A Departure

The family of the late Henry Leek, each with a cup in hand, experienced a certain difficulty in maintaining the interview at the pitch set by Matthew and Henry.  Mrs. Leek, their mother, frankly gave way to soft tears, while eating bread-and-butter, jam and zebra-like toast.  John took everything that Alice offered to him in gloomy and awkward silence.

“Does he mean to come back?” Matthew demanded at length.  He had risen from the foot-stool.

“Who?” asked Alice.

Matthew paused, and then said, savagely and deliberately:  “Father.”

Alice smiled.  “I’m afraid not.  I’m afraid he’s gone out.  You see, he’s a rather peculiar man.  It’s not the slightest use me trying to drive him.  He can only be led.  He has his good points—­I can speak candidly as he isn’t here, and I will—­he has his good points.  When Mrs. Leek, as I suppose she calls herself, spoke about his cruelty to her—­well, I understood that.  Far be it from me to say a word against him; he’s often very good to me, but—­another cup, Mr. John?”

John advanced to the table without a word, holding his cup.

“You don’t mean to say, ma’am,” said Mrs. Leek “that he—?”

Alice nodded grievously.

Mrs. Leek burst into tears.  “When Johnnie was barely five weeks old,” she said, “he would twist my arm.  And he kept me without money.  And once he locked me up in the cellar.  And one morning when I was ironing he snatched the hot iron out of my hand and—­”

“Don’t!  Don’t!” Alice soothed her.  “I know.  I know all you can tell me.  I know because I’ve been through—­”

“You don’t mean to say he threatened you with the flat-iron?”

“If threatening was only all!” said Alice, like a martyr.

“Then he’s not changed, in all these years!” wept the mother of curates.

“If he has, it’s for the worse,” said Alice.  “How was I to tell?” she faced the curates.  “How could I know?  And yet nobody, nobody, could be nicer than he is at times!”

“That’s true, that’s true,” responded the authentic Mrs. Henry Leek.  “He was always so changeable.  So queer.”

“Queer!” Alice took up the word.  “That’s it Queer!  I don’t think he’s quite right in his head, not quite right.  He has the very strangest fancies.  I never take any notice of them, but they’re there.  I seldom get up in the morning without thinking, ’Well, perhaps to-day he’ll have to be taken off.’”

“Taken off?”

“Yes, to Hanwell, or wherever it is.  And you must remember,” she said gazing firmly at the curates, “you’ve got his blood in your veins.  Don’t forget that.  I suppose you want to make him go back to you, Mrs. Leek, as he certainly ought.”

“Ye-es,” murmured Mrs. Leek feebly.