Part 2, Chapter IV.
Throwing Down the Gauntlet.
Shortly after this day at the Rabys, Mrs Joshua Palmer went up to Waynflete ostensibly because she thought that she could be of some use to Aunt Waynflete in getting comfortably settled in there, and in finally arranging her household if, as seemed likely, she remained there for the winter, but really moved by something in her daughter’s letters which excited her anxiety. It would not do at all to have “anything” between Godfrey and Jeanie, at their age. By-and-by, if anything really came of the fancy, things might be different.
Guy and his friend were therefore left alone at Ingleby, and two or three weeks passed without much outward event, but of much inward importance.
Guy, whether wisely or unwisely, plunged into the study of such experiences as his own, and their possible explanations. He had no difficulty in these days in finding material, and he brought to bear on the subject an amount of acute intelligence and reasoning power for which Staunton had hardly given him credit. He puzzled him a good deal by his ridicule of some recorded stories, and his keen interest in others. He mastered the point of the various theories, stating and criticising them with much force, and the discussions were certainly so far good for him that he lost some of his sense of unique and shameful experience. But Cuthbert saw that he tested everything by an incommunicable and inexplicable sense, and he never uttered any definite conviction as regarded himself. He had no “nervous attacks” as Cuthbert called them; but whether the terrible night at Waynflete had done him permanent harm, or whether the strain was more continuous than appeared, he was certainly far from strong, and suffered from any extra exertion, so that the need of care was evident enough.
“I believe I was a fool to set you upon all this reading,” said Cuthbert, one day. “You’ll wear yourself out with it when I have to leave you.”
“It would be very difficult to be alone,” said Guy, thoughtfully.
“It’s out of the question. You’re not fit for the mill or for the hard winter here. You ought to have a sea-voyage, or something of that sort. Or, at any rate, come and stay on the south coast somewhere where I could make my headquarters while I’m lecturing, and see you now and then.”
“There are a great many things I can’t quite tell you,” said Guy, after a pause, “and they don’t only concern myself. It’s all right about the reading, but I’ve got something to do to-day. It’s quite simple, only rather hard. And I know ‘he’ doesn’t want me to do it.”
Guy had said nothing so personal since his first confession, and, as he got up languidly, and prepared to return to the mill for his afternoon work, giving his friend an odd, half-smiling look, as he moved away, Cuthbert felt an uncomfortable thrill.
It startled him to feel that Guy’s conviction lay absolutely untouched by all his recent study. There was something inscrutable behind the pathetic eyes, and what was it? Was the boy “mad north-north west?” or would he at last compel belief in the incredible? Horatio, Cuthbert thought, had a great advantage in having actually seen the ghost that haunted Hamlet.
Then he remembered making some remark to Guy on the “objective” character of this famous apparition, and Guy had answered, “But they only saw it, as you see a house or a tree. I don’t suppose it made much difference to them.”
Guy betook himself to the mill, and called John Cooper into the room where the bottle of brandy was still locked up in the cupboard in the wall. He had often been as conscious of its presence there, as he could have been of that of the ghost; every morning he thought about it more and more persistently, and every evening when he went away he knew that the day’s victory had left him with less strength for the morrow’s conflict.
Now, when he went up to the cupboard, and turned the key in the lock, and, with his keen ears heard the old manager’s step crossing the court—it was to him as if another hand pushed the lock back—and another than himself suggested a different reason for the summons. But he stood still, leaning against the wall, till the old man came into the room.
Then he put up his hand, and let the door swing open.
“John Cooper,” he said, “take that out, and take it away with you. I’ll own you had right on your side. But you shouldn’t have cackled about it to Mrs Waynflete.”
“Well now,” said Cooper, in a rougher echo of the young man’s slow, musical voice, “I’ve thought of that myself. I’m glad you’ve come to a better mind about it, Mr Guy, for I’d not be willing to see the old missus disappointed in your future.”
“She don’t expect much,” said Guy. “Now then,” after Cooper had taken the brandy-bottle out of the cupboard, and set it beside a file of bills. “Now that you see I’m not going to send the business and myself to the dogs, shut the door, I’ve something to say.”
John Cooper obeyed, and Guy sat down by the table.
“Now then,” he repeated, “we are going to the dogs, and you know it. Let’s look it in the face.”
“Eh, Mr Guy, trade’s fluctuating. We’ll pull round without letting th’ owd lady know there’s aught wrong.”
“Look here,” said Guy, opening a paper, “d’ye think I’ve no brains in my head? Look at the number of orders for this year, and last year, and ten years back. Look at the receipts. What’s the use of spending money on setting all those out-of-date old looms in order? Where’s the sense of manufacturing the sort of goods people don’t want, instead of what they do? Is that the way these mills were run sixty years ago, when old Mr Thomas managed the business?”
“He got the new looms, sir.”
“Exactly so; and wouldn’t he have seen long ago that they were worn out. Look here, John, we’ll have to pull up, and put our shoulders to the wheel, or we’ll have Palmer Brothers down among the failures before many months are over.”
“Eh, Mr Guy, for the Lord’s sake don’t say so. Don’t mention such a thing. ’Tis those new mills over Rilston way—and the price of coals—and trade being bad ever since the Government— Eh, my lad, just think of your old auntie, seeing all her life work undone, and having to sell the property she’s so proud over.”
Here Guy started slightly, as the old man’s voice choked.
