AGAIN.
"Theer's a chap," it was said of Murdoch with some disdain among the
malcontents,--"theer's a chap as coom here to work for his fifteen bob a
week, an' now he's hand i' glove wi' th' mesters an's getten a shop o'
his own."
The "shop" in question had, however, been only a very simple result of
circumstances. In times of emergency it had been discovered that "th'
'Merican chap" was an individual of resources. Floxham had discovered
this early, and, afterward, the heads of other departments. If a machine
or tool was out of order, "Tak' it to th' 'Merican chap an' he'll fettle
it," said one or another. And the time had never been when the necessary
"fettling" had not been accomplished. In his few leisure moments,
Murdoch would go from room to room, asking questions or looking on in
silence at the work being carried on. Often his apparently hap-hazard
and desultory examinations finally resulted in some suggestion which
simplified things astonishingly. He had a fancy for simplifying and
improving the appliances he saw in use, and this, too, without any waste
of words.
But gradually rough models of these trifles and hastily made drawings
collected in the corner of the common work-room which had fallen to
Murdoch, and Haworth's attention was drawn toward them.
"What wi' moddles o' this an' moddles o' that," Floxham remarked, "we'll
ha' to mak' a flittin' afore long. Theer'll be no room fur us, nor th'
engines neyther."
Haworth turned to the things and looked them over one by one, touching
some of them dubiously, some carelessly, some without much
comprehension.
"Look here," he said to Murdoch, "there's a room nigh mine that's not in
use. I don't like to be at close quarters with every chap, but you can
bring your traps up there. It'll be a place to stow 'em an' do your bits
o' jobs when you're in the humor."
The same day the change was made, and before leaving the Works, Haworth
came in to look around. Throwing himself into a chair, he glanced about
him with a touch of curiosity.
"They're all your own notions, these?" he said.
Murdoch assented.
"They are of not much consequence," he answered. "They are only odds and
ends that fell into my hands somehow when they needed attention. I like
that kind of work, you know."
"Aye," responded Haworth, "I dare say. But most chaps would have had
more to say about doin' 'em than you have."
Not long after Ffrench's advent a change was made.
"If you'll give up your old job, and take to looking sharp after the
machinery and keeping the chaps that run it up to their work," said
Haworth, "you can do it. It'll be a better shop than the other and give
you more time. And it'll be a saving to the place in the end."
So the small room containing his nondescript collection became his
headquarters, and Murdoch's position was a more responsible one. He
found plenty of work, but he had more time, as Haworth had prophesied,
and he had also more liberty.
"Yo're getten on," said Janey Briarley. "Yo're getten more wage an' less
work, an' yo're one o' th' mesters, i' a way. Yo' go wi' th' gentlefolk
a good bit, too. Feyther says Ffrench mak's hissen as thick wi' yo' as
if yo' wur a gentleman yorsen. Yo' had yore supper up theer last neet.
Did she set i' th' room an' talk wi' yo'?"
"Yes," he answered. It was not necessary to explain who "she" was.
"Well," said Janey, "she would na do that if she did na think more o'
yo' nor if yo' were a common chap. She's pretty grand i' her ways. What
did yo' talk about?"
"It would be hard to tell now," he replied. "We talked of several
things."
"Aye, but what I wanted to know wur whether she talked to thee loike
she'd talk to a gentlemon,--whether she made free wi' thee or not."
"I have never seen her talk to a gentleman," he said.
"How does she talk to Haworth?"
"I have never seen her talk to him either. We have never been there at
the same time."
This was true. It had somehow chanced that they had never met at the
house. Perhaps Rachel Ffrench knew why. She had found Broxton dull
enough to give her an interest in any novelty of emotion or experience.
She disliked the ugly town, with its population of hard-worked and
unpicturesque people. She hated the quiet, well regulated, well-bred
county families with candor and vivacity. She had no hesitation in
announcing her distaste and weariness.
"I detest them all," she once said calmly to Murdoch. "I detest them."
