Many waters

Part One A

I

CHAPTER

i

B Y the edge of a small irregular pond down in the hol¬ low and hidden from the house by a line of flow¬ ering shrubs, a small boy was actively engaged in the quasi-torture of a very tiny grey kitten.

Both the boy and the kitten were intensely serious—the kitten, owing to its uncomfortable position, the boy, with the frowning preoccupation of the investigator.

The situation admits of possibilities; variations are in¬ teresting, piquant, mirth-provoking, according as one indulges one’s fancy. In the new-found strength of youth there is a range of opportunities quite delightful: one de¬ velops originality, one experiments, one is a scientist, a latent gift for invention shows itself. One is, moreover, all-conquering.

In the present instance the small boy (he was not really so very small, being twelve and a half and already re¬ markably fine looking for his age) had acquired a method at once delicate and profound. It consisted in throwing the tiny ball of grey fluff as far out into the pond as pos¬ sible, and then, with mingled delight and admiration, watching its slow and perilous struggle back to shore.

As it reached the region of comparative safety represented by the green line of the banks, the boy, eagerly wait¬ ing, pounced upon it to send it hurtling once more out into the centre of the pond. The kitten, rapidly growing more and more exhausted in its hopeless struggle against the overwhelming odds, began to show signs of collapse; its efforts were ludicrous, pitiable, droll, yet the boy’s inter¬ est did not flag.

‘‘Seven,” counted the boy truculently as he once again caught the miserable, dripping little creature. He had all but missed him this time, due to a last despairing dodge of his victim, for the boy, having inherently the instincts of a sportsman, now allowed a second’s grace at the edge of the bank—useless as far as the kitten was concerned, too exhausted to profit thereby.

“Seven,” the boy repeated in a low whisper; and held the half-drowned, wretched little animal to his breast a moment in order to get a better hold on its fur.

His face was serious, and, in spite of his occupation, in no way evil-looking. It was, in fact, save for the frown¬ ing brows which the gravity of the business in hand in¬ volved, rather affable than otherwise. Tall for his age, lithe, fair-haired, with a few faint freckles across the bridge of his straight little nose, full, well-formed lips and a beautifully modelled chin, he was altogether a pleas¬ ing figure of a boy. Attired in a nondescript costume of knee-length socks, brown corduroy breeches dulled a soft grey from hard wear and showing a rent near the left knee, a soft shirt of unusually fine material, open at the neck to show a throat straight and slim and wonderfully moulded, made up a figure altogether charming to un¬ prejudiced eyes. On the bank beside him lay a discarded tan sweater. Such was Donald Callender, only son of Colonel and Mrs. Callender of Whitridge.

Gripping the kitten firmly by a handful of fur at the back of its neck, he drew himself back, body poised like a javelin thrower’s, slender, graceful, a statue carved out of mobile living flesh, and let go. At the same instant, from behind him, there came a sharp scream, stabbing the silence about him and somewhat spoiling his throw. The kitten went only half as far as intended.

He turned. A small girl, white-faced with rage, was running towards him from the cluster of elms that hid the pond from the road beyond, her hands clenched in anger, her lower lip caught fiercely between small white teeth in a ferocious effort to keep back the tears. Behind her pelted a boy, smaller than the one on the bank, stockier, less agile, white-ribboned tie flying behind him as he ran, heavy boots thud-thudding on the soft grass.

The boy on the bank turned back to the pond just in time to seize again the unfortunate kitten as he emerged. He turned, laughing, to the others, showing a row of charmingly white teeth. The smile lighted up his face wonderfully, dispelling the frown, making him wholly boy¬ ish and lovable.

“I say, you jolly near made me miss him that time.”

The newcomers had reached the bank now. They stood side by side, an even height, the boy’s face red with run¬ ning; the little girl, still pale as ivory, was shaking with emotion.

“You wicked boy! Oh, you wicked boy!” was all she could gasp out. The boy beside her stood silent, breathing hard, hands tight-clenched.

