(I)
At half-past eleven o'clock Mrs. Partington came upstairs to the room
where the two men were still drinking, to make one more suggestion that
it was time to go to bed.
It was a dreary little room, this front bedroom on the first floor,
where Frank and the Major had slept last night in one large double bed.
The bed was pushed now close against the wall, the clothes still tumbled
and unmade, with various articles lying upon it, as on a table. A chair
without a back stood between it and the window.
The table where the two men still sat was pulled close to the fire that
had been lighted partly in honor of Mr. Partington and partly in honor
of Christmas, and was covered with a _débris_ of plates and glasses and
tobacco and bottles. There was a jam-jar filled with holly obtained from
the butcher's shop, in the middle of the table. There was very little
furniture in the room; there was a yellow-painted chest of drawers
opposite the door, and this, too, held a little regiment of bottles;
there was a large oleograph of Queen Victoria hanging above the bed,
and a text--for some inscrutable reason--was permitted to hang above the
fireplace, proclaiming that "The Lord is merciful and long-suffering,"
in Gothic letters, peeping modestly out of a wealth of painted
apple-blossoms, with a water-wheel in the middle distance and a stile.
On the further side of the fireplace was a washhand-stand, with a tin
pail below it, and the Major's bowler hat reposing in the basin. There
was a piece of carpet underneath the table, and a woolly sort of mat,
trodden through in two or three places, beside the bed.
* * * * *
Mrs. Partington coughed as she came in, so tremendous was the reek of
tobacco smoke, burning paraffin and spirits.
"Bless the men!" she said, and choked once more.
She was feeling comparatively light-hearted; it was a considerable
relief to her that Frank actually had not come back, though she never
had for one instant expected him to do so. But she didn't want any more
disturbances or quarrels, and, as she looked at the Major, who turned in
his chair as she came in, she felt even more relieved. His appearance
was not reassuring.
He had been drinking pretty steadily all day to drown his grief, and had
ended up by a very business-like supper with his landlord. There were
four empty beer bottles and one empty whisky bottle distributed on the
table or floor, and another half-empty whisky bottle stood between the
two men on the table. And as she looked at the Major (she was completely
experienced in alcoholic symptoms), she understood exactly what stage he
had reached....
* * * * *
Now the Major was by no means a drunkard--let that be understood. He
drank whenever he could, but a tramp cannot drink to very grave excess.
He is perpetually walking and he is perpetually poor. But this was a
special occasion; it was Christmas; he was home in London; his landlord
had returned, and he had lost Gertie.
He had reached, then, the dangerous stage, when the alcohol, after
having excited and warmed and confused the brain, recoils from it to
some extent, leaving it clear and resolute and entirely reckless, and
entirely conscious of any idea that happens to be dominant (at least,
that is the effect on some temperaments). The maudlin stage had passed
long ago, at the beginning of supper, when the Major had leaned his head
on his plate and wept over the ingratitude of man and the peculiar
poignancy of "old Frankie's" individual exhibition of it. A noisy stage
had succeeded to this, and now there was deadly quiet.
He was rather white in the face; his eyes were set, but very bright, and
he was smoking hard and fast.
"Now then," said Mrs. Partington cheerfully, "time for bed."
Her husband winked at her gravely, which was his nearest approach to
hilarity. He was a quiet man at all times.
The Major said nothing.
"There! there's 'Erb awake again," said the mother, as a wail rose up
the staircase. "I'll be up again presently." And she vanished once more.
* * * * *
Two of the children were awake after all.
Jimmie lay, black-eyed and alert, beside his brother, and looked at his
mother reflectively as she came in. He was still thinking about the
sixpence that might conceivably have been his. 'Erb's lamentation
stopped as she came in, and she went to the table first to turn down the
smoking lamp.
She was quite a kindly mother, a great deal more tender than she seemed,
and 'Erb knew it well enough. But he respected her sufficiently to stop
crying when she came in.
"Now then," she said with motherly sternness. "I can't 'ave--"
Then she stopped abruptly. She had heard steps on the pavement outside
as she came into the room, and now she heard the handle of the street
door turned and someone come into the passage. She stood wondering, and
in that pause she missed her chance, for the steps came straight past
the door and began to go upstairs. It might, of course, conceivably be
one of the lodgers on the top-floor, and yet she knew it was not. She
whisked to the door a moment later, but it was too late, and she was
only just in time to see the figure she knew turn the corner of the four
stairs that led to the first-floor landing.
"Is that Frankie?" asked Jimmie, suddenly sitting up in bed. "Oh!
mother, let me--"
"You be quiet!" snapped the woman, and stood listening; with parted
lips.
(II)
From that point Mrs. Partington seems to have been able to follow very
closely what must have taken place upstairs.
