THE RAFT
By Coningsby Dawson
Author Of “The Garden Without Walls”
With Illustrations By Orson Lowell
New York
Henry Holt And Company 1914
Their virgins had no marriage-songs; and they that could swim did cast themselves into the sea to get to land, and some on boards, and some on other things.
THE RAFT
CONTENTS
[ CHAPTER II—“I’M HALF SICK OF SHADOWS” ]
[ CHAPTER III—ALL THE WAY FOR THIS ]
[ CHAPTER V—ENTER PETER AND GLORY ]
[ CHAPTER VI—JEHANE’S SECOND MARRIAGE ]
[ CHAPTER VII—THE WHISTLING ANGEL ]
[ CHAPTER VIII—“COMING. COMING, PETERKINS” ]
[ CHAPTER IX—KAY AND SOME OTHERS ]
[ CHAPTER X—WAFFLES BETTERS HIMSELF ]
[ CHAPTER XI—THE HOME LIFE OF A FINANCIER ]
[ CHAPTER XII—THE ‘MAGINATIVE CHILD ]
[ CHAPTER XIII—PRICKCAUTIONS ]
[ CHAPTER XIV—PETER IN EGYPT ]
[ CHAPTER XVI—THE ANGELS AND OCKY WAFFLES ]
[ CHAPTER XVII—A HOUSE BUILT ON SAND ]
[ CHAPTER XVIII—PETER TO THE RESCUE ]
[ CHAPTER XIX—THE CHRISTMAS CAB ]
[ CHAPTER XX—THE HIDING OF OCKY WAFFLES ]
[ CHAPTER XXI—STRANGE HAPPENINGS ]
[ CHAPTER XXII—CAT’S MEAT LOOKS ROUND ]
[ CHAPTER XXIII—AND GLORY SAID ]
[ CHAPTER XXIV—THE TRICYCLE MAKES A DISCOVERY ]
[ CHAPTER XXV—THE HAPPY COTTAGE ]
[ CHAPTER XXVI—THE HAUNTED WOOD ]
[ CHAPTER XXVII—PETER FINDS A FAIRY ]
[ CHAPTER XXIX—A GOLDEN WORLD ]
[ CHAPTER XXXI—A NIGHT WITH THE MOON ]
[ CHAPTER XXXII—IF YOU WON’T COME TO HEAVEN, THEN—— ]
[ CHAPTER XXXIII—THE WORLD AND OCKY ]
[ CHAPTER XXXIV—THE BENEVOLENT DELILAHS ]
[ CHAPTER XXXV—WINGED BIRDS AND ROOTED TREES ]
[ CHAPTER XXXVI—THE SPREADING OF WINGS ]
[ CHAPTER XXXVIII—A NIGHT OF IT ]
[ CHAPTER XXXIX—ON THE RIVER ]
[ CHAPTER XL—MR. GRACE GOES ON THE BUST ]
[ CHAPTER XLII—THE COACH-RIDE TO LONDON ]
[ CHAPTER XLIII—AN UNFINISHED POEM ]
[ CHAPTER XLIV—IN SEARCH OF YOUNGNESS ]
[ CHAPTER XLV—LOVE KNOCKS AT KAY’S DOOR ]
[ CHAPTER XLVI—THE ANGEL WHISTLES ]
[ CHAPTER XLVII—“THEIR VIRGINS HAD NO MARRIAGE-SONGS; AND THEY THAT COULD SWIM——” ]
CHAPTER I—A MAN
It was said of Jehane that she married blindly on the re-bound. She herself confessed in later life that she married out of dread of becoming an old maid.
A don’s daughter at Oxford has plentiful opportunities for becoming an old maid. Undergraduates are too adventurously young and graduates are too importantly in earnest for marriage; whether too young or too earnest, they are all too occupied. To bring a man to the point of matrimony, you must catch him unaware and invade his idleness. Love, in its initial stages, is frivolous.
This tragic state of affairs was frequently discussed by Jehane with her best friend, Nan Tudor. Were they to allow themselves to fade husbandless into the autumn of girlhood? Were they too ladylike to make any effort to save themselves from this horrid fate?—In the gray winter as they returned from a footer match, on the river in summer as the eights swung by, in the old-fashioned rectory-garden at Cassingland, this was their one absorbing topic of conversation. Ye gods, were they never to be married!
They watched the privileged male-creatures who had it in their power to choose them: that they did not choose them seemed an insult. When term commenced, they would dash up to their colleges in hansoms and step out confident and smiling. They would saunter through the narrow Oxford streets to morning lectures, arm-in-arm, in tattered gowns, smoking cigarettes, jolly and lackadaisical. In the afternoon, with savage and awakened energy, they would strive excessively for athletic honors. At night they would smash windows, twang banjoes, rag one another, assault constables and sometimes get drunk. At the end of term they would step into their hansoms and vanish, lords of creation, in search of a well-earned rest.
Jehane contrasted their lives with Nan’s and hers. “They’ve got everything; our hands are empty. We’re compulsory nuns and may do nothing to free ourselves. When he comes to my rescue, if he ever comes, how I shall adore him.”
Then together they would fall to picturing their chosen lover. Unfortunately the choice was not theirs—their portion was to wait for him to come.
They knew of lean, striding women in North Oxford who had waited—women whose hair had lost its brightness, who fondled dogs and pretended to hate babies.
Jehane and Nan adored babies. They loved the feel of little crumpled fingers against their throats and the warmth of a tiny body cuddled against their breasts. They never missed an opportunity for hugging a baby. They never passed a young mother in the streets without a pang of envy.
Why was it that no man had chosen them? Gazing at their own reflections, they would tell themselves that they were not bad-looking—Jehane with her cloudy brown eyes and gipsy mane of night-black hair, Nan all blue and flaxen and fluffy. The years slipped by. Where was he in the world?
For eight years, since she was seventeen, Jehane had never ceased watching. Every New Year and birthday she had whispered to herself, “Perhaps, by this time next year he will have come.” Marriage seemed to her the escape to every happiness.
Now that she was twenty-five she grew desperate; from now on, with every day, her chance of being one of the chosen would diminish. As she expressed it to Nan, “We’re two girls adrift on a raft and we can’t swim. Over there’s the land of marriage with all the little children, the homes and the husbands; we’ve no means of getting to it. Unless some of the men see us and put off in boats to our rescue, we’ll be caught in the current of the years and swept out into the hunger of mid-ocean. But they’re too busy to notice us. Oh, dear!”
When Jehane spoke like this Nan would laugh; except for Jehane, no such thoughts would have entered her head. They didn’t worry her when she was with her rector father at Cassingland, occupied with her quiet round of village-duties. In her heart of hearts she believed that life was planned by an unescapable Providence. Her placid philosophy irritated Jehane. She said that Nan’s God was a stout widower in a clerical band; whereat Nan would smile dreamily and answer, “Wouldn’t it be just ripping if God were?”
At such times Jehane thought Nan stupid.
That Jehane should have been so romantic about marriage was inexplicable, save on the ground that she voiced the passions which her parents had suppressed in themselves.
Her father, Professor Benares Usk, was the greatest living Homeric scholar—a tall, bowed man with a broad beard that flowed down below his watch-chain, a bald and venerable egg-shaped head and a secret habit of taking snuff. He had lost interest in human doings since Greece was trampled by the Roman Eagles. Both he and Mrs. Usk were misty-eyed—they had frictioned off the corners of their personalities in the graveyards of the past; their minds were museums, stored with chipped splendors, the atmosphere of which was stuffy.
Mrs. Usk was an authority on Scandinavian folk-lore—a thin, fine-featured, flat-breasted woman who wore her dresses straight up and down without a bulge. Her soft gray hair was drawn tightly off her forehead and twisted at the back into a hard, round walnut.
Only on Sunday afternoons was the house thrown open to visitors; then Jehane would offer tea to ill-at-ease young bloods, while her father fingered his beard and made awkward efforts to be affable, and her mother, ignoring the guests, sat bolt upright in her chair and slumbered. What a look of relief came into the tanned faces of the men when they caught up their hats and departed. They had come as a duty to see not Jehane but her father; and now they went off to their pleasures. Oh, those Sunday afternoons, how they made her shudder!
Often she marveled at her parents—what had brought them together? To her way of thinking, they knew so little about love and could so easily have dispensed with one another. Like dignified sleepy house-cats, they sat on distant sides of the domestic hearth, heedless of everything save to be undisturbed.—Ah, when she married, life would become intense, ecstatic—one throb of passion!
There was a story current in the ‘Varsity of how the Professor cared for Mrs. Usk. He had taken her for a drive in a dog-cart, he sitting in front and she, characteristically, by choice at the back. Deep in thought, he had jolted through country-lanes. Her presence did not occur to him till he had returned to Oxford and had drawn up before his house; then he perceived that she was not there and must have tumbled out. Some hours later, having retraced his journey, he found her by the roadside with a broken leg. For the next three months the greatest living Homeric scholar did penance, wheeling an exacting lady in a bathchair. Doubtless, he planned his great studies of the Iliad as he trundled, and the chair’s occupant constructed English renderings of Scandinavian legends. At all events, next autumn they each had a book published.
These were the influences under which Jehane grew up. Her parents were more like children to her than parents, gentle and utterly absorbed in themselves; they were no earthly use when it came to marriage. She could not apply to them for help; they would have thought her indelicate, if they had thought about it at all. Probably they would not have understood. Sometimes marriage came to girls—sometimes it didn’t; nobody was to blame whether it did or didn’t. That would have been their way of summing up. Meanwhile Jehane was twenty-five; she had begun to abandon hope, when the great change occurred—it commenced with William Barrington.
It was early summer. The streets had been washed clean by rain and were now haunted by strange sweet perfumes which drifted over walls from hidden college-gardens. Nan had driven in from Cassingland and had come to Jehane for lunch and shelter. It was afternoon; the sun was shining tearfully over glistening turrets and drenched tree-tops.
Jehane unlatched the window and leant out above the flint-paved street, looking up and holding out her hands. From far away, out of sight on the river, came the thud of oars and hoarse shouts where the eights were practising. Halfway down the street the tower of Calvary soared, incredibly frail and defiant, against a running sea of cloud.
“There’s not a drop. If you don’t believe me, feel for yourself. Let’s——”
She drew back swiftly, looking slightly flustered.
From the back of the room Nan’s voice came smooth and unhurried, “What’s the matter? Why don’t you finish what you were saying?”
“It’s a man,” Jehane whispered.
In an instantly arranged conspiracy, Nan tiptoed over to her friend. Cautiously they peered out. No sooner had Nan’s eyes found what they sought than she darted back; Jehane, with rising color, remained bending forward.
The bell rang. A few seconds later, the front-door opened and shut. Jehane drew a long breath and stood erect. Laughing nervously, she patted her face with both hands. “You look scared, you dear old thing—more fluffy than ever: just like a tiny newly hatched chicken—— But it’s happened in the world before.”
“Oh, Jehane, how could you do it?”
“Do what?”
“You know—stare at him like that.”
“I looked; I didn’t stare. Why, my dear, that’s what woman’s eyes were made for.”
“But—but you flung your eyes about his neck. You’ve dragged him into the house.—And I want to hide so badly.”
“I don’t.” Jehane feigned a coolness which she did not possess.
A step sounded on the stairs. Nan buried her hot cheeks in a bowl of lilac. A maid entered with a card.
Jehane looked up from reading it.
“Don’t know him, Betty. What made him come?” Betty looked her surprise. “To see master, of course. That’s what he said.”
“But you told him father was out?”
“I did, miss. But he’s all the way from London. Seems the master gave him an appointment. He told me to tell you as you’d do instead.”
“Just like father to forget. We’re going on the river; I suppose I’ll have to see him first.—No, Nan, I won’t be left by myself.—Betty, you’d better show him up.”
Nan threw herself down on the sofa, crushing herself into the cushions, as far from the door as she could get. “I wish I’d not come. Jehane, why did you do it?” Jehane seated herself near the window where the light fell across her shoulder most becomingly. She spread out her skirts decorously and picked up a book, composing her features to an expression of sweetest demureness—that it was a Greek grammar did not matter. In answer to Nan’s question she replied, “Little stupid. Nothing venture, nothing have.”
CHAPTER II—“I’M HALF SICK OF SHADOWS”
The strange man was rather amused as he climbed the stairs, but he showed no amusement when he entered.
Jehane laid aside her book leisurely and rose from her chair; he was even better to look at than she had expected. It was his clothes that impressed her first; the gray tweeds fitted his athletic figure with just that maximum of good taste that stops short of perfection. Then it was his face, clean-shaven and intellectual—the face of a boyish man, mobile and keen in expression. She liked the way he did his dark brown hair, almost as dark as hers, swept straight back without a parting from his forehead. His eyes were kindly, piercing and blue-gray; for a man he had exceptionally long, thin hands. She liked him entirely; she wondered whether he was equally well impressed.
“So thoughtless of father—he’s out. Is there anything I can do for you?”
Jehane was tall, but she only reached up to his shoulders. His eyes looked down on hers and twinkled into a smile at her nervous gravity.
“We all know the Professor; there’s no need to apologize. Please don’t stand.”
She was about to comply with his request, when she realized that she no longer held his attention. He was staring past her. She turned her head.
“Oh, allow me to introduce you, Mr. Barrington, to my friend, Miss Tudor.”
“I thought it was.” His tones had become extraordinarily glad. “No one could forget little Nan, who’d once known her. But Nan, you’ve grown older. What do you mean by it? It’s so uncalled for, so unexpected. You’re no longer the Princess Pepperminta that you were.”
Nan crossed the room in a romping bound and commenced pumping his arm up and down.
“It’s Billy, dear old Billy! You remember, Jehane; I’ve told you. Billy who sewed up father’s surplice, and Billy who tied knots in my hair, and Billy who, when I got angry, used to call me the Princess Pepperminta. You made yourself so detestable, Billy, that our village talks about you even now.”
“A doubtful compliment; but it’s ripping to see you—simply ripping.”
Jehane stood aside and watched them. She had heard Nan talk of Billy Barrington and how her father had tutored him for Oxford—but that must be twelve years back. She had never known him herself and had never been very curious about him. But now, as she watched, she felt the appeal of this big, broad-shouldered boy of thirty.
They were talking—talking of things beyond her knowledge, things which shut her out.
“And why didn’t you write in all these years? Father and I often mentioned you. In Cassingland you were an event. It wasn’t kind of you, Billy.”
“Things at home were in such a mess. I’d to start work at once. Somehow, with working so hard, other things faded out.”
“Poor Nan with the rest!”
“No, I remembered you. ‘Pon my honor I did, Nan; but I thought——”
“Yes?”
“You were such a kid in those days; I thought you’d forgotten. As though either of us could forget. I was an ass.”
Jehane had turned her back and was looking out of the window. For the first time she envied Nan—Nan, the daughter of a country parson. It was too bad.
“Miss Usk.”
She glanced across her shoulder.
“We’re being intolerably rude, talking all about our own affairs. You see, once Nan was almost my sister. How old were you, Nan? Thirteen, wasn’t it? And I was eighteen. We’ve not met since then. My father died suddenly, you know. I had to step into his shoes—they were much too big for me. That was the end of Oxford and Cassingland.”
“We were going out on the river,” said Jehane. “Perhaps you’ll join us. I’ll sit very quiet and listen. You can talk over old times to your heart’s content.”
They piled his arms with cushions, and together set out through the glistening meadows to the barges. After the rain, the air was intensely still. Sounds carried far; from tall trees on the Broad Walk and from the uttermost distance came the fluty cry of birds, from the river the rattle of oars being banked, and from every side the slow patter of dripping branches. Like a canvas, fresh from an artist’s brush, colors in the landscape stood out distinct and wet—flowers against the gray walls of Corpus, trunks of trees with their velvety blackness and shorn greenness of the Hinksey Hills. Men in disreputable shorts, returning from the boats, passed them. Some ran; some sauntered chatting.
Barrington laughed shortly and drew a long breath. “Nothing to do but enjoy themselves. Nothing to do but grow a fine body and learn to be gentlemen. I missed all that. After the rush and drive, it’s topping to sink back.”
“You’re right; it is sleepy. One day’s just like the next. We stand as still as church-steeples. People come and go; we’re left. We exist for visitors to look at, like the Martyr’s Memorial and Calvary Tower.”
He glanced down at Jehane quickly: she interested him—there was something about her that he could not understand. The long penciled brows, the thick lashes, the cloudy eyes and the straight, pale features attracted and yet repelled him. He felt that she was not happy and had never been quite happy. The natural generosity of the man made him eager to hear her speak about herself.
But Jehane was aware that she had struck a discord in what she had said. He had flinched like a child, with whom the thought of pain had not yet become a habit. She made haste to cover up her error by directing attention to himself.
“But you—what are you?”
“I’m a pub.”
“A pub! But you can’t be. You don’t mean that you——”
Nan caught his arm in her merriment and leant across him. “Of course he doesn’t. He’s a publisher. He always did clip his words.”
“But not the Barrington—father’s publisher?”
“Yes, the Barrington. It’s funny, Jehane, but it can’t be helped. Anyhow, he’s only Billy now.”
Barrington stood still, eying the two girls—the one fair and all mischief, the other dark and serious. “What’s the matter with you, Miss Usk? Why do you object?”
“If I told you, you might not like it.”
“Rubbish.”
“Well then, you ought to have a long gray beard like father. You’re not old enough.”
“I’ve sometimes thought that myself.”
“Billy’s always been young for his age,” said Nan; “he’s minus twenty now.”
But, as they walked on, Jehane was saying to herself, “Then he was only coming to see father, as everybody comes! It wasn’t my face that drew him.”
They strewed the cushions on the floor of the punt. Barrington took the pole and Jehane seated herself in front so that she could face him. All that he should see of Nan’s attractions was the back of her golden head—Jehane had arranged all that.
They swung out into mid-stream unsteadily; Barrington was struggling to recover a forgotten art. Their direction was erratic. They nearly fouled a returning eight; the maledictions of the cox, each stinging epithet of whose abuse politely ended in “sir,” drew unwelcome attention to their wandering progress. When they had collided with the opposite bank, Nan stood up and took the pole herself. Jehane was in luck.
She had often pictured such a scene to herself—a man, herself, and a punt on the river; in these pictures she had never included Nan. She had heard herself brilliantly conversing, saying amusing things that had made the man laugh, saying deep things that had made him solemn; then, presently she had ceased to torment him, his arms had gone about her, and she had lain a fluttering wild thing on his breast.
Now, in reality, she had nothing to say. When he spoke, she gave him short answers. She was not mistress of herself. She trailed her hands in the water and was afraid to look up, lest he should guess the tumult in her heart.
The punt had turned out of the main stream into the Cherwell, and was stealing between narrow banks. Jehane knew that she was appearing sullen; she always appeared like that with men. In her mind’s eye she saw herself acting the other part of gay, responsive woman of the world. She was angry with herself.
Barrington, hampered by her embarrassment, had twisted round on his cushions and was chaffing Nan. Nan was looking her best and, as usual, was quite unconscious of the fact. In her loose, blowy muslin, standing erect, leaning against the pole with the water dripping from her hands, she seemed the soul of summer and unspoilt girlhood against the background of lazy river and green shadows. There was something infantile and appealing about Nan. Her flaxen hair fitted her like a shining cap of satin. Her eyes were inextinguishably bright and blue; above them were delicate, golden brows. Her red lips seemed always slightly parted, ready to respond to mischief or merriment. She was small in build—the kind of girl-woman a man is tempted to pick up and carry. Her chief beauty was her long, slim throat and neck; she was a white flower, swaying from a fragile stem. It was impossible to think that Nan knew anything that was not good.
