Chapter X

The Carsons rebuilt the east wing of Redstoke that winter. It had been destroyed by fire in the last owner’s time, and only patched up, the house being really large enough without it. But to rebuild it to the original design had always been a fancy of Lady Sibyl’s; and that year she was able to indulge it, owing to the fact that she rather unexpectedly inherited money. The actual building went on while she was wintering in Egypt; but it was done by the time she was back in the early spring, and ready for her to devote herself to the considerations of decorations and the choice of furniture. To choose these satisfactorily was not very easy: the old plans had been followed accurately, with the result that some of the rooms, by their shape, style, and lighting, demanded furniture and fittings of a date and sort not easy to get.

But Lady Sibyl, who had the advantage not possessed by many of knowing what she wanted, and also being able to pay for it, fortunately found the right person to help her. In the autumn someone, on behalf of a Robert Barmister, had written offering to sell her an iron chest of Dutch workmanship. And when the purchase had been arranged, and the chest, a rather finer specimen than the one at Redstoke, had been approved, the same person (by order of Robert Barmister) had offered, if at any time she wanted a special piece of furniture or similar article matched, found, or procured, to undertake the work. She recalled this when she began to go into the decorating and furnishing of the east wing. Being in town, she wrote and requested Robert Barmister to call upon her, at the same time giving him an indication of the nature of her requirements. He replied that he would wait upon her when and where she wished, but suggested she might possibly find it more satisfactory to come to him, as there was a likelihood he could at once show her some of the things she wanted.

She came and spent an interesting hour seeing rare and beautiful things in an environment which appealed to her sense of fitness, exhibited under Barmister’s orders by one (Josiah Foregood) not unsuited to the work and surroundings—so well suited, that she felt it would have sorted even better with the long, old rooms and his gentle, dignified courtesy had he been dressed in snuff-coloured coat and knee-breeches. She appreciated him much, and talked to him a good deal, though the business of the interview was carried on by his master: each in a different way pleased her. She would like to have had several things she saw that day, the dolphin mantelpiece and the dim, painted ceiling of the office among them. Neither of these two was obtainable; the one because it was not for sale, the other because it would not move. But other things that she admired were; and she selected several, and gave orders for others to be obtained, and for drawings of yet others, discussed and described, to be made and submitted to her. She was a customer after Robert Barmister’s heart: a person of means and taste, able to really appreciate the best of what was good, and ready to pay for it without cavilling about the price. One to please Josiah too. He felt things would have a good home with her, and be suitably placed as background to a grace and elegance which was worthy of them.

Among the articles discussed was a certain oak panelling. The one room in the old wing at Redstoke which had not been entirely burnt was panelled in oak. The woodwork had been much damaged by fire: some entirely destroyed, and the remainder a good deal injured; but what remained was of such fine workmanship, and so uncommon a design that Lady Sibyl was anxious to have it repaired and fitted to the new room, if it were possible to replace the missing panels with anything which at all matched. Barmister assured her this should be quite possible, and undertook to go into the matter. Accordingly, the old panelling, which had been carefully removed at the time of the building, was sent to him for repair, with exact measurements of the new room, so that he might know what more would be required; and after examination, he had the work put in hand.

Michael had a certain amount of drawing to do in connection with the work. Nan also was called into council. Her father wanted her opinion as to how far it was desirable to supplement the Redstoke panelling with other somewhat dissimilar, though of the same date, and how closely the new, when any was necessary, should copy the old. They both spent some time planning and piecing out this chief ornament for Lady Sibyl’s new boudoir. They did not speak of her; they never did, they had hardly really mentioned her name, even when she came to Soho—when neither saw her. They did not speak of her now; only of the work. If one of them mentally saw her in the panelled room when it should be done, with the low light of a wood fire flickering over her and the background, he said nothing about it. He would never see it really. It would be for another that the fire would bring the beauty of her colouring from the shadows; for another that her voice would thrill with the remembered note of sympathy as she talked intimately in the twilight. In the face of such things there is nothing to be said. And Nan, whatever she thought, said nothing. Merciful people who say nothing.

But when the supplementary panelling was complete, and the whole ready to put in place, she was obliged to say something. This was in April, about the time of Rosalind Annarly’s wedding.

