“O Henry,” cried Nan in tears, “what have you done?”
“I’ve done,” answered Butson, reaching for his cigar, “jist what I meant to do. That’s all. ’Cos it suited me. See?”
Nan felt the coarse overbearance of his stare, and dropped her gaze beneath it. And with that misgiving fell upon her: the shadow her punishment flung before it.
Mr. Henry Butsonhad fallen on good fortune. No more would he endure the humiliation of begging a job of an unsympathetic gaffer. In future his life would be one of ease, free from ignoble exertion and unshamed by dungaree overalls. And he made it so. For a little while, his wife seemed to indulge in an absurd expectation that he would resume his search for occupation of one sort or another. Once she even hinted it, but he soon demolished that fancy, and in terms that prevented any more hints. He had little patience with such foolishness, indeed. The matter was simple enough. Why did a man work? Merely to get shelter and food and clothes and comfort, and hair-oil, whatever he wanted to drink and smoke, and his necessary pocket-money. A man who could get these things without working would be a fool to work; more, he would behave inhumanly to his fellow man by excluding him from a job. As for himself, he got what he needed easily enough, without the trouble of even taking down the shop-shutters: a vulgar act repellent to his nature.
So he rose at ten, or eleven, or twelve, as the case might be, and donned fine raiment; the most fashionablesuit procurable from the most fashionable shop in Aldgate. He began at Aldgate; but in time he grew more fastidious, and went to a tailor in Leadenhall Street, a tailor whose daily task was to satisfy the tastes of the most particular among the ship-brokers’ clerks of St. Mary Axe. His toilet complete, his curls well oiled, Mr. Butson descended to a breakfast of solitary state—Nan’s had been hurried over hours ago. The rest of the day was given as occasion prompted. When the weather was fine, nothing pleased him better, nor more excellently agreed with his genteel propensities, than to go for a stroll up West. When Harbour Lane was quiet and empty (he seemed to choose such times for going out) he would slip round to the station, and by train and omnibus gain the happy region. He was careful to take with him enough money to secure some share of the polite gratifications proper to the quarter, and minutely acquainted himself with the manners and customs of all the bars in the Strand and about Piccadilly Circus. And although he was a little astonished when first he was charged eighteenpence for an American drink, he was careful not to show it, and afterwards secretly congratulated himself on the refined instinct that had pitched on so princely a beverage in the dark, so to speak. He took air, too, in Hyde Park, to the great honour of his whiskers, and much improved his manner of leaning on a rail and of sitting in a green chair. In the eveninghe tried, perhaps, a music hall, but always some of the bars, and arrived home at night rather late, sometimes a trifle unsteady, and usually in a bad temper. Bad temper was natural, indeed, in the circumstances; after so many hours’ indulgence in the delights of fashionable society it revolted his elegant nature to have to return at last to a vulgar little chandler’s-shop in a riverside street, where a wife in a print bodice and a white apron was sitting up for him; sometimes even crying—for nothing at all—as if the circumstances were not depressing enough for him already.
These little excursions cost money, of course, but then what was the good of keeping an ignoble little shop if you couldn’t get money out of it? And the shop did very well. Mrs. Butson and the girl—the cripple—were boiling bacon (the smell was disgusting) all day long, and they sold it as fast as it was cold. And other things sold excellently too. From the time when she took the shutters down in the morning to the time when the lad Johnny put them up at night, Mrs. Butson was unceasingly at work serving—unless she were boiling—and scarce had five minutes for her meals; and often the girl had to leave the bacon and help in the shop too. Very well—all that meant profit. The woman couldn’t make him believe that it didn’t, merely because the wretched details of trade failed to interest him. That was the way of people in that class of life—there was atouch of the miser about all of them. No matter how the money came in, they persisted in their narrow views as to spending it. And there was other income, in addition. The lad Johnny—he was almost a man to look at—brought his mother eight shillings a week at the time of the wedding, and then ten shillings, and then twelve; more, it would increase two shillings a year; but in truth his mother was unduly extravagant in buying him clothes. Still at anyrate there was something, and there might be more if only Mrs. Butson would turn the girl out to earn a little, instead of letting her waste her time reading, and confirming her in habits of idleness. And there was the rent from the cottage. This came every week by postal order from Bob Smallpiece, and since it was fitting that a husband should open letters sent his wife by a single man, Mr. Butson cashed the orders without troubling her in the matter at all.
So that indeed he was not at all wasteful, considering both his income and the society he moved in—for he was not slow in making acquaintances among the affable gentility of the bars. In fact he would have done it cheaper still but for the pestilent uncertainty of Spring Handicaps. It would seem impossible for him to put half a sovereign on any horse without dooming it to something very near the last place. The distinguished society of the bars was profoundly astonished, indeed distressed, at his ill-luck; but gave him more excellentinformation for future events; information, however, that brought even worse luck with it.
His wife showed no sympathy for his troubles—and of course there are vexations and disappointments (such as those of the Spring Handicaps) which are inseparable from fashionable life—but rather aggravated them with hole-and-corner snivelling, and ridiculous attempts at persuading him to a mean and inglorious way of life. She even hinted vulgar suspicion of his west-end friends, and suggested that he should associate with a long fool called Hicks, living next door—a common working man. For a long time—many months in fact—he bore it with what patience he might, retaliating only in such terms as seemed necessary to close her mouth, and to convince her of his contempt for her low habit of mind, and indeed, for herself; and when at last it grew plain that personal punching was what was needed, he was so considerate as not to punch her about the face, where marks would advertise the state of his domestic affairs; careful, also, to operate not other than quietly, when they were alone, on the same grounds of decency. And he knew that she would tell nobody, for at least she had self-respect enough for that.
Of these things Johnny knew nothing, and Bessy only a little. Both were glad that their stepfather was so much from home, and though Johnny’s sentimenttoward him was a mere sullen contempt, the lad made no parade of the fact,—rather aimed indeed at keeping things quiet for his mother’s sake. But Bessy fretted in secret.
Johnny’smonths went uneventfully. At Maidment and Hurst’s he applied himself zealously to his trade—the more because home was a dull place now—and he was as smart a lad as any in the shop of his age, or perhaps of a few months older. He could turn back an eyelid, too, and whip away an iron filing, or a speck of emery grit, with such address and certainty as might astonish a surgeon. The operation was one that every engineer’s apprentice grew apt at, and exceptional dexterity like Johnny’s was a matter of pride, a distinction zealously striven for, an accomplishment to exercise at every opportunity. Johnny felt that he had passed with honours on the memorable day when Cottam, the gaffer, roared to him from the other end of the shop to come and attend to his eye, afflicted with a sharp grain of brass. “No—not you,” quoth Mr. Cottam, in answer to instant offers of help from those hard by. “This ’ere’ll stick like a nail in a barn door. Where’s young May? D’y’ear? Where’s young Jack May?”
Much of his practical knowledge Johnny owed to Long Hicks. That recluse, whose sole friend hithertohad been his accordion, now declared for a second hobby, which was to turn Johnny into the best workman at Maidment and Hurst’s before his time was out. “You’ve got all the chances,” said Long Hicks. “You’re servin’ yer time on small work—alwis best for trainin’ a first-rate man. I’m reckoned a good fitter, but I served time mostly on big work, or I’d ’a’ bin better.”
