by Forrest Reid
He clumped out of the yard, accompanied by Tom as far as the hall-door. The notes for Mr. Knox and Mr. Flood were ready, and, having inquired from Uncle Stephen what time he was to be back for dinner, Tom set out to deliver them.
For a short while he stood watching George at work. Tiny blue butterflies hovered near the trees, and the scythe passed through the ripe tall grass with a faint swish. A puff of warm soft wind lifted the hair from Tom’s forehead: the day was going to be hot, like yesterday.
George was already hot: Tom could see the sweat glistening under his hair. His hands and forearms were brown as oak bark; above the elbow his arms were white. The blue dye of his shirt was half washed out, and had acquired a pleasing tint that harmonized with his surroundings. His trousers were of a neutral earthy hue, and Tom wondered how he kept them up, for he wore neither braces nor a belt.
Leaving George, he sauntered down the dark avenue and took the road he had traversed on the previous night. But everything looked different now, particularly Tinker’s Lane, which was deep in sunshine and zooming with wild bees. There was the stile he had looked over, and there the river—no longer veiled in mist, but bright as a snake between its green banks. Not only was there this change of aspect, but the walk itself seemed shorter—no distance at all compared with the tramp he had found it last night.
Mr. Knox was out, so he left the note with his landlady, and was free to do some sight-seeing. To most people sight-seeing in Kilbarron would have proved rather dull. It was an ordinary little country town, without a past and without a future, but Tom discovered attractions. He loitered in the market-place, which was smelly and more or less deserted; he came out into the High Street. He inspected the bank, the town hall, and the post-office, as conscientiously as if they had been buildings of European fame. Lower down the same street he came on the Unionist Club and the offices of R. P. Flood, solicitor (their solicitor, his and Uncle Stephen’s), where he left his second note; while just round the corner was the Royal Cinema, whose coloured posters he stopped to study in the company of a red-haired message-boy—a butcher’s boy, as the parcels in the carrier on his bicycle showed. The butcher’s boy was less interested in the posters than in Tom, though this interest partook of suspicion. Eventually, however, a desire to talk of the film overcame distrust of the stranger. The butcher’s boy had seen it on the previous night, had in fact seen it twice, and soon they were in the thick of its entanglements. Tom gazed at a distraught female clinging passionately to a cold and aloof young man. ‘Is she his love?’ he asked, for he had these quaintnesses of vocabulary.
The butcher’s boy stared stolidly at the lady. ‘What d’you mean, his love?’ he presently said. ‘She’s a tart.’
‘Oh,’ said Tom.
‘Can’t you see he’s spurning her?’ the butcher’s boy continued. ‘He’s got a girl already. His girl’s the other girl’s sister.’
‘What other girl?’ asked Tom.
‘The tart. His girl’s the tart’s sister, but he doesn’t know that, because she calls herself another name.’
‘Who does—his girl?’
‘No, the tart. What would his girl change her name for? Have a bit of wit.’
‘But why should the tart change hers?’ asked Tom, bewildered.
‘Ah, you’re silly. Tarts always chooses fancy names—foreign names. I don’t believe you know what a tart is.
Yes, I do.’
‘Well then, what you talkin’ about.’ The butcher’s boy gave him a scornful look, mounted his bicycle, and rode away, leaving Tom to pursue his tour alone.
His next pause was before a stationer’s window, filled with paper-backed novels showing pictures of masked men in evening dress pointing revolvers at persons of both sexes also in evening dress. Occasionally the man with the revolver was not in evening dress, and then Tom recognized a detective. A small sprinkling of wild-west and idyllic pictures interested him less, though he read all the titles and the names of all the authors, and after he had done so could have given each one of these correctly. With a like thoroughness he worked his way through the dismal vulgarities of a row of comic postcards. There was never a smile on his face; the feebly bacchanalian, or timidly salacious jests did not amuse him in the least; but he accomplished his task… . He went into a confectioner’s and bought some chewing-gum. Then he asked for a drink of water… . He bought a fishing-line and some hooks; he would have bought a rod only his money—Jane’s money, he remembered—was not sufficient. He lingered to watch a young man in difficulties with a motor-bicycle, and when, after a succession of horrible detonations, the bicycle started, he took up, a position on a weighing-machine. He did not put a penny in the slot, but his slim brown hands grasped the sides of the machine, while he jerked himself violently up and down, making the pointer on the dial jerk too, until an enraged hairdresser, brandishing a pair of scissors, rushed out to dislodge him. Tom apologized and proceeded on down the street. He came to the rescue of a lady whose dog was fighting with another dog, and when the animals were separated—not without clouds of dust, furious barks, and considerable risk of bites—he decided that it was time to go home.
