Sleep in Peace (4 page)

She untied Ludo's feeder and wiped his mouth and cheeks energetically, then with a flash of her long legs skipped out of the room. Ludo rolled up his feeder exactly as he had been taught—he would omit nothing that he ought to do, to-night, for fear God should see it and want to punish him. (The velvet suit made God seem very near.) He climbed down from his chair slowly, feeling lonely and tired.

A small sound from the hearth reminded him that he was not, however, quite alone. The newborn infant, restored to life by the doctor's ministrations, lay by the fireside in its beribboned cot. Ludo went over and looked down at it mournfully. A horrid ugly little red thing, he thought sadly; fancy
that
being the youngest, fancy his mother liking
that
best! Even as he watched, it began to screw up its ugly monkey face and turn a deeper shade of crimson; a thin ugly wail issued from its toothless lips. Ludo looked round nervously for someone to soothe it, but there was nobody at hand. It continued to wail piercingly; Ludo, uneasy, strolled out of the nursery and looked along the landing and down the stairs; several voices, dulled by their passage through wood, reached his ears, but there was no one in sight. He hesitated; why not go downstairs to the safe, warm kitchen? Nobody could expect
him
to look after the baby, surely? But the thin wail persisted; it sounded so helpless and so tormented that the softhearted Ludo was drawn back to it against his will. He stood over the cot again, deeply troubled by the poor little thing's distress. The infant raised its voice and screamed its utmost. Ludo, perspiring
with perplexity, suddenly took a daring decision; with his knee, furtively, so as to be able to pretend he was not doing it if anyone suddenly came in, he rocked the cot.

The result was good; an odd look of surprised acquiescence came over the crumpled face, and the wail diminished in intensity. Ludo continued to rock; the wail died. Ludo smiled, and putting out one finger, very gently touched the baby's cheek. It was soft and warm. He stroked it carefully.

“Oh, God,” prayed Henry Hinchliffe, kneeling in his dining-room, his family about him, “Who didst bring Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego safe out of the burning fiery furnace, that they might show Thy power before an unbelieving nation, we thank Thee because it hath pleased Thee to-day to preserve our little sister in the house of Alfred Armistead from the advancing flames. We pray that she may always remember this Thy great mercy, and be very specially Thy child, and the means of bringing others to Thy service. We ask Thy blessing upon her and upon her house, and upon this our house, that all in it may live good, pure and upright lives, and serve Thee faithfully. We pray Thee to bless those who are here, and those who are absent from us; bless Henry, and Alice, and Edward, and Frederick, and help them to see the Way which is the Truth and the Life, so that in all their goings out and their comings in they may be worthy children of Thy great family.”

Henry Hinchliffe was a somewhat older man than Alfred Armistead, but he had not married till the building of Blackshaw Mills set him on his feet, so that their children were much of an age. Edward was rising eight, Frederick was six; a miscarriage and a stillborn infant had made a gap in the family between Frederick and the child who was expected two months hence.

