<h2><SPAN name="page150"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>XVI.</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">With</span> the spring the steady
application of paint in Harbour Lane burst into a fury.
Everywhere the houses and the flagstaffs and the fences took new
coats of many colours, changing as the season went, and the
paint-pot traffic fell into a vaster confusion. As tops
were “in” among the boys, the smell of paint grew day
by day, and when the marble season began little else could be
smelt. With July came Fairlop Friday, and Bessy wondered at
the passing of a great model of a rigged ship on wheels, drawn by
horses, and filled with jubilant shipwrights on their way to
Epping Forest, in accord with yearly custom. She had grown
to consider the forest as a place so far off (though indeed she
knew the distance in mere miles) that it came almost as a
surprise to see people starting out to drive there in a few hours
with so slow a vehicle, and to return the same night.</p>
<p>Bob Smallpiece had written once or twice (he kept an eye on
the empty cottage, and looked out for a tenant), but he had never
made a visit, as Nan May had asked him. The last news was
that his bedridden old mother was worse, and not expected to
live.</p>
<p><SPAN name="page151"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>The
trade went well—better than ever, indeed, and scarce a
month passed but Nan May put a sovereign or two in the
post-office savings bank; and Uncle Isaac began secretly to look
upon the shop in Harbour Lane as a convenient retreat for his
later years. Already he took as many meals there as
possible, for, as he said, he could get no proper attention in
his new lodgings. Of his old friend Mr. Butson he had seen
nothing for months. For Butson, he knew, had lost his berth
on the steamboat, and had fallen on evil times—and Uncle
Isaac never intruded on private griefs of this description.</p>
<p>But late in the year, when the anniversary of Johnny’s
apprenticeship was nearing, and when Johnny himself was near a
head taller—for he grew quickly now—Uncle Isaac saw
Butson from afar as he crossed the docks, and Butson saw
him. There was no escape, but Uncle Isaac, with a grin and
a wave of the hand, tried to pass on hurriedly, as though urgent
business claimed his time. But Mr. Butson rose from his
bollard—bollards had been his most familiar furniture for
months now—and intercepted him.</p>
<p>“You’ve ’ad about a year now to git that
’urry over,” he said, with something not unlike a
sneer. “If you’re goin’ that way,
I’ll come along too. Got any ’bacca?”</p>
<p>Uncle Isaac, with a bounteous air that scarce covered his
reluctance, pulled out a screw of paper, and Mr. <SPAN name="page152"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>Butson
filled his pipe. For some little way he smoked in silence,
for tobacco was an uncommon luxury with him just now, and he
enjoyed a succession of puffs with no interruption. Then he
said, “Workin’ at Turton’s now?”</p>
<p>“No,” Uncle Isaac replied, with a slight
cough. “I—no, I ain’t workin’
there.”</p>
<p>“Thought not. Looked out for y’ often.
An’ you moved too.” Butson smoked again for a
space, and then went on. “I’ve ’ad a
pretty awful year,” he said. “Why I was very
near goin’ stokin’ once or twice.” (He
had not quite gone, because the chief engineer always sent him
ashore.) “Nice thing, that, for a man o’ my
bringin’-up.”</p>
<p>They walked on. Truly the bad year had left its marks on
Mr. Butson. The soles were three-quarters gone from his
boots, and the uppers were cracked. He wore a mixture of
ordinary and working clothes, frayed and greasy and torn, and he
shivered under a flimsy dungaree jacket, buttoned so close to the
neck as to hint an absence of shirt. His bowler hat was
weather-beaten and cracked, and the brim behind was beginning to
leave the crown because of rain-rot.</p>
<p>Presently Uncle Isaac, impelled to say something, asked,
“Bin out all the time?”</p>
<p>“Very near. Got a job on a ’draulic, but the
chap <SPAN name="page153"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
153</span>began jawin’ me about somethin’. I
wasn’t goin’ to stand that, so I just walked
out.”</p>
<p>“Nothin’ else?”</p>
<p>“Not much. One or two things I got on to, but they
didn’t last. Know the laundry over the Cut?
Well they took me on there to run the engine, an’ sacked me
in a week. Said I was asleep! Measly swine.
Much the same at other places. Seemed to want to treat me
like—like any common feller. But I showed ’em
different to that!”</p>
<p>“Ah!” commented Uncle Isaac absently. He was
wondering which way to lead the walk, and how to take leave of
his companion. But his invention was at a stand, and
presently the other went on.</p>
<p>“Well,” he said, “you ain’t got so
much to say as you used. Know any job you can put me on
to?”</p>
<p>“No, I don’t,” replied Uncle Isaac with
gloomy simplicity. “Trade’s bad—very
bad. I bin workin’ short time meself, an’
standin’ auf day after day. Stood auf
to-day.”</p>
<p>“Well then, lend us a bob.”</p>
<p>Uncle Isaac started, and made the space between them a foot
wider. “Reely, Mr. Butson, I—”</p>
<p>“All right, make it two bob then, if you’d
rather. You’ve ’ad more ’n that out
o’ me one time an’ another.”</p>
<p>“But—but I tell you I’m unfort’net
meself. I bin standin’ auf day after
day—”</p>
<p><SPAN name="page154"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
154</span>“Seems to me you’re tryin’ to stand
auf as much as ye can now. Look ’ere.”
