SLAVES OF FREEDOM
By Coningsby Dawson
New York: Henry Holt And Company
1916
[Illustration: 0003]
[Illustration: 0007]
A SLAVE OF FREEDOM
The Night slips his arm about the Moon
And walks till the skies grow gray;
But my Love, when I speak of love,
Has never a word to say.
I set my dreams at her feet as lamps
For which all my hope must pay;
But my Love, when I speak of love,
Has never a word to say.
I fill her hands with a gleaming soul
For her plaything night and day;
But she, when I speak to her of love,
Has never a word to say.
I give my life, which is hers to kill
Or to keep with her alway;
And still, when I speak to her of love,
She’s never a word to say.
_The Night slips his arm about the Moon
And walks till the skies grow gray;
But my Love, when I speak of love,
Has never a word to say._
BOOK I--LIFE TILL TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER I--MRS. SHEERUG’S GARDEN
Nother bucket o’ mortar, Mr. Ooze.”
The excessively thin man glanced up from the puddle of lime that he
was stirring and regarded the excessively fat man with a smile of meek
interrogation.
“‘Nother bucket o’ mortar, Willie Ooze, and don’t you put your ’ead on
one side at me like a bloomin’ cockatoo.”
Mr. William Hughes stuttered an apology. “I was thin-thinking.”
“Thin-thinking!” The fat man laughed good-naturedly. Turning his back
on his helper, he gave the brick which he had just laid an extra tap to
emphasize his incredulity. “’Tisn’t like you.”
The thin man’s feelings were wounded. To the little boy who looked on
this was evident from the way he swallowed. His Adam’s-apple took a
run up his throat and, at the last moment, thought better of it. “But I
_was_ thinking,” he persisted; “thinking that I’d learnt something from
stirring up this gray muck. If ever I was to kill somebody--you, for
instance, or that boy--I’d know better than to bury you in slaked lime.”
“Uml Urn!” The fat man gulped with surprise. He puckered his vast chin
against his collar so that his voice came deep and strangled. “It’s
scraps o’ knowledge like that as saves men from the gallers. If ’alf
the murderers that is ’anged ’ad come to me first, they wouldn’t be
’anging. But--but----” He seemed at last to realize the unkind
implication of Mr. Hughes’s naive confession. “But I’d make four o’ you,
Willyum! You couldn’t kill me, however you tried.”
In the face of contradiction Mr. Hughes forgot his nervousness. “I
could.” he pleaded earnestly. “I’ve often thought about it. I’d put off
till you was stooping, and then jump. What with you being so short of
breath and me being so long in the arms and legs, why-----------! I’ve
planned it out many times, you and me being such good friends and so
much alone together.”
The face of the fat man grew serious with disapproval. “You?
’ave, ’ave you! You’ve got as far as that! You’re a nice domestic
pet, I must say, to keep unchained to play with the children.” He
attempted to go on with his bricklaying, but the memory of Mr. Hughes’s
long arms and legs so immediately behind him was disturbing. He swung
round holding his trowel like a weapon. “Don’t like your way of talking;
don’t like it. O’ course you’ve ‘ad your troubles; for them I make
allowances. But I don’t like it, and I don’t mind telling you. Um! Um!”
The thin man was crestfallen; he had hoped to give pleasure. “But I
thought you liked murders.”
“Like ’em! I enjoy them--so I do.” The fat man spoke tartly. “But when
you make me the corpse of your conversations, you presoom, Mr. Ooze, and
I don’t mind telling you--you really do. Let that boy be the corpse next
time; leave me out of it---- ’Nother bucket o’ mortar.”
_That_ boy, who was sole witness to this quarrel, was very small--far
smaller than his age. In the big walled garden of Orchid Lodge he felt
smaller than usual. Everything was strange; even the whispered sigh of
dead leaves was different as they swam up and swirled in eddies. In his
own garden, only six walls distant, their sigh was gentle as Dearie’s
footstep--but something had happened to Dearie; Jimmie Boy had told
him so that morning. “Teddy, little man, it’s happened again”--the
information had left Teddy none the wiser. All he knew was that Jane had
told the milkman that something was expected, and that the milkman had
told the cook at Orchid Lodge. The result had been the intrusion at
breakfast of the remarkable Mrs. Sheerug.
