<h2><SPAN name="page195"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>XXIII.</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Johnny’s</span> months 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?”</p>
<p>Much of his practical knowledge Johnny owed to Long
Hicks. That recluse, whose sole friend hitherto <SPAN name="page196"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>had 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.”</p>
<p>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?”</p>
<p>Johnny admitted that he had gone a long way beyond that rule
of arithmetic.</p>
<p>“Yus,” Hicks answered. “I’ve got
beyond it, too, <SPAN name="page197"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
197</span>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.</p>
<p>“But there,” he proceeded,
“<i>you’re</i> all 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.</p>
<p>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, <SPAN name="page198"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
198</span>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.</p>
<p>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’s <i>Manual</i>,
Reed’s <i>Handbook</i>, Donaldson’s <i>Drawing and
Rough Sketching</i>, 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.</p>
<p>“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
the <SPAN name="page199"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
199</span>Mechanical Drawin’ class. That’s your
game. They’ll put you up to the reg’lar
drawin’-auffice capers.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>But there came an evening when his eyes were opened—in
some degree, at least. Perhaps something <SPAN name="page200"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>especially
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?”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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
confused <SPAN name="page201"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
201</span>bunch fell on the floor, he twisted up one leaf and
thrust it into the gas flame.</p>
<p>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!”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>Nan, in the shop, heard from the beginning, and
trembled. Her impulse to interfere she checked as she
might, for she well knew <i>that</i> would worsen Bessy’s
plight; but it was choking hard.</p>
<p>In the midst Johnny burst in from the street, whistling.
“Why, mother,” he said, “what’s up?
Ill? You look—what’s that?”</p>
<p><SPAN name="page202"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
202</span>“No—nothing, Johnny. Don’t go
in. I’ll go. Stay—”</p>
<p>But there was a cry and a noise of falling. Johnny flung
open the parlour door and stood aghast.</p>
<p>. . . Butson pushed the girl forward. “Go
an’ earn yer livin’, y’ idle slut! Get
out o’ this!”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Don’t you move!” he cried, white with
passion. “Don’t you try to get up, or
I’ll beat your head in!”</p>
<p>Mr. Butson raised his arm to save his skull, but caught a blow
across the bone that sent it numb to his side.</p>
<p>“Johnny—don’t!” cried Nan, snatching
at his arm. “O Henry! pray
don’t—”</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“Don’t, Johnny!” his mother entreated.
“Think o’ the neighbours! They can hear next
door!”</p>
<p><SPAN name="page203"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>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!”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Johnny, Johnny,” pleaded poor Nan, “think
of the disgrace! Do let’s make it up—for my
sake, Johnny!”</p>
<p>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!”</p>
<p>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 came <SPAN name="page204"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>here
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.</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>Johnny’s voice was loud again, and once more Nan
appealed.</p>
<p>“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
shall <SPAN name="page205"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
205</span>take 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!”</p>
<p>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’. <i>I</i> don’t want no
words.”</p>
<p>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!”</p>
<p>“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 touches
<SPAN name="page206"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
206</span>you! 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!”</p>
<p>And Mr. Henry Butson, growling indistinctly, went out to wash
his face, closely watched by Johnny, poker in hand.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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