Chapter 1 of To London Town. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. To London Town by Arthur Morrison. Chapter 1. The afternoon had slumbered in the sun, but now the August air freshened with an awakening breath. An epping thick stirred and whispered through a myriad leaves. Far away beyond the heaving green woods, distant clouds floated flat on the upper air. And a richer gold grew over the hills as the day went westward. This way and that between and about trees and undergrowth. An indistinct path went straggling by easy grades to the lower ground by Wormleton pits. An errant path whose every bend gave choice of green passes toward banks of heather and bracken. It was by this way that an old man and a crippled child had reached the pits. He was a small old man, white-haired and a trifle bent, but he went his way with a sturdy tread, satchel at side and butterfly net in hand. As for the child, she too went sturdily enough, but she hung from a crutch by the right shoulder and she moved with a jog and a swing. The hand that gripped the crutch gripped also a little bunch of meadowsweet and the other clasped tight against her pinafora, tattered old book that would else have fallen to pieces. Once on the heathery slade the old man lifted the strap over his head and put the satchel down by a tree-clump at the wood's edge. Now the rest for you best, he said, as he knelt to open his bag. I'm going over the pits pretty close today. He packed his pockets with pillboxes, a poison bottle and a battered, flat tin case, while the child with a quick rejection of a crutch sat and watched. The old man stood, slapped one pocket after another and then with a playful sweep of the net-gauze across the child's face, tremped off him on the heather. Good luck, grandad, she cried after him and settled on her elbow to read. The book needed a careful separation, being opened it back as at front. Likewise, great heed lest the leaves fall into confusion for, since they were worn into a shape more oval than rectangular, the page numbers had gone and in places corners of text had gone too. But the main body of the matter, thumbed in rub, stood good for many a score more readings and the story was the Sicilian romance. Round about the pits and across the farther ground of Genesis Slade the old man pushed his chase, now letting himself cautiously down the side of a pit, now stealing softly among bracken with outstretched net and again running his best through the wiry heather, always working towards sun and wind and often standing watchfully still his eye alert for a fluttering spot amid the flood of color about him. Meantime the little cripple conned again the familiar periods of the old romance. Few indeed of its ragged leaves but might have been replaced if lost from pure memory, few indeed for that matter of the pilgrim's progress or of Susan Hopley or of the Scottish chief's worn volumes all in her grandfather's little shelf of a dozen or fifteen books, so that now because of old acquaintance the tale was best enjoyed with many pauses.  For the jangle of a herd-bell was the clank of the night's armor, the distant boom of a great gun at Waltham Abbey told of the downfall of enchanted castles, and in the sudden plink of an errant cow she heard the growling of an ogre in the forest. The western hillsides grew more glorious, and the sunlight, peeping under heavy boughs flung along the sward, gilt the tree-balls whose shadows vainted and lit nooks under bushes where the wake robin raised its scarlet mace of berries. The old man had dropped his net and for a while had been searching the herbage. It was late in the day for butterflies, but fox-maw caterpillars were plenty among the heather, as well as others. Thus Bessie read and dreamed, and her grandfather rummaged the bushes till the sunlight was gathered up from the turf under the trees and lifted from the tallest spire among the agrimony as the sun went beyond the hilltops. Then at last the old man returned to his satchel. The flies ain't much he observed as Bessie looked up, but for trade it's best not to miss anything. It's always what you're shortest of, as sells, and the blues was out late today. But I've got luck with caterpillars. If they go all right I ought to have a box full of rosy marbled out of ease. Rosy marbled? It's a late brood, then, and so long since you had any. Two year, and this is the only place for him, the old man packed his bag and slung it across his back. We'll see about tea now, he added, as the child rose on her crutch, but we'll keep open eyes as we go. Over the slade they took their way, where the purple carpet was patterned with round hollows, black with heather ash and green with star moss. By the edges of the old gravel pits overhung with bramble and bush and so into more woods. A jay flew up before them, scolding angrily, now and again a gap among the trees, let through red light from beyond Woodriddon. Again and again the old man checked his walk, sometimes but to drop once more into his even tramp, sometimes to stop and sometimes to beat the undergrowth and to shake branches. To any who saw there was always a vaguely familiar quality in old May's walk. A patient plod and burden or not ever a not suggestion of something carried over shoulder, matters made plain when it was learned that the old man had been 40 years a postman. Presently as they walked they heard shrieks, gaffaws and a discordant singing that half smothered the wine of a concertina. The noise was the louder as they went, and when they came where the white of a dusty road back to tree stems they heard it at its fullest. Across the way was an inn, and by its side a space of open ground where on some three-score bean-feesters sported at large. Many were busy at kissing the ring, some way branches torn from trees, others stood up empty bottles and flung more bottles at them. They stood, sat, ran, lay and rolled, but each made noise of some sort and most drank. Plainly donkey-riding had palled for a man and a boy had gathered a black-dozen donkeys together and were driving them off. The people were Londoners, as Bessie knew, for she had often seen others.  Each bed with a board on it were toys and this too she would have forgotten, for she was very little indeed then, but that a large and terrible gentleman had come every day and hurt her bad leg. It was the Shadwell Hospital, but these were Londoners and Bessie was a little afraid of them and conceived London to be a very merry and noisy place very badly broken everywhere by reason of the Londoners. Other people also came in wagonettes and were a little quieter and less gloriously bedecked.  Perhaps they were not real Londoners but folk from parts adjoining, but these were Londoners proper wearing each other's hats with paper wreaths on them.  Dear Bill, here's old grandfather catchin' tiddlers, why don't you keep them out or mistiff and every flush face doubly reddened by the setting sun turned deep in its mouth in a guffaw. You'll cop it for gettin' your trousers wet, screamed a woman and somebody flung a lump of crust. Betsy jogged a faster into the wood and in its shadow her grandfather swily doubtfully said they like their joke, some of them don't think. But it's always tiddlers. It grew dusk under the trees and the sky was pale above. They came to where the ground fell away in a glen that was almost a trench and a brook ran in the ultimate furrow. On the opposing hill a broad green ride stood like a wall before them. A deep moss of trees clinging at each side. Here they turned and where the glen widened the cottage was to be seen on sloping ground with a narrow roadway a little beyond it. A whitewashed cottage so small that there seemed scarce a score of tiles on its roof. One of the few scattered habitations holding its place in the forest was a riot of ancient settlement. A little tumult of garden tumbled about the cottage a jostle of cabbages, lavender onions, wall flowers and hollyhock confined as with difficulty by a precarious fence patched with wood in every form of manufacture and in every stage of decay. I expect mother and Johnny finished tea long ago, Betsy remark her eyes fixed on the cottage in the light. The path they went by grew bearer of grass as it neared the cottage and as they trod it men's voices could be heard from within in a woman's laughter. Sounds like visitors the old man exclaimed that's odd I wonder who there you are then father came a female voice from the door here's Uncle Isaac and a gentleman come to see us. It was Betsy's mother who spoke a pleasant fresh active woman set back the gate. The door opened into the living room where sat two men while a boy of fourteen squeezed a bash in a trifle sulky in a corner. There was the smell of bad cigar which had almost but not quite banished the wanted smell of the room. A smell in some degree due to camphor though perhaps more to caterpillar. For the walls were hidden behind boxes and drawers of divers shapes and sizes and before the window and in unexpected places on the floor stood other boxes covered with muslin, nurseries for larvae, pupae and doomed butterflies. And so many were these that the room itself in your box gave scant space to the three people in the little round table that were in it. Wherefore, Betsy's mother remained in the doorway and Uncle Isaac when he rose took a very tall hat from the floor and mounted on his head for lack of other safe place for the little table sustained a load of cups and saucers.  Good evening Mr. May, good evening said Uncle Isaac, shaky hands with the air of a man faithful to a friend in defiance of the world. This is my friend Mr. Butson. Mr. Butson was a tall rather handsome man of forty or thereabouts with curly hair and whiskers and he greeted the old man with grumb condescension. Mr. Butson, Uncle Isaac continued with a wave of the hand is a gentleman at present in connection with a steamboat profession though above it by family and inclination. Mr. Butson and me has been taken a day's holiday with a select party by name of Beanfest in Breaks. Oh yes, responded old May divesting himself of his bag. We passed some of them by the done cow and very merry they was too with concertinas and kissing the ring and what not.   