HIS 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.
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 the other matters that claimed his care; but chief
of them all was a different thing altogether.
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.
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
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 _did_ know the figures of a quadrille, having
learned them by rote, as most boys learn Euclid. He laid hands on the
mild young 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.
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.
Fair, very fair were the poor little streets in the moonlight as Johnny
walked home, and very sweet the 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.
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.