He recommended Johnny to qualify as a marine engineer when his apprenticeship was over, even if he intended to live a shore life. “You get yer c’tificates, an’ then you’re all right,” he would say. “An’ the better c’tificates you get the better you’ll do, afloat or ashore. So as soon as your time’s out, off you go an’ serve your year at sea as fourth or fifth of a good boat, if you can get the job. The rest’ll be easy as winkin’ to a quick young chap like you. You can draw nice an’ neat—I can put a thing down acc’rate enough, but I can’t draw it neat—and what with one thing an’ another I b’lieve you could pass your second now. I ought to ’a’ done it, p’raps, but I lose me ’ed at anythin’ like a ’xamination. An’ I never ’ad over-much schoolin’. Them compound multiplications ’ud ’ave me over ev’ry time. I s’pose you don’t think nothin’ of a compound multiplication?”
Johnny admitted that he had gone a long way beyond that rule of arithmetic.
“Yus,” Hicks answered. “I’ve got beyond it, too,teachin’ meself. I know ’ow to do ’em well enough. But Lord! what a strain they are! Tons, ’undredweights, quarters, pounds, ounces, an’ grains, an’ multiply ’em by five ’undred an’ twenty-seven thousan’ six ’undred an’ eighty-three. There ain’t no end to a job like that, an’ yer brain on the stretch all the time, ’cos a tick out’ll make it about a million tons wrong in the end. It ’ud send me foamin’ mad, at a ’xamination an’ all, with a chap waitin’ for the sum! Phew!” And Long Hicks’s forehead went clammy at the fancy.
“But there,” he proceeded, “you’reall right. You’ll knock auf your second’s examination easy as marbles; an’ then you’ll do yer chief’s ’an extry chief’s all in one, an’ then you’ll do the Board o’ Trade, an’ be a guarantee chief or anythin’ ye like! You will, by George!” and the lank man gazed in Johnny’s face (Johnny was sitting on Hicks’s bed) with much respect and admiration, being fully persuaded, in the enthusiasm of the moment, that the lad had already as good as achieved the triumphs he prophesied.
But there was work to do, and Johnny did it. Mechanical drawing, when its novelty had worn off, was less delightful than the fancy-free draughtsmanship he had practised as a schoolboy, and it had an arid twang of decimals and vulgar fractions. Still, for a time there was a charm in the gradual unfolding of the inner principles of his work, and in the disclosure, piece by piece,of the cunning complication that stood ministrant on the main simplicity of a great steam engine; till the beauty of the thing in its completeness came in sight, with something of surprise in it. Though this, too, grew a commonplace as familiarity cheapened it, and then his work was work merely. And so it went till half the time of his apprenticeship was over, and he was eighteen, and a sinewy young fellow.
Sometimes he drew at home, and sometimes in Hicks’s room. Hicks had a few books—editions a little out of date, some of them, but all useful—and these were at Johnny’s service: Seaton’sManual, Reed’sHandbook, Donaldson’sDrawing and Rough Sketching, and the like. Hicks’s room was inconvenient for drawing, but nothing would tempt Hicks next door, and once or twice Mr. Butson had come home when Johnny’s drawing-board and implements littered the table in the shop-parlour, and made objections.
“My eye!” exclaimed Hicks, one evening, in face of a crank-shaft elevation and sections, as Johnny held it up on the board; “why that’s a drawin’ good enough to put in a frame! I tell ye what, me lad. With a bit more practice, an’ a bit o’ the reg’lar professional touch, you’ll be good enough for a draughtsman’s job. Lord! you’ll be a master some day, an’ I’ll come an’ get a job of you! Look ’ere, no more o’ this gropin’ about alone. Round you go to the Institute, an’ chip into theMechanical Drawin’ class. That’s your game. They’ll put you up to the reg’lar drawin’-auffice capers.”
Thus urged, Johnny went to the Institute. This was an evening school, founded by a ship-builder twenty years earlier. Here a few lads, earnest as Johnny, came to work and to learn, and a great many more, differently disposed, came to dabble. There was a gymnasium, too, and a cricket-club, and plenty of boxing. And girls came, to learn cookery and dressmaking: and there were sometimes superior visitors from other parts, oozing with inexpensive patronage, who spoke of Johnny and his companions as the Degraded Classes, who were to be Raised from the Depths.
And so in the Institute Johnny drew, and learned the proper drawing-office manner of projection. Learned also the muscle-grinder and the long-arm balance on the horizontal bar, and more particularly learned to pop in a straight left, to duck and counter, and to give and take a furious pounding for three minutes on end without losing wind or good-humour. So that his attention was diverted from home, and for long he saw nothing of the misery his mother suffered in secret, nothing of the meek endurance of Bessy; and for the more reason because both studied to keep him ignorant, and to show him cheerful faces.
But there came an evening when his eyes were opened—in some degree, at least. Perhaps somethingespecially perverse had happened in a Spring Handicap (Spring Handicaps were just beginning), perhaps it was some other of the vexations that beset a gentlemanly career: but certainly Mr. Henry Butson came into Harbour Lane in no amiable mood. At the corner, where a public-house shed light across the street, he ran into a stout bare-armed girl in a faded ultramarine hat, and made to push her roughly aside. But the girl stood her ground, and planted an untender elbow near the spot where his watch-chain hung resplendent. “Garn!” she cried, “bought the street, ’ave yer?” And then as he sought to pass on: “D’y’ear! Ye got yer collar an’ yer chain; where’s yer muzzle?”
Nowise mollified by this outrage, Mr. Butson came scowling in at the shop door, and taking no notice of Nan, who stood at the counter, entered the back parlour and slammed the door behind him. It was barely nine o’clock, and so early a return was uncommon.
Bessy sat by the fireside, sewing. Mr. Butson was angry with the world, sorely needing someone to bully, and Bessy was providentially convenient. He put a cigar into his mouth and strode across to the shelf in the corner, shoving the girl and her chair and her crutch out of his way in a heap. The shelf carried Bessy’s tattered delight of old books; and, dragging a random handful of leaves from among them, while a confusedbunch fell on the floor, he twisted up one leaf and thrust it into the gas flame.
Bessy seized his arm. “O don’t!” she pleaded. “Please don’t! Not out of the book! There’s a lot I made on the mantelpiece! Don’t, O don’t!”
Indeed a glass vase stood full of pipe-lights. But he jerked his elbow into her face, knocking her backward, and swore savagely. He lit his pipe with the precious leaf, and then, because Bessy wept, he took another handful from the shelf and pitched it on the fire. At this, pleading the harder, she limped forward to snatch them off, but Mr. Butson, with a timely fling of the foot, checked her sound leg, and brought her headlong on the fender.
“Yus,” he roared, furious at the contumacy, “you take ’em auf, when I put ’em on! Go on, an’ see what I’ll do to ye? Damn lazy skewshanked ’eifer!” He took her by the shoulder as she made to rise, and pushed her forward. “Go an’ earn yer livin’, y’idle slut!”
Nan, in the shop, heard from the beginning, and trembled. Her impulse to interfere she checked as she might, for she well knewthatwould worsen Bessy’s plight; but it was choking hard.
