you know, with a little fire, we’d bin cookin’ something, when a
blooming sweep come along. I’ll tell it to you; it was just inside a
bit of a wood and we was sleeping rough. My mate was a bit nervous,
you know, ’e kept looking round as if ’e could see something, but it
was that dark you might be looking in a sack. I says to Timmy: what’s
up with you? I dunno, ’e says, something going on, and just as ’e says
that this blooming sweep ’oofs in from nowhere and falls over our
beer. I says to Timmy, ’e’s knocked over our beer; are you going to
fight ’im or shall I? And Timmy shouts: look at ’im, ’e’s laying on the
fire! And s’elp me God so ’e was, ’is legs was in the sticks and ’is
trousers was a-burning. Come out of it, we says, but ’e didn’t move.
No, my oath, ’e layed there like a dead sheep. Well, we pulled ’im off
it, but ’e was like a silly bloke. ’E couldn’t stand up and ’e couldn’t
say anything. ’E got a lot of froth round ’is mouth like a ’orse that’s
going wicked. And ’e wasn’t drunk, neither, but, _you_ know, ’e was
just frightened out of ’is life about something. We sit ’im down with
’is back against a tree and made the fire up again. What’s the matter
with you, we says; you got a fit, we says; what d’ye want coming ’ere,
we says? But we couldn’t get no answer from ’im. ’Is face was that dam
white ’cept where it was smudged with soot, and there was this froth
dribbling on ’im, and what d’yer think, ’e’d got a red rose stuck in
’is button-’ole. ’E was a horrible sight; we couldn’t bear ’im, so we
picks ’im up, and Timmy give ’im a clout in the ear and shoves ’im out
among some bushes where we couldn’t see ’im. Sw’elp me if ’e didn’t
come crawling back on ’is hands and knees where we was sitting round
the fire. Oh, ’e was horrible. Timmy went nearly daft and I thought
’e was going to give ’im one good kick in the mouth and finish ’im.
’Stead of that we picks ’im up again and runs ’im further down the wood
and heaves ’im into some blackberry bushes and tells ’im what we’d do
to ’im if ’e come again. That was no good; in five minutes ’e crawled
back. Timmy was shaking like a dog, and fell on ’im as if ’e was going
to strangle ’im, but we had to let ’im stay, and old Timmy was blacker
than the sweep when ’e’d done with ’im. But the bloke _wouldn’t_ say
nothing or open ’is eyes, _you_ know, he _wouldn’t_ open his eyes, ’e
was like something what had been murdered and wouldn’t die, if you know
what I mean. Blast ’im, I could kill ’im, Timmy says. That’s no good
of, says I, and at last we left ’im ’side the fire, and we went off
somewhere just outside the wood and packed up in a clump of ur-grass.
I went to sleep, but I don’t believe old Timmy did, well, I know ’e
didn’t. Now we hadn’t ’eard nothing all night, nothing at all, but when
I wakes up in the morning the blooming sweep was gone and not a chink
of ’im left anywhere. But,” said Jerry impressively to Arthur, who eyed
him with horror, “we found something else!” There was silence while
Jerry’s face was connected to his mug of beer. Nobody spoke. We eyed
him with eager interest. He vanquished his thirst and smacked his lips
but held the mug in readiness for further libation.
“Not twenty chain away a woman was laying down. Timmy touches me
frightened like and says, Look, what’s that? My eyes was nearly skinned
out of me. I couldn’t speak. We walked quietly up to ’er like two sick
men. She lay there just as if she’d dropped out of the sky, naked as
an angel, not a shift nor a stocking, not a button on ’er.” There was
again silence until Larry struck a match loudly on a jar, his pipe,
hooked tightly in his forefinger, having gone out. Mrs. Pellegrini
stared, and breathed audibly. “And,” said Jerry impressively, “she was
the grandest creature what ever you see. I touched ’er with them two
fingers and she was cold as iron, stiff, gone a bit dull like pearls
look, but the fine build of that lady was the world’s wonder. There was
not a scratch or a wound on ’er or the sign of ’er death anywhere. One
of ’er legs was cocked up at the knee like she’d lay in bed. ’Er two
eyes was just looking at the ground and there was a kind of funny smile
on ’er face. Fine long hair she had, black as a cat’s back and long as
the tail of a horse. And in it there was a red rose, and in one of ’er
hands she was holding a white lily. There was a little bird’s dropping
on ’er stomach. I wiped it off. I says to Timmy: That sweep! And ’e
says to me, Jerry Ogwin, we’re ’aving a share out. What about that
sweep I says to ’im, but all ’e says was: we’re ’aving a share out. ’E
was afraid of getting pulled for this job, _you_ know. I never seen a
man so frightened afore, and ’e was not a chap as renagged ever, not
Timmy.”
