Uncle Stephen

by Forrest Reid

  ‘So that’s that,’ he muttered aloud; but, though he might pretend to dismiss the matter in three words, he lay with his eyes open, staring into the darkness. The sooner he left the home the better. Not that—except to Jane perhaps—he thought what had happened could make much difference. His step-mother was angry, but probably she would be less angry in the morning, and at any rate he would be going away. She was really not an unkindly person, not sulky like Eric, nor sarcastic like Leonard, nor unaccountable like Jane. She had the best temper of them all, and if her affections were exclusively lavished on her own children, there was nothing strange in that. It would have been stranger if they weren’t, Tom thought, for he knew well enough that on his side he had neither shown nor felt anything more than civility. He was not much better at disguising his feelings than she was. When it had been possible he had avoided the good-night kiss which from the beginning had been one of the proofs that she ‘made no difference’ between him and the others. He couldn’t help it. He couldn’t think of her as anything but a stranger—his father’s second wife—a dull, good-natured, and rather common person. He had even been glad that she looked and spoke and thought as she did, because it shut her out so completely from the soft clear memory of his real mother.

  Clear, but intermittent; sometimes for long periods absent, sometimes returning in a dream, or like a ghost. It was as a ghost now that it glided into the silent room, laying its head on Tom’s pillow and taking him into its arms. There had been a time when this ghost had made him cry a little, but now it only made him grave and rather sad. But it still had power to make him wish childish wishes, such as that he could hear its voice. It was strange—very strange—how the sound of a voice had come to be the dearest of his memories… .

  He knew he was beginning to grow sleepy, which with him at night was unusual. As a rule he was only sleepy in the mornings; at night he dropped asleep without any conscious preliminary drowsiness. But now he knew he was sleepy, very very sleepy, though awake. No voice this; merely the faintest breathing in his ear. ‘Uncle Stephen—Uncle Stephen.’ … It was his own breath whispering the words… . Uncle Stephen, then, was the only living being except himself who had belonged to his mother. Sleepier and sleepier he grew; deeper and deeper he sank into a darkness pierced now by fantastic shafts of dream-light. Yet still he was awake, he knew he was awake, though his spirit had gained a marvellous sense of buoyancy and power. An intense happiness gushed up as from some sunken fount within him, filling his mind, which was no longer conscious either of sleepiness or wakefulness. ‘Uncle Stephen—Uncle Stephen,’ he called, half laughing, as if it were a game: and the tall figure dimly visible against the window-blind came noiselessly to his bedside. But in the darkness Tom could not see his face.

  ‘Tom?’

  ‘Yes; I am here.’

  The faintest grey of glimmering dawn showed in the window-frame. There was a thin awakening twitter of surely the earliest birds. Tom only just noticed these things, sighed luxuriously, and smiled. The freckled, sleep-flushed face turned on the pillow as the small clean body turned between the sheets, and then the drowsy eyelids once more descended… .

  CHAPTER IV

  ‘It’s all very well,’ said Jane, ‘but I don’t see how you can go away without clothes. You can’t expect Uncle Stephen to lend you things, and anyway, unless he happens to be a dwarf, they wouldn’t be much use if he did.’

  Tom regarded her disconsolately—a not infrequent sequel to their conversations. He was sure she could help him if she wanted to, but this morning she was in one of her least tractable moods. ‘It’s not as if he had invited you,’ Jane went on. ‘Very likely he detests boys. Most people do.’

  ‘Couldn’t you send some of my things after me?’ he suggested humbly. ‘A small bag would do. And you could address it to the railway station, to be called for.’

  ‘If the bag is to be so small why don’t you take it yourself?’

  ‘I might be seen.’

  ‘So might I.’

  ‘But you could wait till some time when your mother was out.’

  ‘And I’m to hang about the house—perhaps for two or three days—till she goes out? That will be very pleasant.’

  Tom sighed. ‘I can take my pyjamas and what is absolutely necessary in a parcel. If you help me I can hide it in the yard, and then I’ll slip out by the back-door after dinner. I must catch the three-twenty-five. The next train would be too late. I don’t know where the house is and I may have a long walk.’

