Collected works of j s f.., p.710
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 710
“I want to ask you, Howroyd, and you, Jubb, certain questions,” he said. “I shall be obliged if you’ll give me plain answers. What I want to ask arises out of certain information which has been given me. Is it true that you are both members of a society or group formed in the town for the purpose of spreading the principles of Syndicalism?”
Howroyd looked at Jubb, and Jubb looked at Howroyd. It was Howroyd who presently replied to Bright’s question.
“Without answering that in direct terms, Mr. Marrashaw,” he said quietly, “may I point out that we’re at liberty, as private individuals, to belong to any group, any society, any movement we like?”
“As private individuals, you are,” answered Bright. “So we’ll leave that. I’ll go on to a more pertinent question. Is it true that since I put forward my profit-sharing scheme you have both done everything you could, by influence and persuasion, to prevent your fellow-workpeople from falling in with it? Answer me that, if you please!”
Again it was Howroyd who spoke. His usually pale face had grown paler since he entered the room, and his deep-set eyes were beginning to glow. He glanced at Jubb: Jubb nodded.
“It’s perfectly true that we’ve spoken against your scheme,” answered Howroyd. “We don’t agree with it! It’s not in accordance with our principles: we don’t want to see it, nor any such project, adopted, here, or elsewhere. As to influence and persuasion, you use both terms in a way I shouldn’t. What we have done has been to criticise and speak against the scheme whenever it has been discussed in our presence; to point out its weaknesses, fallacies, dangers to the class it’s supposed to benefit. Why not? you invited criticism and even opposition. As free men, we’ve a right to say what we think!”
“Why did you not come out in the open, then?” demanded Bright. “Neither of you were at the meeting.”
“That’s not our method,” replied Howroyd. “Our method is to teach our principles by quiet conversation and gradual permeation. Once more — we have a right to it.”
“In plain words — you think it honest to take my money, and set my people against my plans!” exclaimed Bright. “Is that it?”
Howroyd’s pale cheeks assumed a faint colour, and his sombre eyes flashed.
“That is not it!” he answered. “As to setting your people against your plans, we, like all other men and women in your employ, have a perfect right to criticise any plan, project, proposal which affects our well-being. As to taking your money, you know as well as we do — indeed, far better — that for every penny you pay us, we give you much more than an equivalent. You’ve admitted that already, in the printed proposals for profit-sharing which you sent out.”
“You contend then that if I, as proprietor of this business, formulate certain schemes, you, as employees, have a right to counteract them?” demanded Bright.
“So far as they concern ourselves — yes,” assented Howroyd. “Decidedly so!”
“And you intend to go on advising my workpeople not to agree with the profit-sharing scheme I’ve devised for their benefit?” asked Bright. “I want a plain answer!”
“We intend to stand by our right of free speech,” replied Howroyd. “I shall say precisely what I please about your scheme, and whenever I please, and wherever I please!”
“And I shall do the same!” said Jubb, resolutely. “I’m a paid man, but that doesn’t make me a slave. Nothing’ll do that, and—”
The door opened, and the chief cashier, an elderly, spectacled man walked in, and looked a mild astonishment at what he saw. And at the sight of him, Howroyd and Jubb exchanged significant glances.
“Mr. Walshaw,” said Bright, “how are these two men paid — monthly, weekly, or what?”
The cashier glanced wonderingly from master to men.
“Howroyd monthly, and Jubb weekly, Mr. Marrashaw,” he answered.
“Give Howroyd a month’s salary, and Jubb a week’s wages,” commanded Bright. “Both in lieu of notice. They’re dismissed.”
Then, with a wave of his hand, he signed to all three to leave the room, and as the door closed upon them, he rose from his chair and crossing to the window beyond it, looked out on the quadrangle. The first object on which his eyes fell was Charlesworth’s statue, massive and imposing in the morning sunlight. Bright’s lips met in a tight grip as he looked on the marble effigy: in that moment he began to realise and to understand his father better than he had ever done when Charlesworth was flesh and blood.
