My Darling Love
Chapter 23 – The Lost Children
"All wrongdoing is done in the sincere belief that it is the best thing to do."
-Arnold Bennett
George wasn't made the bank manager, but his assistant. He did not receive the great increase of salary for which he'd hoped, but the extra stipend the title "assistant" would provide would still ease the Darling financial woes.
Mr. and Mrs. Darling traveled home and into their unusually quiet home after staying late at the party. They walked together arm and arm, and Mary quietly told him what she herself expected. "I do not want to live in the kind of home your father made for his family. If you remember, George, living with your mother almost drove me insane. If you want to send me to an early grave, then by all means, become your father. But otherwise, I expect you to be my George, the George I fell in love with, the father of my children and my partner. Please..."
George conceded he had been upset with Wendy, and that he'd taken it out on the whole family. "I will apologize to the children in the morning at breakfast. But I do think we should be a little stricter with our rules. And Mary, I don't ever want to be my father, I hated that man. I'll be the one in the early grave if you became my mother so, I agree completely, let's not do that either."
They both chuckled and strolled casually, stopping at the park for one last kiss before proceeding to the front door of their home. As they walked up the steps, George added, "As I recall, I owe you something special from this morning Mary."
Mary turned to see his face; curious of the debt he spoke of. His eyes said everything and Mary smiled pulling him quickly inside by his arm.
Grandpa Joe and Aunt Millicent had fallen asleep reading, and their snoring was the only sound that resonated throughout the house. Nana was fiercely barking in the backyard as if protecting her family from an attack. "Why don't you bring Nana inside, Mary?" George responded to his wife's melancholy expression as she gazed out the back window. "It's cold tonight, and I'm sure she misses the children. Best to keep her inside I think."
"Really, George?" He nodded, and Mary was in the backyard in an instant. Nana could not contain the message she needed to dispatch to George and Mary, and knocked them both over dashing into the house and up the stairs.
"The children will be so pleased," Mary said, as she took off her earrings, peeking into the parlor, wondering whether or not she should disturb the sleeping guards, resting on the sofa and loveseat.
Ignoring the others, Nana raced into the nursery and waited by the door for her masters. When no one followed after her she blasted back down the stairs and bit George on his arse, then latched onto Mary's dress and dragged her up to the children's room. George still shocked by Nana's actions, paused downstairs until he heard Mary scream, "OH GOD, NO! GEORGE, COME QUICKLY. THE CHILDREN!"
Her cry woke Grandpa Joe and Aunt Millicent, who followed behind George's frantic dash into the nursery. There they found Mary hanging out the wide-open window holding on with only one hand. George clutched her around the waist and pulled her into his arms and back into the nursery. "They're gone, they ran away!" Mary managed through her tears as she fell to the floor still in George's embrace.
George looked about, holding her with a panicked face. "No, Mary, they are probably just hiding. They are just playing a game with us. That's all. Check under the beds and in the wardrobe."
Aunt Millicent searched the nursery with Grandpa Joe searching his room and every other room in the house. For a while, the children's names were shouted into every nook and cranny within the Darling Residence.
"I told you to watch them! Why didn't you watch after them? They are only children!" Mary wailed inconsolably in her husband's arms.
"It's alright, Mary, they are just playing a game with us, they are only hiding. They will come out and we will all have a jolly good giggle at them for being so silly," George insisted, holding her tightly while kissing his wife's forehead as Grandpa Joe and Aunt Millicent, dumbfounded by the children's disappearance looked on. George began to weep as well, as he continued on with, "Oh yes, we will laugh at their silliness my love. And then we will hug them and kiss them and ask them politely never to play this game with us again..."
"They couldn't have gotten far, Mary, not in their nightclothes," offered Grandpa Joe as he rested, out of breath, on Wendy's bed.
Mary stood and stared at her father, "I escaped out of my window in only my slip and stockings, find them...."
By dawn, George and Grandpa Joe took to the streets. They checked hospitals and orphanages. George went to the school, and requested the name and address of every student, and, one by one, he went to each home and inquired after his missing daughter and sons. Grandpa Joe went to the church and had the priest make an announcement at morning mass requesting any information about Wendy, John and Michael be brought to the attention of the authorities.
