Since Hullah had come to live in the end house, Private Hey, eyes-right when he turned at the South Bar, and eyes-left when he turned again at the Sowgate Steps, had counted the days when Mollie had appeared at the windows or shaken the table-cloth in the narrow garden. His amusement was no longer with chimney-pots and bath-rooms; it was, to tell over to himself the dissolute life he had led since Mollie had turned her back on him. Somehow, it seemed to exalt her.
It was not that he had ever lied, or stolen, or left a friend in trouble. To the pink-faced private these things were not merely wicked; they were “dead off”—a much worse thing. He drew the line at things that were “off.” But he had committed a monotonous routine of other sins, beginning usually at the canteen, continuing at the “regulation” inns or at the Cobourg Music-hall, and ending on the defaulter-sheet with a C.B. And one day his colonel had said to him: “Hey, you remind me of a cherub who kicks about in the mud and glories to think himself an imp.” That had puzzled and troubled Hey, for he liked the fine old colonel.
“He forgot everything except little Mollie Westwood” (page 35).
For he had ranked himself with the magnificently wicked. In amours, short of anything that was “off,” was he not a Juan? In the matter of inebriety, and for brawling in the streets, why, his officers might make war with ceremony and all that, but (the cherub flattered himself) he was an item of the reckless, heroic, glorious stuff they had to do it with. And since Mollie, by refusing him, had driven him to all this, the sight of her ought surely to have inspired him in his courses; it troubled him that it did not do so. On the contrary, he never felt less inclination to fuddle himself or to click his heels over the gallery-rail of the Cobourg than when he had seen her. When he did not see her, these things were less difficult, and that again was wrong. To regulate his conduct at all by the sight of another man’s wife was, of all dead-off things, the deadest.
Now Hullah, as the sentry knew, had no family; but when, the following spring, the apple trees put forth their pink, and the white clouds sailed high over Maychester, and the note of the cuckoo floated on the air, the cherub became moody and bashful and changed colour ten times in an hour. Thrushes and blackbirds flew back and forth from their nests; and Mollie, too, her figure dwarfed by his point of vantage, sunned herself in the garden. Sometimes the cherub blushed red as his tunic. He ought to have gone to the Cobourg and played the very deuce; instead, off duty, he wandered unhappily alone. Then one day he missed her, and his eyes scanned the house and her windows timorously.
Six weeks passed. Then one morning he saw that the white blinds were drawn. His face became white as wax.
The next day he saw the tail of a coach beyond the end of the house. He exceeded his beat, descended the Sowgate Steps, and stood, trembling and watching. Then he gave a great sob of relief. The coach had turned; the horse wore white conical peaks of linen on its ears—the mark of a child’s funeral. The small procession passed, and the cherub resumed his beat.
That evening the colonel stopped him as he crossed the barrack yard.
“Ah, Hey!... I’m glad you’ve given us so little trouble lately. I’d try to keep it up if I were you.”
“Yes, sir,” said the cherub, saluting; and the colonel nodded kindly and passed on.
The July sun beat fiercely down on the grey walls, and the sentry’s tunic was of a glaring bull’s red. Not a breath moved the trees below, and the click of his heels sounded monotonously.
Within the shadow of the South Bar, where the steps wound down to the street, a frock-coated, square-built man of forty, with clipped whiskers and crafty eyes, watched the sentry approach. For the second time he cleared his throat and said “Tom!”
This time the sentry turned. “I ain’t allowed to talk on duty,” he said.
The man within the shadow waited.
He waited for half an hour, and then the clatter of the relief was heard ascending the turret. Presently Private Hey passed him without looking at him. He descended after him, and in the street spoke again.
“I ain’t off duty yet; you can come to the Buttercup,” said Private Hey.
The bar of the Buttercup was below the level of the street, and a gas-jet burned all day over its zinc-covered counter. In the back parlour behind it Hullah awaited Private Hey.
The cherub’s voice was heard shouting an order, and he entered the snug. The uncoated barman followed him with the liquor, and retired.
“Did you want to speak to me?” the cherub demanded.
“I did, Tom, I did. How—how are you getting on?”
“Spit it out.”
Hullah murmured smoothly: “Ah, the same blunt-spoken, honest Tom that was at Peterson’s! You remember Peterson’s and the old days, Tom?”
“I’d let the old days drop if I was you. I thought you had done.”
“So did I, Tom, so did I; but every breast has its troubles. You’ve heard the expression, Tom, that there is no cupboard without its skeleton?”
“Keep your cupboards and skeletons to yourself.... Does the new bathroom answer all right?”
“Nicely, Tom, I thank you.... Did you know Peterson was back in Maychester?”
“Ho, is he? I expect he wants to talk over the old days with his friend Hullah, same as you with me. Well, you was a precious pair o’ rascals—though for myself, mark you, I like to see honour among such.”
“Hush, Tom!... He’s back, and seeking you. He’d better be careful; it’s twenty years, is that. But what I wanted to say, Tom, is that it would save a lot of trouble—a lot of trouble—if you weren’t to see him.”
“Ho!... Hullah, my man.”
“Yes, Tom.”
“Do you know what I think you are?”
Hullah stammered. It was so hard to get a start in business—the competition—he’d gone straight except for that once.
“I think you’re the blackguardest, off-est scamp in the trade, and I wouldn’t be found dead in a ditch with you. That’s juicy, coming from me. I’m no saint, but just a common-or-garden Tommy, with a defaulter sheet it’s a sin to read; and I say you’re a blackguard, and dead-off.”
Hullah cringed. He’d gone straight since—Peterson had already pushed him for twice what he’d had out of it—it was hard to be persecuted like this, hard. The cherub revolved in his mind phrases of elaborate and over-done irony.
Suddenly Hullah mentioned his wife, and the pink of the cherub’s face deepened.
“Come into the yard,” he said.
Hullah followed him into a dusty plot, where hens scratched and cases and barrels lay scattered everywhere.
“What did you say?” the soldier demanded.
The architect’s face was of an unwholesome white, and Hey