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diff --git a/old/55288-0.txt b/old/55288-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 4b0017e..0000000 --- a/old/55288-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,10812 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Hepplestall's, by Harold Brighouse - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: Hepplestall's - -Author: Harold Brighouse - -Release Date: August 7, 2017 [EBook #55288] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEPPLESTALL'S *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - - - - - - - - -HEPPLESTALL’S - -By Harold Brighouse - -New York: Robert M. McBride & Company - -1922 - - -[Illustration: 0001] - - -[Illustration: 0009] - - - - -FOREWORD - -RUMMAGING at a bargain-counter, I came across an object which puzzled -me, and, turning to the shopman, I asked him what it was. He took it up -contemptuously. “That,” he said. “Dear me, I thought I’d put it in the -dust-bin. It’s fit for nothing but destruction.” - -“And you call it?” I persisted. “I call it by its name,” he said. “It’s -an outworn passion, and a pretty frayed one too. Look at that!” - -I watched him pull gently at the passion and it came apart like mildewed -fabric. “There’s no interest in that,” he said. “That never led to a -murder or a divorce, a feeble fellow like that. If it ever got as far as -the First Offenders’ Court, I shall be surprised.” - -“Yet it looks old,” I said. “In its youth, perhaps--” - -He examined it more closely. “I don’t think it’s a love passion at all,” - he said, shaking his head. “My suppliers are getting very careless.” - -“You wouldn’t care to give me their address?” I coaxed. - -He threw the passion down angrily. “This is a shop,” he said. “I’m here -to sell, not to make presents of my trade secrets.” - -I apologized. “Of course,” I said, “I will always deal through you. And -as to this passion, what is the price of that?” - -“I’m an honest man and to tell you the truth I’d rather put that in the -dust-bin than sell it. It goes against the grain to be trading in goods -that I know won’t satisfy.” - -I said things such as that I would take the risk, that I would not hold -him responsible for any disappointment the passion might cause me and -I ended by offering him sixpence. So taken was he by the generosity of -this offer that he not only accepted it, but insisted on my taking, as -discount, a piece of newspaper which, he said, would serve very well to -wrap round the passion, pointing out, truthfully, that it was a cleanish -piece of paper, neither stained, by nor stinking of fried fish. - -So we struck that bargain, and leaving the shop, which I have never -found again, I carried the passion home and unwrapped it from the -paper and put it on the table in my study. After a time, when it was -accustomed to its new surroundings, it showed unmistakably that it -wished to be friendly with me. At its age, I gathered, and in its -outworn condition, it thought fit to be grateful to me for having -purchased it at so great a price. The shopman was right; it was not a -love passion, it was a hate passion, but superannuated now, and if I -cared to watch it carefully it promised that I should see from the first -all that happened: how this hate which was so very strong a hundred -years ago had died and was now turned to such corruption and kindliness -that, before it fell utterly to pieces, it was to show me its career. To -me it seems that the story of this hate falls, like the hymns, into two -parts, ancient and modern, and I think it properest to begin by telling -you the ancient part first. Hates that are to live a hundred years are -not born in a day, so I shall first tell you how Reuben Hepplestall -turned from petty squire to cotton manufacturing and you will see later -for yourselves why this hate began. - - - - -HEPPLESTALL’S - - - - -PART I - - - - -CHAPTER I--REUBEN’S SEAL - -EVEN to-day a man may be a Jacobite if he likes to be a Jacobite just -as he may read the Morning Post, and in the day when Reuben Hepplestall -was young there was a variety of reasons for being Jacobite, though -most of them were romantic and sentimental rather than practical or -good sense, and Hepplestall’s reason was rank absurdity because it was -absurdity unredeemed by conviction. He was Jacobite because Sir Harry -Whitworth was Hanoverian, from hatred of Sir Harry, not from love of the -Stuarts; but Hepplestall was young and as a general principle perversity -in youth is better than perversity in age, leaving the longer time for -correction. - -Certainly, Hepplestall’s was a risky game, which may have had -attractiveness for him. He was strong, even in perversity, and having -set his hand to the plow, did not rest until he found himself accepted -as a power in the inner councils of the local Jacobites; but there was -something nourishing to his self-importance in this furtive prominence -and he savored the hazards of it not only because it marked to himself -his difference from the hard drinking sportsmen of Sir Harry’s set, -but as a mental exercise. He took a gambler’s risk in a gambling age, -backing his vigilance against all comers, feeling that to touch the -fringe of intrigue lifted him above a society which exercised its gullet -more than its wits. His secret, especially a dangerous secret, flattered -lus sense of superiority. - -In sober fact young Hepplestall was intellectually superior to his -contemporaries and, aware of it, resented the deference they paid to -Sir Harry, the man of acres, the Beau, the Corinthian, the frequenter -of White’s and Almack’s, leader unchallenged of local society. By his -clandestine unorthodoxy, by his perpetual balancing on a tight-rope, he -expressed to himself his opposition to Sir Harry; and there was Dorothy -Verners, predestined in the eyes of the county for Sir Harry, waiting -only for a question which would have the force of a command. Reuben had, -in secret, his own idea of the future of Dorothy Verners. He aspired -where he knew himself fitted to aspire, but the county would have -dissolved in contemptuous guffaws at the thought of Reuben Hepplestall -in the character of rival to Sir Harry. He brooded darkly in rebellion, -outwardly accepting Whitworth’s social despotism, inwardly a choked -furnace of ambition. - -It was little Bantison who involuntarily played the god in the machine -and died that the Hepplestalls might be cotton lords in Lancashire. -Bantison was not prepossessing; a short man, gross of body with a face -like raw beef and hands offensively white, dressed in his clerical coat -on which spatters of snuff and stains of wine smirked like a blasphemy, -endowed with fine capacity for other people’s Burgundy and distinguished -by an eye that earned him, by reason rather of alertness than deformity, -the nickname of “Swivel-Eyed Jack.” Some vicars, like Goldsmith’s, were -content with forty pounds a year; the Reverend Mr. Bantison had that -limited stipend with unlimited desires, and contrived by the use of his -alert eye and the practice of discreet blackmail to lead a bachelor -life of reasonable amplitude. Not to be nice about the fellow, he was as -unprincipled a wolf as ever masqueraded in a sheepskin; but he is not to -infest this narrative for long. - -They were at table at Sir Harry Whitworth’s, who dined at six o’clock, -latish, as became a man of fashion. There was acquiescence in that -foible, but no imitation of a habit which was held to be an arbitrary -encroachment on the right to drink. The ladies had, in strict -moderation, to be treated civilly--at any rate, the ladies had to -eat--so that Sir Harry’s guests rarely drew up to the mahogany for the -serious entertainment of the evening before eight o’clock, and a man of -a position less assured than his would have been suspected of meanness -and too great care for the contents of his cellar. But Whitworth was -Whitworth and they shrugged their shoulders. After all, with good will -and good liquor one can achieve geniality in an evening not beginning -(for serious purposes) until eight. - -The ladies dismissed to tea and to whatever insipid joys the -drawing-room might hold, the men addressed themselves with brisk -resolution to the task of doing noble justice to the best cellar in the -county. They were there, candidly and purposefully, to drink, and it was -never too late to mend sobriety, but under Sir Harry’s roof the process -had formality and the unbuttoned rusticity of native debauchery must be -disciplined to the restraint of ordered toasts. A pedantic host, this -young baronet, but his wines had quality, and they submitted with what -patience they could summon to his idiosyncrasy. There were no laggards -when Sir Harry bid them to his board. - -Ignoring the parson--which, mostly, was what parsons were for and -certainly made no breach of etiquette--Sir Harry himself gave the toast -of “The King” with a faintly challenging air habitual to him but démodé. -Lancashire sentiment had veered since the forty-five and there was now -no need, especially in Whitworth’s company, to emphasize a loyalty they -all shared. It was not a fervent loyalty and no one was expected to be -exuberant about the Hanoverians, but bygones were bygones, and one took -the court one found as one took the climate. - -But did one? Did every one? Did, in especial, Reuben Hepplestall, whom -Mr. Bantison watched so narrowly as he drank to the King? To Bantison -the enigmatic was a provocation and a hope and as a specialist in -enigmas he had his private notion that the whole of Hepplestall was -not apparent on the surface: he nursed suspicion, precious because -marketable if confirmed, that here was one who conserved the older -loyalty, and he watched as he had watched before. Finger-glasses were on -the table, but so crude a confession of faith as to pass his wine -over the water was neither expected nor forthcoming and Hepplest all’s -gesture, except that it repeated one which Bantison had noted mentally -when “The King” had been toasted on other occasions, was so nearly -imperceptible as to seem unlikely to have significance. But it was a -repetition, and did the repetition imply a ritual? It was improbable. -The risk was high, the gain non-existent, the defiance in such company -too blunt, the whole idea of expressing, however subtly, a rebellion -in a house of loyalists was unreasonable. Still, as Reuben raised his -glass, it hovered for an instant in the air, it made, ever so slightly, -a pause and (was it?) an obeisance which seemed directed to his, fob; -and when Mr. Bantison sat down he frowned meditatively at the pools -of mellow light reflected from the candles on the table and his face -puckered into evil wrinkles till he looked like an obscene animal -snarling to its spring; but that is only to say Mr. Bantison was -thinking unusually hard. - -He was thinking of young men, their follies, their unreasoning -audacities and how these things happened by the grace of Providence -to benefit their wise elders. His face at its best, when he was doing -something agreeable like savoring Burgundy or (if so innocent an action -is to be conceived of him) when he smelled a violet, was a mask of -malice; it was horrible now as he weighed his chances of dealing to -his profit with Reuben. Whether he was right or wrong in his particular -suspicion, there was plainly something of the exceptional about this -dark young man. Hepplestall, considered as prey, struck him as a tough, -tooth-breaking victim, and Mr. Bantison had not the least desire -to break his teeth. He decided not to hazard their soundness--their -whiteness was remarkable--upon what was still conjecture. He wanted many -things which money would buy, but an orange already in his blackmailing -grip was yielding good juice and every circumstance conspired with the -excellence of Sir Harry’s Burgundy to persuade him to delay. His needs -were not urgent. And yet, and yet-- - -But it wasn’t Bantison’s lucky night. As they sat down, Sir Harry cast -a host’s glance round the table in search of a subject with which to set -the conversational ball rolling again, and saw the spasm of malevolence -which marked Bantison’s face in the moment of irresolution. “I’gad,” - he cried to the table at large, “will you do me the favor to observe -Bantison? A gargoyle come to meat. If it isn’t the prettiest picture I -ever saw of devotion incarnate. Watch him meditating piety.” - -The company gave tongue obsequiously, ready in any case to dance when -Whitworth piped, doubly ready in the case where a parson was the butt. -Their mirth happened inopportunely for Bantison, proving at that crisis -of his indecision, a turning point. Left alone, he would have remained -passive: the taunt awoke aggression. - -“I crave your pardon, Sir Harry. I was in thought.” - -“The pangs of it gave your face a woundy twist. Out with the harvest of -it, man! A musing that gave you so much travail should shed new light on -the kingdom of heaven.” - -“I was thinking,” said Bantison, “of a kingdom more apocryphal; of the -kingdom of the Stuarts,” and his eye, called Swivel, fell accusingly on -Hepplestall. - -The attack was sudden, with the advantage of surprise, but in that -company of slow-moving brains, already dulled by wine, there was none -but Reuben who saw in Bantison’s allusion and Bantison’s quick-darting -eye an attack at all. So far, the affair was easy. “They have their -place,” said Reuben gravely, “in history.” - -“And--,” began Bantison combatively, but Sir Harry cut him short. “Drown -history,” he said, “and mend your thoughts, Bantison. A glass of wine -with you.” Aggression subsided in Bantison; he murmured, and felt, that -it was an honor to drink with Sir Harry. For the time, the incident was -closed. - -Reuben pondered the case of Mr. Bantison, worm or adder, and admitted -to disquiet. This devil of an unconsidered parson, this Swivel-Eyed Jack -who seemed good for nothing but to suck up nourishment, and to be the -target of contemptuous and contemptible wit, had got within his guard, -had plainly detected the meaning of the obscure ritual by which he -honored the king over the water and mentally snapped his fingers at Sir -Harry even while he dined with him. And Reuben Hepplestall did not mean -to forego that mental luxury of finger-snapping at Sir Harry. He damned -Sir Harry, but damned more heartily this unexpected impediment to the -damning of Sir Harry. And if Bantison showed resolution, so much the -worse for him; of the two it was certainly not Reuben Hepplestall who -was coming to shipwreck; and how much the worse it was for Bantison -depended exactly on that reverend gentleman’s movements. The first move, -at any rate, had been a foolish one: it had warned Reuben. - -The second move was still more foolish: really, Mr. Bantison’s career -as a blackmailer had lain in rosy places, and he grew careless through -success. Besides, since Sir Harry had silenced him, forgiven him, drunk -with him, Mr. Bantison, as blackmailer, was off duty and a man must have -some relaxation; but Burgundy plays the deuce with discretion and was, -all the time, brightening his wits in the same ratio as it made him -careless of Hepplestall’s resentment. An idea, that was not at all a -stupid idea, but in itself a dazzling idea, came into his mind, and the -glamor of it obscured any discretion the Burgundy might have left him. -Hanging from Hepplestall’s fob were several seals. They interested Mr. -Bantison. - -By this time not a few appreciators of the Whitworth cellar had slid -from their chairs to the floor, and there was nothing exceptional about -that. For what reason were their chairs so well designed, so strongly -made and yet so excellently balanced but that a man might slide gently -from them without the danger of a nasty jar to his chin as it hit the -table? Chairs beautiful, and--adapted to their users when to be drunk -without shame was a habit. Some one was on the floor by Hepplestall, -leaving a vacant chair. Bantison, obsessed by his idea, exaggerated -slightly a drunkenness by no means imaginary, lurched from his seat on -a mission of discovery and took the empty place by Hepplestall. “What’s -the hour?” he asked. - -Hepplestall gave him his shoulder, glanced at the clock on the wall -behind him and stated the time. - -“You do not consult your watch,” said Bantison. - -“I have the habit,” said Hepplestall, “of doing things in my own way,” - and a soberer man than Bantison would have taken warning at his menace. -Mr. Bantison was either too far gone to recognize the mettle of his -adversary or else he was merely vinous and reckless. With his notable -eye on the seal which he suspected (rightly) to be, in fact, a phial -containing water, he made a bold snatch at Hepplestall’s fob. - -Sir Harry, comparatively sober, no partisan of Hep-plestall’s, but -certainly none of the vicar’s, saw the snatch and rose with a “Good -God, has Bantison taken to picking pockets?” but there was, even at that -demonstration, nothing like a sensation in the room; they were neutrally -ready to acquiesce in picking pockets, in an outraged host, in anything. -They were country gentlemen late in the evening. - -The snatch, ill-timed, had failed of its objective. Mr. Bantison clawed -thin air in ludicrous perplexity and Hep-plestall, assured by Sir -Harry’s gesture of his sympathy, took his opportunity. He rose, with his -hand down Bantison’s neck, clutching cravat, coat, all that there was to -clutch, and with a polite: “You permit?” and a bow to Whitworth, carried -the parson one-handed to the window. Bantison choked speechlessly, -imprecations and accusations alike smothered by the taut neck-band round -his throat. Hepplestall opened the window, breathing heavily, lifted the -writhing sinner and dropped him through it. - -“And that’s the end of him,” commented Sir Harry, more truly than he -knew. “You’re in fine condition, sir. A glass of wine with you.” - - - - -CHAPTER II--SMOKED HERRING - -THAT night ended, as the nights of such gatherings were wont to -end, with some safely, others precariously horsed, others bundled -unceremoniously by Sir Harry’s servants into coaches where their wives -received them without disapproval, and the rest accommodated on the -premises. The absence of Mr. Bantison escaped their notice. - -The Reverend and unregretted Bantison was absent from the leave-taking -because he had already taken leave. Mr. Bantison was dead. To the sorrow -of none, and the satisfaction of a few who had paid forced tribute to -the observation of his eye, Mr. Bantison was dead. It was agreed at the -breakfast table that he died of apoplexy and a very probable end too, -though not strictly in accordance with the evidence. Apoplexy implies -a spontaneity of termination, and Mr. Bantison’s end had lacked -spontaneity. - -They were all very heartily cynical about it, taking their formidable -breakfast at Sir Harry’s, and no one more cynical than Whitworth. A -parson more or less, what did it matter? There was none of that overnice -regard for the sanctity of human life characteristic of the late -nineteenth century, to which the early twentieth brought so drastic a -corrective; but though they agreed on their collective attitude, there -was nothing to prevent stray recollections coming to mind and the facts -of the case were known to more than Whitworth and Hepple-stall. In -public, it was apoplexy; in the wrong privacy it was still apoplexy, but -in the right, there was censure of Hepplestall. True, the snuffing-out -of Bantison was no more reprehensible in itself than the crushing of a -gnat, but who knew that the habit of manslaughter, once acquired, might -not grow on a man? It wasn’t worse than gossip, and idle whisper, but -the whisper reached Hepplestall and he felt that it was not good for -the man who hoped to marry Dorothy Verners to be the subject of gossip, -however quiet. The gossip was more humorous than malicious, and it was -confined to a circle, but that circle was the one which mattered and -Reuben felt that in his rivalry with Whitworth he had suffered a rebuff -through the death of Mr. Bantison. And there was that matter of the -Stuarts. “Curse the Stuarts” was his feeling now towards that charming -race; he saw them, with complete injustice, as first cause of -his eclipse. Besides, if Bantison had detected him, there was the -possibility of other open eyes. Altogether, the symbol of his defiance -of Sir Harry seemed ill-chosen and the sooner he changed it the better. -Something, he decided, was urgently required, not to silence chatter -(for chatter in itself was good, proclaiming him exceptional), but to -set tongues wagging so briskly with the new that they would forget to -wag about the old. He felt the need of something to play the part of -red herring across the trail, and his red herring took the sufficiently -surprising shape of a cotton-mill. - -It surprised and scandalized the landed gentry, his friends of -the Whitworth set, because the caste system was nearly watertight: -certainly, of the two chief divisions, the landowners and the rest, -Reuben belonged with the first, while cotton spinners were rated low -amongst the rest. They were traders, of course, and not, at that stage, -individually rich traders: the master spinners were spinners who had -been men and rose by their own efforts to the control of other men. -This was the pastoral age of cotton, going but not gone. It went, in -one sense, when they harnessed machinery to water-power, but isolated -factories on the banks of tumbling streams were related rather to the -old regime of the scattered cottage hand-spinner and hand-weaver than -to the coming era of the steam-made cotton town with its factories -concentrated on the coal-fields; and, in the eyes of the gentry, steam -was the infamy. - -In Reuben’s, steam was the ideal: he knew nothing about it, had hardly -heard of Arkwright or Hargreaves, Kay or Crompton who, amongst them, -made the water-power factory; and Watt of the practicable steam-engine, -Watt who gave us force and power, Watt the father of industrial -civilization, the inventor who was not responsible for the uses others -made of his inventions, so let us be equitable to his memory, let us -not talk of him as either the world’s greatest scapegoat or its most -fruitful accident--Watt was almost news to Reuben Hepplestall when he -met Martin Everett in Manchester. - -The meeting was fortuitous. Everett, an architect, one of Arkwright’s -men who had quarreled with him, was kicking his heels in the ante-room -of a Manchester lawyer’s office when Reuben was shown in. Certainly, -Reuben was not to be kept waiting by the lawyer as Everett, a suppliant, -an applicant for capital, was likely to wait, but the lawyer was engaged -and the two young men fell to talking. Everett, something of a fanatic -for steam, the new, the unorthodox, the insurgent challenge to the -landed men, at once struck fire on Hepplestall. He turned lecturer, -steam’s propagandist, condemning waterpower as an archaism, and when -Reuben admitted he had come to his lawyer for the very purpose of giving -instructions for the sale of land and the initiation of plans for -a factory on, he suggested, the banks of a river, Everett had small -difficulty in converting him to steam. - -“I meant to bury Bantison,” said Reuben. “Now we’ll boil him.” Everett -was puzzled. - -“You burn wood in your house, sir?” he asked. - -“And coal. Is it to the point?” - -“The coal is. You get it--where?” - -“There is a seam.” - -“Then that is the site of your factory.” - -“God!” said Hepplestall, “it will be a monstrous sight.” He spoke as if -that gladdened him. - -“The building, sir, will have dignity,” the architect reproved him. - -“Aye? But I’m thinking of the engine. The furnace. The coal. A red -herring? A smoked herring!” - -He relished the thought again. By steam (Lord, was he ever in the camp -of those fantastical reactionaries, the Jacobites?), by steam he would -symbolize his opposition to Whitworth and the Bloods. He was going into -trade and so would be, anyhow, ostracized, but more than that, into -steam, gambling on the new, the hardly tried, the strange power that the -Bloods had only heard of to deride it; going into it blindly, on general -hearsay, and the particular _ipse dixit_ of a young enthusiast who might -be (except that Reuben trusted his insight and knew better) a charlatan -or a deluded fool; and for Reuben there was the attraction of taking -chances, of the impudent, audacious challenge to fortune and to the -outraged Bloods. - -“Do you know, Everett,” he said, “a man might turn atheist expecting -less stricture than I expect who make the leap from land to steam.” It -came into his mind that Dorothy Verners was further off than ever -now. “Everett,” he said, “extremes meet. We’ll call that factory the -‘Dorothy.’ Gad, if we win! If we win!” He gripped Martin’s hand with -agonizing strength and went into the lawyer’s room, leaving Everett to -wonder what sort of an eccentric he had hooked. - -The lawyer, who had been asked by letter to be prepared with advice, -found all that brushed curtly aside: he was to take instructions from a -client who knew what he wanted, not to minister to a mind in doubt, and -very definite and remarkable instructions he found them. “The whole of -your land to be sold, excepting where the presence of coal is, or will -be within a week, known? And all for a steam-driven factory! Sir, I -advised your father. I believe he trusted me. It is my duty to warn you -and--” - -“Thankee, sir,” Reuben interrupted him. “I may tell you I looked for -this from you, but I don’t appreciate it the less because I expected it. -You advised my father, you shall continue to advise me.” - -“That you may do the opposite?” - -“No. That when I go driving through new country I may have a brake on my -wheels.” - -“Well... am I to lock your wheels this time?” - -“I’m going driving,” said Reuben resolutely, “but you shall find me some -one to teach me to handle the reins. I must learn my trade, sir. Find -me some factory owner who will sell me his secrets cheap, near my -coal-lands if that’s possible, that I may watch Everett at work.” - -“If a Hepplestall condescends to trade,” said the lawyer without -conscious flattery, “he will be welcomed by the traders. There will be -no difficulty about that. Indeed you have one on your own land, Peter -Bradshaw, with a factory on a stream of yours and I believe he has both -spinning jennies and weaving-looms. Go and hear what Peter thinks of -steam.” - -“His disapproval will be a testimony to it. I’ll see Peter,” said -Reuben, and was away before the lawyer had opportunity to voice the -score of stock arguments that age keeps handy for the correction of -rash youth. He had then the more to say to Everett, the corrupter, -the begetter in Reuben of his mad passion for steam, and it’s little -satisfaction he got out of that. Young Everett was to realize a dream, -he was to be given, he thought, a free hand to build a steam-driven -factory as he thought a steam-driven factory ought to be built, and the -prudent lawyer’s arguments, accusations, menaces, were no more to him -than the murmurings a man hears in his sleep when what he sees is a -vision splendid: it was only some time afterwards that Everett woke up -to find in Hepplestall not the casual financier of his dream in stone, -but a highly informed, critical collaborator who tempered zeal for -steam with disciplined knowledge and contributed as usefully as Everett -himself to make the “Dorothy” the finest instrument of its day for the -manufacture of cotton. - -He got the knowledge chiefly from Bradshaw, partly from others who had -carried manufacture beyond the narrow methods of Bradshaw’s water-wheel. -It lay, this primitive factory, in a gentle valley amongst rounded hills -of gritstone and limestone: a chilly country, lacking the warmth of the -red earth of the South, backward in agriculture, nourishing more oats -than wheat and, in the bleak uplands, incapable of tillage. Coarse grass -fought there with heather, but if there was little color on the moors -save when the heather flowered in royal purple and the gorse hung out -its flame, there was rich green in the valleys and the polish of a humid -atmosphere on healthy trees. A spacious rolling country, swelling to -hills which, never spectacular, were still considerable: a clean country -of wide views and lambent distances in those days before the black smoke -came and seared. - -Not many miles away, sheltered amongst old elms, was Hepplestall’s own -house; above it the hill known to be coal-bearing, where Everett was -to build, on the hill top, the steam-driven factory, a beacon and -a challenge to the old order. So, aptly to Reuben’s purpose, lay -Bradshaw’s factory and house, the two in one and the whole as little -intrusive on the scene as a farmhouse. - -When he came in that first day, Peter was in the factory and if -Reuben had had any doubts of making this the headquarters of his -apprenticeship, the sight of Phoebe Bradshaw would have removed them. -To one man the finest scenery is improved by a first-class hotel in the -foreground; to another, a stiff task is made tolerable by the presence, -in his background, of a pretty woman. Phoebe had prettiness in her -linsey-woolsey gown with the cotton print handkerchief about her -shoulders; she was small and she was soft of feature. You could not -look at her face and say, of this feature or of that, that it had -shapeliness, but in a sort of gentle improvisation, she had her placid -charm. She sat at needlework, at something obscurely useful, but her -pose, as he entered, was that of a lady at leisure, amusing herself with -the counterfeit of toil. - -Bradshaw’s daughter, had Bradshaw not thrived and lifted himself out of -the class of the employed, would have been in the factory, at work like -the other girls; but she aspired to ladyhood and, fondly, he abetted -her. He was on the up-grade, and let the fact be manifest in the -gentility of his daughter! There was pride in it, and somehow there -was the payment of a debt due to her dead mother who had worked at home -spinning while Peter wove the yarn she spun in a simpler day than this. -What the late Mrs. Bradshaw would have thought of a daughter who aped -the fine lady, or of a father who encouraged her, is not to the point: -Peter idolized Phoebe, and she sat in his house to figure for Reuben as -an unforeseen mitigation in his job of learning manufacture. - -He proceeded to address himself with gallantry to the pleasing -mitigation. She rose, impressed, at the coming to that house of an -authentic Olympian. “Pray be seated, Miss Bradshaw,” he said. “For it -_is_ Miss Bradshaw?” he added, implying surprise to find her what she -was. - -“I am Phoebe Bradshaw,” she told him. “You would see my father? He is in -the factory. Will you not sit while I go and call him?” - -For a man intent upon stern purpose, Reuben felt remarkably unhurried. -“My business can wait,” he said, gesturing her again to her chair. “It -has no such urgency that you need disturb yourself for me and turn a -lady into a message-bearer.” He noted the quick flush of pleasure which -rose to her cheeks on the word “lady.” - -“Indeed,” he went on, “I find myself blame-worthy and unaccountably a -laggard that this is the first time I have made your acquaintance.” - -“Oh! I... I am not much in the world, sir.” - -“The world is the loser, Miss Bradshaw. But it is not too late to find -a remedy for that. They tell us the North is poor soil for flowers and -with an answer like you to their lies it would be criminal to hide it.” - -Crude flattery, but it hit the target. “I? A flower? Oh, sir--” - -“Why call me sir? If you were what--well, to be frank, what I expected -to find you, a spinner’s wench, no more than that, why then your sirring -me would be justifiable. There are social laws. I don’t deny it.” - -“We have no position,” she assented. - -“What’s position when there’s beauty? You have that which cuts across -the laws. Beauty, and not rustic beauty either, but beauty that’s been -worked on and refined... I go too fast, I say too much. Excuse a man in -the heat of making a discovery for being frank about what he’s found and -forget my frankness and forgive it. I spoke only to convince you that a -‘sir’ from you to me is to reverse the verities.” - -“But you are Mr. Hepplestall?” - -“Then call me so. I mount no pedestal for you.” Then Peter came in, and -Hepplestall retired his thoughts of Phoebe to some secondary brain-cell -that lay becomingly remote from Dorothy Verners and from his immediate -plan of picking up knowledge from Peter. The lawyer had been right: -there was no question of Peter’s setting a price upon his trade secrets, -he was ravished by the interest his ground-landlord was pleased to -take in his little factory and if he was puzzled to find Hepplestall -intelligent and searching in his questions, there was none more pleased -than Peter to answer with painstaking elaboration. Once Reuben asked, -“Are there not factories driven by steam?” - -And Peter was wonderfully shrewd. “There are fools in every trade,” he -said, “hotheads that let wild fancies carry off their commonsense.” - -“Steam is a fancy, then? It does not work?” - -“I have never seen it work,” said Peter, which was true; but he had -not gone to look as, presently, Reuben went, sucking up experience -everywhere with a bee-like industry. Meantime, he astonished Peter by -proposing himself as paying guest while he worked side by side with the -men and women in the factory. - -“I have the whim,” said Reuben and saw astonishment fade from Peter’s -face. They had their whims, these gentry, and indulged them, and if -Hepplestall’s was the eccentric one of wishing to experience in his own -person the life of a factory hand, why, it wasn’t for Bradshaw to oppose -him. And Peter smiled aside when Reuben said that he would try it for a -week. A week! A day of such toil would cure any fine gentleman of such a -caprice. But Peter was to be surprised again, he was to find Reuben not -tiring in a day, nor in a week, not to be tempted from the factory even -by a cock-fight to which Peter and half his men went as a matter of -course, dropping the discipline of hours and forgetting in a common -sportsmanship that they ranked as master and man--oh, those gentler -days before the Frankenstein, machinery, quite gobbled up man who made -him!--but as time went on, still, after three months, working as spinner -at Peter’s water-driven jennies and becoming as highly skilled as -any man about the place. Even when the truth was out, when most of -Hepplestall’s acres had gone to the hammer, and one could see from -Bradshaw’s window the nascent walls of Reuben’s factory, Peter was still -obtuse, still happy at the thought of the honor done to cotton by the -Olympian, still blind to the implications of the coming into spinning, -so near to him, of a capitalist on the greater scale. He was to be cured -of that blindness, but what, even if he had foreseen the future from -the beginning, could he have done? In the matter of Phoebe, no doubt, he -could have acted, he could have sent her away; but Hepplestall in other -matters was not so much mere man as the representative of steam. What -could he have done to counter steam? Bradshaw was doomed and steam was -his undoing, and, though the particular instrument, Hepplestall, was to -have, for him, a peculiar malignancy, the seeds of his ruin were sown in -his own obstinate conservatism. He had seen visions of a great progress -when water-power superseded arm-power, but his vision stopped short of -steam. Peter was growing old. - - - - -CHAPTER III--PHOEBE BRADSHAW - -IF Hepplestall calculated much, which is a damnable vice in youth, it -is possibly some consolation to know that he miscalculated the effect -upon the county of his plunge, for at this stage his eclipse was -total and he had not anticipated that. They did not forget Bantison -in remembering the rising walls of his factory, and still less in the -thought that Reuben who had sat at their tables was working with his -hands as a spinner. They added offense to offense; if he was seen he was -cut; and their chatter reached him even at Bradshaw’s where, as he knew -very well, gentry talk must be loud indeed to penetrate. - -He had overestimated his strength to resist public opinion. He was a -proud man and he was outcast and, set himself as he did with ferocious -energy to his task, he fell short of forgetfulness. Dorothy Verners was -at the end of a stony, tortuous road; it would be, at the best, a long -time before he reached the end of that road and the chances that she -would still be there, that Whitworth, carelessly secure as he was, would -wait long enough to leave her there for Hepplestall, seemed to him, in -these days of despondency, too remote for reason. He would never bridge -the gulf in time and his patience ebbed away. Not that he ever doubted -that, in the end, in money, position, reputation, he would outdistance -Whitworth, but Dorothy Verners, as a symbol of his ascendancy, was -dwindling to the diminished status of an ambition now seen to be too -sanguine. He had not realized how much he would be irked by the contempt -of the county. If, at the end of all, he had them at his feet! Aye, -so he would, but wouldn’t it be more humbling for them if they came -licking, along with his, the feet of a wife of his who was not of their -order? Wouldn’t he so triumph the more exultantly? He argued the case -against his first intentions, seeking justification for falling honestly -in love with Phoebe Bradshaw. - -Honest love was, at first, very far from his purpose. A gentleman didn’t -seduce his host’s daughter, but that rule of conduct postulated that -the host be equally a gentleman and Bradshaw seemed, when Reuben came, -un-fathomably his inferior, and Bradshaw’s daughter, for all her airs, -the sort of flower hung by the roadside to be plucked by any grand -seigneur. Nor did he ever, at the back of his mind, move far from that -attitude. His tolerant association with these people was an immense -condescension, justified only by ulterior purpose. But if marriage with -Phoebe fitted his purpose, as in his first reaction from the disdain -of the county it seemed to do, why, then, though he never thought of -himself as belonging with the manufacturers, it might in the long run -prove a famous score against the county. - -Phoebe had advantages. She was at hand, he saw her every day at meals -and was ready to believe that she revealed every day some new, shy -prettiness, she was tractable, malleable in the future and his without -effort in the present, and it was comforting to think of her softness -when all his else was harsh endeavor and wounded pride and a long stern -struggle to success. While Dorothy Verners was of the struggle, yet -a man must relax sometimes, as Mr. Bantison had thought when he put -Burgundy before the discretion which becomes a blackmailer. Reuben -chewed upon it, not reconciled to surrendering Dorothy, not quite -convinced by the most convincing of arguments he addressed to himself, -unwilling, even if they had convinced, to let go any part of his full -scheme, but inclining, feeling himself a bit of a fool, a bit of an -apostate, and very much more a prodigy of generosity, to look upon -Phoebe as one whom he might make his wife. - -Thus (on the whole) well-intentioned towards her, he proposed one -summer’s morning to take her out walking, which was partly a gesture -addressed to his hesitations, and partly a deliberate means to a closer -acquaintance than he could compass indoors in the single living-room -where Peter hampered by too faithful attendance on his pupil. He -mentioned his wish, a little too grandly, a little too much like a royal -command. - -Phoebe had her wisdom and the weeks of their intercourse had rubbed away -the first bloom of his divinity: he ate like other mortals, and, like -the sort of mortals she despised in her pose of ladyhood, he labored -in the factory. She had conceived ambition which, as he seemed to level -himself down to her, looked not impossible to realize, if she sustained -in his eyes her quality of ladyhood. And to go out had its perils. She -flowered indoors and her little graces withered in the open air, when -she knew she reverted to type, walked freely with great strides and -swung across the moors like any weaver’s lass hurrying to work. These -things, she thought, were discounts off her value: but they might, just -possibly, be a winning card. They might announce that she had variety. - -“To walk,” she said, “with you?” - -“Oh, not too far for a lady,” he assured her, “and not too fast.” - -“You,” she retorted, “ride too much. I’ll walk you off your legs.” So -she challenged him, with wisdom. - -If they were to make a walking match of it, at least they were not to be -philanderers, they were not going out only as far as the first heather, -there to sit together in a solitude that might spell danger. And she -announced spirit to a man who would (she knew) appreciate it, she -declared that if her inches were few they had vigor, that if she had -ladyhood it was skin-deep, that she wasn’t a one-volume abridgment of -imbecility, not his for the beckoning; and she went defiantly, to put -on a bonnet and a shawl which would have been a violent and successful -assault on any complexion less admirable than hers. She was, indeed, -playing her gambling card. - -And, to his surprise, he liked it. This, if it were not mere flicker, if -it were not instinctive counterfeiting of a feminine move in a -sex-game, was a spirit which would serve her well, and him too, in the -drawing-rooms of the county in the future he was contemplating for them -both. Wasn’t it fact that my Lord Montacute had married his cook and -that she had made him a notable Lady? And he wasn’t a lord nor Phoebe a -cook. - -Small Phoebe kept her promise, too. She came of hardy stock, and she -hadn’t spent the day, as he had, standing at a spinning-jenny. He had to -cry her mercy, flinging himself exhausted on the heather. - -“I said you ride too much,” she exulted, secure that he did not feign -fatigue, standing over him while the blood raced happily through -tingling limbs. - -“And you,” he retorted, “too little.” - -“I? I do not ride at all. You know we have no horses.” - -“It will be necessary for you to ride,” he said. - -“Why so?” she asked him. “Haven’t I proved that I can walk?” - -“Still,” he said, “I shall have horses brought tomorrow. Will you have -me for riding master?” - -“To ride I should need a habit.” - -“Which I provide.” - -She held her breath. For what was it “necessary” for her to ride if not -that he was thinking of a future for her that jumped giddily with her -ambition? Still, she kept her head; still, she sensed the value of -offering this man persistent opposition, and all she said was “Are you -rested now?” - -He rose, to find himself aware of strange tremblings, not to be -accounted for by tiredness, of a dampness on his brow, and, when he -spoke, of a thickened voice. “You shall have the habit to-morrow,” he -promised her. - -“They burned warlocks once,” she mocked him. A warlock is a wizard. -“Habits do not come in a day except by magic.” - -“Yours will come by road, from Manchester. I ride in for it to-morrow.” - -“Neglecting your work?” - -“I choose my work,” he said, and strode off, leaving her to follow as -she might, but if he thought to outdistance her, he reckoned without -the grit of Phoebe. As a lady, he could find a dozen chinks a day in her -Brummagen armor; as a country lass she had a native energy that all her -vanities left unimpaired, and set what hot pace he could, she kept level -with him like a taunt which refuses to stop ringing in a man’s ears. If -this was a duel, Phoebe was scoring winning points that night. “But a -horse will test your mettle, my wench,” he was thinking savagely, and -with relief that the idea of a horse had come to him. - -“When I go driving through new country,” he had told the lawyer, “I like -a brake on my wheels,” and he was feeling very urgently the need of -a brake on his wheels in the new country through which he suddenly -discovered himself to be driving now. He put it to himself in phrases -that may or may not be paradoxical. - -“Damn her, I love her,” he said aloud as he undressed that night. - -Phoebe, in her room across the passage, mingled fear with triumph. -If one is not born to horses, horses terrify. In that, more than in -anything else, lay the difference between Phoebe’s world and Reuben’s. -If her ladyhood was pretentious and calculated instead of instinctive, -well, theirs did not go very deep either. There was culture in that -age, but not, extensively, in Lancashire. Culture hugged the capital, -throwing outposts in the great houses of the Home Counties. In -Manchester itself there were bookish people, but in the county sport -was the touchstone, and if horsemanship in the skilled sense was not -expected of a woman, she must at any rate be not shy of a horse. It was -almost the test of gentry. - -When the thought came to him as he panted on the heather it had not, -indeed, been as a test of her quality. At first, he was more generous -than that. To be his wife, she must ride; she did not ride; and he must -teach her. Only later did he see it as a trial of her fitness, as she, -at once, saw it, gathering courage for an ordeal. If she must ride to -win this husband, then, cost what it might, she would ride. - -He kept his word, taking for the first time a full day off from his -education as a spinner, demanded measurements of her at breakfast, rode -with them into Manchester, was back by early evening with a habit -and, from his stables, a horse used to a side-saddle: doing all with -characteristic concentration of energy that brooked no opposition from -any such bombastical pleader for delay as the outraged habit-maker. - -Hepplestall commanded, and Hepplestall received. - -There are degrees in habits? Then this was a habit of high degree. -Whether it was a lover’s free-handed gift or the circumstance of a trial -by ordeal, it was the best it could be, and Phoebe’s prettiness was -equal to it. Indeed, she trended by choice to a fluffiness of dress and -a cheapness in taste that Reuben, who was not fastidious, had not failed -to note. You have seen, perhaps, a modern hospital nurse in uniform and -the same nurse in mufti? That was the difference between Phoebe in her -habit and Phoebe as he had seen her hitherto. More than ever, he felt -conviction that no ill-judged passion was leading him astray, that here, -when good dressmakers had clothed her, was his match and the match for -the county. He tried to be skeptical, to criticize, and found, at the -end of a scrutiny too frank to be well-mannered, that there was nothing -here to criticize. - -She smiled, bravely, aware from her glass that what he saw was good, -aware that he could not see how big a thing her horse appeared to her, -how far above the ground the saddle was, how shrunken small she felt. -But it was consoling to know that if she was going to break her neck, -she was to do it in the finest clothes she had ever worn. His look of -candid admiration was a tonic. - -“This is your horse,” he said. “We called him Hector.” She made -Hector’s acquaintance prettily, but, plainly, she missed his point, and -he made it more definitely. “Of course, you may rename him now that he -is your own.” - -“Mine? My horse? But, Mr. Hepplestall--” - -“Have you your salts?” he asked, cutting short her cry of surprise. A -horse more or less, he would have her think, was triviality when Reuben -Hepplestall was in the mood to give. - -“Salts?” she repeated, puzzled. - -“In case you swoon,” he said gravely, and not ironically either. It was -the swooning age. - -But not for Phoebe. Did ladies swoon at a first riding-lesson? She -doubted it: they took that lesson young, as children, in the years -before they were modish and swooning, and, in any case, it wasn’t her -ladyhood that was in question now; it was her courage. “I shall not -swoon,” she said, and he relished the bravado of it. - -Spirit? Aye, she had spirit to be wife of his, and it behoved him not to -break it. If he had had thoughts, brutally, of making this test of -her as harsh as he could, that was all altered now by the sight of -her adorning the habit instead of overwhelmed by it, caressing Hector -instead of shrinking from him, and he saw tenderness as the prime virtue -of a riding-master. She wasn’t going to take a fall if he could prevent -it. - -Between them, between Reuben and Hector, a sober animal who had carried -Reuben’s mother and hadn’t forgotten his manners in the years since her -death, and between these two and Phoebe’s pluck, they managed a lesson -which gave her confidence for later lessons when the instructor’s mood -was less indulgent. Reuben hadn’t tenderness as a habit. Neither had -she very staunchly the habit of courage, but all the courage she had was -wrought up for these occasions and, thanks to the sobriety of the good -Hector, it served. She took a toss one day, but fell softly into heather -and rose smiling before he had leaped to the ground. His last doubts -that he loved her fled when she smiled that day. “’Fore Gad,” he cried, -“you’re thoroughbred.” It was the sweetest praise. - -That was a moment of supreme exaltation, but, all the time, Phoebe was -living now in upper air. For her, manifestly and openly for her, he was -neglecting what had seemed the only thing he lived for; he spent long -days riding with Phoebe instead of laboring to learn in the factory. -Once or twice when he had the opportunity of inspecting some -steam-driven works not too remote, he took her with him, leaving her in -state obsequiously served in an inn while he studied the engine-house -and the driving bands and the power-looms of the factory, refusing the -manufacturer’s invitation to dinner and offending a host to come back -where she waited for him at the inn. Peter might croak, and Peter did -croak like any raven and shake his head, and Peter was told he was -old-fashioned, and was put in his place as parents have always been -put in their place when young love takes the bit between its teeth. -Hepplestall, and his lass? It was a piece of luck too rare to be true. -He prophesied sad fate for her, he wished she had a mother--men are -handicapped--he spoke of sending for her aunt: all the time, too -overawed by Hepplestall’s significance to be more effective as an -obstacle than a cork bobbing on the surface of a flood. Protest to -Reuben himself, or even appeal, was sheer impossibility for Bradshaw, -who was almost feudal in his subservience to gentry. He saw danger, -warned Phoebe, was laughed at for his pains and turned fatalist. Phoebe -cared for neither his spoken forebodings nor his morose resignation. -Phoebe was happy, she tasted victory, she was sure of Reuben now and so -sure that she began to look beyond the fact that she had got him and was -holding him, she began to concede herself the luxury of loving him. - -Phoebe was a sprinter, capable of effort if the effort need not be -sustained. She had attracted Reuben, and in the doing it had submitted -to severe self-discipline, to a vigilance and a courage which went -beyond those of the normal Phoebe. Accomplishment went to her head like -wine; she wasn’t prudent Phoebe on a day when, as their horses were at -the door, a message came from Everett asking Reuben to go at once to -discuss some detail of equipment of the now nearly completed factory. -She wasn’t prudent or she would never have taken such an occasion to -plead that he had promised her that day for riding. She knew what his -factory meant to him, knew, too, how jealous he was of his hard-won -knowledge, how keen to match it against Everett’s older experience; -yet she asked him to imply, by keeping a promise to ride, that she came -before the factory. And he loved her. Whatever the depth of his love, -whatever the chances that this was the love that lasts, he loved her -then. “Tell Mr. Everett,” he said to the messenger, “that I authorize -him to use his own judgment.” - -Which Everett very gladly did, promptly and, he thought, irremediably. -It was a point on which he had his own ideas, differing from Reuben’s, -and carte blanche at this stage, after the endless controversies, of -Reuben’s obstinate collaboration, was a godsend that Everett wasn’t -going to throw away by being dilatory. - -It resulted that when Reuben next visited the works, he was confronted -by a _fait accompli_, and by Everett’s hardly concealed smirk of glee. -“The thing, as you see, is done now. I had your authority to do as I -thought best,” said Everett. - -“Then undo and re-do,” said Reuben, sourly. - -“Pull down!” gasped Everett. “But--” - -“You heard me,” growled Reuben, turning on his heel from a disgruntled -architect who had been too previous with self-congratulations on getting -his own way for once. - -And Phoebe was triumphing at home, secure of her Reuben, in ecstasy at -her tested power over him. - -Reuben, too, was thinking of that power, of how he had yielded to it, of -Samson and Delilah and of the dry-rot that sets in in a man’s strength -when he delivers his will into a woman’s keeping. It was a dark, -inscrutable Reuben who came home that night to Bradshaw’s; beyond -Phoebe’s skill to smooth away the irritation furrows from that brow. She -used her artless remedy; she fed him well, and persuaded herself that -no more was wrong than that he came in hungry. He was watching her that -night with critical eyes and she was aware of nothing but that his gaze -never left her: its fidelity rejoiced her. - -He flung himself vigorously at work, after that. There was woman, a -snare, and work, the sane alternative, there was the zest of it, the -mere exercise of it to sweat evil humors out of a man. By now he knew -all that Bradshaw’s factory could teach him, and, by his inspections of -modern factories, much more; but his own place was not quite ready, his -organization was complete on paper and till the day came for applying -his knowledge, time had to be filled somehow and as well at Bradshaw’s -as anywhere else. Phoebe found herself neglected. He did not ride, or, -if he did, it was alone. It came to her that she had made too sure of -him; he hadn’t mentioned marriage, he was drifting from her. What could -she do to bind him to her? - -Then he relented. She was suffering and he thought, in a tender mood, -that it hurt him to see her suffer. Wasn’t he making a mountain of a -molehill, wasn’t he unjust to blame her for the consequences of his -weakness? He was a most chivalrous gentleman when he next invited her -to ride with him, and she accepted, meekly. There lay the difference -between the then and the now. Then they were comrades, now he -condescended and he did not know it. But it was still his thought that -Phoebe was to be his wife, and in the comfortable glow of forgiveness, -in horse-exercise on a pleasant afternoon with one whose complexion was -proof against any high light, who was a plucky rider and his accustomed -fellow on these rides, they achieved again a genuine companionship. -His doubts and her fears alike dissolved in what seemed the mellowed -infallibility of that perfect afternoon. - -Two other riders came in sight, meeting them, along the road--a lady, -followed by her groom. Dorothy Verners sitting her horse as if she had -been cradled on it, straight, tall Dorothy whose beauty was so different -from Phoebe’s soft prettiness. Dorothy had beauty like a birthright. She -came of generations of women whose first duty was to be admirable, who -had, as it were, experimented long ago with beauty and had fixed its -lines for their successors. Where Phoebe suggested a hasty improvisation -of comeliness, where, in her, comeliness was unexpected and almost an -impertinence, in Dorothy it was authentic and assured. - -Had Reuben, seeing Phoebe in the magic vision of his love, called her -a thoroughbred because she took a fall without blubbering? It was -a compliment, and he had meant it. He had meant it because she had, -surprisingly, not flinched. But of the real thoroughbreds, of those who -were, without compliment, thoroughbred, one would take for granted that -they did not flinch and the surprise would be not that they did not -flinch, but if they did. He had not been seeing Dorothy Verners lately; -he had been forgetting her authenticity; and he hadn’t the slightest -doubt, watching her approach, that he belonged with her order, that -he was an aristocrat who, if he stooped to trade, stooped only to rise -again. He saw himself through his own eyes. - -And Dorothy looked at him through hers, seeing a dark man, not -unhandsome, who was of good stock, but a nonentity until he had brought -unpleasant notoriety upon himself by too summary a method of dealing -with Mr. Bantison and, after that, had stepped down to association with -the manufacturers. No doubt it was a manufacturer’s daughter with whom -he took his ride. Some of them she had heard, upstarts, did ride. A -man who had lost caste, a man to be ignored. Would it hurt him to be, -emphatically, ignored by her? He deserved to be hurt, but probably his -skin was thick and, in any case, why was she wasting thought on him? He -was cut by the county: she had not to create a precedent. She did what -she knew others did. She cut him dead, and it came, unreasonably, as a -shock to Hepplestall. - -He was used to the cut direct, he didn’t even tighten his lips now when -one of his former acquaintance passed him by without a glance. But he -hadn’t anticipated this, he hadn’t included Dorothy, and her contempt -struck at him like a blow. It wasn’t what Dorothy stood for, it wasn’t -that she was the reigning toast, and that to carry her off was to have -been his splendid score off Whitworth. It was, simply, that she was the -one woman, and, yes, he admitted her right to be contemptuous; he had -permitted her to see him in demeaning company. He looked at Phoebe with -intolerable hatred in his eyes, he could have found satisfaction in -lashing her with his whip till he was exhausted. Well, he didn’t do -that. - -But Phoebe comprehended something of his thought. She tried--God knows -she tried--to win him back to her as they rode home. She chattered -gayly, keeping it up bravely while jealousy and fear gnawed her heart, -and Hepplestall stared glumly straight ahead with never a word for -Phoebe. Her words were like sea foam breaking idly on granite. - -Words didn’t do. Then, what would? Desperately, she came to her -decision. He was slipping from her, there was wreck, but there was -still the possibility of rescue. When she said “Good night,” there was -invitation in her eye; and something, not love, took him, later, across -the passage to her room. Phoebe’s last gambling card was played. - - - - -CHAPTER IV--ALMACK’S CLUB - -MR. LUKE VERNERS put on his boots in his lodging in Albemarle Street, -St. James, in a very evil mood. He was in London, and ordinarily liked -to be in London although it was a place where a man must remember his -manners, where he wasn’t a cock crowing on his dung-hill, but a mighty -small atom in a mighty big crowd; but London with his wife and his -daughter was a cruel paradox. Why the plague did a man cramp his legs -in a coach for all those miles from Lancashire to London if it wasn’t -to get away from wife and daughter? And here he was tied to the family -petticoats, in London. It was enough to put any man into bad temper. - -As a rule, Mr. Verners was a tolerant person. In a squat little volume -published in the year 1822 and called “A Man of the World’s Dictionary,” - a Virtuous Man is defined as “a being almost imaginary. A name given -to him who has the art of concealing his vices and shutting his eyes to -those of others,” and so long as the vices of others did not interfere -with his own, and so long as the others were of his own order, Mr. -Verners was a candidate for virtue, under this definition. But the man -born to be a perfect individualist is at a disadvantage when he owns an -estate and feels bound by duty to marry and beget an heir: it isn’t the -moderns who discovered that marriage clogs selfishness. - -Mr. Verners had an heir, but not, as it happened, till Dorothy had come -first. If she hadn’t come first, she would not have come at all; but she -came, and dazzlingly, and if there is something agreeable in being the -father of a beauty, there is also something harassing. A wife, after -all, is only a wife, but with a monstrous fine lady of a daughter about -the house a man has to mind his p’s and q’s. Mr. Verners was a sort of -a gentleman and he minded his p’s and q’s, but he wasn’t above admitting -that he looked forward to the day when, Dorothy well and truly married, -he could relax to reasonable carelessness at home. - -And not only did Dorothy not get married, not only did Whitworth -procrastinate and play card games in London instead of the love-game in -Lancashire, but Dorothy, instead of waiting patiently, became strangely -restive. The queer thing is that her discontent began to show itself -soon after she had met Reuben Hepplestall riding in the road one day -now a year ago. She hadn’t mentioned the meeting at home. Why should she -mention a creature who was outcast? Why give him a second thought? What -possible connection could there be between the meeting and this change -in her hitherto entirely submissive habit of waiting for Whitworth? -None, to be sure, and no doubt Luke was perfectly right when he said it -was all the vapors. - -“But the vapors,” said Mrs. Verners, “come from Sir Harry’s absence.” - -And “Tush,” said Mr. Verners, who was not without his envious sympathy -of that rich bachelor in London, and there, for that time, they left it. - -But the vapors came again, they turned endemic while Sir Harry continued -a parishioner of St. James’, a gay absentee from his estates and his -plain duty of marrying Dorothy, and Mr. Verners’ sympathy wore thin. A -tolerant man, but a daughter who (he held) moped and a wife who (he told -her in set terms) nagged, played the deuce with his tolerance and so, -finally, against his better judgment, they were come to London, “To dig -the fox out of his earth,” he said. “Aye, but do you fancy the fox will -relish it?” - -He knew how he, in the character of fox, would have received this hunt. -“But we come naturally to London, for clothes for Dorothy and me,” said -Mrs. Verners. - -“Do we?” he growled. “It’s heads I win and tails you lose every time -with a woman. What the hangment do I get except an empty purse?” - -If the gods smiled, he got rid of Dorothy, but that wasn’t to be -emphasized now any more than was his very firm intention to spend on -himself the lion’s share of the contents of that purse. These things -were not to be mentioned because it was good to have a grievance against -his wife, to throw responsibility for their enterprise on her shoulders, -to seem wholly, when he was only half, convinced that they were doing an -unwise thing. - -“Dorothy must come to London sometimes,” said Mrs. Verners placidly, -“and Sir Harry is hardly to be reminded by letter of his negligence, -whereas the sight of Dorothy--” - -“Well, well,” said Luke, “you’re proud of your poppet.” Secretly, he -would have backed the looks of his daughter against those of any woman -in the land. “But,” he went on, “we’re in London now, and London’s full -of pretty women. Your wench may be the pride of Lancashire, but you’re -pitting her here against the full field of the country--” - -“Mr. Verners, you are vulgar.” - -“I’m stating facts,” he said. “We’re here to catch Whitworth and I am -indicating to your woman’s intelligence and your motherly prejudice that -the bait you’re offering may not look so juicy here as it did at home -where it hadn’t its peer.” - -So he insured himself against failure, and the particular source of his -ill-humor as he prepared to go out on the day after their arrival in -town was not mental but physical. To jam gouty feet, used to roomy -riding boots, into natty gear ought to be nothing. In the past it had -been nothing, when he had drunk in the London air and found it the well -of youth, but, this time, remarkably, the boots pinched unforgettably, -and the realization that he hadn’t the resilience of youth, that he -was in London yet hipped, in a play-ground yet grave, disheartened -Mr. Verners, and it wasn’t till that skilled diplomat, the porter at -Almack’s, recognized him instantly with a salute that Mr. Verners felt -petulance oozed from him. It was a wonderful salute; it indicated the -porter’s joy at seeing Mr. Verners, his regret that Mr. Verners was only -an occasional visitor, his personal feeling that, but for the occasional -visits of Mr. Verners, the life of the porter of Almack’s Club would not -be worth living; it welcomed him home with a captivating, deferential -flattery and the mollified gentleman was to meet with further balm -inside the club, where play was not running spectacularly high and there -were idle members eager for the simple distraction to be had from -any face not wearisomely familiar. Besides, Mr. Verners came from -Lancashire; London had heard of Lancashire recently and was willing to -hear more. - -He came in without much assurance, but hesitation fled when he found -himself the center of an interest not at all languid. - -“Damme, it’s Luke Verners come to town. Business for locksmiths here,” - was the coarse-witted welcome of a lord. - -“Locksmiths?” asked Verners. - -“Ain’t it locksmiths one employs to put bolts and bars on one’s wife’s -bedroom?” - -“You flatter me, my lord,” said Verners. - -The dandy eyed him appraisingly. “Perhaps I do, Verners, perhaps I do. -You are past your prime.” - -“Does your lordship care to give me opportunity to prove otherwise, with -pistols, swords or--her ladyship?” A hot reception? Music in the ears of -Mr. Verners, who relished it for its coarseness, for what seemed to him -the authentic note of London Town, a greeting spoken propitiously by -a lord. And if this was a good beginning, better was to follow. Mr. -Seccombe rose from the chair where he was drowsing, recognized -Verners with a start and came up to him interestedly. “Rot your chaff, -Godalming,” he said. “Verners will give you as good as he gets any day. -Tell us the news of the North, man. Are things as queer as they say?” - -“What do they say?” asked Luke. - -“They speak of steam-engines.” - -“Oh, Lord,” groaned Godaiming. “Old Seccombe’s on his hobby-horse.” - -“Of steam-engines,” repeated Mr. Seccombe severely, “and of workers -whose bread is taken out of their mouths by machinery, so that they are -thrown upon the poor-rates that the landlords must pay.” - -“Gospel truth, Mr. Seccombe,” said Luke feelingly, “and yond fellow -Arkwright, that began it, made a knight and a High Sheriff for doing us -the favor of ruining us. What’s the country coming to?” - -“Corruption and decay,” said his lordship. - -“Is that so sure?” queried Seccombe. “What is your word on that, -Verners?” - -“Beyond doubt, it is the end of all things when landlords are milked -through the poor-rates,” said Luke. - -“Yet steam would appear to have possibilities?” - -“Oh, Seccombe’s a hopeless crank,” said Godalming. - -“Possibilities for whom, Mr. Seccombe?” asked Vemers. “For a barber like -this Arkwright? Yes, he throve on steam, but what is that to us? Will -steam grow corn?” - -“Steam is an infamy,” stated a gentleman called Collinson. - -“You do not agree, Seccombe? No, why should you? You own houses in -London. Easy for you to play the philosopher. Those of us with land -are beginning to watch the trading classes closely, and steam has the -appearance of an ally to trade and enemy to us.” - -“Then let the alliance be with us, Mr. Collinson,” said Seccombe. -“Indeed, I am making no original suggestion. We have had the cases -mentioned here of more than one man of our own order who--” - -“Traitors! Outcasts!” cried Godalming. - -“Or, perhaps, wise men, my lord. I do not know.” - -“You don’t know if it is wise to sell your soul to the devil?” - -“Personally,” said Mr. Seccombe, “I should regard that transaction -as precarious, but not to the present point. There was mentioned the -example of one Hepplestall.” - -“You have heard of him--here?” Mr. Verners was astonished. - -“We were interested to hear,” said Mr. Collinson. - -“Of a perversion,” said Godalming. - -“Godalming withholds from Mr. Hepplestall the light of his approval,” - said Mr. Seccombe, “but--” - -“Approve a turn-coat that was once a gentleman? Why, he