BOY AND GIRL
Pocket Upton was able to relieve his soul of one load that morning. Dr.
Baumgartner had left the schoolboy to his soap and water, taking the
newspaper with him; but apparently Pocket had followed him down in
quicker time than the other anticipated. At any rate the little lady of
the house was all alone in the dining-room, where Pocket found her
boiling eggs on the gas-fire, and had her to himself for several
seconds of which he wasted none. There was neither grace nor tact in
what he said, and his manner was naturally at its worst, but the
penitential torrent came from his heart, and was only stemmed by the
doctor’s hasty arrival on the scene. Miss Platts had not been given
time to say a word, but now she asked Mr. Upton how many minutes he
liked his egg boiled, and would not let him do it himself, but smiled
when he told her it was “done to a shake.” Dr. Baumgartner, on the
other hand, scowled upon them both until observation or reflection had
convinced him that no promises had been broken and no confidences
exchanged.
The callow pair saw something more of each other during the morning;
for Pocket hotly resented being distrusted, and showed it by making up
to the young girl under the doctor’s nose. He talked to her about books
in the other room. He had the impertinence to invite her into the
dining-room for a game of billiards, but the sense next moment to
include her uncle in an amended form of more becoming suggestion.
Baumgartner eventually countenanced a game, but spent most of the time
with his back to the players and his eye on the street. The boy and
girl got on very well now; they seemed frankly glad of each other,
though he caught her more than once with a large and furtive eye on
him. But she seemed to enjoy her baptism of schoolboy slang. And it was
only when she began to question him about his special vocabulary, that
Baumgartner looked on for a little, and put in his word.
“You see he still believes in his public school,” said he to Phillida,
in a tone which reminded their visitor of his first breakfast in the
house.
“I should think I did!” cried Pocket, and did a little loyal boasting
about the best of schools, and the best house in that school, until
memory took him by the throat and filled his eyes. It was twelve
o’clock, and a summer’s Saturday. School was over for the week. Only
your verses to do in your own time, and get signed by Spearman before
you went up to dormitory on Saturday night; but meanwhile, Saturday
afternoon! A match on the Upper, where you could lie on your rug and
watch the game you couldn’t play; call-over at the match; ices and
lemon-drinks in a tent on the field; and for Saturday supper anything
you liked to buy, cooked for you in the kitchen and put piping hot at
your place in hall, not even for the asking, but merely by writing your
name plainly on the eggs and leaving them on the slab outside! It was
not these simple luxuries that Pocket missed so sorely; it was the
whole full life of ups and downs, and no yesterdays and no to-morrows,
that he had lost for ever since last Saturday. The heavy midday meal
came in smoking from the Italian restaurant, and Pocket was himself
again, as a boy will be; after all, they knew about him at home by this
time, their worst fears were allayed, and in the end it would all come
right. In the end he would be sitting in his own old place at home,
instead of with strangers in an unknown street; telling them
everything, instead of holding his peace; and watching even Fred and
Horace listening to every word—much as Dr. Baumgartner was listening to
something now.
What was it? Phillida was listening, too, and watching her uncle as she
listened. Pocket did both in his turn.
It was the voice of newspaper hawkers, shouting in couples, coming
nearer with their shouts. Dr. Baumgartner jumped up from the table, and
ran outside without his hat.
His promise alone prevented Pocket from following and outstripping the
doctor. He knew what the shouting was about before he could have sworn
to a single raucous word. But Phillida could not know, and she resumed
at once where they had left off before breakfast.
“Of course I forgive you,” she whispered. “It was I began it!”
“Began what?”
“Our row yesterday.”
Phillida had a demure twinkle, after all; but it was lost on Pocket
now. “I’d forgotten all about it,” he said with superfluous candour,
his ear still on the street.
“I haven’t.”
Her voice made him remember better. “I hope to goodness I didn’t hurt
you?”
“Of course you didn’t.”
“But you must have thought me mad!”
There was a slight but most significant pause.
“Well, I never shall again.”
“Then you did!” he gasped. Their eyes had met sharply; both young faces
were flooded with light, and it was much the same light. There was no
nonsense about it, but there was indignant horror on his side, and
indignant shame on hers.
“You really are at school?” she whispered, not increduously, but as one
seeking assurance in so many words; and in a flash he saw what she had
thought, what she had been deliberately made to think, that his beloved
school was not a school at all, but an Ayslum!
But at that moment Dr. Baumgartner was heard bargaining at the gate
with one raucous voice, while the other went on roaring huskily, “Park
murder—arrest! ’Rest o’ de Park murderer! Park murder—Park
murder—arrest!” And Pocket sprang up from the table in a state that
swept his last thoughts clean from his mind.
The girl said something; he did not hear what. He was white and
trembling, in pitiable case even to eyes that could only see skin-deep;
but the doctor’s step came beating like a drum to him, and he was
solidly seated when the doctor entered—without any paper at all.
“It’s that murder the papers are all exploiting,” he explained
benignly. “They were shouting out something about an arrest; you would
hear them, I daresay. But it’s the usual swindle; the police are merely
hoping to effect an arrest. I threatened to send for them unless the
scoundrel took his paper back!”
