“Perhaps! I’m not so sure that I can stand it — alone.” He leaned towards Wisberry across the rim of the table. He wanted all these men with him, and he turned his voice to the notes of sympathy. “I’m all for your point of view. You have said many true things. The little independent men have built up England. The foreman who has the courage and brains and character to become a master, and when he’s a master to work till one o’clock in the morning, when his comrade stops virtuously at six in the evening. Yes, those are the fellows. They’re the heart and the strength of England. But they’re done for. We’ve got to recognise that a lot of good things are passing away. There’s not a politician in any party who’ll cast a vote or make a speech to keep the little independent man alive and kicking. Conservatives, Liberals, Labour — give ’em any sort of fancy name you like — the little independent man means nothing to ’em. What they are going to replace him with, as the stay and prop of England, they don’t know, they don’t care, they don’t give a thought to.
“We are governed not by men, but by phrases and gestures and slogans. ‘Big business’ is one of them. Big business means that no man shall work later or harder or better than his neighbour. So the little man can’t get through. Conservatives say it, Liberals say it, Labour men say it. What’s the phrase? The door is slammed and bolted and barred — against the little man. He must stop work at six and remain a man on a wage, somebody’s servant always and never his own master. He has got his recreation ground to make up for his servitude. We’ve got to face it. Amalgamations, mass production, each unit of production fed with enormous capital and no more little independent men. Yes, but listen to me! The little men who’ve got through, who are in being — they’re in a different case. It isn’t a question of stopping them getting through. It’s a question of pushing them back amongst the servants;” and he stopped and looked about him, nodding his head encouragingly — the man who knew something, the man with a scheme. “Not quite such an easy job, that! No, sir!”
Of Hoyle’s small audience, Copeland, who had severed himself from ambition and looked for nothing more than the ease to which his years of work had entitled him, was perhaps alone unimpressed by the tirade.
“What’s the great idea?” he scoffed. “Shall we burgle Thewliss’ house and destroy his formula?”
“Destroy it, no,” Hoyle returned quickly; and even Copeland raised his eyebrows in a flash of interest. It was only the destruction of the formula which Hoyle accepted as ridiculous. The other half of his joke, the theft of it, was left unmentioned — as too foolish for words? Or as worth so many words that it could only be most delicately approached. Copeland felt himself pleasantly stimulated, as he might be by a detective novel.
“Carry on!” he said in quite a different voice.
Suddenly all the lassitude and the despair had vanished. A new spirit had awaked in that room. Three pairs of eyes were fixed upon Hoyle, eyes still anxious but no longer hopeless, three chairs were drawn close to the tables, three bodies became vibrant and alert. Hoyle had the magnetism of a leader. To borrow an expressive phrase from another art, he came over the footlights at them — and held them.
“To destroy the formula,” he declared, and brushed the notion away with a wave of the hand, “no good! One thing, I think it’s not so complicated but that Thewliss can carry the main processes in his head and work out the rest again. He has been twenty-five years at it, remember! But even if he couldn’t, someone else will. I’m a fatalist in these things. Once a thing’s discovered, it’s discovered. Drag a secret out of Nature, she can’t hide it away again. It’ll be whispered somehow, it’ll fill the air, and some crafty fellow will condense it and get it tangible and solid again, No! Leave that out!”
“What then?” asked the manufacturer from Somerset.
“Yes, what then?” Hoyle repeated. “Now listen to me and don’t for Heaven’s sake shy at a word I’m going to use,” and he leaned forward shaking a forefinger. “The important thing for us gathered here is not the formula but the psychology — yes, that’s the word you’re not to shy at — of its discoverer, Mark Thewliss.”
Mr. Hoyle was perhaps a little too disdainful of his companions. They were all, even the downhearted Benfield, shrewd enough business men who knew very well the importance of the individual factor in a deal and found nothing over-cryptic in Hoyle’s fine word.
“Very like,” said Copeland. “Let’s hear!”