It had been arranged that Josiah should go to Redstoke to see the woodwork put up; not to do anything himself—he was no practical carpenter or cabinet-maker—but to superintend those who did, and see that they did not damage or remove any of the precious carving. But the day before he should have gone he was taken ill with influenza. Really ill, with a bad attack; no mild one would have kept him from work. Nan knew that when she left home to go to the wedding.

She was obliged to leave Soho before one o’clock so as to reach Hurstbury in time. Michael had left even earlier, and would return later. She determined to go to Bayswater as soon as she got back and hear how Josiah was, and what were the chances of his being able to travel to Redstoke to-morrow. Owing to Mr. Cordover’s bringing her to town in his car she was able to do this both more quickly and more comfortably than she expected, and to return home in fair time.

Michael was already back when she came in. The Annarlys had not insisted on his staying to dine; the Whartons and one or two others were coming, and the party was complete without him. No doubt they would have been pleased if he had stayed, but they had not expected or said anything about it. So he had come back, and was at work on the patent drawings when Nan came in with news of Josiah.

“I’m afraid he’s rather bad,” she said, unpinning her hat.

Michael said he was sorry, and inquired details.

She gave what she had learned in a brief interview with Miss Janet; then went to the window, ruffling her hair, pressed down by the weighty millinery.

“He won’t be able to go to-morrow,” she said, expressing what they were both thinking.

“No,” Michael said, without glancing up from his drawing, “I suppose not.”

She stood looking out a minute, back to him. Someone must go to see the panelling put up to-morrow; in the absence of Josiah, it should naturally devolve on Michael. Barmister knew of no reason against it, and would not easily admit one: none had ever been specifically spoken of between them either.

“I can do it, if you like,” she offered, rather as if the subject had been discussed aloud, instead of thought of in silence. “As Josiah can’t, if you were not here, I probably should; and as it is, I can induce father to send me in preference to you. I can go, if you like—but,” she turned half round, “I think almost it would be better not.”

Michael’s pencil ceased a moment. “No,” he agreed, “of course not,” and the pencil went on as before.

She watched him a moment. She knew he was not really drawing, only imperceptibly touching lines already made; and she knew also that, though he had agreed with her as if it were some unimportant thing, it was really otherwise. Yet she did not withdraw her words; she had a feeling it were better he should go. Not because she could not do what was wanted, and would not have infinitely preferred doing it to sending him, nor yet because her father could not be induced by her to quite approve of her doing so; she could not have given her reason, only she felt in herself that it were better—better for him to go.

“Will you?” she said.

“Of course,” he answered; “there’s nothing else to be done.”

The next day he went to Redstoke.

It was seven months since the evening when he dined there; seven months since he had come into personal touch with any of the people, or the interests of that life. Above all things, he hoped not to come into personal touch with them now. Not that he was ashamed of his present work and situation; he would as soon have met Carson while among Barmister’s workmen as any other way; but infinitely sooner not have met him at all. He did not want to meet anyone belonging to that time, neither friend nor foe. He had done with that life: he could never go back to it; even if such an impossibility happened as that he was reinstated at Galhardy’s, with all cleared up, and everything on the best of footings; still he could not truly go back. Something had gone from him in the past months—or come to him—it could never be the same again; he realised it when he went to Redstoke.

Lady Sibyl was in London. There was only a housekeeper to be consulted with, should consultation be necessary, which was unlikely. She was a person Michael had never seen in the old days. The butler, who had been there when he used to come to and fro, had gone; his place was filled by another. The gardeners at work among the flower-beds no doubt were the same, but they probably did not know him by sight then, and certainly did not recognise him now. No one recognised him; no one inquired his name. He was merely the furniture people’s man come to see to the putting up of the panelling; a person who came with the workmen, and disappeared again when they did.

