The Raft
His stand was suspiciously near Topbury Cock. But most cab-stands are
near to some public house. Peter had become his very dear friend and to
him Mr. Grace had opened his heart, denying all charges and imputing the
redness of his countenance to the severity of his calling and exposure
to the weather.
Mr. Grace was asleep on his box, his face stuffed deep in his collar,
the reins sagging from his swollen hands as if at any minute he might
drive off. When Peter spoke to him, he jumped himself together. “Keb,
sir. Right y'are, sir. H'I'm ready------ Well, I'm blessed! Strike me
blind, if it ain't the little master.”
Peter spread apart his legs, thrusting his hands deep in his
knickerbocker pockets. “I'm going to be sent away, Mr. Grace, and I'm
worried.”
Mr. Grace twisted his head, as if trying to lengthen his fat neck;
finding that impossible, he shifted his ponderous body nearer to the
edge of the seat and regarded Peter with his kind little pig's eyes.
“Worried, Mr. Peter? Well, I never!”
“I'm worried for Kay--I shan't be here to take care of her.” His voice
fluttered, then steadied itself as he lifted up his head and finished
bravely.
“We'll do that, Master Peter. You kin rely on an old friend.”
“Thank you, Mr. Grace; that was what I was going to ask you. If anyone
was to run away with her, they'd come to you to drive them. Wouldn't
they?”
“Not a shadder of a doubt. I drives all the best people in Topbury.”
“These wouldn't be 'zactly the best people--not if they were stealing
Kay.”
“All the better; the easier for me to spot 'em. Any par-tickler pusson
you suspeck of 'aving wicked designs upon 'er?”
“No one in particular, Mr. Grace. I was just frightened that I might
come home and find her gone.”
“What one might call a prickcaution?”
“I think that's what I meant.”
Mr. Grace's neck had become sore with looking down, so he tempted Peter
to come on the box. Puffing and blowing, he gave him a hand to help him.
When they were seated side by side, Mr. Grace looked fondly at the curly
head and straight little body. “I shall miss yer.”
“And I shall miss you. It's nice to be missed by somebody.”
“I shall miss yer 'cause you've been my prickcaution.”
“I?”
“Yas, you. You've been my prickcaution against my darter, Grace. She's
thought better o' me since we've been friends. And then----”
“I'm glad she's thought better of you. And then, what?”
“Well, you kep me informed as to 'er nights out, so I could h'escape.”
Peter regarded his friend in surprise. “Escape! But she wouldn't hurt
you.”
“Not h'intendin' to, Master Peter; not h'intendin' to. It's me feelin's
h'I refer to. You don't know darters. 'Ow should yer?--She thinks I
drink, like all the rest of 'em 'cept you. On 'er nights h'out she
brings 'er blooming Salvaition Band to this 'ere corner, h'aimin' at my
con-wersion. It's woundin' and 'umiliatin', Master Peter, for a pa as
don't need no conwersion. She makes me blush all through, and that makes
things wuss for a man wi' a red compleckshon. So yer see, you wuz my
prickcaution.”
“But you don't drink, Mr. Grace, do you?”
“No more 'an will wash me mouf out same as a 'orse. It's cruel 'ard to
be suspickted o' wot yer don't do.”
Peter looked miserably into the kind little pig's eyes. “I'm suspected
too. That's why I'm being sent away.”
“O' wot?”
“They call it 'magination.”
“Ah!”
“Why do you say _ah_ like that?”
“'Cause it's wuss'n drink--much wusser. But take no more'n will wash yer
mouf out and yer'll be awright. That's my principle in everythin'----
Master Peter, this makes us close friends, don't it? We're both
misonderstood. I----”
Just then a fare came up--an old lady, very full in the skirt, with
parcels dangling from her arms in every direction.
“Keb, keb, keb. Oh yes, my 'orse is wery safe. No, 'e don't bite and 'e
won't run away. Eh? Oh, I'm a wery good driver. Eh? Three to you, mum;
four bob to anyone else. Am I kind to 'im? I loves 'im like me own
darter.--See yer ter-morrow, Master Peter.--Gee, up there. Gee up, I
tell yer.”
Peter sought out Grace's policeman on his beat and made him the same
request with respect to Kay. Then he saw the Misses Jacobite and warned
them. Having done his best for her safety in his absence, he hurried
home.
The evening went all too fast--seven, eight, nine, ten. Every hour the
clock struck he felt something between a thrill and a shiver (a “shrill”
he called it) run up and down his spine. “_The end. The end. The end_,”
the clock seemed to be saying over and over, so that he wanted to get up
and shriek to stop it. Oh, that a little boy could seize the spokes and
stay the wheels of time!
“Tired, Peter? Hadn't you better----”
“Oh, not yet! Please, just another five minutes.”
“The dustman's come to my Peterkin's eyes,” his mother murmured.
He sat up, valiantly trying to look wakeful.
They had not the heart to cut short his respite--it was such an eternity
till Christmas. His head sank against his mother's knees and his eyes
closed tightly, tightly.
“Poor little fellow,” his father said.
“My darling little Peterkins”--that was his mother.
They carried him up to bed. On the half-landing, outside the nursery
door, they halted, remembering how their dreams had shaped his character
long before God had made his body.
Next morning, soon after breakfast, Mr. Grace drove up to the door as
he had promised. He drove all the best people of Topbury to their
battlefields of joy or sorrow. He was Topbury's herald of change, and
had learnt to control his emotions under the most trying circumstances.
