Part 105 (1/2)

She caught her breath, for the woman broke out into dry sobbing and cried out wildly:

”Oh, come back to 'im! Come back, if you're a woman! Gawd, Who made 'im, knows as 'ow 'e can't bear no more! Oh! if my 'art's so wrung by what I've seen him suffer, think what he's bore these crooil weeks an' months!”

The peonies rocked in the gale of Emigration Jane's emotion. Her hard-worked hands went out, entreating for him; her dowdy little figure seemed to grow tall, so impressive was the earnestness of her appeal.

”Him and you are toffs, and me and Keyse are common folks.... Flesh and blood's the syme, though, only covered wiv different skins. An' Human Nature's Human Nature, 'owever you fake 'er up an' christen 'er! An' Love must 'ave give an' take of Love, or else Love's got to die! Burn a lamp wivout oil, and see wot 'appens. It goes out!--You're left in the dark!”--Her homely gesture, ill.u.s.trating the homely a.n.a.logy, seemed to bring down blackness. Lynette hung speechless upon her fateful lips.

”--Then, like as not, you'll overturn the table gropin'. 'Smashed!' you'll say, 'an' n.o.body but silly me to blyme! It would 'ave lighted up a 'appy 'ome if I 'adn't been a barmy idiot. It would 'ave showed me the face of my 'usband leanin' to kiss me in our blessed marriage-bed, an' my baby smilin' in its cradle-sleep 'ard by.... Oh!--Oh!”--She choked and clutched her bosom, and her voice rose in the throaty screech of incipient hysteria--”An' I've left my own sweet, unweaned boy to come and say these words to you!... An' the darlin' darlin' fightin' with the bottle they're tryin' to give 'im, and roarin' for 'is mam.... And my b.r.e.a.s.t.s as 'ard as stones, an' throbbin'!... Gawd 'elp me!” She panted and fought and choked, striving for speech.

”Keep your hair on!” advised W. Keyse in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. She turned on him like a tigress, her eyes flaming under her straightened fringe.

”Keep yours! I've come to speak, and speak I mean to--for the sake of the best man Gawd's made for a 'undred years. Bar one, you says, but bar none, says I, an' charnce it! Since the day 'e stood up for you in that Dutch saloon-bar at Gueldersdorp, what is there we don't owe to 'im--you and me, and all the blooming crew of us? And because 'e'll tyke no thanks, 'e gits ingrat.i.tude--the dirtiest egg the Devil ever hatched!”

”Cripps!” gasped W. Keyse, awe-stricken by this lofty flight of rhetoric.

Ignoring him, she pursued her way.

”You're a beautiful young lydy”--her tone softened from its strenuous pitch--”wot 'ave 'ad a disappyntment, like many of us 'ave at the start.

You'd set your 'art on Another One. 'E got killed, an' you married the Doctor--but it's never bin no real marriage. You've ate 'is bread, as the sayin' is, an' give 'im a stone. An' e's beat 'is pore 'art to b.l.o.o.d.y rags agynst it--d'y after d'y, an' night after night! I seen it, I tell you!”

she shrilled--”I seen it wiv me own eyes! You pretty, silly kid! Don't you know wot 'arm you're doing? You crooil byby! do you reckon Gawd gave you the man to torture an' break an' spoil?”

A hand, imperatively clapped over the mouth of Mrs. W. Keyse, stemmed the torrent of her eloquence.

”Dry up! You've said enough,” ordered her spouse.

”Do not stop her!” Lynette said, without removing her fascinated eyes from the Pythoness. ”Let her tell me everything that she has seen and knows.”

”I seen the Doctor--many, many times,” the woman went on, as W. Keyse reluctantly ungagged her, ”watchin' Keyse and me in our poor 'ome-life together--with the eyes of a starvin' dog lookin' at a bone. You ought to know 'ow starvin' 'urts....” The strenuous voice soared and quivered. ”You learned that at Gueldersdorp! Yet you can see your 'usband dyin' of 'unger, an' never put out your 'and! Dyin' for want of a kiss an' a bit o'

cuddle--that's the kind o' dyin' I mean--dyin' for what Gawd gives to the very brutes He myde! Seems to you I talk low!... Well, there's nothink lower than Nature, _An' She Goes As 'Igh As 'Eaven_!” said Emigration Jane.

The wide, sweeping gesture with which the shabby little woman took in land and sea and sky was quite n.o.ble and inspiring to witness. And now the tears were running down her face, and her voice lost its raucous shrillness, and became plaintive, and even soft.

”I'm to tell you everythink I've seen, an' know about the Doctor.... I've seen 'im age, age, a bit more every d'y. I've seen 'im waste, waste, with loneliness and trouble--never turnin' bitter on accounts of it--never grudgin' 'elp that 'e could give to man or woman or kid. Late on the night you left 'ome I see 'im come up to your bedroom. 'E switched on the light.

'E forgot the blinds was up. 'E looked round, all 'aggard an' lost an'

wild-like, before 'e dropped down cryin' beside the bed.”

She sobbed, and dropped on her own knees in the sand among the p.r.i.c.kly yellow dwarf roses, weeping quite wildly, and wringing her hands.

”The mornin' found 'im there. Six weeks ago that was; an' every night since then it's bin the syme gyme. Never the blinds left up since that first time, but always light, and his shadow moves about. An' in my bed I wake a-cryin' so, an' don't know which of 'em I'm cryin' for--the lonely shadow or the lonely man----”

She could not go on, and W. Keyse took up the tale.

”She's told you true. Maybe we'd never 'ave come but for the feelin' that things was workin' up to wot the pypers call a Domestic Tragedy. Or at the best the break-up of a 'Ome. That's wot my wife she kep' on stuffin' into me,” said W. Keyse. ”An'--strewth! when the Doctor sent for me an' pyde me orf ... full wages right on up to the end o' the year, an' the syme to Morris an' the 'ouse'old staff, tellin' us e's goin' on a voyage, I s'ys to 'er, 'It's come!'”

”On a voyage! Where?”