Some one was kicking his foot He awoke to find Ruddy, hands in pockets, grinning down on him.
“Been op for hoars,” he whispered; “been exploring. Found a ripping pool Want to swim in it?”
Teddy eased his arm from under the little girl and nodded. “Let’s light a fire first. She’ll know then that we’re not far away, and won’t be nervous.”
The blur of foliage quivered with mysteries of a myriad coinings and goings. Everywhere unseen paths were being traveled to unseen houses. Within sight, yet sounding distant, a woodpecker, like a postman going his rounds, was tap-tap-tapping.
Ruddy knelt and struck a match; tongues of scarlet spurted. The camp-fire became a beating heart in this citadel of gray-green loneliness.
Desire lay curled among withered leaves, her face flushed with sleep, her lips parted. At sound of the fire snapping and cracking, she stirred and opened her eyes slowly.
“Oh, don’t leave me. Where are you going?”
“To have a swim,” they told her.
“But mayn’t I come? I promise to sit with my back turned. I promise not to look, honestly.”
Behind a holly, within sight of the pond, they left her. “Oh, dear, I wish I were a boy,” she pouted. “Boys have fathers and they can bathe and—and they can do almost everything.”
While they undressed, she kept on talking.
“It’s the same as if you weren’t there, when I can’t see you. Splash loud when you get into the water.”
As she heard them enter, “Splash louder,” she commanded. “Girls don’t have to be truthful. If you don’t make a noise I’ll look round.”
“Pooh! Look round. Who cares!” cried Ruddy.
“No, don’t—not yet,” shouted Teddy.
Then the sound of their laughter came to her, of the long cool stretch of arms plunging deep and panting growing always more distant.
She couldn’t resist. The babies came into her eyes and her finger went up to her mouth. She turned and saw two sleek heads, bobbing and diving among anchored lilies. Beneath the water’s surface, as though buried beneath a sheet of glass, the ghost of the wood lay shrouded. Trees crowded down to the mossy edge to gaze timidly at the wonder of their own reflection. Across the pond flies zigzagged, leaving a narrow wake behind them. A fish leapt joyously and curved in a streak of silver. With his chin resting in the highest branches, the sun stared roundly and smiled a challenge.
“I will be a boy,” she whispered rebelliously.
Her arms flew up and circled about her neck. Lest her daring should go from her, she commenced unbuttoning in a tremendous hurry.
“Hi, Princess, what are you doing?”
She was busy drawing off her stockings.
“I say, but you can’t do that.”
“No, you can’t do that.”
The scandalized duet of protests continued. Her knight-errants watched her aghast.
Sullen gray eyes glared defiance at them; yet they weren’t altogether sullen, for a glint of mischief hid in their depths.
“I am doing it. You daren’t come out to stop me.”
“We’ll come out if you’ll promise to turn round. We’ll do anything, Princess. You can have the pond all to yourself.”
“Don’t want the pond all to myself, stupids.”
She began to slip off her petticoat. Two shocked backs were turned on her. As the boys retreated further into the lilies, their pleadings reached her in spasms. Their agony at the thought of violated conventions made her relentless.
She was tired of being a girl; tired of being without a father. “I’ll be a boy,” she whispered, “and wear knickerbockers and have a father, like Teddy.” She really thought that, in some occult way, her outrageous conduct would accomplish that. It was all a matter of dress. She chuckled at imagining her mother’s amazement. The still sheet of water was a Pool of Siloam that would heal a little girl of her sex.
“When she’s once got in,” whispered Ruddy, “it won’t be so bad. We can——”
Teddy grabbed his shoulder fiercely. “You shan’t see her. We’ll stay just as far away as——”
A scream startled the air. They swung about. Knee-deep in the pool, at bay and pale as a wood-nymph, was Desire.
“I won’t come out,” she was shouting, “and I’m not a naughty girl.”
Leaning out from the bank, trying to hook her with an umbrella, was a balloon-shaped old lady.
Behind her, peering above the bushes, was the face of Farmer Joseph, his merry eyes screwed up with amusement.
