XXIII.

JOHNNY'S 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?"

Much of his practical knowledge Johnny owed to Long Hicks. That recluse,

whose sole friend hitherto 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."

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?"

Johnny admitted that he had gone a long way beyond that rule of

arithmetic.

"Yus," Hicks answered. "I've got beyond it, too, 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.

"But there," he proceeded, "_you're_ 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.

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, 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.

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 _Manual_, Reed's

_Handbook_, Donaldson's _Drawing and Rough Sketching_, 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.

"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 Mechanical

Drawin' class. That's your game. They'll put you up to the reg'lar

drawin'-auffice capers."

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.

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.

But there came an evening when his eyes were opened--in some degree, at

least. Perhaps something 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?"

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.

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

bunch fell on the floor, he twisted up one leaf and thrust it into the

gas flame.

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!"

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.

"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!"

Nan, in the shop, heard from the beginning, and trembled. Her impulse to

interfere she checked as she might, for she well knew _that_ would worsen

Bessy's plight; but it was choking hard.

In the midst Johnny burst in from the street, whistling. "Why, mother,"

he said, "what's up? Ill? You look--what's that?"

"No--nothing, Johnny. Don't go in. I'll go. Stay--"

But there was a cry and a noise of falling. Johnny flung open the

parlour door and stood aghast.

. . . Butson pushed the girl forward. "Go an' earn yer livin', y' idle

slut! Get out o' this!"

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.

"Don't you move!" he cried, white with passion. "Don't you try to get

up, or I'll beat your head in!"

Mr. Butson raised his arm to save his skull, but caught a blow across the

bone that sent it numb to his side.

"Johnny--don't!" cried Nan, snatching at his arm. "O Henry! pray

don't--"

"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.

"Don't, Johnny!" his mother entreated. "Think o' the neighbours! They

can hear next door!"

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!"

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.

"Johnny, Johnny," pleaded poor Nan, "think of the disgrace! Do let's

make it up--for my sake, Johnny!"

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!"

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 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.

"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!"

Johnny's voice was loud again, and once more Nan appealed.

"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 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!"

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_ don't want no words."

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!"

"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

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!"

And Mr. Henry Butson, growling indistinctly, went out to wash his face,

closely watched by Johnny, poker in hand.

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.