“I’ve known Thewliss for donkey’s years,” Hoyle continued, “did business with him when poor old William Mardyke used to wring his hands over his piratical young partner. Thewliss was going through the scrum then with his head down” — he turned to Wisberry— “your independent little man working till one o’clock in the morning and up again at six. Scientist first of all, mind, but wanting money, high position, the delicacies of life, power — or rather the sensation of power. Not so much doing things — which means power — as the pleasurable knowledge that you can do things if you choose. You can see that difference in the fact that though a Cabinet Minister young enough to be able to look forward to the highest office, he chucked it, took a peerage and went back to his own work. After all, governing is power, real power. But Thewliss had got what he wanted, the sensation of it, the tang and savour of it. He’s a stag who eats only the top of the turnip, wants the fine taste not the meal, and so he went off to make real this old dream of his, the formula which is to put colour within the reach of the poorest coolie in Seringapatam and make the whole world good-humoured.”
“Well, that’s the man! Granted,” Benfield agreed. “But how are we saved?”
“Yes,” Wisberry concurred explosively. “It’s all high-class, up-to-date exposition, old man, and thank you very much for it. But where do we come in?”
“I didn’t say ‘that’s the man,’” Hoyle returned. “I didn’t even say it was ever all the man, though it was the part of him which stood out. But other sides of him are standing out now. He married, he wanted children, and there he’s failed, you see, and it has broken his spirit a bit. Take that from me! He, the great man with all the coolies in lilac robes bowing to him as a second Mahomet, and an adoring family saying: ‘That’s papa, that big swell of a fellow!’ Not to be! So Thewliss loses his edge. Then there’s another curious little illuminating scene I was present at. Wait a bit! My throat’s dry.”
Mr. Hoyle rose from his chair and rang the bell. He certainly was thirsty, for not only was he talking a great deal more than was his habit, but he was talking with his thoughts concentrated on making such a choice of words as would best persuade his audience. But he desired even more than the satisfaction of his thirst a little space of time during which his three guests might memorise the substance of his speech.
When the waiter appeared he ordered:
“Four double whiskies and four small sodas.”
Mr. Benfield set up a mild bleat that if he took anything at this hour it was a glass of dry sherry, but Copeland, crying: “My word, that accounts for a lot,” would not allow it. It was only when the four tumblers were pleasantly bubbling on the table that Hoyle resumed his argument.
“That curious little circumstance — yes,” he continued. “I let Thewliss out of his laboratory four months ago at the end of his demonstration. He rapped on the door and I let him out. It was about four o’clock in the morning. Well, I never saw a man more dejected.”
“Tired,” Copeland corrected.
“Tired, of course, but dejected, too. Queer that, eh? He had demonstrated under the strictest conditions the absolute success of twenty-five years of research and experiment and thought. He was the master of all the dyeing industries in the world — and he was dejected. So dejected that one other who was present, a young Colonel Crayle, gasped out that he had failed. But I knew better. Thewliss stood in the doorway spreading about him an extraordinarily penetrating sense of loneliness. He was lonely, Do you follow me, Copeland? You, too, Wisberry? See how it fits exactly in what I told yo
u before. He had longed for a child, to crown all his hard work and wealth and make it worth while. And the child had been denied him. All right! He had still the undiscovered formula to occupy him. But that’s done with now. The rest of his life was looking a little blank just then. Not very much fun to be got out of it. See! Not very much inducement to get busy with marketing his discovery.”
Copeland pursed up his lips and nodded his head.
“Yes, I see that. He’ll take his time.”
“And more time still,” said Hoyle. “For here’s another side of him. He’s an artist, a craftsman, the old sort of craftsman with a real love of the thing he has done, a real reluctance to let it go because it mayn’t just fulfil the artist’s craving for exactness. I’ve seen him myself touch and fondle with his long fingers some fabric or another which has just taken some new shade of colour of his creation. The same sort of thing’ll happen to him now, and more forcibly than before. He’s going to put that formula away and pull it out again after a bit, to see if he can’t simplify it a little more, and put it away again and play with it, like one of those Johnnies who paints your portrait for the Town Hall and begins by making it like you and then takes out and puts in until at the end you’re a stranger with a knobbly nose.”