After they had passed under Magdalen Bridge they had the river very much to themselves: the rain had driven most of the voyagers to cover. For long stretches there was no sound but their own voices, the splash of the pole and the secret singing of birds.
Jehane, with trailing hands and brooding eyes, watched this man; she wanted him—she did not know why—she wanted him for herself. Sometimes she became so concentrated in her mood that she forgot to listen to what was being said. Through her head went humming significant and disconnected stanzas, which she repeated over and over:
“Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed:
‘I am half sick of shadows,’ said
The Lady of Shalott.”
Jehane had once been told that she was Pre-Raphaelite in appearance; she never forgot that—it explained her to herself. She had quarreled forever with a man who had said that Rossetti’s women resulted from tuberculosis of the imagination. The truth of the remark was unforgivable—she knew that she herself suffered from some such spiritual malady.
A question roused her from her trance.
“I say, Billy, are you married yet?”
It was extraordinary how Jehane’s heart pounded as she waited for the question to be answered.
He clasped his hands in supplication, “Promise not to tell my wife that we came out like this together.”
Nan let the pole trail behind her and gazed down at him mockingly. Her face was flushed with the exertion of punting: the faint gold of the stormy afternoon, drifting through gray willows, spangled her hair and dress. “When you like you can make yourself as big an ass as anyone. I don’t believe you are a pub: you’re a big, lazy fellow playing truant. Answer my question.”
“But Pepperminta, why should I?”
“Don’t call me ridiculous names. Answer my question.”
Barrington stretched himself indolently on the cushions. “You’ve not changed a bit; you’re just as funny and imperious as ever. Soon you’ll stamp your little foot; when that fails, you’ll try coaxing. After twelve years of being away from you, I can read you like a book.”
“You can’t; I never coax now. I scowl, and get angry and cruel.”
He glanced up at her gentle, laughing face. “You couldn’t make your face scowl, however much you tried.”
Jehane told herself that they were two children, rehearsing an old game together. People must be very fond of one another to play a game of pretending to quarrel. She felt strangely grown up and out of it, and quite unreasonably hurt. Nan was surprising her at every turn.
“You’ll enjoy yourself much better,” he was saying, “if I leave you in suspense. You can spend your time in guessing what she looks like. Then you can start watching me closely to see whether I love her. And then you can wonder how much I’m going to tell her of what we say to each other.”
Nan jerked the punt forward. “I don’t want to know. You can keep your secret to yourself.” Then, glancing at Jehane, “I say, Janey, you ask him. He can’t be rude to you. He’ll have to answer.”
Jehane had no option but to enter into the jest. “I know. Father told me. Mr. Barrington is a widower.”
The man’s eyes flashed and held hers steadily; they twinkled with surprise and humor. “Go on, Miss Usk; you tell her. It’s altogether too sad.”
While she was speaking, she was excitedly conscious that he was examining her and approving her impertinence. “Mr. Barrington married his mother’s parlor-maid soon after he left Cassingland. She was a beautiful creature and very modest; because she felt herself unworthy of the brilliant Mr. Barrington, she made it a condition of their marriage that it should be kept secret. Then she got it into her head that she was spoiling his promising career, and——- Well, she died suddenly—of gas. After she was dead, a volume of poems was discovered—love poems—and published anonymously; my mother attributes them to Bacon and my father used to attribute them to Shakespeare. Then father found out, but he’s never dared to tell mother; she was always so positive about it.”
Nan had stared at her friend while she was talking. Could this be the serious Jehane? What had happened? At the end she broke into a peal of laughter. “It won’t do, old girl; you’re stuffing. Billy hasn’t got a mother.”
“And he isn’t married,” he said; “and he doesn’t want to be married yet. Now are you content?”
Jehane was not content. As they drifted through Mesopotamia with its pollard-willows, sound of running waters and constant fluttering of birds, she kept hearing those words “And he doesn’t want to be married yet.” Did men ever want to be married, or was it always necessary to catch them? Catch them! It sounded horrid to put it like that, and robbed love of all its poetry. As a girl with a Pre-Raphaelite appearance, she had liked to believe all the legends of chivalry: that it was woman’s part to be remote and disdainful, while men endangered themselves to win her favor. But were those legends only ideals—had anything like them ever happened? And supposing a woman wanted to catch Barrington, how would she set about it?
The roar of water across the lasher at Parsons’ Pleasure grew louder, drowning the conversation which was taking place in low tones at the other end of the punt. As they drew in at the landing, Jehane bent forward and heard Barrington say, “I believe you’d have been disappointed if I had been married”; and Nan’s retort, “I believe I should. You know, it does make a difference.”
Nan turned to Jehane, “What are we going to do next? There’s hardly time to go further.”
“Oh, don’t go back yet,” Barrington protested; “let’s get tea at Marston Ferry.”
“But who’ll take the punt round to the ladies’ landing? Ladies aren’t allowed through Parsons’ Pleasure, and I hardly trust you to come round by yourself.” Nan eyed him doubtfully. “You may be a good pub, but you’re a rotten punter.”
“Dash it all, you needn’t rub it in. If the worst comes to the worst, I shall only get a wetting.”
“You’re sure you can swim?”
“Quite sure, thanks.”
“Well, good-by, and good luck. I should hate to lose you after all these years of parting.”
As they struck out along the path across the island and the screen of bushes shut him from their view, Jehane felt her arm taken.
“Don’t you like him, Janey?”
“What I’ve seen of him, yes.”
“I was afraid you didn’t.”
“Whatever made you think that?”
“Because he thought it. I could feel that he thought it.”
“But I did nothing.”
“You wore your touch-me-not-manners, Janey. You looked so tragic and black. I had to talk my head off to fill in the awkwardnesses.”
“I know you did; but I wasn’t sure of the reason.”
Nan glanced up quickly and her eyes filled; the blood surged into her face and throat; her lips trembled. She pressed her cheek coaxingly against the tall girl’s shoulder. “You foolish Jehane; you’re jealous. Why, Billy and I use to eat blackberries out of each other’s hands.”
Then Jehane relented. Drawing Nan to her with swift, protecting passion, she kissed the wet eyes and pouting mouth. “You dear little Nan, I was jealous. You’re so sweet and gentle; no one could help loving you. I was angry with myself—angry because I’m so different.”
“So much cleverer,” Nan whispered.
“I don’t want to be clever; I’d give everything I possess to look as good and happy as you.”
“But you are good. If you weren’t, we shouldn’t all love you.”
“All? It’s enough that you do.”
When Barrington rounded the island, he found them standing oddly near together; then he noticed a moist ball of handkerchief crushed in Nan’s free hand—and he guessed.
CHAPTER III—ALL THE WAY FOR THIS
Jehane had been granted her wish and she was frightened. The river stretched before her, a lonely ghost, glimmering between soaked fields and beaten countryside. The rain-fall must have been heavy in the hills, for the river was swollen and discolored: branches, torn from overhanging trees, danced and vanished in the swiftly moving current. With evening a breeze had sprung up, which came fitfully in gusts, bowing tall rushes that waded in the stream, so that they whispered “Hush.” In the distance, above clumped tree-tops, the spires of Oxford speared the watery sky; red stains spread along white flanks of clouds—clouds that looked like chargers spurred by invisible riders.
The man of whom she knew so little and whom she desired was standing at her side. She was terrified. She had gained her wish—at last they were alone together.
Behind them, up the hill, the cosy inn nestled among its quiet arbors. Across the river the ferryman sat whistling, waiting for his next fare to come up. Moving away through misty meadows on the further bank a white speck fluttered mothlike.
“She’ll get home all right, don’t you think?”
“Why not? She always does.”
“But it’ll be late by the time she reaches Cassingland. She’s got to catch the tram into Oxford, to harness up and then to drive out to the rectory. It’ll be late by the time she arrives.”
“She’d have been later if she’d returned by river with us.—See, she’s waving at the stile.—Girls have to do these thing’s for themselves, Mr. Barrington, if they have no brothers.”
He stroked his chin. “Girls who have no brothers should be allotted brothers by the State.”
She faced him daringly. “I should like that. I might ask to have you appointed my brother.”
“You would, eh! Seems to me that’s what’s happened.—Funny what a little customer Nan is for making her friends the friends of one another: she was just the same in the old days. One might almost suspect that she’d planned this from the start—bringing us out all comfy, and leaving us to go home together.—But, I say, can you punt?”
“I can, but I’m not going to.”
He stepped back from her involuntarily and eyed her. There was a thrill of excitement in her clear voice that warned and yet left him puzzled. She filled him with discomfort—discomfort that was not entirely unpleasant. While Nan was present, she had been watchful and silent; now it was as though she slipped back the bars of her reticence and stepped out. He tingled with an unaccustomed sense of danger. He weighed his words before expressing the most trifling sentiment. Usually he was recklessly spontaneous; now he feared lest his motives might be mistaken. What did she want of him? She had gazed down from the window and beckoned him with her eyes—him, a stranger. Whatever it was, Nan knew about it, and had cried about it the moment his back was turned. He distrusted anyone who made Nan cry.
Silence between them was more awkward than words—surcharged with subtle promptings that words disguised; he took up the thread of their broken conversation.
“If you’re not going to punt, how are we going to get back? I’ll do my best, but you’ve seen what a duffer I am.”
“We’ll sit in the stern and paddle. With the current running so strongly, we could almost drift back.”
He followed her down the slope. She walked in front, her head slightly turned as though she listened to make sure that he followed. He noticed the pride of her handsome body, its erectness and its poise—how it seemed to glide across the grass without sound or motion. He summed her up as being abnormally self-conscious and wilfully undiscoverable. He wondered whether her restraint hid a glorious personality, or served simply as a disguise for shallowness of mind.—And while he analyzed her thus, she was scorning herself for the immodesty of her fear and dumbness.
Kneeling down on the landing to unfasten the rope, he pieced his words together. “I ought to apologize for what I implied just now. It must have sounded horribly ungallant to suggest that you should work while I sat idle.” She did not answer till they were seated side by side in the narrow stern. Taking a long stroke with her paddle, she shot a searching glance at him; the veil drew back from her eyes, revealing their smoldering fire. “That’s all right. I don’t trouble. You needn’t mind.”
Though she had not blamed him, she had not excused him.
Night was falling early; outlines of the country were already growing vague. Edges of things were blurred; from low-lying meadows silver mists were rising. In the great silence grasses rustled as cattle stirred them, the river complained, and a solitary belated bird swept across the dusk with a dull cry.
It was dangerous and it was tempting—he could not avoid personalities. He tried to think of other things to say, but they refused to take shape. His perturbation seemed the rumor of what her mind was enacting. Several times inquisitive inquiries were on the tip of his tongue; he checked them. Then her body lurched against him; their shoulders brushed.
“You have a beautiful name.”
“Indeed! You think so?”
“For me it has only one association.”
Again she brushed against him. He caught the scent of her hair and, in the twilight, a glimpse of the heavy drooping eyelids.
“I mean that poem by William Morris—it’s all about Jehane. You remember how it runs: ‘Had she come all the way for this’——?”
“You’re frightened to continue. Isn’t that so?” Her tones were cold and quiet. “‘Had she come all the way for this, to part at last without a kiss?’—I remember. It’s all about dripping woods and a country like this, with a river overflowing its banks, and a man and a girl who were parted forever ‘beside the haystack in the floods.’ Jehane was supposed to be a witch, wasn’t she? ‘Jehane the brown! Jehane the brown! Give us Jehane to burn or drown.’ There’s something like that in the poem—— I suppose I make you think only of tragic things?”
“Why suppose that?”
“Because I do most people.”
“In my case there’s no reason for supposing that. I oughtn’t to have mentioned it.”
“Oh yes, you ought. You felt it, though you didn’t know it. It’s unfortunate for a girl always to impress people as tragic, don’t you think? Men like us to be young. You’re so young yourself—that’s your hobby, according to Nan.—But if you want to know, you yourself made me think of something not quite happy—that’s what kept me so quiet on the way up.”
“I thought I’d done something amiss—that perhaps you were offended with me for the informal way in which I introduced myself.”
She gave him no assurance that she had not been offended.
“Here’s what you made me think,” she said:
“She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look’d down to Camelot.”
“Rather nice, isn’t it, to find that we’ve had such a cheerful effect on one another?”
“But—but why on earth should I make you think of that?”
She left off paddling and glanced away from him; a little shiver ran through her. When she spoke, her voice was low-pitched but still penetrating.
“Let me ask you a question. Do you think that it’s much fun being a girl?”
“Never thought about it.”
“Well, it isn’t.”
“I should have supposed that, for anyone who was young and good-looking, it might be barrel-loads of fun to be a girl in Oxford.”
“Well, I tell you that it isn’t. You’re always wanting and wanting—wanting the things that men have, and that only men can give you. But they keep everything for themselves because they’re like you, Mr. Barrington—they’ve never thought about it.”
“I’m not sure that I understand.”
“Bother! Why d’you force me to be so explicit? Take the case of Nan—she’s one of thousands. She’s got nothing of her own—no freedom, no money, no anything. She’s always under orders; she’s not expected to have any plans for her future. She creeps to the windows of the world and peeps out when her father isn’t near enough to prevent her. Unless she marries, she’ll always be prying and never sharing. She’s a Lady of Shalott, shut up in a tower, weaving a web of fancies. She hears life tramp beneath her window, traveling in plume and helmet to the city. Unless a man frees her, she’ll never get out.—Oh, I oughtn’t to talk like this; I never have, to anyone except to Nan. Why do you make me? Now that it’s said, I hate myself.”
“Don’t do that.” He spoke gently. “I’m glad you’ve done it. You’ve made me see further. We men always look at things from our own standpoint.—I suppose we’re selfish.”
He waited for her to deny that he was selfish.
“There’s no doubt about it,” she affirmed.
They paddled on in silence till they came to the lasher. Together they hauled the punt over the rollers—there was no one about. When it had taken the water on the other side, Jehane stepped in quickly; while his hands and thoughts were unoccupied, she was afraid to be near him. He stood on the bank, holding the rope to keep the punt from drifting; his head was flung back and he did not stir. Through the network of branches moonlight drifted, making willows, gnarled and twisted, and water, rushing foam-streaked from the lasher, eerie and fantastic. He was thinking of Nan and the meaning of her crying.
“Miss Usk, it was very brave of you to speak out.”
She laughed perversely; she was so afraid of revealing her emotion. “You must have queer notions about me. I’ve been terribly unconventional.”
They drifted down stream through Mesopotamia, pursued by the sandal-footed silence. When Barrington spoke to her now, it was as though there lay between them a secret understanding. What that understanding was she scarcely dared to conjecture. Here, alone with him in the moon-lit faery-land of shadows, she was supremely at peace with herself.
At Magdalen Bridge they tethered the punt; it was too late to return to the barges.
Outside her father’s house they halted. Through the window they could see the high-domed forehead of the Professor, as he sat with his reading-lamp at his elbow.
“You’ll come in? You had some business with father that brought you down from London?”
“But it’s late. If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to see him to-morrow.”
“Are you staying for long in Oxford?”
“I hadn’t intended.”
“But you may?”
“I may. It all depends.”
“Good-by then—till to-morrow.”
Professor Usk sank his head as she entered, that he might gaze at her above his spectacles. “Home again, daughter? Been on the river with Nan, they tell me! It’s late for girls to be out by themselves.”
She answered hurriedly. “Mr. Barrington was with us.”
“Ah, Barrington! Nice fellow! Did he say anything about my book?”
She was on tenterhooks to be by herself. “He’ll call tomorrow.”
“Have you been running, daughter? You seem out of breath. I’ve a minute or two to spare; come and sit down. Tell me what you’ve been doing. Did Barrington say whether that book of mine had gone to press?”
She backed slowly to the threshold and stood with the handle in her hand.
“I’ve a headache, father.”
She opened the door and fled.
Locking herself in her room, she flung herself on the bed and lay rigid in the darkness, shaken with sobbing. Pressing her lips against the pillow to stifle the sound, she commenced in a desperate whisper, “Oh God, give him to me. Dear God, let me have him. Oh God, give——”
CHAPTER IV—LOVE’S SHADOW
When Barrington called on the Professor next morning, he did not see Jehane. She had stayed in bed for breakfast, to keep out of his way. She did not trust herself to meet him before her parents because of her face—it might tell tales. She was strangely ashamed that anyone should know of her infatuation. And yet she longed to meet him that she might experience afresh the sweet tingling dread lest he should touch her. Ah, if she were sure that he returned her love, what a different Jehane he should discover....
Though she did not meet him, she espied him the moment he turned into the street. Peering stealthily from behind the curtain, she was glad to notice that he glanced up, as though conscious that her hidden eyes were watching. Listening at the head of the stairs, she heard his voice. She heard him inquire after her, and tried to estimate his disappointment and anxiety when her father answered casually, “The daughter has one of her headaches.... No, nothing much. She may not be down this morning.”
After he had left, she was angry with herself for her cowardice. She ought to have seized her opportunity. Perhaps he was returning at once to London, where he would quickly forget her. She might never see him again.
By a kind of necromancy she tried to arrive at certainty as to whether or no he would marry her. If she could count a hundred before a cart passed a particular lamppost, then he would become her husband. When the cart went too fast for her counting, she skipped numbers and cheated in order to make the test propitious. Sitting in her bedroom, partly dressed, with the brilliant summer sunshine streaming over her, she invented all kinds of similar experiments.
At last she grew impatient of her own company and came downstairs to lunch. Her dreamy mother, who usually noticed nothing, embarrassed her by remarking that her face was flushed as though she were sickening for something. She turned attention from herself by inquiring the result of her father’s interview with Mr. Barrington.
Her father was annoyed because his book had been delayed in publication—quite unwarrantably delayed, he said. She could not get him to state whether Barrington had gone back to London. The conversation developed into an indictment of the innate trickiness of publishers. Mrs. Usk had never been able to reconcile the place she occupied in the world of letters with the smallness of her royalty-statements. It almost made her doubt the financial honesty of some persons. Jehane had listened with angry eyes while these two impractical scholars, comfortably interrupting one another across the table, swelled out the sum of their grievances. Now she took up the cudgels so personally and so passionately in the defense of publishers in general, and Barrington in particular, that she was moved to tears by her eloquence.
Her parents peered at her out of their dim eyes in concerned silence. When the tears had come, they nodded at each other, bleating in chorus, “She is not well. She is flushed. She is certainly sickening for something. She must go to bed. The doctor must be summoned.”
Jehane pushed back her chair. “You’ll do nothing of the kind. I’m quite well.”
After she had made her escape, it was discovered that she had eaten nothing. In a few minutes she reappeared in her out-door attire and announced that she was going to Cassingland.
“But, my dear, you can’t,” her mother protested; “not in your state. You may give it to Nan; it may be catching. And then, think how Mr. Tudor would blame us.”
Jehane tapped with her foot impatiently. “Don’t be silly, mother. I’m going.”
And with that she departed. Only one of the witnesses of this scene conjectured its true cause—Betty, the housemaid, who on more than one occasion had watched these same symptoms develop in herself.
At the stable where her father’s horse was baited Jehane ordered out the dog-cart. She did not know why she was going to Cassingland. Certainly she did not intend to make Nan her confidant—the frenzy of love is contagious. But Nan must know many pages of Barrington’s past, the whole of which was a closed book to her. Without giving away her secret, they might discuss him together.
