CHAPTER L

I had told my father I should be dining at Derryaghy, yet he made no remark when, instead, I came in an hour late for tea. Fresh tea simply was prepared for me, and again, while I sat at table, I was conscious of something peculiar in the way he watched me, so that for an instant it even flashed upon me that he might have heard of what had happened in the wood.

It was only when I had finished eating that he spoke. “I had a letter from your Uncle George this afternoon,” he said, and I knew at once, not so much from his voice as from the face he turned to me, that something serious had happened.

My thoughts darted straightway to Aunt Margaret, to vague, gruesome tragedies, murder or suicide. “What’s the matter?” I asked, uneasily. Perhaps it had to do with little Alice? Why couldn’t he tell me at once? Then I noticed that he had pushed a bundle of photographs to me across the table.

“Do you know anything of these?” he asked, in a strange voice.

I started. A glance at the top one had been sufficient. I recognized the photographs George had kept hidden in his room, or others like them. I looked at my father watching me, not angrily, but in a kind of hopeless way; I looked into his gray, still face while he went on speaking. “They were found in your bedroom hidden under the floor. Uncle George says that George knows nothing about them, and, that being the case, he felt it his duty to tell me. He does not mention your name. I don’t know what to do. I have been trying to think.” He looked at the wretched things, as they lay there, with a kind of horror.

I sat silent for a moment. “They’re not mine,” I then said. “I have nothing to do with them.”

A gleam of relief came into his face, but it faded quickly. “You never saw them before?”

I lifted the top one, but immediately put it back again. “I don’t know whether I saw them before or not,” I answered. “If I didn’t see these particular ones I saw others like them.” My father winced. “But they never belonged to me. Even if I had wanted them I wouldn’t have known where to get them.”

“Did you know of this hiding place?”

“Yes.”

“And of what was there?”

“Yes.”

“Only you and George occupied that room.”

“And George says they aren’t his.” I looked towards the window.

My father hesitated. Then he said solemnly, “Will you give me your word of honour, Peter, that you had nothing to do with their being there?”

“I had nothing to do with it.” I answered quietly. “I knew they were there, because George showed them to me. If he was here he would not say they were mine. I knew what he was like from the first day I went there. Those things were there then, and on the very first night he wanted to show them to me, but he was frightened to. I did not see them till a long time afterwards. I would never have seen them at all, if you had let me leave when I first wrote to ask you to.”

“You gave me no reason,” said my father, sadly. “Do you think I should have allowed you to stay an hour in the place if I had known?”

“You might have guessed there was _some_ reason. And at the time I couldn’t give any――I didn’t know myself.”

“Had that anything to do with your not wanting to go back there after Christmas?”

“In a way――more or less,” I answered. “Not exactly that, but other things――――”

My father sighed. He tore the photographs in two, and placed them in the empty grate, where he set fire to them. It was like an act of purification, and when it was concluded he turned round and said gloomily, “I’m sorry if I misjudged you. I accept your word.”

But he didn’t accept it――he couldn’t. Secretly, and underneath everything, and, without admitting it even to himself, he couldn’t help being doubtful, and I knew he was doubtful. If I had suddenly told him the photographs were mine, and expressed appropriate remorse, I believe it would have made him happier than my denial did. As I saw the wretchedness of his face the injustice of the whole thing became intolerable. “Do you believe me, or do you not?” I asked brusquely.

“I have told you I believe you.”

“You don’t look as if you did.”

“I can’t pretend to treat the matter as of no importance. My believing you means that I must disbelieve George.”

“Why should you trouble about George? And, at any rate, though he did have those things, he’s decent enough in some ways. I’m pretty sure he would have burnt them himself after a while.”

I’m afraid this speech did neither George nor myself any good. It simply made my father think me callous.

I went out on the golf-links with Tony, and sat looking at the sea. I began to think of my father and of the failure of his life. This last incident seemed but to fit with all the others into its tragic grayness. And I reflected how for him I must compose a large part of that failure. Thinking of me could bring him little consolation, probably just the reverse. It was a pity. I doubtless was not, particularly from his point of view, much to boast of, but I was better than he thought me. I might be below the average in most things, but I was not below it in all....

And then my natural egotism rose once more to the surface. My mind turned to Katherine, and it seemed to me I was making a horrible mess of my whole existence. I got up and walked slowly back to the town. A wandering troupe of open-air entertainers had arrived during the day, and were busy erecting tents and hobby-horse machines in a large field not far from our house. Most of the natives, both young and old, were superintending these preparations with an unflagging interest which had already stretched over hours, but I was in no mood to join them. I determined to walk as far as the pier and then go home. I had not gone above a hundred yards when I felt my face burning. Before me, coming in my direction, were Katherine and Gerald. Nothing but a straight stretch of road and footpath lay between us, and it was certain that they must have already seen me. I would have liked to turn back, but my pride prevented such a step, and I walked on, my head up, a flaming blush on my face. Gerald and I raised our caps. My eyes sought Katherine’s, but her glance just brushed mine to rest on some distant point beyond me. The next moment we had passed. Hot tears rose to my eyes, but I walked as far as I had intended to. On the pier steps I sat down and put my arms round Tony’s broad back and kissed him. If I had committed the greatest crime on earth, I thought, he would have licked my cheek and pretended to bite my ear just as he did now.