Part 10

She almost spat at him, with a gesture of impatient agony for Peter on the floor.

"You've been lying to me," suddenly said the man.

She did not answer, but he persisted:

"You told me----"

"He did not."

He lifted his hand to strike her. She did not flinch, but said quietly:

"Who's the blackguard now?"

He turned and walked swiftly from the shed. She heard him running to the house, and took Peter's head on her lap. His lips were moving. Compassion stirred in her--a sensual compassion, feeding upon her complete possession of Peter, helplessly at her pleasure.

The man returned with the farmer's cart, and Peter was taken to the house. A telegram was sent to Hamingburgh, and the local doctor was called. He said that Peter had had a stroke of the sun. He was in a raging fever. The farmer's granddaughter was occasionally left with him.

She sat for several hours beside the bed watching Peter's restless and feeble movements. Sometimes she heard him talking vaguely and softly, but for long she could catch no syllable of what he said. Again she was stirred with delicious pity. She put her hands upon his cheeks, and leaned over his stirring lips for a long hour. Then suddenly she began to hear what he was saying, piecing his broken words.

He was walking alone in a dark house. It was very dark and quite still except for the dripping of water into a cistern. Peter always returned to this dripping water. He was looking for someone, and he stood where she used to sleep. At last a strange name came to his tongue--endlessly repeated.

The listening girl drew away from him. She went to the window to get beyond range of his voice. She was empty and thwarted. The name pursued her and she turned back to the bed. Maddened by his repeated murmur, she felt as if she were fighting for a place in his mind. She put her hand upon his mouth, trying to still the name upon his lips. But she felt them moving under the touch of her fingers, with the syllables that shut her out.

She dropped on her knees beside him, becoming a part of his madness.

"Here is the woman you want," she sang to him. Tears of vexation and jealousy--quick as a child's--started down her face.

"Peter, boy, don't you remember? You came to me, and dropped in the hay. I sang to you in the dark, and you came."

But Peter stood in a dark house, muttering a name she had never heard. Now he was striking matches one after another, peering into the empty corners of a deserted room. Then he spoke of an attic with rafters, and again of the dripping water.

The girl looked into his vacant eyes.

"Can't you see me, Peter?"

It was someone else he saw: he talked now of her dusty frock and of a garden where he sat and waited.

The woman by the bed could not come between him and this lovely ghost. She strained Peter towards her, and put her face to his cheek.

"No, Peter; it's me that is here. Can't you feel that I am holding you?"

Her pressure started in him another disordered memory. He struggled against her, and raised himself upon an elbow. His eyes looked quite through her. He saw her in his brain, but he did not see her in the room before him. The girl shuddered to hear him struggling with a mirage of herself. He was back in the loft. At first she thought it was the sight of her visibly before him in the room that caused him to speak of her. She drew back, and with a shudder saw he was talking to the air.

"You are not Miranda," he said, accusing the shape of his brain. "She smiled, but she did not smile like that."

The girl could no longer endure it. She went from the room, and, till Mrs. Paragon came, the farmer's wife sat beside him.

XXV

Mrs. Paragon arrived late in the afternoon. Peter could not be made to perceive her, and a physician was sent for from London.

Mrs. Paragon sat with Peter through the night, stifling her fear. His talk perplexed her in the extreme. The empty house where he wandered became as real to her as the room in which she sat. He had gone there to find Miranda, and this it was that so grieved and puzzled his mother. Peter had never once spoken of Miranda since the night he had arranged to go to London for the first time. She did not think he had of late thought of Miranda. Had he been eating his heart in secret?

The farmer's granddaughter waited upon Mrs. Paragon through the night. They talked only of his condition, but Mrs. Paragon noted her extreme interest in the patient.

Towards the morning they were together by the bedside. Peter had begun again to talk, and Mrs. Paragon suddenly saw the girl shrink away. Then almost immediately she turned and left the room.

Mrs. Paragon bent to listen. Peter was treading again the weary round of his thoughts of the preceding day. After a few moments his mother's face became very thoughtful.

