Every profession and most trades, except perhaps a few humble female
ones, such as that of washerwoman, have their societies: some have
only trade unions, but many have more or less social and club-like
ones as well. So vast and wide a profession as engineering, stretching
from the construction of the Assouan Dam to the nice adjustment of a
waste-pipe, naturally has many societies in connection with it. Michael
Annarly was a member of several; also of several others of a more
generally scientific or quasi-scientific nature. It cannot be said that
he had very often attended the meetings of any, or found them of great
interest when he did; he was essentially of the unco-operative sort,
in his work independent of ordinary methods, indifferent to accepted
opinions, and a little impatient of them and of the people dealing in
them. Still, partly from policy, and partly from a rather pathetic
effort to be in union with his kind, he had occasionally attended
various meetings. The opportunities naturally had not been numerous
during the time he was at Galhardy’s, but he had taken them when they
came. He had occasionally read a paper or contributed to a discussion:
always to the advancement of knowledge, both of the subject and his
hearers; though not always to the advancement of the self-esteem of
former reputed authorities, of which he had not always thought to
be tender. Such a thing is not forgotten, notably by the sufferer;
indeed, it is very liable to be remembered, especially when the man who
committed the offence has come to grief. There are some, then, who see
in his downfall the consequence of his dangerously unconstitutional
mind and methods, and some who perceive a just retribution on one who
has caught them (the authorities) tripping, and frankly said so. Such
things would be remembered against Michael now; and those who had no
personal reasons against him would look upon him with curiosity or
perhaps pity, or the shrugged shoulders of superior wisdom. In the
circumstances, it is not surprising that he had no inclination to
attend the meetings of any society that autumn and winter, although
doing so was his sole chance of meeting men of kindred tastes.
“You don’t know what they are,” he told Nan once; “you would not have
thought I and my affairs could interest them or matter to them, but I
can tell you they do, a deal more than any of the subjects they are
supposed to care for. I have seen a deal more eagerness and enthusiasm
over the question of who is going to get the chair of engineering at
Muddleborough-cum-Pudley than over a discussion on the effect of torque
on the structure of metals. That was the subject, by the way, on which
old B—— got so angry with me. He was wrong, and he didn’t forgive
me for showing it. My observations have since received practical
application, when, I understand, he fathered the theories he condemned
when they were mine; but he has not forgiven me any the more for that.
Nor has he forgiven me Galhardy’s; he had a nephew there, rather a
waster, a junior and always will be, but the old man was awfully proud
of it. He did not like my situation there. He will like my present
situation; and, owing to the nephew, and other circumstances, he and
all his friends, following and satellites, will have known all there is
to know about it, and a good deal more besides, almost as soon as you
did.”
“That is one of the reasons why you should go to meetings where you
will see him and his friends,” Nan said. “They cannot know the truth,
no one knows that wholly, and if you are never seen they will think you
are ashamed to show yourself because the worst they imagine is true.”
“I don’t care what they think.”
“Then go,” she urged. “If they and their opinion don’t matter, why mind
going among them?”
“Because they are a lot of rule-of-thumb, time-serving place-hunters,
and their ceaseless talk about nothing wearies me.”
“They can’t all be that,” she protested; “there must be some who are
worth meeting.”
He admitted there were. “There are some men worth going a long way to
meet,” he admitted; “they are not the ones who talk much, or who are
there often; still, usually one happens on one of them.”
“Then for their sake it is worth going.”
“Why? I don’t want to hear about the work that is worth while; I don’t
want to hear what other men are doing, or what there is to be done. I
have nothing to do with it now; I have done with it, or, rather, it
with me.”
“Perhaps so,” she agreed, and then began to ask about the chances of
picking up draughtsman’s work at the meetings of any of the societies.
He said it might happen, more likely at the technical, though possibly
even at the purely learned or academic ones. She did not in so many
words urge him to go on that account, but he saw the connection.
