CHAPTER XII
For the next month Carstairs saw little of Darwen except at the works; he was busy with his mother, getting a house and supervising the moving. At the works they talked simply "shop." Carstairs was absolutely lost to everything except engines, boilers, dynamos, etc. For twelve hours a day he was at the works planning, improving, overhauling.
"We'll mop off that £1000 debt, and show a profit in the first year," he announced to Darwen enthusiastically.
"Yes," Darwen agreed, and his marvellous eyes shone with an even greater enthusiasm. "We'll show 'em how to run things on this job, eh?"
"I think so."
"Rather, not a doubt of it."
In three months they knocked £1000 off the coal bill, in spite of the strenuous opposition of certain members of the council.
"Rummy things, those chaps making such a row about our getting different coal and weighing it ourselves, isn't it?" Carstairs asked.
Darwen smiled. "The application of a little oil," he observed, "but they've got up against the wrong men this time, eh? We have the doctor solid behind us, too."
A sudden light seemed to break in upon Carstairs. "Oh!" he said, almost in horror. He was honest to the core, every fibre in his body vibrated in disgust at such treacherous roguery laid bare under his very eyes, as it were.
"Didn't you really tumble to it?" Darwen seemed genuinely astonished.
"No, I'm blowed if I did! but I shall know where to look in the future."
"Ah, quite so!" Darwen was thoughtful, he knew that Carstairs was a particularly keen observer.
They reconstructed switchboards and overhauled engines. They tested and calibrated all the consumers' meters; some had been paying for juice they had never used; others, and the great majority, had been using current far in excess of that for which they paid. Carstairs found a meter in a councillor greengrocer's shop that must have been entirely stopped for months.
The genial representative of the people descended into his cellar and watched the new meter being installed. "Are you going to make my bill lighter, Mr Carstairs?" he asked, with an anticipatory smile.
"No, heavier, I'm afraid, Mr Green."
"What!" The smile faded at once. "Very well, I shall have it taken out."
Carstairs looked at him calmly, searchingly. "Just as you like, of course, Mr Green. We can't afford to give the juice away, you know."
"You can't afford! What do you mean? That's not the way to talk to consumers. I'm afraid you don't know your business, Mr Carstairs."
"On the contrary, I think I know it very well, Mr Green."
"Very well, I shall bring the matter up at the next committee. Things are going from bad to worse."
"I think not! However, I hope you'll do everything possible to satisfy yourself on that point Mr Green." Carstairs spoke very slowly and very quietly, it was a way he had when his anger was rising.
"That man," Darwen observed, when Carstairs told the story, "is a little rogue. It never pays to be little in anything. It's a sign of intellectual incompetence, lack of courage and general feebleness. I'm glad you told me; we'll have this out in committee. I'll break that man just to encourage the others, eh?" There was a glitter in his eye that Carstairs could not quite understand. Carstairs' brain was somewhat heavy and ponderous, but once on the move in any direction, it rolled onwards with an irresistible sweep; he was a ruthless searcher after truth according to his light. Darwen himself had set the wonderful mechanism of his brain moving in the direction of suspicion, he now began almost unconsciously to suspect his friend.
At the next committee meeting Darwen awaited the attack of Mr Green in smiling affability, but it never came. The little rogue had thought better of it. However, Darwen was not to be baulked. Producing a number of bills, consumers' meter reading, calculations of probable consumption, etc., he attacked Mr Green. The little man arose in his wrath, lost his head and shouted. Darwen smiled and smiled, and played with him, as a cat plays with a mouse; then he squashed him with overwhelming evidence and demanded an apology for personalities. The little man gave in, he almost wept; Darwen was so big, so suave, so very acute, so merciless and so cool; it almost broke his heart; he got up, a shattered, nerveless wreck, and left the room.
