CHAPTER XXXVI--THE SPREADING OF WINGS

He might have been setting out for Australia or to explore Tibet, they

made such a final matter of his going. The way in which he was waited

on, considered and admired brought to his remembrance those early days

when he had been sent to Miss Rufus to be cured of his 'magination.

“But motherkins, dearest, Oxford's only sixty miles--a two hours'

journey. I can write to you the last thing at night and you can be

reading me next morning at breakfast.”

Nan shook her head. “It's the spreading of wings, Peter--the first

flight from the nest. You'll come back, of course; but always more

rarely.”

She foresaw in this first departure, all the other departures that lay

ahead. The day was coming when she would be left alone. She pictured

herself as old and grayheaded, sitting listening to phantom footsteps

of memories which passed and repassed, but never brought the living

presence. Already she tasted the bitterness of the woman who, having

been first, must learn to be second in the affections of those who were

part of her body. Kay and Peter were growing up. They would soon have

their secrets--their interests which she could not share. They would

marry and enter her house as visitors. She pictured all that; the

spreading of wings had commenced.

When Peter had been a little boy at Sandport, certain lines had driven

the tears into her eyes with their wistful yearning. They were often on

her lips now:

“Oh, to come home once more, when the dusk is falling,

To see the nursery lighted and the children's table spread;

'Mother, mother, mother!' the eager voices calling,

'The baby was so sleepy that she had to go to bed.'”

Already the inexorable law of change had taken her babies from her, and

soon----. There would come a day when the rooms would be empty; her

home would become again what it was before she had entered it--merely a

house.

When Peter laughed at her tenderly, attempting to coax her into braver

thoughts, she clung to him, searching his face to discover the odd

little boy who had asked such curious questions. For his sake she would

smile through her tears, saying, “I'm just a silly woman, getting

old, Peter. Don't think that I grudge you anything. I don't, I don't,

only--only it's the first spreading of wings--the struggling out of the

nest.”

It was true--truer than she fancied; there was Cherry.

However late he worked in those last days, however noiseless he made his

feet upon the stairs, she heard him. Creeping from her room, she would

stand white-robed beside his bed, stoop above his face on the pillow and

tuck him up warmly. It wouldn't be for much longer--he was almost a man.

And Billy--he tried to laugh her out of a sentiment which he fought down

in himself. Manlike, he disguised his feelings. He took so much interest

in the preparations, that it might have been he, instead of Peter,

who was going up to Oxford. By day he pretended to be cheerful; but at

night, when she lay down beside him, after her excursions to Peter's

bedroom, he would take her in his arms, whispering the old endearments,

“Golden little Nan,” and “Princess Pepperminta,” just to let her

understand that, whoever went from her, he would be left.

One October afternoon Mr. Grace, the herald of Topbury's great

occasions, drew up against the pavement. Boxes were carried out. Cat's

Meat shuffled away into the distance. At the end of the Terrace, Peter

leant from the window; they were still there, waving from the steps.

He had begged them not to come to the station; he knew they would break

down. He turned the corner--his flight had begun in earnest. While

familiar sights lasted, he was conscious not of adventure, but

depression. Yes, that was the house from the dusk of whose garden a hand

had stretched out to grasp him. Strange, and this was the same Christmas

cab! Inanimate things hadn't changed; it was he who had altered.

Then came the excitement of Paddington--undergrads with golf-bags slung

across their shoulders; others who were spectacled and looked learned;

still others with ties of contrasting hues and secret significance--a

crowd superbly young and enthusiastic, which did its best to appear

blasé. And then the rush of the train, the exalted sense of opportunity,

the overwhelming consciousness of manhood, and that first night of

romantic speculation within the gray walls of Calvary College! Bells,

hanging so high and sounding so mellow that they seemed to swing from

clouds, struck out the hours. His mother had heard them, those same

bells, in her girlhood. By craning out, he could see the window from

which Jehane had caught first sight of his father and had called Nan's

attention. He was beginning his journey at the spot where his parents'

journey, halfway over, had commenced. Would he and Cherry tell their

children stories of where and how they had met? He and Cherry! It was of

her that he was thinking when Harry Arran entered and found him seated

among his partly opened boxes.

“Tried to reach you all summer,” Peter said.

Harry was taking stock of the room's contents. “I say, old boy, you've

brought no end of furniture. You'll be quite a swell.---- What's that?

