Success
He shrugged his shoulders, as one beyond caring.
“Is it actionable?” she inquired, after a while. “I mean, if you had
had the cancelling letter and they could prove it, would they be able
to prosecute you?”
“I suppose so. I don’t see that it matters. Certainly the fact that
I did not have the letter, and that they can’t prove it, does not;
if they want a case against me, I dare say they can get that or make
it—they can make a good many things at Galhardy’s. I don’t much care
if they do; they may as well do one thing as another, at least I should
have an opportunity of speaking then. Not that that would really be
worth anything either; they’re too big.”
Nan said nothing; she knew it did matter. She had the woman’s eye for
the driftwood after the wreck, and for the fragments that remain; and
she saw that prosecution, though it might give an opportunity to use
the fragments as missiles, must inevitably scatter them past recovery,
and leave the scatterer bare. She did not urge this, however, but sat a
little looking into the blaze, thinking.
“Tell me,” she said at length, “why did you want these foreign rights?
Were they really worth so much to you?”
“They should have been worth somewhere about fifty thousand pounds,” he
answered.
The estimate may have been incorrect, though he certainly believed
in it himself; she saw that, but was not greatly impressed by the
magnitude of the loss. Money as money did not appeal to her.
Nor perhaps entirely to him either: at all events he went on to advance
another reason for his efforts, and in a tone which suggested how much
it weighed with him. “I had a claim to them,” he said; “the things were
mine, and they were useless to Galhardy’s. Why shouldn’t I have had
them? Of course, it was argued that no one had been granted such rights
before, but then no one before had done quite what I had for the firm.
Already I had saved them a great deal; in a year or two my inventions
will bring in eight or ten thousand a year to them. And what did I get?
A wretched seven hundred, rising perhaps to eight hundred.”
It sounded a good deal to her, though, of course, small in proportion
to the greater sum. To him it was nothing.
“It was hardly enough to live on,” he said. “Everyone there has a
private income. I was the only one in anything approaching that
position without. It was impossible to make both ends meet. I had to do
what the others did.”
Nan’s ignorance of the world was such that she knew nothing for or
against this, but intuitively she did know that there is a wonderful
mixture of the small and the great in most men: in this one perhaps the
contrast was rather more crude than in most.
“Would they really have given you no more?” she asked. “Surely they
would——”
“They always advised me to ‘leave myself in the hands of the
directors’; that is the stereotyped advice when one says anything about
recognition. Usually men do leave themselves in the directors’ hands,
having no choice—and stop there. There are plenty of instances of it in
most firms, big and little.”
He began to speak of them, for a while forgetting his own affairs in
citing the hard cases of others. But soon the one central thought
returned, overwhelming others.
“I don’t mean that the directors of Galhardy’s would have treated me
so badly as that; they wouldn’t—one thing, I doubt if they could,
and, anyhow, they wouldn’t. But I should not have got anything worth
having out of the aerial torpedo, or the new steel I perfected for
them either. I did not try much for the steel; I let it pass without
much protest, and put everything on the torpedo; but the way they
behaved over the one showed what was to be expected in the other case,
if it was left in their hands. It is true, of course, that what one
does while one is with a firm is the property of the firm, that is
understood and reasonable enough. But when one does a thing of any
size, a thing that is going to be worth a fortune to them, and which
they have not been able to get elsewhere, one might expect something: I
mean something considerable. I dare say, though I don’t know, I might
have got something small, but not in any way commensurate.”
Nan nodded, and sat thinking a little. “I wonder,” she said, “why they
promised those rights you wanted? They were not actually bound to give
anything, you say, and it is not their custom to give much? What they
promised amounted to a great deal, and was a most unprecedented thing.
Why did they do it?”
“Because they came to the conclusion they would not get the aerial
torpedo, the real perfect thing, without,” he answered, and for a
moment the flickering, fighting smile, which had been gone from him
these days, lurked in his eyes. It died almost as it came, but it
suggested that considerable skill, as well as other less admirable
qualities, must have been needed in the late handling of Galhardy’s
genius.
“Have they got all they want now?” Nan asked, and the cloud descended
almost visibly upon him.
“Everything,” he answered. “They have my papers.” There was a level
hopelessness in the voice which told of utter loss. “It is all there;
it was all ready to be drafted out. They knew, I told them I had all
the work completed, and all the data collected ready to draw up the
report, before they made the swoop. They waited for that.”
“The report was not made? What they have is only in notes and drawings,
and so on? Isn’t there a chance they won’t be able to make it out and
find what they want?”
There was not in his opinion. “They can’t help it,” he said. “I tell
you, it’s all there; the veriest fool who knew even the alphabet of
the subject could not fail. Besides, the thing’s been made, different
parts of it and the filling for the heads too. Oh, not all by one
man—by different men and at different times. I was not going to have
anyone able to report on it before I was ready. But they could find all
out, if they tried, and put it together for themselves practically,
if there were any need; but there won’t be, for they have it on paper
almost plain enough for a child to understand. No, they have all: the
torpedo and the torpedo-head, everything, as completely as they have
the steel I reported on months ago. They have all; there is nothing
left.”