"Now, gentlemen, I think we may proceed to business." The talons were sheathed, he was so genial, so pleasant, that it was scarcely possible to grasp the fact that this was the same man who had just crumpled up the little greengrocer like an empty paper bag. Many of the other councillors shifted uneasily in their seats and fear gnawed at their hearts; they cast shifty, uneasy glances at the young handsome engineer. What was this awful thing they had raised up in their midst? Even the massive, grand old doctor at the head of the table was subdued; he gazed straight at Darwen in solemn thought; perhaps he was wondering whether this was, after all, the sort of man he ought to entrust his daughter's happiness to.
That evening the proceedings in the committee room were reported verbatim in the local papers, and more than that, some of the London papers had a short pithy paragraph exaggerating the event. Of course there was nothing for it, the little councillor had to resign.
Darwen's mother had taken a nice house, small, but in a good part of the town, and the day after the eventful committee meeting, Carstairs went there to dinner. The rooms were tastefully furnished. Carstairs commented to himself that the feminine eye and hand were apparent everywhere; he went in with Darwen, and, as he was left in the drawing-room alone for a few minutes while Darwen went to look for his mother, he looked round at the water colour paintings on the walls, the cabinet of old china, the frequent ornaments, statuettes, bronze and marble: he felt somehow that it had a Frenchy tone; at any rate, was unlike any other room he had ever been in; it was the sort of thing he felt that his brother Stephen, the artist, would admire. Darwen's mother he imagined as tall, artistic, graceful (bearing in mind Darwen's face and form), beautiful and brilliant. The poets, that he remembered in their diggings, were scattered over the table; he noted that the bindings of all were beautiful and expensive, too. "The Prince" was not among them.
He heard voices outside, Darwen's he knew; and another, full, rich, contralto.
The door opened. "Let me introduce you to the mater, Carstairs."
Carstairs stood up and held out his hand. His face showed no emotion whatever, but in his brain was deepest wonder. The woman who stood before him, the mother of that graceful, accomplished son, the designer of these rooms, was almost short and very broad, full chested, broad hipped, her hair was light brown and very luxuriant. But the face—probably at one time it had been handsome in a masculine sort of way, now—the skin was of an exceedingly coarse texture, lined with innumerable small wrinkles and of a uniform weather-beaten red; the eyes were bloodshot, clouded; the eyes of a drunkard, or at least a heavy drinker.
"How do you do, Mr Carstairs? Do sit down."
The manner was distinctly "loud," and looking at the speaker, the voice seemed to lose half its charm.
"How do you like our home, Mr Carstairs?"
"Very much indeed. I was admiring this room when you came in!"
The clouded eyes seemed to light up with a flash of pleasure. "Charlie does all this. I haven't got any taste in these things." Carstairs was more astonished than ever, but he made a remark which occurred to him as suitable, then they drifted into generalities. She asked Carstairs about his home. "I know that part fairly well," she explained. "I've hunted over a good bit of it."
"Have you?" Carstairs was genuinely surprised. Darwen had never told him.
Mrs Darwen laughed, rather a coarse laugh. "That is to say, I followed the hounds, while Charlie was at school at Clifton. I used to have a day out occasionally, just to remind me of old times." She sighed deeply. "I was brought up in the Quorn district, you know."
"That's Leicester way, isn't it?"
"Round there. That was where I met Charlie's father. Poor dear Tom, he wasn't much of a horseman."
"I used to follow them sometimes when I was a kid," Carstairs observed.
"Did you? I suppose you would." She looked him over with approving eyes, somewhat, he felt, as a groom looks over a nice horse; and there was no doubt Carstairs was a very fine animal.
A gong sounded in the hall, and Mrs Darwen rose. "That's dinner," she said, "come on in."
She led the way and Carstairs followed, lost in wonder, as he contemplated a rear view of her squat, ungainly figure. At dinner she drank a stiff glass of whisky and soda. Carstairs carefully avoided looking at it; he knew Darwen was watching him closely. Both the young men were rather silent, but the old lady rattled away.