As she drove along the Woodstock road and turned off into the leafy Oxford lanes, she laid her plans. She would affect to have found him dull company in the journey back from Marston Ferry; she would be surprised that anyone should think him interesting. Then Nan, with her sensitive loyalty to friends, would prove the splendor of his character with facts drawn from her own experience.
Down the road ahead a man was striding in the direction in which she was driving. At the sound of wheels he turned and, standing to one side, raised his hat. Blood flooded her cheeks. Her instinct was to dash by him. She could not endure his attitude of secure comradeship. He must be everything to her at once or nothing. Her eyes fell away from his, yet she longed to return his gaze with frankness.
“I’m in luck. When I called this morning, the Professor told me you were unwell.”
“I’m better.”
“I’m glad. I’ve been blaming myself for not taking sufficient care of you.”
Had he chosen, he could have crushed her to him then; she was made so happy that she would not have protested. But how was he to judge this from the proud, almost sullen face that watched him from the dog-cart?
He looked up at her cheerfully. “Bound for the same place, aren’t we? I’m tired of pounding along by myself; if you don’t mind, I’ll jump in and let you drive me.”
She nodded ever so slightly and he swung himself up. “Going to Nan’s?”
“To Cassingland,” he assented. “I want to see for myself the lady in her tower. D’you know, I can’t get that out of my head—all that you told me about girls.”
“Really.”
She spoke indifferently and flicked the horse with the whip, so that it started forward with a jerk.
“You’re not very curious. You don’t ask me why I can’t forget.”
“Why?”
“Because, with other conditions, it’s equally true of men.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You will when I’ve told you. To get on nowadays a fellow’s got to work day and night.”
“You’re ambitious?”
“Of course I am. I want to have power. I’ve not had a real holiday for years. Of course I’ve money, which you say girls don’t have; but I’ve responsibilities. I know nothing of women—I’ve had no time to learn. That’s why I’m so grateful to you for yesterday. With me it’s just work, work, work to win a position, so that one day some woman may be happy. So you see, I have my tower as well as Nan, where I’m doomed to spin my web of fancy.”
“But men choose their own towers—build them for themselves.”
“Don’t you believe it. Some few may, but so do some few girls. I wanted to go to Oxford and to write books and to be a scholar, instead of which I publish other men’s scribblings and do my best to sell ‘em.”
“I never thought... I mean I thought all men... But you’re strong: if any man could have chosen, you would have done it. Tell me about yourself.”
And he told her—his dreams, anxieties, small triumphs, and incessant round of daily duties. He was very fine and gentle, speaking with touching eagerness, as though confession were a privilege which he rarely allowed himself. Yet Jehane was not content; she knew that in love the instinct for confession is coupled with the instinct for secretiveness. When she touched him, he was not disturbed as she was; his voice did not quiver—he did not change color. She told herself that men were the masters, so that even in love they showed no distrust of themselves. But the explanation was not convincing.
They were nearing Cassingland. Ambushed in trees, rising out of somnolent lowlands, the thin, tall spire of a church sunned itself. Like toys, tumbled from a sack, about which grass had grown up, cottages lay scattered throughout the meadows. As they came in sight of the triangular green, with the tidy rectory standing, high-walled, on its edge, their conversation faltered.
He offered her his hand to help her out. She held back for a second, then took it with ashamed suddenness. He raised his eyes to hers with a boy’s enthusiasm.
“Miss Usk, it’s awfully decent of you to have listened to me.”
“It’s you who’ve been decent. You make everything so easy. You seem... seem to understand.”
He was puzzled. “I’ve done nothing but talk at unpardonable length about myself. As for making things easy, it’s you—you’re so rippingly sensible.”
She winced. No man falls in love with a woman for her sanity. It was as though he had called her middle-aged or robust. She wanted to appeal to him as weak and clinging. When people are in love they are far from sensible; she knew that she was anything but sensible at present. If he had told her she was capricious and charming, she would have shown him a face exultant.
Nan came tripping to the gate. “This is jolly—both of you together!”
Her coming was inappropriate; for the next few months all her appearances were to prove ill-timed so far as Jehane was concerned. And yet, what was to be done? Professor Usk’s house was too subdued in its atmosphere to be congenial. Moreover, the Professor invariably monopolized a man who was his guest—especially when the man was a publisher. Then again, Jehane was painfully aware that she was awkward in the presence of her parents, and did not create her best impression. So she did not encourage Barrington to call on her in Oxford. Naturally she turned to Cassingland, where you had the wide free country, and no one suspected or watched you because you were friendly with a man. Cassingland furnished an excuse for both of them: Nan was her friend; Mr. Tudor had been his tutor. Mr. Tudor, with his honest, farmer-like appearance and frayed clericals, lent an air of propriety to proceedings. And Nan—she helped the propriety; but she never knew when she was not wanted. She spoke of Barrington as Billy. She took his arm and snuggled against him with a naive air of mischief, leading him to all the spots along the river, in the garden and scattered through the fields, which years ago had formed their playground. Jehane resented her innocent air of belonging to him. So, very frequently when Barrington came down from London and she drifted out, as if by accident, to the rectory, she wore the mask of reserve and sullenness, and did not show to best advantage.
Barrington, for his part, was always equal in his temper—too equal for Jehane. With Nan he was gay and frivolous; to her he was grave and deferential. She wished he would display more ardor and less caution. If it had been in her nature, she would have made the running; she was pained by his unvarying respect.
All summer love’s shadow had rested on her. It was September now; the harvest lay cut in the fields ready to be carried. Nan had sent Jehane a message that morning that Barrington was expected; so here she was once more at the rectory, spending the week-end.
They had gone up to bed, leaving the men to smoke; suddenly Nan put on her dress, saying that she heard her father calling. Jehane prepared for bed slowly; by the time she was ready to slip between the sheets Nan had not returned. She blew out the candle; the room was instantly suffused with liquid moonlight and velvet shadow. In the darkness, as often happens, her senses became sharpened—she heard a multitude of sounds. Somewhere near the church, probably from the tower, an owl was hooting. In the distance a dog barked. She could hear the wash of the river among its rushes, and the padding of a footstep on the lawn. Romance in her was stirred.
Going to the window, she leant out; she was greeted by the strong fragrance of roses. Sheaves, standing in rows throughout the fields, looked like a sleeping camp. Trees, save where mists thumbed them, were etched distinctly against the indigo horizon. The white disc of the moon, like a paper lantern, hung balanced between the edges of two clouds. Its light, streaming down the sky, was like milk poured across black marble. Nature seemed to have blinded her eyes and to hold her breath.
Across the lawn from the open study window, a shaft of gold slanted, making the darkness on either side intense by contrast. As Jehane listened, she heard what seemed a panting close to the wall beneath her. She leant further out and discerned a blur of white. She was about to speak when the red glow of a cigar, thrown down among the bushes, warned her.
“At last! You’ve never given me a chance to be alone with you. I’ve wanted you all summer, little Nan.”
His arms were round her. As he stooped above her, her face was blotted out... He was speaking again.
“Your father saw it. That’s why he called you.... If I’d had to wait much longer, I should have asked you before her. Why—why would you never let us be alone together?”
Nan’s voice came muffled beneath his kisses. “Because, Billy darling, I wanted to play fair.”
“Fair?”
An answer followed, so softly whispered that it did not carry—a surprised exclamation from the man.
Jehane had tiptoed from the window.
With her black hair tumbled about her, her hands pressed against her mouth, she lay sobbing. The night had lost its magic....
Nan entered the room stealthily. She glanced toward the bed. Thinking Jehane was sleeping, she did not light the candle, but commenced to fumble at her fastenings, undressing in the dark. A sob refused to be stifled any longer. Nan paused in her undressing and stood tense; then ran and bent above the bed. Seizing Jehane by the shoulders, she tried to turn her face toward her.
“Oh, Janey, I did, I did play fair. I told you every time he was coming.... Say you’ll still be friends.”
But Jehane said nothing.
Next morning she greeted Barrington with her accustomed mixture of proud restraint and sullenness. “We’ve been expecting this all summer. We wondered when it would happen. I hope you’ll be very happy.”
After that she came less frequently to Cassingland. The lovers had long walks, uninterrupted, unaccompanied. Once he told Nan, “I can’t believe it, Pepperminta. I’m sure you were mistaken.”
“But I wasn’t.” She shook her curly head sadly.
They rarely mentioned Jehane. They knew that she was troubled; but they knew of no way in which to help.
At Christmas, when snow lay on the ground, they were married.
Nan, who had never feared spinsterhood greatly, had escaped from it. Jehane retired to the isolation which she sometimes called her tower, and at other times her raft. She often told herself savagely that, had it not been for her shyness in instancing Nan instead of herself on that journey down from Marston Ferry, she might have been the bride at that wedding. Secretly, she was bitter about it; outwardly, she kept up her friendship—otherwise she would have seen no more of Barrington.
CHAPTER V—ENTER PETER AND GLORY
Barrington did everything on a large scale—he knew he was going to be a big man. He arranged his surroundings with an eye to his expanding future. It was so when he bought his house at Topbury.
It had more rooms than he could furnish—more than a young married couple could comfortably occupy. But he intended to spend his entire life there, hanging the walls with memories and associations of affection. It would be none too large for a growing family. That was Barrington all over; he planned and looked ahead.
The house stood high in the north of London; it was one of twenty in a terrace—all with porches and areas in front, and long walled gardens at the back. To-day the octopus suburbs, throwing out tentacles of small mean dwellings, have crept across the broad views and strangled the rural aspect. But when Nan and Barrington went to live there, they looked out from their back-windows uninterrupted across the Vale of Holloway to Gospel Oak and the Heath at Hampstead. The approach to Topbury Terrace was through quiet fields where sheep were grazing. The oldest inhabitants still talked of a group of shops as Topbury Village. Many of the roads were private; traffic was kept back by gates or posts planted across them.
The house was a hundred years old, spacious and lofty. It had the sturdy look of Eighteenth Century handiwork. Though standing in a terrace, it retained its own personality and seemed to hold itself aloof from its neighbors. Once link-boys had stood before its doors and coaches had rumbled through Islington Village out from London, bringing its master home from routs and functions. Probably he was a portly merchant, accompanied by a dame who wore patches.
Adjoining its bedrooms were powder-cupboards; its lower windows were heavily grated against attack. All the entries were massively screened and bolted. It seemed to boast its privacy. In the garden were pear-trees, a mulberry and a cedar. At the bottom of the garden was a stable with stalls for three horses.
At first Nan was rather awed—she did not know what to do with it. Many of the rooms remained unfurnished. That was to be done slowly, by picking up old and rare articles—pictures and tapestries as they could afford them, a piece here and a piece there: this was to be their hobby. She was frightened by so much emptiness, and clung to her husband, puzzled and proud. Then, gradually, she began to understand: they were planning for the future greatness which they were to share. She was no longer frightened; she was glad.
There was one room in which they often sat. Sometimes they would visit it separately and surprise one another. When they entered, they became strangely bashful and childlike—it was holy ground. They left all their cruder ambitions on the threshold. They stopped talking or conversed in whispers, holding hands. It was on a halfstory, between the first floor and the second, and looked into the garden. Up the wall outside a magnolia clambered; against its window a laburnum tapped and shed its golden tassels. Everything was waiting for someone who was some day coming. A high guard stood about the hearth to prevent someone, when he began to toddle, from falling into the fire and getting burnt. A little bed was ready—a bed so tiny that you could lift it with one hand. On the floor toys lay scattered. Everything had been thought out for his reception long before he warned them of his coming. To bring home new toys and leave them there for Nan to discover was one of Barrington’s absurd ways of telling her how much he loved her.
It was in that room that they kissed after their first quarrel. It was there she told him that the little hands were being fashioned that were to be held so fast in theirs.
And he came one bright February morning, when crocuses were standing bravely above the turf and a warm spring wind was blowing. Nan hugged him to her breast, smiling and crying—she was so glad he was a man. They called him Peter—after the house his father said, because the house was Peterish and old-fashioned. William was sure to be contracted to Bill or Billy; one Billy was enough in any family——-
It was shortly after the birth of Peter that Jehane caught her man. It was said that she married him on the rebound, for she never ceased loving Barrington. She did it more to get off the raft, and to show that she could do it, than for anything.
Captain Bobbie Spashett had seen her portrait in a friend’s house. He was under orders to sail for India. He had six weeks in which to make her acquaintance, do his courting and get over the wedding. He proved himself a man of energy, managing the business with a soldier’s dash. Then he sailed for India, promising to send for her when he was settled. Unfortunately, before the year was out, he died in action.
In February, almost on the anniversary of Peter’s birth, his daughter came into the world. Jehane named her Glory, because of the distinguished nature of her father’s death.
When Captain Spashett’s affairs came to be settled, it was found that he had left his widow something less than a thousand pounds from all sources.
Then Jehane discovered that, in stepping off the raft, she had not reached the land. She went to live with her parents.
CHAPTER VI—JEHANE’S SECOND MARRIAGE
It was his own fault; he knew it in after years. Barrington was partly responsible for Jehane’s second marriage. It was he who suggested that, since Jehane was not happy with her parents, it would be decent to ask her up to Topbury for Christmas.
Did he like her? Well, hardly! He felt that she bore him a grudge. Whenever her name was mentioned, he and Nan had a guilty sense. They were so happy—they had everything that she coveted and lacked.
They asked her by way of atonement. When she objected that Glory would be a nuisance, they replied that Glory would be fun for Peter.—And it was he who, in the goodness of his heart, invited Waffles.
Ocky Waffles was not his sort. His very name was a handicap. A man named Waffles could scarcely command respect; but the Christian name made it worse. How could anyone called Ocky Waffles be a gentleman? He was his cousin, however, and lived alone in London lodgings. His mother was recently dead. Whatever his shortcomings, he had been an attentive son. The chap would be rottenly lonely, thought Barrington. Unadulterated Ocky he could not stand; but, if he could jumble him up in a family-party and so get him diluted, he would be very glad to do him a service. In the uncalculating days of boyhood they had been warm friends. So Mr. Tudor was persuaded to come from Cassingland and Ocky was invited.
In her twenty-eighth year, Jehane traveled to Paddington en route for her second adventure in matrimony. Glory was with her, a golden-haired baby just beginning to toddle, the image of her soldier father. Jehane still wore mourning—deepest black, with white frills at her wristbands and a white ruff about her neck. Black suited her pale complexion—it lent her the touch of helpless pathos that her beauty had always wanted. Her manner was hushed and gentle, matching her costume. Her large, dark eyes had that forlorn expression of “Oh, I can never forget,” which has so often sealed the fate of an unmarried man. You felt at once that the finest deed possible would be to bring her happiness. At least, so felt Waffles.
But that Christmas there were times when she did forget. In her new surroundings, where she and Glory were no longer burdens, she grew almost merry. When memory clouded her eyes and restored the sternness of tragedy, it was not Bobbie Spashett she remembered, who had died a very gallant gentleman, fighting for his country; it was simply that, with proper care, Nan’s shoes might have been hers. When she saw Barrington slip his arm about his wife, and heard her whisper, “Oh, please, Billy, not now,” it made her wild with envy. She felt that it was more than she could bear. She was unloved, and so was Waffles; they had this in common, despite dissimilarities.
Ocky Waffles was a kind-hearted lounger. He was always late for everything—which left him plenty of time to devote to her. His best friends would never have accused him of refinement. His mind was untidy; he was lazy and ineffectual. His faculty for conversation was childish—he babbled. He was continually making silly jokes at which he laughed himself. Because the world rarely laughed with him, he believed that his bump of humor was abnormally developed. He had met only one person as humorous as himself—his mother; she, admiring and loyal old lady, had laughed till the tears came at anything he said. But she was dead; he had lost his audience. He missed her and was extremely sorry for Ocky Waffles. No one understood his catch-phrases now, “Reaching after the mustard,” and, “Look at father’s pants.” They did not even know to what they referred; he had to explain everything. There was an element of absurdity and weak pathos about the man; when one of his jokes had missed fire he would dab his eyes, saying with a catch in his throat, “Oh dear, how mother’d have split her sides at that!”
Jehane was genuinely moved to compassion. Sinking her voice, she would lead him aside and whisper, “Tell it again, Mr. Waffles. I think I could understand.”
Before Ocky met her, the denseness of his friends had driven him to public houses, where other tales might be told without shocking anybody. With barmaids he could pass for a “nut,” a witty fellow. Grief drove him to it, he told himself. He was well aware that public houses were bad for his pocket and worse for his health. When Jehane seemed to applaud him, his thoughts naturally turned to marriage—marriage would cure every evil, and then—— Oh, then he would become like Barrington, with a loving wife, art-treasures and a fine house. It was only a matter of keeping steady and concentrating your willpower.
But to become like Barrington he would have had to be a gentleman. A top-hat never sat on his head as if it belonged to him. With his equals in birth and opportunity he could never be comfortable. He found it easy to be chatty with stable-boys and servants. This he attributed to his superior humanity. He was fond of walking down the street with a pipe in his mouth. When he sat on a chair, it was usually on the middle of his back with his feet thrust out. He slouched through life like an awkward boy, experiencing discomfort in the presence of his elders.
Since he could not cure himself of his habits, he determined some day, when he was ready for the effort, to get money; with money his habits would no longer be bad—they would become signs of democracy and independence. At the time of the Christmas party he was a clerk in a lawyer’s office—he had been other things before that. This was his worldly condition, when he met Jehane and fell in love with her.
They drifted together from force of circumstance; Nan and Barrington were still very much of lovers; Mr. Tudor spent his time on the floor with Peter and Glory. They were thrown together; there was no escape from it. Ocky was naturally affectionate; it was part of his weak amiability to love somebody. He craved love for himself—or was it admiration? But as a rule no one was flattered by his affection—it was always on tap. Jehane did not know that. Her wounded pride was soothed because he selected her. She was hungry for a man’s appreciation and anxious for his protection. And as for Ocky, to whom no one ever listened—he was encouraged by her pleased attention.
He sought her out at first in a good-natured effort to dispel her melancholy; his method was to regale her with worn chestnuts. She heard them with a slow, sweet smile on her mouth, which narrowed and widened, but rarely broke into mirth. This showed him that all his stories were new to her. The poor fellow was stirred to his shallow depths. A gusty passion blew through him; he struggled into seeming strength; he felt he was a man.—When you’re choosing a woman who will be condemned to hear all your old anecdotes over and over to the day of her death, it is very necessary to select one to whom they will come fresh, at least before marriage. Yes, she was the wife for Waffles.
Little confidences grew up between them. She told him about Barrington, hinting that he had wobbled between her and Nan. And he told her about Barrington, how as boys they had been like brothers, spending every holiday together, but now——.
But now, in Barrington’s own words, a little of Ocky went a long way; after an hour or two in his company he felt quite fed up with him. As with many a clever man, vulgarity of mind disgusted him more than well-bred viciousness. He found it difficult to hide his feelings from his guest. In fact, he didn’t.
Nan was the first to notice what was happening. “He’s making love to Jehane, I declare!”
Her husband shook his head knowingly. “Jehane’s too proud for that.”
“But he is. They’re always sitting over the fire, oh, so closely, and whispering together.”
“It can’t be. She’s amusing herself. If I thought it were, I’d stop it. Ocky may be a bounder, but he wouldn’t do that.”
“Billy boy, he’s doing it.”
“But he’s hardly got a penny to bless himself, and her little income wouldn’t attract him.”
“You may say what you like, old obstinate; it doesn’t alter facts.”