XII
TWENTY MINUTES TICKED themselves away before Bright’s door opened again. Then Hermie Clough burst in, and Bright, turning slowly from the window, saw that her face was aflame with indignation and her eyes hot with anger: she was quivering, too, from head to foot of her slight figure. She came to a stop by the side of her writing-table, and resting the tips of her fingers on it, faced him.
“Bright!” she exclaimed. “You’ve turned out Allot Howroyd! And Lister Jubb! It’s — tyranny! The meanest, most abominable tyranny! Where are all your promises? All your good intentions! To dismiss men for—”
“I’ve dismissed both men for gross and lying treachery!” interrupted Bright. “Just as I shall dismiss any man, woman, boy, girl, who carries on the same game! I’ll never do a thing, Hermie, to interfere with freedom, nor with liberty of speech, but I’ll have no mean, lying spies about my premises! If they can’t come out into the open—”
“Mean? Lying?” cried Hermie. “They? Then—”
Suddenly she paused, looking fixedly at Bright.
“The meanness and lying and spying are in the man who’s led you to this!” she said. “You’ve let yourself be deceived—”
“No!” said Bright, firmly. “Both men acknowledged that they used their best endeavours to defeat my scheme: they gloried in it, I think! Frank and candid enough, anyway.”
“And you — you turned them off for — for that!” exclaimed Hermie. “For opposing your scheme?”
“Precisely!” retorted Bright. “I’m not such a fool as to employ people who thwart my projects. Let ’em go and do it outside!” He laughed, a little bitterly. “While I’m captain of this ship,” he went on, “I’ll have a loyal crew! Otherwise—”
Hermie suddenly interrupted him with a strange, searching glance.
“Are you going to call these two men back — and re-instate them?” she demanded. “Answer — Bright!”
“No!” replied Bright. “I am not!”
He plunged his hands in his pockets and looked at her: something in her eyes told him that it was now or never between her and him.
“Neither for you, Hermie, nor for anybody!” he said, suddenly. “I’m master! And,” he added, “you’d better realise that — as well as the others. I’ve a crow to pull with you, yet!”
Hermie gazed at him a moment, as steadily as he was gazing at her. Then she lifted her left hand and slowly drew from its third finger the engagement ring which Bright had given her just after his father’s death. She laid it on the table before him, picked up her gloves and umbrella, and walked out of the room, silently. Just as she had left Charlesworth, so now she turned her back on Bright.
END OF THE SECOND PART
Part the Third: THE SON OF HIS FATHERS
I
WHEN HERMIE CLOUGH closed the door and went away from him, Bright realised that she also closed a chapter of his book of life. It was neither from instinct nor through intuition but by sure knowledge that he now felt everything to be over between her and himself. He made no effort to call her back: he had no wish to have a last word with her. The thing was done: she had done it; perhaps he had helped to do it. For a moment he felt a little dazed: it was just as if he had experienced a sudden fall from an inconsiderable height or been unexpectedly submerged in ice-cold water. But presently he pulled himself together, thrust his hands in his pockets, and turning to the window, looked out across the quadrangle. His gaze on its familiar objects was abstracted; he was thinking, and not of the events of the last half-hour. Rather, his mind was running over the story of his relations with the girl who had just left him. Perhaps they had been unusual — odd, some folk would have called them, he supposed. Some folk, too, would have seen little of what was commonly considered love-making in those relations. Hermie and himself had been brought together by their work at the Technical school: interchange of opinion had revealed a mutual sympathy and community of interest: they had discovered that they shared common notions about things in general and about the future: each an idealist, he and she had come to think that their ideas might run on closely parallel lines and perhaps fuse in the end. But all along, spread across a two years’ intimate acquaintanceship, Bright had felt vaguely conscious that he had never quite understood Hermie Clough, nor got at her real inner self: he knew, intuitively, that she went far beyond him in many of her ideas and conclusions, and experience had taught him that temperamentally she was elusive and secret. Now, however, she had been open and candid enough; as she had dealt with Charlesworth, his father, so she had dealt with him, the son. And Bright knew, when she laid her engagement ring on his desk, and walked out of the room, indignation quivering in every line of her slight figure, that he, after all, had only occupied a second place in her scheme of life — uppermost with Hermie, then, always, was this vague, shadowy thing, the cause. Evidently, she was the sort that would sacrifice everything to her devotion to that, to the Ideal — he was not quite sure that she might not have in her the stuff that lay in Joan of Arc, perhaps in Charlotte Corday: he could easily imagine her going to the stake, defiant and implacable to the last, in defence of her opinions, and he had a half-amused idea that her slender fingers would be steady enough if circumstances impelled her to stick a knife in the throat of a tyrant.