Tried to reach us with letters, did you? We never got one of 'em. Never

knew our next address ourselves. Just went wandering, you know. My

brother's such an erratic chap.”

Peter turned away, so that his face would not be seen, and spoke in an

offhand manner. “Cherry with you?”

The question tickled Harry. He straddled his legs and watched his

friend's back, tilting his head toward his shoulder with a magpie

expression of impertinent knowledge. “Cherry with us! No, jolly fear.

She's a nice kid and all that, but we weren't out for love-affairs.

Fact is, I was trying to make that silly ass brother of mine forget one

woman. We carried knapsacks and went almost in rags. But what made you

ask?”

“I thought she was. The golden woman said----.”

Harry interrupted. “Oh, so you've been seeing _her!_” He pronounced

_her_ with his old hostility. “I wouldn't see too much of her.”

Peter smiled quietly. How unjust Harry had always been to his brother's

women friends! He was still the mouth-organ boy, only a little too old

now to climb trees to display his jealousy. Did he think that he could

protect the Faun Man forever from marrying? Didn't it ever enter his

head that he might fall in love himself? And yet Peter sympathized with

Harry, for he had the same feelings with regard to Kay. He would hate

any man who tried to win her. That was a long way off--she was only

thirteen at present. His thoughts came back to Harry. “So, if you were

me, you wouldn't see too much of her! Why not? I've been feeling--well,

rather sorry for her.”

“You have, have you?” Harry laughed tolerantly. “Sorry for her! Pooh!

People who begin by feeling sorry for Eve end by being sorry for

themselves. She always starts her affairs like that, by getting

people sorry for her. Don't you know what's the matter with her? She's

selfish--a lap-dog kind of woman, born to be petted, but of no use

whatever in the world. She wants everyone to love her, and gives nothing

in return. She doesn't play the game, Peter; she expects to have a man

always toddling after her, but she won't marry him because----. I don't

know; I suppose it would disturb her to have children.” Harry paused,

waiting for Peter to argue with him. When his remarks were met without

challenge, he continued, “She doesn't mean any harm--her sort never

does; but she's a jolly sight more dangerous than if she were immoral.

She gambles like an expert as long as luck's with her; the moment she

loses, she pretends to be a little child who doesn't understand the

rules. So she wins all the time and never pays back. She's kept my

brother feverish for years, loving him, and then, when it comes to

the point, not knowing whether she really loves him. Gives her a nice

comfortable sense, when anything goes wrong with her investments, to

feel that he's always in the background. I'm sick of it. She's a ship

that's always setting sail for new lands and never coming to anchor.

Lorie's too fine a chap to be kept dawdling his life away by a vain

woman. Some day she won't be quite so pretty--she dreads that already;

it's part of her shallowness. Then she'll run to cover, if any man'll

have her.---- You don't believe me. Suppose you think every woman's wild

to be married?”

“I don't think that.” In this particular Peter flattered himself that he

had had more experience than Harry.

Harry took him up shrewdly. “If you don't think it, you wish you did.

You'll see, if you live long enough. There are heaps of well-bred

women like Eve, with the greed of chorus-girls and the morals of

refrigerators. And here's something else for your protection--Eve can't

bear to see any woman loved except herself. Lorie knows all this, and

still he's infatuated--plays Dante to her Beatrice. She isn't worth

it. She tells him she isn't worth it; that makes him think she's noble.

She--she sucks men's souls out for the fun of doing it when she isn't

thirsty, and flings them in the gutter like squeezed oranges.”

Peter's case was so nearly similar to the Faun Man's that he couldn't

bear this conversation. It was as though Harry was describing and

accusing Cherry. _She sucks men's souls out and flings them in the

gutter like squeezed oranges_. And Cherry hadn't been thirsty either;

she had pretended that she hadn't wanted to do it.

“But Cherry,” he said, “do you know where she is and anything about

her?”

Harry looked at him squarely, a little pityingly. He sat down and

crossed his legs. “Yes. We took her abroad with us and dropped her at

the convent-school. She's---- I don't know. She's got a queer streak in

her--she's an exotic.” And then, “I suppose you know that she thinks

she's in love with Lorie?”

Peter bit his lip; he drew his knee up with his hands clasped about it.

“I know that. And the Faun Man, does he care for her?”

