Success
Milligen’s slighting reference to the council, the cheque it contained.
He did not feel himself insulted by it, nor did any question of
inadequacy trouble him; it would see him through at least the
preliminary stages of patenting his automatic switch for alternating
currents; that mattered so much more than anything else to him now that
he never gave anything else a thought.
The working out and perfecting the automatic switch invention had been
the one tolerable thing since he had been on the Clyde. It had been
done in spare hours, and was almost purely theoretical, to work at it
practically had been extremely difficult. Still, the mere fact of being
again among machines, in well-appointed shops and great engine-rooms,
was very stimulating to him. His mind, long fallow, responded eagerly
to the stimulant, and many possibilities and ideas were generating
and evolving besides the one of the switch which was already near
perfection. Possibly the company for which he worked, had they been
consulted, would have said he had no business to develop any ideas but
theirs and those connected with their work. But it would have been
quite useless for either he or they to try and limit thus; placed in
such circumstances and surroundings the conception and evolution of
ideas were as inevitable with him as the inhaling and exhaling of
breath in the air. And after all, the company had little to complain
of; they had bought him very considerably: bought him body and soul, it
seemed to him, and every bit of liberty too.
The position was all he had foreseen and worse, though less, perhaps,
because it was different from what he had anticipated than because
he had not quite realised what it would be in the working out. He
said little about it; he had no one at hand to say anything to, for
he lived an absolutely isolated life, associating with no one and
working ceaselessly, in season and out of season, in the old insatiable
way—with an additional touch of that desperation which tradition
ascribes to the damned, who strive so to keep the devils at bay. He
wrote to Nan occasionally: always about the work, the mechanical and
constructive difficulties, the ideas in connection with them, and other
ideas which came to him. Principally he wrote of the last, it was the
realm of faerie to him, the dream-world wherein the artist-souled, even
mathematical and machine artists, comfort themselves for the hardness
of the way. And when he wrote of these his letters, quite impersonal,
sometimes mere engineering treatises, were happy. But in spite of
these and in spite of the tone of his other letters and all that was
left out of them, Nan had more than an idea of the situation and the
almost unendurable fret of it. She did not refer to it in her replies,
she never touched on what he did not tell her; but she did her best to
infuse into her letters some little of the patience and courage which
might make the position tenable. And in a measure she succeeded; he
told her so when in September he came to London on business for the
firm.
It was only a flying visit, with no more than an hour or two in Soho,
but during the time the truth was out. It was bound to be; Nan would
have divined it, if he had said nothing; and, for the life of him, he
could not have helped saying something.
“It doesn’t matter talking to you,” he said; “it doesn’t seem like
whining. I suppose I ought not to whine; I suppose I knew what was
coming, but—sometimes I think I can’t stand it!”
Nan nodded. “Does Mr. McFarline take the interest in the work that was
threatened?” she asked.
“McFarline? Oh, yes. He’s a small part though; he and his interest
were a mere figure of speech. He does take an interest, intelligent
on the whole; he’s a man of sense and ability, though Scotch of the
Scotch. You know what that is to work with—or, perhaps, you don’t; it’s
the devil if you are a Southerner and the work is such as calls for a
margin to handle efficiently. But McFarline’s nothing, little more than
the name they put on the whole system.”
“And that is——?”
“Report, report, report. Suspected, watched at every turn. Oh, not
obviously; they are decent about it on the whole, all the bosses
pretend there is no suspecting; they are quite gentlemen; all the
underlings, having less manners and nothing to gain by me being there,
make it perfectly obvious. Why, sometimes I doubt if a greaser would
trust me with his pocket-knife!”
Nan could guess how he felt, how such morbid imaginings must arise.
“Isn’t that last just a little unfair to the men?” she suggested.
“I suppose it is,” he answered. “Of course it is really. But the whole
thing gets on my nerves when I sit alone and stew and stew over it; I
don’t see it fairly. I am a silly ass, I know that. But it is pretty
awful.”
She knew that it must be, and led him to talk of it.
“It doesn’t sound much reduced to words,” he told her, “you can’t tell
from that quite how it works out; the whole atmosphere and feeling
is no mean part of it. Of course, it is frightfully hampering—and
humiliating too—to have to supply duplicate copies of all notes,
drawings, designs, and everything else to the chief draughtsman. I have
to do that; and he has to, or thinks he has to, go into them all and
try and understand the why and the wherefore. He can’t, and he gets
huffy about it, and I get so exasperated that I feel I shall murder
him one day. Then, all orders for plant have to be put through the
superintendent of shops, with detailed drawings of every one. That, you
know, is hopeless. If you give a man any sort of position you ought not
to expect that; still, I must own the superintendent is pretty decent.
