ADRIAN GLYNDE

A NOVEL

BY

MARTIN ARMSTRONG

Thou blind mans marke, thou fooles selfe chosen snare,

Fond fancies scum, and dregs of scattred thought;

Band of all evils, cradle of causelesse care,

Thou web of will, whose end is never wrought …

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

Contents

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XXVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Chapter XXXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXXIII

Chapter XXIV

Chapter XXV

Chapter XXVI

Chapter XXVII

Chapter XXVIII

A Note on the Author

I

In the middle of a wide expanse of reclaimed marshland, divided, like a great patchwork quilt, into fields of every shape, size, and colour, lay the little station of Wilmore Junction. Its buildings—the ticket-office, parcels-office, waiting-room, refreshment-room, and the shelter supported on slim iron pillars which roofed the platform—were all on the down side. The up platform, except for a little open-fronted wooden shelter, its walls covered with garish railway-posters and time-tables, was bare of all but gas-lamps and a large board supported on posts announcing the name of the station.

The station buildings had a spinsterish, Victorian air: it seemed as if, in the days of the Prince Consort, an exhibition had been held at Wilmore, and the exhibition buildings, not quite Swiss, not quite Chinese, nor yet wholly Sheraton, had survived to become a wayside railway station. Far along the down platform, continuing the line of the station buildings, was a bay where the branch-line trains arrived and departed. This branch-line, on leaving the station, curved away at once to the southwest, but the main line drove its long spear straight ahead into the plain until it was swallowed by distance.

A main-line train from the north had just left the station. It drew away rapidly, and the end of its van, with the red jewel of the lamp hung between the buffers, had already shrunk to half its natural size. Into the cold, sunny air of early April the engine was pouring a great shining ostrich-plume of smoke which sagged down upon the fields to the right of the line. Its huge, rolling crowns kept breaking away and floating detached along the surface of the fields, till one by one they thinned and dissolved into clear air.

Adrian Glynde, a little thirteen-year-old boy in a grey overcoat, grey cap and stockings and bare knees, stood on the platform watching the receding train. His hands were in his coat pockets and a suitcase stood on the platform beside him. The porter who had been on the platform when the train arrived and had lifted down his bag for him, had vanished into the parcels-office and there was not another soul in sight. The station was empty of all but silence and sunshine and cold air.

The train, drawing its undulating plume after it, had shrunk already to the size of a very small toy. Adrian, watching it vanish, felt a little lonely. There had been an old lady in the carriage with him, an old lady with a round rosy face and round horn-rimmed spectacles. She had begun talking to him even before the train had started. At first he had been shy, answering her only in monosyllables and all the while looking out of the window at the bookstall and the people who hovered about it like bees, bought a paper, and drifted away again. But at last he had found himself talking to her without embarrassment, and long before the train reached Wilmore they had become great friends. And now she was gone, vanished abruptly out of his life, and he felt a little ache at his heart as he relapsed into his habitual loneliness.

All his brief life he had been a lonely little boy. In nineteen hundred and fifteen, when he was only seven years old, his father had been killed in the war, and thereafter he had seen little of his mother. Though in his heart he longed for her, he had always been half afraid of her, for life with her had been a series of alarming mysteries, tempestuous scenes between her and his father which he himself could not understand. The only thing of which he had been sure was that they were always his mother’s fault. It was always she who started them, and he knew that she did so not for any real reason but because she gave way to a kind of mad wilfulness. He knew that it was her fault not only because he adored his father and felt that he could do no wrong, but also because his mother’s behaviour to him was just the same. At one moment she would be petting him and lavishing on him the endearments for which he still hungered; at the next she would be repulsing him, scolding him for some sin of which he was wholly unconscious. He had soon given up trying to understand her and had got into the way of accepting her love, not as a thing to be relied on, but as a blessed and unlooked-for treat, and her hate as an affliction which could not be explained or averted. His father’s face during those harrowing scenes still haunted him. Its expression would suddenly and heart-rendingly change, all the colour and life would die out of it and he would grow alarmingly pale, as if he were suffering from a terrible headache. On these occasions Adrian had longed passionately to rush to him and comfort him, but the sinister mystery of the situation had set an impassable barrier between them and he could only gaze at his father in an agony of helpless sympathy.

He often dreamed of his mother, of her tantalising tenderness which delighted him and led him on, only to disappoint him before his heart was satisfied; but most of all he yearned for those rare and rapturous times when his mother went away on some visit and he spent all the time from tea to bed-time with his father, and then, for a treat, was put to bed not in his own little bed in the nursery, but in his father’s and mother’s bed, where in the morning he would awake to find his father there beside him and they would have long delightful conversations before it was time to get up.

Gazing unseeingly after the train, he had not noticed that it had now vanished, that not the most distant feather of its smoke brightened the fields; but discovering now that he was gazing at empty space, he turned away with a little sigh and walked towards the refreshment-room. It was already a quarter past one, and the branch-line train did not start till two o’clock. His Aunt Clara had told him to get himself some lunch at the Wilmore refreshment-room when she had written to let him know that he was not to come to her and Uncle Bob at Yarn for the holidays, but was to join them at his grandfather’s.

That piece of news had made him very unhappy, for, being a homeless and parentless child, he clung desperately to his precarious anchorage in the home of his father’s sister Clara. As the holidays approached he always became more and more anxious lest the hope to spend them with his aunt and uncle at Yarn should be, as it had been more than once, frustrated. And now, just a week before the school broke up, the blow had fallen. Aunt Clara had written to say that they were all three to go to his grandfather’s. He had felt, as he read her letter, that his holiday was ruined.

He had never seen much of his grandfather, though he constantly heard about him from Aunt Clara and Uncle Bob, who spoke of him much and often read aloud references to him and his poetry in the newspapers. He had even discovered already that there was a reflected glory in being Oliver Glynde’s grandson, for when people heard that he himself was called Glynde they would usually ask if he were related to Oliver, and would be obviously impressed when he said that he was. But the handsome, hawklike, bearded old man with the shock of white hair had always filled him with awe, even though he had always been kind. Besides, he had been looking forward to seeing Rhoda’s pups, which had been born during last holidays, and to going for long adventurous walks with Philip, the Rector’s son, with whom he had become great friends at Christmas-time. Now all this was knocked on the head and he would not go to Yarn again till next summer—perhaps not even then, he thought to himself with a sinking heart—if some other unexpected plan was forced upon him.

The woman who served in the Wilmore Junction refreshment-room was roused from her knitting by approaching footsteps, and saw in the doorway a little boy with a face like a small, delicately tinted mask on which were painted thick, dark brows, long eyelashes, and a sad little Pierrot’s mouth. He came up to the bar, and she put by her knitting and got up to serve him. For a moment he stood looking shyly at the glass-covered dishes of ham sandwiches, buns, and fruit, then, raising large dark grey eyes to her face, eyes whose colour and unexpected depth surprised and charmed her, he asked for a ham sandwich, a bun, and two bananas.

“Will you have them on a plate or in a bag?” she asked him.

He hesitated, and then said, to her disappointment: “In a bag, please.”

When he had received the paper bag and his change, he went out, and through the window she watched the small lonely figure walk up the platform to the seat near his suitcase, where he sat down and began to open the paper bag. If Bert had not been killed in nineteen-fourteen perhaps they would have had a dear little boy like that. But he would not have had such a sad face, she was sure of that, because they would all three have been so happy together, and even if Bert had been killed later, there would have been their brief ecstasy of married life to remember and the child to preserve for her something of Bert. Ah, if only they had not been so respectable, had not waited till they could be married. The disgrace would have seemed nothing now compared with the marvellous happiness of having a child of his to live for. With a sigh she resumed her seat behind the glass dishes and steaming urn, and took up her knitting again.

Seated on the station bench, Adrian began to eat his ham sandwich. He was hungry and the sandwich seemed to him very good. It was pleasant to sit there in the sun, and he wished he could just go on sitting, free from the necessity of catching another train and travelling to a strange place. If only Aunt Clara and Uncle Bob would always stay at Yarn so that the holidays and the prospect of holidays could be happy and secure. Or if his mother would come home from India, take him to live with her, and be always, as she had been sometimes, cheerful and kind and loving. Or, best of all, if only his father were alive now and they could have a home together with his mother always away on one unending visit. But that idea was too heavenly to have been ever possible.

His mind busied itself again with his mother and father, and, dreaming with the half-eaten sandwich in his hand, he recalled a terrible day when his mother had broken out more violently than usual. His father in those days generally came home in time for tea at halfpast four, but on that day he had been late and Adrian and his mother had sat waiting in the drawing-room with the tea ready on the table. They waited for a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes, half an hour, and he had grown very hungry. He could see by his mother’s face that she was in one of her moods, and for a long time he had not spoken to her but had glanced at her surreptitiously from time to time as she sat, with her mouth grimly set, staring at the fire. At last he had asked if they need wait for his father.

“If your father chooses to keep us waiting,” she had replied, still staring at the fire, “we must wait.” Then she had glanced at Adrian. “My poor child,” she said, “are you getting very hungry? I’m sure you are. It’s simply heartless of him.”

Then with a quick, impatient gesture she had rung the bell. “Janet,” she said when the maid came, “take away the tea: it will be ruined by now.”

The maid hesitated for a moment and then lifted up the tray.

“No, not everything,” said his mother sharply. “I said the tea … the teapot. Goodness knows what has happened to Mr. Glynde.”

Janet went to the door carrying the teapot.

“Bring some fresh tea when he comes in,” his mother called after her. She had resumed her staring at the fire and Adrian, becoming, at his mother’s remark, suddenly anxious about his father, had stolen over to the window. At that moment he had caught sight of his father coming down the street. A lady was with him. Adrian knew the lady.

“Here’s Father with Mrs. Lexington,” he had shouted, and his mother had jumped from her chair and run to the window. Adrian saw his father fumble in his waistcoat pocket for his latchkey, and next moment he had stopped, raised his hat to Mrs. Lexington, and was opening the front door. His mother returned quickly to her chair near the fire and sat as she had sat before.

Adrian felt immensely relieved. His father’s return was always a blissful moment, and now it meant not only the usual happiness but the end of his recent anxiety. He had been vaguely afraid, after what his mother had said to Janet, that some mysterious accident had befallen his father. Besides, now they would be able to have tea.

The door opened and his father came in, bringing with him, as he always did for Adrian, a warm gust of life and colour and cheerfulness. Adrian ran to him and his father put a large, affectionate arm round the little boy’s shoulders.

“Well, old man!” he said, patting his back and smiling down at him. Then he turned to the immovable figure by the fire. “I’m afraid I’m awfully late. I was kept at the office for nearly an hour.”

“Again?” said his mother’s voice, cold, incredulous, from her chair.

“Yes, again, worse luck.”

He saw his mother turn her head and shoot a quick, hard glance at them. “What a fool you must think me if you really imagine I believe that,” she said.

Adrian felt his father’s arm twitch. “I should think you more of a fool if you didn’t,” he replied with a curtness that surprised Adrian. His father was generally very patient when his mother attacked him; too patient, Adrian always felt. He was glad now to hear his father stand up to her.

But his mother was not quelled. “Well, I don’t. That’s all,” she retorted.

His father ignored the reply. He came forward into the room and his eyes fell on the tea-table. “Why, you haven’t had tea yet,” he said.

“Of course we haven’t,” said his mother indignantly, “and the poor child’s almost starving.”

His father did not reply, and Adrian, glancing at his face, could see that he was keeping his mouth tight shut so as to keep in the words he wanted to say.

“And I suppose that you’ll pretend, next, that I’m to blame for it,” persisted his mother.

“We’ll discuss that later, Minnie,” his father replied coldly, and Adrian intercepted a glance at his mother which said as clearly as words that they were not to quarrel in front of him.

But his mother ignored the glance and flared up.

“We’ll do nothing of the sort,” she said. “I won’t have you making use of the child to shut me up.”

His father had sat down near the tea-table, his arm round Adrian, who had climbed on to an arm of his chair. He replied with a dry, joyless laugh. “Shut you up?” he said. “Nothing in the world would do that, Minnie, when once you get going. But it takes two to discuss, and I refuse to discuss it now.”

“Because you daren’t,” she replied in a quiet, breathlessly furious voice; “because you know you’re in the wrong; because you’ve lied to me and are frightened of being found out.”

“I simply don’t know what you’re talking about, Minnie,” said his father wearily, “I’ve told you the plain truth. Do you wish me to neglect important business in order not to be late for tea, and do you mean to pretend that there’s anything to stop you giving Adrian his tea at the proper time, even though you yourself prefer to seize the opportunity for martyrdom?”

All the while he spoke his arm was round Adrian and his large, comforting hand was gently stroking his side.

“What I mean to say,” she persisted stubbornly, “and what I have said already, is that you are lying to me. I’m not quite such a fool as I look, Sandy.”

“Very well. Then, for heaven’s sake, let us leave it at that: I’m a liar and you’re not such a fool as you look.”

Adrian saw his mother’s nostrils suddenly contract. “You’ll drive me mad one of these days, Sandy,” she said in an intense, exasperated whisper.

“I can trust you to do that for yourself, Minnie,” he answered bitterly, “and not only yourself, but me into the bargain.”

“And Mrs. Lexington too, perhaps.” She paused. Then with a quiet, fierce, cynical amiability, which so shockingly transformed her face that Adrian felt frightened and horrified as if in the presence of some half-perceived indecency, she continued: “I happened, you see, and so did your child here, to be at the window when you arrived just now.”

His father nodded. “I see,” he said. Then he burst out in exasperation: “What unmitigated lunacy! Do you expect me to cut Mrs. Lexington when I meet her in broad daylight a few yards from my own house?”

Adrian had listened in agonised amazement to this seemingly inconsequent wrangle. Why had Mrs. Lexington suddenly come into the argument? It was a mystery which his six years could not fathom.

The horrible change again came over his mother’s face. “How curious, isn’t it,” she said in the same soft, mock-amiable tone, “that on the very day you are kept so late at the office you should happen to meet Mrs. Lexington a few yards from the house?” Her voice changed. The sham graciousness faded out of it and it became cold and hard again. “No, Sandy. That won’t wash.”

Adrian had remembered that phrase, because it had introduced yet another mystery. What could his mother mean?

“Very well,” said his father, “then ring up the office and ask Scott what time I left. That’s simple enough.”

His mother gave a short, scornful laugh. “A little too simple for me, thank you.”

“Perhaps it is, Minnie. Simplicity was never your strong point, was it?”

“I was simple enough until I met you,” she replied, searching suddenly for her handkerchief. “It was you that forced me to be … to be …” She rose from her chair, her handkerchief to her eyes, and to Adrian’s horror began to whimper.

“Run away to the nursery, old man,” said his father with a sigh, and Adrian went miserably towards the door.

But his mother suddenly burst out into hysterical incoherence:

“No!” she screamed. “No! You shan’t drive my child away from me.” She rushed over to Adrian, dropping her handkerchief on the way, and seized him in her arms. “I won’t stand it any longer,” she screamed. “You’re driving me mad. I’m going, and I’ll take him with me. I’m going, do you hear? Now, at once.”

Still clutching Adrian, she made for the door. But Adrian, filled with fear and hatred of her, struggled and kicked and at last escaped and ran to his father.

Then his mother turned furiously on his father.

“There!” she shrieked. “There! Look what you’ve done now. You’ve turned my child against me.”

She snatched the door open and it slammed behind her, and in a few moments they heard her footsteps in the room above. Adrian, after standing for a while silent and appalled, had suddenly burst into tears. His father’s arm closed round him. “All right, old man. Don’t you worry,” he said, and he sat down and took Adrian on his knee. “Let mother go. It’s only one of her moods.”

He kissed Adrian, and then, putting him down, stood up himself. At that moment Janet entered with a pot of fresh tea. When she had gone, his father went to the teatable. “Come, let us have our tea,” he said. “Aren’t you ravenous? I am.”

He poured out Adrian’s milk, handed him some bread and butter, then poured out a cup of tea for himself.

As they began to eat they heard a door slam overhead; then hurried footsteps descended the stairs, crossed the hall; the front door opened and was violently closed.

And then it seemed that a blessed silence fell upon the house. Adrian felt suddenly happy and care-free. He had looked across the tea-table at his father and smiled. “We haven’t had tea alone together,” he said, “since my birthday.”

These things had happened years ago, and yet he remembered them with such clearness that they seemed more real than the things of to-day; and, living them over again as he had just been doing, he had been so absorbed by them that he had forgotten that he was sitting on the platform of Wilmore Junction and had not even noticed that he had finished the sandwich and got half way through the bun.

Sparrows were hopping about on the asphalt round his feet, picking up the crumbs that the wind had blown to what they considered a safe distance. Adrian watched them, noticing for the first time how bold and decorative a sparrow’s plumage is, in spite of its sober colours. The wind flattened or ruffled their feathers and blew the little birds about like toy ships in a pond. There were a few crumbs beside his left shoe, and he watched a sparrow fussily trying to make up its mind to dart in and snatch one. It had gone thin with apprehension and was stretching out its neck to its full extent in an attempt to reach a crumb. Then its courage failed it and it swerved away. Adrian chirped at it, but that only increased its nervousness. At last with a sudden bold dash it grabbed a crumb and shot away with a loud flutter of wings, and, seeing this rashness rewarded, the others at once began to make cautious inroads till all the crumbs were finished.

Suddenly there was a loud mechanical chirrup of pulleys followed by the hollow, woody sound of the fall of the signal at the top of the platform. With a rapid purr of wings the flock of sparrows vanished. Adrian opened his coat and took out his silver watch. It was twenty to two. The branch-line train would be coming in; and soon with a metallic clanking it coiled round the bend and ran lazily into the bay, the little tank-engine pushing behind.

Adrian made haste to finish his bun: he did not like strangers to see him picnicking. He crumpled together the paper bag with the two bananas in it and pushed it into his overcoat pocket. He would eat them later, in the train. Five or six leisurely country-folk got out and drifted towards the station exit, and soon Adrian was alone again. The little engine unhooked itself and trundled off to have a drink. Adrian chose a carriage, hoisted his bag into it, and placed it in a window seat. Having done this, he climbed down on to the platform and went to watch the engine return and join up with the train again.

When the train started, he had the carriage to himself, and he sat looking out of the window and wondering tremulously what sort of a holiday he was going to have at his grandfather’s. Aunt Clara and Uncle Bob were driving from Yarn: it was a long way, and very likely they would not arrive till after him. The thought added to his anxieties. Who would meet him at the station? Perhaps, he thought with a little spasm of apprehension, his grandfather. He felt unsettled, unhappy. It was more like the end than the beginning of a holiday. When the train landed him at Abbot’s Randale an hour later he had quite forgotten to eat his bananas.

II

By dinner-time that evening Adrian already felt reassured. The strangeness he had dreaded turned out to be of a very different kind from what he had expected. Although he was still rather afraid of his grandfather he was also very much attracted by him, and instead of feeling alienated and dismayed by the unfamiliar life at Abbot’s Randale, he already found himself in various subtle ways interested and thrilled. He no longer regretted Yarn.

The pleasant old Georgian house with its airy hall, its wide, leisurely staircase and the lofty, large-windowed rooms, was full of rare and lovely things, many of which Oliver Glynde had collected during the half-century he had lived there. The place seemed to Adrian a fairy palace. Its restrained richness enchanted him. He kept discovering that he was in the presence of beautiful things. The blue and silver brocade hanging in the hall and the great Oriental rug, a figured medley of fawn, straw-colour, and soft blues, with touches of faded orange here and there, fascinated him: so too did the red lacquer in the drawing-room—the great chest, its glossy scarlet decorated with golden leaves, flowers, and birds; the small scarlet writing-desk in the window, the great red and gold-framed mirror over the mantelpiece, all of them glowing against the silvery grey of the walls and curtains. The walls were bare except for a long hanging of coral-coloured silk brocaded with lilies and leaves of scarlet, pale blue, and pale green, and two pictures in heavy gilded frames in which grim, richly robed saints stood against a background of tarnished gold. A Chinese priest, a serene figure of gilded wood, brooding cross-legged on a golden throne, stood on a table in a corner of the room, and from the ceiling hung a glass chandelier that looked like the formal showers of a fountain frozen into a crystal immobility.

One of his fears had been that he would feel lonely, one isolated boy among three grown-ups. With Aunt Clara and Uncle Bob he had always felt himself one of a trio, but he had feared that they would change when they were away from home, that they and his grandfather would be the trio and he himself would be left out. But this, he saw already, had been as false as his other fears. One of the nicest things about his grandfather was that he treated him and talked to him just as he did to the others, and Aunt Clara and Uncle Bob were just the same as they were at Yarn. There was no question of being grown up or not grown up; he himself was simply one of a party of four. The only difference was that Uncle Bob, instead of changing into an old grey flannel suit in the evenings, dressed himself up like Grandfather in a white shirt and dinner-jacket, and he himself too changed into his best suit with the black coat and waistcoat. As for Aunt Clara, she had always dressed for dinner, but here she was even smarter than at home. Adrian enjoyed the solemn formality of dressing for dinner and the spectacle of them all sitting, so grand, round the dinner-table. In the centre of the table stood a glass bowl like a green bubble, and round it were four green glass candlesticks like slim plants whose stems and leaves had become transparent; their candles had lemon-coloured shades. On either side of him sat his aunt and uncle, and opposite to him, beyond the glass bowl and framed by the glass candlesticks, his grandfather, an impressive figure, with his shock of white hair, the thick grey brows under which the blue-grey eyes shone keenly in the candlelight on either side of his eagle’s beak of a nose, and the rather full, luxurious, yet fastidious mouth, unhidden by the grey moustache and pointed grey beard.

From time to time Adrian glanced at him when he thought he wasn’t looking. He was terribly grand, he thought, with his large black bow and the faultless whiteness of his shirt studded with two pearls: and what made him look grander still was the dinner-jacket he wore—not an ordinary dinner-jacket like Uncle Bob’s, but a black velvet one.

Then he glanced at Uncle Bob. It was extraordinary how grand dress clothes made people seem. He had always looked upon Uncle Bob, with his fat, ruddy, cleanshaven face, his contented brown eyes always ready to smile, his brown hair and brown country clothes, as a rough, brown, floppy sort of man. But Uncle Bob in dress clothes, with hair brushed and ruddy face refined almost to pinkness, seemed to be the same kind of person as Grandfather, though so different from him in looks. It pleased Adrian to see Uncle Bob like this and to notice, too, how very much he and the old gentleman liked one another.

Aunt Clara, who had been talking a moment ago, had fallen into a reverie and sat, bare-necked, bare-armed, in black silk, before her empty plate, with eyes mildly gazing at nothing. It was strange to catch her thus off her guard. Adrian, for the first time in his life, examined her face, feeling almost as if it were a face he had never seen before. It was a long, narrow face, made longer and narrower by the hair brushed upwards and backwards from the high brow. Her nose was long and had something of the aquiline incisiveness of her father’s, but the mouth had none of the luxuriousness of his: it was narrower and sterner, the eyes less piercing, and the eyebrows thinner and arched in a slightly disdainful surprise. But the disdainfulness of the brows and the grimness of the mouth did not trouble Adrian, who knew how kind the eyes beneath the brows could be and how ready the mouth was to curl humorously or soften into an indulgent smile for him. She was wearing the pendant he especially admired, the large single diamond slung on a narrow chain about her long neck, and there was the sparkle of another in the black silk at her breast.

Stock the butler, a silent black and white satellite, circulated in the semi-darkness behind their chairs about the shining table. Behind his grandfather Adrian saw the vague gleam of silver on the dark sideboard.

And suddenly he remembered how, one night years ago, when his father and mother were going out to dinner, he had sat in the drawing-room with his father, waiting for his mother to come down. His father was in dress clothes with white tie and white waistcoat, and Adrian still remembered how handsome he looked. His mother, as usual on these occasions, was late, and his father, silent and preoccupied, kept glancing at the clock on the mantelpiece. At last there was a light step on the stairs, the door opened, and his mother stood in the doorway in a wonderful dress of pale silky yellow. With her pale golden hair, her pale blue eyes, and her small, exquisitely neat figure, she looked like a fairy princess.

“Am I all right?” she asked, smiling and turning slowly round till she faced them again.

Adrian and his father gazed at her, entranced, and his father, in that delightfully comic way he had of saying so much less than he meant, had replied:

“H … m! Yes, perhaps you’ll do.” Then he had turned to Adrian. “What do you say, old man?”

Adrian had nodded judicially. “Yes,” he had answered, “she’ll do,” and all three of them had burst out laughing.

His grandfather’s voice broke in on this vision of the past.

“But I can never understand,” he was saying, “why sherry should have gone out of fashion. A first-rate sherry is a finer wine than the finest port, and that,” he added, “is saying a very great deal, because a good vintage port is a noble wine. But a port, to be good, must be very good. Your ports from the wood are a horror. One shudders at the bare thought of their insufferable fruitiness: whereas even a tolerable sherry is worth drinking.”

“I quite agree,” said Uncle Bob. The man who invented the proverb Any port in a storm had no palate for wine.”

“My dear Bob!” said Clara faintly, raising her eyebrows a little higher.

“And the best of all sherries are the pale sherries,” said Bob.

“Undoubtedly,” said Oliver Glynde. “The darker they get, the more closely they approach to something which is not sherry. Some of your pale sherries are, of course, extremely dry—almost too dry for my taste, though occasionally I can enjoy a glass of the very dry, more especially with a biscuit, in the middle of the morning when I am working and don’t want to be bothered with luncheon. But a pale, rather full sherry is the best of all. I drew a bottle two days ago, so that it should be ready for your arrival, of a sherry so pale that it is hardly more than straw-coloured, but anything less pale than the flavour can hardly be imagined.”

With eyes thrown up and both hands raised, Oliver Glynde made a gesture of ecstasy. “Your great-grandfather, Adrian, bought it forty years ago from a wine-merchant in Canterbury who had bought it fifteen years previously at the selling-up of a country-house in the neighbourhood. Its origin and name were unknown, but the cellar-book of the house had shown it to be twenty years old when the wine-merchant bought it. How old does that make it?”

“Seventy-five,” said Adrian promptly.

“Yes, seventy-five. I hope I may live to be as old and as magnificently well preserved. My father christened it Canterbury Pale. A port of that age would be undrinkable. Mere cedar-pencil and as thin as a rat.” He glanced at his daughter. “You remember the Canterbury Pale, Clara? You’ve drunk it more than once.”

Clara’s narrow mouth curled into a charming smile. “I am not likely to forget it, Father.”

The old man’s eyes twinkled. “Ah, Clara! Like your dear mother, you always had a taste for sherry. Saintsbury is quite right. ‘When ladies do know anything about wine,’ he says, ‘there is no mistake about their taste.’”

“In that, as in everything,” said Clara, “one can learn only by experience, and in the matter of wine most women have lacked the opportunity. If there had been equality of opportunity, Father, women, at least until they took up smoking, would have been finer judges of wine than men, who spend half the day treating their tongues as if they were haddocks and herrings. But now women have become as disgusting in that respect as men, and every drawing-room and boudoir reeks of bonfires.”

Oliver shook a finger at his daughter. “Beware of detachment, Clara. Faith, we are told, can move mountains, and nitric acid will burn a hole in a five-shilling piece, but these things are innocuous trifles compared with the devastating effects of applied detachment. It is the greatest of all disintegrators. The finest cigar, regarded with detachment, is undoubtedly a portable bonfire of dead tobacco leaves, but the finest sherry is equally a bunch of grapes which has been stepped on by a Spanish peasant and has, in consequence, gone bad, and a picture by Botticelli is a mess of tinted slime buttered on to a plank. Detachment will take the life and poetry out of anything. Poetry has rescued beef from the mere cow, mutton from the mere sheep, and caviare from the abomination of mere fish-spawn; and the most revolting corruption, when transformed by the title of Stilton cheese, becomes a dainty fit for princes and bishops. But that, mind you, is not to say that poetry, by revealing the new aspects of cow, sheep, and fish-spawn, detaches them from the old. It regards serenely every aspect. The princes and bishops may shrink from bringing a microscope to the luncheon-table on Stilton days, but your true poet—who, so far as I know, does not exist—would wield both microscope and cheese-scoop simultaneously, regarding his helping of Stilton not with horror but with ecstatic wonder, seeing behind lactic acid, maggot, and mite to the fountains of creation.” He glanced with twinkling eyes at Adrian across the green bowl. “Have you ever seen Stilton through a microscope, Adrian?”

“Yes, I have,” said Adrian.

“And eaten it too?”

Adrian smiled. “Yes, but not on the same day.”

Everybody laughed, and Adrian, reassured and flattered, felt that by this brief exchange he and his grandfather had suddenly been drawn closer together.

In the drawing-room afterwards Adrian began to feel extremely sleepy. It already seemed to him a week since he had started from Waldo that morning. The old lady whose conversation had comforted him in the train had sunk already into the limbo of things forgotten, and his troubles and fears at Wilmore Junction and during the rest of the journey had faded to no more than pale phantoms in the warm light of his new security. As he nestled into the corner of a deep armchair a little detached from the others, their talk came to him in alternate waves of sense and nonsense. The great mirror over the mantelpiece blurred into a cloudy cavern of mellow effulgence, and the shattered ice of the chandelier seemed to swing towards him and then recede, lose focus, and change to a thickly clustered constellation of stars whose iridescent rays grew and shrank, shrank and grew, with the come and go of his consciousness. He felt himself sinking through delicious depths. Then with an effort he roused himself and found Aunt Clara’s eyes upon him. The other two were talking.

“Isn’t it bed-time?” Her lips shaped the words inaudibly, her brows accenting the query.

Adrian shook his head decisively, smiling a plea for indulgence. Aunt Clara smiled back and conveyed wordlessly that he appeared to be very sleepy, but that to-night he might do as he liked. Adrian voicelessly assured her that he wasn’t sleepy in the least, and next moment he was enveloped by the soothing drone of the two men’s voices and the warmly looming yellow cave over the mantelpiece. He lost foothold, swayed, and sank into sleep.

The three grown-ups contemplated him and exchanged smiles.

“He’s a handsome little man,” said Oliver, “a dark-haired miniature of dear Sandy. There’s not a trace of The Baggage in him, thank God. Do you think he’s going to be happy here, Clara?”

Clara nodded. “Perfectly. He was frightened of you at first, but he has taken to you enormously. I can tell at once with him.”

The old man’s eyes glittered suddenly in the firelight. “Poor little chap. With no father and worse than no mother, he’s rather at the mercy of life.” Then his face hardened and the eagle came back into it. “And what is your latest news of The Baggage?” he asked. “Does she still favour you with her confidence?”

Clara nodded. “Still!” she said. “And I can’t understand why. I have a letter about every three months. I have never disguised my feelings, always behaved to her like a disapproving school ma’am, and in fact, as regards the boy, I’ve always, as you know, taken a high hand.”

Bob laughed. “That’s why Minnie likes you,” he said, “because you all but take a stick to her. Dogs are often the same. Both Rhoda and Betty adore Bishop the keeper, because he’s a martinet, but they’re barely civil to me who treat them like ladies. You brow-beat Minnie and she respects you: I try to be polite and amiable, and what’s the result? She just tolerates me to my face and despises me in her heart.”

“But she probably knows too—because no one can say that Minnie is not diabolically sharp—that you simply think her a fool, while I can’t help being enormously entertained by her.”

“Oh, I should be entertained all right,” old Oliver broke in, “if I could forgive her—which I shall never do—for making dear Sandy miserable. Performing cats, performing monkeys, performing vermin are all entertaining. Once, as a very small boy, I saw performing fleas at a show. Some were horses and drew a miniature barouche, two others were coachman and footman, and yet another—a cabinet minister or a duchess no doubt—rode inside. The only difference between them and The Baggage is that they didn’t know they were performing, whereas she doesn’t know we know she is performing. You say she is sharp, Clara: well, perhaps she is sharp enough to see through others, but her sharpness stops short of realising that others see through her. She mistakes her profound shallowness for depth. Nobody else does, however. Does she show any interest in the boy?”

“Not in her letters to me. Her letters to me, you see, are all about herself—variations on a not very original theme. But once every half-year or so she recollects she is a mother and posts him an essay in the maternal—’ My own precious lamb,’ and so on.”

“And what is the effect on the boy?”

“Oh, he is glad of the Indian stamps. The letters simply surprise and puzzle him. Naturally he has almost forgotten her by now and can’t understand what all the fuss is about. He reads them through once and then leaves them about, and I collect them and put them away. One wonders why, if the lamb is really so precious, Minnie should be willing to leave him about as Adrian does her letters.”

“Willing!” said Bob, laughing softly. “You are unjust to yourself, my dear Clara. You force her to.”

“Yes, and how gracefully she submits. I know my Minnie better than you do, Bob. She prides herself on her skill in compelling us to look after him for her. The point is, of course, that both sides are willing to be coerced, which, as the boy is happy with us and would certainly be miserable with her, is fortunate.”

“Fortunate indeed!” said Oliver. “Happy or not, with her he would certainly be in the worst possible company for a child. In fact, if the poor little devil succeeded in being happy with her, it would be so much the worse for him.”

Clara laughed grimly. “He would at least have the distinction of being the first person who had.”

“You gather, then, that the new husband isn’t?”

“That, surely, is a foregone conclusion.”

Oliver nodded. “Especially, I suppose, in India, where her field will be restricted and her activities, in consequence, the more intense.”

“She hints at havoc in military hearts of all ranks. Her fatal attraction, you know!”

“Ah, her attraction!” The old man’s lip curled. “She exercises it conscientiously, I admit, as a spinster exercises a poodle. But it’s of the kind, I should have supposed, that leaves the heart whole.”

“Yet poor Sandy was bitten by it, and now the Colonel.”

“True. And the Colonel, no doubt, is now suffering the consequences. She ogles all the young subalterns, of course, and makes herself and him ridiculous.”

“Quite so. She speaks in her last letter of one,’ a charming boy whose only fault is that he’s a little too fond of me, my dear.’ Her letters reveal a brilliant court of which she is the queen.”

Oliver snorted. “Queen, indeed! A queen, like Euclid’s point, of no parts, no magnitude, but position. To be a Colonel’s wife covers a multitude of inadequacies.”

Clara and Bob burst out laughing. The old man glanced at them sharply: then his eyes twinkled, his face suddenly thawed into a smile, and he joined in the laugh.

The laughter roused Adrian. He stirred in his chair, and opened his eyes, and next moment the others, having recovered themselves, found him upright and smiling, watching them.

III

April sunshine and the cold pure air of early morning filled the garden; and the house, so plain and simple in its dignity, faced that purity unabashed, its formally-spaced windows shining in the curd-white stucco of its front. There was no sign of inhabitants, but the carefullykept garden, the gleam of the polished windows, some of them half-open, and from four of the chimney-pots a leisurely jet of smoke flowing straight upwards, told that the place was quietly alive.

Presently the front door opened and Stock, the butler, in shirt-sleeves and a green baize apron, appeared on the doorstep and stood for a moment surveying the morning, framed in the pillared porch like the picture of a canonised bishop, green-robed in his Renaissance niche.

In the large spare-room above the drawing-room, Clara, her long face wearing unashamed the unmitigated asceticism of early morning, sat up in bed in a faded heliotrope silk dressing-gown sipping a cup of tea. Invisible but for a dishevelled bunch of hair, Bob, who despised tea at such an hour, lay at her side, a motionless and shapeless chrysalis. “What a relief it will be,” she was thinking to herself, “if Father and little Adrian take to one another.” For Adrian was certainly a tie and a responsibility. Her very affection for the boy made him the more so. It was difficult to regulate one’s movements by school holidays. They always seemed to come just at the time one wanted to be away from home. Yet when the poor little chap relied on one so pathetically one hardly had the conscience to disappoint him and pack him off somewhere else for his holiday. She had hoped that the holiday he had spent, some time ago, with the Crowhursts would be a success. There were two little girls and four boys for him to play with there, and she had thought that the company of other children would be good for him. But when she had questioned him afterwards he had confessed, his poor little face hot with shame and twisted with emotion, that he had not enjoyed himself at all. “Not a little, now and then?” She had pressed him for proof that it had not really been so bad. But no; he had not enjoyed any of it: he had, too obviously, been very miserable. Yes, certainly he was a tie. Yet rather than pack him off to Minnie, who would certainly pack him off somewhere else at the first opportunity, she would do her best for poor Sandy’s sake, and for the boy’s sake too, to be within easy reach always at holiday time. But it was all very difficult, and if only it turned out that his grandfather, now that the ice was broken, would be willing to have him sometimes at Abbot’s Randale, it would be a weight off her mind. If people didn’t want children, they oughtn’t to have them. But of course it must have been poor Sandy who wanted the child, and, as their father had said last night, the little man was extraordinarily like Sandy—a miniature, dark-haired Sandy with a small, sad mouth in place of Sandy’s jovial smile, and, in place of Sandy’s self-confidence, the timid, unspoken appeal for love and protection which was so disturbing, so heart-searching.

It was this that Clara unconsciously desired to escape from. Unconsciously she resented this disturbing intrusion upon the otherwise unviolated privacy of her heart. She raised the lid of the teapot, peeped inside, and, with pursed ascetic lips and the slightly surprised lift of her brows, poured herself out another cup.

At the other end of the house, old Oliver Glynde, reclining motionless with closed eyes in the slim fourposter hung with yellow damask, like an aged prince-bishop lying in state, was thinking, as he so often thought when idle, of his dead son. The little boy who had arrived on the previous afternoon, so like a sad miniature Sandy, had stirred up a cloud of memories and emotions which had lain, a sediment long undisturbed, in the dark pool of his mind. It was as if the wheel of time had swung backwards, the past returned, and Sandy as a little boy were alive again. But both the past and the boy—and this was what so moved and troubled him—were somehow harrowingly different, charged with a pathos which had been absent before. It seemed to the old man that this little boy silently and unconsciously reproached him for all these years of neglect. His heart ached with remorse. Why, he asked himself, had he neglected the boy all this time?

The reasons were various and complex. It was partly, he saw now, cowardice. Sandy’s death had been for him such a tragedy that he had fled from the contemplation of it and avoided all that might remind him of his irreparable loss. It was with this object that, immediately after Sandy’s death, he had left Abbot’s Randale and remained away, for the most part abroad, for five years. If he had liked his daughter-in-law, things would of course have been different; but he hated her. It was not merely, nor chiefly, that he disliked her personally: he bitterly resented the unhappiness she had brought to Sandy by her jealousy and her ridiculous delusions about her own fatal attractiveness. It was true that she had been violently attached to Sandy, but that had only made it the worse for him, for love, in a woman like Minnie, was little more than a fierce and exorbitant possessiveness that ruined the peace and happiness of the object of it. Oliver still believed that if Sandy had been happily married he would not have volunteered for that patrol from which he never returned. Sandy had been devoted to the little boy, and when he was in France he must often have consoled himself with the certainty that, if anything happened to him, his father would look after the boy.

Tears stung the old man’s closed eyes. He faced the undeniable truth that his response to that trust had been to go away for five years and then, after his return, to ignore the boy for two years more. How had he contrived to allow himself to be guilty of such neglect of the creature that was dearest of all to his dead son? How, but by cowardice? Yes, he told himself now in his bitter self-reproach, it had been mere crude cowardice, fear of suffering. How unfeeling one could become through excess of feeling. It was a paradox, but true. Because it was so horribly painful to feel, one funked it, shirked feeling, and took refuge in heartlessness. But that, at least, was over now. He would devote himself to the little chap now as, in old days, he had devoted himself to Sandy. He sighed and stirred under the bedclothes. The thought that, as Clara had said last night, the little chap had taken to him, touched him deeply. What had he done to deserve the boy’s affection? He would see to it that they became great friends.

In another room, a room on the east front which had once been Sandy’s, Adrian lay in bed with eyes wide open. On waking, his first feeling had been, as for many days past, one of apprehension. He felt vaguely that something unsettling threatened him. He opened his eyes and found himself in a strange place. There was no window where he was accustomed to see one when he awoke in the dormitory at Waldo. Had he got turned over on to the wrong side in his sleep? Had his bed itself revolved mysteriously in the night? He remembered now what it was that threatened him: it was the visit to his grandfather, the visit which had ruined his hopes of the coming holidays. Then he discovered that he was not in his school bed, but in a larger and much more: comfortable one. A mirror seen vaguely on an invisible wall opposite his eyes showed luminous green folds of a window-curtain, and as he stared sleepily at it the curtain moved, split like the thin rind of a fruit, and displayed a shining core of sunlight which dazzled him. A little breeze fluttered round the room like an invisible bird: then the curtains dropped together, shutting out the golden vision.

But that brief invasion had put to flight all Adrian’s shadowy fears and left in his heart a glow of happiness and warm excitement. For with a rush of delighted recollection he had realised where he was. He felt that he must get up and plunge at once into this exciting new life.

But perhaps it was not yet time to get up. Nobody had told him what time breakfast would be. Perhaps he ought not to get up till someone told him to. He controlled his impatience and lay still, his mind revolving a medley of thoughts and memories and anticipations. Would he be allowed to come here again for the holidays, he wondered. What a relief it would be to know that if ever he was disappointed again of his hopes of holidays at Yarn, he might come here instead of being sent to some strange, unhappy place, as he had been two years ago when he had paid that dreadful visit to the Crowhursts. How miserable he had been, not merely during the visit but before it when, just ten days before the holidays began, Aunt Clara had written to tell him that she and Uncle Bob would be away and he would not be able to go to Yarn. He had then for the first time realised that he was not necessary to Aunt Clara and Uncle Bob, as they were to him, and he had felt desolate and unprotected. He had put her letter into his pocket and had gone and locked himself into the lavatory, so that no one should see him crying. He had been longing for the holidays, and now the holidays were ruined and there was nothing left for him to hope for.

How vividly he recalled his sensations, a cold, white, sour feeling of fear and loneliness inside his stomach, when—as he and Mr. Austin, the master who was to hand him over to Mr. Crowhurst at Victoria Station, stood waiting on the platform, after leaving the other boys—that strange, forbidding-looking man with spectacles and a short raggy beard had come up to them.

“Are you by any chance Mr. Austin of Waldo School?” he had asked. “Good! I’m Mr. Crowhurst. And this, I suppose, is the young man. Well, come along, young fellow.” And, before Adrian had had time to realise what was happening, Mr. Austin had left him and Mr. Crowhurst was haling him off into the unknown.

All the way in the train he had sat looking out of the window, sick with apprehension, while Mr. Crowhurst read the paper or talked to a man sitting opposite them.

“Not one of yours?” the man had asked, signing with his head at Adrian.

“No. Son of a friend of my wife’s. His mother’s abroad, so he’s coming to us for the holidays. One extra doesn’t make much difference in our crowd.”

At the mention of the crowd, Adrian’s heart had sunk.

Then the awful arrival, with the six children dancing round and all shouting at once, and fat, kind, faded Mrs. Crowhurst putting her hand on his shoulder and introducing him to them all.

“Children! Children! Be quiet for a moment and shake hands with Adrian.” Then, as each shook hands and stared at him inquisitively, she had said, in her sweet, too musical voice:

“This is Milly. Now Wilfred. Now Elinor. Now Bobby. And this is Gerrard. And this is little Frankie. Give Adrian your hand, Frankie. There’s a good boy.”

And then had followed the ordeal of tea in the nursery with its incessant noise and its strange, sourish smell of children. There Miss Chadwick, the nursery governess, had taken charge of the mob, and Mr. and Mrs. Crowhurst had disappeared. Adrian had had one very thick piece of bread and butter and, feeling too shy and too sick to eat more, had refused Miss Chadwick’s offer of another.

“But, my dear boy, you’ve had nothing. This will never do. Just look at Frankie.”

Adrian had lifted his eyes for a moment from his plate and glanced at Frankie, an impish little boy with a large mouth, made larger by jam, and mischievous eyes, whose whole face seemed to be employed in destroying a huge chunk of bread and jam.

One of the girls, Elinor, had been niecr than the others. She had sat next him on that first occasion, and quite suddenly, half way through tea, she had said: “Have a bit of my cake,” and had broken her piece in two and put the larger half on his plate. Adrian had thanked her shyly and eaten it, feeling, for a moment, a little less isolated.

After tea they had all gone down to the drawing-room, where Mrs. Crowhurst had read to them. What a relief that had been. Mrs. Crowhurst sat on the sofa and Frankie planted himself beside her, nestling up against her; and she had called to Adrian to come and sit on her other side. The rest sat about on chairs or on the floor, and all, for once, grew quiet while in her sing-song, musical voice Mrs. Crowhurst read them Old Saint Paul’s. Throughout his visit that peaceful half-hour was his one consolation. On the first evening he had looked forward to bed-time, for then at last, he supposed, he would be alone. But to his horror he found that he was to sleep with Wilfrid, Bobby, Gerrard, and Frankie in the Boys’ Room, another bare, homeless room with oilcloth on the floor and a great window wide open, and his worst fears came true when, as soon as Miss Chadwick had bidden them good night and left the room, they all got out of bed and began to pillow-fight.

“Come on, Adrian,” Wilfrid had shouted to him when he pretended to be asleep. “Come on! Don’t be a mug!” And little Frankie, looking like a horrible little goblin in his blue flannel pyjamas, had echoed Wilfrid: “Don’t be a mug, Adrin!”

But Adrian had turned away from them and made no reply, and after they had given his curled-up body one or two hearty thumps with a pillow, Wilfrid’s scornful voice had ordered: “Oh, well, let him alone!” and, except for an accidental pillow now and then, he had been left to his misery.

It seemed to Adrian now, as he recalled that terrible month and suffered, as it were in echo, all the sensations he had gone through at the time, that nearly all his memories connected with the Crowhursts were connected with smells. There was the smell of the day-nursery. He could smell it now as strongly as if he were back at the Crowhursts; and the smell of stale slop-cloths that haunted the Boys’ Room; and the close, thick smell of the gloomy dining-room, a mixture of gas-stove, boiled onions, and crumbs in an empty biscuit-tin; and, worst of all, the reek of slops and drains in the combined bathroom and water-closet. He even remembered the smells of Mr. and Mrs. Crowhurst themselves. Mr. Crowhurst smelt of sweet tobacco and black boot-polish, and when Adrian sat beside Mrs. Crowhurst during the after-tea readings or when she stooped to wish him good night he noticed a faint aroma of stewed prunes.

Mrs. Crowhurst and Elinor were the only ones he liked, and he saw little of either. Elinor was generally lost in the crowd, and it was only for brief moments that they found themselves together. Elinor was a year older than he was and she had been kind to him and petted him. One day, when no one else was in the room, she had kissed him and told him that she liked him much better than her brothers. “They’re always so noisy and rough,” she had said, “and not nearly as pretty as you are, Adrian.”

He had thought her pretty, with her mop of dark curls and her shining brown eyes, but, except for those rare moments when she remembered Adrian’s existence and grew gentle and endearing, she was as noisy as the rest of them. He had longed for the end of his visit, and one day when he was ostensibly writing to Aunt Clara, he had made a little calendar showing, for each day, the total number of days till the end of the holidays. He kept it in his pocket and crossed the days off when he was alone; and sometimes he would refrain for several days so as to have the luxury of obliterating three or four days at a single blow, and so, he felt, bring the day of release suddenly nearer.

When the last day came at length, he had turned suddenly reckless from sheer relief and had laughed and talked and joined in the nightly pillow-fight with the rest. When he left them next morning, dressed in his school clothes, they had seemed quite sorry.

