RUPERT was annoyed, and annoyed with himself for being annoyed, when he
drove up to the main gate of Staithley Mills on the following afternoon
and found that the gate-keeper did not know him. It was plainly the
man’s duty to warn strangers off the premises, and Rupert was, by
hypothesis and in fact, a stranger, but he felt it a reproach that Sir
Rupert Hepplestall was forced to make himself known to Hepplestal’s
gate-keeper.
The man, an old workman, who preferred this mildly honorific wardenship
to a pension, made him a backhanded apology. “It’s so long sin’ we’ve
seen thee,” he said. “Us had a hoam-coming ready for thee arter the war,
but tha’ didno come.” No sirring and no obsequiousness from this old
servant of the firm, and Rupert gave a quick, resentful glance as he
pulled the car up in the yard.
Then he remembered that this was Lancashire--and he knew now what
Lancashire thought of him. There was no reason why he should, and every
reason why he should not, care what Lancashire thought, seeing that he
came there solely to arrange his clean cut from Staithley; but an old
fellow in a factory yard who did not scrape, but told him frankly that
he had not come up to local expectations, had been able to thwack him
shrewdly.
It was not much better after that to be treated like a prodigal, to
be conducted possessively to the office entrance and to hear the
gate-keeper announce in a great and genial voice, “I’ve a glad surprise
for yo’, There’s th’ young maister.”
He was not and he refused to be “th’ young maister,” but he could not
explain to this guide that he wasn’t what he seemed; the infernal fellow
was so naively proud to be his herald. “I feel like Judas,” he thought,
and tried wryly to laugh the thought away. It was a tremendous and a
preposterous simile to be occasioned by the candid loyalty of one old
workman, but things did not go much better with him inside the offices.
Theoretically, they should have shrunk, to his maturer gaze, from his
boyish recollection of them, but they were authentically impressive. He
couldn’t think lightly of this regiment of desks, nor could he pretend
that the eyes which turned towards him as his loud-voiced pilot
announced him, were hostile. Theory was in chancery again; all employees
ought to hate all employers, but the elderly gentlemen who were
hastening towards him wore on their faces expressions of genuine
pleasure instead of the decent deference that might cloak a mortal
hatred. Ridiculously as if he had been indeed a prince on the day when
Sir Philip took him round and introduced him, he discovered a royal
memory, and remembered their names. It was developing into a reception;
this wasn’t at all what he had come for. He wondered what the younger
clerks were thinking, men of his own age, ex-service men, but he had not
the chance even to look at them. A positive guard of honor was escorting
him to William’s room, that joss-house of the Hepplestalls.
If only he could laugh at their formality and at their quaint
appreciativeness of his knowing their names! He felt he ought to laugh;
he felt it was all something out of Dickens. Or if he could blurt out
that he had come to slip the collar for ever from his neck! They would
scuttle from him as though he were the plague; but he could neither
laugh aloud nor tell the truth to those solemn mandarins. They were not
pompous fools, or he could have laughed, he could have scattered them
impishly with his truth; but they were captains in a Service where
promotion went by merit, they were proven efficients in an organization
whose efficiency was world-renowned, and their homage was not absurd
because it was paid not to the young man, Rupert Hepplestall, but to Sir
Philip’s son, to the successor to the Headship of the Service. That made
it the more hypocritical in him to seem to accept their homage, but if
he was going to forfeit what good opinion they retained of a truant, he
was going to keep it, at any rate, until the die was unalterably cast.
It was certain to be cast, but Hepplestal’s was retorting on him with
unexpected power. Mary was right: the bigness of Hepplestal’s had been
escaping him. From London the sale had seemed no more than signatures on
documents, and a check. Up here, confronted with Staithley Mills as so
much brick, mortar and machinery, and confronted with no more than one
crude loyalist in the yard and half a dozen grayboards of the Service in
the office, the thing loomed colossal. Let it loom: he held its future
in the hollow of his hand, and this, of all times, was no moment for
second thoughts. He had to tackle William, the waverer, the fence-sitter
who must be met with firmness, and not by one who was himself
momentarily awed by the bigness of Hepplestal’s into being a waverer.
