CHAPTER XII.
MR. MALLORY’S POLITICS.
During the following forenoon Myles sat alone in the outer office, employed exactly as he had been on the day of Mrs. Mallory’s visit, weeks before. Wilson was going his usual round in the works, and Mr. Sutcliffe, the manager, was out.
Pausing at the end of a column of figures, he raised his eyes and saw coming down the street something which caused him to open his eyes in surprise, though surprise was not his usual expression.
It was a very high and very swell phaeton, with a pair of magnificent bays, which danced along the street, as if its shabby, clog-worn stones caused much distress to their aristocratic hoofs. The driver of this (in Thanshope) unique conveyance was a young man in light grey clothes and a round cloth cap—no English cap: indeed there was, at least to the uninitiated Thanshope eye, something un-English in his whole appearance. He was, however, master of his cattle, as even Myles could see. Beside him sat a slight, dark boy, with a plain, queer, but attractive face; and behind was a very correct-looking groom.
‘Who on earth is that chap?’ was Myles’s first very natural thought, as he forgot his work, and gazed in the blissfulness of ignorance at the vision. The next moment he could have bitten off his tongue could he have had the feeling that he had not bestowed a second glance upon the whole affair, for the dancing bays came sidling down the street, and the driver pulled them up before that very office door; moreover, he had caught sight of Myles staring at him, and had given him in return a lazy look from a pair of rather sleepy eyes.
Now Myles knew it was the ‘so-called master’—it was Sebastian Mallory: a second glance at the fair though bronzed face, the yellow hair and moustache, the proudly cut features, and the indifferent expression, displayed sufficient likeness to his mother to make the first intuitive conviction a certainty.
Furious with himself at having been caught staring openly and wonderingly, Myles forgot his voluntary promise to Adrienne, and, in order to prove that, whatever his open eyes might at first have seemed to intimate, yet that he was not really at all struck by anything he had seen, he turned his back to the door, and was apparently bending with the deepest attention over his work, when that door was opened; he heard a voice conclude some injunctions to the groom, and the answer which followed:
‘Jawohl, mein Herr.’
‘Foreign servants, even!’ murmured Myles, shrugging his shoulders.
‘Good morning, my good man,’ was the next thing he heard, in an accent as different from that of the Thanshope ‘gentleman’ as Adrienne’s was different from that of the Thanshope lady.
He turned round and looked up; he was forced to do so now, and, without noticing the lad who stood in the background, he faced Mallory. The two young men confronted each other for the first time.
So far as expression and complexion went, they were as great a contrast as could be imagined. Both were tall, spare, and well-built, and there the resemblance ended. Myles was, as has been said, quick, passionate, lithe, alert, with a temper that sprang into action on every possible occasion, with eyes that flashed, brows that contracted, very often in the course of the day. Sebastian Mallory was graceful, but there was some languor, real or assumed, in the grace. He was handsome, but the good looks were certainly marred by the bored expression on his pale, fine features. His eyes moved slowly; they were very good eyes, luminous, and hazel in colour, but they did not look as if they would easily flash. He spoke, looked, moved, as if he found life rather troublesome, and scarcely worth the trouble when it had been taken. He had taken off his cap when he entered the office—foreign fashion, and Myles saw that his face, all save the forehead, was somewhat bronzed; but it was with the bronze of a hot sun—not nature, naturally he was pale. His hair, too, seemed to have caught the sun at the ends, elsewhere it was just yellow hair. Every gesture and movement was full of the polished ease of high cultivation.
Myles, looking straight at him, said to himself, ‘One of your languid, heavy swells, are we? I’m afraid we shall ruffle his fine feathers in this horrid democratic place.’
He had Mrs. Mallory in his mind’s eye as he surveyed her son; her principles were well known—the divine right of kings—the Conservative side through thick and thin, good report and evil report; Church and Constitution intact through every storm; our greatest Premier, the late lamented Duke of Wellington; the working-man in his proper place (wherever that may be); rich and poor, gentle and simple, a providential arrangement which it would be sinful and impious to think of disturbing.
Thinking of all this, Myles surveyed Sebastian Mallory, and as he found him entirely different from any young man he had ever seen before, and as most of the Thanshope people, great and small, were of the Radical persuasion, he immediately concluded that he was right—what had been bred in the bone must come out in the flesh, and it was quite clear that Mr. Mallory was a Conservative of the bluest dye.