When in the morning the girl brought her some breakfast, she said to her quietly:

"How long have you been here?"

"Two days." Already the girl knew she was detected.

"What has happened to my son?"

"How am I to know better than the doctor?" she countered.

"You know very well indeed."

"He is nothing to me."

Mrs. Paragon inexorably faced her:

"How could you be so wicked?" she said in a low voice.

"What do you mean?"

"You are not surprised when I talk to you of my son, and you have been here only two days."

Peter's mother stood like marble. The girl saw she was open to be read. Her pride was broken.

"Do not send me away," she pleaded. "I must know whether he lives or dies."

"What right have you to know?"

The girl was silent, and Mrs. Paragon shivered. She hardly dared be made sure.

"Has my son belonged to you?"

"No."

The girl hated to confess it, but quickly used it as a plea:

"Now will you let me stay?" she entreated.

Mrs. Paragon turned coldly away.

"Please go," she commanded.

The girl was struck into a hopeless humility.

"I will not trouble him again," she pleaded.

"I myself shall see to that."

Mrs. Paragon spoke calmly, and did not stir. Peter lay on the bed safely in her shadow.

The girl looked her farewell at him and passed out.

The specialist from London arrived before noon. He at once took a cheerful view. After listening to the local doctor's account of Peter's night, and examining the patient himself, he relieved Mrs. Paragon of her fears.

"What's the boy been doing?" he asked, after deciding there was nothing to keep him in Worcestershire. "This might well be mistaken for a touch of the sun," he said, smiling at the local man, "but it's not quite so simple. It looks as if he'd been trying to put himself straight with things, and not quite succeeded. He's suffering from acute mental excitement, but he's a healthy youngster and his temperature's falling. He won't talk any more."

"There's a thing that rather puzzles me, doctor," Mrs. Paragon hesitated.

"Well?"

"My son has been troubled, greatly troubled, by someone here, but most of his talk was about someone else."

"I don't quite understand."

"He has talked of a girl I thought he had forgotten. At least I did not think she had lately been in his mind."

"Very likely not, Mrs. Paragon. The mind's not at all a simple thing. Usually in cases like this the memories which come uppermost are things forgotten. We call it the subconscious self. This girl your son has been talking about--probably he does not know that he remembers her. Perhaps--of course I don't know all the circumstances--he has not thought of her for years. But evidently she is a vital memory. She is sleeping in his mind. Pardon my running on like this," the doctor concluded, smiling, "but you look interested."

"I think I understand."

"Is that all you want to know?"

"You are sure he is quite safe?"

"There's nothing to be anxious about. He only wants well nursing."

The doctor paused and looked keenly at Mrs. Paragon.

"You are very proud of him," he suggested.

"Prouder to-day than ever."

"He looks quite a splendid fellow. Send for me if anything goes seriously wrong."

Mrs. Paragon now sat happily with Peter, for he grew continually calmer, and she felt he was safe. A proud content sank deep into her heart as she put together the story of these last days. She pondered also the doctor's words, and wondered whether Peter had consciously called Miranda to his help. Or did she lurk as a secret angel under the surface of his life?

Forty-eight hours later Peter woke from a long sleep, and found his mother beside him. He did not stir, but just accepted her. He felt too weak to talk, and, taking some food, went immediately to sleep again.

Next time he woke Mrs. Paragon was not in the room, the farmer's wife having taken charge for a moment. Peter raised himself on one elbow, wondering to feel himself so weak.

"How long have I been like this?" he asked. "I feel as if I'd been in bed for a year."

"You're all right now, lad. You've been too much in the hot sun and got a touch o' fever."

Peter looked round the room.

"Didn't I see my mother here?" he asked.

"You did, to be sure. We sent for her when you were took with the heat. It was Bess that found you, lying in the road."

Peter remembered now how and where he had fallen.

Mrs. Paragon came in at that moment, and the farmer's wife greeted her.

"The lad's awake, and talking like a Christian."

Mrs. Paragon came and kissed him, the farmer's wife softly leaving them together. Peter looked tranquilly at his mother.

"I'm afraid I've frightened you," he said at last.