“That ’e wasn’t,” said Mrs. Pellegrini, “I seen ’im once half murder
two sojers for beating a deaf and dumb man.”
“Well,” continued Jerry, “I says all right Timmy, and so we ’as a share
out and gits on different roads. My share was a clothes basket and a
pair of spectacles cost tuppence ha’penny, _you_ know, and I walked all
that day as ’ard as ever I could. Then I bushes for the night, and when
I woke up nex’ morning I ’eard some talking going on. I looks under
the ’edge and found I was side a strawberry field, _you_ know, a lot
of strawberries. So I ’ops in and sells my basket to the strawberry
pickers for a shilling. They give me a shilling for it, so that was all
right. ’Ad a shilling and a pair of spectacles for my share out. I goes
on a bit and then I comes across a beanfeast party, and I showed ’em my
pair o’ gold spectacles--I’d just found ’em--_you_ know!”
Larry burst into a peal of laughter that seemed to surprise Jerry and
he said:
“Ain’t you ever met a feller what’s found a pair of gold spectacles?”
Larry couldn’t reply and Jerry continued:
“No, ain’t you really? God, what a laugh! Yes, I sells ’em to a fly
young party for two and fo’ pence and off I goes. Never ’eard no more
of Timmy. Never ’eard no more of anything. I dunno if they found the
girl. I dunno if they found that sweep. They didn’t find _me_.”
He paused for a moment.
“They didn’t find _me_,” he repeated.
There was silence at last; the room was getting dim with evening. Mrs.
Pellegrini spoke:
“And you wiped it off her stomach, did you, Jerry?”
“I did,” said he.
Mrs. Pellegrini turned to Arthur and said in a sharp voice:
“Fill that pot for the gentleman!”
The young man in terror obeyed, he exceedingly obeyed.
When the last pot was emptied Jerry and Larry and the wretched mute
went off along the road together. Rosa Pellegrini said “So long” to me
and drove off with her cavalcade. The inn was empty and quiet again so
you could hear the water at the outfall.
I walked along the bank of the old river until I came to the lock where
the water roaring windily from the lasher streamed like an old man’s
beard; a pair of swans moved in the slack water of the pool. Away there
was a fine lea of timothy grass looking as soft as wool. And at the end
of the lea there was a low long hill covered with trees full of the
arriving darkness; a train that you could not hear the noise of shot
through a grove and poured a long spool of white fume upon the trees
quietly, a thing to be looking at, it was so white and soft. But I was
thinking ... thinking ... thinking of the grand white slim woman who
did not seem dead at all to me, lying with a lily in her hand, a red
rose in her hair. And I could not think it to be true at all; I believe
Jerry was only telling us one of his tales.
* * * * *
ARABESQUE
* * * * *
ARABESQUE: THE MOUSE
In the main street amongst tall establishments of mart and worship was
a high narrow house pressed between a coffee factory and a bootmaker’s.