Edward was tall for his age, thin and wiry, with very bony
hands which seemed to flap out from his body at odd angles; he had a long, thin, intelligent face, very bright blue eyes and sandy hair (like his father's), which stuck up from his forehead in a peak. His hands, apparently so unco-ordinated, were really eager and skilful, and he already had a table of his own in the nursery which he called his laboratory and forbade Frederick to touch. In September he had been sent to the Hudley Grammar School for the first time, and was beginning to be distinguished there already for his scholastic prowess, and popular for his mockery and daring. He had listened with interest to his father's comparison of the Armistead baby to Abed-nego, as something novel and therefore worth consideration, but when Mr. Hinchliffe went off into his customary family blessings, Edward's attention wandered. Soon a preoccupied frown furrowed his high narrow forehead; he had begun to visualise the room which his eyelids concealed from him, as a mental exercise. There was the huge mahogany bookcase behind him, full of rows of uniform volumes, political biographies and theological works, with the big Graphics in the bottom shelves; then the window with its large glass window-box, bushy with his mother's ferns; then his father's desk laden with neat piles of papers; the newspaper stand; the hearth. There was the black marble mantelpiece, with the pillared marble clock and the prancing bronze horses and the engraved card of invitation to the Mayor's At Home. There was an oil painting of his maternal grandfather, in a black gown with a pen in his hand, and another of his maternal grandmother, in a frilled cap. There was the large dining table, covered by the crimson chenille tablecloth with its tempting fringe, on which at present rested an open Bible; there were two armchairs and six ordinary chairs, all in red velvet and mahogany. Finally by the door there was the curved mahogany sideboard, on which stood the branched silver flower vase, and the biscuitine. And what else? What occupied the left side of the sideboard to-night? There was something there, Edward was sure, something unusual, something
he had noticed particularly. What could it be? How stupid to have forgotten! He scowled to induce concentration, but could see nothing to the left of his mental sideboard except a blur. What a failure! How feeble! Very slowly he turned his head, then cautiously opened one eye. Ah! it was his mother's work-basket. Of course. Everyone else was praying very hard, observed Edward, enjoying this solitary and forbidden view of his family at their devotions. His father and mother knelt on opposite sides of the hearth, back to back; Father knelt firmly erect, with his head thrown up; Mother crouched over her chair and bent her face into her hands—the flowing lines of her long brown serge dress were very graceful, Edward thought, and he loved her cloud of soft dark hair. Dear little Frederick, so fresh and plump in one of Edward's cast-off suits, had clasped his hands against his breast and looked like one of the cherubs on his mother's silver handglass; his fair hair fell as usual over his eyes, his bow as usual was crooked and his Eton collar rumpled, but his flushed cheeks and shining golden lashes revealed ecstasy. Edward sighed; why was everybody so rapt to-night, he wondered. Mr. Hinchliffe had now reached the Lord's Prayer; Edward, tired for the moment of daring speculation, gave up questions, closed his eyes, and repeated the familiar cadences dutifully.

Mrs. Hinchliffe was indeed praying with special fervour. (The daughter and sister of ministers of God, she believed with all her soul in the power of prayer.) She had been deeply shocked by her husband's story of the fallen chimney. An infant child to be in such danger! Poor helpless little thing! It was dreadful! Especially as the Armisteads were such worldly people, with no inner belief, no true religion, to guide and help them in this hour of trial. In the Hinchliffes' view, nobody who went to Church could be otherwise than lacking in inner religion; the Church was shackled by the bonds of wealth, stifled by its own lust for power; no true grace could inhabit there. This was so obvious that nobody could be ignorant of it; and accordingly those who went to Church in
Hudley must do so from worldly motives, to “stand well” with their superiors and show off their best clothes. In country districts, where the people were backward and uneducated, perhaps some churchgoers might still seriously believe in the purity and goodness of the Church, but in a progressive, enlightened place like Hudley, such simplicity was quite impossible. Accordingly churchgoers in Hudley could not bear away with them on Sunday any true sense of God, with which to inspire their daily life. As might be expected, therefore, the Armisteads' daily life was such as to excite the Hinchliffes' gravest disapproval.

(“Forgive us our trespasses,” prayed Mr. Hinchliffe, “as we forgive them that trespass against us.”)

Their politics, for example, were utterly mistaken, shockingly Jingoistic; on that account Henry Hinchliffe had nicknamed them “The Blues”. Then, while the Hinchliffes' address was Number Eleven, Cromwell Place, and they kept one maid, Alfred Armistead, who certainly drew more income from the business than his junior partner but was still labouring under some of his father-in-law's liabilities, lived in a “House”, found two maids and a nursery governess necessary to his family's comfort, and entertained on a lavish scale. He also drank wine, and smoked cigars. To the Hinchliffes all this seemed not only quite opposed to all that had made England the most enlightened and prosperous country in the world, but also childishly pretentious and essentially silly—a gimcrack imitation of the idle rich, those landed gentry who were such a godless, useless, tyrannical burden on the nation's wealth. Mr. Armistead's London-made suits, his elaborate ties, his glossy boots, his extravagance in linen, were the subject of frequent ridicule in the Hinchliffe household—“a regular collar and cuff man”, Mr. Hinchliffe called him—while the opinions of each other's dress held by Mrs. Hinchliffe and Mrs. Armistead respectively were even more severe. Mr. Hinchliffe had a condescending fondness for the amiable and personable Alfred, however, felt a moral responsibility for his welfare to old Spencer Thwaite,
whom he revered, and had a just appreciation of Alfred's
flair
for a good design; he often therefore lamented to his wife his partner's erroneous style of living. “They can't save a penny in that house,” he said, genuinely concerned. “It's an absurd establishment for a young man.” He totted up mentally the sums he himself allotted each year to current expenses, to his children's future education, to charity and to saving, and could not see how Alfred could possibly afford to keep three maids and live in Blackshaw House. The conclusion was inevitable; the Armisteads were not saving. Three maids and not a penny saved! “I'm confident that Alfred is making a serious mistake,” worried Mr. Hinchliffe, pushing up his moustache. “If he goes on like this, he'll find himself in debt.” At this awful word, Mrs. Hinchliffe's mild blue eyes widened in horror. “Perhaps old Mrs. Armistead has something?” she hinted. Her husband coughed discreetly, pursed his lips and looked down his nose. “I think not,” he said.

