Uncle Stephen

by Forrest Reid

  ‘I know you don’t care a fig about trespassing, if that’s what you mean.’

  Tom hung his head. He turned away. ‘Shall we have a game of chess?’ he asked.

  ‘Very well,’ said Uncle Stephen, and Tom went to a table in the corner, whereon the red and white ivory pieces were already set out.

  He carried the table over into the lamplight. He lifted the red knight. It was quite heavy, for these were the largest chessmen he had ever seen. ‘Are they very old, Uncle Stephen?’ he asked. ‘Have you always had them?’

  ‘No, but I played my first game with them.’

  ‘When you were a boy—at home?’

  ‘When I was a boy; but not at home. It was in Italy.’

  ‘Then they’re Italian?’

  ‘They belonged at that time to an Italian, but they’ve belonged, I expect, to a good many people. There’s a name on the box—Nicolo Spinelli. That was some ancestor of my friend’s, for his name too was Spinelli. But the chessmen were made in China, and their first owner probably was a Chinaman.’

  Tom had placed the table in front of Uncle Stephen’s armchair: he now brought up a chair for himself and sat down. He looked across the table and suddenly smiled: the tiny cloud had passed.

  ‘Shall I move first?’ he asked.

  Uncle Stephen nodded assent, and Tom lifted a white pawn. But he held it poised in the air. ‘Wouldn’t it be queer, Uncle Stephen, if all the people to whom these chessmen had once belonged came in now to look on?’

  ‘Very queer. I think we’re better without them.’

  ‘They’d be ghosts, of course, and we wouldn’t know they were there.’

  Then he stopped talking, and with bright eyes watched Uncle Stephen’s move. The game proceeded with a profound gravity. Beyond the clear circle of lamplight was a deepening darkness, and in the darkness the open windows were visible, for the curtains had not been drawn. From time to time Tom looked up from the table and out of the window behind Uncle Stephen’s chair. Dimly he could see the black branches of trees. In the distance he heard a corncrake.

  ‘It would be quite possible, Uncle Stephen, that they were watching us, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Quite—so far as I know.’

  You see,’ Tom explained, ‘I wasn’t going to move my bishop at all, and then somebody gave me a hint.’

  ‘That must mean he wants you to win,’ Uncle Stephen replied gravely, ‘because it was an excellent move.’

  Tom gave him a quick glance. ‘He had a pigtail, and long wide sleeves with little sprigs of flowers worked on them in coloured silks.’

  ‘That was Fu Kong,’ said Uncle Stephen.

  Tom thought. His face was very happy. ‘Do you know, Uncle Stephen, I often used to get into rows for saying things like that—I mean about Fu Kong’s sleeves.’

  ‘While your mother was alive—wasn’t it all right then?’

  ‘Yes, but she was like you. My step-mother thinks I tell lies.’

  The spell of the game was suddenly relaxed, and Uncle Stephen looked across the table at his antagonist. ‘Did you see Fu Kong’s sleeves, Tom?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s the queerest part of it. I must in a sort of way have seen them or I couldn’t have described them, could I? I mean something must have put them into my head; or where did they come from?’

  ‘What put them into your head was knowing that the chessmen were Chinese.’

  ‘Yes, but— So mehow I can’t ever think of things without beginning to see them.’

  ‘Are you frightened of the dark?’

  ‘No. Not often.’

  ‘Were you nervous last night—when everything was strange to you?

  ‘No. Well perhaps a little bit. But it hadn’t anything to do with being in the dark. It was more as if—Sometimes I pretend things, and then all at once they become real. I mean, I begin to believe them.’

  ‘And you went to sleep last night at once?’

  ‘Yes. At least—’

  ‘At least what?’

  ‘I went to sleep as soon as I got into bed. But I came out on to the landing first and listened.’

  ‘Listened?’

  Tom nodded.

  ‘But why? What were you listening to?’

  Tom coloured. He did not answer.

  ‘Had you heard anything?’

