The Dark House

he became eight years old. He did not know this, though he did know that it was his birthday and that a birthday was a great and presumably auspicious occasion. His concept

had given him a toy fort fully garrisoned with resplendent Highland soldiers. And there had been a party of children whom, as a s

hatred of Christine, who tried to take her place. For a time indeed his mother went completely out of his consciousness. But after a little she came back to him by a secret path. In the interval she had ceased to be connected with his evening prayer and his morning bath and all the other tiresome realities and become a creature of dreams. She grew tall and beautiful. He liked to be alone-best of all at night when Christine had put the light out-so that he could make up stories about her and himself and t

m her side and lost himself, and, being overwhelmed with the sense of his smallness and forlornness, had burst into a howl of grief. Then suddenly she had stood out from the midst of the sympathet

his adoration became an agony and he lay with his face hidden in his

e twentieth time in his career, and called out, "Hallo, Robert!" in her clear, cool voice, and Robert, standing at the top of the stairs in his night-shir

ipotent as his mother had become. He knew that she, too, was often terribly unhappy, and their helplessness in the face of a common danger gave them a sort of equality. But she was good to him, and her faithfulness was the one sure thing in his convulsed and rocking world. He clung to her as a drowning man clings to a floating spar,

e night before, there was the quiet, resolute scratch of her latch-key in the lock, and when James Stonehouse, sullen and menacing, brushed rudely against her in the hall, she went on steadily up the stairs to where Robert waited fo

-fastened on as an afterthought, as it were, but so firmly that there could be no escape. Because of it Christine loved him. He knew that he was not always a very lovable little boy. Even with her he could be obstinate and cruel-cruel because she was so much less than his mother had become-and there were times when, with a queer unchildish power of self-visuali

alf. He had come down to breakfast shaking with anticipation. All through the morning he had waited for the surprise that was to be sprung on him, hanging at everyone's heel in turn, and it was only towards dusk that he knew with bitter certainty that he had been forgotten. A crisis had wiped him a

d with him in her q

ar, you can'

n one of thos

ght, unwashed, into bed, cry

ely by a stout shabby man with a bald head and good-natured face, who announced that he had come to put a distraint on the furniture which, incidentally, had never been paid for. Edith Stonehouse, with an air of outraged

had been exuberant-exultant-his good-humour white-hot and dangerous. Looking into his brilliant blue eyes with their two sharp points of light, it would have been hard to tell whether he was laughing or mad with anger. His moods were like that-too close to be distinguished from one another with any safety. Christine, wh

m," Edith had said in

ange, you bad-t

rtune, and when she dared she was arch with an undertone of grievance. Robert had capered about him and held his hand and

in again. It's about the furniture. You said it was paid for. I can't think how you could be so mad. I ra

But James Stonehouse had taken no notice. He had gone on spreading and warming himself be

at the University. Got sent down together. Wonderful fellow-wonderful. Now he's in business in South Africa. Made his pile in diamonds. Simply rolling. He's going to let me in. Remarkable chap. Asked him to dinner. Oh, I've arranged all that on my way up. Gunther's are sending round a cook and a couple of waiters an

," Christine had i

son, his eyes brightening to an electric glare as they picked out the patches of the shabby sailor-suit an

oolbred's first thing to-morrow and have him fitted out from top to toe--" The gathering storm receded

y he had become so drunk that he had had no opportunity to explain to the French chef and the

n his mother. He had listened to the talk and his father's laughter-jovial and threatening-and once he had dived downstairs and, peering through the banisters li

Stonehouse had gone off early in a black and awful temper. It seemed that at the last moment the multi-millionaire had explained that owing to a hitch in his affairs he was s

uarter of an inch long when his sense of wrong and injustice deepened to an overwhelming despair. It was not only that even Christine had failed him-everything was failing him. The shabby plot of rising ground opposite, which justified Dr. Stonehouse's contention that he looked out over open country, had become immersed in a loathsome mist, greenish in hue, in which it heaved and rolled and undulated like an uneasy reptile. The house likewise heaved, and Robert had to lean hard again

, since the bailiff had no claim on it, was to go to the pawnbroker's to appease the butcher.

Never did I think I should have to go through such humiliation. My sisters say I ought to leave him-that I am wanting in

eep his temper or out o

niffed

in the background. Only yesterday I found a letter from Mrs. Saxburn-that red-haired vixen he brought home t

It was all very well-he might hate his father, Christine might hate him, thou

is always looking for it and thinking he has found it

nk y

ed. "There have been so many of them-and all

t into the landing. Their voices

ut his temper," Edith persisted b

times I think

nk why you didn't marry him yourself. I'm sure he asked you. Jim couldn't be alone with a woman ten

om his chair and was sick-convulsively, hideously sick. For a moment he remained huddled on the floor, half unconscious, and then very

ng, why didn't

viciously from somewhere in the background

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

t you know what happens to wic

alking, 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

e, Edith-I'll-I

you mustn't spe

I don't expect it. 'Edith,' indeed! Did you ever hear such a thing! I can't

-breaking vision of his real mother. She stood close to him, looking at him with her grave ey

ther-not if you killed me. I wou

rt, d

ere he's concerned. What a wicked temper. Deceitful, too. I'm su

father. I wouldn't be

t at once or I s

lien, hateful little boy who made her feel like an interloper in her own house, bought with her own money. S

d 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, whi