It had four flights of long dim echoing stairs, and at the top, in a
room that was full of the smell of dried apples and mice, a man in the
middle age of life had sat reading Russian novels until he thought he
was mad. Late was the hour, the night outside black and freezing, the
pavements below empty and undistinguishable when he closed his book
and sat motionless in front of the glowing but flameless fire. He felt
he was very tired yet he could not rest. He stared at a picture on
the wall until he wanted to cry; it was a colour print by Utamaro of
a suckling child caressing its mother’s breasts as she sits in front
of a blackbound mirror. Very chaste and decorative it was, in spite
of its curious anatomy. The man gazed, empty of sight though not of
mind, until the sighing of the gas jet maddened him. He got up, put out
the light, and sat down again in the darkness trying to compose his
mind before the comfort of the fire. And he was just about to begin
a conversation with himself when a mouse crept from a hole in the
skirting near the fireplace and scurried into the fender. The man had
the crude dislike for such sly nocturnal things, but this mouse was so
small and bright, its antics so pretty, that he drew his feet carefully
from the fender and sat watching it almost with amusement. The mouse
moved along the shadows of the fender, out upon the hearth, and sat
before the glow, rubbing its head, ears, and tiny belly with its paws
as if it were bathing itself with the warmth, until, sharp and sudden,
the fire sank, an ember fell, and the mouse flashed into its hole.
The man reached forward to the mantelpiece and put his hand upon a
pocket lamp. Turning on the beam, he opened the door of a cupboard
beside the fireplace. Upon one of the shelves there was a small trap
baited with cheese, a trap made with a wire spring, one of those that
smashed down to break the back of ingenuous and unwary mice.
“Mean--so mean,” he mused, “to appeal to the hunger of any living thing
just in order to destroy it.”
He picked up the empty trap as if to throw it in the fire.
“I suppose I had better leave it though--the place swarms with them.”
He still hesitated. “I hope that little beastie won’t go and do
anything foolish.” He put the trap back quite carefully, closed the
door of the cupboard, sat down again and extinguished the lamp.
Was there any one else in the world so squeamish and foolish about such
things! Even his mother, mother so bright and beautiful, even she had
laughed at his childish horrors. He recalled how once in his childhood,
not long after his sister Yosine was born, a friendly neighbour
had sent him home with a bundle of dead larks tied by the feet “for
supper.” The pitiful inanimity of the birds had brought a gush of
tears; he had run weeping home and into the kitchen, and there he had
found the strange thing doing. It was dusk; mother was kneeling before
the fire. He dropped the larks.
“Mother!” he exclaimed softly. She looked at his tearful face.
“What’s the matter, Filip?” she asked, smiling too at his astonishment.
“Mother! What you doing?”
Her bodice was open and she was squeezing her breasts; long thin
streams of milk spurted into the fire with a plunging noise.
“Weaning your little sister,” laughed mother. She took his inquisitive
face and pressed it against the delicate warmth of her bosom, and he
forgot the dead birds behind him.
“Let me do it, mother,” he cried, and doing so he discovered the throb
of the heart in his mother’s breast. Wonderful it was for him to
experience it, although she could not explain it to him.
“Why does it do that?”
“If it did not beat, little son, I should die and the Holy Father would
take me from you.”
“God?”
She nodded. He put his hand upon his own breast. “Oh feel it, Mother!”
he cried. Mother unbuttoned his little coat and felt the gentle _tick
tick_ with her warm palm.
“Beautiful!” she said.
“Is it a good one?”
She kissed his upsmiling lips. “It is good if it beats truly. Let it
always beat truly, Filip, let it always beat truly.”
There was the echo of a sigh in her voice, and he had divined some
grief, for he was very wise. He kissed her bosom in his tiny ecstasy
and whispered soothingly: “Little mother! little mother!” In such joys
he forgot his horror of the dead larks; indeed he helped mother to
pluck them and spit them for supper.
It was a black day that succeeded, and full of tragedy for the child.
A great bay horse with a tawny mane had knocked down his mother in the
lane, and a heavy cart had passed over her, crushing both her hands.
She was borne away moaning with anguish to the surgeon who cut off the
two hands. She died in the night. For years the child’s dreams were
filled with the horror of the stumps of arms, bleeding unendingly. Yet
he had never seen them, for he was sleeping when she died.
While this old woe was come vividly before him he again became aware
of the mouse. His nerves stretched upon him in repulsion, but he soon
relaxed to a tolerant interest, for it was really a most engaging
little mouse. It moved with curious staccato scurries, stopping to rub
its head or flicker with its ears; they seemed almost transparent ears.
