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.”
“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 sayahlike 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!”
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 upincognito. 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 atour 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.
“You don’t like me, do you?”
“Us’ally I like everyone,” said Peter; “I don’t know you yet.”
“I’m a cross old woman. If you don’t mind losing your play, you can come and sit beside me.”
And Peter sat down. It was dull for him. Across the sands boats on wheels raced with spread sails, dashing toward the silver thread. Ponies, which you could hire for a few pennies, were galloping up and down. Across the flat beach, like a monstrous centipede, with trestles for legs, the long pier crawled with its head in the sea and its tail on land. And the pier had its own delirious excitements: on show, in the casino at the end, was a troop of performing fleas who drove one another in the tiniest of hansom-cabs. Peter knew because a lady-flea, named Ethel, had been lost; a reward for her recovery was advertised all over Sandport. Ten shillings were offered and hundreds of fleas had been submitted for inspection. Peter had a wild dream that he might find Ethel: with ten shillings he could escape to London from this Egypt of exile in the sand.
Miss Rufus broke in on his reverie. She had been wondering how anyone who had the right to Peter could be so foolish as to do without him.
“Why did they send you?”
“Send me to you?”
“Yes.”
“Because I made Kay cry about heaven.”
“Humph! D’you know what it says about heaven in the Bible?—that there’s no marriage. Was that what she cried about?”
“Kay wouldn’t cry about a thing like that. She’s my little sister—littler than me—and she’s never going to marry. We’re going to live together always and have chipped potatoes and sausages for breakfast.”
A smile twisted the thin straight lips of the sallow woman; it was the first that Peter had seen there. It was almost tender—like a thing forgotten coming back.
He laughed—he was always ready to laugh at himself. “You think that’s funny? Father thinks it’s funny, too. He says, ‘Peterkins, Peterkins, time’ll change all that.’ But it won’t you know, ‘cause we mean it truly.”
“But wouldn’t it be very sad not to marry? Wouldn’t you like one day to have a little boy just like yourself?”
He shook his head. “I’m an awful worry. No, I don’t think so. But I’d like to have a little girl like Kay—and I’ll have her, anyhow.”
The arm of the sallow woman stole round his shoulder. “Who says you’re an awful worry?”
“That’s why I’m here, you know. I worried them with my queer questions. When I’m the same as other people, they’ll let me come back.”
“I don’t think you’re a worry. I hope you’ll never be like anyone else.”
“But you mustn’t say that, ‘cause you’re to change me. I’m glad you like me.”
“Then be glad I love you,” she whispered.
The lonely woman’s heart opened to Peter. He told her all about Kay and Grace and Romance; he thought she ought to know everything since she was to cure him. But instead of curing him she almost—almost made him worse.
There was a strange furtiveness in their relation; the other boys must not suspect. Miss Rufus despised favoritism; she tried to be very hard on Peter in lesson-hours. He understood and smiled to himself.
He was terribly homesick. He wanted Kay badly. He wanted to hear her laughter. He marked each hour by what they were doing at Topbury. Now they were sitting down to breakfast; now Kay was going with his mother shopping; now the dinner was being set and his father’s key was grating in the latch. Sounds and smells would bring sudden and stabbing remembrance. He would hear the garden with the dead leaves rustling, see the nursery gleaming in the firelight and a little girl being made ready for bed. Oh, she must be frightened without Peter, at the top of that tall dark house!
At night, when Miss Rufus broke her rule against favoritism and, stealing to his room, pressed his head against her bony breast while he said his prayers, it was then that he thought of his mother with most poignancy.
But he was to be a little knight, so those weekly letters which commenced “My Beloveds,” were written stoutheartedly. They must never guess. But Nan saw the tremble in the sprawling hand and the blots, where diluted ink had spread.
“Billy boy, we must have him back, I can’t bear it.”
“Nonsense, darling. The chap’s quite happy.”
“He isn’t. He isn’t. And you know it. Kay wants him—she’s fretting. I want him, and you want him as much as any of us. I want to hear his footsteps on the stairs, to see his clothes lying about, and—and——”
“But it isn’t what we want, little Nan; it’s what’s best for him. He’s as nervous as a cat—always has been. Give him a year of sea-air.”
