“Were you — you were in pain, Kenyon!”
“Don’t speak of it,” said Kenyon, grimly. “It was so bad that I didn’t care what happened to me; and I don’t care now, when I remember it. I’m thankful the doctors are coming this morning — I mean the umpires. Anything’s better than last night over again. I’ve felt nothing like it before.”
“And you never will again, old fellow! I know you won’t. They’ll see to that!”
“Will they?” Kenyon made a wistful pause. “So I thought up to last night: I thought they’d get me up and out again. In the night I gave up thinking so. I lay here, C. J., and asked only to be put out of my misery. I never had such a bad night before — nothing like. I’ve had my bad ones, but I used to grin and bear it, and think away of St. Crispin’s, and you, and the fellows. But last night — —”
“Well?” said C. J. in a hard voice. His heart had smitten him.
“Well, you’d made me give up the idea of St. Crispin’s, you know. Don’t look like that — it’s just as well you did. Only I hadn’t it to think about in the night. I missed it.”
He shut his eyes: he had been thinking of St. Crispin’s, but not in the old way, no longer as within his reach. Ideals are not shattered so easily by hearsay, and St. Crispin’s was heaven to Kenyon still, though now he might not enter in. Well, one would rather never get there than find heaven imperfect too. And Kenyon, had he been older, would have appreciated his blessedness in being permitted to lay down this ideal unsubstantiated and as good as new; for not C. J., but experience only, could have razed so solid a castle in the air; C. J. had only lifted the drawbridge against Kenyon forever.
But Forrester was thinking of the night before.
“My dear fellow, you speak as though school were the only thing you had to live for!”
“Well, it was the thing I wanted to get better for,” replied Kenyon, frankly; “one of the things anyhow. Of course I want to be up and out here as well. I love this dear old place!”
“Do you want to get strong only for your own sake?” Forrester could not help saying, gently. “Do you never think of Ethel, of your father? I am sure you do!”
Kenyon coloured.
“Don’t, old fellow! It’s hard to think of anybody but yourself when you’re laid up in bed for weeks and weeks. But Ethel knows that I do sometimes think about her; and that reminds me, C. J.; I was going to ask you to play tennis with her, or take her out for a ride, or something. She wants to come out of her shell. And then the governor, he’s so decent to me now, of course I’d like to get better for his sake too. I think he’d make less fuss about the windows now — I’d like to break another and see! But it’s no good pretending I’m as sorry for them as for myself, I can’t be.”
“You are very honest,” said Forrester, looking kindly into the great bright eyes. “I wish all my fellows were as brave and honest as you!”
“I’m not so brave. You don’t know what I’ve gone through up here alone in the night, apart from the pain. I’ve been thinking about — it. C. J., I don’t know, now, that I’m going to get better at all. I pray to, and I try to, but I don’t know that I am. I say, don’t hook it! I daren’t say it very loud. You’re the first I’ve said it to at all. It only came to me last night ... and it does seem hard lines. Look at the sun! With the window open like this, and your eyes shut, it’s almost as good as lying out on the grass. Dear old place!... Why have you hooked it? What are you looking out of the window for? They can’t be coming yet!”
But they were, as it happened, though that was not why Forrester had risen; nor had he answered when Kenyon heard the wheels.
“What a bother, C. J.! There was something else I meant to tell you; must you scoot? Then come up after the umpires have been, and tell me what they say — yourself. You sha’n’t go till you promise!”
VI
When C. J. returned, the sun shone into the room no more; it was afternoon.
Kenyon was very white.
“Well?”
“Kenyon, they don’t know!”
“But they’re still in the house. Why haven’t they gone? What are they waiting for? Tell me, C. J. You said you’d tell me!”
“Poor old Kenyon — dear old fellow!” faltered Forrester. “I promised to tell you, I know I did, and downstairs they’ve asked me to. Now you’ll never feel it, Kenyon. They’re going to do something which may make you better. You — you’ll be put to sleep — you’ll never feel a thing!”
“When is it to be?”
“This afternoon — very soon.”
