Chapter IV

Robert Barmister was in one of the large upper rooms examining chairs. To him, busy with a beautiful specimen of eighteenth-century craftsmanship, came Nan.

He looked round as she entered, and asked her if it was the only one of that particular pattern they had at present.

She nodded, and then inquired if he had been asked to make yesterday’s journey merely to see and match such a chair.

“No,” he answered, “I also saw a fool—a fool with a 1760 chair, patched by a mid-Victorian hand, and who must have another precisely like it, patch and all. She is sure there must have been more than one originally made to the design. So’m I; but I’m not so sure the Victorian nincompoop had the mauling of more than one, and I’m very sure there is no human chance of coming on it if he did. But since she does not admit the patching—persists in thinking it part of the original design—she doesn’t admit that difficulty either.”

Nan laughed. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Patch her one, to be sure.”

“Patch such a chair!”

“No, stupid, have one made patched, of course; what do you suppose?”

One supposes, since the master craftsman responsible for the original chair had been dead these many years, some modern was to copy his design (with the mid-Victorian addition), and Robert Barmister was to receive the price a rich amateur must expect to pay for a rare antique which has needed much finding.

Nan knew this, having lived with the trade. She accepted the first part as entirely justifiable; to alter a perfect article, or to patch a master’s design to anyone’s orders, seemed to her a sacrilege most unjustifiable. Personally, she would not have sold the copy as anything but a copy, and at a good copy’s price; but then money and money-making had small attraction for her: she did not think of calling her father into judgment for it, if they had for him.

She began to speak of the matter which had really brought her to him that morning. “Michael Annarly is here,” she said; “did Josiah tell you?”

He had not, he had something else to do, Barmister said; then asked what Annarly was doing, and why he was there.

“I met him yesterday,” Nan answered, “when I was coming back from Miss Janet’s, and I asked him to come.”

Barmister frowned. “What for?” he said. “The Annarlys don’t put themselves out of the way to be civil to you; you don’t go there twice a year, and you don’t like it when you do: why should you ask one of them here?”

“I don’t exactly know why I did it,” she said doubtfully; “it just came to me that I would when I saw him yesterday, so I did.”

Her father grunted. “And it just came to him, I suppose, that he would come to see what sort of a place it was.”

“I don’t think that was the reason why he came.”

“Well, I don’t see what else it was,” Barmister said; “the whole family think they do a considerable kindness if they step out of the way to come here and see you; at least, they would if they did it, which they don’t—thank goodness! He must feel very patronising, I should think, since he’s their best piece. By the way, I thought he was away somewhere usually, in the North or the Midlands making a name and a fortune. What’s he in town for?”

“I believe he came to see people on business; he is in some sort of trouble, I think.”

“Under a cloud?” Barmister asked, though without the slight instinctive withdrawing of the majority of men from one so labelled. “Is it that, hey?”

“I should not say so,” Nan answered. She would not; the words were so totally, so almost grotesquely, inadequate. “Should you mind if he stayed here a day or two?”

Barmister turned round at that, his keen eyes on her: the discussed guest was a man, a young one, who might, perhaps, show attractions for an utterly inexperienced girl, without himself so much as giving a condescending thought to her. “Are you going to fall in love with him?” he demanded.

“In love!” The idea was ludicrous, almost pathetically ludicrous. “No,” Nan said, “not that; it isn’t that way I’d think of him. All the same, I’d like him to stop a few days, if you don’t mind.”

“H’m,” her father said doubtfully, but afterwards consented. If Nan wanted to have the man for a day or two, let her; there was no reason why she should not, she was not a fool; and if he wanted to stop for a day or two, why, let him. Of course, he must have some reason; one which did not appear on the surface, but which could be found out, Barmister had no doubt of himself there; and no doubt but that he would send the guest packing if he did not approve the reason.

But he did not find it out, although he was soon persuaded that his first suspicion was correct: Michael was in a difficulty of some kind. Its nature he did not discover; but he guessed it to take its rise from ambition rather than any of the more venial (and to him less forgivable) sins of youth, and with that he was content. Of the extent, he had no idea; after a night’s rest Michael was sufficiently controlled to appear normal to one who knew nothing of him, more especially when there was Nan, who understood, to come between.

