“Well, strike me lucky!” said the taxi driver at last, out of breath. “She wor th’ best o’ th’ bunch of ’em. I see nowt nor hear nowt from any of ’em—they’re not worth it, I’ll be damned if they are—our sermon-lapping Adela and Maud,” he looked scornfully at his nephew. “But she was the best of ’em, our Anna was, that’s a fact.”
He was talking because he was afraid.
“An’ after a hard life like she’d had. How old was she, lad?”
“Fifty-five.”
“Fifty-five....” He hesitated. Then, in a rather hushed voice, he asked the question that frightened him:
“And what was it, then?”
“Cancer.”
“Cancer again, like Julia! I never knew there was cancer in our family. Oh, my good God, our poor Anna, after the life she’d had!—What, lad, do you see any God at the back of that?—I’m damned if I do.”
He was glaring, very blue-eyed and fierce, at his nephew. Berry lifted his shoulders slightly.
“God?” went on the taxi driver, in a curious intense tone, “You’ve only to look at the folk in the street to know there’s nothing keeps it going but gravitation. Look at ’em. Look at him!”—A mongrel-looking man was nosing past. “Wouldn’t he murder you for your watch-chain, but that he’s afraid of society. He’s got it in him.... Look at ’em.”