He means that coaster crown and vans he added for Uncle Isaac's enlightenment. I had fell as low as that war know he sucked savagely at the butt of his cigar found it extinct, looked vainly for some word of fling it and at last dropped it into a teacup. No Mr. May, no, not them lot, Uncle Isaac said with a touch of grave reproach as man of some little property myself and in company of Mr. Butson by nature, gin, teal, disposed I should be far from mixing with such. We come down with the shipwrites and engineers from Lawcensus. That was probably Mr. May's little joke Mr. Butson. Mr. May is a man of property himself besides a man of science as I think I told you this year land and residence being in point. If any man was to come and say to Mr. May get out of that property Mr. May what would the law say to that man? Null avoid. That's what the law it would said get out yourself your claims avoid. Uncle Isaac checking a solemn thump at the table just in time to save the teacups took his hat off instead and put it on again. Mr. Butson grunted ah and Mrs. May taking the net squeezed in with Bessie behind her I'll put a few of these boxes on the stairs and make more room she said the kettle's still boiling in the back house and I'll make some more tea Bessie had a habit of shyness in presence of strangers Uncle Isaac ranked as one for it was two years at least since he had been there before. Indeed what she remembered of him then made her the shire for he had her anger very loudly on the gratitude she owed her grandfather calling her a cripple very often in course of his argument and sometimes a burden she knew that she was a cripple and a burden but to be held tightly by the arm and told so by a gentleman with such a loud voice shy as his uncle Isaac somehow inclined her to cry so now as soon as might be she joined her brother and the two retreated into the shadowy corner between the stairfoot in the back house door the old butterfly hunter too was shy in his more elderly way beyond his widow daughter-in-law and her two children he had scarce in acquaintance or at least none more familiar than the naturalist in London to whom he sold his specimens so that now in presence of this very gentile Mr. Butson who he feared was already disgusted at the humble character of the establishment he made but a hollow meal a half-forgotten notion afflicted him that it was proper to drink tea in only one of two possible ways but whether from the cup or from the saucer he could not resolve himself Mr. Butson had finished his tea so that his example was lacking though indeed the leaves in his saucer seemed to offer a hint a hint soon triumphantly confirmed by Uncle Isaac who was nothing averse from a supplementary cup and who emptied it straight away into his saucer and gulped it ardently glaring fearfully over the edge where at his host drank from the saucer also and took heed to remember for the future still he was uncomfortable and a little later he almost blushed at detecting himself inhospitably grateful for signs that Mr. Butson began to tire of the visit meanwhile he modestly contributed little to the conversation no said Mr. Butson gloomily after a long pause and in reply to nothing in particular I ain't a man of property I wish I was if people got what they was brought up to but there he stuck his hands lower in his pockets and savagely regarded vacancy Mr. Butson's uncle said Uncle Isaac is a mayor a mayor and his other relations is of equal aristocracy but he won't have nothing to say of them not a word it's just blood pride or breeding but what I say it may be proper self-respect but it ain't proper self-justice it ain't self-justice in my way of putting it why you won't even name them won't name them Mr. May won't he the old man answered rather tamely dear dear Mr. Butson laid his head back jerked his chin and snored at scorn at the ceiling no won't as much as name them such as a lofty contempt otherwise what would be my path of duty my path of duty on behalf of self-justice Mr. Butson would be to see him and put a pina argument ere I puts it it's him and here is me here is Mr. Henry Butson your very dutiful relation of fashionable instincts and an engineer then which none better though much above it and unsuitably in chain by worldly circumstances in the engine room of a penny steamer here Mr. Butson snorted again likewise here is me a elderly man of some small property and a ship ride of practical experience then circumstances be in the case consequently what more natural and proper than a partnership with capital that how I put the point a partnership with capital just so said old May and seeing that the others still paused he added of course but he's proud proud said Uncle Isaac shaking his head plaintively perhaps I'm proud Mr. Butson admitted candidly I suppose I got my faults from him not if it was to beg me on their knees why I'd sooner be beholden to strangers ah that you would sigh Uncle Isaac but it ain't self justice no it ain't self justice itself respect anyhow said Mr. Butson sullenly if they like to treat me unnatural let him observed Uncle Isaac some families is unnatural and some is natural and there's a deal of difference between them look at Mr. May now he ain't all together in my family though my niece's father-in-law by marriage but what naturalness his son was an engineer in your trade Mr. Butson fitter at maidments he's left my niece a widow consequence a coat tail and a cogwheel what does Mr. May do why he shows his naturalness he brings he brings her and her children down here on his free old residence and consequently there they are look at that was a principle with Uncle Isaac to neglect no opportunity at reciting at large the excellences of any person of the smallest importance with whom you might be acquaintant or the excellences with that person might be supposed to desire credit for if in his actual presence so much the better nothing could be cheaper and on the whole it paid very well he's advertised an amiable character and there remain off chances of personal benefit moreover the practice solidified Uncle Isaac's reputation among his acquaintances for here quote each in his turn was plainly a man of sagacious discernment the old postman however was merely uneasy to his mind it was nothing but a matter of course that when his son died the widow and children should come under his own roof and it was as a matter of course that he had brought them there but Bessie's mother said simply yes granddad's been a good one to us always she as well as the children called him granddad yes proceeded Uncle Isaac and in with as much to think about as a man of education too wonderful why there's nothing as he don't know in astronomy and in in sectonomy no think no not astronomy interjected old may a little startled by both counts of the imputation not astronomy Mr. Mundy I say yes answered Uncle Isaac with an emphatic slap on his knee modesty under a bushels all very well Mr. May all very well but I know I know astronomy and medica medica and all the other classics I know I give best part of my small property such as it is for after education Mr. May who's generally agreed in the family that Uncle Isaac was very close as to the small property of his nothing could induce him to speak of it with any particularity of detail and opinions varied as to its characters still whatever it was it suffice to gain Uncle Isaac much deference and consideration the more probably because of its mysterious character a deference in a consideration which Uncle Isaac could stimulate from time to time by cloudy illusions to altering his will well observed Mr. Buttson rising from his chair education never done me much good no unfortunately common at Uncle Isaac and I prefer property myself Mr. Buttson made toward the door and Uncle Isaac prepared to follow at this moment a harsh female voice suddenly scream from the darkness without Laura I almost fell over a blessed house it said and there was a shrill laugh we'll ask him the way back Old May stepped over the threshold at the sound but the magnificence was stricken from the face of Mr. Buttson his cheeks paled his mouth and eyes opened together and he shrank back even toward the stair foot nobody marked him however but the children for attention was shocked it without jeer which way to the done cow see Elaine answered the old postman followed that to the right and you'll come to it it's a bit farther than through the wood but you can't go wrong right there were two women and a man the screaming woman said something to the others in a quiet tone in which however the word titlers was playing to hear and there was a laugh good night old chap she bawled back jam pot with a bit of water crease full of their games remarked the old man with a tolerant smile as he turned toward the door that was the person that said I'd catch it for getting my clothes wet as we came past the done cow the voices of the bean fester is abated and ceased and now Mr. Buttson left no doubt of his readiness to depart come he said with chap fall and briskness we'll have to get back to the others they'll be going he took leave with so much less dignity and so much more haste than accorded with his earlier manner that Mr. May was a trifle puzzled though he soon forgot it good night Mr. May I wish you good night said Uncle Isaac shaking hands impressively I've greatly enjoyed your flow of conversation Mr. May he made after the impatient Buttson stopped half way to the gate and called gently Nann replied stepping out to him what is it? Uncle Isaac whispered gravely in her ear and she returned and whispered to the old man of course certainly he said looking mightily concerned as he re-entered the cottage Mrs. May reached a cracked cup from a shelf and turning over a few coppers elicited a half crown with this she returned to Uncle Isaac I'll make a note of it said Uncle Isaac as he pocketed the money and sent a postal order oh don't trouble about that Uncle Isaac for Uncle Isaac with the small property must not be offended in a manner of a half crown what trouble he ejaculated deeply pained to pay my ear come on growl Mr. Buttson savagely from the outer gloom come on and they went together taking the lane in the direction opposite to that lately used by the noisy woman well old may observed we don't often have visitors and I was glad to see your Uncle Isaac man and Mr. Buttson too he added impartially yes return Bessie's mother innocently such a gentleman isn't he there's one thing I forgot the old man said suddenly I might have asked them to take a drop of beer before they went they had some while they was waiting for tea and I don't think there's much left she dragged a large tapped jar from under the breeding box at the window and it was empty ah was all the old man's comment as he surveyed the jar thoughtfully presently he turned into the back house and emerged with a tin pot and a brush I'm a going trickling a bit he said come Johnny the boy pulled his cat from his pocket fetched a lantern and was straight away ready while Bessie sat to her belated tea the last pale light lay in the west and the evening offered up an oblation of sweet smells all things that feed by night were out and nests were silent say for once and again a sleepy twitter every moment another star peeped and then one more the boy and the old man walked up the slope among the trees pausing now at one now at another to dobb the bark with the mixture of rum and treacle that was in the pot it's always best to be careful when you treacle when there's holiday folk about said Johnny's grandfather they don't understand it once I've treacle the log or a stump and found a couple sitting on it when I came back with new dresses and such it's no good explaining they think it's all done for practical joking it's best to go on and take no notice I've heard him say don't the country smell lovely meaning the smell of the rum treacle they was sitting on but when they find it lor the language I have heard awful the boy was quiet almost all the round granddad do you really like that likeness I made a mother like it my boy well of course it's a knobby picture Uncle Isaac said it was bad oh there was a thoughtful pause while they tramp toward the next tree that's only Uncle Isaac's little game Johnny you mustn't mind that it's a knobby picture I don't believe Uncle Isaac knows anything about it said the boy Vietnamese I think he's ignorant here Johnny cries his grandfather that won't do you know not at all you mustn't say things like that well that's what I think granddad and I know he says things wrong when he came before he said that ship I drew was bad and I I very near cried that was in secret and not to be confessed but now Johnny went on on 14 and I know better I don't believe Uncle Isaac knows a bit about things they had come again to the tree first treacle then leaving the pot and brush at its foot the old man by help of the lantern took certain of the moths that had been attracted from this he carried the lantern to the next tree in the round and then to the next filling the intervals between his moth successive chapters of a mild and