Mrs. Kitson gazed at her with horror, dismay, and even fear.
"Why? Why? Don"t you know how wrong it is to take things that don"t belong to you?"
"Oh, all that!" said Sarah, waving her hand scornfully. ""I don"t want the silly thing, and I don"t suppose I"d have kept it, anyhow. I don"t know why I"ve told you," she added. "But I just don"t want to be bothered with Mary any more."
"Indeed, you won"t be, you wicked girl," said Mrs. Kitson. "To think that I--my grand-father"s--I"d never missed it. And you haven"t even said you"re sorry."
"I"m not," said Sarah quietly. "If Mary wasn"t so tiresome and silly those sort of things wouldn"t happen. She _makes_ me----"
Mrs. Kitson"s horror deprived her of all speech, so Sarah, after one more glance of amused cynicism about the room, retired.
As she crossed the Square she knew, with happy relief, that she was free of Mary, that she need never bother about her again. Would _all_ the people whom she compelled to obey her hang round her with all their stupidities afterwards? If so, life was not going to be so entertaining as she had hoped. In her dark little brain already was the perception of the trouble that good and stupid souls can cause to bold and reckless ones. She would never bother with any one so feeble as Mary again, but, unless she did, how was she ever to have any fun again?
Then as she climbed the stairs to her room, she was aware of something else.
"I"ve caught you, after all. You _have_ been soft. You"ve yielded to your better nature. Try as you may you can"t get right away from it. Now you"ll have to reckon with me more than ever. You see you"re not stronger than I am."
Before she opened the door of her room she knew that she would find Him there, triumphant.
With a gesture of impatient irritation she pushed the door open.
CHAPTER IX
YOUNG JOHN SCARLETT
I
That fatal September--the September that was to see young John take his adventurous way to his first private school--surely, steadily approached.
Mrs. Scarlett, an emotional and sentimental little woman, vibrating and taut like a telegraph wire, told herself repeatedly that she would make no sign. The preparations proceeded, the date--September 23rd--was constantly evoked, a dreadful ghost, by the careless, light-hearted family. Mr. Scarlett made no sign.
From the hour of John"s birth--nearly ten years ago--Mrs. Scarlett had never known a day when she had not been compelled to control her sentimental affections. From the first John had been an adorable baby, from the first he had followed his father in the rejection of all sentiment as un-English, and even if larger questions are involved, unpatriotic, but also from the first he had hinted, in surprising, furtive, agitating moments, at poetry, imagination, hidden, romantic secrets. Tom, May, Clare, the older children, had never been known to hint at anything--hints were not at all in their line, and of imagination they had not, between them, enough to fill a silver thimble--they were good, st.u.r.dy, honest children, with healthy stomachs and an excellent determination to do exactly the things that their cla.s.s and generation were bent upon doing. Mrs. Scarlett was fond of them, of course, and because she was a sentimental woman she was sometimes quite needlessly emotional about them, but John--no. John was of another world.
The other children felt, beyond question, this difference. They deferred to John about everything and regarded him as leader of the family, and in their deference there was more than simply a recognition of his st.u.r.dy independence. Even John"s father, Mr. Reginald Scarlett, a K.C., and a man of a most decisive and emphatic bearing, felt John"s difference.
John"s appearance was unengaging rather than handsome--a snub nose, grey eyes, rather large ears, a square, stocky body and short, stout legs. He was certainly the most independent small boy in England, and very obstinate; when any proposal that seemed on the face of it absurd was made to him, he shut up like a box. His mouth would close, his eyes disappear, all light and colour would die from his face, and it was as though he said: "Well, if you are stupid enough to persist in this thing you can compel me, of course--you are physically stronger than I--but you will only get me like this quite dead and useless, and a lot of good may it do you!"
There were times, of course, when he could be most engagingly pleasant.
He was courteous, on occasion, with all the beautiful manners that, we are told, are yielding so sadly before the spread of education and the speed of motor-cars--you never could foretell the guest that he would prefer, and it was nothing to him that here was an aunt, an uncle, or a grandfather who must be placated, and there an uninvited, undesired caller who mattered nothing at all. Mr. Scarlett"s father he offended mortally by expressing, in front of him, dislike for hair that grew in bushy profusion out of that old gentleman"s ears.
"But you could cut it off," he argued, in a voice thick with surprised disgust. His grandfather, who was a baronet, and very wealthy, predicted a dismal career for his grandchild.
