The“little chat”—as Mr. Leeming would certainly have called it—did not take place for a long time, for the reverend gentleman’s mind had become exercised with a problem of greater importance than the devotion of Edwin. It wasn’t exactly his fault. Mr. Leeming was a bachelor. He was now in his forty-third year. Naturally endowed with an intense shyness of disposition which the forced publicity of his two professions, in the pulpit and the Classroom, had overlaid with a veneer of suave assurance, he was none the less a man of ardent, if timid passions. He himself had always been aware of this powerful sensual element in his nature. With a certain degree of courage he had subjected it to a deliberate mortification. Obstinately he had fitted his body to the Procrustean couch that his conscience recommended: obstinately, and in a degree successfully. Not quite successfully . . . for his original appetites were unwieldy, and if they had been coerced in one direction they had undoubtedly and demonstrably overflowed in another, as witnessed the growing expanse of his waistcoat.
This waistcoat, on week-days of broadcloth andon Sundays of a more sensual silk, was the symbol of Mr. Leeming’s possibilities. He didn’t know it. Even if he were aware, in the lacing of his boots, of its physical existence; he hadn’t the least idea of its spiritual significance. If he had realised this, if he had been content to see himself as he actually stood upon the brink of his morning bath instead of as a snowy surpliced priest of God or a knightly figure in the armour of Sir Percivale (such, indeed, was his Christian name), Mr. Leeming might have been a healthier and a happier man. As it was, the devil that he believed he had conquered, in reality possessed his soul.
In his quest for the thing which he had labelled purity he had unconsciously allowed the idea of “Impurity” to become an obsession. In the activities of a parish, hustled by the continual accidents of stark life and stabilised by the actual responsibility of a wife and an increasing family, Mr. Leeming might have become a thinner and a wiser man. In the sedentary and monotonous duties of a public school, he had become gradually more fat and introspective, and, as the years advanced, more perpetually conscious of the unashamed presence throughout human nature of his own suppressed desires,—more frightened . . . and more curious . . . of their terrible existence and more terrible power. Mr. Leeming, with the best intentions in the world, was in a bad way.
A number of circumstances favoured the development of the unfortunate gentleman’s obsession. In the last Easter holidays he had attended a conference of assistant masters in London, at which thewhole question had been discussed with the greatest solemnity, and plans had been formulated for the stamping out of “impurity” in every public school in England. The speeches of the delegates had convinced him of his own blindness. It was impossible that St. Luke’s should be so very different from any other public school, yet other people had assured the meeting that in their own schools the disease was “rampant,” and Mr. Leeming had returned to his summer duties convinced that if only he looked with sufficient care more ills than he had ever suspected might be found. He had become a man with a mission.
For a crusade of this kind St. Luke’s was not by any means an ideal field. The head-master, for all his imposing presence, was not a practical man. He was intolerant of enthusiasms in his staff, not so much because they were symptomatic of ill-breeding, but because they tended to disturb the pleasant ordered tenor of his life. Croquet and botany were sciences of more interest to him than education. He believed in hard games, corporal punishment, nature study, and the classics. He hated extremes. The golden mean was his creed, his weakness, and his apology. He hadn’t any use for Mr. Leeming’s intensities. He could even be picturesque on occasion. “If you are going to appoint yourself inspector of our dirty linen, Leeming,” he said, “you really mustn’t expect me to do the washing.”
“I don’t think you understand me, sir,” Mr. Leeming began. . . .
“Oh, don’t I?” said the Head. The word Impurity formed voicelessly on Mr. Leeming’s lips.
“It is a scandalous thing . . . scandalous . . .” he complained to the common-room, “that a man who knows what is right and is determined to follow it shouldn’t be properly backed by the headmaster. The matter is vital. It is the most important . . . by far the most important problem in modern education. Any means are justified to purge the schools of this sort of thing. . . .”
“I can see you, Leeming,” drawled Selby, “in the rôle ofagent provocateur.” The common-room exploded.
“What is wanted in the public schoolmaster is a higher sense of seriousness,” Leeming spluttered. “You have no sense of suspicion.”
“What is more wanted in the public schools,” said Cleaver, “is a suspicion of sense—common sense.”
“All you fellows talk,” said Dr. Downton, “as if the whole thing were a problem for the public schools purely and simply. It’s nothing of the kind. It’s not the ignorance of the average schoolmaster as much as the ignorance of the average parent. I mean ignorance of the nature of boys . . . lack of sympathy, lack of responsibility. And when ugly things happen they shove it on to us.”
“That’s what they pay a hundred and fifty a year for,” said Cleaver.
“Of which we don’t see any too much . . .” Selby growled.
“None of you take it seriously. The thing is enormous,” said Leeming. “What can you expect in a way of improvement when a housemaster like Selby makes jokes about it? I’m convinced thatthere’s only one way. . . . You can’t drive boys. You’ve got to understand their hearts.”
“You’ve got to understand their bodies,” said Cleaver.
Mr. Leeming flushed. “I think you are merely disgusting, Cleaver.”
“He’s quite right,” said Downton. “It isn’t sexual education, it isn’t moral instruction that’s going to work the miracle. When a boy reaches a certain age—and it isn’t the same age with all boys—he begins to be conscious, and quite properly, of his physical passions. You needn’t shudder, Leeming. They exist. You know they exist as well as anybody. Well, when he reaches that stage a public school isn’t the proper place for him.”
“The games would go to pot,” said Cleaver. From his point of view there was no more to be said.
“It depends entirely on your boy. Some are too old at seventeen. Some are perfectly safe at nineteen. The trouble is that just when you get them in sight of these dangers you put them in supreme authority. A prefect can do pretty well as he likes. . . .”
“It’s the essence of the system . . . responsibility,” said Selby.
“It gives them what Shaw said about something else: the maximum of inclination with the maximum of opportunity.”
“Shaw?” said Cleaver. “You fellows are too deep for me. Anyway, I don’t believe there’s much wrong here. So long.” He swung out of the room.
“That kind of man,” said Mr. Leeming, “is at the root of the whole business.”
Dr. Downton was almost angry. “Yon know, Leeming, you’re talking bosh. The thing’s solving itself. All over the world schoolboys are getting wider interests at school. In their homes they’re taking a more equal place in family life. It is no longer a matter of being seen and not heard. They’re being treated like human beings. The more you treat them like human beings the less likely they are to behave like young animals. And the greatest mistake of all is to keep on talking to them about it. Every boy of a certain age is curious, and quite naturally curious, about his physical possibilities. So is every girl. . . .”
“My dear Downton,” said Leeming flushing, “I shall be obliged if you won’t—er—pursue the subject. You make it painful. . . .”
“Very well,” said Downton gathering up the skirts of his gown.
“Thank you.” Leeming left the room. Selby smiled lazily.
“If only,” he said, “if only our friend Leeming had ever enjoyed the advantage of a really bad woman’s society.”
