‘Do you remember, when you were staying with us, my taking you down to the end of the town, to look at those two factories? And I asked you if you would come and manage them, supposing I ever got them to work again. You said you would, if you were not tied down to something else, or in a much better position. Michael tells me you are still in the same place, and not too well satisfied with it. I am going to claim your promise. My friend, Otho Askam, has bought the mills; at least, an arrangement has been made by which they will most likely become his in time, unless they pay so well that we can afford to repay him his advances. He entrusts the whole direction of them to me, and I intend to spin jute in them, as I told you before. I should like to have your aid and counsel as soon as ever you can give them to me. I hope you have not changed your mind, and that you will not think the salary too small. We find that we cannot offer you more than £120 to begin with, but it would be advanced on the first possible opportunity; and with the increasing prosperity of the concern the manager would get more, and eventually have a share in the business, if it should turn out worth anything; and I intend that it shall so turn out. I need not say that we will guarantee that you lose nothing in a pecuniary point of view, if you are willing to help us to start a new thing. I cannot say fairer than that; and in the hope that I may very soon receive your assent to this proposition, to be followed by your speedy arrival, I remain,
‘Yours faithfully,
‘Gilbert Langstroth.’
The result of this letter was, that within six weeks of its having been written, there lounged into the library of the Red Gables one afternoon an immensely tall, broad-shouldered young man, with a great shock of loose black hair; a pale, rough-hewn, plain face, clever and attractive; and with a wonderfully delicate forehead—a young man who was in the habit of saying the roughest kind of things in the softest of voices. This was Roger Camm, the former friend and playfellow of the two Langstroths when they had all been boys together. According to his own account, he had turned himself into a working man in order to save his own self-respect, and because he had no affection for the Church, which had treated his father so scurvily. According to Michael Langstroth, he was the best and truest friend that ever a man had. And according to Gilbert, he was a shrewd, ‘levelheaded’ man of business, who was going to help him to start his factories, and, incidentally, set his, Gilbert’s, fortunes going in the right direction.
‘Here I am,’ was Roger Camm’s laconical greeting.
‘And not before you were wanted,’ replied Gilbert, rising to meet him with outstretched hand and his sweetest smile. ‘You are welcome as flowers in May.’
‘That shows my value to be high,’ said Roger. ‘There are not many to be found, then, in these latitudes. Where am I to put up till I find rooms?’
‘Why, here, of course. Everything is ready for you. But I believe Michael expects you to dine with him to-night.’
Thus Roger Camm was, as it were, inducted into his new position. He told himself that night, before he went to sleep, that it was odd that his life’s course should bring him back to Bradstane, the little country market-town which he despised; and that his lot, at a critical period, should again be cast in with these others whom he had known when young, but from whom he had believed himself to be, practically, finally severed when he had left his native place to begin work in a great city.