All the family realised quite definitely that nothing could be done with John. It was fortunate, indeed, that he was, on the whole, of a happy and friendly disposition. He liked the world and things that he found in it. He liked games, and food, and adventure--he liked quite tolerably his family--he liked immensely the prospect of going to school.
There were other things--strange, uncertain things--that lay like the dim, uncertain pattern of some tapestry in the back of his mind. He gave _them_, as the months pa.s.sed, less and less heed. Only sometimes when he was asleep....
Meanwhile, his mother, with the heroism worthy of Boadicea, that great and savage warrior, kept his impulses of devotion, of sacrifice, of adoration, in her heart. John had no need of them; very long ago, Reginald Scarlett, then no K.C., with all the K.C. manner, had told her that _he_ did not need them either. She gave her dinner parties, her receptions, her political gatherings--tremulous and smiling she faced a world that thought her a wise, capable little woman, who would see her husband a judge and peer one of these days.
"Mrs. Scarlett--a woman of great social ambition," was their definition of her.
"Mrs. Scarlett--the mother of John," was her own.
II
On a certain night, early in the month of September, young John dreamt again--but for the first time for many months--the dream that had, in the old days, come to him so often. In those days, perhaps, he had not called it a dream. He had not given it a name, and in the quiet early days he had simply greeted, first a protector, then a friend. But that was all very long ago, when one was a baby and allowed oneself to imagine anything. He had, of course, grown ashamed of such confiding fancies, and as he had become more confident had shoved away, with stout, determined fingers, those dim memories, poignancies, regrets. How childish one had been at four, and five, and six! How independent and strong now, on the very edge of the world of school! It perturbed him, therefore, that at this moment of crisis this old dream should recur, and it perturbed him the more, as he lay in bed next morning and thought it over, that it should have seemed to him at the time no dream at all, but simply a natural and actual occurrence.
He had been asleep, and then he had been awake. He had seen, sitting on his bed and looking at him with mild, kind eyes his old Friend. His Friend was always the same, conveying so absolutely kindness and protection, and his beard, his hands, the appealing humour of his gaze, recalled to John the early years, with a swift, imperative urgency.
John, so independent and a.s.sured, felt, nevertheless, again that old alarm of a strange, unreal world, and the necessity of an appeal for protection from the only one of them all who understood.
"Hallo!" said John.
"Well?" said his Friend. "It"s many months since I"ve been to see you, isn"t it?"
"That"s not my fault," said John.
"In a way, it is. You haven"t wanted me, have you? Haven"t given me a thought."
"There"s been so much to do. I"m going to school, you know."
"Of course. That"s why I have come now."
Beside the window a dark curtain blew forward a little, bulged as though some one were behind it, thinned again in the pale dim shadows of a moon that, beyond the window, fought with driving clouds. That curtain would--how many ages ago!--have tightened young John"s heart with terror, and the contrast made by his present slim indifference drew him, in some warm, confiding fashion, closer to his visitor.
"Anyway, I"m jolly glad you"ve come now. I haven"t really forgotten you, ever. Only in the day-time----"
"Oh, yes, you have," his Friend said, smiling. "It"s natural enough and right that you should. But if only you will believe always that I once was here, if only you"ll not be persuaded into thinking me impossible, silly, absurd, sentimental--with ever so many other things--that"s all I"ve come now to ask you."
"Why, how should I ever?" John demanded indignantly.
"After all, I _was_ a help--for a long time when things were difficult and you had so much to learn--all that time you wanted me, and I was here."
"Of course," said John politely, but feeling within him that warning of approaching sentiment that he had learnt by now so fundamentally to dread.
Very well his friend understood his apprehension.
"That"s all. I"ve only come to you now to ask you to make me a promise--a very easy one."
"Yes?" said John.
"It"s only that when you go off to school--before you leave this house--you will just, for a moment, remember me just then, and say good-bye to me. We"ve been a lot here in these rooms, in these pa.s.sages, up and down together, and if only, as you go, you"ll think of me, I"ll be there.... Every year you"ve thought of me less--that doesn"t matter--but it matters more than you know that you should remember me just for an instant, just to say good-bye. Will you promise me?"
"Why, of course," said John.
"Don"t forget! Don"t forget! Don"t forget!" And the kindly shadow had faded, the voice lingering about the room, mingling with the faint silver moonlight, pa.s.sing out into the wider s.p.a.ciousness of the rolling clouds.