But there were other matters than this, his own personal affair, to think of at that moment. He realised that he had come to a definite cross-road; a plain and unmistakable parting of the ways. It was well for him that he had by that time arrived at a clear knowledge of his own position. He had not given up, nor had he the slightest intention of giving up, any of his ideas about the relative positions of employed and employer, of labour and capital: he was not only as anxious as ever, but as determined as ever to re-adjust those positions in the light of his own reading of modern necessities. But circumstances had made him both capitalist and employer: he was Marrashaw, of Marrashaw’s Mill. His own tastes might make him dislike his job: he did dislike it, but it was his job, and therefore he had got to do it. However deeply and sincerely he might sympathize with his people, he was master, and he was not such a fool as to believe that mastership could as yet be done away with. And a master was a master, and Bright knew well that he must now either make a firm, uncompromising, resolute stand for his rights as master, or become the victim and tool of a secret, dictating cabal which would prove more exacting and arbitrary than any tyrannical autocracy. He looked round the room in which he stood, at the old Marrashaw pictures and portraits, and out of the window, at the queer old birthplace of the family and the statues of his ancestors which it had been his father’s odd whim to set up for all men to see. After all, there was a great deal to be proud of: perhaps he had always been prouder of it than he knew, or had ever let Charlesworth know. Certainly he had never meant to forswear the family traditions: what he had meant was to alter its workings in accordance with his own views of what the modern relations should be between capital and labour. He knew that his own intentions in regard to his carefully-evolved profit-sharing scheme had been sincere and genuine: even now, in spite of everything, he could not believe that the majority of his three thousand workpeople really wished to reject his offers. Surely the sensible and far-seeing folk amongst them would rally round him at the right moment! — but he would have no underhand work, no treachery; what angered him in his thoughts of men like Howroyd and Jubb was the knowledge that, as the woman had said to him, theirs was moles’ work — underground, beneath the surface. Bright, in spite of his modernity, was old-fashioned enough to believe that there is no honest fighting unless in the open: had he been a soldier, he would have felt distinct qualms of conscience if commanded to sink mines under an unconscious enemy.
A diffident tap at his door heralded the entrance of Lockwood Clough. Bright bade him come in and sit down: like his father, he had a genuine respect for this old servant and there was no man in all Haverthwaite, not even Ellerthwaite, that he would have been better pleased to see at that moment. He sat down himself and looked at Lockwood half shyly.
“You’ve heard what I’ve just done?” he said. “Dismissed Howroyd and Jubb.”
“I heard,” answered Lockwood, laconic as usual. “It’s all over the place.”
Bright’s face grew determined and even threatening.
“That’s a thing I won’t have!” he declared. “Secret intriguing against me! Nobody could stand that, Lockwood. There’d be an end of all government if that went on. Any sensible man, or woman, must see that nobody can carry on a business if there are people in it who secretly oppose the head of it! Absurd!”
“That’s not their idea,” remarked Lockwood. He shook his head. “I’m only telling you what they say — not my notions, of course.”
“Who are they?” demanded Bright.
“Them!” said Lockwood, nodding towards the big wings of the Mill, seen through the windows behind Bright’s desk. “The folks, in general. Not business at all, they say. Naught to do with business. They say — will say — that chaps like Allot Howroyd and Jubb — as they claim themselves — have a right to criticise, to give their opinions.”