In the midst Johnny burst in from the street, whistling. “Why, mother,” he said, “what’s up? Ill? You look—what’s that?”
“No—nothing, Johnny. Don’t go in. I’ll go. Stay—”
But there was a cry and a noise of falling. Johnny flung open the parlour door and stood aghast.
. . . Butson pushed the girl forward. “Go an’ earn yer livin’, y’ idle slut! Get out o’ this!”
For a second Johnny stared. Then he reached Butson at a spring and knocked him backward with a swing of his right fist. The crutch lay behind the man’s heels and tripped him, so that he sat backward on the floor, mightily astonished. Johnny snatched the poker and waved it close about Butson’s head.
“Don’t you move!” he cried, white with passion. “Don’t you try to get up, or I’ll beat your head in!”
Mr. Butson raised his arm to save his skull, but caught a blow across the bone that sent it numb to his side.
“Johnny—don’t!” cried Nan, snatching at his arm. “O Henry! pray don’t—”
“Get away, mother,” said Johnny, “or I’ll have to hit his head! You blackguard coward! You—you’re a meaner hound even than I took you for! You’ll touch my sister—a lame girl—will you?” At the thought he struck, but again Nan caught at him, and only Mr. Butson’s shoulder suffered.
“Don’t, Johnny!” his mother entreated. “Think o’ the neighbours! They can hear next door!”
So they could, and for the sake of trade the proprieties of Harbour Lane must be respected. To have a row in the house was a scandal unpardonable in Harbour Lane. In the height of his anger Johnny remembered, and instinctively dropped his voice. “Very well,” he said, “then call a p’liceman—I’ll lock him up!”
Johnny’s anger kept his reason half astray yet, or he would have remembered that to have a member of the household taken off by a policeman would be more disgraceful than twenty rows. But Mr. Butson’s consternation, though momentary, was plain.
“Johnny, Johnny,” pleaded poor Nan, “think of the disgrace! Do let’s make it up—for my sake, Johnny!”
Bessy was crying in a corner, and Nan was choking and sobbing. Johnny wavered, and the poker stopped in mid-air. Butson took heart of grace and moved to get up, though he kept his eye on the poker. “Better take ’im away,” he growled to Nan, “if ye don’t want me to smash ’im!”
Straightway the poker waved again, and Mr. Butson changed his mind as to getting up. “Smash me?” Johnny asked. “Smash me, eh? Keep a civil tongue, or you shall have it now! See?” and he thrust the point against Mr. Butson’s nose, leaving a black smear. “Don’t think I care for you! If this was anywhere else I’d ha’ broken your head in twenty places! Now you sit there an’ listen to me, Mr. Butson. What you are we know. You camehere starving, with about half a suit o’ boiler clothes in the world, and my mother fed you—out o’ charity, an’ worse luck. She fed you, and she put clothes on your lazy carcase, and you cadged and begged as a mongrel dog wouldn’t. Stop where you are, or you’ll have it!” This with another flourish of the poker and another smear on the nose. Mr. Butson sat up again, a figure of ignominy.
“You talked my mother over, and you married her, and you’ve lived on her ever since, like a gentleman—or like what you think’s a gentleman—you, not worth boy’s pay on a mud-barge! Now see here! I’m not a boy now—or at anyrate I’m not a little one. I’m within half a head as tall as you. I’m not so strong as you now perhaps, and I know I’m not as big. But some day I shall be stronger, because you’re rotting yourself with idleness and booze, and then I’ll give you a bigger hiding than you can carry, for what I saw just now! You look forward to that! Until then, if you put your hand within a foot of my sister again, I’ll brain you with this poker, or I’ll stick something into you,—I’ll go for you with whatever I can lay hold of! Now you remember that!”
Johnny’s voice was loud again, and once more Nan appealed.
“All right, mother,” he answered, more quietly, “but I’ll make him understand. I shall keep a little more at home in the evenings now, my fine fellow, and I shalltake all this table to draw on, whether you like it or not, unless my sister or my mother want to use it. I’ve got more right here than you. And if I go out I’ll ask about your behaviour when I come in. I’ve kept quiet and knuckled under to you, for the sake of peace, and so as not to worry mother. There’s been enough o’ that. If you want rows you shall have ’em! I’ll make you as frightened of me as you are of the p’lice. Ah! you know what I mean!” Johnny had no idea of what he meant himself, but he had been sharp enough to observe the effect of his earlier allusion to the police, and he followed it up. “You know what I mean! You’d look a deal more at home in gaol than here, in a white shirt, eating other people’s victuals!”
Mr. Butson decided that bluster would not do just at present. He wondered if Johnny really did know anything, and how much. But surely not, or he would go a good deal farther. Anyway, best be cautious. So Mr. Butson growled, “Oh, all right. Damn lot o’ fuss to make over nothin’.Idon’t want no words.”
And Bessy, still crying, took hold of her brother’s arm and said, “Don’t say any more, Johnny, please. I—I—p’raps I oughtn’t to ha’ done what I did!”
“What you did!” Johnny answered, not so cheaply appeased. “You do what you like, Bess—I’ll see he don’t interfere. He says he don’t want any words—he shan’t have ’em. He’ll have something harder if he touchesyou! Let go my arm a minute. Go on, you can get up now!” This to Butson, with the black nose. “You’d better go an’ wash yourself. But none o’ your tricks! If you try to lay hold o’ me from behind, or anything like that, you’ll get it, with anything I can catch hold of! So now you know!”
And Mr. Henry Butson, growling indistinctly, went out to wash his face, closely watched by Johnny, poker in hand.
Next door, on one side, heads were thrust out at the back-door to listen to the unwonted noise of quarrelling at the chandler’s; and on the other side other heads were thrust out at the front door. Because the law of irregularity in the building of Harbour Lane decreed a back-garden to the one house and a front-garden to the other.
Hishome in Harbour Lane grew less sufferable than ever to Mr. Butson’s tastes. His contempt remained for the sordid surroundings, the vulgar trade, the simple wife—for everything about the place in fact, with the reasonable exceptions of the money he extracted from it and the food he ate there; and now there was the new affliction of an unsubmissive stepson. A stepson, moreover, who watched, and who kept alert ears for any expedient assertion of authority whereat he might raise mutiny; a most objectionable stepson in every way, far too big, and growing bigger every day; who would not forget bygones, and who had a nasty, suggestive way of handling the poker—a large poker, an unnecessarily heavy poker for a sitting-room. And he seemed to suspect things too, and talked unpleasantly of the police; a thing that turned one hot and cold together. So Mr. Butson went more up West, and sought longer solace in the society of the bars.
As for Johnny, finding Butson ceasing, so far as he could see, from active offence, he gave thought to other things; though watching still. His drawing was amongthe other matters that claimed his care; but chief of them all was a different thing altogether.
For at the Institute he had found the girl he first saw on the dark morning when he set out to be an engineer. He had seen her since—once as he was on his way to a ship-launch, and twice a little later; then not at all for eighteen months at least, till he began to forget. But now that he saw her again and found her a woman—or grown as much a woman as he was grown a man—he wondered that he could ever have forgotten for a moment; more, when he had seen her twice or thrice, and knew the turn of her head and the nearing of her step, he was desperately persuaded that nothing in the world, nor time nor tide, could make him forget again. So that he resolved to learn to dance.
