Haworth's/Chapter XXVI
CHAPTER XXVI.
A REVOLUTION.
In a month's time the Broxton Bank was an established fact. It had sprung into existence in a manner which astonished even its originator. Haworth had come to him in cold blood and talked the matter over. He had listened to the expounding of his views, and without being apparently much moved by his eloquence, had still shown a disposition to weigh the plan, and having given a few days to deliberation, he had returned a favorable decision.
"The thing sounds well," he said, "and it may be a sharp stroke that way. When the rest on 'em hear on it, it'll set 'em thinkin'. Blast 'em! I like to astonish 'em, an' give 'em summat to chew."
Mr. Ffrench could scarcely believe the evidence of his senses. He had been secretly conscious of playing a minor part in all business transactions. His pet theories had been thrust aside as worthy of small notice. His continental experience had been openly set at naught. When he had gone to the trouble of explaining his ideas to the heads of the various departments, he had been conscious of illuminating smiles on the grimy countenances around him. His rather frail physique, his good breeding, his well-modulated voice, had each been the subject of derisive comment.
"Gi' him a puddlin' rake an' let him puddle a bit," he had heard a brawny fellow say, after one of his most practical dissertations.
After his final interview with Haworth, he went home jubilant. At dinner he could speak of nothing else. Miss Ffrench heard the details from beginning to end, and enjoyed them in a manner peculiarly her own.
At the "Who'd ha Thowt it" no little excitement prevailed when the movement was discussed.
"A bank!" said Foxy Gibbs. "An' wheer did he get th' money to set up a bank wi'? Why, he getten it out o' th' workin' mon, an' th' sweat o' th' workin' mon's brow. If theer wur na no banks, theer'd be more money to put in 'em. I dunnot believe i' banks mysen. Let the brass cerkylate—let it cerkylate."
"Aye," said Mr. Briarley, who had reached his second quart, "let it cerkylate, an' he'll ha' more comfort, will th' workin' mon. Theer's too many on 'em," with natural emotion. "They're th' ruin o' th' country. Theer's summat wrong wi' 'em. If they'd gi' a chap summat to put i' 'em theer'd be some chance for him; but that's allus th' way. He has na no chance, hasn't th' workin' mon—he has na no——"
"Shut up!" said Foxy Gibbs.
"Eh?" inquired the orator, weakly and uncertainly.
"Shut up, till tha's getten less beer i' thee!"
"Shut—" repeated Mr. Briarley, winking his eyes slowly,—"up?"
He seized his beer mug and gazed into its depths in some confusion. A deep sigh escaped him.
"That's allus th' road," he faltered. "It's th' road wi' Sararann, an' it's th' road wi' aw on 'em. He has no chance, has na a mon as is misforchnit." And he happily disposed of the beer before Janey opened the door and appeared to marshal him homeward.
But the Broxton Bank was an established fact, and created no small sensation.
"He is a bold fellow, this Haworth," it was said among his rivals, "but he will overstep himself one of these days."
"He's set up a bank, has he?" shouted Granny Dixon, on Murdoch's first visit after she had heard the story.
"Yes," Murdoch answered.
She sat glowering at the fire a few moments almost bent double, and then, having deluded her audience into believing she had subsided, suddenly started and came to life again with increased vigor.
"I've getten my brass i' th' Manchester Savin's," she cried, "an' I'll keep it theer."
It seemed unnecessary to reply, and nobody made any remark upon this statement of facts. But the venerable matron had not concluded.
"I'll keep it theer!" she repeated—"keep it theer! I conna bide him, no more than I can bide her." And then she returned to her fire, fixing her great eyes upon it and mumbling with no small elation.
"Th' thing'll break now, for sure," commented her much-tried hostess, sardonically. "It conna stand up agen that, i' reason. Haworth ud better sell th' Works at th' start afore it's too late."
There had been some vague wonder in Murdoch's mind as to what the result of Haworth's outburst against himself would be.