Jehane was proud, as Barrington said; but not too proud. She realized quite well what Waffles was, but she hoped to brace him up with her strength. She was by no means blind to his shortcomings. Often, when the smile was playing about her mouth, her mind was in a ferment of derision. At night remorse pursued her—the fine, clean memory of Bobbie Spashett.—But the constant sight of Nan and Barrington, their stolen kisses and love-words, were getting on her nerves. She looked down the vista of the years—was no man ever to conquer her? Was she to grow into an old woman with that one brief memory of her soldier-man? So love-hunger drew her to Waffles, despite the warnings of her better sense. The love-hunger was continually quickened by the sight of Nan’s domestic happiness.
When, after a week’s acquaintance, he said, “Mrs. Spashett, will you marry me?” she replied, “My brave husband!—I cannot.—I must be true to the end.”
When he asked her again two days later, she was less positive. “Oh, Mr. Waffles, there’s Glory.”
“Call me Ocky,” he said.
Then he changed his tactics. He argued his loneliness, their community of grief, the loss of his mother. When he spoke of his mother, she liked him best. “Give me time,” she murmured.
The crisis came on the last day of her visit, and was hastened by two foolish happenings. She detested the thought of the return to her parents’ silent house. She had persuaded herself that she was not wanted there; her child fidgeted the old people and disarranged the household. After the glimpse of warmth and heaven she had had, she magnified her troubles through the glass of envy. Oh, to have her own fireside, and her own man!—This was how the crisis happened.
Peter, aged three, was playing with Glory. With the clumsiness of childhood he knocked her down. She commenced to scream loudly—so loudly that she might have been seriously hurt. Jehane rushed into the nursery, caught her baby to her breast and, in her anguish, smacked Peter. Peter in all his young life had never been smacked; he watched her goggle-eyed and then set up a terrified howl. When Nan arrived on the scene, he was sobbing and explaining that he had only meant to softy Glory, which was his word for loving her by rubbing her with his face and hands. A quarrel ensued between the mothers in which bitter things were said. How did Jehane dare to touch Peter, her little Peterkins baby, who was always so sensitive and gentle! Nan was fiercely angry that her child had been unjustly punished; Jehane was no less angry because her child had been knocked down. When it was all over, the babies were told to kiss one another; Peter, when Jehane approached him, hid his face in his mother’s skirt.
Strained relations followed, which made light words impossible. Barrington, when he heard of it, was extraordinarily annoyed. Waffles, because she was in the minority, sided with Jehane. That her quiet, madonna-like adoration of Glory should have turned into tigerish protective passion attracted him strangely.
That evening Barrington had some friends to dine with him—men and women of his world, whose good opinion he valued. During dinner and afterwards in the drawingroom, Waffles had been ousted from the conversation; their talk was all of books and travel—things he did not understand. He felt cold-shouldered—crowded out. He resented it, and was determined to show them that he also could be clever.
He waited for an opening-. A pause in the conversation occurred. He sprang into the gap. That he was irrelevant did not matter.
“Heard a good riddle the other day. Wonder if any of you can answer it.” All eyes turned in his direction. He cleared his throat and fumbled at his collar. “If a cat ate a haddock and a dog chased the cat, and the cat jumped over the wall, what relation would the dog bear to the haddock?”
There was embarrassed silence. Every face wore a puzzled expression. Barrington pulled his cigar from his mouth and gazed sternly at the glowing ash.
At last a lady, who wrote poetry, took compassion on him. She tapped him on the arm. “I can’t think of any answer. Put me out of my suspense. I’m so anxious to learn.”
Waffles beamed his acknowledgments. “That’s the answer,” he said eagerly; “there isn’t any answer.”
Barrington ceased to be vexed with his cigar and laughed coldly.
“You mustn’t mind my cousin. He’s a genial ass. Sometimes it takes him like that.—Let’s see, what were we discussing when we were interrupted?”
So there were two people with wounded feelings in that company. Ocky saw Jehane slip out of the room, and he followed. On the stairs she halted.
“Why are you following?”
“I’m not wanted. Confound their stupidity.”
“But why should you follow me?”
“Because you’re the same as I am. That’s why you left; you’re not at home here. Look how they behaved about Glory. I say, it’s our last evening together. Won’t you give me—”
But, ridiculous as it appeared to her, an almost maidenly fear took hold of her; she fled. He found her in the dark, at the top of the tall house; she was leaning over her child’s cot sobbing. He grew out of himself, stronger, better; against her will, he folded her to him.
“Won’t you give me your answer, darling?”
Silence.
“I’ll be very good to Glory.”
Still silence.
“Oh, Jehane, I’m so foolish—such a weak, foolish fellow; I need your strength. With you I could be a man.” Then all that was maternal awoke in her. She remembered how she had seen him looking empty-handed, while those clever men and women had stared. “You musn’t mind my cousin. He’s a genial ass. Sometimes it takes him like that.”—Cruel! Cruel! She took his head and pressed it to her bosom, kissing him on the forehead.
Nan, disturbed by their disappearance, found them kneeling, hand-in-hand, beside Glory.
That night as she sat before her mirror undressing, she let her hands fall to her side, listless. Barrington stole up behind her and kissed her on the neck, rubbing his face against hers.
“That’s what Peter calls softying.”
“But you weren’t thinking of Peter, little woman.”
“How did you know that?”
“You looked sad. What’s the trouble?”
She bent back her head, so that their eyes met and their lips were near to touching. “If I hadn’t been there that day, would you have loved Jehane instead?”
“Pepperminta, I was in love with you when we played together at Cassingland. Why ask foolish questions?”
“Because it’s happened.”
“You don’t mean—?”
“Yes. She’s taken him, and I’m sure she doesn’t want him.”
Barrington drew himself upright, then stooped over her; he was realizing the perfect joy of his own union with a startled sense of thankfulness.
“Poor people,” he murmured.
Three months later Jehane was married. The wedding was quiet; there were none but family-guests. No one felt that it was an affair to boast about. It took place from the Professor’s house at Oxford; Mr. Tudor performed the ceremony. Glory was being left with Nan till the honeymoon was ended. All morning Jehane’s face had been gloomy; perhaps she already had her doubts. Certainly Mr. Waffles did not show to advantage in art Oxford atmosphere. He was too boisterous. His shoes were too shiny. The colors of his tie and button-hole clashed. His clothes looked ready-made. At parting with her mother, Jehane did the unexpected—she wept.
On their drive to the station through austere streets, with bright glimpses of college quadrangles and young bloods in shooting-jackets and dancing-slippers, sauntering bareheaded, Waffles grew more exuberant and irrepressible; his ill-timed gaiety grated on her nerves. Having taken their seats in the carriage, the train was delayed in starting. He hung his head out of the window, jerking jocular remarks to her across his shoulder. She did not answer him, but sat with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes cast down. He could not make her out; up to now she had responded so readily to his merriment. At all costs he must make her laugh.
The station-master was passing down the platform, his hands clasped beneath his flapping coat-tails. Not every station-master guards the gate-way to a seat of learning. This particular station-master felt the full importance of his position and carried himself with his stomach thrust forward and his head thrown back.
Waffles leant from the window and beckoned frantically. When the official came up, he commenced to jabber in invented gibberish, desperately gesticulating with his hands.
“Don’t understand you,” the official said tartly; “don’t talk no foreign langwidge.”
Waffles paused in his torrent of palaver and winked solemnly at a group of undergraduates who stood watching. They happened to be pupils of the Professor. Then, as though an inspiration had burst upon him, he inquired, “Parlez-vous FranÃÆçais?”
“Nong. I do not,” snapped the station-master, annoyed that his lack of scholarship should be exposed in this manner.
He was moving away, when Waffles produced his crowning witticism, to which all the rest had been preface. Jehane would certainly laugh now. “Hi! Station-master! Does this train go to Oxford?”
He had one glimpse of the insulted official’s countenance, then he felt himself grabbed by the arm and drawn violently back into the carriage.
“Do you want to make me ashamed of you already. Sit down and behave yourself.”
“But darling—”
“Oh, be quiet. Aren’t you ever solemn? Is nothing sacred?”
Exceedingly puzzled and utterly extinguished, he did as he was bade, waiting like a small boy expecting to be spanked.
That was how they began life together.
CHAPTER VII—THE WHISTLING ANGEL
Peter can quite well remember the events which led up to that strange happening; not that the events or the happening seemed strange at the time—they grew into his life so naturally. He thought, if he thought at all, that to all little boys came the same experience; he would not have believed you had you told him otherwise.
He had recently achieved his fourth birthday and the garden, which was his out-door nursery, was a-flutter with tremulous spring-flowers. That night his mother sent away the nurse, and undressed and bathed him herself. She wanted to be foolish to her heart’s content, laughing and singing and crying over him. Only the slender laburnum, with the kind old mulberry-tree peering over its shoulder, watched them through the window. The laburnum was a young girl, his mother told him, with shaky golden curls; the mulberry, whose arms were propped with crutches, was her grandfather.
As Peter’s mother squeezed the sponge down his back, she stooped her pretty head, kissing some new part of his wet little body as though she were making a discovery. And she called him love-words, Peterkins, Precious Lamb, Ownest; and she pushed him away from her, saying he did not belong to her, that so she might feel the eager arms clasped more fiercely about her neck.
When he had been rolled in the towel, his big father entered and took him, rubbing his prickly chin against Peter’s neck; nor would he give him up. It was a long time before he was popped into his pink, woolly nightgown. Even then, when he was safe in bed, they stayed by him—his mother humming softly, while his father knelt to be able to kiss her without bending. Shadows came out from the cupboard and crept toward the window, pushing back the daylight; the daylight dodged across the ceiling, hid in the mulberry where it slept till morning, came back and peeped in at him tenderly, and vanished. His eyes grew heavy; the next thing he remembers is an early breakfast, a cab at the door and being told to be the goodest little boy in the world. He was hugged till he was breathless; then he saw the face of his beautiful mother, her eyes red with weeping, leaning out of the cab-window throwing kisses, growing distant and yet more distant down the terrace.
In later years he knew where they went—to Switzerland to re-live their honeymoon. At the time he thought they were gone forever.
Grace, his nurse, did her best to comfort him, blowing his nose so severely that he looked to see if it had come off in the handkerchief. For Grace he had a great respect. She was a good-natured lump of a girl, who beat a drum for the Salvation Army under gas-lamps and fought a never ending battle with herself to pronounce her name correctly. Mr. Barrington had threatened that the penalty for failing was dismissal. Now the violence of her emotion and the absence of her employers made her reckless. “There, little Round Tummy, Grice’ll taik care of you, don’t you blow bubbles like that. You’ll cry yourself dry, that you will, and drown us.”
An awful suggestion! He pictured the dining-room flooded with his tears, the furniture floating and Grace swimming for her life. He turned off the tap to just the littlest dribble. If he’d stopped at once, Grace would have ceased to be sorry.
She did not keep her promise to take care of him. On the contrary, she conducted him through London on the tops of buses and left him at a strange house. It belonged to the “smacking lady,” a name which he had given to Jehane since an unfortunate occurrence previously mentioned. He had been taught to call her Auntie to her face, but she went by the other name inside his head.
On many points his memories of this period are muddled. When he was not in disgrace, he was allowed to play with Glory; if he had been specially good, he was privileged to splash in the same bath with her before being put to bed. But this was not often; it appeared that quite suddenly, since coming to the smacking lady’s house, he had developed an extraordinary faculty for being bad. She said that he was spoilt, and shut him up in rooms to make him better. He did his best to improve, for he believed that his naughtiness was the cause of his mother’s absence; she would never come back, unless he became “the goodest little boy in the world.” To judge by the smacking lady’s countenance, he did his best to no purpose.
Her man was the one bright spot in his tragedy; and even he seemed a little afraid of her. He did not champion Peter in her presence, but he would take him out of rooms—oh, so stealthily—and carry him to the end of the garden where a river ran, along the floor of which fishes flashed, pursued by their shadows. There he would tell him funny stories—stories of Peter’s world and within the compass of Peter’s understanding; and he would laugh first to warn Peter when he was going to be really funny——
Peter had again been bad, shut up in a room and rescued by the smacking lady’s husband. They were sitting on the river-bank, screened from the windows of the house by bushes, when they heard the sound of running. It was the servant; she spoke loudly with excitement and seemed out of breath. The funny man’s face became grave; he rose and left Peter without a word.
After that, all kinds of people came hurrying; they banged on the door and went swiftly up the stairs—swiftly and softly. No one paid him any heed and, strange to say, they were equally careless of Glory. He was glad of that, for he loved Glory; it made him happy to have her to himself. All that day they played among the flowers, he following the shining of her little golden head. When she fell asleep tired, he sat solemnly beside her, holding her crumpled hand.
That night they were hastily undressed by a stranger and tumbled into the same bed. She was so strange that she did not know that she ought to hear them say their prayers. It was Peter who reminded her.
Lying awake in the darkness, he was sensitive that something unusual was happening. Up and down the creaking stairs many footsteps came and went; dresses rustled; voices muttered in whispered consultation. In intervals between doors opening and shutting, there were long periods of silence. During one of these he heard a sound so curious that he sat up in bed—a weak, thin wailing which was new to him and, had he known it, new to the world. He gathered the bed-clothes to his mouth and listened. Voices on the stairs grew bolder—almost glad. Peter was conscious of relief from suspense; night itself grew less black.
Again a door opened on the lower landing; there were footsteps. A man spoke cheerfully. “It’s all over and successfully. Thank God for that.”
And the smacking lady’s husband roared, “A little nipper all my own, by Gad!”
Peter didn’t understand, but they let him see next morning—a puckered thing, wrapt in blue flannel, with the tiniest of hands, lying very close to Aunt Jehane’s breast. It was the funny man who showed him, lifting him up so he could look down on it. The funny man was happy.
Did he start asking questions at once, or does he only imagine it? Perhaps someone tried to explain things to him—it may have been his friend, the funny man. It may have been that he overheard conversations and misconstrued them. At all events, he knew that the baby was a girl and that she had come several weeks before she was expected. Someone said that Master Peter would never have been there had they known that this was going to happen.—So babies came from somewhere suddenly—somebody sent them! This was the beginning of his longing to have a baby all to himself—but how?
One fine morning the treacherous Grace arrived, not one little bit abashed. She told him that his mother was coming back to Topbury.
“Then am I the goodest little boy in the world?”
She thumped her great arms round him; he might have been her drum she was playing. “You can be when you like; and, my word, I believe you are now.”
He learnt before he left that the new baby was to be called “Riska”; and he noticed this much, that its hair and eyes were black.
His mother had lost her whiteness. Her face and hands were brown; only her hair was the old sweet color. He had not been long with her when he made his request. “Mummy, get Peterkins a baby.”
She was sitting sewing by the window. She looked up from the little garment she was making, holding the needle in her hand.
“What a funny present! Why does little Peter ask for that?”
“Mummy, where does babies come from?”
She laid aside her work and took him into her lap. “From God, dearie.”
“Who brings them, mummikins?”
“Angels.”
“How does they know to bring them?”
She laughed nervously; then checked herself, seeing how serious was the child’s expression. “People ask God, darling; he tells the angels. They bring the babies all wrapt up warmly in their softy wings and feathers.”
“Could a little boy ask him?”
“Anyone could ask him.”
“Would he send me one for my very ownest?”
“Some day—perhaps.”
“And you asked God to send me, muvver?”
“I and your Daddy together.”
He lay so quietly in her arms that she thought his questions were at an end. She did not take up her work, but sat smiling with dreamy eyes, humming and resting her chin on his curly head. He clambered down from her knee, satisfied and laughing, “Ask him again—you and Daddy together.”
Just then Barrington entered. “What’s Daddy to ask for now?” Then, “Why Nancy, tears in your eyes! What’s Peter been doing?”
She held her husband very closely, looking shy and happy. “He’s been asking for the thing we’ve prayed for.”
“Eh! What’s that?”
“A baby.”
“A baby? Funny little beggar! Extraordinary!”
“And sweet!” whispered Nan.
“Come here, young fellow.” His father was solemn, but his eyes were laughing. He held Peter between his knees, so their faces nearly met. “If your mother asks God for a baby sister, will you always be good to her—the truliest, goodest little brother in the world?”
And Peter nodded emphatically. His father shook his chubby hand, sealing the bargain.
Peter watched hourly for her coming—he never doubted it would be a her. He would inquire several times daily, “Will it be soon?” There was always the same answer, “Peterkins, Peterkins presently.”
One night he heard the same sounds that had amazed him at the smacking lady’s house—whispers, running on the stairs, doors opening and shutting. He waited for the weak, thin wailing; but that did not follow. Nevertheless, he was sure it had happened: wrapt up warmly, in softy angel-feathers, God had sent him a sister for himself.
It was very late when Grace came to bed. Peter pretended to be asleep; he feared she would be angry. Slowly he raised himself on the pillow, his eyes clear and undrowsy.
“Why, Master Peter!”
She turned from the mirror so startled that, as she spoke, the hair-pins fell from her mouth.
53
“What a fright you give me! I thought your peepers ‘ad been glued tight for hours h’and hours.”
“Has she come? Has she come? Did a lady-angel bring her?”
“Lor’ bless the boy, he’s dreamin’! Now lie down, little Round Tummy. Grice won’t be long; then she’ll hold you in ‘er arms all comfy.”
“But Grace, she’s downstairs, a teeny weeny one—just big enough for Peter to carry.”
“Now, look ‘ere, you just stop it, Master Peter. It’s no time for talkin’; you’ll ‘ear soon enough. You and your teeny weeny ones!”
Peter lay down, his little heart choking. Why wouldn’t Grace tell him?
“But, Grace———”
“Shut up. I’m a-sayin’ of me prayers.”
In the morning the hushed suspense still hung about the house. When he raised his piping voice, Grace shook him roughly. At breakfast his father’s brows were puckered—he wasn’t a bit happy like the funny man. When the table had been cleared, he laid aside his paper and sat Peter on his knee before him. “Something happened last night, sonny. You’ve got a little brother.”
“Not a sister, Daddy?”
Peter cried at that; no wonder they were all so sad. “But we asked God for a sister partickerlarly.”
All day as he played in a whisper by himself, he tried to think things out. God had become confused at the last moment, or the angel had: the wrong baby had been brought to their house. But where was the right one?
That evening the angel remembered his error and took the baby back.
Peter was being undressed for bed and Grace was crying terribly. She had just slipped him into his long, pink nightgown when his father came in hurriedly. He caught him up, wrapping a blanket round him and ran with him downstairs. The door of the room which he had watched all day was opened by a man in black. The room was in darkness, save for a shaded lamp. There were several people present; all of them whispered and walked on tiptoe. He raised himself up in his father’s arms. On the bed his mother lay weak and listless; her eyes were blue and vacant. She seemed to have shrunk and tears stole down her cheeks unheeded. Her hair seemed heavy for her head and lay across the pillow in two broad plaits. In her arms was a little bundle. The man in black commenced to talk huskily. No one answered; everyone listened to what he said. Suddenly he stooped to take the bundle from his mother, but her arms tightened. “I’ll keep him as long as God lets me.”
So the man drew aside the wrappings; Peter saw the face of a tiny stranger already tired of the world. The man in black spoke some words more loudly and touched the stranger’s face with water. Peter shuddered; it was cruel to wet his face like that. They all stood silent in the shadows—all except Peter, who cuddled against his father’s shoulder. Someone said, “He’s gone,” and the sobbing commenced.
That night Peter slept in his mother’s bedroom—she would have it. She seemed frightened that an angel so careless might carry him away as well. So they set up his cot by the side of her bed; as she lay on her pillows she could watch him.