“But you’ll catch cold, darling,” Mrs. Sheerug coaxed. “Oh, dear, oh, dear! What shall I do? Please do come out.”
“I shan’t catch cold either. And if I do come out you’ll only be cross with me.”
“I won’t be cross with you, darling. I’m too glad to find you for that.”
“Did my beautiful mother send you?”
With what guile Mrs. Sheerug answered the boys could only guess by the effect.
“Well, then,” came the piping little voice, “tell Farmer Joseph to stop looking, and you stop poking at me. I don’t like your umbrella.”
They saw her wade out, drops of water falling from her elfin whiteness like jewels; then saw her folded in the bat-like wings of the faery-godmother’s ample mantle. The glade emptied. The wood grew silent They dared to swim to land.
Ruddy was the first to say anything. “Ma—Ma’s a wonder. I oughtn’t to have sent that pigeon till this s’moming.” Then, in a burst of penitence for his zeal, “I’m afraid I’ve spoiled—— I say, I’m beastly sorry.”
He had spoiled everything; there was no denying it There would be no more camp-fires, no more slaying of bird-catchers, no more pretending you were a war-horse with a rescued Princess from Goblinland riding on your back. Teddy was too unhappy to blame or forgive Ruddy. He pulled on his shirt and indulged in reflections.
“Wonder how they found us?” muttered Ruddy. “Must have seen the smoke of our fire. That wasn’t my fault anyhow; you did agree to lighting that.”
“Oh, be quiet,” growled Teddy. “What does anything matter? Who cares now how they found out?”
Ruddy stole away to see what was happening, thinking that he might prove more acceptable elsewhere.
Teddy stared at the pool. Birds flew across its quiet breast; fish leaped; the sun smiled grandly. Everything was as it had been, yet he was altered. They would take her away from him; of that he was certain. Perhaps they would put her on another ship and send her traveling again across the world. There would be other boys who had never had a sister. He hated them. Because he was young, he would have to stay just where he had been always—in Eden Row, where nothing ever happened. The tyranny of it!
He was roused by hearing his name called softly. She was tiptoeing down the glade, dragging Mrs. Sheerug by the hand. Mrs. Sheerug’s other hand still clasped her umbrella.
As he turned, the child ran forward and flung her arms about his neck. “Oh, Teddy, this person says perhaps she’ll help us to find her.” Then, in a whisper, bringing her face so dose that the thistledown of her hair brushed his forehead and his whole world sank into two gray eyes, “The Princess wasn’t very nice this morning—not modest, so this person says. But you don’t mind—say you don’t I did so want to be like you and to do everything that boys do,” and then, long drawn out, when he thought her apology was ended, “Teddy.”
Mrs. Sheerug trundled up, her hands folded beneath her mantle, and looked down at them benevolently.
“Boys aren’t to be trusted; they shouldn’t be left alone with girls,shouldn’t.” Having uttered the moral she felt necessary, she allowed herself to smile through her shiny spectacles. “She’s fond of you, Teddy—a dear little maid. Ah, well! We must be getting back with Farmer Joseph to breakfast.”
In the wagonette, as they drove through the golden morning, few words were said. Mrs. Sheerug sat with Desire cuddled to her, kissing her again and again with a tender worship. Teddy-couldn’t divine why she should do it, since she had never seen her until that morning. He was conscious of a jealousy in Mrs. Sheerug’s attitude—a protective jealousy which made her want to keep touching Desire, the way Hal did, to realize her presence. It was as though they both shared his own dread that at any moment they might lose her.
It was in the late afternoon when Mrs. Sheerug left. Before going she led him aside. “I want to talk to you.” Her cheeks quivered with earnestness. “You did very wrong, my dear, very wrong. Just how wrong you didn’t know. Something terrible might have happened. That little girl’s in great danger. You must keep her in the garden where no one can see her. Promise me you will. I’d take her back to London to-night, only Hal doesn’t know I’ve found out I want to give him the news gently.” She broke off, wringing her hands and speaking to herself, “Why, oh why, was he so foolish? Why did he keep it from me?” Then, recovering, “Either Hal or I will come and fetch her to-morrow. Don’t look so down-hearted, my dear. If the good Lord remembers us, everything may turn out well. If it does, I’ll let you come and see her. Perhaps,” her dim eyes flickered with excitement, “I shall be able to keep her always and make sure that she grows into a good woman. Perhaps.”
