The story of the adventures, experiences, and journeyings of Mr. Joseph
Hutchinson, his daughter, and the invention, if related in detail, would
prove reading of interest; but as this is merely a study of the manner
in which the untrained characteristics and varied limitations of one man
adjusted or failed to adjust themselves to incongruous surroundings and
totally unprepared-for circumstances, such details, whatsoever their
potential picturesqueness, can be touched upon but lightly. No new idea
of value to the world of practical requirements is presented to the
public at large without the waking of many sleeping dogs, and the
stirring of many snapping fish, floating with open ears and eyes in
many pools. An uneducated, blustering, obstinate man of one idea, having
resentfully borne discouragement and wounded egotism for years, and
suddenly confronting immense promise of success, is not unlikely to be
prey easily harpooned. Joseph Hutchinson's rebound from despair to high
and well-founded hope made of him exactly what such a man is always
made by such rebound. The testimony to his genius and judgment which
acknowledgment of the value of his work implied was naturally, in his
opinion, only a proper tribute which the public had been a bull-headed
fool not to lay at his feet years before. So much time lost, and so much
money for it, as well as for him, and served 'em all damned well right,
he said. If Temple Barholm hadn't come into his money, and hadn't
had more sense than the rest of them, where would they all have been?
Perhaps they'd never have had the benefit of the thing he'd been telling
them about for years. He prided himself immensely on the possession of a
business shrewdness which was an absolute defense against any desire
on the part of the iniquitous to overreach him. He believed it to be a
peculiarly Lancashire characteristic, and kept it in view constantly.
“Lancashire's not easy to do,” he would say hilariously, “Them that can
do a Lancashire chap has got to look out that they get up early in the
morning and don't go to bed till late.”
Smooth-mannered and astute men of business who knew how to make a man
talk were given diffuse and loud-voiced explanations of his methods and
long-acknowledged merits and characteristics. His life, his morals, and
his training, or rather lack of it, were laid before them as examples
of what a man might work himself up to if “he had it in him.” Education
didn't do it. He had never been to naught but a village school, where
he'd picked up precious little but the three R's. It had to be born in a
man. Look at him! His invention promised to bring him in a fortune like
a duke's, if he managed it right and kept his eyes open for sharpers.
This company and that company were after him, but Lancashire didn't snap
up things without going into 'em, and under 'em, and through 'em, for
the matter of that.
The well-mannered gentlemen of business stimulated him greatly by their
appreciative attention. He sometimes lost his head a trifle and almost
bullied them, but they did not seem to mind it. Their apparently
old-time knowledge of and respect for Lancashire business sagacity
seemed invariably a marked thing. Men of genius and powerful character
combined with practical shrewdness of outlook they intimated, were of
enormous value to the business world. They were to be counted upon as
important factors. They could see and deal with both sides of a proposal
as those of weaker mind could not.
“That they can,” Hutchinson would admit, rolling about in his chair and
thrusting his hands in his pockets. “They've got some bottom to stand
on.” And he would feel amenable to reason.
Little Ann found her duties and responsibilities increasing daily. Many
persons seemed to think it necessary to come and talk business, and
father had so much to think of and reason out, so that he could be
sure that he didn't make any mistakes. In a quiet, remote, and darkened
corner of her mind, in which were stored all such things as it was well
to say little or nothing about, there was discreetly kept for reference
the secretly acquired knowledge that father did not know so much about
business ways and business people as he thought he did. Mother had
learned this somewhat important fact, and had secluded it in her own
private mental store-room with much affectionate delicacy.
“Father's a great man and a good man, Ann love,” she had confided to
her, choosing an occasion when her husband was a hundred miles away,
“and he IS right-down Lancashire in his clever way of seeing through
people that think themselves sharp; but when a man is a genius and
noble-minded he sometimes can't see the right people's faults and
wickedness. He thinks they mean as honest as he does. And there's times
when he may get taken in if some one, perhaps not half as clever as
he is, doesn't look after him. When the invention's taken up, and
everybody's running after him to try to cheat him out of his rights, if
I'm not there, Ann, you must just keep with him and watch every minute.
I've seen these sharp, tricky ones right-down flinch and quail when
there was a nice, quiet-behaved woman in the room, and she just fixed
her eye steady and clear-like on them and showed she'd took in every
word and was like to remember. You know what I mean, Ann; you've got
that look in your own eye.”