For a long while Mrs. Sheerug had been a staple topic of conversation
between Dearie and Jimmie Boy. They had wondered who she was. They
had made up the most preposterous tales about her and had told them to
Teddy. They would watch for her to come out of her house six doors away,
so that as she passed their window in Eden Row Jimmie Boy might make
rapid sketches of her trotting balloon-like figure. He had used her more
than once already in books which he had been commissioned to illustrate.
She was the faery-godmother in his _Cinderella and Other Ancient Tales:
With!6 Plates in color by James Gurney_. She was Mother Santa Claus in
his _Christmas Up to Date_. They had rather wanted to get to know her,
this child-man and woman who seemed no older than their little son
and at times, even to their little son, not half as sensible. They had
wanted to get to know her because she was always smiling, and because
she was always upholstered in such hideously clashing colors, and
because she was always setting out burdened on errands from which she
returned empty-handed. The attraction of Mrs. Sheerug was heightened by
Jane’s, the maid-of-all-work’s, discoveries: Orchid Lodge was heavily
in debt to the local tradesmen and yet (it was Dearie who said “And yet.”
with a sigh of envy), and yet its mistress was always smiling.
When Mrs. Sheerug had invaded Teddy’s father that morning, she had come
arrayed for conquest. She had worn a green plush mantle, a blue bonnet
and, waving defiance from the blue bonnet, a yellow feather.
“I’m a total stranger,” she had said. “Go on with your breakfast, Mr.
Gurney, I’ve had mine. I’ll watch you. Well, _I’ve heard_, and so I’ve
dropped in to see what I can do. You mustn’t mind me; trying to be a
mother to everyone’s my foible. Now, first of all, you can’t have that
boy in the house--boys are nice, but a nuisance. They’re noisy.”
“But Teddy, I mean Theo, isn’t.”
It was just like Jimmie Boy to call him Theo before a stranger and to
assume the rôle of a respected parent.
Mrs. Sheerug refused to be contradicted. She was cheerful, but emphatic.
“If he never made a noise before, he will now. As soon as I’ve made Theo
comfortable, I’ll come back to take care of you.”
Making Theo comfortable had consisted in leading him down the
old-fashioned, little-traveled street, on one side of which the river
ran, guarded by iron spikes like spears set up on end, and turning him
loose in the strange garden, where he had overheard a fat man accusing a
thin man of murderous intentions.
Teddy looked round. The walls were too high to climb. If he shouted
for help he might rouse the men’s enmity. Neither of them seemed to
be annoyed with him at present, for neither of them had spoken to him.
There was no alternative--he must stick it out. That’s what his father
told Dearie to do when pictures weren’t selling and bills were pressing.
Already he had picked up the philosophy that life outlasts every
difficulty--every difficulty except death.
Mr. Hughes, having supplied the bucket of mortar, was trying to make
himself useful in a new direction. The groan and coughing of a saw were
heard. The fat man dropped his trowel and turned. He watched Mr. Hughes
sorrowfully.
“Mr. Ooze, that’s no way to make a job o’ that” For the first time he
addressed the little boy: “He’s as busy as a one-armed paper-’anger
with the itch this s’morning. Bless my soul, if he isn’t sawing more
ground than wood.” Then to Mr. Hughes: “’Ere, give me that. Now watch
me; this is the way to do it.”
The fat man took the saw from the meek man’s unresisting hand. “You lay
it so,” he said. He laid the saw almost horizontal with the plank. The
thin man leant forward that he might profit by instruction, and nodded.
“And now,” said the fat man, “you get all your weight be’ind it and
drive forward.”
As he drove forward the blade slipped and jabbed Mr. Hughes’s leg. Mr.
Hughes sat down with a howl and drew up his trousers to inspect the
damage. When the fat man had examined the scratch and pronounced it not
serious, he proposed a rest and produced a pipe. “Nice smoke,” he said,
“is more comforting than any woman, only I wish I’d known it before I
married.” Then he became aware that he alone was smoking.