She caught the boy to her breast. She was trembling all over and on the verge of tears. When she had climbed into the wagonette, with Ruddy seated beside her, and had lumbered slowly out of the farmyard, she left Teddy wondering: Why had she said “a good woman”? As though there was any doubt that little Desire would grow up good!
HE had searched the farmhouse, calling her name softly. He had peered into the lumber-room, where shadows were gathering. He had looked everywhere indoors. Now he stepped into the orchard and called more loudly, “Desire. Desire. Princess.”
Leaves shuddered. Across moss-grown paths slugs crawled. Everything betokened rain; all live things were hurrying for shelter. Behind high red walls, where peach-trees hung crucified, the end of day smoldered. The west was a vivid saffron. To the southward black clouds wheeled like vultures. The beauty of the garden shone intense. The greenness of apple-trees had deepened. Nasturtiums blazed like fire in the borders of box. The air was full of poignant fragrances: of lavender, of roses, and of cool, dean earth.
To-morrow night all that he was at present feeling would have become a memory. He called her name again and renewed his search. To-morrow night would she, too, have become a memory? How loud the whisper of his footsteps sounded I And if she had become a memory, would she forget—would the future prove faithless to the past?
The garden would not remember. The brook would babble no less contentedly because he was gone. All these flowers which shone so bravely—within a week they, too, would have vanished. The birds in the early morning would Scarcely notice his absence. In the autumn they would fly away; in the spring, when they returned, they would think no more of the boy who had parted the leaves so gently that a little girl might peep into their nests. And would the little girl remember? Even now, when he called, she did not answer.
In an angle of the garden, most remote from the farmhouse, he espied her. Something in her attitude made him halt Her head was thrown back; she was staring into a chestnut which tumbled its boughs across the wall. Her lips were moving. She seemed to be, talking; nothing reached him of what was said. At first he supposed she was acting a conversation.
“Desire,” he shouted. “Princess.”
She glanced across her shoulder and distinctly gave a warning. The chestnut quivered. He was certain some one was climbing down. She kissed her hand. The bough was still trembling when he reached her.
“Who was it?”
She pressed a finger to her lips.
“Was it Ruddy? But it couldn’t have been Ruddy unless——”
Beyond the wall he heard the sound of footsteps. They were stealing away through grass.
When he turned to her, she was smiling with mysterious tenderness.
“Who was it?”
She slipped her hand into his. “Iamfond of you, dear Teddy, but I mustn’t, mustn’t tell.”
They walked in silence. Rain began to patter. They could hear it hiss as it splashed against the sunset.
“Best be getting indoors,” he said.
In the lumber-room, where so many happy hours had been spent, they sat with their faces pressed against the window.
“Do you want to play?”
He shook his head.
“You’re not sulky with me, Teddy, are you? It would be unkind if you were. I’m so happy.” She flung her arms about his neck, coaxing him to look at her. “What shall I do to make you glad? Shall I make the babies come into my eyes?”
He brushed his face against her carls. “It isn’t that. It’s not that I’m sulky.” Her hands fluttered to his lips that he might kiss them. “It’s—it’s only that I want you, and I’m afraid I may lose you.”
She laughed softly. “But I wouldn’t lose you. I wouldn’t let anybody, not even my beautiful mother, make me lose you. I would worry and worry and worry, till she brought me back.” She lowered her face and looked up at him slantingly. “I can make people do most anything when I worry badly.”
He smiled at her exact self-knowledge. She knew that she was forgiven and wriggled into his arms. “Why do you want me? I’m so little and not nice always.”
“I don’t know why I want you, unless——”
“Unless?” she whispered.
“Unless it’s because I’ve been always lonely.”
She frowned, so he hastened to add, “But I know I do want you.”
“When I’m a big lady do you think you’ll still want me?”