“You want me to take up this work, if I can get it?” he said. He did
not want it himself; how little he wanted no one knew. It had always
seemed to him the veriest threads and remnants of his profession, a
dreary monotony that led nowhere, more utterly distasteful even than
the drawing of chair-backs and writing Robert Barmister’s letters. But
Nan wished it; she, in her ignorance, seemed to think something of
it, and she had been good to him—so good that he had not the heart to
disappoint her by telling her how poor and meagre it really was.
“Very well,” he said, “I’ll go to-night. Perhaps I shall be able to
pick up a job.”
And he went. And though he did not pick up a job, Nan was satisfied,
for when he came back he told her of a discussion there had been in
which it was clear he had taken a part, forgetting, in his anxiety
to establish a point, his own equivocal position. No doubt he had
remembered it before and afterwards; no doubt some present had helped
him to do so; and no doubt the position had been trying enough (in
spite of his declaration of indifference) to one of his acutely
perceptive temperament and overstrained nerves. But the stirring of
former interests, and the response to the appeal of familiar terms,
were equally real. The next time Nan suggested he should go to a
meeting, he went with less urging.
That time it happened he met Johnson, a member of the firm of patent
agents employed by Galhardy’s. He had come across him a good deal
during the latter part of the time he was at the great foundries,
having more than once given advice, unofficially, on technical subjects
in connection with patents. Possibly Johnson remembered this now;
possibly, also, he knew enough of the methods of the firm to suspend
judgment on Michael’s affairs. At all events he showed no inclination
to avoid his company.
“What are you doing now?” he asked casually in the course of talk.
“For a living? Making drawings of chair-backs for a relative.”
The tone was careless, and Johnson thought it a jest; but Michael
assured him to the contrary.
“Fact,” he said, still speaking lightly. “Don’t you believe I can do
it? I can; I draw rather well.”
“Yes,” Johnson said—he had suddenly seen the speaker’s eyes, and saw
that in them at utter variance with the light tone and manner.
“Why chair-backs?” he asked. “Why not something more in line with your
previous work?”
“Because they offered first,” Michael answered truthfully, but still
so carelessly as to almost leave a doubt about the truth. “I’m not
particular, anything that offers will do for me. I’d do chair-legs,
if they were wanted, or geometrical patterns for linoleum, or machine
drawings, anything.”
“Is that a fact?” Johnson said, and then added, with just a trace of
hesitancy, “would you do our drawings?”
For half a second Michael shrank; the instinct to decline, to turn from
this contact with the work of the past, still more from the proffered
help of a man from it, was tremendous. But swiftly came the thought of
Nan, who expected him to get it, who expected something to come of it.
“Certainly, if you’ll give me any,” he said, and was grateful that the
other kindly refrained from apologising for the nature of the work, and
the poverty of the pay.
In that way Michael received his first draughtsman’s work. It was
poorly paid, but, as a compensation, there was a good deal of it, and
always likely to be. The Patent Office requires that all drawings of
machinery and processes for which a patent is applied for should be of
a certain size and fineness, and on a particular kind of paper. It is
the patent agents’ business to get such made from the original drawings
of the patentee, naturally employing whom they think fit to do it,
and paying him a much smaller sum than their client pays them. Such
drawing is very monotonous, and in a sense mechanical; demanding the
nicest accuracy and attention to detail, without allowing any scope
for individuality. It was particularly distasteful to one of Michael’s
nature. Nevertheless, he did it when he could get it. If he saw little
chance of arriving at anything better that way, it might at least
ultimately be a method of earning a living. The principal difficulty
he found in connection with it, was to refrain from pointing out to
the patentee the technical flaws which he sometimes perceived in the
invention thus brought to his notice.
Nan once asked him why he did not point them out.
“It wouldn’t be fair to Johnson,” he said. “The clients might resent
their drawings being sent to a man who was able to find out the faults,
and, consequently, they would judge, able to annex valuable ideas if he
had a mind to—especially a man with a reputation like mine. Besides,
what does it matter? It doesn’t matter to me if they are wrong.”
“No,” Nan said, but she thought that it did; that underneath there
would always be something in him to which error of that sort mattered,
and problems appealed. And probably she was right; at all events, in a
little he glanced up from the drawing he was at work upon. It was one
for an invention which would be rendered valueless by such a flaw—the
result, most likely, of the inventor’s ignorance of a small and obscure
law.