  ‘Nothing except the clock. I can’t explain, Uncle Stephen. Really, I’m not trying to hide anything. I just—I don’t know. It’s just that I try to make things happen. No, it’s not quite that. I would tell you if I could, but—’

  ‘Don’t worry. I expect I understand. Everything depends on the things you want to make happen. They must be good things.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You can make them good things.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And if you make them good things always, the time will come when there won’t be any others.’

  ‘I think this house is good, Uncle Stephen. Don’t you think houses can be good or—not good?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But it’s not an ordinary house.’

  ‘Don’t you like it?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s not ordinary, and neither is the other—the lodge.’ Tom hesitated. ‘And you’re not an ordinary uncle,’ he added.

  ‘What is an ordinary uncle?’

  Tom had no difficulty whatever with this. ‘Uncle Horace,’ he replied.

  Uncle Stephen laughed. Tom was pleased that he had made him laugh, though it had been quite unintentionally. Again the game proceeded, and presently Tom moved his queen and said ‘Check!’ But he said it half-heartedly, for a suspicion had been dawning in his mind. ‘Uncle Stephen, you’re not to let me win on purpose.’

  ‘Don’t you want to win?’

  ‘Yes I do, but not in that way.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘You mean you can win if you like?’

  ‘As the pieces, are now, I think in five moves.’

  And so it was. Tom immediately rose and put away the table.

  ‘Does that mean bedtime?’ Uncle Stephen asked, glancing at his watch.

  ‘Bedtime! Why it’s quite early! It only means that we can play chess again to-morrow.’

  ‘And what shall we do now?’

  ‘I don’t want to bother you. I’ll read for a bit… . Shall I tell you what I’d like to do?’

  ‘I don’t see how I’m to know otherwise.’

  ‘I’d like you to show me some pictures.’

  ‘Pictures. What kind of pictures?’

  Tom had his eyes fixed on a row of tall portfolios. ‘Any kind. One of these,’ he said, going to the shelf.

  ‘But my dear boy, I’m sure those aren’t pictures—or at least what you probably mean by pictures.’

  ‘Which shall I bring, Uncle Stephen?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ve forgotten what’s in them.’

  Tom carried a portfolio to the table and Uncle Stephen unfastened the tapes that kept it closed. ‘These are all Greek vases,’ he said. ‘We’d better try another lot.’

  ‘But I like these,’ said Tom, pulling his chair round beside Uncle Stephen’s. ‘At least I like this first one. Only I want you to tell me about it. Who are those figures?’

  ‘The two goddess are Demeter and Persephone: the boy is Triptolemos. They are sending him out on his mission.’

  Tom bent over the plate. ‘Tell me how you know who they are, and about Triptolemos.’

  ‘Are you sure this isn’t just an excuse for sitting up when you ought to be in bed?’ Uncle Stephen asked doubtfully.

  ‘Really it isn’t. Of course I know who Demeter and Persephone were, but I don’t know much about Triptolemos. What was his mission?’

  ‘His mission was to give corn-seed to the country-people, and to teach them how to plough the land and to sow the corn and reap it and thresh it. He later became a half-god, but as you see him there he is just a farm-boy, though a prince of Eleusis. The chariot is Demeter’s own car, drawn by winged ser
pents.’

  ‘Was there ever any such person as Triptolemos?’

  ‘Nobody knows. He hasn’t always even the same father. But he is always the favourite of Demeter. He is her messenger and it is through him she gives her blessings. Altars and temples were built to Triptolemos himself, because he really was Demeter’s adopted son, besides being a very pleasant person.’

  ‘What else did he do?

  ‘He gave the people three commandments—like Moses, except that Moses gave ten. The commandments of Triptolemos were: Honour your father and mother. Offer fruits to the gods. Be kind and just to animals.’

  ‘Those are good commandments,’ said Tom. ‘I’m going to keep them myself. I think it’s far better to keep a few commandments absolutely than to bother about a lot that don’t really suit you.’

  ‘But, Tom, that’s a very immoral doctrine.’

  ‘Is it? I’ll always keep your commandments, Uncle Stephen. Is there anything else about Triptolemos?’