On the first day, the day when the directors of Galhardy’s were to meet, Nan suggested he should draw up a memorial of all that had happened: the accusation and defence, his real offence, and what justification he had to offer for it.

“What is the use?” he said apathetically. “They will decide to-day before ever they can get it.”

“But they could redecide after, I suppose?” she urged. “And even if they did not, if it made no difference, it surely would be worth doing: if they decide in your favour they would be glad to be able to see plainly that they were right, and if they decide otherwise—it is certainly as well to raise a protest.”

“I don’t think it is worth while,” he said. “I did all I could in the last two days, trying to get at various of the directors, and it came to nothing. When I saw Harte yesterday I could see it had come to nothing.”

Nevertheless, when she again urged it, he consented; to begin to write were a less effort than to withstand her.

“I will copy it when it is done,” she said; “there is an old typewriter downstairs which is seldom wanted, I will bring it up. I don’t do it very well, but I can manage if I go slowly.”

She fetched the machine, and early perceived that it would be necessary to make several drafts before the final copy, for he was one of those who reconstruct and rearrange every argument a dozen times before passing it on paper; and to whom every written word, and the placing of every one, are important. Characteristics which overwork, and the ample assistance he had been granted in clerical matters, had increased of late. Before long, the habit asserted itself, and he was writing and rewriting, constructing and reconstructing, elaborating arguments, cutting down phrases, and explaining facts with an extraordinary regard for detail and accuracy of expression which not only brought self-conviction by its logic, but also temporarily diverted the mind from its one idea and the stupor following upon it. It also used much paper—sheets begun and cast aside, sheets on which side issues were worked out, or solitary notes or paragraphs to be reduced to single sentences jotted down; a scatter of very indecipherable papers all about. There are minds to whom papers are as clothes, and as the very expression of themselves almost; their thoughts cannot become articulate, or even concrete, without paper, they must be written down (or expressed in curves or diagrams) before they are really thoughts. Take such visible expressions of himself; such visualised thoughts—notably when they are of abstruse and very-well loved matters—from a man, and you have taken much. Strip them all away, when from overwork and nervous strain he is least fit for the shock, and you leave him an inarticulate, shivering thing, naked, dumb, and confounded. Michael had been bereft of every visible expression of himself: all his papers, diagrams, and notes on everything that really mattered to him were in the hands of the directors. He had not so much as a pencilling in a pocketbook left when Nan induced him to begin a statement of what had happened, and to express outside himself that which had ground round and round in his head these last days.

The greater part of the day they worked at the memorial; she, in the copying and recopying, becoming much more fully acquainted with the facts. Towards dusk they were more or less finished; that is, copies of the statement in the last and most satisfactory form were completed and posted separately to the directors. Michael was not really contented with it; he never had been for long with anything he had written, nor with anything he had decided, always, sooner or later, seeing some possibility beyond: but the exigencies of posting had compelled the passing of this at last. For a little after it was done he went over what had been written, discovering where it might have been improved, and debating whether the small variations of phrasing which had been made in each copy were the ones best suited to each recipient; entirely forgetting that he had said, and thought the whole useless. But after a while he seemed to remember that, and with a collapse of interest collected the loose sheets and came to the fire in silence.

Nan was silent too; but she was thinking of the matter itself, not the statement of it. At length she spoke, and she did not attempt to speak of anything else: there are times when to attempt what is called “diverting the mind” is an imbecility bordering on an insult.

“They absolutely promised you these foreign rights?” she asked. “I mean the rights in these inventions of yours which they were not going to use?”

He told her “yes” briefly, and lapsed into silence again. But in a little while something roused him to speak of the matter and the struggle which had gone before.

“I had a fight for them,” he said. “I have been months getting the concession, but I did get it in the end—subject to the consent of Sir Joseph Harte. Afterwards—almost immediately afterwards—I got that, verbally first and very fully, later a letter confirming it.”

“But not the second letter cancelling it?”

“That letter was never sent.”

He spoke with unshakable conviction, though he had no evidence—there can be little of a negative.

