first impressions of the universe
§ 1
peter could not remember a time when joan was not in his world, and from the beginning it seemed to him that the chief fact was mary. “nanny,” you called her, or “mare-wi,” or you simply howled and she came. she was omnipresent; if she was not visible then she was just round the corner, by night or day. other figures were more intermittent, “daddy,” a large, loud, exciting, almost terrific thing; “mummy,” who was soft and made gentle noises but was, in comparison with mary, rather a fool about one’s bottle; “pussy,” and then the transitory smiling propitiatory human stuff that was difficult to remember and name correctly. “aunties,” “mannies” and suchlike. but also there were inanimate persons. there were the brass-headed sentinels about one’s cot and the great brown round-headed newel post. his name was bungo-peter; he was a king and knew everything, he watched the stairs, but you did not tell people this because they would not understand. also there was the brass-eyed monster with the triple belly who was called chester-drawers; he shammed dead and watched you, and in the night he creaked about the room. and there was gope the stove, imprisoned in the fender with hell burning inside him, and there was nobby. nobby was the protector of little boys against chester-drawers, stray bears, the thing on the landing, spider scratchings and many such discomforts of nursery life. of course you could also draw a deep breath and yell for “mare-wi,” but she was apt not to understand one’s explanation and to scold. it was better to hold tight to nobby. and also nobby was lovely and went whack.
moreover if you called “mare-wi,” then when the lights 60came joan would sit up in her cot and stare sleepily while you were being scolded. she would say that she knew there weren’t such things. and you would be filled with an indefinable sense of foolishness. behind an impenetrable veil of darkness with an intervening floor space acrawl with bears and “burdlars” she could say such things with impunity. in the morning one forgot. joan in the daytime was a fairly amusing companion, except that she sometimes tried to touch nobby. once peter caught her playing with nobby and pretending that nobby was a baby. one hand took nobby by the head, and the other took joan by the hair. that was the time when peter had his first spanking, but joan was careful not to touch nobby again.
generally joan was passable. of course she was an intrusion and in the way, but if one wanted to march round and round shouting “tara-ra-ra, ra-ra, ra-ra, tara boom de ay,” banging something, a pan or a drum, with nobby, she could be trusted to join in very effectively. she was good for noise-marches always, and they would not have been any fun without her. she had the processional sense, and knew that her place was second. she talked also in a sort of way, but it was not necessary to listen. she could be managed. if, for example, she touched peter’s bricks he yelled in a soul-destroying way and went for her with a brick in each hand. she was quick to take a hint of that sort.
it was arthur’s theory that little children should not be solitary. mutual aid is the basis of social life, and from their earliest years children must be accustomed to co-operation. they had to be trained for the co-operative commonwealth as set forth in the writings of prince kropotkin. mary thought differently. so arthur used to go in his beautiful blue blouse and sit in the sunny nursery amidst the toys and the children, inciting them to premature co-operations.
“now peter put a brick,” he used to say.
“now joan put a brick.”
“now dadda put a brick.”
mary used to watch proceedings with a cynical and irritating expression.
“peter’s tower,” peter would propose.
61“our tower,” arthur used to say.
“peter knock it over.”
“no. no one knock it over.”
“peter put two bricks.”
“very well.”
“dadda not put any more bricks. no. peter finish it.”
“na-ow!” from joan in a voice like a little cat. “me finish it.”
arthur wanted to preserve against this original sin of individualism. he got quite cross at last imposing joyful and willing co-operation upon two highly resistant minds.
mary’s way was altogether different. she greatly appreciated the fact that dolly and arthur had had the floor of the nursery covered with cork carpet, and that arthur at the suggestion of aunt phœbe had got a blackboard and chalks in order to instil a free gesture in drawing from the earliest years. with a piece of chalk mary would draw a line across the floor of the nursery, fairly dividing the warmth of the stove and the light of the window.
“that’s your bit, peter,” she would say, “and that’s your bit, joan. them’s your share of bricks and them’s yours. now don’t you think of going outside your bit, either of you, whatever you do. nohow. nor touch so much as a brick that isn’t yours.”
whereupon both children would settle down to play with infinite contentment.
yet these individualists were not indifferent to each other. if joan wanted to draw on the blackboard with chalk, then always peter wanted to draw on the blackboard with chalk at the same time, and here again it was necessary for mary to mark a boundary between them; and if peter wanted to build with bricks then joan did also. each was uneasy if the other was not in sight. and they would each do the same thing on different sides of their chalk boundary, with a wary eye on the other’s proceedings and with an endless stream of explanation of what they were doing.