rather vague lecture on respect for elders it was dark night now and the sky all the dust with the stars the old man and the boy took their way more by use than by sight amid the spectral presences of the trees whose infinite whisperings filled the sharpening air they emerged on high ground once could be seen here the lights of lauten and there the lights of Woodford and others more distance in the flatter country here the night when swept up lustily from Essex and away from far on the Robin Hood road came a rumble and a murmur in presently the glare of hand lights rehing green the sign and token of homing bean festers end of chapter one chapter two of to London town this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by John Brandon to London town by Arthur Morrison chapter two where some while a problem had confronted the inmates of the cottage and now it was ever with them the choice of a trade for Johnny the situation of the cottage itself made the main difficulty there was a walk of two miles to the nearest railway station and then London was twelve miles off it was in London the trades were learnt but to get there here the family must stay for here was the cottage which cost no rent for the old man had bought it with his little savings moreover here also were the butterflies and the moths which meant butter to the dry bread of the little pension and here was the garden to part with Johnny altogether was more than his mother could face and indeed what was to pay for his lodging and keep the moths and butterflies could be no living for Johnny to begin with though he was always ready to help in the hatching, killing, setting and what not like Hunter like his grandfather and then the old man had long realised that the forest was growing a poorer and poorer hunting ground each year and must someday after he was dead he hoped be no longer worth working people were hard on the hawks so that the insect eating birds multiply to pace and butterflies were fewer and there was something else or so it seemed some subtle influence from the great smoky province that laid to the south west for London grew and grew and washed nearer and still nearer its scummy edge of barren brick bats and clinkers it had passed Stratford long sense and had nearly reached Layton and though Layton was eight miles off still the advancing town sends something before it an odour a subtle principle that drove the hunter flies the old man had once taken the emperor moth at Stratford in a place long covered with a row of grimy little houses now the emperor was not too easy to find in the thickest of the woodland and indeed when the wind came from the south west the air seemed less clear in the old man's eyes than was its want a dozen years back true many amateurs came with nets boys from boarding schools there about chiefly and did not complain but he who by trade had noted day by day for many years the forest produce in egg larva, pupa and amago saw and knew the change so that butterflies being beyond possibility as Johnny's trade his grandfather naturally be thought him of the one other self was familiar with and spoke of the post office he knew the postmaster at Lofton and the postmasters at other of the villages about the forest by making a little interest Johnny might take the next vacancy as messenger but the prospect did not temp the boy he protested and it was almost his soul contribution to the daily discussion that he wanted to make something and there was little doubt if one might judge from the unpleasing ships and figures in colored chalks wherewith he defaced whatever offered a fair surface that he would most like to make pictures he never urged the choice in plain terms for that were hopeless but both his mother and his grandfather condemned it in all respects as though he did deal more caterpillar than butterfly in this life for the likes of us my boy the old man would say as he labored at his setting making pictures and such is all very well but we can't always choose our own line I've been a lucky man in my time thank god the insects was my hobby long for I made any money of them your poor grandmother that you never saw I've had them moths and grubs will be for you she used to say why not bees as you can make something out of and Haskins that took the next round to mine he kept bees but I began selling a few specimens to gentlemen here and there and then more and after that I took them to London regular same as now it ain't as good as it was I hope that it'll last my time out it was because I was carrying letters here that I had the chance doing it at all if you was to carry them yourself you'd be able to do something else too bees perhaps a good few men's boots but we're a bit off the villages here here's the house yours and your mother's when I'm gone and I'm 69 you could be a cleaner than London you could put up a little bit of glass in the garden and grow tomatoes and cucumbers them and fowls you could keep fowls would sell very well to the gentle folk and they all know the postman wages ain't high but you live cheap here with no rent and there's a pension perhaps that's your line defend on it Johnny but I should like a trade where I can make something the boy would answer wistfully I really should granddad ah with the shake of the head make what I doubt what you mean in pictures you must get that notion out of your head Johnny some of them as make them may do well but most awful I see them in London often on the pavement regular clever ones too doing mackerel and bits of salmon splendid and likenesses of the queen and sunsets with the sky shaded beautiful begging regular begging with a cap out for coppers and help gifted poverty wrote in chalk that won't do you know Johnny the boy's mother felt for him an indefinite ambition in the life of letter carrying though picture making she favored as little as did the old man but there was the situation of the cottage a hindrance they could see no way to overcome this being so they left it for the time and betook themselves to smaller difficulties putting the letter carrying aside for the moment and forgetting distance as an obstacle from truly a good many and that none should be missed Johnny's grandfather took paper and pencil and walked to Woodford where he begged use of a London directory and read through all the trades from absorbent cotton wool manufacturers to zincographic printers making a laborious list as he went omitting with some reluctance such items as bankers brokers, stock and share merchants, patentees and physicians and hesitating a little over such as aeronauts and shive turners the task filled a large part of three days of uncommonly hard work and old David May finished his list in mental bedevilment what was a shive turner indeed for that matter what was an ammeter the list did but multiply confusion and divide counsel Nan May sang less at her housework now thinking of what she could remember of the trades that began with absorbent cotton wool manufacture and ended with zincographic printing little best neglected the bookshelf and poured over the crabbed catalog with earnest incomprehension it afflicted Johnny himself with a feeling akin to terror for which he found it hard to account the arena of the struggle for bread was so vast and he so small combatant to choose a way into this scrimmage more it seemed all so unattractive there could be little to envy in the daily life of a seed crusher or a quart plaster maker but the old man would pin a sheet of the list to the wall and study it while he worked with indoors full of patience and simple courage bacon powder maker he would call a loud to whomever it might reach how's that that's making something sometimes Bob small piece the forest keeper would look in on his way by the cottage and be consulted by the immense being in much leather and velvet team with a face like a long capped pippin when he first came to the forest years back his amiable peeps into the house may have been prompted by professional considerations Fort was his habit to keep an eye on solitary cottages in his walk cottages wherein it had once or twice been his luck to spy by surprise some furry little heap that a poke of his ash stick had separated into dead rabbits indeed had all maize taste lain that way nothing would have been easier for him than to set a snare or two at night as he hunted his moths but soon the keeper found that this one at least of the cottages thereabouts was no poacher and then his greetings were as friendly as they seemed as to Johnny's trade he had few ideas beyond one that butchers did very well in London his sister having married one and what a shyve turner or an ammeter might be he knew no more than his stick but he knew well enough what a poacher was as also perhaps did the stick if contact could teach it and he counseled that the boy be kept away from certain lots as the blandy lot the honey well lot and the haze lot who would do him no good the old butterfly hunter knew these lots very well on his own account and his perpetual gropings about banks and undergrowth made him no friends among them they were scarce believe even after long experience that Grubbs alone accounted for his activity and truly a man with a government pension who affected scientific tastes who lived a clean life who was called Mr. May by keepers and whom moreover had such uncommon opportunities of witnessing what passed in the woods might well be an object of suspicion in simple truth the village loafers had small conception of the old man's knowledge of their behavior among the rabbit burrows he knew the woods as they knew the innards of a quart pot and his eyes aged as they might be were trained by years of search for things well-nigh invisible amid grass leaves and undergrowth he could have found their wires blindfold and he knew Joe Blandy's wires from Amos Honeywells better than Joe and Amos themselves but of all this he said nothing holding himself a strict neutral and judging it best never to seem too knowing still it was the fact that when the lots of periodically weeded of members caught with disjointable guns wire nooses or dead things furred or feathered those left behind were apt to link circumstances together and to regard the old man with doubt and ill favor once indeed he hung in doubt for days much tempted to carry a hint to Bob's small piece of a peculiarly foul and barbarous manner of deer stealing wherein figured a tied fawn an anxious doe a heavy stone a broken leg and a cut throat but a chance that the keeper was otherwise aware an old man's doubt was determined by news that the thief wailed and gory he had made a fight for it had been brought to the police cells with a dripping doe on a truck behind him even now as Bob's small piece grinned in at the cottage door one saw the gap where two teeth had gone in that up and downer no said the keeper it won't do the boy no good to let him knock about with nothing to do about here specially boys that knocks about this part mostly gets in with them lots as we've been speaking of something about as bad ain't there no gentlemen here about to give him a job I'd like him to learn a trade the old man said anxiously but he don't see how it's always something to stand by is a trade and it's what he wants wants to make something that's the way he puts it else I'd say post office same as me his father was in the engineering remarked mrs. May who had arrived at the door with certain sticks of rhubarb from the garden I'd like him to go to that I think but he can't from here Bob's small piece knew nothing of engineering and little more of any of the several objects read out from the list pin to the window frame near which the old man worked