Part 30 (1/2)
”And Peter?”
For a moment Jan hesitated. With heightened colour she met Tony's grave, searching eyes. Above everything she desired to be always true and sincere with him, that he might, as on that first night in England, feel that he ”believed” her. ”I have every reason to love Mr. Ledgard,” she said slowly: ”he was so wonderfully kind to all of us.” She was determined to be loyal to Peter with poor Fay's children. Jan hated ingrat.i.tude. To have said she only liked Peter must have given Tony the impression that she was both forgetful and ungrateful. She would not risk that even though she might risk misunderstanding of another kind if he ever repeated her words to anybody else.
Her heart beat rather faster than was comfortable, and she was thankful that she and Tony were alone.
”Who _do_ you like?” he asked.
”Nearly everybody; the people in the village, our good neighbours ...
Can't you see the difference yourself? Now, you love your dear Mummy and you like ... say, William----”
”No,” Tony said firmly, ”I love William. I don't think,” he went on, ”I like people ... much. Either I love them like you said, or I don't care about them at all ... or I hate them.”
”That,” said Jan, ”is a mistake. It's no use to hate people.”
”But if you feel like it ... I hate people if they cheat me.”
”But who on earth would cheat you? What do you mean?”
”Once,” said Tony, and by the monotonous, detached tone of his voice Jan knew he was going to talk about his father, ”my Daddie asked me if I'd like to see smoke come out of his ears ... an' he said: 'Put your hand here on me and watch very careful.'” Tony pointed to Jan's chest. ”I put my hand there and I watched and watched an' he hurt me with the end of his cigar. There's the mark!” He held out a grubby little hand, back uppermost, for Jan's inspection, and there, sure enough, was the little round white scar.
”And what did you do?” she asked.
”I bit him.”
”Oh, Tony, how dreadful!”
”I shouldn't of minded so much if he'd really done it--the smoke out of his ears, I mean; but not one teeniest little puff came. I watched so careful ... He cheated me.”
Jan said nothing. What could she say? Hot anger burned in her heart against Hugo. She could have bitten him herself.
”Peter was there,” Tony went on, ”and Peter said it served him right.”
”Yes,” said Jan, grasping at this straw, ”but what did Peter say to you?”
”He said, 'Sahibs don't cry and sahibs don't bite,' and if I was a sahib I mustn't do it, so I don't. I don't bite people often.”
”I should hope not; besides, you know, sometimes quite good-natured people will do things in fun, never thinking it will hurt.”
Tony gazed gloomily at Jan. ”He cheated me,” he repeated. ”He said he would make it come out of his ears, and it didn't. He didn't like me--that's why.”
”I don't think you ought to say that, and be so unforgiving. I expect Daddie forgot all about your biting him directly, and yet you remember what he did after this long time.”
Poor Jan did try so hard to be fair.
”I wasn't afraid of him,” Tony went on, as though he hadn't heard, ”not really. Mummy was. She was drefully afraid. He said he'd whip me because I was so surly, and she was afraid he would ... I _knew_ he wouldn't, not unless he could do it some cheaty way, and you can't whip people that way. But it frightened Mummy. She used to send me away when he came....”
Tony paused and knitted his brows, then suddenly he smiled. ”But I always came back very quick, because I knew she wanted me, and I liked to look at him. He liked Fay, I suppose he liked to look at her, so do I. n.o.body wants to look at me ... much ... except Mummy.”
”I do,” Jan said hastily. ”I like to look at you just every bit as much as I like to look at Fay. I think you care rather too much what people look like, Tony.”