He suddenly drooped, his huge frame appearing to shrink. Joan saw the change and it made her more merciless. She strode towards him and shook her fist in his face.
“You poor fool, John. You will never understand. My mother, indeed! I wonder! Perhaps we neither of us understand her. She has brought me up to this way of life, which drove me to marriage with you—though that is not all. There was something else to it. I did love you, I did want to please you and to share your life and interests. But you have assumed too much, with your schoolboy acceptances. I’m a woman, I’m your wife, not a … not a … not a … chum!”
They faced each other now with increased desperation, both of them afraid, and both angry. Joan gathered herself for further cruelty.
“Mother may be responsible, after all, as you say. She was the one who decided to hide the flesh and blood. She was the one who feared something. I can’t blame her. She was grieving for my father, whom she had worshipped. I still remember him, and how I felt I was an interloper, while he was at home. She must have been abandoned to him; abandoned, yes, you know what I mean, or don’t you? Then when he was killed, she had to face that loss; more than his death, perhaps. I can see it now. This misery has opened my eyes. Thank you for that, at least. But you must go. I’m not blaming you any more. We just can’t carry on as we were, that’s all. I may have needed a man who would wake me up, and you a woman who could bring you out of that epicene world of school and university and the decent country parsonage where nothing is mentioned, nothing done that is not ethical and orthodox.… But I’m raving. I’m getting out of my depth. That’s what is wrong. I’m not used to the depths. And now they are gaping before us, and you won’t recognise the fact. You think Mother does not know: but I wonder. If she could hear us now, would she realise what it is, the misunderstandings of the blood, the sense of shame because there has been no cause for shame; the disgusting purity! Yes, that startles you, doesn’t it!”
John Boys decided that the situation was out of hand, and he tried to bring it down to earth.
“Look here, my dear girl. We can’t go on like this, arguing and saying things we shall regret later on. I’ll tell you what. I’ve brought your skis over with me. It was my idea, when I found you had come to Paris, to pick you up here and for us to go on to St. Moritz to join the University Club there. It will do us both a world of good. You’ve had too much indoor stuff this term; all the year indeed, cramming away over the old boy’s research. Let him stew for a bit. He’s gone off to the States. You come with me now, and get some fresh air and mountain air at that. Look, I’ll leave you now, and come back to-morrow morning. I’m in a scruffy little hotel near the Madeleine, somewhere behind the American Embassy in a street called the Rue Boissy d’Anglas. One of our lab. men told me of it; damn cheap though, and that’s good enough, since the beds are clean. I’ll be over in the morning, then; good-night, old girl.”
He approached her, and kissed her cheek, then patted her on the back. “Keep smiling, old thing,” he said, and was about to retreat, when the door opened, and a child peered in, his beady eyes alive with curiosity and enquiry. The man stared at this apparition, and Adrian Batten entered, soberly now, and shut the door behind him. He looked shyly at John Boys, then approached Joan, increasing his pace as he neared her, until at the last, he ran to her and clasped her round the thighs, nearly knocking her over in his intensity. He reached up and took her hand, then higher, and drew her face down to his, to kiss her.
‘Joan!” he said, his childish voice piping high with anxiety. “I can’t find Uncle Tom. I thought this was his room, because I came here before, three doors from the lift. I remember counting my footsteps … But this isn’t his room. But I’ve found you. I wanted to find you, Joan. I ought not to be out, and Father will be angry. I can’t bear that. He frightens me, he says nothing!”
The child was over-excited, and he clung to Joan desperately. She dared not repulse him, but she was at a loss how to deal with such a violent concentration of feeling. She looked appealingly at her husband, their differences for the moment put aside. He turned back, curious to learn what all this was about, and who the child might be. He saw an ordinary urchin, wearing indoor slippers, his legs blue with cold: a large head with tousled, soft hair; but it was the eyes that held his attention, the eyes of an adult, and an adult with some vivid purpose in life. But they made the child appear slightly abnormal to John Boys, and he was prepared to disapprove.
