Jack Carstairs of the power house

by Sydney Sandys

CHAPTER VIII

The works at Southville were rather larger than the works he had just left in the Midlands, and Carstairs felt a delightful sense of exaltation as he first took charge of a shift by himself. For eight hours he was entirely responsible for the efficient, economical, and safe working of about 6000 horsepower of plant. He felt a sense of responsibility, of age; he felt uplifted and steadied. He was very thoughtful, but very confident; he had taken great pains during the week he was on with Darwen to make himself thoroughly acquainted with everything about the station. His confidence was the direct outcome of his knowledge; he looked at the various engines, dynamos, boilers and switch gears, and felt that he fully grasped the why and wherefore of it all; he reviewed the possibilities of what might happen, what might break down, in the various component parts of the complicated whole, and what he would do to tackle it. He considered it all very solemnly and felt very confident; he knew he would not scare. Physically he was in the pink of condition, his head was very clear and his technical knowledge very bright from constant use.

The chief, an awkward-looking, flabby man, came down to see him on his first shift. "Well! do you think you can manage it?" he asked.

"Yes," Carstairs answered, looking his chief steadily in the eyes; the eyes were lack-lustre and heavy, they shifted uneasily and roamed round the engine room: he stepped up to a bit of bright brass work and rubbed his finger across it. "That won't do," he said, holding up a finger soiled with greasy dirt. "Make that man clean that." He turned and went away abruptly.

Carstairs called the engine driver, a little man of herculean build. "I knowed he'd spot that," the man said, in a tone of protest. "Got a eye like a hawk, he have."

It was the first time Carstairs had noticed this man particularly; they had been on different shifts before. He looked him over with approval; the arms, bare to the elbow, were astonishingly big and sinewy-looking; the chest was immensely deep, it arched fully outward from the base of the full, white throat; the top button of his shirt, left undone, showed a glimpse of a very white skin and the commencement of a tattoed picture ("Ajax defying his mother-in-law," the man called it); his eyes were a bright hazel brown, singularly piercing and steady.

"What's your name?"

"Bounce, sir." He stood up very straight, his piercing eyes resting with steady persistence on Carstairs' face.

The name seemed remarkably appropriate. The whole man was suggestive of indiarubber.

"Been a sailor or soldier, haven't you?"

"Sailor, sir. I done twelve year in the navy."

"Did you?" Carstairs looked at him, thoughtfully. "I've got an uncle in the navy."

"What name did you say, sir?"

"Carstairs."

"Carstairs, I knows him. Commander Carstairs. I was with him in the 'Mediterranean.' Nice bloke he was. You ask him if he remembers Bounce, sir, Algernon Edward Bounce, A.B., light-weight champion boxer of the Mediterranean Fleet. He was there when I won it at Malta."

The man's manner was exceedingly civil and respectful, but there was something about it that kept irresistibly before your mind all the time that he was an independent unit, a man. After twelve years of the sternest discipline in the world this man was as free as the air he breathed, there was no sign of servility. The thought passed through Carstairs' mind, as he looked at him, that this breed, truly, never could be slaves.

"I'll ask him when I see him. So you're a boxer, are you?"

"Yes, sir. Light weight, though I ought to go middle; eleven stone two pounds, that's my weight. I can get down to ten, but I ain't comfortable, though I 'ave a done it."

Carstairs measured him with his eyes. He seemed very little over five feet. Later on, he ascertained that he was exactly five feet three inches.

"I see. Just wipe over that brass work, will you?"

With remarkable alacrity, and a peculiarly prompt and decisive manner, the man saluted and set about his work.

Carstairs watched him in silence for some minutes, struck more than ever by the appropriateness of his name; he marvelled too at the singularity of his chief. In all that clean and bright engine room there was only that one bit of obscure brass work uncleaned, and the chief had spotted it. "An acutely observant man, evidently," Carstairs meditated.

Later on in the evening, the chief assistant dropped in. He was a big, heavily-built man with a well-shaped, massive head and handsome, even features with general indication of great strength—mental, moral, and physical; the sort of man many women go into ecstasies over: the element of the brute seemed fairly strong in him. To Carstairs' critical eyes and slow, careful scrutiny, he appeared, however, somewhat flabby. He stood behind Carstairs on the switchboard and watched him parallel machines.