“Hang it all, who says they haven’t?” exclaimed Bright. “Not I, anyway! Haven’t I been inviting criticism, asking for opinion? Didn’t I ask ’em all to come to that meeting? Did these two come? Not they! Instead, they sneak about, poisoning the other folks’ minds. I won’t have that — let ’em come out into the open and speak straight out, as I’ve done. I’d respect ’em for that, and I should know what I had to deal with. But this is all part of a conspiracy. Look here, Lockwood! — there’s a secret society in this town that wants — hanged if I know what it does want! — a universal strike or something — anyway, it’s dead against my scheme and all such schemes, and Howroyd and Jubb belong to it, and that’s why they’ve been at work. Now, I’ll have no secret societies and agents at work here — if I know it. I’m genuinely anxious, as I’ve made abundantly clear, to make immense changes — changes that my father would have been just horrified and scandalised at! — in the way of benefiting the workpeople, but I’ll do it in my own way — I’m not going to be a puppet in the hands of a clique!”
“I understand!” said Lockwood. “But I’ve known there was some such influence at work for a long time — I warned your father about it. He got some information from Grew, Mr. Bright.”
“Well, so did I — last night,” remarked Bright. “Grew’s a rat, of course — but useful. And we’d better keep his name to ourselves, Lockwood.”
“I don’t know what he told your father,” said Lockwood. “Nor what he told you. What I know is, there was some such influence at work for a long time. And what I came in to say is — this morning’s work’ll lead to trouble, Mr. Bright, and you’d best be prepared.”
“You mean — the workpeople will side with those two men?” suggested Bright.
Lockwood gave his young master a keen, knowing look.
“I mean this, sir,” he answered. “As you know, every man and woman, lad and lass in Marrashaw’s Mill is a trades-union member. Well, so’s those two men — Howroyd and Jubb. We’ve scarce anybody in the place that doesn’t belong to the union — nobody, indeed, except the managers and such-like: all the workfolk do: I do. And now — you’ll have the union against yer!”
“On what grounds?” asked Bright. “I suppose even trades’ union officials have some sense of proportion and recognise reason and common-sense?”
“They’ll take high grounds,” answered Lockwood. “They’re over sharp and subtle to do aught else! They’ll completely disregard your reasons for dismissal. They’ll say that Howroyd and Jubb have been dismissed for exercising an Englishman’s right of free speech! That’s a good ticket. And you know what our folks are, sir.”
“What?” asked Bright. “I’m not sure — having regard to what’s happened lately — that I do, Lockwood! What are they?”
“They’re Haverthwaite folk!” answered Lockwood, with a quiet smile. “Born rebels and radicals! They’ll be up in arms as soon as it’s dinned into their ears that men have been turned off for daring to say what they think. Whenever has there been a time in all t’ history o’ t’ town, Mr. Bright, when interference with a man’s liberty and freedom o’ speech didn’t rouse ’em same as a red tag is said to rouse a bull?”
“Yes,” said Bright, after a moment’s thought and reflection. “I suppose that’s so.”
“It is so!” asserted Lockwood. “You’ll not remember them, but I’ve seen two or three strikes in this town that arose out of what sensible folks would call storms in tea-cups. All out o’ naught!— ‘cause Tom thought his liberty was at stake, or Dick considered his tongue tied. And as for pig-headedness! — well,” he added, with a laugh, “I’ve heard ‘at Irishmen’s noted for obstinacy, but if there’s aught can beat Haverthwaite folk, I would like to see it!”
“You think we shall have a strike — here?” asked Bright.
“I think you’ll be hearing from t’ trade-union, sir,” answered Lockwood. “Most likely, they’ll be asking for t’ re-instatement o’ those two men.”
Bright’s face grew dark.
“They can ask!” he muttered. “But they’ll not get! I shan’t go back on my word, or action. That’s no good. What else could I do? You don’t mean to say that you disapprove it?”
