TOLLY proceeded in a vague sort of scurry to clear up. But in general
confusion of conscience and in his gin-begotten shakiness, he presently
dropped the poker with a clatter, and Strange awoke and sat bolt upright
in his Ulster.
“Well, Tolly, how do you feel?” he demanded blandly, regarding the
forlorn, dirty figure with a persistent and contemplative stare that
caused it to wriggle and writhe like a worm.
Tolly was a very long, thin, crooked person, whether young or old it was
impossible to decide, unless you happened to have seen his baptismal
register.
His mother herself was rather at sea on the question. “He has always
looked like that from a baby,” she remarked to the school inspector,
when he called one day to round up the urchin, who from his lanky length
certainly looked quite meet for Primers. “I don’t believe myself he’s
that old but he may be, there ain’t no tellin’, he’s that queer one
can’t never say nothin’ certain regardin’ him.”
Tolly’s freckles were his great point, they were so many, so
parti-coloured and so varied in form; they congregated most on his long
thin nose, and tumbled over one another in a way that gave the appendage
a scaly look like the tail of a fish. Tolly’s teeth suffered from early
decay; he may have had a few back-grinders but all he could boast of in
front was one abnormally long fang at the right side, that wobbled
frightfully at every word, and when he was nervous from gin wobbled even
when he was silent.
“If I remember aright,” continued Strange, “you took the pledge the
night before I left, you cried too—let alone roared—with remorse.”
“Yes, sir, I don’t deny nothin’.”
“I’d like to catch you at it! Well, how long did you keep the pledge?”
“I believe it were a matter of three weeks, sir, then I cotched cold.”
“Oh, indeed! And the gin cotched you? Now, clear up that place. I shall
cook breakfast myself. When you have put things ship-shape from my point
of view, not yours, recollect, I shall give you sixpence, then you can
go to the baths round the corner and scrub yourself from head to foot.
Your things—except the hat, I burnt that, you appear to have stored
dripping in it—are in the box I gave you, put them on and then wait here
for me. That gridiron, those tumblers, those cups and other things you
have smashed or pawned, you will buy out of your next three weeks’
wages—Farris’s gin-hole has all your savings, no doubt. And to-night I
shall give you a dose of castor oil mixed with senna.”
“Oh, Lord help me!” groaned Tolly, and he shuffled nearer to his master,
with his slits of lips drawn tight across his fang—he had experienced
Strange’s treatment before this.
“Now stop groaning, and do your work, neither I nor the Lord would touch
you with a pair of tongs in your present beastly condition! You have
earned your punishment and of course you shall get it. If you lived
decently you would have a first-rate place and you know it, and, look
here, I have come to the end of my patience, if I find you in this state
again, I shall sack you.”
Tolly gave an anguished squeal.
“Oh, I’ll try, sir, I does try, I swear to God I does. I tries, I does,
till I sweats like a bullock and doesn’t know if I’m on my head or my
heels, but summow it ain’t no go. Don’t sack me, for the love of God,
don’t, sir.”
“Finish your sweeping, and go over that place under the table again. I
shall see how you get on after the bath and the castor oil.
“Poor beggar!” said Strange to himself, as he ate his ham and drank his
well-sweetened tea. “Poor beggar! I wonder if I shall ever make anything
out of him! Only that the creature is so weakly—look at the miserable
hold of his claws on that dustpan!—I should take him about with me, the
Arabs would teach him sobriety anyway and he might pose as an apostle of
Christianity among them.”
At this thought Strange chuckled aloud, and helped himself to another
slice of ham.
Tolly’s face brightened as he heard the sound, he turned furtively to
watch his earthly Providence, and went on with his dusting with
redoubled fury.
“Now,” said Strange, when he had finished, “carry all these things into
the next room and have a good feed. When did you happen to have your
last meal?”
On the point of truth Strange was inexorable; the fellow dared not lie,
but he had a sort of bastard pride about him and felt the question
keenly. Turning a sickly puce, he stammered,
“I haven’t had nothing yesterday, sir, summow I didn’t feel like it.”
“No? Well, if I were you I’d cultivate the feeling now. Send in the
barber on your way to the bath, and hand down that ink bottle from the
shelf before you go. Pah! you can’t even fill an ink bottle, your hand
shakes so! Upon my word, if I have to sack you I don’t know what you’ll
do, you aren’t worth fourpence a week in this condition.”
Tolly gave a dumb shudder and his fang kept time to it.
Five years before, Strange had picked him up out of a sewer, where he
went to learn the trade of ratting. Strange liked to learn the ins and
outs of anything that had any suggestion of human interest in it.
He had brought the half-dead, mouldy creature to his rooms, and after
saving his life, it struck him to keep it, and see what could be done
with it. This was the result.
As long as Strange was at home Tolly kept straight, but directly he was
out of reach, the miserable absorbing craving took hold of the wretch,
and pinched, and pulled, and nipped, as with raging hot irons, at the
very soul of him, till at last he swallowed his humanity at a gulp, gave
way to the beast, and fled to the gin-shop.
For three weeks he had endured the torture this last time, Strange
thought with grim pity, as he watched him, through the heavy Eastern
curtains, devouring his food to the dropping of tears.
“Poor beggar! I shall never be able to get rid of him as long as life
holds whatever morsel of soul he may have in him. Meanwhile, I cannot
stand that solitary fang; when he has got over his brew I shall get him
a set of teeth.”
He lay back and laughed. “They’ll be the ruin of his immortal soul,
those teeth; fancy the grin of the fellow when his lips have a resisting
surface to stretch across! Brown will charge frightfully for filling
such a cavern.”
He laughed again and turned to his work, and in two hours he had the
first batch of “copy” ready for the printer. Then he yawned and
stretched, and apologized to the barber, whom he had kept waiting an
hour and ten minutes.
When he was shaved, he dressed, and set forth to resume civilization.