I couldn’t have gone on at all, if he hadn’t been. But perhaps the
thing I most mind, over and above the general feeling, is the weekly
report. I have to supply a full report of everything done, thought
of, about to be done or thought of, and the rest to the secretary
every week. And he——. Well, he’s not a supercilious sneak like Brett
certainly, but he’s a fish—a sort of machine that registers things
by ticks, observes the omission of a comma, and must have everything
foursquare, reduced to set terms, and pigeon-holed for reference. Think
of it when it’s ideas, when it’s inventions, possibilities, nebulous
things that may never become facts! Think of subtracting last week’s
work from this, dividing the result by the week before, and giving the
answer in pounds sterling!”
Nan could think of it, but could think of little to say to mitigate it.
“You see,” he admitted later on, “I was used to having a freer hand
than many people; I know now that I had it at Galhardy’s, though I used
to go on about their red-tape. I don’t seem as if I could work without
freedom. After all, if one does work that others don’t, if one is
expected to turn out higher-class work and more than the average, one
ought not to be tied down to average conditions. That is what I used to
think—what I still think. But now I haven’t even average conditions, or
anything approaching them.”
Again Nan could only sympathise, and afterwards induce him to talk of
the inventions and ideas which were his consolation. He responded to
the sympathy, and told her about them so long as time held: explained
how he had taken out a provisional patent for the automatic switch, and
what must be done next, and might be done eventually. It was not till
just as he was going that they referred again to his present situation;
then Nan put the question plainly:
“Shall you stop?”
“I mayn’t have the chance,” he answered. “Brett is staying with
McFarline now; I didn’t know till lately that he knew the little beast.
I don’t think he does know him well, or see him often.”
“Will it make a difference?”
“May. He’ll clear me out, if he can. One thing, I don’t much care if he
does. It would settle the question of whether or not I could go on with
it, wouldn’t it? I shouldn’t care if it were not for——”
He broke off, he was standing on the doorstep when he spoke, and he
glanced up at the old house.
She followed the direction of his thought. “If it were not for coming
back here?” she said. “You remember what I said about that? There is
always a place for you here; you must always come. Besides, I believe
my father would be glad. I think he misses you.”
He looked at her a little incredulously. “It’s good of you to say it,”
he said.
“I would not, if I did not think it true,” she answered.
And he knew it, and found it rather comforting.
He found it comforting in the time which followed, when, it must be
owned, he stood in some need of comfort. If the situation was difficult
before, it became a hundred times worse now. He wrote of it fairly
frankly to her, after their talk it was only natural, also it was some
relief, though he did not tell her all or nearly all of the fresh
troubles and humiliations which beset him. Brett, though he had not
convinced all the directors that they were better without the services
of Michael Annarly, had succeeded in inducing so great a degree of
uneasiness and suspicion on their part that the position was almost
untenable. What little Michael’s personality may have done to mitigate
former suspicions, and what beneficial influence the already obvious
value of his work may have had, were a great deal more than done away
with by the warnings given (and very likely at least partly believed)
by Brett during his Scotch visit. The opinion held after that was such
that, had it been held earlier, Michael would as soon have been offered
the Chancellorship of the Exchequer as employment with the company. As
it was though, in the face of what he clearly could do for them, some
were in favour of a continuation, others were for a termination of his
services on any terms, and all were for a policy of such care that the
conditions were about unendurable, and with most men would have had the
same result as dismissal.
Still Michael remained, doggedly remained, only telling Nan a part of
the bitterness of his soul. And she, by inference and deduction as much
as anything, divined the rest, and hesitated whether to advise him to
hold on or to give up. At last she wrote, “_Why not come back? I do
not believe you will be able to work out anything worth having under
the present conditions. Perhaps by and by you may be able to do the
engine for these people or some others, but now it seems as if it were
impossible, only a waste of time to try. Come back here._”
CHAPTER XV
It was the evening of Nan’s birthday, and she and her father sat
together by the fire in the companionable silence possible to people
who are good friends. Good friends they were: understanding each other
unusually well for parent and child, and, more unusual still, realising
and being content to take on trust the great deal that could not be
understood. That evening, however, there was a question in the mind of
one concerning the other. Barmister, absorbed though he appeared to be
in his paper, let his eyes wander now and again to Nan, quietly sewing.
He was thinking of her birthday last year, or, rather, of that which
she had asked of him then. It was the one request she had made of him
which he thought foolish, so far as she herself was concerned. He had
thought so at the time, though he granted it; he thought so now. But he
was by no means sure she was yet convinced she had asked for what was
valueless to her; it crossed his mind that it might be he who had made
the mistake in granting it. He rather wished he knew what she really
did think about it.
“Are you satisfied?” he asked suddenly.—“Satisfied with the present you
asked for last year, or are you disappointed?”
She looked up. “No,” she said, “I’m not disappointed at all.”