At the gate he caught sight of Uncle Stephen, who had come out to look for him, and Tom broke into a run. Together they walked up the drive.
‘Well, what mischief have you been up to?’ Uncle Stephen asked.
Tom told him. He prattled happily of everything he had seen and done. He found Uncle Stephen very easy to talk to. ‘But Mr. Knox was out so I just left the note.’
‘In the meantime your telegram has arrived,’ said Uncle Stephen. ‘It came an hour ago.’
‘My telegram?’
‘A telegram about you.’
Tom was delighted. ‘What was in it? Did Jane tell?’
‘That I can’t say. It was merely to ask if you were here.’
The telegram itself was on the hall table when he went in, and Tom read it. He brought it in to dinner with him and read it again, aloud. ‘Pringle,’ it was signed, and Tom accentuated the name, which for some reason he found amusing. Also he saw in it a sign that battle was imminent, and the idea of battle, with himself and Uncle Stephen fighting on the same side, pleased him extremely.
‘They won’t get your letter till to-night,’ he said gaily. Or perhaps to-morrow?’
‘To-morrow, I fancy. But I’ve sent a telegram too. Indeed, Mr. Pringle very kindly prepaid a reply. “Tom arrived safely am keeping him.” Was that right?’
Tom considered. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that ought to do it. At least, it may.’
‘Do what? Not, I trust, create annoyance.’
‘Oh, it will do that all right. But “Am keeping him permanently” might have been better.’
Uncle Stephen looked at him. ‘I’ve been quite clear about the permanence in my letter,’ he said. ‘I’ve asked your step-mother to send on your belongings—all your possessions—books, clothes, everything.
Tom had a vision of the arrival of this letter, of its being opened by his step-mother, of her face as she handed it to Uncle Horace, who would be standing, fussy and angry, on the hearthrug. The scene appealed to him. If the letter arrived in the morning she’d take it to the bank, though visits to the bank were rarely risked, Uncle Horace having expressed himself strongly on the subject.
After dinner he followed Uncle Stephen to the library. He wondered if he might suggest going down to the river. The river attracted him, and as yet he had only seen it from a distance. On the other hand, Mrs. Deverell had told him Uncle Stephen rarely, if ever, went outside the Manor grounds. Before he could make up his mind Uncle Stephen himself settled the question. ‘It is just possible Mr. Knox will call this afternoon. I didn’t mention any time to him. Do you think you can manage to amuse yourself?’
‘I don’t mean in here,’ he went on, as Tom turned to an examination of the bookshelves. ‘It’s far too fine a day for that. Why not go out and explore the place? It’s all pretty wild—a regular jungle—but there a
re paths, and even an old garden, if you can find it.’
So Tom went out alone, though he determined to leave the exploration of the grounds for another day, and to go down to the river. There was an easy way to get to it, by Tinker’s Lane, but when he reached the gate he decided against this. The bridge at Tinker’s Lane was more than half a mile off, and though the river was not visible from where he stood, he was certain he could reach it without going near the Kilbarron Road. At any rate he would try. So he scrambled through a gap in the opposite hedge, and skirting a tract of ploughed land, made for the meadows beyond. The grass was long here—all these fields were hay fields—and Tom supposed he ought not to trample it down, but to keep close by the hedge. Anyway he liked hedges, and this was the finest he had ever seen, eight or nine feet high, a double hedge, with a narrow ditch in between, dark and green and cool, having a trickle of water at the bottom of it, which he could hear, though a dense tangle of vegetation—cow-parsley, vetches, convolvulus and brambles—hid it from sight. Here and there the hedge was broken by a beech-tree, its dark corrugated branches showing through the golden-green leaves. Honeysuckle was in bud, and the fresh young bracken gave out its peculiar, cold, slightly astringent perfume. On his left the trees of the Manor woods looked almost blue.
