by Forrest Reid
‘You mean—’
‘Ay,’ answered Deverell laconically.
It was not much of an answer, but Tom knew it was all he should get, and for the first time since their encounter he laughed. Deverell did not echo his amusement (he was, Tom guessed, in his own way quite as serious a person as Mr. Knox), but none the less their relation had undergone a modification of some kind when he said, ‘Good-night, Mr. Tom.’
‘Good night,’ Tom replied.
Next minute he was alone, and the minute after had broken into a jog-trot, for it really was very late, far too late to be arriving at a strange house. A most alarming thought occurred to him, that perhaps Uncle Stephen went to bed early. People living in the country often did, and though no doubt he would be able to waken him by hammering at the door, he did not think he should have the courage to do this; he would rather spend the night in the open air. He would be pretty sure to find some kind of shelter, and at any rate it was quite warm.
He stopped, and in the brightening moonlight looked at his watch:—twenty-five past ten. Here, anyhow, was the gate—a white wooden gate—very likely the back entrance. But he pressed down the latch with a fluttering heart, for all his misgivings had returned, accompanied by not a few new ones.
In the avenue he had to proceed warily. The moon was not yet clear of the tree tops, and it was so dark that more than once he found himself blundering into the bushes. The black trees towered above him; everything was black and alarmingly still. He was sure now that Uncle Stephen would have gone to bed, and the prospect of spending a night out of doors was much less attractive than it had been only a few minutes ago. He wanted to hurry, but that was impossible. It was difficult enough, even when walking slowly and carefully, to keep to the path, which wound this way and that way, so that there was always a wall of trees directly facing him.
Then suddenly he saw the house. It was there, in the moonlight, dark and solid, and though from this distance he could make out no architectural details apart from two projecting wings and a flat roof, there was a light, there were several lights, warm and bright and friendly.
Tom crossed the intervening silver-grey lawn, and on the broad gravel sweep stood still. The porch was wide and deep, but before mounting the two shallow steps leading to it he had to summon up all his resolution. It was a brief struggle, however: he entered the porch, and began to search for the bell. He could not find one, but he found a knocker, and gave two lamentably timid raps.
They were hardly loud enough to have disturbed a mouse, let alone to have waked up Uncle Stephen, yet barely had the discreet sound subsided when he heard footsteps in the hall, and next instant the door opened wide, letting out a flood of light, through which he faced a small, fragile, elderly woman—Mrs. Deverell, he supposed.
‘Does Mr. Collet live here?’ he was beginning nervously, when his question was interrupted.
‘Why, it must be Master Tom! I’d given up, expecting you, Master Tom, and was getting ready to go home.’
‘I know I’m awfully late. I couldn’t help it.’ He stopped suddenly in the bewildering realization that he had been expected. He gazed with astonished eyes at Mrs. Deverell, but the housekeeper had replunged into her own explanations.
‘You see the master wasn’t quite sure which day you’d be coming, and it was only this morning he asked me had I got your room fixed up. And then, even if you came by the last train, I made sure you’d be here by nine o’clock. But your room’s all ready, sir, and your supper’s ready… . So you walked from the station! Even so, the train must have been terribly late. And they’ve never sent on your things: it’s just like them! However, you’d better go and speak to the master first, and then I’ll show you your room. I kept up a fire, thinking you might like a bath, so the water will be nice and hot. Leave your parcel there on the hall table and I’ll take it up. Just follow me, sir.’
But Tom had not yet regained sufficient composure to follow her, or even to produce any very intelligible speech, though he did manage to say the engine had broken down. It was as if he clung to this as the one comprehensible fact in a maze of unreality. Then it flashed across his mind that Jane might have sent a telegram to announce his arrival. But why should she? It wasn’t a bit like her to do such a thing. Besides, if there had been a telegram Mrs. Deverell would have known definitely he was coming.
And all this time she was waiting, and had even begun to peer at him rather anxiously. ‘Uncle Stephen expected me?’ he said, with an effort forcing his conflicting thoughts into a coherent question. Yet involuntarily he added, ‘How can he have expected me? How can he have known?’
