"EVEN."
The same evening M. Saint Méran had the pleasure of meeting a person of
whom he had heard much, and in whom he was greatly interested. This
person was the master of "Haworth's," who came in after dinner.
If he had found Murdoch a little trying and wearisome, M. Saint Méran
found Haworth astounding. He was not at all prepared for him. When he
walked into the room as if it were his own, gave a bare half-nod to
Ffrench, and carried himself aggressively to Miss Ffrench's side, Saint
Méran was transfixed with astonishment. He had heard faint rumors of
something like this before, but he never dreamed of seeing it. He
retreated within himself and proceeded to study minutely the manners and
characteristics of the successful manufacturers of Great Britain.
"He is very large," he said, with soft sarcasm, to Miss Ffrench. "Very
large indeed."
"That," replied Miss Ffrench, "is probably the result of the iron
trade."
The truth was that he seemed to fill the room. The time had passed when
he was ill at ease in the house. Now he was cool to defiance. Ffrench
had never found him so embarrassing as he was upon this particular
evening. He spoke very little, sitting in his chair silent, with a
gloomy and brooding look. When he directed his attention upon any one,
it was upon Rachel. The prolonged gaze which he occasionally fixed upon
her was one of evil scrutiny, which stirred her usually cool blood not a
little. She never failed, however, to meet it with composure. At last
she did a daring thing. Under cover of a conversation between her father
and Saint Méran, she went to the table at his side and began to turn
over the books upon it.
"I think," she said, in an undertone, "that you have something to say to
me."
"Aye," he answered, "I have that, and the time'll come when I shall say
it, too."
"You think I'm afraid to hear it," she continued. "Follow me into the
next room and see."
Then she addressed her father, speaking aloud.
"Your plans for the new bank are in the next room, I believe," she said.
"I wish to show them to Mr. Haworth."
"Y--yes," he admitted, somewhat reluctantly. "They are on my table."
She passed through the folding doors and Haworth followed her. She
stopped at one of the windows and waited for him to speak, and it was
during this moment in which she waited that he saw in her face what he
had not seen before--a faint pallor and a change which was not so much a
real change as the foreshadowing of one to come. He saw it now because
it chanced that the light struck full upon her.
"Now," she said, "say your say. But let me tell you that I shall listen
not because I feel a shadow of interest in it, but because I _know_ you
thought I shrank from hearing it."
He pushed open the French window and strode on to the terrace.
"Step out here," he said.
She went out.
"This," he said, glancing about him, "this is th' place you stood on th'
night you showed yourself to the strikers."
She made no answer.
"It's as good a place as any," he went on. "I'm going to have it out
with you," he said, with bitter significance.
Then, for the first time, it struck her that she had overstepped the
mark and done a dangerous thing, but she would have borne a great deal
sooner than turn back, and so she remained.
"I've stood it a long time," he said, "and now I'm going to reckon up.
There's a good bit of reckoning up to be done betwixt you and me, for
all you've held me at arm's length."
"I am glad," she put in, "that you acknowledge that I did hold you at
arm's length, and that you were not blind to it."
"Oh," he answered, "I wasn't blind to it, no more than you were blind to
the other; and from first to last it's been my comfort to remember that
you weren't blind to the other--that you knew it as well as I did. I've
held to that."
He came close to her.
"When I give up what I'd worked twenty year to get, what did I give it
up for? For _you_. When I took Ffrench in partner, what did I run the
risk for? For _you_. What was to pay me? _You._"
His close presence in the shadow was so intolerable to her that she
could have cried out, but she did not.
"You made a poor bargain," she remarked.
"Aye, a poor bargain; but you were one in it. You bore it in your mind,
and you've bore it there from then till now, and I've got a hold on you
through it that's worth summat to me, if I never came nigh nor touched
you. You knew it, and you let it be. No other chap can pay more for you
than Jem Haworth's paid. I've got that to think of."
She made a gesture with her hand.
"I--I--hush!" she cried. "I will not hear it!"
"Stop it, if you can. Call 'em if you want, and let 'em hear--th' new
chap and all. You shall hear, if all Broxton comes. I've paid
twenty-five year of work and sweat and grime; I've paid 'Haworth's'--for
I'm a ruined chap as I stand here; and but for _you_ I'd have got
through."
There was a shock in these last words; if they were true the blow would
fall on her too.
"What," she faltered,--"what do you mean?"
"Th' strikes begun it," he answered, laconically, "and," with a jerk of
his thumb toward the room in which her father sat, "he finished it. He
tried some of his gentleman pranks in a quiet way, and he lost money on
'em. He's lost it again and again, and tried to cover it with fresh
shifts, and it's 'Haworth's' that must pay for 'em. It'll come sooner or
later, and you may make up your mind to it."
"What were you doing?" she demanded, sharply. "You might have known----"
"Aye," he returned, "what was I doing? I used to be a sharp chap enow.
I've not been as sharp i' th' last twelvemonth, and he was up to it. He
thought it was his own brass, likely--he'd give summat for it as
belonged to him."
He came nearer to the light and eyed her over.
"You've had your day," he said. "You've made a worse chap of me than I
need have been. You--you lost me a friend; I hadn't counted that in.
You've done worse by him than you've done by me. He was th' finer mak'
of th' two, and it'll go harder with him. When I came in, he was hanging
about the road-side, looking up at the house. He didn't see me, but I
saw him. He'll be there many a night, I dare say. I'd be ready to swear
he's there now."
"Whom do you mean?"
"I mean--Murdoch!"
The very sound of his own voice seemed to fire him with rage. She saw a
look in his eye which caused her to shrink back. But she was too late.
He caught her by the arm and dragged her toward him.
A second later when he released her, she staggered to one of the rustic
seats and sank crouching into it, hiding her face in the folds of her
dress. She had not cried out, however, nor uttered a sound, and he had
known she would not.
He stood looking down at her.
"A gentleman wouldn't have done it," he said, hoarsely. "I'm not a
gentleman. You've held me off and trampled me under foot. That'll leave
us a bit even."
And he turned on his heel and walked away into the darkness.