With the air of nailing his colors to the mast, even if they were the
skull and crossbones, he recovered his resolution in the moment when
that ambassadorial figure, the Chief Cashier of Hepplestall’s, threw
open William’s door and announced “Sir Rupert Hepplestall”; and a grave
assurance, inflexible and self-reliant, seemed to enter the room with
him.
William raised careworn eyes as this bright incarnation of sanguine
youth came into the office in which he sat almost as if it were a
condemned cell. He knew, better than Rupert who knew the Hepplestalls so
little, what wrath would come when they two faced an outraged Board, and
this sedate, this almost smiling confidence seemed to him as offensive
as buffoonery at a funeral. “You look very cheerful,” he greeted his
nephew resentfully.
“Why not?” said Rupert. “It’s a mistake to call optimism a cheap virtue.
How are you, Uncle?”
“I suppose you slept last night,” was the reply from which Rupert was to
gather that sleep at such a crisis was considered gross.
“Yes, thanks,” he said. “At Matlock. I drove up quietly, because I
wanted to think. Really, of course, I’d decided in the first five
minutes after opening your letter.”
“You decided very quickly,” said William, who had come to no decision.
“My wife made the same remark,” said Rupert. “But that’s a day and a
half ago, and my first opinion stands. I’ve decided to sell.” Speaking,
he gave a just perceptible jerk of the head which William remembered as
a characteristic of Sir Philip when he, too, announced one of his quick
decisions, and the little movement was not a grateful sight to William.
Sir Philip’s son had his father’s trick and, it seemed, his father’s way
of arriving rapidly at a conclusion. William, victim to irresolution
as he always was, was sliding off his fence into opposition, through
nothing more logical than jealousy of this boy who had the gift of
making up his mind swiftly. “Am I to understand that your wife has other
views?” he asked. It was hardly likely in such a wife, in an actress,
but Rupert’s words seemed to suggest that Mary had given him pause, and
if William was going to oppose this headstrong boy, any ally, however
unlikely, would be welcome.
But, “Wives don’t count in this,” said Rupert bruskly, and, he thought,
truthfully. It was true at any rate between Rupert and the wife of
William; Rupert’s decision had been made before he opened Gertrude’s
prompting letter. But William and William’s wife were another matter,
and William shuffled uneasily on his chair as he admitted the
influence in this crisis of the Service of Gertrude who was not born a
Hepplestall. He must be strong.
“Quite right,” lie said firmly. “Wives don’t count. But it isn’t the
case that you decide, Rupert. The Board decides.”
“I make it from your letter that for the practical purposes of this
deal, you and I decide.”
“It still is not the case that you decide.”
“Oh, naturally, when I said I’d decided, I meant as regards myself.
I’m here to get your views. But, even if you’re against me, Uncle,
that won’t stop me from going on. I mean there may be others who aren’t
romantic about Hepplestall’s. I may find others who’ll pool their shares
with mine in favor of a sale.”
William inclined to tell him to go and try. He didn’t think it likely
that there would be any others, but if there were, let them join with
Rupert and let William be able to say that his hand was forced. It would
be a comforting solution.
“You’re hoping it, Uncle. I’m perfectly aware you want to sell. Why did
you write to me at all if you didn’t want to sell?”
“Is that fair, Rupert? You would have been the first to blame me if I
had not told you of this.”
“I should never have known anything about it. I know nothing of lots of
important things you decide.”
“And doesn’t that seem a shameful thing for your father’s son to have
to say, Rupert? Suppose I sent you that letter just to make you see what
sort of important things we had to decide in your absence. To arouse
your sense of responsibility.”
“That cock won’t fight, Uncle. You could decide other things very well
without me. You could decide this, too, if the decision were a negative.
But the decision you hoped for was an affirmative and so you wrote to
me. Are you going to deny that you hoped I’d want to sell?”