He was in his lightest mood of sardonic gaiety. The sins of the vendors
recalled those of “your vermin press itself”; the association was
wilfully unfair, the favourite phrase a studied insult; but the English
boy was either dense or indifferent, and Phillida’s great eyes were in
some other world. Baumgartner subjected them both to a jealous
scrutiny, and suddenly cried out upon his own bad memory. It appeared
there was a concert at the Albert Hall, where “the most popular and
handsome pair in England” (the inverted commas were in the doctor’s
sneer) were being welcomed on their return from the ends of the earth.
He had intended going to hear what they could do; but Phillida should
go instead; she was not past the ballad stage.
And Phillida rose submissively, with unreal thanks which could not
conceal her recognition of the impromptu pretext for getting rid of
her; her uncle called a taxicab, and with harsh hilarity turned her off
the premises in the frock she had been wearing all day.
“And now,” said he, returning with a scowl, “what the devil were you
two talking about while my back was turned?”
“Yesterday,” replied Pocket, more than ready for him, though his heart
beat fast.
“What about yesterday?”
“Our scuffle in the other room.”
“Is that all?”
“No—I found out something; she didn’t tell me.”
“What did you find out?”
“That you let her think me mad!” cried Pocket, in monstrous earnest. He
might have laughed at himself, could he have seen his own reproachful
face. But he could have killed Baumgartner for laughing at him; it did
not occur to him that the laugh was partly one of pure relief.
“Why, my young fellow, how else can I account for you?”
“You said she would think I was a patient.”
“Exactly! A mental case.”
“You had no business to make me out mad,” persisted Pocket, with dogged
valour.
“Pardon me! I had all the business in the world; and I beg that you’ll
continue to foster the illusion as thoroughly as you did yesterday when
I was out. It’s no good shaking your head at me; listen to reason,”
continued Baumgartner, with an adroit change of tone. “And try, my good
young fellow, do try to think of somebody besides yourself; have some
consideration for my niece, if you have none for me.”
Pocket was mystified, but still more incensed; for he felt himself
being again put gently but clearly in the wrong.
“And I should like to know,” he cried, “what good it does her to think
she’s associating with a lunatic?”
“She would probably prefer the idea to that of a murderer,” was the
suave reply. “I speak only of ideas; otherwise I should not make use of
such an expression, even in jest. It’s as ugly as it’s ridiculous in
your case. Yet you heard for yourself that others are applying the
horrid term in all sobriety.”
“I heard more than that,” returned Pocket. “They’ve arrested somebody!”
“I thought I told you there was no truth in that?”
But Baumgartner had winced for once, and the boy had seen it, and his
retort was a precocious inspiration.
“That was only to avoid a scene at table, Dr. Baumgartner!”
“Well, my young fellow,” said the doctor, after one of his wise pauses,
“and what if it was?”
“I can’t sit here and let an innocent man lie in prison.”
“He won’t lie long.”
“It’s absolutely wicked to let them keep him at all.”
“Nor will they, longer than another hour or two.”
“Well, if they do, you know what I shall do!”
Pocket had never displayed such determination, nor incurred quite the
same measure or quality of wrath that Baumgartner poured upon him
without a word for the next few moments. It was a devouring gaze of
sudden and implacable animosity. The ruthless lips were shut out of
sight, yet working as though the teeth were being ground behind them;
the crow’s footed face flushed up, and the crow’s feet were no more; it
was as though age was swallowed in that flood of speechless passion
till the whole man was no older than the fiery eyes that blazed upon
the boy. And yet the most menacing thing of all was the complete
control with which the doctor broke this pregnant silence.
“You say that. I say otherwise. You had better find a book in the other
room till you know your own mind again.”
“I know it now, unless they release that man,” said Pocket, through his
teeth, although they chattered.
“Give them a chance, and give yourself one! It will be time to think of
clearing other people when they fail to clear themselves. Have more
patience! Think of your own friends, and give them time too.”
If the last allusion was to the lad’s letter, due in Leicestershire
that morning, it was as happy as all Baumgartner’s last words. If he
meant himself to be included among Pocket’s friends, there was food for
thought in the suggestion that a man of the doctor’s obvious capacity
was not idle in the boy’s best interests. Pocket was made to feel
rather ashamed of himself, as usual; but he could not forget the
concentrated fury of the look which had not been weakened by infuriate
words; and the recollection remained as an excuse, as well as a menace,
in his mind. He had time enough to think it over. Dr. Baumgartner
smoked his meerschaum in the gathering shade at the back of the house.
The schoolboy sulked for some time in the big chair, but eventually
took the doctor at his word about a book.
If it be ever true that a man may be known by his books, it was
certainly so to some extent in the case of Dr. Otto Baumgartner. His
library was singularly small for an intellectual man who wrote
himself, and a majority of the volumes were in languages which no
public schoolboy could be expected to read; but of the English books
many were on military subjects, some few anthropological; there were
photographic year-books and Psychical Research Reports by the foot or
yard, and there was an odd assortment of second-hand books which had
probably been labelled “occult” in their last bookseller’s list.
