The Dark House. I. A. R. Wylie

nature. I remember my promises at the altar—even if Jim forgets his——"

      "He didn't promise to keep his temper or out of debt," Christine said.

      Edith sniffed loudly.

      "Or away from other women. Oh, it's no good, Christine, I know what I know. There's always some other woman in the background. Only yesterday I found a letter from Mrs. Saxburn—that red-haired vixen he brought home to tea when there wasn't money in the house to buy bread. I tell you he doesn't know what faithfulness means."

      Robert, rising for a moment above his own personal anguish, clenched his fist. It was all very well—he might hate his father, Christine might hate him, though he knew she didn't, but Edith had no right. She was an outsider—a bounder——

      "He is faithful to his ideal," Christine answered. "He is always looking for it and thinking he has found it. And except for Constance he has always been mistaken."

      "Thank you."

      "I wasn't thinking of you," Christine explained. "There have been so many of them—and all so terribly expensive—never cheap or common——"

      They were dragging the carpet out into the landing. Their voices sounded louder and more distinct.

      "I could bear almost everything but his temper," Edith persisted breathlessly. "He's like a madman——"

      "He's ill—sometimes I think he's very ill——"

      "Oh, you've always got an excuse for him, Christine. You never see him as he really is. I can't think why you didn't marry him yourself. I'm sure he asked you. Jim couldn't be alone with a woman ten minutes without proposing. And everyone knows how fond you are of him and of that tiresome child——"

      Robert Stonehouse gasped. The earth reeled under his feet. The stump of the cigar rolled off the windowsill, and he himself tumbled from his chair and was sick—convulsively, hideously sick. For a moment he remained huddled on the floor, half unconscious, and then very slowly the green, soul-destroying mist receded and he found Christine bending over him, wiping his face, with her pocket-Handkerchief.

      "Robert, darling, why didn't you call out?"

      "He's been smoking," Edith's voice declared viciously from somewhere in the background. "I can smell it. The horrid little boy——"

      "I didn't—I didn't——" He kept his feet with an enormous effort, scowling at her. He lied shamelessly, as a matter of course and without the faintest sense of guilt. Everyone lied. They had to. Christine knew that as well as anyone. Not that lying was of the slightest use. His father's temper fed on itself and was independent alike of fact or fiction. But you could no more help lying to him than you could help flinching from a red-hot poker. "I didn't," he repeated stubbornly, and all the while repeating to himself, "It's my birthday—and they've forgotten. They don't care." But he would rather have died then and there than have reminded them. He would not even let them see how miserable he was, and to stop himself from crying he kept his eyes fixed on Edith Stonehouse, who in turn measured him with that exaggerated and artificial horror which she considered appropriate to naughty children.

      "Oh, how can you, Robert? Don't you know what happens to wicked little boys who tell lies?"

      He hated her. He hated the red, coarse-skinned face, the tight mouth and opaque brown eyes and the low, stupid forehead with its old-fashioned narrow fringe of dingy hair. He knew that in spite of Sir Godfrey and the family estate of which she was always talking, she was common to the heart—not a lady like Christine and his mother—and her occasionally adopted pose of authority convulsed him with a blind, ungovernable fury. He was too young to understand that she meant well—was indeed good-natured and kindly enough in her natural environment—and as she advanced upon him now, in reality to smooth his disordered hair, he drew back, an absurd miniature replica of James Stonehouse in his worst rages, his fists clenched, his teeth set on a horrible recurring nausea.

      "If you touch me, Edith—I'll—I'll bite you——"

      "Hush, darling—you mustn't speak like that——"

      "Oh, don't mind me, Christine. I'm not accustomed to respect in this house. I don't expect it. 'Edith,' indeed! Did you ever hear such a thing! I can't think what Jim was thinking about to allow it. He ought to call me 'Mother'——"

      Robert tore himself free from Christine's soothing embrace. He had a moment's blinding, heart-breaking vision of his real mother. She stood close to him, looking at him with her grave eyes, demanding of him that he should avenge this insult. And in a moment he would be sick again.

      "I wouldn't—wouldn't call you mother—not if you killed me. I wouldn't if you put me in the fire——"

      "Robert, dear."

      "You see, Christine—but of course you won't see. You're blind where he's concerned. What a wicked temper. Deceitful, too. I'm sure I'm glad he's not my child. He's going to be like his father."

      "I want to be like my father. I wouldn't be like you for anything."

      "Robert, be quiet at once or I shall punish you."

      She was angry now. She had been greatly tried during the last twenty-four hours, and to her he was just an alien, hateful little boy who made her feel like an interloper in her own house, bought with her own money. She seized him by the arm, shaking him viciously, and he flew at her, biting and kicking with all his strength.

      It was an ugly, wretched scene. It ended abruptly on the landing, where she let go her hold with a cry of pain and Robert Stonehouse rolled down the stairs, bumping his head and catching his arm cruelly in the banisters. He was on his feet instantly. He heard Christine coming and he ran on, down into the hall, where he caught up his little boots, which she had been cleaning for him, and after a desperate struggle with the latch, out into the road—sobbing and blood-stained, heart-broken with shame and loneliness and despair.

      2

      His relationship with the Brothers Banditti across the hill was peculiar. It was one of Dr. Stonehouse's many theories of life that children should be independent, untrammelled alike by parental restrictions and education, and except on the very frequent occasions when this particular theory collided with his comfort and his conviction that his son was being disgracefully neglected, Robert lived the life of a lonely and illiterate guttersnipe. He did not know he was lonely. He did not want to play with the other children in the Terrace. But he did know that for some mysterious reason or other they did not want to play with him. The trim nursemaids drew their starched and shining darlings to one side when he passed, and he in turn scowled at them with a fierce contempt to which, all unknown, was added two drops of shame and bitterness. But even among the real guttersnipes of the neighbourhood he was an outcast. He did not know how to play with other children. He was ignorant alike of their ways and their games, and, stiff with an agonizing shyness, he bore himself before them arrogantly. It was natural that they in turn hated him. Like young wolves they flaired a member of a strange and alien pack—a creature who broke their unwritten laws—and at first they had hunted him pitilessly, throwing mud and stones at him, pushing him from the pavement, jeering at him. But they had not reckoned with the Stonehouse rages. He had flung himself on them. He had fought them singly, by twos and threes—the whole pack. In single combat he had thrashed the grocer's boy who was several inches taller and two years older than himself. But even against a dozen his white-hot fury, which ignored alike pain and discretion, made him dangerous and utterly unbeatable. From all encounters he had come out battered, blood-stained, literally in shreds, but clothed in lonely victory.

      Now they only jeered at him from a safe distance. They made cruel and biting references to the Stonehouse menage, flying with mock shrieks of terror when he was unwise enough to attempt pursuit. Usually he went his way, his head up, swallowing his tears.

      But the Brothers Banditti belonged to him.

      On the other side of the hill was a large waste plot of ground. A builder with more enterprise than capital had begun the erection of up-to-date villas but had gone bankrupt in the