Things went smoothly on the first day; there was no interruption of any sort. The workmen did well: there were several of them, experienced men who understood their work; they would be finished probably by to-morrow evening. There had been one mistake made: it was remediable, but, since it might entail delay, it was annoying. The panel which fitted over the chimney-piece had not been sent. It was part of the original woodwork, but had been so badly damaged that little beyond the centre coat of arms remained intact. Its repairing and restoration to something like the former condition was the work of an artist in the trade, who had taken his time over it, and, apparently, neglected to send it back by the stipulated date. At all events, it had not come to Redstoke with the rest. When, late in the afternoon, Michael discovered the fact, he telegraphed to Barmister to have it sent by messenger. It could not arrive until the mid-day train to-morrow; it might not till late in the afternoon, according as to whether or no the artist was ready to let it go. Still, even if it did not come until the late train, there would be time to complete the work. It could be put up last of all; the rest finished, or nearly, before it came.

Michael stayed at the small inn not far from Redstoke; he chose it as much because he had never entered it before as because it was near to the house. He avoided speaking more than was necessary to anyone there; he shrank from any sort of mental contact with people, as raw flesh shrinks from touch. One could not speak, hardly look, in this neighbourhood without coming into some contact, near or remote, with Galhardy’s, where everyone worked, or their relations worked; from whence arose the daily bread, the daily occupation, almost in some form or other the common interests and topics of conversation of two-thirds of the population. It was from some director of Galhardy’s that the young hounds in the stables came; it was for the workmen of Galhardy’s that the line of a new tram ran through an aggrieved suburb; it was through them really that political changes were felt as affecting the demand for guns and munitions of war, taxing coal, or helping or hindering foreign rivalry. One could not get away from sight and sound of the great firm here, except by shutting the door and thinking of something else. Michael shut the door, and thought of the joiners and carpenters, and once, rather late, of how curiously outside this once-familiar world he seemed. A full, stirring world-in-itself, whose cross currents and by-plays mattered much, everything, to those who lived there—as they once had to him, but mattered nothing now. A thought, this, producing a feeling as of one dead, who, disembodied, revisits the earth to play no part there.

The disembodied must feel cold revisiting the earth without their earth-clothes of flesh, and lonely without any share in the matters of the world. It and its interests may seem remote; yet they, while perhaps wanting no part, must feel lonely without it, and long to be away again to the land of shades. Michael longed to be back in the old house in Soho. He longed more the second day than the first. He felt then more acutely that he did not belong here; he shrank even more from any chance of contact with those who did. As the day wore on he found himself waiting and listening for such: for a familiar face or a familiar step, in a way which was morbidly ridiculous perhaps, but almost unendurable.

The panel did not come by the mid-day train. It was not really surprising that it should not. Yesterday Michael was prepared for such a contingency; but to-day, though he assured himself and the workmen that he hardly expected it, its non-arrival worried him. He arranged and rearranged the scheme of work in his own mind—he had the wisdom to keep it there, and not to speak of it to the men. He kept his nerves entirely to himself, with shame recognising them as nerves, but not getting the better of them on that account. As the time of the afternoon train approached he made plans as to what should be done if the panel did not come. Of course, it would come; Barmister would have telegraphed if, for any reason, he had been unable to send it, unless he were hoping up to the last minute to get it from the repairer. Such men, the real artists at their work, were difficult to deal with; often addicted to drink, or temper, or other failings which interfered with their carrying out contracts, even when they were inclined to do so. If the panel did not come, the work could not be finished that day: it could not, anyhow, be finished in time for him to return to London to-night; though, if the missing part arrived to-day, it should be possible to finish late and return first thing to-morrow morning without coming again to Redstoke. Michael made up his mind to return then. Panel or no panel, he would leave the house to-night, and come back no more; the head joiner could wait, if waiting there must be, and fix it without him. He would not stay longer than this evening—it seemed too long to wait for that, although the afternoon was far advanced. He looked at his watch: he had looked at it several times in the last few minutes, for the messenger, had one come by the later train, was due now—rather overdue, in fact; either the train was late, or he was not coming.

The door opened quietly, and Nan, carrying a heavy parcel, came into the room.

“Father has caught influenza from Josiah,” she explained. “He is not bad, but he cannot see after things, so, as I knew no one to send, I fetched the parcel and brought it myself.”

Michael took the parcel, for a moment too relieved for speech, though not really surprised. It was not surprising that Nan should come; indeed, now she was here it seemed so much the one thing likely to happen—and the one satisfactory thing—that he thought no more about it or any of his previous feelings. He uncovered the panel, and superintended its placing without any haste, or anxiety, or recollection of his desire to be finished and gone.