“You’re... you’re very headstrong, Rupert.”
“I’ve come here to get down to facts. And the flat fact is that both you
and I want to sell. You want more pleasure in life than being Head of
Hepplestall’s allows you. You want to get out and I don’t mean to get
in. We both know that from the point of view of those old Johnnies on
the wall”--William shuddered at his catastrophic levity--“it’s a crime
to sell Hepplestall’s. But I’m not a Chinaman and I won’t worship my
ancestors. I’ve my own view of the sort of life I mean to live. And we
both know that the whole of the rest of the Board may be against us and
that some of them virulently will. Very well, then we don’t tell the
Board before it’s necessary. We go into the question of price, and we
quote the figure to these accountants. We see what reply we draw. As to
the price, that’s your affair.”
“Well,” confessed William, “tentatively, purely as a matter of
curiosity, I have gone into that.”
“Uncle,” said Rupert, surprising William with a giant’s hand-grip,
“you and I speak the same language. And we won’t stammer, either. These
accountants wrote to you, so the reply must be from you. You have not
had an opportunity to consult your Board and you speak for yourself in
estimating the market value of Hepplestall’s at so much. This figure
should not be regarded as the basis of negotiation, but as the minimum
financial consideration on which other terms of sale could be founded.
Something like that, eh? Now show me the figure and tell me how you
arrived at it.”
From nephew to uncle, this did not strain courtesy; it was hot
pace-making irresistibly recalling to William occasions when Sir Philip,
well in his stride, had made him wonder whether such alert efficiency
was quite gentlemanly. But with the figures in his pocket he had been no
sloven himself, and if Rupert and he did indeed speak the same language,
he hadn’t stammered.
At the same time, this production of the figures, to one so pertinacious
as Rupert, advanced matters to a stage from which there was no retreat
and he hesitated until a thought, sophistical but consoling, came into
his mind. He had heard it rumored that the Banks were beginning to frown
on the excessive speculation in mills; of course, and time, too. The
Government had cried, “Trade! Trade!” and had inspired the Banks to
encourage trade by lending money readily. Then it was found that too
much of the money lent was being used not for sound trade but for
speculation, and borrowers were faced with a decided change of front on
the part of bank managers. William conveniently forgot that the type of
rich man behind the accountants who had written to him would be above
the caprice of bank managers, and decided happily that the whole affair
had merely an academic interest; in that case, there was no harm in
discussing the figures with Rupert behind the backs of the rest of
the Board, and in submitting them to London. The nationally eminent
accountants would have been infuriated to know that William Hepplestall
imagined them capable of having to do with a mare’s-nest; but that it
was all a mare’s-nest was the salve he applied to his conscience as he
went to the safe to collect his data for Rupert.
Rupert had no sophistical conclusions to draw from a general situation
of which he knew nothing; it was clear to him that they had passed the
turning-point and were safely on the tack for home. There would be
any amount of detail to be settled, but the supreme issue was decided;
William and he were at one, and Hepplestal’s was to be sold! No wonder
he had hectored a little. He had had to rout William and not only
William but the belated hesitations in himself born of his dismay at the
formidable size of Hepplestal’s; and success had justified his methods.
In here, the massiveness of the mills did not oppress and a modern man
whose thinking was not confused by the portraits of his ancestors
could see this thing singly, stripped of sentiment, in terms of pounds,
shillings and pence. If Staithley Mills were large, so would be the
figure William was to declare; if the tradition was fine, it was
commutable into the greater number of thousands. That was sanity,
anything else was muddled-headedness, and he awaited William’s
scratches on paper as one who has swept away obfuscating side-issues and
concentrates on essentials.
“It makes a very considerable total, Rupert,” said William gravely.
“We’ve got used to considerable totals, haven’t we? I don’t suppose it’s
more than a day’s cost of the war.”
“Then I’ve a surprise for you,” said William.
