English fiction -- 20th century; Short stories, English
“Meaning the patent-medicine fellow. . . Death is death and business is
business, George goes on; and look—my hands are clean, he says, showing
them to Cloete. Cloete thinks: He’s going crazy. He catches hold of him
by the shoulders and begins to shake him: Damn you—if you had had the
sense to know what to say to your brother, if you had had the spunk to
speak to him at all, you moral creature you, he would be alive now, he
shouts.
“At this George stares, then bursts out weeping with a great bellow. He
throws himself on the couch, buries his face in a cushion, and howls like
a kid. . . That’s better, thinks Cloete, and he leaves him, telling the
landlord that he must go out, as he has some little business to attend to
that night. The landlord’s wife, weeping herself, catches him on the
stairs: Oh, sir, that poor lady will go out of her mind. . .
“Cloete shakes her off, thinking to himself: Oh no! She won’t. She will
get over it. Nobody will go mad about this affair unless I do. It isn’t
sorrow that makes people go mad, but worry.
“There Cloete was wrong. What affected Mrs. Harry was that her husband
should take his own life, with her, as it were, looking on. She brooded
over it so that in less than a year they had to put her into a Home. She
was very, very quiet; just gentle melancholy. She lived for quite a long
time.
“Well, Cloete splashes along in the wind and rain. Nobody in the
streets—all the excitement over. The publican runs out to meet him in
the passage and says to him: Not this way. He isn’t in his room. We
couldn’t get him to go to bed nohow. He’s in the little parlour there.
We’ve lighted him a fire. . . You have been giving him drinks too, says
Cloete; I never said I would be responsible for drinks. How many? . . .
Two, says the other. It’s all right. I don’t mind doing that much for a
shipwrecked sailor. . . Cloete smiles his funny smile: Eh? Come. He
paid for them. . . The publican just blinks. . . Gave you gold, didn’t
he? Speak up! . . . What of that! cries the man. What are you after,
anyway? He had the right change for his sovereign.
“Just so, says Cloete. He walks into the parlour, and there he sees our
Stafford; hair all up on end, landlord’s shirt and pants on, bare feet in
slippers, sitting by the fire. When he sees Cloete he casts his eyes
down.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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