at a setting stick and presently he departed on his walk desi at the casement above saw him swing away toward the glen lifting his stick in recognition of Johnny who bore a bundle of dead sticks homeward Johnny's mother peeled and cut the rhubarb revolving impossible expedience for bridging the space between them and London the space that looked so small on the map but was so great an obstacle to their purposes and so wide a division between the two modes of life she knew Johnny's grandfather pinned and strapped deftly deep in thought presently looking up it beats me he said fearful of ignoring some good thing in trades to guess what a shive Turner is end of chapter 2 recording by John Brandon chapter 3 of to London Town this is a LibyVox recording all LibyVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibyVox.org recording by Alan Lawley so life went to the cottage for a little while they looked for another visit from Uncle Isaac since as he had sent no postal order it was felt that he must defer the return of the half crown merely because he contemplated an early payment in person but weeks passed and nothing was heard of him nor seen meantime the problem of Johnny's trade no solution he had left school nearly three months now and the things seeming desperate he had well now resolved to give in to the post office at the thought London seemed a far and wondrous place where to he could never attend an awe of the terrible list his grandfather compiled from the London directory became longing for the least inviting trade in the collection he had his memories of London too and they were more numerous and more pleasant than buses there he could see from his bedroom window the masks of many ships quite close in the strong winds and in his remembered London the weather was ever cold brisk, dry and windy the masks bent and rocked gravely the ropes bellied and the blocks whistled aloud at night he lay and heard the yards groan and the cordage creak and rattle just by the corner ships sometimes thrust prime ship booms clean over the dock wall as if to see what the town was like and often he had stood in the street to watch men climbing the rigging and hanging bent over spars like airwigs he had gone shopping too gripping tight at his mother's skirts in flaring market streets where everybody shouted it once and there were mountains of bullseyes and peppermints on barrows there was a street with shops on one side and a blank wall on the other and over and behind this wall lifted high in the air was the monstrous skeleton of a great ship men swarmed like ants about the skeleton and all day hammers went with a mighty clanger and great lights flared at night there were big blank walls at all the places where they made ships and he could remember a little door in one such wall a door beyond which he greatly desired to see but it was rarely opened and then put a little way by an ill-natured old man who squeezed through and closed it very quickly so that Johnny believed he must issue thus to prevent the escape of some small and active animal imprisoned within all that Johnny remembered of his father was that he wiped his oily hands out on waste a curious stuff like a great deal of soft sewing thread in a hopeless tangle that he had never seen since that and the funeral when he rode in a carriage with a crate bow pinned to his new jacket and his mother held his hand very tight at the graveside most of his memories were of the streets revived after long oblivion as when the smell of roasted chestnuts brought a vision of a glowing coke fire by the corner of the shipyard wall with a pockmarked man behind it whom he would know anywhere now and he was not to return to this place of waste for memory after all nor to learn to make a ship nor an engine let alone a picture the weeks went long where flowers had been Johnny and Bessie made their yearly harvest of blackberries some for puddings and jam at home some to sell at such kitchen doors as might receive them until an afternoon in early October when with an order from a lady at Daedon they betook themselves in search of slows warm colours touched the woods to a new harmony and seen from high ground they lay like flowerbeds in green and red yellow and brown the honeysuckle bloomed its second time and totes still stood in crimson companies in the shade of the trees slows were rare this year near home so the children searched their way through the Wake Valley to Honey Lane Quarters around their slows though few it was a long and scratchy task and when it was finished they were well up in St. Thomas' Quarters and the sun was setting they made the best of their way back as far as the road near the Dun Cow and there parted for Bessie was tired and hungry and though Johnny was little better he resolved to carry his slows fresh to Daedon and get the money since he was already a little on the way so Bessie turned up the lane that led to the cottage and Johnny took to the woods again for Daedon by way to right of Wyrmington Bids dusk was growing to dark but the boys stepped fearlessly in his path the last throttle sang his last even song for the year and was still the shadowy trees so living and so silent about him the wrestling trunks of beaches the reaching arms of oak and hornbeam all struck a gaze as though pausing in their everlasting struggle to watch and whisper as he passed and the black depth between them might well have oppressed the imagination of such a boy from other parts but Johnny travelled along among them little heeding thinking of the great ship haunted London he longed for and forecasting nothing of the blow that should fall but in that hour and send him the journey sorrowing presently he was aware of the light ahead it moved a photo too from the ground and Johnny knew its swing then it stopped resting by a tree root you, granddad called Johnny and hello came the old man's voice in answer the old man had cut a leaf with a caterpillar on it from a shrub and was packing it in a pillbox out for a few night feeders he explained as the boys stopped beside him but you ain't been home to tea he added taking home the slows might have left them till the morning John easy now you've got them oh come up from over there Johnny made a vague toss of the arm and I thought I might as well cut across to Thaden first Bess went up the lane I'll be home for you now granddad unless you're going back straight I won't be long behind you I'm just going to the pits I can't make nothing of them I took last night under the brambles and heather never saw the light before quite so I'm going to see if there's more and get all I can they walked together a few yards till the trees thinned you'll go cross the slade said the old man you'll be beat I'll step it the boy answered I want my tea he was trotting home by the lane from Thaden with his empty basket on his arm and his hands and the sixpence in his trousers pockets when he checked the sound as a cry from the wood but he heard no more and trotted on probably the deer were fighting somewhere rare fighters were the Bucks in October end of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of To London Town this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Gray Clayton To London Town by Arthur Morrison Chapter 4 Johnny had finished his tea and was lying at his ease in the old easy chair whistling, rattling his heels on the half and studying a crack in the ceiling that suggested an angry face Mrs May had put the sixpence the sloves had brought into the cracked teacup that still waited the return of Uncle Isaac's half-crown had washed the tea things and was now mending the worn collar with his great coat in readiness for the winter Bessie had fallen asleep over her book had been wakened had fallen asleep again and in the end had drowsily climbed the stairs to early bed but still the old man did not return I wonder Granddad ain't back yet Johnny's mother said for the third time he said he'd be quick so as to finish that case tonight this was a glass-topped mahogany box in course of setting with specimens for all those fengis a special private order expect you can't find them catapill as he went for Johnny conjectured that's what it is he's forgot all about racing me home Mrs May finished the collar lifted the coat by the loop and turned it about in search of wrents finding none she put it down and stood at the door listening think you're too tired to go and look for him Johnny she asked presently Johnny thought he was it's them catapillers safe enough he said he never saw any before and it was just a chance last night tonight he can't find them and he's keeping on searching all over the pits and the slay that's about it there was another pause the candle he had in the lantern wouldn't last an hour she said he'd have had to come back for more Johnny I'm getting nervous why what for asked Johnny though the circumstances of the short candles startled his confidence he might get a light from somewhere else instead of coming all the way back but where asked Mrs May there's only the done cow and he might almost as well come home he wouldn't ask him Johnny left the chair and joined his mother at the door as they listened a more regular sound made itself plain amid the low hum of the trees footsteps here he comes said Johnny but the sound neared and the steps were long and the tread was heavy in a few moments Bob Small piece's voice came from the gloom wishing them good night Mrs May called to him have you seen granddad anywhere Mr Small piece the keeper checked his strides and came to the garden gate pie-balled with the light from the cottage door no he said I run across him or seen his light anywheres no which way he went he was just going to Wormleton pits and back that's all well I've just come straight across the pits and as straight here wherever I could go past the Duncal and ain't seen nearer sign of him one in particular I'm getting nervous about him Mr Small piece somehow I'm frightened tonight he went out about six and now he don't want much of nine and he only had a bit of candle that wouldn't burn an hour and he never meant stopping long I know because of a case he's got to set I thought perhaps you might have seen nothing of him but I'll go back to the pits now if you like and welcome I'd be sorry to bother you but I would like someone to go here Johnny go along there's a good boy all right all right the keeper exclaimed cheerfully we'll go together I expect he's invented some new speeches of moth and he's forgotten all about his light thinking out the improvements ain't the first time he's been out at night about here anyhow Johnny had his cap and was at the gate and in a moment the keeper and he were mounting the slope mother's worrying herself over nothing tonight Johnny grumbled granddad's been later in this many a time and she never said a word why when he gets after caterpillars and thinks he forgets everything they walked on among the trees presently how long has it since your father died Bob Small piece asked abruptly up nine years now and more mother might have married again I suppose I don't know very likely never heard her say nothing Bob Small piece walked on with no more reply than a grunt soon a light from the done cow twinkled through the bordering coppers and in a few paces they were up to the woods edge no light along the road the keeper said glancing to left and right and making across the hard gravel there's somebody Johnny exclaimed pointing up the pale road drunk objected the other and truly the indistinct figure staggered and floundered and going the wrong way chapped just out of the done cow come on but Johnny's gaze didn't shift it's granddad he cried subtly and