BUT this launch was when Johnny's 'prentice teeth were cut: when the
running down of bolts and pins was beneath his notice, and he could be
trusted with work at a small nibbling machine; when he had turned
stop-valve spindles more than once, and felt secretly confident of his
ability to cut a screw.
Meantime history was making at the shop: very slowly at first, it is
true. The holly had been made the most of; but it seemed to attract not
at all. Penn'orths and ha'porths were most of the sales, and even they
were few. Nan May grew haggard and desperate. Uncle Isaac had called
once soon after the opening Saturday, but since had been a stranger. He
had said that he was about to change his lodgings (he was a widower), but
Nan knew nothing of his new address. In truth, such was Uncle Isaac's
tenderness of heart, that he disliked the sight or complaint of distress;
and, in the manner of many other people of similar tenderness, he betook
himself as far as possible from the scene thereof, and kept there.
It was within a few days of Christmas when things seemed hopeless.
Johnny, indeed, had never ceased to hope till now. He had talked of the
certainty of struggling on somehow till his wages were enough for all;
indeed, even the six shillings a week seemed something considerable now,
though he knew that the rent alone came to ten. But even Johnny's
cheerfulness fell in face of the intenser dejection, the more open tears,
of his mother and sister, as the days wore on. Long Hicks found him a
quieter, less inquisitive boy, and a duller help than at first; and
dinner at home was a sad make-believe. Each knew that the other two were
contrasting the coming Christmas with the last. Then, gran'dad was with
them, hale and merry; to look out of window was to look through a world
of frosty twigs to woody deeps where the deer waited, timid and shadowy,
for the crusts flung out afar for them from the garden. Now . . . but
there!
But it was just at this desperate time that a change came, as by magic.
The men who pulled down the wall at the opposite side of the street gave
place to others who built a mighty brick pier at each side of the
opening: a pier designed to carry its half of the new gate. But ere the
work was near complete, men and boys from the yard found it a convenient
place to slip out and in at, on breakfast-time or dinner-time errands.
Now it chanced at the time that one of these men was in a domestic
difficulty; a difficulty that a large part of the eight or nine hundred
men of the ship-yard encountered in turn at more or less regular
intervals. His wife inhabited the bedroom in company with a monthly
nurse; while he roosted sleeplessly at night on a slippery horsehair
couch in the parlour, or wallowed in a jumble of spare blankets and old
coats on the floor; spending his home hours by day in desolate muddling
in the kitchen, lost and incapable, and abject before the tyranny of the
nurse. On dark mornings he made forlorn attempts at raking together a
breakfast to carry with him to work; but as he had taken no thought to
put anything into the cupboard over night, he found it no easy matter to
extract a breakfast from it in the morning. So it came to pass that on
the second day of his affliction this bedevilled husband, his hunger
merely aggravated by the stale lumps of bread he had thought to make
shift on, issued forth at the new gate in quest of breakfast. There was
little time, and most of the shops were a distance off; but just opposite
was a flaming little chandler's shop, newly opened. It was thinly
stocked enough, but it would be hard luck indeed if it did not hold
something eatable. And so Nan May's first customer that day was the
starved husband.
"Got anythink t' eat?" he asked, his ravening gaze piercing the bare
corners of the shop. "Got any bacon?"
"Yes, sir," Nan May answered, reaching for the insignificant bit of
"streaky" that was all she had.
"No--cooked, I mean. Aincher got any cold boiled 'ock?"
"No, sir."
"Y' ought t' ave some cooked 'ock. Lots 'ud 'ave it in the yard. I
can't eat _that_--the smiths' shop 's the other end o' the yard, an' I
got nothing to toast it with. Aincher got nothing else?"
Nan May grasped the situation, and conceived an instant notion, for
indeed she had inborn talent as a shopkeeper, though till now it had had
no chance to show itself. "Will you wait five minutes?" she asked.
Yes, he would wait five minutes, but no more: and he sat on the empty
case, from which Uncle Isaac had delivered his recommendation of
Enterprise. Nan May cut two rashers and retired to the shop parlour. In
three minutes the hungry customer was hammering on the counter, declaring
that he could wait no longer. Pacified by assurances from within, he
resigned himself to a minute and a half more of patience: when Mrs. May
returned with a massive sandwich, wherein the two rashers, fresh
frizzled, lay between two thick slices of bread. Lifting the top slice
for a moment, as guarantee of good faith, Nan May exchanged the whole
ration for threepence.