Aunt Millicent called the constables, and they re-inspected the Darling home. "Lost children are a rarity, Mrs. Darling, but it does happen from time to time. We have similar cases we are investigating as well. Now, you said they ran away. Is it possible they could have been kidnapped? Do you and your husband have any enemies?" As Mary tried to make a list anyone who might have ought against them, "Who would steal your children away, Mary Elizabeth?" Aunt Millicent scoffed at such an idea.
"You said you found their nursery window open. Are you sure you closed and locked it?" the policeman inquired.
Aunt Millicent assured them that after George and Mary left, she checked in on the children herself and the window was in fact shut and locked. "No one would be able to climb up and snatch them with it locked," was her expert opinion. "If the children unlocked it and climbed down, well that's just the better theory."
Mary sat on the sofa as Millicent and constable talked back and forth about all the other children in London who had gone astray in the middle of the night, searching for some similarity that would link them to the Darling children.
"There were no footprints in the snow..." Mary mumbled, but no one heard.
"There were no footprints in the snow," which got everyone's attention when she increased her volume. "There were no footprints, and if they left on foot there would be footprints."
Aunt Millicent turned up her nose to her niece, who had apparently lost her mind, and replied, "They did not leave through the front door, Mary. So unless you are suggesting they flew out the window into the night sky -- well, that is just absurd!"
The constable agreed, but still wanted a list of anyone Mary and George would consider a foe. Mary thought long and hard and attempted a list. Her father and mother might have been first. But she had reconciled with Grandpa Joe long ago, and her mother was in the ground a decade, if not more, and she was never really an enemy to being with. Frederick Darling the Fourth and his wife Grandma Josephine were both dead and buried. George's three brothers all lived in other countries, and had no interests in them. Aunt Millicent was there, so she was not suspect. Bank customers who lost money or had their clothes ruined because of Wendy's fiasco had no idea where the Darlings lived. "Mrs. Dash, Wendy's teacher. I gave her a piece of my mind about an offensive letter she sent to my husband."
That was the only person Mary could remember, doubtful at best, and swiftly handled, "It's Miss Dash, Mrs. Darling and she lives with her mother in a tiny basement flat next to the church. There were no signs of your children anywhere."
The neighbors adored the children, and as the morning lingered on, they came by and dropped off their sympathies and covered dishes. "At least you won't have to worry about food," they would say as they left.
By nightfall on the first night, the constables returned with grim news. "No leads or clues have been found to your children's whereabouts, Mr. and Mrs. Darling. I'm very sorry. The only thing to do is wait. We will check in with you everyday and let you know if anything turns up."
Mary began crying, and this time it was her father's arms she fell into. George led the officers from the house. "Mr. Darling, this is not the first unexplained case of missing children we've seen. It seems every so often a number of children go missing. Some return on their own regards, some do not. The ones that don't are never found. Best start praying to God that wherever they are, they realize they want to come home." They tipped their hats and went on their ways with glum faces.
"It's all my fault. It's all my fault," George repeated over and over again. Mary was silent.
Grandpa Joe brought her armchair up the nursery and set it by the window. "That's what your mother did when you ran away," he told her as she eased into it and rested her head back. She had cried all the tears her body could produce in one day, and now she had nothing left to show for all her misery and sorrow. The only sound she heard that first night without the children in the Darling Residence was George writing over and over again, "My children must not fear me," and agony of her own heart breaking.
The second and third day after the children had gone was the same. Mary sat in her chair and waited by the open window. It was cold outside and her breath could be seen. She was still attired in her emerald green party dress, refusing to change out it. "This is the last thing the children saw me in," she explained. George made her cover up in a blanket and attempted the close the window. Snow was swirling in, and was beginning to ice the rug below. "NO! This window must always remain open. All the windows in this house must never be locked, as well as the front door. When they come home, I never want them to think for even a moment that they are no longer welcome here."
Mary insisted Grandpa Joe sit in the foyer with a smile on his face, with entranceway to the house open. "George will need to take a loan out to pay the heating bill!" he told his daughter, alarmed. A compromise was made: Grandpa Joe bundled up from head to toe in the morning and put his favorite chair out on the front porch. There he sat with a smile on his face and waited with the front door closed, but not locked. At night, he moved the chair back inside and slept on the floor in the foyer, still wearing a smile.
