The Sailor. Snaith John Collis
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 passed 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 passage 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 butter, 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 butter," said Mother, sawing away at a quartern loaf.
The boy seized the bread and butter 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. "Damn 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 apron, 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 passed 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.
"I'm thinking I'll have a bite meself," said Job, with a glance at the sofa. "And then I suppose I had better take him along to the police station."
Mother made no reply, but gave her husband a breakfast worthy of a foreman shunter. She then examined carefully the boy's hands and feet.
"I never did see such a hobject," said she. And then with an imperious air, "I'll give him a wash, that's what I'll do."
In order to carry out this resolve, she went into the scullery, filled the copper, and lit the fire.
Presently the members of the family, three small boys and a smaller girl, came down to breakfast en route to school. They looked wonderingly at the creature on the sofa, with great curiosity in their half frightened eyes. Their father told them sternly to keep away from it, to get on with their breakfasts, not to make a noise, and to clear off to school.
"Is it a boy or a girl?" Alfie asked Johnnie, in a thrilling whisper as soon as father had retired to help Mother in the scullery.
"A girl, o' course."
There was some excuse for Johnnie: there was something that looked exactly like a girl in the sleeping face. The rest was hidden by the coat.
The family was soon packed off to school, Johnnie "with a flea in his ear" for having cleaned his boots imperfectly the night before. Mother then cleared away the remains of breakfast, and the Foreman Shunter fetched a fair-sized zinc bath out of the washhouse, pushed back the table, and set it down before the fire. He filled it with warm water from the copper, and then gave the sleeper a shake and said,
"Now, then, boy."
The boy roused himself with a little whimper of protest. He had not been very fast asleep; the police in varying forms of their activity were still hovering round the outskirts of his mind. He began to cry miserably at the sight of the zinc bath, which supplied a forgotten link in an awful chain of memories. Yes, this was the police station after all. He remembered now quite well how they gave him a bath before they …
"What are you crying for?" asked Mother. "I'm not going to hurt you, my boy. Nice warm bath. Bind up your feet. Then you can go to sleep again."
Perhaps it wasn't the police station, after all. Certainly that institution as he knew it had no Mother and no warm tea and no fried bacon, and no sofa and no old coat.
Mother removed the filthy shirt and the tattered knickerbockers with uncompromising but not indelicate hands.
"Them had better be burnt, Job," she said sharply, as she gave them to the Foreman Shunter to throw into the back yard.
"Better ha' done this job in the scullery, Mother," said he.
"Too cold…" She took the temperature of the bath with an expert's finger… "I never did see anything like this poor child. There's nothing to him. Look at his ribs. You can count 'em. Ugh!" The eye of