"If you'd like any cold boiled bacon, sir," she said, "I shall have some
at one o'clock."
He heard, but he was off at a trot with his sandwich. In five minutes
Nan May's bonnet was on, and in five more Bessy was minding shop alone,
while her mother hastened to Mr. Dunkin's for a hock of bacon. Here was
a possible change of fortune, and Nan May was not a woman to waste a
chance.
Boiled and cooled--or cooled enough for the taste of hungry riveters--the
hock stood in a dish on the counter at one o'clock, flanked by
carving-knife and fork. A card, bearing the best 10 that Bessy could
draw, advertised the price, and the first quarter-pound of slices was
duly cut for the desolate husband, who came back, a little later, for two
ounces more; for he had been ill-fed for two or three days, and the new
baby made an event wherewith some extra expense was natural. Boys came
for two other quarter-pounds, so that it was plain that the first
customer had told others; and a loaf was cut up to go with the bacon.
Mrs. May announced the new branch of trade to Johnny when he came to
dinner; and though as yet the returns were small enough, there was a new
chance, and his mother was hopeful of it; so he went back to the lathe
with a lighter heart.
That night the riveters worked overtime, and the bacon was in better
demand still. More, at night two or three men took home a snack in
paper, for supper; and from that day things grew better daily. The hock
was finished by the afternoon of the next day, and the establishment was
out of pickles; for men and boys who brought their own cold meat with
them came now for pickles. Trade was better as the days went on, and
Christmas, though it found them poor enough, was none so sad a festival
after all. And in a month, when the gate had been formally opened for
some time, and the men streamed by in hundreds, three large hocks would
rarely last two days; and there was an average profit of three shillings
a hock. More, the bread came in daily in batches, at trade price, and
cheese and pickles went merrily. But what went best, and what increased
in sale even beyond this point, was the bacon. Some customers called it
ham, which pleased Nan May; for indeed her cooking hit the popular taste,
and she began to feel a pride in it. Men who went home to dinner would
buy bacon to take home for tea; and as many of these lived in Harbour
Lane and thereabout, custom soon came from their wives, in soap and
candles, treacle and pepper and blacking. Nan May's trade instinct grew
with exercise. She found the particular sort of bacon that best suited
her purpose and her customers' tastes; she had regular boilings
throughout the week; she quickly found the trick of judging the quality
of whatever she bought; and she bought to the best use of her money.
But here it must be said that Nan May, in her new prosperity, behaved
toward one benefactor with an undutiful forgetfulness that was near
ingratitude. For she bought almost nothing of Mr. Dunkin. He was
reasonably grieved. True, she had begun by getting her first stock of
him, but even then her critical examination of what was sent showed an
unworthily suspicious attitude of mind. She even sent back many things
and demanded better, wilfully blind to the fact that Mr. Dunkin could
turn her out of the shop at a week's notice if he pleased; though indeed
in his own mind he was not vindictive, for another new tenant would be
hard to find. He even submitted to outrage ending in actual loss and
humiliation. For a large tin of mustard was Mrs. May's first supply, and
it was a tin from among those kept for sale to small shopkeepers, and not
on any account to be sold from retail, across Mr. Dunkin's own counter.
But something in the feel and taste of this mustard did not please Nan
May (though indeed _she_ was not asked to eat it), and it went back. Now
it chanced that Mr. Dunkin had taken on a new shopman that week, and this
bungling incapable straightway began selling mustard from the returned
tin. He had served three customers before his blunder was perceived, and
then the matter came to light purely because the third customer chanced
to be a food and drug inspector. This functionary gravely announced
himself as soon as he had good hold of the parcel, and handsomely offered
the return of a third part of the mustard, in a sealed packet. And the
upshot was a fine of five pounds and costs for Mr. Dunkin, on the
opinionative evidence of an analyst, who talked of starch and turmeric
and ginger--all very excellent substances, as anybody knows. Truly it
was a vexatious blow for Mr. Dunkin, and an unjust; for certainly the
fault was not his, and to sell such an article, retail, was wholly
against his principles. But he never complained, such was his
forbearance: never spoke of his hardship to a soul, in fact, except when
he "sacked" the new assistant. It was even said that he had offered a
reporter money to keep it out of the papers; and though it _did_ get into
the papers (and at good length too) yet the effort was kindly meant. For
truly it could but give Mrs. May pain to learn that she had been the
cause of Mr. Dunkin's misfortune, if she were a woman of any feeling at
all.