Nan missed him terribly. No merry voice awoke her in the morning. The ceiling above her bed never shook with childish prancing. Kay, by herself, was very quiet. She was always asking where was Peter: had he gone to heaven?
But it was when she came home at nightfall along the Terrace that Nan’s longing was most intense. Childhood would be all too short at best. Too soon the years would take him from her. One day she would give anything for just one evening of the joy that she now might have. Who could tell what the future held? An old woman, grayheaded, she would sit and whisper to herself,
“Oh, to come home once more, when the dusk is falling,
To see the nursery lighted and the children’s table spread;
‘Mother, mother, mother!’ the eager voices calling,
‘The baby was so sleepy that she had to go to bed!’”
Thinking these thoughts, Nan would sink her face in her hands, foretasting the solitude that was surely coming.
But it was for Peter’s good, his father said. He looked very intently at the Dutch landscape by Cuyp, seeking quiet from it, when he said it.
As for curing him, Miss Rufus was the wrong person to do that. Peter was aware of it. He had made her as bad as himself. He had set her loving. He must look for help elsewhere.
On Saturdays Mr. Waffles called for him—quite a splendid Mr. Waffles with soaped mustaches and rather shabby spats. He was taken to Madeira Lodge, shiny with its newly purchased highly polished furniture. In the afternoons he walked with Mr. Waffles to Birchdale, where the dunes stretched away in billows of sand and the air was always blowy. In the evenings he played with his cousins till it was time to return to Miss Rufus. Across the road from Madeira Lodge was a Methodist Chapel and beside it a plot of waste land. To this place he would escape when he got the chance. The grass grew rank; it was easy to hide among the withered evening-primroses. He had come to a great conclusion: no one but God could cure him. There, behind the Methodist Chapel, he argued with God about it, praying for Kay’s sake that he might be made well. Nothing happened—perhaps because Glory found him and, having found him, was always following him to his place of hiding. He pledged her to secrecy, told her his trouble and asked her advice about it. But she only stared with dumb love in her eyes and shook her quiet head.
Of his longing to return he did not dare to speak to Miss Rufus—she was too fond of him. Nor must he mention it in his letters. Aunt Jehane—ah, well, she spoke of his parents as though they were entirely mistaken about everything. She was always trying to prove to him how much more broad-minded, clever and generous she and Uncle Waffles were. Her jealous nature prompted her to steal the boy’s heart by every expedient of kindness and flattery. She told him scandal about her neighbors. She spoke of love between boys and girls. She made him kiss Glory and laughed at his awkwardness. She gave him special treats at his meals. She boasted about her husband, saying how well he was getting on and how much he would do for Peter. And she did all this that Peter might tell her that he was happier at Sandport than at Topbury.
Peter couldn’t tell her that. He had commenced her acquaintance with a prejudice. He could never forget that she had once been the smacking lady. He watched her with his cousins, how she was foolishly lenient or foolishly severe, but wise never. She allowed herself to punish them unjustly; but if anyone, even their father, blamed them, they were “My Eustace” and “My girls.” Especially was this the case with Glory, in whose making Mr. Waffles could claim no share. She could always humble his uncle by speaking regretfully of Captain Spashett.
For Uncle Waffles Peter had a fellow sympathy; it was to him he turned. On those walks among the sand-hills they had fine talks together.
“Old son, I did a big stroke of business this week. Oh yes, I tell you, this little boy knows his way about town. Had two more acres offered me, and borrowed money for the purchase. They’re a long way out, but Sandport’ll grow to them. Now what d’you know about that?”
Uncle Waffles was often confessional with Peter and always exuberant. He asked his opinion on business affairs as though his opinion mattered. He seemed to keep nothing back, even touching on things domestic.
“You mustn’t think I’m complaining of the Duchess. She’s a snorter. But, you know, she’s never understood me. I’m taking her in hand though, and educating her up to my standard. When first I knew her, she seemed to think that loving was wicked. Now what d’you know about that?”