Nan saw that plainly, though she did not say so; she turned it in her mind a while, but when she did speak it was to ask another question. “What is it that they actually bring against you? Is it that they say you acted on this permission, and began to negotiate about the rights before you ought?”

He nodded, and she asked, “Did you?”

Again he nodded, and again after a pause was moved to speak. “Yes, I did, but there was no harm in it; I committed myself to nothing and told nothing. Technically, of course, I was wrong; I had no business to answer the inquiries made by the French people, as I did; but actually it was the natural way to do it. Anyone would have done the same, half of them gone much further if they had had the chance.”

“I suppose,” she said, “it would not have mattered, if the permission had not been withdrawn?”

“No, though I should still, technically, have exceeded my powers.”

“As it is?”

He shrugged his shoulders, as one beyond caring.

“Is it actionable?” she inquired, after a while. “I mean, if you had had the cancelling letter and they could prove it, would they be able to prosecute you?”

“I suppose so. I don’t see that it matters. Certainly the fact that I did not have the letter, and that they can’t prove it, does not; if they want a case against me, I dare say they can get that or make it—they can make a good many things at Galhardy’s. I don’t much care if they do; they may as well do one thing as another, at least I should have an opportunity of speaking then. Not that that would really be worth anything either; they’re too big.”

Nan said nothing; she knew it did matter. She had the woman’s eye for the driftwood after the wreck, and for the fragments that remain; and she saw that prosecution, though it might give an opportunity to use the fragments as missiles, must inevitably scatter them past recovery, and leave the scatterer bare. She did not urge this, however, but sat a little looking into the blaze, thinking.

“Tell me,” she said at length, “why did you want these foreign rights? Were they really worth so much to you?”

“They should have been worth somewhere about fifty thousand pounds,” he answered.

The estimate may have been incorrect, though he certainly believed in it himself; she saw that, but was not greatly impressed by the magnitude of the loss. Money as money did not appeal to her.

Nor perhaps entirely to him either: at all events he went on to advance another reason for his efforts, and in a tone which suggested how much it weighed with him. “I had a claim to them,” he said; “the things were mine, and they were useless to Galhardy’s. Why shouldn’t I have had them? Of course, it was argued that no one had been granted such rights before, but then no one before had done quite what I had for the firm. Already I had saved them a great deal; in a year or two my inventions will bring in eight or ten thousand a year to them. And what did I get? A wretched seven hundred, rising perhaps to eight hundred.”

It sounded a good deal to her, though, of course, small in proportion to the greater sum. To him it was nothing.

“It was hardly enough to live on,” he said. “Everyone there has a private income. I was the only one in anything approaching that position without. It was impossible to make both ends meet. I had to do what the others did.”

Nan’s ignorance of the world was such that she knew nothing for or against this, but intuitively she did know that there is a wonderful mixture of the small and the great in most men: in this one perhaps the contrast was rather more crude than in most.

“Would they really have given you no more?” she asked. “Surely they would——”

“They always advised me to ‘leave myself in the hands of the directors’; that is the stereotyped advice when one says anything about recognition. Usually men do leave themselves in the directors’ hands, having no choice—and stop there. There are plenty of instances of it in most firms, big and little.”

He began to speak of them, for a while forgetting his own affairs in citing the hard cases of others. But soon the one central thought returned, overwhelming others.

“I don’t mean that the directors of Galhardy’s would have treated me so badly as that; they wouldn’t—one thing, I doubt if they could, and, anyhow, they wouldn’t. But I should not have got anything worth having out of the aerial torpedo, or the new steel I perfected for them either. I did not try much for the steel; I let it pass without much protest, and put everything on the torpedo; but the way they behaved over the one showed what was to be expected in the other case, if it was left in their hands. It is true, of course, that what one does while one is with a firm is the property of the firm, that is understood and reasonable enough. But when one does a thing of any size, a thing that is going to be worth a fortune to them, and which they have not been able to get elsewhere, one might expect something: I mean something considerable. I dare say, though I don’t know, I might have got something small, but not in any way commensurate.”

