Chapter XIV

Old Milligen had the gout: not suppressed gout, or gouty indigestion, or any of the forms which are fashionable to-day, but the old original complaint, such as Chatham and the great men of his time knew. Like them Milligen had it, and like theirs his temper suffered; also his wife—he had no family at home to suffer, his daughters being married and his sons dead. The gout, while it was at its acutest, prevented him from attending to anything much besides itself; when it lessened a little he attended, so far as he was able, to his own business. Later he attended to that of the town council. He was still more or less of a prisoner to the house; indeed, he had only got so far as his own works once or twice, and with great difficulty, much bad language, and, the doctor said, some risk. Consequently, even when he turned his attention to the council, he was not able to go personally to the offices, nor yet to the private residences or business premises of any of the members. He was consequently driven to writing to the body, although pen and ink were not the medium in which he felt at home.

His letter, which began “_Dear Misters_,” and concluded “_and may the devil take the lot of you for scabs.—Yours obedtly, James Milligen_,” contained matter which, in some parts of England, would have been considered more than grounds for a libel action. In this town such a remedy occurred to no one; town councillors, and old Milligen too, were not far enough removed from the time when such differences were settled with coats off in the yard—a simpler, and, on the whole, pleasanter as well as cheaper remedy. One cannot, of course, settle it in that way with a man suffering from gout; nor can one with credit do it if one is a town councillor. Those concerned laboured under this disadvantage, also they were rather too old and too well-to-do; they merely replied in kind, abused Milligen roundly to all who would carry word back to him, and, unofficially, to himself too, and officially wrote and advised him, in polite language, to mind his own business.

“My business!” he roared when he read it. He did not mind the abuse at all, but he did object to the official advice, also his foot gave him a sudden twinge at the moment. “I’ll see to the business, my lads! I’ll make your ears tingle for as mean a set of scrogs as ever built shoddy and winked at it! Maria! Maria, woman! D’ye hear! Fetch me that paper!”

Maria fetched it, a newspaper of large local circulation: an issue now some weeks old, which contained a report of the affair at the council power station. Old Milligen had been taken ill the day the account appeared, and so had not read it till some time after, and had not been well enough to take any steps in the matter for some time after that; and when he had written the council had not been in any hurry to acknowledge his letter. What with one thing and another the matter was already a thing of the past in local interest. Not so in Milligen’s. He read the report all over again, flushing as he did so, and rolling a sentence on his tongue now and again—“An unforeseen accident,” “providentially, the damage was comparatively small, the matter never assuming alarming proportions,” “the council’s employees, ably directed by Mr. William Heath, rose splendidly to the occasion: the thanks of the community are due to them and to a gentleman from a neighbouring factory, who, with considerable presence of mind, turned off the dynamos.”

“‘Due to ’em!’ Due to Willy Heath! Yes, and there’s something else due to you, Willy, and that’s a piece of my mind, and you’ll have it, my lad, when I’m about again! ‘A gentleman from a neighbouring factory’! Maria, tell Turner to look in this evening, I’d like another chat with Turner; he’ll be pleased with these ——’s letter.”

“Yes,” Maria said, although she knew another chat with Turner would further excite the gout and her irascible lord. But she never attempted to interfere with him in what she deemed men’s matters; and he never thought of interfering in what was reckoned women’s. When their interests were mutual and clashed, as had sometimes happened when the children were at home, they settled it in a verbal bout slightly reminiscent of the backyard days.

Turner came that evening and read the council’s letter, and told again, as he had told before, what had happened at the power station on the night the chimney fell. As he was himself employed there: indeed, was almost the first man to recover his presence of mind on that eventful night, he was in a position to do so, and to give a further and fuller account of Michael’s share than the paper did. It is true he repeated on this occasion, as on others when he talked to old Milligen, that no use was to be made of what he said; it was all in confidence, and he could not afford to lose his job. But that did not matter; there were too many men in the station that night, most of them more or less acquainted with Milligen, for information to be traced to one particularly; besides, plenty of others outside possessed it in some form now; the thing was not done in a hole and corner, as Milligen said to Turner. And said again when later he called at the council offices.

When he did call there the members of the council expressed themselves glad to see him about again. They were too, he was a fellow-townsman with mutual interests, one of themselves, as it were; they thought no more of his letter than they would of an explosion of abuse from one of their own body in the heat of passing argument. He did not either; he might have called them names, all the same they were his very good friends, always were, and always would be, even though he had come about the original subject now.

