AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH.
At dinner the next evening Mr. Ffrench had a story to tell. It was the
rather exciting story of the completion of Murdoch's labor, the night
attack and his sudden departure. Exciting as it was, however, Mr.
Ffrench did not relate it in his most vivid manner. His nervous ailments
had increased of late, and he was not in a condition to be vivacious and
dramatic. The incident came from him rather tamely, upon the whole.
"If it is the success he thinks it is," he terminated, "he is a made
man--and he is not the fellow to deceive himself. Well," he said, rather
drearily, "I have said it would be so."
As Haworth had foreseen, Saint Méran appeared upon the scene again. He
was present when the story was told, and was much interested in it as a
dramatic incident bringing the peculiarities of the manufacturing class
of Broxton into strong play.
"If they had murdered him," he remarked with critical niceness, "it
would have been the most tragic of tragedies. On the very eve of his
life's success. A tragedy indeed! And it is not bad either that it
should have been his master who saved him."
"Why do you say master?" said Miss Ffrench, coldly.
"Pardon me. I thought----"
Mr. Ffrench interposed in some hurry.
"Oh, he has always been such an uncommon young fellow that we have
scarcely thought of him as a servant. He has not been exactly a servant
in fact."
"Ah!" replied Saint Méran. "I ask pardon again."
He had been not a little bewildered at the change he found in the
household. Mr. Ffrench no longer expounded his views at length with
refined vigor. He frequently excused himself from the family circle on
plea of severe indisposition, and at other times he sat in singular and
depressing silence. He was evidently ill; there were lines upon his
forehead and circles about his eyes; he had a perturbed air and started
without any apparent cause. A change showed itself in Miss Ffrench
also,--so subtle as not to be easily described. It was a change which
was not pallor nor fragility. It was an alteration which baffled him and
yet forced him to recognize its presence constantly, and to endeavor to
comprehend it. Ffrench himself had seen it and pondered over it in
secret. When he sat in his private room at the Bank, bewildered and
terrified even by the mere effort to think and face the future, his
burden was not a little increased by his remembrance of his hours at
home. More than all the rest he shrank from the day of reckoning with
his daughter. He had confronted Haworth and borne the worst of his
wrath. The account of himself which he must render to her would be the
most scathing ordeal of his life.
"Some women would pity me," he said to himself, "but she will not."
Truth to tell, he looked forward pathetically to the possibility that
hereafter their paths might lie apart. Fate had saved him one fearful
responsibility, at least. Her private fortune had been beyond his reach
and she would still be a rich woman even when the worst came. He could
live on very little, he told himself, and there was always some hope for
a man of resources. He still believed somewhat, though rather vaguely,
in his resources.
A few days after Murdoch's departure there came to Broxton, on a visit
of inspection, a dignitary of great magnitude--a political economist, a
Member of Parliament. Above all other things he was absorbed in the
fortunes of the manufacturing districts. He had done the trades-unions
the honor of weighing their cause and reasoning with them; he had
parleyed with the strikers and held meetings with the masters. He had
heard of Haworth and his extraordinary stand against the outbreak, and
was curious to see him.
He came as the guest of one of the county families, who regarded Haworth
and his success a subject worth enlarging upon. He was taken to the
Works and presented to their master. Haworth met him with little
enthusiasm. He showed him over the place, but maintained his
taciturnity. He was not even moved to any exhibition of gratitude on
being told that he had done wonders.
The _finale_ of the visit was a stately dinner given by the county
family. Haworth and the member were the features of the festivity, and
speeches were made which took a congratulatory and even a laudatory
turn.
"I can't go," Ffrench cried, piteously, when Haworth came to his room at
the Bank with the news. He turned quite white and sank back into his
chair. "It is too much to ask. I--no. I am not strong enough."
He felt himself as good as a dead man when Haworth turned about and
strode up to him, livid, and opening and shutting his hands.
"Blast you?" he hissed through his teeth. "You did it! _You!_ And you
shall pay for it as long as I'm nigh to make you!"
Saint Méran was among the guests, and Miss Ffrench, whose wonderful
beauty attracted the dignitary's eye at once. Years after he remembered
and spoke of her. He glanced toward her when he rose to make his
after-dinner speech, and caught her eye, and was somewhat confused by
it. But he was very eloquent. The master of "Haworth's" was his
inspiration and text. His resources, his strength of will, his giant
enterprises, his readiness and daring at the moment when all was at
hazard--these were matters, indeed, for eloquence.
Haworth sat leaning forward upon the table. He played with his
wine-glass, turning it round and round and not spilling a drop of the
ruby liquid. Sometimes he glanced at the orator with a smile which no
one exactly understood, oftener he kept his eyes fixed upon the full
wine-glass.