started running Bob Small piece Bob Small piece sprang after him and in twenty paces they were running abreast as they neared the old man they could hear him talking rapidly in a monotonous high pitched voice he was hatless and though they called he took no heed but stumbled on as one seeing and hearing nothing till as the keeper reached to seize his arm he trod in a gully and fell forwards the shock interrupted his talk and he breathed heavily and hearing still before him as he regained his uncertain foothold and reeled a step further and then Bob Small piece grasped him above the elbow and shouted his name what's the matter granddad Johnny demanded ill the old man glared fixedly and made as though to resume his course why watch this said Bob Small piece retaining the arm and lifting a hand gently to the old man's hair as blood dotted and trickling Lord he's had a bad wipe over the head said Bob and with that lifted Old May in his arms as a nurse lifts a child Thadon's nearest run Johnny boy run like the blazes and fetch the doctor Tantive take him into the Duncal no home's best and save shifting him twice run it purple emperors and small coppers began the old man again in his real chatter small coppers and masked ringlets everywhere and my bag full of letters at the beginning of the round but I finished my round and now they're all gone all gone because of London coming and I give in my empty bag and so he tailed off into indistinguishable gable while Bob Small piece carried him into the wood to Johnny scudding madly towards Thadon he lifted a grotesque horror as of some absurd nightmare this baby babble of his white-haired grandfather carried baby fashion he blinked as he ran and felt his head for his cap half believing that he ran in a dream in very truth End of Chapter 4 Recording by Quay Clayton Chapter 5 of To London Town This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Quay Clayton To London Town by Arthur Morrison Chapter 5 Mrs May still stood at the cottage door and the keeper warned by the light called from a little distance Here we are Mrs May he said as cheerfully as he might he just had a little accident that's all, so I'm carrying him don't be frightened, get a little water I think he's got a bit of a cut on his head but it's nothing to fluster about and so, assuring and protesting, Bob brought the old man in the woman saw the staring grey face and the blood oh my god she quavered, stricken, sick and pale he's, he's no, no, no, no shift the table, I'll put him down on the rug she mastered herself and said no more the old man whose babble had sunk to an indistinct mutter was no sooner laid on the floor than he made a vague effort to rise as though to continue on his way but he was feebler than before and Bob Smallpeace pressed him gently back upon the new mended coat to make a pillow Nan May, tense and white curbed her agitation ministering and suffering in silence years before a man had been carried home to her thus but then, all was over and after the first numbness grief could take its vent once she asked Bob Smallpeace how it had happened he told how little he knew and by way for passing the words to Bessie wakened by unwanted sounds Mrs May said nothing Bessie, in her nightgown sat on the stairs hugging her crutch and sobbing with what quietness she could compel of herself there was a little brandy in the cotton bottle and the keeper thought it well to force the spirit between the old man's teeth while Mrs May bathed the head and washed away the clotted blood as they did so the wheels of the doctor's dog cart were heard in the lane and soon the doctor came in at the door pulling off his gloves Johnny stood pale helpless and still almost breathless behind the group while the doctor knelt at his grandfather's side there was a contused wound at the top of the head the doctor could see a little back, not serious but blood still dripped from the ears and the doctor shook his head fracture of the base he said as if to himself reviving a little because of the brandy and the bathing the old man once more made a motion as if to rise his eyes grew brighter though fixed still and his voice rose distinctly as ever took the bag in, yes London's coming fast and are frightening out the butterflies London's are driving the butterflies out of my round and butterflies can't live near it London's out of my round and I've done my round and now I'll give in the empty bag take the bag and look for the pension that's the advantage of the post office John some gets pensions but some don't but the butterflies will last my time I hope and Haskins has kept bees but I'm hoping to finish my round and so on and so on till the voice fell again and the muttering was fainter than before Bob Smallpeace stood awkwardly by unwilling to remain a useless intruder but just as reluctant to desert friends in trouble presently he be thought himself that work was still to do in inquiry how the old man's hurt have befallen whether by accident or attack perhaps indeed to inform the police and that in good time so he asked turning his hat about in his hands if there was anything else he could do nothing more Smallpeace thanks the doctor said with an unmistakable lift of the brows and a glance at the door God bless you for helping us Mr Smallpeace Mrs May said as she let him out I'll let you know how he is in the morning if you can't call and when the door was shut go to bed Johnny my boy and take a rest but Johnny went no further than the stairs and sat there with his sister the old man's muttering ceased wholly and he breathed heavily sturtlessly the doctor rose to his feet and turned to Mrs May won't you tell me sir she said is it is it it is very serious the doctor said gravely and added with impressive slowness very serious indeed the woman took a grip of the table and caught three quick breaths you must keep yourself calm and you must bear up you must prepare yourself in case of something very bad indeed twice she tried to speak but was mute and then no hope she said more to sight than to hearing he put his hand kindly on her shoulder it would be wrong of me to encourage it he said as for what I can do it is all over but you must bear up he went on firmly as guided to a chair she bent forward and covered her face drink this he took a small bottle from his bag poured something into a cup and added water drink it, drink it up all of it I must go you've your children to think of remember come to your mother my boy he was gone and the children stood with their arms about their mother the old man's breathing which had grown heavier and louder still presently eased again and his eyes closed drowsily at this the woman looked up with an impossible hope in her heart truly the breath was soft and natural and the drawn lines had gone from his face he must be sleeping why had she not thought to ask Bob Smallpeace to carry him up to bed and why had the doctor not ordered it softly she turned the wet cloth that lay over the wound the breath grew lighter and still lighter and more peaceful the face till one might almost trace a smile quieter and quieter and still more peaceful till all was peace indeed End of Chapter 5 Recording by Greg Clayton The pits were none of them deep six feet at most at the bottom of the deepest they found Old May's lantern with the glass broken and the candle overrun and extinguished and the gravel was spotted with marks which, in the clearer light of the morning were seen to be marks of blood it was useless to look for footprints the ground was dry and except in the pits themselves it was covered with heather whereon no such traces were possible and this was all the police had to say at the inquest where at the jury gave a verdict of accidental death for the old man had died as was medically certified after post-mortem examination of brain laceration produced by fracture of the base of the skull and the fracture was caused by percussion from a blow on the upper part of the head a blow probably suffered by falling backward into the pit and striking the head against a large stone embedded at the bottom everything suggested such an explanation above the steepest wall of the pit over which the fall must have chanced a narrow ledge of ground ran between the brink and a close clump of bramble and bush and this ledge was grown thick with tough heather as apt almost as a tangle of wire to catch the foot and cause a stumble it was plain that stooping to his occupation on this ledge and perhaps forgetting a situation in the interest of his search he had fallen backward into the pit with the lantern he had probably lain there insensible for some while and then developing a crazed half-consciousness he had crawled out of the easy slope at the farther end and staggered off with or so ever his disjointed faculties might carry him nobody had seen him but his grandson and the keeper so that the verdict was a matter of course and the dismal inquiry was soon done with and indeed the jury knew all there was to know unless it were a trivial matter of some professional interest to Bob Smallpeace about which the police preferred to have nothing said since it could not help the jury though it might chance later to be of some use to themselves it was simply the fact that several very fresh peg holes were observed about the pits hinting a tearing away of rabbit snares with no care to hide the marks the days were bad dreams to Johnny he found himself continually repeating in his mind that granddad was dead granddad was dead as though he were forcing himself to learn a lesson that persistently slipped his memory well enough he knew it and it puzzled him that he should find it so hard to believe and mostly so easy a grief as he woke in the morning he knocked down his spirits and then with an instant revulsion he doubted it was but the aftertaste of a dream and there lay the empty half of the bed they were wont to share and the lessons began again he went about the house here was a sheet of granddad's list of trades pinned to the wall there the unfinished case of moths for which the customer was waiting these and the shelves and the breeding boxes all were as parts of the old man impossible to consider apart from his active white-headed figure in some odd hopeless way they seemed to suggest that it was all right and that granddad was simply in the garden or upstairs or in the back house and presently would come in as usual and put them all to their daily uses and it was only for dint of stern concentration of thought that Johnny forced on himself the assurance that the old man would come along his cases no more nor ever again discuss with him the list of London trades then the full conviction struck him sorely like a blow behind the neck and the heavy stroke of bereavement and the sick fear of the world for his mother and sister together but there he was merely torturing himself he took refuge in a curious callousness that he could call back very easily when he would so the days went but with each new day the intermissions of full realisation grew longer till plain grief persisted in a leaden ache rarely broken by a spell of apathy his mother and sister went about household duties silently not often apart they were comforted in companionship it seemed but solitude brought tears and heartbreak Nan May's London upbringing caused her some thought of what her acquaintances there would have called a proper funeral but here the machinery of such funerals must be brought from a distance thus becoming doubly expensive and this being the case cottagers made very little emulation at such times and a walking funeral perhaps at best a cab from the rank at Lawton station satisfied most moreover the old man