In the silence which followed the little girl’s outburst, Donald glanced down at the wet and dripping kitten in his arms and a look of faint surprise overspread his features. It had amused him to watch its struggles in the water; the moral attributes of the case had not affected him.

Now the other boy spoke. “You beast!” he declared, seconding the little girl. “You filthy beast! That isn’t your kitten.”

The tall boy looked at him coolly but without any sign of annoyance.

“Well, it isn’t yours, either.”

Refuted, the smaller boy hesitated, anger struggling with a primitive sense of the rights of property. In the dead¬ lock thus achieved the little girl stepped forward. What a time to fuss and mull with logic, or the question of pos¬ session! She pointed a small accusing finger at the strange grey kitten, still wet and cowering against the fair boy’s breast.

“Don’t you dare throw it in again,” she lisped. She only did this lisping when excited. It was a habit which par¬ ticularly annoyed her but which she was to carry with her all through life. “Don’t you dare!” she repeated. “If you do, Mark will beat you. Won’t you, Mark ?”

She turned to the boy at her side who, shouldered with a sudden responsibility, tried nobly to meet it.

“Ye-es, rather!” he agreed doubtfully.

Donald Callender shook the fair hair back from his forehead. He looked from one to the other of his critics; scowled for a moment in perplexity; then his brow cleared.

“I’m not going to throw it in again. Here, take your old cat.” He tumbled it, dishevelled and dripping, into the eager arms of the little girl who had begun to cry softly. “You’re a pair of young kids, you are. I’m going into the house to get something to eat.”

He strolled off, hands negligently thrust into his pockets, whistling a tune. His whistling was very inexact.

His capitulation was not due to any fear of the little girl’s threat, nor did he resent the implied insult to his own pugilistic prowess. Under other circumstances he would have fought Mark Wetherell gladly and joyously.

Nor was it that he was in truth tired of watching the struggles and antics of the half-drowned kitten. It was simply that he had been brought to see the point of view of another. He didn’t care one way or another about the kitten; but he respected the others’ strength of feeling in the matter. It was significant, this characteristic of his, this mobility of viewpoint, and was destined to influence him all through life, to smooth the way for him, to bring him friends and to make him the universally admired man into whom he was later to develop. Carelessly he would whistle his serene way through ranks upon ranks of less fortunately equipped individuals who had not his own happy faculty of acquiescence. As he once, many years later, remarked to that same Mark Wetherell: “The world belongs to those who can best adjust themselves to it. That’s the true secret of the art of living; but most people don’t know it.”

In the present case he had but adjusted himself to the conventions of a more humane society than himself, and he remained quite comfortable. Admitting his own premise, and carrying it still further, one might say that the kitten had failed to adjust itself to circumstances— hence its discomfiture— But we grow diffuse—

Left alone on the green bank of the pond, the two chil¬ dren watched their playmate’s departure in silence. Then the little girl, still sobbing, sank down on the grass and began gently to dry the kitten with the skirt of her brown gingham frock. The kitten, after drawing its claws in one ungrateful scratch across the little girl’s bare right arm, settled down in her lap with a contented shiver.

Occupied, the girl—Marian Pritchard was her name— paid no more heed to the departing Donald; but the boy, Mark Wetherell, continued to gaze after him. A thought¬ ful frown of regret was deepening on his forehead.

“It's no use trying to fight him,” he said, “he won’t

Marian looked up for an instant from her ministrations.

“Why not? Is he afraid?”

Mark shook his head.

“No,” he said truthfully, “he isn’t afraid. It isn’t that. He could lick me easy,” a painful honesty flushed his cheeks, “and he knows it. That’s why he wouldn’t fight. It—it was I who was afraid.” The colour deepened on his cheeks and he dropped his eyes.

“No, you weren’t,” the little girl flashed back at him. “You weren’t at all afraid! You weren’t! Anyway, you would have fought him if he’d been willing to and that shows you’re braver, or, at least, just as brave as he is.’’

“But—but I couldn’t really have made him give up the cat,” persisted the boy with honesty. “Not if he’d really meant to keep it, and—and if he’d landed me one.”