  ‘How much money have you?’

  Tom hesitated. Jane once more had gone straight to the point, and it was this time a point he himself had been alternately approaching and avoiding. She knew it too; he could see that from the stony gaze she had fixed on him. ‘Not very much,’ he admitted.

  ‘How much?’ asked Jane.

  ‘Three-and-eightpence.’

  Jane’s expression grew more stony still. ‘You’re evidently going to walk most of the way,’ she said unfeelingly. ‘Three-and-eightpence won’t take you far, and you’ve two journeys to make.’

  ‘I can get a through ticket of course.’

  ‘For three-and-eightpence?’

  Tom waited a moment, but so did Jane. ‘You got a pound from Uncle Horace on your birthday,’ he said, ‘and you can’t have spent much of it.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Jane. ‘Now I see why I was taken into the secret!’

  ‘Of course if you like to be a beast about it,’ muttered Tom.

  ‘Calling names won’t do any good.’

  ‘Well, why do you say such rotten things then?’

  ‘They’re perfectly true things. You mayn’t like them, but that’s because you’re ashamed.’

  Tom flared up. ‘I’m not ashamed… . You know very well that wasn’t the reason why I told you.’

  ‘And even if I lent you the money,’ Jane pursued coldly, ‘it wouldn’t get over the difficulty of your clothes.’

  ‘I tell you I’m going to make up a parcel. I’ll do it now if you’ll stand outside my bedroom door and keep nix.’

  ‘It would be better if I packed and you kept nix.’

  ‘No. Somebody might come along and want to know what you were doing in my room. We’d enough of that last night.’

  Jane, for a wonder, yielded to the argument, and he hastened to take advantage of this compliance. But when five minutes later he rejoined her on the landing she cast a sceptical glance at the parcel. ‘You don’t seem to be taking much!’

  ‘I can’t. It has to look like an ordinary parcel.’

  ‘Why—if you’re taking it out by the back way?’

  ‘I may be seen from the kitchen window.’

  Jane gave the parcel another glance. She had assumed her most patronizing manner. ‘Did you put in your toothbrush?’ she asked. Or was that not one of the necessaries?’

  Tom controlled his feelings. ‘I have it in my pocket.’

  ‘Handkerchiefs?’ asked Jane.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, they weren’t necessary: Uncle Stephen probably uses them.’

  Tom repressed a retort: he knew she was only trying to annoy him. ‘Promise you won’t say anything before the others.’

  ‘About what?’ Jane inquired.

  ‘I mean make allusions—with double meanings.’

  ‘You don’t mind if they’ve only a single meaning, then?’

  Still he was determined not to squabble. ‘You know well enough it’s the kind of thing you do do,’ he muttered.

  ‘I think you’re perfectly horrid,’ Jane broke out unexpectedly. ‘I don’t want you to go to Uncle Stephen a bit, though I’m helping you in every possible way, and all the gratitude you show is to call me a sneak, and—’

  The sentence ended in an ominous sniff. Now he had made her cry! He felt guilty and uncomfortable, and yet what he had said really was quite justifiable. But the weeping Jane had clasped herself to his bosom, her wet cheek was pressed against his, and he could only mumble a
pologies and tell her he was sorry. He continued to do so, calling himself various unflattering names, until, with a disconcerting shock, he discovered that her grief had changed to amusement.

  ‘I’m not laughing,’ she immediately told him. ‘At least, if I am, it’s hysterical. But, Tom, you are a funny boy. No, no—you’re a darling. Only I wish you did—even just a little bit—feel sorry.’

  ‘Sorry! But haven’t I been saying how—’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean that kind of sorry. That doesn’t matter. You didn’t say anything I didn’t deserve. I mean sorry about going away. No, I don’t mean that either, because of course you’re bound to be glad. I don’t know what I mean—’

  ‘But I am sorry to leave you, Jane. I like you very much.

  ‘Yes;—you needn’t strain your imagination. Tell me what I’m to do with your parcel.’

  Tom breathed the faintest sigh of relief ‘As soon as you hear me whistle (I’m going down to the yard now), I want you to chuck it out of the bathroom window. I’ll hide it somewhere, and it ought to be easy enough to slip out through the yard after dinner.’