Mrs. Deverell continued to look at him, while an expression of uncertainty slowly deepened in her own eyes. ‘Didn’t you write him a letter, sir?’ she murmured. Or him to you?’ Her frail and faded features seemed to beg him to answer ‘Yes’.
‘I hadn’t time. I—’
Ah, well,’ she caught at this as better than nothing, ‘that’s why he couldn’t say whether it would be to-day or to-morrow.’ And her manner struck Tom as carrying an odd note of not wishing to push the matter further. ‘You’d better come with me now, sir, and tell him you’ve arrived.’
The hall, of whose appearance Tom was only beginning to take in a conscious impression, was square and carpeted; and halfway down it, against the panelled wall, a grandfather’s clock ticked with a homely, comforting sound. Beyond this was a wide low staircase, branching off on the first landing to right and left, where it was backed by three tall narrow windows. From the foot of the stairs dimly lit passages also extended to right and left, following the lines of the upper flights. It was towards the passage on the left that Mrs. Deverell by the gentlest push now impelled him, and half-way down it she knocked on a door, opening it, however, at the same time. ‘Here’s Master Tom now, sir,’ she said in a toneless voice, her thin hand grasping Tom’s sleeve as if to prevent him from running away.
There had been no summons from within, but firmly Mrs. Deverell pushed him forward, while simultaneously she herself withdrew, closing the door softly behind her, and leaving Tom, dumb and motionless, on the threshold of what was the largest room he had ever seen, and which in fact must have covered nearly the whole area of the east wing of the home.
He had, in his nervousness, a blurred impression of high book-lined walls, of a soft floating light that dimmed and shaded off into a surrounding darkness, but above all, though at what seemed to be an immense distance from him, of a figure seated by a table, a figure whose grave, kind face and silver hair were surmounted by a black skull-cap. There was a perceptible pause and an intense silence. The room rapidly became brimmed with this silence, which passed over Tom in wave after wave, so that he might have been deep down under the sea. His heart was thumping, his cheeks burned, and all at once an unutterable misery swept over him. His mouth quivered; he was at that moment on the very verge of tears; but he forced them back, biting on his lower lip. At the same time the seated figure had risen, looking tall, though slightly stooped, in a black costume that vaguely suggested an earlier period than the present, and showed only a touch of soft white linen at throat and wrist. But this movement seemed to have the effect of decreasing the distance between them, and Tom advanced. It was all strange enough, for no word had yet been spoken, and Tom came forward slowly, step by step, his arms hanging by his sides, his head drooping a little. He came on and on till at last he felt a hand resting on each of his shoulders, and at this he looked up into eyes of the darkest deepest blue he had ever beheld. His own eyes were misty and again he was biting on his lip, but he felt a hand brushing lightly over his head, and then more firmly, so that, obedient to its pressure, he tilted it back a little, and at the same time closed his eyelids. The hand came to rest, still pressing lightly on the tumbled hair, and Tom all at once had the oddest and loveliest impression. He didn’t know whence it came—perhaps out of the Bible—but he knew—and it was as if he had never known anything so deeply, so beautifully—
that Uncle Stephen had blessed him.
He felt suddenly at rest: he felt happy: he even smiled faintly—shyly—but contentedly—after a little, rather sleepily. And still he said nothing:—nor did Uncle Stephen. Thus, in fact, Mrs. Deverell found them when she came back. It seemed to Tom as if she had been gone only an instant, though it must have been longer, much longer. She had come to say that Master Tom’s room was ready, and that she thought he’d better have his supper now and go to bed, after which she herself would go home. Tom held out his hand to Uncle Stephen, and they said goodnight: then Mrs. Deverell took him off to the dining-room. He obeyed her in a kind of dream. It had all come about so wonderfully that by now he had ceased to question anything. He supposed he should understand in time, but not to-night—nor did it matter if he never understood. Strangest of all perhaps, was his sense of having plunged into a world utterly unknown to him, but in which he was not unknown, and which appeared to have been always there waiting for him.
And, if he did not understand, he at any rate knew; for this was Uncle Stephen—his Uncle Stephen. He had seen him before—twice—though it was only to-night he had seen his face. And he had known the sound of his voice—known it before he had heard it bidding him good-night. Moreover, he thought Uncle Stephen knew too… .