Peter watched for the results of the educating and was disappointed. When Uncle Waffles tried to kiss Aunt Je-hane, she still drew aside her head, saying, “Don’t be silly, Ocky.” She left the room when he began to tell his latest funny story. It was odd, if he was really successful, that she should always treat him like that.
And there were other secrets Peter learnt—that his uncle had an obscure disease which no one must mention. His uncle was very brave and laughed about it. It could be kept in check, so long as he took his “medicine” regularly. His “medicine” could be obtained at any public house and was frequently obtained on those Saturday excursions to and from Birchdale. When Glory accompanied them, Uncle Waffles contrived to do without it.
At Christmas Peter was put in charge of the guard and returned to Topbury. The month that followed was epoch-making—a bitter pleasure. Like a man living on his capital, he was always reckoning how much was left. And then the respite ended and the exile in Egypt recommenced.
He clenched his hands. He would not cry. And yet——.
It was Kay he wanted. His whole life was wrapt up in her.
The first day back at school he noticed that one of his companions was absent. The second and the third day passed; then the news leaked out that he was dead. It dawned on Peter that death was a peril that threatened everybody. No amount of care on the part of Mr. Grace or the policeman could shield Kay from it. The thought became a nightmare. Miss Rufus discovered that he was unhappy; he cried at night in bed. She was hurt; but, when he told her, she was more gentle with him than ever.
Midway through the term a telegram arrived. Its message was broken to him by Uncle Waffles. Kay was dangerously ill and calling for him; he was to go back.
A drizzling rain hung over London. The streets were clogged with mud, and gas-lamps shone drearily through the drifting murk. Throughout the long and dismal journey he had sat pale-faced; in the intervals between praying he had told himself that, were she to die, he would never forgive his father for having separated him from her. He was stunned and yet fiercely rebellious. In spite of his desperate hope, he was prepared for the worst.
At the station Grace met him. Indiscreet through grief, she told him how from the first of her three days’ illness his little sister had never ceased calling for him.
“‘Er temp’rature’s runned up with fretting, poor lamb; but you was allaws h’able to quiet ‘er, Master Peter.”
Before the cab had halted on the Terrace, Peter was up the steps. Someone had been behind the blinds, watching; the door opened almost before he had rung the bell. His father stood before him. In his hot anger Peter dodged beneath his arm and commenced to mount the stairs. If he had been there, he felt sure, this would not have happened.
From the room in which she had been born came the heavy smell of eucalyptus. Peter opened the door; a fire was burning, as when he had first found her there. A cot was drawn up to the fire and from it came a ceaseless tired wailing. In the wailing he made out his name, uttered over and over. As he ran forward, his mother rose to put her arms about him. He rushed past her: she did not count. Bending over the cot, he gazed into the flushed face. The hoarse voice stopped. The lips, cracked with fever, pressed against his mouth.
“Little Kay, it’s truly Peter. He’s never going to leave you.”
From the moment he touched her, she began to mend.
Some days later, when relief from suspense left leisure for attention to other matters, Mr. Barrington wrote to Miss Rufus, saying that his son would not return. In reply he received a curious confidence. She had advertised her school for sale, and it was Peter’s doing. Peter had taught her that, except love, nothing mattered.
Peter’s father had seen Miss Rufus; he thought that love on her lips was an odd word. Couldn’t one love and still keep a school? It was veryPeterishof Peter to make a lady with a corrugated countenance do a thing like that. Something lay behind the letter. Later, when the scandal had become public, Jehane informed them what that something was.
Peter’s father felt penitent. He took his son between his knees, resting his hand on his curly head, and gazed at him intently as though for the first time he was beginning to know him.
“Have you forgiven me, little chap?” Then, “I was mistaken about you. Your mother was right. Go on beingPeterishto your heart’s content. We love you best like that.”
To Nan he said, “You should have seen that woman. She was barbed wire all round—impregnable. Absolutely. But Peter—well! We’ve got a queer little shrimp for our son and heir.”
