<h2><SPAN name="page87"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>X.</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was at Maidment and
Hurst’s, engineers, that Johnny’s father had met his
death; and it was to Maidment and Hurst that Nan had resolved to
take the boy, and beg an apprenticeship for him. True, the
firm had at the time done more than might have been expected of
it, for the accident had been largely a matter of heedlessness on
the victim’s part, and the victim was no old hand, but had
taken his job only a few months before. It had seen that
nothing was lacking for the widow’s immediate needs, nor
for a decent funeral; and it had offered to find places in an
orphanage for the children. But Nan May could not bring
herself to part with them: Bessie, indeed, was barely out of the
hospital at the time. And then the lonely old
butterfly-hunter had cut matters short by carrying them off all
three.</p>
<p>So that now, if Johnny were to learn a trade, Maidment and
Hurst’s was his best chance, for it was just possible that
the firm would take him apprentice without premium, when it was
reminded of his father. In this thing Nan May wasted no
time. The house once clean within, and something done
toward stocking the shop, <SPAN name="page88"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>Johnny was made ready, in the best of
his clothes, for inspection. It was a muddy morning, and
Mrs. May had fears for the polish on Johnny’s boots.
Gladly would she have carried him across the miry streets, as she
had done in the London of years ago, though she knew better than
to hint at such an outrage on his dignity. So they walked
warily, dodging puddles with mutual warnings, and fleeing the
splashes of passing vans. Truly London was changed, even
more in Nan May’s eyes than in Johnny’s. The
people seemed greyer, more anxious, worse fed, than when she
lived among them before, a young wife in a smiling world, with
the best part of thirty-eight shillings to spend every
week. The shops were worse stocked, and many that she
remembered well were shut. True, some flourished signs of
prosperity, but to her it seemed prosperity of a different and a
paltrier sort—vulgar and trumpery. Once out of the
Harbour Lane district, the little houses lacked the snug,
geranium-decked, wire-blinded, rep-curtained comfort of aspect
she remembered so well—the air that suggested a red fire
within, a shining copper kettle, a high fender, and muffins on a
trivet. Things were cheap, and cold, and grubby.
Above all, the silent ship-yards oppressed her fancies.
Truly, this looked an ill place for new trade! In her hunt
for the vacant shop she had encountered no old friends, and now,
though she walked through familiar streets, she had little but
fancied <SPAN name="page89"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
89</span>recognition, now and again, of some face at a shop
door.</p>
<p>Presently they turned a corner and came upon a joyful crowd of
boys. They ran, they yelled, they flung, and in their midst
cursed and floundered a rusty rag of a woman, drunk and
infuriate, harried, battered and bedeviled. Her clothes
were of decent black, but dusty and neglected, and one side of
her skirt dripped with fresh mud. Her hair was draggled
about her shoulders, and her bonnet hung in it, a bunch of
mangled crape, while she staggered hither and thither, making
futile swipes at the nimble rascals about her. She struck
out feebly with a little parcel of bacon-rashers rolled in a
paper, and already a rasher had escaped, to be flung at her head,
and flung again by the hand that could first snatch it from the
gutter.</p>
<p>“Yah! Old Mother Born-drunk!” shouted the
young savages, and two swooped again with the stretched
skipping-rope that had already tripped their victim twice.
But she clasped a post with both arms, and cursed at large,
hoarse and impotent.</p>
<p>Nan May started and stood, and then hurried on. For she
had recognised a face at last, grimed and bloated though it had
grown. “Law!” she said, “it’s Emma
Pacey! To think—to think of it!”</p>
<p>Indeed the shock was great, and the change amazing. It
was a change that would have baffled recognition by <SPAN name="page90"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>an eye that
had less closely noted the Emma Pacey of seventeen years
ago. But Emma Pacey was a smart girl then (though fast and
forward, Nan May had always said), and had caused some little
disturbance in a course of true love which led, nevertheless, to
Nan’s wedding after all. In such circumstances a
woman views her rival’s face, as she views her clothes,
with a searching eye, and remembers well. “And to
come to that!” mused Nan May, perplexed at a shade of
emotion that seemed ill-turned to the occasion, wherein the
simple soul saw nothing of womanish triumph.</p>
<p>But the changes seemed not all for the worse. There were
busy factories, and some that had been small were now
large. Coffee-stalls, too, were set up in two or three
places, where no such accommodation was in the old time: always a
sign of increasing trade. But on the whole the walk did
nothing to raise Nan’s spirits.</p>
<p>Johnny saw little. The excursion was to decide whether
he should learn to make steam-engines or not, though what manner
of adventure he was to encounter he figured but vaguely. He
was to come into presence of some gentlemen,
presumably—gentlemen who would settle his whole destiny
off-hand, on a cursory examination of his appearance and
manner. He must be alert to show his best behaviour, though
what things the gentlemen might do or say, and what unforeseen
problems of conduct might present themselves, were past guessing;
<SPAN name="page91"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>though he
guessed and guessed, oblivious of present circumstance.