himself had many a time preached strong disapproval of money wasted on funerals had indeed prophesied that if any costliness were wasted on him he would rise from his coffin and kick a mute so now that time had come a thaden carpenter made the coffin and a cab from Lawton was the whole show the old man's relations were not and if Nan May's most still alive were forgotten for in the forest cottage the little family had been secluded from such connections as by sundering seas at first they had seemed too near for correspondence and then they had been found too far for visiting Uncle Isaac came to the funeral however and though in the beginning he seemed prepared for solemn declaration something in the sober grief at the cottage made him unwontedly quiet it was a short coffin accommodated under the cabman's seat with no great protrusion at the ends what there was being covered decently with a black cloth the cab held the mourners easily Johnny and Bessie in their Sunday clothes their mother and hers they had always been black since she was first a widow and Uncle Isaac in a creasy suit of lustrous black oddly bunched and wrinkled at the seams the conventional Sunday suit of his generation of artisans folded carefully and long preserved and designed to be available alike for church and for such funerals as might come to pass a brisk wind stirred the trees and flung showers of fallen leaves after the shabby old four-wheeler as it climbed the lanes that led up to the little churchyard where the sexton and his old man waited with the planks and ropes by the new-dug grave it was a bright afternoon but a fresh chill in the wind hinted at the coming of winter a belated red admiral seemed to chase the cab fluttering this way or that now by one window now by the other and again away over the hedge top nothing was said now and again Johnny took his eyes from the open window to look at his companions his mother opposite sat pale and worn with her hands in her lap and gazed blankly over his head at the front window of the cab she was commonly a woman of healthy skin and color but now the skin seemed coarser and there was no color but the pink about her red eyelids Uncle Isaac next to her sat forward and rubbed his chin over and round the knob of his walking stick with a turks head of tarred cord as for Bessie sitting at the far end of his own seat Johnny saw nothing of her face or her handkerchief and the crutch handle but she was very quiet and he scarcely thought she was crying for himself he was sad enough in a heavy way but in no danger of tears and he turned again and looked out the window at last the cab stopped at the lich gate here Bob's small piece unexpectedly appeared to lend a hand so that with the sexton and the carpenter who was the undertaker Uncle Isaac and the keeper the cabman's help was not wanted the cabman lingered a moment to shift clothes and aprons and to throw a glance or two after the little company as it followed the clergyman and then he hastened to climb to his seat and drive after a young couple that he spied walking in the main road for they were strangers and looked a likely fare back to the station Johnny found the church much as it was on Sunday that today they sat near the front and that he was conscious of a faint sense of family importance by reason of the special service and the coffin so conspicuously displayed a few neighbors women mostly were there too and when the coffin was carried out to the grave they grouped themselves a little way off in the background with Bob's small piece further back still from the grave's edge one looked down over the countryside green and hilly and marked out in meadows by rows of elms with hedges at foot the wind came up briskly and set the dead leaves going again and again chasing them among the tombs and casting them into the new red road Bessie was quiet no longer but sobbed aloud and Nan Mei took no more care to dry her eyes Johnny made an effort that brought him near to choking and then another and then he fixed his attention on the cows in a meadow below countered them with brimming eyes and named them for he knew them well as accurately as the distance would let him he would scarce trust himself to take a last look with the others at the coffin below and its bright tin plate but fell straight away to watching a man mending thatch on the barn and wondering that he wore neither coat nor waistcoat in such a fresh wind and so except for a stray tear or two which nobody saw overflowing from the brimming eyes he faced it out and walked away with the others under the curious gaze of the neighbors who lined up by the path in the opposite direction with the carpenter who carried back the pall folded over his arm like a cloak the four mourners walked back by the lanes in silence Uncle Isaac bore the restraint with difficulty and glanced uneasily at Nan Mei's face from time to time as though he were watching an opportunity to expound his sentiments at length but Johnny saw nothing of this for affliction was upon him now that Grandad was passed away indeed was buried quickly over him now that even the coffin was gone from the cottage and would never be seen again it seemed that he had never understood before and he awoke to the full bitterness of things more his effort at restraint was spent and in the revulsion he found he could hold in no longer he peeped into the thickets by the laneside as he went questing for an excuse to drop behind seeing no other he stooped and feigned to tie his bootlace the voice that quavered absurdly in trying to seem indifferent go on mother, I'm coming presently he dashed among the bushes flung himself on the grass and burst into a blind fury of tears writhing as though under a shower of stinging bulbs he had meant to cry quietly but all was past control and any might hear that chanced by he scarce knew whether the fit had endured for seconds, minutes, or hours when he was aware of his mother sitting beside him his bursting head to her breast Bessie was there too and his mother's arms were around both alike with that he grew quieter and quieter still we mustn't break down, Johnny boy there's hard struggles before us as mother said, smoothing back his hair and you must be very good to me, Johnny you're the man now he kissed her and brushed the last of his tears away yes mother, I will, he said he rose, calmer awoke to new responsibilities and felt a man indeed nothing remained of his outbreak but a chance coming shudder in the breath and as he helped Bessie to her feet he saw five yards off among the bushes Uncle Isaac under his very tall hat gazing blankly at the group and gently rubbing the turks head on his stick among the loose gray whiskers that bordered his large face End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 of To London Town This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org to London Town by Arthur Morrison Chapter 7 Nan May rose another woman in the morning for there was work before her the children marveled to see her so calm and so busy, so full of thought for the business in hand, so little occupied with sorrowful remembrance the old man, prudent ever had arranged years since for what had now befallen there was a simple little will on a sheet of note paper there was a great complicated list on odd scraps of paper thickly beset with additions, alterations and crossing-outs of the specimens hoarded in the cottage with pencil notes of values each revised a dozen times as the market changed there was a post office savings bank deposit book with entries amounting to £8.10 at a nomination form whereby Nan May might withdraw the money there was no life insurance for the old man had surrendered years ago to secure the few pounds he needed to make up the full price of the cottage the will gave Nan May all there might be to take and left her to execute Uncle Isaac on the return to the cottage the day before had at length broken into speech and by devious approaches cunningly disguised and ostentatiously casual had reached the will but he got little by his motion for though his niece told him the will's purport she protested that till tomorrow she should do nothing with it nor did she even offer to produce it of course he had scarcely expected a legacy himself but still he was Uncle Isaac profound in experience learned it in the law and an oracle in the family it seemed to say the least a little scandalous that he should not have had the handling of this property the selling, the control the doling out with such consideration the exertion might earn and the accidents of arithmetic detach it's an important thing is a will, said Uncle Isaac sagely that thing is ought to be seen by an experienced person you might just look and see how it's wrote if any is wrote in pencil it's null avoid no replied Miss May without moving it's all an ink then after a long pause lawyers come very expensive with wills Uncle Isaac observed they come expensive always and mostly they rob the property according to form a lawyer it's best to get a man of experience to go straight to Somerset House in form a purpose it's the cheapest way and safe he takes the will just as it might be me and he goes to the authorities and he talks to him knowing and confidential here I am says he as it might be me on behalf of the last will and only testament as it might be Mr May and I've come in a form a purpose of an objection to lawyers in form a purpose Uncle Isaac repeated impressively tapping a forefinger on the table as was his way of blazing an intrude phrase that else might have passed unregarded Paul Granddad told me what to do about going to Somerset House and all that answered Nan May in case anything happened but I take it very kind if you'd come with me Uncle Isaac me not understanding such things but I can't think about it today and with so much of his finger in the pie Uncle Isaac was feigned to be content and soon he left declining his stay for the night to Johnny's great relief because his cheap return ticket was available for the day and no more and now Johnny having brought sheets of full scrap paper from Lowton was set to work to make a fair copy of the amazing list of specimens at work at great length accomplished in an unstable round hand but on the whole with not so many blots and Nan May series of visits to Somerset House was begun saddening her with the cost of one nine pence each visit for fares and train and omnibus the first indeed cost more for Uncle Isaac's fare from Millwall was also to be paid but he came no more for in truth his failure as a man of business was instant and ignoble to begin with the shadow of the awful building fell on him as he neared it extinguishing his confidence and stopping his tongue in the quadrangle the very tall hat distinguished an Uncle Isaac of hushed speech and meek docility and along the corridors that followed Nan May deferentially in unresting pursuit of room 37 the room was reached at last and here Uncle Isaac found himself constrained to open the business for Nan May herself held back now and the young man in gold rimmed glasses fixed him with his eye so taking off his hat with both hands Uncle Isaac in a humble murmur began we've good morning sir we've come as it might be in form of a purpose what as regards to a will Uncle Isaac explained desperately dropping his technicality like a hot rivet as regards to a will and in testament which the late deceased did did write out very well are you the executor well sir not as it might be executor no but as uncle to Mr. May's daughter-in-law by marriage are you the gentleman turned abruptly to Nan May who gave him the will whereupon Uncle Isaac in a hopeful way of recovering nerve and eloquence