Читать книгу Joan and Peter - H. G. Wells - Страница 49

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After dinner, the best dinner they had had for many weeks, a dinner beautifully suggestive to a sick man of getting back once more to a world in which there is enough and comfort, Oswald’s tongue was loosened and he told his story. He was not usually a communicative man but this was a brimming occasion; Muir he knew for a model of discretion, Muir had been his colleague, his nurse and his intimate friend to the exclusion of all others, for three eventful months, and Muir had already made his confidences. So Oswald told about Dolly and how his scar and his scruples had come between them, and what he thought and felt about Arthur, and so to much experimental wisdom about love and the bitterness of life. He mentioned the children, and presently Muir, who had the firm conscientiousness of the Scotch, brought him back to Peter.

“He was a decent little chap,” said Oswald. “He was tremendously like Dolly.”

“And not like that other man?” said Muir sympathetically.

“No. Not a bit.”

“I’m thinking you ought to stand by him for all you’re worth.”

Oswald thought.

“I will,” he said....

The next morning life did not seem nearly so rounded and kindly as it had been after his emotional storm of the evening before; he was angry and jealous about Dolly and Arthur again, and again disposed to regard his guardianship as an imposition, but he felt he had given his word overnight and that he was bound now to stand by Joan and Peter as well as he could. Moreover neither Lady Charlotte nor the sisters Stubland were really, he thought, people to whom children should be entrusted. His party reached Luba’s the next evening, and he at once arranged to send a cable to Mr. Sycamore accepting his responsibility and adding: “Prefer children should go on as much as possible mother’s ideas until my return.”