Peter went laughing through the spring-world—it had become all kindness. In some strange way he had saved Kay’s life. Everybody said so. He did not know how. And now she was strong and well—more his than ever.
“‘Appy, Master Peter? H’always ‘appy,” Mr. Grace would say when they met on the cab-stand.
Yes, Peter was always happy now. His eyes were blue torches of joy which burnt up other people’s sadness. His golden little motherkins forgot her dread of when he would become a man; she held him tightly in the nest at Topbury, surrounding him with her gentle love. His father showed his affection in a man’s fashion by making Peter his friend. And Kay, racing down the garden-path and dancing with the flowers in the sunshine, put the feeling which they all experienced into words, “The joy’s gone into my feet, Peter; I’m so glad.”
Never again would anyone suspect him of harming her. He could gather her to him and tell her tales to his heart’s content. And what games of pretending they played together! The old-fashioned garden became a forest of limitless expanse and the house a castle. Kay was a princess in danger and Peter was a knight who came to her rescue. Peter taught his mother and father his pretence-language, so that they might play their part as king and queen of the castle. Peter’s father learnt that he did not go to business in the morning, but to the wars. In the evening, when he returned, he would sometimes see two merry faces watching for him from the top-windows—the top-windows were the battlements. Then he felt that, grown man though he was, he ought to prance up the Terrace, as his legs would have done had they been really those of a royal charger.
Peter had brought back the spirit of fun-making to Top-bury. In the garden by day, where the wind whispered round the walls, and the trees let in glimpses of high-flying clouds, and in the nursery at twilight, where the laburnum leant her arms on the window-sill to listen, nodding her golden tassels, he created his imaginary world. Here the king and queen would join them almost shyly, as if they feared that their presence might disturb. They came hand-in-hand on tiptoe. Peter noticed how different they were from Aunt Jehane and Uncle Waffles: they were never tired of being lovers.
“Please, Peter, we want to be your little boy and girl. May we hear your story?”
The invisible arms of the threatened death had drawn them very near together. Like the spring about them, their hearts were emotional with exultant tenderness.
Like all children, Kay and Peter had their place of hiding, where they lived their most secret world. It was the loft above the unused stable. One had to climb up boxes and scramble through a hole in the ceiling to get to it. It was thick in dust and cob-webs, but they cleaned a space where they could sit and pretend it was their house and that they were married. There was only one window, smothered in ivy, looking out on the garden. From here they could observe whether anyone was coming. There were chinks in the floor which served as spy-holes; through one of them they could see the stall in which the tandem-tricycle was kept. They planned to explore all manner of countries when Kay’s legs were long enough to reach the pedals.
“Can’t think where you kiddies get to,” their father said; “I believe it’s somewhere in the stable. I’ve been calling and calling’.”
And Peter laughed, for he knew that grown people were far too sensible to think of climbing into the loft in search of them. Only one grown person was so adventurous—but that comes later.
When letters arrived from Sandport they were usually addressed to Nan; as a rule the first post brought them, and she would read out extracts as they sat at breakfast.
They were curious letters, written in a jealous spirit, but intended to create an impression of contentment. They were in the nature of veiled retorts which said, “So you see, my husband’s as good as yours.” Without knowing it, they betrayed envy. If Nan had given news concerning the doings of herself, Billy or her children, Jehane would reply with parallel details concerning her family. Just as in conversation she spoke of her husband as Mr. Waffles, as though the very name were a title inspiring awe, so in correspondence she quoted his opinions, as a loving wife would the sayings of a man she worshiped. Jehane wrote less and less in the mood of spontaneous friendship; if she had nothing better to say, one wondered that she took the trouble to write at all. Probably she did it out of habit and, perhaps, in order to hoodwink herself.
And she was evasive. Questions as to how Ocky’s enterprise was progressing were left unanswered—in place of answers were loose optimistic statements. A letter from Sandport usually brought with it an atmosphere of annoyance. Nan exercised her tact in selecting portions to be read aloud. It was in keeping with Ocky’s character that, even when Barrington had written himself, Jehane did the replying, saying that her husband was very busy at present with new developments.