Meanwhile Sebastian had been looking at Myles, too, surprised at receiving no answer to his remark, and still more surprised to observe that the eyes of the ‘good man’ were fixed intently, criticisingly, and with unabashed steadfastness upon himself, and appeared to measure him over from head to foot, in a manner which was, to say the least, singular. The cap of the young man remained on his head; he did not rise; he did not ask what he could do, nor the visitor’s business; he simply looked at him with a pair of remarkably keen, piercing, dark eyes, and Sebastian returned the look, until at last a gleam of amusement appeared in his sleepy eyes.
That look of amusement was not lost upon Myles; it irritated and angered him. He was so terribly in earnest about all he did, thought, or believed, as not readily to see the comic side of a question, while it was Mallory’s chief foible to take everything in this world that came to him as rather amusing—if not too troublesome.
‘Ma foi!’ he observed, with a quaint look, but very good-naturedly; ‘they told me in the train that I should be surprised at the Thanshope people, and so I am!’
‘Perhaps they’ll be equally surprised with you,’ said Myles, concisely.
‘Well, they may,’ replied Sebastian, coolly. ‘Do you know who I am?’
Myles hesitated a moment, much wishing to say, ‘No, I don’t,’ but integrity got the upper hand; he only put the fact as disagreeably as he could.
‘I should suppose you are Mrs. Mallory’s son.’
Sebastian turned to the brown-faced, dark-eyed boy who stood behind, and remarked smilingly,
‘You see, I am nobody, Hugo; only my mother’s son; and yet here I am upon my own property.’
The youth nodded, and glanced thoughtfully at Myles, who could not resist going on with the rather perilous game he was playing, and who remarked drily,
‘You’ll find that we count a good deal by residence and relationship here.’
‘So!’ said Sebastian, with the amused half-smile still playing about his lips and in his eyes, to the intense exasperation of Myles, who naturally saw nothing at all to laugh at in the situation. There was something, too, about Mallory, which struck a subtle blow at his pride and self-esteem—something which in his innermost heart he knew to be superior to himself, though he passionately refused to admit the idea.
‘Your guess is correct,’ went on Sebastian. ‘I am Mrs. Mallory’s son. And now I should be glad to know who and what you are—one of my work-people, perhaps?’
The young man did not seem to be at all annoyed at what was taking place; indeed, there was that in his manner which said that he was mildly amused with the whole affair. He looked around as he spoke, with a lazy, criticising glance, but it was the glance, as Myles keenly felt, of a master, and of one who was accustomed to be a master. He was surveying his property, and questioning one of his servants. All the revolutionary element in that servant was in perturbation.
‘What am I?’ he began, when Sebastian, who had taken off his cap on entering the office, said suggestively, ‘Hadn’t you better take your cap off?’
‘That is a matter of opinion,’ said Myles, the blood rushing to his face. ‘It is not the fashion here. As for me, I doff to no man, and but few women.’
‘Ah! well, we won’t quarrel about it. As you say, it is a matter of opinion,’ said Sebastian, politely; but there was something in the tone which made Myles feel small, and as if he had been behaving childishly—not a comforting feeling.
‘But I interrupted you,’ continued Mallory, who seemed to be acquiring gradually a sort of interest in the conversation; ‘you were going to tell me who you are?’
‘My name is Myles Heywood, and my business is cut-looking and part of the over-looking in this factory,’ said Myles.
‘Heywood,’ repeated Sebastian, his eyes losing their lazy look, ‘Heywood, where have I—ah, yes! A cut-looker—I don’t know what that is.’
‘Likely enough not,’ said Myles.
‘But it is quite certain that I must learn it,’ pursued Sebastian; ‘what is it, if I may ask?’
An uncomfortable sense began to steal over Myles, that Mr. Mallory was courtesy itself, and that too under considerable provocation. He gave a short sketch of his business.
‘Thanks,’ said Sebastian. ‘And now—by-the-by, I am absolutely forgetting my business—is Mr. Sutcliffe in?’
‘Not now: he will be in about an hour.’
‘In an hour? Then I must go over the works without him. Is there any one here who knows all about it—you, perhaps?’ he added quickly, as if struck by a happy thought.
