Michael's Crag

Chapter 11

BUSINESS IS BUSINESS.

It reconciled Cleer to leaving London for awhile when she learnt that

Eustace Le Neve was going north to Yorkshire, with Walter Tyrrel, to

inspect the site of the proposed Wharfedale viaduct. Not that she ever

mentioned his companion's name in her father's presence. Mrs.

Trevennack had warned her many times over, with tears in her eyes, but

without cause assigned, never to allude to Tyrrel's existence before

her father's face; and Cleer, though she never for one moment

suspected the need for such reticence, obeyed her mother's injunction

with implicit honesty. So they parted two ways, Eustace and Tyrrel for

the north, the Trevennacks for Devonshire. Cleer needed a change

indeed; she'd spent the best part of a year in London. And for Cleer,

that was a wild and delightful holiday. Though Eustace wasn't there,

to be sure, he wrote hopefully from the north; he was maturing his

ideas; he was evolving a plan; the sense of the magnitude of his stake

in this attempt had given him an unwonted outburst of inspiration. As

she wandered with her father among those boggy uplands, or stood on

the rocky tors that so strangely crest the low flat hill-tops of the

great Devonian moor. She felt a marvelous exhilaration stir her blood

--the old Cornish freedom making itself felt through all the

restrictions of our modern civilization. She was to the manner born,

and she loved the Celtic West Country.

But to Michael Trevennack it was life, health, vigor. He hated London.

He hated officialdom. He hated the bonds of red tape that enveloped

him. It's hard to know yourself an archangel--

But amid all the undulations of that great stony ocean, one peak there

was that delighted Trevennack's soul more than any of the rest--a bold

russet crest, bursting suddenly through the heathery waste in abrupt

ascent, and scarcely to be scaled, save on one difficult side, like

its Miltonic prototype. Even Cleer, who accompanied her father

everywhere on his rambles, clad in stout shoes and coarse blue serge

gown--. for Dartmoor is by no means a place to be approached by those

who, like Agag, "walk delicately"--even Cleer didn't know that this

craggy peak, jagged and pointed like some Alpine or dolomitic

aiguille, was known to all the neighboring shepherds around as St.

Michael's Tor, from its now forgotten chapel. A few wild Moorland

sheep grazed now and again on the short herbage at its base; but for

the most part father and daughter found themselves alone amid that

gorse-clad solitude. There Michael Trevennack would stand erect, with

head bare and brows knit, in the full eye of the sun, for hour after

hour at a time, fighting the devil within him. And when he came back

at night, tired out with his long tramp across the moor and his

internal struggle, he would murmur to his wife, "I've conquered him

to-day. It was a hard, hard fight! But I conquered! I conquered him!"

Up in the north, meanwhile, Eustace Le Neve worked away with a will at

the idea for his viaduct. As he rightly wrote to Cleer, the need

itself inspired him. Love is a great engineer, and Eustace learned

fast from him. He was full of the fresh originality of youth; and the

place took his fancy and impressed itself upon him. Gazing at it each

day, there rose up slowly by degrees in his mind, like a dream, the

picture of a great work on a new and startling principle--a

modification of the cantilever to the necessities of the situation.

Bit by bit he worked it out, and reduced his first floating conception

to paper; then he explained it to Walter Tyrrel, who listened hard to

his explanations, and tried his best to understand the force of the

technical arguments. Enthusiasm is catching; and Le Neve was

enthusiastic about his imaginary viaduct, till Walter Tyrrel in turn

grew almost as enthusiastic as the designer himself over its beauty

and utility. So charmed was he with the idea, indeed, that when Le

Neve had at last committed it all to paper, he couldn't resist the

temptation of asking leave to show it to Sir Edward Jones, whom he had

already consulted as to Eustace's prospects.

Eustace permitted him, somewhat reluctantly, to carry the design to

the great railway king, and on the very first day of their return to

London, in the beginning of October, Tyrrel took the papers round to

Sir Edward's house in Onslow Gardens. The millionaire inspected it at

first with cautious reserve. He was a good business man, and he hated

enthusiasm--except in money matters. But gradually, as Walter Tyrrel

explained to him the various points in favor of the design, Sir Edward

thawed. He looked into it carefully. Then he went over the

calculations of material and expense with a critical eye. At the end

he leant back in his study chair, with one finger on the elevation and

one eye on the figures, while he observed with slow emphasis: "This is

a very good design. Why, man, its just about twenty times better than

Erasmus Walker's."

"Then you think it may succeed?" Tyrrel cried, with keen delight, as

anxious for Cleer's sake as if the design were his own. "You think

they may take it?"

"Oh dear, no," Sir Edward answered, confidently, with a superior

smile. "Not the slightest chance in the world of that. They'd never

even dream of it. It's novel, you see, novel, while Walker's is

conventional. And they'll take the conventional one. But its a first

rate design for all that, I can tell you. I never saw a better one."

"Well, but how do you know what Walker's is like?" Tyrrel asked,

somewhat dismayed at the practical man's coolness.

"Oh, he showed it me last night," Sir Edward answered, calmly. "A very

decent design, on the familiar lines, but not fit to hold a candle to

Le Neve's, of course; any journeyman could have drafted it. Still, it

has Walker's name to it, don't you see--it has Walker's name to it;

that means everything."