"Do you play football—rugby? Yes, you would of course! Charlie's a splendid player. I used to turn out and watch him, stood about in the damp grass and got the rheumatism thoroughly into my old bones," she laughed again, a louder, coarser laugh.
"Not so very old, I expect, Mrs Darwen," Carstairs was trying his 'prentice hand at a compliment.
She laughed aloud. "Ha, ha! Charlie'd do better than that, he can pay compliments like his father. Ah! his father was a rare hand at that game, or any other game. So's Charlie, he's a thorough sportsman. 'Always go straight, boy,' that's what I taught, 'over hedges and ditches, straight ahead.'" She gesticulated with her arms.
Carstairs felt rather embarrassed. Darwen was unusually silent, but his mother talked away and laughed and joked. After dinner they smoked a cigar apiece and Darwen seemed to wake up, but still he was serious. "From your description, mater, I imagine the guv'nor was something like Carstairs here."
"Well, yes, something."
"But dark, I suppose?" Carstairs asked, looking at Darwen's almost swarthy complexion.
"Oh, dear no! He was fair, quite as fair as you."
"Was he really?"
Perhaps it was in answer to Carstairs' puzzled look, or perhaps just as the wayward fit took her. Anyhow, she volunteered an explanation.
"The Darwens were French," she said, "a good French family—Huguenots. They came to England about six generations ago. They were fair, but there was once an inter-marriage with a noble Florentine lady, and ever since then there have been occasional dark Darwens. Charlie is one." She threw back her head. There was much pride and something of defiance in her tone.
"Mater, you never told me before."
"My boy, you never asked me."
"No, that's true." Darwen was very silent for some minutes, and Carstairs could find nothing to say. "Then it's possible that I may have some of the blood of Old Nick in me." It was said quite seriously.
Mrs Darwen burst into a harsh scream of charwoman laughter. "My boy, you've got a touch of the devil in you right enough."
"I meant Machiavelli," Darwen explained.
"Who is he?"
"Oh, mater! He was an exceedingly clever Italian. He stripped the common facts of human existence of their halo of sentiment and showed things as they are; here in England we suffer from the despotic sway of a fetish called 'fair play.'"
"Fair play is a jewel," Carstairs observed, doggedly.
"There you are! Look at that!" Darwen pointed excitedly at Carstairs. "Behold the Saxon, yellow-haired, blue-eyed, clasping his gilded idol frantically to his bosom."
"He's not yellow-haired and he's not blue-eyed, and he's clasping his own big biceps across his bosom," Mrs Darwen observed laughing.
Carstairs, leaning back with folded arms, laughed too.
Darwen shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "I'm in a strange country, I cannot comprehend. 'Don't hit a man when he's down,' you say. Why! that's the only time you've got a chance to really punish him. Oh, the fearful and wonderful Saxon brain!" He stood up, and stretching both arms above his head, gazed upwards at the ceiling. "Surely, surely, the Saxon is the devil personified. The Lord, the great Lord Nature, has endowed the Saxon with mighty biceps and a head of surpassing density. The yellow-haired son of darkness has spread himself over the globe. 'I cannot think: thou shalt not think,' has been his maxim and his passport, and, because of the magnitude of his biceps and the paucity of his ideas, he has cramped the intellect of the world. With his biceps the Lord endowed the Saxon with one idea, one commandment, 'Thou shalt not yield.' And the races of mankind, the multitudes of humanity, have spent themselves in vain endeavours to combat this idea. He has driven the Red man from America, the Black man from Australia. He stole the very country he lives in from a more intellectual, more civilized, and more refined race. Not once but many times has he been beaten, well beaten and rightfully beaten, but he could not see it." Darwen let his arms drop listlessly to his sides. "The Saxon has broken the heart of the world."
