Violet Forster's Lover Part 9

"That's a tongue; nothing of your tinned or gla.s.s things, but a Portland and Mason; and that's a ham, a small Westphalian boned ham; I like Westphalian ham, even if you don't; and that was a chicken at lunch, and it's very nearly a chicken now, and there's honey, and marmalade, and jam, and cakes, and bread, and lots of things which some people wouldn't turn their noses up at, whatever others may do. I don't know that I'm fond of a meat tea, or high tea, or whatever you call it, as a rule; though after all we do have sandwiches, all sorts of sandwiches, with tea; everybody does, so it doesn't make such a very great difference. Anyhow, I'm going to eat meat--all sorts of meat--with my tea this afternoon, and you can watch me. There are two plates, and two knives, and two forks, and two of everything for two people, and two chairs; if you should know of anyone who will do me the honour to take tea with me, I'll be very glad of--his society. I'm going to begin."

She had placed a chair at one side of the table in which she sat, making as if to pour out tea; then suddenly sprang up, turning to the man who still stood twisting his cap between his fingers.

"Do you think you're playing the n.o.ble pudding-headed hero in a Drury Lane drama? Haven't you got sense enough to get in out of the rain? Do you suppose I don't know you're starving? How long ago is it since you had a square meal?"

"Didn't I tell you not to ask me questions?"

"You didn't tell me! It will need a very different person from you to tell me things of that kind in my own house."

"Then I'll leave your house."

"No, you don't!" She interposed herself between him and the door. "I say no, you don't; and you can glare at me for all you are worth. I've been glared at by much more dangerous persons than you, and I still live on. You wouldn't lay a finger on me if I'd treated you twenty times as badly as I have done; you may think you would, but you wouldn't; you may tell yourself that you will when you're all alone, but you won't, and you couldn't; you're that kind of man. The devil may get into you, but he won't get into you enough to induce you, when it comes to the pinch, to lay violent hands upon a woman. You say you are going to leave my house, and I say you're not. I say I won't let you; there's a direct challenge. You won't touch me, but I shan't hesitate to touch you. I am that kind. You understand, you are not to leave my house without my permission; and in order that we may know exactly where we are I'm going to lock the door and put the key in my pocket."

"You shan't do that."

"Shan't I? Well, we'll see." All at once her tone changed to one of the most singular appeal. "Man, do you know that I've been starving, and not so very long ago? Why, for years of my life I as good as starved; but there have been times when I've gone without food for days together, and known what it is to feel as you are feeling now." She laid her finger-tips softly on his ragged coat-sleeve. "You're a much stronger man than I supposed, but please don't be a fool; do sit down and have some tea with me, and afterwards you can wring my neck; you'll want lots of strength to do it properly."

CHAPTER IX

The Drapery

He was persuaded, he knew not how; he never meant to be. The something which was in him, the craving for food which was life, was on her side; he did have tea with her, a gargantuan tea. He ate of everything there was to eat, while she showed that the necessity that she should have something to eat of which she had spoken was a fiction, by trifling with odds and ends, while she watched that his plate was kept well supplied, and kept on talking. She was even autobiographical.

"Compared with what I have gone through, with my course of training in life's hard school, what you've endured is nothing, and you see that outwardly I'm none the worse for it. I used to think that there wasn't such a thing in the world as laughter for me, that it was just as improbable that I should have a good time as that I should jump over the moon. Yet, I've learnt to laugh at times, nearly all the time; and as for a good time, I've acquired the knack even of getting that. It will be the same with you, and more."

"I doubt it."

"Of course, all green hands do; they take life too seriously."

"Do they? When you left me I don't remember; when I remembered anything again I was in the workhouse infirmary. I'd been found senseless and practically stripped in an alley off the Gray's Inn Road. I'd been in the infirmary more than a week before I came to my senses, after a fashion; then they wanted me to account for myself. I couldn't, or I wouldn't, they were not sure which, so they put me out again into the street. I'm not certain, but I fancy that they gave me the choice of that or of being an able-bodied pauper. It was snowing on the day they turned me out; you should have seen the clothes I was wearing, and the boots!"

"I know the Christian charity of the parish and of the workhouse master!"