has dined at -Brooks’ and now blacks his sweaty hands with coal. Is there defense for -him?” asked Godalming. - -“I am prepared to defend him,” said Seccombe. - -“Then you’re a Jacobin.” Godalming turned an outraged back. - -“Verners will correct me if I am wrong,” said Collinson, “but we hear of -Mr. Hepplestall that he has a great steam-driven factory, with a small -town at its feet, and by his steam is driving out of trade the older -traders in his district. Is that true?” - -“Entirely,” said Mr. Verners, “though it staggers me that news of so -small a matter has traveled so far and so fast.” - -“Some of us have our eyes on steam,” said Seccombe, “and some of us,” he -eyed Godalming with severity, “some of us prefer that a power like steam -should be in the hands of men of our order.” - -“But they cannot be of our order,” protested Verners, scandalized. “They -cease, of their own conduct, to be of our order.” - -“You do not dispute the facts about Hepplestall?” - -“No. It’s your conclusions I find amazing.” - -“Oh,” said Godalming, “this isn’t Almack’s Club at all. We’re in France, -and Mr. Collinson is wearing a red cap, and Mr. Seccombe has no breeches -and--rot me if I ever expected to hear such damned revolutionary -sentiments from an Englishman.” - -“Will you do me the favor, my lord, to consider the picture Mr. Verners -has assented to be veracious?” Mr. Seccombe said, leaning back in his -chair and looking like nothing so much as Maclise’s Talleyrand in the -Fraser Portraits; elbows on the arms of his chair, hands caressing his -stomach, knees wide apart, the sole of one shoe rubbing against the -other, a look of placid benignity on his face. “That large factory, -dominating a town of cottages where its workers live, under the -owner’s eye, and that owner a gentleman who has extinguished the small -lower-class manufacturers of his neighborhood. I ask you to consider -that picture and to tell me what there is in it that you feel -undesirable. To me, my lord, it is an almost feudal picture. The Norman -Keep, with a village clustered around its walls, is to my mind the -precedent of Mr. Hepplestall’s factory with its workers in their -cottages about it. I confess to an admiration of this Hepplestall, -whom you regard as a traitor to our order and I as a benefactor to -that order. You will hardly assert that our order is unshaken by the -deplorable events in France, you will hardly say that, even before that -unparalleled outbreak of ruffianism, our order had maintained the high -prestige of the Feudal days. A man in whose action I see possibilities -of restoring in full our ancient privileges is a man to be approved and -to be supported by us. If we do not support him, and others like him, -what results? Abandoned by us, he must consort with somebody and he will -consort naturally with other steam-power manufacturers, adding to their -strength and weakening ours. It seems to me that this steam is a notable -instrument for keeping in their places those classes who might one day -follow the terrible French example: and the question is whether it -is better for us ourselves, men of our order, directly to handle -this instrument, or whether we are to trust it in the hands of the -manufacturing class. For my own part, I distrust that class, I like a -man who grasps his nettles boldly and I applaud Mr. Hepplestall.” - -Several men had joined the circle by now, and Mr. Seecombe ended to find -himself the center of an attention close but hostile. Phrases such as -“rank heresy” and “devil’s advocate” made Mr. Collinson feel heroic -when he said, “Speaking for myself, I stand converted by your argument, -Seecombe.” - -At which Godalming gave the theorist and his supporter the name of “a -brace of begad trucklers to Satan,” and such a whoop of applause went up -as caused Mr. Seccombe to look round quickly for cover. It was clear -that to touch steam was not condoned as an attempt to revitalize the -Feudal system: to touch steam was to defile oneself and to propose a -defense of a gentleman who stooped to steam was to be unpopular. Mr. -Seccombe liked his views very well, but liked popularity better and, -catching sight of Whitworth in the crowd, saw in him a means of -distracting attention from himself. - -“Have you a word on this, Whitworth?” he asked. “You come from -Lancashire.” - -“My word on this,” he said, “is Mr. Verners’ word. Like him I am the -victim of these steaming gentlemen, and I have only to remember my -bailiff’s accounts to know how much I am mulcted in poor-rates.” - -“Imagine Harry Whitworth perusing an account!” said Godalming. - -“One has one’s duties, I believe,” said Sir Harry. “But I have been too -long away from Lancashire to be a judge of this matter. I can tell you -nothing of Hepplestall and his factory, for this is the first I heard -of it, but I can tell you of Hepplestall and a parson.” And he told the -tale of Mr. Bantison. - -“This is the stuff your hero is made of, Seccombe,” jeered Godalming. - -“Not bad stuff,” Seccombe heard an unexpected ally say. “The stuff, as -Seccombe put it, that grasps a nettle firmly.” - -“Oh,” conceded Sir Harry, “Bantison was nettle enough. But as to -steam--!” He shrugged his shoulders, and gave Mr. Seccombe the opening -for which he angled. - -“It does not appeal to you to go to Lancashire and better Hepplestall’s -example?” he asked blandly. - -“Good God!” said Sir Harry, and the Club was with him. - -“There might be wisdom in a visit to your estates,” said Mr. Seccombe, -and the Club was, vociferously, with him. Mr. Seccombe smiled secretly: -he had, gently but thoroughly, accomplished his purpose of turning the -volatile thought of the Club away from his argument. He had raised a -laugh at Whitworth’s expense, a brutal laugh, a “Vae Victis” laugh: he -had focused attention on the case of Sir Harry Whitworth. - -It was not an unusual case. This society had a leader known, with -grotesque inappropriateness, as the First Gentleman in Europe and the -First Gentleman in Europe had invented a shoe-buckle. Whitworth tripped -over the buckle; he criticized it in ill-chosen company and news of his -traitorous disparagement was carried to the Regent. Whitworth was in -disgrace. - -The usual thing and the discreet thing was to efface oneself for a time, -but Harry Whitworth had the conceit to believe himself an ornament that -the Prince could not dispense with. He stayed in town, daily expecting -to be recalled to court: and the frank laughter of Almack’s was a -galling revelation of what public opinion thought of his prospects of -recall. - -It was a humiliation for a high-spirited gentleman, and an -embarrassment. To challenge a Club was to invite more ridicule, while -to single out Mr. Seccombe, the first cause of his discomfiture, was -equally impossible; Seccombe was too old for dueling; one did not go out -with a man old enough to be one’s grandfather. There was Godalming, -but, again, he feared ridicule: Godalming’s special offense was that he -laughed loudly, but Godalming habitually laughed loudly and one couldn’t -challenge for insulting emphasis a man who was naturally emphatic. - -Whitworth saw no satisfactory way out of it, till Verners, mindful of -Dorothy, supplied an opportunity for retreat. - -“I may be able to give Sir Harry some little information about his -estates. They are in good hands, and though naturally we in Lancashire -would welcome amongst us the presence of so notable a landowner, the -estate itself is well managed by his people.” Which was quite a pretty -effort in tact from one unaware of Sir Harry’s misfortune, and puzzled -by the laughter. - -Whitworth snatched at the opportunity, meager as it was. “I will come -with you to hear of it, Verners.” Then as he turned, a feeling that he -was making a poor show of it tempted him to say, “Gentlemen, I heard you -laugh. Next time we meet, next time I visit Almack’s, the laugh will be -upon the other side. Godalming, will you wager on it?” He could issue -that simulacrum of a challenge, at any rate. Men betted upon anything. - -“A thousand guineas that you never come back,” suggested Godalming. - -“A thousand that I am back--back, you understand me--in a month.” - -“Agreed,” said Godalming. “I back Prinny’s resolution for a thousand for -a month.” - -“Shall we go, Mr. Verners?” said Sir Harry to the mystified squire, and -“Gad, they’re betting on a weather-vane,” murmured Mr. Seccombe in the -ear of his friend, Mr. Collinson. - - - - -CHAPTER V--SIR HARRY WOOS - -TO know one’s duty and to do it are often different things. Sir Harry’s -duty, as he knew, was to regard his wild oats as sown, to marry Dorothy, -and to go home quietly to Lancashire. In London, he competed on equal -terms with men far richer than himself at a pace disastrously too hot -for his means, but the competition had been, socially, a triumph for him -and to go back now of all times, when temporarily he was under a cloud, -was a duty against which his pride fought hard. - -He hadn’t compromise in him and compromise, in this case was -unthinkable. It was either Lancashire with Dorothy, or London without -her. Dorothy in London was not to be thought of: no countrybred wife for -him unless on the exceptional terms of her bringing him a great fortune, -and what she was to bring was well enough in Lancashire but a bagatelle -to be lost or won at hazard in a night in London. Decidedly, she would -be a blunder in London: if a man of his standing in society put his head -under the yoke, it had to be for a price much greater than Dorothy could -pay. He would lose caste by such a marriage. - -There remained the sensible alternative, the plan to be good and -dutiful, to abandon London, ambition, youth, and to become a dull and -rustic husband. Long ago, his father and Luke Vcrners had come to an -understanding on the matter, eminently satisfying to themselves, and he -had let things remain, vaguely, at that. Certainly he broke no promise -of his own making if he avoided Dorothy for ever: and here he was going -under escort (and it seemed to him a subtly possessive escort) of Luke -Verners to call on Dorothy, to, it was implied, clarify the situation -and, he supposed, to declare himself. Well, that was too cool and -however things happened they were not going to happen quite like that. -He didn’t mind going to survey Dorothy: indeed, Almack’s being closed to -him just now by his own action, he must have some occupation; but this -Dorothy--positively he remembered her obscurely through a haze of other -women--this Dorothy must needs be extraordinary if she were to reconcile -him to a duty he resented. It might be necessary to teach these good -people their place. Luke seemed to Sir Harry uninstructed in the London -perspective and in the importance of being Whitworth. - -It was unfortunate that Mrs. Verners clucked over him like a hen who has -found a long-lost chicken. Her inquiries after his health seemed to -him even more assured in their possessiveness than Luke’s attitude of a -keeper. Mrs. Verners was the assertion of motherhood, and on every score -but that of hard duty, he was prepared to depreciate Dorothy, when she -came in, to the limits of justice and perhaps beyond them. Dorothy might -be a miracle, but Mrs. Verners as a mother was a handicap that would -discount anything. - -Then Dorothy came in, carrying in her arm a kitten with an injured paw. -From her room she had heard it crying in Albemarle Street, had run out -and for the last ten minutes had been doctoring it somewhere at the back -of the house. Mrs. Verners was alarmed: Dorothy was still flushed with -running, or, perhaps, with tenderness; her hair was riotous; she was -thinking of the kitten, she had the barest curtsy for Sir Harry, she -was far from being the great lady her mother would have had her in this -moment of meeting with him. And he incontinently forgot that he was -there on a sort of compulsion, he nearly forgot that it was his duty to -like her. Emotionally, he surrendered at sight to a beautiful unkempt -girl who caressed a kitten and, somehow, brought cleanliness into the -room. “Good God!” said Sir Harry, his manners blown to pieces along with -his hesitations by one blast of honesty. - -If they could have been married there and then, it was not Whitworth -who would have been backward. All that was best in him was devotedly and -immediately hers, and that best was not a bad best either: if he could -forget London and his craving to be a figure in the town, a courtier and -a modish rake, he had the making of a faithful husband to such a woman, -satisfied with her, with country sports and the management of his -estate, a good father, and a hearty, genial, eupeptic, hard drinking -but hard exercising representative of the permanent best in English -life--the outdoor gentleman. - -If he could forget--and just now he utterly forgot, with one swift -backward glance at London women. What were they to her? Dressmakers’ -dummies, perruquiers’ blocks, automata directed by a dancing-master, -cosmetical exteriors to vanity, greed, vice, if they were not, like some -he hated most, conceited bluestockings parading an erudition that it -didn’t become a woman to possess. Whereas, Dorothy! He felt from her a -whiff of moorland air, and a horse between his legs and the clean rush -past him of invigorating wind and all the zest of a great run behind the -hounds with the tang of burning peat in his nostrils and the scent of -heather coming down from, the hills. It wasn’t quite--it wasn’t yet, by -years--the case of the roué worn by experience who seeks a last piquant -emotion in religion or (what seems to him almost its equivalent) in a -fresh young girl, but his situation had those elements, with the -added glamor of discovering that his duty was not merely tolerable but -delicious. - -“Good God,” he said again, quite irrepressibly in the spate of his -emotion, then realizing that he was guilty of breach of decorum, -lapsed to apologetic amenities from which they were to gather that his -ejaculations referred to the kitten. - -His polite murmur roused Dorothy to self-consciousness. “What a hoyden -Sir Harry must be thinking me,” she said confusedly. - -“They are wrong,” said Sir Harry, “who call red roses the flower of -Lancashire. That flower is the wild heather. That flower is you.” - -“Yes,” said Dorothy with whimsical resignation, “the commonest flower -that blooms.” - -“But a rarity in London,” he said, “and, bloom like yours, rare -anywhere. In London, Madam, we have a glass-house admiration for -glass-house flowers that wilt to ruin at a breath of open air. I have -been guilty of the bad taste to share that admiration. I have been -unpardonably forgetful of the flower of Lancashire.” And he bowed to -Dorothy in as handsome apology as a laggard lover could make. “We heard -a word at the club, Mr. Verner, which, as you observed, had the faculty -of annoying me. It annoyed me because in a club one thinks club-wise and -club-wisdom is opaque. I should not be annoyed now.” - -“Are we to know what the word was?” asked Mrs. Verners not too -discreetly. - -Sir Harry raised his eyebrows slightly. Decidedly, he thought again, a -clucking hen, but his management of her could wait: this was his hour of -magnanimity. “At the club, Madam,” he said, “we were allowed to hear a -Mr. Seccombe recommending me to visit my estates.” Sir Harry looked at -Dorothy. “And it is in my mind that Seceombe counseled well.” - -Considering the man and remembering the wager with Godalming, that was -an admission even more handsome than his apology. It fell short, but -only short, of actual declaration and perhaps that might have come had -not Mrs. Verners attempted to force a pace which was astonishingly fast. -She saw her expedition turning in its first engagement to triumphant -victory, but she wanted the spoils of victory, she wanted a spade to be -called unmistakably a spade, she wanted his declaration in round terms -before he left that room. - -“We are to see you back in Lancashire?” she said insinuatingly. - -Sir Harry shuddered at her crude persistence, but, gallantly, “I have -good reason to believe so,” he replied, scanning the reason with an -admiration qualified now by wonder if she would become like her mother. - -“And you will come to stay?” - -“That I cannot say,” he was goaded to reply. Damn the woman! She was -arousing his worst, she was reawakening his rebellion to the thought -that he had had his fling, she was tempting him to continue it in the -hope that when his fling was ended, Mrs. Verners would have, mercifully, -also ended. He took his leave with some abruptness, treading a lower air -than that of his expectancy. - -But Dorothy held her place with him. For wife of his, this was the -one woman and Mrs. Verners, in retrospect, diminished to the disarmed -impotence to hurt of a spikeless burr. - -He weighed alternatives--Dorothy, heather, the moors, domesticity, -estates, his place in the county against the stews of St. James, the -excitement of gambling on a horse, a prizefighter or the dice, the hot -perfumes of balls, Ranelagh, the clubs, women. He even threw in Prinny -and his place at Court, and against all these Dorothy, and what she -stood for, held the balance down. He formed a resolution which he -thought immutable. - -He assumed, and Mrs. Verners had fed that assumption, that there were to -be no difficulties about Dorothy and, fundamentally, she meant to make -none. She had looked away from Hepplestall when she met him on a road, -and many times since then she had looked back in mind to Hepplestall, -but Sir Harry was her fate and she did not quarrel with it. He had, -though, been bearishly slow in accepting her as his fate and she saw no -reason in that to smooth his passage to the end now that, clearly, -he was in the mood to woo. His careless absence had been one long -punishment for her: let her now see how he would take the short -punishment of being impaled for a week or two on tenterhooks about her. - -He came again, heralded by gifts, with hot ardor to his wooing. He -brought passion and buttressed that with his self-knowledgeable desire -to force the issue, to make a contract from which there could be -no retreat: and thereby muddied pure element with lower motive. He -complimented her upon a new gown. - -“It pleases you?” she asked. - -“Much less than the wearer.” - -“You are a judge of ladies’ raiment, are you not, Sir Harry?” - -“No more than becomes a man of taste.” - -“One hears,” she said, “of Lady Betty Standish who was at choosing -patterns with her dressmaker, and of a gentleman shown into the room -that chose her patterns for her, and of the bills that Lady Betty sent -to the gentleman, and of how he paid them.” - -“You have heard of that?” he said. “Well, there are women in town -capable of such bad taste as that.” - -“The bad taste of allowing you to choose her gowns? But were you not -competent to choose?” - -“The bad taste,” he said, “of sending the bills to me. Would you have -had me decline to pay them?” - -“Again,” she said, passing no judgment, “there is a story of a merchant -that lived in Hampstead and drove one night with a plump daughter in a -coach to eat a dinner in the City. The coach was stopped on the Heath by -a highwayman who wanted nothing of the merchant, but was most gallant to -his daughter.” - -“I kissed the girl,” said Sir Harry. “It was done for a wager and I won -it. A folly, and a harmless one,” but he wondered, if she had heard -of these, if there were less innocent escapades that she had heard -of. There was no lack of them, nor, it appeared, of babblers eager to -gossip, to his disservice, about a man on whom the Regent frowned. - -“One hears again,” she said, “that at Drury Lane Theater,”--he blushed -in good earnest: would she have the hardihood to mention a pretty -actress who--? and then he breathed again as she went on--“there was -once an orange wench--” - -“That was a bet I lost,” he said. “I was to dress as a woman and stand -with my basket like the rest, and I was not to be identified. I was -identified and paid. But what are these but the freaks we all enjoy in -London? Vain trifles, I admit it, in the telling. Not feats to boast -of, not incidents that I take pleasure in hearing you refer to, but, I -protest, innocent enough and relishable in the doing.” - -“Perhaps,” she said. “And while you relished them in London, did you -give thought to what I did at home?” - -“You? To what you did? What did you do?” Sir Harry was flabbergasted at -her question. - -“I was at home, Sir Harry.” She spoke without bitterness, without -emphasis, and when he looked sharply at her, she seemed to interpret -the look as an invitation and rose. “My mother, I think, is ready to -accompany us if you care to take me walking in the Park.” - -Decidedly a check to a gentleman who proposed to make up for past delays -by a whirlwind wooing. She was at home, while he ruffled it in London. -And where else should she be? What did she imply? At any rate, she had -embarrassed him by the unexpectedness of her attack. Of course she -was at home, and of course he was a reveler in London. He was man, she -woman, and he hoped she recognized the elementary distinction. Whatever -her object, whether she had the incredible audacity to accuse him--him, -open-handed Harry--of something only to be defined as meanness, or -whether she was only being witty with him, she had certainly discouraged -the declaration he came to make. - -Mrs. Vemers found him a moody squire of dames in the Park, while his -sudden puzzlement gave Dorothy a mischievously happy promenade. He -brought them, after the shortest of walks, to their door. - -“You have been very silent, Sir Harry,” Mrs. Verners told him, with her -incurable habit of stating the obvious. “Are you not well to-day?” - -“Perfectly, I thank you, Madam.” - -“Oh, Lud, mother, it is but that you do not appreciate Sir Harry’s -capacity for disguise. In the past, he has been--many things. To-day we -are to admire him in the character of a thunderstorm.” - -“Indeed?” he said. “Thunderstorms break.” - -“But not on me,” said Dorothy, and ran into the house. - -Sir Harry turned away with the scantest bow to Mrs. Verners. This was a -new flavor and he wanted to taste it well, to make sure that he approved -a Dorothy who could be a precipitate hoyden rushing out-of-doors to an -injured kitten and a woman of wit that stabbed him shrewdly. She had -variety, this Dorothy; she wasn’t the makings of a dull, complacent -wife. Well, and did he want dullness and complacency? He was going -to Lancashire, to a life that a Whitworth must live as an example to -others: there was to be nothing to demand a wife’s complacency. And -as to dullness, heaven save him from it--and heaven seemed, by making -Dorothy Verners, to have answered that prayer. He decided to be more in -love with Dorothy than before--which, as she wasn’t willing to fly into -his arms when he crooked a beckoning finger, was only natural; and -went into a shop from which he might express to her the warmth of his -sentiment at an appropriate cost. She should see if he was mean! - -In the shop he found my Lord Godalming who was turning over some bright -trinkets intended for a lady who was not his wife. Godalming was surly, -eyeing Whitworth as he called for the best in necklaces that the shopman -had to show. “Oh, yes,” said his lordship, “bring out the best for Sir -Harry Whitworth. Jewels for Sir Harry and paste for me. I am only a -lord.” - -“What’s put you out, Godalming?” - -“Ain’t the sight of your radiant face enough to put me out? I hate -happiness in others.” - -“Then I can offer you the consolation of knowing that my happiness will -not be visible to you long. I propose very shortly to go North, my lord, -and to stay there.” Godalming flopped back against the counter like a -fainting man who must support himself and, indeed, his astonishment was -genuine enough. “Go North?” he gasped. “Are you gone stark mad?” - -“I have flattered myself to the contrary,” said Sir Harry, with -complacency. “I have believed that I have recovered my senses.” - -“Rot me if I understand you,” said his lordship. - -“Yet you find me in the article of choosing a necklace.” - -“Damme, Whitworth, are there no women nearer than the North Pole? Is -there no difference between gallantry and lunacy?” - -“I am thinking of marriage, my lord.” - -“Oh, Lud, yes, we’ve all to come to that. But we don’t come to it -happily. We don’t think of it with our faces like the August sun. I’m -the last man to believe your smirking face covers thoughts of marriage. -I know too well what it does cover.” - -“Indeed? And what?” - -“What? Burn me if you are not the most exasperating man alive. Have you -no recollections of a wager?” - -“I am bound to make you an admission, Godalming. Occupied with other -matters, I had for the moment forgot our wager. But you need have no -fears. I pay my debts.” - -“Pay? Where in the devil’s name have you been hiding yourself if you -don’t know you’ve won the wager?” - -“Won it?” cried Sir Harry. - -“What else are you happy for?” - -“I give you my word I did not know of this, Godalming.” - -“The news has been about the town these last two hours. A courier has -ridden in from Brighton summoning you to Prinny’s table to-morrow. He is -tired of his shoe buckle and vows that you are right about it. They say -he wrote you the recall with his own gouty hand. There’s condescension, -damn you, and you let me be the one to tell you news of it, me that -loses a thousand by it!” - -“I have been some hours absent from my rooms,” apologized Sir Harry. -“But this! This!” And if his face glowed before, it blazed now in the -intoxication of a great victory. He wasn’t thinking of the wager he had -won, and still less of the lady who was his to win: he was thinking of -a fat, graceful, capricious Prince who used his male friends as he used -his female, like dirt, who drove a coach with distinction and hadn’t -another achievement, who had taken Harry Whitworth back into a favor -that was a degradation; and Harry Whitworth thought of his restoration -to that slippery foothold as a triumph and a glimpse of paradise! The -Regent had forgiven him and nothing else mattered. - -He savored it a while, then became conscious of a shopman with a tray of -jewels, and of why he came into the shop. He had the grace to lower his -voice from Godaiming’s hearing as he said, “You must have finer ones -than these. I desire the necklace to be of the value of one thousand -guineas.” - -He chose, while Godalming bought his pretentious trifle, and gave -Dorothy’s address. Then, “I believe that I am now entitled to the -freedom of Almack’s Club, my lord,” he said. “Do you go in that -direction?” And Godalming, who was not a good loser, was too sensitive -to the social ascendency of the man whom the Regent forgave to decline -his proffered company. The wind blowing South for Whitworth, it wasn’t -desirable that word of Godalming’s wagering on its remaining North -should be carried to royal ears: he had better, on all counts, make -light of his loss and be seen companionably with this child of fortune. - -Not to mention the simpler fact that Godalming was a thirsty soul and -that such a reversal of fortune as had come to Harry was only to be -celebrated with high junketing. Indirectly, in his person of loser of -the wager, Godalming was the host and it wasn’t proper for a host to be -absent from his own table. - -Intrinsically, a wager of a thousand guineas was nothing to lift -eyebrows at: Mr. Fox once played for twenty-two hours at a sitting and -lost £500 an hour, and the celebration of a victory was what the victor -cared to make it. Sir Harry had more than the winning of a bet -to celebrate, he had a rehabilitation and proposed to himself the -considerable feat of making Almack’s drunk. It was afternoon, but any -time was drinking time, and only the darkness of mid-winter lasted long -enough to cloak their heroic debauchery. Men were not rare who kept -their wits and were steady on their legs after the sixth bottle, and why -indeed cloak drunkenness at all, if at the seventh bottle a gentleman -succumbed? There was no shame in falling in a good fight: the shame -was to the shirker and the unfortunate born with a weak head, a puny -three-bottle man. - -This is to generalize, which, perhaps, is better than a particular -description in this squeamish day of the occasion when Harry Whitworth -made his re-appearance at Almack’s resolved to write his name large in -the Bacchanalian annals of the Club. He was to dine in the Pavilion at -Brighton with his Royal Highness next night, and, by the Lord, Almack’s -was to remember that he had come into his own again. - -Some crowded hours had passed when the memorialist at the table’s head -unsteadily picked up a glass and saying mechanically, “A glass of wine -with you, sir,” found himself isolating from a ruddy haze the flushed -face of Mr. Verners. - -“Verners!” he cried. “Verners! What’s the connection? Dorothy, by Gad! -Going Brighton kiss Prinny’s hand to-morrow, Verners. Going your house -kiss Dorothy’s hand to-night. Better the night, better the deed. Dorothy -first, Prinny second. Gentlemen, Dorothy Verners!” - -There wasn’t more sobriety in the whole company than would have sufficed -to add two and two together, and nobody noticed, let alone protested, -when the host reeled from the table, linked his arm in that of Mr. -Verners and left the room. Mr. Verners’ mind was a blessed blank gently -suffused with joy. Incapable of thought, he felt that he had on his arm -a prisoner whose capture was to do him great honor. The servants put -them tenderly in a coach for the short drive to Albemarle Street. - -“I shall call you Father,” said Sir Harry, and the singular spectacle -might have been observed, had the night been light and the coach open, -of an elderly gentleman endeavoring to kiss the cheek of a younger, his -efforts frustrated by the jolting of the coach, so that the pair of them -pivoted to and fro on their bases like those absurd weighted toy eggs -the pedlars sell, and came, swaying in ludicrous rhythm, to the Verners’ -lodging. - -During the afternoon the necklace had been delivered, and if Dorothy was -no connoisseur of jewels she was sufficiently informed to know that here -was a peace-offering of royal value. She had twitted Sir Harry with his -follies, she had watched him draw the right conclusion from her recital -of some of them--the conclusion that she resented his preference for -such a life to coming, long ago, to where she and duty and she and love -were waiting for him--she had mocked him at her door, and had mocked his -sullen face when she compared him with a thunderstorm: and she wondered -if she had not gone too far, been too severe. Mrs. Verners lectured her -unsparingly on her waywardness, and Dorothy inclined to think that she -deserved the lecture. Then the necklace came and if a gift like that was -not as plain a declaration as anything unspoken could be, Dorothy was -no judge, or her mother either. The lecture ended suddenly, turned to -a gush of admiration of such magnificence. Harry had won forgiveness, -Dorothy decided, and if he came next day in wooing vein it wasn’t -she who would check his ardor a second time. One need not be called a -materialist because a symbol that is costly convinced at once, when a -cheap symbol would be ineffective. - -She was ready for Sir Harry, but not for this Sir Harry. The giver of -princely gifts should live up to his princedom, not in the sense of -His Royal Highness, George, but in the romantic sense. She had been -idealizing Harry since the precious token came and he came--like this, -lurching, thick-voiced, beastly. True, a gentleman lost nothing of -gentlemanliness by appearing flushed with wine before ladies; but there -were degrees and his was a condition beyond the most indulgent pale. Old -husbands--Mr. Verners is the example--might have no surprises for their -wives, but to come a-wooing in his cups was outrage. - -Mrs. Verners made an effort. “Dorothy,” she whispered, “remember the -necklace. Don’t be too nice.” Dorothy remembered nothing but that this -beast that had been a man was reeling towards her, making endearing -noises, with the plain intention of kissing her. Her whole being seemed -to concentrate itself to defeat his intention: she hit him, and hit -hard, upon the face and Sir Harry sat stupidly on the floor. Then, -defying her mother with her eye, she remembered the necklace. - -His man, undressing him that night, found an exceptional necklace round -his neck beneath his ruffles. He thought of Sir Harry and his condition, -of the obliterating effect of much alcohol, of theft and of the hanging -that befell a convicted thief and, after balancing these thoughts, he -stole the necklace. There were no inquiries made. - - - - -CHAPTER VI--THE MAN WHO WON - -IT is said that the Chinese use a form of torture consisting in the -uninterrupted dripping, drop by drop, of water on the head of a victim -who eventually goes mad. Mrs. Verners, though not Chinese, used a -similar form of torture as they drove North from London in the coach, -but Dorothy did not go mad under the interminable flow of bitter -comment. Instead, she watched the milestones and, as each was passed, -made and kept the resolution not to scream, or to jump out or to strike -her mother until they reached the next, and so, by a series of mile-long -constraints, disciplined herself to bear the whole. - -After Mrs. Verners had said that Dorothy was a graceless girl who had -made them all into laughing-stocks and an affected prude whose nicety -was monstrous, and a conceited, pedantic, prim ignoramus who had the -bumkinly expectation that men were saints, and a pampered milksop who -had made her unfortunate parents the jest of the town, there really was -not much more to say, but the lady had suffered disappointment and did -not suffer it silently. - -Occasionally, for a change, she turned her batteries on Mr. Verners who, -poor man, was paying by an attack of gout for his London indulgences and -couldn’t sleep the miles away. There was some justice in her attacks on -Mr. Verners. He was first cause of Dorothy’s conduct to Sir Harry: he -had brought Sir Harry home to them that night: he was accessory to their -disaster. - -“Well, well, but it is over,” he said a dozen times. - -“But--,” and she began again with stupid and stupefying iteration. - -Mr. Verners, after a trip to town, was matter apt for stupefaction. It -would need days of hard riding on penitential diet at home to sweat the -aches out of him, but even while Mrs. Verners was elaborating the theme -that all was lost, he was conscious of a reason, somewhere at the back -of his mind, for believing that all was not lost. He couldn’t dredge -the reason to the surface, and he couldn’t imagine what grounds for -cheerfulness there were, but he felt sure that something had happened in -London, or that something had been said in London which offered new hope -to a depressed family. For three days he fished vainly in the muddied -waters of his recollection for that bright treasure-trove, then, when -they were reaching their journey’s end and were within a few miles of -home, he saw Hepplestall’s factory crowning the hill-top, with its stack -belching black smoke, and remembered how unexpectedly significant this -Hepplestall had loomed in a conversation at Almack’s Club. - -He didn’t at first associate that strange significance of Hepplestall -with his sense that he had brought hope with him from London. True, -there was this difference between his wife’s motives and his--that she -had wanted to see Dorothy married to Whitworth, and he wanted to see -Dorothy married. Dorothy in any man’s home, within reason; but his was -the ideal of the father who felt in her presence a cramping necessity -to restraint, and, if any man’s, why should he think of Hepplestall’s -in particular, when, since Sir Harry was out of the running, there was -a host of sufficiently eligible young men and when now he watched his -wife’s resentful glare as she looked at that unsightly chimney? - -It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her at once that Whitworth was -not their only neighbor to be spoken of respectfully, but on second -thoughts that had better wait till Dorothy was not present to hear her -mother’s inevitable first pungencies. He wanted Dorothy married, and it -was easy to marry her to almost any bachelor in the county; yet here was -Luke Verners settling it obstinately in his mind that Hepplestall was -the husband he wished for her. Hepplestall had been heard of in London, -which was one wonder, and had been the subject of a serious discussion -at a gaming club, which was a greater wonder, and Verners, who -had helped to dig the gulf between Reuben and the county, was now -considering how the gulf was to be bridged. Was steam atrocious, when -it gained a man the commendation of Mr. Seccombe? He recalled Seccombe’s -comparison of the factory and its surrounding cottages with the feudal -chieftain’s keep, and as he looked again at Hepplestall’s creation, he -saw how apt the comparison was, he saw alliance with Reuben as an astute -move that might give him footing on the winning side, as, emphatically, -a “deep” thing. If steam were a success, it couldn’t be an atrocity. - -Whether it were atrocity or not, there was no question but that steam, -in Reuben’s hands, was a success. He was working with a tigerish energy -that left no stone unturned in the consolidation of his position. As yet -he was a monopolist of steam in the district, but that was an advantage -that couldn’t last and he meant when he had to meet more up-to-date -competition than that of the water-power manufacturers to be impregnably -established to meet it. He hadn’t time to think of other things--such as -women, or the county, or Dorothy Verners or even Phoebe Bradshaw. - -Phoebe had borne him a son. Reuben had not decided--he had not had time -to decide--but he didn’t think that mattered. If he was going to marry -her--to silence her he had promised marriage and, so far as he knew, -intended to keep his promise--it was because he had a fondness for her -but, beyond that, because he hoped to see the county cringe to his wife, -and if it was going to please him to watch them cringe to a Mrs. Reuben -Hepplestall who was Peter Bradshaw’s daughter, it was going to please -him more to watch them cringe to a woman who was the mother of his son -before he married her. That was his present view, and because of it he -permitted Peter to jog on at his little factory, he didn’t starve Peter -out of existence as he was starving the other water-power manufacturers -of the neighborhood, he wasn’t forcing Peter’s workpeople into the steam -factory by the simple process of leaving them no other place in which -to find employment. Peter was privileged, a King Canute miraculously -untouched by the tide of progress; but, for the rest of them, for -Peter’s like who were unprivileged, Reuben was ruthless. He wanted -their skilled laborers in his factory, and he undercut their prices, -naturally, thanks to steam, and unnaturally, thanks to policy, till he -drove them to ruin, filled his factory with their workpeople, sometimes -flinging an overseer’s job to the manufacturer he had ruined, sometimes -ignoring him. He was building a second factory now, out of the profits -of the first. He had to rise, to rise, to go on rising till he dominated -the county, till the gentry came to pay court to the man they had -flouted. That was the day he lived for, the day when they would fawn and -he would show them--perhaps with Phoebe by his side--what it meant to be -a Hepplestall in Lancashire. In his mine there were hewers of coal, -in the factory men, women and children, laboring extravagant hours for -derisory pay to the end that Hepplestall might set his foot upon the -county’s neck. - -All this was background; motive, certainly, but motive so covert beneath -the daily need to plan fresh enterprise, to produce cotton yarn by -the thousand pounds and cloth by the mile as never to obtrude into his -conscious thought at all. This was his interim of building and till -he had built securely he could not pause to think of other issues. The -county, for example: he wasn’t speculating as to where he stood with -the county now: the time for the county’s attention would come when he -stood, a grown colossus, over it and he was only growing yet. He didn’t -anticipate that the county would make advances at this stage, that to -some of them this stage might seem already advanced while to him, with -his head full of plans for development, the stage was elementary. He -didn’t anticipate Luke Verners. - -Mr. Verners, diplomat, came into the factory-yard leading a horse which -had shed a shoe, and called to a passing boy to know if Mr. Hepplestall -were in. Reuben was in, in the office, in his shirt-sleeves, and though -Verners did not know this, it was a score for the bridge-builder that -Reuben, on hearing of his presence, placed his pen on his desk instead -of behind his ear and put on his coat before going out. - -“I deem this good fortune and not bad since it happened at your gates, -Hepplestall,” said Luke. “If you have a forge here, can I trouble you? -If not there’s a smithy not a mile away.” He gave Reuben a choice: his -advance was to be accepted or rejected as Reuben decided. - -“I have the means to shoe my wagon horses,” said Reuben, indicating -at once that his was a self-supporting and a trading organization. If -Verners cared to have his horse shod on Reuben’s premises, the shoeing -would be good, but it would bring Luke into contact with trade. - -Luke nodded as one who understood the implications. “I shall take it as -a favor, Hepplestall,” he said, and Reuben gave his orders, then, “I can -offer you a glass of wine,” he said, “but it will be in the office of a -manufacturer.” And the astonishing Mr. Verners bowed and said, “Why not? -Although an idle man must not waste your time.” - -“I turned manufacturer,” said Reuben, “not slave,” and led the way into -the office. Followed amenities, and the implicit understanding that -there had never been a breach, that for Hepplestall to set up a factory -was the most natural thing in the world and when, presently, his horse -was announced to be ready, “When,” asked Luke, “are we to see you at -dinner, Hepplestall?” - -Reuben felt that the olive branch oozed oil. “I have not dined much -from home of late,” he said, doubtfully. “Then let me make a feast to -celebrate your return.” - -“To what fold, Mr. Verners?” - -“Well,” said Luke, “if you are doubtful, let me tempt you. Let me tell -you of my wife and of my daughter but new returned from London with the -latest modes.” - -“Thankee, Mr. Verners,” said Reuben, “it is not in my recollection that -I ever met you face to face and that you did not know me. But it -is firmly in my mind that Mistress Dorothy Verners gave me the cut -direct.” - -“I did not know of this,” said Luke, truthfully. - -“No? Yet she acted as others have acted. You will do me the justice to -note that if I find your invitation remarkable, I have reason.” - -“Then I repeat it, Hepplestall. I press it. Dorothy shall repent her -discourtesy. I--” (he drew himself up to voice a boast he devoutly hoped -he could make good) “I am master in my house.” - -“No,” said Reuben, “No, Mr. Verners, I will not come to dinner when my -appearance has been canvassed and prepared for. But I will ride home -with you now, if you are willing, and you shall tell me as we go what, -besides purchasing the latest modes, you did in London.” - -Luke was regretting many things, the impulse which brought him riding -in that direction and made him loosen a horse-shoe up a lane near -the factory, and the cowardice that had prevented his mentioning his -intention to Mrs. Verners who had not _yet_ been given an opportunity -to look at Reuben Hepplestall through the sage eyes of Mr. Seccombe of -Almack’s Club. To take Reuben home now was to introduce a bolt from the -blue and Mr. Verners shuddered at the consequences. He couldn’t trust -his wife, taken by surprise, to be socially suave, and Dorothy, whom he -thought he could trust, had been rude to Reuben--naturally, inevitably, -in those circumstances quite properly, but, in these, how disastrously -inaptly! By Luke’s reading of the rules of the game, Reuben should have -been grateful for recognition on any terms, and, instead, the confounded -fellow was aggressive, dictating terms, impaling Mr. Verners on the -horns of dilemma. He had said, “If you are willing,” but that, it -seemed, was formal courtesy, for Reuben was calmly ordering his horse to -be saddled. - -Had he no mercy? Couldn’t he see how the sweat was standing out on Mr. -Verners’ face? Was this another example like the case of Mr. Bantison -of doing what Seccombe admired, of grasping a nettle boldly? Mr. Verners -objected to be the nettle, but didn’t see how he was to escape the -grasp. The grasp of Reuben Hepplestall seemed inescapable. - -He committed himself to fate, with an awful sinking feeling that he -whose fate it is to trust to women’s tact is lost. - -“And in London,” asked Reuben as they rode out of the yard. “You did?” - -Luke chatted with a pitiful vivacity of all the noncommittal things -he could, while Reuben listened grimly and said nothing. Did ever a -sanguine gentleman set out to condescend and come home so like a captive -and a criminal? He had the impression of being not only criminal but -condemned when Reuben said, dismounting at Verners’ door, “So far I have -not found the answer to this riddle, sir. Perhaps it is to be found in -your drawing-room?” - -Mrs. Verners and Dorothy were to be found in the drawing-room, and if -Luke had been concerned about his wife’s attitude he might have spared -himself that trouble. She gave a little cry and looked helplessly at -Reuben as if he were a ghost, and he gave a little bow and that was -the end of her. She could have fainted or gone into hysterics or made a -speech as long as one of Mr. Burke’s and Reuben would have cared for the -one as little as the other. He was looking at Dorothy. - -“I have brought Mr. Hepplestall home with me,” was Luke’s introduction. - -“And,” said Reuben to Dorothy, “is Mr. Hepplestall visible?” - -“Perfectly,” she said and bowed. - -“I rejoice to hear,” he said gravely, “of the restoration of your -eyesight. You see me better than on a day a year ago?” - -“I see you better,” said Dorothy, meeting his eye, “because I see you -singly,” and he had to acknowledge that a spirited reply to his attack. -It put him beautifully in the wrong, it suggested that he had permitted -himself to be seen by a lady when in the company of one who was not a -lady, it implied that the cut was not for him but his companion, -that there was no fault in Dorothy but in him who carried a blazing -indiscretion like Phoebe Bradshaw into the public road, and that he was -tactless now to remind Dorothy of her correct repudiation of him when he -paraded an impropriety. - -She flung Phoebe to the gutter, she made a debating point and showed him -how easy it was to pretend that he had never been refused recognition. -All that was necessary for his acceptance of her point was his agreement -that Phoebe was, in fact, of no importance. - -And Reuben concurred. “I have to apologize for an indiscretion,” he -said, deposing Phoebe from her precarious throne, and giving her the -disreputable status latent in Dorothy’s retort. - -So much for Phoebe, whereas he, wonderfully, was being smiled upon by -Dorothy Verners. The gracious bow with which she accepted his apology -was an accolade, it was a sign that if he was a manufacturer he was -nevertheless a gentleman, that for him manufacturing was, uniquely, -condoned. But he thought it needful to make sure of that. - -“There is a greater indiscretion,” he said, “for which I do not -apologize. I am a trader and trader I remain, unrepentant, Miss Verners, -unashamed.” - -“I have heard of worse foibles,” said Dorothy, thinking of Sir Harry. - -But he couldn’t leave it at that: he couldn’t be light and accept -lightness about steam. “A foible is a careless thing,” he said. “I am -passionate about my steam-engines.” - -“Indeed, you have a notable great place up there,” said Luke. - -“It will be greater,” said Reuben. “I am to grow and it with me.” Then -some sense either that he was knocking at an open door or merely of the -convenances made him add, “My hobby-horse is bolting with me, but I felt -a need to be definite.” - -He was not, he meant, to be bribed out of his manufacturing by being -countenanced. He wanted Dorothy, but he wanted, too, his leadership in -cotton. And Dorothy was contrasting this man’s passion with Sir Harry’s, -which she took justifiably, but not quite justly, to be liquor, while -steam seemed romantically daring and mysterious. She knew what drink did -to a man and she did not know what steam was to do. Reuben seemed to her -a virile person; she was falling in love with him. - -Mrs. Verners, inwardly one mark of interrogation, was taking her cue -from the others who so amazingly welcomed a prodigal, swallowing a pill -and hiding her judgment of its flavor behind a civil smile. “Does Mr. -Hepplestall know that we have been to London?” she asked. - -Luke felt precipices gape for him; this was the road to revelations -of his motives, but Reuben turned it to a harmless by-path. “So I have -heard,” he said. “I was promised news of the fashions.” And fashions, -and the opinions of Mrs. Verners on fashions, gently nursed to -its placid end a call of which Luke had expected nothing short -of catastrophe. Reuben was sedulously attentive to Mrs. Verners, -wonderfully in agreement with her views, and Luke, returning from seeing -him to his horse, had the unhoped for satisfaction of hearing her say, -“What a pleasant young man Mr. Hepplestall is, after all.” - -He took time by the forelock then. “His enterprise,” he said, “is the -talk of the London clubs. We have not been seeing what lies beneath our -noses. They think much of Hepplestall in London. They watch him with -approval.” - -“I confess I like the way his hair grows,” said Mrs. Verners, and -Dorothy said nothing. - -While as to Reuben, there is only one word for the mood in which he rode -home--that it was religious. Sincerely and reverently, he thanked his -God for Dorothy Verners, and to the end he kept her in his mind as -one who came to him from God. A miracle had happened--Luke was God’s -instrument bringing him to that drawing-room where Dorothy was--and -Reuben had a simple and a lasting faith in it. - -Not that in the lump it softened him, not that he wasn’t all the same a -devil-worshiper of ambition and greed and hatred, for he was all these -things, besides being the humbly grateful man for whom God wrought the -miracle of Dorothy Verners. She was on one side, in her place apart, and -the rest was as it had been. - -It may be that his conduct to Bradshaw resulted from this religious -mood. Religion is associated with the idea of sacrifice and if the -suffering was likely to be Peter’s rather than Reuben’s, Reuben -sacrificed, at least, the contemptuous kindliness he felt towards Peter. -His first action was to set in motion against Bradshaw the machinery by -which he had crushed other small manufacturers out of trade. - -In those days, the power-loom had not become a serious competitor of the -hand-loom and the hand-weavers chiefly worked looms standing in sheds -attached to their cottages or (for humidity’s sake, not health’s) in a -cellar below them; but they used by now power-spun yarn which was -issued to them by the manufacturers. Reuben had permitted Peter to go -on spinning in his factory: he now sent round to the weavers the message -that Peter’s yarn was taboo and that if they dealt with Peter they would -never deal with Hepplestall. It was enough: the weavers were implicitly -Reuben’s thralls, for without his yarn they could no longer rely on -supplies at all. Peter was doomed. Reuben had not even, as had been -necessary at first, to go through the process of undercutting his -prices; he had only to tell the weavers that Peter was banned and they -had no alternative but to obey. - -So far Peter had been allowed, by exception, to remain in being as a -factory-owner, which placed him on a sort of equality with Reuben, as -a little, very little brother, and now brotherliness between a Bradshaw -and the man on whom Dorothy Verners smiled was a solecism. Reuben could -not dictate in other districts--yet--but, in his own, there were to be -no people of Bradshaw’s caliber able to say of themselves that they, -like Hepplestall, had factories. There would be consequences for -Phoebe. He did not give them a second thought. They were what followed -inevitably from the placing of Phoebe by Dorothy Verners, they were -neither right nor wrong, just nor unjust, they had to be--because of -what Dorothy had said when she made, lightly, a dialectical score off -Reuben. - -He left that fish to fry and went (miraculously directed) to dine with -the Verners. He dined more than once with the Verners, he was made to -feel that he was at home in the Verners house, so that one suave summer -evening, after he had had a pleasantly formal and highly satisfactory -little tête-à-tête with Luke as they sat together at their wine, he led -Dorothy through the great window on to the lawn and found an arbor in -a shrubbery. There was no question of her willingness, and it hardly -surprised him that there should be none, for he was growing accustomed -to his miracle as one grows accustomed to anything. - -“Still, there is a thing which puzzles me,” he said. “You were in -London. Did you see Sir Harry Whitworth there?” - -Dorothy made a hole in the gravel with her toe, and the hole seemed to -interest her gravely. Then she looked up slowly and met Reuben’s eye. -“Sir Harry Whitworth is nothing to me,” she said. - -And he supposed Sir Harry to have proposed and to have been refused, -which was broad truth if it wasn’t literal fact. - -Refused Sir Harry? And why? For him! The miracle increased. - -“This is the crowning day of my life,” he said. “It is a day for which -I lived in hope. I saw this day, I saw you like golden sun on a far -horizon. That the day has come so soon is miracle.” He took her hand. -“Dorothy Verners, will you marry a manufacturer?” - -“I will marry you, Reuben,” she said, and his kiss was sacramental. - -He kissed her as man might kiss an emblem, or the Holy Grail, with a -sort of dispassionate passion that was all very well for a symbol or a -graven image, but not good enough for Dorothy, who was flesh and blood. - -“No, no!” she cried. “Reuben, what are you thinking me? I am not like -that.” - -“Like what?” he said. “I think you miracle.” - -“Yes, but I’m not. I’m a woman--I’m not a golden sun on a far horizon. -I’m nearer earth than that.” - -“Never for me,” he protested. - -“Yes, always, please. Oh, must you drag confession from me? I love you, -Reuben, you, your straight clean strength. I went in shadows and in -doubt, I waded in muddied waters until you came and rescued me. You -touch me, and you kiss me now as if I were a goddess--” - -“You are my goddess, Dorothy.” - -“I want us to be honest in our love. You’ve shown me a great thing, -Reuben. You have shown me that there is a man in the world. My man, and -not my god, and, Reuben, don’t worship me either. Don’t let there be -fine phrases and pretense between us two.” - -“Pretense?” - -“The pretense that I am more than a woman and you more than a man.” - -“You are the most beautiful woman in the world.” - -She was looking at him quaintly. “Yes, if you please,” she said. So long -as it was admitted she was human, she liked to be lifted in his -eyes above the rest of feminine humanity. This was right, this was -reasonable, this wasn’t the fantastic blossom of love-making that must -needs wither in the chilly air of matrimony, this gave them both a -chance of not having to eat indigestible words afterwards, of not having -to allow in the future that they began their life together in a welter -of lies. She was a woman and she was beautiful and it was no more than -right that he should think her woman’s beauty was unique. “And I’ve -told you what I think of you,” she said. “I shall not change my mind on -that.” - -“I shall never give you need,” he said, but he was finding this the -ultimate surprise of all. “I had supposed that women liked to be wooed.” - -“I think they do. I’m sure I do, but I’m a plain-dealer, Reuben.” - -“I find you very wonderful,” he said, and kissed her now as she would -have him kiss, with true and honest passion that had respect in it but -wasn’t bleached with reverence--and very sweetly and sincerely, she -kissed him back. - -That was their mating and she brought it at once from the extravagant -heights where he would have carried it, into deep still waters. It came -quickly, it was to last permanently. These two loved, and the coming and -the lasting of their love had no more to do with reason than love -ever has. If Mr. Verners had the impression that he was a guileful -conspirator who had made this match, he flattered himself; at the most -he had only accelerated it. Inside, he sat looking forward to the -quick decline in his table manners which would follow upon the going of -Dorothy from his house; outside, two lovers paced the lawn in happiness, -and they did not look forward then. To look forward is to imply that -one’s present state can be improved. - -Two months ago, they were in London; two months ago the idea that they -should entertain Hepplestall, the manufacturer, the gentleman who was, -in that tall Queen Anne Verners house which stood on the site of a -Verners house already old when the Stuarts came to reign, would have -seemed madness; the house itself would fall in righteous anger on such -a guest. Now he was coming into the drawing-room with Dorothy’s hand in -his, accepted suitor, welcomed son. Something of this was in Dorothy’s -mind as she led him, solemn-faced and twinkling-eyed round the room. On -the walls in full paintings or in miniatures, old dead Verners looked at -her, and to each she introduced him. “And not one of them changed their -color,” she announced. - -Mrs. Verners had a last word to say. “But there is Tom.” Young Tom -Verners was with his regiment in the Peninsula. - -“Tom!” cried Dorothy. “I’ll show you what Tom thinks of this.” She -raised a candlestick to light the face of her grandfather’s portrait on -the wall. Tom, they said, was the image of his grandfather who had been -painted in his youth in the uniform of a cornet of horse when he brought -victory home with Marlborough. She waved the candle and as she knew very -well it would, the minx, its flicker brought to the portrait the sudden -appearance of a smile. “That,” she said, “is what Tom thinks,” and -Mrs. Verners wept maudlin tears and felt exceedingly content. There was -happiness that night in the Verners house. - -When he had mounted his horse, and had set off, she came running down -the steps after him. “Stop!” she cried. “No, don’t get off. Just listen. -My man, my steam-man, I love you, I love you,” and ran into the house. - -In his own house, when he reached it, he found Peter and Phoebe Bradshaw -waiting for him, sad sights the pair of them, with drawn, suffering -faces and the sense of incomprehensible wrong gnawing at their hearts. -They couldn’t understand, they couldn’t believe; hours ago they had -talked themselves to a standstill, and waited now in silent apprehensive -misery. - -“Well?” asked Reuben. - -“The weavers tell me of an order of yours. I can’t believe--there must -be some mistake.” - -“I gave an order.” - -“But--” - -“I gave an order. It closes your factory? Come into mine. You shall have -an overlooker’s job.” Peter was silent. He was to lose his factory, -his position, his independence. He who had been master was to turn man -again, to go back, in the afternoon of life, to the place from which as -young man he had raised himself. What was Hepplestall saying? “You had -no faith in steam, Bradshaw. This is where disbelief has brought you. I -did not hear your thanks.” - -“Thanks?” repeated Peter. - -“I offer you an overlooker’s job in my factory.” - -“But Reuben,” said Phoebe, “Reuben!” - -He turned upon her with a snarl. She used his Christian name. She dared! -“Reuben!” she said. “The boy. Our boy. Our John?” - -“He will be--what--five months old?” - -“Yes,” she said. - -“At five years old, I take children into the factory. Good-night.” - - - - -CHAPTER VII--THE EARLY LIFE OF JOHN BRADSHAW - -ONCE upon a time, a West Indian slave owner was in conversation with -three master-spinners and they spoke of labor conditions in the North -of England. “Well,” he said, “I have always thought myself disgraced by -being the owner of slaves, but we never in the West Indies thought it -possible for any human being to be so cruel as to require a child of -nine years old to work twelve and a half hours a day, and that, you -acknowledge, is your regular practice.” - -That, and worse, was the early life of John Bradshaw, son of Reuben -Hepplestall. Peter went into Reuben’s factory: he took the meatless bone -Reuben contemptuously threw to a dog: he became an overlooker. Once he -had been a fighter, when he was raising himself from the ranks into the -position of a small factory owner: then contentment had come upon him -and fighting power went out of him. Whom, indeed, should he fight? He -was not encountering a man but a Thing, a System, which at its first -onslaught seemed to crush the spirit of a people. - -The later Hepplestalls looked back to Reuben, their founder, and saw -him as a figure of romance. The romance of Lancashire is rather in the -tremendous fact that its common people survived this System that came -upon them from the unknown, that, so soon, they were hitting back at -the Thing which stifled life. Capital, unaggravated, had been tolerable; -capital, aggravated by steam, made the Factory System and the System was -intolerable. - -Reuben might have chosen to make exceptions of the Bradshaws, but he -did not choose it. They had to be nothing to the husband of Dorothy -Hepplestall, they had to go, with the rest, into the jaws of the System. -So Peter lost his liberties and found nothing in the steam machines to -parallel the easy-going familiarities between master and man which had -humanized his primitive factory. A bell summoned him into the factory, -and he left it when the engines stopped, which might be twelve and a -half or might be fifteen hours later. He gave good work for bad pay -and his prayer was that the worst might not happen. The worst was that -Phoebe might be driven with him into the factory, and the worst beyond -the worst was that Phoebe’s son might be driven with her. So he gave -of his best and tried with a beaten man’s despair to hold off the worst -results of the creeping ruin that came upon his home. - -Reuben was guiltless of personal malignancy. He had decided that the -Bradshaws must not be favorites, that they must do as others did, which -was a judgment, not a spite, and Reuben did not control the system, but -was controlled by it. He, like the Bradshaws, must do as others did. -He could, of course, have got out: his difference from them was that he -could abjure cotton. But he did not do that, and so long as he stayed -in, a competitor with other manufacturers, he was obliged, if he would -survive commercially, to use the methods of the rest. They may or may -not have been methods that revolted him by their barbarity, and it is -probable that, even in that callous age, what of the true gentleman was -left in him was, in fact, revolted. That is, at least, to be deduced -from the completely isolating veil he hung between Dorothy and the -factory. His house was the old home of the Hepplestalls, near the -factory but not, like many manufacturers’ houses, adjacent to it. It was -sufficiently far away for him, practically, to live two lives which -did not meet. He was a manufacturer and he was the husband of Dorothy’ -Hepplestall; in the factory one man and at home another, not lying at -home about steam because there he never spoke of it, preserving her -romantic illusions about his work by keeping her remote from it. She -might have had her curiosities, but she loved Reuben, she consented at -his will to be incurious and the habit remained. It might have remained -even if love had faded, but their love was not to fade. And the county -took it that if Dorothy Verners had married a manufacturer, the factory -was not to be mentioned before her. In the presence of ladies they did -not mention it to Reuben, though, in the bad times, when the poor-rate -rose and half the weavers came upon the parish, Reuben was roasted to -his face with indignant heat after the ladies had left the table. - -He was neither of the best nor of the worst. He was not patriarchal like -the Strutts and the Gregs who, while conforming to the System, qualified -it with school-houses and swimming baths, nor did he go to the extreme -of ordering his people into the cottages he built and compelling them -to pay rent for a cottage whether they occupied it or not. He didn’t -run shops, charging high prices, at which his people had to buy or where -they had to take goods in part payment of wages. Such devices, though -general, seemed to him petty and extraneous to the factory; but in the -factory he was a keen economist and one of the results of the System -was that the masters looked on wages not as paid to individuals but to -families. That was so much the normal view that a weaver was not allowed -to go on the parish unless he proved that his wife and children worked -in the mills and that the whole family wage was inadequate for their -support. - -Phoebe had to go and, when he was old enough, that is to say at five, -John also went. The legal age for apprentices was seven--they were -workhouse children bound to the master till they were twenty-one--but -John was a “free” laborer, so, until the Act of 1819, which made nine -years and twelve working hours the minimum, John was “free” to work at -five, to be a breadwinner, to add his magnificent contribution to the -family wage which kept the Bradshaws from the workhouse. - -The factory bell was the _leit motif_ of his life, but the Bradshaws had -a relic of their past which made them envied. They had a clock, and the -clock told them when it was time to get up to go to the factory. Others, -clockless, got up long before they needed and waited in the chill -of early morning, at five o’clock, for the door to open. The idea of -ringing the bell as a warning half an hour before working hours began -had not occurred to any one then, and people rose in panic and went -out, cutting short sleep shorter, stamping in snow (or, if snow is -sentimental, is it ever particularly joyous to rise, with a long day’s -work ahead, at five and earlier?), waiting for the doors to let them in -to warmth. No one was ever late. The fines made it expensive to be late, -and the knocker-up, the man who went round and for a penny or tuppence -a week rattled wires at the end of a clothes-prop against your bedroom -window till you opened the window and sang out to him--the knocker-up -was a late Victorian luxury. In John’s day, there was only the factory -bell, and one was inside the factory when it rang. The bell was -the symbol of the system, irritating the weavers especially, as the -power-loom increased in efficiency, and drove more and more of them -to the factories. The spinners, indeed, had had the interregnum of the -water-factory: it was not, for them, a straight plunge into the tyranny -of the system. The old hand-weaver, whose engine was his arms, began and -stopped work at will, which is not to say that he was a lazy fellow, but -is to say that he had time to grow potatoes in a garden, to take a share -in country sports and, on the whole, to lead a reasonable life: and his -wife had the art and the time to cook food for him. When she worked in -the factory, she had no time to cook, and there was nothing to cook, -either, and if she had worked from childhood, she had never learned how -to cook, and there was no need. They lived on bread and cheese, with -precious little cheese. They rarely lived to see forty. - -John, son of Reuben (though he did not know that), came to the factory -at five in the morning and left it, at earliest, at seven or eight at -night, being the while in a temperature of 75 to 85. As to meal-times, -why, adults got their half hour or so for breakfast and their hour for -dinner