"Henry Seabrook will hate to admit he's been wrong all these years," was his game comment. "You recollect how he raved and carried on when you showed him those futurist designs?"
"Do I not? You'd have thought there was something positively immoral in them, evil enough to rot the very yarns!"
He refrained from alluding to the fact that his father had displayed an almost equal distaste and scepticism. Let old Seabrook shoulder the blame!
"As soon as you've pulled out of this, I'll go over the whole thing with you and show you the figures. For the moment, though, I don't want to tax your strength."
"I suppose you're right," admitted his father with a sigh. "I'm getting on pretty well, I believe, but the slightest effort does me up. This wretched fever leaves me as limp as a rag. Never mind—what you've told me is the best tonic I could hope for."
He closed his eyes with a look of contentment and lay quiet, the outline of his head sharp against the pillow. Roger leaned back in his chair, well pleased with his father's reception of his report, and realising more than ever before what his achievement meant to the old man. Up till now he had been chiefly concerned with his own satisfaction over a great personal triumph, the biggest thing he had accomplished in his entire career. To begin with, hampered as he had been by the two hard, conservative old men above him, Henry Seabrook and his father, this represented the only time he had been allowed to strike out a line for himself. Ever since he came down from the University and went to work to "learn the business," he had violently disagreed with certain details in the policy of the firm. Not that he was not proud of Seabrook & Clifford. No factories were run on better lines; there was nothing in their administration to hide up or apologise for, while "Seacliff Fabrics" were of an excellence recognised throughout England and the colonies. Only their designs were old-fashioned, the honoured firm had not moved with the times, as others and often less worthy competitors had done.
In Roger's opinion, the sign of this was their failure to capture the American market. He had tried hard to convince the old partners of this, but for several years his efforts had met with no success. In the end he had on his own initiative sought out young artists of a modern school of design in London and in Paris, wherever he could find them, and from them had obtained a whole collection of new drawings for printed cottons. Then, after a hard-fought campaign, he finally secured a grudging consent to put his idea to the test and, armed with his batch of Seacliff Fabrics brought up to date, he had set out four months ago for the United States—with the happy result just related.
Well! They would have to believe in him now, those two stubborn old men; they could no longer regard him as a hare-brained youngster full of mad theories. He wished suddenly that his mother could know of his good fortune. She, he was sure, would have had confidence in him from the start. He raised his eyes to the mantelpiece, where there was a photograph of her, taken in the dress of eighteen years back. The face was pleasing without being beautiful, the eyes seemed to look at him with humorous understanding, just as they had so often done in life. He had been a schoolboy when she died, yet even then he had realised her imagination and love of beauty, coupled with the ability for bringing out those same qualities in himself.
On the other end of the shelf was a large, shadowy photograph of his father's present wife, one of the sort known as a "camera study," the pose exquisite, hair and draperies fading into a dim background, the eyes wistful and dreamy. Without moving, he examined it appreciatively. There was no denying that Thérèse was a lovely woman.
Yet as he looked his face hardened, and he felt the blood slowly mount until his cheeks burned as though on fire. He was recalling an incident known to no one but himself, a thing which never failed to rouse in him sensations of shame and resentment. It belonged to the early days of his father's second marriage, and before relating it, it may be as well to explain how the cotton manufacturer came to meet the present Lady Clifford.