“peter’s building a love-i-lay house.”
“joan’s building, oh!—a lovelay-er house. wiv a cross on it.”
“why not build one lovely house for both of you?” said 62arthur, still with the co-operative commonwealth in mind.
neither child considered that his proposal called for argument. it went over their heads and vanished. they continued building individually as before, but in silence lest arthur should be tempted to intervene again.
§ 2
joan was a dancer from the age of three.
perhaps she got some hint from dolly, there is no telling; but anyhow she frisked and capered rhythmically by a kind of instinct whenever dolly played the piano. so dolly showed her steps and then more steps. peter did not take to dancing so readily as joan and his disposition was towards burlesque. joan danced for the love of dancing, but peter was inventive and turned his dances into expression. he invented the fat dance, with a pillow under his pinafore, the thin dance, with a concave stomach and a meagre expression, the one leg dance and the bird dance, this latter like the birds about the crumbs in winter time. also the tipsy dance, bacchic, which arthur thought vulgar and discouraged. dolly taught joan the flower dance, with a very red cap like a pistil, and white silk skirt petals upheld by her arms. these she opened slowly, and at last dropped and then drooped. this needed a day of preparation. peter produced his first remembered æsthetic judgment on a human being on this occasion.
“pritty joan,” he said with conviction, as she stood flushed and bright-eyed after the dance, and with that he went and kissed her.
“he’s beginning young,” said arthur.
it is what all parents say, and it is true of all children. but parents keep on saying it....
before he was fully four peter was conducting an æsthetic analysis of his world. he liked some of the tunes dolly played and disapproved of others. he distributed “pritty” lavishly but by no means indiscriminately over the things of the world. “oh pritty fo’wers,” was the primordial form of these expanding decisions. but he knew that nobby was not pretty.
63arthur did his best to encourage and assist these budding appreciations.
one evening there was a beautiful still sunset. the sun went down, a great flattening sphere of reddening gold sinking into vast levels of blue over the remoter hills. joan had already been carried off to bed, but arthur seized upon peter and stood him in the window seat. “look,” said arthur. peter looked intently, and both his parents sat beside him, watching his nice little round head and the downy edge of his intent profile.
“look,” said arthur, “it goes. it goes. it’s going ... going ... going....”
the sun became a crescent, a red scimitar, a streak of fire.
“ah!” said arthur, “it’s gone.”
came an immense pause.
“do it adain, dadda,” said peter with immense approval. “do it adain....”
§ 3
the theory of ideals played almost as important a part in the early philosophy of peter as it did in the philosophy of plato. but peter did not call them “ideals,” he called them “toys.” toys were the simplified essences of things, pure, perfect and manageable; real things were troublesome, uncontrollable, over complicated and largely irrelevant. a real train, for example, was a poor, big, clumsy, limited thing that was obliged to go to red hill or croydon or london, that was full of stuffy unnecessary strangers, usually sitting firmly in the window seats, that you could do nothing satisfactory with at all. a toy train was your very own; it took you wherever you wanted, to fairyland or russia or anywhere, at whatever pace you chose. then there was a beautiful rag doll named “pleeceman,” who had a comic, almost luminous red nose, and smiled perpetually; you could hit joan with him and make her squawk and yet be sure of not hurting her within the meaning of the law; how inferior was the great formless lump of a thing, with a pale uneventful visitor’s sort of face we saw out of the train at caterham! 64nobody could have lifted him by a leg and waved him about; and if you had shied him into a corner, instead of all going just anyhow and still smiling, he would probably have been cross and revengeful. how inferior again was the real cow, with its chewing habits, its threatening stare and moo and its essential rudeness, to suzannah, the cow on the green board. perhaps the best real things in the world were young pigs....
but this much is simply to explain how it was that peter was grateful but not overwhelmed to find that there was also a real nobby in existence as well as his beloved fetish. and this nobby was, as real things went, much better than one could have expected him to be. peter’s heart went out to him from the very first encounter, and never found reason to relinquish him again.
