Success
perhaps pity, or the shrugged shoulders of superior wisdom. In the
circumstances, it is not surprising that he had no inclination to
attend the meetings of any society that autumn and winter, although
doing so was his sole chance of meeting men of kindred tastes.
“You don’t know what they are,” he told Nan once; “you would not have
thought I and my affairs could interest them or matter to them, but I
can tell you they do, a deal more than any of the subjects they are
supposed to care for. I have seen a deal more eagerness and enthusiasm
over the question of who is going to get the chair of engineering at
Muddleborough-cum-Pudley than over a discussion on the effect of torque
on the structure of metals. That was the subject, by the way, on which
old B—— got so angry with me. He was wrong, and he didn’t forgive
me for showing it. My observations have since received practical
application, when, I understand, he fathered the theories he condemned
when they were mine; but he has not forgiven me any the more for that.
Nor has he forgiven me Galhardy’s; he had a nephew there, rather a
waster, a junior and always will be, but the old man was awfully proud
of it. He did not like my situation there. He will like my present
situation; and, owing to the nephew, and other circumstances, he and
all his friends, following and satellites, will have known all there is
to know about it, and a good deal more besides, almost as soon as you
did.”
“That is one of the reasons why you should go to meetings where you
will see him and his friends,” Nan said. “They cannot know the truth,
no one knows that wholly, and if you are never seen they will think you
are ashamed to show yourself because the worst they imagine is true.”
“I don’t care what they think.”
“Then go,” she urged. “If they and their opinion don’t matter, why mind
going among them?”
“Because they are a lot of rule-of-thumb, time-serving place-hunters,
and their ceaseless talk about nothing wearies me.”
“They can’t all be that,” she protested; “there must be some who are
worth meeting.”
He admitted there were. “There are some men worth going a long way to
meet,” he admitted; “they are not the ones who talk much, or who are
there often; still, usually one happens on one of them.”
“Then for their sake it is worth going.”
“Why? I don’t want to hear about the work that is worth while; I don’t
want to hear what other men are doing, or what there is to be done. I
have nothing to do with it now; I have done with it, or, rather, it
with me.”
“Perhaps so,” she agreed, and then began to ask about the chances of
picking up draughtsman’s work at the meetings of any of the societies.
He said it might happen, more likely at the technical, though possibly
even at the purely learned or academic ones. She did not in so many
words urge him to go on that account, but he saw the connection.
“You want me to take up this work, if I can get it?” he said. He did
not want it himself; how little he wanted no one knew. It had always
seemed to him the veriest threads and remnants of his profession, a
dreary monotony that led nowhere, more utterly distasteful even than
the drawing of chair-backs and writing Robert Barmister’s letters. But
Nan wished it; she, in her ignorance, seemed to think something of
it, and she had been good to him—so good that he had not the heart to
disappoint her by telling her how poor and meagre it really was.
“Very well,” he said, “I’ll go to-night. Perhaps I shall be able to
pick up a job.”
And he went. And though he did not pick up a job, Nan was satisfied,
for when he came back he told her of a discussion there had been in
which it was clear he had taken a part, forgetting, in his anxiety
to establish a point, his own equivocal position. No doubt he had
remembered it before and afterwards; no doubt some present had helped
him to do so; and no doubt the position had been trying enough (in
spite of his declaration of indifference) to one of his acutely
perceptive temperament and overstrained nerves. But the stirring of
former interests, and the response to the appeal of familiar terms,
were equally real. The next time Nan suggested he should go to a
meeting, he went with less urging.
That time it happened he met Johnson, a member of the firm of patent
agents employed by Galhardy’s. He had come across him a good deal
during the latter part of the time he was at the great foundries,
having more than once given advice, unofficially, on technical subjects
in connection with patents. Possibly Johnson remembered this now;
possibly, also, he knew enough of the methods of the firm to suspend
judgment on Michael’s affairs. At all events he showed no inclination
to avoid his company.
“What are you doing now?” he asked casually in the course of talk.
“For a living? Making drawings of chair-backs for a relative.”
The tone was careless, and Johnson thought it a jest; but Michael
assured him to the contrary.
“Fact,” he said, still speaking lightly. “Don’t you believe I can do
it? I can; I draw rather well.”
“Yes,” Johnson said—he had suddenly seen the speaker’s eyes, and saw
that in them at utter variance with the light tone and manner.
“Why chair-backs?” he asked. “Why not something more in line with your
previous work?”
“Because they offered first,” Michael answered truthfully, but still
so carelessly as to almost leave a doubt about the truth. “I’m not
particular, anything that offers will do for me. I’d do chair-legs,
if they were wanted, or geometrical patterns for linoleum, or machine
drawings, anything.”
“Is that a fact?” Johnson said, and then added, with just a trace of
hesitancy, “would you do our drawings?”
