And man returned to the ground out of which he was taken, and his wife bare children and he builded walls. But thou shalt think an evil thought and say, “I will go up to the land of unwalled villages.”
Dante, it’s time you went to school.”
For the past three years, since he had married the Snow Lady, my father had given me lessons in his study for the last hour of every morning before lunch. It had been the Snow Lady’s idea; she said I was growing up a perfect ignoramus.
My father tilted up his spectacles to his forehead, and gazed across the table at me thoughtfully. “Yes,” he repeated, “I’ll be sorry to lose you, my boy; but it’s time you went to school.”
He was to lose me; then I was to go away! My heart sank, and leapt, and sank again with a dreadful joy of expectation. In my childish way I had always been impatient of the present—a Columbus ceaselessly watching for the first trace of seaweed broken loose from the shores of the unknown. Change, which at mid-life we so bitterly resent, was at that time life’s great allurement.
The school selected was one of the smaller public-schools, lying fifteen miles distant from Stoke Newington. It was called the Red House and stood on Eden Hill. It was situated in lovely country, so my father said, and had for its head-master a man with whom he was slightly acquainted, whose name was the Reverend Robert Sneard.
For the next few weeks I was a semi-hero. Ruthita regarded me with the kind of pitying awe that a bullock inspires in children, when they meet it being driven lowing along a road to be slaughtered. Everyone became busy over preparations for my departure—even the Snow Lady, who seldom worked. I was allowed to sit up quite late, watching her pretty fingers flashing the needle in and out the flannel that grew into shirts for me to wear. Ruthita would snuggle up beside me, her long black curls tickling my cheek. There were lengthy silences. Then Ruthita would look up at her mother and say, “Mumsie, I don’t know whatever we shall do without him.” And sometimes, when she said it, the Snow Lady would laugh in her Frenchy way and answer, “Why, Ruthita, what’s one little boy? He’s so tiny; he won’t leave much empty space.” But once, it was the night before I left, she choked in the middle of her laughing and took us both into her arms, telling us that she loved us equally. “I can’t think what I’ll do without my little lover,” she said.
Of a sudden I had become, a person of importance. The servants no longer made a worry of doing things for me. They watched me going about the house as though it were for the last time, and spoke of me to one another as, “Poor little chap.” I had only to express a want to have it gratified. I was treated as the State treats a condemned criminal on the day of his execution, when they let him choose his breakfast. I gloried in my eminence.
It was arranged that my uncle should drive me to the Red House. Before I went, I was loaded with good advice. My father sent for me to his study one night and, with considerable embarrassment, alluded to subjects of which I had no knowledge, imploring me to listen to no evil companions but to keep pure. His language was so delicately veiled that I was none the wiser. I thought he referred to such boyish peccadilloes as jam stealing and telling lies. Even the Snow Lady, who took delight in being frivolous, read me a moral story concerning the rapid degeneration, through cigarettes and beer-drinking, of a boy with the face of an angel. Neither of these temptations was mine, and I had never regarded myself as particularly angelic in appearance. They beat about the bush, hunting ghostly passions with allegories.
I noticed that Ruthita would absent herself for an hour or more at a stretch. When I followed her up to her room the door was locked, and she would beseech me with tears in her voice not to peek through the key-hole. The mystery was explained when she presented me with a knitted muffler, the wool for which she had purchased from her own savings. I came across it, moth-eaten and faded, in my old school play-box the other day. It was cold weather when she made it, for a little girl to sit in a bedroom without a fire. I hope I thanked her sufficiently and did not accept her surprise as though it were expected.
On an afternoon in January I departed. Then I realized for the first time what going away from home meant. The horror of the unknown, not the adventure, pressed upon me. We all pretended to be very gay—all except Hetty, who threw her apron over her head and, in the old scripture phrase, lifted up her voice and wept. They accompanied me out of the garden, down Pope Lane, to where the dog-cart was tethered. I mounted reluctantly, stretching out the last moment to its greatest length, and took my place beside Uncle Obad. My father had his pen behind his ear, I remember. It seemed to me as though the pen were saying, “Hurry up now and get off. Your father can’t waste all day over little boys.” Dollie lifted her head and began to trot. The Snow Lady waved and waved, smiling bravely. Then Ruthita broke from the group and ran after us down the long red street for a little way. We turned a corner and they were lost to sight.
I drew nearer to my uncle, pressing Ruthita’s muffler to my lips and gazing straight before me.
“What—what’ll it be like?”
He shook his head. “Couldn’t say,” he muttered huskily.
After about an hour’s driving, he broke the silence with a kindly effort to make conversation. He told me that we were on the Great North Road, where there used to be highwaymen. He spoke of Dick Turpin and some of his exploits. He pointed out a public-house at which highwaymen used to stay. He could not stir my imagination—it was otherwise occupied. I was wondering why I should be sent to school, if my going made everyone unhappy. I was picturing the snug nursery, with the lamp unlighted, and the fire burning, and Ruthita seated all alone on the rug before the fire.
We left the Great North Road, striking across country, through frosty lanes. My uncle ceased speaking; he himself was uninterested in what he had been saying. We passed groups of children playing before clustered cottages, and laborers plodding homeward whistling. It seemed strange to me that they should all be so cheerful and should not realize what was happening inside me.
We came in sight of the Red House. It could be seen at a great distance, for it stood out gauntly on the crest of Eden Hill, and the sunset lay behind it. In the lowlands night was falling; lights were springing up, twinkling cheerfully. But the Red House did not impress me as cheerful—it had no lights, and struck me with the chill and repression that one feels in passing by a prison.
“Well, old chap, we’re nearly there,” said my uncle with a futile attempt to be jolly.
I darted out my hand and dragged on the reins. “Don’t—don’t drive so fast. Let Dollie walk.”
He looked down at me slantwise. “You’ve got to be brave, old chap. Nothing’s as bad as it seems at the time. Nothing’s so bad that it can’t be lived through. Why, one day you’ll be looking back and telling yourself that these were your happiest days.”
Despite his optimisms, he did as I requested and let Dollie walk the rest of the way. While she climbed the hill, we got out and walked beside her. My uncle put his hand in his pocket, and drew out a half-crown. He balanced it in his palm; tossed it; put it back into his pocket; drew it out again. “Here, Dante,” he said at last, “see what I’ve found. You’d best take it.”
As we approached nearer, he was again moved to generosity. He was moved three times, to be exact; each time he considered the matter carefully, then rushed the coin at me. He gave me seven shillings in all. I am sure he could ill afford them.
At the top of the hill he beckoned me to jump into the trap. It was fitting, I suppose, that we should drive up to my place of confinement grandly. Then a great idea seized me. My box was under the seat behind. I had all my belongings with me. There were no walls to restrain us now.
“Uncle,” I whispered, “I don’t want to go there. You once said you were tired of houses. Why shouldn’t we run away?”
He heard the tremble in my voice. He lifted me in beside him and drove along the outside of the school-walls, not entering at the gate.
“It’s beastly hard,” he said, “and the trouble is that I can’t explain it. All through life you’ll be wanting to run away, and all through life, if you’re not a coward, you won’t be able. You see, people have to earn a living in this world, and to earn a living they must be educated. Your father’s trying to give you the best education he can, and he means to be kind. But it’s a darned shame, this not being able to do what you like. I can’t run away with you, old chap. There’s nothing for it; you’ve just got to bear it.”
He stopped, searching for words. He wanted to tell me something really comforting and wasn’t content with what he had said. He found it. Turning round in the dogcart, he threw his arm about my shoulder and pointed above my head, “Look up, there.” I raised my eyes and saw the blue black sky like an inverted cup, with a red smudge round the western rim where a mouth of blood had stained it. One by one the silver stars were coming out and disappearing, like tiny bubbles which break and form again. As I looked, night seemed to deepen; horizons dropped back; the earth fell away. The sky was no longer a cup; it was nothing measurable. It was a drifting sea of freedom, and I was part of it.
“They can rob you of a lot of things,” my uncle said, “but they can never take that from you. It’s like the world of your imagination, something that can’t be stolen, and that you can’t sell, and that you can’t buy. It’s always yours.”
We drove through the gate to the main entrance. My box was deposited in the hall. My uncle shook hands with me in formal manner when he said good-by, for the school-porter was present. He turned round sharply to cut proceedings short, and disappeared into the night. I listened to his wheels growing fainter. For the first time I was utterly alone.
In delicate schoolboy slang, I was a new-bug—a thing to be poked and despised, and not to be spoken to for the first few days. There were other new-bugs, which was some consolation; but we were too shy to get acquainted. We moped about the playground sullen and solitary, like crows on a plowed field. Every now and then some privileged person, who was not a new-bug, would bang our shins with a hockey-stick; after which we would hop about on one leg for a time, looking more like crows than ever.
The Snow Lady had packed fifty oranges in my box. I made holes in the tops of them with my thumb and rammed in lumps of sugar, sucking out the juice. Not because I was greedy, but because there seemed nothing else to do, I ate every one of the fifty the first day. The following night I was ill, which did not help my popularity. One dark-haired person, about my own age, with a jolly freckled face, took particular offense at my misdemeanor. His real name was Buzzard, but he was nicknamed the Bantam because of his size and his temper. He never said a word about the oranges, but he punished me for having been ill by stamping on my toes. He did this whenever he passed me, looking in the opposite direction in an absent-minded fashion. My quietness in putting up with him seemed to irritate him.
The afternoon was frosty; I was hobbling miserably about the playground with Ruthita’s muffler round my throat. It was a delicate baby-pink, and the Bantam easily caught sight of it. He came up and jerking it from me, trod on it. I had never fought in my life, but my wretchedness made me reckless. I thought of little Ruthita and the long cold hours she had spent in making it. It seemed that he had insulted her. I hit him savagely on the nose.
Immediately there were cries of, “A fight! A fight!” Games were stopped. Boys came running from every direction. Even the new-bugs lifted up their heads and began to take an interest in the landscape.
“Now you’ve done it,” the Bantam shouted.
He started out, accompanied by the crowd to the bottom of the playground. I followed. The laboratory, a long black shed, stood there, with a roof of galvanized iron and rows of bottles arranged in the windows. Behind it we were out of sight of masters, unless they happened to be carrying on experiments inside.
A ring was formed. The Bantam commenced to take off his coat and collar. I did likewise. A horrid sickening sense of defenselessness came over me. I experienced what the early Christians must have felt when they gazed round the eager amphitheatre, and heard the lions roaring.
A big fellow stepped up. “Here, new-bug, d’you know how to fight?”
When I shook my head, he grinned at me cheerfully. “Hold your arms well up, double your fists, and go for him.”
The advice was more easy to give than to put into action. The Bantam was on top of me in a flash. He made for my face at first, but I lowered my head and kept my arms up, so he was content to pummel me about the body. He hurt, and hurt badly; I had never been treated so roughly.
Something happened. Perhaps it was a fierce realization of the injustice of everything—the injustice of being sent there by people whom I loved, the injustice of not being spoken to, the injustice of the boys jeering because I was getting thrashed. I felt that I did not care how much I got damaged if only I might kill the Bantam. He thumped me on the nose as I looked up; my eyes filled with tears. I dashed in at him, banging him about the head. I heard his teeth rattle. I heard the shouting, “Hurrah! Go it, new-bug. Well done, new-bug.” In front of me the wintry sunset lay red. I remember wondering whether it was sunset or blood. Then the Bantam tried to turn and run. I caught him behind the ear. He tripped up and fell. I stood over him, doubtful whether he were dead. Just then the door of the laboratory opened. The boys began to scatter, shouting to one another, “The Creature! Here he comes. The Creature!” The Bantam picked himself up and followed the crowd.
A man came round the side of the shed. He looked something like Dot-and-Carry-One, only he was smaller. His hair was the color of a badger’s, shaggy and unbrushed. His face was stubbly and besmirched with different colored chalks from his fingers. His clothes were stained and baggy. He approached sideways, crabwise, in a great hurry, with one hand stretched out behind and one in front, like flappers. His gestures were those of a servant in a Chinese etching; they made him absurdly conspicuous by their self-belittlement. Beyond everything, he was dirty.
“What they been beating you for?” he inquired in his shorthand way of talking. “You hit him first! What for?” He pulled a stump of a pencil out of his mouth as though he were drawing a tooth. After that I could hear him more clearly. “A muffler? He trod on it? Well, that’s nothing to fight about. Oh, your sister gave it you? That’s different.”
The last two sentences were spoken very gently—quite unlike the rest, which had been angry. “Humph! His sister gave it him!”
He took me by the hand and led me into the shed, closing the door behind him. An iron stove was burning. The outside was red hot; it glowered through the dusk. Running round the sides of the room were taps and basins, and above them bottles. Ranged on the table in the middle were stands, bunsen-burners and retorts. He went silently about his work. He was melting sulphur in a crucible.
Every now and then the sulphur caught and burnt with a violet flame; and all the while it made a suffocating smell.
I felt scared. I didn’t know what he was going to do with me. The boys had called him The Creature, which sounded very dreadful. He had dragged me into his den just like the ogres the Snow Lady read about.
Presently his experiment ended. He gave me a seat by the stove, and came and sat beside me. He didn’t look at all fierce now. He struck me as old and discouraged.
“Always fight for your sister,” he said. Then after a pause, “What’s she called?”
I found myself telling him that she wasn’t really my sister, that her name was Ruthita, and that she had knitted me the muffler. He patted me on the knee as I talked. He might almost have been The Spuffler.
“Boys are horrid beasts,” he said. “They don’t mean to be unkind. They, don’t think—that’s all. Soon you’ll be one of them.”