nobby wasted a good lot of time that might have been better employed in play, by talking to mummy; and when a little boy set himself to rescue his friend from so tepid an occupation, mary showed a peculiar disposition to thwart one. “oh! leave them alone,” she said, with the tart note in her voice. “i’m sure they don’t want either of you.”
still mummy didn’t always get nobby, and a little boy and girl could hear him talk and play about with him. when he told really truly things it was better than any one else telling stories. he had had all sorts of experiences; he had been a sailor; he knew what was inside a ship. that had been a growing need in peter’s life. all peter’s ships had been solid hitherto. and nobby had been in the same field, practically speaking, with lions ever so many times. lions, of course, are not nearly so dreadful as bears in a little boy’s world; bears are the most dreadful things in the world (especially is this true of the black, under-bed bear, ursus pedivorus) but lions are dreadful enough. if one saw one in a field one would instantly get back over the stile again and go home, mary or no mary. but one day near nairobi, nobby had come upon a lion in broad daylight right in the middle of the path. nobby had nothing but a stick. “i was in a hurry and i felt annoyed,” said nobby. “so i just walked towards him and waved my stick at him, and shouted to him to get out of my way.”
65“yes?” breathless.
“and he went. most lions will get away from a man if they can. not always though.”
a pause. there was evidently another story to that. “tell us,” said mummy, more interested even than the children.
big nobby made model african villages out of twigs and suchlike nothings in the garden, and he brought down joan and peter boxes of zulu warriors from london to inhabit them. also he bought two boxes of “egyptian camel corps.” one wet day he “made africa” on the nursery floor. he made mountains out of books and wood blocks, and put a gold-mine of gold paper therein; he got in a lot of twigs of box from the garden and made the most lovely forest you can imagine; he built villages of bricks for the zulus; he put out the animals of peter’s noah’s ark in the woods. “here’s the lion,” he said, propping up the lion against the tree because of its broken leg.
“gurr woooooah!” said joan.
“exactly,” said nobby, encouraging her.
“waar-oooh. waaaa!” said joan, presuming on it.
“bang!” said peter. “you’re dead, joan,” and stopped any more of that.
§ 4
then one day an extraordinary thing happened. it was towards lunch-time, and mary was bringing joan and peter home from a walk in the woods. joan was tired, but peter had been enterprising and had run on far ahead; he was trotting his fat legs down the rusty lane that ran through the bushes close to the garden fence when he saw nobby’s lank form coming towards him from the house, walking slowly and as if he couldn’t see where he was going. peter was for slipping into the bushes and jumping out at him and saying “boo.” then he saw nobby stop and stand still and stare back at the house, and then, most wonderful and dreadful! this great big grown-up began to sob and cry. he said “ooo-er!” just as peter did sometimes when he felt unendurably 66ill-used. and he kept raising his clenched fists as if he was going to shake them—and not doing so.
“i will go to hell,” said nobby. “i will go to hell.”
in a passion!
(peter was shocked and ashamed for nobby.)
then nobby turned and saw peter before peter could hide away from him. he stopped crying at once, but there was his funny face all red and shiny on one side.
“hullo, old peter boy,” said nobby. “i’m off. i’m going right away. been fooled.”
so that was it. but hadn’t he africa and lions and elephants and black men to go to, a great real play nursery instead of a nursery of toys? why make a fuss of it?
he came to peter and lifted him up in his arms. “good-bye, old peter,” he said. “good-bye, peter. keep off the copper punching.” he kissed his godson—how wet his face was!—and put him down, and was going off along the path and peter hadn’t said a word.
he wanted to cry too, to think that nobby was going. he stared and then ran a little way after his friend.
“nobby,” he shouted; “good-bye!”
“good-bye, old man,” nobby cried back to him.
“good-bye. gooood-bye-er.”
then peter trotted back to the house to be first with the sad but exciting news that nobby had gone. but as he came down from the green wicket to the house he looked up and saw his father at the upstairs window, gazing after nobby with an unusual expression that perplexed him, and in the little hall he found his mother, and she had been crying too, though she was pretending she hadn’t. they knew about nobby. something strange was in the air, perceptible to a little boy but utterly beyond his understanding. perhaps nobby had been naughty. so he thought it best to change the subject, and began talking at once about a wonderful long bicycle with no less than three men on it—not two, mummy, but three—that he had seen upon the highroad. they had thin white silk shirts without sleeves, and rode furiously with their heads down. their shirts were blown out funnily behind them in the middles of their backs. they went like that!...