“Ah!” He tried to imagine her as a big lady. “You’ll be proud then, I expect. I once knew a big lady and she wasn’t—wasn’t very kind. I think I like you little best.” Outside it was growing dark. The rain beat against the window. The musty smell of old finery in boxes fitted with the melancholy of the sound.
“I’m glad you like me little best, because,” she drew her fingers down his cheek, “because, you see, I’m little now. But when I’m a big lady, I shall want you to like me best as I am then.”
He laughed. “I wonder whether you will—whether you’ll care.”
“You say all the wrong things.” She struggled to free herself. “You’re making me sad.”
“D’you know what you’ll be when you grow up?”
She ceased struggling; she was tremendously interested in herself.
“What?”
“A flirt.”
“What is a flirt?” she asked earnestly.
“A flirt’s a——” He puzzled to find words. “A flirt’s a very beautiful woman who makes every one love her especially, and loves nobody in particular herself.”
She clapped her hands. “Oh, I hope I shall.”
Outside her bedroom at parting she stopped laughing. “Iamfond of you, dear Teddy.”
“Of course you are.”
She pouted. “Oh, no, not of course. I’m not fond of everybody.”
He had set too low a value on her graciousness. He had often done it wilfully before for the fun of seeing her give herself airs. “I didn’t mean ‘of course’ like that,” he apologized; “I meant I didn’t doubt it.”
“But—but,” she sighed, “you don’t say the right things, Teddy—no, never. You don’t understand.”
What did she want him to say, this little girl who was alternately a baby and a woman? When he had puzzled his brain and had failed to guess, he stooped to kiss her good-night She turned her face away petulantly; the next moment she had turned it back and was clinging to him desperately. “I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want to leave you.”
“You shan’t.” He had caught something of her passion. “Mrs. Sheerug has promised. She lives quite near our house, and you’ll be my little sister. You shall come and feed my pigeons, and see my father paint pictures. My mother’s called Dearie—did I tell you that? Don’t be frightened; I’ll lie awake all to-night in case you call.”
“No, sleep.” She drew her fingers down his face caressingly. “Sleep for my sake, Teddy.”
He tried to keep awake, but his eyes grew heavy. Farmer Joseph and Mrs. Sarie came creaking up the stairs. The house was left to shadows. Several times he slipped from his bed and tiptoed to the door. More than once he fancied he heard sounds. They always stopped the second he stirred. The monotonous dripping of rain lulled him. It was like an army of footsteps which advanced and halted, advanced and halted. Even through his sleep they followed.
It seemed the last notes of a dream. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. Where was he? In his thoughts he had gone back years. He ought to have been in Mrs. Sheerug’s bedroom, with the harp standing thinly against the panes and the kettle purring on the fire. He was confused at finding that the room was different. While that voice sang on, he had no time for puzzling.
It came from outside in the darkness, where trees knelt beneath the sky like camels. Sometimes it seemed very far away, and sometimes just beneath his window. It made him think of faeries dancing by moonlight It was like the golden hair of the Princess Lettice lowered from her casement to her lover. It was like the silver feet of laughter twinkling up a Beanstalk ladder to the stars. It was like spread wings, swooping and drifting over a faery-land of castellated tree-tops. It grew infinitely distant. He strained his ears; it was almost lost It kept calling and calling to his heart.
Something was moving. A shadow stole across his doorway. It was gone in an instant—gone so quickly that, between sleeping and waking, it might have been imagined. His heart was pounding.
In her room he saw the white blur of her bed. Timid lest he should disturb her, he groped his hand across her pillow. It was still warm.
As he ran down the passage a cold draught met him. The door into the farmyard was open. He hesitated on the threshold, straining his eyes into the dusk of moonlight that leaked from under clouds. As he listened, he heard Desire’s laugh, low and secret, and the whisper of departing footsteps. Barefooted he followed. In the road, the horses’ beads turned towards the wood, a carriage was standing with its lamps extinguished. The door opened; there was the sound of people entering; then it slammed.
“Desire! Desire!”
The driver humped his shoulders, tugged at the reins, and lashed furiously; the horses leapt forward and broke into a gallop. From the window Vashti leant out. A child’s hand fluttered. He ran on breathlessly.
