Part 2 (2/2)

One hopeless month succeeded another, until a cloud seemed to close round Paul's brain, rendering him automatic in his actions, merely animal in his half-satisfied appet.i.tes. Fines and curses were his portion at the factory; curses and beatings--deserved if Justice held a hurried scale at home. Paul, who had read of suicide in The Bludston Herald, turned his thoughts morbidly to death. But his dramatic imagination always carried him beyond' his own demise to the scene in the household when his waxlike corpse should be discovered dangling from a rope fixed to the hook in the kitchen ceiling. He posed cadaverous before a shocked Budge Street, before a conscience-stricken factory; and he wept on his sack bed in the scullery because the prince and the princess, his august parents, would never know that he had died. A whit less gloomy were his imaginings of the said prince and princess rus.h.i.+ng into the house, in the nick of time, just before life was extinct, and cutting him down. How they were to find him he did not know. This side-track exploration of possibilities was a symptom of sanity.

Yet, Heaven knows what would have happened to Paul, after a year or so at the factory, if Barney Bill, a grotesque G.o.d from the wide and breezy s.p.a.ces of the world, had not limped into his life.

Barney Bill wore the cloth cap and conventional and unpicturesque, though shapeless and weather-stained, garment of the late nineteenth century. Neither horns nor goat's feet were visible; nor was the pipe of reed on which he played. Yet he played, in Paul's ear, the comforting melody of Pan, and the glory of the Vision once more flooded Paul's senses, and the factory and Budge Street and the b.u.t.tons and the scullery faded away like an evil dream.

CHAPTER III

THE Fates arranged Barney Bill's entrance late on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon in August. It was not dramatic. It was merely casual. They laid the scene in the brickfield.

It had rained all day, and now there was sullen clearance. Paul, who had been bathing with some factory boys in the not very savoury ca.n.a.l a mile or so distant, had wandered mechanically to his brickfield library, which, by means of some scavenging process, he managed to keep meagrely replenished. Here he had settled himself with a dilapidated book on his knees for an hour's intellectual enjoyment. It was not a cheerful evening. The ground was sodden, and rank emanations rose from the refuse. From where he sat he could see an angry sunset like a black-winged dragon with belly of flame brooding over the town. The place wore an especial air of desolation. Paul felt depressed. Bathing in the pouring wet is a chilly sport, and his midday meal of cold potatoes had not been invigorating. These he had grabbed, and, having done them up hastily in newspaper, had bolted with them out of the house. He had been fined heavily for slackness during the week, and Mr.

b.u.t.ton's inevitable wrath at docked wages he desired to undergo as late as possible. Then, the sun had blazed furiously during the last six imprisoned days, and now the long-looked for hours of freedom were disfigured by rain and blight. He resented the malice of things. He also resented the invasion of his brickfield by an alien van, a gaudy vehicle, yellow and red, to the exterior of which clinging wicker chairs, brooms, brushes and jute mats gave the impression of a lunatic's idea of decoration. An old horse, hobbled a few feet away, philosophically cropped the abominable gra.s.s. On the front of the van a man squatted with food and drink. Paul hated him as a trespa.s.ser and a gormandizer.

Presently the man, shading his eyes with his hand, scrutinized the small, melancholy figure, and then, hopping from his perch, sped toward him with a nimble and curiously tortuous gait.

He approached, a wiry, almost wizened, little man of fifty, tanned to gipsy brown. He had a shrewd thin face, with an oddly flattened nose, and little round moist dark eyes that glittered like diamonds. He wore cloth cap on the back of his head, showing in front a thick ma.s.s of closely cropped hair. His collarless s.h.i.+rt was open at the neck and his sleeves were rolled up above the elbow.

”You're Polly Kegworthy's kid, ain't you?” he asked.

”Ay,” said Paul.

”Seen you afore, haven't I?” Then Paul remembered. Three or four times during his life, at long, long intervals, the van had pa.s.sed down Budge Street, stopping at houses here and there. About two years ago, coming home, he had met it at his own door. His mother and the little man were talking together. The man had taken him under the chin and twisted his face up. ”Is that the nipper?” he had asked.

His mother had nodded, and, releasing Paul with a clumsy gesture of simulated affection, had sent him with twopence for a pint of beer to the public-house at the end of the street. He recalled how the man had winked his little bright eye at his mother before putting the jug to his lips.

”I browt th' beer for yo',” said Paul.

”You did. It was the worst beer, bar none, I've ever had. I can taste it now.” He made a wry face. Then he c.o.c.ked his head on one side. ”I suppose you're wondering who I am?” said he.

”Ay,” said Paul. ”Who art tha?”

”I'm Barney Bill,” replied the man. ”Did you never hear of me? I'm known on the road from Taunton to Newcastle and from Hereford to Lowestoft. You can tell yer mother that you seed me.”

A smile curled round Paul's lips at the comic idea of giving his mother unsolicited information. ”Barney Bill?” said he.

”Yuss,” said the man. Then, after a pause, ”What are you doing of there?”

”Reading,” said Paul.

”Let's have a look at it.”

Paul regarded him suspiciously; but there was kindliness in the twinkling glance. He handed him the sorry apology for a book.

Barney Bill turned it over. 'Why, said he, ”it ain't got no beginning and no end. It's all middle. 'Kenilworth.' Do yer like it?”

”Ay!” said Paul. ”It's foine.”

”Who do yer think wrote it?”

As both cover and a hundred pages at the beginning, including the t.i.tle-page, to say nothing of a hundred pages at the end, were missing, Paul had no clue to the authors.h.i.+p.

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