Читать книгу Waynflete - Christabel R. Coleridge - Страница 8

Guy had really returned from London with a “new-fangled idea,” or, rather, with plans for carrying out one long entertained, and with more courage than usual for putting it forward. He liked the business, and had no lack of ideas concerning it; but during the two years that he had been at work in the mill his position there had become more and more difficult. He could not feel himself a nobody, and he knew what ought to be done; but his aunt had given him no place and no authority; to use the idiom of his county, “he had no say in the work,” and Mrs. Waynflete thought so little of his powers or of his character that she never received his suggestions with favour. She distrusted him, and he knew it, and to a certain extent he knew why. But he was quite sure of his ground now, and as soon as the visitors had departed, he proceeded to unfold his mind.

He told her, with as much delicacy as he could, but with something of her own tenacity, that in his opinion the two faithful old managers were hardly up to the requirements of the day. He thought that more pains should be taken to follow the changes of fashion, and that besides producing broadcloth and plain tweed, certain classes of fancy goods should be undertaken. This would involve an outlay for machinery suited for weaving patterns, and it might also be necessary to engage an overseer who could superintend the production of this class of goods; some extension of the premises might also be required. If his aunt disliked the notion of alterations in the old mills, there was a little mill near which had been worked in a small and unsuccessful way by a man without sufficient capital to carry it on, who would gladly let it to “Palmer Brothers,” as the Ingleby firm was still called, from Mr. Thomas’s father and uncle. Guy adduced facts and figures, and made it plain that he knew what he was talking about; and, in short, showed more of the old lady’s own faculty for business than she had ever given him credit for.

But one of the principles of Palmer Brothers had always been that it was a risky and unsound way of doing business to follow the changes and chances of fashion. People would always want broadcloth and tweed, but fancy goods might lie on hand, and fail to find a market; and, in short, did not suit with Palmer’s way of doing business.

Old Mrs. Waynflete sat in her chair in what was called the library at the Mill House, though it contained very few books. She watched the pale, slight youth before her with the most absolute want of respect for his personality, with an innate distrust for his facts and figures, and yet feeling with the first painful pangs of old age that she could not entirely grasp the argument. Guy was talking of conditions unknown to her. Surely the day had not come when she and her good old servants were unable to judge what was the best for the business. Surely this lad could not have pointed out to her what she had failed to see for herself. Surely he could not be in the right.

“Is there any other matter you want to find fault with?” she said. “I’d like to hear your true opinion.”

Guy hesitated a little; but, quiet as he looked, he had the obstinacy of his race, and he could not resist giving his true opinion.

“Well,” he said, “I don’t think the mills are as popular with the work-people as they were once. There are modern ways of attending to their health and their comfort, in which we’re deficient. Ventilation, and so on. But a small outlay would set all that to rights. One must move with the times.”

“So you think John Cooper and Jos Howarth are past their work?”

“Not exactly. I think Cooper’s a good old fellow. Howarth I’m not so sure of.”

“You seem very sure of yourself, Guy. Late hours and days away from business were not the way to make a fortune in my time.”

Guy flushed up.

“I should do my best,” he said; “and I believe—I am sure—that I am not incapable of carrying out these plans. And one thing more I wish to say, Aunt Waynflete. After Christmas, Godfrey will be coming in to the business. As things are now, there is no scope for both of us. With the scheme I propose, there would be plenty to do—if you allow us to do it.”

“You need not to think that all the ideas come first into your head, my lad. I have thought of that. There’ll be an agent wanted for Waynflete.”

Now, this was a remark which it was nearly impossible for Guy to answer. He was the natural heir of Waynflete, but Waynflete was in the old lady’s own power, and she had never dropped a word as to her intentions regarding it. He could not assume that Waynflete concerned him rather than Godfrey; and yet, if it did not, the whole principle of his aunt’s life would be falsified. Besides, the idea was most distasteful to him. He said hurriedly and unwisely—

“Waynflete is hardly enough of a place to occupy a man’s whole time, in any case.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Waynflete, “you have said your say, and I’ll consider my answer. But I’ve known the business forty years before you were born, my lad, after all.”

It was the way of the Waynfletes to hide their real selves from each other as carefully as if each one had been plotting treason. They erected quickset hedges round their hearts and souls, as if to be misunderstood was needful to their self-respect. Guy said no more, and withdrew, and he never spoke a word to Godfrey of what had passed between his aunt and himself.