“I tell you what I might do here,” he said; “I might write out
that law, put it so that anyone could apply it for himself to this
invention, and send a copy of it to the patentee anonymously. If he is
any good, he will at once see what he has done, and set it right before
it is too late. I think I’ll do that.”
He did: but since it was done anonymously he naturally did not
hear the result; and, his interest having suddenly burnt out, he
never troubled to inquire if the specification was altered, or the
application for the patent withdrawn.
This was in February. He had been more than three months in Soho then,
and seemed, so far as one could judge, likely to be many more; working
for Barmister in the day and drawing out other men’s inventions at
night. Almost, it seemed, as if he had sunk into obscurity never to
reappear; certainly to be as far as ever from any return to his old
life and work. Towards the end of the month, it is true, he came into
something like momentary touch with it. It was when he met Blake, of
Blake and Kingswell.
Blake and Kingswell were the people who supplied oil to Galhardy’s:
Michael had seen a certain amount of the junior partner during the
last part of his time with the firm. The new steel process he had
worked out was for an oil-hardened metal, and as a consequence he had
had several interviews with Blake; when, besides discussing qualities
of oil and kindred business details, they had talked of enough other
things to form a favourable opinion of each other. But when he caught
sight of the man in the City, where he had gone on some business for
Barmister, his instinct was to avoid him. However, as it chanced, he
was recognised before he more than thought of doing it.
“Hullo!” Blake said. “You in town? What are you doing?”
“I live in town,” Michael answered—he had no inclination to speak of
the chair-backs.
“Consulting work?” Blake asked. “Very wise; much better worth your
while than anything else. I always thought you were rather wasted at
Galhardy’s.”
Michael said nothing. There were draughtsmen who called themselves
consulting engineers, and he had a sudden distaste to owning himself a
complete failure to this man who still thought him otherwise.
They walked on together for a while, speaking of various technicalities
in connection with Blake’s business, notably some trouble there was
with the filter presses in the oil works.
As Michael listened, the old instinct stirred. At first he only
listened, but soon it was more; the familiar names and turns of thought
called up the old attention. Without being aware of it, he was making
inquiries and suggestions with the absorbed attention and keen insight
he always had for such things.
At the corner of the street Blake said, “Couldn’t you manage to come
down and have a look at the presses? Our works aren’t very far from
town. We must have an expert opinion. I’d sooner have yours than any
man’s I know. Can you do it?”
Again, as when Johnson offered him the draughtsman’s work, Michael
hesitated. He could not himself have told why: not from any doubt of
his ability to do what was required, or any dislike of it, nor yet
from any uncertainty as to payment. He had none of these. Yet for the
second he drew back from the idea; from embarking on anything, taking
any step, however sure and desirable, out of the humble, present way.
The sensation was mastered almost as quickly as it arose; he said he
should be glad to give an opinion, and fixed a time for the visit of
inspection when his absence was least likely to inconvenience Barmister.
It was a small matter really, this visit to the oil works; little more
than an hour spent in the familiar atmosphere of machines, with the
smell of oil and the sound of wheels, the semi-living company of force
housed and harnessed in iron. But to Michael it was not only like
the smell of the sea to the sailor, and the sound of guns to the old
campaigner, but something more. It is something to be back again with
what you can do supremely well; with instant and complete mastery to
grip a problem and solve a difficulty, even if it is a small one; when
for months your meat and drink has been, and you have lain down and
risen up with one thought only—failure, complete failure, and a sense
of your own utter inadequacy. Such a thing is something. The visit
to the oil works stood out for Michael a peak in the grey level of
that time; and though he said nothing of it to Nan—such things do not
express themselves readily, even when one is fully conscious of them—it
is possible she understood. Though they said nothing, they celebrated
the occasion together, spending part of the fee he obtained in going
far enough into the country to see the first stirrings of spring under
the dun skin of winter.