Unconscious of the doom which was being forged for their chastisement in the white heat of Mr. Leeming’s troubled brain, the school lay scattered along the perimeter of the cricket-field waiting for the players to emerge from the pavilion. They came, and the great expanse of green was made more beautiful by their scattered figures. Everything in the game seemed spacious and smooth andclean—the white flannels of the players; the paler green of the rolled pitch; the new red ball; the sharp click of the bat. Before lunch the school had lost three wickets, but now it seemed as if a stand were to be made. The studious Carr, the head of Edwin’s house, was batting steadily; while Gilson, the school’s most showy batsman, who would play for Surrey in the holidays, was beginning to get set. Edwin and Widdup had their deck-chairs side by side, and Douglas, for want of Griffin, absent on some deeper business, had pitched himself near them, reclining upon a positive divan of downy cushions.
The winnings of the house sweepstake, easily gained, and therefore easily to be spent, supplied the natural accompaniment of ices and ginger beer or that inimitable compound of both that was known as the Strawberry Cooler. Under such circumstances the mere fact of lazy existence was a pleasure. Even when the cautious Carr was bowled, the long partnership ended, and the St. Luke’s wickets began to fall like autumn leaves, the serene beauty of the day was scarcely clouded.
In the middle of the afternoon the figure of Mr. Leeming drifted along the edge of the field. He halted on the path immediately in front of Edwin with his back to the spectators, considerably incommoding Douglas’s view of the play. “Old Beelzebub’s a friend of yours, isn’t he, Ingleby?” said Douglas lazily. “You might tell him that he isn’t made of glass.” But Mr. Leeming, suddenly aware of a voice behind him, turned and came towards them, smiling.
“Ah, Ingleby,” he said. “Is that you?”
He sat on the grass beside them, very carefully, as befitted a man of his figure. “A beautiful day. Let me see, who are we playing?”
“The M.C.C., sir.”
“Ah, yes . . . the Marylebone Cricket Club. Are you fond of cricket, Ingleby?”
“Of course I am, sir.”
“I very seldom see you now. That’s the pity of it. The better a boy is the less you see of him. He passes through your form quickly, and that’s the end of it. And how is Widdup?”
Widdup was very well, if a little impatient
“You and Ingleby are great friends, Widdup. Quite inseparable. I’ve often seen you walking up and down the quad at night. I wonder what it is you have in common, eh?”
Widdup didn’t know. They’d always been pals. They’d always slept alongside each other. That was how you got to know a chap.
“Well, Ingleby, what are you reading in these days?”
“Well hit, sir; oh, well hit. . . . Make it five. I beg your pardon, sir. . . I don’t think I’m reading anything in particular.”
Slowly it became evident to Mr. Leeming that the audience which he had honoured with his company was bored. With great dignity he picked himself up and left them.
“He’s a funny old swine,” said Douglas.
“I used to think he was rather decent,” said Edwin. “Horribly ‘pi’ you know.”
“I don’t trust him,” said Douglas. “I always feelas if he’s up to some low-down business or other. He goes mooching about in those old felt slippers of his, and you never know where he is. The other day he came into the long box-room when Griff and I were there playing Nap. You couldn’t tell he was coming. He’s like a damned old tomcat. I can’t think how you stick him, Ingleby. . . .”
“I don’t, really,” Edwin confessed.
“And old Griff says he follows him like a shadow. Just lately he’s taken to haunting the swimming-bath. I don’t know what he goes there for. He never used to. He never goes in. I don’t suppose the fat beast can swim.”
“He could float . . .” said the practical Widdup.
The golden afternoon dragged out its lovely length. The atmosphere of luxurious indolence grew so heavy that it became too great an effort to think of carrying the rugs and deck-chairs back to the studies; and when Douglas had left them to keep an appointment with Griffin, Widdup and Edwin sat on till the meadows swam with soft golden light, till the tops of the pyramidal lime-trees became the colour of their blossoms, and the sun cast long shadows upon the yellow fields. In this delightful hour the sounds of the match from which excitement had faded almost as the fierceness had faded from the sky, became no more than a placid accompaniment to the dying day. At six-thirty stumps were drawn. The wide fields began to empty and soon no life was seen upon them but low dipping swallows who skimmed the smooth lawn as though it were the surface of some placidlake. Upon the hillside a straggling trail of boys could be seen taking home their rugs and cushions as though they were returning from a day of toil instead of one of the most exquisite idleness.
“Come on,” said Widdup at last; “we shall be late for chapel.” And indeed another twenty minutes found them assembled in the oak pews for evensong. They sang theNunc Dimittis, a canticle which for all the rest of his life Edwin associated with the placid closing of a summer day, and the mild rays of the departing sun blazed through the stained glass of the west window upon the pale mosaic of the nave. When they emerged from the chapel the sun had set, the skyline of the downs lay low and almost cold, and cockchafers were whirring blindly among the sticky tops of the conifers along the chapel path.
In the middle of the crowd that stuck congested in the porch Edwin found himself wedged between Douglas and Griffin. They whispered together behind his back. “Well, are you going?”
“Of course I’m going, I told you.”
“You’ve fixed it up with her?”
“Yes, she’s up to any sport. Why don’t you come with us?”
“Two’s company. . . .”
“Go on with you. . . . You can easily pick up another. You’re not a sportsman, Duggie.”
“I don’t take risks of that kind. You bet your boots I don’t. Why don’t you ask Ingleby? He’s a blood. Says he went to see the Birches. And he’s flush, too. Won the sweep.”
“Ingleby?” Griffin scoffed. “I bet you he’d funk it.”
“Funk what?” said Edwin.
“Going down town to-night. There’s a fair on. I’m taking the skivvy from J dorm. She’s all right. She knows a thing or two.”
“Don’t talk so loud, you ass,” said Douglas. “Well, will you come?”
“No, I won’t,” said Edwin.
“You said you went to the Birches.”
“I did go to the Birches.”
“Well, nobody believes you. Now’s your chance to show your pluck. Come along, gentlemen, show your pluck. . . . Three to one bar one. . . . ’Ere you are, sir. The old and trusted firm. Ingleby . . . you are a rotten little funk!”
Edwin said nothing. “He’s got more sense than you have, anyway, Griff,” said Douglas.
