Much of his practical knowledge Johnny owed to Long Hicks. That recluse14, whose sole friend hitherto p. 196had been his accordion15, 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’ bin16 better.”
He recommended Johnny to qualify as a marine17 engineer when his apprenticeship18 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 ashore19. 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 multiplications21 ’ud ’ave me over ev’ry time. I s’pose you don’t think nothin’ of a compound multiplication20?”
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 lank22 man gazed in Johnny’s face (Johnny was sitting on Hicks’s bed) with much respect and admiration23, being fully1 persuaded, in the enthusiasm of the moment, that the lad had already as good as achieved the triumphs he prophesied24.
But there was work to do, and Johnny did it. Mechanical drawing, when its novelty had worn off, was less delightful25 than the fancy-free draughtsmanship he had practised as a schoolboy, and it had an arid26 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 simplicity27 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 sinewy28 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 Sketching29, and the like. Hicks’s room was inconvenient30 for drawing, but nothing would tempt31 Hicks next door, and once or twice Mr. Butson had come home when Johnny’s drawing-board and implements32 littered the table in the shop-parlour, and made objections.
“My eye!” exclaimed Hicks, one evening, in face of a crank-shaft elevation33 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 capers34.”
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 dabble35. 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, oozing36 with inexpensive patronage37, who spoke38 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 projection39. 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 misery40 his mother suffered in secret, nothing of the meek41 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 perverse42 had happened in a Spring Handicap (Spring Handicaps were just beginning), perhaps it was some other of the vexations that beset43 a gentlemanly career: but certainly Mr. Henry Butson came into Harbour Lane in no amiable44 mood. At the corner, where a public-house shed light across the street, he ran into a stout45 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 muzzle46?”
Nowise mollified by this outrage47, Mr. Butson came scowling48 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 uncommon49.
Bessy sat by the fireside, sewing. Mr. Butson was angry with the world, sorely needing someone to bully50, 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 crutch51 out of his way in a heap. The shelf carried Bessy’s tattered52 delight of old books; and, dragging a random53 handful of leaves from among them, while a confused p. 201bunch 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 savagely55. 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 interfere56 she checked as she might, for she well knew that would worsen Bessy’s plight57; 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?”
p. 202“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, mightily58 astonished. Johnny snatched the poker59 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 skull60, but caught a blow across the bone that sent it numb61 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 lame54 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 entreated62. “Think o’ the neighbours! They can hear next door!”
p. 203So they could, and for the sake of trade the proprieties63 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 instinctively64 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 consternation65, though momentary66, 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 sobbing67. 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 growled68 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 smear69. “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 p. 204here starving, with about half a suit o’ boiler70 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 cadged71 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 p. 205take 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 knuckled72 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 allusion73 to the police, and he followed it up. “You know what I mean! You’d look a deal more at home in gaol74 than here, in a white shirt, eating other people’s victuals75!”
Mr. Butson decided76 that bluster77 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 appeased78. “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 p. 206you! 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, growling79 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.
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1
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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zealously
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| adv.热心地；热情地；积极地；狂热地 | |
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eyelid
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| n.眼睑，眼皮 | |
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speck
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| n.微粒，小污点，小斑点 | |
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grit
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| n.沙粒，决心，勇气；v.下定决心，咬紧牙关 | |
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apprentice
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| n.学徒，徒弟 | |
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dexterity
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| n.(手的)灵巧，灵活 | |
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accomplishment
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| n.完成，成就，（pl.）造诣，技能 | |
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memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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afflicted
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| 使受痛苦，折磨( afflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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recluse
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| n.隐居者 | |
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accordion
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| n.手风琴；adj.可折叠的 | |
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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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marine
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| adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵 | |
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apprenticeship
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| n.学徒身份；学徒期 | |
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ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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multiplication
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| n.增加，增多，倍增；增殖，繁殖；乘法 | |
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multiplications
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| 增多( multiplication的名词复数 )； 增加； 乘； 繁殖 | |
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lank
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| adj.瘦削的；稀疏的 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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prophesied
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| v.预告，预言( prophesy的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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arid
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| adj.干旱的；(土地)贫瘠的 | |
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simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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sinewy
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| adj.多腱的，强壮有力的 | |
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sketching
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| n.草图 | |
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inconvenient
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| adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的 | |
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tempt
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| vt.引诱，勾引，吸引，引起…的兴趣 | |
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implements
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| n.工具( implement的名词复数 )；家具；手段；[法律]履行（契约等）v.实现( implement的第三人称单数 )；执行；贯彻；使生效 | |
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elevation
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| n.高度；海拔；高地；上升；提高 | |
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capers
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| n.开玩笑( caper的名词复数 )；刺山柑v.跳跃，雀跃( caper的第三人称单数 ) | |
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dabble
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| v.涉足，浅赏 | |
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oozing
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| v.（浓液等）慢慢地冒出，渗出( ooze的现在分词 )；使（液体）缓缓流出；（浓液）渗出，慢慢流出 | |
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patronage
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| n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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projection
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| n.发射，计划，突出部分 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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meek
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| adj.温顺的，逆来顺受的 | |
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perverse
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| adj.刚愎的；坚持错误的，行为反常的 | |
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beset
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| v.镶嵌；困扰，包围 | |
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amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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muzzle
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| n.鼻口部；口套；枪(炮)口；vt.使缄默 | |
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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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scowling
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| 怒视，生气地皱眉( scowl的现在分词 ) | |
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uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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bully
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| n.恃强欺弱者，小流氓；vt.威胁，欺侮 | |
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51
crutch
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| n.T字形拐杖；支持，依靠，精神支柱 | |
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52
tattered
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| adj.破旧的，衣衫破的 | |
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random
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| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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54
lame
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| adj.跛的，(辩解、论据等)无说服力的 | |
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savagely
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| adv. 野蛮地，残酷地 | |
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56
interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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plight
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| n.困境，境况，誓约，艰难；vt.宣誓，保证，约定 | |
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mightily
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| ad.强烈地；非常地 | |
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poker
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| n.扑克；vt.烙制 | |
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skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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numb
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| adj.麻木的，失去感觉的；v.使麻木 | |
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entreated
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| 恳求，乞求( entreat的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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proprieties
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| n.礼仪，礼节；礼貌( propriety的名词复数 )；规矩；正当；合适 | |
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64
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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consternation
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| n.大为吃惊，惊骇 | |
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momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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sobbing
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| <主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
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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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69
smear
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| v.涂抹；诽谤，玷污；n.污点；诽谤，污蔑 | |
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70
boiler
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| n.锅炉；煮器(壶，锅等) | |
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71
cadged
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| v.乞讨，乞得，索取( cadge的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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72
knuckled
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| v.（指人）指关节( knuckle的过去式和过去分词 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝 | |
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73
allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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74
gaol
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| n.(jail)监狱；(不加冠词)监禁；vt.使…坐牢 | |
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75
victuals
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| n.食物；食品 | |
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76
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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77
bluster
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| v.猛刮；怒冲冲的说；n.吓唬，怒号；狂风声 | |
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78
appeased
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| 安抚，抚慰( appease的过去式和过去分词 )； 绥靖（满足另一国的要求以避免战争） | |
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79
growling
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| n.吠声, 咆哮声 v.怒吠, 咆哮, 吼 | |
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