Tietjens himself he had always addressed with the voice and accent of a common seaman; with his coarsened surface voice!
He had the two personalities. Two or three times he had said:
"Why don't you kiss the girl? She's a nice girl, isn't she? You're a poor b——y Tommie, ain't cher? Well, the poor b——y Tommies ought to have all the nice girls they want! That's straight, isn't it? . . ."
And, even at that time they hadn't known what was going to happen. . . . There are certain cruelties. . . . They had got a four-wheel cab at last. The drunken boy had sat beside the driver; he had insisted. . . . Her little, pale, shrunken face had gazed straight before her. . . . It hadn't been possible to speak; the cab, rattling all over the road had pulled up with frightful jerks when the boy had grabbed at the reins. . . . The old driver hadn't seemed to mind; but they had had to subscribe all the money in their pockets to pay him after they had carried the boy into the black house. . . .
Tietjens' mind said to him:
"Now when they came to her father's house so nimbly she slipped in, and said: 'There is a fool without and is a maid within. . . .'"
He answered dully:
"Perhaps that's what it really amounts to. . . ." He had stood at the hall door, she looking out at him with a pitiful face. Then from the sofa within the brother had begun to snore; enormous, grotesque sounds, like the laughter of unknown races from darkness. He had turned and walked down the path, she following him. He had exclaimed:
"It's perhaps too . . . untidy . . ."
She had said: