The next morning at breakfast-time father had not come back, and
mother said a lot of things that made Jack feel very uncomfortable.
She herself had taught him that any one who said bad things about
his father was wicked, but now it seemed that she was trying to tell
him something about father that was not nice. She spoke so slowly
that he hardly understood a word she said, though he gathered that
father had stolen something, and would be put in prison if he was
caught. With a guilty pang he remembered his own dealings with his
money-box, and he determined to throw away the rest of the sweets
when, nobody was looking. Then mother made the astounding statement
that he was not to go to school that day, but his sudden joy was
checked a little when she said he was not to go out at all, except
into the back garden. It seemed to Jack that he must be ill, but
when he made this suggestion to mother, she gave up her explanations
with a sigh. Afterwards she kept on saying aloud, "I must think, I
must think!" She said it so often that Jack started keeping count on
his fingers.
The day went slowly enough, for the garden was wet after the
thunderstorm, and mother would not play any games. Just before
tea-time two gentlemen called and talked to mother in the
parlour, and after a while they sent for Jack to answer some
questions about father, though mother was there all the time.
They seemed nice gentlemen, but mother did not ask them to stop
to tea, as Jack expected. He thought that perhaps she was sorry
that she had not done so, for she was very sad all tea-time, and
let him spread his own bread and jam. When tea was over things
were very dull, and at last Jack started crying because there
was nothing else to do. Presently he heard a little noise and
found that mother was crying as well. This seemed to him so
extraordinary that he stopped crying to watch her; the tears ran
down her cheeks very quickly, and she kept on wiping them away
with her handkerchief, but if she held her handkerchief to her
eyes perhaps they would not be able to come out at all. It
occurred to him that possibly she was sorry she had said, wicked
things about father, and to comfort her, for it made him feel
fidgety to see her cry, he whispered to her that he would not
tell. But she stared at him hopelessly through her red eyelids,
and he felt that he had not said the right thing. She called him
her poor boy, and yet it appeared that he was not ill. It was
all very mysterious and uncomfortable, and it would be a good
thing when father came back and everything went on as before,
even though he had to go back to school.
Later on the woman from the mill came in to sit with mother. She
brought Jack some sweets, but instead of playing with him she burst
into tears. She made more noise when she cried than mother; in fact
he was afraid that in a minute he would have to laugh at her
snortings, so he went into the parlour and sat there in the dark,
eating his sweets, and knitting his brow over the complexities of
life. He could see five stars, and there was a light behind the red
curtain of the front bedroom at Arber's farm. It was about twelve
times as large as a star, and a much prettier colour. By nearly
closing his eyes he could see everything double, so that there were
ten stars and two red lights; he was trying to make everything come
treble when the gate clicked and he saw his father's shadow. He was
delighted with this happy end to a tiresome day, and as he ran
through the passage he called out to mother to say that father was
back. Mother did not answer, but he heard a bit of noise in the
kitchen as he opened the front door.
He said "Good evening" in the grown-up voice that father encouraged,
but father slipped in and shut the door without saying a word. Every
night when he came back from the post-office he brought Jack the
gummed edgings off the sheets of stamps, and Jack held out his hand
for them as a matter of course. Automatically father felt in his
overcoat pocket and pulled out a great handful. "Take care of them,
they're the last you'll get," he said; but when Jack asked why, his
father looked at him with the same hopeless expression that he had
found in his mother's eyes a short while before. Jack felt a little
cross that every one should be so stupid.
When they went into the kitchen everybody looked very strange, and
Jack sat down in the corner and listened for an explanation. As a
rule the conversation of the grown-up people did not amuse him, but
tonight he felt that something had happened, and that if he kept
quiet he might find out what it was. He had noticed before that when
the grown-ups talked they always said the same things over and over
again, and now they were worse than usual. Father said, "It's no
good, I've got to go through it;" the mill-woman said, "Whatever made
you do it, George?" And mother said, "Nothing will ever happen to me
again!" They all went on saying these things till Jack grew tired of
listening, and started plaiting his stamp-paper into a mat. If you
did it very neatly it was almost as good as an ordinary sheet of
paper by the time you had finished. By and by, while he was still at
work, the mill-woman brought him his supper on a plate, and raising
his head he saw that father and mother were sitting close together,
looking at each other, and saying nothing at all. He was very
disappointed that although father had come home they had not had any
jokes all the evening, and as they were all so dull he did not very
much mind being sent to bed when he had finished his supper. When he
said good-night to father, he noticed that his boots were very muddy,
as if he had walked a long way like a common postman. He made a joke
about this, but they all looked at him as if he had said something
wrong, so he hurried out of the room, glad to get away from these
people whose looks had no reasonable significance, and whose words
had no discoverable meaning. It had been a bad day, and he hoped
mother would let him go back to school the next morning.
And yet though he took off his clothes and got into bed, the day was
not quite over. He had only dozed for a few minutes when he was
roused by a noise down below, and slipping out on to the staircase he
heard the mill-woman saying good-night in the passage. When she had
gone and the door had banged behind her, he listened still, and heard
his mother crying and his father talking on and on in a strange,
hoarse voice. Somehow these incomprehensible sounds made him feel
lonely, and he would have liked to have gone downstairs and sat on
his mother's lap and blinked drowsily in his father's face, as he had
done often enough before. But he was always shy in the presence of
strangers, and he felt that he did not know this woman who wept and
this man who did not laugh. His father was his play-friend, the
sharer of all his fun; his mother was a quiet woman who sat and
sewed, and sometimes told them not to be silly, which was the best
joke of all. It was not right for people to alter. But the thought of
his bedroom made him desolate, and at last he plucked up his courage,
and crept downstairs on bare feet. Father and mother had gone back
into the kitchen, and he peeped through the crack of the door to see
what they were doing. Mother was still crying, always crying, but he
had to change his position before he could see father. Then he turned
on his heels and ran upstairs trembling with fear and disgust. For
father, the man of all the jokes, the man of whom burglars were
afraid and compared with whom all other little boys' fathers were as
dirt, was crying like a little girl.
He jumped into bed and pulled the bedclothes over his face to shut
out the ugliness of the world.