His mother went over to him and put her hand affectionately on his shoulder; she seemed rather concerned. "My boy! You were always a sportsman, always clean; many's the time I turned out in the rain on the wet grass, in the wind or the frost to watch you play, and you were always straight, always clean; I knew the game and I watched you."
He looked into his mother's eyes. "I was, mater, always straight, never cheated."
She looked proud and happy. "I know, I know!" she said. "You got that from me, from my side, your grandfather was a splendid sportsman. He rode right across country, straight as the crow flies, over hedges and ditches and walls, always straight, quite straight."
"Yes," he agreed, "that's how I played, always straight. But I never, for the life of me, could see why."
She shook her head. "Because it's not right, you wouldn't feel the same if you won by cheating."
"You're the best mater in all the world." He smiled at her affectionately. "But you have the intellectual limitation of the Saxon; history teaches me that it's useless to argue with you."
Carstairs had been sitting still, staring straight ahead; he arose and looked at his watch. "I'm afraid I must be going. I want to get out those figures——"
"Nonsense, my dear chap," Darwen took him by the arm. "Come on into the other room, and I'll play you a tune."
"What do you say, Mrs Darwen?" Carstairs looked at her quite seriously.
"Oh, you'll stay, of course."
So he stayed.
"You and the mater," Darwen remarked, as they made their way into the other room, "ought to get on as thick as thieves, you're both so very Saxon."
Carstairs laughed. "In the light of your recent little oration, I'm sure we're both highly flattered," he said.
On his way home late that night, Carstairs was very thoughtful. "So Darwen was right, there was a touch of the Dago in him; the subtle Italian diplomatist, crossed with the dashing English-French sportsman, a strange mixture." He pondered deeply.
Next morning on his way to the works, a policeman, an acquaintance made in the dark days of his shift engineering career, stopped him. "Have you heard the news, sir?"
"No. What news?"
"Mr Darwen's house was burgled last night."
"Last night? Why I was there up till half-past eleven. Did they get away with much?"
Policeman X19 smiled. "More than they wanted, sir. Mr Darwen heard a noise and come down with a bull's-eye lantern and a revolver. They fired almost together; 'e hit Mr Darwen in the arm, and Mr Darwen plugged 'im through the chest. Our men's on his track, now."
"Good Lord, I must go along and see him." Carstairs turned off towards Darwen's house. As he went up the garden path, he passed a rather pretty girl, neatly dressed, going out. He raised his hat and also his eyebrows at the same time.
She stopped and blushed slightly. "Oh, Mr Carstairs, I heard Mr Darwen was shot and came round to inquire if it was serious."
"You didn't tell me," he said.
"No, I didn't know till you'd gone."
He found Darwen having breakfast with his mother. His left arm was bound up, but he seemed jubilant and happy. His mother also seemed the same. "It was most exciting. Something woke me up just about two o'clock. Don't know what it was, but while I lay awake I thought I heard somebody, the noise was very slight. Anyhow I went down to see, accompanied by a bull's-eye lantern, which I'd only bought the day before, and a small bore revolver. I located the disturber just coming out of the drawing-room, I was on the stairs. I hadn't made a sound, but he had a revolver in his hand, and as soon as he saw the light he let fly."
"I heard two shots, one just after the other, nearly frightened me out of my life—" Mrs Darwen took up the tale. "The brute tried to kill him, and now he won't prosecute him. You remember the way he was talking about fair play last night, Mr Carstairs."
Darwen smiled apologetically. "The poor devil has had enough, though it's not a very serious wound. I tied him up, gave him some brandy and a pipe of tobacco. He's a unique specimen, born in the woods, and bred at sea, on sailing ships; hardly civilized, but quite a decent chap, very susceptible to music; only he's deficient in moral sensibilities. Like me." He looked at his mother and laughed.
She looked triumphantly at Carstairs. "And he won't give him up to the police. He's upstairs in Charlie's bed, and he wants me to nurse him and keep it dark. What do you think of it, Mr Carstairs?"
