The Sailor Part 3

In the meantime the boy was shivering and whimpering in what he felt to be the strong arms of the police.

"Let me go, mister, this once," he whined as awful recollections surged upon him. He had been getting terribly hurt all through the night, but he knew that he was going to be hurt still more now that the police had got hold of him.

But his faint whimpers and half-hearted wriggles were without effect upon the majesty of the law.

"Lie still. Keep quiet," growled the Foreman Shunter, adding as quite an impersonal afterthought, "Blast you!"

It seemed a very long time to the boy before he came to prison. Up one strange street and down another he was carried. As he lay in the arms of the police he could make out lamp after lamp and row after row of houses in the darkness.

It was a long way to the station.

"Let me go this once, mister," he began to whine again. "I'll not do it no more."

"Quiet, blast you," growled the large, rich voice of the police.

At last they came to a door, which in the uncertain light seemed exactly similar to one he had pa.s.sed through on an occasion he would never forget to his dying day. He began to cry again miserably.

Perhaps they would give him something to eat--they did so before--but he would not be able to eat anything this time if they offered it, not until they had done what they had to do.

He could hear sounds a little way off ... inside the prison. He gripped convulsively the rough overcoat of his captor. How vividly he remembered it all! They gave it two other boys first. Again he could hear their screams, again he could see the blood running down their bare legs.

He must try to be a man ... he remembered that one of the other boys had laughed about it afterwards ... he must try to be a man ... at least that had been the advice of a fatherly policeman in spectacles who had presided over the ceremony....

"Mother ... that you..." The terrific voice of his captor went right through him. "Where are you, Mother? Show a light."

Suddenly a door at the end of the pa.s.sage was flung open. There came a blinding gush of gaslight.

"Why, Job ... whatever...!"

"I'll set him on the sophy."

"Yes, on the sophy. Goodness gracious me!"

The boy realized that he was on a horsehair sofa, and that a fine, clean, handsome-looking lady was standing with her mouth open in front of him.

"Goodness gracious, Job!"

"Come all the way from Blackhampton in a truck this morning. By the 5:40 Express."

"Well, I'm blessed if I ever see such a hobject. I'll give him some tea and a bit o' bacon, and some bread and b.u.t.ter, and then I'll get some o' that mud off him."

"Some of it's blood," said the Foreman Shunter.

"Yes, I see it is. Never ... did ... I ... see ... anythink ... like him. I'll make the tea; the kettle's boiling." The voice of Mother was the nearest thing to music the boy had ever heard. It was better even than that of the ladies who sang in the bar of the Wheat Sheaf, the Red Lion, and the Crown and Anchor, outside which places he had always stayed to listen when he could conveniently do so. This room was not in the least like the police station. And he was quite sure that the lady called Mother had nothing whatever to do with....

"Set him a bit nearer to the fire, Job,"--yes, the voice was music--"and put this round him."

"This" was an old coat.

VI

"I'll give it him in a saucer," said Mother. "It'll be cooler that way."

A saucer of tea was offered to the boy.

"Can you hold it, me lad?"

"Yes, lady," he said, faintly.

"Lap it up, then. Better let me try it first." She sipped a little out of the saucer. "Yes, that's right enough."

The tea was so perfectly delicious that he swallowed it at a gulp.

Mother and the Foreman Shunter watched him with surprise.

"Now for a bite o' bread and b.u.t.ter," said Mother, sawing away at a quartern loaf.

The boy seized the bread and b.u.t.ter like a hungry dog. Mother and the Foreman Shunter stood looking at him with queer, rather startled faces.

"I never see the likes o' that, Job."

"No, never," said the Foreman Shunter, solemnly. "d.a.m.n me."

"What's your name, boy?"

"Enry Arper, lady."

"Enry what?"

"Enry Arper, lady."

"Could you eat a bit o' bacon, do you think?"

The boy nodded with an eagerness that made the Foreman Shunter laugh.

"I see nothing to laugh at, Job Lorimer," said his wife sharply. Tears had come into her eyes. She whisked them away with a corner of her ap.r.o.n, and then gave a sniff of remarkable violence. "And they call this a Christian land."

"You never heard me call it that, Mother," said the Foreman Shunter.

"More shame to you, then, Job Lorimer."

"I know this," said the Foreman Shunter, speaking in a slow and decisive manner, "whatever this country is or whatever it ain't, there's as much Christianity in it as there is in that hearthrug. And there ain't a bit more."

"Shut your head," said his wife. "And hand me that knife and I'll cut up this bit o' bacon for him."

She took a delicately browned rasher out of a hissing, delicious smelling frying-pan on the fire, cut it into very small pieces, gave it to the boy, and told him to eat it slowly.

After the boy's wants had been attended to, Mother spread a newspaper on the sofa and told him to put up his legs and rest a bit. The Foreman Shunter then pa.s.sed through a door and performed wonders in the way of blowing and splashing at the scullery sink. When he reappeared his face was very red and shining and the boy was fast asleep.