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 apprentice2 without premium6, 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, p. 88Johnny was made ready, in the best of his clothes, for inspection7. 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 outrage8 on his dignity. So they walked warily9, dodging10 puddles11 with mutual12 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 paltrier13 sort—vulgar and trumpery14. Once out of the Harbour Lane district, the little houses lacked the snug15, geranium-decked, wire-blinded, rep-curtained comfort of aspect she remembered so well—the air that suggested a red fire within, a shining copper16 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 p. 89recognition, now and again, of some face at a shop door.
Presently they turned a corner and came upon a joyful17 crowd of boys. They ran, they yelled, they flung, and in their midst cursed and floundered a rusty18 rag of a woman, drunk and infuriate, harried19, battered20 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 bonnet21 hung in it, a bunch of mangled22 crape, while she staggered hither and thither23, making futile24 swipes at the nimble rascals25 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 gutter26.
“Yah! Old Mother Born-drunk!” shouted the young savages27, and two swooped28 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, hoarse29 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 p. 90an eye that had less closely noted30 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 disturbance31 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!” mused32 Nan May, perplexed33 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 vaguely34. He was to come into presence of some gentlemen, presumably—gentlemen who would settle his whole destiny off-hand, on a cursory35 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; p. 91though he guessed and guessed, oblivious36 of present circumstance. Only once before had he felt quite that quality of trepidation37, and that was three years back, when he trudged38 along the road to Woodford to get a tooth drawn39.
But he came off very well, though the preliminaries were solemn—rather more portentous40, he thought, than anything in the dentist’s waiting-room. There was a sort of counter, with bright brass41 rails, and a ground-glass box with an office-boy inside it. The unprecedented42 and unbusinesslike apparition43 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 retired44 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 acting45 partner were in. Then came a time of stealthy and distrustful inspection on the part of the office-boy, who, having regained46 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 austere47 of mien) sat at a writing-table. The gentleman asked Mrs. May one or two rather abrupt48 questions about her dead husband—dates, and so forth—and referred to certain notes on his table after each p. 92answer. Then Nan offered him one of three papers which she had been fiddling49 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.”
And Nan May chimed in: “O, yes, sir, very fond.”
“Well, if you stick well at your drawing in the p. 93evenings, and learn the theory, you’ll be a foreman some day—perhaps a manager. It all depends on yourself. You shall have a chance to show us what you’re made of. That’s all we can do—the rest is for yourself, as I’ve said.”
“Yes, sir, thank-you, sir—I’ll try.” And Mrs. May was audibly thankful too, and confident of Johnny.
“Very well, it’s settled.” The gentleman rang a bell, and bade the junior clerk “Just send for Cottam.”
“I have sent for the foreman,” he went on, “whose shop you will be in. He’ll look after you as long as you behave well and keep up to your work. You won’t see me very often, but I shall know all about you, remember.” And he turned to his table, and wrote.
Presently there was a sudden thump50 at the door, which opened slowly and admitted the foremost part—it was the abdomen—of Cottam the foreman. He was of middle height, though he seemed short by reason of his corpulence; deliberate in all his movements, yet hard, muscular, and active. He turned, as it were on his own axis51, at the edge of the door, shut it with one hand, while he dangled52 a marine53 peaked cap in the other; and looked, with serene54 composure, from over his scrub of grey beard, first at Mrs. May, then at Johnny, and last at his employer.
“Oh, Cottam,” the gentleman said, writing one more word, and letting drop his pen, “this lad’s name is John p. 94May. I expect you’ll remember his father. Bad accident, I believe, in the heavy turning shop; died, in fact.” This with a slight glance at Nan May.
The foreman turned—turned his whole person, for his head was set on his vast shoulders with no visible neck between—bent a trifle, and inspected Johnny as he would have inspected some wholly novel and revolutionary piece of machinery55. “Y-u-u-us,” he said, with a slowly rising inflection, expressive56 of cautious toleration, as of one reserving a definite opinion. “Y-u-u-us!”
“Well, he’s to come on as apprentice, and I’d like him to come into your shop. There’ll be no difficulty about that, will there?”
