Haworth's

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Half the night passed before he returned home. When he did so he went to his room and slept heavily until daylight. He had never slept as he slept in these nights,—heavy dreamless sleep, from which, at first, he used to awaken with a start and a perfectly blank sense of loss and dread, but which became, at last, unbroken.

Night after night found him at his labor. It grew upon him; he longed for it through the day; he could not have broken from it if he would.

Once, as he sat at his table, he fancied that he heard a lock click and afterward a stealthy footstep. It was a sound so faint and indistinct that his disbelief in its reality was immediate; but he got up, taking his lantern with him, and went out to look at the entrance passage. It was empty and dark, and the door was shut and locked as he had left it. He went back to his work little disturbed. He had not really expected to find the traces of any presence in the place, but he had felt it best to make the matter safe.

Perhaps the fact that once or twice on other nights the same light, indefinite sound fell upon his ear again, made him feel rather more secure than otherwise. Having examined the place again and with the same result, it troubled him no more. He set it down to some ordinary material cause.

After his first visit Haworth came into his room often. Why he came Murdoch did not understand very clearly. He did not come to talk; sometimes he scarcely spoke at all. He was moody and abstracted. He went about the place wearing a hard and reckless look, utterly unlike any roughness and hardness he had shown before. The hands who had cared the least for his not altogether ill-natured tempests in days gone by shrank or were restive before him now. He drove all before him or passed through the rooms sullenly. It was plain to see that he was not the man he had been—that he had even lost strength, and was suddenly worn and broken, though neither flesh nor color had failed him.

Among those who had made a lion of him he was more popular than ever. The fact that he had held out against ill luck when so many had gone down, was constantly quoted. The strikes which had kept up an uneven but prolonged struggle had been the ruin of many a manufacturer who had thought he could battle any storm. "Haworth's" had held its own and weathered the worst.

This was what the county potentates were fond of saying upon all occasions,—particularly when they wanted Haworth to dine with them at their houses. He used to accept their invitations and then go and sit at their dinner-tables with a sardonic face. His humor, it was remarked with some regret, was often of a sardonic kind. Occasionally he laughed at the wrong time, and his jokes were not always easy to smile under. It was also remarked that Mr. Ffrench scarcely seemed comfortable upon these festive occasions. Of late he had not been in the enjoyment of good health. He explained that he suffered from nervous headaches and depression. His refined, well-molded face had become rather thin and fatigued-looking. He had lost his effusive eloquence. He often sat silent and started nervously when spoken to, but he did not eschew society at all, always going out upon any state occasion when his partner was to be a feature of the feast. Once upon such an occasion he had said privately and with some plaintiveness to Haworth:

"I don't think I can go to-night, my dear fellow. I really don't feel quite equal to it."

"Blast you!" said Haworth, dispensing with social codes. "You'll go whether you're up to it or not. We'll keep it up to the end. It'll be over soon enough."

He evinced interest in the model, in his visits to the work-room, which seemed a little singular to Murdoch. He asked questions about it, and more than once repeated his caution concerning its being "kept close."