Robert Barmister was in one of the large upper rooms examining
chairs. To him, busy with a beautiful specimen of eighteenth-century
craftsmanship, came Nan.
He looked round as she entered, and asked her if it was the only one of
that particular pattern they had at present.
She nodded, and then inquired if he had been asked to make yesterday’s
journey merely to see and match such a chair.
“No,” he answered, “I also saw a fool—a fool with a 1760 chair,
patched by a mid-Victorian hand, and who must have another precisely
like it, patch and all. She is sure there must have been more than
one originally made to the design. So’m I; but I’m not so sure the
Victorian nincompoop had the mauling of more than one, and I’m very
sure there is no human chance of coming on it if he did. But since
she does not admit the patching—persists in thinking it part of the
original design—she doesn’t admit that difficulty either.”
Nan laughed. “What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Patch her one, to be sure.”
“Patch such a chair!”
“No, stupid, have one made patched, of course; what do you suppose?”
One supposes, since the master craftsman responsible for the original
chair had been dead these many years, some modern was to copy his
design (with the mid-Victorian addition), and Robert Barmister was to
receive the price a rich amateur must expect to pay for a rare antique
which has needed much finding.
Nan knew this, having lived with the trade. She accepted the first
part as entirely justifiable; to alter a perfect article, or to patch
a master’s design to anyone’s orders, seemed to her a sacrilege most
unjustifiable. Personally, she would not have sold the copy as anything
but a copy, and at a good copy’s price; but then money and money-making
had small attraction for her: she did not think of calling her father
into judgment for it, if they had for him.
She began to speak of the matter which had really brought her to him
that morning. “Michael Annarly is here,” she said; “did Josiah tell
you?”
He had not, he had something else to do, Barmister said; then asked
what Annarly was doing, and why he was there.
“I met him yesterday,” Nan answered, “when I was coming back from Miss
Janet’s, and I asked him to come.”
Barmister frowned. “What for?” he said. “The Annarlys don’t put
themselves out of the way to be civil to you; you don’t go there twice
a year, and you don’t like it when you do: why should you ask one of
them here?”
“I don’t exactly know why I did it,” she said doubtfully; “it just came
to me that I would when I saw him yesterday, so I did.”
Her father grunted. “And it just came to him, I suppose, that he would
come to see what sort of a place it was.”
“I don’t think that was the reason why he came.”
“Well, I don’t see what else it was,” Barmister said; “the whole family
think they do a considerable kindness if they step out of the way to
come here and see you; at least, they would if they did it, which
they don’t—thank goodness! He must feel very patronising, I should
think, since he’s their best piece. By the way, I thought he was away
somewhere usually, in the North or the Midlands making a name and a
fortune. What’s he in town for?”
“I believe he came to see people on business; he is in some sort of
trouble, I think.”
“Under a cloud?” Barmister asked, though without the slight instinctive
withdrawing of the majority of men from one so labelled. “Is it that,
hey?”
“I should not say so,” Nan answered. She would not; the words were so
totally, so almost grotesquely, inadequate. “Should you mind if he
stayed here a day or two?”
Barmister turned round at that, his keen eyes on her: the discussed
guest was a man, a young one, who might, perhaps, show attractions for
an utterly inexperienced girl, without himself so much as giving a
condescending thought to her. “Are you going to fall in love with him?”
he demanded.
“In love!” The idea was ludicrous, almost pathetically ludicrous. “No,”
Nan said, “not that; it isn’t that way I’d think of him. All the same,
I’d like him to stop a few days, if you don’t mind.”
“H’m,” her father said doubtfully, but afterwards consented. If Nan
wanted to have the man for a day or two, let her; there was no reason
why she should not, she was not a fool; and if he wanted to stop for
a day or two, why, let him. Of course, he must have some reason; one
which did not appear on the surface, but which could be found out,
Barmister had no doubt of himself there; and no doubt but that he would
send the guest packing if he did not approve the reason.
But he did not find it out, although he was soon persuaded that his
first suspicion was correct: Michael was in a difficulty of some
kind. Its nature he did not discover; but he guessed it to take its
rise from ambition rather than any of the more venial (and to him
less forgivable) sins of youth, and with that he was content. Of the
extent, he had no idea; after a night’s rest Michael was sufficiently
controlled to appear normal to one who knew nothing of him, more
especially when there was Nan, who understood, to come between.