It was a very quiet night, here in Turner Road: the roysterers were in
the better-lighted streets, and the sober folk were at home. And there
was not a footstep on the pavements outside to confuse the little drama
of sound that came down to her through the ill-fitting boards overhead.
She could not explain afterwards why she did not interfere. I imagine
that she hoped against hope that she was misinterpreting what she heard,
and also that a kind of terror seized her which she found it really
impossible to shake off.
First, there was the opening and closing of the door; two or three
footsteps, and then dead silence.
Then she heard talking begin, first one voice, then a crescendo, as if
two or three clamored together; then one voice again. (It was
impossible, so far, to distinguish which was which.)
This went on for a minute or two; occasionally there was a crescendo,
and once or twice some voice rose almost into a shout.
Then, without warning, there was a shuffling of feet, and a crash, as of
an overturned chair; and, instant upon the noise, 'Erb set up a
prolonged wail.
"You be quiet!" snapped the woman in a sharp whisper.
The noises went on: now the stamp of a foot; now the scraping of
something overhead and a voice or two in sharp deep exclamation, and
then complete silence once more. 'Erb was sobbing now, as noiselessly as
he could, terrified at his mother's face, and Jimmie was up, standing
on the floor in his flannel shirt, listening like his mother. Maggie
still slept deeply on the further side of the bed.
The woman went on tip-toe a step nearer the door, opened it, and peeped
out irresolutely. But the uncarpeted stairs stretched up into the
darkness, unlit except for the glimmer that came from the room at whose
door she was standing....
There was a voice now, rising and falling steadily, and she heard it
broken in upon now and again by something that resembled a chuckle.
Somehow or another this sickened her more than all else; it was like her
husband's voice. She recoiled into the room, and, as she did so, there
came the sound of blows and the stamping of feet, and she knew, in a way
that she could not explain, that there was no fight going on. It was
some kind of punishment, not a conflict....
She would have given the world to move, to run to the street door and
scream for help; but her knees shook under her and her heart seemed to
be hammering itself to bits. Jimmie had hold of her now, clinging round
her, shaking with terror and murmuring something she could not
understand. Her whole attention was upstairs. She was wondering how long
it would go on.
It must be past midnight now, she thought: the streets seethed still as
death. But overhead there was still movement and the sound of blows,
and then abruptly the end came.
There was one more crescendo of noise--two voices raised in dispute, one
almost shrill, in anger or expostulation; then one more sudden and heavy
noise as of a blow or a fall, and dead silence.
(III)
The next thing that Mrs. Partington remembered afterwards was that she
found herself standing on the landing upstairs, listening, yet afraid to
move.
All was very nearly silent within: there was just low talking, and the
sound of something being moved. It was her husband's voice that she
heard.
Beyond her the stairs ran up to the next story, and she became aware
presently that someone else was watching, too. An untidy head of a woman
leaned over the banisters, and candle-light from somewhere beyond lit up
her face. She was grinning.
* * * * *
Then the sharp whisper came down the stairs demanding what was up.
Mrs. Partington jerked her thumb towards the closed door and nodded
reassuringly. She was aware that she must be natural at all costs. The
woman still hung over the banisters a minute longer and then was gone.
Jimmie was with her too, now, still just in his shirt, perfectly quiet,
with a face as white as paper. His big black eyes dwelt on his mother's
face.
Then suddenly she could bear the suspense no more. She stole up to the
door, still on tip-toe, still listening, and laid her fingers on the
handle. There were more gentle movements within now, the noise of water
and a basin (she heard the china clink distinctly), but no more words.
She turned the handle resolutely and looked in.
* * * * *
The Major was leaning in the corner by the window, with his hands in his
pockets, staring with a dull, white, defiant kind of face at the bed.
The lamp on the mantelpiece lighted him up clearly. On his knees by the
bedside was her husband, with his back to her, supporting a basin on the
bed and some thing dark that hung over it. Then she saw Frank. It was he
who was lying on the bed almost upon his face; one boot dangled down on
this side, and it was his head that her husband was supporting. She
stared at it a moment in terror.... Then her eyes wandered to the floor,
where, among the pieces of broken glass, a pool of dark liquid spread
slowly over the boards. Twigs and detached leaves of holly lay in the
midst of it. And at that sight her instinct reasserted herself.
She stepped forward and took her husband by the shoulder. He turned a
face that twitched a little towards her. She pushed him aside, took the
basin from him, and the young man's head....
"Clear out of this," she whispered sharply. "Quick, mind! You and the
Major!... Jimmie!" The boy was by her in an instant, shaking all over,
but perfectly self-controlled.
"Jimmie, put your things on and be off to the clergy-house. Ring 'em up,
and ask for Mr. Carter. Bring him round with you."