Kenyon drew a hard breath.
“You’ve got to be in the room, C. J.!”
“Very well, if they will let me. But you’ll never know, Kenyon — you’ll know nothing at all about it!”
“They must let you. You’ve got to hold my hand right through, whether I feel anything or not. See?”
“My dear boy! My brave old fellow!”
“It’s a bargain?”
“I’d better go and ask them now.”
“Hold on a bit. How you do like to do a bolt! I wish this hadn’t come so soon ... there was so much I’d got to tell you ... all what I thought of in the night. You know the game we had, the night before you went, last summer? John would call it Gentlemen and Players; poor old John! I remember every bit of it — especially that leg-hit. It was sweet!. Well, when Ethel got run out, and our side lost — ah! I thought you’d remember — I played the fool, and you told me not to grumble at the umpire’s decision. You said life was like cricket, and I mustn’t dispute the umpire, but go out grinning — —”
“I didn’t mean that, Kenyon! You know I didn’t! I never thought — —”
“Perhaps not, but I did in the night; and I’m thinking of it now, C. J., I’m thinking of nothing else!”
VII
Kenyon had rallied: nearly a week had passed. It had done no good, but it had not killed him.
The afternoon was hot, and still, and golden. The window of Kenyon’s room was wide open; it had been wide open every day. Below, on the court beyond the drive, Forrester and Ethel were playing at playing a single. Kenyon had rallied so surprisingly, and had himself begged them to play. He could not hear them, he was asleep; it was a pity; but he was sleeping continually. Mr. Harwood sat by Kenyon in the deep arm-chair. He had sent the nurse to lie down in her room. The afternoon, though brilliant, was still and oppressive.
How long he slept! Mr. Harwood seldom took his eyes from the smooth white forehead, whiter than usual under its thatch of brown hair. It was damp also, and the hair clung to it. Mr. Harwood would smooth back the hair, and actually not wake Kenyon with the sponge. His untrained fingers were grown incredibly light and tender. He would stand for minutes when he had done this, gazing down on the pale young face with the long brown locks and lashes. They were Kenyon’s mother’s eyelashes, as long and as dark. When Mr. Harwood raised his eyes from the boy, it was to gaze at her photograph on the screen. Kenyon in his sleep was extremely like her. The eyes in the portrait were downcast a little; they seemed to rest on Kenyon, to beckon him.
The voices of Ethel and Forrester, never loud, were audible all the time. And Mr. Harwood was glad to hear them. He did not want those two up here. He would not have Forrester up here any more; only Kenyon would. It was Forrester who had held the child’s unconscious hand during the operation, and until Kenyon became sensible, when “C. J.” was the first sound he uttered. There had been too much Forrester all through, much too much since the operation. It was Kenyon’s doing, and Kenyon must have all his wishes now. It was not Forrester’s fault. Mr. Harwood knew this, and hated Kenyon’s friend the more bitterly for the feeling that another man would have loved him.
How Kenyon slept! How strange, how shallow, his breath seemed all at once! Mr. Harwood rose again, and again smoothed the long hair back from the forehead. The forehead glistened: and this time Kenyon awoke. There was a dim unseeing look in his eyes. He held out a hand, and Mr. Harwo
od grasped it, dropping on his knees beside the bed.
“Stick to my hand. Never let go again. Remember what you told me? I do — I’m thinking of it now!”
Mr. Harwood did not remember telling him any one thing. He was kneeling with his back to the window. Kenyon’s sentences had come with long intervals between them, and accompanied by the most loving glances his father had ever received from him. The father’s heart throbbed violently. Perhaps he realised that his boy was dying; he was more acutely conscious that Kenyon and he were alone together, and that childish love and trust had come at last into the dear, dying eyes. He had striven so hard to win this look — had longed for it of late with so mighty a longing! And at the last it was his. What else was there to grasp?
Kenyon began to murmur indistinctly — about cricket — about getting out. Mr. Harwood leant closer to catch the words, and to drink deeper while he could of the dim loving eyes. But there came suddenly a change of expression. Kenyon was silent. And Mr. Harwood never knew why.
