第44章

Thinks she was born to be everybody's servant." He seated himself beside Miss Ensor on the antiquated sofa. It gave a complaining groan but held out.

"Did you have a good house?" the girl asked him. "Saw you from the distance, waving your arms about. Hadn't time to stop.""Not many," admitted Mr. Simson. "A Christmassy lot. You know.

Sort of crowd that interrupts you and tries to be funny. Dead to their own interests. It's slow work.""Why do you do it?" asked Miss Ensor.

"Damned if I know," answered Mr. Simson, with a burst of candour.

"Can't help it, I suppose. Lost me job again.""The old story?" suggested Miss Ensor.

"The old story," sighed Mr. Simson. "One of the customers happened to be passing last Wednesday when I was speaking on the Embankment.

Heard my opinion of the middle classes?"

"Well, you can't expect 'em to like it, can you?" submitted Miss Ensor.

"No," admitted Mr. Simson with generosity. "It's only natural.

It's a fight to the finish between me and the Bourgeois. I cover them with ridicule and contempt and they hit back at me in the only way they know.""Take care they don't get the best of you," Miss Ensor advised him.

"Oh, I'm not afraid," he answered. "I'll get another place all right: give me time. The only thing I'm worried about is my young woman.""Doesn't agree with you?" inquired Miss Ensor.

"Oh, it isn't that," he answered. "But she's frightened. You know. Says life with me is going to be a bit too uncertain for her. Perhaps she's right.""Oh, why don't you chuck it," advised Miss Ensor, "give the Bourgeois a rest."Mr. Simson shook his head. "Somebody's got to tackle them," he said. "Tell them the truth about themselves, to their faces.""Yes, but it needn't be you," suggested Miss Ensor.

Mary was leaning over the table. Miss Ensor's four-penny veal and ham pie was ready. Mary arranged it in front of her. "Eat it while it's hot, dearie," she counselled. "It won't be so indigestible."Miss Ensor turned to her. "Oh, you talk to him," she urged.

"Here, he's lost his job again, and is losing his girl: all because of his silly politics. Tell him he's got to have sense and stop it."Mary seemed troubled. Evidently, as Miss Ensor had stated, advice was not her line. "Perhaps he's got to do it, dearie," she suggested.

"What do you mean by got to do it?" exclaimed Miss Ensor. "Who's making him do it, except himself?"Mary flushed. She seemed to want to get back to her cooking.

"It's something inside us, dearie," she thought: "that nobody hears but ourselves.""That tells him to talk all that twaddle?" demanded Miss Ensor.

"Have you heard him?"

"No, dearie," Mary admitted. "But I expect it's got its purpose.

Or he wouldn't have to do it."

Miss Ensor gave a gesture of despair and applied herself to her pie. The hirsute face of Mr. Simson had lost the foolish aggressiveness that had irritated Joan. He seemed to be pondering matters.

Mary hoped that Joan was hungry. Joan laughed and admitted that she was. "It's the smell of all the nice things," she explained.

Mary promised it should soon be ready, and went back to her corner.

A short, dark, thick-set man entered and stood looking round the room. The frame must once have been powerful, but now it was shrunken and emaciated. The shabby, threadbare clothes hung loosely from the stooping shoulders. Only the head seemed to have retained its vigour. The face, from which the long black hair was brushed straight back, was ghastly white. Out of it, deep set beneath great shaggy, overhanging brows, blazed the fierce, restless eyes of a fanatic. The huge, thin-lipped mouth seemed to have petrified itself into a savage snarl. He gave Joan the idea, as he stood there glaring round him, of a hunted beast at bay.

Miss Ensor, whose bump of reverence was undeveloped, greeted him cheerfully as Boanerges. Mr. Simson, more respectful, rose and offered his small, grimy hand. Mary took his hat and cloak away from him and closed the door behind him. She felt his hands, and put him into a chair close to the fire. And then she introduced him to Joan.

Joan started on hearing his name. It was one well known.

"The Cyril Baptiste?" she asked. She had often wondered what he might be like.

"The Cyril Baptiste," he answered, in a low, even, passionate voice, that he flung at her almost like a blow. "The atheist, the gaol bird, the pariah, the blasphemer, the anti-Christ. I've hoofs instead of feet. Shall I take off my boots and show them to you?

I tuck my tail inside my coat. You can't see my horns. I've cut them off close to my head. That's why I wear my hair long: to hide the stumps."Mary had been searching in the pockets of his cloak. She had found a paper bag. "You mustn't get excited," she said, laying her little work-worn hand upon his shoulder; "or you'll bring on the bleeding.""Aye," he answered, "I must be careful I don't die on Christmas Day. It would make a fine text, that, for their sermons."He lapsed into silence: his almost transparent hands stretched out towards the fire.

Mr. Simson fidgeted. The quiet of the room, broken only by Mary's ministering activities, evidently oppressed him.

"Paper going well, sir?" he asked. "I often read it myself.""It still sells," answered the proprietor, and editor and publisher, and entire staff of The Rationalist.

"I like the articles you are writing on the History of Superstition. Quite illuminating," remarked Mr. Simson.

"It's many a year, I am afraid, to the final chapter," thought their author.