Boismont on _Hallucinations_ was one of these; it was the book for
Pocket. He took the little red volume down, and read a long chapter on
somnambulism in the big chair. In a way it comforted him. It was
something to find that he was far from being the only harmless creature
who had committed a diabolical deed in his sleep; here among several
cases was one of another boy who had made an equally innocent and yet
determined attempt on his own father. But there was something peculiar
in poor Pocket’s case, something that distinguished it from any of
those cited in the book, and he was still ferreting for its absolute
fellow when Phillida came in long before he expected her. Boismont had
made the time fly wonderfully, in spite of everything; the girl, too,
appeared to have been taken out of herself, and talked about her
concert as any other young girl might have done, both to Pocket and her
uncle, who glided in at once from the garden. The doctor, however, was
himself in mellower mood; and they were having tea, for all the world
like any ordinary trio, the girl still making talk about sundry songs,
the man quizzing them and her, and the boy standing up for one that his
sister sang at home, when a metallic tattoo put a dramatic stop to the
conversation.
The two young people, but not their elder, were startled quite out of
their almost inadvertent tranquillity; and the knocker was not still
before Pocket realised that it was the first time he had heard it. No
letters were delivered at that house; not a soul had he seen or heard
at the door before. Even in his excitement, however, with its stunning
recrudescence of every reality, its instantaneous visions of his people
or the police, there was room for a measure of disgust when the girl
got up, at an ungallant nod from the German, to go to the door.
“It’s a huge fat man,” whispered Phillida, on her return to the big
room at the back of the house. “Here’s his card.”
“Thrush!” muttered Baumgartner as though he knew the name, and he
glowered at the two young faces on which it made no impression
whatever. It was plain how he hated leaving them together; but for once
it must be done, and done quickly—with both doors open and the
visitor’s very movements audible on the steps. To the door the doctor
must go, and went, shutting that one pointedly behind him.
The young creatures, looking in each other’s eyes, listened for raised
voices and the slam of prompt expulsion; but the voices were pitched
too low to reach their ears in words, and were only interrupted by the
sound of footsteps in the hall, and the perfectly passive closing of an
outer and an inner door in quick succession.
“He’s taken him into the dining-room,” murmured Phillida. “Who can it
be?”
“Hasn’t he any friends?”
“None who ever come here; none of that name anywhere, I feel sure.” Her
great eyes, without leaving his for an instant, filled with thought as
a blank screen takes a shadow. “I wonder if it’s about that!” she
whispered.
“What?”
“What they were calling out with the newspapers while we were at
table.”
There was a pause. The look in her eyes had changed. It was purely
penetrating now.
“Why should it be?” asked Pocket, his own eyes falling.
“It’s no use asking me, Mr. Upton.”
“But I don’t understand the question.”
“Is that true?”
“No,” he muttered; “it isn’t.”
She was leaning over to him; he felt it, without looking up.
“Mr. Upton,” she said, speaking quickly in the undertone they were both
instinctively adopting, “you know now what I thought about you at
first. I won’t say what made me; but that was what I thought, but could
hardly believe, and never will again. It makes it all the more a
mystery, your being here. I can’t ask my uncle—he tells me nothing—but
there’s something I can and must ask you.”
Pocket hung his head. He knew what was coming. It came.
“My uncle brought you here, Mr. Upton, on the very morning that thing
happened they were calling out about to-day. In the Park. It is to the
Park he goes so often in the early morning with his camera! How can I
say what I want to say? But, if you think, you will see that everything
points to it; especially the way he ran out for that paper—and hid the
truth when he came in!”
Pocket looked up at last.
“I know the truth.”
“About the arrest?”
“Yes; it was quite obvious, and he admitted it when you’d gone.”
“Why not before?”
“I couldn’t tax him about it in front of you,” he muttered, looking up
and down quickly, unable to face her fierce excitement.
“Do tell me what it is you both know about this dreadful case!”
“I can’t,” the boy said hoarsely; “don’t ask me.”
“Then you know who did it. I can see you do.”
There was a new anguish even in her whisper; he could hear what she
thought.
“It was nobody you care about,” he mumbled, hoarser than before, and
his head lower.
“You don’t mean——”
She stopped aghast.
“I can’t say another word—and you won’t say another to me!” he added, a
bitter break in his muffled voice. He longed to tell her it had been an
accident, to tell her all; but he had given his word to Baumgartner not
to confide in her, and he did not think that he had broken it yet.
“You don’t know me,” she whispered, and for a moment her hand lay warm
in his; “trust me! I’m your friend in spite of all you’ve said—or
done!”
Dr. Baumgartner might have been ten minutes getting rid of the
intruder; before that he had been first amazed and then relieved to
hear the piano in the drawing-room; and that was all his anxious ear
had heard of either boy or girl during his absence. Yet the boy was
not standing over the piano, as he might have been, for Phillida was
trying to recall one of the concert songs he said his sister sang.
Pocket, however, was staring out into the garden with a troubled face,
which he turned abruptly, aggressively, and yet apprehensively to meet
the doctor’s.
But the doctor no longer looked suspiciously from him to Phillida, but
stood beaming on them both, and rubbing his hands as though he had done
something very clever indeed.