Billy's Manhood

BILLY'S MANHOOD

O sane human should ever interfere in the private life of any man or woman. But when Billy mixed up his life with those of Miss Lestrange and the other man, he called me in to help.

Billy was a big, clean-souled, straight-limbed boy, with the level head and eye which gave him top average for his district nearly every cricket season; the other man could smoke a pipe with me in silence, but I did not know his heart, for all that; and Miss Lestrange I had never heard of until Billy came to me that night.

He came in the dark, with an unsteady step down the hall, and the door flung wide, so that my scattered papers eddied away into corners, smudging each other. I cursed Billy where I sat. Then I turned. And after that I got up and took him by the shoulders, and put him into my big chair.

“You'll have a nip,” I said. “And then you'll tell me who you've been killing, Billy.”

He needed that nip—badly. His hands shook, and the glass clattered on his teeth. Then I stood up before the fire, and looked him over.

He had no coat, and his trousers were wet to the knee with black slime, and his boots and his hands were cut. There was coal dust on his shirt and on the whiter flesh showing through the torn places. There was coal-dust dried in ridges on his face, and there was coal-dust again in his thick fair hair. But it was his eyes that troubled me—Billy's frank eyes—for they carried the look of a man who battles with a temptation that is going to smudge or purify his soul. I had known Billy since he wore petticoats; but now I doubted if I knew him at all. He had come to the heritage of his manhood very swiftly.

“Well?” I said, and wondered how much right a man has to counsel another man when that other's moral sense is involved.

Billy was limp in the big chair. Exhaustion and trouble had weakened his fibres.

“How is a man to tell a chap that a girl loves him without pretending to know?” he said.

“He generally doesn't,” said I. “He lets the other chap find out for himself.”

“But when he doesn't know if the other chap wants to find out?”

“I give it up,” I said.

“You can't. I've got to know—now.”

“Billy,” I said, “in a Latin sentence all the verbs are at one end, and the rest of the parts of speech are at the other. They may be very good parts of speech, but they're no earthly use without the verbs. Give me the verbs, please.”

Billy looked at his hands. There was blood dried on them, and grime.

“Yes,” he said, “of course. Did you know we went down the coal-mines to-day? Nine of us. We all got out; but for some hours we didn't think that any of us were going to get out.”

“A slip?” I asked.

“Yes; a slip. There were the two Duncan girls, and Elsie Dare, and May Tompson, and Mr. and Mrs. Terris, and Dickson, and—Miss Lestrange.”

This was the name I had been waiting for. It did not need the break in Billy's voice to tell me.

“And yourself?” I said.

“Yes, We took two lamps, and some candles; and we explored lots of the galleries. The girls walked on the tramlines, an' we fellows walked in the water between an' held them up, an' o' course there was lots of laughing and talking and fun. We went down some awfully deep places, and there was white fungus as soft as the froth on milk standing up at the sides, and once a white rat ran along a ledge above us—such a whopper.”

I understood that Billy was getting himself under control before he could speak Miss Lestrange's name again.

“Funny that white things should grow in a coal-mine,” I said weakly.

“Yes; isn't it? There are gum-poles—they call 'em soldiers—along the galleries to prop the roof up, and we went into one deserted working where six were down in a row. It was infernally dry and close, and the candles wouldn't burn, and the walls crumbled where you put your hand on them, and just the action of walking made you sweat like a navvy. But she—one of the girls—wanted to follow up some line of strata, so we went on, with Mrs. Terris grumbling and growling at Dickson—she's his sister, y know. An' then ... it came suddenly.”

I saw a shudder run over him, and for an instant he held his head in his hands. Then he said:

“We knew, of course. There was the ripping, shaking roar, and the kind of quiver; and the little bits of slate and coal were cracking off from the roof—one piece smashed my lamp; and the girls began to cry, and—oh, it was hell!”

He came over, and set his back to the mantelshelf. He was not fit to be on his feet; but I saw that he was going to fight his battle standing, and I let him be.

“Dickson is a white man,” he said distinctly. “He deserves all the good he gets—if he—if he wants it.”

“Oh, certainly,” I murmured.

I understood that Dickson was the other man. There is always another man when the first man's eyes look as Billy's did.

