<h2><SPAN name="page207"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>XXIV.</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">His</span> home 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.</p>
<p>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 among <SPAN name="page208"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>the other
matters that claimed his care; but chief of them all was a
different thing altogether.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 her <SPAN name="page209"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>manner, 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.</p>
<p>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-ball <SPAN name="page210"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
210</span>with 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 very <SPAN name="page211"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>annoying, 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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
he <i>did</i> know the figures of a quadrille, having learned
them by rote, as most boys learn Euclid. He laid hands on
the mild young <SPAN name="page212"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
212</span>shopman 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Fair, very fair were the poor little streets in the moonlight
as Johnny walked home, and very sweet the <SPAN name="page213"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>air.
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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