“About that business up at the station,” he began.

“Ah, yes, Mr. Milligen,” the chairman said, “The question of compensation, of course——”

“Compensation be damned,” Milligen said benevolently. “What’s that between friends? We can settle that any time to the satisfaction of all parties. I see your fellers have already put me up a tidy little bit o’ wall.” (They had, a wall eighteen inches thick of the best blue acid-proof bricks, at the town’s expense, Milligen saw to that.) “It’s ‘the gentleman from the neighbouring factory’ I’ve come to talk about. What about compensating him?”

“Did he lose anything?” inquired Mr. Heath.

“Did you, Willy?” Milligen asked. “What, not the toe o’ your boot when you tripped over the hydrant?”

The council laughed here, and afterwards called themselves to order and suggested that Mr. Milligen should state his business. Accordingly he did: it was to give the name and address of the gentleman from the neighbouring factory, so that the council should be able to forward him some suitable reward and recognition of his invaluable services on the disastrous night. So Milligen said in quite a fine speech, obviously prepared beforehand, though concluded with a sentence which was not. “He saved the whole blamed thing from going to kingdom come, and you from being hauled up before the Local Government Board, if not the beaks—and you know it. Now, what’re you going to do?”

“Are you acting for him?” inquired Mr. Heath.

“No, I ain’t,” the other retorted; “he was acting for me that night, looking at my winding gear. And he did it to rights too! I’ve got something now that’ll wipe the eye of some folks before we’re much older. Lord! But it was a treat to see him touch a machine or handle a tool! He touched ’em as if he loved ’em, his fingers, the very skin of his fingers, was all alive to ’em! My old engines knew him for all the world like horses, they behaved sweetly!”

Mr. Heath cleared his throat and said it was interesting. He personally had seen this magician at work, and though he knew nothing of machinery, could have certified him capable—also disrespectful, and entirely unwilling to take orders. He did not say so, however; he glanced from the subject rather quickly, and brought forward another for consideration. He said, since Mr. Milligen was now here, it was a good opportunity to discuss with him, in a friendly way, a complaint which had been recently brought against him, or rather against the drainage of his dyeing works.

“Our men, when putting up the wall,” he said, “complained a good deal of smells; it might perhaps be in the interest of public health if our inspector were to come——”

“And put his head in one o’ my dye-vats?” Milligen interrupted. “Now, look you here, Willy, my drains are as right as yours any day. If there’s a stink up at my place, there’s a stink. Who’s having dye without it? It’s none of the council’s business. You aren’t the father and mother of every evil in this town, and I’ve told you so before. You let them alone that don’t concern you. I don’t know as I should be in a hurry to adopt every orphan ill about, if I was you, seeing the hefty little family of your own you have, with a factory chimney for a fine upstanding eldest daughter—at least, she didn’t stand up, she sat down on a man or so.”

“Come, come, Mr. Milligen,” the chairman said pacifically, “don’t let’s be unneighbourly, on your first coming down town again too. Let’s come to business in a friendly spirit.”

They came, for they really understood one another on the whole, and the chairman and a few members of the council already shared Milligen’s opinion, in a more moderate form, that there should be some recognition of the man who had rendered them such great service. These were in the minority certainly, and they were not very strong in their views, and since the man had not come forward or in any way obtruded himself upon public notice, they had not troubled in the matter. The financial condition of the council in the face of the costly disaster was not such as to induce them to spend money unnecessarily. Also, since all were concerned in minimising the seriousness of the affair, none were concerned in emphasising the magnitude of the service rendered. But Milligen’s coming put rather a different complexion on things; he stood out for a reward, and he stood obstinately, showing every sign of making a considerable talk not only to the council itself. In the end most of the councillors came to be of his way of thinking; at all events, the discussion, which had begun rather acrimoniously, ended in a friendly talk as to what form the recognition should take. It was finally agreed, after much debate then and later, that a medal and a cheque for fifty pounds should be forwarded. Milligen wanted an illuminated address of thanks as well, but there was no support for that idea, so he expressed himself content without.

However, it befell that Michael did not after all receive quite what was decided upon. It happened one day that Mr. Heath mentioned the proposed reward to his nephew, the present head engineer at the power station; he also by chance mentioned the name of the man who was to receive it, and which the head engineer had not heard before.

He looked up now quickly. “Michael Annarly?” he said. “Is that who it is?”

