When the empty rooms were furnished—the oak bedroom and the Italian—the modern furnishings in other parts of the house were gradually supplanted; even the staircase was hung with paintings which Barrington restored himself. There was one little drawback to these prowlings through London which Peter was too proud to mention: his father as he walked would pinch his hand to show his affection—but it hurt. He knew why his father did it, so he did not tell him. He bit his lips instead to keep back the tears.
Four other people stole across his childish horizon like wisps of cloud—the Misses Jacobite. They lived in an old-fashioned house in Topbury and kept no servants. Peter got to know them because they smiled at him coming in and going out of church. There was Miss Florence, who was tall and reserved; and Miss Effie, who was little and talkative; and Miss Madge, who was fat and jolly; and Miss Leah, a shadow-woman, who sat always in a darkened room with pale hands folded, crooning to herself.
People said “Poor thing! Oh well, there’s no good blaming her now. She wouldn’t thank us for our pity; after all, she brought it on herself.”
Or they said. “You know, they were quite proud once—the belles of Topbury. Two of them were engaged to be married. Their father was alive then—the Squire we called him. But after Miss Leah——” They dropped their voices till they came to the last sentence, “And the disgrace of it killed the old chap.”
Even Grace, when she took Kay and Peter to visit them, left them if she could on the doorstep. Her righteous mood asserted itself; she flounced her skirt in departing, shaking off the dust from her feet for a testimony against them. “Scand’lous, I calls it. If I wuz to do like ‘er, yer ma wouldn’t let me touch yer. But o’ course, it’s different; I’m only a sarvant-gal. And they ‘olds their ‘eads so ‘ighl Brazen, I calls it. Before I walked the streets where a thing like that ‘ad ‘appened in my family, I’d sink into my grave fust—that I would. I ‘ate the thought of their kissing yer, my precious lambs.”
Peter was always wondering what it was that Miss Leah had brought upon herself. Whatever it was, it stayed with her in the room with the lowered blinds at the back of the house. She never went out; callers never saw her. Her eyes were vague, as though she had wept away their color. She spoke in a hoarse whisper, as in a dream; and her attention had to be drawn to anything before she saw it. But it was her singing that shocked and thrilled Peter, making him both pitiful and frightened. Her song never varied and never quite came to an end; she repeated it over and over. You could hear it in the hall, the moment you entered; it went on at intervals until you left. She sang it with empty hands, sitting without motion:
“On the other side of Jordan
In the sweet fields of Eden
Where the Tree of Life is growing
There is rest for me.”