  ‘Sophocles wrote a play about him, but there are only a few lines of it left. Some say that he was an elder brother of Demophon—the little boy Demeter tried to make immortal by putting him every night into the fire, until his mother interfered. According to another tradition that little boy was Triptolemos himself. Ovid, in his Fasti, gives a different version, making the father, Keleos, not a king, but just an old peasant who worked on his own farm, and who met the goddess when he and his small daughter were coming home one evening with a load of acorns and blackberries. The girl was driving a couple of goats, and it was she who spoke first to Demeter, seeing her sitting by a well and mistaking her for an old countrywoman—the kind of solitary old woman Wordsworth would have made a poem about. All the Greek stories, you see, were treated in different ways by different writers. They were everybody’s property, and the writer when he made a poem or a play out of them drew the characters to suit his own temper. And somehow this makes them all the more real—when you come across them over and over again, different but still the same. They accumulate a kind of richness of humanity. Triptolemos may once have been as real a boy as you. The heroes had strange fates. Some began as mortals and slowly grew divine; some, beginning as gods, lost their divinity and became human… .’

  ‘You know, we can’t possibly go through all these to-night,’ Uncle Stephen said, an hour later.

  Tom sighed, smiled, stretched himself, and got up from his chair. ‘Is that milk for me?’ he asked, looking at a tray which had been set on a side-table.

  ‘Yes, Mrs. Deverell left it for you.’

  Tom drank his glass of milk and put some biscuits in his pocket. ‘Good-night, Uncle Stephen,’ he said, holding out his hand, ‘and thanks awfully for showing me the pictures.’

  ‘Good-night, Tom. Sleep well. I suppose you can find your own way?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Don t drop candle-grease on the stairs.’

  ‘No.’

  Tom lit his candle and walked as far as the door. There he stood holding the door-knob, and once or twice he turned it, but he did not open the door nor look back into the room. Than he put the candle down.

  He returned to the table. ‘Let me put this away,’ he said, lifting the portfolio and carrying it to its shelf.

  Uncle Stephen watched him in silence. Tom lingered for another minute or two by the bookshelves, but at last went once more to the door. This time he heard his name spoken. ‘Tom.’

  Instantly he blew out the candle, came back, and stood beside Uncle Stephen’s chair.

  ‘What is it, Tom?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Tom whispered, putting his arms round Uncle Stephen’s shoulder. ‘Just—I don’t want to go to bed yet.’

  CHAPTER XI

  Nothing had come from his step-mother—not even a letter—so after dinner Tom went down to the station to make inquiries. But he did not find his luggage. If it came, the station-master told him, it would be sent out to the home; it might come by the next train; there was one due at 4.30. Tom thanked him and fumed homeward.

  But he was annoyed, and he was particularly annoyed because it seemed to him so stupid! What good could keeping his clothes do? It wouldn’t bring him back. At least they might have sent on a few things, such as shirts and socks and collars—things they knew he would require. He hadn’t even a pair of slippers, and his step-mother must know that too. In fact, he was sure she had long ago gone through all his possessions to find out exactly what he had brought, and Jane would have told her. She simply wanted to make him uncomfortable, and wanted to be disagreeable to Uncle Stephen. He half thought of going into the post-office and telephoning to Uncle Horace. But it would do no good. Let them keep his things if they wished to: they could have them as a memento—the only one they were likely to get.

  Both on his way to the station and on his return through Kilbarron he had kept a sharp look-out for the boy he had seen at the other home. Not that he expected to meet him: he thought it far more likely that he lived ten or twelve miles away and had ridden over on a bicycle. He might easily have done that, and hidden his bicycle somewhere while he explored the Manor grounds. It was just the sort of thing Tom himself would have liked to do—though when it came to the point he might have funked it… .