67all through the midday meal nobody said a word about nobby....
nobody ever did say anything about nobby again. when on a few occasions peter himself talked appreciatively of nobby nobody, unless it was joan now and then, seemed the least bit interested....
one side consequence of oswald’s visit had been the dethronement of the original nobby. the real nobby had somehow thrust the toy nobby into the background. perhaps he drifted into the recesses of some box or cupboard. at any rate when peter thought of him one day he was nowhere to be found. that did not matter so much as it would have done a couple of months before. now if the bears and “burdlars” got busy in the night-nursery peter used to pretend that the pillow was the real nobby, the nobby who wasn’t even afraid of lions and had driven off one with a stick. a prowling bear hadn’t much chance against a little boy who snuggled up to that nobby.
§ 5
mummy was rather dull in those days, and daddy seemed always to be looking at her. daddy had a sort of inelasticity in his manner too. suddenly aunt phyllis and aunt phœbe appeared, and it was announced that daddy and mummy were going off to italy. it was too far for them to take little boys and girls, they said, and besides there were, oh! horrid spiders. and peter must stay to mind the house and joan and his aunts; it wasn’t right not to have some man about. he was to have a sailor suit with trousers also, great responsibilities altogether for a boy not much over four. so there was a great kissing and going off, and joan and peter settled down to the rule of the aunts and only missed mummy and daddy now and then.
then one day something happened over the children’s heads. mary had red eyes and wouldn’t say why; the aunts had told her not to do so.
phyllis and phœbe decided not to darken the children’s lives by wearing mourning, but mary said that anyhow she would go into black. but neither joan nor peter took much notice of the black dress.
68“why don’t mummy and daddy come back?” asked peter one day of aunt phœbe.
“they’ve travelled to such wonderful places,” said aunt phœbe with a catch in her voice. “they may not be back for ever so long. no. not till peter is ever so big.”
“then why don’t they send us cull’d poce-cards like they did’t first?” said peter.
aunt phœbe was so taken aback she could answer nothing.
“they just forgotten us,” said peter and reflected. “they gone on and on.”
“isn’t nobby ever coming back either?” he asked, abruptly, displaying a devastating acceptance of the new situation.
“but who’s nobby?”
“that’s mr. oswald sydenham,” said mary.
“he’s coming back quite soon,” said aunt phœbe. “he’s on his way now.”
“’cos he promised me a lion skin,” said peter.
§ 6
aunts phyllis and phœbe found themselves two of the four guardians appointed under arthur’s will.
it had been one of arthur’s occasional lapses into deceit that he destroyed the will which made oswald the sole guardian of joan—so far as he could dispose of joan—and peter, without saying a word about it to dolly. he had vacillated between various substitutes for oswald up to the very moment when he named the four upon whom he decided finally, to his solicitor. some streak of jealousy or pride, combined with a doubt whether oswald would now consent to act, had first prompted the alteration. instead he had decided to shift the responsibility to his sisters. then a twinge of compunction had made him replace oswald. then feeling that oswald might still be out talked or out voted by his sisters, he had stuck in the name of dolly’s wealthy and important cousin, lady charlotte sydenham. he had only seen her twice, but she had seemed a lady of considerable importance and strength of character. anyhow it made things fairer to the sydenham side.
but phyllis and phœbe at once assumed, not without 69secret gladness, that the burthen of this responsibility would fall upon them. oswald sydenham was away in the heart of africa; lady charlotte sydenham was also abroad. she had telegraphed, “unwell impossible to return to england six weeks continue children’s life as hitherto.” that seemed to promise a second sleeping partner in the business.
the sisters decided to continue the ingle-nook as the children’s home, and made the necessary arrangements with mr. sycamore, the family solicitor, to that end.
they discussed their charges very carefully and fully. phyllis was for a meticulous observance of arthur’s known or assumed “wishes,” but phœbe took a broader view. mary too pointed out the dangers of too literal an adhesion to precedent.
“we want everything to go on exactly as it did when they were alive,” said phyllis to mary.
“things ’ave got to be different,” said mary.
“not if we can help it,” said aunt phyllis.
