Mr. Chairman nodded at Mr. Master. "Keep his nose to it," said Mr. Chairman.
"This way," said Mr. Master to Mr. Wriford; and Mr. Wriford got slowly to his feet and followed him slowly through a door he held ajar.
II
Stronger now. Increasingly stronger as day succeeded day and the year came more strongly into her own. Only waiting a little more strength, so he believed, to betake himself from Pendra Workhouse and go—anywhere. Actually, as the event that did at last prompt him to go might have told him, it was a reason, a shaking-up, a stirring of his normal round, rather than sufficient strength that he awaited. In a numbed and listless and detached way he was not uncomfortable in the new circumstances to which he was introduced after the Board-room interview. The Master, removed from the obsequious habit that he wore when before the Guardians, showed himself not unkindly. He conceived rather a liking for Mr. Wriford. Mr. Wriford performed for him the duties of boy-"clurk" in a manner that was of the greatest assistance to him. He reported very favourably on the matter to the Guardians; and when Mr. Wriford spoke of taking his discharge put forward a proposition to which the Guardians found it convenient to consent. Why lose this inmate of such valuable clurkly accomplishments? Why not offer him his railway fare home, wherever in reason that might be, if he stayed, say a month, and continued to assist the Master? At the end of that time he might be offered a very few shillings a week to continue further—if wanted. Mr. Master carried the proposition to Mr. Wriford. Mr. Wriford in a numbed, listless and detached way said: "All right, yes." He was taken from the workhouse ward where till then he had slept and accommodated in a tiny box-room in the Master's quarters. His nose was kept at it, as Mr. Master had been desired. His duties were capable of extension in many directions. That he fulfilled them in a numbed, listless, and detached fashion was none to the worse in that he accepted them without complaint whatever they might be. "I call him: 'All right, yes,'" Mr. Master obsequiously told the Guardians. "That's about all ever he says. But he does it a heap. Look at the way the stores are entered up. I've had him checking them all this week."
CHAPTER V
MAINTOP HAIL FOR THE CAPTAIN
I
The event that at last aroused Mr. Wriford and took him far from Pendra was supplied by the oldest sea-captain living on that distinguished personage's birthday. The oldest sea-captain living "went a bit in his legs" shortly after Mr. Wriford had entered upon the new phase of his duties. He was provided with a wheeled-chair, and Mr. Wriford found him seated in this in the grounds one day, abandoned by his cronies and weeping softly over his beloved portograph in the Daily Mirror paper. He wept, he told Mr. Wriford, because none of them blokes ever took any notice of him now. The finer weather kept the blokes largely out of doors, and they would go off and leave him. "I'm the oldest sea-captain living, Matey," said he in a culminating wail, "and I've got me portograph in the Daily Mirror paper. It's cruel on me. 'Ave a look at it, Matey."
Mr. Wriford pushed the wheeled-chair and the oldest sea-captain living about the grounds all that afternoon, and the task became thereafter a part of his daily occupation. It was not a duty. It merely became a habit. The face of the oldest sea-captain living would light up enormously when he saw Mr. Wriford approaching, and he would thank him affectionately when each voyage in the wheeled-chair was done, but Mr. Wriford was never actively conscious of finding pleasure in the old man's gratitude. He never conversed with him during their outings—and had no need to converse. The oldest sea-captain living did all the talking, chattering garrulously and with the wandering of a fading old mind of his ships, his voyages, and his adventures, and ecstatically happy so to chatter without response. He was born in Ipswich, he told Mr. Wriford, and he was married in Ipswich and had had a rare little house in Ipswich and had buried his wife in Ipswich. Whenever, in his chattering, he was not at sea he was at Ipswich, and the reiteration of the word gradually wormed a place into Mr. Wriford's mind, creeping in by persistent thrusts and digs through the web and mist of his own thoughts which, as he revolved them, enveloped him numbed, listless, detached from the oldest sea-captain living and his chattering as from all else that surrounded him in the workhouse.