CHAPTER XIII.
MR. FFRENCH VISITS THE WORKS.
There were few men in Broxton or the country surrounding it who were better known than Gerard Ffrench. In the first place, he belonged, as it were, to Broxton, and his family for several generations back had belonged to it. His great-grandfather had come to the place a rich man and had built a huge house outside the village, and as the village had become a town the Ffrenchs had held their heads high. They had confined themselves to Broxton until Gerard Ffrench took his place. They had spent their lives there and their money. Those who lived to remember the youth and manhood of the present Ffrench's father had, like Granny Dixon, their stories to tell. His son, however, was a man of a different mold. There were no evil stories of him. He was a well-bred and agreeable person and lived a refined life. But he was a man with tastes which scarcely belonged to his degree.
"I ought to have been born in the lower classes and have had my way to make," he had been heard to say.
Unfortunately, however, he had been born a gentleman of leisure and educated as one. But this did not prevent him from indulging in his proclivities. He had made more than one wild business venture which had electrified his neighbors. Once he had been on the verge of a great success and again he had overstepped the verge of a great loss. He had lost money, but he had never lost confidence in his business ability.
"I have gained experience," he said. "I shall know better next time."
His wife had died early and his daughter had spent her girlhood with a relative abroad. She had developed into beauty so faultless that it had been said that its order belonged rather to the world of pedestals and catalogues than to ordinary young womanhood.
But the truth was that she was not an ordinary young woman at all.
"I suppose," she said at dinner on the evening of her visit to the Briarley cottage,—"I suppose these workpeople are very radical in their views."
"Why?" asked her father.
"I went into a cottage this afternoon and found a young workman there in his working clothes, and instead of leaving the room he remained in it as if that was the most natural thing to do. It struck me that he must belong to the class of people we read of."
"I don't know much of the political state of affairs now," said Mr. Ffrench. "Some of these fellows are always bad enough, and this Haworth rose from the ranks. He was a foundry lad himself."
"I met Mr. Haworth, too," said Miss Ffrench. "He stopped in the street to stand looking after the carriage. He is a very big person."
"He is a very successful fellow," with something like a sigh. "A man who has made of himself what he has through sheer power of will and business capacity is a genius."
"What has he made of himself?" inquired Miss Ffrench.
"Well," replied her father, "the man is actually a millionaire. He is at the head of his branch of the trade; he leads the other manufacturers; he is a kind of king in the place. People may ignore him if they choose. He does not care, and there is no reason why he should."
Mr. Ffrench became rather excited. He flushed and spoke uneasily.
"There are plenty of gentlemen," he said. "We have gentlemen enough and to spare, but we have few men who can make a path through the world for themselves as he has done. For my part, I admire the man. He has the kind of force which moves me to admiration."
"I dare say," said Miss Ffrench, slowly, "that you would have admired the young workman I saw. It struck me at the time that you would."
"By the bye," her father asked with a new interest, "what kind of a young fellow was he? Perhaps it was the young fellow who is half American and——"
"He did not look like an Englishman," she interrupted. "He was too dark and tall and unconscious of himself, in spite of his awkwardness. He did not know that he was out of place."
"I have no doubt it was this Murdoch. He is a peculiar fellow, and I am as much interested in him as in Haworth. His father was a Lancashire man,—a half-crazy inventor who died leaving an unfinished model which was to have made his fortune. I have heard a great deal of the son. I wish I had seen him."
Rachel Ffrench made no reply. She had heard this kind of thing before. There had been a young man from Cumberland who had been on the point of inventing a new propelling power, but had, somehow or other, not done it; there had been a machinist from Manchester who had created an entirely new order of loom—which had not worked; and there had been half a dozen smaller lights whose inventions, though less involved, would still have made fortunes—if they had been quite practical. But Mr. Ffrench had mounted his hobby, which always stood saddled and bridled. He talked of Haworth and Haworth's success, the Works and their machinery. He calculated the expenses and the returns of the business, he even took out his tablets to get at the profits more accurately, and got down the possible cost of various improvements which had suggested themselves.
"He has done so much," he said, "that it would be easy for him to do more. He could accomplish anything if he were a better educated man—or had an educated man as partner. They say," he remarked afterward, "that this Murdoch is not an ignoramus by any means. I hear that he has a positive passion for books and that he has made several quite remarkable improvements and additions to the machinery at the Works. It would be an odd thing," biting the end of his pencil with a thoughtful air, "it would be a dramatic sort of thing if he should make a success of the idea the poor fellow, his father, left incomplete."
Indeed Miss Ffrench was quite prepared for his after-statement that he intended to pay a visit to the Works and their owner the next morning, though she could not altogether account for the slight hint of secret embarrassment which she fancied displayed itself when he made the announcement.
"It's true the man is rough and high-handed enough," he said. "He has not been too civil in his behavior to me in times gone by, but I should like to know more of him in spite of it. He is worth cultivating."
He appeared at the Works the following morning, awakening thereby some interest among the shrewder spirits who knew him of old.