and the machinery was stopped so that was just the time for -the children to nip under and over it, snatching their food while they -cleaned a machine from dust and flue. Bad for the lungs, perhaps, but -the work was so light and easy. John, who was small when he was five, -crawled under the machines picking up cotton waste. - -There was a school of manufacturers who held, apparently without -hypocrisy, that this was a charming way to educate an infant into habits -of industry: a sort of work in play, with the cotton waste substituted -for a ball and the factory for the nursery. And they called the work -light and easy. - -John was promoted to be a piecer--he pieced together threads broken in -the spinning machines, and, of course, the machine as a whole didn’t -stop while he did it, and it was really rather skilled work, done very -rapidly with a few exquisitely skilled movements: and that was hardly -work at all, it was more amusement than toil. Only one Fielden, an -employer who, many years later, tried the experiment for himself, found -that in following the to-and-fro movements of a spinning machine for -twelve hours, he walked no less than twenty miles! Fielden was a -reformer; he didn’t call this light and easy work for a child, but -others did. - -It would happen that--one knows how play tires a child--John would feel -sleepy towards evening. He didn’t go to sleep on a working machine, or -he would have died, and John did not die that way: he didn’t go to -sleep at all. He was beaten into wakefulness. Peter often beat him -into wakefulness, and Peter did it not because he was cruel to John -but because he was kind. If Peter had not beaten him lightly, other -overseers would have beaten him heavily, not with a ferule, but with a -billy-roller, which is a heavy iron stick. John also beat himself and -pinched himself and bit his tongue to keep awake. As the evening wore on -it became almost impossible to keep awake on any terms: sometimes, they -sang. Song is the expression of gladness, but that was not why they -sang. And they sang--hymns. It would have been most improper to sing -profane songs in a factory. - -As to John’s home life, he went to bed: and if it hadn’t been for Phoebe -or Peter who carried him, he would often not have reached bed. He would -have gone to sleep in the road, and because he had never known any other -life than this, it was reasonable in him to suppose that the life he -led, if not right, was inevitable. - -He did not suppose it for long. You can spring surprises on human -nature, you can de-humanize it for a time, but if you put faith in -the permanent enslavement of men and women, you shall find yourself -mistaken. Even while John was passing from a wretched childhood to a -wretched adolescence, the reaction was preparing, and mutely, hardly -consciously at all, he was questioning if the things that were, were -necessarily the things that had to be. There was the death of Peter, in -the factory, stopping to live as a machine stops functioning because it -is worn out, and there was the drop in their family wages, though John -was earning man’s pay then. And there was the human stir in the world, -the efforts of workers to combine for better conditions, for Trade -Unions, for Reformed Parliaments, and the efforts of the ruling classes, -qualified by the liberalism of a Peel or the insurgency of a Cobbett, to -repress. There were riots, machine-breaking, factory-burning, Peterloo, -the end of a great war, peace and disbanded soldiery, people who starved -and a panic-stricken Home Secretary who thought there was a revolution. - -Most of it mattered very little to John, growing up in Hepplestall’s -factory, which escaped riot. It escaped not because its conditions -were not terrible but because conditions were often more terrible. As -employer, Reuben trod the middle way, and it was the extreme men, the -brutes who seemed to glory in brutality, at whom riots were aimed. -John knew that there were blacker hells than his, which was a sort -of mitigation, while mere habit was another. If life has never been -anything but miserable, than misery is life, and you make the best of -it. One of the ways by which John expected to make the best of it was to -marry. He married at seventeen, but when it is in the scheme of things -to be senile at forty, seventeen is a mature age. The family wage was -also in the scheme of things: the exploitation of children was the basis -of the cotton trade: and though love laughs at economics as heartily -as at locksmiths, marriage and child-bearing were not discouraged by -misery, but encouraged by it. John did not think of these things, nor -of himself and Annie as potential providers of child-slaves. He thought, -illogically, of being happy. - -And, considering Annie, not without excuse. She was of the few’ who -stood up straight, untwisted by the factory, though it had caught her -young and tamed her cruelly. There was gypsy blood in her. She, of a -wandering tribe, had been taught “habits of industry,” and the lesson -had been a rack which, still, had not broken her. It hadn’t quenched -her light, though, within him, John had the fiercer fire. With him, the -signs of the factory hand were hung out for all to see. Pale-faced and -stunted, with a great shock of hair and weak, peering eyes, he was more -like some underground creature than a man living by the grace of God -and the light of the sun--he had lived so much of life by the artificial -light of the factory in the long evenings and the winter mornings; but -he had a kind of eagerness, a sort of Peeping Tom of a spirit refusing -to be ordered off, and a suggestion of wiriness both of mind and body, -which announced that here was one whose quality declined obliteration by -the System. - -Lovers had a consolation in those days. Bone-tired as the long -work-hours left them, it was yet possible by a short walk to get out -of the town that Hepplestall had made. These two were married, and a -married woman had no manner of business to steal away from her house -when the factory had finished with her for the day, but that was what -Phoebe made Annie do. That was Phoebe’s tribute to youth, and a heavy -tribute, too. She, like them, had labored all day in the factory and at -night she labored in the home, sending them out to the moors as if they -were careless lovers still--at their age! Phoebe kept her secret, and -she had the sentiment of owing John reparation. It was not much that she -could do, but she did this--growing old, toil-worn, she took the lion’s -share of housework, she set them free, for an hour or so, to go upon the -moors. And Annie was grateful more than John. Already, he was town-bred, -already he craved for shelter, already the overheated factory seemed -nature’s atmosphere to John. - -She threw herself on the yielding heather, smelling it, and earth and -air in ecstasy, then rolled on her back and looked at the stars. “Lad, -lad,” she cried, “there’s good in life for all that.” - -“Aye, wench,” he said, “there’s you.” - -“Me? There’s bigger things than me. There’s air and sky and a world that -is no beastly reek and walls and roofs.” - -“It’s cold on the moor to-night,” he said, shivering. - -She threw her shawl about him. “You’re clemmed,” she said, drawing him -close to the generous warmth of her. “Seems to me I come to life under -the stars. Food don’t matter greatly to me if there’s air as I can -breathe.” - -“We’re prisoned in yon factory, Annie. Reckon I’m used to the prison. -There’s boggarts on the moor.” - -She laughed at his fears. “Aye, you may laugh,” he said, “but there was -a gallows up here, and boggarts of the hanged still roam.” - -The belief in witches, ghosts and supernatural visitants of all kinds -was a common one and it was not discouraged by educated people who -hoped, probably, to reconcile the ignorant to the towns by allowing -terrifying superstitions of the country to remain in circulation. But -Annie’s gypsy strain kept her immune from any such fears: her ancestors -had traded in superstition. “And,” he went on seriously, “when the -Reformers tried to meet on Cronkey-shaw Moor, it’s a known fact that -there were warlocks seen.” What was seen was a body of men grotesquely -decked in the semblance of the popular notion of a wizard, with -phosphorescent faces and so on. Somebody was using a better way to -scotch Reform than soldiers, but the trick was soon exposed and meetings -and drillings on the moors were phenomena of the time. - -“You make too much o’ trouble o’ all sorts, John,” she said. - -“I canna keep fro’ thinking, Annie,” he apologized. “I’m thinking now.” - -“Aye, of old wives’ tales,” she mocked. - -“No. I’m thinking of my grandfer and of Hepplestall’s factory.” - -“I’m in the air,” she said. “That’s good enough for me.” She was -slightly jealous of John, who had known his grandfather. Very soundly -established people had known two grandfathers: John had known one, -but Annie none. However, he was not to be prevented from speaking his -thought. - -“I’ve heard my grandfer tell o’ times that were easier than these. He -had a factory o’ his own--what they called a factory them days. Baby to -Hepplestall’s it were. I’ll show you its ruin down yonder by the stream -some day. He’s dead now, is grandfer. Sounds wonder-ful to hear me talk -of a grandfer wi’ a factory o’ his own.” - -“Fine lot of good to thee now, my lad. I never had no grandfer that I -heard on, but I don’t see that it makes any difference atween thee and -me to-day.” - -“I’m none boasting, Annie,” he said. “I’m nobbut looking back to the -times that used to be. Summat’s come o’er life sin’ then, summat that’s -like a great big cloud, on a summer’s day.” - -“Well,” said Annie, “we’ve the factory. But there’s times like this when -I’ve my arms full of you and my head full of the smell of heather. And -there’s times like mischief-neet”--that is, the night of the first of -May--“and th’ Bush-Bearing in August. I like th’ Wakes, lad... oh, and -lots of times that aren’t all factory. There’s Easter and Whitsun and -Christmas.” There were: there were these survivals of a more jocund age, -honored still, if by curtailed celebrations. The trouble was that the -curtailments were too severe, that neither of cakes nor ale, neither -of bread nor circuses was there sufficient offset against the grinding -hardships of the factories. Both John and Annie had so recently emerged -from the status of child-slavery that the larger life of adults might -well have seemed freedom enough; to Annie, aided by Phoebe’s sacrifice, -to Annie, living more physically than John, to Annie, who rarely looked -beyond one short respite unless it was to the next, the present seemed -not amiss. Except the life of the roads and the heaths, to which she saw -no possibility of return, from which the factory had weaned her, she had -no traditions, while he had Peter Bradshaw for tradition. He had slipped -down the ladder, and there was resentment, usually dormant, of the fact -that he saw no chance to climb again. - -“Things are,” was her philosophy. “I’m none in factory now, and I’m none -fretting about factory and you’d do best to hold your hush about your -grandfer, John. His’n weren’t a gradely factory.” - -That was it. She accepted Hepplestall’s, while John accepted the habit -of Hepplestall’s, dully, subterraneously resenting it. She almost took -a pride in the size of Hepplestall’s. “And,” she said, good Methodist as -she was, “there’s a better life to come.” - -He had no reply to make to that. The Methodist was the working class -religion, as opposed to the Church of the upper classes and, at first, -the rulers had seen danger in it, and in an unholy alliance of Methodism -with Reform. There was something, but not a great deal in their fear. -There was the fact, for instance, that in the Methodist Sunday Schools -reading and writing were taught. “The modern Methodists,” says Bamford -in his ‘Early Days,’ “may boast of this feat as their especial work. The -church party never undertook to instruct in writing on Sundays.” That -far, but not much farther, the Methodists stood for enlightenment. -Cobbett gave them no credit at all. He said, in 1824, “the bitterest -foes of freedom in England have been, and are, the Methodists.” Annie -had “got religion”: the sufferings and the hardships of this life were -mere preparations for radiant happiness to come, and a religion of this -sort was not for citizens but for saints; it gave no battle to the -Devil, Steam. - -John stirred uncomfortably in her arms. He had an aching sense of wrong, -beyond expression and beyond relief. If he tried to express it, his -fumbling words were countered by her opportunism and, in the last -resort, by her religion. Things were, and there was nothing to be done -about them. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII--THE LONELY MAN - -A MAN with a foot in two camps is likely to be welcomed in neither and -to be lonely in his life. The cotton manufacturers had grown rich, they -were established, they were a new order threatening to rival in wealth -and power the old order of the land interest, and they were highly -self-conscious about it. Land had no valid cause to be resentful of the -new capitalists. Land was hit by the increase in the poor rates, but -handsomely compensated for that by the rise in land values. But a new -power had arisen and land was jealous of its increasing influence in the -councils of the nation. - -Reuben never forgot that he belonged to the old order, was of it, and -had married into it. In business affairs, it was necessary to have -associations with other manufacturers, but he had no hospitalities at -home for them on the occasions when they met to discuss measures of -common policy. He entertained them at the factory, he kept home and -affairs in separate water-tight compartments, and was loved of none. He -was his own land-owner and his own coal-owner, both long starts in the -race, and he was at least as efficient and enterprising as his average -competitor. A gentleman had come into trade and had made a great success -of it. More galling still, he insisted that he remained a gentleman in -the old sense, a landed man, “county.” Not in words but by actions and -inactions which bit deeper than any words he proclaimed his superiority. - -And why not? He was superior, he was the husband of Dorothy Hepplestall -and it was that fact--the fact that he had married Dorothy and made a -success of their marriage--which counted against him with the county far -more than his having gone into trade and having made a success of that. -They would have welcomed a failure somewhere, and he had failed at -nothing. So though he had their society, he had it grudgingly. - -He was then driven back, not unwillingly, on Dorothy. She was, for -Reuben, the whole of friendship, the whole of companionship, the whole -of love; after all, she was Dorothy and certainly he made no complaint -that he had no other friends and that he was a tolerated, unpopular -figure in society. His days were for the factory, his evenings for -Dorothy and their children and, when the children had gone to bed, for -Dorothy and his books. Books, though they were not unduly insisted upon -in the country districts of Lancashire, went then with gentlemanliness -and Reuben was not idiosyncratic, but normal, in becoming bookish in -middle-age. In Parliament they quoted the classics in their speeches, -and the Corinthian of the Clubs, whatever his sporting tastes, spared -time to keep his classics in repair. Bookishness, in moderation, was -part of the make-up of a man of taste, and for Reuben it had become a -recourse not for fashion’s sake but for its own. - -Life for Reuben had its mellowness; he had struggled and he had won; he -was owner and despot, hardly bound by any law but that of his will, of -the several factories contained within the great wall, of a coal-mine, -of the town of cottages and shops about. The conditions of labor were -the usual conditions and they did not trouble his conscience. Things -were, indeed, rather smoother for Hepplestall’s workers than for some -others; he was above petty rent exactions and truck shops, as, being his -own coal supplier, he could very well afford to be. - -What drawbacks there were to his position were rather in matters of -decoration than reality, but it was decided proof of his unpopularity -in both camps of influence that Hepplestall was not a magistrate. Other -great manufacturers, to a man, were on the bench and took good care to -be, because administration of the law was largely in the hands of the -magistrates and the manufacturers wanted the administration in trusty -hands--their own. It was a permanent rebuff to Reuben that he was not a -magistrate; there were less wealthy High Sheriffs. - -It was a puny irritation, symptomatic of their spite, and it didn’t -matter much to Reuben, who was sure of his realities, sure, above all, -of the reality of Dorothy’s love. No love runs smooth for twenty years -and probably it would not be love if it did, but only a bad habit -masquerading as love, so that it would not be true to say of Reuben and -Dorothy that they had never had a difference. They had had many small -differences, and in this matter of love what happens is that which also -happens to a tree. Trees need wind; wind forces the roots down to a -stronger and ever stronger hold upon the earth. And so with love, which -cannot live in draughtless hothouse air, but needs to be wind-tossed to -prove and to increase its strength. Impossible to be a pacifist in love! -Love is a tussle, a thing of storms and calms: like everything in life -it cannot stand still but must either grow or decay, and for growth, -it must have strife. Sex that is placid and love that is immovable are -contradictions in terms. Love has to interest or love will cease to be, -and to interest it cannot stagnate. - -The children came almost as milestones in the road of their love; each -marked the happy ending of a period of stress. They were not results -of a habit, but the achievements of a passion, live symbols of a thing -itself alive. These two hearts did not beat all the time as one, and the -restlessness of their love was as essential as its harmony. - -But the shadow of a difference that might grow into a disaster was -being cast upon them. In a way, it was extraneous to their love, and in -another way was part and parcel of it. The question was the future of -Edward, the eldest son. - -Dorothy lived in two worlds, in Reuben and in the county, and Reuben -lived in three, Dorothy, the factory and the county. He put the factory -second to Dorothy and she put it nowhere. There was a bargain between -them, unspoken but understood, that she should put it nowhere and yet he -was assuming, tacitly, that Edward was as a matter of course to succeed -him as controller of the factory and the mine: of these two he always -thought first of the factory and second of the mine. - -She might have reconciled herself to the mine. There were Dukes, like -the Duke of Bridgewater, who owned coal-mines and her Edward might have -gained great honor, like that Duke, by developing canals. But she had -not moved with the times about factories, nor, indeed, had the times, -that is, her order of the old gentry, moved very far. The Secombes were -still exceptional, the Luke Verners still trimmers, land was still -land and respectable, steam was steam and questionable, and it is to be -supposed that though the coal of the Duke was used to make steam, coal -was land and therefore on the side of the angels, whatever the devils -did with it afterwards. Prejudice, in any case, has nothing to do with -consistency. She had no prejudice against Reuben’s connection with the -factory; he was her “steam-man” still, but she did not want Edward to be -her steam-son. - -Edward himself was conscious of no talent for factory owning and hardly -of being the son of a factory owner. - -The management of her children’s lives was in Dorothy’s hands, involving -no mention of the factory, and in her hands Reuben was content to leave -their lives until his sons had had the ordinary education of gentlemen, -until they were down from their Universities. He had not suffered -himself as a manufacturer because he was educated as a gentleman and saw -no reason to bring up his sons any differently from himself. Throw them -too young into the factory, and they would become manufacturers and -manufacturers only: he had the wish to make them gentlemen first and -manufacturers afterwards. - -Edward had ideas of his own about his future, and it came as a surprise -to be invited at breakfast to visit the factory one day during vacation -from Oxford. Instinctively he glanced, not at his mother, but at his -clothes. He was not precisely a dandy, but had money to burn and burned -a good deal of it at his tailor’s. - -“The factory, I said, not the coal-mine,” Reuben said, noting his son’s -impulse. “You have looked at your clothes. Now let us go and look at -the first cause of the clothes. As a young philosopher you should be -interested in first causes.” - -“Oh, is it necessary, Reuben?” pleaded Dorothy. - -“Sparks should know where the flames come from,” said Reuben. - -“I have great curiosity to see the factory, sir,” said Edward. “I showed -surprise, but that was natural. You have hidden the factory from us all -as if it were a Pandora’s box and if you judge the time now come when -I am to see the place from which our blessings come, I assure you I -am flattered by your confidence. But I warn you I am not persuaded in -advance to admire the box.” - -Reuben smiled grimly at his hinted opposition. “If you look with sense, -you will admire,” he said. “Factories run to usefulness, not beauty. -Shall we go?” - -They went, and Reuben exhibited his factory with thoroughness, with the -zest of a man who had created it, but now and then with the impatience -of the expert who does not concede enough to the slow-following thought -of the lay mind. Edward began with every intention to appreciate, but as -Reuben explained the processes, found nothing but antipathy grow within -him. - -He breathed a foul, hot, dust-laden air, he hadn’t a mechanical turn of -mind and was mystified by operations which Reuben imagined he expounded -lucidly. Once the thread was lost, the whole affair was simply -puzzlement and he had the feeling of groping in a fog, a hideously -noisy fog, where wheels monotonously went round, spinning mules beat -senselessly to and fro and dirty men and women looked resentfully at -him. It seemed to him a hell worse than any Dante had described, with -sufferers more hopeless, bound in stupid misery. He was not thinking of -the sufferers with any great humanitarianism: they were of a lower order -and this no doubt was all that they were fit for. He was thinking of -them with disgust, objecting to breathe the same air, revolted by their -smells, but he was conscious of, at least, some sentiment of pity. If -he had understood the meaning of it all, he felt that he would have seen -things like these in true perspective, but he missed the keys to it, -was nauseated when he ought to have been interested and his attempted -queries grew less and less to the point. - -Reuben perceived at last that he was lecturing an inattentive audience. -“Come into the office,” he said, and in that humaner place, with its -great bureau, its library of ledgers and its capacious chairs for -callers, where the engine throbbed with a diminished hum, Edward tried -to collect his thoughts. “This,” Reuben emphasized, “is where I do my -work. I go through the factory twice a day, otherwise, I am to be found -in here. A glass of wine to wash the dust out of your throat?” - -Edward was grateful: but wine could not wash his repugnance away. “Well, -now,” asked Reuben, “what do you think?” - -“Frankly, sir, I am hardly capable of thought.” - -“No,” said Reuben meditatively. “No. Its bigness takes the breath away.” - -But Edward was not thinking of bigness. “If I say anything now which -appears strange to you, I hope you will attribute it to my inexperience. -I am thinking of those people I have seen. To spend so many hours a day -in such conditions seems to me a very dreadful thing.” - -“Work has to be done, Edward, and they are used to it. You will find -that there are only two sorts of people in this world, the drivers and -the driven.” He leaned forward in his chair. “Which are you going to -be?” - -“I?” The personal application caught him unawares, then he mentally -pulled himself together. If he was in for it, he could meet it. - -“I did not bring you here as an idle sight-seer. At first blush you -dislike the factory, but it is my belief that you will come to like it -as well as, I do.” Edward stared at his father who was, he saw, serious. -He veritably “liked” the factory. “In fact,” Reuben was saying, “I can -go further. I love this place. I made it; it is my life’s work; and I -am proud of it. Hepplestall’s is a great heritance. When I hand it on to -you, it will be a great possession, a great trust. How great you do not -know and if I showed you now the figures in those books you would be no -wiser. As yet you do not understand. Even out there in the works where -things are simple you missed my meaning, but there is time to learn it -all before I leave the reins to you.” - -“I am to decide now?” - -“Decide? Decide? What is there to decide? You are my eldest son.” - -Edward made an effort: Reuben was assuming his consent to everything. -“May I confess my hope, sir? My hope was that when I had finished at -Oxford, you would allow me to go to the bar.” - -“The bar? A cover for idleness.” Sometimes, but Edward had not intended -to be idle. The bar was an occupation, gentlemanly, settling a man in -London amongst his Oxford friends; it seemed to Edward that the bar -would meet his tastes. If it had been land that he was to inherit, -naturally he would have taken a share in its management, but there was -no land: there was a factory, and he felt keen jealousy of Tom, his -younger brother. It was settled that Tom should follow his uncle, Tom -Verners, who was Colonel Verners now, into the Army, while he, the -eldest son, who surely should have first choice, he was apparently -destined will he, nill he, for this detestable factory! - -“I will have no son of mine a loafer. You would live in London?” - -“I should hope to practice there.” - -“I’ll have no idlers and no cockneys in my family, Edward. -Hepplestall’s! Hepplestall’s! and he sneers at it.” - -“Oh, no, sir. Please. Not that. I feel it difficult to explain.” - -“Don’t try.” - -“I must. I think what I feel is that if we were speaking of land I as -your eldest son should naturally come into possession. I should feel it, -in the word you used, as a trust. But we are not speaking of land.” - -Reuben gripped his chair-arms till his hands grew white and recovered a -self-control that had nearly slipped away. The boy was ready to approve -the law of primogeniture so long as he could be fastidious about his -inheritance, so long as the inheritance was land. As it was not land, he -wanted to run away. He deprecated steam. He dared, the jackanapes! -“No,” said Reuben, “we are not speaking of land. We are speaking of -Hepplestall’s.” - -“If it were land,” Edward went on ingenuously, “however great the -estate, you would not find me shirking my responsibility.” - -“I see. And as it is not land? As it is this vastly greater thing than -land?” Then suavity deserted him. “Boy,” he cried, “don’t you see what -an enormous thing it is to be trustee of Hepplestall’s?” - -“Oh,” said Edward, “it is big. But let me put a case.” - -“What? Lawyering already?” scoffed Reuben. “Suppose one dislikes a cat. -Fifty cats don’t reconcile one.” - -“You dislike the factory?” - -“I may not fully understand--” - -“Then wait till you do. Come here and learn.” - -“That would be the thin end of the wedge.” - -“It is meant to be,” said Reuben, and on that their conversation -was, not inopportunely, interrupted. A clerk knocked on the door and -announced Mr. Needham. “Don’t go, Edward,” said Reuben, “this can figure -as a detail in your education,” and introduced his son to the caller. - -Edward looked hopelessly at the visitor. Reuben had told him that the -office was the place where his business life was spent and therefore -Edward’s contacts, if he came to the factory, would not be with the -squalid people he had seen at work, but with people who visited the -office. He looked at Mr. Needham, and decided that he had never seen a -coarser or more brutal man in his life. There were certain fellows of -his college justly renowned for grossness; there was the riffraff of the -town, there were hangers-on at the stables, there were the bruisers he -had seen, but in all his experience he had seen nothing comparable with -the untrammeled brutishness of Mr. Richard Needham. If this was -the company he was asked to keep, he preferred--what did one do _in -extremis?_ Enlist? Well, then, he preferred enlistment to the factory. - -Needham was, however, not quite the usual caller, who was a merchant -come to buy, or a machinist come to sell, rather than, as Needham was, -a manufacturer and a notorious one at that. By this time, the repeal of -the Combination Acts had given Trade Unionism an opportunity to develop -in the open, and manufacturers who had known very well how to deal with -the earlier guerilla warfare of the then illegal Unions were seriously -alarmed by its progress. There was a strong movement to force the -reënactment of the Combination Laws. Contemporaneously, the growth -and proved efficiency of the power-loom drove the weavers to extremes. -Needham was self-appointed leader of the reactionaries amongst the -manufacturers: a man who had risen by sheer physical strength to a -position from which he now exercised considerable influence over the -more timid of the masters. - -He had the curtest of nods for Edward. “My God, Hepplestall, we’re in -for a mort of trouble,” he said, mopping his brow with a huge printed -handkerchief and putting his beaver hat on the desk. He sank into a -stout chair which groaned under his weight, and Edward thought he had -never seen anything so indecent as the swollen calves of Mr. Needham. - -Reuben silently passed the wine. It seemed a good answer. - -Warts are a misfortune, not a crime: but the wart on Mr. Needham’s nose -struck Edward as an obscenity--and his father loved the factory! He -didn’t know that he was unduly sensitive, but certainly Needham on top -of his view of the workpeople made him queasy. - -Needham emptied and refilled a glass. “I’d hang every man who strikes,” - he said. “Look at ‘em here,” he went on, producing a hand-bill which he -offered to Reuben. - -“After the peace of Amiens,” it read, “the wages of a Journeyman Weaver -would amount to 2/7 1/2 per day or 15/9 per week, and this was pretty -near upon a par with other mechanics and we maintained our rank in -society. We will now contrast our present situation with the past, and -it will demonstrate pretty clearly the degraded state to which we have -been reduced. - -“During the last two years our wages have been reduced to so low an -ebb that for the greatest part of that time we have... the Journeyman’s -Wages of 9d or 10d a day or from 4/6 to 5/--per week, and we appeal to -your candor and good sense, whether such a paltry sum be sufficient to -keep the soul and body together.” - -“What do you think of that?” asked Needham. “Printing it, mind you, -spreading sedition and disaffection like that. Not a word about their -wives and children all taken into the factories and all taking good -wages out. If commerce isn’t to be unshackled and free of the attacks of -a turbulent and insurrectionary spirit, I ask you, where are we? Where’s -our chance of keeping law and order when the law permits weavers to -combine and yap together and issue bills like yond? It’s fatal to allow -‘em to feel their strength and communicate with each other without -restraint. Allow them to go on uninterrupted and they become more -licentious every day. What do you say, Hepplestall?” - -“Why, sir, it’s you who are making a speech, and I may add a speech -containing many very familiar phrases.” - -“Aye, I’ve said it before, and to you. I might have spared my breath. -But hast heard the latest? Dost know that the strikers in Blackburn -destroyed every power-loom within six miles of the town and... and...” - Mr. Needham drew in breath... “and they’ve been syringing cloth wi’ -vitriol. Soft sawder in yond hand-bill, ‘appeal to your candor and good -sense,’ aye and vitriol on good cloth when it comes to deeds.” - -“Yes, I heard of that. A nasty business, though I understand the -authorities have dealt strongly with the outbreak.” - -“Aye, you’re a philosopher, because it happened at a distance from you. -It’s some one else’s looms that’s smashed, and some one else’s cloth -that’s rotted. What if it were youm, Hepplestall?” - -“We don’t have Luddites here.” - -“You allays think you’re out of everything. Now I’ve brought you the -facts and you know as well as I do what’s the cause of this uppishness -of the lower orders. It’s Peel, damn him. One of us, and ought to know -better. Sidmouth’s the man for my money. Sidmouth and Castlereagh. -There was sense about when they were in charge. Now, we let the spinners -combine and the weavers combine and they’re treading on our faces. Well, -are you standing by your lonesome as usual or are you in it with the -rest of us to petition against workmen’s combinations? That’s a straight -question, Hepplestall.” - -“I shall take time to answer it, Mr. Needham. I have acted with you in -the past and I have taken leave to doubt the wisdom of your actions and -I have on such occasions acted neither with you nor against you. This -time--” - -“This time, there’s no chance of doubt.” - -“But I do doubt, sir. I doubt whether a factory, controlled by a strong -hand, has anything to fear from Workmen’s Combinations.” - -“Damn it, look at Blackburn!” - -“You shall have my decision when it is ready. At this moment, I tell you -candidly I do not incline to join you.” - -“But union is strength. They’ve combined. So must we.” - -“We always have, in essentials. I promise you I will give this matter -every thought.” - -Needham looked angry, and then a cunning slyness passed across his face. -“I’m satisfied with that,” he said. “Aye, I’m satisfied, though you may -tell me I’ve come a long road to be satisfied wi’ so little at the end -o’ it.” Reuben rose, bowing gravely. “I am glad to have satisfied you, -Mr. Needham,” he said, blandly ignoring the hint that an invitation to -dinner was the natural expectation of a traveled caller. - -“Aye,” said Needham, “Aye.” He finished the bottle, since nothing more -substantial was forthcoming, and rose to go. “Then I’ll be hearing from -you?” - -“Yes,” Reuben assured him. “I will see you to your horse.” - -“Nay, you’ll not. They don’t breed my make of horse. I’ve a coach at -door, and extra strong, too.” - -“Then I will see you to your coach.” Needham nodded to the silent -Edward, and went out with Reuben. There was no strategical issue between -Needham and Hepple-stall. Needham, when he spoke, used phrases taken -from the writings of manufacturers more literate than himself, and -so stated, by such a man, his point of view sounded preposterously -obscurantist. But it was, in essence, Reuben’s view also, with the -difference that Reuben looked on attempts to combat the principle of -Unionism as tactical error. The Combination Acts, he felt, had gone -for ever, and the common policy of the masters should not be in the -direction of reviving those Acts but of meeting the consequences of -their repeal. - -He was, indeed, habitually averse from open association with his fellow -manufacturers because of his self-conscious social difference, and, -where such a man as Needham led, was apt to pick more holes in his -policy than were reasonable. It was quite likely in the present case -that he would come round to Needham’s view, but certainly he would not -hurry. The troubles at Blackburn were remote from him and he felt his -own factory was out of the danger zone, and that if he threw in his -weight with the Needham petition it would be altruistically, and perhaps -a waste of influence which could have found better employment. His -own people were showing no signs of restiveness, and he didn’t think -Unionism was making much headway amongst them. Reason and self-interest -seemed allied with his native individualism to resist Needham’s policy. - -He returned to find Edward staring gloomily at his boots. “Well, -Edward?” he asked cheerily. “Did you like your lesson?” - -“The thing I liked, sir, the only thing I liked, is that you are not to -act with Mr. Needham.” - -“Am I not?” - -“It did not sound so. Tell me, is that a fair specimen of the type of -man you meet in business?” - -“No. In many ways he is superior to the most.” - -“Superior! That fat elephant!” - -“Needham is one of the strongest men in the cotton trade, Edward.” - -“Oh, I called him elephant. Elephants have strength.” - -“And strength is despicable?” - -“No. But--” - -“But Needham is a gross pill to swallow. Well, if it will ease your -mind, I do not propose to act with him on this issue. You need not -swallow this pill, Edward. But I am not looking to a son of mine to be -a runaway from duty, to be a loiterer in smooth places. You have Oxford -which is, I hope, confirming you as a gentleman and you have the factory -which will confirm you as a man. I could make you an appeal. I could -first point out that I am single-handed here in a position which grows -beyond the strength of any single pair of hands. I could dub you my -natural ally at a time when I have need of an ally. But I shall make you -neither an appeal nor a command. Hepplestall’s is a greater thing than -I who made it or than you who will inherit it, and there is no occasion -for pressure. You are, naturally, inevitably, in its service.” Edward -felt rather than saw that somewhere at the opening of the well down -which this plunged him there was daylight. “I do not perceive the -inevitability,” he cried. “You doom me to a monstrous fate.” - -“You are heroical,” said Reuben, “but as to the inevitability, take -time, and you will perceive it.” - -“Daylight! Give me the daylight!” was what Edward wanted to say, but he -repressed that and hardly more happily he asked, “Is there no beauty in -life?” - -“There is beauty in Hepplestall’s,” said Reuben, and meant it. He had -created Hepplestall’s. - - - - -CHAPTER IX--THE SPY - -EDWARD’S “fat elephant” drove from Hepplestall’s meditating his retort -to Reuben’s intransigeancy. He held that it was necessary to weld the -manufacturers into a solid phalanx of opposition to the legalizing -of Trade Unions, and that if Reuben were allowed to stand out, other -masters, whom Needham regarded as weak-kneed, would stand out with him. -Needham was obstinate and unscrupulous, with a special grudge against -“kid-gloved” Hepplestall, and if there were no overt manifestations of -discontent in Hepplestall’s factory, his business was to provoke them. -There was surely latent discontent there as everywhere else and the -good days of Sidmouth and Castlereagh had shown what could be achieved -in the way of manufacturing riot by the use of informers. Informers -were paid to inform, and lost their occupation if no information were -forthcoming; they did not lose their occupation; they were agents -provocateurs, and Gentleman Hepplestall was, if Needham knew right from -left, to be thwacked into line by the activities of an informer. - -He hadn’t much difficulty--he was that sort of man--in laying hands -upon a suitable instrument. The name of the instrument was Thomas -Barraclough, and it was, indeed, in Needham’s hands already working as -a weaver in his factory, not, to be sure, for the purpose of provoking -unrest there but merely for decent spying. There is honesty in spying as -in other things and the decent spy is the observer and reporter of what -others do spontaneously; the indecent spy is he who instigates the deeds -he afterwards reports. Barraclough was quite willing, for a higher -fee, to undertake to prove to Hepplestall that Trade Unions were murder -clubs. - -The affair was not stated, even by blunt Needham to his spy, with quite -such candor as this, but, “If tha’ sees signs o’ trouble yonder, tell me -of ’em; and if tha’ sees no signs tha’s blinder than I tak’ thee -for,” was a sufficiently plain direction to an intelligent spy, -and Barraclough nodded comprehendingly as he went off to begin his -cross-country tramp to Hepplestall’s. - -A spy who looks like a spy is disqualified at once, but what are the -symptoms of spying? What signs does spying hang out on a man that we -shall know him for a spy? Is he bent with a life spent in crouching at -key holes? A keen-eyed, large-eared ferret of a man? The fact is that -Barraclough was small and bent, and ferretty, that he looked like your -typical spy and yet did not look, in the Lancashire of those days, any -different from a famished weaver. They were “like boys of fifteen and -sixteen and most of them cannot measure more than 5 feet 2 or 3 inches.” - -Steam fastened on this generation, stunting it, twisting it, blasting -it, and if Barraclough had been reasonably tall, reasonably well-made -and nourished he would have been marked at once as something different -from the workers who were to accept him as one of themselves. So, -in spite of looking like a spy, he was qualified to be a spy in -Hepplestall’s because he looked like any other undergrown, underpaid, -underfed weaver lad. - -And there is good in all things, though Hepplestall was not thinking -of the Blackburn riots as good when he was cavalier about them with -Needham. There was the good, for Hepplestall’s, that the destruction of -the Blackburn looms and their products brought an exceptional rush of -orders to Reuben; and Thomas Barraclough, applying for work when he -ended his tramp at the factory gates, found himself given immediate -employment. - -He found, too, that as an honest spy he had no occupation in this place. -He could report distress, sullen suffering and patient suffering; he -could report the ordinary things and would have to say, in honesty, that -here the ordinary things had extraordinary mitigations; and he found -nothing of the violent flavor expected by Needham. It remained for him -to take the initiative and to provide against disappointing his master’s -expectations, but the mental sketch he had made of himself as an -effective explosive did not seem likely to be justified in any hurry. -The Blackburn riots had not been followed by such ferocity of punishment -as had befallen the Luddites a few years previously, but there had been -men killed by soldiers during the riots: there were ten death sentences -at Lancaster Assizes, reduced afterwards to transportation for life: and -thirty-three rioters were sent to prison. That was fairly impressive, as -it was meant to be, but much more impressive was the appalling distress -which quite naturally fell upon the Blackburn people who had destroyed -the looms, and if all this was salutary from the point of view of law -and order it was excessively inopportune from the special point of view -of Mr. Barraclough. - -Here he was, under orders to raise tumult, in a place where not only -were there no symptoms of tumult, but where those who might possibly -be tumultuously disposed were cowed by the tales, many true and many -exaggerated, of Blackburn’s sufferings. The malignant irony of the uses -of the agent provocateur was never better exemplified, but it wasn’t -for Needham’s trusty informer to chew upon that, but, whatever his -difficulties, to get on with his incitements. And he soon decided that -Hepplestall’s people, in the mass, were “windbags,” that is, they would -listen to him and they would, in conversation, be as vehement as he, but -their vehemence was in words not deeds and only deeds were of any use -to Barraclough. The method of the Luddites, machinery-smashing, was -discredited for ever by the Blackburn example and he gave up hope of -any large-scale demonstration at Hepple-stall’s. What was left was -the possibility of finding some individual who was capable of being -influenced to violent action. - -Then, just as he was despairing of finding the rightly malleable -material, Annie Bradshaw’s second son was born and Annie Bradshaw died. -She had been almost luxuriously careful about the birth of her first -child: she had left the factory three days before his birth and had not -returned, with the child at her breast, for a full week afterwards; but -second babies were said to come more easily, wages were needed and she -had lifted heavy beams before. The child was born on the factory floor, -it lived and Annie died. There was no extraordinary pother made about -her death, because women were continually defying steam in this way and -most of them survived it. Annie did not survive. She was unlucky. That -was all. - -“Don’t fret for me, lad,” she gasped to John. “I’m going through the -Golden Gates. Tak’ care o’ the childer.” The engine did not stop--guns -do not cease fire because a soldier falls on the battlefield--and to -John Bradshaw, nineteen, widower with two infant sons, it beat a devil’s -tattoo of stunning triumph. There were women gathered around her body, -somewhere a woman was washing his son, but he was seeing nothing of -them, nothing of the life that had come through death. Annie was gone -from him, his glorious Annie of the winds and the moors, lying white -and silent on the oily floor of a stinking factory, and already the -women were leaving her, already they were returning to their several -places. If they gave him sympathy, they took bread out of their mouths -and sympathy must be so brief as to appear callosity. It was not -callosity, and he knew it; knew, too, that he did not want long-winded -condolences or any condolences at all, yet their going so quickly from -that white body seemed to him a stark indecency adding to the monstrous -debt Steam owed him. - -He was thinking of the small profanities of this death rather than of -the death itself. He hadn’t realized that yet, he was probing his way -through the attendant circumstances to the depths of his tragedy. He -knew that he would never lie beneath the stars again with Annie while -the breeze soughed through the heather and she crooned old songs of the -roads in his ear: he knew, but he did not believe it yet. She had been -so utterly protective of him. If she took down her hair, and held it -from her, and he crept beneath its curious warmth, what had mattered -then? He had loved her and by the grace of Phoebe--though he was not -thinking of Phoebe now--they had been given leave to love and to enjoy -each other in the hours which were not the factory’s. - -The engine, thumped horribly on his ear and a gust of passionate hatred -struggled to make itself articulate. “You fiend!” he cried. “Curse you, -curse you!” - -When an overseer came to tell him that a hand-cart was at the gates to -take Annie’s body and the baby home, and that Phoebe might go with him, -he was lying, dazed, on the floor and mechanically did what he was told -to do. He had no volition in him, and Mr. Barraclough, professional -observer, noting both his hysteria and his stupor decided that he had -found his man at last. Providence had ordained that Annie should die to -make an instrument for Richard Needham’s emissary. - -In the days of her youth, Phoebe had her follies as she had her -prettiness; now, schooled by adversity, an old woman of forty, she was -without illusions as she was without comeliness; she had nothing but her -son, and, hidden like a miser’s gold, her hatred of the Hepplestalls, -of Reuben who betrayed her, of Dorothy whom he married, of his sons who -stood where her son should have stood. For two seconds she was weakened -now, for two seconds: as she folded Annie’s baby in her shawl and held -him closely to her she had the thought that she must go to Reuben with a -plea for help, then put that thought away. - -“Don’t worry your head about the childer, lad,” she said, “I’ll manage.” - She would work in the factory, she would order their cottage, she would -rear the babies, she would pay some older woman who was past more active -work a small sum (but the accepted rate) to look after the babies while -she was in the factory. She would take this burden off his shoulders -as she had taken the burden of housework off Annie’s. She had permitted -John and Annie to enjoy the luxury of love and now she was permitting -John the luxury of woe. She said that she would “manage,” he knew the -enormous implications of the word, but knew, because she said it, that -she would keep her promise. There was no limit to his faith in Phoebe -and he touched her shoulder gently, undemonstratively, saying in that -simple gesture all his unspeakable gratitude, accepting what she gave -not because he underrated it, not because he did not understand, but -because it was the only thing to do. - -For her his touch and his acceptance were abundance of reward. Go to -Hepplestall! Take charity, when this sustaining faith was granted her? -Oh, she would manage though her body cracked. It was a soiling and a -shameful thought that these babes were Reuben’s grandchildren. - -They were not his and John, please God, would never know who was his -father; they were hers and John’s and they two would keep them for their -own. - -It wasn’t bravado either. It wasn’t a brief heroical resolution begotten -of the emotions caused by Annie’s death. She counted the cost and chose -her fight, spurning the thought of Hepplestall as if the justice he -might do her were an obscenity. She knew what she undertook to do and, -providing only that she had ten more years of life, she would do it. - -John, mourning for Annie, was not too sunk in grief to be unaware of the -fineness of his mother. Would Annie--she who loved her life--have said -“Things are,” if she had foreseen how soon the things which were bad -were to be so infinitely worse? The factory had killed her, it had taken -his Annie from him, it had put upon his mother in her age the burden -she took up with a matter of fact resignation that seemed to him the -ultimate impeachment of the system which made heroism a commonplace. -“Mother!” he cried. “Mother!” - -“Eh, lad,” she said, “we’ve got to take what comes.” - -She did not, at least, as Annie did, answer his inarticulate revolt with -religion, but she had fundamentally the same resignation to the things -of this world, and for the same reason. She, too, looked forward to -a radiant life above: she saw in her present troubles the hand of God -justly heavy upon one who had been a light woman. John, knowing nothing -of that secret source of her humility, attributed all to the one cause, -to the Factory which crushed and maimed and killed in spirit as in body. -He refused his acceptance, his resignation. There was, there must be, -something to be done. But what? What? - -First, at any rate, Annie had to be buried with the circumstance which -seemed to make for decency and for that they had provided through the -Benefit Society. This---decent burial--was the first thought behind the -weekly contributions paid, heaven knows at what sacrifice, to the -Society and they were rewarded now in the fact that Annie was not buried -at the expense of the parish. That was all, bare decency, not the -flaunting parody with plumes and gin of the slightly less poor: nor were -there many mourners. Leave was given to a select few to be absent for an -hour from the factory, and the severe fines for unauthorized absence -kept the numbers strictly, with one exception, to the few the overseer -chose to privilege. Phoebe and John were granted the full day, without -fine, and, of course, without wage, and so, it appeared, was Mr. -Barraclough. But Mr. Barraclough was on business, and the fine that he -would have to pay would figure in the expenses he would charge Mr. -Needham. - -One or two old women--old in fact if not in years, incapacitated by the -factory, for the factory--had been at the graveside and were going home -with Phoebe, and it was natural that John should hold out his hand to -Barraclough, this unexpected, this so self-sacrificing sympathizer and -that they should fall into step as they moved away together. - -“Man, I had to come. I’m that sorry for thee. Coming doan’t mean much -for sure, but--” - -“It means a day’s wages, choose how,” said John, who knew that -Barraclough was not of the few who had been granted an hour’s leave to -come. - -Barraclough nodded. “And a fine, an’ all,” he said, “but that all counts -somehow. Seems to me if it weren’t costing me summat, it u’d not be the -same relief it is to my feelings. I didna come for thy sake, I came to -please masel’, selfish like. I had to get away from yond damned place -that murdered her. I couldna’ stand the sight o’ it to-day.” - -“Murdered her!” said John. He had, no doubt, used that word in thought, -but it had seemed to him audacious, a thought to be forbidden utterance. -And here, shaming him for his mildness was one, an outsider, a stranger, -who, untouched intimately by Annie’s death, yet spoke of it outright as -murder. John felt that he was failing Annie, that he had not risen to -his occasion, that it was this other, this fine spirit, who could not -“stand the sight” of the factory on the day of her funeral, who had -risen to the occasion more worthily than John, who was Annie’s husband. -“Aye,” he said somberly, “it was murder.” - -“You never doubted that, surely,” said Barraclough. - -“Oh,” said John, “when a woman dies in childbirth--” - -“Aye, but fair treated women don’t. What art doing now? I mean for the -rest of the day. Looking at it from my point of view, I might as well -tak’ the chance to get out o’ sight o’ yond hell-spot. I’m going -on moors for a breath of air. Wilt come? Better nor settin’ to hoam -brooding, tha’ knows.” - -His point was simply to get John in his emotional crisis to himself, but -luck was with him in his proposal further than he knew. For John, the -moors were a reminder of Annie at her sunniest, but for the moment all -that he was thinking of was that strange instinct for the sympathetic -stranger rather than for the sympathy, too poignant to be borne, of his -mother. And he did not wish to see his sons that day. - -“‘Tis better nor brooding,” he agreed, and went. There was virtue, he -thought, in talking. Phoebe was all reserve and action, and on this -which resolved itself into a day off from the factory, she would be very -active in her house. He was quite sure that he did not want to go -home. Exercise for his legs, air for his lungs and the conversation, -comprehending but naturally not too intimate, of this kindly -stranger--these were the things to get him through the day. - -But the conversation of Mr. Barraclough was not calculated to be an -anodyne. - -“Thank God, we’ve gotten our backs to it. We’re walking away from yond -devilry, we’ve our faces to summat green.” How often had he not heard -something like that from Annie! “It beats me to guess what folks are -made of, both the folk that stand factories and t’other folks that drive -‘em into factories. I know I’ve gotten an answer to some of this under -my bed where I lodge and I’ll mak’ the answer speak one of these days -an’ all.” - -“An answer? What answer? I’ve looked and found no answer.” - -“No? They looked at Blackburn and found th’ wrong answer an’ all, -th’ould answer that the Luddites found and failed wi’. Smashing -machines! Burning factories! What’s, the good o’ that? They nobbut -put up new factories bigger and more hellish than before and mak’ new -machines that’ll do ten men’s work instead of two. Aye, they were on -wrong tack in them days. They were afraid to get on right tack.” - -“Is there a tack that’s right?” he asked. - -“There’s shooting,” said Barraclough. - -“Shooting? Tha’ canna shoot an engine, nor a factory.” - -“No, and that’s the old mistake. Trying to hit back at senseless brick -and iron. There’s men behind the factories, men that build and men that -manage. Men that own and tak’ the profits of our blood and death. For -instance, who killed thy wife?” - -“Why... why...” hesitated John, who was still intrigued obscurely with -the idea that he, the father of her child, was author of her death. - -“She died o’ th’ conditions o’ Hepplestall’s factory and yo’ canna’ -bring yer verdict o’ willful murder against conditions. Yo’ bring it -against the fiend that made the conditions. Yo’ bring it against Reuben -Hepplestall.” - -“Maister Hepplestall!” - -“Aye, Maister. Maister o’ us fra’ head to heel. Maister o’ our lives and -deaths, and gotten hissel’ so high above us that I can see tha’s scared -to hear me talk that road of him.” That was true, Barraclough seemed to -John almost blasphemous. Hepplestall _was_ high above them, so that to -make free with his name in this manner was something outrageous. “Aye, -the spunk’s scared out of thee by the name of Hepplestall as if tha’ -were a child and him a boggart. But I tell thee this, he isna a boggart. -He’s a man and if my bullet gets him, he’ll bleed and if it gets him in -the right place, he’ll die, and there’ll be one less in the world o’ -the fiends that own factories and murder women to mak’ a profit for -theirselves.” - -“You’d do that! You!” - -“Some one must do the job. Th’ gun’s to hoam under my bed, loaded an’ -all. Execution of a murderer, that’s what it’ll be. Justice on the -man that killed thy wife.” John halted abruptly. “What’s to do?” asked -Barraclough. “Let’s mak’ th’ most of this day out o’ factory. Folks like -thee and me mustna’ think too much of causes o’ things. The cause of -this day off was thy wife’s death, but we’ve agreed tha’s not to brood. -So come on into sunshine and mak’ the most of what we’ve gotten.” - -“We’ll mak’ the most of it by turning to hoam,” said John. - -“Thy hoam’s no plaice for thee to-day.” - -“No. But thy hoam is,” said John. “I want to see yon gun. I’m thinkin’ -that’ll be a better sight for me nor all the heather in Lankysheer.” - -“For thee?” Mr. Barraclough was greatly surprised. “Nay, I doubt I was -wise to mention my secret to thee.” - -“Art coming?” John was striding resolutely homewards. - -“Well, seeing I have mentioned it, I suppose there’s no partiklar harm -in showing it. O’ course, tha’ canna’ use a gun?” - -“Can’t I? No, you’re reight there. I’m not much of a man, am I? As tha’ -told me, I’ve gotten no spunk, but I’ve spunk enough now. It weren’t -more than not seeing clear and tha’s cleared things up for me -wonnerful.” - -“I have? How?” - -“Tha’ can shoot, if I canna’, Barraclough.” Which was disappointing to -the spy, who thought things were going better than this. - -Still he could bide his time and “Aye, I can shoot,” he said. “I’ve been -in militia.” - -“Then tha’ can teach me,” said John, to Mr. Barraclough’s relief. “I’ll -be a quick learner.” - -“Well, as tha’s interested, I’ll show thee how a trigger’s pulled,” - and Barraclough was, in fact, not intending to go further than that in -musketry instruction. Hepplestall killed might, indeed, encourage -the others, it might array the manufacturers solidly under Needham’s -reactionary standard, but Barraclough read murder as going beyond his -directions, and supposed that if Reuben were fired on and missed (as -he would be by an amateur marksman), the demonstration of unrest at -Hepplestall’s would have been satisfyingly made. - -He was, therefore, sparing in his tutorship when they had come into his -room and handled the gun together. “We munna call the whole neighborhood -about our ears by the sound of a shot,” he said. - -“No,” said John, “but if tha’ll lend me this, I’ll find a plaice for -practicing up on moors.” - -“Lend thee my gun! Nay, lad, tha’s asking summat. It wenna do to carry -that about in daylight.” - -“I’ll tak’ it to-neight, and bring un back to-morrow neight.” - -“To-neight? Tha’ canna’ practice in the dark.” - -“Maybe I’ll ha’ no need to practice. Maybe there’s justice and summat -greater nor me to guide a bullet home. I can nobbut try and I’m bound to -try to-neight--the neight o’ the day I buried her, the neight when I’m -hot. I’m poor spirited and I know it, and I’m wrought up now. To-morrow -I’ll be frit.” - -Barraclough balanced the gun in his hands. “I had my own ideas o’ this,” - he said--the idea in particular, he might have added, had this been an -occasion for candor, that such precipitancy was contrary to the best -interests of an informer. Before an event occurred, a sagacious spy -should have prophesied it and here was this ardent boy in so desperate -a hurry for action that Barraclough was like to be cheated of the -opportunity of proving to Needham that he was dutifully accessory before -the fact. - -But, he reflected, he had not found Hepplestall’s a fertile earth for -his seeds, and if he played pranks with this present opportunity, if he -attempted delay with a boy like John, a temperamentalist now in the -mood to murder, he might very well lose his only chance of justifying -himself. Besides, he could yet figure as a prophet and at the same time -establish a sound alibi for himself if immediately after handing the -gun over to John, he set off to report to Needham. On the whole, he saw -himself accomplishing the object of his mission satisfactorily enough. - -“Who’s gotten the better right?” John was saying. “Thou that’s not had -nobhut a month o’ the plaice, or me that buried a wife this day killed -by Hepplestall?” - -Barraclough bowed his head. He thought it politic to hide his face just -then, and the motion had the seeming of a reverent assent. “I’ve no -reply to that,” he said. - -“Thy claim is strongest. Come when it’s dark, and tha’ shall have the -gun.” - -John moved to the door. - -“Where’st going now?” asked Barraclough, apprehensive of the slackening -of the spring he had wound up. - -“To her grave,” said John, and Barraclough nodded approvingly. He -trusted Annie’s grave; there would be no slackening of the spring and -mentally he thanked John for thinking of a grave-side vigil. Barraclough -had not thought of anything so trustworthy; he had thought of an inn, to -which the objections were that he had no wish to be seen in company with -John, and that alcohol is capricious in effect. - -Barraclough had given him a goal, and an outlet for all his pent-up -emotion. There was his dreadful childhood in the factory, then the -splendid mitigation whose name was Annie, and the tearing loss of her: -behind all that, there was the System and above it now was Hepple-stall. -He had an exaltation by her grave. There was a people enslaved by -Hepplestall and there was John Bradshaw, their deliverer, John Bradshaw -magnified till he was qualified for the high rôle of an avenging angel. -He was without fear of himself or of any consequences, he had no doubts -and no loose ends, he had simply a purpose--to kill Hepplestall. To be -sane is to think and John did not think: he felt. - -There was some reason why he could not kill Hepplestall till it was -dark. Once or twice he tried, vaguely, to remember what the reason was, -then forgot that he was trying to remember anything. When it was dark -he was to go to Barraclough’s for the gun with which he would kill -Hepplestall. He was cold and hungry, shivering violently and aware of -nothing but that he was God’s executioner. - -When dusk came he left the grave and went, dry-lipped, stumbling like -a man walking in a dream, to Barra-clough’s. At the sight of him, -Barraclough had more than doubt. Of what use a gun in these palsied -hands? What demonstration, other than one palpably insane, could this -trembling instrument effect? - -But Bradshaw was the one hope of the agent and since there was nothing -else to trust, he must trust his luck. - -“The gun! The gun!” - -Barraclough placed it in his hands without a word and John turned with -it and was gone. The canny Barraclough, taking his precautions in case -the worst (or the best) happened, slept that night in a public-house -midway between Needham’s and Hepplestall’s. He had made himself pleasant -to several passers-by on the road; he had asked them the time; he had -established his alibi. - - - - -CHAPTER X--DOROTHY’S MOMENT - -WHEN Edward came home on the day of his introduction to the factory, -Dorothy met him with an anxious, “Well, Edward?” and, “Oh, Mother,” he -had said, “I have to think of this. Pray do not ask me now.” - -That was all and, if she liked, she could consider herself snubbed for -attempting an unwomanly inquisitiveness into the affairs of men, but he -intended no snub nor did she interpret him as side-tracking her. It was, -simply, that he refused to involve Dorothy in this trouble. - -He might be forced to take some desperate measure--nothing more hopeful -than his first thought of enlistment had yet occurred to him--and if -things were to come to an ugly pass like that he wasn’t going to have -his mother concerned in them. He declined the factory, and discussion -would not help. - -Reuben felt no surprise at Edward’s silence. The boy was, no doubt, -considering his situation and would come in time to the right -conclusions about it; he would see that this was not a thing to be -settled now, but one which had been settled twenty years ago by the fact -that Edward was Reuben’s firstborn son. No: he was not anxious about -Edward, with his jejune opinions, his young effervescence, his failure, -from the polities of Oxford, to perceive that life was earnest. Edward -wanted, did he, to play at being a lawyer: so had Reuben once played -at being a Jacobite. Youth had its green sickness. But Dorothy was -different: he couldn’t disembarrass himself so easily about Dorothy. - -They were all putting a barrier between their thoughts and their words, -but marriage had not blunted, it had increased, his sensitiveness to -Dorothy’s moods, and he was aware that she was troubled now more deeply -than he had ever known her moved before. She seemed to him to be badly -missing the just perspective, to be making a mountain of a mole-hill, to -be making tragedy out of the commonplace comedy of ingenuous youth, -to be too much the mother and too little the wife, to be, by unique -exception, unreasonable: but all this counted for nothing with him when -Dorothy was pained. Yet he couldn’t, in justice, blame Edward as first -cause of her grief when the cause was not Edward, or Edward’s youth, -but the universal malady of youth. He reminded himself again of that -fantastic folly of his own youth, Jacobitism, and it was notably -forebearing in him to remember it now and to decide that his own green -sickness had been less excusable than Edward’s. - -What it came to was that some one must clear the air, some one must -break this painful silence they were, by common consent, keeping about -the subject uppermost in their minds. In a few days now Edward -would return to Oxford for his last term and it must be understood, -explicitly, that when he came home it was to begin his apprenticeship at -the factory. Get this thing finally settled, get it definitely stated in -terms on both sides, and Dorothy would cease to make a grief of it. It -was the inconclusiveness, he thought, which perturbed her. - -Edward had a Greek text on his knee when Reuben went into the -drawing-room: he might or he might not have been reading it. He might -have been conscious that Dorothy had suddenly got up and thrown the -curtains back from the window and had opened it and stood there now as -if she needed air. Reuben had the tact to make no comment. - -He sat down. Then he said, “Edward, I have been thinking of the time -when I was your age and it came into my mind that had I then been shown -a factory such as I showed you the other week, I should have thought it -a very atrocious sight. I couldn’t, of course, actually have been shown -such a place when I was your age, for there were no such places. Steam -was in its infancy. But I put the matter as I do to show you that I -understand the feelings you did not trouble to conceal.” - -“Thank you, sir,” said Edward. “I have to acknowledge that I was not -complimentary to your achievement. I was not thinking of it as an -achievement, but I, too, have been thinking and I see how cubbishly I -failed in my appreciation.” - -“Come,” said Reuben, “this is better.” - -“As far as it goes, sir, yes. But I am not to go much further. In the -shock of seeing the ugliness of that place, I believe that I forgot my -manners--more than my manners. I forgot your mastery