IT 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.
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, 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 recognition, now and again, of some face at a shop door.
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.
"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.
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!"
Indeed the shock was great, and the change amazing. It was a change that
would have baffled recognition by 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.
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.
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; 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.
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 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."
"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?"
"Yes, sir, if you please." He never thought it would be quite so hard to
get it out.
"Ah. Plenty of hard work, you know. Not afraid of that, are you?"
"No, sir."
"How old are you?"
"Fifteen next month, sir."
"Get on all right at school? What standard?"
"Passed seventh, sir."
Mrs. May handed over her other two papers: a "character" from the
schoolmaster and another from the rector.
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?"
"Yes, sir."