Chapter XV

It was the evening of Nan’s birthday, and she and her father sat together by the fire in the companionable silence possible to people who are good friends. Good friends they were: understanding each other unusually well for parent and child, and, more unusual still, realising and being content to take on trust the great deal that could not be understood. That evening, however, there was a question in the mind of one concerning the other. Barmister, absorbed though he appeared to be in his paper, let his eyes wander now and again to Nan, quietly sewing. He was thinking of her birthday last year, or, rather, of that which she had asked of him then. It was the one request she had made of him which he thought foolish, so far as she herself was concerned. He had thought so at the time, though he granted it; he thought so now. But he was by no means sure she was yet convinced she had asked for what was valueless to her; it crossed his mind that it might be he who had made the mistake in granting it. He rather wished he knew what she really did think about it.

“Are you satisfied?” he asked suddenly.—“Satisfied with the present you asked for last year, or are you disappointed?”

She looked up. “No,” she said, “I’m not disappointed at all.”

He returned to his paper, but over it he continued to watch her as she went on with her needlework.

“You haven’t made much of a job of Michael yet,” he observed at length.

She laughed. “In twelve months? Why, it takes Fate, with all the powers of circumstance and providence at command, three score years and ten to do that for most people!”

“H’m!” he said, and frowned thoughtfully. “I understood that was what you wanted to do; I thought it was.”

“I know you did, though I never said so. I’m not sure that it was myself. I’m not really sure what making a job of a person would be, or if anyone could do it; I almost think not.”

“I certainly think not,” he said emphatically, “and I’ve always thought not. But I thought you were bent on it—making a success of him, getting him back to the position he slipped from, and all that. He don’t seem to have got far on the journey.”

“Not very,” she admitted.

Barmister regarded her from under bent brows. “Don’t you want him to get back?” he asked. “If you don’t, why did you send him off on the steamship business? And if you do, why did you have him back again? What do you want?”

“I want him to do what will turn out best,” she answered, ignoring the influence assigned to her, and which in a way was correct. In a sense, she had sent Michael, and had recalled him, though not by conscious exertion of power, only by seeing it wisest and showing him it was so.

“Do you mind him being here again?” she asked, looking up from her work. “I thought you did not mind. I thought, when we talked about it before he definitely gave up with the shipping people, you were rather glad than not to have him come back.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” Barmister said, “it suits me well enough. I’ve nothing against him; he’s useful to me, in fact, he got to be a deal more useful before he went than I knew or should have believed if anyone had told me. So far as I’m concerned, it’s all right to have him back; he’s settled in just as before, no swelled head from his late flutter. I dare say there wasn’t so much to swell it, if the truth was known. The thing that beats me is where you come in. If you are satisfied, I suppose you’ve got something out of it, though it certainly isn’t the satisfaction of making a job of him, for that’s not done. What is it you do want? Him to do what’s best, you say—but why? Where do you personally come in?”

She considered a moment, then she said, “I don’t quite know. I just want it, that’s all, I think.”

Barmister said “Humph,” and returned to his paper; but he was not entirely satisfied. Not dissatisfied as to her honesty, he knew she was speaking the truth; she always did, her words coincided with her thoughts and opinions as nearly as she could make them, so nearly that strangers, used to the less accuracy of ordinary speech, sometimes mistook them. Barmister recognised that she meant what she said, no more and no less; she really did not know why she wanted this thing, but, he felt, that need not prevent the existence of a reason, unrecognised by her, of which he should not approve. He had a high opinion of her judgment, unusually high in one of the older generation for one of the younger. But she was a woman, and a young one, and in one particular the judgment of such is not to be relied on; while the quiet persistence of this one was a fact on which he, at least, could rely. In the past, it is true, he had usually allowed her to choose for herself, and it had usually answered; she had chosen wisely or else, when very occasionally she had not, had gained as much in wisdom learnt. But this case was different: if a mistake were made here, it was one without remedy, and in the deciding there was a personal influence to remember, another person concerned—a person with brains but no money, with abilities and, presumably, ambitions, and moods. An utterly incalculable person to Barmister: one whose actions and decisions he could not foresee, but against whom he felt there might be need to guard. And if guard, then at once. Death is an event the date of which no man can foretell, but the nature of it in his own case this one could very well. It would be such, his doctor had warned him, as would give time for no last words or death-bed arrangements; in ordinary health one minute, the weakened heart slowing down for death the next.

