She caught her breath, for the woman broke out into dry sobbing and cried out wildly:
"Oh, come back to 'im! Come back, if you're a woman! Gawd, Who made 'im, knows as 'ow 'e can't bear no more! Oh! if my 'art's so wrung by what I've seen him suffer, think what he's bore these crooil weeks an' months!"
The peonies rocked in the gale of Emigration Jane's emotion. Her hard-worked hands went out, entreating for him; her dowdy little figure seemed to grow tall, so impressive was the earnestness of her appeal.
"Him and you are toffs, and me and Keyse are common folks.... Flesh and blood's the syme, though, only covered wiv different skins. An' Human Nature's Human Nature, 'owever you fake 'er up an' christen 'er! An' Love must 'ave give an' take of Love, or else Love's got to die! Burn a lamp wivout oil, and see wot 'appens. It goes out!—You're left in the dark!"—Her homely gesture, illustrating the homely analogy, seemed to bring down blackness. Lynette hung speechless upon her fateful lips.
"—Then, like as not, you'll overturn the table gropin'. 'Smashed!' you'll say, 'an' nobody but silly me to blyme! It would 'ave lighted up a 'appy 'ome if I 'adn't been a barmy idiot. It would 'ave showed me the face of my 'usband leanin' to kiss me in our blessed marriage-bed, an' my baby smilin' in its cradle-sleep 'ard by.... Oh!—Oh!"—She choked and clutched her bosom, and her voice rose in the throaty screech of incipient hysteria—"An' I've left my own sweet, unweaned boy to come and say these words to you!... An' the darlin' darlin' fightin' with the bottle they're tryin' to give 'im, and roarin' for 'is mam.... And my breasts as 'ard as stones, an' throbbin'!... Gawd 'elp me!" She panted and fought and choked, striving for speech.
"Keep your hair on!" advised W. Keyse in a hoarse whisper. She turned on him like a tigress, her eyes flaming under her straightened fringe.
"Keep yours! I've come to speak, and speak I mean to—for the sake of the best man Gawd's made for a 'undred years. Bar one, you says, but bar none, says I, an' charnce it! Since the day 'e stood up for you in that Dutch saloon-bar at Gueldersdorp, what is there we don't owe to 'im—you and me, and all the blooming crew of us? And because 'e'll tyke no thanks, 'e gits ingratitude—the dirtiest egg the Devil ever hatched!"
"Cripps!" gasped W. Keyse, awe-stricken by this lofty flight of rhetoric. Ignoring him, she pursued her way.
"You're a beautiful young lydy"—her tone softened from its strenuous pitch—"wot 'ave 'ad a disappyntment, like many of us 'ave at the start. You'd set your 'art on Another One. 'E got killed, an' you married the Doctor—but it's never bin no real marriage. You've ate 'is bread, as the sayin' is, an' give 'im a stone. An' e's beat 'is pore 'art to bloody rags agynst it—d'y after d'y, an' night after night! I seen it, I tell you!" she shrilled—"I seen it wiv me own eyes! You pretty, silly kid! Don't you know wot 'arm you're doing? You crooil byby! do you reckon Gawd gave you the man to torture an' break an' spoil?"
A hand, imperatively clapped over the mouth of Mrs. W. Keyse, stemmed the torrent of her eloquence.