"Is it cheaper than this would be," Tyrrel asked, for Le Neve had laid

stress on the point that for economy of material, combined with

strength of weight-resisting power, his own plan was remarkable.

"Cheaper!" Sir Edward echoed. "Oh dear, no. By no means. Nothing could

very well be cheaper than this. There's genius in its construction,

don't you see? It's a new idea, intelligently applied to the

peculiarities and difficulties of a very unusual position, taking

advantage most ingeniously of the natural support afforded by the rock

and the inequalities of the situation; I should say your friend is

well within the mark in the estimate he gives." He drummed his finger

and calculated mentally. "It'd save the company from a hundred and

fifty to two hundred thousand pounds, I fancy," he said, ruminating,

after a minute.

"And do you mean to tell me," Tyrrel exclaimed, taken aback, "men of

business like the directors of the Great North Midland will fling away

two hundred thousand pounds of the shareholder's money as if it were

dirt, by accepting Walker's plan when they might accept this one?"

Sir Edward opened his palms, like a Frenchman, in front of him. It was

a trick he had picked up on foreign bourses.

"My dear fellow," he answered, compassionately, "directors are men,

and to err is human. These great North Midland people are mere flesh

and blood, and none of them very brilliant. They know Walker, and

they'll be largely guided by Walker's advice in the matter. If he saw

his way to make more out of contracting for carrying out somebody

else's design, no doubt he'd do it. But failing that, he'll palm his

own off upon them, and Stillingfleet'll accept it. You see with how

little wisdom the railways of the world are governed! People think, if

they get Walker to do a thing for them, they shift the responsibility

upon Walker's shoulders. And knowing nothing themselves, they feel

that's a great point; it saves them trouble and salves their

consciences."

A new idea seemed to cross Tyrrel's mind. He leant forward suddenly.

"But as to safety," he asked, with some anxiety, "viewed as a matter

of life and death, I mean? Which of these two viaducts is likely to

last longest, to be freest from danger, to give rise in the end to

least and fewest accidents?"

"Why, your friend Le Neve's, of course," the millionaire answered,

without a moment's hesitation.

"You think so?"

"I don't think so at all, my dear fellow, I know it. I'm sure of it.

Look here," and he pulled out a design from a pigeon-hole in his desk;

"this is in confidence, you understand. I oughtn't to show it to you;

but I can trust your honor. Here's Walker's idea. It isn't an idea at

all, in fact, it's just the ordinary old stone viaduct, with the

ordinary dangers, and the ordinary iron girders--nothing in any way

new or original. It's respectable mediocrity. On an affair like that,

and with this awkward curve, too, just behind taking-off point, the

liability to accident is considerably greater than in a construction

like Le Neve's, where nothing's left to chance, and where every source

of evil, such as land-springs, or freshets, or weakening, or

concussion, is considered beforehand and successfully provided

against. If a company only thought of the lives and limbs of its

passengers--which it never does, of course--and had a head on its

shoulders, which it seldom possesses, Le Neve's is undoubtedly the

design it would adopt in the interests of security."

Tyrrel drew a long breath. "And you know all this," he said, "and yet

you won't say a word for Le Neve to the directors. A recommendation

from YOU, you see--"

Sir Edward shrugged his shoulders. "Impossible!" he answered, at once.

"It would be a great breach of confidence. Remember, Walker showed me

his design as a friend, and after having looked at it I couldn't go

right off and say to Stillingfleet, 'I've seen Walker's plans, and

also another fellow's, and I advise you, for my part, not to take my

friend's.' It wouldn't be gentlemanly."

Tyrrel paused and reflected. He saw the dilemma. And yet, what was the

breach of confidence or of etiquette to the deadly peril to life and

limb involved in choosing the worst design instead of the better one?

It was a hard nut to crack. He could see no way out of it.

"Besides," Sir Edward went on, musingly, "even if I told them they

wouldn't believe me. Whatever Walker sends in they're sure to accept

it. They've more confidence, I feel sure, in Walker than in anybody."

A light broke in on Walter Tyrrel's mind.

"Then the only way," he said, looking up, "would be ... to work upon

Walker; induce him NOT to send in, if that can be managed."

"But it can't be," Sir Edward answered, with brisk promptitude.

"Walker's a money-grubbing chap. If he sees a chance of making a few

thousands more anywhere, depend upon it he'll make 'em. He's a martyr

to money, he is. He toils and slaves for L. s. d. {money} all his

life. He has no other interests."

"What can he want with it?" Tyrrel exclaimed. "He's a bachelor, isn't

he, without wife or child? What can a man like that want to pile up

filthy lucre for?"

"Can't say, I'm sure," Sir Edward answered, good humoredly. "I have my

quiver full of them myself, and every guinea I get I find three of my

children are quarreling among themselves for ten and sixpence apiece

of it. But what Walker can want with money heaven only knows. If _I_

were a bachelor, now, and had an estate of my own in Cornwall, say, or

Devonshire, I'm sure I don't know what I'd do with my income."

Tyrrel rose abruptly. The chance words had put an idea into his head.

"What's Walker's address?" he asked, in a very curt tone.

Sir Edward gave it him.

"You'll find him a tough nut, though," he added, with a smile, as he

followed the enthusiastic young Cornishman to the door. "But I see

you're in earnest. Good luck go with you!"