"Only for a little while," she reassured him.

"What time is it? I mean, how long have you been here?"

"Only three days."

"It feels like a hundred years," said Peter. "As if it had all happened to someone else. There was a girl here, mother. Where is she now?"

"She has gone away."

Peter sank peacefully back. After a while his mother said to him:

"Have you been grieving for anyone, Peter, during these last years?"

"Grieving?" Peter was making diagrams of the cracks and stains on the ceiling.

"You've been talking, Peter."

"What have I been talking about?" he idly inquired.

"You've been talking about your troubles."

"I haven't any troubles." Peter turned from the ceiling to his mother's face, feeling how pleasant it was to see her there.

"You've been talking about someone who troubled you," Mrs. Paragon persisted.

"But, mother," he objected, "you tell me she has gone away."

"There is no one else?"

"No one at all."

Peter lived deliciously for a week with his mother in the shaded room. He never seemed to have felt so happy. His mind was content to be idle. When he was tired of collecting into groups the roses on the wall-paper, or watching for hours the blue square of the window across which once or twice in a day a bird would fly, he would ask his mother to read to him old tales of Ainsworth and Marryat. He affected an imperious self-indulgence.

It was decided at last that Peter was strong enough for the journey home. Cordial thanks and farewells were exchanged with the farmer and his wife. Peter even left a kind message for the farmer's granddaughter, who had fled for fear of infection. He no longer thought of her as one who could trouble him.

XXVI

Peter soon picked up his strength at Hamingburgh. Three weeks passed and he thought of returning to London. Then came a letter from Marbury.

His uncle had applied for the Chiltern Hundreds, and Marbury was to stand at once in a contested by-election. He lightly but cordially asked Peter to come and stay with him through the fight and meet some of the distinguished people it would draw into the constituency.

Peter eagerly accepted. Next day he met Marbury at York, leaving the train to avoid a tedious slow journey of forty miles.

Lord Haversham's principal seat was at Highbury Towers, a lonely house on the edge of a moor. The nearest town was ten miles away.

It was a fortress of civilisation planted in a wilderness. In a bad winter, with snow lying deep, it was sometimes cut off for days from the world outside.

"There's something impudent about the place," said Marbury, as the car rushed over the moors. "It flies in the face of Nature. The Towers is the most comfortable home in England, and it is in a desert."

"A very beautiful desert," said Peter. He was feasting on the superb line of a moor-end, red with the heather.

"You must see it in the winter. I went through last election with my uncle. It was December, and we did well if we managed to keep half our appointments."

"Tell me about your uncle."

"He's dying, Peter." Marbury conveyed this as a simple fact. He did not intend an effect.

"You mean that he's very ill," suggested Peter.

"I mean that he's dying. The doctors give him six months or a year in Egypt. Here they allow him till the autumn."

"When is he going away?"

"He isn't going away," answered Marbury. "He thinks it worth while to die at home." Again Marbury spoke without insisting in the least on the heroic implication of his words.

"But six months of life and the sun," protested Peter.

"Six months is not long. We have lived at Highbury for a thousand years. Besides, my uncle wants things to go smoothly when he dies. He is posting me up in the estate--all the small traditional things."

Marbury talked of these things with a curious tranquillity. He simply recorded them. He fell very silent; and at the journey's end looked with interest at the large old house at which they had arrived.

Marbury took Peter upstairs to a room beside his own, and left to dress quickly for dinner. He would come back for Peter and show him the way down. When Peter was ready, he stood for a few minutes at the window. He looked on to a terrace and a garden which ended abruptly and fell suddenly to the moor. At the end of the terrace, magnificently poised and fronting desolation, was the copy of a famous statue by a contemporary sculptor, audaciously asserting the triumph of art--the figure of a naked youth superbly defiant.

Soon Marbury joined Peter at the window and put a hand affectionately on his shoulder.

"That's what I mean," he said, following Peter's look towards the statue in silhouette against the moor, "when I say that this place seems to fly in Nature's face. He's insolent, don't you think? He's looking over thirty miles of moor--not a house between himself and the open sea. In the winter the snow piles up against him, and storms bang into him from the German Ocean. He is the last exquisite word of the twentieth century asserting our mastery over all that."