On the first day, the day when the directors of Galhardy’s were to
meet, Nan suggested he should draw up a memorial of all that had
happened: the accusation and defence, his real offence, and what
justification he had to offer for it.
“What is the use?” he said apathetically. “They will decide to-day
before ever they can get it.”
“But they could redecide after, I suppose?” she urged. “And even if
they did not, if it made no difference, it surely would be worth
doing: if they decide in your favour they would be glad to be able to
see plainly that they were right, and if they decide otherwise—it is
certainly as well to raise a protest.”
“I don’t think it is worth while,” he said. “I did all I could in the
last two days, trying to get at various of the directors, and it came
to nothing. When I saw Harte yesterday I could see it had come to
nothing.”
Nevertheless, when she again urged it, he consented; to begin to write
were a less effort than to withstand her.
“I will copy it when it is done,” she said; “there is an old typewriter
downstairs which is seldom wanted, I will bring it up. I don’t do it
very well, but I can manage if I go slowly.”
She fetched the machine, and early perceived that it would be necessary
to make several drafts before the final copy, for he was one of those
who reconstruct and rearrange every argument a dozen times before
passing it on paper; and to whom every written word, and the placing
of every one, are important. Characteristics which overwork, and the
ample assistance he had been granted in clerical matters, had increased
of late. Before long, the habit asserted itself, and he was writing
and rewriting, constructing and reconstructing, elaborating arguments,
cutting down phrases, and explaining facts with an extraordinary
regard for detail and accuracy of expression which not only brought
self-conviction by its logic, but also temporarily diverted the mind
from its one idea and the stupor following upon it. It also used much
paper—sheets begun and cast aside, sheets on which side issues were
worked out, or solitary notes or paragraphs to be reduced to single
sentences jotted down; a scatter of very indecipherable papers all
about. There are minds to whom papers are as clothes, and as the
very expression of themselves almost; their thoughts cannot become
articulate, or even concrete, without paper, they must be written
down (or expressed in curves or diagrams) before they are really
thoughts. Take such visible expressions of himself; such visualised
thoughts—notably when they are of abstruse and very-well loved
matters—from a man, and you have taken much. Strip them all away,
when from overwork and nervous strain he is least fit for the shock,
and you leave him an inarticulate, shivering thing, naked, dumb, and
confounded. Michael had been bereft of every visible expression of
himself: all his papers, diagrams, and notes on everything that really
mattered to him were in the hands of the directors. He had not so much
as a pencilling in a pocketbook left when Nan induced him to begin a
statement of what had happened, and to express outside himself that
which had ground round and round in his head these last days.
The greater part of the day they worked at the memorial; she, in the
copying and recopying, becoming much more fully acquainted with the
facts. Towards dusk they were more or less finished; that is, copies of
the statement in the last and most satisfactory form were completed and
posted separately to the directors. Michael was not really contented
with it; he never had been for long with anything he had written, nor
with anything he had decided, always, sooner or later, seeing some
possibility beyond: but the exigencies of posting had compelled the
passing of this at last. For a little after it was done he went over
what had been written, discovering where it might have been improved,
and debating whether the small variations of phrasing which had been
made in each copy were the ones best suited to each recipient; entirely
forgetting that he had said, and thought the whole useless. But after
a while he seemed to remember that, and with a collapse of interest
collected the loose sheets and came to the fire in silence.
Nan was silent too; but she was thinking of the matter itself, not
the statement of it. At length she spoke, and she did not attempt to
speak of anything else: there are times when to attempt what is called
“diverting the mind” is an imbecility bordering on an insult.
“They absolutely promised you these foreign rights?” she asked. “I mean
the rights in these inventions of yours which they were not going to
use?”
He told her “yes” briefly, and lapsed into silence again. But in a
little while something roused him to speak of the matter and the
struggle which had gone before.
“I had a fight for them,” he said. “I have been months getting the
concession, but I did get it in the end—subject to the consent of Sir
Joseph Harte. Afterwards—almost immediately afterwards—I got that,
verbally first and very fully, later a letter confirming it.”
“But not the second letter cancelling it?”
“That letter was never sent.”
He spoke with unshakable conviction, though he had no evidence—there
can be little of a negative.
