The Frobishers/Chapter 11

MY PAL

It afforded sensible delight to Polly Myatt to be allowed to assist Joan in the furnishing of No. 16, after it had undergone preliminary whitewashing. She bustled in and out, and, so far as her strength permitted, helped in the arrangement of the articles sent from the shops. The energy of her mind was out of all proportion to the capacity of her body.

Joan's ideas of what were necessary transcended those of Polly, who deemed it incumbent on her to check her friend's tendency to too lavish expenditure. But indeed, No. 16 was supplied with only what was necessary, though Joan and Polly differed somewhat occasionally as to what constituted necessaries. Joan hankered after a carpet for the little parlour, but Polly would not hear of such extravagance. She had taken the idea into her head that Joan was in extremely reduced circumstances, and that it was her duty to restrain Joan's outlay. A cocoa-nut fibre matting was finally determined on as a compromise.

No difference of opinion manifested itself as to the absolute and supreme necessity for looking-glasses.

The daily work in the potteries, exacting cleanliness in person and in manipulation, has induced those engaged therein to be scrupulous about having their houses neat.

The home of the Myatts was no exception. Although in it no article was new, yet everything was kept in order and was clean, save only from the all-pervading and unavoidable grime of the ingrained soot. To see the adjoining habitation fresh with limewash, and stuffed with articles new from the shops, afforded Polly a pleasure that found expression in repeated bursts of laughter. By Joan's readily granted permission she was enabled to bring in her father and mother to contemplate and admire what was partly the achievement of their daughter.

The Myatt père was a man employed on firing the ovens, and the duty held him often occupied throughout the night. It is a duty very responsible, as on the proper maintenance of the heat and its intensity depends the result of a whole oven's packing. An oven for biscuit china has to be fired for sixty hours, one for glost, or glazing, for forty.

He was a strongly built man, with a thick black "Newgate collar" under his shaven chin, and with a bald head between two bushes of hair above the ears. His wife was a washed-out woman with faded eyes and pallid complexion, who appeared to have had everything boiled out of her except temper, and to have lost all power except that of giving tongue; and that was evidenced by the crows' feet about her mouth and the twitch of her vixenish lips.

The man, on the other hand, bore the appearance of being heavy and placable. Both regarded Joan Frobisher with covert suspicion. They readily detected that she belonged to a class superior to their own, and had ideas of a different order to theirs. This mistrust rendered them awkward in her presence. But Polly partook of none of this. She regarded herself as a patroness, to whom Joan owed her introduction to No. 16 and to the cheap dealers in furniture, and to whom a moderating influence was due, that had delivered Joan from extravagant expenditure.

Among those occupying the street, who manifested considerable interest in the proceedings in the corner house, as with her own people, Polly was a stout champion to her friend.

All the inhabitants of the thoroughfare were acquaintances of Polly, and into intercourse with them all Joan was drawn by her companion. She was soon on speaking terms with every inhabitant of her own sex, and with some of the other as well. Although aware that she was observed critically and with some dubitation, she encountered no unfriendliness from the women or lack of respect from the men.

At night, when Joan lay on her bed, all alone for the first time in her life in a strange house, she was able leisurely to consider her new surroundings, and gauge her own capacity for accommodating herself to them.

There was much that met her eyes and ears wholly unfamiliar, and some things jarred with her high-strung refinement.

The town was sordid, the streets shabby, the houses very small. So far as she was able to judge, it was not inhabited by any gentlefolk, as she understood the term, except by a parson or two and a few medical men, and possibly by a lawyer.

Those who lived in the best houses&mdash;houses of more than a ground floor and one upper storey, and who had a room on each side of the front door, were also those who worked least, the better-class shopkeepers, such as did not live above their shops. But of these there were few. As to the owners of the tile-yards, the potbanks, and the collieries, they had mansions far away in the country, among trees and flowers, and went to their business by train.

Living where she had chosen to live, living in the manner she had elected, and among such as necessarily must be her daily associates, she would be as absolutely cut off from the society of those of the class to which she belonged by birth and culture as if she had been wrecked on a South Sea island, peopled only with dusky natives.

Perhaps one of those elements most difficult to which to accommodate the taste is dialect. But some dialects are vulgar and repugnant to the refined ear, and others are not so. To this latter class is the common speech of Staffordshire. It is singularly pure. It bears a Northern intonation that is pleasing and never grates, and possesses none of those elements of defective or distorted pronunciation that characterise the vocalisation of a Cockney.

Joan had already noticed, as regards the external appearance of the people, that dark hair prevailed, and that those employed in the potworks were curiously short in their lower limbs. This was probably due to sedentary habits from an early age. They might have long backs, but their legs were disproportionate.

Joan, with cool, clear sense reviewing all that had come under her observation, was well aware that she would be deprived of a thousand things that she would miss, and which hitherto she had considered indispensable. But she saw with equal distinctness that by the change she would not be the loser. Hitherto, she had known nothing of that part of humanity which earns its daily bread, save only what she had seen of the sleepy rustics about Pendabury, and these she viewed from a towering height, which had rendered her incapable of understanding them as they understood one another.

