They had not always been Banditti. Before Robert's advent they had been the nice children of the nicest people of the neighbourhood. Their games had been harmless, if apathetic, and they had always gone home punctually and clean. The parents considered the waste land as a great blessing. Robert had come upon them in the course of his lonely prowlings, and from a distance had watched them play hide and seek. He had despised them and their silly game, but, on the other hand, they did not know who he was and would not make fun of him and taunt him with unpaid bills, and it had been rather nice to listen to their cheerful voices. The ruins, too, had fired his imagination. He had viewed them much as a general views the scene of a prospective battle. And then—strangest attraction of all—there had been Frances Wilmot. She was different from any other little girl he had ever seen. She was clean and had worn a neat green serge dress with neat brown shoes and stockings which toned with her short curly brown hair, but she did not shine or look superior or disdainful. Nor had she been playing with her companions, though they ran back to her from time to time as though in some secret way she had led their game. When Robert had come upon her she was sitting on the foundations of what was to have been a magnificent portico, her arms clasped about her knees, and a curious intent look on her pointed delicate face. That intent look, as he was to discover, was very constant with her. It was as though she were always watching something of absorbing interest which no one else could see. Sometimes it amused her, and and then a flicker of laughter ran up from her mouth to her grey eyes and danced there. At other times she was sorry. Her face was like still water, ruffled by invisible winds and mirroring distant clouds and sunshine.
Robert had watched her, motionless and unobserved, for several minutes. It had been a very unhappy day. Christine had gone off in a great hurry on some dark errand in the city connected with "raising money" on a reversion and had forgotten to wash him, and though he did not like being washed, the process did at least make him feel that someone cared about him. Now at sight of this strange little girl an almost overpowering desire to cry had come over him—to fling himself into someone's arms and cry his heart out.
She had not sat there for long. She had got up and moved about—flitted rather—so that Robert, who had never heard of a metaphor, thought of a brown leaf dancing in little gusts of wind. And then suddenly she had seen him and stood still. His heart had begun to pound against his ribs. For it was just like that that in his dreams his mother stood, looking at him. She, too, had grey eyes, serene and grave, penetrating into one's very heart.
And after a moment she had smiled.
"Hallo!"
Robert's voice, half choked with tears had croaked back "Hallo!" and she had come a little nearer to him.
"What's your name?"
"Robert—Robert Stonehouse."
"Where do you come from?"
He had jerked his head vaguely in the direction of the hill, for he did not want her to know.
"Over there."
"Why are you crying?"
"I—I don't know."
"Would you like to play with us?"
"Yes—I—I think I would."
She had called the other children and they had come at once and stood round her, gazing wide-eyed at him, not critically or unkindly, but like puppies considering a new companion. The girl in the green serge frock had taken him by the hand.
"This is a friend of mine, Robert Stonehouse. He's going to play with us. Tag—Robert!"
And she had tapped him on the arm and was off like a young deer.
All his awkwardness and shyness had dropped from him like a disguise. No one knew that he was a strange little boy or that his father owed money to all the tradespeople. He was just like anyone else. And he had run faster than the fastest of them. He had wanted to show her that he was not just a cry baby. And whenever he had come near her he had been all warm with happiness.
In three days the nice children had become the Brothers Banditti with Robert Stonehouse as their chief. Having admitted the stranger into their midst he had gone straight to their heads like wine. He was a rebel and an outlaw who had suddenly come into power. At heart he was older than any of them. He knew things about reversions and bailiffs and life generally that none of them had ever heard of in their well-ordered homes. He was strong and knew how to fight. The nice children had never fought but they found they liked it. Once, like an avenging Attila, he had led them across the hill and fallen upon his ancient enemies with such awful effect that they never raised their heads again. And the Banditti had returned home whooping and drunk with victory and the newly discovered joy of battle. His hand was naturally against all authority. He led them in dark plottings against their governesses and nursemaids, and even against the Law itself as personified by an elderly, somewhat pompous policeman whose beat included their territory. On foggy afternoons they pealed the doorbells of such as had complaint against them, and from concealment gloated over the indignant maids who had been lured down several flights of stairs to answer their summons. And no longer were they nice children who returned home clean and punctual to the bosom of their families.
Very rarely had the Banditti showed signs of revolt against Robert's despotism, and each time he had won them back with ease which sowed the first seeds of cynicism in his mind. It happened to be another of the elder Stonehouse's theories—which he had been known to expound eloquently to his creditors—that children should be taught the use of money, and at such times as the Stonehouse family prospered Robert's pocket bulged with sums that staggered the very imagination of his followers. He appeared among them like a prince—lavish, reckless, distributing chocolates of superior lineage with a haughty magnificence that brought the disaffected cringing to his feet.
But even with them he was not really happy. At heart he was still a strange little boy, different from the rest. There was a shadow over him. He knew that apart from him they were nice, ordinary children, and that he was a man full of sorrows and mystery and bitter experience. He despised them. They could be bought and bribed and bullied. But if he could have been ordinary as they were, with quiet, ordinary homes and people who loved one another and paid their bills, he would have cried with joy.
When he did anything particularly bold and reckless he looked out of the corners of his eyes at Frances Wilmot to see if at last he had impressed her. For she eluded him. She never defied his authority, and very rarely took part in his escapades. But she was always there, sometimes in the midst, sometimes just on the fringe, like a bird, intent on business of its own, coming and going in the heart of human affairs. Sometimes she seemed hardly to be aware of him, and sometimes she treated him as though there were an unspoken intimacy between them which made him glow with pride for days afterwards. She would put her arm about him and walk with him in the long happy silence of comradeship. And once, quite unexpectedly, she had seemed gravely troubled. "Are you a good little boy, Robert?" she had asked, as though she really expected him to know, and relieve her mind about it.
And afterwards he had cried to himself, for he was sure that he was not a good little boy at all. He was sure that if she knew about his father and the bailiffs she would turn away in sorrow and disgust.
He knew that she too was different from the others, but with a greater difference than his own. He knew that the Banditti looked up to her for the something in her that he lacked, that if she lifted a finger against him, his authority would be gone. And the knowledge darkened everything. It was not that he cried about his leadership. He would have thrown it at her feet gladly. But he longed to prove to her that if he was not a good little boy he was, at any rate, a terribly fine fellow. He had to make her look up to him and admire him like the rest of the Banditti, otherwise he would never hold her fast. And everything served to that end. Before her he swaggered monstrously. He did things which turned him sick with fear. Once he had climbed to the top of a dizzy wall in the ruins, and had postured on the narrow edge, the bricks crumbling under him, the dust rising in clouds, so that he looked like a small devil dancing in mid-air. And when he had reached