Tongues of Conscience Part 49

"I am starving."

With the words, the scarlet spots in his cheeks deepened to a fiercer hue, and he hung his head like one abruptly overwhelmed with shame.

"For G.o.d's sake give me something!" he muttered. "I've--I've never done this before."

Horace's hand went to his waistcoat pocket, but before he could take out a coin Mrs. Errington had decisively intervened.

"Horace, I forbid you," she said.

"Mater!"

"Understand--I forbid you."

She took his arm and they walked on, leaving the man standing by the water-side. He did not follow them or repeat his dismal statement, only let his head drop forward on his bosom, while his fingers twisted themselves convulsively together.

Meanwhile a hot argument was proceeding between Mrs. Errington and Horace. For once it seemed that the boy was inclined to defy his mother.

"Let me give him something--only a few coppers," he said.

"No; beggars ought not to be encouraged."

"That chap isn't a regular beggar. I'll wager anything it's true. He is starving."

"Nonsense! They always say so."

"Mater--stop! I must----"

Horace paused resolutely and looked round. In the distance the man could still be seen standing where they had left him, his head drooped, his narrow shoulders hunched slightly forward.

"Let me run back," the boy went on; "I won't be a minute."

But Mrs. Errington's curious parsimony was roused now to full activity.

"I will not allow it," she said; "the man is probably a thief and a drunkard. Hyde Park swarms with bad characters."

"Bad character or not, he's starving. Anyone can see that."

"Then let him starve. It's his own fault. Let him starve! n.o.body need unless they have committed some folly, or, worse, some crime. There's bread enough for all who deserve to live. I have no sympathy with all this preposterous pauperising which goes by the name of charity. It's a fad, a fas.h.i.+on--nothing more."

She forced her son to walk on. As they went he cast a last glance back at the beggar.

"Mater, you're cruel!" he said, moved by a strength of emotion that was unusual in him--"hard and cruel!"

Mrs. Errington made no reply. She had gained her point, and cared for little else.

"You'll repent this some day," Horace continued.

He was in a pa.s.sion, and scarcely knew what he was saying. Strings seemed drawn tightly round his heart, and angry tears rose to his eyes.

"You'll repent it, I bet!" he added.

Then he relapsed into silence, feeling that if he spoke again he would lose all the self-control that a boy of sixteen thinks so much of.

All that day Horace thought incessantly of the beggar, and felt an increasing sense of anger against his mother. He found himself looking furtively at her, as one looks at a stranger, and thinking her face hard and pitiless. She seemed to him as someone whom he had never really known till now, as some one whom, now that he knew her, he feared. Why his mind dwelt so perpetually upon a casual beggar he couldn't understand. But so it was. He saw perpetually the man's white face, fierce and ashamed eyes, the gesture at once hungry and abashed with which he asked for charity. All day the vision haunted the boy in the suns.h.i.+ne.

Mrs. Errington, on her part, calmly ignored the incident of the morning and appeared not to notice any change in her son's demeanour. In the evening Captain Hindford came to dine. He was struck by Horace's glumness, and in his frank way openly chaffed the boy about it.

"What's up with this young scoundrel?" he said to Mrs. Errington.

Horace grew very red.

"Horace is not very well to-day," said his mother.

"Mater, that's not true--I'm all right."

"I think it more charitable to suppose you seedy," she replied.

"Charitable!" Horace cried. "Well, Mater, what on earth do you know about charity?"

Captain Hindford began to look embarra.s.sed, and endeavoured to change the subject, but Horace suddenly burst out into the story of the beggar.

"It was just after you left us," he said to the Captain.

"I saw the fellow following you," the Captain said. Then he turned to Mrs. Errington. "These chaps are the plague of the Park," he added.

"Exactly. That is what I tell Horace."

"I don't care!" the boy said stoutly. "He _was_ starving, and we were brutes not to give him something. The Mater'll be sorry for it some day.

I know it. I can feel it."

Captain Hindford began to talk about French plays rather hastily.

When Mrs. Errington went up to the drawing-room, Horace suddenly said to the Captain--

"I say, Hindford, do me a good turn to-night, will you?"

"Well, old chap, what is it, eh?"

"When you say 'good-night,' don't really go."

The Captain looked astonished.

"But----" he began.

"Wait outside a second for me. When the Mater's gone to bed I want you to come into the Park with me."

"The Park? What for?"

"To find that beggar chap. I bet he's there. Lots of his sort sleep there, you know. I want to give him something. And--somehow--I'd like you to come with me. Besides, it doesn't do to go looking for anyone in the Park alone at night."