Now the process known as "paralleling" or "synchronizing" alternating current dynamos or "alternators" is somewhat critical; the operator has to watch two voltmeters and get their reading exactly alike; he also has to watch two lamps (now usually supplanted by a small voltmeter) which grow dull and bright more or less quickly, from perhaps sixty times a minute to ten or twelve times per minute, as the engine drivers slowly vary the speed of the engines. When the voltmeters are reading alike, and during the small fraction of a minute when the lamps are at their brightest, the operator has to close a fairly ponderous switch; if he is too late or too early, but particularly if he is too late, there are unpleasant consequences: the machines groan and shriek with an awe-inspiring sound, keeping it up very often for a considerable time; all the lamps on the system surge badly, and the needle of every instrument on the switchboard does a little war dance on its own, till the machines settle down. Sometimes the consequences of a "bad shot" are even more dire. There once appeared in one of the technical journals a pathetic little poem about a pupil's "first shot," how "he gazed severely at the voltmeters," and "looked sternly at the lamps," then he "took a howler," and "switched out again," "wished he hadn't," "Plugged in again and—bolted." In a similar journal there was another sort of prose poem, too, written in mediæval English which finished up a long tale of woe thus: "He taketh a flying shot and shutteth down ye station."

This was the operation then (in which every man needs all his wits and some more than they possess) in which Carstairs was engaged at a critical period of the load (for be it remembered the time available is always strictly limited) when the chief assistant stood behind him. He remained calm and impassive, as behoved his countenance, for some time, then, just when the phases were beginning to get longer, and Carstairs took hold of the switch handle in readiness to plug in; the chief assistant stepped excitedly up behind him. "Now! Be careful! Watch your volts! There! There! You might have had that one! Look out, here she comes! Watch your volts, man, watch your volts!"

Carstairs felt like knocking him down, he missed two good phases that he might have taken, then he "plugged in" rather early. The machines groaned a little, but soon settled down.

"Too soon! Too soon!" the chief assistant said,

In angry silence Carstairs turned and signalled the engine driver to speed up the machine. The chief assistant left the board, and went out without further comment.

"Does that ass always play the mountebank behind a chap when he's paralleling?" Carstairs asked his junior.

"Sometimes, he gets fits now and again: Fitsgerald, the chap that's just left, turned round and cursed him one day. I nearly fell off the board with laughing. Old Robinson looked at me. 'What the devil are you laughing at?' he said. I might have got your job if it hadn't been for that. Fitsgerald got the sack over it."

"Apparently I shouldn't have missed much," Carstairs said as he went away.

When he got home at about half-past twelve, Darwen was sitting up for him. "How did you get on?" he asked, with his genial smile.

"Oh, first-class." They sat down to supper. "Took rather a howler, paralleling six and seven. That ass Robinson was jigging about like a monkey-on-stick behind me, telling me what to do. Next time I shall stand aside and ask if he'd prefer to do it himself."

"Don't do that, old chap, he's a malice-bearing beast. Funks always are! Don't take any notice of him. Forget him, or send him away; ask if he'd mind watching the drivers, as they brought her down too quick, or something, last time."

Carstairs was silent.

"Fitsgerald got the sack for cursing him over the same thing. He was a red-headed chap. We were talking about Robinson's unpleasant ways (he'd had a go at me the day before). I said he wanted a good cursing to cure him of it, and I'm blowed if Fitz didn't curse him about a couple of days later." Darwen's eyes seemed to flicker with an uncanny sort of light, his voice dropped into a reflective tone. "Threatened to chuck him over the handrail if he didn't go off the switchboard. Hasty chaps those red-headed fellows are. We had a chap at school—what school were you at, Carstairs?"

"Cheltenham."

"Were you? I was at Clifton, went to Faraday House, after."

Pushing back his chair, Darwen, got up and went to the piano, he played some very slow, soft music, slow and soothing, it breathed the breath of peace into Carstairs' troubled soul.

