  At half-past eleven o'clock Mrs. Partington came upstairs to the room where the two men were still drinking, to make one more suggestion that it was time to go to bed. It was a dreary little room, this front bedroom on the first floor, where Frank and the Major had slept last night in one large double bed. The bed was pushed now close against the wall, the clothes still tumbled and unmade, with various articles lying upon it, as on a table. A chair without a back stood between it and the window. The table where the two men still sat was pulled close to the fire that had been lighted partly in honor of Mr. Partington and partly in honor of Christmas, and was covered with a dÉbris of plates and glasses and tobacco and bottles. There was a jam-jar filled with holly obtained from the butcher's shop, in the middle of the table. There was very little furniture in the room; there was a yellow-painted chest of drawers opposite the door, and this, too, held a little regiment of bottles; there was a large oleograph of Queen Victoria hanging above the bed, and a text—for some inscrutable reason—was permitted to hang above the fireplace, proclaiming that "The Lord is merciful and long-suffering," in Gothic letters, peeping modestly out of a wealth of painted apple-blossoms, with a water-wheel in the middle distance and a stile. On the further side of the fireplace was a washhand-stand, with a tin pail below it, and the Major's bowler hat reposing in the basin. There was a piece of carpet underneath the table, and a woolly sort of mat, trodden through in two or three places, beside the bed. Mrs. Partington coughed as she came in, so tremendous was the reek of tobacco smoke, burning paraffin and spirits. "Bless the men!" she said, and choked once more. She was feeling comparatively light-hearted; it was a considerable relief to her that Frank actually had not come back, though she never had for one instant expected him to do so. But she didn't want any more disturbances or quarrels, and, as she looked at the Major, who turned in his chair as she came in, she felt even more relieved. His appearance was not reassuring. He had been drinking pretty steadily all day to drown his grief, and had ended up by a very business-like supper with his landlord. There were four empty beer bottles and one empty whisky bottle distributed on the table or floor, and another half-empty whisky bottle stood between the two men on the table. And as she looked at the Major (she was completely experienced in alcoholic symptoms), she understood exactly what stage he had reached.... Now the Major was by no means a drunkard—let that be understood. He drank whenever he could, but a tramp cannot drink to very grave excess. He is perpetually walking and he is perpetually poor. But this was a special occasion; it was Christmas; he was home in London; his landlord had returned, and he had lost Gertie. He had reached, then, the dangerous stage, when the alcohol, after having excited and warmed and confused the brain, recoils from it to some extent, leaving it clear and resolute and entirely reckless, and entirely conscious of any idea that happens to be dominant (at least, that is the effect on some temperaments). The maudlin stage had passed long ago, at the beginning of supper, when the Major had leaned his head on his plate and wept over the ingratitude of man and the peculiar poignancy of "old Frankie's" individual exhibition of it. A noisy stage had succeeded to this, and now there was deadly quiet. He was rather white in the face; his eyes were set, but very bright, and he was smoking hard and fast. "Now then," said Mrs. Partington cheerfully, "time for bed." Her husband winked at her gravely, which was his nearest approach to hilarity. He was a quiet man at all times. The Major said nothing. "There! there's 'Erb awake again," said the mother, as a wail rose up the staircase. "I'll be up again presently." And she vanished once more. Two of the children were awake after all. Jimmie lay, black-eyed and alert, beside his brother, and looked at his mother reflectively as she came in. He was still thinking about the sixpence that might conceivably have been his. 'Erb's lamentation stopped as she came in, and she went to the table first to turn down the smoking lamp. She was quite a kindly mother, a great deal more tender than she seemed, and 'Erb knew it well enough. But he respected her sufficiently to stop crying when she came in. "Now then," she said with motherly sternness. "I can't 'ave—" Then she stopped abruptly. She had heard steps on the pavement outside as she came into the room, and now she heard the handle of the street door turned and someone come into the passage. She stood wondering, and in that pause she missed her chance, for the steps came straight past the door and began to go upstairs. It might, of course, conceivably be one of the lodgers on the top-floor, and yet she knew it was not. She whisked to the door a moment later, but it was too late, and she was only just in time to see the figure she knew turn the corner of the four stairs that led to the first-floor landing. "Is that Frankie?" asked Jimmie, suddenly sitting up in bed. "Oh! mother, let me—" "You be quiet!" snapped the woman, and stood listening; with parted lips. (II)From that point Mrs. Partington seems to have been able to follow very closely what must have taken place upstairs. It was a very quiet night, here in Turner Road: the roysterers were in the better-lighted streets, and the sober folk were at home. And there was