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 pa.s.sed long ago, at the beginning of supper, when the Major had leaned his head on his plate and wept over the ingrat.i.tude 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 pa.s.sage. 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 sc.r.a.ping 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 rea.s.suringly. 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 gla.s.s, 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 rea.s.serted 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, d.i.c.k 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.