Chapter V: Cherry Comes to a Decision

Three weeks of utter dependence, of rising late to do nothing where he had used to rise early to take part in a world of action, of sitting jammed between a wash-boiler and a drab wall, to the destructive criticism of Nan’s voice, had further degenerated Cherry. He had discovered that three weeks in a man’s life can be an eternity. He dimly felt that he was being hounded down to depths of hopelessness and helplessness such as he had never dreamed life could hold for him. Will Cherry, a man who could break sugar-string on his arm-muscle, sing sea songs, and double his wages by tips. The physical effort of these three weeks had been bad. The mental effect was worse. Such remnants of hope that had clung to him were riven away. Cherry was a practical man. Apart from dogs, he did not theorise. The only books in the house were three in number: “Grace Darling” was a school prize of Polly’s; “The Book of Fate and Two Thousand Dreams” was Nan’s; the Bible was a present from Grandma Cherry and was sadly disfigured by having once been flung on the fire by Nan because Cherry remarked that his kipper was a little overdone.

In these three books Cherry found no lasting interest. A dissatisfaction in not having been educated was part of the substratum of his dark thoughts, after divers attempts to concentrate on any one of these books.

But, for the most part, he was conscious of making no definite charge against Fate. It was impossible to be definite in the presence of Nan’s voice and in this topsy-turvy house.

For three weeks there had been no cyclone.

The street was beginning to feel disappointed.

Every morning and night he had the crowning humiliation of being dressed and undressed by Nan. There were times when it took all his effort to contain himself, as she twitched at his buttons. Moreover--he was conscious that all was not going well with those stumps of his that were now all he could call legs.

Strange twitchings of the nerves would wake him in his sleep. But the days were the worst to bear--the long deserts of naked light, over which sounded Nan’s voice, nag, nag, nag, like a jarring clock that had been wound up by some demon away back before creation, and would not stop till the crack of doom, but go on, clank-clank, till a man could not hear any other sound for it, till it pulverised his brain and broke his mighty heart.

It had been washing day.

From ten to four the Cherry castle had been dirty clothes, wet clothes, clothes on the rack overhead, clothes dripping moisture on him from above, clothes rooked round his chair, clothes being folded by Nan, who anathematised him as a lazy hound because he smoked as he sat.

Irony of laughter had been in his heart all day. With the physical weakness, and its ensuing degeneracy of will there had awakened a corrosive cynicism, which perhaps, had he known it, kept him from going mad.

Now--the domestic earthquake around his chair, was over for another week. Next week, he would be there again. And the week after that. And always. Till he got used to it--this rotting, this weakness, this living apart from the movement of the universe.

He was thinking this as he watched Polly dressing up for choir-practice. Nan was washing herself at the sink. Her best clothes were airing inside the fender. Nan would not die deliberately. There was no hope that way. She was now going for a night out, Tanner Fold way.

Whilst she got ready Cherry tried to solve the question that asked why a woman like Nan could buy a picture like “Wedded Love” and hang it up to look down on scenes such as would happen in that kitchen. For Cherry could not deceive himself. Another cyclone was imminent. Nan was unchanged. And--there was no manner of appeal to such a woman. Had there been--the silent appeal of his broken strength, his vanished lightheartedness, would have been eloquent. She was the Stone Age--that thrust the weak children out to perish, that left the sick and aged to die, that had to be wooed by a club. There was no appeal. Had there been, Cherry would have died before making it--to a woman.

He sat watching her put her black hair into a chignon.

Polly was almost ready, flitting here and there between the smoky lamp, humming little snatches of melody, ready for the practice. Polly had tried to tone herself down, in sympathy with her Dad’s affliction. Polly could not. Billy had teased Polly that the natural history definition of a “flapper” meant “a young duck.” It was true. But the “young duck” once or twice had made Cherry something “nourishing,” though the first time it was burnt, the second time salt to brininess. After which erratic movements towards helping her father’s destiny, Polly’s conscience was momentarily appeased.

“I’ll be back soon,” said Polly, music-folio in hand, and her hat on in the artful tilt that Becky could never accomplish.

“Tooraloo, Polly,” said Cherry.