"Robinson is only a fool," Darwen said over his shoulder. "I feel rather sorry for him—hasn't got the heart of a mouse—gets in a frightful stew when he's got to parallel himself—he's not a bad-hearted chap—done me one or two rather good turns."

"I thought he was alright too, at other times." Carstairs felt the spirit of peace stirring within him.

"It's kinder to him to let him drift, he doesn't mean anything—can't help himself—nervous, you know. I just smile at him."

"Suppose that is the best way. I'll have a shot next time, anyway. Made me rather ratty to-night."

Darwen played for some time in silence. "Chief come in at all?" he asked, at length.

"Yes. Came in and groused about a bit of brass work being dirty."

"That's like the chief. He'll never express an opinion on anything except its external appearance; very safe man, the chief, extremely safe, but stupid: he'll fail, not through what he does, but what he leaves undone." He ceased speaking, but the music went on slowly welling out, breathing good will and trust to all mankind. It died slowly away leaving the tired listener in a blissful state of rest. Darwen got up and looked at him with sparkling, observant eyes.

"Good-night, old chap. I'm going to bed."

Carstairs arose slowly from the big, easy chair, "Wish I could play like you, Darwen."

The rest of the week passed (at the works) with singular uneventfulness, in fact never afterwards did Carstairs have such an uneventful week on load shift; but all the same the memory of his first week on shift by himself remained always clear and distinct above all other experiences; never afterwards did he feel the delightful thrill of responsibility, of excitement, of awe almost, as he walked round the engine room and boiler house surveying the men and plant, for those first few days, and felt that for eight hours he was monarch of all he surveyed; with all the other men far out of call, spreading out in different parts of the town, reading their papers, at the theatre or music halls, while he was responsible for the lightening of their darkness, and the safe keeping of the men and plant around him. In after life he often reflected that the princely salary of £104 per annum was singularly inadequate for the kingly nature of his office; but the greengrocers, the doctors, and publicans thought it was remarkably good for a man who spent most of his time walking about with his hands in his pockets. These works had been making a financial loss of from £100 to £2000 every year since they started, with the exception of one year, when, by careful manipulation of the accounts, they managed to show a profit of £20, which, under the expert examination of a proper accountant, would probably have been converted to a loss of £500.

Darwen watched the finances with a keen interest. He was very chummy with Robinson; they studied the reports of the various stations together with great earnestness. "A loss or a profit doesn't matter much to a corporation as long as they have continuity of supply." Darwen laid it down as a law, and Robinson heartily agreed. That axiom was only a half truth, but the foundation of all municipal work is only a half truth, so it did not matter much.

Robinson was very proud. "We never have the lights out here," he said. And Darwen smiled approval. "That's so," he agreed, and on his shift he took care that it always should be so; he had every engine in the place warmed up, ready for instant use, and two boilers always lighted up and under pressure in case of necessity. Robinson approved of his method, and the chief—the chief grumbled about the boiler house being dirty, but on Darwen's shift it was cleaner and more tidy than on any other shift; also the engine room was brighter and more spotless, so much and so persistently so, in fact, that the cautious chief was drawn out of his shell to express a decided opinion to the chairman of the electricity committee (who remarked on it). "Yes," the chief said, with a little flicker of enthusiasm, "that man Darwen is decidedly the best engineer I've ever had." Which remark was not overlooked by the chairman, a doctor, a large man with a large imposing black beard, who had been struck, as who could fail to be, by the remarkable beauty of face and form and general impression of intelligence of the athletic young engineer.

It was not very long after Darwen had observed the chief and chairman in conversation and looking pointedly at him, that he developed certain symptoms which, in his opinion, necessitated medical advice. Common sense, he explained to Carstairs, pointed out the chairman as the man to go to.

The doctor recognized him at once. "Hullo!" he said, looking him over with distinct approval, for Darwen's winning, frank smile captivated him at once. "Has the electricity got on your system?" The doctor was a jovial, hearty man.

Darwen laughed. He showed precisely the right amount of amusement at the joke, then, shortly and precisely, he stated (almost verbatim from a medical book he had looked up in the reference library) the symptoms of a more or less minor complaint.