Only once before had he felt quite that quality of trepidation,
and that was three years back, when he trudged along the road to
Woodford to get a tooth drawn.</p>
<p>But he came off very well, though the preliminaries were
solemn—rather more portentous, he thought, than anything in
the dentist’s waiting-room. There was a sort of
counter, with bright brass rails, and a ground-glass box with an
office-boy inside it. The unprecedented and unbusinesslike
apparition of Mrs. May, with a timid request to see Mr. Maidment
or Mr. Hurst (one was dead, and the other never came near the
place), wholly demoralised the office-boy, who retired upon his
supports in the depths of the office. Thence there
presently emerged a junior clerk, who, after certain questions,
undertook to see if the acting partner were in. Then came a
time of stealthy and distrustful inspection on the part of the
office-boy, who, having regained his box, and gathered up his
wits, began to suspect Johnny of designs on his situation.
But at last Johnny and his mother were shown into an inner room,
furnished with expensive austerity, where a gentleman of thirty
or thirty-five (himself expensively austere of mien) sat at a
writing-table. The gentleman asked Mrs. May one or two
rather abrupt questions about her dead husband—dates, and
so forth—and referred to certain notes on his table after
each <SPAN name="page92"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
92</span>answer. Then Nan offered him one of three papers
which she had been fiddling in her hand since first she passed
the street door—her marriage “lines.”</p>
<p>“O, ah, yes—yes—of course,” said the
gentleman with some change of manner. “Of
course. Quite right. Best to make
sure—can’t remember everybody. Sit down, Mrs.
May. Come here, my boy. So you want to be an
engineer, eh?”</p>
<p>“Yes, sir, if you please.” He never thought
it would be quite so hard to get it out.</p>
<p>“Ah. Plenty of hard work, you know. Not
afraid of that, are you?”</p>
<p>“No, sir.”</p>
<p>“How old are you?”</p>
<p>“Fifteen next month, sir.”</p>
<p>“Get on all right at school? What
standard?”</p>
<p>“Passed seventh, sir.”</p>
<p>Mrs. May handed over her other two papers: a
“character” from the schoolmaster and another from
the rector.</p>
<p>When the gentleman had read them, “Yes, yes, very
good—very good, indeed,” he said. “But
you’ve not finished learning yet, you know, my boy, if
you’re to be an engineer. Fond of drawing?”</p>
<p>“Yes, sir.”</p>
<p>And Nan May chimed in: “O, yes, sir, very
fond.”</p>
<p>“Well, if you stick well at your drawing in the <SPAN name="page93"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>evenings, and
learn the theory, you’ll be a foreman some
day—perhaps a manager. It all depends on
yourself. You shall have a chance to show us what
you’re made of. That’s all we can do—the
rest is for yourself, as I’ve said.”</p>
<p>“Yes, sir, thank-you, sir—I’ll
try.” And Mrs. May was audibly thankful too, and
confident of Johnny.</p>
<p>“Very well, it’s settled.” The
gentleman rang a bell, and bade the junior clerk “Just send
for Cottam.”</p>
<p>“I have sent for the foreman,” he went on,
“whose shop you will be in. He’ll look after
you as long as you behave well and keep up to your work.