“It’s not for me at all,” said Lockwood. “You’ve your own ideas. But there’s things that might have been remembered. Both Howroyd and Jubb are old hands — they’ve been in their respective departments a good many years. It might ha’ been better, Mr. Bright, if you’d talked to ’em, and asked ’em to throw off this underneath business, and come out into open warfare—”
Howroyd looked at Jubb, and Jubb looked at Howroyd. It was Howroyd who presently replied to Bright’s question.
“Without answering that in direct terms, Mr. Marrashaw,” he said quietly, “may I point out that we’re at liberty, as private individuals, to belong to any group, any society, any movement we like?”
“As private individuals, you are,” answered Bright. “So we’ll leave that. I’ll go on to a more pertinent question. Is it true that since I put forward my profit-sharing scheme you have both done everything you could, by influence and persuasion, to prevent your fellow-workpeople from falling in with it? Answer me that, if you please!”
Again it was Howroyd who spoke. His usually pale face had grown paler since he entered the room, and his deep-set eyes were beginning to glow. He glanced at Jubb: Jubb nodded.
“It’s perfectly true that we’ve spoken against your scheme,” answered Howroyd. “We don’t agree with it! It’s not in accordance with our principles: we don’t want to see it, nor any such project, adopted, here, or elsewhere. As to influence and persuasion, you use both terms in a way I shouldn’t. What we have done has been to criticise and speak against the scheme whenever it has been discussed in our presence; to point out its weaknesses, fallacies, dangers to the class it’s supposed to benefit. Why not? you invited criticism and even opposition. As free men, we’ve a right to say what we think!”
“Why did you not come out in the open, then?” demanded Bright. “Neither of you were at the meeting.”
“That’s not our method,” replied Howroyd. “Our method is to teach our principles by quiet conversation and gradual permeation. Once more — we have a right to it.”
“In plain words — you think it honest to take my money, and set my people against my plans!” exclaimed Bright. “Is that it?”
Howroyd’s pale cheeks assumed a faint colour, and his sombre eyes flashed.
“That is not it!” he answered. “As to setting your people against your plans, we, like all other men and women in your employ, have a perfect right to criticise any plan, project, proposal which affects our well-being. As to taking your money, you know as well as we do — indeed, far better — that for every penny you pay us, we give you much more than an equivalent. You’ve admitted that already, in the printed proposals for profit-sharing which you sent out.”
“You contend then that if I, as proprietor of this business, formulate certain schemes, you, as employees, have a right to counteract them?” demanded Bright.
“So far as they concern ourselves — yes,” assented Howroyd. “Decidedly so!”
“And you intend to go on advising my workpeople not to agree with the profit-sharing scheme I’ve devised for their benefit?” asked Bright. “I want a plain answer!”
“We intend to stand by our right of free speech,” replied Howroyd. “I shall say precisely what I please about your scheme, and whenever I please, and wherever I please!”
“And I shall do the same!” said Jubb, resolutely. “I’m a paid man, but that doesn’t make me a slave. Nothing’ll do that, and—”
The door opened, and the chief cashier, an elderly, spectacled man walked in, and looked a mild astonishment at what he saw. And at the sight of him, Howroyd and Jubb exchanged significant glances.
“Mr. Walshaw,” said Bright, “how are these two men paid — monthly, weekly, or what?”
The cashier glanced wonderingly from master to men.
“Howroyd monthly, and Jubb weekly, Mr. Marrashaw,” he answered.
“Give Howroyd a month’s salary, and Jubb a week’s wages,” commanded Bright. “Both in lieu of notice. They’re dismissed.”
Then, with a wave of his hand, he signed to all three to leave the room, and as the door closed upon them, he rose from his chair and crossing to the window beyond it, looked out on the quadrangle. The first object on which his eyes fell was Charlesworth’s statue, massive and imposing in the morning sunlight. Bright’s lips met in a tight grip as he looked on the marble effigy: in that moment he began to realise and to understand his father better than he had ever done when Charlesworth was flesh and blood.
XII
TWENTY MINUTES TICKED themselves away before Bright’s door opened again. Then Hermie Clough burst in, and Bright, turning slowly from the window, saw that her face was aflame with indignation and her eyes hot with anger: she was quivering, too, from head to foot of her slight figure. She came to a stop by the side of her writing-table, and resting the tips of her fingers on it, faced him.