“But we’re not going to fail,” he said. “We’re going to fight it out and pull through; that is, if you back me up.”
John Cooper stared at him incredulously. Besides his natural surprise that this “laddie” was old enough to have a say in the matter, and besides his not unjustifiable suspicions of him, Guy’s delicate outlines and look of ill-health—in fact, his whole air—was so unlike that of the powerful old woman who had so long held the reins, that the identical form of the lines into which his lips set, was unperceived, and the sudden, keen glance that came through the silky black lashes, from the usually absent eyes, was startling.
“You know well enough, sir,” said Cooper shakily, “that there’s nought I wouldn’t do for the old lady and the business. She’s been a grand character all her days, and if there’s a curse on the Waynfletes, she set her teeth against it when she was but a slip of a lass, with rosy cheeks and eyes that could look the sun down.”
“Ay?” said Guy. “What d’ye mean by a curse on the Waynfletes?”
“Well, sir, of course it’s only a manner of speech; but there were plenty to say that Margaret Waynflete’d bring Palmers her own ill luck. Now, I say, Margaret never brought ill luck to any man; and Mr Thomas had the best of good fortune when he took her with her shawl over her head and without a penny. Bad luck’ll never overtake her now in her old age.”
“It will, unless we set our teeth against it pretty hard. I’m going to tight. Now, look here, it all depends on what money or credit can be produced now. In a few months it will be too late. I’m going to make my aunt attend to what I have to say; and, if I can, get her to trust me. For she’ll have to trust me with all she has, and make me the master, or down we shall go. And what you’ve got to do, is to tell her honestly, from the bottom of your soul, that you trust me, and know I’ve got her own grit in me. So now, I give you my solemn word of honour that I’ll never touch a drop of strong drink till ‘Palmer Brothers’ is itself again, and Waynflete safe; and, if I fail, may I become part of the curse myself. So here goes!”
He took up the brandy-bottle, and threw it out of the window, down into the shallow, dark-dyed stream below. They heard it crack against the stony bottom.
“Now then,” said Guy, “will you back me up?”
“Lord, Mr Guy! That was unnecessary behaviour,” said the bewildered Cooper; “and very strong language to use. But I’ll go along with you. You’ve brought me to look the Lord’s will in the face—which isn’t easy at seventy-eight—for there’s not a matter of four years between me and the missus. But I’ll serve you faithful, Mr Guy; and if the Almighty means us to fail—”
“But He don’t,” said Guy. “It’s quite another sort of person that means it. Now sit down, and we’ll talk business.”
As Guy marshalled his figures and his facts, asked penetrating questions, and prepared the statement to which Mrs Waynflete must at all costs be made to hearken, Cooper, who had a hard enough head of his own, silently gave in and yielded his whole allegiance. Only when the interview was over, he said, pleadingly—
“You’ll be gentle, Mr Guy? For it don’t come easy to old folks to turn their minds upside down. It is easy for a young lad like you to act.”
“Think so?” said Guy, with a queer, sad look. “Well, I’ll do what I can.”
He was much more tired than was good for him, as he came in to the study, in the rapidly increasing darkness of the autumn afternoon. Cuthbert was not there, and all his sense of courage and energy failed him; for, the more resolutely a nervous strain is encountered, the less power of resistance is left. He grew drowsy in the dusk, then roused up suddenly to the agony of panic-fear, to the intolerable sense of his enemy within him. He might cover eyes and ears, but it entered by no such avenues—anything to drown—to bury it. There was whisky in the cupboard. He staggered to his feet, and the next moment Cuthbert’s hand was on his shoulder.
“Steady, my boy, steady. What is it? Lie down again. I am here; you’ll be better in a minute.”
Guy clung to the hand of flesh and blood as if he had been drowning. He hid his face, not hearing one word that Cuthbert said. He was not merely suffering terror, but struggling, fighting to free himself, to escape, to separate himself from the influence that seemed to be upon him, resisting and opposing it with all his strength. “Oh, help—help!” he gasped.
“Yes—yes, my dear boy. Lie still. It will pass off directly.”
And very soon, in two or three minutes, as Cuthbert counted time, the agony seemed to cease, and Guy dropped back, deadly faint, but with closed eyes and smooth brow.
Cuthbert brought him, as soon as he let go his desperate hold, some of the remedy provided by the doctor, and tended him with a care and kindness altogether new to him.
“It’s much better with you here,” said Guy, presently, as if half-surprised.
“Of course it is. You were so tired; no wonder a bad dream upset you.”
Guy lifted his heavy eyes for a moment, and looked at him.
“A very bad dream,” he said drily. “It’s over now.”
“Tell me what it was?”
“He came, that’s all. No, I can’t tell you. You don’t understand; but you help.”
Cuthbert did not think him fit for an argument, and sat by him in silence. He felt that the sight of Guy’s agony had tried his own nerves somewhat. It was an odd turn of fate, he thought, that brought a quiet, everyday person like himself, to whom no great heights or depths, either of character or of fortune, were likely to come, who held steady, unexciting opinions, and expected no revelations about anything, to be guide, philosopher, and friend, to this strange being, for whom the balance swung with such frightful oscillations.
Guy was very quiet all the evening, submitting with a little surprise to his friend’s precautions, but evidently finding it comfortable to have done with concealment.
Only, the last thing of all, he looked at Cuthbert with his mocking smile on his lip—“What a ‘softy’ I should be,” he said, “if this was what you think it!”