It sometimes happens that one man’s difficulty satisfactorily dealt
with leads to other men offering others for solution. It may have been
the case with Michael; at all events, after a time a second piece of
consulting work was offered to him. It was merely to give an opinion on
a machine for heating houses by a process, and with substances hitherto
undreamed of—and entirely impracticable for that purpose. He went
into the matter carefully and exhaustively. He did not see a thing as
ridiculous or fraudulent nearly so quickly as many less well-informed:
there were such infinite possibilities in his universe that he always
began by regarding as possible what was seriously brought before him,
even if it at first sight transgressed laws as he knew them. This time
it took him some time to discover that the whole process and machine
for carrying it out were utterly ridiculous and impracticable. When
he did come to this conclusion, and proved it beyond doubt, he wrote
a report in accordance—for which he received nothing at all. It is
impossible to raise money or float a company on the report of an
expert who condemns the whole scheme as unsound; in such circumstances,
if he is of no very high standing, or not in the position to receive (a
much smaller) fee beforehand, he can hardly be surprised if payment is
a part of the affair overlooked.
The next consultation on which Michael was called was also
unremunerative. It was a “friendly” one. That is, he spent a Saturday
afternoon discussing technicalities and details with a man whom he had
met once before, and who suddenly revived, or discovered, a friendship
for him. The man in question learnt what he wanted to know, and was
able afterwards to put it into practice, at the slight cost of a whisky
and soda and a cigarette or two. Being naturally satisfied with such a
result, and feeling very friendly towards Michael, the active factor
in it, he shortly afterwards introduced another man. The second also
was “friendly”; but, as Michael was not inclined to give away another
Saturday afternoon, the second spent no more than ten minutes or so in
his company, and gained only one piece of information worth having for
nothing.
Towards the end of March, Michael received another application for
information, but of a different sort. This time it was a letter from
a General Wallaby (retired) requesting him to give an opinion on an
automatic brake for high-speed motor engines. The General did not
mention how he had come to hear of him, and Michael never knew whether
it was from some former acquaintance, or from one of the very few who
had employed him, or by some chance talk overheard. He rather inclined
to the latter view, for the letter, written in the third person, was
couched in terms rather suggestive of a communication to a firm of
house-decorators about the heating apparatus, or a summons to a good
mechanic to come and overhaul the car. But, as Nan pointed out, the
writer “concluded the fee would be the usual one of £2 2s. 0d. (two
guineas),” and that, at least, was something to the point.
“After all,” she said, “two guineas is two guineas; indeed, rather more
than less, these times.”
Michael did not agree; he disliked the idea of the guineas more
than the work. “I don’t mind overhauling the old fellow’s car,” he
said, “and putting his automatic brake idea in going order—if that’s
possible, which I rather expect it’s not. I have done that sort of
thing for different people lots of times when I was at Galhardy’s, but
I can’t exactly take a fee for it.”
“Why not?”
He did not seem able to quite say. “It’s rather like when one has set
the bathroom taps right for somebody, if he offered one eightpence an
hour, or whatever it is plumbers get.”
“I suppose it is,” Nan admitted. “Still, if the person thought you a
plumber, and would not have asked you to set the taps right otherwise?
It would be rather embarrassing for him if you didn’t take the
eightpence, and so showed he’d made that sort of mistake.”
“People have no business to make that sort of mistake,” Michael said,
“they would not, if they gave themselves the trouble to think. Why
should this General Wallaby think me a mechanic, in the first instance,
or go on thinking me one in the second?”
Nan could not tell him. “It never seems to me to much matter what
people think,” she owned. “I suppose it comes of being the kind of
person no one notices or really thinks about, anyway; but, to me, it
never seems important what one is thought, it does not alter what one
really is. Of course, for anyone to apply to you to give an opinion on
motor brakes and such is a little like sending for a great surgeon to
tie up a cut finger, an egregious waste. Though on the whole, perhaps,
hardly so much of a waste, so far as you are concerned, as copying
machine drawings for patent agents, if for no other reason than that it
is better paid.”
Michael laughed a little. “I wonder,” he said, “whether you judge very
much truer, or very much less true than most people? Certainly, you
don’t judge like them.”
But he took her advice and went to see General Wallaby and the brakes,
which had been made to his design.
