Now what should she do? She had surely been gone a long time. At any moment now the handicraft class would come to an end and an angry Miss Giles would be coming to find her. What should she do with Baba? She pulled forward the front of her tunic and wondered if he could be bestowed between her tunic and her blouse. Though he was so tiny he was very fat. But then so was she, and perhaps an added corpulence about the region of her chest would not be noticed. She was wondering about it when she heard the sound of slamming desk lids and the ring of voices. The class was over and the door had been opened. Then followed the sound of the familiar stampede to the cloakroom, and then she heard Miss Giles coming down the passage.
“Keep still and don’t make a sound,” she whispered to Baba, and she fastened her belt more tightly round her waist and put him inside her tunic. Then she opened the door and came boldly out into the passage straight into Miss Giles, so close to her that they stood with their bodies almost touching each other. Winkle stood with her head tipped back, her hands clasped at her chest to keep Baba in position, and her blue eyes gazed up into the face above her.
“I’ve been all this time,” she said.
“So I observe,” said Miss Giles drily, and cast about in her mind for some suitably castigating remarks. Biting words usually flocked to her unbidden, but today none came. Her whole mind was captured by the attitude and face of the child. Standing so close to her, looking down on her from above, she saw nothing unusual in the shape of the stout little figure; what to her was unusual were the hands clasped so beseechingly beneath the child’s white face. For Winkle’s usually rosy cheeks had lost their color. She had passed through moments of intense horror and fear and she had not recovered yet. There were dark circles round her eyes and her mouth had lost its baby curve of entire happiness. Miss Giles saw in the white face and imploring hands the fear of all the nervous little girls flayed by her bitter tongue over a period of years. Misery had driven her to unreasoning revenge and Margary had been the last of many, but until today she had deliberately not known it. That was where her sin lay. She had not willed cruelty but she had willed self-deception. She had thought she had enough to bear on the surface of her life without research into the murky depths; and there again, in the attempt to evade suffering, there was sin. Why should one evade suffering? Evasion was denial of truth. “Brother Fire, God made you beautiful and strong and useful; I pray you be courteous with me,” Saint Francis had said when the man came to cauterize his eyes. One could ask a brother to be courteous but one could not deny his brotherhood. To turn aside from one brother was to turn aside from all the brethren, from birds and beasts and flowers and children, from verse and music. One could not pick and choose. It had to be all or nothing. No wonder she was a lonely woman. It was herself whom she was flaying now with her thoughts, and upon the surface of them there floated the white face of the child.
“Don’t you feel well, Henrietta?” she asked gently.
“I feel sick,” said Winkle with truth.
“Would you like to lie down?”
“I’d like to go home,” whispered Winkle.
“Run along then,” said Miss Giles. “I’ve just seen your mother come with the car.”
Winkle scuttled down the passage to the cloakroom, her hands still at her breast, and plunged into the welter of hurtling wellingtons and flapping mackintoshes and flailing arms that was the school dressing to go home. No one noticed her and she was able to button herself into her mackintosh without comment, and she was the first to be out of the house and trundling down the drive to her mother and the car. It was all she could do not to throw herself into Daphne’s arms, so great had been her longing for her, but without even looking at her mother she bundled herself and Baba into the back seat.
“Aren’t you coming to sit by me, precious?” asked Daphne, hurt, for Winkle’s place was always beside her. She was the more hurt because her thoughts had been obsessed by her youngest all the afternoon, and she had got the car out and started for Oaklands ten minutes before time.
“No thank you,” said Winkle politely.
“I will then,” said Pat, who had come out after Winkle, and all the way home the unobservant Margary sat beside Winkle and never noticed the heaving of her breast.
2
At the vicarage Winkle immediately scrambled out of the car and ran upstairs to take off her things. Margary went to find John and Daphne turned to Pat. “What’s the matter with my Winkle?” she demanded. “She didn’t look herself.”
“I expect she had a dust-up with old Giles,” said Pat. “She asked to be excused from class and went and played games in the broom cupboard. She does, you know, when she’s bored.”
“How very naughty of her,” murmured Daphne.
“They must go somewhere,” said Pat. “Margary goes behind the woodshed. I’m leaving, so I don’t care.”
“About what?” asked Daphne sharply.
“I’ve told you before, Mother,” said Pat, “that Oaklands is a foul stinking hole.” She went indoors before her mother had time to expostulate, and Daphne put the car away and followed her in that low state of mind familiar to parents whose children are beginning to get out of hand. Bringing up children, she thought, was like pouring ginger beer into a tumbler. All went well up to a certain point, and then it all frothed over the top. It was only Pat, so far. Margary was not the frothy type and she still had her Winkle down at the bottom of the tumbler.
“I’m going to get tea in the kitchen, Winkle,” she called up the stairs, for Winkle loved to help her get the tea.
“In a minute,” came Winkle’s voice.
The tea was nearly ready before she reappeared, and then she came so quietly that her footsteps were lost in the sound of the kettle coming to the boil.
