Young Tom

by Forrest Reid

  “For my part,” Mother went on, ignoring Granny’s advocate, “though the china is very nice, I must say I prefer European pictures”—which led to an animated discussion between her and Doctor Macrory as to whether it is possible to appreciate pictures of completely different kinds even supposing they are equally good.

  The doctor thought not, “for the simple reason that for us as individuals they never can be equally good. I remember visiting an exhibition of early Dutch masters and trying my hardest to wax enthusiastic over a picture of a hare by Jan Weenix—supposed to be the gem of the collection. Which, in a way, I dare say it was. Only all the time I couldn’t help wondering why he should have wanted to paint a dead hare hanging up by its feet when he might just as easily have painted a living one. . . . It was the same with several of the other pictures; the painting was marvellous, but the subject appeared to be a matter of indifference—whether it was a madonna or a child with diarrhœa.”

  Daddy, who on principle never agreed with Doctor Macrory, here found a few words to say in favour of the child with diarrhœa. It struck Tom as a rather strange topic to choose at dinner-time, but the argument was academic, and as it proceeded became more and more metaphysical, and less and less comprehensible so far as he was concerned. It was the kind of argument, however, both Daddy and Doctor Macrory loved, and it lasted so long that dinner was practically over when Phemie, very red in the face, abruptly terminated it by bursting into the room.

  “If you please, ma’am, will you come and speak to Mary. I can’t do anything with her, and she’s going on the way you never heard the like—crying and sobbing about a ghost she says is upstairs.”

  “A ghost!” Mother repeated feebly, staring at Phemie in bewilderment. “What kind of ghost?”

  At this both Daddy and Doctor Macrory laughed, but Phemie was nearly choking with bottled-up indignation. “You may well ask!” she cried, “and it’s what I asked myself, for it might be a whole regiment of them from the noise she’s making. But sure it’s only the ghost of a little boy, up in Master Tom’s room. . . . She says she won’t sleep another night in the house, and——”

  Mother rose with a sigh and followed Phemie to the kitchen, while Daddy observed, “One of the lesser domestic felicities which you, Doctor, as a bachelor, I presume have to forgo.” Then, with a twinkle in his eye, he turned to his son: “You must have brought the ghost with you, Tom, from Granny’s

  “It was an ill-timed joke if ever there was one, and Tom tried vainly to hide his discomposure. Little did Daddy know how true his words were, or he might not have spoken them so lightly! With a mumbled apology he rose abruptly from the table, but Daddy immediately asked; “Where are you going to?”

  He hesitated guiltily, avoiding the two pairs of eyes he now felt to be fixed upon him. At last he stammered: “I’m going upstairs to—to look.”

  “Sit down,” Daddy told him quietly, “and don’t be silly. She probably saw a curtain flapping, or something equally terrifying”—and he actually cracked a walnut and pushed the decanter in the direction of Doctor Macrory, who appeared to be equally unperturbed.

  Tom sat down, but it was only with the greatest effort that he remained seated. The possibility of any such development as this had never crossed his mind. He had found no opportunity before leaving Granny’s to pay a further visit to the closed rooms: or rather, there had no longer been any closed rooms; for the very next day Granny herself had gone up to inspect them, with the result that she had suddenly taken it into her head to have them tidied up, cleaned out, the floors scrubbed, and even the woodwork touched up with fresh paint, so that from then on either Quigley or Mrs. Quigley had been in constant possession. This, so far as ghosts were concerned, had effectually ended the adventure; and pondering on it quietly and at leisure Tom had even come to be half persuaded that it was his own private adventure—by which he meant that other people, had they been there, would have seen nothing. . . .

  Yet now Mary had seen. . . . Only, why Mary . . . ? And why, above all, here at home—miles away from Tramore . . . ? And what had she seen?