One morning Nan passed a letter down the table without comment. Barrington’s brows drew together in a frown; halfway through reading it he flung it from him.
“Another! Well, I must say they might have waited until they knew whether they could afford——”
Nan interrupted him quietly. “Billy, not before——”
She glanced at the children.
When they were supposed to have forgotten what their father had said, Kay and Peter were informed—Aunt Je-hane had another little girl.
That evening the king and queen of the castle talked together after the knight and the princess had been put to bed.
“They’ve no right to do a thing like that—bringing another child into the world. Jehane doesn’t love him. It’s my belief she never has. The thing’s sordid. What chance will the little beggar have? It puts the whole business of marriage on a level with the animals. Ugh!”
They were sitting beneath the mulberry in the cool dusk. From far away, like waves lapping against the walls of a precipice in a cranny of which they had found shelter, the weary complaint of London reached them. Within his own house, with his wife and children, Barrington felt lifted high above all that. He hated this intrusion of strife and ugliness.
Nan’s arm stole round his neck; she had never lost the shyness with which she had given him her first caress. “Billy, old boy, you mustn’t be angry with them—only sorry. Don’t you know we’re exceptional.”
“Not so exceptional as all——”
“Yes—as all that. How many wives and husbands are lovers after they’ve been married ten years?”
“Never tried to count.”
“How many then would choose one another again if they could begin afresh?”
“Begin afresh, with full knowledge of everything that was to happen?”
“Yes.”
“Not many.”
“Then, who are we to judge? We should just be thankful for ourselves and sorry for——”
“But it’s the children I’m thinking of—children who aren’t wanted, begotten by parents who don’t want one another.”
The silence was broken by Nan. “Perhaps, Jehane was a child like that. I’ve often thought it. She’s always been so hungry—hungry for affection.”
“Hungry—but jealous. She doesn’t go the right way to work to get it.”
“She hasn’t learnt; no one ever taught her. She’s married; yet she’s still on the raft.—Billy, I want you to do something for her.”
“Me—for her?”
“I want you to ask her, as soon as she’s well, to come here to Topbury with the baby. She’s tired. I can feel it in her letters. I’d like to help her.”
“She’ll only misconstrue your help—you know that. She’ll bore us to tears by boasting about Ocky.”
“And won’t that be to her credit?”
“To her credit, but beastly annoying. If she’d only believe in him to his face and cease shamming that she’s proud of him behind his back, matters might mend. She won’t let us make her affairs our business. Some day, when it’s too late, she may have to. That’s what I’m afraid of.”
But, when Jehane came, she set that fear at rest. It was impossible not to believe that Ocky’s feet were on the upward ladder: she was better dressed, happier and had money to spend. She wore presents of jewelry which her husband had given her—so she said. The money, she told them, was the result of speculations which Ocky had made for her with the little capital left by Captain Spashett. She spoke with enthusiasm of his cleverness. And the happiness—that was because Barrington had invited her personally. Naturally she kept this knowledge to herself.
Nan had planned to encompass her with the atmosphere of affection. Little gifts from Jehane, received in her girlhood, were set about the bedroom to awaken memories—to let her know how well she was remembered. Jehane noticed the carefully thought out campaign—the efforts that were made to win her. She wondered what it all meant; then she realized and was touched.
Nan sat wistfully beside her friend, watching the baby being put to bed. She kissed its little limbs with a kind of reverence and ministered humbly to its helplessness. When Jehane pressed its eager lips against her breast, Nan’s eyes filled with tears. Jehane looked up questioningly.
“I shall never have another,” Nan said.
Jehane stretched out her hand and drew Nan to her. She could be magnanimous when for once she found her lot coveted. When the baby had been fed and was being laid in its cot, Nan slipped to the window and leant out, gazing across the roofs of Holloway to Hampstead where the sun hung red.
There was no warning. She felt lips on her cheeks, lips violently kissing her ears and neck. She turned with a throaty laugh. “You haven’t done that for ages.”
“Not kissed you? Of course I have.”
