The Rise of Henry Morcar (30 page)

“Would you like to come round now and pick your sites?” suggested Morcar.

“That's very kind of you,” said David.

Although it was Saturday morning, the mill was, in the Yorkshire parlance, “throng”; each department showed a busy preoccupation which naturally did not diminish as Morcar approached. Every loom was clacking, the spindles hummed; the warehouse was full of bales, which a warehouseman was stencilling in black with the names of far-off cities. It was such second nature to Morcar to look at what was going on, finger the cloths stacked about, step up to the perching window and so on that he found himself doing it now as usual, though he tried to refrain. He spared young Oldroyd as much embarrassment as he could by introducing him immediately they entered a room, so that chance remarks of an awkward kind should not be made, but the Yorkshire nature is downright and several workmen asked him blunt questions as to the difference between the mill now and in his father's time. Even without these, Morcar could guess
that the experience was a trying one for the young man, and that he could hardly command a cheerful smile and tone as they selected sites for his photographs.

“You're very busy,” remarked David in a constrained tone as they turned towards the office. “How many looms do you run altogether, Mr. Morcar?”

“Nigh on two thousand. You're collecting the family history in your spare time, you said. What do you do with the rest of your time?” asked Morcar kindly, to turn his thoughts.

“I'm a cloth manufacturer, Mr. Morcar. I've rented Old Syke Mill, you know, Old Mill it's called now—my family had it in the early days. It's small, of course.”

“I began with a couple of looms in one room, myself.”

“My cousins are helping me—the Mellors.”

“Which Mellors are those?” said Morcar, running various West Riding genealogies over in his mind. He could not track down any manufacturers named Mellor who were related to the Old-royds, and made up his mind to ask his mother—she would know.

“They're great Trades Union men,” said David.

“Oh!” said Morcar, astonished.

“I've been living with them up Booth Bank, you know, for the last six years,” said David easily. “I run Old Mill on a profit-sharing basis.”

“And what do your Trades Union cousins say to that?” said Morcar sardonically.

“They say I'm trying to vitiate the principle of collective bargaining and make my workers betray their class,” replied David promptly.

Morcar looked at him, startled. He met young Oldroyd's lively eye, and suddenly both men laughed.

“I have an Old Mill social club—welfare, you know—but I'm told that's smearing the workmen's souls with capitalist jam,” went on David with his merry look.

Morcar again gave a bark of laughter. “Aye, that sounds familiar. I seem to have heard all that before,” he said comfortably. “Why do you go on, then?”

“I'm entitled to my own views. It's my idea of a transition stage,” said David. “However, I don't expect you want to hear all about that.”

“But do you know anything about
cloth?”
demanded Morcar, frowning.

“I took a four year course in textiles at Leeds University, if you think that counts.”

“Oh, you did.”

They had by now returned to Morcar's private office, and
on an impulse he picked up a pattern which lay on his desk and tossed it over to David. It was one of his latest Thistledowns, supple in tissue, delicate in its hues; brilliantly successful in the market.

“That's the sort of stuff I'm making here,” he said.

“Yes—I know your Thistledowns, Mr. Morcar,” said David, examining it. “Charming colours—charming. Delightful design. But I think we could beat you on texture.”

“Eh?” barked Morcar. “What?” He coloured violently; he was astonished and also furiously angry. “I think you'd better make that good, young man—substantiate it,” he said, in a loud angry tone, using one of Harington's words to lend dignity to his sentence. “Just show me the fabric that can beat my Thistledowns.”

Young Oldroyd dived into a waistcoat pocket and produced a tiny scrap of material, which Morcar seized on avidly. It was a one-colour fabric suitable for women's coats; in colour an extraordinarily deep rich blue. Morcar at first thought it a trifle too bright to be tasteful—Christina would never wear it, he felt sure—but then it struck him that the colour would suit young Jenny to perfection. He felt the cloth between his fingers; it was extremely thick and rich, almost velvety, in the handle, yet feathery, supple, light. His expert eye perceived at once all the subtle techniques which had been employed to give the cloth its special merits: the combination of woollen and worsted yarn which kept the weight down; the rich shade to match the rich character of the cloth; the repeated cropping and raising necessary for the velvet pile; the vertical wave design which gave it bloom.

