Success
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SUCCESS
SUCCESS
BY
UNA L. SILBERRAD
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
SUCCESS
CHAPTER I
Michael Annarly was talking to Lady Sibyl Carson. He had been dining
with the Carsons, and he was staying on after the other guests, deep in
talk with his hostess. He was the last to move, excepting, of course,
those who were staying in the house. These were all men; Carson did not
encourage the idea of women visitors in case they should want to go out
with the guns, and Lady Sibyl had few friends of her own sex for whom
she cared enough to insist on inviting. The men lounged by the fire
in the room, part hall, part billiard-room, to which the company had
retired when the more formal guests departed. Lady Sibyl and Annarly
were some distance from the others, she in a deep-seated chair which
toned in colour with the golden russet of her dress and hair and eyes.
Annarly sat beside her in earnest talk, as he had sat ever since their
coming into the hall; since then neither had conceded even a pretence
of recognising the existence of other people. When the one or two local
guests, who had lingered on, came to take leave of their hostess, she
for the moment waked to a recollection of their existence, made a few
remarks in a charming manner, and then obviously went back in mind to
where she was before. Annarly, who in spite of his thirty years was
not really well versed in the ways of the world, certainly not of
this world, did not acquit himself even so well as that. He remained
completely absorbed until a rather pronounced yawn from one of the
group by the fireplace arrested his attention and reminded him of the
lateness of the hour and the way he had outstayed other people. He rose
to say good-bye.
Lady Sibyl rose too; her eyes were shining and the whole of her
beautiful face was alive with the excitement and admiration which some
women feel for success.
“Good-bye,” she said, and her voice thrilled with a note of pride as
well as sympathy, “good-bye—and thank you! Thank you, for telling me. I
am proud that you should have thought it worth while to tell me. I need
not say that I am proud that you have accomplished it—I always knew you
would! All the same”—she offered him her hand, and her voice dropped
half a tone softer—“I’m glad.”
He took the hand, his unusually sensitive and telepathetic fingers
gripping hers closely. She did not resent it, she was moved out of
herself by what he had that evening told her.
“I may come on Saturday and tell you what they say?” he asked.
She nodded. “I shall be very impatient till then. I only hope they will
treat you well, what I call well; I have bigger ideas than you, you
know. When you give me leave to speak, I think I shall see if I cannot
influence them. A woman can help sometimes.”
“Sometimes?” Their eyes met, and for the moment she had the feeling,
perhaps he had too, that she had been half the inspiration of his work,
or at least that her sympathy and interest had helped through the
hardest places.
Carson broke in here. “You off, Annarly?” he said, quite unconscious of
any thing he might be interrupting, and went on to speak of the state
of the roads and the peculiarities of Annarly’s car.
“Who’s that chap?” Dawling, one of the men by the fire, asked, when he
had gone.
“Annarly?” Carson said; “oh, he’s at Galhardy’s.”
Most of those present were that in a sense, or at least had some
interest or nominal connection with the great foundries; one of the
great foundries of Europe which, a town in itself, lay not far distant
and was of more vital interest to the surrounding country than the
British Constitution or any other human institution. Dawling himself
had little interest in it, but, from intimate conversation with those
who had, most of the more important names were familiar to him;
Annarly’s he could not place among them: also, though not very acute,
he had a vague consciousness that the man was not one of themselves.
“What is he?” he asked, “I don’t seem to have heard of him.”
“That’s because you’ve been out of England the last three years,”
Brett, a smallish man in the corner, said. “Had you been here, you’d
have known—from his own demonstration, if nothing else—that he is
the greatest genius of modern times. I don’t quite know what one
should call him: engineer, mathematician, electrician, mechanic, or
Jack-of-all-trades, but it’s quite certain he’s a marvel.”
The sarcasm of the tone was so obvious that it was easy to see Brett,
secretary to the board and private secretary to the chairman of
directors of Galhardy’s, did not love this talented acquisition of the
great firm. Even the unobservant Dawling saw that, and Lady Sibyl, who
had gone to a bureau at the far end of the room, caught the intonation
though not the words. She closed the bureau and came to the group by
the fire.
“Are you talking of Mr. Annarly?” she said. “He is an extraordinary
person, extraordinarily clever; much, much more able, I think, than any
of you yet realise.”
She stood looking down at the blaze a moment, her eyes reflecting the
flickering lights, and a thoughtful smile curving her lips.
Her husband grunted; he was not in the least jealous, it never
occurred to him to be jealous of any poet, musician, scientist, or
other man of brains with whom his wife chose to beguile her otherwise
tedious intellectual solitude. It certainly did not occur to him to be
jealous of Annarly. Though he was quite unlike all who had gone before
him in favour, and was also possessed of tangible abilities which
Carson himself could value, if not understand, he was no more one of
themselves than the others were; no more one in ordinary life, the life
of the house and the coverts, and so on.
Brett, from beyond his host, moved a little impatiently. “I am afraid
you are too generous, Lady Sibyl,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll find
it wise to accept Annarly entirely on his own valuation.”