“Fetch me my pen,” he said, breaking a long silence, “I want to write a letter. I’ve half a mind to alter my will.”

Nan fetched it, and the letter was written without further remark from either of them. Afterwards they talked of other things, business and their usual interests, until Michael came in.

Michael had been to Hurstbury. He would not have chosen to go, seeing it was Nan’s birthday, but his father had not been well, and he felt that he ought. Going home was not especially agreeable since his return from the Clyde, for that return had been a considerable disappointment to the Annarlys. Since it they had come to definitely accept him as one of those—to be found here and there in families—concerning whom the tactful do not inquire; men of some brilliancy and no staying power, who promise much at the beginning but in the end have to be kept or frequently propped up by the more solid members. They did not express these sentiments to Michael, but he was aware of them, and went to Hurstbury now only when he thought his father was dull, or not well, or for some reason in need of his company. In all other respects things were somewhat as they were before he went away. He had less drawing to do for the patent agents. During his absence the work had been given to someone else, and could not on his return be immediately given to him again. On the other hand, he was called on consultations more than he had been during the barren months of the spring and summer; not very frequently certainly, and the occasions were neither important nor lucrative, still they occurred now and again. For the rest he was Barmister’s man as before.

“—I’m your father’s clerk,” he said to Nan; “a tolerable one by this time, I hope—it isn’t a waste if I am; as well to do one thing as another, if one does it well. Really I think I’d as soon do this as anything—which, perhaps, is a good thing, since there seems no competition to ask me to do anything else.”

But, as it happened, in the course of time he was asked to do something else. It was not a great nor specially suitable offer; one which, in earlier days, no one would have ventured to make to him, and which, even quite recently, he would hardly have seriously considered. It came from old Milligen.

Milligen came to London on business for a few days that winter. Coming to London was an event in his life, and one which, in spite of age and infirmities, he made the most of: transacting business, buying a present for his wife, and going to a music-hall in company with George Foregood with the serious attention of a man who has a good deal to get through.

Part of Milligen’s business lay with George: that part was transacted in Miss Janet’s sitting-room—not the best room, there was no fire there except on state occasions; also, Miss Foregood would not have admitted George and a business friend, no matter if he had been a member of the house of Rothschild, to that apartment for commercial purposes. She let them have what she called the sitting-room and betook herself to the kitchen, where she was quite happy and very busy; taking care, however, before she left, to remove the plush table-cloth from the centre dining-table. This removal did not offend Mr. Milligen, he preferred the cloth off; less because he felt more at liberty in dropping ash and setting down a damp glass on the American cloth under-cover than because he found a comfortable homeliness in it, as he did in the horsehair arm-chair in which he sat. He was at home with these things, and much preferred Miss Janet’s house to his hotel. Some other people might also; it was cleaner, if nothing else. But he would have preferred it to any hotel: the Carlton, Claridge’s, or any other. He could almost fancy himself at home as he and George sat here and smoked, their glasses beside them, their papers before them, the air hazy with tobacco, and the window tight shut. It was exactly the atmosphere in which to talk business, slowly, with opportunity for digressions and wary goings about the subject, and long tales of past deals, full savouring it as old men, whose business is their pleasure—love.

George understood the methods; indeed, he really preferred them to any others. He had some points in common with old Milligen, at all events, more than he had with any of the other men with whom he had tried to deal about his invention. If the old man had the money and enterprise necessary there was a greater chance of George coming to terms with him than there was with any of the financiers and wealthy directors with whom he had, from time to time, been in negotiation.

But only a part of Milligen’s business lay directly with George; another part lay indirectly, and it was that which touched Michael. George had, in the first instance, introduced Michael to the warp dyer; it was he now who was requested to bring him to an interview. The interview took place in the evening, Michael could not get away before, and in Miss Janet’s sitting-room, by choice of all parties.

Michael, not aware that the lady of the house, in company with Josiah and a clock he was anxious to take to pieces, had retired to the kitchen, presented himself at the appointed time. The small room was by that time sufficiently suffocating, and he chose a seat as near the window as he could, hoping that, tight shut though it was, enough draught would creep through to keep him awake. The two elder men, quite unaffected by the atmosphere, drew up to the fire and filled their pipes and their glasses, remarking that the night was raw cold.

When these and various courteous preliminaries were over and the pipes were alight, Milligen observed, as if now opening the business of the evening, “I’m an old man, Mr. Annarly——”

“Oldish,” corrected George, who was a year older.