not a footstep on the pavements outside to confuse the little drama of sound that came down to her through the ill-fitting boards overhead. She could not explain afterwards why she did not interfere. I imagine that she hoped against hope that she was misinterpreting what she heard, and also that a kind of terror seized her which she found it really impossible to shake off. First, there was the opening and closing of the door; two or three footsteps, and then dead silence. Then she heard talking begin, first one voice, then a crescendo, as if two or three clamored together; then one voice again. (It was impossible, so far, to distinguish which was which.) This went on for a minute or two; occasionally there was a crescendo, and once or twice some voice rose almost into a shout. Then, without warning, there was a shuffling of feet, and a crash, as of an overturned chair; and, instant upon the noise, 'Erb set up a prolonged wail. "You be quiet!" snapped the woman in a sharp whisper. The noises went on: now the stamp of a foot; now the scraping of something overhead and a voice or two in sharp deep exclamation, and then complete silence once more. 'Erb was sobbing now, as noiselessly as he could, terrified at his mother's face, and Jimmie was up, standing on the floor in his flannel shirt, listening like his mother. Maggie still slept deeply on the further side of the bed. The woman went on tip-toe a step nearer the door, opened it, and peeped out irresolutely. But the uncarpeted stairs stretched up into the darkness, unlit except for the glimmer that came from the room at whose door she was standing.... There was a voice now, rising and falling steadily, and she heard it broken in upon now and again by something that resembled a chuckle. Somehow or another this sickened her more than all else; it was like her husband's voice. She recoiled into the room, and, as she did so, there came the sound of blows and the stamping of feet, and she knew, in a way that she could not explain, that there was no fight going on. It was some kind of punishment, not a conflict.... She would have given the world to move, to run to the street door and scream for help; but her knees shook under her and her heart seemed to be hammering itself to bits. Jimmie had hold of her now, clinging round her, shaking with terror and murmuring something she could not understand. Her whole attention was upstairs. She was wondering how long it would go on. It must be past midnight now, she thought: the streets seethed still as death. But overhead there was still movement and the sound of blows, and then abruptly the end came. There was one more crescendo of noise—two voices raised in dispute, one almost shrill, in anger or expostulation; then one more sudden and heavy noise as of a blow or a fall, and dead silence. (III)The next thing that Mrs. Partington remembered afterwards was that she found herself standing on the landing upstairs, listening, yet afraid to move. All was very nearly silent within: there was just low talking, and the sound of something being moved. It was her husband's voice that she heard. Beyond her the stairs ran up to the next story, and she became aware presently that someone else was watching, too. An untidy head of a woman leaned over the banisters, and candle-light from somewhere beyond lit up her face. She was grinning. Then the sharp whisper came down the stairs demanding what was up. Mrs. Partington jerked her thumb towards the closed door and nodded reassuringly. She was aware that she must be natural at all costs. The woman still hung over the banisters a minute longer and then was gone. Jimmie was with her too, now, still just in his shirt, perfectly quiet, with a face as white as paper. His big black eyes dwelt on his mother's face. Then suddenly she could bear the suspense no more. She stole up to the door, still on tip-toe, still listening, and laid her fingers on the handle. There were more gentle movements within now, the noise of water and a basin (she heard the china clink distinctly), but no more words. She turned the handle resolutely and looked in. The Major was leaning in the corner by the window, with his hands in his pockets, staring with a dull, white, defiant kind of face at the bed. The lamp on the mantelpiece lighted him up clearly. On his knees by the bedside was her husband, with his back to her, supporting a basin on the bed and some thing dark that hung over it. Then she saw Frank. It was he who was lying on the bed almost upon his face; one boot dangled down on this side, and it was his head that her husband was supporting. She stared at it a moment in terror.... Then her eyes wandered to the floor, where, among the pieces of broken glass, a pool of dark liquid spread slowly over the boards. Twigs and detached leaves of holly lay in the midst of it. And at that sight her instinct reasserted herself. She stepped forward and took her husband by the shoulder. He turned a face that twitched a little towards her. She pushed him aside, took the basin from him, and the young man's head.... "Clear out of this," she whispered sharply. "Quick, mind! You and the Major!... Jimmie!" The boy was by her in an instant, shaking all over, but perfectly self-controlled. "Jimmie, put your things on and be off to the clergy-house. Ring 'em up, and ask for Mr. Carter. Bring him round with you." Frank's head slipped a little in her hands, and she half rose to steady it. When she had finished and looked round again for her husband, the room was empty. From below up the