Читать книгу The Raft - Coningsby Dawson - Страница 14

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Peter took all the credit to himself—she was his baby. And why not? Nobody, not even his mother or father, had had anything to do with her advent. For many months after Philip’s short sojourn, his mother had cried and his father had frowned whenever babies were mentioned. Had it not been for Peter, the little sister might have slipped God’s memory. Peter gave him no chance to forget. Every night, kneeling between the bed-clothes with his lips against the pillow to muffle the sound, he reminded God. He realized that this attitude was not respectful and always apologized in his prayers. He did it because big people wouldn’t understand if they caught him kneeling beside the bed; it would be quite easy to fall asleep there and get found.—So, of course, when she came, she belonged to him. But her coming was not yet. He had no end of trouble in getting her.

After he had heard the whistling, he tried to tell Grace about it. This happened the very next morning. She had risen late and was dressing him in a hurry in order to get him down in time for breakfast. She hardly listened to him at all, but jerked him this way and that, buttoning and tying and tucking.

“My, oh, my! There’s only emptiness inside your little ‘ead this mornin’; you must ’ave left your brains beneath the pillow. What a lot o’ talk about nothin’.”

“It wasn’t nothing, Grace. I really and truly heard it.”

“Now then, no false’oods, young man. God’s a-listenin’ and writin’ it all down.—There, Grice didn’t mean to be h’angry! But you talk your tongue clean out o’ your ‘ead.”

“But Grace, I did. I did. It was like this.”

He pursed his lips together; only a splutter came. Grace rubbed his face vigorously with the flannel, leaving a taste of soap in his mouth.

“You should ‘ear my new sweet’eart.” She was trying to create a diversion. “ ‘E can make a winder rattle in its frame; it’s that loud and shrill, the noise ‘e do make. If you’re a good boy, maybe I’ll get ’im to teach you ‘ow.”

He was bursting with his strange new knowledge; he was sure his mother would understand. While his father was at the table he kept silent. His father soon hurried away; the front-door slammed.

He plucked at his mother’s skirt. “Last night God was in my cupboard.”

“But darling, little boys oughtn’t to say things like that—not even in fun, Peter.”

“I heard him, mummikins. An angel was with him, doing like this.”

He puffed out his cheeks; but he wasn’t so clever as the angel. No sound came.

His mother gazed long into the eager face, trying to detect mischief. “Whistling—is that what you mean? But angels don’t whistle, Peter.”

“This one did—in our cupboard—in my bedroom.”

He wagged his head solemnly in affirmation. Then he drew down his mother’s face. She was smiling to herself. “God was making our baby,” he whispered, “and the angel was waiting to bring her.”

The rain came into her eyes—that was what Peter called it. “Hush, my dearest. That’s all over. You’re my only baby now.”

She pressed him to her; he could feel her shaking. Just then, he knew, nothing more must be said.

Many times he tried to tell her. One evening, while the angel was whistling, she tiptoed into his bedroom. Looking up through the darkness he saw her and seized her excitedly about the neck. “They’re there, mummy. Don’t you hear her? She’s whistling now.” He pronounced it ‘wussling.’

“Why her, Peter?”

“I dunno; but listen, listen.”

She opened the cupboard door. “See, there’s nothing.”

“She stopped when you did that.”

“Go to sleep, my precious. You’re dreaming. If there was anything, mother would have heard it as well.”

So he learnt to keep his secret to himself; no one seemed able to share it. Every now and then, he would stop in his playing, with his head on one side and his face intent; those who watched would see him creep upstairs and peep into the big, dark cupboard. Strangely enough, whatever he thought he heard, he did not appear frightened.

When the doctor was called to examine him he said, “A very imaginative child! Oh dear no, he’s quite well. He’ll grow out of that fancy. Won’t you, old chap?”

At the back of his mother’s mind was the terror that she was going to lose him. She kept him always with her. When that dreamy look came into his eyes and he turned his head expectantly, she would snatch him to her breast, as though someone lurked near to take him from her. And Peter lay still in her arms and smiled, for it seemed to him that the angel leant over the banisters and whistled softly, “I’m coming. I’m coming, little Peterkins.”

But Peter was anxious to make God hurry. It was Grace who taught him how.

Her faith came in spasms. Although she beat the drum for the Salvation Army her fervor had its ups and downs. She used to tell Peter. When her love-affairs went wrong, she was overwhelmed with doubt and refused to go on parade. “ ‘E can carry the drum ‘isself,” she would say, speaking of her Maker. “If ‘e don’t look after me no better, I’ve done with ’im. It’s awright; I don’t care. ‘E can please ‘isself. If ‘e can do without me, I can do without ’im. So there.”

These confidences made Peter feel that God was an excessively accessible person. One evening, kneeling in his mother’s lap with folded hands, he surprised her by adding to the petition she had taught him, “Now, look here, God, I’m tired of waiting. I wants——”

At this point he was stopped by a gentle hand pressed firmly over his mouth.

“I can’t think what’s come to Peter,” she told her husband; “he speaks so crossly to God in his prayers.”

“That’s Grace,” said Barrington laughing, “you mark my words. You’d better talk to her.”

