Halfway up a hill between Wimborne and Ringwood, Hoopdriver and Jessie stopped among the pine trees to rest.
They sat beside the road, enjoying the quiet afternoon.
After a while, Hoopdriver took the cigarette from his mouth and suddenly returned to a subject that had been troubling him.
“Do you think a man who works in a draper’s shop is a respectable citizen?”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
“What if his job is to persuade people to buy things they don’t really want?”
“Does he have to do that?”
“That’s what salesmanship is,” Hoopdriver said. “If you don’t do it, you won’t keep your job.”
He looked down at the grass.
“There’s no point arguing about it. It isn’t a particularly honest trade, and it isn’t exactly useful work either. It’s not highly respected, and there’s hardly any freedom.”
He counted the hours on his fingers.
“Seven in the morning until half past eight at night. Every day. Where’s the time to actually live?”
Jessie remained silent.
“Real working men laugh at us,” he continued. “And educated men—bank clerks, solicitors’ clerks and people like that—look down on us.”
He gave a bitter laugh.
“From the outside, we look respectable. Inside the business, they pack us into dormitories like prisoners. We live on bread and butter, get ordered around all day, and are treated almost like slaves.”
Jessie looked at him with concern.
“You’re just respectable enough to know that you’re not really respected,” he said.
“And unless you have money of your own, there’s almost no way out. Most draper’s assistants can barely earn enough to support a family. And even if you get married, your employer can still treat you like dirt, because he knows you need the job.”
He shook his head.
“That’s what being a draper’s assistant means. And you tell me I should be satisfied with it.”
He looked directly at her.
“Would you be satisfied if you were a shop girl?”
Jessie didn’t answer.
She looked at him sadly, her brown eyes full of sympathy.
For once, Hoopdriver felt he had nothing more to say.
After a while, he spoke again.
“I’ve been thinking.”
Jessie turned toward him and rested her cheek against her hand.
“Well?”
“I was thinking about it this morning.”
“Yes?”
“It’s probably a foolish idea.”
“What idea?”
Hoopdriver hesitated.
“I’m about twenty-three.”
“Yes.”
“I had a decent education until I was about fifteen.”
He sighed.
“That means I’ve already lost eight years.”
He looked at her.
“Is it too late for me?”
Jessie said nothing.
“I wasn’t completely hopeless at school,” he continued. “I learned some algebra. I studied Latin as far as the basic grammar. I even learned some French.”
He gave a small shrug.
“I had the beginnings of an education, anyway.”
“And now you’re wondering whether you should continue your education?”
“Yes.”
He looked embarrassed.
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“You should,” Jessie said immediately.
Hoopdriver looked surprised.
“You really think so?”
“Of course.”
She smiled.
“You’re a man. You’re free to choose your own future.”
Her voice became more enthusiastic.
“Sometimes I wish I were in your position. You actually have the chance to start over and fight for something better.”
Hoopdriver stared at the road.
“Am I really enough of a man to do that?”
Then he remembered the years he had lost.
“There are eight years missing.”
“You can make them up.”
“How?”
“By working harder than the men who had everything handed to them.”
She looked at him seriously.
“The educated men you admire aren’t necessarily moving forward. Most of them are perfectly satisfied with their lives.”
She smiled slightly.
“They play golf, go to dinners, and spend their time thinking of clever things to say to women like my stepmother.”
Hoopdriver laughed.
“They think they already know everything,” Jessie continued.
“You don’t.”
She pointed at him.
“That may actually be your advantage. You know there are things you don’t know. They don’t.”
“Good Lord,” Hoopdriver said.
“You certainly know how to encourage a fellow.”
“I wish I could help you,” Jessie said quietly.
Hoopdriver became thoughtful again.
“It’s pretty obvious you don’t think much of drapers.”
Jessie paused.
“People have risen from much lower positions than yours.”
She began listing examples.
“Burns was a ploughman. Hugh Miller was a stonemason. Dodsley was a footman.”
“But drapers are different.”
“How?”
“We’re respectable enough to be stuck in the middle.”
He gestured toward himself.
“We wear decent coats and collars, but we’re not educated men. We’re too ordinary to attract attention and too proud to be satisfied.”
“Wasn’t there a theologian named Clarke who had been a draper?”
“Maybe.”
Hoopdriver thought for a moment.
“The only successful draper I’ve ever heard about was someone who started a business making sewing thread.”
“Have you ever read Hearts Insurgent?”
“No.”
He immediately changed direction.
“The truth is, I haven’t read much at all.”
Jessie listened.
“You don’t get much time when you work where I do. We have a library at the shop, and I’ve read most of what was there.”
He began counting the authors he remembered.
“I’ve read a lot of Besant, quite a bit of Mrs. Braddon, some Rider Haggard, Marie Corelli, and a few Ouida novels.”
He shrugged.
“They’re good stories. Some of them are excellent writers. But somehow, none of them seemed to have much to do with my life.”
“And there are so many books everyone talks about that I’ve never even opened.”
“Do you read anything besides novels?”
“Hardly.”
He smiled awkwardly.
“After working all day, you’re too tired. And proper books aren’t always easy to get.”
“I did attend some extension lectures once.”
“What did you study?”
“Elizabethan dramatists.”
He made a face.
“It sounded impressive, but most of it went right over my head.”
Jessie smiled.
“And I tried woodcarving too.”
“How did that go?”
“I cut my thumb.”
He shrugged.
“So I gave it up.”
Jessie looked at him.
Hoopdriver sat there with his hands resting loosely on his knees.
His face was troubled.
“It makes me sick when I think about it,” he said.
“I was cheated.”
“Cheated?”
“My old schoolmaster promised to make something of me. He should have been able to give me a real education.”
Instead, he had given me scraps of knowledge and sent me into the world.
“Twenty-three years,” Hoopdriver said bitterly.
“And what do I have to show for them?”
“I don’t really know anything.”
“I can’t really do anything.”
“And now I’m too old to learn.”
“Are you?”
He barely seemed to hear her.
“My parents paid thirty pounds for my apprenticeship.”
He laughed bitterly.
“Thirty pounds. They thought they were paying to have me trained properly.”
“My employer promised to teach me the trade.”
“He didn’t.”
“He taught me how to be an employee. That’s all.”
“That’s what happens to draper’s apprentices. If every man who does that were called a fraud, there wouldn’t be anyone left to sell cloth and thread.”
He sighed.
“So don’t tell me about Burns and all those great men who started with nothing.”
“I’m not like them.”
“But I’m not completely hopeless either.”
“With proper teaching, I might have become something better.”
He looked at Jessie.
“I wonder what those men who laugh at people like me would have become if they had wasted twenty-three years the way I have.”
He gave a tired smile.
“Twenty-three years is a pretty big disadvantage.”
For a moment neither spoke.
Then Hoopdriver looked at her again.
“You’ve done this to me.”
Jessie looked puzzled.
“You’re real.”
“You’ve made me think about what I really am.”
“And what I might have become.”
He looked toward the distant road.
“Suppose my life had been different.”
“Then make it different.”
Hoopdriver looked at her.
“How?”
“Work.”
She spoke firmly.
“Stop pretending you’re someone you’re not.”
“Face your life honestly.”
“Fight for the future you want.”
Hoopdriver gave her a sideways glance.
“And even then…”
He stopped.
Jessie waited.
“No,” he said quietly.
“It’s probably no use.”
He looked down at the ground.
“I’m already starting too late.”
The conversation ended there.
For a long time, they simply sat beneath the pine trees, each lost in thought.