“He couldn’t have hit you,” the little girl reminded him with satisfaction, “without dropping the cat. And then I should have grabbed it and run. So you see we should have won after all.”

“That’s true.” Mark brightened. “But I’m glad I didn’t have to, all the same. It was beastly for the kitten, of course, but I like Donald. I think he’s wonderful,” he added in a blushing admission.

A voice from the shrubbery near them cut short the other child’s response.

“Master Mark, will you come in and have some tea with Mrs. Callender and Master Donald? They’re waiting for you now up at the house. Mrs. Callender sent me down to fetch you. She telephoned the rectory and they said you might stay. You’re to come at once, please.”

Mark turned, and the little girl looked up; then slowly rose to her feet, lifting the kitten in her arms.

The hard, rather pinched features, of the Callenders’ housemaid confronted them above her crisp black dress and stiffly starched apron. Her eyes were small and greedy like the eyes of a rodent. Mark glanced reflectively from her to the child beside him. Reading his unspoken thought the maid hastily spoke :

“At once, please, Master Mark! Tea’s already on the table. Mrs. Callender said nothing about the little girl. She can run along now, I expect. I’m sure she’s been around here long enough, haven’t you, child ? Do come, now. Master Donald is waiting.” She compressed her lips formidably.

Oppressed with the superiority of age and the air of command, Mark yielded and joined the woman. Marian, with the kitten in her arms, stood staring after them. The hard-faced maid waved an admonitory hand at her from a distance.

“There now, run along, do!—We wants none of the likes of you about,” she added under her breath.

The child, left alone, silently watched them out of sight around the screen of shrubbery. Then, very slowly, she turned, and slipping dexterously through a gap in the hedge, made her way along the edge of the park, emerging onto the main road at some little distance from the pond. Cutting across this road at right angles she climbed a low stone wall into an unused meadow, whence a field path led her presently to a bridge across a narrow stream beyond which rose the vine-covered walls of the modest cottage which was her home, and beyond them the stables, more extensive by far than the house.

She paused on the bridge for a moment to watch the black angular flies skating on the surface of the water and the thin waving grasses stirred by some invisible current underneath.

Still unhurriedly she opened and passed through the little wicket gate which separated the cottage garden from the outer world, walked up the neat gravelled path to the house, and, avoiding the front door with its columns of twining roses, followed the meandering gravel bordered with sweet alyssum, around to the side of the house. Here, selecting a warm corner of the porch where the sun struck full, she deposited the kitten, which, warmed and dried, tucked its paws contentedly beneath its body and, quite satisfied, went to sleep.

With a little sigh, perhaps at the lack of attachment apparent in the cat, Marian left it. The porch door, open¬ ing directly into the dining room was, as usual, unlatched. She entered and closed the door methodically after her.

The room was rather dark, for the blinds on the side towards the sun had been pulled down. Marian blinked for a moment in the uncertain light after the brilliant outof-doors. It was cool here, but oppressive, as if the room lacked airing.

Her mother was standing at the sideboard hastily par¬ taking of a belated luncheon of sardine sandwiches and ginger beer. Her eyes turned towards the little girl as she entered, but otherwise she took no cognizance of her presence. She was busy pouring out the frothy ginger beer.

Marian looked at her mother. She was dressed, as usual, in her riding habit, the skirt wrapped about her rather gaunt form. She had not troubled to hook the skirt into place, but held it there with the tip of her elbow.

io

She had taken off her hat, and her hair, knotted in a tight braid at the nape of her neck and tied with a black ribbon, gave, without the hat, a foolishly juvenile look to her head. Her hands, long and slim, grasped the sandwich.

Marian regarded her mother studiously, gravely. It was rather as if she had never seen her before.

Mrs. Pritchard turned back to the sideboard to pour herself another glass of the ginger beer; and Marian ob¬ served the sharp line of her profile against the window blind; the hawklike nose, high-bridged, aristocratic; the expressive, deep-set black eyes, above the thin line of lips and the teeth that stuck out ever so little.

