Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and others Part 20

Mrs. Moore heard of this event from her husband, who stopped at the Hall late that evening, and found Peter asleep, and Jean restless and headachy. He spent a long and almost silent hour pacing the rose terrace with Sidney in the cool dark. Late into the night the doctor and his wife lay wakeful, discussing affairs at the Hall.

After some hesitation, Mrs. Moore went the next day to find Jean. There was no sound as she approached the house, and she stepped timidly into the big hall, listening for voices. Presently she went softly to the dining-room, and stood in the doorway. The room was empty. But Mary's heart rose with a throb of thanksgiving. Peter's silver mug was in its place on the sideboard. She went swiftly to the pantry where Julia was cleaning the silver.

"Julia!" she said eagerly, softly, "I notice that the baby's cup is back. Did he give in?"

The maid, who had started at the interruption, shook her head gravely.

"No'm. Mrs. Carolan picked it up."

"MRS. Carolan?"

"Yes'm. She seemed quite wildlike this morning," went on the maid, with the simple freemasonry of troubled times, "and after Peter went off with Mrs. Butler, she--"

"Oh, he went off? Did his father let him go?" Mary's voice was full of relief. Mrs. Butler was Jean's cousin, a cheery matron who had taken a summer cottage at Broadsands, twenty miles away.

Julia's color rose; she looked uneasy.

"Mr. Carolan had to go to Barville quite early," she evaded uncomfortably, "and when Mrs. Butler asked could she take Peter, his mother said yes, she could."

"Thank you," Mary said pleasantly, but her heart was heavy. She went slowly upstairs to find Jean.

Peter's mother was lying in a darkened bedroom, and the face she turned to the door at Mary's entrance was shockingly white. They exchanged a long pressure of fingers.

"Headache, Jean, dear?"

"Oh, and heartache!" said Jean, with a pitiful smile. "Sid thrashed him yesterday!" she added, with suddenly trembling lips.

"I know." Mary sat down on the edge of the bed and patted Jean's hand.

"I've let him go with Alice," said Jean, defensively. "I had to!" She turned on her elbow, her voice rising. "Mary, I didn't say one word about the whipping, but now--now he threatens to hold him under the stable pump!" she finished, dropping back wearily against her pillows.

Mrs. Moore caught her breath.

"Ah!" They eyed each other sombrely.

"Mary, would YOU permit it?" demanded Mrs. Carolan, miserably.

"Jeanie, dearest, I don't know what I'd do!"

After a long silence, Mary slipped from the bedside and went noiselessly to the door and down the stairs, vague ideas of hot tea in mind. In the dining-room she was surprised to find Sidney, looking white and exhausted, and mixing himself something at the sideboard.

"I'm glad you're with Jean," he said directly. "I'm off to get the boy!

The car is to be brought round in a few minutes."

Mrs. Moore went to him, and laid her fingers on his arm.

"Sidney!" she protested sharply, "you must stop this--not for Peter; he's as naughty as he can be, like all other boys his age sometimes; but you don't want to kill Jean!" And, to her self-contempt, she began to cry.

"My dear girl," he said concernedly, "you mustn't take this matter too hard. Jean knows enough of our family history to realize--"

"All that is such nonsense!" she protested angrily. But she saw that he was not listening. He compared his watch with the big dining-room clock, and then, quite as mechanically picked Peter's mug from the group of bowls and flagons on the sideboard, studied the chasing absently for a moment, and, stooping, placed the mug just as it had fallen four days before. Mary watched as if fascinated.

A moment later she ran upstairs, her heart thundering with a sense of her own daring. She entered the dark bedroom hurriedly, and leaned over Jean.

"Jean! Jean, I hate to tell you! But Sidney's going to leave in a few minutes to bring Peter home. He's going after him."

She had to repeat the message before the meaning of it flashed into the heavy eyes so near her own. Then Jean gathered her filmy gown together, and ran to the door.

"He shall not!" she said, panting, and Mary heard her imperative call, "Sidney! Sidney!" as she ran downstairs. Then she heard both their voices.