The idea of leading Mr. Mallory round the works excited the liveliest aversion in Myles’s mind.
‘Wilson, the head-overlooker, is above me. He generally does that,’ said he.
‘Wilson—I ought to remember Wilson. He has been here a long time, hasn’t he?’
‘He has,’ said Myles, rather emphatically.
‘I thought so. Well, where is he?’
Myles, despite himself, very much despite himself, felt the influence of Sebastian’s manner. He would have been glad could he reasonably have classed him with Frederick Spenceley, but no such classification was for a moment possible. He wished he had not made that difficulty about going through the works. He suddenly remembered his voluntary promise to Adrienne, and felt that he could not tell her he had kept his word. But too proud, or perhaps too shy, to suddenly change his manner, he said, in the same curt tone,
‘He’s going round the works. If you’ll wait a minute I’ll send him to you.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mr. Mallory.
Myles went out of the office, and across the yard to the factory; and Mallory, putting his hand upon Hugo’s shoulder, silently pointed to the workman’s figure, and they watched him until he had gone into the mill.
‘Hugo, you have not a good ear for English names yet, but I have. I have heard that man’s name just lately—yesterday, in fact, in the train as we came from Manchester. He is a fellow I must know something more about. Did you notice him? He has a splendid face.’
‘Splendid manners too, I think,’ said the boy sarcastically.
‘Yes,’ replied Sebastian meditatively. ‘Heywood! If he had not mentioned his name when he did, I think I should have lost my temper. As it is, I shall try another plan. There he goes! What a row comes from behind that door!’
Then they looked through the window.
‘What a prospect!’ said Sebastian, glancing over the head of his companion, who leaned with both arms on the window-sill. ‘This time last week, do you remember? we were with—ah, what was their name—those girls and their brother?’
‘On the Luzern steamer, going to Fluelen,’ said Hugo, his eyes fixed upon the dead wall opposite.
‘Just so! Do you remember the sunset, and Mount Pilatus, as we came back? Well, Pilatus is there now—and we are here.’
Hugo made no answer, but Sebastian saw a smile curve his cheek.
‘Why, you might be pleased rather than not,’ said he.
‘I am not displeased,’ replied the lad, with the same little smile.
‘Not displeased that I took a notion about duty into my head, and whirled you away from Switzerland, and snow-peaks, and Alpine colouring, to Thanshope, Hugo?’
‘Suppose you had obeyed the call of duty without whirling me away—had left me behind somewhere?’ said Hugo, tranquilly.
‘Ah, so! That is at the root of it,’ said Sebastian, laughing. ‘What an odd—ah, here comes the overlooker! Now, Hugo, observe me doing the merchant-prince, and prepare your artist-eye for some shocks during the progress we are going to make.’
Wilson entered in a state of high excitement.
‘Mr. Mallory, sir, this is a hunexpected pleasure! I couldn’t believe it. ‘Ow are you, sir? Well, I ’ope. We’ve looked forward long to this event.’
‘Very well, thank you. I found myself at home sooner than I had expected—a week earlier. I remember you very well,’ he added. ‘How are you and your family?’
‘As well as possible, sir, thank you,’ said Wilson, pressing the hand which Sebastian had held out to him. ‘Do I see a friend of yours, sir?’ he added, looking at Hugo, who was watching the man with the preternatural solemnity which was one of his ways of showing that he was amused.
‘Yes; a very great friend—Mr. Von Birkenau,’ was all Sebastian said, and added, ‘I want to go through the works. I asked that young fellow who was here, who——’
‘I hope he wasn’t rude, sir. I trust he didn’t make him self unpleasant,’ said Wilson, fervently.
‘Why, is he insubordinate usually, or rude to his superiors?’ asked Sebastian, with a sudden keenness of look, in strong contrast with his soft voice, and gentle manner.
‘Insubordinate! no, sir. A better workman or an honester young fellow never lived; only he’s got the idea that he hasn’t got no superiors—and it will bring him into trouble. I often tell him so.’
‘But he is clever and honest, you say?’ said Sebastian, pausing to ask the question.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Wilson, who was fond of Myles, and had been fond of him for years. ‘He’s got the brains of half a dozen of the usual run, and you might trust him with untold gold; ay, and more dangerous things than that. But he is apt to give a little too much of his sauce.’