The first time he found himself confronting him as he went to his work-room he spoke to him:
"You said once," he remarked, "that you had kept this room empty because you did not care to be at close quarters with every man. Now"
"Get thee in, my lad," he interrupted, dryly. "It suits me well enow to ha' you nigh me. Never fear that."
The only outward change made was in his manner. He went about his labor with a deadly persistence. He came early and went home late. The simplest "hand" saw that some powerful force was at work. He was silent and harder in his rule of those under him. He made closer bargains and more daring plans. Men who had been his rivals began to have a kind of fear of him. All he took in hand throve.
"He is a wonderful fellow," said Ffrench to his friends. "Wonderful—wonderful!"
Even the friends in question who were, some of them, county magnates of great dignity, began to find their opinion of the man shaken. In these days there was actually nothing to complain of. The simple little country woman reigned in his household. She attended the Broxton Chapel and dispensed her innocent charities on all sides. Finally a dowager of high degree (the patroness of a charitable society), made the bold move of calling upon her for a subscription.
"It weren't as hard to talk to her, Jem, as I'd have thought," said Mrs. Haworth afterward. "She began to tell me about the poor women as suffers so, an' somehow I forgot about her bein' so grand. I couldn't think of nothin' but the poor creturs an' their pain, an' when I come to sign my name my 'and trembled so an' my eyes was that full I couldn't hardly tell what I'd put down. To think of them poor things"
"How much did you give her?" asked Haworth.
"I give her ten pound, my dear, an'"
He pulled out a bank-note and handed it to her.
"Go to her to-morrow and give her that," he said. "Happen it'll be summat new fur her to get fifty at a stroke."
So it began to be understood that the master of "Haworth's" was a bugbear with redeeming points after all. The Broxton Bank had its weight too, and the new cottages which it was necessary to build.
"It is to Haworth after all that you owe the fact that the place is growing," said Ffrerich.
There came an evening, when on entering the drawing-room of a county potentate with whom she and her father were to dine, Rachel Ffrench found herself looking directly at Haworth, who stood in the center of a group of guests. They were talking to him with an air of great interest and listening to his off-hand replies with actual respect. Suddenly the tide had turned. Before the evening had passed the man was a lion, and all the more a lion because he had been so long tabooed. He went in to dinner with the lady patroness, and she afterward announced her intention of calling upon his mother in state.
"There is a rough candor about the man, my dear," she said, "which one must respect, and it appears that he has really reformed."
There was no difficulty after this. Mrs. Haworth had visitors every day, who came and examined her and wondered, and, somehow, were never displeased by her tender credulity. She admired them all and believed in them, and was always ready with tears and relief for their pensioners and charities.
"Don't thank me, ma'am," she would say. "Don't never thank me, for it's not me that deserves it, but him that's so ready and generous to every one that suffers. There never was such a kind heart before, it seems to me, ma'am, nor such a lovin' one."
Haworth's wealth, his success, his open-handedness, his past sins, were the chief topics of conversation. To speak of Broxton was to speak of the man who had made it what it was by his daring and his power, and who was an absolute ruler over it and its inhabitants.
Ffrench was a triumphant man. He was a potentate also; he could ride his hobby to the sound of applause. When he expatiated upon "processes," he could gain an audience which was attentive and appreciative. He had not failed this time, at least, and was put down as a shrewd fellow after all.
In the festivities which seemed, somehow, the result of this sudden revulsion of feeling, Rachel Ffrench was naturally a marked figure. Among the women, with whom she was not exactly a favorite, it was still conceded that she was not a young woman whom it was easy to ignore. Her beauty—of which it was impossible to say that she was conscious—was of a type not to be rivaled. When she entered a room, glancing neither to right nor left, those who had seen her before unavoidably looked again, and those who had not were silent as she passed. There was a delicate suggestion of indifference in her manner, which might be real or might not. Her demeanor toward Haworth never altered, even to the extent of the finest shadow of change.