Nan saw that plainly, though she did not say so; she turned it in her
mind a while, but when she did speak it was to ask another question.
“What is it that they actually bring against you? Is it that they say
you acted on this permission, and began to negotiate about the rights
before you ought?”
He nodded, and she asked, “Did you?”
Again he nodded, and again after a pause was moved to speak. “Yes, I
did, but there was no harm in it; I committed myself to nothing and
told nothing. Technically, of course, I was wrong; I had no business to
answer the inquiries made by the French people, as I did; but actually
it was the natural way to do it. Anyone would have done the same, half
of them gone much further if they had had the chance.”
“I suppose,” she said, “it would not have mattered, if the permission
had not been withdrawn?”
“No, though I should still, technically, have exceeded my powers.”
“As it is?”
He shrugged his shoulders, as one beyond caring.
“Is it actionable?” she inquired, after a while. “I mean, if you had
had the cancelling letter and they could prove it, would they be able
to prosecute you?”
“I suppose so. I don’t see that it matters. Certainly the fact that
I did not have the letter, and that they can’t prove it, does not;
if they want a case against me, I dare say they can get that or make
it—they can make a good many things at Galhardy’s. I don’t much care
if they do; they may as well do one thing as another, at least I should
have an opportunity of speaking then. Not that that would really be
worth anything either; they’re too big.”
Nan said nothing; she knew it did matter. She had the woman’s eye for
the driftwood after the wreck, and for the fragments that remain; and
she saw that prosecution, though it might give an opportunity to use
the fragments as missiles, must inevitably scatter them past recovery,
and leave the scatterer bare. She did not urge this, however, but sat a
little looking into the blaze, thinking.
“Tell me,” she said at length, “why did you want these foreign rights?
Were they really worth so much to you?”
“They should have been worth somewhere about fifty thousand pounds,” he
answered.
The estimate may have been incorrect, though he certainly believed
in it himself; she saw that, but was not greatly impressed by the
magnitude of the loss. Money as money did not appeal to her.
Nor perhaps entirely to him either: at all events he went on to advance
another reason for his efforts, and in a tone which suggested how much
it weighed with him. “I had a claim to them,” he said; “the things were
mine, and they were useless to Galhardy’s. Why shouldn’t I have had
them? Of course, it was argued that no one had been granted such rights
before, but then no one before had done quite what I had for the firm.
Already I had saved them a great deal; in a year or two my inventions
will bring in eight or ten thousand a year to them. And what did I get?
A wretched seven hundred, rising perhaps to eight hundred.”
It sounded a good deal to her, though, of course, small in proportion
to the greater sum. To him it was nothing.
“It was hardly enough to live on,” he said. “Everyone there has a
private income. I was the only one in anything approaching that
position without. It was impossible to make both ends meet. I had to do
what the others did.”
Nan’s ignorance of the world was such that she knew nothing for or
against this, but intuitively she did know that there is a wonderful
mixture of the small and the great in most men: in this one perhaps the
contrast was rather more crude than in most.
“Would they really have given you no more?” she asked. “Surely they
would——”
“They always advised me to ‘leave myself in the hands of the
directors’; that is the stereotyped advice when one says anything about
recognition. Usually men do leave themselves in the directors’ hands,
having no choice—and stop there. There are plenty of instances of it in
most firms, big and little.”
He began to speak of them, for a while forgetting his own affairs in
citing the hard cases of others. But soon the one central thought
returned, overwhelming others.
“I don’t mean that the directors of Galhardy’s would have treated me
so badly as that; they wouldn’t—one thing, I doubt if they could,
and, anyhow, they wouldn’t. But I should not have got anything worth
having out of the aerial torpedo, or the new steel I perfected for
them either. I did not try much for the steel; I let it pass without
much protest, and put everything on the torpedo; but the way they
behaved over the one showed what was to be expected in the other case,
if it was left in their hands. It is true, of course, that what one
does while one is with a firm is the property of the firm, that is
understood and reasonable enough. But when one does a thing of any
size, a thing that is going to be worth a fortune to them, and which
they have not been able to get elsewhere, one might expect something: I
mean something considerable. I dare say, though I don’t know, I might
have got something small, but not in any way commensurate.”
