Part 35 (1/2)
But the plump woman did not heed him. She was going on with her fire-making, and retailing in disconnected fragments the fearfulness of Uncle Jim.
”There was always something a bit wrong with him,” she said, ”but nothing you mightn't have hoped for, not till they took him and carried him off and reformed him....
”He was cruel to the hens and chickings, it's true, and stuck a knife into another boy, but then I've seen him that nice to a cat, n.o.body could have been kinder. I'm sure he didn't do no 'arm to that cat whatever anyone tries to make out of it. I'd never listen to that....
It was that reformatory ruined him. They put him along of a lot of London boys full of ideas of wickedness, and because he didn't mind pain--and he don't, I will admit, try as I would--they made him think himself a hero. Them boys laughed at the teachers they set over them, laughed and mocked at them--and I don't suppose they was the best teachers in the world; I don't suppose, and I don't suppose anyone sensible does suppose that everyone who goes to be a teacher or a chapl'in or a warder in a Reformatory Home goes and changes right away into an Angel of Grace from Heaven--and Oh, Lord! where was I?”
”What did they send him to the Reformatory for?”
”Playing truant and stealing. He stole right enough--stole the money from an old woman, and what was I to do when it came to the trial but say what I knew. And him like a viper a-looking at me--more like a viper than a human boy. He leans on the bar and looks at me. 'All right, Aunt Flo,' he says, just that and nothing more. Time after time, I've dreamt of it, and now he's come. 'They've Reformed me,' he says, 'and made me a devil, and devil I mean to be to you. So out with it,' he says.”
”What did you give him last time?” asked Mr. Polly.
”Three golden pounds,” said the plump woman.
”'That won't last very long,' he says. 'But there ain't no hurry. I'll be back in a week about.' If I wasn't one of the hoping sort--”
She left the sentence unfinished.
Mr. Polly reflected. ”What sort of a size is he?” he asked. ”I'm not one of your Herculaceous sort, if you mean that. Nothing very wonderful bicepitally.”
”You'll scoot,” said the plump woman with conviction rather than bitterness. ”You'd better scoot now, and I'll try and find some money for him to go away again when he comes. It ain't reasonable to expect you to do anything but scoot. But I suppose it's the way of a woman in trouble to try and get help from a man, and hope and hope. I'm the hoping sort.”
”How long's he been about?” asked Mr. Polly, ignoring his own outlook.
”Three months it is come the seventh since he come in by that very back door--and I hadn't set eyes on him for seven long years. He stood in the door watchin' me, and suddenly he let off a yelp--like a dog, and there he was grinning at the fright he'd given me. 'Good old Aunty Flo,' he says, 'ain't you dee-lighted to see me?' he says, 'now I'm Reformed.'”
The plump lady went to the sink and filled the kettle.
”I never did like 'im,” she said, standing at the sink. ”And seeing him there, with his teeth all black and broken--. P'raps I didn't give him much of a welcome at first. Not what would have been kind to him.
'Lord!' I said, 'it's Jim.'”
”'It's Jim,' he said. 'Like a bad s.h.i.+llin'--like a d.a.m.ned bad s.h.i.+lling. Jim and trouble. You all of you wanted me Reformed and now you got me Reformed. I'm a Reformatory Reformed Character, warranted all right and turned out as such. Ain't you going to ask me in, Aunty dear?'
”'Come in,' I said, 'I won't have it said I wasn't ready to be kind to you!'
”He comes in and shuts the door. Down he sits in that chair. 'I come to torment you!' he says, 'you Old Sumpthing!' and begins at me.... No human being could ever have been called such things before. It made me cry out. 'And now,' he says, 'just to show I ain't afraid of 'urting you,' he says, and ups and twists my wrist.”
Mr. Polly gasped.
”I could stand even his vi'lence,” said the plump woman, ”if it wasn't for the child.”
Mr. Polly went to the kitchen window and surveyed his namesake, who was away up the garden path with her hands behind her back, and whisps of black hair in disorder about her little face, thinking, thinking profoundly, about ducklings.
”You two oughtn't to be left,” he said.
The plump woman stared at his back with hard hope in her eyes.
”I don't see that it's _my_ affair,” said Mr. Polly.
The plump woman resumed her business with the kettle.