He led the way out of the laboratory, turning the key behind him. The bell in the tower was ringing for supper. The school was all lit up. He climbed the railing which divided the playground from the football field, telling me to follow. We passed across the meadows to the village, which lay on the northward side of Eden Hill; it snuggled among trees. The cottages were straw-thatched. Frost glistened on the window-panes, behind which lamps were set. Unmelted snow glimmered here and there in the gardens in patches among cabbage stumps. We turned in at a gate. The Creature raised the latch of the door and we entered.
How cozy the little house was after the bare stone corridors and cold, boarded dormitories. All the furnishings of the room into which he led me were worn and out-of-date; but they had a homelike look about them which atoned for their shabbiness. The walls bulged. Pictures hung awry upon them. The springs of the sofa had burst; you sank to an unexpected depth when you sat upon it. The carpet was threadbare; patch-work rugs covered the worst places. Yet for all its poverty, you knew that it was a room in which people had loved and been kind to one another. An atmosphere of memory hung about it.
The Creature appeared to be his own house-keeper. He left me alone while he went somewhere into the back to get things ready. I could hear him striking matches and jingling cups against saucers.
As I sat looking curiously round at wax-fruit in glass-cases and a stuffed owl on the mantel-shelf, the door was pushed open gently. An old lady entered. She trod so lightly, gliding her feet along the floor, that I should not have heard her save for the turning of the handle. She was dressed from head to foot in clinging muslin. Her face and hands were so frail and white that you could almost see through them. Her faded hair fell disordered and scanty about her shoulders. Her eyes were unnaturally large and luminous. She showed no surprise at seeing me. She looked at me so stealthily that she seemed to establish a secret. Crossing her hands on her breast she courtesied, and then asked me as odd a question as was ever addressed to a little boy. “Are you my Lord?”
“If you please, mam,” I faltered, “I’m Dante Cardover.”
Her look of intense eagerness faded, and one of almost childish disappointment took its place. She moved slowly about the room, from corner to corner, bowing to people whom I could not see and whispering to herself.
My host came shuffling along the passage. He was carrying a tea-tray. When he saw the woman, he set it hurriedly down on the table and went quietly towards her. “Gipie,” he said, “Egypt, we’re not alone; we have a guest. Tell them to go away.”
He spoke to her soothingly, as though she were a child. Her eyes narrowed, the strained far-away expression left her face. She made a motion with her hand, dismissing the invisible persons. He led her to me. It was strange to see a grown woman follow so obediently.
“Gipie,” he said, “I want you to listen to me. This boy is my friend. They were fighting him up there,” jerking his head in the direction of the school. “He’s lonely; so I brought him to you. Tell him that you care.”
The old lady lifted her hands to my shoulders—such pale hands. “I’m sorry,” she said. It was like a child repeating a lesson.
He introduced us. “This is my sister, Egypt; and this is Dante Cardover.”
I don’t know what we talked about. I can only remember that the little old man and woman were kind to me and gave me courage. There are desolate moments in life when one hour of sympathy calls out more gratitude than years of easy friendship.
That night as the Creature walked back with me from his cottage, he told me to come to him whenever I was lonely. At the Red House he explained my absence to the house-master. I went upstairs to the dormitory, with its rows of twelve white beds down either side, feeling that I had parted from a friend.
As I undressed in the darkness the Bantam spoke to me. “Didn’t mean to fight you, Cardover. Make it up.”
So I made it up that night with the boy whose nose I had punched. He was a decent little chap when off his dignity. We began to make confidences in whispers; I suppose the darkness helped us. He told me that his father was in India and that he hadn’t got a mother. I told him about the Snow Lady, and Hetty, and Uncle Obad; I didn’t tell him about Ruthita because of the muffler. Then I began to ask him about the Creature. I wanted to know if that was his name. The Bantam laughed. “Course not. He’s Murdoch the stinks’ master. We call him the Creature ’cause he looks like one. Weren’t you funky when he took you to his rabbit-hutch? Was Lady Zion there?”
“Lady Zion?”
“Yes. Lady Zion Holy Ghost she calls herself. She’s his sister, and she’s balmy.”
He was going to enter into some interesting details about her, when the monitor and the elder boys came up. He hid his face in the pillow and pretended to be sleeping soundly.
“The Bantam needs hair-brushing,” the monitor announced. “Here you, wake up. You’re shamming.” He pulled the clothes off the Bantam’s bed with one jerk. The Bantam sat up, rubbing his eyes with a good imitation of having just awakened.
“Out you come.”
One boy held his hands and another his legs, bending his body into a praying attitude. He fought like a demon, but to no purpose. They yanked his night-shirt up, while the monitor laid into him with the bristly side of a hairbrush. He addressed him between each blow. “That’s one for bullying a new-bug. And that’s another for fighting. And that’s another for being licked and getting in a funk, etc.” By the time they had done he was sobbing bitterly. Then the light went out.
I suppose I ought to have been glad at being avenged; but I wasn’t. Somehow I felt that the big boys had punished him not from a sense of justice, but only because they were big and wanted to amuse themselves. Then I got to thinking what a long way off India was, and how dreadful it must make a boy feel never to see his father. It had been a long while dark in the dormitory and almost everyone was breathing heavily. I stretched out my hand across the narrow alley which separated me from the Bantam.
“Bantam,” I whispered.
He snuffled.
“Bantam.”
I felt his fingers clutch my hand. I crept out and put my arms about him. Then I got into his bed and curled up beside him, and so we both were comforted.
The Bantam and I became great friends. He was a brave daredevil little chap, prematurely hardened by the absence of home influences to make the best of life’s vicissitudes. Within an hour of having been beaten, he would be gay again as ever. He was a soldier’s son, and never wasted time in pitying himself. He was greedy for joy, as I am to this day, and we contrived to find it together.
Yet, when I look back, the making of happiness at the Red House seems to me to have been very much like manufacturing bricks without straw. I am amazed at our success. Very slight provision was made for our comfort. Our daily routine was in no way superior to that of a barrack; the only difference was that they drilled our heads instead of our arms and legs. The feminine influence was entirely lacking, and a good deal of brutality resulted. If the parents could have guessed half the shocking things that their fresh-faced innocent looking darlings did and said in the three months of each term that they were away from home, they would have been broken-hearted. And yet they might have guessed. For here were we, young animals in every stage of adolescence, herded together in class-rooms and dormitories, uninformed about ourselves, with only paid people to care for us.
Apart from the masters we governed ourselves by a secret code of honor. One of the favorite diversions, when things were dull, was to find some boy who was unpopular, in a breach of schoolboy etiquette. He would then be led into a class-room, held down over a desk, and thrashed with hockey-sticks. I have seen a boy receive as many as ninety strokes, laid on by various young barbarians who took a pride in seeing who could hit hardest. Usually at the end of it the victim was nearly fainting, and would be lame for days after. The masters knew all about such proceedings, but they were too indifferent to interfere. They boasted that they trusted to the school’s sense of justice.
A boy, who was at all sensitive, went about in a state of terror. If you escaped hockey-sticks by day, there was always the dormitory and hair-brush to be dreaded. The way to get beyond the dread of such possibilities was to make yourself popular, and the easiest way to become popular was to play ingenious pranks on the masters.
The glorious hours of liberty that broke up the monotonous round of tasks stand out in vivid contrast to the discipline. We lived for them and kept charts of the days, because this seemed to bring them nearer. There were two half-holidays a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays, on which, if sufficient excuse were given, we were allowed to go out of the school-grounds. If the permission were withheld, we broke bounds and took the risk of discovery and consequent thrashings. These stolen expeditions had a zest about them that made them the more pleasurable.
The Bantam and I did most things together. We had a common fund of money. His memories of India lent a touch of romance to our friendship. He would spin long yarns of man-eating tigers and terrible battles with hill-tribes. He had a lurid imagination and added some fresh detail each time he told his tales. Not to be behindhand, I narrated my escape to the forest—leaving out the Ruthita part of it—and how Lilith had made me a gipsy.
These stories became a secret between us which we shared with no one. We created for ourselves a mirage world which we called IT. In IT we had only to speak of things and they happened. In IT there were man-eating tigers to whom we threw our masters when they had been unpleasant to us. We would drag them by their feet through the jungle, and then let out a low blood-thirsty wailing sound. Immediately we had done it, we would drop our victim and climb trees, for we could hear the tigers coming. The victim was bound so he couldn’t run away and while he lay there “in the long rank grass with bulging eyes,” we would remind him of his crimes committed at the Red House. The account of his tortures and dying words would become a dialogue between the Bantam and myself.
“Then the tiger seized him by the arm and chawed him,” the Bantam would say.
“And the other tiger seized him by the leg, pulling in an opposite direction,” said I.
“Then old Sneard looked up at me, with imploring eyes. ‘I’ve been a beast,’ he moaned, ‘and you were always a good boy. Call them off for the sake of my little girl.’ But I only laughed sepulchrally,” said the Bantam.
“Your little girl will be jolly well glad when you’re dead,” said I.
“Everybody will be glad,” said the Bantam. “And then a third tiger crept out of the bushes and bit off his head, putting an end to his agony.”
“You needn’t have killed him so soon,” I would expostulate discontentedly. “I’d got something else I wanted to do to him.”
“All right,” the Bantam would assent cheerfully; “let’s kill him again.”
So real was this land of IT to us, that we would shout with excitement as we reached the climax of our narrations. The English fields through which we wandered became swamps, deserts, and forests at will.
It became part of our game to pretend that we might meet Lilith any day. Often we would break bounds, stealing down country lanes and peering through hedges, hoping that at the next turn we should discover her seated before her camp-fire. Hope deferred never curbed our eagerness; we always believed that we should meet her next time.
If we did not meet Lilith, we met someone equally strange—Lady Zion, the Creature’s sister. It was the Bantam who told me all about her. “She’s wrong up there,” he said, tapping his forehead. “She thinks she’s something out of the Bible; that’s why she calls herself Lady Zion Holy Ghost. She goes about the country dressed in white, riding on a donkey, muttering to herself, looking for someone she can never find. She thinks that she’s in love with old Sneard, and that he don’t care for her. They say that once he was going to marry her and then threw her over. That’s what sent her balmy.”
When I grew older I learnt the truth about the Creature and his sister. He became a firm friend of mine before schooldays were ended. He was a man who possessed a faculty for not getting on in the world which, had it been of value, would have amounted to genius. Anyone else with his brains and instinct for daring guess-work in scientific experiment, would have made a reputation. Instead of which he pottered his life out at the Red House, defending his sister and allowing himself to be imposed on both by boys and masters.
Popularity was the armor which permitted you to do almost anything with impunity. A boy would take almost any chance to get it. Very early in my school experience the Bantam thought out a plan which he invited me to share—with the dire result that I was brought into intimate contact with Mr. Sneard.
Every night between seven and eight the lower forms assembled to prepare their next day’s lessons. The Creature usually presided, chiefly because he was good-natured and the other masters were lazy. It was part of his penance. The room in which we assembled was illumined by oil-lamps, which hung low on chains from the ceiling. If the chimney of one of these broke, the light became so bad in that quarter that work was suspended until it had been replaced. The Bantam conceived the happy idea of persuading them to break in an almost undiscoverable manner. It was simplicity itself—to spit across the room so skilfully as to hit the chimney, whereupon the moisture on the hot glass would cause it to crack. We practised at sticks and gate-posts in the fields at first; having become more or less proficient, we practised aiming at objects above our heads. This was more difficult. Our progress was slow; it was dry work. Still, within a month we considered ourselves adepts.
One night in prep we put our plan to the test. The Creature was seated at his raised desk, absorbed in some scientific work. The Bantam, judging his distance carefully, took aim and the chimney cracked. As soon as the lamp-boy had been sent for and the chimney had been replaced, it was my turn. I was no less successful. For a week prep was disorganized; every night the same thing happened. I felt secretly ashamed of myself, for I knew that I was behaving meanly to a man who had always been kind in his dealings with me; but I was intoxicated with popularity. The Bantam and I were the heroes of the hour. Boys who had never condescended to speak to us, now offered us their next week’s pocket-money to instruct them in an art in which we excelled. Games were abandoned. All over the play-ground groups of young ruffians might be seen industriously spitting at some object by the hour together.
I suppose the Creature must have watched us from the laboratory and put two and two together. One night, when three chimneys had broken in succession, he caught me in mid-act. I say he caught me, but he did not so much as look up from the book he was reading. He just said, without raising his head, “Cardover, you must report yourself to Mr. Sneard to-morrow.”
To have to report oneself to Mr. Sneard was the worst punishment that an under-master could measure out. Somehow it had never entered my head that the Creature would be so severe as that. Why, I might get expelled or publicly thrashed! My imagination conjured up all sorts of disgraces and grisly penalties.
That night in the dormitory the Bantam told me of a way in which I might save myself; it was my first lesson in the value of diplomacy in helping one out of ticklish situations. It appeared that Mr. Sneard was always lenient with a boy who professed conversion.
Next day as I was hesitating outside his private room, screwing up my courage to tap, the Bantam sidled up behind me. “I’m going too,” he said. Before I could dissuade him, he had turned the handle.
Sneard was a sallow cadaverous person; he affected side-whiskers and had red hair. He wore clerical attire, the vest of which was very much spotted through his nearsightedness when he ate at table. He was probably the least scholarly master in the school, but he owed his position to his manners. They were unctuous, and had the reputation of going down with the parents. I suppose that was how he caught my father. He composed hymns, which he set to music and compelled us to sing on Sundays. They were mostly of the self-abasement order, in which we spoke of ourselves as worms and besought the Almighty not to tread on us. For years my mental picture of God was that of a gigantic school-master in holy orders, very similar in appearance to Sneard himself.
When we entered, he was seated behind his desk writing. He prolonged our suspense by pretending not to see us for a while. Suddenly he cast aside his pen and wheeled round in a storm of furious anger. When he spoke, it sounded like a dog yapping.
“You young blackguards, what’s this I hear about you?”
