"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?"
R. BROWNING.
Following Rose's suggestion, and because for the time being there really
seemed nothing for her to do, unless she could show herself a little
better trained, Joan joined the County Council Night Schools in the
neighbourhood. She would go there five evenings in the week; three for
shorthand and two for typing. Her fellow scholars were drawn from all
ages and all ranks--clerks, office boys, and grey-headed men; girls with
their hair still in pig-tails, and elderly women with patient, strained
faces, who would sit at their desks plodding through the intricacies of
shorthand and paying very little attention to what went on all round
them.
The boy and girl section of the community indulged in a little rough and
tumble love-making. Even long office hours and the deadly monotony of
standing behind desk or counter all day could not quite do away with the
riotous spirit of youth. They giggled and chattered among themselves,
and passed surreptitious notes from one form to the other when Mr.
Phillips was not looking.
Mr. Phillips, the shorthand master, was a red-faced, extremely irascible
little man. He came to these classes from some other school in the city
where he had been teaching all day, and naturally, by the time evening
arrived, his none too placid temper had been stretched to
breaking-point. He was extremely impatient with any non-comprehension
of his complicated method of instruction; and he would pass from row to
row, after his dictation had been finished, snatching away the papers
from his paralysed pupils and tearing them into fragments had the
exercise been badly done.
Joan noticed the man who sat next her on the first and every night. He
was quite the worst person she had ever seen at learning anything. He
was not by any means young, grey already showed in the hair above his
ears, and his forehead wrinkled with innumerable lines. He had, she
thought, the most pathetic eyes, large and honest, but quite
irredeemably stupid.
"I can't make head or tale of it," he confessed to her on the second
night. "And Mr. Phillips gets so annoyed with me, it only muddles me
more."
"Why do you bother to learn?" she asked. It seemed rather strange that a
man of his age should have to struggle with so elementary a subject.
"I have worked in an office for the last ten years," he explained. "The
new boss has suddenly decided that shorthand is necessary. I don't
know," he spoke rather vaguely, his eyes wandering round the room, "but
it is just possible he might ask me to go if I did not master it. I have
been there so long I hardly like to have to look for another place."
"It seems such a shame," Joan told Rose afterwards, "that these people
can never get a place where they feel really safe. They live always
expecting to be turned off at a moment's notice, or to have somebody put
in on top of them. Everybody seems to be fighting against everybody
else; doesn't anyone ever stop to help?"
The older girl laughed. "Why, yes," she said. "The world, or at least
the people in it, are not so bad as all that. Only life is a case of
push and struggle, and it is only natural that people should want to get
the best they can for their money. Also it wouldn't be fair if the ones
who worked best were not preferred to the others."
Mr. Simpson, Joan's perplexed friend of the shorthand class, was
certainly one of the stupidest people she had ever met, yet she was
terribly sorry for him. He was the butt of the class, which did not add
to the hilarity of his position, because of the torrent of abuse which
he always drew from Mr. Phillips at some stage in the evening.
"Now," Mr. Phillips would call out, starting the lesson by a blackboard
demonstration, "silence and attention, please."
He would draw a series of strokes and dashes on the blackboard, calling
out their various meanings, and the class would set itself to copy them.
The lesson would proceed for some time in silence, save for Mr.
Phillips' voice, but presently the bewilderment caused by so many new
outlines would terrify Mr. Simpson and he would lean forward to
interrupt, stammering, as he always did when nervous.
"Why is 'M' made like that?" he would say. "Wouldn't it be much better
if it were made the other way?"
"Why, why?" Mr. Phillips would thunder. "If you would just learn what
you are taught, sir, and not try to think, it would be a great deal
pleasanter for the rest of us."
Mr. Simpson would get a little red under the onslaught, but his eyes
always retained their patient, perplexed expression. He seemed
impervious to the impression he created in the back row. "Laughing-stock
of the whole class," Mr. Phillips called him in a moment of extreme
irritation, and the expression caught on.
"I am so silly," he said to Joan. "I really am not surprised that they
think me funny."
She was the one person who was ever nice to him or who did attempt to
explain things to him. Sometimes they would get there a little early and
she would go over his exercises with him. He might be thick-skinned to
the want of tolerance which the rest of the class meted out to him; he
was undoubtedly grateful to Joan for the kindness she showed him.
