Fathers of Men

“Looks like it, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know you! I won’t have anything to do with you,” exclaimed Mulberry, with a drunken dignity rendered the more grotesque by his difficulty in getting to his feet.

“Well, you certainly won’t have anything more to do with Mr. Devereux,” retorted Jan, only to add: “So I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with me,” in a much more conciliatory voice. He had just remembered his second thoughts on the way.

“Why? What’s happened him?” asked Mulberry, suspiciously.

“Never you mind. He can’t come; that’s good enough. But I’ve come instead – to settle up with you.”

“You have, have you?”

“On the spot. Once for all.”

Jan slapped one of the pockets that could not be abolished in cricket trousers. It rang like a money-bag flung upon a counter. The reprobate looked impressed, but still suspicious about Evan.

“He was to come here yesterday, and he never did.”

“It wasn’t his fault; that’s why I’ve come to-day.”

“I said I’d go in and report him to Mr. Thrale, if he slipped me up twice.”

“'Blab’ was your word, Mulberry!”

“Have you seen what I wrote?”

“I happen to have got it in my pocket.”

Mulberry lurched a little nearer. Jan shook his head with a grin.

“It may come in useful, Mulberry, if you ever get drunk enough to do as you threaten.”

“Useful, may it?”

If the red eyes fixed on Jan had been capable of flashing, they would have done so now. They merely watered as though with blood. Till this moment man and boy had been only less preoccupied with the flies than with each other. Mulberry with the battered hat had vied with Jan and his handkerchief in keeping the little brutes at bay. But at this point the swollen sot allowed the flies to cover his hideousness like a spotted veil. It was only for seconds, yet to Jan it was almost proof that the scamp had something to fear, that his pressure on Evan was rather more than extortionate. His expressionless stare had turned suddenly expressive. That could not be the flies. Nor was it only what Jan thought it was.

“I’ve seen you before, young feller!” exclaimed Mulberry.

“You’ve had chances enough of seeing me these four years.”

“I don’t mean at school. I don’t mean at school,” repeated Mulberry, racking his muddled wits for whatever it might be that he did mean. Jan was under no such necessity; already he was back at the fair, that wet and fateful night in March – but he did not intend Mulberry to join him there again.

“It’s no good you trying to change the subject, Mulberry! I’ve got your letter to Mr. Devereux, and you’ll hear more about it if you go making trouble at the school. If you want trouble, Mulberry, you shall have all the trouble you want, and p’r’aps we’ll give the police a bit more to make ’em happy. See? But I came to square up with you, and the sooner we get it done the better for all the lot of us.”

Jan was at home. Something contracted ages ago, nay, something that he had brought with him into the world, something of his father, was breaking through the layer of the last five years. It had broken through before. It had helped him to fight his earliest battles. But it had never had free play in all these terms, or in the holidays between terms. This was neither home nor school; this was a bite of life as Jan would have had to swallow it if his old life had never altered. And all at once it was a strapping lad from the stables, an Alcides of his own kidney and no young gentleman, with whom the local Cacus had to reckon.

“Come on!” said he sullenly. “Let’s see the colour o’ yer coin, an’ done with it.”

Jan gave a conquerer’s grin; yet knew in his heart that the tussle was still to come; and if he had brought a cap with him, instead of driving out bare-headed this was the moment at which he would have given the peak a tug. He plunged his hand into the jingling pocket. He brought out a fistful of silver of all sizes, and one or two half-sovereigns. In the act he shifted his position, and happened to tread – but left his foot firmly planted – upon that ugly cudgel just as its owner stooped to pick it up and almost overbalanced in the attempt.

“Look out, mister! That’s my little stick. I’d forgotten it was there.”

“Had you? I hadn’t,” said Jan, one eye on his money and the other on his man. “You don’t want it now, do you, Mulberry?”

“Not partic’ly.”

“Then attend to me. There’s your money. Not so fast!”

His fist closed. Mulberry withdrew a horrid paw.

“I thought you said it was mine, mister?”

“It will be, in good time. Have a look at it first.”

“Lot o’ little silver, ain’t it?”

“One or two bits of gold as well.”

“It may be more than it looks; better let me count it, mister.”

“It’s been counted. That’s the amount; you sign that, and it’s yours.”

With his other hand Jan had taken from another pocket an envelope, stamped and inscribed, but not as for the post, and a stylographic pen. The stamp was just under the middle of the envelope; above was written, in Jan’s hand and in ink:

Received in final payment for everything supplied in Yardley Wood to end of June– £2 18s. 6d

“Sign across the stamp.” said Jan briskly. Underneath was the date.

The envelope fluttered in the drunkard’s fingers.

“Two p’un’ eighteen – look here – this won’t do!” he cried less thickly than he had spoken yet. “What the devil d’you take me for? It’s close on five golden sovereigns that I’m owed. This is under three.”

“It’s all you’ll get, Mulberry, and it’s a darned sight more than you deserve for swindling and blackmailing. If you don’t take this you won’t get anything, except what you don’t reckon on!”

The man understood; but he was almost foaming at the mouth.

“I tell you it’s a dozen and a half this summer! Half a dozen bottles and a dozen – ”

“I don’t care what it is. I know what there’s been, what you’ve charged for it, and what you’ve been paid already.” Jan thought it time for a bit of bluff. “This is all you’ll get; but you don’t touch a penny of it till you’ve signed the receipt.”

“Don’t I!” snarled Mulberry. Without lowering his flaming eyes, or giving Jan time to lower his, he slapped the back of the upturned hand and sent the money flying in all directions. Neither looked where it fell. Mulberry was ready for a blow. Jan never moved an eye, scarcely a muscle. And over them rose and fell such sylvan music as had been rising and falling all the time; only now their silence brought it home.

“You’ll simply have to pick it all up again,” said Jan quietly. “But if you don’t sign this, Mulberry, I’m going to break every bone in your beastly body with your own infernal stick.”

He finished as quietly as he had begun; it must have been his face that said still more, or his long and lissom body, or his cricketer’s wrists. Whatever the medium, the message was understood, and twitching hands held out in token of submission. Jan put the pen in one, the prepared receipt in the other, and Mulberry turned a back bowed with defeat. Close behind him grew a stunted old oak, forked like a catapult, with ivy winding up the twin stems. Down sat Mulberry in the fork, and with such careless precision that Jan might have seen it was a favourite seat, and the whole little open space, with its rustling carpet and its whispering roof, its acorns and its cigar ends, a tried old haunt of others besides Mulberry. But Jan kept so close an eye on his man that the receipt was being signed, on one corduroy knee, before he looked up to see the broad bust of a third party enclosed in the same oak frame.

It was Mr. Haigh, and in an instant Jan saw him redder than Mulberry himself. It was Haigh with a limp collar and a streaming face. So he had smelt a rat, set a watch, and followed the fly on foot like the old athlete that he was! But how much more like him all the rest. Jan not only came tumbling back into school life, as from that other which was to have been his, but back with a thud into the Middle Remove and all its old miseries and animosities.

“I might have known what to expect!” he cried with futile passion. “It’s about your form, doing the spy!”