But the little society that danced at the Institute saw nothing of her, this radiant unforgettable. She came twice a week to the dressmaking class; wherein she acted as monitor or assistant to the teacher, being, as Johnny later discovered—by vast exertions—a dressmaker herself, in her daily work. She made no friendships, walked sedately apart, and was in some sort a mystery; being for these reasons regarded as “stuck-up” by the girls of the class, and so made a target for many small needle-thrusts of spite. Johnny had a secret notion that she remembered him; because she would pass him with so extreme an unconsciousness in hermanner, so very blank an unacquaintance in her eyes. Neat and grey in her dress, she had ever a placid gravity of air, almost odd by contrast with the unceasing smirk and giggle of the rest of the girls of the Institute. And her name—another happy discovery, attained at great expense of artless diplomacy—was Nora Sansom.
And now for awhile the practice of orthographic projection suffered from neglect and abstraction of mind. Long Hicks, all ignorant of the cause, was mightily concerned, and expostulated, with a face of perplexed surprise, much poking of fingers through the hair, and jerking at the locks thus separated. But it was a great matter that tugged so secretly at Johnny’s mind, and daily harder at his heart-strings, till he blushed in solitude to find himself so weak a creature. Nora Sansom did not come to the dancing. She knew nobody that he knew. She was unapproachable as—as a Chinese Empress. How to approach Nora Sansom? And at the thought he gulped and tingled, and was more than a little terrified. He was not brought to a stand by contemplation of any distinct interposing labyrinth of conventional observance, such as he who can see can pick his way through in strict form; but by a difficulty palpable to instinct rather than figured in mind: an intangible barrier that vexed Johnny to madness, so that he hammered the Institute punching-ballwith blind fury. And again, because the world was now grown so many heavens wider, he would sit and dream of things beyond its farthest margin yet. And between plan and section, crank-shaft and piston, he would wake to find himself designing monograms of the letters N. S. and J. M. Altogether becoming a sad young fool, such as none of us ever was in the like circumstances.
But an angel—two angels, to be exact, both of them rather stout—came one night to Johnny’s aid. They came all unwitting, in a cab, being man and wife, and their simple design was to see for themselves the Upraising of the Hopeless Residuum. They had been told, though they scarce believed, that at the Institute, far East—much farther East than Whitechapel, and therefore, without doubt, deeper sunk in dirt and iniquity—the young men and women danced together under regular ball-room conventions, neither bawling choruses nor pounding one another with quart pots. It was even said that partners were introduced in proper form before dancing—a thing so ludicrous in its incongruity as to give no choice but laughter. So the two doubters from the West End (it was only Bayswater, really) took a cab, to see these things for themselves.
But, having taken no pains to inform themselves of the order of things at the Institute, they arrived on an evening when there was no dancing. This was veryannoying, and they said so, with acerbity. They were, indeed, so very indignant at the disconformity of the arrangements to their caprice, and so extremely and so obviously important, and the lady waggled her gilt-handled lorgnon with such offended majesty, that it was discussed among those in direction whether or not something might be done to appease them. And in the end, after a few hasty inquiries, the classes were broken up for the evening and an off-hand dance was declared, to the music extracted from the Institute piano and the fiddle of a blushing young amateur.
The girls came in gay and chattering from the dressmaking class, and the lads rushed to exchange gymnasium-flannels for the clothes they had come in—all unconscious that they were to be made a show of. They who kept their dancing-shoes on the premises triumphed in their foresight, and Johnny was among them. As for him, he had seen Nora Sansom coming in with the others, alone and a little shy, and he resolved to seize occasion with both hands.
And he did so very gallantly, with less trepidation than at a calmer moment he would have judged possible. First a quadrille was called, and Johnny’s courage rose—for as yet he had no great confidence in his dancing in general, but hedidknow the figures of a quadrille, having learned them by rote, as most boys learn Euclid. He laid hands on the mild youngshopman who had unexpectedly found himself appointed master of ceremonies, and in two minutes he was standing in a set with Nora Sansom at his side. The sheer pride of it disorganised his memory, so that it was lucky they were a side couple, or there would have been a rout in the first figure. Johnny’s partner knew very little or nothing of dancing, but she was quick to learn, and Johnny, a rank beginner himself, had a proud advantage in his knowledge of the figures—unstable as it was. So that the thing went very joyfully, and the girl’s eyes grew brighter and her face gayer each moment to the end. For her life had been starved of merriment, and here was merriment in plenty, of the sort a girl loves.
Four or five dances were all there were, for the place shut at ten. To dance them all with Nora Sansom were impossible and scandalous, for everybody was very “particular” at the Institute. But Johnny went as far as two and a “sit out,” and extracted a half-promise that she would come and dance some other time. More, he walked two streets of the way home with her, and the way was paved with clouds of glory. Why he might go no farther he could not guess, but there he was dismissed, quite unmistakably, though pleasantly enough.
Fair, very fair were the poor little streets in the moonlight as Johnny walked home, and very sweet theair. It was a good world, a kind world, a world as one may see it who has emptied a bottle of good champagne. Johnny would have shaken hands with anybody on the way—probably even with Butson if he had met him; but nobody made the offer, and even the baked-chestnut man—he was still there, by the high wall—growled merely when Johnny gave him good night. And so Johnny went to dreams of gentle grey eyes in a dimpled face with brown hair about it. For few of the song-book beauties were Nora Sansom’s. Her hair was neither golden nor black, but simple brown like the hair of most other people, and her eyes were mere grey; yet Johnny dreamed.
As for the two angels from Bayswater who caused all these things to come to pass, they looked at the dancing from the gallery, and said that it was really very creditable, considering; quite surprising, indeed, for people of that class, and they hoped it didn’t lead to immorality. And they went home virtuously conscious of having done their duty toward the Submerged. But the lady left her gilt-handled lorgnon in the cab, whereof the gentleman hadn’t thought to take the number. And the lady said a great many times before they went to bed (and after) that it was Just Like a Man.
Theweeks went, and the time neared when dancing at the Institute would end for the season—would end with a bang and a dazzle in a “long night,” when dancing would be kept up shamelessly till something nearer one o’clock than twelve. Johnny counted, first the weeks, then the days, and last the hours. Not because of the dancing, although that was amusing, but because he was to take Nora Sansom with his double ticket. For herself, she may have counted days and hours, or may not; but true it was that she sat up late on several nights, with nun’s veiling and ribbons, making a dress for the occasion—the first fine frock that had been hers. And every night she hid it carefully.
Each dressmaking-class night of late it had been Johnny’s privilege to guard her home-going to the end of that second street—never farther. Twice she had come to dancing, and by that small practice was already Johnny’s superior at the exercise; for a big-shouldered novice of eleven stone two is a slower pupil than any girl of eighteen in the world. And they were very welcome one to the other, and acquaintance bettered dayby day. Once Johnny ventured a question about the adventure of the morning, now more than three years ago, but learned little from Miss Sansom’s answer. The lady who was ill was her relation, she said, and she found her; and then she talked of something else.
