Chapter IV: Part 4

At the place where the road from Carnaby Down ends in the main western highway that goes towards Bath there stands, or once stood, a strongly built stone cottage confronting, on the opposite side of the high road, a large barn and some cattle stalls. A man named Cotton lived with his wife lonely in this place, their whole horizon bounded by the hedges and fences of their farm. His Christian name, for some unchristian reason, was Janifex; people called him Jan, possibly because it rhymed with his wife's name, which was Ann. And Ann was a robust managing woman of five and thirty, childless, full of desolating cleanliness and kindly tyrannies, with no perceptions that were not determined by her domestic ambition, and no sympathies that could interfere with her diurnal energies whatever they might be. Jan was a mild husbandman, prematurely aged, with large teeth and, since 'forty winters had besieged his brow,' but little hair. Sometimes one of the large teeth would drop out, leaving terrible gaps when he opened his mouth, and turning his patient smile to a hideous leer. These evacuations, which were never restored, began with the death of Queen Victoria; throughout the reign of her successor great events were punctuated by similar losses, until at last Jan could masticate, in his staid old manner, only in one overworked corner of his mouth.

He would rise of a morning throughout the moving year at five of the clock; having eaten his bread and drunk a mug of cocoa he would don a long white jacket and cross the road diagonally to the gate at the eastern corner of the sheds. These were capped by the bright figure of a golden cockerel, voiceless but useful, flaunting always to meet the challenge of the wind. Sometimes in his deliberate way Jan would lift his forlorn eyes in the direction of the road coming from the east, but he never turned to the other direction, as that would have cost him a physical effort, and bodily flexion had ceased years and years ago. Do roads ever run backward--leaps not forward the eye? As he unloosed the gate of the yard his great dog would lift its chained head from some sacks under a cart, and a peacock would stalk out from the belt of pines that partly encircled the buildings. The man would greet them, saying, "O, ah!" In the rickyard he would pause to release the fowls from their hut and watch them run to the stubbles or spurn the chaff with their claws as they ranged between the stacks. If the day were windy the chaff would fall back in clouds upon their bustling feathers, and that delighted his simple mind. It is difficult to account for his joy in this thing, for though his heart was empty of cruelty it seemed to be empty of everything else. Then he would pass into the stalls and with a rattle of can and churn the labour of the day was begun.

Thus he lived, with no temptations, and few desires except perhaps for milk puddings, which for some reason concealed in Ann's thrifty bosom he was only occasionally permitted to enjoy. Whenever his wife thought kindly of him she would give him a piece of silver and he would traipse a mile in the evening, a mile along to the _Huntsman's Cup_, and take a tankard of beer. On his return he would tell Ann of the things he had seen, the people he had met, and other events of his journey.

Once, in the time of spring, when buds were bursting along the hedge coverts and birds of harmony and swiftness had begun to roost in the wood, a blue-chinned Spaniard came to lodge at the farm for a few weeks. He was a labourer working at some particular contract upon the estate adjoining the Cottons' holding, and he was accommodated with a bed and an abundance of room in a clean loft behind the house. With curious shoes upon his feet, blazing check trousers tightly fitting upon his thighs, a wrapper of pink silk around his neck, he was an astonishing figure in that withdrawn corner of the world. When the season chilled him a long black cloak with a hood for his head added a further strangeness. Juan da Costa was his name. He was slightly round-shouldered with an uncongenial squint in his eyes; though he used but few words of English his ways were beguiling. He sang very blithely shrill Spanish songs, and had a pleasant courtesy of manner that presented a deal of attraction to the couple, particularly Ann, whose casual heart he reduced in a few hours to kindness, and in a few days, inexplicably perhaps, to a still warmer emotion--yes, even in the dull blankness of that mind some ghostly star could glimmer. From the hour of his arrival she was an altered woman, although, with primitive subtlety, the transition from passivity to passion was revealed only by one curious sign, and that was the spirit of her kindness evoked for the amiable Jan, who now fared mightily upon his favorite dishes.

Sometimes the Spaniard would follow Jan about the farm. "Grande!" he would say, gesturing with his arm to indicate the wide-rolling hills.

"O ah!" Jan would reply, "there's a heap o' land in the open air."

The Spaniard does not understand! He asks: "What?"

"O ah!" Jan would echo.

But it was the cleanly buxom Ann to whom Da Costa devoted himself. He brought home daily, though not ostensibly to her, a bunch of the primroses, a stick of snowbudded sallow, or a sprig of hazel hung with catkins, soft caressible things. He would hold the hazel up before Ann's uncomprehending gaze and strike the lemon-coloured powder from the catkins on to the expectant adjacent buds, minute things with stiff female prongs, red like the eyes of the white rabbit which Ann kept in the orchard hutch.

One day Juan came home unexpectedly in mid-afternoon. It was a cold dry day and he wore his black cloak and hood.

"See," he cried, walking up to Ann, who greeted him with a smile; he held out to her a posy of white violets tied up with some blades of thick grass. She smelt them but said nothing. He pressed the violets to his lips and again held them out, this time to her lips. She took them from him and tucked them into the front of her bodice while he watched her with delighted eyes.

"You ... give ... me ... somethin ... for ... los flores?"