“they’ll grow,” said mary after reflection.
phœbe became eloquent in the evening.
“we are to have the advantages of maternity, phyllis, without—without the degradation. it is a solemn trust. blessed are we among women, phyllis. i feel a madonna. we are madonnas, phyllis. modern madonnas. just touched by the wings of the dove.... these little souls dropped from heaven upon our knees.... poor arthur! it is our task to guide his offspring to that high destiny he might have attained. look, phyllis!”
with her flat hand she indicated the long garden path that dolly had planned.
phyllis peered forward without intelligence. “what is it?” she asked.
phyllis perceived that phœbe was flushed with poetical excitement. and phœbe’s voice dropped mystically to a deep whisper. “don’t you see? white lilies! a coincidence, of course. but—beautiful.”
“for a child with a high destiny, i doubt if peter is careful enough with his clothes,” said phyllis, trying to sound a less pre-raphaelite note. “he was a perfect little disgrace this afternoon.”
70“the darling! but i understand.... joan too has much before her, phyllis. as yet their minds are blank, tabula rasa; of either of them there is still to be made—anything. peter—upon this rock i set—a new age. when women shall come to their own. joan again. joan of arc. coincidences no doubt. but leave me my fancies. fancies—if you will. for me they are no fancies. before the worlds, phyllis, we were made for this.”
she rested her chin on her hand, and stared out into the blue twilight, a brooding prophetess.
“only a woman can understand a woman,” she said presently. “not a word of this, phyllis, to others.”
“i wish we had bought some cigarettes this afternoon,” said phyllis.
“the little red glow,” reflected phœbe indulgently. “it helps. but i don’t want to smoke tonight. it would spoil it. smoke! let the flame burn clear awhile.... we will get in cigarettes tomorrow.”
§ 7
joan and peter remained unaware of the great destinies before them. more observant persons than they were might have guessed there were deep meanings in the way in which aunt phœbe smoothed back their hair from their foreheads and said “ah,” and bade them “mark it well” whenever she imparted any general statement, but they took these things merely as her particular way of manifesting the irrational quality common to all grown-up people. also she would say “dignity! your mission!” when they howled or fought. it was to the manuscript that grew into a bigger and bigger pile upon what had been arthur’s writing-desk in arthur’s workroom, that she restricted her most stirring ideas. she wrote there daily, going singing to it as healthy young men go singing to their bathrooms. she splashed her mind about and refreshed herself greatly. she wrote in a large hand, punctuating chiefly with dashes. she had conceived her book rather in the manner of the prophetic works of the admired mr. ruskin—with carlylean lapses. it was to be called hail bambino and the grain of mustard seed. it was all about the tremendousness of children.
71the conscientious valiance of aunt phœbe was very manifest in the opening. “cæsar,” the book began, “and the son of semele burst strangely into this world, but jesus, mohammed, confucius, newton, darwin, robert burns, were born as peacefully as you or i. nathless they came for such ends—if indeed one can think of any ending thereto!—as blot out the stars. yesterday a puling babe—for jesus puled, mohammed puled, let us not spare ourselves, newton, a delicate child, puled most offensively—herod here and bacteria there, infantile colic, tuberculosis and what not, searched for each little life, in vain, and so today behold springing victoriously from each vital granule a tree of teaching, of consequence, that buds and burgeons and shoots and for ever spreads so that the gates of hell may not prevail against it! here it is the tree of spirituality, here the tree of thought, predestined intertwiner with the tree of asgard, here in our last instance a chanting beauty, a heartening lyrical yawp and whirlaboo. and forget it not, whatever else be forgotten, the word of the wise, ‘as the twig is bent the tree inclines.’ so it is and utterly that we realize the importance of education, the pregnant intensity of the least urgency, the hint, the gleam, the offering of service, to these first tender years.”
here aunt phœbe had drawn breath for a moment, before she embarked upon her second paragraph; and here we will leave aunt phœbe glowing amidst her empurpled prose.
joan and peter took the substitution of aunt phœbe muttering like a sibyl overhead and aunt phyllis, who was really amusing with odd drawings and twisted paper toys and much dancing and running about, in the place of daddy and mummy, with the stoical acceptance of the very young. about daddy and mummy there hung a faint flavour of departure but no sense of conclusive loss. no clear image and expectation of a return had been formed. no day of definite disappointment ever came. after all the essential habitual person, mary, was still there, and all the little important routines of child-life continued very much as they had always done.
yet there was already the dawn of further apprehensions in peter’s mind at least. one day peter picked up a dead 72bird in the garden, a bird dead with no injuries manifest. he tried to make it stand up and peck.