She had. The various persons who interviewed Mr. Hutchinson became
familiar with the fact that he had an unusual intimacy with and
affection for his daughter. She was present on all occasions. If she had
not been such a quiet and entirely unobtrusive little thing, she
might have been an obstacle to freedom of expression. But she seemed a
childish, unsophisticated creature, who always had a book with her when
she waited in an office, and a trifle of sewing to occupy herself with
when she was at home. At first she so obliterated herself that she was
scarcely noticed; but in course of time it became observed by some that
she was curiously pretty. The face usually bent over her book or work
was tinted like a flower, and she had quite magnificent red hair. A
stout old financier first remarked her eyes. He found one day that she
had quietly laid her book on her lap, and that they were resting upon
him like unflinching crystals as he talked to her father. Their serenity
made him feel annoyed and uncomfortable. It was a sort of recording
serenity. He felt as though she would so clearly remember every word he
had said that she would be able to write it down when she went home; and
he did not care to have it written down. So he began to wander somewhat
in his argument, and did not reach his conclusions.
“I was glad, Father, to see how you managed that gentleman this
afternoon,” Little Ann said that night when Hutchinson had settled
himself with his pipe after an excellent dinner.
“Eh?” he exclaimed. “Eh?”
“The one,” she exclaimed, “that thought he was so sure he was going to
persuade you to sign that paper. I do wonder he could think you'd listen
to such a poor offer, and tie up so much. Why, even I could see he
was trying to take advantage, and I know nothing in the world about
business.”
The financier in question had been a brilliant and laudatory
conversationalist, and had so soothed and exhilarated Mr. Hutchinson
that such perils had beset him as his most lurid imaginings could never
have conceived in his darkest moments of believing that the entire
universe had ceased all other occupation to engage in that of defrauding
him of his rights and dues. He had been so uplifted by the admiration of
his genius so properly exhibited, and the fluency with which his future
fortunes had been described, that he had been huffed when the arguments
seemed to dwindle away. Little Ann startled him, but it was not he
who would show signs of dismay at the totally unexpected expression of
adverse opinion. He had got into the habit of always listening, though
inadvertently, as it were, to Ann as he had inadvertently listened to
her mother.
“Rosenthal?” he said. “Are you talking about him?”
“Yes, I am,” Little Ann answeered, smiling approvingly over her bit of
sewing. “Father, I wish you'd try and teach me some of the things you
know about business. I've learned a little by just listening to you
talk; but I should so like to feel as if I could follow you when you
argue. I do so enjoy hearing you argue. It's just an education.”
“Women are not up to much at business,” reflected Hutchinson. “If you'd
been a boy, I'd have trained you same as I've trained myself. You're a
sharp little thing, Ann, but you're a woman. Not but what a woman's the
best thing on earth,” he added almost severely in his conviction--“the
best thing on earth in her place. I don't know what I'd ever have done
without you, Ann, in the bad times.”
He loved her, blundering old egotist, just as he had loved her mother.
Ann always knew it, and her own love for him warmed all the world about
them both. She got up and went to him to kiss him, and pat him, and
stuff a cushion behind his stout back.
“And now the good times have come,” she said, bestowing on him two or
three special little pats which were caresses of her own invention, “and
people see what you are and always have been, as they ought to have seen
long ago, I don't want to feel as if I couldn't keep up with you and
understand your plans. Perhaps I've got a little bit of your cleverness,
and you might teach me to use it in small ways. I've got a good memory
you know, Father love, and I might recollect things people say and make
bits of notes of them to save you trouble. And I can calculate. I once
got a copy of Bunyan's `Pilgrim's Progress' for a prize at the village
school just for sums.”
The bald but unacknowledged fact that Mr. Hutchinson had never exhibited
gifts likely to entitle him to receive a prize for “sums” caused this
suggestion to be one of some practical value. When business men talked
to him of per cents., and tenth shares or net receipts, and expected him
to comprehend their proportions upon the spot without recourse to
pencil and paper, he felt himself grow hot and nervous and red, and was
secretly terrified lest the party of the second part should detect that
he was tossed upon seas of horrible uncertainty. T. Tembarom in the same
situation would probably have said, “This is the place where T. T. sits
down a while to take breath and count things up on his fingers. I am not
a sharp on arithmetic, and I need time--lots of it.”
Mr. Hutchinson's way was to bluster irritatedly.
“Aye, aye, I see that, of course, plain enough. I see that.” And feel
himself breaking into a cold perspiration. “Eh, this English climate
is a damp un,” he would add when it became necessary to mop his red
forehead somewhat with his big clean handkerchief.
Therefore he found it easy to receive Little Ann's proposition with
favor.
“There's summat i' that,” he acknowledged graciously, dropping into
Lancashire. “That's one of the little things a woman can do if she's
sharp at figures. Your mother taught me that much. She always said women
ought to look after the bits of things as was too small for a man to
bother with.”