Nan nodded, and sat thinking a little. “I wonder,” she said, “why they
promised those rights you wanted? They were not actually bound to give
anything, you say, and it is not their custom to give much? What they
promised amounted to a great deal, and was a most unprecedented thing.
Why did they do it?”
“Because they came to the conclusion they would not get the aerial
torpedo, the real perfect thing, without,” he answered, and for a
moment the flickering, fighting smile, which had been gone from him
these days, lurked in his eyes. It died almost as it came, but it
suggested that considerable skill, as well as other less admirable
qualities, must have been needed in the late handling of Galhardy’s
genius.
“Have they got all they want now?” Nan asked, and the cloud descended
almost visibly upon him.
“Everything,” he answered. “They have my papers.” There was a level
hopelessness in the voice which told of utter loss. “It is all there;
it was all ready to be drafted out. They knew, I told them I had all
the work completed, and all the data collected ready to draw up the
report, before they made the swoop. They waited for that.”
“The report was not made? What they have is only in notes and drawings,
and so on? Isn’t there a chance they won’t be able to make it out and
find what they want?”
There was not in his opinion. “They can’t help it,” he said. “I tell
you, it’s all there; the veriest fool who knew even the alphabet of
the subject could not fail. Besides, the thing’s been made, different
parts of it and the filling for the heads too. Oh, not all by one
man—by different men and at different times. I was not going to have
anyone able to report on it before I was ready. But they could find all
out, if they tried, and put it together for themselves practically,
if there were any need; but there won’t be, for they have it on paper
almost plain enough for a child to understand. No, they have all: the
torpedo and the torpedo-head, everything, as completely as they have
the steel I reported on months ago. They have all; there is nothing
left.”
His voice dropped, and his whole body seemed to sink. Nan said nothing;
there seemed nothing to say. She sat in the low firelight, very quiet.
The next day the directors’ decision would be known; not till late
in the evening, however, for, though she had telegraphed Michael’s
present address to his rooms, a letter forwarded from there would not
be delivered in Soho till the last post. She was busy during part
of the day making drawings of chair backs and other details for her
father. She asked Michael, who was a clever draughtsman, to help her;
but though he tried, he failed. He seemed utterly unable to keep his
attention fixed on the unfamiliar work; he took up and put down pencils
and india-rubber, set down lines and rubbed them out without any
perception of what he did. But when, led thereto by some question or
suggestion of hers, he tried to make drawings of aerial propellers and
kindred things he succeeded even worse, for, added to inability to fix
attention, there was vague fear—the fear of a man who feels slipping
the sheet-anchor of loved work which has never failed him before.
Nan saw that for that day of waiting there was nothing to be done; so
she attempted nothing, only stayed in all day. A quiet, inconspicuous
presence, physically almost as easy to overlook as the shadows in the
old house, but spiritually perhaps otherwise.
In the afternoon she wrote some letters; as she began the first, she
glanced up at the date. “Let me see,” she said; “it’s the third, isn’t
it? Saturday?”
“Saturday?” Michael repeated the word as one recollecting.
“Yes. Had you an appointment?”
“No,” he answered, “at least, yes. But it does not matter. I was to
have gone to the Carsons’ this afternoon, to tell Lady Sibyl how the
aerial torpedo was received at the board meeting.”
He had forgotten it till this moment. Strange how completely he had
forgotten it; Lady Sibyl and all that she stood for—and she had stood
for much—had been utterly blotted from his mind. He had saved her
letters in the general crash, but neither then nor after did he know
why. It was, incomprehensible as it may seem, in a way an automatic
act, one without reasoned volition. The woman herself had no place in
the crisis; she had none in the days which had ensued. He had forgotten
her as completely as he had forgotten all other outside things.
But now he remembered. In a wave, with a sensation which was almost
like an audible _swish_, recollection flowed back. He would have been
at the Carsons’ now, in the small drawing-room. She would have been
there, in the deep chair half turned from the light. He could see her
in his mind’s eye, the glow that lurked in her hair and the gown she
would wear. He could see her white hands, tapering and pink-tipped,
could feel their softness as they touched his in greeting, or in some
accident of service as handing cups and placing cushions. He saw all,
saw the kindling in her eyes as he spoke, heard the thrill in her low
voice as she answered—as one sees a lighted room when standing without
in the dark.
“Ought you to have written to say you could not come?”
Nan’s voice recalled him abruptly.