"Piece a cake!" said Ann, moving towards the pantry door.

"Ah ... cake...!"

As she pulled open the door, still keeping a demure eye upon him, the violets fell out and down upon the floor, unseen by her. He rushed towards them with a cry of pain and a torrent of his strange language; picking them up he followed her into the pantry, a narrow place almost surrounded by shelves with pots of pickles and jam, plates, cups and jugs, a scrap of meat upon a trencher, a white bowl with cob nuts and a pair of iron crackers.

"See..., lost!" he cried shrilly as she turned to him. She was about to take them again when he stayed her with a whimsical gesture.

"Me ... me," he said, and brushing her eyes with their soft perfume he unfastened the top button of her bodice while the woman stood motionless; then the second button, then the third. He turned the corners inwards and tucked the flowers between her flesh and underlinen. They stood eyeing one another, breathing uneasily, but with a pretence at nonchalance. "Ah!" he said suddenly; before she could stop him he had seized a few nuts from the white bowl and holding open her bodice where the flowers rested he dropped the nuts into her warm bosom. "One ... two ... three!"

"Oh...!" screamed Ann mirthfully, shrinking from their tickling, but immediately she checked her laughter--she heard footsteps. Beating down the grasping arms of the Spaniard she darted out of the doorway and shut him in the pantry, just in time to meet Jan coming into the kitchen bawling for a chain he required.

"What d'ye want?" said Ann.

"That chain for the well-head, gal, it's hanging in the pantry." He moved to the door.

"'Taint," said Ann barring his way. "It's in the barn, I took it there yesterday, on the oats it is, you'll find it, I took it over yesterday, clear off with your dirty boots." She 'hooshed' him off much as she 'hooshed' the hens out of the garden. Immediately he was gone she pulled open the pantry door and was confronted by the Spaniard holding a long clasp knife in his raised hand. On seeing her he just smiled, threw down the knife and took the bewildered woman into his arms.

"Wait, wait," she whispered, and breaking from him she seized a chain from a hook and ran out after her husband with it, holding up a finger of warning to the Spaniard as she brushed past him. She came back panting, having made some sort of explanation to Jan; entering the kitchen quietly she found the Spaniard's cloak lying upon the table; the door of the pantry was shut and he had apparently gone back there to await her. Ann moved on tiptoe round the table; picking up the cloak she enveloped herself in it and pulled the hood over her head. Having glanced with caution through the front window to the farmyard, she coughed and shuffled her feet on the flags. The door of the pantry moved slowly open; the piercing ardour of his glance did not abash her, but her curious appearance in his cloak moved his shrill laughter. As he approached her she seized his wrists and drew him to the door that led into the orchard at the back of the house; she opened it and pushed him out, saying "Go on, go on." She then locked the door against him. He walked up and down outside the window making lewd signs to her. He dared not call out for fear of attracting attention from the farmyard in front of the house. He stood still, shivered, pretended in dumb show that he was frozen. She stood at the window in front of him and nestled provocatively in his cloak. But when he put his lips against the pane he drew the gleam of her languishing eyes closer and closer to meet his kiss through the glass. Then she stood up, took off the black cloak, and putting her hand into her bosom brought out the three nuts, which she held up to him. She stood there fronting the Spaniard enticingly, dropped the nuts back into her bosom ... one ... two ... three ... and then went and opened the door.

In a few weeks the contract was finished, and one bright morning the Spaniard bade them each farewell. Neither of them knew, so much was their intercourse restricted, that he was about to depart, and Ann watched him with perplexity and unhappiness in her eyes.

"Ah, you Cotton, goodbye I say, and you _señora_, I say goodbye." With a deep bow he kissed the rough hand of the blushing country-woman. "_Bueno._" He turned with his kit bag on his shoulder, waved them an airy hand and was gone.

On the following Sunday Jan returned from a visit in the evening and found the house empty; Ann was out, an unusual thing, for their habits were fixed and deliberate as the stars in the sky. The sunsetting light was lying in meek patches on the kitchen wall, turning the polished iron pans to the brightness of silver, reddening the string of onions, and filling glass jars with solid crystal. He had just sat down to remove his heavy boots when Ann came in, not at all the workaday Ann but dressed in her best clothes smelling of scent and swishing her stiff linen.

"Hullo," said Jan, surprised at his wife's pink face and sparkling eyes, "bin church?"

"Yes, church," she replied, and sat down in her finery. Her husband ambled about the room for various purposes and did not notice her furtive dabbing of her eyes with her handkerchief. Tears from Ann were inconceivable.

The year moved through its seasons, the lattermath hay was duly mown, the corn stooked in rows; Ann was with child and the ridge of her stays was no longer visible behind her plump shoulders. Fruit dropped from the orchard boughs, the quince was gathered from the wall, the hunt swept over the field. Christmas came and went, and then a child was born to the Cottons, a dusky boy, who was shortly christened Juan.

"He was a kind chap, that man," said Ann, "and we've no relations to please, and it's like your name--and your name _is_ outlandish!"