Under the roof of the woods all was blackness. The sounds of travel grew fainter. When he reached the meadows beyond, there was nothing but the mist of moonlight on still shadows—he heard nothing but the sullen weeping of rain-wet trees and grass. He threw himself down beside the road, clenching his hands and sobbing.
Next day Hal arrived to fetch him back to London. The wagonette was already standing at the door. He thought that he had said all his farewells, fixed everything indelibly on his memory, when he remembered the lumber-room. Without explanation, he dashed into the house and climbed the stairs.
Pushing open the door, he entered gently. It was here, if anywhere, that he might expect to find her—the last place in which they had been together. Old’ finery, dragged from boxes by her hands, lay strewn about. The very sunshine, groping across the floor, seemed to be searching for her. He was going over to the place by the window where they had sat, when he halted, bending forward. Scrawled dimly in the dust upon the panes, in childish writing, were the words, “I love you.” And again, lower down, “I love you.”
His heart gave a bound. That was what she had been trying to make him say last night, “I love you.” He hadn’t said it—hadn’t realized or thought it possible that two children could love like that. He knew now what she had meant, “You don’t say the right things, Teddy—no, never. You don’t understand.” He knew now that from the first he had loved her; his boyish fear of ridicule had forbidden him to own it. There on the panes, like a message from the dead, soon to be overlaid with dust, was her confession.
Voices called to him, bidding him hurry. Footsteps were ascending. Some one was coming along the passage. The writing was sacred. It was meant for his eyes alone. No one should see it but himself. He stooped his lips to the pane. When Hal entered the writing had vanished.
“You—you played here,” he said. All day he had been white and silent “I’m sorry, but we really must be going now, old chap.”
On the stairs, where it was dark, he laid an arm on the boy’s shoulder.
“You got to be very fond of her? We were both fond of her and—and we’ve both lost her. I think I understand.”
The journey back to London was like the waking moments of a dream. He gazed out of the carriage window. He couldn’t bear to look at Hal; his eyes seemed dead, as though all the mind behind them was full of darkened passages. It wasn’t easy to be brave just now, so he turned his face away from him.
“Teddy.” There was no one in the carriage but themselves. “Did she ever say anything about me?”
“She said that you were fond of her.”
“Ah, yes, but I don’t mean that. Did she ever say how she felt herself?”
“About you?”
“About me.”
There was hunger in Hal’s voice—hunger in the way he listened for the answer.
“Not—not exactly. But she liked you immensely. She really did, Hal. She looked forward most awfully to your coming.”
“Any child would have done that when a man brought her presents. Then she didn’t say she loved me? No, she wouldn’t say that.”
Hal spoke bitterly. Teddy felt that Desire was being accused and sprang to her defense. “I don’t see how you could expect her to love you after what you had done.” The man looked up sharply. “After what I had done! D’you mean kidnaping her, or something further back?”
“I mean taking her away from her mother.”
Hal laughed gloomily. “No, as you say, a person with no claims on her couldn’t expect her to love him after that.”
Sinking his head forward, he relapsed into silence and sat staring at the seat opposite. When the train was galloping through the outskirts of London, he spoke again.
“I’ve dragged you into something that you don’t understand. Don’t try to understand it; but there’s something I want to say to you. If ever you’re tempted to do wrong, remember me. If ever you’re tempted to get love the wrong way, be strong enough to do without it. It isn’t worth having. You have to lie and cheat to get it at first, and you have to lie and cheat to keep some of it when it’s ended.” He turned his face away, speaking shamefully and hurriedly. “I sinned once, a long while ago—I don’t know whether you’ve guessed. I’m still paying for it. You’re paying for it. One day that little girl may have to pay the biggest price of any of us. I was trying to save her from that.”
Through the window shabby rows of cabs showed up. A porter jumped on the step, asking if there was any luggage. Hal waved him back. Turning to Teddy, he said, “When you’ve sinned, you never know where the paying ends. It touches a thousand lives with its selfishness. Remember me one day, and be careful.”
Driving home in the hansom, he referred but once to the subject “I’ve made you suffer. I don’t know how much—boys never tell. I owed you something; that’s why I spoke to you just now.”