“Who is this?” he said, gravely.
“The doctor’s son,” said Joan, stooping over the child and trying to comfort him, for he was now shaking, and she feared that he would begin to cry. And the idea of this particular child crying was alarming. He was normally so gentle, assured, even serene, in spite of his intensity of mood. His tears would be as heavy, as bitter as those of an old man, dragged from the depths of experience, worth their weight in sorrow.
“Look, Adrian, you must let me take you home again. You’ve come out in your slippers, and you’ll catch cold. No overcoat either! What will they say if they know? But we must smuggle you back again. Come, I’ll get my coat.”
But he would not release her. He buried his face in her stomach, and murmured from there, “Father has been angry about the American. He said I must not play again to him, or go sailing my boat with him. But he is a friend of Uncle Tom, and I don’t know what to do.”
“I know what you ought to do. You ought to go to bed. Why, it is nearly seven o’clock, Adrian. Let us forget the American. Don’t you worry about that. Your father knows what is best for you, surely? And your mother too, she will look after everything, I’m sure.”
While she was thus trying to comfort the waif, her husband had gone down on his knees and was rubbing the boy’s legs, to restore warmth to them.
“Poor little blighter! He’s as cold as charity. Damn silly, letting him escape like this. There’s frost about.”
These ministrations reassured the boy, and he removed his head from Joan’s stomach and examined the stranger. Boys was again conscious of the shrewd grey eyes. He found himself replying as to a grown-up when the boy said, coolly:
“Who are you?”
Adrian pondered after Boys had introduced himself.
“Then you live with Joan?” he asked.
“In a way, yes.”
“Which way?”
He was following a pattern of ideas; perhaps composing round this matter which intrigued him by its newness and oddness. He was glancing from one to other of the giants towering over him, weaving his vivid little communicating themes, and binding them together in the process.
“And have you got a flat like ours?”
“Yes,” said Boys, eagerly. He believed that this infant was an advocate for him.
“And how many children are there; just two like me and Jeannette?”
In the hesitation that followed, Boys floundered, and Joan stared over the boy’s head at the farther wall, while she pressed the small figure to her convulsively, a gesture to which the precocious infant responded with fervour. The thread of interest broke, and Adrian turned to another theme.
“But I thought this was Uncle Tom’s room. I came after him, you see, because he went home with the key of my engine. Jeannette saw him put it in his pocket when Father spoke to him about the American. And he forgot to give it to me.”
“What is all this about an American?” asked John, trying to speak through closed lips so that the boy should not be included in the enquiry.
“I can’t tell you now,” said Joan, pointing down at the child.
“I’ll tell him,” said Adrian, looking up and putting his hand in hers again. “Father says I must not give a recital, and Uncle Tom and the American want me to.”
Boys looked blankly from his wife to the child.
“He plays the piano,” said Joan, lamely, afraid to enlarge in front of the boy.
“Oh, I see,” said John. But he didn’t see. The information meant little to him.
>
“And Father was angry about it. I know when he is angry. He is so quiet, and everybody is frightened, even Mother, and Uncle Tom who was a soldier.”
“I see,” said John again. And this time he did see; but he saw wrongly. He thought that the boy’s father was quite naturally objecting to so effeminate an occupation in a healthy boy’s life.
Joan knew what his reaction would be, and was ready to accuse him again.
“That’s what Mother feels, I believe,” she said, having read her husband’s mind. “But it is not that. Dr. Batten wants to be sure that the talent shall not be abused. He is musician enough, and wise enough, to see that danger. I believe he is right. You don’t realise the possibilities of this. But I can’t say more now. We must get Adrian home.”
“But I wanted to see you too, Joan,” the boy insisted. “I played to you, didn’t I, at our party? I play to people when I love them.”