Jan's delight now was to sit and muse upon the child as he had ever mused upon chicken, lambs and calves. "O ah!" he would say, popping a great finger into the babe's mouth, "O ah!" But when, as occasionally happened, the babe squinted at him, a singular fancy would stir in his mind, only to slide away before it could congeal into the likeness of suspicion.

Snow, when it falls near spring on those Cotswold hills, falls deeply, and the lot of the husbandmen is hard. Sickness, when it comes, comes with a flail and in its hobnailed boots. Contagious and baffling, disease had stricken the district; in mid-March great numbers of the country folk were sick abed, hospitals were full, and doctors were harried from one dawn to another. Jan would come in of an evening and recite the calendar of the day's dooms gathered from men of the adjacent fields.

"Amos Green 'ave gone then, pore o' chap."

"Pore Amos," the pitying Ann would say, wrapping her babe more warmly.

"And Buttifant's coachman."

"Dear, dear, what 'ull us all come to?"

"Mrs. Jocelyn was worse 'en bad this morning."

"Never Jan! Us'll miss 'er."

"Ah, and they do say Parson Rudwent won't last out the night."

"And whom's to bury us then?" asked Ann.

The invincible sickness came to the farm. Ann one morning was weary, sickly, and could not rise from her bed. Jan attended her in his clumsy way and kept coming in from the snow to give her comforts and food, but at eve she was in fever and lay helpless in the bed with the child at her breast. Jan went off for the doctor, not to the nearest village for he knew that quest to be hopeless, but to a tiny town high on the wolds two miles away. The moon, large, sharp and round, blazed in the sky, and its light sparkled upon the rolling fields of snow; his boots were covered at every muffled step; the wind sighed in the hedges and he shook himself for warmth. He came to the hill at last; half-way up was a church, its windows glowing with warm-looking light and its bells pealing cheerfully. He passed on and higher up met a priest trotting downwards in black cassock and saintly hat, his hands tucked into his wide sleeves, trotting to keep himself warm and humming as he went. Jan asked a direction of the priest, who gave it with many circumstances of detail, and after they had parted he could hear the priest's voice call still further instructions after him as long as he was in sight. "O ah!" said Jan each time, turning and waving his hand. But after all his mission was a vain one; the doctor was out and away, it was improbable that he would be able to come, and the simple man turned home with a dull heart. When he reached the farm Ann was delirious but still clung to her dusky child, sleeping snugly at her bosom. The man sat up all night before the fire waiting vainly for the doctor, and the next day he himself became ill. And strangely enough as he worked among his beasts the crude suspicion in his mind about the child took shape and worked without resistance until he came to suspect and by easy degrees to apprehend fully the time and occasion of Ann's duplicity.

"Nasty filthy dirty thing!" he murmured from his sick mind. He was brushing the dried mud from the hocks of an old bay horse, but it was not of his horse he was thinking. Later he stood in the rickyard and stared across the road at the light in their bedroom. Throwing down the fork with which he had been tossing beds of straw he shook his fist at the window and cried out: "I hate 'er, I does, nasty filthy dirty thing!"

When he went into the house he replenished the fire, but found he could take no further care for himself or the sick woman; he just stupidly doffed his clothes and in utter misery and recklessness stretched himself in the bed with Ann. He lay for a long while with aching brows, a snake-strangled feeling in every limb, an unquenchable drouth in his throat, and his wife's body burning beside him. Outside the night was bright, beautiful and still sparkling with frost; quiet, as if the wind had been wedged tightly in some far corner of the sky, except for a cracked insulator on the telegraph pole just near the window, that rattled and hummed with monstrous uncare. That, and the ticking of the clock! The lighted candle fell from its sconce on to the mantelpiece; he let it remain and it flickered out. The glow from the coals was thick upon the ceiling and whitened the brown ware of the teapot on the untidy hearth. Falling asleep at last he began dreaming at once, so it seemed, of the shrill cry of lambs hailing him out of wild snow-covered valleys, so wild and prolonged were the cries that they woke him, and he knew himself to be very ill, very ill indeed. The child was wailing piteously, the room was in darkness, the fire out, but the man did not stir, he could not care, what could he do with that flame behind his eyes and the misery of death consuming him? But the child's cries were unceasing and moved even his numbed mind to some effort. "Ann!" he gasped. The poor wife did not reply. "Ann!" He put his hand out to nudge her; in one instant the blood froze in his veins and then boiled again. Ann was cold, her body hard as a wall, dead ... dead. Stupor returned upon him; the child, unhelped, cried on, clasped to that frozen breast until the man again roused himself to effort. Putting his great hands across the dead wife he dragged the child from her arms into the warmth beside him, gasping as he did so "Nasty ... dirty ... thing." It exhausted him, but the child was still unpacified and again he roused himself and felt for a biscuit on the table beside the bed. He crushed a piece in his mouth and putting the soft pap upon his finger fed thus the hungry child until it was stilled. By now the white counterpane spread vast like a sea, heaving and rocking with a million waves, the framework of the bedstead moving like the tackle of tossed ships. He knew there was only one way to stem that sickening movement. "I hate 'er, I does," rose again upon his lips, and drawing up his legs that were at once chilly and streaming with sweat, full of his new hatred he urged with all his might his wife's cold body to the edge of the bed and withdrew the bedclothes. Dead Ann toppled and slid from him and her body clumped upon the floor with a fall that shook the room; the candle fell from the mantelpiece, bounced upon the teapot and rolled stupidly along the bare boards under the bed. "Hate 'er!" groaned the man; he hung swaying above the woman and tried to spit upon her. He sank back again to the pillow and the child, murmuring "O ah!" and gathering it clumsily to his breast. He became tranquil then, and the hollow sounding clock beat a dull rhythm into his mind, until that sound faded out with all light and sound, and Jan fell into sleep and died, with the dusky child clasped in his hard dead arms.