Harry laughed. “On that score you don't need to be jealous. He wishes

she wasn't such a little donkey. He's bored by it. It complicates

matters most frightfully; he's her guardian. We had a most awful job in

shaking her. That's why we left her at the convent. Had a rotten scene

in Paris--tears and hysterics. She'd planned to make a third in our

party. We weren't on for it, you can bet your hat.”

Peter grew impatient at Harry's way of talking. He spoke shortly. “So

you know where she is? You can give me her address?”

“I can't.” The grin of the mouth-organ boy, poking fun at everything,

accompanied the refusal. “The kid made us promise not to tell you. She

has her own idea of playing fair. Wish Eve had.” He yawned. “By George,

time I was off to bed. I've got to be up bright and early to-morrow to

call on Mr. Thing--the tutor-bird.”

Left alone in the stillness, Peter did not stir. In the street, below

his window, footsteps echoed at rare intervals. Now and then, as

men parted in the quadrangle, laughter burst on the night and voices

shouted. Then, again, he heard the bells, high up and spectral, telling

him that time was passing. He thought about Harry, envying him the

cavalier cloak of indifference behind which he hid his sensitiveness. He

thought about the Faun Man, with his fine faculty for loving wasted all

these years by an undecided woman. And he thought of Eve and how she had

misled him, letting him believe that the Faun Man had deserted her. Why

had she done it? And then he thought of Cherry, poor little Cherry, who

was keeping out of his way that she might play fair.

But he would make her love him. He would work day and night to make

himself splendid. He was nothing at present--had nothing to offer her.

But, one day----. And so, with the invincible optimism of youth, he

pulled himself together. He was a knight riding out on a quest, wearing

his lady's badge to bring her honor.

Had he cared, he might have pictured to himself the other adventurers

he had known, who had ridden out in the same brave belief that life was

romantic: Jehane, who had looked from the window across the street and

had beckoned with her eyes, only to give a husband to another woman;

Ocky Waffles, who had come to her as the feeble substitute for the

nobility she had coveted; his mother and father for whom, despite its

kindness, life had proved a pedestrian affair. But, on his first night

in this city of dreamers, he saw, stretching away below him, wide

landscapes of illusion. There was so much to do, so much to experience,

so much to dare. The spreading of wings had brought him to a crag from

which he viewed, not the catastrophe of sunsets, but the riot of

morning boiling up against cloud-precipices and pouring ensaffroned

and clamorous across the world. He saw only the glory of its challenge,

nothing of its threat.

In the weeks that followed his belief in the marvelousness of mere

living was quickened. The head and shoulders of the marvel were that,

for the first time, he was lord of his own existence. Like God, he could

create himself. Mr. Thing, the tutor-bird, advised him, in a sneering

tone of voice, that he had a chance of a first in Honor Mods. Mr. Thing

had become embittered by past experience with other brilliant students.

“If you don't take to drink and to yowling like a cat of nights, you may

do it, Mr. Barrington. But I expect you'll run wild like the rest.”

Peter was claimed by Roy Hardcastle, the captain of the boats. His

breadth and height, and slightness of hip marked him as a potential

oarsman. Every afternoon he ran down through the meadows to the barges,

there to be tubbed and sworn at by the coaches. He rowed in the Junior

Fours as stroke and won his race. He was chosen as stroke for the

Toggers--after that his career as an athlete was settled. Calvary men

began to prophesy a rowing future for him. He noticed that men, not

of his own college, paused on the bank to watch his style as his eight

swung by.

The keenness of Oxford life awoke him to his powers; the contempt in

which slackers were held spurred him forward. He had never been called

upon to test his personality in competition with others. The experience

took him out of himself, but beneath externals he remained the same

simple-hearted, compassionate idealist. He was different from other men,

and other men knew it. Perhaps it was that he was uncivilized, as

the golden woman had told him--uncivilized in the sense of being

unsophisticated and intense. Perhaps it was that his standards were

pitched high, and that he was chivalrous in his attitude of cleanness

toward himself. At all events, it never entered his head that the sowing

of wild oats was a legitimate employment. Men stopped talking about

certain adventures when he was present.

Even Mr. Thing, the tutor-bird, felt it--this subtle atmosphere of

robust innocence, which Peter carried about with him, an innocence which

bore no resemblance to the lily-white priggishness of a Sir Galahad.

