MR. MALLORY’S POLITICS.
‘_Philinte._--Mais on entend les gens au moins sans se fâcher.
_Alceste._--Moi, je veux me fâcher, et ne veux point entendre.’
_Le Misanthrope._
During the following forenoon Myles sat alone in the outer office,
employed exactly as he had been on the day of Mrs. Mallory’s visit,
weeks before. Wilson was going his usual round in the works, and Mr.
Sutcliffe, the manager, was out.
Pausing at the end of a column of figures, he raised his eyes and saw
coming down the street something which caused him to open his eyes in
surprise, though surprise was not his usual expression.
It was a very high and very swell phaeton, with a pair of magnificent
bays, which danced along the street, as if its shabby, clog-worn
stones caused much distress to their aristocratic hoofs. The driver of
this (in Thanshope) unique conveyance was a young man in light grey
clothes and a round cloth cap--no English cap: indeed there was, at
least to the uninitiated Thanshope eye, something un-English in his
whole appearance. He was, however, master of his cattle, as even Myles
could see. Beside him sat a slight, dark boy, with a plain, queer, but
attractive face; and behind was a very correct-looking groom.
‘Who on earth is that chap?’ was Myles’s first very natural thought, as
he forgot his work, and gazed in the blissfulness of ignorance at the
vision. The next moment he could have bitten off his tongue could he
have had the feeling that he had not bestowed a second glance upon the
whole affair, for the dancing bays came sidling down the street, and
the driver pulled them up before that very office door; moreover, he
had caught sight of Myles staring at him, and had given him in return a
lazy look from a pair of rather sleepy eyes.
Now Myles knew it was the ‘so-called master’--it was Sebastian Mallory:
a second glance at the fair though bronzed face, the yellow hair and
moustache, the proudly cut features, and the indifferent expression,
displayed sufficient likeness to his mother to make the first intuitive
conviction a certainty.
Furious with himself at having been caught staring openly and
wonderingly, Myles forgot his voluntary promise to Adrienne, and, in
order to prove that, whatever his open eyes might at first have seemed
to intimate, yet that he was not really at all struck by anything he
had seen, he turned his back to the door, and was apparently bending
with the deepest attention over his work, when that door was opened; he
heard a voice conclude some injunctions to the groom, and the answer
which followed:
‘_Jawohl, mein Herr._’
‘Foreign servants, even!’ murmured Myles, shrugging his shoulders.
‘Good morning, my good man,’ was the next thing he heard, in an accent
as different from that of the Thanshope ‘gentleman’ as Adrienne’s was
different from that of the Thanshope lady.
He turned round and looked up; he was forced to do so now, and, without
noticing the lad who stood in the background, he faced Mallory. The two
young men confronted each other for the first time.
So far as expression and complexion went, they were as great a contrast
as could be imagined. Both were tall, spare, and well-built, and there
the resemblance ended. Myles was, as has been said, quick, passionate,
lithe, alert, with a temper that sprang into action on every possible
occasion, with eyes that flashed, brows that contracted, very often
in the course of the day. Sebastian Mallory was graceful, but there
was some languor, real or assumed, in the grace. He was handsome, but
the good looks were certainly marred by the bored expression on his
pale, fine features. His eyes moved slowly; they were very good eyes,
luminous, and hazel in colour, but they did not look as if they would
easily flash. He spoke, looked, moved, as if he found life rather
troublesome, and scarcely worth the trouble when it had been taken. He
had taken off his cap when he entered the office--foreign fashion, and
Myles saw that his face, all save the forehead, was somewhat bronzed;
but it was with the bronze of a hot sun--not nature, naturally he
was pale. His hair, too, seemed to have caught the sun at the ends,
elsewhere it was just yellow hair. Every gesture and movement was full
of the polished ease of high cultivation.
Myles, looking straight at him, said to himself, ‘One of your languid,
heavy swells, are we? I’m afraid we shall ruffle his fine feathers in
this horrid democratic place.’
He had Mrs. Mallory in his mind’s eye as he surveyed her son; her
principles were well known--the divine right of kings--the Conservative
side through thick and thin, good report and evil report; Church and
Constitution intact through every storm; our greatest Premier, the
late lamented Duke of Wellington; _the working-man in his proper
place_ (wherever that may be); rich and poor, gentle and simple, a
providential arrangement which it would be sinful and impious to think
of disturbing.
