Part 14

Joan stayed in this garden for exactly three minutes. Then she returned to Mrs. Pybus, who was engaged in some dim operations with a kettle in the kitchen. “Drat this old kitchener!” said Mrs. Pybus, rattling at a damper.

“Want to go ’ome,” Joan said, in a voice that betrayed emotion.

Mrs. Pybus turned her meagre face and surveyed Joan without excessive tenderness.

“This _is_ your ’ome, dearie,” she said.

“I live at Ingle-Nook,” said Joan.

Mrs. Pybus shook her head. “All that’s been done away with,” she said. “Your aunts ’ave give you up, and you’re going to live ’ere for good—’long o’ me.”

§ 5

Meanwhile Mr. Grimes, with a cheerful kindliness that Peter perceived to be assumed, conveyed that young gentleman first to an outfitter, where he was subjected to nameless indignities with a tape, and finally sent behind a screen and told to change out of his nice, comfortable old clothes and Heidelberg sandals into a shirt and a collar and a grey flannel suit, and hard black shoes. All of which he did in a mute, helpless rage, because he did not consider himself equal to Mr. Grimes and the outfitter and his staff (with possibly the chauffeur thrown in) in open combat. He was then taken to a hairdresser and severely clipped, which struck him as a more sensible proceeding; the stuff they put on his head was indeed pleasingly aromatic; and then he was bought some foolery of towels and things, and finally a Bible and a prayer-book and a box. With this box he returned to the outfitter’s, and was quite interested in discovering that a pile of things had accumulated on the counter, ties, collars and things, and were to be packed in the box for him forthwith. A junior assistant was doing up his Limpsfield clothes in a separate parcel. So do we put off childish things. That parcel was to go via Mr. Grimes to The Ingle-Nook.

A memory of certain beloved sea stories came into Peter’s head. “This my kit?” he asked Mr. Grimes abruptly.

“You might call it your kit,” said Mr. Grimes.

“Am I going on a battleship?” asked Peter.

Mr. Grimes—and the two outfitting assistants in sympathy—were loudly amused.

“You’re going to High Cross School,” said Mr. Grimes, emerging from his mirth. “Firm treatment. Sound Church training. Unruly boys not objected to.”

“I didn’t know,” said Peter.

They returned to the automobile, and after a mile or so of roads and turnings stopped outside a gaunt brace of drab-coloured semi-detached villas standing back behind a patch of lawn, and having a walled enclosure to the left and an overgrown laurel shrubbery to the right. “Here’s High Cross School,” said Mr. Grimes, a statement that was rendered unnecessary by a conspicuous black and gold board that rose above the walled enclosure. They descended.

“Wonther which ithe houth,” mused Mr. Grimes, consulting his teeth, and then suddenly decided and led Peter towards the right hand of the two associated doors. “This,” said Mr. Grimes, as they waited on the doorstep, “is a _real_ school.... No nonsense about it,” said Mr. Grimes.

Peter nodded with affected intelligence.

They were ushered by a slatternly maid-servant into the presence of a baldish man with a white, puffy face and pale grey eyes, who was wearing a university gown and seemed to be expecting them. He was standing before the fireplace in the front parlour, which had a general air of being a study. There were an untidy desk facing the window and bookshelves in the recess on either side of the fireplace. Over the mantel was a tobacco-jar bearing the arms of some college, and reminders of Mr. Mainwearing’s university achievements in the form of a college shield and Cambridge photographs.

“Well,” said Mr. Grimes, “here’s your young man,” and thrust Peter forward.

“So you’ve come to join us?” said Mr. Mainwearing with a sort of clouded amiability.

“Join what?” said Peter.

Mr. Mainwearing raised his eyebrows. “High Cross School,” he said.

“I’m at the School of St. George and the Venerable Bede,” said Peter. “So how can I?”

“No,” said Mr. Grimes; “you’re joining here now.”

“But I can’t go to _two_ schools.”

“Consequently you’re coming to _this_ one,” said Mr. Grimes.

“It’s very sudden,” said Peter.

“What’s this about the School of Saint What’s-his-name?” asked Mr. Mainwearing of Mr. Grimes.

“It’s just a sort of fad school they’ve been sending him to,” Mr. Grimes explained. “We’re altering all that. It’s a girls’ school, and he’s a growing boy. It’s a school where socialism and play-acting are school subjects, and everybody runs about with next to nothing on. So his proper guardians have decided that’s got to stop. And here we are.”

Mr. Mainwearing regarded Peter heavily while this was going on.

“Done any square root yet?” he asked suddenly.

