 | CHAPTER XXXI.
A DWARF. John Brent |  |
31. CHAPTER XXXI.
A DWARF.
It was with much curiosity and interest in
Padiham that I stepped down into the basement,
and entered his shop. I reverence as much a
great mechanic, in degree, perhaps in kind, as I
do any great seer into the mysteries of Nature.
He is a king, whoever can wield the great forces
where other men have not the power. And none
can control material forces without a profound
knowledge, stated or unstated, of the great masterly
laws that order every organism, from dust
to man and a man-freighted world. A great
mechanic ranks with the great chiefs of his time,
prophets, poets, orators, statesmen.
Padiham was in his shop at work. No mistaking
him. A stunted, iron-gray man, not misshapen,
but only shut together, like a one-barrelled
opera-glass.
A very impressive head was Padiham's. No
harm had been done to that by whatever force
had driven in his legs and shut his ribs together.
His head was full grown. In contrast with his
beard were iron-gray. He had those heavy,
square eyebrows that compel the eyes from
roving, and shut them down upon the matter
in hand, so that it cannot escape. Not a man,
this, to err on facts or characters. A pretender
person, a sham fact, he would test at once and
dismiss. Short's Cut-off had never met a sterner
critic than this man with the square forehead
and firm nose.
He was hard at work at a bench, low according
to his stature, filing at some fine machinery.
The shop was filled with a rich sunny duskiness.
Here and there surfaces of polished brass sparkled.
Sunbeams, striking through the dim windows,
glinted upon bits of bright steel strewn
about. I perceived the clear pungent odor of
fresh steel filings, very grateful after the musty
streets, seething in June sunshine and the exhalations
of the noisome Thames. It was a
scene of orderly disorder, ruled by the master-workman
there.
Padiham had, of course, observed my entrance.
He took no notice of me, and continued his
work.
I held my station near the door. I did not
wish to spoil his job by the jar of an interruption.
Besides, I thought it as well to let him
speak first. I was prepared for an odd man;
he might make the advances, if he pleased.
Padiham went on filing, in a grim, intelligent
way. I glanced about the shop.
There were models all about of machines,
some known, some strange to me; disconnected
portions of inventions lying side by side, and
wanting only a bolt or a screw to be organized
and ready to rush at pumping, or lifting, or
dragging, or busy duty of some useful kind.
There was store, too, of interesting rubbish, —
members of futile models, that could not do busy
duty of their kind for some slight error, and
worth careful study as warnings; for failure with
mechanics is the schoolmaster of success. Drawings
of engines hung all about the walls. As
guardian genius of the spot, there was a portrait
of that wise, benignant face of my friend of this
morning, that great engineer who had directed
me hither.
Apart in a dusky corner, by the chimney and
forge, hung two water-color drawings in neat
gilt frames. They were perhaps a little incongruous
with the scenery of the gnome's cavern.
I did not, of course, expect to find here a portrait
of a truculent bruiser or a leering bar-maid.
Beery journeymen keep such low art hanging
before them to seduce them from any ambition
to become master hands and beguile them back
of beer. Padiham would of course need drawings
of models and machines, and enjoy them;
There, however, in the dim background, hung
the two cheerful drawings, in their neat frames.
They renewed and repeated the feeling which the
gay roses in the upper windows had given me.
My fancy supplied a link between the drawings
and the flowers. They infused a pleasant element
of refinement into the work-a-day atmosphere
of the shop.
One of these drawings — I could just faintly
distinguish their subject, and not the skill, greater
or less, of their handling — was a view of an old
brick many-gabled manor-house on a lawn dotted
with stately oaks. Its companion — and the light
hardly permitted me to decipher it — seemed to
be a group of people seated on the grass, and a
horse bending over them. I glanced at these
objects as my eye made the tour of the shop;
but my head was filled with Short's Cut-off and
this grim dwarf before me.
Presently Padiham laid down his file, and took
up a pair of pincers from the confusion on his
bench. He gave a bit of wire a twist, and, as
he did so, looked at me. The square eyebrows
seemed to hold me stiff, while he inspected. He
studied my face, and then measured me from top
to toe. There was a slight expression of repellence
in his features, as if he thought, “This big
fellow probably fancies that his long legs make
him my master; we 'll try a match.”
He addressed me in a sweet, hearty voice, quite
in discord with his gruff manner. No man could
be a bear and roar so gently. I perceived the
Lancashire accent. The dialect, if it had ever
been there, was worn away. Tones are older in
a man than words. He can learn a new tongue;
his organ he hardly alters. If Nature has ordained
a voice to howl, or snarl, or yelp, or bray,
it will do so now and then, stuff our mouths
with pebbles as we may.
Padiham's frank, amiable voice neutralized his
surly manner, as he said: “Now then, young
man, what are you staring at? Do you want
anything with me? Say so, if you do. If not,
don't stand idling here; but go about your business.”
“I want you to do a job for me.”
“Suppose I say, I don't want to do it?”
“Then I 'll try to find a better man.”