"Well, if the wound should prove serious——"
"Oh, there's no fear of that."
Carstairs smiled. "It's an interesting experiment," he remarked.
Darwen pushed back his chair and stood up. "I'll come down to the works with you," he said. He got his hat and they went out together.
"By the way," Carstairs remarked as the front door banged behind them, "I met my landlady's daughter as I came in."
"Yes. I know. Came to ask if it was anything serious. Jolly decent of her."
"That's so. I think Mrs Hughes took quite a motherly interest in you. The grub's not half as good since you left."
"Is that so? I used to give the girl a little instruction on the piano occasionally you know, perhaps that made the difference."
"Ah, I see. I didn't know that."
"No-o. It was only occasionally you know, when you were out, and there was nothing else to do. She's rather an intelligent girl."
"Yes, she looks that."
They arrived at the works. Carstairs was proceeding to his own office, but Darwen stopped him. "Come into my room for a minute and have a chat." They sat down in the comfortable, almost luxurious office.
"Who do you think that burglar was?" Darwen looked at Carstairs with a humorous light flickering round his big brown eyes.
"Haven't any idea. Sam's in quod, still——"
"Yes—but this is Sam's mate."
A heavy frown gathered on Carstairs' brow. "How's that? Did he make a mistake? Was it me he was after, or——"
Darwen did not answer for a minute; he watched Carstairs' face thoughtfully, he seemed to be speculating on something. "No," he said, at length. "He made no mistake, not a single one; for a man who can neither read nor write he's very intelligent, but the fates were against him. Do you believe in Fate?" Darwen had a way of digressing at critical points which always jarred on the mathematically direct mind of Carstairs.
"Oh, hang Fate!"
"My dear chap! you can't. I say he made no mistakes. He came there to kill, to kill me, and he'd have done it, but I happened to be awake and I fancied I heard a noise. It was pure fancy, mind, because he was in his bare feet, and silent as a mouse. It was so much fancy, in fact, that I lay in bed debating with myself whether I should go down. I reasoned thus: Everything is quite still, but it may have been a noise that woke me. I am awake, why should I not go down? If I go down to look for burglars, I ought to be prepared to receive them, therefore I will take a loaded revolver and my nice new bull's-eye lantern. Do you know I felt quite a childish pleasure in lighting up that new bull's-eye lantern."
"How do you know he came to kill you?"
"He said so."
"He said so?"
"Yes. I told him I had a pretty good idea of the plot. The Irishman had given it away, I said."
"The Irishman? What Irishman?"
Darwen smiled. "That's precisely what I wanted to know. There are on the electricity committee, three Irishmen, two Welshmen, four Englishmen, and one Scotsman."
Carstairs remained silent.
"Would you like to make a guess?" Darwen asked.
"Mr Pat Donovan."
"Right in once." Darwen's eyes sparkled. "You know a devilish lot about machinery, but I admit I thought you were rather a fool as far as men were concerned."
"Thanks. What's the rest of the yarn?"
"Well, let me go back a bit."
Carstairs sighed.
Darwen laughed. "When we had that unpleasant incident in the committee the other day, I watched 'em all, carefully, as I made my points. When Green called me a rogue and a liar, I watched 'em all. They didn't seem to think it a very grave charge. But when I answered him, when I said, 'You've called me a rogue and a liar, Mr Green, but I think you'll find if you carefully analyse your feelings on the matter, that it's my honesty and not my roguery, that annoys you. I'm sorry I can't see things as you do, Mr Green, but I'm a sportsman, and anything that appears to me unfair, or that I can't fully grasp, I invariably expose to the daylight, and turn and twist it till I can understand it, or till I let daylight into it. That's my method, Mr Green, and I may assure you that it is as unalterable as the laws of the Medes and Persians.'"
"How's that for eloquence? We used to run a sort of parliament at school, rather good practice, you know." Darwen laughed lightly.
