Success
wrong. He was a sharp lad, though groovy. He was my foreman—he’d been
with me more’n twenty years; you saw him when you came to my place—had
a red beard and a slight cast in one eye. He died this autumn:
pneumonia, taken off all in a pop; he’s a serious loss to me.”
He sucked at his pipe sadly, and George sucked in sympathy;
appreciation of and regret for a foreman was a sentiment he approved.
But he did not expect Michael to appreciate it from the same point of
view; he never made the mistake of ranking him with himself nor yet
with old Milligen. By some deduction of his own he classed him among
the aristocrats (there are other aristocracies besides those of birth
or money), and he knew such did not look at things as he did. Also,
his experience was that they, whether patient or impatient according
to nature and circumstances, did not understand or appreciate long
digressions.
“Get on, old cock,” he admonished his friend, “get it out.”
“I’ll get it out my own way,” Milligen replied shortly, then, turning
to Michael, he continued with increased sadness, “I’ve no son, and my
sons-in-law are pudding heads. I’m not going to put money into the
pockets of any sons-in-law, not much! Have them round my works—not me!
Besides, they don’t know anything about dyeing. But I want someone,
that’s the point. I want a partner. Not a partner in the ordinary
sense of the word, one that puts a deal o’ money in and wants a deal
more out, and fools round and wants all his own new-fangled way. But a
youngish man with guts and gumption; one that’s content to work the old
ways, and at the same time keeps his eye open for the new and puts in
a thing here and a thing there, as means and opportunity allow. That
place is lookin’ up, the bit of work you did for me has made a new man
of it; we’re going to do something yet. But I’m not what I was, and I’m
goin’ to be less, and I can’t do it single-handed.”
His voice dropped over the last, and he turned to his glass for
consolation. George looked sideways at Michael; his face was not less
surly than usual, but his fierce eyes showed a little anxiety. He was
not moved by pathos; there was only one thing he cared for in the
world, that was his invention; an acute observer might have fancied now
Michael was in some way connected with it and its chance of success.
“He’s thinking of taking it on,” he could not refrain from saying,
nodding towards Milligen as he did so; “my invention, you know.”
“I’m thinking of taking on dyeing in the sliver,” Milligen
corroborated. “That is, if we can come to an arrangement. You’ll say
it’s a funny thing for a man that’s got more’n he can manage as it
is to go out and get more, but there it is. I always had a fancy for
breakin’ out that way; it goes as naturally with warp dyeing as bread
with cheese. The chance has come; you’ve helped to put me on my legs
again; George here’s got the dodge that’s wanted, I’m not goin’ to turn
my back on it. Blessed if I am, gout or no gout!”
Michael agreed heartily, and congratulated George on being near to
making satisfactory terms for his invention.
“You know all about it?” Milligen asked. “What d’you think of it? I’ll
want you to give me a report by’n-by, if you will, two guinea job. I’m
not taking a pig in a poke.”
Michael, a little embarrassed by the presence of his first
acquaintance, the inventor, replied that he would, of course, be
pleased to report, if it were agreeable to both. However, as he soon
saw, there was no need for him to feel any embarrassment, both were
quite comfortable about it.
“You’d better hear what we’re thinkin’ of,” old Milligen said; “you’d
best hear the whole. I’m not buying this thing of George; I’ve not
got the money for that, I’m no syndicate—and it isn’t royalties and
all that. The notion is, he should work it with me, the sliver dyeing
to be worked in along with the warp dyeing, profits on the whole to
be shared, proportions not agreed upon yet, but they will be to the
satisfaction of all parties.”
“I see,” Michael said, “Mr. Foregood will be a sort of junior partner,
the man you were looking for?”
He privately thought George was not the man he would himself have
looked for in that situation. Apart from his age, he had many
disqualifications, not least among them his obstinate and difficult
temper, and the distrustful temperament which made him very unfit to
deal with either new ideas or his fellow-men.
Possibly old Milligen shared these sentiments. “No,” he said bluntly,
and somewhat as if the person mentioned had not been present, “he’s
not the man I’m lookin’ for. He’s the man that’s got the apparatus
for dyeing in the sliver, and a good enough apparatus too, if I know
anything about it. And he’s the man that’s goin’ to look after it, if
I branch out that way, as I’m thinkin’ of doin’, and if we can come to
terms; and he’s the man that’s goin’ to take a share of the profits by
way of payment. But he’s not the man I’m lookin’ for to work in under
me, and make something of the old place. You’re that.”
“I!”
Milligen nodded.
“It isn’t your line; I know that, nor yet your class either; but it’s
my idea all the same.” He turned to George for corroboration, and
George assented gruffly.
“I’ve talked it over with George here,” he said, “up and down, for and
against, likelys and unlikelys; and that’s what it comes to, that’s the
notion. Take it or leave it, and no offence either way: an offer never
hurt anyone, whether it was up to their size or not, and a refusal
hurts no one either among friends.”