“Look, Mummy,” said Winkle behind her mother’s back. “For you.”
Daphne swung round and beheld Winkle nursing the smallest, fattest and most unattractive Pekinese she had ever seen. It was old, with a grey muzzle, and in very poor condition. One eye was closed up and mattering at the corner while the other bulged at Daphne in such a startling manner that she stepped back a pace. She had never seen such a horrid little dog and she hated to see such an unhealthy creature held against Winkle’s breast. “Winkle, put it down!” she commanded.
Winkle obeyed and Baba gave a little whimper of pain, staggered and then righted himself, holding up his injured paw out of harm’s way and wagging his bedraggled scrap of a tail. That gallantry of a hurt animal, that instinctive determination to make the best of things, was Daphne’s undoing. Revulsion was lost in pity and she sat down on the floor, lifted Baba to her lap and examined the paw and the eye. She did truly love animals. The touch of Baba’s pink tongue upon her hand as she acknowledged with gratitude her desire to help him, moved her. It was years since she had owned a dog, for they had felt they could not afford one.
“Who gave him to you, Winkle?” she asked.
“No one did,” said Winkle. “I just found him. He’s for you.”
Daphne fondled Baba’s ears. He was one of the royal dogs of Peking, who in the days of their glory had paced in a double line behind the Son of Heaven, holding up the Imperial robe in their mouths. A dog of heavenly lineage, descendent of Buddha’s lion, who for love of his master had changed himself into a little dog that he might nestle in his arms. And now come to this.
“Did you find him in the road, Winkle?” asked Daphne. “And how naughty of you to go in the road.”
“He was lost,” said Winkle.
“Then we ought to take him to the police station,” said Daphne uncertainly. “He must have been a valuable little dog once.” He was a sleeve dog. His ancestors had been bred as small as possible so they might be carried in the wide sleeves of the ladies of the Imperial family, and lie there in silken comfort.
“But he’s for you, Mummy,” said Winkle in hurt tones. “I
brought him home for you.”
“He must have been the sweetest little thing at one time,” Daphne thought. Even now his white chest was soft to the touch and in spite of the grey muzzle she doubted if he was as old as he looked. Bathed and brushed and cared for, he might be a dear little dog. “I must see to this eye, Winkle,” she murmured absently. “How could it have got like this? And I think the paw is sprained.”
“I knew you would like him, Mummy,” said Winkle. “Shall I give him some milk?”
“In that saucer on the dresser,” said Daphne. “Carefully now, Winkle.”
Baba was set gently on the floor before the saucer of milk and lapped hungrily. Daphne and Winkle sat back on their heels and watched him.
“What on earth?” asked John. He and Margary had come hand in hand into the kitchen, and hand in hand gazed with startled eyes at the object on the floor. Margary, even more astonished than her father, opened her mouth and then shut it again. Like Brer Rabbit it was her habit to lie low and say nothing. She had found that amidst the many complications of life silence was best.
“He’s a stray dog Winkle found in the road,” said Daphne. “He has no collar. Winkle brought him for me, but I suppose we ought to tell the police?”
Kneeling on the floor, looking appealingly up at him, she seemed to have lost ten years of her age, and John found it difficult to harden his heart. “Certainly we must notify the police,” he said. “And what was Winkle doing out in the road?”
“I was excused from class,” said Winkle.
“Not to go out in the road, I’m sure,” said John.
“No,” said Winkle briefly to this side issue. “It was in a very frightening place that I found him.”
“Where?” asked Daphne sharply.
“Dark and frightening,” said Winkle, her face blanching at the memory. “And he was crying. I had to bring him away.”
“Where was this place, Winkle?” demanded Daphne in a panic.
“A horrible place,” said Winkle, “I won’t go there again. There was something lying on the floor and I thought it was a dead man, only it wasn’t.”
“Where was it, Winkle?” asked her anguished mother.
“I think we had better have tea without waiting for Pat,” said John. He was a great believer in tea as a solvent for intellectual problems. It soothed the nerves and cleared the mind and was often of assistance to a lapsed memory.
Baba was settled on a cushion before the stove and John handed the children bread and honey. A distracted Daphne had just poured strong tea into Winkle’s mug and milk and water into John’s cup when Pat burst into the room. She had nothing in common with Brer Rabbit. Her method amidst the complications of life was that of direct challenge.
“Good lord!” she ejaculated. “How did Baba get here?”
“You know the dog?” asked John mildly.
“Good lord, yes, he’s Mrs. Belling’s. Poor little brute. But if you pinched him, Winkle, there’ll be the stink of a row when the old girl finds out.”
Winkle, absorbed in the delight of strong sweet tea in her mug, raised her face from it to say briefly, “He’s Mummy’s now,” and returned to her mug again.
John drank a little milk and water to give him strength and then said with as much sternness as he could compass, “Winkle.” His youngest bit deep into a slice of bread and honey and smiled at him sweetly over the top of it. “Winkle, you must tell Mummy where exactly you found that dog.”