Nan shook her head. “Not like that, as though you wanted to. You haven’t done it since we were girls.”
Jehane, half-ashamed of her impulsiveness, looked away. “We’ve been too busy to make a fuss. But the feeling’s been there.”
“I don’t call that making a fuss—and it isn’t because we’ve been busy. We’ve been drifting apart—playing a game of hide and seek with one another.” Then, before Jehane could become casual, “I do so want to be friends.”
“And aren’t we friends?”
“Not in the old sense. We’re hard and suspicious, and doubt one another.”
“Then let’s be friends in the old sense, you dear little Nan.”
Like Peter, when Nan had made up her mind to be tender, no one could resist her. She treated Jehane with sweet envy, because of the baby on her breast. She made believe that Jehane was fragile, and kept her in bed for breakfast. After Barrington had been seen off to business, she went up to help her dress. It was in this hour that Jehane was most confessional. She recalled the dreamy Oxford days, with their desperate dreams of love, when life was unexperienced. She even spoke of the great disillusion that had followed; she spoke in general terms to include all wives and husbands. She spoke of Waffles as he had been, only that she might praise him as he had become. Her fierce loyalty to him, her wilful consistency in shutting her eyes to his faults, was a form of self-respect which never faltered. Nan found a difficulty in pretending that he was all that was claimed for him; they both knew that he was not. Still, she was convinced that he was mending.
Barrington, noticing the change in Jehane, said, “There are only two things that could do it: money or love. It isn’t love, so we have to believe that it’s——”
But it was love—love for Barrington and the effect of being near him. Even she herself wondered at how the old infatuation had lasted. Her very bitterness had been a form of love. Now that he went out of his way to be kind to her all the passion in her responded—but she had to disguise its response.
At night, with another man’s child in her arms, she lay awake. In the darkness and silence she told herself stories, juggling with circumstances.
Once she heard a tapping on her door. She crouched against the wall, shuddering.
The handle turned. Nan stood on the threshold. “I thought I heard you moving.”
Guilty and angry, Jehane said nothing. Nan groped her way toward the bed and found it empty.
“Jehane, Janey,” she called.
Then she saw her, stooped to her and caught her in her arms, begging for an explanation. Just as once, when she had asserted, “Jehane Idid, Ididplay fair,” so now she got no answer—only, “I’m stupid, dear; I’ll be better in the morning.”
Cold with alarm, Nan crept downstairs and hid herself in Billy’s arms. He was too sleepy to give the matter much attention. “She’s odd, darling. Never understood her. Poor old Ocky!”
The intoxication and the madness were gone. Fear had come. Any moment they might guess. With fear came contrition: she would idolize her husband more, till he became for her the man he was not. Next morning she surprised Nan by announcing that she was homesick for Ocky, that her things were packed and she would return to Sand-port at once. There was no dissuading her. In her heart she had determined to wipe out her faithlessness by educating her husband into largeness by love.
When the train had moved out of the station Billy stared at Nan puzzled. “Really does look as if she’d grown fond of him! Eh what?”
Nan squeezed his arm. “Perhaps she always was fond of him and we were sceptics.”
“She may be now. She wasn’t.”
“Is it because he’s got money?”
“Does make a difference, doesn’t it?”
Nan pressed against him and looked up laughing. “Between you and me it wouldn’t.”
“Think not?”
“Never.”
Hidden in a cab, he caught her to him. “You darling!” She held him from her, blushing. “But why now? What’s this for?”
“Jehane makes me thankful for what I’ve got.”
That evening a man moved along the Terrace, halted as though he were minded to turn back, moved on and at last knocked at Barrington’s door. While he waited he mopped his forehead; his manner was furtive.
Once inside the hall he became important, handing his card with a flourish. Left alone while the maid announced his presence, he fiddled with his necktie and twisted his soaped mustaches.
Barrington burst in on him. “Anything the matter, old man?”
“Matter? ‘Course not.”
“Didn’t you know that Jehane went home this morning?”
“Got your telegram just as I was leaving. Had business in London. Couldn’t put it off.”
