Читать книгу Joan and Peter - H. G. Wells - Страница 40

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The day of the great coup of Lady Charlotte was tragic and painful from the beginning. Peter got up wicked. It was his custom, and a very bad one, to bang with his spoon upon the bottom of his little porringer as he ate his porridge. It had grown out of his appreciation of the noise the spoon made as he dug up his food. Now, as Mary said, he “d’librately ’ammered.” How frequently had not Mary told him he would do it “once too often!” This was the once too often. The porridge plate cracked and broke, and the porridge and the milk and sugar escaped in horrid hot gouts and lumps over tablecloth and floor and Peter’s knees. It was a fearful mess. It was enough to cow the stoutest heart. Peter, a great boy of five, lifted up his voice and wept.

So this dire day began.

Then there was a new thin summer blouse, a glaring white silk thing, for Peter, and in those days all new things meant trouble with him. It was put on after a hot fight with Mary; his head came through flushed and crumpled. But Joan accepted her new blouse as good as gold. Then for some reason the higher powers would not let us go and look at the kittens, the dear little blind kittens in the outhouse. There were six of them, all different, for the Ingle-Nook cat was a generous, large-minded creature. Only after a dispute in which Joan threatened to go the way of Peter was “just a glimpse” conceded. And they were softer and squealier and warmer than anything one had ever imagined. We wanted to linger. Mary talked of a miracle. “Any time,” she said, “one of them kitties may eat up all the others. Any time. Kitties often do that. But it’s always the best one does it.”

We wanted to stay and see if this would happen. No! We were dragged reluctantly to our walk.

Was it Peter’s fault that when we got to the edge of the common the fence of Master’s paddock had been freshly tarred? Must a little boy test the freshness of the paint on every fence before he wriggles half under it and stares at Wonderland on the other side? If so, this was a new law.

But anyhow here we were in trouble once more, this beastly new white blouse “completely spoilt,” Mary said, and Mary in an awful stew. The walk was to be given up and we were to go home in dire disgrace and change....

Even Aunt Phyllis turned against Peter. She looked at him and said, “O Peter! What a mess!”

Then it was that sorrow and the knowledge of death came upon Joan.

She was left downstairs while Peter was hauled rather than taken upstairs to change, and in that atmosphere of unrest and disaster it seemed a sweet and comforting thing to do to go and look at the kittens again. But beyond the corner of the house she saw old Groombridge, the Occasional Gardener, digging a hole, and beside him in a pitiful heap lay five wet little objects and close at hand was a pail. Dark apprehension came upon Joan’s soul, but she went up to him nevertheless. “What you been doing to my kittays?” she asked.

“I drownded five,” said old Groombridge in a warm and kindly voice. “But I kep’ the best un. ’E’s a beauty, ’E is.”

“But why you drownded ’em?” asked Joan.

“Eh! you got to drown kittens, little Missie,” said old Groombridge. “Else ud be too many of um. But ollays there’s one or so kep’. Callum Jubilee I reckon. ’Tis all the go this year agin.”

Joan had to tell some one. She turned about towards the house, but long before she could find a hearer her sorrowful news burst through her. Aunt Phœbe writing Ruskinian about the marvellous purity of childish intuitions was suddenly disturbed by the bitter cry of Niobe Joan going past beneath the window. Joan had a voluminous voice when she was fully roused.

“They been ’n dwouwnded my kittays, Petah. They been ’n dwouwnded my kittays.”