But Adrian had not been sorry: he had been unutterably glad. Even to return to Waldo was a matter for rejoicing compared with life at the Crowhursts. He had resolved that if ever Aunt Clara told him he was to go to the Crowhursts’ again, he would run away from school before the end of term. Elinor had written to him twice during the weeks that followed, but it never occurred to him to answer her letters.…

The green curtains swam apart again and let in a great searchlight of sunshine. He stretched himself like a young cat in the comfortable bed and dismissed the Crowhurst sensations. That brief revival of them had served to make him savour, even more fully than before, the delights of the life he was now leading. Yes, it was a happy life. Its only cloud was still a long way off—the fact that next September he was going to a public school. When he thought of Charminster he imagined a school ten times as big as Waldo, full of very big, aggressive boys. The idea filled him with cold forebodings. But September was a very long time away, and he was not going to allow that remote prospect to spoil his present enjoyment. Besides, anything might happen before then. His mother might come home and take him back with her to India. He had read Kim, and had dreamed with half-frightened glee of the wonderful adventures he might have in India. But then he recalled a thing he was always forgetting, that his mother had married again, that she was the wife of some man he had never seen. The thought, whenever he recalled it, chilled him. Did his mother love this mysterious husband better than she loved him? It seemed likely that she did, because she had gone away to India with the husband and never seemed to want to come and see him or to send for him to go to her. He felt a jealous dislike of his unknown stepfather: he was sure that, if ever he met him, he would hate him; and perhaps his stepfather would hate him in return and be unkind to him.

But even before she had married again he had seen his mother seldom. She was always abroad or just going abroad, it seemed, when the holidays came, and sometimes she would write telling him how disappointed she was not to see her little lamb. He knew quite well that Aunt Clara and Uncle Bob did not like her. Once when, as usual, he had been spending his holidays at Yarn, he had asked Aunt Clara why his mother was always away, and Aunt Clara had replied in the dry way she had of saying to him things which were really intended for the ears of Uncle Bob.

“Your mother, my dear? Big-game hunting, no doubt. Your mother is a woman of much enterprise, Adrian.”

“What do you mean?” he had asked.

“I mean,” Aunt Clara had replied, “that when your holidays come she frequently finds herself otherwise engaged.”

“Yes,” said Adrian, “she wrote to me last week before I left Waldo, and said she was very disappointed.”

“Charming courtesy,” said Aunt Clara.

“Clara!” Uncle Bob’s voice broke in disapprovingly, and thereupon Aunt Clara had laughed and drawn Adrian to her.

“Don’t bother about what your silly aunt says, Adrian. I only mean that I think it’s a pity your mother is away so much.”

All Adrian remembered of these baffling utterances of Aunt Clara’s was the impression they gave him that his mother was somehow doing things she oughtn’t to do. What could it be she was doing? He felt vaguely pained and alarmed. His mother had always been mysterious and disturbing.

Over a year ago Aunt Clara had told him that his mother had married again. “Have you heard from your mother lately, Adrian?” she had asked in her dry way on the day after his arrival at Yarn for the Christmas holidays.

He replied that he had not had a letter during all the previous term.

“Then perhaps you haven’t heard that she has changed her name.”

“Changed her name?” he faltered, afraid of what this mysterious act might signify.

“Yes. You must address your letters in future not to Mrs. Glynde but to Mrs. Clandon.”

“Why, what does it …? What has she …? What does it mean?” he asked shamefacedly.

“Oh, it means simply that she has married again—married a Colonel Clandon.”

Adrian was silent for some moments; then he asked: “Does that mean that she has forgotten about Father?”

Aunt Clara glanced at him. Her eyes softened and her manner, as so often, changed abruptly. It was as if she had flung off that rather baffling coldness of hers and had grown suddenly warm and kind.

“No, of course not, my dear. It only means that she likes Colonel Clandon and has arranged to live with him instead of living alone. People are not happy living alone, you see. No doubt she will write to you from India.”

“Then is Mother in India?”

“Yes, my dear.”

“But isn’t India a very long way off?”

“Well, yes, it’s a good way.”

He was chilled by the idea of his mother suddenly withdrawn to this vast distance. Again he was silent, his mind busy with the disturbing news. Then, “Aunt Clara,” he asked timidly, “will she … will she ever come back?”

“Why, of course she will, my dear child. In fact, I should say she will come back quite soon, for a change. Your mother was always a great one for a change.”

For days Adrian could not get accustomed to what he had heard. “Mother’s in India,” he kept telling himself. “Mother’s called Mrs. Clandon.” But though he repeated these facts to himself, the significance of them escaped him: their only effect was to send a little chill to his heart and add yet another veil to the disturbing mystery that enclosed his mother.…

But now, in the pleasant listlessness of early morning, though his mother glided across his mind with the Crowhursts and the threat of Charminster and strange half-forgotten sayings of Aunt Clara and sundry other ghosts, his thoughts were not deeply concerned with her. They were focussed on his new surroundings and the unexpectedly delightful life which had begun for him on the previous afternoon. And now there was a knock at the door and Stock came in with a can of hot water, wished him good morning, drew the green curtains, flooding the room with golden daylight, and went out telling him that the bathroom was free.

The moment the door closed, Adrian jumped out of bed, and snatching a towel and sponge ran off to the bathroom.

IV

When he arrived in the dining-room the rest were already at table. A letter lay beside his plate. Its presence somehow embarrassed him. He glanced at it, then glanced at the grown-ups; but no one was looking at him. His grandfather was carefully selecting from a silver dish a piece of bacon, which he laid beside a poached egg on a plate and handed to him with a smile. Aunt Clara was pouring out a cup of coffee. Uncle Bob was reading a printed circular. As he received his plate of bacon and egg, Adrian shot a more attentive glance at the envelope in front of him and saw that it was from his mother. It had an Indian stamp and had been re-addressed from Waldo. He drew it quietly over the edge of the table and slipped it into his pocket. Perhaps no one except Stock had seen the letter: anyhow, no one seemed to be inquisitive about it or even conscious of it.

But, as a matter of fact, before Adrian had come down, Clara had noted it.

“Hallo,” she had said, “another stamp for Adrian’s collection.”

Oliver had raised his brows.

“A prick of conscience from Minnie,” Clara had explained, indicating the Lettter. “There must have been a slackening in the assiduity of the court, or possibly a slight brush with the Colonel.”

The two men exchanged one of the amused glances which Clara’s tongue often evoked.

“Cat!” said Bob.

Clara’s eyes danced. “Yes,” she said, “where Minnie is concerned, I am a cat. I am fully aware of it and I am grateful to Minnie for the opportunity she provides. Minnie is my safety-valve. Or perhaps I’m a rat rather than a cat. Rats, you know, have to gnaw, willy-nilly, to keep their teeth in check: otherwise they grow so long and curly that they can’t eat with them and starve in consequence. That’s why one hears them frantically gnawing beams and timbers in the night. They don’t want to; it’s simply that they have to. It’s the same with me: so long as I can get my teeth into Minnie from time to time, I’m all right. Goodness knows what would happen to me if Minnie were to die.”

“Or to us,” remarked Bob.

Oliver glanced at Bob. “It’s obviously up to us, Bob, to keep The Baggage alive. What a paradox that we should owe our peace and good-humour to Minnie. We must surely be unique in that respect.”

Clara smiled with grim relish. “No doubt it would astound Colonel Clandon to be told of it.”

Adrian was silent and preoccupied after breakfast. He was conscious of the letter in his pocket, and was wondering how soon he could get away by himself and read it. Clara’s belief, which on the previous evening she had expressed in the drawing-room, that he was merely bored and puzzled by his mother’s letters and had almost forgotten her was, like other of her rapid and summary conclusions, quite false. He recalled her vividly with a tantalised and thwarted longing and each letter stirred in him a flicker of hope that she would come to him or send for him and that he would find in her, at last, all that he desired. When he left her letters about, as Clara had reported, it was not because he was bored by them, but because his eagerness had again been met by the inevitable disappointment and perplexity.

Before long he found an opportunity to slink away to his bedroom, and there, having carefully shut the door, he took the letter out of his pocket and opened it. “My own lamb,” he read. “Why have I not heard from you for so long? The months go by, but the postman, horrid man, never brings me a letter from my child. Can he have forgotten his Mummy all these hundreds and thousands of miles away in a strange country? Are your holidays over yet, I wonder, or not yet begun? I never can remember the dates and I can’t find your last letter. No doubt you will go to Yarn as usual. I wrote a long letter to Aunt Clara weeks and weeks ago and not a word have I had in reply. That is the worst of living abroad, every one forgets you, even your nearest and dearest, even my own little Adrian. Well, my dear child, I have no time for more at present. You have no idea how fearfully busy Mummy is. Fondest love and a kiss.”

Having read it through, he lingered for a moment staring vaguely at the letter; then, with a little sigh, he laid it on the dressing-table and, with a sudden change of mood, turned, walked alertly to the door, and went downstairs.

In the afternoon Clara and Bob drove out to call on friends, and Adrian and his grandfather were left together. Adrian had accompanied his uncle and aunt to the garage, and as he watched them drive away he felt a sudden misgiving. It was a little disconcerting to be left alone with his grandfather; and he had strolled out of the stable-yard and, turning away from the house, had prowled about the grounds, following a path through a dark, mysterious shrubbery which ended at a door in a wall. The door was open, and Adrian, peeping inside, discovered the kitchen-garden. A man was digging at the far end of it, so Adrian avoided that end, and, taking a straight path that led to some greenhouses, he went to the door of each in turn and, pressing his nose against the glass, inspected the contents. He did not dare to go inside: the opening and shutting of the glass doors would make a noise and perhaps attract the attention of the gardener. Still following the path, he came to another door in the wall: by this he went out, and soon found himself in a pleasant square of lawn enclosed by trees and shrubs and with a fountain in the middle of it and, at the far end, a glass-fronted summerhouse facing the afternoon sun. He crossed the grass and went to inspect the fountain, holding out his hand to catch the drops. It fascinated him, and he stood there for a long time watching it and from time to time putting his hand into the shower. Sometimes the breeze blew it sideways and it streamed out on to the grass like a silver horse-tail. When he had had enough of the fountain, he crossed the grass to the summerhouse. He glanced cautiously into the entrance, and was startled to see his grandfather sitting there with a pencil in his hand and a little writing-pad on his knees. With a little “Oh!” he was on the point of retreating, but his grandfather’s voice stopped him.

“Don’t go, Adrian.”

“I … I thought perhaps … you were busy.”

“So I was, but I shall be very glad to be interrupted. You see, I wasn’t getting along very well.”

“Were you writing a poem?” asked Adrian, feeling that he was being rather personal.

“I was trying to,” said Oliver, “but it won’t start. They don’t always start when you want them to, you know.”

“No, I suppose not,” said Adrian. He stood therewith his hands in his trouser-pockets, shyly treading on one foot with the other. He hoped that his grandfather would pursue the subject. But for a while the old man said nothing: he seemed to be thinking, and next moment Adrian, blushing at his own boldness, asked: “What was it about?”

“It’s about a Chinese sage—a wise man, you know,” said his grandfather, “who was oppressed by the feeling that one never really gets to know anything of the things we see around us—things such as human beings, mountains, birds, beasts, water, rocks, and so on. We know something about them all, he said to himself, but we don’t really know them. There is always some final barrier. We know, for instance, that water is transparent and wet and thirst-quenching and made up of two parts of hydrogen to one of oxygen, but we can never say what it is, never know all there is to know about it. We remain apart from it, baffled, somehow, of true experience of it.”

“Yes, I’ve felt that,” said Adrian, sitting down in a basket-chair beside his grandfather. “We know all about them but we can’t ever get at them.”

“That’s it. You’ve seen what I’m driving at. Well, this poem of mine is going to be a sort of parable made out of that idea. The old Chinee resolves that he will seek patiently for knowledge, real knowledge, of one thing in the world. If he could really get to know even one thing only, he would, he felt, be content. In fact, he half suspected that if he did get to know this one thing completely, he would discover that he had got to know everything—that he had found the key, I mean.”

“Yes, I see,” said Adrian. “I like the story.”

“Well, this old Chinee chose water as the door through which he would attain to knowledge; and he went off into the mountains where there was a lonely lake and built himself a little hut on the edge of it. The lake was cupped in a circle of mountain-tops and was fed by waterfalls that tumbled from their rocky sides. And all day long the old man studied the water, watching and touching the waterfalls as you were doing to the fountain there just now, putting his hands into the lake, and sometimes even flinging off his cloak and diving headlong into it. And he would spend whole days and nights imagining himself to be water, water lying calm and passive under a blue sky or a cloudy sky or a starry sky, still water reflecting all above it and around it and darkly revealing all within it, water with all its glassy skin ruffled by wind or pitted by rain-drops, water wavering out from a centre into widening, undulating circles when a stone is dropped into it, water abandoning itself to leap after leap down cliffs, flinging itself without shrinking or hesitating against stones and rocks and shattering into thousands of drops, each drop having a shape perfect and unique in accordance with the speed and direction in which it is moving; water evaporating, drying, steaming up into the air, giving up its being to another state of being, and turning again into its former being and dropping down through great heights of air to the earth. So he spent his days.

And one day when he was leaning from the window of his hut and gazing intently into the lake, he saw, deep down in the gloomy crystal of the water, a passing of slim ghosts. It was a shoal of fish. They passed and repassed, moving with an unhurrying perfection of motion which entranced him. It was as if the water itself had taken on bodily life in shapes that perfectly expressed its nature.

Then he saw that among these shadowy shapes was one smaller and more lovely than the others, a creature that seemed to be made from the frail rainbow stuff of which bubbles are made, and he knew that this fish was the Genius of the Water, that it was water become alive. And he knew that if only he could tame this fish, not capture it by force or guile, but take it by its own desire, he would come at the knowledge which he sought.

So the old man went away and collected the proper tools for what he had decided to do, and first he set about hewing out of the mountain-side a great rough block of crystal. For days and weeks and months he hewed, till at last, at a final blow from his hammer and chisel, the great block broke away from the mountain-side and went bounding down to the edge of the lake. And there the old man set himself to carve it into a crystal tank, a tank, that should be so transparent and so beautifully wrought that it should be worthy of the Genius of the Water. Slowly and patiently he worked at the block, and months went past and years, and at last he had hollowed it out and polished it till it caught the rays of the sun and shattered them into a hundred rainbow lights. Then, binding ropes round it, he lowered it carefully into the lake, and for the rest of the day he leaned from his window gazing down into the water.

And towards evening the shoal of fish came sliding, dim and arrowy, through the dark water, and among them was the Genius of the Water faintly shining like a delicate slip of rainbow. And the shoal curved suddenly towards the tank and swam three times round the edge of it, while the old man watched from above, breathless with hope. But when they had completed the third circle, with a sudden flick of their tails they curved sideways and vanished into the dimness.

Then the old Chinee knew that his tank was not yet worthy, and he hauled it up again, and for months and years he carved and polished it until it had become like the finest glass. Then again he lowered it with ropes into the lake and watched.

And again the shoal of fish came in the evening, and they swam three times round the lip of the tank, but this time the Genius of the Water dived suddenly over the lip and, followed by the rest, swam three times round the inside of the tank, while the old man leaned staring from his window, trembling with hope.

But having swum three times round the inside of the tank, the fishes with a sudden spiral curve slipped out of it and vanished again into the dimness of the lake. But the old Chinee patiently hauled up his tank again, and again for many months and years he worked upon it, grinding and polishing it till it was as thin as the frailest shell, and he carved upon its walls the shapes of trailing water-weeds and the leaves and flowers of water-lilies.

The crystal tank was now so marvellously fine and frail and perfect that its walls were no thicker than the walls of a bubble, and it was so light and so fragile that it was no longer necessary nor safe to bind ropes about it. But the old man flung off his cloak and with infinite care took it in his arms and waded into the water. And the water crept up to his navel and then to his chest, and then to his shoulders and neck, and then it closed over his head. And holding his breath he waded on, till, stooping down, he set the precious tank in its place. Then, stretching out his arms and clapping them suddenly to his sides, he shot upwards to the surface of the lake and swam ashore. And, hurrying to his cabin, he leaned out of the window and watched.

When he had watched for several hours he became aware of a shadowy movement in the water, and the shoal of fish took shape out of the dimness of the water, and the Genius of the Water was among them. And, as before, they swam three times round the outside of the tank and three times round the inside, and then with a sudden dart aside they slipped over the rim and away into the dark water. And the old man’s heart sank, for he was now very old and very weary and his bodily strength and his hope were almost at an end. And he peered down again upon the tank, wondering how it would be possible to make it more perfect; but when his eyes had found it they were caught by a sudden rainbow glimmer within it, and, trembling with delight he saw that, though the other fishes were gone, the Genius of the Water was still there, swimming slowly and quietly round the inside of the tank. Then, rushing out of his hut and flinging off his cloak, he dived into the lake, and before the circles made by his leap had spent themselves, his head rose again above the surface of the lake and he waded out carrying the precious tank. And there, more beautiful than anything that can be imagined, was the Genius of the Water swimming slowly and quietly round.

The old Chinee set the tank in his hut, and it stood there between the four wooden walls like a great crystal moon. Then the Genius of the Water began to swim swiftly round and round. Swifter and swifter it whirled, until at last it was invisible and the tank held only a shining whirlpool of water.

Then the old Chinee got his cup and ladled out some of the water and drank it; and as he drank there entered into him perfect wisdom, so that he knew and understood everything. But however much he drew from the tank, to quench his thirst or wash his body or cool his head in the summer-time, the tank never grew empty, but remained always a little whirlpool of living water drawn from some deep and unquenchable spring.”

“And did the old Chinee die in the end?” asked Adrian, waking up as if from a dream.

“No,” said his grandfather, “the old man, according to the story, never died.”

“And what does it mean?” Adrian asked.

“It means just what it says,” replied his grandfather.

“But doesn’t it mean something else too?”

“It is a poem, and so, like all poems, it means a great many things. It means whatever you can find in it, but whatever it means cannot be more clearly said than it is said in the poem. After all, it’s quite a clear story, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Adrian,” and when you come to think of it, it would be rather a bother, wouldn’t it, to hunt out the other meanings.”

“Yes. So long as you know they’re there, you don’t want to hunt them out, just as you don’t want to shoot all the birds in this garden so as to be able to count them up and prove they were really here.”

Adrian laughed and then was silent. His grandfather rose from his chair, “I’m beginning to feel as if it were tea-time, aren’t you?” he said. “Shall we go and see?”

“Well,” said Adrian as they walked back together through the shrubbery, “I hope you manage to write the poem.”

Tea was ready, and as they sat down Stock brought in the teapot and a plate of buttered toast; and to Oliver, looking across the tea-table at the small, neat, brighteyed boy sitting opposite him, it seemed once again as if the last twenty-three years had shrunk to nothing and Sandy was sitting there again.

As if in response to that dream, Adrian raised his eyes and said: “Sometimes Father and I used to have tea alone together.”

“Your father? But …” For a moment the old man was bewildered. Then his mind righted itself. No, Sandy was no longer here: he was dead. But he was here, none the less, in the boy’s heart and in his own heart too—the three of them alone together.

“And you liked that?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Adrian with conviction.

“Better than …?”

“Better than when Mother was there?” The boy paused for a moment with a wistful inward gaze. “Yes,” he said, “best of all. But it didn’t happen very often.”

“And what did you talk about at those teas?”

“Oh, everything. We always had lots to talk about. I don’t remember what it was. We just talked, you know.”

The old man nodded. “Yes, that is the best kind of talk, isn’t it? When you just talk without knowing why, like birds singing. Sandy and I used to talk like that.”

“Here, I suppose,” said Adrian.

“Yes, here. He often sat where you are sitting now. He and I often had tea alone together. You see, your Aunt Clara was seven years older than your father, and she and your grandmother would be out together sometimes paying calls, and he and I would be left to ourselves.”

The old man paused, dreaming to himself. Then he said: “You’re very like what your father was as a boy.”

Adrian looked up, blushing a little. “Me?” he said. “I never knew I was like Father. I’m … I’m very glad.” In his mind had risen once more the memory of that occasion on which he and his father had had tea alone together after his mother had rushed from the house in a rage. Why was she like that? She had rushed away from them that day, but it didn’t much matter then, because he had had his father whom he loved more, much more than his mother; but after his father had gone to France and never come back, his heart had fixed itself entirely upon her, and it hurt and bewildered him that she still ran away from him, avoided him, kept him at arm’s length when he longed to get at her. What was it that was so strange and unreliable about her? He had never been able to understand it.

He looked across the tea-table at his grandfather and said: “Aunt Clara doesn’t like Mother, does she?”

He saw his grandfather’s face change. Something which had been there the moment before went out of it. For a moment he did not reply. “Well, you see,” he began at last, “they are so different. You can’t expect people so different to be great friends.”

“But Mother likes her.”

“Do you think she does?”

Adrian nodded. Then, as if a sudden doubt had assailed him, he added: “Well, I think she does.” Then he asked: “Do you like Mother?”

The question troubled the old man. He wished neither to tell the boy a lie nor to pain him by the truth. “I used to feel angry with her,” he said, after a pause, “because I thought she behaved badly to your father.”

“Yes, she did,” said Adrian with a brightness of tears in his eyes.

“But it’s different for you, of course,” said Oliver, “because she’s your mother and you love her, don’t you?”

“Yes,” the boy replied simply, and then added after a moment’s consideration, “at least I want to, but it seems as if she wouldn’t let me.”

The old man could not resist his desire to be assured that the boy preferred his father. “But you were happiest of all,” he asked, “when you and your father were alone together?”

“Yes, it was lovely then,” answered Adrian with a glow in his voice. “And sometimes, but only very seldon, Mother went away on a visit, and we were together for days and days. We had splendid times then.”

Oliver smiled gently. “I’m sure you had,” he said.

“But it was wretched when Father went away, because then I was left alone.”

“But your mother was there?”

“Yes, but not so much as when Father was at home. She was nearly always out to tea when Father was away, and often out to lunch too. It was almost as if she was away too, when he was. And it was the same after he was killed in France. She was out a great deal, and when she was in, Miss Cotton said she was too upset to have me bothering her. Of course I wouldn’t have bothered her really. After all, I was seven years old then. And then of course she went away to the South of France.”

“And you went to school?”

“Yes, and to Aunt Clara and Uncle Bob for the holidays.”

“Yes, she ran away from it,” thought the old man to himself, “just as I did. I was no better. The only difference between us was that she ran to the South of France and I to the south of Spain. We both ran away from doing the only thing that would have been of any use.

“And so you had a sad time of it at first, old man,” he said to the boy.

Adrian smiled. “Father used to call me Old Man,” he said.

“I hope you’ll be like your father when you grow up,” said Oliver. “Your father did things instead of sitting still and thinking about them like the rest of us, or, worse still, running away from them because we daren’t so much as think about them. When the war broke out and everybody thought that England was in danger, your father didn’t sit still and chatter as we did. He simply joined the army, so as to be ready to meet the danger when it came. And it was the same when he was killed. Did you ever hear how he died?”

Adrian shook his head.

“Well, it was in the middle of a big advance. The Germans had built great concrete forts which we used to call pill-boxes, in which they put machine-guns. The pill-boxes were so strong that our shells had little effect on them, and one of these pill-boxes was in front of your father’s company and was holding up their advance. They had sent messages to the artillery to try to get our guns to destroy the pill-box, but the guns—they were only eighteen pounders—couldn’t manage it, and time was precious. So your father and a sergeant volunteered to do it themselves, and they did it. They ran out, carrying a bomb or two, right in the teeth of the machinegun fire; the sergeant was hit before they were half-way there, but by a miracle your father reached the pill-box. They saw him throw a bomb into the entrance, they heard it explode, and then they saw him vanish into the entrance. Then there was another explosion. After that the pill-box was silent. Our men went forward, and when, a minute or two later, they reached it they found everyone inside it dead.”

“And Father too?”

“Yes, your father too. He didn’t stop to talk and think, you see. He saw there was something quite simple to be done, so he went and did it. His Colonel told me that what he did certainly saved the lives of many of our men, besides clearing the way for the advance at a very critical moment. Your father didn’t like war: he hated it. But he did the best thing he could have done, once the war had started. He didn’t cry over spilt milk as some of us did: he simply set about cleaning it up. When I think of myself and thousands of other people sitting about the world in chairs, chattering like magpies, or everlastingly scribbling, or, worse still, thinking and thinking, round and round like empty windmills…”

The old man broke off with a sudden savage gesture, and with a deep sigh rose from the tea-table.

Within a few days of his arrival at Abbot’s Randale, Adrian had lost all fear of his grandfather and they had become great friends. The old man showed him the room which had been his father’s nursery, the bedroom he had had as a boy and a young man, the gun he had used as a boy, the one and a half pound trout he had caught at the age of sixteen and insisted on having stuffed and mounted in a glass case, and the pictures he had painted at various times of his childhood. And he took Adrian into his study and showed him treasures of his own: an ancient Chinese carving in flame-coloured jade of a horse lying down, its head alertly raised as if at a sudden noise; a pebble of opal as big as a walnut; a little vellum-bound book with jewelled clasps which had belonged to Mary Queen of Scots; a silver and enamel triptych of Byzantine workmanship, minute and gay as the illuminated page of a missal, and an ebony snuff-box inlaid with gold and silver which, his grandfather told him, was said to have belonged to the poet Pope. Adrian opened it: it was empty, but it gave out a queer, spicy smell like gingerbread. And after showing him all these things, the old man had taken him over to what seemed to be a coffin of polished and inlaid mahogany, set on a stand near the windows, and, opening a lid in its side, had revealed a small keyboard, the ivories worn hollow and tawny with age, the satinwood panel behind the keys inlaid with garlands of mother-o’pearl, and on a pearl shield in the centre the date 1775. On the wall above it in a black and silver frame hung a grim little picture in black. It was, it appeared, a portrait of a corpse, a gaunt, grinning, bearded face, hooded in grave clothes which were tied in an absurd topknot on the top of the head. Under it was written John Donne. Having studied it in horrified fascination for a moment, Adrian glanced down at the little piano again.

“Docs it play?” he asked, delighted: and, for answer, Oliver sat down, and a sweet, wiry sound, like the sound of a musical box, awoke under his touch.

Adrian loved music, and this music held him bewitched. “I know that,” he said when the piece was finished; “that’s Handel.”

The old man turned and looked at him. “So you like music, do you?” he said, smiling with pleasure at the discovery. “Can you play yourself?”

“I can’t play real pieces,” said Adrian, “but I play to myself. Mrs. Winser—our head-master’s wife, you know—said I might play on their piano when they were out, because she knew I wanted to. She plays to us on Sunday evenings. She’s very good. She plays Beethoven and Handel and Mozart and Chopin and … and lots of other things too.”

“And does she give you lessons?”

“She gives me one sometimes, because she knows I’m so keen on music, but I don’t really have lessons, you know.”

“Would you like to?”

Adrian’s face lit up. “Yes!” he said, as if he were being offered a priceless gift.

“Then you shall,” said his grandfather. “We’ll arrange for you to start next term. Meanwhile you can play on this, whenever you feel like it. Just come in and start off. Don’t bother about me, if I’m here. If I’m working and don’t want you to play, I’ll just say so. I’ll say’ Sorry, I’m busy!’ and you can go away and try again later.”

And so during the rest of his visit Adrian played a great deal on the funny little piano: not a day passed on which he did not steal into the study and play over the four pieces he had invented during the last year at Waldo; and he invented other pieces too, which seemed to him extraordinarily beautiful. Often as he played he glanced up at the grim, fascinating face of John Donne that hung on the wall almost on a level with his eyes. He was shy at first when he found his grandfather there, but the old man seemed so absorbed in a book or in writing letters that Adrian soon came to feel that he did not so much as hear him, and never suspected until just before the end of the holidays that he had been slyly listening. It was one afternoon when Adrian had finished playing and had just closed the lid of the piano. His grandfather, who was sitting at his desk, called to him. “Here,” he said, “here’s something for you.”

Adrian took the sheets of music-paper which his grandfather was handing to him and glanced at the outer page. On it was written in a beautiful script, surrounded by scrolls and flourishes: “Four Pieces for the Piano, by Adrian Glynde.”

As he stared, still puzzled, at the page, his grandfather took the manuscript from him, went to the piano, and to Adrian’s astonishment and delight played his own four pieces to him.

V

Adrian, back at school, became aware that life had grown wider and fuller. His visit to his grandfather had given him much to look back upon with pleasure and much to think about. He had the comforting assurance now that he had another home and another friend who reminded him often of his father. But against all this there was the knowledge that next term he would not return to Waldo, but would be plunged into the vast, hostile strangeness of Charminster. Charminster was now looming very large.

There was yet another impending event to which he looked forward half with eagerness, half with fear. Aunt Clara had written to tell him that he was to spend the first half of his summer holidays at Yarn and the second half at Abbot’s Randale, and that while he was at Yarn his mother would be there. At last his hopes that she would come and see him were going to be realised. Over and over again he told himself so. “I’m going to see Mother,” he kept saying to himself, and each time he said it he was surprised to miss the thrill of happiness which he had always imagined such news would bring. Why was it that, mixed with his excitement at the prospect of seeing his mother after five years, he felt this curious fear, this curious impulse to run away and escape from it all? If Aunt Clara were to write again and say that his mother was not coming after all, he would, he knew, feel half relieved.

He had had no letter from his mother since the one he had received at Abbot’s Randale, and in that one she had said nothing of her coming to England. From Aunt Clara he had had the usual letters: she always wrote to him once a week during term time; and this term already he had had two long, wonderful letters from his grandfather which had pleased him more than any letters he had received. His mother’s letters seemed to have no one at all behind them; in Aunt Clara’s he found something, though not very much, of the real Aunt Clara; but in his grandfather’s it seemed almost as if the old man himself were there talking to him. He carried them in his pocket, and often, when he had nothing to do, he took them out and read them over again.

As term slipped by, he realised for the first time how fond he had grown of Waldo; and now, just as he had begun to realise it, just as he had begun to feel thoroughly at home and happy there, he was going to leave it and start again, friendless and bewildered, as four years ago he had started here.

But when the end of term came and he bade good-bye to the boys and masters and Miss Egham, the matron, and the familiar rooms and garden, he was too excited at the prospect of the holidays and of going again to Yarn, where he had not been for seven months, to feel his departure very deeply, even though the fact that his mother would be at Yarn roused in him that strange feeling of shyness and tremulous misgiving.

From Waldo to Yarn was not a long journey. Adrian always arrived just in time for lunch, so that he always associated the arrival at his uncle’s and aunt’s with a special set of sensations, which were those of walking, with a nose keenly aware of the promise of good food, into the dining-room—a room which seemed, after the bare, unlovely dining-room at Waldo, marvellously fresh and beautiful with its large, shining windows, the silver shining on the polished sideboard, the gleaming glass and silver on the snow-white tablecloth, and the comfortable glow of its brick-red curtains and carpet. How delightful it was to have left the cold asceticism of Waldo, to have a clean table-napkin and clean silver forks and spoons and bright knives to eat with, to see the beaming countenance of Uncle Bob on his left and the fine, thin face of Aunt Clara with its slightly sarcastic smile on his right, and to exchange the joyless routine of Waldo grub for the delicious surprises of meals at Yarn. And how delightful, sitting in the presence of all these well-loved and excellent things, to know that there was no afternoon school, no school to-morrow, nothing whatever to do, except what he wanted to do, for a month or six weeks.

But this time, as these familiar memories presented themselves to his mind for joyful anticipation as the train whirled him towards Yarn, the richness of their flavour was tempered by the thought of his mother—now, as he had only just realised she would be, so disturbingly unfamiliar. She would come to the station with Uncle Bob, no doubt, to meet him. How uncomfortable, how upsetting it would be, anyhow at first. With a sharp sting of internal panic he felt the familiar jolting of the points half a mile outside Yarn station, and next moment he saw the familiar farm, white among its tapering poplars, flash past on the left—that farm where, his uncle had once told him, a farm-labourer had murdered his master years ago. As the train ran into Yarn station he caught a glimpse of the old dark blue Fiat across the white railings. The driver’s seat was empty: that meant that Uncle Bob was waiting for him on the platform. But inside the car a lady was sitting, and Adrian, with a sudden hurrying of the heart, told himself that it must be his mother.

A moment later he had given up his ticket and was following Uncle Bob to the car. The door opened, and Adrian, bracing himself for the meeting, was enormously relieved to see Aunt Clara alone inside.

What had happened, he wondered, as they drove out of the station yard. Had his mother not come after all? Aunt Clara soon resolved his doubts.

“Your mother had a subsequent engagement, my dear—an irresistible invitation to a luncheon party. We felt we ought not to accept and she felt she ought not to refuse; so here we are, and there she is. She will be back to tea.”

Adrian settled himself against the cushions. “When I saw someone in the car, I thought it was her,” he said.

“Naturally. And, to your disappointment, you found me.”

Adrian glanced at her shyly. “No, I wasn’t disappointed,” he said, and was surprised, as her eyes met his, to see them for a moment swim with tears.

The car swerved into the entrance gate, and soon Adrian was taking off his coat in the hall, so hungry that he could hardly endure the prospect of having to wash his hands and wait with Uncle Bob till Aunt Clara came down. At last she came, and he followed her and his Uncle into the dining-room, his nose alert, like a young fox-terrier’s, for the first delicious savour.

“Hungry, eh?” asked Uncle Bob, looking up from his carving of a chicken.

“Frightfully,” he replied, and as the plate was placed before him he realised that the holidays had really begun.

After lunch, he went out, as usual, to inspect. He was disappointed to find that Rhoda’s pups were already quite large, independent creatures: he had forgotten that pups grew so quickly. But they were nice, amusing beasts and he took them out to play with their mother on the lawn. But as time passed, he glanced more and more frequently at the drive, expecting every moment to see his mother returning from the luncheon party. He pictured her as he had last seen her, small, pretty, neat, with mischievous pale blue eyes, waving golden hair, and lively ways. Then he recalled her in one of her moods, when she became very quiet and her eyes turned very hard and she spoke in a voice that was little more than a hoarse whisper. When she became more angry still, she used to shriek and sob in a way that ashamed and alarmed him. But she would not, he believed, indulge in her tempers here. As he glanced again towards the gate, he imagined her appearing there and coming down the drive in that fairylike evening dress she had worn, years ago, when she and his father were going out to dinner. He did not seriously believe that she would appear now in that dress, but his imagination stubbornly presented her to him in it. It was the only guise in which he could picture her now.

After playing with the pups for a long time he took them back to their kennel and entered the house by a side door. Emerging into the front hall, he was surprised to find a strange lady seated at the writing-table near the fireplace with a pen in her hand. She did not seem to notice his arrival, but sat gazing fixedly across the room as if considering what she should say in the letter she was writing. She had a thin face with high cheekbones and a pointed chin. Her lips were very red and her golden eyebrows very narrow: her pale golden hair was cut in a straight fringe along her forehead and curled into little plaited buns over her ears. All this, and the absent stare of her pale blue eyes, made her look to Adrian like a large, expensive doll. Suddenly her gaze moved, she caught sight of him standing awkwardly there, and with a sudden sinking of the heart Adrian realised she was his mother.

“Well,” she said, in a hard, precise voice which he did not recognise, “if that isn’t my own child staring at me as if I were a ghost. Why, don’t you know your own Mummy, Adrian? Come here, my lamb, and give me a kiss.”

Adrian approached obediently. This lady was so utterly unlike his mother as he remembered her that he was much more afraid of her than if she had been a stranger. There was something terrible for the boy in this immense change in her. She put an arm round him and her lips touched his cheek. She exhaled the faint fragrance of an exotic flower. “Wherever have you been, Adrian?” she asked.” I expected to find you looking out for me. Instead of which …” She made a gesture indicating vacancy. “No Adrian! Not a sign!”

“I was in the garden,” he replied, “playing with Rhoda’s pups.”

“Playing with pups! While your poor Mummy whom you haven’t seen for … what is it? four, five, six years, has been waiting and waiting. Well, what a big boy you’ve grown. Let me look at you.” She put a finger under his chin and tilted his face up.

Adrian lowered his eyes, shyly avoiding her keen gaze. “What, shy with your own mother?” She gave him a little pat on the shoulder. “Well, run away and let me finish my letter before tea.”

Adrian, glad of the release, turned away, and, seeing the drawing-room door open, went in. The tea-table with its white cloth was already in place, but there were still no other signs of tea. He took a book from a table as he passed and settled himself in a corner of the sofa with the open book in his hands. But though his eyes were fixed on the page, he was not even trying to read. His gaze was fixed on an inner vision of the strange, unlovable lady he had so unexpectedly discovered in the hall. His heart could not accept the fact that she was his mother, though a few unmistakable resemblances to his mother—her way of opening her eyes wide in an innocent stare; the curve of her temples; her way of talking, though not her voice—assured him that it was she. He longed to escape, to leave Yarn and go at once to his grandfather’s at Abbot’s Randale, for he felt he would never get to know this utter stranger whose moments of likeness to the mother in his mind produced on him the impression of a painful caricature. It was almost impossible to realise that the mother he remembered no longer existed, that she was not still in India and might not yet return to visit him. A chill void opened, like a wound, in his heart. He longed to roll on the sofa and let himself weep, weep on quietly until his heart was eased of its burden of emptiness. After that, it seemed, he would feel better, and the presence in the house of the strange visitor would be little worse than that of any other stranger.

As he was occupied with these thoughts and feelings, he was roused by the arrival of the waiting-maid with the tea-tray, and, immediately after her, Aunt Clara.

“Hallo, Adrian!” she said. “Have you seen your mother?”

“Yes,” he said in a voice which told her nothing and so told her all. Then, feeling somehow called upon to say something else, he added: “She’s busy at present, writing a letter.”

Clara sat down beside him, and in a pleasant, friendly way which warmed his heart, took his hand in hers. Then her eyes fell on the book on his knee. “Einstein and the Universe, by Charles Nordmann! Well, upon my word!” she said.

He raised shy, guilty eyes to hers, and realising the situation she turned away her face.

The door opened and Minnie entered, followed by Bob.

“It’s sure to catch the post?” she was saying.

“Quite!” answered Bob. “Rayner always goes with the letters, and Rayner’s as good as the clock at Greenwich.”

“Because,” Minnie explained, “its very important.”

Clara inspected the performing doll with her slightly sarcastic smile. “Well, Minnie, and don’t you see an enormous change in Adrian?”

“Enormous,” said Minnie, casting a cold, bright smile at her son. “He’s quite the young man.”

“And what of the luncheon? Was it worth your sacrifice?”

“My sacrifice?” The pale blue eyes opened wide.

“Of the drive to the station, my dear.”

“Clara, what a way you have of putting things.”

“Your way, not mine, my dear Minnie. You’re too modest. Didn’t you say to me, when accepting the invitation, that there are times when one does not do what one most wishes to do? I thought that very beautiful: quite biblical. Abraham, no doubt, addressed himself in those very words when thumbing the edge of the carving-knife.”

Minnie threw up her small white hands. “Oh, if you drag in Scripture, I’m lost.” Then she returned to the charge. “It’s all very well for you to poke fun at me, Clara: you judge everything by your simple life here. But if you and Bob had ever lived in India you would realise that social duties are a serious matter.”

“My dear Minnie, why should I trouble to go to India when I can so conveniently learn from you, here in our modest little English village? Are you ready for another cup of tea?”

Minnie passed her cup, and Clara, with her slightly raised eyebrows and slightly upturned smile, took the cup and, lifting the teapot, poured into it a slim, perfectly aimed arc of tea. “Sugar? I always forget.”

Minnie shuddered. “Heavens, no!”

Clara returned the cup. “Now, tell me; who was there?”

Minnie responded with gusto. It was a theme which interested her.” Well, the Mannings, a Mr. and Mrs. Huxtable, and, of all people, Sir George and Lady Matfen.”

Clara shook her head. “I don’t know them.”

Minnie pursed her lips. “Sir George was Governor of Gibraltar,” she said. “I met them sixteen years ago in Ireland when Papa was stationed there, you know. When I told Sir George that I was Major Emmet’s daughter, he actually remembered me perfectly. He said I hadn’t changed in the least.”

Clara glanced at her visitor with genuine concern. There was not the smallest glint of malice discernible in her eye. “But, my dear Minnie, how distressing. He might at least have refrained from saying so.”

Minnie knitted her brows. “Distressing, you think?”

“Yes! One might have hoped that after sixteen years … However!”

Minnie smiled a girlish smile and tossed her head. “I haven’t an idea what you’re getting at, Clara. I only know it’s something horrid.” She shot a spritely glance at Adrian. “Your auntie loves to tease your poor mother, Adrian.” She transferred the glance to Bob. “Bob. I’m afraid your wife’s not improved. Still a fearful cynic.”

Clara smiled modestly. “Not a cynic, dear Minnie; merely a realist.”

“Or perhaps simply jealous. You’re surely not going to pretend that if the remark had been made to you, you wouldn’t have been … well, a little pleased?”

Clara shook her head. “Flattery, Minnie, has to be plausable before I can digest it.”

Minnie considered the reply for a moment with an arch frown, and then, with a smile, lightly dismissed it unexplored. Her own question to Clara had tickled her, because, obviously, no one could have made such a remark to poor Clara. “I liked the Huxtables,” she said, “at least I liked him. Her I thought a trifle … well, stupid: we hadn’t much to say to each other. But he and I hit it off at once.”

Clara glanced at her reproachfully. “Not another victim, I trust, Minnie? It’s too cruel to turn an elephant-gun on to our local rabbits. Aren’t you content with your Indian triumphs?”

Bob, who as usual on these occasions had sat silent, glancing with a dry smile from one to other of the two women, burst into a loud laugh and rose to his feet. “I’m going to feed the pups, Adrian,” he remarked as he went towards the door.

Adrian at once jumped up and followed him.

Minnie, with eyebrows raised in surprise, watched them go. “Pups again!” she remarked as the door closed. “Funny child! He was amusing himself with the pups, it appears, instead of looking out for me, when I came back this afternoon; and now it’s pups again. He seems to be more interested in pups than in his mother.”

Clara smiled grimly. “But of course he is, my dear Minnie. A sleeping partner has no right to be offended if, when he calls at the office after an absence of six years, the staff doesn’t recognise him. Did you flatter yourself that absence would make the heart grow fonder?”

“As his mother, I flattered myself, I must say, that I should have a rather warmer welcome.”

“And, as your son, no doubt Adrian did the same. If you see no reason to reproach yourself with your luncheon-party, I don’t see what right you have to reproach him with his pups. It’s tit for tat, that’s all.”

Minnie threw up her head and pursed her lips. “Don’t be absurd, Clara,” she said with dignity. “The two cases are entirely different. One doesn’t treat children as grown-up people. At least, if you do, I don’t. And I must say, I am disappointed in the boy’s behaviour. I’m sure I don’t know why you should think it necessary to take his side.”

“Mere habit, I suppose,” said Clara drily. “A habit of six years standing.”

Minnie’s pupils narrowed. “You speak as if I had deserted the child,” she remarked with dignified protest.

Clara inspected the pale blue eyes critically, then shrugged her shoulders. “What would you prefer to have it called, Minnie? I’m all in favour of accurate definition.”

Minnie was beating time on the floor with one foot. She was getting angry. “Are you ever serious, Clara, I wonder? Your incessant wittiness, you know, sometimes gets on my nerves.”

Clara laughed. “Then why stay and listen to it. The world lies before you. There’s no one in the library and you know your way to your room. Or there is London, or India, where social obligations are such very serious matters. But you misunderstand me if you think I am being frivolous. I was never more serious in my life. What I am trying to make you realise is that you are almost a complete stranger to Adrian. He hasn’t seen you for nearly half his lifetime. Children, by the very simplicity of their natures, are terribly just: they pay back just so much as they receive. It is useless for you to expect from Adrian more than you have given.”

“I shall expect him to treat me as his mother,” answered Minnie conclusively.

“Then I’m afraid,” said Clara, “that you will be disappointed.” She rose from her chair. “You and I, Minnie,” she said with a smile, “understand each other remarkably well, I believe. I never mince matters with you, even when I am being what you so flatteringly call witty; and I will do you the justice to admit that you generally take what I say in very good part. It would be hypocrisy in me to pretend, and in you to claim, that you have been a good mother to Adrian, and all I am trying to do is to persuade you not to demand much of him at present. If you can win his affection during the next week or two, it will be time enough then to speak of his duty to you as a son. Will you come and pay a visit to your rivals?”

Minnie, tight-lipped and cold-eyed, shook her head in impatient bewilderment. “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Clara.”

Clara went towards the door. “The pups, I mean,” she said over her shoulder.

VI

Clara regarded it as a symptom when, at nine o’clock that night, Adrian, who had sat silent all evening, got up from his chair and began to bid them good night. Nine o’clock was his usual bed-time, but on the first night of the holidays it was always understood that he should stay up as long as he liked, and hitherto he had always sat up, chattering all the time, till she and Bob went to bed. He now came first to her, as usual, and Clara without a thought put her arm round him and received and returned his kiss. To bear in mind all the time that he was Minnie’s child was difficult. It was only when Adrian went from her to Bob that she remembered and glanced apprehensively at her sister-in-law.

Minnie was sitting tight-lipped and with knitted brows, staring in front of her like a petulant child. When Adrian went shyly towards her, she showed no consciousness of his approach, and it was only when he had stopped in front of her that she turned her head and regarded him as if she had been unexpectedly roused from a reverie. The boy waited timidly for some sign from her, blushing with embarrassment, and, when none came, he awkwardly held out his hand. Minnie glanced at the hand, then at the boy’s face, but she made no responsive movement. Then her lips parted.

“Good night, Adrian!” Her tone was like a school-mistress’s rebuke, and the boy, with a hardly audible good night in reply and a troubled glance at his aunt, went slowly out of the room.

Thereafter there was a long, painful silence, during which Minnie sat staring resentfully in front of her, her face set like a mask but for a spasmodic twitching of the chin.

It was Bob who spoke in the end. “You mustn’t mind at first, Minnie,” he said. “You see, the boy’s shy.”

His intervention came as a relief to Clara, who, in these painful circumstances, had wanted to be sympathetic, but had been at a loss how to begin. She glanced now at Minnie, and Minnie, turning her head at that moment, met her eye, avoided it, and turned to Bob.

“I am glad at least,” she said, angrily tearful, “that someone had the … the decency … to … to apologise.”

Clara’s flicker of sympathy was quenched at once. “You are mistaken, Minnie,” she said. “No one is apologising.”

Minnie turned narrowing eyes on her. “Oh, not you, of course. I didn’t expect you to. You’re only too glad to have prejudiced my child against me.”

“Prejudiced?” Clara considered the expression. “If you mean that I’ve made him love me more than you, you’re right. But whose fault is that? Yours: not mine.”

Minnie sniffed. “My fault! I like that. It’s my fault. I suppose, that you’ve been influencing my child behind my back?”

“Most certainly it is. I wasn’t competing with you, Minnie. I was competing with no one. That’s the point: there was no one here to compete with. Somebody had to be a mother to him. You’ve been glad enough, these six years, to let Bob and me do your job for you, and now you’re selfish enough to be surprised and indignant when you see the inevitable consequences. Your theory is, isn’t it, that we should do the work and you should draw the pay. Unfortunately for you, things don’t work out like that. For six years Bob and I have loved and cared for the boy—not, I’m ashamed to say, as much as we ought to have done, but still, a good deal better than you have. In return he gives us his love. What have you done for him?”

