CHAPTER XXIX

Owen stepped back off the foot-board on to the platform.

“Good-bye,” I said, leaning out of the carriage window. “There’s no use your waiting till the train starts. I hope you’ll have decent holidays.”

He smiled. “I’m sure I will. I wish, all the same, you were going to be with me. I thought of it, but then I thought you would rather go home.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Wouldn’t you really? Don’t you want to go home?”

“Yes, of course. Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. You don’t seem, perhaps, quite so keen as you were――――”

Owen still waited, but I had taken my seat.

“Well, I’ll see you again in a fortnight,” he went on, cheerfully. “Write to me, won’t you, if you aren’t too busy?”

“Yes.”

Another pause followed, while Owen looked up and down the platform. He seemed to me extraordinarily happy.

“Well, good-bye again,” he said.

“Good-bye.”

And this time the guard’s whistle blew, the train jolted forward with a clatter of coupling-irons, and then glided steadily on. I waved my hand to Owen, catching a last glimpse of his bright, animated face before I settled down to the indifferent contemplation of the staler, and coarser-looking persons who shared my compartment. What I had been looking forward to for many weeks had come to pass; I was on my way home; outwardly nothing was wanting; yet not even the thought of seeing Mrs. Carroll again seemed to have power to awaken that joy I had anticipated, though she had written to ask me to spend part of my holidays with her, and I tried now to think of some scheme by which to make this part as large as possible.

I looked at the people opposite; I looked out of the window; I turned the pages of _Punch’s Almanac_, which Owen had bought for me at the bookstall. Then I shut my eyes and tried to doze.

When the train drew in at the station I saw my father standing on the platform. Somehow, I had not expected him to be there, and he upset my calculations. I opened the carriage door, and as I shook hands with him I realized how much easier it is to make plans than to carry them out, and hoped Mrs. Carroll herself had approached him on the matter of my going to Derryaghy. His careworn, anxious face was lit by a smile as he asked me how I was. A porter meanwhile had secured my box and was wheeling it on a truck along the platform. But, as we walked behind him, that old stupid feeling of constraint had already begun to take possession of me, and my replies to my father’s questions sounded, for all I could do to the contrary, stiff, and even reluctant.

It was after one o’clock and dinner was ready when we reached the house.

“The train must have been late,” I remarked, indifferently, as we sat down; and then I could think of nothing further to say.

It struck me that my father was older and dimmer and shabbier than I had remembered him. He presented the picture, drab and dreary, of perfectly achieved failure, and I found myself looking out for all his old habits, the peculiar noises he made with his nose, his fashion of smacking his lips. I noticed that his hands were not very clean, and that his coat looked as if he had brushed his hair over it. These things struck me all the more forcibly, somehow, because I tried to think how superficial and unimportant they were. I had a vision of the solitary meals he must have taken for the past four months, and I was sorry for him, though subconsciously, at the same time, I was considering how soon it would do for me to mention my proposed visit to Derryaghy.

After dinner he asked me what I wanted to do. “It is nice and dry for walking,” he said. “We have had quite a hard frost.”

It sounded as if he intended coming with me, a thing he seldom or never did.

“I was thinking of going up to Derryaghy,” I answered, with an assumption of carelessness that did not prevent my noting the immediate change that came into his face.

“Had you planned anything?” I asked hastily.

“No, no.”

“Perhaps you would like to go for a walk?”

“No, no. Please yourself,” he replied.

So I went up to Derryaghy, with a guilty sense that I had hurt his feelings. It was a pity that I should have begun in this fashion; that I could not, for once, have been cheerfully and spontaneously unselfish, but my longing to get back to my old haunts was intense, and I yielded to it.

