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diff --git a/old/55288-h/55288-h.htm b/old/55288-h/55288-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index 5d592f9..0000000 --- a/old/55288-h/55288-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,12803 +0,0 @@ -<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> - -<!DOCTYPE html - PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" > - -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> - <title>Hepplestall's, by Harold Brighouse</title> - <meta content="pg2html (binary v0.17)" /> - <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> - <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> - - body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify} - P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .75em; margin-bottom: .75em; } - H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } - hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} - .foot { margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; text-align: justify; font-size: 80%; font-style: italic;} - blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} - .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} - .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} - .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} - .xx-small {font-size: 60%;} - .x-small {font-size: 75%;} - .small {font-size: 85%;} - .large {font-size: 115%;} - .x-large {font-size: 130%;} - .indent5 { margin-left: 5%;} - .indent10 { margin-left: 10%;} - .indent15 { margin-left: 15%;} - .indent20 { margin-left: 20%;} - .indent30 { margin-left: 30%;} - .indent40 { margin-left: 40%;} - div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } - div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } - .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} - .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} - .pagenum {position: absolute; right: 1%; font-size: 0.6em; - font-variant: normal; font-style: normal; - text-align: right; background-color: #FFFACD; - border: 1px solid; padding: 0.3em;text-indent: 0em;} - .side { float: left; font-size: 75%; width: 15%; padding-left: 0.8em; - border-left: dashed thin; text-align: left; - text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; - font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;} - .head { float: left; font-size: 90%; width: 98%; padding-left: 0.8em; - border-left: dashed thin; text-align: center; - text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; - font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;} - p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0} - span.dropcap { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 0.8 } - pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} - -</style> - </head> - <body> - - -<pre> - -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 - - - - - - -</pre> - - <div style="height: 8em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h1> - HEPPLESTALL’S - </h1> - <h2> - By Harold Brighouse - </h2> - <h4> - New York: Robert M. McBride & Company - </h4> - <h3> - 1922 - </h3> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0001.jpg" alt="0001 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0001.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0009.jpg" alt="0009 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0009.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - <b>CONTENTS</b> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_FORE"> FOREWORD </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> <b>HEPPLESTALL’S</b> </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_PART"> <b>PART I</b> </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I—REUBEN’S SEAL </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II—SMOKED HERRING </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III—PHOEBE BRADSHAW </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV—ALMACK’S CLUB </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V—SIR HARRY WOOS </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI—THE MAN WHO WON </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII—THE EARLY LIFE OF JOHN BRADSHAW - </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII—THE LONELY MAN </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX—THE SPY </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X—DOROTHY’S MOMENT </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI—THE HATE OF THE HEPPLESTALLS - </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_PART2"> <b>PART II</b> </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER I—THE SERVICE </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER II—THE VOICE FROM THE STREET </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER III—MARY ELLEN </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER IV—MR. CHOWN OF LONDON </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER V—HUGH DARLEY’S HANDIWORK </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER VI—THE DREAM IN STONE </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER VII—MARY AND RUPERT </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER VIII—THE REGENCY </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER IX—MARY ARDEN’S HUSBAND </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER X—THE PEAK IN DARIEN </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XI—STAITHLEY EDGE </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_FORE" id="link2H_FORE"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - FOREWORD - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">R</span>UMMAGING 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.” - </p> - <p> - “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!” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “Yet it looks old,” I said. “In its youth, perhaps—” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “You wouldn’t care to give me their address?” I coaxed. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - I apologized. “Of course,” I said, “I will always deal through you. And as - to this passion, what is the price of that?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h1> - HEPPLESTALL’S - </h1> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_PART" id="link2H_PART"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - PART I - </h2> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER I—REUBEN’S SEAL - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">E</span>VEN 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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— - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “I crave your pardon, Sir Harry. I was in thought.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Hepplestall gave him his shoulder, glanced at the clock on the wall behind - him and stated the time. - </p> - <p> - “You do not consult your watch,” said Bantison. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER II—SMOKED HERRING - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HAT 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “I meant to bury Bantison,” said Reuben. “Now we’ll boil him.” Everett was - puzzled. - </p> - <p> - “You burn wood in your house, sir?” he asked. - </p> - <p> - “And coal. Is it to the point?” - </p> - <p> - “The coal is. You get it—where?” - </p> - <p> - “There is a seam.” - </p> - <p> - “Then that is the site of your factory.” - </p> - <p> - “God!” said Hepplestall, “it will be a monstrous sight.” He spoke as if - that gladdened him. - </p> - <p> - “The building, sir, will have dignity,” the architect reproved him. - </p> - <p> - “Aye? But I’m thinking of the engine. The furnace. The coal. A red - herring? A smoked herring!” - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>ipse dixit</i> 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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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—” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “That you may do the opposite?” - </p> - <p> - “No. That when I go driving through new country I may have a brake on my - wheels.” - </p> - <p> - “Well... am I to lock your wheels this time?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>is</i> Miss - Bradshaw?” he added, implying surprise to find her what she was. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “Indeed,” he went on, “I find myself blame-worthy and unaccountably a - laggard that this is the first time I have made your acquaintance.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh! I... I am not much in the world, sir.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - Crude flattery, but it hit the target. “I? A flower? Oh, sir—” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “We have no position,” she assented. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “But you are Mr. Hepplestall?” - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - And Peter was wonderfully shrewd. “There are fools in every trade,” he - said, “hotheads that let wild fancies carry off their commonsense.” - </p> - <p> - “Steam is a fancy, then? It does not work?” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER III—PHOEBE BRADSHAW - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>F 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “To walk,” she said, “with you?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, not too far for a lady,” he assured her, “and not too fast.” - </p> - <p> - “You,” she retorted, “ride too much. I’ll walk you off your legs.” So she - challenged him, with wisdom. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “And you,” he retorted, “too little.” - </p> - <p> - “I? I do not ride at all. You know we have no horses.” - </p> - <p> - “It will be necessary for you to ride,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “Why so?” she asked him. “Haven’t I proved that I can walk?” - </p> - <p> - “Still,” he said, “I shall have horses brought tomorrow. Will you have me - for riding master?” - </p> - <p> - “To ride I should need a habit.” - </p> - <p> - “Which I provide.” - </p> - <p> - 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?” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “They burned warlocks once,” she mocked him. A warlock is a wizard. - “Habits do not come in a day except by magic.” - </p> - <p> - “Yours will come by road, from Manchester. I ride in for it to-morrow.” - </p> - <p> - “Neglecting your work?” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “Damn her, I love her,” he said aloud as he undressed that night. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Hepplestall commanded, and Hepplestall received. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Mine? My horse? But, Mr. Hepplestall—” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “Salts?” she repeated, puzzled. - </p> - <p> - “In case you swoon,” he said gravely, and not ironically either. It was - the swooning age. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - It resulted that when Reuben next visited the works, he was confronted by - a <i>fait accompli</i>, 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. - </p> - <p> - “Then undo and re-do,” said Reuben, sourly. - </p> - <p> - “Pull down!” gasped Everett. “But—” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - And Phoebe was triumphing at home, secure of her Reuben, in ecstasy at her - tested power over him. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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? - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER IV—ALMACK’S CLUB - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>R. 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “But the vapors,” said Mrs. Verners, “come from Sir Harry’s absence.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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?” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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—” - </p> - <p> - “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—” - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Verners, you are vulgar.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - He came in without much assurance, but hesitation fled when he found - himself the center of an interest not at all languid. - </p> - <p> - “Damme, it’s Luke Verners come to town. Business for locksmiths here,” was - the coarse-witted welcome of a lord. - </p> - <p> - “Locksmiths?” asked Verners. - </p> - <p> - “Ain’t it locksmiths one employs to put bolts and bars on one’s wife’s - bedroom?” - </p> - <p> - “You flatter me, my lord,” said Verners. - </p> - <p> - The dandy eyed him appraisingly. “Perhaps I do, Verners, perhaps I do. You - are past your prime.” - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “What do they say?” asked Luke. - </p> - <p> - “They speak of steam-engines.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, Lord,” groaned Godaiming. “Old Seccombe’s on his hobby-horse.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “Corruption and decay,” said his lordship. - </p> - <p> - “Is that so sure?” queried Seccombe. “What is your word on that, Verners?” - </p> - <p> - “Beyond doubt, it is the end of all things when landlords are milked - through the poor-rates,” said Luke. - </p> - <p> - “Yet steam would appear to have possibilities?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, Seccombe’s a hopeless crank,” said Godalming. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “Steam is an infamy,” stated a gentleman called Collinson. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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—” - </p> - <p> - “Traitors! Outcasts!” cried Godalming. - </p> - <p> - “Or, perhaps, wise men, my lord. I do not know.” - </p> - <p> - “You don’t know if it is wise to sell your soul to the devil?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “You have heard of him—here?” Mr. Verners was astonished. - </p> - <p> - “We were interested to hear,” said Mr. Collinson. - </p> - <p> - “Of a perversion,” said Godalming. - </p> - <p> - “Godalming withholds from Mr. Hepplestall the light of his approval,” said - Mr. Seccombe, “but—” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “I am prepared to defend him,” said Seccombe. - </p> - <p> - “Then you’re a Jacobin.” Godalming turned an outraged back. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “Entirely,” said Mr. Verners, “though it staggers me that news of so small - a matter has traveled so far and so fast.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “But they cannot be of our order,” protested Verners, scandalized. “They - cease, of their own conduct, to be of our order.” - </p> - <p> - “You do not dispute the facts about Hepplestall?” - </p> - <p> - “No. It’s your conclusions I find amazing.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Have you a word on this, Whitworth?” he asked. “You come from - Lancashire.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Imagine Harry Whitworth perusing an account!” said Godalming. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “This is the stuff your hero is made of, Seccombe,” jeered Godalming. - </p> - <p> - “Not bad stuff,” Seccombe heard an unexpected ally say. “The stuff, as - Seccombe put it, that grasps a nettle firmly.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “It does not appeal to you to go to Lancashire and better Hepplestall’s - example?” he asked blandly. - </p> - <p> - “Good God!” said Sir Harry, and the Club was with him. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Whitworth saw no satisfactory way out of it, till Verners, mindful of - Dorothy, supplied an opportunity for retreat. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “A thousand guineas that you never come back,” suggested Godalming. - </p> - <p> - “A thousand that I am back—back, you understand me—in a - month.” - </p> - <p> - “Agreed,” said Godalming. “I back Prinny’s resolution for a thousand for a - month.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER V—SIR HARRY WOOS - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>O 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - His polite murmur roused Dorothy to self-consciousness. “What a hoyden Sir - Harry must be thinking me,” she said confusedly. - </p> - <p> - “They are wrong,” said Sir Harry, “who call red roses the flower of - Lancashire. That flower is the wild heather. That flower is you.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” said Dorothy with whimsical resignation, “the commonest flower that - blooms.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Are we to know what the word was?” asked Mrs. Verners not too discreetly. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “We are to see you back in Lancashire?” she said insinuatingly. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “And you will come to stay?” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “It pleases you?” she asked. - </p> - <p> - “Much less than the wearer.” - </p> - <p> - “You are a judge of ladies’ raiment, are you not, Sir Harry?” - </p> - <p> - “No more than becomes a man of taste.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “You have heard of that?” he said. “Well, there are women in town capable - of such bad taste as that.” - </p> - <p> - “The bad taste of allowing you to choose her gowns? But were you not - competent to choose?” - </p> - <p> - “The bad taste,” he said, “of sending the bills to me. Would you have had - me decline to pay them?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “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—” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps,” she said. “And while you relished them in London, did you give - thought to what I did at home?” - </p> - <p> - “You? To what you did? What did you do?” Sir Harry was flabbergasted at - her question. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “Perfectly, I thank you, Madam.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Indeed?” he said. “Thunderstorms break.” - </p> - <p> - “But not on me,” said Dorothy, and ran into the house. - </p> - <p> - 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! - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “What’s put you out, Godalming?” - </p> - <p> - “Ain’t the sight of your radiant face enough to put me out? I hate - happiness in others.” - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “I have flattered myself to the contrary,” said Sir Harry, with - complacency. “I have believed that I have recovered my senses.” - </p> - <p> - “Rot me if I understand you,” said his lordship. - </p> - <p> - “Yet you find me in the article of choosing a necklace.” - </p> - <p> - “Damme, Whitworth, are there no women nearer than the North Pole? Is there - no difference between gallantry and lunacy?” - </p> - <p> - “I am thinking of marriage, my lord.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Indeed? And what?” - </p> - <p> - “What? Burn me if you are not the most exasperating man alive. Have you no - recollections of a wager?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Pay? Where in the devil’s name have you been hiding yourself if you don’t - know you’ve won the wager?” - </p> - <p> - “Won it?” cried Sir Harry. - </p> - <p> - “What else are you happy for?” - </p> - <p> - “I give you my word I did not know of this, Godalming.” - </p> - <p> - “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!” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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!” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER VI—THE MAN WHO WON - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>T 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Well, well, but it is over,” he said a dozen times. - </p> - <p> - “But—,” and she began again with stupid and stupefying iteration. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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? - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “To what fold, Mr. Verners?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “I did not know of this,” said Luke, truthfully. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>yet</i> 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - He committed himself to fate, with an awful sinking feeling that he whose - fate it is to trust to women’s tact is lost. - </p> - <p> - “And in London,” asked Reuben as they rode out of the yard. “You did?” - </p> - <p> - 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?” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “I have brought Mr. Hepplestall home with me,” was Luke’s introduction. - </p> - <p> - “And,” said Reuben to Dorothy, “is Mr. Hepplestall visible?” - </p> - <p> - “Perfectly,” she said and bowed. - </p> - <p> - “I rejoice to hear,” he said gravely, “of the restoration of your - eyesight. You see me better than on a day a year ago?” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “I have heard of worse foibles,” said Dorothy, thinking of Sir Harry. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “Indeed, you have a notable great place up there,” said Luke. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “I confess I like the way his hair grows,” said Mrs. Verners, and Dorothy - said nothing. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Still, there is a thing which puzzles me,” he said. “You were in London. - Did you see Sir Harry Whitworth there?” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - And he supposed Sir Harry to have proposed and to have been refused, which - was broad truth if it wasn’t literal fact. - </p> - <p> - Refused Sir Harry? And why? For him! The miracle increased. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “I will marry you, Reuben,” she said, and his kiss was sacramental. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “No, no!” she cried. “Reuben, what are you thinking me? I am not like - that.” - </p> - <p> - “Like what?” he said. “I think you miracle.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Never for me,” he protested. - </p> - <p> - “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—” - </p> - <p> - “You are my goddess, Dorothy.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Pretense?” - </p> - <p> - “The pretense that I am more than a woman and you more than a man.” - </p> - <p> - “You are the most beautiful woman in the world.