Nan nodded, and sat thinking a little. “I wonder,” she said, “why they promised those rights you wanted? They were not actually bound to give anything, you say, and it is not their custom to give much? What they promised amounted to a great deal, and was a most unprecedented thing. Why did they do it?”

“Because they came to the conclusion they would not get the aerial torpedo, the real perfect thing, without,” he answered, and for a moment the flickering, fighting smile, which had been gone from him these days, lurked in his eyes. It died almost as it came, but it suggested that considerable skill, as well as other less admirable qualities, must have been needed in the late handling of Galhardy’s genius.

“Have they got all they want now?” Nan asked, and the cloud descended almost visibly upon him.

“Everything,” he answered. “They have my papers.” There was a level hopelessness in the voice which told of utter loss. “It is all there; it was all ready to be drafted out. They knew, I told them I had all the work completed, and all the data collected ready to draw up the report, before they made the swoop. They waited for that.”

“The report was not made? What they have is only in notes and drawings, and so on? Isn’t there a chance they won’t be able to make it out and find what they want?”

There was not in his opinion. “They can’t help it,” he said. “I tell you, it’s all there; the veriest fool who knew even the alphabet of the subject could not fail. Besides, the thing’s been made, different parts of it and the filling for the heads too. Oh, not all by one man—by different men and at different times. I was not going to have anyone able to report on it before I was ready. But they could find all out, if they tried, and put it together for themselves practically, if there were any need; but there won’t be, for they have it on paper almost plain enough for a child to understand. No, they have all: the torpedo and the torpedo-head, everything, as completely as they have the steel I reported on months ago. They have all; there is nothing left.”

His voice dropped, and his whole body seemed to sink. Nan said nothing; there seemed nothing to say. She sat in the low firelight, very quiet.

The next day the directors’ decision would be known; not till late in the evening, however, for, though she had telegraphed Michael’s present address to his rooms, a letter forwarded from there would not be delivered in Soho till the last post. She was busy during part of the day making drawings of chair backs and other details for her father. She asked Michael, who was a clever draughtsman, to help her; but though he tried, he failed. He seemed utterly unable to keep his attention fixed on the unfamiliar work; he took up and put down pencils and india-rubber, set down lines and rubbed them out without any perception of what he did. But when, led thereto by some question or suggestion of hers, he tried to make drawings of aerial propellers and kindred things he succeeded even worse, for, added to inability to fix attention, there was vague fear—the fear of a man who feels slipping the sheet-anchor of loved work which has never failed him before.

Nan saw that for that day of waiting there was nothing to be done; so she attempted nothing, only stayed in all day. A quiet, inconspicuous presence, physically almost as easy to overlook as the shadows in the old house, but spiritually perhaps otherwise.

In the afternoon she wrote some letters; as she began the first, she glanced up at the date. “Let me see,” she said; “it’s the third, isn’t it? Saturday?”

“Saturday?” Michael repeated the word as one recollecting.

“Yes. Had you an appointment?”

“No,” he answered, “at least, yes. But it does not matter. I was to have gone to the Carsons’ this afternoon, to tell Lady Sibyl how the aerial torpedo was received at the board meeting.”

He had forgotten it till this moment. Strange how completely he had forgotten it; Lady Sibyl and all that she stood for—and she had stood for much—had been utterly blotted from his mind. He had saved her letters in the general crash, but neither then nor after did he know why. It was, incomprehensible as it may seem, in a way an automatic act, one without reasoned volition. The woman herself had no place in the crisis; she had none in the days which had ensued. He had forgotten her as completely as he had forgotten all other outside things.

But now he remembered. In a wave, with a sensation which was almost like an audible _swish_, recollection flowed back. He would have been at the Carsons’ now, in the small drawing-room. She would have been there, in the deep chair half turned from the light. He could see her in his mind’s eye, the glow that lurked in her hair and the gown she would wear. He could see her white hands, tapering and pink-tipped, could feel their softness as they touched his in greeting, or in some accident of service as handing cups and placing cushions. He saw all, saw the kindling in her eyes as he spoke, heard the thrill in her low voice as she answered—as one sees a lighted room when standing without in the dark.

“Ought you to have written to say you could not come?”

Nan’s voice recalled him abruptly.