Mummikins got happy slowly; she seemed disappointed in God. Gradually Peter learnt that, although the baby had been left at the wrong house, they had given him a name and had called him Philip. But the old question worried Peter—the one which no one seemed able to answer: where was the sister God had meant to send and which his father had promised? Since everyone treated him with reticence, he took the matter up with God himself. Often, when his mother bent above him and thought him sleeping, he was talking with God inside his head. As a result the strange thing happened.
In his room, to the left of his bed, was a large powder-cupboard, even in the day-time full of shadows. One night he had been praying out loud to himself, but his voice was growing weary and his eyelids kept falling. As he lay there, coming from the cupboard, very softly, very distant, he heard a sound of whistling. It was a little air, happy and haunting, trilled over and over. He sat up and listened, not at all frightened. He thrust himself up with his elbows, his head bent forward, in listening ecstasy. His father could whistle, but not like that. A man’s whistling was shrill and strong. This was gentle and glad, like a violin played high up—ah yes, like his mother’s whistling. Then, somehow, he knew that a girl’s lips formed that sound.
He slipped out of bed in the darkness and tiptoed to the cupboard. He opened the door; it stopped.
When he was safe in bed it again commenced, as though it were saying, “I’m coming. I’m coming, little Peterkins. Don’t be impatient.”
It was trying to say more than that, and he racked his brains to understand. When he lay quiet and was almost asleep, the picture formed. He saw a girl-angel, standing in a garden, watching God at his work. And what was God doing? He was making a little sister for Peter, stitching her together. And every time the angel stopped whistling, God’s needle dropped. And every time she recommenced, God laughed and plucked feathers from her softy wings to make garments for the little sister. Peter named her the Whistling Angel. One day, when she and God were ready, she would bring his little sister to him.
The last thing he heard, as his sleepy eyes closed on the pillow, was that happy haunting little air, like a tune played high up on a violin, faintly, faintly.
“I’m coming. I’m coming, little Peterkins. Don’t be impatient.”
It was like the rustle of wind in an angel’s wings who had already set out on the journey.
CHAPTER VIII—“COMING. COMING, PETERKINS”
Peter took all the credit to himself—she was his baby. And why not? Nobody, not even his mother or father, had had anything to do with her advent. For many months after Philip’s short sojourn, his mother had cried and his father had frowned whenever babies were mentioned. Had it not been for Peter, the little sister might have slipped God’s memory. Peter gave him no chance to forget. Every night, kneeling between the bed-clothes with his lips against the pillow to muffle the sound, he reminded God. He realized that this attitude was not respectful and always apologized in his prayers. He did it because big people wouldn’t understand if they caught him kneeling beside the bed; it would be quite easy to fall asleep there and get found.—So, of course, when she came, she belonged to him. But her coming was not yet. He had no end of trouble in getting her.
After he had heard the whistling, he tried to tell Grace about it. This happened the very next morning. She had risen late and was dressing him in a hurry in order to get him down in time for breakfast. She hardly listened to him at all, but jerked him this way and that, buttoning and tying and tucking.
“My, oh, my! There’s only emptiness inside your little ‘ead this mornin’; you must ‘ave left your brains beneath the pillow. What a lot o’ talk about nothin’.”
“It wasn’t nothing, Grace. I really and truly heard it.”
“Now then, no false’oods, young man. God’s a-listenin’ and writin’ it all down.—There, Grice didn’t mean to be h’angry! But you talk your tongue clean out o’ your ‘ead.”
“But Grace, I did. I did. It was like this.”
He pursed his lips together; only a splutter came. Grace rubbed his face vigorously with the flannel, leaving a taste of soap in his mouth.
“You should ‘ear my new sweet’eart.” She was trying to create a diversion. “‘E can make a winder rattle in its frame; it’s that loud and shrill, the noise ‘e do make. If you’re a good boy, maybe I’ll get ‘im to teach you ‘ow.”
He was bursting with his strange new knowledge; he was sure his mother would understand. While his father was at the table he kept silent. His father soon hurried away; the front-door slammed.
He plucked at his mother’s skirt. “Last night God was in my cupboard.”
“But darling, little boys oughtn’t to say things like that—not even in fun, Peter.”
“I heard him, mummikins. An angel was with him, doing like this.”
He puffed out his cheeks; but he wasn’t so clever as the angel. No sound came.
His mother gazed long into the eager face, trying to detect mischief. “Whistling—is that what you mean? But angels don’t whistle, Peter.”
“This one did—in our cupboard—in my bedroom.”
He wagged his head solemnly in affirmation. Then he drew down his mother’s face. She was smiling to herself. “God was making our baby,” he whispered, “and the angel was waiting to bring her.”
The rain came into her eyes—that was what Peter called it. “Hush, my dearest. That’s all over. You’re my only baby now.”
She pressed him to her; he could feel her shaking. Just then, he knew, nothing more must be said.
Many times he tried to tell her. One evening, while the angel was whistling, she tiptoed into his bedroom. Looking up through the darkness he saw her and seized her excitedly about the neck. “They’re there, mummy. Don’t you hear her? She’s whistling now.” He pronounced it ‘wussling.’
“Why her, Peter?”
“I dunno; but listen, listen.”
She opened the cupboard door. “See, there’s nothing.”
“She stopped when you did that.”
“Go to sleep, my precious. You’re dreaming. If there was anything, mother would have heard it as well.”
So he learnt to keep his secret to himself; no one seemed able to share it. Every now and then, he would stop in his playing, with his head on one side and his face intent; those who watched would see him creep upstairs and peep into the big, dark cupboard. Strangely enough, whatever he thought he heard, he did not appear frightened.
When the doctor was called to examine him he said, “A very imaginative child! Oh dear no, he’s quite well. He’ll grow out of that fancy. Won’t you, old chap?”
At the back of his mother’s mind was the terror that she was going to lose him. She kept him always with her. When that dreamy look came into his eyes and he turned his head expectantly, she would snatch him to her breast, as though someone lurked near to take him from her. And Peter lay still in her arms and smiled, for it seemed to him that the angel leant over the banisters and whistled softly, “I’m coming. I’m coming, little Peterkins.”
But Peter was anxious to make God hurry. It was Grace who taught him how.
Her faith came in spasms. Although she beat the drum for the Salvation Army her fervor had its ups and downs. She used to tell Peter. When her love-affairs went wrong, she was overwhelmed with doubt and refused to go on parade. “‘E can carry the drum ‘isself,” she would say, speaking of her Maker. “If ‘e don’t look after me no better, I’ve done with ‘im. It’s awright; I don’t care. ‘E can please ‘isself. If ‘e can do without me, I can do without ‘im. So there.”
These confidences made Peter feel that God was an excessively accessible person. One evening, kneeling in his mother’s lap with folded hands, he surprised her by adding to the petition she had taught him, “Now, look here, God, I’m tired of waiting. I wants——”
At this point he was stopped by a gentle hand pressed firmly over his mouth.
“I can’t think what’s come to Peter,” she told her husband; “he speaks so crossly to God in his prayers.”
“That’s Grace,” said Barrington laughing, “you mark my words. You’d better talk to her.”
“Oh, but I’m so frightened when he does like that. Billy, do you think——”
He stopped her promptly. “No, I don’t. The boy’s all right.”
Seeing how her lips trembled, he took her in his arms. “You’ve never grown out of your short frocks—you’re so timid, you golden little Nan.”
It was after Grace had been spoken to that she made it up with her Maker. When this occurred, Peter was with her in the dimly lit hall where the soldiers of Salvation gathered. She was sitting beside him sulkily on the back bench nearest the door; suddenly she rose and dashed forward in a storm of weeping. While the penitent knelt by the platform, the man who was waving his arms went on talking. Peter was growing frightened for her, when she jumped to her feet, seizing a tambourine which she banged and shook above her head, and shouted, “I’m cleansed. I’m cleansed.”
Partly because of her strength and partly because of her righteousness, she was allowed to carry the drum again and march in the front of the procession. Peter was impressed. After that when he had been impatient with God, he would seek forgiveness by declaring himself cleansed. He always thought that, following such confessions, the whistling came louder from the cupboard.
But it was Uncle Waffles who completed his information. At intervals he would come over to Topbury with Aunt Jehane. So far as the ladies were concerned, the talk was usually about their children. Aunt Jehane would rarely fail to mourn the fact that hers were both girls.
“Boys are different,” she would say; “you can turn them out to sink or swim. But girls! Sooner or later one has to get them married. It’s like my fortune to have two of them—the luck was with you from the first.”
Perhaps that was Jehane’s way of reminding Nan that she had given her husband only Peter. Waffles seemed to construe it in that light for, when she had repeated her complaint more than twice, he would tuck Peter under one arm and Glory under the other, and steal away to some hidden place where he could ask him funny questions. If he heard a cock crowing he would stop and inquire, “Why does the Doodle-do?”
The little boy almost always forgot the proper answer. Uncle Waffles would have to tell him, “Because he does, Peter.”
Peter soon learnt that Uncle Waffles had secrets as well, for, when he talked in the presence of his wife, he would hold his chin in his hand, so as to be able to slip his fingers quickly over his mouth if he found that unwise words were escaping. If he were too late in slipping up his fingers, she would say quite sharply, “Ocky, don’t be stupid. You’re no better than a child.”
It was because Uncle Waffles was no better than a child that Peter took courage to ask him, “How does people have babies?”
His uncle regarded him seriously a moment. “You’re very little to ask such questions. It’s a great secret. If I tell you, promise to keep it to yourself.”
When he had promised, his uncle whispered. And Peter knew that it was true, for he remembered that someone had been lazy and had had breakfast in bed before the coming of both Riska and Philip. So he learnt the last piece of witchcraft by which babies are induced to come into the world. From then on, until it happened, he was continually coaxing his mother not to get up to breakfast. One morning she took his advice; then he knew for certain that Uncle Waffles was very wise, even though Aunt Jehane did call him stupid.
For some time the whistling had been growing bolder: it would come out of the cupboard as though the angel were running; it would wander all over the house and meet him in the most unexpected places. When he was playing in the garden it would drift down to him from the tree-tops, “Coming, Peterkins. Coming.” It had grown quick like that, as though it, too, were impatient of waiting.
Two years had gone by since God had sent Philip and taken him back so suddenly. It was within a few days of the anniversary and very close to Christmas. All day the sky had been heavy with clouds. It was bitterly cold outside; Peter had been kept in the nursery with a big, red fire blazing. Everyone seemed busy; they opened the door now and then to make sure that he was all right, and left him to play by himself. Toward evening the clouds burst like great pillows, swollen with angels’ feathers; softly, softly, covering up bare trees, putting the world to sleep beneath a great white counterpane, the snow came down.
He woke in the night; it was like a lark singing right beside his bed. It was the old haunting little air that it sang, but so much quicker, “Coming. Coming. Coming.” Sometimes it sank into the faintest whisper; sometimes it would swell into a sound so loud and happy that even Grace’s sweetheart could not have whistled louder. Grace turned drowsily and, seeing him sitting up, drew him down beneath the clothes, putting her arms about him. No, she had not heard it.
In the morning his mother’s breakfast was carried upstairs and his father looked worried. Peter grew afraid lest he had done wrong and a little sister was not wanted. So he hid himself in the big dark cupboard in the bedroom and was not missed for hours.
Presently voices wandered up and down the house, sometimes sounding quite near and sometimes quite distant, “Peter! Peter! Where are you?” They seemed afraid to call louder.
Peter had his suspicions, so he kept quiet. They did not want her—and they knew that he had done it.
Someone said “Shish!” The other voices sank into silence; now it was only his father’s that he heard. “Peter-kins, Peterkins, father wants you. Don’t be frightened. He’s going to tell you something grand.”
So Peter came out; when he saw his father’s face, he knew that he was not angry.
“You did want her too—didn’t you, didn’t you, Daddy?”
“Of course I did, you rummy little chap. But how did you know? Who told you?”
Although he coaxed and rubbed his scrubby chin against Peter’s neck, he never got an answer to that question. Where was the good of answering? Either you had ears like Peter’s or you hadn’t.
CHAPTER IX—KAY AND SOME OTHERS
She filled all his thoughts; the world had become new to him. Picture-books were no longer amusing; just to be Peter with a little strange sister was the most fascinating story imaginable.
It was easy to keep him good; Grace had only to threaten that he should not see her. See her! He lived for that. Early in the morning he was at the bedroom door, waiting for the nurse to look out and beckon. As he followed her in on tiptoe, his golden little motherkins would turn on her pillow, holding out her hand. She was prettier than ever now. If Peter had known the word, he would have said she looked sacred: that was what he felt. And she seemed to have grown younger. She appeared immature as a girl, so slim and pale, stretched out in the broad white bed. Her hair lay in shining pools between the counterpane mountains.
“Pepperminta, you’re no older than Peter,” he had heard his father tell her; “you’re a kiddy playing with dollies—not a mother. It’s absurd.”
He knew from watching his father that, if they had loved her before, they must love her ten thousand times better now. When he went for his walks with Grace, he spent his pennies to bring her home flowers.
Everything in that room had been brightened to welcome the little sister. It had a sense of whiteness and a soft, sweet fragrance. They had to make the little sister feel that they were glad she had come and wanted her to stay. So a fire was kept burning in the grate. They spoke in whispers and walked on their toes, the way one does in church.
Climbing on a chair, he would seat himself at the foot of the bed while his mother’s eyes laughed at him from the pillow, “We’ve managed it this time, little Peter.”
Presently the nurse would turn back the sheet and show him the stranger, cuddled in his mother’s breast; he would see a shining head, like fine gold scattered on white satin.
“The same as yours, mummy.”
“And the same as yours, darling.”
When anyone found him in any way like her, Peter was glad.—If he waited patiently, the blue eyes would open and stare straight past him, seeing visions of another world.
“She sees something, mummy.”
“God, perhaps.”
Peter thought he knew better, for he heard quite near, yet so softly that it might have been far away, the violinlike whisper of one who whistled beneath her breath.
“Dearest, was Peter like that?”
“Peter and everybody.”
There were times when he was allowed to slip his finger between those of the tiny fisted hand. When he felt their pressure, they seemed to say, “I’m yours, Peter-kins. Take care of me, won’t you?”
He was sure she knew that he had seen God make her.
He did not want to speak; he was perfectly content to sit in the sheltered quiet, watching. He would listen outside the door for hours on the chance of being admitted. If Grace missed him, she always knew where he might be found.
As the little sister grew, he was permitted to see her bathed and dressed. One by one the soft wrappings were removed and folded, and the perfect little body revealed itself. No wonder God had taken so long; he had put such love into his work. By and by she learnt how to crow and splash. Her first recorded smile was given to Peter. But long before that a name had to be chosen.
She was christened Kathleen Nancy and was called Kay, because that made her sound dearer.
Peter was nearly seven at the time of her coming. Of all people, he and his mother seemed to know her best. They had secrets about her; before she could talk, they told one another what her baby language meant. During her first summer on earth, they would sit beside her cradle in the garden, believing that birds and flowers stooped to watch her.
“You’re no older than Peter,” his father had said. But, when he came home from the city, he would join them and seemed perfectly happy to gaze on Kay, with Peter on his knee, holding Nan’s free hand.
Even in those early days, it was strange the power that Peter had over her. If she were crying, she would stop and laugh for Peter. She would sleep for Peter, if he hummed and rocked her. When she began to speak, it was Peter who taught her and interpreted what she said; that was during her second summer, when leaves in the garden were tapping. They grew to trust Peter where Kay was concerned. “He’s so gentle with her,” they said.
“Might be ‘er father, the care ‘e takes of ‘er. It’s uncanny,” Grace told her sweetheart.
Her sweetheart was a policeman at this moment; his profession did not make for sentiment. “Father, by gum! Fat lot o’ care your father took o’ you, I’ll bet.”
Grace’s father was a cabby and was known to the Barrington household as Mr. Grace—a name of Peter’s bestowing. He drove a four-wheeler and had a red face. His stand was at the bottom of Topbury Crescent, which formed the blade to the sickle of which the Terrace was the handle.
When Kay was beginning to toddle, her cot was transferred from her parents’ to Peter’s bedroom. Nan was none too strong and Barrington could not afford to be roused at five in the morning—he worked too hard and required all his rest. Had Peter’s wishes been consulted, this was just how he would have arranged matters. From the moment when the light went out to the moment when his eyelids reluctantly lowered, he had Kay all to himself. Throwing off the clothes, he would slip out and kneel beside her cot, softying her with his face and hands. He had to do this carefully lest he should be heard. Sometimes, in stepping out, the mattress squeaked and a voice would call up the tall dim stairs, “Peter, are you in bed?” An interval would elapse while he hurried back; then he would answer truthfully, “Yes.” Often the voice would say knowingly, “You are now.”
But the temptation was too great. It was so wonderful to touch her in the darkness, to hear her stir, to feel her hand brush his cheek and the warm sleepy lips turned toward his mouth.
“It’s only Peter,” he would whisper; and, perhaps, he would add, “Little Kay, aren’t you glad I borned you?”
Oh yes, it was he who had contrived her birth. There, as a proof, was the big dim cupboard where it had all commenced.
In the shadowy darkness of the room, before Grace came up to undress, he lived in a world of fancy. Through the oblong of the doorway the faint gold glimmered, made by the lowered gas. In the square of the window, as in a magic mirror, all kinds of strange things happened. Great soft clouds moved across it, like mountains marching. Presently they would stand aside, giving him glimpses of deep lagoons and floating lands. Stars would dance out, like children holding hands, and wink and twinkle at him. The moon would let down her silver ladder, smiling to him to ascend. He laughed back and shook his head. Oh, no thank you; Kay needed his attention.
Beneath the sky was a muffled world, like a Whistler nocturne, of house-tops and drowsy murmurs. It was a vague field of seething shadows in which the blur of street-lamps was a daffodil forest. Dwellings which were blind all day, in streets he had never traversed, now peered stealthily from behind their curtains with the unblinking eyes of cats. What did they do down there? Church bells in the Vale of Holloway would try to tell him. Sometimes strains of a barrel-organ would drift up merrily and he would picture how ragged children danced, beating time with rapid feet upon the muddy pavement. Sometimes in the distance, like a scarlet fear, a train would shoot across the murk and vanish.
But always from these wanderings his imagination would return to the cot where the little sister nestled. Who was it put the thought into his head? Was it some strange confusion between winking stars and the Bethlehem story? Or was it Grace in one of her flights of poetry? Long ago, he told himself, like this the Boy Jesus must have sat keeping guard over a baby sister, while at the bottom of a tall steep house Mary helped Joseph, making chairs and tables.
Once Peter gave things away completely by trusting too much to his wakefulness; he was found asleep on the floor beside Kay’s cot when Grace came up to undress.
If the nights had their spice of adventure because such doings were forbidden, the mornings were not to be sneered at. He would be wakened by a small hand stroking his face and she would snuggle into bed beside him. Years after, when he was a man, he remembered the sensation of her cold feet when she had found him difficult to rouse.
But the greatest treat of all came rarely. When his father went away on a journey, his mother could cast aside her habits. She would make her home in the nursery and hirelings would be driven out. Grace would be given an evening with her policeman, and Peter, and Kay, and Nan would have each other to themselves. If it were winter, they would have supper by firelight, after which they would sit and toast themselves while Nan told stories of her girlhood. Kay would be taken into her lap and Peter would sit on the rug, cuddling against her skirt.
“How did Daddy find you, Mummy?”
And when that had been told in a simplified version, “Mummy, should I be your little boy, if you’d married someone else?”