of steam. I forgot -that having turned manufacturer, you became a great manufacturer. I--” - he hesitated. “I am not trying to be handsome. I am trying to be just.” - -“Just?” - -“And, believe me, trying not to be smug. I only plead, sir, that I am -old enough to know my own tastes.” - -“Are you? I can only look back to myself, Edward, and I am certain that -when I was your age, I had no taste for work.” - -“A barrister’s is a busy life, sir. That is what I seek to persuade -you.” - -“And I grant you that it may be. I will grant even that you may have a -taste for work, and work of a legal kind. And I have still to ask you if -you think it right to put selfish tastes in front of plain duty.” - -“Oh, why did you send me to Oxford, sir? Why, if you destined me for the -factory, did you first show me the pleasantness of the world?” - -“I wished my son to be an educated gentleman. You have seen Richard -Needham. He is a product, extreme, but still a product, of the factories -and nothing but the factories. He is, as I told you, an able man. But he -is coarse. He is a manufacturer who has no thought beyond manufacturing. -That is why I sent you to Oxford, where you went knowing that you were -heir to Hepplestall’s. You have treated this subject now as if the -factory was a surprise that I have sprung upon you.” - -“In theory, sir, I suppose I knew what you expected of me. But I had -never seen the factory and the factory, in practice, after Oxford, after -some education, some glimpse of the humanities, is--” - -“I, too,” Reuben warned him, “had my education.” - -“Yes,” said Edward. “Yes,” and looked at his father with something like -awe. It was true that Reuben was educated--if Edward wanted proof, -there was that bookishness of his which bordered at least on -scholarliness--and he had stomached the factory; he had stomached it and -remained a gentleman! He impressed Edward by his example: he had had the -cleverness, in this conversation, to suggest that Edward, young, was in -the same case as Reuben, young, had been. - -As a fact, their cases were not parallel at all. Circumstances such as -Mr. Bantison had pressed Reuben into manufacturing: he had discovered, -almost at once, his enthusiasm for steam: he had surrendered himself -with the imaginative glamor of the pioneer and if the road was stony, if -once he had strayed down the by-path whose name was Phoebe, he had, at -the end of it, Dorothy, that bright objective. Edward had none of these. -Edward came from Oxford, with his spruce ambition to cut a figure at -the bar, and was confronted with the menacing immensity of the great -factory, full-grown in naked ugliness. He was without motive, other than -the commands of his father, to do outrage on his prejudices. - -But it was not for Reuben to point out these differences, nor, it -seemed, for Dorothy to intervene with word of such of them as she -perceived. She was all with Edward in this struggle, but she was loyal -to Reuben and he did her grave injustice if he thought she had made -alliance with her son against her husband. She had kept silence and she -meant to keep silent to the end--if she could, if, that is, Reuben did -not drive too hard: and she had to acknowledge that, so far, he had -not used the whip. As for her private sufferings, she hoped she had the -courage to keep them private. That was the badge of women. - -“Then I can only admire,” Edward was saying. “I can only give you best. -I can only say you are a stronger man than I.” - -Reuben thought so too, but “Pooh,” he said, “an older man.” - -“But you were young when you took up manufacturing. I--I cannot take it -up. Let me be candid, sir. I abhor the factory.” - -“We spoke just now of tastes. Will it help you to think of the factory -as an acquired taste? You are asked to make a trial of it and it is not -usual to refuse things that are known to be acquired tastes--olives, for -example--without making fair trial of them.” - -“No,” said Edward, meeting his father’s eye. “But it is usual to eat -olives. It is not usual for a gentleman to turn manufacturer.” - -“Edward!” Dorothy broke silence there. - -“Oh!” said Reuben, “this is natural. Our limb of the law has ambitions. -Already he is fancying himself a judge--my judge.” - -“I apologize, sir,” said Edward. “I acknowledge, I have never doubted, -that you are both manufacturer and gentleman. But I cannot hope to -repeat that miracle myself.” - -“You can try.” - -“I have the law very obstinately in my mind, sir. I could, as you say, -try to become a manufacturer. One can try to do anything, even things -that are contrary to one’s inclinations and beyond one’s strength.” - -“I will lend you strength.” - -“You could do that and I am the last to deny you have abundance of -strength. But I believe in spite of your aid that I should fail, and the -failure would not be a single but a double one. After failing here as -manufacturer, I could hardly hope to succeed elsewhere as a barrister. I -should have wasted my most valuable years in demonstrating to you what -I know for myself without any necessity of trial, that I am unfitted for -trade.” - -“You believe yourself above it. That is the truth, Edward.” - -It was the truth. Reuben had stooped and Edward did not intend to -perpetuate the stoop. Edward was a wronged man cheated of his due, -robbed by the unintelligible apostasy of his father of his birthright -of land ownership and if the attitude and the language with which he -now confronted Reuben were unfilially independent, they were, at least, -reticent and considerate expressions of what he actually thought. Reuben -imagined him youthfully extravagant: he was, on the contrary, a model of -self-restraint, he was a dam unbreakable, withstanding an urgent flood. -The indictment he could fling at his father! The resentments he could -voice! And, instead, he was doing no more than refusing to go into a -disreputable factory. Above it? He should think he was above it. - -“I used the word ‘unfitted,’” he said. “Shall we let that stand?” - -“Till you disprove it, it may stand. When you come down from Oxford, you -will go into the factory and disprove it.” - -“No.” - -“I have been very patient, Edward. I have let you talk yourself out, -but--” - -“Lord, sir, the things I haven’t said!” - -“Indeed? Do you wish to say them?” - -Edward did, but he glanced at his mother, whose one contribution to -their discussion had been a reproof of him, of him, who had been so -splendidly restrained! Why, then, should he spare her? Why, if she -had deserted to the other side, should he not roll out his whole -impeachment? Why not, even though it implicated her, even though he must -suggest’ that she was accessory to the weaving of the web in which -he struggled? He thought she was, because of that one sharp cry, on -Reuben’s side in this. - -She read that thought. She saw how wildly he who should have known -better was misunderstanding her, and it added to a suffering she had -not thought possible to increase. Was this her moment, then? Sooner or -later, she must intervene, she must throw in her weight for Edward at -whatever strain upon her loyalty to Reuben, but it must be at the right -moment and probably that moment would not come yet, when Edward was -present to confuse her by his indiscretions, but later, when she was -alone with Reuben. It was enormously, it was vitally important that she -should choose her moment well. If she spoke now, she would of course -correct the mistake that Edward was so cruelly making about her, but -that was not to the main point. She would not, if she could help it, -speak till she was sure that the favorable moment had arrived. All else -was to be subordinate to that. - -Reuben followed Edward’s glance. “Yes,” he said, “you are distressing -your mother,” and, certainly, she felt her moment was escaping her. If -she spoke now she must say, “No, Reuben. You, not Edward, are the -cause of my distress,” and she could not say that. She could only wait, -feeling that to wait was to risk her moment’s never coming at all. - -“I see we are distressing her,” said Edward, studiously abstaining from -putting emphasis upon the “we.” - -“And the many more things that I might say shall not be said. I will -take a short cut to the end. The end is my absolute refusal to go into -the factory upon any terms whatever.” - -Reuben rose, with clenched fists. He had not the intention of striking -his son, but the impulse was irresistible to dominate the slighter man, -to stand menacingly over him. How in this should she find her moment? -Where if temper rose, if Reuben did the unforgivable, if he struck -Edward, where was her opportunity to make a peace and gain her point? As -she had cried “Edward!”, so now, “Reuben!” she cried, and put a hand on -his. - -He responded instantly to the sound of her voice and the touch of her -hand. “You are right, Dorothy,” he said. “We must not flatter our young -comedian by taking him gravely.” - -“That is an insult, sir,” said Edward. - -“In comedy,” Reuben smiled suavely at him, “it may be within the rules -for a father to insult a vaporing son. In life, such possibilities do -not exist.” - -Ridicule! Edward could fight against any weapon but this. “You treat me -like a child,” he said in plaintive impotence. - -“Oh, no,” said Reuben. “So far, I have given you the benefit of the -doubt. I have not whipped you yet.” - -“Whipped!” - -“A method of correction, Edward, used upon children and sometimes on -those whose years outstrip their sense.” - -“Do you seriously picture me, sir, remaining here to be a whipping -block?” - -“Children run away: and children are brought back.” Her moment! Oh, it -was slipping from her as they squabbled, Edward’s future was at stake, -and not his alone. If young Tom Hepplestall was for the army, there were -still her younger sons; there were Edward’s own unborn sons. The stake -was not Edward’s future only, it was the future of the Hepplestalls and -all her landed instincts were in revolt against the thought that her -sons were to follow Reuben in his excursion, his strange variation, from -the type she knew. Once his factory had seemed mysterious and romantic. -Now, she was facing it, she was seeing it through Edward’s outraged -eyes. Incredible mercy that she had not seen it before, but not -incredible in the light of her love for Reuben. It had been a thing -apart from her life and now, implacably, was come into it. There was no -evading the factory now; there was no facile blinking at it as a dark -place in Reuben’s life about which she could be incurious, it was -claiming her Edward, it had come, through him, into her life now. - -It was crouching for her, like a beast in the jungle and what was to -happen when the beast sprang, to her, to Reuben, to their love? She had -held aloof from the factory and she had kept Reuben’s love. Were these -cause and effect and was her aloofness a condition of his love? Was her -hold on him the hold of one consenting to be a decoration, and no more -than a decoration in his life? Had she shied from facts all these years, -and was retribution at hand? - -These were desperate questionings, but Edward was her son and she must -take her risks for him, even this risk imperiling her all, this so much -greater risk than the life she risked for him when he was born. But when -to speak? When to put all to the test? Surely not just now when this -pair of men, one calling the other “child,” both, one as bully, the -other as Gasconader, were behaving like children. She groped helplessly -for her moment. - -Then, suddenly, as she seemed to drown in deep water and to clutch -feebly upwards, she knew that her moment was come. She had not heard the -sound of the shot coming from the shrubbery and felt no pain. She only -knew that she was weak, that her moment, safely, surely, was come, and -that she must use it quickly. - -Because she was lying on the floor and Reuben and Edward were bending -over her, she was looking up into their faces. That seemed strange to -her, but everything was strange because everything was right. In this -moment, there was nothing jeopardous; she had only to speak, indeed -she need not actually trouble to put her message into words, and Reuben -would infallibly agree with her. There were no difficulties, after all. -She had felt that it was only a question of the right moment, and here -was her moment, exquisitely, miraculously, compellingly right. - -Her hand seemed very heavy to lift but, somehow, she lifted it, somehow -she was holding Reuben’s hand and Edward’s, somehow she was joining them -in friendship and forgiveness. It was right, it was right beyond all -doubt. Reuben would never coerce Edward now, and she smiled happily up -at them. - -“Reuben,” she said, then “Edward,” that was all. Her hand fell to the -floor. - -Edward looked up from Dorothy’s dead face to see his father disappearing -through the window, but Reuben need not have hurried. John Bradshaw was -standing in the shrubbery twenty yards from the window, making no effort -to run. There was no effort left in him. He was the spring wound up by -Mr. Barraclough; now he had acted and he was relaxed; he was relaxed and -happy. A life for a life, and such a life--Hepplestall’s! He had led his -people out of slavery. He had shot Hepplestall. - -And in the light from the window, he saw rushing at him the man who was -dead. There was no Annie now to laugh his superstitious fears away and -to fold him in her protective arms: there was no one to tell him that -the silent figure was not Hepplestall’s ghost. He believed utterly that -a “boggart” was leaping at him. - -True, there was a leap, and a blow delivered straight at his jaw with -all the force of Reuben’s passionate grief behind it, and the blow met -empty air. John, felled by a mightier force than Reuben’s, felled by -his ghostly fear, lay crumpled on the ground and Hepplestall, recovering -balance, flung him over his shoulder like a sack and was carrying him -into the house before the servants, alarmed by the shot, had reached the -room. - -Edward met him. “I am riding for the doctor, sir,” he said. - -“Doctor?” said Reuben. “It’s not a doctor that is needed now, it’s a -hangman. Lock that in the cellar,” he said to the servants, dropping his -sprawling burden on the floor, “and go for the constables.” Then, when -they were gone, when he had silenced by one look their cries of horror -and they had slunk out of the door as if they and not the senseless boy -they carried were the murderers, “Leave me, Edward, leave me,” he said. - -Edward stretched out his hand. There was sympathy in his gesture and -there was, too, a claim to a share in the sorrow that had come to them. -Dorothy was Edward’s mother. - -“Go,” said Reuben fiercely; and Edward left him with his dead. - -The beast had made his spring. Dorothy had not gone to the factory, and -the factory had come to her. - - - - -CHAPTER XI--THE HATE OF THE HEPPLESTALLS - -PHOEBE made all reasonable, and a few indulgent, allowances for the -weaknesses of manflesh, but when she awoke to the knowledge that -John had not been home all night, she was downright angry with him. A -bereaved husband might accept the consolation offered by his friends on -the day of his wife’s funeral, and might go on accepting it late into -the night. She had left the door on the latch for him with the thought -that it wasn’t like John to drown his sorrow, but men were men, even the -best of them, and she had put a lot of housework behind her that day. He -would have been constantly getting in her way with his clumsy efforts to -help, and if he had found forgetfulness, no matter how, they had both of -them come through the day very well. - -But he had not come home at all; he had forgotten too thoroughly, and -Phoebe intended to give him “the rough side of her tongue” the moment -she came across him in the factory. It never occurred to her that he -would not be in the factory. To be out all night was a departure from -his custom, and on such a night a departure from decency, but to be -absent from work was more than either of these; it was defiance of -necessity, a treachery to her and to his children and she knew her -John better than to suspect him of conduct like that. He might be -grief-stricken and, after that (homeopathically), ale-stricken, but the -law of nature was “Work or Clem,” and John would be at work. - -He was not at work, and that was not the only thing to be remarked that -morning. Nobody appeared to have a word for her, though there was an -exceptional disposition to gossip. Even the overseers had caught the -infection and formed gossiping groups to the detriment of discipline. -She was too preoccupied at first to notice that she was their cynosure -or to wonder what it meant, but she couldn’t for long be unconscious of -their gaze. - -They were looking at her, every one was looking at her, and her first -impulse was to be angry with them for staring so curiously and her -second was to conceal her awareness of their gaze. They stared? Let them -stare. She had not been at the factory on the previous day, but she had -had leave of absence. She had been burying her daughter-in-law, and if -they wanted to stare at her for that, they could stare. And then she -connected their fixed regard with John’s absence. There was something -serious then? Something about John of which they knew and she did not? -She dropped abruptly her pretense of unconsciousness. - -“For God’s sake tell me what’s to do,” she cried. “If it’s John, I’m his -mother and I’ve the right to know.” - -Will Aspinall, the overseer, detached himself from his group. “Get -at work,” he bawled at large, then with a rare gentleness, led Phoebe -aside. “Either tha’s gotten th’ brassiest faice i’ Lankysheer, or else -tha’ doan’t kna’,” he said. - -“Is it to do with John?” she asked. - -“Aye,” he said, “it’s all to do wi’ thy John.” - -“I know nothing beyond that he’s not been home all night.” - -“A kna’ he’s not bin hoam. He’s done wi’ coming hoam.” - -“Why? Why? What has happened?” - -“A’m, striving to tell thee that. Th’ job’s not easy, though.” He looked -at her. “Wilt have it straight?” - -“I’m never afraid of truth.” - -“Truth can hit hard. Well, I’ll tell thee. Thy John shot at th’ -maister’s wife last neight an’ hit her. They’ve gotten him.” He upturned -a waste-bin. “Now, A’m real sorry for thee and it weren’t a pleasant job -for me to break th’ news. That’s over, though, and tha’ knaws now. Next -sit thee down on this. It’s in a corner, like, and folks canna watch -thee. When tha’ feels like work, come and tell me.” He left her with -rough kindliness, and relieved his feelings by cuffing a child who was -peering round a loom at them. He was paid to be brutal, and the child, -gathering himself up from the floor, might have thought that the -overseer was earning his wages: but the shrewd blow was rather a warning -to the rest and an expression of his sympathy with Phoebe than an -episode in his day’s work. - -That Aspinall, and not he alone but the general sense of the workers, -should be sympathetic towards her was in its way remarkable enough. They -expected naturally that John would hang, but they had definitely -the idea that retribution for his deed would not stop at the capital -punishment of the actual malefactor. Hepplestall would “tak’ it out of -all on us,” and “We’ll go ravenous for this,” “Skin an’ sorrow--that’s -our shape,” and (from a humorist) “Famished? He’ll spokeshave us” were -some of the phrases by which they expressed their belief in the -widespread severity of Hepplestall’s vengeance. - -Yet they had no bitterness against John, nor against Phoebe who, as his -mother, might be supposed to have a special responsibility. It was a -dreadful deed and the more dreadful since his bullet had miscarried and -had killed a woman; but it had fanned to quick fire their smoldering -hatred of Hepplestall and there was more rejoicing than regret that he -was, through Dorothy, cast down. They would have preferred to know that -John had hit the true target but, as it was, it was well enough and -they were not going to squeal at the price they expected to pay. -Their commiseration was not for the bereaved master, but for the -about-to-be-bereaved mother of the murderer. - -Somebody moved a candle so that Phoebe in her corner should be the more -effectually screened from observation. It was a kindly act, but one -which she hardly needed. Her thoughts were with John, but not with a -John who was going to be hanged; they were with a John who was going to -be saved. - -Murderers were hanged and so for the matter of that were people -convicted of far less heinous crimes. That was the law, but she had -never a doubt but that Hepplestall was above the law, that he was the -law, and that John’s fate was not with an impersonal entity called -justice but, simply, with Hepplestall. Probably two-thirds of her -fellow-workers were firmly of the same belief in his omnipotence, though -they hadn’t, as she supposed she had, grounds for thinking that he would -intervene on John’s behalf. - -When Annie died she had told herself vehemently that she would never -go, a suppliant, to Hepplestall, she would never let him share in John’s -children wrho were his grandchildren; but that resolution was rescinded -now. Reuben had never hinted since the day when Peter and Phoebe went to -him, aghast at the edict which broke Peter’s factory, that he remembered -he had had a son by Phoebe. It was so long ago and perhaps he had indeed -forgotten, but she must go to him and remind him now. She must tell him -that John Bradshaw was his son. He could not hang his son. - -Daylight was penetrating through the sedulously cleaned windows of -the factory. It was the hour when expensive artificial light could be -dispensed with and candles were being extinguished; it was the hour, -too, when Reuben might ordinarily be expected in his office. He had the -usual manufacturers’ habit of riding or walking to the factory for half -an hour before breakfast, and to-day word was passed through the rooms -that he had, surprisingly, arrived as usual. - -The word had not reached Phoebe, but she expected nothing else. She had -to speak with Reuben, and therefore he would be there. She came from her -corner and told Aspinall what she intended. - -“Nay, nay!” he said. - -“Please open the door for me.” - -“A canna’,” he said. “Coom, missus, what art thinking? He’ll spit at -thee.” - -“I have to speak to him about John,” said Phoebe. “Open the door and let -me through.” - -“It’s more nor my plaice is worth,” he said, but, nevertheless, he was -weakening. She was not making a request, she was not a weaver asking a -favor of an overseer, she was Phoebe Bradshaw, whom Peter had brought -up to be a lady, giving an order to a workman in the tone of one who -commands obedience as a habit. - -He scratched his head in doubt, then turned to a fellow-overseer and -consulted with him. They murmured together with a wealth of puzzlement -and headshaking and, presently, “Now, Mrs. Bradshaw,” said Aspinall, -“tak’ heed to me. Yon door’s fast, but me an’ Joe here are goin’ to open -it on factory business, understand. If happen tha’s creeping up behind -us, it’s none likely we’ll see thee coomin’ and if tha’ slips through -door and into office while we’ve gotten door open on our business, it’s -because tha’ was too spry for us to stop thee. That’s best we can do for -thee and it’s takkin’ big risks an’ all.” - -“I’m grateful,” said Phoebe. - -They opened the door and made loud sounds of protest as she slipped -through, causing Reuben to look up from the bureau where he was opening -his letters and to see both Phoebe standing in his office and the actors -at the door. He waved them off and, when the door was closed, “Well?” he -said. - -“Reuben!” said Phoebe. - -He rose with an angry cry. How dared she, this weaver, this roughened, -withered old woman, address him by his Christian name? This gray wraith, -whose hair hung mustily about her like the jacket of lichen about a -ruined tree, she to call him by the name his Dorothy alone had used! -That morning of all mornings it was outrage of outrages. - -He did not know her whom once he nearly loved. Twenty years ago he had -put her from him and had excluded her from his recollection. Long ago -the factory had outgrown the stage when an employer has knowledge of -his workpeople as individuals; he did not know her nor had the -identification of the prisoner as John Bradshaw, a spinner in the -factory, conveyed any personal significance to him. Bradshaw was a -common name, and he had never known that Phoebe had called their son -John. - -“But I am Phoebe,” she said, standing her ground before his menacing -advance. “Phoebe, Reuben. Phoebe, who--Phoebe Bradshaw.” - -He remembered now, he had remembered at the second “Phoebe”--and at the -second “Reuben.” He was even granting her, grimly, her right to call him -by that name when the “Bradshaw” struck upon his ear. - -“Bradshaw?” he repeated. “Bradshaw?” And this second time, there was an -angry question in it. - -“I came about John,” she said. “John is our son, Reuben. Of course he -did not know, but--” Reuben had covered the space between them at a -bound. He was holding her hands tightly, he was looking at her with eyes -that seared. In moments like these, thought outspaces time. John, his -wife’s murderer, was his son, and the son of Phoebe Bradshaw whom he -had--well, he supposed he had betrayed her. She had told the son, of -course. He had nursed a grievance, he had shot Dorothy in revenge. -Whether he had aimed at Reuben and hit Dorothy, or whether he lied when -he had made that statement to the constable and had, in fact, aimed at -Dorothy, they had the true motive now. Reuben might have put it that his -sin had found him out, but his thought did not run on those lines. Then, -what was she saying? “Of course, he did not know.” Oh, that was absurd, -that took them back for motive to what John had been telling the -constable--that he shot at Hepplestall to--to--(what was the boy’s -wind-bagging phrase which the constable reported?)--“to set the people -free from a tyrant.” - -“Say that again,” he said. - -She met his eye fearlessly. “Of course he did not know. You could not -think that I would tell of my shame. Father and I, we invented a second -cousin Bradshaw whom I married, who died before John was born.” - -Yes, she was speaking the truth, and, after all, he didn’t know that -it mattered very much. Dorothy was dead, either way, but, yes, it did -matter. It mattered enormously, because of Dorothy’s sons. If John -had known, there must have been disclosures at the trial, things said -against Reuben, ordinary enough but not the things he cared to have -Dorothy’s sons know about their father. - -It wasn’t criminal to have seduced a woman twenty years ago, and the -exceptional thing about Reuben was that he had seduced no more women, -that he had not abused his position as employer. Needham was known, -with grim humor, as “the father of his people.” Whereas Reuben had been -Dorothy’s husband. - -He saw the trial and that disclosure insulting to Dorothy’s memory. -He heard the jeers of Needham and his kind. Hepplestall, Gentleman -Hepplestall, reduced by public ordeal to a common brutishness with the -coarse libertines he had despised! He saw Dorothy’s sons contemptuous -of their father. This, they would take occasion to think, was where -factory-owning led a man. - -“You’re sure of this?” he asked. “You’re absolutely sure he did not know -he is my son?” - -“Absolutely,” she said. - -“Ah,” he said, “that’s good. If he had known, I believe I must have -taken measures to defeat justice. I should have done all in my power -to have spirited him away before the trial, and I believe I should have -contrived it. I feel quite keenly enough about the matter to have -done that.” Which was, to Phoebe, confirmation of her belief in his -omnipotence. “But, as it is,” he went on, “as it is, thank God, the law -can take its course.” He was back in his chair now, looking at her with -a relief that was almost a smile, if tigerish. She, he was thinking, -might still speak to his discomfiture if she were put in the box at the -trial, but he would see that she was not called. There was no need to -call her to establish John’s absence from home that night, when he had -been caught red-handed. They could do without Phoebe, and he would take -care they should. - -“Can take its course,” she repeated, bewildered. What had Reuben meant -if not, incredibly, that had she told John of her “shame,” he would have -been saved now, but that, as it was, John must--“But it cannot tak’ its -course, John is your son. Your son. Reuben, he’s your son. You cannot -hang your son.” - -“He killed my wife.” - -“But you haven’t understood. They haven’t told you. John was not -himself. He--” - -“Drunk?” - -“No, no. Oh, Reuben. He was crazed with grief on account of his wife. -Don’t they tell you when the likes of that chances in the factory? Annie -Bradshaw, that was John’s wife and your daughter-in-law--she bore a -child on the floor in there and died. You must have heard of it.” - -Reuben nodded. “These women,” he said, “are always cutting it too fine.” - His gesture disclaimed responsibility for the reckless greed of women. - -“Yes,” she said, brazenly agreeing with his monstrous imputation, “but -John loved Annie and he’s been in a frenzy since she died and in his -mazed brain we can see how it seemed to him. We can, can’t we, Reuben? -She died in the factory and it looked to him that the factory had killed -her. And then he must have got a gun. I don’t know how, but we can see -the crazy lad with a gun in his hands and the wild thought in his mind -that the factory killed Annie. It’s your factory, it’s Hepple-stall’s, -and it ‘ud seem to him that Hepplestall killed. Annie, so he took his -gun and came to your house and tried to kill you. A daft lad and a -senseless deed and an awful, awful end to it, but we can read the -frantic thoughts in his grief-struck brain, we can understand them, -Reuben--you and I.” She sought to draw him into partnership with her, to -make him share in the plea which she addressed to him. - -But “He killed my wife,” Reuben said again. - -She had a momentary vision of Reuben and Phoebe twenty years ago riding -home to Bradshaw’s on the afternoon when they had met Dorothy in the -road, and Dorothy had cut him. She had talked then, she had chattered, -she had striven to be gay and her talk had rebounded, like a ball off a -wall, from the stony taciturnity of his abstraction and that night, that -very night.... It had been Dorothy then, and it was Dorothy now. “He -killed my wife.” - -“But, Reuben, he was mad.” - -“Still--” - -She flung herself upon her knees. “Reuben, you cannot hang your son. Not -your son, Reuben.” - -“Quiet,” he commanded. “Quiet.” - -“Oh, I will be very quiet.” She lowered her voice obediently. “If there -are clerks through that door, they shall not hear. No one shall ever -know he is your son. You can save him and you must. He is your son and -there are babies, two little boys, your grandchildren, Reuben. What can -I do alone for them? Give John back to me and we can manage. It will be -mortal hard, but we shall do it.” - -The woman was impossible. Actually she was pleading not only for the -murderer’s release, but for his return. His wife, Dorothy, lay dead at -this boy’s hands, and Phoebe was assuming that nothing was to happen! -But, by the Lord, things were going to happen. Crazy or not that phrase -of John’s stuck in his throat--“to set the people free from a tyrant.” - Where there was one man thinking that sort of thing, there were others; -it was a breeding sort of thought. Well, he’d sterilize it, he’d bleed -these thinkers white. Meantime, there was Phoebe, and, it seemed, there -were two young encumbrances. “There is the workhouse,” he said. - -“Not while I live,” said Peter Bradshaw’s daughter. - -“But to live, Phoebe, you must earn, and there will be no more earning -here for you.” The workhouse was a safe place for a woman with a -dangerous story and anything that escaped those muffling walls could -be set down as the frantic ravings of a hanged man’s mother. This -side-issue of Phoebe was a triviality, but he had learned the value of -looking after the pence--as well as the pounds. - -“Oh, do with me what you like. You always have done. But John--John!” - -He looked his unchanging answer. - -“I am to go to the workhouse. Is not that enough? I to that place and -his children with me, John to--to the gallows, and why? Why? Because -through all these years I have given you a gift. The gift of my silence. -You are going to hang my son because I did not tell him he was your son. -You could save him and you don’t because he did not know. Reuben, is -there no mercy in you?” There was none. John had killed Dorothy. “Then, -if I shriek the truth aloud? If I cry out now so that your clerks can -hear me, that John is your son? If--” - -“It would make this difference, Phoebe. You would go to the madhouse, -instead of to the workhouse. In the one you would be alone. In the other -you would sometimes see John’s brats.” He rang the hand-bell on his -desk. - -“And teach them,” she said, “teach them to speak their first words, ‘I -hate the Hepplestalls.’” - -Perhaps he heard her through the sound of the bell, perhaps not. A -well-drilled clerk came promptly in upon his summons. “This woman is to -go at once to the workhouse, with two children,” he said. “If there are -forms to go through refer the officials to me.” - -In the factory they called him “Master.” He was master of them all. She -did not doubt it and she went. - -Reuben finished reading his letters before he went home to breakfast. He -read attentively, doing accustomed things in his accustomed way because -it seemed that only so could he drug himself to forgetfulness of -Dorothy’s death, then gravely, with thoughts held firmly on business -affairs, he mounted his horse to where skilled hands had made death’s -aftermath a. gracious thing. - -Edward had spoken to his brothers. “Give me five minutes alone with -Father when he comes in,” he said. It seemed to him this morning that -once, a prodigious while ago, he had been fatuously young and either -he had quarreled with his father or had come near to quarreling--he -couldn’t be expected to remember which across so long a time as the -night he had passed since then--about so obvious a certainty as his -going into the factory. Dorothy, in that moment when she held their -hands together, had made him see so clearly what he had to do. A moment -of reconcilement and of clarification, when she had indicated her last -wish. It was a law, indeed, and sweetly sane. “Why, of course, Mother,” - he had been telling her through the night, “Father and I must stand -together now.” He told, and she could not reply. She could not tell him -how grotesquely he misinterpreted her moment. - -He met Reuben at the door. “Father,” he said, “there is something you -must let me say at once. My mother joined our hands last night. May we -forget what passed between us earlier? May we remember only that she -joined our hands last night, and that they will remain joined?” - -“I hope they will,” said Reuben, not quite certain of him yet. - -“The man who killed her came from the factory. I should like your -permission to omit my last term at Oxford. I want very deeply to begin -immediately at the factory.” His voice rose uncontrollably. “‘Drive or -be driven,’ sir, you said the other day. And by God, I’ll drive. I’ll -drive. That blackguard came from there.” - -“Come with me after breakfast,” Reuben said, shaking the hand of his -heir. And in that spirit Edward went to Hepplestall’s to begin his -education. - -Dorothy had died happy in the bright certainty of her authentic moment! - - - - -PART II - - - - -CHAPTER I--THE SERVICE - -IF there is a man whose job I’ve never envied, it’s the A Prince of -Wales,” groaned Rupert Hepplestall, looking in his mirror with an air of -cynical boredom and fastening white linen round a bronzed neck. “And I’m -going to get the taste of it to-day.” - -The point was that it was Rupert’s sixteenth birthday, and the sixteenth -birthday of a Hepplestall was an occasion of such moment that he had -been brought back from Harrow to spend that day at home. - -On their sixteenth birthdays, the Hepplestall boys, and some others who -were favored though only their mothers were Hepplestalls, were received -in the office and from thence escorted through the mills by the Head -of the Firm with as much ceremonious aplomb as if they were Chinese -mandarins, Argentine financiers, Wall Street magnates, Russian nobles, -German professors or any of the miscellaneous but always distinguished -foreigners, who, visiting Lancashire, procured invitations: to inspect -that jewel in its crown, the mills at Staithley Bridge. For the boys -it was the formal ritual of initiation into the service of the firm. -A coming of age was nothing if not anti-climactic to the sixteenth -birthday of a Hepplestall. - -Not all Hepplestalls were chosen; there were black sheep in every flock, -but if a Hepplestall meant to go black, he was expected to show symptoms -early and in Rupert’s case, at any rate, there was no question of -choice. Rupert was the eldest son. - -He would return to school, he would go to a university, but to-day he -set foot in the mills, and the step was final. The Service would have -marked him for its own. - -Rupert was cynical about it. “It’s like getting engaged to a barmaid in -the full and certain knowledge that you can’t buy her off,” he said and -that “Barmaid” indicated what he secretly thought of the show-mills of -Lancashire. But he was not proposing resistance; he was going into this -with open eyes; he knew what had happened to that recreant Hepplestall -who, so to speak, had broken his vows--the man who bolted, last heard -of as a hanger-on in a gambling hell in Dawson City, “combined,” the -informant had said, “with opium.” It wasn’t for Rupert. He knew on which -side his bread was buttered. But “Damn the hors d’ouvres,” he said. -“Damn to-day.” Then, “Pull yourself together. Won’t do to look peevish. -Come, be a little prince.” - -He composed in front of the mirror a compromise between boyish eagerness -and an overwhelming sense of a dignified occasion, surveyed his -reflection and decided that he was hitting off very neatly the -combination of aspects which his father would expect. Then he jeered -at his efforts and the jeer degenerated into an agitated giggle: he was -uncomfortably nervous; “This prince business wants getting used to,” he -said, recapturing his calculated expression and going downstairs to the -breakfast room. - -Only his father and mother were there. To-night there would be a dinner -attended by such uncles as were not abroad in the service of the firm, -but for the present he was spared numbers and it seemed a very ordinary -birthday when his mother kissed him with good wishes and his father -shook his hand and left a ten pound note in it. - -He expected an oration from his father, but what Sir Philip said was -“Tyldesley’s not out, Rupert. 143. Would you like to go to Old Trafford -after lunch?” - -“To-day!” he gasped. Could normal things like cricket co-exist with his -ordeal? - -“Yes, I think I can spare the time this afternoon,” and so on, to -a discussion of Lancashire’s chances of being the champion -county--anything to put the boy at his ease. Sir Philip had been through -that ordeal himself. He talked cricket informally, but what he was -thinking was “Shall I tell him he’s forgotten to put a tie on or shall -I take him round the place without?” But he could hardly introduce a -tie-less heir to the departmental managers, who, if they were employees -had salaries running up to fifteen hundred a year, with bonus, and were, -quite a surprising number of them, magistrates. So he proceeded to let -the boy down gently. “Heredity’s a queer thing,” he said. “It’s natural -to think of it to-day, and I shall have some instances to tell you of -later, when we get down to the office. But what sets me on it now is -that precisely the same accident happened to me on my sixteenth birthday -as has happened to you. I forgot my tie.” - -“Oh, Lord!” Rupert was aghast, feeling with twitching fingers for the -tie that wasn’t there. - -“I take it as a happy omen that you should have done the same.” - -“You really did forget yours, dad?” - -“Really,” lied Sir Philip. - -“Then I don’t mind feeling an ass,” said Rupert, and his father savored -the compliment as Rupert left the room. It implied that the boy had -a wholesome respect for him, while, as to his own diplomacy, “The -recording angel,” he said, turning to his wife, “will dip in invisible -ink.” - -Lady Hepplestall touched his shoulder affectionately, and left him to -his breakfast-table study of the market reports. - -The baronetcy was comparatively new. Any time these fifty years the -Hepplestalls could have had it by lifting a finger in the right room; -and they had had access to that room. But titles, especially as the -Victorian shower of honors culminated in “Jubilee Knights,” seemed -vulgar things, and Sir Philip consented to take one only when it seemed -necessary that he should consent, after much pressure from his brothers. -It seemed necessary in 1905 and the Hepplestall baronetcy, included -amongst the Resignation Honors conferred by the late Balfour -administration, was a symbol of the defeat of Joseph Chamberlain and -“Tariff Reform.” It advertised the soundness of the Unionist Party, even -in the thick of the great landslide of Liberalism, it registered the -close of the liaison with Protection. If Hepplestall of Lancashire, -Unionist and Free Trader, accepted a baronetcy from the outgoing -Government, the sign was clear for all to read; it could mean only that -Hepplestall had received assurances that the Party was going to be good, -to avoid the horrific pitfalls of “Tariff Reform.” Lancashire -could breathe again and Sir Philip, sacrificing much, immolated his -inclinations on the twin altars of Free Trade and the Party. If ever -man became baronet _pour le bon motif_, it was Sir Philip Hepplestall. A -gesture, but a gallant one. - -Rupert spoke many things aloud in lurid English to his reflection in -his mirror; the banality of having so carefully studied his facial -expressions while not perceiving the absence of a tie struck him as -pluperfect, but his vituperative language was, happily, adequate to the -occasion and he successful relieved his feelings. One combination of -words, indeed, struck him as inspired and he was occupied in committing -it to memory as he went downstairs to Sir Philip. - -“I feel like the kid who had too much cake and when they told him he’d -be ill, he said it was worth it,” he announced. “It was worth it to -forget my tie.” - -“In what way in particular?” asked Sir Philip, mentally saluting a -spirited recovery. - -“Will you ask me that next time I beat you at golf and words fail you? -I’ve got the words.” - -Anyhow, he’d got his impudence back and Sir Philip, knowing the massive -impressiveness of the mills, was glad of it. He wanted his boy to -bear himself well that day, and he was not afraid of levity or -over-confidence when he confronted him with Hepplestall’s. He had, he -admitted to himself, feared timidity; he had, at any rate, diagnosed -acute nervousness in Rupert’s breakfast-table appearance, and feeling -that the attack was vanished now, he rang for the car with his mind -easy. - -The site of old Reuben’s “Dorothy” factory was still the center whose -extended perimeter held the mills known to Lancashire, and nearly -as well known to dealers in Shanghai, or in the Malji Jritha market, -Bombay, as Hepplestall’s, but the town of Staithley Bridge lay in the -valley, extending down-stream away from the mills, so that there was -country still, smoky but pleasant, between the Hall and the town. -Electric trams bumped up the inclines through sprawling main-streets off -which ran the rows upon uniform rows of cell-like houses, back-to-back, -airless, bathless, insanitary, in which the bulk of the workers lived. -Further afield, there were better, more modern houses, costing no more -than those built before the age of sanitation--and these were more often -to be let than the houses of the close-packed center. It may have been -considered bumptious in Staithley to demand a bath, and a back-garden; -it may have been held that, if one lived in Staithley, one should do -the thing thoroughly; or it may have been that cleanliness too easily -attained was thought equivalent to taking a light view of life. In their -rooms, if not in their persons, they were clean in Staithley, even to -the point of being “house-proud” about their cleanliness; but medicine -that does not taste foul is suspect, and so is cleanliness in a house -when it is attained without the greatest possible mortification of -female flesh. You didn’t, anyhow, bribe a Staithley man by an electric -tram and a bright brick house with a bath to “flit” from his gray stone -house in an interminable row when that house was within reasonable -walking distance of the mills or the pits. No decentralization for him, -if he could help it: he was townbred, in a place where coal was cheap -and fires extravagant, and a back garden was a draughty, shiversome -idea. - -But all this compress of humanity, and the joint efforts of the -municipality and the jerry-builder to relieve it, lay on the side of the -mills remote from the Hall--old Reuben had seen far enough to plant the -early Staithley out of his sight, and where he planted it, it grew--and -the short drive through dairy farm-land and market-gardens was not -distressing to eyes accustomed to the pseudo-green, sobered by smoke, of -Lancashire. Nor had the private office of the Hepplestalls any eyesores -for the neophyte. He had been in less comfortable club-rooms. - -Indeed, this office, with its great fireplace, its Turkey carpet, its -shapely bureau that had been Reuben’s, and its chairs, authentically -old, chosen to be on terms with the historic bureau, its padded leather -sofa and the armchairs before the fire, and above all, the paintings on -the wall, had all the appearance of a writing-room in a wealthy club. - -“This is where I work, Rupert,” said Sir Philip, and Rupert wondered if -“work” was quite the justifiable word. He thought the room urbane and -almost drowsily urbane, he thought of work rather as the Staithley -people thought of cleanliness, as a thing that went with mortification -of the flesh, and things looked very easy in this room. But he reserved -judgment. Sir Philip was apt to come home looking very tired. Perhaps -the easiness was deceptive. - -A telephone rang, and his father went to the instrument with an apology. -“This is your day, Rupert, but I must steal five minutes of it now.” - He spoke to his broker in Liverpool, and there were little jokes and -affabilities mingled with mysterious references to “points on” and other -technicalities. There was an argument about the “points on,” and Sir -Philip seemed very easily to get the better of it, and then, having -bought a thousand bales of raw cotton futures, he put the telephone down -and said, “That’s the end of business for to-day.” An insider would have -known that something rather important had happened, that the brain of -Sir Philip had been very active indeed in those few minutes when he -lingered over the market-reports at the breakfast-table, that trained -judgment had decided a largish issue and that a brilliant exhibition of -the art of buying had been given on the telephone. Rupert’s impression -was that some enigmatic figures had casually intruded while Sir Philip -passed the time of day with a friend in Liverpool who had rather -superfluously rung him up. At Harrow, veneration of the business man was -at a discount, and he believed Harrow was right. To write Greek verse -was a stiffer job than to be a cotton-lord--on the evidence so far -before the court. - -“Well,” said Sir Philip, “I’m going to try to show you what -Hepplestall’s is, and the portraits on these walls make as good a -starting-point as I can think of. That is Reuben, our Founder. There are -a few extant businesses in Lancashire founded so long ago as ours; -there are even older firms. But such age as ours is rare. It’s been an -in-and-out business, the cotton trade. You know the proverb here that -‘It’s three generations from clogs to clogs.’ That is, some fine -fellow born to nothing makes a mark in life, rises, fights his way, and -beginning as man ends as master, giving the business he founded such -momentum as carries it along for the next generation. His son is born to -boots, not clogs, but he hasn’t as a rule the strength his father had. -He’s lived soft and his stock degenerates through softness. The business -of the old man doesn’t go to pieces in the son’s time, but it travels -downhill as the momentum given it by its founder loses force. And the -grandson of the founder is apt to be born to boots and to die in -clogs; he begins as master and ends as man. That is the cycle of three -generations on which that proverb is founded, and not unjustly founded. -It’s one of the points about the cotton trade that a strong man could -force his way out of the ranks, but it’s the fact that his successors -were more likely to lose what he left them than to keep it or improve -upon it. I’ll go so far as to say that making money is easier than -keeping it. - -“We Hepplestalls have had the gift of keeping it. What a father won, -a son has not let go. The sons have been fighters like their fathers -before them and with each son the battleground has grown. Well, -that might terrify you if I don’t explain that long ago, in your -great-grandfather’s time indeed, the firm had outgrown the power of any -one man to control it utterly. There were partnerships and a share of -the responsibility for the younger sons. More recently, in fact when -my father died, we made a private limited company of it. Two of your -uncles, Tom and William, in charge in Manchester, have great authority, -though mine is the final word. What I am seeking to tell you is that -while it is a tremendous thing--tremendous, Rupert--to be the Head of -Hepplestall’s, the burden is not one which you will ever be called upon -to bear single-handed. The day of the complete autocrat went long ago. -But this is true, that the Head of Hep-plestall’s has been the general -in command, the chief-of-staff, the man who guarded what his ancestors -had won and who increased the stake. That is the Hepplestall tradition -in its minimum significance.” - -Rupert started. In spite of his boyish skepticism he was already seeing -himself as the Lilliputian changeling in a house of the Brobdingnagians, -and if this were the minimum tradition, what, he wondered, was the -maximum? - -“We have the tradition of trusteeship,” Sir Philip proceeded. “And the -trusteeship’ of Hepplestall’s is an anxious burden. It includes what I -have spoken of already; it includes our family interests, but they are -the smallest portion of the whole. We are trustees for our workpeople: -we do not coddle them, but we find them work. That is a serious matter, -Rupert. I have of course become accustomed to it as you will become -accustomed to it, but the thought is never absent from my mind that on -us, ultimately on me alone, is laid the burden of providing work for our -thousands of employees. Trade fluctuates and my problem is, as far as is -humanly possible, to safeguard our people against unemployment.” - -“I never thought of it like that,” said Rupert, whose crude ideas of -Labor were rather derived from his public school, and occasional reading -of reactionary London newspapers, than from his home. “I wonder if they -are grateful?” - -“Their gratitude or their ingratitude has no bearing on my duty,” said -Sir Philip. - -“But aren’t there strikes?” - -“You might put it that since ’ninety-three we have bowdlerized -strikes in Lancashire. We fight with buttons on our foils, thanks to the -Brooklands agreement.” - -Rupert tried to look comprehending, but he could only associate -motor-racing with Brooklands. “Still,” he said, “I don’t believe they -are grateful. There’s that Bradshaw beast.” - -“Ah!” said Philip, “Bradshaw! Bradshaw!” The name pricked him shrewdly. -“But no,” he said, “he’s not a beast.” - -“He’s Labor Member for Staithley,” said Rupert. “I see their gratitude -less and less.” - -“Well,” said his father, “we were speaking of tradition. The Bradshaws -come into the Hepplestall tradition. A wastrel gang and queerly against -us in every period. A Bradshaw was hanged for the murder of Reuben’s -wife. There were Chartist Bradshaws, two turbulent brothers, in my -grandfather’s day. In my day, Tom Bradshaw was strike leader here in the -great strike of ’ninety-two.” - -“And they sent him to Parliament for it,” said Rupert hotly. - -“Tom’s not a bad fellow, Rupert. I admit he’s their masterpiece. The -rest of the Bradshaws are work-shys and some of them are worse than -that. But they do crop up as a traditional thorn in our flesh and -I daresay you’ll have your battle with a Bradshaw. Nearly every -Hepplestall has had, but if he’s no worse a chap than Tom, M. P., you’ll -have a clean fighter against you. But there’s a more serious tradition -than the Bradshaws, a fighting tradition, too, a Hepplestall against a -Hepplestall, a son against a father.” - -“Oh!” Rupert protested. - -“Yes. I expect to have my fight with you. It’s the march of progress. -Look at old Reuben there and Edward his son. Reuben was a fighter for -steam when he was young. Other people thought steam visionary then if -they didn’t think it flat blasphemy. But he grew old and he couldn’t -rise to railways. Edward brought the railway to Hepplestall’s, right -into the factory yard, in the teeth of Reuben’s opposition and when -Reuben saw railway trains actually doing what Edward said they would -do, carrying cotton in and goods out and coal out from the pit-mouth, he -retired. He gave Edward best and went, and Edward lit the factory with -gas, made here from his own coal, and Reuben prophesied fire and sudden -death and the only death that came was his own. - -“That portrait is of William, Edward’s son. Their fight was over the -London warehouse. William did not see why we sold to London merchants -who re-sold to shops; and William had his way, and later quarreled with -his son Martin over so small a thing as the telegraph. That was before -telephones, and you had an alphabetical switchboard and slowly spelt out -sentences on it. William called it a toy, and Martin was right and saved -thousands of valuable hours. But I had the honor of telling my father, -who was Martin, that he had an intensive mind and that lighting the -mills by electricity, and rebuilding on the all-window design to save -artificial light and installing lifts and sprinklers (to keep the -insurance low) were all very useful economies but they didn’t extend -the trade of Hepplestall’s. I went round the world and I established -branches in the East. I didn’t see why the Manchester shipping merchants -should market Hepplestall’s Shirtings in Shanghai and Calcutta. My -father told me I had bitten off more than I could chew, but he let me -have the money to try with. Well, there’s your uncle Hubert in charge -at Calcutta now, and your uncle Reuben Bleackley at Shanghai, you’ve -cousins at Rio and Buenos Aires and Montreal and on the whole I can -claim my victory. I wonder,” he looked quizzically at Rupert, “what your -victory over me will be? To run our own line of steamers? To work the -mills by electricity? I give you warning here and now that I’m against -both. Oil--oil’s a possibility; but we needn’t go into those things now. - -“I hope I shall never oppose you, sir,” said Rupert. - -“Then you’ll be no true Hepplestall--and you are going to be. You’ll go -through it as the rest of us went through it, and you’ll come out tried -and true. I’ll tell you what I mean by going through it. That’s no -figure of speech. We are practical men, we Hepplestalls, every man -of us. We’ve diverse duties and responsibilities, but we’ve a common -knowledge, and an exact one, of the processes of cotton manufacture. We -all got it in the same way, and the only right way--not by theory, not -by looking on, but by doing with our own hands whatever is done in these -mills--or nearly everything. You’re going to be a carder and a spinner -and a doubler and a weaver. You’re going to come into the place at -six in the morning with the rest of the people and the only difference -between you and them is that when you’ve learned a job you’ll be moved -on to learn another. You’ll come to it from your university and you’ll -hate it. You’ll hate it like hell, and it’ll last two years. Then you’ll -have a year in Manchester and then you’ll go round the world to every -branch of Hepplestalls. In about five years after you come here, you’ll -begin to be fit to work with me, and if you don’t make a better Head -than I am, you’ll disappoint me, Rupert.” - -Rupert was conscious of mutinous impulses as his father forecasted the -rigorous training he was expected to undergo. How cruel a mockery was -that suave office of Sir Philip! And Sir Philip himself, and all the -Hepplestalls--they had all submitted to the training. They had all been -“through it.” And they called England a free country! Well, he, at any -rate-- - -He felt his father’s hand upon his knee, and looked up from his -meditations. “It is a trust, Rupert,” said Sir Philip. - -Rupert began to hate that word and perhaps his suppressed rebellion hung -out some signs, for Sir Philip added, almost, but not quite, as if he -were making an appeal, “always the eldest son has been the big man of -his time amongst the Hepplestalls. It hasn’t been position that’s made -us; each eldest son has made himself, each has won out by merit, My -brothers were a tough lot, but I’m the toughest. And you. You won’t -spoil the record. You’ll be the big man, Rupert. And now we’ll go -through the mill,” he went on briskly, giving Rupert no opportunity to -reply. - -Rupert was shown cotton from the mixing room where the bales of raw -material were opened, through its processes of cleaning, combing, -carding to the spinning-mill whence it emerged as yarn to go through -warping and sizing to the weaving sheds and thence to the packing rooms -where the pieces were made up and stamped for the home or the foreign -markets. Hepplestall’s had their side-lines but principally they were -concerned with the mass production of cotton shirtings and Rupert was -given a kinematographic view of the making of a shirting till, stamped -in blue with the world-famous “Anchor” brand, it was ready for the -warehouse, which might be anywhere from Manchester to Valparaiso or -Hongkong; and as they went through the rooms he was introduced to -managers, to venerable overseers who had known his grandfather, -fine loyalists who shook his hand as if he were indeed a prince, and -everywhere he was conscious of eyes that bored into his back, envious, -hostile sometimes, but mostly admiring and friendly. He was the heir. - -He walked, literally, for miles amongst these men and women and -these children (there were children still in the mills of Lancashire, -“half-timers,” which meant that they went to the factory for half the -day, and to school the other half, and much good school did them after -that exhilarating morning!), and he bore himself without confessing -openly his consciousness that he was not so much inspecting the factory -as being inspected by it. All that he saw, he loathed, and he couldn’t -rid his mind of the thought that he was condemned to hard labor in these -surroundings. But there were mitigations. - -“And,” said a white-haired overseer as he shook Rupert’s hand, “’appen -we shall see you playing for Lanky-sheer one of these days.” - -“You have ambitions for me,” he smiled back. - -“Well, you’re on the road to it.” - -That was the delightful thing, that they should know that he was on -the road to it. They must be keenly interested to know so much when his -place in the Harrow first eleven was only a prospect--as yet--a pretty -secure prospect, but one of those intimate securities which were -decidedly not published news. It was a reconciling touch, bracing him to -keep up his gallant show as they made their progress, but neither -this nor the self-respecting deference of the high-salaried, efficient -managers resigned him to the price he was expected to pay for being -Hepplestall. That dour apprenticeship, which Sir Philip had candidly -prophesied he would “hate like hell,” daunted him; those five years -out of his life before he “began to work.” It was a tradition of the -service, was it? Then it was a bad tradition. He didn’t object to serve, -but this was to make service into slavery. - -Allowing for school and university, he wouldn’t come to it for another -six years yet, and by then he ought to be better equipped for a -rebellion. But--the infernal cunning of this sixteenth-birthday -initiation--it would be too late then. From to-day, if he let the day -pass without protest, he wore the chains of slavery, he was doomed, -marked down for sacrifice, and he was so young! He resented the -unfairness of his youth pitted in unequal conflict with his father. - -“One last tradition of the Hepplestalls, Rupert,” Sir Philip said as -they returned to his office, “though I expect you’re hating the word -‘tradition.’” Oh, did his father understand everything and forestall it? -“The eldest sons have not come to it easily. Sometimes there’s been open -refusal. There’ve been ugly rows. There’s always been a feeling on the -son’s part that the terms of service were too harsh. Well, I have come -to know that they are necessary terms. We are masters of men, and we -gain mastery of ourselves in those days when we learn our trade by the -side of the tradesmen. We cannot take this great place of ours lightly, -not Hepplestall’s, not the heavy trust that is laid upon us. We cannot -risk the failure of a Hepplestall through lack of knowledge of his trade -or through personal indiscipline. Imagination, the gifts of leadership -are things we cannot give you here; either you have them in you or you -will never have them, and it is reasonable to think you have them. They -have seemed to be the birthright of a Hepplestall. But we can train you -to their use. - -“There is that Japanese ideal of the Samurai. I don’t think that it is -absent from our English life, but perhaps we have not been very explicit -about our ideals. There’s money made here, and if I told some people -that what actuates me is not money but the idea of service, I should not -be believed. I should be told that I confused Mammon with God: but I am -here to serve, and money is inescapable because money is the index of -successful service in present day conditions. Service, not money, is the -mainspring of the Hepplestalls, the service of England because it is -the service of Lancashire. We lead--not exclusively but we are of the -leaders--in Lancashire. We are keepers of the cotton trade, trustees of -its efficiency, guarantors of its progress. - -“I am earnest with you, Rupert. Probably I’m offending your sense of -decent reticence. Ideals are things to be private about, but let us just -for once take the wrappings off them and let us have a look at them.... -Well, we’ve looked and we’ll hide them again, but we won’t forget -they’re there. I suppose we keep a shop, but the soul of the shopkeepers -isn’t in the cash-register.” - -How could he reply to this that the training which had been good enough -for his father and his uncles was not good enough for him? Somewhere, he -felt certain there were flaws to be found and that Sir Philip was rather -a special pleader than a candid truth-teller, but he impressed, and -Rupert despised himself for remaining obstinately suspicious of his -father’s sincerity. - -“And you’re a Hepplestall. That is not to be questioned, is it, Rupert? -In the present and in the future, in the small things and the large, -that is not to be questioned.” - -It was now or never for his protest. Mentally he wriggled like a kitten -held under water by some callous child and as desperately. He would -drown if he could not reach the aid of two life-buoys, courage to -outface Sir Philip and wits to put words to his thoughts. - -“No, sir, that is not to be questioned,” he heard himself, unexpectedly, -say, and Sir Philip’s warm handshake sealed the bargain. He had not -meant to say it; he did not mean to stand by what he had said, but his -hand responded heartily to his father’s and his eye met Sir Philip’s -gaze with the charming smile of frank, ingenuous youth. - -He was thinking that six years were a long time and that there were men -who had come to great honor after they had broken vows. - - - - -CHAPTER II--THE VOICE FROM THE STREET - -THE room held a grand piano, a great fire and two men of fifty who were -playing chess. The stout, bullet-headed man with the mustache which did -not conceal the firmness of his mouth was Tom Bradshaw; the lean man -with the goatee beard, who wore spectacles, was Walter Pate. Both were -autocrats in their way. Tom ran the Spinners’ Union and was M. P. in his -spare time, Walter ran music in Staithley Bridge and had no spare time -except, on rare occasions, for chess. - -Tom made a move. “That’s done you, you beggar,” he said, gleefully -rising and filling a pipe. - -Walter’s fine hand flickered uncertainly over the board. He saw defeat -ahead. “If I weren’t a poor man, I’d have the law on you,” he said. - -“You can’t play chess, Walter. It’s a question of brain.” - -Pate shied the matches at him, and Tom sat at the piano and picked out a -tune with one hand. - -“Stop it!” cried Walter. - -“On terms,” said Tom. - -“I hate you,” said Walter. “Come away.” - -“The terms are the Meistersinger,” said Tom. - -“On a piano! You’re a Goth.” - -“No. I’m paying you a compliment you deserve. Get at it.” - -Walter got. - -Young Rupert in his Slough of Despond had been too busy with himself to -wonder why Sir Philip had corrected him when he described Tom Bradshaw -as a “beast.” - -At his mother’s knee, Tom, like all the Bradshaws of the seed of John, -had lisped, “’A ’ate th’ ’epplestalls,” and, when he was a little -older, had learned that he hated them “Because they’re dirty thieves. -Because yon mills o’ theirn are ourn by rights.” This was not socialism -and had nothing to do with the doctrine that all property is theft; it -was the family superstition of the Bradshaws, and they believed it as -the first article of their faith. - -They believed it blindly and perhaps none of them were eager to have -their eyes opened because other people’s eyes might have been opened at -the same time and, as things usefully were, it was romantic to be -the wronged heirs to Hepplestall’s. It excused so much, it invited -compassion for the victims of injustice, it extorted charity for these -martyrs to foul play. Details were conspicuously lacking, but the -legend had life and won sympathy for the view the Bradshaws took of -themselves--that they couldn’t be expected to go to work in the mills of -the usurping Hepplestalls. As a family, they were professional cadgers -whose stock-in-trade was their legend, and Staithley held enough people -who were credulous or who were “agin the government” on principle -(whether they took the Bradshaw claim seriously or not) to make the -legend a profitable asset. Repetition is infallible, as the advertiser -knows, and these ragged Ortons of the Staithley slums had plenty of -adherents. - -There were several scores of ways of earning a livelihood in Staithley -without working at Hepplestall’s, but the average Bradshaw pretended -that as a natural pride prevented him from serving the despoiler, he -was barred from work entirety, though he did not object to his children -working for him, and Tom began as a half-timer in the mills. A bad time -he had of it too at first. He did not say it for himself, but the other -half-timers said it for him: he was the “lad as owned Hepplestall’s,” - and if there was any dirty work going, the owner did it, nursing anger -against his family and coming young to a judicious opinion of their -pretensions. - -He had his handicap in life, but soon gave proof that if he was a -Bradshaw it was an accident which other people would be wise to forget, -fighting his way from the status of a butt till he was cock of the walk -amongst the half-timers. There is much to be said for a wiry physique as -the basis of success, but Tom shed