POMONA'S BABE

POMONA'S BABE

Johnny Flynn was then seventeen years old. At that age you could not call him 'boy' without vexing him, or 'man' without causing him to blush--his teasing ruddy and uproarious mother delighted to produce either or both of these manifestations, for her offspring was a pale mild creature--but he had given a deal of thought to many manly questions. Marriage, for instance, was one of these. That was an institution he admired, but whose joys, whatever they were, he was not anxious to experience; its difficulties and disasters as ironically outlined by the widow Flynn were the subject of his grossest scepticism--scepticism in general being not the least prominent characteristic of Johnny Flynn.

Certainly his sister Pomona was not married; she was only sixteen, an age too early for such bliss; but all the same she was going to have a baby. He had quarrelled with his mother about most things; she delighted in quarrels, they amused her very much; but on this occasion she was really very angry, or she pretended to be so--which was worse, much worse than the real thing.

The Flynns were poor people, quite poor, living in two top-floor rooms at the house of a shoemaker, also moderately poor, whose pelting and hammering of soles at evening were a durable grievance to Johnny. He was fond of the shoemaker, a kind, bulky, tall man of fifty, though he did not like the shoemaker's wife, as bulky as her husband, and as tall, but not kind to him or to anything except Johnny himself; nor did he like any of the other lodgers, of whom there were several, all without exception beyond the reach of affluence. The Flynn apartments afforded a bedroom in front for Mrs. Flynn and Pomona, a room where Johnny seldom intruded, never without a strained sense of sanctity similar to the feeling he experienced when entering an empty church, as he sometimes did. He slept in the other room, the living room, an arrangement that also annoyed him--he was easily annoyed--for he could never go to bed until mother and sister had retired, and for the same reason he had always to rise before they got up, an exasperating abuse of domestic privilege.

One night he had just slipped happily into his bed, and begun to read a book called _Rasselas_, which the odd-eyed man at the public library had commended to him, when his mother returned to the room, first tapping at the door, for Johnny was a prude, as she knew, not only from instinct and observation but from protests which had occasionally been addressed to her by the indignant boy. She came in now only half clad, in petticoat and stockinged feet, her arms were quite bare. They were powerful arms, as they had need to be, for she was an ironer of linen at a laundry, but they were nice to look at, and sometimes Johnny liked looking at them, though he did not care for her to run about like that very often. Mrs. Flynn sat down at the foot of his couch and stared at her son.

"Johnny," she began steadily, but paused to rub her forehead with her thick white shiny fingers. "I don't know how to tell you I'm sure, or what you'll say...." Johnny shook _Rasselas_ rather impatiently and heaved a protesting sigh. "I can't think," continued his mother, "no, I can't think that it's our Pomony, but there she is, and it's got to be done--I must tell you; besides, you're the only man in our family now, so it's only right for you, you see, and she's going to have a baby--our Pomony!"

The boy turned his face to the wall, although his mother was not looking at him--she was staring at that hole in the carpet near the fender. At last he said "Humph! ... well?" And as his mother did not say anything, he added, "What about it? I don't mind." Mrs. Flynn was horrified at his unconcern, or she pretended to be so; Johnny was never sure about the genuineness of her moods. It was most unfilial, but he was like that--so was Mrs. Flynn. Now she cried out, "You'll _have_ to mind, there, you must. I can't take everything on my own shoulders. You're the only man left in our family now--you must, Johnny. What are we to do?"

He glared at the wallpaper a foot from his eyes. It had an unbearable pattern of blue but otherwise indescribable flowers; he had it in his mind to have some other pattern there--some day.

"Eh?" asked his mother sharply, striking the foot of the bed with her fist.

"Why ... there's nothing to be done ... now ... I suppose." He was blushing furiously. "How did it happen--when will it be?"

"It's a man she knows. He got hold of her. His name is Stringer. Another two months about. Stringer. Hadn't you noticed anything? Everybody else has. You are a funny boy, can't make you out at all, Johnny, I can't make you out. Stringer his name is, but he shall pay dearly for it, and that's what I want you--to talk to you about. Of course, he denies of everything, they always do."

Mrs. Flynn sighed at this disgusting perfidy, brightening however when her son began to discuss the problem. But she talked so long, and he got so sleepy at last, that he was very glad when she went to bed again. Secretly she was both delighted and disappointed at his easy acceptance of her dreadful revelation; fearing a terrible outburst of anger, she had kept the knowledge from him for a long time. She was glad to escape that, it is true, but she rather hungered for some flashing reprobation of this unknown beast, this Stringer. She swore she would bring him to book, but she felt old and lonely, and Johnny was a strange son, not very virile. The mother had told Pomona terrifying prophetic tales of what Johnny would do, what he would be certain to do. He would, for instance, murder that Stringer and drive Pomony into the street; of course, he would. Yet here he was, quite calm about it, as if he almost liked it. Well, she had told him, she could do no more, she would leave it to him.