Mr. Thing was rather surprised; he had always felt virtue in a man to be

offensive and had compared it to a prim little maid attired for a party,

refusing to romp with bolder children for fear she should spoil her

dress.

Mr. Thing was a don of the old school, a two-bottle man; not

infrequently about midnight he was intoxicated. It was said that under

the influence of wine his scholarship was ripest. He would recite

rolling speeches from Thucydides in the language of Athens, working

himself up into fervor and tears, declaiming in a voice which trembled

with humanity and trumpeted with valor. But when, after drinking to

excess, he met Peter beneath the stars in the shadowy quads, he

seemed conscious that an excuse was necessary. He invented a lie, this

gray-haired scholar, beneath which to hide his shame from clear-eyed

youth. It was reported that he was getting ready for the Judgment Day,

that he might be letter-perfect in his apology to his maker.

“Been to the fun'ral of a dear fr'end, Mr. Barrington--a very dear

fr'end. Been taking the sharp edge off my grief. You haven't losht a

dear fr'end--not so dear as I have. So don't you do it.”

He showed drunken concern lest Peter should do it, and had to be

reassured many times. At last, shaking his head sceptically, he would

permit Peter to pilot him to his room. The boy's erectness hurt him; it

accused him. It caused him to look back and remember another lad, who,

beyond the waste of misspent years, had been not unlike him. One night,

made carelessly sentimental by an extra bottle, he told the truth.

“Wasn't always like this, Mr. Barrington. I was something like you--only

a little reckless. She said she'd wait for me, and then----. So that's

why. Now you know it.”

Cakes and ale in the imagination of young Oxford are usually associated

with licence. To be abstemious is to be unpopular and entails persistent

ragging. Peter believed whole-heartedly in the consumption of cakes and

ale, so long as it wasn't carried to the point of gluttony. He was eager

to taste life, and took part in all the fun that was going; only always

at the back of his mind lay the thought of Cherry--he must make himself

fine for her, so as to be worthy.

He got into frequent adventurous scrapes. He was present at the Empire

with Harry when a young lady, whose stockings were the most conspicuous

part of her clothing, came to the footlights and sang a song, each verse

of which ended with the question,

“Will you risk?

I'd risk it.

Wouldn't you?”

Harry couldn't bear that she should go away unanswered. The courtesy

of the 'Varsity was jeopardized. Moreover, she was pretty and only

the musicians separated him from the stage. The theme of the song was

kissing. He leapt the orchestra-rail, splashed his foot on the key-board

of the piano, seized her hand and hauled himself up beside her,

shouting, “Yes, I'll risk it.”

She hadn't intended her invitation to be taken so seriously. With

becoming modesty she broke away from him, just as he was about to prove

his assertion that he'd risk it. Harry followed her, in one wing and

out the other, to and fro across the stage. The theatre rose yelling,

watching this amorous game of hide-and-seek. Of a sudden the cry,

“Proggins! Proggins!” went up. The Proctor and his bulldogs entered.

Harry jumped from the stage into his seat. Some considerate person

turned out the lights and there was a rush of undergrads for the exits.

Peter and Harry burst into the night with the Proctor's bulldogs

close behind them. Then came the long run; the brilliant plan,

Peter's invention, that they should escape over walls instead of by

thoroughfares; the clambering and climbing, the dashes across gardens

and the final escape into freedom through the house of a startled old

gentleman who threw his slipper after them--but not for luck.

Harry, as a rule, was the initiator of their escapades; Peter championed

them to a finish gamely. The mouth-organ boy walked through the world

with a roving eye, seeking always new lands of innocent adventure.

When he had almost come to shipwreck on some wild coast of whimsical

absurdity, it was Peter who hurried to his rescue. The song which he had

sung in the tree-tops of Friday Lane had been a prophecy. He still sang

it in the austere city of gray walls and spires. It was a pæan of high

spirits and irrepressible youth:

“I've been shipwrecked off Patagonia,

Home and Colonia,

Antipodonia;

I've shot cannibals,

Funny-looking animals,

Top-knot coons;

I've bought diamonds twenty a penny there,

I've been somewhere, nowhere, anywhere--

And I'm the wise, wise man of the wide, wide world.”

When he sang it, he and Peter would look at one another, with eyes

laughing, and would talk of Kay--of how they had commenced their

friendship by fighting over her, and of how--of so many things that were

kind and golden, like memories of spring days when the wind is blowing.