Mr. Wisberry chuckled.
“Yes, but the portrait’s hung up sooner or later,” he said.
“That’s true,” Hoyle agreed. “Let me put it this way. He’ll be like a poet who writes a sonnet and can’t let it out of his hands for fear that he might want to alter a rhyme or call her Diana instead of Lalage.”
“Yes, but the poem gets published in the end.” The man of gloom and melancholy repeated Wisberry’s objection. “What’s the use of a few months’ reprieve to any of us?”
“Why, just this!” Hoyle looked carefully behind him to make sure that the door was shut. “Suppose that I could get hold of a copy of this formula, whilst Thewliss is still playing about with it. I don’t say that I can, but suppose that I could. We could make a little trust. I could raise what money was required. I have got people who believe in me. We could quietly and quickly install the new plant required, each in his own factory, and we could scoop the pool. We should be first in the field — a long way first. We shouldn’t be paying royalties in patents; we should be right there underselling everybody and turning out our stuff with double or treble shifts at an enormous profit.”
The man from Somersetshire brought his fist into play again.
“By gum, that sounds good to me.”
Mr. Benfield shook his head, smoothed his long beard and twisted the tip of it. Gloom and cold water were his contributions to the gathering.
“But can you get a copy of the formula?” he asked. “Not you!”
And very slowly Hoyle produced a little case from the breast of his dinner-jacket. He opened it and laid it on the table. From one of the pockets he took five sheets of thin paper and unfolded them. They were covered with short lines of sentences in a clear microscopic hand, interspersed with hieroglyphics and curious lozenge-shaped diagrams.
“Here it is,” he said quietly.
It was significant of the mastery which Hoyle had established over his companions that not one of them doubted the accuracy of the copy. It was significant of their own prudence that not one of them asked him how he had got hold of it. They accepted the five sheets of exquisite penmanship as the devout accept a miracle, and they gazed at the magician who had produced them with a reverential awe. They passed the papers from hand to hand, holding them gingerly by the edges lest the mark of a thumb should blur a necessary figure.
“By gum!” the man from Somersetshire whispered. “Get in first, eh? Just the four of us! It’ld be a treat to see Thewliss’ face.”
“Oh, come!” Copeland protested.
He hated the introduction of personal rancours into the battles of business. A man went down — yes, and very likely you would try to make sure that he didn’t get up again in a hurry. But not because you hated him. It was a jungle fight for life and lordship and food, not a tournament between enemies. Wisberry, with his creed of the small man, was introducing a foolish and a rather dangerous factor. They had Thewliss’ formula. Very well! They would exploit it, but not out of animosity to Thewliss. There was neither time nor room for nonsense of that kind in the modern commercial life.
“Leave Thewliss alone now!”
Mr. Benfield, after a flicker of hope, relapsed into despondency as his old eyes wandered from diagram to capital letter and from capital letter to minute number on the top of it.
“No use to me this! I can’t make head or tail of it.”
“Nor I,” Hoyle agreed heartily. “But I’ve got a laboratory of my own and a chemist — the best in the world and devoted to me. He’ll read this off as if it was a leader in The Times.” He folded up the sheets and put them away.
“It’s getting late. Here’s what I propose. First my chemist gets to work. Then we worry out what’s wanted in the way of plant, new and converted, and estimate the cost. Then we get the money. I charge myself with that. I know where I can get it. Then we quietly get the plant made and installed. And within twelve months we shall be working with treble shifts and orders years ahead. Is that agreed?”
“Yes.”
The monosyllable came heartily from the three men, for even Benfield had a glimpse of salvation.
“Good!”
Hoyle rose from his chair, and the others followed his example and began to pick up their coats and hats from the chairs and sofas about the room.
“Meanwhile,” Hoyle adjured them earnestly, “not a word, not a chuckle even to your wives. And in a fortnight or so I’ll fix up another meeting in some other busy centre where we shan’t be noticeable, and come to it with the plans.”