Nan became vigorous in her attempts to get off, when the door closed behind Polly. She stuck green pins in the big, black chignon, laced herself up into an amazing circumference, buttoned her boots with a hairpin, and finished dressing at top speed. Then she stood, in her hat with its great feathers, and the coat that was gaudily green, in the light of the smoky lamp.

“I’m goin’ to have a bit of life, I am,” announced the Amazon.

“Drop a cob on,” said Cherry, referring to the dying fire.

He asked it in the command he had used ever since his first discovery that some women, like some dogs, only obey the command, and won’t meet a man on the level.

“Ax God to drop a cob on,” she laughed contemptuously.

He was silent.

“What is there for supper?” he inquired.

It struck him sometimes as peculiar how they stuck to the old formulas of common speech, when their relationship had changed so. There he was, asking what there was for supper--when he couldn’t get it.

“Oh--a wind-pudding’ll do thee good once in a while,” said Nan.

She said the words with an intonation that reminded him acutely of his economic downfall. A fire of rage went through him--but comet-like, died out in that negative weakness that would not admit of strong emotions, yet. Half-dead men cannot retaliate like lions.

“I’ll leave the door for thee,” he said, trying sarcasm.

Even his wit had deserted him. It was a thing that belonged to his vitality, it seemed.

“Tha can suit thysel’,” she said, gaily. “My name’s in the rent-book.”

Even as she flung a taunting glance at him, before going down the passage, he recalled that the rent collector had asked him about something or other “being all right,” a week ago, and that he had disinterestedly nodded, without understanding.

Nan had disenfranchised him.

He was no longer a citizen.

His lack of interest had been taken advantage of by Nan. She was legally boss of the castle, as she was spiritually its rein-holder.

“Nan!”

He called the word after her, with six-foot-one imperiousness.

The banging of the street door was his answer.

He had fallen another step.

Sitting in his corner, hearing the feet of men and women pass his door, the ignoring of his lot made him feel that he must hurl himself against his four walls. He struggled against this last humiliation he had sustained. But human nature had reached its limit of endurance.

Will Cherry wept--like a little child, with the heart of a man.

She had stolen his vote.

He wiped his eyes on the red and white spotted handkerchief he used to take his breakfast in, to eat in the porter’s room. Columbus! It was bad enough to pawn a broken man’s watch, his clothes and his phonograph; but--to pinch his vote! What would come next?

When it was over, he looked around the little kitchen as if to assure himself that none had seen his weakness. Moses and Daniel were sublimely unconscious of this human display. But he felt a greater depression on account of having given way to it. A woman had made him “bawl.”

He sat regarding the cinder-choked hearth.

By virtue of his past supremacy he had kept Nan sufficiently in order to have the house “half-way decent.” _Now!_ He looked around him.

His depression grew.

The sense that he was going down, down, that Polly and he were drifting slumwards, Tanner Foldwards, with Nan at the helm, became a painful obsession. When dirt increased, on the top of the disturbances, they would be told to quit. Gradually they would drift down into little street, after little street, each slummier, until Tanner Fold got them, and Nan was in her right environment.

In his weakened state the picture became a nightmare.

He had fallen into a half-stupor of sleep and weakness, when a knocking on the kitchen door startled him.

“Eh--I said I’d come if it kept fine,” said a comical voice. A comical figure of a woman followed it, staring round-eyed as she advanced into the lighted kitchen. She was stubby, blue-eyed, middle-aged, and wore a straw hat that had once been a man’s holiday hat, a man’s jacket, and short skirt. She carried a huge, brown portmanteau, dilapidated enough to have been Noah’s. It almost dragged her to the earth.

Cherry started at this apparition.

She stared back at him.

Then--she burst out laughing.

“Well,” she said, “if I haven’t gone an’ gotten into th’ wrong house. I wanted the house where there’s twins.”

She laughed again.

Cherry smiled.

She stirred the sense of humour he had thought was dead.

Then she plunged into a long apology, and explanation, and autobiography, all interspersed by the little bursts of merry laughter.

“Eh--them’s two nice picters,” she said, suddenly, and set the brown portmanteau down, whilst she walked up to inspect them more closely, rough hands on her hips.