“Bright!” she exclaimed. “You’ve turned out Allot Howroyd! And Lister Jubb! It’s — tyranny! The meanest, most abominable tyranny! Where are all your promises? All your good intentions! To dismiss men for—”
“I’ve dismissed both men for gross and lying treachery!” interrupted Bright. “Just as I shall dismiss any man, woman, boy, girl, who carries on the same game! I’ll never do a thing, Hermie, to interfere with freedom, nor with liberty of speech, but I’ll have no mean, lying spies about my premises! If they can’t come out into the open—”
“Mean? Lying?” cried Hermie. “They? Then—”
Suddenly she paused, looking fixedly at Bright.
“The meanness and lying and spying are in the man who’s led you to this!” she said. “You’ve let yourself be deceived—”
“No!” said Bright, firmly. “Both men acknowledged that they used their best endeavours to defeat my scheme: they gloried in it, I think! Frank and candid enough, anyway.”
“And you — you turned them off for — for that!” exclaimed Hermie. “For opposing your scheme?”
“Precisely!” retorted Bright. “I’m not such a fool as to employ people who thwart my projects. Let ’em go and do it outside!” He laughed, a little bitterly. “While I’m captain of this ship,” he went on, “I’ll have a loyal crew! Otherwise—”
Hermie suddenly interrupted him with a strange, searching glance.
“Are you going to call these two men back — and re-instate them?” she demanded. “Answer — Bright!”
“No!” replied Bright. “I am not!”
He plunged his hands in his pockets and looked at her: something in her eyes told him that it was now or never between her and him.
“Neither for you, Hermie, nor for anybody!” he said, suddenly. “I’m master! And,” he added, “you’d better realise that — as well as the others. I’ve a crow to pull with you, yet!”
Hermie gazed at him a moment, as steadily as he was gazing at her. Then she lifted her left hand and slowly drew from its third finger the engagement ring which Bright had given her just after his father’s death. She laid it on the table before him, picked up her gloves and umbrella, and walked out of the room, silently. Just as she had left Charlesworth, so now she turned her back on Bright.
END OF THE SECOND PART
Part the Third: THE SON OF HIS FATHERS
I
WHEN HERMIE CLOUGH closed the door and went away from him, Bright realised that she also closed a chapter of his book of life. It was neither from instinct nor through intuition but by sure knowledge that he now felt everything to be over between her and himself. He made no effort to call her back: he had no wish to have a last word with her. The thing was done: she had done it; perhaps he had helped to do it. For a moment he felt a little dazed: it was just as if he had experienced a sudden fall from an inconsiderable height or been unexpectedly submerged in ice-cold water. But presently he pulled himself together, thrust his hands in his pockets, and turning to the window, looked out across the quadrangle. His gaze on its familiar objects was abstracted; he was thinking, and not of the events of the last half-hour. Rather, his mind was running over the story of his relations with the girl who had just left him. Perhaps they had been unusual — odd, some folk would have called them, he supposed. Some folk, too, would have seen little of what was commonly considered love-making in those relations. Hermie and himself had been brought together by their work at the Technical school: interchange of opinion had revealed a mutual sympathy and community of interest: they had discovered that they shared common notions about things in general and about the future: each an idealist, he and she had come to think that their ideas might run on closely parallel lines and perhaps fuse in the end. But all along, spread across a two years’ intimate acquaintanceship, Bright had felt vaguely conscious that he had never quite understood Hermie Clough, nor got at her real inner self: he knew, intuitively, that she went far beyond him in many of her ideas and conclusions, and experience had taught him that temperamentally she was elusive and secret. Now, however, she had been open and candid enough; as she had dealt with Charlesworth, his father, so she had dealt with him, the son. And Bright knew, when she laid her engagement ring on his desk, and walked out of the room, indignation quivering in every line of her slight figure, that he, after all, had only occupied a second place in her scheme of life — uppermost with Hermie, then, always, was this vague, shadowy thing, the cause. Evidently, she was the sort that would sacrifice everything to her devotion to that, to the Ideal — he was not quite sure that she might not have in her the stuff that lay in Joan of Arc, perhaps in Charlotte Corday: he could easily imagine her going to the stake, defiant and implacable to the last, in defence of her opinions, and he had a half-amused idea that her slender fingers would be steady enough if circumstances impelled her to stick a knife in the throat of a tyrant.
