Despair's Last Journey Part 17

'Ay!' he said after a long pause; 'ay, ay!'

'I was afraid you wouldn't like it, sir,' said Paul 'I'm not misliking it, lad,' his father answered. 'I'm not misliking it What's your proposition, Paul?'

'I don't know, sir. I've formed no plans. I don't know how to go about things. I'm stifling here.'

'It's natural,' said Armstrong; 'I've stifled here for twenty years, lad. But then,' he added, with his own dry, wistful twinkle of a fleeting smile, 'I was born to stifle. What'll you do in the world, Paul, when ye get into it, if ye're out of it here?'

'I don't know, sir. I shall try to do something.'

'Ay!' said Armstrong again; 'ay, ay!'

His gray-blue eyes dreamed behind his grizzled brows, and Paul sat watching him. There was a touching something in the gray, bowed figure and the gray patience of his face. Paul seemed to see him alone, thus dreaming.

'I won't go, dad, unless you like.'

'It's best, Paul; it's best.'

A knock sounded at the front-door, and Paul walked down the long narrow pa.s.sage which lay alongside the sitting-room and the shop, and admitted the major part of the household. They had been to a tea-meeting and concert at Ebenezer, and they all trooped chattering into the big kitchen, bringing a smell of frost and night air in their raiment.

'Mary,' said Armstrong, at the first gap of silence, 'Paul is going to London.'

Paul's heart swelled at this unlooked-for acceptance of his plans, but the household stood in wonder.

'What's Paul got to go to London for?' asked Mrs. Armstrong.

'We've talked it over within the last few minutes,' returned Armstrong.

'The lad's coming to discretion. He wants to see the world. I'll find something for him to do there.'

'William,' said his wife, 'you're mad.'

Armstrong lit his pipe and said nothing, but the wife uplifted her voice and spoke.

'Yes,' she said, 'you've got your proper look on, as if you were half a million miles away, and me a insect, crawling about somewhere in another planet and not worthy of a thought I know your ways--I've got a right to know 'em after nine-and-thirty 'ears o' married life, I reckon. You've spoke your word, and you'll sooner die than go back on it. Another man 'ud give some sort of a why an' a wherefore. But you! You're Sir Horacle, you are. You've opened your lips, and other folks' talk is just no more than so many dogs a-chelpin'! What's our Paul want to go to London for? Answer me that, if you please, William Armstrong. If it was in me, William, to be a downright vulgar woman, I'd take the poker to you.'

Armstrong looked up with his swift, dry twinkle, and she laughed.

She tried to make the laugh sound angry, but the effort was useless.

Armstrong twinkled again, and she burst into a peal.

'Children,' she said, wiping her eyes with the fringe of her shawl, 'remember what I tell you. That's the best man in the world, but I hope to gracious goodness as none of you will ever grow up like him. He's enough to break the patience of a saint. If Job'd ha' lived with him, he'd ha' broke his head with one of his potsherds.'

Then the household laughed at large, for of late years this was the fas.h.i.+on--this, or something very like it--in which all combative disputes had ended. It had not always been so. In the earlier years, which Paul could well remember, before the gray little man had achieved his triumph of speechless mastery, there had been scenes which bordered on the terrible.

'And now,' said Mrs. Armstrong, 'what's our Paul to go to London for?'

'He'll finish learning his business there,' said Armstrong. 'In two or three years' time he ought to be able to come back and take charge of the place. There's the nucleus of a good trade here, if it had energy and knowledge brought to bear on it.'

There was an end of spoken opposition, and the fact that Paul was going to London was accepted. A month went by, and all arrangements were made.

The Rev. Roderic Murchison had left Barfield, and had accepted a call from some congregation in the outskirts of the great city. He held a salaried post as well as Metropolitan secretary to his sect, and had become a person of importance. He was in a.s.sociation with a firm of printers who worked mainly for the big Nonconformist bodies, and an odour of sanct.i.ty was supposed, by the Armstrong household at least, to rest upon the labours upon which Paul was about to enter in their office. Paul had examples of the office craftsmans.h.i.+p set before him.