“What, lost yours, Mr. Ooze? Just what one might expect! You’re the most
unlucky chap I ever met, yes, and careless. You bring your troubles on
yourself, Willie Ooze. First you go and lose a wife that you never ought
to ’ave ’ad, and now you lose something still more valuable.”
“Ah, yes!” The thin man ceased from searching through his pockets and
heaved a sigh. “I lose everything. Suppose I’ll go on losing till the
grave shuts down on this body o’ me--and then I’ll lose that. My ’air
began to come out before I was twenty--tonics weren’t no good. Now I
always ’ave to wear a ’at--do it even in the ’ouse, unless I’m
reminded. And then, as you say, there was poor ’Enrietta. I’m always
wondering whether I really lost ’er, or whether----”
“Expect she gave you the slip on purpose,” said the fat man. “Best
forget it; consider ’er as so much spilt milk.”
“That’s just what I can’t do.” Mr. Hughes clasped his bony hands: “It
don’t seem respectful to what’s maybe dead.”
As far as Teddy could make out from their conversation, ’Enrietta had
once been Mrs. Hughes. On a trip to Southend she had insisted on taking
a swing in a highflyer. To her great annoyance her husband had been too
timid to accompany her, and she had had to take it by herself. The last
he had seen of her was a flushed face and flapping skirt swooping in
daring semi-circles between the heavens and the ground. When the swing
had stopped and he pressed through the crowd to claim her, she had
vanished.
Perhaps it was the blood on the thin man’s leg that prompted the fat
man’s observation. “It might ’ave been that.”
“What?”
The fat man drew his finger across his throat suggestively. “That.” He
repeated. “It might ’ave ’appened to your ’Enrietta.”
“Often thought it myself.” Mr. Hughes spoke slowly. “But--but d’you
think anybody would suspect that I----?”
“They might.” The fat man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “It’s usually
chaps of your build that does it; as the lofty Mr. Shakespeare puts it,
’I ’ate those lean and ’ungry men.’”
“Very true! Very true! Lefroy was lean and ’ungry. I know, ’cause I
once rode with ’im in the same railway carriage.”
Teddy listened, fascinated and horror-stricken, to the fat and thin man
swapping anecdotes of murders past and present. For half an hour they
strove to outdo each other in ghastliness and minuteness of details.
When they had returned to their work and Mr. Hughes was at a safe
distance, the fat man spoke beneath his breath to the little boy: “He’s
no good at anything. I keep him with me ’cause we both makes a ’obby
of ’omicide--that’s the doctor’s word for the kind o’ illness we
was talking about. Also,” here his voice became as refined as Teddy’s
father’s, “he amuses me with his Cockney dialect He says he’s unlucky
because he was born in a hansom-cab. Whenever I speak to him I call him
Ooze and drop my aitches. It’s another of my hobbies--that and keeping
pigeons. Pretending to be vulgar relieves my feelings. When one’s
married and as stout as I am, if one doesn’t relieve one’s feelings one
bursts.”
For the same reason that one lavishes endearments on a dog of uncertain
temper, Teddy thought it wise to feign an interest in the fat man’s
hobbies. “It can’t be very nice for them,” he faltered.
“For ’oo?”
“The persons.”
“What persons?”
“The persons you do it to.”
“Do it to! Do it to! You’re making me lose my temper, which is bad for
me ’ealth; that’s what you’re doing. Now, then, do what? Don’t beat
about. Out with it.”
For answer the little boy drew a tremulous finger across his throat in
imitation of one of the fat man’s gestures.
The fat man started laughing--laughing uproariously. His body shook like
a jelly and fell into dimples. He tried to speak, but couldn’t. At last
he shouted: “Mr. Ooze, come ’ere. This little boy--”
Then he stopped laughing suddenly and dropped his rough way of talking.
The child’s face had gone desperately white. “Poor chap! Must have
frightened you! Here, steady.”
“Now you’ve done it,” said Mr. Hughes, coming up from behind. “And when
your wife knows, won’t you catch it!”