‘Ah! Well, we will go on now, if you please; and when Mr. Sutcliffe comes in, I’ll get him to go on and lunch with me. I should like to say a few words to the—“hands,” is it you call them?—if there is any place where they could come and listen to me.’
‘Surely, sir. The big yard will hold them all, and more than them.’
‘Then be good enough to lead the way,’ said Sebastian, looking at his watch suggestively.
Wilson was a proud and a happy man that morning, as he led the newly arrived lord of that place through the maze of great rooms and machinery, and pointed out all the improvements, the wonderful contrivances for making wood and steel and iron do the work of hands and feet; all the ‘perfection of mechanism, human and metallic,’ of which the factory and its contents formed an example.
Sebastian followed him: his eyes had lost their sleepy look; he asked many questions, acute enough, for all the indifferent tone of them. He seemed to have much of the gift which is said to be royal—the eye which took in with incredible rapidity both details and generalities. Very little that was to be seen escaped him, including the curious glances and the loud comments and surmises relative to himself.
It took an hour to go even quickly through the different rooms, and then Wilson, saying, ‘This is the last, sir, the warehouse,’ took them into a large, well-lighted room, in which were some half-dozen men at work, Myles Heywood in the centre. Sebastian stooped to Hugo, whispering,
‘I want to speak to that young fellow alone a few minutes.’
Hugo stepped up to a large pile of cloth, seemingly interested in some mystic marks and figures upon it, which he requested Wilson to explain; while Sebastian, going on, stopped at Myles’s side, and, looking at his work said,
‘That is cut-looking is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I’ve learnt something. Listen to me a moment, will you?’
Myles looked up inquiringly.
‘I am going to say something to all these people directly, and I want you to promise to come and listen to it; will you?’
Half vexed, half flattered, Myles looked into Mallory’s face. He had not given up his notion that the young man was a ‘jackanapes:’ but if so, the ‘jackanapes’ had a manner that it was not easy for even a superior person to resist. Myles replied,
‘Certainly I will come.’
He looked as if he were going to add something—in fact it was on the tip of his tongue to say, ‘I don’t promise to like what I shall hear;’ but he refrained. He remembered Adrienne and his promise. Yet he had the conviction that he would dislike what Sebastian had to say. A Conservative—Southern sympathies, no doubt. What could such an one have to say that he would like? But he would go, if only to watch till the cloven foot showed itself.
At that moment Wilson came up again.
‘You’ve seen the last of the rooms, sir. If you’re ready, I’ll have the bell rung, and then we can go out into the yard.’
In a few minutes the great bell had clanged out, the engines had been stopped, the hands were streaming out into the yard.
Sebastian and Wilson stood upon a huge empty lorrie that was close by one of the warehouse doors, so that they had nothing to do but step on to it, which they did, while Myles and his comrades swung themselves on to the ground, and took their stand in a knot, not far away from this impromptu platform.
Sebastian looked keenly at all the upturned faces, while Wilson made a few brief yet remarkably entangled and involved introductory remarks.
The overlooker’s voice ceased. He swung himself from the lorrie, and went and stood with the crowd.
‘My friends,’ began Sebastian, ‘circumstances have kept me for ten years away from Lancashire. Perhaps I might still not have made the necessary effort to return, but for this great struggle which is going on in America, and whose direct effects will first be felt in Lancashire. When that began, I felt I had no right to remain any longer away. I have heard, and one or two little things which I have seen, even during the few hours I have been in Thanshope, lead me to feel that the saying is a true one, that you Lancashire men are inclined to despise an employer who does not know his business, much as you would despise a workman who did not know his work. The principle is a right and honest one; and I don’t say that I may not have come under the head of those who deserve some contempt as being ignorant, and “absentee owners.” Even since I came here, I have discovered that I never knew what work was before; I see that my task will be no easy one, to master the principles of my business, and to try and provide in some degree against the dark days which, I fear, are almost inevitable. But, hard or easy, it is a task I mean to learn. The time is coming, as I think all thoughtful men must see—coming rapidly, when Lancashire will have to exert every effort to meet that distress which will rush upon her; that cloud that is hastening across the Atlantic is a very black cloud, and will make the days very dark. Let us try manfully, hand in hand, to breast the storm together.