But as time went, he began to doubt if she were, for her custom dropped
away to nothing. The rate at which bacon was handed in from the cart of
a firm somewhere in the Borough, was scandalous to behold. Before his
very eyes, too, when he called for the rent. He employed a collector,
but presently took to coming for the rent himself, that by his presence
and his manner he might shame so thankless a tenant into some sense of
decency, some order for bacon or mustard. He coughed gently and stared
very hard at the incoming goods, but Nan May was in no wise abashed, and
gave the carman his directions with shameless composure. With his
sympathetic stop full out, Mr. Dunkin asked how trade was, and Nan May
answered in proper shopkeeper terms, that "she mustn't grumble." With
hums and purrs, he led back through casual questions and answers to the
stock he had at first supplied, and asked her how she had done with this,
and how that had "gone off." But her answers were so artlessly direct,
so inconsiderately truthful, that good Mr. Dunkin was clean baffled, and
reduced at last to a desperate hint that if anything were wanted he could
take the order back with him. But he got no order, so he purred and
hummed his way into Harbour Lane, and so away; and after a time the
collector came in his stead.
Mr. Dunkin resolved to wait. He had some doubts of the permanence of
this new prosperity in the shop. The place had never brought anybody a
living yet, and he should not feel convinced till he had seen steady
trade there for some time. Nan May's activities could always be kept
from flagging by judicious increases of rent, and _if_ the thing grew
well established by her exertions, and was certain to continue a paying
concern, why, here would be a new branch of Mr. Dunkin's business ready
made. It needed but a week's notice, given unexpectedly, at a properly
chosen time, when no neighbouring shop was to let, and a good stroke of
business was happily completed. Mrs. May would vanish, a man would go in
to manage at a pound or twenty-five shillings a week and his quarters,
there would be no interruption to trade (for the outgoing tenant would
naturally keep at work till the last minute, to get what little she
could), and Mr. Dunkin would have a new branch, paying very excellently,
with no trouble to himself. Mr. Dunkin had established other branches in
the same way, and found it a very simple and cheap arrangement. There
was no risk of his own capital, no trouble in "working-up" the trade, no
cost of goodwill, and rent was coming regularly while the tenant laboured
with the zeal of a man who imagines he is working for his own benefit and
his children's. The important thing was to give nothing but a weekly
tenancy; else the tenant might find time to get going somewhere near at
hand, and so perhaps deprive Mr. Dunkin of the just reward of his
sagacity, foresight, and patience. But there was little difficulty in
that matter. Beginners were timid and glad of a weekly tenancy, fearing
the responsibility of anything longer, at first; and afterwards--well,
things were in a groove, and Mr. Dunkin was so very kind and sympathetic
that it wasn't worth while to bother about a change. And by this method
Mr. Dunkin, judiciously selecting his purchases in shop property, had
acquired two or three of his half-dozen branches, and flourished
exceedingly; which all kindly souls rejoiced to see.
In the beginning he had no thought of this plan for the Harbour Lane
shop, being mainly concerned to get a tenant, no matter in what trade;
and indeed in his eye the place was as little suited for chandlery as for
anything. Even now he must wait, for he doubted the lasting quality of
the new prosperity; better a few years of forbearance than a too hurried
seizure of a weakening concern, to find little more than the same
tenantless shop on his hands after all. And if it seemed that the trade
owed anything to the personal qualities and connexions of Mrs. May, well,
it would be a simple thing to keep her on to manage, instead of a man.
It would be an act of benevolence, moreover, to an unfortunate widow, and
come cheaper. But that was a matter for the future.
Meanwhile Nan May, active and confident, filled her shop by purchase from
whatsoever factor sold best and cheapest, and travellers called for her
orders. The hungry husband who first came for cooked bacon she always
treated with particular consideration, finding him good cuts. He ceased
his regular visits in three weeks or less, and Nan May, taught by
experience in her earlier London life, well guessed the cause of his
coming. In the spring, three months or so later, great crowds thronged
about the ship-yard to see the launch of the battleship that overtime had
so long been worked on; and when the launch was over, this man and his
wife, the man carrying the baby, came into the shop for something to
celebrate the occasion at tea. The parents did not altogether comprehend
Nan May's enthusiasm over the baby, which she took from its father's arms
and danced merrily about the shop, while customers waited. But they set
it down to admiration of its personal beauty, though truly it was an
ordinary slobbery baby enough. But it went away down the street in great
state, triumphantly stabbing at its mouth with the sugarstick gripped by
one hand, and at its father's whiskers with that brandished in the other.