Читать книгу The Hampdenshire Wonder - J. D. Beresford - Страница 23

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Stott maintained an obstinate silence as we walked together up to the Common, a stretch of comparatively open ground on the plateau of the hill. He walked with his hands in his pockets and his head down, as he had walked out from Ailesworth with me nearly three years before, but his mood was changed. I was conscious that he was gloomy, depressed, perhaps a little unstrung. I was burning with curiosity. Now that I was released from the thrall of the child’s presence, I was eager to hear all there was to tell of its history.

Presently we sat down under an ash-tree, one of three that guarded a shallow, muddy pond skimmed with weed. Stott accepted my offer of a cigarette, but seemed disinclined to break the silence.

I found nothing better to say than a repetition of the old phrase. “That’s a very remarkable baby of yours, Stott,” I said.

“Ah!” he replied, his usual substitute for “yes,” and he picked up a piece of dead wood and threw it into the little pond.

“How old is he?” I asked.

“Nearly two year.”

“Can he …” I paused; my imagination was reconstructing the scene of the railway carriage, and I felt a reflex of the hesitation shown by the rubicund man when he had asked the same question. “Can he … can he talk?” It seemed so absurd a question to ask, yet it was essentially a natural question in the circumstances.

“He can, but he won’t.”

This was startling enough, and I pressed my enquiry.

“How do you know? Are you sure he can?”

“Ah!” Only that aggravating, monosyllabic assent.

“Look here, Stott,” I said, “don’t you want to talk about the child?”

He shrugged his shoulders and threw more wood into the pond with a strained attentiveness as though he were peculiarly anxious to hit some particular wafer of the vivid, floating weed. For a full five minutes we maintained silence. I was trying to subdue my impatience and my temper. I knew Stott well enough to know that if I displayed signs of either, I should get no information from him. My self-control was rewarded at last.

“I’ve ’eard ’im speak,” he said, “speak proper, too, not like a baby.”

He paused, and I grunted to show that I was listening, but as he volunteered no further remark, I said: “What did you hear him say?”

“I dunno,” replied Stott, “somethin’ about learnin’ and talkin’. I didn’t get the rights of it, but the missus near fainted—she thinks ’e’s Gawd A’mighty or suthing.”

“But why don’t you make him speak?” I asked deliberately.

“Make ’im!” said Stott, with a curl of his lip, “make ’im! You try it on!”

I knew I was acting a part, but I wanted to provoke more information. “Well! Why not?” I said.

“ ’Cos ’e’d look at you—that’s why not,” replied Stott, “and you can’t no more face ’im than a dog can face a man. I shan’t stand it much longer.”

“Curious,” I said, “very curious.”

“Oh! he’s a blarsted freak, that’s what ’e is,” said Stott, getting to his feet and beginning to pace moodily up and down.

I did not interrupt him. I was thinking of this man who had drawn huge crowds from every part of England, who had been a national hero, and who, now, was unable to face his own child. Presently Stott broke out again.

“To think of all the trouble I took when ’e was comin’,” he said, stopping in front of me. “There was nothin’ the missus fancied as I wouldn’t get. We was livin’ in Stoke then.” He made a movement of his head in the direction of Ailesworth. “Not as she was difficult,” he went on thoughtfully. “She used to say ‘I mussent get ’abits, George,’ Caught that from me; I was always on about that—then. You know, thinkin’ of learnin’ ’im bowlin’. Things was different then; afore ’e came.” He paused again, evidently thinking of his troubles.

Sympathetically, I was wondering how far the child had separated husband and wife. There was the making of a tragedy here, I thought; but when Stott, after another period of pacing up and down, began to speak again I found that his tragedy was of another kind.

“Learn ’im bowling!” he said, and laughed a mirthless laugh. “My Gawd! it ’ud take something. No fear; that little game’s off. And I could a’ done it if he’d been a decent or’nery child, ’stead of a blarsted freak. There won’t never be another, neither. This one pretty near killed the missus. Doctor said it’d be ’er last. … With an ’ead like that, whacher expect?”

“Can he walk?” I asked.

“Ah! Gets about easy enough for all ’is body and legs is so small. When the missus tries to stop ’im—she’s afraid ’e’ll go over—‘e just looks at ’er and she ’as to let ’im ’ave ’is own way.”