Peter had not.

“Know the date of Magna Carta?”

Peter did not. “It was under John,” he said.

“I wanted the date,” said Mr. Mainwearing. “What’s the capital of Bulgaria?”

Peter did not know.

“Know any French irregular verbs?”

Peter said he didn’t.

“Got to begin at the beginning,” said Mr. Mainwearing. “Got your outfit?”

“We’ve just seen to that,” said Mr. Grimes. “There’s one or two things I’d like to say to you—”

He glanced at Peter.

Mr. Mainwearing comprehended. He came and laid one hand on Peter. “Time you saw some of your schoolfellows,” he said.

Under his guiding pressure Peter was impelled along a passage, through an archway, across an empty but frowsty schoolroom in which one solitary small boy sat and sobbed grievously, and so by way of another passage to a kind of glass back-door from which steps went down to a large gravelled space, behind the high wall that carried the black and gold board. In the corner were parallel bars. A group of nine or ten boys were standing round these bars; they were all clad in the same sort of grey flannels that Peter was wearing, and they had all started round at the sound of the opening of the door. One shock-headed boy, perhaps a head taller than any of the rest, had a great red mouth beneath a red nose.

“Boys!” shouted Mr. Mainwearing; “here’s a new chum. See that he learns his way about a bit, Probyn.”

“Yessir!” said the shock-headed boy in a loud adult kind of voice.

Mr. Mainwearing gave Peter a shove that started him down the steps towards the playground, and slammed the door behind him.

Most of these boys were bigger than any boys that Peter had ever known before. They looked enormous. He reckoned some must be fifteen or sixteen—quite. They were as big as the biggest Sheldrick girl. Probyn seemed indeed as big as a man; Peter could see right across the playground that he had a black smear of moustache. His neck and wrists and elbows stuck out of his clothes.

Peter with his hands in his new-found pockets walked slowly towards these formidable creatures across the stony playground. They regarded him enigmatically. So explorers must feel, who land on a strange beach in the presence of an unknown race of men.

§ 6

“Come on, fathead!” said Probyn as he drew near.

Peter had expected that tone. He affected indifference.

“What’s your name?” asked Probyn.

“Stubland,” said Peter. “You Probyn?”

“Stubland,” said Probyn. “Stubland. What’s your Christian name?”

“Peter. What’s yours?”

Probyn disregarded this counter question markedly. “Simon Peter, eh! Your father got you out of the Bible, I expect. Know anything of cricket, Simon Peter?”

“Not much,” said Simon Peter.

“Can you swim?”

“No.”

“Can you fight?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s your father?”

Peter didn’t answer. Instead, he fixed his attention upon a fair-haired boy of about his own size who was standing at the end of the parallel bars. “What’s _your_ name?” he asked.

The fair boy looked at Probyn.

“Damn it!” said Probyn. “I asked _you_ a question, Mr. Simon Peter.”

Peter continued disregardful. “Hasn’t this school got a flagstaff?” he asked generally.

Probyn came closer to him and gripped him by the shoulder. “I asked you a question, Mr. Simon Peter. What is your father?”

It was a question Peter could not answer because for some obscure reason he could not bring himself to say that his father was dead. If ever he said that, he knew his father would be dead. But what else could he say of his father? So he seemed to shrink a little and remained mute. “We’ll have to cross-examine you,” said Probyn, and shook him.

The fair boy came in front of Peter. It was clear he had great confidence in Probyn. He had a fat, smooth, round face that Peter disliked.

“Simon Peter,” he said. “Answer up.”

“What is your father?” said Probyn.

“What’s your father?” repeated the fair boy, and then suddenly flicked Peter under the nose with his finger.

But this did at least enable Peter to change the subject. He smote at the fat-faced boy with great vigour and missed him. The fat-faced boy dodged back quickly.

“Hullo!” said Probyn. “Ginger!”

“That chap’s not going to touch my nose,” said Peter. “Anyhow.”

“Touch it when I like,” said the fat-faced boy.

“You won’t.”

“You want to _fight?_” asked the fat-faced boy, conscious of popular support.

Peter said he wasn’t going to have his nose flicked anyhow.

“Flick it again, Newton,” said Probyn, “and see.”

“I’ll show you in no time,” said Newton.

“Why!—I’d lick you with one hand,” continued Newton.

Peter said nothing. But he regarded his antagonist very intently.

“Skinny little snipe,” said Newton. “Whaddyou think you’d do to me?”

“Hit him, Newton,” said a cadaverous boy with freckles.