With an intolerable consciousness of eavesdropping, Mrs. Moore slipped out of the house by the servants' quarters, and crossed the drying lawn at the back of the house, to gain the old grape arbor beyond. She sat there with burning cheeks and a fast-beating heart, and gazed with unseeing eyes down the valley.

Presently she heard the horn and the sc.r.a.ping start of the motor-car, and a moment later it swept into view on the road below. Sidney was its only occupant.

Mrs. Moore sat there thinking a long while. Dull clouds banked themselves in the west, and the rising breeze brought dead leaves about her feet.

She sat there half an hour--an hour. The afternoon was darkening toward dusk when she saw the motorcar again still a mile away. Even at this distance, Mary could see that Peter was sitting beside his father in the tonneau, and that the little figure was as erect and unyielding as the big one.

She rose to her feet and stood watching the car as it curved and turned on the winding road that led to the gates of Carolan Hall. Even when the gates were entered, both figures still faced straight ahead.

Suddenly Sidney leaned toward the chauffeur, and a moment later the car came to a full stop. Mary watched, mystified. Then Sidney got out, and stretched a hand to the boy to help him from his place. The simple little motion, all fatherly, brought the tears to her eyes. A moment later the driver wheeled the car about, to take it to the garage by the rear roadway, and Sidney and his son began to walk slowly toward the house, the child's hand still in his father's. Once or twice they stopped short, and once Mary saw Sidney point toward the house, and saw, from the turn of Peter's head, that his eyes were following his father's. Her heart rose with a wild, unreasoning hope.

When a dip in the road hid them, Mary turned toward the house, not knowing whether to go to Jean or to slip away through the wood. But the instant her eye fell on Madam Carolan's window she knew what had halted Sidney, and a wave of heartsickness made her breath come short.

Jean had taken her place there, to watch and wait. She was keeping the first vigil of her life. Mary could see how the slight figure drooped in the carved chair; she remembered, with a pang, the other patient, drooping figure that had stamped itself upon her childish memory so many years ago. The suffocating tears rose in her throat. A sudden sense of helplessness overwhelmed her.

Obviously, the watcher had not seen Sidney and Peter. Her head was resting on her hand, and her heavy eyes were fixed upon some sombre inner vision that was hers alone.

Mary crossed behind the house, and, as they came up through the shrubbery, met Sidney and his son at the side door. Sidney's face was tired, but radiant with a mysterious content. Peter looked white--awed.

He was clinging with both small brown hands to one of his father's firm, big ones.

"I know what you're going to say, Mary," said Sidney, in a tone curiously gentle, and with his oddly bright smile. "I know she's there.

But we're going to her now, and it's all right. Peter and I have been talking it over. I saw her there, Mary, and it was like a blow! SHE'S not the one who must suffer for all this. Peter and I are going to start all over again, and settle our troubles without hurting a woman; aren't we, Peter?"

The little boy nodded, with his eyes fixed on his father's.

"So the episode is closed, Mary," said Sidney, simply. "And the next time--if there is a next time!--Peter shall make his own decision, and abide by what it brings. The mug goes back to its place to-night, and--and we're going to tell mother that she never need watch and wait and worry about us again!"

They turned to the steps; but, as the boy ran ahead, Sidney came back to say in a lower tone:

"I--it may be weakness, Mary, but I can't have Jean doing what--what SHE did, you know! I tried to give the boy some idea, just now, of the responsibility of it. n.o.body spared my grandmother, but Jean SHALL be spared, if I never try to control him or save him from himself again!"

"Ah, Sidney," Mary said, "you have done more, in taking him into your confidence, than any amount of punis.h.i.+ng could do!"

"Well, we'll see!" he said, with a weary little shrug. "I must go to Jeanie now."

As he mounted the steps, Peter reappeared in the darkened doorway. The child looked like a little knight, with his tawny loose mop of hair and short tunic, and the uplifted look in his lovely eyes.

"Shall we go to her now, Dad?" said the little treble gallantly. And, as the boy came close to Sidney's side, Mary saw the silver mug glitter in his hand.