“What have I done? Loved him too, and much more than you are capable of doing, Clara.”

Clara shook her head. “Love at long range, and unexpressed at that, is cold comfort to a child. If you wanted to preserve his affections you should have preserved them in person. You can’t delegate a job like that, as though it were a mere pickling business like Elizabeth Lazenby’s. Nor, with the best will in the world, can we transfer our share to you.”

Minnie’s small body gave a sudden angry wriggle. “I don’t want your share, thank you,” she broke out with exasperated emphasis. “I want my own, that’s all; and, what’s more, I shall insist on having it, in spite of you both.”

Clara regarded this explosion with scornful calm. “Your share? I’m afraid you’re getting it now.”

Minnie, breathless and sobbing with rage, turned on her. “Oh, you’re a fool, nothing but a chattering fool. You talk and talk and talk, and you know as much about love as a magpie.”

Clara laughed. “Whereas your method,” she said, “is that of the cuckoo. You laid your egg, didn’t you in the magpie’s nest. But don’t let us quarrel, Minnie. You’re right: I let my tongue run away with me. Now run upstairs and wash your face. You can’t imagine what a muddle your complexion has got into.”

Minnie, in horror at this information, rose from her chair, and, holding a small lace handkerchief to her nose, hurried from the room. As the door shut, Clara made a gesture of despair. “Really,” she said with a sigh, “she’s hopeless.”

Bob nodded his head. “Pretty bad!” he said. “But you really ought to draw it a bit mild, you know, Clara. The cat was … well, head and shoulders out of the bag.”

Clara smiled. “I know. But I’m no good with children—least of all children of forty. I treat Adrian as a grownup person and it works perfectly, but then Adrian’s ten years older than his mother.”

Minnie fled to her room. She was feeling terribly upset. Arrived there, she shut the door and, switching on a light; hurried to the dressing-table. The first glance told her that what Clara had said was no more than the truth. She was a perfect sight. Had Bob noticed, she asked herself as she stared at the haggard face in the mirror that stared deplorably back at her. Really one ought to be more careful: one ought never to forget oneself except at home. It was all Clara’s fault: Clara was so infuriating. And to be treated by the boy like that in front of them both had been too humiliating. She had never liked little boys, and it had been an unpleasant shock to her to discover, on first catching sight of Adrian this afternoon, that he was so much of a boy, so little of a baby. And then, after this first feeling of dislike, she had all at once seen in him, as he stood looking at her across the hall, that extraordinary look of Sandy, and that had been so very disturbing, so very painful. She did not like to be reminded of poor Sandy nowadays, after all that had happened since. It was too upsetting. That was the worst of having such strong feelings. The meeting with Adrian which she had imagined had been quite different. She had expected to find a gay, affectionate child anxiously looking out for her when she returned from the luncheon, that he would rush up to her gleefully as she entered the house, overjoyed to see his mother again. In fact, she had anticipated that the difficulty would be to avoid having him hanging about her too much. Children, however charming, soon become so extraordinarily exhausting. But the trouble, as it turned out, was precisely the opposite. Unless she kept him up to the mark he would avoid her altogether and spend his time feeding pups with that stupid fellow Bob. What could have induced Clara to marry Bob? But for that matter, what could have induced him to marry Clara, for he didn’t seem really to care tuppence about women? In most men one was aware of … well, a kind of response; but one never received the smallest response from Bob. He was simply not interested. A boor. But of course that was the reason why he had married Clara. Exasperating woman. She was glad she had let her have a piece of her mind in the drawingroom just now. “You’re a fool, Clara, nothing but a chattering fool. You talk and talk and talk …” Yes, that would take her down a peg or two, give her something to think about. “A chattering fool.” In her re-absorption in the scene, Minnie surprised herself by murmuring the phrase aloud. Then, consciously, she repeated it, eagerly savouring the dramatic emphasis of its consonants. But now her attention was monopolised by the restoration of her complexion, which was very nearly complete. She glanced at the mirror and felt, and looked, more like herself again. It was as if, with the skilful replacing of youthful calm on her face, calm had been restored to her spirits. She no longer felt very angry with Clara. After all, she had given her back as good as she had received; and Clara, strange creature that she was, was somehow a good sort and rather fun. Her half friendly, half malicious attacks were always rather invigorating. Or nearly always; for to-day, about Adrian, she had really been a beast.

Then, just as she was going to put a finishing touch to her eyebrows, she paused and looked at her watch. Ten o’clock. To go down to the drawing-room again was going to be a little difficult, a little embarrassing, after what had happened; and, after all, there was nothing much to go down for. The evenings at Yarn were always rather dull; no bridge, no one to talk to but Clara or Bob, and she had talked to them all day. If only they would ask people in to meet her, a nice little dinner or two with a few pleasant people to talk to, and then a game of bridge. But they never did. That was the worst of Clara and Bob: they never put themselves out to entertain one. No; it would be tiresome to go down and begin the evening over again. She would go to bed now and read her novel. And it would serve them right. No doubt when she didn’t reappear, they would feel a little ashamed of themselves. She began slowly to undress. In less than a quarter of an hour she was luxuriously settled in bed, wrapped in a blue and salmon silk kimono, with an electric lamp at her elbow and the novel in her hand.

Through the wall, not three feet from her head, her son was dreaming of her. He was out on the lawn playing with the pups, and from time to time he glanced down the drive to see if his mother was coming. At last something yellow flickered behind the shrubs near the gate and in a moment he had recognised her. She was moving, not walking but gliding, towards the house in the lovely yellow silk dress, pale as the pale gold of her hair, like a fairy princess. He waved to her, and, catching sight of him, she waved back and turned off the drive on to the grass and came floating towards him. He knew she was coming back to him as he had always hoped she would come, and his heart fluttered with joy. But when she was not many yards from him he saw that some one was hurrying from the front door. It was a woman in a black dress. With a feeling of terror he recognised her. It was the woman he had found writing letters in the hall that afternoon. She came running towards them, waving a warning hand at his mother. “No, no,” she shouted; “you mustn’t speak to him. Go away.” He glanced at his mother. She had stopped and was gazing, frightened, at the woman in black. Then her eyes returned to him. “It’s all right, my lamb,” she said, smiling at him; but he saw from her smile that she was afraid. He moved impulsively towards her, but the woman in black, his other mother, stepped fiercely in between them, and then, to his horror, she flew at his mother, attacked her, struck at her with her fists. His mother was half hidden from him: he could not see what was happening. But suddenly he heard a cry and saw that she had fallen. The woman in black was standing over her. He rushed at her, seized one of her black arms and pulled, pulled frantically; but she turned and laughed at him and shook him off. Then he ran past her and bent over the body of his mother. She was lying quite still, and he discovered with horror that he was bending over a mere heap of yellow clothes. The shock awoke him, and he lay feeling the night air cold on his face, his heart thumping loudly in his side.

Next door, Minnie, totally unaware of the fierce self-combat in which she was indulging in her son’s dream, leaned back on her pillows in her salmon and blue kimono, utterly absorbed in her novel. The electric lamp on the table beside her shed a bright light on her book and a soft, rosy glow filtered through its silk shade on her face. In that discreet, flattering glow she looked, with her newly restored complexion, her little pointed chin, and her downcast eyes, amazingly young and pretty.

It was so that Clara found her when, at half-past ten, she tapped at the door and entered. Minnie looked up from her novel, calm, amiable, attractive, as Clara went up to the foot of the bed.

“Ah, so you’ve gone to bed,” said Clara. “We’re just going too. I looked in to say good night and to apologise for being such a pig.”

“You were a pig,” said Minnie in amiable reproach.

“I know I was. But you force me to be, Minnie, when you’re such a child.”

Clara had not foreseen the effect of her rebuke, for Minnie welcomed it as the most delicious flattery. Her face broke into a bright smile, looking, in the rosy light from the lamp, like the face of a little girl. “I’ll try to be good in future,” she said coyly as she laid down her novel. The tone and manner filled Clara with horrified astonishment. It was almost as if she had witnessed an indecency. She turned abruptly from the bed.

“That’s right,” she said in her most expressionless key. “Well, good night, Minnie.” Then, as she opened the door, she turned and added with a sub-acid melodiousness: “Angels guard you!”

Outside, she shrugged despairing shoulders. “Quite, quite incurable!” she said to herself.

Minnie, blissfully confident in the charm she had just exercised, returned with a little care-free sigh to her novel.

VII

Next day it was evident that Adrian was being taken in hand. An intensive course in filial duty had begun for him: he was being taught to revolve round Minnie instead of revolving round Clara and Bob. A sudden change of orbit is a ticklish business and likely to be accompanied by explosions, but in the case of Adrian it appeared to be proceeding with surprising calm. It seemed that he was actually pleased to perform the endless errands which Minnie imposed upon him. His willingness puzzled Clara, for she did not realise that he had all the while been acutely aware that something was due from him to this strange woman and had been terribly embarrassed by his inability to offer anything. Emotionally she made no call on him and thus frustrated all possibility of reponse. But now she was giving him something he could do and do easily, a set of merely mechanical tasks which comfortably disguised the lack of emotional contact between them and relieved the strain from which he had been suffering. So it was that he obeyed Minnie’s continual demands with cheerful alacrity, running to the morning-room to see if she could have dropped her handkerchief there, running to her bedroom to fetch a little bag from her dressing-table, running after Rayner with a letter which had not been quite ready when he called, and which, like all Minnie’s letters, was very important. If material revolutions were all that was needed, Adrian appeared to be revolving beautifully. He even, at the instigation of Clara, achieved something of the outward and visible form of filial affection by kissing his mother when he said good night and good morning.

But these things did no more than throw over Adrian’s insufficiency a veil which Minnie was not long in penetrating. For it was obvious enough at various revealing moments that his heart had not followed his body into its new orbit, and Minnie with growing irritation sat waiting in vain for him to display symptoms of the inward and spiritual graces of sonhood. Her attitude was worse than childish, for it had nothing of the impulsive generosity of a child. If she was a child, she was a spoilt and selfish child; she demanded everything, and it never occurred to her to give anything. Of the humility and uncalculating prodigality of love she knew nothing. She would never give till she had received some guarantee that it would be profitable to give. Her disposition was that of the confirmed philanderer, ready to fling herself at the head of the first comer not for love of him but for love of herself, using her flippant charm as a bait with which to catch still unsufficing assurances of her beauty and power. Unfortunately she stopped short of flirting with her own son, not from any moral principle, but because she rightly mistrusted her power over children. Their incorruptible simplicity turned the points and edges of her glittering armoury and she felt ineffectual and ill at ease in their presence. So it was that she withheld from Adrian even the gay enticements she offered to older people, which might at least have sufficed to set his heart in motion. But even if she had believed that her charm would work on him, her pride would have forbidden her to exercise it. She exercised it to compel those to give who owed her nothing. Adrian was her son, he owed her everything, and so she waited impatiently, not deigning to plead for what was hers by right.

She waited, but still the due homage was delayed: worse, it was given to others in her presence. The afternoon after Adrian’s arrival, Clara and Bob declared their intention of going for a walk. A walk with Clara and Bob meant a cross-country scramble of anything up to eight miles, a form of activity which Minnie hated. She did not care for the country, and could not bear to feel herself getting hot and untidy; besides fields and rough tracks played havoc with her smart, high-heeled shoes, and nothing would induce her to be heavily shod. “Clara,” she had told a friend, “positively goes about like a carthorse.” So when a walk was suggested Minnie always had important letters to write.

“I suppose we can’t tempt you, Minnie?” Clara had said on this occasion.

“I think not, thank you, Clara. I have a few letters to write.”

A smile flickered at the corners of Clara’s mouth. “More letters?” she replied in mock amazement. “I never knew a woman so martyrise herself for the sake of her friends.”

At that moment Adrian came in and noticed that Clara and Bob carried sticks. “A walk?” he said eagerly. “I’m coming.”

Minnie raised her eyebrows. “I was just going to suggest, Adrian,” she said, “that you should keep me company.”

Adrian’s eagerness dissolved and he became suddenly awkward and crestfallen. He glanced at his aunt and uncle and then at Minnie. “I’d … I’d rather go a walk if you don’t mind,” he said shyly.

Minnie’s eyes hardened and her lips narrowed. “But I do mind,” she said coldly.

Adrian stood bewildered with eyes cast down, and when Bob and Clara went out he accompanied them as far as the front door. There he stopped. “Good-bye,” he said mournfully.

“Good-bye, young feller,” said Bob, patting him on the back. “Your mother wants to see something of you, you understand.”

Adrian’s brow lowered darkly. “Well, I don’t want her,” he said sullenly. He watched them go, and then went slowly back to the morning-room, where he had left his mother. She was in the same chair and the same position in which he had left her.

“Hallo,” she said in cold surprise, “I thought you’d gone.”

“I thought you wanted me to stay,” replied Adrian.

“Certainly not, if you want to go with your uncle and aunt. I hoped you would prefer to stay with me. It isn’t much to expect, I should have thought.”

Adrian lingered awkwardly, uncertain what this might imply. Her voice and attitude had suddenly reminded him vividly of how she used to talk to his father, years ago, when she was in one of her moods. She wriggled her shoulders irritably and glanced sharply at him again.

“What are you waiting for?” she said. “You’d better go and join your uncle and aunt. I don’t want you.”

Adrian turned and went slowly out of the room. But once outside his manner changed: he dashed to the front door, down the steps, and across the lawn, hatless, as fast as he could run. If he hurried he would get to the road in time to see which turning they were going to take. But when he reached the gate the road was empty. Probably, he thought, they would go by Taverton Mill, and he ran down the road, turned into the lane on the left and then across the stile. But when he reached the mill, breathless and shock-headed, there was still no sign of them, and he realised with a pang of disappointment that they must have gone another way. He turned back despondently, and a dull resentment against his mother smouldered in his heart.

When Clara entered the morning-room on her return from the walk she found Minnie nodding over a novel.

“Ah!” she exclaimed with a smile, “exhausted by correspondence, I see!”

Minnie roused herself. “Back already?” she said with a lazy smile. “You can’t have been far.”

“Farther than would have suited you, my dear. We’ve been gone two mortal hours. I fear you can’t have missed us as much as you ought.”

Minnie smiled more brightly. “That depends on how much I ought to have missed you,” she said, and then added in a pleasant, off-hand tone: “Aren’t you grateful to me for letting you have Adrian after all?”

Clara knitted her brows. “Adrian? But he stayed with you.”

“No,” said Minnie guilelessly. “He seemed disappointed at missing the walk, so I sent him running after you.”

Reflecting subsequently on the incident of Adrian and the walk, Minnie congratulated herself on so neatly disguising her annoyance from Clara. Adrian’s evident reluctance to remain behind with her and the anger she had been unable to hide in face of it had let her down deplorably, but by a presence of mind of which she was justly proud she had afterwards completely recovered her position. She was so pleased with this unexpected readjustment that she forgave Adrian his disrespect and treated him to some arch gaiety during tea. But Adrian had not forgiven her, and her gaiety alienated him still more, for he saw in it an unpardonable duplicity. She had been harsh and ill-tempered with him when they were alone, and now, for appearance’ sake, she was trying to make herself pleasant. He was not going to cooperate in this deception, which he felt to be an insult to him, and he made no other reply to her sallies than a sheepish and rather sullen smile.

That Adrian, after his behaviour, should refuse to respond when she deigned to forgive him outraged Minnie. She instantly ignored him and, to make him feel his exclusion, turned a bombardment of high spirits upon Bob and Clara, who were amazed and highly amused by her cheerfulness.

“Upon my word,” was Clara’s comment to Bob afterwards, “a veritable Brock’s Benefit! What can have set her off?”

“Probably the cake,” said Bob, “I gave her two large slices.”

After her regrettable outburst on Adrian’s first night and her betrayal of resentment in the matter of the walk next day, Minnie, out of regard for her complexion and her prestige, did not again lose control of herself. But her resentment against Adrian for preferring his uncle and aunt to her and her resentment against them for being the objects of that preference grew daily, as each day inevitably brought some new proof of it. She became more and more determined to assert herself. But, as she reminded herself, she would not have to be too drastic. It was an immense convenience to her that Bob and Clara should be so willing to look after Adrian and she must not do anything to endanger such an admirable arrangement. But she knew well enough, in spite of Clara’s rude reminder that they had been doing her job for her for the last six years, that they had grown very fond of Adrian, and she felt therefore that she might assert her authority by taking him from them for a week before the arranged end of his visit to them. They could not pretend the least right to prevent her, and Adrian himself would, of course, have to comply. He must be taught his duty somehow. To carry him off, willy-nilly, would be a good way of impressing her authority upon him. It would teach him that he spent his holidays at Yarn only thanks to her permission, that, in fact, he was indebted to her for the friendship of Bob and Clara, which, apparently, he so much enjoyed. And it would teach him also that, if he persisted in being rude and disagreeable to her, she could be very much more disagreeable to him in return.

But this she realised, the moment afterwards, was not a very happy basis for a close companionship of a week or ten days. It would probably be just as disagreeable for her as for Adrian. To be thrown even closer together when they were already getting on so badly would be extraordinarily unpleasant.

And then an excellent solution presented itself. Why not take this opportunity of paying her promised visit to the Crowhursts. That visit was never very thrilling, in any case. It was only the fact that she was such an enormous success with Emma and Frank Crowhurst that made it worth while. It seemed extraordinary, whenever she thought of it, that she and the worthy, dowdy old Emma should be friends. It was simply because they had been at school together. Yes, at school! How ghastly, yet, thank God, how incredible the fact that Emma, already undisguisedly and undisguisably middle-aged, was no older than herself. As a schoolgirl Emma had had an infatuation for the gay, attractive Minnie which she had never quite shaken off. She had even succeeded in making Frank share it; and so Emma and Frank, so monstrously, so ridiculously unlike her other friends, had become a habit. They stimulated her to her finest flights by appreciating and even believing every word she said; and by doing so they made their house, even with that appalling crowd of children, bearable for a week. The crowd of children, on this occasion, would positively be an advantage, for it meant that the house had a machinery for dealing with children and that Adrian could be dropped into the machine with the rest. He would be no bother to her whatsoever. And so among her important letters on this particular day was one addressed to Mrs. Crowhurst, and by the afternoon post two days later, with the usual flattering alacrity, an enthusiastic acceptance of the suggestion came from Emma. “Tell Adrian,” ran a postscript, “that the children are longing to see him again.”

That, then, was settled. Her fortnight with Bob and Clara ended in two days’ time. She had been going from them to a brother in Worcestershire, but he would not mind her putting off her visit for a week. She wrote at once and did so, and over tea she launched the scheme upon Bob, Clara, and Adrian.

“I have a surprise for you, Adrian,” she said nonchalantly. “Mrs. Crowhurst has asked me to take you with me when I go on Thursday, and I’ve told her you’ll be delighted.”

“Mrs. Crowhurst?” Adrian turned suddenly pale as he whispered the name.

“Yes,” she said cheerfully. “You know the Crowhursts, don’t you?”

Adrian looked timidly from one to other of his companions. “But … but … I’d much rather not go, if you don’t mind,” he stammered miserably.

“Not go?” Minnie was amazed. “Oh, but you must go, my dear child. I’ve accepted for you, and, in any case, I couldn’t very well have refused.”

Adrian did not reply, and no one saw the tears in his eyes. The idea of being snatched suddenly from Yarn was upsetting enough; but to be going to the Crowhursts, where he had been so miserable, filled him with a horrified panic. For the rest of tea he sat silent, as if dazed by what he had heard, the tea in his cup and the cake on his plate forgotten.

Clara and Bob realised at once that Minnie could have done nothing to alienate the boy from her more completely. Minnie herself, of course, was unaware of this, and Clara felt that it was only right to tell her. She did so as soon as tea was over, when Bob and Adrian had gone out, leaving her and Minnie alone in the room.

“I don’t suppose you ever heard, Minnie,” she began, “that Adrian had a very miserable time at the Crowhursts’ when he stayed with them a year or two ago.”

Minnie shook her head. “No,” she said; “I hadn’t heard.”

“I fancy that all those children were too much for him. You see, he’s horribly shy.”

“Then it seems to me that the sooner he begins to go about a little, the better.”

“I quite agree. But … you mustn’t think me meddlesome, Minnie. You know I always speak my mind.… I do think it would be a mistake for you to insist on his going to the Crowhursts if he really hates the idea. What I fear, you see, is that it may give him a grudge against you. He’s difficult enough as it is, isn’t he?”

Minnie narrowed her lips. “A good deal too difficult, in my opinion. And one only makes him more so by giving into his whims. What he wants is a little discipline.”

“Why not take him somewhere else? It seems so unfortunate that, by an unhappy chance, you should have hit on the very place …”

Minnie shrugged her shoulders impatiently. “Oh, fiddlededee, Clara! If one stopped to consider every child’s whims and fancies, life would become impossible. Let us say no more about it.”

And no more was said by any of them. Adrian longed to talk of it to Bob and Clara, but could not bring himself to do so and went about, restless and preoccupied, with a dumb pain at his heart and the resentment against his mother burning deeper and deeper into him.

That night in bed he remembered the dream he had had at the beginning of the holidays. The cleavage in his mind which that dream had bodied forth had ceased already to exist, for the mother of to-day was now identified with his memories of what she had been at her worst, and the radiant ghost which he had compounded out of scattered memories of her best and hopes of what she would be to him when they met again, had faded to a mere sensation, a vague sense of loss. Yes, his mother was completely now the fierce, black-clothed woman who had struck down the fairylike mother of his dream, and it was only too fatally in character that she was now dragging him from Aunt Clara and Uncle Bob whom he loved and Yarn where he loved to be, to the misery he associated with the Crowhursts.

As he lay open-eyed in his dark, lonely bedroom, the sharp, unforgettable memories of the Crowhursts spread once more like a disease through his mind, immensely more appalling now than in that early morning reverie three weeks ago. Because they were now not mere memories, but imminent and inexorable realities, they assumed in his shrinking regard fantastically horrible proportions. His heart flinched: he dared not face them. It was impossible to believe that the day after tomorrow that nightmare was going to repeat itself. The thought that his mother would be there too was no consolation: rather, it made the prospect more dreadful still. And now another misery faced him. The defence of present happiness being suddenly withdrawn, the impending threat of Charminster, where in a month’s time he would begin life as a public-schoolboy, grew large and terrible. He was so utterly wretched that he could not sleep, but lay tossing till after midnight.

Next day, nothing was seen of him between breakfast and lunch. He returned, hot and breathless, when they had already been seated at lunch for about ten minutes, and replied, when interrogated, that he had been for a walk. After lunch he vanished again, and did not reappear for tea. As dinner-time approached, the three grown-ups began to look grim, and when at dinner there were still no signs of him, their anxiety was apparent in their faces and in the strained silence which held them, with hardly a break, throughout the meal. Clara’s acute anxiety aroused in her a growing anger against Minnie, while Minne’s guilty conscience could not afford to feel scared and reassured itself by anger against Adrian.

“It’s simply monstrous to behave like this,” she exclaimed irritably as they crossed the hall from the dining-room to the drawing-room. “I can’t think what he means by it.”

Clara’s nerves were beyond restraint. “Can’t you, Minnie?” she replied. “Then you must be extremely stupid. What he means by it, as you know well enough, is that you have goaded him beyond endurance. But goodness knows what exactly that means. That’s what’s keeping us on tenterhooks now. I hope you’ll profit by the experience.”

“It seems to me, Clara,” answered Minnie hotly, “that you’re trying to make a mountain out of a molehill, and so is Adrian if he’s really behaving like this just because I’m taking him to stay with the Crowhursts.”

“One person’s molehill is another person’s mountain, Minnie. I warned you yesterday and your reply was’ Fiddlededee.’ Well, now we are enjoying the consequences of your fiddlededeeing.”

Minnie ignored this. “Adrian’s just doing this to frighten us,” she said.

“Us? You, you mean. Well, I only hope he is.”

Unable, in her agitation, to endure Minnie any longer, Clara sailed out of the room and joined Bob, who was smoking a pipe in the morning-room. As she entered the room, the telephone bell rang. Bob took down the receiver.

“Yes.… Right.… Yes.… Yes,” said Bob, as Clara stood waiting expectantly. “Yes.… Yes.… I’ve got that. Yes.… Thank you.” He replaced the receiver and turned to Clara. “It’s a wire from that young monkey,” he said. “Am all right. Don’t worry. Writing.”

Clara heaved a deep sigh of relief. Then a smile curled her lips. “He’s decided, of course, not to go to the Crowhursts,” she said. Then she shrugged her shoulders. “Well, I suppose I ought to tell her, though it would serve her right if I waited till to-morrow.” She turned and went out of the room.

When she had closed the door, Bob went to the telephone again. “Hallo,” he called. “You phoned me a telegram just now. Barlton, Yarn. Will you please tell me where it was handed in. Abbot’s Randale? Thank you.”

The woman who served at the Wilmore Junction refreshment room had laid aside her knitting that evening at the sound of the opening door. She knew the boy who asked for a cup of tea, though he showed no sign of knowing her. At first she could not remember where she had seen him before; but when he raised his dark-fringed grey eyes to hers, she knew at once.

“You were here a few months ago, weren’t you?” she said.

“Yes, last April,” said Adrian.

She thought him looking less forlorn. He was sunburnt now and he was more manly, more self-possessed than on the former occasion.

“Yes, I remember,” she said. “You bought a ham sandwich, a bun, and a banana.”

He smiled at her, and once more she wished she had a little chap of her own like this, who would be looking out for her when she went home, or perhaps waiting for her outside the station to walk home with her.

“You must have a very good memory,” he said.

“Was I right?”

“Just about,” he said, “but, as a matter of fact, it was two bananas.”

“Why, so it was,” she replied. “Fancy me forgetting that.” And then, after a moment, she repeated, with a touch of sadness in her voice, as though it seemed to her a serious matter: “Just fancy me forgetting that.”

VIII

It is half-past two on a Monday afternoon, the first Monday of the autumn term at Charminster. The warm sunlight of late September falls through the half-open windows of the great bare, empty common-room of Taylor’s, one of the ten houses of Charminster, on to bare boards, bare walls, bare benches and tables, and the two tiers of stained and varnished lockers that form a high wainscot to two of the four walls of the room. The other walls are painted drab, and on them hang framed photographs of cricket and football house-elevens. It is easy to see that it is the beginning of term, for the wide fireplace shows immaculately clean in a bright searchlight-shaft of sunshine that illuminates it. The fireback is sootless, there is not a sign of ash or dust or paper under the grate, and the bars are newly black-leaded. The brass of the doorknobs and the knobs on the lockers shine like sunlight solidified, the speckless windows are limpid as the air itself: everything is inexorably clean, bare, comfortless, Spartan. The room has two doors, the second leading into Hall, the living-room of the upper school, and where the floor of Common-room is raised, at the far end, nine inches above the rest, stands the high table at which the upper school sits for lunch. They take their other meals in Hall, leaving Common-room to the boys of the lower school.

Not a sound breaks the silence except the mechanical heart-beats of a clock hung on the wall over the door that leads to Hall, for all the boys are out playing or watching games. In a little over an hour they will come, all sixty of them, swarming into the house to change and get their books for afternoon school.

Then into this airy, mechanically measured silence fall the sounds of small footsteps on the stone-paved passage. They are hard and hollow and regular, as if another and larger clock had joined its beats for a moment with the softer tic-toc of the clock on the wall. They approach, and round the half-open door Adrian looks cautiously into the empty room. He enters, and then pauses for a moment and glances at the ticking clock as if in doubt whether to go or stay. Obviously he ought not to be there, since no one else is there. He is probably committing some monstrous breach of rules or school etiquette. If discovered he will find himself an object of reprimand or ridicule. Then, deciding that it is more bearable to risk this and be surreptitiously alone, than to be publicly and patently alone out-of-doors, where every boy who is not playing a game has a companion, he tiptoes forward and sits down on one of the long forms, his elbows on the table, his chin cupped in his hands.

Since his arrival at Charminster three days ago. Adrian had lived in a state of bewilderment. He felt as if he were being swept along on a great stream, in which before he had mastered one novelty, he was swept on to the next. He kept discovering, to his horror, things he was supposed to have done which he had not done. That very morning, on going into school, he found that he was supposed to have prepared a chapter of Job as well as learnt by heart the Collect during prep, on the previous evening. He had waited in fearful expectation for his turn for a question, and when Mr. Storer, his form-master, had asked it, he had been able to do nothing but blush. The boy next him had answered it and had gone up above him.

This afternoon he had discovered that if you did not want to be left in the lurch all afternoon, you had to book a companion before-hand. He had heard boys inviting other boys to “come out this afternoon,” but had not known how necessary it was to do the same. How was it that the other new boys had known? For he seemed to be the only one who was left alone. But whom could he have asked? He had made no friend yet, and he would not have dared to invite a boy he hardly knew.

Still, though he felt bewildered and very much alone, Adrian felt too that the great flood did carry you along to whatever you were expected to do; that though you omitted things and made minor mistakes on the way, you did arrive, merely by following the stream, at the various destinations at which it was your duty to arrive. And it was generally easy, too, in the crowd, to avoid appearing as lonely as you really were. This was the first time he had found himself actually isolated.

There were nine new boys this term besides himself. He did not yet know them all by name nor even by sight, though he had distinguished four, Harting, Jones, Clouston Minor, and Phipps, who seemed to be the nicest. But the names and appearances of new boys were of no real importance. It was his duty, he had already been told, to know who were the captains of the school football and cricket elevens and every member of the teams, and the same of the teams of Taylor’s, his own house; who played for the school at racquets and fives, which houses belonged to which games-clubs and what were the colours of those clubs, besides a mass of other facts in which the new boys had to pass an examination in a fortnight’s time.

He had not got very far yet in the acquirement of all this knowledge. He did not yet know even the names of the six prefects of his own house. He had already had two opportunities of gazing at them with awe on Saturday and Sunday evenings when, at house-prayers in Common-room, one of them had stood beside Mr. Wisborough at the high table and read a passage from the Bible and the other five had stood behind them with their backs to the wall, while the rest of the boys were gathered in rows round the lower tables.

Adrian had particularly noticed the sixth prefect, a handsome, merry-looking boy with fair hair and blue eyes. There was something in his gay, good-humoured expression, his quick, determined movements, even in the mere shape of him, that made him seem twice as alive as any of the others. He had just been made a prefect, Adrian discovered, and the others seemed pleased and a little amused by the fact. It was obvious that he was a great favourite. Adrian had gathered at first that his name was Ronny, but soon discovered that it was really Dakyn and that Ronald was his Christian name.

From the first Adrian was captivated by him. He knew well enough that this enchanting person was too far above him ever to become a friend of his: probably he would never so much as speak to him. But that did not trouble him. He was content to admire at a distance.

But now, as he sat in the empty Common-room with his elbows on the table, he was not thinking of Dakyn. He was recalling his sudden arrival at his grandfather’s a month ago. He recalled how he had awoken on the morning after his mother had announced her intention of taking him to the Crowhursts with the determination to revolt. It was as if all his misery of the previous night had solidified during his sleep into this firm determination. He would simply refuse to go. She was not very much bigger than he was, and she could not drag him to the Crowhursts by main force if he was determined not to go. But next moment he had realised that it would be extremely awkward for his uncle and aunt if he made a scene in their house. He was sufficiently aware of the situation between them and his mother to see that his mother would probably blame them for his bad behaviour to her, and that, though they would really agree with him, they would be forced to side with her.

And then he thought of his grandfather. Obviously the best way would be simply to go to his grandfather’s without a word to anyone. He decided to walk to the village after breakfast and ring up his grandfather from the post-office.

How delighted the old man had been when he arrived that evening at Abbot’s Randale. Adrian had found him waiting on the platform when he got out of the train. He had told his grandfather nothing on the telephone except that it would fit in better if he might come to-day instead of the following week when he was due. But on the drive from the station he explained everything.

The old man had chuckled. “Well, upon my word! The young devil!” he had remarked.

“But wasn’t it the best thing to do?” said Adrian.

“Well, if you ask me as man to man,” Oliver had replied, “certainly it was. But by rights I suppose I ought to pack you straight back to your mother.”

“But you won’t,” replied Adrian confidently.

“But, as you say, I won’t,” said his grandfather. “I shouldn’t dream of it. A guest, after all, is sacred. But they’ll be in a fearful stew at Yarn, you know, when you don’t turn up to-night. What about your aunt and uncle?”

“I’m going to write to Aunt Clara,” said Adrian.

“I’ll tell you what,” said his grandfather. “Why not send your uncle a wire saying you’re all right. You needn’t say where you are, just’ Am all right. Don’t worry. Writing later,’ or something like that.”

Adrian had agreed that it would be a good thing to do, and they had stopped at the post-office and wired there and then. For some days he had been a little afraid that his mother might find out where he was and come down in a fury. He had pictured her hurrying towards him across the lawn, the angry, black-clothed figure of his dream. But days passed and nothing happened, and he felt as if, by his sudden resolute action, he had woken himself from the bad dream which his mother had haunted.

Before the end of the holidays Aunt Clara and Uncle Bob had turned up at Abbot’s Randale. One afternoon, as they walked together in the garden, Aunt Clara had said to him in her discreetly humorous way:

“I heard from your mother a fortnight ago, Adrian. If I am to believe her, a visit to the Crowhursts is an experience so delightful as to be almost intoxicating. You wouldn’t, of course, agree with that view.”

Adrian smiled. “Not quite!” he said.

“It’s extraordinary,” said Aunt Clara meditatively, “how tastes differ. When I was a girl at school, a friend offered me a shilling if I would eat a snail. I accepted, but found the experience so revolting that for two days I could eat nothing else. Yet there was another girl at the same school who ate them by the dozen, free of charge, and declared them delicious. Her name, I remember, was Matilda Slatterley, and I thought, and still think, that it served her right.”

Adrian, dreaming alone in the Common-room at Taylor’s, smiled to himself as he recalled Aunt Clara’s absurd anecdote. Then he suddenly took his elbows off the table and sat up. Quick footsteps, which he recognised from their sound as the steps of barred and studded football boots, came ringing down the passage. Now they had reached the door, and their sound suddenly changed from the ring and squeak of nails on stone flags to a hollow knocking on the boards of Common-room floor. Adrian glanced over his shoulder. Round the edge of the half-open door the face of Ronny Dakyn appeared and surveyed the room. Then he caught sight of Adrian. “Hello, nipper,” he said, fixing his bright blue eyes on him. “No one else about? Then you might get me a jug of hot water, will you? Know where to get it?”

Adrian jumped up and answered that he did.

“Bring it up to Prefects’ Room. And look sharp: I’ve got to be changed in five minutes.”

The bright face disappeared and the footsteps tramped down the passage, and as Adrian hurried out to get the hot water he heard Dakyn dashing noisily up the stone stairs.

At first he had been overcome with shame at being discovered, idle and alone, in Common-room, but now he was all aglow at the chance of doing something for this godlike person whom he so much admired.

He got the hot water, climbed the stairs, and knocked at the door of the prefects’ bedroom. It seemed almost profane that he, a mere new boy, should enter that august chamber. Dakyn, his boots and stockings already off and flung on the floor, was struggling out of his shirt. “Thanks, nipper!” he said, emerging red-faced and touzle-haired and flinging the shirt on his bed. “Shove it on the washstand. Is it hot?”

“Yes, very!” said Adrian.

“You’re a new boy, aren’t you?” asked Dakyn over his shoulder, as he poured the water into the basin. “What’s your name?”

“Glynde,” said Adrian.

“You oughtn’t to have been frowsting in Commonroom, you know.”

Adrian blushed. “I … I had no one to go about with,” he stammered.

“I see. Yes, it is a bit awkward at first. You ought to get hold of some other chap if your name isn’t down for a game. It’s rotten wandering about alone. Are you any good at footer?”

“Not very,” said Adrian, hanging his head.

Dakyn glanced at him again. “That’s a pity,” he said. “You must try and improve. And of course there’s fives and squash.” He spoke in jerks as he scrubbed his face and neck and armpits with soap. “Anyhow, you mustn’t hang about in Common-room in the middle of the afternoon. It isn’t done. It’s a good thing it was only me that caught you. You mustn’t turn into a little frowster. See?” His kind blue eyes glanced at Adrian again. “You’d better skip off now. Understand, don’t you?” he said as Adrian turned to go.

Adrian smiled back at him and said: “Yes, thank you!” and as he went downstairs he heard, two flights below him, the boys swarming back into the house.

At the bottom of the stairs he was swallowed unobserved into the multitude, and all at once he felt that he was one of them, that he had settled down and was no longer a single, lonely new boy.

When the boys returned to the house after morning school they crowded round the games-board that hung on the wall in Common-room to see if their names were down for a game that afternoon. On entering Commonroom next day Adrian found such a seething, struggling crowd round the board that he couldn’t get at it. Bolder spirits than he hurled themselves into the throng and, pushing to the front, gained a glimpse of the lists by main force. But Adrian was incapable of such vigorous tactics and stood timidly on the fringe, waiting. A new boy, struggling out of the mêlée, passed him. “Your name’s down for footer, Glynde,” he said, and Adrian’s heart sank. Yes, as he saw for himself a minute or two later, his name was down to play on Ground 8. He had always been a little afraid of football. It was not that he was afraid of being hurt, but that he felt himself somehow incapable of the unself-conscious impulse and cheerful self-assertion that the game demanded. He felt foolish and awkward and was haunted by the fear of making himself ridiculous. The thought of having to play this afternoon filled him with apprehension; but Dakyn had said yesterday, when he had confessed that he was no good at footer, that he must try to improve, and he now made a stern resolve to shake off his fears and throw himself recklessly into the game. In one way he was glad to be playing: it would save him from the necessity of finding someone to go out with this afternoon, a problem which had been troubling him all morning. Before lunch, he had been telling himself, he must at all costs ask one of the other new boys, otherwise he would find himself left in the lurch again. But now his afternoon was at last provided for, and after lunch he rushed off to the boot-room and there, among a shouting and pushing and struggling crowd, he changed into footer things and went off with Phipps, who was down to play in the same game, to find Ground 8.

Adrian was put outside left. He was pleased to find that there was no master present. At Waldo Mr. Austin had always supervised games loudly and insistently. “Go on now, Glynde. Get at him. Run. You’re not at a funeral. You ought to be there; not here.”

Those encouraging shouts of Mr. Austin’s had always paralysed Adrian. They had somehow made it impossible for him ever to do what they urged him to do. But here at Charminster he found that no one paid any special attention to him. Everyone was playing: there were no spectators; and Adrian, full of his new resolve, discovered, when to his amazement half-time was called, that he had been getting along just like everyone else. During the second half he found himself running with the ball in front of him, far ahead of the rest. How it had come about he did not know. There seemed to be no one in front of him, and he paused, feeling sure that he must be off-side. Somebody shouted “Go on!” and he went on, and then a voice shouted “Shoot!” He glanced up and saw the goalkeeper rushing at him, and he shot. Somebody behind him said “Good man,” there were a few formal hand-claps, and he discovered to his astonishment that he had shot a goal. He glanced round shyly, but no one was taking any notice of him. Apparently it was a matter of course that he, like anyone else, should get a goal. He ran back to his place full of a warm, surprised satisfaction, and in a moment he was lost once more in the engrossing whirl of the game. When the whistle blew, he turned, expecting it was for an offside and could hardly believe that the game was over. He was breathless, happy, and tingling all over his body. For the first time in his life he had achieved the state of a healthy young animal.

IX

That evening Adrian was told that he was wanted in Hall. “Me?” he asked, wondering uneasily what he was wanted for.

“Yes, you!” said the boy who had delivered the message. “You’re Glynde, aren’t you?”

Adrian with beating heart approached the sacred door, opened it, and went nervously in. For the first time he beheld that sanctuary, with its battered armchairs, its two long tables, and ancient benches, the great glasspanelled bookcase that contained the house library, and the exalted persons of the upper school taking their ease in the chairs and on the benches. He stood with his back to the door, his hand on the door-knob behind him, timidly waiting. For a moment it seemed to him that immense numbers of eyes were staring at him, but no one spoke. He was conscious of Ronny Dakyn sitting at the far end of one of the tables diligently writing. Adrian could see nothing of him but his bright golden head bent over two black arms. Waiting there, he felt horribly embarrassed.

Coulter, the head prefect, glanced round the room. “Who sent for this fag?” he asked.

Dakyn raised his head from his writing and saw Adrian. “Oh, it’s all right. I sent for him,” he said and beckoned to Adrian, who made his way towards him through the armchairs as if through a hostile jungle. When Adrian reached him, Dakyn had resumed his writing and Adrian stood waiting beside his chair. He cast a quick side-glance across the room, but no one, he saw with relief, was any longer conscious of his presence. The room was full of talk. Dakyn pushed away the list he was making out and looked up at him. “Would you like to be my fag, Glynde?” he asked.

“Yes, please,” Adrian replied almost in a whisper. He did not know what the offer implied, but whatever it implied he would unhesitatingly have accepted.

“It’s not a bad job, you know,” said Dakyn. “You’ve got to do jobs for me and look after my study, and you get off all other fagging.”

“Thank you!” Adrian murmured.

“Right!” said Dakyn. “Come to my study in about ten minutes and I’ll put you up to some of the jobs.”

Adrian threaded his way back through the chairs to the door. It seemed to him that his unspoken desires were being miraculously fulfilled. When he had shut the door behind him, he received the stare of Common-room as he had received the stare of Hall.

“Well?” asked a noisy, inquisitive boy called Jenkins whom Adrian had hated from the first. He was sitting near the door beside another boy with a large mouth.

“Dakyn’s made me his fag,” said Adrian.

“You? Well, I’m damned.”

“Know him at home?” asked the big-mouthed boy.

“No,” said Adrian.

The big-mouthed boy wagged his head mysteriously at Jenkins.

“Must be a case,” he said with mock disapproval.

Jenkins looked searchingly at Adrian. “Is it a case?” he asked.

Adrian had no idea what they were talking about. “I don’t know,” he said vaguely.

Both the boys laughed, and the one with the big mouth mimicked Adrian’s “I don’t know,” exaggerating its tone into one of farcical demureness.

Adrian’s duties as prefect’s fag afforded him some respite from the incessant rowdiness of Common-room. He had to polish Dakyn’s shoes, brush his clothes, keep his study clean, get tea ready for him there on certain occasions and wash up afterwards, as well as perform various other jobs which kept him pleasantly and not too onerously employed.

Though these things brought him into touch with Ronny Dakyn several times a day, he did not become familiar with him. It was not to be expected and Adrian had not expected it. He was far too much in awe of Dakyn to have dared to respond with much success even if Dakyn had encouraged him to talk. But he was quite content, in his state of humble adoration, to black Daykn’s shoes and brush his clothes; indeed merely to handle these intimate possessions of his hero gave him an ecstatic happiness. He polished the shoes until they shone like jet, brushed black coats and waistcoats and pressed grey trousers until Dakyn looked immaculate. Nor was Dakyn unappreciative.

“I must say, Glynde,” he said one day, when Adrian had brought him his shoes, “you’re a marvel with shoes.”

Adrian soon found that he could craftily take advantage of his job to enjoy a little of the peace and quietness which it was so difficult to find downstairs. In the middle of tidying Dakyn’s study he would choose a book from the top shelf where Dakyn kept novels and stories, and kneeling on a chair with his elbows on the table he would read happily, keeping one ear open for footsteps in the passage. There was just time, at the first sound of a step, to snap the book shut, pop it back in its place, and be dusting a picture-frame before the study door opened.

But one day he had incautiously allowed himself to become so engrossed in Mr. Polly, which he had been reading in this way by short stages, that Dakyn was standing in the doorway watching him before he could pull himself together. He sat back on his heels on the chair, the book blatantly open on the table before him, scarlet in the face. Dakyn was looking at him with eyebrows raised and a smile on his face. Adrian gazed back at him helplessly. At last he found a voice.

“I … I’m very sorry,” he stammered. “I … I’m afraid I was reading one of your books.”

Dakyn shut the door. “Well, why shouldn’t you?” he said. “I don’t mind. You can always come in here when the place is empty. Except of course in the afternoon when you ought to be out,” he added with mock severity, and Adrian knew he was referring to the afternoon when he had caught him in Common-room. He turned red with shame; but Dakyn, seeing his mortification, gave him a fatherly pat on the back. “All right,” he said. “I didn’t really think you would.” He bent over Adrian’s shoulder and looked at the book. “What was it?” he said. “Oh, Mr. Polly. Yes, a damned good book. No wonder I caught you bending. Well, I’ve got to work now, so you must scoot. Leave Mr. Polly here on the table, under these others. Then he’ll be handy when you want him.”

It was not long before Adrian became conscious of Ellenger. He was continually looking into Dakyn’s study and Adrian would sometimes find him sitting there alone, reading or writing. On such occasions, unless he had something to do for Dakyn that could not be postponed, Adrian would retire discomfited. Often when Adrian was reading there, it would be Ellenger’s step which interrupted him, and Adrian got to know that step so well, to distinguish it so clearly from the light, cheerful step of Dakyn, that he would have his book put away and be emerging from the study before Ellenger was half-way down the passage.

Ellenger was too low in the upper school to have a study of his own, and so he made use of Dakyn’s, for Dakyn was a particular friend of his. He was a large, thick-set, square-faced boy with dark brown smouldering eyes and straight black hair which hung low over his forehead and reminded Adrian of the hair of a Japanese doll. There was something scornful and brutal in the closed, enigmatical expression of his large, square face, his harsh voice, and his incessant use of bad language. The younger boys regarded him with awe and dislike, and Adrian disliked him as much as any. He resented Ellenger’s intrusion on Dakyn’s study and on Dakyn himself, for unconsciously Adrian already looked upon both the study and Dakyn as his own particular property. It was clear to him that Ellenger disliked him, for he never spoke to him unless it was unavoidable and behaved always as though he were a creature beneath his notice.

One day, coming down the passage without shoes, he caught Adrian reading in the study.

“Hallo, what’s this?” he said, regarding Adrian loweringly from the door.

Adrian was tongue-tied.

“What are you up to?” Ellenger asked more aggressively.

“I was reading,” faltered Adrian.

“And who the hell said you could read in here?”

“Dakyn did.”

“Hm, Dakyn did, did he? I don’t think that’s very likely.”

“If you ask him …” Adrian began.

“You’d better clear out now, anyhow,” Ellenger broke in brutally, and Adrian slunk out, trembling with thwarted hatred.

What on earth, he wondered, as he retreated down the passage and downstairs to Common-room, could Ronny like in a beast like that.

Ellenger sat down in the easy chair and reached for a book on the table. When, after some minutes, Dakyn came in he looked up lazily.

“Hallo, Len; give me a pencil,” said Dakyn, taking a piece of paper from a pad on the table.

Ellenger fumbled in his pocket and handed over a pencil, and Dakyn began to scribble a note. When he had finished, Ellenger said:

“I found that young water-rat reading in here just now.”

“Who? Young Glynde?”

“Hm.”

“Well, what of it?”

Ellenger shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, nothing; so long as you don’t mind.”

Dakyn from where he stood at the table examined Ellenger. “Which means, I suppose, that you do, you surly old devil. Well, you’ll damned well have to put up with it.”

Ellenger met Dakyn’s straight, lively gaze and his face cleared, as if briefly illuminated by some inner glow, into a smile of extraordinary sweetness.