“Hit him, Newton. He’s too cocky,” said another. “Flick his silly nose again and see.”

“I’ll hit him ’f’e wants it,” said Newton, and buttoned up his jacket in a preparatory way.

“Hit him, Newton,” other voices urged.

“Let him put up his fists,” said Newton.

“Do that when I please,” said Peter rather faintly.

Newton had seemed at first just about Peter’s size. Now he seemed very much larger. All the boys seemed to have grown larger. They were gathering in a vast circle of doom round a minute and friendless Peter. Probyn loomed over him like a figure of fate. Peter wondered whether he need have hit at Newton. It seemed now a very unwise thing indeed to have done. Newton was alternately swaying towards him and swaying away from him, and repeating his demand for Peter to put his hands up. He seemed on the verge of flicking again. He was going to flick. Probyn watched them both critically. Then with a rapid movement of the mind Peter realized that Newton’s face was swaying now well within his range; the moment had come, and desperately, with a great effort and a wide and sweeping movement of the arm, he smote hard at Newton’s cheek. Smack. A good blow. Newton recoiled with an expression of astonishment. “You—swine!” he said.

Two other boys came running across the playground, and voices explained, “New boy.... Fight....”

But curiously enough the fight did not go on. Newton at a slightly greater distance continued to loom threateningly, but did no more than loom. His cheek was very red. “I’ll break your jaw, cutting at me like that,” he said. “You swine!” He used foul and novel terms expressive of rage. He looked at Probyn as if for approval, but Probyn offered none. He continued to threaten, but he did not come within arm’s length again.

“Hit him back, Newton,” several voices urged, but with no success.

“Wait till I start on him,” said Newton.

“Buck up, young Newton,” said Probyn suddenly, “and stop jawing. You began it. _I’m_ not going to help you. Make a ring, you chaps. It’s a fair fight.”

Peter found himself facing Newton in the centre of an interested circle.

Newton was walking crab fashion athwart the circle, swaying with his fists and elbows high. He was now acting a dangerous intentness. “Come on,” he said terribly.

“Hit him, Newton,” said the cadaverous boy. “Don’t wait for him.”

“You started it, Newton,” Probyn insisted. “And he’s hit you fair.”

A loud familiar sound, the clamorous ringing of a bell, struck across the suspended drama. “That’s tea,” said Newton eagerly, dropping his fists. “It’s no good starting on him now.”

“You’ll have to fight him later,” said Probyn. “Now he’s hit you.”

“It’s up to you, Newton,” said the cadaverous boy, evidently following Probyn’s lead.

“Cavé. It’s Noser,” said a voice.

There was a little pause.

“Toke!” cried Probyn.

“Toke, Simon Peter,” said the cadaverous boy informingly....

Peter found himself no longer in focus. Every one was moving towards the door whence Peter had descended to the playground, and at this door there now stood a middle-aged man with a large nose and a sly expression, surveying the boys.

Impelled by gregarious instincts, Peter followed the crowd.

He did not like these hostile boys. He did not like this shabby-looking place. He was quite ready to believe that presently he would have to go on fighting Newton. He was not particularly afraid of Newton, but he perceived that Probyn stood behind him. He detested Probyn already. He was afraid of Probyn. Probyn was like a golliwog. He knew by instinct that Probyn was full of disagreeable possibilities for him, and that it would be very hard to get away from Probyn. And what did it all mean? Was he never going back to Limpsfield again?

The bell had had exactly the tone of the tea bell at Miss Murgatroyd’s school. It might have been the same bell. And it had made his heart homesick for the colour and brightness of the School of St. George and the Venerable Bede, and for the friendly garden and familiar rooms of Ingle-Nook. For the first time he realized that he had fallen into this school as an animal falls into a trap, that his world had changed, that home was very far away....

And what had they done to Joan?...

Had he to live here always?...

It struck Mr. Noakley, the assistant master with the large nose, as he watched the boys at tea, that the new boy had a face like a doll, but really that face with its set, shining, expressionless eyes was only the mask, the very thin mask, that covered a violent disposition to blubber....

Well, no one was going to see Peter blub. No one was going to hear him blub....

Tonight perhaps in bed.

He had still to realize the publicity of a school dormitory....

He knew he couldn’t box, but he had seen something in Newton’s eyes that made him feel that Newton was not invincible. He would grip his fists in a very knobby way and hit Newton as hard as he could in the face. Oh!—_frightfully_ hard....

Peter was not eating very much. “Bags I your slice of Toke,” said the cadaverous boy.

“Take the beastly stuff,” said Peter.