That night in the dormitory when the lights were turned down Griffin had not appeared. Douglas, who slept next to him, had constructed, by means of his own bolster and another confiscated from the bed of the small boy on whom the animosity of the coalition was now chiefly lavished, a very plausible imitation of Griffin’s prostrate figure. As Griffin habitually slept in a position which enabled him to absorb his own fugginess, this was not difficult. When Edwin went to sleep Griffin had not arrived. Drugged with fresh air he slept untroubled by any dream. In the middle of the night (as it seemed) he awoke, not because he had heard any sound but rather because he had become aware in his sleep of some unusual presence. Hedid not move, but slowly opened his eyes, and all he saw was the figure of Mr. Selby, gigantically tall, clad in a long bath-gown of Turkish towelling and carrying a lighted candle that cast a shadow even more gigantic on the whitewashed walls. He moved slowly and his bedroom slippers made no sound on the boarded floor. Opposite the foot of Edwin’s and Widdup’s bed he paused for a moment. Edwin closed his eyes. He felt the eyelids quiver. Why on earth should Selby want to look at him? He passed on, and Edwin, cautiously opening his eyes, saw him pause again opposite the gap between Douglas and Griffin. At this point he waited longer. He appeared to be thinking. He passed on and then suddenly turned back and gently lifted the sheet from Griffin’s pillow. Gently he replaced it. Edwin was almost too sleepy to realize that Griffin wasn’t there; but when he did, the first thought which came into his mind was one of spontaneous and inexplicable loyalty. He thought, “Poor old Griff: He’s in for it.” And yet, if there was one person in the world against whom he had a reasonable excuse for hatred . . . Very silently Selby left the dormitory. Edwin became conscious of the ghostly noises of the night: a night-jar spinning in the wood at the back of the Schoolhouse: the boom of a cockchafer that some enthusiast had captured and imported into the dormitory. The clock in the high turret struck twelve. The chime wandered clanging over the empty quadrangle.
The next week was the most sensational that had ever shaken the placid life of St. Luke’s. The fall of Griffin was no startling matter—deliberately he had been “asking for it,” and the escapade of the fair in race-week was no more than a crowning glory. Still, it was an impressive affair. Immediately after breakfast next morning it was whispered that Griffin had been sent to the infectious ward in the sanatorium, which was always devoted, by reason of its size rather than any conscious attempt at symbolism, to the isolation of moral leprosy. It became certain—and Edwin, after his vision of Selby’s visit in the night had taken it for granted—that Griffin was to be “bunked.” In the afternoon, Douglas, faithfully prowling near his comrade’s prison, had seen Griffin, splendidly unrepentant, at the high window of his condemned cell. Griffin had smiled. Griffin, evidently, didn’t give a damn for the whole business. The house thrilled. Of such stuff heroes were made. It remained to be seen, in the opinion of the critical, how Griffin would shape in the supreme test of the scaffold on which he would probably be birched before the assembled school. The betting was all on Griffin’s being a sportsman.
There followed a day of suspense. Consultations between masters were noticed. Selby, for a whole hour, had been closeted with the Head. Old fat Leeming had been sent for at last to join their deliberations. What had Leeming to do with it? Other housemasters had been summoned to theroom beneath the clock and emerged with unusually serious faces. Who was this Griffin that his fate should shake the foundations of Olympus? The Head, indeed, showed his seriousness more clearly than all the others. He arrived late in chapel, where the service had waited on his coming: he stalked up the aisle, as full of omen as any black crow, with his pale seamed face and his shaggy black beard, and his arms crossed behind his back beneath the skirts of his gown. From his high seat at the end of the chancel he scowled on the whole school as if he hated it. At supper a message was read out. The school would assemble by classes in the Big Schoolroom at noon. Poor old Griff. . . . The sergeant, it was said, had been seen binding a new birch in the porter’s lodge.
It was all very romantic and thrilling. Edwin, conscious now for the first time of the extreme foolhardiness of his racecourse adventure, felt himself a greater dog than ever. And then, when the stage was set, and the audience attuned to an atmosphere of tragedy by so much thunder-weather, Griffin, from whom the glamour of the heroic had been gradually fading in the shame of his captivity, achieved the dramatic. He bolted. With a ladder of knotted sheets he climbed down the waterspout and disappeared into open country. Griffin lived somewhere in Kent. In half a day he would reach home.
For Selby’s house it was a great morning. Edwin, in spite of his hatred of Griffin, shared in the general elation. Such private feuds were smallconcerns in the face of the common enemy. Douglas was flown with insolence.
“I knew old Griff would do them,” he said. “By God . . . that’s a man if you like. It’s the nastiest knock old Selby’s had in his life. Think of it . . . a chap with a weak heart like old Griff shinning down a waterspout!”
Edwin wondered if the meeting in the Big Schoolroom would be off, or whether, perhaps, it would be postponed and Griffin hauled back from the bosom of his family to go through with it.
“You silly ass,” said Douglas. “Of course they can’t fetch him back. He’s done them brown.”
But the morning went on without any alteration in the programme. At twelve o’clock the solemn procession began: the whole black-coated population of St. Luke’s filtering through narrow corridors and the wide folding doors into the big Schoolroom. The whole business was impressive; for nobody spoke and no sound came from the crowd but the drag of slowly-moving feet and arms that brushed one another. They were like a flock of sheep driven away from market on a narrow road between dusty hedges, for none of them knew what was coming. Rumour was busy with whispers.
Griffin had been found in a ditch with his leg broken and had been hauled back to fulfil his sentence. Like Monmouth, Edwin thought. Griffin, in company with the pale skivvy from “D” had been arrested by the police at Waterloo. Other rumours, less credible, as, for instance, that Cleaver, meeting a jockey friend of his in a little pub called the Grenadier in the Downs Road, hadwalked into a taproom full of School House bloods on Sunday morning. Indeed, these were strenuous days.
The school settled down. The Head, lean, crow-like, flapped the wings of his gown. He seemed to find it difficult to make a beginning, and while he waited for a word his left arm twitched. Then he began. It was obvious that his pause had been nothing more than a rhetorical trick designed to fix the attention of an audience already thrilled by uncertainty. He wasn’t at a loss for words at all. He boomed, he ranted, he bellowed, he rolled his “r’s” and his eyes. The masters, sitting at their high desks, remained discreet and rather bored . . . all except Mr. Leeming, to whom the orator appeared as an inspired prophet of God. For the subject of his harangue was Mr. Leeming’s own: Impurity; and the whole meeting the immediate result of Mr. Leeming’s investigations. The curtain had gone up with a most theatrical flourish upon the Great Smut Row.
The essence of the Head’s speech was a general threat. Certain things had been discovered; certain further inquiries were to be made; the fate of a large number of boys lay in the balance; more details were known, in all probability, than any of the victims suspected; to the youngest among them he made a special appeal; confession, immediate confession, would be the better part of valour; he looked to every member of the school to aid him in the task, the sacred duty, of purging St. Luke’s of this abominable thing. Indeed it is possible that he meant what he said. His port was bad,and he knew better than to drink it; but the heady vintage that he brewed from sonorous words knocked him over every time.
The meeting dissolved in silence. For the moment the school was impressed, less by the gravity of the charge than by its indefiniteness. The same evening brought tales of segregated suspects, of tearful and terrible interviews in the rooms of housemasters, of prefects suspended: of a veritable reign of terror—lettres de cachetand the rest of it—in Citizen Leeming’s house. “D” dormitory and the others in charge of the languid Selby suffered least. When evening came to set a term to rumours only two were missing—the black Douglas, and an insignificant inky creature of the name of Hearn, whom the threats of the headmaster had driven to some grubby confession. An atmosphere of immense relief fell upon the awed dormitory and found vent in a memorable “rag.”