Elaine Pritchard took a deep draught of the ginger beer and finished off the last sandwich. “Gad! but I’m tired,” she announced abruptly. “I’ve half a mind not to go out again, so long as it’s not necessary. It’s no joke trying to teach stupid children to ride all day.” The re¬ mains of the ginger beer followed the sandwich. “Awk¬ ward little pigs!” she added.

Marian said nothing. She knew it was hard work be¬ ing a riding teacher and giving riding lessons all day. She had heard it pronounced so very often. So she said noth¬ ing and seated herself on the arm of one of the dining¬ room chairs. She felt dispirited, unhappy; a sense of the futility of life suddenly overwhelmed her. It is a feeling which youth has no business to know. Vaguely, the mother sensed a lack of energy in the child, observed the dim traces of tears about her eyes.

“Where’ve you been?” she asked sharply.

“Playing.” The child turned away, instinctively hid¬ ing her hurt.

“Who with?”

Marian sighed. She always hated these cross-examina¬ tions which ended in nothing. She was strangely sensiii tive, craving a little tenderness—understanding. In spite of herself the tears came back into her eyes. The woman at the sideboard noticed them and for a moment her own eyes softened.

‘‘What’s the matter?” she asked brusquely. “Has any one been saying anything to you?”

The child shook her head. She could not trust herself to speak just then. If only her mother would take her in her arms for a moment, hold her close as she had seen Mark’s mother hold him— But that, of course, was absurd!

Mrs. Pritchard looked down at her gloves and crop which she had started to gather up from the bare table. There was something slightly confused about her manner. It may have been that she guessed the child’s need and felt herself inadequate to deal with it. Perhaps she, too, longed for a closer rapprochement, a meeting on some more emotional terms; but the years and her own tem¬ perament had placed a barrier between them which she could not bridge. Time had but confirmed her in the con¬ viction that she had given all that was in her of love and affection to one person in the world. As water will some¬ times concentrate in one deep, unfathomable well, leaving the surrounding land dry and striated, so her emotional life had flowed into one channel. In her absorption she had neglected or refused to acknowledge the existence of other ties. As impossible for her to take this child of hers to her heart as to change her stature; and yet she was not a bad mother.

Possibly the ache of thwarted motherhood tried her as severely as the apparent lack of affection tried the child. At all events, sensing a difficult situation, she avoided Marian’s eyes and repeated her question:

“Who have you been playing with?”

“Mark and Donald,” Marian answered over her shoulder from the shadow of the window seat whither she had retired.

Elaine got rid of the uncomfortable sense of having failed the child by assuming a responsibility in regard to her playmates.

“I’d rather you played with Donald than with Mark. It will mean more for you later on—socially, I mean.” It did not occur to her that Marian could not follow this line of reasoning. Elaine Pritchard always talked to her that way—as if the child were grown up. She had no proper understanding of what childhood means. “They didn’t think to ask you in to tea, I suppose.”

Marian shook her head. Instinctively again she hid the true account.

Elaine slipped the napkin she had not used back into the drawer of the sideboard and picked up her hat from the chair where it lay.

“Oh, they wouldn’t think of it, of course. People never do any of the nice things they might. I was in hopes you might have got a bite to eat up there. It would have helped out a lot to-day. I’ve finished up everything here.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

The child sat in the window seat, her chin cupped in her hand, gazing out through the half-closed shutters where the blind had been raised a little. Elaine stood look¬ ing perplexedly at the empty ginger beer bottle.

“I couldn’t get home at lunchtime—too busy. And Ted had his lunch at Jerrold’s in the village. You didn’t have any, I suppose?”

The child shook her head.

“I’m sorry. What a nuisance they didn’t invite you in to have something up at the Hall. However, there’s some cold chicken in the ice chest.” Her brow cleared. “You might get yourself some of that if you’re hungry. I’ve got to go out now. I’ve promised Ted to be ready by half-past; it’s that now, and I’ve got to brush up my hair a bit. Just find yourself something out in the kitchen, won’t you? That’s a good girl. And you might carry those dishes out for me, if you will. If you see Ted, tell him I’ll be with him in a jiffy—She disappeared through the dining-room door.

