The Clockmaker's Apprentice

Source written for Revision Library in a classic literary style (original, copyright-free).

It was upon a raw morning in November, when the fog lay heavy upon the cobbles of Elmsworth and the last leaves clung stubbornly to the churchyard elms, that young Thomas Redfern first presented himself at the door of Mr. Absalom Grieve, clockmaker, of No. 4 Vellum Row.

He had walked the whole distance from the coaching inn, his portmanteau banging against his knee at every third step, and had rehearsed his little speech of introduction some dozen times upon the road, until the words had quite lost their meaning and rattled about his head like coins in an empty tin. He was an orphan of thirteen years, sent from his uncle's parish in Norfolk with a letter of indenture and precious little else besides.

The shop, when at last he found it, wore an aspect scarcely less forbidding than the fog without. Its window, crowded with clocks of every size and temper, ticked and chimed in such discordant chorus that Thomas fancied the very building must be alive, and none too pleased at his arrival. He knocked twice upon the door, and, receiving no answer, ventured a third time, whereupon it was opened by a woman of uncertain years, her apron dusted with flour, who looked him over with the frank suspicion generally reserved for tinkers and other itinerant persons.

"You'll be the Norfolk boy," said she, in a manner that made the observation sound almost an accusation. "You had best come in out of the wet, though I daresay Mr. Grieve will have plenty to say to you before the day is out."

She led him through a narrow passage, thick with the smell of oil and beeswax, into a workshop where a small, stooped gentleman sat hunched over a bench, a jeweller's glass screwed into one eye, examining the innards of a longcase clock with the tender concentration other men reserve for the sickbed of a beloved relation. He did not look up at once, and Thomas stood, cap in hand, not daring to speak, while the multitude of clocks about the walls ticked on, each a fraction out of step with its neighbour, so that the room seemed to hum with a hundred small, disagreeable arguments.

At length Mr. Grieve set down his glass and regarded the boy with eyes of a pale, watery blue, though not unkind for all their coldness. "So," said he, "you are the article my cousin the rector has seen fit to send me. Well, you are thin, which is no bad thing in this trade, for a stout finger will not thread a hairspring. Can you write your name?"

"Yes, sir," said Thomas, and did so, upon a scrap of paper offered him, in a hand rather better than his years might have promised.

"Hum," said the clockmaker, examining the signature as though it were itself a mechanism requiring adjustment. "It will serve. You will begin, Thomas Redfern, by learning to be silent, for I have found that boys who talk overmuch generally think but little, and a clock, you will discover, has no patience whatsoever with a careless hand." He rose, with some difficulty, and beckoned the boy nearer to the bench, where a hundred minute wheels and springs lay arrayed upon a cloth, gleaming faintly in the grey light from the window. "Here," said he, not unkindly, "is where you shall learn what patience truly means."

Thomas looked upon the scattered wheels, so small and so many, and felt, for the first time since his uncle's letter had summoned him from all he knew, something that was not quite fear, and not quite hope, but partook a little of each; and he resolved, standing there amid the ticking and the oil-smell and the old man's watchful eye, that he would not be found wanting.