He forced us to tell him the stupid details of our offense. He could have had no sense of humor, for while we were speaking he covered his eyes with his hand as though staggered with horror at the enormity of our depravity. Later experience has taught me that what he meant us to believe was that he was engaged in prayer.
When in small throaty whispers we had finished our confession, he looked up at us. “Your poor, poor fathers,” he said, “one in India and one my friend! What shall I tell them? How shall I break this news to them?”
Then he straightened himself in his chair. “There’s nothing else for it; Cardover, it’s over there. Will you please fetch it?”
He pointed to a cane in the corner, which leant against a book-shelf. It was at this crisis that the Bantam made use of his stratagem.
“If you please, sir, I’ve been troubled about my soul again.” Then he added loyally, “And Cardover’s been lying awake of nights thinking about hell.”
If the truth be told I had been lying awake imagining Sneard being bled to death very slowly, and very torturingly, by a hill-tribe. But Sneard caught at the bait. “I am glad to hear it. Cardover, before I cane you, come here and tell me about your views on hell.”
Before we left him, great crocodile tears were streaming from our eyes by reason of knuckles rubbed in vigorously. We were not punished. The last sight I had of Sneard he was gazing with holy joy at a great oil-painting of himself which hung above his desk.
Most of the boys in the Red House were converted many times—as often as they came within reach of the birch. Sneard made much coin out of referring to these touching spiritual experiences in public gatherings of parents. I have never been able to decide whether we really did fool him. I am inclined to believe that his eyes were wide open to our hypocrisy, but that he found it paid to encourage it. Part of his salary was derived from percentages on the tuition fees of all boys over a certain number. He found that the best card to play with parents for the attracting of new pupils, was a statement of the numerous conversions which were brought about through his influence.
The Bantam and I won immunity from bullying in a quite unexpected manner.
Our beds stood next together. Every night the younger boys were sent up to the dormitory at nine; fifteen minutes later the lights were turned out. The upper-classmen didn’t come up till ten. For three-quarters of an hour each night we could whisper together in comparative privacy about IT, going on wildest excursions in our hidden land. Not unnaturally the curiosity of the other small boys of our dormitory was aroused—they wanted to share our secret, and we wouldn’t let them. We were quite their match if it came to a fight, which was all the more irritating. We steadily refused to fight with them, or play with them, or to tell them anything. They became sulky and suspicious; in their opinion our conversation was too low to bear repetition. I suppose one of them must have sneaked to Cow—Cow was monitor of our dormitory. One night he came up early and on tiptoe. The first thing I knew he was standing in the darkness looking down on me, where I lay whispering on the Bantam’s bed. I was fairly caught.
“Young’un, what’s that you’re saying?” he asked sternly.
To have told him would have spoilt everything. Only when my night-shirt had been stripped off and I saw that a grand gala-night of hair-brushing was being planned, did I venture an explanation.
“I was only telling the Bantam a story.”
“That’s a lie. Let’s hear it,” said the Cow.
“I can’t begin when you’ve got my shirt,” I expostulated. “Let me get back into bed; then I’ll tell you.”
It was arranged that I should be given a respite while the older boys undressed. Once safe in bed, I set my imagination galloping.
“Once upon a time,” I commenced, “there was a great pirate and he was known as the Pirate King. He had a wife called One-Eye, and she was the only person he was afraid of in all the world. He sailed the blood-red seas with a crew of smugglers and highwaymen, most of whom he had rescued at the last minute from the gallows. They were devoted to him, and the vessel in which he sailed was called The Damn.”
The name of the vessel fetched them. There was no more talk of hair-brushing. At half-past ten the light went out and we heard old Sneard shuffling down the passage, going his final round of inspection. At each door he halted, lifting his candle above his head and craning out his long thin neck. Satisfied that all was in order, he shuffled on to his own quarters and we heard his door slam. That night I must have lain in the darkness recounting the adventures of the Pirate King till long past twelve. Every now and then a voice would interrupt me from one of the narrow white beds, asking a question. I fell asleep in the midst of my recounting.
After that it became a practice that each night a fresh development in the life of this wonderful man should be unfolded. It was a good deal of a tax on the imagination, but the Bantam came to my help, and we told the story turn and turn about. We told how The Damn sailed into Peru and came back blood-drenched and treasure-laden; how the Pirate King took strange maidens to his breast in coloring all the way from alabaster to ebony, and what his wife One-Eye had to say about it; how the Pirate King could never be defeated and became so strong that he made himself Pope till he got tired of it. Discrepancies in chronology caused us no more inconvenience than they usually do historic novelists. In our world Joan of Arc and Julius C?sar were contemporaries. They met for the first time as prisoners, when they were introduced by the Pirate King on board The Damn. It was owing to the Roman Emperor that the Maid escaped and survived to be burnt.
But the part which found most favor was that which described the sack of London, and how the boys of the Red House enlisted with the pirates and took all the masters, except the Creature, out to sea and made them walk the plank. I refused to allow the Creature to be murdered.
When the story became personal, the Bantam and I discovered ourselves the possessors of unlimited power. We were lords of the other boys’ destinies. We could make them heroes or cowards, give them fair maidens or forget to say anything about them. Frequently we received bribes to let the giver down easily or to make him appear more valiant. I’m afraid we drifted into being tyrants, like Nero and all the other men whose wills have been absolute, and took our revenge with the rod of imagination. In the middle of some thrilling escapade of the pirates, when only courage could save them from calamity, we would tell how one of the boys in a near-by bed turned traitor and went over to the enemy.
Out of the darkness would come an angry voice, “I didn’t, you little beasts. You know quite well, I didn’t.”
“Oh, yes, you did,” we would say, and proceed to make him appear yet more infamous. If he expostulated too frequently, arms would be reached out and a shower of boots would fly about his head.
Our reputation spread beyond the dormitory; the history of the Pirate King, his wife One-Eye, and the good ship Damn, became a kind of school epic in which all the latest happenings at the Red House were chronicled. No one dared to offend us, small as we were. Like Benvenuto Cellini, sniffing his way through Europe and petulantly turning his back on kings and cardinals with impunity, we attained the successful genius’s privilege of being detested for our persons, but treasured for our accomplishments. So at last we were popular in a fashion.
What contrasts of experience we had in those days!
The crestfallen returns to the Red House, with play-boxes stuffed with feeble comfort in the shape of chocolates and cake; the long monotony of term-time with the dull lessons, the birchings, the flashes of excitement on half-holidays and the counting of the weeks till vacations came round; then the wild burst of enthusiasm when trunks were packed and Sneard had offered up his customary prayer in his accustomed language, and we set off shouting on the homeward journey.
All the discipline and captivity were a small price to pay for the gladness of those home-comings. Ruthita would be at the end of the Lane waiting for me, a little shy at first but undeniably happy. The Snow Lady would be on the door-step, her pretty face all aglow with merriment. My father would forsake his study for the night and sit down to talk to me with all the leisure and courtesy that he usually reserved for grown men. Until they got used to me again I could upset my tea at table, slide down the banisters, and tramp through the house with muddy boots—no one rebuked me for fear the welcome should be spoiled. The Snow Lady called me The Fatted Calf, wilfully misinterpreting the Bible parable. Little by little Ruthita would lose her shyness; then we would begin to plan all the things we would do in the seemingly inexhaustible period of freedom that lay before us. In those days weeks were as long as years are now.
There was once a time when I had no secrets from Ruthita. But a change was creeping over us almost imperceptibly, forming little rifts of reserve which widened. Walls of a new and more subtle kind were growing up about us, dividing us for a time from one another and from everybody else.
There was one holiday in which I became friendly with a butcher-boy. He was a guinea-pig fancier; I arranged to buy one from him for a shilling. My intention was to give it to Ruthita on her birthday. I told no one of my plan—it was to be a surprise. A little hutch was knocked up in the tool-shed which the old white hen had tenanted.
The night before the birthday the butcher-boy came, and smuggled the little creature in at the gate. Next morning I wakened early. Ruthita was standing beside my bed in her long white night-gown, beneath which her rosy toes peeped out. When I had kissed her, she seemed surprised that I had no present for her. I became mysterious. “You wait until I’m dressed,” I said.
Slipping into my clothes I ran into the garden to get things ready. To my unspeakable astonishment when I looked into the hutch, I found three guinea-pigs, two of them very tiny, where only one had been the night before. I felt that something shameful and indelicate had happened. Exactly what I could not say, but something that I could not tell Ruthita. When she traced me down to the tool-shed, I drove her away almost angrily; I felt that I was secretly disgraced.
That morning when the butcher-boy called for orders, I took him aside. I sold him back the three guinea-pigs for ninepence, and thought the loss of threepence a cheap price to pay to rid myself of such embarrassment. The butcher-boy grinned broadly and winked in a knowing manner. To me it was all very serious, and with a boy’s pride I did not invite enlightenment. I took Ruthita out and let her choose her own present up to the value of ninepence. I lied to her, saying that that was what I had intended.
Arguing by analogy from this experience, I gradually came to realize that all about me was a world of passion, the first boundaries of which I was just beginning to traverse.
The Bantam, having no home to go to, would sometimes return with me to Pope Lane for the vacation; the Snow Lady was attracted by his freckled face and impudently upturned nose. In the early years he, Ruthita, and I would play together. Then, as we grew more boyish, we would play games in which she could not share. But at last a time came when I found that it was I who was excluded.
I found that Ruthita and the Bantam had a way of going off and hiding themselves. It was quite evident that they had secrets which they kept from me. An understanding lay between them in which I could not share. I became irritable and began to watch.
One summer evening after tea I could not find them, The gate into the Lane was unlatched; I followed. There was a deserted house no great way distant, standing shuttered in the midst of overgrown grounds. We had found a bar broken in the railings, and there the Bantam and I played highwaymen. Naturally I thought of this haunt first.
Creeping through the long grass I came upon them. The Bantam had his arm about Ruthita’s waist. She was tossing back her hair; her face was radiant. I could only catch a glimpse of her sideways, but it came home to me that the qualities in her which, in my blindness, I had taken for granted, were beautiful and rare. As I watched, the Bantam kissed her. She drew back her head, glad and yet ashamed. I crept away with a strange sense of forlornness in my heart; they had stumbled across a pleasure of which I was ignorant.
Poor little Ruthita!—it was short-lived. Hetty, having quarreled with the gardener, had not married. What I had seen, she also saw a few days later and told my father. He was very angry. I can see Ruthita now, with her long spindly legs and short skirts, standing up demurely to take her scolding. I listened to the scorching words my father spoke to her; the burden of his talk was that her conduct was unladylike. I came to her defense with the remark, “But, father, she only did what I saw you and the Snow Lady doing.”
That night I went to bed supperless and I had no more pocket-money for a week. The Bantam’s visit was cut short; he was bundled back to the Red House. I was sent down to Ransby to stay with my Grandmother Cardover. I have the fixed remembrance of Ruthita’s eyes very red with weeping. The utmost comfort I could give her was the promise that I would carry messages of her eternal faithfulness to her lover on my return to school.
The world had grown very complicated. Love was either wicked or stupid. Hetty had acted as though it was wicked when I caught her with John; my father, when I had caught him, as though it was stupid. Yet he was not ashamed of love now that he was married. I could not see why Ruthita should be so scolded for doing what her mother did every day.
At a distance I had been sorry for the Bantam, but at close quarters his hopeless passion for Ruthita bored me. On my return to the Red House he overwhelmed me with a flood of maudlin confessions. There was nothing pleased him better than to get me alone, so that he could outline to me his impossible plans for an early marriage. He talked of running away to sea and making his fortune in a distant land. It sounded all very easy. His only fear was that in his long absence Ruthita might be forced to marry some other fellow. “Dante,” he would say, “you’re a lucky chap to have been always near her.”
This kind of talk irritated me, partly because I was jealous of an ecstasy which I could not understand, and partly because I had known Ruthita so many years that I thought I knew her exact value a good deal better than the Bantam. There was something very absurd, too, in the contrast between this gawky boy, with his downy face and clumsy hands, and these exaggerated expressions of sentiment. I began to avoid him; at that time I did not know why, but now I know it was because of the herd spirit which shuns abnormality.
Nevertheless he had stirred something latent within me. My days became haunted with alluring conjectures; beneath the cold formality of human faces and manners I caught glimpses of a boisterous ruffianly passion. Sometimes it would repel me, making me unspeakably sad; but more often it swept me away in a torrent of inexplicable riotous happiness. I had come to an age when, shut him up as you may in the garden of unenlightenment, a boy must hear from beyond the walls the pagan pipes and the dancing feet of Pan.
Of nights I would lie awake, still and tense, reasoning my way forward and forward, out of the fairy tales of childhood into reality. Sometimes I would bury my face in my pillow, half glad and half ashamed of my strange, new knowledge. Now all the glory of the flesh in the Classics, which before had slipped by me when encountered as a schoolboy’s task, burned in my brain with the vehement fire of immemorial romance.
Old Sneard had a terrifying sermon, which he was fond of preaching on Sunday evenings when the chapel was full of shadows. His heated face, startlingly illumined by the pulpit-lamps, would take on the furious earnestness of an accusing angel as he leant out towards us describing the spiritual tortures of the damned. He spoke in symbolic language of the causes which led up to damnation. Until quite lately I had wondered what in the world he could be driving at. His text was, “Son of man, hast thou seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in his chambers of imagery?” The grotesque unreality of likening a group of school-boys to the elders of Israel never occurred to me; I was too carried away by the reality of sin itself and the terror of what was said. When service was ended I would steal up the stone stairway to the dormitory in silence, almost fearful that my guilt might be betrayed by my shadow....
It was summer-time. Those of us who professed an interest in entomology were permitted during the hour between prep and supper to rove the country with butterfly-nets. The results of these expeditions were given to the school natural history museum; most of the boys hunted in pairs. Things being as they were between myself and the Bantam, I preferred to go by myself.