Thinking of all this, Myles surveyed Sebastian Mallory, and as he found
him entirely different from any young man he had ever seen before, and
as most of the Thanshope people, great and small, were of the Radical
persuasion, he immediately concluded that he was right--what had been
bred in the bone must come out in the flesh, and it was quite clear
that Mr. Mallory was a Conservative of the bluest dye.
Meanwhile Sebastian had been looking at Myles, too, surprised at
receiving no answer to his remark, and still more surprised to observe
that the eyes of the ‘good man’ were fixed intently, criticisingly,
and with unabashed steadfastness upon himself, and appeared to measure
him over from head to foot, in a manner which was, to say the least,
singular. The cap of the young man remained on his head; he did not
rise; he did not ask what he could do, nor the visitor’s business;
he simply looked at him with a pair of remarkably keen, piercing,
dark eyes, and Sebastian returned the look, until at last a gleam of
amusement appeared in his sleepy eyes.
That look of amusement was not lost upon Myles; it irritated and
angered him. He was so terribly in earnest about all he did, thought,
or believed, as not readily to see the comic side of a question, while
it was Mallory’s chief foible to take everything in this world that
came to him as rather amusing--if not too troublesome.
‘_Ma foi!_’ he observed, with a quaint look, but very good-naturedly;
‘they told me in the train that I should be surprised at the Thanshope
people, and so I am!’
‘Perhaps they’ll be equally surprised with you,’ said Myles, concisely.
‘Well, they may,’ replied Sebastian, coolly. ‘Do you know who I am?’
Myles hesitated a moment, much wishing to say, ‘No, I don’t,’ but
integrity got the upper hand; he only put the fact as disagreeably as
he could.
‘I should suppose you are Mrs. Mallory’s son.’
Sebastian turned to the brown-faced, dark-eyed boy who stood behind,
and remarked smilingly,
‘You see, _I_ am nobody, Hugo; only my mother’s son; and yet here I am
upon my own property.’
The youth nodded, and glanced thoughtfully at Myles, who could not
resist going on with the rather perilous game he was playing, and who
remarked drily,
‘You’ll find that we count a good deal by residence and relationship
here.’
‘So!’ said Sebastian, with the amused half-smile still playing about
his lips and in his eyes, to the intense exasperation of Myles, who
naturally saw nothing at all to laugh at in the situation. There was
something, too, about Mallory, which struck a subtle blow at his pride
and self-esteem--something which in his innermost heart he knew to be
superior to himself, though he passionately refused to admit the idea.
‘Your guess is correct,’ went on Sebastian. ‘I am Mrs. Mallory’s son.
And now I should be glad to know who and what you are--one of my
work-people, perhaps?’
The young man did not seem to be at all annoyed at what was taking
place; indeed, there was that in his manner which said that he was
mildly amused with the whole affair. He looked around as he spoke, with
a lazy, criticising glance, but it was the glance, as Myles keenly
felt, of a master, and of one who was accustomed to be a master. He was
surveying his property, and questioning one of his servants. All the
revolutionary element in that servant was in perturbation.
‘What am I?’ he began, when Sebastian, who had taken off his cap on
entering the office, said suggestively, ‘Hadn’t you better take your
cap off?’
‘That is a matter of opinion,’ said Myles, the blood rushing to his
face. ‘It is not the fashion here. As for me, I doff to no man, and but
few women.’
‘Ah! well, we won’t quarrel about it. As you say, it is a matter of
opinion,’ said Sebastian, politely; but there was something in the
tone which made Myles feel small, and as if he had been behaving
childishly--not a comforting feeling.
‘But I interrupted you,’ continued Mallory, who seemed to be acquiring
gradually a sort of interest in the conversation; ‘you were going to
tell me who you are?’
‘My name is Myles Heywood, and my business is cut-looking and part of
the over-looking in this factory,’ said Myles.
‘Heywood,’ repeated Sebastian, his eyes losing their lazy look,
‘Heywood, where have I--ah, yes! A cut-looker--I don’t know what that
is.’
‘Likely enough not,’ said Myles.
‘But it is quite certain that I must learn it,’ pursued Sebastian;
‘what is it, if I may ask?’
An uncomfortable sense began to steal over Myles, that Mr. Mallory was
courtesy itself, and that too under considerable provocation. He gave a
short sketch of his business.
‘Thanks,’ said Sebastian. ‘And now--by-the-by, I am absolutely
forgetting my business--is Mr. Sutcliffe in?’
‘Not now: he will be in about an hour.’
