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 aher.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.
“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.
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.’
“Whyher, 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 himselfcleansed. 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.
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 lookedsacred: 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.”