Twopence Coloured Read Online Free PDF Page B

the experiences of this world, after only nineteen years spent in it: and so you willbe well able to understand how, when the word struck home (and she had only one reeling ghastly word for it) — how her face went to ashes and her spirit was shocked.
    Drunk! It was as though you had given Jackie a lash across the cheek with a mule-whip. To Jackie it was something abhorrent, like madness, as leering and unthinkable.
    You will be well able to understand how she sat there with thought and movement paralysed, how she looked illy around at the others — at the young girl in black, who was most amazingly, and gravely, unperturbed; at the other old lady, who was moving her head from left to right and fidgeting horridly; at the young man opposite her, who was reading the Life of Francis Place as rapidly as ever — how she looked down at her suitcase, which was under the heels of Dad, who was now seated; how she wondered if she might yet escape, and say “May I have my suitcase, please?” and smile; and how she at last half rose to do so, and met the eyes of the young man opposite, and fell weakly back again…. And by this time the train was moving….
III
    Dad began it. Son was engaged in rolling a cigarette. For a few minutes, indeed, there had seemed a possibility that there was not going to be much trouble now that the train was off: but Dad began it. This watery-eyed old gentleman, who for a little while had been content, in a sudden access of somewhat pathetic dreaminess, to sit looking out of the window, all at once, and as though in continuance of a previous conversation, put his hand out on to the knee of the young girl all in black, and leering forward, spoke in tones of husky condolence.
    “’As yer Auntie died then, dear?” asked Dad.
    To which there was no reply.
    “I expect yer Auntie’s died, ain’t she, dearie?” asked Dad, who had, apparently, an idée fixe on the actual form his fellow-traveller’s had taken.
    “Don’t you talk such nonsense, Dad,” shouted Son, suddenly bursting in. “Of course ’er Auntie ain’t died. Never ’eard of such a thing. You’ll be sayin’ my Auntie’s died next.”
    “Well, she’s all in black, ain’t she?”
    Son said that So was Christmas too. This was a perfectly inaccurate and really quite irrelevant argument, but some obscure logic latent in it appeared to satisfy his parent, and there was a lull. Then Son began to sing.
    Son was an exceptionally foolish singer, pronouncing all his words not as it was natural for such a common man to pronounce them, but in such a manner as he conceived one who had been benefited by an “Oxford Education” would have brought them out. It was indeed one of his boasts, when in liquor (as now), that he himself had been elevated by this type of education, as will be shown. He also beat his breast a great deal.
    “Ef yew WAH the oanLAY gel in the WARLD,” sang Son. “And Ai wah the OAN LAY BOY!”
    Son now turned jauntily to Jackie, as though to paint the prospect for her. “NOTHin’ — ELSe ’d — MATTAH — INthe — WARLD TOO
    DAY!
    WEEKood — go on — LOVin’ — in the — SAME OLD WAY .’
    By the way Son stressed the “same old way,” it was clear that Jackie was committed in the past.
        “A garDEN — of EeDEN — just built for TEW, 
        Dah-dah-dee, dah-dah, DAH DAY! (This very shrewdly.)
        Ef yew WAH the oanLAY gel in the WARLD,
        And Ai WAH the O an LAY BOY !”
    Concluding which, with a heavenward flourish and a smile of bliss at the giddy supposition, Son at once came back to earth; and feeling his duties as the life of the party, immediately flung out a little green packet under the face of the old lady next to him, and courteously begged her to take a Wood — by which Son intended Woodbine (his own favourites) — but was quietly rebuffed. He was in no way wounded, however , and at once expressed his sociability by the same method to the young girl in black opposite him,