Collected works of j s f.., p.706
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 706
There were many matters about which Bright wanted advice at that time. They were chiefly of a private nature. The well-oiled machinery of business affairs had been too long established for any hitch to occur through Charlesworth’s sudden death: thanks to the heads of departments and the well-drilled army of subordinate managers and foremen, everything ran with its accustomed smoothness in the great mill: it was scarcely noticeable that Charlesworth’s hand released the controlling lever and Bright’s grasped it. And Bright knew that the whole edifice was so firmly rooted that he had nothing to do but keep an eye open for the need of small repairs — Marrashaws Mill was a sound, established thing. It cost him no anxiety: never would do, said wiseacres like Ellerthwaite, if he would leave things alone. But he was bothered about other matters, and one was Marrashaw Royd.
For some reason for which he would have found it difficult to account, Bright had an absolute and ineradicable dislike to the pretentious mansion in which his father had taken such pride. Outside his own bedroom, his workshop, and the morning-room, he loathed every inch and corner of it. The solemn grandeur of the state apartments, their pretentiousness, their ostentation, roused feelings of irrepressible anger in him; nothing, except sheer necessity, could induce him to set foot within them. And now that they were his he felt something as a man might feel who, having a natural taste for a pint of ale, a crust of bread, and a slice of cheese, is set down to a banquet of rich food and floods of champagne. Live in Marrashaw Royd he would not: the two rooms in the Leemingville cottage had been far more attractive. Yet Marrashaw Royd and all its contents, rich furnishings, priceless objects of art, luxurious carpets; and all the rest of it, with its fine gardens, ornamental grounds, carriages, horses, motor-cars, was — his.
Oddly enough, Bright felt a curious reserve in talking about these things to Hermie Clough. He had an intuitive feeling that to remind Hermie of his wealth was pleasing to neither: also he thought it scarcely respectful to Charlesworth’s memory to let Hermie know how much he disagreed with his father’s taste. But going across the moor to Ellerthwaite’s house one afternoon, and finding nobody at home but Milly, he suddenly unbosomed himself to her.
“Milly!” he blurted out, in the midst of a conversation about nothing. “I’m in a regular hole about something that’s bothering me fearfully. Help me out! you’re a managing sort.”
“What is it, Bright?” asked Milly. “Something domestic? That’s the only line I’m at all managing in.”
“Well, something of that sort,” replied Bright. “It’s the house — Marrashaw Royd. I don’t know what to do with it. It’s a white elephant on my hands. Between you and me, I hate it — can’t stand it. My father thought no end of it — he built it. But — well, there it is. I simply can’t live in it!”
“Why?” demanded Milly.
“Why? Good Heavens! — do you think I want to live in a place that looks like — well, half like a museum and art-gallery, and half like an imitation of the inside of Buckingham Palace! I want something — home-like.”
“It is a bit — magnificent,” admitted Milly. She was fully alive to Bright’s suggestions for she had known what it was to dine at Charlesworth’s table in the gorgeous dining-room and spend the rest of the evening amid the splendours of the drawing-room, and had been thankful all the time that her own father, fond as he was of comfort, had never followed his friend’s example and built a modern mansion. “But then—”
“What?” asked Bright.
“It’s there — and I suppose it’ll get — more home-like in time, especially if you used the rooms more,” said Milly. “And besides — my father told me you were going to be married to Hermione Clough.”
“Not for some time, anyway,” replied Bright, hastily. “And — what’s that got to do with it?”
“Probably Hermione would like Marrashaw Royd just as much as you dislike it,” suggested Milly.
Bright laughed — almost derisively. The idea of Hermie as a centre-figure in Marrashaw Royd was too much for him to imagine.
“Would she?” he exclaimed. “That shows how little you know of her, then! A plain cottage in Paradise Street would be more to Hermie’s liking — she’s the sort who thinks it’s wicked to have servants!”
“Does she?” observed Milly, demurely. “That is interesting! Do you?”
“I?” said Bright. “Well, really, I — I don’t know that I do. I suppose servants are — rather useful, aren’t they? I don’t know much about it.”
“I should say you’d know a lot more if you were suddenly asked to do without them,” said Milly, drily. “However — but do you really mean that you don’t want to live in Marrashaw Royd?”
“Don’t want?” exclaimed Bright. “I won’t! I’ll have to live there, I expect, till Trissie and your Victor get married — Trissie’s got to be considered, you know. But when that’s over — well, I just won’t. What do I want with a place that size? I should feel as if I were living in the National Gallery — or in one of Maple’s show-rooms!”
“Aren’t you ever going to ask your friends to dinner or anything?” suggested Milly. “Your father was very hospitable.”
Bright’s face clouded and he groaned slightly.
“I never thought of that!” he muttered. “Shall — shall I be expected to do that sort of thing?”
Milly, who was busied with her needle-work, smiled, but as her eyes were bent on her needle, Bright failed to see it.
“Oh, well I suppose you ought to keep up the family customs,” she answered. “People are sure to ask you to dinner, you know, and so — eh?”
Bright groaned again.