“Texture is what I'm especially interested in,” said David in an apologetic tone. “You can hardly judge from such a scrap really, Mr. Morcar. Now if you saw the piece—there's no reason why you should be interested, of course.”

“None whatever,” said Morcar brutally. There was a pause. The two men eyed each other fiercely, neither allowing their glance to give way. “Damned young whelp,” thought Morcar. “Throwing himself out of a train, running a profit-sharing business—and turning up with the best bit of overcoating for women I've seen outside my own mill for years,” he added, his lifelong expertise in textiles compelling him to this honest estimate. He gave a sudden snort of laughter. “I'll come along with you and look at it now, if you like,” he said. “Though you're a fool, bear in mind, to show your patterns to a competitor.”

“I'll risk it,” cried young Oldroyd, laughing.

A few minutes later Morcar was driving himself up the Ire
Valley in the wake of David's old and rather rickety but well-engined sports car, which in a young man's style, thought Morcar forgivingly, was painted white, with scarlet wings. They turned off the main road and bumped down an uneven lane which still had something of the country about it, for there were fields on either side divided from the road by low stone walls. Halfway down David slowed to have a word with a young workman who was walking up. He was bareheaded, and his reddish hair bristled in the March sunshine; short, solidly built, fair-skinned, he listened to David with a reluctant air, resting large hands on the car door, glanced at Morcar rather sourly, but eventually nodded his head. “One of the Mellors, I expect,” thought Morcar. The two cars drove on and stopped in the yard of a small mill standing on the bank of the river. “Good water,” thought Morcar appreciatively, descending. The outside of the mill was in excellent condition; the walls well-pointed, the woodwork freshly white-painted, the windows clean, the door a handsome (and probably political, thought Morcar grimly) scarlet. They were met in the doorway by a young man of a different type; thin, dark-haired, wearing a brown cardigan and brown tie to a brown corduroy suit. He had a well-shaped head like David's and a lively ardent air; on a closer look he was seen to have features which were a thin edition of those of the young man in the lane, his hair too though dark had reddish gleams, so probably he was another Mellor.

“This is my cousin, George Bottomley Mellor,” said David. “Mr. Morcar of Thistledown fame.”

“Corduroy, my God,” thought Morcar, shaking hands.

“I've been boasting to Mr. Morcar about our cloth, GB, and he doesn't believe me,” explained young Oldroyd.

“I think you'll find you're wrong, Mr. Morcar,” said Mellor, his brown eyes sparkling. “Yes, I think you'll find you're wrong there.”

He spoke in a reasonable persuasive tone, as to a child, and Morcar felt obscurely irritated. “How does he know whether I shall be wrong or not,” he thought, “when he doesn't know what Oldroyd has been boasting
about?”
Aloud he grunted non-committally, and said he should be glad to see the piece in question.

“I was just leaving, David,” went on Mellor. “The buzzer sounded some time ago. Will you lock up? I thought of catching the next bus. Matthew's gone.”

He spoke fluently, correctly, in a friendly open tone and with a better accent than Morcar's. “He's a nice chap,” thought Morcar: “But young, opinionated and swollen-headed. Dogmatic
. Theoretical. A hothead. Not a patch on young Oldroyd. Nice chap, though. But what a pair of children to run a mill!”

As he thought thus it struck him suddenly that of late all young men had begun to seem very young to him. Last time he had been alone with Christina, he remembered too, she had laid a caressing finger on his temples and told him the touch of grey there suited him. “Good heavens,” thought Morcar: “I'm forty-five. Forty-six next October. I suppose I'm middle-aged.” He shook off the strange and painful thought impatiently.

“Yes—we met him in the lane. Don't bother to stay unless you want to help me to show Mr. Morcar round,” David was saying.

“I won't deprive you of that pleasure,” said Mellor, smiling.

