Fraternity Part 21

"Hughs wounded out there?"

"Yes, sir--in the head."

"Ah! And fever?"

"Yes, Sir."

Martin tapped his pipe against his forehead. "Least drop of liquor goes to it, I suppose?"

Mrs. Hughs paused in the dipping of a cloth; her tear-stained face expressed resentment, as though she had detected an attempt to find excuses for her husband.

"He didn't ought to treat me as he does," she said.

All three now stood round the bed, over which the baby presided with solemn gaze.

Thyme said: "I wouldn't care what he did, Mrs. Hughs; I wouldn't stay another day if I were you. It's your duty as a woman."

To hear her duty as a woman Mrs. Hughs turned; slow vindictiveness gathered on her thin face.

"Yes, miss?" she said. "I don't know what to do.

"Take the children and go. What's the good of waiting? We'll give you money if you haven't got enough."

But Mrs. Hughs did not answer.

"Well?" said Martin, blowing out a cloud of smoke.

Thyme burst out again: "Just go, the very minute your little boy comes back from school. Hughs 'll never find you. It 'll serve him right. No woman ought to put up with what you have; it's simply weakness, Mrs.

Hughs."

As though that word had forced its way into her very heart and set the blood free suddenly, Mrs. Hughs' face turned the colour of tomatoes. She poured forth words:

"And leave him to that young girl--and leave him to his wickedness!

After I've been his wife eight years and borne him five! after I've done what I have for him! I never want no better husband than what he used to be, till she came with her pale face and her prinky manners, and--and her mouth that you can tell she's bad by. Let her keep to her profession--sitting naked's what she's fit for--coming here to decent folk---" And holding out her wrists to Thyme, who had shrunk back, she cried: "He's never struck me before. I got these all because of her new clothes!"

Hearing his mother speak with such strange pa.s.sion, the baby howled.

Mrs. Hughs stopped, and took him up. Pressing him close to her thin bosom, she looked above his little dingy head at the two young people.

"I got my wrists like this last night, wrestling with him. He swore he'd go and leave me, but I held him, I did. And don't you ever think that I'll let him go to that young girl--not if he kills me first!"

With those words the pa.s.sion in her face died down. She was again a meek, mute woman.

During this outbreak, Thyme, shrinking, stood by the doorway with lowered eyes. She now looked up at Martin, clearly asking him to come away. The latter had kept his gaze fixed on Mrs. Hughs, smoking silently. He took his pipe out of his mouth, and pointed with it at the baby.

"This gentleman," he said, "can't stand too much of that."

In silence all three bent their eyes on the baby. His little fists, and nose, and forehead, even his little naked, crinkled feet, were thrust with all his feeble strength against his mother's bosom, as though he were striving to creep into some hole away from life. There was a sort of dumb despair in that tiny pushing of his way back to the place whence he had come. His head, covered with dingy down, quivered with his effort to escape. He had been alive so little; that little had sufficed. Martin put his pipe back into his mouth.

"This won't do, you know," he said. "He can't stand it. And look here!

If you stop feeding him, I wouldn't give that for him tomorrow!" He held up the circle of his thumb and finger. "You're the best judge of what sort of chance you've got of going on in your present state of mind!"

Then, motioning to Thyme, he went down the stairs.

CHAPTER XVI

BENEATH THE ELMS

Spring was in the hearts of men, and their tall companions, trees. Their troubles, the stiflings of each other's growth, and all such things, seemed of little moment. Spring had them by the throat. It turned old men round, and made them stare at women younger than themselves. It made young men and women walking side by side touch each other, and every bird on the branches tune his pipe. Flying sunlight speckled the fluttered leaves, and gushed the cheeks of crippled boys who limped into the Gardens, till their pale c.o.c.kney faces shone with a strange glow.

In the Broad Walk, beneath those dangerous trees, the elms, people sat and took the sun--cheek by jowl, generals and nursemaids, parsons and the unemployed. Above, in that Spring wind, the elm-tree boughs were swaying, rustling, creaking ever so gently, carrying on the innumerable talk of trees--their sapient, wordless conversation over the affairs of men. It was pleasant, too, to see and hear the myriad movement of the million little separate leaves, each shaped differently, flighting never twice alike, yet all obedient to the single spirit of their tree.

Thyme and Martin were sitting on a seat beneath the largest of all the elms. Their manner lacked the unconcern and dignity of the moment, when, two hours before, they had started forth on their discovery from the other end of the Broad Walk. Martin spoke:

"It's given you the hump! First sight of blood, and you're like all the rest of them!"

"I'm not, Martin. How perfectly beastly of you!"

"Oh yes, you are. There's plenty of aestheticism about you and your people--plenty of good intentions--but not an ounce of real business!"

"Don't abuse my people; they're just as kind as you!"

"Oh, they're kind enough, and they can see what's wrong. It's not that which stops them. But your dad's a regular official. He's got so much sense of what he ought not to do that he never does anything; Just as Hilary's got so much consciousness of what he ought to do that he never does anything. You went to that woman's this morning with your ideas of helping her all cut and dried, and now that you find the facts aren't what you thought, you're stumped!"

"One can't believe anything they say. That's what I hate. I thought Hughs simply knocked her about. I didn't know it was her jealousy--"

"Of course you didn't. Do you imagine those people give anything away to our sort unless they're forced? They know better."

"Well, I hate the whole thing--it's all so sordid!"

"O Lord!"

"Well, it is! I don't feel that I want to help a woman who can say and feel such horrid things, or the girl, or any of them."

"Who cares what they say or feel? that's not the point. It's simply a case of common sense: Your people put that girl there, and they must get her to clear out again sharp. It's just a question of what's healthy."

"Well, I know it's not healthy for me to have anything to do with, and I won't! I don't believe you can help people unless they want to be helped."

Martin whistled.

"You're rather a brute, I think," said Thyme.

"A brute, not rather a brute. That's all the difference."

"For the worse!"

"I don't think so, Thyme!"