blood and bruised like any other -boy and the incidents of his battling career amongst the half-timers -at Hepplestall’s did nothing to disturb that first lesson of his life, -“’A ’ate th’ ’epple-stalls.” - -Hatred is a motive, like any other, and a strong one. It resulted in -Tom’s conceiving the ambition, while he was a “little piecer,” that he -would some day be secretary of the Spinners’ Union and in that office -would lead labor against the Hepplestalls. He was his own man now, -living not at home but in lodgings, hardily keeping himself on the wages -of a “little piecer” of eighteen, reading the _Clarion_, and presently -startling a Sunday School debating society with the assertion that -he read Marx and Engels in the original. It was not long after that -astonishing revelation of his secret studies that he became unofficial -assistant to the local secretary of the spinners, and might regard -himself as launched on a career which was to take him in 1906 to the -House of Commons. - -An election incident accounted chiefly for Sir Philip’s good opinion -of Tom Bradshaw. Tom might forget the legend, but the legend could not -forget a candidate, and it was thrown into the cockpit by some zealous -supporter who imagined that Tom would ride that romantic horse and win -in a canter. Tom thought otherwise; a story obscurely propagated amongst -Staithley’s tender-hearted Samaritans was one thing, emerging into the -fierce light which beats upon a candidate it was another. He was out -to win on the merits of his case, not by means of a sentimental appeal -which, anyhow, might be a boomerang if the other side took the matter up -with the concurrence of the Hepplestalls. - -But it was not that afterthought, it was purely his resolution that the -issues should not be confused, that took him straight to Sir Philip. Sir -Philip looked a question at him. - -“It might be Union business,” said Tom, “but it isn’t. It’s the election -and I’m here, which is the other camp, to make you an appeal. There’s -a thing being said in Staithley that touches you and me. I haven’t said -it, but it was said by folk that thought they spoke on my behalf. You’ll -have heard tell of it?” - -“I’ve heard,” said Sir Philip. - -“Well,” said Tom, “there’s always a lot of rubbish shot at elections, -but the less the better. Will you help me to get rid of this particular -load of rubbish? Will you help me to tell the truth?” - -“Is there question of the truth?” - -“Not in my mind. But in theirs, there is. They believed what they said -of you and me.” And he went on to tell Sir Philip of the belief of the -Bradshaws and of its acceptance by others. “You can put it that it’s -never been an easy thing for me to be a Bradshaw in Staithley. We’re -known as the Begging Bradshaws and it’s been a load I’ve had to carry -that I’m one of them by birth. They’ve begged on the strength of this -story. But it’s only hurt me up to now. It’s going to hurt others -to-day, it’s going to hurt my cause and I’m here not to apologize for -folks that have done no more than said what they believe: I’m here to -ask if you will join with me in publishing the truth.” - -“Shall I tell you the only fact known to me which may have bearing on -your family’s belief, Mr. Bradshaw?” - -“I wish you would. That there’s a fact of any sort behind it is news to -me.” - -“A man called Bradshaw was hanged for the murder of an ancestress of -mine. It is possible you are descended from this man.” - -“By gum!” said Tom. “That’s an ugly factor. I didn’t know I was in for -one like that when I came here asking you to help me with the truth. -Well, we’ll publish it. It’ll not help me, but I’m for the truth whether -it’s for me or against me.” - -Sir Philip crossed the room to him. “Shake hands, Mr. Bradshaw,” he -said. “We’ll tell the truth in this together, but at the moment we’ve -not gone very far. Your opinion of your family in general makes you -rather too ready to believe that they are in fact the descendants of -this murderer.” - -“Thank you, Sir Philip,” said Tom. “But I’m not doubting it.” - -“What we can do, at any rate, is to go together through the records of -the firm. Or I will employ some one who is accustomed to research and we -will issue his report. My cupboard may have a skeleton in it, but it is -open to you to investigate.” - -Tom Bradshaw sweated hard. “It’s making a mountain out of a mole hill,” - he said. He had never, since the half-timers taught him commonsense, had -anything but contempt for the legend of the Bradshaws; at every stage -of his upward path it had embarrassed him, but never had he felt before -to-day that it pursued him with such poisonous malignity. He had no hope -that any point favoring the Bradshaws would emerge from an examination -of the records; it would be a fair examination of dispassionate title -deeds and its fairness would be the more damaging. And he had pleaded -for the truth, he had put this rapier into his political opponents’ -hands! The Labor candidate was the descendant of a murderer! - -“Thank you again,” he said. - -“Oh, as to that,” said Sir Philip, “the existence of this belief -interests me. If our searcher finds any grounds for it here or in parish -registers or elsewhere, I shall of course acknowledge them. But the odds -are that the legend springs from a perverted view of the murder of which -I have told you, and if that is so, I fear the disclosure will hardly -profit you.” - -“It won’t,” said Tom gloomily. “But it’ll shut their silly mouths.” - If, he reflected, it did not open them in full cry on a new and odious -scent. - -“So we go on with it?” - -“We go on.” - -“May I say this, Mr. Bradshaw? That your attitude to this affair -increases an admiration of you which was considerable before? If you -beat us in this election we shall have the satisfaction of knowing that -we are beaten by a man.” Which was handsome, seeing that there was -the stuff of libel in the statements of Tom’s well-meaning supporter. -Amenities, but Tom did not doubt their sincerity, and his sentiment of -personal hatred, already weakened by contact with the Hepplestalls in -his Union affairs, merged into his general and tolerantly professional -opposition to capitalists. - -In the event, what was issued was a statement simply denying, on the -authority of a historian, of Sir Philip and of Tom, that the claim -made by the Bradshaw family, and repeated during the election, had any -foundation whatsoever, and whether the denial had effect or not, it -cannot have made much difference to Tom’s candidature. He had a clear -two thousand majority over both Liberal and Unionist opponents, and had -held the seat ever since, while the legend of the Bradshaws, like any -lie that gets a long start of the truth, flourished as impudently as -ever. In Bradshaw opinion, Tom Bradshaw had been bought, and they found -fresh evidence for this view whenever Tom’s matured attitude toward the -Masters’ Federation earned for him the disapproval of extremists. They -did not cease to teach their children that if every one had their own, -Hepplestall’s was Bradshaws’. “A gang of wastrels,” Sir Philip had -called them to Rupert, and could have quoted chapter and verse for his -opinion. As he read the history dredged by his searcher, the Bradshaws -began with John, a murderer, and ended in a family of beggars; but he -excepted Tom. When the Union spoke to him through Tom, there was no -bitterness between them; there was a meeting on equal terms between two -men who respected each other. Sir Philip recalled the Bradshaws as they -figured in his historian’s report, and he recalled the Hepplestalls. -“Dying fires,” he thought; Tom Bradshaw was eminently the reasonable -negotiator. - -Walter Pate crashed out the final chords. - -“Aye,” said Tom, “aye. A grand lad, Wagner. And when I hear you play -him, it’s a comfort to know I can wipe the floor with you at chess.” - Which Mr. Pate accepted as a merited salute to a brilliant performance, -and unscrewed the stopper from a bottle of beer. A moment later Tom -stared at his friend in blank amazement; he was staggered to see Pate -raise the glass to his lips and put it down again. - -“Man, are you ill?” he cried. The beer foamed assuringly, but, to be on -the safe side, Tom tasted it. “The beer’s fine, what’s to do?” - -“Shut up, you slave to alcohol. Shut up and listen.” - -Walter opened the window, the cold night air blew in and with it came -from the street the strains of “Lead Kindly Light,” sung in a fresh -girlish voice. - -Fires are fires in Staithley, as Tom was in the habit of telling -Londoners who put coal by the dainty shovelful into a doll’s house -grate, and if he was commanded to shut up he could do it, but the open -window was a persecution. There was a silent pantomime of two elderly -gentlemen one of whom struggled to close a window, the other to keep it -open, then Tom turned to the defeated Walter with a “What the hangment’s -come over you?” - -“Have you no soul at all, Tom? Couldn’t you hear her?” - -“I heard a street-singer.” - -“You heard a class voice, and you’re going to hear it again.” Mr. Pate -was at the window. - -“Then bring her in,” said Tom. “I’ll freeze for no fad of yours. A class -voice in Staithley streets!” - -“A capacity to play chess is a limiting thing,” was fired at him as -Mr. Pate left the room. Tom took an amicable revenge by emptying both -glasses of beer. “I’ve cubic capacity, choose how,” he said, indicating -their emptiness as Walter returned with the girl who had been singing. - -“Get warm,” said Walter to her. “Then we’ll have a look at you.” - -She had, clearly, the habit of taking things as they came, and went to -the fire with as little outward emotion as she had shown when Walter -pounced upon her in the street. She accepted warmth, this strange, -queerly luxurious room, these two men in it, as she would have accepted -the blow which Walter’s upraised hand and voice had seemed to presage in -the street--with a fatalism full of pitiable implications. - -She was of any age, beyond first childhood, that went with flat-chested -immaturity; she was dirty beyond reason, but she had beauty that shone -through her gamin disorder like the moon through storm-tossed cloud. Her -tangled hair was dark auburn, her eyes were hazel and as the fire’s heat -soaked into her a warm flush spread over her pinched face like sunshine -after rain on ripening corn. - -“Can you sing anything besides ‘Lead Kindly Light?’” asked Walter. - -“Of course she can’t,” said Tom. “It’s the whole of the beggar’s opera.” - He was sore about that opened window and resented this girl who -had disturbed a musical evening. He had appetite for more than the -“Meister-singer,” and seemed likely, through the intruder, to go -unsatisfied. - -She looked pertly at Tom. “’A can, then,” she said. “Lots more, but,” - her eyes strayed round the room, “’a dunno as you’d fancy ’em.” - -“Go on,” said Walter. “There’ll be supper afterwards.” - -“Crikey,” she said, and sang till he stopped her, which was very soon. -They had a taste in the meaner public-houses of Staithley for the sort -of song which it is libelous to term Rabelaisian. Her song, if she did -not know the meaning of its words, was a violent assault upon decency; -if she did know--and her hesitation had suggested that she did--it was -precocious outrage. - -“Stop it,” cried Walter, horrified. - -Tom spat into the fire. “My constituents!” he groaned. “Walter, it’s a -queasy thought.” - -“I thought you favored education,” said Walter. - -“I do, but--” - -“Go on favoring it. It’s a growing child.” - -“Thanks,” said Tom gratefully. “You’re right. This is foul-tasting -tonic, but it’s good to be reminded how far we haven’t traveled yet.” - -Walter’s hand strayed gently to his friend’s shoulder. - -“Short fights aren’t interesting,” he said, and turned to the -girl, whose patient aloofness through this little conversation, so -unintelligible to her, was, again, revealing. - -“Go back to the hymn,” he said. - -“A hymn?” The word had no meaning for her. - -“‘Lead Kindly Light,’” he explained. - -“Oh, that,” she said, and sang it through without interruption. It -was street singing, adapted to penetrate through the closed windows -of Staithley and by sheer shrillness to wring the withers of the -charitable. Tom Bradshaw, amateur of music, found nothing in this -insistent volume of song to account for Walter Pate’s interest; she -made, tunefully, a great noise in a little room, and he wished that -Walter would stop her, though not for the same reason as before. -But Walter did not stop her, he listened and he watched with acute -absorption and when she had finished, “again,” he said, gesturing Tom -back into his chair with a menacing fist. - -“It goes through me like a dentist’s file in a hollow tooth,” Tom -protested. - -“You fool,” said Mr. Pate pityingly, and, to the girl, “Sing.” - -“Now,” he said when she had ended, “I don’t say art. Art’s the -unguessable. I say voice and I say lungs. I say my name’s Walter Pate -and I know. Give me two years on her and you’ll know too. If you’d -like me to tell you who’ll sing soprano when the Choral Society do the -‘Messiah’ at Christmas of next year, it’s that girl.” - -“’Oo are you gettin’ at?” she asked. - -“I’m getting at you, getting at you with the best voice-producing system -in the North of England--Walter Pate’s. And when I’ve finished with you, -you’ll be--well, you won’t be singing in the street.” - -“Well, I can’t see it, Walter,” said Tom. - -“You’ve the wrong letters after your name to see it,” said Walter, “but -I’ve made a find to-night, and I’m gambling two years’ hard work on the -find’s being something that will make the musical world sit up. Buy a -cheap brooch and it’s tin washed with gold. That voice is the other way -round. It’s tin on top and gold beneath and I’m going digging for the -gold.” Not, he might have added, because gold has value in the market. -If Walter Pate had discovered a voice which, under training, was to -become the pride of Staithley, that was all he wanted; he wouldn’t hide -under a bushel his light as the discoverer and the instructor, but all -he wanted else was proof in support of his often expressed opinion that -musically Staithley led Lancashire (the rest of the world didn’t matter) -and he thought he had found his proof in--he turned to the girl. “You -haven’t told us your name,” he said. - -“Mary Ellen Bradshaw,” she told him, and “Lord!” said Tom. “You’ll waste -your time.” - -“I shan’t,” said Walter. “There’s grit amongst that tribe. You’re here -to prove it.” - -“Where do you live?” Tom asked her. - -“Brick-yards, mostly,” she said. “I’m good at dodging bobbies.” There is -warm sleeping by the kilns, and the police know it. - -“Got any parents, Mary Ellen?” - -“’A dunno. They was there last time ’A went to Jackman’s Buildings. -There weren’t no baggin’ there, so ’a ’opped it. That’s a long time -sin’.” - -“This gentleman is called Bradshaw,” said Walter, to Tom’s annoyance. - -“Is ’e?” she said. “’A ’ate th’ ’epplestalls.” It might have been -a password, and Tom thought she had the intention, in speaking it, -to curry favor with a rich relation, but as it happened Mary Ellen -was sincere. She did not say she hated the Hepplestalls to please Tom -Bradshaw. She said it because it was true. - -Tom certainly wasn’t pleased. He reached for his hat. “I’m off out of -this,” he said, and when Walter looked at him with surprise, “Man,” he -said, “it’s beyond all to find that old ghost jibbering at me when I’ve -sweated blood to lay it. You do not hate the Hepplestalls,” he roared at -Mary Ellen. “They’re decent folk and you’re mud.” - -“Aye,” she said submissively. That she was mud, at any rate, was not -news to her. - -“Aye, what?” - -“What yo’ said.” - -“Come,” said Walter. “There’s tractability.” - -“I call it cunning. Beggar’s cunning. She’s a Bradshaw.” - -“Not to me. She’s a Voice, and, by the Lord, I’ll train her how to use -it.” - -“What are you going to do, Walter?” Tom put his hat down, feeling that -it was ungenerous to leave his friend in the grip of a mistaken impulse. - -“Steal her. Well, no. That’s not to do; it’s done. She’s here. Mary -Ellen, you’re going to sleep in a bed to-night, with sheets and a -striped quilt on it like you see in the windows of the Co-op.” - -“Oo--er,” said Mary Ellen. - -“But,” said Walter, “you’re going to be washed first. The water won’t be -cold. It’ll be warm, and it’ll be in a bath. You’ve heard of baths?” - -She nodded. “Aye,” she said, “you ’ave ’em when you go to quod.” - -Tom turned suddenly away and when he looked round there were marks of -suffering on his face. “I’ve been living too soft, Walter,” he said. -“I’ve been forgetting.” - -“No,” said Walter, “your whole life is remembering. Education, Tom. -Isn’t that the sovereign remedy?” - -“I’m believing in nothing just now,” said Tom Bradshaw. - -“Then I am. I’m believing in the voice of Mary Ellen and I’m going to -educate it.” - -“Will it ’urt?” asked Mary Ellen. - -“No,” said Tom, “but I will if you’re not grateful to Mr. Pate. I’ll -break your neck.” - -“Tom, Tom!” protested Walter. - -“Eh, lad,” said Tom, “I’ve got the heartache for the waif, but you’re -aiming to sink two years’ good work in her, and she a Bradshaw. Man, -they’re the Devil’s Own. They’ll take and take and--do you fancy this -is like me, Walter? Me arguing against one of the downs being given -a chance to get up! But when it’s you that’s giving the chance and a -Bradshaw that’s to take it I’ve a sinking feeling that the risk’s too -big. They’ll bite the hand that feeds them, they’ll--” - -“Well, I’ll be bitten then. There are times when I doubt if you’ve a -proper sense of the place of music in the world and I tell you, this -is one of them. If I’m vouchsafed the chance of giving that voice to -mankind, I can do without having her gratitude thrown in. I’m doing this -to please myself, my lad, and for the honor and the glory of Staithley -Bridge. If she goes on to where I’m seeing her, she’ll wipe her boots on -me in any case, but she’ll not wipe out the fame of Staithley that bred -her.” - -“She was bred in Jackman’s Buildings. The beastliest slum in the town.” - -“They’ll go pilgrimages to her birthplace.” - -“You don’t believe that. Music’s as bad as drink for damaging a man’s -sense of proportion.” - -Mary Ellen fidgeted, not with, the distress which may be supposed to -assail a sensitive child who is discussed before her face, but because -the conversation missed her main point. “When’s supper?” she asked. - -“After your bath,” said Walter, defying Tom with his eyes. Tom took -up his hat again. “I’m off,” he said. “I’ve never found the cure for -fools.” - -“All right,” said Walter. “In two years’ time, you’ll be the fool. I’m -going bail for that Voice, and it’s neither here nor there that the -Voice goes with a Bradshaw.” - -“Good night,” said Tom, and went. - -Mary Ellen “pulled bacon” at the door he closed behind him. “’A ’ate -th’ ’epplestalls,” she said cheekily, but her impudence fell from her -as he returned. She thought he had heard her and had come to inflict -punishment. - -But Tom had not heard. “Walter,” he said, “if you value my friendship, -there’s a thing you’ll not deny me.” - -“Well?” - -“I pay half. Let’s be fools together.” - -Walter sucked meditatively at an empty pipe. “Aye,” he said, “we’re both -bachelors and,” holding out the hand of partnership, “I’m generous by -nature, Tom. Tell Mrs. Butterworth I want her as you go downstairs.” - - - - -CHAPTER III--MARY ELLEN - -MARY ELLEN heard with trepidation that there was a Mrs. Butterworth on -the premises; she was old enough to know that it was one thing to “get -round” two men, and another to cozen a woman. - -Her cozening had not been much more culpable than that of any one who -sees a chance and determines not to fritter it away by understatement. -It was not quite true, it was a propagandist gloss upon the truth, -to say that she slept out on the brickfields, implying that she was -homeless when she had sleeping rights in the fourth part of a bed in -Jackman’s Buildings. But there had been no dissembling, no thought to -please Tom Bradshaw, when she said she hated the Hepplestalls. She hated -them because she hated the misery in which she lived and because they -were the cause of her living in misery. That was her implicit belief -and the guile had not been in stating it but in denying it when Tom -commanded her denial. - -The guile had succeeded, too. Tom Bradshaw was not a strong man of his -faction without knowing that there is a cant of the underdog as of the -upper, and he had suspected her of “beggar’s cunning.” Then she had won -him round; he had remembered that she was of his clan, he had felt that -there, but for the grace of God and the difference of age and sex, went -Tom Bradshaw, and he had gone partners with Walter in her future. - -She had conquered males, but she feared Mrs. Butterworth and drew closer -to the fire lest the woman should detect her as not so unsophisticated -as she seemed nor so young as she looked. - -She did not know Mrs. Butterworth nor the strength of Mrs. Butterworth’s -affection for Walter. Mrs. Butterworth was, in nominal office, his -housekeeper; actually she was slave, without knowing she was slave, to -a man who did not know he had enslaved her. Stoically she took whatever -came from Walter, and things like lost kittens and broken-legged -puppies came habitually. This time, making unprecedently a call upon -her tolerance, a girl came and Mrs. Butterworth might have been provoked -into defining the duties of a housekeeper to a bachelor. Instead, she -listened to instructions, put on an overall, got out her disinfectants -and prepared to clean Mary Ellen and to burn her clothes with a placid -competence which asserted that she was not to be overcome by any freak -of Walter’s, no matter how eccentric. - -“If she’s to go into the spare bed,” she said, “she’ll go clean.” - -No need to dwell on happenings in the bathroom; they were there for a -long time, and when Mary Ellen came out, wrapped in a night-dress of -Mrs. Butterworth’s, she felt raw from head to foot. But she had two -satisfactions which sent her very happily to sleep in spite of her -rawness. One was bread and milk in quantity, the other was the assurance -she derived from the looking-glass that if her parents saw her, they -would not recognize her. Her voice had been an asset to her parents who -had been therefore not so indifferent to the existence of their Mary -Ellen as her story had suggested. - -Mrs. Butterworth returned to the sitting room. “She’s in bed,” she -reported. - -“Thank you,” said Walter and then, by way of explanation, added, “She -can sing.” - -“I thought it would be that,” she said. - -“Yes, yes, it is quite extraordinarily that. Did I make it clear to you -that she will live here?” - -“I’ll keep her clean,” said Mrs. Butterworth, shouldering the burden. - -“And she had better be described as my niece, from, let us say, Oldham. -You will buy her clothes to-morrow. Her name is Mary. We will call her -Mary Pate.” - -“It’s a good name to take risks with,” she warned him. - -“Wait till I’ve taught her how to sing.” - -“Oh, aye,” she said, with seeming skepticism; but she was not skeptical. -She accepted Mary, she believed in her because Walter believed in her -and because his belief was so strong that he bestowed on her the name of -Pate. That settled, for Mrs. Butterworth, that Mary was remarkable. - -Walter himself was doubtful if he was justified in sharing his name with -her. It was an honored name in Staith-ley, but when Mary Ellen soared -she would cast luster on the name she bore, and he questioned if he were -not highhandedly appropriating that luster to his name. But on other -grounds, of convenience, of propriety (a singing master had to be -circumspect), of cover from the possible quest of bereft parents, he -decided she had better be Pate. - -Why, it Italianized into Patti! He hadn’t thought of that before, but it -seemed a good omen and before he went to bed that night he had planned -in full his scheme for the education of a pupil who did not merely -come to him for lessons while spending the rest of her time out of his -control, but of one who from her uprising to her retiring should be -ordered by him to the single end that she should be a great singer. - -No one but a bachelor, and a Mrs. Butterworth-spoiled bachelor at that, -would have imagined that a system so drastic, and so monastic, would -prove workable, but at first Mary Ellen was docile. She had gone without -creature comforts for too long not to appreciate them when she had them, -and she was docile through her fear of losing them, of being sent back -to Jackman’s Buildings or of being dragged back by her parents. Their -beat, certainly, was not her beat now, and the almost suburban street in -which she had been singing when Walter heard her was well away from the -Staithley Beggar’s Mile. But there were always off-chances (such as her -own coming there), and perhaps she knew or perhaps she did not know that -she was one of those people who can be seen across a wide road by -the short-sighted: a quality she had of which there is no particular -explanation except that it is one of the Almighty’s conjuring tricks, -performed for the ugly as compensation for their ugliness and for the -beautiful because to them that hath shall be given. - -At any rate, so long as she feared the clutch of her past she subdued -her rebelliousness to the discipline of study, and all too soon he was -treating her companionably, he was letting her into the secret of -the ambition he had for her, he was assuming that because he knew the -necessity of a long, arduous training, she would reasonably submit to -it. - -But her submissiveness to his regimen passed with the passing of her -fears. She trusted the disguise of clothes, of the manner she acquired -and of speech, which was no longer that of Jackman’s Buildings, -to confound the Bradshaws even if she met them face to face and as -confidence grew her motive for acquiescence in much that his system -implied was weakened. It implied, especially, the secreting of her -talent until he deemed it ripe for exhibition, and Mary Ellen grew -impatient. - -Perhaps he had not clearly stated his ambition or perhaps she had not -clearly understood, but while he expected her to be a pupil long after -her Staithley days were past, she was not looking beyond Staithley, she -was not seeing why work should be continuous now that it had ceased to -be a new sensation. She was avid of results and grew sullen at her labor -which seemed to lead nowhere but to more labor. - -He consulted Mrs. Butterworth: was Mary Ellen ill? “I’ll? She’s got -horse-strength, but you can overdrive a horse. All work and no play is -good for nobody.” - -“She goes to concerts,” he protested. - -“That’s part of her work, and part of her trouble, too. Going and -hearing others sing and you telling her to watch them and to learn what -to avoid, and she fancying she’s better than they are, an’ all.” - -“She is better.” - -“Then it doesn’t help her to know it and to know they sing in public and -she doesn’t.” - -“She shan’t sing yet. What am I to do?” - -“Take her mind off it. It’s always concerts. There are theaters.” - -There were. There was one in Staithley (there was even, depth below the -deep, a music-hall), but the feeling existed that if playgoing was done -at all it should be done furtively and though Walter would not have -dreamed of putting music and drama in two categories the one labeled -respectable and the other disreputable, he had to defer to the -prejudices of those who did. He lived by teaching music and singing to -the offspring of Staithley’s upper ten, and there might be tolerance -amongst them, but he had to be on the safe side and to take the view -that the theater was a detrimental place. This was self-protective habit -which recently had crystallized into something approaching conviction -through the action of one Chown. The crime of Mr. Chown, and to Walter -it was no less than crime, was to translate the Staithley Hand Bell -Ringers to the music-halls, where they had made much money by (Walter -held) debasing their musical standards. But the music-hall was not the -theater and he had to admit, on reflection, that there was really no -connection between Mr. Chown’s vulgarization of the musical taste of the -Staithley Hand Bell Ringers and Mary Ellen’s going to the play. There -was Shakespeare and if it was prudent for him not to go with her -himself, there was Mrs. Butterworth, who stood awaiting his decision -with a notable and not disinterested anxiety. - -It was not disinterested because the slave had her relaxation, her -weekly “night out” when she threw the shackles off and forgot in the pit -of the Theater Royal that she was housekeeper, valet, nurse and mother -to Walter Pate. Not his to ask nor his to tell what delicious freedom -she found in those emancipated hours, but hers the hope to add to them -when she cunningly prescribed the theater as a cure for Mary Ellen’s -restiveness. - -“Would you go with her?” he asked shyly, his tone implying that now, if -never before, he was her petitioner. - -“If you wish it,” she said, exulting secretly. “I’m sure she needs a -change.” - -So, Shakespeare conveniently arriving at Staithley in the hands of a -troupe of actors of heroic good intentions, Mary Ellen went to fairyland -with Mrs. Butterworth who proved, however, when she had grown used to -sitting on a plush chair in the circle instead of on a hard bench in the -pit, an unromantic guide. Mary was lost with Rosalind in Arden and Mrs. -Butterworth took advantage of the interval to parade her knowledge of -the private concerns of the actors. It was, for the most part, a recital -of the sycophantic slush handed by the advance agent to the office of -the _Staithley Evening Reporter_, and printed each Friday unedited. She -knew how Jacques and Phoebe, though they only met when this tour began, -had been married last week at. Huddersfield, and what difficulties had -been overcome to secure legal marriage for a pair of strolling players -who only stayed in a town for a week. And she knew where Rosalind lodged -in Staithley. Mary did not find this disenchanting: for her it linked -fairyland with Staithley. Rosalind was not a dream, mysterious, -impalpably detached from life, but a real woman lodging in a street -which Mary Ellen knew: she walked the pavements in skirts when she -wasn’t ruffling it in doublet and hose, bewitching young Orlando in a -glamorous wood, and if Rosalind why not, some magical day, Mary Ellen? -She gasped at her audacity, at the egregious fantasy of leaping -thought. She was earth-bound by Staithley, and these were the fetterless -imaginings of a freer world. - -She couldn’t and she didn’t look beyond Staithley, and the stage seemed -something so remotely beyond her reach that she bid her thought, even -from herself. She had the trick, when chocolate came her way, of -getting on a chair and of putting the packet on the top of her wardrobe, -hoarding it not too long but long enough to make her feel nobly -conscious of severe self-restraint. So with this thought of the stage: -she put it, wrapped in silver paper, at the top of her mental wardrobe, -not wholly inaccessible, but difficult of access, not forgotten but -put where it was not easy to remember it. But it had all the same its -reactions and the chief of these operated in a manner precisely contrary -to Walter’s intentions when he allowed her to go to the play. “She -shan’t sing yet,” (in public, that is) he had said decidedly to Mrs. -Butter-worth, and Mary Ellen, if she admitted doublet and hose to be, -for her, the fabric of a dream, was spurred by that impossible to demand -her possible, to demand her right to wear an evening dress and in it to -appear upon a platform and to sing in public. - -“Not yet,” he said. “Not for a long while yet.” - -“Oh, Daddy Pate, I can’t wait for ever.” - -“Nobody’s asking you to. But you’ll wait till you’re ready.” - -“How long?” - -“Some time. Years.” - -“Years? But you told Mr. Bradshaw I was to sing in the ‘Messiah.’ I’ve -been learning it.” - -“You heard that? That night you came? Well, it was a foolish boast -of mine. You practiced it as you have practiced other things, for the -groundwork on which you’ll build.” - -“You mean I’m not good enough. Then why have you told me I’m good?” - -“You’re too good to spoil.” - -“But I’m spoiling now.” - -“No: you’re learning.” - -She cried piteously and when, surprisingly, that did not move him, she -sulked and refused to eat and managed to make herself so unwell -that work was out of the question and Mrs. Butterworth was guilty of -disloyalty to Walter. - -“She’ll fret herself into a decline,” she said. “You’d best give way to -her.” - -“She’ll damage her voice if this goes on,” he had to admit. “Can’t -you talk sense to her?” and Mrs. Butter-worth, swinging back to her -allegiance, promised she would try, but her talking was to ears that -were deaf. Mary Ellen, appealed to in the name of gratitude she owed -Walter, was stubbornly unmoved. “I was better off in the streets,” she -said. “I sang. People heard me.” - -Mrs. Butterworth held up her hands in scandalized protest. “Oh, dearie!” - she said, incapable of more. - -“Why am I kept down like this?” demanded Mary Ellen. “Mr. Pate knows -best.” - -“He knows he’s got me in prison. He thinks he can amuse himself by -trying his experiments on me. His perfect system that has never been -tried before! No, because nobody would stand it, so he picked me off -the street to have me to try it on because he thought I was helpless. -He doesn’t care about me. I’m not a girl. I’m not human flesh and blood. -I’m a thing with a voice that he’s testing a system on, and he thinks -I’ll let him go on testing till he’s tired of it. Years, he said. Years -in a prison! Years, while he bribes me to stand it by making lying -promises--” - -“Oh! he never!” said Mrs. Butterworth, stung to defend Walter, though -secretly in sympathy with much of her passionate distortion of his -motives. - -“He did! He said I was to sing solo in the ‘Messiah’ and now he says I -shan’t. He isn’t tired of his experiments yet.” - -“I’m sure he means it for your good.” - -“Yes. Father’s licked me saying that and loving me I’m being kept -down for his pleasure and I’m tired if he isn’t. I’m going back to the -streets.” - -“That’s foolish talk, Mary.” - -“I’m going to sing somewhere. That may be foolish, but it’s fact.” - -“Well, I’ll tell him. Now eat your breakfast.” - -“No,” said Mary Ellen, hunger-striker, and Mrs. Butterworth reported -a total failure in guarded misquotation of the rebel. “I can put bacon -before her, but I cannot make her eat. And she’ll run away. She will, as -sure as eggs are eggs, and you’ll lose her then. We can’t lock her up.” - -“No.” Walter mused upon the authority of a foster-father, clamping his -anger down, recognizing the weakness of his position. He was not her -guardian; he had no reason to suppose that her parents were alive or -that any one had better right than he had to command her, but he had -assumed possession of Mary Ellen as if she were a kitten and a girl was -not a kitten. He could only rule by the consent of the ruled, and he -thought he had earned her consent. He had given her so much--even, -treating her as of discreet age, his confidence--and he had thought she -had responded, he had thought she had reasonably understood what he was -doing and why. But if she put it that he was simply a tyrant, there was -nothing to do but to humor her till, in time, she saw indisputably that -he was right. To let her go, to lose what had been so well begun, was -unthinkable. - -Mrs. Butterworth, sensitive to Walter’s suffering, broke in upon his -thoughts. “I’d like to whip the thankless brat,” she said viciously, -and if she was hinting at a policy it might have been a sound one. -But Walter was not thinking whether Mary Ellen was or was not still of -whipable age, he was going back, whimsically, to his beginnings with -her, he was thinking how he had said to Tom, “If she goes on to where -I’m seeing her, she’ll wipe her boots on me.” The boot-wiping had begun -before he looked for it; that was all except that it was his system on -which she wiped her boots, his system off which she rubbed the bloom. - -He went to Mary, still staring at her uneaten meal, with a compromise. -“I think you might sing this season with the Choral Society, Mary,” - he said, “attending their practices and appearing in public when they -appear.” - -“Daddy Pate,” she said, “I didn’t mean to be a nuisance, but I had to -make you see it. The Choral Society? That means just in the chorus.” - -“Well, for this season, Mary.” - -“But the ‘Messiah’? You promised me.” - -“Oh, hardly. But we shall see, Mary. We shall see.” And knowing that she -had got him, so to speak, with his foot on the butter-side, she kissed -him very sweetly and then, to show him what a practical, commonsensical -person she really was, she sat down to breakfast. “And I don’t mind,” - she said, “if the bacon is cold,” and ate, magnanimously. - - - - -CHAPTER IV--MR. CHOWN OF LONDON - -THE best that could be said about the Wheatsheaf Hotel at Staithley -Bridge was very good indeed; it was that when a certain eminent -actor-manager was appearing in Manchester, he put up at the Wheatsheaf -in Staithley and motored in and out. It is thirty miles each way, there -is a Midland Hotel in Manchester, and actor-managers know all there is -to know about personal comfort. That places the Wheatsheaf. - -It was Staithley’s sporting hotel, and golf club-houses, not to mention -the habit of golfers of motoring to their sport, have dispelled the -illusion that sportsmen are a hardy race. The Wheatsheaf had its crowded -hour when the visiting teams of professional footballers who came to -oppose Staithley Rovers arrived in a charabanc, and attracted customers, -who paid reckless prices for drinks in a place where they could get near -views of authentic heroes: but for the most part, solid, quiet comfort -was the keynote of the Wheatsheaf and commercial travelers knew it. - -Those of them who were not victims of the falling status of the -traveler, and the too closely scrutinized expense accounts, went to the -Wheatsheaf; the others envied them and went where they could afford to -go. The uninstructed Londoner would have passed it by without a second -glance; the Wheatsheaf did not advertise. It was innocent of gilt, and -its whisky was unwatered. It was a very good hotel. - -Nevertheless, Mr. Alastair Montagu, who always stayed there when his -company was at the Theater Royal, was surprised to see Lexley Chown -in the smoking room of the Wheatsheaf. He remembered the eminent -actor-manager, and his surprise was not that Chown, being in Staith-ley, -should have the discrimination to stay at the Wheatsheaf, but that -Chown should be in Staithley. Chown was a figure in the profession, but -emphatically a London figure. - -The business of Mr. Chown was that of an “artiste’s agent.” A middleman -trading in human flesh and blood? Perhaps; but Chown was a useful -clearing-house. He was an impressive person, floridly handsome, -beautifully dressed, and the routine work which kept him and the -expensively rented, exquisitely furnished suite of offices near -Leicester Square was something like this. A manager would ring up and -say that by to-morrow he must have a snub-nosed actor, six feet tall, -with red hair and a cockney accent to play a part worth seven pounds a -week. Mr. Chown, or Mr. Chown’s secretary, consulted the card index and, -by its means, collected half a dozen unemployed actors who answered, -roughly, to the manager’s specification, and sent them to see the -manager, who might choose one of them but more probably would not. He -would probably ring up and say, “I say, Chown, I’ve looked over this -bunch. Not one of them a bit like it.” Chown would reply, truthfully, -that each of his applicants had a snub nose, red hair, was six feet high -and a cockney who was prepared to act for seven pounds a week, and that -these were the qualifications the manager had demanded. The manager -would not deny it, but “I had a brain-wave last night. Billy Wren is the -man I want for that part. He was born to play it, only,” pathetically, -“I don’t know where he is.” - -“I do,” Mr. Chown would say calmly. “He’s in ‘The Poppy Plant,’ which is -at Eastbourne this week and at Torquay next week.” - -“Get him out of that for me, old man.” - -“I’ll try, but Billy is five feet six, his hair is black and he’s got a -Roman nose.” - -“I don’t care: I want him.” - -“And his salary is sixteen.” - -“Who cares?” Billy would be wired for, cajoled into giving up the -certainty of his tour for the uncertainty of a London run, his touring -manager would be placated with a substitute at half Billy’s salary, -and the London Manager would pay Mr. Chown precisely nothing for these -services. Did Mr. Chown, then, help lame dogs over stiles for nothing? -Not at all: he received ten per cent of the actor’s salary for the first -ten weeks of a run, from the actor. His brains and his system were at -the service of the manager, but it was the actor who paid all while -receiving certainly not more than the manager who paid nothing, not -even compliments to Mr. Chown on the astonishing efficiency of that -compilation of many years, his card index. - -That was the bread and butter work of Mr. Lexley Chown, but his portly -form was not nourished on Lenten fare, nor was his wine bill paid out of -his card index. He was an industrious seeker after talent buried in the -English provinces; he had the flair--not the nose, for, remarkably, Mr. -Chown was not a Jew--for discovering young people of merit whose market -value, under intelligent handling, would in a few years be in the -neighborhood of a hundred pounds a week. It is a profitable thing to be -sole agent of a number of people each earning a hundred pounds a week. - -When business was good--and Staithley was a good “No. 2” town--Mr. -Alastair Montagu was capable of believing what his posters asked the -public to believe about the merits of his company, but in his most -optimistic, his most characteristically showman-like mood, he could not -persuade himself that Lexley Chown had come from London to Staithley -looking for stars of the future amongst the sprightly old women and -elderly young men of “The Woman Who Paid” company. There was old Tom -Hall, of course, a sound actor who ought to be in London, but Chown knew -all about Tom, and about Tom’s trouble, too. Whisky drinkers on Tom’s -scale weren’t Chown’s quarry, nor, indeed, he reflected, were sound -actors either. To be a “sound actor” is to be damned with faint -praise and a mediocre salary. No: Chown must be after something at the -music-hall, and Montagu had “popped in” the other evening without seeing -anything extraordinary. But that was just it, with Chown. There was -nothing extraordinary about the people he discovered until after he -discovered them; then every one saw how extraordinary they were. - -Chown, shaking Montagu’s hand and bending over it with an inclination of -the body which seemed derived from Paris rather than London, was merely -Chown not differentiating between this unimportant touring manager -and the great ones of the earth who paid high salaries to established -reputations. But Mr. Montagu was flattered, he had a fine capacity for -flattery. - -“My dear Montagu, I’m delighted,” said Mr. Chown. “You will honor me by -dining with me? They have a Chablis here that really is not unworthy of -your acceptance.” - -It was flattering to be thought a connoisseur of wine, and Chown had -skillfully mentioned a wine that couldn’t go beyond Montagu’s _savoir -vivre_, instead of the more esoteric drinks of his own preferring. Yet -Mr. Chown, taking trouble to secure a guest, wanted nothing of Montagu -but his company. The theater is at once convivial and self-insulating. -Chown hated solitude, and though there were hail-fellow-well-met -commercial travelers in the hotel whose conversation would have been -a tonic, he preferred the limited Mr. Montagu. Erroneously, Mr. Chown -despised commercial travelers. - -Mr. Montagu, in gratitude, decided to give Mr. Chown a hint. Mr. Chown -was in evening dress. - -“I am glad to hear,” said Mr. Chown, who had heard nothing at all, “that -you are having excellent houses.” - -The houses were no better than Montagu’s inexpensive company deserved. -“I am not,” he confessed, “doing musical comedy business. Still, they -have a feeling for the legitimate here. Staithley’s a good town, if,” he -added, trying to give his kindly hint, “it isn’t dressy.” - -“No. I suppose one mustn’t judge these people by their clothes. They -don’t put their money on their backs in the North. They’ve more left to -spend on the theater, Montagu.” - -“And the music-hall.” - -“Ah! You feel the competition?” - -“I wasn’t meaning that. Look here, Chown, are you coming in to see my -show to-night?” - -“Well--” Mr. Chown’s whole anatomy, as seen above the table, was apology -incarnate. - -“No. You’re not. I didn’t think it and that’s why I didn’t ask at once. -It’s some one at the Palace you’ve come to see, isn’t it?” - -“What makes you think so?” - -“Well, there’s nothing else in Staithley.” The theater _is_ -self-insulating. “And you haven’t come here for your health. But, if -you’ll excuse my saying it, they don’t dress for the theater, let alone -the Palace, and if you go there as you are, they’ll throw things at you -from the gallery.” - -“Montagu, I shan’t forget this kindness,” said Chown. - -“You put me under obligation to you. But--did you never hear of an -Eisteddfod?” - -“Is it a new act on the halls?” asked Mr. Montagu, who did not rapidly -clear his mind of an obsession. - -Mr. Chown smiled. “Not yet,” he said, but “out of the mouths of -babes and sucklings,” he thought, mentally filing an idea for future -reference. - -“Wait a moment,” said Mr. Montagu. “Why am I thinking of Lloyd George?” - -“Because of a natural association of ideas. Staithley Eisteddfod, -however, is a Lancashire occasion with a Welsh label that hasn’t much to -do with it. You may recall the Hand Bell Ringers who were on the halls -some years ago. I picked them up at Staithley Eisteddfod. It’s a sort of -competitive festival of song, and if I were not dressed, I should not be -admitted to the stalls.” - -Staithley was, so to speak, on Montagu’s beat, and it was not on, -obviously, Chown’s. Yet here was Chown telling Montagu something -about Staithley quite material to his business, which he did not know. -Staithley Eisteddfod did not advertise: the largest hall in the town was -too small to hold the friends of the competitors, let alone the hardly -more dispassionate public, and Chown had his ticket for the stalls -because he was a subscriber to the funds. Short of theft, it was the -only way by which one could become possessed of a ticket. - -He did not add, though he knew, that Montagu’s second-rate company -with their third-rate play was at the Staithley Theater Royal that week -because more alert managers, with better attractions, steered clear -of the place in that week of musical ferment, and the resident theater -manager had to take what he could, by diplomatic silence, get. One lives -and learns and Mr. Montagu would learn that week without a living wage; -his moderate houses belonged with the early, pre-Eisteddfod nights of -the week and though only the favored few would crowd into the Eisteddfod -Hall, the rest of Staithley, hot partisans of the performers, watched -and waited. - -Music is music in Lancashire. - -“Ah.” said the innocent Mr. Montagu, “if it’s music, and dressed at -that, it’ll not affect me at the theater.” - -“Let me fill your glass.” said Mr. Chown. “What’s your opinion of the -cinemas?” - -Mr. Montagu was of the opinion, current, in 1912. that, the cinemas were -of no account. Revolutions in the making are apt to go unperceived by -their contemporaries. Chown was less insular, but “Imagine.” he said, -“the strangled emotions of the young man in the stalls who desires -a woman he sees on the cinema and then realizes she is a shadow on a -screen.” They finished dinner on a genially Rabelaisian note. - -Chown chose this, the first evening of the Eisteddfod, because there -were to be no Hand Bell Ringers and no instrumentalists: there was -choral singing and there were soloists. He was going to hear Choral -Societies from all over Lancashire sing, one after the other, the same -chorus from “King Olaf,” and he was going to hear soloists, one after -the other, sing the same song. It was, on the face of it, the dullest -possible way of spending an evening, yet the packed audience in -Staithley Drill Hall considered themselves privileged to be there. The -official judges who were Walter Pate and two others (which meant, for -practical purposes. Walter Pate alone) sat screened oft from view of the -performers, lest prejudice should mar the fairness of their decisions. -They heard but did not see. - -The audience heard and saw, and the singers were not numbers to them but -“our Annie”’ or “our Sam”’ or “our lot fra? Blackburn”’ and so on. Local -feeling ran high under an affectation of cool discrimination and broke -out in wild applause, intended to influence the judges’ verdict, coming, -curiously localized, from parts of the hall where adherents had gathered -together in the belief that union is strength. But they were, one -and all, susceptible to fine shades of singing; they didn’t withhold -applause from a fine rendering because the singers were of some other -district than their own. Local patriotism was disciplined to their -musical appreciations. - -Mr. Chown, of London, had ceased, as an annual visitor, to be surprised -by this musical cockpit, where not money but taintless glory was the -prize. They competed for the honor of their birthplaces, and for the -privilege of holding a “challenge shield,” inscribed with the winners’ -names, until the nest contest. He had ceased even to wonder at that -drastic rule of an autocratic committee imposing evening dress upon the -occupants of the front seats and at its phenomenal results. He was a -worker in research, he was scientifically unemotional about the motive -of his research, but he was on fertile ground here, and if he drew blank -at Staithley Eisteddfod, then Lancashire was not the county he took it -for. - -Yet his was not the point of view of Mr. Pate, and the capacity to -sing was the least of the qualities for which he looked. To a sufficing -extent, the capacity would be present in all of to-night’s competitors, -even in those who sang only in chorus, and what Mr. Chown was looking -for was best indicated by the algebraic symbol, X. He couldn’t, himself, -have defined the quality he sought. The reflection of Mr. Montagu about -the actor Tom Hall may be recalled. Tom Hall was a sound actor, lacking -X. If there is a word for X, it is personality. Good locks went for -something, and so did the evident possession of either sex but the whole -of X depended neither upon good looks nor upon sex, and was a mystery of -the stars whom Mr. Chown, with his trustworthy flair, discovered before -they were stars. Technique could be acquired, and Mr. - -Chown did not condemn technique, but X _was_ and it was not possible -to acquire it. Add X to technique and the result was a hundred pounds -a week: technique without X was Tom Hall, “The Woman Who Paid” and the -whisky of conscious failure in life. - -He sat down with a silent prayer that an X performer would appear on -the platform and that he might not repeat his poignant disappointment -of last year when he had found an unmistakable X only to learn that -its possessor was a Wesleyan who looked upon a theater door as the main -entrance to hell. “But you’re a great artist,” he had told her and “I’m -a Christian woman,” she had replied and left him frustrate. - -His program informed him that the first part of the evening would be -occupied by choral singing, and he settled himself on a spartan chair to -await, with what patience he might, the turn of the soloists. There were -ten choirs on the program; at least two hours of it, he reckoned, -but Mr. Chown was no quitter and the zeal of the conductors and the -rusticity of the choirs’ clothing might be trusted to afford him some -amusement. And yet he flagged; the monotony was drugging him, and the -Wheatsheaf had done him very well.... - -Had he slept? That was the question he asked himself as he saw the girl. -Had he slept through the choral and perhaps half of the solo singing? He -sat up sharply, and, as he did so, realized that a full choir was on -the platform. But his first impression had been that the girl was alone, -and, even now, he found it difficult to see that there were thirty-nine -other people with her. - -She eclipsed them. “She’s got it,” he prevented himself with difficulty -from shouting aloud--and Mr. Chown was no easy prey to enthusiasm. -Still, a girl who could wipe out thirty-nine other people, who could -glow uniquely in a crowd! “Put her on a stage,” he was thinking, “and -they’ll feel her to the back row of the gallery.” He noted as additional -facts, accidentals but fortifying, that she had youth and good looks. He -tried, honestly, to fix his attention on a large-headed man in the choir -who had a red handkerchief stuck into his shirt-front, and a made-up tie -that had wandered below his ear. The fellow was richly droll, but it was -no use: the girl drew him back to her. He tried again, with an earnest -spinsterish lady who looked strong-minded enough for anything: and the -girl had him in the fraction of a minute. “She’ll do,” he thought--“if -she hasn’t got religion,” he added ruefully. “Number seven--Staithley -Bridge Choral Society,” he read on his program. That was a -simplification, anyhow: the girl must live in Staithley. - -They were the home choir, Staithley’s own, and the applause was -long, detaining them in embarrassed acknowledgment on a platform they -vehemently wished to quit, but Mr. Chown, making for the pass-door under -cover of the applause, observed that there was no embarrassment about -the girl. “Um,” he thought, “no nerves. They’re better with them. Well, -one can’t have everything.” At the pass-door, a steward stood sentinel. -“Press,” said Mr. Chown with aplomb, using an infallible talisman, and -the sentinel made way for him. - -When the verdict was announced, the winning choir was to appear again -on the platform to sing a voluntary and to receive acclamations and the -challenge shield. Meanwhile, the whole four hundred contestants were -herded together in the Drill Hall cellarage and Mr. Chown added himself -inconspicuously to their number. Mistaken, as he hoped to be, for -a Staithlwite just come off the platform, he found beer pressed -fraternally upon him, and, heroically, he drank. Self-immolation and -research are traditional companions. He felt that the beer had made him -one of them, but could not withhold a backward glance at the vanity -of West End tailoring. When he had said “Press” to the steward at the -pass-door he had wondered if his costly cut were plausible and now that -same cut was blandly accepted amongst the nondescript swallowtails of -this unconforming mob. But he welcomed their inappreciation; he wanted -to make the girl’s acquaintance first as one of themselves. - -A press of women came down the stairs into the cellar and Mary Ellen -was with them but not of them. They chattered incessantly, excitedly, -letting taut nerves relax in a spate of shouted words; she was silent, -unmoved by the ordeal of the platform and the applause, nursing her -sulky, secret resentment of Walter Pate who had refused to let her -compete amongst the soloists. Mr. Pate was guarding his treasure against -premature publicity; he was guarding her, specifically, against Mr. -Chown, that annual raider who had so damnably ruined the Staithley Hand -Bell Ringers by taking them to the music-halls; he hid her in the Choral -Society and he underrated Mr. Chown’s perceptiveness. - -She had taken many things from Walter Pate--the good food which had so -unrecognizably developed her, with the physical exercises he prescribed, -from a sexless child into a woman of gracious curves; the good -education, the good musical instruction; the good beginnings of every -kind; and in return she gave him work. He was almost certain of her -now: the tin was gone from her golden voice and when he let his hoarded -secret loose upon the world he knew that, under God, he would be making -a great gift to the concert-platform. He would give a glorious voice, -perfectly trained, and perhaps more than that. But the more was still -only “perhaps.” - -“Art,” he had said, “is unguessable” and it remained unguessable. But, -“she’s not awakened yet,” he thought, and hoped for a time when her -voice would be more than well-produced. - -It lacked color, warmth, feeling, but she was young and, meanwhile, he -was doing his possible. It was the hardest thing to keep her back -from public trial, both because of the girl herself and because of Tom -Bradshaw, who was paying half her costs and didn’t share Walter’s faith. -But they must wait, they must all wait, and if two years were not long -enough they must wait longer. - -Mr. Pate, who looked upon her as the great servant he would give to -music, was screened away in the judges’ box: Mr. Chown, who looked upon -her as an income, watched Mary Ellen take her cloak from a long row -hanging on the wall and go towards the stairs she had just descended. - -Evidently, she was for a breath of air and he thought it would be a -shrewd air on his bare head, but the opportunity of private conversation -was too good to be missed and he awaited her return at the foot of the -stair. - -“Oh, you are going out?” he said. “So’m I. It’s hot in here.” He -modified the Gallicism of his bow. - -“Yes,” she said, consenting to his escort. She knew, better than he did, -that the sort of boisterous crowd which awaits the declaration of -an election result was assembled round the Drill Hall; it would be -convenient to have this big man with her to shoulder a way through it. - -Their clothes stamped them as competitors and the crowd gave passage. -Evening dress was licensed in Staithley that night, but his arm was -agreeably protective till they were through the crush; then he withdrew -it. - -“I’m glad to be out of that,” he said. - -“There’s too much crowd to-night,” said Mary Ellen. - -“Ah, you feel that, do you?” - -“Choral singing!” she said, with immense disgust. - -“Yes, indeed. It does make one feel one of a crowd. I’ve often wondered, -in my own case, if I shouldn’t have done better to have gone on the -stage.” - -She looked him over. “Well,” she said, “I suppose you weren’t always -fat. It’s too late now.” - -Mr. Chown swallowed hard. “Yes, for me,” he said. “Not for you. Would -you care to go on the stage if the chance came?” - -“Would a duck swim?” - -Ducks, he thought, more often drowned than swam on the stage; that was -why there was always so much room at the top. “It’s very hard work,” he -said. - -“I’m not afraid of work,” she said, and then remembered her grievance, -“if I can see it leading anywhere. Work that only leads to singing with -the crowd isn’t funny.” - -“Oh, I can do better than that for you.” - -“You can? You?” - -“If you will work. If, for instance, you will get rid of your Lancashire -accent.” - -“Tha’ gornless fule,” she said, “if tha’ doan’t kna’ th’ differ -’atween Lankysheer an’ t’other A’ll show thee. Me got an accent? Me -that’s worked like a Fury these last two years to lose my accent? Let me -tell you I’ve had the best teachers in Staithley and--” - -“Yes,” he interrupted. “The difference is amazing. I realize how you -must have worked. It is only a question now of, so to speak, a finishing -school. The best teachers in Staithley are, after all, Staithley -teachers. I am thinking of London and perhaps not so much of conscious -work as unconscious imitation of the speech of the people who are around -you.” - -“London!” she said. “London! Who are you?” - -“I’m a well-known theatrical agent, and I became well-known by making -the right people famous. You are one of the right people, but there is -work before you. You can’t act yet. You have it all to learn, acting, -dancing--” - -“Not all,” she said. “I can sing.” - -“In a Choral Society,” he said. - -“You go and ask Walter Pate,” she said, professing a faith in Walter’s -judgment which might, in her circumstances, have been to her credit, but -that all Staithley shared that faith. - -All Staithley and Mr. Chown who was at once impressed by her giving -Walter Pate so confidently as reference for her abilities. “Does Mr. -Pate believe in you?” he asked. - -“Ask him yourself. Ask him why he keeps me and teaches me and when he’s -told you that, ask him a question for me. Ask why he wouldn’t let me go -in for the solo competition to-night when he says I’m to sing solo in -the ‘Messiah’ at Christmas, and if you get the answer to that, tell me, -for I don’t know.” - -Chown thought he could tell her without asking, and marked, gladly, her -bitterness. If Pate was training this girl, it was because he believed -in her. Pate did not take all who came, and wasted no time on fools, but -he had not let her sing as a soloist to-night, though she was to sing -“The Messiah” in a few months. Why? Because tonight was Chown’s night -for being in Staithley and Pate was afraid of Chown. Pate (the dog) had -found something in this girl and was keeping it to himself. He imagined -he had hidden her safely in that choir, did he? But old Chown had the -flair, Chown had spotted the girl’s possession of something Pate did not -know her to possess. Pate only knew she had a voice: Chown knew she -had the stuff in her that stars were made of. Certainly her voice, a -Pate-approved, Pate-produced voice, put an even better complexion on the -matter than Chown had suspected; it meant that here was immediate, and -not merely future, exploitability. She was ripe at once for musical -comedy on tour and when she had shed her accent and picked up some -tricks of the trade, he would stun London with her--if he could filch -her from the wary Mr. Pate. - -He did not think of it, precisely, as filching, because his conscience -was quite clear that he, being Chown, could do immensely more for her -than Pate. Pate would be thinking of the salary of a musical comedy -star. Pate would do her positive damage by over-training her up to some -impossible standard ridiculously above the big public’s head; and the -big public was the only public that counted. Mr. Chown saw himself, in -all sincerity, as the girl’s benefactor, if not as her savior. - -A word of hers came back to him as a menace to his hopes. “Did I -understand you to say that Mr. Pate keeps you?” - -Mary Ellen nodded, and he felt he had struck a snag. - -“You are a relative of his?” - -“I’m not then. If you want to know, he found me singing in the streets.” - -“And was this long ago?” - -“Getting on for two years.” - -Mr. Chown had the grace to feel a twinge: she was, beyond a doubt, -Pate’s property. But he recovered balance, telling himself very firmly -that Pate would mismanage the property; that life was a battlefield and -that “Vae Victis” was its motto; that one must live and that if Pate had -taken reasonable precautions, he would not have exposed the girl to the -marauding Mr. Chown. And, anyhow, Pate was a provincial. - -He asked her age, and “Twenty-one,” she said brazenly, aware of the -trammels of minority. He guessed her eighteen at most, but she wasn’t -impossibly twenty-one and he had his reasons for believing her. - -“You couldn’t be a better age,” he said. “I have some doubt as to what -Mr. Pate will say to my proposal of the stage for you.” - -“Are you going to tell him about it?” she asked in alarm. - -“I will tell you,” he said, “now. If you come with me to-morrow to -London, you can begin at once in a musical comedy on tour.” She gave -a gasp. “Oh,” he said, “you wish to hear no more. You are anxious to -return to the Drill Hall. You are, perhaps, cold?” He was very cold, but -not too cold to play his fish. - -“Cold? I could listen all night to this.” Mr. Chown envied her the -undistinguished cloak she wore: _per ardua ad astra_. - -“Well,” he said, “it is true that the work I have to offer you is very -different from the restrained, the almost caged existence you have been -enduring. But you will begin in the chorus. You have stage fright to -get over, and all the green sickness of a raw beginner. My friend Hubert -Rossiter”--even Mary Ellen had heard of Rossiter--“will take you and I -shall see that he passes you on from company to company. Soon you will -play small parts, and then leading parts. Possibly, for experience, a -pantomime at Christmas. And while you are learning your business in this -way you will be paid all the time.” - -“How much?” she asked promptly. - -“Exactly what you are worth,” he said. “You won’t starve and I call your -attention to this point. I act as your agent and I take a ten per cent -commission of your salary. That is all I take, and you will see that it -is to my interests that your salary shall be large. If I did not believe -that your salary in a very few years will be considerable, I should not -be standing bareheaded and without a coat in a Staithley by-street. The -train to London leaves at ten in the morning. Am I to take a ticket for -you?” - -“Yes,” she said. - -“It is a curious fact,” he remarked, “that I do not know your name. Mine -is Chown. Lexley Chown.” - -“Mine’s Mary Ellen Bradshaw,” she said, jettisoning the name of Pate as -useless cargo now. - -“Mary,” he mused. “I think we’ll keep the Mary. But we’ll improve the -rest. And now that you and I have settled this between ourselves, when -do I see Mr. Pate?” - -“He’s very busy to-night,” said Mary Ellen, “and the train leaves early -to-morrow.” - -Mr. Chown looked hard at her, and she met his eye unflinchingly. It was -perfectly understood between them that Walter Pate was a ladder by which -she had reached a secure place. Having reached it, she could kick the -ladder from her, and “Well,” thought Mr. Chown, “she can do it to Pate, -but I’m forewarned.” He turned to go back to the Drill Hall expecting -her to follow. She did not follow, she was gazing fixedly up the street -in which they stood and when he returned, a trifle ill-tempered at -being kept longer than need be in the chilling air, her remark was -disconcerting. - -The street ran uphill from the valley of the town, by daylight bleak and -mean, each small house monotonously the repetition of its neighbor, -but seen as she saw it now, blurred in the misty night, it led like -an escape from man’s sordid handiwork to the everlasting hills beyond. -Dimly the rim of Staithley Edge showed as she raised her eyes, vague -blackness obscurely massed beneath a gloomy sky, and above it floated -the trail of smoke emitted from some factory-stack where the night -stokers fed a furnace. Chimneys, the minarets of Staithley; stokers, -the muezzins; smoke, the prayer. Somewhere wind stirred on the blemished -moors and a fresher air blew through the street. Mary Ellen breathed -deeply, greedily filling her lungs as if she feared that to go from -Staithley was to dive into some strange element which would suffocate -her unless she had a stored reserve of vital air. But she was not -thinking that. - -Mr. Chown was watching her in some bewilderment. She brought her eyes -down from Staithley Edge to the level of his face. “London’s flat,” - asserted Mary Ellen. - -“Not absolutely,” he assured her. - -“It’s flat,” she insisted. “I’m going to miss the Staithley hills.” - -It was right and proper for Mr. Chown, agent, to have his offices near -Leicester Square and his beautifully furnished rooms in the Albany; but -it was not right for Mary Ellen Bradshaw to adumbrate the instincts of -the homing pigeon. In Mr. Chown’s opinion, home was a superstition of -the middle-classes, and if an artist was not a nomad at heart, the worse -artist she. - -He returned to his seat in the Drill Hall, with his bright certainty of -Mary Ellen a trifle dimmed by her unreadiness to forget the Staithley -hills, just as Walter Pate announced the judges’ decision of the choral -competition. Staithley Bridge were not the first; he faced an audience -which was three parts Staithley and gave the verdict to another choir. -It was wonderful proof of their opinion of Walter Pate that there was no -disposition to mob the referee. - - - - -CHAPTER V--HUGH DARLEY’S HANDIWORK - -IT is not to be gainsaid that Tom Bradshaw heard of the flight of Mary -Ellen with relief. “I don’t know if I’m a doubting Thomas: I’m sure I’m -a doubting Quixote,” had been his thought lately when he remitted Walter -his half share of her expenses. He was very certain now that he was the -one good Bradshaw, and whatever backward glances Walter might cast Tom -closed the account of Mary Ellen with finality. He would neither see nor -hear that young woman again. “I blame myself,” he wrote to Walter. “She -is a Bradshaw and I ought to have stopped your foolishness instead of -going shares in it. I’ll stop it now, though, and when you write of -going to the police I say I won’t have it. Forget her. (If it comes to -police, owd lad, what price yon pair of white-slaving procurers, thee -and me?). This man Chown that you say you suspect. I’ve made enquiries -and there’s nothing the matter with Chown. And if he looted her from -us, who looted first? It’s a blow to you, but honestly, Walter, better -sooner than later and she would have cut and run when it suited her. -She’s a Bradshaw. Bar me, Bradshaws are muck.” - -Meanwhile, the organizer of victory was making first tactical moves in -his Mary Ellen campaign. He made them in a spacious room whose admirable -furniture suggested that this was the Holy of Holies of some eminent -dealer in antiques until one noticed the large, floridly signed -photographs on the walls and the parti-colored advertising sheet which -announced all West End attractions and contradicted crudely the Persian -rugs on the floor: the private office of Mr. Hubert Rossiter, that -elderly miracle of youthful dapperness whose queer high-stepping walk -suggested, especially when he rehearsed a crowd of chorus-girls, nothing -so much as a bantam-cock. He had developed, to an extraordinary degree, -the knack of knowing what the public wanted and of fitting together, -like the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, incongruous parts that merged under -his touch into the ordered whole of a popular entertainment. He -wasn’t, artistically, without scruple, but Hubert Rossiter with his -two sweetstuff shops in town and his several touring companies in the -country was a prophet of theatrical standardization: a safe man, with no -highbrow pretensions about him, never short of other people’s money for -the financing of his productions. - -Chown had been called into the Presence about a matter which might -have caused friction on any other day. Today, Chown wanted something of -Rossiter and the threatening clouds dissolved in smiling sunshine. That -affair settled, Chown took up his hat, then stopped. - -“By the way, Hubert,” he said, “whom would you say is the toughest stage -manager you’ve got on tour?” - -“There’s Darley. Darley doesn’t wear kid gloves. He’s out with ‘The -Little Viennese.’ I’m told they call that company ‘The Little Ease.’” - -“Just what I’m looking for. That’s the South tour, isn’t it?” asked -Chown who did not want Mary Ellen to visit Staithley. - -“Yes.” - -“Well, will you take a girl from me and put her in the chorus and ask -Darley with my compliments to give her hell?” - -“I conclude from this that you want to get back on some one who’s been -pestering you to get a perfect lady on the stage.” - -“If I were not an honest man, I’d let you go on thinking that. But when -she’s had three months of Darley, I’m going to ask you to give her a -part in another show and then a lead and--” - -“My dear Lexley, you have only to command. I run my companies solely for -your convenience.” - -“Seriously, Hubert, you can have first option on this girl at a hundred -a week in town two years hence, and she’ll be cheap at that. Would you -like to see her now?” - -“I hate looking at raw meat. What are her points?” - -“She can sing.” - -Mr. Rossiter shrugged his shoulders. “She’s nothing in my life for -that,” he said. - -“She’s got youth.” - -“Flapper market’s depressed, Lexley. Give me experience all the time.” - -“Darley’s seeing to the experience. I tell you, Hubert--” - -“Oh, I know. The perfect Juliet. I’m always hearing of her. Never seen -her yet.” Mr. Rossiter pressed a bell, and the immediacy of the response -suggested that Mr. Claud Drayton, who entered, lived up to the part for -which he was cast, of Field-Marshal to the Napoleon, Rossiter. “Got her -with you, Chown?” asked Rossiter. - -“I did venture to bring her.” - -“You would. Drayton, Chown’s got a girl here. Chorus in ‘The Little -Viennese’ for three months. Maisie in ‘The Girl from Honolulu’ after -that. Get reports and let me see them. That’ll do. Good-by, Chown.” He -pressed another bell and a shorthand typist appeared as if by magic: he -was dictating letters to her before Chown and Drayton had left the room. -It was efficiency raised to the histrionic degree. - -Drayton had eliminated surprise from his official life, but he couldn’t -restrain an instinctive gasp at the sight of Mary Ellen when Chown -urbanely ushered her into his room. He gasped because she did not -comply with, she violated, the first principle of an applicant for an -engagement in the chorus. The first principle was that to apply with any -chance of success for a job worth thirty-five shillings a week, you must -wear visible clothing worth thirty-five pounds; and Mary Ellen was in -the Sunday clothes of Staithley. Her costume was three seasons behind -the fashions when it was new, her shoes were made for durability, and -her hair-dressing made Mr. Drayton think of his boyhood, when he had -gone to Sunday school. But he had his orders and here was Lexley -Chown remarkably sponsoring this incredible applicant. He took out -a contract-form. “Name? Sign here. The company’s at Torquay. Report -yourself at the theater to Mr. Darley to-morrow. You’ll travel midnight. -Show this in the office and they’ll give you your fare.” He fired it all -at her almost without interval, sincerely flattering the manner in which -his chief addressed him, and, as a rule, he flustered the well-dressed, -experienced ladies he addressed. Here was one who was not experienced, -who was dressed so badly that he thought of her as a joke in bad taste -and, confound her, she was not flustered. She took the contract and -the payment-slip from him calmly, eyeing him with a steady gaze which -reduced his self-importance to the vanishing point. “Good-by. Good -luck,” he jerked at her with the involuntariness of an automaton. - -She did not intend to seem disdainful; she was merely tired and the -summary marching orders by a midnight train bewildered her. Mr. Chown, -squiring her in her incongruous clothes from the Rossiter headquarters, -thought he had reason to congratulate himself. - -There was, first, the document, terrifyingly bespattered with red seals, -which she had signed in his office. She might be a minor, but she had -set hand and seal to the statement that she was legally of age and to -the undertaking on the part of Mary Ellen Bradshaw, hereinafter known as -the artiste and for professional purposes to be known as Mary Arden, to -employ Lexley Chown as her sole agent at the continuing remuneration -of ten per cent of her salary, paid weekly by the artiste to the -agent. Formidable penalties were mentioned, two clerks witnessed their -signatures with magisterial gravity and “Altogether,” thought Mr. Chown, -refraining from handing her a copy of their agreement, “if she shuffles -out of that, she’ll be spry.” - -There was, second, the compliance of Mr. Rossiter and the coming -noviciate under Darley. Deliberately he had left her in her country -clothes, trusting them to disguise in the Rossiter offices a quality he -did not wish to be clearly apparent yet: deliberately, he had rushed -her affair thinking all the while of Darley--or if not of him, of a -Darley, of some crude martinet who was to lick her into shape. He wanted -her ill-dressed, he wanted her bewildered. He wanted Darley to know how -raw she was; he wanted hot fire for her and he saw her Staithley clothes -acting upon Darley like compressed air on a blast furnace. The girl was -too cool, she showed no nervousness. “Darley will teach you to feel, -my girl,” he thought: “I’m making your path short, but I don’t want it -smooth. Soft places don’t make actresses. I’m cruel to be kind.” And -being kind he advanced her two pounds on account of commission, told her -the station for Torquay was Paddington and left her on Rossiter’s steps. -He had exposed himself unavoidably to the lifted brows which could not -help saluting the glossy Lexley Chown in the company of these obsolete -clothes, but the necessity was past now and he lost no time in -indicating to her that, for better or for worse, her future was in her -own hands. He had other business to attend to. - -Mary Ellen, who had surrendered herself confidingly to his large -protectiveness, was braced by his departure. Their journey together, -the wonder of lunching at a table in a train, the oppressiveness of -offices--these were behind her now and she stood on Rossiter’s busy -steps breathing hard like a swimmer who comes to surface after a long -dive. She breathed the air of London and looked from that office down -a street across Piccadilly Circus, nameless to her. The whirl of it -assaulted her; the swimmer was in the breakers now. - -Mr. Rossiter’s commissionaire, not unaccustomed to the sight of young -women pausing distressfully on those steps where they had left their -hopes behind them, addressed her with kindly intent. “Shall I get you a -taxi, miss?” - -“No, thanks,” said Mary Ellen, who had noted the immense sums Mr. Chown -had paid to the drivers of those vehicles. “I’ll walk,” and “others -walk” she thought. “I can do what they can,” and hardily set foot upon -the London streets. Let that commissionaire perceive that Mary Ellen was -afraid? Not she, and presently she was so little afraid that she asked -the way to Euston of a policeman. Her suit-case--in strict fact, Mr. -Pate’s suitcase--was at Euston. - -The man in the left luggage office at Euston was good enough to tell her -the way to Paddington, but “You can’t carry that,” he said. “Why not?” - said Mary Ellen, and carried it. The case was heavy and grew heavier: -but there were stretches of her route, the part, for instance, between -Tottenham Court Road and Portland Road, which revived her spirit. That -might have been a bit of Staithley. London was flat; she had seen no -reason in the slight rise of Shaftesbury Avenue to justify Mr. Chown’s -qualifying “Not absolutely”; but there were sights and smells along the -road to Paddington which she accepted gratefully as evidence of some -affinity with Staithley. Piccadilly Circus was not the whole of -London; one could breathe here and there, Praed Street way, in cheering -shabbiness. She saw a barefoot girl, and a ragged boy offered to carry -her bag. There was still a confused echo of the surging West End in her -ears and she hadn’t conquered London, but she had received comforting -assurance that, in spots, London was habitable. - -She fortified herself with tea at Paddington, remembered the night -journey and bought buns at the counter, remembered the night journey -again and slept in a waiting-room, cushioned on her bag, till it was -nearly midnight. There was nothing in this precautionary garnering -of sleep to prevent her from sleeping in the train, and her through -carriage to Torquay was being shunted at Newton Abbot when she awoke and -hungrily ate buns. Near Dawlish, she had the first sight in her life -of the sea, and all the emotions proper to the child of an island race -ought to have besieged her in the gray dawn. “It’s big,” she thought, -grudging the sea the character of space, then turned her eyes inland -to the cliffs. “They’re small, but they’re better than the sea.” Not -Staithley Edge, but elevation of a sort. - -Mr. Hugh Darley, arriving at the theater at eleven o’clock, was told by -the doorkeeper that a young lady was waiting for him. - -“Been here long?” he asked, looking through Mary Ellen who stood in the -passage. - -“I came on duty when the night-watchman went off at nine. She was here -then.” - -“More fool she,” he said. “Got my letters there?” The doorkeeper had his -letters, including one from Mr. Drayton. - -Darley was a small man, with a shock of red hair and intensely blue eyes -which gleamed sometimes with the light of an almost maniacal fury. It -was this uncontrolled temper which kept him out of London: at his job, -the job of infusing energy and “go” into bored chorus girls and -of supplying spontaneity and drollery to comedians who had neither -spontaneity nor drollery of their own, he was masterly when he kept his -temper. A stage manager needn’t suffer fools gladly, but he must suffer -them suavely, he must hide his sufferings and must cajole when his every -instinct is to curse, and Darley was a touring stage manager instead of -a London “producer” because he simply could not roar them as ’twere -any nightingale and London players were too well established not to be -able effectually to resent his Eccles’ vein: the strollers were not. - -He read Drayton’s letter through. “Where is she?” he asked. - -“Why, here,” said the doorkeeper. - -“But,” said Mr. Darley and then “Christ!” he cried, and bit through -his pipe. That often happened: he carried sealing was in his pocket -for plugging the hole. “Comes to a theater at eight in the morning and -dresses like a scullery maid’s night out. What’ll they send me next? I -suppose you _are_ what they’ve sent me? What’s your name?” - -“Mary Arden.” - -He consulted the advice note of these extraordinary goods. “That’s -right,” he admitted. “Arden! Whom did you see as Rosalind?” - -Mary Ellen blushed: he seemed to her to read her secrets. “And me a man -that respects Shakespeare,” he said. “There’s one line of the Banished -Duke you may remember. ‘Sweet are the uses of adversity.’ If you don’t -remember the line, you’re going to, Miss Mary Arden. You chose the name. -I don’t know that I don’t choose to make you worthy of it.” - -“Oh, will you?” she cried. - -“You’ve got no sense of humor,” he said. “Come on the stage and we’ll -see what you have got. It’ll be like going water-finding in the Sahara. -Can you read music?” - -“Yes,” she said. - -“Then be looking at those songs. There’s a piano in the orchestra. I’m -going down to it.” - -She was staring in amazement at the sheeted auditorium into which the -unexpected rake of the stage seemed threatening to precipitate her. -Vague masses hung over her head in the half-light seeming about to fall -and crush her in the grisly loneliness to which she was abandoned as -Mr. Darley went round to the orchestra. The diminished echoes of his -footfalls were a wan assurance that this place, shunned by daylight as -if it were a tomb, had contacts with humanity. But he had said it was -the stage and however disconcerting she might find its obscure menace, -the stage was where she wished to be and she was not to be put down -either by it or by a little man who was rude about her best clothes, -while he had not shaved that morning and his knickerbockers showed a -rent verging on the scandalous. She had to sing to him and she expelled -her terrors of her strange, her so alarmingly dreary surroundings, and -strained her eyes to read the music he had put into her hands. - -He seemed to bob up below her like a jack-in-the-box, and struck some -chords on the piano. “Have you got that one?” he asked. - -“Yes.” she said, fighting her impulse to scream at the phenomenon of his -sudden reappearance. - -“Then let her go.” - -She sang the opening chorus of “The Little Viennese.” - -“You’ve sung that before,” he said, accusingly. - -“Oh, no.” - -“Don’t try to kid me. It won’t pay. Read through the one you’ve got -there marked 3.” No. 3 was a new interpolation; she might know the -rest, but she couldn’t know No. 3. “Ready? Go on,” and, in a minute, -surprised, satisfied but by no means inclined to show his satisfaction -other than by cutting the trial short, “That’ll do, that’ll do,” he said -resentfully. “This isn’t the Albert Hall. What about your dancing?” - -“I’m afraid I haven’t danced yet,” said Mary. - -“You will,” he said savagely, “and to my piping. I knew there was a -catch in it somewhere,” he thought, “but it comes to me that I’ve found -a hobby for the rest of this tour. They don’t often send me stuff that’s -worth working on.--I suppose you took the name of Arden because you’ve -got a wooden leg,” he jeered aloud. - -Mary Ellen’s face clouded, then an accomplishment of her street days -came back to her. They were not, after all, so long ago. She pitched her -hat into the wings and, reckless of the rake of the stage, turned rapid -cartwheels. - -“It’s that sort of wood,” she said, breathless but defiant. - -“Thanks for the assurance,” he said, “only this isn’t a circus and your -legs are wooden. They’re wooden because you’ve no brains in them and -till you have brains in your toes you’re no use to me. You’ve got an -accent that’s as thick as pea-soup and till you’ve cleared it, it’ll -stay hidden in the chorus. If you’ll work, I’ll teach you to act but, -by the Lord, you’ve work ahead of you. If I take trouble and you don’t -work, I’ll flay you alive. Is that understood? Very well. There’s a -matinee to-day. You come in and see the show this afternoon and you see -it again to-night. You’ll be sitting where I can see you and if I catch -you laughing, I’ll eat you. Leave laughing to the audience; it’s their -job. You’re there to learn. Watch what the other girls do and when they -do it. They’ll love you because I’m calling a chorus rehearsal for you -to-morrow. Make mistakes then if you dare. You’ll play to-morrow night. -See the wardrobe mistress between the shows to-day about your clothes. -I’m paid to make you a chorus girl; you’ll be in the chorus tomorrow -night. Then I begin to have my fun with you. I begin to make your name -something else than an impertinence. I get busy on you, my girl. You’re -clay and I’m the potter. Meantime, we’ll go to the door and I’ll tell -the first girl who comes for her letters to show you where you’re likely -to find rooms and you can ask her why Hugh Darley proposes to spend four -hours a day breaking in a chorus girl.” - -Mary asked the other girl, who looked curiously at her. “I never knew -Darley to make love before,” she said. - -“Love!” said Mary, blinking startled eyes as if a flashlight had blazed -at her out of darkness. - -“Well,” said her cynical friend, “when you’ve been more than five -minutes on the stage, you’ll know that the way to success lies through -the manager’s bedroom. Don’t look at me like that. Down your nose. -I’m not a success, I’m in the chorus running straight on thirty-five -shillings a week, and there are more of us keep straight than don’t.” - -Mary was not conscious that she had looked, fastidiously or otherwise, -at her companion. She had a feeling of vertigo; she was thinking of -herself, not of the other girl, and of this shameful threat before which -she seemed to stand naked in her bones. - -“We don’t look after other people’s morals,” Dolly Chandler assured her, -“but you may care to know Darley’s married.” - -“You think he meant--this?” - -Dolly shrugged her shoulders. “He’s a man.” - -“And he meant you to tell me what you are telling me?” - -“You’re pretty green, you know. I expect he thought I’d put you wise. -Though I tell you again it’s not like what I’ve seen of Darley to do the -sultan stunt.” - -And in ordinary clothes she had turned cartwheels before this man! Mary -Ellen blushed scarlet consternation. - -Mr. Chown’s thought, “Darley will teach you to feel,” was taking rapid -substance, but she must drive it from her, she must go to the theater -and sit through two performances and memorize, memorize. - -“That will do,” said Darley after the rehearsal next day. “Miss Arden -will stay behind. You can go on to-night,” he told her as the rest went -up the stairs. “You’ve got the tunes if you haven’t got the words -and they’re damn fool enough not to matter though you’ll know them by -Saturday. You’ve got a clumsy notion of the movements, but you don’t -know how to move. Your idea of walking is to put one foot in front -of the other. You’re as God made you, but he’s sent you to a good -contractor for the alterations. He’s sent you to me. Did you get Dolly -Chandler to answer that question?” - -She failed to meet his eye. Telling herself she was a coward, she tried -and failed. - -“I see,” he said. “She answered it the way they’ll all answer it. I’m -going to put in four hours a day with you and Dolly’s told you what -they’ll think of you. Thought’s free and it’s mostly dregs and I don’t -mind. What about you, Rosalind?” - -“You mean it won’t be true?” There was a hope and she clutched at it -with words that came unbidden to her lips. - -“True?” he roared. “You--papoose, you whippet! Don’t cry, you whelp. I -asked you a question. I asked you if you mind their thoughts?” - -“No,” she said. - -“Then we start fair,” he said. “I’m having you on the stage and I’m -coming to see you at your rooms, and if you’d like to know your name in -this company, it’s Dar-ley’s Darling. Only you and I’ll know we meet -for work, not play. I’m stage manager of a rotten musical comedy on -a scrubby tour, but I’m a servant of the theater and I’ll prove it on -you.” - -He was, disinterestedly, the theater’s servant, and service purged of -self-interest is rare though there is plenty of voluntary work done in -the theater. An actor rehearses for weeks and performs without fee in a -special production: he may have an enthusiasm for the play he is to -act, he may feel that such a play must, at all costs, come to birth, -but somewhere self-interest lurks. The play may succeed at its special -performance; it may be taken for a run, and, if not, the actor still has -the hope that his acting will focus on him the attention of critics and -managers. And if the part he plays is so inconsiderable that he cannot -hope to attract notice to himself, his hope is that the organizers of -special productions will note him as a willing volunteer to be rewarded, -next time, with a distinctive part. - -For Darley, proposing to spend laborious hours in molding Mary Ellen, -there was nothing concrete to be gained; no credit from the Rossiter -headquarters and the positive loss of a reputation for asceticism which -had been a shield against the advances of aspirants who believed that -success in the theater was reached by the road Dolly had indicated to -Mary. He did not flatter his company by supposing that his reputation -for austerity would survive association with Mary. But, intimately, -he would have his incomparable gain, the matchless joy of the creative -artist working on apt material. - -“You can take the rest of this week in getting used to jigging about -in the chorus,” he said. “Then we’ll begin to work. Only you needn’t -despise musical comedy. There are as many great actresses who came out -of a musical comedy training as out of Shakespeare. Perhaps for the same -reason that white sheep eat more than black ones.” - -He drilled her on a dozen stages as the tour went on, in a dozen walks -from the Parisian’s to the peasant’s (“You’ve never heard of pedestrian -art,” he said, “but this is it”), and for dancing, “You’re too old, but -we’ll get a colorable imitation,” and in her rooms they went through -Rosalind and Juliet till she spoke the lines in English and made every -intonation to his satisfaction. “Feel it, you parrot, feel it,” was his -cry, and he stopped his mockery of calling her Rosalind. He called her -“Iceberg.” - -He had taken her far, very far, along the technical way, and he had come -to a barrier. Where there was question of the grand emotions, her voice -was stupid. She seemed intelligently enough to understand with her -brain, but there was a lapse between understanding and expression. “I’ve -done all I’m going to,” thought Harley. “She’s not an actress yet, she’s -only ready to be one when somebody breaks the eggs to make the omelette. -I’m not the somebody.” - -Except that she did not shirk work, she gave no sign of gratitude. -Harley was another Pate, another man who was, to please himself, -experimenting on her with a system. She was not afraid of him now; men -in her experience were usable stepping-stones and when their use to her -was gone, she stepped from one to another. In the present case she saw -clearly what he was aiming at and the necessity of this training in -technique. It had visible results, it wasn’t, like Pate’s, a journey to -a peak mistily beyond a far horizon and it would, in any case, last -only for the three months she was to spend in the chorus of “The Little -Viennese.” He could take pains with her and she would generously -be there to be taken pains with; it was a sort of exercise which -he preferred to playing golf with the men or the other girls of the -company, and she permitted his enjoyment of the preference because it -was of use to her. - -“What did you want to go on the stage for, anyhow?” he asked her once. - -“To hold them,” she said, “there!” And made a gesture, imperious, -queenly, that almost wrung applause from him. “To have them in my grip -like that. To know I’ve got them in my power.” - -“I think you’ll do it, Mary, when you have learned to feel,” he told her -soberly. - -She looked at him with glittering eyes. “Gee, does it get you like -that?” he said, amazed. Here, to be welcomed with both hands, was -feeling at last. - -“Yes,” said Mary, dashing him to earth, “there’s money in it.” - -“You miserable slut!” he said, and flung out of her room. - -Money! Yet hadn’t she excuse? She feared poverty, having known it. -Poverty, for her, was not a question of what would happen to an income -of a thousand a year if the income tax went up; it was Jackman’s -Buildings and the Staithley streets. If she could help it, she was not -going back to poverty. To Staithley perhaps she would go back: she was -indeed fixed in her idea to go back, to buy, with her stage-made wealth, -a house in Staithley like Walter Pate’s and to be rich in Staithley. So -far, in her journeyings, she had seen no place like Staithley: either -there was flatness which depressed her, or hills which were too urbane, -or too low, too much like mounds in a park to be worthy of the name of -hills. The stage was a means to an end, and the end was Staithley, -a house of her own, an independence--and her present salary was -thirty-five shillings a week, less ten per cent to Chown! She was, at -any rate, thrifty with it, seeing no need, on tour, with her contract in -her pocket, to revise her wardrobe in the direction of effectiveness and -keeping her nose too closely to the grindstone Darley held to have time -for money-spending in other ways. She watched with satisfaction her Post -Office Savings Bank account increase by a weekly ten shillings. - -Darley relented and came back next day with the Maisie part in “The -Girl from Honolulu” in his pocket. “Damn her,” he thought, “she’s honest -about it and there have been avaricious artists. Avarice and Art aren’t -contradictory.” He expected no more at their parting than the cool -“Good-by” she gave him. - -“Full of possibilities,” he reported her to Drayton, and when Drayton -asked him to be more definite, “I can’t,” he wrote, “be more definite -than this. You know those Chinese toys consisting of a box within a box -of beautiful wood, wonderfully made? You marvel at the workmanship and -you open box after box. You get tired and you go on opening because each -box is beautiful and because of a faint hope you have that there’ll -be something in the last box. I don’t know what’s in hers. That’s her -secret and her mystery, and, by the way, you can discount what Pettigrew -is going to tell you of her Maisie. It isn’t her Maisie. It’s mine. I’ve -rehearsed her in it.” - -“Darley’s mad about her,” Drayton interpreted this to Rossiter. - -Darley was, anyhow, sufficiently interested to travel across half -England to see her play Maisie on her first Saturday night, in -Liverpool. He stood at the side of the circle where he could watch both -her and the house, and he waited, especially for a scene which was one -of the weaknesses of the piece, when Maisie, by sheer blague, has to -subdue a rascally beachcomber who intends robbery. He wasn’t afraid of -her song, but this scene called for acting; it wasn’t plausible, even -for musical comedy, unless Maisie carried it off _con brio_. - -And he had, that night, his reward for the labor of these months. It -was Saturday night, and the audience stopped eating chocolates. Darley -wasn’t looking at the stage, he was looking at the audience and he knew -triumph when he saw it. They stopped eating. Darley looked upon his work -and knew that it was good. - -“_Ich dieu_” he muttered. “By God, I do. Where’s the bar?” - - - - -CHAPTER VI--THE DREAM IN STONE - -IF some one idiosyncratic and original, some one bold to challenge the -accepted order, had dared to put Mary Arden on her defense, if it had -been asked what she was doing in the war, she would have replied with -cool assurance that she was keeping her head about it when nothing was -more easy than intemperance. Every day her post brought letters which -encouraged the belief, not that she made an opportunity of war, but that -she held high rank amongst home-keeping indispensables. Her letters -from unknown men in the trenches were explicit that Mary Arden was the -England they were fighting for--food, if she had cared to eat it, for -the grossest conceit. - -She was, by now, the leading musical comedy exponent of demureness, with -Chown as her undroppable pilot; and Pate, Darley and a procession of -stage managers who had steered less ably than that devoted pair were -forgotten’ rungs on the ladder she had climbed. She kept her head about -things more yeasty, in her microcosm more demoralizing, than the war; -she kept her head about success and kept it about men. She rode vanity -on the snaffle because she was herself ridden by ambition. - -Once the ambition had been trivial, once she had aimed no higher than a -house in Staithley as big as Walter Pate’s, but she had grown since then -and, with her, ambition grew, rooted in something older than her vanity -or than herself, rooted in the Bradshaw hatred of the Hepplestalls. -Secretly she nursed her ambition to possess a great house on Staithley -Edge, high, dominating the town of the Hepplestalls, a house to make the -old Hall look like a cottage, a house where she would live, resuming her -name of Bradshaw, eclipsing the Hepplestalls in Staithley. - -In eyes accustomed to the London she had conquered, the Hepplestalls -dwindled while Mary Arden, star, looked very big. There was veritable -conspiracy to augment her sense of self-importance and even the -newspapers, as the war degenerated into routine, gave of their -restricted space to say, repeatedly, that Mary Arden was a “person.” - To such an one, her ambition seemed no foolishness, but it wasn’t to be -done just yet--nor by practicing such crude economies as those of her -first cheese-paring tour. Dress mattered to her now; it belonged with -her position like other sumptuosities inseparable from a position which -was itself a symbol of extravagance. She rode the whirlwind of the war, -a goddess of the Leave Front, dressing daintily as men would have -her dress, but if there was lavishness at all it was for professional -purposes only. It was lavishness corrected by prudence, lavishness -calculated to maintain a position which was to lead her to a house in -Staithley Edge. She was a careful spendthrift, and she was careful, too, -in other ways. The dancing and the dining, the being seen with the -right man at the right places--these were not so much the by-products -of success as its buttresses; and to be expert in musical comedy acting -implies expertness in the technique of being a gay companion. She -exercised fastidious selectiveness, but, having chosen, gave her company -at costly meals to young officers who returned to France swaggering in -soul, mentioning aloud with infinite casualness that they had lunched -with Mary Arden. It was tremendously the thing to do: one might be a -lieutenant in France but one had carried a baton in London: and -one didn’t, even when the sense of triumph led one to the mood of -after-dinner boasting, hint that there was anything but her company at -meals or at a dance to be had from Mary Arden. The Hepplestalls were -going to find no chink in her immaculate armor when she queened it over -them from her great house on the hill, but to suggest that mere pride -was the motive of her continence is to do her an injustice. - -Socially as well as theatrically, then, she had her vogue and nothing -seemed to threaten it; yet Mr. Rossiter had the strange caprice to -be not wholly satisfied with Mary Arden. As a captain of the light -entertainment industry, he was doing exceedingly well out of the war; he -had a high opinion of the Colonial soldiery; the young British officer -was hardly behind the Colonial private in his eagerness to occupy Mr. -Rossiter’s stalls, and at times when leave was suspended the civilian -population filled the breach in its very natural desire for an antidote -to anxiety. Surely he was captious to be finding fault anywhere, last -of all with Mary Arden? But Hubert Rossiter did not hold his position -by taking short views or by seeing only the obvious, and he sent for Mr. -Chown to discuss with him the shortcomings of his client, Miss Arden. - -“Sit down, Lexley,” he said. “Have you read that script I sent you?” - -Mr. Chown produced from a neat attaché-case the typescript of Mr. -Rossiter’s next play, with a nod which managed to convey, besides mere -affirmation, his deep admiration of the inspired managerial judgment. - -“Well, now,” said Rossiter briskly, “about Mary Arden. There’s, every -musical reason why I should cast her for Teresa in this piece. She can -sing the music. Leslie’s the alternative and Leslie can’t sing it. The -question is, can Mary act it?” - -Mr. Chown’s geese were not swans: he knew that his clients, even if they -were his clients, had limitations. “I saw her in the other part as I -read it, Hubert,” he fenced. - -“The flapper part isn’t worth Mary’s salary. Now, is it? Seriously, I’m -troubled about Mary.” - -“What’s the matter with her?” - -“She keeps her heart at her banker’s for one thing. Do you know she -once came into this office with a ’bus ticket stuck in the cuff of her -sleeve? A leading part at the Galaxy Theatre, and rides in a ’bus!” - -“That wasn’t recently. Be fair, Hubert. And where do you want her to -keep her heart?” - -“Where she wore the ’bus ticket. On her sleeve. If she’s so fond of -money, Lexley, why doesn’t she go after it? There’s plenty about.” - -Chown stiffened in his chair. “As Miss Arden’s agent, Hubert,” he said -severely, “I protest against that suggestion.” - -Rossiter smiled blandly. “Right. You’ve done your duty to your client -and to the proprieties. Now we’ll get down to facts.” - -“But anyhow, Hubert, don’t forget what this girl is. She plays on her -demureness. It’s Mary’s winning card.” - -“A nunnery’s the place for her sort of demureness. In the theater a -woman only scores by demureness when it’s known to the right people that -she’s a devil off the stage.” - -“No! No,” cried Chown. “You--” - -“The theater is a place of illusion, my friend. In any case, Mary’s been -doing flappers too long. She’s getting old.” - -“You’re simply being perverse, Hubert.” Mr. Chown was genuinely angry. -“Mary Arden old!” - -“Then,” said Rossiter, “she began young and it comes to the same thing. -What’s a play-going generation? Five years? Very well, for a generation -of playgoers she’s been doing demure flappers and it’s time she did -something else and time somebody else did the flappers. And can she do -anything else? Can she? I’ll tell you in one word what’s the matter with -Mary--virginity.” - -Mr. Chown could only bow his head in sorrowing agreement. “She is -immoderate,” he said gloomily and Rossiter stared at him, finding -the adjective surprising until, “‘Everything in moderation, including -virginity,’” quoted Chown. - -“Is that your own?” asked Rossiter with relish. - -But Chown disclaimed originality and even personal knowledge of his -mot’s authorship. He did not read books. He read life and, especially on -Thursdays, the _Daily Telegraph_. “The man who said it to me said it was -Samuel Butler’s.” - -“It’s good,” pronounced Rossiter, writing the name down. “I’ll get -Drayton to write to this man Butler and see if he’ll do me a libretto. I -like his flavor.” - -“I’m afraid he’s dead,” said Chown. - -“Oh, this war!” grieved Rossiter. “This awful war! Is it to take all our -promising young men? Well, to come back to Mary. I want to cast her for -Teresa and now, candidly, she being what she is, can I?” - -“No,” agreed Chown. - -“There it is! Waste. Constriction of her possibilities. I wish you’d -make her see that it’s bad for her art. You and I have to watch over our -young women like fathers. You brought this girl to me and I’ve endorsed -your judgment so far: but she’s got no future if she doesn’t mend her -ways. I’ve been thinking of reviving ‘The Duchess of Dantzic.’” - -“For her?” gasped Chown. “Mary to play Sans-Gene?” - -“She can sing it, but she can’t act it--yet. If she’s out for marriage, -get her married. Marry her yourself. Do something. But a woman who -shirks life will never play Sans-Gêne.” Rossiter rose to administer -a friendly pat to Chown’s shoulder. “Think it over, old man,” he said -earnestly. “Meantime,” he conceded graciously, “I’ll give Teresa to -Leslie and Mary can flap once more. But, I warn you, it’s the last time. -I’m tired of real demureness. I want real acting.” - -Chown hesitated slightly, then “Do you know, I’ve a card up my sleeve -about Mary,” he said. - -“Then, for God’s sake, play it, my lad. Play it. It’s overdue.” - -“What about giving her a character part?” - -“Character? That’s not her line. You know as well as I do that we can’t -monkey with the public’s expectations. An actress can afford anything -except versatility.” - -“Listen,” said Chown. “I picked her up in Lancashire and her accent’s -amazing. I needn’t remind you that Lancashire is almost as popular on -the stage as Ireland. As you said, the theater’s a place of illusion.” - -“Did you notice,” asked Rossiter witheringly, “that the scene of this -piece is laid in Granada?” - -“Does that matter?” asked Chown blandly. - -Rossiter was turning over the pages of the script. “Not a bit,” - he hardily admitted. “I’ll take the chance, Lexley. We’ll make her -Lancashire, and there’s a male part that’ll have to go to Lancashire -too. What a pity that chap Butler was killed in the war. He’d have been -just the man to write it in.” - -“I don’t think he was Lancashire,” said Chown and, in his turn, “Does -that matter?” asked Rossiter. “You go and have that talk with Mary and -leave me to look after authors. It takes doing nowadays. Surprising what -they’ll ask for doing a bit of re-writing. Makes a hole in a ten-pound -note if you don’t watch it.” - -Chown had a talk, rather than “that” talk, with Mary, omitting, for -instance, Rossiter’s recommendation of matrimony as essential to an -actress. Experience, with or without marriage lines, might tap an -emotional reservoir but, in her case, the experience would certainly go -with marriage and Chown had suffered too often by the retirement of his -successful clients after marriage to risk advising it. He considered -Rossiter incautious. “There’s a part for you in ‘Granada the Gay,’” he -told her, “that is going to make you a new reputation. A Lancashire part -and London will think you’re acting it. You and I know you _are_ it, but -we won’t mention that.” - -“This is interesting,” said Mary Ellen with shining eyes. “I’ll work at -this. I’ll show them something.” - -Chown nodded, satisfied that she would, in fact, “show them” enough to -silence Rossiter’s murmurings for the next two years--nobody looked for -a shorter run than that from a musical comedy in war time--and Rossiter -was indeed ungrudging in his admission that Mary’s demure Lancastrian, -with the terrific and accurate accent coming with such rugged veracity -from those pretty lips, was the success of “Granada the Gay.” People -were going with scant selectiveness to all theaters alike, but there -were a few, and the Galaxy among them, which had their special lure. - -It was a curiosity of the time, full though the theaters were, that -advance bookings were low. No one could see ahead, no one’s time was his -own and perhaps that was the reason or perhaps it was only the sentiment -which underlay the practice of going impulsively to theaters without the -solemnity of premeditation involved in booking seats many days ahead; -and the two young officers, sitting down to dinner, were not remarkable -in expecting at that late hour to get stalls at any theater -they pleased. “Libraries”--that curious misnomer of the ticket -agencies--perhaps kept up their sleeves a parcel of certainly saleable -tickets for the benefit of abrupt men in khaki, but libraries were -crowded places to be avoided by those who had the officering habit of -telling some one else to do the tedious little things. - -“We might go on to a show after this,” said Derek Carton. “Don’t you -think so, Fairy? Waiter, send a page with the theater list. I want -tickets for something.” - -His companion, only arrived that day from France, let his eyes stray -sensuously over the appointments of the restaurant. He was to eat in a -room decorated in emulation of a palace at Versailles; the chefs were -French; the guests, when they were not American, were of every allied -or neutral European nationality; the band played jazz music; and to the -marrow of him, as he contemplated the ornate evidences of materialistic -civilization, he exulted in his England. The hardship was that he -couldn’t spend the whole of this leave in London: he must go, -to-morrow, to Staithley. He was, he had been for six months, Sir Rupert -Hepplestall, but when his father died the 1918 German push was on and -leave impossible. Decidedly he must go North, this time, this once, -though--oh, hang the Hepplestalls! Why couldn’t they let him go quietly, -to look in decent privacy at his father’s grave? But no: they must -make him a director of the firm and they must call a meeting for him to -attend. Well-meaning but absurd old men who had not or who would not -see that Rupert was free of Hepplestall’s now. Sincerely he mourned -his father’s death, and they wouldn’t let him be simple about it, they -complicated a fellow’s pilgrimage to Sir Philip’s grave by their obtuse -attempt to thrust his feet into Sir Philip’s shoes. - -That needn’t matter to-night, though, that sour affront to the idea of -leave: it was his complication not Carton’s who, good man, had met him -at the station. Like Rupert, Carton had gone from Cambridge to the war, -then he had lost a leg and now had a job at the War Office: and the -jolly thing was that Carton hadn’t altered, he was as he used to be even -to calling Rupert by that old nickname. If you have seventy-three inches -you are naturally called Fairy and out there nobody ever thought of -calling you anything else except on frigidly official occasions. But -you were never quite sure of the home point of view; the thing called -war-mind made such amazing rabid asses of the people who were not -fighting and you weren’t certain even of Carton and now you were a -little ashamed of having been uncertain. Of course, old Carton would not -rot him about his title; of course, he would call him Fairy, he wouldn’t -allude to that baronetcy of which Rupert was still so shy. - -“Stop dreaming, Fairy,” said Derek, and he looked across the table to -find a page-boy at Derek’s elbow and a theater-list on the table before -him. “What shall it be?” - -“Oh, Robey, I suppose.” - -“Yes,” Derek agreed. “Usually Robey’s first choice. Just now, it’s Robey -or ‘Granada the Gay,’ with a girl called Arden.” - -“You’re in charge,” said Rupert. “I’ve heard of Mary Arden.” - -Derek tried not to look superior. “It’s usual,” he said. “Galaxy -Theater, boy,” and presently received a pink slip of paper entitling him -to the occupancy of two stalls that night. Nothing would have surprised -him more than not to have received it, an hour before the curtain rose -on a musical comedy in the first flush of brilliant success. - -They ate and mostly their talk was superficial. It preserved a -superficial air when men who had been killed were spoken of and only -once did there seem divergence in their points of view. Some technical -point of gunnery came up and Derek, who was at the War Office, agreed -that “We can’t improve it yet. But I tell you, old man, in the next -war--” - -“That--that was a topping Turkish Bath we went to before dinner,” said -Rupert. - -Derek stared. “What!” he gasped. - -“I’m changing the subject,” said Rupert with a smile of forgiveness for -his friend who had been home too long, too near to the newspapers and -the War Office. At the Front, they didn’t talk of the next war, they -were fighting the last of the wars. But he didn’t want argument with -Derek to-night. “Are you through that liqueur?” he asked. “Let’s go on -to this theater, shall we?” - -Rossiter could not and did not expect his commissionaires to emulate the -silky suppleness of cosmopolitan head waiters, but it was impressed upon -them that they were not policemen on point duty but the servants of -a gentleman receiving their master’s guests; he neglected nothing, -“producing” the front of the house as he produced the entertainment on -the stage or the business organization in his office. It was whispered -to husbands that his most exquisite achievement was the ladies’ -cloak-room. You might leave your restaurant savage at the bill, but by -the time you had progressed from the Galaxy entrance to your stall, you -were so saluted, blarneyed, caressed, that there was no misanthropy in -you. - -It captivated Rupert; he couldn’t, try as he would, duplicate Derek’s -stylish air of matter-of-fact boredom. Yesterday he was in hell and -to-morrow, very likely, he would swear if the waiter at the hotel -brought up tepid tea to his bedside; but to-night he hadn’t made -adjustments, to-night he was impressible by amenity. And he had read -in the papers that London had grown unmannerly! Outrageous libel on an -earthly paradise. - -But it may be hazarded that first steps, even in paradise, are not -sure-footed, and in spite of his bodily ease, and the “atmosphere” - of Mr. Rossiter’s stalls and his eagerness to be amused, his mind, -accustomed to the grotesque convention, war, did not immediately accept -the grotesque convention, musical comedy. In a day or two he would, -no doubt, be as greedy of unreality as any believer in the fantastic -untruths distributed to the Press by the War Office propaganda -departments, but he was too lately come to Cloud Cuckoo Land to have -sloughed his sanity yet. He had yearned for color and he had it now; and -the vivid glare of a Rossiter musical comedy put an intolerable strain -upon his eyes, while the humor of the comedians put his brain in -chancery. Home-grown jokes, he supposed, and yet their mess had fancied -itself at wit. He was regretful that he had not insisted on Robey. Robey -was the skilled liaison officer between Front and Leave. Robey jerked -one’s thoughts irresistibly into the right groove at once; he wouldn’t -have sat under Robey wilting to the dismal conviction that his first -evening on leave was turning to failure. - -Then, from off-stage, a girl began to speak, and Rupert sat taut in his -stall. He all but rose and stood to attention as Mary Arden appeared -in the character of that inapposite Lancastrian in Granada. She did -not merely salt the meat for him; there was no meat but her. He thought -that, then blushed at the coarseness of a metaphor which compared this -girl with meat. She spoke in the dialect of Lancashire and where he had -been dull to the humor of the comedians, all was crystal now. Boredom -left him; the morose sentiment of a ruined evening melted like cloud in -the sunshine of Mary Arden; phoenixlike leave rose again to the level of -anticipation and beyond. - -Tell him that he was ravished because she reminded him of Staithley, and -he would not have denied that he was ravished but he would have denied -very hotly that Staithley had anything to do with it. Suggest that he -was seized and held because she spoke a dialect which was his as well as -hers, and he would have denied knowledge of a single dialect word. But -Rupert was born in Staithley where dialect, like smoke, is in the air -and inescapable and Mary was calling to something so deep in him that -he did not know he had it, his love of Lancashire covered up and locked -beneath his school, Cambridge, the Army. She turned the key, she sent -him back to the language he spoke in boyhood, not in the nursery or the -schoolroom, but in emancipated hours in the garage and the stables where -dialect prevailed. Obstinate in his creed of hatred of the Lancashire of -the Hepplestalls, he did not know what she had done to him, but he felt -for Mary the intimacy of old, tried acquaintanceship. He was unconscious -of others on the stage, even as background: he was unconscious of being -in a theater at all and sat gaping when the curtain cut him off from her -and Derek began to push past him with an impatient “Buck up. Just time -for a drink before they close. Always a scram in the bar. Come along.” - -“But,” said Rupert still sitting, still stupidly resenting the intrusion -of the curtain, “but--Mary Arden.” - -“If that’s the trouble, I’ll take you round and introduce you -afterwards. Anything, so long as we don’t miss this drink.” - -Derek led his friend to the bar, where there was opportunity for Rupert, -amongst a thirsting thrusting mob, to revise his estimate of London -manners in war-time. When they had secured whiskies, “You know -her!” Rupert said, jealous for the first time of Derek’s enforced -home-service. - -“I’ve met her once,” said Derek. “That’s a good enough basis for -introducing you, to an actress. But I might as well warn you. Mary’s -as good as her reputation. A lot of men have wasted time making sure of -that.” - -“I see,” said Rupert curtly. “But you’ll introduce me.” - -“Yes,” said Derek, “if you insist.” He had brought Rupert to the Galaxy -because it was the thing to do, just as he had met Mary for the same -reason, but he resented her strangeness. To Derek an actress who was not -only notoriously but actually “straight” was simply not playing the game -and he was reluctant to add Rupert to the train of her exhibited -and deluded admirers. Whereas Rupert would have shrunk aghast at the -temerity of his thoughts if he had realized Mary as an actress and a -famous one. He was, in all modesty, seeing her possessively because she -and he were alone in a crowd. - -He had to mar with Lancashire this leave which had suddenly turned so -glamorous; there was the more reason, then, for boldness, for grasping -firmly the opportunity presented by Carton’s introduction, but it -troubled him to shyness to think that he had so greatly the advantage of -her. He had watched her for three hours and she hadn’t seen him yet. It -seemed to him unfair. - -His first impression, as her dressing-room door opened to Derek and he -looked over his friend’s shoulder, was of cool white walls and chintz -hangings. The gilt Empire chairs, relics of a forgotten Rossiter -production, which furnished the cell-like room as if it were a great -lady’s prison de luxe in bygone France, added in some indefinable way to -its femininity. The hangings bulged disconcertingly over clothing. - -In his stall he had established that he knew her, but this seemed too -abrupt a plunge into her intimacy. She sat, with her back to him, at a -table littered with mysteries, and her hair hung loosely down her white -silk dressing-gown. He turned away, with burning face, only to find in -that room of mirrors no place to which to turn. Carton, that lump of -ice, was unaffected, and so was Mary herself who continued, messily, -to remove grease-paint from her face with vaseline and a vigorous towel -while she gave Carton, sideways, an oily hand. She was not incommoding -herself for a man she hardly remembered. - -“Weren’t there two of you when you came in?” she asked and Derek -realized that Rupert had fled. “Fairy!” he called, and opened the door. -“Come in, man.” - -Mary laughed. “Fairy?” she said. “You’ve a quaint name. Fairy by name -and nature. Fairies disappear.” - -He was distressingly embarrassed. Carton had, merely instinctively, -called him by the usual nickname, and was he, to escape her gay -quizzing, to draw himself up grandly and to say that he wasn’t Fairy -but Sir Rupert? “Fairy” set her first impressions against him, but to -attempt their correction by announcing that he had a title might, by -its pompousness, only turn bad to worse. Better, for the moment, let it -slide. He smiled gallantly. “When I disappear again,” he said, “it will -be because you tell me to.” He cursed his unreadiness to rise above the -level of idiocy. - -“Do you know, Miss Arden, Fairy comes from Lancashire,” said Derek, by -way of magnanimously helping a lame dog over a stile. - -“Does he?” said Mary listlessly. She could see in her glass without -turning round his large supple frame and his handsome face which would, -she thought, look better without the conventional mustache. She placed -men quickly now. Well-bred, this boy, gentle. Too gentle? Probably not. -Big men were apt to be gentle through very consciousness of strength, -and he was graceful for all his size. “Fairy” would do: decidedly he -would do to replace as her decorative companion across restaurant tables -her latest cavalier who had just gone back to France. - -“Oh,” he was saying, “it won’t interest Miss Arden that I come from -Lancashire.” - -“Well,” she said, hinting a gulf impassable between North and South, -“I’m a London actress.” - -“That’s the miracle of it,” he said. “Lancashire’s an old slag-heap of -a county and one couldn’t be proud of it. Only, by Jove, I am, since -hearing you. It’s queer, but when you spoke Lancashire it was as if -I met an old friend I hadn’t seen for a long time. I know it’s awful -cheek, Miss Arden, but it seemed to put me on an equality with you.” - -She did not know he was a Hepplestall, she missed the poignant irony -of their identities, but when Sir Rupert haltingly told her that it was -“awful cheek” in him to feel on an equality with the exalted Mary Ellen -Bradshaw, she had, unusually, the thought that she ought to check this -absurd diffidence by blurting out that she learned her Lancashire on -Staithley Streets, that she was not acting but was the real, raw thing. -It was not often, these days, that Mary blushed to accept homage. She -hadn’t put herself, the times, the strange perverted times, had put her -on a pinnacle and, being there, she did what men seemed gratified that -she should do, she looked down on them. But because she kept her head, -she had not resented, she had welcomed, the one or two occasions when -she had been made to feel ashamed. There was a man, now dead, whom she -recalled because Rupert was making her in the same way look at herself -through a diminishing-glass. He had, unlike the most, talked to her -of the things they were doing over there: he had told her in a -matter-of-fact way of their daily life and she had made comparisons with -hers, she had dwindled to her true dimensions. And Rupert by means she -couldn’t analyze was giving a similar, salutary experience. She felt -shrunken before him and was happy to shrink. - -Derek’s formula for the correct welcome of a fighting soldier on leave -included supper at a night club, and they were wasting time on the -impossible woman. “I expect you want to turn us out so that you can -dress,” he cut in. - -“Oh!” cried Rupert, alarmed at the idea of going so pat upon their -coming. “But--yes, I suppose you must. Only I--” he took courage, if -it wasn’t desperation, in both hands and added, “Will you lunch with me -to-morrow at the Carlton?” - -She pretended to consult a full engagement-book. “I might just manage -it,” she grudged defensively. Though he shrank her and she realized -being shrunk by him, he was not to think that lunch with Mary Arden was -less than a high privilege. - -He took that view himself. “I shall be greatly honored,” he said -sincerely: then Derek hustled him away, but not to the night club. -Rupert resisted that anti-climax, he who had held Mary’s hand in his, -“But I’m so grateful to you, Derek,” he emphasized. - -“Are you? Then don’t be ungrateful if I tell you that no one’s quite -sane on leave,” and sane or not, Rupert went to bed in the elated mood -of a man who knows he has created something. “Like a hen clucking over -an egg,” was Derek’s private-comment on his friend. - - - - -CHAPTER VII--MARY AND RUPERT - -RUPERT lay in bed morosely contemplating the first fact about -Leave--its brutal elasticity. If he did not know, on the one hand, what -he had done to deserve the acquaintanceship of Mary Arden, he did not -know, on the other, that he deserved that dark intrusion on brief London -days, the Staithley visit. Fortune first smiled, then apishly grimaced, -but he threw off peevishness with the bed-clothes and the tang of cold -water. Soberly, if intrusion was in question, then it was Mary who -intruded and if he hadn’t learned, by now, to take things as they came, -he had wasted his time in France. - -He must go to Staithley, he must attend the conclave of the -Hepplestalls, but he need not then and there make his protest -articulate. Would it, indeed, be decent, coming as he would straight -from his first reverent visit to his father’s grave, to fling defiance -at his uncles? If they cared to read consent into an attitude studiously -noncommittal, why, they must; but he wouldn’t in so many words announce -his irrevocable decision never to be bondsman to Hepplestall’s; he -wouldn’t by any sign of his invite a tedium of disputation which might -keep him, heaven knew how long, from London and his Mary. - -His Mary! That was thought which outran discretion, truth and even hope. -The most he sanguinely expected of her was that she would consent, for -the period of his leave, to “play” with him and, of course, there was a -matter, trivial but annoying, to be set right first. That introduction -under his nickname bothered him: his silence suggested that he was -ashamed to acknowledge himself at the moment of being presented to an -actress, and the suggestion was insulting to her. So far, and so far as -the invitation to lunch went, she had accepted him as her companion -“on his face,” and it might have been romantic enterprise to see if -she would continue to consort with a Fairy, a man cursed with a name as -grotesque as Cyrano’s nose, but he took Mary too seriously to put their -playtime in jeopardy by keeping up a masquerade. The last thing he would -do was to traffic on his title, but the first was to let her know that -he wasn’t a Fairy! By telling a waiter to address him as Sir Rupert? -He didn’t like that way. The way of an intriguer. No, he must face -his dilemma, hoping to find means to bring out the truth without (God -forbid!) advertising it, and in the first moments of their meeting, too. - -What prevented him from telling her when she came into the restaurant -and held out her hand with an “Ah, Captain Fairy,” was her disconcerting -frock. It was not an unusual frock except that it was a fashionable and -supreme frock and Mary had torn off two other fashionable frocks before -she decided that this was an occasion for a supreme frock. It was an -occasion, she admitted by stages marked by the change of frock, for her -best defenses. She had welcomed medicinally the purge to pride he had -unconsciously administered but he must not make a habit of it and -from head to foot, within and without, she wrapped herself in -dress-assurance. - -“You’re stunning,” he said at sight of her, stupidly and truthfully, -missing the finer excellences of her frock, disconcerted by it simply -because it was a frock. Idiot, he called himself, did he expect her to -come to the Carlton in a white silk dressing-gown with her hair down her -shoulders? But neither on the stage nor in her dressing-room had he seen -her with her hair up and he hadn’t, in that particular, been imaginative -about her. He saw her now a well-dressed woman, superbly a woman, but -so different from the Mary of stage-costume or of dishabille, so -wonderfully more mysterious, that his illusion of knowing her very soul -dropped from him and left him bankrupt of confidence in the presence of -a lady charming but unknown. - -They were at a table and Mary had the conversation under control long -before he realized that she was still addressing him as Captain Fairy. -Perhaps, after all, his assertion of himself would go best with the -coffee: he resolved very firmly that he wouldn’t let it slide beyond the -coffee. He became aware of subtle oppositions between them, of pleasant -undercurrents in action and reaction making an electricity of their own; -he sensed her evident desire to lead the conversation. Well, she would -naturally play first fiddle to a Fairy, but perhaps there was something -else and, if so, he could put that right without embarrassing himself. -She had said last night, as if pointedly, “I’m a London actress,” - thinking of him, no doubt, as a provincial. - -He said, “By the way, Carton mentioned last night that I come from -Lancashire. His point was, I suppose, that it would interest you because -you happen to be playing a Lancashire part. I’m Lancashire by the -accident of birth, but I hope I’ve outlived it in my life.” - -“Oh!” said Mary, thinking of a photograph of Staithley Edge which hung -on the wall of her flat almost with the significance of the ikon in a -Russian peasant’s room, “oh, are you ashamed of Lancashire?” - -“I’m going there this afternoon, as a matter of fact, probably for the -last time. I don’t think the word is ‘ashamed,’ though. I’ve outgrown -Lancashire. I shall settle in London after the war. Look here, may -I tell you about it? Theoretically, I was supposed to go back to -Lancashire some day, after I’d finished at Cambridge. To go back on -terms I loathed, and I didn’t mean to go back. I was reading pretty hard -at Cambridge, not for fun, but to get a degree--a decent degree; to have -something to wave in their faces as a fairly solid reason for not going -back. I thought of going to the bar, just by way of being something -reasonable, but I don’t know that it matters now. I mean after the war -they can’t possibly expect the things of a man that they thought it was -possible, and I didn’t, to expect before. My father’s dead, too, since -then. And that makes a lot of difference. I’m awfully sorry he died, -but I can’t help seeing that his death liberates me. I shan’t go back to -Lancashire at any price.” - -He had the earnest fluency of a man talking about himself to a woman. -How well she knew it! And how old, how wise, how much more experienced -than the oldest war-scarred veteran of them all did she not feel when -her young men poured out their simple histories to her! But she was used -to the form of consultation. They put it to her, as a rule, that they -sought her advice and though she knew quite well that their object -was to flatter, it piqued her now that Rupert did not ask advice. He -reasoned, perhaps, and his assertion was not of what he would do after -the war but of what he positively would not. He was not going back to -Lancashire and, “You do pay compliments,” she said a little tartly. “You -bring out to lunch an actress who’s doing a Lancashire part and you tell -her that Lancashire’s not good enough for you.” - -“But that’s your art,” he cried, “to be so wonderfully not yourself. -Seriously, Miss Arden, for you, a London actress, to be absolutely -a Lancashire girl on the stage is sheer miracle. But that’s not the -question and between us two, is Lancashire a place fit to live in?” So -he bracketed them together, people of the great world. - -“I won’t commit myself,” she said. It was not her art, it was herself, -but she couldn’t answer back his candor with candor of her own and felt -again at disadvantage with him. He attacked and she could not defend. -She said, “Oh, I expect you’ll get what you want. You look the sort that -does.” She was almost vicious about it. - -“I hope I shall,” he said, gazing ingenuous admiration at her. “For -instance--” - -She moved sharply as if she dodged a blow. Men did queer things on -leave; she had had proposals from them though she knew them as little as -she knew Rupert. “For instance,” he went on imperviously, “shall I get -this? Shall I get your promise to have lunch with me here on Thursday? I -shall be back from Lancashire by then.” - -“Yes, I’ll lunch,” she said convulsively, calling herself a fool to have -misjudged him and a soppy fool, like the soppiest fool of a girl at the -theater, to be so apt to think of marriage. Yet Mary thought much of -marriage, not as the “soppy fools” thought, hopefully, but defensively. -Marriage did not march with her dream in stone and the thought of Mary -Ellen Bradshaw on Staithley Edge. She fought always for that idea, and -refusals were the trophies she had won in her campaigns for it, usually -easy victories, but once or twice she had not found it easy to refuse. -Did Rupert jeopardize the dream? She couldn’t say and, thank God, she -needn’t say. He hadn’t asked her, but she admitted apprehension, she -confessed that he belonged with those very few who had made her dream -appear a bleak and empty thing. This man disturbed her: she was right to -be on her guard, to bristle in defense of her dream at the least sign -of passion in him. But she despised herself for bristling unnecessarily, -for imagining a sign which wasn’t there. He had, confoundedly, the habit -of making her despise herself. - -Then it happened, not what she had feared would happen but something -even more disturbing. - -“Ah,” he said gayly, “then that’s a bet. That’s something to look -forward to while I’m at Staithley.” - -Staithley! Staithley! It rang in her brain. Stammering she spoke it. -“Staithley!” - -“Yes,” he said. “It’s a Lancashire town. I don’t suppose you’ve ever -heard of it, but my people, well, we’re rather big pots up there.” - -“In Staithley?” she repeated. - -“Yes. We’re called Hepplestall.” He looked at her guiltily. Mary’s -teeth were clenched and her bloodless hands gripped the table hard, but -actress twice over, woman and Mary Arden, and modern with cosmetics, -her face showed nothing of her inward storm. “That idiotic name Carton -called me by--they all do it,” he protested loyally. “It’s odds on that -they’ve forgotten what my real name is but I’m Rupert Hepplestall really -and... oh, as a matter of form, I’m Sir Rupert Hepplestall. I--I can’t -help it, you know.” - -One didn’t make a scene in a restaurant. One didn’t scream in a -restaurant. One didn’t go into hysterics in a restaurant. That was all -she consciously thought, clutching the table till it seemed the veins in -her fingers must burst. Hepplestall--and she. And Mary Ellen Bradshaw. -Lunching together. Oh, it--but she was thinking and she must not think. -She must repeat, over and over again, “One does not make a scene, one--” - -Immensely surprised she heard herself say, “No, you can’t help it,” - and as she saw him smile--the smile of a schoolboy who is “let off” a -peccadillo--she concluded that she must have smiled at him. - -“I’m better now I’ve got that off my chest,” he said. “I had to do it -before we parted though, by George, I’ve cut it fine.” There are several -ways, besides the right way, of looking at a wrist-watch. She was -annoyed to find herself capable of noticing that Rupert’s was the right -way. “I shall have to dash for my train. Where can I put you down? I -must go now: I’ll apologize on Thursday for abruptness.” - -“I’m going to the flat,” she said. “Baker Street.” He was paying the -bill, getting his cap and stick, urging pace on the taxi-driver, busy in -too many ways to be observant of Mary. - -“Hepplestall,” she thought going up her stairs, “Hepplestall, and I’ve -to act to-night.” Her bed received her. - -***** - -Incongruous in youth and khaki he sat abashed amongst black-coated -elders of the service at the board of Hepplestall’s. - -He wanted urgently to scoff, to feel that it all didn’t matter because -nothing mattered but