“Old,” repeated Milligen decidedly, “and not getting younger. I’m not what I used to be, Mr. Annarly; this deuced gout plays Old Harry with a man, and doctor says—and I don’t suppose he’s lying this time—it’s goin’ to do it more, a deal more, unless I take care. Well, I don’t mind telling you, takin’ care isn’t in my line; I shouldn’t bother about it, not me—but there’s the missus to reckon with. You don’t know my missus?”

Michael said he had not the pleasure. George snorted; not that he had anything against Mrs. Milligen, whom he only knew slightly, but he held the whole genus “missus” in a contempt almost equalled by that which he had for those who talk of pleasure in connection with them.

Milligen paid him no attention. “You’d like her,” he said to Michael; “she’s the right sort. But that’s neither here nor there; the thing is, what’s going to be done about me?”

Michael, though he was a little mystified by the question, gave it consideration; he always gave matters brought to his notice grave, careful, and painstaking attention, even when to most people they were manifestly absurd or quite beyond his scope. It is true, when he found them so himself, which he did occasionally when others would not, he sometimes dismissed them with a curtness humiliating to those who presented them. At the present moment he considered Milligen’s situation as if it had been his own, and as such began mentally to devise schemes for dealing with it.

The old man interrupted before he had developed one far enough to speak of it.

“It was all right before Cooper died,” he said, “or, maybe, not so wrong. He was a sharp lad, though groovy. He was my foreman—he’d been with me more’n twenty years; you saw him when you came to my place—had a red beard and a slight cast in one eye. He died this autumn: pneumonia, taken off all in a pop; he’s a serious loss to me.”

He sucked at his pipe sadly, and George sucked in sympathy; appreciation of and regret for a foreman was a sentiment he approved. But he did not expect Michael to appreciate it from the same point of view; he never made the mistake of ranking him with himself nor yet with old Milligen. By some deduction of his own he classed him among the aristocrats (there are other aristocracies besides those of birth or money), and he knew such did not look at things as he did. Also, his experience was that they, whether patient or impatient according to nature and circumstances, did not understand or appreciate long digressions.

“Get on, old cock,” he admonished his friend, “get it out.”

“I’ll get it out my own way,” Milligen replied shortly, then, turning to Michael, he continued with increased sadness, “I’ve no son, and my sons-in-law are pudding heads. I’m not going to put money into the pockets of any sons-in-law, not much! Have them round my works—not me! Besides, they don’t know anything about dyeing. But I want someone, that’s the point. I want a partner. Not a partner in the ordinary sense of the word, one that puts a deal o’ money in and wants a deal more out, and fools round and wants all his own new-fangled way. But a youngish man with guts and gumption; one that’s content to work the old ways, and at the same time keeps his eye open for the new and puts in a thing here and a thing there, as means and opportunity allow. That place is lookin’ up, the bit of work you did for me has made a new man of it; we’re going to do something yet. But I’m not what I was, and I’m goin’ to be less, and I can’t do it single-handed.”

His voice dropped over the last, and he turned to his glass for consolation. George looked sideways at Michael; his face was not less surly than usual, but his fierce eyes showed a little anxiety. He was not moved by pathos; there was only one thing he cared for in the world, that was his invention; an acute observer might have fancied now Michael was in some way connected with it and its chance of success.

“He’s thinking of taking it on,” he could not refrain from saying, nodding towards Milligen as he did so; “my invention, you know.”

“I’m thinking of taking on dyeing in the sliver,” Milligen corroborated. “That is, if we can come to an arrangement. You’ll say it’s a funny thing for a man that’s got more’n he can manage as it is to go out and get more, but there it is. I always had a fancy for breakin’ out that way; it goes as naturally with warp dyeing as bread with cheese. The chance has come; you’ve helped to put me on my legs again; George here’s got the dodge that’s wanted, I’m not goin’ to turn my back on it. Blessed if I am, gout or no gout!”

Michael agreed heartily, and congratulated George on being near to making satisfactory terms for his invention.

“You know all about it?” Milligen asked. “What d’you think of it? I’ll want you to give me a report by’n-by, if you will, two guinea job. I’m not taking a pig in a poke.”

Michael, a little embarrassed by the presence of his first acquaintance, the inventor, replied that he would, of course, be pleased to report, if it were agreeable to both. However, as he soon saw, there was no need for him to feel any embarrassment, both were quite comfortable about it.