  ‘And when I can, I’ll lock and bolt the back-door so that nobody will know.’

  At this so unexpected and reasonable an attitude Tom had a flash of compunction. ‘You’re being awfully decent, Jane. I’m leaving all the worst part of it to you, and you get nothing out of it. But I don’t want you to think you’ve got to tell lies. If you’re asked directly, you know, you must tell the truth.’

  ‘I can say you talked about running away to sea.’

  Tom stared. ‘But I didn’t.’

  ‘Yes you did; we’ve talked about it now.’

  Tom was speechless for a minute. ‘Oh, well,’ he said, at last, ‘I think you can look after yourself.’

  But Jane still held him. ‘There’s something I want to ask you to do,’ she murmured.

  ‘What?’ He had hesitated a moment, though only for a moment, because he really wanted to do anything he could. ‘You’ll think it silly. I think it silly myself.’

  He waited; and then, ‘I’ll come back when I’ve hidden the parcel,’ he suggested, since she seemed loth to proceed further.

  ‘I want you to let me cut off some of your hair: Jane said abruptly, half defiantly.

  ‘My hair?’ He looked at her in astonishment. At first he thought she was trying to be funny.

  ‘I can do it so that it won’t be noticed,’ Jane went on.

  ‘But what—’

  ‘Oh, take your parcel,’ she cried impatiently, ‘and come back. I’m going to cut your hair,’ she added, as he moved towards the staircase. ‘If you don’t let me I won’t help you or lend you any money, so you can make up your mind which it is to be.’

  ‘All right; you needn’t get excited about it.’

  ‘It’s because you’re so stupid: everything surprises you: the least little thing.’

  ‘Nothing that comes from you does,’ Tom retorted. ‘I didn’t know what you meant at first; I thought you wanted to cut my hair all over. It’s the way you said it.’

  ‘A scrubby little schoolboy with freckles. I bet nobody else will ever make such a suggestion. What’s more, I only made it out of kindness. Everything I’ve ever done for you has been done out of compassion, so you’d better get that into your head.’

  ‘It hasn’t,’ Tom replied, now completely enlightened. ‘And I do understand; I’ve felt that way myself.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ returned Jane loftily. ‘If you want your wretched parcel you’d better hurry down to the yard, because I’m going to throw it out of the window now—at once.’

  ‘All right; I won’t be a jiff. And I am sorry for being stupid. I think it was because it was about me that made me not understand. At any rate, all I was going to tell you—’

  ‘I know what you were going to tell me. You needn’t repeat it. Was it Eric’s hair you wanted?’

  Tom blushed scarlet. ‘I didn’t want anybody’s hair,’ he muttered gruffly. ‘I wouldn’t be such a fool.’

  ‘Well, you’d better run downstairs, because I’m not going to wait much longer.’

  ‘I’m going. But don’t throw it till I whistle: there may be somebody there. And I’ll come back when I’ve finished, and let you—’

  ‘You needn’t bother: I’ve changed my mind,’ said Jane.

  ‘Well, I’ll come back anyhow.’

  CHAPTER V

  The first part of his journey had been accomplished with comparative celerity, but there had been a long wait at the end of it, and now, on the branch line, the ancient train puffed and panted asthmatically through the summer fields as if quite unused to such violent exercise. There were many small stations, and at each the engine stopped to take breath. Then, with an indignant scream, it would jerk on again, till finally it came to rest where there was no station at all.