“Yes?” asked Rupert with an eager anticipation which was hardly due to
greed so much as to impatience to learn what fabulous key to the pageant
of life was to be his to turn. Let it only be big enough and he had
no doubt that it would dazzle Mary out of her queer, old-fashioned
timidities. He stood upon his peak in Darien. “Yes,” he asked again as
William paused, not because he had a sense of the dramatic but because
he was nervous.
There was a knock at the door, apologetic if ever knock apologized, and
an embarrassed henchman of the Service came in upon William’s indignant
response.
“I wouldn’t dream of disturbing you, sir, but Lady Hepplestall is here.”
“My wife?” cried Rupert, hoping against hope that it was his mother.
“Yes, Sir Rupert, and Bradshaw’s with her. Mr. Bradshaw of the spinners.
The M. P. He... well, sir, he put it that he knew you didn’t want to be
interrupted and he’s come to interrupt.”
“Thank you,” said William. “We will not keep Lady Hepplestall waiting.”
William was very dignified as he said the only possible thing, and
he hoped Rupert would perceive in his dignity a reproach to his own
exhibition of crude amazement before an understrapper. Rupert was
ludicrously like a boy caught in the act of robbing an orchard, and
William’s eye was alight as he contrasted this crestfallen Rupert with
the Rupert who had declared roundly that “Wives don’t count in this.”
William had hopes of Mary, who was shown in with Tom before Rupert had
time to attempt an explanation of her presence to his uncle.
Rupert recovered himself and made a tolerable show of hauteur; he wasn’t
the small boy in the apple orchard but a very grand gentleman making his
pained protest at her intrusion. “Mary!” he began.
“No, not now, Rupert,” she checked him. “I’m here to watch. I told
Mr. Bradshaw and he is here to speak.” To watch, she did not add, with
desperately anxious eyes the effect upon him both of her summons to Tom
and of what Tom had to say. She thought she had saved Hep-plestall’s,
she thought Tom had a medicine that would cure them of their wish to
sell, but had she saved Rupert? That was her larger question and she saw
no answer to it yet. She was there to watch and pray.
“Well,” said Tom, “that’s a good opening. As she says, Lady Hepplestall
told me what you’re up to and we’re saved the trouble of bluffing round
the point. You’re out to sell Hepplestall’s; I’m here to stop you.”
“The devil you are,” cried Rupert.
Tom turned to William. “Does Sir Rupert know I’m secretary of the
Spinners’ Union?” he asked.
“Indeed?” said Rupert. “And what business may this be of the Spinners’
Union, or any other Union?”
“Vital business,” said Tom, “of theirs and every other cotton trade
Union. I’m usually asked to sit down in this office, Mr. Hepplestall.”
“You are usually asked to come into it, Mr. Bradshaw. You have hardly
asked to-day,” said William.
“Please yourself,” said Tom. “I’ve been sitting a long while in the
train. I can stand, only I’ve a bad habit of making speeches when I’m on
my feet and I’d as lief have had this friendly.”
It surprised and annoyed Rupert that William pointed to a chair with
an “If you please, Mr. Bradshaw.” Himself, he would have kicked the
confounded fellow into the street and when he had gone it would have
been Mary’s turn for--not for kicking, certainly, but for something
severe in the way of disciplinary measures. “Friendly!” he scoffed.
“What you might call a benevolent enemy, Sir Rupert,” said Tom. “If I
weren’t benevolent, I’d have gone into Staithley streets and cried
it aloud that Hepplestall’s was being sold to Londoners, and I’d have
watched the hornets sting you. But, being benevolent, I’d rather you
didn’t get stung, and I’m here till I get your assurance that all
thought of a sale is off.”
“That means you’re making quite a long stay with us, Mr. Bradshaw,” said
Rupert elaborately.
“I wonder how much you know of the Staithley folk, Sir Rupert,” said
Tom. “They’re fighting stock. You maybe know there’s a likely chance of
things coming to a big strike in the cotton trade on the wages question,
but that’s not just yet and if you don’t watch it there’ll be an urgency
strike in Staithley that might begin to-night. One of these wicked
strikes you read about. Without notice.”