Accordingly Morcar was shown the blue piece, and taken round the mill, by Oldroyd alone. As Mellor had said, the buzzer had sounded, and as he had implied, the workpeople had left; the engine was not running, the premises were silent, and no mill ever looked at its best when its machinery was still. In spite of this disadvantage Morcar was constrained to admit that he could not have arranged Old Syke Mill better himself. The machines were new and good, their location with relation to each other sensible; useful gadgets—wooden slopes, handy shelves, wheeled tables, good lighting—ameliorated the working conditions and expedited the work; the cloths on the looms were good sound stuff and suited to modern requirements; altogether there was an air of cheerful and intelligent enterprise about the place which Morcar liked. Long before they had finished their inspection, Morcar was asking questions and giving advice as if the owner of Old Syke Mill were a favourite nephew, while young Oldroyd displayed his arrangements and his problems quite as if asking for approval and guidance.

“It's no affair of mine, of course,” said Morcar presently: “But where did you find the money to pay for all this?”

“It isn't all paid for,” said David, colouring. “I only wish it were. I had a small legacy from my grandmother when I was a boy—luckily when we came to go into it we found I couldn't touch the cash until I was of age, so it escaped the crash period. I used it to get more from the bank, you know, in the good old way—or the bad old way, whichever you prefer.”

“Ah, the banks! That's a big subject,” said Morcar feelingly.

“When I was a student at Leeds I used to think I would never allow myself to owe a bank anything,” said David ruefully. “But I couldn't have started this place without them—and I believe I can make it pay, so I had to take the chance.”

“Didn't your cousins invest anything, then?”

“No; heavens, no. Matthew works here, that's all. GB is at Oxford at present. Ruskin, you know.”

“Ah,” said Morcar. He did not know, but could pick up information without betraying ignorance, rather faster than the next man.

“GB comes here a good deal during his vacations,” continued David.

“Well, what about that piece?” said Morcar, who was tired of GB—he would tire of that young man very easily always.

The blue piece was altogether admirable.

“You've had some trouble with your dyer, to get a really blue blue like that,” said Morcar, admiring it.

“You're right—I argued with him for weeks,” said David, laughing.

“What do you call the blue?”

“I haven't given it a name.”

“A name's a great help in selling,” advised Morcar seriously.

He went on to recommend methods of making the quality of the Oldroyd product known. In doing this he gave David advice about merchants and markets which some of Morcar's competitors would have paid large sums to hear, and set him right on one or two over-naïve suppositions carefully.

“Well—I reckon you did right to leave that train, lad,” said Morcar as they sat down at last in the neat little office. “Now what about a bite of lunch with me at the Club?” He looked at his watch and whistled ruefully. “Half-past two—won't be much left,” he said.

“Come out with me—that is if you can put up with a cold meal for once,” said David eagerly. “I have a cottage on the hillside here, up at Scape Scar.”

Finding that the young man lived alone, so that there would be no household to upset by his intrusion, Morcar agreed. They left his car in the yard and set out in David's, drove up to Mar-thwaite, crossed the river by the new bridge and dashed up a narrow moorland lane, full of stones large and small and of so uncompromising a gradient that Morcar was quite glad not to be driving his own handsome car over it. They drew up in front of two cottages just under the brow of the hill. An Annotsfield Corporation sign, white on blue, labelled the cottages
Scape Scar
; they had long rows of windows in their upper storey, such as Morcar had often seen in cottages on the West Riding hills. David inserted a large cottage key and raised the sneck on the door; they came at once into a low room with a beamed ceiling, where a substantial cold luncheon was already set. David took
additional china and silver from a corner cupboard for Morcar, and they began the meal.

“I haven't had this place long, so you must forgive me if I'm still houseproud. It's an ancestral abode, as they say—forbears of mine lived here in 1812. I lived in Booth Bank with my cousins before I came here, so this seems particularly pleasant.”

“How did you like Booth Bank?”

“How does anyone like a small house in a row in a West Riding street with no indoor sanitation? It was hell,” said David cheerfully. (Morcar remembered his first Saturday morning at Number 102 Hurst Road, and winced.) “I had to live with some relative till I was old enough to start at Old Mill—my father insisted on that—so I thought it might as well be the Mellors. A useful experience. My father was vexed but I couldn't help it.”