CHAPTER THE EIGHTH THE HIGH CROSS PREPARATORY SCHOOL (continued 2)

Little he knew!

Peter affected to write industriously....

§ 14

After the midday meal on Wednesday Peter loafed for a little time in the playground.

“Coming to play cricket, Simon Peter?” said Probyn.

“Got to stay in the schoolroom,” said Peter.

“He’s going to write his five hundred lines,” said young Newton. “I said he would.”

189(Young Newton would know better later.)

Peter went back unobtrusively to the schoolroom. In his desk were two slices of bread-and-butter secreted from the breakfast table and wrapped in clean pages from an exercise-book. These were his simple provisions. With these, a pencil, and a good serviceable catapult he proposed to set out into the wide, wide world. He had no money.

He “scouted” Mr. Mainwearing into his study, marked that he shut the door, and heard him pull down the blind. The armchair creaked as the schoolmaster sat down for the afternoon’s repose. That would make a retreat from the front door of the school house possible. The back of the house meant a risk of being seen by the servants, the playground door or the cricket-field might attract the attention of some sneak. But from the front door to the road and the shelter of the playground wall was but ten seconds dash. Still Peter, from the moment he crept out of the main class-room into the passage to the moment when he was out of sight of the windows was as tightly strung as a fiddlestring. Never before in all his little life had he lived at such a pitch of nervous intensity. Once in the road he ran, and continued to run until he turned into the road to Clewer. Then he dropped into a good smart walk. The world was all before him.

The world was a warm October afternoon and a straight road, poplars and red roofs ahead. Whither the road ran he had no idea, but in the back of his mind, obscured but by no means hidden by a cloud of dreams, was the necessity of getting to Ingle-Nook. After he had walked perhaps half a mile upon the road to Clewer it occurred to Peter that he would ask his way.

The first person he asked was a nice little old lady with a kind face, and she did not know where the road went nor whence it came. “That way it goes to Pescod Street,” she said, “if you take the right turning, and that way it goes past the racecourse. But you have to turn off, you know. That’s Clewer Church.”

No, she didn’t know which was the way to Limpsfield. Perhaps if Peter asked the postman he’d know.

No postman was visible....

190The next person Peter asked was as excessive as the old lady was deficient. He was a large, smiling, self-satisfied man, with a hearty laugh.

“Where does the road go, my boy?” he repeated. “Why! it goes to Maidenhead and Cookham. Cookham! Have you heard the story? This is the way the man told the waiter to take the underdone potatoes. Because it’s the way to Cookham. See? Good, eh? But not so good as telling him to take peas that was. Through Windsor, you know. Because it’s the way to Turnham Green. Ha, ha!

“How far is Maidenhead? Oh! a tidy bit—a tidy bit. Say four miles. Put it at four miles.”

When Peter asked for Limpsfield the large man at once jumped to the conclusion he meant Winchfield. “That’s a bit on your left,” he said, “just a bit on your left. How far? Oh! a tidy bit. Say five miles—five miles and a ’arf, say.”

When he had gone on a little way the genial man shouted back to Peter: “Might be six miles, perhaps,” he said. “Not more.”

Which was comforting news. So Peter went on his way with his back to Limpsfield—which was a good thirty miles and more away from him—and a pleasant illusion that Aunts Phyllis and Phœbe were quite conveniently just round the corner....

About four o’clock he had discovered Maidenhead bridge, and thereafter the river held him to the end. He had never had a good look at a river before. It was a glowing October afternoon, and the river life was enjoying its Indian summer. High Cross School was an infinite distance away, and all its shadows were dismissed from his mind. Boats are wonderful things to a small boy who has lived among hills. He wandered slowly along the towing-path, and watched several boats and barges through the lock. In each boat he hoped to see Uncle Nobby. But it just happened that Uncle Nobby wasn’t there. Near the lock some people were feeding two swans. When they had gone through the lock Peter went close down to the swans. They came to him in a manner so friendly that he gave them the better part of his provisions. After that he watched the operations of a man repairing a Canadian canoe beside a 191boat-letting place. Then he became interested in the shoaling fish in the shallows. After that he walked for a time, on past some little islands. At last, as he was now a little foot-sore, he sat down on the bank in the lush grass above some clumps of sweet rush.