“Umph! where 'll you look for him?”
“In the first shop where there 's one that
knows enough to give good words to a stranger.”
“Well; say what your job is.”
“You 're ready to do it then?
“I 'm not ready to waste any more time in
talk.”
“Nor I. I want some working models of a
new patent Cut-off.”
“I wont undertake any tom-foolery.”
“If you can make tom-foolery out of this,
you 're a cleverer man than I am.”
“That may not be much to say. I 've had
so many shams brought to me in the way of cut-offs
that I shall not spend time on yours unless
it looks right at first glance.
“You 'll see with half an eye that this means
something.”
“Show me your drawings; that will settle
it.”
I produced the working drawings.
Padiham studied them a few moments. I
volunteered no explanation.
Presently he looked up, and fixed me with his
square eyebrows, while he examined me from
head to foot again.
“Did you invent this?” said he.
“No.”
“Umph! Thought not. Too tall. Who
did?”
“Mr. Short.”
“Don't Mister the man that thought out this.
His whole name I want, without handles. He
don't need 'em.”
“George Short.”
“George, — that 's my name too. I suppose
he is a Yankee. I know every man in England
likely to have contrived this; but none of them
have quite head enough.”
“He is an American.”
“Is he a Mormon?”
“No.”
“Are you?”
“No. It is an odd question.”
“I don't know much about your country, except
that you invent machines, keep slaves, blow
up steamboats, and beguile off Englishmen with
your damned Mormonism. The Mormons have
done so much harm in my country, — Lancashire
that is, — that I 've sworn I 'd never have anything
to do with any Yankee, unless I first knew
he was not one of those wolves. But if you 're
not, and George Short is not, I 'll do your job.
Now tell me precisely what you want made, for
I can't spend time with you.”
“I want six sets of these models at once.”
“I 'll order the castings this evening. I have
materials here for the fine parts. Can you handle
tools? — I mean useful tools, — files and saws
and wrenches, not pens and sand-boxes.”
“I 'm a fair workman with your tools.”
“You can help me then. Come over to-morrow
morning at seven. No; you 're an idler,
and I 'll give you till eight. If you 're not here
by that time you 'll find me busy for the day.”
So saying, Padiham turned off to his work.
He gave me no further attention; but filed away
grimly. I watched him a moment. What intensity
other great artists, who see form hidden within
a mass of brute matter, he seemed to be urged
to give himself, body and soul, to releasing the
form from its cell, to setting free the elemental
spirit of order and action locked up in the
stuff before him.
His brief verdict upon my friend's invention
settled its success in my mind. Not that I
doubted before; but the man's manner was conclusive.
He pronounced the fiat of the practical
world, as finally as the great engineer had done
of the theoretical. I thrilled for old Short, when
this Dwarf, lurking away in a by-court of London,
accepted him as his peer. The excitement
of this interview had for a time quite expelled
my anxieties. For a time I had lost sight of
the two figures that haunted me, and ever vanished
as I pursued. They took their places again as
I left the shop and issued from Lamely Court
into the crowded thoroughfare at hand.
I took a cab, and drove to my hotel, and so to
Biddulph's. The dinner at the Baronet's shall
not figure in these pages. It was my first appearance
as hero. I and my horse were historic
characters in this new circle. I was lionized by
Lady Biddulph, a stately personage, inheritress
of a family rustle, — a rustle as old as the Plantagenets,
and grander now by the accumulations
who blushed when I took my cue and praised
Biddulph, she also lionized me. A thorough-bred
American finds English life charming, especially
if he is agreeably lionné; a scrubby
American considers England a region of cold
shoulder, too effete to appreciate impertinence.
Lady Biddulph gave me further facts of the
history of the Clitheroes.
“Our dear Ellen!” she concluded. “If she
had known how much I loved her, she would
have disregarded her natural scruples,” — and
she glanced at her son, — “and let me befriend
and protect her. It goes to my heart to see Mr.
Brent so worn and sad. He, too, has become
very dear to us all. I have adopted him as my
son as long as he pleases, and try to give him a
mother's sympathy.”
Brent walked back with me to Smorley's.
“How different we are!” he said, as we
parted. “I am all impulse; you are all steadiness.”
“Suffering might throw me off my balance.
Remember that I have had trial and experience,
but no torture.”
“Torture, that is the word; and it has unmanned
me like a wearing disease. Your coming
makes a man of me again.”
“Give me a day or two for Short's Cut-off and
take our knight-errantry upon us again. We
are dismounted cavaliers now, to be sure, — no
Pumps or Fulano to help us, — but we shall find,
I will not doubt, some other trusty aid against
the demon forces.”
Brent bade me good night with a revival of his
old self. We were to meet again to-morrow.
I sat down to gladden Short with the story of
my success to-day, and wrote hard and fast to
catch to-morrow's steamer.
The dwarf, I knew, would be a man after
Short's own heart, — these men of iron and steel
are full of magnetism for each other. I gave
Short a minute description of Padiham's shop.