All day it had been raining. The sky was still damp with heavy clouds and the evening fell early. I slipped out into the cool wet dusk, eager to be solitary. Some boys were kicking a ball and called to me to come and play with them. In my anxiety not to be delayed, I doubled up my fists and ran. They followed in pursuit, but soon their shouts and laughter grew fainter, till presently I was alone in a dim, green world. The air was exquisitely fragrant with earth and flower smells. Far away between the trees of Eden Hill a watery sunset faded palely. Nearer at hand dog-roses and convolvuli glimmered in the hedges.
I threw myself down in the dripping grass, lying full-length on my back, so that I could watch the stars struggle out between the edges of clouds. Oh, the sense of freedom and wideness, and the sheer joy of being at large in the world! I listened to the stillness of the twilight, which is a stillness made up of an infinity of tiny sounds—birds settling into their nests, trees whispering together, and flowers drawing closer their fragile petals to shut out the cold night air. I told myself that all the little creatures of the fields and hedgerows were tucking one another safe in bed. Then, as if to contradict me, the sudden passion of the nightingale wandered down the stairway of the silence, each note separately poignant, like glances of a lover who halts and looks back from every step as he descends. From far away the passion was answered, and again it was returned.
A great White Admiral fluttered over my head. I picked up my net and was after it. So, in a second, the boy within me proved himself stronger than the man. But the butterfly refused to let me get near it and would never settle long enough for me to catch it.
I followed from field to field, till at last it came to the cricket-ground and made a final desperate effort to escape me by flying over the hedge into the private garden of Sneard’s house. His garden was forbidden territory, but the twilight made me bold to forget that. Breaking through the hedge I followed, running tiptoe down a path which ended in a summer-house. The White Admiral settled on a rosebush; I was in the act of netting it when I heard someone stirring. Standing in the doorway of the summerhouse was a girl about as tall as myself. We eyed one another through the dusk in silence. Her face was indistinct and in shadow.
“You don’t know how you frightened me.”
Directly she spoke I knew that she was not Beatrice Sneard, as I had dreaded. Her voice was too friendly; it had in it the lazy caressing quality of a summer’s afternoon when bees are humming in and out of flowers. Her way of pronouncing words was halting and slightly foreign. In after years I came to know just how much power of temptation her voice possessed.
“I suppose you’re not allowed in here,” she said; “but you needn’t worry—I shan’t tell.”
The boy in me prompted me to answer, “You can tell if you care to.”
She gave a secret little laugh. “But I shan’t.”
After all my gallant imaginings of what I would do on a like occasion, I stood before her awkwardly, tongue-tied and ungracious—so far removed are dreams from reality. The White Admiral, tired with the long pursuit, still clung to the rose’s petals. Across misty fields nightingales called, casting the love-spell, and the moon, in intermittent flashes, caused the dripping foliage to glisten.
She rested her hand on my arm—such a small white hand—and drew me into the seclusion of the summerhouse.
“You’re not afraid of girls, are you?” she questioned, and then inconsequently, “I’m awfully lonely.”
There was a note of appeal in her tones, so I found my tongue and asked why she was lonely.
“Because I quarrel with Beatrice—we don’t get on together. Do you know, she thinks all you boys are simply horrid persons?”
“Perhaps we are,” I said. “Most people think that.”
“But I don’t,” she answered promptly.
Gradually my constraint left me. She had an easy kindness and assurance in her manner that I had never found in any other girl. She slipped her hand into mine; made bold by the darkness of the summer-house, I held it tightly.
“I like you. I like you very much,” she whispered.
“But you’ve never spoken to me before. Why should you like the?”
She turned her face to mine, so that our lips were quite near together. “I suppose because I’m a girl.”
The bell for supper began to ring. I pretended not to hear it. Through the roses across the lawn I saw Sneard stand in his study-window, struggling into his gown. Then the window became dark and I knew that he had gone to read evening prayers.
“The bell is ringing,” she said at last. “If you don’t go, you’ll get punished.”
“If it’s for your sake, I don’t care.”
She pushed me gently from her. “Go away now. If you get into trouble, you’ll not be able to come back tomorrow.”
She ran down the path with me as far as the hedge. The bell was at its last strokes, swinging slower and slower. At the hedge we halted. I knew what I wanted to do; my whole body ached to take her in my arms and kiss her. But something stronger than will—the habit of restraint—prevented. Some paces away on the other side of the hedge I remembered that I did not even know her name. Without halting I called back to her questioning, and as I ran the answer followed me through the shadows, “Fiesole.”
After the monitors had come up and the lights had been put out, I waited for an hour till all the dormitory was sleeping; then, very stealthily, I edged myself out of bed. Standing upright, I listened to make sure that I was undetected. I stole out into the corridor bare-foot. I feared to dress lest anyone should be aroused. In my long linen night-gown I tiptoed down the corridor, down the stairs, and entered the fifth-form class-room. Throwing up the window I climbed out.
An English summer’s night lay before me in all its silver splendor—huge shadows of trees, scented coolness of the air, and damp smoothness of turf beneath my tread. The exultation of life’s bigness and cleanness came upon me. I knew now that it was right to be proud of the body and to love the body. Oh, why had it been left to a glimpse in the dusk of a young girl’s face to teach me that? At a rush I had become possessed of all the codes of mediaeval chivalry. Every woman, however old or unpleasing, was for Fiesole’s sake most perfect—a person to be worshiped; for in serving her I should be serving Fiesole. What a name to have! How all her perfectness was summed up in the beauty of those full vowel sounds, Fi-es-sol-le.
I trespassed again in the garden. In the quiet of the rose-scented night I entered the summer-house.
Far away the nightingales sang on. There were words to their chanting now and their song was no, longer melancholy. And these were the words as I heard them: “Fiesole—Fiesole—Fiesole. Love in the world. Love in the world. Glad—glad—glad.”
My secret was too big and beautiful to keep to myself. There was no one I could tell it to save the Bantam. But the Bantam had grown shy of me; he knew that within myself I had been laughing at him. He turned away when I tried to catch his eye, and bent with unaccustomed diligence above his lessons.
Not till after lunch did I get a chance to approach him. All the other boys had changed into flannels and had hurried off to the cricket-nets. I wandered into the empty playground and there found him seated alone in a corner. His knees were drawn up so that his chin rested on them; in his eyes was a far-away sorrowful expression. I halted before him.
“Bantam.”
He did not look up, but I knew by the twitching of his hands that he had heard.
“Bantam, I’ve got something to tell you.”
Slowly he turned his head. He was acting the part of Hamlet and I was vastly impressed. “Is it about Ruthita?”
“Partly. But it’s happened to me too, Bantam.”
“Wot?”
“A girl.”
A genuine look of live-boy astonishment overspread his countenance. “A girl!” he ejaculated. “But there ar’n’t any about—unless you mean Pigtails.”
Pigtails was Beatrice Sneard, and I felt that an insult was being leveled at me.
“If you say that again, I’ll punch your head.”
“Oh, so it is Pigtails.” He rose to his feet lazily and began to take off his jacket. “Come on and punch it.”
But a fight wasn’t at all what I wanted. So I walked straight up to him with my hands held down.
“Silly ass, how could it be Pigtails? Do I look that sort? It’s another girl. I came to you ’cause you’re in love, and you’ll understand. I’ve been a beast to you—won’t you be friends?”
I held out my hand and he took it with surly defiance. I was too eager for sympathy, however, to be discouraged.
“She’s called Fiesole,” I said. “Isn’t that beautiful?”
“Ruthita’s better.”
“She’s got gold hair with just a little—a little red in it.”
“I prefer black.”
“I’m not talking about Ruthita; I’m telling you about Fiesole.”
“I know that,” said the Bantam; “you never do talk about Ruthita now.”
I walked away from him angrily in the direction I had taken on the previous evening. As I approached the nets I saw a little group of spectators. Then I made out the clerical figure of Sneard and the figure of Pigtails dressed in gray, and between them a slim white girl. Behind me I heard the pit-a-pat of running feet on the turf. The Bantam flung his arm about my shoulders, saying, “I’ve been a beast and you’ve been a beast; but we won’t be beasts any longer.” Then, following the direction of my eyes, “What are you staring at? Is that her? My eye, she’s a topper!”
He prodded me to go forward. When I showed reluctance, he used almost Fiesole’s words, “Why, surely, Dante, you ar’n’t afraid of a girl!”
I was afraid, and always have been wherever my affections are concerned. But I wasn’t going to own it just then. I let him slip his arm through mine, and we sauntered forward together. Through the soft summer air came the sharp click of the ball as it glanced off the bat, and the long cheer which followed as the wicket went down. Fiesole turned, clapping her hands, and our eyes met. Then she ceased to look at me; her gaze rested on the Bantam, while a half-smile played about her mouth. A pang of jealousy shot through me. With the instinctive egotism of the male, I felt that by the mere fact of loving her I had made her my property. However, Pigtails came to my rescue, for I saw her jolt Fiesole with her elbow; her shocked voice reached me, saying, “Cousin Fiesole, whatever are you staring at?”
I tugged at the Bantam’s sleeve and we turned away.
“My golly, but she is a ripper,” he whispered....
As the distance grew between us and her, he kept glancing across his shoulder and once halted completely to gaze back. I envied him his effrontery. My fate from the beginning has been to run away from the women I love—and then to regret it.
We had entered into another field and were passing a laburnum tree, when the Bantam drew up sharply. He pointed to its blossom all gold and yellow. “The color of her hair,” he said, and promptly threw himself under it, lying on his back, gazing up at its burning foliage. The sun filtered down through its leaves upon us, making fantastic patterns on our hands and faces. The field was tall in hay, ready for the cutting, so we had the boy’s delight of being completely hidden from the world.
“What’s the color of her eyes?” he asked presently.
“Don’t know; it was dusk when I saw her. I expect it’s the same as Ruthita’s.”
“Who is she?”
“Met her in Sneard’s garden—Pigtails called her ‘cousin’ just now.”
“She’s called Fiesole! Pretty name. How it suits her.”
“Not prettier than Ruthita,” I said.
He sat up and grinned at me. “Who’re you getting at? You wanted me to say all that half-an-hour ago in the playground; now I’ve said it. I can think she’s pretty, can’t I, and still love Ruthita best?”
“But you oughtn’t to love her at all,” I expostulated with a growing sense of indignant proprietorship.
“Look here,” explained the Bantam seriously, “you’re jealous. That’s the way I felt about you when you told me that you weren’t Ruthita’s brother; I quite understand. But if I’m to marry Ruthita, I shall be your brother-in-law. Sha’n’t I? And if you marry Fiesole, she’ll be my sister-inlaw. Won’t she? Well then, I’ve got a right to be pleased about her.”
I took him at his word and told him everything that had happened and all that I knew about her. Continually he would break in with feverish words of surprise and flattery, leading me on still further to confess myself. In the magic world of that summer’s afternoon no difficulties seemed insuperable. Married we could and would be. Parents and schoolmasters only existed for one purpose—to prevent boys and girls who fell in love from marrying: that was why grown-ups had all the money. In a natural state of society, where men lived in the woods, and wore skins, and carried clubs, these injustices would not happen.
So we unbosomed ourselves, only understanding vaguely the immensities that love and marriage meant. Then the bell for four o’clock school began calling and, like the slaves we were, we returned, on the run, to the Red House.
We found that we were not the only persons to be inflamed by the beauty of, Fiesole. All the boys were talking about her. One of our chief fears was set at rest—her surname was not Sneard, but Cortona. Her father had been a famous Italian actor married to Sneard’s sister, and both her parents fortunately were dead. She had quite a lot of money and had come from a convent at Tours, where she was, being, educated, to stay with her uncle on a visit of undetermined length or brevity. This news had all been gathered by the Cow, who had that curious faculty for worming out information which some boys possess. He had extracted it from the groundman, who had extracted it from Sneard’s gardener, who had extracted it from Sneard’s housemaid, with whom he was on more than friendly terms—so of course it was authentic.
That evening after prep I again stole out. The Bantam showed himself very impertinent—he wanted to come with me. I had great difficulty in persuading him that it wasn’t necessary. I found Fiesole in the summer-house. She was subdued and wistful, and insisted on asking questions about that nice boy she had seen with me. I told her frankly that he was engaged to my sister, and gave her a graphic account of how my father had turned him out of Pope Lane. I fear I made him seem altogether too romantic. She made careful inquiries about the appearance of Ruthita, which I took as a sign of encouragement—a foreknowledge that sooner or later I intended to ask her to become one of my family. When the bell rang for prayers and we parted, I held her hand a little longer, but experienced my old reluctance in the matter of kissing.
Next morning fate played me a scurvy trick; I woke with a bad sore throat, due I suppose to my escapade of the night earlier, and was sent to the infirmary. On the evening of the day I came out, which was four days later, I was summoned after prep to report myself to the doctor. This made me late in getting to the summer-house.
The bell for prayers had commenced to ring as I got there. I was climbing through the hedge when I heard footsteps on the garden path. There were two children standing hushed amid the roses, the one with face tremulously uplifted, the other looking down with eager eyes. As I watched their lips met. It was impossible for me to stir without making my presence known. One of them came bolting into me, going out by the way I was entering. We rolled over and I recognized the Bantam. Fiesole, hearing the angry voices of two boys quarreling, ran. And so I got my first experience of the lightness of woman’s affection.
However, if I was seeking a revenge, I got it. Before the end of the summer term Pigtails became suspicious, and discovered the Cow in the summer-house with the fickle Fiesole. The Cow, because he was a monitor, was expelled and I was appointed in his place—Mordecai and Haman after a fashion. Fiesole, on account of her kissing propensities, was regarded as a dangerous person and sent away. I was a grown man when next I met her.
It was during the last week of the summer term, while I was convalescing from Fiesole’s sudden exit and was beginning to forgive the Bantam his treachery, that the magic personality of George Rapson first flashed into my little world.
