This altogether overcame John, who walked with the old man leaning on his arm to the new-made grave, which had been covered with snowdrops, and where already two or three of these pale, wintry blossoms, cold and pure, were peeping out. They were followed all along the street by many a sympathetic look. The men took off their hats, the women gave them half-tearful greetings. ‘They go unto the grave to weep there.’ These words can never be said without moving the general heart, so easily touched, and to some griefs so sympathetic. That it should be an old man and a boy who were making that pilgrimage was, the gossips said, ‘more heart-breakin’ than if it had been a woman and a girl.’ The helplessness of the pair, and yet the difference between their helplessness and that of the women who had lost their bread-winner, has something poignant in it. And if Mr. Sandford had exhausted all resources in finding an expedient for calming the mind of John, and diverting him from his inquiries, he could not have found one that was more effectual. The chill sweetness of the little snowdrop upon his tender old mother’s grave quenched all the heat and fire of thought out of the boy’s heart.
But he did not forget the question which tore it asunder. Some time after he heard that Mr. Cattley was going to Liverpool for a day or two to see his brother, and eagerly asked to be allowed to go with him. The boy was looking pale, they had all remarked without surprise, and the curate was very willing to have him for a companion. John managed to get his grandfather’s permission without letting him know where they were going; for Mr. Sandford was pleased and proud that his boy should be the curate’s companion anywhere. It was with a mixture of excitement and trouble that John set out. He felt that he might be about to make some monstrous discovery, he knew not what, yet the sense of doing something clandestine and forbidden contended in his mind with that pleasure in carrying out our own desires, which is so strong in most hearts.
It was a long journey. Mr. Cattley and he went over the common to the station at twelve o’clock of a brilliant, sunshiny February day, when all the roads in their wetness reflected the wonderful colours of the sky, and the very puddles were strewn with turquoise and gold; but it was between six and seven at night, dark and cold, when they reached the great town, which John entered with all the natural excitement of a country boy who has never seen such a place before. Mr. Cattley took him to the lodging to which he himself usually came on his visits here; for his brother, like most other people of his importance, lived out of town. He took John next morning through a world of streets, some of which were imposing and brilliant, but by far the greater part mean, narrow, and unlovely, to the place where the great foundry was, and where but for an accident he himself might have been. The youth went over it with a mixture of pleasure and repulsion. The novelty, the bustle, the feeling of a great new energy unknown to him before, the quickened sense of living and great creative work went to his head like a new inspiration; but the plunging and ploughing of pistons and wheels, the huge monstrous machines which looked like sentient creatures; the grind, and whirl, and noise, and endless movement, in so many different senses at once, up and down, round and round, back and forward, contradicting each other, made the brain of the country lad go round too, with a sickening confusion. A touch of envy of all those accustomed workmen, who understood, and moved about so coolly among, this confusing round of wheels, and at the same time a sense of thankfulness that he was not himself to take his place among them, was in John’s mind. This was not what had fired his imagination, or rather, had fired Elly’s imagination, and thrown a warm reflection upon his. The lighthouses, the canals, the civilising roads, the works that would be good for humanity, as well as worth a man’s while, were different from all this buzzing and plunging. Yet John was wise enough to know that the two things were too closely connected to be severed. He was glad, however, that he was to be set to surveying and outdoor work rather than to this.
Mr. Cattley was with his brother in the office, and John was left to stray about the outskirts of the place, after he had been shown over it, to wait for the curate. The grimy courts, the big, ugly buildings, sheds, all the frightful accessories of the place were new to him. Why were such places so ugly? Was it necessary they should be so ugly? The black soil of the yard, over which the workmen went crunching in their heavy boots, seemed mixed up of cinders and coal dust and mud. He was asking himself, with a half laugh at his own simplicity, why this must be—whether it might not be worth while to make the surroundings of the workshops less hideous—when his eye was caught by one of the labourers passing between him and the grimy wall. No skilled workman this, like those in the blackened moleskins, which, at the beginning of the week, were white, with their free step and independent aspect. The man was one of the drudges of the establishment, a skill-less hanger-on, doing jobs as they were wanted, carrying the great, rusty bars of iron, bringing coals, doing all the rough work of the place. He was dressed in the indescribable clothes of the British labourer, who has no sort of habitual costume, not even a blouse under which to hide his rags, with a red cotton handkerchief knotted about his neck. Perhaps it was this bit of cotton that caught John’s eyes: and then it seemed to him that the face above it was not unknown to him. It was a sufficiently villainous face; the features looked as if they had been roughly shaped out of some coarse paste, the small eyes, looking out from under shaggy brows, with a sidelong glance, the slouching gait, the unshaven chin, made up a very unattractive picture altogether.
‘Where can I have seen him?’ John said to himself. He had the keen recollection of youth, and soon identified the unlovely figure which had passed across his field of vision once, and no more. The man, seeing John’s gaze fixed on him, felt it expedient to touch his cap, and claim the recognition that was in the lad’s eyes. It might mean, if nothing more, a pint of beer.
‘Mornin’, sir,’ he said, as if he knew all about him.
John was a little startled by this recognition.
‘You know me, too?’ he said.
‘I never forget anyone I ever sets eyes upon—especially a young man as has little to do with them sixpences of his, and knows as a poor man is mostly dry.’
‘And yet I never saw you but once,’ said John, with a laugh. He thought within himself that this was not a very dignified acquaintance, and yet to have remembered was something in the fellow’s favour. ‘When I saw you you were looking for some one down at Edgeley, don’t you know?’