“But you... Mr. Bradshaw, you’re the chief Union official.”
“Oh, yes,” said Tom, “and officially the strike would be unofficial.
But I’d be roundabout, unofficially. Rum sort of strike, eh? Striking
against the Hepplestalls for the Hepplestalls, and a Bradshaw leading
it. If you knew owt of Bradshaws and Hepplestalls, you’ll see the
rumminess of that.”
“Against us for us. Yes, I see. One might almost conclude you like the
Hepplestalls, Mr. Bradshaw.”
“Like ‘em!” said Tom. “Like ‘em!” His eyes glanced at William with the
suspicion of a twinkle in it. William wondered if there was a twinkle;
Sir Philip would not have wondered, he would have seen and he would
have understood. He would have discounted Tom’s next words, “I take
the liberty of telling you the Hepplestalls are a thieving gang of
blood-sucking capitalists, but I prefer to stick to the blood-suckers
I know. I know the Hepplestalls and I can talk to them. I don’t know, I
won’t talk to a soulless mob of a London syndicate. You can think of it
like this, Sir Rupert. There was steam, and it fastened like a vampire
on Lancashire. It fastened on your sort as well as on my sort, and we’ve
been working up to where we’re getting steam in its place, obeying us,
not mastering us. We’re doing well against steam. Shorter hours are
here, and factory work before breakfast has gone. Half-timers are going,
and education’s going to get a sporting chance. And we’re not beating
steam to let ourselves be ruined by water.”
William nodded sober acquiescence, but Rupert was uninformed. “Water?”
he asked.
“Watered capital,” Tom explained. “Lancashire’s water-logged, but we’ll
keep Staithley out of what’s coming to Lancashire. You have mills here
that are the pride of the county. You wouldn’t turn them into the pride
of speculators as the biggest grab they ever made in Lancashire! You
wouldn’t make Staithley suffer from the rot of watered capital.”
William stirred furtively on his chair and avoided Tom’s eye with the
shiftiness of a wrongdoer who is shown the results of misdeed, and then
remembered that he had done no wrong and nodded approval of Tom’s words
which were not addressed to him but to Rupert. Mentally he thanked Tom
for saying outright things which he had himself thought. He had merely
kept them in reserve, unspoken until he had entertained himself by
proceeding a little further with the accountants; but that was, perhaps,
not the most honorable form of entertainment, based as it would have
been on the false pretense that William was prepared to sell, and he was
grateful to Tom for an intrusion which cleared the air. He did not blame
himself: he had not played with fire, or, if he had, it had been while
wearing asbestos gloves; but what Tom said to Rupert--of course it
was to Rupert--was the final argument against a sale, and he drew out
notepaper and bent to write.
To Rupert, Tom was simply a nuisance. He had sighted victory, he
had carried William, he had resolutely defeated such difficulties as
sentiment and the frowning ponderosity of Hepplestall’s, and he saw Tom
Bradshaw, with his croaking prophecies of after-effects of the sale
upon some fifty thousand inhabitants of Staithley, as a monstrous
impertinence. He was so busy seeing Tom as an impertinence that he did
not see William writing a letter.
“I’ve heard of the tyranny of Trade Unions,” he said. “I’ve heard of
what they call their rights and what most people call their privileges.
But I’ve never heard of a Trade Union’s right to veto a sale. I have the
right to transfer possession of my own to anubody. If you think you can
engineer a strike against that elementary right of property, I tell you
to go ahead and see what happens.”
“I know what will happen in this case, Sir Rupert. If we let you sell--”
“You let! You can’t prevent.”
“If you sold,” Tom went on, “some undesirable results would arise. I am
dealing with them before they arise. I am dealing on the principle that
prevention is better than cure.”
“Are you? Then suppose I said strike and be damned to you?”
“If you said that you would be a young man speaking in anger and I
shouldn’t take you too seriously.”
“What!” cried Rupert. There was no doubt about his anger now.
“One moment,” said Tom. “I’m against a strike, but it’s a good weapon.