X

Adrian settled down at Charminster much more easily than he had expected. The prospect, the arrival, and the first few days there had been rather dreadful. During his four years at Waldo there had never been more than twenty boys there, and for some time only twelve. It had not been much of a preparation for this seething ocean of noisy and often hostile youth into which he had been so suddenly plunged.

Waldo had come to be a sort of home to him, but there was nothing of home about Charminster. It was more like a jungle in which there was a ceaseless struggle for existence and only the fit—the self-assertive and physically strong—survived to enjoy any but the most meagre and harassed existence.

Though Adrian had not at the time much minded bidding farewell to Waldo, the uprooting had in the end upset him a good deal, and still more he had been upset by the meeting with his mother and the disillusionment it had brought. It was as if his life had lost its centre. He felt lonely and unsettled, and it was in this defenceless state that he had had to face Charminster.

In these forlorn circumstances the sudden entry into his life of Ronny Dakyn had been his salvation. It was inevitable, in the lonely state in which he was, that he should set his forlorn heart and unused affections on someone, and it was fortunate that he should chance to set them, attracted perhaps by nothing more than his outward charm, on the pleasant, kind-hearted Dakyn, who, by a casual word, had urged him to turn his energies to the things in which he was most deficient. It was doubtless nothing more than chance that Dakyn should have remarked that he must try to improve his football-playing. He had said it lightly, without any insistence or earnestness; but Adrian had accepted it as a sacred duty imposed upon him by one who had suddenly become the most important being in his life. Games at Charminster were regarded by the boys as the only things of importance. A boy was judged and approved or not by whether he was good or bad at games. Work and the things of the mind did not count. Urged by that casual remark of Ronny Dakyn, Adrian saved himself from contempt and nonentity at Charminster and, in a single hour, in that first game of football, freed himself from a tangle of inhibitions also. For his sudden discovery of the rapture of the game turned out to be permanent. He had set himself to obey Dakyn, but it had not occurred to him to speculate on whether Dakyn would ever know that he had done so. He had obeyed without thought of reward: his own consciousness that he had fulfilled what Dakyn had commanded was its own reward. He was astonished when, as he entered the study with a note one evening, Dakyn, having read the note and thrown it aside, said to him:

“You play a nice game of footer, young man. I saw you on Ground 5 this afternoon.”

Adrian flushed with embarrassment and gratitude. At first he could say nothing. Then, blushing still redder, he replied: “You said I had to improve.”

“I said so?” Dakyn looked puzzled.

“Yes. You asked me if I was any good, and I said No, and you said it was a pity and I must improve.”

Dakyn saw in the little boy’s eyes that look which he was accustomed to see in so many others that he had come to regard it as his rightful tribute. He was flattered, amused, and a little touched.

“So you improved?” he said, smiling. “Good for you, little man.”

If Ronny Dakyn was an unconscious saviour of Adrian at Charminster, Mr. Heller was soon, in a very different direction, to become no less. Mr. Heller and Dr. Edward Yardley-Tritton, who was also the school organist, taught the piano at Charminster. It was open to boys who wished, or whose parents wished them to learn the piano to choose either master. Almost all of them chose Dr. Yardley-Tritton, not because he was popular and respected, but because he demanded little and was easy to please. He was also easy to disregard. He was universally looked upon as a fool, and not unjustly. His appearance distressingly bespoke the conventional artist. He wore a double-breasted black coat and a starched turndown collar. His tie had a greater licence than anyone but an artist such as Dr. Yardley-Tritton would permit to his tie. His face was fleshy; he had full, weak, indulgent lips crowned by a greying brown moustache, and from the base of his sagging cheeks flowed an absurd pair of dundreary whiskers, an anachronism which appeared to have been caused by a subsidence of the hair of the head which left his crown almost bare. He wore horn-rimmed pince-nez which were slung round his neck by a black ribbon. His usual expression was that of a fastidious eclectic, but this he was very far from being, for his taste in music was so catholic as to be quite tasteless. His favourite musical adjectives were “charming,” “graceful,” “tasteful,” “melodious.” By the boys he was known, not in affection, but in contempt, as Teddy.

No one could have been less like Teddy than Mr. Heller, whose name had long since been altered into Old Hell. In appearance he was like an old vulture. His figure was long, thin, and drooping. The thin, bony head and skinny neck were sunk forward between hunched shoulders. His long, blob-ended nose and weedy moustache overhung a mouth, with teeth discoloured by pipe-smoking, which was set, when he was serious, in a permanent death’s-head grin, but curled, when occasionally he smiled, into an expression of great gentleness. He had a pronounced, bony, aristocratic chin and blue, myopic eyes that blinked behind gold-rimmed spectacles. His clothes were unostentatiously good, the clothes of a gentleman; and, despite his half comical, half pitiable appearance, there was about him a distinction which was enhanced by a kindly, old-fashioned courtesy of manner. But the distinction and the courtesy were evident only to those who penetrated his external comicality and became acquainted with him. Few boys did so. He was regarded as a freak, and his reputation as an irritable and exacting purist frightened pupils away to the facile Teddy.

Adrian did not at once arrange for piano lessons. In the first place he had been too timid to find out how to do so and had decided to wait until he had settled down. But, besides this, he had heard Teddy play the piano at a Sunday concert soon after his arrival, and had been repelled by his fluent and shallow tinkling of Beethoven’s C Sharp Minor Sonata and by the fact that he had followed it up with a piece by Moskowski. Teddy, in all seriousness, played in the manner adopted by entertainers who try hard to be frivolous—that manner which recalls the self-satisfied rider of a short-trotting cob. Adrian decided at once that he would rather not have lessons at all than take them from Teddy.

These Sunday concerts were occasional events and were never largely attended. There were only a dozen boys and a few masters and their wives at the one at which Old Hell played a Bach Prelude and Fugue and two of Beethoven’s Sonatas, one of them the Appassionata. Adrian was one of the twelve boys. He went alone, and all the time he sat enthralled. He had never before heard such playing.

When the concert ended with the ending of the Appassionata he returned to himself from a state of rapture in which he had been unconscious of his surroundings, of old Mr. Heller himself, of everything but that revelation of a new world. He immediately resolved that he would brave the legendary terrors of Old Hell, and, made suddenly bold by his enthusiasm, he stayed behind when the rest went out of the Hall, and waited for him at the bottom of the steps that mounted to the platform. The old man was still at the piano, a vulture groping vaguely for scraps on the floor of its cage. He had closed the piano and was slowly gathering his music together, and soon he crossed the platform and came down the steps. He did not notice Adrian till he was right up against him. Then he stopped and made a series of inarticulate noises, as though he were breathing aloud. Adrian for the first time noticed the fixed grin and believed, with embarrassment, that the old man was laughing at him. But when he spoke it was evident that he was not laughing, for his voice was polite and kindly.

“Did you … er … did you … er …” He gently moved a large, bony hand in the air as if he were conducting what he was trying to say.

“Yes please, sir,” said Adrian. “I wanted to ask you if I could have music lessons.”

Mr. Heller breathed aloud again. “The … er … the piano?” he asked. He pronounced it piahno.

“Yes, sir.”

“You do … er … you do … er … play?”

“No, not really, sir. Just a little.”

“But you … er … you like music?”

“Yes, sir, very much.”

“Were you … er … here,” he vaguely indicated the air about them, “just now, when … er … when I was … er … playing?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And … er … which of the pieces did you … er … like the … er … the best?”

“That last one, sir—the Appassionata,” said Adrian. Mr. Heller nodded his head slowly several times, as though devoutly agreeing. “You … er … know it, perhaps?”

“Yes, sir, but I’ve never heard it played like that before. Our head-master’s wife at Waldo played it to us sometimes.”

“And she … er … she made rather a … hm! … rather a poor job of it?”

“No, not bad, sir; but nothing like yours.”

“Most of the boys go … er … to Dr. Yardley-Tritton,” said Mr. Heller, as if gently rebuking Adrian for not doing the same. “Why did you … er …?” He indicated in the air the approach of an invisible Adrian to an invisible Mr. Heller.

“I heard Dr. Yardley-Tritton play two Sundays ago, sir,” said Adrian without intended cynicism.

“And that … er … was enough to make you … er … apply … er …?” Mr. Heller was really smiling this time, and Adrian smiled too.

“Yes, sir; to you.”

“Of course, you’ll have to … er … speak to your … er … house-master. But meanwhile, perhaps you’d … er … care … to … er …?”

Adrian gathered that they were to leave the Hall together for some airy destination. “I could give you … er … some … er … some tea.”

Adrian accepted the invitation, and followed Mr. Heller out through the porch. Outside he looked anxiously about him, for he was ashamed of being seen walking with Old Hell, knowing well that the result would be ridicule and scornful curiosity. But at that hour on a Sunday afternoon there were few boys about the school buildings, and they turned out of the cloisters unobserved, followed the edge of one of the football fields, and, to Adrian’s relief, dived down a hidden path through a close hazel-copse. At the end of it they descended rustic steps into a lane, and half-way down the lane Mr. Heller opened a gate in a close oak fence and let Adrian into a small garden. A cinder path ran straight to the porch.

They entered the house, and Mr. Heller, putting a hand on Adrian’s shoulder, propelled him gently out of the narrow hall into a small, dim room. It seemed to Adrian, as he entered, to contain little else than a black grand piano and a table with a white cloth on it. The chief thing he noticed about it was its smell, a close, spicy smell which seemed to be made up of the smell of the inside of a piano and of old books, and the rich aroma of loose tobacco in ajar. It reminded him of the smell of the old ebony snuff-box which his grandfather had said was supposed to have belonged to the poet Pope.

Mr. Heller went to put down the music he was carrying on a chair near the piano. His thin body and hunched shoulders stooped stiffly over the chair, an ancient bird of prey cowering under a cold wind. He fumbled with the music, then, still stooping, spoke to Adrian, his comic, tragic mask peering at him round his bent body; and Adrian suddenly thought of that grim little picture of John Donne in his shroud which hung over the old piano in his grandfather’s study in a black and silver frame. The picture had always horrified and fascinated him, and he had often stared at it as he sat playing to himself.

“You haven’t yet told me your … er … your name,” Mr. Heller was saying.

“Glynde, sir.”

“And your … er … your …?”

“Taylor’s, sir.”

The old man straightened himself and turned to Adrian. “Let me … let me … er … see … er … your hand.”

Adrian, wondering what he meant, shyly held out his small, delicate-fingered hand. Mr. Heller took it in his own long, bony talon, kneeded it, peered at it, turned it over, and peered at it again.

“Hm, yes!” he said, releasing it. “A good … er “—he worked his own marvellously flexible, independent fingers over an immaterial piano—” a good … er … musicianly hand. A good hand for … er … for Bach.”

When Mr. Heller completed a sentence, when he actually uttered a word that gave the sentence meaning, he spoke that word, however commonplace it might be, with a quiet, confidential emphasis and a little jerk of the head, as if he were imparting a happy discovery. More often his sentences never achieved completion; yet in spite of this, Adrian found that it was nearly always easy to read him. Perhaps that gently, rhythmically moving hand of his really conveyed in some mysterious way a definite meaning. But it was a slower method than speech, it demanded more anxious attention in the listener, and it made Adrian even more nervous than he usually was. He was relieved when the door opened and a middle-aged woman came in carrying a tea-tray. Mr. Heller blinked at her through his spectacles.

“Mrs.… er … Mrs.…” he said, making a rhythmical picture of her name in the air; “we shall want … er … an … er … an extra … er …” He indicated Adrian, the tea-table, the invisible kitchen.

“I’ve brought them, sir,” said the woman. “I saw the young gentleman with you as you passed the kitchen window.”

Mr. Heller poured out tea and lifted the cover from the buttered toast, handed Adrian his cup, the sugarbasin, the toast, and then helped himself, all with a slow, courteous formality and an accompaniment of audible breathings, gaspings, and polite, inarticulate noises. It was evident that he enjoyed tea and buttered toast, for he raised a triangle of toast to his mouth and bit it into a mere crescent, chewed it till his whole face seemed to crumple up, and then took long gulps from his cup with the slow gusto of a drinking horse. Yet there was nothing boorish in the effect of this behaviour; rather a formal and leisurely dignity. Suddenly he realised the presence of a new cake, drew it towards him, and, seizing a knife, attacked it blindly but vigorously until he had reduced it to a wreckage of odd fragments.

Adrian, small, shy, and demure, sat eating and drinking, occasionally giving the old man a timid smile or replying, “Yes, please, sir “and “No, thank you, sir “to his vague hospitable noises.

When they had finished, Mr. Heller pushed his chair back and stood up.

“Well!” he said with a long breath, as if suddenly conscious that they had delayed too long and must get to business. He turned to the piano. “I’ll just … er …” He slowly and rhythmically fingered a contrapuntal passage for two hands on the air of the sitting-room and Adrian gathered with a thrill of excitement that Mr. Heller was going to play to him.

The old man sat down at the piano, fumbled among the music on an adjacent chair, emerged from the struggle with a battered volume, and beckoned Adrian to bring up another chair and sit beside him. He set the volume on the music-stand, slowly and patiently found his place, then turned Donne’s death mask on Adrian, blinked, and asked him: “You know the … the Waldstein Sonata?”

“No, sir.”

“Ah!” The ah implied that Adrian had a treat in store. The old man was now turning down the lower corners of the pages he was going to play.

“You will … er …?” He was politely requesting Adrian to turn over for him.

“I’m afraid I shan’t be able to follow, sir.”

“I’ll … er … I’ll …” Mr. Heller indicated that he would nod his head at the critical moments. “Now!”

He faced the music, foresquare to the piano, his hands held over the keyboard with the fists clenched. He appeared to be collecting himself, gathering himself into the mood that the music demanded. Then with his right fist he slowly beat time, looking at Adrian. “You see?” he said, and then beat time again. His intention seemed to be to convey the mood of the music to Adrian. Then again he squared himself, paused, opened his hands, dropped them quietly to the keys, and began.

There was in Mr. Heller’s playing everything that he lacked in manner and conversation. There was strength, precision, delicacy, a clear, rhythmical articulateness, and above all the presence of a powerful control. The piece he had just begun opened with a soft drumming, and Adrian, recalling the playing of Dr. Yardley-Tritton, was astonished at the strength and precision which Mr. Heller conveyed in that soft shimmer of sound. Teddy, he thought, would have made it sound trivial at once, the puffing of a toy steam-engine. But there was no triviality about Mr. Heller. Piano-playing for him was not an amiable adornment but a religious act. He could be rich, mysterious, melancholy, threatening, explosive, triumphant, gay, even rollicking, but of triviality he was incapable. Adrian was carried away, thrilled to the marrow by the soft, mysterious pulsings, the terrifying crescendos, the sudden plunges into abysmal silences in that first movement. He was so enthralled that, after a few pages, he forgot to watch for Mr. Heller’s nod, and was brought to himself by frantic, inarticulate noises that rose above the hurrying noise of the music and culminated in an infuriated: “B-b-b-boy!”

Adrian sprang to his feet, fumbled helplessly at the turned-up ear of the page in an agony of terror, and flapped it over at last, feeling that he had only just averted an appalling, a world-wrecking disaster. He sank back on his chair, palpitating, exhausted by the shock; but Mr. Heller was already far ahead down the next page, carried onwards, despite the unturned leaf, by the sheer momentum of the music, and in a minute he had nodded again and again Adrian had missed the nod.

Mr. Heller stopped in mid-course. He stared at Adrian with gaping mouth and poised fists conducting furiously in the air. “B-b-but … but … don’t you … er … er … c-can’t you … er …!” he gasped and spluttered in outraged, helpless expostulation.

Adrian sat there scarlet, terrified, covered with shame. Suddenly Mr. Heller was calm. He turned back two pages, pointed to a particular bar, glanced at Adrian, gasped like a fish in the bottom of a boat, poised himself for another start, and once more the room brimmed with music. Thenceforward Adrian kept a firm hold on himself, taking care not to resign himself again to the rapture of the music. He concentrated his whole attention on Mr. Heller’s head and on the task of turning the pages suddenly and neatly. When the movement ended there was a long pause during which the two sat silent and motionless, not wishing either to stir or speak.

Then the hands were lifted and poised again, slowly lowered, and like the slow, serene dawning of a new world, the next movement began. It was so slow that Adrian was no longer afraid of yielding to the music. He saw too that the movement changed to a rondo before the page had to be turned, and he knew that he would recognise the change when it came. It came—after a slow, secret preparation, richly satisfying in its beauty, yet persistently promising something more—on a single long note in the treble which Mr. Heller held with the pedal, his spread hands lifted above the notes, acting the pause which the pedal sustained. With hands still poised he turned Donne’s death mask on Adrian and said, quietly and articulately: “The opening of the Gates of Heaven!”

Then he turned his face to the music-stand and a golden illumination of sound, soft, level, serene, flowed out into the room. It glowed for days, weeks, months, with a soft, radiant leisure, and then a thrill shook it, it became more brilliant, for a long while it quivered and sparkled, dimmed and brightened again; and then it rushed into a still greater brightness, dazzling, blinding; broke into leaping tongues of flame; grew portentously into a conflagration of sound.

The great blaze died down to a shimmer, soft and luminous. A clanging flame shot upwards and died. Another, still more fierce. And then another, volcanic, appalling, that faded, the moment after, into darkness. Adrian had resigned himself again to the music. He had discovered that by leaning back in his chair and fixing his eyes on the back of Mr. Heller’s head he could both enjoy the music and keep watch for the nod. And now once more in the darkness the Gates of Heaven were opened and, golden and softly luminous, the creation of light began again, slowly evolving through long ages; increasing, increasing to a dazzling brightness; bursting into still fiercer flames, still more thunderous explosions of fire; and so again dying down, crumbling into grey ash, and, bursting out afresh, recreated into a being more ardent, more torrential, till at its final avatar it spread suddenly, like a bursting furnace, into a quivering, softly crackling lake of fire, shaken with hurrying tremors, flinging up sudden, bright showers of sparks, and finally gathering itself up, like a waterspout at sea, into an all-concluding holocaust.

Mr. Heller sat silent, his hands on his knees, still absorbed, it seemed, in that amazing world which he had just called into existence. Then, like one emerging from a trance, he began to move, to come to himself again, and soon he turned his kindly smile, his real smile, upon Adrian. He saw the wonder and delight in the boy’s eyes.

“Well, boy,” he said, “it’s … it’s … er … it’s … ! “His gestures conveyed that the Waldstein Sonata was a sublime mastcrpicce, a miracle. Adrian thought so too. There was reason, this time, he felt that words should fail Mr. Heller. He himself had nothing to say, indeed he felt an irresistible desire to refrain from saying anything, and he was relieved to see that Mr. Heller did not expect him to speak. The old man took the volume from the music-stand, laid it on the pile of music beside him, and began to tell Adrian again that he must see his house-master about coming to him for lessons. Then they arranged between them the day and hour when he would turn up for his first lesson.

It was time for Adrian to go, for in half an hour there would be Sunday evening chapel, and he ran down the lane in a state of glowing spiritual intoxication, feeling no less than that a new realm of life had been opened to him.

He ran on, up the steps, through the copse, and along the edge of the deserted playing-field, impelled by that inner glow to a furious bodily energy.

XI

That first visit to Mr. Heller was for Adrian the beginning of many similar experiences equally wonderful. That room with its close, spicy smell, which he ever afterwards associated in his memory with Mr. Heller, became and remained throughout his life, though five years later he went out of it never to enter it again, one of the sacred places of his spirit. There, for an hour twice a week, he had his music lesson, and there, when the lesson was over, Mr. Heller would play to him, and Adrian would gladly have listened, if there had been time, for as long as the old man cared to play. He played him ancient and modern music of all kinds, and explained the nature of every kind and the life and genius of its composers in a way that entranced Adrian. It was only, he soon discovered, in the preliminaries, the commonplaces, the brief, practical moments of conversation that the old man was so hopelessly inarticulate. When he warmed to a subject in which he was interested he could be coherent and eloquent enough.

“It’s your duty, Glynde,” he would say, beating time softly with a clenched fist on Adrian’s shoulder, “to make yourself acquainted with every composer of good music. I am a narrow and prejudiced old man, and I consider I have every right to be, because I’ve given them all a fair trial and I’ve chosen my gods. My narrowness, you see, comes of breadth. But you have no business to be narrow. A narrowness that comes of inexperience is quite unwarrantable, quite … er … unwarrantable.” He emphasised his quite with a heavier punch on Adrian’s shoulder. “I shall try to prejudice you, but you must not listen to me. You must listen to the music, not to me, and choose what you like best, regardless of what I may say. Don’t ask me who are the best composers. If you do, I shall try … I shall try very hard … not to tell you. You may perhaps notice that I play a lot of Beethoven, a great deal of Bach, Byrd, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, and Brahms, a little of Chopin, Debussy, Ravel, almost none of Schumann or Scriabine or Mendelssohn. You may notice that, and you may begin to draw conclusions. Well, all I can do is to forbid you to draw conclusions; or, if you insist, if your mind will put two and two together, then don’t allow your conclusions to affect your own choice. Remember that your master is a narrow and prejudiced old man—worse, an old man who glories in his narrowness and prejudices.”

Adrian’s early lessons were, of course, very elementary; but Mr. Heller had fired him with a fever to play, and he practised with immense diligence. Sometimes Mr. Heller played him tunes of extreme simplicity by Bach, Haydn, or Mozart, and those pieces, under his hands, became exquisitely carved crystals, perfect in every curve. Adrian saw with surprise that he approached each with the same solemn initiatory pause with which he had approached the Waldstein Sonata, as though even such simple things demanded of him the same seriousness and respect as the most complex.

One day he played a Bourrée by Bach with such irresistible beauty that Adrian begged him to play it again. He did so, and then, turning to Adrian, he asked: “Do you … er … like that one especially?”

Adrian, with a sigh of overflowing satisfaction, said that he did.

“Then,” said Mr. Heller, “you had better learn it.”

“Learn it?” said Adrian. “Could I?”

“Certainly you could. It’s … er … very … er … simple.” He paused, and then added: “And, like all very … er … simple things, it’s … er … very … er … difficult. I will tell you something, Glynde, that I have no … er … no business to tell you. Dr. Yardley-Tritton could never … er … play, play you understand, that piece, even if he practised it for … er … for a hundred years.” He turned Donne’s death mask upon Adrian. “You see, boy?” His kindly smile illuminated the mask. “You see?”

“Yes, sir,” said Adrian.

“But you, I think, with a little practise, will … er … play it. I’ll play it through to you again.” He did so, and paused in his usual way when he had finished it. “Well,” he said after the pause, “it’s … it’s … er … it’s … You see, boy?”

“Yes, sir,” said Adrian.

“Well, it’s … er … it’s a jewel. Take it and practise it.” He handed the music to Adrian.

So the term passed. After the small life at Waldo, this new life seemed to Adrian strenuous, full, packed with continually varying activities and emotions. There were the pleasures and drudgeries of school work. He hated mathematics and science: the hours spent over them were almost unbearable. But in classics, and English, and French he caught fugitive glimpses of something that he was looking for, something indefinable and ecstatic, which he found in Ronny Dakyn, in the music into which Old Hell was initiating him, in the thrilling abandonment of football.

His absorption in Ronny Dakyn resulted in a complete duality of attitude towards him. For Adrian cherished in his mind an ideal Ronny, his greatest friend, who loved him as much as he himself loved Ronny, to the exclusion of everyone else. With this Ronny he would have long, happy, intimate talks. They would go about arm in arm, as the real Dakyn did with superior persons of his own standing; they would sit together all evening in a study from which Ellenger was for ever excluded, and they would spend the holidays alone together on some blessed island inaccessible to the rest of humanity.

Such was Adrian’s secret Ronny, a being kept alive and credible in his mind by the bodily presence of Dakyn, that smart young man who sometimes presided over prep., who stood with the other prefects facing the rest of the house during prayers, and who occasionally dropped a kindly and condescending word or two to an adoring Adrian who blacked his shoes, brushed his clothes, swept out his study, and obeyed his lightest wish with grateful alacrity. For the first time for many years his heart had found a resting-place. When he had fixed it on his absent mother, he had found not satisfaction nor happiness, but only hunger, and, when the real mother came at last, disillusionment. But now his heart was fixed not on a vague hope, but on a human being, and although he still allowed comforting fantasies to lend what reality denied him, he felt blissfully secure; for having been so long denied all, he was content, supremely content, with little. His love was busy and warmly housed and he was too young and inexperienced to realise how insecure was his tenure. But, insecure or not, it gave him, while it lasted, just that basis which at the time he so urgently needed. It spurred him into games-playing, of which he had previously been afraid, and it enabled him to possess his soul humbly but stoically in the ceaseless, internecine rowdyism of Common-room, by which, shy and nervous as he was, he would otherwise have been utterly cowed. Even as it was, the rowdyism harrowed him: but he endured it: he had his compensations.

The chief blot on his happiness was Ellenger. He hated him, not merely because Ellenger, with the bully’s instinct, treated him harshly and contemptuously, but yet more because he invaded his paradise and came between him and Dakyn, and because—worse still—Dakyn obviously liked him. And when he learned one day just before the end of term, from a conversation between them which he overheard when preparing tea for them in the study, that Dakyn was to spend the latter part of the coming holidays with Ellenger, he was filled with a jealousy which poisoned his life for several days. He longed for Ellenger to leave Charminster, he longed for him to die. If hate could kill, Ellenger’s days would certainly have been numbered.

Just as his infatuation had imprinted on Adrian’s mind every detail of Dakyn’s face and form, so had his hatred done with those of Ellenger. Every crease, every curve of Ellenger’s face, the very hues and texture of its flesh, were engraved with horrible vividness on his mind’s eye—the square, fleshy cheeks, mottled and grained with red; the smouldering brown eyes; the low brow fringed with lank black hair like the hair of a Japanese doll.

The days drew on towards the holidays: the last week had begun, and Adrian was divided against himself. He looked forward more eagerly than ever to release from school. How marvellous, how unbelievable to think that a week hence he would be at Yarn again. After this whirl of new experiences, it seemed more like a year than three months since he had seen Aunt Clara and Uncle Bob. How delicious to think that only a week hence he would be sitting in the evening in the comfortable peace of the drawing-room at Yarn instead of in the exhausting and homeless riot of Common-room; eating the excellent Yarn food with clean silver, clean, sharp knives, snowy tablecloth and flowers on the table, instead of the rough fare, the dirty cloth, and saw-edged knives and bent-pronged forks of Taylor’s. But across this delighted anticipation struck the haunting thought of separation from Dakyn. For five weeks Dakyn would have dropped out of his life. But not out of his thoughts. A hundred times a day he would think of him, and in bed at night when there was nothing else to interrupt him. Yes, at least he would have his thoughts; but thoughts would be a poor substitute for the bright, visible reality. And so he looked forward with equal delight and dread to the final morning.

When at last the eve of the holidays was at hand he saw nothing all day, as it happened, of Dakyn. Each time he went to the study, it chanced that Dakyn was not there, and when at last Adrian settled himself to read there in the desperate hope that Dakyn would come in, the hateful footsteps of Ellenger sounded in the passage, and Adrian, with black disappointment in his heart, fled disconsolate to Common-room. Could it possibly be that he would leave Charminster without a few last moments in the study with Ronny, moments which would probably, as so often, bring nothing but a casual cheerful phrase or two from Ronny and a shy answer from Adrian, but precious moments, for all that? Adrian caught a brief glimpse of him at prayers, and went miserable to bed.

Perhaps Dakyn would want him to do something for him next morning before they started, or even if not, surely he would send for him to say good-bye. But next morning came and there was no summons. Adrian had stubbornly set his heart on a last glimpse of Dakyn, a last word from him. It had become a sheer necessity to his peace of mind. If he failed of these, he told himself, his whole holiday would be ruined.

When the moment to start for the station had almost arrived, he ran in despair to the study. What excuse he would make when he got there he did not know and in his misery he hardly cared. The door was half open. Timidly, with his heart in his mouth, he looked in. His eyes met the smouldering brown eyes of Ellenger, raised at the sound of his step from a bag in which he was packing something.

“I … I … I looked in,” Adrian stammered, “to see if Dakyn wanted me for anything.”

“I don’t think so,” said Ellenger.

Adrian, crestfallen and forlorn, hesitated for a moment and then turned to go, casting a mute, helpless glance at his enemy.

To his amazement Ellenger’s face was suddenly transformed, illuminated. “Good-bye,” he said, and for the first time there was no hostility in his voice. “I’ll tell him you came.”

Adrian ran downstairs in astonishment. “Why, he might easily have been quite a decent sort of chap,” he thought to himself.

The rush to the station, the scramble for a seat in the special for Waterloo, the hubbub in the crowded carriage that persisted throughout the journey almost made Adrian forget his heartache. But as the train ran into Waterloo, it suddenly flared up inside him, a keen inner wound. “This is the end,” he thought. “I shan’t see him now.”

On the platform, Aunt Clara, majestic and smiling, was waiting for him. She spotted him as he got out of the carriage. They walked together in the stream of boys and parents, towards the van, followed by a porter whom Aunt Clara, in her cool, practical way had secured before the train came in. They stood together on the outskirts of the crowd that seethed about the luggage van, Adrian glancing anxiously among the crowd. But there was no sign of Ronny. The porter had found Adrian’s portmanteau and they followed him to the barrier. As they stood together beside the portmanteau while their porter went to secure a cab, Adrian felt a smart tap on his shoulder, and, turning his head, saw Dakyn with Ellenger on the far side of him. They were already past him, but Dakyn was looking back, and now he waved his hand. “Good-bye, little man,” he shouted. “Have a good time.”

Adrian, getting into the cab, felt himself plunged in a warm ocean of happiness.

“Who is your handsome friend, Adrian?” Aunt Clara asked as they drove off.

“He’s called Dakyn,” Adrian replied.

“He looks a nice fellow,” said Aunt Clara.

“He is,” said Adrian coolly and judicially; “quite.”

XII

More than a fortnight before the beginning of the holidays Clara had written to her sister-in-law. She sat at the writing-desk in the morning-room at Yarn while Bob read the newspaper on the sofa near the window.

“I’m afraid we must ask her,” she said, “for Adrian’s sake.”

“For Adrian’s sake?” Bob looked up in surprise from the newspaper. “You’ll get precious little thanks from Adrian for asking her.”

“I know that, my dear; but if we don’t ask her, she may insist on his joining her somewhere else.”

“I don’t think she will.”

“Neither do I. She will doubtless remember what happened when she insisted on his going with her to the Crowhursts. But still …!”

Bob chuckled. “Young monkey! You know, I should never have believed he had it in him.”

Clara smiled grimly. “Needs must,” she said, “when the devil drives. You might not have thought, either, that Minnie had it in her to be a first-rate educator of backward youth; and yet—in perfect innocence, it’s true—she did more for Adrian last holidays than Waldo did in four years.”

“She taught him, you mean, to stand on his own feet.”

“Not only that. She also taught him to tread on her toes when she kicked his shins. No, I don’t think Minnie will come. I hope not, because I’ve not had long enough yet to recover from her last visit to feel inclined for her again so soon. But after all, what are we to do? Our position is equivocal.”

“Not at all. Adrian writes to say he’s coming for the holidays, and what can we do but welcome him?”

Clara thought for a moment,” H … m. Yes!” she said. “That sounds simple. Unless, of course, Minnie writes to him and insists on his going somewhere else.”

“Well, Adrian would refuse.”

“Yes, in the way he refused last time. But this time he would probably flee not to Father, but to us here, and that would be extremely awkward.”

“It would if Minnie cut up rough, but not if she took it lying down as she did the Crowhurst business.”

“It would be awkward in either case, because, even though she took it lying down, she would bear us a grudge for it, and for Adrian’s sake I don’t want to get on the wrong side of Minnie.”

Bob burst out laughing. “That, Clara,” he said, “is very difficult for anyone to believe who had the privilege of overhearing one or two of your conversations with her last August.”

Clara smiled broadly. “There are times,” she said, “when my principles break down.”

“And the cat takes over?”

“Yes, the starved cat allows itself a square meal. But that’s quite against my principles, and at the moment, my dear, I’m applying my principles. I think, in fact, that I’d better invite her.”

“Yes, I suppose you had.” Bob resumed his newspaper. Then he laid it down to add: “And don’t let it be for nothing, Clara, that you’re the daughter of a distinguished writer. Turn her out a cordial invitation which she will somehow feel unwilling to accept. Put your heart into it, my dear. I know I can trust you.”

Again he retired behind the newspaper, and Clara, with eyebrows thoughtfully raised and the expression of a fastidious poet engaged upon a masterpiece, lifted her pen.

Apparently her labours were successful, since for a fortnight they produced no reply. Then she received a letter from Paris. She read it to Bob in the morning-room interjecting glosses of her own:

“Dearest Clara, What will you think of me? A dangerous question, my dear Minnie. I received your letter in Ireland, where I was staying with the Trevises, and not a moment could I get to myself to write and thank you for your very kind invitation. We lived in a whirl, my dear; hunting, shooting, luncheons, and never less than twelve at dinner, not to mention bridge at all hours. Alas, poor harassed Minnie! I was to have left there on the 12th, but Sir George insisted on me staying another week, and I felt it would really be too bad to break up the party by refusing. Beware, Bob, of the crushing responsibilities incurred by charm. Now, as you see, I am here in Paris, I came over three days ago with Letty Finsbury, to do some shopping before I sail next month. The latest modes are simply incredible, my dear. I shall hardly dare to wear some of the dresses I have got. However, they will expect it of me in India, I suppose. They always rather look to me, you know, and I owe it to Archie not to fall short. You see, Bob? A martyr to duty, as ever! Once more, thank you for so kindly inviting me. Pray don’t mention it, Minnie. But, after all, you didn’t, for a fortnight. If I hadn’t been so fearfully rushed, I need not say how delighted I should have been to accept. Best Xmas wishes to you and Bob.

“Yours affectly

“Minnie Clandon.

“P.S.—How sad not to see Adrian. Give him his mother’s best wishes.”

“That was a near thing,” said Bob, “a very near thing. I wonder if she had to open the envelope to put in that postscript.”

Clara glanced again at the letter. “Astonishing, chattering little person!” she said reflectively and with a faint tinge of tenderness in her voice. “Don’t you feel shaken and deafened. Bob, by the breathless, purposeless energy of it all?”

“Minnie certainly puts herself into her letters,” said Bob.

Clara nodded eloquently. “She does,” she said; “but she very nearly forgot to put Adrian into this one.”

As Clara drove from Waterloo to Liverpool Street with Adrian, he asked her suddenly: “Aunt Clara, is Mother going to be at Yarn?”

Clara, who had been watching with sad, reflective eyebrows the dome of St. Paul’s swelling portentously above the huddle of buildings that clustered beneath it along the river, brought her gaze back into the cab. “Your mother? No, my dear, She’s in Paris. Are you disappointed?”

“Not exactly,” said Adrian with a dry smile. “What has she gone to Paris for?”

“To buy dresses to take back to India. She gives me to understand that she is a leader of fashion in India. She sails next month.”

“For India?”

“Yes, to resume the leadership of fashion there. Where does she lead it to, I wonder?”

“Not to the Crowhursts, I suppose?” said Adrian. He blushed a little at his boldness, and they both burst out laughing.

“No,” said Clara, “presumably not to the Crowhursts but”—she sighed wearily—“round and round in an elegant spiral, I suppose, ending at last in stark nakedness, which is the apotheosis, the heaven, of fashion.”

Adrian could not follow Aunt Clara into these metaphysical realms, but he was accustomed to similar flights of hers which, he supposed, were not really nonsense. She, meanwhile, had fallen into her reverie again, but she disturbed it to remark, as if to herself:

“Judging by evening dresses I have seen lately, I gather that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”

As they approached Liverpool Street she said: “We are driving over to Abbot’s Randale next Thursday for Christmas. We shall be there only three or four days, because your grandfather is hard at work on a masterpiece and cannot long be interrupted.”

Adrian thought that there was a tinge of sarcasm in her tone and was somewhat shocked. “Aren’t they masterpieces, then?” he asked.

“Aren’t what masterpieces, my dear?”

“Grandfather’s poems.”

“Oh, certainly they are. Do you doubt it?”

“I thought, from your voice, that you doubted it,” said Adrian.

Aunt Clara pursed her lips and thought for a moment. “If I have doubts,” she said, “they are that any poetry is a masterpiece. I prefer my bread and butter thin, you see, and without jam. But, as poetry goes, your grandfather’s is good—oh, extremely good.” She sighed regretfully. “But what prose he would have written,” she said.

“Did Father like poetry?” Adrian enquired.

“Yes, Adrian. Your father, as a boy and a young man, used to read a great deal of poetry. If he had read less, he might… perhaps … have …” Her voice died away; her eyes studied the passing shops.

“He might have …?” Adrian prompted.

Aunt Clara suddenly woke up. “… have avoided your mother, my dear, to put it flat.”

“And that would really have been better,” Adrian, to her surprise, asserted seriously. Then he added: “But in that case I wouldn’t be here.”

Clara glanced round at him. “No, my dear, I suppose you wouldn’t; and that,” she said, taking his hand, “would have been a great pity.”

It had seemed natural to Adrian that Aunt Clara did not care for poetry. He could not have explained why he thought it natural, but it fitted in, in his unreflecting knowledge of her, both with the charming and amusing qualities she possessed and those she lacked. He had discovered early that there were things which it was useless to demand of her, and after a few early failures he had ceased to demand them. That no doubt was the secret of the excellent terms they were on.

Minnie Clandon was different. Of her too there were things that it was useless to demand, but they were the things that every child demands of its mother, and Adrian had not been able until a few months ago to cease to demand them of her. But apart from the fact that Minnie was his mother, Adrian would have found it much more difficult to cease to demand them of her than it had been in the case of Aunt Clara, because there was this profound difference between them, that Clara’s instinctive honesty compelled her to discourage such demands, whereas Minnie Clandon, with that perverse duplicity found in frivolous and flirtatious women, did her best to force everyone she met to demand of her the very things that she was unable or unwilling to give, not only to her child, but to anyone.

Adrian’s processes as regards the two women were entirely unconscious, for his self-awareness was still almost exclusively emotional: there was little or nothing of explicit intelligence in it. He would have been amazed and puzzled if he had been informed of the fact that he had a very clear notion of his aunt’s limitations. But Clara had been right when she told Bob that Minnie had done wonders to develop Adrian during the summer holidays, for he was now beginning consciously to use his intellect, and the first person he was focusing it upon was Minnie herself. His remark to Clara in the cab, the remark in reply to her indiscreet reference to his father and mother, was the first outward evidence of it.

But Clara herself was still free from his conscious scrutiny. He knew at once, for instance, that it was natural to her to dislike poetry, and her confession of that dislike did not have the smallest influence on his own attitude. But he had not achieved this through conscious thought. His own attitude to poetry was governed by his attitude to his grandfather. His grandfather attracted and interested him enormously. His grandfather had told him a mysterious, absorbing story, a story which threw a revealing light on all sorts of hidden feelings, and had told him that this story was poetry. That was enough to assure him of poetry’s supreme value. And if it had not been enough, Aunt Clara’s statement that his father used to read poetry would have completed his conviction. Her corollary that poetry had been responsible for his father’s unfortunate marriage had left him entirely unaffected. He had never himself read poetry: the poetry he had been made to learn and say by heart at Waldo and Charminster he had looked upon and still looked upon merely as a part of school and therefore as quite separate from this other poetry, this mysterious thing into which his grandfather had given him an exciting glimpse. Having heard from Aunt Clara on the drive to Liverpool Street that his grandfather was engaged on what she had with a faint ironic tinge called “a masterpiece,” Adrian on the first occasion that he found himself alone with the old man asked him whether it was the story of the old Chinese and the crystal tank.

“Yes,” said Oliver, “it is; but the working out of the story took me much further than I had expected. It is turning into a great long business about man’s search for wisdom. But how did you know I was working on a poem at present?”

“From Aunt Clara,” said Adrian, “she said you were engaged on a masterpiece.”

“‘Engaged on a masterpiece,’ she said, did she? But your Aunt doesn’t care much about poetry.”

“No,” said Adrian, “she prefers prose.”

Oliver looked at the boy with an amused twinkle in his eye. “And which do you prefer?” he asked.

Adrian blushed. “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about either,” he said. “Of course I’ve had to learn poetry for repetition at school, but when it’s work it’s different somehow.”

“But don’t you read books for your own amusement?”

“Oh, yes,” said Adrian.

“And what do you read?”

“Oh, just anything I come across. I read Bulldog Drummond last term, and Mr. Polly.”

“Mr. Polly? Wells! H … m! I suppose you might do worse. And what else?”

“Oh, Treasure Island.”

“And did you like Treasure Island?”

“Not much,” said Adrian, and then added: “it wasn’t bad.”

“Perhaps,” said his grandfather, “you found it too exciting. I used to love exciting books when I was your age, but now I simply can’t endure them. The novel of adventure, in which there is a rapid succession of exciting events, is to me insufferably tedious. I yawn and yawn. The only way an author can entice me into enduring the monotony of it is to butter it liberally with psychology. What I mean is that all I care about is the adventures that happen inside people, adventures of the mind, adventures of the soul. If the writer will give me plenty of that I’ll be content to swallow his action. Do you see what I mean?”

“You mean your narrowness comes from breadth.”

The old man turned amazed speculation upon Adrian, but Adrian had not intended to astonish him and was not aware that he had done so.

“Mr. Heller, my music-master, said that,” he added calmly. “He said he was a narrow and prejudiced old man and that he had a perfect right to be, because he had given all the composers a fair trial and had chosen his gods, but that I had no right to be narrow yet.”

Oliver Glynde nodded his head approvingly. “He’s quite right,” he said. “And who are his gods?”

“His gods are Beethoven and Bach, and William Byrd, and after them Handel, Haydn, and Mozart.”

“Good. He and I belong to the same religion.”

“And who are your gods, Grandfather? I mean, among poets.”

“I have two heavens,” said the old man, “one for gods who are the gods of everyone who loves literature, gods who are high above our feeble ambitions and emulations: the other for the gods whom I regard as my masters and humbly try to imitate. In the first heaven are Shakespeare, and Dante, and I think … yes, I think, Wordsworth. In the second are a strangely assorted three: Racine, Landor, and John Donne, whose picture, there, you so often look at.”

“And must I read all those if I want to know about poetry?”

“No, old man, I wouldn’t try any of them except Shakespeare for a long time yet. But there are plenty of others you would enjoy, and several of them I ought to have put in the first heaven sitting on the steps of the great ones’ thrones. I will give you the poems of Keats. But when you read poetry you must not forget, if you want to enjoy it to the full, that it not only means what it says in words but also a great many things it doesn’t say. It has meanings as music has meanings. You would say, wouldn’t you, that a Sonata by Beethoven had a perfectly definite meaning of its own?”

“Yes,” said Adrian, remembering Mr. Heller’s playing of the Appassionata and the Waldstein.

“But it is a meaning that has no need of words—that cannot, in fact, be put into words. Well, the sound of poetry has a meaning of its own, and so has the rhythm, and these meanings reinforce the meaning of the words. As for the words, they also have many meanings besides the one particular meaning of which they tell.”

“Yes,” said Adrian, “we talked about that, didn’t we, when you told me the story of the old Chinee?”

Oliver nodded. “So you see that what a poet does when he writes poetry is to say something to you as fully as forcefully and as unforgettably as possible. He entices your mind, your heart, and all your senses into making you accept what he offers. If say ‘Pass the jam,’ I am saying a perfectly plain thing, I am simply shying a wellaimed brick at your mind. But when I write a poem I make an organised attack on you. I shy a dozen bricks all at once, each brick aimed carefully. One hits your head, another your heart, five hit your five senses, another your love of dancing, another your love of music, another your love of beautiful shapes and colours, another catches you on the soul. That’s what poetry does: it bombards every part of your defences at once.”

Adrian appeared to be puzzled. “Then why … how does Aunt Clara … manage to hold out against the bombardment?”

“A … h!” The old man burst into a laugh. “Trust your Aunt Clara to hold out,” he said. Then, serious once more, he explained: “Poetry conquers only those who wish to be conquered. If you don’t yield to it, it can’t touch you.”

“Then Aunt Clara is one of those who don’t like being bombarded?”

Oliver laughed again. Precisely,” he said. “Dear Clara never gives herself beyond a certain point.”

That remark of his grandfather’s came as a revelation to Adrian. It illuminated what he had hitherto not consciously seen; it recalled and explained childish disappointments, the pained sense, once a great sorrow to him, that Aunt Clara did not love him as he loved her. No, Aunt Clara did not give herself, that was it. But it was this very fact, he next moment felt, though he could not have explained why, that made her say such delightfully amusing things.

“You mustn’t tell your aunt I said that,” said his grandfather,” because there’s nothing that more annoys people who don’t give themselves than to be told so.”

“Did Father give himself, then?” Adrian asked.”

“Oh, completely,” replied the old man fondly. “He was as open and unfettered as the sky. Why, didn’t he end by giving his life?”

XIII

The holiday life at Abbot’s Randale and at Yarn seemed to Adrian, by its contrast with Charminster, much richer and freer and more delightful than it had seemed when he had come to it from Waldo. The quiet and restfulness after the everlasting turbulence, the long leisurely vacancy of the days after the weeks of cast-iron routine, the beauty of the rooms in his grandfather’s house and the civilisation of the meals filled him with delight. It was wonderful to be able to slink away after lunch to his grandfather’s study and play the little piano and stare at the death-mask of John Donne, instead of having to rush to the rowdy boot-room to change into chilly shorts and shirt for fives or football; to realise that in the evening there would be no prep., no prayers, nothing to do but to talk or read the volume of Keats which his grandfather had given him; and, best of all, to awake in the morning and suddenly to discover that no crashing bell was on the point of wrecking the early morning peace, that there was at least an hour in which to lie and dream of what he would do during the day, of the new tune he had begun to compose, or of Ronny, who, though away in unknown surroundings, was extraordinarily real, extraordinarily near to him as he lay thinking of him now and holding long imaginary conversations with him.

The separation from Ronny was not nearly so unbearable as he had expected. The absence of the real Dakyn seemed merely to add a background of warm, luxurious melancholy to his holiday pursuits, for there was always present to him the comforting assurance that in a few weeks he would see him again. But suppose something happened to prevent Ronny from returning after the holidays. Once or twice that thought occurred to Adrian, and at once there yawned beneath him such a cavern of misery that he drove the thought from his mind. It would be impossible, it seemed to him, to go on at Charminster if Ronny were not there.

That thought made him realise for the first time that life’s happiness hangs by a thread which an insignificant accident or the idle whim of an unknown person may snap irremediably. Yet, though his mind perceived that fearful truth, there burned in some deeper recess of his being a faith in the security of his happiness, a faith which was perhaps produced by nothing more than the happiness itself. The accident, of which the bare thought chilled and terrified him, would not, he felt sure, actually happen.

In the afternoon he played over a new piece he had composed, fastidiously altering it here and there and critically trying over each new version, lingering enchanted over each phrase; and his glowing absorption in the music reinforced his faith in the security of his joy. He played the piece to his grandfather, who praised it and, bringing music-paper from a drawer, showed him how to write it down.

“Have you shown your pieces to Mr. Heller?” the old man asked.

“Oh, no!” said Adrian.

“Why not?”

“I daren’t. He’s so very particular.”

“But so are your pieces,” said Oliver.

“They’re particular?” said Adrian, knitting his brows.