But Edwin did not sleep. There was no reason why he should not have slept; but he couldn’t help feeling, against reason, that in some way he might be dragged into the toils of vengeance; that some peculiar combination of circumstances might implicate him in the business, even though he had never had anything to do with it. Somehow appearances might be against him. In particular he became suspicious of Mr. Leeming’s attentions to him in the past. He imagined that the wily creature had suspected him, and tried, for that reason, to find a way into his confidence. What other explanation could there be? His avoidance ofMr. Leeming could only have increased the suspicion. Plainly, he was done for.
He remembered, with a perilous clearness, words that had passed between them to which he had given no thought. Now they appeared terribly significant. “You and Ingleby are great friends, Widdup,” Leeming had said only a few days before. “Quite inseparable. I’ve often seen you walking up and down the quad at night. I wonder what you have in common, eh?” Now Edwin knew why he wondered. And Widdup, like a damned fool, had said that they slept alongside each other. Supposing old Leeming imagined. . . . It was too bad. He lay there staring at the rafters and wondering what could be done. He would like to write to his mother about it. But a man couldn’t write to his mother about a thing like that. And his father wouldn’t understand. In the end he determined that the only thing he could possibly do was to go and see Leeming next day and assure him that there was nothing wrong with their friendship. “And then,” he thought, “the old beast won’t believe me. He’ll think that I’ve gone to him because I have a guilty conscience, and he’ll suspect me more than ever. He’ll go and make all sorts of inquiries and something will come out that will be difficult to explain.” How could anything come out when there wasn’t anything wrong? He could not give a reasonable answer to this question, and yet he was afraid. From this spiritual purgatory of his own making he passed into an uneasy sleep.
Next morning, in the middle of early school, thesergeant entered with a message for Mr. Cleaver, and waited while the master read it.
“Ingleby,” he said at last, “Mr. Selby wants to speak to you. You had better go at once.”
Edwin packed up his books with trembling hands. He went very white. It seemed to him that the eyes of the whole form were on him. They were thinking, “Hallo, here’s another of them. Ingleby! Who would have thought it?” He heard the footsteps of the sergeant go echoing down the corridor as steadily and implacably as the fate that was overtaking him. He only wanted to get it over. As soon as he was out of the classroom he ran, for every moment of uncertainty was torture to him. He ran across the quad and climbed the stairs, breathless, to the low room still steeped in stale honeydew, where his life at St. Luke’s had begun and must now so abruptly end. Mr. Selby sat at his desk waiting for him. When Edwin entered the room he looked suddenly embarrassed and fingered an envelope on his desk.
“Ingleby, I sent for you urgently . .”
“Yes, sir.”
“It probably came as a shock to you . . . or perhaps you were prepared?”
“No, sir.”
“Then you must pull yourself together. You can’t guess what it is?”
“No, sir.” . . . But he could. It came to him suddenly, huge and annihilating, swamping in the space of a second all the uneasiness and terror that had shadowed him in the night. Those things were nothing . . . nothing.
“Oh, sir . . . my mother . . .”
“Yes. . . It’s your mother, Ingleby. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Very sorry. . . .”
“Tell me, sir. She’s dead. Oh . . . she’s dead . . . ?”
Mr. Selby unfolded the telegram although he already knew its contents.
“No. It’s not so bad as that. But she’s ill . . . very ill . . .”
“I knew. . . . The minute you spoke I knew, sir. . . .”
“You had better catch the eight o’clock train at the Downs station. You need only take your little bag. You can get it from the matron!’
“Yes, sir. . . .”
“Have you any money?” Mr. Selby almost smiled to see him so eager to go.
“No, sir. . . . Only about eightpence.”
“You can’t go without money, you know. Here’s a sovereign. Now, cheer up, there’s a good fellow. Cheer up!” He smiled wanly, and Edwin burst into tears. Mr. Selby laid an awkward hand on his shoulder. It was very decent of him, Edwin thought, as he stood with his fists in his eyes, one of them clutching the sovereign that Selby had given him.
“Thank you, sir . . . but it’s awful, it’s awful. . . .”
“Of course, of course. . . .”
He shepherded Edwin out of the room. When the boy had gone, Mr. Selby, an unemotional man, tore the telegram into small pieces and placed them, with a confirmed bachelor’s tidiness, in thewaste-paper basket. Then he lit a pipe of honeydew; and the blue smoke from the bowl together with the brown smoke that he expelled from his nostrils shone cheerily in the morning sun that beat through the latticed window on to a woman’s photograph standing on the desk in front of him. For a moment he gazed at the faded image. He had not thought of her for years.
Ina morning air of miraculous freshness Edwin left the quad by the iron gates on the eastern side. The square was quite empty, for all its usual inhabitants were now in early school. He noticed an unusual aspect of space and cleanliness. He could not remember ever having seen it empty before. He noticed the tuck-shop in the corner by the swimming-bath. This, too, was closed, and the windows were heavily shuttered. It was a small thing, but it suddenly occurred to him that people put up their shutters or pulled down their blinds when some one lay dead in a house. It seemed to him like a sort of omen. He said to himself, “I must think of something else . . . I must think of something else. I can’t bear it.” The only other time when he had ever thought of death had been a single moment a week or so before when his mother had written about her plan of a visit to Switzerland. And then the thought had been no more than an indefinite shadow, too remote to be threatening. Now it was different. The threat was ponderable and vast. “Death . . . I mustn’t think of it. I must think of something else.”
He had to think of something else; for by thetime the gate clanged behind him the clock in the tower struck the quarter, and he knew that he had barely time to catch his train. With his bag in his hand he started running up the road between the tufted grassy banks; past the scene of his last adventure, the oak paling beside the nightingale’s spinney, past the last of the new villas, and so, on to the open downs. It was a strange adventure for him to reach them so early in the morning. Their turf was silvered still with a fine dew that made it even paler than a chalk down should be. Fold beyond beautiful fold they stretched before him. The woody belts of beech and pine lay veiled in milky mist, and the air which moved to meet him, as it seemed, over that expanse of breathing grass, was of an intoxicating coolness and sweetness which went to his head and made him want to shout or sing. The spring of a summer morning in the spring of life! It was all wrong. Surely no awful devastation of death could overshadow such an ecstasy of physical happiness? He refused to believe it. It was all fantastic nonsense. Of course she wasn’t dead. Your mother couldn’t die without your feeling it. . . .
At the station he had five minutes to spare. He changed his sovereign, and was relieved to be rid of the responsibility of one coin, and to fill his pocket with silver. There were several coppers in the change, and these he placed in a penny-in-the-slot machine, extracting several metallic ingots of chocolate cream. He was ready for these at once, for his only breakfast had been a hurried cup of tea and a slice of bread and butter in thematron’s room. The train jolted out of the station, and soon he was travelling eastward with the high water-tower of St. Luke’s dipping gradually beneath a long horizon.
The morning grew more beautiful. In some strange way its beauty seemed to have got into his blood; for he tingled with a kind of mild ecstasy which he couldn’t help feeling unsuitable—almost irreverent, to the tragic occasion. There was adventure in it and the added charm of the unexpected. He was going home. Surely it was reasonable enough to be excited at such a prospect as that, to smell the fine summer scents that were so different in a midland shire; to see the gorse ablaze on Pen Beacon and Uffdown and the green glades of the old Mercian wood. Of course it was always wonderful to be going home.
