Читать книгу Joan and Peter - H. G. Wells - Страница 29

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Then one day an extraordinary thing happened. It was towards lunch-time, and Mary was bringing Joan and Peter home from a walk in the woods. Joan was tired, but Peter had been enterprising and had run on far ahead; he was trotting his fat legs down the rusty lane that ran through the bushes close to the garden fence when he saw Nobby’s lank form coming towards him from the house, walking slowly and as if he couldn’t see where he was going. Peter was for slipping into the bushes and jumping out at him and saying “Boo.” Then he saw Nobby stop and stand still and stare back at the house, and then, most wonderful and dreadful! this great big grown-up began to sob and cry. He said “Ooo-er!” just as Peter did sometimes when he felt unendurably ill-used. And he kept raising his clenched fists as if he was going to shake them—and not doing so.

“I will go to Hell,” said Nobby. “I will go to Hell.”

In a passion!

(Peter was shocked and ashamed for Nobby.)

Then Nobby turned and saw Peter before Peter could hide away from him. He stopped crying at once, but there was his funny face all red and shiny on one side.

“Hullo, old Peter boy,” said Nobby. “I’m off. I’m going right away. Been fooled.”

So that was it. But hadn’t he Africa and lions and elephants and black men to go to, a great Real Play Nursery instead of a Nursery of Toys? Why make a fuss of it?

He came to Peter and lifted him up in his arms. “Good-bye, old Peter,” he said. “Good-bye, Peter. Keep off the copper punching.” He kissed his godson—how wet his face was!—and put him down, and was going off along the path and Peter hadn’t said a word.

He wanted to cry too, to think that Nobby was going. He stared and then ran a little way after his friend.

“Nobby,” he shouted; “good-bye!”

“Good-bye, old man,” Nobby cried back to him.

“Good-bye. Gooood-bye-er.”

Then Peter trotted back to the house to be first with the sad but exciting news that Nobby had gone. But as he came down from the green wicket to the house he looked up and saw his father at the upstairs window, gazing after Nobby with an unusual expression that perplexed him, and in the little hall he found his mother, and she had been crying too, though she was pretending she hadn’t. They knew about Nobby. Something strange was in the air, perceptible to a little boy but utterly beyond his understanding. Perhaps Nobby had been naughty. So he thought it best to change the subject, and began talking at once about a wonderful long bicycle with no less than three men on it—not two, Mummy, but three—that he had seen upon the highroad. They had thin white silk shirts without sleeves, and rode furiously with their heads down. Their shirts were blown out funnily behind them in the middles of their backs. They went like that!...

All through the midday meal nobody said a word about Nobby....

Nobody ever did say anything about Nobby again. When on a few occasions Peter himself talked appreciatively of Nobby nobody, unless it was Joan now and then, seemed the least bit interested....

One side consequence of Oswald’s visit had been the dethronement of the original Nobby. The real Nobby had somehow thrust the toy Nobby into the background. Perhaps he drifted into the recesses of some box or cupboard. At any rate when Peter thought of him one day he was nowhere to be found. That did not matter so much as it would have done a couple of months before. Now if the bears and “burdlars” got busy in the night-nursery Peter used to pretend that the pillow was the real Nobby, the Nobby who wasn’t even afraid of lions and had driven off one with a stick. A prowling bear hadn’t much chance against a little boy who snuggled up to that Nobby.