Once Aboard the Lugger Part 26

"Oh dear, oh dear," said he; hobbled away at a speed dangerous to his life and limbs to seek protection of a park-keeper.

The sobs grew longer, less hysterical: changed into long "ohs" of misery; died away.

"There, there," said George, patting, dabbing. "There, there."

With a final frantic sniff she recovered her self-possession.

"I'm a little f--fool," said she.

"I'm a brute," said George.

The bitter knowledge nerved each to better efforts. Calm reigned.

Mary said, "Now you must listen and believe, dear."

"Let me have your hand, then."

She gave it with a little confiding, snuggling movement, and she continued: "You must believe, because I have thought it all out, whereas to you it is new. If I were a proper-spirited girl"--she rebuked his negation with a gesture--"if I were a proper-spirited girl I know I should leave Mrs. Chater at once--walk out and not care what I might suffer rather than stay where I had been insulted. Girls in books would do it. Oh, Georgie, this isn't books. This is real. I have been through it, and I would die sooner than face it again. You know--I have told you--what it is like being alone in cheap lodgings in London. Afraid of people, dear. Afraid of men, afraid of women. I couldn't, could not go through it again. And after all-don't you see?

--if Mrs. Chater will let me stay, what have I to mind? I shall be better off than before, if anything. Mrs. Chater has always been-- well, sharp. She may be a little worse--there's nothing in that. But this Bob Chater, since he came, has been the worst part of it. And as things are now, his mother watchful and he--what shall I say? angry, ashamed--why, he will pay no further attention to me. Come, am I not right? Isn't it best?--if only she will let me stay."

"I don't like it," George said. "I don't like it."

"Dearest, nor I. But we can't, can't have what we like, and this will be the best of the nasty things. For so short a time, too. I'm quite bright about it. Am I not? Look at me."

George looked. Then he said, "All right, old girl."

She clapped her hands. "Only one thing more. You mustn't seek out--you mustn't touch the detestable Bob."

With the gloom of one relinquis.h.i.+ng life's greatest prize George said, "I suppose I mustn't." He added, "I tell you what, though. You mustn't interfere with this. I'll save it up for him. The day I take you out and marry you I'll pull him out--and pay him."

They parted upon the promises that Mary would write that evening to tell him of the result of her interview with Mrs. Chater, and that, in the especial circ.u.mstances, he might come to see her in the Park for just two minutes on Monday morning.

And each went home, thinking, not of that portending interview with Mrs. Chater, but upon the love they had declared.

CHAPTER IV.

Events And Sentiment Mixed In A Letter.

I.

At ten o'clock that night Mary took up her pen.

"First, my dear, to tell you that it is all right. I may stay. I had lunch with the children in the nursery, and just as we had finished a maid came to say that Mrs. Chater would see me in the study. Down I crawled, wis.h.i.+ng that I was the heroine of a novel who would have pa.s.sed firmly down the stairs and into the room, 'pale, but calm and serene.' Oh! I was pale enough, I feel sure. But as to serene!--my heart was flapping about just like a tin ventilator in a wind, and I was jumpy all over. You see what a coward am I.

"Mrs. Chater had grown since last I saw her. Of that I am convinced.

She sat, enormous, thunder-browed, bolt upright in a straight chair. I stood and quivered. Books are all wrong, dear. In books the consciousness of virtue gives one complete self-possession in the face of any accusation, however terrible. In books it is the accuser of the innocent who is ill at ease. Oh, don't believe it! Mrs. Chater had the self-possession, I had the jim-jams.

"'I have not seen you since last night,' she said.

"I gave a kind of terrified little squeak. I had no words.

"'Your version of what happened I do not wish to hear,' she went on.

"This relieved me, because for the life of me I could not have told her had she wished to hear it. So I gave another little mouse-squeak.

"'My son has told me.' Her voice was like a deep bell. 'How you can reconcile your conduct with the treatment that you have received at my hands, here beneath my roof'--she was very dramatic at this point--'I do not know.'

"Nor did I--but not in the way she meant. I was thinking how ign.o.ble was my meek att.i.tude in light of what had happened. But you don't know what it was like, facing that woman and dreading the worse fate of being turned out into this awful London again. Another wretched little squeak slipped out of me, and she went on.

"'My boy,' said she, 'has implored me to overlook this matter. My boy has declared there were faults on both sides' (!!!!). 'If I acted rightly as a mother, what would I do?'

"I didn't tell her, Georgie. Could I tell her that if she acted rightly as a mother she would box her boy's fat ears until his nose bled? I couldn't. I squeaked instead.

"'If I acted rightly as a mother,' said she, 'I would send you away.

I am not going to.'

"I squeaked.

"'I choose to believe that your behaviour in this matter was a slip. I believe the episode will be a lesson to you. That is all. Go.' I goed."

II.

George, when he had read thus far, was broadly grinning. Obviously Mrs. Chater was not such a bad sort after all. If--as no doubt--she implicitly believed her son's version of the incident, then her att.i.tude towards Mary was, on the whole, not so bad.

But his Mary, when she had written thus far, laid down her pen, put her pretty head upon the paper and wept.

"Oh, my dear!" she choked. "There, that will make you think it was all right. You shall never know--never--what really happened. Oh, Georgie, Georgie, come very quick and take me away! How can I go on living with these beasts? Oh, Georgie, be quick, be quick!"

Then this silly Mary with handkerchief, with india-rubber, and with pen-knife erased a stain of grief that had fallen upon her pretty story; sniffed back her tears; lifted again her pen.

Now she wrote in an eager scrawl; nib flying. Had her George not been so very ordinary a young man he must have perceived the difference between that first portion so neatly penned--parti-coloured words showing where the ink had dried while the poor little brain puzzled and planned at every syllable--and this where emotion sped the thoughts.

III.

"So that's all right" (she wrote), "and now we've only got to wait, a few, few weeks. Dearest, will they fly or will they drag? What does love do to time, I wonder--whip or brake?--speed or pull? Georgie mine, I feel I don't care. If the days fly I shall be riding in them-- galloping to you, wind in the face; shouting them on; standing up all flushed with the swing and the rush of it; waving to the people we go thundering past and gazing along the road where soon I will see you-- nearer and nearer and nearer.

"And if the days creep? Well, at first, after that picture, the thought seems melancholy, unbearable. But that is wrong. The realisation will not be unbearable. If they creep, why, then I shall lie in them, very comfortable, very happy; dreaming of you, seeing you, speaking with you, touching you. Yes, touching you. For, my dear, you are here in the room with me as I write. I look up just to my right, and there you are, Georgie mine; sitting on the end of my bed, smiling at me. You have not left me, my dear, since we parted on the seat this morning. Why, I cannot even write that it is only in imagination that I see you. For me it is not imagination. I do, do see you, Georgie mine. You are part of me, never to leave me.

"How new, how different, love makes life! Everything I do, everything I see, everything I hear has a new interest because it is something to share with you, something to save up and tell you. I am in trouble (you understand that I am not, shall never be again; this is only ill.u.s.tration--you must read it 'if I were in trouble'). I am in trouble, and you are sharing it with me, sympathising so that trouble is an unkind word for what is indeed but an opportunity acutely to feel the joy of loving and being loved. I am happy, and the happiness is a thousandfold increased because it comes to me warmed through you.