Success
He returned to his paper, but over it he continued to watch her as she
went on with her needlework.
“You haven’t made much of a job of Michael yet,” he observed at length.
She laughed. “In twelve months? Why, it takes Fate, with all the powers
of circumstance and providence at command, three score years and ten to
do that for most people!”
“H’m!” he said, and frowned thoughtfully. “I understood that was what
you wanted to do; I thought it was.”
“I know you did, though I never said so. I’m not sure that it was
myself. I’m not really sure what making a job of a person would be, or
if anyone could do it; I almost think not.”
“I certainly think not,” he said emphatically, “and I’ve always thought
not. But I thought you were bent on it—making a success of him, getting
him back to the position he slipped from, and all that. He don’t seem
to have got far on the journey.”
“Not very,” she admitted.
Barmister regarded her from under bent brows. “Don’t you want him to
get back?” he asked. “If you don’t, why did you send him off on the
steamship business? And if you do, why did you have him back again?
What do you want?”
“I want him to do what will turn out best,” she answered, ignoring the
influence assigned to her, and which in a way was correct. In a sense,
she had sent Michael, and had recalled him, though not by conscious
exertion of power, only by seeing it wisest and showing him it was so.
“Do you mind him being here again?” she asked, looking up from her
work. “I thought you did not mind. I thought, when we talked about it
before he definitely gave up with the shipping people, you were rather
glad than not to have him come back.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” Barmister said, “it suits me well enough.
I’ve nothing against him; he’s useful to me, in fact, he got to be a
deal more useful before he went than I knew or should have believed
if anyone had told me. So far as I’m concerned, it’s all right to
have him back; he’s settled in just as before, no swelled head from
his late flutter. I dare say there wasn’t so much to swell it, if the
truth was known. The thing that beats me is where you come in. If you
are satisfied, I suppose you’ve got something out of it, though it
certainly isn’t the satisfaction of making a job of him, for that’s not
done. What is it you do want? Him to do what’s best, you say—but why?
Where do you personally come in?”
She considered a moment, then she said, “I don’t quite know. I just
want it, that’s all, I think.”
Barmister said “Humph,” and returned to his paper; but he was not
entirely satisfied. Not dissatisfied as to her honesty, he knew she
was speaking the truth; she always did, her words coincided with her
thoughts and opinions as nearly as she could make them, so nearly that
strangers, used to the less accuracy of ordinary speech, sometimes
mistook them. Barmister recognised that she meant what she said,
no more and no less; she really did not know why she wanted this
thing, but, he felt, that need not prevent the existence of a reason,
unrecognised by her, of which he should not approve. He had a high
opinion of her judgment, unusually high in one of the older generation
for one of the younger. But she was a woman, and a young one, and in
one particular the judgment of such is not to be relied on; while the
quiet persistence of this one was a fact on which he, at least, could
rely. In the past, it is true, he had usually allowed her to choose
for herself, and it had usually answered; she had chosen wisely or
else, when very occasionally she had not, had gained as much in wisdom
learnt. But this case was different: if a mistake were made here, it
was one without remedy, and in the deciding there was a personal
influence to remember, another person concerned—a person with brains
but no money, with abilities and, presumably, ambitions, and moods.
An utterly incalculable person to Barmister: one whose actions and
decisions he could not foresee, but against whom he felt there might
be need to guard. And if guard, then at once. Death is an event the
date of which no man can foretell, but the nature of it in his own case
this one could very well. It would be such, his doctor had warned him,
as would give time for no last words or death-bed arrangements; in
ordinary health one minute, the weakened heart slowing down for death
the next.
“Fetch me my pen,” he said, breaking a long silence, “I want to write a
letter. I’ve half a mind to alter my will.”
Nan fetched it, and the letter was written without further remark from
either of them. Afterwards they talked of other things, business and
their usual interests, until Michael came in.
Michael had been to Hurstbury. He would not have chosen to go, seeing
it was Nan’s birthday, but his father had not been well, and he felt
that he ought. Going home was not especially agreeable since his return
from the Clyde, for that return had been a considerable disappointment
to the Annarlys. Since it they had come to definitely accept him as one
of those—to be found here and there in families—concerning whom the
tactful do not inquire; men of some brilliancy and no staying power,
who promise much at the beginning but in the end have to be kept or
frequently propped up by the more solid members. They did not express
these sentiments to Michael, but he was aware of them, and went to
Hurstbury now only when he thought his father was dull, or not well, or
for some reason in need of his company. In all other respects things
were somewhat as they were before he went away. He had less drawing to
do for the patent agents. During his absence the work had been given
to someone else, and could not on his return be immediately given to
him again. On the other hand, he was called on consultations more than
he had been during the barren months of the spring and summer; not
very frequently certainly, and the occasions were neither important
nor lucrative, still they occurred now and again. For the rest he was
Barmister’s man as before.
