‘May,’ said John. He could not get beyond that point. What they said between themselves was nothing to him. He paid no attention to what they said. May! There swept into his mind a quick passing recollection of the feverish anxiety he had once felt to identify somehow and find out his relationship with some one of the name, and the Mayor of Liverpool, whom he had almost disturbed in his state to ask, Do you know anyone——? But he never met anywhere an individual who bore that name till now.
‘Ye see before ye,’ said Montressor, embarrassed, ‘me young friend, the unfortunate man that I was trying to recommend to you the last time we met. He says true, he was better off at that moment than I was; but that makes no difference. Yes, me noble boy. This is the May I told ye of. I have thought there was a likeness in some things between ye; but me wife would not hear me say it, for, John May, ye have the heart of a king: and me poor friend there, though he’s named the same——’
The man, who had not been listening any more than John had listened to the private conversation between his two companions, here woke up from his own thoughts with a slight start.
‘Who,’ he said, ‘are you calling John May? My name is Robert, not John at all—if it is me you mean. My father’s name was John, an honest worthy man. I always made up my mind to call the boy after him. What do you know about John May? that’s not my name, not my name at all. I’m rather in a weak state of health and I can’t bear very much. You wouldn’t speak of such things if you knew that they threw me into a tremble all over, which is very bad for me. Who do you mean by John May?’
The three men looked at each other in a tremulous quiver of excitement, like the flashing of intense heat in the air. They gazed at each other saying nothing. Montressor, though he had hitherto been calm, was growing agitated too, he could not tell why. There was a suppressed excitement in the very air round them which none of the three could fully understand. At this moment there was a knock at the door, which they all heard, as if they heard it not, without an attempt to make any reply. The world outside was for the moment blank to them; they had something more important than anything outside to settle among themselves.
CHAPTER VI.
A CRISIS.
It had been about noon when John left Messrs. Barretts’ office. It was now between three and four in the afternoon. His long walk, his talk with Montressor, the agitation and excitement of the catastrophe had made the time go as upon wings. But it had not gone upon wings at the office, where there was a great deal of commotion and discomfort, the pupils saying among themselves that for Sandford to go away in such a way was next to impossible; that little Prince, the little sneak, had told some lie—just like him; that the bosses, or the governors, or whatever other name for the heads of the office happened to be current at the moment, had made a howling mistake, and that the whole affair was nothing but a proof of the general stupidity of those teachers and overseers whom it is the mission of youth to dethrone. This agitation of feeling was not confined to the pupil-room or the outer office. It entered in, with the most serious results, to the very sanctuary of the establishment, Mr. Barrett’s own room, where Mr. William had a controversy with his father, which nothing but the decorum necessary between the heads of such a government could have kept within bounds.
Mr. Barrett was a pessimist by nature, and one who always expected to be deceived and wronged. He had heard, he forgot what, that had led him to expect evil of John, and to that idea he had clung during the period of the young man’s training with the purest faith. He had to confess from time to time that John had done very well so far, but—— He never forgot to shake his head and add that but. Now he was, if it is permissible to say so of a good man, delighted that his prophecies were justified. He told his son that he had always expected it, ‘from something his mother told me,’—though in the course of years he had forgotten what Mrs. Sandford had told him, which was not much.
William Barrett, however, was of another mind. He had liked John—he had put full faith in him, he had appreciated his practical abilities, and the good work he did, and his power of managing men, and had been disposed to look indulgently upon any theories or plans he might have. This was all the length his mind had gone when John spoke to him first of that scheme for draining the Thames Valley. He had smiled at it very good-humouredly—he had said to himself that when boys do take up an idea it is generally a magnificent one, but that it is better even to plan something on a ridiculously gigantic scale than to think of nothing at all. He was prepared, indeed, to get some amusement out of John’s Thames Valley. Perhaps there might be something in it, some idea which a maturer brain could work out. There was no telling, but at all events it would be worth looking at for the fun of it, if nothing more: a youth of that age, with no experience to speak of, tackling a business which had baffled the wisest! But it was like a boy to do so. Fools rush in—or at least pupils rush in—where engineers sometimes fear to tread.
So he looked forward with amused expectation to the production of John’s scheme. But when Prince told him that story of Spender & Diggs, the scheme took a different aspect in Mr. William Barrett’s eyes. It gained an importance, a reality which nothing else could have given it. He did not smile at the idea of this absurd youthful plan as presented to the rival office. It became immediately a serious matter; a project of the greatest importance. All at once it became possible, very likely, that the other firm, who had nothing to do with John, might be about to reap all the benefit of him, and to enter upon the greatest engineering work that had been attempted for years, through this boy at whose plans ‘Barretts’ had smiled. William Barrett had no inclination to smile now. It was deadly earnest by this time: and he could not but feel sure in the natural certainty of events that this scheme which he had pooh-poohed would be seen in its true light by the others, and would make the fortune of Spender & Diggs.