When they were in a room together his eye followed her with stealthy vigilance, and her knowledge of the fact was not a disturbing one. The intensity of her consciousness was her great strength. She was never unprepared. When he approached her she met him with her little untranslatable smile. He might be bold, or awkward, or desperate, but he never found her outwardly conscious or disturbed, or a shade colder or warmer.
It was only natural that it should not be long before others saw what she, seeing, showed no knowledge of. It was easily seen that he made no effort at concealment. His passion revealed itself in every look and gesture. He could not have controlled it if he would, and would not if he could.
"Let 'em see," he said to himself. "It's naught to them. It's betwixt her and me." He even bore himself with a sullen air of defiance at times, knowing that he had gained one thing at least. He was nearer to her in one way than any other man; he might come and go as he chose, he saw her day after day, he knew her in-goings and out-comings. The success which had restored her father's fortunes was his success.
"I can make her like a queen among 'em," he said,—"like a queen, by George,—and I'll do it."
Every triumph which fell to him he regarded only as it would have weight in her eyes. When society opened its doors to him, he said to himself, "Now she'll see that I can stand up with the best of 'em, gentlemen or no gentlemen!"
When he suddenly found himself a prominent figure—a man deferred to and talked of, he waited with secret feverishness to see what the effect upon her would be.
"It's what women like," he said. "It's what she likes more than most on 'em. It'll be bound to tell in the end."
He labored as he had never labored before; his ambitions were boundless; he strove and planned and ventured, lying awake through long hours of the night, pondering and building, his daring growing with, his success. There occurred one thing, however, which he had not bargained for. In his laudable enthusiasm Mr. Ffrench could not resist the temptation to sound the praises of his protégé. His belief in him had increased instead of diminished with time, as he had been forced regretfully to acknowledge had been the case during the eras of the young man from Manchester and his fellows. He had reason to suspect that a climax had been reached and that his hopes might be realized. It is not every man who keeps on hand a genius. Naturally his friends heard of Murdoch often. Those who came to the Works were taken to his work-room as to a point of interest. He became in time a feature, and was spoken of with a mixture of curiosity and bewilderment. To each visitor Ffrench told, in strict confidence, the story of his father with due effect.
"And it's my impression," he always added, "that we shall hear more of this invention one of these days. He is a singular fellow—reserved and not easy to read just the man to carry a purpose in his mind and say nothing of it, and in the end startle the world by accomplishing what he has held in view."
Finally, upon one occasion, when his daughter was making her list of invitations for a dinner party they were to give, he turned to her suddenly, with some hesitation in his manner.
"Oh—by the way," he said, "there's Murdoch, we've never had Murdoch."
She wrote the name without comment.
"Who next?" she asked after having done it.
"You see," he went on, waveringly, "there is really nothing which could be an obstacle in the way of our inviting him—really nothing. He is—he is all that we could wish."
The reply he received staggered him.
"It is nonsense," she said, looking up calmly, "to talk of obstacles. I should have invited him long ago."
"You!" he exclaimed. "Would you—really?"
"Yes," she answered. "Why not"
"Why—not?" he repeated, feebly. "I don't know why not. I thought that perhaps" and then he broke off. "I wish I had known as much before," he added.
When he received the invitation, Murdoch declined it.
"I should only be out of place," he said, candidly to Miss Ffrench. "I should know nobody and nobody would know me. Why should I come?"
"There is a very good reason why you should come," answered the young woman with perfect composure. "I am the reason."
There was no further discussion of the point. He was present and Haworth sat opposite to him at the table.
"It's the first time for him?" said Haworth to Miss Ffrench afterward.
"It is the first time he has dined here with other people," she answered. "Have you a reason for asking?"
He held his coffee-cup in his hand and glanced over it across the room,
"He is not like the rest on 'em," he said, "but he stands it pretty well, by George!"