stairs came a sudden draught, and the flame leaped in the lamp-chimney. And then, once more unrestrained, rose up the wailing of 'Erb. (IV)A little after dawn on that Christmas morning Mr. Parham-Carter sat solitary in the kitchen. The children had been packed off to a neighbor's house before, and he himself had been to and fro all night and was tired out—to the priest's house at Homerton, to the doctor's, and to the parish nurse. All the proper things had been done. Frank had been anointed by the priest, bandaged by the doctor, and settled in by the nurse into the middle of the big double bed. He had not yet recovered consciousness. They were upstairs now—Jack, Dick and the nurse; the priest and the doctor had promised to look in before nine—there was nothing more that they could do for the present, they said—and Mrs. Partington was out at this moment to fetch something from the dispensary. He had heard her story during one of the intervals in the course of the night, and it seemed to him that he had a tolerably accurate theory of the whole affair—if, that is to say, her interpretation of the noises she had heard was at all correct. The Major must have made an unexpected attack, probably by a kick that had temporarily disabled Frank, and must then, with Mr. Partington's judicial though amused approval, have proceeded to inflict chastisement upon Frank as he lay on the floor. This must have gone on for a considerable time; Frank seemed to have been heavily kicked all over his body. And the thing must have ended with a sudden uncontrolled attack on the part of the Major, not only with his boots, but with at least one of the heavy bottles. The young man's head was cut deeply, as if by glass, and it was probably three or four kicks on the head, before Mr. Partington could interfere, that had concluded the punishment. The doctor's evidence entirely corroborated this interpretation of events. It was, of course, impossible to know whether Frank had had the time or the will to make any resistance. The police had been communicated with, but there was no news yet of the two men involved. It was one of those bleak, uncomfortable dawns that have no beauty either of warmth or serenity—at least it seemed so here in Turner Road. Above the torn and dingy strip of lace that shrouded the lower part of the window towered the black fronts of the high houses against the steely western sky. It was extraordinarily quiet. Now and then a footstep echoed and died suddenly as some passer-by crossed the end of the street; but there was no murmur of voices yet, or groups at the doors, as, no doubt, there would be when the news became known. The room, too, was cheerless; the fire was long ago gone out; the children's bed was still tumbled and disordered, and the paraffin lamp had smoked itself out half an hour ago. Overhead the clergyman could hear now and again a very gentle footstep, and that was all. He was worn out with excitement and a kind of terror; and events took for him the same kind of clear, hard outline as did the physical objects themselves in this cold light of dawn. He had passed through a dozen moods: furious anger at the senseless crime, at the hopeless, miserable waste of a life, an overwhelming compassion and a wholly unreasonable self-reproach for not having foreseen danger more clearly the night before. There were other thoughts that had come to him too—doubts as to whether the internal significance of all these things were in the least analogous to the external happenings; whether, perhaps, after all, the whole affair were not on the inner side a complete and perfect event—in fact, a startling success of a nature which he could not understand. Certainly, exteriorly, a more lamentable failure and waste could not be conceived; there had been sacrificed such an array of advantages—birth, money, education, gifts, position—and for such an exceedingly small and doubtful good, that no additional data, it would appear, could possibly explain the situation. Yet was it possible that such data did exist somewhere, and that another golden and perfect deed had been done—that there was no waste, no failure, after all? But at present these thoughts only came to him in glimpses; he was exhausted now of emotion and speculation. He regarded the pitiless facts with a sunken, unenergetic attention, and wondered when he would be called again upstairs. There came a footstep outside; it hesitated, then the street door was pushed open and the step came in, up to the room door, and a small face, pinched with cold, its eyes all burning, looked at him. "Come in, Jimmie," he whispered. And so the two sat, huddled one against the other, and the man felt again and again a shudder, though not of cold, shake the little body at his side. (V)Ten minutes later a step came down the stairs, a little hurriedly, though on tip-toe; and Mrs. Partington, her own thin face lined with sleeplessness and emotion, and her lips set, nodded at him emphatically. He understood, and went quickly past her, followed closely by the child, and up the narrow stairs.... He heard the street-door close behind him as the woman left the house. It seemed to him as he came into the room as if he had stepped clean out of one world into another. And the sense of it was so sudden and abrupt that he stood for an instant on the threshold amazed at the transition. First, it was the absolute stillness and motionlessness of the room that impressed him, so far as any one element predominated. There were persons in the room, but they were