Marbury waved his arm towards the open moor, and laughed an apology:

"He usually works me up like that. Let's have some dinner."

They went down, and Peter was made acquainted with many people whose names he tried to remember. His mind was whirling with impressions, unable to settle upon anything definite till, at dinner, he had had time to recover from a sensation of being too much honoured. This sensation had invaded him at being introduced by Marbury to an exquisite young woman.

"Peter," he said, "this is my sister. Look after him, Mary, and tell him who everybody is."

Then Marbury had disappeared, leaving Peter shyly rising to her light chatter.

"The house is packed, and there are beds at the home-farm," she said as they sat to the table. "Everybody is rushing to help Antony."

"Antony?" Peter echoed in a puzzled way.

"Don't you know his name?" she asked, looking towards Marbury.

"I'm afraid not," Peter confessed.

"But he called you Peter."

"Everybody calls me Peter."

"Why does everybody do that?"

"I don't know. Everybody does."

Peter was beginning to enjoy himself. Lady Mary smiled into his frank eyes, liking the direct way in which they looked at her.

They paused as Haversham came in to dinner. His empty chair always stood at the head of the table. Sometimes he was unable at the last moment to come down, but he never allowed anyone to wait or to inquire.

Peter looked at him with interest. He was yet at the prime, but grey and frail. His features were proud and delicate, his voice gravely penetrating. He was too far from Peter for his conversation to be heard, but he talked with lit face and a frequent smile. Sometimes, however, he fell silent, and Peter thought he detected the strained inward look of one struggling with physical pain.

"You don't know Uncle Eustace?" said Lady Mary, following Peter's look.

"Not yet."

"He will do you good."

"Antony was telling me about him on the way down."

They talked through dinner of indifferent things. The accent of conscious culture which Peter now cordially hated was missing. Yet the talk was alive--happily vivid and agreeable. No one seemed anxious to make an effort or to press home a conviction. Nor was Peter aware of words anxiously picked. He was unable yet to name his impression. He only knew that he talked more frankly of small things than he had talked before.

He noticed in a series of pleasant discoveries how beautiful was the setting of their talk. Lord Haversham had at Highbury brought the art of fine living to perfection. He had filled the place with costly things, without anywhere suggesting unreasonable luxury. Highbury Towers grew upon the visitor. Even as a guest began to wonder why he never seemed to have dined so well and been less brutally aware of it, he perceived that the glass he fingered was lovely and rare, that it consonantly set off the china bowl which neighboured it, and the ancient candlesticks to left and right. Haversham had always held that true luxury was not insistent, and he was never so disappointed as when his guest broke into a compliment of a particular object. Had it perfectly agreed, fitting its environment, the mood of the conversation, the temperament of the party for which it was designed, it would, he urged, have passed unnoticed. It would have made its effect without directly speaking.

Peter was filled with an adventurous sense of novelty. He had not met people quite like these before. What was it which so clearly distinguished this company from any he had yet frequented? Clearly it was not their manners. Opposite Peter was a peer who took most of his soup indirectly by way of a long moustache, who wisely sat with his napkin well tucked in at the neck. His face reminded Peter of the farmer with whom he had lately laboured in the field; his talk was mostly of dogs, his vocabulary limited and racy. Yet he quite obviously went with the silver, whereas Peter could think of a dozen men he knew--men who had not only learned to feed with discretion, but had read all the most refined literature in three or four languages, and could talk like people in a stage drawing-room--who quite obviously would have jarred.

Peter comfortably surrendered to the charm of an atmosphere quietly genial and free. The machinery alone of this new life pleased and fascinated. He felt that a beautifully ordered system had taken charge of him, that henceforth he had only to suffer himself to be moved comfortably through the day, that life was now a series of artfully arranged opportunities for free expression in suitable surroundings. This feeling had first invaded him as at York he had seen his baggage mysteriously vanishing, by no act of his own, into a strange car which started off even as he himself was being wrapped in warm rugs for the race to Highbury. It was confirmed later, when, reaching his room with Marbury, he had found the things which had so swiftly vanished at York faultlessly spread for his evening wear. Peter was rapidly putting forth roots in this new soil. Every moment some unexpected thing appeared, to be at once included in his total impression of a new life, to become part of the common round.