Nan stayed some time, making a few comments and suggestions, and examining the work critically. She left when it was nearly done to go and make arrangements for staying at the inn, as it was impossible for her to return to town that evening. There was really no need she should, Mrs. Bidden was well able to look after her father; she and Michael would go back together first thing to-morrow morning. She left him now to see the last of the work done, and then to follow her to the inn.

But as it happened he did not follow. Just before he was ready to go a car stopped before the house. He hardly noticed it, he was absorbed in the work in hand, and, since Nan’s coming, had lost the sense of watch for someone which had grown on him during the day. He heard the noise of the engine, the car stop, turn and go away again, but only vaguely, and without thinking of them in connection with himself. He certainly did not think of them in connection with the Carsons; he did not think of them at all until, looking round at some new sound, he saw Carson himself standing in the doorway.

“Hullo!” Carson exclaimed in surprise. “You here! Where on earth have you dropped from?”

He spoke much as he had spoken when Michael last saw him seven months ago, except, perhaps, that there was something of greater geniality in the tone; more of the camaraderie he had for men of his own sort, and never had quite had for Galhardy’s genius.

“I came to see the panelling put up,” Michael answered. “It’s my uncle’s affair; I mean, he’s the man that supplied the pieces that were missing, and all that.”

“Did he, by Jove?” Carson said, coming into the room and looking interestedly round. “He must be a bit of a conjurer! I told Sibyl I didn’t believe she’d ever get the old tinder put together. Looks jolly well, doesn’t it?”

Michael said he thought it was satisfactory on the whole, then went round the room with Carson, answering any questions he asked.

“What an extraordinary fellow you are!” Carson exclaimed. “I had no idea you knew anything about this sort of thing.”

“I don’t,” Michael answered, “I’m merely here as a kind of foreman on behalf of the man who supplied it; I really know nothing about it.”

Carson laughed. “Oh, I know what it means when you know nothing of a subject,” he said. “I was once let in for holding forth on one in the innocent belief that you wouldn’t be able to catch me tripping. Never again, not on panels nor piston-rods either. By the way, have you deserted them for this, chucked engineering for good and all?”

“Not altogether,” Michael answered, “I occasionally do a little consulting work, nothing to speak of; usually I am at the furniture place, clerk and that sort of thing.”

He spoke casually, as if there were nothing in the admission. Carson made no remark upon it—no doubt partly from delicacy, though it is also possible that, to one entirely without personal acquaintance with work in any of its grades, the contrast did not stand out in all its crudity.

“Sibyl did not tell me you were in that furniture concern,” he said; “she might have let me know you were coming here.”

“Lady Sibyl did not know herself,” Michael said. “She does not know I have anything to do with this; I did not see her when she came to my uncle’s about the furniture and panelling; she knows nothing about me.”

“No,” Carson said, “now you come to mention it, I don’t know how she should. Nor how anyone should either; you didn’t bother to leave an address when you departed in fire and brimstone last autumn. I believe Sibyl was a good deal affronted at the time; she said you had made some arrangement to come and see her, and neither turned up nor wrote; and when she wrote to you she got no answer, only, after a time, her letter returned through the post office.”

“I’m sorry,” Michael said. “I did not think she would expect me; I thought she would understand. Of course, she did understand, I know that. It’s very good of you——”

“Oh, bosh!” Carson said. “That’s rot! Where are you staying? At the pub? What on earth for? It’s a beastly little hole; I’ll send for your belongings.”

But Michael declined. He keenly appreciated the suggestion and Carson’s whole attitude. He understood, as only could one who knew the inner workings of the great corporation, how rare it must be to find one in any way connected with Galhardy’s, who either could or would so treat him. Carson might be a man who would allow no one to dictate to him as to friends, acquaintances, or proceedings; but he was also one who, by the very class peculiarities which gave that quality, was liable to have little sympathy with Michael and an enormous contempt for that of which he was accused. Michael realised enough of this to much appreciate the invitation, but he refused it none the less; to do anything else would have been an effort beyond him, he felt he could not face it.

“Well, stay and dine,” Carson urged, “you might do that, anyway. You’ll have to, you won’t be able to dine there. Why, it killed one of the pups last year, nothing but the feed down there.”

