第60章

Jonah breathed slowly into the reeds,up and down the scale,testing the compass of the instrument.It was full and rich,unlike any that she had heard in the streets.Presently he struck into a popular ballad from the music-hall,holding the organ to his mouth with the left hand.With his right he covered the pipes to control the volume of sound as a pianist uses the pedals.When he had finished,Clara smiled in encouragement,with a secret feeling that he was making himself ridiculous.She looked across the water,wishing he would put the thing away and stop this absurd exhibition.But Jonah had warmed up to his work.He was back in Cardigan Street again,when the Push marched through the streets with him in the lead,playing tunes that he had learned at the music-halls.

In five minutes Clara's uneasiness had vanished,and she was listening to the music with a dreamy languor quite foreign to her usual composure.Her mind was filled with the fantastic splendour of the sunset;the fresh salt air had acted like a drug;and the sounds breathed into the reeds made her nerves vibrate like strings.Strange,lawless thoughts floated in her mind.The world was meant for love,and passionate sadness,and breaking hearts that healed at the glance of an eye.And as her ear followed the tune,her eyes were drawn with an irresistible movement to the musician.

She found him staring at her with a magnetic look in his eyes.

He was no longer ridiculous.The large head,wedged beneath the shoulders,the projecting hump,monstrous and inhuman,and the music breathed into the reeds set him apart as a sinister,uncanny being.She frowned in an effort to think what the strange figure reminded her of,and suddenly she remembered.It was the god Pan,the goat-footed lord of rivers and woods,sitting beside her,who blew into his pipes and stirred the blood of men and women to frenzies of joy and fear.There was fear and exultation in her heart.A pagan voluptuousness spread through her limbs.Jonah paused for a moment,and then broke into the pick of his repertory.And Clara listened,hypnotized by the sounds,her brain mechanically fitting the words to the tune:

Come to me,sweet Marie,sweet Marie,come to me!

Not because your face is fair,love,to see;

But your soul,so pure and sweet,Makes my happiness complete,Makes me falter at your feet,sweet Marie.

The vulgar,insipid words rang as plainly in her ears as if a voice were singing them.Jonah stopped playing,and stared at her with a curious glitter in his eyes.She felt,in a dazed,dreamy fashion,that this was the hunchback's declaration of love.The hurdy-gurdy tune and the unsung words had acted like a spell.For a space of seconds she gazed with a fixed look at Jonah,waiting for him to move or speak.She seemed to be slipping down a precipice without the power or desire to resist.Then,like a fit of giddiness,the sensation passed.She stumbled to her feet and ran wildly down the rocky path to the wharf where the ferry-boat,glittering with electric lights,like a gigantic firefly,was waiting at the jetty.

MRS PARTRIDGE MINDS THE SHOP

Chook caught the last tram home,and found Pinkey asleep in bed with a novelette in her hand.She had fallen asleep reading it.The noise of Chook's entry roused her,and she stared at him,uncertain of the hour.

Then,seeing him fully dressed,she decided that it was four o'clock in the morning,and that he was trying to sneak off to Paddy's Market without her.She was awake in an instant,and her face flushed pink with anger as she jumped out of bed,indignant at being deprived of her share of the unpleasant trip to the markets.Three times a week she nerved herself for that heartbreaking journey in the raw morning air,resolved never to let Chook see her flinch from her duty.As she started to dress herself with feverish haste,Chook recovered enough from his astonishment to ask her where she was going.

"To Paddy's,of course,"she replied fiercely."Yer sneaked off last week on yer own,an'cum 'ome so knocked out that yer couldn't eat yer breakfast."A cold shiver ran through Chook.Her mind was affected,and in a flash he saw his wife taken to the asylum and himself left desolate.Then he understood,and burst into a roar.

"Git into bed again,Liz,"he cried."Ye're walkin'in yer sleep.""Wot's the time?"she asked,with a suspicious look.

"Five past twelve,"said Chook,reluctantly.

"An'ye're only just come 'ome!Wot d'ye mean by stoppin'out till this time of night?"she cried,turning on him furiously,but secretly relieved,like a patient who finds the dentist is out.

"The play was out late,an'we."stammered Chook.

As he stammered,Pinkey caught sight of a rip in his sleeve,and looking at him intently,was horrified to see his lip cut and bleeding.She gave a cry of terror and burst into tears.

"Yer never went to no play;yer've bin fightin',"she sobbed.

"No,I ain't,fair dinkum,"cried Chook."I'll tell yer 'ow I come by this,if yer wait a minute.""Yer never cut yer lip lookin'at the play;yer've gone back ter the Push,as Sarah always said yer would.""I'll screw Sarah's neck when I can spare the time,"said Chook,savagely.

Chook,the old-time larrikin,had turned out a model husband,but,for years after his marriage,Mrs Partridge had taken a delight in prophesying that he would soon tire of Pinkey's apron-strings and return to the Push and the streets.And now,although Waxy Collins and Joe Crutch were in jail for sneak-thieving,their places taken by younger and more vicious scum,Pinkey thought instantly of the dread Push when Chook grew restive.

"No,"said Chook,deciding to cut it short,"I tore me coat an'cut me lip gittin'away from the Johns at Paddy Flynn's alley."Pinkey turned sick with fear.The two-up school was worse than the Push,and they were ruined.