His voice dropped, and his whole body seemed to sink. Nan said nothing;
there seemed nothing to say. She sat in the low firelight, very quiet.
The next day the directors’ decision would be known; not till late
in the evening, however, for, though she had telegraphed Michael’s
present address to his rooms, a letter forwarded from there would not
be delivered in Soho till the last post. She was busy during part
of the day making drawings of chair backs and other details for her
father. She asked Michael, who was a clever draughtsman, to help her;
but though he tried, he failed. He seemed utterly unable to keep his
attention fixed on the unfamiliar work; he took up and put down pencils
and india-rubber, set down lines and rubbed them out without any
perception of what he did. But when, led thereto by some question or
suggestion of hers, he tried to make drawings of aerial propellers and
kindred things he succeeded even worse, for, added to inability to fix
attention, there was vague fear—the fear of a man who feels slipping
the sheet-anchor of loved work which has never failed him before.
Nan saw that for that day of waiting there was nothing to be done; so
she attempted nothing, only stayed in all day. A quiet, inconspicuous
presence, physically almost as easy to overlook as the shadows in the
old house, but spiritually perhaps otherwise.
In the afternoon she wrote some letters; as she began the first, she
glanced up at the date. “Let me see,” she said; “it’s the third, isn’t
it? Saturday?”
“Saturday?” Michael repeated the word as one recollecting.
“Yes. Had you an appointment?”
“No,” he answered, “at least, yes. But it does not matter. I was to
have gone to the Carsons’ this afternoon, to tell Lady Sibyl how the
aerial torpedo was received at the board meeting.”
He had forgotten it till this moment. Strange how completely he had
forgotten it; Lady Sibyl and all that she stood for—and she had stood
for much—had been utterly blotted from his mind. He had saved her
letters in the general crash, but neither then nor after did he know
why. It was, incomprehensible as it may seem, in a way an automatic
act, one without reasoned volition. The woman herself had no place in
the crisis; she had none in the days which had ensued. He had forgotten
her as completely as he had forgotten all other outside things.
But now he remembered. In a wave, with a sensation which was almost
like an audible _swish_, recollection flowed back. He would have been
at the Carsons’ now, in the small drawing-room. She would have been
there, in the deep chair half turned from the light. He could see her
in his mind’s eye, the glow that lurked in her hair and the gown she
would wear. He could see her white hands, tapering and pink-tipped,
could feel their softness as they touched his in greeting, or in some
accident of service as handing cups and placing cushions. He saw all,
saw the kindling in her eyes as he spoke, heard the thrill in her low
voice as she answered—as one sees a lighted room when standing without
in the dark.
“Ought you to have written to say you could not come?”
Nan’s voice recalled him abruptly.
“No,” he answered. “It’s of no consequence.” He spoke indifferently,
with a hardness in the indifference. “She will have heard before this,
and if she hasn’t, she will soon enough. It doesn’t matter. I shall
never see her again.”
Nan returned to her writing. Among the medley of half-told and retold
facts which had been given to her there had once been mention of some
private papers burned, instead of delivered to the directors. There had
been no account of how they were saved from the fate of the rest, nor
why; neither had borne on the one matter of moment, so both had been
passed over. But now she guessed that the papers saved and personally
destroyed concerned Lady Sibyl. And “it didn’t matter,” for he would
“never see her again!” Pity crept up in her heart; he had lost this
too, this woman, whatever she was to him, in addition to all the rest.
In the evening came the letter. Barmister, who since the closing of
his office had been out all the afternoon on such business as was
possible to be done on a Saturday, was home now and sitting with them.
Nan fetched the letters herself; there were three for her father, one,
the expected one, for Michael. She gave them out, then sat down again
to her needlework, watching neither. Barmister read his through and
grunted over them; they were business ones, and one of them annoyed
him. Michael read his, and, slowly refolding it, put it into a pocket.
She had a glimpse of his face, though she avoided looking at it. It
was grave and quiet, but expressed nothing. The mental crisis was past;
he could take the good or the bad now without disorder or outward
expression.
Barmister crushed the typewritten sheets of one of his letters
together, and with a muttered malediction on the folly of his
correspondent got to his feet. He asked Nan about some book of
reference.
It was downstairs in the office, and she offered to fetch it.
“No,” he said, “I’ll go myself. I want to look up something in the
day-book too.”
He went, and she continued stitching.
“Well,” Michael said at last, and as the sound of feet descended the
little stair—“they have settled it.”
She looked up. “Dismissal?” she said, though she guessed already.
He nodded, and handed her the letter.
GALHARDY & COMPANY, LIMITED.
_Secretary’s Department._
_Sir,_