The Master Craftsman

A few days afterwards Robert came over to the yard. He came during the men’s dinner-hour, when a delightful calm settles down upon Wapping, and even the cranes and the donkey-engines are silent; when the waggons rumble no longer, and there is no ringing of bells, and no hammering of hammers, and no grinding of machines. And we sat upon two workmen’s benches opposite each another and talked.

‘I saw Lady Frances yesterday,’ he began; ‘she was good enough to invite me to call, and so I did call, and had a long talk with her.’

‘Good!’

‘She’s a splendid woman! That’s the kind of woman to back up a man. I used to think that a man wants no help from any woman. I now see that a clever, sympathetic woman who understands things may be of the greatest use.’

‘Undoubtedly. Lady Frances could help a man very much in politics if she chose. She might help you—but it must be in her own way. She is interested in you already.’

‘Of course she’s all for Party. She says I must join her Party, or else there is no chance.’

‘You’ve heard that before, haven’t you? Well, there is no chance outside the grooves; I am certain of it.’

‘Anyhow, I won’t join a party. I went in an Independent Member, and I’ll continue an Independent Member. Nothing whatever shall induce me to join the rank and file of Party, to run about and say what I am told to say—nothing, mind you. Not even to get the assistance of that woman.’

He spoke with the determination of approaching submission. His words had a forced ring in them; their exaggeration showed weakness. He was under temptation.

‘Then, Robert, farewell, a long farewell, to dreams of greatness!’

‘We talked about my speech, and she spoke highly of it. Well, why not? A very good speech it was. When we came to read it next day, how it stood out from the windbags and froth of the rest!—you noticed that, George?’

‘I did. A very fine speech—full of solid stuff.’

Robert never pretended to any modesty as regards his own work. He honestly thought it a great deal better than the work of anybody else, and he said so, without any affectation of inferiority. This candour impressed people. Other men it might injure, but not Robert. Very few men, indeed, do really possess a sincere, unaffected admiration for their own powers. Most of us are spoiled by diffidence. It is not everyone who realizes his own value.

‘Of course,’ he added, ‘she admired the speech.’

‘She admired your speech. What else did she say? What did she advise?’

‘Well, of course, criticisms are not always pleasant, but she has a large experience. She says, to begin with, that I must not be too earnest. You always said that, and I believe she’s right. The Members don’t like a preacher nor a funeral sermon. Everybody used to get up and go out in the old days when John Stuart Mill lectured the House. I’ve got to cultivate a lighter vein for ordinary occasions. Well, I believe I can do that; only I was anxious for them to learn the facts. I had to teach them the facts. Don’t they want the facts, then?’

‘They don’t want the trouble of learning them.’

‘She advises me very strongly to follow up the success of the first speech. This time I must answer someone, and prove that I have the power of debate. Well, George, though I now see very plainly that our little mock Parliament was conceited and cocky and shallow——’

‘Isn’t that almost enough in the way of adjectives for one little mock Parliament?’

‘Yet it did give me certain power of reply and repartee—as I mean to show the House at the earliest opportunity.’

‘Very good. Next.’

‘Oh, then we began talking about other things. It seems odd that I should be taking advice about my own affairs from a woman, doesn’t it?’

‘It would have seemed odd three months ago.’

‘But, of course, Lady Frances isn’t an ordinary woman. She’s got the brains of fifty women and the experience of a hundred put together. What a woman she is!’

‘How did she advise you about your own affairs?’

‘She asked me about myself. Of course I told her everything there is to tell. Why should I conceal things? I even told her how you have given your evenings for three months or more to show me what the West End world was like. She strongly advises me to go into society. “Become one of the world,” she says.’

‘Did she tell you how to get in? The gates of what she calls the world do not exactly stand open to everybody.’

‘Exactly. What they call Society is divided into circles, and there are circles within circles. There are art circles, literary circles, musical circles, rich circles, exclusive circles, dramatic circles—all kinds, overlapping each other. And there are political circles; and in them she could launch me—of course on the usual conditions.’

‘Party, of course.’

‘Party. No room anywhere, it seems, for the Independent Member.’

‘And you are an Independent Member. It is unfortunate, isn’t it?’

‘Says I must join a political club. But there are none for us Independent Members.’

‘No; it is unfortunate.’

‘Then we talked about the way in which men get on nowadays. No one, not even you, ever before understood my position so perfectly. Whatever I tell her, she catches it in a minute. One would think she had lived next door. And about the ways of men—they don’t climb, George, they wriggle—they wriggle, most of them.’

‘So I have heard. That is partly why I came here. I don’t like wriggling.’

‘Wriggling and advertising. One must be like the man who advertises his soap, always before the world.’

‘That is, in fact, the first thing, and the second thing, and everything.’

‘She told me about one man who has certainly got on remarkably well, yet not so well as I mean to do, because he hasn’t the same ability. This man, who, like me, had no family influence, got into a political club, wrote a paper now and again for one of the magazines, spoke frequently at public meetings, was seen everywhere at private views, and first nights, and at private houses, went into the House, spoke on occasion and with weight, published a volume of essays, was accepted as a man who went everywhere long before Society received him at all, and is now married to a woman whose wealth and connections will advance him rapidly.’

