CHAPTER LI

“I want to go up to Belfast to-day,” I said to my father next morning at breakfast.

His reply was exactly the one I had anticipated. “What do you want to go to Belfast for?”

“I want to see Owen about something.”

“Hadn’t you a whole fortnight when you saw him every day?”

“I want to speak to him,” I answered, very low-spiritedly. I knew he was thinking of the railway-fare, and if I had had any money myself I should never have asked him.

“Can’t you write?” he demanded, querulously.

“I want to speak to him.”

“Don’t go on repeating the same thing like a child.”

“But why can’t I go?” I asked helplessly.

“Because it is a waste of money.”

“It will only cost five shillings.”

“Five shillings is a great deal too much to spend upon nothing.”

“It isn’t nothing. I want to speak to him. I never asked to go before.”

“You’ll be seeing him very soon――in another fortnight――and you will have plenty of time to talk to him then.”

“I want to speak to him now,” I persisted. “Can’t I go?”

“Peter, you are dreadfully obstinate. What do you want to see him about that won’t keep for a few days?”

“I sent him a telegram before breakfast, asking him to meet me, and I can’t very well not go.”

“It is your own fault if you do things without consulting me.”

Nevertheless, in the end, he allowed me to go, and I caught the first train.

I had asked Owen to meet me in the Botanic Gardens, for I did not want to call at his house, and, as I arrived some few minutes before the appointed time, I began to pace disconsolately up and down one of the paths, my head filled with dreary thoughts. Two or three gardeners with long rakes were raking the walks, and a man with a pair of clippers was trimming the edges of the grass. As they pottered over their work they carried on a disjointed conversation, principally about religion, or rather about the evils of Roman Catholicism. I listened to their idiotic remarks, which at another time might have amused me. The man with the clippers was describing some form of service which he called “High Rosary,” and the rakers from time to time interpolated words and grunts. A few little boys were playing hide-and-seek, and now and then a nurse passed, wheeling a perambulator. An old pensioner, sucking an empty pipe, hobbled up to the seat I had taken a corner of, though all the others were vacant, and began with much fumbling to unfold a greasy-looking newspaper. The sight of his futile senility somehow irritated me, and I stared at him fiercely, but he sat on. I began to think that perhaps Owen would not come: for all I knew he might be away from home. Two or three untidy, vulgar, little girls, with smaller brothers and sisters in tow, came up to inquire “the right time.” After I had satisfied their curiosity they still hovered near me, gazing at me in a silence that it was difficult to construe as flattering. At a distance of three or four yards they then settled down stolidly to some obscure game, in which a great deal of monotonous, rhymed dialogue was the principal feature. They intoned this in shrill, unmodulated voices, but all the time keeping a sharp look-out on my movements. The old pensioner turned his watery eyes on me and made a remark about the weather. I pretended not to hear him, but he only made it again, and I had to answer. He began to talk politics. His fumbling hands, his foolish, empty pipe, his bleared and rheumy eyes, depressed me, and I wondered why he couldn’t be put into a lethal chamber. Then I saw Owen turn the corner and sprang up to meet him.

“Why didn’t you come to the house? Where are your things?” he asked. The little girls had suspended their game to watch us with breathless interest.

“I’m not going to stay, Owen. I came up just because I wanted to speak to you about something―――― Get away!” This last remark was addressed to a child who had drawn nearer, so as not to miss what we were saying. She stared at me with an expression of solemn idiocy, but without budging an inch from the position she had taken up.

“That’s all right,” said Owen, “but of course you’ll stay now you’re here. I can lend you everything you need, and I’ve told them at home to expect you.”

“I can’t. My father would hardly let me come; even as it was.”

“Get yer hair cut,” suggested the polite child, putting out her tongue.

“Owen, I want to tell you something: I want your advice.”

He at once became serious. He took my arm and we strolled down toward the pond, followed by the whole band of children, who, captained by the same odious little girl, screamed now in chorus, “Get yer hair cut! Get yer hair cut!”

The din they made was terrific. I waited till we had turned the corner and were out of sight of the gardeners and the pensioner. Then I swung round quickly and made a grab at the ringleader. In about two seconds, kicking and screaming, she was across my knee, and I was administering as sound a spanking as she had ever received in her life.

“I say,” cried Owen, “what on earth are you doing?”

I released my captive, who with crimson, tear-drenched face, and open mouth, went bawling back in the direction she had come from.

“That’s all right, any way,” I said to the astonished Owen. “There’s nothing like taking these things in time.”

The rest of the children had retreated, moving backwards, with round eyes fixed on me, but perfectly callous to the woes of their comrade.

“You’ll be having someone coming and kicking up the mischief of a row,” said Owen, uneasily.

“I don’t care. Can’t we find a quiet place?”