The next day, just before luncheon, Jeanie was gathering flowers on the lawn, when a door in the wall that led to the mills opened, and Guy dashed in, with so white and wild a look, and a step at once so hurried and so faltering, that she ran up to him, exclaiming—

“Guy! Are you ill? What is the matter?” Guy looked at her, as she said afterwards, as if he did not see her, and hurried in and upstairs without a word, and as she followed, scared and puzzled, she heard him shut and lock his bedroom door behind him. Turning away in distress and alarm, she met Godfrey strolling along in the sunshine, with Rawdie at his heels, and a book under his arm, a picture of idle holiday enjoyment.

“Oh,” he said, in answer to her appeal, “Guy is like that if he has a headache. He likes to be let alone; he never wants anything.”

Jeanie still looked doubtful.

“People don’t generally look so with a headache,” she said. “Does he often have such bad ones?”

“No,” said Godfrey; “only once in a way. He’ll be all right in an hour or two. Let him alone.”

Jeanie thought it a very odd headache; but no more was said, though, from Mrs. Waynflete’s face when Guy did not appear at luncheon, it might have been argued that his sudden illness told against his plans.

She put on her bonnet, and took her way down to the mill with a step that was still firm, though slower than of old, and asked for John Cooper. She was no unusual visitor, and had never let her hold of the business drop; and as she sat down in the little office, and cast her still keen blue eyes round her, it was more than ever difficult to believe, more than ever distasteful to feel, that her day was almost done. The two old men who had long managed the business, though some years younger than herself, now seemed like contemporaries. She had worked under their fathers in her girlhood, she had seen them rise in office under her husband, she had now worked with them for many years, and with them she felt at one.

Partly from this, and partly, perhaps, from the incautiousness of old age, before many minutes had passed, she had made John Cooper aware, both of Guy’s plans and of his strictures. It was so natural to discuss the crude ideas of the youth with her experienced old friend.

John Cooper was very much taken by surprise. The reticent and cautious Guy had never betrayed how carefully he had been “takin’ notes.” Had this lad really put his finger on the weak places? John Cooper was much too careful to commit himself to a direct contradiction.

“Well, Mrs. Waynflete,” he said; “Mr. Guy is young, and young folks like to have something to show for their opinions. But, there’s been many new fashions since you and I began to work the business. The old master never held with following the fashion.”

“You can be making changes every year if you do.”

“So you can do, Mrs. Waynflete; so you can. Eh, but I’ve seen changes.”

“Mr. Guy has a notion of business, too,” said the old lady.

“Did ye see Mr. Guy when he came home, ma’am?” said John Cooper, suddenly.

“No; he had a bit of headache, and went to his room. Young men aren’t as tough as they used to be.”

There was a silence. The old man watched the lady over the writing-table between them. He, too, was a vigorous old grey-head, with a hard mouth and keen eyes wrinkled up close. The little room was full of bills and letters and safes. A stray ray of afternoon sun shot through the small-paned window, and showed the dusty air and the dusty floor, and the well-arranged contents of the dusty shelves.

John Cooper crossed the little room, and stood in the streak of sunshine. It shone upon his well-known grey hair, on his shrewd, weather-beaten face, and glittered on a small key left in a little oak cupboard in the wall. John Cooper opened the cupboard, and the sun shot in and sparkled with sudden brilliant reflections on something inside.

“Eh, what have you there?” said Mrs. Waynflete.

John Cooper took out a tall brandy-bottle, nearly empty, and a glass still containing some drops of spirit, and set them on the table.

“Mr. Guy left the key by mistake,” he said.

“John Cooper! What do you mean?”

No asseveration could have added to the abrupt force of the intonation, as Mrs. Waynflete sat upright, grasping the arms of her wooden chair, and looking straight at the manager.

“Mr. Guy keeps that cupboard close locked. But to-day he left it swinging open, when he went home—with a headache.”

“Did ye see him go?”

“I came in at the door here, Mrs. Waynflete, and Mr. Guy staggered past me, and never saw me. He went stumbling out and up the lane. Hurrying and reeling as he went—as once and again I’ve seen him before.”