“Yes. You have polished them down, haven’t you, to their clearest and simplest. There’s nothing in them, is there, that doesn’t seem real and alive to you? That should be the foundation of every piece of music and of every poem, however elaborate. I believe that you should be able to play the essence of a symphony with one finger. All music and all art must have a structure. If you take away the flesh, with its warmth and colour, its wonderful curves and folds and creases, its beautiful decorations of hair, you should find the skeleton; and if you take away the bony limbs and curves and flourishes of the skeleton, you should find the backbone, the spine on which all these are hung in perfect balance; and in the spine you should find the spinal cord which holds even the spine together and makes it supple. The first and last quality of music is in its spinal cord. Have you ever read The Book of Job? There is a wonderful saying there which is true not only of human beings but also of art: “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither.” You cannot tell if a man has a perfect body until you see him naked. It is easy to make anyone look beautiful if you dress him up in gorgeous clothes, and it is easy to make music sound lovely at a first hearing if you dress it up in elaborate harmonies and rhythms and orchestration. But if the music is really good it must be able to endure the light of day upon its nakedness. Nowadays tricks of harmony-weaving and pattern-weaving and tone-weaving by means of masses of different instruments have become so elaborate and so ingenious that symphonies and tone-poems, like brocaded dresses stiff with whalebone, stand up of themselves even though there is no living body inside them. Be as subtle and intricate as you like, but always build your elaborations out of a simple, clear, and vital core. That is what I try to do. And not only that. Your elaborations must not be merely applied to that central simplicity: they must grow out of it. When I talked of dresses and nakedness, I gave you the wrong idea. I should have compared music to a seed from which springs a growth of roots and branches, leaves and flowers.”

Adrian loved these private talks, and the general talk at meals. The talk at Abbot’s Randale was for him a continual feast. It fed something in him which had long been starved, and it provided him with cud which he ruminated at leisure. Things which were vague or incomprehensible when he first heard them became clear in the light of some chance saying of his grandfather’s on the following day.

The subject of art arose again at dinner next evening. It began with the Burgundy. Dates were bandied about, and Adrian caught the sound of strange names: Romanee, Hospices de Beaune, Nuits Saint Georges; and then the bottle that was in question at the moment and reclined luxuriously in a wicker cradle, was carefully poured out by Oliver himself, who rose from his chair and circled the table to do so. When he had returned to his place and helped himself he raised his glass and inhaled its fragrance. His fine old beak of a nose seemed to grow finer, more fastidiously inquisitive, the nostrils more proudly arched, the full, well-shaped lips fuller and redder with anticipation. Then, before tasting, he raised his head and his eyes shone.

“Exquisite!” he said. “A work of art; nothing less!”

He took a careful sip and so did the other two. It was as if they were partaking of a sacrament.

“Better!” said Clara with a sigh of satisfaction.

The old man raised an eyebrow. “Better?”

“Than a work of art,” said Clara. “It’s real. It’s an exquisite and delicate emotion, not merely the expression of one.”

“Then we are not to express our emotions?” asked Oliver, with the gleam of a smile in his eyes and at the corners of his mouth.

“Only in extreme moderation,” said Clara, “otherwise one tends to become … well, a mere Italian tenor. I always suspect the expression of emotion to be a substitute for the feeling of it.”

“And in that, my dear,” said Oliver, “I believe you are largely right, if you mean physical and not artistic expression. But it was artistic expression that you referred to first.”

“Well, I prefer unemotional art.”

“There’s no such thing, my child. A mere contradiction in terms. Art is nothing else than the conservation of emotion. Your emotional people—your Italian tenors, Clara—are mere thunder-claps and lightning-flashes, whereas art …”

“Is the municipal gas-works?” said Bob.

“Precisely. Or shall we say, the electric supply?”

“But my dear Father,” said Clara, “you’re not going to tell me that you like emotional art?”

“But indeed I am, Clara, and I can only hope that the information won’t spoil your dinner.”

“Is your icy Racine, then, as emotional as … whom shall I say? … Alfred de Musset or the early Swinburne with his ridiculous Dolores?”

The old man braced his shoulders emphatically. “As emotional? Why he’s infinitely, immeasurably more so; just as Bach contains more emotion than all your Chopins and Wagners and Strausses and Scriabines rolled together. What is the matter with Dolores and, for example, that horrible melody in the middle of Chopin’s Funeral March is the thinness and shallowness of the emotion. They’re Italian tenors, if you like. It is simply the immense emotional power of Racine that makes him the great poet he is. Why, didn’t you yourself very wisely remark just now that emotionalism was usually a substitute for genuine feeling.”

Clara sipped her Burgundy and for a moment did not speak. Her lips moved as she savoured the wine and set down the glass. “Well, Father,” she said at last, “I’m afraid I’ve allowed you to shoot me with my own bullet. I have no reply except one which you and Bob, mere logical men as you are, will at once label as typically feminine.”

The old man’s eyes sparkled at her. “And that is?”

“That whatever Racine may or may not be, I don’t like him.”

“Yes,” said Oliver, “a woman’s reply and a perfectly just one, because strictly practical. Enjoyment of art is not in the end a matter of principles, but a matter of experience. One must not use principles to judge works of art. One submits oneself to artistic experience and draws principles from the experiences. But I suspect a weakness somewhere, Clara, for all that. You called Racine icy just now, and you also said that you preferred unemotional art. Now, if you find him icy, why don’t you like him?”

Clara shook her head. “I haven’t a notion. Probably because I don’t really care for any poetry.”

“Or possibly, do you think, because Racine isn’t really icy?”

Clara raised her glass again. “My dear Father, if you hold me in a cleft stick, how can I enjoy my Burgundy?”

Oliver laughed. “Then I’ll let you out, my dear. Besides, I’d rather you called Racine icy and disliked him than called him icy and liked him for it, for in the second case you would have made two mistakes instead of one.”

They stayed ten days at Abbot’s Randale. When Christmas was over and the appointed five days of their visit were past, the old man could not let them go.

“The poem will have to wait,” he said. “One makes virtuous resolutions, but, thank God, one has the strength of mind not to keep them.”

Seeing that he really wished them to stay, they gladly postponed their departure till after New Year’s Day. Adrian asked nothing better.

“If I were a real poet,” said Oliver at lunch, “I should, of course, bundle you back to Yarn at once, or rather I should never have invited you here at all, for the perfect artist, I suppose, sacrifices everything to his art.”

“Which is all very well for the perfect artist,” said Clara, “but not very pleasant for the everything, which in this case would include Bob, Adrian, and myself. We should find ourselves in the position of a sort of threefold Isaac, and you, as the perfect artist, would of course ignore the timely interruption of the angel of the Lord.”

“If I were the perfect artist, my dear, I should have gone on with my poetry instead of getting a couple of children and a grandchild, so that you and Adrian would not be here to be sacrificed and I might never have had a chance of getting my sacrificial knife even into Bob. No, the perfect artist is a hermit whose only happiness is the service of his god; or, as I sometimes suspect, he is a machine designed by Nature, Nature with a big N of course, solely for the production of poetry, music, or whatever his art may be. My weakness is that the larger half of me is a human being, and the human half protests sooner or later. It refuses to be enslaved by the tiresome trade of divine pattern-making and it goes on strike. Sooner or later,” he said, turning to Adrian, “you’ll discover that you’re not one person, but two, body and soul, the animal man and the spiritual man, an incompatible couple who are always squabbling and pitching into each other. If you could give both enough work to do, it wouldn’t be so bad; but you can’t, because each demands a full-time job. So you have to favour one or the other, and, whichever you favour, the other grumbles and whines. I often wish I were a coal-heaver. A week of coal-heaving would keep the animal man quiet for a bit, but, after all, that would only end in the spiritual man’s getting out of hand.”

“Are we to understand,” asked Bob,” that it is Oliver Glynde the animal who has pressed us to stay an extra five days?”

“Certainly it is,” replied the old man. “Oliver the Spirit did all he could not to detain you, but the warm-blooded, gregarious, chattering, eating, and drinking Oliver shouted him down, and here you are.”

“I should like,” said Clara, her narrow lips curling into a smile, “to put in a word for the mind, who seems to have been left out of the menage—or shall I say menagerie?”

“Mind?” The old man snorted with humorous disgust. “Mind is a mere nuisance. He pretends to be the friend of both and is the friend of neither. Body and Soul are innocent, simple, honest, each is a thoroughbred; but Mind is a crafty, disingenuous, squint-eyed mongrel who enormously embitters the antagonism between the other two. Mind should be kept severely on collar and chain and used only as a pointer, a retriever, or a turn-spit—kept in a bag, like a ferret, let out to bolt rabbits, and, that done, caught and pushed back into the bag before he gets into mischief. Don’t speak to me of Mind: he’s a bad dog. Think of all the mongrel pups he’s presented us with.”

“Pups?”

“The philosophers.”

Clara smiled reflectively. “I have always found him, when kindly treated, a very charming and useful pet.”

“So people have declared who kept tiger-cubs,” said Oliver, “till the day when the cubs ceased to be cubs and gobbled them up.”

“Ought we then,” said Bob, “to apprentice Adrian to a coal-heaver?”

“Yes,” said Oliver, “on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; and to a poet or a composer on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.”

“My poor Adrian, what a week!” said Clara, glancing compassionately at him across the table. “But on Sundays perhaps you’ll be allowed to pat the Mongrel.”

On the day following New Year’s Day they left Abbot’s Randale.

“Good-bye, my spiritual Father,” called Clara from the car to the old man, who stood erect and imposing as a major prophet in the stone niche of the porch.

“Good-bye, good-bye, my dear animals,” he called back, his grey-blue eyes twinkling. Then, just as Bob was on the point of starting, he hurried forward to the car. “Clara, you haven’t left the Mongrel behind you, I hope?”

“Oh, dear me, no,” she replied. She tapped her forehead with her forefinger. “I’ve got him safe in here.”

XIV

For Adrian the return to Charminster was something like a sea-bathe on a cold, rough day. To fling off the warm clothing of holiday comforts and luxuries and leap suddenly into the bare, turbulent, Spartan welter of school was a drastic change. It was horrible to return to the labour and tedium of school work, to the noise and restlessness of Common-room, to the remorseless lack of leisure, the rush to change for a game directly after lunch without the smallest breathing-space, and to the hostile intrusions of the hated Ellenger. But he had rich compensations. The bodily presence of Ronny Dakyn would be enough to make up for all, and besides Dakyn there was Mr. Heller and music.

At Waterloo station he began to look out for Dakyn, his eyes anxiously filtering the crowd of boys that moved past the carriage window where he himself had already been lucky enough to secure a seat. He had met Phipps in the station and they had boarded the train together. He had been glad to discover Phipps, not only because he was a special friend of his, but also because by doing so he had ceased to be alone and thus had at once become immune from the anxieties and diffidences to which loneliness exposed him. He felt now that he had an anchorage, that he was a part, and no longer a victim, of this swarming crowd.

Phipps looked surprisingly a little gentleman, extraordinarily clean and individual, and so did all the other boys. So, though he was not aware of it, did Adrian himself. It would take some days to rub off their holiday cleanness and reduce them all to type again. Some of the boys had their people with them, and Adrian examined them curiously and critically, glad that Uncle Bob and Aunt Clara were not there to be exposed to the multitudinous inspection and so provide an opportunity, he felt, for the infringement of his personal privacy. He spotted members of the school eleven, of his own house eleven, and one or two of the Taylor’s prefects—gorgeous people, self-possessed, and slightly scornful of the crowd through which they moved; but his search for Dakyn was unrewarded.

The train started, and he took refuge in a book he had borrowed from Yarn, reading it steadily until they had reached their destination. At the station, he, Phipps, and three other boys collared a taxi, and his heart sank as they drove up to the gaunt, ugly block of Taylor’s. But though his heart sank, he felt secure. For he knew the place now, with all its rules and regulations and customs, all the ins and outs and intricacies of its routine and organisation. He was no longer the helpless and bewildered new boy. He became aware, even, of a little thrill of affection for the place.

They went in and ran upstairs to the dormitory to find their cubicles and deposit their coats and bags. Then all together, as if for protection, they went down to Common-room. How remorselessly clean and bare and hollow the place was. Not a vestige of the comforts of Abbot’s Randale or Yarn which now, in a sudden pang of memory, seemed to him unspeakably precious. But Common-room was at least fairly peaceful at present. No one had yet settled down. Small groups of boys stood about, talking soberly. Adrian spotted friends here and there, and with an inward thrill of fear and hatred one or two of his pet aversions. But he paid little heed to either, for he was in a state of suspense, he was waiting anxiously, impatiently—a prey, under his small, quiet, inscrutable exterior, to desperate hopes and agonised forebodings.

He and Phipps went providently off to bag pegs for their footer things and pigeon-holes for their boots in boot-room. As they passed the door of Hall, they ran into a large, heavily built shape that was going in. It was Ellenger. He inspected them from under his scowling brows.

“Hallo, young man!” he said to Adrian in a tone that was rather a threat than a salutation.

When he was past them, the bumptious Phipps pulled a face at his retreating back. “Surly swine!” he said.

Adrian said nothing. The sight of Ellenger brought before him in his single person all that he feared and hated at Charminster; but it brought him a gleam of hope too. He knew that Dakyn had been going to stay with Ellenger for the second half of the holidays. If so, then the return of Ellenger must mean the return of Dakyn. On a sudden impulse, knowing that Ellenger was safe in Hall, Adrian ran upstairs and along the passage to the studies. The door of Dakyn’s was ajar and he peeped in. The place was dead. Not a sign of a bag, not so much as a hat; nothing out of place! Obviously Dakyn had not yet been into it. That must mean that he hadn’t yet arrived. His legs weak with anxiety, he went slowly downstairs and rejoined Phipps. At prayers, at least, he would know: his suspense would be at an end. His anxiety was so great that he ate the slices of tinned tongue and wet ham and drank the metallic tea of the invariable first supper of term without even noticing the lamentable change from the good fare of the holidays.

Supper was cleared, the tablecloths removed, time crept on. At last the boys in Common-room began to line up round the tables. It was five minutes to nine. The door of Hall opened and the boys of the upper school began to stream in and line up. Just before Mr. Wisborough, the prefects would come in. Adrian, who had been late in getting into position, found himself obliged to stand at a point where his back was turned to Hall door and, worse still, where he would not be able to see the prefects where they stood for prayers. It was too late to change his place: there was no room at the other side of his table. “He’s not here! He’s not here!” something kept saying to him. He believed that he could feel, that he knew unmistakably that Ronny was not at the other side of that door. Why wasn’t he there? What had happened?

Suddenly the door-handle rattled: the door opened. Adrian’s heart beat so fast that it seemed to rise into his throat and stifle him. In defiance of convention, he turned his head and watched. Coulter, the head prefect, came in first. He saw the right shoulder of the next, and of the next; then, higher than the rest, the dark head of Jackman, the fourth. Still Adrian stared. The boy standing next him punched him on the thigh. But Adrian did not turn his head, for behind Jackman’s shoulder he had caught sight of a bright gleam of gold and a neat pink ear. The first glimpse was enough: he was satisfied. But for another second he did not turn away his eyes. With a fluttering heart he stared still. Dakyn, passing him now, saw him and, meeting his gaze, smiled and raised his eyebrows in mock reproof. The footsteps of Mr. Wisborough were audible at the door. Adrian resumed his proper attitude, and as he did so he caught the amused eyes of Phipps, who made a discreet and hardly perceptible face at him.

Adrian went to bed happy. It did not matter at all that he had hardly seen Ronny and had not spoken a word to him. That brief glimpse of him, that silent, whimsical, wholly unhoped-for salutation, the blessed assurance that he was safely back at Charminster and that his own well-being was thus assured, these things were enough and more than enough for his humble cravings.

Next day he resumed his job as prefect’s fag. In the morning, after breakfast, Dakyn sent for him, and Adrian found him in the study, busy unpacking a trunk. A wooden box with a padlock lay open beside it, and the door of the cupboard under the bookshelves was open too. Dakyn raised a red face from his labours.

“Hallo, little man,” he said, “did you have a decent time?”

“Very, thank you,” said Adrian. “I hope you had.”

“Not half bad, thanks,” said Dakyn. “Give me a hand with this unpacking, will you? You’ll find various kinds of foods in the box there. Just take them out and stick them in the cupboard. That small box there is crystallised fruit. That’s for you. First prize for being champion shoe-polisher. You’d better keep it up here, then you won’t have to share it with the crowd in Common-room. You can have one when you happen to be up here. Better try one now.”

Adrian was overcome with gratitude. He began shyly to undo the wrappings. When he had opened the box and discovered the rows of pink, yellow, and dark green fruits, he held it out timidly to Dakyn.

“Won’t you have one too?” he said.

“Shall I?”

“Yes, do.”

Dakyn looked at Adrian, then at the fruit. “It’s a terrible job to choose,” he said with a scowl of comic perplexity. Then he chose a green one.

Some days later Adrian, alone in the study, remembered the preserved fruits and, kneeling down, opened the door of the cupboard and got the box out. He opened it, seriously considered the contents, and had just dislodged a yellow apricot when the door opened and Ellenger appeared. He stood there with his hand on the door-handle and fixed his sombre gaze on the little crouching boy.

“Hm! Caught you this time,” he said.

Adrian, with the apricot between finger and thumb, closed the box with his other hand and began to put it away. He was conscious of Ellenger, still motionless, watching him insolently from the door. Dumb rage struggled within him. He was furious that this great swine of a chap should keep butting in and accusing him of all sorts of dirty tricks. He was furious, but he was afraid. Ellenger was so large and aggressive, he himself so small and insignificant. He felt rage spreading like fire over his face, up among the roots of his hair, he felt it flaming round his neck into the very tips of his ears. If he had had the courage and a knife he would gladly have stabbed Ellenger, struck the knife in deep, deep into his broad chest. His hands trembled, and at first he could not fit the box into its place in the small crowded cupboard. Ellenger, watching him from behind, saw the redness flow across his neck and ears and took it for a sign of guilt. He was glad: he felt triumphant and vindictive. But slowly Adrian’s fury got the better of his fear. It struggled with him, oppressing him and urging him to let it out. He turned a flaming face to Ellenger.

“Do you suppose I pinch Dakyn’s stuff? “he asked, breathless with anger, his nostrils pulsing, the muscles about his temples and jaws twitching.

“It looks uncommonly like it,” said Ellenger sardonically.

“That box is mine,” said Adrian. Not for worlds would he have told Ellenger that Dakyn had given it to him: that was no business of Ellenger’s: it was a thing between himself and Dakyn.

Ellenger smiled contemptuously. “Then why can’t you keep it in your cupboard in Common-room and share it with other chaps, as any decent chap would?”

Adrian, his bashfulness gone, his eyes bold with anger, shot at Ellenger a look ablaze with the cold fire of hatred. He wasn’t going to tell him, however, that Ronny had said he must keep it there. Not likely. He turned and shut the cupboard door, and at the same moment Ellenger opened the door whose handle he still grasped. Adrian was going, but Ellenger, by holding the door open for him, seized the opportunity to produce the impression that he was turning him out of the study.

Adrian heard the door shut-to sharply behind him as with racing heart and knees and arms trembling with anger he went down the passage. “Bloody swine!” he murmured to himself. “Bloody swine!” He had never used the word bloody before, and to use it now, to savour the full aggressive possibilities of its sound, brought a marvellous relief to his feelings. It seemed as if the words were actually attacking and injuring Ellenger. Fantastic projects leapt into his mind. He would make a row about it and force Ellenger to apologise. He would tell Dakyn and complain of Ellenger’s low-down accusations. If only he could think of some way of harming Ellenger, of showing him up for the bloody swine he was. At least he would tell all his friends about it and they would agree that he was a bloody swine. That would be a comfort, anyhow, when he told the story and the listener replied: “Oh, well, what can you expect from such a bloody swine!”

In the afternoon of the day after his return to Charminster Adrian ran down through the copse to Mr. Heller’s house. As he entered the gate and approached the porch a muffled blare of music came from the house, as though the place were a factory pulsing with energy. He opened the front door and let out a louder whirl of sound. He was entangled in music: the whole house was alive with it. Eddies and showers and cataracts of notes swirled, combined, swept apart, and broke across each other’s tracks in a whirlpool of hurrying harmonies which brimmed up into the hollow of the staircase, engulfed the hat-rack with its coats and hats and umbrellas, ebbed and flowed about the kitchen door and down the back passage.

It had always been understood that Adrian rang no bell and knocked at no door, that he let himself into the house and into the sitting-room, and that if Mr. Heller were playing he sat quietly down at his side, ignored until the piece was finished. He opened the sitting-room door now and let himself into the heart of the factory.

The heavy, spicy smell of the room, half fragrant, half repellent, attacked his sense with its challenging reminder, bringing back to him in a single impression the essence of all that Old Hell himself, his stumbling speech, his playing and his teaching, all that music itself meant to him. Old Heller’s meagre body was crouched over the keyboard. His busy talons, moving as if in delirium, now clawed, now softly stroked, now grabbed fiercely at the notes, his thin moulting vulture’s head nodded spasmodically. It seemed sometimes as if he were about to peck at a note with his long livid beak. A claw shot forward, made a savage snatch at the music, and in a flash a page was whipped over. Noiselessly Adrian drew up a chair and sat down beside him. He knew at once that it was Bach, and as he sat losing himself in the music it seemed to him that time had swallowed the holidays, closed over them as water closes over a stone, that he had not been away from Charminster for the last five weeks, but that the old routine had flowed on and was still flowing uninterrupted. He watched the old man’s head, noted the direction of his gaze, detected on the page a phrase that had just declared itself in the treble, and, when the moment came, leaned forward as usual and turned over.

John Donne’s death mask was suddenly turned full upon him, the eyes stared through the thick lenses, the mouth gaped and inarticulate noises came through the noise of the music. “Why, bless … bless … bless me … why …!” Adrian seemed to hear, but the music rolled on uninterrupted, till a pause came at the bottom of the next page, a transition from one part of the piece to another. The new page was headed “Fugue.”

But Mr. Heller took no notice of Adrian. He held both hands suspended. For a moment the house was full, startlingly, overwhelmingly full of silence. Then the left hand indicated a slow, leisurely rhythm, the right dropped to the keyboard, and the slow simple notes of the fugue were quietly announced. The left hand dropped: another voice joined the first, repeating in rich, tender, more masculine tone what the first had said. Gradually other voices awoke, twining their weft of sound into the growing and thickening texture.

It seemed to Adrian that he was witnessing a great orderly development, the building in the empty space of the room of a great sound-world. Yet he was not merely witnessing it. Every sense, every sinew and nerve of his body were taking part in it, developing it, or being developed into it, or both simultaneously: a world full and perfect, lacking in nothing that perfection demands, potently and faultlessly called into being by this grotesque, nodding, bony vulture, who himself seemed to lack so much of the perfect man. Adrian, caught into that intenser life, realised powers which were beginning to stir in him. He felt that the mysteries of music were within his grasp, that before long he would be able to play as Mr. Heller played, and that he would himself write music, not only the small clear tunes he composed now, but a music of tunes woven across tunes in rich and intricate patterns, a richness built up out of simplicity, as his grandfather had said that all good things must be built. The fugue rose to heights and marched by solemn strides irresistibly and inevitably downward, strong as basalt yet flexible as living muscle, rose to higher summits still, to forge downwards still more loudly, still more emphatically to inevitability on ultimate rock bottom.

When the piece was finished, and when in the long pause that followed they had fallen out of that world created by sound and shattered by final silence, gathered themselves each into his narrow self, into Charminster, into Mr. Heller’s small sitting-room, the old man broke out of his abstraction, turned with his kind smile to Adrian, and the two met for the first time that term.

“Well … well … er … well, my dear Glynde. I’m … er … I’m … This is … er … really …” With his quiet, distinguished courtesy he held out his long bony hand. “You know,” he went on, making rhythmic indications of words in the air, “I hadn’t … I hadn’t … no, not the slightest … er … You took me … er … completely … by … er, yes, by … er … when you turned over. You had an enjoyable holiday?” he asked with sudden coherence. “Good! Good! I’m very glad. You … er … practised?”

“Yes, sir. I practised a lot for ten days when I was at my grandfather’s. You see, my aunt has no piano. She and Uncle Bob, my uncle I mean, don’t care about music, but my grandfather is very keen on it.”

“And what sort of music is he keen on?”

“Oh, the best sort,” said Adrian. “I told him who your gods were, and he said that you and he belonged to the same religion.”

The old man held up his large hands in mock horror. “How am I going to teach you music, Glynde, if both he and I are influencing you all the time.” He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. “I don’t see how the Romantics are going to have a look in,” he said, chuckling to himself. He turned to Adrian again. “Your grandfather isn’t, by any chance, the poet?”

“Yes, sir, he’s Oliver Glynde.”

Mr. Heller was at once thrown back into incoherence by the news. “Oh, but … this … but this is … er … really … Why did I … er … I never … and the name so … er … so uncommon, too. Oh, well … my … er … my dear boy … you, you, you … have a high … a very high … er … ideal to … to live up to. A true classic, my dear Glynde, a true … er … classic, if ever there was one.” He turned in his chair and waved a large hand towards his bookshelves. “There he is, you see. There on the … er … second … er … shelf, complete,” and Adrian, glancing at the shelf, saw the familiar row of volumes which he was accustomed to see, undisturbed month in month out, in the bookcase in the Yarn morning-room. “He’s the only … er … modern I read,” said Mr. Heller, “except Paul Valery, and him, my dear Glynde, you … er … you … well, you won’t know.”

XV

So for Adrian the term passed in school-work, with its horrible tedium and its brief and cloudy glimpses, in a Greek or a Latin passage here and there, into the mysterious crystalline world which his grandfather had revealed to him; in smiles from Dakyn and scowls from Ellenger; in the strenuous self-forgetfulness of football and fives; in the enthralled secret readings in Dakyn’s study of books which his grandfather had given to him, small volumes of Herrick, Campion, Milton, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, and Robert Bridges; in the secluded and thrilling hours with Mr. Heller in which he explored more and more deeply the mysterious world of music. He took to music as to his proper element: his powers developed with a speed which surprised the old man. It seemed not so much that he was acquiring new powers as that dormant powers already acquired were being daily reawakened in him. Just as old Heller himself was transformed when playing the piano, from a queer withered, grinning, mumbling, inarticulate, tragicomical old bird of prey into a masterful and perfectly balanced creator of worlds, so it was with Adrian. When he played, his nervousness, his diffidence, his sense of his own insignificance were left behind and he stepped into a rich golden world in which the current of life ran more warmly, more fully and more potently, in which he had a free and conscious control of faculties of which in the world of every day he was only intermittently and weakly aware. But the musical Adrian was not without his influence on Adrian the schoolboy. The schoolboy was developing, maturing. He was growing, in his quiet way, more self-confident, less tongue-tied. He began to reply to Dakyn’s talk, in their brief occasional meetings, with something more than blushes and monosyllables and downcast looks: he came to feel a little less abject in the presence of the hateful Ellenger, and though it was not to be expected that he should give him back as good as he suffered from him, yet he sometimes gave him scowl for scowl.

As the term drew towards its close he discovered, to his relief, signs that Ellenger’s star was on the wane. One day, going to the study with a pair of Dakyn’s shoes, he found Ellenger standing with his back to him in the doorway. He was talking to Dakyn, who was inside. Adrian paused with the shoes in his hand.

“But couldn’t you manage a week, even, toward the end of the hols.?” Ellenger said. His tone was humble, reproachful, but stubbornly persistent.

Ronny’s voice, careless and free, replied from inside. “I can’t, Len. I’m full up, I swear. Haven’t I explained already?” In the cheerful voice Adrian detected a faintly unnatural brightness, as if Ronny were deliberately excluding from the question the seriousness into which Ellenger was trying to force it.

Ellenger, a large incubus, stood his ground in the doorway. “You could if you wanted to,” he said dully and doggedly.

Ronny’s lively voice replied again. There was a touch of impatience in it now. “Look here, old man; don’t keep on at it. I’ve told you I’d come if I could.”

“And you could if you wanted to. It’s simply that you won’t.”

Bright, incisive, matter-of-fact, and irritated, the invisible Ronny’s voice rejoined: “You’ve said that once before, Len. If you really think it’s because I don’t want to, why do you keep on at it?”

Ellenger made no reply. It was as if his voice, which, in sharp contrast with Ronny’s lively and cheerful tones, had grown with each new insistence duller, thicker, and more sluggish, had solidified into the even more immovable resistance of silence. His motionless bulk, blocking the doorway, presented to Adrian, who hovered in the passage with the shoes in his hand, the very shape and symbol of stubbornness. But actually his stubbornness was broken. Adrian heard a deep sigh, and the large dark body swayed a little in the sunny rectangle of the half-open doorway.

“Well “—the voice was dull, weary, and bitter—” I suppose you think me a god-damned nuisance. You don’t bother to … to … think that it means a lot to me, even if it’s nothing to you.”

No reply came from within, and there was, for Adrian, something pitiable in the movement with which Ellenger turned. Seeing Adrian there, he gave an instantly suppressed start: then with a face, sombre, unhappy, and closely shut, he pushed past him and went slowly down the passage.

Adrian still hesitated. Suddenly he had felt shy of intruding upon Dakyn, and he turned and went quietly away, taking the shoes with him.

During the remaining fortnight of the term Ellenger hardly ever came to the study. The change was an unhoped-for holiday for Adrian. He could sit at ease in the study now, free from the constant fear of hostile interruption, and as Dakyn, when there, was more often alone, he was more inclined to chat with Adrian. But for Ellenger, he thought regretfully, life would always be like that. Yet at odd moments the image of Ellenger turning miserably away would recur unexpectedly to his mind, bringing a brief accusatory sense that his happiness was founded on the unhappiness of his old enemy.

But the occultation of Ellenger proved to be temporary, for when the Easter holidays were over and Summer Term began, he and Dakyn resumed their old friendship and once more Adrian’s share in the study was small and precarious.

So days, weeks, and months passed, work days and holidays, every waking moment with its degrees and half degrees of pain or happiness measured out by the sensitive, restlessly oscillating needle of the heart; times full and rich in the living, packed with emotions, yet, when Adrian looked back upon them in after-years, a brief episode, a bitter-sweet quintessential drop stored in one of the sealed crystal cells of his being, sweet with the pure fragrance of springtime and bitter with its irreparable loss.

It was after the completion of his second year at Charminster, on the day after the beginning of the autumn term, that Adrian discovered, to his surprise and relief, that Ellenger had left. He had known during the previous term that others were leaving, but he had heard nothing of its being Ellenger’s last term; and now, without a sign, without so much as a final hostile word, his old enemy had suddenly abandoned his long hostility and quietly dropped out of his life. This sudden, silent disappearance of Ellenger’s affected him inexplicably. It was not that he was not delighted that he had gone; on the contrary, it seemed almost too good to be true. But Ellenger had meant much in his life, he had been inescapably and horribly real to him, and this sudden cessation of his reality, this sudden noiseless lapse into non-existence was baffling, incredible. The disappearance of some of the other boys—boys whom he had not particularly liked or disliked—left him unmoved, but it seemed that to lose an enemy did not leave one unmoved. There was in it a shock that, with all its difference, had a strange resemblance to the unexpected loss of a friend.

All that intruded of Ellenger now was his letters to Ronny. Adrian would not have known of them had he not seen one lying on Ronny’s study table. It lay there as though thrown hastily aside: at the bottom of the page, which was closely written in a small, very neat hand, “Yours, Len” stood out in larger writing. That was all that Adrian saw of it, but the writing, like everything else that pertained to Ellenger, fixed itself on his mind, and among the letters that came for Ronny he noticed an envelope addressed in that writing about once a week. How often, if ever, Ronny replied, Adrian never knew.

He had now reached a position at Charminster in which he was no longer liable for fagging. During the previous term it had been fairly obvious that he would be promoted, and the prospect of this had haunted him like a threat of exile; for promotion would mean that he ceased to be Ronny’s fag. That would make life at Taylor’s hardly bearable; for, as he knew well enough, he would entirely lose touch with Ronny. He would see no more of him than he saw of the other prefects—a distant view at prayers, a chance glimpse in the passages, on the stairs, or out-of-doors. In his fear of this terrible eventuality he had slacked in his work in the hope that he would avoid promotion. But though he could refrain from putting forward his best efforts, he could not bring himself to abandon all standards deliberately and do bad work: and so it became more and more certain that he would be promoted. He comforted himself with the thought that he would be able to volunteer to go on as Dakyn’s fag even if he were promoted. But he was uncertain if Dakyn would agree, and he longed to be certain while disaster might still be averted.

In his anxiety he determined, to screw himself up to the point of asking Dakyn. When, after long delay, he did so, his scheme was shattered at once. Dakyn would not hear of it.

“You can’t be a fag if you’re in Remove. Besides, why should you be, if you needn’t?”

“Because … because I’d rather, if you don’t mind. I … I don’t want to stop.”

“You’d rather go on than not?”

“Yes.”

Dakyn was touched and flattered. He had many friends and admirers, but now that Ellenger was gone, he had no worshipper but Adrian, and unconsciously he demanded worship; it was almost a necessity to him. He thought for a moment; then shook his head.

“No, no. It wouldn’t do, little man. I’m afraid it wouldn’t do. You see, it would be quite out of order.”

“Then I won’t go into Remove,” said Adrian.

“But you can’t help yourself, man. You can’t refuse.”

“I can do a rotten exam.,” said Adrian stubbornly.

Dakyn put his hand on his shoulder. “No, no. Damn it, Glynde.” He paused: then a bright idea came to him. “Look here, you can go on using the study, even though you aren’t a fag. Won’t that do?”

Of course it would do. It solved all Adrian’s troubles instantly.

And so at the beginning of his third year Adrian ceased to polish Ronny’s shoes. He became, in fact, though the difference in their ages and position made it impossible that he should be on such intimate terms with him as Ellenger had been, a kind of second Ellenger, and a little rat of a boy, no bigger than Adrian had been when he first arrived at Charminster, took over his job as fag.

And this fag was a little nuisance, just as Adrian himself had been to Ellenger. He was always bursting in, with one excuse or another, when Adrian was sitting in the study, or Adrian found him there sweeping the floor or polishing the window when he wanted to sit there. And perhaps if he had acted on impulse he would have bundled the little rat out. But he didn’t. He remembered what a curse Ellenger had been, and he remembered too the life that the small boys led in the endless riot of Common-room. The poor little devil was probably taking refuge from Common-room when Adrian found him fooling about in the study. So he disguised his impatience, and though he could not, if he would, talk freely and, as it were, on equal terms to boys who were still no more than children, he tried in brief, stilted phrases to be pleasant to the boy, and the boy, shy and grateful, replied in monosyllables. He even condescended so far for Ronny’s sake, as to instruct the boy in some of the niceties of his job.

Adrian had grown much in the last two years. He was not, even now, big for his age, but the difference in size between him and this young fag was greater, much greater, than the difference between Ronny and him. And he was no longer the helpless victim of Commonroom. Quietly and unassumingly he had acquired a position there that the riot did not disturb. Besides, he was good at football. There was a chance that he might play for the house this term. This and his quiet inscrutability had gained for him the same respect that others gained by violent aggressiveness. He was looked upon as rather a queer bird, but quite all right. It was thought funny that, being good at footer, he should be so good at the piano. But that was a part of his queerness. Piano-playing by itself—especially Adrian’s kind of piano-playing, which was fearfully highbrow, superbly contemptuous of jazz and ragtime—would have been despicable; but even highbrow piano-playing was pardonable when backed by football-playing, and, when done so astonishingly well as Adrian did it, almost a little admirable. He joined Mr. Heller in a Sunday concert, a recital for two pianos, and later in the term gave a recital of his own at which there was an unusually large audience, for the most part made up of Taylor’s boys, most of whom came out of curiosity. Even the unmusical ones were impressed, and the verdict was that he was a real pro., a damned sight better than Teddy and Old Hell.

Phipps told him so, and got little thanks from Adrian for the compliment.

“Shows how little you know about it, Flipper,” he said. “Better than Teddy, if you like. Who isn’t? But Old Hell’s a genius. I shan’t cut him out for years, if ever.”

“Well, anyhow, you didn’t half knock sparks out of the old box,” said Phipps.

“She’s not got many sparks in her to knock,” said Adrian, still grimly resentful of the intractable old school piano.

“What, isn’t she a good one? She seemed to make a hell of a noise.”

Adrian grinned. “She’d be all right as a steam-roller,” he said, “or a gas-meter, or a penny-in-the-slot machine, or … or a second-hand set of false teeth, but as a piano she’s a bit … a bit out of her element.”

Adrian and Phipps were great friends. Phipps, round-faced, lively, inexhaustibly good-humoured, wide awake, but untroubled by an intellect, roused the gay and irresponsible in Adrian. In Phipps’s company he felt light-hearted and free, marvellously free. He talked cheerful nonsense to Phipps and Phipps received it with loud mirth. The cleft between his actual relationship with Ronny and his feelings for him often oppressed him. He began to realise now, as his mind matured, that his vague and impossible longings could never coincide with reality; that the Ronny of his dreams and the Dakyn with whom, even now, he was not on very intimate terms, were not, and, it seemed, never could be, the same person. This discovery produced in him intermittent fits of despair. He felt profoundly unsettled: he became moody and introspective. Yet he could not detach himself either from the real or the imaginary Dakyn. Both of them had become vital parts of his life.

Nor was this all that disturbed him. A ferment of growth seethed in the hidden places of his mind, new perceptions, new awarenesses, new desires, fed by his deeper knowledge of music and his keen and miscellaneous reading. All these things sprouted and pushed and struggled within him, and there was no one to whom he could talk of them. He felt sometimes as if they were about to rise up and choke him. But in his friendship with Phipps there was none of the stress and hungry dissatisfaction of his relation with Dakyn. Neither demanded of the other more than he received: when together they were free, gay, on equal terms. Though their point of contact was small, their encounters were vivid; like those of a couple of billiard-balls, they resulted in cheerful noise and stimulating shocks. He could not talk to Phipps of the things that germinated within him: if he were to do so, Phipps, he felt, would hardly know what he was talking about. But with Phipps he could escape from them, rest from them, throw off youth’s perplexities and growing-pains and refresh himself in its cheerful simplicity. Only to look at Phipps’s round, red-cheeked, smiling face, his dancing, mischievous eyes, to come into contact with his high spirits and irrepressible energy, was a tonic and a holiday. He seemed to be always on the dance, always breathlessly eager, always up to one thing or another. He had many of the qualities that Adrian lacked. Shyness and diffidence were things unknown to him. He was ready for anything or anybody. In his cheerful amiability he was no respecter of persons, and in consequence people liked and respected him. Early in his career at Charminster he had been nicknamed Flipper, a name which suited him as well as his own. He was a kind of boy who invited a nickname, whereas it was typical of Adrian that he should have remained simply “Glynde “until now, when his friends began to call him Adrian. Dakyn, who in fatherly amusement at his small, compact demureness, had at first often called him “little man,” did so still, the title having, in the course of time, become in his mind a proper name; and the patronising endearment it implied was precious to Adrian, who—infatuated creature that he was—heard in it much more than Dakyn put into it.

Not that Dakyn was indifferent to Adrian. He felt for him an amused affection: he liked to have him about, to find him in his study when he went there. It pleased him to entice him out of his shyness, to draw him out and discover his unsuspected qualities, his liveliness and humour—the Glynde humour—which gradually, under the encouragement of their slowly growing intimacy, emerged in surprising flashes.

At the end of this term Adrian was promoted again. He was in the upper school now: the distance between him and Dakyn had diminished. He was no longer an insignificant child: he was no longer a child at all. He was only three inches less that Dakyn in height. This closer approach to Dakyn, though it made Adrian extremely happy and diverted him from his tendency to depression and self-absorption, was unfortunate, for it narrowed the unbridgeable gulf between the ideal and the real, awoke again those romantic longings which he was beginning painfully to grow out of, and so postponed his chances of escape. Adrian himself knew it, but how could he deliberately turn his back on this unhoped-for gift of the gods. His starved heart could not bear to forego such chances of happiness, even though it should end, as he foresaw it would end, in misery. But even now it would be misery to reject it: in either case he was in for his portion of misery. Why not, then, recklessly grasp the happiness that waited ready to hand: though the later separation would be still more painful, the happiness he had enjoyed would enable him to bear it more stoutly. Separation was surely coming, for Dakyn was leaving Charminster at the end of the summer term. That prospect loomed like the mountainous pile of a distant storm on the far confines of this brief, radiant spring. At night before he fell asleep and when he awoke in the morning its ghostly presence stood by his bed, breathing the chill of death. It seemed to Adrian almost a foregone conclusion that when Dakyn left Charminster he would lose touch with him. Dakyn’s gaiety and charm would attract a cluster of new friends, and he, in his free, easy fashion, would settle down within the new circle. Adrian thought of Ellenger. What, he wondered anxiously, had happened to him? He still wrote to Ronny, though, Adrian noticed, not so often; about once a fortnight now. But did Ronny ever reply? The answer to that question would have told him much, too much perhaps, for his peace of mind. What a couple of besotted fools they were, himself and Ellenger, Adrian thought to himself with a sigh. Other boys, breezy folk like Flipper, or Ronny himself for that matter, were not bothered by this kind of thing. Flipper regarded it as a harmless lunacy, like piano-playing. The difference between Ronny and Flipper was that Ronny was quite ready to accept adoration, while Flipper would certainly have refused it with amiable but heavy-handed ridicule. Adrian smiled to himself as he imagined Flipper’s reception of a worshipper: “Dip the headlights, old man. Switch off the vox humana, if you don’t mind.” But actually the thing would never reach such explicitness with Flipper. He would have disposed of it at a much earlier stage by mere behaviour. Words would never be needed. No, a fellow who set his affections on Flipper would have a thin time of it; but not, in the end, so thin a time as Adrian himself was going to have, for at least his cure would have been a quick one.

When Easter came Oliver Glynde was abroad and Adrian spent the holidays at Yarn. His uncle and aunt thought him listless and moody, and Clara tried to rouse him, not without occasional success, by discreetly and indiscreetly poking fun at him. Bob’s method was to ignore the change and treat him exactly as usual. “Don’t bother him too much,” he said to Clara. “The boy’s growing up.”

“I thought that growing up meant waking up,” said Clara, “but Adrian seems to be going to sleep.”

“Yes, seems,” said Bob. “But don’t you believe it. When young people go to sleep outwardly, it generally means that there is a lot of waking up going on inside.”

“My dear Bob!”

Clara glanced at him, surprised, reflective, with raised eyebrows.

“It’s a fact, Clara,” he said.

Clara smiled. “I take your word for it, my dear,” she said. Then after a meditative pause she added: “I wonder how many of our friends notice that, when it comes to human nature, you know about four times as much as I do.” Again she was silent, her eyebrows arched, her mouth set in the meditative, half-humorous placidity so typical of her. Then again her eyes and mouth grew animated. “The difference between you and me, Bob,” she said, “is that you camouflage your wisdom and I camouflage my ignorance. Most of our friends, I suspect, are like people walking about on a dark night. They bump against something large and solid, which the darkness prevents them from fully comprehending. That’s you. Then they turn a corner and come upon a glittering, flashing, rather vulgar edifice which recalls the Crystal Palace. That’s me. If they were to return by daylight they would find in place of the Crystal Palace a few scraps of burnt paper, a slight smell of gunpowder, and a vast flat wire skeleton, the wreckage of what the firework-makers call’ a set piece’; and they would discover that what they had bumped into in the dark was … well, St. Alban’s Abbey.”

Adrian came into the room at that moment, and Bob turned to him. “Adrian, what steps am I to take? Your aunt has just called me a cathedral.”

“That’s nothing,” said Adrian. “Yesterday she said I was like Bond Street on a Sunday.”

“And there’s no redress?”

“Not for me,” said Adrian, “because I am afraid that, as a matter of fact, I was.”

“Poor Adrian,” said Clara. “But you mustn’t take too much notice of what I say. You should receive my talk as your grandfather does.”

“And how is that?” asked Adrian.

“He selects me,” said Clara; “and then edits me with copious notes and glosses. I can see him doing it whilst I am talking to him, and the sight is both salutary and stimulating. But when I said you were like Bond Street on Sunday I wasn’t complaining: I was only remarking. I didn’t mean to imply that you were boring, my dear, but bored. However, it may very well be true that Bond Street is never itself, its true self, except on Sunday. So long as you’re enjoying your holidays …!”

“Oh, I’m doing that all right,” said Adrian, and he meant what he said. Yet he could not have said that he was happy, nor, on the other hand, unhappy. The prospect of Ronny’s leaving at the end of next term was almost continually present to his mind. He could neither forget nor fully realise it: his mind ached numbly, like chilled hands on a frosty day. He had foreseen that it would be so with him and had determined to provide against it, and so he had asked his aunt if he might hire a piano during the holidays. He would practise hard, he had resolved, at Bach—nothing but Bach, and he would work at a string trio which he had already been ruminating for some time. It was to be a birthday present for his grandfather.

Now the piano was duly bestowed in a room where it was inaudible from the other living-rooms, and every day he worked hard at his practising and composing.

Clara shook her head over both. “I don’t know what the Glyndes are coming to,” she said. “For centuries they have been irreproachable Englishmen. Then your grandfather took to poetry and our eighteen or twenty generations of ancestors turned in their graves. Now, as if that were not enough, you threaten the family with a musician. Music, of course, is even more indecent than poetry. To a Glynde, a true Glynde, music implies concertinas, monkeys, and fleas, long hair, an aversion from soap and water, something almost Italian.”

“Do I understand,” replied Adrian, “that you are a true Glynde, Aunt Clara?”

“Half of me is,” she answered, “but the other half isn’t: that is your grandfather’s fault. He developed my mind, taught me to use my eyes and ears, to be independent, sceptical, discriminating, a disgusting thing to do to a little Glynde. And I was a very promising little Glynde, much more so than your father: so promising, in fact, that your grandfather was only partially successful. The feelings of a Glynde remain in me: they rise instinctively under the amused scrutiny of my father’s daughter. I really do, Adrian, in my heart of hearts, think it shocking to write poetry and even prose, though I allow myself the indulgence of enjoying prose. As for music, it seems to me more shocking than either. One might as well walk naked in the streets or blurt out one’s most intimate feelings in the Euston Road.”

“Then a true Glynde, I suppose,” said Adrian, “would never express any feelings.”

“Never,” said Clara; “or, rather, only in such a way as never to betray any. Ages ago, my dear Adrian, the Glyndes invented, as safeguards against the betrayal of feeling, a series of useful expressions, such as So sorry, Truly delighted, Kindest regards, Fondest love, and so on. All self-respecting English families have used them ever since, the Glyndes, of course, among them, until your grandfather betrayed us by breaking out into poetry. And now you, as you tell me, are actually exposing yourself in a string trio.”

Adrian laughed, but even though he laughed he knew there was a good deal of truth under Aunt Clara’s banter, and, in fact, even more than she knew. For the ferment of unexpressed feelings, to which he was at present a prey, found vent in the music he was writing, and so immediately, so nakedly, that at moments he could hardly believe that the music did not betray him, that it would not communicate explicitly the feelings it so vividly symbolised for him. The work relieved him greatly, for the intellectual labour of expressing his pent feelings in artistic form brought a warm, secret satisfaction. It was not that this expression of his emotions mitigated their sharpness: it seemed rather that it increased it. But it also did something else: it transformed for him the idle drift of unavoidable but useless emotion into what seemed to him something positive, shapely, and valuable. In Bach, on the other hand—the stern intellectual Bach which he selected for his practising—he escaped for a while from all particular and personal feelings into a kind of mathematical ecstasy which was positively invigorating.