He was just opposite the autumnal fires of the Cleveden woods, amidst which he could catch glimpses of Italian balustrading. The water was a dark mirror over which hung a bloom of mist. Now and then an infrequent boat would glide noiselessly or with a measured beat of rowlocks, through the brown water. Afar off was a swan....

Presently he would go on to Ingle-Nook. But not just yet. When his feet and legs were a little rested he would go on. He would ask first for Limpsfield and then for Ingle-Nook. It would be three or four miles. He would get there in time for supper.

He was struck by a thought that should have enlightened him. He wondered no one had ever brought him before from Ingle-Nook to this beautiful place. It was funny they did not know of it....

Above that balustrading among the trees over there, must be a palace, and in that palace lived a beautiful princess who loved Peter....

§ 15

It seemed at the first blush the most delightful accident in the world that the man with the ample face should ask Peter to mind his boat.

He rowed up to the wooden steps close by where Peter was sitting. He seemed to argue a little with the lady who was steering and had to back away again, but at last he got the steps and shipped his oars and held on with a boat hook and got out. He helped the lady to land.

“Here, Tommy!” he shouted, tying up the boat to the rail of the steps. “Just look after this boat a bit. We’re going to have some tea.”

“We shall have to walk miles,” said the lady.

“Damn!” said the man.

Something seemed to tell Peter that the man was cross.

192Peter doubted whether he was properly Tommy. Then he saw that there was something attractive in looking after a boat.

“Don’t let any one steal it,” said the man with the ample face, with an unreal geniality. “And I’ll give you a tanner.”

Peter arose and came to the steps. The lady and the gentleman stood for a time on the top of the bank, disputing fiercely—she wanted to go one way and he another—and finally disappeared, still disputing, in the lady’s direction. Or rather, the lady made off in the direction of Cookham and the gentleman followed protesting. “Any way it’s miles,” she said....

Slowly the afternoon quiet healed again. Peter was left in solitude with the boat, the silvery river, the overhanging woods, the distant swan.

At first he just sat and looked at the boat.

It had crimson cushions in it, and the lady had left a Japanese sunshade. The name of the boat was the Princess May. The lining wood of the boat was pale and the outer wood and the wood of the rowlocks darker with just one exquisite gold line. The oars were very wonderful, but the boat-hook with its paddle was much more wonderful. It would be lovely to touch that boat-hook. It was a thing you could paddle with or you could catch hold with the hook or poke with the spike.

In a minute or so the call of the boat-hook had become irresistible, and Peter had got it out of the boat. He held it up like a spear, he waved it about. He poked the boat out with it and tried to paddle with it in the water between the boat and the bank, but the boat swung back too soon.

Presently he got into the boat very carefully so as to paddle with the boat-hook in the water beyond the boat. In wielding the paddle he almost knocked off his hat, so he took it off and laid it in the bottom of the boat. Then he became deeply interested in his paddling.

When he paddled in a certain way the whole boat, he found, began to swing out and round, and when he stopped paddling it went back against the bank. But it could not go completely 193round because of the tight way in which the ample-faced man had tied it to the rail of the steps. If the rope were tied quite at its end the boat could be paddled completely round. It would be beautiful to paddle it completely round with the waggling rudder up-stream instead of down.

That thought did not lead to immediate action. But within two minutes Peter was untying the boat and retying it in accordance with his ambitions.

In those days the Boy Scout movement was already in existence, but it had still to disseminate sound views about knot-tying among the rising generation. Peter’s knot was not so much a knot as a knot-like gesture. How bad it was he only discovered when he was back in the boat and had paddled it nearly half-way round. Then he saw that the end of the rope was slipping off the rail to which he had tied it as a weary snake might slink off into the grass. The stem of the boat was perhaps a yard from shore.

Peter acted with promptitude. He dropped his paddle, ran to the bows, and jumped. Except for his left leg he landed safely. His left leg he recovered from the water. But there was no catching the rope. It trailed submerged after the boat, and the boat with an exasperating leisureliness, with a movement that was barely perceptible, widened its distance from the bank.

For a time Peter’s mind wrestled with this problem. Should he try and find a stick that would reach the boat? Should he throw stones so as to bring it back in shore?

