Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/138

 evening when she was alone in the kitchen preparing to go home. The elder Crispin came in followed by one of his Japs. He made her sit down in one of the kitchen chairs, sat down beside her, and began to talk to her in his soft beautiful voice. What it was all about to this day she doesn't know—some of his fine stuff about Sensation, I daresay, and the benefit of suffering so that you could touch life at its fullest! I shouldn't wonder—anyway an old woman like Mrs. Martin, who had borne eight or nine children of her husband who beat her, knew plenty about suffering without Crispin trying to teach her. Anyway he went on in his soft beautiful voice, and she sat there bewildered, fascinated a bit by his red hair which she told me "she never could get out of her mind like," and the Jap standing silent beside her.

"Suddenly Crispin took hold of her old wrinkled neck and began stroking it, putting his face close to hers, talking, talking, talking all the time. Then the Jap stepped behind her, caught the back of her head and pulled it.

"What would have happened next I don't know had not the younger Crispin come in, and at the sight of him the older man instantly got up, the Jap disappeared—it was as though nothing had been. Old Mrs. Martin got out of the house, then tumbled to pieces in the shrubbery. She was ill for days afterwards, but she kept the whole thing quiet with