He remembered other homecomings from St. Luke’s; the first, and best of all, when, on a December morning they had crowded into the housemaster’s room where Mr. Selby sat in his dressing-gown, with a gaslight flaring, handing out the little paper packets of travelling money; how the damp platform at the station had been crowded with human happiness and such a holiday spirit of independence that Griffin and Douglas had lighted cigarettes while they waited for the train. That was the town station. He reflected that he had only once before been to the Downs, where the train service, except on race days, was not so good; that had been on the occasion of his first visit to St. Luke’s for the scholarship exam. He had come down in an Eton suit, fortunately correct, and anunfortunate topper that he would have given his life to hide when he found that they were not worn. And his mother had come down with him. At the thought of her the old numbing dread fell upon his heart. Perhaps this was the very carriage in which they had travelled. He remembered the journey so well: how she had sat in the right-hand corner, with her face to the engine, wearing a tailor-made grey coat and skirt, a velvet hat and a veil. He had been looking at her rather critically, for he was anxious that she should seem what she was—the most beautiful creature in the world. And when he was looking at her with this in his mind she had smiled at him, for no other reason in the world probably but that she loved him; and with that smile he had been satisfied that she really was beautiful. And he had noticed how lovely her hands were when she took her gloves off. . . . Now, the memory of the moment made him want to cry, just as the beauty of the morning made him full of exultation. It was a most perilous mixture of emotions.
By this time the region of downs had been left far behind. They were gliding, more smoothly, it seemed, through the heavily-wooded park country of the home counties. Stations became more frequent, and the train began to fill with business people hurrying to London for their morning’s work. They settled themselves in their carriages as though they were confident that their seats had been reserved for them. They were all rather carefully, rather shabbily dressed: the cuffs of their coats were shiny, and the cuffs of their shirtsfringed, and one of them, a gentleman with a top-hat half-covered by a mourning-band, wore cuff-covers of white paper. They all read their morning papers and rarely spoke; but when they did speak to each other they used an almost formal respect in their addresses which implied that they were all respectable, God-fearing people with responsibilities and semi-detached houses. Edwin they ignored—not so much as a wilful intrusion as an unfortunate accident. He began to feel ashamed that, by starting from the terminus, he had occupied a corner seat to which the gentleman with the paper cuffs had an inalienable right.
In a little while the villas from which this population had emerged began to creep closer to the track, and by the seventh station their backs were crowding close to the embankment with long, narrow gardens in which the crimson rambler rose seemed to have established itself like a weed. The houses, too, or rather the backs of them, grew more uniform, being all built with bricks of an unhealthy yellow or putty colour. Soon there were no more buildings semi-detached. The endless rows seemed to be suffering some process of squeezing or constriction that made them coalesce and edged them closer and closer to the railway line. Soon the gardens grew so small that there was no room in them for green things, only for a patch of black earth occupied by lean cats, and posts connected by untidy pieces of rope on which torn laundry was hung out to collect the smuts or flap drearily in a night of drizzle. Then the gardens went altogether; and the beautiful and natural love of greenthings showed itself in sodden window-boxes full of languishing geranium cuttings or mignonette. The very atmosphere seemed to have been subjected to the increasing squeeze; for the mild air of the downs had here a yellow tinge as though it were being curdled. To complete the process the train plunged, at last, into a sulphurous tunnel, emerging amid acrid fumes in a sort of underground vault where the door was opened by a ticket-collector with a red tie, tired already, who shouted “Tickets, please.”
None of the respectable suburban gentlemen took any notice of him, for by purchasing season tickets they had rendered themselves immune from his attentions; but he glared at Edwin, and Edwin passed him his ticket, which was handed on as if it were a curiosity and a rather vulgar possession by the gentlemen on his side of the compartment. The door was slammed. The man with the top-hat placed it carefully on his head and adjusted the paper cuffs. Others folded their morning papers and put them in their pockets. One, apparently recognizing a friend who was sitting opposite to him, for the first time, said “Good-morning,” and the train passed amid thunderous echoes under the arch and into Victoria Station. All his fellow-passengers were adepts at evacuation, and before he knew where he was Edwin was alone in the carriage.
He was very lonely and yet, somehow, a little important. Usually, at term end, he had crossed London with Widdup, whose westward train also started from Paddington. He hailed a hansom,and one that was worthy of its name: a shining chariot, all coach-builders’ varnish, with yellow wheels and polished brass door-handles and clean straw that smelt of the stable on its floor. The cabman was youngish, mahogany-complexioned, and ready to be facetious. He called Edwin “My lord,” and Edwin hardly knew whether to treat him seriously or not. “Geawing to the races, my lord?” he said. The Lord knew Edwin had had enough of races for a bit. He said “Paddington.” “Ascot or Newbury?” said the cabby, climbing to his seat.
It was a great moment. The movement was all so swift and luxurious, the hansom so delicately sprung that it swayed gently with the horse’s motion. The polished lamps on either side were filled with wedding rosettes. Inside on either hand were oblong mirrors in which Edwin could almost see his own profile: a subject of endless curiosity. There was even a little brass receptacle for cigar-ash. A Cunarder of a cab! The cabby whistled “Little Dolly Daydreams” with a ravishing tremolo. The cab, which had jolted a trifle on the setts of the station-yard, passed among a flight of feeding pigeons out of the iron gates into the bowling smoothness of the Palace Road. My word, this was life. . . . Life! . . . Perhaps she was dead already. Oh, why should a day like this be marred?
It seemed to him, after a moment’s thought, that it was possible—even if it were wrong—to be possessed by two and opposite emotions at once. He was miserable to feel an alarm which wasn’t exactly definite or real, and yet he could not helpenjoying this astounding and unforeseen adventure. “If Idofeel like that,” he thought, “it can’t be exactly wrong.” And that comforted him.
He surrendered himself to the joys of the morning. The streets were so wide and clean, the green fringe of the park so pleasant: through the railings he could see men and women on horseback taking an early ride, enjoying, like him, the coolness of the morning air. He wondered at the great white stucco houses of Park Lane, standing back from the wide pavement with an air of pompous reticence. Before one of them, remnant of a summer dance the night before, a tented portico, striped with red and white, overstretched the pavement. Edwin did not know what kind of people lived in these houses, but in the light of this morning it seemed to him that theirs must be an existence of fabulous happiness, all clean and bright and shining as the morning itself or the rubber-tired hansom, spinning along with its yellow spokes beside the neat park railings. All of them were surely exalted, splendid creatures, born to great names and a clear-cut way of life without the least complication, dowered with a kind of instinctive physical cleanliness.
At the corner, by Marble Arch, the hansom cab, silent but for its jolly jingling bells, nearly ran over an old gentleman in a frock coat with an exquisite white stock and a noble nose. His name was probably Cohen; but Edwin thought he must be at least an Earl.