Mrs. Waynflete’s brown old face grew a shade paler, she still held by the arms of the chair, as she rapidly weighed what had been said.

It seemed to her that the fact of the young man’s possessing a bottle of spirits was as nothing compared with the secrecy with which he had concealed it. Nor would he be the first in the house of Waynflete to fall a victim to such a temptation.

On the one hand, Mrs. Waynflete had seen it in her father, and feared it for her brother; on the other, there was nothing in Guy’s look or ways to suggest it, save the occasional attacks of illness, as to which he was always mysterious and secretive.

“Lock up the cupboard,” she said, “and give me the key. And ye’ll not say a word of this matter.”

“Nay, not to Joshua Howarth, nor to young Jos, nor to my own John Henry. It’s no matter for talking of.”

Mrs. Waynflete put the key in her pocket, rose, and standing at her full height, said—“Good day to you,” and walked away with firm, unfaltering step, across the paved entrance, up the bit of lane that led to the garden wall. She went in through the gate and across the garden, and upstairs to Guy’s room, at which she knocked sharply.

“Guy, I wish to come in.”

The door was unfastened, and Guy stood there in great surprise.

“Aunt Margaret!” he said. “What is it? I am much better. I am coming down for some tea.”

Mrs. Waynflete put him aside with her hand, entered the room, and shut the door.

It was a large, comfortable room, with a bookcase and a good supply of books, a writing-table, a sofa and an armchair, besides the little iron bed in the corner, and it was brilliantly light, for there was not a curtain or a hanging of any sort in the room. Such was Guy’s taste. He looked pale still, but quite himself, and there was nothing peculiar in his manner, as he repeated—

“What is it, Aunt Margaret?”

“This,” said his aunt, as she sat down in the armchair, and held out the key.

“What is it that you mean?” said Guy, with a sudden look of being on his guard, and much in the tone of her own question to John Cooper.

“You left your cupboard open, Guy, and John Cooper, very properly, locked it up, and gave me the key. What should a lad of your age do with a bottle of brandy?”

“Confound John Cooper’s meddling impertinence!” said Guy, passionately. “It is nothing to him or to any one what I choose to keep there.”

“That depends upon the use you make of it.”

“Has John Cooper been setting it about that I’ve been drinking?” said Guy, with an angry laugh. “Is that—is that what it looks like?”

He caught himself up with a start, and turning away to the window, stood staring out of it, while his aunt said—

“It’s a matter I’ll have cleared up, Guy, before I answer all your questions of this morning. I’ve known many young fellows take a drop too much in company. That wasn’t thought so much of when I was young. But it’s different nowadays; and what that bottle of brandy means, if it means anything at all, is a very different matter again.”

Whether Guy was struggling with temper or embarrassment, or whether he really did not know what to say, he was silent for some time. At last he turned round, and said ungraciously—“On my word and honour, I don’t drink. I have never been drunk in my life—yet.”

“Then what does this mean?” still holding out the key.

“Sometimes—very seldom—I get faint or dizzy—with a headache—I hate a fuss, and I can set myself right with a little brandy.” There was something in the extreme reluctance with which the answer was given that justified suspicion.

“You ought to see a doctor, if that is so,” said Mrs. Waynflete, with much reason; “and when I hear what he says, I’ll think of what you say.”

“As you please, Aunt Margaret,” said Guy. “If my word is not to be taken, I don’t care in the least to be cleared by another person’s.”

“You ought to care how your character stands in my eyes,” said Mrs. Waynflete. “Take back your key. I shall judge for myself.”

She looked keenly at the young man standing in the sunlight. It was obvious that now, at any rate, he was fully master of himself, and Mrs. Waynflete had lived too much with men, and knew their ways too well, not to perceive that there was nothing in his look to substantiate the charge against him.

Suddenly he looked round at her, in a curious, furtive way—a look which he withdrew at once as she met it, but which startled her. She had caught the glance of fear and suspicion.

“Time will show,” she said, as she left the room. “But I’ll have it all made clear to me, before I trust matters in your hands.”

When left alone, Guy hastily locked his door again, then flung himself down on the sofa.

“Oh, I am a fool, a fool!” he cried to himself. “God knows what will become of me!”

He turned his face downwards with a gesture of despair. There was no one to help him, and he could not help himself.