The Story of Antony Grace

In good time I started, leaving Revitts sleeping off his night’s fatigue, and about ten minutes to ten I was at the door of the great printing-office, flushed with exercise and dread, but eager all the same to make a beginning.

I hesitated as to whether I should go in at once or wait till it struck ten, but I thought that perhaps I might be some time before I saw Mr Ruddle, so I walked straight in, and the man reading the paper in his gloss case looked up at me in a very ill-used way as I stopped at his window.

“You again?” he said gruffly. “Well, what is it?”

“If you please, I’ve come to work,” I said.

“Work? Why, it’s ten o’clock. Why weren’t you here at eight?”

“Mr Ruddle said ten o’clock, sir, and I want to see him.”

“Oh!” he said gruffly, as if he were the gatekeeper of an earthly paradise. “Well, I s’pose you must pass in. Go on.”

I went on into the passage, feeling as if the doorkeeper was the most important personage there, and as if the proprietors must make a practice of asking permission to go into their own place.

I went, then, nervously down the passage till I came to the door of the room where I had seen Messrs Ruddle and Lister. It was ajar, and there were loud voices talking, and though I knocked they went on.

“Stern firmness is one thing, Grimstone,” I heard Mr Ruddle saying, “and bullying another.”

“But you don’t consider, sir, that I bully the men, do you?” said another voice which was quite familiar to me.

“You may call it what you like, Grimstone. There, I’m busy now.”

There was a sharp step, and the door was flung wide open and closed, when my friend the overseer, who had been so rough to me on the previous day, came out and pretty nearly knocked me down.

Chapter Seventeen.

My First Literary Efforts. I Make Another Friend

The overseer and I stood in the dim light gazing at one another for a few moments, during which I seemed to read in his sharp, harsh face an air of resentment at my presence.

“Hallo!” he said, in an angry voice, and evidently rejoicing at having encountered some one upon whom he could vent a little of the anger seething within him. “What, are you here again, you young vagabond? Didn’t I tell you yesterday to go about your business? Be off with you, or I’ll send for a policeman. How dare you! What do you mean?”

“But please, sir,” I remonstrated.

“Will you be off?” he roared; and I felt that I was about to be driven from the place, when the proprietor’s door was sharply opened and Mr Lister appeared.

“Confound it all, Grimstone,” he cried, “what’s the matter now? Look here, sir; I will not have this bullying and noise in the place.”

“Your father never spoke to me like that, Mr John, when he was alive.”

“My father put up with a great deal from you, Grimstone, because you were an old and faithful servant of the firm; but that is no reason why I, his son, should submit to what is sometimes bordering on insolence.”

“Insolence, Mr John?”

“Yes, Grimstone, insolence.”

“What is the matter?” said Mr Ruddle, coming out.

“Mr John says I’m insolent, Mr Ruddle,” said the overseer angrily; “was I ever insolent to you, sir, or his father?”

“Well, if you want the truth, Grimstone, you often were very insolent, only we put up with it for old acquaintance’ sake. But what’s the matter now?”

“I was just speaking to this young vagabond, who persists in hanging about the place, sir, when Mr John came out and attacked me, sir.”

“Don’t call names, Grimstone,” said Mr Lister hotly. “This young vagabond, as you call him, is a fresh boy whom Mr Ruddle has taken on, and whom I desire you to treat kindly.”

“Why didn’t he speak, then,” said the overseer angrily; “how was I to know that he was engaged? In Mr Lister senior’s time the engaging of boys for the office was left to the overseer.”

He stalked off, evidently in high dudgeon, leaving the masters gazing at one another.

“He grows insufferable,” said Mr Lister angrily. “One would think the place belonged to him.”

“Yes, he is rough,” said Mr Ruddle; “but he’s a good overseer, John, and a faithful old servant. He was with us when we first began. Well, my boy, you’ve come then; now go upstairs to the composing-room, and ask Mr Grimstone to give you a job; he’ll be a bit cross, I dare say, but you must not mind that.”

“No; sir; I’ll try not.”

“That’s right,” he said, giving me a friendly nod, and I hurried upstairs and walked right through the composing-room to Mr Grimstone’s glass case.

He saw me coming, but, though I tapped softly at the door several times, he refused to take any notice of me for some minutes, during which I had to stand uncomfortably aware of the fact that I had given terrible offence to this man in authority, by allowing myself to be engaged downstairs after he had bade me go.

He was busy, pen in hand, looking over some long, narrow pieces of paper, and kept on turning them over and over, making his spectacles flash as he changed his position, and directing the top of his very shiny bald head at me, till at last he raised it, gave a start, and turned as if astonished at seeing me there; but it was poor pantomime and badly done.

“Well, what is it?” he said.

“If you please, sir, Mr Lister sent me up to ask you to give me a job.”

“Me give you a job,” he said, in a menacing tone; “why, I thought you would be hanger-on down below, and not come up into the office, where you’d get your nice white hands dirtied. What job can I give you? What can you do? What do you know? Here, Smith, take this boy, and give him a page of pie to dis.”

The big, fat-headed boy came up from a distant part of the room, scowled at me, and led me to one of the desk-like frames, upon which were four large open trays full of compartments of various sizes.

“Here you are!” he said, “lay holt;” and he thrust a little heavy square paper packet into my hands. “It’s burjoyce,” – so it sounded to me; “look alive, and then come for another.”

He went away, leaving me balancing the heavy packet in my hand. It was about the size and thickness of a small book, but what next to do with it, or how I was to do it, I, did not know.

Of course I know now that it was the petty, contemptible revenge of a little-minded man to set me, a totally uninstructed novice, to do that which an old practised compositor will shelve if he can, as an uncongenial task. To “dis a page of burjoyce pie” was, in fact, to distribute – that is, place in its proper compartments, or in the case – every large and small letter, space and point, of a quantity of bourgeois, or ordinary newspaper type, that had been accidentally mixed, or “pied” as it is technically termed. The distribution of an ordinary page or column of type is comparatively easy, for the skilled workman reads it off word by word, and drops the letters dexterously in the compartment assigned; but in “pie” the letters and spaces are all jumbled, and the task is troublesome and slow.

There was I, then, with about as easy a task as if I had been suddenly handed the various parts of a watch, and told to put them together; and I felt helpless and ashamed, not daring to interrupt any of the busy men intent upon their work at the various frames.

An hour must have elapsed before I felt that I dare venture to go towards Mr Grimstone’s glass case, and I was about desperately to tell him that I was ignorant and helpless, and quite unfit to do what he had set me, when the dark, stern-eyed man I had seen on the previous day came round by where I stood.

He gazed at me curiously, and gave me a nod, and was passing on, when I desperately exclaimed:

“If you please, sir – ”

“Eh? What, is it, my boy?” he said.

“I was told, sir, to dis this pie,” I said, fearful that I was making some absurd blunder about the word pie.