It spied a red cinder and skipped innocently up to it ... sniffing ...
sniffing ... until it jumped back scorched. It would crouch as a cat
does, blinking in the warmth, or scamper madly as if dancing, and
then roll upon its side rubbing its head with those pliant paws. The
melancholy man watched it until it came at last to rest and squatted
meditatively upon its haunches, hunched up, looking curiously wise, a
pennyworth of philosophy; then once more the coals sank with a rattle
and again the mouse was gone.
The man sat on before the fire and his mind filled again with
unaccountable sadness. He had grown into manhood with a burning
generosity of spirit and rifts of rebellion in him that proved
too exacting for his fellows and seemed mere wantonness to men of
casual rectitudes. “Justice and Sin,” he would cry, “Property and
Virtue--incompatibilities! There can be no sin in a world of justice,
no property in a world of virtue!” With an engaging extravagance and a
certain clear-eyed honesty of mind he had put his two and two together
and seemed then to rejoice, as in some topsy-turvy dream, in having
rendered unto Cæsar, as you might say, the things that were due to
Napoleon! But this kind of thing could not pass unexpiated in a world
of men having an infinite regard for Property and a pride in their
traditions of Virtue and Justice. They could indeed forgive him his
sins but they could not forgive him his compassions. So he had to go
seek for more melodious-minded men and fair unambiguous women. But
rebuffs can deal more deadly blows than daggers; he became timid--a
timidity not of fear but of pride--and grew with the years into
misanthropy, susceptible to trivial griefs and despairs, a vessel of
emotion that emptied as easily as it filled, until he came at last to
know that his griefs were half deliberate, his despairs half unreal,
and to live but for beauty--which is tranquillity--to put her wooing
hand upon him.
Now, while the mouse hunts in the cupboard, one fair recollection stirs
in the man’s mind--of Cassia and the harmony of their only meeting,
Cassia who had such rich red hair, and eyes, yes, her eyes were full
of starry enquiry like the eyes of mice. It was so long ago that he
had forgotten how he came to be in it, that unaccustomed orbit of vain
vivid things--a village festival, all oranges and houp-là. He could not
remember how he came to be there, but at night, in the court hall, he
had danced with Cassia--fair and unambiguous indeed!--who had come like
the wind from among the roses and swept into his heart.
“It is easy to guess,” he had said to her, “what you like most in the
world.”
She laughed; “To dance? Yes, and you...?”
“To find a friend.”
“I know, I know,” she cried, caressing him with recognitions. “Ah, at
times I quite love my friends--until I begin to wonder how much they
hate me!”
He had loved at once that cool pale face, the abundance of her strange
hair as light as the autumn’s clustered bronze, her lilac dress and all
the sweetness about her like a bush of lilies. How they had laughed at
the two old peasants whom they had overheard gabbling of trifles like
sickness and appetite!
“There’s a lot of nature in a parsnip,” said one, a fat person of the
kind that swells grossly when stung by a bee, “a lot of nature when
it’s young, but when it’s old it’s like everything else.”
“True it is.”
“And I’m very fond of vegetables, yes, and I’m very fond of bread.”
“Come out with me,” whispered Cassia to Filip, and they walked out in
the blackness of midnight into what must have been a garden.
“Cool it is here,” she said, “and quiet, but too dark even to see your
face--can you see mine?”
“The moon will not rise until after dawn,” said he, “it will be white
in the sky when the starlings whistle in your chimney.”
They walked silently and warily about until they felt the chill of the
air. A dull echo of the music came to them through the walls, then
stopped, and they heard the bark of a fox away in the woods.
“You are cold,” he whispered, touching her bare neck with timid
fingers. “Quite, quite cold,” drawing his hand tenderly over the curves
of her chin and face. “Let us go in,” he said, moving with discretion
from the rapture he desired. “We will come out again,” said Cassia.
But within the room the ball was just at an end, the musicians were
packing up their instruments and the dancers were flocking out and
homewards, or to the buffet which was on a platform at one end of the
room. The two old peasants were there, munching hugely.
“I tell you,” said one of them, “there’s nothing in the world for it
but the grease of an owl’s liver. That’s it, that’s it! Take something
on your stomach now, just to offset the chill of the dawn!”