“Why, do you know him?” the uncle inquired.

“I know of him.”

“What? What do you know? Old Milligen talked a deal of his doings; he’s worked him out something or other that’s going to put the old man on his legs again he believes.”

“Very likely,” the words were spoken dryly, “he’s said—by some—to be about the first engineer in England at the present time, and one of the best all round ones.”

Mr. Heath stared; his nephew was not habitually lavish in his praise of other men’s abilities or achievements, and though his tone was peculiar now it did not suggest sarcasm. “What was he doing at old Milligen’s shanty?” he asked.

“That’s just it,” the other answered; “what was he?” A large stretch of land and a complicated railway journey lay between the town and the great Galhardy foundries, which were not even in the same county: the head engineer’s home, which was situated between the two, was not either. But it was near enough for him to know some of the talk of Galhardy’s: every engineering centre in the country knew some of the talk of it, for all sent students and apprentices there, and most men of any standing in the profession, and many of none, knew of the talk that clung about the name of Michael Annarly, his striking ability, his early brilliant success, and his sudden dropping out. Mr. Heath’s nephew did not know much; but he knew some, and he readily undertook to find out more. He would have done so, apart from obliging his uncle, for he was not unnaturally curious himself.

The consequence of what he found and passed on to the council was that that respectable body came to the conclusion fifty pounds and a medal were an unsuitable reward, much beyond the requirements of the case.

It is true the man had served them well, but he had done it on his own initiative and to please himself; he expected nothing, for he had not even left his name with the engineer. He had good reason not to do so, and not to be proud of it, or anxious for it to get into the papers, even in a creditable connection. They felt it was not for them, as honest traders and works owners or managers, to countenance in any way one who had transgressed the first principle of the code of such institutions. They argued the matter a good deal, wrangled over it considerably, for there were some who still felt he ought to have something, and there was Milligen who thought he ought to have a good deal, and who, as he said, did not care a damn for Galhardy’s or any of the other aristocrats of commerce. The subject of the reward was a standing dish at the council meetings all the summer, and a favourite topic of discussion when members of the council and intimates came together at Masonic meetings and other friendly occasions. At last, in September, the matter was settled, probably a little for the same reason that the Unjust Judge settled the matter of the widow who cried continually before him—old Milligen playing the part of the widow. In full meeting it was voted that a cheque for twenty-five pounds should be sent to Mr. Michael Annarly in recognition of useful service rendered to the council on the 26th May last. And in due course the clerk of the council forwarded the cheque, requesting a receipt in the course of post.

The letter, addressed to Michael in London, was sent on by Nan to him, at work now for the steamship company on the Clyde. With it there came another letter, enclosing in a large envelope a printed card. The card had, at the first glance, some resemblance to a memorial card of the old-fashioned type; indeed, it was of the sort which are designed for that purpose, and which can be ordered blank through the undertaker and filled in with name, date, and text to suit the case. It is the cheapest way of getting an effective commemorative card, the reason, no doubt, why old Milligen selected it, though he probably considered it suitable too; the mourning figures embossed upon the surface might be regarded as lamenting the meanness of the town council, and the urn upon which they leaned as containing the ashes of the portion of the power station and employees destroyed. Upon the card was printed:

_To Michael Annarly, Esq., Engineer_

~In Memoriam~

(these were the Gothic letters of the original lithography)

_of May 26th and an act of signal courage and
Common Sense_

“_Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might._”

Michael did not laugh when he read it through, his lips twitched, and the corners of his eyes crinkled a little; there was another feeling mixed with the amusement, and one stronger than it, the card touched him curiously. After all, it was recognition of sorts, the best sort that the old man could compass; a rather fine sort in his estimation, no doubt; he would be quite proud of it and very serious about it—one reckons motives in estimating values—at least, one does when one is no longer very young. Michael was not young; he had travelled a long way from the man who thought a handsome income and a seat on the advisory board of Galhardy’s small recognition to ask for unique work done. He looked long at the card now, and put it away carefully, rather glad to have it. When he wrote to acknowledge it to Milligen he pleased him by asking him to send another. Nan might like one, she would understand as he did, and the old man evidently hoped he would ask for another.