‘I suppose that you all, or nearly all, will agree with me upon at least one point—sympathy with the Federal side in this struggle. (A murmur, deep and strong, of profound approbation arose—a murmur in which men’s and women’s voices alike joined.) ‘That noble man, Abraham Lincoln, against whose honour the Southern press has lifted its impotent voice—not to mention some journals in this country, which Englishmen ought to be ashamed to read—that noble man, should he live and be fortunate in his grand crusade, will benefit all the world by his intrepidity. He cannot give you cheap and abundant supplies of cotton now, but by his courage and wisdom he is securing your future supplies upon a firm basis, very different from the slippery vantage-ground of slave-labour upon which they have hitherto depended. (Another murmur indicative of that approval which, to their honour, Lancashire working-men and women, throughout those bitter years, gave to the Federal side, greeted the speaker.)
‘I understand that you Lancashire men, especially you Thanshope men, think a great deal of politics and principles. So you ought, considering who is your member, and that other great name which is connected with Thanshope. I also know that in spite of the strong Conservative element amongst your gentry, and, they tell me, amongst the workmen too’ (a voice: ‘Conservative working-man—there’s no such thing!’)—‘in spite of this alleged Conservative element, you have always, since you first returned a representative to Parliament, returned a Radical.
‘I was not aware of the strength of the feeling upon this point in Thanshope. I have always myself held politics to be secondary to some other subjects, but, since I find so much interest centred round the point here, and moreover, since persons whom I have met and spoken to have treated me on the tacit assumption that I was a Conservative, I judge it as well to tell you, face to face, that whatever I may be on other matters, in politics I am no Conservative, but a Radical. Of course there are almost as many kinds of Radicals as there are of Dissenters. The details of my radicalism and those of your radicalism are, I dare say, somewhat different; but I hope we shall both be able to respect the principle and never mind the form.
‘Now I will not keep you longer—only let me say, finally, I am here to learn my business, and to try to guide my ship through the storm that is coming. Thanshope, as you know, is one of the places where the pinch of distress will be soonest felt, since the counts of yarns used here are precisely those the supply of which will soonest fall off. I ask a promise from you, and I make one to you. In that time that is coming I ask you to trust me—my feelings and intentions towards you, and on my part I promise to strain every nerve to do my duty by you. We will work on as long as there is cotton to be had, and then—I trust, for your sakes, and mine, and that of humanity at large, that it will not be long that I shall have to help you in your fight to keep the wolf from the door.’
He stopped, bowed, and was turning away, when they gave him a hearty cheer; and one or two voices informed him laconically that they ‘reckoned he was one o’ th’ reet sort,’ and that ‘he’d suit.’
He jumped down from the lorrie, joined Wilson and his friend Hugo, and went with them towards the office. The engineer returned to his post; soon the busy machinery was in full roar again, as if there had been no such thing as war—no such parties as Federals and Confederates. The interruption to the morning’s work was already a thing of the past—an incident to be talked about.
Myles Heywood maintained entire silence upon the subject, nor could any one of all who inquired of him get him to say what he thought of the new master. He might have deep thoughts about it—at least they were unexpressed. The rest of the hands talked the event over with lively excitement. The general impression was a favourable one. The men liked what he had said, though he was generally pronounced to be a ‘bit too much of a swell,’ and it was agreed that he ‘spoke rather fine,’ and, they said, minced his words too much; was, in short, rather too much of a fine gentleman. Otherwise he was considered sound, and they were pleased to find him on the right side in politics.
The women, too, liked him, for reasons apparently similar to those alleged by Peter van den Bosch, as their grounds for liking Philip van Artevelde,
Mary Heywood, at least, said she ‘liked the chap: he had siccan a soft voice, and a nice, smooth-soundin’ name, like.’
The general conclusion was a very Lancashire one; that the young man had spoken well and reasonably; sensibly enough for a person who knew nothing about his business, but that ‘fair words butter no parsnips;’ and the conjecture may reasonably be hazarded whether Sebastian’s speech had induced any one of his hearers to form a decided opinion, good or bad, of him. They waited to see, and indeed the time was striding forward with fearful rapidity, nearer and nearer, when the sincerity of his profession should be put to the proof.