“No,” he answered. “It’s of no consequence.” He spoke indifferently,
with a hardness in the indifference. “She will have heard before this,
and if she hasn’t, she will soon enough. It doesn’t matter. I shall
never see her again.”
Nan returned to her writing. Among the medley of half-told and retold
facts which had been given to her there had once been mention of some
private papers burned, instead of delivered to the directors. There had
been no account of how they were saved from the fate of the rest, nor
why; neither had borne on the one matter of moment, so both had been
passed over. But now she guessed that the papers saved and personally
destroyed concerned Lady Sibyl. And “it didn’t matter,” for he would
“never see her again!” Pity crept up in her heart; he had lost this
too, this woman, whatever she was to him, in addition to all the rest.
In the evening came the letter. Barmister, who since the closing of
his office had been out all the afternoon on such business as was
possible to be done on a Saturday, was home now and sitting with them.
Nan fetched the letters herself; there were three for her father, one,
the expected one, for Michael. She gave them out, then sat down again
to her needlework, watching neither. Barmister read his through and
grunted over them; they were business ones, and one of them annoyed
him. Michael read his, and, slowly refolding it, put it into a pocket.
She had a glimpse of his face, though she avoided looking at it. It
was grave and quiet, but expressed nothing. The mental crisis was past;
he could take the good or the bad now without disorder or outward
expression.
Barmister crushed the typewritten sheets of one of his letters
together, and with a muttered malediction on the folly of his
correspondent got to his feet. He asked Nan about some book of
reference.
It was downstairs in the office, and she offered to fetch it.
“No,” he said, “I’ll go myself. I want to look up something in the
day-book too.”
He went, and she continued stitching.
“Well,” Michael said at last, and as the sound of feet descended the
little stair—“they have settled it.”
She looked up. “Dismissal?” she said, though she guessed already.
He nodded, and handed her the letter.
GALHARDY & COMPANY, LIMITED.
_Secretary’s Department._
_Sir,_
_I am instructed to inform you that the Board of Directors have
considered the information concerning you which has been duly laid
before them._
_This information shows that very grave irregularities have been
going on for some considerable period. I am therefore directed
to inform you that the Board have decided to terminate your
appointment at once._
_The character of the information is such that the Board are giving
their very earnest consideration as to what course it is their
duty, in the interests of the firm, to adopt: in any case, I am
directed to remind you that, under your original contract, the
divulgence of anything of a confidential nature, at any time, will
render you liable to prosecution for breach of the said contract._
_I am, Sir,_
_Your obedient servant,_
_CECIL BRETT, Secretary._
So Nan read and then read again. Not that in her own mind she did not
understand; she did, the whole case, with a curious plainness. She
understood that much which at first glance appeared important was
really not so, merely detail—the unreceived letter, the antagonistic
secretary who might or might not be responsible, the difficulty
of securing a hearing, even the justice or injustice of the whole
proceeding—none complicated the case or truly influenced judgment on
it. It was perfectly simple and inevitable really, turning on the
old and quite natural law of might is right. Briefly it amounted to
this—there was one who had what the great firm of Galhardy’s wanted,
and had a species of right to, and he would not part with it at their
standard price: it had been taken from him without price, that was all.
How, did not matter; it had simply been done, as inevitably it must
have been. That dismissal should be a part of it was his own fault and
the consequence of what their past experience of him had taught them:
his probable future use to them was more than outweighed by the certain
irritation of his future proceedings. The firm naturally discarded the
thing which hampered or annoyed when the reason of its existence (so
far as they were concerned) had been achieved. The cost and consequence
to the thing, equally naturally, did not come into consideration;
it did not exist for a firm, which of necessity labours under the
notorious disabilities of a corporation; that which is without soul to
be saved, or body to be kicked, can take cognisance of no such trifles.
Nan dimly realised it, but she did not put it into words; she returned
the letter with other comments than that. Soon after, Barmister came
back with the book he had been for, and orders that she should find
something for him. She found it, and the short remainder of the evening
was spent without any reference to the directors’ decision.
But as they parted for the night, Michael said, “I must go home
to-morrow, and tell my father.”
She nodded: that was inevitable now, and a thing so difficult that
comment was superfluous, even banal.
“Yes,” she said, “you must go,” and she gave him a hand-grasp for good
night.