_I have had two or three taken off_, he wrote in the letter which
accompanied the card, _so, besides one which I am keeping myself, I
can let you have another or so for any lady friend you might fancy
to forward it to. My own is framed and hung up, so that any of
those Scrogs of the Council who happen to look in for a pipe and a
glass can’t fail to see it. If it don’t make them feel ashamed, it
ought._

_I am pleased to say the work you did for me is better than you
promised; I can now deal with endless yarns, as no other man in the
trade can. I am proud to have met you, and now conclude by saying
that if there is anything in the small way I can do for you at any
time, please command_

_Yours obediently,_
JAMES MILLIGEN.

“At least, I have satisfied one man,” Michael thought as he put the letter down, and he was glad of it. The more glad, perhaps, because the piece of work, unimportant though it was, was a good piece of work—a neat and complicated adjustment, very perfectly conceived, which satisfied his own critical faculty too.

He turned to the other letter and was astonished to find, after Milligen’s slighting reference to the council, the cheque it contained. He did not feel himself insulted by it, nor did any question of inadequacy trouble him; it would see him through at least the preliminary stages of patenting his automatic switch for alternating currents; that mattered so much more than anything else to him now that he never gave anything else a thought.

The working out and perfecting the automatic switch invention had been the one tolerable thing since he had been on the Clyde. It had been done in spare hours, and was almost purely theoretical, to work at it practically had been extremely difficult. Still, the mere fact of being again among machines, in well-appointed shops and great engine-rooms, was very stimulating to him. His mind, long fallow, responded eagerly to the stimulant, and many possibilities and ideas were generating and evolving besides the one of the switch which was already near perfection. Possibly the company for which he worked, had they been consulted, would have said he had no business to develop any ideas but theirs and those connected with their work. But it would have been quite useless for either he or they to try and limit thus; placed in such circumstances and surroundings the conception and evolution of ideas were as inevitable with him as the inhaling and exhaling of breath in the air. And after all, the company had little to complain of; they had bought him very considerably: bought him body and soul, it seemed to him, and every bit of liberty too.

The position was all he had foreseen and worse, though less, perhaps, because it was different from what he had anticipated than because he had not quite realised what it would be in the working out. He said little about it; he had no one at hand to say anything to, for he lived an absolutely isolated life, associating with no one and working ceaselessly, in season and out of season, in the old insatiable way—with an additional touch of that desperation which tradition ascribes to the damned, who strive so to keep the devils at bay. He wrote to Nan occasionally: always about the work, the mechanical and constructive difficulties, the ideas in connection with them, and other ideas which came to him. Principally he wrote of the last, it was the realm of faerie to him, the dream-world wherein the artist-souled, even mathematical and machine artists, comfort themselves for the hardness of the way. And when he wrote of these his letters, quite impersonal, sometimes mere engineering treatises, were happy. But in spite of these and in spite of the tone of his other letters and all that was left out of them, Nan had more than an idea of the situation and the almost unendurable fret of it. She did not refer to it in her replies, she never touched on what he did not tell her; but she did her best to infuse into her letters some little of the patience and courage which might make the position tenable. And in a measure she succeeded; he told her so when in September he came to London on business for the firm.

It was only a flying visit, with no more than an hour or two in Soho, but during the time the truth was out. It was bound to be; Nan would have divined it, if he had said nothing; and, for the life of him, he could not have helped saying something.

“It doesn’t matter talking to you,” he said; “it doesn’t seem like whining. I suppose I ought not to whine; I suppose I knew what was coming, but—sometimes I think I can’t stand it!”

Nan nodded. “Does Mr. McFarline take the interest in the work that was threatened?” she asked.

“McFarline? Oh, yes. He’s a small part though; he and his interest were a mere figure of speech. He does take an interest, intelligent on the whole; he’s a man of sense and ability, though Scotch of the Scotch. You know what that is to work with—or, perhaps, you don’t; it’s the devil if you are a Southerner and the work is such as calls for a margin to handle efficiently. But McFarline’s nothing, little more than the name they put on the whole system.”

“And that is——?”

“Report, report, report. Suspected, watched at every turn. Oh, not obviously; they are decent about it on the whole, all the bosses pretend there is no suspecting; they are quite gentlemen; all the underlings, having less manners and nothing to gain by me being there, make it perfectly obvious. Why, sometimes I doubt if a greaser would trust me with his pocket-knife!”

Nan could guess how he felt, how such morbid imaginings must arise. “Isn’t that last just a little unfair to the men?” she suggested.

“I suppose it is,” he answered. “Of course it is really. But the whole thing gets on my nerves when I sit alone and stew and stew over it; I don’t see it fairly. I am a silly ass, I know that. But it is pretty awful.”