And so till the evening before the “long night.” It was the rule at the Institute to honour the long night with gloves and white ties, by way of compromise with evening dress; and Johnny bought his gloves with discretion and selected his tie with care. Then he went to the Institute, took a turn or two at the bars, climbed up the rope, and gave another member a lesson with the gloves. Thus refreshed, he dressed himself in his walking clothes, making sure that the tie and the gloves were safe in his pocket, and set out for home. There was no dressmaking class that night, so that he need not wait. But outside and plainly waiting for him, was Nora Sansom herself. Johnny thought she had been crying: as in fact she had.
“Oh, Mr. May,” she said. “I’m very sorry, but—I thought you might be here, and—and—I’m afraid I shan’t be able to come to-morrow!”
“Not come! But—but why?”
“I’m sorry—I’m very sorry, Mr. May; but I can’t tell you—really.”
There was a quiver of the lip, and her voice was a little uneven, as though there were danger of more tears.But Johnny was not disappointed merely; he was also angry, and it was hard to conceal the fact. So he said nothing, but turned and walked a few steps by her side.
“I—hope you won’t mind,” she pursued, uneasy at his silence. “I’m very much disappointed—very much indeed.” And it was plain that she was. “But there’ll be a good many there. And you’ll have plenty of partners.” This last she found a hard thing to say.
“I don’t care how many’ll be there,” Johnny replied. “I shan’t go.”
It was said curtly, almost angrily, but Nora Sansom heard it with an odd little tremor of pleasure. Though she merely said, “But why not? There’s no reason why you should be disappointed too.”
“Anyhow, I’m not going,” he said; and after a pause added: “Perhaps you might ha’ gone if I hadn’t asked you!”
“Oh, I shouldn’t!” she answered, with tears in eyes and voice. “You know I shouldn’t! I never go anywhere!”
Johnny instantly felt himself a brute. “No,” he said. “I know you don’t. I didn’t mean anything unkind. But I won’t go.”
“Do you really mean it?”
“Of course. I’m not going without you.” He might have said something more, but a little group of peoplecame straggling past. And the girl, with her eyes on this group, said the first thing that came to her tongue.
“Where will you go then?”
“Oh anywhere. I don’t know. Walk about, perhaps.”
She looked shyly up in his face, and down again. “Imight go for a walk,” she said.
Johnny’s heart gave a great beat. “Alone?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Perhaps.”
But she would be questioned into nothing definite.Ifshe took a walk, shemightgo in such and such a direction, passing this or that place at seven o’clock, or half-past. That was all. And now she must hurry away, for she had already been too long.
What mattered the dance to Johnny now? A fig for the dance. Let them dance that liked, and let them dance the floor through if it pleased them. But how was it that Nora Sansom could take a walk to-morrow evening, yet could not come to the Institute? That was difficult to understand. Still, hang the dance!
For Nora it would be harder to speak. Howbeit indeed the destruction of the looked-for evening’s gladness, in her first fine frock, had been a bitter thing.But that day her hiding-place had been discovered, and now the dress that had cost such thoughtful design and such hopeful labour was lying, rolled and ticketed, on a pawnbroker’s shelf.
Thatthey must come to Blackwall Pier was assured. For there were no streets, no crowds, no rumbling waggons; there were the wide sky and the unresting river, the breeze, the ships, and the endless train of brown-sailed barges. No unseamanlike garden-seats dishonoured the quay then, and strolling lovers sat on bollards or chains, or sat not at all.
Here came Johnny and Nora Sansom when the shrinking arc of daylight was far and yellow in the west, and the Kentish hills away to the left grew dusk and mysterious. The tide ran high, and tugs were busy. A nest of them, with steam up, lay under the wharf wall to the right of the pier-barge, waiting for work; some were already lighted, and, on the rest, men were trimming the lamps or running them up, while a cheerful glow came from each tiny cabin and engine-room. Rascal boys flitted about the quays and gangways—the boys that are always near boats and water, ever failing to get drowned, and ever dodging the pestered men who try to prevent it.
The first star of the evening steadied and brightened,and soon was lost amid other stars. Below, the river set its constellations as silently, one after another, trembling and blinking; and meteor tugs shot across its firmament, in white and green and red. Along shore the old Artichoke Tavern, gables and piles, darkened and melted away, and then lit into a little Orion, a bright cluster in the bespangled riverside. Ever some new sail came like a ghost up reach out of the gloom, rounded the point, and faded away; and by times some distant voice was heard in measured cry over water.
They said little; for what need to talk? They loitered awhile near the locks, and saw the turning Trinity light with its long, solemn wink, heard a great steamer hoot, far down Woolwich reach. Now the yellow in the sky was far and dull indeed, and a myriad of stars trembled over the brimming river. A tug puffed and sobbed, and swung out from the group under the wharf, beating a glistering tail of spray, and steaming off at the head of a train of lighters. Out from the dark of Woolwich Reach came a sailing-ship under bare spars, drawn by another tug. In the middle of the river the ship dropped anchor, and the tug fell back to wait, keeping its place under gentle steam.
They walked on the wharf, by the iron cranes, and far to the end, under the windows of the abandoned Brunswick Hotel. Here they were quite alone, andhere they sat together on a broad and flat-topped old bollard.
Presently said Johnny, “Are you sorry for the dance now—Nora?” And lost his breath at the name.
Nora—he called her Nora; was she afraid or was she glad? What was this before her? But with her eyes she saw only the twinkling river, with the lights and the stars.
Presently she answered. “I was very sorry,” she said slowly . . . “of course.”
“But now—Nora?”
Still she saw but the river and the lights; but she was glad; timid, too, but very glad. Johnny’s hand stole to her side, took hers, and kept it. . . . “No,” she said, “not sorry—now.”
“Say Johnny.”
What was before her mattered nothing; he sat by her—held her hand. . . . “Not sorry now—Johnny!”
Why came tears so readily to her eyes? Truly they had long worn their path. But this—this was joy. . . . He bent his head, and kissed her. The wise old Trinity light winked very slowly, and winked again.
So they sat and talked; sometimes whispered. Vows, promises, nonsense all—what mattered the words to so wonderful a tune? And the eternal stars, a million ages away, were nearer, all nearer, than the world of common life about them. What was for her she knewnow and saw—she also: a new heaven and a new earth.
Over the water from the ship came, swinging and slow, a stave of the chanty:—
“I’m a flying-fish sailor straight home from Hong-Kong—Aye! Aye! Blow the man down!Blow the man down, bully, blow the man down—O give us some time to blow the man down!Ye’re a dirty Black-Baller just in from New York—Aye! Aye! Blow the man down!Blow the man down, bully, blow the man down—O give us some time to blow the man down!”
“I’m a flying-fish sailor straight home from Hong-Kong—Aye! Aye! Blow the man down!Blow the man down, bully, blow the man down—O give us some time to blow the man down!
Ye’re a dirty Black-Baller just in from New York—Aye! Aye! Blow the man down!Blow the man down, bully, blow the man down—O give us some time to blow the man down!”
Time went, but time was not for them. Where the tug-engineer, thrusting up his head for a little fresh air, saw but a prentice-lad and his sweetheart on a bollard, there sat Man and Woman, enthroned and exultant in face of the worlds.