One evening on his way to class he plucked up courage to purchase a
small buttonhole for her, and blushed a very warm red when Joan took his
offering with a smile and pinned it into her coat.
"How nice of you," she said. "I love violets, and these smell so sweet."
"They are not half sweet enough for you," he managed to say, stuttering
furiously.
Joan had a moment's uneasiness. Surely the wretched little man was not
going to fall in love with her? She glanced sideways at him during the
class and what she saw reassured her. His clothes, his dirty hands, his
whole appearance, put him in a different world to herself. However kind
she might be to him, he surely could not fail to recognize that it was
only the same kindness which would prompt her to cross the road to give
a penny to a beggar?
Unfortunately Mr. Simpson belonged to a class which is very slow to
recognize any difference in rank save that of wealth. He was a humble
little man before Joan, but that was because he was by nature humble,
and also because he was in love. He thought her very wonderful and
beautiful beyond his range of words, but he imagined her as coming from
much the same kind of home as his own, and she seemed to exist in the
same strata of life.
A night or two after the flower episode he fixed adoring eyes on her and
asked if he might be allowed to see her home.
"Well, it is rather out of your way," Joan remonstrated, she had so
often seen him trudge off in the opposite direction.
"That is of no consequence," he replied, with his usual stutter.
The streets were dark, quiet, and deserted. Now and then as they hurried
along, for Joan walked as fast as she could to ward off conversation,
they passed a solitary policeman doing his beat, and dim, scarce seen
lovers emerged out of the shadows holding each other's hands.
"Will you not take my arm?" Mr. Simpson ventured presently. He was
slightly out of breath in his effort to keep up with her.
"No, thank you," Joan answered. The whole occurrence was too ridiculous,
yet for once in her life her sense of humour was failing her. "And I
wish you would not bother to come any further, it is quite unnecessary."
Her tone was more than chilly. Mr. Simpson, however remained undaunted.
His slow and ponderous mind had settled on a certain course; it would
need more than a little chilliness to turn it from its purpose.
"I was going to ask you," he went on, "whether you would do me the
honour of coming to the theatre one evening? If you have a mind that
turns that way sometimes."
"No, thank you," answered Joan once more. "I never go to theatres, and I
shouldn't go with you in any case," she added desperately, as a final
resource.
"I meant no offence," the man answered, humble as ever. "I should always
act straight by a girl, and for you----"
"Oh, don't, please don't," Joan interrupted. She stopped in her walk and
faced round on him. "Can't you see how impossible it would be for
me----" she broke off abruptly, rather ashamed of her outburst. "I am
going to be a snob in a minute, if I am not careful," she finished to
herself.
"I know I am not amusing, or anything," the man went on; "but you have
always seemed so kind and considerate. If I have offended in any way, I
am more than sorry."
Joan felt that he was frowning as he always frowned in hopeless
perplexity over his shorthand.
"I am not offended," she tried to explain more gently. "Only, please do
not ask me to go out with you again, or offer to walk home with me. Here
we are anyway, this is where I live." She turned at the bottom of
Shamrock House steps and held out her hand to him. "Good-night," she
said.
Simpson did not take her hand, instead he stared up at her; she could
see how shiny and red his face was under the lamp.
"You are not angry with me?" he stuttered.
"Why, no, of course not," Joan prevaricated. Then she ran up the steps
and let herself into the hall without looking back at him.
For two or three days she attempted to ignore the man's presence in
class next her, and Simpson himself in no way intruded. He had taken her
snubbing like a man; from the height of his dreams he had fallen into an
apathetic despair; the only effect it had on him was to make him
stupider than ever at his work. Then one evening, with a face working
rather painfully, he told her that he did not intend to come any more.
"I am going to another centre," he said, gathering his books together
and not looking at her.
"Has Mr. Phillips been too much for you?" she asked, wilfully ignoring
the deeper meaning behind his words.
"No," he answered, "it is not that. It may seem quite absurd," he went
on laboriously, "but I want to ask you to let me have your note-book. I
have got a new one to give you in its place." He produced a packet from
his pocket and held it out to her.
Later on, when she thought over the thing, she smiled. A note-book
seemed so singularly unromantic, but at the time she felt nearer tears.
The look in his eyes haunted her for many days. She had been the one
glimpse of romance in his dreary existence, and she had had to kill the
dream so ruthlessly.