In the garden they heard the cry, and sped into the house, and up the stairs and into the room, warm from their game. They opened the door and stood still; for they saw Kenyon as none ever had seen him before, with his face upon his father’s shoulder, and a smile there such as Forrester himself had never won.
A LITERARY COINCIDENCE
It was twenty-five minutes past eight, and a fine October morning, when Mr. Wolff Mason, the popular novelist and editor of Mayfair, emerged from the dressing-room of his house in Kensington and came downstairs dabbing his chin with his clean pocket-handkerchief. The day had begun badly with the man of letters, whose boast it was that he had shaved for upwards of forty years without cutting himself anything like forty times. He entered the dining-room with a comically rueful expression on his kindly humorous face, and with a twitching behind the spectacles which would have led those who knew him best to prick their ears for one of the delightful things which the novelist was continually saying at his own expense. His face fell, however, when he found no one in the room but the maid who was lighting the wick beneath the plated kettle on the breakfast table.
“Has Miss Ida not come down yet?”
“Not that I know of, sir. Shall I go and see?”
“Oh, never mind, never mind,” said the novelist, cursorily examining the letters on his plate, and opening none of them. “Well, upon my word, I don’t know what has come over Ida,” he added to himself, as he undid the fastenings of the French window which led down iron steps into the little London garden behind the house. “Yesterday morning she ran it pretty fine. The day before she was a good minute late. Of course she may be in time yet, but I do wish I could teach her to be five minutes early for everything, as I am. Ida is worse than either of her sisters in this respect; and she began by being the best of the three.”
Wolff Mason sighed as he thought of his daughters. The two elder ones were married and settled, very comfortably, it is true; but if Ida followed their example, what on earth was to become of her unfortunate father? Who was to typewrite his manuscript, and correct his proofs, and peel the stamps from the enclosed envelopes of the people who wrote for the novelist’s autograph? No, he could not do without Ida at any price; and Mr. Mason shook his head as he passed out into the fresh air and down the iron steps into the garden. He did more: he shook his daughters, and all creatures of mere flesh and blood, quite out of his mind.
For it was Wolff Mason’s habit to spend five minutes in the garden, every morning before breakfast, when it was fine; and when it was not, to walk round the breakfast table four-and-twenty times. That filled the five minutes which he always spent in the exclusive company of the characters of his current novel. He had been heard to say that he did his day’s work in those five minutes; that at the office, where he worked at his novel all the morning, he had only to sit with his pen in his hand for three hours, and fifteen hundred words of fiction was the inevitable result. That part was purely mechanical, the novelist said. He had really written it in the five minutes before breakfast. It is not generally known, however, how curiously Wolff Mason delighted in humorous depreciation of his own work and methods. One would have liked his critics to hear him on the subject; they took his writings so very much more seriously than he did himself, that they little dreamt how highly their clever elaborate reviews entertained the philosophic object of their censure. It was an open secret that Wolff Mason professed a wholesome and unaffected disregard for posterity and the critics; but if the books that delighted two generations are forgotten by a third, their writer will certainly be remembered as the most charming talker, the kindest-hearted editor, and the most methodical man of letters of his day.
To method and to habit, indeed, the novelist had been a slave all his literary life. This he admitted quite freely. On the other hand, he argued that as his habits were all good ones in themselves (with the possible exception of that ounce of tobacco which he managed to consume daily), while his methods produced a not wholly unsuccessful result, the slavery suited him very well. Certainly it was good to be five minutes early for everything, and to start most things as the clocks were striking. The dining-room clock struck the half-hour after eight as Mr. Mason re-entered and shut the French window behind him. He had thought out the half-chapter for that day with even more than his customary minute prevision. This was all very good indeed. It was bad, however, that he should find himself now quite alone in the room, with the hot plates and the bacon growing cold, the kettle steaming furiously over the thin blue flame, and no Ida to make the tea.