The ship swung round on the tide, bringing her lights square and her stem for the opening lock. The chanty went wailing to its end:—
“Blow the man down, bully, blow the man down—To my Aye! Aye! Blow the man down!Singapore Harbour to gay London town—O give us some time to blow the man down!”
“Blow the man down, bully, blow the man down—To my Aye! Aye! Blow the man down!Singapore Harbour to gay London town—O give us some time to blow the man down!”
The tug headed for the dock and the ship went in her wake with slow state, a gallant shadow amid the blue.
Soon the tide stood, and stood, and then began its ebb. For a space there was a deeper stillness as the dim wharves hung in mid-mist, and water and sky were one. Then the air stirred and chilled, stars grew sharper, and the Thames turned its traffic seaward.
Happinessnever stayed long with Nora Sansom. Little, indeed, had been her portion, and it was a poor sort at best. But this new joy was so great that it must needs be short of life; and in truth she saw good reason. From the moment of parting with Johnny doubts had troubled her; and doubts grew to distress—even to misery. She saw no end—no end but sorrow. She had been carried away; she had forgotten. And in measure as her sober senses awoke she saw that all this gladness could but end in heart-break and bereavement. Better, then, end all quickly and have done with the pang. But herein she misjudged her strength.
Doubts and perplexities assailed Johnny also, though for a time they grew to nothing sharper. He would have gone home straightway, proud and joyful, if a little sheepish, to tell his mother the tale of that evening. But Nora had implored him to say nothing yet. She wanted time to think things over, she said. And she left him at the familiar corner, two streets beyond the Institute, begging him to come no farther, for this time, at anyrate. Next evening was the evening of thedressmaking class. He saw her for a few minutes, on her way through those two familiar streets, and he thought she looked unwell.
A few nights later he saw her again. Plainly she had been crying. When they came to a deserted street of shut-up wharves he asked her why.
“Only—only I’ve been thinking!” she said.
“What about?”
“About you, Johnny—about you and me. We—I think—we’re very young, aren’t we?”
That had not struck him as a difficulty. “Well,” he said, “I don’t know about that. I s’pose we are, like others. But I shall be out o’ my time in two years and a half, or not much more, and then—”
“Yes, then,” she said, catching at the word, “p’raps then it will be different—and—I mean we shall be older and know better, Johnny. And—now—we can often see one another and talk like friends—and—” She looked up to read his eyes, trembling.
Something cold took Johnny by the throat, and checked his voice. “But—what—you don’t mean—that?”
“Yes,” she said, though it was bitter hard. “It’ll be best—I’m sure, Johnny!”
Johnny gulped, and his voice hardened. “Oh!” he said, “if you want to throw me over you might say so, in straight English!”
“Oh—don’t talk like that, Johnny!” she pleaded, and laid her hand on his arm. “It’s unkind! You know it’s unkind!”
“No—it’s only plain an’ honest. I don’t understand this half-and-half business—seeing each other ‘like friends’ an’ all that.”
One more effort she made to hold her position—but her strength was near gone. “It’ll be better, Johnny—truly it will! You—you might meet someone you’d like better, and—”
“That’s my look-out; time to talk about that when it comes. The other night you let me kiss you, and you kissed me back—told me you loved me. Now you don’t. Maybe you’ve met someone you like better.”
She held out no more. Her head fell on his shoulder, and she broke into an agony of tears. “O Johnny, Johnny, that is cruel! You don’t know how cruel it is! I shall never like anybody better than you—never half so much. Don’t be unkind! I’ve not one friend in the world but you, and I do love you more than anything.”
With that Johnny was ready to kick himself for a ruffian. He looked about, but nobody else was in the shadowy street. He kissed Nora, he called himself hard names, and he quieted her, though she still sobbed. And there was no more talk of mere friendship. She had tried her compromise, and had broken down. Butpresently Johnny ventured to ask if she foresaw any difficulty with her parents.
“Father’s dead,” she said simply. “He’s been dead for years.” This was the first word of her family matters that Johnny had heard. Should he come to see her mother? The question struck her like a blow.
“No—no, Johnny,” she said. “Not yet—no, you mustn’t. I can’t tell you why—I can’t really; at anyrate not now.” Then after a pause, “O Johnny, I’m in such trouble! Such trouble, Johnny!” And she wept again.
But tell her trouble she would not. At anyrate not then. And in the end she left Johnny much mystified, and near as miserable as herself, because of his blind helplessness in this unrevealed affliction.
Inexpert in mysteries, he was all incomprehension. What was this trouble that he must not be told of? He did not even know where Nora lived. Why shouldn’t she tell him? Why did she never let him see her as far as home? This much he knew: that she had a mother, but had lost her father by death. And this he had but just learned from her under stress of tears. He was not to see her mother—at least not yet. And Nora was in sore trouble, but refused to say what the trouble was. That night he moped and brooded. And at Maidment and Hurst’s next morning—it was Saturday—Mr. Cottam the gaffer swore, and made remarks aboutthe expedience of being thoroughly awake before dinner-time. More, at one o’clock Johnny passed the pay-box without taking his money, and turned back for it, when reminded, amid the chaff of his shopmates, many offers of portership, and some suggestions to scramble the slighted cash.
Not far from the yard-gate he saw a small crowd of people about a public-house; and as he neared he perceived Mother Born-drunk in the midst of it. The publican had refused to serve her—indeed, had turned her out—and now she swayed about his door and proclaimed him at large.
“’Shultin’ a lady!” she screamed hoarsely. “Can’t go in plashe ’thout bein’ ’shulted. ’Shulted by low common public-’oush. I won’t ’ave it!”
“Don’t you stand it, ducky!” sang out a boy. “You give ’em what for!”
For a moment she seemed inclined to turn her wrath on her natural enemy, the boy, but her eye fell on a black bottle with a broken neck, lying in the gutter. “Gi’ ’em what for?” she hiccupped, stooping for the bottle, “Yesh,I’llgi’ ’em what for!” and with that flung the bottle at the largest window in sight.
There was a crash, a black hole in the midst of the plate glass, and a vast “spider” of cracks to its farthest corners. Mother Born-drunk stood and stared, perhaps a little sobered. Then a barman ran out, tucking in hisapron, and took her by the arm. There were yells and screams and struggles, and cheers from blackguard boys; and Mother Born-drunk was hauled off, screaming and sliding and stumbling, between a policeman and the publican.
Johnny told his mother, when he reached home, that her old acquaintance Emma Pacey was like to endure a spell of gaol. But what occupied his mind was Nora’s trouble, and he forgot Mother Born-drunk for three or four days.
Then came the next evening of the dressmaking class at the Institute, and he went, never doubting to meet Nora as she came away. At the door the housekeeper, who was also hall-porter, beckoned, and gave him a letter, left earlier in the day. It was addressed to him by name, in a weak and straggling female hand, and for a moment he stared at it, not a little surprised. When he tore open the envelope he found a blotchy, tear-stained rag of a letter, and read this:—
“My Dearest Johnny,—It is all over now and I do hope you will forgive me for not telling you before. This is to say good-bye and God bless you and pray forget all about me. It was wrong of me to let it go so far but I did love you so Johnny, and I could not help it and then I didn’t know what to do. I can never come to the classes again with all this disgrace and everything printed in the newspapers and I must get work somewhere where they don’t know me. I would rather die, but I must look after her as well as I can, Johnny, because she is my mother. Burn this at once and forget all about me and some day you will meetsome nice girl belonging to a respectable family and nothing to be ashamed of. Don’t try to find me—that will only make us both miserable. Good-bye and please forgive me.Yours affectionately,Nora Sansom.”
