XXV
For at the height of this particularly mischancy posture of affairsthe meddlesome Fates had elected to dispatch Cock-eye Flinks to serveas our _deus ex machina_. And just as in the comedy the police turnup in the nick of time to fetch Tartuffe to prison, or in the tragedyFriar John manages to be detained on his journey to Mantua and thusbring about that lamentable business in the tomb of the Capulets, soMr. Flinks now happens inopportunely to arrive upon our lesser stage.
Faithfully to narrate how Cock-eye Flinks chanced to be at Selwoodewere a task of magnitude. That gentleman travelled very quietly; andfor the most part, he journeyed incognito under a variety of aliasessuggested partly by a fertile imagination and in part by prudentialmotives. For his notions of proprietary rights were deplorably vague,and his acquaintance with the police, in consequence, extensive. Andfinally, that he was now at Selwoode was not in the least his fault,but all the doing of an N. & O. brakesman, who had in unculturedargument, reinforced by a coupling-pin, persuaded Mr. Flinks todisembark from the northern freight on the night previous.
Mr. Flinks, then, sat leaning against a tree in the gardens ofSelwoode, some thirty feet from the wall that stands between Selwoodeand Gridlington, and nursed his pride and foot, both injured in thathigh debate of last evening, and with a jackknife rounded off the topof a substantial staff designed to alleviate his present lameness.Meanwhile, he tempered his solitude with music, whistling melodiouslythe air of a song that pertained to the sacredness of home and of awhite-haired mother.
Subsequently to Cock-eye Flinks (as the playbill has it), enter avision in violet ruffles.
Wide-eyed, she came upon him in her misery, steadily trudging towardan unknown goal. I think he startled her a bit. Indeed, it must beadmitted that Mr. Flinks, while a man of undoubted talent in hisparticular line of business, was, like many of your great geniuses, inoutward aspect unprepossessing and misleading; for whereas he lookedlike a very shiftless and very dirty tramp, he was as a matter of factas vile a rascal as ever pawned a swinish soul for whiskey.
"What are you doing here?" said Margaret, sharply. "Don't you knowthis is private property?"
To his feet rose Cock-eye Flinks. "Lady," said he, with humbleness,"you wouldn't be hard on a poor workingman, would you? It ain't myfault I'm here, lady--at least, it ain't rightly my fault. I justclimbed over the wall to rest a minute--just a minute, lady, in theshade of these beautiful trees. I ain't a-hurting nobody by that,lady, I hope."
"Well, you had no business to do it," Miss Hugonin pointed out, "andyou can just climb right back." Then she regarded him more intently,and her face softened somewhat. "What's the matter with your foot?"she demanded.
"Brakesman," said Mr. Flinks, briefly. "Threw me off a train. Hestruck me cruel hard, he did, and me a poor workingman trying to makemy way to New York, lady, where my poor old mother's dying, lady, andme out of a job. Ah, it's a hard, hard world, lady--and me her onlyson--and he struck me cruel, cruel hard, he did, but I forgive him forit, lady. Ah, lady, you're so beautiful I know you're got a kind, goodheart, lady. Can't you do something for a poor workingman, lady, witha poor dying mother--and a poor, sick wife," Mr. Flinks added as adolorous afterthought; and drew nearer to her and held out one handappealingly.
Petheridge Jukesbury had at divers times pointed out to her the evilsof promiscuous charity, and these dicta Margaret parroted gliblyenough, to do her justice, so long as there was no immediate questionof dispensing alms. But for all that the next whining beggar wouldmove her tender heart, his glib inventions playing upon it like afiddle, and she would give as recklessly as though there were nosuch things in the whole wide world as soup-kitchens and organisedcharities and common-sense. "Because, you know," she would afterwardsalve her conscience, "I _couldn't_ be sure he didn't need it, whereasI was _quite_ sure I didn't."
Now she wavered for a moment. "You didn't say you had a wife before,"she suggested.
"An invalid," sighed Mr. Flinks--"a helpless invalid, lady. And sixsmall children probably crying for bread at this very moment. Ah,lady, think what my feelings must be to hear 'em cry in vain--thinkwhat I must suffer to know that I summoned them cherubs out of Heaveninto this here hard, hard world, lady, and now can't do by 'emproperly!" And Cock-eye Flinks brushed away a tear which I, for one,am inclined to regard as a particularly ambitious flight of hisimagination.
