THE CONVICT'S RETURN.
It stood where four roads met--a square building of two storeys, with
white-washed walls and a high slate roof. The fence, and the once trim
garden, had vanished with the turnpike gate; and a jungle of gooseberry
bushes, interspersed with brambles, shut off the house from the roads.
And only by courtesy could these be so-called, for time and neglect had
almost obliterated them.
On all sides stretched a flat expanse of reaped fields, bleak-looking
and barren in the waning November twilight. Mists gathered thickly over
ditch and hedge and stubbled furrow a constant dripping could be heard
in the clumps of trees looming here and there in the fog.
Through the kitchen-garden jungle a narrow, crooked path led up to the
door where two rough stones ascended to a broken threshold. Indeed, the
whole house appeared ragged in its poverty. Many of the windows were
stuffed up with rags; walls, cracked and askew, exuded green slime;
moss interspersed with lichen, filled in the crevices of the slates
upon the roof. A dog would scarcely have sought such a kennel, yet a
dim light in the left-hand window of the lower storey shewed that this
kennel was inhabited. There sat within--a woman and a child.
The outer decay but typified the poverty of the interior. Plaster had
fallen from walls and ceiling, and both were cracked in all directions.
No carpet covered the warped floor, and the pinched fire in the rusty
grate gave but scanty warmth to the small apartment. A deal table,
without a cloth, two deal chairs, and a three-legged stool--these
formed the sole furniture. On the blistered black mantelshelf a few
cups and saucers of thick delf ranged themselves, and their gay pinks
and blues were the only cheerful note in the prevailing misery.
The elder of these two outcasts sat by the bare table; a tallow candle
of the cheapest description stuck in a bottle shed a feeble tight, by
which she sewed furiously at a flannel shirt. Stab, click, click, stab,
she toiled in mad haste as though working for a wager. Intent on her
labour, she had no looks to spare for the ten-year-old boy who crouched
by the fire; not that he heeded her neglect, for a brown toy horse took
up all his attention, and he was perfectly happy in managing what was,
to him, an unruly steed.
From the likeness between these two, the most casual observer would
have pronounced them mother and son. She had once been beautiful,
this slender woman, with her fair hair and blue eyes, but trouble and
destitution had robbed her of a delicate loveliness which could have
thriven only under congenial circumstances. In those faded eyes, now
feverishly glittering, there lurked and expression of dread telling
of a mind ill at ease. Dainty garments would have well become her
fairness, but she was clothed, rather than dressed, in a black stuff
gown without even a linen collar to relieve its lustreless aspect.
Poverty had made her careless of her appearance, heedless of the
respect due to herself, and her sole aim, apparently, was the speedy
completion of the shirt at which she incessantly wrought.
The boy was a small copy of his mother, with the same fair hair and
blue eyes but his face had more colour, his figure was more rounded,
and he was clothed with a care which shewed the forethought and the
love of a mother even in the direst poverty.
After some twenty minutes of silence, broken only by the clicking of
the needle and the low chatter of the child, signs of exhaustion began
to show themselves in the worker. Before long, big, hot tears fell on
the grey flannel, and she opened her mouth with an hysterical gasp.
Slowly and more slowly did the seamstress ply her needle, until at
last, with a strangled sob, she flung back her head. "Oh, Heavens!"
was her moan, and it seemed to be wrung from the very depths of her
suffering heart. The child, with a nervous cry, looked up, trembling
violently.
"What is it mother? Is father coming?"
"No, thank Heaven!" said the mother, fiercely. "Do you want him?"
So white did the boy's face become that his eyes shewed black as pitch
balls. The question seemed to strike him like a blow, and he hurled
himself forward to bury his head in the woman's lap. "Don't--don't let
him come!" he sobbed, with unrestrained passion.
"Why do you speak of him, then?" cried the mother, angrily, just as
she might have addressed a person of her own age. "Never mention your
father, Gilbert. He has gone out of your life--out of mine. He is dead
to you--and to me."
"I am glad," sobbed the boy, shaking with nervous excitement. "Are you
sure, quite sure, mother, he will never come back again?"
"Who is sure of anything?" muttered the woman, gloomily. "He is out of
prison now; at any time he may track us down. But he shall not I get
you, my boy," and she strained the child to her breast. "I would kill
him first!"