He found them as impractical as he had expected, and quite beyond
any improving into usefulness. However, he was able to do something
for his money, for there were other home-invented adjuncts affixed
to the car; the General spent his retirement and the surplus of a
comfortable income on such things. Michael was able to make suggestions
and alterations by which some of the earlier ones might be rendered
serviceable. Gibbs, the chauffeur—no mean mechanic, it was necessary
for the safety of the General that he should be highly competent—looked
on, at first with distrust, for he immediately perceived that the
stranger was not of the fraternity, afterwards with puzzled interest,
and finally with awed admiration. General Wallaby also looked on and
offered remarks and explanations from time to time, all of which were
received with respectful attention and interest.
“Seemed to understand his business,” the General remarked to Gibbs
afterwards.
“Yes, sir,” said Gibbs, saluting.
“Quite an intelligent person; not so abominably conceited as most of
these engineers; able to take another man’s idea and allow there’s
something in it. He was quite struck with that last one of mine.”
“Yes, sir,” said Gibbs. “He might well be that, sir.”
The General walked round his car radiating approval. He stopped to
handle his last but one improvement. The recently departed expert had
done the same, and the General recalled his hands—wonderful, sensitive
hands with broad palms and curiously slim, alive fingers, very well
kept.
“Gibbs,” the General said, he sometimes unbent to Gibbs, who was a very
superior man as well as a good mechanic—“Gibbs, what class do those
sort of people belong to?”
“Couldn’t say, sir. You see, there isn’t many of them, sir, they’d
hardly be a class, they’re so very, very few.”
There are not few who call themselves consulting engineers, there are
a good many of them. But there are few men of great ability and inborn
comprehension in that or any other profession: genius is rare, and not
always to be classed when met. Still one—certainly not the General—need
not conclude that was what Gibbs meant. Though, it must be admitted,
when he let the expert out by the back gate, which was the nearest way
to the station, he did say with some eagerness, “Sir, if you ever want
a mechanic, if you ever want one for anything, will you think of me?
I’d be proud to work under you in any capacity!”
And it is possible that Michael, travelling back to town, thought more
of those words than of the two guineas which, enclosed in an envelope,
General Wallaby had put into his hand.
After General Wallaby no one asked his services for anything, not even
for a “friendly” conference.
It seemed as if he were back again where he was before the chance
meeting with Blake, no more than Barmister’s not very efficient clerk
and handy-man, and, in his spare time, occasional draughtsman to patent
agents, and curiously patient, almost apathetic, at being so.
But in the middle of April there came a touch from what had been
lost. He received a letter from an important steamship company who,
like others, were very interested in the problem of the application
of internal combustion engines to large ships. They had, it appeared,
a design for such an engine under consideration now; but, for some
reason, they had begun to doubt its real practicability. They wrote
asking Michael if he would examine and advise upon it, and, possibly,
undertake its perfecting.
It was a difficult subject, involving problems which one would hardly
expect to take to a man whose best work was done on aerial torpedoes
and steel. Michael guessed how it was that it had come to him.
“Blake’s father-in-law is one of the directors of the company,” he
said. “I remember his mentioning it one day at Galhardy’s; we had been
talking about internal combustion engines for big ships, a subject that
always interested me.”
Nan by this time knew something of the subjects that interested him.
Their name was legion, and any and every one introduced to his notice
was able to exclusively occupy his attention and give rise to whole
trains of new, and, to the initiated, illuminating ideas.
“I suppose,” she suggested, “those steamship people would not find it
easy to get a man to do what it is they want done?”
Michael admitted that possibility. “The ones best qualified are a bit
too big,” he said. “You see, it would probably entail six months’ or
so close work in the works. It wouldn’t be worth a big man’s while to
take it up, or worth the company’s while to pay the exorbitant price
they would have to, if one could be persuaded to do it.”
Nan nodded; it seemed that this time the circumstances, which
heretofore had told against him, now told in his favour; inasmuch as
they made him, a man in the first rank of ability, glad to accept work
beyond the attainments of most of those whose attention it was not
beneath.
“Will it take six months?” she asked.
