They went down the long dark garden together, and at the kitchen-door Armstrong paused.
‘It’s a sore thing,’ he said, ‘for a man to have to misuse his ain flesh an’ blood. But ye’re not of an age to understand that. Remember, Paul, this is not my seeking; but I’ll have the truth by foul means or fair. And it’s just you to choose.’
Paul entered the kitchen, and his mother was for instant justice, as she saw it, but Armstrong intervened.
‘This matter is in my hands,’ he said.
He was a very quiet and yielding man in many things, but when he chose to speak in that way he made his word law.
Then came the lonely night. The wretched poet, a weedy lad who had overgrown his strength, lay in bed and cried in anguish. He topped his father by a head already, though he was but three months beyond his fifteenth birthday, and if he had chosen to fight he might perhaps have held his own. But a thought so impious never entered his mind. He was helpless, and he lay blubbering, undignified, with a breaking heart. He did not think much or often of the coming pain, but he brooded on the indignity and injustice until he writhed with yelps of wrath and hatred and agony of heart, and awoke Dick, who wanted to know what was the matter, and was roughly sympathetic for a time, until, finding he could make out nothing, he turned and went to sleep again.
There were black looks in the morning everywhere, for Paul was known to be in deep disgrace again. He swallowed a cup of the thin, washy coffee—its flavour of chicory and coarse brown sugar was nauseous on the palate of the man at the tent door—and then his father, pale as himself, rose amidst the affrighted boys and girls, and motioned him silently to the sitting-room. This was a sort of family vault, with its scanty furniture in grave-clothes, and a smell of damp disuse about it always, even in summer-time.
‘Are ye ready with the truth?’ asked Armstrong. Paul looked at him like a dumb thing in a trap, but said never a word. ‘Very well,’ The gray man’s hands shook and his voice, and his face was of the colour of gray paper. ‘Go to the back-kitchen and strip.’
Paul, dry-eyed, gloomy, and desperate, walked before, and his father followed. The girls clung to each other. There had been no such scene as this in the house for years. The tawse had hung idle even for Paul for many and many a day. Armstrong took the instrument of justice from its hook, and laid it on the table He took off his coat, and rolled up his left shirt-sleeve. He was left-handed. The arm he bared was corded and puny. It shook as if he had the palsy. His wife had a sudden pity for him, and ran at him with a gush of tears.
‘William,’ she said, ‘don’t break your heart for the young vil’in; he isn’t worth it Oh, God! I wish he was no child o’ mine.’