Aunt Millicent did what she did best, and spread stories. But not juicy gossip about how Mary and her incompetent husband lost their children. More so, "If you see the children on the streets or anywhere else for that matter, ask them to go home at once. Their parents love them and miss them desperately. Better yet, tempt them home with candy, all children love candy. I will personally reimburse your expense."
George went to the bank. "If the children should need your assistance, they will seek you out there," Mary reasoned, even though George countered that his reaction to them the last time they went to the bank was (he thought) why they ran away in the first place.
She would not hear of him staying home, and Grandpa Joe concurred. "Best to have some normalcy for Mary." So George went to the bank, and when he came home, he sat at his desk and continued writing, changing the sentence everyday. "Nana is the children's nurse, not a dog." And "It is more important that my children love me than respect me." He refused to eat any meals, for he was sure the children were hungry out on the streets. Both Mary and Grandpa Joe felt the same, and fasted as well.
George slept in the nursery each night cuddled up by Mary's feet. He refused to be covered with a blanket, "I want to suffer the chill. If our children are out there tonight, they will be cold with only their nightclothes. I don't deserve a warm blanket or bed." Mary waited until he fell asleep and then wrapped him up with a warm comforter. On the third night, when the bitter wind blew in the snow, she put a woolen hat on his head.
Late at night, with the house sleeping, Mary rose from her chair and entered the washroom and took a long hot bath. She changed into a simple crimson nightgown, robe and slippers. She brushed out her long hair while sitting at her vanity and gazed at her reflection. Her precious babies were lost, and so was her heart. She opened her drawer full of dreams and removed the picture Wendy had made of the lovely queen and the pirate captain. She folded it neatly and put in her pocket, returning to the nursery.
Mary looked down at George asleep on the floor. No matter what travesties went on around him, he always dreamt of numbers and finances. He mumbled incoherently how much the children should have taken out of their piggy banks before embarking on their adventure. Mary wanted to sleep and she prayed to God for it, "Please give me rest, dearest God, just for tonight, that in my sleep I should see my children and guide them home safely...I ask that you help me, send me an angel, give me aid, give me guidance...." Mary closed her eyes...
Captain Hook was a hard man, strong and wicked. Mary lay underneath him as he rutted with such force she bled. Something strange brewed inside of her, for the first time she realized this was not a nightmare. She endured willingly every second that he took from her what he wanted, as that was her just punishment for being a horrible mother, and as his climax neared, she spoke. "Tell me you still love me."
"No," he responded thrusting into her a final time, releasing his seed. "I hate your children, Madam, and I hate even more the fact that they belong to your husband."
Captain Hook hated children, all children, even those that were hers. "You are going to do marvelously on this ship, Madam," he whispered in her ear when he was finished.
"I though my name was Beauty and you were the beast?" she said from underneath him, turning her head from him in disgust as he speared his hook in the wooden planks for leverage as he rose from her. "I think I prefer, Madam, a more formal relationship, now that you are married." Mary felt as if she would be sick, seeing his naked form standing above her. He offered his hook to help her stand as well and she shook her head, preferring to get up without his help.
"Oh, but Madam, do not dress, for we are not yet finished," the pirate captain told her, spinning her about to face him as she gathered her nightgown from the floor.
"Do you really think I will be eager for you, Captain Hook, when you only had a go at me a moment ago?" Mary asked, with an expression that was just as lost as her children.
"I can do whatever I like to you, Madam, for you are in my world now. And I must say, Peter did not lie, you are just as lovely as he claimed, and there is so much more that you deserve from a man. Now bend over..."
"Pan..." Mary muttered as she slept on the armchair. But it was not the magical character Wendy described in her stories. To Mary, Pan was her brother-in-law, the Peter of the Past. "Paris..." again she groaned in her sleep. George had not told her what his brother suggested, but she knew, for Peter's wife had proposed the same scenario.
"Your husband is so handsome. I have no idea where my friend would have ever gotten the idea that he could be fond of men. Mary, is it true that George has had no other women but you?" Mary nodded, curiously watching her sister-in-law's odd expression. She looked as if someone had tempted her with an exquisite piece of chocolate.
"What a shame for George, all these years to be trapped with the same woman."
