“Why, mammy ain’t there,” he exclaimed. “Mammy went away ever so long ago. I don’t think she’s dead, though, ’cos daddy wouldn’t let me talk about her, only just lately, since he was ill. You see,” he went on with an explanatory wave of the hand, “daddy’s been a very bad man. He’s better now—leastways, he ain’t so bad as he was; but I ’spect that’s why mammy went away. Don’t you?”
“I daresay, Freddy,” Matravers answered softly.
“We’re getting very near now,” Freddy remarked, looking over the apron of the cab. “My! won’t dada be surprised to see me drive up in a cab with you! I hope he’s at the window!”
“Will your father be at home now?” Matravers asked.
Freddy stared at him.
“Why, of course! Dad’s always at home! Is my face very buggy? Don’t rub it any more, please. That’s Jack Mason over there! I play with him. I want him to see me. Hullo! Jack,” he shouted, leaning out of the cab, “I’ve been run over, right over, face all buggy. Look at it! Hands too,” spreading them out. “He’s a nice boy,” Freddy continued as the cab turned a corner, “but he can’t run near so fast as me, and he’s lots older. Hullo! here we are!” kicking vigorously at the apron.
Matravers looked up in surprise. They had stopped short before a long row of shabby-genteel houses in the outskirts of Kensington. He took the boy’s outstretched hand and pushed open the gate. The door was open, and Freddy dragged him into a room on the ground floor.
A man was lying on a sofa before the window, wrapped in an untidy dressing-gown, and with the lower part of his body covered up with a rug. His face, fair and florid, with more than a suggestion of coarseness in the heavy jaw and thick lips, was drawn and wrinkled as though with pain. His lips wore an habitually peevish expression. He did not offer to rise when they came in. Matravers was thankful that Freddy spared him the necessity of immediate speech. He had recognized in a moment the man who had sat alone night after night in the back seats of the New Theatre, whose slow drawn-out cry of agony had so curiously affected him on that night of her performance. He recognized, too, the undergraduate of his college sent down for flagrant misbehaviour, the leader of a set whom he himself had denounced as a disgrace to the University. And this man was her husband!
“Daddy,” the boy cried, dropping Matravers’ hand and running over to the couch, “I’ve been run over by a hansom cab, and I’m all buggy, but I ain’t hurt, and this gentleman brought me home. Daddy can’t get up, you know,” Freddy explained; “his legs is bad.”
“Run over, eh!” exclaimed the man on the couch. “It’s like that girl’s damned carelessness.”