"Musha," sobbed his wife, "don"t be always talking out of you. Any one would think that it was an old, criminal thief you were instructing, instead of a bit of a child that"ll be growing out of his wildness in no time. Come across to me, child, come over to your mother, my lamb."
That night, when his father got into bed, he prodded his foot against something under the sheets. Investigation discovered a brown paper bag at the end of the bed. A further search revealed a wasp"s nest, inside of which there was an hundred angry wasps blazing for combat. His father left the room with more expedition than decency. He did not stop to put on as much as his hat. He fled to the stream which ran through the meadow at the back of their house, and lay down in it, and in two seconds there was more bad language than water in the stream.
Every time he lifted his head for air the wasps flew at him with their tails curled. They kept him there for half an hour, and in that time he laid in the seeds of more rheumatism than could be cured in two lifetimes.
When he returned home he found his wife lying on the floor with a blanket wrapped about her head, groaning by instinct, for she was senseless.
Her face had disappeared. There was nothing where it had been but poisoned lumps. A few days later it was found that she was blind of one eye, and there was danger of erysipelas setting in.
The boy could not be found for some time, but a neighbour, observing a stone come from nowhere in particular and hit a cat, located the first cause in a ditch. He brought the boy home, and grabbed his father just in time to prevent murder being done.
It was soon found that the only thing which eased the restless moaning woman was the touch of her son. All her unmanageable, delirious thoughts centred on him--
"Sure he"s only a boy; beating never did good to anything. Give him a chance now for wouldn"t a child be a bit wild anyhow. You will be a good boy, won"t you? Come to your mother, my lamb."
So the lad grew, from twelve to fifteen, from fifteen to twenty. Soon he attained to manhood. To his mother he seemed to have leaped in a day from the careless, prattling babe to the responsibly-whiskered miracle at whom mothers sit and laugh in secret delight. This towering, big-footed, hairy person! was he really the little boy who used to hide in her skirts when his father scowled? She had only to close her eyes and she could feel again a pair of little hands clawing at her breast, sore from the violent industry of soft, wee lips.
So he grew. Breeches that were big became small. Bony wrists were continually pushing out of coat cuffs. His feet would burst out of his boots. He grew out of everything but one. A man may outgrow his breeches, he cannot outgrow his nature: his body is never too big or too small to hold that.
Every living thing in the neighbourhood knew him. When a cat saw him coming it climbed a tree and tried to look as much like a lump of wood as it could. When a dog heard his step it tucked its tail out of sight and sought for a hole in the hedge. The birds knew he carried stones in his pockets. No tree cast so black a shadow in the sunlight as he did. There were stories of a bottle of paraffin oil and a cat that screeched in flames. Folk told of a maltreated dog that pointed its nose to heaven and bayed a curse against humanity until a terrified man battered it to death with a shovel. No one knew who did it, but every one said there were only two living hearts capable of these iniquities--one belonged to the devil, the other to our young man, and they acquitted Satan of the deeds.
The owner of the dog swore by the beasts in the field and the stars in the sky that he would tear the throat of the man who had injured his beast.
The father drove his one-eyed wife from the house, and went with her to live elsewhere; but she left him and went back to her son, and her husband forswore the twain.
When women saw him in the road they got past him with their breath hissing through their teeth in fear. When men pa.s.sed him they did it warily, with their fists clenched and their eyes alert. He was shunned by every one. The strength of his arms also was a thing to be afraid of, and in the world there was but two welcomes for him, one from his mother, the other from an old, grey rat that slept in his breast--
"Sure, you"re all against him," his mother would say. "Why don"t you give the boy a chance? It"s only the hot blood of youth that"s working in him--and he never did it either. Look how kind he is to me! never the bad word or the hard look! Ye black hearts that blame my boy, look among yourselves for the villain. No matter who is against you, come to your mother, my lamb."
He was found one day at the foot of the cliff with his neck broken.
Some said that he had slipped and fallen, some said he had committed suicide, other some pursed their lips tightly and said nothing. All were relieved that he was gone, saving his mother only, she mourned for her only son, and wept bitterly, refusing to be comforted until she died.
III
She had begun to get thin. Her face was growing sharp and peaked. The steady curve of her cheek had become a little indeterminate. Her chin had begun to sag and her eyes to look a little weary. But she had not observed these things, for we do not notice ourselves very much until some other person thinks we are worthy of observation and tells us so; and these changes are so gradual and tiny that we seldom observe them until we awaken for a moment or two in our middle age and then we get ready to fall asleep again.