“Men have the big things to look after. That's enough for anybody,”
said Little Ann. “And they ought to leave something for women to do.
If you'll just let me keep notes for you and remember things and answer
your letters, and just make calculations you're too busy to attend to, I
should feel right-down happy, Father.”
“Eh!” he said relievedly, “tha art like thy mother.”
“That would make me happy if there was nothing else to do it,” said Ann,
smoothing his shoulder.
“You're her girl,” he said, warmed and supported.
“Yes, I'm her girl, and I'm yours. Now, isn't there some little thing
I could begin with? Would you mind telling me if I was right in what I
thought you thought about Mr. Rosenthal's offer?”
“What did you think I thought about it?” He was able to put affectionate
condescension into the question.
She went to her work-basket and took out a sheet of paper. She came back
and sat cozily on the arm of his chair.
“I had to put it all down when I came home,” she said. “I wanted to make
sure I hadn't forgotten. I do hope I didn't make mistakes.”
She gave it to him to look at, and as he settled himself down to its
careful examination, she kept her blue eyes upon him. She herself did
not know that it was a wonderful little document in its neatly jotted
down notes of the exact detail most important to his interests.
There were figures, there were calculations of profits, there were
records of the gist of his replies, there were things Hutchinson
himself could not possibly have fished out of the jumbled rag-bag of his
uncertain recollections.
“Did I say that?” he exclaimed once.
“Yes, Father love, and I could see it upset him. I was watching his face
because it wasn't a face I took to.”
Joseph Hutchinson began to chuckle--the chuckle of a relieved and
gratified stout man.
“Tha kept thy eyes open, Little Ann,” he said. “And the way tha's put
it down is a credit to thee. And I'll lay a sovereign that tha made no
mistakes in what tha thought I was thinking.”
He was a little anxious to hear what it had been. The memorandum had
brought him up with a slight shock, because it showed him that he had
not remembered certain points, and had passed over others which were of
dangerous importance. Ann slipped her warm arm about his neck, as she
nearly always did when she sat on the arm of his chair and talked things
over with him. She had never thought, in fact she was not even aware,
that her soft little instincts made her treat him as the big, good,
conceited, blundering child nature had created him.
“What I was seeing all the time was the way you were taking in his
trick of putting whole lots of things in that didn't really matter, and
leaving out things that did,” she explained. “He kept talking about
what the invention would make in England, and how it would make it, and
adding up figures and per cents. and royalties until my head was buzzing
inside. And when he thought he'd got your mind fixed on England so that
you'd almost forget there was any other country to think of, he read out
the agreement that said `All rights,' and he was silly enough to think
he could get you to sign it without reading it over and over yourself,
and showing it to a clever lawyer that would know that as many tricks
can be played by things being left out of a paper as by things being put
in.”
Small beads of moisture broke out on the bald part of Joseph
Hutchinson's head. He had been first so flattered and exhilarated by the
quoting of large figures, and then so flustrated and embarrassed by his
inability to calculate and follow argument, and again so soothed and
elated and thrilled by his own importance in the scheme and the honors
which his position in certain companies would heap upon him, that an
abyss had yawned before him of which he had been wholly unaware. He was
not unaware of it now. He was a vainglorious, ignorant man, whose life
had been spent in common work done under the supervision of those who
knew what he did not know. He had fed himself upon the comforting belief
that he had learned all the tricks of any trade. He had been openly
boastful of his astuteness and experience, and yet, as Ann's soft little
voice went on, and she praised his cleverness in seeing one point after
another, he began to quake within himself before the dawning realization
that he had seen none of them, that he had been carried along exactly
as Rosenthal had intended that he should be, and that if luck had not
intervened, he had been on the brink of signing his name to an agreement
that would have implied a score of concessions he would have bellowed
like a bull at the thought of making if he had known what he was doing.
“Aye, lass,” he gulped out when he could speak--“aye, lass, tha wert
right enow. I'm glad tha wert there and heard it, and saw what I was
thinking. I didn't say much. I let the chap have rope enow to hang
himself with. When he comes back I'll give him a bit o' my mind as'll
startle him. It was right-down clever of thee to see just what I had i'
my head about all that there gab about things as didn't matter, an' the
leavin' out them as did--thinking I wouldn't notice. Many's the time
I've said, `It is na so much what's put into a contract as what's left
out.' I'll warrant tha'st heard me say it thysen.”
“I dare say I have,” answered Ann, “and I dare say that was why it came
into my mind.”
“That was it,” he answered. “Thy mother was always tellin' me of things
I'd said that I'd clean forgot myself.”
