Success
little consciousness of any but the moment, no formed consciousness
of that, only a living it in every nerve and every fibre to the very
full. The Zenith, though a man at the time does not know it—knows
nothing but he is he, and the world, all that is not he, is his for the
grasping. Divine delusion which comes near to fulfilling itself by the
strength of its conviction! Divine moment when the long fight is almost
won and victory, showing clear, is upon the threshold, and the Fates,
won as women by success, offer to add other gifts—all other gifts,
everything, the whole world to be had for the asking! Divine arrogance
when a man, realising himself a self-existing unit and feeling his
power, approaches to the Divinity! A moment such as that in which
Nebuchadnezzar, struck with the sudden realisation of his own ability
and the greatness to which it had achieved, cried, “Behold this great
Babylon which I have builded!”
* * * * *
It was late by the time Michael Annarly reached his rooms; by then he
was thinking quite soberly of the immediate future and of the directors
of Galhardy’s, before whom he should put the final designs for the
aerial torpedo. They knew it was completed, he himself had told them so
in answer to the last of their many inquiries; not set out clear and
in the superfine form presented to boards, but all there, all the real
work done. It was a great admission for him, the first time in all the
while he had worked at the problem, that he owned himself satisfied;
the directors, well aware that his standard would not be below theirs,
were dignifiedly excited. They requested that he would have the final
designs ready to put before them at the next board meeting. He had
undertaken to do so, not omitting to mention that it would be as much
as he could do to be ready, although he had all the notes, statistics,
and details of experiments collected and on the way to be reduced to
order.
It is possible, had he not himself felt some youthful impatience to
demonstrate what he had done, they might have had to wait longer
for the result. He was young enough to have enjoyed inventing some
fictitious reason for delay, by way of reprisal for what he had
suffered in the past from their impatience and from various of their
methods and those that obtained in the great firm. Other men might
think he enjoyed a most unusual, unwise, and unprecedented liberty
of action in Galhardy’s; he himself held no such opinion. He had
rebelled much against what he considered the lack of it, and against
the red-tape which ruled here only less than in a great Government
department. The work had been done in half the time, so he told Lady
Sibyl more than once, had they given him a definite sum of money, the
control of a certain number of men, and the power to get what he wanted
made in other parts of the foundry, and asked no questions and received
no reports till all was finished.
They had, not unnaturally, done no such thing, though by degrees they
allowed him more freedom than had ever been given before. With the
result that, with doubt and hesitation on their part, and fretting
against obstacles and going round them on his, he had worked at a
pace never before approached in Galhardy’s; making many enemies among
superiors, many admirers among inferiors, entirely unconscious of both;
turning out the most astonishing quantity of work, although privately
holding that he was terribly wasting his time. There had been other
aerial torpedoes, and other torpedo-heads of his designing before
this last one, which was to combine the excellencies of all others.
Before now the directors would have been satisfied with the results
that he could have put before them. One of the manifestations of their
impatience to which he most objected was that which made them ready to
be satisfied with a good deal less than perfection in their anxiety
to be first in solving the world’s new problem of warfare. They aimed
at making money, as they would by being first; he aimed at perfection
of work and, where work was concerned, was arrogantly contemptuous of
their aims; so far it was he who had carried the day. But all that was
over now, the work was complete. That evening he had told Lady Sibyl
about it, and received her sympathy and applause; shortly it would be
formally put before the directors, and thereafter would come other,
more prosaic though possibly more tangible, applause.
He was rather late leaving his rooms the next morning. Said rooms were
situated on the outskirts of the town which, though it bears another
geographical name on the map, might really be called Galhardy’s.
Living in that part of the town was disproportionately expensive; men
of a certain standing, younger sons of good families and protégés of
the directors put into the great firm, had their rooms there; as they
were of one class (often of one family) and that a class which is
expected to pay disproportionately—and not look at the change—prices
ranged high. Annarly was not of that class, and his original instinct,
inherited from respectable, but by no means wealthy, city people, was
not to pay outrageously for what was not worth it, and to look at the
change. Nevertheless, he lived in the approved precincts and paid the
demanded price with the best grace; he reckoned he got something for
it—he was counted in as one of the others.
When he left his rooms that morning, the other men, though not all
strikingly punctual, were already gone about what they were pleased to
call their work. It was decidedly late, but he had not felt inclined
to get up; he had hardly slept at all till after other people were
well astir. He often did not at that time; the fury with which he
habitually worked, taken in conjunction with the nervous fret of much
of his present life, was beginning to tell on him. A man cannot work
ceaselessly at advanced brain-work all day and wear himself to pieces
all night rebelling against the impediments in his path and devising
ways of surmounting them, without having to pay for it. The moment of
victory and cessation is liable to be the one when Nature begins to
think of sending in her bill.
