Changing Winds Part 59

"Don't you like it?" Henry said, bending down to him.

"'E can't eat it, guv'nor!" the other boy said.

"Can't eat it?"

"No, guv'nor, 'e can't. I'll 'ave to eat it for 'im...."

"But why can't you eat?" Henry asked, turning to the boy who still gaped helplessly at the pudding.

The child did not answer. He stared at the pudding, and then he stared at Henry, and as he did so, the pudding fell from his hands, and he became sick....

"'Ere, wod you chuckin' it awy for?" the other boy said, dropping quickly to the ground and picking up the pudding.

"He's ill," Henry said helplessly.

"'E's always ill," the boy answered, stuffing pieces of the recovered pudding into his mouth.

A policeman was standing at the corner, and Henry went to him and told him of the child's plight.

"Sick is 'e?" the constable exclaimed.

"Yes," Henry answered. "He looked hungry, poor little chap, and so I bought him some of the pudding they sell in that shop!"

The policeman looked at him for a few moments. "Well, of course, you meant it kindly, sir!" he said, "but if I was you I wouldn't do that again. If you'll excuse me sayin' it, sir, it was a d.a.m.n silly thing to do!"

"Why?"

"Why! 'Alf the kids about 'ere is too 'ungry to eat. That kid ought to be in the 'ospital by rights. Don't never give 'em no puddin' or stuff like that, sir. Their stomachs can't stand it. Nah, then," he said to the sick child, "you 'op 'ome, young 'un. You didn't ought to be 'angin'

about 'ere, you know, upsettin' the traffic an' mykin' a mess on the pyvement. Gow on! Git aht of it!"

The boys ran off, leaving Henry staring blankly after them. "'E'll be all right, sir!" said the policeman. "It's no good tryin' to do nothink for 'em. They're down, guv'nor, an' that's all about it. I seen a lot of yooman nature down about 'ere, an' you can tyke it from me, them kids is down an' they'll stay down, an' that's all you can say about it.

Good-night, sir!"

"Good-night!" said Henry.

He moved away, feeling sick and miserable and angry.

"It's beastly," he said to himself. "That's what it is. Beastly!"

6

His mind was occupied by violent thoughts about the two children whom he had fed with currant pudding, and he did not observe what he was doing or where he was going. He was in a wide, dark street where there were tram-lines, but he could not remember seeing a tramcar pa.s.s by. He was tired and although he was not hungry, he was conscious of a missed meal, and he was thirsty. "I'd better turn back," he said to himself, turning as he did so. He wondered where he was, and he resolved that he would ask the first policeman he met to tell him in what part of London he now was and what was the quickest way to get out of it.

"It was silly of me to come here at all," he murmured, and then he turned quickly and stared across the street.

A woman had screamed somewhere near by ... on the other side of the street, he thought ... and as he looked, he saw figures struggling, and then they parted and one of them, a woman, ran away towards a lamppost, holding her hands before her in an appealing fas.h.i.+on, and crying, "Oh, don't! Don't hit me!..." The other figure was that of a man, and as the woman shrank from him, the man advanced towards her with his fist uplifted....

Henry could feel himself shrinking back into the shadow.

"He's going to hit her," he was saying to himself, and he closed his eyes, afraid lest he should see the man's fist smas.h.i.+ng into the woman's face. He could hear a foul oath uttered by the man and the woman's scream as she retreated still further from him ... and then, trembling with fright, he ran across the street and thrust himself between them.

"Oh, my G.o.d, what am I doing?" he moaned to himself as he stood in the glare of the yellow light that fell from the street lamp. He felt rather than saw that the woman had risen from the ground and run away the moment the man's attention was distracted from her, and a shudder of fear ran through him as he realised that he was alone. He could see the man's brutal face and his blazing, drink-inflamed eyes, and in the middle of his fear, he thought how ugly the man's eyebrows were ... one long, black line from eye to eye across the top of his nose. The man, his fist clenched and raised, advanced towards him. "He's going to hit me now," Henry thought. "He'll knock me down and ... and kick me!...

These people always kick you!..."

He stood still waiting for the blow, mesmerised by the man's blazing eyes; but the man, though his fist was still clenched, did not strike him. He reeled up to him so closely that Henry was sickened by the smell of his drink-sodden breath. "Fight for a woman, would you?" he shouted at him. "Eih? P'tect a woman, would you?..."

Henry wanted to laugh. The man was repeating phrases from melodramas!...

"Tyke a woman's part, eih? I know you, you b.l.o.o.d.y toff! You ... you think you're a b.l.o.o.d.y 'ero, eih, p'tectin' a woman from 'er 'usband!" He pushed Henry aside, almost falling on the pavement as he did so. "I've a goo' mind to break your b.l.o.o.d.y neck for you, see, b.l.o.o.d.y toff, interferin' ... 'usband an' wife. See? Thash what I'll do!..."

He came again at Henry, but still he did not strike. He mumbled his melodramatic phrases, swaying in front of Henry, and threatening to break his neck and punch his jaw and give him a thick ear, but he did no more than that, and while he threatened, a crowd gathered out of the shadows, and a woman, with bare arms, touched Henry's arm and drew him away from the drunken man. "You 'op it, mister," she said, "or you'll get 'urt!" She pushed him out of the crowd, slapping a lad in the face who had jostled him and said, "Gawblimey, look at Percy!" and when she had got him away from them, she told him again to 'op it.

"Thank you!..." he began.

"Don't you wyste no time, mister, but 'op it quick," she interrupted, giving him a push forward.

"But I don't know where I am," he replied.

"Dunno w'ere you are!... Well, of course, you look like that! You're in Bermondsey, mister, an' if you tyke my advice you'll go 'ome an' sty 'ome. People like you didden ought to be let out alone! You go 'ome to your mother, sir! The first turnin' on the right'll bring you to the trams...."

He did as she told him, hurrying away from the dark street as quickly as he could. He was trembling. Every nerve in his body seemed to be strained, and his eyes had the tired feel they always had when he was deeply agitated.

"My G.o.d," he said, "what an a.s.s I was to do that!"

7

Gilbert and Roger were sitting together when he got home.

"Hilloa, Quinny!" Gilbert exclaimed as he looked at Henry's white face.

"What have you been up to?"

He told them of his adventure in Bermondsey.

"You do do some d.a.m.n funny things, Quinny!" said Gilbert, going to the sideboard and getting out the whisky. "Here, have a drop of this stuff.

You look completely pipped!"

"I don't think I should make a habit of knight-errantry, if I were you,"

said Roger. "Not in slums at all events!"

"Has Ninian come back yet?" Henry asked, sipping the whisky.

"He's gone to bed. The _Gigantic_ got off all right, but there was trouble at the start. She fouled a cruiser or something. Ninian's full of it. He'll tell you the whole rigmarole in the morning. You'd better trot off to bed when you've drunk that, and for G.o.d's sake, Quinny, don't try to be heroic again. You're not cut out for that sort of job!..."

THE EIGHTH CHAPTER