# Peewee/Chapter 13

The limousine had swung into the drive several blocks to the north of him and Peewee could not be sure at that distance if it was her's. It stopped at the edge of the greensward, still too far away for certainty as to the car, but there was no mistaking her slim figure. His heart leaped as he saw her cross to the esplanade and he trembled as she turned in the direction which would lead her past him.
Her start of surprise and eagerness as she saw him was a warning to him.
"Oh! you have come back!" She said. "I'm glad."
He smiled at her with careful innocence. "Yes'm," he said.
"You didn't keep your promise. You didn't stay with Mr. Beman. You ran away."
​"Yes'm; I did."
"Why?" She sat down beside him on the concrete step. "Please tell me why you didn't stay there."
Should he pretend to her it had been from fear of Beman? Should he tell her something else? Her nearness had its effect of bewilderment upon him. She had on a dress he had not seen before; he thought it prettier than the others. Her dark hair was looped under a close round hat. The faint, sweet odor of her presence, as he breathed it, made him fight against an incomprehensible impulse toward tears.
"I didn't like it there," he replied.
"Why?"
"I just didn't like it."
She looked wonderingly at him. "You mean to say you ran away from where you would have had good food and clothes and someone to look after you just back to the streets?"
"Yes'm."
"You're like a little wild thing," she observed. "I can't understand you. Don't you ​know that someday you'll grow up and that you ought to have the things now that will make you then a strong, good man?"
"Yes'm," he said.
She would never be like this again to him, he was thinking. When he saw her again his father would have told her. There would not be that kind interest in her clear blue eyes, that sweetness in her smile.
"You wouldn't want me to take you back there again?"
"No'm."
"You understand that I want to do something for you—help you?"
"Yes'm."
"If I found some other place, some nicer place where you would like to be and where they would take care of you, would you let me send you there?"
He pretended to consider; there was no harm in promising.
"Yes'm."
"Will you go with me now?"
He drew away from her apprehensively.
​"No'm."
"Will you let me give you a note to someone who will feed you and take care of you to-night?
He shook his head violently.
"Then what can I do? Will you meet me here to-morrow?"
He wanted to cry. To-morrow she would not want to meet him; to-morrow she would think of him with bitterness and dislike. "Yes'm," he said.
"You'll surely come here?"
"Yes."
"I wouldn't let you go away—I'd take you with me now, only I don't want to make you not like me; I don't want to frighten you." She got up, holding out a five dollar bill to him. "Be sure you have a place to eat and sleep to-night."
He put the money in his pocket, standing up because she had. He hung his head and put one foot upon the other in embarrassment; he wanted her to kiss him and did not know how to ask. She reacted unconsciously to his desire.
​"We'll bind our bargain then," she said, "like this."
He trembled violently as he felt her lips, and stood looking after her as she crossed the greensward and bridle path to the waiting motor. She hesitated and turned back a step as though doubtful of her decision not to force him to go with her, but finally got into the car.
The loneliness which choked him as the motor disappeared changed slowly to resentment. That she was never going to be like this to him again was because of Lampert. He had no feeling toward his grandfather except dislike and scorn. It made him angry that his father had not tried harder to stop Lampert. Instead of that his father had let Lampert frighten him by saying that he was going into court. As he looked toward the great house just down the street, he thought that the fierce, self-willed, violent old man who lived in it would not have been afraid of Lampert. If it had been Beman whom Lampert had been dealing with, Lampert would have been stopped. Beman, in spite of his age, had given ​Peewee an impression of irresistibleness. Peewee worshipped strength, for the streets had taught him that boys who let other boys frighten them never sold their papers.
He went west toward Clark Street, because there were more people on that street than these others, projecting in his mind his plans for revisiting dirtier and more dismal and still more crowded streets, but the thought of Beman persisted and slowed his steps. He had been disturbed by Beman only because Beman had been going to tell Mrs. Markyn about him. Now that Mrs. Markyn was to be told anyway there was no longer any reason for considering Beman that way. What, he wondered, would Beman do, if he knew what Lampert was preparing?
He turned back finally to Astor Street and walked south. He dodged through a narrow passage between two buildings and came out in the rear of Beman's house. The servant's entrance door opening upon the paved court was, he knew, usually unlocked. He pushed at it and crept into the servants' hall, letting the ​door reclose noiselessly. Listening and hearing nothing, he went up the stairs to the great, beautiful main hall. He listened again, then crossed the polished floor without a sound and looked in at the door of Beman's den. The old man was there, sitting in front of his wood fire—immense and powerful even in repose. Peewee coughed and Beman then looked up.
"Hello," he said.
"Hello," Peewee returned.
Beman, he saw, looked past him toward the door. The old man had had agents searching for him and supposed that one of them had brought him there. When he saw no one with him his sharp eyes rested on Peewee more attentively.
"Who brought you back?" he asked.
"I just came," Peewee answered sweetly. "I like it here."
Beman swung around in his chair to study Peewee. "You were here before," he said. "You didn't seem to like it then; you ran away."
"Yes, sir."
"Why did you do that?"
​Beman, Peewee reflected, did not know that he knew who his father was. He had to be told now, for nothing could be accomplished without it.
"I ran away because you were going to show me to her and tell her who I am."
Beman seemed surprised as much as an old man can be surprised.
"I listened at the door," Peewee explained, "and heard you say that to him—that you were going to tell her."
Beman seemed to comprehend. "I see," he said. He thought a moment. "Don't happen to have learned yet who your father is, have you?"
He wanted to discover, Peewee comprehended, how much had been overheard, and was concealing his real question under the indirectness of this inquiry.
"I knew that all along," Peewee answered with sweetness.
