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      CHAPTER XIV

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      The little old woman arose early and bustled in the preparation of breakfast. At times she looked anxiously at the clock. An hour before her son should leave for work she went to his room, and called him in the usual tone of sharpness:

      ‘George! George!’

      A sleepy growl came to her.

      ‘Come, come, it’s time t’ git up,’ she continued. ‘Come, now, git right up!’ Later she went again to the door.

      ‘George, are yeh gittin’ up?’

      ‘Huh?’

      ‘Are yeh gittin’ up?’

      ‘Yes, I’ll git right up!’

      He had introduced a valour into his voice which she detected to be false. She went to his bedside and took him by the shoulder.

      ‘George—George—git up!’

      From the mist-lands of sleep he began to protest incoherently. ‘Oh le’ me be, won’ yeh? ‘M sleepy!’

      She continued to shake him. ‘Well, it’s time t’ git up. Come—come—come on, now!’

      Her voice, shrill with annoyance, pierced his ears in a slender, piping thread of sound. He turned over on the pillow to bury his head in his arms. When he expostulated, his tones came half-smothered.

      ‘Oh, le’ me be, can’t yeh? There’s plenty ‘a time! Jest fer ten minutes! ‘M sleepy!’

      She was implacable. ‘No, yeh must git up now! Yeh ain’t got more’n time enough t’ eat yer breakfast an’ git t’ work.’

      Eventually he arose, sullen and grumbling. Later he came to his breakfast, blinking his dry eyelids, his stiffened features set in a mechanical scowl.

      Each morning his mother went to his room, and fought a battle to arouse him. She was like a soldier. Despite his pleadings, his threats, she remained at her post, imperturbable and unyielding.

      These affairs assumed large proportions in his life. Sometimes he grew beside himself with a bland, unformulated wrath. The whole thing was a consummate imposition. He felt that he was being cheated of his sleep. It was an injustice to compel him to arise morning after morning with bitter regularity, before the sleep-gods had at all loosened their grasp. He hated that unknown force which directed his life.

      One morning he swore a tangled mass of oaths, aimed into the air, as if the injustice poised there. His mother flinched at first; then her mouth set in the little straight line. She saw that the momentous occasion had come. It was the time of the critical battle. She turned upon him valorously.

      ‘Stop your swearin’, George Kelcey; I won’t have yeh talk so before me! I won’t have it! Stop this minute! Not another word! Do yeh think I’ll allow yeh t’ swear b’fore me like that? Not another word! I won’t have it! I declare I won’t have it another minute!’

      At first her projected words had slid from his mind as if striking against ice, but at last he heeded her. His face grew sour with passion and misery—he spoke in tones dark with dislike.

      ‘Th’ ‘ell yeh won’t? Whatter yeh goin’ t’ do ‘bout it?’ Then, as if he considered that he had not been sufficiently impressive, he arose and slowly walked over to her. Having arrived at point-blank range he spoke again. ‘Whatter yeh goin’ t’ do ‘bout it?’ He regarded her then with an unaltering scowl, albeit his mien was as dark and cowering as that of a condemned criminal.

      She threw out her hands in the gesture of an impotent one. He was acknowledged victor. He took his hat and slowly left her.

      For three days they lived in silence. He brooded upon his mother’s agony and felt a singular joy in it. As opportunity offered, he did little despicable things. He was going to make her abject. He was now uncontrolled, ungoverned; he wished to be an emperor. Her suffering was all a sort of compensation for his own dire pains.

      She went about with a gray, impassive face. It was as if she had survived a massacre in which all that she loved had been torn from her by the brutality of savages.

      One evening at six he entered and stood looking at his mother as she peeled potatoes. She had hearkened to his coming listlessly, without emotion, and at his entrance she did not raise her eyes.

      ‘Well, I’m fired!’ he said suddenly.

      It seemed to be the final blow. Her body gave a convulsive movement in the chair. When she finally lifted her eyes, horror possessed her face. Her underjaw had fallen. ‘Fired? Outa work? Why—George?’

      He went over to the window and stood with his back to her. He could feel her gray stare upon him.

      ‘Yes! Fired!’

      At last she said:

      ‘Well, whatter yeh goin’ t’ do?’

      He tapped the pane with his finger-nail.

      He answered in a tone made hoarse and unnatural by an assumption of gay carelessness:

      ‘Oh, nothin’!’

      She began, then, her first weeping. ‘Oh—George—George—George—’

      He looked at her, scowling.

      ‘Ah, whatter yeh givin’ us? Is this all I git when I come home f’m being fired? Anybody ‘ud think it was my fault. I couldn’t help it.’

      She continued to sob in a dull, shaking way. In the pose of her head there was an expression of her conviction that comprehension of her pain was impossible to the universe.

      He paused for a moment, and then, with his usual tactics, went out, slamming the door. A pale flood of sunlight, imperturbable at its vocation, streamed upon the little old woman, bowed with pain, forlorn in her chair.