“N-o-o-o!” with the same deliberate inflection, similarly expressive.
“Then you’d better take him down, and tell the timekeeper. He may as well begin on Monday, I suppose.”
“Y-u-u-us!” tuned57 once more in an ascending58 scale. And with that the acting partner bade Mrs. May good-morning, turned to his writing, and the business was over.
Cottam the foreman put his cap on his head and led the way through the outer office, along a corridor, down the stairs and across the yard, with no indecent haste. It was a good distance to go, and Johnny was vaguely reminded of a circus procession that had once p. 95passed through Loughton, and that he had followed up for nearly three miles, behind the elephant.
Half-way across the yard the foreman stopped, and made a half turn, so as to face Nan May as she came up. He raised an immense leathery fist, and jerked a commensurate thumb over his shoulder. “That’s the young guv’nor,” he said in a hoarse whisper, with a confidential59 twitch60 of one cheek that was almost a wink61. “That’s the young guv’nor, that is. Smart young chap. Knowed ’im so ’igh.” He brought down his hand to the level of his lowest waistcoat button, twitched62 his cheek again, nodded, and walked on.
The timekeeper inhabited a little wooden cabin just within the gates, and looked out of a pigeon-hole at all comers. Mr. Cottam put his head into this hole—a close fit—and when he withdrew it, the timekeeper, a grey man, came out of his side door and stared hard at Johnny. Then he growled64 “All right,” and went in again.
“Six o’clock o’ Monday mornin’,” Mr. Cottam pronounced conclusively65, addressing Mrs. May. “Six o’clock o’ Monday mornin’. ’Ere,” with a downward jerk of his thumb to make it plain that somewhere else would not do. Then, without a glance at Johnny, whom he had disregarded since they left the office, he turned and walked off. Johnny and his mother were opening the small door that was cut in the great gate, when Mr. p. 96Cottam stopped and turned. “Mornin’!” he roared, and went on.
Mother and boy went their way joyously66. Here was one of Nan May’s troubles dissolved in air, and as for Johnny, a world of wonders was before him. Now he would understand how steam made engines go, and all day he would see them going—he would make engines himself, in fact. And for this delightful67 pursuit he would be paid. Six shillings a week was what apprentices1 got in their first year—a shilling for every day of work. Next year he would get eight shillings, and then ten, and so on. And at twenty-one he would be a man indeed, an engineer like his father before him. More, he was to draw. The gentleman had told him to draw in his spare time. The clang of hammers was as a merry peal68 from the works that lined their way, and the hoots69 of steamships70 on the river made them a moving music.
Nan May wondered to see such merry faces about the streets on the way home. Truly the place was changed; but, perhaps, after all, it was no such bad place, even now. The street was quiet where they had seen the drunken woman, though two very small boys were still kicking a filthy71 slice of bacon about the gutter. But three streets beyond they saw her for a moment. For the blackguard boys had contrived72 to topple Mother Born-drunk into a hand-barrow, which they were now p. 97trundling along at such a pace that the bedraggled sufferer could do no more than lie and cling to the rails, a gasping73, uncleanly heap. Truly Emma Pacey’s punishment was upon her.
Bessy brightened wonderfully at the news of Johnny’s success. For she was thoughtful and “old-fashioned” even among the prematurely74 sage75 girl-children of her class, and she had been fretting76 silently. Now she hopped77 about with something of her old activity. She reported that the next-door neighbour on the left had been persistently78 peeping over the wall, and that just before their arrival the peep had been accompanied by a very artificial cough, meant to attract attention. So Mrs. May went into the back-yard.
“Mornin’, mum,” said the next-door neighbour, a very red-faced man in a dungaree jacket. “Weather’s cleared up a bit. I’ve bin63 ’avin’ ’alf a day auf, touchin’ up things.” He sank with a bob behind the wall, and rose again with a paint-pot in his lifted hand. “Bit o’ red paint any use to ye?”