the war, and they set the war in a perspective -new to him, as passing episode reacting certainly upon the permanency, -Hepple-stall’s, but reacting temporarily as the Cotton Famine had -reacted in the days of the American Civil War. - -He did not fail to perceive the significance of old Horace, Sir Philip’s -uncle, who was seventy, with fifty years to his credit of leadership -in the Service, a living link with heaven knew what remote ancestors. -Perhaps old Horace in his youth had seen the Founder himself. It bridged -time, it was like shaking hands with a man who had been patted on the -head by Wellington, and, like Horace, Rupert was subjected to the fact -of being Hepplestall. The law of his people, the dour and stable law, -ran unchangeable by time. - -Complacent he had not been as he bared his head before Sir Philip’s -grave, but he had kept his balance. - -Death, that lay outside youth’s normal thought and entered it with -monstrousness, was Rupert’s known familiar and a father dead could -sadden, but could not startle, a soldier who had seen comrades killed -at his side. It touched him, quite unselfishly, to think that Sir Philip -had gone knowing him not as rebel, not as apostate of the Hepplestalls, -but as a son of whom he could be proud--Rupert the cricketer, the solid -schoolboy who developed, unexpectedly but satisfactorily, into a reading -man at Cambridge, and then the soldier; but he was stirred to other and -far deeper feelings by the references made at the board to Sir Philip. -They were not formal tributes, they were chatty reminiscences hitting -Rupert the shrewder because there was nothing conventional about them, -bringing home to the son how his father had seemed to other eyes than -his. How little he had known Sir Philip! How carelessly he’d failed in -his appreciations! And it was double-edged, because the very object of -this meeting was to salute him as heir to the chieftainship, implying -that in the son they saw a successor worthy of the father. - -They even apologized to him for having, in his absence, appointed an -interim successor. Sir Philip’s death created a situation unprecedented -in the history of the firm because never before had the Head died with -his son unready to take the reins, and the war aggravated the situation. -Rupert’s training could not begin till the war ended; it would be many -years before he took his place at the head of the table, Chairman of the -Board. - -Behind the training they underwent was the theory of the machine -with interchangeable parts; it was assumed that the general technical -knowledge they all acquired fitted each for any post to which the -Service might appoint him. They did not overrate mere technique but -they relied upon the quality of the Hepplestalls. If occasion called a -Hepplestall, he rose to it. This occasion, the occasion of a regency, -had called William Hepplestall, Sir Philip’s brother next in age to him. - -William had not sought, but neither did he shirk, the burden of -responsibility. “I will do my duty,” he had said. “You know me. I am not -an imaginative man, and the times are difficult. But I will do my duty.” - -It would, certainly, not have occurred to William in the first days of -the war to convert their Dye-House from, cotton dyeing to woolen: that -sort of march into foreign territory, so extraordinarily lucrative, -would have occurred to none but to Sir Philip, and they understood very -well that under William, or under any of them now, the control would -be prudent and uninspired. They looked to Rupert as inheritor cf the -Hepplestall tradition of inspiration in leadership. Calmly they made -the vast assumption not only that he was coming to them but that he was -coming to be, eventually, a leader to them as brilliant as Sir Philip -had been. - -“I shall not see it,” said old Horace, “but I do not need to see. We -continue, we Hepplestalls; we serve.” - -Amiably, implacably, with embarrassing deference to Sir Philip’s son, -they pinned him to his doom, and in France, when he had heard of -this meeting they arranged for him, he had thought of it as a comic -interlude, and of himself as one who would relax from great affairs -to watch these little men at play! He sat weighed down, in misery. In -London he had decided that he wouldn’t argue, but he hadn’t known that -he could not argue. He was oppressed to taciturnity, to speechless -sulking which they took, since Rupert did everything, even sulking, -pleasantly, to mean that he was overwhelmed by the renewal, through -their eulogies, of his personal grief for the loss of his father. They -spoke tactfully of the war, deferring to him as a soldier; they aimed -with family news in gossipy vein of this and that Hepplestall in and -out of the war, to put him at his ease, and soon the meeting ended. -They took it as natural that he wished to spend his leave in London. It -seemed they understood. They advised about trains. - -Rupert escaped, miserable because he was not elated to leave that -torture-chamber. He hadn’t faced the music. But he couldn’t. Altogether -apart from his wish to get out of Staithley at the first possible -moment, he couldn’t face that music. Their expectations of him were so -massive, so serene, so sure, their line unbreakable. - -In the train, he recurred to that thought of the Hepplestall line. No: -he could not break it, but there might be a way round. He was going -to London, where Mary was, and the point, surely the point about the -training of a Hepplestall was that they caught their Hepplestalls -young. They cozened them with the idea of service and sent them, willing -victims, to labor with their hands in Staithley Mills--because they -caught them young. Rupert was twenty-five. Cynically he “placed” that -meeting now: it was a super-cozening addressed to a Hepplestall who was -no longer a boy: it admitted his age and the intolerable indignities the -training held for a man of his age, for a captain who had a real chance -of becoming a major very soon. It was their effort, their demonstration, -and he saw his way to make an effort and a counter demonstration. -Clearly, they saw that it wasn’t reasonable to train a man of his -years to spinning and the rest of it; then they would see the absolute -impossibility of compelling a married man to undergo that training. A -man couldn’t leave his wife at some Godless early morning hour to go to -work with his hands, he couldn’t come home, work-stained, after a day’s -consorting with the operatives, to the lady who was Lady Hepplestall. - -He realized, awed by his presumptuousness, that he was thinking of Mary -Arden as the lady who was Lady Hep-plestall. - -He thought of her with awe because he was not seeing Mary Arden, musical -comedy actress, through the elderly eyes of his uncles, still less of -his aunts, but from the angle of our soldiers in France who made Mary a -romantic symbol of the girls they left behind them. To marry Mary Arden -would be an awfully big adventure. - -***** - -She had time, while he was at Staithley, to come to terms with his -disclosure. In the restaurant, when it came upon her suddenly, it had -sent her, certainly, heels over head, but, soberly considered, she began -to ask herself what there was in it that should disconcert her. She -was Bradshaw and he a Hepplestall and she believed that without effort, -merely by not discouraging him, she could make him marry her. What could -be neater? What revenge more exquisite upon the Hepplestalls than Mary -Ellen Bradshaw, Lady Hepplestall? - -True--if she hated them. But her hatred, reexamined, seemed a visionary -thing; at the most it was romantic decoration to a fact and in this mood -of inquisition Mary sought facts without their trimmings. She sought her -hatred of the Hepplestalls and found she had no hatred in her. - -She raised her eyes to the photograph of Staithley Edge. Yes, that was -authentic feeling, that passion for the Staithley hills, but she didn’t -want to go there in order to take the shine out of the Hepplestalls. She -had romanticized that feeling, she had made hatred the excuse for her -ambition, so arbitrary in an actress with a vogue, to go back to live -bleakly amongst smoke-tarnished moors. Rupert, for instance, was firmly -set against return. - -It was deflating, like losing a diamond ring, and she did not humble -herself to the belief that the diamond had never been there. It had, in -the clan-hatred of the Bradshaws, but she had been stagey about it. She -had magnified a childish memory into a living vendetta and, scrutinized -to-day, she saw it as a tinsel wrapping, crumbling at exposure to -daylight, round her sane sweet passion for the hills: and the conclusion -was that Rupert Hepplestall meant no more to her than Rupert Fairy--or -little more. She had mischief enough in her to savor the thought of Mary -Ellen squired in London by Sir Rupert Hepplestall and decided that if -he wanted to take his orders from her for the period of his leave, she -would take particular pleasure in ordering him imperiously. - -She calculated, she thought, with comprehensiveness, but missed two -factors, one (which she should have remembered) that Rupert had seemed -lovable, the other (which she could not guess) that he returned from -Staithley to begin his serious wooing. He laid siege before defenses -which she had deliberately weakened by her re-orientation of her facts. - -One day, before he must go back to France, he spoke outright of love. -If he hadn’t, half a dozen times, declared himself, then he didn’t know -what mute announcement was, but leave was running out and addressing -silent questions to a sphinx left him a long way short of tangible -result. - -“Oh, love!” she jeered. “What’s love?” - -“I can tell you that,” he said, “better than I could ten days ago. -Love’s selfishness _à deux_. I’m one of the two and my idea of love is -finding comfort in your arms.” - -She thought it a good answer, so good that it brought her to her feet -and to (they were in her flat) the drawer in her desk where she had -hidden a photograph. Holding it to him, “Do you recognize that?” she -asked. “The other day, when we were talking, I said I had no people -and--” - -“Was that mattering before the war? I’m sure it doesn’t matter now,” he -said. - -“And this photograph?” - -He shook his head. “It might be any hill.” - -“But it is Staithley Edge.” - -For a moment he was radiant. “You got it,” he glowed, “because of me.” - -“I got it because of me. Listen. I’m Mary Arden, actress. I’m -twenty-five years old and I’m about as high as any one can get in -musical comedy. I began in the chorus, but I’ve had a soft passage up -because I was pushed by an agent who believed in me. If you think I’m -more than that, you’re wrong. And I’m much less than that. I said I had -no people, and it isn’t true.” - -“I don’t want to know about your people. We’re you and I. We’re Mary and -Rupert.” - -“Yes. But we’re Mary Bradshaw and Rupert Hepplestall.” - -With that, she thought, she slaughtered hope, not his alone but -something that grew in her, something she was thinking of as hope -because she dared not think of it as love. Now she need no longer think -of it at all; she had killed it; she had met his candor with her candor, -she had announced herself a Bradshaw. It was the death of hope. - -Suffering herself but compassionate for the pain she must have given -him, she raised her eyes to his. And the response to a lady martyring -herself to truth was an indulgent smile and maddening misapprehension. -“Is there anything in that? Bradshaw instead of Arden? Surely it’s usual -to have a stage-name.” - -“You haven’t understood. When I pretend to be Lancashire on the stage, I -don’t pretend. Is that clear?” - -It irked him that he couldn’t say, “As mud.” She was too passionately in -earnest for him to dare the flippancies. He said, “Yes, that’s clear.” - -“And Staithley in particular. I’m Staithley born and bred. Bred, I’m -telling you, in Staithley Streets. My name’s Bradshaw.” - -He lashed his memory, aware dimly that Bradshaw had associations for him -other than the railway-guide. It was coming to him now. The Staithley -Bradshaws, that sixteenth birthday interview with his father, his own -disparaging of Tom Bradshaw and Sir Philip’s defense of him. His father -had been right, too. Tom was in some office under the Coalition, pulling -his weight like all the rest. The war had proved his sportsmanship, -as it had everybody’s. He hadn’t a doubt that any of the Staithley -Bradshaws who were in the army were splendid soldiers. - -In the ranks, though. - -One thought twice about marrying their sister. He wished she hadn’t -told him, and as he wished it she was emphasizing, “I’m from the Begging -Bradshaws.” - -He forced a smile. “You’re a long way from them, then,” he said, and she -agreed on that. - -“Oh, yes,” she said, “I’m eight years from them. I don’t know them and -they don’t know me. I’m Mary Arden to every one but you: only when you -say your idea of love is finding comfort in my arms, I had to tell you -just whose arms they are. I’m Bradshaw and I’ve sung for pennies in the -Staithley Streets.” - -Some of the implications he did not perceive at once, but he saw the -one that mattered. His sphinx had spoken now. She “had” to tell him, and -there were only two reasons why. The first was that she loved him, and -the second was that she was honest in her love--“Mary,” he said, “you’ll -marry me.” - -“No.” - -“If you want arguments about a thing that’s settled, I’ll give you -them,” he said. “You don’t know what a gift you’ve brought me. You don’t -know how magnificently it suits me that you’re Bradshaw.” - -“Suits you!” she cried incredulously, and he told her why of all the -things she might have been she was the one which definitely wiped out -all possibility of his return to Staithley. They couldn’t force him -there with a Bradshaw for his wife, they would be the first to cry out -that it wouldn’t do: she was his master-card, Mary, whom he loved; she -was Mary Arden and tremendously a catch; she was Mary Bradshaw, his sure -defense against the rigid expectations of the Hepplestalls and... oh, -uncounted things besides. “And I apologize,” he said, “I apologize for -arguing, for dragging in the surrounding circumstance. But you tell me -you’re Bradshaw as if it unmade us and I tell you it’s the best touch in -the making of us.” - -She wasn’t sure of that. She was idiosyncratic and peculiar herself in -wishing to go back to Staithley, but she felt that her dream, though she -had stripped it of romantic hate, yet stood for something sounder than -his mere obstinate refusal to return. He left himself in air; he was -a negative; rejecting Staithley, he had no plans of what he was to do -after the war. - -But that was to prejudge him, it was certainly to calculate, and she had -calculated too much in her life. Caution be hanged! There was a place -for wildness. - -They would say, of course, that she was marrying for position. Let them -say: she would, certainly, be Lady Hepplestall, but at what a discount! -To be Lady Hep-plestall and not to live in Lancashire, in the one place -where the significance of being Hepplestall was grasped in full! It was -like marrying a king in exile, it was like receiving a rope of pearls -upon condition that she never wore them. It excluded the pungent climax -of Mary Ellen as Mistress of Staithley Hall. - -Her dream had set, indeed, in a painted sky, but she would not linger in -gaze upon its afterglow; she was not looking at sunset but at dawn, and -raised her eyes to his. She discovered that she was being kissed. She -had the sensation, ecstatic and poignant, surrendering and triumphant, -of being kissed by the man she loved. - -She had not, hitherto, conceived a high opinion of kissing. On the stage -and off, it was a professional convention, fractionally more expressive -than a handshake. This was radically different; this was, tinglingly, -vividly, to feel, to be aware of herself and, through their lips, of -him. She had the exaltation of the giver who gives without reserve, and -from up there, bemused in happiness, star-high with Rupert’s kiss and -her renunciations, she fell through space when he unclasped her and -said with brisk assurance, “Engagement ring before lunch. License after -lundi. That’s a reasonable program, isn’t it?” - -Perhaps it was reasonable to a time-pressed man whose leave could now -be counted by the hour. Perhaps she hadn’t seen that there is only one -first kiss. It came, and no matter what the sequel held, went lonely, -unmatched, unique. What passion-laden words could she expect from him to -lengthen a moment that was gone? - -It wasn’t he who was failing’ her, it was herself who must, pat upon -their incomparable moment, be criticizing him because he was not -miraculous but practical. And this was thought, a sickly thing, when her -business was to feel, it was opposition when her business was surrender. -The wild thing was the right thing now. She purged herself of thought. - -“Yes,” she said. She was to marry. Marry. And then he would go back to -France; but first he was to find comfort in her arms. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII--THE REGENCY - -THE rigorous theory that a Hepplestall was instantly prepared at the -word of command to go to the ends of the earth in the interests of -the firm was, in practice, softened by expediency. They did not, for -instance, recall their manager at Calcutta or Rio and expect him to -fill a home berth as aptly as a man who had not spent half a lifetime in -familiarizing himself with special foreign conditions; they used their -man-power with discretion and humanity, and there seemed nothing harsh -in expecting William Hepplestall, chief of their Manchester offices, to -remove to Staithley when he became the acting Head. - -William was a man who, in other circumstances, would have deserved -the epithet “worthy,” perhaps with its slightly mocking significance -emphasized by a capital W. A “Worthy” has solid character bounded by -parochial imagination; and William rose, but only by relentless effort, -to thinking in the wide-world terms of trade imposed upon the chief of -Hepplestal’s Manchester warehouse. He was masterly in routine; under Sir -Philip, a trusted executant of that leader’s conceptions; and since -he bore his person with great dignity, he cut a figure ambassadorial, -impressive, fit representative in Manchester of the Hepplestalls who -took the view of that city that it was an outpost--their principal -outpost--of Staithley Bridge. - -Probably Sir Philip, had he been alive, would have prevented William’s -promotion; but Sir Philip had died suddenly, without chance to nominate -a successor who, most likely, would have been unobvious and, most -certainly, the best. And even Sir Philip would have saluted ungrudgingly -the spirit, humble yet resolute, in which William accepted his -responsibility. The Board, weakened in personnel by the war, did, as -Boards do, the obvious thing, and were very well satisfied with the -wisdom of their choice. - -What they did not understand, what William himself did not foresee, was -that his difficulties were to be increased by the conduct of his wife. -Mrs. William had failed to realize that in marrying William she married -a Service. She thought she married the head of Hepplestall’s Manchester -offices and that she had, as a result, her position in Manchester and -her distinguished home in Alderley Edge, which is almost a rural suburb -and, also, the seat of a peer. Short of living in London, to which she -had vague aspirations when William retired, she was very well content -with her degree; and the news that she was expected to uproot herself -and to live in Staithley came as a startling assault on settled -prepossessions. While she hadn’t the challenging habit of asserting that -she was of Manchester and proud of it, she knew the difference between -Manchester, where one could pretend one was not provincial, and -Staithley, where no such pretense was possible, and it was vainly that -William told her of Lady Hepplestall’s offer to leave the Hall in -their favor. Sir Philip’s widow knew, if Mrs. William didn’t, what was -incumbent on a Hepplestall. - -“In other words, we’re to be caretakers for Rupert,” she said. “What -will become of my Red Cross committee work here?” - -William suggested that by using the car she need be cut off from none of -her activities. “But I’m to live down there,” she said, “decentralized, -in darkest Lancashire,” and she had her alternative. If the firm -required this irrational sacrifice of William’s wife, he had surely his -reply that he was rich enough to retire and would retire with her, -to London. Her friend, Lady Duxbury, was already preparing to move to -London after the war; the William Hepplestalls could move now. They were -forced to move now. - -“It is not a question of being rich enough to retire,” he said. “No -doubt I am that; but I am an able-bodied servant of the firm. We -Hepplestalls do not retire while we are capable of service.” - -She had never thought him so dull a dog before; she whistled at the -obligations of the Service, and she exaggerated the influence of a wife -which persuades in proportion as it is ventured sparingly, seasonably, -and with due regard to the example of pig-drivers who, when they would -have their charges go to the left, make a feint of driving them to the -right. - -“Sir Ralph Duxbury is younger than you,” she argued, “and he’s retiring -at the end of the war. They’re going to London to enjoy life before -they’re too old.” - -“Duxbury,” said William severely, “is a war-profiteer. His future plans -tally with his present.” - -“Oh, how can you say that of your friend?” - -“I can say it of most of my friends. But you would hardly suggest that -it is true of me. You would hardly put the case of a Hepplestall on all -fours with the case of a Duxbury.” - -She did suggest it. “But surely you are all in business to make money!” - -“My dear,” he said, with dignified rebuke, “I am a Hepplestall,” and -left it, without more argument, at that. He knew no cure for eyes which -saw no difference between the Service and the nimble men who had thriven -by the mushroom trades of temporary war-contractors. “And we go to -Staithley.” - -If it was a matter of capitulations, he had his own to make in -his disappearance from Manchester, his familiar scene. The Head of -Hepplestalls made no half-and-half business of it, dividing his days -between the mills, the Manchester office and the Manchester Exchange. He -left others to cut a figure on ‘Change and to hold court in the offices. -His place was at the source, at the mills, a standard-bearer of the -cotton trade, a manufacturer first and a salesman and distributor only -by proxy. It meant, for William, the change in the habits of half -a lifetime, the end of his pleasant Cheshire County associations at -Alderley, the end of his lunches in his club in Manchester, and, so -far, he could have sympathized with Gertrude if only she hadn’t, by the -violence of her expression, driven him hotly to resent her view. - -She called it “darkest Lancashire”--Staithley, the Staithley of the -Hepplestalls! “Caretakers for Rupert!” There was truth in that, though -the caretaking, by reason of the war and because when the war ended -Rupert had still to begin at the beginning, would last ten years and -(confound Gertrude), couldn’t she see what it meant to William that he -was going to live and to have his children live in Staithley Hall where -he had spent his boyhood? Caretakers! They were all caretakers, they -were all trustees. Above all, he, William, was Head of Hepple-stall’s -and his wife had so little appreciation of the glory that was his as to -be captious about the trivial offsets. - -The responsibility, heaven knew, was heavy enough without Gertrude’s -adding to it this galling burden of her discontent, but, though she -submitted, it was never gracefully. She went to Staithley determined -that their time there should be short, that she would lose no -opportunity to press for his retirement; but she had learned the need of -subtlety. She had found her William a malleable husband, but there -were hard places in the softest men and here was one of them not to be -negotiated easily or hurriedly, but by a gentle tactfulness. Perhaps she -knew, better than he knew himself, that there was no granite in him. - -She reminded him, not every day or every week, but sufficiently often -to show that she did not relent, of her hatred of Staithley. She had -the wisdom not to criticize the Hall--indeed she couldn’t, even when she -flogged resentment, disrelish that aging place of mellow beauty--but, -“If it were anywhere but at Staithley!” she cried with wearying -monotony, and in a score of ways she made dissatisfaction rankle. It was -a fact in their lives which she intended to turn into a factor. - -She made a minor counter of Rupert’s marriage to a musical comedy -actress. “I’m caretaker for a slut,” she said, and when, after the war, -William was indulgent about Rupert who was demobilized and yet did not -come to Staithley, her fury was uncontrolled. “He has had no honeymoon -and no holiday,” said William. “Both are due to him before he comes -here.” - -“Here,” she said, “to the Hall, to turn me out of the only thing -that made Staithley tolerable. You expect me to live in a villa in -Staithley?” - -“The Hall is Rupert’s. If he were a bachelor, he would no doubt ask us -to stay on. As he is married, we must find other quarters.” - -“But not in Staithley. William, say it shall not be in Staithley.” - -“It must.” - -“I’m evicted for that slut! Have you no more thought for your wife than -to humiliate me like that?” - -“There is no humiliation, Gertrude. And, I expect, no need to think of -this at all yet. Rupert deserves a long holiday.” - -“Keeping me on tenterhooks, never knowing from one day to the next when -I shall get orders to quit. And, all the time we could do the reasonable -thing. We could leave Staithley and go to London.” - -“We shall not leave Staithley,” he said. “Staithley is the home of the -Head of Hepplestall’s.” - -“The homeless Head,” she taunted, and he did, in fact, almost as much -as she, resent the implications of Rupert’s marriage. It had been suave -living at the Hall, peopled with memories of his race and, important -point, affording room for a man to escape into from his wife. Certainly -he had been dull about Rupert’s marriage, he hadn’t sufficiently -perceived that he must leave the Hall to live elsewhere in Staithley. “A -villa in Staithley,” Gertrude put it, and truly he supposed that he -must live in a house which would be correctly described as a villa. He -couldn’t expect the associations of the Hall, but he wanted scope in a -Staithley home in which to flee from Gertrude, and looked ahead with a -sense of weariness to the long period of Rupert’s noviciate. Then, and -not till then, he might chant his “_Nunc dîmittis_” he might retire and -go, as Gertrude wished, to London, but not before then. Certainly not -before then. - -But war disintegrates. William was wrong in thinking that he had to pit -his tenacity and his sense of duty only against Gertrude. The end of the -war and its immediate sequel were to blow a shrewd side-wind upon his -resolution to endure. - -The great delusion of the war was that its end would be peace. William -was encouraged by that delusion to wrestle with the war-problems of his -business: the shortage of raw cotton, the leaping costs of production, -the shortage of shipping. The home trade was good beyond precedent, it -almost seemed that the higher the price the greater the demand; but -the home market, at its most voracious, took only a minor part of -Hepplestall’s output. Turkey was an enemy; India, China and South -America followed warily the upward trend of prices, expecting the end of -the war to bring a sudden fall, and, also, were difficult of access by -reason of the transport shortage. In spite of the military service act, -in spite of their woolen dyeing, and of every device that William and -the Board could contrive to keep the great mills active, there was -unemployment at Hepplestall’s. Cotton was rationed in Lancashire and -Hepplestall’s quota of the common stock was insufficient to keep their -spindles at work. The situation was met adequately by the Cotton Control -Board and the Unions and by the substitution of corporate spirit for -individualism; by high wages; by a pool of fines imposed on those who -worked more spindles and took more cotton than their due; and ends were -met all round, but, however different the case of the munition trades, -cotton was no beneficiary of the war. - -The year 1919 brought a great and a dangerous reaction. It was seen by -the foreign markets that their expectations of a spectacular fall in -prices were not to be realized, and, for a time, buyers scrambled -to supply, at any price, cotton goods to countries starved of cotton -practically throughout the war. William looked back to his father’s time -when the margin of profit on a pound of yarn had been reckoned by an -eighth or a farthing: it was now sixpence or more, and he trembled -for the cotton trade. Such margins had the febrile unhealthiness of an -overheated forcing-house. He hadn’t expected peace to duplicate for him -the conditions of 1913, but these profits, current in 1919, expressed -for him the hazards of the peace. There was a madness in the very air, -and a frenzy of speculation resulted from this rebound of the cotton -trade from war-depression to extreme buoyancy. The profits were -notorious, and Labor could not be expected to remain without its share -of the loot. That was reasonable enough, but William had no faith in -the boom’s lasting and knew the difficulty of persuading Labor to accept -reduction when the tight times came. Meanwhile, certainly, Labor had a -sound case for a large advance in wages, even though wages had -steadily risen throughout the war. William wondered if any helmsman -of Hepple-stall’s had ever faced such anxious times as these; the very -appearance of prosperity, deceptive and fleeting as he held it to be, -was incalculable menace. In spite of himself, he was a profiteer--not a -war, but an as-a-result-of-the-war profiteer--and both hated and feared -it. This was not peace but pyrotechny; they were up like a rocket and he -feared to come down like the stick. - -Lancashire was turned into a speculator’s cockpit and cotton mill shares -were changing hands sometimes at ten times their nominal value. The -point, especially, was the prohibitive cost of building, so that -existing mills had monopoly valuations. The general anticipation, which -William did not share, was that a world hunger for cotton goods would -sustain the boom for four or five years; there was plenty of war-made -wealth ready for investment, and the cotton trade appeared a promising -field for high and quick returns. - -So much money was there and so attractive did cotton trade prospects -appear that the local speculator began to be outbidden very greatly to -his patriotic annoyance. The annoyance, indeed, was more than patriotic -or parochial, it was sensible. A highly technical trade can be run -to advantage only when its controllers have not only full technical -knowledge, but full knowledge of local characteristics and prejudices, -and Lancashire was, historically, self-supporting with its finance as -well as its trade under Lancashire direction. From its brutal origins -to its present comparatively humane organization, its struggles and its -achievements had been its own. - -The interests of the financier are financial; one-eyed, short-sighted, -parasitic interests. Steam and the factory system fell like a blight -on Lancashire, but they had in them the elements of progress of a kind; -they worked out, outrageously, in the course of a century to a balance -where the power was not exclusively the employers’. The object of the -London financiers who now perceived in Lancashire a fruitful field was -to buy up mills, run them under managers for the first years of the -boom, then, before new mills could be built, to show amazing profits and -to unload on the guileless public before the boom collapsed. It was -a raid purely in financial interests and opposed to the permanent -interests of Lancashire, which would be left to bear, in a new era of -distress, the burdens imposed by over-capitalization. To the financier, -Lancashire was a counter in whose future he had no interest after he -had floated his companies and got out with his profits. And he collected -mills like so many tricks in his game. - -The owners were fraudulent trustees to sell even under temptation of -such prices as were offered? Well, many did not sell, and for others -there was the excuse, besides natural greed, of war-weariness. They had -the feeling that here was security offered them, ease after years of -strain; it was a _sauve qui peut_ and the devil take the hindmost. They -were men who hadn’t been in business for their health and were offered -golden opportunity to retire from business. They had been, perhaps, a -little jealous of others who had made strictly war wealth, and this -was their chance to get hold, at second hand, of a share of those war -profits. There was the example of others... there would be stressful -times ahead for the cotton trade... Labor upheavals... it was good to be -out of it all, with one’s money gently in the Funds. - -And Finance goes stealthily to work: it was not at first apparent, -even to sellers, that behind the nominal buyers were non-Lancashire -financiers. There was no immediate apprehension of the objects; nobody -took quick alarm. Labor, especially the Oldham spinners, had cotton -shares to sell and took a profit with the rest. They started a special -share exchange in Oldham: it was open through the Christmas holidays -and on New Year’s Day of 1920. That speaks more than volumes for the -dementia of that boom. Working on New Year’s Day in Oldham! What was -the use of being sentimentally annoyed at being outbidden by a Londoner, -even if you perceived he was a Londoner, when the congenital idiot -offered ten pounds for a pound share on which you had only paid up five -shillings? - -Appetite grew by what it fed on and Finance ceased to be satisfied with -acquiring small mills whose names, at any rate, were unknown to the -outside investor. Hepplestall’s was different, Hepplestall’s was known -to every shopkeeper and every housewife in the land. It was, in the -opinion of Finance, only a question of price; and prices did not cow -Finance. - -William sat in the office of the Hepplestalls with a letter before him -which was Finance’s opening gambit in the game. It was addressed to -him personally, marked “private and confidential,” by a London firm -of chartered accountants whose national eminence left no doubt of the -serious intentions of their clients. - -Which of us does not know the fearful joy of mental flirtation with -crime? William, restraining his first sound impulse to tear up the -letter and to put its fragments where they properly belonged, in -the waste-paper basket, persuaded himself that his motive was simple -curiosity. It had nothing to do with Gertrude, nor with her impatience -of Rupert who was prolonging a holiday into a habit, and who, if he made -no signal that her reign in Staithley Hall must end, made no signal, -either, that his training for the Service must begin. By this time, -William had, distinctly, his puzzled misgivings about Rupert, but he -hadn’t quite reached the point of seeing in Rupert’s absence and his -uncommunicativeness a deliberate challenge to the Service. He attributed -to thoughtlessness an absence which was thoughtful. - -He had at first no other idea than to calculate what fabulous figure -would, in existing circumstances, be justly demanded for Hepplestall’s -on the ridiculous hypothesis of Hepplestall’s being for sale. There -was surely no harm on a slack morning in a little theoretic financial -exercise of that kind. There wasn’t; but, for all that, he went about -the collecting of data, alone in his office under the pictured _eyes_ of -bygone Hepplestalls, with the furtive air of a criminal. - -For insurance purposes, in view of post-war values, they had recently -had a professional valuation made of the mills, machinery, office and -warehouse buildings in Staithley and Manchester. Providential, William -thought, meaning, of course, no more than that he need not waste more -than an hour or so in satisfying his natural curiosity. It was, he -asserted, defiantly daring the _gaze_ of the Founder on the wall, -natural to be curious. - -He had the valuation for insurance before him now: he applied the -multiplication table to reach an estimate of the market value. He -meditated goodwill. Guiltily he attempted to capitalize the name of -Hepplestall’s, and it made him feel less guilty to capitalize it in -seven figures. The total result was so large that, notwithstanding the -national eminence of the chartered accountants whose letter was in his -pocket, he felt justified in regarding his proceedings as completely -extravagant. - -So he might just as well amuse himself further. He might, for instance, -refresh his memory of the distribution of Hepplestall’s shares, and -he might turn up the articles of association and see if that document, -usually so comprehensive, had anticipated this unlikeliest of all -improbabilities, a sale of Hepplestall’s: and what emerged from his -investigation was the fact that if he and Rupert voted, on their joint -holdings of shares, for a sale at a legally summoned general meeting of -Hepplestall’s shareholders, a sale would be authorized. He and Rupert! -William found himself sweating violently. It was impure, obscene -nightmare, but style his communings what he would, the pass was there -and he and Rupert had the power to sell it. - -He rose and paced the room. War disintegrates, but not to this degree, -not to the degree of dissipating the tradition of the Hepplestalls. He, -the Head, the Chief Trustee, had meditated treachery, but only (he faced -the portraits reassuringly), only speculatively, only in pursuit of a -train of thought started by an impertinent letter, which he had not torn -up. No, he had not torn it up, he had preserved it as laughable proof -of the insensibility to finer issues of these financial people. He would -show it to his brothers or to Rupert: it would become quite a family -jest. - -To Rupert? Indeed he ought to show it first to Rupert, the future Head. -He could, jokingly, good-humoredly, use it as a lever to make Rupert -conscious of his responsibilities, he could say “if you don’t come -quickly, there’ll be no Hepplestall’s for you to come to. Look at this -letter. You and I, between us, have controlling interest; we could sell -the firm, and the rest of the Board could not effectively prevent us. -I’m joking, of course. That sort of thing isn’t in the tradition of the -Hepplestalls. And, by the way, speaking of the tradition, when are we to -expect you amongst us?” - -Something like that; not a bit a business letter, not serious; genial -and avuncular; but there was, manifestly, a Rupert affair, and this -impudent inquiry of the eminent chartered accountants was the very means -to bring the affair to a head. The boy was exceeding the license allowed -even to one who had been in the war from the beginning; it was nearly a -year since his demobilization. - -William thought that his letter would seem more friendly if he addressed -it from the Hall and looked in his desk for notepaper. He seemed to have -run out of the supply of private notepaper he kept in his desk; then the -spinning manager interrupted him. He put the letter in his pocket again: -he would write to Rupert after lunch at the Hall. - -He was busy for some time with the spinning manager, and went home -convinced that the only serious thought he had ever had about the letter -in his pocket was of its opportuneness in the matter of Rupert. It was -nothing beyond a plausible excuse for writing to Rupert essentially on -another subject and the figures in his note-book were not a traitor’s -secret but the meaningless result of a middle-aged gentleman’s mental -gymnastics. - -He lunched alone with Gertrude and, “I’m writing to Rupert to-day,” he -said incautiously. - -“Oh?” She bristled. “Why?” - -He perceived and regretted his incaution. It was indiscreet to say that -his object was to urge Rupert to Staithley when that coming could only -mean Gertrude’s going from the Hall. “Oh,” he said, “I’ve to send on a -letter which will amuse him.” He had decided that the only use of -that letter was humorous; it was a jest, questionable in taste but -illustrative of the times and therefore to be mentioned in the family -and preserved as a curiosity amongst the papers of the firm. And if it -were going to be a family diversion, who had better right than William’s -wife to be the first to enjoy it with him? She had unreal grievances -enough without his adding to them the real grievance of his denying her -the right to laugh at those harlequin accountants who so grotesquely -misapprehended Hepplestall’s. “This is the letter,” he said, passing it -across to her, expecting, actually, that she would smile. - -She did not smile. “I see,” she said, and, in fact, saw very well. -Women’s incomprehension of business has been exaggerated. “Why, to -arrive at the figure they ask for would take weeks of work.” - -“I got at it roughly in half an hour this morning,” he boasted. - -“And sent it to them?” she asked quickly. - -“Oh dear, no. I was only doing it as a matter of curiosity. If I sent -them my result, I should frighten them.” - -“They must expect something big, though. Shan’t you reply at all or are -you consulting Rupert first?” - -“I’d hardly say ‘consult,’” he said. “I’m sending it him as I show -it you--as a joke. I shall point out to him, as a form, that he and I -between us have a controlling share interest. I shall jest about -our powers. It’s an opportunity of making Rupert awake to his -responsibilities.” - -“Yes,” said Gertrude, “I see. And you know best, dear.” She was -dangerously uncombative, arranging her mental notes that, though he -derided the letter, he had prepared an estimate and that he was writing -to Rupert who, with William, could take decisive action. By way purely -of showing him how little seriously she took it, she changed the -subject. - -“I heard from Connie Duxbury this morning,” she said. - -“Not the most desirable of your acquaintances, I think,” said William. - -“Oh, my dear. Sir Ralph’s a member of Parliament now.” - -“It isn’t a certificate of respectability.” - -She looked thoughtfully at him, as he rose and went into the library to -write to Rupert, with the careful, anxious gaze of a wife who sees in -her husband the symptoms of ill-health. She wished to leave Staithley -for her own sake, but decidedly it was for William’s sake as well. In -Manchester, if he had not been advanced, if (for instance) his play at -Bridge was circumspect while hers was dashing, he had been broadminded. -She remembered that he had spoken of Sir Ralph as a profiteer, but had -admitted that most of their friends were profiteers. Staithley, already, -was narrowing William, in months. What would it not do for him in years? -She must get him out of Staithley before it was too late. - -He was writing to Rupert; so would she write to Rupert. She would -assume, and she had her shrewd idea that the assumption was correct, -that Rupert’s views of Staithley marched with her own. She would paint -in lurid colors a picture of life in Staithley; she would exhibit -William, his furrowed brow, his whitening hair, as an awful warning; -she would enlarge upon the post-war difficulties, so immensely more -wearisome than in Sir Philip’s time. She would suggest that the -accountants’ letter was a salvation, a means honorable and reasonable, -of cutting the entail, of escaping from the Service. And she would tell -him to regard her letter as confidential. - -She had no doubt whatever of her success with Rupert and as to William, -waverer was written all over him. Rupert’s decision would decide -William, and the William Hepplestalls would go to London. There were -housing troubles, but if you had money and if you took time by the -forelock, trouble melted. She proceeded to take time by the forelock and -wrote to Lady Duxbury to ask her to keep an eye open for a large house -near her own. She whispered to her dearest Connie in the very, very -strictest confidence that Hepplestall’s was going to be sold. - - - - -CHAPTER IX--MARY ARDEN’S HUSBAND - -GIVE up the stage!” echoed Mr. Chown, assuming an appearance of -thunderstruck amazement. - -“Don’t act at me, my friend,” said Mary. “You must have had the -probability in mind ever since I told you I was married.” - -He had; that was the worst of women; an agent sweated blood to make a -woman into a star, and the thankless creature manned and retired. -But Mary had not immediately retired and he thought he had reasonable -grounds for hoping that she would continue to pay him his commission for -many years; a woman who married well and yet remained on the stage could -surely be acting only because she liked it, and Mr. Chown had a lure to -dangle before her which could hardly fail of its effect upon any actress -who cared two straws for her profession. - -He remembered the day when he had rung up Rossiter and had said, “Mary’s -married,” and Rossiter had replied, “Right, I’ll watch her,” and, a -little later, had told him “Mary will do. She can play Sans-Gêne.” - -That was the bait he had for Mary. When (if ever), London tired -of “Granada the Gay,” she was to play Sans-Gêne. She was to stand -absolutely at the head of her profession. He reviewed musical comedy -and could think of no woman’s part in all its repertoire which was so -signally the blue riband of the lighter stage; and Rossiter destined it -for the wear of Mary Arden! - -“Listen to this, Mary. Do you know what Rossiter is doing next?” - -“I’ll see it from the stalls,” she said. - -“No. You’ll be it. You’ll be Sans-Gêne in ‘The Duchess of Dantzig.’ ” - -“I didn’t tell you I’m retiring from the stage, did I? All I said was -that it’s possible.” - -“Ah!” said Chown, watching his bait at work. - -“You’re wrong,” she said. “You’re wrong.” - -He put his hand on hers. “Am I, Mary? Absolutely?” - -“No,” she confessed, “and I’m grateful. You’ve done many things for me -and this is the biggest of them all. If I stay on the stage, I’ll play -it and I’ll... I’ll not make a failure. But you haven’t tempted me to -stay. I’m getting mixed. I mean I’m tempted, horribly. I’ve a megaphone -in my brain that’s shouting at me to damn everything and just jolly well -show them what I can do with that part. But I won’t damn everything. I -won’t forget the things that make it doubtful whether I’ll stay on the -stage or not. I’ll give up Sans-Gêne rather than forget them, and I know -as well as you do what Rossiter means by casting me for that part. He -means that Mary’s right there.” - -“Yes,” said Chown, “he means that.” - -“It’s decent of him. We’ll be decent, too, please. We’ll tell him -there’s a doubt.” - -“Look here, Mary, I know you well enough to ask. Is it a baby?” - -She shook her head. “Not that sort of baby,” she said, and puzzled him. - -It was Rupert. In Mary’s opinion, Rupert was in danger of becoming the -husband of Mary Arden, one of those deplorable hangers-on of the theater -who assert a busy self-importance because they are married to somebody -who is famous. He hadn’t, quite, come to that yet, but it was difficult -to see what else he could assert of himself beyond his emphatic negative -against going to Staithley; and she proposed very definitely that he -should not come to it, either. He should not, even if she had to leave -the stage, even if she must sacrifice so great, so climactic a part as -Sans-Gêne. - -She had not come painlessly to that opinion of him. She had not watched -him since his demobilization and she had not come to her profound -conviction that something was very wrong with Rupert, without feeling -shame at her scrutiny and distrust of this love of hers which could -disparage. At first, while he was still at the Front, she went on acting -simply to drug anxiety. She acted on the stage by night and for the -films by day, and later it was to see if she could not, by setting an -example, persuade him that work was a sound diet; and now she was afraid -that the example had miscarried and that her associations with the stage -were doing him a mischief. To work in the Galaxy was one thing, to loaf -in it another, and he, who had no work to do there, was in it a good -deal. - -If Rupert was developing anything, it was listlessness. He had an animal -content in Mary, and was allowing a honeymoon to become a routine. -Perhaps because she was a certainty and because the war had sated him -with hazards, he could not bear to be away from her. She had suggested -Cambridge and, though it was flat, was ready to go there with him. -He went and looked at Cambridge, found it overcrowded and returned to -London. Through the summer he played some cricket, in minor M. C. C. -matches, and did not find his form. He thought of golf for the winter, -found that the good clubs had long waiting lists, and, though friends -offered to rush him in, refused to have strings pulled for him. - -Privately, he had self-criticism and tried to stifle it. There was -a miasma of disillusionment everywhere; there was the Peace that was -mislaid by French pawnbrokers instead of being made by gentlemen; there -was the impulse to forget the war on the part of the civilian population -who now seemed so brutally in possession; there was the treatment of -disbanded soldiery which, this time, was to have belied history, and -didn’t. He strained to believe the current dicta of the minority mind -and to find in them excuse for his lethargy. - -He was, no doubt, tired; but whatever subtle infections of the soul -might be distressing him, materially at any rate he was immune from the -common aggravation of high prices. He made that explicitly one of his -excuses. It wasn’t fair that he, who had all the money he needed, should -take a job from a man who needed money. “There’s unpaid work,” thought -Mary, but she did not say it. She thought he must sooner or later see it -for himself. - -He did see it and tried to blink at it. He was of the Hepplestalls, of a -race who weren’t acclimatized to leisure, who found happiness in setting -their teeth in work. He was born with a conscience and couldn’t damp it -down. He was aware, at the back of behind, that it was hurting him to -turn a deaf ear to the call of Staithley. He had done worse things -than Staithley implied in the necessity of war, and there was also a -necessity of peace. He felt nobly moral to let such sentiments find -lodgment in his mind. - -His father’s diffident comparison of the Hepplestalls with the Samurai -came back to him. Yes, one ought to serve, but it wasn’t necessary to -go to Staithley to be a Samurai. One could be a Samurai in London. He, -decisively, was forced to be a Samurai in London because he had married -Mary Arden and to wrench her from her vocation, to take her away from -London, was unthinkable. - -There was no hurry to set about discovering the place of a Samurai in -modern London. Like everybody else he had, with superlative reason, -promised himself a good time after the war, and if the good time had its -unforeseen drawbacks, that was no ground for refusing to enjoy all the -good there was. Mary was not the whole of the good time, but she was its -center. He supposed he couldn’t--certainly he couldn’t; there were other -things in life than a wife--concentrate indefinitely on Mary, but this -world of the theater to which she belonged was so jolly, so strange to -him, so unaccountably enthralling. He became expert in its politics -and its gossip. He was obsessed by it through her who had never been -obsessed. He was duped, as she had never been since Hugh Darley applied -his corrective to her childish errors, by the terribly false perspective -of the theater. He saw the theater, indeed, in terms of Mary; several -times a week he sat through her scenes in a stall at the Galaxy, -and when she scoffed at the idiotic pride he took in gleaning inside -information, in knowing what so and so was going to do before the -announcement appeared in the papers, and at being privileged to go to -some dress-rehearsals, it was, he thought, only because she was used to -it all while he came freshly to it. He might even find that a Samurai -was needed in the theater. Would Mary like him to put up a play for her? -He thought her reply hardly fair to the excellence of his intentions. -But if she refused, incisively, to let him be a Samurai of the theater, -she was troubled to see him continue his education of an initiate. - -He was self-persuaded that his fussy loafing had importance, when it -was, at most, a turbid retort to conscience. He was feeling his way, he -was learning the ropes, he was meditating his plans, and there was no -lack of flattering council offered to the husband of Mary Arden who was, -besides, rich. - - Big fleas have little fleas - Upon their backs to bite ’em. - These fleas have other fleas - And so, ad infinitum. - -Morally, he was the little flea on Mary’s back, and he was collecting -parasites on his own. Then William’s letter came, offering a clean cut -from Staithley and an annihilating reply to his conscience. - -He didn’t need Gertrude’s letter to show him exactly what William’s -and William’s enclosure meant. He read clearly between the lines that -William wobbled. “He’s on the fence,” he thought, “he doesn’t need a -push to shove him over,--he needs a touch.” Then Rupert and William, -acting together, must face a hostile Board of conservative Hepplestalls, -and a nasty encounter he expected it to be. They wouldn’t spare words -about his father’s son. - -But that was a small price to pay for freedom; Rupert and William -had the whip hand and the rest of the Hepplestalls could howl, -they could--they would; he could hear them--shriek “Treachery” and -“Blasphemy” at him, but it was only a case of keeping a stiff upper lip -through an unpleasant quarter of an hour, and he was quit of the Service -for ever. There would no longer be a Service. - -That was a tremendous thought, breath-catching like--oh, like half a -hundred things which had happened to him in France. Yes, that was the -true perspective. The war had played the deuce with tradition, it had -finished bigger things than the service of the Hepplestalls. They would -have to see, these Hepplestalls, that he was a man of the new era, a -realist, not to be bamboozled by their antique sentimentalities. If they -wanted still to serve, it could be arranged, as part of the conditions -of the purchase, that they should serve the incoming owner. He was -disobliging nobody. - -He looked up to find Mary studying his face. “Sorry, old thing,” he -said, “but these are rather important. Letters from Staithley.” - -“Staithley!” - -“Yes. I expect you’d forgotten there is such a place. I haven’t spoken -of it, but Staithley has been in my mind a good deal lately. I’ve found -myself wondering if I was altogether right in giving it the go-by. I’ve -wondered if I quite played the game.” It didn’t hurt to say these things -now that the means to abolish the Service were in his hands; he could -admit aloud to Mary what he hadn’t cared, before, to admit to himself. -And he was too interested in his point of view to note the quick -thankfulness in Mary’s face, and her joy at his confession. Complacently -he went on, “That’s putting it too strongly, but... ancestors. It’s -absurd, but I’ve been in the street and I’ve had the idea that one of -those musty old fellows who are hung up on the walls in Hepplestall’s -office was following me about, going to trip me up or knock me on the -head or something. I’ve looked over my shoulder. I’ve jumped into a -taxi. Nerves, of course, and you’d have thought my nerves were tough -enough at this time of day. I’m telling you this so that you’ll rejoice -with me in these letters. They’re the answer to it all. There’s no -question about playing the game when the game’s no longer there to -play.” - -He gave her the letters. She hadn’t known how much she had continued to -be hopeful of the Staithley idea, not for herself, not for a Bradshaw -who might live in Staithley Hall, but for him; and his admission that -Staithley had been in his mind was evidence that he knew occultly the -root cause of his derangement. These letters, he told her, were the -answer to it all, and they could be nothing but the call to Staithley, -an ultimatum which he meant to obey, of which he had the charming grace -to admit that he was glad. Indeed, indeed, she would rejoice with him. -He was going to Staithley, to work, to be cured by work and the tonic -air of the moors of the poison London had dropped into his system. - -“This will finish off that old bogey,” he exulted and she exulted with -him as she bent her eyes to read the letters. She read and saw with what -disastrous optimism she had misunderstood. And he stood there aglow -with happiness, expectant of her congratulations when this was not the -beginning of new life but the death of hope! “Well?” he asked. “Well?” - -“It does seem to depend on you,” she hedged. - -“Uncle William would if he dared, eh? He’s as good as asking me to dare -for him, and I’ll dare all right. I’ll wire that I’ll see him to-morrow -afternoon. That’s soon enough. I’ll go by car. It’s a beastly railway -journey.” - -“Aren’t you deciding very quickly, Rupert?” - -“I thought for a solid five minutes before I handed the letters across -to you.” He was most indignant at her imputation of hastiness. - -“I was watching you. Five minutes! Not long to give to the consideration -of a death sentence.” - -“A--what?” - -“Staithley. Staithley Mills without the Hepplestalls!” - -“Oh, they’ll survive it. This tiling’s a gift from God, and I’m not -going to turn my back on the deity. It’s bad manners. Candidly, I’m -surprised at you, Mary. You might be thinking there’s something to argue -about. You might be sentimental for the Hepplestalls.” - -“No,” she said. “For a Hepplestall. For you. Rupert, I’ll leave the -stage to-morrow if you will go and do your work at Staithley.” - -“Good Lord! Besides, aren’t you rather forgetting? Aren’t you forgetting -you’re a Bradshaw?” - -“It is quite safe to forget that. I’m Mary Arden. Nobody knows me. It’s -too long since I was anything but that.” - -“Oh, it wouldn’t do. Too risky altogether. Oh, never. Staithley’s the -one place that’s absolutely barred.” - -“Rupert, you’re making me responsible. You’re using me as your excuse.” - -“Damn it, Mary, do you want us to live in Staithley?” - -“Yes.” - -“Well, I’m sorry. We can’t. I do you the justice to tell you I’ve never -found you a capricious woman before. But it’s plain that this is one of -the times when a man has to put his foot down on... on sentimentality -and all that sort of thing.” - -“Your conscience was troubling you, Rupert.” - -“It was, I’ve admitted it. And this letter is my quittance. It washes -conscience out. It closes the account.” - -“No. You’re still troubled.” - -“I’ll be hanged! Do you keep my conscience?” - -“I want us to go to Staithley, Rupert.” - -“This time, I can’t give you what you want, Mary. I’m going to Staithley -alone, for the purpose of cutting Staithley out of my life for ever. -I’m sorry about your attitude. I’m completely fogged by it, but I’m not -going to talk about it any more. This is the nearest we’ve ever come to -quarreling and we’ll get no nearer. I’ll go along for the car now.” - -“Just one moment first, though. You say you’re putting your foot down. I -have a foot as well as you.” - -“I adore your foot, Mary. If I were a sculptor--” - -“Seriously, Rupert, I’m going to fight this. You’re doing wrong, you -know you’re doing wrong--” - -“Fight?” he said. “My dear Mary, perhaps you own half of Hepplestall’s -shares? Now I’d an idea it was I.” - -“Yes, it is you. It’s the man I love, and I won’t see you do this rotten -thing and raise no hand to stop you.” - -“There are two things that I deny. It isn’t rotten and you can’t stop -me. So, won’t you just admit that you’re a woman and that you’re out of -your depth? Let’s kiss and be friends.” - -“When we’ve just declared war?” she smiled. - -“Oh, that’s rubbish. You’ve no munitions, my dear.” - -“I’ve love,” she said, “and love will find me weapons. Perhaps love -won’t be particular what weapons it finds, either. If love finds -poison-gas, you won’t forget there’s love behind the gas, will you? I -want you to understand. You offered me something. You offered to put -Mary Arden in a theater of her own. Well, it’s the dream of every -actress and God knows it’s good enough for Mary Arden. To be in -management, and in management where there’s lots of money to do exactly -as I want!” - -“And more money when this sale’s gone through,” he said eagerly. - -“Yes,” she said, “it’s fine for Mary. It’s more than good enough for -her. But it isn’t good enough for Mary’s Rupert. Don’t you see it? You -must, you must. To be running an entertainment factory, when you might -be running Hepplestall’s?” - -“You know, you’re looking at the theater through the wrong end of the -telescope, and at Hepplestall’s through the right. You haven’t a notion -of the wonderful things I’d planned to do for you in the theater. You’ve -never let me speak of them. And it isn’t running Hepplestall’s either. -Not for a long time. If I just went up there and walked into the office -as head of Hepplestall’s, there might be some sense in what you say, -but I don’t do that. I go into the mills and spin and do all sorts of -footling jobs for years. Years, I tell you,” he shouted and then it -occurred to him that he was arguing and had said he would not argue. -“The simple fact is that you don’t know what you’re talking about and -that I do. We’ll let it rest at that, except that I’m now going for the -car.” - -“And except,” said Mary, “that I am fighting.” - -“You darling,” he said contemptuously, and went out. - -Advocacy has its perils for the advocate. In the heat of argument, she -had felt confident of her weapon and now she doubted if it were a weapon -or hers to use. In promising Rupert a fight she had Tom Bradshaw in -mind; it had seemed to her that Labor had only to lift its voice -in order to obtain anything it demanded, and wasn’t Tom member for -Staithley? But now that Rupert had gone and she was able coolly to -examine the weapon she proposed to enlist, she couldn’t imagine why she -ever thought it would fight in her cause. Why should she, after so many -years, have thought of Tom at all? He had nothing to thank her for; that -much was certain, but she had instinctively thought of him as her true -ally in her struggle for the soul of Rupert Hepplestall. So, though she -saw no reason in it, she would carry out her intention, she would send -for Tom Bradshaw. If he was nothing else, he was a Staithley man, and -he was something else. He was a Bradshaw. So was she. That was reason -enough to send for him. - -Time was against her and she didn’t know how to set about finding his -address, but the paper informed her--she didn’t as a rule take stock of -the fact--that the House was sitting. A phrase caught her eye. “Labor -members absented themselves from the debate.” Suppose he were absent -to-day? She could only try. She wrote-- - -_Dear Mr. Bradshaw:_ - -_I am writing in ease I do not find you at the House. I want to see -you urgently. You may possibly have noticed that Sir Rupert Hepplestall -married Mary Arden of the Galaxy Theatre. I enclose tickets for both -this afternoon and to-night. I must see you, please. If I am on the -stage when you come, have a look at me, but come round behind the moment -I am off. They will bring you to me at once. Failing that, telephone me -here. It is really important._ - -_Yours sincerely,_ - -_Mary Hepplestall._ - -She meant to have written that Mary Arden was Mary Ellen Bradshaw, but -she couldn’t resist, even in her anxiety, springing that surprise upon -him when he heard her speaking the tongue of Staithley on the stage. -He might know already, he might have seen the piece. She wasn’t -unsophisticated enough to suppose that Labor members were any more -austere in their recreations than other people, but Tom wasn’t likely to -frequent musical comedy. He liked music. - -She went to the theater for the tickets, enclosed them with her letter -and took it to the House of Commons, where she was assured that Tom -would certainly receive it during the day. That was comforting as far -as it went, and what went further was that both policemen of whom she -enquired in the precincts of the House addressed her as “Miss Arden.” - There are people who do not gain confidence by finding themselves known -to the police. Mary was helped just then to be reminded that she was -famous. - -She had conquered London; surely she could conquer Rupert Hepplestall. - -Reading her letter, Tom couldn’t imagine what need she had of him in -that galley, but the Coalition could coalesce without his opposition for -an hour or two that afternoon, and he might as well go and see what was -perturbing her play-acting Ladyship. - -He followed instructions, went to the front of the house and asked -Rossiter’s impressive attendant if Miss Arden was at that moment on the -stage. “Mr. Bradshaw, Sir?” He was, and a surprised and flattered Mr. -Bradshaw by the time the Galaxy staff had ushered him to his stall with -the superlative deference shown to those about whom they had special -instructions. He was not royalty, and he was not received by Mr. -Rossiter, but he was Miss Arden’s guest and the technique of his welcome -was based accurately on that of Hubert Rossiter receiving royalty. - -As a Labor Member he ought, properly, to have scowled at flunkeydom; he -ought to have bristled at the full house, at the sight of so many people -idle in the afternoon; and he did neither of these reasonable things. -He was in the Galaxy, and, besides, he was looking at the stage and on a -bit of authentic Lancashire on the stage. “Yon wench is the reet stuff,” - he thought, slipping mentally back into the vernacular. “By gum, she -is.” She was remarkably the right stuff; if his ear went for anything, -she was Staithley stuff. That must be why she seemed familiar to him -as if he had met her, or somebody very like her. But he decided that he -hadn’t met her; he had only met typical Lancashire women, and this was -the sublimation of the type. She finished her scene and left the stage. -An attendant was murmuring softly to him. Would he go round and see Miss -Arden now? - -Tom pulled himself together. A queer place, the theater, making a man -forget so completely that he was there on business. It dawned upon -him that this Lancashire witch he had gazed at with such absorbed -appreciation was Mary Arden, Lady Hepplestall. “If she wants anything -of me that’s mine to give, it’s hers for the asking,” he thought, as -he followed his guide, still chuckling intimately at the racy flavor -of her; no bad compliment to an actress who was thinking that day of -anything but acting. - -She awaited him in her room unchanged, in the clogs and shawl of the -first act, which were not very different, except in cleanliness, from -the clothes Mrs. Butterworth had burned. - -“Well, Mr. Bradshaw,” she greeted him, “and who am I?” - -“Who are you? Why, Lady Hepplestall.” - -“You’ve seen me from the front, haven’t you? And you didn’t know me? I’m -safer than I thought I was. Will it help you if I mention Walter Pate?” - -It didn’t; he saw nothing in this splendid woman to take him back to the -starveling waif whom Pate and he adopted or to the crude, if physically -more developed, girl he had seen on one or two later occasions at -Staithley. Mary relished his bewilderment: if Rupert made seriously the -point against going to Staithley that she was Bradshaw, here was apt -confirmation of her reply that nobody would know her. Tom Bradshaw saw -her in clogs and shawl and did not know her. She hummed a bar or two of -“Lead Kindly Light.” - -“Mary Ellen!” he cried. “Yes, I ought to have seen it. But Lady -Hepplestall to Mary Ellen Bradshaw. It’s a long way to look.” - -“And you don’t much care to look? Not at that thankless girl who -bolted.” - -But she was Lady Hepplestall and she was the artist, yes, by God, the -artist, who had gripped him magically five minutes ago. He could