Little Kay, with her delicate face and shining hair, she stood a white

flower in the shadow-wood of remembrance--a narcissus-shrine to which

their steps were continually returning. So, while undergraduates of

the Roy Hardcastle type shouted themselves hoarse on Saturday nights at

college wine-clubs, making a rowdy effort to be men, Peter and Harry,

without effort, remained boys and sat concocting fairy-tale letters to

a little girl at Topbury. They refused to credit the evidence of their

eyes, that she was growing up. They signed their letters jointly,

filling them with ridiculous tenderness. She received them every Monday

morning at breakfast, and was made to feel that she was still a sharer

in their lives. Because Cherry postponed her coming, Peter had to have

some outlet for his affection. In a curious way he made his little

sister the temporary substitute for the girl he loved. It did not occur

to him to inquire what motives prompted Harry's epistolary philanthropy.

Jehane did not at once fulfil her promise to send her girls to stay with

Professor Usk. On his return home for Christmas Peter discovered

the reason. Riska was in the throes of her first romance. At Topbury

shoulders were shrugged. Of course girls of fifteen did have their

flirtations, but it was only among the lower-classes that they were

openly acknowledged and dignified into love-affairs. Jehane, however,

took the matter seriously. She explained why. The young fellow was

a good catch and four years Riska's senior; he was the son of a

speculative builder who was invading Southgate with an army of

jerry-built villas. The story of how Riska had effected the young man's

capture proved that Jehane's training had been efficient. Riska had

shown a fine faculty for seizing her strategic opportunity. Barrington's

comment when he heard it was brief and to the point, “Ought to

be spanked. If she grows up this way, she'll make her face the

dumping-ground for anybody's kisses.”

That was just it; in her fear lest her girls should never marry, Jehane

had taught Riska, who was more apt a pupil than Glory, to welcome

any comer without fastidiousness. There was nothing heaven-sent about

marriage; it was a lucky-bag, into which you thrust your hand and

grabbed; or, to employ her old parable, maidenhood was a raft from which

girls who were wise escaped at the first opportunity, in cockle-boats,

on boards and even by swimming--the great object was to reach the land

of matrimony before the distance between the shore and the raft had

lengthened. Possibly one might get wet in the effort. One couldn't

be too nice over an affair so desperate. It was anything to attain a

marriage-song.

This was how Riska's first excursion from the raft occurred. She had

been out riding her bicycle and a hat had blown by her. The hat must

belong to a head. She espied the head and liked it; therefore she chased

the hat. Having caught it, she waited for the owner to come up. She

accepted his thanks and indulged in a few minutes' conversation. Next

day, riding along the same road at the same hour, she had encountered

the owner of the hat again. After that, good-luck and liking had taken

a hand in bringing them together. Soon he had been invited to tea at the

cottage. Jehane had made things easy for him. She had learnt that his

father was a self-made, ambitious man, who wore side-whiskers and hoped

to die a baronet.

“The Governor,” the boy had told her, “wants me to marry well.” There

lay the rub. Would his father consider Riska good enough? The name of

the young fellow was Bonaparte Triggers.

Jehane felt that it was absolutely necessary that young Triggers should

be socially impressed. She persuaded Barrington to allow Riska to bring

her suitor to Topbury. Before he came, she issued a careful warning

that no mention was to be made of Ocky Waffles. Closely questioned, she

admitted that, without deliberately lying, she had let the boy suppose

that she was a widow.

“But, if he's seriously in love with Riska, you'll have to tell him,”

Barrington objected.

Jehane's face clouded. “That's my affair. Who'd marry the daughter of a

convict? It's easy for you to talk.”

“Then you mean that----? Look here, I'm not criticizing; but don't

you think that this'll look like deception? Supposing he married Riska

without knowing, he'd be bound to find out after. Let Riska tell him.

If he's the right kind of a chap, he'll love her all the more for her

honesty.”

Jehane lost her temper as far as she dared. “You've always been against

me--always. Of course, if you're ashamed of us, and don't want Riska to

bring him----.”

There was no arguing along these lines. Barrington gave his reluctant

consent.

Riska came, bringing with her Bonaparte Triggers, a flashy youth with

a cockney thinness of accent. The purpose of his visit was to be

impressed; he made it clear from the start that he had come to impress.