Mary never thought of her husband as trapped in their marriage. Mrs. Peter Darling, seeing Mary's surprise, answered her unspoken question. "Oh yes, young men should always sow their wild oats before marriage. That way, when they are married, they never need long for another. Now Peter told me," Mrs. Peter Darling guided Mary by the arm out of the parlor into her private sitting room, "that George had no intention of bedding you before you were married, but had intended on, well, you know, dearest Mary," she continued, tittering, "tasting a few apples on your tree before buying the orchard of your hand. And then he got you in the wrong way on his first time," she tisked, "what a shame for poor George. It would have been much better for the both of you if he had tasted those apples. But George, poor George, never had the chance, and the way the other young ladies seem to be falling over him and he so flirtatious with them, it's only a matter of time before he strays."
Poor George? Poorer Mary most would reason, by that simple comment she was now frightened for her marriage. She had no idea what she would do if George took another to bed.
Peter's wife continued to throw wood on the fire she had started in Mary's mind. Holding Mary firmly arm in arm, she led her on a little stroll in her back garden. "Now Peter tells me you can't have anymore children, most unfortunate dear. So if George was to have his way with any of the young ladies frolicking around here, well, not having to prevent a child with you has left him out of practice. He might get one of them in the wrong way, is that not why you had to be married in the first place? And you and your precious children don't want any illegitimate babies born of him. I mean, a man of George's respectable stature, whatever would the neighbors think?"
"What would you advise?" Mary queried, having never thought of George with another, let alone giving that "another" his child.
"Well, since you ask... Maybe I could do the admirable thing and help your husband out. Instead of giving into the persuasion of some hussy that would cause loads of gossip and trouble, I would be willing to lie with him. Just so he could have some variety, mind you, and of course -- no one would ever know. And like you, I cannot have any children either so there is no worry for you in that matter. This is for you Mary, for you," Peter's wife insisted, battering the considerable ramparts of Mary's misgivings. She kept telling her that this was a special lesson to George just for Mary's sake. "Once he takes to bed with another woman, he will appreciate what he comes home to dearest. Without that, you are just asking for trouble and men have a way of always finding trouble."
Mary inquired after her brother-in-law, Peter, and the other woman told her, "Well dear, it was his idea. And if you were interested in taking him to bed, well, since I would be with your husband, I would not mind."
Mary flatly refused Peter that afternoon when he gave her the emerald gown, and later in the day at dinner, both times without speaking to him. But for her own husband, she was afraid to decline. "I don't want George to take another to bed, but if you think it will teach him a lesson --" Mary was baffled by her sister-in-law's arguments, muddling her own thinking at that moment, and Mrs. Peter Darling further deceived her with, "I'll flirt with him a little, perhaps, dearest Mary, I am completely wrong in my assumptions, we shall see."
Unfortunately, she did not appear wrong at all, for later that afternoon, before dinner, Peter's wife led George into her private bedroom and did her best to seduce him. "Sweet Mary ought to be ashamed keeping a gorgeous man like you all for herself." He was a tad drunk, not himself and -- at first -- quite willing. She got all his clothes off and consumed his member with her mouth, tasting his seed. She was in no way even close to Mary with her oral talents, but he came just the same.
When it was over, he looked down at her face, and saw unveiled the evil witch in Wendy's fairy tales who tricked him into eating the poisoned fruit. Quite a coincidence indeed, for her name was Eve as well. And just like Adam who was cast out of Eden for his sin, George was also to be sent away from his paradise. George pushed Eve off the bed and hurriedly dressed.
She winked at him as she left, "I'll see you later this evening so we can finished what we started, and I must say, I am so looking forward to it!" The moment the door to Eve's room closed, George vomited onto her bed.
George was not the only one she winked at, she winked at Mary, too, who was waiting in the parlor. "You were right Mary, he does taste very sweet on the tongue," Eve whispered licking her lips as she passed. George came down and saw Mary's face, the beautiful queen whom he had handed over to the enemy.
"THE KING HAS COMMITTED AN ACT OF TREASON, HANG HIM!" echoed in his ears as Mary ran from the room out into the gardens and away from him. Her king, a husband who would now forever be soiled in his wife's eyes, watched her go before taking flight after her. Disloyal and weak, he bowed his head in shame when he caught up to her crying in the grotto nearest the forest, the farthest place on Peter property. "Go back to your brother and your parties and your new friends," she wept, and George, still not himself, made an even worse mistake and left.