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “I think they do. I’m sure I do, but I’m a plain-dealer, Reuben.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Verners had a last word to say. “But there is Tom.” Young Tom Verners - was with his regiment in the Peninsula. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Well?” asked Reuben. - </p> - <p> - “The weavers tell me of an order of yours. I can’t believe—there - must be some mistake.” - </p> - <p> - “I gave an order.” - </p> - <p> - “But—” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Thanks?” repeated Peter. - </p> - <p> - “I offer you an overlooker’s job in my factory.” - </p> - <p> - “But Reuben,” said Phoebe, “Reuben!” - </p> - <p> - He turned upon her with a snarl. She used his Christian name. She dared! - “Reuben!” she said. “The boy. Our boy. Our John?” - </p> - <p> - “He will be—what—five months old?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” she said. - </p> - <p> - “At five years old, I take children into the factory. Good-night.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER VII—THE EARLY LIFE OF JOHN BRADSHAW - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>NCE 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - The factory bell was the <i>leit motif</i> 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “Aye, wench,” he said, “there’s you.” - </p> - <p> - “Me? There’s bigger things than me. There’s air and sky and a world that - is no beastly reek and walls and roofs.” - </p> - <p> - “It’s cold on the moor to-night,” he said, shivering. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “We’re prisoned in yon factory, Annie. Reckon I’m used to the prison. - There’s boggarts on the moor.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “You make too much o’ trouble o’ all sorts, John,” she said. - </p> - <p> - “I canna keep fro’ thinking, Annie,” he apologized. “I’m thinking now.” - </p> - <p> - “Aye, of old wives’ tales,” she mocked. - </p> - <p> - “No. I’m thinking of my grandfer and of Hepplestall’s factory.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER VIII—THE LONELY MAN - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Edward himself was conscious of no talent for factory owning and hardly of - being the son of a factory owner. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, is it necessary, Reuben?” pleaded Dorothy. - </p> - <p> - “Sparks should know where the flames come from,” said Reuben. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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?” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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?” - </p> - <p> - Edward was grateful: but wine could not wash his repugnance away. “Well, - now,” asked Reuben, “what do you think?” - </p> - <p> - “Frankly, sir, I am hardly capable of thought.” - </p> - <p> - “No,” said Reuben meditatively. “No. Its bigness takes the breath away.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “I?” The personal application caught him unawares, then he mentally pulled - himself together. If he was in for it, he could meet it. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “I am to decide now?” - </p> - <p> - “Decide? Decide? What is there to decide? You are my eldest son.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “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! - </p> - <p> - “I will have no son of mine a loafer. You would live in London?” - </p> - <p> - “I should hope to practice there.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll have no idlers and no cockneys in my family, Edward. Hepplestall’s! - Hepplestall’s! and he sneers at it.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, no, sir. Please. Not that. I feel it difficult to explain.” - </p> - <p> - “Don’t try.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “If it were land,” Edward went on ingenuously, “however great the estate, - you would not find me shirking my responsibility.” - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh,” said Edward, “it is big. But let me put a case.” - </p> - <p> - “What? Lawyering already?” scoffed Reuben. “Suppose one dislikes a cat. - Fifty cats don’t reconcile one.” - </p> - <p> - “You dislike the factory?” - </p> - <p> - “I may not fully understand—” - </p> - <p> - “Then wait till you do. Come here and learn.” - </p> - <p> - “That would be the thin end of the wedge.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>in extremis?</i> - Enlist? Well, then, he preferred enlistment to the factory. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Reuben silently passed the wine. It seemed a good answer. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “Why, sir, it’s you who are making a speech, and I may add a speech - containing many very familiar phrases.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I heard of that. A nasty business, though I understand the - authorities have dealt strongly with the outbreak.” - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “We don’t have Luddites here.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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—” - </p> - <p> - “This time, there’s no chance of doubt.” - </p> - <p> - “But I do doubt, sir. I doubt whether a factory, controlled by a strong - hand, has anything to fear from Workmen’s Combinations.” - </p> - <p> - “Damn it, look at Blackburn!” - </p> - <p> - “You shall have my decision when it is ready. At this moment, I tell you - candidly I do not incline to join you.” - </p> - <p> - “But union is strength. They’ve combined. So must we.” - </p> - <p> - “We always have, in essentials. I promise you I will give this matter - every thought.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” Reuben assured him. “I will see you to your horse.” - </p> - <p> - “Nay, you’ll not. They don’t breed my make of horse. I’ve a coach at door, - and extra strong, too.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - He returned to find Edward staring gloomily at his boots. “Well, Edward?” - he asked cheerily. “Did you like your lesson?” - </p> - <p> - “The thing I liked, sir, the only thing I liked, is that you are not to - act with Mr. Needham.” - </p> - <p> - “Am I not?” - </p> - <p> - “It did not sound so. Tell me, is that a fair specimen of the type of man - you meet in business?” - </p> - <p> - “No. In many ways he is superior to the most.” - </p> - <p> - “Superior! That fat elephant!” - </p> - <p> - “Needham is one of the strongest men in the cotton trade, Edward.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I called him elephant. Elephants have strength.” - </p> - <p> - “And strength is despicable?” - </p> - <p> - “No. But—” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “You are heroical,” said Reuben, “but as to the inevitability, take time, - and you will perceive it.” - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “There is beauty in Hepplestall’s,” said Reuben, and meant it. He had - created Hepplestall’s. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER IX—THE SPY - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">E</span>DWARD’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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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!” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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!” - </p> - <p> - “Eh, lad,” she said, “we’ve got to take what comes.” - </p> - <p> - 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? - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Man, I had to come. I’m that sorry for thee. Coming doan’t mean much for - sure, but—” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “You never doubted that, surely,” said Barraclough. - </p> - <p> - “Oh,” said John, “when a woman dies in childbirth—” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “‘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. - </p> - <p> - But the conversation of Mr. Barraclough was not calculated to be an - anodyne. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “An answer? What answer? I’ve looked and found no answer.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Is there a tack that’s right?” he asked. - </p> - <p> - “There’s shooting,” said Barraclough. - </p> - <p> - “Shooting? Tha’ canna shoot an engine, nor a factory.” - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “Why... why...” hesitated John, who was still intrigued obscurely with the - idea that he, the father of her child, was author of her death. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Maister Hepplestall!” - </p> - <p> - “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 <i>was</i> 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.” - </p> - <p> - “You’d do that! You!” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “We’ll mak’ the most of it by turning to hoam,” said John. - </p> - <p> - “Thy hoam’s no plaice for thee to-day.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “For thee?” Mr. Barraclough was greatly surprised. “Nay, I doubt I was - wise to mention my secret to thee.” - </p> - <p> - “Art coming?” John was striding resolutely homewards. - </p> - <p> - “Well, seeing I have mentioned it, I suppose there’s no partiklar harm in - showing it. O’ course, tha’ canna’ use a gun?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “I have? How?” - </p> - <p> - “Tha’ can shoot, if I canna’, Barraclough.” Which was disappointing to the - spy, who thought things were going better than this. - </p> - <p> - Still he could bide his time and “Aye, I can shoot,” he said. “I’ve been - in militia.” - </p> - <p> - “Then tha’ can teach me,” said John, to Mr. Barraclough’s relief. “I’ll be - a quick learner.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “No,” said John, “but if tha’ll lend me this, I’ll find a plaice for - practicing up on moors.” - </p> - <p> - “Lend thee my gun! Nay, lad, tha’s asking summat. It wenna do to carry - that about in daylight.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll tak’ it to-neight, and bring un back to-morrow neight.” - </p> - <p> - “To-neight? Tha’ canna’ practice in the dark.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Thy claim is strongest. Come when it’s dark, and tha’ shall have the - gun.” - </p> - <p> - John moved to the door. - </p> - <p> - “Where’st going now?” asked Barraclough, apprehensive of the slackening of - the spring he had wound up. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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? - </p> - <p> - But Bradshaw was the one hope of the agent and since there was nothing - else to trust, he must trust his luck. - </p> - <p> - “The gun! The gun!” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER X—DOROTHY’S MOMENT - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>HEN 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Come,” said Reuben, “this is better.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Just?” - </p> - <p> - “And, believe me, trying not to be smug. I only plead, sir, that I am old - enough to know my own tastes.