MR. FFRENCH VISITS THE WORKS.
There were few men in Broxton or the country surrounding it who were
better known than Gerard Ffrench. In the first place, he belonged, as it
were, to Broxton, and his family for several generations back had
belonged to it. His great-grandfather had come to the place a rich man
and had built a huge house outside the village, and as the village had
become a town the Ffrenchs had held their heads high. They had confined
themselves to Broxton until Gerard Ffrench took his place. They had
spent their lives there and their money. Those who lived to remember the
youth and manhood of the present Ffrench's father had, like Granny
Dixon, their stories to tell. His son, however, was a man of a different
mold. There were no evil stories of him. He was a well-bred and
agreeable person and lived a refined life. But he was a man with tastes
which scarcely belonged to his degree.
"I ought to have been born in the lower classes and have had my way to
make," he had been heard to say.
Unfortunately, however, he had been born a gentleman of leisure and
educated as one. But this did not prevent him from indulging in his
proclivities. He had made more than one wild business venture which had
electrified his neighbors. Once he had been on the verge of a great
success and again he had overstepped the verge of a great loss. He had
lost money, but he had never lost confidence in his business ability.
"I have gained experience," he said. "I shall know better next time."
His wife had died early and his daughter had spent her girlhood with a
relative abroad. She had developed into beauty so faultless that it had
been said that its order belonged rather to the world of pedestals and
catalogues than to ordinary young womanhood.
But the truth was that she was not an ordinary young woman at all.
"I suppose," she said at dinner on the evening of her visit to the
Briarley cottage,--"I suppose these work-people are very radical in
their views."
"Why?" asked her father.
"I went into a cottage this afternoon and found a young workman there in
his working clothes, and instead of leaving the room he remained in it
as if that was the most natural thing to do. It struck me that he must
belong to the class of people we read of."
"I don't know much of the political state of affairs now," said Mr.
Ffrench. "Some of these fellows are always bad enough, and this Haworth
rose from the ranks. He was a foundry lad himself."
"I met Mr. Haworth, too," said Miss Ffrench. "He stopped in the street
to stand looking after the carriage. He is a very big person."
"He is a very successful fellow," with something like a sigh. "A man who
has made of himself what he has through sheer power of will and business
capacity is a genius."
"What has he made of himself?" inquired Miss Ffrench.
"Well," replied her father, "the man is actually a millionaire. He is
at the head of his branch of the trade; he leads the other
manufacturers; he is a kind of king in the place. People may ignore him
if they choose. He does not care, and there is no reason why he should."
Mr. Ffrench became rather excited. He flushed and spoke uneasily.
"There are plenty of gentlemen," he said. "We have gentlemen enough and
to spare, but we have few men who can make a path through the world for
themselves as he has done. For my part, I admire the man. He has the
kind of force which moves me to admiration."
"I dare say," said Miss Ffrench, slowly, "that you would have admired
the young workman I saw. It struck me at the time that you would."
"By the bye," her father asked with a new interest, "what kind of a
young fellow was he? Perhaps it was the young fellow who is half
American and----"
"He did not look like an Englishman," she interrupted. "He was too dark
and tall and unconscious of himself, in spite of his awkwardness. He did
not know that he was out of place."
"I have no doubt it was this Murdoch. He is a peculiar fellow, and I am
as much interested in him as in Haworth. His father was a Lancashire
man,--a half-crazy inventor who died leaving an unfinished model which
was to have made his fortune. I have heard a great deal of the son. I
wish I had seen him."
Rachel Ffrench made no reply. She had heard this kind of thing before.
There had been a young man from Cumberland who had been on the point of
inventing a new propelling power, but had, somehow or other, not done
it; there had been a machinist from Manchester who had created an
entirely new order of loom--which had not worked; and there had been
half a dozen smaller lights whose inventions, though less involved,
would still have made fortunes--if they had been quite practical. But
Mr. Ffrench had mounted his hobby, which always stood saddled and
bridled. He talked of Haworth and Haworth's success, the Works and their
machinery. He calculated the expenses and the returns of the business.
He even took out his tablets to get at the profits more accurately, and
got down the possible cost of various improvements which had suggested
themselves.
"He has done so much," he said, "that it would be easy for him to do
more. He could accomplish anything if he were a better educated man--or
had an educated man as partner. They say," he remarked afterward, "that
this Murdoch is not an ignoramus by any means. I hear that he has a
positive passion for books and that he has made several quite remarkable
improvements and additions to the machinery at the Works. It would be an
odd thing," biting the end of his pencil with a thoughtful air, "it
would be a _dramatic_ sort of thing if he should make a success of the
idea the poor fellow, his father, left incomplete."
Indeed Miss Ffrench was quite prepared for his after-statement that he
intended to pay a visit to the Works and their owner the next morning,
though she could not altogether account for the slight hint of secret
embarrassment which she fancied displayed itself when he made the
announcement.
"It's true the man is rough and high-handed enough," he said. "He has
not been too civil in his behavior to me in times gone by, but I should
like to know more of him in spite of it. He is worth cultivating."
He appeared at the Works the following morning, awakening thereby some
interest among the shrewder spirits who knew him of old.