  Tom, sitting upright on the hard, straight-backed, unupholstered seat of what was little more luxurious than a cattle-truck, with his brown-paper parcel beside him, was neither surprised nor annoyed by the delay. The mood of elation, or at least of expectant excitement, in which he had started, was fast ebbing. He had begun to feel nervous, as well as hot and thirsty, but he was in no hurry to reach his journey’s end. He was tired of looking out of the window, he had neither book nor paper—nothing indeed to read except the inscriptions pencilled on the opposite wall of the carriage—inscriptions of three kinds—religious, political, and improper—though occasionally all three were blended in a single sentence. He wondered why such inscriptions were always the same. Even the prurient impulse seemed incapable of anything but monotonous repetition, and the feeble attempts at illustration were still more narrowly limited. He studied the countenance of his only fellow-traveller, a young clergyman who was absorbed in a crossword puzzle. He too had a parcel, obviously a tennis-racket, on the shop label attached to which was typed Rev. Charles Quintin Knox. Tom was interested in names. It seemed to him that people were always like their names. They must grow like them, because of course you weren’t born Percy or Sam or Jim or Alfred. If he ever had children of his own he would be very careful what names he gave them. What would Charles Quintin Knox be like? Rather standoffish, rather English public-schoolish, with cold light blue eyes that betrayed not the slightest desire to make your acquaintance. Tom was certain this analysis was not merely the result of his impression of the young man in the opposite corner, though it accorded with it. Would Charles Quintin Knox be good at games? He could tell from this young parson’s eyes that he was good at games, just as anybody could have told from Eric’s and Leonard’s. Perhaps it was only when you were exceptionally good that your eyes had that particular clearness of vision. But his thoughts were interrupted by the sound of shouted questions, and he leaned out of the window to learn the cause of the commotion. From all the other windows people were leaning out, and to his surprise he saw what must be either the engine-driver or the stoker seated on the embankment, lighting a cigarette. Tom had taken the stopping of the train in this secluded spot to be a part of the ordinary procedure, but it now looked otherwise, and it was apparently the detached and leisurely attitude of the cigarette-smoker that had excited expostulation.

  A grimy oil-smeared person in stained blue overalls came walking down on the sleepers. ‘There’s no use talking,’ he announced in good-naturedly bellicose tones. ‘The front’s dropped out of her, and ye’ll either have to get out and walk or wait till another engine comes. Jimmy’s away to telephone, and God knows how long he’ll be.’

  ‘What’s happened? What’s the matter?’ Tom’s parson had dropped his newspaper and was leaning out over Tom’s shoulder.

  The man in overalls recognized an acquaintance of a superior order. ‘It’s the engine, Mr. Knox.’ He squirted a thin jet of tobacco juice in a delicate parabola and with a black hand wiped away the sweat trickling down his forehead. ‘Sure it was only a matter of time annyway: it’s not our fault.’


  Mr. Knox rejected the excuse. ‘The engine ought to have been examined,’ he said. ‘There must have been carelessness somewhere.’

  ‘Ah well, you know yourself, Mr. Knox, the less examining you do on this line the happier you’ll be.’

  Tom laughed, whereupon the man in overalls winked at him and Mr. Knox withdrew.

  The man in overalls, after further expectoration, now addressed himself directly to Tom, as the only person who seemed capable of accepting an accident in the proper spirit. ‘It’ll be above an hour likely before they get another engine,’ he said. ‘If you’re only wanting the next station it would maybe answer you better to walk it: it’s not above a mile.’

  ‘I’m going to Kilbarron,’ Tom said.

  ‘Ah well then, you’d have a goodish step, and it’s a warm day… . But sure it’s a lovely view you have there from the window, and his reverence for company.

  Whether this hint was sincere or not, it produced an effect. The young clergyman addressed Tom for the first time since he had entered the train. ‘I’m going to Kilbarron too,’ he said, rather stiffly.

  ‘How far is it, sir?’ Tom asked.

  ‘About five miles.’

  Tom considered whether he should risk the walk. It was a perfect evening, and though the sun still shone and the air was windless the heat of the day had abated. On the other hand he had never been in this part of the world before and was not very good at following directions.

  ‘I’ll walk if you will,’ he said—a suggestion which appeared to surprise rather than charm Mr. Knox, who answered briefly that he intended remaining where he was.

  ‘I knew he was particular,’ thought Tom. ‘Charles Quintin Knox… . And he’s got an accent too.’

  He guessed that his own appearance must be grubby in the extreme: it often was: and to settle the question he wet the corner of his handkerchief and drew it down his cheek. The handkerchief had not been clean to begin with, but on the conclusion of this experiment it was distinctly dirtier. The aristocratic Mr. Knox watched the performance with an air of aloofness.