“Well, that’s a good reason.  It might be a great profession, but it has its liars and tricksters like the rest.  It is eaten up by little men who wrap themselves in priestly garments and hide their ignorance behind oracular silences.  They play up to the superstitious weakness of the mob, and replace one religion by another.  They don’t care what beastly misery and evil they keep alive so long as they can pull off their particular little stunts.  You mustn’t be like that, Stonehouse.  To be free—­to be free—­and strong enough to go one’s way and trample down the people who try to turn you aside; that is the only thing worth while.  Don’t let them catch you, Stonehouse.  You don’t know how cunning they can be—­cunning and cruel.”

He sighed again, and Robert did not try to answer.  He had given up all hope of understanding, and his tiredness was now such that he had to set his teeth to keep the tears back.  At the corner they waited in silence watching the jolly, yellow-eyed ’bus rumble towards them down the High Street.

“Your guardian will tell you what we have arranged,” Mr. Ricardo said abruptly and with a complete change of tone.  “In a month you will read better than any of them.  As to the rest, you will have to compromise.  So long as you know what you are doing and don’t humbug yourself, there’s no harm done.  With the necessity you will shake yourself free.  You can say, ‘I believe in God the Father Almighty’ with your lips and in your heart, as I do, damned rot—­damned rot.’”

He laughed, and in the lamplight Robert saw his face, puckered with an impish, malicious merriment.  Robert laughed too.  So he had guessed right.  He felt proud and pleased.

“Good night, Stonehouse.”

“Good night, sir.”

Robert took off his battered cap politely as did other boys.  Mr. Ricardo scrambled into the ’bus with an unexpected agility, and from the bright interior in which he sat a huddled, faceless shadow, he waved.  Robert waved back.  A fresh rush of elation had lifted him out of his sorrowful weariness.  His disgrace had been miraculously turned to a kind of secret triumph.  He was different; but then, how different!  He didn’t wear chains or a ring through his nose.  He was going to know things that no one else knew.  And one day he would be big and free.

5

It did not last.  By the time he had dragged himself up to the top of their stairs there was nothing left but hunger, the consciousness of tattered, blood-stained clothes, and a sore, tired body.  After all, he was only a small boy who had wanted to play with other boys, and had been cast out.  Even Mr. Ricardo could never make them play with him.

It was dark in the sitting-room.  Against the grey, ghostly light of the window he could see Christine bowed over her typewriter.  She was so still that she frightened him.  All the terrors of night which lay in wait for him ever since his fathers dead hand had touched his door and opened it, rushed down upon him with a sweep of black, smothering wings.  He called out “Christine!  Christine!” in a choked voice, and she moved at once, and he saw her profile, sharp-drawn and unfamiliar.