“Oh! Nothing,” said Ossipon, gazing earnestly and quivering
inwardly with the desire to find out something, but obviously
intimidated by the little man’s overwhelming air of unconcern.
When talking with this comrade – which happened but rarely – the
big Ossipon suffered from a sense of moral and even physical
insignificance. However, he ventured another question. “Did you
walk down here?”
“No; omnibus,” the little man answered readily enough. He lived
far away in Islington, in a small house down a shabby street,
littered with straw and dirty paper, where out of school hours a
troop of assorted children ran and squabbled with a shrill,
joyless, rowdy clamour. His single back room, remarkable for
having an extremely large cupboard, he rented furnished from two
elderly spinsters, dressmakers in a humble way with a clientele of
servant girls mostly. He had a heavy padlock put on the cupboard,
but otherwise he was a model lodger, giving no trouble, and
requiring practically no attendance. His oddities were that he
insisted on being present when his room was being swept, and that
when he went out he locked his door, and took the key away with
him.
Ossipon had a vision of these round black-rimmed spectacles
progressing along the streets on the top of an omnibus, their self-
confident glitter falling here and there on the walls of houses or
lowered upon the heads of the unconscious stream of people on the
pavements. The ghost of a sickly smile altered the set of
Ossipon’s thick lips at the thought of the walls nodding, of people
running for life at the sight of those spectacles. If they had
only known! What a panic! He murmured interrogatively: “Been
sitting long here?”
“An hour or more,” answered the other negligently, and took a pull
at the dark beer. All his movements – the way he grasped the mug,
the act of drinking, the way he set the heavy glass down and folded
his arms – had a firmness, an assured precision which made the big
and muscular Ossipon, leaning forward with staring eyes and
protruding lips, look the picture of eager indecision.
“An hour,” he said. “Then it may be you haven’t heard yet the news
I’ve heard just now – in the street. Have you?”
The little man shook his head negatively the least bit. But as he
gave no indication of curiosity Ossipon ventured to add that he had
heard it just outside the place. A newspaper boy had yelled the
thing under his very nose, and not being prepared for anything of
that sort, he was very much startled and upset. He had to come in
there with a dry mouth. “I never thought of finding you here,” he
added, murmuring steadily, with his elbows planted on the table.
“I come here sometimes,” said the other, preserving his provoking
coolness of demeanour.
“It’s wonderful that you of all people should have heard nothing of
it,” the big Ossipon continued. His eyelids snapped nervously upon
the shining eyes. “You of all people,” he repeated tentatively.
This obvious restraint argued an incredible and inexplicable
timidity of the big fellow before the calm little man, who again
lifted the glass mug, drank, and put it down with brusque and
assured movements. And that was all.
Ossipon after waiting for something, word or sign, that did not
come, made an effort to assume a sort of indifference.
“Do you,” he said, deadening his voice still more, “give your stuff
to anybody who’s up to asking you for it?”
“My absolute rule is never to refuse anybody – as long as I have a
pinch by me,” answered the little man with decision.
“That’s a principle?” commented Ossipon.
“It’s a principle.”
“And you think it’s sound?”
The large round spectacles, which gave a look of staring self-
confidence to the sallow face, confronted Ossipon like sleepless,
unwinking orbs flashing a cold fire.
“Perfectly. Always. Under every circumstance. What could stop
me? Why should I not? Why should I think twice about it?”
Ossipon gasped, as it were, discreetly.
“Do you mean to say you would hand it over to a `teck’ if one came
to ask you for your wares?”