In the morning Johnny greeted his sister with tender affection, and at evening, having sent her to bed, he and his mother resumed their discussion.

"Do you know, mother," he said, "she is quite handsome; I never noticed it before."

Mrs. Flynn regarded him with desperation, and then informed him that his sister was an ugly, disgusting little trollop who ought to be birched.

"No, no, you are wrong, mother, it's bad, but it's all right."

"You think you know more about such things than your own mother, I suppose." Mrs. Flynn sniffed and glared.

He said it to her gently: "Yes."

She produced a packet of notepaper and envelopes, _The Monster Packet for a Penny_, all complete with a wisp of pink blotting paper and a penholder without a nib, which she had bought at the chandler's on her way home that evening, along with some sago and some hair oil for Johnny, whose stiff unruly hair provoked such spasms of rage in her bosom that she declared that she was "sick to death of it." On the supper table lay also a platter, a loaf, a basin of mustard pickle, and a plate with round lengths of cheese shaped like small candles.

"Devil blast him!" muttered Mrs. Flynn as she fetched from a cupboard shelf a sour-looking bottle labelled Writing Fluid, a dissolute pen, and requested Johnny to compose a letter to Stringer--devil blast him!--telling him of the plight of her daughter Pomona Flynn, about whom she desired him to know that she had already consulted her lawyers and the chief of police, and intimating that unless she heard from him satisfactory by the day after to-morrow the matter would pass out of her hands.

"That's no good, it's not the way," declared her son thoughtfully; Mrs. Flynn therefore sat humbly confronting him and awaited the result of his cogitations. Johnny was not a very robust youth, but he was growing fast now, since he had taken up with running; he was very fleet, so Mrs. Flynn understood, and had already won a silver-plated hot-water jug, which they used for the milk. But still he was thin and not tall, his dark hair was scattered; his white face was a nice face, thought Mrs. Flynn, very nice, only there was always something strange about his clothes. She couldn't help that now, but he had such queer fancies; there was no other boy in the street whose trousers were so baggy or of such a colour. His starched collars were all right, of course, beautifully white and shiny--she got them up herself--and they set his neck off nicely.

"All we need do," her son broke in, "is just tell him."

"Tell him?"

"Yes, just tell him about it--it's very unfortunate--and ask him to come and see you. I hope though," he paused, "I hope they won't want to go and get married."

"He ought to be made to, devil blast him!" cried Mrs. Flynn, "only she's frightened, she is; afraid of her mortal life of him! We don't want him here, neither; she says he's a nasty, horrible man."

Johnny sat dumb for some moments. Pomona was a day girl in service at a restaurant. Stringer was a clerk to an auctioneer. The figure of his pale little sister shrinking before a ruffian (whom he figured as a fat man with a red beard) startled and stung him.

"Besides," continued Mrs. Flynn, "he's just going to be married to some woman, some pretty judy, God help her ... in fact, as like as not he's married to her already by now. No, I gave up that idea long ago, I did, before I told you, long ago."

"We can only tell him about Pomony, then, and ask him what he would like to do."

"What he would _like_ to do--well, certainly!" protested the widow.

"And if he's a decent chap," continued Johnny serenely, "it will be all right, there won't be any difficulty. If he ain't, then we can do something else."

His mother was reluctant to concur, but the boy had his way. He sat with his elbows on the table, his head pressed in his hands, but he could not think out the things he wanted to say to this man. He would look up and stare around the room as if he were in a strange place, though it was not strange to him at all, for he had lived in it many years. There was not much furniture in the apartment, yet there was but little space in it. The big table was covered with American cloth, mottled and shiny. Two or three chairs full of age and discomfort stood upon a carpet that was full of holes and stains. There were some shelves in a recess, an engraving framed in maple of the player scene from "Hamlet," and near by on the wall hung a gridiron, whose prongs were woven round with coloured wools and decorated with satin bows. Mrs. Flynn had a passion for vases, and two of these florid objects, bought at a fair, companioned a clock whose once snowy face had long since turned sallow because of the oil Mrs. Flynn had administered "to make it go properly."

But he could by no means think out this letter; his mother sat so patiently watching him that he asked her to go and sit in the other room. Then he sat on, sniffing, as if thinking with his nose, while the room began to smell of the smoking lamp. He was remembering how, years ago, when they were little children, he had seen Pomony in her nightgown and, angered with her for some petty reason, he had punched her on the side. Pomony had turned white, she could not speak, she could not breathe. He had been momentarily proud of that blow; it was a good blow, he had never hit another boy like that. But Pomony had fallen into a chair, her face tortured with pain, her eyes filled with tears that somehow would not fall. Then a fear seized him, horrible, piercing, frantic; she was dying, she would die, and there was nothing he could do to stop her! In passionate remorse and pity, he had flung himself before her, kissing her feet--they were small and beautiful, though not very clean--until at last he had felt Pomony's arms droop caressingly around him, and heard Pomony's voice speaking lovingly and forgivingly to him.