not -see her as a Bradshaw. “You’ve traveled far since then,” he said -ungrudgingly. “I’m proud I was in at the start.” - -“I wrote to you,” she said, “because I wanted help. I don’t know why it -came to me that you were the one person who could help and even when I -wrote I saw no reason in it. No reason at all. Instinct, perhaps. We’re -both Bradshaws, and he’s a Hepplestall, but I’m not pretending that I -care about this thing except as it concerns my husband. I do think it -concerns a lot of other people, but I don’t care for them. I don’t -care if it’s good or bad for them, and this is just a matter between -my husband and myself. You see how little reason I have to suppose that -you’ll do anything.” - -“The way you’re putting it is that I’m to interfere between man and -wife. That’s a mug’s game. But you can go on. I’m here to hear.” - -“If I knew that mine was just a war marriage, I think I’d kill myself. -It isn’t yet, but he’s in danger, and he can be saved. It’ll save him if -he’ll go to Staithley and take up his work.” - -“Hasn’t he yet?” - -“No: he’s killing time in London.” - -He looked at her, wondering if he could accuse her of playing the Syren. -If Mary Ellen piped, a man would dance to her tune and small blame to -him either; but he couldn’t assume that she was holding Rupert in London -when it was she who saw salvation for him in Staithley. If he had to -take a side, he took hers so far as to say, “A work-shy Hepplestall is -something new.” - -“You’re thinking that it’s my fault,” she said. “You’re thinking of me -that first time you met Mary Ellen. You’re thinking of her ‘’A ’ate -th’ ’Epplestalls.’” - -“I did think of it,” he admitted. “Then I thought again. He ought to be -in Staithley.” - -“And he’s on his way there now to sell Hepplestall’s.” - -“What!” said Tom, rising to his feet, with his hand tugging at his -collar as a flush, almost apoplectic, discolored his neck. “What! Sell -Hepplestall’s!” - -She told him of the letters. “And you thought it was no business of -mine?” he said. “You saw no reason in sending for me? Instinct, eh! -Well, thank God for instinct then. Sell Hepplestall’s! By God, they -won’t. Who to? To a damned syndicate, that offers through a London -accountant? Londoners! outsiders! Know-nothing grab-alls that have the -same idea of Trades Unions as they have of Ireland. There’s been too -much of this selling of Lancashire to pirates, and happen Labor’s been -dull about it, and all. But Hepplestall’s. I didn’t think they’d go for -Hepplestall’s. That’s big business, if you like; that’s swallowing the -camel but they’re not to do it, Mary, and if you want to know who’ll -stop them, I will.” He was racing up and down her room, not like a caged -tiger which only paces, but like an angry man who tries to move his legs -in time with rushing thought. “Ugh! you don’t know what you’ve done, -letting this cat out of the bag. I’ll be careful for your sake, but I -tell you I’m tempted to be careless. Would you like to know what they -called me in the _Times_ the other day? An Elder Statesman of the Labor -Party. That means I’ve gone to sleep, with toothless jaws that couldn’t -bite a millionaire if I caught his hand in my pocket. It means I’m a -harmless fossil and you can bet your young life the bright lads of the -advanced movement that think Tom Bradshaw lives by selling passes are -on to that damned phrase. If I go down to Staithley and call the young -crowd together and tell them this, I could blossom into an idol of -the lads. They’re ready for any lead, but it ’ud let hell loose in -Lancashire and I’ll not do it if I can find another way. I’ll be -an elder statesman, but if the Hepplestalls don’t like my British -statesmanship, by God, I’ll give ’em Russian. I’ll show them there’s -to be an end of this buying and selling Labor like cattle.” - -Mary sat overwhelmed by the spate she had provoked; she hadn’t dreamed -that she would so strangely touch him on the raw, and he, too, sat, -shaken, hiding his face in his hands on her dressing-table. Presently he -looked up, and she saw that the storm had passed. “I’m an old fool,” - he said, “ranting like a boy. But I’m upset. I didn’t think it of the -Hepplestalls. This lad of yours... what would Sir Philip have thought of -him?” - -She was fighting Rupert, and Tom Bradshaw was the ally she had called to -help her, but she was stung to seek defense for him. “Sir Philip did -not go through the war, as Rupert did,” she said. “All that’s the matter -with Rupert is that he is still--still rather demobilized.” - -“Post-war,” groaned Tom. “I know. It’s the word for everything that’s -deteriorated: but Hepplestall’s shan’t go post-war.” - -She spoke of William, and, “Aye,” he agreed. “I know William. William’s -weak--for a Hepplestall. Well, it’s those two then. Your spark and -William. I think I can do it. Mary. They meet to-morrow, eh? Well, it -won’t be the duet they think it will. It will be a trio and I’ll be -singing to a tune of my own.” - -“If,” said Mary, “it isn’t a quartette. I’m coming with you. It’ll make -my understudy grateful, anyhow.” - - - - -CHAPTER X--THE PEAK IN DARIEN - -RUPERT was annoyed, and annoyed with himself for being annoyed, when he -drove up to the main gate of Staithley Mills on the following afternoon -and found that the gate-keeper did not know him. It was plainly the -man’s duty to warn strangers off the premises, and Rupert was, by -hypothesis and in fact, a stranger, but he felt it a reproach that Sir -Rupert Hepplestall was forced to make himself known to Hepplestal’s -gate-keeper. - -The man, an old workman, who preferred this mildly honorific wardenship -to a pension, made him a backhanded apology. “It’s so long sin’ we’ve -seen thee,” he said. “Us had a hoam-coming ready for thee arter the war, -but tha’ didno come.” No sirring and no obsequiousness from this old -servant of the firm, and Rupert gave a quick, resentful glance as he -pulled the car up in the yard. - -Then he remembered that this was Lancashire--and he knew now what -Lancashire thought of him. There was no reason why he should, and every -reason why he should not, care what Lancashire thought, seeing that he -came there solely to arrange his clean cut from Staithley; but an old -fellow in a factory yard who did not scrape, but told him frankly that -he had not come up to local expectations, had been able to thwack him -shrewdly. - -It was not much better after that to be treated like a prodigal, to -be conducted possessively to the office entrance and to hear the -gate-keeper announce in a great and genial voice, “I’ve a glad surprise -for yo’, There’s th’ young maister.” - -He was not and he refused to be “th’ young maister,” but he could not -explain to this guide that he wasn’t what he seemed; the infernal fellow -was so naively proud to be his herald. “I feel like Judas,” he thought, -and tried wryly to laugh the thought away. It was a tremendous and a -preposterous simile to be occasioned by the candid loyalty of one old -workman, but things did not go much better with him inside the offices. - -Theoretically, they should have shrunk, to his maturer gaze, from his -boyish recollection of them, but they were authentically impressive. He -couldn’t think lightly of this regiment of desks, nor could he pretend -that the eyes which turned towards him as his loud-voiced pilot -announced him, were hostile. Theory was in chancery again; all employees -ought to hate all employers, but the elderly gentlemen who were -hastening towards him wore on their faces expressions of genuine -pleasure instead of the decent deference that might cloak a mortal -hatred. Ridiculously as if he had been indeed a prince on the day when -Sir Philip took him round and introduced him, he discovered a royal -memory, and remembered their names. It was developing into a reception; -this wasn’t at all what he had come for. He wondered what the younger -clerks were thinking, men of his own age, ex-service men, but he had not -the chance even to look at them. A positive guard of honor was escorting -him to William’s room, that joss-house of the Hepplestalls. - -If only he could laugh at their formality and at their quaint -appreciativeness of his knowing their names! He felt he ought to laugh; -he felt it was all something out of Dickens. Or if he could blurt out -that he had come to slip the collar for ever from his neck! They would -scuttle from him as though he were the plague; but he could neither -laugh aloud nor tell the truth to those solemn mandarins. They were not -pompous fools, or he could have laughed, he could have scattered them -impishly with his truth; but they were captains in a Service where -promotion went by merit, they were proven efficients in an organization -whose efficiency was world-renowned, and their homage was not absurd -because it was paid not to the young man, Rupert Hepplestall, but to Sir -Philip’s son, to the successor to the Headship of the Service. That made -it the more hypocritical in him to seem to accept their homage, but if -he was going to forfeit what good opinion they retained of a truant, he -was going to keep it, at any rate, until the die was unalterably cast. - -It was certain to be cast, but Hepplestal’s was retorting on him with -unexpected power. Mary was right: the bigness of Hepplestal’s had been -escaping him. From London the sale had seemed no more than signatures on -documents, and a check. Up here, confronted with Staithley Mills as so -much brick, mortar and machinery, and confronted with no more than one -crude loyalist in the yard and half a dozen grayboards of the Service in -the office, the thing loomed colossal. Let it loom: he held its future -in the hollow of his hand, and this, of all times, was no moment for -second thoughts. He had to tackle William, the waverer, the fence-sitter -who must be met with firmness, and not by one who was himself -momentarily awed by the bigness of Hepplestal’s into being a waverer. -With the air of nailing his colors to the mast, even if they were the -skull and crossbones, he recovered his resolution in the moment when -that ambassadorial figure, the Chief Cashier of Hepplestall’s, threw -open William’s door and announced “Sir Rupert Hepplestall”; and a grave -assurance, inflexible and self-reliant, seemed to enter the room with -him. - -William raised careworn eyes as this bright incarnation of sanguine -youth came into the office in which he sat almost as if it were a -condemned cell. He knew, better than Rupert who knew the Hepplestalls so -little, what wrath would come when they two faced an outraged Board, and -this sedate, this almost smiling confidence seemed to him as offensive -as buffoonery at a funeral. “You look very cheerful,” he greeted his -nephew resentfully. - -“Why not?” said Rupert. “It’s a mistake to call optimism a cheap virtue. -How are you, Uncle?” - -“I suppose you slept last night,” was the reply from which Rupert was to -gather that sleep at such a crisis was considered gross. - -“Yes, thanks,” he said. “At Matlock. I drove up quietly, because I -wanted to think. Really, of course, I’d decided in the first five -minutes after opening your letter.” - -“You decided very quickly,” said William, who had come to no decision. - -“My wife made the same remark,” said Rupert. “But that’s a day and a -half ago, and my first opinion stands. I’ve decided to sell.” Speaking, -he gave a just perceptible jerk of the head which William remembered as -a characteristic of Sir Philip when he, too, announced one of his quick -decisions, and the little movement was not a grateful sight to William. -Sir Philip’s son had his father’s trick and, it seemed, his father’s way -of arriving rapidly at a conclusion. William, victim to irresolution -as he always was, was sliding off his fence into opposition, through -nothing more logical than jealousy of this boy who had the gift of -making up his mind swiftly. “Am I to understand that your wife has other -views?” he asked. It was hardly likely in such a wife, in an actress, -but Rupert’s words seemed to suggest that Mary had given him pause, and -if William was going to oppose this headstrong boy, any ally, however -unlikely, would be welcome. - -But, “Wives don’t count in this,” said Rupert bruskly, and, he thought, -truthfully. It was true at any rate between Rupert and the wife of -William; Rupert’s decision had been made before he opened Gertrude’s -prompting letter. But William and William’s wife were another matter, -and William shuffled uneasily on his chair as he admitted the -influence in this crisis of the Service of Gertrude who was not born a -Hepplestall. He must be strong. - -“Quite right,” lie said firmly. “Wives don’t count. But it isn’t the -case that you decide, Rupert. The Board decides.” - -“I make it from your letter that for the practical purposes of this -deal, you and I decide.” - -“It still is not the case that you decide.” - -“Oh, naturally, when I said I’d decided, I meant as regards myself. -I’m here to get your views. But, even if you’re against me, Uncle, -that won’t stop me from going on. I mean there may be others who aren’t -romantic about Hepplestall’s. I may find others who’ll pool their shares -with mine in favor of a sale.” - -William inclined to tell him to go and try. He didn’t think it likely -that there would be any others, but if there were, let them join with -Rupert and let William be able to say that his hand was forced. It would -be a comforting solution. - -“You’re hoping it, Uncle. I’m perfectly aware you want to sell. Why did -you write to me at all if you didn’t want to sell?” - -“Is that fair, Rupert? You would have been the first to blame me if I -had not told you of this.” - -“I should never have known anything about it. I know nothing of lots of -important things you decide.” - -“And doesn’t that seem a shameful thing for your father’s son to have -to say, Rupert? Suppose I sent you that letter just to make you see what -sort of important things we had to decide in your absence. To arouse -your sense of responsibility.” - -“That cock won’t fight, Uncle. You could decide other things very well -without me. You could decide this, too, if the decision were a negative. -But the decision you hoped for was an affirmative and so you wrote to -me. Are you going to deny that you hoped I’d want to sell?” - -“You’re... you’re very headstrong, Rupert.” - -“I’ve come here to get down to facts. And the flat fact is that both you -and I want to sell. You want more pleasure in life than being Head of -Hepplestall’s allows you. You want to get out and I don’t mean to get -in. We both know that from the point of view of those old Johnnies on -the wall”--William shuddered at his catastrophic levity--“it’s a crime -to sell Hepplestall’s. But I’m not a Chinaman and I won’t worship my -ancestors. I’ve my own view of the sort of life I mean to live. And we -both know that the whole of the rest of the Board may be against us and -that some of them virulently will. Very well, then we don’t tell the -Board before it’s necessary. We go into the question of price, and we -quote the figure to these accountants. We see what reply we draw. As to -the price, that’s your affair.” - -“Well,” confessed William, “tentatively, purely as a matter of -curiosity, I have gone into that.” - -“Uncle,” said Rupert, surprising William with a giant’s hand-grip, -“you and I speak the same language. And we won’t stammer, either. These -accountants wrote to you, so the reply must be from you. You have not -had an opportunity to consult your Board and you speak for yourself in -estimating the market value of Hepplestall’s at so much. This figure -should not be regarded as the basis of negotiation, but as the minimum -financial consideration on which other terms of sale could be founded. -Something like that, eh? Now show me the figure and tell me how you -arrived at it.” - -From nephew to uncle, this did not strain courtesy; it was hot -pace-making irresistibly recalling to William occasions when Sir Philip, -well in his stride, had made him wonder whether such alert efficiency -was quite gentlemanly. But with the figures in his pocket he had been no -sloven himself, and if Rupert and he did indeed speak the same language, -he hadn’t stammered. - -At the same time, this production of the figures, to one so pertinacious -as Rupert, advanced matters to a stage from which there was no retreat -and he hesitated until a thought, sophistical but consoling, came into -his mind. He had heard it rumored that the Banks were beginning to frown -on the excessive speculation in mills; of course, and time, too. The -Government had cried, “Trade! Trade!” and had inspired the Banks to -encourage trade by lending money readily. Then it was found that too -much of the money lent was being used not for sound trade but for -speculation, and borrowers were faced with a decided change of front on -the part of bank managers. William conveniently forgot that the type of -rich man behind the accountants who had written to him would be above -the caprice of bank managers, and decided happily that the whole affair -had merely an academic interest; in that case, there was no harm in -discussing the figures with Rupert behind the backs of the rest of -the Board, and in submitting them to London. The nationally eminent -accountants would have been infuriated to know that William Hepplestall -imagined them capable of having to do with a mare’s-nest; but that it -was all a mare’s-nest was the salve he applied to his conscience as he -went to the safe to collect his data for Rupert. - -Rupert had no sophistical conclusions to draw from a general situation -of which he knew nothing; it was clear to him that they had passed the -turning-point and were safely on the tack for home. There would be -any amount of detail to be settled, but the supreme issue was decided; -William and he were at one, and Hepplestal’s was to be sold! No wonder -he had hectored a little. He had had to rout William and not only -William but the belated hesitations in himself born of his dismay at the -formidable size of Hepplestal’s; and success had justified his methods. -In here, the massiveness of the mills did not oppress and a modern man -whose thinking was not confused by the portraits of his ancestors -could see this thing singly, stripped of sentiment, in terms of pounds, -shillings and pence. If Staithley Mills were large, so would be the -figure William was to declare; if the tradition was fine, it was -commutable into the greater number of thousands. That was sanity, -anything else was muddled-headedness, and he awaited William’s -scratches on paper as one who has swept away obfuscating side-issues and -concentrates on essentials. - -“It makes a very considerable total, Rupert,” said William gravely. - -“We’ve got used to considerable totals, haven’t we? I don’t suppose it’s -more than a day’s cost of the war.” - -“Then I’ve a surprise for you,” said William. - -“Yes?” asked Rupert with an eager anticipation which was hardly due to -greed so much as to impatience to learn what fabulous key to the pageant -of life was to be his to turn. Let it only be big enough and he had -no doubt that it would dazzle Mary out of her queer, old-fashioned -timidities. He stood upon his peak in Darien. “Yes,” he asked again as -William paused, not because he had a sense of the dramatic but because -he was nervous. - -There was a knock at the door, apologetic if ever knock apologized, and -an embarrassed henchman of the Service came in upon William’s indignant -response. - -“I wouldn’t dream of disturbing you, sir, but Lady Hepplestall is here.” - -“My wife?” cried Rupert, hoping against hope that it was his mother. - -“Yes, Sir Rupert, and Bradshaw’s with her. Mr. Bradshaw of the spinners. -The M. P. He... well, sir, he put it that he knew you didn’t want to be -interrupted and he’s come to interrupt.” - -“Thank you,” said William. “We will not keep Lady Hepplestall waiting.” - William was very dignified as he said the only possible thing, and -he hoped Rupert would perceive in his dignity a reproach to his own -exhibition of crude amazement before an understrapper. Rupert was -ludicrously like a boy caught in the act of robbing an orchard, and -William’s eye was alight as he contrasted this crestfallen Rupert with -the Rupert who had declared roundly that “Wives don’t count in this.” - William had hopes of Mary, who was shown in with Tom before Rupert had -time to attempt an explanation of her presence to his uncle. - -Rupert recovered himself and made a tolerable show of hauteur; he wasn’t -the small boy in the apple orchard but a very grand gentleman making his -pained protest at her intrusion. “Mary!” he began. - -“No, not now, Rupert,” she checked him. “I’m here to watch. I told -Mr. Bradshaw and he is here to speak.” To watch, she did not add, with -desperately anxious eyes the effect upon him both of her summons to Tom -and of what Tom had to say. She thought she had saved Hep-plestall’s, -she thought Tom had a medicine that would cure them of their wish to -sell, but had she saved Rupert? That was her larger question and she saw -no answer to it yet. She was there to watch and pray. - -“Well,” said Tom, “that’s a good opening. As she says, Lady Hepplestall -told me what you’re up to and we’re saved the trouble of bluffing round -the point. You’re out to sell Hepplestall’s; I’m here to stop you.” - -“The devil you are,” cried Rupert. - -Tom turned to William. “Does Sir Rupert know I’m secretary of the -Spinners’ Union?” he asked. - -“Indeed?” said Rupert. “And what business may this be of the Spinners’ -Union, or any other Union?” - -“Vital business,” said Tom, “of theirs and every other cotton trade -Union. I’m usually asked to sit down in this office, Mr. Hepplestall.” - -“You are usually asked to come into it, Mr. Bradshaw. You have hardly -asked to-day,” said William. - -“Please yourself,” said Tom. “I’ve been sitting a long while in the -train. I can stand, only I’ve a bad habit of making speeches when I’m on -my feet and I’d as lief have had this friendly.” - -It surprised and annoyed Rupert that William pointed to a chair with -an “If you please, Mr. Bradshaw.” Himself, he would have kicked the -confounded fellow into the street and when he had gone it would have -been Mary’s turn for--not for kicking, certainly, but for something -severe in the way of disciplinary measures. “Friendly!” he scoffed. - -“What you might call a benevolent enemy, Sir Rupert,” said Tom. “If I -weren’t benevolent, I’d have gone into Staithley streets and cried -it aloud that Hepplestall’s was being sold to Londoners, and I’d have -watched the hornets sting you. But, being benevolent, I’d rather you -didn’t get stung, and I’m here till I get your assurance that all -thought of a sale is off.” - -“That means you’re making quite a long stay with us, Mr. Bradshaw,” said -Rupert elaborately. - -“I wonder how much you know of the Staithley folk, Sir Rupert,” said -Tom. “They’re fighting stock. You maybe know there’s a likely chance of -things coming to a big strike in the cotton trade on the wages question, -but that’s not just yet and if you don’t watch it there’ll be an urgency -strike in Staithley that might begin to-night. One of these wicked -strikes you read about. Without notice.” - -“But you... Mr. Bradshaw, you’re the chief Union official.” - -“Oh, yes,” said Tom, “and officially the strike would be unofficial. -But I’d be roundabout, unofficially. Rum sort of strike, eh? Striking -against the Hepplestalls for the Hepplestalls, and a Bradshaw leading -it. If you knew owt of Bradshaws and Hepplestalls, you’ll see the -rumminess of that.” - -“Against us for us. Yes, I see. One might almost conclude you like the -Hepplestalls, Mr. Bradshaw.” - -“Like ‘em!” said Tom. “Like ‘em!” His eyes glanced at William with the -suspicion of a twinkle in it. William wondered if there was a twinkle; -Sir Philip would not have wondered, he would have seen and he would -have understood. He would have discounted Tom’s next words, “I take -the liberty of telling you the Hepplestalls are a thieving gang of -blood-sucking capitalists, but I prefer to stick to the blood-suckers -I know. I know the Hepplestalls and I can talk to them. I don’t know, I -won’t talk to a soulless mob of a London syndicate. You can think of it -like this, Sir Rupert. There was steam, and it fastened like a vampire -on Lancashire. It fastened on your sort as well as on my sort, and we’ve -been working up to where we’re getting steam in its place, obeying us, -not mastering us. We’re doing well against steam. Shorter hours are -here, and factory work before breakfast has gone. Half-timers are going, -and education’s going to get a sporting chance. And we’re not beating -steam to let ourselves be ruined by water.” - -William nodded sober acquiescence, but Rupert was uninformed. “Water?” - he asked. - -“Watered capital,” Tom explained. “Lancashire’s water-logged, but we’ll -keep Staithley out of what’s coming to Lancashire. You have mills here -that are the pride of the county. You wouldn’t turn them into the pride -of speculators as the biggest grab they ever made in Lancashire! You -wouldn’t make Staithley suffer from the rot of watered capital.” - -William stirred furtively on his chair and avoided Tom’s eye with the -shiftiness of a wrongdoer who is shown the results of misdeed, and then -remembered that he had done no wrong and nodded approval of Tom’s words -which were not addressed to him but to Rupert. Mentally he thanked Tom -for saying outright things which he had himself thought. He had merely -kept them in reserve, unspoken until he had entertained himself by -proceeding a little further with the accountants; but that was, perhaps, -not the most honorable form of entertainment, based as it would have -been on the false pretense that William was prepared to sell, and he was -grateful to Tom for an intrusion which cleared the air. He did not blame -himself: he had not played with fire, or, if he had, it had been while -wearing asbestos gloves; but what Tom said to Rupert--of course it -was to Rupert--was the final argument against a sale, and he drew out -notepaper and bent to write. - -To Rupert, Tom was simply a nuisance. He had sighted victory, he -had carried William, he had resolutely defeated such difficulties as -sentiment and the frowning ponderosity of Hepplestall’s, and he saw Tom -Bradshaw, with his croaking prophecies of after-effects of the sale -upon some fifty thousand inhabitants of Staithley, as a monstrous -impertinence. He was so busy seeing Tom as an impertinence that he did -not see William writing a letter. - -“I’ve heard of the tyranny of Trade Unions,” he said. “I’ve heard of -what they call their rights and what most people call their privileges. -But I’ve never heard of a Trade Union’s right to veto a sale. I have the -right to transfer possession of my own to anubody. If you think you can -engineer a strike against that elementary right of property, I tell you -to go ahead and see what happens.” - -“I know what will happen in this case, Sir Rupert. If we let you sell--” - -“You let! You can’t prevent.” - -“If you sold,” Tom went on, “some undesirable results would arise. I am -dealing with them before they arise. I am dealing on the principle that -prevention is better than cure.” - -“Are you? Then suppose I said strike and be damned to you?” - -“If you said that you would be a young man speaking in anger and I -shouldn’t take you too seriously.” - -“What!” cried Rupert. There was no doubt about his anger now. - -“One moment,” said Tom. “I’m against a strike, but it’s a good weapon. -It’s maybe a better weapon when it isn’t used than when it is. It can -hit the striker as well as the struck.” - -“Oh? That’s dawned on you, has it?” - -“Some time before you were born. But this strike wouldn’t hurt the -striker. There’s somebody ready to buy Hepplestall’s. I’ll call him Mr. -B., because B stands for butcher, and a butcher will buy a bull but -he won’t buy a mad bull. Mr. B. will think twice before he buys -Hepplestall’s when Hepplestall’s men are on strike against being sold. -No one buys trouble with his eyes open. That’s why we can stop this. -That’s the public way, but I’ve still great hopes we’ll stop it -privately, in this room.” - -“Then you--” Rupert began hotly, but William interrupted. “You may have -noticed that I was writing, Mr. Bradshaw. This letter goes to-night -finally declining to treat in any way for a sale of Hepplestall’s. I -have signed it and I am Head of Hepplestall’s. I hope, Sir Rupert, the -future Head will sign it with me.” - -“Uncle!” he said, and turned his back. - -“It isn’t needful,” said Tom, “for me to add that nobody shall ever know -from me that there was any question of a sale.” - -“Thank you,” said William. “As a fact, Mr. Bradshaw, there never was.” - He believed what he said, too. He believed he had never been influenced -by Gertrude or convinced by Rupert. He believed he had merely toyed -pleasantly with the idea, standing himself superior to it. “But that -shall not prevent me from appreciating your actions, yours, Lady -Hepplestall, and yours, Mr. Bradshaw. We Hepplestalls are all trustees, -all of us,” he emphasized, looking at Rupert’s stiff back, “but you have -shown to-day that you are sharer in the trust.” - -Tom wondered for a moment what was the polite conversational equivalent -of ironical cheers; William was escaping too easily, but the chief -point was not the regent but the heir, Mary’s Rupert, and he could spare -William the knowledge that he had deceived nobody. - -“Sir Rupert spoke just now,” he said, “of the rights of property. -They are rightful rights only when they are matched with a sense of -responsibility, and capital that forgets responsibility is going to get -it in the neck.” - -“We have,” said William superbly, “the idea of service in this firm.” - -“Man,” said Tom, “if you hadn’t had, I shouldn’t be here to-day talking -to you in headlines. If you hadn’t had that idea and if you hadn’t lived -up to it and if I didn’t hope you’d go _on_ living up to it, I’d have -had a very different duty. Shall I tell you what that duty would have -been, Sir Rupert? To keep my mouth shut and let you sell. The higher you -sold the higher they’d resell when they floated their company, and the -sooner they’d start squeezing the blood out of Staithley.” - -Rupert turned a puzzled face. “That would have been your duty? Why?” he -asked. - -“Hot fevers are short,” said Tom. “It ‘ud bring the end more quickly. -I don’t know if you read the _Times_. If you do you may have seen that -they mentioned my name the other day along with some more and called us -the elder statesmen of the Labor Party. Too old to hurry. Brakes on the -wheels of progress. Maybe; but I’m one that looks for other roads than -the road that leads to revolution and you Hepplestalls have been a -sign-post on a road I like. You’ve been too busy overpaying yourselves -to go far up the road yet, but you’re leaders of the cotton trade and by -the Lord that ship needs captaincy. That’s why I didn’t do what lots -in the Party would tell me was my duty--to let you rip, and rip another -rent in the rotting fabric of capitalism.” Mary’s hand was on his arm. -“Because you love the Hepplestalls,” she said. - -“And me a Bradshaw?” he said indignantly. “Me a Labor Member and they -capital? Did you ever hear of the two old men who’d been mortal enemies -all their lives, and when one of them was killed in a railway accident, -the other took to his bed and died because he’d nothing left to live -for? That’s me and the Hepplestalls.” - -She shook her head, smiling. “It’s not like that,” she said. - -“It ought to be,” said Tom, “but it isn’t. Service, not greed, and -there’s a hope for all of us in that, and if you want to know who taught -me to see it, it was Sir Philip Hepplestall.” - -Rupert was in distress. Why should London, his schemes, theaters, seem -so incredibly remote? Why wasn’t he angry with this grizzled fellow from -the Staithley stews who dared, directly and indirectly, to lecture him? -Why didn’t he resent Mary, another Bradshaw, who had brought Tom -there to reprimand a Hepplestall? And why weren’t ladders provided for -climbing down from high horses? - -“My father?” he said. “My father taught you?” It was his ancestors -he declined to worship. A father was not an ancestor, and Rupert was -hearing again Sir Philip’s deep sincerity as he spoke of the Samurai. -“We have both learned from Sir Philip, Mr. Bradshaw. I have been near to -forgetting the lesson. Did he ever speak to you of Samurai?” - -“Sam who?” asked Tom. - -“Ah,” said Rupert happily. That was his secret, that intimate ideal -which Sir Philip had revealed only to his son. He hadn’t, perhaps, the -soundest evidence for supposing that the confidence had been uniquely to -him, but in his present dilemma it seemed entirely satisfactory--a way -out and a way down. And, after all, he came down by a ladder. - -A great noise filled the room, ear-splitting, nerve-jarring to those -who were not used to it. Rupert was not used to it, but for a moment -wondered if it were external or the turmoil of his thoughts. “Only the -buzzer,” William smiled. - -“Staithley goes home,” said Tom. - -But not yet. The Chief Cashier knocked perfunctorily on the door and -came in with the bland air of one who had the entree at all times. “If -Sir Rupert could speak to the workpeople,” he said. “Word was passed -that he is here. This window looks upon the yard. May I open it?” - -Rupert paused for one of time’s minor fractions, and his head jerked as -his father’s used to jerk. “Mr. Bradshaw,” he said, “will you step to -the window with us?” - -It was grand; it was too grand; it was a gesture which began finely and -ran to seed like rhubarb. It was florid when he wanted to be simple -and he harked back in mind to a _Punch_ cartoon of some years earlier, -representing the Yellow Press as a horrible person up to the knee in -mud, calling out, “Chuck us another ha’penny and I’ll wallow in it.” He -felt himself up to the midriff in a mud of sentimentality; for two pins, -he would with ironic grace wallow in the mud. His surrender was too -loathsome and insincere: he held out his hand to Tom, feeling that he -was going the whole hog, parading his humiliation before the men and -women of Hepplestall’s who had the idiotic wish to salute a traitor as -their prince. - -Tom offered first aid here and shook his head. “No, thanks,” he said. -“I’ve to be careful what company I keep in public. I’m Member for -Staithley, but I’m Labor Member and you’re Capital.” - -“Aren’t we to work together in the future?” asked Rupert. - -“If they see me standing there with you, they’ll throw brickbats at -me, and some of them will hit you. You’ve a lot to learn, Sir Rupert. -Old-fashioned Labor men like me, that want to hurry slowly, are between -the devil and the deep sea. If I show myself standing by the devil, the -sea will come up and drown me.” - -“By George,” said Rupert, feeling half clean of mud and insincerity, “by -George, this is going to be interesting. I’ve... I’ve a lot to learn, -haven’t I?” - -“Thank God, you know it,” said Tom Bradshaw reverently. - -And in another minute, Rupert knew it better still, when he moved to -the window with William. The factory yard below them was packed with a -cheering mass of workpeople, and every inlet to it showed a sea of heads -stretching as far as the eye could reach. Not one tenth the employees of -the great mills could stand within sight of the window; those who -were there had gained priority of place because they worked in the -departments nearest the yard, but not by any means all whose work was -nearby had come and it struck William, if not Rupert, that the people -here assembled were chiefly elderly or very young. The elders, like the -gate-keeper who had passed the word of Rupert’s coming into the mills, -had genuinely an impulse of loyalty to a Hepplestall; the very young -were ready to make a noise in a crowd gathered upon any occasion; and -the merely young had for the most part made no effort to struggle into -the yard. - -To Rupert, this was Hepplestall’s making spontaneous levy in mass to -welcome him; a little absurd of them, even if their prince had -been princely, but undeniably affecting. He must play up to these -acclamations, he must say something gracious, and he must not -condescend. He was an ass whom they lionized, but he wouldn’t bray. He -offered to speak, and the hearty roar below him diminished. - -It has been observed before to-day that the contemptuous noise known as -“booing” is unable to assert itself against cheers, whereas a few sharp -hisses cut like a whip across any but the greatest uproar. As the cheers -diminished in anticipation of his speech, the appearance of unanimity -was shattered by derisive hissing, drowned at once by renewed volume of -cheers, but more than sufficient to indicate an opposition. - -Behind him in the room he heard Mary’s quick “What’s that?” he heard -Tom say “Poor lad! Poor lad!” Who was a poor lad? He? He never did like -honey; he didn’t want the leadership of sheep and he began to speak -without preamble. - -“It’s a tremendous thing to be a Hepplestall and if you cheered just now -because my name is Hepplestall I think that you were right. Some of you -hissed. If that was because I am a Hepplestall, I think that you were -wrong, but if it was because I’ve been a long time in coming here, then -you were right. I shirked the responsibility. I had the thought to take -my capital out of Hepplestall’s and to put it into something soft. But a -man said to me lately that capital that failed to accept responsibility -was going to get it in the neck. I agreed and my capital stops in -something tough, in Hepplestall’s. And another thing. We’ve made hay of -the hereditary principle as such. If I’ve no merit, I shan’t presume on -being Sir Philip’s son. In the mills side by side with you, it will -be discovered whether I have merit or no. Now, I am not a socialist. -I shall take the wages of capital and if I rise to be your manager, I -shall take the wages of management. That’s blunt and I expect some of -you are taking it as a challenge. Then those are the very fellows who -are going to help me most. We’ll arrive amongst us at the knowledge of -what is capital’s fair wage and what is management’s fair wage. I am -here to learn and I am here to serve. If you will believe that, it will -help us all; it will help more than had I kept my motives to myself and -simply made you a speech of thanks for the home-coming welcome you have -given me. The welcome expressed some disapproval and I should not have -been honest if I had pretended that I didn’t notice it. I am not out to -earn your approval by methods which might be contrary to the interests -of Staithley Mills. I am out to serve Hepplestall’s, not sectionally, -but as a whole. I look to you to show me my way, and while I have to -thank you wholeheartedly for your cheers, I am absolutely sincere in -thanking you for your hisses. They are the beginning of my education. I -haven’t a sweet tooth and I liked them. We’re not going to get together -easily, I and those fellows who hissed. Well, strong bonds aren’t forged -easily and I can’t be more than a trier. I’m Hepplestall and proud of -it, and I dare say that’s enough for some of you. It isn’t enough for me -until I’ve proved myself and it isn’t enough for the fellows who hissed. -I’m asking them for fair play for a Hepplestall. I’m asking for a -chance. I’m going to do my best and I’m keeping you from home. It’s good -of you to stay and I’ve said my say. You’ve not had butter; you’ve had -facts. My thanks to you for listening. Good night.” - -They cheered and he stood at the window as they dispersed, trying to -remember what he had said, trying to gauge its effect upon the men. -There were no hisses, but that meant nothing; a demonstration of -opposition had been made and needn’t be repeated. But, anyhow, he hadn’t -lied; he hadn’t pretended that he had their esteem before he earned it; -and he meant to earn it. - -He turned from the window to Tom Bradshaw; neither to Mary nor to -William, but to Tom. “Did I talk awful tosh?” he asked. “Honestly, I -don’t know what I said.” - -“A young speaker never does, and, some ways, he’s the better for having -no tricks of the trade. You’ll do, lad. You’ll do.” - -Rupert’s face was bright as he heard the approbation of a Bradshaw under -the portrait of Reuben Hepplestall. “Hepplestall and proud of it! Did I -say that?” - -William nodded and Rupert looked at him with a puzzled face. “Damn -it, it’s true,” he said wonderingly. “May I sign that letter, Uncle -William?” - - - - -CHAPTER XI--STAITHLEY EDGE - -RUPERT in the office had been all that Mary had dared to hope, and that -was the danger of it. She watched him almost distrusting her eyes as she -might have watched a sudden conversion at a Salvation Army meeting, as -a spectacle that was too fantastic to be accepted at face value. She -had an idea that somebody suffered when the penitent reacted from the -emotion of the bench. - -“Always a catch in everything,” she had thought when she avowed her -origin to Rupert, though she feared to lose him by the confession, and -now she was adventuring again in skepticism, she was hunting the catch, -the flaw latent in human happiness. She had won a victory and she -expected to pay the price. - -William invited them to the Hall and Rupert deferred to her with -conventional politeness which seemed to her bleak menace. He froze her -by his courtesy after he had so pointedly ignored her presence except -for the pained surprise with which he had welcomed her, but she tried to -believe that she was hypersensitive. - -She had butted in, into an affair of men, and even if he recognized -that she had done the one thing possible, she could hardly expect him -to applaud her meddling. Men were not grateful to meddling women. Heaven -knew she did not want him to eat the leek for her; and often there were -understandings which were better left unspoken. If that was it, if they -were tacitly to agree that her trespass was extreme but justified, then -she could do very well without more words. She could exult in his silent -approbation; but silent resentment would be terrible. - -It would be terrible but bearable: she was thinking too much of herself -and too little of him. She loved, and what mattered in love was not what -one got out of it but what one put into it. By a treachery, if he liked -to take that view of her interference, she had put more into her love -than she had ever put before, she had taken a greater risk and he was -signally the gainer by it. He was going to Hepplestall’s, he was a -greater Rupert now. - -She couldn’t have it both ways and what had been wrong in London was -that he had loved her too much, in the sense that he had spent his -life upon her and on things which came into his life only through his -relationship with her. To be beautiful, love must have proportion and -his had grown unshapely. If all her loss were to be loss of superfluity, -her price of victory would be low indeed. He would not in Staithley be -the great lover he had been in London, but there was double edge to that -phrase “great lover”: the great lovers were too often the little men. -Certainly and healthily he would love her less uxoriously now, and that -must be all to the good. - -All, even if he loved her no more. That was the risk she had taken with -open eyes, and love her sanely or love her not at all, he had come to -Hepplestall’s: Rupert the man was of more importance than Rupert the -husband. And the right man would not cease to love her because she had -gone crusading for his soul under the banner of a Bradshaw. - -She saw that she had come round to optimism and found herself in such a -port with a thousand new alarms. She was crying safety when there was no -safety, she... - -Rupert and William were talking and she had not been listening. She must -have missed clews to Rupert’s thought and forced herself to hear. It -didn’t sound revealing talk, though. Lightly--and how could they be -light?--they were chaffing each other about their cars. - -“I’ll prove it to you now,” William was saying. “We’ll garage your crock -here and I’ll drive you up to the Hall in a car that is a car.” - -“No, thanks,” said Rupert, “I’ve something to do first, with Mary. We’ll -follow you soon. I dare say my aunt won’t be sorry to have warning of -our coming.” - -William’s face fell. Gertrude could make herself unpleasant when she did -not get her way, and this time her hopes had gone sadly agley. He would -have liked a bodyguard when he announced to her that Rupert was coming -to Staithley. “I had hoped--” he began. - -Rupert nodded curtly. “Yes,” he said, surprising William by a look which -seemed strangely to comprehend his dilemma, “but we shall not be long.” - -Mary thrilled through all preoccupation to the heady thought that a -Bradshaw was to dine at Staithley Hall, but her way there was not, it -seemed, to be an easy one. Rupert chose, she supposed, to have things -out with her first, and if she did not relish the anticipation, she -could admire his promptitude. He had an air of grim gayety which -mystified by its contradiction, but of which the grimness seemed -addressed to William and the gayety to her. - -“Got any luggage?” he asked her. She had quitted Staithley with a -suitcase; she returned with no more outward show of possession, and they -picked up her case in the ante-room where she had left it as they passed -through to get the car. - -“Well, Mary Ellen,” he said, using her full name which certainly was -normal in Lancashire where the Mary Ellens and the John Thomases are -almost double-barreled names, “this is Staithley. How well do you -remember it? Is there a road round the mills?” - -“I think so,” she said, “but you’ll meet cobbles.” - -“It’s Staithley,” he said, and drove the circuit of the mills in -silence. “Um,” he said. “London. Furthest East, which is the Aldwych -Theater, to Furthest West, which is the St. James, to Furthest North, -which is the Oxford, and back East by Drury Lane. We’ve driven further -than that round these mills. Somebody once mentioned to me that they’re -big. There’s a coal mine, too, that’s a bit of detail nobody bothers to -think of. Well, is there any way of looking down on this village?” - -“There’s Staithley Edge,” she said. “There’s a road up by the Drill -Hall.” - -“Point it out,” he said. “You understand that we’re doing this to -give Aunt Gertrude time to powder her nose. It isn’t really a waste of -petrol.” - -Whatever it was, and certainly she found no harsh reactions here, they -were doing it in the dark which fell like a benediction on Staithley. -Their wheels churned up rich mud of the consistency, since for days it -had been fine, of suet pudding, and the road, worn by the heavy traffic -of the mills, bumped them inexorably. “Staithley!” he said. “Staithley!” - but she did not detect contempt. They reached the Drill Hall and the -Square, unchanged except by a War Memorial and a cinema, and turned -into the street up which she had once gazed while Mr. Chown waited, -ill-lighted, ill-paved, a somber channel between two scrubby rows of -deadly uniform houses. “Staithley goes home,” Tom Bradshaw had said, -and this was where an appreciable percentage of it had gone; but neither -Rupert nor Mary were being sociological now. She did not know what he -was thinking; she thought of Staithley Edge and of the moors beyond, -wondering a little why she should find Staithley so good when it was so -good to get out of it up here. - -A tang of burning peat assailed her nostrils, indicating that they had -reached the height where peat from, the moors cost less than coal from -the pits, and soon the upland air blew coolly in their faces as they -left the topmost house behind. The road led on, over the hill, across -the moor which showed no signs, in the darkness, of men’s ravaging -handiwork, but at the first rise Rupert stopped the car and got out. - -“So that’s it.” He looked on Staithley, where the streets, outlined by -their lamps, seemed to lead resolutely to an end which was nothing. It -was not nothing; it was the vast bulk of Staithley Mills, unlighted save -for a glimmer here and there, but possibly he was seeing in these human -roadways which debouched on that black inhuman nullity, a symbol of -futility. The gayety seemed gone from him like air from a punctured -balloon, as he said again, in a dejected voice, “So that’s it. That pool -of darkness. They’re a great size, the Staithley Mills.” - -She was out of the car and at his elbow as she said, “A man’s size in -jobs, Rupert.” - -“Or in prisons,” he said bitterly. - -“Prisons!” And she had been feeling so secure! Here was sheer -miracle--she and Rupert were standing together on Staithley Edge; -they were in her land of heart’s desire, and the Edge, her Mecca, was -betraying her, the miracle was declining to be miraculous. “Prisons!” - she said, in an agony of disillusionment. - -“Oh, aren’t we all in prison?” he asked. “The larger, the smaller--does -it matter?” - -This was philosophy, and Mary wanted the practicalities. “Are you seeing -me as jailer? Is that what you mean?” - -“Resenting you?” he asked. “You!” and left it so with luminous emphasis. -“No. Life’s the jailer. For four years I was every day afraid of death. -I’m afraid of life to-night. What shall I make of Staithley? Those -mills, to which each Hepplestall since the first who built there has -added something great. Those milestones of my race. I meant to run away, -I meant to dodge and shirk and make belief. You’ve steered me back and -I thank you for it, Mary. But it’s a mouthful that I’ve bitten off. -Hepplestall’s! What shall I add? I don’t know. I’m overpowered. It’s so -solemn. It’s so big.” - -“You’re big, Rupert.” - -He seemed not to hear or to feel her hand on his. “‘On me, ultimately on -me alone rests the responsibility.’ That is what my father, who was -Head of Hepplestall’s, said to me. Look at those mills, then look at me. -They’re big. They’re terrifying in their bigness.” - -“No. Worth while in their bigness.” - -“I don’t know what you were thinking as we drove round the mills. I was -wondering,” he smiled a little, “if they speak of a cliff as beetling -because it makes one feel the size of a beetle under it. And I thought -of a machine I remembered seeing in the works that they call a beetle. -It’s got great rollers with weights that clump and thump the cloth till -it shines and the noise of it splits your ears. Each huge wall of the -mills, God knows how many stories high, seemed to fall on me like -so many successive blows from a beetling machine. I was under -Hepplestall’s, as people talk of being under the weather, and it’s -always Hepplestall’s weather in Staithley. I wasn’t lying when I spoke -to those fellows in the yard, I had some confidence then, but it’s -oozed, it’s oozed. Look at the size of it all.” - -“I’m looking,” said Mary, “and from Staithley Edge it’s in perspective. -Rupert, this air up here! I’m not afraid. Not here. Not now. You... -you’ve got growing pains, and they say they’re imaginary, but I know -they’re good. You’re a bigger man already than you were.” - -“I’m a hefty brute for a growing child,” he smiled down at her. - -“You can take it smiling, though,” she approved. - -“It’s this modern flippancy,” he grinned. “A generation of scoffers. But -you can’t get over Hepplestall’s by scoffing at it. I came up here -to look down on it, and I’m only more aware than ever that it’s big. -You--you’ve got your idea of me. It’s a nice idea, but it’s pure -flattery.” - -“No.” - -“Oh, yes, it is, to-day. But it’s something to grow up to, and it’s -worth while because it’s your idea. If this family gang of mine told me -they believed in me I should know they were talking through their hats. -They wouldn’t be believing in me, they’d be believing in who I am, -they’d be believing in a tradition which declares that my father’s son -must be up to standard. You’re different. You know me and they don’t, -and you’ve brought me to Staithley. It’s your doing, and I want like -hell not to let you down. Your idea of me’s not true. It’s too good to -be true. But I mean to make it true.” - -Mary looked uphill to where, a hundred feet above them, the darkling rim -of the Edge was silhouetted against the sky. “Staithley Edge,” she said, -“and in my mind I was calling you a cheat.” She stooped to the bank by -the road, she plucked coarse grass and held it to her lips. “Staithley -Edge, will you forgive me? The dreams I’ve had of you, and then the -shameful doubts and now the better than all dreaming that this is. I was -going to build a house on Staithley Edge, and I have built a man.” - -“Of course,” said Rupert, “I knew you had a passion for hills.” - -“I never told you,” Mary said. - -“No. But I knew. This is a hill. It isn’t an Alp. It isn’t a mountain. -It’s Staithley Edge. I wonder what they’re doing about houses in -Staithley. I don’t want to rob any one, but I’d like a house up here.” - -“Rupert!” she cried. - -“It’s Aunt Gertrude, you know,” he seemed to apologize. “Poor old thing, -she’s got the same bee in her bonnet that her nephew used to have. -London. Well, William’s the Head and he ought to go on at the Hall, and -if he does it should pacify Gertrude. I expect he’s going through it -while we’re loafing up here. Shall we go and break the news to her that -there’s no eviction on the program?” - -“Oh, my dear, there are a thousand things we haven’t said.” - -“There’s the point, for instance, that if I look down on Staithley Mills -every morning from my bedroom I ought to feel less scared of them.” - -“I don’t believe a word of it,” said Mary and, kissing him, some -hundreds of the things they hadn’t said seemed lustrously expressed. She -found no insincerities in him now; the gesture and the bravado and the -air that it was all something he was doing for a wager--these had -gone and in their place was his task acknowledged and approached with -humility. It was a beginning and she thought so well of his beginning -that she had time to think of herself. - -He turned the car towards the Hall, and the thought that she was going -there was no longer heady. He had spoken contemptuously of “this family -gang”; he had said, and she adored him for it, that she was different. -They had, perhaps, some comfort for Gertrude; they were going to her -with a message which should reconcile her to the news she would have -heard from William; but, for all that, Mary was daunted at her coming -encounter with Gertrude Hepplestall. - -“Rupert,” she said, “you must help me to-night. Your aunt, and all the -Hepplestalls, your family--and me.” - -He frowned. “Well?” he said. - -“There’s the tradition, and you married me. You married into musical -comedy.” - -“Hasn’t it dawned on you that you’re my wife, Mary?” But that was -precisely what had dawned upon her and his question made her wonder -if he saw what was implied. In London, he was all but explicitly the -husband of Mary Arden; in Staithley she was no longer Mary Arden, she -was the wife of Sir Rupert Hepplestall. That might not mean that the -foundations of their relationship had shifted, but it certainly meant a -vital difference in its values above the surface. She was Cæsar’s wife -and people ought not to be able to remember against Cæsar that he had -married an actress. - -“Yes, your wife, Rupert. Your wife who was an actress.” - -“Are you making the suggestion that you are something to be ashamed of?” - -“I’ve the conceit to believe I’m not. You love me and I’ve the right to -be conceited. But it isn’t what I think of myself, it’s what Staithley -will think of me. London’s inured to actresses. Staithley--” - -“Excuse an interruption,” he said, “but if you want to know what -Staithley will think to-morrow, look there.” He slowed the car -and pointed to the cinema across the Square. A man on a ladder -was hand-printing in large letters on a white sheet above the door -“Tomorrow. Mary Arden in...” - -“That’s enterprise, isn’t it? The fellow can’t have heard more than half -an hour ago that I was here, then he’d to think of you and he must have -been busy on the ’phone to have made sure of getting that film here -tomorrow.” - -“Rupert, how awful for you. They will never forget what I was now.” - -“Never. Thank God.” - -“Don’t you care?” - -“Oh, yes, I care and if I cared cheaply, I should thank you for being my -propagandist. I should thank you for making me popular because you are -popular and I’m your husband. You can’t deny there’s that in it, Mary, -but there’s more. There’s the bridging of a gulf. There’s a breach -made in a bad tradition. We Hepple-stalls must drop being Olympian. -Aloofness; that’s to go and it’ll get a shove when Lady Hepplestall is -seen on the screen in Staithley. What do a thousand Gertrudes matter if -we can bridge the gulf? We’ve got to get together, we’ve got to reach -those men who hissed. Do you see that cinema as a cheap way? I don’t. -It’s a modern way if you like and it isn’t a way I made but one you -made for me. It’s a reach-me-down, and I shan’t stop at ways that are -ready-made. I’ll find my own. Up on the Edge I asked what I would add to -Hepplestall’s. I’ll add this if I can--I’ll add humanity.” - -“And I can help. Music, for instance.” - -“You’ll make me jealous soon. You have so many advantages of me. I’m not -even sure if I’m good enough for Lancashire League cricket. It’s good -stuff, I can tell you. Whereas you...” - -“Am I to manage Staithley Mills?” - -“Nor I, for years. Never, if I’m unequal to it. But you’re right. The -mills are the important thing, the rest’s decoration and decoration -won’t go far. Staithley won’t stand you and me as Lady and Lord -Bountiful. Those hissing friends of ours--circuses won’t satisfy them -and I’d think the worse of them if they would. I’ll talk to William -to-night and I expect he’ll snap my head off. He’s of the old gang, -William is. There’s the war between William and me, but, Lord, he’ll -know, he’ll know it all and I know nothing. I’m so young.” - -“Yes,” said Mary, “and you’ll stay young, please. You’ll keep your hope, -my faith, your youth.” - -“I’m young all right,” he said. “Listen to me if you doubt it. ‘I’ll -add humanity.’ Did I say that? With a voice beautifully vibrant with -earnestness? Young enough to be capable of anything. But I will add it,” - he finished as he drew up at the door of the Hall. - -Hope burnished them as they came into the old home of the Hepplestalls; -they were the keepers of a great light lit on Staithley Edge; they had -a radiance which seemed to Gertrude a personal affront to her -chatelainship. They came with the insolence of conquerors into the -somber scene of her defeat, but she was on guard against revealing her -feelings to the actress woman who was Lady Hepplestall. She had failed, -she was doomed to Staithley, she had to explain away to her friend the -letter she had written announcing that she was coming to live in London, -she was to be evicted from the Hall by a saucy baggage out of a musical -comedy; but even if the baggage proved as bad as her worst anticipations -she would not lower to her by the fraction of an inch her flag of -resolutely suave politeness. - -She went upstairs to change her face after a tempestuous interview with -William, and, expectant of a Mary strident in jazz coloring, changed -also her frock to a sedate gray which should contrast the lady with the -Lady. Then Mary came, with hair wind-tossed, and round her lips were -marks as if she were a child sticky with toffee (but that was because -when you pluck grass on Staithley Edge and press it to your cheek -and kiss it, it leaves behind traces of the smoky livery it wears), -apologizing for her plain traveling dress, looking so unlike Gertrude’s -idea of the beauty-chorus queen who had captured Rupert that immediately -she was off on a new trail and saw in Mary a tool made for her through -which to work on Rupert and after all to bring about the sale -of Hepple-stall’s. She could manage this smudge-faced piece of -insignificance and she could manage a Rupert who had been caught by it. -Her spirits rose, and their happiness seemed to her no longer offensive -but imbecile. - -Later on, she wondered why she forgot that the business of an actress -was to act. She meditated ruefully upon the vanity of human hopes and -the fallibility of first impressions, and she had no doubt but -that Mary, for some dark purpose of her own, had counterfeited -insignificance. - -Mary hadn’t, as a fact, acted, but she had thought of Mary Ellen -Bradshaw and of Jackman’s Buildings and Staithley streets as the door -of the Hall opened to her, and she had continued to think of Mary Ellen -Bradshaw through the few moments when Gertrude was greeting her. She -didn’t know that the mourning grass of Staithley Edge had left its mark -on her face; if she had known, she would have felt more insignificant -still, but she had washed since then, she had kissed Rupert in their -bedroom in Staithley Hall and her effect now upon Gertrude was that -of the bottle marked “Drink me” upon Alice in Wonderland. Gertrude -had drunk of no magic bottle, but she dwindled before Mary. It was -disconcerting to an intriguer who had so lately seen Mary as her pliant -instrument, but “Pooh! some actress trick,” she thought, making an -effort to believe that she dominated the table. - -“I’m afraid you will find Staithley very dull,” she said, “but we shall -all do our best for you.” - -“Thank you,” said Mary. “It’s exciting so far.” - -“Yes. It must be strangely novel to you. Of course, I never go into the -town. One needn’t, living in the Hall; but I’m forgetting. I shan’t be -living here.” - -“Oh, you will, aunt,” said Rupert. “We went up on the Edge to have -a look at it all, and we decided--it arose out of a suggestion of -Mary’s--to build a house up there. You see, uncle, you’re the Head. The -Hall is naturally yours and aunt’s.” - -“Naturally? It’s your property, Rupert.” - -“Then that settles it. We’ll get some one to run us up a cottage on the -Edge quite quickly. Really a cottage, I mean. I shall be working as a -workman and I ought to live as one. I shan’t do that, but it won’t be a -mansion pretending to be a cottage.” - -“Well!” said Gertrude. “A cottage on the Edge!” - -“We have to grow, Rupert and I,” said Mary. “We aren’t big enough for -the Hall yet.” - -“I feel about a quarter of an inch high, uncle, when I think of those -mills... those thousands of men.” - -“Oh, the workpeople,” said Gertrude, putting them in their place. “Your -uncle tells me some of them dared to hiss.” - -“Yes, I want to talk to you about that, uncle.” - -William shuffled in his chair. “Not very nice of them, was it?” - -“Impertinents,” said Gertrude. “They ought to be locked up.” - -Rupert stared at her. If this was the attitude of the Hall, he -thought, no wonder there had been a show of resentment. But it was only -Gertrude’s attitude. “Would you also lock up,” said William, “the very -many who did a deadlier thing than hissing? The men who stayed away, -the men who went home ignoring Rupert altogether? We’d have to close the -mills for lack of labor.” - -“Lord,” said Rupert, “that’s telling me something.” - -“I thought it best that you should know.” - -Rupert thought so too, even if it was a piece of knowledge which seemed -to bring him off a high place with a bump. - -“Oh, my dears,” Gertrude put in, “you’ve no idea how difficult it all -is.” - -“No,” said Mary, “but Rupert knows that he knows nothing and he’s here -to learn.” - -“Yes. I’m here to learn. Can you put your finger on this for me, uncle? -Why did they hiss? Why did they stay away?” - -“What do you expect from a pig but a grunt?” asked. Gertrude. - -“It’s to be noted, Rupert,” said William, “that the hisses came before -you spoke, not afterwards.” - -“You mean I said the right thing?” - -“Did you mean what you said? Look at those books over there.” Behind the -glass of the old mahogany case to which he pointed, the titles looked -queerly incongruous. There were books on such subjects as Welfare -Societies, Works Committees, Co-Partnership, and Rupert thought them -incongruous not only in connection with that bookcase but with William. - -“People have sent them to you?” he guessed. - -“No. I bought them. If in the short years that I’ve been Head I have -left my mark on Hepplestall’s, it is in this direction. Your father, as -perhaps you know, was against what he called coddling the men. I -would not coddle, but I have encouraged Welfare Societies and I have -instituted Works Committees.” - -Rupert had the sensation of deflation. He had called William of “the -old gang,” and here was William’s contribution to the march of -Hepplestall’s. Rupert was to add humanity, was he? Well, William had -added it first. “I did these things with hope,” William was saying. -“I pinned my faith to them, and what are they worth? There were two -Hepplestalls hissed in Staithley Mills today. That is the reply to what -I have tried to do. Can you wonder that I feel I’ve shot my bolt and -missed my aim? The detail of my Works Committees scheme took me a year -to evolve. I thought it was accepted and welcomed; and I was hissed -to-day in Staithley Mills.” - -For a moment even Mary was daunted, not by the thing she had brought -Rupert here to do but by the realization of what release had meant to -William. - -“Not you, uncle,” Rupert cried. “They hissed me for being a laggard.” - -“We’re Hepplestalls. That’s why they hissed. They hissed the Service.” - -It had seemed solemn enough on Staithley Edge, but that was childish -levity compared with this. What should one answer back to men who -hissed the Service which served them? Gertrude’s pig with a grunt -seemed justified in the light of William’s revelation of his progressive -efforts. - -“And you,” William said, “you spoke, and they cheered you for it. Well, -it’s in those books. Co-Partnership. No: I’ve not done that. Limitation -of profits--I’ve thought the Government was doing that drastically. I -don’t know. You went too far for me, but they didn’t hiss you when -you’d done, You sav you’re here to learn. Well, I can’t teach you. The -technical side and the ordinary business side--oh, yes, we’ll teach you -those. But what Labor wants, what, short of something catastrophic on -the Russian scale, will satisfy Labor, I cannot tell you for I do not -know.” - -Once, unimaginably long ago, Rupert had found the beginnings of a -solution in his wife’s appearance on the screen in a Staithley cinema. -It was so long ago that he thought he must have grown stupendously since -then. - -Perhaps he had; it was a far cry from that uninformed optimism to this -throttling doubt. - -The doubt, though, was almost as uninformed as the optimism. He could -see Mary’s lips moving: what was she signaling to him? Ah, that was it. -She was repeating what she had said as they turned up the drive. “You’ll -stay young, please. You’ll keep your hope, my faith, your youth.” - -Yes, so he would. He wouldn’t let Mary down, he wouldn’t be beaten by -Staithley. _Punch_--queer how much he turned to memories of _Punch_ for -mental figures--had a cartoon in an _Almanac_ during the war. A tattered -soldier, beaten to the knee, represented one year; a fresh upstanding -soldier, taking the standard from the first, represented the next year. -Was the motto “Carry on”? Well, a good motto for peace too. William was -coming to the end of his tether, and Rupert must make ready to take from -his hands the standard of the Service. - -He had to learn, to learn, and for this thing which mattered most he -had not found a teacher, but he must keep his hope. Somewhere was light. -Somewhere was illumination. Somewhere was a teacher. - -A servant came into the room. “Mr. Bradshaw wishes to speak to Sir -Rupert on the telephone,” he said, and a scoffing laugh from Gertrude -died stillborn at a look from the ci-devant, insignificant Lady -Hepplestall. Rupert went to the door, like a blind man who is promised -sight; and it is permissible to hope that Phoebe Bradshaw, from the -place in which she was, saw the face of Rupert Hepplestall as he -answered the call to the telephone of Tom Bradshaw, his adviser. - -THE END - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Hepplestall's, by Harold Brighouse - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEPPLESTALL'S *** - -***** This file should be named 55288-0.txt or 55288-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/5/2/8/55288/ - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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