Teddy’s arrival home scattered the last mists of his dream-world. As the cab drew up before the house, the door flew open and his father burst out, bundling a mildly protesting old gentleman down the steps.
“No, I don’t paint little pigs,” he was shouting, “and I don’t paint little girls sucking their thumbs and cooing, ‘I’m baby.’ You’ve come to the wrong shop, old man; no offense. I’m an artist; the man you’re looking for is a sign-painter. Good evening.”
The door banged in the old gentleman’s face. Jimmie Boy was so enjoying his anger that he didn’t notice that in closing the door he was shutting out his son.
When Teddy had been admitted by Jane, he heard his mother’s voice dodging through his father’s laughter like a child through a crowd.
“You needn’t have been so sharp with him, Jimmie. He only wanted to buy the kind of pictures you don’t paint You can’t expect every one to understand. Now he’ll go the rounds and talk about you, and you’ll have another enemy. Why do you do it, my silly old pirate?”
The old pirate pretended to become suspicious that his wife was trying to lower his standards—trying to persuade him to paint the rubbish that would sell She protested her innocence. Long after Teddy had made his presence known the argument continued, half in banter, half in seriousness. Then it took the familiar turning which led to a discussion of finance.
He stole away. The impatient world had swept him back into its maelstrom of realities. It had taken away his breath and staggered his courage. Hal’s harangue on the consequences of sin had made him see sin everywhere. He saw his father as sinning when he indulged his genius by pushing would-be purchasers down his steps. Hal was right—he and Dearie would have to pay for that; all their lives they had been paying for his father’s temperament. They had had to go short of everything because he would insist on trying to exchange his dreams for money.
He wandered out into the garden where his pigeons were flying. Instinctively his steps led him to the stable. From the stalls he dragged outThe Garden Enclosed, which was to have made his father famous. He gazed at it; as he gazed, the world seemed better. The world must be a happy place so long as there were women in it like that. People said that his father hadn’t succeeded; but he had by being true to what he knew to be best.
He climbed the ladder to the studio where, through long years of discouragement, his father had refused to stoop below himself. Leaning from the window, he gazed into the garden. The dusty smell of the ivy came to him.
There in the darkness his mother found him. Coming in quietly, she crouched beside him, taking his hands.
“Mother, you’re very beautiful.”
Her heart quickened. “Something’s happened. Once you wouldn’t have said that.”
“I’ve been thinking about so many things,” he whispered, “about how it must have helped a man to have had some one like you always to himself.”
“You were thinking,” she brushed his cheek with hers, “you were thinking about yourself—about the long, long future.”
“Yes.” His voice scarcely reached her. “I was growing frightened because of Hal. I was feeling kind of lonely. Then I thought of you and Jimmie Boy. It would be fearful to grow up like Hal.”
“You won’t, Teddy.”
There was a long silence. They could hear each other’s thoughts ticking. At last he whispered, “Desire said she never had a father.”
“Poor little girl! You must have guessed?”
“Hal?”
Choking back her tears, she nodded.
“Things like that——” He broke off, staring into the darkness. “Things like that make a boy frightened, when first they’re told him.” She drew his head down to her shoulder. He lay there without speaking, feeling sheltered for the moment. All the threats of manhood, the fears that he might fail, the terror lest he might miss the highest things like Hal, drew away into the distance.
In the night, when he awoke and they returned, he drove them off with a new purpose. The pity and white chivalry of his boyhood were aflame with what he had learnt. Until he met her again, he would keep himself spotless. She should be to him what the Holy Grail was to Sir Gala-had. He would fight to be good and great not for his own sake—that would be lonely; but that he might be strong, when he became a man, to pay the price for Desire that Hal’s sin had imposed on her.
Fear is a form of loneliness; it was Ruddy who cured Teddy of that.
For years they had met in Orchid Lodge and up and down Eden Row, nodding to each other with the contemptuous tolerance of boys whose parents are friends. It was the shared memory of the adventure in the woodland that brought them together.