“Very likely. Of course, one might not make a success of it in that
time, but it should be possible to find out, if one could. If one
could, it might mean a pretty good thing, very likely fifteen hundred
pounds a year ultimately. I think one should manage to get that, and
with that——”
The old lights flickered in his eyes for a minute; in mind he saw again
a possibility of something akin to the old position, of a return to
work with scope in it, and, consequently, liberty, power, and all that
which, for him, it entailed.
“I should have that man of Wallaby’s, if I ever did get in,” he said.
“I don’t suppose he knows anything about marine engines, but that
doesn’t matter, he’s a good man; I don’t think much of specialised
knowledge _per se_; after all, it’s less what a man knows that matters
in real problems, than how he sets about dealing with what he doesn’t
know.”
Nan agreed and said nothing about air-castles and the previousness
of arranging the staff of them before the first brick is laid; she
knew that that childish faculty sometimes goes with the constructive
mathematical mind.
But the enthusiasm did not remain with the builder now. “I don’t know
that we need spend time talking of what I’ll do if I do make a success
of it,” he said, “quite likely I shan’t make anything of the kind.”
But she did not believe that; nor did he really, although at times he
insisted on it, speaking of the enormous difficulties of the hitherto
unsolved problem presented by the big engines.
That same day he wrote to the steamship company, saying he was willing
to undertake their work, suggesting terms and other arrangements. He
did not mention the matter to Barmister; although he and Nan thought a
great deal about it, neither mentioned it to her father, there would be
time enough for that when all was settled.
And as it happened events justified this reticence. Two days later
there came another letter from the company. Michael’s reply had been
received, but after further consideration, the board had decided not to
proceed on the lines originally indicated. Their own engineers hoped to
be equal to doing all that was necessary, so they would not trouble him
further in the matter.
“Are they equal to it?” Nan asked. “How can they be now if they weren’t
four days ago?”
Michael shrugged his shoulders. “They may have hit on something,” he
said, “though I hardly think so.”
“Nor do I,” she said significantly.
He took the blow, and blow it certainly was, very quietly. “After
all,” he said, “it’s not really surprising; it’s only what we might
have expected. The wonder is, not that they have backed out now, but
that they appealed to me in the first instance. Most of the directors
of this are in two or three kindred companies and thoroughly mixed in
that lot; if they don’t absolutely know any of Galhardy’s directors
personally they do indirectly; they must have known something about
that affair.”
“Of course,” Nan said, “they would hardly have applied to you if they
had not; it’s only because of that that you are free and willing to do
what they wanted, and they know it; besides, if, as you say, it was
through Mr. Blake they did apply to you, he would probably have said
something about it to them, very likely not to your discredit.”
“Blake’s a good sort,” Michael said; “he’d have made the best tale he
could; he believes the best, I think; he was awfully decent to me.”
His face brightened for a moment, as he recalled the afternoon with the
oil presses.
“What has caused this change, then?” Nan asked. “Why have they altered
their minds now?”
Michael did not know. “Possibly,” he suggested, “one director, more
nervous or more suspicious or more punctilious than the rest, who was
not there at the first discussion, came along afterwards and upset the
others. Or perhaps some one of them has heard a fresh yarn about me. Or
it might even be that someone in Galhardy’s, hearing there was a chance
of me getting in there, has taken the trouble to talk to them. I don’t
know how much interest Galhardy’s take in me and my proceedings, I
should hardly have thought so much as that, still they may; they had a
rather exalted opinion of the work I might do for other people, and the
consequent damage to them. Anyway, I don’t see that it matters how it
happened; it has happened, as it was likely to, and there’s an end.”
Nan nodded: there was an end, there was nothing to be gained by
speculating on the reason or the manner of it.
“And after all,” he said, “perhaps it’s just as well. I dare say
I shouldn’t have done any good with the thing, if I had had the
chance; it’s a subject on which I have worked very little; probably
I should have made a muddle of it. And working for people like that
again—working that way——”
He did not finish the sentence, but it was plain that he shrank from
the idea as he had before welcomed it, doubting his own ability and
everything else.