George returned to the house just in time to meet his brother and hear his own proposals asking for a fair trade of Mary's services. "You should share your wife with me, brother, for we are family. And now that you have had at mine, it is only right I have at yours. Don't you agree?"
The George that appeared to have waited in England now leapt across the sea and defended the Queen against the George that stayed with Mary in Paris. "Absolutely not, Peter, your wife practically threw herself at me. I will ask Mary only to be fair, but I will not make her do something she does not want to do," was all he could come up with after quickly reentering his body, having pushed the evil George out.
That night as they lay in bed, Mary, heartbroken, questioned him over and over again. "I don't know what's come over me this week, it's like I am a totally different person, and I have to tell you, Mary, I hate the man that I've been." He went on to explain to Mary what had transpired with their sister-in-law in her room.
Mary had her questions and she asked them one after the other. "Did you like it? Was she better than I? Do you want to be with more different women? Where will that leave us if you do? What will happen if you decide you want to be with another forever?"
The first three questions were answered easily, "No," followed by his apologies. The fourth did not require any response only a reassurance, "There will never be any others." George knew the fifth question was essential to the rest of their lives, and so he not only gave the reply but his entire body holding tightly to hers when he spoke to show how serious and true his words was, "No Mary, I could never imagine living my life with anyone but you."
George swore on his life and that of his children that he would never stray from Mary again. His guilt over his vile adultery, not to mention his broken wedding vows, consumed him on their trip home. He stared out the window and said nothing, grasping Mary's hands in his own so tightly she was convinced he was terrified that if she took them away, he would never feel her gentle touch again. The night of his infidelity, he bathed in water so hot it scalded his skin. When they arrived home, he bathed again, and like Mary had once done for an innocent act, he scrubbed himself raw. He was in the bathroom well over an hour when Mary finally knocked to check in on him.
"I just can't get it to wash away, I can't get clean of her," he told her as she gazed on him helpless in the tub with abrasions covering his skin. She helped him from the tub and held him. "Forgive me," he beseeched the lovely queen.
But she couldn't, at least not yet, and her outburst over his lack of costly gifts she felt he should shower her with for her profession, was more the result of his betrayal than of his neglect in buying her expensive present. And now, Mary found herself in the same dream that led to his pardon.
"You don't really love George all that much, do you, Madam?" Captain Hook dressed in his wet rags after he had finished with her for the second time.
Mary was too sore from his abusive intercourse to do anything but lie flat on her stomach on the damp planks of his cabin. "I love him with all my heart, more than I love myself," she whispered, for it hurt even to speak.
"Liar...Tell me then why would you let another woman take from him what is yours, hum?" He bent down and rolled her on her back.
She was cold, and goose bumps covered her entire body. "I did what I did to keep him -- How do you know that? How do you know about the other?" Mary asked.
"I know everything. You see, Madam; unlike what your brother-in-law claims, your husband and I are truly one and the same. I must say that I was shocked that you voluntarily let him be led away by his evil older brother when even his own mother called him the devil. If I were you, I would be mindful of wolves in sheep's clothing where your husband is concerned. And I would ask you to keep better watch over my children."
Mary sat up only a little and rested her weight on her elbows, "'my children'? Don't you mean I would ask you to keep a better watch over 'your own' children? Your own children." Mary sat up only to be kicked back down by Captain Hook.
"Did you have my children?" Captain Hook queried, placing his hand on his chin, "No Madam, you have your husband's children, well, you had your husband's children and now they are lost. So sad for you, is it not?" He stuck out his lower lip in a pout and frowned, dismayed, shaking his head mocking her grief.
Mary pleaded with him, "Return them to me please."
Captain Hook smiled and waved to her, "But I am the wicked pirate captain, Madam, I don't save children, I frighten them. Do you not listen to your daughter's stories, am I not the one who gets defeated and cast down to my death?"
Mary was now drifting away as if she was being carried by air alone.
"No, in Wendy's stories it is the pirate captain that saves the day!" Mary screamed out as Captain Hook stood with his hands on his hips watching her departure. Just when he was almost out of sight, she heard him ominously call, "Good then, I'd best get started ... Wendy ..."