He did not belong to a world of culture and felt, as Ocky Waffles

had felt before him, that an effort was being made to rob him of

his self-possession. He resisted the effort by smoking innumerable

cigarettes, and tried to parade his own paces by accompanying himself

on the piano while he sang music-hall ditties of the latest

hug-me-quick-and-not-too-delicately order. His visit was not a success.

He was jerry-built, like his father's villas.

After he had departed. Nan had the nervous desire to fling up all

the windows and to go through the house with a duster. It wasn't

snobbishness on her part, but she was unaccustomed to see fingers

squeezed and kisses exchanged in public. Barrington found her in the

drawing-room and slipped his hand into hers. “It's as I thought; Riska's

not in love with him. Her mother's trained her to believe that the first

man to come should be the first man accepted. And, d'you know, Nan----?”

“What, Billy?”

“Didn't you notice anything? She's pretty and she's sweet, because she's

young; but already she's getting hard and calculating like Jehane. I'm

afraid for her--she's more passion than her mother ever had. She's ripe

fruit, and not sixteen yet; if she isn't plucked, she'll fall to the

ground.---- It's a horrible thing to say of a young girl.”

And then, “I don't like him; but I hope he marries her.”

He didn't marry her; Peter and Glory were blamed for that. Without

telling anyone, they arranged to give Ocky a Christmas treat. What form

the treat was to take caused many secret discussions. They had to

be secret--all Glory's dealings with her stepfather were secret; the

mention of his name was forbidden by her mother.

“How about a theatre?” Peter suggested.

Glory shook her quiet head. “He's not very intellectual.”

“Well, a pantomime?”

Glory nodded. “I believe he'd like that.”

So once again she set out alone with her tall cousin on the top of a

bus. For a few brief hours he was to be hers entirely. In anticipating

the adventure, she had racked her brains to think of entertaining

subjects to talk about. She was terribly afraid she would bore him; she

believed him to be so extraordinarily clever. She needn't have worried.

He was a big boy on that winter's afternoon and not a man. Directly they

were out of sight of the Terrace, he took her arm.

“But Peter!” she protested, her face flushing.

“Don't be a little silly,” he told her; “you'll slip on the snow and

fall down.------ I say, Glory, you do look ripping. How you have got

yourself up! You've put on everything except the parlor sofa.”

At Topbury Corner he wanted to take a hansom, but she insisted on a bus.

“No, really. I prefer it. I've a reason--yes. But I wouldn't tell you

what it is for worlds.”

Her reason was that she was afraid to be left alone with him lest she

should grow self-conscious. It was easier to talk in crowds. And how

they did talk! Her little prepared speeches, her scraps of nervously

gathered information were all forgotten. They were two children

sailing through a Christmas world on a schooner of the London streets.

House-tops were white with snow; shops gay with decorations. In the

murky grayness of the sky a derelict sun wallowed, like a ship on fire.

It was a happy day; their eyes were bright to find something on every

hand to laugh about. Now it was a cutler's window, merry with mistletoe

and holly, all a-gleam with gnashing knives and razors, across which

was pasted the legend, “Remember the Loved Ones at Home.” Now it was an

undertaker's, in which stood a placard:

DO IT NOW JOIN MY COFFIN CLUB

ANYONE CAN LIVE

MAKE SURE OF GETTING

BURIED A TACTFUL CHRISTMAS PRESENT

GIVE A YEAR'S SUBSCRIPTION

TO A FRIEND

Glory grew out of her shyness; she snuggled her chin against her

squirrel muff, laughing and chatting, saying things which surprised

herself. Peter kept glancing at her side-long. She was tender-looking.

Yes, she was like Kay. He'd noticed that before. He noticed her for a

day, and then forgot her for months. It had always been like that.

Was it his fault? She was like a snow-drop--she had a knack of hiding

herself.

They got off at Wardour Street, tunneling into dingy alleys from which

Italy watches strangers with sad brown eyes, dreaming of vineyards and

sun-baked towns.

Glory twitched his arm. “Down here. It's a short cut.”

“Hulloa! You don't mean to say that you've been here by yourself?”

She looked guilty; then smiled up from beneath her lashes. She had

nothing to fear from Peter. “Often, since you first brought me. Once a

week, at least; but don't tell mother. He's got no one to love except

Mr. Widow. I--I'm sorry for him.”