But in all three of these preoccupations of his, the anxieties about Ronny, the composition of the trio, and the practising of Bach, he was haunting worlds unknown to Yarn. During most of the hours he spent in his room he was quite unconscious of his surroundings: indeed, except during meals and the hours he spent with his aunt and uncle, he was more truly absent from the familiar house and garden than when, at Charminster, his thoughts often haunted them. He lived suspended in a sort of limbo of feelings not happy, not quite unhappy, but certainly deep, certainly acute. No wonder they thought him listless and moody. Clara was right: he was very like Bond Street on Sunday. His blinds were drawn, he presented closed shutters to the world, and the things within, the precious and the cheap, the beautiful, the ugly, the fantastic, were hidden in an artificial twilight.

XVI

As soon as he was back at Charminster Adrian’s way of life changed completely. He no longer lived in those detached worlds he had haunted during the holidays. Old Heller had been amazed and delighted at the results of his assiduous piano practice at Yarn, but now Adrian practised barely enough to content him. He seemed to have lost most of his interest in music. The completed fragment of the trio was shut away in a drawer. All his windows were unshuttered: he looked outward, not inward. His whole existence was concentrated on Ronny. He became ingenious in making plots for seeing him: he discovered beforehand what his movements were to be and then planned his own so as to meet Ronny as if by accident. This patient and elaborate craftiness succeeded surprisingly: he saw much more of Ronny than ever before, and Ronny showed no signs of resenting it. No doubt he never suspected the craft that lay behind: if he had stopped to consider the matter at all he would probably have believed that it was the result of his own will and pleasure.

But despite the success of his schemes, Adrian was not happy. It was not merely the fast approaching separation from Ronny that disturbed him. Much more it was his peculiar relation to him. The increase in their intimacy only served to show him more clearly the unreality of his attitude. For he and Ronny had little in common. Ronny was as kind-hearted, as easy, as cheerful, and as charming as ever, but he was not interested in most of the things that interested Adrian. He lived, it seemed, on the surface of life. He loved games and he loved people, but his love of people was diffused. He had neither the capacity nor the need for intimate friendship. He liked to be the centre of a moving crowd, or rather a revolving crowd, a crowd of familiar individuals with each of which, as in a game, he came into brief, frequent, and lively contact. But it was impossible not merely for Adrian but for anyone else at Charminster to get at him. He remained secluded and elusive behind his screen of cheerfulness and charm. By slow degrees Adrian had begun to realise this, but unhappily the realisation did not detach him from Ronny. His feelings for him remained stubbornly unaltered. The sight of him, the sound of his approaching footsteps, produced in him the same acute emotions as ever. An unexpected meeting with him thrilled him no less profoundly than in early days. It was almost, he sometimes felt, as if he were caught in a trap. If only he could escape, if only, by some sudden miracle, he could be cured, what a relief it would be. But what he could not do was deliberately to make the effort to escape, to impose upon himself, against the instinct of his heart, the long, dreary mental discipline which in the end might cure him. It is only when the heart is warmly housed that we can obey the stern and arduous dictates of the mind, for then heart and mind work in unison. But in Adrian heart and mind were at variance. If his mother, when he met her after all those years at Yarn, had fulfilled his cherished image of her—that image which, in the sharpness of his need, he had made out of forgetfulness of the worst of her and remembrance of the best—his heart, at that critical time, would perhaps have found safe anchorage, and never drifted rudderless, to strand at last on this bright but desert island. But for Adrian himself his predicament was a mystery. He knew only that he was impaled on a dilemma. He suffered, and clung desperately to the cause of his suffering. His one thought now was to bind Ronny to him, so as to hold him even though they were separated at the end of the term. If he could get him to come and stay during the holidays, that, he felt, would form an additional bond. His grandfather had told him that he could always bring a friend when he went to him in the summer. He determined to invite Ronny. But no sooner had he conceived the idea than he began to feel how difficult it would be to do so. At the mere thought of it he was overcome with a kind of fear. It was a matter of such urgency, such tremendous importance, to him that it seemed to him that it would be impossible to control himself to an ordinary composure when asking it. He spent much time in planning beforehand what he would say so that he should avoid becoming confused and inarticulate under the stress of his feelings. He would begin by talking of his grandfather: that would be the best way. Ronny knew, of course, everybody at Taylor’s knew, that his grandfather was Oliver Glynde. If they were talking of his grandfather it ought to be easy to suggest, as if the idea had just occurred to him, that Ronny should come to Abbot’s Randale. But days passed, and weeks, and he could not bring himself to speak. When he tried to brace himself to do so, panic seized him, his heart beat furiously, and he took cowardly refuge in postponement.

But at last, when Ronny chanced to ask him where he was going to spend his holidays, he forced himself to snatch the opportunity. “I’m going to my grandfather’s,” he said, and then he heard himself continuing in an absurdly tremulous voice: “It’s … it’s a ripping place. You … you wouldn’t come there for a bit, I suppose?”

Ronny glanced at him. The question had sounded so off-hand that he hardly knew if it was meant. Adrian avoided his eyes. He was waiting in a dumb agony for the result of his immense daring.

“What, stay with you there, you mean?” Ronny asked.

“Yes,” said Adrian, his face suddenly reddening. “I wish you would.” His voice had a curious little break in it. His tongue and lips felt dry.

“It’s awfully good of you, Little Man,” said Ronny, and for a moment Adrian’s hopes were high. But they were instantly shattered. “But it couldn’t be managed,” Ronny went on. “I’ve always such a lot of things on in the summer hols.”

“You couldn’t manage a week even, or just a day or two?” Adrian faltered, and as he spoke the words he remembered that day two years ago when he had come upon Ellenger in the study doorway asking just what he was asking now, almost in the very words. In a moment he would be slinking miserably away as Ellenger had done, and perhaps the same mysterious estrangement would fall between him and Ronny. That memory extinguished his last spark of hope. He hardly heard Ronny’s reply. Next moment Ronny had neatly changed the subject and Adrian dared not persist. He pulled himself together and swallowed his bitter disappointment with more grace than Ellenger had done. He even managed to reply cheerfully to Ronny’s gay screen of chatter. When, ten minutes later, he left the study, Ronny rewarded his submissiveness.

“We’ll be bound to meet later on in London or somewhere, Little Man,” he said. “I’m not going to lose sight of you.”

Adrian paused at the door. “And would you … perhaps … write sometimes?” he asked.

Ronny’s brows contracted slightly. “Well … I’m a rotten correspondent, you know,” he said. Then his face cleared. “But if you write, I’ll damn well have to answer, won’t I?”

Adrian went out. The worst had happened: his scheme had failed, as he might have guessed, all the time, that it would. He sighed, but felt to his surprise that it was a sigh of relief. He was not, for some reason, as miserable as he ought to have been. Perhaps the relief brought by the end of his suspense, the feeling that he had at last got the thing off his chest, counteracted his disappointment. He had allowed it to prey on him and his mind had inflated it, day by day, into a matter of fantastic gravity. Now he was free of it. The blow had fallen and he felt little worse than before. As for the future, it was entirely vague. He hardly believed that Ronny once he had settled down elsewhere, would really want to see him. That was not in his nature.

For the brief remainder of the term Adrian lived from day to day; and in a flash, it seemed, the end of term came, Ronny vanished out of his life, and he found himself solitary at his grandfather’s taking stern refuge in Bach and in work on the neglected trio. But he did not exist so wholly in Limbo as he had done at Yarn last Easter, for it was impossible to be in the same house as Oliver Glynde and remain entirely detached from life. The old man’s company was as stimulating as ever, and it was now wonderfully healing to heart and mind. He felt melancholy but not empty, and he would have asked nothing better than to live on, day after day, as he was living at present, in a kind of emotional convalescence.

The only thing he dreaded now was his return to Charminster. He dreaded the emptiness that he would find there. If only he too could have left at the end of last term. But what excuse could he have offered to his uncle and aunt and grandfather? He could have given no convincing pretext for his wish to be taken away so early; for he was not yet eighteen and was making excellent progress in everything expected of a schoolboy. No, he would have to go back and make the best of it.

During the twenty minutes wait at Wilmore Junction he went for a cup of tea to the refreshment-room. He liked the Wilmore refreshment-room: it was bare, ugly, old-fashioned, but it was also familiar and hospitable. And he liked the woman who had served there all these years. He and she had become friends. They said nothing but the most commonplace things during their brief meetings, but they were glad to meet. Perhaps he was flattered by her always recognising him, even though, more than once, a year had elapsed between their meetings, and by the obvious fact that she was always so pleased to see him. But it was not only that. He liked her plain, friendly face and her pleasant voice.

When he had gone and she had sat down once more to her knitting, she sighed to herself, for she had thought him looking unhappy. His eyes and his mouth—the sad pierrot’s mouth—were the same as they had been when he had first come timidly into the refreshment-room as a little boy. Later he had grown to look happier and more self-reliant, but now the old look had returned. What could have happened, she wondered? But of course there was nothing she could do. Why, when you came to think of it, she hardly knew him, though his rare visits had come to mean so much to her.

An unusually large number of boys had left Taylor’s at the end of the summer, and Adrian returned in the autumn to find himself a prefect. The novelty of this, the change it brought into his life, his preliminary timidity, which however he successfully disguised and soon overcame, and the responsibility and importance of his new status, helped at first to distract his attention from the terrible emptiness of the place. But not for long. His life no longer had any centre. When he was in school or playing football or working at his music all was well, but when he returned to himself and there was no longer anything to distract his thoughts, a dull depression took hold of him and he moped in his study.

The jovial Phipps did his best to rouse him, and occasionally he was successful. When his attempts failed, he lost patience and gave Adrian a piece of his mind.

“The Lord knows what’s come over you, Adrian. Why can’t you pull yourself together, man? You never used to be like this. Being with you nowaday’s as bad as being at a blooming funeral.”

To himself Adrian admitted that Phipps was right. It was not as if all this moping did the slightest good, whereas to pull himself together and do his best to shake himself free of his obsession could not very well make him more miserable than he was already, and might in the end make him happier. But it would be, while it lasted, a thankless job and he felt that he had not the energy to try.

But in the end he did try. He had not yet written to Ronny nor had he heard from him, and now he refrained from writing. He even refrained, so far as he could, from thinking of him. He resumed the string trio, working away with pages of music manuscript spread all over his study table, to the astonishment of Phipps and his other friends. Mr. Heller was pleased to find that his last term’s neglect of music was at an end. He practised furiously now, so that, except when he was playing games or carrying out his duties as prefect, his friends saw almost nothing of him. When they did, they found him touchy and preoccupied: they could not make out what had come over him. It was only when he played games that they saw in him the Glynde they knew, for then he threw off his gloom and, it seemed, concentrated all his energies into those moments. He played football with a frenzied absorption that astonished them. Then, it seemed to him, he got to grips with something, something in himself which he exorcised in a fury of physical action. He played for Taylor’s now, and was, in fact, easily their best man, and it was almost certain that, when a vacancy occurred, he would play for the school. Even when the game was over he was, for a while, astonishingly, boisterously cheerful. But this cheerfulness soon exhausted itself and he plunged again into his black mood. There were times when he sickened even of music, but not for long. The sheer mastery of old Heller’s playing always drove away his gloom in the end; and when he himself played, the physical exercise soon released his feelings. But he wearied of his attempts at composition and gave up work on the trio.

At the beginning of November Oliver Glynde had had a sharp attack of influenza, and when he was well enough to travel his doctor had advised him to go abroad to avoid the English winter. At first it had been decided that he was to go to the South of France and that Adrian should join him there for the holidays. Adrian was delighted at the prospect. He had never been abroad. What a gorgeous change from the rain and the boredom of Charminster it would be to go to a strange, exciting country where there was summer in winter. His grandfather had sent him a passport, and when he felt more depressed than usual he unfolded it and studied it with wondering absorption. But his hopes were disappointed. The weather reports from the Riviera were so bad that it was decided that Oliver Glynde must go further afield. He started, at the beginning of December, for Biskra, and Adrian spent Christmas at Yarn.

Clara and Bob found him dull and irritable. Clara put it down to music. “Music,” she asserted, “is an unhealthy art. It’s all very well as a distraction, like tennis or chess, but Adrian overdoes it.”

Bob laughed at this. “Nonsense, Clara,” he said. “The boy’s growing up, that’s all. He’s at the queer age, and getting through it pretty well, in my opinion.”

But Adrian’s queerness, whatever its cause, did not abate during the following term. His friends found him just as unsatisfactory, just as indecipherable, as he had been in the autumn. To Adrian that Easter term was almost unendurable. The weather was bad, the weeks crawled past like months, the dreary routine of school was almost maddening. One evening he got out his trio and looked it over. There was a lot of it now, twelve pages of closely written manuscript. It seemed to him, as he looked through it, that he saw it very clearly. Its faults stood out, obvious and unmistakable, but its merits also stood out. He considered it carefully and with detachment, and he felt certain that on the whole it was remarkably good. “Yes,” he told himself, “it’s good, a very good job,” and, gathering the pages together, he tore them across, gathered the half-pages into packets and tore each packet across, then bundled the heap of torn paper into the waste-paper basket. The trio had served its purpose. He would write music, better music than this, later. He blew out his breath as though relieved of a burden. He was sick of the trio, and he was sick of his sentimental feelings about Ronny, and he was sick, sickest of all, of Charminster. Yes, that was the root of the matter: he had got out of Charminster all that it could give him, and, lingering on there now, he felt like one sitting at a feast when all the wine has been drunk and all the guests have gone. From Old Heller he still received much, very much; but old Heller was not Charminster. The fact that he had only one other pupil besides Adrian proved how remarkably little of Charminster he was.

The term drew to a close in a dreary monotony of rain. The daily spectacle of rain on the windows, the yards and yards of wet asphalt that reflected blackly the meagre modern Gothic of the school-buildings, the stale smell of the ugly class-rooms, the gaunt, unlovely, hatefully familiar block of Taylor’s filled him with weary disgust. If the whole place had caught fire and burnt to the ground Adrian would have been delighted.

He determined to get away from it, to get away for good. To return next term and again the term after would be unendurable: the mere thought of it was appalling.

At last, ten days before the holidays, he wrote to his aunt Clara asking to be taken away from Charminster at the end of the term. It was a long, rambling letter which cost him immense pains to write. He was so anxious to convince her of the extreme seriousness of the matter, to let her see how strongly he felt, to force her to understand and sympathise, that the letter became a mere tangle of words and arguments. Clara, reading it with her eyebrows raised in surprise and mystification, decided at once that it had been fired off on the spur of the moment as the result of some temporary disturbance in Adrian’s school life. She heard no desperate cry in it, and indeed it needed a wiser and more human creature than Clara to detect it in that jumble of inadequate reasons which were Adrian’s utterly unsuccessful attempt to explain feelings which even he himself did not understand. “By now,” she thought as she sat down to reply, “he will have settled down again,” and she wrote him one of her cool, matter-of-fact communications saying that she was sorry to hear he was out of sympathy with Charminster, that these moods did, she knew well, come over one from time to time, generally, she added to herself but not to Adrian, as a result of indigestion or continued bad weather. Sensible people, she wrote, set their jaws and persevered till the mood passed, as such moods always did sooner or later. She hoped, she said, that he would not suppose she did not understand or sympathise. She pointed out very reasonably that it would be a thousand pities to cut short his career at Charminster, and that to do so might ruin his chances at Oxford and would certainly be a bitter disappointment to his grandfather.

Adrian had felt such an overwhelming desire to convince Clara that he had irrationally taken it for granted that his letter would do so. Her reply came as a crushing disillusionment, and, as a result, his mind turned upon her with a cold, detached criticism. “Understand!” he thought scornfully. “Of course she doesn’t understand. That’s the worst of her. She’s always so prim and cold and collected.” His anger against her was increased by her statement that his leaving school would be a blow to his grandfather, for he recognised, but would not admit to himself, that this might be true. If his grandfather had been within easier reach he would have written to him in the first instance. Now he felt it would not be quite decent to appeal to him over Clara’s head, after having tried and failed to obtain her assent to his wishes. He retired into his gloom and raged internally. It seemed to him that whenever his feelings were strongly concerned he was sure to be thwarted by people or circumstances. In old days he had never had enough of his father and was always being unexpectedly repulsed by his mother. Later he had been harassed by the insecurity of his hopes of holidays at Yarn. Later still, the longing he had fixed on his mother had been rudely shattered, and when in his loneliness he had set his affections on Ronny Dakyn, he had got more misery than happiness out of it. Now they were going to force him to do what his whole being cried out against, to compel him to stay on at this hateful spot.

In these circumstances the prospect of holidays at Yarn had lost all its attraction. He was delighted, when the day came, to leave Charminster, but his mind was set against Yarn. A ferment of wild schemes boiled within him. As he drove to the station with Phipps he cast a final look from the window of the cab at Charminster, gaunt, chilly, and soulless behind a curtain of fine rain. “Well, of all the lousy holes …!” he muttered.

“Oh, of course it’s a lousy hole,” said Phipps gaily. “Every school’s a lousy hole, automatically. But, all the same, I like the old place.”

“You like it, Flipper? You honestly mean to say you like it?”

“Of course I like it. I love it.”

“Well,” said Adrian, “all I can say is that if I was one of those Old Testament blighters I’d call down fire from heaven and burn the damned place to a frazzle.”

“Thanks!” said Phipps. “And what about the inmates?”

“Them too!” said Adrian.

“Thanks again!” said Phipps, a little wounded.

Adrian laughed. “Oh, not you, Flipper! I’d make an exception of you and Old Hell and a brief list, a very brief list, of others.” He glanced through the rain again. “Yes,” he said, “an exceedingly lousy hole!”

XXVII

When he had reached Waterloo and bidden good-bye to Phipps, Adrian had his trunk despatched direct to Yarn, and then, taking only a small suitcase, got into a cab and drove, not to Paddington, but to Charing Cross. He deposited his suitcase in the cloak-room and went out into the Strand. His mind was busy, alert, full of clear-cut plans. Ever since the days when he had lived with his mother and father in London, he had had a small account at the bank, to which from time to time he had added. It amounted now to over fifty pounds, and had for the last year been in his own control. He took a bus to the bank now and drew out the whole sum. He then made a few other purchases and bought a rucksack, sent a wire to Clara saying, “Don’t expect me for some days. Writing,” and then returned to Charing Cross and lunched at the hotel.

After lunch he went to the little writing-room on the first floor and sat down to write letters. For some time he sat staring in front of him, gnawing his pen. Then slowly and laboriously he began to write. “Dear Aunt Clara, Your answer to my letter was a great disappointment to me. I wouldn’t have written that letter if I hadn’t been really horribly fed up. Really and truly I can’t return to Charminster next term: I simply couldn’t stand another term of it. I quite see what you say about it in your letter, but the fact is I would rather die than go back. If I were to come to Yarn now, you would naturally try to talk me round. But I can’t argue about it: I only know that I must clear out of Charminster. So I think I had better not come to Yarn at present. Arguing would only make us all unhappy. You and Uncle Bob would get angry with me, and I could do nothing but be as stubborn as a mule, because I couldn’t, really I couldn’t, give in and go back. So I’m going abroad instead. I’m starting this evening or to-morrow morning and shall post this just before I go. I am writing to Grandfather now, explaining everything to him as well as I can. I am sure he will understand. I’ll write to you often, so don’t worry about me, and don’t you and Uncle Bob be too angry with me. You wouldn’t be, if you knew how thoroughly fed up I’ve been.”

Having finished this letter and put it in his pocket, he wrote a long one to his grandfather and posted it in the letter-box in the hall of the hotel. Then he went out into the station-yard. He knew there was a Cook’s Travel Bureau there. Fortunately he already had the passport which his grandfather had sent him four months ago. But how did one get a ticket, how find out all the necessary details about the journey? He had no idea. He had never been out of England, and the thought of going abroad filled him with misgivings. He went and gazed tentatively into Cook’s window; then, overcome with cowardice, sheered off and went into the station, where he strolled unconsciously to and fro, propelled by his nervous excitement. He clenched his teeth to prevent them chattering. Then he turned and went back to Cook’s and walked straight in.

A quiet, middle-aged man attended to him. “I want to go to Carcassonne in France,” said Adrian. “Would you please tell me …” He had chosen Carcassonne because Phipps had spent the previous Easter holidays there and had told him wonderful things about it.

The middle-aged man showed no surprise at his request, but immediately took up a railway guide and turned to the necessary page. He asked Adrian when he wanted to start. “I could start this afternoon,” Adrian replied. “But is it.… Could I …?”

The middle-aged man perhaps noticed his agitation, for he asked him if he had been abroad before. When Adrian told him he had not, he proceeded to explain everything to him in quiet, leisurely tones, jotting down times, places, and scraps of useful information on a piece of paper. It was, it appeared, the easiest thing in the world to go to Carcassonne. “You can speak French?” he asked Adrian.

“Yes, after a fashion,” said Adrian with a shy smile.

“In that case you’ll have no difficulty,” the man told him.

Adrian left the bureau with a second single to Carcassonne in his pocket, feeling enormously reassured. The boat-train, it appeared, left Victoria at four o’clock.

In his anxiety, he reached Victoria an hour before train time. There was nothing for him to do there but hang about till his train came in. He inspected the indicator and discovered his platform. Then he strolled towards the bookstall.

Before he had reached it he was stopped by a voice behind him. “Hallo, Glynde!”

He turned, and did not at first recognise the large, heavily built man. Then he held out his hand. “Hallo, Ellenger!”

“You don’t happen to have seen Ronny about, do you?” Ellenger asked.

“What, here?” Adrian’s heart leapt to his throat at the thought of meeting Ronny. He turned and glanced about among the crowd.

“Oh, I don’t think he’s here,” said Ellenger, “but I thought he might be. I wrote and asked him to lunch, and told him I was leaving here at three-fifteen, so that if he couldn’t manage lunch, he might perhaps meet me here for a few minutes. But he didn’t turn up for lunch and I don’t suppose he’ll come now.”

Ellenger’s face was more closed and enigmatical than ever, but his voice was friendly. He seemed quite pleased at meeting Adrian.

“Where are you off to now?” Adrian asked.

“Home. You see, I’m going away … leaving England … to-morrow, and I had to come up on business this morning. I thought he might meet me as it was the last chance.”

“Leaving England? For good, you mean?”

“I’ve got a job in Peru. I’m joining an uncle out there.”

Adrian hesitated, and then said: “I’ll come and see you into your train if you don’t mind. Mine doesn’t go for an hour.”

Ellenger gave him one of those rare smiles of his. “It’ll be awfully nice if you will,” he said.

They went together towards the platform. “You’ll be away for some time then?” said Adrian when he had got a platform-ticket.

“I shan’t be back for four or five years, if then,” said Ellenger. He glanced down the platform in front of them. “No signs of Ronny,” he said. “He won’t turn up. But I thought there was just the chance.”

Adrian was suddenly overcome with sympathy for this large, unhappy creature. He longed to show his goodwill, but all he could say was: “Four or five years sounds a long time, but of course it isn’t really.”

Ellenger chose a third smoker, got in, shut the door, and leaned out of the window. “I was lucky to meet you,” he said, looking down at Adrian. Then a look of embarrassment crossed his face. “I wonder if you’d do me a favour,” he said awkwardly. “It’s a strange thing to ask, but if you would do your best to persuade Ronny to write occasionally.… You’ll be seeing him, won’t you?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I don’t know if I shall. But if I do see him, I’ll do what I can, you may be sure.”

“That’s awfully kind of you,” said Ellenger.

The whistle blew and Adrian held out his hand. “I’m awfully glad you happened to catch sight of me,” he said.

“So am I,” said Ellenger. The train started. He grasped Adrian’s hand. “You’re a good chap,” he said, and withdrew suddenly from the window.

“The best of luck,” shouted Adrian, following the moving train. In the dimness of the corridor he saw Ellenger turn his head and make a motion with his hand, and then, with a pang at his heart, he caught, in a brief, unforgettable glimpse, the flash of tears in his old enemy’s eyes.

Just before six o’clock that evening Adrian arrived at Dover Harbour. The smell of the clean, salt, chilly air as he followed the crowd along the platform and across to the quay, awoke in him a host of keen, sharply conflicting feelings. Fear struggled with the eagerness in his heart, a longing for the familiar comforts of Yarn with a deep sense of relief at his escape from the dreary life of the last six months, a small irrepressible thrill of adventure with a craven shudder at the unknown that awaited him across that forbidding, restless water, iron grey under the sombre evening sky. But secure in this tumult of emotions was his determination to go on.

The steamer, its decks and funnels and masts towering formidably above the quay, stirred uneasily on the choppy water of the harbour. Adrian made his way up the gangway and, stepping on board, felt the deck lift under his feet. And at that strange, heaving motion of the great complicated creature he realised with a sudden thrill of misgiving that he had left the sureness and security of England behind him.

He set down his bag, put on his coat (for the breeze was chilly), and, leaning over the rail, watched the stream of passengers filtering along the steep gangway into the ship, watched the luggage swung deftly from the quay by the noisy crane, watched the harbour hands loose the ropes from the bollards as the ship’s engines began to pulse under his feet. The gap of water between the boat and the quay yawned wider and wider; the darkly towering town drew back. The boat was divesting itself of the harbour as though putting off a cloak. Soon it had flung off the last long ribbon of pier. A chilly line of dim white cliffs opened out behind: lights twinkled like clusters of fireflies in the dark thicket of the landline: the boat drove straight for the grey emptiness ahead. It was not till the coming night had swallowed England that Adrian returned to his solitary self and to the deck on which he stood.

XVIII

The sun was so hot that it was a relief to step out of the dazzling village street into the low, dim, stone-flagged room of the estaminet. There the air was cool and smelt of damp stone, and the dimness soothed the eyes. A scarlet curtain, brilliant against the outside glare, hung over the door that gave on the street. Sometimes it filled slowly with a passing breeze, bellied into the room, and shrank noiselessly back. On a dresser at the back of the room an array of copper cooking-vessels glowed with a subdued rosy lustre. Benches stood against the walls, and before the benches long tables.

Adrian shook the rucksack from his shoulders and, pushing his way in between a bench and a table, sat down and put the sack on the bench beside him. A stout, handsome woman had come from an inner room at the sound of his footsteps.

“May I have some déjeuner? I am very hungry,” he said to her in French.

She nodded her head. “Good!” she said. “You will eat well here, monsieur. Give me only a little half-hour.”

Adrian turned to his rucksack and got out a writing-pad, fumbled for a pencil in his pocket, and laid both on the table before him. He was hot, tired, and perfectly happy. Leaning back against the cool wall and stretching out his legs under the table, he sat for a while staring in front of him. Then he took out his watch. It was ten past twelve. The poor devils at Charminster would still be in morning school, or perhaps just coming out. Term had begun a week ago. Fancy, only just fancy, if he had decided to stick it, spent his holidays like a good boy at Yarn and gone back to Charminster. He would have been there at this moment. Thank God he had made up his mind to do the right thing—or the wrong thing, he thought, with a little noiseless laugh. He wondered now how he had managed to pull it off, “because it really wasn’t like me,” he thought; “not a bit.”

His thoughts turned to his aunt. She really was rather a brick, for he had undeniably treated her and Uncle Bob very badly. He hadn’t even dared to trust them not to try to force him to return, and so, though he had written to her twice, he had not given any address until a week ago when, at least, they could not have got him back in time for the beginning of term. He had decided that it was useless to disguise his whereabouts any longer, because his money was beginning to peter out, and, when it did, he supposed he would have to return to England. Then he had given the address of the little hotel at Quillan which he had made his headquarters since leaving Carcassonne. Yesterday a letter with her familiar writing on the envelope had come for him, and he had opened it with some trepidation. How like Aunt Clara that letter had been—imperturbable, despite her just annoyance, strictly practical, coldly incisive in style, and yet, in the end, so magnanimous. At the thought of it he felt a glow of affection for her, and, taking it out of his pocket now, he read it through again.

“MY DEAR ADRIAN,—You are a very unaccountable person. On the last occasion of your running away, four years ago, when your mother tried to dragoon you into a visit to the Crowhursts, I secretly approved. But then you were running away from your mother, and I didn’t approve of your mother. This time you are running away from us, and you cannot expect me to be so acquiescent. I am annoyed partly that you should slink away and leave us to tidy up a troublesome situation which you have wilfully imposed upon us, and partly because I dislike all explosive and unaccountable behaviour. You get that, I suppose, from your mother: certainly not from us. You have passed the age when running away can be considered a kind of heroism, and I hope that in future you will face whatever situations you create. I have written to your grandfather and shall act on his wishes. I hope you will do the same and will not treat them with the airy disregard with which you treated mine. I need not point out that his happiness and peace of mind are of more importance than a temporary and, it seems to me, rather trifling dissatisfaction of your own. You know, I hope, that I am not one to bear malice. I think you have behaved badly and I have told you so candidly, and there’s an end of it. When you decide to return, we shall be as glad as ever to see you. You need not have hesitated to let me have an address that would find you, for we should have spared you and ourselves a hue and cry. Your uncle was more annoyed over your escapade than I have seen him for years, but, like me, he is recovering. He called you a variety of names which it would be salutary for you to hear, but improper for me to repeat. Let us know if you want money: your dramatic flight need not entail the additional romance of squalor and starvation. I hope you are taking the opportunity to improve your French. Your uncle joins me in love.”

How like her to scold him and in the same breath to offer to send him money. And how inimitably like her that last practical sentence: “I hope you are taking the opportunity to improve your French.” Whatever happened, Aunt Clara would always be practical. If he were to write and announce his capture by Turkish brigands, Aunt Clara in the course of a sympathetic reply would doubtless urge him not to waste the chance of learning Turkish. He took up his pencil and began to write to her.

He had finished his letter before his meal was ready, and on a sudden impulse he began a letter to Ronny. He had lately come to realise that in his determination to escape from the imaginary Ronny which had caused him so much unhappiness he had almost left the real one out of account. The real one was a very charming, kind-hearted fellow who had treated him generously. It seemed to him now, as he thought of Ronny, that, apart from those disturbing sentimental feelings towards him into which he had allowed himself to fall, he had for him the same sort of honest affection that he had for Phipps. He could think of him calmly and rationally now: it seemed as if he had at last managed to shake off his absurd obsession about him. It was nearly ten months now, he reflected as he sat, pencil in hand, since Ronny had left Charminster. It was certainly high time that he wrote to him. But perhaps by this time Ronny would not want to hear from him. He would be in new surroundings, among new people, and in his gay, adaptable fashion he would have dismissed Adrian and Charminster and his other school friends from his mind. The thought gave him a little stab of pain. Well, there was no harm in writing in any case. If he got no reply he would know that Ronny didn’t want to be bothered with him. He pulled up his sleeves and began to write, telling of his desertion of Charminster and of his present vagrant existence.

A week later, to his astonishment and delight, a reply came in the well-known writing. The rush of emotion which the mere sight of it produced in him showed him how he had misread his own feelings.

“DEAR LITTLE MAN,” wrote Ronny, “I was awfully glad to get your letter this morning, forwarded from home. I was beginning to think you had clean forgotten me and had been meaning for a long time to write and tick you off. Well, upon my word, fancy you giving old Charminster the go-by like that. It takes one of you quiet, harmless little chaps to do a thing like that. I bet it made your people sit up. I’m settled in London now, a poor bloody clerk in a shipping office, so if there’s anything you want to know about ships you’ve only got to drop a line to R. D., Esqre., at the above address and full particulars will be forwarded. I’ve got digs in Lennox Street, near Torrington Square, number 29. Beastly street, but fairly decent digs. Look me up, mind, when you are in London. So long.

“Yours,

“RONALD DAKYN.”

That short, commonplace letter stirred Adrian deeply. He read it over and over again; he minutely examined the disturbingly familiar writing. “Yes,” he thought to himself, “that’s the way he always made his capital R’s.” He gazed, fascinated and incredulous, at the envelope: then, with a deep sigh, folded the letter and put it carefully away in his breast-pocket. “Oh, bother,” he thought, “I’ve gone and started it all off again.”

The fact that Clara did not press Adrian to return to England was due to the attitude of Oliver Glynde, who, as a result of the letters he had received from Adrian, wrote and urged her to leave him to his own devices. He wrote also to Adrian—one of those wonderful, copious letters of his, in which he told him he must remain in France as long as he wanted to. He recommended Avignon, Aries, Les Baux, Aigues Mortes, the Cevennes.

So Adrian stayed on, wandering about the country with a rucksack and sending his suitcase by rail when he moved to a new centre. The novelty of the life, the new country, the freedom and leisure, the French conversations with chance acquaintances in estaminets, cafes, hotels, or in the open country, were just what he needed. He walked incessantly. The walking kept him in fine condition: his mind had grown as healthy as his body. In the summer holidays Phipps joined him and they had a wonderful fortnight in the Pyrenees. But when the fortnight was over and he stood on the platform waving to Phipps, who waved back to him from the receding train, he felt for a moment lonely and exiled. Why hadn’t he gone with Phipps? They would have had such a jolly journey home together.

That evening he decided to return home. But when he awoke next morning his mood had changed and he knew that he could not tear himself away yet.

When at last he reached Yarn the winter was at hand. He had been away over half a year. His dark hair was bleached at the ends to the colour of copper, he had the face and hands of a gypsy, the condition of his clothes was deplorable. In Clara’s restrained and immaculate home he appeared as a disastrous intrusion. “My dear boy,” she remarked, aghast, “if you had come to the back door without warning you would certainly have been turned away.” She inspected him more closely, a smile on her face. “How very unlike a Glynde,” she said, shaking her head. Then her eyes kindled with irrepressible admiration. “But I must say,” she said, “you look disgracefully well.”

They assembled at Abbot’s Randale for Christmas. It seemed to Adrian years since he had been there, and he looked forward eagerly to returning. On the evening of their arrival it froze, and next morning the garden, in the grip of the hoar-frost, had the keen, cold, brittle purity of crystal. The hard weather seemed to Adrian to double the beauty of the place. As soon as breakfast was over, Oliver Glynde, hatted and coated, went out to enjoy it, and Adrian went with him. The paths and the lawn had an adamantine crust which rang hollow under their feet. Every blade of grass, every needle of the pines and firs, every twig of the bare branches of the times and beeches was furred with the delicate white crystallisation of the rime. Thickets and the shrubs in the borders had become a tangle of spun glass; the fountain-basin in the middle of the enclosed lawn contained not water, but a moulded block of darkly translucent flint. The fountain itself had ceased to play. It was ice-bound, and as it slowly froze it had built its waters into an elaborate, many-bossed shape of quartz, like the carved image of a Chinese god.

The piercing cold and glassy purity of the garden brought out in rich contrast the warm, colourful beauty of the house. A great fire crackled in the hall, and the warm, summery fragrance of a hot-house plant which stood in a brass bowl on the central table seemed to be another aspect of the blue, orange, and straw-coloured rug and the lustrous silk hanging whose colours were the richer and more vivid for the hueless austerity of the garden. Every strange and beautiful object in Oliver’s study had taken on, by contrast, a brighter individuality. It was as if, in the absence of bloom in the garden, the house had broken into strange, exotic flowers of endless variety. In the drawing-room, as the afternoon drew on towards evening, those planes of the scarlet lacquer furniture that faced the hearth glowed as if red-hot in the firelight, fiery sheen stained the figured Chinese silk on the wall, and flecks of gold and scarlet fire flickered in the gilt frames and the golden backgrounds of the holy pictures. The glass chandelier was no longer the frozen shower of a fountain, but a rain of many-coloured jewels.

How delightful it was once more to be in the stimulating company of Oliver Glynde and Clara and Bob and to move about among these beautiful surroundings. When he thought of Charminster now, Adrian discovered in the back of his mind a deep affection for it. He loved and regretted gaunt, unlovely Taylor’s, the rowdy Common-room, the bare stone stairs, the passage that led to the studies, all the rooms and corridors through which, like a small red corpuscle in the bloodstream of Charminster youth, he had circulated with his small freight of vivid, infinitely various emotions. Yes, he loved it all, even while thanking God he was not returning to it. His realisation of his love for it was, in fact, a condition of his not returning to it.

Clara had now begun to be much preoccupied with his future. Her orderly and practical mind insisted, now that he had been allowed to have his fling, that he ought to settle down to something. But she had not broached the subject except to Bob, who heartily agreed with her.

“But we must leave it to your father,” he said. “Obviously he has taken over the problem of Adrian. He actually seemed pleased when the young scamp bolted from school.”

But the active Clara could not leave it at that. “I shall raise the subject at the first opportunity,” she said and she found the opportunity that very evening at dinner, when her father suggested that Adrian should stay on at Abbot’s Randale when she and Bob went home. “We might do some reading together,” the old man said to Adrian, “the classics, English, French, and perhaps a little Spanish.”

“But what, after all, of the future, my good creatures?” asked Clara.

Her father shot a challenging glance at her. “The future, Clara? There’s no such thing.”

“Perhaps not,” said Clara, “but it has always been found convenient to pretend there is.”

“Take care of the present,” replied the old man, “and the future, allowing for the moment that it exists, will take care of itself.”

“And pray who said that?” said Clara superciliously.

“I did,” said Oliver; “and so, you may remember, did Jesus Christ. It is a golden rule which nowadays we are only to apt too disregard.”

Clara smiled indulgently. “It is obvious, my dear Father, that you have never been a woman or a housekeeper, and the same, I venture to say, applies to Jesus Christ. When he said that Mary had chosen the better part, I have always felt he was exceedingly unfair to Martha, who was, after all, busy about providing the indispensable motive power for his preaching and for Mary’s adoration. For, say what you will, men and women are creatures of flesh and blood and stomachs, and supper, therefore, is supper.”

“My dear Clara, I should not be my daughter’s father if I decried supper or any of the needs and pleasures of the body. But too many cooks, you remember! We can’t all make the supper, and none of us need be making the supper all the time. There’s a time for supper-making and a time for adoration. It is awkward, I admit,” he added, “when, as on the historic occasion you mention, they coincide.”

“Oh, so long as you will admit,” Clara replied, “that there is, for everybody, a time for supper-making; and further, for washing-up too—an even less poetical business! And so long as you don’t forget, in your preoccupation with poetry and the soul, my own little private pet the mind for whom I tried to put in a plea the last time I was here. It takes a mind to produce a good supper and a trace of mind even to remember the washing-up. What I’m driving at is, what about Oxford? What about a profession? Don’t let Adrian forget the plates, my dear poet, in his preoccupation with Plato.”

“But Plato, Clara, is a philosopher—one of your own little proteges.”

Clara shook her head disapprovingly. “A philosopher,” she said, “who always seemed to me, when I tried to read him, fatally tainted with poetry.” She turned to Adrian. “Have you given any thought, Adrian, to what you are going to be?”

Adrian looked sheepish, but before he could reply his grandfather had butted in.

“Going to be!” he echoed scornfully. “People are always worrying young folk about what they are going to be. In the state in which most of us live nowadays it is unfortunately necessary for them to do so. But we, by no particular merit of our own perhaps, are fortunate. We have enough money to be free of the necessity of working for our living. It is because of this increasing necessity to work for a living that culture is slowly dying out. There are very few really cultured young people in England today. It may be lack of inclination as well as of opportunity: I don’t know. But Adrian has the inclination, so for God’s sake let us give him the opportunity. You had it, Clara, and you made the most of it, and from the way you have been lecturing us about pans and dish-clouts I judge that it hasn’t done you any serious harm. You remain a practical person, though a little weak in that most practical of all matters, poetry.”

“My dear Father,” said Clara, “if we are to call poetry practical, what on earth is left for us to call unpractical?”

Oliver laughed. “I don’t ever expect to convince you, Clara, that poetry is anything more than a polite drunkenness. But to the writer of poetry, poetry is immensely, superlatively practical, for it deals or attempts to deal with reality. And it deals with it directly, for it avoids the clumsy method of thought and takes the short-cut of emotion. If you say’ I feel this’ or’ I feel that,’ you are stating an incontrovertible truth; no one can justifiably get up and tell you that you don’t, nor would it in the least impair the validity of your feelings if he did so. But if you say ‘I think this,’ every Tom, Dick, and Harry may jump up and prove convincingly, if he happens to be a better logician than you are, that you are wrong. Besides, emotions are vital things, the most vital things we have, and you can hardly deny that the most vital are the most practical.”

“And so Adrian with his music has a perfect right to declare himself a practical business man?”

“I believe he would have been considered so in Elizabethan times, which, in such matters, were more enlightened than ours. Shakespearean doctors, you remember, are very fond of prescribing music for their patients. So if you consider Messrs. Burroughs and Welcome practical men of business, I don’t see how you can deny Adrian the title. If you provoke us too persistently, Clara, we shall retort, in reply to all these salvoes from your batterie de cuisine, that your own preoccupation with pots and kettles and sinks is comfortably and aesthetically removed from stern reality. I don’t believe you have ever washed up in your life, and I should sit down to a supper which you had not only ordered but actually cooked, with the gravest misgivings.”

Bob gave a loud laugh. “Got you there, Clara! Don’t you remember the plaice that wouldn’t fry and the kidneys that turned into very fair imitations of india rubber boot-heels?”

Clara’s composure collapsed and she gave one of her sudden, loud, hearty laughs, opening her mouth and showing her fine teeth. “Don’t speak of them, Bob,” she said, shuddering. Then she turned, her eyes still shining with mirth, to her father. “But my private incapacities, and the fact that, when I provide supper, it is a supper not (except on that one unhappy occasion) cooked by myself, doesn’t really affect the question. You will soon be telling me, I expect, that plumbers are vague dreamers, engine-drivers unworldly mystics, and that Santa Fina of San Gimignano, who spent all her brief life, I believe, at full length on the kitchen floor having visions, was a very energetic and businesslike young woman. It seems to me, I must confess, a mere confusion of terms.’ The practical is quite unpractical, the only really practical things are the unpractical,’ and so on. Why have words at all if we are to twist them into meaning their opposites?”

“No, Clara,” said the old man, “the confusion is not in the terms, but in the ideas. To call art unpractical is only a sympton of the mercenary dullness of the modern outlook. It is time we dissociated, as Remy de Gourmont used to say, the ideas of the artistic and the unpractical. The New Psychologists, I believe, have already exploded some of the strongholds of the practical. Nothing, it used to be generally believed (though I myself never credited it for an instant), could be more utterly practical than a spring-cleaning. A woman in the act of spring-cleaning was the very symbol, the apotheosis of the practical. But all that has been exploded long since. It is known to-day that spring-cleaning is a sublimated sexual orgy, though why they should grace it with the qualification of sublimated is more than I can understand. Why not diverted?”

“Or perverted?” suggested Bob.

“Or perverted.” Oliver accepted the suggestion. “For a simple orgy affects no one but the participators, whereas a spring-cleaning raises a dust that is far better left lying, and causes horrible discomfort to numberless innocent males who ask nothing better than to be allowed to rest peacefully in a comfortable average of cleanliness and dirt.”

Clara laughed. “The New Psychology,” she said, “is obviously a science invented by men. If women were as poetical as men they could, I am sure, throw a very lurid light on pipe-smoking and company-promoting.”

They rose from the table, and that was all Clara got out of her laudable attempt to introduce the theme of Adrian’s future.

XIX

Whether or not there was such a thing as the future, Adrian had been thinking of it. After his long holiday he felt a desire for hard work, he wanted to get to grips with something, and his mind turned again to music. A crowd of ideas was stirring in him, but he knew nothing, beyond what in his youthful attempts he had discovered for himself, of the technical side of composition. He now determined that before going any further he must master this, and so equip himself thoroughly as a workman before he again tried to be an artist. He discussed the matter with his grandfather, and they decided that he should go to London and study at the Royal College of Music. Adrian wrote to Ronny, asking advice about rooms in London, and Ronny replied urging him to share his. They could easily share the sitting-room, he said, and by good luck the front bedroom above the sitting-room was vacant at the moment. “I’ve booked it for you from the twenty-third,” he wrote. “It will be like old times when you used to share my study.” He took it for granted that Adrian would be delighted to join him, and he was right.

“I feel guilty about you, Adrian,” said his grandfather on the evening before Adrian moved to London. “Here we are, apprenticing you to art without making any arrangements about the complementary apprenticeship to coal-heaving. The difficulty lies in the present organisation of society. If we coal-heave at all, society insists that we do so every day except Sunday, and not every alternate day. What are we to do for Adrian the animal? In the country it is fairly easy to keep the animal exercised, but in town it is a difficult job. That’s why I would never keep a dog when I lived in London.”

“He’ll have to take his chance,” said Adrian. “I shall be too busy to give him much attention.”

“But don’t ignore the poor devil, old man. Don’t turn into a hermit. What a pity you took to music instead of sculpture. The sculptor is the only man who escapes from the limits imposed by modern life. His work involves both the poetry and the coal-heaving. If I could begin again I would be a sculptor.”

“But think of the slowness of it. How exasperatingly the manual labour would lag behind the thought. You’re the best off in that respect, Grandfather. I’m sure music must be maddening at times. Think of the sheer mechanical labour of putting together an orchestral score. You work in single lines, but the wretched symphony-writer works by pages: every musical word has to be … to be built up vertically as well as horizontally.”

“Horrible!” said Oliver. “And none of it requiring any appreciable muscular effort, nothing but a skipping and scratching among the staves. No, your sculptor’s the only happy man. He has to sweat with hammer and chisel.”

“But why should that be better than to sit still and write a poem and then go for a walk? Or to coal-heave for a living and read Voltaire for pleasure in the evenings?”

“Why, indeed?” said the old man. “It’s mere prejudice on my part. I don’t mind reading for pleasure, because I’m a professional writer; but I resent the unproductiveness of my muscular life. I want a little serious coal-heaving to make a walk in the country a justifiable indulgence.”

“But a walk is justifiable, because you enjoy it and it does you good.”

“Exactly! You’re more truly classic than I am, Adrian. I suffer, it seems, from a tiresome romantic puritanism which I never seem to grow out of. So you won’t be worried by having no coal-heaving to do?”

“No, I’m afraid not,” said Adrian.

Oliver was silent. He was thinking, and smiled drily at his thoughts. “I’m afraid it’s undeniable,” he said at last, “that the peculiar nature of my coal-heaving is that it is limited exclusively to the mind. Despite my strong feelings on the subject and the flood of words I let loose about it, I have never stirred a finger to put it, or anything equivalent to it, into practice. And as for doing anything useful, even in the mental department, haven’t I spent half a lifetime in writing poetry which appeared to be of no use whatsoever? It’s only in the last twenty years, you know, that people have begun to take any notice of me. Before that, my books didn’t sell three hundred copies.”

“So your coal-heaving is a sort of prick of conscience?”

“Yes, a moment of revolt against writing poems for their own sakes only.”

“But nowadays all your work has become useful because people have learnt to appreciate it.”