Or perhaps if he told some one that the boat was adrift?

He went up the steps to the towing-path. There was no one who looked at all helpful within sight. He watched the boat drift slowly for a time towards the middle of the stream. Then it seemed to be struck with an idea of going down to Maidenhead. He watched it recede and followed it slowly. When he saw some people afar off he tried to look as though he did not belong to the boat. He decided that presently somebody would appear rowing—whom he would ask to catch his boat for him. Then he would tow it back to its old position.

Presently Peter came to the white gate of a bungalow and considered the advisability of telling a busy gardener who 194was mowing a lawn, about the boat. But it was difficult to frame a suitable form of address.

Still further on a pleasant middle-aged woman who was trimming a privet hedge very carefully with garden shears, seemed a less terrible person to accost. Peter said to her modestly and self-forgetfully; “I think there’s a boat adrift down there.”

The middle-aged woman peered through her spectacles.

“Some one couldn’t have tied it up,” she said, and having looked at the boat with a quiet intelligence for some time she resumed her clipping.

Her behaviour did much to dispel Peter’s idea of calling in adult help.

When he looked again the boat had turned round. It had drifted out into the middle of the stream, and it seemed now to be travelling rather faster and to be rocking slightly. It was not going down towards the lock but away towards where a board said “Danger.” Danger. It was as if a cold hand was laid on Peter’s heart. He no longer wanted to find the man with the ample face and tell him that his boat was adrift. The sun had set, the light seemed to have gone out of things, and Peter had a feeling that it was long past tea-time. He wished now he had never seen the man with the ample face. Would he have to pay for the boat? Could he say he had never promised to mind it?

But if that was so why had he got into the boat and played about with it?

His left shoe and his left trouser-leg were very wet and getting cold.

A great craving for tea and home comforts generally arose in Peter’s wayward mind. Home comforts and forgetfulness. It seemed to him high time that he asked some one the way to Limpsfield....

§ 16

When Noakley and Probyn arrived at Maidenhead bridge in the late afternoon it seemed to them that they had done all that reasonable searchers could do, and that the best thing now was to take the train back to Windsor. They were 195tired and they felt futile. And then, when hope was exhausted, they struck the trail of Peter. The policeman at the foot of the bridge had actually noted him. “’Ovvered about the bridge for a bit,” said the policeman, “and then went along the towing path. A little grave chap in grey flannel. Funny thing, but I thought ’E might be a runaway.... Something about ’im....”

So it was that Noakley and Probyn came upon the ample-faced man at the lock, in the full tide of his distress.

He was vociferous to get across to the weir. “The boat ought to have come down long ago,” he was saying, “unless it’s caught up in something. If he was in the boat the kid’s drowned for certain....”

Noakley had some difficulty in getting him to explain what kid. It was difficult to secure the attention of the ample-faced man. In fact before this could be done he twice pushed back Noakley’s face with his hand as though it was some sort of inanimate obstacle.

It was a great and tragic experience for Probyn. They both went across by the lock to the island behind the lead of the lockkeeper and the ample-faced man. They came out in sight of the weir; the river was still full from the late September rains and the weir was a frothing cascade, and at the crest of it they saw an upturned boat jammed by the current against the timbers. A Japanese umbrella circled open in a foamy eddy below, stick upward. The sun was down now; a chill was in the air; a sense of coming winter.

And then close at hand, caught in some weedy willow stems that dipped in the rushing water Probyn discovered a little soddened straw hat, a little half-submerged hat, bobbing with the swift current, entangled in the willow stems.

It was unmistakable. It bore the white and black ribbon of High Cross School.

“Oh, my God!” cried Probyn at the sight of the hat, and burst into tears.

“Poor little Peter. I’d have done anything for him!”

He sobbed, and as he sobbed he talked. He became so remorseful and so grossly sentimental that even Noakley was surprised....