  Meanwhile Doctor Macrory and Daddy had once more taken up their interrupted discussion, but they broke it off the moment Mother returned, and. all three looked at her, Tom with round anxious eyes, the other two in a sort of amused inquiry. Mother herself was less amused than vexed, though she veered oddly between the two as she recounted what had taken place. It appeared that she and Phemie had managed between them either to cajole or bully the unfortunate Mary into a more reasonable, or at any rate a more submissive frame of mind. Mother had taken the line that there was no ghost, that it was all nonsense; Phemie, accepting the ghost, had dwelt scornfully on its diminutive size. “It’s asking the mistress’s forgiveness you ought to be, Mary Donaghy, instead of roaring and rampaging round the house, the way it might be Doctor Crippen or some of them ones was after you!”

  “Tom did not smile. Phemie may or may not have used those words, but Mother only repeated them because she thought they were funny. Her own description of poor Mary was very far from bearing them out. “There she sat, the tears streaming down her face, though if I told her once I told her fifty times, ‘There are no such things as ghosts’.”

  “That surely was a rather rash statement,” Doctor Macrory observed. “According to the great Milton, ‘millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep’.”

  “Yes, unseen,” Mother retorted, and Daddy asked curiously: “What actually does she say she did see?”

  “Oh, she now admits she only thought she saw something—a little boy—standing by the window—and he was gone next moment. . . . It’s a pity he did go, for it’s chiefly that which seems to have frightened her.”

  But at this point Tom ceased to listen. The preoccupation of the others gave him the opportunity he had been waiting for, and slipping quietly away, he ran upstairs to his own room. He opened the door precipitately, but whatever he may have expected to find he did not find; the room was empty, and empty it remained, though he waited on for some time.

  He did not know whether this was a good sign or the reverse, but at least there was nothing he could do about it. Perhaps the trouble was over and might not happen again; and since he could not stay up here indefinitely, and did not want to rejoin the others, who would still be talking about it, he decided that he might as well go down to the kitchen and get some bread-and-milk for his hedgehog.

  There, however, the sight of Mary renewed his uneasiness, mingled now with a sense of irritation. For she was seated in a chair in a lax and mournful fashion, very much as Mother had described her, suggesting something between a sagging bolster and Watts’s picture of the abandoned Ariadne. Even if she had seen Ralph, Tom thought impatiently, what was there to make such a fuss about? and he cast a sidelong and unsympathetic glance at her. Phemie, too, every time she looked in Mary’s direction, emitted a. disdainful sniff.

  Leaving them to settle their own troubles, Tom went out into the garden and down to the hedge at the foot of it. Roger must either have grown tired of waiting or been offended by Daddy’s treatment of him, for he had gone home. Everybody, Tom thought, seemed to be at cross-purposes and at variance with everybody else, and it was all most stupid.

  He sat down under the bank, close to a deserted rabbit-hole, and gave a low call, which he repeated at intervals until Alfred peeped out. Then his mood instantly changed, and his misgivings were forgotten. Alfred had brought a friend with him to-night—either that, or he had acquired a wife. At any rate they both shared the bread-and-milk—Alfred boldly and confidently—the wife, if she was his wife, at first timidly They had odd little faces, with tiny black eyes, small ears, and long, sensitive noses; and in spite of their very short legs they could climb up and down the bank and across Tom with surprising agility. He hoped they would soon have a family, for he had never seen very young hedgehogs, and they must be dear little things. Alfred had only come to live in the rabbit-h
ole that spring, or at any rate had only been discovered then, and by the stupid William of all people, who had found him on the croquet-lawn, half-way through a hoop, and been frightened to touch him. Luckily Tom had not been far off at the time, and had lifted him out of danger in spite of William’s warning that his spikes were poisonous. William had wanted to kill him with his spade, which was just like William. He insisted that hedgehogs ought to be destroyed, that they devoured eggs and young birds, and carried away apples on their spines, though this last was so obviously untrue that you wouldn’t have thought even he could have believed it. Daddy, fortunately, soon put a stop to that nonsense, and told him they were the most useful things you could have in a garden, and got rid of far more slugs than any of William’s own contrivances. At which William had moved off, muttering to himself, and of course still firmly convinced that he knew better. . . .

  “Tom! Tom!” It was Mother calling to him—to go to bed, he supposed. He didn’t want to go to bed, but since Alfred and his wife had now finished the bread-and-milk he lifted the empty dish and returned slowly to the house.

