After the paroxysm of self-scorn had partly exhausted itself, I stood staring in the woman’s face.

‘Well,’ said she, ’I thought the shiny Quaker was a rum un, but blow me if you ain’t a rummyer.

‘Her name was Winifred, and the word “father” produced fits,’ I said, not to the woman, but to my soul, in mocking answer to its own woe.  ’What about my father’s spiritualism now?  Good God!  Is there no other ancestral tomfoolery, no other of Superstition’s patent Aylwinian soul-salves for the philosophical Nature-worshipper and apostle of rationalism to fly to?  Her name was Winifred.

’Yis; don’t I say ‘er name wur Winifred?’ said the woman, who thought I was addressing her.  ’You’re jist like a poll-parrit with your “Winifred, Winifred, Winifred.”  That was ‘er name, an’ she ’ad a shock, pore dear, an’ it was all along of you at the studero a-talkin’ about ’er father.  You must a-talked about ’er father:  so no lies.  She ’ad fits arter that, in course she ’ad.  Why, you’ll make me die a-larfin’ with your poll-parritin’ ways, sayin’ “a shock, a shock, a shock,” arter me.  In course she ’ad a shock; she ’ad it when she was a little gal o’ six.  My pore Bill (that’s my ’usband as now lives in the fine ‘Straley) was a’most killed a-fightin’ a Irishman.  They brought ’im ‘um an’ laid ‘im afore her werry eyes, an’ the sight throw’d ‘er into high-strikes, an’ arter that the name of “father” allus throwed her into high-strikes, an’ that’s why I told ’em at the studero never to say that word.  An’ I know you must ‘a’ said it, some o’ your cussed lot must, or else why should my pore darter ‘a’ ‘ad the high-strikes?  Nothin’ else never gev ’er no high-strikes only talkin’ to ’er about ‘er father.  An’ as to me a-sendin’ ’er a-beggin’, I tell you she liked beggin’.  I gev her baskets to sell, an’ flowers to sell, an’ yet she would beg.  I tell you she liked beggin’.  Some gals does.  She was touched in the ‘ead, an’ she used to say she must beg, an’ there was nothink she used to like so much as to stan’ with a box o’ matches a-jabberin’ a tex’ out o’ the Bible unless it was singin’.  There you are, a-larfin’ and a-gurnin’ ag’in.  If I wur on’y ’arf as drunk as you are the coppers ’ud ‘a’ run me in hours ago; cuss ’em, an’ their favouritin’ ways.’

At the truth flashing in upon me through these fantastic lies, I had passed into that mood when the grotesque wickedness of Fate’s awards can draw from the victim no loud lamentations—­when there are no frantic blows aimed at the sufferer’s own poor eyeballs till the beard—­like the self-mutilated Theban king’s—­is bedewed with a dark hail-shower of blood.  More terrible because more inhuman than the agony imagined by the great tragic poet is that most awful condition of the soul into which I had passed—­when the cruelty that seems to work at Nature’s heart, and to vitalise a dark universe of pain, loses its mysterious aspect and becomes a mockery; when the whole vast and merciless scheme seems too monstrous to be confronted save by mad peals of derisive laughter—­that dreadful laughter which bubbles lower than the fount of tears—­that laughter which is the heart’s last language; when no words can give it the relief of utterance—­no words, nor wails, nor moans.