Recognizing it at once, "I'll soon put that right for you," the doctor said, in his hearty, jovial way. His extensive practice was largely due to his jovial manner; he appreciated the clear and precise statement of the symptoms.

"It's nothing serious then, doctor?"

"Oh, no!—no! It might have been, of course, if you'd let it go on."

"Ah! that's just it; it's the same with an engine, you know, 'a stitch in time.' I like to get expert advice at the start."

This was business from the doctor's point of view. He became serious. "Most true," he said. "Still, people will aggravate their complaints by so-called home treatments."

"The penny-wise policy, doctor, the results of combined ignorance and meanness."

"I wonder," Darwen said, later on, as he poured the contents of a medicine bottle down the bathroom waste pipe, "I wonder what in thunder this is, a sort of elixir of life served out to most people for most complaints at a varying price. Funny what stuff people will pour down their necks."

Some hours later, as they sat facing each other in their big easy chairs, Darwen said: "Didn't you say your guv'nor was a parson, Carstairs?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Because the time has arrived to trot him out."

"What do you mean?" Carstairs flushed rather angrily.

"I have not got a guv'nor," Darwen observed, sadly; "haven't any recollection of my guv'nor. He went down with the Peninsula coming home from Australia. He was a mining engineer."

Carstairs was softened. "Hard lines," he said, and there was much sympathy in his tone.

"It is," Darwen agreed. "A guv'nor helps one so much. I want you to get your guv'nor to come down and stay with us for a few days. What College was he at?"

"Christ Church, Oxford."

"Then it's almost a cert he'll bump up against some one he knows down here, some other parson, or somebody. I want to get into the chairman's crowd, he's churchwarden at St James'. I'm going there."

Carstairs removed his pipe slowly from his lips and stared more or less blankly. It was the limit of surprise he allowed himself ever to express.

"Yes, and I'm joining St James' Gym. and the Conservative Club. Robinson has introduced me to one or two rather decent people, too; Robinson belongs here, you know. To-morrow you and I are going to sign on for a dancing class; Robinson's people put me on to it; Robinson doesn't dance. I'm pretty good, and you'll be good with practice. Every fit man can dance well with practice."

Carstairs puffed silently at his pipe for some minutes. "Will the dividends on dancing, gymnastics, church-going, etc., pan out better than working?" he asked at length.

"Do you think you are getting the full value of your present stock of knowledge?"

"Not by chalks, but one never does."

"I beg to differ; some men get paid considerably over the value of their knowledge."

"Perhaps you're correct," Carstairs admitted, after a pause.

"Well, I want to join the happy band. Shove your knowledge forward, having due regard to the manner of your doing so, that it does not defeat its own ends. And that is wisdom; you're paid for the combined product of your knowledge and your wisdom. Wisdom is the most scarce, the most valuable, and the most difficult to acquire: it is the knowledge of the use of knowledge. Do you see?"

"They bear the relation to each other of theory and practice in engineering."

"Not quite. Theory is an effort of the imagination, either a spontaneous effort of your own, based on known facts, or an assimilation of the results of other men's practice as recorded by them in books. The sources of error are twofold; the limits of your own imagination, your own conception of the other man's description, and the limit of the other man's gift of expression and explanation. Practice is your own conception and remembrance of what you yourself have personally experienced. Both are knowledge; wisdom is distinct from either."

Carstairs smiled. "Well, it's your wisdom I doubt, not your knowledge. I mean to say, that my application of my knowledge to my conception of your application of your knowledge, as expressed by you in the present discussion, leads me to doubt the accuracy of your application of your knowledge to the case under discussion. The possible sources of error being in my imagination or your expression, and as my imagination is a fixed quantity, unless you can improve your expression, I shall fail to coincide with you. How's that?"

"That's very good." Darwen took a deep breath and laughed. "Let me have another shot. Who gets the most money, the successful professor or the successful business man?"

"The successful business man."

"Hear, hear! That's because he's selling wisdom, while the professor is selling knowledge."

"I disagree, on two points. Number one, the business man sells necessities, boots for instance; the professor sells luxuries, quaternions, for instance." Carstairs paused and quoted, "'What I like about quaternions, sir, is that they can't be put to any base utilitarian purpose.'"