‘You’re dropping asleep on your feet, Master Tom,’ Mrs. Deverell said as he smiled at her. ‘And little wonder after the day you’ve had. The minute you’ve finished your supper you must go straight to bed.’
He had forgotten how hungry he was, but he realized it when he sat down at the table. Mrs. Deverell had prepared nothing elaborate for him, but there was cold chicken and ham, a fresh green salad, and rolls and butter. While he ate she sat knitting, and more than once, when he glanced up, he caught her eyes fixed on him in a mildly speculative gaze, as if she were searching for an answer to a riddle his advent had suggested. She did not tell him that a delicate moustache of milk marked his upper lip, that there was a sooty smudge down one of his cheeks from temple to chin, that his hands were shockingly dirty. Of the last fact, before the end of his meal, Tom himself became conscious. ‘I say, I shouldn’t have sat down like this,’ he apologized.
‘Well, I was going to take you upstairs,’ Mrs. Deverell answered, ‘but I hadn’t the heart to keep you starving any longer. You’d better wash your hands and face though, before you get into bed, or I don’t know what the sheets will be like in the morning. I suppose they’ll be sending up your luggage first thing to-morrow.’
‘They won’t,’ answered Tom, his mouth full of lettuce. ‘I mean, I haven’t any. Except that parcel.’
Mrs. Deverell suspended her knitting to look at him. ‘But bless you, child, there’s nothing in your parcel except your pyjamas and two or three handkerchiefs and collars and an old pair of flannel trousers!’
‘I know. You see I couldn’t bring anything that would be missed. I came away unexpectedly.’
‘Unexpectedly!’ Mrs. Deverell resumed her knitting and for a time the clicking of needles and the munching of lettuce leaves provided the only sounds in the room. At last, however, she spoke: ‘I don’t rightly know what “unexpectedly” means, nor if I’m intended to know, or just to mind my own business.’
‘You don’t even know my name, do you?’ said Tom.
‘Not your second name,’ Mrs. Deverell admitted, ‘unless it’s Collet?’
‘It isn’t: it’s Barber; but my mother was a Collet… .’
‘She’s dead,’ Tom added, after finishing his milk, ‘and my father died last Friday.’
Mrs. Deverell at this laid down her knitting. ‘Oh, you poor lamb!’ she cried. ‘And me sitting here asking you questions. Now don’t you be bothering about anything I may have said.’
‘But you haven’t said anything,’ Tom assured her. You haven’t asked a single question. I ran away, but that was really because I thought my step-mother wouldn’t let me come. I mean, I would rather have asked her, only I couldn’t risk it.’
‘And have you told your uncle that?’
‘Uncle Stephen?’
‘Yes: you must tell him: you’d have been better to tell him at once when you were having your talk to-night, but it will do in the morning.’
‘All right, I’ll tell him in the morning.’
‘And I must say I hope your step-mother will allow you to stay. Because your uncle has taken to you: that’s very plain. And I won’t deny I had my doubts about it beforehand—when he first told me you might be coming. He’s never had visitors of any sort so long as I’ve known him. And a boy seemed the last in the world… .’
‘But I’m his nephew,’ said Tom.
‘Nephew or no nephew. Well, as I say, it’s easy to see he’s taken to you, and it will do him a world of good to have somebody.’
Tom wiped his mouth, brushed the crumbs from his waistcoat, and said, ‘I met your son on the way here.’
Mrs. Deverell looked up without a smile. Oh, him!’ was all she replied, with a slight shake of her head.
‘He wanted me to go back to your house, because he thought I wouldn’t be able to get in here. He thought you’d be at home.’
‘You needn’t be paying much attention to what he’d think or not think. I suppose he begun asking you questions.’
‘I asked him one first.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t bother your head about him. Mr. Collet wouldn’t want you to be making friends with him. I’m his mother, and perhaps oughtn’t to say it, but it’s little good he’s ever done either to himself or anyone else. If you’ve finished, Master Tom, I’ll show you your room, for it’s late and I must be going. I’ll leave the things here for Sally to clear up in the morning.’