Once again the resorts of elegance were left behind. The hansom, heaving heavily, was checkedon the slope of the gradient descending to the departure platform at Paddington. Opposite the booking-office it stopped, and Edwin was released from this paradisaical loosebox. The cabby, wishing him the best of luck at Goodwood, patted his horse, whom he had christened Jeddah, and climbed up again to his seat whistling divinely. Edwin was disgorged upon the long platform at Paddington that rumbled with the sound of many moving trollies below a faint hiss of escaping steam, and smelt, as he had always remembered it, of sulphur mingled with axle grease and the peculiar odour that hangs about tin milk-cans. He was thankful to be free of it, sitting in the corner of a third-class carriage opposite a stout woman with eyes that looked as if she had been crying all night, and a heavy black veil, whose hat was surmounted by coloured photographs of the Memorial Theatre at Stratford and Brixham Trawlers waiting for a Breeze.
This train ran out of London more easily than the other had entered it. The area of painful constriction seemed more narrow, and in an incredibly short time he found himself gliding along the Thames valley with the ghostly round tower of Windsor Castle on his left.
At Reading, where the sidings of the biscuit factory reminded him of teas which he had “brewed” with Widdup, the woman opposite took out a crumpled paper bag, and began to eat sandwiches. She lifted her veil to do so, and the process suddenly proclaimed her human. Edwin saw that she wasn’t, as he had imagined, a sombre, mute-likecreature, but a woman of middle age with a comfortable face and a methodical appetite.
He began to wonder what he should say if she offered him a sandwich, for he dreaded the idea of accepting anything from a stranger, and at the same time could not deny that he was awfully hungry, for the chocolate creams that he had absorbed at the Downs station had failed to dull his normal appetite. This emergency, however, never arose. The woman in black worked steadily through her meal, and when she had finished her packet of sandwiches folded the paper bag tidily and placed it in a wicker travelling basket, from which she produced one of those flask-shaped bottles in which spirits are sold at railways stations. From this she took a prolonged and delicious gulp; recorked and replaced it, smiled to herself, sighed, and lowered her portcullis once more.
It cheered Edwin to think that she wasn’t as inhuman and sinister as he had imagined; and in a little while he saw beneath her veil that she had closed her eyes and was gradually falling asleep. The sun, meanwhile, was climbing towards the south, and the railway carriage began to reflect the summery atmosphere of the green and pleasant land through which the train was passing. It made golden the dust on the window-pane at Edwin’s elbow and discovered warm colours in the pile of the russet cloth with which the carriage was upholstered.
It was a country of green woods and fields of ripening mowing-grass from which the sound of a machine could sometimes be heard above therumble of the train. It all seemed extraordinarily peaceful. A cuckoo passed in level flight from one of the hedgerow elms to the dark edge of a wood. In the heart of the wood itself a straight green clearing appeared. It reminded Edwin of the green roads that pierced the woods below Uffdown, and he remembered, poignantly, the walk with his mother in the Easter holidays when they had reached the crown of the hills at sunset. Some day, they had said, they would make that journey again. Some day . . . perhaps never. Was it quite impossible to get away from that threatening shadow? But even while he was thinking how unreasonable and how cruel the whole business was, another sight fell upon his eyes and filled him with a new and strange excitement: a small cluster of spires set in a city of pale smoke, and one commanding dome. He held his breath. He knew that it was Oxford.
This, then, was the city of his dreams. Here, in a little while, he would find himself living the new life of leisure and spaciousness and culture which had become his chief ambition. This was his Mecca: “That lovely city with her dreaming spires,” he whispered to himself. It was indeed merciful that the vision of his second dream should come to cheer him when the first became so perilously near extinction.
Even when the train began to slow down among red-brick suburbs of an appalling ugliness the mood of excitement had not faded. The train ran in smoothly, and the woman in black awoke and blew her nose. Edwin, looking out of thecarriage window, saw a congregation of demigods in grey flannel trousers, celestial socks, and tweed Norfolk coats lounging with a grace that was Olympian upon the platform. All of them, he thought, were supremely happy. In this holy city happiness had her dwelling. One of them—his back was turned to Edwin—reminded him of Layton, the old head of the house. He remembered with a thrill, that Layton, who had won a scholarship at New College, was now in Oxford. Of course it must be he. Very excited, Edwin slipped out of the carriage and ran after him. “Layton!” he called. And the young man looked round. “What do you want?” he said. It wasn’t Layton at all. Edwin apologised. “I’m awfully sorry. I thought you were a chap I knew.”
The porters were slamming the doors and he only just managed to scramble into his seat before the train started. The woman in black spoke for the first time. She had a soothing voice, with a west-country burr that reminded him of his father and Widdup. “I thought you were going to be left behind,” she said. “I saw your bag was labelled North Bromwich.”
Shouts were heard on the platform. “North Bromwich next stop. . . . Next stop North Bromwich . . .” Edwin sat down panting, and the train moved off. “Next stop North Bromwich. . .” The words echoed in his brain, and chilled him. He didn’t want to look back to see the last of Oxford. Next stop North Bromwich. At North Bromwich he would know the worst. Swiftly, inevitably, thetrain was carrying him towards it. The tragedy had to be faced.
He was seized with a sudden inconsolable fear of desolation. His eyes brimmed with tears so that the coloured landscape could not be seen any longer. The tears gathered and fell. He could feel them trickling down his cheeks, and when he knew that he could not hold them back any longer the strain of his emotion was too strong for him, and, against his will, he sobbed aloud, burying his face in his hands.
The woman in black, hearing the sobs, raised her veil and looked at him.
“What is it, my dear?” she said.
“Oh, nothing . . . nothing.”
“Folks don’t cry about nothing. . . .”
She spoke quite kindly, and her kindness was too much for him. It gave him quite an unaccountable feeling of relief to speak about it.
“It’s . . . it’s my mother,” he said.
“There now. . . . Is it really? That’s bad for ’ee. When did she pass away?”
“She isn’t dead. I . . . I hope she isn’t. But she’s awfully ill.”
“Don’t cry now, boy. While there’s life there’s hope. I always tells them that.”
“Who do you tell that to?”
The black woman laughed. “Who do I tell that to? Ha . . . that’s a good ’un. Why, dearie, my patients, of course.”
“I don’t understand. . . . What sort of patients?”
“Well, Mr. Inquisitive, if you must know, I’m a monthly nurse.”
Still Edwin did not understand. He asked,—“Do many of them die?”
“Why, bless my heart, no. It’s more a matter of births than deaths. Not that I haven’t a’ seen deaths. And laid them out. But I’ll tell you something. It’s my belief that they all die happy. And though it’s hard on a young boy like you to lose his best friend—that’s his mother—it’s my belief that death is a happy release. Yes, a happy release. I always tell them that. Especially after a long illness. I wonder, has your dear mother been ill for a long time?”
Edwin thought. “Yes.”
“Perhaps,” said the black woman with relish, “Perhaps you could give me some idea of what she was suffering from and then I could tell you near enough.”