“Thank you, Adrian,” she said, wondering what it all meant. She was determined not to be caught. She must not encourage this. But at the same time, she could not hurt him. “Now let us go.”
“I wish you had a piano here,” said the child, ignoring her efforts to jockey him towards the door—though she still had to find her own outdoor clothes. “I could explain things. Father is too cross about it. Why can’t I play for the American? He wants me to go to Brussels and play there, in a big hall. I’d like to do that. I like the sound in a big hall. I have heard Monsieur Cortot, and it makes the music clear; grander, grander!” He was excited again, and waved his arms upwards, knocking John Boys aside in the process.
“My God,” said that worthy. “You’d better get him home, Joan. He’s got a touch of temperature, I should say.”
“But I want my engine-key from Uncle. Can we find his room, Joan?”
“Perhaps we can,” she said. “He is on the floor above. Maybe his room is over this one. If so, he must be in, for I can hear somebody moving about.”
“I’ll see you through with this,” said John. “It’s a cold night.”
Joan withdrew herself from the embrace of the child, disappeared into the next room, and returned without a coat, and only a scarf over her head.
“Mother took my coat when she went, didn’t she?”
John picked up Mrs. Winterbourne’s fur coat, but it was much too small, and he had to put it round Joan’s shoulders with the sleeves dangling.
They conducted the child up the two flights of stairs round the lift.
“Now do you know the room?” asked Joan.
“It’s there,” said Adrian, pointing along the corridor.
“It is over ours then,” she said, to John. “So he will be there.”
As she spoke, the door opened, and her mother appeared carrying Joan’s coat over her arm.
She did not at first see the party emerging from the dark staircase, and she turned back to say something to the occupant of the room. Then she recognised Joan, with John and the boy. Her discomfiture was momentary, and quickly disguised. The poor light in the corridor hid the change in her appearance, the suggestion of ease, a careless touch here and there in her clothes, her hair slightly disarranged, but only the more attractive thereby.
“Darlings,” she said, a general embrace in her voice, warm, impulsive. “I was freezing to death down there, when the colonel came in. He insisted on my coming and waiting by his fireside.” She gave the impression of a baronial hearth, vast in respectable antiquity. “And I took your coat, Joan. We were so upset, of course. But that is over now, my dears. I can feel it is. So much can happen in half an hour!” She paused, deterred, perhaps, by the silence of the three figures in the dim light. The daughter and son-in-law said nothing even then. It was Adrian who spoke, while Mary Winterbourne advanced and took her coat from Joan’s shoulders, replacing it with the tweed garment which she had carried out of the colonel’s room. Joan shuddered, but said nothing. She was frightened. John took the coat again and held it for her to put her arms through the sleeves.
“No!” she said, drawing away from it.
“But what is little Adrian doing here?” said her mother, now in command of the situation. John, who suspected nothing, replied.
“His uncle has come away with the key of his toy locomotive. That’s a serious matter, Mother darling. If you were a boy you would realise that.”
Mary flushed, and became urgent.
“Of course! We will get it for him. Come, Adrian, let me go with you and ask him for the key. Don’t you bother, you two. Go down and we’ll come back to you.”
Joan hesitated, looking intently at her mother. Then she turned, without a word, and walked slowly down the stairs, followed by her husband, who carried her coat.
Mary watched them for a moment, perplexed. Then she took Adrian by the hand, and led him back to the door from which she had emerged so discreetly. Knocking on the panel with her knuckles, she opened it a few inches, keeping the child behind her. She thrust her head in.
“Adrian is here,” she whispered. “Can he come in?”
The colonel hurried into his dressing-gown and came forward. He touched her face tenderly with his fingers, drawing them down her temple and over her cheek, before replying, and ushering her and his nephew into the room.
Chapter Fifteen
To the Mountains
It had begun to rain. John Boys picked up the child and carried him, half-protected under his overcoat, striding along so swiftly that Joan had almost to trot to keep level with him. She was silent, but again and again she began to speak, breathless because of the pace. She could not find the words, however. Finally, as they turned out of the boulevard into the Rue Boissanade, she put out a hand timidly and touched her husband on the sleeve.