You won’t see me very often, but I shall know all about
you, remember.” And he turned to his table, and
wrote.</p>
<p>Presently there was a sudden thump at the door, which opened
slowly and admitted the foremost part—it was the
abdomen—of Cottam the foreman. He was of middle
height, though he seemed short by reason of his corpulence;
deliberate in all his movements, yet hard, muscular, and
active. He turned, as it were on his own axis, at the edge
of the door, shut it with one hand, while he dangled a marine
peaked cap in the other; and looked, with serene composure, from
over his scrub of grey beard, first at Mrs. May, then at Johnny,
and last at his employer.</p>
<p>“Oh, Cottam,” the gentleman said, writing one more
word, and letting drop his pen, “this lad’s name is
John <SPAN name="page94"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
94</span>May. I expect you’ll remember his
father. Bad accident, I believe, in the heavy turning shop;
died, in fact.” This with a slight glance at Nan
May.</p>
<p>The foreman turned—turned his whole person, for his head
was set on his vast shoulders with no visible neck
between—bent a trifle, and inspected Johnny as he would
have inspected some wholly novel and revolutionary piece of
machinery. “Y-u-u-us,” he said, with a slowly
rising inflection, expressive of cautious toleration, as of one
reserving a definite opinion. “Y-u-u-us!”</p>
<p>“Well, he’s to come on as apprentice, and
I’d like him to come into your shop. There’ll
be no difficulty about that, will there?”</p>
<p>“N-o-o-o!” with the same deliberate inflection,
similarly expressive.</p>
<p>“Then you’d better take him down, and tell the
timekeeper. He may as well begin on Monday, I
suppose.”</p>
<p>“Y-u-u-us!” tuned once more in an ascending
scale. And with that the acting partner bade Mrs. May
good-morning, turned to his writing, and the business was
over.</p>
<p>Cottam the foreman put his cap on his head and led the way
through the outer office, along a corridor, down the stairs and
across the yard, with no indecent haste. It was a good
distance to go, and Johnny was vaguely reminded of a circus
procession that had once <SPAN name="page95"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>passed through Loughton, and that he
had followed up for nearly three miles, behind the elephant.</p>
<p>Half-way across the yard the foreman stopped, and made a half
turn, so as to face Nan May as she came up. He raised an
immense leathery fist, and jerked a commensurate thumb over his
shoulder. “That’s the young
guv’nor,” he said in a hoarse whisper, with a
confidential twitch of one cheek that was almost a wink.
“That’s the young guv’nor, that is. Smart
young chap. Knowed ’im so ’igh.” He
brought down his hand to the level of his lowest waistcoat
button, twitched his cheek again, nodded, and walked on.</p>
<p>The timekeeper inhabited a little wooden cabin just within the
gates, and looked out of a pigeon-hole at all comers. Mr.
Cottam put his head into this hole—a close fit—and
when he withdrew it, the timekeeper, a grey man, came out of his
side door and stared hard at Johnny. Then he growled
“All right,” and went in again.</p>
<p>“Six o’clock o’ Monday mornin’,”
Mr. Cottam pronounced conclusively, addressing Mrs. May.
“Six o’clock o’ Monday mornin’.
<i>’Ere</i>,” with a downward jerk of his thumb to
make it plain that somewhere else would not do. Then,
without a glance at Johnny, whom he had disregarded since they
left the office, he turned and walked off. Johnny and his
mother were opening the small door that was cut in the great
gate, when Mr. <SPAN name="page96"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
96</span>Cottam stopped and turned.
“Mornin’!” he roared, and went on.</p>
<p>Mother and boy went their way joyously. Here was one of
Nan May’s troubles dissolved in air, and as for Johnny, a
world of wonders was before him. Now he would understand
how steam made engines go, and all day he would see them
going—he would make engines himself, in fact. And for
this delightful pursuit he would be paid. Six shillings a
week was what apprentices got in their first year—a
shilling for every day of work. Next year he would get
eight shillings, and then ten, and so on. And at twenty-one
he would be a man indeed, an engineer like his father before
him. More, he was to draw. The gentleman had told him
to draw in his spare time. The clang of hammers was as a
merry peal from the works that lined their way, and the hoots of
steamships on the river made them a moving music.</p>
<p>Nan May wondered to see such merry faces about the streets on
the way home. Truly the place was changed; but, perhaps,
after all, it was no such bad place, even now. The street
was quiet where they had seen the drunken woman, though two very
small boys were still kicking a filthy slice of bacon about the
gutter. But three streets beyond they saw her for a
moment. For the blackguard boys had contrived to topple
Mother Born-drunk into a hand-barrow, which they were now <SPAN name="page97"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>trundling
along at such a pace that the bedraggled sufferer could do no
more than lie and cling to the rails, a gasping, uncleanly
heap. Truly Emma Pacey’s punishment was upon her.</p>
<p>Bessy brightened wonderfully at the news of Johnny’s
success. For she was thoughtful and
“old-fashioned” even among the prematurely sage
girl-children of her class, and she had been fretting
silently. Now she hopped about with something of her old
activity. She reported that the next-door neighbour on the
left had been persistently peeping over the wall, and that just
before their arrival the peep had been accompanied by a very
artificial cough, meant to attract attention. So Mrs. May
went into the back-yard.</p>
<p>“Mornin’, mum,” said the next-door
neighbour, a very red-faced man in a dungaree jacket.
“Weather’s cleared up a bit. I’ve bin
’avin’ ’alf a day auf, touchin’ up
things.” He sank with a bob behind the wall, and rose
again with a paint-pot in his lifted hand. “Bit
o’ red paint any use to ye?”</p>
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