Mr. Widow certainly wasn't much to love. The secondhand shop had a

cheerless aspect. On this winter's day the door stood open; Mr. Widow

held that it was tempting to customers. Ocky crouched over a coke-stove,

rubbing his hands. The moment Glory entered, she hurried toward him,

putting her arms about his neck. His face lit up. “Why, it's Glory!

Little Glory!” He ran his hands over her. “How beautiful! But you

oughtn't to come. The Duchess'll find out. Oh yes, she will. She always

finds out. Then, there'll be a row.”

He caught sight of Peter. “Ha! Young Oxford to see his poor old uncle!

I went to Oxford once. Humph! Got married there. A bad day's work! A bad

day's work!”

They told him their plans. He wanted to ask Mr. Widow's permission--Mr.

Widow didn't approve of theatres. “Let him go hang,” Peter said.

“That's all very well.” Ocky shook his head thoughtfully. “All very

well! But he may let me go hang one fine morning. What then?”

It was quite evident that Ocky was losing his pluck. He would have

forgotten his spats and would have forgotten to twirl his mustaches, if

Glory hadn't been at hand to make him jaunty.

They popped him into a hansom and whirled him off to dinner at the

Trocadero. He sat between them, holding Glory's hand and blinking at the

glaring shops; he was more accustomed to darkness. At the entrance to

the restaurant he clutched at Peter, “I don't belong here, old chap.”

“Nonsense. Glory and I----”

All through dinner Peter told his uncle what he and Glory were going to

do for him. By-and-bye he, Peter, would have money. When he had money,

he would buy a little house in the country. Ocky should live there with

Glory, and he, Peter, between the intervals of making more money, would

run down and visit them. It seemed almost true, almost possible, in

that brilliant room where the corks flew out of bottles and the music

clashed. It almost seemed that the world was generous--that it would

give him another chance. He gazed from the eager boy, so keen to

convince him of happiness, to the flower-face of his stepdaughter, which

nodded and nodded, insisting, “Yes. Yes. Yes,” to Peter's optimism.

He asked if he might have whisky. When he got it, he tried to deceive

himself and others as to the quantity he was drinking.

“God bless my soul! I've made my whisky too strong.” Then he would

dilute it. “God bless my soul! I've made my whisky too weak.” The

alcohol whipped up his courage. Of course there were good times coming.

Peter would see to it; he never promised anything that he didn't

accomplish. Then, again he caught sight of the two young faces--but what

had Peter to do with Glory?

They stepped into another hansom. Piccadilly Circus was a blazing jewel.

Streets were gun-metal, washed with liquid gold. People were silver

flowers. Peter would do it.

The curtain went up. He was a child again. He laughed at everything. How

long was it since he had laughed? He kept nudging his companions, afraid

lest they should miss the jokes. They were just the kind of jokes he

used to make--Mr. Widow was his only audience now. You couldn't expect

a murderer to be a humorist--if he were a humorist he wouldn't be a

murderer.

He had laughed rather louder than usual. Someone turned round in the row

just in front. A girl! He looked more closely. She was staring at him.

Her companion followed her eyes, seemed surprised, and nodded to Peter

and Glory. All through the evening the strange man kept turning round

stealthily--the girl, without seeming to do so, was trying to prevent

him.

Next day, when Glory returned from Topbury to Southgate, Riska met her

with clenched hands.

“Now you've done it.”

“Done what?”

“Lost him for me. He's begun to suspect. He wants to know who was that

shabby man with you and Peter. Of course I daren't tell him. He says I

look like him. You stupid! And last night I'm sure he was going to have

proposed to me.--And Ocky isn't even your father.”

It was all too true; Bonaparte Triggers had done with Riska. He sent

her a formal letter, breaking off everything. “My father,” he wrote,

“happens to know Lawyer Wagstaff, your father's old employer. At first

I wouldn't believe that you were his daughter. I wouldn't have minded,

anyhow; I was in love with you. But you and your mother lied to me about

it. I could never trust you after that. The moment I saw that man with

your cousin and Glory I knew the truth.”

So ended Riska's first attempt to plunge from the raft. She clambered

back, a little damp, but with her heart intact. Glory was blamed for

the catastrophe; in future she had to be more careful in meeting Ocky.

Barrington, after a stormy interview with Jehane in which Peter was

accused, shook his head, “Riska! Humph! Poor kiddy, I'm sorry. She's

ripe fruit, Peter. Mark my words; if she isn't plucked, she'll fall to

the ground.”