“Dickson made a joke of it,” said Billy. “He even got Mrs. Terris to stop kicking up a row. Then he and I went back to look. But we knew it was hopeless before we got there. Then we searched along the walls for another gallery, and about half-way we found one, up level with our heads. Dickson boosted me into it, and I crawled on my stomach for twenty yards or so till I could stand up. Then, down a side working, fresh air blew in my face. I swallowed a good lot before I turned round.... I was a bit done up, you know.”

I nodded. The signs of physical effort were very plain on him.

“There were voices at the mouth of the cut when I came to it again. The women were half-fainting with the heat and the bad air, and the lamp had gone out. We got 'em up through the cut one by one, and dragged 'em along to the air. It was dark as death, and the roof was close down over our heads—if we'd died there, I don't believe our souls could have got out. And the going was all sliding shale and nasty jagged edges that cut if you touched them. Girls' clothes aren't built for that kind of work. We had to take 'em all through.... Dickson was looking after his sister. She wouldn't let him go, because she said Terris was no more good than a sick headache. And,” said Billy sternly, “Dickson was quite right to look after his sister. She was his own flesh and blood.”

“Of course,” said I, and wondered. Dickson is not the sort of man who requires championing by other men.

“I had pulled them all up through the cut,” said Billy. “All but—Miss Lestrange. I guessed she'd wait till the last, because I knew she had pluck. But when I put my hands down she wasn't there. And when I spoke she didn't answer. So I dropped down and struck a match ... and I ... couldn't see her.”

On the fire a log of wood fell in half. I stooped, and knocked the ends together with the poker. Then Billy was speaking again.

“I ran along the gallery in the dark; for I'd only two matches left, and I knew I'd want them later. Then I found her. She had fainted, or struck her head on something. She wouldn't be noticed, as she didn't make a fuss, and Dickson wouldn't know. A fellow can't go shouting out a girl's name in a crowd.”

I knew that Billy had wanted to shout a girl's name that day.

“Well?” I said.

“I—she wasn't conscious when I found her. I got her up into my arms, and I—and I”

“You kissed her,” I said. “Don't lie, Billy. I wouldn't give a brass farthing for you if you didn't kiss her.”

Billy's bruised hand clenched on the mantelshelf.

“I'll swear I didn't know till then,” he said, and his voice was harsh with intense feeling—“not till the slip came. Then I knew that if she didn't come out alive I would not want to. But when I found her, and I didn't know if I'd come too late, then I kissed her. And her lips were warm.”

Once, long ago, I had gone to a girl, not knowing if I went too late. And I had kissed her. But her lips were cold.

“God has been very good to you, Billy,” I said.

“Has He? I don't know. Then ...”

Billy looked at me, and there was defiance in his eyes. “I'm telling you this because I have to, not because I want to. And if you're going to make a jeering beast of yourself”

“I'm not,” I said. But I was not thinking of Billy at all.

“I held her ... and I kissed her. But I didn't speak. And ... when her arms came round my neck and she kissed me back, I ... didn't speak then, either. Words didn't matter.... Then she must have fainted again. There was blood on her head, and I bound it up as well as I could. And I carried her.... I had to be very careful getting her up into the top workings.”

Billy was a strong youth, and well made; but there was ample explanation for his bodily exhaustion now.

“I got along over the shale somehow. It was slow work, for I was so afraid of knocking her against the jagged bits. But I wasn't tired at all.”

“Oh no!” I said decidedly,

“I lost my way up on the shale,” said Billy. “The air got worse, and the heat was like hell. I—I had to put her down at last, and when I tried to speak my tongue was dry, and I could only whisper. I thought it was going to be death for us both there together, and ... when she pulled my face down and asked me, I told her so. And she laughed. I tell you it was a real laugh. And death didn't matter at all. And I held her tight ... and I took that ruby ring—you don't know it—I took it off her right hand and I put it on the third finger of the left, and I kissed it there....”

Billy's voice was growing very uneven, and I would have brought out the whisky again, but I did not dare. For there are times when a man must bite on the bullet with his senses clear.

“We both thought it was death then, I think. The air was very bad, and it hurt to breathe. But we had our arms round each other.... After a bit I took her up and I went on. And at last there was air, and up through a chink in the wall there was a pin-speck of light that I knew for a man-hole. I got a broken soldier out of the side-way, and knocked the chink bigger—it was rotten stuff caved in. And she was coming round again when I got her up towards the air; but I wouldn't let her climb, for it was that slippery yellow stuff, you know, and an angle of about one in three.”