Mr. Mason took up his position with an elbow on the mantel-piece and one foot to the fire, and stared solemnly at the clock. It was a worse case than yesterday. Two, three, four minutes passed. Then there was a rustle in the hall; light, quick footsteps ran across the room, and a nervous little hand was laid upon the novelist’s shoulder. In another instant he was looking down into great dark eyes filled with the liveliest contrition, and making a mental note of the little black crescents underneath.
“Dear father, can you forgive me?”
“I’ll try to, my dear, since you look so — penitent.”
He had been about to say “pale.” As he kissed the girl’s cheek, its pallor was indeed conspicuous. As a rule she had the loveliest colour, which harmonised charmingly with the sweet clear brown of her eyes and hair. Ida Mason was in fact a very beautiful and graceful girl, but lately she had grown thin and quiet, and the salt was gone out of her in many subtle ways which did not escape the spectacles of that trained observer, her father. Mr. Mason glanced over the Times while his tea was being made, and knew all that was in it before his cup was poured out, the bacon on his plate, and the toast-rack set within easy reach of his hand.
“A singularly dull paper,” said he, as he flung it aside and Ida sat down.
“Yes?”
“It is absolutely free from news. At this time of year there’s more fun in the papers that lend themselves to egregious contributions from the public. I see, however, that Professor Palliser died last night — —”
“How dreadful!”
“In his ninety-third year,” added Mr. Mason, dryly, to his own sentence.
“I’m afraid I was thinking of someone else,” said Ida lamely.
“Of me, my dear? Then I will take another piece of sugar, if you don’t object. The fact is, you didn’t give me any at all. No, that’s the salt!”
Ida laughed nervously. “I am so stupid this morning! Please forgive me, dear father.”
“I hope there is nothing the matter?”
“Nothing at all.”
“That’s right. I fear that the religious novel is to have a most undesirable vogue. The Times reviews three in one column. We have to thank ‘Robert Elsmere’ for this.”
“And ‘Humphry Ward, Preacher,’” suggested Ida.
The novelist arched his eyebrows and bent forward over his plate. “Exactly,” said he, after a slight pause. He did not look at his daughter. Otherwise
he would have seen that she was eating nothing, and that her eyes were full of tears. It was plain to him, however, that for some reason or other, into which it was not his business to inquire, it would be unkind to press further conversation upon Ida, whom he merely thanked more affectionately than usual for moving his plate and for pouring out his second cup of tea. Over breakfast the novelist always took half an hour precisely. The clock was striking nine when he rose from the table and went upstairs to take leave of his wife.
Mrs. Mason was a sweet, frail woman of sixty, who for years had breakfasted in her own room. Without being actually an invalid, she owed it to her quiet mornings upstairs that she was still able to see her friends in the afternoon, and to dine out at moderate intervals. For five-and-thirty years his wife had been Wolff Mason’s guardian angel. On her wedding-day she had been just as proud of her unknown bridegroom as she was now of the celebrated littérateur, and had loved the stalwart young fellow of eight-and-twenty only less dearly than the white old man of sixty-three. He found her with her tea and toast growing cold on the bed-table at her side; she was reading Ida’s typewritten copy of the novel upon which he himself was then engaged.
“My dear Wolff,” Mrs. Mason exclaimed, greeting her husband with the enthusiastic smile which had inspired and consoled him in the composition of so many works of fiction, “I am delighted with these last chapters! You have never done better: you might have written the love scenes thirty years ago. But you look put out, dear Wolff. Have they been stupid downstairs?”
“We are all stupid to-day, including my dear wife if she really thinks much of my love scenes. I cut myself shaving, to begin with. Then Ida was late for breakfast — four long minutes late — and for the third time this week. I am put out, and it’s about Ida. It is not only that she is late, but there are rings under her eyes, and she forgets the sugar in your tea, and when you ask for it hands you the salt, and when you speak to her she answers inanely. She pulled a long face when I told her that Professor Palliser died last night, though the poor dear old gentleman has been on a public death-bed these eighteen months. She came a fearful howler over a book which she herself has read, to my knowledge, within the last fortnight. For the life of me I can’t think what ails her.”
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 415