Since there seemed some doubt, Peter made haste to assure her, “Dearest, I’m so, so glad.”
In the dancing flames and shadows, Kay would be undressed and popped into the tin-bath while Peter helped. Then, all warm and snuggly, she would be carried to her mother’s bed. In a short time Peter would follow and fall asleep with his arms about her.
Toward midnight he would rouse; the gas was lit and someone was rustling. Looking down the bed, he would see his mother with her gold hair loose about her shoulders. “Hush,” she would whisper, placing her finger against her mouth. So he would lie still, watching her shadow on the walls and ceiling. Again the room was in darkness; his face was hidden in her breast as she clasped him to her. He was thinking how lucky it was that his father had found her.
In the morning Kay would wake them, climbing across their legs or losing herself beneath the bed-clothes. Just to be different from all other mornings, they would have their breakfast before they dressed. What an adventure they made of it and what good times they had!
In after years, looking back, Peter realized what children he had had for parents; they seemed anything but children then. His father was not too old to be a lion on hands and knees beneath the table, trying to catch him as he ran round. At last his mother would cry out, “Billy, dearest, do stop it. You’ll get the boy excited.”
And then there were those empty rooms at the top of the house to be furnished. Peter’s father led him all over London, visiting beery old women and dingy old men, whose shops to the unpracticed eye were stocked with rubbish. Oak paneling, bronzes, French clocks, canvases dim with dirt, were discovered and carried home in triumph. For the canvases frames had to be hunted out; the pursuit was endless. These treasures were driven home in cabs, taking up so much room that Peter had to make himself smaller. Nan would fly to the door as the wheels halted on the Terrace.
“Peter, why did you let him? Oh, Billy, how extravagant!”
“But, my dear, it’s an investment. I paid next to nothing and wouldn’t sell it for a thousand pounds.”
“Couldn’t,” she corrected; but, as was proved later, she was wrong in that.
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.”
Where were the “sweet fields of Eden”? Peter liked the sound of them and would have asked her, had not something held him back. She must be very tired, he thought, to be singing always about rest. Yet he never saw her work.
He had been there many times and had only heard her, until one day, as he was scampering down the passage with Miss Madge pursuing, the door opened and a woman with dim eyes and hair as white as snow looked out. She gazed at him without interest; but when Kay toddled up to her fearlessly, she stooped and caught her to her breast.
Several things about the Misses Jacobite struck Peter as funny. They divided the visit up, so that each might have a child for part of it entirely to herself. Each would behave during that time as though she were a mother famished for affection, returned from a long journey, and would invent secrets which were to be shared by nobody but the child and herself. Kay and Peter were carried off into separate rooms, and there played with and cuddled by a solitary Miss Jacobite. Though the Misses Jacobite were obviously poor, the children always went home with a present; often enough it was a toy from the dusty, disused nursery. When they met Kay and Peter on Sundays and people were watching, they pretended to forget the other things that had happened.
“I wonder you let your children go there,” people said.
Nan smiled slowly and answered softly, gathering Kay and Peter to her. “Poor things! They were robbed of everything. I have so much I don’t deserve. I can spare them a little of my gladness.”
“But, Mrs. Barrington, that’s mere sentiment. How does your husband allow it?”
One day Nan’s husband spoke up for himself. “Did you ever hear of the raft? I thought not. Well, Nan and I have.”
CHAPTER X—WAFFLES BETTERS HIMSELF
It was the month of June. A breeze blowing in at the open window fluttered out the muslin curtains and shook loose the petals of roses standing on the table. A milk-cart rattled down the Terrace, clattering its cans. Sounds, which drifted in from the primrose-tinted world, were all what Peter would have described as “early.” The walls of the room were splashed with great streaks of sunlight, which lit up some of the pictures with peculiar intensity and left others in contrasting shadow. One of those which were thus illumined was a Dutch landscape by Cuyp, hanging against the dark oak paneling above a blue couch; it represented a comfortable burgher strolling in conversation with two women on the banks of a canal. Barrington liked to face it while he sat at breakfast; it gave him a certain indifference to worry before the rush of the day commenced. But this morning, to judge by his puckered forehead, it had not produced its usual effect. He glanced up from the letter he was reading and tossed it across to Nan. “What d’you make of that?”
She bent over it, wrinkling her brows. The letter was in a man’s handwriting and the postscript, which was of nearly equal length, was in a woman’s.
“I don’t know; if it was from anyone but Ocky——”
“Precisely, Ocky’s a fool. He’s always been a fool and he’s growing worse; but Jehane ought to have sounder sense. It’s beyond me why she married him. I never did understand Jehane; I suppose I never shall.”
“You’re not a woman, Billy; or else you would. She was sick and tired of being lonely and dependent; she wanted someone to take care of her. Ocky was the only man who offered. But that’s eight years ago—I’m afraid she’s found him out; and she’s doing her best to persuade herself that she hasn’t. Poor Jehane, she always admired strong men—men she could worship.”
“That explains but it doesn’t excuse her. She had a strong man in Captain Spashett; the hurry of her second marriage was indecent. I never did approve of it. I said nothing at first because I thought she might help Ocky to grow a backbone.—And now there’s this new folly, which she appears to encourage.”
“But, dear, is it so foolish? Perhaps, she’s given him a backbone and that’s why he’s done it.” She laughed nervously. “They both say that this is a great opportunity for him to better himself.”
“Bah! The only way for Ocky to better himself is to change his character. He’s a balloon—a gas-bag; he’ll go up in the air and burst. The higher he goes, the further he’ll have to tumble. You think I’m harsh with him; I know him. Jehane’s done him no good; she despises him, I’m sure, though she doesn’t think she shows it. She’s filled his head with stupid ambitions and before she’s done she’ll land him in a mess. She’s driven him to this bravado with private naggings; he wants to prove to her that he really is a man. Man! He’s a child in her hands. It hurts me to watch them together. Why can’t she be a wife to him and make up her mind that she’s married a donkey?”
“It’s difficult for a woman to make up her mind to that—especially a proud, impatient woman.”
He paid no attention to his wife’s interruption, but went on irritably with what he was saying.
“So he’s giving up a secure job, and he’s going into this harum-scarum plan for buying up the sands of Sandport for nothing and selling them as house-plots for a fortune. Even if there were anything in it, who’s going to finance him? Of course he’ll come to me as usual.”
“But he says he’s got the capital.”
“That’s just it—from where? His pocket always had a hole in it. When he says he’s got money, I don’t believe him; when he’s proved his word I grow nervous.”
Barrington leant across the table, rapping with his knuckles. “Ocky’s the kind of amiable weak fellow who can easily be made bad—especially by a woman who refuses to love him. Once a man like that’s gone under, you can never bring him back—he’s lost what staying quality he ever had.”
Nan rarely argued with her husband. Pushing back her chair, she went and knelt beside him, pressing her soft cheek against his hand. “You are a silly Billy, dearest, to be so serious on such a happy morning. There’s no danger of Ocky ever becoming bad; and, in any case, what’s this got to do with the matter? I know he’s foolish and his jokes get on your nerves; but it isn’t his fault that he’s not clever like you. You shouldn’t be gloomy just because he’s going to be daring. I don’t wonder he’s sick of that lawyer’s office. And it’s absurd to think that he’s going to be bad; look how Peter loves him. You like Ocky more than you pretend, now don’t you?”
“If liking’s being sorry. I’m always sorry for an ass; and I’m angry with Jehane because she knows better. She’s doing this because she’s jealous of you—that’s why she clutches at this bubble chance of prosperity.”
“Ar’n’t you a little unjust to her, Billy? Since our marriage, you’ve always been unjust to her. You know why she’s jealous—she wants her husband to be like you.”
Her voice sank away to a whisper. “Oh, Janey, I did, I did play fair,” she had said that night at Cassingland; in her violent assertion of fairness there had been an implied question which Jehane had never answered. Both she and her husband knew that they had never been acquitted.
Barrington drew Nan’s head against his shoulder. “Poor people.” Then he kissed her with new and eager gladness.
“And it isn’t only pity you feel for Ocky?” She persisted. “Now confess.”
He pulled out his watch hastily and, having replaced it, gulped down his coffee. “When I was Peter’s age, we were brought up like brothers together. I loved him then; I’m disappointed in him now. And yet I’m always catching glimpses in him of the little chap I played with. You see, at school I was the stronger and had to protect him. I was always fighting his battles. And one whole term, when his hand was poisoned, I had to take him to the doctor to get it dressed—— No, it isn’t only pity, Pepperminta: it’s memories.”
As he was going out of the door she called after him, “Then, I suppose, I can write and say we’ll have them?”
“While they’re moving—the children? Yes.”
“Jehane doesn’t say how many.”
“She means all, I expect. There’s the garden for them—it’ll be fun for Kay and Peter.”
A week later, Jehane traveled across London to Top-bury Terrace, bringing with her Glory, aged nine, Riska, aged six, and her youngest child, Eustace, who was the same age as Kathleen. Jehane was now in her thirty-seventh year, a striking brooding type of woman. As her face had grown thinner and her cheeks had lost their color, the gipsy blackness of her appearance had become more noticeable. She still had a fine figure, so that men in public conveyances would furtively lower their papers to gaze at her. There clung about her an atmosphere of adventure, of which she was not entirely unaware. She was unconquerably romantic, and would spin herself stories in the silence of her fancy of a love that was crushing in its intensity. No one would have guessed from the hard little lines about the corners of her eyes and mouth that this imaginative tenderness formed part of her character.
Since the birth of Eustace her hair had fallen out in handfuls and she had adopted a style of dressing it that was distinctly unbecoming. She had had her combings made up into an affair which Glory called “Ma’s mat.” It consisted of half-a-dozen curls, sewn together in rows like sausages, which she pinned across the top of her head so that they made a fringe along her forehead. It gave her an old-fashioned look of prim severity. Jehane retained for Nan an affection which was partly genuine and partly habit; but she resented Nan’s youthful appearance with slow jealous anger, attributing it to freedom from anxiety and the possession of money. As for Nan, her attitude was one of gentle and atoning apology for her happiness. “I’m so glad you brought the children yourself, Janey.”
“And who could have brought them? I’m not like you—I only keep two servants. When this scheme of Ocky’s has turned out all right, perhaps it may be different.”
She turned swiftly on Nan with latent defiance, as though challenging her to express doubt.
“I’m sure both Billy and I hope it will. Wouldn’t it be splendid to see Ocky really a big man?”
“It would be a good deal more than splendid. It would mean the end of little houses and cheap servants and neighbors that you can’t introduce to your father’s friends. It would mean the end of pinching and scraping to save a penny. And it would mean a chance for my girls.”
Nan slipped an arm into hers and hugged it. “Dear old thing, I think I understand. And when is Ocky coming over to tell us all about it? He gave us hardly any details in his letter.”
Jehane became evasive. “He’s naturally very busy. The chance developed so suddenly that he’s hardly had time to turn round. It came to him through a client at the office. Mr. Playfair had noticed him at his desk as he passed in and out to see Mr. Wagstaff. He’s told Ocky since that he spotted him at once and said to himself, ‘If ever I want a chap with-business push and legal knowledge, that’s my man.’”
“And he’s never talked with him?”
“Hardly. Not much more than to say ‘How d’you do?’ or ‘Good-morning’.”
“Wasn’t it wonderful that he should have sized him up in a flash?”
Jehane glanced at her narrowly. “It may be wonderful to you; it isn’t to me. I’m well aware that you and Billy don’t think much of Ocky. Oh, where’s the sense in disowning it? You both think he’s a born fool.”
“I’m sure you never heard Billy say that.”
“Heard him say it! Of course I didn’t. I’d like to hear him dare to say anything like that about my husband. But actions speak louder than words. He thinks it just the same; he thinks that Ocky’s good for nothing But to sit at a desk, taking a salary from another man. P’rhaps, you didn’t know that for years Ocky’s been the brains of that office?”
Nan lifted her honest eyes; she was filled with discomfort. This kind of controversy was always happening when they met; they drifted into some sort of feud for which Jehane invariably held her responsible. “The brains of the office! No, indeed, I never heard that. Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because you and Billy thought he was incompetent, and it didn’t seem worth the trouble to correct you.”
“I’m sure I’ve always thought him very kind, especially to Peter.”
“Kind! What’s kindness got to do with being clever?” Nan pressed Jehane to stay to dinner. She would send a telegram to Ocky; she would send her home in a cab. But Jehane was in an ungracious mood and eager to take offense. She resented the implication that a cab was a luxury. No, she couldn’t stay; there was too much to do. She had intended to return in a cab, anyhow. In reality she was anxious to avoid Barrington’s shrewd questioning. She was rising to take her departure, when she saw him descending the garden steps.
“Ha, Jehane! This is luck. I’ve had thoughts of you all day. That letter’s got on my nerves. I couldn’t work; so I came home early.—Oh no, we’re not going to let you off now. You’ve got to stop and tell us. By the way, before Ocky actually decides, I’d like to talk the whole matter over with him.”
“He’s decided already.”
“You don’t mean———-”
“Yes. Why not? He’s given Wagstaff notice. Things so happened that he had to make up his mind in a hurry or lose it.—But I really ought to be going. Nan knows everything now.”
Barrington placed his hand on her shoulder arrestingly. At his touch she drew back and colored. “This thing’s too serious, Jehane,” he said, “to be dismissed in a sentence. I have a right to know.”
He spoke kindly, but she answered him hotly. “What right, pray?”
“Well, if anything goes wrong, there’s only me to fall back on. And then there’s the right of friendship.”
“I can’t say you’ve shown yourself over friendly. If you’ve had to meet Ocky, you’ve let all the world see you were irritated. If you’ve ever invited him to your house, you’ve taken very good care that no one important was present. One would judge that you thought he lowered you. I can’t see that you have the right to know anything.”
“That can only be because your husband hasn’t told you. To quote one instance, it was through my influence that he got this position that he’s now thrown over—Wagstaff is my lawyer.”
Jehane tossed her head. “You always want to make out that he owes you everything—— Well, what is it that I’m forced to tell you?”
Barrington kept silence while they walked down the path to where chairs were spread beneath the cedar. The children ran up boisterously to greet him; having kissed them, he told Grace to take them away and to keep them quiet. When he spoke, his tones were grave and measured: “It wasn’t fair of Ocky to send you to tell us; he ought to have come himself.”
“He didn’t send——”
Barrington held up his hand. “You can’t tell me anything on that score; from the first he’s shirked responsibility. He would never fight if he could get anyone else to fight for him. Many and many’s the time I’ve had to dohis dirty work. Now you’re doing it. This is unpleasant hearing, Jehane; but you know it’s true. I’d take a wager that you spent hours trying to screw up his courage to make him come himself.”
She lifted her head to deny it, but his quiet gray eyes met hers. Their sympathy and justice disturbed her. She refused to be pitied by this man——. A great fear rose in her throat. What if his opinion of her husband were correct? It was the opinion she herself had had for years and had tried to stifle. Time and again she had listened to his plausibility—his boastings that he was the brains of the office, that luck was against him and that one day he would show the world. She had used his arguments to defend him to her relations and friends. In public she had made a parade of being proud of him. In private she had tried to ridicule him out of his shame-faced manners. And now she was trying so hard to believe that he had found his opportunity.—It was cruel of Barrington, especially cruel when he knew quite well that it was him she had loved. She could not endure to sit still and hear him voice her own suspicious and calmly analyze the folly of her marriage.
“If you think that my husband was afraid to come and tell you, the only way to prove the contrary is to let him come himself to-morrow.”
“I shall be more than glad to see him.”
But Ocky did not come to-morrow, nor the next day. The day after that Barrington went to see his lawyer.
“Good-morning, Mr. Wagstaff. I should like to speak to you about my cousin, Mr. Waffles.”
Mr. Wagstaff twitched his trousers up to prevent them from rucking as he crossed his legs. “If there’s anything I can do to help you, Mr. Barrington——”
“I understand he’s given you notice.”
Mr. Wagstaff sat up suddenly. “Understand what? He told you that?”
“No, he did not tell me. His wife did.”
“Ah, his wife! He left her to make the explanations. Just what one might expect.”
“Then he didn’t give you notice?”
“Course not.” Mr. Wagstaff spoke testily, as though for an employee to give him notice was an event beyond the bounds of possibility.
“Then he left without notifying you?”
“Well, hardly.”
The lawyer noticed that the door leading into the main office was ajar; he got up and closed it. When he returned he did not re-seat himself, but straddled the hearth-rug, holding up his coat-tails although no fire was burning.
“Mr. Barrington, sir, I put up with your cousin’s shiftlessness for longer that I ought to have done; I did it out of respect for you, sir. There was a time when I hoped I might make something of him. He can be nimble-witted over trifles and his own affairs; but he never put any interest into my work. He was insubordinate—not to my face, you understand, but when my back was turned; he wasn’t a good influence in the office. I tell you this, sir, to prove that I haven’t acted without consideration.”
The lawyer waggled his coat-tails and seemed to find a blemish in his boots, so earnestly did he regard them. When he received no help from Barrington, he suddenly came to the point and looked up sharply.
“He betrayed professional confidence; so I sacked him.”
“Had it happened before?”
“Possibly. He was always garrulous. This time it was an affair of some property at Sandport. Our client had two competing purchasers, one of whom was a Mr. Playfair. Your cousin leaked to Mr. Playfair—kept him informed as to what the other purchaser was doing. Not a nice thing to occur, Mr. Barrington.”
This last remark was as much an interrogation as an assertion. The lawyer waited for his opinion to be indorsed.
“Not at all nice,” Barrington assented. “If it’s lost you any money, I must refund it.”
“‘Tisn’t a question of money. Wouldn’t hear of that.” As Mr. Wagstaff shook hands at parting, he offered a crumb of comfort: “Mind, I don’t say your cousin is dishonest, Mr. Barrington; that would be too, too strong. Perhaps, it would be better stated by saying that his sense of honor is rudimentary.”
“Perhaps,” said Barrington brusquely. “I think I catch your meaning.”
CHAPTER XI—THE HOME LIFE OF A FINANCIER
People who loved Ocky Waffles always loved him for his good; he would have preferred to have been loved for almost any other purpose. Affection, in his experience, turned friends into schoolmasters. There was Barrington, a fine chap and all that; but why the dickens did he take such endless pains to be so uselessly unpleasant?
Ocky was on the lookout for Jehane when she returned from Topbury. As she turned the corner, he espied her from behind the curtains and lit his pipe to give himself confidence. No sooner had she entered than she commenced an account of her visit, indignantly underlining her interview with Barrington. Ocky seated himself on the edge of the table, puffing away and swinging his legs.
“Wants to see me, does he? He can go on wanting. I’m sick of his interfering. A fat lot he’s ever done to help me! And with his position and friends he could have helped me—instead of that he gives me his advice. Truth is, Jehane, he doesn’t want to see us climb; he’d rather be the patron of the family. With the best intentions in the world, he’s out to put a spoke in my wheel. Oh, I know him!—If he’s so anxious for information, he can come here to get it.”
While he spoke he scrutinized his wife, judging the effect of his blustering independence. She was suspicious of some hidden knowledge; he felt it. Something had been said behind his back at Topbury—something derogatory. Could Barrington have heard already.
Pressing down the ashes in the bowl of his pipe, he struck a match. Jehane was between himself and the door; he wondered whether he could slip past her and make his exit if things became unpleasant. He detested being cornered; he could be so much braver when the means of escape lay behind him. Meanwhile, it seemed good policy to continue talking.