After all, when I reached Derryaghy, Mrs. Carroll was not there. She had left a message for me to say that she had been obliged to go up to town, but that she hoped I should be able to dine with her at the usual hour. I wandered out into the winter woods, beautiful with the strange and delicate beauty of naked trees. I loved this place really with a kind of passion, and I was glad my father was not here, glad that I was alone. Dark slender branches traced fantastic arabesques against the grey sky above my head. The black- and silver-stemmed birches gave the note that was carried out through all the colouring. Only the fir-trees, laurels, and an occasional holly-tree, were green. I loved the woods in winter; they seemed to me to have then a peculiar grace they did not possess at any other season. And the wind whistled so hollowly in the leafless trees, and the darting birds were so black against the sky, and all was so silent and solitary, with a sort of frozen loveliness, that I could conceive of nothing more beautiful even in the green pomp and splendour of summer. And behind everything was a vision of long, lamp-lit, fire-lit evenings, with dreamy, delicious books. The leaves of the laurels and holly were coated with frost; the dead fronds of the bracken were a dull brown; here and there the sombre colouring was splashed with the red leaves of brambles. There was a hint of approaching snow in the air, there was almost a silence of snow, and I seemed to feel it drawing closer to me through the cold, remote sky. The ground was hard as iron. Sometimes a single leaf, pallid and faded, trembled still at the end of a twig, but almost all the leaves that were going to fall had fallen long ago. I saw the flash of fur, brown and white, in the frozen grass, but Tony, who followed at my heels, was indifferent to rabbits.

It was dusk when I returned. A servant preceded me into the drawing-room, and lit the lamps, and made up the fire, throwing on another log or two. I sat down in one of the big, soft armchairs and began to turn over Christmas numbers――the _Graphic_, the _London News_, _Holly Leaves_――looking at Caldecott’s, Sambourne’s, and Fred Barnard’s drawings. I began to read a story by Bret Harte. It was extraordinarily nice to be here again. This dear old house, how I loved it! The huge wood fire, the roomy depth of my armchair, the soft, thick carpet, all the surroundings of pleasantness and comfort, appealed to me after my prolonged and reluctant experience of the McAllisters. The fragrant China tea that was brought in to me tasted more deliciously than anything I had ever tasted before, and when I had finished my story (“The Chatelaine of Burnt Ridge,” I think it was called) and the servant had cleared away the tea-things, I sat and dozed.

I had asked after Miss Dick, but of course she had gone home for Christmas. I was really to be alone this time――just myself and Mrs. Carroll.

As I sat there, looking into the fire, I felt that it would have been nicer of me to have gone home on this, the evening of my arrival, but six o’clock, our tea hour, had struck ten minutes ago, and still I had not budged from my chair. Curious thoughts, thoughts I should have been ashamed to tell anybody, came to me unbidden, and for the first time. It made a tremendous difference just who happened to be one’s father, I reflected; and I thought of how the Dales were Mrs. Carroll’s nearest relatives. “She likes me better than anybody else,” I said to myself. “If I were by myself she would adopt me. All this――the house――everything will belong one day to somebody else; but to whom?... The house?” ... And I remembered she did not care for Gerald, and that Gerald did not in the least try to make her alter her opinion. Probably he had only come over last summer because his people had insisted on it. All at once I realized that these speculations were not particularly charming, and tried to put them from me. At the same time I heard the sharp sound of a horse’s hoofs on the frozen ground, then the crunch of gravel under carriage wheels, and I knew Mrs. Carroll had returned.

She opened the door and came straight to me, smiling and holding out her hand. “You’ve grown so big,” she said, lifting her thick veil, “I don’t know whether you want to be kissed or not, but I think I’ll risk it.” She kissed me, and then held me at arm’s length to look at me. She moved me a little so that the lamp-light fell on my face. “My dear child,” she asked, with a sudden anxiety, “aren’t you well? How did you get those black lines under your eyes? You can’t be getting enough sleep. Have you been working too hard?”

“No,” I answered, “but I was up late last night.”

“You must be more careful: your health is infinitely more important than any wretched examination. Well, at all events, I’m very glad to see you.”

* * * * *

A couple of hours later, after dinner, she again took up the subject of my appearance, which evidently did not satisfy her, though I assured her there was nothing the matter.

“You’ve altered,” she said, thoughtfully. “It isn’t only that you’ve grown, but you, somehow, look older. Do you get your meals properly? I expect you stop to play after school instead of coming home to your dinner!”

I changed the subject as soon as I could by asking after the Dales. “Will they be here next summer?”

“If you would like it I daresay we can manage it. In fact I invited Katherine for Christmas, but she couldn’t come.”

“I hope they will come in the summer.”

I inquired after all the other people I could think of: I felt interested in everything that had happened since I had gone away. Then I sat quiet, and quite suddenly, when I thought she had forgotten all about it, Mrs. Carroll said, “I wish you would tell me, Peter, just what is troubling you.”