196

§ 17

When next morning Mr. Grimes learnt by a long and expensive telegram from Mr. Mainwearing, followed almost immediately by a long explanatory letter, that Peter had run away from school and had been drowned near Boulter’s Lock, he was overcome with terror. He had visions of Aunt Phœbe—doubled, for he imagined Aunt Phyllis to be just such another—as an avenger of blood. At the bare thought he became again a storm of vibrations. His clerks in the office outside could hear his nails running along his teeth all the morning, like the wind among the reeds. His imagination threw up wild and hasty schemes for a long holiday in some inaccessible place, in Norway or Switzerland, but the further he fled from civilization the more unbridled the vengeance, when it did overtake him, might be. Lady Charlotte was still in England. On the day appointed and for two days after, the Channel sea was reported stormy. All her plans were shattered and she had stayed on. She was still staying on. In a spasm of spite he telegraphed the dire news to her. Then he went down to Windsor, all a-quiver, to see that Mr. Mainwearing did not make a fool of himself, and to help him with the inquest on Peter as soon as the body was recovered.

His telegram did have a very considerable effect upon Lady Charlotte, the more so as it arrived within an hour or so of a letter from Mrs. Pybus containing some very disconcerting news about Joan. At midday came Mr. Mainwearing’s story—pitched to a high note of Anglican piety. The body, he said, was still not found, “but we must hope for the best.” When Mr. Sycamore arrived at Chastlands in the afternoon he found Lady Charlotte immensely spread out in her drawing-room as an invalid, with Unwin on guard behind her. She lay, a large bundle of ribbon, lace, and distresses, upon a sofa; she had hoisted an enormous beribboned lace cap with black-and-gold bows. On a table close at hand were a scent-bottle, smelling-salts, camphor, menthol, and suchlike aids. There were also a few choice black grapes and a tonic. She meant to make a brave fight for it.

Mr. Sycamore was not aware how very dead Peter was at 197Chastlands and Windsor, seeing that he was now also at The Ingle-Nook in a state of considerable vitality. It was some moments before he realized this localized demise. Indeed it was upon an entirely different aspect of this War of the Guardians that he was now visiting the enemy camp.

At first there was a little difficulty made about admitting him. Cashel explained that Lady Charlotte was “much upset. Terribly upset.” Finally he found himself in her large presence.

She gave him no time to speak.

“I am ill, Mr. Sycamore. I am in a wretched state. Properly I should be in bed now. I have been unable to travel abroad to rest. I have been totally unable to attend to affairs. And now comes this last blow. Terrible! A judgment.”

“I was not aware, Lady Charlotte, that you knew,” Mr. Sycamore began.

“Of course I know. Telegrams, letters. No attempt to break it to me. The brutal truth. I cannot tell you how I deplore my supineness that has led to this catastrophe.”

“Hardly supine,” Mr. Sycamore ventured.

“Yes, supine. If I had taken up my responsibilities years ago—when these poor children were christened, none of this might have happened. Nothing.”

Mr. Sycamore perceived that he was in the presence of something more than mere fuss about Peter’s running away. A wary gleam came into his spectacles.

“Perhaps, Lady Charlotte, if I could see your telegram,” he said.

“Give it him, Unwin,” she said.

“Stole a boat—carried over a weir,” he read. “But this is terrible! I had no idea.”

“Give him the letter. No—not that one. The other.”

“Body not yet recovered,” he read, and commented with confidence, “It will turn up later, I feel sure. Of course, all this is—news to me; boat—weir—everything. Yes.”

“And I was ill already!” said Lady Charlotte. “There is reason to suppose my heart is weak. I use myself too hard. I am too concerned about many things. I cannot live for myself alone. It is not my nature. The doctor had commanded 198a quiet month here before I even thought of travel—literally commanded. And then comes this blow. The wretched child could not have chosen a worse time.”

She gave a gesture of despair. She fell back upon her piled pillows with a gesture of furious exhaustion.

“In the last twenty-four hours,” she said, “I have eaten one egg, Mr. Sycamore.... And some of that I left.”

Mr. Sycamore’s note of sympathy was perhaps a little insincere. “Of course,” he said, “in taking the children away from their school—where they were at least safe and happy—you undertook a considerable responsibility.”

Lady Charlotte took him up with emphasis. “I admit no responsibility—none whatever. Understand, Mr. Sycamore, once for all, I am not responsible for—whatever has happened to this wretched little boy. Sorry for him—yes, but I have nothing to regret. I took him away from—undesirable surroundings—and sent him to a school, by no means a cheap school, that was recommended very highly, very highly indeed, by Mr. Grimes. It was my plain duty to do as much. There my responsibility ends.”