“I think,” said Edwin, “it was diabetes.”
“Diabetes . . . think of that! I’ve a’ had several with that. It’s a bad complaint. Very. I’m afraid I can’t give you the hopes that I’d like to.”
“But don’t they ever get better?” Edwin asked in agony. “I expect they do sometimes, don’t they?”
“It all goes to sugar,” said the woman enigmatically. “I ought to know for I’ve had them. Yes . . . I’ve had them. But while there’s life there’s hope. That’s what I always say. And a boy’s best friend is his mother. You must never forget her.”
“I couldn’t forget her. Oh, I wish you’d never told me,” said Edwin, sobbing once more.
“Now, dearie, don’t take on so. You mustn’t take on so. You must take what God gives you. I always tell them that.”
“I won’t take what God gives me,” he cried. “I won’t. I can’t bear to lose her.”
“Ssh. . . . You mustn’t say that. It’s wicked to say that; I should be frightened to be struck dead myself if I said a thing like that in God’s hearing.”
She looked nervously at the luggage rack above her head as if she expected to find the Almighty in hiding there. Edwin followed the direction of her glance and read: “This rack is provided for light articles only it must not be used for heavy luggage.” He wondered inconsequently, whether the stop, which was missing, should come before or after the word “only.”
“You must cheer up, dearie,” said the black woman soothingly. “While there’s life . . .”
Edwin wished she would shut up. He was sorry that she had ever spoken, and yet he couldn’t quite suppress a desire to be further informed on certain technical details which this authority had at her finger-tips. “Is it a painful death?” he asked slowly, wiping away the last of his tears.
“Painful? . . . Well . . . not to say painful. Not as painful as some. Most of mine passed away in their sleep like. And they look so peaceful and happy. It’s a great consolation to their friends. Just like a doll, they look. That’s better. You mustn’t cry. That’s a brave boy. Upon my word, even though I’m used to it, it’s quite upset me talking to you.” She gave a little laugh and dived oncemore for the bottle of spirits. “This wouldn’t be no use to you,” she said, as she took a swig. Edwin shook his head.
“Every woman has a mother’s feelings. And I know what they go through. I understand. I do. Now, that’s right. Cheer up and be a good lad. Hope for the best. That’s what I tell them. . . .”
“This rack is intended for light articles only. It must not be used for heavy luggage. This rack is intended for light articles. Only it must not be used for heavy luggage. While there’s life there’s hope. While there’s life there’s hope. While there’s life there’s hope.”
So, in the pitiful whirl of Edwin’s brain, foolish words re-echoed, and in the end the empty phrase seemed to attach itself to the regular beat of the train’s rhythm as the wheels rolled over the joints in the rails. Mesmerised by the formula he only dimly realised that they were now roaring, under a sky far paler and less blue, towards the huge pall of yellowish atmosphere beneath which the black country sweltered.
Soon the prim small gardens told that they were touching the tentacles of a great town. A patch of desert country, scarred with forgotten workings in which water reflected the pale sky, and scattered with heaps of slag. A pair of conical blast furnaces standing side by side and towering above the black factory sheds like temples of some savage religion, as indeed they were. Gloomy canal wharfs, fronting on smoke-blackened walls where leaky steampipes, bound with asbestos, hissed. The exhaust of a single small engine, puffing regular jets ofdazzling white steam, seen but not heard. A canal barge painted in garish colours, swimming in yellow water, foul with alkali refuse. A disused factory with a tall chimney on which the words Harris and Co., Brass Founders, was painted in vertical letters which the mesmeric eye must read. Another mile of black desert, pools, and slag heaps, and ragged children flying kites. Everywhere a vast debris of rusty iron, old wheels, corroded boilers, tubes writhen and tangled as if they had been struck by lightning. An asphalt school-yard on a slope, with a tall, gothic school and children screaming their lungs out, but silent to Edwin’s ears. Endless mean streets of dusky brick houses with roofs of purple slate and blue brick footpaths. Dust and an acrid smell as of smoking pit heaps. More houses, and above them, misty, and almost beautiful, the high clock tower of the Art Gallery. A thunderous tunnel. . . . The clamour of the wheels swelled to an uproar. “While there’s life there’s hope. While there’s life there’s hope.” Under the gloom of the great glass roof the train emerged.
“Good-bye, dearie,” said the black woman, smiling. “I hope it’s not as bad as you think. You never know. Don’t forget your bag, now.”
He could easily have done so.
Aunt Laurawas waiting for him on the platform. It was a very strange sensation. Always at other times when he had come home from St. Luke’s his mother had met him at North Bromwich, and even now it seemed natural to look for her, to pick out her fragile figure from all the others on the platform, and then to kiss her cool face through her veil. On these occasions neither of them would speak, but he would see her eyes smiling and full of love looking him all over, drowning him in their particular kindness. Aunt Laura was a poor substitute. To-day she was a little more diffuse and emotional than usual, and at the same time curiously kinder. She kissed him—her lips were hot—and he felt that the kiss was really nothing more than an attempt to conceal an entirely different emotion and to hide her eyes. On his cheek her lips trembled. He dared not look at her for he was afraid that in her eyes he would be able to read the worst. It had to be faced. At last he managed to say,
“How is she?”
And above the roar of the station he heard anuncertain voice answer. “She’s very ill, Eddie . . . very ill indeed.”
“Not dead? . . . she’s not dead?”
“No, no. We must all be brave, Eddie.”
“We must all be brave.” . . . He hated to hear her talk like that. What had she to be brave about? It wasn’t her mother who was dying, only her sister. A sister wasn’t like a mother. It was all very well to say these conventional things. He didn’t believe she really meant them. She could cry her eyes out before he’d believe her, however kind she might try to be. It wasn’t any good her trying to be kind now. She hadn’t been kind to his mother. He remembered the day when her callousness had made his mother cry. He couldn’t pity her now; he couldn’t put up with her condolences; he believed he hated her. He would hate any one in the world who had given his mother a moment’s pain. She was so little and beautiful and perfect. . . .
And yet, when he sat opposite to Aunt Laura in the Halesby train, and examined her more closely, he could see for himself that the strain of the last few days had somehow chastened her—she seemed to have lost some of her florid assurance, and her eyes looked as if she had been crying. She even seemed to have shrunk a little. And this made matters worse, for it seemed to him that the very thing which had obliterated what he most disliked in her had also accentuated the family likeness. All the time, beneath this face, which he distrusted, he could see a faint and tantalising resemblance to the other face that he adored. If any one hadsuggested to him that Aunt Laura was in any way like his mother, he would have denied it indignantly; but the likeness was there, a curious, torturing likeness of feature. He didn’t know then what in after years he was to realise time after time: that grief has a way of suppressing individual characteristics and reducing the faces of a whole suffering family to their original type after the manner of a composite photograph. It was tantalising, and so harrowing that he dared not look at her any longer.
