“Mr. David Oldroyd to see you, sir.”
“The boy who jumped off the train,” thought Morcar, startled. He felt a repulsion to Francis Oldroyd’s son, a reaction against the injustice of that feeling to a lad not responsible for his father’s sins, a liking for the boy’s spirit and a sympathy for him because he had to see a stranger sitting in his father’s place, all at once. Morcar’s private office was very different from what it had been in Francis Oldroyd’s time; he had banished the mahogany and installed very large plate-glass windows, blue and white paint, and furniture of unvarnished oak, chromium and blue leather, in a fine modern design. “It will be painful for him,” thought Morcar, saying aloud: “Show him in.” He bent to finish the signing of some letters which the typist had brought in, and when he looked up David Oldroyd was already in the room.
It was not a schoolboy, however, who stood before him, but a young man fully grown, tallish, broad at the shoulders, slender at the hips, who carried himself without self-consciousness and smiled at him pleasantly. Dark crisp hair with chestnut glints, blue eyes, strong dark eyebrows and eyelashes, olive complexion, a head broad at the temples narrowing to a determined chin. His suit of dark grey check was quite as handsome as Morcar’s, and he wore (of course, thought Morcar) an old school tie. In spite of this Morcar liked him at once, whoever he was, for he had a look of such lively intelligence, such merry friendliness, such vigorous gusto, that it was really very taking. But who was he? Morcar wondered.
“I hope this is not an inconvenient time for me to call, Mr. Morcar,” said young Oldroyd, colouring under the older man’s stare: “Perhaps I should have asked for an appointment? I chose Saturday morning because I thought you might be less engaged. But if it’s inconvenient I’ll take myself off immediately. Perhaps you’d let me come another time?”
He said orf where Yorkshiremen said off and used the broad a and other southern modes of pronunciation, like Christina, and altogether showed he had received what was known, thought Morcar with his customary scepticism on this subject, as a gentleman’s education.
“Oh, it’s quite convenient this morning,” said Morcar. “I apologise for my surprise, but I was expecting the boy who jumped off the train.”
“Ah! My romantic past,” said David lightly. “But that’s nearly six years ago now, you know, Mr. Morcar.”
“I suppose it is,” said Morcar. “You’re ashamed of it now, eh?”
“No!” exclaimed David, colouring fiercely. “Why should I be ashamed? I’m not in the least.”
Morcar indicated a chair and pushed forward the box of cigarettes.
“And what can I do for you?” he said.
“You’ll think I’m a sentimental ass, no doubt,” said David pleasantly. “But I’m collecting and editing family papers in my spare time—that is, when I have any. And I find we have no photographs of Syke Mills. I came to ask your permission to have some taken. I thought I should come at once, before major alterations are made in the premises. I’m too late in some respects already, I see,” he added with an engaging grin, looking at the chromium.
“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.”
“Do you live here alone, then?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Ackroyd next door ‘do’ for me,” said David. “Ackroyd was my father’s chauffeur, his batman in the last war. You may remember him.”
“I do vaguely,” said Morcar, who at once saw the trench on the day of Charlie’s death—and the shell-hole and Charlie’s dead face, and Jessopp’s face with the jawbone sticking out. “But why the ‘last’ war?”
“Don’t you think we’re heading for another? Or don’t you?”
Morcar moved uneasily. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t like the way we back away every time our toes are threatened.”
“And you think it invites further toe-treading? Just my view,” said David. “I hate war, but we can’t just let freedom and justice slip down the drain without lifting a finger to stop them.”
“It’s a great pleasure to me to hear you say so!” exclaimed Morcar warmly. “I don’t know much about these things, but that’s just how I feel myself.”
David rose and opened the cottage door, where a whining and scratching had become audible. A rough-haired, low-hung, black and brown dog with upright ears bounced in, wagging a rapturous tail; after greeting David ecstatically, it turned mild brown eyes on Morcar and advanced to sniff at him, eventually raising itself and laying a pleading paw on Morcar’s arm.
“Down, Heather, down, old boy,” said David. “Please don’t give him anything to eat. He’s a mixture of Lakeland terrier and Scotty,” he replied to Morcar’s question.
“Mongrels always have the nicest dispositions, I’m told,” said Morcar, stroking Heather’s head and enjoying the pleasure in the dog’s beautiful loving eyes.
“Yes—look at the English,” agreed David. “Shall we have coffee upstairs? I live mostly in the loom-chamber because of the view.”