Left alone, the child drew her feet up on to the window seat. Somewhat hungry when she came in, her appetite seemed to have gone suddenly. She would have liked a little luncheon if her mother had had time to sit down with her while she ate it, but she didn’t want anything alone. It wasn’t that kind of hunger.

She ran the blind up a little further and knelt on the hard cushions, feeling, somehow, very small and neglected, and gazed out into the sunshine of the little cottage garden. From her place she could just see the kitten’s grey head sleepily curled on its forepaws, but even that sight failed to rouse her. She wondered dispassionately what would ultimately become of the little thing. She wouldn’t be allowed to keep it, of course. It wouldn’t do on account of the dogs. And after all she was fond of the dogs. She must go out presently and make sure that they were locked up in the stable yard where they wouldn’t find the kitten. And perhaps Mrs. Jerrold in the village would take the cat for her. They had recently lost their old tortoise shell she knew—and Mrs. Jerrold was so kind-hearted. Or there was old Mr. Horner who might need one—

There was Ted Chamberlayne in the drive outside, standing at the heads of the two horses. She thought of opening the window and calling to him that her mother would be down directly, but the window wouldn’t open easily and so she gave it up. What was the use to say her mother would be right there when she would be right there! Her mother had said she’d be down in a jiffy; and Ted never seemed to mind waiting.

Besides, she didn’t feel like talking with Ted to-day. Not that he ever said much; but she dreaded, with the acute self-conscious dread of childhood, being questioned again about that missed tea up at the Hall. And she felt tired—tired of everything, of the dogs and the horses and the eternal stable talk—even tired of handsome Ted Chamberlayne; tired of his good looks, his broad hat and his interminable leggings and riding togs. Why didn’t he ever wear other clothes ? Her mother, now, occasion¬ ally slipped into an evening dress, relic of other days, or went shopping in town clad in a street frock and hat like other people, but Ted never! Always the same putties, grey hunting breeches, homespun coat and wide hat! She even knew the insides of his pockets: the fat, gold huntingcase watch that his father had given him and the little cross he carried, tucked away inside his vest pocket, that he had won in the South African War. It used to thrill her, that cross, but to-day she didn’t care about that either. For it had come to her, in the faintest of suspicions, and with a meaning which she couldn’t in the least compre¬ hend, that in some inscrutable way Ted Chamberlayne was responsible for her not being wanted up at “the Hall,” that being the somewhat pretentious name they gave to Donald’s house on the hill.

Ted turned towards the house with a look of enquiry, and Marian waved tentatively, but he evidently couldn’t see her through the closed window. After all, she was fond of Ted. She started up to go around by the door and deliver her message; but at that moment Elaine Pritchard ran down the stairs and out of the house by the front entrance, slamming the door behind her. Her eyes had the peculiar light which she kept for Ted alone, as he turned towards her and helped her to mount.

In another moment he was on his own horse and trotting beside her down the drive. Marian watched them out of sight. Her mother did not look back, but Marian could hear her high-pitched voice remonstrating with Ted over some question of the horses all the way out to the main road.

Marian carried the soiled sandwich plate and beer bottle out into the kitchen. She made certain that the dogs, Pompey, Tags and Beppo, were safe in the stable yard; and then retired to her own little room upstairs—a cool little room with a dormer window facing the front garden, filled with the scent of roses and often with the sound of the surf beating on Hodder’s beach, a hard, flat, sandy stretch of shore of some length; for the cottage stands midway between Whitridge village and the Hall, and Whitridge itself, that neat little New England village, is less than a mile from the sea.

The road which runs past the lower gate of the Hall grounds—not the road that passes the cottage—leads in a direct line to Thornton, a town of some size and the county seat. It is, in fact, a thriving little city of which Whitridge sometimes pretentiously claims to be a suburb.

Beyond Whitridge in the other direction, the road runs down close to the sea in irregular windings past high, un¬ dulating sand dunes covered with coarse grass, past the salt marshes and the low headland with its surmounting life-saving station and a few surrounding cottages, on, in a wide curve, to the clustered houses that form the village of Tonomet—considerably smaller and quainter than its companion village of Whitridge. It is a sleepy, unambitious little place, full at all times of elderly fishermen and retired sea dogs who sit about on the rotted old wharves and tell each other sea tales of a past day—tales as racy and hearty as themselves in their prime.