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1
apprentices
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| 学徒，徒弟( apprentice的名词复数 ) | |
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apprentice
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| n.学徒，徒弟 | |
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apprenticeship
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| n.学徒身份；学徒期 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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orphanage
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| n.孤儿院 | |
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premium
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| n.加付款；赠品；adj.高级的；售价高的 | |
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inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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outrage
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| n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒 | |
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warily
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| adv.留心地 | |
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dodging
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| n.避开，闪过，音调改变v.闪躲( dodge的现在分词 )；回避 | |
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puddles
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| n.水坑， （尤指道路上的）雨水坑( puddle的名词复数 ) | |
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mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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paltrier
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| paltry（微小的）的比较级形式 | |
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trumpery
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| n.无价值的杂物；adj.（物品）中看不中用的 | |
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snug
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| adj.温暖舒适的，合身的，安全的；v.使整洁干净，舒适地依靠，紧贴；n.（英）酒吧里的私房 | |
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copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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joyful
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| adj.欢乐的，令人欢欣的 | |
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rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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harried
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| v.使苦恼( harry的过去式和过去分词 )；不断烦扰；一再袭击；侵扰 | |
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battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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bonnet
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| n.无边女帽；童帽 | |
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mangled
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| vt.乱砍（mangle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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rascals
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| 流氓( rascal的名词复数 )； 无赖； （开玩笑说法）淘气的人（尤指小孩）； 恶作剧的人 | |
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gutter
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| n.沟，街沟，水槽，檐槽，贫民窟 | |
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savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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swooped
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| 俯冲，猛冲( swoop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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hoarse
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| adj.嘶哑的，沙哑的 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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disturbance
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| n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调 | |
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mused
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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cursory
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| adj.粗略的；草率的；匆促的 | |
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oblivious
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| adj.易忘的，遗忘的，忘却的，健忘的 | |
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trepidation
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| n.惊恐，惶恐 | |
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trudged
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| vt.& vi.跋涉，吃力地走（trudge的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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portentous
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| adj.不祥的，可怕的，装腔作势的 | |
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brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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unprecedented
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| adj.无前例的，新奇的 | |
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apparition
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| n.幽灵，神奇的现象 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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regained
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| 复得( regain的过去式和过去分词 )； 赢回； 重回； 复至某地 | |
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austere
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| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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fiddling
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| 微小的 | |
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thump
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| v.重击，砰然地响；n.重击，重击声 | |
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axis
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| n.轴，轴线，中心线；坐标轴，基准线 | |
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dangled
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| 悬吊着( dangle的过去式和过去分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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53
marine
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| adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵 | |
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serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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expressive
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| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
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57
tuned
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| adj.调谐的，已调谐的v.调音( tune的过去式和过去分词 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调 | |
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ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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confidential
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| adj.秘（机）密的，表示信任的，担任机密工作的 | |
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twitch
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| v.急拉，抽动，痉挛，抽搐；n.扯，阵痛，痉挛 | |
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wink
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| n.眨眼，使眼色，瞬间；v.眨眼，使眼色，闪烁 | |
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twitched
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| vt.& vi.（使）抽动，（使）颤动（twitch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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bin
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| n.箱柜；vt.放入箱内；[计算机] DOS文件名:二进制目标文件 | |
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64
growled
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| v.（动物）发狺狺声， （雷）作隆隆声( growl的过去式和过去分词 )；低声咆哮着说 | |
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conclusively
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| adv.令人信服地，确凿地 | |
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joyously
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| ad.快乐地, 高兴地 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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peal
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| n.钟声；v.鸣响 | |
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hoots
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| 咄，啐 | |
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steamships
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| n.汽船，大轮船( steamship的名词复数 ) | |
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filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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gasping
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| adj. 气喘的, 痉挛的 动词gasp的现在分词 | |
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prematurely
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| adv.过早地，贸然地 | |
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75
sage
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| n.圣人，哲人；adj.贤明的，明智的 | |
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76
fretting
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| n. 微振磨损 adj. 烦躁的, 焦虑的 | |
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77
hopped
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| 跳上[下]( hop的过去式和过去分词 )； 单足蹦跳； 齐足（或双足）跳行； 摘葎草花 | |
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78
persistently
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| ad.坚持地；固执地 | |
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