  Mother was waiting for him on the lawn, and half involuntarily, while he walked beside her, he asked the question he had very nearly asked Granny. His mind, indeed, was at present so full of it, that he asked it just as if they had already been discussing the matter. “Suppose there was a boy who wanted very much to play with another boy, could he come back? I mean—I mean, do you believe he could?”

  It was only after he had uttered the words, and seen Mother’s purposely blank expression, that he realized they had not been talking. “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” she said. “Could who come back? And come back from where?”

  “I don’t know,” Tom answered doubtfully. “From—from heaven, perhaps.”

  Mother, after studying his face for a moment, abandoned subterfuge. “This, I suppose, is Mary’s work! Phemie’s also, for she at any rate ought to have known better. I was extremely angry with both of them.”

  “But how was it Phemie’s fault?” Tom expostulated. “How could she help about Mary?”

  “She could help bursting into the room the way she did—before Doctor Macrory too. What was to prevent her from calling me out and speaking to me in private? Only they never consider anybody but themselves. And as for Mary! I could have smacked her—great stupid lump—sitting there moaning and groaning over nothing! Probably some trash she’d been reading—about ghosts and murders and——”

  “Mary reads love stories,” Tom thought it only fair to point out.

  “Well, it’s the same thing,” Mother rather wonderfully replied: “never anything sensible. . . . Now, I suppose, we’ll be treated to a similar scene every time she has to go upstairs by herself in the dark.”

  “It wasn’t dark,” Tom again pointed out. “And,” he added, “if you’re thinking of me you needn’t worry, for I don’t care a straw.”

  His words, or more perhaps the tone in which they were uttered, must have had the right effect, for Mother, while seeming slightly surprised, also appeared considerably relieved. She gave him a long look, and then suddenly smiled. “No—I don’t believe you do,” she declared. “Well, I’m glad you’re such a sensible boy. . . . People of that class are always superstitious—terrified if they hear a death-watch beetle, or break a looking-glass, or dream of a hearse.”

  This at least cleared the air for the time being: nevertheless, later on, and up in his own room, Tom half wished Ralph would come, if only that he might be warned of all the trouble he had made. And just before he fell asleep he fancied he did see him, but in a half-dream, between sleeping and waking. “You must stay in Granny’s house,” he whispered very gently—“in your own house—or go back to—to wherever you really come from. . . . I’m sorry, but you can see for yourself what happens when you don’t. It would be all right if there was only me, but I think other people—some other people—like Mary—can see you too—and they’re frightened. They can’t help it, I expect. . . . They don’t understand. . . . Do, please, go back.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  TOM, Roger, Barker and Pincher were all in the garden next morning when Pascoe, armed with a fishing-net and waders, arrived. As his approach was heralded by a good deal of ringing of his bicycle-bell, naturally the three dogs, unaccustomed to such spectacular entrances, hastened to assist him to dismount; which he did precipitately, eliciting a cry of anguish from Barker, upon whose paw he had descended, and yelps of delight from the excitable Pincher, who had grabbed him by the jacket.

  “I say—call your beastly dogs off, can’t you!” Pascoe shouted, for Pincher, relinquishing the jacket, had now got hold of the handle of the fishing-net, and in the tug-of-war that followed, the bicycle clattered to the ground.

  “What are you laughing at?” Pascoe screamed. “If he gets the net he’ll tear it to pieces! Let go, dash you!” But Tom had already caught Pincher by the scruff of the neck, and a monitory smack brought him to order.

  “It’s your own fault,” he said, “for kicking up such a row. If you’d come in quietly like anybody else it wouldn’t have happened. . . . Anyhow, they’re not my dogs; they’re only friends.”

  Pascoe, however, had already recovered his natural calm, and was now studying the canine bodyguard with a thoughtful expression. He seemed to be pondering something, with the result that presently he turned his gaze upon Tom himself, and pronounced solemnly: “If I were you I’d keep them here for a while.”

  “Keep them?” Tom echoed, bewildered by this sudden change. “Do you mean all the time? How can I keep them when they’re not mine?”

  “You could borrow them,” Pascoe replied, “and I’ll tell you why. I was going to warn you in any case, so that you could let your people know.”