Mrs. Hinchliffe, remembering all this now, prayed for the poor little Armistead baby very earnestly indeed, as it was her duty to do. She could not help feeling that in a more truly sober and religious family, the defects in the chimney would have been discovered earlier, and she thanked God Almighty for His great mercy in granting that her own coming child should be born into a decent, God-fearing, respectable household.

“For Thine is the Kingdom,” concluded Mr. Hinchliffe fervently, “the Power and the Glory, for ever and ever.”

“Amen,” said Mrs. Hinchliffe.

“Amen,” echoed her two sons.

“Freddie,” said Edward thoughtfully, half an hour later as the boys lay side by side on their neat iron bedsteads: “If God wanted to save the Blue Baby, why didn't he keep the chimney standing? It would have been easier, it seems to me.”

“Father would say that the ways of the Almighty are inscrutable,” murmured Frederick in his liquid and golden tones.

“No talking there!” boomed Mr. Hinchliffe from without cheerfully, thumping a friendly warning on the boys' bedroom door.

Three days later Laura Armistead died. As her child's life too seemed doubtful, the infant was hurriedly baptised in the Blackshaw House dining-room, and given her mother's name.

“You must be a good girl now, and look after Paoa,” old Mrs. Armistead urged Gwen sadly.

Gwen burst into tears and promised that she would, she
would
be good.

“I suppose
that's
why God brought down the chimney,” commented Edward from his tumbled bed.

Frederick hesitated. “The ways of the Almighty are inscrutable,” he proffered at length, but his golden voice was sad.

“Well, I think it's a shame,” concluded Edward, punching his pillow emphatically.

Laura's world consisted of Gwen, Mildred, Papa, Ada and Ludo. You loved them all, of course, devotedly; they loved you devotedly in return. But here there seemed to come a difference; for whereas Ludo's and Ada's loving, especially Ludo's, meant that they always liked what you said and agreed with it, and you always liked what they said and knew in advance that you would agree with it, with Gwen and Mildred it was not like that at all. They hardly ever liked what you said; indeed they always thought it silly, which Laura began to feel was harsh. It was inexplicable, and very grieving, but although of course you loved your sister and your nurse devotedly, for all good children loved their sister and their nurse devotedly, you often found yourself, as the day went on, growing cross at the perpetual disagreement of Mildred and Gwen. Papa seemed able to agree with everybody, and of course everybody agreed with him; he was Papa.

In the mornings you woke up, and had barely time to admire your picture of Queen Victoria being told she was Queen before Mildred came and dressed you, and Gwen heard your prayers. This was the first danger-point of the day; you were apt to forget some of the words, or not pronounce them properly, which of course annoyed Gwen, who prompted you with a disdainful air. Vexed by her tone, you sometimes revenged yourself by slurring over her name in the request for divine blessings, and laying very great stress on Ludo's—Gwen never seemed to notice this, but
when you had done it you felt guilty all day. For some reason you always said your prayers in your cambric petticoat, which was rather chilly, as it was so often winter in Hudley. You had often mentioned that Queen Victoria was wearing a dressing-gown, but nobody seemed to take the hint. Having finished prayers, you put on your dress of indigo serge, whose yoke was handsomely embroidered with red braid—the cloth came from Blackshaw Mills, and Mildred made your clothes—and the white pinafore you had worn for tea the night before. On weekdays you had breakfast in the nursery, on Sundavs in the dining-room, but always with Papa.