“Must have been important. She’ll be disappointed.”
“It was.”
“Suppose it’s too late for you to start to-night?” Barrington pulled out his watch. “Humph! Stop with us, won’t you?—Had dinner?—All right. Let’s go out. Nan’s in the garden.”
What was it that had brought him? Barrington kept asking himself that question. As usual, Ocky was voluble and plausible, but—— His high spirits were forced; he avoided the eye when watched. He rattled on about the possibilities of Sandport. He talked of the friends he had made—men whom Barrington guessed to be of no importance. He repeated his friends’ hilarious stories, “Here’s a good one John told me——” It was Ocky who discovered the humor in the story and laughed.
Trees grew more dense against the dark. Lights in houses were extinguished. The roar of London, like a voice wearied of quarreling, which mumbled vexatiously in a last retort, sank away into silence. But this tireless voice at his side went on, babbling of nothing, talking and talking.
Nan rose. “I’m sleepy. You’ll excuse me, won’t you? Billy, darling, don’t be long.”
Ocky refilled his foul pipe—with a pipe between his teeth he felt fortified.
Barrington waited for him to reach his point—therewasa point he felt sure. Ocky’s visits always had an ulterior motive.
“Everything all right at Madeira Lodge?”
“Topping.”
“And the land investment?”
“Fine.”
“Then what brought you?”
Ocky was as shocked as if a gun had been fired in his face. The question was unkind. He’d tried to be sociable and to stave off unpleasantness—and this was the thanks he got. He squirmed uneasily; the wicker-chair creaked, betraying his agitation.
“That’s a rotten thing to say to a fellow, Billy. What brought me, indeed!”
It was Barrington’s turn to shift in his chair. He hated to be called Billy by Waffles. The offence was repeated.
“You’re confoundedly direct, Billy. Whenever I visit you, you always think I’ve come to get something.”
“And haven’t you?” Barrington’s voice was hard. “Well, I have, now you mention it.”
A pause.
Barrington lost patience. “Why can’t you get it out like a man? You’ve done something while Jehane’s been away—something that made you afraid to meet her. Haven’t you?”
“Jehane!—— In a sense it’s her doing. Don’t see why she should make me afraid.”
“Her doing! In what way?”
Ocky struck a match; finding his pipe empty, he held the match till it burnt his fingers. “I’m not blaming Jehane, but itisher doing up to a point. She wants money to dress her girls up to the nines. She wants money to make the house look stylish. If it hadn’t been for Jehane, I should never have left old Wagstaff’s office. Mind, I’m not blaming her. But where was the money to come from?”
“You let her believe you were making it.”
“Eh? So I was. So I shall if I can only get time.”
“Where’d you get the money she’s already had?”
“It’s her money that I invested for her.”
“You’ve been living on the principal—is that it? On the money that should have gone to Glory.”
The tension proved too great for Ocky. A joke might relieve the situation. “Seems to me that’s where it’s gone.” When no laugh followed he hastened to add, “Financial pressure. Of course I’m sorry.” Then, “I want you to lend me enough to tide me over.”
“I’ve been tiding you over all your life. You’ll have to tell her. When you’ve told her, I’ll see what I can do once more.”
For the first time that evening the foolish tone of banter went out of the weak man’s voice.
“For God’s sake! Don’t make me do that. You don’t know what a punishment you’re inventing. D’you know what that’d do to her?—kill what little love she has for me. She’d hate me. She’d despise me even more than she does already. I’ve got to live with her. Oh, my God!”
Barrington drew back into the shadow. He was deeply moved, and ashamed of it.
The other man, goaded deeper into sincerity by his silence, continued, pleading brokenly.
“You can’t understand. Between you and Nan it’s always been different. You’re strong and she’s so tender. But I—I’m weak. I try to do right, but I’m everlastingly in the wrong. I’ve had to crawl for every scrap of love my wife ever gave me. She’s thrown it at me like a bone to a dog. I’m a poor flimsy devil. I know it. We never ought to have married—she’s too splendid. But she’s all I’ve got. I thought—I thought if I could take her money and double it, she’d respect me at last—believe me clever. I did make money for her at first. I saw what a difference it made. Then I lost. I was afraid to tell her, so went on. I thought I’d win if I tried again. And she—after the first time, she expected the extra money from me. Little by little it all went. But don’t make me tell her.”