“Oh, but I’m so frightened when he does like that. Billy, do you think——”

He stopped her promptly. “No, I don’t. The boy’s all right.”

Seeing how her lips trembled, he took her in his arms. “You’ve never grown out of your short frocks—you’re so timid, you golden little Nan.”

It was after Grace had been spoken to that she made it up with her Maker. When this occurred, Peter was with her in the dimly lit hall where the soldiers of Salvation gathered. She was sitting beside him sulkily on the back bench nearest the door; suddenly she rose and dashed forward in a storm of weeping. While the penitent knelt by the platform, the man who was waving his arms went on talking. Peter was growing frightened for her, when she jumped to her feet, seizing a tambourine which she banged and shook above her head, and shouted, “I’m cleansed. I’m cleansed.”

Partly because of her strength and partly because of her righteousness, she was allowed to carry the drum again and march in the front of the procession. Peter was impressed. After that when he had been impatient with God, he would seek forgiveness by declaring himself cleansed. He always thought that, following such confessions, the whistling came louder from the cupboard.

But it was Uncle Waffles who completed his information. At intervals he would come over to Topbury with Aunt Jehane. So far as the ladies were concerned, the talk was usually about their children. Aunt Jehane would rarely fail to mourn the fact that hers were both girls.

“Boys are different,” she would say; “you can turn them out to sink or swim. But girls! Sooner or later one has to get them married. It’s like my fortune to have two of them—the luck was with you from the first.”

Perhaps that was Jehane’s way of reminding Nan that she had given her husband only Peter. Waffles seemed to construe it in that light for, when she had repeated her complaint more than twice, he would tuck Peter under one arm and Glory under the other, and steal away to some hidden place where he could ask him funny questions. If he heard a cock crowing he would stop and inquire, “Why does the Doodle-do?”

The little boy almost always forgot the proper answer. Uncle Waffles would have to tell him, “Because he does, Peter.”

Peter soon learnt that Uncle Waffles had secrets as well, for, when he talked in the presence of his wife, he would hold his chin in his hand, so as to be able to slip his fingers quickly over his mouth if he found that unwise words were escaping. If he were too late in slipping up his fingers, she would say quite sharply, “Ocky, don’t be stupid. You’re no better than a child.”

It was because Uncle Waffles was no better than a child that Peter took courage to ask him, “How does people have babies?”

His uncle regarded him seriously a moment. “You’re very little to ask such questions. It’s a great secret. If I tell you, promise to keep it to yourself.”

When he had promised, his uncle whispered. And Peter knew that it was true, for he remembered that someone had been lazy and had had breakfast in bed before the coming of both Riska and Philip. So he learnt the last piece of witchcraft by which babies are induced to come into the world. From then on, until it happened, he was continually coaxing his mother not to get up to breakfast. One morning she took his advice; then he knew for certain that Uncle Waffles was very wise, even though Aunt Jehane did call him stupid.

For some time the whistling had been growing bolder: it would come out of the cupboard as though the angel were running; it would wander all over the house and meet him in the most unexpected places. When he was playing in the garden it would drift down to him from the tree-tops, “Coming, Peterkins. Coming.” It had grown quick like that, as though it, too, were impatient of waiting.

Two years had gone by since God had sent Philip and taken him back so suddenly. It was within a few days of the anniversary and very close to Christmas. All day the sky had been heavy with clouds. It was bitterly cold outside; Peter had been kept in the nursery with a big, red fire blazing. Everyone seemed busy; they opened the door now and then to make sure that he was all right, and left him to play by himself. Toward evening the clouds burst like great pillows, swollen with angels’ feathers; softly, softly, covering up bare trees, putting the world to sleep beneath a great white counterpane, the snow came down.

He woke in the night; it was like a lark singing right beside his bed. It was the old haunting little air that it sang, but so much quicker, “Coming. Coming. Coming.” Sometimes it sank into the faintest whisper; sometimes it would swell into a sound so loud and happy that even Grace’s sweetheart could not have whistled louder. Grace turned drowsily and, seeing him sitting up, drew him down beneath the clothes, putting her arms about him. No, she had not heard it.

In the morning his mother’s breakfast was carried upstairs and his father looked worried. Peter grew afraid lest he had done wrong and a little sister was not wanted. So he hid himself in the big dark cupboard in the bedroom and was not missed for hours.

Presently voices wandered up and down the house, sometimes sounding quite near and sometimes quite distant, “Peter! Peter! Where are you?” They seemed afraid to call louder.

Peter had his suspicions, so he kept quiet. They did not want her—and they knew that he had done it.

Someone said “Shish!” The other voices sank into silence; now it was only his father’s that he heard. “Peter-kins, Peterkins, father wants you. Don’t be frightened. He’s going to tell you something grand.”

So Peter came out; when he saw his father’s face, he knew that he was not angry.

“You did want her too—didn’t you, didn’t you, Daddy?”

“Of course I did, you rummy little chap. But how did you know? Who told you?”

Although he coaxed and rubbed his scrubby chin against Peter’s neck, he never got an answer to that question. Where was the good of answering? Either you had ears like Peter’s or you hadn’t.