I was sitting listlessly at my desk one sunshiny morning. The window at my side was open, commanding a view of the school garden, the driveway leading through it, and beyond that of the sleepy village street. Below the window grew a bed of lavender whose fragrance, drifting in, made me forgetful of the book which lay before me and of the master at the black-board chalking up dull problems in algebra. I was dreaming as usual, telling myself a story of what I would do if old Sneard should pop his head inside the door and say, “My dear Cardover, you have worked so well that I intend to make an example of you by giving you this day as a holiday.”
Just then the master at the board turned round and jumped me into a realization of the present. “Cardover, you will please stand up and repeat my explanation of this problem.”
I stood up and gazed stupidly at the medley of signs and abbreviated formulae, hoping to discover some clue of reasoning in their apparent meaninglessness. “Well?”
“If you please, sir, I wasn’t attending.”
“I thought not. If you had been, you would have known that I have not explained it yet. You will come to me after class and—”
But his sentence was never ended. At that moment the head of every boy turned as one head; yes, and even the head of the master turned. Up the driveway came the sound of prancing hoofs, the soft crunch of wheels in the gravel, and cries of, “Whoà, girl! Steady there, steady.”
Past the window flashed a high yellow dog-cart, drawn by a tandem of spirited chestnuts. A tiger in livery and top-hat sat behind with arms folded, superbly aware of his own magnificence. Between the wheels ran a Dalmatian, a plum-pudding dog as we used to call them. On the high front-seat were two men, equally gorgeous. The one who drove wore a large fawn coat with enormous pearl buttons, distinctly horsey in cut and fashion. On his head was a tall beaver hat. He was a massively built man and had the appearance of a sporting aristocrat. To make him more splendid, he was young, with a bronzed complexion, full red lips, and finely chiseled features. His companion looked like a Methodist parson, trying to pass as a racing gent. He was attired in a light tweed suit of a rather pronounced black and white check. On his head was a gray felt hat, and in his button-hole blazed a scarlet geranium. They were laughing in deep full-throated guffaws as they whizzed past, with the sun flashing on their wheels and harness. The tiger and the Dalmatian were the only solemn things about them. What was my surprise to have recognized in the second man a relative?
“It’s my uncle!”
Even the master, so recently bent on my humiliation, seemed to hold his breath in regarding the nephew of so resplendent a person. Here was poetic justice with a vengeance. Most of the boys’ friends, if they were too rich to walk from the station when they came to visit them, crawled up the hill in a musty creaking cab, with hard wooden seats, and two or three handfuls of straw on the floor, more or less dirty. In the history of the Red House no boy’s relative had dashed up to visit him with such a barbaric clatter and display of wealth. Ah, if Fiesole had been there to envy me, how she would have blamed herself for her falseness!
“Cardover, you may sit down.”
The master turned again to the black-board, forgetting the threatened penalty. The boys eyed me above the covers of their books, and awaited further developments.
The door opened and Sneard peered round on us shortsightedly. A pleased smile played about the corners of his diplomatic mouth. His happiness at receiving such distinguished callers seemed to have had an effect upon his hair, turning it to a yet more fiery red. Usually when he spoke he snapped, but now his tones were as fluty as he could make them with so little practice.
Turning to the master, “Is Dante Cardover here?” he inquired. When I was pointed out to him he said, “Mr. George Rapson is here and with him your uncle, Mr. Spreckles. You may take a holiday, Dante, and go out with them.”
I rose from my seat in an ecstasy of bewilderment. What under the sun had happened that old Sneard should call me Dante, and who was Mr. George Rapson? As I picked my way through the labyrinth of forms and desks; getting glimpses of my school-mates’ lengthened faces, I felt that I was taking the sunlight from the room by my good fortune as I left.
I followed Sneard to his study, which I had so often visited on such different errands. Even now as I crossed its threshold, I could not quite shake off my accustomed clammy dread. The Spuffler, catching sight of me, ran forward in his gayest manner. “Ah, Dante, old chap, it’s good to see you. Rapson’s heard so much about you that he couldn’t keep away any longer. ‘Spreckles,’ he said, ‘you’ve got to introduce me. It’s Dante, Dante, all day long. You can’t talk of anyone else.’ So here we are. Rapson, this is my nephew.”
Mr. Rapson grabbed me by the shoulder with a large white hand and gazed down on me. There was a jolly-dog air about him combined with a big healthy strength, which made one both like and fear him from the first. And there was so much of him to like; he was over six foot in height and proportionately built in breadth. “Hm! Dante. Glad to meet you. Let’s get out.”
Sneard wanted me to put on my Sunday suit, but Mr. Rapson wouldn’t hear of it. “Hated clothes when I was a kid. Still think we ought to go naked. Let him be as he is. He’s got nothing to spoil and therefore’ll enjoy himself.”
Without waiting for a reply, he nodded to Sneard, heaved his great shoulders through the doorway, so down the hall and out on to the steps where the tiger was holding the horses’ heads.
“Just like Rapson,” my uncle said. “Masterful fellow. Makes up his mind and then goes ahead. Good-day, Mr. Sneard. Oh, yes, we’ll take care of him and bring him back.”
They took me up in front beside them; the whip cracked and the tiger sprang away from the leader. Off we sped, down the hill and into the valley, winding in and out of overgrown lanes where we had to duck our heads to avoid the boughs; then out again with fields on either side of us, up hill and down dale never slackening, with the wind on our cheeks and the sun in our faces. Mr. Rapson’s attention was completely taken up with his driving; it needed to be, for he swung round corners and squeezed between farm-wagons in outrageously reckless fashion. I watched his strong masterful hands, how they gathered in the reins and forced the horses to obedience. My eyes wandered up him and rested on his face: the face of a man a little over thirty, calm and yet when stern almost cruelly determined, with a shapely beak of a Roman nose planted squarely in the middle of it—a sign-post to his purpose.
Then I glanced at my uncle with his fashionable checks and scarlet geranium. I remembered that my grandmother called him the Spuffler, and wondered what she would call him now, could she see him. That nervous air he had had, of at once asserting and apologizing for himself with a pitiful display of bluster, had vanished. He carried himself with the jaunty confidence of a middle-aged gentleman unsubdued by the world—one who knew how to be dignified when necessary, but who preferred at present to relax. Above all he conveyed the impression of one beautifully fond of life’s simple pleasures and quietly composed in a happy self-respect. What had done it? Was it George Rapson, or had he at last had success with one of his poultry experiments?
Perhaps he guessed some of the inquiries that were running through my head, for, as I crouched near him in the little space allotted me on our high up perch, he squeezed my hand, hinting at some great secret, for the telling of which we must be alone by our two selves.
With foam flying from the horses’ mouths we entered Richmond and glittered down those quaint and narrow streets, which have always seemed to me more like streets of a seaport than of an inland town. We turned a corner; full before us drifted up the long and shadowy quiet of the Thames.
Mr. Rapson refused to be sociable until he had seen to the rubbing down and stabling of his horses; so we two wandered off together along the miniature quays, where boatmen with a deep-sea sailor’s swagger pulled clay pipes from their mouths and wished us a cheerfully mercenary “Good-mornin’.”
My curiosity was inarticulate with a multitude of crowding questions. I couldn’t make my choice which to ask first. I watched the swans sail in and out the tethered boats, and racked my brain for words. Then I blurted out, “What does it all mean, Uncle Obad?”
His eyes filled with tears. “My boy, it means success.”
I mumbled something typically boylike and inadequate about being “jolly glad.” He slipped his arm through mine with that endearing familiarity he had, as though I were a man. He was too excited to sit down, so we strolled along the quays, under the creeper-covered redbrick walls of the houses, and out of Richmond along the open river-bank.
“No one ever believed that I’d do it, Dante. I don’t think you did yourself. They all said, ‘Oh, Spreckles! Ha, the fellow who twiddles his thumbs while his wife works!’ They didn’t say it to my face—they didn’t dare. But that was what they thought about me. I seemed a failure—a good-natured incompetent. Even people who liked me felt ashamed of me—-I mean people who were dear to me, living in the same house. Women want their husbands to measure up to the standards of other men. It’s natural—I don’t blame ’em. But, you know, I never had a chance, old chap—never seemed to find my right kind of work. I couldn’t do little things well. I’m one of those imperial men who need something big to bring the best out of’ ’em. And now I’ve got it—I’ve got it, Dante.”
I caught his excitement, and begged him to tell me what this wonderful something was that had so suddenly transformed him from a nobody into a powerful person. I felt sure he was powerful, apart from anything he said, for he radiated opulence. He halted in the middle of the tow-path, gripping me by the shoulders, laughing into my face and bidding me guess. I guessed everything possible and impossible. Losing patience, “It’s diamond mines,” he burst out.
“But how did you get ’em, Uncle Obad, and where?”
For an instant I had a wild vision of men with pickaxes, shovels, and miners’ lamps, digging down into the bowels of the Christian Boarding House.
We seated ourselves on the bank with legs dangling above the water, and he told me. It seemed that Mr. George Rapson was the cause of this meteoric rise to prosperity. In April he had come to stay at Charity Grove as an ordinary paying-guest. From the first he was extraordinary and had amazed them with his wealth-his horses, his clothes, his friends, and his lavish manners. Most of his? fellow boarders were struggling young men, who earned two pounds a week in the City and paid twenty-five shillings for their keep and lodging. On the start they only knew that he was a South African, holiday-making in England. Little by little he let out that he was interested in diamond mines, and later that he owned The Ethiopian, one of the most promising properties of its kind in the world. The more communicative he became, the more surprised they were that he should make his head-quarters at a Christian Boarding House. There seemed no reason why he should not pay a higher price and enjoy the advantages of a secular environment.
One night he took my uncle into his room, locked the door, and let the cat out of the bag. It was my uncle and his personality that had attracted him. He had seen his name as secretary to so many thriving philanthropic societies that he had been led to appreciate his worth as an organizer. He wanted his help. He had come to England to unload a number of shares in The Ethiopian diamond mines, but it had to be done quietly and without advertisement. He had a number of unscrupulous enemies in the mining world who wanted to merge his property with theirs. They had tried to crowd him out in various ways—once by bringing about a law-suit to dispute his title to his holdings. If they should get wind that shares in The Ethiopian were to be bought in the open market, they would buy up every share in sight in an effort to gain control. Therefore it was necessary that business should be carried on in a private manner, and as far as possible through channels of personal friendship rather than those of the City and the Stock Exchange.
He had studied my uncle carefully and was convinced that he was just the man for the work. He proposed giving him a salary of one thousand pounds a year to act as his English agent, and a five-per-cent commission on all sales of shares that he was instrumental in effecting. His chief service was to consist in supplying lists of names and addresses of the moneyed religious public, and in applying his influence to the attracting of purchasers. The lists were of course to be culled mainly from the contributors to the charitable societies of which he was secretary. In fact, what the proposal amounted to, as I see it now, was that my uncle’s integrity, well-known among religious circles, was to guarantee the worth of the shares.
“It’s a close secret, Dante,” my uncle said. “Rapson won’t let me tell anyone, not even your Aunt Lavinia, the basis of our understanding. But I had to tell somebody; happiness isn’t happiness when you keep its reason to yourself. So I’ve told you, because we’ve had so many secrets together.”
We sat on, quite forgetful of time, watching the sleepy flowing of the river, building castles in the air. Last month they had declared their half-yearly dividend and it had amounted to twenty per cent. Since then the sale of shares had quickened enormously. Why, there was one morning’s mail when my uncle’s commissions alone had amounted to fifty pounds. Think of that—and it was only the beginning! Then we commenced to reckon how much he would have in five years, if his commissions amounted always to fifty pounds a morning, and he made a rule to spend nothing but his salary. It was the old childish game which had first made us chummy, of so many hens laying so many eggs, and how much would we have at the end of a twelvemonth.
He could afford to joke now concerning the penury of his lean years before the great Rapson had put in an appearance. He even made fun of his own spuffing, and laughed as he told me how much economy those odd shillings and half-crowns, which he used to give me in such a large manner, had cost him.
“But it’s all over now,” he said cheerfully, “and I’m going to be an important man. People are beginning to look up to me already. Who knows?—one day I may enter Parliament. I’m moving in a different social set—Rapson’s friends. He’s very well-connected. They’re a little gay and larky, you know; your Aunt Lavinia don’t quite know what to make of ’em. She’ll get over that. Oh, but it’s a big new world for me, Dante, and there’s heaps of things to do in it that I never knew about.”
On our way back the great George Rapson himself met us, and we found that we’d been gone an hour. He told us that he’d ordered lunch at a little inn, called The White Cross—one which hung over the river.
How proud I was to walk beside him as we re-entered Richmond! Everyone turned to stare after him as he passed, with his long fawn coat open and flapping, his easy rollicking laugh, his great height and distinguished presence. And I, Dante Cardover, was by way of being the friend of such a man! The gates of romance were indeed opening.
The White Cross Inn had separate balconies, built out from each of its second-story windows. In one of these our table was set. The little tiger helped the maid of the inn to wait upon us. And what a meal we had!—salmon and salad and fowl, stuffed veal and pine-apple, dates, almonds, and raisins—everything that a boy could ask to have. Up the walls of the inn climbed rambler roses and tumbled over the sides of the balcony. Beneath us lay the river, like a silver snake, lazily uncurled, sunning itself in great green meadows.
“This is to be your day, Dante,” Mr. Rapson said. “We brought some of these things from London because we knew you liked, ’em. You discovered your Uncle Obad before I did, and when no one else had. He’s told me all about it. Here’s your very good health.”