Beman seemed amazed and appeared to have gained a sudden respect for Peewee as, though he recognized that Peewee was deeper than he ​looked. The heavy brows came down over his cold, gray eyes. "You did?" he said.
"Yes, sir. I ran away because I didn't want her to be told, but now I don't care if you tell her because she's going to be told anyway."
"What's this?" Beman demanded. "Who's going to tell her?"
Peewee considered his reply to this. "My grandfather is going to make my father tell her."
"Make him?" Beman exclaimed.
"Yes, sir."
"How?"
"He's going to show in court that he was married to my mother." Courts were places well known to Peewee; he swung one leg to and fro and smiled at Beman. "They say they found what shows in her trunk."
"Found what?"
"I don't know. It shows that he was married to her."
"A marriage certificate?"
"I don't know. My father says they made it up themselves."
​"Forged it? It must be some sort of a certificate then."
The facts of life, though not the names that many of them were called by, were known to Peewee. The circles he had lived in were those where people broke the laws. He had known of men who married several wives without formalities of divorce; it had been very plain that, in such a case, the first wife was respected and the others regarded as unfortunate. Would Beman, it had suddenly occurred to him upon the street, allow his granddaughter to be threatened publicly with that kind of misfortune? Beman had wanted to separate Markyn from his wife, but he had not been willing there should be a scandal. Lampert was preparing scandal. Peewee had not consciously weighed these things, but he had felt that if Beman knew what was going on he would not like it.
He saw with satisfaction Beman get up onto his stiff old legs and move irritably about the room. He looked bigger and more threatening standing up than in his chair. The gray skin of his face whitened and his voice was angry.
​"Who started this?"
"I said my grandfather."
"Ben Lampert? There's someone helping him. Who?"
"He's got a lawyer."
"What's the lawyer's name?"
Peewee shook his head; his father had not told him that.
"My father said he was going to tell her to-morrow," Peewee remarked.
"He is? What business has he got to tell her? She's my granddaughter, ain't she? If anybody's to tell her, I'm to tell her—not him, or Lampert. What's he going to tell her? How much?"
Peewee surveyed Beman with astonishment. It was quite plain that there was but one thing which anyone would have to tell Mrs. Markyn; when she knew who Peewee was she would know all. Did Beman mean that there were still other things to know about Peewee? The boy did not know why the old man's manner brought this thought to him. But he was aware that there had been a change in Beman—a ​change not produced by what Peewee just had told him. When he had seen Beman last the old man had looked triumphant. He did not look that way now; he looked irritated and bothered.
Beman pressed the bell. "Take him away," he directed when the servant came. "Keep an eye on him this time." He gazed down thoughtfully at Peewee. "It's a dam good thing," he commenced, "that you came back."
Peewee, as the servant led him from the room, twisted his head to gaze back questioningly at the old man. He could not have told why he had expected his father to do nothing against Lampert and had been hopeful of result from Beman. The sidewalks which, since babyhood, had poured their crowds past him had taught him to judge men instinctively, and he had felt, without being able to make it definite in thought, that his father could fight only with his own weapons, while Beman by preference used the weapons of his opponent and was honest with honest men, crooked with crooks. He had not known what he anticipated from ​Beman, but it was certain that what he saw in the old man was not what he had anticipated.
The admonition to the servant to keep watch of him did not disturb him. A boy who had escaped from so many institutions and climbed over so many walls which had broken glass on top would have no difficulty in getting out of Beman's house when he wanted to, in spite of the servants. But in his interest in what the change in Beman meant he did not want to get out of the house yet. The manner of the servants with whom he dined told him nothing. He appreciated that they were not likely to know that anything was going on. He spent the night in the bed he had had when he was in the house before, and awoke with excitement which increased as the day progressed. In the late afternoon, the servant who had charge of him was told to take him to Beman in his den.
"Come here," the old man directed when the servant had left them.
Peewee went near him doubtfully. Beman turned him so that he faced the light and studied speculatively his small face, with its ​distinctive, handsome nose and mouth and violet eyes shaded by their long black lashes.
"How do you like being related to people?" he inquired.
Peewee hesitated. He had been perfectly contented on the streets before he had learned who his parents were. Mostly misfortune had come to him from that discovery; but he recollected that except for it he would not have met Mrs. Markyn.
"Who?" he inquired.
"Well, Ben Lampert—he's your grandfather, ain't he?"
"Yes, sir."
"What do you think of him?"
Peewee violently shook his head. He did not at once find the words to express his intense dislike for the ex-barn boss.
"How about Walter Markyn?"
Peewee did not know; he felt antagonism without resentment toward his father.
"You look like him, you know."
"Yes, sir," Peewee replied.
​"There's no mistaking that. Are you glad that you're his son?"
"No, sir," said Peewee.
"You mean because he wasn't married to your mother?"
"No, sir." The fact that his birth was not conventional was not a conscious burden to Peewee. He was accustomed to thinking of himself as not like others.
"What then? You'd be glad if he had been married to her, wouldn't you?"
"No, sir."
"Why not?"
Peewee could not answer that. He had an indefinite feeling that it would be an additional misfortune to everybody, including himself, if his father had been married to his mother.
"Who told you that he wasn't married to her?" Beman inquired.
"He did."
"He'd have said that anyway, wouldn't he?"
Did Beman mean that they had been married? Peewee was commencing to believe that the old man did mean that. He perceived ​vaguely that the misfortune which this would entail related to Mrs. Markyn. Would not that make his own position toward her immensely worse. Exactly why his existence should become for that reason more utterly unforgivable to her was not plain to him, but he felt that it was a fact, and his throat closed up as he gazed at Beman anxiously.
"Go over there," Beman directed, "and sit down."
Peewee backed toward the chair and drew himself up on it, still staring at Beman in anxiety.