The sun beat down on the wide meadow. The ripened grass, heavy now with seed, trembled, though to Tom the wind stirring it was imperceptible. And in contrast with the green path by the hedge, where he walked partly in sunlight and partly in shadow, the colour of the meadow was a tapestry of infinitely delicate shades—greys and browns, pinks and mauves, gold and crimson, flecked here and there with the vivid whiteness of dog daisies.
Tom had never seen anything so like his idea of a prairie. If he had waded out through it the grass would have reached almost to his thighs. Small blue butterflies like those he had seen in the morning—nearly the same colour as the speedwell flowers and nearly the same as the sky—hovered in the quivering air, close by the hedge. The shrill hidden orchestra of grasshoppers played their ancient Greek melody, through which, from somewhere behind him, the two notes of a cuckoo broke monotonously—the dullest of all bird songs, Tom thought, really not much better than the clocks.
Once or twice, as he proceeded, he fancied he heard a sound on the other side of the hedge, but when he peered through the dark trellis he could see nothing. It came, he thought—this stealthy rustle—from the field beyond, and he stopped to listen. Again he heard it—a sound of movement, but certainly not made by a horse or a cow. This was the movement of a much smaller beast—a dog perhaps, or even a cat—come out hunting—for not a few creatures must have their homes and their runs in this hedgerow—rabbits, birds, mice, and hedgehogs. Tom whistled, but no dog appeared.
He cut himself a rod from an ash-tree, and went on his way. From the beginning he had been ascending a continuous though very gradual slope, and when he reached the brow of this long low gradient he saw the river beneath him, about two hundred yards distant. Tom decided to bathe. He ran down the gorse-splashed hill, which on this side was much steeper; found between two ancient whins an undressing place; and three minutes later was in the water. The current was sluggish, dragging its winding course by beds of willow-weed, loose-strife, and flowering-rushes; the water was warm on the surface and of a sweetish taste. He was drifting and splashing luxuriously when he remembered the warning, so often impressed upon him, that to bathe within an hour or two of a solid meal was always dangerous, and frequently fatal. Something or other happened inside you and you expired in agony. Was anything happening now? He couldn’t feel anything. But something might be going on inside him all the same. Anyway, it wasn’t so nice as bathing in the sea. The water had a slightly, oily feeling against his skin—particularly against the tips of his fingers; it was as if he were bathing in milk. And it wasn’t only the feeling; it was partly the smell—a sleepy, sticky kind of smell—not a bit invigorating like the smell of the sea. The sea produced sharp little prickles all over you, but the river clung to you like syrup. It, too, was pleasant enough, of course—in a lazy, water-lizard kind of way, and when you got used to the green weeds trailing round your legs, which at first felt slimy. Tom, standing up to his knees in the shallow water at the edge, slowly picked them off his body and limbs.
He lay on his back in the grass, and the hot golden sun licked his body, poured over and penetrated him. He shut his eyes and tried to imagine the sun as a God. Or a God might come to him out of the river. He would not open his eyes until he had counted fifty slowly, and then—
He opened his eyes… .
It would be pleasant if the old tales were true—or some of them. He would read Uncle Stephen’s book again. Uncle Stephen seemed to believe, not exactly in the stories, but in something behind them—powers, influences, a spiritual world much closer to this world than the remote heaven of Christianity. Was that why Leonard had called him a magician?
He sat up. The river glistened in the brooding sunshine. He would come here to fish, he told himself, for The Compleat Angler had been one of his school prizes, and this river reminded him of it. He did not see any fish, but probably by bathing he had frightened them away. It looked a good place. Only, as he had never fished in his life, this judgement was perhaps not worth much. What he did see were dragon-flies—bright, strange, metallic creatures, iridescent in the sunlight. And they carried his mind back to the afternoon of his father’s funeral. All that seemed now infinitely remote; he had a feeling that his whole life had changed since then. He remembered he had been unhappy, but this unhappiness was now like a far-off cloud barely visible on the horizon. It disappeared entirely when he heard a plop on the farther side of the river and saw a small animal swimming straight towards him.