It’s maybe a better weapon when it isn’t used than when it is. It can
hit the striker as well as the struck.”
“Oh? That’s dawned on you, has it?”
“Some time before you were born. But this strike wouldn’t hurt the
striker. There’s somebody ready to buy Hepplestall’s. I’ll call him Mr.
B., because B stands for butcher, and a butcher will buy a bull but
he won’t buy a mad bull. Mr. B. will think twice before he buys
Hepplestall’s when Hepplestall’s men are on strike against being sold.
No one buys trouble with his eyes open. That’s why we can stop this.
That’s the public way, but I’ve still great hopes we’ll stop it
privately, in this room.”
“Then you--” Rupert began hotly, but William interrupted. “You may have
noticed that I was writing, Mr. Bradshaw. This letter goes to-night
finally declining to treat in any way for a sale of Hepplestall’s. I
have signed it and I am Head of Hepplestall’s. I hope, Sir Rupert, the
future Head will sign it with me.”
“Uncle!” he said, and turned his back.
“It isn’t needful,” said Tom, “for me to add that nobody shall ever know
from me that there was any question of a sale.”
“Thank you,” said William. “As a fact, Mr. Bradshaw, there never was.”
He believed what he said, too. He believed he had never been influenced
by Gertrude or convinced by Rupert. He believed he had merely toyed
pleasantly with the idea, standing himself superior to it. “But that
shall not prevent me from appreciating your actions, yours, Lady
Hepplestall, and yours, Mr. Bradshaw. We Hepplestalls are all trustees,
all of us,” he emphasized, looking at Rupert’s stiff back, “but you have
shown to-day that you are sharer in the trust.”
Tom wondered for a moment what was the polite conversational equivalent
of ironical cheers; William was escaping too easily, but the chief
point was not the regent but the heir, Mary’s Rupert, and he could spare
William the knowledge that he had deceived nobody.
“Sir Rupert spoke just now,” he said, “of the rights of property.
They are rightful rights only when they are matched with a sense of
responsibility, and capital that forgets responsibility is going to get
it in the neck.”
“We have,” said William superbly, “the idea of service in this firm.”
“Man,” said Tom, “if you hadn’t had, I shouldn’t be here to-day talking
to you in headlines. If you hadn’t had that idea and if you hadn’t lived
up to it and if I didn’t hope you’d go _on_ living up to it, I’d have
had a very different duty. Shall I tell you what that duty would have
been, Sir Rupert? To keep my mouth shut and let you sell. The higher you
sold the higher they’d resell when they floated their company, and the
sooner they’d start squeezing the blood out of Staithley.”
Rupert turned a puzzled face. “That would have been your duty? Why?” he
asked.
“Hot fevers are short,” said Tom. “It ‘ud bring the end more quickly.
I don’t know if you read the _Times_. If you do you may have seen that
they mentioned my name the other day along with some more and called us
the elder statesmen of the Labor Party. Too old to hurry. Brakes on the
wheels of progress. Maybe; but I’m one that looks for other roads than
the road that leads to revolution and you Hepplestalls have been a
sign-post on a road I like. You’ve been too busy overpaying yourselves
to go far up the road yet, but you’re leaders of the cotton trade and by
the Lord that ship needs captaincy. That’s why I didn’t do what lots
in the Party would tell me was my duty--to let you rip, and rip another
rent in the rotting fabric of capitalism.” Mary’s hand was on his arm.
“Because you love the Hepplestalls,” she said.
“And me a Bradshaw?” he said indignantly. “Me a Labor Member and they
capital? Did you ever hear of the two old men who’d been mortal enemies
all their lives, and when one of them was killed in a railway accident,
the other took to his bed and died because he’d nothing left to live
for? That’s me and the Hepplestalls.”
She shook her head, smiling. “It’s not like that,” she said.
“It ought to be,” said Tom, “but it isn’t. Service, not greed, and
there’s a hope for all of us in that, and if you want to know who taught
me to see it, it was Sir Philip Hepplestall.”
