So his placid fortune endured for years. Then there came a golden summer evening when Mrs. Simmons betook herself with a basket to do some small shopping, and Simmons was left at home. He washed and put away the tea-things, and then he fell to meditating on a new pair of trousers, finished that day, and hanging behind the parlour door. There they hung, in all their decent innocence of shape in the seat, and they were shorter of leg, longer of waist, and wilder of pattern than he had ever worn before. And as he looked on them the small devil of Original Sin awoke and clamoured in his breast. He was ashamed of it, of course, for well he knew the gratitude he owed his wife for those same trousers, among other blessings. Still, there the small devil was, and the small devil was fertile in base suggestions, and could not be kept from hinting at the new crop of workshop gibes that would spring at Tommy's first public appearance in such things.
"Pitch 'em in the dust-bin!" said the small devil at last. "It's all they're fit for."Simmons turned away in sheer horror of his wicked self, and for a moment thought of washing the tea-things over again by way of discipline. Then he made for the back room, but saw from the landing that the front door was standing open, probably the fault of the child downstairs. Now a front door standing open was a thing that Mrs. Simmons would /not/ abide: it looked low. So Simmons went down, that she might not be wroth with him for the thing when she came back; and, as he shut the door, he looked forth into the street.
A man was loitering on the pavement, and prying curiously about thedoor. His face was tanned, his hands were deep in the pockets of his unbraced blue trousers, and well back on his head he wore the high- crowned peaked cap, topped with a knob of wool, which is affected by Jack ashore about the docks. He lurched a step nearer to the door, and "Mrs. Ford ain't in, is she?" he said.
Simmons stared at him for a matter of five seconds, and then said, "Eh?""Mrs. Ford as was, then--Simmons now, ain't it?"He said this with a furtive leer that Simmons neither liked nor understood.
"No," said Simmons; "she ain't in now." "You ain't her 'usband, are ye?""Yus."
The man took his pipe from his mouth and grinned silently and long. "Blimy," he said at length, "you look like the sort o' bloke she'd like," and with that he grinned again. Then, seeing that Simmons made ready to shut the door, he put a foot on the sill and a hand against the panel. "Don't be in a 'hurry, matey," he said; "I come 'ere t' 'ave a little talk with you, man to man, d' ye see?" And he frowned fiercely.
Tommy Simmons felt uncomfortable, but the door would not shut, so he parleyed. "Wotjer want?" he asked, "I dunno you.""Then, if you'll excuse the liberty, I'll interdooce meself, in a manner of speaking." He touched his cap with a bob of mock humility. "I'm Bob Ford," he said, "come back out o' kingdom come so to say. Me as went down with the /Mooltan/--safe dead five year gone. I come to see my wife."During this speech Thomas Simmons's jaw was dropping lower and lower. At the end of it he poked his fingers up through his hair, looked down at the mat, then up at the fanlight, then out into the street, then hard at his visitor. But he found nothing to say.
"Come to see my wife," the man repeated. "So now we can talk it over-- as man to man."Simmons slowly shut his mouth, and led the way upstairs mechanically, his fingers still in his hair. A sense of the state of affairssank gradually into his brain, and the small devil woke again. Suppose this man /was/ Ford? Suppose he /did/ claim his wife? Would it be a knock- down blow? Would it hit him out?--or not? He thought of the trousers, the tea-things, the mangling, the knives, the kettles, and the windows; and he thought of them in the way of a backslider.
On the landing Ford clutched at his arm, and asked in a hoarse whisper, " 'Ow long 'fore she's back?"" 'Bout an hour, I expect," Simmons replied, having first of all repeated the question in his own mind. And then he opened the parlour door.