Owen considered. “Come down the Lagan walk: there’s never anybody there.”

I let him take me, and we walked till we were stopped by a low parapet, over which we had a charming view of the black mud-banks of the river, for the tide was out, and beyond this a strip of waste land, dotted with mill chimneys and the backs of dirty houses. It was neither a cheerful nor a beautiful outlook, but we both stood gazing over the wall, as if beyond it lay the New Jerusalem.

“It’s horribly smelly,” I discovered at length.

“I thought you wanted somewhere quiet,” Owen apologized.

“I didn’t mean this sort of thing. I’m sure there’s a dead cat or dog in that sack down there. Come away.”

“I didn’t know the tide was out,” said Owen patiently.

But I found it difficult now to begin my story. Those wretched children had upset everything. I was quite unreasonably cross, too, with Owen, for bringing me to these hideous mud-banks, with their litter of old boots, of empty tins and broken bottles. I even had it on the tip of my tongue to tell him it was just like him, but refrained.

We retraced our steps and found a seat near the pond. Here we sat in silence, Owen waiting for me to begin my tale.

“Something very unpleasant happened yesterday,” I murmured, branching off to a secondary subject.

“Happened to you?”

“Not to me only―――― It was a letter my father got from Uncle George――the people I was living with in town here, you know.”

“I know.”

“You remember the chap who came with us to ‘Faust?’”

“Your cousin?”

I nodded. “He had some photographs which he kept hidden under the floor in our bedroom.”

“Why?”

“So that nobody would get hold of them. They were――that kind. I don’t know where he got them from.”

“Bad?”

I nodded again. “And they were found a few days ago, and he denied that they were his, so Uncle George wrote to my father.”

“Saying they must be yours?”

“It came to that, though he didn’t actually say it.”

“But you denied it too?”

“Yes――only――I don’t know that my father believes me.”

“Even now?”

“He says he does, but I’m not sure. At any rate it has upset him a lot.”

“He must be an awfully low cad.”

“George? He’s not up to much. But I expect it never occurred to him that his people would write, and I suppose he thought, now I was out of the way, it wouldn’t much matter to me whether they blamed me or not. Neither would it have mattered, if Uncle George hadn’t written.”

“Of course it would have. What is your father going to do?”

“I don’t know. There is nothing he _can_ do, except tell them what I say.” I felt suddenly sad and doubtful――doubtful of the quality of my own innocence, which had seemed perfectly clear before. “I’m not sure that I’m giving you a right impression,” I went on, after a short silence. “I knew George had these things: I had looked at them: I knew where he kept them.”

“It all seems to me very rotten,” said Owen, disgustedly.

“It is, rather. Aunt Margaret may write to Mrs. Carroll, for instance, just out of spite.”

“She can hardly do that now.”

“I don’t know. She hates me. And it would be horrible if she did, though Mrs. Carroll wouldn’t believe her.”

I was silent a while. “But that isn’t really what I came up to tell you,” I suddenly began. Then I related what had happened yesterday in the wood.

Owen stared in front of him at the drab, seedy-looking, little ducks, who were paddling about on the dirty sheet of water. A rat stole out, and seeing us scuttled back again.

“Why did you behave like that? It was most extraordinary!”

I made no answer.

“It wasn’t very gentlemanly, you know,” Owen continued, “to say the least of it.”

“I never said I was a gentleman,” I interrupted. “I’m not one, in the ordinary sense of the word, nor even in the other, according to you.”

“Oh, that’s rot.” He sat trying to puzzle it out. He looked at me and unexpectedly smiled.

I smiled too, but my heart was heavy as lead. “Well, that’s all I came up to tell you,” I muttered, “――not very much!”

He saw I was not happy. “I know I’m not very experienced in matters of this kind,” he confessed, “but if I were you, Peter, I should go to Derryaghy and ask to see her. Would you like me to do anything?”

“There’s nothing you could do. Would it not be better for me to write?”

“I don’t think so. It might be easier.”

“It would be. And suppose she won’t see me?”

“You can only try.”

“Well, I’ll go back and think it over.”

“But won’t you stay, really?”

“No. I must go.”

“Before this happened she liked you very much――she told me so herself.”

I shook my head. “It is all over. She will never speak to me again.”

“If she doesn’t――――” He stopped.

“What?” I asked.

“She isn’t worth bothering about,” Owen concluded.

“Oh, you don’t know.”

“What was there, after all, so very dreadful? It’s not as if you were in any way repulsive!”

He tried to persuade me to change my mind about going home as we walked toward the park gate, but I was firm. “Good-bye, Owen,” I said. “Thank you for coming. I will write to you if there is anything to write about.”

I got on a tram, and he stood on the footpath, looking after me.