Rupert was in distress. Why should London, his schemes, theaters, seem
so incredibly remote? Why wasn’t he angry with this grizzled fellow from
the Staithley stews who dared, directly and indirectly, to lecture him?
Why didn’t he resent Mary, another Bradshaw, who had brought Tom
there to reprimand a Hepplestall? And why weren’t ladders provided for
climbing down from high horses?
“My father?” he said. “My father taught you?” It was his ancestors
he declined to worship. A father was not an ancestor, and Rupert was
hearing again Sir Philip’s deep sincerity as he spoke of the Samurai.
“We have both learned from Sir Philip, Mr. Bradshaw. I have been near to
forgetting the lesson. Did he ever speak to you of Samurai?”
“Sam who?” asked Tom.
“Ah,” said Rupert happily. That was his secret, that intimate ideal
which Sir Philip had revealed only to his son. He hadn’t, perhaps, the
soundest evidence for supposing that the confidence had been uniquely to
him, but in his present dilemma it seemed entirely satisfactory--a way
out and a way down. And, after all, he came down by a ladder.
A great noise filled the room, ear-splitting, nerve-jarring to those
who were not used to it. Rupert was not used to it, but for a moment
wondered if it were external or the turmoil of his thoughts. “Only the
buzzer,” William smiled.
“Staithley goes home,” said Tom.
But not yet. The Chief Cashier knocked perfunctorily on the door and
came in with the bland air of one who had the entree at all times. “If
Sir Rupert could speak to the workpeople,” he said. “Word was passed
that he is here. This window looks upon the yard. May I open it?”
Rupert paused for one of time’s minor fractions, and his head jerked as
his father’s used to jerk. “Mr. Bradshaw,” he said, “will you step to
the window with us?”
It was grand; it was too grand; it was a gesture which began finely and
ran to seed like rhubarb. It was florid when he wanted to be simple
and he harked back in mind to a _Punch_ cartoon of some years earlier,
representing the Yellow Press as a horrible person up to the knee in
mud, calling out, “Chuck us another ha’penny and I’ll wallow in it.” He
felt himself up to the midriff in a mud of sentimentality; for two pins,
he would with ironic grace wallow in the mud. His surrender was too
loathsome and insincere: he held out his hand to Tom, feeling that he
was going the whole hog, parading his humiliation before the men and
women of Hepplestall’s who had the idiotic wish to salute a traitor as
their prince.
Tom offered first aid here and shook his head. “No, thanks,” he said.
“I’ve to be careful what company I keep in public. I’m Member for
Staithley, but I’m Labor Member and you’re Capital.”
“Aren’t we to work together in the future?” asked Rupert.
“If they see me standing there with you, they’ll throw brickbats at
me, and some of them will hit you. You’ve a lot to learn, Sir Rupert.
Old-fashioned Labor men like me, that want to hurry slowly, are between
the devil and the deep sea. If I show myself standing by the devil, the
sea will come up and drown me.”
“By George,” said Rupert, feeling half clean of mud and insincerity, “by
George, this is going to be interesting. I’ve... I’ve a lot to learn,
haven’t I?”
“Thank God, you know it,” said Tom Bradshaw reverently.
And in another minute, Rupert knew it better still, when he moved to
the window with William. The factory yard below them was packed with a
cheering mass of workpeople, and every inlet to it showed a sea of heads
stretching as far as the eye could reach. Not one tenth the employees of
the great mills could stand within sight of the window; those who
were there had gained priority of place because they worked in the
departments nearest the yard, but not by any means all whose work was
nearby had come and it struck William, if not Rupert, that the people
here assembled were chiefly elderly or very young. The elders, like the
gate-keeper who had passed the word of Rupert’s coming into the mills,
had genuinely an impulse of loyalty to a Hepplestall; the very young
were ready to make a noise in a crowd gathered upon any occasion; and
the merely young had for the most part made no effort to struggle into
the yard.