She knew that it must be, and led him to talk of it.

“It doesn’t sound much reduced to words,” he told her, “you can’t tell from that quite how it works out; the whole atmosphere and feeling is no mean part of it. Of course, it is frightfully hampering—and humiliating too—to have to supply duplicate copies of all notes, drawings, designs, and everything else to the chief draughtsman. I have to do that; and he has to, or thinks he has to, go into them all and try and understand the why and the wherefore. He can’t, and he gets huffy about it, and I get so exasperated that I feel I shall murder him one day. Then, all orders for plant have to be put through the superintendent of shops, with detailed drawings of every one. That, you know, is hopeless. If you give a man any sort of position you ought not to expect that; still, I must own the superintendent is pretty decent. I couldn’t have gone on at all, if he hadn’t been. But perhaps the thing I most mind, over and above the general feeling, is the weekly report. I have to supply a full report of everything done, thought of, about to be done or thought of, and the rest to the secretary every week. And he——. Well, he’s not a supercilious sneak like Brett certainly, but he’s a fish—a sort of machine that registers things by ticks, observes the omission of a comma, and must have everything foursquare, reduced to set terms, and pigeon-holed for reference. Think of it when it’s ideas, when it’s inventions, possibilities, nebulous things that may never become facts! Think of subtracting last week’s work from this, dividing the result by the week before, and giving the answer in pounds sterling!”

Nan could think of it, but could think of little to say to mitigate it.

“You see,” he admitted later on, “I was used to having a freer hand than many people; I know now that I had it at Galhardy’s, though I used to go on about their red-tape. I don’t seem as if I could work without freedom. After all, if one does work that others don’t, if one is expected to turn out higher-class work and more than the average, one ought not to be tied down to average conditions. That is what I used to think—what I still think. But now I haven’t even average conditions, or anything approaching them.”

Again Nan could only sympathise, and afterwards induce him to talk of the inventions and ideas which were his consolation. He responded to the sympathy, and told her about them so long as time held: explained how he had taken out a provisional patent for the automatic switch, and what must be done next, and might be done eventually. It was not till just as he was going that they referred again to his present situation; then Nan put the question plainly:

“Shall you stop?”

“I mayn’t have the chance,” he answered. “Brett is staying with McFarline now; I didn’t know till lately that he knew the little beast. I don’t think he does know him well, or see him often.”

“Will it make a difference?”

“May. He’ll clear me out, if he can. One thing, I don’t much care if he does. It would settle the question of whether or not I could go on with it, wouldn’t it? I shouldn’t care if it were not for——”

He broke off, he was standing on the doorstep when he spoke, and he glanced up at the old house.

She followed the direction of his thought. “If it were not for coming back here?” she said. “You remember what I said about that? There is always a place for you here; you must always come. Besides, I believe my father would be glad. I think he misses you.”

He looked at her a little incredulously. “It’s good of you to say it,” he said.

“I would not, if I did not think it true,” she answered.

And he knew it, and found it rather comforting.

He found it comforting in the time which followed, when, it must be owned, he stood in some need of comfort. If the situation was difficult before, it became a hundred times worse now. He wrote of it fairly frankly to her, after their talk it was only natural, also it was some relief, though he did not tell her all or nearly all of the fresh troubles and humiliations which beset him. Brett, though he had not convinced all the directors that they were better without the services of Michael Annarly, had succeeded in inducing so great a degree of uneasiness and suspicion on their part that the position was almost untenable. What little Michael’s personality may have done to mitigate former suspicions, and what beneficial influence the already obvious value of his work may have had, were a great deal more than done away with by the warnings given (and very likely at least partly believed) by Brett during his Scotch visit. The opinion held after that was such that, had it been held earlier, Michael would as soon have been offered the Chancellorship of the Exchequer as employment with the company. As it was though, in the face of what he clearly could do for them, some were in favour of a continuation, others were for a termination of his services on any terms, and all were for a policy of such care that the conditions were about unendurable, and with most men would have had the same result as dismissal.

Still Michael remained, doggedly remained, only telling Nan a part of the bitterness of his soul. And she, by inference and deduction as much as anything, divined the rest, and hesitated whether to advise him to hold on or to give up. At last she wrote, “_Why not come back? I do not believe you will be able to work out anything worth having under the present conditions. Perhaps by and by you may be able to do the engine for these people or some others, but now it seems as if it were impossible, only a waste of time to try. Come back here._”