was thrust out of the business and told that Nan May alone would be dealt with and he retired once more into the shadow with little relief to Levin a great deal of injured dignity so that for the rest Nan May relied on herself alone and hardened her face to the world when the specimens came to be sold a smart young man came from the London firm of naturalists to make an offer examine the trays in cases as hastily and carelessly as was consistent with a privilege sharp eye to all they held and with the air of contempt proper for a professional buyer for in such a matter of business the widow and the orphan needing money are the weak party, humble and timid watching small signs with sinking hearts and easy to beat and a man of business worth the name of one takes advantage of the fact for every penny it will bring so the smart young man looking more contemptuous than ever and dusting his fingers with his pocket handkerchief flung Nan May an offer of five pounds for the lot no thank you sir the woman answered with a simple decision I'm sorry you've had the trouble, good morning which was not the reply the young man had looked for and indeed not a reply easy of rejoinder so he was constrained to some unbending of manner and a hint that his firm might increase the offer if she would name a sum and the whole thing ended with a letter carrying a check for forty pounds which was very handsome indeed for the young man's firm would scarce have paid more than for the collection in the ordinary way of trade and so the old man's little affairs were gathered up and the inland revenue took its bite out of the estate and there were no more journeys to summer set but nobody would buy the cottage end of chapter seven chapter eight after London town this is a Liby Vox recording all Liby Vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Liby Vox.org recording by Alan Lawley just such a day as Johnny's London memories always brought cold and dry and brisk found him perched on the cart that was to take him to London again besides himself the cart held his mother and his sister and the household furniture from the cottage while banks the carrier sat on the shaft Bessie was made comfortable in the armchair her mother sat on a bundle of bedding when it was convenient to descend when steep hills were encountered and Johnny sat on the tailboard and jumped off and on as the humor took him all through long Lawton village there was something of a triumphal progress for people knew them and turned the log Bessie alone remained in the cart for the long haul a bug-hurst hill while Johnny tramping beside and making enough excursions into the thicket flung up into a lap sprigs of holly with berries already they had plenty close in a box but it is better to have too much than too little so any promising head was added to the store for it was December and Christmas would come in three weeks or so an air that Nan May was to open shop in London it was to be a chandler's shop with aspirations towards grocery and butter chandlery grocery and butter being things of the buying and selling where of Nan May knew as little as anybody in the world beyond the usual retail prices at the forest villages but something must be done and everything has a beginning somewhere so Nan May resolutely set face to the work to play the world with all the rigor of the game and her figure as she traveled steadily up the hill beside the cart was visible symbol of her courage always a healthy clean skin almost a handsome woman active and shapely she walked the hill with something of steadfast fierceness as one joining in trampling an obstacle her eyes fixed before her and taking no heed of the view that opened to Bessie's gaze as she looked back from under the tilt of the cart but busy with thought of the fight she was beginning a little fearful but by so much the gamer meanwhile it was a good piece of business to decorate a shop with holly at Christmas and here Johnny found holly ready for the work it would cost money in London the cart crowned the hilltop and still Nan May regarded not the show that lay behind where of Bessie took her fill for the moment still left there Lawton tumbled about its green hills beset with dusty trees like a spilt box full of toys with the sad coloured forest making the horizon behind it away to the left seen between the boughs of the near pines high beach steeple lifted from the velvety edge and as far to the right on its own rose the square church tower that stood by granddad's grave and where the bold curve of staples hill lost itself among the woods some tall brown trees up rose above the rest and gave goodbye for invisible beyond them lay the empty cottage in its patch of garden grown, dank and waste then roadside trees shut all out and the cart stopped on the level to take up Nan May and now the old mare jogged faster along to woodfoot wells and through the green fringed with a wonder of big houses and many broad miles of countries seen between them then farther down the easy slope of rising sun road with thick woods at the waist edge of the roadside their winter austerity softened by the sunlight among the brown twigs and so on and on till they emerged in bushy Layton flats and turned off for Layton's town and now they were nearing London indeed once past the green man they were on a trammed line road and there were shops and houses with scarce of break where there was one bricklayers on scaffoldings were building shopfronts the new shops had a raw disagreeable look and some of these a little older were just old enough to be dirty without being a witless disagreeable and raw some were prosperous brilliant with guilt and play glass others which had started even with them stood confess failures poor and mean with a pathetic hair almost an expression of disappointment in every window older buildings some very old stood about harrow green but already the wreckers had begun to pull a cottage down to make room for something else and then the new shops began again and lined the road without a check till they were new no longer but of the uncertain age of commonplace London brick and mortar and Maryland Point railway station was past and it was town indeed with clutter and smoke and mud Stratford Broadway lay wide and busy with the church and the town hall imposing and large but soon the road narrowed and grew fouler and the mouths of unclean Alice dribbled slush and dirty children across the pavement then there were factories and the road passed over narrow canals of curiously iridescent sludge too thick to the casual eye for the passage of any craft but interesting to the casual nose and there was a great low misty waste of the dullest possible rubbish where grass would not grow a more hopelessly desolate and dispiriting wilderness than Johnny had ever dreamed of or Bessie ever read with a chemical manure works in a far corner having a smell of great volume and range they topped Bauer Bridge and turned sharply to the left now it was London itself London by act of parliament there was a narrow way with a few wharf gates and then an open space with houses centuries old fallen on leaner years but still grubbly picturesque hence the old mare trotted through a long and winding street that led by dirty entries by shops by big distilleries by clean dull houses where managers lived by wooden inns swinging ancient signs over canal bridges to a place where many streets lying regularly at right angles or of small houses or clean every one a counterpart of every other and then the docks and the ships at least the great dark gates with the giant pepper box and the clock above them and the high walls with here and there a mask and at intervals as the houses permitted the high walls and the masks were visible again and again in the short way yet to go past Blackwell Cross till at last the cart stopped before a little shut up shop badly in want of paint in a street where one gained the house doors down areas maybe or up steps or on the level from a pavement more than two feet wide while the doors themselves and the wooden rails that guarded all the steps were painted in divers unaccustomed and original colours and had nothing in common but a subtle flavour of ship stores over the way was the wall of a shipyard and where so ever there might be a view of houses from the back there were small flagstaffs rigged as masks with gaffes complete the door of the little shop opened after a short struggle with the rusty lock and Nan Mei and her children were at home in London End of Chapter 8 Chapter 9 of To London Town This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org To London Town by Arthur Morrison Chapter 9 The shop in Harbour Lane had been a greengrocers, a barbers a fried fishmongers and a tripe sellers but chiefly it had been shut up as it was now Nobody had ever come into it with much money it is true but all had gone out of it with less than they brought it was said indeed that the greengrocer had gone out with nothing but the clothes he wore but as he went no farther than the end of the street where he drowned himself from a swing bridge he needed no more nor even so much Mr Duncan the landlord had bought the place at a low price as was his way in buying things but he got very little out of his investment which was not his way at all it was novelty that surprised and irritated Mr Duncan he was a substantial tradesman who had long relinquished counter work for there were a dozen assistants in the two departments of his chief shop eight for grocery and butter and four for oil and saucepans paint and mousetraps and there were half a dozen branches some in the one trade and some in the other scattered about in as many neighbouring parishes he was a large man of vast sympathy the tone of his voice with his wide pulpy hand told of infinite tenderness toward the sorrows and sins of the world even in the early days when he had but one shop, a little one and no shopman he would weigh out a pound of treacle with so melting a benignity that the treacle seemed balm of Gilead and a bounteous gift at the price he would drive a bargain in a voice of yearning beneficence that left the other party ashamed of his own self-seeking as well as something the poorer by the deal it was a voice wherein a purr had a large part a purr that was hoarse yet soothing and eloquent of compassion so that no man was so happy but a talk with Mr. Duncan would persuade him that the lot was hard indeed that entitled him to such a wealth of sympathy it was a wealth that Mr. Duncan squandered with no restraint but this that it carried no other sort of wealth with it on the whole Nan May had counted herself fortunate in falling in with Mr. Duncan for when, in his fatherly solicitude he discovered that she had a little money in hand he undertook to supply her with stock and to give her certain hints in the mystery of chandlery he also felt no cause for complaint for he had hoped for a tenant merely and here was a tenant and customer in one more, she was a widow knowing nothing of trade so that it might be possible to sell her what others would not buy at a little extra profit as to rent, moreover, he was doing well for on the day the deposit was paid Mrs. May had found little choice among vacant chops and this was in a situation to suit her plans as to Johnny and his trade and as she was tired and nervous full of plain anxiety sympathetic Mr. Duncan saw his chance of trying for an extra shilling a week and got it and Nan May was left to pay for what painting and cleaning the place might need it needed a good deal as Mr. Duncan had ruefully observed two days before in expectation of a decorator's bill if ever a tenant came and now Nan