I came with the whisky then, mixed stiff; for no man has the right to play with his physical and moral sinews as Billy had played with his. But he turned from me.

“No,” he said. Then: “It was getting lighter now, and I felt her turn in my arms, and her eyes were open.” He paused a moment, and then said levelly, “She had thought I was Dickson.”

I did not say anything. I knew that he did not want me to.

“I let her go when I had seen her face, and she came up behind me, not even holding to me. And at the top”—I thought that Billy was going to break down at last, but I did not yet know the stuff his manhood was made of—“at the top she held out both hands to me, and she told me that because I'd saved her and because I'd put that ring there, it would not come off till I ... till ... I ... put another.... If I had not seen her when the light first came I mightn't have known. So I laughed, and kissed her hand, and I told her that we'd wait till we were clean enough to see each other before we spoke about it again. Then I took her home, and I came to you.”

“Billy,” I said, and I did not touch him nor look at him—“Billy, are you very sure that she thought it was Dickson?”

Billy lost guard of himself for the first time. “Sure!—sure! My God! Do you think a man'd tell another man that he was in hell if he could help it? Yes; I'm sure. And now ... how am I to free her?”

“Tell her that now you know she mistook you for Dickson—”

“Oh! ... you... Tell her that I know she loves with all her heart and soul a man who perhaps doesn't care a curse for her?”

I thought a moment. Dickson and Billy were much the same build of men. Both had firm beardless faces and ordinary features. Miss Lestrange would be thinking of Dickson, and the boy Billy would be outside her mind altogether. Besides, she would be dazed with her fall.

“It's a rotten idea for all young men to clean-shave,” I said.

“I came to you,” said Billy, “because you know Dickson rather well. Does he love her—or any one else?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“Then I want you to find out.”

“Find out? 1? I ask Dickson? Billy, fellows don't nose into Dickson's private affairs.”

“You will,” said Billy. “He wouldn't listen to me. But you can make him listen. And I must know—now.”

And then the front door banged, and a step rang on the passage flooring. We both knew that step. Dickson walked always with the steady, rather heavy tread of a military nan. He pushed the room door open and halted on the threshold. And he was very nearly as dirty as Billy, though it was anger and not exhaustion that held him.

“What the devil do you mean by losing your way, you young fool?” he cried. “I went straight back, and you must have gone up some confounded side passage”

I stood forward. Billy was not in a fit state for bullying just then. Frankly, I was not eager for it myself.

“Now, you stop that, Dickson,” I said. “There's something else in the wind. I'm going to ask, you an impertinent question.”

I heard Billy's breath in a sob behind me, and the grate of his foot on the fender. And I wondered how he was going to stand up to it.

Dickson laughed a little.

“Then I'd advise you not to ask it,” he said.

“Thanks. I don't want to. But—Dickson, are you in love with Miss Lestrange?”

Dickson jumped, and the red flooded his face.

“I've seen a man badly hurt for a less impertinent question than that,” he said, and his voice was very quiet.

“Yes,” I said. “But you're not going to hurt me. You know 1 wouldn't ask it without a very good reason.”

“No reason is good enough to justify an impertinence,” said Dickson; but I knew by then, and so I didn't mind. And I had to have it, all the same.

“All right,” I said; “you shan't get any reason at all just now. But, for the sake of love and honour, Dickson, you'll answer me this.”

Dickson looked past me to Billy. And what he saw probably brought his reply.

“I meant to ask her to marry me to-day,” he said, “but I didn't get the chance. I mean to ask her to-morrow.”

Then Billy tumbled over in a heap. But he never said a word. He went down with his flags flying.

“It's all right,” I said to Dickson, as we lifted the limp thing between us. “Hearts don't break at his age—or at any other age either, for that matter. But if you or I came through our first fight as well as Billy has done, we're pretty decent sorts on the whole. An' you'll have to interview us both, Dickson, before you call on Miss Lestrange.”

Billy came to the full stature of his manhood that night; but he did not let his cricket averages go down. Perhaps that is why 1 am proud to have him come in sometimes and smoke a pipe with me—in silence.