Somewhat mystified, Morcar followed him up the narrow stairway into the room with the long row of mullioned windows. The view was certainly fine; one could see down the winding length of the industrial Ire Valley almost to Syke Mills, or up the valley to the rocky moorland. The furniture of this room was old, he noted, and in cottage style: an oak chest, an oak settle, a large round table, a couple of spindle-back chairs, a wooden clock on the wall. The table was covered with papers, some old, with seals attached as if they were property deeds, some new, typed in the modern fashion.
“I was just making out the family pedigree,” said David. “But I think this would probably interest you most.” He turned over the papers and handed Morcar a long narrow book backed in crumbling whitey-brown paper. “It’s an account book for 1728—the oldest Oldroyd document in my possession. The Old-royds were cloth-manufacturers then, as you see.”
Morcar turned the leaves slowly, in astonishment. Two packs of wooll, he read; woad—madder—teazles. They were items which figured often in his own accounts.
“And is this quite genuine?” he asked. “Was cloth really made in the West Riding in those days?”
“My dear Mr. Morcar!” exclaimed David quickly, colouring. “Cloth has been woven in the West Riding certainly for seven hundred years and possibly for twelve hundred. Excuse me,” he said in a tone of apology, breaking off: “The honourable antiquity of the cloth-trade is rather a hobby-horse of mine, and I’m apt to gallop away when people question it. But you’ve read all the books on the subject, of course.”
“No, I can’t say I have,” said Morcar slowly. “In fact, I can’t say I’ve read any of them.” He turned the pages of the account-book, fascinated. Note that a pack of wooll as many pounds as it cometh to so many pence it is a lb, he read. “That’s still true of course,” he thought, “for wool-packs still hold two hundred and forty pounds—as many pounds in weight as there are pennies in a pound sterling. I suppose the old chap found it useful when he was costing his cloth.”
“I’ve masses more of a similar kind,” said David. He threw back the lid of the oak chest, and revealed a tumbled mass of books and papers. “I’m going to sort them all out,” he said, speaking eagerly. “When we left Syke Mills a lot of these were turned out and put to be burned in the boiler fire, but luckily I rescued them. And then I got some from a great-uncle who took an interest in these things—he left me his papers when he died. They’re really interesting. Here for instance is a copy of a letter from an ancestor to Richard Oastler. Here’s an Order Book for 1835. See the tiny patterns stuck at the side? Wanted by waggon immediately— that has a modern ring. Here’s the poster of a meeting about settling spinners’ accounts. This is the correspondence about the first steam engine in Old Mill, with Boulton and Watt, you know.”
“Oastler!” thought Morcar. “Boulton and Watt! Loom-chamber! Hell!”
“I have the modern accounts too,” went on David, nodding towards a row of tall ledgers in the low bookcase: “A sorry tale they tell! But I’m boring you, Mr. Morcar—I’m apt to forget that everybody doesn’t share my zeal for the antiquities of the textile trade.” He made to close the lid of the chest.
“Nay,” said Morcar slowly, stretching out a hand to prevent him: “It’s very interesting.”
As soon as he had spoken he realised that he had accented the last word on the est syllable, a Yorkshirism of which he knew he was sometimes guilty, for Christina teased him about it. He looked quickly at David to see if the young whippersnapper were laughing at him. David was indeed smiling, but with a look of such friendly candour, such gentle affection in his agreeable young eyes that Morcar was not offended but encouraged.
“I’m a West Riding manufacturer, you see,” explained Morcar. He sounded hesitant, laborious, because he was speaking with a sincerity he had hitherto used only to Charlie and to Christina, in the whole course of his life. He intended to express that he had no pretensions to be a gentleman or a scholar, but only to make good cloth, and he saw by David’s nod that he was understood.
“Everything about the West Riding textile trade is dear to me,” said David. “Its past, its present and its future.”
“I’ve been too much concerned with its present only, perhaps,” said Morcar slowly, fondling Heather’s ears. “With my own small part in the present, perhaps I should say.” He hesitated, and added: “I should like to learn about its past, though. But I must be off!” he exclaimed, as the clock struck an hour and he was visited by a mental picture of his laden desk.
“I’ll turn the car before you get in—it’s rather awkward,” said David, hurrying downstairs. “No, Heather, you can’t come.”
As they drove through Marthwaite village David suddenly checked the car.
“Look at that,” he said.
A poster outside the village newsagent’s read: Germany’s sensational Rhineland move.
“I’ll hop out and get a newspaper,” said David.
They bent over the Annotsfield evening paper together. German Troops Re-Enter Rhineland: Sensational Move by Hitler This Morning: Germany Sheds Last Shackles of Versailles.
“That next war we were discussing is beginning now,” said David grimly.
“Aye! They’re at it again. I reckon I shall soon have to get down my old tin hat,” said Morcar.
They looked at each other and knew that they were friends.