At Halesby they walked up from the station together almost without speaking. The little house on the edge of the country wore a strangely tragic air. Downstairs all was quiet. After the big echoing rooms at St. Luke’s it seemed ridiculously small. Nobody inhabited the rooms, and the soft carpet created a curious hushed atmosphere in which it seemed sacrilege to speak in anything but a whisper. Aunt Laura took off her hat and veil.
“I’d better carry my bag upstairs,” said Edwin. He felt somehow, that in his little old room he could be happier. He could even, if he wanted to, throw himself on the bed and give way to the tears which were bound to come.
“No . . . you’d better wait here,” said Aunt Laura. “Your father is sleeping in your room. You see it wouldn’t do for him to be in hers. He’s been there for three nights. And I’m in the spare room. I think you’re going to sleep over at Mrs. Barrow’s.”
Edwin flamed with jealousy. What was AuntLaura doing in the house? She, above all people, had no right to be there.
“But I could sleep on the sofa in the drawing-room,” he said.
“You mustn’t make difficulties, Eddie. It’s all arranged. The specialist has been out this afternoon to see her with Dr. Moorhouse. He may be upstairs now.”
“But I can’t, I can’t be so far away. I ought to be here. She would like me to be here.”
“Eddie, dear . . . do be a good boy. Here comes your father.”
And his father came. Strangely, strangely old and worn he looked in the shabby alpaca coat. Edwin had never realised that he could be so pathetic. He smiled at Edwin, a smile that was unutterably painful. “Eddie . . . my boy,” he said, and kissed him, “I’m glad you’ve come. . . . She was anxious for you to come. . . .”
“Oh, father. . . .”
“We must all be brave, Eddie.” Again that terrible smile.
“Father, may I go and see her . . .?”
“The doctor says that nobody had better see her to-night.”
“Yes, Eddie, we must obey the doctor’s orders, dear,” said Aunt Laura.
“But you’ve seen her . . . you saw her this morning, didn’t you?”
“That was different,” said Aunt Laura. “I was up all night with her.”
“It isn’t different, is it, father? Aunt Laura’s nothing to her. . . .”
“Eddie, Eddie. . . .” Aunt Laura protested.
“Father, if she asked for me she ought to see me. . .”
“She’s so ill, Eddie. I’m afraid she wouldn’t know you.”
“Oh, I’m sure she would. . . .”
“Edwin, you mustn’t worry your father; there’s a good boy.”
“Oh, Aunt Laura . . .” Then fiercely, “She’s any mother. . . .”
Edwin’s father sighed and looked away. Aunt Laura, with a business-like change of tone which implied that Edwin’s question was disposed of, whispered to his father, “Is she still sleeping?”
“Yes. . . . The doctor says it isn’t really sleep, it’s coma.”
Coma . . . a gloomy and terrible word! What did it mean? Edwin remembered the woman in the train. “Most of them pass away in their sleep like.”
“I think I’ll go and lie down for an hour,” said his father.
“Yes, do, John,” said Aunt Laura encouragingly. “You need it. I’ll go upstairs myself to be handy if the nurse wants anything.”
This was the first that Edwin had heard of a nurse. The idea inspired him with awe. His father sighed and turned to go.
“Father . . . can’t I go up, only for a minute?”
Aunt Laura, who had taken upon herself the role of protectress and manager of the distressed household, intervened,
“Eddie, you mustn’t worry your father. We’reall in trouble, and you mustn’t be a nuisance.” His father went, without speaking.
“Well, when can I see her?” Edwin demanded.
“To-morrow. . . . You must be patient like the rest of us. Now I must go upstairs. You’ll be quiet, won’t you? Mrs. Barrow has your bedroom ready, and if you take your bag over she’ll give you some tea. She promised to look after you. She was most kind. Or, if you like, and will keep very quiet, you can stay here and read.”
“I didn’t come home to sit down here and read. Why did they send for me to come if they won’t let me see her? I want her. . . .”
“Hush . . .” said Aunt Laura, with an air of being scandalised. She left him, closing the door with exaggerated quietness behind her, leaving him alone in the room that had once witnessed so much happiness. He didn’t know what to do. Read? The idea was ridiculous. He looked at the familiar shelves, on which he knew the place and title of every book. A sense of the room’s awful emptiness oppressed him, for everything in it recalled the memory of his darling’s presence; the books that they had read together; the big chair in which he had sat cuddled in her arms; her workbasket on the table by the window; and—terribly pathetic—a shopping list scribbled on the back of an envelope. He couldn’t bear to be alone in the room with so many inanimate reminders; and while he was debating where he should go, a sudden angry jealousy flamed up in his heart towards the other people in the house: his father, Aunt Laura, the doctor, and the unknown nurse who shared theprivilege that was denied him and didn’t realise its value. He clenched his hands and cried aloud: “We belong to one another. . . . She’s mine. . . . She’s mine. I hate them.”
He opened the door softly and stepped into the hall. Scarcely knowing what he was doing he looked into the drawing-room. There stood the piano with a sonata of Beethoven upon the music-stand. The room was full of a curious penetrating odour which came, he discovered, from a big vase full of pinks that had faded and gone yellow. Some days ago, he supposed, his mother had picked them. Her hands . . . he worshipped her hands. A strange and uncontrollable impulse made him bend and kiss the dead flowers.
But the atmosphere of that room was if anything more cruel than the other. He couldn’t stay there. Once more he found himself in the darkness and quiet of the hall. The house had never been so silent. Only, in the corner an oak grandfather’s clock with a brass face engraved with the name of Carver, Hay, ticked steadily. In the silence he heard his own heart beating far faster than the clock.
Scarcely knowing what he was doing he climbed upstairs and crept quietly to the door of the room where his mother was lying. He knelt on the mat outside the door and listened. Inside the room there was no sound; not even a sound of breathing. If only he dared open the door. . . . If only he could see her for a second she might smile at him and he would be satisfied. He was thankful to find that the mere fact of being nearer to her madehim feel more happy. For a long time he knelt there, and then, hearing a slight noise in his own room, where his father was supposed to be resting, he stole downstairs again, a little comforted, opened the front door and went out into the garden.
Mrs. Barrow, at whose house it had been arranged that Edwin should put up for the night, was the Ingleby’s nearest neighbour and their landlady. The gardens of the two houses stood back to back with a high wall between, and the relations of the neighbours had always been so friendly that the little door in the wall was never locked, even though it was so seldom used that tendrils of ivy had attached themselves to the woodwork, forming a kind of natural hinge.
On the Inglebys’ side of the wall lay a modern well-kept garden, not more than twenty years old. Edwin’s mother had a passion for flowers, and his father had made the gratification of her pleasure his favourite hobby, so that Edwin’s earliest memories of both of them were associated with the gathering of fruits and blooms, with the rich odours of summer, or, above all, the smell of newly-turned earth. This summer Mr. Ingleby had planted the long bed that stretched along the side of the house towards the door in Mrs. Barrow’s wall with masses of delicately-coloured stocks. Though the form of these flowers was not particularly beautiful their scent rose to meet him in a hot wave of overpowering sweetness. He remembered a letter in whichhis mother had told him how wonderful they were. Everything reminded him of her. . . .