“I had anuncle were anhartist,” she confided. “Ay, he could paint owt. But he took to drink. They often do. Poor things!” She laughed the comical laugh. She appeared short-sighted and walked to poke her snub nose into the pictures. Then she said backing, “Well, I’ll have to go, mister.” She took up the brown bag, which flew open, and let out a scrubbing brush.

With a burst of comical laughter she picked it up and thrust it inside the bag, shutting it, and saying to the brush, “Thee keep thy nose in there.”

She had seen Cherry staring at the contents of the bag.

“I’m a cleaner,” she said, cheerfully. “An’ I’m not ashamed on it. Eh, if it weren’t for us, some o’ them top nobs wouldn’t be able to sleep in beds. Poor things!” She laughed the funny, contradictory laugh.

“How much to clean this hole up?” quoth Cherry.

Jane, the charwoman, looked around, screwed up her eyes as if to gauge the extent of the dirt and said apologetically, “Do you think you’d be hurt at a tanner?”

“I don’t sweat folk,” said Cherry.

“Now--I never _do_ sweat,” Jane told him. “That’s why I’ve rheumatics. Eh--aren’t you married, mister?”

She was kneeling down by the brown bag, taking out the sack apron, blue spar, bottles of brass polish, packets of dry soap, and cloths of all textures and colours.

“She’s out,” said Cherry.

She looked up at the legless man from her kneeling position, shook out a cloth and said, “Oh,” glancing round the place again. She had sized up the situation, and looked simple sympathy.

She pushed Cherry’s chair into the corner near the bed, whilst she commenced an onslaught on the floor with the broom.

As the dust rose she sang, just as Cherry had used to sing about his work. There was a lightheartedness oozed from her personality that affected even him. Her old skirt flapped in and out of the dust-heaps she made, her blue eyes shone through the dust-mist, the blouse that was obviously a gift and fitted her skimpily, had its sleeves rolled up over arms reddened by much contact with water, and on each wrist was a grimy “bracelet” left from the last clean-up she had been at. The man’s hat on her head was tossed aslant and wobbled as she sang:

“I’m Burlington Bertie,
I rise at ten-thirty,
And Buckingham Palace I view;
I stand in the yard,
When they’re changing the guard,
An’ the King shouts across,
‘Tooraloo.’
The Prince of Wales’ brother,
Along with another,
Pats me on the back an’ says
‘Come an’ see Mother!’
_I’m Bert._
I haven’t a shirt!
If they ax me to dine I say ‘No’.
I’ve just had a banana,
With Lady Di-ana,’--
I’m Burlington Bertie,
From--Bow.”

The broom was now going with such a good swing to the tune, and she was so happy that Cherry forgot his woes for a moment, and at the end of the song put in a short “bow-bow” that just rounded it off.

Which pleased Jane no end.

She began to ask Cherry questions about his legs. Perhaps the moment had come when the restrained agony of his heart was ready to burst forth. Jane became a safety-valve. Whilst, as she listened, and shook her head, she would twirl a cloth round the brass rod over the fire-place, or brush at the kettle, her head on one side to catch sight of any dirt lurking, her eyes looking frank, childish sympathy, of a very fine order, whilst her mouth let out little ejaculations like “Oh.” “Well, if ever.” “Eh, to be sure.” Her work never ceasing, nor her sympathy of listening.

Then, when he had finished, she astonished Cherry by observing, one hand on her hip and the other holding a blacking-brush:

“They’ve spoiled a pair, that’s what they’ve done,” she avowed, cheerfully.

He stared at her.

“I mean,” quoth Jane, “if your wife had got _mine_, they’d have bin a good-matched pair, an’ I don’t believe _we_ should have had a wrong word.”

She made the awful observation quite simply, staring genially at the man in the corner.

“We” meant Cherry and herself.

Even as he wondered whether or not he should blush she laughed, and he decided he needn’t.

“Is he a bad ’un?” queried Cherry.

Herein Jane showed the first signs of discreetness.

“Ay,” she nodded, “but--he’s mine.”

Whereupon she shut up, and commenced to sing the chorus of “Burlington Bertie” whilst she dusted, dusting Cherry’s chair, with him sitting in it as unconcernedly as though he had been made of wood.

“Ay,” she murmured, on putting the rug down straight to the mark of the now whitening hearthstone, “God knows why we get mixed up as we do. But we do. But there’s a lot o’ things we can’t make out in this world. Now, some foak says everything has a purpose. Now, what good are cockroaches? Will somebody tell me that?” She picked up a cloth and shook it disgustedly.