After a decent interval his mother returned to him.

"What are we going to do about _her_?" she asked, "She'll have to go away."

"Away! Do you mean go to a home? No, but why go away. I'm not ashamed; what is there to be ashamed of?"

"Who the deuce is going to look after her? You talk like a tom-fool--yes, you are," insisted Mrs. Flynn passionately. "I'm out all day from one week's end to the other. She can't be left alone and the people downstairs are none too civil about it, as it is. She'll have to go to the workhouse, that's all."

Johnny was aghast, indignant, and really angry. He would never, never consent to such a thing! Pomony! Into a workhouse! She should not, she should stop at home, here, like always, and have a nurse.

"Fool!" muttered his mother, with castigating scorn. "Where's the money for nurses and doctors to come from? I've got no money for such things."

"I'll get some!" declared Johnny hotly.

"Where?"

"I'll sell something."

"What?"

"I'll save up."

"How?"

"And I'll borrow some."

"You'd better shut up now, or I'll knock your head off!" cried his mother. "Fidding and fadding about--you're daft!"

"She shan't go to any workhouse!"

"Fool!" repeated his mother, revealing her disgust at his hopeless imbecility.

"I tell you she shall not go there!" shouted the boy, stung into angry resentment by her contempt.

"She shall, she must."

"I say she shan't!"

"Oh, don't be such a blasted fool!" cried the distracted woman, rising from her chair.

Johnny sprang to his feet almost screaming, "You are the blasted fool--you, you!"

Mrs. Flynn seized a table knife and struck at her son's face with it. He leaped away in terror, his startled appearance, glaring eyes, and strained figure so affecting Mrs. Flynn that she dropped the knife, and, sinking into her chair, burst into peals of hysterical laughter. Recovering himself the boy hastened to the laughing woman. The maddening peals continued and increased, shocking him, unnerving him again; she was dying, she would die. His mother's laughter had always been harsh but delicious to him, it was so infectious; but this was demoniacal, it was horror.

"Oh, don't, don't, mother, don't!" he cried, fondling her and pressing her yelling face to his breast. But she pushed him fiercely away, and the terrifying laughter continued to sear his very soul until he could bear it no longer. He struck at her shoulders with clenched fist, and shook her frenziedly, frantically, crying:

"Stop it, stop, oh, stop it! She'll go mad! Stop it, stop!"

He was almost exhausted, when suddenly Pomona rushed into the room in her nightgown. Her long black hair tumbled in lovely locks about her pale face and her shoulders; her feet were bare.

"Oh, Johnny, what are you doing?" gasped his little pale sister Pomony, who seemed so suddenly, so unbelievably, turned into a woman. "Let her alone."

She pulled the boy away, fondling and soothing their distracted mother until Mrs. Flynn partially recovered.

"Come to bed now," commanded Pomona, and Mrs. Flynn thereupon, still giggling, followed her child. When he was alone tremblingly Johnny turned down the lamp flame which had filled the room with smoky fumes. His glance rested upon the table knife; the room was silent and oppressive now. He glared at the picture of Hamlet, at the clock with the oily face, at the notepaper lying white upon the table. They had all turned into quivering semblances of the things they were; he was crying.

2

A letter, indited in the way he desired, was posted by Johnny on his way to work next morning. He was clerk in the warehouse of a wholesale provision merchant, and he kept tally, in some underground cellars carpeted with sawdust, of hundreds of sacks of sugar and cereals, tubs of butter, of lard, of treacle, chests of tea, a regular promontory of cheeses, cases of candles, jam, starch, and knife polish, many of them stamped with the mysterious words FACTORY BULKED. He did not like those words, they sounded ugly and their meaning was obscure. Sometimes he took the cheese-tasting implement from the foreman's bench, and, when no one was looking, pierced it into a fine Cheddar or Stilton, withdrawing it with a little cylinder of cheese lying like a small candle in the curved blade. Then he would bite off the piece of rind, restore it neatly to the body of the cheese, and drop the other candle-like piece into his pocket. Sometimes his pocket was so full of cheese that he was reluctant to approach the foreman, fearing he would smell it. He was very fond of cheese. All of them liked cheese.