Filip and Cassia were beside them, but there were so many people
crowding the platform that Filip had to jump down. He stood then
looking up adoringly at Cassia, who had pulled a purple cloak around
her.
“For Filip, Filip, Filip,” she said, pushing the last bite of her
sandwich into his mouth, and pressing upon him her glass of Loupiac.
Quickly he drank it with a great gesture, and, flinging the glass to
the wall, took Cassia into his arms, shouting: “I’ll carry you home,
the whole way home, yes, I’ll carry you!”
“Put me down!” she cried, beating his head and pulling his ears, as
they passed among the departing dancers. “Put me down, you wild thing!”
Dark, dark was the lane outside, and the night an obsidian net, into
which he walked carrying the girl. But her arms were looped around him,
she discovered paths for him, clinging more tightly as he staggered
against a wall, stumbled upon a gulley, or when her sweet hair was
caught in the boughs of a little lime tree.
“Do not loose me, Filip, will you, do not loose me,” Cassia said,
putting her lips against his temple.
His brain seemed bursting, his heart rocked within him, but he adored
the rich grace of her limbs against his breast. “Here it is,” she
murmured, and he carried her into a path that led to her home in a
little lawned garden where the smell of ripe apples upon the branches
and the heavy lustre of roses stole upon the air. Roses and apples!
Roses and apples! He carried her right into the porch before she slid
down and stood close to him with her hands still upon his shoulders. He
could breathe happily at the release, standing silent and looking round
at the sky sprayed with wondrous stars but without a moon.
“You are stronger than I thought you, stronger than you look, you are
really very strong,” she whispered, nodding her head to him. Opening
the buttons of his coat she put her palm against his breast.
“Oh how your heart does beat: does it beat truly--and for whom?”
He had seized her wrists in a little fury of love, crying: “Little
mother, little mother!”
“What are you saying?” asked the girl, but before he could continue
there came a footstep sounding behind the door, and the clack of a
bolt....
What was that? Was that really a bolt or was it ... was it ... the snap
of the trap? The man sat up in his room intently listening, with nerves
quivering again, waiting for the trap to kill the little philosopher.
When he felt it was all over he reached guardedly in the darkness for
the lantern, turned on the beam, and opened the door of the cupboard.
Focussing the light upon the trap he was amazed to see the mouse
sitting on its haunches before it, uncaught. Its head was bowed, but
its bead-like eyes were full of brightness, and it sat blinking, it did
not flee.
“Shoosh!” said the man, but the mouse did not move. “Why doesn’t it go?
Shoosh!” he said again, and suddenly the reason of the mouse’s strange
behaviour was made clear. The trap had not caught it completely, but
it had broken off both its forefeet, and the thing crouched there
holding out its two bleeding stumps humanly, too stricken to stir.
Horror flooded the man, and conquering his repugnance he plucked the
mouse up quickly by the neck. Immediately the little thing fastened
its teeth in his finger; the touch was no more than the slight prick
of a pin. The man’s impulse then exhausted itself. What should he do
with it? He put his hand behind him, he dared not look, but there was
nothing to be done except kill it at once, quickly, quickly. Oh, how
should he do it? He bent towards the fire as if to drop the mouse into
its quenching glow; but he paused and shuddered, he would hear its
cries, he would have to listen. Should he crush it with finger and
thumb? A glance towards the window decided him. He opened the sash with
one hand and flung the wounded mouse far into the dark street. Closing
the window with a crash he sank into a chair, limp with pity too deep
for tears.
So he sat for two minutes, five minutes, ten minutes. Anxiety and shame
filled him with heat. He opened the window again, and the freezing air
poured in and cooled him. Seizing his lantern he ran down the echoing
stairs, into the dark empty street, searching long and vainly for the
little philosopher until he had to desist and return to his room,
shivering, frozen to his very bones.
When he had recovered some warmth he took the trap from its shelf. The
two feet dropped into his hand; he cast them into the fire. Then he
once more set the trap and put it back carefully into the cupboard.