Technically they were excellent, but their literary form was not of the highest order. He learned that a hundred and odd workmen were engaged, and he pictured them as a set of square-toes whose talk would be guarded and pious and narrow, for in his innocence he imagined the men who translated good books into type were necessarily good, and the men who translated into type the goody-goody were of that spiritual complexion.

Paul and his father travelled up to London together on a Thursday.

They found lodgings in Charterhouse Square at the house of a sprightly black-eyed lady, whose husband, long deceased, had been a Nonconformist minister. She was very smiling and gracious, and Paul thought her a charming woman, but he got out of her good books very early, and never knew how for years after.

'Oh yes, Mr. Armstrong,' she said at the Sunday dinner, 'anybody would know you were from the country.'

'How?' Paul asked.

'By your hair,' said the lady.

'Oh, well,' said Paul, 'I must get it cut London fas.h.i.+on.'

Mrs. Bryne bit her lips and flashed a look at him. The boarders t.i.ttered, but Paul sat unconscious. He knew that ignorant people misplaced their aspirates at times, but Mrs. Bryne was a lady, and wore silk dresses on week-days.

But he had sown a seed of misliking, and it had opportunity to ripen.

Armstrong the elder, with that wholesale want of worldly wisdom which distinguished him, had arranged that Paul should have a room in Mrs.

Bryne's house, with breakfast and supper on week-days and whole board on Sundays, on terms which fitted accurately with his earnings. He gave Paul a pound for pocket-money, and went away without a thought as to what the lad was to do for his daily dinner. This admirable business arrangement bore fruit, of course.

At eight o'clock on a February morning Paul presented himself at the office. The day was foggy and bitter. The street-lamps were alight, and all the shops yet open were dull yellow with gas-lamps in the fog. He had to ask his way several times, and only one pa.s.senger in four or five took any notice of him, but he reached his destination as some neighbouring church clock boomed the hour out of the nowhere of the upper air. He announced himself by name to a man in a gla.s.s-case at the head of the stairs. The man gave him a surly side-way nod, and Paul, not understanding, waited for something more.

'Upstairs, ye fool!' said the man.

'It's a cold mornin',' said Paul. That nose o' yours looks a bit pinched with it. I've half a mind to warm it for you.'

'Well,' said the surly man, 'how often do you want to be spoken to?'

'Once is enough,' said Paul. 'Come outside and I'll gi' thee a lesson in manners.'

The surly man declined this invitation, and slid down the gla.s.s in front of him. Paul mounted wrathfully. He was more grieved at himself than at the other fellow, because he had made up his mind to be civil to everybody, and above all things to put away the Barfield accent, which he could do quite easily when he thought about it.

In the great room he entered there were rows on rows of compositors'

frames, all dimly illuminated by a single gas-jet, and the air was thick with fog. One prematurely sharp-looking small boy was performing a sort of rhythmic dance with a shrill whistle for accompaniment. He had a big can of water, which he swung like a censer as he danced. The can had a small hole pierced in the bottom, and the boy was laying the dust When the can had yielded its last drop he took up a big broom and swept the place rapidly, keeping up his shrill whistle meanwhile.

'Isn't it time somebody was here?' Paul asked at length.

'Manday's a saint's day,' said the boy. 'You a-comin' to work 'ere?' he asked. Paul nodded. 'You'll know better next taime. Why, even the "O."

doesn't come before naine on a Manday.'

That was the fas.h.i.+onable c.o.c.kney dialect of the time. It is dead, as are the many fas.h.i.+ons of c.o.c.kney speech which have followed it until now, and as the present accent will be in a year or two. It tickled Paul's ear, and to get more of it he beguiled the boy to talk.

'Who's the "O."?' he asked

'"O."?' said the boy sharply. 'Overseer.'

'Why are they late on Monday?'

'I suppose,' said the boy, 'they stop too late at church on Sanday. They are a pretty old ikey lot as works 'ere, and so I tell you.'

Paul began to revise his opinion as to the probable character of his a.s.sociates. But perhaps the boy was purposely misleading him. He thought it worth while to wait and see.