The tiger, who had been drawing the cork out of a large green bottle about half as tall as himself, now poured out a golden foamy liquid. I found one glass of it had the same care-freeing effect that the holding of Fiesole’s hand in the summer-house had had. I felt myself at ease in the world, and began to speak of the Reverend Robert Sneard as “jolly old Sneard,” and of all people who had authority over me with tolerant contempt. I gazed back from the security of my temporary Canaan, and gave my entertainers a whimsical account of my perilous journey through the wilderness of boyhood. It was wonderful even to myself how suddenly my shyness had vanished.
Mr. Rapson seemed highly amused. “You’ll do, young’un,” he said.
Then little, by little, he began to speak of Africa—-the dust, the Kaffirs, and the wide, parched veldt. He spoke of adventures with lions far up in the interior, and of how he had once been an ivory-hunter before he struck it lucky in the south. “I ran away from home when I was a youngster of twenty and all because of a girl.” He nodded at me wisely across the table, “Keep clear of the girlies, they’re the devil.”
I thought of Fiesole and inquired if some girls weren’t quite attractive devils. My uncle looked shocked in a genial fashion at this very free use of a forbidden word—the fear of Aunt Lavinia purged his vocabulary even when she was absent. But Mr. Rapson went red in the face and smacked his hands together, laughing loudly. “Of course they’re attractive; else how’d they tempt us?”
A punt, which had stolen up beneath our balcony, now caught his attention. A girl in a gown of flowered muslin, with a broad pink sash about her waist, was standing in the stern. She was alone, and all the river formed a landscape for her daintiness.
Mr. Rapson stared hard at her; her back was towards us. “Seem to know her hair,” he muttered. He half rose. “By George, it’s Kitty!”
Leaning far out over the balcony he called to her impulsively, “Kitty! Kitty!”
Very leisurely she lifted up to him a small flushed face, all laughter and naughtiness, and waved her hand. She was as pretty as love and a summer’s day could make a woman—but I wasn’t supposed to be old enough to observe such things as that.
She brought her punt in to the bank, while Mr. Rapson went down to help her out. When he gave her his hand to steady her, she kept it in hers. As she glanced mischievously up at him I heard her say, “Why, George, you terror, who’d have thought of meeting you here!”
He whispered something to her with a frown; she dropped him a mocking courtesy.
When he brought her up on to the balcony, he introduced her as his cousin Kitty. She bowed to us with a roguish grace, clinging close to his arm. “Now, Kitty,” he said, freeing himself, “you’ve got to behave.”
Seeing that my uncle was looking at her in a puzzled manner, she took the center of the stage without embarrassment, explaining, “Georgie and I are very old friends and I’ve not seen him, oh, for ages.”
When they had told her how they happened to be there and that it was my day, and that they had stolen me away from my lessons, she swung round on me with a kind of rapture. “Oh, what darlings to do that! And what a nice boy!” Without further ado she patted my face and kissed me. It was a new sensation. I blushed furiously, and was both pleased and abashed. “You may be older than I am,” I thought; “but you’re only a girl. In three years I could marry you.”
She was like a happy little dog in a meadow; never still, sending up birds—following nothing and chasing everything. In her conversation she gamboled about and never ceased gamboling. She didn’t sit quietly like the Snow Lady and all the other ladies of my acquaintance, putting in a word now and then, but letting the men do the talking. She made everybody look at her—perhaps, because she was so well worth looking at. Even before she had kissed me I was in love with her.
Mr. Rapson seemed a little nervous, and she appeared to delight in his fear of her daring.
“Georgie’s always had a passion for me,” she said, “though he won’t own it.” Then suddenly, seeing the troubled expression on his face, “How much has the poor dear told you about himself?”
She wriggled out of me something of the story of his doings. She eyed him archly from under her big hat and, when I had ended, leant across the table so their faces nearly met. “How many lions did my Georgie kill in Africa?”
“Be quiet, you little devil,” he laughed, seizing her by the hands.
The employment of that forbidden word set me wondering whether this was the girl for love of whom he first went wandering. But she looked too young for that.
We went into her punt and drifted down the river with the current. She played the madcap all the way, speaking to him often in baby language. He seemed to be amused by it, as a St. Bernard might be amused by the impertinence of a terrier. When she got too bold he would hold her hands until she was quiet, overpowering her with his great strength much the same as he did his horses. Then she would turn her attentions to me for a time, and I would make believe to myself she was Fiesole. My uncle looked on like a benevolent Father Christmas, dignified and smiling.
Dusk was settling when we started on the return journey. We found that we had drifted further than we had intended. Mr. Rapson took the pole and did the punting. Miss Kitty sang to him, she said to encourage him. I think it must have been then that I first heard Twickenham Ferry. She had to leave off part way through the last verse I remember. She said that the mist from the river choked her; but I, lying on the cushions beside her, somehow gathered the impression that she was nearly crying. When she broke down, under cover of darkness I got my hand into hers, and then she slipped her arm about me. After that she was very subdued and silent. My uncle fell off to sleep, and Mr. Rapson kept his face turned away from us, busy with his punting. I wondered if, after all, Miss Kitty was happy.
It was night when we arrived. She insisted on parting with us at the landing, saying that her houseboat was just across the river and she could take the punt home quite well unaccompanied. We had said good-by and were walking along the quay, when Rapson left us and ran back. I saw him come close and bend over her. They seemed to be whispering together. Then she pushed out into the river; the lights of the town held her for a time; darkness closed in behind her and she vanished.
On the drive back to the Red House I grew drowsy.
I tried to keep my eyes open, but even the soft moonlight seemed dazzling. The meadows and tall trees stealing by, ceased to stand out separate, but became a blur. The sharp trit-trot, trit-trot of the horses’ hoofs on the hard macadam road lulled me by their monotonous regularity.
When I came to myself I heard my uncle saying, “I like that little cousin of yours, Rapson; she’s charming and different from any woman that I ever met.”
“Daresay she is,” Rapson answered, dryly; “you’ve led such a sheltered life. Of course she isn’t my cousin.”
“Who is she, then?”
“Oh, a nymph.”
“A nymph! You have the better of me there. That’s a classical allusion, no doubt. I don’t understand.”
“Never mind, papa,” Mr. Rapson said cheerfully; “I didn’t think you would understand. It’s just as well.”
Then he commenced speaking to his horses. “So, girl! Steady there! Steady!”
I rubbed my eyes, and saw that we were ascending Eden Hill.
Deep down in their secret hearts all the Spuffler’s relations had felt that his permanent failure to get on in the world was a kind of disgrace to themselves. They resented it, but as a rule kept quiet about it “for the sake of poor Lavinia.” My aunt was always “poor Lavinia,” when mentioned by her family. Before: strangers, needless to say, they helped him to keep up his pretense of importance and spoke of him with respect. But the thought that a man who had intermarried with them, should have lowered his wife to the keeping of a boarding-house rankled. Even as a child I was conscious that my close attachment to my uncle Obad was regarded with disapprobation. He was the Ishmael of our tribe.
At first none of his relatives would believe in his mushroom prosperity. Perhaps, they did not want to believe in it; it would entail the sacrifice of life-long prejudices. They pooh-poohed it as the most extravagant example of his fantastic spuffling. On my return home for the summer holidays I very soon became aware of an atmosphere of half-humorous contempt whenever his name was mentioned. Once when I took up the cudgels for him, declaring that he was really a great man, the Snow Lady patted my hand gently, calling me “a blessed young optimist.” My father, who rarely lost his temper, told me I was speaking on a subject concerning which I was profoundly ignorant.
On a visit to Charity Grove I was grieved to find that even Aunt Lavinia was skeptical. Despite the jingling of money in my uncle’s pockets, she insisted on living in the old proud hand-to-mouth fashion, making the spending capacity of each penny go its furthest. Her house was still understaffed in the matter of servants—servants who could be procured at the lowest wages. She still did her shopping in the lower-class districts, where men cried their wares on the pavement beneath flaring naphtha-lamps and slatternly women elbowed your ribs and mauled everything with dirty hands before they purchased. Here housekeeping could be contrived on the smallest outlay of capital.
Uncle Obad might go to fashionable tailors; she clothed herself in black, because it wore longest and could be turned. She listened to his latest optimisms a little wearily with a sadly smiling countenance, as a mother might listen to the plans for walking of a child hopelessly crippled. She had heard him speak bravely so many, many times, and had been disappointed, that she had permanently made up her mind that she would have to go on earning the living for both of them all her life.
Yet she loved him as well as a woman could a man for whom she was only sorry; she was constantly on the watch to defend him from the disapprobation of the world. But she refused ever again to be beguiled into believing that he would take his place with other men. So, when he told her that they didn’t need to keep on the boarding-house, she scarcely halted long enough in her work to listen to him. And when he said that he could now afford her a hundred pounds for dress, she bent her head lower to hide a smile, for she didn’t want to wound him. And when he brought her home a diamond bracelet, she tried to find out where it had been purchased in order that she might return it on the quiet.
Gradually, however, she began to be persuaded that this time it wasn’t all bluster. The gallantry of his attitude towards herself was the unaccountable element. Not so long ago it had been she who was the man about the house, and he had been a kind of grown-up boy. Once she had allowed him to kiss her; now he kissed her masterfully as by right of conquest. He had become a man at last, after halting at the hobbledehoy stage for fifty years. He treated her boldly as a lover, striving to draw out her womanhood. He was making up the long arrears of affection which, up to this time, he had not felt himself worthy to display.
One evening in the garden he tore the bandage of doubt from her eyes. I was there when it happened. We were down in the paddock, the home of the fowls, where so many of our dreams had taken place. The gaunt London houses to the right of us were doing their best to shut out the sunset. Aunt Lavinia began to wonder how much the little hay-crop would fetch this year. She was disappointed because it had grown so thin, and there seemed no promise of rain.
“It doesn’t matter, my dear,” said my uncle cheerfully.
“Obad, how can you say that!”
He pressed up to her flushing like a boy, placing his arms about her and lifting her face. “Lavinia, are you never going to trust me?”
The sudden tenderness and reproach in his voice stabbed her heart into wakefulness. When she spoke, her words came like a cry: “Oh, Obad, how I wish I could believe it true this time!”
“But it is true, my dearest.”
I stole away, and did not see them again till an hour later when they wandered by me arm-in-arm through the wistful twilight. Within a week I knew that she had accepted his prosperity as a fact, for he gave her a blue silk dress and she wore it. But he had harder work in getting her to give up the boarding-house. His great argument was that Rapson advised it—it would advance their social standing. She fenced and hesitated, but finally promised on the condition that he was still succeeding in November.
I think it must have been the news of her surrender that sapped the last foundation of my father’s skepticism. At any rate, shortly after this, when my uncle by special invitation came over to Pope Lane, he was given one of my father’s best cigars as befitted a rich relative. The best glass and silver were put out. We all had unsoiled serviettes and observed uncomfortable company manners. In the afternoon he was carried off to my father’s study and remained there till long past the tea-hour.
Later my father told me the subject of their discussion.. By dint of hard saving he had put by two thousand pounds for planting me out in the world, part of which was to pay for my Oxford education. Having heard of that half-yearly twenty-per-cent dividend which the Ethiopian shares had paid and that they were still being issued privately, at par value, he was inclined to entrust his money to my uncle, if he could prove the investment sound. If the mines were as good as they appeared to be, he would get four hundred pounds a year in interest—which would make all the difference to our ease of life. There was another consultation; the next thing I knew the important step had been taken.
All our power of dreaming now broke loose. It became our favorite pastime to sit together and plan how we would spend the four hundred pounds.
“Why, it’s an income in itself,” my father would exclaim; “I shall be freed forever from the drudgery of hack-work.”
And the Snow Lady would say, “Now you’ll be able to turn your mind to the really important things of life—the big books which you’ve always hoped to write.”
And Ruthita would sidle up to him in her half-shy way, and rub her cheek against his face, saying nothing.
A wonderful kindliness nowadays entered into all our domestic relations. My father’s weary industry, which had sent us all tiptoeing about the house, began to relax. Even for him work lost something of its sacredness now that money was in sight. He no longer frowned and refused to look up if anyone trespassed into his study. On the contrary, he seemed glad of the excuse for laying aside his pen and discussing what place in the whole wide world we should choose, when we were free to live where we liked.
It should be somewhere in Italy—Florence, perhaps. For years it had been his unattainable dream to live among olive-groves of the Arno valley. We read up guide-books and histories about it. Soon we were quite familiar with the Pitti Palace, the Ponte Vecchio, and the view from the Viale dei Colli at sundown. These and many places with beautiful and large-sounding names, became the stock-in-trade of our conversation. And the brave, looked-down-on Spuffler was the faery-godmother who had made these dreams realities.
A tangible proof of the promised change in our financial status was experienced by myself on my return to school in a more liberal allowance of pocket-money. As yet it was only a promised change, for the half-yearly dividend would not be declared until January, and would not be paid till a month later.
What one might call “a reflected proof” came when we went over to spend Christmas with Uncle Obad at Chelsea.
Yes, Aunt Lavinia had succumbed to her good fortune. The Christian Boarding House had been abandoned and a fine old house had been rented, standing nearly at the corner of Cheyne Row, looking out across the river to Battersea.
On Christmas Eve my uncle’s carriage came to fetch us. That was a surprise in itself. It was his present to Aunt Lavinia, all brand new—a roomy brougham, with two gray horses, and a coachman in livery. From this it will be seen that he had not kept his bargain with himself, made that day at Richmond, to live only on his salary.
A slight fall of snow was on the ground; across London we drove, the merriest little family in all that shopping crowd. We had scarcely pulled up against the pavement and had our first peep of the fine big house, when the front-door flew open, letting out a flood of light which rippled to the carriage like a golden carpet unrolled across white satin.
There stood Uncle Obad, frock-coated and glorious, with Aunt Lavinia beside him, dressed all in lavender—not at all the prim, businesslike little woman, half widow, half hospital nurse, of my earliest recollection. She was as beaming and excited as a young girl, and greeted the Snow Lady by throwing her arms about her and whispering, “Oh, doesn’t it seem all too good to be true?”