"I would kill him, too--kill him, too!" panted Gilbert, brokenly. "Oh,
mother, mother! I hate him! I hate him!" and he burst into tears.
"Hush, hush, my baby!" soothed the mother. "Never think of him. He will
not get you. No, no."
But the boy continued to sob convulsively, and it required all her arts
to pacify him. She knew from experience what the end of this outbreak
would be if it continued beyond a point. The lad was precocious and
neurotic, quite undisciplined, taking colour from his surroundings,
tone from the atmosphere in which he chanced to be; and as the fit
took him, could be angel or demon. But in ten minutes the mother had
succeeded in soothing him sufficiently to send him back to his play.
Then she recommenced her work, and as the needle flew through the
coarse stuff she thought of her husband.
"The brute! The hound!" so ran her thoughts. "It is his work. If Gilbert
should see him again he would die or go mad, or fall into one of his
trances. In any case he would be lost to me. Ah!" she broke out aloud,
pushing the hair from her lined forehead. "How long will it last?"
There was no answer to the despairing question, and she went on sewing,
listening the while to the prattle of her lad.
"Stand still. Brownie!" the child was saying. "You aren't galloping
over the big green of Bedford-park. Do you remember your nice stable by
this there, Brownie, and the pretty rooms? I don't like this house any
more than you do. Mother was happy in our pretty cottage, so was I, so
was my Brownie."
"Mother will never be happy again," murmured the woman, savagely
stabbing the flannel as though she were stabbing the man of whom she
was thinking. "Ruin and disaster. Disaster and ruin! Why are such men
created?"
Gilbert took no notice. "Do you remember the red houses, Brownie, and
the railway? I took you there often for a trot. It was just three years
ago. Trot now!"
"Aye, just three years!" cried the woman. "Years of agony, pain, shame
and disgrace. Why doesn't he die!" and she bit off the end of a thread
viciously.
"Mother," said the boy, unexpectedly, "I'm hungry. Give me something to
eat."
The woman opened a cupboard and brought out a small loaf, a bundle of
victuals, and a tiny packet of tea, precious as gold to her poverty.
In silence she boiled the kettle and brewed a cup; in silence she set
the food before the hungry child. But when he began to eat her feelings
proved too much for her. She burst into fierce words.
"Eat the bread of charity, Gilbert!" she said in a loud, hard voice,
and still speaking as though to a person of her own age. "The loaf only
is paid for by our own money. I got the bones and the meat from Miss
Cass at the Hall. She took me for a beggar in spite of the work I have
done for her. And she is right, I am a beggar--so are you--and your
father---- There, there! Don't look so scared. We will not speak of
him."
Then the boy did a strange thing. With a sudden pounce he seized a
sharp-pointed, buck-handled knife used for cutting the bread, and,
raising it in the air, looked at his mother with fierce eyes.
"If my father takes me away from you," he said, shrilly, "I'll stick
this into him. I will, mother!"
With an ejaculation of terror she snatched the knife out of his small
hands, clenched now so wickedly. "Heaven forgive me," she thought,
laying it down on the table. "My hatred comes out in him. I may lead
him into danger. Heaven keep his father out of his way. I should see
a doctor." She glanced round the room and laughed bitterly. "Oh,
Heavens'" she broke out aloud. "See a doctor. I can't pay, and ask him
in this hovel! Charity? No, no. I'll earn my bread, if I die in the
earning." And she fell as fiercely as before to her sewing.
Gilbert, now himself again, ate slowly and with much enjoyment. At
intervals he fed the horse which he had brought to the table with him.
His mother watched him, pondering over his late outburst so terribly
suggestive of the latent instincts in the child. She knew well the
reason of it, though she would not acknowledge so much even to herself.
Her husband had treated her brutally, and the high-spirited creature
had resented his behaviour with passionate hatred. She had taught her
child to detest his father.
It was a wild night. The wind beat against the crazy building till it
creaked in all its loosened joints. Still the woman went on sewing, and
the boy continued to eat. A miserable silence settled down upon them.
Suddenly the mother raised her hand, and the child stopped eating with
an expression of terror on his white face.
