Robert took off his battered cap politely as did other boys. Mr. Ricardo scrambled into the 'bus with an unexpected agility, and from the bright interior in which he sat a huddled, faceless shadow, he waved. Robert waved back. A fresh rush of elation had lifted him out of his sorrowful weariness. His disgrace had been miraculously turned to a kind of secret triumph. He was different; but then, how different! He didn't wear chains or a ring through his nose. He was going to know things that no one else knew. And one day he would be big and free.
5
It did not last. By the time he had dragged himself up to the top of their stairs there was nothing left but hunger, the consciousness of tattered, blood-stained clothes, and a sore, tired body. After all, he was only a small boy who had wanted to play with other boys, and had been cast out. Even Mr. Ricardo could never make them play with him.
It was dark in the sitting-room. Against the grey, ghostly light of the window he could see Christine bowed over her typewriter. She was so still that she frightened him. All the terrors of night which lay in wait for him ever since his fathers dead hand had touched his door and opened it, rushed down upon him with a sweep of black, smothering wings. He called out "Christine! Christine!" in a choked voice, and she moved at once, and he saw her profile, sharp-drawn and unfamiliar.
"Is that you, Robert? What is it, dear?"
So she had not been worrying about him at all. She did not know that it was long past their usual supper-time. She had been thinking of something else. It made her seem a terrifyingly long way off, and he shuffled across the room to her, and touched her to make sure of her. And it was strange that her hand glided over him anxiously, questioningly, as though in the darkness she too had been afraid and uncertain.
"Your form-master, Mr. Ricardo, has been here. We've been talking about you. Is your coat very, very torn?"
"Not—not very."
"Never mind. I'll mend it afterwards—when you've gone to bed."
Because he was so tired himself the unutterable weariness in her voice smote him on the heart unbearably. He had never heard it before. It made him think of her, for the first time, not just as Christine, who looked after him and loved him, but as someone apart whom, perhaps, he did not know at all. Hadn't they asked him, "Who is Christine?" And he hadn't answered. He hadn't known.