CHAPTER XXIII

That night, for the first time, I felt George’s fascination falter, and it is a fact rather melancholy in its significance that this consciousness came to me in the form of a sense of freedom, of relief. He began to talk to me, just as usual, as soon as he had turned out the light, but I told him brusquely to shut up, that I wanted to go to sleep, and when he tried to begin again I let him see I was in earnest.

As I lay there I determined that at Christmas I would make another effort to get into rooms of my own choosing. If I wanted to ask Owen Gill, for instance, to come to see me, how could I do so? For one thing, his people would not like him to come here; for another, I should not myself care to ask him. I was by this time firmly convinced that my aunt was frequently more or less under the influence of drugs. It may have been on account of her illness; I could not say; but there were times when she seemed hardly to know what she was doing, and at such moments her dislike for me, which she usually more or less successfully concealed, jumped to the surface. I had no idea how long she had been in this condition; I was quite sure my father knew nothing about it; yet she appeared to me to have already lost something of her hold upon reality. I had heard her make statements so obviously untrue that they could have deceived nobody but Uncle George. I had heard her repeat a harmless remark made by Miss Izzy, and, by altering it ever so slightly, give it a quite new and highly disagreeable meaning. But Uncle George never dreamed of contradicting her, whether it was that he was afraid of her, or whether he was simply blind, I could not tell.

On the Sunday after my becoming acquainted with Owen I was alone in the house with little Alice, who had been unwell and had not gone out with the others to morning church. As usual, she had climbed up on my knee, and was sitting with her thin brown arms round my neck, and her queer little face close to mine.

“Ma looked through all your pockets yesterday morning, when you were at school,” she said.

“What pockets?” I asked quietly.

“The pockets of your clothes――every one.”

“Well, did she find anything?” I murmured, in as indifferent a tone as I could manage.

“She found a letter――and some other things.”

“And did she read the letter?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know? Where were you?”

“I saw her.”

“How did you see her?”

“I saw her through the key-hole.”

“Oh; I didn’t think you would look through key-holes.”

“Didn’t you? I do――often.”

“You shouldn’t. It isn’t nice, you know. You must never do it again.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s not a nice thing to do. It’s spying.”

“I’ve often done it,” said Alice, with perfect detachment. “I’ve looked at you through the key-hole.”

“You must never do it again. Promise, or I won’t be friends with you any more.”

“If I promise, will you be friends?”

“Yes. But you must keep your promise, remember.”

I returned to “Anna Karénine.” “I must buy a desk,” I thought, “or some kind of box I can lock up.” Presently little Alice began again. “I’ve got a secret.”

I had lugubrious forebodings in regard to this secret. “Have you?” I answered dismally.

“Don’t take any soup to-day,” the child said, softly.

I laid down my book. There was something arresting about this injunction, something even startling. I looked into the strange dark eyes that seemed almost to fill the small elf-like face, and I knew that a confidence of a highly unpleasant character was imminent.

“I put a dead mouse into the soup,” little Alice whispered.

“Oh;” I exclaimed feebly. I felt inclined to put her down very abruptly from my knee, and it was with difficulty that I controlled this impulse. “What made you do such a thing? Now it will all be wasted.”

“Nobody knows about it,” the child continued artlessly, rubbing her cheek against mine. “Once I put something in before, when people were coming for dinner. It was fun to watch them all looking so stiff and solemn, and eating away, and not knowing what was there all the time. I laughed so much that ma sent me out of the room. But I wouldn’t do that with you, because I love you.”

Her strange little face turned to mine, and her eyes were fixed on me. She must have seen the disgust I felt, for she began to tremble and her eyes filled with tears. Then she hid her face against my shoulder and clung to me. I was frightened to scold her. Even without my having said anything she seemed to shrivel up like some bruised and broken plant. I patted her head gently, and at once she brightened. She got down from my knee and began to dance about the floor.

Meanwhile I was left with the problem of the soup. If the soup were strained the mouse, I supposed, would be discovered; but if it were, as it was practically certain to be, simply turned out into a tureen, the revelation might come too late. On the other hand, were I to turn informer, little Alice would most surely be whipped, and, whether she deserved it or not, the idea of that was as revolting to me as would be the ill-treatment of a sick monkey. There was a young girl in the kitchen who looked after the rougher work, and I thought of explaining the matter to her, after swearing her to secrecy, but before I had made up my mind I heard the others downstairs.

They had evidently got back from church, and now I didn’t know what to do. Uncle George, preceded by Gordon and Thomas in their green plush suits, came into the parlour. Uncle George began to warm himself before the gas-stove. “You should have come out this morning, Peter,” he said, in his gentle voice. “You missed a treat.”

I listened to his comments on the sermon, feeling all the time most uncomfortable. Gordon and Thomas tried to climb about my chair, but I kept them off with a firm hand. The parlour door was open, probably the kitchen door too, for all at once there came a scream from that department, not very loud, yet distinctly audible. I glanced at Alice. The others hadn’t heard it. Uncle George was still in the midst of his mild enthusiasm, and Gordon and Thomas, flattening their little round red noses with a finger, were practising squinting with remarkable success. Alice had become perfectly still, her big black eyes fixed on mine: and, as for me, I knew the mouse had been discovered and felt vastly relieved. Conceive of my amazement, therefore, when the soup after all appeared at table. Alice and I did not take any, and Aunt Margaret did not either, so that there was enough left to do Monday’s dinner; but of the mouse I never heard again.