"It's rather more than two months ago, and since then I've never had a square meal nor a comfortable night's lodging. You know what kind of weather we've been having, an old-fashioned winter, the best skating we've had for years. I don't know how I've lived through it, but I have. And there are thousands who've been no better off than I have, men, women, and children; I've herded with them. What a world! And for what I've suffered I have to thank you."

"That's not true."

"That's a lie. I'm eating your food--I can't help eating it, I've got to that--but don't you fancy that I'm under any obligation to you because of it. I owe everything I've had to bear to you, and I'll pay you for it. I've told myself that I would over and over again, and I will."

"You talk nonsense; would you rather I had let you go to gaol?"

"What do you mean?"

"Have you forgotten that when I first had the honour of meeting you I saved you from the police? I came on the scene in the very nick of time. In another minute they'd have laid you by the heels and marched you to the station."

He laid down his knife and fork.

"So I was right."

"About what?"

"It's all been a haze; something must have happened to me, something must have cracked in here." He laid his hand on his head. "I don't seem to remember anything beyond a certain point. I don't remember how it was I came to meet you. I know you took me to your house, and dosed and drugged me, and dyed my hair and painted my face, and that while I was still more than half stupefied by your drugs you made a catspaw of me to enable you to bring off some swindle--what it was I've never understood--and that then you left me in the street, as if I were carrion that you were throwing to the dogs; but how I first came to get into your house I have never been able to make out."

"I have upstairs the watch, chain and purse of which you relieved an old gentleman in Hyde Park, just before I came upon the scene. There's his name inside the watch. I only have to communicate with the owner--I know all about him--and you'll be sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, during which you'll suffer much worse things than anything you've had to bear because of me."

"Is that true, that I did what you say?"

"Perfectly, honestly; do you mean to say that you can't remember?"

"Now that you speak of it I do seem to recall something; it's coming back."

"I should think that it probably was; it will all of it come back if you give it time. I know all about you. I know your name, your record, the whole dirty story; you were as deep in the gutter when I first met you as you are now, and perhaps deeper--certainly you had no more chance of getting out of it; men with your record never do, I know."

"What's my name?"

"Do you mean to tell me that you don't know?"

"Not--not clearly; sometimes I nearly know, it's on the tip of my tongue, I can see it written, somewhere; but the writing is not plain--I can't quite make it out."

"What do you call yourself?"

"They call me 'Balmy."'

"Who's they?"

"Oh, some of them; some of the swine with whom I herd. I didn't know what 'balmy' meant before they told me; it seems that it means a man who's not right in his head--not quite mad, but very nearly. I don't think I'm mad, or even nearly, but, looking back, I can't get beyond a certain point--beyond you. What did you do to me that caused it? Can't you undo it?"

"Personally, I did nothing. There was somebody else there besides me; can't you remember him?"

"I do seem to remember someone; wasn't it a man?" She nodded. "I do seem to remember a man, a black-faced man. I suppose he was your tool, and what he did to me was done by your orders."

"He certainly was not my tool. You say they tell you that you're not in your right mind; you were not when I first met you. I should say that you were practically starving and had been living the life of a London gutter man; that bolt from the police finished you; we had to do something to get life back into you. You certainly had your senses no more about you than you say you had in the workhouse infirmary. I declare to you that when I left you you were in a much better condition than when I met you. You had your senses more about you; you had been well fed, I believe the food I gave you saved your life; you were well dressed, you had money in your pocket. I don't see how I can fairly be held responsible for what happened to you afterwards; if you were in your right mind now, you'd see I can't."

"I don't know how much of what you're telling me is true. What do you want with me now? Why have you brought me here, do you want to use me as a catspaw again?"

"Let me tell you my story, and then you'll begin to understand. Do you mind if I have a cigarette? I can always talk better when I am smoking.

And won't you have a cigar?"

"I had a cigar when I saw you last."

"You remember that? Have another now that we meet again. You'll find that there's nothing the matter with those cigars, they're good tobacco."

She placed a box of cigars in front of him. He glared at them as if he would rather they had not been there, but the craving that was in him got the upper hand again. He took and lighted one, puffing at it while she talked.