The Snow Lady kissed her gaily on both cheeks, saying, “True enough, my dear. At any rate, Obad’s carriage was very real.”
How changed we were from the solemn polite personages who had considered it a point in our favor that we knew how to bottle our emotions. We laughed and rollicked, and made quite poor jokes seem brilliant by the sparkle with which we told or received them. And all this was done by money; in our case, merely by the promise of money! When a boy remembered what we all had been, it was a transformation which called for reflection.
My uncle with his jolly rich-relative manner was the focus-point of our attentions. Aunt Lavinia and, in fact, we all felt flat whenever he went out of the room. She followed after him like a little dog, with dumb admiring eyes, waiting to be petted. She told the Snow Lady that she couldn’t blame herself enough and could never make it up to him, for having lived with him in the same house all those years without having discovered his goodness. Then, as ladies will, they kissed for the twentieth time and did a little glad crying together.
So the stern grayness, which comes of a too frequent pondering on a diminishing bank-account, had vanished from the faces of our elders. Ruthita and I looked on and wondered. A great house had something to do with it, and heavy carpets, and wide fire-places, and fine shiny furniture, but underlying it all was money.
Christmas Eve I was awakened by the playing of waits outside my window. I looked out at the broad black river, with the ropes of stars, which were the lights of bridges, flung across it. And I looked at the untrodden snow, stretching far down the Embankment, gleaming and shadowy, making London seem a far-away, forgotten country. Then fumbling in the darkness, I looked in my stocking and drew out a slip of paper. By the light of a match, I discovered it to be a check from my aunt and uncle for fifty pounds. Comparing notes in my night-gown with Ruthita next morning, I found that she had another for the same amount.
Ah, but that was something like a Christmas! Never a twenty-fifth of December comes round but I remember it. My father summed it all up when he said, “Well, Obad, now you’ve struck it lucky, you certainly know how to be generous.”
He certainly did, and proved amply that only poverty had prevented him in former days from being the best loved man in the family. Only one person roused more admiration than my uncle, and that was Mr. Rapson. My father had never met him, so he had been invited to the Christmas dinner. At the last moment he had excused himself, saying that he had an unavoidable engagement with a lady. However, he turned up late in the evening with Miss Kitty on his arm and a fur-coat on his back. Somehow they both seemed articles of clothing; he wore them with such perfect assurance, as though they were so much a part of himself. In the hall he took off his fur-coat, and then he had only Miss Kitty to wear.
It was awe-inspiring to see the deference that was paid him and the ease with which he accepted every attention. My father, with the sincerest simplicity, almost thanked him to his face for selling him The Ethiopian shares.
Of course he had to tell his lion-stories and how he went hunting ivory in Africa. My uncle trotted him about as though he were a horse, reminding him of all his paces. Mr. Rapson was his discovery—his property. We all sat round and hero-worshiped. Miss Kitty seemed overwhelmed by the greatness of the house and the general luxury.
She appeared particularly shy of the ladies. After she had gone they declared her to be a dumb, doll-like little creature, with her quiet eyes and honey-colored hair. I sniggered, and they said, “What’s the matter with the boy? Why are you gurgling, Dante?”
I was thinking of another occasion, when she was neither dumb nor doll-like.
Now, quite contrary to her behavior at Richmond, she remained almost motionless on the chair in which Mr. Rapson had placed her, looking like a beautiful obedient piece of jewelry, waiting till her owner got ready to claim her. Only at parting did she show me any sign of recollection and then, while all eyes were occupied with Mr. Rapson, she whispered, “You were good to me at Richmond. I don’t forget.”
We stayed with my uncle four days. To us children it was a kind of tragedy when we left. “We must do this every year,” my uncle said.
“If we ar’n’t in Florence,” my father replied gaily.
Going back to school this time was a sore trial—it meant moving out of the zone of excitement. It seemed that every day something new must happen; and then there was so much to talk about. However, I got my pleasure another way—by the things I let out at school, with a boy’s natural boastfulness, about my uncle. I found myself, what I had always desired to be, genuinely and extremely popular. Money again! I let them know that they would probably only have the privilege of my society for a little while as, in all likelihood, I should be living in Florence next year.
This term two events happened, intimately related to one another in their effect upon my career, though at the time no one could have suspected any connection between them.
Lady Zion, the Creature’s sister, had certainly got more crazy in the years that had elapsed since I first met her. The winter was a heavy one and the snow fell far into February; yet nothing could restrain her, short of an asylum, from wandering about in the bleakest weather all over the countryside. Sometimes she would stay out far into the night, and on several occasions the Creature and I had to go out and search for her. I have seen her pass me five miles from home, riding on her little ass, talking to herself, all unaware of anything around her.
She was a temptation to the village-boys, and they would frequently torment her. The antagonism between the Red House and the village ran high. In a sense she was school property; we would make a chance of rescuing her an excuse for a free-fight. This meant that when the enemy found her alone, they took the opportunity of displaying their spite.
On the fourteenth of February she had been out all day. No one had seen her; by nightfall she had not returned. The Creature got permission to have me go out with him to hunt for her. It was necessary that someone should go with him because he was short-sighted. We investigated all her favorite haunts, but found not a trace of her. We inquired of farmers and travelers on the road, but heard nothing satisfactory. If she had gone by field-routes this was not remarkable, for all the country was covered with snow. Her white draped figure against the white landscape made it easy for her to escape observation.
The poor old Creature was getting worried; we had been three hours searching and hadn’t got a clue. I did my best to cheer him, and at last proposed that we should return to his cottage as sometimes the donkey had brought her back of himself.
From the point where we then stood our shortest route lay cross-country through a wood, skirting a little dell. Under the trees it was very dark although the moon was shining, for the trees grew close together. We were passing by the dell when I happened to look aside. The moonlight, falling across it, showed me something standing there. I asked the Creature to wait while I went and examined it. As I got nearer, I saw it was alive; then I recognized Lady Zion’s donkey. It had halted over what appeared to be a drift of snow. On coming closer I saw that it was Lady Zion herself. Something warned me not to call her brother.
Bending down, I turned her over and drew the straggling hair from off her face. There was a red gash in her forehead and red upon the snow. By the fear that seized me when I touched her, I knew.
Coming back to the Creature I told him it was nothing—I had been mistaken. At the school-house I made an excuse to leave him while he went on to the cottage. When he was out of sight I ran panic-stricken to Sneard’s study and told him. The two of us, without giving the alarm, returned to the wood and brought her home. The Creature was just setting out again when we reached the cottage. By the limp way in which she hung across the donkey’s back, he realized at a glance what had happened. Catching her in his arms, he dragged her down on to the road and, kneeling over her, commenced to sob and sob like an animal, not using any words, in a low moaning monotone.
One by one windows in the village-street were thrown open; frowsy heads stuck out; lights began to grope across the panes; the sleeping houses woke and a promiscuous crowd of half-clad people gathered. Above the intermittent babel of questions and answers was the constant sound of the Creature’s sobbing.
Next morning the news of Lady Zion’s death was common property. Detectives came down from London and a thorough effort was made to trace the murderer. Near the spot in the dell where she had been discovered, half-a-dozen snowballs lay scattered. It was supposed that a village-boy had come across her there, and in one of the snowballs he had thrown, purposely or accidentally, had buried a stone; then, seeing her fall, had run away in terror.
At the school various rumors went the round. The one which found most favor, though we all knew it to be untrue, was that Sneard had done it. His supposed motive was his well-known annoyance at Lady Zion’s irritating obsession that he had once loved her.
In the midst of this excitement, while the London detectives were still hunting, I received a telegram from my father, unexplained and peremptory, “Return immediately. Bring all belongings.”
Of course the telegram was connected in some way with the payment of the first half-yearly dividend. Perhaps my father had decided on an instant removal to Italy. So my schoolmates thought as they stood enviously watching me pack.
Towards evening I stepped into the village’s one and only cab. I shook the dust of the Red House from my feet without regret. With the intense selfishness of youth, my own hope for the future made me almost forgetful of the Creature’s tragedy.
It was about eight o’clock when I reached Pope Lane. All the front of the house was in darkness. I tugged vigorously at the bell, feeling a little slighted that none of them had been on the look-out. Directly the door opened, I rushed in with a mouthful of excited questions. Hetty stared at me disapprovingly. “Don’t make so much noise, Master Dante,” she said; “your mother and Miss Ruthita ’ave ’ad a worryin’ day and ’ave gorn to bed. They didn’t know you was comin’.”
I noticed that the stairway was unlighted, that the gas in the hall was on the jet, and that Hetty herself was partly prepared for bed. I was beginning to explain to her about the telegram, speaking below my breath the way one does when death is in the house. Just then my father came out from his study. His pen was behind his ear and his shoulders looked stoopy. His face had the worn expression of the old days, which came from overwork.
“Father, why did you send for me?”
He led me into the study, closing the door behind him.
“You’ve got to be brave.”
At his words my heart sank. My eyes retreated from his face. I wanted to lengthen out the minutes until I should know the worst.
“My boy, your Uncle Obad’s gone to smash. We’ve lost everything.”
He seated himself at the table, his head supported on his hand. He had tried to speak in a matter-of-fact manner, as much as to say, “Of course this is just what we all expected.” But I could see that hope had gone out of him. I wanted to say something decent and comforting; but everything that came to me seemed too grandiloquent. There was nothing adequate that could be said. Florence, realization of dreams, respite from drudgery—all the happiness that money alone could purchase and that had seemed so accessible, was now placed apparently forever beyond reach of his hand.
He took his pen from behind his ear and commenced aimlessly stabbing the blotting-pad.
He spoke again, looking away from me. “That money was yours. I saved it for you. It was for giving you a chance in the world. I ought to have known that your uncle wasn’t to be trusted—he’s never been able to earn a living by honest work. But there, I don’t blame him as much as I blame myself. I must have been mad.”
“Shan’t we get anything back?”
He shook his head. “This fellow Rapson is a common swindler, from what I can make out. He simply used your uncle. He may never have had any diamond mines. If he had, they were worthless. He doesn’t appear to have had any capital except what he got by your uncle selling his shares. He paid his one dividend last summer in order to tempt investors, and now he’s decamped. We shan’t see a penny back.”
I tried to tell him that he needn’t worry for my sake—I could work.
“Yes, yes,” he said, “that’s why I sent for you. Of course your fees are all paid for this term; but if you’ve got to enter the commercial world, the sooner the better. You’ve come to an age when every day spent at school is a day wasted, unless you’re going to enter a profession. You can’t get a University education without money and, in any case, it’s worse than valueless unless you have the money to back it.”
“But I don’t mind working,” I assured him; “I shall be glad to work. P’raps by starting early I’ll be able to earn a lot of money and help you one day, Dad.”
He frowned at my cheerfulness; he had finished with optimism forever. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Money isn’t so easily earned. It took me fifteen years of pinching and scraping to save two thousand pounds.” Then, conscious of ungraciousness, he added, “But I like your spirit, Dante, and it was good of you to say that.”
His fear of heroics and sentiment made him rise quickly and turn out the lamp.
“Best go to bed.”
I groped my way upstairs through the darkened house. There was something unnatural about its darkness. Its silence was not the silence of a house in which people were sleeping, but one in which they lay without rest staring into the shadows. In my bedroom I felt it indecent to light the gas. I sat by the window, looking out across gardens to our neighbors’ illumined windows. Someone was playing a piano; it seemed disgustingly bad taste on their part to do that when we had lost two thousand pounds.
My thought veered round. What after all were two thousand pounds to be so miserable about! I began to feel annoyed with my father that he should have made such a fuss about it. I was sure that neither the Snow Lady nor Ruthita had wanted to go to bed so early. Probably he didn’t really want to himself. He just got the idea into his head, and had forced it on the family. In our house, until Mr. Rapson came along, it had always been like that: he punished us, instead of the people who had hurt him, by the moods that resulted from his disappointments. Why, if it was simply a matter of my going to work, I rather liked the prospect. Anyhow, it was for the most part my concern. And then I remembered how sad he had looked, and was sorry that such thoughts had come into my head.
A tap at my door made me jump up conscience-stricken. “It’s only Ruthita,” a low voice said.
She crept in noiselessly as a shadow. Her warm arms went about my neck, drawing my face down to hers. “Oh, Dannie, I’m so, so sorry,” she whispered.
“What about?”
“Because I’ve never missed welcoming you home ever since you went to school, and you needed me most of all this evening—and because you’ve got to go to work.”
“That doesn’t matter, Ruthie. If I go to work I’ll earn money, and then I’ll be able to do things for you.”
“For me! Oh, you darling!” Then she thought a minute and her face clouded. “But no, if you go to work you’ll marry. That’s what always happens.”
She stood gazing up at me, her face looking frailer and purer than ever in the darkness. She had slipped on a long blue dressing-gown to come and see me, and her long black hair hung loose about her. Just below the edge of her gown her small pale feet showed out. Then I realized for the first time that she had changed as I had changed; we were no longer children. Perhaps the same wistful imaginings, exquisite and alluring, had come to her. For her also the walls of childhood, which had shut out the far horizon, were crumbling. Then, with an overwhelming reverence, I became aware of the strange fascination of her appealing beauty.
She snuggled herself beside me in the window. We spoke beneath our breath in the hushed voices of conspirators, lest we should be heard by my father.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said apologetically. “I was lonely, so I came to you. Everything and everybody seem so sad.”
“It was your thoughts that were sad, Ruthie. What were you thinking about?”
She rubbed her cheek against mine shyly and I felt her tremble. “I was thinking about you. We’re growing up, Dante. You may go away and forget—forget all about me and the Snow Lady.”
“I shan’t,” I denied stoutly.
To which she replied, “But people do.”
“Do what?”
“Forget. And then I’m not your sister really—only by pretense.”