"What's he up to now?" they said to each other. "He's getten some crank i' his yed or he would na be here."
Not being at any time specially shrewd in the study of human nature, it must be confessed that Mr. Ffrench was not prepared for the reception he met with in the owner's room. In his previous rare interviews with Jem Haworth he had been accorded but slight respect. His advances had been met in a manner savoring of rough contempt, his ephemeral hobbies disposed of with the amiable candor of the practical and not too polished mind; he knew he had been jeered at openly at times, and now the man who had regarded him lightly and as if he felt that he held the upper hand, received him almost with a confused, self-conscious air. He even flushed when he got up and awkwardly shook hands. "Perhaps," said his visitor to himself, "events have taught him to feel the lack in himself after all."
"I looked forward, before my return, to calling upon you," he said aloud. "And I am glad to have the opportunity at last."
Haworth reseated himself after giving him a chair, and answered with a nod and a somewhat incoherent welcome.
Ffrench settled himself with an agreeable consciousness of being less at a loss before the man than he had ever been in his life.
"What I have seen abroad," he said, "has added to the interest I have always felt in our own manufactures. You know that is a thing I have always cared for most. people have called it my hobby, though I don't think that is quite the right name for it. You have done a great deal since I went away."
"I shall do more yet," said Haworth with effort, "before I've done with the thing."
"You've done a good deal for Broxton. The place has grown wonderfully. Those cottages of yours are good work."
Haworth warmed up. His hand fell upon the table before him heavily.
"It's not Broxton I'm aimin' at," he said. "Broxton's naught to me. I'll have good work or none. It's this place here I'm at work on. I've said I'd set 'Haworth's' above 'em all, and I'll do it."
"You've done it already," answered Ffrench.
"Ay, but I tell you I'll set it higher yet. I've got the money and I've got the will. There's none on 'em can back down Jem Haworth "
"No," said Ffrench, suddenly and unaccountably conscious of a weakness in himself and his position. He did not quite understand the man. His heat was a little confusing.
"This," he decided mentally, "is his hobby."
He sat and listened with real excitement as Haworth launched out more freely and with a stronger touch of braggadocio.
He had set out in his own line and he meant to follow it in spite of all the gentlemen manufacturers in England. He had asked help from none of them, and they had given him none. He'd brought up the trade and he'd made money. There wasn't a bigger place in the country than "Haworth's," nor a place that did the work it did. He'd have naught cheap and he'd have no fancy prices. The chaps that worked for him knew their business and knew they'd lose naught by sticking to it. They knew, too, they'd got a master who looked sharp after 'em and stood no cheek nor no slack dodges.
"I've got the best lot in the trade under me," he said. "I've got a young chap in the engine-room as knows more about machinery than half the top-sawyers in England. By George! I wish I knew as much. He's a quiet chap and he's young; but if he knew how to look a bit sharper after himself, he'd make his fortune. The trouble is he's too quiet and a bit too much of a gentleman without knowing it. By George! he is a gentleman, if he is naught but Jem Haworth's engineer."
"He is proud of the fellow," thought Ffrench. "Proud of him, because he is a gentleman."
"He knows what's worth knowing," Haworth went on. "And he keeps it to himself till the time comes to use it. He's a chap that keeps his mouth shut. He comes up to my house and reads my books. I've not been brought up to books myself, but there's none of 'em he can't tackle. He's welcome to use aught I've got. I'm not such a fool as to grudge him what all my brass won't buy me."
"I think I've heard of him," said Ffrench. "You mean Murdoch."
"Ay," Haworth answered, "I mean Murdoch; and there's not many chaps like him. He's the only one of the sort I ever run up against."
"I should like to see him," said Ffrench. "My daughter saw him yesterday in one of the workmen's cottages and," with a faint smile, "he struck her as having rather the air of a radical. It was one of her feminine fancies."
There was a moment's halt and then Haworth made his reply as forcibly as ever.
"Radical be hanged," he said. "He's got work o' his own to attend to. He's one of the kind as leaves th' radicals alone. He's a straightforward chap that cares more for his books than aught else. I won't say," a trifle grudgingly, "that he's not a bit too straight in some things."
There was a halt again here which Ffrench rather wondered at; then Haworth spoke again, bluntly and yet lagging a little.
"I—I saw her, Miss Ffrench, myself yesterday. I was walking down the street when her carriage passed."
Ffrench looked at him with an inward start. It was his turn to flush now.
"I think," he said, "that she mentioned it to me."
He appeared a trifle pre-occupied for some minutes afterward, and when he roused himself laughed and spoke nervously. The color did not die out of his face during the remainder of his visit; even after he had made the tour of the Works and looked at the machinery and given a good deal of information concerning the manner in which things were done on the Continent, it was still there and perhaps it deepened slightly as he spoke his parting words.
"Then," he said, "I—we shall have the pleasure of seeing you at dinner to-morrow evening?"
"Yes," Haworth answered, "I'll be there."