Mr. Sycamore had drifted quietly into a chair, and was sitting obliquely to her in an attitude more becoming a family doctor than a hostile lawyer. He regarded the cornice in the far corner of the room as she spoke, and replied without looking at her, softly and almost as if in soliloquy: “Legally—no.”

“I am not responsible,” the lady repeated. “If any one is responsible, it is Mr. Grimes.”

“I came to ask you to produce your two wards,” said Mr. Sycamore abruptly, “because Mr. Oswald Sydenham lands at Southampton tonight.”

“He has always been coming.”

“This time he has come.”

“If he had come earlier all this would not have happened. Has he really come?”

“He is here—in England, that is.”

Lady Charlotte gasped and lay back. Unwin handed her the bottle of smelling-salts. “I have done nothing more than my duty,” she said.

199Mr. Sycamore became more gentle in his manner than ever. “As the person finally responsible—”

“No!”

“Haven’t you been just a little careless?”

“Mr. Sycamore, it was this boy who was careless. I am sorry to say it now that he— I can only hope that at the last— But he was not a good boy. Anything but a good boy. He had been altogether demoralized by those mad, violent creatures. He ran away from this school, an excellent school, highly recommended. And you must remember, Mr. Sycamore, that I was paying for it. The abnormal position of the property, the way in which apparently all the income is to be paid over to these women—without consulting me. Well, I won’t complain of that now. I was prepared to pay. I paid. But the boy was already thoroughly corrupted. His character was undermined. He ran away. I wash my hands of the consequences.”

Mr. Sycamore was on the point of saying something and thought better of it.

“At any rate,” he said, “I have to ask you on behalf of Mr. Oswald Sydenham to produce the other child—the girl.”

“She can’t be produced,” said Lady Charlotte desperately.

“That really does make things serious.”

“Oh, don’t misunderstand me! The child is in excellent hands—excellent hands. But there are—neighbours. She was told to keep indoors, carefully told. What must she do but rush out at the first chance! She had had fair warning that there were measles about, she had had measles explained to her carefully, yet she must needs go and make friends with a lot of dirty little wretches!”

“And catch measles.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s why—?”

“That’s why—”

“There again, Lady Charlotte, and again with all due respect, haven’t you been just a little careless? At that nice, airy school in Surrey there was never any contagion—of any sort.”

“There was no proper religious teaching.”

200“Was there any where you placed these children?”

“I was led to believe—”

She left it at that.

Mr. Sycamore allowed himself to point the moral. “It is a very remarkable thing to me, Lady Charlotte, most remarkable, that Catholic people and Church of England people—you must forgive me for saying it—and religious bodies generally should be so very anxious and energetic to get control of the education of children and so careless—indeed they are dreadfully careless—of the tone, the wholesomeness and the quality of the education they supply. And of the homes they permit. It’s almost as if they cared more for getting the children branded than whether they lived or died.”

“The school was an excellent school,” said Lady Charlotte; “an excellent school. Your remarks are cruel and painful.”

Mr. Sycamore again restrained some retort. Then he said, “I think it would be well for Mr. Oswald Sydenham to have the address of the little girl.”

Lady Charlotte considered. “There is nothing to conceal,” she said, and gave the address of Mrs. Pybus, “a most trustworthy woman.” Mr. Sycamore took it down very carefully in a little notebook that came out of his vest pocket. Then he seemed to consider whether he should become more offensive or not, and to decide upon the former alternative.

“I suppose,” he said reflectively as he replaced the little book, “that the demand for religious observances and religious orthodoxy as a first condition in schools is productive of more hypocrisy and rottenness in education than any other single cause. It is a matter of common observation. A school is generally about as inefficient as its religious stripe is marked. I suppose it is because if you put the weight on one thing you cannot put it on another. Or perhaps it is because no test is so easy for a thoroughly mean and dishonest person to satisfy as a religious test. Schools which have no claims to any other merit can always pass themselves off as severely religious. Perhaps the truth is that all bad schools profess orthodoxy rather than that orthodoxy makes bad schools. Nowadays it is religion that is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

“If you have nothing further to say than this Secularist 201lecturing,” said Lady Charlotte with great dignity, “I should be obliged if you would find somewhere—some Hall of Science—... Considering what my feelings must be... Scarcely in the mood for—blasphemies.”