"Quaternions, my dear chap——"

"Half a minute! Number two, the business man sells knowledge of men and affairs as opposed to the professor's knowledge of things only."

"The Lord has delivered you into my hands, Carstairs."

"I saw it as soon as I'd spoken."

"Well, let us acquire knowledge of men and affairs, instead of merely of things—engines."

"I admit that my conception of——"

"Chuck it."

"Well, you've made a good point."

"You're Harveyized steel, Carstairs, and it gives me immense satisfaction to see that I'm making some impression on you. Well, you may go on grinding away all your life, and if nobody knows of the knowledge you possess, you'll never get paid for it."

"But I will show it by the application of it in my work. The chief is bound to see it."

"Not a ha'porth, my boy. And if he does, the chances are that he'll depreciate it in the eyes of the world, or get you the sack, because he'll be afraid of you."

"I admit the probability of those possibilities."

"As an engineer you must never forget the interdependence of parts: as a successful man you must never overlook the interdependence of everything in nature. Smile at men as if you were overjoyed to see them and they'll give you anything, as long as it's not their own property."

"Hear, hear!"

"Our object in life is to persuade the councillors to dole us out an extra dose of the ratepayers' money."

"I admit the correctness of the conclusion."

"Then let us, with all circumspection, smile on the councillors and their wives and daughters, particularly the daughters."

"Nothing would please me more, provided the daughters reciprocate the smile."

"They'll do that alright, old chap, if you only do it the right way. The most potent force in nature is the love of women; it behoves us as engineers to utilize this force. There is nothing much that a woman in love won't do, and there is even less that she won't make the poor fool, who imagines she is in love with him, do."

"It's supposed to be specially dangerous to run two girls in parallel."

"You may take it as proved that, 'In the same town and on the same side of it, there cannot be two girls in love with the same man, etc.' All the same, the idea of it is rather fascinating." Darwen's eyes sparkled.

"We are wandering from the point."

"Quite so. Are you going to get your guv'nor down?"

"Look here. Have you got any money?"

"Well, I'm not absolutely stony."

"Then lend me two quid and I'll go home for a week-end and bring him back."

Darwen fished out his purse with a smile. "The seeds of wisdom are in you, I perceive," he said.

Suddenly the strains of music were wafted in to them through the open window. "What in thunder is that?" Darwen asked, getting up with a puzzled look and gazing out into the street. "By Jove, it's a kid with a mouth organ, looks like a gipsy kid."

With a serious face Carstairs got up and looked out of the window too. The boy was looking directly up at the window; as soon as he caught sight of Carstairs, he changed his tune abruptly.

"What's that tune, Darwen? I seem to know it."

"That's 'The Gipsy's Warning.' The kid plays very well, too, for an instrument like that. I thought it was a violin for a minute."

They stood up at the window and watched. The boy played the same thing twice over, then he played a Scotch tune. Then he opened the gate and walking across the little lawn stood under the window and touched his cap.

Carstairs put his hand in his pocket and pulled out sixpence. "Wait a minute," he said to the boy. He went downstairs and spoke to him. "Do you come from Scotland?"

"Yes, sir; I seen you there. Sam's down here and he's after you." He turned and went out into the road again and disappeared.

Carstairs looked after him with a troubled frown, then he returned to the sitting-room.

Darwen looked at him with observant, surprised eyes. "Did you know that kid?" he asked.

"No, but he knew me. I once had a row with a gipsy in Scotland; flattened him out, broke his leg; he's been after me ever since. That kid came to tell me he's in this town now. Next pay day I shall invest in a young bull dog."

Carstairs sat down again in the big easy chair and gazed at nothing. His thoughts were far away; he had no doubt who had sent the gipsy boy to warn him. "The most potent force, the love of women." Good God! and what of the love of men? A gipsy girl. It was quite impossible.

Then Darwen played—pleading, soothing music—and Carstairs told him the whole story.

"You'll have to remove that gipsy, that Sam—in self-defence, mind, of course. And the girl—you couldn't marry a gipsy, of course, but it's not necessary."

And Carstairs listened in silence.