The woman listened, wild eyed--not in vain. From some distance came the
sound of a dragging footstep. There was a drag, a halt, and then again
a drag, as though some wounded animal were writhing its way to a place
of safety. The outcast knew the sound of that halting gait only two
well. So did the boy.
"It's father!" he cried, shrilly. A look of mingled terror, repulsion,
hatred, took possession of his white face.
"Hush!" said the woman, imperatively, and left the room. For a moment
Gilbert sat quietly listening; then his small hand slipped along the
table to grasp the buck-handled knife. Trembling with excitement, he
watched the door; he could hear without his mother's taunting voice.
"Come in, Mark Jenner. I know you are standing there in the darkness.
Enter, and see the state to which your wickedness has reduced your wife
and child. Come in, you lying scoundrel, you brute, you thief!"
In answer to this invitation came a growl as of an angry animal. Then
the footsteps dragged themselves nearer and halted at the door. There
ensued the sound of taunts and curses. And almost immediately after
this exchange of courtesies between husband and wife, who had been
parted for three years, the door opened to admit a thick-set man, whose
face, in spite of its cunning, was not devoid of refinement. He was in
rags and soaking with the wet.
Gilbert stared at this half-forgotten father who had been so long a
stranger. Then the fierce inherited hatred woke suddenly within him. In
deadly silence he launched himself forward, knife in hand, and struck
at his father. Though taken by surprise, the man had about him some of
the swiftness of the wild beast which is always prepared for danger,
and he warded off the blow with one hand. But the keen blade had cut
him across the knuckles, and as the blood spurted he uttered an oath of
terror and of pain. For a moment he made as if to fling himself on his
small assailant; then he paused, with a look of fear. For the child,
passing suddenly from motion to stillness, stood, apparently in a
cataleptic trance, with rigid limbs and eyes widely staring. His mother
swept down on him with the swoop of a striking falcon, and had him in
her arms before her husband could recover himself.
"You have seen him like this before," she said, "so you know he will
remain in the trance for some time. I will take him to bed."
"It is you who have put him up to this," cried the man in a shaking
voice.
Mrs. Jenner laughed. "Heaven put him up to it," she said, hysterically.
"This hatred of you dates too far back. You had better ask a doctor to
explain. I cannot; but I know what I know. Wait till I have put him to
bed, then I will come back to hear how you have hunted me down, and
why. I thought I was free from gaol-birds," she finished, bitterly, and
passed out of the room and up the stairs.
Mr. Jenner gave a savage ejaculation. Then he shuffled forward to
the fire, warmed himself, and proceeded to attack the food. In an
incredibly short space of time there was not a crumb left on the table,
and he was still hungry.
"If I only had a smoke!" he growled, squeezing his hands together.
"But I have nothing, not even a welcome. Ah, well, there are those
who will pay for this!" He took a well-worn pocket-book out of his
breast-pocket. "My fortune lies in here; but it is not safe while he is
about."
The reflection seemed to make him uneasy, and he glanced round the poor
room, looking for a place where he might hide his treasure. His eyes
fell on the brown horse, and he chuckled.
"She'll always keep that for Gilbert," he said, "and it's not likely to
be lost. I'll put it in there."
Having assured himself that his wife was upstairs, he proceeded to
carry out his plan. The toy was made of rags, painted and moulded
to the shape of a horse. So he made an incision in the belly, and,
thrusting in his finger, formed a hole. Then, with a hasty glance
round, he opened the red pocket-book and produced therefrom a Bill of
Exchange, which he folded up into a compass as small as possible. This
he thrust into the hole, pulled the interior stuffing over it, and
using his wife's needle, sewed up the hole with considerable despatch
and dexterity. A few white threads were still sufficiently noticeable
to arouse suspicion, so he rubbed his hand on the sooty grate and
blackened the rent. So neatly was all this done that no one would have
guessed that the toy had been opened.
Jenner laughed, and tossed the horse on to the table where the child
had left it. "That's all right," he said. "She'll never part with
anything belonging to the boy."
He looked over the table to see if any food remained. Finding none, he
swore a little and sat down by the fire, upon which he had heaped all
the fuel he could find. There he brooded, chin in hand, thinking of his
past, dreading the days to come.