Michael stayed to dine; but it was not the thought of the dinner which induced him, it was steel. Some chance words Carson spoke caught his attention; only a few words, spoken inadvertently, not finished and only not recalled because they could not be, but enough for Michael. The old watchful observation by which in the time at Galhardy’s he had come to divine what most men meant by what they did not say, sprang to life again and helped him here. It was his steel that Carson had referred to thus by accident, the new steel he had worked out for the great firm some time ago, and which he thought he had left ready for manufacture on a large scale seven months back. More than once he had wondered if they were manufacturing, and, when careful inquiries in likely places tended to show that they were not, why they were not. But they were now he knew, not from Carson’s words, rather in spite of them, as women know things when they love, a subtle instinct hardly possible except to love. Galhardy’s were making his steel, and there was something curious about it, or about their not having done so earlier. He stayed to dine with Carson. For love a man will do harder things than dine where he would much rather not, though perhaps it is not every man who can love a new process for making oil-cooled steel, the child of his brain.

* * * * *

One of the carpenters brought a message to Nan at the inn. It was written on a scrap of paper, and ran, “_Am dining with Carson; don’t wait._” Nan accordingly had supper alone, and afterwards read by the fire, until she fell asleep. She was aroused by Michael’s return.

Directly he entered she saw that something was the matter, but she did not remark on it, and he came to the fire, saying something about the night having turned colder.

She agreed, though she fancied the cold must be in himself and the lowered vitality which comes to some in utter depression, for the night was warm with a strong south wind blowing.

“I did not know Mr. Carson was expected back,” she said casually.

“He was not,” Michael answered, “he turned up unexpectedly, soon after you left.”

He stirred the fire and sat staring into it for a while. “Carson’s a good sort,” he said at length, the gloom in his eyes lightening for a moment. “There’s not another man connected with Galhardy’s, from Sir Joseph to the least of the greasers, who would have behaved to me as he did to-day.”

“I’m glad!” Nan said. There were not very many people who had gone out of their way to be pleasant to him. “You always liked him, didn’t you?”

“I hardly knew him really; I knew Lady Sibyl better. She was not there this evening, he was alone.”

Nan nodded. Lady Sibyl, she perceived, was not the cause of the depression, he spoke her name too carelessly, hardly aware of it; the trouble must be in connection with work and the loved invention.

“Are Galhardy’s making your torpedo?” she asked.

“I don’t know, I have not heard. Of course, they must be; the thing was all worked out when I left, all on paper, anyway; they could not fail to get it. They would not have kicked me out till they were sure; I told you that before.”

He had, over and over again. “Still,” she suggested, “they don’t seem to be making it; surely if they were some news of it would have leaked out and reached you? Even if there were no little paragraphs in the papers, saying that Messrs. Galhardy had successfully overcome the great difficulty of modern warfare and that sort of thing, you would have heard something of it somewhere.”

“I don’t know, I might; though quite likely not. How should I unless by chance at some society’s meeting? I don’t have much to do with those sort of people and things now. I have given up scientific work, or, rather, it has given me up, I think we may take it, for good and all.”

She did not reply; she did not believe it was for good and all, though she could not deny that it almost began to look like it.

“I wonder,” she speculated, “why they are not making the torpedo, if they are really not making it?”

“Perhaps they cannot agree as to who’s to have the honour of ‘inventing’ it,” he said.

“Inventing it?” she asked.

But he did not explain, and she pressed for no information, coming to sit on the hearthrug in silence.

For a little neither spoke; at length he said abruptly, “You know my steel?”

She nodded; but he did not go on, the mention of the steel had recalled the process to the momentary exclusion of other thoughts.

“It was a process for oil-hardened steel,” he said, forgetting he had told her this before. “A good thing; the elongation was extraordinary for so high a tensile strength. I imagined when I left Galhardy’s they would apply it on a large scale almost at once.”

“Didn’t they?”

“No—I don’t know why. The first big lot is being made now; in fact, they are going to quench some thirty tons to-night.”

“Are they? How I should like to see it!”

“There’s not much to see; it is only lowering a hot ingot of steel into a big tank of oil, and leaving it there till it is cold, the ordinary oil-hardened process. The improvement I made is before that, in the steel itself, not the hardening.”

