Remembering Irene's dread warnings on this subject I must say that I
felt uneasy. Had he heard her, and was he daring me? And what dire thing
could happen if the sock was removed? I sought to reason with him, but
he signed to me to look sharp, and I removed the sock. The part of him
thus revealed gave David considerable pleasure, but I noticed, as a
curious thing, that he seemed to have no interest in the other foot.
However, it was not there merely to be looked at, for after giving me
a glance which said “Now observe!” he raised his bare foot and ran his
mouth along the toes, like one playing on a barbaric instrument. He then
tossed his foot aside, smiled his long triumphant smile and intimated
that it was now my turn to do something. I thought the best thing I
could do would be to put his sock on him again, but as soon as I tried
to do so I discovered why Irene had warned me so portentously against
taking it off. I should say that she had trouble in socking him every
morning.
Nevertheless I managed to slip it on while he was debating what to do
with my watch. I bitterly regretted that I could do nothing with it
myself, put it under a wine-glass, for instance, and make it turn into
a rabbit, which so many people can do. In the meantime David, occupied
with similar thoughts, very nearly made it disappear altogether, and I
was thankful to be able to pull it back by the chain.
“Haw-haw-haw!”
Thus he commented on his new feat, but it was also a reminder to me, a
trifle cruel, that he was not my boy. After all, you see, Mary had not
given him the whole of his laugh. The watch said that five and twenty
minutes had passed, and looking out I saw Irene at one end of the street
staring up at my window, and at the other end Mary's husband staring up
at my window, and beneath me Mary staring up at my window. They had all
broken their promise.
I returned to David, and asked him in a low voice whether he would give
me a kiss. He shook his head about six times, and I was in despair. Then
the smile came, and I knew that he was teasing me only. He now nodded
his head about six times.
This was the prettiest of all his exploits. It was so pretty that,
contrary to his rule, he repeated it. I had held out my arms to him, and
first he shook his head, and then after a long pause (to frighten me),
he nodded it.
But no sooner was he in my arms than I seemed to see Mary and her
husband and Irene bearing down upon my chambers to take him from me, and
acting under an impulse I whipped him into the perambulator and was off
with it without a license down the back staircase. To the Kensington
Gardens we went; it may have been Manitoba we started for, but we
arrived at the Kensington Gardens, and it had all been so unpremeditated
and smartly carried out that I remember clapping my hand to my head in
the street, to make sure that I was wearing a hat.
I watched David to see what he thought of it, and he had not yet made
up his mind. Strange to say, I no longer felt shy. I was grown
suddenly indifferent to public comment, and my elation increased when
I discovered that I was being pursued. They drew a cordon round me near
Margot Meredith's tree, but I broke through it by a strategic movement
to the south, and was next heard of in the Baby's Walk. They held both
ends of this passage, and then thought to close on me, but I slipped
through their fingers by doubling up Bunting's Thumb into Picnic Street.
Cowering at St. Govor's Well, we saw them rush distractedly up the Hump,
and when they had crossed to the Round Pond we paraded gaily in the
Broad Walk, not feeling the tiniest bit sorry for anybody.
Here, however, it gradually came into David's eyes that, after all, I
was a strange man, and they opened wider and wider, until they were the
size of my medals, and then, with the deliberation that distinguishes
his smile, he slowly prepared to howl. I saw all his forces gathering
in his face, and I had nothing to oppose to them; it was an unarmed man
against a regiment.
Even then I did not chide him. He could not know that it was I who had
dropped the letter.
I think I must have stepped over a grateful fairy at that moment, for
who else could have reminded me so opportunely of my famous manipulation
of the eyebrows, forgotten since I was in the fifth form? I alone of
boys had been able to elevate and lower my eyebrows separately; when
the one was climbing my forehead the other descended it, like the two
buckets in the well.
Most diffidently did I call this accomplishment to my aid now, and
immediately David checked his forces and considered my unexpected
movement without prejudice. His face remained as it was, his mouth open
to emit the howl if I did not surpass expectation. I saw that, like the
fair-minded boy he has always been, he was giving me my chance, and
I worked feverishly, my chief fear being that, owing to his youth,
he might not know how marvellous was this thing I was doing. It is an
appeal to the intellect, as well as to the senses, and no one on earth
can do it except myself.
When I paused for a moment exhausted he signed gravely, with unchanged
face, that though it was undeniably funny, he had not yet decided
whether it was funny enough, and, taking this for encouragement, at it
I went once more, till I saw his forces wavering, when I sent my left
eyebrow up almost farther than I could bring it back, and with that I
had him, the smile broke through the clouds.
In the midst of my hard-won triumph I heard cheering.
I had been vaguely conscious that we were not quite alone, but had not
dared to look away from David; I looked now, and found to my annoyance
that I was the centre of a deeply interested gathering of children.
There was, in particular, one vulgar little street-boy--
However, if that damped me in the moment of victory, I was soon to
triumph gloriously in what began like defeat. I had sat me down on one
of the garden-seats in the Figs, with one hand resting carelessly on the
perambulator, in imitation of the nurses, it was so pleasant to assume
the air of one who walked with David daily, when to my chagrin I saw
Mary approaching with quick stealthy steps, and already so near me that
flight would have been ignominy. Porthos, of whom she had hold, bounded
toward me, waving his traitorous tail, but she slowed on seeing that I
had observed her. She had run me down with my own dog.
I have not mentioned that Porthos had for some time now been a visitor
at her house, though never can I forget the shock I got the first time
I saw him strolling out of it like an afternoon caller. Of late he has
avoided it, crossing to the other side when I go that way, and rejoining
me farther on, so I conclude that Mary's husband is painting him.
I waited her coming stiffly, in great depression of spirits, and noted
that her first attentions were for David, who, somewhat shabbily, gave
her the end of a smile which had been begun for me. It seemed to relieve
her, for what one may call the wild maternal look left her face, and
trying to check little gasps of breath, the result of unseemly running,
she signed to her confederates to remain in the background, and turned
curious eyes on me. Had she spoken as she approached, I am sure her
words would have been as flushed as her face, but now her mouth puckered
as David's does before he sets forth upon his smile, and I saw that she
thought she had me in a parley at last.
“I could not help being a little anxious,” she said craftily, but I must
own, with some sweetness.
I merely raised my hat, and at that she turned quickly to David--I
cannot understand why the movement was so hasty--and lowered her face
to his. Oh, little trump of a boy! Instead of kissing her, he seized her
face with one hand and tried to work her eyebrows up and down with the
other. He failed, and his obvious disappointment in his mother was as
nectar to me.
“I don't understand what you want, darling,” said she in distress, and
looked at me inquiringly, and I understood what he wanted, and let
her see that I understood. Had I been prepared to converse with her, I
should have said elatedly that, had she known what he wanted, still she
could not have done it, though she had practised for twenty years.