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “A barrister’s is a busy life, sir. That is what I seek to persuade you.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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—” - </p> - <p> - “I, too,” Reuben warned him, “had my education.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - Reuben thought so too, but “Pooh,” he said, “an older man.” - </p> - <p> - “But you were young when you took up manufacturing. I—I cannot take - it up. Let me be candid, sir. I abhor the factory.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Edward!” Dorothy broke silence there. - </p> - <p> - “Oh!” said Reuben, “this is natural. Our limb of the law has ambitions. - Already he is fancying himself a judge—my judge.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “You can try.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “I will lend you strength.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “You believe yourself above it. That is the truth, Edward.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “I used the word ‘unfitted,’” he said. “Shall we let that stand?” - </p> - <p> - “Till you disprove it, it may stand. When you come down from Oxford, you - will go into the factory and disprove it.” - </p> - <p> - “No.” - </p> - <p> - “I have been very patient, Edward. I have let you talk yourself out, but—” - </p> - <p> - “Lord, sir, the things I haven’t said!” - </p> - <p> - “Indeed? Do you wish to say them?” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “I see we are distressing her,” said Edward, studiously abstaining from - putting emphasis upon the “we.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “That is an insult, sir,” said Edward. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - Ridicule! Edward could fight against any weapon but this. “You treat me - like a child,” he said in plaintive impotence. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, no,” said Reuben. “So far, I have given you the benefit of the doubt. - I have not whipped you yet.” - </p> - <p> - “Whipped!” - </p> - <p> - “A method of correction, Edward, used upon children and sometimes on those - whose years outstrip their sense.” - </p> - <p> - “Do you seriously picture me, sir, remaining here to be a whipping block?” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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? - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Reuben,” she said, then “Edward,” that was all. Her hand fell to the - floor. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Edward met him. “I am riding for the doctor, sir,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Go,” said Reuben fiercely; and Edward left him with his dead. - </p> - <p> - The beast had made his spring. Dorothy had not gone to the factory, and - the factory had come to her. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XI—THE HATE OF THE HEPPLESTALLS - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">P</span>HOEBE 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Is it to do with John?” she asked. - </p> - <p> - “Aye,” he said, “it’s all to do wi’ thy John.” - </p> - <p> - “I know nothing beyond that he’s not been home all night.” - </p> - <p> - “A kna’ he’s not bin hoam. He’s done wi’ coming hoam.” - </p> - <p> - “Why? Why? What has happened?” - </p> - <p> - “A’m, striving to tell thee that. Th’ job’s not easy, though.” He looked - at her. “Wilt have it straight?” - </p> - <p> - “I’m never afraid of truth.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Nay, nay!” he said. - </p> - <p> - “Please open the door for me.” - </p> - <p> - “A canna’,” he said. “Coom, missus, what art thinking? He’ll spit at - thee.” - </p> - <p> - “I have to speak to him about John,” said Phoebe. “Open the door and let - me through.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m grateful,” said Phoebe. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Reuben!” said Phoebe. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “But I am Phoebe,” she said, standing her ground before his menacing - advance. “Phoebe, Reuben. Phoebe, who—Phoebe Bradshaw.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Bradshaw?” he repeated. “Bradshaw?” And this second time, there was an - angry question in it. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Say that again,” he said. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “You’re sure of this?” he asked. “You’re absolutely sure he did not know - he is my son?” - </p> - <p> - “Absolutely,” she said. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “He killed my wife.” - </p> - <p> - “But you haven’t understood. They haven’t told you. John was not himself. - He—” - </p> - <p> - “Drunk?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - Reuben nodded. “These women,” he said, “are always cutting it too fine.” - His gesture disclaimed responsibility for the reckless greed of women. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - But “He killed my wife,” Reuben said again. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “But, Reuben, he was mad.” - </p> - <p> - “Still—” - </p> - <p> - She flung herself upon her knees. “Reuben, you cannot hang your son. Not - your son, Reuben.” - </p> - <p> - “Quiet,” he commanded. “Quiet.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Not while I live,” said Peter Bradshaw’s daughter. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, do with me what you like. You always have done. But John—John!” - </p> - <p> - He looked his unchanging answer. - </p> - <p> - “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—” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “And teach them,” she said, “teach them to speak their first words, ‘I - hate the Hepplestalls.’” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - In the factory they called him “Master.” He was master of them all. She - did not doubt it and she went. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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?” - </p> - <p> - “I hope they will,” said Reuben, not quite certain of him yet. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - Dorothy had died happy in the bright certainty of her authentic moment! - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_PART2" id="link2H_PART2"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - PART II - </h2> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER I—THE SERVICE - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>F 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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?” - </p> - <p> - “To-day!” he gasped. Could normal things like cricket co-exist with his - ordeal? - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, Lord!” Rupert was aghast, feeling with twitching fingers for the tie - that wasn’t there. - </p> - <p> - “I take it as a happy omen that you should have done the same.” - </p> - <p> - “You really did forget yours, dad?” - </p> - <p> - “Really,” lied Sir Philip. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - Lady Hepplestall touched his shoulder affectionately, and left him to his - breakfast-table study of the market reports. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>pour le bon motif</i>, it was Sir Philip - Hepplestall. A gesture, but a gallant one. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “In what way in particular?” asked Sir Philip, mentally saluting a - spirited recovery. - </p> - <p> - “Will you ask me that next time I beat you at golf and words fail you? - I’ve got the words.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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? - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “Their gratitude or their ingratitude has no bearing on my duty,” said Sir - Philip. - </p> - <p> - “But aren’t there strikes?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “Ah!” said Philip, “Bradshaw! Bradshaw!” The name pricked him shrewdly. - “But no,” he said, “he’s not a beast.” - </p> - <p> - “He’s Labor Member for Staithley,” said Rupert. “I see their gratitude - less and less.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “And they sent him to Parliament for it,” said Rupert hotly. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh!” Rupert protested. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “I hope I shall never oppose you, sir,” said Rupert. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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— - </p> - <p> - He felt his father’s hand upon his knee, and looked up from his - meditations. “It is a trust, Rupert,” said Sir Philip. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “You have ambitions for me,” he smiled back. - </p> - <p> - “Well, you’re on the road to it.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER II—THE VOICE FROM THE STREET - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE 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. - </p> - <p> - Tom made a move. “That’s done you, you beggar,” he said, gleefully rising - and filling a pipe. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “You can’t play chess, Walter. It’s a question of brain.” - </p> - <p> - Pate shied the matches at him, and Tom sat at the piano and picked out a - tune with one hand. - </p> - <p> - “Stop it!” cried Walter. - </p> - <p> - “On terms,” said Tom. - </p> - <p> - “I hate you,” said Walter. “Come away.” - </p> - <p> - “The terms are the Meistersinger,” said Tom. - </p> - <p> - “On a piano! You’re a Goth.” - </p> - <p> - “No. I’m paying you a compliment you deserve. Get at it.” - </p> - <p> - Walter got. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>Clarion</i>, 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “I’ve heard,” said Sir Philip. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “Is there question of the truth?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Shall I tell you the only fact known to me which may have bearing on your - family’s belief, Mr. Bradshaw?” - </p> - <p> - “I wish you would. That there’s a fact of any sort behind it is news to - me.” - </p> - <p> - “A man called Bradshaw was hanged for the murder of an ancestress of mine. - It is possible you are descended from this man.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “Thank you, Sir Philip,” said Tom. “But I’m not doubting it.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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! - </p> - <p> - “Thank you again,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “So we go on with it?” - </p> - <p> - “We go on.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Walter Pate crashed out the final chords. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “Shut up, you slave to alcohol. Shut up and listen.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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?” - </p> - <p> - “Have you no soul at all, Tom? Couldn’t you hear her?” - </p> - <p> - “I heard a street-singer.” - </p> - <p> - “You heard a class voice, and you’re going to hear it again.” Mr. Pate was - at the window. - </p> - <p> - “Then bring her in,” said Tom. “I’ll freeze for no fad of yours. A class - voice in Staithley streets!” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “Get warm,” said Walter to her. “Then we’ll have a look at you.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Can you sing anything besides ‘Lead Kindly Light?’” asked Walter. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “Go on,” said Walter. “There’ll be supper afterwards.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “Stop it,” cried Walter, horrified. - </p> - <p> - Tom spat into the fire. “My constituents!” he groaned. “Walter, it’s a - queasy thought.” - </p> - <p> - “I thought you favored education,” said Walter. - </p> - <p> - “I do, but—” - </p> - <p> - “Go on favoring it. It’s a growing child.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - Walter’s hand strayed gently to his friend’s shoulder. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “Go back to the hymn,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “A hymn?” The word had no meaning for her. - </p> - <p> - “‘Lead Kindly Light,’” he explained. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “It goes through me like a dentist’s file in a hollow tooth,” Tom - protested. - </p> - <p> - “You fool,” said Mr. Pate pityingly, and, to the girl, “Sing.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “’Oo are you gettin’ at?” she asked. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, I can’t see it, Walter,” said Tom. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “Mary Ellen Bradshaw,” she told him, and “Lord!” said Tom. “You’ll waste - your time.” - </p> - <p> - “I shan’t,” said Walter. “There’s grit amongst that tribe. You’re here to - prove it.” - </p> - <p> - “Where do you live?” Tom asked her. - </p> - <p> - “Brick-yards, mostly,” she said. “I’m good at dodging bobbies.” There is - warm sleeping by the kilns, and the police know it. - </p> - <p> - “Got any parents, Mary Ellen?” - </p> - <p> - “’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’.” - </p> - <p> - “This gentleman is called Bradshaw,” said Walter, to Tom’s annoyance. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “Aye,” she said submissively. That she was mud, at any rate, was not news - to her. - </p> - <p> - “Aye, what?” - </p> - <p> - “What yo’ said.” - </p> - <p> - “Come,” said Walter. “There’s tractability.” - </p> - <p> - “I call it cunning. Beggar’s cunning. She’s a Bradshaw.” - </p> - <p> - “Not to me. She’s a Voice, and, by the Lord, I’ll train her how to use - it.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Oo—er,” said Mary Ellen. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - She nodded. “Aye,” she said, “you ’ave ’em when you go to - quod.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “No,” said Walter, “your whole life is remembering. Education, Tom. Isn’t - that the sovereign remedy?” - </p> - <p> - “I’m believing in nothing just now,” said Tom Bradshaw. - </p> - <p> - “Then I am. I’m believing in the voice of Mary Ellen and I’m going to - educate it.” - </p> - <p> - “Will it ’urt?” asked Mary Ellen. - </p> - <p> - “No,” said Tom, “but I will if you’re not grateful to Mr. Pate. I’ll break - your neck.” - </p> - <p> - “Tom, Tom!” protested Walter. - </p> - <p> - “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—” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “She was bred in Jackman’s Buildings. The beastliest slum in the town.” - </p> - <p> - “They’ll go pilgrimages to her birthplace.” - </p> - <p> - “You don’t believe that. Music’s as bad as drink for damaging a man’s - sense of proportion.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Good night,” said Tom, and went. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - But Tom had not heard. “Walter,” he said, “if you value my friendship, - there’s a thing you’ll not deny me.” - </p> - <p> - “Well?” - </p> - <p> - “I pay half. Let’s be fools together.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER III—MARY ELLEN - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>ARY 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “If she’s to go into the spare bed,” she said, “she’ll go clean.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Butterworth returned to the sitting room. “She’s in bed,” she - reported. - </p> - <p> - “Thank you,” said Walter and then, by way of explanation, added, “She can - sing.” - </p> - <p> - “I thought it would be that,” she said. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, yes, it is quite extraordinarily that. Did I make it clear to you - that she will live here?” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll keep her clean,” said Mrs. Butterworth, shouldering the burden. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “It’s a good name to take risks with,” she warned him. - </p> - <p> - “Wait till I’ve taught her how to sing.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “She goes to concerts,” he protested. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “She is better.” - </p> - <p> - “Then it doesn’t help her to know it and to know they sing in public and - she doesn’t.” - </p> - <p> - “She shan’t sing yet. What am I to do?” - </p> - <p> - “Take her mind off it. It’s always concerts. There are theaters.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Would you go with her?” he asked shyly, his tone implying that now, if - never before, he was her petitioner. - </p> - <p> - “If you wish it,” she said, exulting secretly. “I’m sure she needs a - change.” - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>Staithley - Evening Reporter</i>, 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Not yet,” he said. “Not for a long while yet.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, Daddy Pate, I can’t wait for ever.” - </p> - <p> - “Nobody’s asking you to. But you’ll wait till you’re ready.” - </p> - <p> - “How long?” - </p> - <p> - “Some time. Years.” - </p> - <p> - “Years? But you told Mr. Bradshaw I was to sing in the ‘Messiah.’ I’ve - been learning it.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “You mean I’m not good enough. Then why have you told me I’m good?” - </p> - <p> - “You’re too good to spoil.” - </p> - <p> - “But I’m spoiling now.” - </p> - <p> - “No: you’re learning.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “She’ll fret herself into a decline,” she said. “You’d best give way to - her.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Butterworth held up her hands in scandalized protest. “Oh, dearie!” - she said, incapable of more. - </p> - <p> - “Why am I kept down like this?” demanded Mary Ellen. “Mr. Pate knows - best.” - </p> - <p> - “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—” - </p> - <p> - “Oh! he never!” said Mrs. Butterworth, stung to defend Walter, though - secretly in sympathy with much of her passionate distortion of his - motives. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m sure he means it for your good.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “That’s foolish talk, Mary.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m going to sing somewhere. That may be foolish, but it’s fact.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, I’ll tell him. Now eat your breakfast.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, for this season, Mary.” - </p> - <p> - “But the ‘Messiah’? You promised me.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER IV—MR. CHOWN OF LONDON - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “I do,” Mr. Chown would say calmly. “He’s in ‘The Poppy Plant,’ which is - at Eastbourne this week and at Torquay next week.” - </p> - <p> - “Get him out of that for me, old man.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll try, but Billy is five feet six, his hair is black and he’s got a - Roman nose.” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t care: I want him.” - </p> - <p> - “And his salary is sixteen.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - It was flattering to be thought a connoisseur of wine, and Chown had - skillfully mentioned a wine that couldn’t go beyond Montagu’s <i>savoir - vivre</i>, 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. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Montagu, in gratitude, decided to give Mr. Chown a hint. Mr. Chown was - in evening dress. - </p> - <p> - “I am glad to hear,” said Mr. Chown, who had heard nothing at all, “that - you are having excellent houses.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “And the music-hall.” - </p> - <p> - “Ah! You feel the competition?” - </p> - <p> - “I wasn’t meaning that. Look here, Chown, are you coming in to see my show - to-night?” - </p> - <p> - “Well—” Mr. Chown’s whole anatomy, as seen above the table, was - apology incarnate. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “What makes you think so?” - </p> - <p> - “Well, there’s nothing else in Staithley.” The theater <i>is</i> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “Montagu, I shan’t forget this kindness,” said Chown. - </p> - <p> - “You put me under obligation to you. But—did you never hear of an - Eisteddfod?” - </p> - <p> - “Is it a new act on the halls?” asked Mr. Montagu, who did not rapidly - clear his mind of an obsession. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Wait a moment,” said Mr. Montagu. “Why am I thinking of Lloyd George?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Music is music in Lancashire. - </p> - <p> - “Ah.” said the innocent Mr. Montagu, “if it’s music, and dressed at that, - it’ll not affect me at the theater.” - </p> - <p> - “Let me fill your glass.” said Mr. Chown. “What’s your opinion of the - cinemas?” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Chown did not condemn technique, but X <i>was</i> 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.... - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, you are going out?” he said. “So’m I. It’s hot in here.” He modified - the Gallicism of his bow. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “I’m glad to be out of that,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “There’s too much crowd to-night,” said Mary Ellen. - </p> - <p> - “Ah, you feel that, do you?” - </p> - <p> - “Choral singing!” she said, with immense disgust. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - She looked him over. “Well,” she said, “I suppose you weren’t always fat. - It’s too late now.” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Chown swallowed hard. “Yes, for me,” he said. “Not for you. Would you - care to go on the stage if the chance came?” - </p> - <p> - “Would a duck swim?” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I can do better than that for you.” - </p> - <p> - “You can? You?” - </p> - <p> - “If you will work. If, for instance, you will get rid of your Lancashire - accent.” - </p> - <p> - “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—” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “London!” she said. “London! Who are you?” - </p> - <p> - “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—” - </p> - <p> - “Not all,” she said. “I can sing.” - </p> - <p> - “In a Choral Society,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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?” - </p> - <p> - Mary Ellen nodded, and he felt he had struck a snag. - </p> - <p> - “You are a relative of his?” - </p> - <p> - “I’m not then. If you want to know, he found me singing in the streets.” - </p> - <p> - “And was this long ago?” - </p> - <p> - “Getting on for two years.