  A pause ensued, which was broken in the end rather impatiently by Tom. “Well—why don’t you warn me? Is it something you’re too scared even to mention?”

  “No it isn’t.” Pascoe retorted, “and I’ve a good mind now not to tell you.”

  “You needn’t if you don’t want to: I don’t care.”

  Since this was obviously untrue, Pascoe took no notice of it. “It’s a man,” he said slowly. “He’s hanging about outside, and he was staring in through your gate when I came along. He didn’t know I was watching him, but I was. . . . Because I guessed from the way he was behaving what he was really up to. . . . He was reconnoitring.”

  “Reconnoitring?” Tom was becoming more and more mystified. He could see that the word was intended to be impressive, and he knew what it meant of course; but he associated it with military tactics, which didn’t seem to make sense here.

  “They always do,” Pascoe went on darkly, “before they break into a house. It’s to get the exact position of everything fixed in their minds, so that they won’t make a mistake if there’s an alarm and they have to make a sudden bolt for it.”

  Tom was now gazing at him open-mouthed, which appeared to afford Pascoe a gloomy satisfaction. “You mean he was a burglar? But how could you possibly tell?”

  “Because he was in disguise,” Pascoe answered. “He was disguised as a tramp.”

  This, somehow, was a little too much, and Tom recovered his equanimity. He was extremely curious, nevertheless, and wanted to learn more, so he only said: “He must have known you were there.”

  “Naturally, in the end, he did; seeing that I got off my bicycle and spoke to him.”

  “You——” There flashed across Tom’s mind a picture of Pascoe’s attitude when Brown had approached him in the playground, and Brown was a good deal less formidable than a burglar. The corners of his mouth twitched, but he repressed a temptation to laugh. “What did you say?”

  “I asked him if he knew where you lived. I had to have some excuse, so that he wouldn’t suspect I had penetrated his disguise.”

  “And did he know where I lived?”

  “He said he didn’t, but he gave me a very queer look, and then began to tell me a lot of l
ies—that he was out of work and just looking round in the hope of getting some kind of job, such as clipping hedges or sawing wood; that his wife was sick, and that they had five children and were expecting a sixth; and that the eldest was a boy about my age and very like me in appearance, though of course not so good-looking.”

  “Why ‘of course’?” Tom asked.

  “Well, I’m only telling you what he said,” Pascoe returned huffily “If you don’t want to hear I can stop. . . . Later on, he said something about his six children, and it was then I saw it had been all lies.”

  “I don’t see why,” Tom objected. “He may have been counting in the expected one”—but Pascoe dismissed this objection as too frivolous for notice.

  “I pretended to believe him, and told him I was very sorry and hoped he would soon find work. Then he thanked me and said he wished there were more people like me in the world. He said he was sure my father must be very proud of me, and my mother too, for they had every reason to be: and in the end he asked me for the price of a pint.”

  “Goodness!” Tom exclaimed. Again he wanted to laugh, but instinct warned him that if he did he would hear no more.

  “I asked him how much the price of a pint was,” Pascoe continued gravely, “and he told me sixpence. But I expect my asking him may have raised his hopes, for when I said I hadn’t got sixpence, nor indeed any money at all, he suddenly turned nasty, and wanted to know what I meant by wasting his time. In fact he called me two very bad words, which I think I’d better not repeat, though I dare say you’ve heard them before.”

  “I didn’t ask you to repeat them,” Tom replied; and since Pascoe appeared to have concluded his story he took him to the spot he had thought of for the aquarium, and from there up to the loft to see the aquarium itself.

  The loft was a long, low, whitewashed room, lit by a skylight and by a broad window facing the cobbled yard. They climbed up to it from the interior of the motor-house by means of a board with footholes in it, at the top of which was an open trap-door. Its only furniture was a plain solid kitchen table and a couple of chairs, but Pascoe’s attention was immediately caught by the railway spread out on the floor, and it was with some difficulty that Tom drew him from this to more important business. “There it is,” he said, pointing to the bath, “and what we’ve got to do is to get it down. I’ve tied ropes round it, because we’ll have to lower it out of the window; the trap-door’s too small.”