‘In an hour? Then I must go over the works without him. Is there any
one here who knows all about it--you, perhaps?’ he added quickly, as if
struck by a happy thought.
The idea of leading Mr. Mallory round the works excited the liveliest
aversion in Myles’s mind.
‘Wilson, the head-overlooker, is above me. He generally does that,’
said he.
‘Wilson--I ought to remember Wilson. He has been here a long time,
hasn’t he?’
‘He has,’ said Myles, rather emphatically.
‘I thought so. Well, where is he?’
Myles, despite himself, very much despite himself, felt the influence
of Sebastian’s manner. He would have been glad could he reasonably have
classed him with Frederick Spenceley, but no such classification was
for a moment possible. He wished he had not made that difficulty about
going through the works. He suddenly remembered his voluntary promise
to Adrienne, and felt that he could not tell her he had kept his word.
But too proud, or perhaps too shy, to suddenly change his manner, he
said, in the same curt tone,
‘He’s going round the works. If you’ll wait a minute I’ll send him to
you.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mr. Mallory.
Myles went out of the office, and across the yard to the factory; and
Mallory, putting his hand upon Hugo’s shoulder, silently pointed to the
workman’s figure, and they watched him until he had gone into the mill.
‘Hugo, you have not a good ear for English names yet, but I have. I
have heard that man’s name just lately--yesterday, in fact, in the
train as we came from Manchester. He is a fellow I must know something
more about. Did you notice him? He has a splendid face.’
‘Splendid manners too, I think,’ said the boy sarcastically.
‘Yes,’ replied Sebastian meditatively. ‘Heywood! If he had not
mentioned his name when he did, I think I should have lost my temper.
As it is, I shall try another plan. There he goes! What a row comes
from behind that door!’
Then they looked through the window.
‘What a prospect!’ said Sebastian, glancing over the head of his
companion, who leaned with both arms on the window-sill. ‘This
time last week, do you remember? we were with--ah, what was their
name--those girls and their brother?’
‘On the Luzern steamer, going to Fluelen,’ said Hugo, his eyes fixed
upon the dead wall opposite.
‘Just so! Do you remember the sunset, and Mount Pilatus, as we came
back? Well, Pilatus is there now--and we are here.’
Hugo made no answer, but Sebastian saw a smile curve his cheek.
‘Why, you might be pleased rather than not,’ said he.
‘I am not displeased,’ replied the lad, with the same little smile.
‘Not displeased that I took a notion about duty into my head, and
whirled you away from Switzerland, and snow-peaks, and Alpine
colouring, to Thanshope, Hugo?’
‘Suppose you had obeyed the call of duty without whirling me away--had
left me behind somewhere?’ said Hugo, tranquilly.
‘Ah, so! That is at the root of it,’ said Sebastian, laughing. ‘What
an odd--ah, here comes the overlooker! Now, Hugo, observe me doing the
merchant-prince, and prepare your artist-eye for some shocks during the
progress we are going to make.’
Wilson entered in a state of high excitement.
‘Mr. Mallory, sir, this _is_ a hunexpected pleasure! I couldn’t believe
it. ‘Ow are you, sir? Well, I ’ope. We’ve looked forward long to this
event.’
‘Very well, thank you. I found myself at home sooner than I had
expected--a week earlier. I remember you very well,’ he added. ‘How are
you and your family?’
‘As well as possible, sir, thank you,’ said Wilson, pressing the hand
which Sebastian had held out to him. ‘Do I see a friend of yours,
sir?’ he added, looking at Hugo, who was watching the man with the
preternatural solemnity which was one of his ways of showing that he
was amused.
‘Yes; a very great friend--Mr. Von Birkenau,’ was all Sebastian said,
and added, ‘I want to go through the works. I asked that young fellow
who was here, who----’
‘I hope he wasn’t rude, sir. I trust he didn’t make him self
unpleasant,’ said Wilson, fervently.
‘Why, is he insubordinate usually, or rude to his superiors?’ asked
Sebastian, with a sudden keenness of look, in strong contrast with his
soft voice, and gentle manner.
‘Insubordinate! no, sir. A better workman or an honester young
fellow never lived; only he’s got the idea that he hasn’t got no
superiors--and it will bring him into trouble. I often tell him so.’
‘But he is clever and honest, you say?’ said Sebastian, pausing to ask
the question.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Wilson, who was fond of Myles, and had been fond of
him for years. ‘He’s got the brains of half a dozen of the usual run,
and you might trust him with untold gold; ay, and more dangerous things
than that. But he is apt to give a little too much of his sauce.’