“My Dearest Johnny,—It is all over now and I do hope you will forgive me for not telling you before. This is to say good-bye and God bless you and pray forget all about me. It was wrong of me to let it go so far but I did love you so Johnny, and I could not help it and then I didn’t know what to do. I can never come to the classes again with all this disgrace and everything printed in the newspapers and I must get work somewhere where they don’t know me. I would rather die, but I must look after her as well as I can, Johnny, because she is my mother. Burn this at once and forget all about me and some day you will meetsome nice girl belonging to a respectable family and nothing to be ashamed of. Don’t try to find me—that will only make us both miserable. Good-bye and please forgive me.
Yours affectionately,Nora Sansom.”
What was this? What did it all mean? He stood in the gymnasium dressing-room to read it, and when he looked up, the gaslight danced and the lockers spun about him. The one clear thing was that Nora said good-bye, and was gone.
Presently his faculties assorted themselves, and he read the letter again; and then once more. It was “all over” and she asked him to forgive her for not telling him before. Telling him what? She told him nothing now. She would never come to the Institute again, and he didn’t know her address, and he mustn’t try to find her. But then there was “everything printed in the newspapers.” Of course, he must look at the newspapers; why so long realising that? He went to the reading-room and applied himself to the pile of papers and magazines that littered the table. One paper after another he searched and searched again, but saw nothing that he could connect with Nora, by any stretch of imagination. Till he found a stray sheet of the day before, with rings of coffee-stain on it. The “police intelligence” lay uppermost, and in the midst of the column the nameEmma Sansom, in italic letters, caught hiseye. She was forty-one, and was charged with drunkenness and wilful damage. A sentence more, and everything stood displayed, as by a flash of lightning; for he had witnessed the offence himself, on Saturday. Emma Sansom was the married name of Emma Pacey, whom the boys called Mother Born-drunk; and the woman was Nora’s mother!
Now it was plain—all, from the very beginning, when the child wandered in the night seeking her strayed and drunken mother, and inquired for her with the shamed excuse that she was ill. This was why he was not to call to see Nora’s mother; and it was for this that Nora hindered him from seeing her home.
There was the shameful report, all at length. The publican’s tale was simple and plain enough. He had declined to serve the prisoner because she was drunk, and as she refused to leave, he had her turned out, though, he said, she made no particular resistance. Shortly afterward he heard a crash, and found a broken bottle and a great deal of broken glass in the bar. He had gone outside, and saw the prisoner being held by his barman. His plate-glass window was smashed, and it was worth ten pounds. There was little more evidence. The police told his worship that the prisoner had been fined small sums for drunkenness before, but she was usually inoffensive, except for collecting crowds of boys. This was the first charge against her involving damage.She was the widow of a ship’s officer lost at sea, and she had a small annuity, but was chiefly supported of late by her daughter—a dressmaker—a very respectable young woman. The daughter was present (the reporter called her “a prepossessing young female in great distress”), and she wished to be allowed to pay the damage in small instalments. But in the end her mother was sent to prison for a month in default of payment of fine and damage. For indeed the daughter was a minor, and her undertaking was worthless.
One thing Johnny looked for eagerly, but did not find—the prisoner’s address. Whether consideration for the daughter had prompted the reporter to that suppression, or whether it was due to accident, Johnny could not guess. In other reports in the same column some addresses were given and some not. But straightway Johnny went to beg the housekeeper that he might rummage the store of old papers for those of the day before. For to desert Nora now, in her trouble, was a thing wholly inconceivable; and so far from burning the letter, he put it, envelope and all, in his safest pocket, and felt there, more than once, to be assured of its safety.
But the address was in none of the papers. In fact the report was in no more than three, and in one of those it was but five lines long. What should he do? He could not even write her one line of comfort. Andhe had been going on with his work placidly all Monday while Nora had been standing up in a police-court, weeping and imploring mercy for her wretched mother! If he had known he could scarce have done anything to aid her. But helplessness was no consolation—rather the cruellest of aggravations.
Well, there stood the matter, and raving would not help it, nor would beating the table—nor even the head—with the fist. He must somehow devise a way to reach Nora.
Heresolved, first, to try the Institute. Nora’s name and address must be on the class registers; but what business had he with the girl’s class registers? As diplomatist his failure was lamentable. He could invent no reasonable excuses, and ignoble defeat was his fate at the hands of the rigid lady who managed the girls department of the Institute. Then he took to prowling about all the streets that lay beyond that second corner that had marked the end of their evening walks, watching for her; searching also, desperately, for some impossible sign about a house that might suggest that she lived in it. Thus he spent the daylight of two evenings watching a little muslin-hung window, because the muslin was tied with a ribbon of a sort he remembered her to have worn, and because he chose to fancy a neatness and a daintiness about the tying that might well be hers. But on the second evening as dusk fell the window opened, and a hairy, red-bearded man in blue shirt sleeves put out his head and leaned on the sill to smoke his pipe and watch the red sky. Johnny swung away savagely, and called himself a fool for his pains;and indeed, he could ill afford to waste time, for Maidment and Hurst claimed him till five each day, and a few hours in the evening were all that remained; more, Nora would change her lodgings—perhaps had done so already.
After this he screwed his courage so high as to go to the police-station where the charge against Nora’s mother must have been taken, and to ask for her address. But the cast-iron-faced inspector in charge tookhisname and address instead, as a beginning, and then would tell him nothing. And at last, maddened and reckless, he went to the publican, and demanded the information of him. Now if Johnny had had a little more worldly experience, a little more cunning, and a great deal more coolness, he would have done this at first, and, beginning by ordering a drink, he would have opened a casual conversation, led it to the matter of the window, and in the end would have gained his point quietly and easily. But as it was, he did none of these things. He ordered no drink, and he made a blunt request, taking little thought of its manner, none of the publican’s point of view, and perhaps forgetting that the man was in no way responsible for the rebuffs already endured. The publican, for his part, was already in a bad temper, because of the clumsy tapping of a barrel and ensuing “cheek” of the potman. So he answered Johnny’s demand by asking if he had come to pay for the window;and receiving the negative reply he had expected, he urgently recommended the intruder’s departure “outside”: in such terms as gave no choice but compliance.
So that now, in extremity, Johnny resolved on a last expedient: one that had been vaguely in his mind for a day or two, though he had yet scarce had courage to consider it seriously. This was, to tell his mother the whole thing; and to induce her, if he might, to ask the address at the Institute—perhaps on some pretext of dressmaking business. He was not hopeful, for he well knew that any hint of traffic with the family of one such as Nora’s mother would be a horror to her. But he could see nothing else, and to sit still were intolerable. Moreover he guessed that his mother must suspect something from his preoccupation, and his neglect of his drawing. Though indeed poor Nan was most at pains, just then, to conceal troubles of her own.
