Success
others. At Galhardy’s it had been to a good many people’s interest to
understand what Michael Annarly meant, and to carry out his lightly
indicated instructions—or to get someone more initiated to interpret
them without disturbing him for explanation. Here the positions were
reversed, and, in spite of the help of Josiah and Nan, he was often
humiliatingly at sea until such time as native intelligence enabled him
to understand the trivial but unfamiliar details.
In the main the work he had to do was trivial and mechanical; so
narrow in circumstance, and so totally unsuited to him as might seem
a lamentable waste of time and ability. He did not think of it that
way: he did not think of it at all; he simply did what was before
him without looking before or after. At least, it was much better
than doing nothing at Hurstbury; and he could do it, which was
something—there were moments when he doubted if he could do anything
else, if he could ever do anything at all again. So he plodded with
the unfamiliar tasks, giving exact attention to the careful drawing of
chair-backs and kindred things, and learning what Robert Barmister’s
brief orders and instructions meant in the course of the monotonous
days. Once or twice he went to museums to make drawings of some
specimen of furniture or detail of ornament which was to be reproduced.
Once or twice he went to the warehouse of a fat Jew dealer for some
similar purpose. The last was unpleasant: he was not used to being
treated as an inferior by men of the Jew’s stamp, and every nerve
in his body resented it; even while he was forced to admit himself
inferior, not only in present position, but also in the special
knowledge which alone was valued here. In the main, however, he had
nothing acutely distasteful to do; there was nothing acute in any way.
Only once was he told to do that from which he shrank as impossible.
It was on a Saturday afternoon. Nan had gone with him to one of the
warehouse rooms to help him look for a Florentine mirror, concerning
which her father had given instructions too slight for him to recognise
it. She found the mirror, and observed, just below it, the iron chest
she had bought the day she met him.
“It’s not sold yet, I see,” she said.
“What is not?” he asked.
She pointed it out to him; he had not seen it before.
“Why!” he exclaimed, “it’s like one the Carsons have.”
He had spoken before he was aware: had he been aware he would
hardly have said it; he had a distaste for even so much as in any
way referring to the past in these days. But the sight of the chest
unexpectedly recalled the facsimile in the hall at Redstoke. He moved
a little nearer as if to examine it, but really to recover himself. He
was much more plainly seeing the other chest and the room; half hall,
half billiard-room, where it stood—where he had told Lady Sibyl of his
achievement that last night.
“They thought theirs the only one in England,” he said for the sake of
saying something, and to cover, even from himself, how much the memory
hurt. “They wanted another, but they have never been able to get one.”
“Who wants?” Barmister’s voice asked quickly. He was at the far end
of the room, and had not been noticed by the other two; had hardly
noticed them either until Michael’s words touched the mainspring of his
interest. “Who is it wants a chest? Write and tell ’em I’ve got one.
Write to-night to them, whoever they are.”
He moved away without waiting for an answer, which was perhaps as well,
as Michael did not speak. The thing was impossible: he could not write
to Lady Sibyl!
“I will write that letter,” Nan said quietly.
For a moment he felt relieved; next minute, however, he said, “Why
should you? It’s good of you to bother, but it doesn’t matter; I am
what I am, I should do the work of it. It is of no consequence really
that it should happen to be these people, I have done with them—with
all that. I shall never come across them again.”
“It matters in that it would make it more difficult for them to deal
about the chest,” Nan answered. “Many people find it difficult to buy
or sell when a friend or acquaintance is concerned in it. I bought the
chest; I would like it sold well, and I think that is more probable if
the writing of the letter was not recognised. Make a drawing, and I
will write the letter.”
And she did, though whether her motive was the business one she alleged
is open to doubt: this, at least, is certain, a service is often
doubled by not seeming to be one.
So the letter was written; and, as a consequence, the chest was
eventually dispatched to Redstoke. And Nan wrote the address-label
for the packing-case, and the letter of advice of its dispatch, and
everything else in connection with it. And in spite of what he had
said, it did matter to Michael; for days after the chance recall of
Lady Sibyl and the past there was an additional greyness in the world,
an additional bitterness in failure and in Fate. But he lived it down;
gradually it died again to apathy and patient acquiescence; but he
avoided all mention of the Carsons’ name, all reference to the chest,
and the price (a high one) for which it was sold.
The price for which Barmister sold things was always high; his profits
may not have been quick, but they were usually large; he seldom
made a mistake in what he bought, and never in what he sold. He was
clearsighted and careful; in some respects careful to meanness; he
never used a penny stamp where a halfpenny would do, or a whole sheet
of paper where a half would serve. He had a way of trimming off the
edges, a hole-and-corner manner of conducting his business very much
at variance with the polished mahogany and plate-glass methods which
obtained in all with which Michael had been concerned heretofore.