“You’d better hear what we’re thinkin’ of,” old Milligen said; “you’d best hear the whole. I’m not buying this thing of George; I’ve not got the money for that, I’m no syndicate—and it isn’t royalties and all that. The notion is, he should work it with me, the sliver dyeing to be worked in along with the warp dyeing, profits on the whole to be shared, proportions not agreed upon yet, but they will be to the satisfaction of all parties.”

“I see,” Michael said, “Mr. Foregood will be a sort of junior partner, the man you were looking for?”

He privately thought George was not the man he would himself have looked for in that situation. Apart from his age, he had many disqualifications, not least among them his obstinate and difficult temper, and the distrustful temperament which made him very unfit to deal with either new ideas or his fellow-men.

Possibly old Milligen shared these sentiments. “No,” he said bluntly, and somewhat as if the person mentioned had not been present, “he’s not the man I’m lookin’ for. He’s the man that’s got the apparatus for dyeing in the sliver, and a good enough apparatus too, if I know anything about it. And he’s the man that’s goin’ to look after it, if I branch out that way, as I’m thinkin’ of doin’, and if we can come to terms; and he’s the man that’s goin’ to take a share of the profits by way of payment. But he’s not the man I’m lookin’ for to work in under me, and make something of the old place. You’re that.”

“I!”

Milligen nodded.

“It isn’t your line; I know that, nor yet your class either; but it’s my idea all the same.” He turned to George for corroboration, and George assented gruffly.

“I’ve talked it over with George here,” he said, “up and down, for and against, likelys and unlikelys; and that’s what it comes to, that’s the notion. Take it or leave it, and no offence either way: an offer never hurt anyone, whether it was up to their size or not, and a refusal hurts no one either among friends.”

“It’s awfully good of you,” Michael said. “I’m very flattered you should think of me that way; I’m afraid, though, it is little use. I doubt if I should be much good to you. I know nothing whatever about dyeing; I am an engineer pure and simple; almost any man who had had a technical education and a little factory experience would be as well qualified for your purpose; better, if he had studied chemistry, or spent six months at a dyer’s.”

“Maybe,” Milligen said. “My experience, Mr. Annarly, is that there’s two kinds of men in this world, the men that can do things and the men that can’t—what things not particularly mattering, it’s the can that matters. I rather think I know which is which of those two kinds when I meet ’em.”

Michael laughed. “You think I can?” he said. “I’m much complimented, though I’m not so sure myself. And have you ever thought of the drawbacks of the men who can? They have an abominable way of working their own way and nobody else’s; they may mean to take orders and properly fill a subordinate position in a subordinate way, but more than half the time it doesn’t come off. They’re the devil to drive; and when they’re doing the driving you find yourself getting to places you never thought of. They are always going off their own way almost without knowing it, and unless they have any amount of rope they don’t seem as if they could do anything worth the having.”

“Size too big,” George said gruffly; “don’t fit the harness. We know that fast enough. The job’s not up to you, the old man said that, didn’t he? We know it, but we thought——. Well, we thought perhaps——”

He stopped awkwardly; he had himself in his way been through the odium of evil report and the downfall consequent upon falling foul, justly or otherwise, of a large commercial body.

Michael took the words up for him. “You thought,” he suggested, “that I might not despise such an offer? You are quite right, I never should have despised it——” He turned to Milligen. “Very far from it, sir, I much appreciate it; whether I am suitable or unsuitable, it is a compliment you have paid me. For that reason, if for no other, I must ask if you really know my present situation, when you make it. If you know what there is against me.”

“I’ve heard plenty,” Milligen said, “and”—putting his finger on the side of his nose—“I believe what I do believe. I mayn’t have had what you call a first-class education, Mr. Annarly, or be precisely a genius, still I’m not a born fool. I’m not great on recommends and characters. When I think of the recommends I’ve had, and given, and I wouldn’t have trusted the chaps, half of ’em, with an old boot! I like my own judgment best. I don’t care if you have done Galhardy’s—small blame to you, I dare say I’d have done it myself, if I’d had the brain—you won’t do me, I know that. I like you, that’s the truth; I did from the first. It did my heart good to see you handle the engines, not to speak of anything else. Your spunk about that power station—that was a spry bit of work—and all the rest. I know my concern’s not your class, I said that before, and it’s true; and I’m not your class either, nor’s George. But I’ve a notion we could work together, and a notion there’s something in that work that’s not beneath you and your brains. At all events, there it is. There’s the offer.”