“—I’m your father’s clerk,” he said to Nan; “a tolerable one by this
time, I hope—it isn’t a waste if I am; as well to do one thing as
another, if one does it well. Really I think I’d as soon do this
as anything—which, perhaps, is a good thing, since there seems no
competition to ask me to do anything else.”
But, as it happened, in the course of time he was asked to do something
else. It was not a great nor specially suitable offer; one which, in
earlier days, no one would have ventured to make to him, and which,
even quite recently, he would hardly have seriously considered. It came
from old Milligen.
Milligen came to London on business for a few days that winter. Coming
to London was an event in his life, and one which, in spite of age
and infirmities, he made the most of: transacting business, buying a
present for his wife, and going to a music-hall in company with George
Foregood with the serious attention of a man who has a good deal to get
through.
Part of Milligen’s business lay with George: that part was transacted
in Miss Janet’s sitting-room—not the best room, there was no fire
there except on state occasions; also, Miss Foregood would not have
admitted George and a business friend, no matter if he had been a
member of the house of Rothschild, to that apartment for commercial
purposes. She let them have what she called the sitting-room and
betook herself to the kitchen, where she was quite happy and very
busy; taking care, however, before she left, to remove the plush
table-cloth from the centre dining-table. This removal did not offend
Mr. Milligen, he preferred the cloth off; less because he felt more at
liberty in dropping ash and setting down a damp glass on the American
cloth under-cover than because he found a comfortable homeliness in it,
as he did in the horsehair arm-chair in which he sat. He was at home
with these things, and much preferred Miss Janet’s house to his hotel.
Some other people might also; it was cleaner, if nothing else. But
he would have preferred it to any hotel: the Carlton, Claridge’s, or
any other. He could almost fancy himself at home as he and George sat
here and smoked, their glasses beside them, their papers before them,
the air hazy with tobacco, and the window tight shut. It was exactly
the atmosphere in which to talk business, slowly, with opportunity
for digressions and wary goings about the subject, and long tales of
past deals, full savouring it as old men, whose business is their
pleasure—love.
George understood the methods; indeed, he really preferred them to any
others. He had some points in common with old Milligen, at all events,
more than he had with any of the other men with whom he had tried to
deal about his invention. If the old man had the money and enterprise
necessary there was a greater chance of George coming to terms with him
than there was with any of the financiers and wealthy directors with
whom he had, from time to time, been in negotiation.
But only a part of Milligen’s business lay directly with George;
another part lay indirectly, and it was that which touched Michael.
George had, in the first instance, introduced Michael to the warp dyer;
it was he now who was requested to bring him to an interview. The
interview took place in the evening, Michael could not get away before,
and in Miss Janet’s sitting-room, by choice of all parties.
Michael, not aware that the lady of the house, in company with Josiah
and a clock he was anxious to take to pieces, had retired to the
kitchen, presented himself at the appointed time. The small room was
by that time sufficiently suffocating, and he chose a seat as near
the window as he could, hoping that, tight shut though it was, enough
draught would creep through to keep him awake. The two elder men, quite
unaffected by the atmosphere, drew up to the fire and filled their
pipes and their glasses, remarking that the night was raw cold.
When these and various courteous preliminaries were over and the pipes
were alight, Milligen observed, as if now opening the business of the
evening, “I’m an old man, Mr. Annarly——”
“Oldish,” corrected George, who was a year older.
“Old,” repeated Milligen decidedly, “and not getting younger. I’m not
what I used to be, Mr. Annarly; this deuced gout plays Old Harry with
a man, and doctor says—and I don’t suppose he’s lying this time—it’s
goin’ to do it more, a deal more, unless I take care. Well, I don’t
mind telling you, takin’ care isn’t in my line; I shouldn’t bother
about it, not me—but there’s the missus to reckon with. You don’t know
my missus?”
Michael said he had not the pleasure. George snorted; not that he had
anything against Mrs. Milligen, whom he only knew slightly, but he held
the whole genus “missus” in a contempt almost equalled by that which he
had for those who talk of pleasure in connection with them.
Milligen paid him no attention. “You’d like her,” he said to Michael;
“she’s the right sort. But that’s neither here nor there; the thing
is, what’s going to be done about me?”
Michael, though he was a little mystified by the question, gave it
consideration; he always gave matters brought to his notice grave,
careful, and painstaking attention, even when to most people they
were manifestly absurd or quite beyond his scope. It is true, when he
found them so himself, which he did occasionally when others would
not, he sometimes dismissed them with a curtness humiliating to those
who presented them. At the present moment he considered Milligen’s
situation as if it had been his own, and as such began mentally to
devise schemes for dealing with it.
The old man interrupted before he had developed one far enough to speak
of it.
“It was all right before Cooper died,” he said, “or, maybe, not so