The sharp agony and desperate determination of a man so drifting and careless took Peter aback. He recalled those days when he had hidden him in the stable—it had been the same then. He had always been urging that Je-hane should be persuaded to walk in the garden that he might catch a glimpse of her. The one strong loyalty of his weak existence had been the love of this woman.
“Get her to come to you!” Peter said. “But how? She wouldn’t. She——” Ocky burried his face in the pillow. How thin he was and listless! How spent! How——. What was the word? How smashed! It was as though in the human quarry some chance stone of calamity had fallen on him, making him a moral cripple. He was what he was through the sort of accident that might happen to any man—to the Faun Man, if Eve refused to love him; even to Peter himself.
The boy pulled the clothes back over the man. “Somehow—I don’t know how—somehow I’ll do it. I promise.”
After that, whenever Peter entered the white room, he saw how his uncle watched for someone to follow.
The Misses Jacobite had found a doctor who supported their opinion that their guest must be kept in bed. The prison fare and long confinement had broken down his constitution. The doctor didn’t know what had done it; he advised food and rest.
From time to time Peter brought visitors to the room overlooking the garden. His father came and was shocked by the wasted look of the man who, in earlier years, had been his friend. It was of those earlier years that they chose to speak, by an instinctive courtesy; they, at least, had been happy territory. They recalled together their schoolday pranks—the canings they had earned, the football matches they had lost or won, the holidays when they had broken boundaries, going on some secret adventure. But, when Barrington rose to go, Ocky said, “Don’t come again, Billy. You used to hate to hear me call you Billy; you’ll dislike it just as much when I’m better. We’ve both been forgetting what I am, and what I’ve done. If you come again we may remember. For years I’ve worried you; well, that’s ended. But—you’re a man of the world, and you understand. I’m a jail-bird—and I don’t want to spoil the memory of this hour. Good-bye, old man.”
It turned out that Mr. Grace hadn’t slept on his box so soundly that evening of Peter’s return—at least, not so soundly as to keep his eyes shut.
“All swank on my part, Mr. Peter,” he said; “she’s been h’at me for years, my darter Grice ‘as, and I don’t mean to get conwerted. H’I’m not a-goin’ ter come ter ‘eaven, so long as ‘er voice is the only voice as calls me. ‘Eaven ‘ud be ‘ell, livin’ wiv ‘er in the same ‘ouse, if I wuz ter do that. We’d be for h’everlastin’ prayin’ and floppin’. Not but wot religion ‘as its uses; but not for me in ‘er sense. That’s why I shut me h’eyes when she was a-bellowin’ at the corner. But I saw yer. ‘Ow is the old bloke nar? Your uncle, I mean, meanin’ no disrespeck. I’ve h’often thought that if we ‘ad met under ‘appier h’auspices—h’auspices is one of my Grice’s words—we might ‘ave been pals.”
Peter brought about the ‘appier h’auspices. One afternoon Cat’s Meat halted before the house and Mr. Grace climbed down from his box, a bag of apples in one hand and his whip in the other. He was very red in the face and embarrassed; he had anything but a sick-room appearance, though he often drove in funeral processions. He was immensely careful about the wiping of his feet. Peter tried to coax him to leave his whip in the hall; he wouldn’t. He seemed to think that it lent him dignity, and explained his status in the world. So it was clutching a bag of apples and clasping his whip against his chest, that he entered the white room where the birds hopped in and out.
Ocky Waffles, shifting his position on the bed, caught sight of the weather-beaten, alcoholic figure. Before he could say a word, in a thick, husky voice Mr. Grace offered his apologies.