Winkle masticated a large mouthful at her leisure and then replied, “Upstairs at school. It was dark and horrid there and I was frightened. There was someone snoring but the dead person was only lots of dirty things.”
“But Winkle, Baba is Mrs. Belling’s little dog,” said Daphne.
“Not now,” said Winkle. “I tried to bring him to you before but Pat wouldn’t let me.”
“I wouldn’t have let you today if I’d seen you,” said Pat. “You are just a common thief, Winkle.”
Winkle drained her mug of delicious strong tea, set it down and prepared to roar. But just as she got her mouth wide open and her eyes screwed up, and started to take the first deep breath, John interrupted with, “Now stop that, Winkle. Tell me why you wanted Mummy to have Baba.”
Winkle, endeavoring to shut off the roar, got entangled in her deep breath, choked and hiccuped, frightened herself and began to cry. Between the sobs of her genuine distress her anxious parents caught the broken phrases. “Baba was hurt in the dark cupboard. She doesn’t love Baba. I wanted Mummy to have Baba. I hate school and I was frightened. I won’t go back to school ever again. I’m not a common thief!” And picking up a handy currant bun she threw it at Pat, felt better, took another deep breath and was able to put it to its intended use. There was nothing to be done now but to remove her, which John did, shutting her in the study; the only known way of terminating Winkle’s roars being solitary confinement. Tenderhearted parent though he was he had little compunction about it. There was no grief in these seizures of Winkle’s, only self-defense and determination to get her own way. When he came back it was to find only Pat enjoying her tea. Daphne and Margary seemed to have lost their appetites.
“As soon as we have finished one of us must telephone to Mrs. Belling and set her mind at rest about her dog,” he said to Daphne. “And then I’ll take him back. Winkle had better not see him again.”
“I wish I could have kept him,” said Daphne in a low voice. “He’s such a sick little dog.”
“Mrs. Belling feeds him on chocolate creams,” said Pat. “How can you expect a dog to keep in condition on chocolate creams?”
Baba, asleep on his cushion, whimpered in his sleep.
“If we took him for walks, and fed him right, he’d become a nice little dog, wouldn’t he, Mummy?” said Margary.
“He’s well bred,” said Daphne. “A little sleeve dog. I’ve always wanted a sleeve dog.”
“We’ve always said we couldn’t afford a dog,” said John.
“He’d eat so little,” pleaded Margary.
“Mummy, when we get his fat down, he’ll just go in the sleeve of your Chinese coat that Daddy gave you,” said Pat.
John tried to take a grip of the situation. “Daphne,” he said, “if you’ve finished tea, leave Pat and Margary to clear away and ring up Mrs. Belling while I get the car out.”
Daphne got up slowly. “No need to be in such a hurry, John,” she said. “Don’t get the car out till I’ve telephoned.”
Crossing the room she stooped to caress Baba’s head. He woke up and kissed her hand again.
“He’d look smashing in the sleeve of your coat,” repeated Pat.
“Yes,” said Daphne, and left the room closely followed by her husband. Out in the hall she lifted the receiver and dialled the Oaklands number. “Yes, I’m going to do it,” she said to John. “You needn’t stand over me. . . Oh, is that Annie? This is Mrs. Wentworth speaking. Could I speak to Mrs. Belling? Isn’t she well? I’m sorry. Did she? Well, sleep is always the best thing. Has she an extension in her room? Well, if she’s awake now I’d like to speak to her. . . John, don’t look at me as though you thought it was from me Winkle got her acquisitive habits. I never stole a dog in my life. . . Is that you Mrs. Belling? Daphne Wentworth speaking. I’m so sorry to hear you are not very well today. I’m afraid you’ve missed your little dog and I’m sorry to say Winkle is the culprit. She was very naughty. She buttoned him up inside her coat and brought him home and I never noticed. My husband will bring Baba back at once. . . What did you say? . . . What. . . do you mean? What?”
“What’s the matter?” asked John, for Daphne had replaced the receiver, the color draining away from her face. “What’s the matter, Daphne?”
“She cut me off,” said Daphne.
“Righteous indignation,” suggested John.
“No. She said, ‘Keep the li
ttle brute, I don’t want him.’ John, she sounded horrid. Her voice was thick as though she’d been drinking.”
“Nonsense,” said John.
“Horrid,” repeated Daphne, and even her lips were white.
“Well, we’ve got the little dog,” said John.
“John, I always thought she was such a sweet old lady.”
“Did you?”
“Didn’t you?”
“I wasn’t sure,” said John.
Daphne turned round and looked at him. “John, I’m not at all sure that’s a good school.”
“What makes you say that?” asked John cautiously.
“The way the children were talking. Winkle so frightened. Pat’s language. That poor neglected little dog. The sound of that old woman just now. Do you think it’s a good school?”
“Without any evidence to support my doubts I’ve had them,” said John.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” asked Daphne irritably.
“Would you have listened?” asked John.
She looked at him and saw that he was unsmiling. “No,” she said, and suddenly collapsed in his arms in a storm of tears.