“Will they call it after you?”

He said not. “Processes are numbered, not named, in a firm like Galhardy’s, nothing else is practical.”

“Still,” she said, “I imagine they all know it’s yours? It’ll be good for them to think of that and to remember what you could do when they get stuck with other things.”

A curious expression came over his face. “The steel is not mine; it is Brett’s,” he said.

“What!”

“Brett’s. Yes, that is it; he has taken it.”

“But how could he? How could he! They all know it’s yours, all the directors, some of the workmen even must know it. How could it ever pass for his?”

“He will have made some slight alteration in my process; he would have had the going over of my papers, and so could have done so; something small, enough to give appearance to his claim, but not enough to spoil the process. I hope to Heaven it is small! There is no room for messing about in that! A little might be done without spoiling to any great extent, but not much; if he has done anything much he will have ruined it. I’ve half a mind to write and tell him the only change they can make without detriment to the result.”

He rose as he spoke, the passion for the perfection of work, and the fear that it should be spoiled, eclipsing for the moment everything else. But he did not write, Nan advised him against it; though afterwards, when she realised, as he never did, what sentiments such a letter would arouse in the recipient, she was almost sorry she did. The argument she used was consideration for Carson who, no doubt, ought not to have given the information.

Michael was obliged to admit this. “Though,” he explained, “he didn’t exactly give it, I found it out. I don’t suppose he knows how much he did let me know.”

“Does he know this is your steel?”

“He knows it was: it is Brett’s now. The man who makes the last alteration has the final claim; he has made it; no one can say anything against that.”

“It is stealing!”

“It is not illegal; if the alteration were a real improvement, not a thing of straw, it would be fair.”

“But it is not!” she protested. “You know it is not, they know it is not. Why are they doing it? Why is Brett doing it? He must know no one will really think it his. It can’t be for the credit of invention.”

Michael shrugged his shoulders. “I gather he is to have a commission on the steel turned out.”

“Is he?” Nan said, and sat thinking.

So the directors of Galhardy’s, or at least some of them, were paying Brett? That was what it amounted to; the “improvement” to the process was no blind to them, they would know all about that; but the improver was to be given commission none the less. And since it was not Galhardy’s way to give anything for nothing, it was given for something which was not steel. Hush money? Nan wondered about it, and wondered what Brett had done to oblige in the affair of last September; and what some other bigger man had done that he thought it advisable to pay for. She glanced across at Michael; he had risen and was standing by the table absently fingering the lamp. He roused himself, and suggested going to bed.

She acquiesced, and watched while, as he lowered the light, the last glow momentarily lit his face. He was thinking of his steel again, she knew, and again fearing lest it should have been spoiled to make some cover of decency for the theft. A sudden wave of anger swept over her, anger and pity too. They might have left him that! They had taken so much and he, now at least, asked so little! He would have ignored the theft, he would not have given the lie to any who said in his presence that the process was another’s, could he have been sure that way, or any other, of keeping it unspoiled. She could have wept for the injustice of it all.

“Oh!” she said suddenly. “I hope they will fail! I hope they will fail horribly!”

He turned at the words; she was kneeling upright on the rug now, her face towards the dying fire, her eyes gleaming in the glow.

“I would like them to fail when they try to make the steel!” she said. “I would like their oil-tank to fire. It would be the justice of God!” She stretched clenched hands out suddenly. “I would like it to fire to-night!”

On the words, almost as they were spoken, there came a light. No spurt from the dying embers, no chance rekindling of the extinguished lamp, but a great light; bright almost as a suddenly come dawn, but redder, a fierce orange glow which revealed everything in the room with a terrible plainness and the faces of the two to one another grimly.

Michael jerked the curtain back from the window, and Nan, rising swiftly, came to look out. Away eastward a sheet of flame lit the heavens, a tongue full a hundred and fifty feet high which leapt skywards, turning the night to a new and terrifying day; a great orange-red flame which lit luridly the whole dark landscape and the volume of smoke that, even here, could be seen to roll about it.

For a second they stood looking, then their eyes met.

“Galhardy’s,” he said. “The oil-tank.”

She nodded, her breath coming a little short. “Yes,” she said, “the justice of God.”