as statues. On the farther side of the bed, decent now and arranged and standing out across the room, kneeled the two men, Jack Kirkby and Dick Guiseley, but they neither lifted their eyes nor showed the faintest consciousness of his presence as he entered. Their faces were in shadow: behind them was the cold patch of the window, and a candle within half an inch of extinction stood also behind them on a table in the corner, with one or two covered vessels and instruments. The nurse kneeled on this side, one arm beneath the pillow and the other on the counterpane. And then there was Frank. He lay perfectly still upon his back, his hands clasped before him (and even these were bandaged). His head lay high on three or four pillows, and he wore what looked like a sort of cap, wholly hiding his hair and ears. His profile alone showed clear-cut and distinct against the gloom in the corner behind. His face was entirely tranquil, as pale as ivory; his lips were closed. His eyes alone were alive. Presently those turned a little, and the man standing at the door, understanding the look, came forward and kneeled too by the bed. Then, little by little, he began, in that living stillness, to understand rather better what it was that he was witnessing.... It was not that there was anything physical in the room, beyond the things of which his senses told him; there was but the dingy furniture, the white bed, august now with a strange dignity as of a white altar, and the four persons beside himself—five now, for Jimmie was beside him. But that the physical was not the plane in which these five persons were now chiefly conscious was the most evident thing of all.... There was about them, not a Presence, not an air, not a sweetness or a sound, and yet it is by such negatives only that the thing can be expressed. And so they kneeled and waited. "Why, Jack—" It shook the waiting air like the sound of a bell, yet it was only whispered. The man nearest him on the other side shook with a single spasmodic movement and laid his fingers gently on the bandaged hands. And then for a long while there was no further movement or sound. "Rosary!" said Frank suddenly, still in a whisper.... "Beads...." Jack moved swiftly on his knees, took from the table a string of beads from where they had been laid the night before, and put them into the still fingers. Then he laid his own hands over them again. Again there was a long pause. Outside in the street a footstep came up from the direction of Mortimer Road, waxed loud and clear on the pavement, and died again down towards the street leading to the marshes. And, but for this, there was no further sound for a while. Then a cock crew, thin and shrill, somewhere far away; a dray rumbled past the end of the street and was silent. But the silence in the room was of a different quality; or, rather, the world seemed silent because this room was so, and not the other way. It was here that the center lay, where a battered man was dying, and from this center radiated out the Great Peace. It was no waste then, after all!—this life of strange unreason ending in this very climax of uselessness, exactly when ordinary usefulness was about to begin. Could that be waste that ended so? "Priest," whispered the voice from the bed. Then Dick leaned forward. "He has been," he said distinctly and slowly. "He was here at two o'clock. He did—what he came for. And he's coming again directly." The eyes closed in sign of assent and opened again. He seemed to be looking, as in a kind of meditation, at nothing in particular. It was as a man who waits at his ease for some pleasant little event that will unroll by and by. He was in no ecstasy, and, it seemed, in no pain and in no fierce expectation; he was simply at his ease and waiting. He was content, whatever those others might be. For a moment it crossed the young clergyman's mind that he ought to pray aloud, but the thing was dismissed instantly. It seemed to him impertinent nonsense. That was not what was required. It was his business to watch, not to act. So, little by little, he ceased to think actively, he ceased to consider this and that. At first he had wondered how long it would be before the doctor and the priest arrived. (The woman had gone to fetch them.) He had wished that they would make haste.... He had wondered what the others felt, and how he would describe it all to his Vicar. Now, little by little, all this ceased, and the peace grew within and without, till the balance of pressure was equalized and his attention floated at the perfect poise. Again there was no symbol or analogy that presented itself. It was not even by negation that he thought. There was just one positive element that included all: time seemed to mean nothing, the ticks of the clock with the painted face were scarcely consecutive; it was all one, and distance was nothing, nor nearness—not even the nearness of the dying face against the pillows.... It was so, then, that something of that state to which Frank had passed communicated itself to at least one of those who saw him die. A little past the half hour Frank spoke again. "My love to Whitty," he said.... "Diary.... Tell him...." The end came a few minutes before nine o'clock, and it seems to have come as naturally as life itself. There was no drama, no dying speech, not one word. Those who were there saw him move ever so slightly in bed, and his head lifted a little. Then his head sank once more and the Failure was complete. THE END |
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