“Look here,” I said, “you say that when boys earn money they marry. I don’t think I ever shall because—well, because of something that has happened. So why shouldn’t you and I agree to live always together, the same as we do now?”
She said that that would be grand; she would be a little mother to me. But she wanted to know what made me so sure that I would always be a bachelor. With the sincere absurdity of youth, the more absurd because of its sincerity, I confided my passion for Fiesole. “After what she has done,” I said, “I could never marry her; and yet I love her too well ever to marry anybody else. I can only love golden hair now, and the golden hair of another girl would always remind me of Fiesole.”
Ruthita was silent. Then I remembered that her hair was black and saw that I had been clumsy in my sentiment, so I added, “But, Ruthie, in a sister I think black hair is the prettiest color in the world.”
After she had tiptoed away to her room and I had crept into bed, I lay awake thinking over her words—that she was only my sister by pretense.
Next day my father called me to him. “You had fifty pounds given you last Christmas. I want you to let me have it.”
I supposed that he wanted me to lend it to him, so I gave him my book and we went together to the savings bank and drew it out. I noticed that he drew out Ruthita’s fifty pounds as well. We climbed on to the top of an omnibus; nothing was said about where we were going.
He had bought a paper and I read it across his arm as we journeyed. As he turned over from the first page my eye caught a column headed DISAPPEARANCE OF GEORGE RAPSON. Underneath was a complete account of the whole affair.
My uncle had been interviewed by a reporter and had given a generously indiscreet history of the catastrophe from beginning to end. He tried to defend Rapson, and by his own innocent disclosures pilloried himself as a sanguine, gullible old ass. He insisted on believing in Rapson’s integrity. Things looked queer of course, but sooner or later there would be an explanation, satisfactory to everybody. What the nature of that explanation was likely to be he could not tell, but he hoped for the best. He was reported as having said that Mr. Rapson had repeatedly referred to secret enemies in the financial world. This was the reason he had given to Mr. Spreckles for not disposing of his shares through the ordinary channels.
Mr. Spreckles stated in his interview that, on the evening of the third of January, Rapson had called at his house. He seemed excited and said that certain plots were culminating against his interests which made an instant and secret visit to South Africa essential. He had not hinted at anything definitely serious, but, on the contrary, had given orders for the declaration of the half-yearly dividend, payment of which would not fall due till February. That evening he had disappeared; since then nothing had been heard of him. When four weeks later Mr. Spreckles drew checks on Rapson’s bank-account for payment of the dividends, they were all returned to him dishonored. A month previously, on the morning of January the third, Rapson had withdrawn every penny.
All the names of the people who had lost money in the adventure were appended. For the most part they were wealthy widows and spinsters, heavy contributors to various philanthropies, just the kind of people who would lack the business judgment which would have prevented them from entering into such a gamble. My father’s name was the exception, and was given special attention, being headed A Hard Case. “Mr. Cardover, having endured in his early life the humiliations and struggles which not infrequently fall to the lot of an ambitious penniless young man, had determined that his son, Dante, should not suffer a like embittering experience. To this end he had saved two thousand pounds to start his son on a professional career. This boy was Mr. Spreckles’ favorite nephew. Mr. Spreckles quotes the fact that it was he who induced Mr. Cardover to invest this money in The Ethiopian Diamond Mines as proof of his own honest belief in the value of the shares. The boy will probably now have to be withdrawn from the Red House, where he is being educated. Was it likely, Mr. Spreckles asked, that he would have been a party to the ruin of those whom he loved best, if he had for a moment suspected that the investment was not all that it was represented?”
I had proceeded so far with my reading, when my father crushed the paper viciously into a ball and tossed it over the side of the bus. For the first time within my remembrance I heard him swear. He was so overcome with irritation that he had to alight and walk it off. He kept throwing out jerky odds and ends of exclamations, speaking partly to me, partly to himself.
“The bungling ass!”
“Why did he need to drag our names into it?”
“A regular windbag!”
“First picks my pocket, then advertises my poverty. Thinks that he can prove himself honest by doing that!” I put in a feeble word for my uncle, hinting that he didn’t mean any harm and that it was easy to be wise after the event.
“That’s the worst of people like your Uncle Spreckles,” my father retorted hotly; “they never do mean any harm, and yet they’re always getting into interminable messes.” The storm worked itself out; we climbed on to another bus. At the end of an hour the streets became familiar, and I knew that we were nearing Chelsea.
We got down within a stone’s throw of my uncle’s house. There it stood overlooking the river, shut in with its wrought-iron palings, red and comfortable, and outwardly prosperous as when we had parted on its steps, promising to come again next Christmas if we weren’t in Florence. But when we attempted to enter, we had proof that its outward appearance was a sham. The glory had departed, and with it had gone the white-capped servants.
The door was opened to us on the chain. A slatternly kitchen-maid peered out through the crack. She commenced to address us at once in a voice of high-pitched, impudent defiance.
“Wot yer want? Mr. Spreckles ain’t ’ere, I tell yer. Yer the fortieth party this mornin’ that’s come nosin’ rawnd. D’ye think I’ve got nothin’ ter do ’cept run up and darn stairs h’answering bells? It’s a shime the waie yer all piles inter one man. I calls it disgustin’. A better master a girl never ’ad.”
I loved her for those words. They were the first that I had heard spoken in my uncle’s defense. She was uttering all the pent up anger and sense of injustice that I had been too cowardly to express. Even on my father her fierce working-class loyalty to the under-dog had its effect.
“My good girl,” he said, “you mustn’t talk to me like that. I’m Mr. Cardover, who was staying here last Christmas.”
Her manner changed audibly, literally audibly, at his tone of implied sympathy. She boo-hooed unrestrainedly as she slipped back the chain, permitting us to enter.
“I begs yer pardon, Mr. Cardover,” she sniveled, dusting her eyes with her dirty apron. “I’m kind o’ unnerved. My poor dear master’s got so many h’enemies nar; I didn’t rekernize yer as ’is friend. Yer see, the moment this ’ere ’appened all the other servants left like a pack o’ rats. They didn’t love ’im the waie I did; I come along wiv ’im from the boardin’ ’arse. This mornin’ ’e gives me notice, ’e did. ‘Car’line, I carn’t pay yer no more wyges,’ ’e says. ‘Gawd bless yer,’ says I, ‘an’ if yer carn’t, wot does that matter? I ain’t one of yer ’igh and mighty, lawdy-dah hussies that I should desert yer.’ Oh, Mr. Cardover, it’s a shime the loife they’re leadin’ the poor man. But there, if they sends ’im to prison, I’ll never agen put me nose h’insoide a church nor say no prayers. I’ll just believe there ain’t no Gawd in the world. The landlord, ’e’s in there h’at present wiv’im, a-naggin’ at ’im. I was listenin’ at the key’ole when yer rang the bell. But there, I’m keepin’ yer witin’! Won’t yer step into the drarin’ room till ’e’s by ’imself? H’excuse me dirty ’ands. I ’as to do h’everythin’ for ’im—there’s only me and the master; even the Missis ’as left.”
As she was closing the door behind her, my father called after her, “Mrs. Spreckles left! That’s astounding. Why has she done that?”
The tousled hair and red eyes re-appeared for a second. “Gorn back to start up the bo-ordin’ ’arse,” she stammered with a sob.
How different the room looked from when we were last in it! The cushions on the sofa were awry. The windows winked at you wickedly, one blind lowered and the other up. It had the bewildered, disheveled swaggerness of a last night’s reveler betrayed by the sunrise.
Since Caroline had spoken my mind out for me, I felt awkward alone with my father. I was afraid of what he might say presently.
I picked up a small, handsomely bound volume from the table while we were waiting. I began turning the pages, and found that it was a collected edition of tracts, written by my uncle and ostensibly addressed to young men. They had been a kind of stealthy advertisement of The Christian Boarding-House, calculated to make maiden aunts, into whose hands they fell, sit up and feel immediately that the author was the very person for influencing the morals of their giddy nephews. Through the persuasive saintliness expressed in these tracts Uncle Obad had procured many of his paying-guests. My eye was arrested by the title of one of them, THE DECEITFULNESS OF RICHES. I read, “One of our greatest poets has written of finding love in huts where poor men lie. Oh, that young men might be brought to ponder the truth contained in those words! What is more difficult to obtain than love in the whole world? Can riches buy love? Nay, but on the contrary love and wealth are rarely found together. Many a powerful financier and belted earl would give all that he has in exchange for love. Young men, when you come to die, which of all your possessions can you carry with you to an after-world? Then, at least, you will learn the deceitfulness of riches. You thought you had everything; too late you know that you had nothing. Even in this life some men live to learn that gold is but a phantom—a vampire phantom destroying friendship.”
I had got so far when footsteps and voices, loud in contention, sounded in the hall. “You’ve got to be out of here in a fortnight, d’yer understand? You’re letting down my property the longer you stay here. You’re giving my house a bad name. The address is in all the papers; people are already pointing it out. I won’t stand it. That’s my last word.”
The front door slammed. I heard the chain being put up. The handle of the drawing-room door turned hesitatingly and my uncle entered. He still wore the clothes of affluence, and yet the impression he made was one of shabbiness. He seemed to have shrunk. His jolly John Bull confidence had vanished and had been replaced by the hurried, appeasing manner of a solicitor of charity. He avoided our eyes and commenced talking at once, presumably to prevent my father from talking. He did not offer to shake hands. “Well, Cardover, this is good of you. I hardly expected it. And, ’pon my word, there’s Dante. I’ve been having a worried time of it. I’m a badly misunderstood man. But there, adversity has one advantage: it teaches us who are our friends. When the little storm has blown over I shall know who to drop from my acquaintance. This sudden departure of Rapson has had a very unfortunate effect—most unfortunate. I expect a letter from him by every mail; then I’ll be able to explain matters. A good fellow, Rapson. A capital fellow. As straight as they make ’em. One of the best. Still, I wish he’d told me more of his movements; for the moment affairs are a trifle awkward, I must confess.”
He mopped his forehead with his handkerchief and sank down on the sofa with the air of one who, being among pleasant companions, brushes aside unpleasant topics. “Well, how’s Dante?” he asked, turning to me, “and how’s the Red House?”
I didn’t know how to answer. The question seemed so inappropriate and irrelevant. All the kindness which lay between us made such conversation a cruel farce. I wanted to tell him how sorry I was, and yet I daren’t in my father’s presence. I realized that such cheeriness on my uncle’s part was an insult, and yet I understood its motive.
My father’s face had hardened. He had expected some apology, some sign of humility, or at least some direct appeal to his sympathy. If any of these things had happened after what Caroline had said, I believe he would have responded. But this insincere praise of the archculprit and ostrich-like refusal to face facts simply angered him. He rose to his feet with the restrained impatience of a just man; the drawn sternness of his mouth was terrible. His voice had a steely coldness that pierced through all pretenses.
“Stop this nonsense, Obad,” he said sharply. “Don’t you realize that you’ve ruined me? Won’t you ever play the man? You know very well that Rapson will never come back, unless the police bring him. You’ve been the tool of a conspiracy to swindle the public; it was your religious standing that made the swindle possible. No one’s called you a thief as yet, but that’s what everyone’s thinking. I know you’re not a thief, but you’ve been guilty of the grossest negligence. Can’t you bring home to yourself the disgrace of that? You’ve always been a shirker of responsibility. For years you’ve let your wife do all the work. And now, when through your silly optimism you’ve brought dishonor on the family, you still persist in hiding behind shams. I tell you, Obad, you’re a coward; you’re trying to evade the moral consequences of your actions. If you can’t feel shame now, you must be utterly worthless. Your attitude is an offense against every right-thinking man. I didn’t set out this morning with the intention of speaking to you like this. But your present conduct and that idiotic interview in the newspapers have made me alter my mind about you. To many men they would prove you nearly as big a rascal as Rapson.”
My uncle had sat with his body crouched forward, his knees apart, his hands knitted together, and his eyes fixed on the carpet while my father had been talking. Now that there was silence he did not stir. I watched the bald spot on his head, how the yellow skin crinkled and went tight again as he bunched up and relaxed his brows. He looked so kindly and yet so ineffectual. My father had flayed him naked with his words. He had accused him of not being a man; but that was why I loved him. It was his unworldliness that had made it possible for him to penetrate so far into a child’s world. Caroline snuffled on the other side of the keyhole.
My uncle pulled apart his hands and raised his head. “You’ve said some harsh things, Cardover. You’ve reminded me about Lavinia; I didn’t need to be told that. I may be a fool, but I’m not a scoundrel. I can only say that I’m sorry for what’s happened. I was well-meaning; I did it for the best. Is there anything else you want to tell me?”
“There’s just this.” My father handed him an envelope. “It may help you to do the right thing in paying the investors a little of what’s left. Of course you’ll have to sell off everything and pay them as much as you can.
“But what is this you’ve given me?”
“The hundred pounds you gave to Dante and Ruthita at Christmas.”
He flushed crimson; then the blood drained away from his hands and face, leaving them ashy gray. His lip trembled, so that I feared terribly he was going to cry with the bitterness of his humiliation.
“But—but it was a gift to them. I didn’t expect this. Won’t you let them keep it? I should like them to keep it. It’ll make so little difference to the whole amount.”
“My dear Obad, when will you appreciate the fact that everything you have given away or have, is the result of another man’s theft?”
My uncle glanced round the room furtively, taking in the meaning of those words. It had been my father’s purpose to make him ashamed; that was amply accomplished now. He huddled back into the sofa, a broken man. He had been stabbed through his affections into a knowledge of reality.
My father beckoned to me and turned. I stretched out my hand and touched my uncle. He took no notice. The sunlight streamed in on the creased bald head, the dust, and the forfeited splendor. Reluctantly I tiptoed out and was met in the hall by the hot indignant eyes of Caroline, accusing me of treachery across the banisters.