May addressed herself to the work first, the house must be cleaned the paint could be considered after she had swept one room into a habitable state on her last day in town and here her little store of furniture was stacked then her sleeves and her skirt turned back and a duster over her head she assailed walls and ceilings with the broom and after these the floors so far Johnny helped but when scrubbing began he hindered so it was that for a day or so until it was time for him to help with the windows he had leisure wherein to make himself acquainted with the neighborhood it was a neighborhood with a flavor distinct from that of the districts about it there the flatter of her house of six roomed cottages characterless all stretched everywhere rank behind rank in masses unbroken except by the busier thoroughfares of shops here each little house asserted its individuality by diversity of paint as much as by diversity of shape it was indeed the last stronghold of the shipwrights and mass makers fallen from their high state since the invasion of iron ships in fact shipwrights row was the name of a short rank of cottages close by with gardens in front each with its mast and flag complete in other places where the backyards were very small the flag staff and stays were apt to take to their use the whole space the pole rising from the exact center and a stay taking its purchase from each extreme corner so that anybody assaying a circuit must perform it with many sudden obeisances the little streets had an air of cleanliness all their own largely due to the fresh paint that embellished whatsoever there was an excuse for painting many front doors were reached by two stone steps always well whitened and whether there were steps or not the flagstones before each threshold were distinguished by a whited semicircle five feet in diameter noting this curious fact as he tramped along one such street Johnny was startled by an angry voice closer to his elbow a voice so very sudden and irate that he jumped aside as he looked for the source a red-faced woman knelt within a door Idle young faggot she said stomping your muddy boots all over my clean step and she made so vigorous a grasp at a broom that Johnny went five yards at a gallop now truly there was no step of any sort to the house and Johnny had butt crossed the semicircle because he conceived the footpath to be a public property and because it was narrow but he learnt afterwards that the semicircle was a sacred institution of the place in as high regard among the women as its fellow fetish the flag staff was among the men also that none but grown people and those of low habits or in drink dared trespass on it and that it was always called the step he learnt much too in the matter of paint every male inhabitant of Harbour Lane, Shipwrights Row and the neighbouring streets carried in his leisure moments a pipe, a pot of paint and a brush he puffed comfortably at the pipe and stumped about his back of front garden with the paint pot in one hand and the brush in the other touching up whatever paint would stick to rails, posts, water-butts dustbins, clothes posts all were treated not because they needed it to dry from the last coat but because there was the paint and there was the brush and there was the leisure and this was the only way to use all three so that most things about the gardens took an interesting variety of tints in the run of the year since it was rarely the case that the same colour was used twice in succession when all wooden surfaces were covered it was customary to take a turn at windowsills rainwater pipes and the stones or oyster shells and when nothing else was left then the paint pot and the brush and the pipe were conveyed to the front and the front door which had been green became royal blue or flaming salmon as did the railings if there were any and the window frames two things alone were not subject to such changes of complexion the flagstaff and the brick pavings for it was a law immutable that the flagstaffs should be speckless white and the bricks a cheerful vermilion this last a colour frequently renewed because of nailed boots but done in good oil paint because of wet weather everything else took the range of the rainbow and something beyond so that it was possible in those houses where two families lived to tell at a glance whether the upstairs family were on terms of intimacy or merely of distant civility with the downstairs by the colours uniform or diverse of the sills and the model fences that guarded the flower pots on them for the token and sign of friendship in harbour lane was the loan or the exchange of paint it was the proper method of breaking the ice between new acquaintances and was recognised as such by general sanction the greeting bitter blue paint any use to ya and the offer of the pot across the back fence were the harbour lane equivalents of a call and cards and the newcomer made early haste with an offer of yellow or green paint in return indeed it was in this way that the paint arrived which afterwards made Nan Mei's little shop a bedazzlement to the wayfarer and furnished Johnny with the first painting job he ever grew tired of but newcomers were rare in the neighbourhood for it was a colony apart with independent manners and habits of thought true it had its own divisions and differences as for instance on the question whether or not the association of the paint pot and brush with the Sunday paper was sinful but these divisions were purely internal and nothing was heard of them beyond the boundaries but paint was something more than a recreation and an instrument of social amenity it furnished the colony with an equivalent of high finance wherein all the operations proper to money and credit as spelt with capital initials were reflected in paint for it was a permanent condition of life in the harbour lane and thereabouts that everybody owed everybody else some amount of paint and was owed paint in his turn by others so that a complicated system of exchange prevailed in which verbal bills and checks were drawn as thus to make a simple case hello Bill what about that pot of paint well I was going to bring it round tonight alright well don't bring it to me take it to George you see I owe Jim a bit of paint and he owes Joe a bit and Joe owes George a bit so that I'll make it right all round don't forget with many such arrangements synchronising crossing and mixing with each other and made intricate by differing degrees and manners of debit and credit between Bill and George and Jim and Joe the unlikely subject of paint became involved in a mathematical web of exceeding interest a small image of the money market a sort of chaos by double entry wherein few operators were able to strike a balance at a moment and most were vaguely uncertain whether their accounts inclined toward an affluence of paint or toward sheer bankruptcy an exciting result attained without the aid of capital and with no serious hurt to anybody but these were things that Johnny learned in the succeeding weeks in his walks while his mother scrubbed floors at home he observed one or two matters as to costume he perceived that the men wore blue dungary jackets with large bone buttons and outside these now that it was winter short pilot coats of dark blue stuff thick and stiff like a board the trousers were moleskins perhaps once white all stained with very shiny black patches and all of one cut which placed the seat very baggy a few inches above the bend of the knee and there was a peaked cap of the same shiny black all over that distinguished parts of the trousers he also saw that whereas yesterday the backyards were brisk with fluttering linen today they held scarce any for yesterday was Monday and it was a matter of pride among the energetic housewives of the place to get Washington at the beginning of the week for a woman fell in her neighbor's respect that later in the week her washing day came so Johnny explored the streets with wide eyes and a full heart for here was London where they made great things ships and engines there were places he fancied he recognized great blank walls of mass behind them but now the mass seemed fewer and shorter than in the old days as in truth they were for now more of the ships were steam ships filling greater space for half the show of mass then in other places he came on basins filled with none but sailing ships and here the mass were as tall and fine as ever stayed with much cordage and had their yards slung at a gallon slope like the sword on Sir Walter Raleigh's hip and at Blackwall Stairs looking across the river stood an old old house that Johnny stared at for minutes together a month or two later he heard the tradition that Sir Walter Raleigh himself had lived there it was first of a row of old waterside buildings the newest of which had looked across and almost fallen into the river when King George's ships had anchored off Blackwall and King Charles's for that matter there too stood the artichoke tavern clean and white and wooden heap of gables and windows all out of perpendicular a house widest and biggest everywhere at the top and smallest at the ground floor a house that seemed ready to topple into the river at a push so far did its walls and galleries overhang the water and so slender were the piles that supported them here in the square space on the quay brown men in blue jerseys sold blowters by the score stringing them through the gills with tarry yarn and half the brown men wore earrings below on the foreshore lay many boats and children ran among them all raked for river mussels among the stones in another place he came on just such market streets as he remembered to have trotted along at his mother's side in the old London life though now indeed they seemed something dirtier and meaner and the people seemed less cheerful but this was a place away from Harbour Lane a neighbourhood of dull and dingy rows of little houses range on range and still farther he found another street of shops or rather half a street for one side was a blank wall but no great skeleton ship lifted its ribs above the bricks and no hammers clang behind them for it was a shipyard abandoned and a painted board thick with grime offered the place for sale or hire some of the shops opposite were abandoned too and the others were poor and dull Johnny walked a few steps backward looking at the shops and when he turned about at a corner he almost scorched himself at a cook fire where chestnuts were roasting and there behind the fire stood the pockmarked man himself not a wit altered there he stood with his hands deep in his pockets and tapped the curb with his clogged boots just as he had stood when the great ship was making and the lights flared round it and the shops were all open and busy perhaps the pitted face was a trifle paler but that was all but Harbour Lane and thereabout were the most interesting parts and the pleasantest for Johnny just beyond the stairs and the old houses and the artichoke tavern was a dock inlet with an extraordinary bridge that halved in the middle and swung back to each of two quays men worked it quite easily with a winch and Johnny could have watched for an hour but just here he caught sight of an acquaintance for down on the quay below the bridge end sitting on a mooring post was Mr. Butson a trifle seedy and fallen and conditioned Johnny fancied and grumbly ill used as ever as Johnny looked Mr. Butson took a pipe from his pocket and a screw of paper the paper yielded nothing both jacket pockets and scowled at his empty hands in the end after a gloomy inspection of the pipe he put it away and returned to savage meditation and Johnny went home End of Chapter 9