Tom laughed. The God, as usual, was taking a strange form, for this was a rat. Eric and Leonard had once gone out hunting rats with another boy and a couple of terriers. That was supposed to be sport. Why? This rat, at any rate, must have made up his mind that Tom was not a sportsman, because he landed among the rushes within two yards of the spot where he was sitting, his hands clasped round his knees. There was a slight movement among the rushes, a slight rustle, and the rat was gone. ‘This place is swarming with wild life,’ said Tom.
It was an optimistic view, perhaps, for half a dozen dragonflies, some water-grigs, and a rat comprised the entire fauna he had as yet observed. But now he saw a frog, a very small one, reclining on the leaf of a water-lily. Tom bent down and gazed at him. The frog did not return his gaze, did not seem to do so at all events, for his black unblinking eyes were fixed on the sky.
He was as still as if he had been carved in bright stone; yet now and again Tom could see him breathing. And suddenly it struck him with a little shock of surprise that this frog was one of the most lovely things he had ever beheld. He was lovely. In his shaping there was a delicacy and a perfection that could hardly be possible in so large a creature as a human being. Or was it that most human beings were faulty specimens, did not come nearly so close to their own perfect type as frogs and other animals did to theirs? Why was that? He remembered the line of a hymn, ‘And only man is vile’. So that was what it meant! He had known the line all his life and never guessed its meaning till now. He had always supposed it to refer to people who weren’t religious. But this new meaning must be the real meaning, the meaning it had had for the author of the hymn, who quite possibly had been looking at a frog when he wrote it. Tom thought of another line:—‘And every prospect pleases’. He gazed round him, and with delighted recognition saw that this was equally true. There was not a single thing he could see that wasn’t beautiful. What a fine hymn it must be! As if to put it to further proof he ran to a spot on the bank, where, beyond a bed of rushes, the water brimmed clear and cool and still. And there he stood gazing down at his own image reflected in the stream. The image of man’s vileness! Well, it certainly wasn’t much to boast about. Not exactly vile perhaps, but absurdly unprotected-looking, as if anything c
ould hurt it. Even a snail without his shell would not look so much at the mercy of his surroundings. But there were boys who didn’t look like that when they were naked. Eric and Leonard didn’t.
Tom returned thoughtfully to his clothes and began to dress. He was half-way through his toilet when a shadow fell on the grass beside him, and looking up he saw Deverell. Tom was not startled, but he was surprised. Not only was Deverell there, but he was accompanied by a liver-and-white spaniel, and both must certainly possess the gift of moving noiselessly as phantoms. Then he remembered the sounds he had heard before—the sound on the other side of the hedge. That might have been the spaniel—a little less noiseless than his master. Tom now suspected that Deverell had been following him all along.
He was annoyed. He hated slyness. It was so unnecessary too—and stupid. It annoyed him, moreover, because it reminded him of what Sally Dempsey and George McCrudden had said. Meanwhile a smile had been dawning slowly on the young poacher’s face. He had shaved, Tom noticed, and his dark eyes had a much less sullen expression.
‘Nice day, Mr. Tom. You been in for a-swim?’
‘Yes, I have,’ answered Tom rather crossly. ‘I suppose you were watching me.’ The spaniel began to snuffle at him with a blunt, pinkish nose, and Tom scratched his ears.
‘I seen you,’ Deverell admitted, ‘but I thought maybe you wouldn’t like me to come down. Would you a’ minded, Mr. Tom?’
‘No,’ answered Tom, rather less crossly. ‘But I do mind being followed.’
‘I wasn’t following you.’
Tom looked across the river. ‘I think you were. I think you were on the other side of the hedge.’
Deverell stood without speaking for a minute or two; then he sat down on the bank beside the boy. ‘Not much doing round here, Mr. Tom, is there?’
