“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 addres
sed 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 sai
d.
“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.
Adrian Glynde Page 8