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Are you going to tell him about it?” she asked in alarm. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “Cold? I could listen all night to this.” Mr. Chown envied her the - undistinguished cloak she wore: <i>per ardua ad astra</i>. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “How much?” she asked promptly. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” she said. - </p> - <p> - “It is a curious fact,” he remarked, “that I do not know your name. Mine - is Chown. Lexley Chown.” - </p> - <p> - “Mine’s Mary Ellen Bradshaw,” she said, jettisoning the name of Pate as - useless cargo now. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “He’s very busy to-night,” said Mary Ellen, “and the train leaves early - to-morrow.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Not absolutely,” he assured her. - </p> - <p> - “It’s flat,” she insisted. “I’m going to miss the Staithley hills.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER V—HUGH DARLEY’S HANDIWORK - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>T 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “By the way, Hubert,” he said, “whom would you say is the toughest stage - manager you’ve got on tour?” - </p> - <p> - “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.’” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “Yes.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, will you take a girl from me and put her in the chorus and ask - Darley with my compliments to give her hell?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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—” - </p> - <p> - “My dear Lexley, you have only to command. I run my companies solely for - your convenience.” - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “I hate looking at raw meat. What are her points?” - </p> - <p> - “She can sing.” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Rossiter shrugged his shoulders. “She’s nothing in my life for that,” - he said. - </p> - <p> - “She’s got youth.” - </p> - <p> - “Flapper market’s depressed, Lexley. Give me experience all the time.” - </p> - <p> - “Darley’s seeing to the experience. I tell you, Hubert—” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “I did venture to bring her.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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?” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Hugh Darley, arriving at the theater at eleven o’clock, was told by - the doorkeeper that a young lady was waiting for him. - </p> - <p> - “Been here long?” he asked, looking through Mary Ellen who stood in the - passage. - </p> - <p> - “I came on duty when the night-watchman went off at nine. She was here - then.” - </p> - <p> - “More fool she,” he said. “Got my letters there?” The doorkeeper had his - letters, including one from Mr. Drayton. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - He read Drayton’s letter through. “Where is she?” he asked. - </p> - <p> - “Why, here,” said the doorkeeper. - </p> - <p> - “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 - <i>are</i> what they’ve sent me? What’s your name?” - </p> - <p> - “Mary Arden.” - </p> - <p> - He consulted the advice note of these extraordinary goods. “That’s right,” - he admitted. “Arden! Whom did you see as Rosalind?” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, will you?” she cried. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” she said. - </p> - <p> - “Then be looking at those songs. There’s a piano in the orchestra. I’m - going down to it.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Yes.” she said, fighting her impulse to scream at the phenomenon of his - sudden reappearance. - </p> - <p> - “Then let her go.” - </p> - <p> - She sang the opening chorus of “The Little Viennese.” - </p> - <p> - “You’ve sung that before,” he said, accusingly. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, no.” - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “I’m afraid I haven’t danced yet,” said Mary. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “It’s that sort of wood,” she said, breathless but defiant. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - Mary asked the other girl, who looked curiously at her. “I never knew - Darley to make love before,” she said. - </p> - <p> - “Love!” said Mary, blinking startled eyes as if a flashlight had blazed at - her out of darkness. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “We don’t look after other people’s morals,” Dolly Chandler assured her, - “but you may care to know Darley’s married.” - </p> - <p> - “You think he meant—this?” - </p> - <p> - Dolly shrugged her shoulders. “He’s a man.” - </p> - <p> - “And he meant you to tell me what you are telling me?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - And in ordinary clothes she had turned cartwheels before this man! Mary - Ellen blushed scarlet consternation. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - She failed to meet his eye. Telling herself she was a coward, she tried - and failed. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “You mean it won’t be true?” There was a hope and she clutched at it with - words that came unbidden to her lips. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “No,” she said. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “What did you want to go on the stage for, anyhow?” he asked her once. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “I think you’ll do it, Mary, when you have learned to feel,” he told her - soberly. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” said Mary, dashing him to earth, “there’s money in it.” - </p> - <p> - “You miserable slut!” he said, and flung out of her room. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Darley’s mad about her,” Drayton interpreted this to Rossiter. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>con brio</i>. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Ich dieu</i>” he muttered. “By God, I do. Where’s the bar?” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER VI—THE DREAM IN STONE - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>F 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Sit down, Lexley,” he said. “Have you read that script I sent you?” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “The flapper part isn’t worth Mary’s salary. Now, is it? Seriously, I’m - troubled about Mary.” - </p> - <p> - “What’s the matter with her?” - </p> - <p> - “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!” - </p> - <p> - “That wasn’t recently. Be fair, Hubert. And where do you want her to keep - her heart?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - Chown stiffened in his chair. “As Miss Arden’s agent, Hubert,” he said - severely, “I protest against that suggestion.” - </p> - <p> - Rossiter smiled blandly. “Right. You’ve done your duty to your client and - to the proprieties. Now we’ll get down to facts.” - </p> - <p> - “But anyhow, Hubert, don’t forget what this girl is. She plays on her - demureness. It’s Mary’s winning card.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “No! No,” cried Chown. “You—” - </p> - <p> - “The theater is a place of illusion, my friend. In any case, Mary’s been - doing flappers too long. She’s getting old.” - </p> - <p> - “You’re simply being perverse, Hubert.” Mr. Chown was genuinely angry. - “Mary Arden old!” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Is that your own?” asked Rossiter with relish. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>Daily Telegraph</i>. “The man who said it to me said it - was Samuel Butler’s.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m afraid he’s dead,” said Chown. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “No,” agreed Chown. - </p> - <p> - “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.’” - </p> - <p> - “For her?” gasped Chown. “Mary to play Sans-Gene?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - Chown hesitated slightly, then “Do you know, I’ve a card up my sleeve - about Mary,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “Then, for God’s sake, play it, my lad. Play it. It’s overdue.” - </p> - <p> - “What about giving her a character part?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Did you notice,” asked Rossiter witheringly, “that the scene of this - piece is laid in Granada?” - </p> - <p> - “Does that matter?” asked Chown blandly. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>are</i> it, - but we won’t mention that.” - </p> - <p> - “This is interesting,” said Mary Ellen with shining eyes. “I’ll work at - this. I’ll show them something.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, Robey, I suppose.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” Derek agreed. “Usually Robey’s first choice. Just now, it’s Robey - or ‘Granada the Gay,’ with a girl called Arden.” - </p> - <p> - “You’re in charge,” said Rupert. “I’ve heard of Mary Arden.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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—” - </p> - <p> - “That—that was a topping Turkish Bath we went to before dinner,” - said Rupert. - </p> - <p> - Derek stared. “What!” he gasped. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “But,” said Rupert still sitting, still stupidly resenting the intrusion - of the curtain, “but—Mary Arden.” - </p> - <p> - “If that’s the trouble, I’ll take you round and introduce you afterwards. - Anything, so long as we don’t miss this drink.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “I see,” said Rupert curtly. “But you’ll introduce me.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - Mary laughed. “Fairy?” she said. “You’ve a quaint name. Fairy by name and - nature. Fairies disappear.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Do you know, Miss Arden, Fairy comes from Lancashire,” said Derek, by way - of magnanimously helping a lame dog over a stile. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “Oh,” he was saying, “it won’t interest Miss Arden that I come from - Lancashire.” - </p> - <p> - “Well,” she said, hinting a gulf impassable between North and South, “I’m - a London actress.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER VII—MARY AND RUPERT - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">R</span>UPERT 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “I hope I shall,” he said, gazing ingenuous admiration at her. “For - instance—” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - Then it happened, not what she had feared would happen but something even - more disturbing. - </p> - <p> - “Ah,” he said gayly, “then that’s a bet. That’s something to look forward - to while I’m at Staithley.” - </p> - <p> - Staithley! Staithley! It rang in her brain. Stammering she spoke it. - “Staithley!” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “In Staithley?” she repeated. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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—” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “Hepplestall,” she thought going up her stairs, “Hepplestall, and I’ve to - act to-night.” Her bed received her. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - Incongruous in youth and khaki he sat abashed amongst black-coated elders - of the service at the board of Hepplestall’s. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Complacent he had not been as he bared his head before Sir Philip’s grave, - but he had kept his balance. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “I shall not see it,” said old Horace, “but I do not need to see. We - continue, we Hepplestalls; we serve.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - He realized, awed by his presumptuousness, that he was thinking of Mary - Arden as the lady who was Lady Hep-plestall. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - 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? - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, love!” she jeered. “What’s love?” - </p> - <p> - “I can tell you that,” he said, “better than I could ten days ago. Love’s - selfishness <i>à deux</i>. I’m one of the two and my idea of love is - finding comfort in your arms.” - </p> - <p> - 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—” - </p> - <p> - “Was that mattering before the war? I’m sure it doesn’t matter now,” he - said. - </p> - <p> - “And this photograph?” - </p> - <p> - He shook his head. “It might be any hill.” - </p> - <p> - “But it is Staithley Edge.” - </p> - <p> - For a moment he was radiant. “You got it,” he glowed, “because of me.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t want to know about your people. We’re you and I. We’re Mary and - Rupert.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes. But we’re Mary Bradshaw and Rupert Hepplestall.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “You haven’t understood. When I pretend to be Lancashire on the stage, I - don’t pretend. Is that clear?” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “And Staithley in particular. I’m Staithley born and bred. Bred, I’m - telling you, in Staithley Streets. My name’s Bradshaw.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - In the ranks, though. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - He forced a smile. “You’re a long way from them, then,” he said, and she - agreed on that. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “No.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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?” - </p> - <p> - 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? - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER VIII—THE REGENCY - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “In other words, we’re to be caretakers for Rupert,” she said. “What will - become of my Red Cross committee work here?” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Duxbury,” said William severely, “is a war-profiteer. His future plans - tally with his present.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, how can you say that of your friend?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - She did suggest it. “But surely you are all in business to make money!” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “But not in Staithley. William, say it shall not be in Staithley.” - </p> - <p> - “It must.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m evicted for that slut! Have you no more thought for your wife than to - humiliate me like that?” - </p> - <p> - “There is no humiliation, Gertrude. And, I expect, no need to think of - this at all yet. Rupert deserves a long holiday.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “We shall not leave Staithley,” he said. “Staithley is the home of the - Head of Hepplestall’s.” - </p> - <p> - “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 “<i>Nunc dîmittis</i>” he might retire and go, as Gertrude - wished, to London, but not before then. Certainly not before then. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - <i>sauve qui peut</i> 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. - </p> - <p> - 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? - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>eyes</i> of - bygone Hepplestalls, with the furtive air of a criminal. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>gaze</i> of the Founder on the wall, natural to be - curious. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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?” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - He lunched alone with Gertrude and, “I’m writing to Rupert to-day,” he - said incautiously. - </p> - <p> - “Oh?” She bristled. “Why?” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “I got at it roughly in half an hour this morning,” he boasted. - </p> - <p> - “And sent it to them?” she asked quickly. - </p> - <p> - “Oh dear, no. I was only doing it as a matter of curiosity. If I sent them - my result, I should frighten them.” - </p> - <p> - “They must expect something big, though. Shan’t you reply at all or are - you consulting Rupert first?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “I heard from Connie Duxbury this morning,” she said. - </p> - <p> - “Not the most desirable of your acquaintances, I think,” said William. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, my dear. Sir Ralph’s a member of Parliament now.” - </p> - <p> - “It isn’t a certificate of respectability.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER IX—MARY ARDEN’S HUSBAND - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">G</span>IVE up the stage!” - echoed Mr. Chown, assuming an appearance of thunderstruck amazement. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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! - </p> - <p> - “Listen to this, Mary. Do you know what Rossiter is doing next?” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll see it from the stalls,” she said. - </p> - <p> - “No. You’ll be it. You’ll be Sans-Gêne in ‘The Duchess of Dantzig.’ ” - </p> - <p> - “I didn’t tell you I’m retiring from the stage, did I? All I said was that - it’s possible.” - </p> - <p> - “Ah!” said Chown, watching his bait at work. - </p> - <p> - “You’re wrong,” she said. “You’re wrong.” - </p> - <p> - He put his hand on hers. “Am I, Mary? Absolutely?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” said Chown, “he means that.” - </p> - <p> - “It’s decent of him. We’ll be decent, too, please. We’ll tell him there’s - a doubt.” - </p> - <p> - “Look here, Mary, I know you well enough to ask. Is it a baby?” - </p> - <p> - She shook her head. “Not that sort of baby,” she said, and puzzled him. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.= - </p> - <p> - ````Big fleas have little fleas ````Upon their backs to bite ’em. - ````These fleas have other fleas ````And so, ad infinitum.= - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - He looked up to find Mary studying his face. “Sorry, old thing,” he said, - “but these are rather important. Letters from Staithley.” - </p> - <p> - “Staithley!” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “It does seem to depend on you,” she hedged. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Aren’t you deciding very quickly, Rupert?” - </p> - <p> - “I thought for a solid five minutes before I handed the letters across to - you.” He was most indignant at her imputation of hastiness. - </p> - <p> - “I was watching you. Five minutes! Not long to give to the consideration - of a death sentence.” - </p> - <p> - “A—what?” - </p> - <p> - “Staithley. Staithley Mills without the Hepplestalls!” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Good Lord! Besides, aren’t you rather forgetting? Aren’t you forgetting - you’re a Bradshaw?” - </p> - <p> - “It is quite safe to forget that. I’m Mary Arden. Nobody knows me. It’s - too long since I was anything but that.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, it wouldn’t do. Too risky altogether. Oh, never. Staithley’s the one - place that’s absolutely barred.” - </p> - <p> - “Rupert, you’re making me responsible. You’re using me as your excuse.” - </p> - <p> - “Damn it, Mary, do you want us to live in Staithley?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Your conscience was troubling you, Rupert.” - </p> - <p> - “It was, I’ve admitted it. And this letter is my quittance. It washes - conscience out. It closes the account.” - </p> - <p> - “No. You’re still troubled.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll be hanged! Do you keep my conscience?” - </p> - <p> - “I want us to go to Staithley, Rupert.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Just one moment first, though. You say you’re putting your foot down. I - have a foot as well as you.” - </p> - <p> - “I adore your foot, Mary. If I were a sculptor—” - </p> - <p> - “Seriously, Rupert, I’m going to fight this. You’re doing wrong, you know - you’re doing wrong—” - </p> - <p> - “Fight?” he said. “My dear Mary, perhaps you own half of Hepplestall’s - shares? Now I’d an idea it was I.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “When we’ve just declared war?” she smiled. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, that’s rubbish. You’ve no munitions, my dear.” - </p> - <p> - “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!” - </p> - <p> - “And more money when this sale’s gone through,” he said eagerly. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “And except,” said Mary, “that I am fighting.” - </p> - <p> - “You darling,” he said contemptuously, and went out. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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— - </p> - <p> - <i>Dear Mr. Bradshaw:</i> - </p> - <p> - <i>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.</i> - </p> - <p> - <i>Yours sincerely,</i> - </p> - <p> - <i>Mary Hepplestall.</i> - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - She had conquered London; surely she could conquer Rupert Hepplestall. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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? - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Well, Mr. Bradshaw,” she greeted him, “and who am I?” - </p> - <p> - “Who are you? Why, Lady Hepplestall.” - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “And you don’t much care to look? Not at that thankless girl who bolted.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Hasn’t he yet?” - </p> - <p> - “No: he’s killing time in London.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.’” - </p> - <p> - “I did think of it,” he admitted. “Then I thought again. He ought to be in - Staithley.” - </p> - <p> - “And he’s on his way there now to sell Hepplestall’s.” - </p> - <p> - “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!” - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>Times</i> 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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?” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “Post-war,” groaned Tom. “I know. It’s the word for everything that’s - deteriorated: but Hepplestall’s shan’t go post-war.