But there were other matters than this, his own personal affair, to think of at that moment. He realised that he had come to a definite cross-road; a plain and unmistakable parting of the ways. It was well for him that he had by that time arrived at a clear knowledge of his own position. He had not given up, nor had he the slightest intention of giving up, any of his ideas about the relative positions of employed and employer, of labour and capital: he was not only as anxious as ever, but as determined as ever to re-adjust those positions in the light of his own reading of modern necessities. But circumstances had made him both capitalist and employer: he was Marrashaw, of Marrashaw’s Mill. His own tastes might make him dislike his job: he did dislike it, but it was his job, and therefore he had got to do it. However deeply and sincerely he might sympathize with his people, he was master, and he was not such a fool as to believe that mastership could as yet be done away with. And a master was a master, and Bright knew well that he must now either make a firm, uncompromising, resolute stand for his rights as master, or become the victim and tool of a secret, dictating cabal which would prove more exacting and arbitrary than any tyrannical autocracy. He looked round the room in which he stood, at the old Marrashaw pictures and portraits, and out of the window, at the queer old birthplace of the family and the statues of his ancestors which it had been his father’s odd whim to set up for all men to see. After all, there was a great deal to be proud of: perhaps he had always been prouder of it than he knew, or had ever let Charlesworth know. Certainly he had never meant to forswear the family traditions: what he had meant was to alter its workings in accordance with his own views of what the modern relations should be between capital and labour. He knew that his own intentions in regard to his carefully-evolved profit-sharing scheme had been sincere and genuine: even now, in spite of everything, he could not believe that the majority of his three thousand workpeople really wished to reject his offers. Surely the sensible and far-seeing folk amongst them would rally round him at the right moment! — but he would have no underhand work, no treachery; what angered him in his thoughts of men like Howroyd and Jubb was the knowledge that, as the woman had said to him, theirs was moles’ work — underground, beneath the surface. Bright, in spite of his modernity, was old-fashioned enough to believe that there is no honest fighting unless in the open: had he been a soldier, he would have felt distinct qualms of conscience if commanded to sink mines under an unconscious enemy.
A diffident tap at his door heralded the entrance of Lockwood Clough. Bright bade him come in and sit down: like his father, he had a genuine respect for this old servant and there was no man in all Haverthwaite, not even Ellerthwaite, that he would have been better pleased to see at that moment. He sat down himself and looked at Lockwood half shyly.
“You’ve heard what I’ve just done?” he said. “Dismissed Howroyd and Jubb.”
“I heard,” answered Lockwood, laconic as usual. “It’s all over the place.”
Bright’s face grew determined and even threatening.
“That’s a thing I won’t have!” he declared. “Secret intriguing against me! Nobody could stand that, Lockwood. There’d be an end of all government if that went on. Any sensible man, or woman, must see that nobody can carry on a business if there are people in it who secretly oppose the head of it! Absurd!”
“That’s not their idea,” remarked Lockwood. He shook his head. “I’m only telling you what they say — not my notions, of course.”
“Who are they?” demanded Bright.
“Them!” said Lockwood, nodding towards the big wings of the Mill, seen through the windows behind Bright’s desk. “The folks, in general. Not business at all, they say. Naught to do with business. They say — will say — that chaps like Allot Howroyd and Jubb — as they claim themselves — have a right to criticise, to give their opinions.”