The offer required very much more discussion, explanation, and stating than this. Milligen and his friend were prepared to spend the whole evening over it. George had told Miss Janet she need not sit up to turn the gas out when they had finished, as they should be very late. The evening was young yet, and, with the minuteness of those with time on their hands, they went into details with Michael: details of the work, of George’s apparatus, of future prospects and probabilities; questions of Michael’s possible position, of the capital he could raise—which was not more than a hundred pounds, the fruits of a year’s work and careful saving, and which, even if he felt minded to invest in the little dyeing business, could hardly be expected to purchase a junior partnership. In the end nothing definite was arrived at; it was not to be expected there would be, unless it was a definite refusal.

“You think it over, Mr. Annarly,” old Milligen said at parting. “I’ll be in town a day longer, and if you can’t make up your mind by then, why, there’s always the post—though not so satisfactory. You think it over.”

Michael thanked him, and said he would, then took his leave.

George glowered after his departing figure. “Pity you couldn’t nail him to anything,” he said; “he’ll go back and talk it over with the girl.”

“What girl?” Milligen had a considerable opinion of feminine intelligence, but no opinion of its being exerted in the sphere of a man’s business. “His young lady, do you mean? Is she a high-flyer?”

“No,” George said, “and she’s not his young lady either; she’s just Nan Barmister, where Josiah works, but he’ll talk to her.”

He did. Therein George’s instinct, sharpened by anxiety for the welfare of his apparatus which he believed to be bound up in Michael’s decision, was not at fault. But beyond that he could not go; he could not predict either what Nan would say or how much or little Michael would be influenced by it.

No one seeing Nan at the time of the telling would have been able to forecast either. She listened with attention to the account of the interview and offer: sitting, elbows on the table, chin propped on hands, listening, and saying almost nothing till Michael had finished.

“Well,” he said when he had done, “shall I take it, or shall I not?”

She sat silent a minute, her eyes cloudy with thought, then—“Yes,” she said slowly. “I think I would take it.”

“Do you mean that?” He had put his question half jestingly. In spite of what he had said, it is doubtful how far he himself seriously regarded the offer yet. That she should do so, and come to an early, but evidently considered, decision in favour of it astonished him.

“Why do you say that?” he asked. “What’s your reason?”

“I hardly know,” she answered thoughtfully. “I have one, I suppose, though it won’t put itself into words. It seems somehow as if the time had come to do something; it has seemed so a little while, now this has come along. I have a feeling—though it may be wrong, probably it is if you feel against it—that this may be the thing to do.”

He did not say he felt against it. He looked doubtful—not sceptical—such reasons and influences had more weight for him than for many lesser brains; he never scouted them.

“It isn’t a great thing, this offer,” he warned her; “boiled down it amounts to little more than foreman in a small dyeing works in a small Midland town among small people.”

“I know,” she agreed: “it doesn’t sound much, it isn’t either; but I’m not sure that matters—are you?”

“I suppose not,” he said. “No, I don’t think I care much what the kind of life is really, but the kind of work there wouldn’t be much either. There would be to see George Foregood’s invention put on a working basis, and to superintend the warp dyeing, no more than that.”

“I know,” she said again; “still, I almost think it is worth while.”

“I wonder?” he said. “After all, it is a definite place in the world, a definite piece of work—not that which I was trained for and thought I was cut out for; I may as well give up the last ghost of any thought of that—still, something. A couple of old men, one pig-headed, the other soured and cross-grained, a dilapidated collection of buildings, plant that is a good deal scrap, no capital to speak of, and a job and process of which I know little and care less. It doesn’t look much; yet, I own, in a way, the place attracted me when I first went there. I dare say it sounds silly—not to you, things don’t to you—but the ramshackle place and the pottery, shrewd old man did attract me at the first. I had a sort of feeling one might make something of it.”

She nodded. “That is it,” she said. “I think that’s what I feel.”

Whereupon he naturally swung back to the opposite view and protested that there could not really be anything made of it. “A small living,” he said, “in a small way perhaps, and a comfortable end for the old boy. Though, after all, I suppose, that is something.—Do you know, I have half a mind to go into it!”

For a little he turned the matter, weighing its pros and cons, speaking them aloud, but without seeking any answer or comment; really putting them to himself, not her. In the end the balance was in favour.

“—Though,” so he said, “it is useless to have any delusion about it; there are no possibilities in the concern.”

“No,” she agreed, “not in the concern; that’s why smallness, or largeness, or anything else does not really matter. The possibilities are not in it, they are in you.”