For half a second Michael shrank; the instinct to decline, to turn from
this contact with the work of the past, still more from the proffered
help of a man from it, was tremendous. But swiftly came the thought of
Nan, who expected him to get it, who expected something to come of it.
“Certainly, if you’ll give me any,” he said, and was grateful that the
other kindly refrained from apologising for the nature of the work, and
the poverty of the pay.
In that way Michael received his first draughtsman’s work. It was
poorly paid, but, as a compensation, there was a good deal of it, and
always likely to be. The Patent Office requires that all drawings of
machinery and processes for which a patent is applied for should be of
a certain size and fineness, and on a particular kind of paper. It is
the patent agents’ business to get such made from the original drawings
of the patentee, naturally employing whom they think fit to do it,
and paying him a much smaller sum than their client pays them. Such
drawing is very monotonous, and in a sense mechanical; demanding the
nicest accuracy and attention to detail, without allowing any scope
for individuality. It was particularly distasteful to one of Michael’s
nature. Nevertheless, he did it when he could get it. If he saw little
chance of arriving at anything better that way, it might at least
ultimately be a method of earning a living. The principal difficulty
he found in connection with it, was to refrain from pointing out to
the patentee the technical flaws which he sometimes perceived in the
invention thus brought to his notice.
Nan once asked him why he did not point them out.
“It wouldn’t be fair to Johnson,” he said. “The clients might resent
their drawings being sent to a man who was able to find out the faults,
and, consequently, they would judge, able to annex valuable ideas if he
had a mind to—especially a man with a reputation like mine. Besides,
what does it matter? It doesn’t matter to me if they are wrong.”
“No,” Nan said, but she thought that it did; that underneath there
would always be something in him to which error of that sort mattered,
and problems appealed. And probably she was right; at all events, in a
little he glanced up from the drawing he was at work upon. It was one
for an invention which would be rendered valueless by such a flaw—the
result, most likely, of the inventor’s ignorance of a small and obscure
law.
“I tell you what I might do here,” he said; “I might write out
that law, put it so that anyone could apply it for himself to this
invention, and send a copy of it to the patentee anonymously. If he is
any good, he will at once see what he has done, and set it right before
it is too late. I think I’ll do that.”
He did: but since it was done anonymously he naturally did not
hear the result; and, his interest having suddenly burnt out, he
never troubled to inquire if the specification was altered, or the
application for the patent withdrawn.
This was in February. He had been more than three months in Soho then,
and seemed, so far as one could judge, likely to be many more; working
for Barmister in the day and drawing out other men’s inventions at
night. Almost, it seemed, as if he had sunk into obscurity never to
reappear; certainly to be as far as ever from any return to his old
life and work. Towards the end of the month, it is true, he came into
something like momentary touch with it. It was when he met Blake, of
Blake and Kingswell.
Blake and Kingswell were the people who supplied oil to Galhardy’s:
Michael had seen a certain amount of the junior partner during the
last part of his time with the firm. The new steel process he had
worked out was for an oil-hardened metal, and as a consequence he had
had several interviews with Blake; when, besides discussing qualities
of oil and kindred business details, they had talked of enough other
things to form a favourable opinion of each other. But when he caught
sight of the man in the City, where he had gone on some business for
Barmister, his instinct was to avoid him. However, as it chanced, he
was recognised before he more than thought of doing it.
“Hullo!” Blake said. “You in town? What are you doing?”
“I live in town,” Michael answered—he had no inclination to speak of
the chair-backs.
“Consulting work?” Blake asked. “Very wise; much better worth your
while than anything else. I always thought you were rather wasted at
Galhardy’s.”
Michael said nothing. There were draughtsmen who called themselves
consulting engineers, and he had a sudden distaste to owning himself a
complete failure to this man who still thought him otherwise.
They walked on together for a while, speaking of various technicalities
in connection with Blake’s business, notably some trouble there was
with the filter presses in the oil works.
As Michael listened, the old instinct stirred. At first he only
listened, but soon it was more; the familiar names and turns of thought
called up the old attention. Without being aware of it, he was making
inquiries and suggestions with the absorbed attention and keen insight
he always had for such things.
At the corner of the street Blake said, “Couldn’t you manage to come
down and have a look at the presses? Our works aren’t very far from
town. We must have an expert opinion. I’d sooner have yours than any
man’s I know. Can you do it?”
Again, as when Johnson offered him the draughtsman’s work, Michael
hesitated. He could not himself have told why: not from any doubt of
his ability to do what was required, or any dislike of it, nor yet
from any uncertainty as to payment. He had none of these. Yet for the
second he drew back from the idea; from embarking on anything, taking
any step, however sure and desirable, out of the humble, present way.
The sensation was mastered almost as quickly as it arose; he said he
should be glad to give an opinion, and fixed a time for the visit of
inspection when his absence was least likely to inconvenience Barmister.
It was a small matter really, this visit to the oil works; little more