"What's he up to now?" they said to each other. "He's getten some crank
i' his yed or he would na be here."
Not being at any time specially shrewd in the study of human nature, it
must be confessed that Mr. Ffrench was not prepared for the reception he
met with in the owner's room. In his previous rare interviews with Jem
Haworth he had been accorded but slight respect. His advances had been
met in a manner savoring of rough contempt, his ephemeral hobbies
disposed of with the amiable candor of the practical and not too
polished mind; he knew he had been jeered at openly at times, and now
the man who had regarded him lightly and as if he felt that he held the
upper hand, received him almost with a confused, self-conscious air. He
even flushed when he got up and awkwardly shook hands. "Perhaps," said
his visitor to himself, "events have taught him to feel the lack in
himself after all."
"I looked forward, before my return, to calling upon you," he said
aloud. "And I am glad to have the opportunity at last."
Haworth reseated himself after giving him a chair, and answered with a
nod and a somewhat incoherent welcome.
Ffrench settled himself with an agreeable consciousness of being less at
a loss before the man than he had ever been in his life.
"What I have seen abroad," he said, "has added to the interest I have
always felt in our own manufactures. You know that is a thing I have
always cared for most. People have called it my hobby, though I don't
think that is quite the right name for it. You have done a great deal
since I went away."
"I shall do more yet," said Haworth with effort, "before I've done with
the thing."
"You've done a good deal for Broxton. The place has grown wonderfully.
Those cottages of yours are good work."
Haworth warmed up. His hand fell upon the table before him heavily.
"It's not Broxton I'm aimin' at," he said. "Broxton's naught to me. I'll
have good work or none. It's this place here I'm at work on. I've said
I'd set 'Haworth's' above 'em all, and I'll do it."
"You've done it already," answered Ffrench.
"Ay, but I tell you I'll set it higher yet. I've got the money and I've
got the will. There's none on 'em can back down Jem Haworth."
"No," said Ffrench, suddenly and unaccountably conscious of a weakness
in himself and his position. He did not quite understand the man. His
heat was a little confusing.
"This," he decided mentally, "is _his_ hobby."
He sat and listened with real excitement as Haworth launched out more
freely and with a stronger touch of braggadocio.
He had set out in his own line and he meant to follow it in spite of all
the gentlemen manufacturers in England. He had asked help from none of
them, and they had given him none. He'd brought up the trade and he'd
made money. There wasn't a bigger place in the country than "Haworth's,"
nor a place that did the work it did. He'd have naught cheap and he'd
have no fancy prices. The chaps that worked for him knew their business
and knew they'd lose naught by sticking to it. They knew, too, they'd
got a master who looked sharp after 'em and stood no cheek nor no slack
dodges.
"I've got the best lot in the trade under me," he said. "I've got a
young chap in the engine-room as knows more about machinery than half
the top-sawyers in England. By George! I wish I knew as much. He's a
quiet chap and he's young; but if he knew how to look a bit sharper
after himself, he'd make his fortune. The trouble is he's too quiet and
a bit too much of a gentleman without knowing it. By George! he _is_ a
gentleman, if he is naught but Jem Haworth's engineer."
"He is proud of the fellow," thought Ffrench. "_Proud_ of him, because
he _is_ a gentleman."
"He knows what's worth knowing," Haworth went on. "And he keeps it to
himself till the time comes to use it. He's a chap that keeps his mouth
shut. He comes up to my house and reads my books. I've not been brought
up to books myself, but there's none of 'em _he_ can't tackle. He's
welcome to use aught I've got. I'm not such a fool as to grudge him what
all my brass won't buy me."
"I think I've heard of him," said Ffrench. "You mean Murdoch."
"Ay," Haworth answered, "I mean Murdoch; and there's not many chaps like
him. He's the only one of the sort I ever run up against."
"I should like to see him," said Ffrench. "My daughter saw him yesterday
in one of the workmen's cottages and," with a faint smile, "he struck
her as having rather the air of a radical. It was one of her feminine
fancies."
There was a moment's halt and then Haworth made his reply as forcibly
as ever.
"Radical be hanged," he said. "He's got work o' his own to attend to.
He's one of the kind as leaves th' radicals alone. He's a
straightforward chap that cares more for his books than aught else. I
won't say," a trifle grudgingly, "that he's not a bit too straight in
some things."
There was a halt again here which Ffrench rather wondered at; then
Haworth spoke again, bluntly and yet lagging a little.
"I--I saw her, Miss Ffrench, myself yesterday. I was walking down the
street when her carriage passed."
Ffrench looked at him with an inward start. It was his turn to flush
now.
"I think," he said, "that she mentioned it to me."
He appeared a trifle pre-occupied for some minutes afterward, and when
he roused himself laughed and spoke nervously. The color did not die out
of his face during the remainder of his visit; even after he had made
the tour of the Works and looked at the machinery and given a good deal
of information concerning the manner in which things were done on the
Continent, it was still there and perhaps it deepened slightly as he
spoke his parting words.
"Then," he said, "I--we shall have the pleasure of seeing you at dinner
to-morrow evening?"
"Yes," Haworth answered, "I'll be there."