She made the best of the opportunities for enlivenment which lay within
her grasp. She was not averse to Haworth's presenting himself again and
again, sitting in restless misery in the room with her, watching her
every movement, drinking in her voice, struggling to hold himself in
check, and failing and growing sullen and silent, and going away,
carrying his wretchedness with him. She never encouraged him to advance
by any word or look, but he always returned again, to go through the
same self-torture and humiliation, and she always knew he would. She
even derived some unexciting entertainment from her father's plans for
the future. He had already new methods and processes to discuss. He had
a fancy for establishing a bank in the town, and argued the advisability
of the scheme with much fervor and brilliancy. Without a bank in which
the "hands" could deposit their earnings, and which should make the town
a sort of center, and add importance to its business ventures, Broxton
was nothing.
The place was growing, and the people of the surrounding villages were
drawn toward it when they had business to transact. They were beginning
to buy and sell in its market, and to look to its increasing population
for support. The farmers would deposit their funds, the shop-keepers
theirs, the "hands" would follow their example, and in all likelihood it
would prove, in the end, a gigantic success.
Haworth met his enthusiasms with stolid indifference. Sometimes he did
not listen at all, sometimes he laughed a short, heavy laugh, sometimes
he flung him off with a rough speech. But in spite of this, there were
changes gradually made in the Works,--trifling changes, of which Haworth
was either not conscious, or which he disdained to notice. He lost
something of his old masterful thoroughness; he was less regular in his
business habits; he was prone to be tyrannical by fits and starts.
"Go to Ffrench," he said, roughly, to one of the "hands," on one
occasion: and though before he had reached the door he was called back,
the man did not forget the incident.
Miss Ffrench looked on at all of this with a great deal of interest.
"He does not care for the place as he did," she said to Murdoch. "He
does not like to share his power with another man. It is a nightmare to
him."
By this time, she had seen Murdoch the oftener of the two. Mr. Ffrench's
fancy for him was more enthusiastic than his fancy for the young man
from Manchester or the Cumberland mechanic. He also found him useful,
and was not chary of utilizing him. In time, the servants of the house
ceased to regard him as an outsider, and were surprised when he was
absent for a few days.
"We have a fellow at our place whom you will hear of some of these
days," Ffrench said to his friends. "He spends his evenings with me
often."
"Ffrench has taken a great fancy to thee, lad," Haworth said, drily. "He
says you're goin' to astonish us some o' these days."
"Does he?" Murdoch answered.
"Aye. He's got a notion that you're holding on to summat on the quiet,
and that it'll come out when we're not expecting it."
They were in the little work-room together, and Murdoch, leaning back
in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head, looked before him
without replying, except by a slight knitting of his brows.
Haworth laughed harshly.
"Confound him for a fool!" he said. "I'm sick of the chap, with his
talk. He'll stir me up some o' these days."
Then he looked up at his companion.
"He has you up there every night or so," he said. "What does he want of
you?"
"Never the same thing twice," said Murdoch.
"Do you--always see her?"
"Yes."
The man moved in his seat, a sullen red rising to his forehead.
"What--has she to say?" he asked.
Murdoch turned about to confront him. He spoke in a low voice, and
slowly.
"Do you want to know," he said, "whether she treats me as she would
treat another man? Is that it?"
"Aye," was the grim answer, "summat o' that sort, lad."
Murdoch left his chair. He uttered half a dozen words hoarsely.
"Come up to the house some night and judge for yourself," he said.
He went out of the room without looking back. It was Saturday noon, and
he had the half-day of leisure before him, but he did not turn homeward.
He made his way to the high road and struck out upon it. He had no
definite end in view, at first, except the working off of his passionate
excitement, but when, after twenty minutes' walk he came within sight
of Broxton Chapel and its grave-yard his steps slackened, and when he
reached the gate, he stopped a moment and pushed it open and turned in.
It was a quiet little place, with an almost rustic air, of which even
the small, ugly chapel could not rob it. The grass grew long upon the
mounds of earth and swayed softly in the warm wind. Only common folk lay
there, and there were no monuments and even few slabs. Murdoch glanced
across the sun-lit space to the grass-covered mound of which he had
thought when he stopped at the gateway.