Mr. Butson, in fact, began to chafe under the restraints of narrow circumstances. Not that he was poorer than had been his habit—indeed he was much better off—but that his needs had expanded with his prosperity and with his successes in society. And it was just now that his wife began to attempt retrenchment. Probably she was encouraged by the outrageous revolt of her son, a revolt which had made advisable a certain degree of caution on the part of himself, the head of the household. She spoke of a rumour that the ship-yardopposite might close, as so many other Thames ship-yards had closed of late years. That, she said, would mean ruin for the shop, and she must try to save what little she might, meantime. An absurdity, of course, in Mr. Butson’s view. He felt no interest in the rumours of old women about ship-yards, and petty measurement of the sordid chances of trade irritated him. If his wife found one source of profit running dry, she must look out and tap another, that was all. So long as he got what he wanted he troubled little about the manner of its getting. But now he ran near having less than he wanted, and his wife was growing even less accommodating. She went so far as to hint of withholding the paltry sum the lad earned; he should have it himself, she thought, to buy his clothes, and to save toward the end of his apprenticeship. More than this, Mr. Butson much suspected that Johnny had actually had his own money for some while past, and that Mrs. Butson had descended to the mean subterfuge of representing as his earnings a sum which in reality she extracted each week from the till; an act of pure embezzlement. And then there was the cottage in Epping Forest. She wouldn’t sell it now, though she wanted to sell when she first left it. What good was there in keeping it? True there was three-and-sixpence a week of rent, but that was nothing; it would go in a round of drinks, or in half a round, in any distinguished bar; and there were deductions evenfrom the three-and-sixpence. Sold, the cottage might produce a respectable sum—perhaps a hundred pounds—at anyrate eighty. The figures stirred his blood. What a magnificent dash a man might cut with eighty pounds! And a fortune might be made out of it, too, if it were used wisely, and not buried away in a wretched three-and-sixpenny cottage. Properly invested on judicious flat-race Certainties, it would double itself about twice a week. So he made it very plain to Nan that the sale of the cottage for what it would fetch and the handing over of the proceeds was a plan he insisted on. But the stupid woman wouldn’t see it. It was plain that she was beginning to over-estimate her importance in the establishment, by reason that of late she had not been sufficiently sworn at, shoved, thumped, and twisted and pinched on the arms. That was the worst of kindness to a woman—she took advantage.
So that he was obliged to begin to thump again. There was no need to do it so that Johnny might know, and so cause a low disturbance. In fact, Johnny took little notice of things at home just now, no longer made inquiries, nor lifted the poker with so impudent a stare; and he was scarce indoors at all. Wherefore Mr. Butson punched and ruffianed—being careful to leave no disreputable marks in visible spots, such as black eyes—and sometimes he kicked; and he demanded more money and more, but all the while insisted on the sale of thecottage. The monstrous laws of conveyance made it impossible for him to lay hands on the deeds and sell the place himself, or he would have done it, of course. And he made it advisable, too, for Bessy to avoid him—and that had a better effect than any direct attack on Nan. Till at last the woman was so far reduced that she was near a very dangerous rebellion indeed—nearer than Mr. Butson suspected. For she began to think of attempting a separation by magistrate’s order, shameful as it would be in the neighbourhood. Though she feared greatly.
So it was when Johnny turned toward home on an evening a little before nine o’clock, sick of blind searching, and ready to tell his mother the story of Nora Sansom, first to last. At Harbour Lane corner he saw Butson walking off, and wondered to see him about Blackwall so early in the evening.
Nobody was in the shop, and Johnny went through so quietly that he surprised his mother and Bessy, in the shop-parlour, crying bitterly. Nan sat on a chair and Bessy bent over her, and no concealment was possible. Johnny was seized by a dire surmise. “Mother! What’s this?” he said. “What’s he been doing?”
Nan bent lower, but answered nothing. Johnny looked toward Bessy, almost sternly. “He—he’s beaten mother again,” Bessy blurted, between sobs.
“Beaten mother! Again!” Johnny’s face was white,and his nostrils stood wide and round. “Beaten mother! Again!”
“He’s always doing it now,” Bessy sobbed. “And wanting more money. I’d a good mind to tell you before, but—but—”
“Beaten mother!” The room swam before Johnny’s eyes. “Why—”
Nan rose to close the door. “No, Johnny,” she said meekly. “I’m a bit upset, but don’t let it upset you. Don’t you—”
“What’s the matter with your leg? You’re limping!”
“He kicked her! I saw him kick at her ankle!” Bessy burst out, pouring forth the tale unrestrained. “I tried to stop him and—and—”
“And then he hit you?” asked Johnny, not so white in the cheeks now, but whiter than ever about the mouth.
“Yes; but it was mother most!” and Bessy wept afresh.
Perhaps his evenings of disappointment had chastened Johnny’s impatience. He knew that the man was out of reach now, and he forced his fury down. In ten minutes he knew the whole thing, between Bessy’s outpourings and Nan’s tearful admissions.
“When is he coming back?”
They did not know—probably he would be late,as usual. “But don’t go doing anything hasty, Johnny,” Nan implored; “I’m so afraid of you doing something rash! It’s not much, really—I’m a bit upset, but—”
“I’ll have to think about this,” Johnny said, with such calmness that Nan felt somewhat reassured, though Bessy was inwardly afraid. “I’m going out for an hour.”
He strode away to the Institute, walking by instinct, and seeing nothing till he was under the lettered lamp. He went to the dressing-room and hurried into his flannels. In the gymnasium the instructor, a brawny sergeant of grenadiers, was watching some lads on the horizontal bar. Johnny approached him with a hesitating request for a “free spar.”
“Free spar, my lad?” said the sergeant. “What’s up? Gettin’ cheeky? Want to give me a hidin’?”
“No, sergeant,” Johnny answered. “Not such a fool as that. But I never had a free spar with a man much heavier than myself, and—and I just want to try, that’s all!”
There was a comprehending twinkle about the sergeant’s eyes. “Right,” he said; “you’re givin’ me near two stone—that’s if you’re a bit over eleven. Fetch the gloves.”
At another time Johnny would never have conceived the impudence of asking the sergeant—once champion of the army—for a free spar. Even a “light” spar withthe sergeant was something of an undertaking, wherein one was apt to have both hands full, and a bit over. But the lad had his reasons now.
He dashed at the professor with a straight lead, and soon the blows were going like hail on a window-pane. The sergeant stood like a rock, and Johnny’s every rush was beaten back as by hammer-blows on the head. But he came again fresh and eager, and buzzed his master merrily about the head, getting in a very respectable number of straight drives, such as would knock an ordinary man down, though the sergeant never winked; and bringing off one on the “mark” thatdidknock out a grunt, much as a punch in that region will knock one out of a squeaking doll.
“Steady,” the sergeant called after two long rounds had been sparred. “You’ll get stiff if you keep on at that rate, my lad, andthat’snot what you want, I reckon!” This last with a grin. “You haven’t been boxin’ regular you know, just lately.”
“But you’re all right,” he added, as they walked aside. “Your work keeps you in good condition. Not quite so quick as you would ha’ been if you’d been sparrin’ every evening, o’course. But quick enough for your job, I expect.” And again Johnny saw the cunning twinkle.