Two days after his return from the farm he stole out into Eden Row as night was falling. In the park, across the river, the bell for closing time was ringing. On tennis courts, between slumbering chestnuts, men in flannels were putting on their coats and gathering their shoes and rackets, while slim wraiths of girls waited for them. They swept together and drifted away through the daffodil-tinted dusk. Clear laughter floated across the river and the whisper of reluctantly departing footsteps. Park keepers, like angels in Eden, marched along shadowy paths, herding the lovers and driving them before them, shouting in melancholy tones, “All out. All out.” They seemed to be proclaiming that nothing could last.
“Hulloa!”
Teddy turned to find the sturdy figure in the midshipman’s suit leaning against the railings beside him.
“Must be rather jolly to be like that.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, don’t be a sausage.” Ruddy smiled imperturbably. “To be like them—old enough to put your arm round a girl without making people laugh.”
“Yes.”
Ruddy sank his voice. “Wonder where they all come from. Suppose they look quite proper by daylight, as though they’d never speak to a chap.”
The crowd was pouring out from the gates and melting away by twos and twos. Each couple seemed to walk in its own separate world, walled in by memories of tender things done and said. As they passed beneath lamps, the girls drew a little apart from their companions; but as they entered long intervals of twilit gloom their propriety relaxed.
Turning away from the river, the boys followed the crowd at random. Once Ruddy hurried forward to peer into a girl’s face as she passed beneath a lamp. She had flaxen hair which broke in waves about her shoulders.
Teddy flushed. He had wanted to do it himself, but something had restrained him. Secretly he admired Ruddy’s boldness. “Don’t do that,” he whispered.
“She looked pretty from the back,” Ruddy explained. “Wanted to see by her face whether her boy had been kissing her. You are a funny chap.”
They got tired of wandering. On the edge of a low garden wall, with their backs against the railing, they seated themselves. It was in a road of small villas, dotted with golden windows and shadowy with the foam of foliage.
Ruddy pulled out a cigarette. “I liked her most awfully. Us’ally I don’t like girls.”
“Desire?” Teddy’s heart bounded at being able to speak her name so frankly.
“Desire. Yes. I’ve got an idea that she’s a sort of relation. Ma won’t tell a thing about her. I can’t ask Hal—he’s too cut up. When I speak to Harriet, she says ‘Hush.’ There’s a mystingry.”
For a week Ruddy opened his heart wider and wider, till he had all but confessed that he was in love with Desire. Then one day, with the depressed air of a conspirator, he inveigled Teddy into the shrubbery of Orchid Lodge.
“Want to ask you something. You think I’m in love with that kid, Desire, don’t you? Well, I’m not.”
“I’m glad you’re not, because—you oughtn’t to be. Why you oughtn’t to be, I can’t tell you.”
“But I never was.”
“Oh, weren’t you?” Teddy shrugged his shoulders.
Up went Ruddy’s fists. His face grew red and his eyes became suspiciously wet. “You’re the only one who knows it. You’ve got to say I wasn’t. If you don’t, I’ll fight you.”
“But you’ve just said that I’m the only one who knows it. You silly chump, you’ve owned that you were in love.”
Ruddy stood hesitant; his fists fell “Don’t know what God’ll do to me. I’ve been in love with my——” He gulped. “I’m her uncle.”
For a fortnight he posed as a figure of guilt and hinted darkly at suicide. But the world at fifteen is too adventurous a place for even a boy who has been in love with his niece to remain long tragic. It was on this dark secret of his unclehood, that his momentous friendship with Teddy was founded. Mrs. Sheerug approved of it; she did all that she could to encourage it. She sent him to Mr. Quickly’s school in Eden Row which Teddy attended. From that moment the boys’ great days began.
It was Ruddy who invented one of their most exciting games,Enemies or Friends. This consisted in picking out some inoffensive boy from among their school-fellows and overwhelming him with flatteries. He was made the recipient of presents and invited to tea on half-holidays, till his suspicions of evil intentions were quite laid to rest. Then one afternoon, when school was over, he was lured into Orchid Lodge to look at the pigeons. Once within the garden walls, Orchid Lodge became a brigand’s castle, the boy a captive, and Ruddy and Teddy his captors. The boy was locked up in the tool-shed for an hour and made to promise by the most fearful threats not to divulge to his mother what had delayed him. Intended victims of this game knew quite well what fate was in store for them; a rumor of the brigands’ perfidy had leaked out. The chief sport in its playing lay in the Machiavellian methods employed to persuade the latest favorite that, whatever had happened to his predecessors, he was the great exception, beloved only for himself.