To Rupert, this was Hepplestall’s making spontaneous levy in mass to
welcome him; a little absurd of them, even if their prince had
been princely, but undeniably affecting. He must play up to these
acclamations, he must say something gracious, and he must not
condescend. He was an ass whom they lionized, but he wouldn’t bray. He
offered to speak, and the hearty roar below him diminished.
It has been observed before to-day that the contemptuous noise known as
“booing” is unable to assert itself against cheers, whereas a few sharp
hisses cut like a whip across any but the greatest uproar. As the cheers
diminished in anticipation of his speech, the appearance of unanimity
was shattered by derisive hissing, drowned at once by renewed volume of
cheers, but more than sufficient to indicate an opposition.
Behind him in the room he heard Mary’s quick “What’s that?” he heard
Tom say “Poor lad! Poor lad!” Who was a poor lad? He? He never did like
honey; he didn’t want the leadership of sheep and he began to speak
without preamble.
“It’s a tremendous thing to be a Hepplestall and if you cheered just now
because my name is Hepplestall I think that you were right. Some of you
hissed. If that was because I am a Hepplestall, I think that you were
wrong, but if it was because I’ve been a long time in coming here, then
you were right. I shirked the responsibility. I had the thought to take
my capital out of Hepplestall’s and to put it into something soft. But a
man said to me lately that capital that failed to accept responsibility
was going to get it in the neck. I agreed and my capital stops in
something tough, in Hepplestall’s. And another thing. We’ve made hay of
the hereditary principle as such. If I’ve no merit, I shan’t presume on
being Sir Philip’s son. In the mills side by side with you, it will
be discovered whether I have merit or no. Now, I am not a socialist.
I shall take the wages of capital and if I rise to be your manager, I
shall take the wages of management. That’s blunt and I expect some of
you are taking it as a challenge. Then those are the very fellows who
are going to help me most. We’ll arrive amongst us at the knowledge of
what is capital’s fair wage and what is management’s fair wage. I am
here to learn and I am here to serve. If you will believe that, it will
help us all; it will help more than had I kept my motives to myself and
simply made you a speech of thanks for the home-coming welcome you have
given me. The welcome expressed some disapproval and I should not have
been honest if I had pretended that I didn’t notice it. I am not out to
earn your approval by methods which might be contrary to the interests
of Staithley Mills. I am out to serve Hepplestall’s, not sectionally,
but as a whole. I look to you to show me my way, and while I have to
thank you wholeheartedly for your cheers, I am absolutely sincere in
thanking you for your hisses. They are the beginning of my education. I
haven’t a sweet tooth and I liked them. We’re not going to get together
easily, I and those fellows who hissed. Well, strong bonds aren’t forged
easily and I can’t be more than a trier. I’m Hepplestall and proud of
it, and I dare say that’s enough for some of you. It isn’t enough for me
until I’ve proved myself and it isn’t enough for the fellows who hissed.
I’m asking them for fair play for a Hepplestall. I’m asking for a
chance. I’m going to do my best and I’m keeping you from home. It’s good
of you to stay and I’ve said my say. You’ve not had butter; you’ve had
facts. My thanks to you for listening. Good night.”
They cheered and he stood at the window as they dispersed, trying to
remember what he had said, trying to gauge its effect upon the men.
There were no hisses, but that meant nothing; a demonstration of
opposition had been made and needn’t be repeated. But, anyhow, he hadn’t
lied; he hadn’t pretended that he had their esteem before he earned it;
and he meant to earn it.
He turned from the window to Tom Bradshaw; neither to Mary nor to
William, but to Tom. “Did I talk awful tosh?” he asked. “Honestly, I
don’t know what I said.”
“A young speaker never does, and, some ways, he’s the better for having
no tricks of the trade. You’ll do, lad. You’ll do.”
Rupert’s face was bright as he heard the approbation of a Bradshaw under
the portrait of Reuben Hepplestall. “Hepplestall and proud of it! Did I
say that?”
William nodded and Rupert looked at him with a puzzled face. “Damn
it, it’s true,” he said wonderingly. “May I sign that letter, Uncle
William?”