“Yes, now that I have almost got accustomed to doing without appreciation.” He paused, and then said: “But no! That’s not true. I value appreciation of my work. What I have grown out of is the desire for personal applause. And that is just as well, for the sage has no need of applause. I am not a sage, but I have achieved at least that quality of one, There was once a king—or there will have been if I ever get the poem written—a king of … where shall we say? … of Khor. Because you will have noticed, Adrian, that if one wishes to make a very wise or a very beneficent character in the least credible one has to locate him outside the bounds of Europe. There was once, then, a king of Khor, whose subjects were an energetic, intelligent, but undisciplined and irresponsible people. For centuries they had been accustomed to government by tyranny, and it was as a beneficent tyrant that he ruled them when he succeeded his father on the throne. But he saw that if this state of things continued, their unemployed forces would explode and they would destroy themselves. So he began, slowly and unobtrusively, to organise them, to thrust upon them gradually the business of exploiting their energies in small details of self-government. His reforms caused grave discontent. His people complained that he was weak, idle, unable to control them; but by degrees they adapted themselves to the new conditions. When the time was ripe, he again exercised his tyranny in imposing upon them a still greater measure of freedom, and again there were outcries, again he became unpopular, and again the turbulent energies of the nation were safely conducted into wider and more useful channels. At last, by his patent and careful education, he had given them an admirably equipped constitutional government. He had tamed them and he had liberated them. His work, it seemed, was accomplished. And none too soon, for he was by this time a feeble old man. One day, seated in his study, he was overcome by dejection, for it seemed to him, despite all he had achieved, that he had failed in his life’s work. As if in answer to his thoughts, his Prime Minister entered unannounced and informed him that, in response to the unanimous wish of the people, the cabinet had that morning resolved to depose him and elect a president. They regretted that, as a matter of principle, they must also expel him from the country, for the very idea of a king had become hateful to a free people. All that was needed to put these schemes into practise was the royal assent. The old king, having received this information and given his assent, summoned his valet, ordered him to pack his things, and in an hour, unaccompanied except by the valet, left the palace. By slow stages he travelled to another country, the land of Gobi, whose king, a cousin of his, would, he knew, receive him hospitably. In order that his cousin of Gobi should not be totally unprepared for his arrival, he sent a letter ahead of him, telling of all that had happened in his own kingdom and announcing his arrival a few days later. When he reached his journey’s end he was almost dead from exhaustion. They laid him on a bed of yellow damask, and by degrees he rallied. When he was to some extent rested, his cousin came to his bedside.’ I have come, my dear cousin of Khor,’ he said,’ to offer my profound sympathy in the days of your failure and affliction.’’ My dear cousin and host,’ whispered the old king,’ I do not deserve nor need your pity, for these are the happiest days I have ever known. Throughout my life I have coerced my people towards liberty, but the final act of liberation could not be performed by coercion. It could be performed only by themselves. I could but drive them, like horses, to the pool and hope that they would smell the water and drink. For the last year I have feared failure: I have waited and waited for a sign, and no sign came. I almost came to believe that I should die on the throne and leave my unhappy country a monarchy. But ten days ago, when my Prime Minister came to me and announced my deposition and expulsion, I knew that I was not to be robbed of the fruit of my life’s labour. You see in me, dear cousin, one of the blessed few who have triumphed.’ Having spoken thus, the old king closed his eyes and, with a smile of perfect happiness on his lips, breathed his last breath.”

Adrian left Abbot’s Randale in high feather. He was full of energy and keen to get to work. All the good he had got from his months in France seemed to have concentrated itself now into a tireless activity of mind. He was keen to get to grips with this business of music. And, added to the prospect of hard work at the Royal College, was his eagerness to be with Ronny again. How delightful that would be. He would have Ronny to himself at last, and in a much more satisfactory way than at Charminster for they would live intimately yet independently. They would breakfast together every morning, each would be busy with his own affairs during the day, and they would meet again after work and have their evenings together. How lucky he was. His mind suddenly turned to Ellenger, and he remembered that he must persuade Ronny to write to him fairly often.

The afternoon sun shone over the leafless woods and bare fields as the little train from Abbot’s Randale rattled along towards Wilmore Junction. At Wilmore he would have a cup of tea and a word with his old friend, and when the little train had deposited him there he left his luggage with the porter and went to the refreshment-room.

Her eyes lit up as she recognised him. “And how are you?” he said in his shy, polite way.

“Oh, I keep very well, thank you,” she replied. “I needn’t ask you how you are.”

Her pleasant, kindly eyes rested on his face and Adrian understood that she was referring to his colour. “That’s left over from the summer,” he said. “I was in France. I did a lot of walking.”

“It’s a long time now, isn’t it,” she said, “since you first began looking in here?”

“Yes, I suppose it’s at least seven years.”

“It must have been winter or early spring, because you had on a coat—a grey coat and a grey cap, I remember. You were only a little chap then.” And he’s only a boy now, she thought to herself. He’s got a boy’s face and he’s still shy, for all he’s grown so big.

“Seven years is a long time,” said Adrian seriously.

She smiled. “Well, I hope you’ll look in now and then during the next seven years.”

“Oh, I’m sure to,” said Adrian. “You see, my grandfather lives at Abbot’s Randale. No doubt I’ll be wanting fifteen or twenty cups of tea between now and seven years hence.”

Well, anyhow, he looked happy enough this time, she thought to herself after he had gone.

Adrian, having settled himself in the London train, opened his despatch-case and took out a volume of Bach’s toccatas which he had not yet tried. His intention was to spend the journey in trying to learn one of these and then play it by heart at the next opportunity. Soon he was absorbed in his task, now staring earnestly at the page, now raising his head and fixing his eyes on the luggage-rack in an attempt to recall a few bars of the music.

When he had done this once or twice he became conscious of the person sitting opposite him. It was a young woman, and she was studying him with lively, amused black eyes. Why should she be amused? Adrian felt a little annoyed at her impertinence, and with a frown dropped his eyes again to the music. She thought it comical, he supposed, that anyone should read music instead of reading a cheap magazine. Probably rather a silly young woman. He became absorbed in the music again, but just as he was going to raise his eyes again from the page and run over the next passage in his mind, he remembered the young woman and, frowning rather more severely, he kept his eyes lowered. But, after all, she was probably thinking of something else by this time. It would really be too much if she was still staring. He raised his eyes suddenly, to see what she was doing, and there she was, if you please, still examining him with a look of quiet amusement. Adrian was really annoyed, and, to show her that he was, he returned her gaze firmly and stonily for two or three seconds before dropping his eyes again to the music.

But she was not at all abashed. On the contrary, she leaned forward and said: “Do you find you can manage it?”

“Manage what?” said Adrian coldly. She hadn’t the least idea, he supposed, of what he was doing.

“To memorise it,” she said.

Then she did know: she wasn’t quite so silly after all, then. “Yes,” he said, still rather haughtily, “I’m getting along.”

“Then you must be pretty good at it,” she said. “I’ve tried, but I can never manage more than a hymn-tune. But don’t you know those toccatas?”

“No,” Adrian replied. “I’ve only just got them.”

“There’s a very fine fugue in the third,” she said. “It’s in C minor.”

Adrian became interested. Really, she seemed rather nice. She had a small, round face, hair that was almost black, and those lively black eyes. He glanced at her black and white dress and her little black and white hat and approved of them. But just when he had done so, she drove him back into his shell by putting out her hand and actually turning over the pages of the music on his knee. “There!” she said when she had found the place, “that’s it.”

Adrian glanced at the fugue. It was a good one; at least, the subject was admirable, and he emerged a little from his shell and glanced up at her. “Yes,” he said, “it does look good.” He leaned forward and they began to talk about music.

She seemed, he was obliged to admit, to know something about it, and soon he was chatting to her quite amicably. He told her he was going to work at the Royal College.

“I was there for a time,” she said, “but I wasn’t a success. I was one of the many people who aren’t quite good enough. So I gave it up, oh, a long time ago now, when I was about your age.”

Adrian frowned. Really, what did she know about his age? And what right had she suddenly to turn patronising like that?” I shouldn’t have supposed,” he said, assuming, in his turn, a touch of loftiness, “that it was such a terrible time ago.”

“Some years, I’m afraid,” she said. “I’m twenty-three, you see, and you, I suppose, must be seventeen.”

Adrian, abashed by her inadequate guess, smiled a little awkwardly. “No, not quite so young as that,” he said, with an attempt at manly ease. It was some minutes before he had recovered from his annoyance, but before they reached London they were once again on excellent terms.

When they ran into the dim cavern of Paddington she glanced at the window in surprise. “Are we there already?” she said. Then, as she rose from her seat, she said, regarding him again with those amused black eyes of hers: “Thank you for making the journey go so quickly.”

Adrian was unprepared. He stood up, awkward and blushing, but before he could think of a polite reply a porter had opened the door.

“Well, good-bye!” she said to him, nodding pleasantly, and before he could answer she had skipped out on to the platform and disappeared.

Adrian was somewhat relieved. He had begun to think that he ought to offer to get her a porter or perhaps help her with her luggage. Now he had been freed from these complications, and, handing his bag to a porter, he got out of the train and walked down the platform towards the van.

XX

Having rung the front-door bell, Adrian waited with mingled feelings of eagerness and agitation on the doorstep of number twenty-nine Lennox Street. It was a year and a half since he had seen Ronny and, now that the moment of their meeting again had come, he felt horribly shy. It seemed to him that he had become a timid little worm of a schoolboy again. The door opened and a maid admitted him. He was disappointed to hear from her that Mr. Dakyn was out. It was already a quarter to seven, and Adrian had expected that Ronny would be back from the office long since.

The maid led him upstairs to the sitting-room and left him there. It was a pleasant, airy room with two long windows reaching to the floor. There was a good fire, and the electric lamp shed a warm light from its orange silk shade. Large double doors opened into another room, which, he concluded, was Ronny’s bedroom. He noticed with surprise that the table was set for one only. Could Ronny have forgotten that he was coming? But, in any case, the landlady would have remembered, for Ronny had told him that he had engaged his bedroom for the twenty-third. The absence of Ronny and the single place at the table chilled him a little, and he thought of Ellenger waiting in vain in Victoria Station on that afternoon nearly a year ago when he himself had started for France.

He stood with his hands in his pockets, his back to the fire, examining the room. On the sideboard opposite him stood a bottle of whiskey, two syphons, a bottle of Italian vermouth. He strolled to one of the windows, drew aside the blind, and looked out into the pallid street. A window in one of the houses opposite was suddenly illuminated, revealing a green-panelled room with red curtains. A maid in white cap and apron flitted busily to and fro, and then came forward to the window, drew the curtains, and shut out the scene.

Adrian dropped the blind and strolled back to the fire. He inspected the mantelpiece and noticed two pipes and a tin of tobacco. So Ronny smoked a pipe nowadays? The discovery seemed to widen the distance between them. Stuck into the frame of the mirror were two invitation cards for Mr. Ronald Dakyn. He had forgotten that Ronny would know lots of people and be much in demand. Again he felt chilled and again the distance between them widened. An envelope addressed to R. Dakyn Esqre. was propped against an ornament: the dark edge of a photograph protruded beyond it. Adrian moved the envelope and revealed a half-length photograph of a very smart, good-looking young woman. She was seated in profile, with one hand on her hip. Adrian examined her with critical hostility. He disliked her at once. He saw an uncompromising hardness in the perfection of her features—the perfect, narrow, scornful arch of the eyebrows, the fine, straight nose, the thin, self-conscious mouth. He was afraid of her. Was this Ronny’s girl? Was he in love with her? How awful it would be if she came here often and intruded on their evenings. He knew that he would hate her. She had signed her name, he saw now, in the bottom right-hand corner of the photograph—Esmé Ryan.

He was startled by a knock at the door, and hastily replaced the envelope over the photograph as the door opened and a large, soberly dressed, middle-aged woman came in.

“Good evening, Mr. Glynde,” she said. “I just came up to see that everything was all right. Mr. Dakyn asked me to say he’s sorry he had to go out to dinner. Have you seen your bedroom, sir? Perhaps you’d like me to show you the way. And the bathroom. Your luggage has been taken up. Mr. Dakyn has his breakfast at half-past eight. You would like yours at the same time, I expect. What time would you like to be called?”

She led the way slowly upstairs, giving information and asking a variety of practical questions with a leisurely, dignified, pleasantly old-fashioned Cockney accent. Then, telling him that his supper would be brought up at half-past seven, she left him to unpack.

As he sat at his solitary dinner Adrian felt disillusioned and depressed. All the keenness and energy with which he had started for London that afternoon had gone. He tried to convince himself that it was quite natural for Ronny to be out when he arrived. It might be a longstanding invitation, or he might have been pressed to fill up a gap at the last moment. Ronny would be none the less delighted to see him when he returned. So he argued with himself, but his heart was not persuaded. He knew that if the situation had been reversed, he himself would have been waiting, even if he had been expecting only Phipps or some other friend. He would have felt it to be a slight on his friend to be out when he arrived. Besides, it was a year and a half since they had met. Still, Ronny was Ronny. This was typical of his free and easy ways.

Argue as he might, Adrian was bitterly disappointed. He had little expected that he was going to spend his first evening in Lennox Street alone. Though he had finished his supper he did not rise from the table: he leaned back in his chair, gazing at the tablecloth and vaguely wondering how he should get through the evening. He had brought books with him, they were already unpacked in his bedroom, but he felt that to go upstairs and choose one would demand more enterprise than he was capable of. Besides, he did not feel inclined to read: he would never succeed in getting into a book this evening. Then he remembered the volume of Bach in his despatch-case. The case was here in the sittingroom, and he rose from the table, got out the music and, seating himself in the armchair by the fire, began to turn over the pages. He would do what he had begun to do in the train before the girl interrupted him—try to memorise one of the toccatas. He turned to the fugue she had shown him. Yes, she was right, he thought to himself as he looked through it; it was a fine one, a very fine one. But it was too long and too difficult to memorise, and he turned to a simpler and shorter piece.

For an hour he remained absorbed in the business; then his energy gave out and he closed the book. It was not yet half-past nine: Ronny would not be in for a long time yet. It occurred to him to occupy himself by writing to his grandfather, and he got out his writing materials and began to do so. Writing and dreaming alternately, he got through another hour. He read the letter through, addressed and stamped it, then returned to the chair by the fire and wearily took up the Bach toccatas again. In two minutes he was asleep.

He awoke suddenly to hear muffled steps on the stairs. It must be Ronny at last. He sat up, blear-eyed, and glanced at his watch as he did so. It was half-past twelve. Then, to his horror, he heard low voices, stifled giggles. He struggled to his feet as the door opened.

The first to enter was a girl in a bright green evening dress. Her small face was pale, her hair was black and smooth, and she had long dark brown eyes. After her came another girl, brown haired, in a light blue dress with a black velvet cloak thrown over it. They paused, surprised, at the sight of Adrian, blocking the doorway, and a young man in dress clothes, with shiny black hair, entered behind them and, putting a hand on the shoulder of the green girl, pushed her gently forward. Ronny came last. He too was in dress clothes. The sight of him completed Adrian’s discomfiture. His face was flushed and his eyes shone: he looked, Adrian thought, extremely handsome, but he was changed, greatly changed. He was no longer a youth. In the year and a half since Adrian had seen him he had become a man. He had filled out and the boyish pink of his face was darkened to red. But what changed him most of all was his moustache. Adrian with a sinking of the heart felt that he was in the presence of four strangers.

But next moment Ronny spoke and the distance between them diminished, for his voice and his way of speaking were almost exactly what they had been at Charminster. “Hallo, Little Man,” he said, shutting the door behind him and going over to Adrian. “I thought you would be in bed by this time.”

“I dare say I should have been if I hadn’t fallen asleep in this chair,” said Adrian, taking the hand that Ronny held out to him.

“Well, you’ve changed and no mistake,” said Ronny. “You’re almost twice the size.”

“So have you,” Adrian replied.

Ronny turned and introduced the others—a shower of names of which Adrian retained nothing. They all smiled and nodded aloofly and, Adrian thought, a little contemptuously.

“Ronny thinks you’re double the size,” said the green girl to him, “because he happens to be seeing double at the moment.”

They all laughed and began to chatter among themselves.

“What about yourself?” said Ronny to the green girl. “You’ve drunk level all evening, haven’t you?”

“Yes, my lad,” she replied, as though humouring a saucy boy, “but I have a better head than you.”

“Then what about a double whisky? Perhaps that’ll help you to see double.”

“No, thanks. I’m not interested in seeing double. Besides, I know when I’ve had enough.”

The shiny-haired young man glanced at her quizzically. He had an impertinent, turned-up nose. “How nice that must be for you,” he said. “Then you can always be sure of taking one too many.”

“Well, come on; have another too many now, my children,” said Ronny, his voice gay, excited and slightly out of control.

“One more and this the last,” the blue girl quoted with sham theatricality. “But it must be a quick one because I swore to be home by one.”

“Then a vermouth and soda,” said the green girl. “No more whisky for me.”

They all had vermouth and sodas, and the chatter broke out afresh. Adrian, who stood silent and a little apart from them, surreptitiously inspected the two girls. Neither, he saw, was the mysterious Esmé Ryan whose photograph was on the mantelpiece. The gay talk rattled on for another ten minutes: then it was unceremoniously interrupted by the blue girl. “Billy! Nancy! I’m going now, at once! After all, we only came because Ronny couldn’t be trusted to come home alone. Come on, Billy, you’ve got to come because you promised to drive me home. And you too, Nancy, or you won’t get a lift.”

“Well, I must say you know how to break up a party, Gill,” said Ronny.

“Don’t I?” she replied in her hard, precise voice. “And it’s lucky for you I do. If I didn’t, you’d have us here for breakfast. Good night!”

She went to the door, ignoring Adrian, and the rest followed her.

As the door closed behind them Ronny gave a huge yawn, stretching his shoulders and pushing his fists into his eyes. “Lord, how tired I am!” he said, his face flushed and his eyes gleaming in the light. “Well, I suppose it’s bed-time, Little Man. See you at breakfast.” He went to the folding doors that opened into his bedroom. He was so overwhelmed with sleepiness that he had no attention left for Adrian, who had hoped that, late as it was, they would have a little talk. He too was tired, and not only tired, but unhappy and disappointed. Wishing Ronny good night, he went to the other door and made his way up the dark stairs to his own room.

PU

XXXI

Breakfast was already on the table when Adrian came down. The door into Ronny’s bedroom was open and next moment he came in briskly, buttoning his waistcoat. “Well, Little Man,” he said, “how are you? I’ve hardly seen you yet. Last night I was horribly sleepy and a bit tight into the bargain. Let’s have a look at you.”

He took Adrian by the shoulder and inspected him with bright blue eyes. Adrian shyly dropped his gaze and Ronny laughed. “Still a modest lad, aren’t you?” he said. “But you have grown. You’re as tall as I am, damn you. And where did you get that brown face? In France?”

They sat down to breakfast and at once began to chatter. This, Adrian felt, was the kind of meeting he had hoped for when he arrived. All was now well: his disappointment and disillusionment of yesterday were forgotten. It seemed to him now that the change which had struck him so forcibly on the previous night had almost disappeared. Except for the small moustache, which he could not quite get accustomed to, Ronny was the same as he had always been.

“It’s jolly having you here,” said Ronny. “I’ve never been keen on my own society, you know, and I hate having meals alone.”

“Are you going to be in for supper to-night?” Adrian asked.

“To-night? Let’s see.” He fished a diary out of his pocket. “To-day’s the …?”

“Twenty-fourth,” said Adrian.

“Twenty-fourth. Friday the twenty-fourth. Yes, nothing on to-night. I’ll be back about six, I expect.” He glanced at his watch. “I say, I must be getting a move on.”

Half an hour after Ronny had gone, Adrian himself went out, and the day was taken up in work at the Royal College, lunch, tea, buying music and one or two concert tickets, and various other matters. It was already dark when he got back to Lennox Street.

It was a bitterly cold night. Snow threatened, and it was nice to open the sitting-room door and be greeted by a warm flood of light, a crackling fire, a fragrant scent of pipe smoke and Ronny already there sprawling on the sofa, which he had turned round towards the hearth. Adrian dropped into the armchair and Ronny threw aside the book he had been reading. “God, what tripe!” he said. “There seem to be no decent books nowadays. If you weren’t here I should have had to amuse myself with the damned thing all evening.”

Adrian, lying back in his chair and stretching his feet towards the fire, noticed that the photograph of Esmé Ryan no longer had the envelope in front of it. She sat with her right hand on her hip, looking down at him as if surprised and a little bored by his presence.

Ronny noted the direction of his gaze and gave a little laugh. “Are you looking at Esmé?” he said. “She’s rather a knock-out, isn’t she?”

Adrian flushed guiltily. “Yes,” he said in a voice that could not hide his lack of enthusiasm, “she is goodlooking.” He hated her. He would have liked to leap from his chair, snatch up the photograph, and throw it into the fire.

“Esmé’s a handful,” said Ronny. “There’s not much you can teach her.” It seemed to Adrian that his tone was proprietary. He longed to question Ronny about her, to know if he was in love with her, if, perhaps, they were engaged; but he had not the courage.

“But most girls are handfuls,” Ronny pursued. “Now Gill Weston, the one in the black cloak you saw last night—you might think she was an ordinary, pleasant sort of creature “(But I didn’t, Adrian said to himself), “but she can be a perfect hell-cat when she likes. And all for nothing. You never know where you have her.” He gave a little mirthful chuckle and added: “She simply loathes Esmé.”

Adrian felt his yesterday’s unhappiness steal over him again. He hated these girls: he even hated the snubnosed young man who had turned up with the others last night. They were all so superior and self-confident, and they all seemed to regard Ronny as their property. In their presence, and even when Ronny spoke of them, he felt that he was left out in the cold. But most of all he hated Esmé, whom he had not yet seen.

Their talk turned to Charminster, and soon the maid brought up their supper, and Adrian began to be happy again. He told Ronny of how, nearly a year ago, he had met Ellenger in Victoria Station.

“Poor old Len,” said Ronny. “Yes, I meant to lunch with him, in fact I actually started. Then I ran into two other men I hadn’t seen for some time, and … well, you know how it happens … I said I would have a quick one with them, and we got talking, and before I knew where I was it was two o’clock.”

He confessed that he hadn’t written to Ellenger for some months, “but I’m no good at letter-writing,” he said; “I never seem to get time.”

“With so much novel-reading to do in the evenings, you mean?” said Adrian.

Ronny laughed. “Well, perhaps when I’ve got you here to jog my memory I’ll manage a letter sometimes. Still, why should you? You never had much use for Len, had you?”

“No, but you had,” said Adrian.

“M … m, yes!” Ronny replied. “He was an awful old nuisance sometimes.” He changed the subject suddenly, in his well-known fashion, and Adrian thought to himself: “He’s just the same as he always was. What he likes is to be a centre of attraction and to have people dancing round, but he won’t undertake any responsibility in return.” Yet, after all, he reflected, that careless, easy come, easy go, butterfly nature of his was a large part of his charm. Adrian himself had once more succumbed to the charm, though not quite so abjectly as he had done at Charminster.

After supper Ronny returned to the sofa and his book and pipe, and Adrian, taking the armchair, set to work with a book on musical theory which he had bought that afternoon. He was quite content that he and Ronny should ignore one another. So long as Ronny was there he could ignore him, but if he had been out his mind would have been distractingly occupied with him. With Ronny there in the room, he could concentrate all his attention on his work, conscious of his presence only in the peace of mind and security which it brought to him.

The room was silent except for the spasmodic purring and fluttering of the fire. The evening crept on to nine o’clock, half-past nine, a quarter to ten. Then the frontdoor bell rang. A long pause, and then the door was opened: another pause, and there were sounds of footsteps on the stairs. Ronny sat up and listened. “That sounds like Esmé,” he said. He swung his legs to the floor and stood up. There was a tap on the door and simultaneously it opened. At the sound Adrian’s peace of mind shrivelled like a flower in the fire.

Esmé, it appeared, had just looked in on her way from the Hammertons. After a brief and rather scanty recognition of Adrian’s presence, she and Ronny dropped into a lively, bantering chatter in which Adrian detected a lurking asperity. He himself sat silent in his chair, miserably conscious that he ought to get up and leave them alone, yet unable to think of an easy and plausible way of doing so. And so he sat, horribly embarrassed, for an hour that seemed interminable. Esmé, it turned out, was annoyed about something that was not very apparent to the uninitiated, but it included some very keen-edged remarks about “the Turtle,” who, Adrian gathered, was Gill Weston, the girl in the black cloak. Ronny began by teasing her, but at last, as Adrian perceived by the familiar signs, he grew bored. “My dear girl,” he said at last, with the frown that Adrian knew so well, “why keep on at it? I’ve told you it wasn’t my fault. I simply couldn’t help myself.”

“No, you never can,” Esmé replied curtly. And then a long, wearisome wrangle began. Adrian sat there, bored, humiliated, miserable. He longed to go, but still something held him back. The other two had long since forgotten his presence, and at last he ventured to get out of his chair and quietly leave the room. They did not seem to notice his departure. From his bedroom upstairs he could hear their raised voices—the hard, precise tones of hers, the deeper, more lively inflections of Ronny’s, alternating in quick succession. After he had got into bed they died down to a low murmur, and twice he heard a subdued ripple of laughter from Esmé. Though he was extremely sleepy he was determined to remain awake till he had heard Esmé go, and he lay, miserable and burning with jealousy, listening to the low, intermittent murmur of talk.

He had lain, with ears alert, for nearly an hour, when he heard Ronny’s bedroom door open and, after a few moments, close again. Esmé must still be there, for if she had gone he would certainly have heard the sitting-room door open and even the careful opening and shutting of the front door. What was happening, then? Could she have gone with Ronny into his bedroom? The thought overwhelmed him. He lay on his side, curled up, motionless, in an agony of jealousy and shame. Then, throwing back the bedclothes, he went to the window, opened it with immense caution, and leaned out. In the windows below, the windows of the sitting-room, he could see a faint luminosity piercing the drawn blinds. The sight brought him some comfort. Perhaps, then, she had remained in the sitting-room. He drew down the window noiselessly and, getting back into bed, lay listening again. But he could hear nothing now, not a sound, and when at last he fell asleep he had not heard her go.

He awoke at seven next morning and wondered sleepily what was the meaning of the heavy weight on his mind. But next minute he had recalled everything. Was she still there? Would he find the table laid for three when he went down to breakfast? But no, they would not dare to face Annie, the maid, who would certainly tell Mrs. Draper. If she had stayed the night she would have sneaked out already, before the house began to stir. And yet, when he had had his bath and dressed and went down to breakfast, he half expected to find her there, and it was a delicious relief to discover the sitting-room empty and quiet in the sane morning light and breakfast for two on the table. It was as if the previous evening and his miserable vigil had been no more than a nightmare. Ronny’s door was ajar, and his cheerful voice called out: “Carry on, Little Man. I won’t be two shakes.”

In a moment he came in, alert and smiling, and sat down, lifting the cover from the bacon and eggs. “I hope you hadn’t a very thin time last night,” he said. “But you mustn’t mind Esmé. She’s always barging in.”

“She must have … have stayed pretty late,” said Adrian, hoping that Ronny’s reply would set his mind at rest. But the reply, when it came, only increased his doubts.

“She did,” chuckled Ronny, with sparkling eyes: “damned late!”

What Ronny had said was only too true. Esmé was always barging in, and if it wasn’t Esmé it was one or more of the others. There was hardly an evening, except those when Ronny himself was out, that was not interrupted by an invasion. Adrian got to loathe the sound of the front-door bell. If only he had taken rooms by himself and never renewed his friendship with Ronny. But it was too late now: he couldn’t now leave Lennox Street. Ronny would be astounded and also offended if he were: to suggest such a thing. Besides, he didn’t want to leave. That was the worst of it. Once again he was entangled in the snare.

It was fortunate that he had his work. For the greater part of the day it absorbed his attention. The enthusiasm with which he had come to London had revived as soon as he had settled down to work, and now he was immersed in it, heart and soul. When he was not at Lennox Street he was busy and happy. But when work was over he hurried back home, hoping to see something of Ronny and dreading the disappointment and misery which were almost certain to be awaiting him there.

“I wish you wouldn’t bottle yourself up so when people come in,” Ronny had said to him after one of the usual invasions. “You’re so blooming stand-offish.”

Adrian blushed scarlet. “They don’t like me,” he said at last. “I’m not their sort.”

“You don’t give them a chance, Little Man.”

“They don’t give me a chance,” said Adrian.

“They would all right if only you joined in a bit. Just barge in with a bit of nonsense now and then. It doesn’t matter a damn what you say: only say something and they’ll take you for granted. But you sit about, all silent and disapproving, so what can they do but just leave you to yourself?”

Adrian sighed. “I know,” he said. “It’s my own fault, but I can’t help it. The fact is, I … I …”

“You don’t like them.”

“I hate them,” said Adrian, turning scarlet again.

Ronny laughed. He was not in the least offended. “Well, you are a one,” he said. “You’re like Esmé. When you’re both so good at hating, it’s a wonder you two don’t hit it off. But then you don’t like girls.”

“Don’t I?” said Adrian. He was surprised at Ronny’s certainty on a point which he had never himself considered.

Ronny laughed again. “No, Little Man,” he said, “you don’t. There’s no doubt about that.”

After two months of this existence he went for a few days to Abbot’s Randale. His grandfather had written telling him that Clara and Bob were there, and he had felt a sudden longing to escape into the calm and stimulating society of the family. He wrote, therefore, saying that he would turn up on the following Friday.

It was mild March weather, and on the Friday morning he had a wire from his Uncle Bob telling him that they would meet him with the car at Wilmore, and there, when his train reached Wilmore, were Bob and Clara waiting for him. Clara and Adrian sat together at the back.

“The Muse detained your grandfather,” said Clara as they drove out of the station yard. “She has been fairly reasonable since we arrived, but yesterday and today she has insisted on a little attention. Did you know that your mother was in England?”

“Good Lord, really?” said Adrian unconcernedly.

“Yes, India knows them no more. He has abandoned the arts of war there, and she the arts of peace. What will become of Indian society I tremble to conjecture. Let us hope she will be able to transmit her influence through the post. She wrote asking for your address. You haven’t heard from her?”

“Not a word,” said Adrian.

“I rather gathered from her letter,” Clara went on, “that they want you to join them, now that they’re settling in England. But of course that will depend. We don’t know your mother’s age nowadays. If she has decided to confess to, say, thirty-eight or forty, a personable and accomplished young man as a son might be an asset.”

Adrian laughed and blushed. “Unhappily,” he said, “the young man you so flatteringly describe has other fish to fry. Besides, Mother would be too much of a responsibility. I’d rather leave her to the Colonel.”

“Sh … sh!” Clara raised a warning finger. “The General, my dear. Pray don’t forget. Your mother particularly mentioned it when she wrote, so as to save us from the possibility of a hideous faux pas. By the way,” she added, “would you have cared for a baronetcy?”

“You have one to dispose of? “Adrian’s method with Clara was never to show surprise at what she said.

“Not I. But they’ve been pressing one on your grandfather and can hardly be persuaded that he doesn’t want it. A friend pointed out that he owed it to literature to accept, but your grandfather replied that he had already borrowed so much from literature that he couldn’t afford to incur a further debt. The friend then reminded him that he ought to consider posterity; so your grandfather considered posterity (as represented, of course, by you) and decided that you would be better without it. I am relieved to know that we shan’t have to train the servants not to say Sir Roliver and, later, Sir Radrian.”

When they reached Abbot’s Randale Oliver Glynde was strolling in front of the house, and Adrian joined him until tea-time. Already he was full of that sense of well-being which his grandfather’s house always brought to him. Lennox Street seemed a whole continent away, and he was delighted to let himself forget it and Ronny. The prospect of four days at Abbot’s Randale and of its occupants and their talk was sheer happiness.

At dinner Clara enquired after his work. “There is no immediate fear, I trust, of a public appearance at the Albert Hall?”

“As a pianist?” asked Adrian.

“Or, what in some ways would, I think, be worse, as a conductor.”

“Neither,” said Adrian. “So far, I am as capable of conducting an orchestra as of conducting a bus.”

“I hope an orchestra is easier than a bus,” said Bob. “During the General Strike—as you may remember, because I boasted about it a good deal at the time—I tried my hand at bus conducting, and a very difficult and exasperating job it was. The musical part of it—the ringing of the little bell on the ticket punch—was one of the hardest. Have you ever tried to play the ticket punch?”

“Never,” said Adrian, “but I have always thought it a very beautiful instrument.”

Bob shook his head. “Take my advice,” he said, “and stick to the piano.”

“Have you ever thought,” said Oliver, “what a wonderful thing it would be if we could profit instantly and completely by the intellectual and spiritual discoveries of others as we do by their material discoveries; so that, for instance, bus conducting or orchestra conducting, by the very fact that it was an established art, was within the capacity of all, whether or not they chose to use it, just as any of us can turn on the gas or the electric light? Then the whole accumulated experience of a generation would be instantly absorbed by the next generation, and babies would begin at the point reached by the wisest of their fathers’ generation. Why is it not so? There seems to be no valid reason against it except the fatal one that, as a matter of fact, it is not so. Each of us has to learn by his own experience. It is appalling to think how little we can help others, how useless to others is the experience we have painfully won by labour, disappointment, and all kinds of mental and spiritual anguish. The best we can do is to put them in the way of discovering for themselves. It is a terrible privation for the old to be so little able to help the young. But vicarious experience is a paradox. Each of us is alone and helpless—helpless to help and helpless to be helped.”

“Fortunately,” said Clara in her smooth, logical tones, “it is only on rare occasions that we become conscious of our helplessness.”

Oliver Glynde glanced at his daughter, so calm, so self-possessed, materially and intellectually such an admirable work of art within her clearly defined outline. She, he reflected, was the measure of his success and failure as a father. He loved her bright, compact, stimulating mind, her affection for him, her complete lack of fear of him. He loved to have her and Bob with him: he would have been glad to have them always with him. But how useless he would be to her in any terrible emergency, how powerless to help. He and she were two continents whose common frontier was only a few short miles. And yet, he went on to reflect, were not her qualities exactly those which precluded terrible experiences? She was so admirably protected by mountains of unshakable calm, seas of temperate indifference. She had no flashing volcanic heights, no dark, unsounded depths. She would never need the help he could never give. He watched the three of them talking together, pursuing the subject he had raised. His eyes wandered to Adrian, that dark, sensitive boy behind whose external calm he felt rather than saw the restless stir of smouldering passions. What would happen to Adrian? What, perhaps, he wondered, with a sudden stab of fear and longing, was happening already, unknown to him? He was still disturbingly like Sandy, a dark, brooding Sandy without the old Sandy’s openness and accessibility. He was not like Clara: he, the old man knew, had deeply hidden capacities for loving and suffering: he was not immune from terrible experiences. With a sinking of the heart he realised how helpless, how agonisingly helpless he would be if anything terrible were to happen to Adrian. For though Adrian had admitted him to much of himself, to more perhaps than he had admitted any other living soul, he had never shown him his innermost heart. But that was a thing too rare, too impossible to hope for. How often in the whole lifetime of mankind had one creature laid itself bare to another? Yet could not that final barrier be broken down with a supreme effort? If it were, the terrible helplessness, the terrible uselessness, the terrible loneliness would be abolished.

The old man sighed. Such dreams could come true only in an ideal state, when body and mind and law and convention had been finally shuffled off. And yet, though it was impossible to imagine the achievement of such a communion with the cool, crystalline heart of Clara, it seemed still to the old man that some small, simple key might even now unlock the deeply hidden, warm, ever bubbling spring which was the heart of the boy sitting opposite him.

XXII

Adrian returned to town on the following Tuesday in time for a Queen’s Hall concert for which he had a ticket. He had arranged to dine out because the concert began at eight o’clock, and he only just had time to drive to Lennox Street and deposit his bag. Ronny was not in when he arrived there. He was glad that his evening was provided for. It would have been depressing, after the delightful sociability of Abbot’s Randale, to arrive back and find that he had to spend the evening alone, or, worse still, with some of those friends of Ronny’s whom he so much disliked. He did not mind going alone to a concert. While the music lasted he was always so much absorbed in it that he was unaware of his surroundings, and during the interval it was not unpleasant to smoke a cigarette in the corridor, leaning against the wall and watching the crowd.

On this occasion he reached his seat just as Beecham, who was conducting, came on to the platform; and as soon as he had settled himself the concert began. In his haste he had not noticed his neighbours on his right and left, and he was surprised, in the silence that followed the opening piece, to hear himself spoken to.

“And did you ever learn your toccata?” the voice said.

He turned his head and found, seated next him on his left, the black-eyed girl who had talked to him in the train two months ago. He had hardly thought of her during the interval, yet he found himself delighted to meet her again. “Why, I never saw you when I came in,” he said, smiling and blushing.

“And I didn’t see it was you,” she said, “till halfway through the overture. Are you alone?”

He told her that he was.

“So am I,” she said. “I often go to concerts alone. My mother isn’t very strong and doesn’t go out much, and other people, people one quite likes at other times, are often an awful bother at a concert.”

Adrian smiled. “I hope I shan’t turn out to be a bother,” he said.

“Well, I can but give you a try,” she answered, with that amused look in her black eyes which he had noticed in the train.

He felt friendly and at ease with her. It was as if their acquaintanceship had ripened in absence.

“And how’s the Royal College?” she enquired.

“It’s very well indeed, thank you.”

“You’re enjoying it?”

“Immensely.”

Their conversation was soon interrupted by the applause that greeted Beecham’s return. The next piece was Handel’s Water Music, and the music itself and the tender, lyrical beauty of Beecham’s rendering of it entranced Adrian. It seemed to him the most lovely music in the world. When the interval came they went out together. As he followed her up the stepped gangway he noticed the simple faultlessness of her white cloak with its ermine collar. She leaned against the wall of the corridor and he stood facing her, smoking a cigarette. Her small, square face, her black hair and black eyes, looked even more charming without a hat.

“I’m very glad we met,” he said.

“So am I,” she answered frankly, “and I’m glad, too, that you’re glad, because you weren’t a bit pleased, you know, last time I ventured to speak to you.” Her black eyes danced.

“In the train, you mean?” said Adrian.

“Yes. You scowled fearfully and looked extremely bored.”

“I thought you were laughing at me.”

“And so I was.”

“Why? Is there any harm in reading music in the train?”

“You were so terribly serious, and your scowls amused me. I’m not used to being scowled at.”

Adrian laughed. “Well, you know, I … I … thought you …”

“Thought me what? “Her smiled enboldened him.

“Well, rather an impertinent young person.”

She broke into a laugh. “And so I suppose I was, by the most correct standards.”

“But I’m doing my best to forgive you now,” said Adrian.

What a nice child he was, she thought to herself, as he stood before her with his unconscious, boyish grace. She was amused and attracted by the quiet earnestness with which he spoke, even when his words were frivolous. And how frank and friendly he was: he treated her, she thought, just as he would treat a boy or a man. That she was an attractive young woman did not seem to occur to him, and she found that refreshing and, somehow, flattering. He was looking at his programme now, and next moment he glanced up from it impulsively. “I say,” he said, “I hadn’t heard about this.”

He handed her the programme, pointing to a concert advertised for the following week. “Are you going to it?” he asked when she had run through the programme.

“Most certainly I am,” she replied, “if there are any tickets left.”

“Then you haven’t got a ticket?”

“No.”

“Shall I get you one when I get mine?”

“Please do,” she said. “That will be very kind of you. Then you’ll let me know if you manage to get them?”

“Yes,” said Adrian as if the matter were settled.

She paused, smiling, and then said: “You won’t by any chance want my address or telephone number, or perhaps even my name?”

“Your name?” He was astonished to discover that he didn’t know her name, “and of course you don’t know mine either,” he said. “How extraordinary!”

She laughed. “Is it so extraordinary?”

“It seems so to me,” said Adrian simply.

He returned on foot to Lennox Street. To sit still in a bus or tube would have been unendurable. Only by strenuous bodily movement could he ease the intense happiness that glowed in him, suffused his body and limbs, flooded his heart with warm light. He strode forward, but his thoughts and feelings streamed back ecstatically to the evening behind him. Her face, her laughing black eyes, her exquisite white, silky dress and cloak kept swimming up into his memory. Lucy Wendover. An enchanting name. He laughed happily to himself. What a state of excitement he was in. Was he in love with her, then? Evidently that was what was up with him. How astonishing. How amusing. How profoundly enthralling. He fumbled mechanically for his latchkey and opened the door. As he rounded the turn in the stairs he saw, from a long crack of light under the door, that the sitting-room was occupied. Were some of those wretched people there? Well, he didn’t mind if they were, damn them. He opened the door and went in.

Ronny was alone, sprawling on the sofa with a pipe and a book. He raised his eyes to Adrian and gave a long yawn; and Adrian stood for a moment looking at him as if from a great distance. He had completely forgotten Ronny during the last three hours, and now, as he stood there, it was as if he were rediscovering him. At the same time he was discovering himself, his new self which told him that he was independent of Ronny. Independent and even slightly hostile, stirred by an impulse to exhibit his freedom by slighting him. For a moment he felt like obeying the impulse. “Hallo,” he might say, “you’re in. Well, I’m sleepy and I’m off to bed. Good night.” That would be to repeat the act of his first meeting with Ronny in that room, but with the parts reversed.

But Ronny was already speaking. “Hallo, Little Man, so you’re back. Lord, but you do look well.”

“So I am,” he answered, laughing to himself in the knowledge of his rapturous secret. He threw his coat and hat on a chair, walked to the mantelpiece, and, lighting a cigarette, stood with his back to the fire looking down on Ronny, who still sprawled on the sofa.

Ronny inspected him, as they talked, with puzzled curiosity. What had come over him? He had never seen him so forthcoming, so surprisingly full of beans. Adrian went to the sideboard and got an apple. He devoured it, then got another and devoured that.

“Didn’t you have any dinner?” Ronny enquired.

Adrian seemed surprised at the question. “Dinner? Yes, an excellent dinner, thanks.”

They talked for a few minutes more, and then Adrian declared he must go to bed. Hitherto he had always been glad to sit up for as long as Ronny was willing to do so. This unaccustomed Adrian was really rather extraordinary, rather unorthodox, but it was not Ronny’s habit to ponder and draw conclusions. He went to bed and forgot the incident, and as Adrian appeared much as usual at breakfast next morning, he had no reason to recall it.

Next day Adrian succeeded in getting the tickets for the concert, and at once rang up Lucy Wendover to tell her so. As he waited for her with the receiver in his hand he was inspired by the bold idea of asking her to dine before the concert; but when her voice came, so clear and precise and disappointingly matter-of-fact, his courage was damped, and he acquiesced when she said that they would meet in their places. Hadn’t she sounded rather cold, he wondered as he left the telephone-box. What had he said to put her off? He did not realise that he had imagined a coldness in her voice merely because its effect had not been reinforced by her lively presence and those mischievous, dancing eyes of hers; nor could he take into account the fact that she knew nothing of his feelings for her.

But when they met at the concert a few days later he found no trace of coldness in her. That evening was for him even more entrancing than the first, and when they parted she invited him to dine with her and her mother two days later. The invitation greatly reassured him. He saw in it, poor infatuated boy, much more than there was any warrant for seeing. It did not occur to him that Lucy’s mother might have insisted on inspecting and approving the stray young man with whom her daughter had made friends, or that they might both wish merely to establish an acquaintance with him, might have been tempted to do so by his relationship to the famous Oliver Glynde. Whether these things were so or not, Adrian left them out of account. Lucy had invited him, he believed, because she felt for him not, he humbly told himself, what he felt for her—how could she? but something at least, he vaguely hoped, more than mere friendliness; and therefore she had wanted to introduce him to her mother, to draw him into the family circle. These omens added to his already overflowing happiness.

He was received by a slightly subdued, slightly less mischievous Lucy, who introduced him to a small, frail grey-haired woman with the delicate, fragile face and hands of an invalid and, unexpectedly, a quiet assurance of speech. She received Adrian with a charming friendliness which won his heart at the outset. Her quietness, her dignity, and her kindness seemed to him to make Lucy more real and more secure for him. He played to them after dinner and went home dangerously encouraged, his heart warmed by Mrs. Wendover’s pressing him to come again.

“Well, Mother,” said Lucy when he had gone; “has he passed?”

Mrs. Wendover smiled. “Oh, certainly he has,” she said. “He’s a dear boy. But don’t let him fall in love with you. He’s far too young.”

“Oh, far too young,” Lucy agreed. “But, thank goodness, he’s too wrapped up in his music to fall in love. That’s what makes him so awfully nice. He talks to me as if I were one of his boy friends. And he’s extraordinarily interesting about music: to go to a concert with him is a revelation. I feel as if I were discovering music for the first time.”

“He certainly plays exquisitely,” said Mrs. Wendover; “such breadth, and his tone is quite superb.”

Week followed week, and they met often, dining or lunching and going to concerts together—delightful occasions only a little dimmed for Adrian by Lucy’s unshakable insistence that she should pay her share for tickets and meals, and by her way of sometimes, as if suddenly detaching herself from him, treating him with a kind of maternal patronage. For Lucy, those moments, at which she felt herself so much older than him, were moments of expansive affection, but they mortified Adrian. He, on the contrary, felt that she was thrusting him from her. For him they reflected Ronny’s attitude, implied in his nickname of Little Man, a nickname which had once warmed his heart, but which nowadays often shamed and irritated him. But they were small matters—those little checks on his happiness in Lucy. Adrian at this time was in that state of supreme well-being in which life breaks into a new and marvellous blossoming. He awoke each morning radiantly happy, he went about his work and pleasures with that abundant zest which devours all that is set before it and cries out for more and he went to bed aglow with health and happiness.

To Ronny he told almost nothing. Ronny had soon noticed his increased absences from Lennox Street, and had concluded that he was avoiding the society of Esmé and the rest. One evening when Adrian returned home late he had taunted him on the subject. “Hallo, Little Man,” he had said as Adrian entered the sitting-room; “running away from the girls again?”

Adrian was puzzled, and, when Ronny had explained, was stung into replying: “As it happens, I was spending the evening with one.”

Ronny laughed. “You, Little Man? Don’t tell me.”

Adrian was annoyed by Ronny’s persistent assumption. “My dear Ronny,” he said, with a touch of haughtiness, “you can’t expect, even with your well-known charm, to monopolise the whole female population.”

Ronny in turn was somewhat nettled. “Well, I must say, you are coming on,” he remarked patronisingly, and then added with a return to his usual good-humour: “Anyhow, I hope it was a pleasant evening.”

“Very pleasant, thanks,” said Adrian, amiable but totally uncommunicative. He felt very definitely that he did not want Ronny to know about Lucy. In his new independence he had, at times, a curious feeling of resentment towards Ronny, and he was not going to share his wonderful secret with him. Not likely.

One evening about this time he had dined alone in Lennox Street and was reading in his usual armchair when there was a tap at the door and Esmé came in. He had not noticed the front-door bell.

She stopped short when she saw that he was alone. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “Isn’t Ronny in?”

She waited, ready to go if Adrian said that he was not; but Adrian, getting up from his chair, found himself replying: “He’s out at present, but he said he’d be in early. Won’t you wait?”

She hesitated. “Well … thank you.… Yes, I will,” she said. “But don’t let me interrupt your reading.”

“I was only reading because I was alone,” said Adrian and to his surprise he found that he no longer mistrusted and disliked her.

“You’ve known Ronny for some time, haven’t you?” she asked after they had talked of other things.

“Yes, I was at school with him.”

She sat silent for a moment, contemplating with a half wistful, half scornful smile some image of her mind. “What was he like as a boy?” she said.

“Exactly like what he is now,” said Adrian, “except for the moustache. If he shaved that off there’d be almost no difference.”

“Ah, but in himself, I mean,” she said; “in character.”