Frank's head slipped a little in her hands, and she half rose to steady
it. When she had finished and looked round again for her husband, the
room was empty. From below up the stairs came a sudden draught, and the
flame leaped in the lamp-chimney. And then, once more unrestrained, rose
up the wailing of 'Erb.
(IV)
A little after dawn on that Christmas morning Mr. Parham-Carter sat
solitary in the kitchen. The children had been packed off to a
neighbor's house before, and he himself had been to and fro all night
and was tired out--to the priest's house at Homerton, to the doctor's,
and to the parish nurse. All the proper things had been done. Frank had
been anointed by the priest, bandaged by the doctor, and settled in by
the nurse into the middle of the big double bed. He had not yet
recovered consciousness. They were upstairs now--Jack, Dick and the
nurse; the priest and the doctor had promised to look in before
nine--there was nothing more that they could do for the present, they
said--and Mrs. Partington was out at this moment to fetch something from
the dispensary.
He had heard her story during one of the intervals in the course of the
night, and it seemed to him that he had a tolerably accurate theory of
the whole affair--if, that is to say, her interpretation of the noises
she had heard was at all correct.
The Major must have made an unexpected attack, probably by a kick that
had temporarily disabled Frank, and must then, with Mr. Partington's
judicial though amused approval, have proceeded to inflict chastisement
upon Frank as he lay on the floor. This must have gone on for a
considerable time; Frank seemed to have been heavily kicked all over his
body. And the thing must have ended with a sudden uncontrolled attack on
the part of the Major, not only with his boots, but with at least one of
the heavy bottles. The young man's head was cut deeply, as if by glass,
and it was probably three or four kicks on the head, before Mr.
Partington could interfere, that had concluded the punishment. The
doctor's evidence entirely corroborated this interpretation of events.
It was, of course, impossible to know whether Frank had had the time or
the will to make any resistance. The police had been communicated with,
but there was no news yet of the two men involved.
* * * * *
It was one of those bleak, uncomfortable dawns that have no beauty
either of warmth or serenity--at least it seemed so here in Turner Road.
Above the torn and dingy strip of lace that shrouded the lower part of
the window towered the black fronts of the high houses against the
steely western sky. It was extraordinarily quiet. Now and then a
footstep echoed and died suddenly as some passer-by crossed the end of
the street; but there was no murmur of voices yet, or groups at the
doors, as, no doubt, there would be when the news became known.
The room, too, was cheerless; the fire was long ago gone out; the
children's bed was still tumbled and disordered, and the paraffin lamp
had smoked itself out half an hour ago. Overhead the clergyman could
hear now and again a very gentle footstep, and that was all.
He was worn out with excitement and a kind of terror; and events took
for him the same kind of clear, hard outline as did the physical objects
themselves in this cold light of dawn. He had passed through a dozen
moods: furious anger at the senseless crime, at the hopeless, miserable
waste of a life, an overwhelming compassion and a wholly unreasonable
self-reproach for not having foreseen danger more clearly the night
before. There were other thoughts that had come to him too--doubts as to
whether the internal significance of all these things were in the least
analogous to the external happenings; whether, perhaps, after all, the
whole affair were not on the inner side a complete and perfect event--in
fact, a startling success of a nature which he could not understand.
Certainly, exteriorly, a more lamentable failure and waste could not be
conceived; there had been sacrificed such an array of advantages--birth,
money, education, gifts, position--and for such an exceedingly small and
doubtful good, that no additional data, it would appear, could possibly
explain the situation. Yet was it possible that such data did exist
somewhere, and that another golden and perfect deed had been done--that
there was no waste, no failure, after all?
But at present these thoughts only came to him in glimpses; he was
exhausted now of emotion and speculation. He regarded the pitiless
facts with a sunken, unenergetic attention, and wondered when he would
be called again upstairs.
There came a footstep outside; it hesitated, then the street door was
pushed open and the step came in, up to the room door, and a small face,
pinched with cold, its eyes all burning, looked at him.
"Come in, Jimmie," he whispered.
* * * * *
And so the two sat, huddled one against the other, and the man felt
again and again a shudder, though not of cold, shake the little body at
his side.
(V)
Ten minutes later a step came down the stairs, a little hurriedly,
though on tip-toe; and Mrs. Partington, her own thin face lined with
sleeplessness and emotion, and her lips set, nodded at him emphatically.
He understood, and went quickly past her, followed closely by the child,
and up the narrow stairs.... He heard the street-door close behind him
as the woman left the house.
It seemed to him as he came into the room as if he had stepped clean out
of one world into another. And the sense of it was so sudden and abrupt
that he stood for an instant on the threshold amazed at the transition.