Not that it mattered Annarly being late; no one concerned with
time-keeping at Galhardy’s would have ventured to comment on the fact
at this stage of his career, whatever might have been the inclination
earlier. With no more than a careless nod to those he chanced to
meet, he walked into his own room. He had his own room now, and had
had it some time; he said he could do double the work if he were
secured solitude and freedom from interruption. It had taken six
months’ persistent argument, application, and persuasion to win the
concession; no one of his standing in the firm had had it before; but
in the end it was won—with the ill-will of several, and he did double
the work and was satisfied. To-day, when he went in, he found several
letters and papers waiting for him; there was only one of interest, a
little note from Lady Sibyl; a few words of rejoicing in the success,
rather warmer and more unguarded than those spoken last night. It had
been written almost directly after he had left, while the glow of
enthusiasm was still on her. More than once before, after they had
spent an evening together, he had received such a note from her, one
which, as it were, carried on the talk just a point further, and said
just a little more than she herself ventured to say. Not of matters of
heart; rather those intimacies of soul and mind and the confidences
of sympathy and sentiment which give the fascination to friendship
between men and women, and sometimes land it elsewhere. Annarly had the
letters, some half dozen of them. He meant to destroy them, not that
there was anything incriminating in them, but they seemed to him too
delicately private to be fairly kept. As yet he had not done so; he had
the writer’s permission to keep them till the end of the year, on the
condition that all were burnt then.
For a minute or two he looked over some of the past ones, standing
by the fire to do it. He sometimes, as to-day, wasted nearly half an
hour before he began work, and some of his compeers in the great firm
knew it. It is true he usually worked one, two, or three hours after
they left off, frequently forgot the existence of lunch, and always
did in a day three times as much as they could at the best. In a vague
way some of them knew that too, but the half hour in the morning made
more impression. At length, however, he put the letters away; he had
the not uncommon habit of keeping private papers among business ones,
though in this case they, in a long envelope, were put in a drawer by
themselves. Or, rather, with no other company than the pistol he had
taken to carrying last winter, when he was working late and coming home
by lonely ways at a time that he had been threatened by some workmen
whose dismissal he had procured for incompetency.
The letters locked up, he set seriously to work.
He had not been at it much more than half an hour, and had not got
beyond the stage of finding it acutely distasteful and being fully
persuaded that he was physically and mentally incapable of doing it,
when an interruption occurred. He looked round impatiently: in spite
of his conviction that he did not want to work, he did not herald
the momentary respite with pleasure. The impatience was considerably
mixed with surprise when the boy who had knocked announced, “Sir James
Shannon.”
Sir James was one of the younger directors, a very rich, a very able
and, in private life, a haughtily exclusive man. He was the one of the
whole body most inimical to Annarly; indeed, it was only his clear
perception of the importance of keeping abilities which rival firms
were only too ready to buy which prevented him from open condemnation
of the man and all his works. That Sir James should come thus was
unprecedented; he had no social dealings with him, and, unlike some
other of the directors, never asked for unofficial (and unremunerated)
opinions on scientific or technical matters in which he was interested.
Any other reason for his coming was difficult to imagine; Annarly was
at a loss to understand it. The reason why Brett, secretary to the
board, should accompany him was equally difficult to guess. Something
warned him that it was not favourable, and instinctively he received
the visitor with a little less deference and a little more assurance
than he usually kept for this one of the directors.
The reception was not without effect; Sir James, who had ignored the
greeting on entering and shown a very marked and considerable distance
of manner, altered a little.
“Mr. Annarly,” he said coldly, but with courtesy, “I regret that a
very unpleasant business brings me here this morning. There are some
questions I am compelled to put to you; I must ask you to answer them
fully and plainly.”
“If I can,” Annarly said, and swiftly reviewed the different matters
which, from time to time, he had not communicated to the directors. And
again instinct and Brett’s hardly veiled satisfaction warned him that
the thing was serious.
He pushed forward a wide-seated chair and invited Sir James to be
seated, more as if he were receiving a friend at home than as if he
were face to face with a difficult situation.
Sir James sat, but it was his only concession. Brett, ignored, and
resenting it, took a small chair beyond his chief and watched silently.
“It has come to the knowledge of the directors,” Sir James began, “that
you have recently entered into negotiations with certain foreign firms
for the sale to them of inventions worked out here, and consequently
the property of this firm.”
Annarly lifted his head quickly. “Seeing that the directors——” he began.