In curious contrast too with the large, almost daring quality which
characterised his dealing in some other ways. Probably, like his choice
of living over his work, it was a survival from older times, when
merchants wrote out their own bills, saved wax and firing, and ventured
their thousands in hazards which would make their descendants tremble.
In several respects the life in the old house was related to that past
time; dinner was at two there on Saturdays and Sundays, at half-past
one, the nearest the exigencies of modern working hours would allow,
on other days. There was cold supper late in the evening, often set at
one end of a table—of great beauty—so as not to interrupt what might be
doing at the other end. There was usually something doing, the polite
art of doing nothing was unknown to the father and daughter, and they
had practically no visitors to help them to it. Sometimes Barmister
was busy with books or papers, or examining recently purchased
treasures; sometimes he was at work downstairs in the room with the
dolphin mantelpiece. Usually Nan sewed of an evening, not fancy work
with clicking of pins or twitchings of silks and examining stitches,
but plain sewing; a continuous, complete sort of occupation which yet
allowed of talk when talk was pleasing, very tranquil.
Once only in the time before Christmas did an interruption occur to the
daily order of things, and that was not unexpected, for it was a yearly
happening. Every year on the 5th December, the anniversary of the day
that Josiah first entered the business, the father and daughter went to
spend the evening at the Foregoods. The custom had been begun long ago,
in the time of the young wife, when the means of all were so straitened
that a supper out was a real economy to the guests, and the getting of
anything adequate to their hospitable instincts a real problem to the
host and hostess.
This year Michael was invited to be of the party, and he accepted,
though he did not want to. The last time he had been out by invitation
was when he dined at Redstoke. If no recollection of that had occurred
to incline him against this he would still have had a distaste for
it; he shrank from meeting his fellow-creatures in any but business
relations. He felt at first that he could not go. But he did, for
Josiah asked him personally, and so tentatively that he did not know
how to refuse without hurting. So he accepted, and Josiah’s simple and
evident satisfaction made him feel a little ashamed.
“My brother, George, will be with us,” Josiah told him. “He’s a clever
man, my brother, but I’m afraid you won’t quite like him.”
“Why not?” Michael asked. “I expect I shall.”
“I don’t think you will. He’s raspy, that is what he is; he has had a
lot of trouble, and it has soured him. I dare say it would have soured
me, if I had had it, I expect it would, it certainly has him.”
“Yes?” Michael said.
He did not feel particularly interested to hear of what sort the
trouble was till Josiah said, “He’s a failure, you see.”
At that his attention was caught.
“I dare say I should have been a failure too,” Josiah went on. “I am
sure I should if it had not been for Mr. Barmister; the males in our
family are that kind, they haven’t much gumption, Janet says, and I
think she’s right. I haven’t much, I know; and I don’t think George
can have, though he has grit, plenty of grit, but he’s cantankerous
with it. That is how the trouble began years ago; he fell out with his
employers.”
“What was he by profession?” Michael asked.
“He was at some dye works originally,” his brother answered; “he was
foreman-mechanic—he’s clever in a way—very clever. We both of us had
rather a taste for machinery when we were boys: mine was nothing, only
an interest in wheels and so on; it all went off in clocks.” His eyes
wandered to the works of an old French clock which lay near him; clocks
were his hobby. What he did not know of horology, ancient and modern,
was little worth knowing; he fingered the French clock tenderly now.
“George was not like me,” he said; “much cleverer. He had, I believe he
still has, real ability. He invented an apparatus for ‘dyeing in the
sliver,’ I think they call it, which was a very good thing; a lot of
money has been made out of it.”
“Not by him, I suppose,” Michael said.
“No, that is what he quarrelled with his employers over. They gave
him a five-pound note for his invention. Of course, they weren’t bound
to give him anything, since he was their man, and the thing was done
in their time, but it was likely to be worth a great deal to them, so
he naturally expected something. Five pounds wasn’t much, certainly;
still, I think myself George did the wrong thing about it. He tore it
in half and threw it in the senior partner’s face, telling him what he
thought of him. George uses rather strong language sometimes.”
“That must have been a surprise for the senior partner,” Michael
observed. “What did he do?”
“Dismissed George on the spot,” Josiah answered, and probably would
have gone on to give some further details of the inventor’s history had
not an interruption occurred here.
On the 5th December, Michael had the opportunity of seeing the man
himself. On that evening he and Nan and her father went to Bayswater.
Nan wore her Sunday dress, a dark-coloured stuff dress, inconspicuous
as usual—one never noticed what she wore or thought about her
appearance at all. It was as well, perhaps, that her clothes were not
fragile on this occasion, for it rained when they left the station, and
Barmister did not take a cab. He never thought of indulging in such
luxuries, and Nan accepted the doing without as a matter of course,
nothing else had ever come her way.
The Foregoods’ house was very small, and always seemed smaller on these
annual occasions, because the hall was so narrow that when Nan and her
father were both in it there was little room for Josiah, who opened the
door and had to squeeze himself behind it. This evening, Michael, being