Read Ebook: The Dark House by Wylie I A R Ida Alexa Ross

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Ebook has 1816 lines and 92969 words, and 37 pages

"What's your name?"

"Robert--Robert Stonehouse."

"Where do you come from?"

He had jerked his head vaguely in the direction of the hill, for he did not want her to know.

"Over there."

"Why are you crying?"

"I--I don't know."

"Would you like to play with us?"

"Yes--I--I think I would."

She had called the other children and they had come at once and stood round her, gazing wide-eyed at him, not critically or unkindly, but like puppies considering a new companion. The girl in the green serge frock had taken him by the hand.

"This is a friend of mine, Robert Stonehouse. He's going to play with us. Tag--Robert!"

And she had tapped him on the arm and was off like a young deer.

All his awkwardness and shyness had dropped from him like a disguise. No one knew that he was a strange little boy or that his father owed money to all the tradespeople. He was just like anyone else. And he had run faster than the fastest of them. He had wanted to show her that he was not just a cry baby. And whenever he had come near her he had been all warm with happiness.

In three days the nice children had become the Brothers Banditti with Robert Stonehouse as their chief. Having admitted the stranger into their midst he had gone straight to their heads like wine. He was a rebel and an outlaw who had suddenly come into power. At heart he was older than any of them. He knew things about reversions and bailiffs and life generally that none of them had ever heard of in their well-ordered homes. He was strong and knew how to fight. The nice children had never fought but they found they liked it. Once, like an avenging Attila, he had led them across the hill and fallen upon his ancient enemies with such awful effect that they never raised their heads again. And the Banditti had returned home whooping and drunk with victory and the newly discovered joy of battle. His hand was naturally against all authority. He led them in dark plottings against their governesses and nursemaids, and even against the Law itself as personified by an elderly, somewhat pompous policeman whose beat included their territory. On foggy afternoons they pealed the doorbells of such as had complaint against them, and from concealment gloated over the indignant maids who had been lured down several flights of stairs to answer their summons. And no longer were they nice children who returned home clean and punctual to the bosom of their families.

Very rarely had the Banditti showed signs of revolt against Robert's despotism, and each time he had won them back with ease which sowed the first seeds of cynicism in his mind. It happened to be another of the elder Stonehouse's theories--which he had been known to expound eloquently to his creditors--that children should be taught the use of money, and at such times as the Stonehouse family prospered Robert's pocket bulged with sums that staggered the very imagination of his followers. He appeared among them like a prince--lavish, reckless, distributing chocolates of superior lineage with a haughty magnificence that brought the disaffected cringing to his feet.

But even with them he was not really happy. At heart he was still a strange little boy, different from the rest. There was a shadow over him. He knew that apart from him they were nice, ordinary children, and that he was a man full of sorrows and mystery and bitter experience. He despised them. They could be bought and bribed and bullied. But if he could have been ordinary as they were, with quiet, ordinary homes and people who loved one another and paid their bills, he would have cried with joy.

When he did anything particularly bold and reckless he looked out of the corners of his eyes at Frances Wilmot to see if at last he had impressed her. For she eluded him. She never defied his authority, and very rarely took part in his escapades. But she was always there, sometimes in the midst, sometimes just on the fringe, like a bird, intent on business of its own, coming and going in the heart of human affairs. Sometimes she seemed hardly to be aware of him, and sometimes she treated him as though there were an unspoken intimacy between them which made him glow with pride for days afterwards. She would put her arm about him and walk with him in the long happy silence of comradeship. And once, quite unexpectedly, she had seemed gravely troubled. "Are you a good little boy, Robert?" she had asked, as though she really expected him to know, and relieve her mind about it.

And afterwards he had cried to himself, for he was sure that he was not a good little boy at all. He was sure that if she knew about his father and the bailiffs she would turn away in sorrow and disgust.

He knew that she too was different from the others, but with a greater difference than his own. He knew that the Banditti looked up to her for the something in her that he lacked, that if she lifted a finger against him, his authority would be gone. And the knowledge darkened everything. It was not that he cried about his leadership. He would have thrown it at her feet gladly. But he longed to prove to her that if he was not a good little boy he was, at any rate, a terribly fine fellow. He had to make her look up to him and admire him like the rest of the Banditti, otherwise he would never hold her fast. And everything served to that end. Before her he swaggered monstrously. He did things which turned him sick with fear. Once he had climbed to the top of a dizzy wall in the ruins, and had postured on the narrow edge, the bricks crumbling under him, the dust rising in clouds, so that he looked like a small devil dancing in mid-air. And when he had reached ground again he had found her reading a book. Then, the plaudits of the awestruck Banditti sounded like jeers. Nothing had ever hurt so much.

About the time that the Banditti first came into his life the vision of his mother began to grow not less wonderful, but less distinct. She seemed to stand a little farther off, as though very gradually she were drawing away into the other world, where she belonged. And often it was Frances who played with him in his secret stories.