“Little spoilt mammy coddle,” thought old Nosey Noakley. “We aren’t good enough for him.”

§ 7

So it was that Mr. Grimes, acting for Lady Charlotte, set about the rescue of Joan and Peter from, as she put it, “the freaks, faddists and Hill-Top philosophies of the Surrey hills,” and their restoration to the established sobrieties and decorums of English life. Very naturally this sudden action came as an astonishing blow to the two advanced aunts. At nine o’clock that evening Miss Murgatroyd was called down to see Miss Phyllis Stubland, who had ridden over on her bicycle. “Where are the children?” asked Aunt Phyllis.

“You sent for them,” said Miss Murgatroyd.

“Sent for them!”

“Yes. I remember now. The young man said it was Lady Charlotte Sydenham. Didn’t you know? She is going abroad tomorrow or the next day.”

“Sent for them!” Aunt Phyllis repeated....

Two hours later Aunt Phyllis was telling the terrible news to Mary. Aunt Phœbe was in London for the night to see Mr. Tree play _Richard II_, and there were no means of communicating with her until the morning. The Ingle-Nook was much too Pre-Raphaelite to possess a telephone, and Aunt Phœbe was sleeping at the flat of a friend in Church Row, Hampstead. Next morning a telegram found her still in bed.

“Children kidnapped by Lady Charlotte consult Sycamore Phyllis”

said the telegram.

“_No!_” cried Aunt Phœbe sharply.

Then as the little servant-maid was on the point of closing the door, “Tell Miss Jepson,” Aunt Phœbe commanded....

Miss Jepson found Aunt Phœbe out of bed and dressing with a rapid casualness. It was manifest that some great crisis had happened. “An outrage upon all women,” said Aunt Phœbe. “I have been outraged.”

“My dear!” said Miss Jepson.

“Read that telegram!” cried Aunt Phœbe, pointing to a small ball of pink paper in the corner of the room.

Miss Jepson went over to the corner with a perplexed expression, and smoothed out the telegram and read it.

“A _Bradshaw_ and a hansom!” Aunt Phœbe was demanding as she moved rapidly about the room from one scattered garment to another. “No breakfast. I can eat nothing. Nothing. I am a tigress. A maddened tigress. Maddened. Beyond endurance. Oh! Can you reach these buttons, dear?”

Miss Jepson hovered about her guest readjusting her costume in accordance with commonplace standards while Aunt Phœbe expressed herself in Sibylline utterances.

“Children dedicated to the future.... Reek of ancient corruptions.... Abomination of desolation.... The nine fifty-three.... Say half an hour.... Remonstrance.... An avenging sword.... The sword of the Lord and of Gideon.”

“Are you going to this Mr. Sycamore?” asked Miss Jepson suddenly.

Aunt Phœbe seemed lost for a time and emerged with, “Good God!—_No!_ This is an occasion when a woman must show she can act as a man. This tries us, Amanda. I will have no man in this. No man at all! Are women to loll in hareems for ever while men act and fight? When little children are assailed?...”

“Chastlands,” said Aunt Phœbe to the cabman, waving Miss Jepson’s _Bradshaw_ in her hand.

The man looked stupid.

“Oh! Charing Cross,” she cried scornfully. “The rest is beyond you.”

And in the train she startled her sole fellow-traveller and made him get out at the next station by saying suddenly twice over in her loud, clear contralto voice the one word “_Action_.” She left Miss Jepson’s _Bradshaw_ in the compartment when she got out.

She found Chastlands far gone in packing for Lady Charlotte’s flight abroad. “I demand Lady Charlotte,” she said. She followed up old Cashel as he went to announce her. He heard her coming behind him, but his impression of her was so vivid that he deemed it wiser not to notice this informality. And besides in his dry, thin way he wanted to hear why she demanded Lady Charlotte. He perceived the possibilities of a memorable clash. He was a quiet, contemplative man who hid his humour like a miser’s treasure and lived much upon his memories. Weeks after a thing had happened he would suddenly titter, in bed, or in church, or while he was cleaning his plate. And none were told why he tittered.

For a moment Aunt Phœbe hovered on the landing outside the Chastlands drawing-room.

“I can’t see her,” she heard Lady Charlotte say, with something like a note of terror. “It is impossible.”

“Leave her to me, me Lady,” said a man’s voice.

“Tell her to wait, Cashel,” said Lady Charlotte.