“I don’t,” she answered, “I estimate him a great deal higher than
that. Oh”—as she saw Brett’s expression—“I know some people think
him conceited, but he is not. It is true he can do and understand
things few others can, and he knows it; but he does not think highly
of himself on that account—though perhaps rather poorly of those who
can’t. That, with his way of refusing to comply with old ways that he
sees no use for, might make him unpopular. But he does not overestimate
his own ability; I think you will say that yourself soon.”
“I may,” Brett conceded, but his tone did not suggest conviction.
“He’s all right,” Carson said carelessly; “a bit short of the sense of
proportion, thinks nothing on earth matters but his own job, and don’t
always see straight about that, otherwise not bad.”
“Isn’t he?” said Brett, with a vindictive flicker of the eyelids. But
he said it quietly, and as Lady Sibyl was then saying good night, no
one paid any particular attention.
When she had gone Dawling observed, “The genius seems to know something
about the gentle art of making enemies.”
“Annarly?” Carson said. “He’s all right, a bit big for his boots, but a
clever devil.”
“How did he get in?”
It was a question of some interest; to get into Galhardy’s, with any
prospect of achieving a position or income worth the having, was a
more than difficult thing unless one were born to it, or acquired it
by great influence, income, or marriage. It was quite evident from the
attitude of all present that Annarly had not done it in any of these
ways. Brett answered now, and his tone was sarcastic.
“By merit,” he said; “he got in by his own merit and singular genius
some three years ago, and by that alone has risen to what he is.
And contrived to get more rope, more power, and more money to fool
with than any other man, though he might be ten years his senior and
the nephew of a director. He is the pet of half the board—a pretty
expensive pet, I should be sorry to say what he and his experiments
have cost the firm—and the bane of the other half, and most other men
in authority too.”
“H’m,” Dawling said; then asked, “Who put him in in the first instance?”
“It’s reported,” Carson answered, “that some woman brought him to the
notice of one of the directors, old Joe, in fact, wasn’t it? At all
events, he always says now that he found him himself, was struck of
a heap by some invention he submitted, or something. Anyway, he was
found, and found, or thought to be, the man for the aerial torpedo
problem.”
“Is that his line?” Dawling asked, interested.
“That’s it. Not but what he’s reported to do plenty else beside—weaned
on ballistics, I believe, and knows all that’s worth knowing about
steel and guns—though he can’t hit a bunny at twenty yards. But it’s
the torpedo business that he depends on; the directors expect him not
only to perfect the means of discharging torpedoes at airships, but
also to give them a suitable torpedo-head too. They’ve been expecting
it some time, and he keeps ’em expecting; he’s a clever chap.”
“Krupps also expect it of him,” Lee-Brendon, an older man who had not
heretofore spoken, observed. “So, I believe, do the other great firms.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean there’s nothing in it,” Carson explained, “he’ll
get it all right, not much doubt about that; our directors don’t make
mistakes where their own interests are concerned. They must have pretty
good grounds for their faith in Annarly to let him have his head as
they do. Not the least clever thing about him is that he’s been able
to get it; ’tisn’t every man with no more than brains to back him, who
could: I admire the chap for that, though it has made him, as I say, a
bit big for his boots.”
He knocked the ashes out of his pipe as he spoke, as a signal that he
at least was ready for bed.
* * * * *
And Michael Annarly?
He drove home through the soft darkness of a late September night,
thinking no more of the night than of the car he drove (and could not
really afford). Neither was he, and this was rarer with him, thinking
of the difficulties of his work and the jealousies and obstacles which
met, and must meet and often thwart, a brilliant young outsider in an
old, close preserve. To-night he was not thinking of them or of ways to
deal with, dodge, or surmount them; he was done with that now, clear
of them, free of them and the need to consider them. He was thinking
of a woman whose gown repeated the russet of the bracken-clad hills
at this season of the year, and whose eyes, a tone darker, looked
glowingly into his when she had bade him come again, and said she would
be impatient till his coming. A woman whose voice had quivered with
enthusiasm and given the commendation to be coveted when he had brought
her, first of all people, word of the completion of his achievement.
Through all his pulses ran the thrill of victory; not over her, though
perhaps he believed in a tenderness for himself, but over fate and
circumstances. She and her glowing sympathy were but as a crown set
on the other achievement; but one that, for the first time, made him
realise that it was victory. Before it was work—good work—not perfect
to his ideal standard, but good, what he had looked to do and believed,
although he as no other knew the enormous difficulties, that he would
do. But it was no more than that till her kindling eyes and thrilling
voice had shown it as victory. No longer only a sober, if important
achievement of great mechanical skill and mathematical ability; no
longer even an overcoming of obstacles, an outwitting of enemies, and
surmounting of difficulties, but Success, Victory, the rare, heady
thing.
That night was a memorable one for Michael Annarly. Some at least are
allowed one such. A night when there is little looking before or after,