He had not thought of meeting any one, and at the first moment the sight
of a figure standing at the grave-side in the sunshine was something of
a shock to him. He went forward more slowly, even with some reluctance,
though he had recognized at once that the figure was that of Christian
Murdoch.
She stood quite still, looking down, not hearing him until he was close
upon her. She seemed startled when she saw him.
"Why did you come here?" she asked.
"I don't know," he answered. "I needed quiet, I suppose, and the place
has a quiet look. Why did you come?"
"It is not the first time I have been," she said. "I come here often."
"You!" he said. "Why?"
She pointed to the mound at her feet.
"Because _he_ is here," she said, "and I have learned to care for him."
She knelt down and laid her hand upon the grass, and he remembered her
emotion in the strange scene which had occurred before.
"I know him very well," she said. "I _know_ him."
"You told me that I would not understand," he said. "It is true that I
don't yet----"
Suddenly there were tears in her eyes and in her voice.
"He does not seem a dead man to me," she said. "He never will."
"I do not think," he answered, heavily, "that his life seems at an end
to any of us."
"Not to me," she repeated. "I have thought of him until I have seemed to
grow near to him, and to know what his burden was, and how patiently he
bore it. I have never been patient. I have rebelled always, and so it
has gone to my heart all the more."
Murdoch looked down upon the covering sod with a pang.
"He did bear it patiently," he said, "at the bitterest and worst."
"I know that," she replied. "I have been sure of it."
"I found some papers in my room when I first came," she went on. "Some
of them were plans he had drawn thirty years ago. He had been very
patient and constant with them. He had drawn the same thing again and
again. Often he had written a few words upon them, and they helped me to
understand. After I had looked them over I could not forget. They
haunted me and came back to me. I began to care for him, and put things
together until all was real."
Then she added, slowly and in a lowered voice:
"I have even thought that if he had lived he would have been fond of me.
I don't know why, but I have thought that perhaps he would."
For the first time in his knowledge of her, Murdoch saw in her the youth
he had always missed. Her dark and bitter young face was softened; for
the moment she seemed almost a child,--even though a child whose life
had been clouded by the shadow of sin and wrong.
"I think--he would," he said, slowly.
"And I have got into the habit of coming here when I was lonely or--at
my worst."
"You are lonely often, I dare say," he returned, wearily. "I wish it
could be helped."
"It is nothing new," she replied, with something of her old manner, "and
there is no help for it."
But her touch upon the grass was a caress. She smoothed it softly, and
moved with singular gentleness a few dead leaves which had dropped upon
it.
"When I come here I am--better," she said, "and--less hard. Things do
not seem to matter so much--or to look so shameful."
A pause followed, which she herself broke in upon.
"I have thought a great deal of--what he left unfinished," she said. "I
have wished that I might see it. It would be almost as if I had seen
him."
"I can show it to you," Murdoch answered. "It is a little thing to have
caused so great pain."
They said but little else until they rose to go. As he sat watching the
long grass wave under the warm wind, Murdoch felt that his excitement
had calmed down. He was in a cooler mood when they got up at last. But
before they turned away the girl lingered for a moment, as if she wished
to speak.
"Sometimes," she faltered,--"sometimes I have thought you had half
forgotten."
"Nay," he answered, "never that, God knows!"
"I could not bear to believe it," she said, passionately. "It would make
me hate you!"
When they reached home he took her upstairs to his room. He had locked
the door when he left it in the morning. He unlocked it, and they went
in. A cloth covered something standing upon the table. He drew it aside
with an unsteady hand.
"Look at it," he said. "It has been there since last night. You see it
haunts me too."
"What!" she said, "you brought it out yourself--again!"
"Yes," he answered, "again."
She drew nearer, and sat down in the chair before the table.
"He used to sit here?" she said.
"Yes."
"If it had been finished," she said, as if speaking to herself, "Death
would have seemed a little thing to him. Even if it should be finished
now, I think he would forget the rest."