But this morning, when the straight little figure came bravely down the
steps, something happened to Mr. Grace's eyes.
“Good-bye, darlingest mother. Good-bye, little kitten Kay. Good-bye.
Good-bye. Good-bye.”
“Jump in, old man,” his father said.
The door banged.
“Yer awright?” asked Mr. Grace.
“We're all right,” said Peter's father.
“Kum up.” Mr. Grace tugged savagely on the reins. “Kum up, carn't yer?”
He had to vent his feelings some way.
“Dammitall,” he growled as his “keb” crawled down the Terrace,
“dammitall. It'll taik more 'an this fare's worf to wash me mouf out
this time. It's got inter me froat. 'Ope I ain't goin' to blub. Dammit!”
CHAPTER XIV--PETER IN EGYPT
Miss Lydia Rufus was a prim person. Judging from her appearance one
would have said that in her case virtue was compulsory through lack
of opportunity. And yet she had had her “accident”--that was how she
referred to it in conversations with her Maker. No one in Sandport, save
herself and God, knew about it. It had happened ten years before Peter
became her pupil. The “accident” had been born anonymously, as one might
say, and had been brought up _incognito_. After the first unavoidable
preliminaries for which her presence was indispensable, she and the
“accident” had separated. She hardly ever dared to see it, for she
was alone in the world and had her living to earn--to do that one must
appear respectable.
For a woman of such bristling righteousness to have been so yielding as
to have had an “accident” was almost to her credit: it was in the nature
of a _tour de force_, like sword-swallowing, passing a camel through the
eye of a needle or any other form of occult acrobatics. It was a miracle
in heart-magic. And often in the night her heart went out in longing for
the child whom she dared not acknowledge. In her soul, which most people
regarded as an ice-house, a sanctuary was established with an altar of
mother-love, on which the candles of yearning were kept burning. This
chapter in her secret history would never have been mentioned had she
not made Peter the proxy of her “accident,” because he was ten and
because he was handsome.
It was lucky for Peter. Her usual attitude toward children was one of
condemnation. She expiated her own sin by uprooting the old Adam from
the hearts of her pupils. In her vigor and diligence she often uprooted
flowers. For the rest, she was a High Church woman, wore elastic-sided
boots and never permitted anything to be placed on a Bible. Her system
of education was one of moral straight-jackets.
Peter found himself in a cramped new house, in a raw new street, on the
outskirts of a jerry-built town. The wind seemed always to be blowing
and, in whichever direction he walked, he always came to sand. It was
as though this place had been planted in a desert that escape might
be impossible. Twenty other little boys, about his own age, were his
fellow-captives. When the school was marched out, walking two abreast,
with Miss Rufus sternly bringing up the tail of the procession, he would
meet other crocodiles of boys and girls, sedately parading, followed
by their warders. These public promenades were a part of the school's
advertisement; deportment was strictly observed. Sandport, as Peter knew
it, was a settlement for convict-children.
Miss Rufus soon formed the habit of keeping him to walk with her. At
first this caused him embarrassment. Little by little--how was it?--he
became aware that with him she was different. As the mood took her,
she spoke to him sharply, was merely forbidding, or was so kind that he
forgot the sourness of her corrugated countenance and the ugly color of
her hair. It was instinctive with him to treat all women as he did his
mother, with quaint chivalry and forethought. An attitude of gallantry
in a pupil was something new to Miss Rufus.
When they came to the miles of beach, all tawny like a golden mantle
spread out with a thread of silver in the far, far distance where the
sea washed its hem, instead of going to romp with the other boys he sat
himself down beside her.
“Go and play,” she told him.
“But you'd be alone, mam.”
“I was always alone before you came.”
“But I'm here now.”
He stood before her laughing, with his cap in his hand and the wind in
his hair. He showed no fear of her--that was not his way with strangers.
She gazed in his face--the gray eyes, the flushed cheeks, the red mouth.
This was not the sullen little slave of her normal experience. In spite
of herself, his bright intelligence and willingness to be loved stirred
something in her breast. If she had not cared what people had thought
of her--if she had been brave, her child might have been like that. Her
chapped, coarse-grained features grew wistful. Peter, looking at her, saw
only a disagreeable, faded woman with red hair.
“You don't like me, do you?”
“Us'ally I like everyone,” said Peter; “I don't know you yet.”
“I'm a cross old woman. If you don't mind losing your play, you can come
and sit beside me.”
And Peter sat down. It was dull for him. Across the sands boats on
wheels raced with spread sails, dashing toward the silver thread.
Ponies, which you could hire for a few pennies, were galloping up and
down. Across the flat beach, like a monstrous centipede, with trestles
for legs, the long pier crawled with its head in the sea and its tail
on land. And the pier had its own delirious excitements: on show, in the
casino at the end, was a troop of performing fleas who drove one another
in the tiniest of hansom-cabs. Peter knew because a lady-flea, named
Ethel, had been lost; a reward for her recovery was advertised all over
Sandport. Ten shillings were offered and hundreds of fleas had been
submitted for inspection. Peter had a wild dream that he might find
Ethel: with ten shillings he could escape to London from this Egypt of
exile in the sand.
Miss Rufus broke in on his reverie. She had been wondering how anyone
who had the right to Peter could be so foolish as to do without him.
“Why did they send you?”
“Send me to you?”
“Yes.”
“Because I made Kay cry about heaven.”