  That was it:—if you had courage you could do anything… . He remembered seeing Eric diving off the balcony at the shallow end of the swimming bath into three feet of water where a slip would have meant a bad accident. It was an idiotic thing to try (he still thought that) and at the time he had begged him not to. All the same he had admired him tremendously—too much even to resent being called a ‘sloppy little fool’ by Leonard, who was waiting to perform the same feat. It was strange how if you were like Leonard or Eric you had to invent such exploits; you never naturally got into disagreeable positions where courage was necessary and must be pumped up whether you felt it or not. Leonard, for instance, who rejoiced in fights, was never singled out by other rejoicers; he had had far fewer scraps than Tom himself, who was all for peace, and whose nose bled at the slightest touch. Was he a coward? It was disgusting to think he was: but can you be a coward in some ways without being a coward in all?—and in lots of ways he was sure he was one. His courage seemed to vary so much. He could never count on it; it never seemed to work spontaneously, but had to be manufactured, and there must always be somebody to be courageous for. Therefore it wasn’t natural—didn’t come from his guts, as it should have come, but from his mind—a sort of angry pride… .

  Tom’s self-examination was not yielding much comfort. He had forgotten what had started it. Perhaps this other boy. Beauty, strength, courage—those really were the qualities he admired. And he hadn’t any of them. The image of Deverell rose before him. Deverell, he supposed, at this moment would be waiting for him down by the river. He frowned. Purposely he had made no promise, but still he hesitated. He felt rather mean, and most likely in the end he would have gone to the river had not the idea flashed upon him to leave a note for the trespasser. He could pin it to the door where he would be sure to see it if he came back. The temptation was irresistible, and Tom hurried on.

  He entered the grounds and turned aside from the main avenue, keeping by the wall, and skirting the shrubbery, beyond which he caught a glimpse of George, and George’s assistant, Robert, a stocky youth of eighteen or thereabouts, whose acquaintance he had not yet made. Robert was shy, and had deliberately kept at a distance. At present he and George were clipping the laurels, though for the moment they had stopped working and their voices were raised in the clamour of religious argument. At least George’s voice was raised, which Tom took for a sign that he had been getting the worst of it. He paused to catch the gist of the discussion, but it had already reached its climax.

  ‘ Cut them bushes an’ houl’ yer tongue!’ George ordered angrily. The like of you puttin’ it on you to give me salvation, that got you your job and learned you everythin’ you know except foolishness. If your sins is washed clean it s more than you
r face is.’

  ‘It’s into the heart, not at the face, that the Lord looks, Mr. McCrudden,’ said Robert earnestly.

  ‘Ay—well, it’s yer face I have to put up with.’

  Tom moved discreetly away.

  Still keeping by the dark stone wall, in whose ancient cracks and crannies a multitude of ferns and climbers, and even an occasional sapling, had found a roothold, he approached his destination through a copse of larch and hazel. Deverell had certainly been right about the rabbits; in every clearing their burrows were manifest, and the white flashing of their little scuts as they dived into shelter at his approach. He reached the inner wall which surrounded his abandoned house, and passed through one of the gaps.

  But hardly into the land of yesterday’s sorcery. Not even when he emerged on to the lawn and saw before him again the low creepered house, the grass terraces, the ruined fountain with its solitary guardian. It was all lovely and quiet and neglected, but it was somehow less thrilling, less strange. It was as if a vivid light, thrown upon it by enchantment, had been withdrawn. Was it he himself who had broken a spell, or had he really seen it first in a peculiar lighting—though the hour must have been nearly the same? He only knew that its beauty was more familiar, less wonderful, that the suggestion of life had vanished from the house, and that it was empty.

  Treading noiselessly on the thick matted grass, Tom went round to the back. He entered a square, roughly paved yard. He peeped through a dark cobwebbed kitchen window, then turned the handle of the door and gently pushed. The door opened and he heard a scuttle among the litter of old newspapers on the floor. Tom stood there, still grasping the door-handle, gazing out of sunshine into twilight. But he did not enter. There was a wooden chair, a table; the grate was stuffed with rubbish; in one corner a heap of plaster had fallen from the ceiling. Not a sound now even of a mouse: then the noisy buzzing of a bluebottle which had flown in over his head. Fat fussy creature! A feast for somebody! Tom thought; noting the thick webs, and wondering what spiders shut in here could possibly find to eat. Or mice either. But the mice doubtless were not really shut in—had their secret passages connected with the outer world.