“I don’t like the way they treat you at Topbury; you always come home down-hearted. There’s too much condescension. Nan overdoes it when she tries to be kind. The rich relation attitude! It riles me. When she makes you a present it’s always a dress—might just as well tell you to your face that you’re shabby. And last Christmas, sending Peter’s cast-off clothes to Eustace! Thank God, we’re not paupers and never shall be!”
As he worked himself into a passion Jehane eyed him somberly. The everlasting pipe, dangling from his mouth, annoyed her immensely. His trousers, bagging at the knees, and his pockets, stuffed with rubbish, were perpetual eyesores; she hated his slack appearance. Other men with his income at least attained neatness. It was not that he spared money on his clothes——. She caught herself comparing him with Barrington—Barrington whose tidy body was the outward sign of his well-ordered mind. Her husband went on talking and her irritation took a new direction.
“I’ll bet a fiver what they said when you told ‘em. ‘My dearest, if it could only happen’—that’s Nan. ‘Ah yes! Humph! sand at Sandport! We must talk this over before he decides’—that’s Barrington. We can guess what his advice’ll amount to, can’t we, old Duchess?”
It was safe to venture the endearment now. If they had nothing else in common, they were partners in their animosities. When running down an enemy together, he could dare to express his affection for her; his way of doing this was to call her Duchess. At other times she would brush him aside with, “Don’t be silly, Ocky.” She often called him “silly,” treating any demonstration as tawdry sentimentality. She had no idea how deeply it wounded.
Now, as she sank into the chair, he bent over and kissed her awkwardly. “Poor old gel, they’ve tired you out. Had nothing to eat since you left here, I’ll warrant. Put up your tootsies and I’ll pull off your shoes; then I’ll order some supper for you.”
“I couldn’t eat anything.”
The room was in darkness and the window wide. In the street children were screaming and playing. A mother, standing on her doorstep, called to her truants through the dusk——- Oh, for a gust of silence—a desert of sound without footsteps; Jehane felt that her life was trespassed on, jostled, undignified. Through the cramped suburb of red-brick villas crept the summer night, like a shameful woman footsore and clad in lavender. Red-brick villas! They were so similar that, if you shook them up in a gigantic hat and set them out afresh, the streets would look in no way different. They were all built in the same style. The mortar had fallen out in the same places. The front gardens were of equal dimensions. They had no individuality. If anyone attempted to be original in the color of her paint or the shape of her curtains, next day she was copied.
With the stale odor of tobacco mingled the sweet fragrance of June flowers. She had only to close her eyes and she was back in Oxford—Oxford which she had exchanged for this rash experiment. She wondered, had she been more patient, would something more delightful have happened. The sameness of economy had worn out her strength and its prospect appalled her.—If Ocky could contrive her escape, even at this late hour, what right had Barrington to prevent him?
He had gone to fetch her slippers—that at least was kind and thoughtful. She treated him with spite. She shrank from the familiarity of his touch. She hated herself for it; and yet she eked out the seconds of her respite from him.
A lamp-lighter shuffled by the garden railings; at his magic, primrose pools weltered up in the dusk.—This business of marriage—had she been less hasty, she might have done better for herself. Oh well, the wisdom which follows the event...
Footsteps on the stairs! As he knelt to put on her slippers, she conquered her revulsion and let her hand rest on his head. He started, surprised: it was long since she had shown him affection. His voice was shaky when he addressed her.
“Now you’re better, old dear. More rested, aren’t you?” She held him at arm’s length, her palms flat against his breast. In the darkness she felt the pleading in his eyes. “Oh, Ocky, you’ll do it this time, won’t you?”
“Do what, Duchess?”
“Don’t call me Duchess; just for once be serious.”
“I am serious, darling. What is it?”
“D’you remember years ago, when you asked me to marry you? D’you remember what you said?”
“Might, if you told me. Was I more than ordinarily foolish?”
“You said, ‘I need your strength. With you I could be a man.’”
“I’d clean forgotten. Funny way of proposin’—eh?”
“It wasn’t funny. That was just what you needed—a woman’s strength. I’ve tried so hard. But I’ve sometimes thought——”
“Go on, old lady.”
“I’ve sometimes thought we never ought to have married.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t you find me good enough? Come Jehane, I’ve not been a bad sort, now have I?”
“I’m accusing myself. I’ve tried to help you in wrong ways. I’ve been angry and sharp and nervous. You’ve come home and attempted to kiss me, and I’ve driven you out with my temper. And I don’t want to do it any more, and yet——”
“You’re upset.”
“No, I’m not. I’m speaking the truth. I’ve been a bad wife and I had to tell you.”
“‘Pon my word, can’t see how you make that out. You’ve given me your money to invest through Wagstaff, so he might think I had capital. And you’ve given me children, and——”
“It isn’t money that counts. It isn’t even children. Heaps of women whose husbands beat them bear them children. It’s that I haven’t trusted you sufficiently. I haven’t loved you.”
“I’ve not complained, so I don’t see—— But what’s put all this into your head?”
“D’you want to know? Seeing Billy and Nan together. They’re so different—you can feel it. They’re really married, while we—we just live together.”
Her voice broke. He put his arms about her, but even then she withdrew herself from him.
“Just live together! And isn’t that marriage? Whether you’re cross or kind to me, Jehane, I’d rather just live with you than be married to any other woman.”
“That’s the worst of it—I know you would. And I nag at you and I shall go on doing it. I feel I shall—and I do so want to do better.”
“Won’t money make a difference? That’s what’s the matter with us, Jehane; we’ve not had money.”
She placed her arms about his neck. “And that’s what I started to say, Ocky. You’ll do it this time, won’t you?”
“Make money? Rather. I should think so. Was talking to Playfair only this morning and he—— But look here, what makes you ask that? You’ll take all the stuffing out of me if you begin to doubt. Who’s been saying anything?”
“It isn’t what they said.”
He lit his pipe and crossed over to the window. In the darkness his outlined figure looked strangely round-shouldered and ineffectual. Her heart sank and her hope became desperate. His voice reached her blustering and muffled. She did wish he would remove his pipe when he spoke to her.
“I know. I know. Confound him! He’s been throwing cold water on my plans as usual. Wants to see me, does he? Well, if he wants badly enough to cross London, Ocky Waffles is his man. I shan’t go to him. That’s certain.”
Jehane strove to believe that his opposition to Barrington was a token of new strength.
Four days later a note arrived. She was tempted to open it, but it was addressed to her husband. Directly he came in she placed it in his hands.
“Read it aloud. What does he say?”
She watched Ocky’s face and saw how it faltered; then he hid the expression behind a mask of cynicism.
“If you won’t read it to me, let me read it myself.”
He crumpled it into his pocket hurriedly, as though he feared that she would snatch it from him. When all was safe, he turned toward the mantel-shelf, hunting for a match.
“Why did you do that?”
“It was addressed to me, wasn’t it? Barrington don’t let his wife read his letters, I’ll bet. Neither do I; I’m not a lawyer’s clerk in an office any longer—I’m going to be a big man.”
“But what did he say?”
Forced to answer, Ocky became reproachful. “Duchess, you’re suspecting me again—you remember what you promised the other night. He says he wants to see me—thinks there may be something in my plan. Daresay, he’ll offer to put money into it. You may bet, this little boy won’t let him. Of course on the surface he advises caution.”
“If that’s all, why can’t you let me read his letter?”
“Because if I did, I’d be acting as though you didn’t trust me. You could have read it with pleasure, if you hadn’t made such a fuss.”
Jehane knew his weak obstinacy of old and gave up the contest. “You won’t see him, of course—unless he comes to the house.”
“Don’t know about that.”
“But you were so emphatic.”
“I can change my mind, can’t I? His letter puts a different complexion on it.”
“But, Ocky, Barrington isn’t two-faced. He doesn’t say one thing to me and another thing to you. He may be awkward, but he isn’t underhand. If he’s in favor of your schemes now, he must have heard something that’s changed him.”
“Not a doubt of it. Very soon a good many people who’ve thought me small beer’ll hear something.”
“But you’ve not answered my question. Where are you going to see him?”
“Oh, maybe at his office.”
Whistling, with feigned cheerfulness, he strolled out. As she watched him slouch down the road, her fingers itched to correct the angle of his hat.
That night she searched his pockets and found the letter. It read, “Mr. Wagstaff has told me the truth. You must meet me at my place of business at twelve to-morrow.”
It was capable of the construction her husband had put on it; it was capable of many others.
Feeling through the coat next morning, searching for his tobacco-pouch, Ocky was shrewd enough to notice that the letter was in its envelope. Such neatness was not his habit. When he came back in the evening from seeing Barrington and Jehane enquired what he had been doing, he handed her the letter with generous frankness.
“You can read it now. I wanted to be sure before I told you. I was right. Barrington’s been talking to Wagstaif and has heard all about it. Oh yes, I can tell you, he’s a very different Barrington.”
“How?”
“He’s discovered that Ocky Waffles Esquire is a person to be respected.”
She scorned herself for her mean suspicions. He deserved an atonement. “Ocky, darling, I’m so glad.”
As her arms went about him, he patted her on the back. “That’s all right, old Duchess. You’ll believe in me now—eh?”
She lifted her face from his shoulder. It was tear-stained with penitence. “God knows, I’ve always tried to, Ocky.”
He must go her one better in generosity. Having deceived her, he could afford to be magnanimous.
“You’ve succeeded, old dear. You’ve given me your strength and made a man of me. I’m your doing.”
CHAPTER XII—THE ‘MAGINATIVE CHILD
The bettering of Mr. Waffles marked the beginning of that intimate and freakish association which was to shape the careers of the children of both families. Though their relationship was distant and in the case of Glory non-existent, they had been taught to regard one another as cousins. As yet they had met so occasionally and so briefly that they had not worn off the distrust, half-shy, half-hostile, which is the common attitude of children toward strangers. From now on they were to enter increasingly into one another’s lives.
Though Barrington had said that it would be fun for Kay and Peter to have Jehane’s children to play with in the garden and Nan had assented, neither of them had undertaken to tell Kay and Peter. They had promised them a surprise—that was all. Truth to tell, they had their doubts about Peter and how he would receive their information; his jealous air of proprietorship regarding his little sister gave them moments of puzzled uneasiness.
Years ago, before Kay was born, the doctor had told them, “He’s an imaginative child. Oh dear no, he’s quite well. He’ll grow out of it.” But he hadn’t. He stood by her always, as if he were a wall between her and some threatened danger. He was not happy away from her; his life seemed locked up in her life. His tenderness for her was beyond his years—beautiful and mysterious. In the midst of his play he would still raise his head suddenly, listening and expectant.
He was odd and gentle in many ways; to his mother his oddness was both frightening and endearing. Cookie shook her head over him and sighed, “‘E’s far away from this old world h’already. I doubt ‘e’ll never grow up to man-’ood.”
And Grace would reply sharply, “Wot rot!” But she would wipe her eye.
He had a habit of asking questions before guests with startling directness—asking them with big innocent eyes; they were questions for which his mother felt bound to apologize: “He’s so imaginative; for many years he was our only child.”
Peter, wondering wherein he had done wrong, would sidle up to her when the guests were gone, inquiring, “Mummy, what is a ‘maginative child?”
His father, when he heard him, would laugh: “Now, Peter, don’t be Peterish or you’ll make us all cry.”
So they did not tell him when his cousins were expected.
He was in the garden, on the grass beneath the cedar, with Kay curled against him. He was telling her stories—his own inventions. On the wall, partly hidden in creepers, basking in the sunshine, blinking down on them through slits of eyes, was a great gray tabby. The tabby was the subject of the story. One day, returning along the Terrace he had found her. Her bones were poking through her fur: she was evidently a stray. He had stopped to stroke her and she had followed. After being fed on the doorstep, she refused to set off on her wanderings again. Whenever the door opened, she entered like a streak of lightning. She was determined to be adopted; though cook had broomed her on to the pavement many times, she was not to be dissuaded by any harshness of refusal. It was almost as though she knew that Kay and Peter were her eager advocates.
With a cat so determined there was only one thing to do; take her out and lose her. So she was captured by feigned kindness and tied in a fish-basket; Grace was given a shilling and the fish-basket with instructions to go on a trip to Hampstead and to leave the fish-basket behind. Now, whether it was that Grace was more kind-hearted than her statements, or whether it was that she preferred the company of her policeman to the fulfilling of her errand, the fact remains that the cat got back before her. An incredible performance if the basket had really been left at Hampstead! Grace was circumstantial in the account she gave; there was nothing for it but to accept her word that a cat had traveled more swiftly than a train.
Stern methods were employed. Doors were closed against the cat; things were thrown at it. It was encouraged to go hungry. The children were forbidden to call it.
One morning Peter jumped out of bed and ran to the window attracted by a strange noise. Looking down into the garden, he saw a flurry of fur careering across flowerbeds till it was brought up sharply against the wall with a bang. The bang was caused by a salmon-tin, in which the cat had got its head fastened while foraging in a garbage-pail. Before he could go to its rescue, cook came out with her hostile broom and commenced the chase. The cat, blinded and maddened, by a miracle of agility climbed a tree, leapt into a neighboring garden and vanished.
A week later it returned, with a ring about its neck where the jagged edges of the tin had torn it. Such persistence and loyalty of affection were not to be thwarted. At first the animal was tolerated; then, as its manners and appearance improved, it was taken into the family. Because of its adventures, when a name had to be chosen, Peter’s father suggested Romance. When Romance gave birth to kittens, they were named after various of the novelists.
The history of Romance, where she went and what she did, was a story which Kay was never tired of hearing, nor Peter of telling. Blinking down from the wall on this sunshiny morning, Romance listened with contented pride to the children, much as an old soldier might whose campaigning days were ended.
“And what did putty say when Gwacie twied to lost her?”
The ‘maginative child was about to answer, when his mother came out under the mulberry: “Peter. Kay. Oh, there you are! Here’s your surprise.”
For a day or two, while the cousins were a novelty, there was nothing but laughter and delight; but when Peter understood that their visit was of undetermined length, he began to regard their coming as an intrusion. Kay and Eustace were of the same age and naturally chose one another as playmates. Eustace was a fat, dull boy, prone to tears, with his mother’s black eyes and handsome hair, and his father’s coaxing ways. He was only four, but he had it in his power to make Peter, aged ten, wretched; for Kay developed a will of her own, and cared no more for Peterish stories now that she could have Eustace for her slave.
So Peter was left to Riska and Glory. His old games for two were useless; he had to think up fresh inventions in which three might partake. He had no heart for it; Grace came to the rescue with pious hints from the Bible.
In the stable by a disused tank, they would enact Jacob’s wooing of Rachel; the tank was the well at which Jacob met her and Romance was the sheep brought down to be watered—she was, when they could catch her. But the game nearly always ended in flushed cheeks and protesting voices. Riska would insist on being Rachel, leaving Glory the undesired part of Leah, who was sore of eye. Of his two girl-cousins Peter preferred Glory; Riska was too high-tempered and stormy. So, when he had served for Rachel seven years and instead had won Leah, he not infrequently was content to stop, setting Bible history at defiance.
One evening his father, walking beneath the pear-trees, heard voices in the empty stable. “I won’t. I won’t,” in stubborn tones. “But you shall, you shall,” in a passionate wail.
He opened the door in the wall quietly. Glory was sitting on the ground, placid eyed, watching a hot-faced little boy who held off a small girl-cousin, fiercely determined to embrace him. When matters had been sullenly explained, Barrington drew his son to him: “If a lady asks you to kiss her, you should do it. It’s Peterish not to. But polygamy always ends in a cry. It’s better not to play at it.”
Then came the inevitable question: “What is polgigamy, father?”
Grace was asked for a fresh suggestion; the result was Samson and Delilah. To Peter’s way of thinking Riska was quite suited to the rÃÆôle of Delilah. Too well suited! In revenge, before he could stop her, she cut off Peter’s hair at the game’s first playing.
During her stay at Topbury she committed many such offences. She was a lawless little creature, strong of character, a wilful wisp of a child, and extraordinarily like Jehane. Her fragile eager face, with its coral mouth and soft dark eyes, could change from demure prettiness to a flame of anger the moment she was thwarted. Yet, smiling or stormy, her small-boned body and long black curls made her always beautiful—a wild and destructive kind of beauty. From the first she claimed Peter as her sole possession, and Peter—— Well, Peter did his best politely to avoid her.
Glory was his favorite, though he often seemed to ignore her. She was the opposite to her half-sister in both appearance and temper. She had nothing of Jehane in her; nor did she resemble her soldier father. She was oddly like to Kay and to a man whom her mother had desired with all her heart. It was strange.
She was gray-eyed and her hair was of a primrose shade. She was tall for her age—taller than Peter—and carried herself with sweet and subdued quietness. She said very little and had submissive ways. Her actions spoke loudly for anyone she loved. They spoke loudly for Peter; but he scarcely observed them. His eyes were all for Kay. Glory was like his shadow stealing after him across the sunlight through that month of June. Her hand was always slipping shyly into his from behind. And she understood his love for his sister, accepting it without question.
She would go to her small half-brother, “Come along Eustace; Glory wants to show you something.”
“But Eustace wanth to play wiv Kay.”
“Eustace can play with Kay directly. Just come with Glory, there’s a dear little boy.”
She would nod to Peter knowingly, and smile to him, leading Eustace away and leaving him alone with Kay.
He could fill her eyes with tears at the least show of irritation; her persistent following did irritate him sometimes. Once, cross because she followed, he told her to sit on the stable wall and not to move till he said she might. Tea-time came and there was no Glory. They searched the house for her and went out into the garden, calling. Not till Peter called did she answer; then he remembered why. He remembered years after the forlornness of that tear-stained face. It was Peterish of him to forget Glory, and to remember her almost too late.
Nan, sitting sewing in the quiet sunlight, would often drop her work to watch the children. She noticed how they kept together, yet always a little separate, acting out the clash of temperaments which they had inherited from their parents. And she noticed increasingly something else—something which she never mentioned and which explained Jehane to her: that astonishing likeness of Glory to Kay, as though they had been sisters.
She would call Glory to her and, as the child sat at her feet, would say, “Do you like Peter, darling?”
The honest eyes would be lifted to her own in affirmation.
“Very much?”
“Very much, Auntie.”
The girlish hand would slip into her own and presently a faltering voice would whisper, “But he doesn’t like me always. I worry him sometimes.”
Nan would call to Peter, “Glory’s tired of sitting with mother. She wants her little tyrant.”
As they wandered away across the lawn, she would follow them with her eyes.
“I hope Jehane’s good to her,” she said to Barrington. “Seems to be, in her jealous way.”
“She’s a nice child.”
“Nicer than Riska or Eustace. That’s thanks to Captain Spashett.”
“Ah, yes,” Nan would say.
Mr. Waffles, having moved his belongings to Sandport, came to fetch the intruders. Peter watched them depart with a sense of relief; now things would settle back into their old groove.
In July the house at Topbury was closed and the Barringtons went for their holiday to North Wales. The servants were sent to their homes, with the exception of Grace. Summer holidays were ecstatic times of fishing-rods and old clothes, when parents put aside their busy manners, broke rules and played truant. This particular holiday was made additionally adventurous by a tandem tricycle, on which Peter was allowed to accompany his father when his mother was too tired, trying to catch the pedals with his short legs or riding on the pedals away from the saddle, when his father was not looking.
He was his father’s companion many hours of each day, for Nan was often tired. His father had plentiful opportunities for judging just how ‘maginative was his child.
One morning, on going down to bathe, the sea was rough and Peter, reluctant to enter and still more reluctant to own it, made the excuse that he was frightened of treading on a dead sailor.