Mr. Butson stood and faced Uncle Isaac. “I’m
broke, clean broke, an’ worse. I’m
’ungry.”</p>
<p>“It’s—it’s very bad,” said Uncle
Isaac. “But why not go t’ yer rich
relations?”</p>
<p>Butson frowned. “Never mind them,” he
said. “I’d rather try an’ tap your small
property. What am I to do? I’m at the end of me
tether, an’ I’ve tried everything.”</p>
<p>“Ah—Enterprise is what you want,” Uncle
Isaac said, being at a loss what else to recommend.
“Enterprise. I’ve recommended Enterprise
before, with wonderful results—wonderful.
An’—an’ ’ow about marryin’?
There’s the lan’lady at the Mariner’s
Arms. She was alwis very friendly, an’ that’s a
life as ought to suit ye.”</p>
<p>“G-r-r-r!” Mr. Butson turned his head with a growl
and took to walking again, Uncle Isaac by his side.
“She’d want to make a potman of me,
an’—an’—well that ain’t much catch,
any’ow. If you won’t lend me a bob, stand me a
feed o’ some sort. Ain’t ’ad yer tea,
’ave ye?”</p>
<p>Plainly something must be sacrificed to Butson, and it struck
Uncle Isaac that the cheapest article would be some of Nan
May’s bacon. So he said, “Well, I was
thinkin’ o’ poppin’ round to my niece’s
to tea. I’m sure she’d make ye very
welcome.”</p>
<p><SPAN name="page155"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
155</span>“Awright. Same niece as give us tea over in
the Forest that time?”</p>
<p>“Yus. She’s round in ’arbour
Lane.”</p>
<p>The lamplighter scuffled past into the thickening dusk,
leaving his sparse trail of light-spots along the dock
wall. The two men came through streets where little
sitting-rooms, lighted as yet by fires alone, cheered Butson with
promise of the meal to come; and when at last he stood in Nan
May’s shop, now no place of empty boxes, but ranged close
with bacon, cheese, candles, sausages, brawn, spiced beef, many
eggs and a multitude of sundries, there was some shadow of the
old strut and sulky swagger, hanging oddly about the broken-up
Butson of these later days.</p>
<p>Uncle Isaac did it with an air, for an air was an inexpensive
embellishment that won him consideration.
“Good-evenin’, Nan. I’ve took the liberty
(which I’m sure you’ll call it a pleasure) to
introduce a of friend to tea which we well remember with
’appier circumstances. Mr. Butson is come to see
you.”</p>
<p>Duller eyes than Nan May’s would have seen
Butson’s fallen condition at a glance, and it afflicted her
to know that while fortune had favoured her it had stricken him
so sorely. She led them in, offering Butson a cordiality in
some sort exaggerated by her anxiety not to seem to see his poor
clothes, nor to treat him a whit the worse for his
ill-luck. As for Mr. Butson, he found a good <SPAN name="page156"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>fire and a
clean hearth, with an armchair beside it, in a better room than
he had seen for long. Old Mr. May’s photograph hung
over the mantelpiece, and below it was the sole remaining
butterfly trophy, a small glass case, set when the old man was
young. The ragged books that were Bessy’s solace
stood on a sideboard top, and Bessy herself, disturbed in
reading, was putting one of them carefully in its place.
The kettle sang on the hob. And when Johnny came from work
he was astonished to find a tea-party of great animation.</p>
<p>Johnny was a big lad now (though he was scarce sixteen years
of age), and Mr. Butson condescended to shake hands with him, to
condole with him on the choice of the wretched trade that had so
ill supported himself, and to exchange a remark or two on the
engineering topics of the week.</p>
<p>But chiefly Mr. Butson attended to the meal. Nan May had
never seen two men together eat such a meal as his. Plainly
he was famished. She was full of pity for this unfortunate,
so well brought up (thought the simple soul), so cruelly
neglected by his well-to-do relations. She cut more slices
of bacon, and more, and still more of bread and butter, quietly
placing them to his hand, till at last he was satisfied.</p>
<p>Mr. Butson was refreshed, filled his pipe again from Uncle
Isaac’s paper, and gave some attention to the
conversation. But the conversation took to itself the
property <SPAN name="page157"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
157</span>of rarely travelling far from Mr. Butson and his
troubles. He had no false modesty about them. He had
parted with almost all his clothes, and hadn’t a shirt to
his back. His tools were in pawn, and a man felt
discouraged from looking for a job when his tools were “put
away,” and he had no money to redeem them. But he
would starve sooner than apply to his unnatural relations; he
would take the help of strangers first.</p>
<p>When at last Mr. Butson took leave, and went shivering into
the gusty night, Uncle Isaac was careful to let him go alone, and
to remain, himself, in the shop parlour till his friend was clear
away. But Nan May ran down the street after her departed
guest. There were a few hurried words of entreaty in the
woman’s voice: “Here, Mr. Butson. Do! you
really must!”—and she scurried back breathless and a
trifle shamefaced. She reached across the counter and shut
the till ere she came into the shop parlour.</p>
<p>Uncle Isaac Iooked up sharply in her face as she entered, but
went on with his pipe.</p>
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