Aunt Phœbe entered, trailing her artistic robes. Before her by the writing-table in the big window stood Lady Charlotte, flounced, bonneted, dressed as if for instant flight. A slender, fair, wincing man in grey stood nearer, his expression agitated but formidable. They had evidently both risen to their feet as Aunt Phœbe entered. Cashel made insincere demonstrations of intervention, but Aunt Phœbe disposed of him with a gesture. A haughty and terrible politeness was in her manner, but she sobbed slightly as she spoke.

“Lady Charlotte,” she said, “where are my wards?”

“They are _my_ wards,” said Lady Charlotte no less haughtily.

“Excuse me, Lady Charlotte. Permit me,” said Mr. Grimes, with soothing gestures of his lean white hands.

“Please do not intervene,” said Aunt Phœbe.

“Mr. Grimes, madam, is my solicitor,” said Lady Charlotte. “You may go, Cashel.”

Cashel went reluctantly.

Mr. Grimes advanced a step and dandled his hands and smiled ingratiatingly. Italian and Spanish women will stab, he had heard, and fishwives are a violent class. Otherwise he believed all women, however terrible in appearance, to be harmless. This gave him courage.

“Miss Stubland, I believe,” he said. “These young people, young Stubland and his foster-sister to wit, are at present in my charge—under instructions from Lady Charlotte.”

“Where?” asked Aunt Phœbe.

“Our case, Miss Stubland, is that they were not being properly educated in your charge. That is our case. They were receiving no sound moral and religious training, and they were being brought up in—to say the least of it—an eccentric fashion. Our aim in taking them out of your charge is to secure for them a proper ordinary English bringing up.”

“Every word an insult,” panted Aunt Phœbe. “Every word. What have you done with them?”

“Until we are satisfied that you will consent to continue their training on proper lines, Miss Stubland, you can scarcely expect us to put it in your power to annoy these poor children further.”

Mr. Grimes’ face was wincing much more than usual, and these involuntary grimaces affected Aunt Phœbe in her present mood as though they were deliberate insults. He did not allow for this added exasperation.

“Annoy!” cried Aunt Phœbe.

“That is the usual expression. We are perfectly within our rights in refusing you access. Having regard to your manifest determination to upset any proper arrangement.”

“You refuse to let me know where those children are?”

“Unless you can get an order against us.”

“You mean—go to some old judge?”

Mr. Grimes gesticulated assent. If she chose to phrase it in that way, so much the worse for her application.

“You won’t—— You will go on with this kidnapping?”

“Miss Stubland, we are entirely satisfied with our present course and our present position.”

Lady Charlotte endorsed him with three great nods.

Aunt Phœbe stood aghast.

Mr. Grimes remained quietly triumphant. Lady Charlotte stood quietly triumphant behind him. For a moment it seemed as if Aunt Phœbe had no reply of any sort to make.

Then suddenly she advanced three steps and seized upon Mr. Grimes. One hand gripped his nice grey coat below the collar behind, the other, the looseness of his waistcoat just below the tie. And lifting him up upon his toes Aunt Phœbe shook him.

Mr. Grimes was a lean, spare, ironical man. Aunt Phœbe was a well-developed woman. Yet only by an enormous effort did she break the instinctive barriers that make a man sacred from feminine assault. It was an effort so enormous that when at last it broke down the dam of self-restraint, it came through a boiling flood of physical power. It came through with a sort of instantaneousness. At one moment Mr. Grimes stood before Lady Charlotte’s eyes dominating the scene; at the next he was, as materialists say of the universe, “all vibrations.” He was a rag, he was a scrap of carpet in Aunt Phœbe’s hands. The appetite for shaking seemed to grow in Aunt Phœbe as she shook.

From the moment when Aunt Phœbe gripped him until she had done shaking him nobody except Lady Charlotte made an articulate sound. And all that Lady Charlotte said, before astonishment overcame her, was one loud “Haw!” The face of Mr. Grimes remained set, except for a certain mechanical rattling of the teeth in a wild stare at Aunt Phœbe; Aunt Phœbe’s features bore that earnest calm one may see upon the face of a good woman who washes clothes or kneads bread. Then suddenly it was as if Aunt Phœbe woke up out of a trance.

“You make—you make me forget myself!” said Aunt Phœbe with a low sob, and after one last shake relinquished him.

Mr. Grimes gyrated for a moment and came to rest against a massive table. He was still staring at Aunt Phœbe.

For a moment the three people remained breathing heavily and contemplating the outrage. At last Mr. Grimes was able to raise a wavering, pointing finger to gasp, “You have—you have—yes—indeed—forgotten yourself!”

Then, as if he struggled to apprehend the position, “You—you have assaulted me.”