The Flynns waited several days for a reply to the letter but none came. Stringer did not seem to think it called for any reply. At the end of a week Johnny wrote again to his sister's seducer. Pomona had given up her situation at the restaurant; her brother was conspicuously and unfailingly tender to her. He saved what money he could, spent none upon himself, and brought home daily an orange or an egg for the girl. He wrote a third letter to the odious Stringer, not at all threateningly, but just invitingly, persuasively. And he waited, but waited in vain. Then in that underground cheese tunnel where he worked he began to plot an alternate course of action, and as time passed, bringing no recognition from Stringer, his plot began to crystallise and determine itself. It was nothing else than to murder the man; he would kill him, he had thought it out, it could be done. He would wait for him near Stringer's lodgings one dark night, and beat out his brains with a club. All that was necessary then would be to establish an _alibi_. For some days Johnny dwelt so gloatingly upon the details of this retribution that he forgot about the _alibi_. By this time he had accumulated from his mother--for he could never once bring himself to interrogate Pomona personally about her misfortune--sufficient description of Stringer to recognise him among a thousand, so he thought. It appeared that he was not a large man with a red beard, but a small man with glasses, spats, and a slight limp, who always attended a certain club of which he was the secretary at a certain hour on certain nights in each week. To Johnny's mind, the _alibi_ was not merely important in itself, it was a romantic necessity. And it was so easy; it would be quite sufficient for Johnny to present himself at the public library, where he was fairly well-known. The library was quite close to Stringer's lodgings and they, fortunately, were in a dark, quiet little street. He would borrow a book from the odd-eyed man in the reference department, retire to one of the inner study rooms, and at half-past seven creep out unseen, creep out, creep out with his thick stick, and wait by the house in that dark, quiet little street; it was very quiet, and it would be very dark; wait there for him all in the dark, just creep quietly out--and wait. But in order to get that _alibi_ quite perfect he would have to take a friend with him to the library room, so that the friend could swear that he had really been there all the time, because it was just possible the odd-eyed man wouldn't be prepared to swear to it; he did not seem able to see very much, but it was hard to tell with people like that.

Johnny Flynn had not told any of his friends about his sister's misfortune; in time, time enough, they were bound to hear of it. Of all his friends he rejected the close ones, those of whom he was very fond, and chose a stupid lump of a fellow, massive and nasal, named Donald. Though awkward and fat, he had joined Johnny's running club; Johnny had trained him for his first race. But he had subjected Donald to such exhausting exercise, what with skipping, gymnastics, and tiring jaunts, that though his bulk disappeared his strength went with it; to Johnny's great chagrin he grew weak, and failed ignominiously in the race. Donald thereafter wisely rejected all offers of assistance and projected a training system of his own. For weeks he tramped miles into hilly country, in the heaviest of boots to which he had nailed some thick pads of lead. When he donned his light running shoes for his second race he displayed an agility and suppleness, a god-like ease, that won not only the race, but the admiration and envy of all the competitors. It was this dull, lumpish Donald that Johnny fixed upon to assist him. He was a great fool, and it would not matter if he did get himself into trouble. Even if he did Johnny could get him out again, by confessing to the police; so that was all right. He asked Donald to go to the library with him on a certain evening to read a book called _Rasselas_--it was a grand book, very exciting--and Donald said he would go. He did not propose to tell Donald of his homicidal intention; he would just sit him down in the library with _Rasselas_, while he himself sat at another table behind Donald, yes, behind him; even if Donald noticed him creeping out he would say he was only going to the counter to get another book. It was all quite clear and safe. He would be able to creep out, creep out, rush up to the dark little street--yes, he would ask Donald for a piece of that lead and wrap it round the head of the stick--he would creep out, and in ten minutes or twenty he would be back in the library again asking for another book or sitting down by Donald as if he had not been outside the place, as if nothing had happened as far as he was concerned, nothing at all!

The few intervening days passed with vexing deliberation. Each night seemed the best of all possible nights for the deed, each hour that Stringer survived seemed a bad hour for the world. They were bad, slow hours for Johnny, but at last the day dawned, passed, darkness came, and the hour rushed upon him.

He took his stick and called for Donald.

"Can't come," said Donald, limping to the door in answer to Johnny's knock; "I been and hurt my leg."

For a moment Johnny was full of an inward silent blasphemy that flashed from a sudden tremendous hatred, but he said calmly:

"But still ... no, you haven't ... what have you hurt it for?"

Donald was not able to deal with such locution. He ignored it and said:

"My knee cap, my shin. Oo, come and have a look. We was mending a flue... it was the old man's wheelbarrow.... Didn't I tell him of it neither!"

"Oh, you told him of it?"

Johnny listened to his friend's narration very abstractedly, and at last went off to the library by himself. As he walked away he was conscious of a great feeling of relief welling up in him. He could not get an _alibi_ without Donald, not a sure one, so he would not be able to do anything to-night. He felt relieved, he whistled as he walked, he was happy again, but he went on to the library. He was going to rehearse the _alibi_ by himself--that was the wise thing to do, of course--rehearse it, practise it; it would be perfect next week when Donald was better. So he did this. He got out a book from the odd-eyed man, who strangely enough was preoccupied and did not seem to recognise him. It was disconcerting, that; he specially wanted the man to notice him. He went into the study room rather uneasily. Ten minutes later he crept out unseen, carrying his stick--he had forgotten to ask Donald for the piece of lead--and was soon lurking in the shadow of the dark, quiet little street.

It was a perfect spot, there could not be a better place, not in the middle of a town. The house had an area entry through an iron gate; at the end of a brick pathway, over a coalplate, five or six stone steps led steeply up to a narrow front door with a brass letter box, a brass knocker, and a glazed fanlight painted 29. The windows, too, were narrow, and the whole house had a squeezed appearance. A church clock chimed eight strokes. Johnny began to wonder what he would do, what would happen, if Stringer were suddenly to come out of that gateway. Should he--would he--could he...? And then the door at the top of the steps did open wide, and framed there in the lighted space young Flynn saw the figure of his own mother.