“Then it wasn’t lost in land speculation?”
“Part, but most in stocks bought on margins. My life’s been hell for the past six months. Don’t make me tell her.”
Barrington rose. “It’s late. I’ll let you know to-morrow. You must give me a complete list of your indebtedness. Whatever I decide, I think you ought not to deceive Je—— And, by the way, say the thing you mean when we talk of this to-morrow. Saygive, instead oflend. I prefer frankness.”
That “whatever I decide” told Ocky his battle was won. One night’s sleep placed all his dread behind him. His lack of self-respect permitted him to recuperate rapidly. Early in the morning he was up and in the garden, whistling cheerfully as though he had suffered no humiliation. Peter heard him and ran to greet him. For an hour before breakfast they exchanged secrets and Peter, in a burst of confidence, initiated his uncle into the mystery of the loft.
“A fine place to hide, Peter?”
“Rather.”
“And you never told anyone before?”
“No one.”
“And you told me! Well, what d’you know about that? You must be somehow fond of this poor old uncle.”
Peter’s father heard them laughing and was annoyed. His night had been restless. He was still more irritated when, on entering the stable, he found Ocky with his arm round Peter’s shoulder. In the sunlight he saw at a glance how his cousin had deteriorated. His gait was more slouchy, his expression more furtive, his teeth more broken with constant biting on the pipe. His attempts at smartness—the soaped mustaches and the dusty spats—were wretchedly offensive; they were so ineffectually pretentious.
The weak man’s hand commenced to fumble in his pocket as Barrington’s eyes searched him.
“Where’s my baccy? Must have dropped it. Seen my pouch anywhere, Peter?”
“It’s in your hand, uncle.” Peter went off into a peal of laughter.
“Surely you can do without smoking till after breakfast.”
Peter’s laugh stopped, cut short by the sternness in his father’s voice.
In his study, an hour later, Barrington asked, “You’re sure there’s nothing else? There’s no good in my giving you anything unless you make a clean breast to me. And mind, this is absolutely the last time I save you. From this moment you’ve got to go on your own.”
“On my honor, Billy, there’s nothing.”
Ocky had a constitutional weakness for lies; so he told one now when it hindered his purpose.
Barrington eyed him doubtfully. “If you’ve not told me the truth, Jehane shall know all.”
“Can’t pledge you more than my honor, Billy.”
The check was signed. He had gained a new lease on life. His contrition left him, expelled by his fatal optimism. He was again a facetious dog, whose paltry mistakes lay in the distant past. At parting he tipped Peter a pound, with characteristic careless generosity. As he walked down the Terrace, he tilted his hat to a more jaunty angle. On his way to the station he bought some flashy jewelry for Jehane and the children. Long before he reached Sand-port, he had so far risen in his own estimation that he thought of himself as a bold financier, who had done a most excellent stroke of business in an incredibly short space of time. As for Barrington—oh, he’d always been narrowminded. The money was a loan that he’d soon pay back.
As he approached Madeira Lodge, Jehane was watering flowers in the garden. He hailed her from a distance, “Hulloa, Duchess!”
She, being penitent for a treachery of which he had no knowledge, restrained her disgust at the detested nickname. She was going to be a good and faithful wife—she had quite made up her mind. The street-door had scarcely shut behind them, when she flung her arms about him. He was taken by surprise.
“I was lonely without you, Ocky—that’s why I came back.”
“Lonely! Lonely for me?”
“Yes. Why—why not?”
“Dun’ know. Sounds odd from you, old lady.”
“From me? From your wife? Didn’t you feel the house—feel it empty with me away?”
His hands clutched at her shoulders. “And when you were not away sometimes. Old gel, I’ve always been lonely for you.”
She brought her face down to his. “Hold me close, Ocky—close, as you’re doing now—always.”