“Exactly the same in character too,” said Adrian. It seemed to him that he saw Ronny quite clearly, knew him inside out.

“Except that now he’s grown up,” she said.

“No,” said Adrian, “not even that. He’s just what he always was.”

She paused, her face melancholy with thought. “The trouble with Ronny is,” she said, as if suddenly resentful, “that you can’t pin him down, you can’t catch hold of him. If you try to, he slips through your fingers.”

“He doesn’t want you to catch hold of him,” said Adrian. “Ronny likes, and in fact expects you to fish for him, but if you try to catch him he’s … well, he’s bored and, as you say, slips through your fingers.”

Esmé smiled bitterly. “You know our Ronny very well,” she said.

He could see that she was depressed, thwarted, disillusioned, and his heart ached for her. So Ronny produced that effect, it seemed, on girls too who ventured too near him. That he should have been bored by the sentimental importunities of boys like himself and Ellenger was only natural. It was their own faults, not his. But there was also, it seemed now from the case of Esmé, some vital quality lacking in him. “I know him well enough to know that.…” He hesitated, broke off, and then said: “He’s a delightful chap, but I wouldn’t bother about him too seriously, if I were you.”

Esmé sighed. “Easier said than done, worse luck!” she said.

She waited till a quarter to eleven. Then, there being still no sign of Ronny, she went disconsolately away.

XXXIII

Minnie Clandon had so many social engagements after her return to England that it was not until over a month after obtaining Adrian’s address from Clara that she found time to write to him. When she did so she told him that she would be in London on the following Wednesday, that she was simply longing, after all these years, to see him again, and that she wanted to have a very particular talk with him. She asked him to meet her for lunch.

Adrian turned up at the appointed hour in the restaurant she had named, but when she arrived, twenty minutes late, he would have failed to recognise her if she had not picked him out; for her hair, under the influence no doubt of Indian suns, had changed to a subdued auburn and she was much altered. Though she had now reached an age that was neither young nor old, she had the appearance of an old woman who looked wonderfully young. He had come to the meeting with few other feelings than idle curiosity and a determination not to be imposed upon, yet the change in her shocked him so much that, as he followed her to the table she had reserved, he would have given much to be able to slip away and abandon her.

“Well, my dear boy,” she said, eyeing him with bird-like admiration as she sat down, “how you have blossomed out. I wasn’t prepared for you to be quite so … what shall I say? … impressive.”

Adrian smiled a little awkwardly. “I’m sorry,” he said, with an attempt at jocularity, “if I’ve provided a shock.”

“Shocks are not always unpleasant,” said Minnie archly, “though I must say you make me feel a hundred. However, one must be prepared for that after … what is it? Five? Six? Seven years?”

“Isn’t it seven?” said Adrian, imitating her vagueness.

She was taking off her gloves with little fluttering movements, and, having dropped them lightly on the table, she began to burrow in a little bead bag, and at last fished out a slim gold lorgnette. “My sight is getting quite hopeless,” she said pleasantly, screwing up her eyes, applying the lorgnette, and glancing critically at the other tables.

“What a funny, silly little thing she is,” thought Adrian, half amused and half disgusted. Then, feeling suddenly aggressive, he asked point blank: “Did you enjoy that visit to the Crowhursts?”

Minnie came out of her lorgnette, and frowned as if trying to recall the occasion. She was taken aback by Adrian’s extraordinary question. The Crowhurst episode she considered, was not a theme for levity, and it was difficult on the spur of the moment to decide how to take Adrian’s glib reference to it. She decided to take it with dignity.

“I was disappointed last time we met, Adrian,” she said.

“We were both disappointed, Mother,” Adrian replied, “but fortunately disappointments don’t last for ever, do they?”

Minnie frowned again. Though Adrian had improved in appearance, he had not, it seemed, improved in the matter of discipline. To put an end to the subject she summoned the waiter and asked for red pepper.

“Your Aunt Clara tells me,” she said, “that you’re taking up music. Isn’t that rather a pity?”

“A pity?” echoed Adrian.

“Yes, as a profession. It’s all very well, of course, as a hobby in one’s spare time. But as a profession! We must really get you into something a little more … what shall we say? … solid! Gentlemanly! My … er … your … er … The General has of course a good deal of influence. We must all three discuss it.”

“But what is there to discuss, Mother?” said Adrian. “It’s too late now to discuss. I’ve chosen music, as you’ve heard, and I’ve already been working at it for over two months.”

“Still, you will admit, won’t you, that there are two sides to the question?”

“Two sides? Certainly, in the sense that some people like it and others don’t. But, as it happens, I do.”

“What I mean is, my dear boy,” said Minnie, placing her hand emphatically on his for a moment as if patiently to check his impertinence, “that I, as your mother, must be allowed some say in the matter. Remember, you are not yet of age. And there’s another thing I want to talk over with you. Your … your stepfather and I, now that we are settling in England, are anxious for you to join us.”

Adrian remained silent. He felt suddenly tired. He had determined, if his mother showed any signs of interfering with him, to make it clear at once that he would not allow it, but he wished, if possible, to do so pleasantly and politely. How curious it was to be sitting opposite this woman—a stranger once more, a woman as different from the one he had seen seven years ago as that one had been from the mother of his early childhood—and listen to her and watch her with so absolute a detachment. She must even now, he noted, be attractive to many men in her vivacious, imperious, old-young fashion. But what would his father think of her if he could see her now? It was impossible to imagine. But now he was embarrassed by her question and the necessity of answering as he was determined to answer it. He blushed and unconsciously stroked the back of his head with his left hand.

“It’s too late for that, Mother,” he said at last. “You see, your … my stepfather and I are complete strangers and even you and I are almost strangers, aren’t we?”

“Adrian!” Minnie’s intonation, by a slight misjudgment, missed the note of pain and sounded that of resentment.

“Well, we are. Honestly, aren’t we? What would be the point of my … er …?”

“Because I wish you to.”

Adrian shook his head, “I’m afraid …” he began, but Minnie interrupted him.

“Remember,” she said, “that I have a right to insist. You’re not yet of age.”

“Listen, Mother,” said Adrian. “Can’t we be reasonable about it? You had a right to insist about the Crowhursts, but it’s next to impossible to make use of such a right. It would be much pleasanter for both of us to meet from time to time like this and talk. Then we would get along splendidly. But if I came to live with you, I should get on your nerves horribly. Yes, I should! I couldn’t possibly help it.”

“What you mean is, I gather, that you won’t come.”

Adrian looked at her, smiling. “Well, you must admit I didn’t put it so rudely.”

She returned his gaze, and by degrees her eyes began to twinkle, and at last she broke into a laugh. “I can’t help liking you, you perfectly horrid boy,” she said; “which is more than I did last time we met. Then I thought you a dreadful little thing. But if I were to tell the General he would be furious, simply furious.” She was serious, very serious now, as if touching on an impressive theme.

But Adrian continued to smile. “And apparently,” she said, her eyes twinkling again, “you wouldn’t care two straws.”

“Won’t you describe the General’s fury, Mother,” he replied. “Then perhaps I might be able to … er …”

“What you want, sir, is a year or two in the Army. And I must say,” she added, inspecting him through her lorgnette, “you would look well in uniform. You would look “—she paused and her eyes suddenly swam with tears—“exactly like your father.”

She took up the menu, studied it for a moment, and then handed it to Adrian. He understood that he must not pursue the subject of his father.

“What will you tell the General about my … disobedience?” he asked.

Saucy questions such as this were exactly what Minnie appreciated. She sparkled immediately. “I shall tell him,” she said, “that, after seeing you, I decided not to resume possession; and that will serve you right.”

The rest of their tête-à-tête passed gaily and they parted on the best of terms. “What fun she is, so long as you give her back tit for tat,” thought Adrian as he got on to a’bus. It would be nice to meet her occasionally and chatter. Now that it was clearly understood that neither had anything but friendly amusement to give the other, they would, he knew, become excellent friends. She was like Ronny in a way, as jolly as could be so long as you gave liberally and demanded nothing in return. She too liked to have admiring people dancing round. What fun to put them both on a desert island and let them dance round each other. There would be some famous collisions during the process.

There was a tinge of early spring in the air, and it was pleasant to sit idle and let the’bus carry him through the roaring traffic, to let the shops and houses slowly pass in a continually varying show, and to feel himself a small, whirling electron of happiness and strength in the middle of that busy flux. His meeting with his mother had, it seemed, added to his already overflowing well-being. For now he liked her. The last traces of his resentment had vanished: he felt for her now an amused affection. He and she understood one another remarkably well: her shortcomings could no longer hurt him and he could see and enjoy her merits. She liked aggressiveness and insubordination, he had discovered, so long as they were gay. He had shown her that he was not to be exploited, and so she would not longer demand filial duty. What she did demand and what he was quite ready to give was filial flirtation. Their escape from one another had drawn them together.

He had escaped from Ronny too, but in the case of Ronny the reaction from that escape was still too new to enable to meet him on the equal terms of independent friendship: he still felt himself impelled to parade his liberty in small acts of aggression which surprised Ronny and ruffled for a moment his good humour, for Ronny was not accustomed to insubordination among his subjects.

The effects on Adrian of these escapes from old, crippling bonds into his new rapture were profoundly beneficial. They roused him from his state of suppression and prolonged immaturity and brought health and vigour to his mind and body. He began at last to live life in its fullness. Seated now on the top of the’bus, he thought with secure and gleeful anticipation of the coming evening, for Lucy and he were dining and going to a concert together.

Lucy too looked forward to the evening with pleasure, for she enjoyed being with Adrian. More and more she valued the frank, lively friendship which was such a welcome change from the wearisome blend of intensity and aggressive frivolity which other young men offered her. She had never yet seriously fallen in love. Occasionally she had felt a pleasant sentimental preoccupation with a young man, sometimes with more than one at once, which she knew herself too well to take seriously. She discussed these passing sentiments light-heartedly with her mother, confessing to each new “flame “with a pantomime of rapture and heart-ache which amused them both. But Adrian was not a “flame.” Mrs. Wendover remarked on it, and Lucy replied that he was too nice. “I’m really fond of him, you see,” she said.

“And not of the flames?” asked her mother.

“Not really,” she said. “They’re just an extra lump of sugar in one’s tea—nice, but not the least bit necessary.”

Months passed. Adrian made new friends. Friends of his grandfather and of Clara and Bob invited him to their houses, and as Ronny’s free evenings were few and unpredictable Adrian did not hesitate to make evening engagements. At last it seemed to Ronny that Adrian’s liberty was exceeding due bounds, and one evening, when he himself had dined alone at Lennox Street and Adrian returned late, he remarked upon the state of things. “Well,” he said, looking up from his novel with less than his usual amiability, “we don’t seem much use to one another nowadays, Little Man, do we?”

“Not much use? What do you mean?” said Adrian.

“Well, as company in the evening, for instance.”

“But you’re so seldom free,” said Adrian. “When I used to dine in, I did so alone more often than not.”

“Still, I am here sometimes, you know.”

“I know, but you never could tell me when. Often when I expected you, you failed at the last minute, didn’t you? I’m not complaining,” he went on. “All I mean to say is that you can’t expect me, and I’m sure you don’t, to stay in night after night on the vague chance.”

That, in point of fact, was what Ronny did expect, but he would not have admitted it even to himself, nor did Adrian appreciate the fact that by his former subservience he had given Ronny grounds to expect it. He was too occupied with Lucy and his new life to perceive these things. Ronny answered him now with a rather unconvincing disclaimer. He had a clear enough sense of fair play to see that he had no right to demand that Adrian should refuse invitations and run the risk of solitary evenings in the precarious hope of his company, but he saw too that Adrian had once been content to do this and now was not. Even the most benevolent of gods does not welcome the loss of a worshipper. The Little Man was ceasing to be the faithful little man that he had once been. He was growing up; in fact, he had already grown up, and all in the last few months.

Occasionally, with a slight tinge of scepticism in his voice, Ronny enquired after Adrian’s mysterious girl. More than once, in the hope of provoking him to divulge something more explicit, he went so far as to express a doubt of her existence. But all to no purpose. Adrian remained uncommunicative; and though Ronny did not persist, this reticence, so far from fending him off, only roused his curiosity, and not only his curiosity, but also a secret resentment. But Lucy remained a myth. Adrian never brought her round to Lennox Street when Ronny was likely to be there, although twice he had taken her there at other times to give her a book or some music which she wanted to borrow.

It was not till September that by accident Lucy and Ronny met. Finding herself near Lennox Street late one afternoon, it occurred to her to call for a book which Adrian had promised to lend her. The maid thought that Adrian was in and showed her up to the sitting-room, where she found Ronny alone.

She had stayed only a few minutes. Ronny had found the book for her, and she had refused, though he had used all his charm to persuade her, to wait till Adrian came in. When she had gone, Ronny lit a pipe, chuckling to himself. It seemed to him a gorgeous joke that he should by this happy accident have unearthed the Little Man’s jealously guarded secret. So this was what had drawn him out of his old self. Well, she was an attractive girl and no mistake. There was something about her … What was it? It was not that she was shy: she was as self-possessed as Nancy or Gill, even as Esmé. But she was somehow much more of a young woman, much more vivid and warmly human than they. They had the hardness and friendly brutality of men. In her he felt the presence of mysteries and hidden tenderness. She was alive, while they, in a way, were dead. What sort of terms were she and Adrian on, he wondered? Adrian had never before shown the least interest in girls. Ronny flattered himself that he was a bit of a Sherlock Holmes, and he remembered now, as a significant fact, that the book she had come for was a book about some musician. Ah, that little fact gave the show away. Ronny laughed to himself with a touch of scorn. That would be just like the Little Man, to pick up a really lovely young creature like this for the simple reason that she was musical, that she was a good person to talk to about music. That explanation pleased him because it put Adrian back in his appropriate immaturity and explained away, without diminishing his own importance, Adrian’s apparent defection. But, in any case, this accidental exposure of the Little Man’s secret was a gorgeous joke, and when, a quarter of an hour later, Adrian came in, Ronny broke out at once.

“Well, the game’s up, Little Man.” He smiled broadly at Adrian. “I’ve just had such a jolly chat with Miss Wendover.”

“She called here?” said Adrian. “Didn’t she leave a message?” But what had happened to the Little Man’s face? Ronny had watched him and had seen his expression change suddenly. For a moment it was as if he had received some terrible news, but almost at once he had controlled himself and both face and voice were being forced to disguise his feelings. What those feelings were Ronny could not make out. Was it just one of the Little Man’s unaccountable fits of shyness? What a funny devil he was. But then, he always had been. He had always been one for sudden, secret feelings, the causes of which remained a mystery. But Ronny’s heavy-handed jocularity dissolved before Adrian’s strange behaviour and, seeing that the subject troubled him, he abandoned it. For an empty, suspended moment there was silence. Then Adrian, in a voice which had almost recovered its normal tone, said: “I’ll just go and have a wash,” and went out of the room.

XXIV

What Adrian feared he could not exactly have said, but for the next two days, until the evening when he was to see Lucy again, he lived in a state of apprehension. A gnawing anxiety pursued him wherever he went. He felt as if Lucy were ill, as if his hold on her had suddenly become insecure, and he longed for the reassurance of the moment of their meeting again. It was in vain that he tried to argue himself out of his fears. What, after all, he asked himself, had happened? Nothing. Lucy had met Ronny and spoken a few words to him: nothing more. Was his fear, then, simple jealousy? Yes, there was jealousy in it, but that was not all. He felt vaguely that something sinister in Ronny, something which he had never defined but had perceived still more strongly in Nancy and Gill and Esmé and Billy, was threatening that warm innocence which was so unspeakably precious to him in Lucy. But he could not analyse his fears, and though his reason told him they were groundless, they persisted, sapping his peace of mind. Time slowed down till it had almost ceased to move, and he could hardly bear to wait for the hour of their meeting.

He arrived early at the restaurant where they were to meet, and as he sat waiting it seemed to him incredible that fate would really allow her to come. He watched the door, sick with doubt, and when, punctual as usual, she came, his relief almost overwhelmed him. How amazed Lucy would have been if she had known all that had happened to him since they last met, the tides of feeling that had swept him, the torrent of relief that, at her coming, had almost cut his feet from under him as he rose to greet her; for nothing was apparent in him except a trace of awkwardness, a little more restraint than was now usual with him, and, throughout the evening, less talkativeness than before.

These signs were so many assurances to her of Adrian’s safety. Once or twice lately she had had misgivings. A sudden flushing of his face when they met, the trace of a tremor in his voice, something unexpected and, as she thought, unlike him in his eyes as he leaned towards her across the restaurant table, had made her wonder for a moment whether his friendship was growing into something more than friendship. But in the end she had always put these things down either to his shyness or his boyish frankness. Perhaps her own wishes had made her unnaturally blind, for what she especially liked and valued in him was that he did not make love to her, did not treat her as a creature to be carefully stalked, but as an intelligent being and an equal. His behaviour tonight strengthened her confidence. She could not have divined that he was silent because his heart was too full to talk, because he was content, in the blissful release from his anxiety, to sit in her presence and drink in the rapture it brought him.

He desired now only one final reassurance, that she should tell him of her meeting with Ronny. But the evening wore on, they left the restaurant and made their way to the Wigmore Hall, the concert began, the interval came, and still she said nothing of her call at Lennox Street. Her silence roused once more his lulled anxieties. He felt them grow up in him like a crop of weeds, spreading, flowering, scattering a shower of small poisonous fruit. At last, as the interval drew to a close, he turned to her and, fixing his eyes on her face, said:“I’m glad you got the book all right.”

Perhaps it was the intentness of his gaze that made her colour rise, but he was sure that there was a constraint in her voice when she replied.

“Yes,” she said, “I called, as I expect you heard.” She hesitated, and then added: “I thought I should find you in.”

That was all. And yet, he argued miserably with himself in bed that night, wouldn’t it have been the natural thing for her to have mentioned Ronny, even to have done so when they first met without his having to raise the subject of the book later and give her the chance? Wasn’t her reticence an ominous symptom? What was she keeping back from him? What had they said when they met? What did she think of Ronny? She had thought too much, of course, to trust herself to speak of him. A black wave of despair rose, yawned, and burst over him. “Lucy!” his heart cried out to her desperately in the darkness.

Then his mind set to work again. And what of Ronny? The thought of Ronny brought him some comfort, for Ronny had had no reticences; he had cheerfully blurted the whole thing out at once. That surely showed that he, at least, had nothing to hide. Besides, Ronny was a thorough sportsman: he would never go to work behind his back to entice Lucy away from him. No; but Ronny enticed whether he meant to or not. However right his intentions might be, his charm might capture Lucy, might have captured her already. At the thought of losing her, her image, heart-rendingly clear, heart-rendingly precious to him, swam up into his consciousness. It was too terrible to be true that he was going to lose her. And then, in reaction against the monstrosity of the thought, he assured himself once again that nothing had really happened at all, that the whole thing was a figment of his imagination. Once one allowed one’s imagination to start working there was nothing it wouldn’t invent. And it was always worse at night: he knew that. When he awoke to-morrow morning he would find that the whole thing was a feverish nightmare. His mind, torturing him with alternate terrors and reassurances, at last exhausted its ingenuity, and as a distant clock struck three he fell asleep.

XXV

The long drawing-room was cleared for dancing. Against the background of green-panelled walls the coloured shapes of dancing couples glided and revolved to the hot pulse of the music. Others sat and talked on chairs and sofas pushed back against the wainscot. The music stopped, the rhythmic movements of the dancers broke off into slow confusion and Ronny’s hostess took possession of him. “Come with me, Mr. Dakyn,” she said. “I want to introduce you to a very charming young friend of mine.”

He followed her, and in a moment found himself being introduced to Lucy Wendover. Finding that they were already acquainted, their hostess left them. “I thought it too bad that those two beautiful young creatures weren’t dancing together,” she whispered to a friend who stood near.

Ronny and Lucy agreed to sit out. “It’s funny, isn’t it, that we should meet by accident again,” he said. Lucy, for one of the rare occasions of her life, felt shy. Under the gaze of those lively, bright blue eyes of his, her usual self-possession deserted her and it was he, at first, who did most of the talking. He was in high spirits. In the presence of this beautiful girl, whose admiration he detected in her shyness, his charm of manner and appearance displayed itself at its brightest. He was amused, too, at this new defeat of Adrian’s secretiveness. It was another joke on the Little Man: he would rag him about it when he got home. But there was something more than amusement in it: there was also, though so deeply hidden that he himself did not consciously perceive it, a gratified sense of revenge taken on Adrian’s defection. Adrian had deserted him and had jealously guarded his supplanter from him, and now he and the supplanter were making friends on their own account.

They found a sofa in an anteroom. But if Lucy was here, it suddenly occurred to him, Adrian must be here too. It would be a better joke still if Adrian were to come into the anteroom now and find them talking. “I haven’t seen Adrian,” he said to Lucy, “but I suppose he’s here.”

Lucy looked quickly about the room. “Adrian? I didn’t know he was. I thought he didn’t care for dancing.”

“Oh, if you don’t know he’s here, he won’t be. I just took it for granted, because you are.”

Lucy laughed. “Then you imagine that …?” She hesitated over how to put it.

“Yes, that’ everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go,’ “said Ronny.

Lucy resented the assumption. “Oh, dear me, no,” she said. “We have lunch or dinner together sometimes and go to concerts, but we’re not quite inseparable.” Then, ashamed of the impulse to disown her friendship with Adrian, she added: “But I do like him. He’s a charming child and we’re very good friends.”

Ronny laughed. “Yes, he is, isn’t he? I keep forgetting he isn’t still a little boy at school. At school, you see, he was very much younger than me. He used to be my fag.”

“Was he very fond of music at school?”

“Rather,” said Ronny. “Wrapped up in it, as he is now. Not that he wasn’t good at games too, especially footer. I suppose he is pretty good at music?”

“Oh, very good indeed,” said Lucy enthusiastically.

“And you’re keen on music too?”

“Yes,” she said. “And so, you see, Adrian and I forgather over music. But he knows much more about it than I do. I used to work at it when I was his age, but I wasn’t good enough. I gave up working at it seriously some years ago.”

Lucy had lost some of her shyness now, but she still avoided his eyes. Through the screen of their talk she was acutely aware of his presence, his body leaning towards her, his gaze enveloping her; and when occasionally she ventured a fleeting glance at him she saw that, sure enough, his gay, blue eyes were fixed upon her as he talked. She had never been so immediately, so overpoweringly aware of anyone before. It was not his words nor his personality that were impressing themselves upon her so violently. It was his vivid, dazzling bodily presence which, it seemed, reached out beyond its tangible confines and enclosed her, entangled her in a net. She felt she must get up and go away, outside his influence; or else lean back, close her eyes, and happily abandon herself to it.

“When are you meeting Adrian again?” he was saying to her.

“Next week,” she replied. “Tuesday or Wednesday, I think.”

“How funny that I should have thought you were always together.”

“What made you think so? Not Adrian, surely?”

“No, not Adrian. In fact, Adrian hardly mentioned you. That’s what started me guessing, I suppose. It only shows how easy it is to make a bloomer when you start the Sherlock Holmes stunt.”

Lucy was greatly relieved. When Ronny had assumed that they were inseparable, she in turn had been led to assume that Adrian had told him that he was in love with her. But that fear was gone now. Adrian had said nothing, and for the good reason that there was nothing to say. Ronny had misunderstood his silence: that was all. It was a weight off her mind. Whatever she was feeling now, as she sat there in Ronny’s exciting and disturbing presence, she was doing no harm to Adrian. He might of course be a little piqued if Ronny and she.… Her mind, as if venturing into deep water, suddenly shivered ecstatically and shrank back.… Yes, piqued, but nothing more; and he would soon get over that.

Ronny, too, as he went home, assured himself that he was not harming the Little Man. Hadn’t Lucy made it quite clear that there was nothing between them? But the position was a little awkward, and when he got home he didn’t, after all, rag Adrian about having met Lucy again. In fact, he did not mention the meeting at all. And Lucy, when she met Adrian for a concert a few days later, also refrained from mentioning it.

But Adrian, his senses sharpened by his bitter misgiving, divined a change in her, a lack of her old, free warmth of manner, a pre-occupation in which he had no share; and, showing her nothing of what he was suffering, he withdrew into himself like a wounded bird and took his new and deeper draught of bitterness in silence.

When next they met it seemed, to his profound relief, that Lucy had come back to him. The tragic gulf which had so mysteriously and tacitly opened between them had as mysteriously and tacitly closed. The respite came to him as a delicious breath of springtime after a shattering storm. But the old triumphant security did not return. He lived in dread of the desolating loss of which he had had that brief but terrible foretaste. He dared not think of it for fear his thinking should in some unknown way conjure it up; but though he drove it from his thoughts, it lurked in some dark corner of his mind, a dull pain numbed but never quite healed.

Meanwhile chance worked against him. Ronny and Lucy had, it turned out, more than one acquaintance in common. They met again at a dance, and their unexpected meeting there betrayed them to each other. For the rest of that evening they were lost to all but themselves. The other guests glided past them like vague shadows, and far behind those shadows, even vaguer than they, the lonely ghost of Adrian shrank away unheeded into the outer darkness.

XXVI

Lucy had promised to meet Adrian for dinner and a Promenade Concert at the Queen’s Hall on the evening after that second dance. Why was it, she wondered, that she felt so reluctant to do so? It was not, she assured herself, that she felt guilty or that her friendship for him had changed. No; the reason was—she had it now—that she was embarrassed at the prospect of speaking of Ronny. And yet she was determined to do so, to tell Adrian that she had met him at the dance last night. Her conscience had been troubling her because she had refrained from telling him that she had met Ronny at the previous dance. That, she felt, was unfair to him. If, as she had believed, she had nothing to hide, why had she felt compelled to hide that? Simply because she was shy of betraying her feelings for Ronny. That was natural enough. It was not that she wished to hide them only from Adrian: she wished to hide them from everybody. But in the particular case of Adrian that was, she felt, unfair; and now if she were to suppress the fact of their second meeting it would be unfairer still. It would almost seem like conspiring against Adrian with his friend. She hated the thought of doing again that which would wound him; and if he were to hear that she had twice met Ronny he would have every right to be wounded by the strange fact that she had concealed it. She would tell him, she resolved, to-night at dinner. But how difficult it would be to mention Ronny’s name without betraying herself. No wonder she felt reluctant to keep her appointment.

Her preoccupation must have been apparent to Adrian, because she became aware, as they sat opposite each other in a corner of the little restaurant, that he too was troubled. They talked of the coming concert and of other things, but their talk was lifeless and strained. Long silences fell between them, and once, as she awoke from her own trouble and raised her eyes to his, she saw there such a depth of dumb suffering that for a moment she was appalled. Did he know, then? Had he somehow instinctively guessed, and was the discovery so terrible to him? Her heart smote her. What could she do for him? She felt suddenly helpless. But at least there must be no more disguise: there had been too much of that already. As if to abolish disguise at once she forced herself now to carry out her resolve.

“I met Ronald Dakyn at a dance last night,” she said, as she spoke she felt the blood rush to her face. “I expect he told you.”

But Adrian did not reply. His face was pale and drawn, he seemed to be perplexed by some alien matter, to be unaware of her presence. She glanced round the restaurant. It had been quite empty when they arrived, for, they were dining early; and it was empty still.

Adrian began to speak. “Tell me, honestly,” he said in a flat, emotionless voice, “are you in love with him?”

The question took her breath away, for it told her all that he had never told her yet. But she must give him an answer, and she felt that, cost what it might, she must tell him the truth. His eyes, full of that abysmal pain that she had seen there before, were on her face. She nodded her head.

“I knew,” he said.

“How? Nobody could have told you.” Her voice was as toneless as his.

“I could tell, from you.”

When they had left the restaurant they turned, by mutual consent, down an unfrequented side street. There he paused.

“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I think I’ll go home.”

That simple phrase cut her to the heart.

“Adrian!” There was a sharp note of distress in her voice. “You see, I didn’t know. I looked on you as a friend. I … I wasn’t in love with you, and you never … showed any sign.”

He stood there silent and listless as a ghost, in his despair. He looked, under the street-lamp, to have grown years older. Lucy could no longer check her tears. In a hopeless attempt to comfort him she held out her hand. “I wouldn’t have hurt you for the world,” she sobbed.

He took her hand and put his face down to it. She felt his lips pressed to it and the hot fall of tears. “I know you wouldn’t,” he said, as if trying to console her. His throat was dry. He paused and then added: “Don’t think I blame you.”

He made a faint sign with his hand, turned, and walked quickly away from her.

It was still quite early when he reached Lennox Street. Pausing outside the house, he glanced up at the sitting-room windows. Light showed behind the drawn blinds. At the thought of Ronny hatred boiled up in him. To cope with Ronny now would demand more energy than he possessed. His whole being was involved in Lucy. His emotions had no strength and no room for the added complication of Ronny, which was no more than a side issue in his disaster. But he must get into the house for a minute or two, time enough to collect and pack a few necessary things. He rang the front-door bell as he let himself in. The maid, coming to answer the bell, met him in the passage. He told her that he would not be there for the night, that he had unexpectedly to go away for a few days. Then he went upstairs, passed the sittingroom door with a wildly pulsing heart, and reached his bedroom on the floor above.

He switched on the light and shut the door. What had he come for? He stood for a moment helpless, his mind paralysed. Then, recollecting himself, he stooped down, pulled a small suitcase from under the bed. He must pack quickly. He opened the wardrobe, went to the chest of drawers and began to open them, vaguely searching in each and taking out things which next moment he realised he would not want. He felt suddenly angry with himself for his inability to concentrate, and paused in the middle of the room, pulling himself together. Sponge, toothbrush, hairbrush and comb, a shirt or two, a few pairs of socks, some slippers, pyjamas. He got the things together and packed them hurriedly into the suitcase. Then with a last look round the room he opened the door, switched out the light, and began cautiously to go downstairs.

As he approached the landing his eye fell on the crack of light under the sitting-room door. Yes, he was in there. There was no murmur of voices. He must be alone. A board wheezed as he rounded the bend in the stairs and turned his back on the door. He heard a sound in the room, and then the door behind him opened, flooding the stairs with light.

“Is that you, Adrian?” said Ronny’s voice.

He went straight on, neither looking back nor replying. The stairs behind him creaked, quick steps were following him, and as he reached the front door Ronny had caught him up.

“What is it, Little Man?” said the piercingly familiar voice almost in a whisper.

Adrian neither looked at him nor answered his question. He was tired, horribly tired; he could not be bothered with Ronny, and he stretched out his hand and took hold of the knob of the latch. But before he could open the door Ronny had grasped his arm. “Adrian, what is it? What’s up? I thought you were spending the evening with … with Lucy.”

To hear him say “Lucy “maddened Adrian. A spasm of despair almost choked him. He tore at his captive arm, but Ronny held on. He had kept his eyes averted, shutting Ronny out, but now he turned them full on him. The face he saw was transformed, the lips drawn, the cheeks blotched as if the blood had suddenly left them, the blue eyes were anxiously scrutinising him, and for the first time in all their long friendship they flinched and dropped before Adrian’s piercing stare.

“I was,” said Adrian, and there was an agony of meaning in his voice.

He wrenched at his arm, but still Ronny held it. “Listen, Adrian! Do listen! Come upstairs.”

With a violent effort which sent Ronny reeling against the wall of the passage Adrian wrenched his arm free and rushed out, leaving the door open behind him.

His instinct was to go at once to Abbot’s Randale, and he boarded a bus for Liverpool Street. The top of the bus was empty and he sank into the back seat. There he crouched, motionless and thoughtless, given up, body and soul, to his misery. The bus ride seemed interminable, and after a while, sluggishly and vaguely, his thoughts began to stir. His heart fought desperately against the fact that he had lost Lucy. It was a fact too agonising to face, and when at last he faced it his heart turned wildly in search of a substitute in which it might find refuge and consolation. It turned, by instinct, to Ronny. Then the irony of that impulse flashed upon him. Ronny was lost to him too—worse than lost: he had become hateful to him, stabbed him in the back. Yes, he had lost them both, and with a pang of maddening jealousy he imagined them together. She would go to Lennox Street to see him. They would sit and talk there in the evening where he and Ronny had so often sat and talked. Suddenly he remembered how Esmé and Ronny had talked there, how he had listened to the murmur of their voices far into the night and had wondered in misery whether … He clapped his hand to his cheek, overwhelmed by a sudden, appalling conjecture. Oh, God! Would Ronny persuade her to spend the night with him? A groan burst from him. He felt it vibrate in the cords of his throat. He laid his arm along the back of the seat in front of him and leaned his forehead on it. How was it possible to suffer so much and not go crazy? He flung the unbearable nightmare from him, sat up, and looked about him. The bus was nearing Liverpool Street. It was not till it had reached the station that he remembered that the last train for Abbot’s Randale would have gone nearly an hour ago.

What could he do? How was he to get through the ghastly hours between now and the early train tomorrow morning? To take a room for the night, to be alone, unoccupied, undistracted, face to face with his despair, would be beyond endurance. He went into the station, left his bag in the cloak-room, and then walked aimlessly out into Bishopsgate. The only thing to do was to walk. The business of walking, the traffic, the crowd would protect him against himself. He set off, back along Bishopsgate, then turned right and lost himself in a succession of narrow alleys and passages. In half an hour he found himself back in Bishopsgate. There were few people about now in this business quarter: the gaunt, coldly shining, empty street added to his desolation, and he walked further southwards.

After a while he found himself on London Bridge. The cool breath of the river rose from below. His head ached: he took off his hat and leaned over the parapet. Below him, a grey blurr scarred with gilt and ruby, lay the long, encumbered deck of a ship. If only he could go on board, sail away down the river, out to sea, away to some remote country, far from all the familiar scenes which tortured him with the stings of a thousand tender and lovely associations, away to some blessed place beyond the reach of memory. He sighed, to lift for a moment the leaden weight that burdened his heart. The weight heaved slowly up and sank back upon him. He put on his hat and moved on.

Beyond the bridge he turned up the slope to London Bridge Station, went in and idled there for a while, then left it and walked westwards. When the clocks struck midnight he found himself crossing Trafalgar Square. His torture had slackened a little, but he was too tired to walk any further. In the black water of a fountain-basin a light breeze stirred little threads of silver which idly wove and unwove themselves. He sat down in a dark corner near some steps and slowly drooped into unconsciousness.

He awoke with a start. A hand was on his shoulder. Was it Ronny? He opened his eyes. A policeman was bending over him, asking him if anything was wrong. He got stiffly on to his feet. “Quite all right, thanks,” he said, and his voice sounded quite cheerful. “I’m going by an early train from Liverpool Street. I fell asleep by accident.”

The policeman seemed to be convinced, wished him good night, and moved on. He realised that he was very cold and stiff and began to walk slowly towards Pall Mall. Saint Martin’s in the Fields struck three. The sound relieved and encouraged him. Time was getting on. There were only four and a half hours till train time. The strangeness of these hours of nocturnal prowling had lifted him out of his normal existence. It was as if he had crossed into another life from which he surveyed his tragedy as a thing detached from him. He felt nothing now but a numbness at his heart.

An hour and a half later he had a cup of coffee and a sandwich in Covent Garden Market. When he returned at last to Liverpool Street it was twilight, and the sun had risen when his train drew out of the station.

With daylight his anguish returned. What was the good, he asked himself now, of going to Abbot’s Randale? But where else could he go? It would have been impossible to go to Yarn, for he could never have brought himself to speak to Clara of what had happened to him. It was a thing which was altogether outside the sphere of their relationship. Her cool, impervious common-sense would be helpless and useless in the presence of his anguish. To betray such feelings as were consuming him would seem to her so very unlike a Glynde. And his mother? He might as well pour out his heart to a butterfly. Yet surely they must have feelings? Yes, but feelings that could never be reached, never shared. But his grandfather would understand and sympathise: there was not the least doubt about that.

He leaned back in his corner seat and stared with a barren mind at the scene that flowed past. He was high and dry, derelict; his life, he felt, had reached an end. The minutes passed, an hour, an hour and a half, but he was unaware of time. He was aware only of duration, a monotonous duration of pain. When the train stopped at Wilmore Junction he did not notice it, and awoke to it only just in lime to snatch his bag and jump out. Plunged suddenly into those familiar surroundings, that halting-place at which he had paused briefly at such various moments of his life, he thought of his old friend in the refreshment-room. It would be comforting to talk to her and have a cup of tea. She knew nothing of his tragedy and there was no embarrassing necessity to tell her. He went heavily down the platform to the wellknown door, but for the first time it resisted him. It was not yet opening time. He went on disconsolately, and sank into a seat to wait for the branch line train.

Before long it clanked in, the absurd little engine pushing from behind. He got into an empty carriage. But as soon as the train had started he realised that he could not go to Abbot’s Randale. What was the good of going? He could not face the labour of getting from the station to his grandfather’s, of explaining his unexpected arrival and pouring out his lamentable tale. For, though his grandfather would certainly understand and sympathise, he could not alter what had happened.

A quarter of an hour later the train halted at Selling, the first stop after Wilmore, and Adrian opened the door and got out. He gave up his ticket and set off down the road towards the little village a mile away. He had no plan.

XXVII

The effort of walking took the edge off his pain, but he was exhausted when he reached the village. He had neither the strength nor the will to go farther. He turned into the first inn and asked for a room, saying that he had had a long journey and wanted to sleep.

At half-past twelve the landlord’s wife knocked at his door and told him that she had had lunch laid for him in the sitting-room. Adrian wanted no lunch, but to avoid appearing strange he got up and went to the little sitting-room, to which, on hearing his footsteps in the passage, the landlord’s wife guided him. There were cold beef, vegetables, salad, and a dish of stewed prunes on the table. Adrian glanced at them with loathing. Then, looking round the room, he saw a hanging bookcase on the wall near the door. He went over to it to choose a book with which he might distract his thoughts. His eyes ran over the titles: Handy Andy, Sermons by the Rev. J. G. Clutterbuck, The Poultry Farmer’s Guide, Nicholas Nckleby, The Pickwick Papers, Mrs. Barbauld’s Poems. He chose Nicholas Nickleby, and, sitting down to his lunch, opened it in the middle. He helped himself to food, but did not take up his knife and fork. Instead, he turned to the open book. “By degrees,” he read, “these raptures subsided, and Mrs. Nickleby went on to entertain her guests with a lament over her fallen fortunes.” His eyes moved to the illustration on the opposite page, which displayed, with what seemed to him in his present state a brutal grotesqueness, “The Affectionate Behaviour of Pyke and Pluck.” He returned to the other page and read on, but when he had reached the bottom he found that he had understood nothing, and, taking up his knife and fork, he compelled himself to eat. But the food was so dry that he could hardly swallow it and he filled a glass with water and drank it off at a single draught. He soon gave up the attempt to eat and again his eyes sought the book. “By degrees these raptures subsided, and Mrs. Nickleby went on to entertain her guests with a lament over her fallen fortunes, and a picturesque account …” Again he forgot the book, the room, all that had passed during the last twelve hours, while his eyes followed the lines to the bottom of the page. His helplessness made him angry, and he went back to where he had started and set himself firmly to concentrate. “By degrees these raptures subsided, and Mrs. Nickleby went on to entertain her guests with a lament over her fallen fortunes.” The insufferable reiteration of that opening sentence, with its suggestion of caricature of his own tragedy, was too much for him. He rose from the table and, taking the book with him, went to an easy chair covered in horsehair near the empty grate. There he sat with the open book on his knee. When a maid came to clear the table he pretended to be reading, but as soon as the door had closed, his eyes left the page.

After he had sat idle for some time a heavy step was heard in the flagged passage, the door opened, and a large, red-faced man stood in the doorway. “I dunno if you’d be interested in a rat hunt, sir,” he said to Adrian.

Adrian flinched at the bare thought of being drawn into any sort of company. “A rat hunt?” he said timidly.

“Yes, sir. We’ve got an old barn that pestered with rats that you can’t keep nothing in it, so we’re going to have’em out. Turn the hose on’em, you know, and shoot’em when they come out. If you’d care to …”

Adrian found himself, by mere inability to refuse, drawn into it. He was already getting up from his chair, and soon he was following the landlord down the passage.

“I’m not sure if I can fit you up with a gun. We’ll see,” said the landlord over his shoulder.

A couple of men with guns under their arms stood in the back doorway; a third, gunless, waited inside. They moved to make way for the landlord, who went out and turned into a shed on the right, followed by Adrian and the third man. He rummaged in dusty corners, on dusty shelves, in a long, coffin-like box. Soon he had pulled out of the box an old rifle. He dusted it on his sleeve, opened the breach, turned it round, and glanced down the barrel. “Not too bad,” he said, handing it to the third man. “You take that, Jim. It’s an old rook-rifle. There’s some cartridges in that tin up there on your right.”

He paused, hands on hips, and stared about him. Then he opened a drawer, searched in it noisily, and pulled something out. “There’s this,” he said to Adrian, “but I don’t know that you’ll be able to do much with it.”

It was an old service revolver. “I doubt she’ll be a bit stiff,” he said. He tried the trigger. There was a dry, wheezing sound, a pause, a snap. He opened it and examined the chamber and the barrel. “Not too bad,” he said, and handed it to Adrian. He poured a handful of cartridges out of a tin box. “Shall I load her for you, sir? I doubt you won’t want more than the five: she won’t be very accurate, I’m afraid.” He filled the chamber and handed the revolver back to Adrian. Then, struck by a sudden doubt, he asked: “You’re used to firearms of course?”

“Oh, yes,” said Adrian untruthfully.

The three of them went out of the shed; the landlord took up his own gun, which was leaning against the wall near the back door, and, joined by the other two, they all went over to an old thatched barn at the other side of the yard. Straw, empty cases, every kind of rubbish, cleared from the barn, was heaped up outside. A man holding a hose stood waiting.

The landlord posted his friends at suitable places; then, glancing at Adrian as if still a little doubtful of the wisdom of having given him the revolver, he led him behind the barn where he was invisible to the rest and could neither harm them nor be harmed by them. “There,” he said. “Now look out for them where you see those holes in the boards there. And, mind you, don’t shoot, only away into the field. Let’em get clear, or you might put a bullet through Jim, inside there.”

He disappeared round the corner of the barn, and Adrian heard him shout: “Right you are, Jim. Turn on the waterworks.” Then through the wooden walls of the barn he heard the hissing and spluttering of the hose.

Adrian glanced at the revolver in his hand. He was trembling so violently that he could hardly hold it. Tentatively he fingered the trigger. Then he glanced down at the holes. From one of them a small rat, its fur wet and ruffled, was slowly emerging. It seemed to be injured. Perhaps it had been half-stunned by the water-jet from the hose. The words “A drowned rat” came into his mind. “Poor little devil!” he thought to himself, watching it pityingly. The crash of a gun-shot sent a convulsive shock from his heels to his head, loosening his knees. For a moment he thought his own revolver had gone off. He paused, recovering himself. Then, drawing a long breath, he braced himself suddenly, raised the hand that held the revolver, and, pressing the muzzle to his right temple, pulled the trigger with all his might.

XXVIII

He awoke, vague, relaxed, and peaceful. He did not open his eyes, but lay still while his mind gathered itself together. Where was he? In Lennox Street? At Abbot’s Randale? If he opened his eyes, would the windows be at the foot of his bed or on his left side? He could not remember and did not make the effort to open his eyes and discover. It must be early—not yet time to get up. But he did not want to get up: it was too delicious to lie full-length in bed.

He dropped back into a doze; then, after a long time, woke again, opened his eyes for a moment and closed them again. He had seen a low, sloping ceiling and, pushed out through the slope, a little dormer window; and sitting on a chair, her face turned away from him, his Aunt Clara. Round that brief vision of the room his memory began to crystallise. It was the little bedroom in the inn at Selling where, a long time ago, he had stopped because he was too tired to go on. Lucy! She came suddenly into his mind and, with her, the sense of a weary, complicated nightmare from which he had now awoken. But Aunt Clara? Where did she come in?

He lay, quietly pondering, piecing things together. Then he hadn’t, after all…? And yet, here he was, released. Had he woken into another life? But in that case what was Aunt Clara doing here? They must have sent for her, of course. He remembered that he had had a letter from her in his pocket. What a long time ago it all was. Yes, they must have found him and brought him in and sent for her. What did she know, then? What did anyone know? Nothing, probably. It was an extraordinary thing to have done, but he was glad, very glad, that he had done it. He was always glad when he succeeded in doing something instead of merely thinking and suffering. No; it would simply be thought that it had been an accident. The revolver had been old and stiff. The truth would never be known.

But suppose Aunt Clara did know the truth, what on earth would she make of it? It was impossible to imagine her reaction to an event so out of her scheme. He imagined himself telling her that he had made a bad shot at a rat, and her pursing her lips and replying a little disapprovingly: “The Glyndes have usually been good shots.” Then, in imagination, he faced her with the truth. “I tried to kill myself.” But imagination was not equal to her reply. He saw her purse her lips again. “My dear Adrian, the Glyndes have usually been good shots.” Yes, he contemplated the astonishing fact with a curious satisfaction: he had tried to kill himself, and in fact he had killed himself, his old unhappy self, so timid, so lax, so prone to disappointment and failure. He had, he knew, put a barrier between himself and the past, and now he was free of the past, ready to start again. And no one would ever know of what had happened—no one except his grandfather. To him he could not pretend: to him, and to him alone, he would tell everything. He stretched himself and opened his eyes.

Clara turned her head and came over to his bedside. “How do you feel, my dear?”

He smiled at her. “Remarkably well, thank you.”

But was he actually well, he wondered, for the first time? He glanced again at her face. It was pale, but it wore its accustomed calm.

“Is there anything much the matter?” he asked, as if enquiring about someone else.

She shook her head. “The doctor says it’s nothing but concussion. You will have to keep quiet for a few days, that’s all.” She stooped and kissed his forehead, and suddenly and silently burst into tears. He reached a hand out of the bedclothes and took hers. She dried her eyes and gave him a wry smile.

“You must allow me to indulge in my little reaction, my dear boy,” she said.

THE END

A Note on the Author

Martin Armstrong (1882-1974) was an English writer and poet. He was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and educated at Charterhouse and Pembroke College, Cambridge. He served in World War I in the British Army in France as a Private in the Artists’ Rifles. He was commissioned into the Middlesex Regiment in 1915 and promoted Lieutenant in 1916. He was included in the final Georgian Poetry anthology.

In 1929 he married writer Jessie McDonald, after she had divorced Conrad Aiken, making Armstrong the stepfather of the young Joan Aiken. He appears in disguised form as a character in Conrad Aiken’s Ushant.

Discover books by Martin Armstrong published by Bloomsbury Reader at

www.bloomsbury.com/MartinArmstrong

Adrian Glynde

Sir Pompey and Madame Juno

The Bird Catcher

The Romantic Adventures of Mr. Darby and of Sarah His Wife

The Bird Catcher

The Sleeping Fury

The Stepson

Venus Over Lannery

For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been

removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain

references to missing images.

This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,

London WC1B 3DP

First published in Great Britain 1930 by Victor Gollancz Ltd

Copyright © 1930 Martin Armstrong

All rights reserved

You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise

make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means

(including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying,

printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the

publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication

may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The moral right of the author is asserted.

eISBN: 9781448210916

Visit www.bloomsburyreader.com to find out more about our authors and their books

You will find extracts, author interviews, author events and you can sign up for

newsletters to be the first to hear about our latest releases and special offers.