Opportunity for revenge arrived when Teddy’s first attempt at authorship was published. Mr. Quickly, the Quaker headmaster, brought out a magazine each Christmas to which his students were invited to contribute. Teddy’s contribution was entitledThe Angel’s Sin. Perhaps it was inspired by remorse for his misdoings. Dearie nearly cried her eyes out when she read it, she was so impressed by its piety. But it moved his school-fellows to ridicule—especially the much-wronged boys who had spent an hour in the tool-shed. They recited it in chorus between classes; they followed him home reciting it; they stood outside the windows of his house and bawled it at him through the railings. “Heaven was silent, for one had sinned. Before the throne of God a prostrate figure lay. But the throne was wrapped in clouds. A voice rang out,” etc.
“They have no souls,” his mother whispered comfortingly.
The Angel’s Sincost the brigands many bruises and their mothers much repairing of torn clothing. Teddy’s mother declared that it was all worth it—she had spent her life in paying the price for having genius in her family; Mrs. Sheerug was doubtful Ruddy was loyal in his public defense of Teddy, but secretly disapproving. “Stupid ass! Why did you do it? Why didn’t you write about pirates? Might have known we’d get ragged.”
Teddy shook his head. He was quite as much puzzled as Ruddy. “Don’t know. It just came to me. I had to do it.”
The Christmas holidays brought a joyous week. Teddy had a cold and was kept in bed. The light was too bad for painting, so his father came and sat with him.
“You’re younger than you were, chappie—more like what I used to be at your age. That young ruffian’s doing you good. What d’you play at?”
When penny dreadfuls were mentioned, Jimmie Boy closed one eye and squinted at his son humorously. “That’s not much of a diet—not much in keeping withThe Ange’s Sinand a boy who’s going to be a genius. Tell you what I’ll do; let’s have Ruddy in and I’ll reform you.”
Then began a magic chain of nights and days. As soon as the breakfast-tray had been carried down, Jimmie Boy would commence his reading. It wasMargaret of Valoisthat he chose as being the nearest thing in literature to a penny dreadful. Teddy, lying cosily between sheets, would listen to the booming voice, which rumbled like a gale about the pale walls of the bedroom. Seated in a great armchair, with his pipe going like a furnace and his knees spread apart before the fire, his rebel father acted out with his free hand all the glorious love scenes and stabbings. Ruddy, stretched like a dog upon the floor, his elbows digging into the carpet, gazed up at Jimmie Boy adoringly. For a week they kept company with kings and queens, listening to the clash of swords and witnessing the intrigue of stolen kisses. They wandered down moonlit streets of Paris, were present at the massacre of St. Batholomew’s Eve, and saw the Duchess of Guise, having rescued Coconnas from the blades of the Huguenots, hide him, dripping with blood, in her secret closet.
WhenMargaret of Valoiswas ended,Hereward the Wakefollowed, and thenRienzi.
“And that’s literature,” Jimmie Boy told them. “How about your penny dreadfuls now?”
In the afternoons Dearie would join them. “You three boys,” she called them. She always made a pretense that she was intruding, till she had been entreated in flowery romance language to enter. Then, sitting on the bed like a tall white queen, her hand clasped in Teddy’s, she would watch dreamily, with those violet eyes of hers, the shaggy head of Jimmie Boy tossing in a melody of words.
It was this week, with its delving into ancient stories, that taught him what his parents’ love really meant—it was a rampart thrown up by the soul against calamity. They had been poor and harassed and disappointed. There had been times when they had spoken crossly. But in their hearts they still stood hand-in-hand, always guarding a royal place in which they could be happy.
“I say,” whispered Ruddy, “your people—they’re toppers. Let’s go slow on the penny dreadfuls.”