There was nothing snobbish in Peter's delight. He already desired to know these people better. But he was not in the least aware of anything which could be described as a social aspiration. He liked his new friends because they were new; and because they behaved differently from any he had as yet encountered. They were continually surprising him in small ways. More particularly he was startled by the intimacy and freedom of their talk. Their conversation was innocent of periphrasis and free from uncomfortable reserve. Peter had heard nothing like it since he had talked with the old farmer under the hedge of his seven acre field.

When the men were alone, Marbury called Peter to the head of the table and introduced him to his uncle. Peter looked with an ardent respect at one who already had touched his imagination.

"I've heard of you," said Lord Haversham as Peter felt for a chair. "You're the man who forcibly removed the Lord Chamberlain's trousers."

"It wasn't the Lord Chamberlain," said Peter nervously.

Lord Haversham turned to Marbury: "I'm sure you told me it was a protest against the censorship of stage plays."

"That, Uncle, was another small affair."

"Then whose were the trousers?" persisted Haversham.

"They belonged to a Junior Prior," said miserable Peter.

"What was the protest this time?"

"Equality of treatment under the law," suggested Marbury. "But you're making Peter uncomfortable. He doesn't like to remember that he was once a man of ideas."

Haversham looked meditatively at Peter: "It must be splendid to believe so thoroughly in an idea that you are ready to remove the trousers of a Junior Prior."

"I was drunk," said Peter bluntly.

"Does that also explain the Lord Chamberlain?" asked Haversham, beginning to be interested.

"No," said Peter. "Then I was only a fool."

"I don't believe a word of it." Lord Haversham turned to Marbury: "Why does he say these things?"

"Peter is a bad case, Uncle. He runs all his ideas to death, and sickens at sight of the corpse. I read Peter two years ago. He was born young."

"I'm afraid he'll very soon exhaust Highbury," said Lord Haversham, smiling.

"No," blurted Peter.

"We haven't any ideas," said Haversham quaintly. "We grow on the soil here, labourers and landlords. Tony," he went on, putting his hand affectionately on Marbury's arm, "is almost perfectly the Radical's notion of a stupid squire. You never think, do you, Tony? You're just choked full of prejudices you can't explain. I'm ashamed of you, Tony. You remind me so perfectly of the sort of fool I was myself thirty years ago."

Lord Haversham looked at his nephew. There was a beautiful tenderness in his address. Almost as he spoke, an expression of great pain came into his eyes.

"I must leave you now," he said. "We will talk again."

He quietly slipped from the room, and the conversation was broken up.

Peter, in the later solitude of his room, sat meditating at length upon his evening. He could not yet define what he liked in Marbury's friends, but he felt his personal need of it. He lacked the frank nature and ease, the lightness and dexterity of these people. He trod too heavily, delivering his sentiments with a weight which was out of keeping. He felt he must get out of the habit--a habit which did not express or become him--of taking too seriously the frequent appeal for his views on this or that. What, after all, were these views that had always mattered so much? He saw his late companions at dinner as merry figures seated about a pool, idly throwing in pebbles to keep the water agreeably astir. Conversation, it seemed, was not something to be captured and led. It was an agreeable adventure in which the universe was sociably explored. The final word, which Peter so frequently was tempted to deliver, should never be spoken, for, after the final word, what more could decently be said?

XXVII

The next morning Peter was early in the breakfast room. Only Lady Mary was there. She was looking for weather at the window.

"Let me get you some breakfast," said Peter, after they had greeted.

"Not for the world," she answered, lifting lids at a side table. "I love breakfast. It's the only time when food seems to matter. I wouldn't think of letting anybody choose my breakfast."

"There, at any rate, we agree," said Peter.