“But there is nothing,” I answered, smiling. “I was only thinking how nice it was to be back here again.”

“Remember you are to come to stay for a few days, before the end of your holidays. You must stay at least a week. When have you to go back?”

“On the eighth.”

“And those people you are with――the What-do-you-call-ems――how do you like them?”

“The McAllisters?” I hesitated. “Not very much.”

“Do they look after you properly?”

“Oh yes.”

“I think I’ll come and see you there. I would have gone before this, only your father didn’t want it.”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” I said.

“Why?”

I had no answer and she went on: “I must call and have a talk with your father before you go back.”

“It won’t do any good so far as that is concerned. He wants me to be there. Aunt Margaret is his sister.”

“I know that, but you’d rather be by yourself, wouldn’t you? I can see there is something you don’t like.”

“My father wouldn’t let me. He has some idea about a home influence――but I told you before, and of course he told you himself.”

“Home fiddlesticks! You’d have been far better at a good boarding-school. This, it seems to me, is neither one thing nor another. I must speak to him.”

“There is no use really,” I said, for I knew that if she were to take the matter up again it might end in my not even being allowed to come to stay at Derryaghy next week.

“Your father is far too anxious about you. If there had been two or three more of you it would have been much better.”

“It isn’t that.” I waited a while before I brought it out: “He doesn’t trust me.”

“Doesn’t trust you? In what way doesn’t he trust you?”

“In every way. He thinks I’m inclined naturally to――to do things――”

“To do things? What sort of things?”

“To be bad,” I said abruptly.

Mrs. Carroll stared at me. “Nonsense, child,” she answered. “I don’t know what can have put such an idea into your head!”

“_He_ did,” I muttered. “There are times when I think he may be right,” I went on dejectedly, “that he must surely have some reason. I don’t know.... He is always thinking about my mother.”

Mrs. Carroll had been on the point of speaking, but at this she paused.

“I know nothing about her,” I pursued. “I can’t remember her at all, and there is not even a photograph at home. What _is_ there? Do _you_ know nothing?”

Mrs. Carroll hesitated. “Nothing,” she then said. “Nothing more than you know yourself, Peter dear,” she added.

“You have never heard? I should like to go to see her.”

“Yes?” There was a note of doubt in this monosyllable which made me look up.

“I should like to judge for myself,” I continued, impetuously. But the question was, or to Mrs. Carroll appeared to be, an impossible one for us to discuss together, and she made no reply.

“And how do you like your school?” she asked presently, holding up a magazine between her face and the blazing fire. “Tell me all about it――about all your friends and everything you do.”

I began to tell her, giving, as I went along a kind of rough, rambling account of my ordinary day. I told of how I had come to know Owen; how the real thief had never been discovered. I described Owen to her; I said he was the only friend I had made. I told her of the party last night, leaving out the episode of Elsie.

“It makes such a difference when you find somebody who is more or less like yourself.”

“I don’t think he is very like me,” I answered. “I don’t think we’re a bit alike, but――” I tried to puzzle it out: “I suppose we must have some things in common.”

“Tell me about him,” she encouraged me.

“He’s a very good chap,” I said lamely. Then, as this didn’t in the least express my meaning: “I mean he’s very straight, and decent, and all that. He’s not like anybody else.”

“What is the difference?”

“Well, for one thing, he’s awfully serious. I don’t mean dull――but serious about what things really mean and that sort of thing.”

“Is he clever?”

“I don’t know. He’s very simple.”

“And George――isn’t that his name? the name of your cousin?――what is _he_ like? Are you friends with him?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Tell me about George too.”

“There’s nothing to tell. He’s in business. You wouldn’t much care for him.”

“Why not? Don’t you?”

“Yes, very well.” And it suddenly struck me as strange that I did so, that I did not positively detest him.

“You do not seem enthusiastic. Is he not nice?”

“Oh, he’s all right. He’s nice enough, I daresay――just as nice as I am.”

“Why won’t you tell me what is the matter, Peter?”

“There is nothing.”

“You haven’t done anything wrong, have you?”

“I don’t know.”

I closed my eyes for a minute as I leaned back in my chair. A silence had fallen on the room with my last words. Then suddenly my self-control deserted me, and I hid my face against the arm of the chair, just as if I had been a child.