“No,” he answered. “It’s of no consequence.” He spoke indifferently, with a hardness in the indifference. “She will have heard before this, and if she hasn’t, she will soon enough. It doesn’t matter. I shall never see her again.”

Nan returned to her writing. Among the medley of half-told and retold facts which had been given to her there had once been mention of some private papers burned, instead of delivered to the directors. There had been no account of how they were saved from the fate of the rest, nor why; neither had borne on the one matter of moment, so both had been passed over. But now she guessed that the papers saved and personally destroyed concerned Lady Sibyl. And “it didn’t matter,” for he would “never see her again!” Pity crept up in her heart; he had lost this too, this woman, whatever she was to him, in addition to all the rest.

In the evening came the letter. Barmister, who since the closing of his office had been out all the afternoon on such business as was possible to be done on a Saturday, was home now and sitting with them. Nan fetched the letters herself; there were three for her father, one, the expected one, for Michael. She gave them out, then sat down again to her needlework, watching neither. Barmister read his through and grunted over them; they were business ones, and one of them annoyed him. Michael read his, and, slowly refolding it, put it into a pocket. She had a glimpse of his face, though she avoided looking at it. It was grave and quiet, but expressed nothing. The mental crisis was past; he could take the good or the bad now without disorder or outward expression.

Barmister crushed the typewritten sheets of one of his letters together, and with a muttered malediction on the folly of his correspondent got to his feet. He asked Nan about some book of reference.

It was downstairs in the office, and she offered to fetch it.

“No,” he said, “I’ll go myself. I want to look up something in the day-book too.”

He went, and she continued stitching.

“Well,” Michael said at last, and as the sound of feet descended the little stair—“they have settled it.”

She looked up. “Dismissal?” she said, though she guessed already.

He nodded, and handed her the letter.

GALHARDY & COMPANY, LIMITED.

_Secretary’s Department._

_Sir,_

_I am instructed to inform you that the Board of Directors have
considered the information concerning you which has been duly laid
before them._

_This information shows that very grave irregularities have been
going on for some considerable period. I am therefore directed
to inform you that the Board have decided to terminate your
appointment at once._

_The character of the information is such that the Board are giving
their very earnest consideration as to what course it is their
duty, in the interests of the firm, to adopt: in any case, I am
directed to remind you that, under your original contract, the
divulgence of anything of a confidential nature, at any time, will
render you liable to prosecution for breach of the said contract._

_I am, Sir,_
_Your obedient servant,_
_CECIL BRETT, Secretary._

So Nan read and then read again. Not that in her own mind she did not understand; she did, the whole case, with a curious plainness. She understood that much which at first glance appeared important was really not so, merely detail—the unreceived letter, the antagonistic secretary who might or might not be responsible, the difficulty of securing a hearing, even the justice or injustice of the whole proceeding—none complicated the case or truly influenced judgment on it. It was perfectly simple and inevitable really, turning on the old and quite natural law of might is right. Briefly it amounted to this—there was one who had what the great firm of Galhardy’s wanted, and had a species of right to, and he would not part with it at their standard price: it had been taken from him without price, that was all. How, did not matter; it had simply been done, as inevitably it must have been. That dismissal should be a part of it was his own fault and the consequence of what their past experience of him had taught them: his probable future use to them was more than outweighed by the certain irritation of his future proceedings. The firm naturally discarded the thing which hampered or annoyed when the reason of its existence (so far as they were concerned) had been achieved. The cost and consequence to the thing, equally naturally, did not come into consideration; it did not exist for a firm, which of necessity labours under the notorious disabilities of a corporation; that which is without soul to be saved, or body to be kicked, can take cognisance of no such trifles.

Nan dimly realised it, but she did not put it into words; she returned the letter with other comments than that. Soon after, Barmister came back with the book he had been for, and orders that she should find something for him. She found it, and the short remainder of the evening was spent without any reference to the directors’ decision.

But as they parted for the night, Michael said, “I must go home to-morrow, and tell my father.”

She nodded: that was inevitable now, and a thing so difficult that comment was superfluous, even banal.

“Yes,” she said, “you must go,” and she gave him a hand-grasp for good night.