The three men separated at the door, Benfield to catch a late train to Chesterfield, Wisberry to seek a less costly hotel, Copeland to take a whisky and soda in the bar. Hoyle remained alone. He released the spring of the blind and looked down from the window upon the lights of the station square.
Big business? Amalgamations? Very well, since they must come, he would be at the head of the first of them in his industry. He no more encouraged personal animosities than did Copeland. He was simply outwitting Thewliss in the way of business. He had no regret either for the means by which he had obtained his copy of the formula — not a thought of the punishment and miseries which might befall those from whom he had obtained it. Such considerations never entered his mind. He was satisfied.
Yet he had made two fatal mistakes. His analysis of the man Mark Thewliss had been both subtle and true, and but for his ignorance of two vital facts his heinous plan might successfully have been based upon it. But if the keen edge of life had been blunted for Mark, because he had no child with whom to enjoy it, it had grown sharp again. For he had recovered, suddenly and unexpectedly, a daughter. And if he had been inclined for lack of a goad rather to play with his invention than to exploit it, the goad was now supplied. For Mark was taking into partnership his wife’s cousin, Derek Crayle, who had left the barrack square so that he might not mark time, and was not at all disposed to do it in the establishment of Mardyke and Campion.
Mr. Hoyle was pleased with his night’s work as he looked down upon the station lights. But he had not profited himself, and he had done such harm upon others as nothing in the world could ever repair.
XXI. OLIVIA MAKES AN OFFER
“POOR OLIVIA! POOR all of us!” Olivia had exclaimed.
But during the autumn months of that year no one could have truthfully quoted more than the first two words of that pitiful cry. It was only Olivia who suffered. The other three, Mark, and Derek Crayle and Lois, walked in a misty golden dream, watching their plans take substance and shaping them, as every little occasion offered, more and more to their will. It is true that Mark was at pains not to parade his joy and pride in this new big daughter who had tumbled out of the skies. But he could not conceal them fro
m Olivia, who knew his secret.
Some years before Thewliss had moved from the small house, with the blue door which would not open itself to interviewers, into the great square round the corner. In this mansion Lois had a little suite of rooms. She was of the family; not an entertainment was given but she must grace it. The companionable evenings of other years when Mark and Olivia made their plans and debated the little incidents of their lives were at an end. There were no plans, indeed, in Mark’s thoughts at all except plans for Lois, and talk of them was taboo. The only occasions on which the pair sat down to dinner alone were those on which Lois was taken out to some dinner at a restaurant with a dance or a theatre to follow, and since Derek Crayle was as a rule her escort, Olivia’s pleasure was altogether spoilt. She had welcomed with her whole heart Derek’s entrance into Thewliss’ great undertakings, dreaming of a fine marriage for him and a resplendent future. Now she felt that she would give anything if only she could return him safe and celibate to the army.
“She means to marry him. She’s an adventuress, that’s what she is for all her reticence. And Mark’s encouraging her. They’re going to ruin Derek between them!”
With such unuttered arguments Olivia fed her resentment and jealousy; and an estrangement grew up between her and Mark, all the more bitter to her because Mark was unaware of it. From the world Mark’s secret was well kept. Lois was his personal secretary and obviously an efficient one. And if her position in the household seemed to some few people unduly privileged, it was explained by a conjecture set on foot by Mark himself that she was the daughter of an old business associate who had fallen upon evil times.
“Anyway it won’t be long, I think, before Lois is very definitely established. Derek’s just waiting until the company’s a fact and he’s positively on the Board,” Mark said to himself with a chuckle.
The preparations, indeed, for the reorganisation of the firm of Mardyke and Campion did much to make Olivia’s woeful forecast true. There were conferences at Upper Theign during the week-ends, in Brooke’s Market and sometimes in Grosvenor Square. Sometimes Sir William Hawker from Ely Place, sometimes Gregory the old manager, would be present, but always Mark and Derek Crayle and always, too, Lois Perriton, since always a note must be taken of the discussions and a confidential summary made.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 604