He threw his indoor shoes into the area. In the next street, beyond pursuit, he sat down on a doorstep and, put on his boots, lacing them with difficulty, for he was half blind with tears and anger. He could not make up his mind how to kill Edith. Nothing seemed quite bad enough. He thought of boiling her in oil or rolling her down hill in a cask full of spikes, after the manner of some fairy story that Christine had told him. It was not the pain, though his arm felt as though it had been wrenched out of its socket, and the blood trickled in a steady stream from his bumped forehead. It was the indignity, the outrage, the physical humiliation that had to be paid back. It made him tremble with fury and a kind of helpless terror to realize that, because he was little, any common woman could shake and beat him and treat him as though he belonged to her. He would tell his father. Even his father, who had so far forgotten himself as to marry such a creature, would see that there were things one couldn't endure. Or he would call up the Banditti and plot a devastating retaliation.

In the meantime he was glad he had bitten her.

He walked on unsteadily. The earth still undulated and threatened every now and then to rise up like a wave in front of him and cast him down. He was growing cold and stiff, too, in the reaction. He had stopped crying, but his teeth chattered and his sobs had degenerated into monotonous, soul-shattering hiccoughs. Passers-by looked at him disapprovingly. Evidently that nasty little boy from No. 10 had been fighting again.

He had counted on the Banditti, but the Banditti were not on their usual hunting-ground. An ominous silence answered the accustomed war-cry, uttered in an unsteady falsetto, and the ruins had a more than usually dejected look, as though they had suddenly lost all hope of themselves. He called again, and this time, like an earth-sprite, Frances Wilmot rose up from a sheltered corner and waved to him. She had a book in her hand, and she rubbed her eyes and rumpled up her short hair as though rousing herself from a dream.

"I did hear you," she said, "but I was working something out. I'll tell you all about it in a minute. But what's happened? Why is your face all bleeding?"

She seemed so concerned about him that he was glad of his wounds. And yet she had the queer effect of making him want to cry again. That wouldn't do. She wouldn't respect him if he cried. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and knitted his fair brows into a fearful Stonehouse scowl.

"Oh, it's nothing. I've had a row--at home. That's all. My father's new wife h-hit me--and I b-bit her. Jolly hard. And then I fell downstairs."

"Why did she hit you?"

"Of course you know. Don't be silly."

"Had you? You look awfully green."

"Yes, I had."

"What's the good of telling lies?"

"It's no good telling the truth," Robert answered stolidly. "They only get crosser than ever. She hadn't any right to hit me. She's not even a relation."

"She's your step-mother."

He began to tremble again uncontrollably.

"She's n-not. Not any sort of a mother. My mother's dead."

It was the first time he had ever said it, even to himself. It threw a chill over him, so that for a moment he stopped thinking of Edith and his coming black revenge. He had done something that could never be undone. He had closed and locked a great iron door in his mother's face. "She's just a beast," he repeated stubbornly. "I'd like to kill her."

Frances considered him with her head a little on one side. It was like her not to enter into any argument. One couldn't tell what she was thinking. And yet one knew that she was feeling things.

"I'd wipe that blood off," she said. "It's trickling on to your collar. No, not with your hand. Where's your hanky?"

He tried to look contemptuous. He did, in fact, despise handkerchiefs. The nice little girls in the Terrace had handkerchiefs, ostentatiously clean. He had seen them, and they filled his soul with loathing. Now he was ashamed. It seemed that even Frances expected him to have a handkerchief.

"I haven't got one," he said.

"How do you blow your nose, then?"

"I don't," he explained truculently.

She executed one of her queer little dances, very solemnly and intently and disconcertingly. It seemed to be her way of withdrawing into herself at critical moments. When she stopped he was sure she had been laughing. Laughter still twinkled at the corners of her mouth and in her eyes.

"Well, I'm going to tidy you up, anyhow. Come sit down here."

He obeyed at once. It comforted him just to be near her. It was like sitting by a fire on a cold day when you were half frozen. Something in you melted and came to life and stretched itself, something that was itself gentle and compassionate. It was difficult to remember that he meant to kill Edith frightfully, though his mind was quite made up on the subject. Meantime Frances had produced her own handkerchief--a large clean one--and methodically rubbed away the blood and some of the tear stains, and as much of the dirt as could be managed without soap and water. This done, she refolded the handkerchief with its soiled side innermost, and tied it neatly round the wounded head, leaving two long ends which stood up like rabbit's ears. A gust of April wind wagged them comically, and made mock of the sorrowful, grubby face underneath. Even Frances, who was only nine herself, must have seen that the sorrow was not the ordinary childish thing that came and went, leaving no trace. In a way it was always there. When he was not laughing and shouting you saw it--a careworn, anxious look, as though he were always afraid something might pounce out on him. It ought to have been pathetic, but somehow or other it was not. For one thing, he was not an angel-child, bearing oppression meekly. He was much more like a yellow-haired imp waiting sullenly for a chance to pounce back, and the whole effect of him was at once furtive and obstinate. Indeed, anyone who knew nothing of the Stonehouse temper and duns and forgotten birthdays would have dismissed him as an ugly, disagreeable little boy.

But Frances Wilmot, who knew nothing of these things either, crouched down beside him, her arm about his shoulder.

"Poor Robert!"

He began to hiccough again. He had to clench his teeth and his fists not to betray the fact that the hiccoughs were really convulsively swallowed sobs asserting themselves. He wanted to confide in her, but if she knew the truth about his home and his people she wouldn't play with him any more. She would know then that he wasn't nice. And besides, he had some dim notion of protecting her from the things he knew.

"You t-t-tied me up jolly well," he said. "It's comfy now. It was aching hard."

"I like tying up things," she explained easily, "You see, I'm going to be a doctor."

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