‘Ah! Well, we will go on now, if you please; and when Mr. Sutcliffe
comes in, I’ll get him to go on and lunch with me. I should like to
say a few words to the--“hands,” is it you call them?--if there is any
place where they could come and listen to me.’
‘Surely, sir. The big yard will hold them all, and more than them.’
‘Then be good enough to lead the way,’ said Sebastian, looking at his
watch suggestively.
Wilson was a proud and a happy man that morning, as he led the
newly arrived lord of that place through the maze of great rooms
and machinery, and pointed out all the improvements, the wonderful
contrivances for making wood and steel and iron do the work of hands
and feet; all the ‘perfection of mechanism, human and metallic,’ of
which the factory and its contents formed an example.
Sebastian followed him: his eyes had lost their sleepy look; he asked
many questions, acute enough, for all the indifferent tone of them.
He seemed to have much of the gift which is said to be royal--the eye
which took in with incredible rapidity both details and generalities.
Very little that was to be seen escaped him, including the curious
glances and the loud comments and surmises relative to himself.
It took an hour to go even quickly through the different rooms, and
then Wilson, saying, ‘This is the last, sir, the warehouse,’ took
them into a large, well-lighted room, in which were some half-dozen
men at work, Myles Heywood in the centre. Sebastian stooped to Hugo,
whispering,
‘I want to speak to that young fellow alone a few minutes.’
Hugo stepped up to a large pile of cloth, seemingly interested in some
mystic marks and figures upon it, which he requested Wilson to explain;
while Sebastian, going on, stopped at Myles’s side, and, looking at his
work said,
‘That is cut-looking is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I’ve learnt something. Listen to me a moment, will you?’
Myles looked up inquiringly.
‘I am going to say something to all these people directly, and I want
you to promise to come and listen to it; will you?’
Half vexed, half flattered, Myles looked into Mallory’s face. He had
not given up his notion that the young man was a ‘jackanapes:’ but
if so, the ‘jackanapes’ had a manner that it was not easy for even a
superior person to resist. Myles replied,
‘Certainly I will come.’
He looked as if he were going to add something--in fact it was on the
tip of his tongue to say, ‘I don’t promise to like what I shall hear;’
but he refrained. He remembered Adrienne and his promise. Yet he had
the conviction that he would dislike what Sebastian had to say. A
Conservative--Southern sympathies, no doubt. What could such an one
have to say that he would like? But he would go, if only to watch till
the cloven foot showed itself.
At that moment Wilson came up again.
‘You’ve seen the last of the rooms, sir. If you’re ready, I’ll have the
bell rung, and then we can go out into the yard.’
In a few minutes the great bell had clanged out, the engines had been
stopped, the hands were streaming out into the yard.
Sebastian and Wilson stood upon a huge empty lorrie that was close by
one of the warehouse doors, so that they had nothing to do but step on
to it, which they did, while Myles and his comrades swung themselves on
to the ground, and took their stand in a knot, not far away from this
impromptu platform.
Sebastian looked keenly at all the upturned faces, while Wilson made a
few brief yet remarkably entangled and involved introductory remarks.
The overlooker’s voice ceased. He swung himself from the lorrie, and
went and stood with the crowd.
‘My friends,’ began Sebastian, ‘circumstances have kept me for ten
years away from Lancashire. Perhaps I might still not have made the
necessary effort to return, but for this great struggle which is
going on in America, and whose direct effects will first be felt in
Lancashire. When that began, I felt I had no right to remain any longer
away. I have heard, and one or two little things which I have seen,
even during the few hours I have been in Thanshope, lead me to feel
that the saying is a true one, that you Lancashire men are inclined to
despise an employer who does not know his business, much as you would
despise a workman who did not know his work. The principle is a right
and honest one; and I don’t say that I may not have come under the head
of those who deserve some contempt as being ignorant, and “absentee
owners.” Even since I came here, I have discovered that I never knew
what work was before; I see that my task will be no easy one, to master
the principles of my business, and to try and provide in some degree
against the dark days which, I fear, are almost inevitable. But, hard
or easy, it is a task I mean to learn. The time is coming, as I think
all thoughtful men must see--coming rapidly, when Lancashire will have
to exert every effort to meet that distress which will rush upon her;
that cloud that is hastening across the Atlantic is a very black cloud,
and will make the days very dark. Let us try manfully, hand in hand, to
breast the storm together.
