第34章

Old Paasch,the German,had been his first victim.Bewildered and protesting,he had succumbed to Jonah's novel methods of attack as a savage goes down under the fire of machine-guns.His shop was closed years ago,and he lived in a stuffy room,smelling vilely of tobacco-smoke,where he taught the violin to hazardous pupils for little more than a crust.He always spoke of Jonah with a vague terror in his blue eyes,convinced that he had once employed Satan as an errand-boy.

People were surprised to find that Jonah meant to live in the rooms over the new shop,when he could well afford to take a private house in the suburbs.It was said he treated his wife like dirt;that they lived like cat and dog;that he grudged her bare living and clothing.Jonah set his lips grimly on a hint of these rumours.

Three years ago he had planted Ada in a house of her own,and had gone home daily to rooms choked with dirt,for with years of ease she had grown more slovenly.Servants were a failure,for she made a friend of them,and their families lived in luxury at her expense.And when Ada was left alone,the meals were never ready,the house was like a pigsty,and she sat complacently amidst the dirt,reading penny novelettes in a gaudy dressing-jacket,or entertaining her old pals from the factory.

These would sit through an afternoon with envy in their hearts,and cries of wonder on their lips at the sight of some useless and costly article,which Ada,with the instinct of the parvenu,had bought to dazzle their eyes.For she remained on the level where she was born,and the gaping admiration of her poorer friends was the only profit she drew from Jonah's success.If Jonah arrived without warning,they tumbled over one another to get out unseen by the back door,but never forgot to carry away some memento of their visit--a tin of salmon,a canister of tea,a piece of bacon,a bottle whose label puzzled them--for Ada bestowed gifts like Royalty,with the invariable formula "Oh!take it;there's plenty more where that comes from."But the worst was her neglect of Ray,now seven years old,and the apple of Jonah's eye.She certainly spent part of the morning in dressing him up in his clothes,which were always new,for they were discarded by Jonah when the creases wore off;but when this duty,which she was afraid to neglect,was ended,she sent him out into the street to play in the gutter.His meals were the result of hazard,starving one day,and over-eating the next.And then,one day,some stains which Ada had been unable to sponge out elicited a stammering tale of a cart-wheel that had stopped three inches from the prostrate child.

This had finished Jonah,and with an oath he had told Ada to pack up,and move into the rooms over the shop,when they could be got ready.

Ada made a scene,grumbled and sulked,but Jonah would take no more risks.

His son and his shop,he had fathered both,and they should be brought together under his watchful eye,and Ada's parasites could sponge elsewhere.

It had happened in time for him to have the living-rooms fitted up over the shop,for the part which was required as a store-room left ample space for a family of three.Ada gave in with a sullen anger,refusing to notice the splendours of the new establishment.But she had a real terror,besides her objection to being for ever under Jonah's sharp eyes.

Born and bred in a cottage,she had a natural horror of staircases,looking on them as dangerous contrivances on which people daily risked their lives.She climbed them slowly,feeling for safety with her feet,and descended with her heart in her mouth.The sight of others tripping lightly up and down impressed her like a dangerous performance on the tight-rope in a circus.And the new rooms could only be reached by two staircases,one at the far end of the shop,winding like a corkscrew to the upper floor,and another,sickening to the eye,dropping from the rear balcony in the open air to the kitchen and the yard.

Mrs Yabsley continued to live in the old cottage in Cardigan Street.

Jonah made her an allowance,but she still worked at the laundry,not for a living,as she carefully explained to every new customer,but for the sake of exercise.And she had obstinately refused to be pensioned off.

"I've seen too many of them pensioners,creepin'an'coughin'along the street,because they thought they was too old fer work,an'one fine mornin'they fergit ter come down ter breakfust,an'the neighbours are invited to the funeral.An'but for that they might 'ave lived fer years,drawin'their money an'standin'in the way of younger men.No pensions fer me,thank yer!"When Jonah had pointed out that she could not live alone in the cottage,she had listened with a mysterious smile.With Jonah's allowance and her earnings,she was the rich woman,the lady chatelaine of the street,and she chose a companion from the swarm of houseless women that found a precarious footing in the houses of their relations--women with raucous voices,whose husbands had grown tired of life and fled;ladies who were vaguely supposed to be widows;comely young women cast on a cold world with a pitiful tale and a handbag.And she fed them till they were plump and vicious again,when they invariably disappeared,taking everything of value they could lay hands on.When Jonah,exasperated by these petty thefts,begged her to come and live with them,she shook her head,with a humorous twinkle in her eyes.