He was beginning to recover his balance and self-respect. It would have
been so like a Lancashire chap to have seen and dealt shrewdly with a
business schemer who tried to outwit him that he was gradually convinced
that he had thought all that had been suggested, and had comported
himself with triumphant though silent astuteness. He even began to rub
his hands.
“I'll show him,” he said, “I'll send him off with a flea in his ear.”
“If you'll help me, I'll study out the things I've written down on this
paper,” Ann said, “and then I'll write down for you just the things you
make up your mind to say. It will be such a good lesson for me, if you
don't mind, Father. It won't be much to write it out the way you'll say
it. You know how you always feel that in business the fewer words the
better, and that, however much a person deserves it, calling names and
showing you're angry is only wasting time. One of the cleverest things
you ever thought was that a thief doesn't mind being called one if he's
got what he wanted out of you; he'll only laugh to see you in a rage
when you can't help yourself. And if he hasn't got what he wanted, it's
only waste of strength to work yourself up. It's you being what you are
that makes you know that temper isn't business.”
“Well,” said Hutchinson, drawing a long and deep breath, “I was almost
hot enough to have forgot that, and I'm glad you've reminded me. We'll
go over that paper now, Ann. I'd like to give you your lesson while
we've got a bit o' time to ourselves and what I've said is fresh in your
mind. The trick is always to get at things while they're fresh in your
mind.”
The little daughter with the red hair was present during Rosenthal's
next interview with the owner of the invention. The fellow, he told
himself, had been thinking matters over, had perhaps consulted a lawyer;
and having had time for reflection, he did not present a mass of mere
inflated and blundering vanity as a target for adroit aim. He seemed a
trifle sulky, but he did not talk about himself diffusely, and lose
his head when he was smoothed the right way. He had a set of curiously
concise notes to which he referred, and he stuck to his points with a
bulldog obstinacy which was not to be shaken. Something had set him on
a new tack. The tricks which could be used only with a totally ignorant
and readily flattered and influenced business amateur were no longer in
order. This was baffling and irritating.
The worst feature of the situation was that the daughter did not read a
book, as had seemed her habit at other times. She sat with a tablet and
pencil on her knee, and, still as unobtrusively as ever, jotted down
notes.
“Put that down, Ann,” her father said to her more than once. “There's no
objections to having things written down, I suppose?” he put it bluntly
to Rosenthal. “I've got to have notes made when I'm doing business.
Memory's all well enough, but black and white's better. No one can go
back of black and white. Notes save time.”
There was but one attitude possible. No man of business could resent
the recording of his considered words, but the tablet and pencil and the
quietly bent red head were extraordinary obstacles to the fluidity of
eloquence. Rosenthal found his arguments less ready and his methods
modifying themselves. The outlook narrowed itself. When he returned to
his office and talked the situation over with his partner, he sat and
bit his nails in restless irritation.
“Ridiculous as it seems, outrageously ridiculous, I've an idea,” he
said, “I've more than an idea that we have to count with the girl.”
“Girl? What girl?”
“Daughter. Well-behaved, quiet bit of a thing, who sits in a corner
and listens while she pretends to sew or read. I'm certain of it. She's
taken to making notes now, and Hutchinson's turned stubborn. You need
not laugh, Lewis. She's in it. We've got to count with that girl, little
female mouse as she looks.”
This view, which was first taken by Rosenthal and passed on to his
partner, was in course of time passed on to others and gradually
accepted, sometimes reluctantly and with much private protest,
sometimes with amusement. The well-behaved daughter went with
Hutchinson wheresoever his affairs called him. She was changeless in the
unobtrusiveness of her demeanor, which was always that of a dutiful and
obedient young person who attended her parent because he might desire
her humble little assistance in small matters.
“She's my secretary,” Hutchinson began to explain, with a touch of
swagger. “I've got to have a secretary, and I'd rather trust my private
business to my own daughter than to any one else. It's safe with her.”
It was so safe with her steady demureness that Hutchinson found himself
becoming steady himself. The “lessons” he gave to Little Ann, and the
notes made as a result, always ostensibly for her own security and
instruction, began to form a singularly firm foundation for statement
and argument. He began to tell himself that his memory was improving.
Facts were no longer jumbled together in his mind. He could better
follow a line of logical reasoning. He less often grew red and hot and
flustered.
“That's the thing I've said so often--that temper's got naught to do wi'
business, and only upsets a man when he wants all his wits about
him. It's the truest thing I ever worked out,” he not infrequently
congratulated himself. “If a chap can keep his temper, he'll be like to
keep his head and drive his bargain. I see it plainer every day o' my
life.”