"Very good," Carstairs observed.
"So they all agreed, and Mr Pat Donovan (publican and bookmaker) made a most vehement speech in support of it. But when I was making it, and several other little points, I observed that the majority of them looked a sort of pea-green colour. Have you ever been sea-sick?"
"Heaps of times."
"Then you'll appreciate how they felt. They wanted to get out and walk but they couldn't, and the way Donovan and M'Carthy rubbed it into poor old Green was astonishing. The Irish are really a wonderful people. I summed it up that there were two honest men in all that committee; one was Dr Jameson at the head of the table, and the other was Mr John Brown, navvy, at the foot of the table. I observed them with the greatest possible interest; the study of mankind is all-enthralling. Those representatives of the several parts of these tiny little islands were as distinct as possible; the Irish, loud and violent; the Welshmen, quiet and sly; the Englishmen, two of them justly indignant, and two just a trifle uneasy; the Scotsman, like an owl, very wise. Now I'll bet if there were a public inquiry on those men, the two Englishmen who have made perhaps £20 each, would come off worst. The Irishmen, who have made perhaps £50 or £60 per annum, would be next. The Welshmen, who have made about the same, would be let off lightly. The two honest Englishmen would have a stain on their characters till their dying day, and the Scotsman, who has probably been making a steady £500 per annum, would leave the court without a stain on his character. People would cheer wildly in the streets, and frantic fools would rush forward to shake him by the hand—then he'd reluctantly accept a modest salary of £200 per week to show himself on the music-hall stage, and send a few simple manly letters to the papers acknowledging the receipt of a large public subscription to keep his old mother (who'd been dead years) out of the workhouse."
Carstairs laughed. "You seem down on the Scotch. Personally I liked them when I lived there."
"My dear chap, Scotsmen in Scotland and Scotsmen in England are two different things. Besides, I'm not down on them a bit. The Scotch are a supremely intellectual race, they are eminently gilt-edged. I knew that the Scotsman would never attack me, he'd rely on other people doing that. The Englishmen, hampered by their ingrained ideas of fair play, would have sent anonymous letters, warning me to be careful. The Welshmen would be very cautious. Only the Irishmen would act so promptly. This, of course, is only the opening of the ball. I'm going to stir up this hornet's nest properly, the place simply stinks of roguery, and I want your help. You'll stand by me, old chap?"
"Of course I will."
Darwen held out his hand, he looked at Carstairs with great admiration. "You're a pure Englishman, Carstairs, and I honestly believe the Englishman is the salt of the earth; he's a bit slow in the top story, but he's hard and fit, and he's a pal all the time, which I think is the real keynote of why he owns such a large section of the earth."
There was a knock at the door and the office boy entered.
"Councillor Donovan to see you, sir."
"Alright; show him in."
A tall, heavy-shouldered, large-headed man with a short nose and a long, clean-shaven upper lip, red-haired, and with a slight squint, rushed enthusiastically up to Darwen and shook him by the hand. "It's right pleased I am to see ye looking so well and fit after the dastardly outrage on ye last night, Mr Darwen."
Darwen smiled cordially, and returned his grasp warmly. "It's very kind of you, Mr Donovan, but it's the sort of thing that's only likely to occur once in a lifetime, thank God."
"Oh, yes, yes. Shure, an' such a thing cud niver happen again in a civilized town like Southville. I'm just off to call a special meeting of the police committee this minute, Mr Darwen."
"Ah! that's like you, Mr Donovan! So energetic. There's no fear of their going to sleep while you're on the council. I'm just off to Dr Jameson myself."
Carstairs watched them for a minute as they stood hand in hand, smiling compliments into each other's faces, then he opened the door quietly and went out into the engine room. He looked round on his smoothly-running, even-turning friends; he had been wont to remark that the applied logic of a running steam engine was the thing that appealed to him most, but now—
"They do seem rather tame after men, somehow," he said, to himself.