Tom jumped to his feet, while Mrs. Deverell turned down the lamp. Your room’s right over this,’ she continued, as she preceded him upstairs, ‘and your uncle’s is at the end of that other passage.’ She paused to point it out before opening Tom’s door. ‘Your uncle thought you’d like this room best, it being so bright and cheerful and getting all the sun.’
‘It’s lovely,’ said Tom, looking round him, ‘and it must be bright with so many windows.’ All of them, he noticed, had cushioned window-seats, and he admired the four-poster with its flowered chintz counterpane, on which, looking absurdly small on that immense expanse, his pyjamas were laid out. ‘I never slept in a bed like this before. It will be like going to sea in a Spanish galleon.’
‘Well, so long as you don’t get lost in it,’ Mrs. Deverell said. ‘And you’ve a bathroom to yourself—through that door there. But you’re not to take a bath to-night, after all that supper. There’s a hot jar in your bed, though it’s such a warm night perhaps you’d be more comfortable without it. I only put one blanket on, so if you feel cold you can spread the eiderdown over you.’
‘Oh, I won’t feel cold: at the present moment I’m boiling. What time am I to get up?’
‘The master has his breakfast at nine. But Sally will wake you in the morning. She’ll be bringing you a cup of tea, and if you leave your clothes on a char outside the door she’ll take them away and brush them. I brought you a pair of the master’s slippers, but I doubt they’ll be too big unless you can manage to tie them on. And now good-night, Master Tom, and I hope you’ll sleep well. I must be off.’
‘Good-night, and thank you very much.’
But Tom, left to himself, did not at once begin to undress. He first went to the windows and pulled up all the blinds Mrs. Deverell had drawn down: then he made a tour of inspection, opening and shutting drawers and doors. In the big carved rosewood wardrobe there was a mirror in which he could see himself from top to toe. The carpet was thick and soft under his bare feet as he padded about, and at last, having heard the hall-door closing behind Mrs. Deverell, he got into his pyjamas. Now he and Uncle Stephen were alone in the house. Nor a sound, not a murmur, either outside or within. It was queer, it was really rather thrilling.
Tom opened his bedroom door cautiously and looked out. The pa
ssage was dim, lit only by the light that floated through from his own room, for Mrs. Deverell had taken away the lamp. He carried a chair out and hung his clothes over the back of it; then stood for a moment or two listening. But there was nothing to hear, except the remote ticking of a clock, and he tiptoed—a small pallid figure—along the passage to the staircase, where he hung over the banisters gazing down into the hall. A broad river of moonlight stretched from the landing windows down the central staircase. Tom knew that, according to the way he allowed his thoughts to turn, this silent house might become a place haunted by fear, or by a spirit of extraordinary peacefulness and beauty. But there was no fear in his heart. What actually kept him hovering there in the cool though not cold darkness was a desire to go down to Uncle Stephen. What prevented him from going down was the thought that Uncle Stephen might be displeased if he did. And beneath both the impulse and in repression was the memory of a time when his mother used to come to say good night to him after he was snugly in bed. That was long ago, but now he wanted—wanted most awfully—Uncle Stephen to come. He remembered his dream. Would there ever be a time when he should be able to talk to Uncle Stephen about it? Why did things never really come right except in dreams? But perhaps they did—here. There had been those minutes—he did not know how many—in the room downstairs, before Mrs. Deverell had returned… .
The mellow chiming of the grandfather’s clock rose front the hall, dispersing his reverie. ‘Dickory, dickory, dock,’ Tom chanted. Then abruptly he was reminded of another clock: but he would not think of those days, and ran back to his room.
CHAPTER VII
Tom, wakened by a knocking on the door, opened his eyes drowsily to see another pair of eyes regarding him with a frank and friendly curiosity out of a rounded, fresh-coloured, pleasant face, and concluded that this morning vision mast be none other than Sally Dempsey. The vision, the moment he took notice of it, retreated to the landing, only to reappear, however, carrying in first a small tray with tea and biscuits, which was placed on the table beside his bed, and then his clothes more neatly folded than they had been since leaving the tailor’s. Sally next went into the bathroom, where he heard her turning on the water.