Promptly Margaret opened the bag at her waist and took out her purse."Don't!" she pleaded. "Please don't! I--I'm upset already. Take this,and please--oh, _please_, don't spend it in getting drunk or gamblingor anything horrid," Miss Hugonin implored him. "You all do, and it'sso selfish of you and so discouraging."
Mr. Flinks eyed the purse hungrily. Such a fat purse! thought Cock-eyePlinks. And there ain't nobody within a mile of here, neither. You arenot to imagine that Mr. Flinks was totally abandoned; his vices wereparochial, restrained for the most part by a lively apprehension ofthe law. But now the spell of the Eagle was strong upon him.
"Lady," said Mr. Flinks, twisting in his grimy hand the bill she hadgiven him--and there, too, the Eagle flaunted in his vigour andheartened him, "lady, that ain't much for you to give. Can't you do alittle better than that by a poor workingman, lady?"
A very unpleasant-looking person, Mr. Cock-eye Flinks. Oh, apeculiarly unpleasant-looking person to be a model son and a lovinghusband and a tender father. Margaret was filled with a vague alarm.
But she was brave, was Margaret. "No," said she, very decidedly, "Ishan't give you another cent. So you climb right over that wall and gostraight back where you belong."
The methods of Mr. Flinks, I regret to say, were somewhat more crudethan those of Mesdames Haggage and Saumarez and Messieurs Kennastonand Jukesbury.
"Cheese it!" said Mr. Flinks, and flung away his staff and drew verynear to her. "Gimme that money, do you hear!"
"Don't you dare touch me!" she panted; "ah, don't you _dare_!"
"Aw, hell!" said Mr. Flinks, disgustedly, and his dirty hands wereupon her, and his foul breath reeked in her face.
In her hour of need Margaret's heart spoke.
"Billy!" she wailed; "oh, Billy, _Billy_!"
* * * * *
He came to her--just as he would have scaled Heaven to come to her,just as he would have come to her in the nethermost pit of Hell if shehad called. Ah, yes, Billy Woods came to her now in her peril, andI don't think that Mr. Flinks particularly relished the look uponBilly's face as he ran through the gardens, for Billy was furiouslymoved.
Cock-eye Flinks glanced back at the wall behind him. Ten feet high,and the fellow ain't far off. Cock-eye Flinks caught up his staff, andas Billy closed upon him, struck him full on the head. Again and againhe struck him. It was a sickening business.
Billy had stopped short. For an instant he stood swaying on his feet,a puzzled face showing under the trickling blood. Then he flung outhis hands a little, and they flapped loosely at the wrists, likewet clothes hung in the wind to dry, and Billy seemed to crumple upsuddenly, and slid down upon the grass in an untidy heap.
"Ah-h-h!" said Mr. Flinks. He drew back and stared stupidly at thatsprawling flesh which just now had been a man, and was seized withuncontrollable shuddering. "Ah-h-h!" said Mr. Flinks, very quietly.
And Margaret went mad. The earth and the sky dissolved in manyfloating specks and then went red--red like that heap yonder. Theveneer of civilisation peeled, fell from her like snow from a shakengarment. The primal beast woke and flicked aside the centuries' work.She was the Cave-woman who had seen the death of her mate--the brutewho had been robbed of her mate.
"Damn you! _Damn_ you!" she screamed, her voice high, flat, quiteunhuman; "ah, God in Heaven damn you!" With inarticulate bestial criesshe fell upon the man who had killed Billy, and her violet fripperiesfluttered, her impotent little hands beat at him, tore at him. She wasfearless, shameless, insane. She only knew that Billy was dead.
With an oath the man flung her from him and turned on his heel. Shefe
ll to coaxing the heap in the grass to tell her that he forgaveher--to open his eyes--to stop bloodying her dress--to come toluncheon...
A fly settled on Billy's face and came in his zig-zag course to thered stream trickling from his nostrils, and stopped short. She brushedthe carrion thing away, but it crawled back drunkenly. She touched itwith her finger, and the fly would not move. On a sudden, every nervein her body began to shake and jerk like a flag snapping in the wind.