“John,” she whispered. “I don’t know what… Something … But I am willing to come with you.”
He looked back at her, over the child’s shoulder.
“What, d’you mean to St. Moritz?”
The boyish hopefulness in his voice made things easier for her.
“Of course. I want to get away from here, at any rate.”
“My dear girl,” he said, bewildered by this sudden change of mood. But he was happy to accept this new one. “That’s grand, Joan. We’ll have a good time. I’ll see to that. The snow ought to be just right.”
Here Adrian intervened. He had been quiet during the walk from the hotel, except for little hummings to himself, and occasional joggings to accentuate the movement of his gigantic human steed.
“I’m riding a camel,” he cried, suddenly. “Look, up … down … up … down. But it breaks, it breaks! I’ve got a tune for that. I’ll write it down when we get home. There’s a break!” This appeared to excite him almost to frenzy.
“Hold tight, kid,” said Boys, pulling him down under the coat, from which he had struggled in his excitement. “Don’t kick your slippers off.”
But he had already lost one. The party paused, and Joan groped about, walking back a pace or two before she found it. Stooping down to pick it up, she retched, and was suddenly sick; violently sick in the gutter.
John was helpless, for he could not put Adrian down on the wet pavement, where the rain was now splashing up in a mist of spray. He was embarrassed by the possibility of passers-by observing them.
“I say, Joan!” he exclaimed, almost angrily, “what on earth? Are you all right?”
“Quite all right,” she gasped, recovering from the unexpected attack. “I can’t think what happened. I was quite all right a moment ago. Perhaps it is hurrying. Don’t bother. I’m quite better now.”
“You don’t sound better. Damned shaky, I think. Look here, how much farther is it?”
“Don’t say anything. It’s only a few yards now. I’ll sit down for a while when we get there. Don’t say anything to the doctor, will you?”
“You sound mysterious. What d’you mean, old girl? I can’t make you out. Why don’t you let me help? Surely it’s my place to …”
“No, John. Has he seen? Don’t let him know.”
But of course Adrian had seen. He saw everything. Fortunately, he was still entranced by the rhythm of what he called the camel-ride, to which he was finding a music to be written down as soon as he got home.
“Come along, Joan!” he called, for Boys had turned and hidden Joan from him.
“It’s this damned French food, I expect,” said Boys, as they resumed their rush through the rain.
“Yes, it must be that,” said Joan, with despair in her heart. She had never felt so alone in the world. She wanted only to get away, to leave her mother until she had thought this thing out; if it could be thought out. Something dreadful had happened; but also something that roused her to an increased bitterness and envy. It was horrifying. She tottered after her husband, longing to cry out to him; knowing that it would be useless.
They found the household almost disturbed. Nothing, perhaps, could absolutely disrupt that smooth ménage, which worked at such high pressure, like the dynamos in a power station. The doctor was at the telephone when they entered, with his wife hovering near, her bland serenity faintly interrupted.
Their appearance, with young Adrian exultant in John’s arms, caused the doctor to ring off abruptly. He came forward and took the boy from the human camel. Joan lamely delivered the wet slipper to Mrs. Batten. Not a word was said. Dr. Batten disappeared with Adrian, but returned instantly, having left the child with the French nurse. He was a little paler than usual, perhaps. He looked intently at both the visitors, and took Boys aside.
“I am grateful to you,” he said, almost inaudibly. “We were telephoning to the hotel. Jeannette told us about the engine-key, and that made us happier, for we knew he would have gone after it. He is a one-thing-at-a-time character. But the trouble is, that he makes that one thing of universal dimensions, and himself an Atlas to carry it. Rather an exhausting process for an immature young creature, don’t you think?”
The Dangerous Years Page 13