First, it was the absolute stillness and motionlessness of the room that
impressed him, so far as any one element predominated. There were
persons in the room, but they were as statues.
On the farther side of the bed, decent now and arranged and standing out
across the room, kneeled the two men, Jack Kirkby and Dick Guiseley, but
they neither lifted their eyes nor showed the faintest consciousness of
his presence as he entered. Their faces were in shadow: behind them was
the cold patch of the window, and a candle within half an inch of
extinction stood also behind them on a table in the corner, with one or
two covered vessels and instruments.
The nurse kneeled on this side, one arm beneath the pillow and the other
on the counterpane.
And then there was Frank.
* * * * *
He lay perfectly still upon his back, his hands clasped before him (and
even these were bandaged). His head lay high on three or four pillows,
and he wore what looked like a sort of cap, wholly hiding his hair and
ears. His profile alone showed clear-cut and distinct against the gloom
in the corner behind. His face was entirely tranquil, as pale as ivory;
his lips were closed. His eyes alone were alive.
Presently those turned a little, and the man standing at the door,
understanding the look, came forward and kneeled too by the bed.
* * * * *
Then, little by little, he began, in that living stillness, to
understand rather better what it was that he was witnessing.... It was
not that there was anything physical in the room, beyond the things of
which his senses told him; there was but the dingy furniture, the white
bed, august now with a strange dignity as of a white altar, and the four
persons beside himself--five now, for Jimmie was beside him. But that
the physical was not the plane in which these five persons were now
chiefly conscious was the most evident thing of all.... There was about
them, not a Presence, not an air, not a sweetness or a sound, and yet it
is by such negatives only that the thing can be expressed.
* * * * *
And so they kneeled and waited.
* * * * *
"Why, Jack--"
It shook the waiting air like the sound of a bell, yet it was only
whispered. The man nearest him on the other side shook with a single
spasmodic movement and laid his fingers gently on the bandaged hands.
And then for a long while there was no further movement or sound.
"Rosary!" said Frank suddenly, still in a whisper.... "Beads...."
Jack moved swiftly on his knees, took from the table a string of beads
from where they had been laid the night before, and put them into the
still fingers. Then he laid his own hands over them again.
* * * * *
Again there was a long pause.
Outside in the street a footstep came up from the direction of Mortimer
Road, waxed loud and clear on the pavement, and died again down towards
the street leading to the marshes. And, but for this, there was no
further sound for a while. Then a cock crew, thin and shrill, somewhere
far away; a dray rumbled past the end of the street and was silent.
But the silence in the room was of a different quality; or, rather, the
world seemed silent because this room was so, and not the other way. It
was here that the center lay, where a battered man was dying, and from
this center radiated out the Great Peace.
It was no waste then, after all!--this life of strange unreason ending
in this very climax of uselessness, exactly when ordinary usefulness was
about to begin. Could that be waste that ended so?
"Priest," whispered the voice from the bed.
Then Dick leaned forward.
"He has been," he said distinctly and slowly. "He was here at two
o'clock. He did--what he came for. And he's coming again directly."
The eyes closed in sign of assent and opened again.
He seemed to be looking, as in a kind of meditation, at nothing in
particular. It was as a man who waits at his ease for some pleasant
little event that will unroll by and by. He was in no ecstasy, and, it
seemed, in no pain and in no fierce expectation; he was simply at his
ease and waiting. He was content, whatever those others might be.
For a moment it crossed the young clergyman's mind that he ought to pray
aloud, but the thing was dismissed instantly. It seemed to him
impertinent nonsense. That was not what was required. It was his
business to watch, not to act.
So, little by little, he ceased to think actively, he ceased to consider
this and that. At first he had wondered how long it would be before the
doctor and the priest arrived. (The woman had gone to fetch them.) He
had wished that they would make haste.... He had wondered what the
others felt, and how he would describe it all to his Vicar. Now, little
by little, all this ceased, and the peace grew within and without, till
the balance of pressure was equalized and his attention floated at the
perfect poise.
Again there was no symbol or analogy that presented itself. It was not
even by negation that he thought. There was just one positive element
that included all: time seemed to mean nothing, the ticks of the clock
with the painted face were scarcely consecutive; it was all one, and
distance was nothing, nor nearness--not even the nearness of the dying
face against the pillows....
* * * * *
It was so, then, that something of that state to which Frank had passed
communicated itself to at least one of those who saw him die.
A little past the half hour Frank spoke again.
"My love to Whitty," he said.... "Diary.... Tell him...."
* * * * *
The end came a few minutes before nine o'clock, and it seems to have
come as naturally as life itself. There was no drama, no dying speech,
not one word.
Those who were there saw him move ever so slightly in bed, and his head
lifted a little. Then his head sank once more and the Failure was
complete.
THE END