“The fact is,” he said, almost pathetically. “I’m not cut out for all that business! My tastes don’t lie in that direction. I always did like coming here — you’re nice and quiet here, in a good old-fashioned way. But I don’t like going out — and to think of giving a dinner-party in that dining-room of ours — I won’t!”
“Very well,” said Milly. “Don’t! Why should you? And as for the house — why not let it?”
“No!” exclaimed Bright, suddenly. “I’ve an idea — splendid! I know what I’ll do — I’ll give the whole place, as it stands, to Trissie and Victor for a wedding-present! It suits Trissie all right — she knows what to do with it. That’s an immense idea, Milly! And,” he added, with a sigh of satisfaction, “it’ll save me the trouble of thinking what to give them — I’d been cudgelling my brains over that already, and I couldn’t think of anything.”
Milly looked up from her work for an instant and took in a general sense of Bright’s ingenuousness. She smiled again as she turned to her needle.
“An immense idea, is it?” she remarked. “I should say it’s an immense present. Have you any notion of what Marrashaw Royd’s worth, Bright?”
“Not exactly,” replied Bright. “But — a tidy lot, including everything.”
“A very tidy lot, I should think!” said Milly, with increasing dryness. “And you’re willing to give it — clear away!”
“But you see, I don’t want it,” urged Bright. “I don’t want it at all. I’ll give it to Trissie — she’ll like it. And then — well, it’ll still be in the family. Oh, I’m quite sure it’s the very best thing to do!”
“You’re very generous,” said Milly. “And the next thing, I suppose — you’ll be giving away the business?”
Bright, who occasionally suffered from lapses of his sense of humour, took this suggestion seriously.
“No,” he answered, gravely. “I won’t do that — there’s too much at stake for too many people. No — but I’ll certainly give Marrashaw Royd to Trissie and Victor. That is, if they’ll accept it.”
“I don’t think you need bother your head about that!” observed Milly. “I should say — knowing Victor pretty well, and Trissie scarcely less — that they’ll put out both hands for it. Really, Bright, you’re a very extraordinary person, and I’m not sure that you don’t need looking after! It’s all very well to be generous, but, after all, you ought to remember that your father worked very hard to get what you so easily give away. However, as you say, it’s to be in the family — and,” she added, with another smile in the direction of the needlework, “I’m quite sure Mrs. Victor Ellerthwaite will take good care of it.”
That, too, was Trissie’s opinion. She received the news of her brother’s proposed wedding-present with equanimity, and thanked him so gracefully and prettily for his kindness that Bright felt much more than compensated.
“But isn’t it splendid and fortunate that the place is coming into our hands!” she said to Victor in communicating the tidings. “Bright! — why, he’d have just neglected everything!”
VII
IN SPITE OF the terrible weight of responsibility that had been forced upon him, things went easily for Bright Marrashaw during the first few months of his proprietorship of the business which his ancestors had founded, and built up and consolidated into a gigantic affair. His managers and foremen were always ready to take things off his shoulders and out of his hands: his workpeople, secretly glad to see a new and a young master amongst them were amicable; the well-oiled wheels of the huge machine ran smoothly and noiselessly. That summer Bright did certain things that made him popular. He organised and carried out a grand full-day trip to Scarborough, conveying his army of employees in a series of special trains, which set them down by the sea before breakfast and left them by it until sun-down: he provided breakfast, dinner, and tea for his three thousand hungry mouths, and wound up the festivity by announcing that what had been done that day would be continued in time to come as an annual event. Then, gazing one day from the windows of the private office on the smooth greensward of the big quadrangle, he determined to turn this fine open space to some practical use, and converted one half of it into lawn tennis-courts for the young folk and bowling green for the old ones. Already there were cricket and football clubs in connection with the mill: Charlesworth always thought he had done plenty for them if he gave each an annual subscription: Bright went further, amalgamated the two, presented the members with a fine new ground, equipped with pavillions and dressing rooms, and set them on a fine financial basis. Clearly, said the townsfolk, the young man was minded to be free with his money, and Milly Ellerthwaite, hearing, as everybody did, of his generous doings, thought of what she had said to him when he confided to her his troublous state of mind about Marrashaw Royd, and felt more certain than ever that Bright wanted looking after; if he went on as he was doing, he would give away all his money.
But in Bright’s opinion all these things were insignificant details in comparison with the scheme which had been working in his brain from the moment he awoke to the full realisation of what it meant to be Marrashaw of Marrashaw’s Mill. He had an instinctive feeling that because of his speech at the Independent Labour Hall, his people expected something of him — a new development, a startling, perhaps revolutionary departure: now and then he heard vague hints of their expectations. And keeping his thoughts strictly to himself, saying nothing of them even to Hermie Clough, he was steadily working out a plan whereby he meant to put the big business on an entirely new footing. When he had made announcement of his heresies to Charlesworth on that eventful evening before his twenty-first birthday, Bright had said that his notions as regards a better understanding between the forces of capital and labour ran in the direction of profit-sharing, and had mentioned one Saylor, of Upper Cotley, a neighbouring manufacturer who had introduced the system into his business some years before, and had made a big success of it. Charlesworth had sneered at the notion — but now that Charlesworth was dead and Bright master there was an open field. Bright visited Saylor at Upper Cotley and carefully examined the results which he had achieved; he paid other visits to big industrial concerns in which profit-sharing or co-partnership was in force: anxious to know all he could on the point he even went abroad and studied the working of various systems in France and Germany. And before the end of the year he had evolved a scheme of his own, the results of many months of anxious and continued thought, and had written it out, and re-written it, and at last had got it all cut-and-dried. Like all enthusiasts he thought it perfect: it was beyond him to realise that it might not be acceptable; having looked at it from every point of view, he failed — being what he was — to find a flaw in it. He fondly believed that by its adoption, he and his workpeople would set up a model, and that Marrashaw’s Mill would be pointed to from every quarter of the industrial world as an ideal to which masters on the one hand and men on the other would turn for light and leading.
