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 p. 196had 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, p. 197teachin’ 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, p. 198of 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 p. 199Mechanical 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 p. 200especially 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, dra............