When at length the speaker sat down with a swift final glance at Rachel
Ffrench, there was a silence of several seconds. Everybody felt that a
reply was needed. Haworth turned his wine-glass two or three times
without raising his eyes, but at last, just as the pause was becoming
embarrassing, he looked across the table at Ffrench, who sat opposite.
"I'm not a speech-making chap myself," he said. "My partner is. He'll
say my say for me."
He gave Ffrench a nod. That gentleman had been pale and distracted
through all the courses; now he became paler than ever. He hesitated,
glanced around him, at the waiting guest and at Haworth (who nodded
again), and then rose.
It was something unusual that Mr. Ffrench should hang back and show
himself unready. He began his speech of thanks in his partner's name
falteringly and as if at a loss for the commonest forms of expression;
he replied to the member's compliments with hesitation; he spoke of the
difficulties they had encountered with a visibly strong effort, he
touched upon their success and triumph with such singular lack of
exultation that those who listened began to exchange looks of
questioning; and suddenly, in the midst of his wanderings and struggles
at recovering himself, he broke off and begged leave to sit down.
"I am ill," he said. "I have--been--indisposed for some time. I must
crave your pardon, and--and my partner's for my inability to say
what--what I would wish."
He sat down amid many expressions of sympathy. The plea accounted for
his unusual demeanor, it was thought. The member himself sought an
interview with him, in which he expressed his regret and his sense of
the fact that nothing was more natural than that the result of so long
bearing a weight of responsibility should be a strain upon the nervous
system and a consequent loss of physical strength.
"You must care for yourself, my dear sir," he added. "Your firm--nay,
the country--cannot afford to lose an element like yourself at such a
crisis."
On the morning following, the member left Broxton. On his way to the
station he was moved to pay a final visit to Haworth at the Works.
"I congratulate you," he said, with much warmth on shaking hands with
him. "I congratulate England upon your determination and indomitable
courage, and upon your wonderful success."
There was a good deal of talk about Murdoch during his absence. The
story of the attack and of Haworth's repulse of the attacking party
became a popular incident. Mr. Reddy and his companions disappeared from
the scene with promptness. Much interest was manifested in the ultimate
success of the model, which had previously been regarded with a mingling
of indifference and disfavor as not "loike to coom to owt." The results
of its agreeably disappointing people by "coming to owt" were estimated
at nothing short of a million per annum.
"Th' chap'll roll i' brass," it was said. "Haworth'll be nowheer. Happen
th' lad'll coom back an' set up a Works agen him. An' he coom here nowt
but a workin' chap a few year sin'!"
The two women in the little house in the narrow street heard the story
of the attack only through report. They had no letters.
"I won't write," Murdoch had said. "You shall not be troubled by
prospects that might end in nothing. You will hear nothing from me till
I come and tell you with my own lips that I have won or failed."
In the days of waiting Christian proved her strength. She would not let
her belief be beaten or weighed down. She clung to it in spite of what
she saw hour by hour in the face of the woman who was her companion.
"I have lived through it before."
It was not put into words, but she read it in her eyes and believed in
spite of it.
He had been away two weeks, and he returned as his father had done, at
night.
The women were sitting together in the little inner room. They were not
talking or working, though each had work in her hands. It was Christian
who heard him first. She threw down her work and stood up.
"He is here," she cried. "He is coming up the step."
She was out in the narrow entry and had thrown the door open before he
had time to open it with his key.
The light fell upon his dark pale face and showed a strange excitement
in it. He was disheveled and travel-worn, but his eyes were bright. His
first words were enough.
"It is all right," he said, in an exultant voice. "It is a success.
Where is my mother?"
He had taken her hand as if without knowing what he did and fairly
dragged her into the room. His mother had risen and stood waiting.
"It is a success," he cried out to her. "It is what he meant it to be--I
have finished his work!"
She turned from him to the girl, uttering a low cry of appeal.
"Christian!" she said. "Christian!"
The girl went to her and made her sit down, and knelt before her,
clasping her arms about her waist, and uplifting her glowing young face.
At the moment her beauty became such a splendor that Murdoch himself saw
it with wonder.
"It is finished," she said. "And it is he who has finished it! Is not
that enough?"
"Yes," she answered, "but--but----"
And the words died upon her lips, and she sat looking before her into
vacancy, and trembling.
Murdoch threw himself on the sofa and lay there, his hands clasped above
his head.
"I shall be a rich man," he said, as if to himself, "a rich man--and it
is nothing--but it is done."