“What did she say about crabs?”
“She said—there was one called Penepoly—I think it was—and she was very nice indeed—and she’s dead, so we buried her—and we aren’t goin’ to be sad about it because it is happier for her, because her—husband is dead too—and there aren’t any children—at least not many—There was lots more, only I forget—she was very silly, really.”
“Am I silly, Shan’t?”
“Yes,” said Shan’t; then seizing him round the neck she ecstatically hugged him.
After Shan’t’s prayers were said there lay a long evening before Marcus. He made Shan’t’s going to bed as late as he dared with the housemaid on the watch. It could hardly be made to last over seven o’clock—and then it was over-late, so the housemaid said. Shan’t was inclined to lengthen her day by means of inordinate praying. The prayers ran on to an extraordinary length. Uncle Marcus could not know that Aunt Elsie strictly limited the number of people prayed for. When Shan’t got down to postmen what posted letters, and cwabs what went to sea—and old gentlemen who hadn’t got any buns, and old ladies who hadn’t got any cake—and po-or little children who hadn’t got any bull’s-eyes, Uncle Marcus should have brought her up with a round turn; but he let her wander on till she came to her darlin’ Aunt Elsie, when he said it was time to stop. “One more, please,” said Shan’t; and she shut her eyes tight and prayed: “Please God, give me a nice donkey ride to-morrow morning at ten o’clock sharp.” She waited, then said, “Thank you,” bowed, and turning to Marcus said triumphantly: “God says he will.”
And Marcus gave her the nice donkey ride the next morning at ten o’clock—sharp.
After Shan’t was in bed and asleep, Marcus took to walking on the sea-front and there he met again the daughter of the mother. She was certainly an attractive girl—and she said she found him sympathetic and understanding. This was gratifying in the extreme to Marcus—few can withstand so subtle a form of appreciation. He had imagined himself unsympathetic outwardly, difficult to know; but at heart capable of intense feeling. He is not the only man who has thus pictured himself.
Then he took to meeting the girl accidentally by day, surprising her reading, or gazing out to sea, with the book on her lap upside down. Her eyes were wonderfully expressive, full of a sadness she did not feel. This she knew. Marcus did not.
In this manner, seeking to comfort where sorrow was not, but only simple femininity, Marcus lost Shan’t. Hurriedly he sought her: up and down the beach, stooping to inspect closely the faces of bending babies, entirely forgetting, it seemed, the age and size of Shan’t. As he rushed along the sea-front, he chanced upon an upturned perambulator. It was in the charge of a small girl hardly bigger than Shan’t, though possibly much older. She was groping in the gutter, heedless of the baby’s perilous position. “’Ave you seen ’is satisfoyer?” asked the small woman-child of Marcus. Marcus righted the perambulator, rearranged the baby in the righted perambulator, and said he had not seen the “satisfoyer.” But he searched for it, found it: wiped it, and popped it into the baby’s mouth, just as any lamentably ignorant nurse or mother or woman-child might have done. But he knew better: even mere man knows what danger there lies to the future of England in the snare of the “satisfoyer.” But Marcus was too busy to think of the future of England and her citizens; he was frightfully busy. He had just time to find the baby’s “satisfoyer,” and to find the baby the ugliest he had ever seen, and was off on his search for Shan’t. What should he say to Sibyl if he should fail to find her? To that detestable aunt? To Diana?
He found Shan’t in the process of being converted, and she was enjoying it immensely. Her eyes were cast heavenwards in an abandonment of religious ecstasy: her mouth was rounded to its widest. She was singing a hymn: sharing a hymn-book with a black man—not even a man black in parts, as is commonly to be met at the seaside, but a real black man.