He strode to the bell and summoned a servant. “Bring some brandy and two glasses,” he said when the man came.
It was an unusual order at that hour. Silently the servant obeyed. Carshaw looked out of the window, while his mother, true to her caste, affected nonchalance before the domestic.
“Now,” said he when they were alone, “drink this. It will steady your nerves.”
She was frightened at last. Her hand shook as it took the proffered glass.
“What has happened?” she asked, with quavering voice. She had never seen her son like this before. There was a hint of inflexible purpose in him that terrified her. When he spoke the new crispness in his voice shocked her ears.
“Mere business, I assure you. Not another word about Winifred. I shall find her, sooner or later, and we shall be married then, at once. But, by queer chance, I have been looking into affairs of late. The manager of our Massachusetts mills tells me that trade is slack. We have been running at a loss for some years. Our machinery is antiquated, and we have not the accumulated reserves to replace it. We are in debt, and our credit begins to be shaky. Think of that, mother—the name of Carshaw pondered over by bank managers and discounters of trade bills!”
“Senator Meiklejohn mentioned this vaguely,” she admitted.
“Dear me! What an interest he takes in us! I wonder why? But, as a financial magnate, he understands things.”
“Your father always said, Rex, that trade had its cycles—fat years and lean years, you know.”