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “If,” said Mary, “it isn’t a quartette. I’m coming with you. It’ll make my - understudy grateful, anyhow.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER X—THE PEAK IN DARIEN - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">R</span>UPERT 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Why not?” said Rupert. “It’s a mistake to call optimism a cheap virtue. - How are you, Uncle?” - </p> - <p> - “I suppose you slept last night,” was the reply from which Rupert was to - gather that sleep at such a crisis was considered gross. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “You decided very quickly,” said William, who had come to no decision. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Quite right,” lie said firmly. “Wives don’t count. But it isn’t the case - that you decide, Rupert. The Board decides.” - </p> - <p> - “I make it from your letter that for the practical purposes of this deal, - you and I decide.” - </p> - <p> - “It still is not the case that you decide.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “Is that fair, Rupert? You would have been the first to blame me if I had - not told you of this.” - </p> - <p> - “I should never have known anything about it. I know nothing of lots of - important things you decide.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “You’re... you’re very headstrong, Rupert.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Well,” confessed William, “tentatively, purely as a matter of curiosity, - I have gone into that.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “It makes a very considerable total, Rupert,” said William gravely. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Then I’ve a surprise for you,” said William. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “I wouldn’t dream of disturbing you, sir, but Lady Hepplestall is here.” - </p> - <p> - “My wife?” cried Rupert, hoping against hope that it was his mother. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “The devil you are,” cried Rupert. - </p> - <p> - Tom turned to William. “Does Sir Rupert know I’m secretary of the - Spinners’ Union?” he asked. - </p> - <p> - “Indeed?” said Rupert. “And what business may this be of the Spinners’ - Union, or any other Union?” - </p> - <p> - “Vital business,” said Tom, “of theirs and every other cotton trade Union. - I’m usually asked to sit down in this office, Mr. Hepplestall.” - </p> - <p> - “You are usually asked to come into it, Mr. Bradshaw. You have hardly - asked to-day,” said William. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “That means you’re making quite a long stay with us, Mr. Bradshaw,” said - Rupert elaborately. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “But you... Mr. Bradshaw, you’re the chief Union official.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Against us for us. Yes, I see. One might almost conclude you like the - Hepplestalls, Mr. Bradshaw.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - William nodded sober acquiescence, but Rupert was uninformed. “Water?” he - asked. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “I know what will happen in this case, Sir Rupert. If we let you sell—” - </p> - <p> - “You let! You can’t prevent.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Are you? Then suppose I said strike and be damned to you?” - </p> - <p> - “If you said that you would be a young man speaking in anger and I - shouldn’t take you too seriously.” - </p> - <p> - “What!” cried Rupert. There was no doubt about his anger now. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh? That’s dawned on you, has it?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Uncle!” he said, and turned his back. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “We have,” said William superbly, “the idea of service in this firm.” - </p> - <p> - “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 <i>on</i> 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.” - </p> - <p> - Rupert turned a puzzled face. “That would have been your duty? Why?” he - asked. - </p> - <p> - “Hot fevers are short,” said Tom. “It ‘ud bring the end more quickly. I - don’t know if you read the <i>Times</i>. 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - She shook her head, smiling. “It’s not like that,” she said. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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? - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “Sam who?” asked Tom. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Staithley goes home,” said Tom. - </p> - <p> - 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?” - </p> - <p> - 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?” - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>Punch</i> 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “Aren’t we to work together in the future?” asked Rupert. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “Thank God, you know it,” said Tom Bradshaw reverently. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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?” - </p> - <p> - 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?” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XI—STAITHLEY EDGE - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">R</span>UPERT 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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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... - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Rupert nodded curtly. “Yes,” he said, surprising William by a look which - seemed strangely to comprehend his dilemma, “but we shall not be long.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “I think so,” she said, “but you’ll meet cobbles.” - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “There’s Staithley Edge,” she said. “There’s a road up by the Drill Hall.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - She was out of the car and at his elbow as she said, “A man’s size in - jobs, Rupert.” - </p> - <p> - “Or in prisons,” he said bitterly. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, aren’t we all in prison?” he asked. “The larger, the smaller—does - it matter?” - </p> - <p> - This was philosophy, and Mary wanted the practicalities. “Are you seeing - me as jailer? Is that what you mean?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “You’re big, Rupert.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “No. Worth while in their bigness.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m a hefty brute for a growing child,” he smiled down at her. - </p> - <p> - “You can take it smiling, though,” she approved. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “No.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “Of course,” said Rupert, “I knew you had a passion for hills.” - </p> - <p> - “I never told you,” Mary said. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Rupert!” she cried. - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, my dear, there are a thousand things we haven’t said.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Rupert,” she said, “you must help me to-night. Your aunt, and all the - Hepplestalls, your family—and me.” - </p> - <p> - He frowned. “Well?” he said. - </p> - <p> - “There’s the tradition, and you married me. You married into musical - comedy.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, your wife, Rupert. Your wife who was an actress.” - </p> - <p> - “Are you making the suggestion that you are something to be ashamed of?” - </p> - <p> - “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—” - </p> - <p> - “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...” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Rupert, how awful for you. They will never forget what I was now.” - </p> - <p> - “Never. Thank God.” - </p> - <p> - “Don’t you care?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “And I can help. Music, for instance.” - </p> - <p> - “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...” - </p> - <p> - “Am I to manage Staithley Mills?” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” said Mary, “and you’ll stay young, please. You’ll keep your hope, - my faith, your youth.” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “I’m afraid you will find Staithley very dull,” she said, “but we shall - all do our best for you.” - </p> - <p> - “Thank you,” said Mary. “It’s exciting so far.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Naturally? It’s your property, Rupert.” - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - “Well!” said Gertrude. “A cottage on the Edge!” - </p> - <p> - “We have to grow, Rupert and I,” said Mary. “We aren’t big enough for the - Hall yet.” - </p> - <p> - “I feel about a quarter of an inch high, uncle, when I think of those - mills... those thousands of men.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, the workpeople,” said Gertrude, putting them in their place. “Your - uncle tells me some of them dared to hiss.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I want to talk to you about that, uncle.” - </p> - <p> - William shuffled in his chair. “Not very nice of them, was it?” - </p> - <p> - “Impertinents,” said Gertrude. “They ought to be locked up.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - “Lord,” said Rupert, “that’s telling me something.” - </p> - <p> - “I thought it best that you should know.” - </p> - <p> - Rupert thought so too, even if it was a piece of knowledge which seemed to - bring him off a high place with a bump. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, my dears,” Gertrude put in, “you’ve no idea how difficult it all is.” - </p> - <p> - “No,” said Mary, “but Rupert knows that he knows nothing and he’s here to - learn.” - </p> - <p> - “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?” - </p> - <p> - “What do you expect from a pig but a grunt?” asked. Gertrude. - </p> - <p> - “It’s to be noted, Rupert,” said William, “that the hisses came before you - spoke, not afterwards.” - </p> - <p> - “You mean I said the right thing?” - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “People have sent them to you?” he guessed. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “Not you, uncle,” Rupert cried. “They hissed me for being a laggard.” - </p> - <p> - “We’re Hepplestalls. That’s why they hissed. They hissed the Service.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Perhaps he had; it was a far cry from that uninformed optimism to this - throttling doubt. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - Yes, so he would. He wouldn’t let Mary down, he wouldn’t be beaten by - Staithley. <i>Punch</i>—queer how much he turned to memories of <i>Punch</i> - for mental figures—had a cartoon in an <i>Almanac</i> 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <h3> - THE END - </h3> - <div style="height: 6em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -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-h.htm or 55288-h.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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