When the hearthstone was quite snowy and dry she sat down the fender, glittering with her polish and elbow-grease. In ten minutes all was finished. Cherry took out a small tin box from his pocket and took from it one shilling.

“Nay,” said Jane, struggling into her man’s jacket. “I _wo-ant_.”

But after ten minutes of argument they decided to split the difference. She gave him three pennies from her pocket, as change.

“Eh, I might ha’ clean’t lamp-glass,” she said. Then, “But I’ve gotten th’ offices to do, yet. An’--he’s as jealous as a bull.” She picked up the big bag, staggered towards the door and said, with almost masculine gallantry, “Well, keep your pecker up, mister. We mun live in hope, if we die in despair. An’--shall I come again?”

Cherry hesitated.

To invite her again might be courting disaster. But the comfort of the extra cleanliness was too tempting.

“Ay. Come next week, at the same time,” he said.

Humming “Burlington Bertie” she went down the dark passage, almost falling over the ragged mat, her cheerful laughter coming back to him. Then the door closed.

Polly came in half an hour later.

“Go an’ ax Billy Breeze to come in and bring his draughts and his ‘Encyclopediæ Letters Co’--” said Cherry.

Polly laid down her music and went off.

Billy was not home, but Grandma Breeze would tell him when he came.

Polly made supper, covering the hole in the cloth with the sugar-bowl and the dirtiest places with the plates.

Then she heaved a great sigh and put on an apron.

It was as she was putting on the pan with the fat to make chips that she saw the house had been cleaned up.

“There are angels hovering round,” warbled the man in the corner.

Jane, the charwoman, with her light heart and light pocket, and the bad husband, and the great query as to what purpose cockroaches served in creation, had worked on Cherry like a tonic.

Polly could not get the mystery out of him.

So she made the chips, whilst she dreamed as she heard them sizzle in the hot fat, of a dream-farm, with dream-servants, and Adam Wild, whom she would twist around her little finger, whilst she wore silk stockings and ate raspberry jam every day. She made up her mind most firmly that she must wash the blue muslin dress, to-morrow, against the Spring Fair and the Charity. Only three weeks--then she and Becky would adventure in Cherrydale.

Billy dropped in just as the chips were ready, a huge volume under his arm, which, on Cherry’s advice, they left until after supper.

Billy wheeled his friend up to the table.

Cherry minded it less than he had ever yet done. But whether or not it was because he could accept favours from Billy, or because of the tonic Charwoman Jane’s personality had been, he was not sure.

To Billy this Polly-made supper was ambrosia.

Cherry found the chips rather fat-sodden, the tea weak, and the bread and butter too inclined to break into crumbs. But he only observed that she was doing well.

It was after Billy and Cherry had argued half an hour on a certain point in the Workman’s Compensation Act, as set forth in the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” whilst Polly stitched flowers into a new hat, that the sound of a woman’s voice came down the street.

To Cherry there was only one voice like that in the world.

It was Nan’s.

Moreover, it was drunk.

“Bed, Polly,” commanded Cherry.

He was again the man to fear.

Billy took “bob-wires” with the “Encyclopædia,” back exit.

Nan came in with a loud backward fling of the front door.

“Come in, Lizzie,” she shouted, at the top of that awful voice. “We are as God made us. An’ them as doesn’t like us can lump us. We’re as good as they make ’em, without paint. Come on. Don’t be shy. Take my arm an’ call me ‘Willy!’” With which remark she staggered in, followed by the woman addressed as Lizzie.

Lizzie resembled a weasel, being red and small of eye, furtive of look, and long-bodied. On her cheek was a patch of brown court plaster.

Nan’s chignon was fallen down her back.

The feathers in both women’s hats were lank and spiritless. It was raining.

They screeched like a couple of hyneas.

Cherry’s rage blurred his vision.

Nan, frying-pan in hand, came up to him and gave him a slobbery kiss. Nan had got drunk to show him how she could please herself what she did with herself.

“That’s him,” she said to Lizzie, who looked a little sleepy, as she sat by the fire. “He gave seven-and-six for me. I got him for nowt, an’ a ring chucked in. An’ he thinks he’s my boss.”