“it ain’t no good, master peter; it’s dead,” said mary.
“what’s dead?” said peter.
“that is.”
“gone dead,” said peter.
“and won’t ever go anything else now—except smell,” said mary.
peter reflected. later he revisited the dead bird and was seen in profound meditation over it. then he repaired to aunt phyllis and confided his intention of immortality.
“peter,” he said, “not go dead—nohow.”
“of course not,” said aunt phyllis. “he’s got too much sense. the idea!”
this was reassuring. but alone it was not enough.
“joan not go dead,” he said. “no.”
“certainly she shan’t,” said aunt phyllis and awaited further decisions.
“pussy not go dead.”
“not until ninety times nine.”
“aunt phyllis not go dead. marewi not go dead.”
he reflected further. he tried, “mummy and daddy not go dead....”
then after thought, “when are daddy and mummy coming back again?”
aunt phyllis told a wise lie. “some day. not for a long time. they’ve gone—oh, ever so far.”
“farther than ever so,” said peter.
he reflected. “when they come back peter will be a big boy. mummy and daddy ’ardly know ’im.”
and from that time, daddy and mummy ceased to be thought of further as immediate presences, and became hero and heroine in a dream of tomorrow, a dream of returning happiness when life was dull, of release and vindication when life was hard, a pleasant dream, a hope, a basis for imaginative anticipations and pillow fairy tales, sleeping parents like those sleeping kings who figure in the childhood of nations, like king arthur or barbarossa. sometimes it was one parent and sometimes it was the other that dominated 73the thought, “when mummy comes back.... when daddy comes back.”
joan learnt very soon to say it too.
§ 8
death was too big a thing for peter to comprehend. he had hardly begun yet with life. and he had made not even a beginning with religion. he had never been baptized; he had learnt no prayers at his mother’s knee. the priceless mary had come to the stublands warranted a churchwoman, but as with so many of her class, her orthodoxy had been only a professional uniform to cloak a very keen hostility and contempt for the clergy, and she dropped quite readily into the ways of a household in which religion was entirely ignored. the first peter heard of religion was at the age of four and a half, and that was from a serious friend of mary’s, a particular baptist, who came for a week’s visit to the ingle-nook. the visitor was really distressed at the spiritual outlook of the two children. she borrowed peter for a “little walk.” she thought she would begin with him and try joan afterwards. then as plainly and impressively as possible she imparted the elements of her faith to peter and taught him a brief, simple prayer. “he’s a love,” she told mary, “and so quick! it’s a shime to keep him such a little heathen. i didn’t say that prayer over twice before he had it pat.”
mary was rather moved by her friend’s feelings. she felt that she was going behind the back of the aunts, but nevertheless she saw no great harm in what had happened. the deaths of arthur and dolly had shaken mary’s innate scepticism; she had a vague feeling that there might be grave risks, well worth consideration, beyond the further edge of life.
aunt phyllis was the first of the responsible people overhead to discover what had happened. peter loved his prayer; it was full of the most beautiful phrases; no words had ever so filled his mouth and mind. there was for example, “for jesus krice sake amen.” like a song. you could use it anywhere. aunt phyllis found him playing 74trains with his bricks in the nursery one afternoon. “hoo! chuff-chuff. chuff-chuff. change for reigate, change for london. for jesus krice sake amen.”
aunt phyllis sat down in the little chair. “peter,” she said, “who is this jesus krice?”
peter was reluctant to give information. “i know all about ’im,” he said, and would at first throw no other light on the matter.
then he relented and told a wonder. he turned his back on his brick train and drew close to aunt phyllis. his manner was solemn and impressive exactly as mary’s friend’s had been; his words were as slow and deliberate. “jesus krice could go dead and come alive again,” he said, “over and over, whenever he wanted to.”
and having paused a moment to complete the effect of this marvel, peter turned about again, squatted down like a little brown holland mushroom with a busy little knob on the top, and resumed his shouting. “hoo! chuff-chuff. chuff-chuff. chuff.”