Now she was about to become a worker among working people, and she foresaw that the study of the class into which she had entered was such as would prove of engrossing interest. One fact had already impressed itself deeply on her&mdash;that human nature was much the same in every class. As some little act of kindness, some token of delicate courtesy, was done or shown, there swelled in her heart a thought of grateful surprise&mdash;and the words of the sacred text recurred to her reiteratedly&mdash;

"He hath made of one blood all . . . men for to dwell on all the face of the earth."

"Polly," said Joan, "I am ready to start in quest of a situation. The house is in order, and I must now see to getting work."

"Where do you think of trying?"

"I shall go from one potbank to another; I shall try great and small. It will be strange if I do not find a gap into which to step."

"I will go with you. Try Fenning's. That's where I worked, and there they know me. Father is there as well, but mother is at Popplewood's."

"It is the same to me where I begin, but I should naturally like to be where you are known and esteemed, Polly. Your good word would go a long way in making my lot comfortable."

"Well, I don't say I can't do something for you. I'll take you to the office. You must ask for Charlie Mangin. He's the head bailie that runs the show for the Fennings." Joan was dressed in preparation, in a very plain black stuff gown, and with a black straw hat on her head. Under one arm she carried a portfolio, and in one hand a basket.

Polly led the way through the deserted streets and along the blank wall of a chinaware factory, whence issued no whirr of machinery, making the walls vibrate. The building seemed to contain no life.

Polly led down a side alley, and then up a flight of steps in a building, where there were glazed tiles casing the walls. At the summit was a glass door.

"Here you are," said the girl. "Ask to see and speak to the manager."

Joan thrust the swinging door open, and preceded Polly within. A clerk looked up.

"What do you want?"

"Kindly allow me a word with Mr. Mangin."

"He's busy. You must wait."

Then the clerk resumed his ledger-work, and Joan retreated to where Polly was seated on a bench by the wall.

A moment later a man came from an inner room and spoke with the clerk about some letters to be entered. Joan at once recognised him as the person who had given annoyance in the tram, and between whom and the girl he was persecuting she had interposed. Polly nudged Joan, and whispered&mdash;

"That's Charlie Mangin."

As the clerk did not inform the manager that there was anyone desirous of seeing him, she ventured to step forward and catch his eye. Mr. Mangin looked at her, somewhat rudely, but without recognition. He said&mdash;

"Well, what?"

"I beg your pardon, sir," answered Joan; "will you allow me a word with you?"

"What about?"

"If you please, I have come to ask for employment as an artist."

"Do you belong to a potter family?"

"No, but I can draw. I have brought a portfolio of my flower subjects. Will you be so good as to look at them?"

She opened and exposed some of her sketches. Very delicate and charming they were.

"Oh!" said the manager, "these are no good at all. It's one thing painting on paper and another on chinaware."

"But I have already essayed that. In this basket I have attempts made on biscuit ware, afterwards burnt&mdash;I shall be glad to show them to you."

She drew from the basket a cup and a saucer, the sides decorated with geraniums, in wreaths.

Mr. Mangin took up one of the articles with a contemptuous shrug and a purse of the lips.

"This is amateurish stuff&mdash;all bad&mdash;no use in the least. You don't know the trade, and we don't require you."

"Then if I cannot paint, will you take me into some other department? I will do anything to which I am set."

"Ground-laying?"

"Ground-laying rather than nothing at all. I will take the lowest and worst-paid place sooner than none at all."

"No good&mdash;you're too old. We like to begin with the very young. They grow up to understand it."

He turned away, thrusting the cup and saucer from him slightingly.

"Mr. Mangin," said Polly, rising from the bench and stepping forward. "She's my pal. You must give her a chance."

"What!&mdash;you here again, Polly Carrots? Not to get into the bank once more?"

"No chance of that," said the girl, and held up her disabled hand. "No. My work is over."

"You should go away, Polly. Get you to the seaside for a while, or up into the moorlands. In time it will work off."

"Bosh! How am I to do that?"

"I daresay we could procure you a ticket to some seaside home or convalescent hospital. I know that Messrs. Fennings subscribe"&mdash;

"Oh yes! you want to have me out of the way lest it go worse with me. I get the colic and die and be inquitched, and so am put into the papers. Bless your bones! there was a socialist chap down our street yesterday, picking up copy, as he called it, and put all sorts of questions to me about the lead."

"You kept your mouth shut, I hope?" exclaimed the manager.

"I did. But Lord! I might have told tales. I'm not that sort. If I have to talk, I'll do so to the Government Commissioner when he comes, and I hear he's on his way. Then there'll be ructions."

"Polly, you are not such a fool!"

"Not I. I know who is doing us to death. It's not Fennings, nor Popplewoods, nor Dunscumbes&mdash;'tis the general public. Never fear&mdash;I'll say naught. But there&mdash;if I oblige you so far, you oblige me. Take my pal."

"Well, Polly, this I would do, but she knows nothing."

"Save your holy bones!" said the girl, "I'll tell you what I'll do. Let me have home some of the ware and paints. Ill can't lay on colour myself with this crippled hand, I can insense her how to do it. Come&mdash;you'll not deny me this, and when the Commissioner comes I'm sure to be in our back yard hanging out the clothes."

"Well, Polly, I'll take your pal, as you call her, on your terms."