‘I suppose that you all, or nearly all, will agree with me upon at
least one point--sympathy with the Federal side in this struggle.
(A murmur, deep and strong, of profound approbation arose--a murmur
in which men’s and women’s voices alike joined.) ‘That noble man,
Abraham Lincoln, against whose honour the Southern press has lifted its
impotent voice--not to mention some journals in this country, which
Englishmen ought to be ashamed to read--that noble man, should he live
and be fortunate in his grand crusade, will benefit all the world
by his intrepidity. He cannot give you cheap and abundant supplies
of cotton now, but by his courage and wisdom he is securing your
future supplies upon a firm basis, very different from the slippery
vantage-ground of slave-labour upon which they have hitherto depended.
(Another murmur indicative of that approval which, to their honour,
Lancashire working-men and women, throughout those bitter years, gave
to the Federal side, greeted the speaker.)
‘I understand that you Lancashire men, especially you Thanshope
men, think a great deal of politics and principles. So you ought,
considering who is your member, and that other great name which is
connected with Thanshope. I also know that in spite of the strong
Conservative element amongst your gentry, and, they tell me, amongst
the workmen too’ (a voice: ‘Conservative working-man--there’s no such
thing!’)--‘in spite of this alleged Conservative element, you have
always, since you first returned a representative to Parliament,
returned a Radical.
‘I was not aware of the strength of the feeling upon this point in
Thanshope. I have always myself held politics to be secondary to some
other subjects, but, since I find so much interest centred round the
point here, and moreover, since persons whom I have met and spoken to
have treated me on the tacit assumption that I was a Conservative,
I judge it as well to tell you, face to face, that whatever I may be
on other matters, in politics I am no Conservative, but a Radical.
Of course there are almost as many kinds of Radicals as there are of
Dissenters. The details of my radicalism and those of your radicalism
are, I dare say, somewhat different; but I hope we shall both be able
to respect the principle and never mind the form.
‘Now I will not keep you longer--only let me say, finally, I am here to
learn my business, and to try to guide my ship through the storm that
is coming. Thanshope, as you know, is one of the places where the pinch
of distress will be soonest felt, since the counts of yarns used here
are precisely those the supply of which will soonest fall off. I ask a
promise from you, and I make one to you. In that time that is coming I
ask you to trust me--my feelings and intentions towards you, and on my
part I promise to strain every nerve to do my duty by you. We will work
on as long as there is cotton to be had, and then--I trust, for your
sakes, and mine, and that of humanity at large, that it will not be
long that I shall have to help you in your fight to keep the wolf from
the door.’
He stopped, bowed, and was turning away, when they gave him a hearty
cheer; and one or two voices informed him laconically that they
‘reckoned he was one o’ th’ reet sort,’ and that ‘he’d suit.’
He jumped down from the lorrie, joined Wilson and his friend Hugo, and
went with them towards the office. The engineer returned to his post;
soon the busy machinery was in full roar again, as if there had been no
such thing as war--no such parties as Federals and Confederates. The
interruption to the morning’s work was already a thing of the past--an
incident to be talked about.
Myles Heywood maintained entire silence upon the subject, nor could any
one of all who inquired of him get him to say what he thought of the
new master. He might have deep thoughts about it--at least they were
unexpressed. The rest of the hands talked the event over with lively
excitement. The general impression was a favourable one. The men liked
what he had said, though he was generally pronounced to be a ‘bit too
much of a swell,’ and it was agreed that he ‘spoke rather fine,’ and,
they said, minced his words too much; was, in short, rather too much
of a fine gentleman. Otherwise he was considered sound, and they were
pleased to find him on the right side in politics.
The women, too, liked him, for reasons apparently similar to those
alleged by Peter van den Bosch, as their grounds for liking Philip van
Artevelde,
‘And wenches who were there, said Artevelde
Was a sweet name, and musical to hear.’
Mary Heywood, at least, said she ‘liked the chap: he had siccan a soft
voice, and a nice, smooth-soundin’ name, like.’
The general conclusion was a very Lancashire one; that the young man
had spoken well and reasonably; sensibly enough for a person who knew
nothing about his business, but that ‘fair words butter no parsnips;’
and the conjecture may reasonably be hazarded whether Sebastian’s
speech had induced any one of his hearers to form a decided opinion,
good or bad, of him. They waited to see, and indeed the time was
striding forward with fearful rapidity, nearer and nearer, when the
sincerity of his profession should be put to the proof.