* * * * *
FELIX TINCLER
* * * * *
FELIX TINCLER
The child was to have a birthday tomorrow and was therefore not uneasy
about being late home from school this afternoon. He had lost his
pencil case; a hollow long round thing it was, like a rolling-pin, only
it had green and yellow rings painted upon it. He kept his marbles
in it and so he was often in a trouble about his pencils. He had not
tried very much to find the pencil case because the boys “deludered”
him--that’s what his father always said. He had asked Heber Gleed if
he had seen it--he had strange suspicions of that boy--but Heber Gleed
had sworn so earnestly that the greengrocer opposite the school had
picked it up, he had even “saw him do it,” that Felix Tincler went into
Mr. Gobbit’s shop, and when the greengrocer lady appeared in answer to
the ring of the door bell he enquired politely for his pencil case.
She was tall and terrible with a squint and, what was worse, a large
velvety mole with hairs sprouting from it. She immediately and with
inexplicable fury desired him to flee from her greengrocer shop, with
a threat of alternative castigation in which a flatiron and a red-hot
pick-axe were to figure with unusual and unpleasant prominence. Well he
had run out of Mr. Gobbit’s shop, and there was Heber Gleed standing
in the road giggling derisively at him. Felix walked on alone, looking
in the gutters and areas for his pencil case, until he encountered
another friendly boy who took him to dig in a garden where they grew
castor-oil plants. When he went home it was late; as he ran along under
the high wall of the orphanage that occupied one end of his street its
harsh peevish bell clanged out six notes. He scampered past the great
gateway under the dismal arch that always filled him with uneasiness,
he never passed it without feeling the sad trouble that a prison
might give. He stepped into his own pleasant home, a little mute, and
a little dirty in appearance; but at six years of age in a home so
comfortable and kind the eve of the day that is to turn you into seven
is an occasion great enough to yield an amnesty for peccadilloes. His
father was already in from work, he could hear him singing. He gave
his mother the sprigs he had picked from the castor-oil plant and told
her about the pencil case. The meal was laid upon the table, and while
mother was gone into the kitchen to boil the water for tea he sat down
and tried to smooth out the stiff creases in the white table cloth. His
father was singing gaily in the scullery as he washed and shaved:
_High cockalorum,
Charlie ate the spinach...._
He ceased for a moment to give the razor a vigorous stropping and then
continued:
_High cockalorum,
High cockalee...._
Felix knew that was not the conclusion of the song. He listened, but
for some moments all that followed was the loud crepitation of a razor
searching a stubborn beard and the sigh of the kettle. Then a new
vigour seized the singer:
_But mother brought the pandy down
And bate the gree...._
Again that rasping of chin briefly intervened, but the conclusion of
the cropping was soon denoted by the strong rallentando of the singer:
_...dy image,
High cock-alorum,
High cock-a-lee._
Mrs. Tincler brought in the teapot and her husband followed her with
his chin tightly shaven but blue, crying with mock horror:
“Faylix, my son! that is seven years old tomorrow! look at him, Mary,
the face of him and the hands of him! I didn’t know there was a bog in
this parish; is it creeping in a bog you have been?”
The boy did not blench at his father’s spurious austerity, he knew he
was the soul of kindness and fun.
“Go wash yourself at the sink,” interposed his mother. Kevin Tincler,
taking his son by the hand, continued with mocking admonishment: “All
the fine copybooks of the world that you’ve filled up with that
blather about cleanliness and holiness, the up strokes very thin and
the down strokes very thick! What was it, Mary, he has let it all out
of his mind?”
“Go and wash, Felix, and come quickly and have your tea,” laughed Mary
Tincler.
“Ah, but what was it--in that grand book of yours?”
The boy stood, in his short buff tunic, regarding his father with shy
amusement. The small round clear-skinned face was lovely with its
blushes of faint rose; his eyes were big and blue, and his head was
covered with thick curling locks of rich brown hair.
“Cleanliness comes next to godliness,” he replied.
“Does it so, indeed?” exclaimed his father. “Then you’re putting your
godliness in a pretty low category!”
“What nonsense,” said Mary Tincler as the boy left them.
The Irishman and his dark-eyed Saxon wife sat down at the table waiting
for their son.