“Not as long as you guarantee my stepmother will neither starve me, beat me, nor send me to gather firewood. Come along, dad, we’re supposed to keep early hours here.”
He pulled a grimace. “Can’t see myself sticking it for long. I’ll run up to town to-morrow and see if there’s anything doing in concert parties. I suppose you can lend me my fare and a bit over?”
“As broke as that?”
“You can take it from me, my daughter,” turning to face her, as they mounted the stairs, “that the prodigal would not have returned for his fatted calf while there was the least remnant of a husk left to him.”
—Miss Esther met them on the landing. “There is the spare-room, Bertram; it adjoins mine, so please do not chatter with your wife after half-past ten o’clock. I will give you a face towel and a hand towel. Do not use the bell-rope on any account. And breakfast is at nine precisely,—we are very punctual people here.”
CHAPTER III
“WE TRAVEL LIGHT”
Bertram was beginning to tire of Chavvy. Aunt Esther was beginning to tire of Bertram. And Mr. Lazarus, tailor, was quite obviously beginning to tire of Peter and her persistent lack of response to his demands for payment. Peter was just rather tired. She could not pay Mr. Lazarus; and Chavvy had conceived for her an unnecessarily clinging affection: “After all,” she was wont to remark wistfully, “we are girls together.”... Peter were not sure if it were legitimate to girl with one’s stepmother. Furthermore, her father and her aunt made her their headquarters of separate complaint. And withal at any moment might come a summons from Stuart, a letter from Stuart, a challenge from Stuart, demanding that she must be constantly and supremely on the alert. For his siege of her was carried on in the spirit of who would say: “Yield you shall—but yield if you dare!”
At present he was following up a period of furious and feverish need of her, when meeting after meeting failed to quench the thirst that was upon them, by a prolonged outburst of silence. An outburst in that it lacked all of relaxation or flatness; insisted every moment of every day that it was on both sides a silence pregnant of meaning—though whether of self-torment or of defeat or of bomb-manufacture neither could tell; a silence awaiting hourly shatterment. Peter felt once or twice that Stuart was mutely pleading with her to break it, or else allow him to break it, but now it amused her to exact mercilessly from him the quality of superman which himself had thrust her into exacting.
“I want to speak to you, my daughter.” In such ponderous fashion did Bertram one Sunday’s noon, call Peter aside into the trim quadrangle of garden. He was addicted to airing his fatherhood in front of Miss Esther and Chavvy, as though challenging them to go and do likewise if they could,—“and it isn’t easy,” disregarding a few minor facts of co-operation, “it isn’t easy to have had a splendid girl like that, all by oneself, and to have brought her up to be a credit!”