Juggernaut Part 15

"The doctor says you may stay half an hour," she told him with friendly simplicity of manner. "Only you must promise not to talk very much, and not to excite him. You'll be careful, won't you?"

"You can trust me," he a.s.sured her.

Their glances met. He liked her naturalness, as transparent as the lucid brown-amber of her eyes. She seemed to him so straightforward, like an extremely nice child. He was sorry when she slipped quietly out and left him alone with the invalid.

"Well, father! This is very wrong of you."

The dull eyes brightened, one big bony hand stretched out to grasp the young man's firm one.

"Roger! I'm glad to see you. A welcome surprise! I never thought you'd be free for another couple of months. How did you manage it?"

"Oh, I succeeded sooner than I expected, that's all. I'm particularly pleased it happened, since you took it into your head to get laid up.

Whatever do you mean by it?"

At his tone of cheerful banter his father's grim face relaxed into a smile.

"G.o.d knows. I seem to get everything that's going, and it isn't for want of taking care of myself, either. Never mind about me; draw up that chair and sit down."

Roger obeyed.

"Now let's hear all about America. You realise you have written me precious few details. I've no idea what you've been up to."

"I didn't want to say much until I had it all definitely fixed up. It was no good crowing too soon. I can set your mind at rest now, though, everything's O. K."

The old eyes riveted themselves on his face intently.

"You mean you've landed some good orders?"

"Some! A lot, all over the place. I tell you, we've done the trick at last; you can accept it for an absolute fact that our American market is established."

The gaunt face on the pillow glowed with triumph. Sir Charles would have hated to admit in words just how great was the satisfaction given him by this news, but his expression betrayed the truth. In his secret heart he had sometimes felt that the princ.i.p.al thing he lived for now was the firm establishment of a market in the United States for the output of Seabrook & Clifford. Until now the buyers across the Atlantic had shown little interest in their well-known materials, although salesman after salesman had been sent out, and money sunk in advertising to an extent that made him shudder to contemplate.

Bitterly he had begun to fear that the wish of his heart would never be realised in his lifetime, yet now, behold! It had come about, and through the agency and judgment of his son. He felt a burning desire to know all details.

"What about those new patterns you took out with you?" he inquired, with an effort to appear casual.

Roger stared at him in astonishment, then laughed.

"Why, of course, it was the new patterns that did it! The old stuff was out of date, no one would look at it. Didn't I always say so? If there's any place in the world that wants modern ideas, it is America.

And let me tell you something else: before you know where you are, the colonies are going to wake up and want them too!"

His father gulped. It may have been that he was swallowing his pride.

Still, he managed to nod, as if this were what he'd been expecting.

"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 compet.i.tors 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 Therese 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.

Some years back the old man had made the acquaintance of a Baron and Baroness de Rummel through the organisation of a musical festival in Manchester. The de Rummels collected about them at their London house a varied circle of smart, semi-artistic people. Sir Charles, first and last a simple business man, having only one point of contact with their world, enjoyed--perhaps a trifle guiltily--his excursions into so sophisticated a set, feeling, no doubt, that in some new way for him he was "seeing life." The men and women he met were ornamental and amusing, possessed expensive habits, spoke in thousands, and told you in the same breath that they hadn't a bean. Many might have been somewhat hazy as to antecedents, but all were well-provided with a certain stock-in-trade--personal charm. There were young men who composed music, others who designed everything from a lampshade to the _decors_ of a ballet, young women who sang or danced, actresses who had not got on because managers would make love to them--or wouldn't, as the case might be. All types and many cla.s.ses were represented, but a common object bound them together, namely, the hope that in the de Rummels' drawing-room they might chance upon a "backer," someone trusting enough to invest money in their enterprises.

In the winter of 1919, the particular star in this artistic zodiac was Therese Romain, dazzling chiefly on account of her ethereal beauty.

She had a voice, which did not amount to much, and she had done a little acting on the stage and for the screen, but without conspicuous success. She had devoted years to war-work, and there were tears in her beautiful eyes when she spoke of her husband, killed in action.

She refrained from mentioning the fact that when he fell he had been in the midst of divorce proceedings against her, nor was she explicit as to the nature of her war-work, though there were those, Roger among the number, who a.s.sumed that it must have paid pretty well. At any rate, the Baron took an interest in her referring to her as his ward--a sufficiently elastic term. Finding Sir Charles attracted, he took him aside and besought him to do something for Therese. Exactly what the Baron had in mind may have been shadowy; but what Sir Charles did was definite. He married her.

This action was as much a bombsh.e.l.l to the Baron as it was to the neighbours in Cheshire, perhaps even more than Therese herself had bargained for. It was a piece of amazing good fortune, but it entailed restrictions which soon grew tedious. Country life in the North Midlands proved a crushing bore. Tennis she cared little for once she had finished dressing for the part, and hunting she gave up after her third venture, when a fall strained a ligament in her back and laid her up for weeks. Altogether she loathed England and the English more every day. London she could have borne, but this life of the rural provinces spelled extinction, beginning with the climate and ending with the vicar for tea. At last she could not even be amused by the sensation she was causing, and, casting about for something to mitigate her boredom, she hit upon Roger as a possible distraction.

Roger, for his part, had seen trouble in the offing, though he was unprepared for it to take this form. He did not dislike the young woman, half French, half Belgian, with the qualities of both races, though secretly he thought his father a fool to have offered her marriage when something less permanent would have served the purpose.

Still, for all his private convictions, he behaved to his stepmother with perfect courtesy, determined to make the best of things.

While Therese was recovering from her accident, Roger sat with her nearly every evening. His father went off to bed at ten o'clock, while Therese found herself with several hours on her hands. It was during this period that Roger became aware that his stepmother was using every means to make him fall in love with her. He tried to ignore the fact, he sought excuses to take him away, but this led to reproaches which made him still more uncomfortable. Beyond a certain point one cannot pretend denseness, and he was in an agony of dread lest his father would see what Therese was up to. She had begun kissing him good-night, and now more and more warmth crept into the embrace until he found himself trying to avoid it. He was no prig, and Therese was attractive, yet the distaste he felt for the situation neutralised her power to lure him. Moreover, she showed him a side which convinced him of what he had hitherto suspected--that Therese had all the instincts of a _cocotte_. Whether she actually was one or not was a matter of opportunity.

The climax came one night during an absence of his father in London.

Therese deliberately came into his room when she knew he was in bed.

It was a painful thing, and even after six years it embarra.s.sed him to think of it. It was her bad taste that revolted him, the calm a.s.sumption that he was ready to enter light-heartedly into a liaison with his father's wife! He was filled with disgust. She had placed him in a position where whatever he did would be wrong; consequently he let his temper get the better of him and, taking her by the shoulders, put her out of the room. Naturally, she never forgave him.

Since that night he had seen little of her. He had moved into Manchester, on the excuse of being nearer the factory, while she, in turn, took to spending more and more time abroad. Three years ago his father had been persuaded to give up work and try the South of France for his health. That had made things easier.

"I'm afraid I shall have to turn you out now. We have to be strict."

He glanced up quickly, then jumped to his feet. The screen which guarded the door had kept him ignorant of the nurse's quiet entrance until she was beside him.

"Have I stayed too long?"

"Oh, no, and I'm glad to see he's resting quietly. You can come in again for a little while this afternoon, if he's going on well."

Roger took leave of the invalid, who opened his sunken eyes for a moment, then closed them again.

"Come outside a moment," he whispered to the nurse when he reached the door.

She followed him into the hall, looking up inquiringly.