrible and inhuman were his examinations into every
detail; there was no privacy he would spare, no old sentiment but he
would turn it over. The old grey managers, the old grey clerks, the
doddering old pensioners, he looked at them, and removed them as so
much lumber. The whole concern seemed like a hospital of invalid
employees. He had no emotional qualms. He arranged what pensions were
necessary, he looked for efficient substitutes, and when these were
found, he substituted them for the old hands.
'I've a pitiful letter here from Letherington,' his father would say,
in a tone of deprecation and appeal. 'Don't you think the poor fellow
might keep on a little longer. I always fancied he did very well.' 'I've got a man in his place now, father. He'll be happier out of it,
believe me. You think his allowance is plenty, don't you?' 'It is not the allowance that he wants, poor man. He feels it very
much, that he is superannuated. Says he thought he had twenty more
years of work in him yet.' 'Not of this kind of work I want. He doesn't understand.' The father sighed. He wanted not to know any more. He believed the pits
would have to be overhauled if they were to go on working. And after
all, it would be worst in the long run for everybody, if they must
close down. So he could make no answer to the appeals of his old and
trusty servants, he could only repeat 'Gerald says.' So the father drew more and more out of the light. The whole frame of
the real life was broken for him. He had been right according to his
lights. And his lights had been those of the great religion. Yet they
seemed to have become obsolete, to be superseded in the world. He could
not understand. He only withdrew with his lights into an inner room,
into the silence. The beautiful candles of belief, that would not do to
light the world any more, they would still burn sweetly and
sufficiently in the inner room of his soul, and in the silence of his
retirement.
Gerald rushed into the reform of the firm, beginning with the office.
It was needful to economise severely, to make possible the great
alterations he must introduce.