Peter, after hearing a sermon at the village chapel, grew profoundly sorry for the Devil. It seemed so dreadful to have to burn for ever and ever. He made a secret promise to God that he would take the Devil’s place. Then he thought it over for some days in horror; he had been too generous—he wanted to go back on his bargain. His mother found him crying one night; she suspected that he had been sleeping little by the dark blue rings under his eyes. She coaxed him, and he told her.
Another sign of his ‘maginativeness was his anxiety to know whether cows had souls.
“That boy thinks too much,” said his father; “he needs to rough and tumble with other boys of his own age. At ten his worst trouble should be tummy-ache.”
Nan smiled. “But Peter’s different, you know.”
“I know. But, if he’s to grow up strong, he must change. Little woman, I don’t like it.”
“Billy boy, I sometimes think it’s our doing, yours and mine. When we put toys in the empty nursery before he was born, before he was thought of, we were making him a ‘maginative child.”
“The sins of the parents, eh?”
“Not that. The love of the parents shall be visited upon the children unto the third and——”
“Pepperminta, you know more about God and Peter and love than I do. You’re right, and you’re always right. How is it that you learn so much by sitting so quiet?”
Matters came to a head through Kay. In the cottage where they stayed, Peter slept with her in the same bed, in a narrow room beneath a sloping roof. She was nervous to be left alone there—it was so dark, so far away, so strange; Peter, a willing martyr, went to bed with her at the same time. Lying awake in the dark or twilight, he would tell her stories.
“Listening, Kay?”
“Yeth,” in a little drowsy voice.
As she grew more sleepy she would snuggle closer with her lips against his face, till at last he knew by her regular breathing that his audience was indifferent to his wildest fancies.
One evening his parents returned from a ride and, entering the house, heard a stifled sobbing.
“What’s that?”
“Must be the children.”
“You wait here, Nan. I’ll go up and quiet them.”
“No, I’ll come, up too.”
As they climbed the stairs and reached the landing, they made out words which were in the wailing: “I don’t want to be a dead ‘un. I don’t want to be a dead ‘un.”
It was Kay’s voice. Peter, leaning over her, was whispering frightened comfort.
When Nan and Billy had taken them in their arms and lit the candle, the tragedy was explained. Peter had been enlarging on the magnificence of heaven and the beauties of the future life. Things went well until Kay realized that there was no direct communication by trains or buses between heaven and her parents. She didn’t want to go there. Its magnificence, unshared by anyone she loved, was terrifying. She didn’t want to be a dead ‘un. She kept repeating it in spite of Peter’s best efforts at consolation.
It was some time before it was safe to blow the candle out and leave them. Death was very imminent in their minds.
Downstairs, when it was all over, Billy looked across at Nan, his brow puckered with annoyance and his lips twitching with laughter. “That decides it.”
“Decides! How? What does it decide?”
“Something that I’ve thought of for a long time. Peter’s too imaginative. He’s not a good companion for Kay.”
“How can you say that? We all know how gentle he is with her.”
“That’s just it. It’s good for neither of them. Now that Jehane and Ocky are at Sandport it makes things easier; they can keep an eye on him.”
“An eye on Peter!”
Billy leant across the table, turning down the lamp and turning it up again. He was gaining time. “It’s for his own good. You don’t suppose I like it. It’ll be hard for all of us.” He spoke huskily.
Nan plucked at the table-cloth. She was almost angry. “You mean that you want to send him to school at Sand-port—send my little Peterkins away?”
“Sandport’s famous for its schools.”
“But Billy, you couldn’t be so cruel. He’s so young and sensitive. His heart would break.”
“Rubbish. I was sent to boarding-school when I was eight. I’ve survived.”
“You! You were different—but Peter!”
She voiced the common fallacy of mothers, that their husbands as boys were of coarser fibre than their children. She bowed her head on her arms beneath the lamp and cried. Her little Peter to be thrust out and made lonely, simply because he had too much imagination! It was cruel!
CHAPTER XIII—PRICKCAUTIONS
There was no withstanding his questions. Peter had to be told why: it was because he was too Peterish. He was going for the good of Kay. All these years in trying so hard to love her, he had been harming her—it amounted to that as he understood it. He was being sent to school that he might learn to be like other children—like Riska and Eustace, for instance.
“When I’m quite like them, can I come home?”
Ah, that was in the future.
Unknowingly he had committed an indiscretion, the penalty for which was exile—the indiscretion was called “‘magination.” He felt horribly ashamed, even though Grace did assure him that some of the very greatest people had been guilty of the same mistake.
“Why, Master Peter, you’re gettin’ orf lightly, that you are. There was once a young fellah as dreamed dreams about sheaves bowin’ down to ‘im, and the moon and stars makin’ a basin for ‘im. D’yer know wot ‘appened?”
“I think that’s silly,” said Peter. “How could the moon and stars make a basin?”
“‘Tain’t silly neither, ‘cause it says it in the Bible. Any-’ow, when ‘e told ‘is dreams d’yer know wot ‘appened? ‘Is h’eleven brethren, they chucked ‘im in a pit—yes, they did. And there ‘e’d ‘ave stayed for keeps if it ‘adn’t been for a passin’ circus as saw ‘e was queer and put ‘im in their show, and took ‘im away into Egypt. Oh my, for a boy wiv ‘magination, you’re gettin’ orf light.”
“What did he do in the circus? Did he ever come home again?”
“‘E grew to be a ruler in h’Egypt and saved ‘is pa and ma and eleven brethren, when they wuz starvin’.”
“P’raps I’ll do that for all of you one day.”
“Yer silly little monkey! There yer go again wiv yer queer sayin’s.”
Peter had been to the Agricultural Hall in Islington and had seen people in side-shows without arms and legs: bearded women; elastic-skinned men; horrid persons with one body and two heads or with a little twin, without even one head, growing out of their chests and waggling their pitiful legs. He wasn’t like that in his body; but he supposed he must be something like it inside his head. The belief that he was somehow deformed made him too humble, too abashed to protest; anything that was for his little sister’s sake must be right. But he wished that someone had warned him earlier; only in this did he feel himself betrayed.—Anyhow, never in his wildest fancies had he supposed that the moon and stars could make basins—and that boy Joseph had turned out all right. Now he was going to his particular Egypt to get cured.
Taking him on his knee, his father had explained matters. He was to be a little knight and not to cry. He was to ride out into the world alone for the good of the lady he loved best. One day he would return to her, and then——.
With his mother it was different; she wept and quite evidently expected him to weep too. She didn’t want him to go. It was not her doing. She loved him to be Peterish; she would not have him otherwise. To her he could confess.
“It’s here, mother,” tapping his breast; “I can’t help it really. But I’ll try.”
No, he couldn’t help it—that was the worst of it—any more than he could help hearing the whistling angel. He could pretend that he wasn’t Peter, just as he had pretended not to hear the angel whistle. But he would not be able to change; he could only learn to wear a disguise. If school could teach him to do that, years hence he might prove worthy to live again at Topbury. Because he felt that he was to blame, he strove to be very brave; if his eyes filled with tears sometimes, it wasn’t because he wanted them to.
The respite shortened. Letters passed to and fro between his father and Uncle Waffles, between his mother and Aunt Jehane. Their contents, discussed at the breakfast table, cast a gloom over all the day. Many schools were offered, but the best for Peter’s particular case was one kept by Miss Lydia Rufus. Aunt Jehane would look after his clothes, and he could spend his Saturdays at Madeira Lodge.
Madeira Lodge! That was the house at Sandport which sheltered Uncle Waffles. It was stamped in red letters at the top of his note-paper and proclaimed magnificence. It rather tickled Peter’s father’s sense of humor.
“Anything from Madeira Lodge ‘smorning?” he would say, with a twinkle, as he sorted out the letters. “But why stop half-way in intemperance? Why not Port Wine Terrace, Moselle Park, in the town of Champagne? Ocky’s too modest.”
Or he would say, “Lord Sauterne of Beer Castle informs his nephew that Miss Rufus’s pupils require a Bible, an Eton suit and two pairs of house-shoes.”
Peter would greet his father’s jokes with a strained but gallant little smile. “We men must keep up the women’s courage,” his father had told him.
It was hard to keep up other people’s courage when your own was down to zero.
By the time they left the cottage in North Wales everything had been arranged. There was just one short fortnight left in which to get Peter’s wardrobe together, mark his linen and finish off his mending and sewing. The mornings were spent in visits to shops, where boots and gloves and suits were fitted on and purchased. A knight when he rides into the world alone must set out duly caparisoned.
And Peter was thankful for the rush and muddle; he found it increasingly difficult not to cry, especially when his mother strained him to her breast and gazed down on him lovingly with her dear wet eyes. He was glad that people should have so much to do, for he hardly knew how to conduct himself since the discovery of his awful blemish. He was afraid to show his affection for his little sister in the old fond ways, and he could think of no new ways of showing it.
He had come to the last day. It was one of those days when summer droops her eyes and confesses that she has grown old. There was just a hint of tears in the sky—a blue film of vapor which softened the valiant smiling of grass and leaves decaying. In the garden the last of the roses were falling and Virginia creeper lay like crusted blood upon the walls. It was as though summer, like a spendthrift woman, put red upon her cheeks to pretend she was not dying. Peter, in his sensitive way, was conscious of the sadness of this vain pretending, this mimicking a beauty that was gone. He was doing the same: preparing for to-morrow and at the same time trying to persuade himself that the present was forever—that to-morrow would never dawn.
He ran up and down the house trying to seem merry and excited, watching his boxes being corded, laughing and chattering—talking of when he would return for Christmas. “We men must keep up the women’s courage”—one of the women was Kay. He was doing his best to be a little knight; it hurt sometimes, especially when his mother looked up from fitting socks and shoes into odd corners of his boxes, unhappy and surprised. She must think him hard-hearted; she should never guess.
After lunch, having watched his opportunity, he slipped out of the house without letting anyone know where he was going. His face was set in a solemn expression of serious determination. He scuttled down the Terrace and down the Crescent, till he came within sight of the cab-stand; he was relieved to find that Mr. Grace, as he called Grace’s father, was disengaged. Mr. Grace was a fat, red-faced man, and like many fat and red-faced men had his grievance. His appearance was against him. People judged him circumstantially and said that he drank. Even Grace said it. His stand was suspiciously near Topbury Cock. But most cab-stands are near to some public house. Peter had become his very dear friend and to him Mr. Grace had opened his heart, denying all charges and imputing the redness of his countenance to the severity of his calling and exposure to the weather.
Mr. Grace was asleep on his box, his face stuffed deep in his collar, the reins sagging from his swollen hands as if at any minute he might drive off. When Peter spoke to him, he jumped himself together. “Keb, sir. Right y’are, sir. H’I’m ready——— Well, I’m blessed! Strike me blind, if it ain’t the little master.”
Peter spread apart his legs, thrusting his hands deep in his knickerbocker pockets. “I’m going to be sent away, Mr. Grace, and I’m worried.”
Mr. Grace twisted his head, as if trying to lengthen his fat neck; finding that impossible, he shifted his ponderous body nearer to the edge of the seat and regarded Peter with his kind little pig’s eyes.
“Worried, Mr. Peter? Well, I never!”
“I’m worried for Kay—I shan’t be here to take care of her.” His voice fluttered, then steadied itself as he lifted up his head and finished bravely.
“We’ll do that, Master Peter. You kin rely on an old friend.”
“Thank you, Mr. Grace; that was what I was going to ask you. If anyone was to run away with her, they’d come to you to drive them. Wouldn’t they?”
“Not a shadder of a doubt. I drives all the best people in Topbury.”
“These wouldn’t be ‘zactly the best people—not if they were stealing Kay.”
“All the better; the easier for me to spot ‘em. Any par-tickler pusson you suspeck of ‘aving wicked designs upon ‘er?”
“No one in particular, Mr. Grace. I was just frightened that I might come home and find her gone.”
“What one might call a prickcaution?”
“I think that’s what I meant.”
Mr. Grace’s neck had become sore with looking down, so he tempted Peter to come on the box. Puffing and blowing, he gave him a hand to help him.
When they were seated side by side, Mr. Grace looked fondly at the curly head and straight little body. “I shall miss yer.”
“And I shall miss you. It’s nice to be missed by somebody.”
“I shall miss yer ‘cause you’ve been my prickcaution.”
“I?”
“Yas, you. You’ve been my prickcaution against my darter, Grace. She’s thought better o’ me since we’ve been friends. And then——”
“I’m glad she’s thought better of you. And then, what?”
“Well, you kep me informed as to ‘er nights out, so I could h’escape.”
Peter regarded his friend in surprise. “Escape! But she wouldn’t hurt you.”
“Not h’intendin’ to, Master Peter; not h’intendin’ to. It’s me feelin’s h’I refer to. You don’t know darters. ‘Ow should yer?—She thinks I drink, like all the rest of ‘em ‘cept you. On ‘er nights h’out she brings ‘er blooming Salvaition Band to this ‘ere corner, h’aimin’ at my con-wersion. It’s woundin’ and ‘umiliatin’, Master Peter, for a pa as don’t need no conwersion. She makes me blush all through, and that makes things wuss for a man wi’ a red compleckshon. So yer see, you wuz my prickcaution.”
“But you don’t drink, Mr. Grace, do you?”
“No more ‘an will wash me mouf out same as a ‘orse. It’s cruel ‘ard to be suspickted o’ wot yer don’t do.”
Peter looked miserably into the kind little pig’s eyes. “I’m suspected too. That’s why I’m being sent away.”
“O’ wot?”
“They call it ‘magination.”
“Ah!”
“Why do you say ah like that?”
“‘Cause it’s wuss’n drink—much wusser. But take no more’n will wash yer mouf out and yer’ll be awright. That’s my principle in everythin’—— Master Peter, this makes us close friends, don’t it? We’re both misonderstood. I——”
Just then a fare came up—an old lady, very full in the skirt, with parcels dangling from her arms in every direction.
“Keb, keb, keb. Oh yes, my ‘orse is wery safe. No, ‘e don’t bite and ‘e won’t run away. Eh? Oh, I’m a wery good driver. Eh? Three to you, mum; four bob to anyone else. Am I kind to ‘im? I loves ‘im like me own darter.—See yer ter-morrow, Master Peter.—Gee, up there. Gee up, I tell yer.”
Peter sought out Grace’s policeman on his beat and made him the same request with respect to Kay. Then he saw the Misses Jacobite and warned them. Having done his best for her safety in his absence, he hurried home.
The evening went all too fast—seven, eight, nine, ten. Every hour the clock struck he felt something between a thrill and a shiver (a “shrill” he called it) run up and down his spine. “The end. The end. The end,” the clock seemed to be saying over and over, so that he wanted to get up and shriek to stop it. Oh, that a little boy could seize the spokes and stay the wheels of time!
“Tired, Peter? Hadn’t you better——”
“Oh, not yet! Please, just another five minutes.”
“The dustman’s come to my Peterkin’s eyes,” his mother murmured.
He sat up, valiantly trying to look wakeful.
They had not the heart to cut short his respite—it was such an eternity till Christmas. His head sank against his mother’s knees and his eyes closed tightly, tightly.
“Poor little fellow,” his father said.
“My darling little Peterkins”—that was his mother.
They carried him up to bed. On the half-landing, outside the nursery door, they halted, remembering how their dreams had shaped his character long before God had made his body.
Next morning, soon after breakfast, Mr. Grace drove up to the door as he had promised. He drove all the best people of Topbury to their battlefields of joy or sorrow. He was Topbury’s herald of change, and had learnt to control his emotions under the most trying circumstances. But this morning, when the straight little figure came bravely down the steps, something happened to Mr. Grace’s eyes.
“Good-bye, darlingest mother. Good-bye, little kitten Kay. Good-bye. Good-bye. Good-bye.”
“Jump in, old man,” his father said.
The door banged.
“Yer awright?” asked Mr. Grace.
“We’re all right,” said Peter’s father.
“Kum up.” Mr. Grace tugged savagely on the reins. “Kum up, carn’t yer?” He had to vent his feelings some way.
“Dammitall,” he growled as his “keb” crawled down the Terrace, “dammitall. It’ll taik more ‘an this fare’s worf to wash me mouf out this time. It’s got inter me froat. ‘Ope I ain’t goin’ to blub. Dammit!”
CHAPTER XIV—PETER IN EGYPT
Miss Lydia Rufus was a prim person. Judging from her appearance one would have said that in her case virtue was compulsory through lack of opportunity. And yet she had had her “accident”—that was how she referred to it in conversations with her Maker. No one in Sandport, save herself and God, knew about it. It had happened ten years before Peter became her pupil. The “accident” had been born anonymously, as one might say, and had been brought up incognito. After the first unavoidable preliminaries for which her presence was indispensable, she and the “accident” had separated. She hardly ever dared to see it, for she was alone in the world and had her living to earn—to do that one must appear respectable.
For a woman of such bristling righteousness to have been so yielding as to have had an “accident” was almost to her credit: it was in the nature of a tour de force, like sword-swallowing, passing a camel through the eye of a needle or any other form of occult acrobatics. It was a miracle in heart-magic. And often in the night her heart went out in longing for the child whom she dared not acknowledge. In her soul, which most people regarded as an ice-house, a sanctuary was established with an altar of mother-love, on which the candles of yearning were kept burning. This chapter in her secret history would never have been mentioned had she not made Peter the proxy of her “accident,” because he was ten and because he was handsome.
It was lucky for Peter. Her usual attitude toward children was one of condemnation. She expiated her own sin by uprooting the old Adam from the hearts of her pupils. In her vigor and diligence she often uprooted flowers. For the rest, she was a High Church woman, wore elastic-sided boots and never permitted anything to be placed on a Bible. Her system of education was one of moral straight-jackets.
Peter found himself in a cramped new house, in a raw new street, on the outskirts of a jerry-built town. The wind seemed always to be blowing and, in whichever direction he walked, he always came to sand. It was as though this place had been planted in a desert that escape might be impossible. Twenty other little boys, about his own age, were his fellow-captives. When the school was marched out, walking two abreast, with Miss Rufus sternly bringing up the tail of the procession, he would meet other crocodiles of boys and girls, sedately parading, followed by their warders. These public promenades were a part of the school’s advertisement; deportment was strictly observed. Sandport, as Peter knew it, was a settlement for convict-children.
Miss Rufus soon formed the habit of keeping him to walk with her. At first this caused him embarrassment. Little by little—how was it?—he became aware that with him she was different. As the mood took her, she spoke to him sharply, was merely forbidding, or was so kind that he forgot the sourness of her corrugated countenance and the ugly color of her hair. It was instinctive with him to treat all women as he did his mother, with quaint chivalry and forethought. An attitude of gallantry in a pupil was something new to Miss Rufus.
When they came to the miles of beach, all tawny like a golden mantle spread out with a thread of silver in the far, far distance where the sea washed its hem, instead of going to romp with the other boys he sat himself down beside her.
“Go and play,” she told him.
“But you’d be alone, mam.”
“I was always alone before you came.”
“But I’m here now.”
He stood before her laughing, with his cap in his hand and the wind in his hair. He showed no fear of her—that was not his way with strangers. She gazed in his face—the gray eyes, the flushed cheeks, the red mouth. This was not the sullen little slave of her normal experience. In spite of herself, his bright intelligence and willingness to be loved stirred something in her breast. If she had not cared what people had thought of her—if she had been brave, her child might have been like that. Her chapped, coarse-grained features grew wistful. Peter, looking at her, saw only a disagreeable, faded woman with red hair.