When her uncle died, the solicitors who had administered his will handed her a small sum of money and intimated that from that date she must hew out her own path in life, and as she had most of the household furniture of her late uncle at her disposal, she decided to let lodgings. Setting about that end with all possible expedition she finished writing "apartments to let" on a square of pasteboard, and, having placed it prominently in a window, she folded her mittened hands and sat down with some trepidation to await the advent of a lodger.
He came in the night time with the stars and the moon. He was running like a youthful G.o.d, she thought, for her mind had not yet been weaned from certain vanities, and she could not see that a gigantic policeman was in his wake, tracking him with elephantine bounds, and now and again s.n.a.t.c.hing a gasp from hurry to blow furious warnings on a whistle.
It was the sound of the whistle which opened her eyes through her ears.
She went to the door and saw him coming framed in the moonlight, his arms pressed tightly to his sides, his head well up and his feet kicking a mile a minute on the pavement. Behind him the whistle shrilled with angry alarm, and the thunder of monumental feet came near as the policeman sprinted in majesty.
As the lodger ran she looked at him. He was a long-legged, young man with a pleasant, clean-shaven face. His eyes met hers, and, although he grinned anxiously, she saw that he was frightened. That frightened smile gripped her and she panted noiselessly, "Oh, run, run!"
As he drew level he fixed his gaze on her, and, stopping suddenly, he ducked under her arm and was inside the house in a twinkling.
The poor lady"s inside curled up in fear and had started to uncurl in screams when she felt a hand laid gently on her arm, and, "Don"t make a noise, or I"m caught," said a voice, whereupon, and with exceeding difficulty, she closed her mouth while the scream went sizzling through her teeth in little gasps. But now the enemy appeared round the corner, tooting incessantly on his whistle, and whacking sparks from the cobblestones as he ran. Behind her she could hear the laboured breathing of a spent runner. The lodger was kneeling at her skirts: he caught her hand and pressed his face against it entreatingly--
The policeman drew near--
"Did you see a fellow skedaddling along here, ma"am?" said he.
She hesitated for only a moment and then, pointing to a laneway opposite, replied--
"He went up there."
"Thank you, ma"am," said the policeman with a genial smile, and he sprinted up the laneway whistling cheerily.
She turned to the lodger--
"You had better go now," said she.
He looked at her ruefully and hesitated--
"If I go now," he replied, "I"ll be caught and get a month. I"ll have to eat skilly, you know, and pick oak.u.m, and get my hair cut."
She looked at his hair--it was brown and wavy, just at his ears it crisped into tiny curls, and she thought it would be a great pity to cut it. He bore her scrutiny well, with just a trifle of embarra.s.sment and a shyly humorous eye--
"You are the kindest woman I ever met," said he, "and I"ll never forget you as long as I live. I"ll go away now because I wouldn"t like to get you into trouble for helping me."
"What did you do?" she faltered.
"I got into a fight with another man," he replied, "and while we were hammering each other the policeman came up. He was going to arrest me, and, before I knew what I was doing, I knocked him down."
She shook her head--
"You should not have done that. That was very wrong, for he was only doing his duty."
"I know it," he admitted, "but, do you see, I didn"t know what I was doing, and then, when I hit him, I got frightened and ran."
"You poor boy," said she tenderly.
"And somehow, when I saw you, I knew you wouldn"t give me up: wasn"t it queer?"
What a nice, gentlemanly young fellow he is, she thought.
"But, of course, I cannot be trespa.s.sing on your kindness any longer," he continued, "so I"ll leave at once, and if ever I get the chance to repay your kindness to a stranger----"
"Perhaps," said she, "it might not be quite safe for you to go yet. Come inside and I will give you a cup of tea. You must be worn out with the excitement and the danger. Why, you are shaking all over: a cup of tea will steady your nerves and give him time to stop looking for you."
"Perhaps," said he, "if I turned my coat inside out and turned my trousers up, they wouldn"t notice me."
"We will talk it over," she replied with a wise nod.
That was how the lodger came. He told her his name and his employment--he was a bookmaker"s clerk. He brought his luggage, consisting mostly of neckties, to her house the following day from his former lodgings--
"Had a terrible time getting away from them," said he. "They rather liked me, you know, and couldn"t make out why I wanted to leave."