‘That may be your fate.’

‘But the trickery of it!’

‘If you want to achieve a definite object, you cannot always choose the way. Nobody but yourself, remember, knows your own motives. What you call trickery may appear to the world as the natural rewards of ability.’

‘Well—but—I don’t know.’ He walked to the edge of the Quay, looking up and down the river. ‘It is a world so different from anything I ever imagined,’ he said. ‘You have opened out the world to me. I confess that I hesitate to venture in upon this kind of path.’

‘You don’t think that you are the only ambitious man in the world, do you? My dear boy, everybody there is ambitious, except the men who have got up as high as they can. And even then they all want something—a little more social consideration. Everybody for himself, anywhere. Nowhere so much as there, in the City of the Setting Sun—in the West. In other words, you have discovered that your old dreams must be abandoned.’

‘I am beginning to understand that it is so. I have been plunged in ignorance. But it is difficult to give up the old ideals.’

‘You are a more human creature than I thought you, Robert. I don’t believe you will ever be so happy over there as you have been in this old shed among the shavings.’

‘It isn’t happiness I want; it is success and power. Well, George’—he came to the bench and sat down beside me—‘I shall not give up because things are different from what I expected. I mean to go on, though perhaps in another way. I mean, I say, to go on.’

‘With a wriggle and a twist?’

‘I shall wriggle as little as may be. Now listen carefully, and don’t interrupt. I am going to make a proposal to you of the greatest importance.’

‘Go on; I will not interrupt.’

‘Well, I see very plainly, to begin with, that the way open to me means a good deal of expenditure. I must have good chambers, some place where I can receive people. I must keep myself well groomed.’

‘Both points are important.’

‘I must have a club. I must cultivate people. There are already plenty of men in the House who want to know me. I must be able to give a dinner occasionally, as Lady Frances advised; and there are the daily expenses, which in the West End run away with so much money. One must go about in cabs; it isn’t possible to go without cabs. Why, here I used to spend nothing at all from day to day except our modest housekeeping money. It means money. I must have money, George.’

‘Yes, if you are going to live over there. But you’ve got your business here.’

‘I can’t live in two places. There you have it. If I am to get on, I must live in the West End; and I can’t carry on this business from Piccadilly Chambers, that’s quite certain.’

‘I’m afraid it’s impossible. Shall you sell this business?’

‘No, I can’t afford to sell the business. But I’ve thought of a plan, and I’ll lay it before you to turn over in your mind. First of all, are you perfectly serious and in earnest about the boat-building trade? Mind, I never believed it. Do you really and truly intend to go into the trade as a living?’

Put in that way, I was staggered, because, you see, I perceived at once what he was driving at.

‘What I thought,’ I replied slowly, ‘when I came here was that I might learn the business from you, and that I might then take my small capital, which is no more than three thousand pounds, and start as a boat-builder in one of the Colonies—British Columbia, for example—wherever I could find an opening. That was my plan, subject to my mastering the mysteries of the craft.’

‘You have mastered most of them, and you are a first-class hand already. But you can’t be trusted yet in the buying and the selling.’

‘Since I’ve kept the books for you I’ve learned something of them as well.’

‘Yes; but you can’t run alone yet. However, that part of it might be managed. Now for my plan. You’ve got a good pile, though you call it so little. It’s a good deal more than I shall want. Give up the idea of a Colony. Settle here in the old place—you can go on living in the old house, if you like—and become my partner—the managing partner. You shall buy your share. Don’t think that I want only to get your money, though that will be of the greatest use to me just now. You will make your solicitor examine the books—for that matter, you have the books already in your hands—and he will tell you what you ought to offer, if you entertain the proposal. Come! Burnikel and Burnikel it has always been called. There were once two cousins in it before they quarrelled over the old man’s diamonds. Let there be two cousins in it again. Robert and George they were once. Robert and George they will be again.’ He got up from the bench. ‘You want time to decide,’ he said. ‘Don’t press yourself. Take as much time as you like. I will advise you in any difficulty, but I will no longer think for the business. You will have to do that. Well, turn it over in your mind, and tell me when you have decided.’

So he got up and left me. Then the men came back from their dinner, and the work went on again.

The most remarkable part of the proposal was that we were actually going to reverse the situation, to change places. I was to give up clubs, chambers, friends, society, and everything that belongs to the class in which I had been brought up. As I had no fortune that was inevitable. But I was to put my cousin in my place. He would give up his business—hitherto his livelihood—and take my place, and belong to the world. And I was to take his place down in this deserted city of warehouses, where, except the clergy of the parish and myself, there would be no single resident who by any stretch of imagination could call himself of the gentle class.

Ninety years ago the two cousins, Robert and George Burnikel, were partners. After all these years two other cousins, Robert and George Burnikel, were to become partners again.

Ninety years ago Robert and George parted. Robert stayed at the yard; George went West. Now this situation was reversed: George was to stay at the yard; Robert was going West.