As I described, I found that my observation
had been much keener than I supposed. Every
object in the shop came back to me distinctly. I
saw the Rembrandt interior, barred with warm
sunbeams; the grim master standing there over
his vice; the glinting steel; the polished brass;
the intelligent tools, ready to spring up and do
their duty in the craftsman's hands; that little
pretty plaything of a steam-engine, at rest, but
with its pocket-piece of an oscillating cylinder
hanging alert, so that it could swing off merrily
at a moment's notice, and its piston with a firm
grip on the crank, equally eager to skip up and
down in the cylinder on its elastic cushion of
steam.
All the objects in Padiham's shop, one after
another, caught my look, as I reviewed the whole
in memory. Suddenly I found myself gazing
intently at my image of those two water-color
drawings in neat gilt frames, hanging in a dusky
corner by the chimney, — those two drawings
which had revived in my mind the sentiment of
the bright, healthy roses in the upper windows.
Suddenly these drawings recurred to me. They
stared at me like an old friend neglected. They
insisted upon my recognition. There was a personality
in them which gazed at me with a shy
and sad reproach, that I had given them only a
careless glance, and so passed them by.
The drawings stared at me and I at them.
An ancient, many-gabled brick manor-house,
on a fair lawn dotted with stately oaks, — that
was the first.
Had I not already seen a drawing, the fellow
of this? Yes. In Biddulph's hands at Fort
Laramie. The same gables, the same sweet slope
of lawn, the same broad oaks, and one the monarch
of them all, — perhaps the very one Wordsworth
had rounded into a sonnet.
And the companion drawing that I hardly
deciphered in the dimness, — that group of figures
and a horse bending over them?
How blind I was!
Fulano!
Fulano surely. He and no other.
And that group?
Ourselves at the Luggernel Springs. Brent
lying wounded, while I gave him water, and a
lady bound up his wounds.
Can this be so? Am I not the victim of a
fancy? Is this indeed my noble horse? Is
he again coming forward to bear us along the
trail of our lost friend.
I stared again at my mental image of the two
drawings. I recalled again every word of my interview
with Padiham.
The more I looked, the more confident I became.
Short's Cut-off had held such entire possession
of me in the afternoon, that I could only
observe with eyes, not with volition, could not
value the treasure I was grasping ignorantly.
But I had grasped it. This is Fulano! Except
for him, I might doubt. Except for his presence,
the other drawing of an old brick manor-house
would be a commonplace circumstance.
“Now let me see,” I thought, pushing aside
my letter to Short for a moment, “what are my
facts?
“Mr. Clitheroe and his daughter have disappeared,
and are probably in London.
“I have found — God be thanked! — a clew,
perhaps a clew. Work by the lady's hand.
“And where? In Padiham's shop.
“Padiham is a Lancashire man. So is Mr.
Clitheroe.
“Padiham has a horror of Mormons. Why
was I so hurried as not to pursue the conversation,
and discover what special cause he had for
his disgust?
“Padiham, in a secluded part of London,
keeps a hospital for the poor and the sick.
“There are bright roses in the upper windows.
No masculine fingers know how to lure blossoms
into being so tenderly.
“Bright roses in the rooms above; able drawings
giving refinement to the rusty shop below.
“Can it be that they are there, under the very
roof of that grim good Samaritan?
“In the three millions have I come upon my
two units?
“Going straight forward and minding my own
business, have I effected in one day what Brent
has failed in utterly after a search of months?
“But let me not neglect the counter facts?
“I did not recognize these pictures when I saw
them. Perhaps what I find in them now is fancy.
My own vivid remembrance of the scene at
Luggernel may be doing artist-work, and dignifying
some commonplace illustration of an old ballad.
Ours was not the first such group since
men were made and horses made for them. Fulano
has had no lack of forefathers in heroism.
“And the manor-house? There are, perhaps,
in Padiham's own county, a hundred such ancient
many-gabled brick halls, a hundred lawns
fair as the one that falls away gently from Mr.
Clitheroe's ancestral mansion, scores of oaks as
stately as the one that was lucky enough to
shadow Wordsworth, and so cool his head for
a sonnet in grateful recompense.
“Padiham may have a daughter who draws
horses and houses to delude me, — imaginative
fellow that I am becoming!
“Or, what do I know? Suppose these fugitives
have taken refuge with Padiham, — it may
be to escape pursuit. Poor Mr. Clitheroe! Who
knows what poverty may have permitted him to
do? Better to hide in Lamely Court than to be
stared at in a prison!
“My facts are slender basis for conclusion,” —
so I avowed to myself on this review.
“But I would rather have a hope than no
hope. The filmiest clew is kinder than no clew.
“I will finish my letter to old Short, dear boy,
inventor of a well-omened Cut-off; I will sleep
like a top, with no mysterious disappearances to
disturb me; I will be with the Dwarf by seven.
If that is Fulano in the drawing, he shall carry
double again. He shall conduct the Lover and
Friend to the Lady.”
| CHAPTER XXXI.
A DWARF. John Brent | |