§ 9
one day mary with an unaccustomed urgency in her manner hurried joan and peter out of the garden and into the nursery, and there tidied them up with emphasis. joan showed fight a bit but not much; peter was thinking of something else and was just limp. then mary took them down to the living-room, the big low room with the ingle-nook and the dining-table in the far bay beside the second fireplace. there they beheld a large female visitor of the worst sort. they approached her with extreme reluctance, impelled by mary’s gentle but persistent hand. the visitor was sitting in the window-seat with aunt phyllis beside her. and aunt phœbe was standing before the little fireplace. but these were incidental observations; the great fact was the visitor.
she was the largest lady that peter had ever seen; she had a plumed hat with black chiffon and large purple bows and a brim of soft black stuff and suchlike things, and she wore a large cape in three tiers and a large black feather boa that 75hissed when she moved and disseminated feathers. her shoulders were enormously exaggerated by a kind of vast epaulette, and after the custom of all loyal anglicans in those days her neck was tightly swathed about and adorned with a big purple bow. everything she wore had been decorated and sewn upon, and her chequered skirts below were cut out by panels and revelations of flounced purple. in the midst of this costume, beneath the hat and a pale blonde fuss of hair, was set a large, pale, freckled, square-featured face with two hard blue eyes and a fascinating little tussock of sandy hair growing out of one cheek that instantly captured the eye of the little boy. and out of the face proceeded a harsh voice, slow, loud, and pitched in that note of arrogance which was the method of the ruling class in those days. “so these are our little wards,” said the voice, and as she spoke her lips wrinkled and her teeth showed.
she turned to phyllis with a confidential air, but spoke still in the same clear tones. “which is the by-blow, my dear, the boy or the gel?”
“lady charlotte!” exclaimed phyllis, and then spoke inaudibly, explaining something.
but peter made a note of “by-blow.” it was a lovely word.
“not even in black. they ought to wear black,” he heard the big lady say.
then he found himself being scrutinized.
“haugh!” said the big lady, making a noise like the casual sounds emitted by large wading birds. “they both take after the sydenhams, anyhow. they might be brother and sister!”
“practically they are,” said aunt phœbe.
lady charlotte confuted her with an unreal smile. “practically not,” she said decisively.
there was a little pause. “well, master stubland,” said the visitor abruptly and quite terrifyingly. “what have you got to say for yourself?”
as peter had not yet learnt to swear freely, he had nothing to say for himself just at that moment.
“not very bright yet,” said lady charlotte goadingly. “i suppose they have run wild hitherto.”
76“it was poor arthur’s wish——” began aunt phyllis.
“we must alter all that now,” lady charlotte interrupted. “tell me your name, little boy.”
“peter picktoe,” said peter with invention. “you going to stop here long?”
“so you’ve found your tongue at last,” said lady charlotte. “that’s only your nickname. what’s your proper name?”
“can we go out in the garden now, auntie?” said peter; “and play at by-blows?”
“garden now,” said joan.
“he’s brighter than you seem to think,” said aunt phœbe with gentle sarcasm.
“commina garden,” said joan, tugging at peter’s pinafore.
“but i must ask him his name first,” said lady charlotte, “and,” with growing firmness, “he must tell it me. come! what is your name, my dear?”
“peter,” prompted mary.
“peter,” said peter, satisfied that it was a silly game and anxious to get it over and away from this horror as soon as possible.
“and who gave you that name?”
“nobody; it’s mine,” said peter.
“isn’t the poor child even beginning to learn his catechism?” asked lady charlotte.
“yes, the garden,” said aunt phœbe to mary, and the scene began to close upon the children as they moved gardenward. joan danced ahead. peter followed thoughtfully before mary’s gentle urgency. what was that last word? “cattymism?” then a fresh thought occurred to him.
“mary,” said peter, in an impassioned and all too audible undertone; “look. she’s got a whisker. here! troof!”
“it was my brother’s wish,” phyllis was explaining as the children disappeared through the door....
“it isn’t the modern way to begin so early with rote-learning,” said aunt phœbe; “the little fellow’s still not five.”
“he’s a pretty good size.”
77“because we haven’t worried his mind yet. milk, light, play, like a happy little animal.”
“we must change all that now,” said lady charlotte sydenham with conviction.