She came down the steps alone, and he followed her short, jerky footsteps secretly until she reached the well-lit part of the town, where he joined her. It was quite simple, she explained to him with an air of superior understanding; she had just paid Mr. Stringer a visit, waiting for letters from that humbug had made her "popped." Had he thought she would creep on her stomach and beg for a fourpenny piece, when she could put him in jail if all were known, as she would, too, if it hadn't been for her children, poor little fatherless things? No, middling boxer, not that! So she had left off work early, had gone and caught him at his lodgings and taxed him with it. He denied of it, he was that cocky, it so mortified her, that she had snatched up the clock and thrown it at him. Yes, his own clock.

"But it was only a little one, though. He was frightened out of his life and run upstairs. Then his landlady came rushing in. I told her all about it, everything, and she was that 'popped' with him she give me the name and address of his fionx--their banns is been put up. She made him come downstairs and face me, and his face was as white as the driven snow, Johnny, it was. He was obliged to own up. The lady said to him, 'Whatever have you been at, Mr. Stringer?' she said to him, 'I can't believe it, knowing you for ten years; you must have forgot yourself.' Oh, a proper understanding it was," declared Mrs. Flynn, finally. "His lawyers are going to write to us and put everything in order; Duckle & Hoole they are."

Again a great feeling of relief welled up in the boy's breast, as if, having been dragged into a horrible vortex, he had been marvellously cast free again.

The days that followed were blessedly tranquil, though Johnny was often smitten with awe at the thought of what he had contemplated. That fool, Donald, too, one evening insisted on accompanying him to the library where he spent an hour of baffled understanding over the pages of _Rasselas_. But the lawyers Duckle & Hoole aroused a tumult of hatred in Mrs. Flynn. They pared down her fond anticipations to the minimum; they put so much slight upon her family, and such a gentlemanly decorum and generous forbearance upon the behaviour of their client, Mr. Stringer, that she became inarticulate. When informed that that gentleman desired no intercourse whatsoever with any Flynn, or the offspring thereof, she became speechless. Shortly, Messrs. Duckle & Hoole begged to submit for her approval a draft agreement embodying their client's terms, one provision of which was that if the said Flynns violated the agreement by taking any proceedings against the said Stringer they should thereupon, _ipso facto_ willy nilly or whatever, forfeit and pay unto him, the said Stringer, not by way of penalty but as damages, the sum of £100. Whereupon Mrs. Flynn recovered her speech and suffered a little tender irony to emerge.

The shoemaker, whose opinion upon this draft agreement was solicited, confessed himself as much baffled by its phraseology as he was indignant at its tenour and terms.

"That man," he declared solemnly to Johnny, "ought to have his brain knocked out;" and he conveyed by subtle intimations to the boy that that was the course he would favour were he himself standing in Johnny's shoes. "One dark night," he had roared, with a dreadful glare in his eyes, "with a neat heavy stick!"

The Flynns also consulted a cabman who lodged in the house. His legal qualifications appeared to lie in the fact that he had driven the private coach of a major-general whose son, now a fruit farmer in British Columbia, had once been entered for the bar. The cabman was a very positive and informative cabman. "List and learn," he would say, "list and learn;" and he would regale Johnny, or anyone else, with an oration to which you might listen as hard as you liked but from which you could not learn. He was husky, with a thick red neck and the cheek bones of a horse. Having perused the agreement with one eye judiciously cocked, the other being screened by a drooping lid adorned with a glowing nodule, he carefully refolded the folios and returned them to the boy.

"Any judge--who was up to snuff--would impound that dockyment."

"What's that?"

"They would impound it," repeated the cabman, smiling wryly.

"But what's 'impound it'? What for?"

"I tell you it would be impounded, that dockyment would," asseverated the cabman. Once more he took the papers from Johnny, opened them out, reflected upon them and returned them again without a word. Catechism notwithstanding, the oracle remained impregnable, mystifying.

The boy continued to save his pocket money. His mother went about her work with a grim air, having returned the draft agreement to the lawyers with an ungracious acceptance of terms.

One April evening Johnny went home to an empty room. Pomona was out. He prepared his tea, and afterwards sat reading _Tales of a Grandfather_. That was a book if anybody wanted a book! When darkness came he descended the stairs to enquire of the shoemaker's wife about Pomony; he was anxious. The shoemaker's wife was absent, too, and it was late when she returned, accompanied by his mother.

Pomona's hour had come. They had taken her to the workhouse--only just in time--a little boy--they were both all right--he was an uncle!

His mother's deceit stupefied him; he felt ashamed, deeply shamed; but after a while that same recognisable feeling of relief welled up in his breast and drenched him with satisfactions. After all, what could it matter where a person was born, or where one died, as long as you had your chance of growing up at all, and, if lucky, of growing up all right. But this babe had got to bear the whole burden of its father's misdeed, though; it had got to behave itself, or it would have to pay its father a hundred pounds as damages. Perhaps that was what that queer bit of poetry meant, 'The child is father of the man.'

His mother swore that they were very good and clean and kind at the workhouse, everything of the best and most expensive; there was nothing she would have liked better than to have gone there herself when Johnny and Pomony were born.

"And if ever I have any more," Mrs. Flynn sighed, but with profound conviction, "I will certainly go there."