They screeched again.

But after a while, Nan began to cook something in the frying-pan. She still retained her hat, though her green coat was on the floor.

Cherry looked across at the woman Nan had brought home.

Then----

“Clear that woman out o’ this house,” he commanded with his six-foot-one authority.

The end of his apathetic toleration was come. His voice was twisted into that weak falsetto that had sounded when the family offered him a shilling a week each.

Moreover, he saw the two women as four.

That weakness of sight, consequent on the loss of blood, was on him.

He wanted to murder Nan.

But--she did not take up the offence at his command that Lizzie go.

She laughed as at a chained eagle.

His heart began to thump great sledge-hammer throbs of rage. Chaotic pictures of her banging his mother’s head against the door-stones, fourteen years ago, of the little coffins that had held baby bodies that would have been men now, _had she cared enough_, came up in and crazed his brain. The kitchen was full of queer snowflakes, varying in size from three-penny pieces to half a crown. All the emotion that had been kept under, which he had thought was gone, rose like a lion now. The indignities he had endured these past weeks--loomed up like mountains.

Then he watched them cut sausage and sheeps’-brains, saw them as through a dark glass of enchantment, eating, laughing and screaming--until the woman next door knocked on the wall for order, which made them worse. Lizzie, having fed, fell asleep. Cherry was nursing his wrath.

Nan began to go over the history of their married life. Soon she was a shrieking monstrosity. But it was a reference to his mother that brought Cherry’s murder-rage to a head.

“Hell-cat!” he hurled at her.

His uttermost rage emitted only a strangled whisper.

She laughed.

What happened next he did not know--what connecting link led up to the realisation that he and Nan were in conflict, that the cyclone had burst and that she was fighting with him as though he were yet six foot, without mercy. Her thumb and forefinger hooked themselves in his cheek, via his lip, so that only a low murmur of his rage could be heard, half-articulated. With one hand he held on to the chair. With the other he defended himself and lashed out at the Stone Age woman. He had a dim sense that Lizzie roused from sleep and came towards them, and self-preservation told him to look out for any movement towards his eyes. His strength was evidently more than Nan expected. He got her down by the throat once--her head on the arm of his chair. But Polly’s shriek made him lose nerve and lose his grip. He never got the advantage again. Lizzie, Polly, Nan and Cherry were all mixed up, and Cherry looked up, through blood, in a dazed way, to find a policeman within his kitchen and see the note-book. They had disturbed the peace once too often. And his skeleton was out of the cupboard. As for Nan--dishevelled and half sobered, she was asking the policeman if a woman couldn’t have a few words with her own husband, in her own house, in a free country.

Polly had apparently gone to the door and cried murder, and the policeman had entered.

To which the man of law merely answered that anything she said might be used against her.

When she burst into a passion of tears and sank on a chair.

Lizzie had slunk away.

The policeman went out.

Polly locked the door after him, on the faces of a small crowd.

The cyclone was over.

Polly bathed her father’s face.

Then she went to bed.

Nan crawled upon the bed in the kitchen and was soon snoring. Had he desired to lie down beside the shrew, he could not do so. She had merely forgotten him. Moreover, he felt that he could not have trusted himself not to strangle her had he been near. The patter of the rain came to him as he sat in the chair by the dying fire. The lamp-glass smoked more deeply and the oil stank. Finally, the light died out. In the darkness he sat, through the long, cold hours, unconscious of the cold or the darkness. He was thinking. He was reminding himself that a man with brains needn’t be beaten by the Stone Age. He could kill Nan, of course. But that would not be mastering her. So far, even with feet, he had only kept her under. Things were very bad. Before him, like an inspiration, was the face of Jane, the cleaner, as she said cheerfully, “We mun live in ’ope, if we die in despair.” He took it as his watchword, sitting in the dark and cold, and thinking more deeply on Nan’s moral and spiritual make-up than ever he had thought in his life, walking round and round it and finishing up with the platitude that after all, she _was_ a woman and there should be some way of winning her round. Beside this great feat, even the economic fight looming ahead of him became insignificant. For after all, if he could scarcely live with Nan, he was sure he couldn’t live at all without her. He was a one-woman man, just as some men are one-dog men.