Boats go out from Tonomet still, but they are poor things compared with those of the old days; for Tonomet has lost much of its ancient grandeur. Yet there lingers about it still the flavour of romance, a mixed flavour of salt fish and the “beauty and mystery of ships,” of high adventure and the unforgotten toll of the sea, which Whitridge, in its comparative newness, lacks and, char¬ acteristically, mocks at. For Whitridge thinks rather well of itself and of little Tonomet—that village with the heathenish name, as Mrs. Jerrold of the “Eagle,” in Whitridge, will often speak of it, with, at best, an amused tolerance. It knows its superiority; for is it not just that much nearer to Thornton and therefore to the advantages of a city?

Thus all the older children of Whitridge go in daily to the Thornton High School, in large busses run at suitable hours for that purpose, whereas the children of Tonomet must do the best they can with the educational offerings of old Mr. Horner of Whitridge; the only alternative being the arrival by private conveyance, and at an outrageous hour, to meet the Whitridge bus—a feat remarkably few of the Tonomet children have ever been known to accom¬ plish. There are, of course, innumerable other advantages in being a Whitridgeite. Indeed, it should be well under¬ stood that the reader’s sympathy and interest are expected to centre in that village, even though we allow the occa¬ sional picturesqueness of Tonomet.

But let us get back to Marian, whom we left in her little upper room at the cottage.

She had stopped in the sitting-room on her way to gather 17 up her two favourite books. She had read neither of them, but she chose them for their pictures, with which she con¬ nected some story of her own originating. One was The Vicar of Wakefield ; the other, which she now opened, was Dombey and Son, one of an old drab-covered edition with illustrations by “Phiz”; the picture which particularly fas¬ cinated her being the one of Florence and Edith Dombey on the staircase. The dark, tragic beauty of the runaway wife thrilled her; the ringlets; the hands that held off the other’s impetuous advance; the great handsome stair¬ case with wide, flat treads leading up to the half-glimpsed beauty of rooms above; all these things had never failed to awaken her imagination. Her interest in, and love for it dated back to the days before she and her mother had come to live in Whitridge, to the time when they lived at home with her father and Aunt Julia, when she herself was a tiny tot.

She tried to-day once more to plan a story to suit the picture. They used to amuse her—these exercises in imagination; but now the spell seemed to have been broken. She could get little pleasure out of them. She closed the book at last impatiently.

She tried getting out her dolls and setting them all in a row along the wall below the dormer window, but the joy of these was gone, too. She was getting old for dolls. And on a sudden impulse she determined to put them all away, to pack them up and send them out of her life— forever.

It was a wrench; it took courage. “It’s for good,” she told herself as she kissed them good-bye, one by one. The farewells made her very sad. The sun had almost set by the time she had finished.

She went to the window and stood looking out at the drooping garden. The dolls were all packed away now.

Was it this that made her so unhappy? Or the remem¬ brance of Donald’s treatment of the grey kitten and of Mark’s defection? Undoubtedly her idols were falling.

She was very pensive for a long time. Then she heard the voices of her mother and Ted Chamberlayne riding back up the drive in the deepening shadows.

Marian brushed away the threatening teardrops; with a quick, defiant tilt of her firm little chin—as firm and finely moulded as Ted Chamberlayne’s own—she turned from the window and slowly went down the stairs to meet them.

CHAPTER II i

T HE betrayal of bedroom confidences is always out of order. The repetition of such intimate con¬ versations by the omniscient author, whether driven thereto by indigence, the pertinacity of creditors or the obvious needs of the story, can never be regarded as in anything but the worst possible taste. It is a thing revolting in itself, despicable, unmanly—the poking of inquisitive noses into private apartments under the guise and semblance of literary curiosity, of intellectual research —Pah! the thing is too palpable, too crude—on the face of it a trumpery excuse not worthy the reader’s credence!