The Dark House | Page 5

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