In putting his notions before his people in particular and the world in general, Bright adopted methods of his own. Having arrived at his final and definite decision, he embodied his scheme in a short address to the workfolk of Marrashaw’s Mill, wherein he set out his proposals in the plainest possible fashion and language, so that the least educated could read and understand. Taking a fair copy of this to the principle printing-office in Haverthwaite, he bound him and his compositors to secrecy in setting up of the address, which they were to make into a four-page tract in bold type. Four thousand copies of this were struck off. And one Monday morning, descending upon them like shafts from heaven, these copies were distributed to every man, woman, boy and girl in Marrashaw’s Mill, and with each a pink slip of paper requesting the recipient to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the proposals, to discuss them seriously and candidly with fellow-workers, and to attend a meeting which would be held, a fortnight later, for the purpose of debating them in public.
Bright’s scheme, on the surface, was simplicity itself. He set out with an axiom of his own, delivered with all the assurance of an infallible utterance — that the worker is justly entitled to a greater share of the profits arising from his work. It followed upon this, of course, that the workers of Marrashaw’s Mill were entitled to more than they were getting. It followed upon that, that he, as an honest employer, desired to give them more and intended to do so. And this was the way in which he would do it: — Here was the business, firmly established, doing excellently well, likely to continue its successful career as far as ever one could see in the future. He proposed to consider it as a standing affair, fully and sufficiently capitalised, on which every year there was a great sum of money made in profits. He had employed a leading firm of accountants to make a careful estimate of the average of profits for the past five years — that average represented a certain large sum: it was not at all likely to decrease; on the contrary, everything pointed to the probability of its growing bigger. Now, in future, starting from that year, he proposed to divide the entire amount of the net annual profit amongst the people connected with Marrashaw’s Mill, on a definite scale. He, as owner, would take twenty-five per cent of it. Twelve-and-a-half per cent would be divided amongst the managers and foreman. Another twelve-and-a-half per cent would be divided amongst those workers, men and women, who had twenty years’ standing. There remained fifty per cent to deal with. This would be divided amongst the remaining workers in relation to their length of service; five years’ service being fixed as the minimum of eligibility. He wound up with a briefly worded appeal to all to consider his proposal in the spirit in which it was made — that of an honest attempt to place every employee in the position of feeling that he or she, in his or her degree had a sound and personal interest in the welfare and prosperity of the business.
Hermie Clough received her copy of Bright’s proposals just as the other folk of the mill had received theirs — it was handed to her as she entered the precincts on her way to the private office. She was reading it at her table when Bright walked in. He coloured, with a certain shyness, when he saw how Hermie was engaged. And Hermie laughed, and let the all-important tractate flutter from her fingers.
“Well?” demanded Bright.
“Just like you, Bright!” she said, with another laugh. “There’s a vein of Quixotic feeling in you!”
“What do you mean?” demanded Bright. He had been expecting words of warm praise from her. “Don’t you like my scheme?” he went on, with some anxiety. “I’ve worked hard enough at it!”
“Profit-sharing schemes don’t appeal to me in the least,” replied Hermie, almost indifferently. “You did well to keep yours to yourself, Bright, until you’d hatched it out: if you’d told me of it I should have deluged it with cold water.”
“Why?” asked Bright. He was genuinely surprised: it seemed to him that his action verged on the magnificent. “Cold water on a scheme that puts seventy-five per cent of the profits of a business like this into the hands of employees! What more can anybody desire?”
“That’s not it,” said Hermie. “I’m dealing with principles. Profit-sharing and co-partnership are all — rot! But here’s to-day’s business to attend to — hadn’t we better get on to the letters?”
Bright turned to his desk feeling as if a cloud had suddenly descended upon the fairness of his morning. He tried to lure Hermie into discussion, but she steadfastly withstood him.
“No!” she declared, when he had re-opened the subject for the third time. “I’m not going to say a word, now. Wait a bit — and see what the people have to say to your proposals. I daresay you think they’ll jump at them?”
“I think they’ll be fools if they don’t,” said Bright.
Hermie laughed again.
“We’ll see!” she said.
Bright purposely went amongst his folk that morning, hoping to hear warm encomium, or at any rate intelligent appreciation. To his surprise he heard nothing of the sort. The few men who mentioned the proposals to him said no more than that the thing needed careful thinking about: no one but Lockwood Clough seemed inclined to discuss it.
