disgusting place into the world. He would run away tomorrow after the
midday meal. It would be the Wednesday half-holiday, and to go off then
gave him his very best chance of a start; he might not be missed by any
one in particular throughout the afternoon. The gap of time until
tea-time seemed to him to be a limitless gap. “Abscond,” said Peter, a
beautiful, newly-acquired word. Just exactly whither he wanted to go, he
did not know. Vaguely he supposed he would have to go to his Limpsfield
aunts, but what he wanted to think he was doing was running away to sea.
He was going to run away to sea and meet Nobby very soon; he was going
to run against Nobby by the happiest chance, Nobby alone, or perhaps
even (this was still dreamier) Daddy and Mummy. Then they would go on
explorations together, and he and Nobby would sleep side by side at camp
fires amidst the howling of lions. Somewhere upon that expedition he
would come upon Mainwearing and Probyn and Newton, captives perhaps in
the hands of savages.
What would he and Nobby and Mummy and Daddy and Bungo Peter and Joan do
to such miscreants?...
This kept Peter thinking a long time. Because it was beyond the limits
of Peter’s generosity just now to spare Mr. Mainwearing. Probyn perhaps.
Probyn, penitent to the pitch of tears, might be reduced to the status
of a humble fag; even Newton might go on living in some very menial
capacity—there could be a dog with the party of which Newton would
always go in fear—but Mr. Mainwearing had exceeded the limits of
mercy....
A man like that was capable of any treason....
Peter had it!—a beautiful scene. Mr. Mainwearing detected in a hideous
conspiracy with a sinister Arab trader to murder the entire expedition,
would be captured redhanded by Peter (armed with a revolver and a
cutlass) and brought before Nobby and Bungo Peter. “The man must die,”
Nobby would say. “And quickly,” Bungo Peter would echo, “seeing how
perilous is our present situation.”
Then Peter would step forward. Mr. Mainwearing in a state of abject
terror would fling himself down before him, cling to his knees, pray for
forgiveness, pray Peter to intercede.
Yes. On the whole—yes. Peter would intercede.
Peter began to see the scene as a very beautiful one indeed....
But Nobby would be made of sterner stuff. “You are too noble, Peter. In
such a country as this we cannot be cumbered with traitor carrion. We
have killed the Arab. Is it just to spare this thousand times more
perjured wretch, this blot upon the fair name of Englishman?
Mainwearing, if such indeed be your true name, down on your knees and
make your peace with God.”...
At this moment the reverie was interrupted by Mr. Mainwearing in
cricketing flannels traversing the schoolroom. He was going to have a
whack before tea. He just stood at the wickets and made the bigger boys
bowl to him.
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.”
(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....
The 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 boat-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.
Peter 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 round 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 was 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 tired 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....
§ 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 Chastlands 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 a 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.
Mr. 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.”