“Lady Charlotte,” said Mr. Sycamore, betraying a note of indignation in his voice; “this school into which you flung your little ward was a very badly conducted school indeed.”

“It was nothing of the sort,” said Lady Charlotte. “How dare you reproach me?”

Mr. Sycamore went on as though she had not spoken. “There was a lot of bullying and nasty behaviour among the boys, and the masters inflicted punishments without rhyme or reason.”

“How can you know anything of the sort?”

“On the best authority—the boy’s.”

“But how could he—”

“He was thrashed absurdly and set an impossible task for not answering to a silly nickname. There was no one to whom he could complain. He ran away. He had an idea of reaching Limpsfield, but when he realized that night was coming on, being really a very sensible little boy, he selected a kindly-looking house, asked to see the lady of the house, and told her he had run away from home and wanted to go back. He gave his aunt’s address at The Ingle-Nook, and he was sent home in the morning. He arrived home this morning.”

Lady Charlotte made a strange noise, but Mr. Sycamore hurried on. “How this delusion about a boat and a weir got into the story I don’t know. He says nothing about them. Indeed, he says very little about anything. He’s a reserved little boy. We have to get what we can out of him.”

“You mean to say that the boy is still alive!” cried Lady Charlotte.

“Happily!”

“In face of these telegrams!”

“I saw him not two hours ago.”

“But how do you account for these telegrams and letters?”

Mr. Sycamore positively tittered. “That’s for Mr. Grimes to explain.”

“And he is alive—and unhurt?”

202“As fresh as paint; and quite happy.”

“Then if ever a little boy deserved a whipping, a thoroughly good whipping,” cried Lady Charlotte, “it is Master Peter Stubland! Safe, indeed! It’s outrageous! After all I have gone through! Unwin!”

Unwin handed the salts.

Mr. Sycamore stood up. He still had the essence of his business to communicate, but there was something in the great lady’s blue eyes that made him want to stand up. And that little tussock of fair hair on her cheek—in some indescribable way it had become fierce.

“To think,” said Lady Charlotte, “that I have been put to all this unutterable worry and distress—”

She was at a loss for words. Mr. Sycamore appreciated the fact that if he had anything more to say to her he must communicate it before the storm burst. He stroked his chin thoughtfully, and began to deliver his message with just the faintest quality of hurry in his delivery.

“The real business upon which I came to you today, Lady Charlotte, has really nothing to do with this—escapade at all. It is something else. Things have arisen that alter the outlook for those children very considerably. There is every reason to suppose that neither you nor the Misses Stubland are properly guardians of Joan and Peter at all. No. One moment more, Lady Charlotte; let me explain. Two young Germans, it would appear, witnessed the accident to the boat from the top of the Capri headland. They saw Mr. Stubland apparently wrestling with the boatman, then the boat overset and the two men never reappeared. They must have dragged each other down. The witnesses are quite certain about that. But Mrs. Stubland, poor young lady, could be seen swimming for quite a long time; she swam nearly half-way to land before she gave in, although the water was very choppy indeed. I made enquiries when I was in Naples this spring, and I do not think there would be much trouble in producing those witnesses still. They were part of the—what shall I call it?—social circle of that man Krupp, the gunmaker. He lived at Capri. If we accept this story, then, Lady Charlotte, Mrs. Stubland’s will holds good, and her 203husband’s does not, and Mr. Oswald Sydenham becomes the sole guardian of the children....”

He paused. The lady’s square face slowly assumed an expression of dignified satisfaction.

“So long as those poor children are rescued from those women,” said Lady Charlotte, “my task is done. I do not grudge any exertion, any sacrifice I have made, so long as that end is secured. I do not look for thanks. Much less repayment. Perhaps some day these children may come to understand—”

Unwin made a sound like the responses in church.

“I would go through it all again,” said Lady Charlotte—“willingly.... Now that my nephew has returned I have no more anxiety.” She made an elegant early-Georgian movement with the smelling-salts. “I am completely justified. I have been slighted, tricked, threatened, insulted, made ill ... but I am justified.”

She resorted again to the salts.

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