“Hang it all, who says they haven’t?” exclaimed Bright. “Not I, anyway! Haven’t I been inviting criticism, asking for opinion? Didn’t I ask ’em all to come to that meeting? Did these two come? Not they! Instead, they sneak about, poisoning the other folks’ minds. I won’t have that — let ’em come out into the open and speak straight out, as I’ve done. I’d respect ’em for that, and I should know what I had to deal with. But this is all part of a conspiracy. Look here, Lockwood! — there’s a secret society in this town that wants — hanged if I know what it does want! — a universal strike or something — anyway, it’s dead against my scheme and all such schemes, and Howroyd and Jubb belong to it, and that’s why they’ve been at work. Now, I’ll have no secret societies and agents at work here — if I know it. I’m genuinely anxious, as I’ve made abundantly clear, to make immense changes — changes that my father would have been just horrified and scandalised at! — in the way of benefiting the workpeople, but I’ll do it in my own way — I’m not going to be a puppet in the hands of a clique!”
“I understand!” said Lockwood. “But I’ve known there was some such influence at work for a long time — I warned your father about it. He got some information from Grew, Mr. Bright.”
“Well, so did I — last night,” remarked Bright. “Grew’s a rat, of course — but useful. And we’d better keep his name to ourselves, Lockwood.”
“I don’t know what he told your father,” said Lockwood. “Nor what he told you. What I know is, there was some such influence at work for a long time. And what I came in to say is — this morning’s work’ll lead to trouble, Mr. Bright, and you’d best be prepared.”
“You mean — the workpeople will side with those two men?” suggested Bright.
Lockwood gave his young master a keen, knowing look.
“I mean this, sir,” he answered. “As you know, every man and woman, lad and lass in Marrashaw’s Mill is a trades-union member. Well, so’s those two men — Howroyd and Jubb. We’ve scarce anybody in the place that doesn’t belong to the union — nobody, indeed, except the managers and such-like: all the workfolk do: I do. And now — you’ll have the union against yer!”
“On what grounds?” asked Bright. “I suppose even trades’ union officials have some sense of proportion and recognise reason and common-sense?”
“They’ll take high grounds,” answered Lockwood. “They’re over sharp and subtle to do aught else! They’ll completely disregard your reasons for dismissal. They’ll say that Howroyd and Jubb have been dismissed for exercising an Englishman’s right of free speech! That’s a good ticket. And you know what our folks are, sir.”
“What?” asked Bright. “I’m not sure — having regard to what’s happened lately — that I do, Lockwood! What are they?”
“They’re Haverthwaite folk!” answered Lockwood, with a quiet smile. “Born rebels and radicals! They’ll be up in arms as soon as it’s dinned into their ears that men have been turned off for daring to say what they think. Whenever has there been a time in all t’ history o’ t’ town, Mr. Bright, when interference with a man’s liberty and freedom o’ speech didn’t rouse ’em same as a red tag is said to rouse a bull?”
“Yes,” said Bright, after a moment’s thought and reflection. “I suppose that’s so.”
“It is so!” asserted Lockwood. “You’ll not remember them, but I’ve seen two or three strikes in this town that arose out of what sensible folks would call storms in tea-cups. All out o’ naught!— ‘cause Tom thought his liberty was at stake, or Dick considered his tongue tied. And as for pig-headedness! — well,” he added, with a laugh, “I’ve heard ‘at Irishmen’s noted for obstinacy, but if there’s aught can beat Haverthwaite folk, I would like to see it!”
“You think we shall have a strike — here?” asked Bright.
“I think you’ll be hearing from t’ trade-union, sir,” answered Lockwood. “Most likely, they’ll be asking for t’ re-instatement o’ those two men.”
Bright’s face grew dark.
“They can ask!” he muttered. “But they’ll not get! I shan’t go back on my word, or action. That’s no good. What else could I do? You don’t mean to say that you disapprove it?”
“It’s not for me at all,” said Lockwood. “You’ve your own ideas. But there’s things that might have been remembered. Both Howroyd and Jubb are old hands — they’ve been in their respective departments a good many years. It might ha’ been better, Mr. Bright, if you’d talked to ’em, and asked ’em to throw off this underneath business, and come out into open warfare—”