“It’s awfully good of you,” Michael said. “I’m very flattered you
should think of me that way; I’m afraid, though, it is little use. I
doubt if I should be much good to you. I know nothing whatever about
dyeing; I am an engineer pure and simple; almost any man who had had a
technical education and a little factory experience would be as well
qualified for your purpose; better, if he had studied chemistry, or
spent six months at a dyer’s.”
“Maybe,” Milligen said. “My experience, Mr. Annarly, is that there’s
two kinds of men in this world, the men that can do things and the men
that can’t—what things not particularly mattering, it’s the can that
matters. I rather think I know which is which of those two kinds when
I meet ’em.”
Michael laughed. “You think I can?” he said. “I’m much complimented,
though I’m not so sure myself. And have you ever thought of the
drawbacks of the men who can? They have an abominable way of working
their own way and nobody else’s; they may mean to take orders and
properly fill a subordinate position in a subordinate way, but more
than half the time it doesn’t come off. They’re the devil to drive;
and when they’re doing the driving you find yourself getting to places
you never thought of. They are always going off their own way almost
without knowing it, and unless they have any amount of rope they don’t
seem as if they could do anything worth the having.”
“Size too big,” George said gruffly; “don’t fit the harness. We know
that fast enough. The job’s not up to you, the old man said that,
didn’t he? We know it, but we thought——. Well, we thought perhaps——”
He stopped awkwardly; he had himself in his way been through the odium
of evil report and the downfall consequent upon falling foul, justly or
otherwise, of a large commercial body.
Michael took the words up for him. “You thought,” he suggested, “that
I might not despise such an offer? You are quite right, I never should
have despised it——” He turned to Milligen. “Very far from it, sir,
I much appreciate it; whether I am suitable or unsuitable, it is a
compliment you have paid me. For that reason, if for no other, I must
ask if you really know my present situation, when you make it. If you
know what there is against me.”
“I’ve heard plenty,” Milligen said, “and”—putting his finger on the
side of his nose—“I believe what I do believe. I mayn’t have had what
you call a first-class education, Mr. Annarly, or be precisely a
genius, still I’m not a born fool. I’m not great on recommends and
characters. When I think of the recommends I’ve had, and given, and I
wouldn’t have trusted the chaps, half of ’em, with an old boot! I like
my own judgment best. I don’t care if you have done Galhardy’s—small
blame to you, I dare say I’d have done it myself, if I’d had the
brain—you won’t do me, I know that. I like you, that’s the truth; I did
from the first. It did my heart good to see you handle the engines, not
to speak of anything else. Your spunk about that power station—that
was a spry bit of work—and all the rest. I know my concern’s not your
class, I said that before, and it’s true; and I’m not your class
either, nor’s George. But I’ve a notion we could work together, and a
notion there’s something in that work that’s not beneath you and your
brains. At all events, there it is. There’s the offer.”
The offer required very much more discussion, explanation, and stating
than this. Milligen and his friend were prepared to spend the whole
evening over it. George had told Miss Janet she need not sit up to turn
the gas out when they had finished, as they should be very late. The
evening was young yet, and, with the minuteness of those with time on
their hands, they went into details with Michael: details of the work,
of George’s apparatus, of future prospects and probabilities; questions
of Michael’s possible position, of the capital he could raise—which
was not more than a hundred pounds, the fruits of a year’s work and
careful saving, and which, even if he felt minded to invest in the
little dyeing business, could hardly be expected to purchase a junior
partnership. In the end nothing definite was arrived at; it was not to
be expected there would be, unless it was a definite refusal.
“You think it over, Mr. Annarly,” old Milligen said at parting. “I’ll
be in town a day longer, and if you can’t make up your mind by then,
why, there’s always the post—though not so satisfactory. You think it
over.”
Michael thanked him, and said he would, then took his leave.
George glowered after his departing figure. “Pity you couldn’t nail him
to anything,” he said; “he’ll go back and talk it over with the girl.”
“What girl?” Milligen had a considerable opinion of feminine
intelligence, but no opinion of its being exerted in the sphere of a
man’s business. “His young lady, do you mean? Is she a high-flyer?”
“No,” George said, “and she’s not his young lady either; she’s just Nan
Barmister, where Josiah works, but he’ll talk to her.”
He did. Therein George’s instinct, sharpened by anxiety for the
welfare of his apparatus which he believed to be bound up in Michael’s
decision, was not at fault. But beyond that he could not go; he could
not predict either what Nan would say or how much or little Michael
would be influenced by it.
No one seeing Nan at the time of the telling would have been able to
forecast either. She listened with attention to the account of the
interview and offer: sitting, elbows on the table, chin propped on
hands, listening, and saying almost nothing till Michael had finished.
“Well,” he said when he had done, “shall I take it, or shall I not?”
She sat silent a minute, her eyes cloudy with thought, then—“Yes,” she
said slowly. “I think I would take it.”
“Do you mean that?” He had put his question half jestingly. In spite of
what he had said, it is doubtful how far he himself seriously regarded
the offer yet. That she should do so, and come to an early, but
evidently considered, decision in favour of it astonished him.
“Why do you say that?” he asked. “What’s your reason?”
“I hardly know,” she answered thoughtfully. “I have one, I suppose,
though it won’t put itself into words. It seems somehow as if the time