by Forrest Reid
‘From Greece first. But at one time he must have been brought to Italy, for it was in Italy he was discovered, buried in the ground, by a man who had found lots of other things, but nothing so precious as this.’
‘And he gave him to you?’
‘Yes—before he died.’
‘The same man who gave you your chessmen?’
‘Yes.’
‘He must have been very fond of you, Uncle Stephen.’
‘I lived with him much as you are living with me.’
Tom took Uncle Stephen’s hand and drew him a step nearer to the statue. ‘Was he—once—worshipped?’ he asked reverently.
‘Yes—or the spirit within him.’
‘Sleep—the spirit of sleep,’ Tom whispered. ‘Haven’t even the words a lovely sound?’
‘It is more than mere sleep as you know it. It is a road through time—a gateway into a world where time is like space, and you may go backward or forward.’
‘I have been there,’ said Tom. ‘I have gone back till I was quite small, and Mother was there… . Uncle Stephen, he is alive: I can see his arms and his hands; his legs and his feet: I can see all of him now—quite perfect and whole.’
‘Yes, I know you can.’
‘Does he make me see him like that?’
‘Perhaps. I don’t know.’
‘If we brought him downstairs, wouldn’t he make that room into his temple just as he has made this?’
‘I should not care to move him. He has always been here. I would rather give you this room for your own. You would like it wouldn’t you? You see, all the space between these four walls is now holy ground. Downstairs it could not be the same—with strangers coming and going.’
Tom gave a little laugh. ‘Surely Uncle Stephen, not a great many strangers come and go.’
‘Perhaps not. But think of that wretched scene this afternoon. It would have been odious. All that you now feel in the air around you would have been desecrated by it. Don’t you feel it? Like a kind of soundless music. Perhaps to you it is even not quite soundless, for I think you are much closer to these things than I am. And it is stronger now than it used to be. Sometimes—Well, all that, I think, would have gone. It comes from the spirit within the image, and, if that spirit were withdrawn, it would vanish too, like the scent of a flower when the flower dies. But here there are no intruders, no contrary influences, nothing antagonistic. You looked at him and found him lovely, and in doing so your spirit was mixed into his spirit. Your mind reached him, like the sunlight or like a prayer: his power was strengthened, his life was strengthened; you became the unconscious priest and your affection drew him nearer… . But most people would be intruders.’
‘Uncle Stephen, was it really true, what you said about people who were sick sleeping in the temple of Asklepios, and about the God coming to them in the night?’
‘It’s certainly true about the people. As for the God, I told you the tradition. Asklepios was an earth-god, or an earth-daimon, and the sleeper slept with his ear to the ground, so as to receive a healing dream from below. Sometimes the God appeared in his own form, sometimes in that of a snake, sometimes in the dream he performed a cure and the patient awoke healthy and sound.’
‘Has Hermes ever come to you?’ Tom asked wonderingly.
‘Not in the way you are with me now; not so that I could touch him or hear him; not even as a ghost. But as an influence—yes: as a power—yes.’
‘Do you think on the night I sleep here he will come to me?’
‘I don’t know… . I’m not sure that I should have brought you here at all. Not now—not yet.’
For Tom was standing there with a strange expression on his face. He might have been listening to some very faint, very distant sound; and in his eyes there was a peculiar veiled and inward look. Slowly they were raised till they met Uncle Stephen’s eyes, and more slowly still his words came. ‘Uncle Stephen—there is something I don’t understand. Tell me—tell me.’ His voice suddenly broke, and next moment Uncle Stephen’s arms were round him.
‘What is it, Tom? What is the matter?’ Uncle Stephen was patting him and consoling him.
‘Nothing—nothing,’ Tom faltered. ‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it. It was just for a minute. I—I don’t know what happened. But somehow it all seemed to come over me.’
‘What seemed to come over you?’
‘I mean—you, and him, and Philip, and—even the boy at the fountain:—it was as if you all were one person… .’ His face had grown white and strained, his parted lips trembled. ‘Uncle Stephen, don’t you love me—really—really?’
‘Yes, yes. Don’t look like that. I shouldn’t have brought you to this room. I ought to have known. But I wanted you to see for yourself that there was no magic; that it was no magician’s den with circles and triangles chalked on the floor; that there were no rods and tripods and chalices—nothing, nothing at all, but the broken statue of a God,’
‘But I never thought there was any such den,’ Tom protested, half laughing through his trouble.
‘Perhaps not. But a seed had been sown in your mind, and I did not want it to grow. Now you have seen the whole house, and if that foolish door worries you, you can nail it up yourself.’
‘I’m not such a baby,’ cried Tom.
‘You are very young in some ways, extraordinarily young. It is just as if a little corner of you had never changed at all—and I keep stupidly thinking of what I was at your age and treating you as if you were the same, whereas you are not—not at all.’
‘I think it must have been because I was tired,’ Tom went on, trying to explain. ‘So much seems to have happened to-day. I think I’d like to go to bed now.’
But he still clung close to Uncle Stephen, who looked down at him and stroked his bowed head.
‘Don’t you want your supper?’ he asked.
‘No: I’m not hungry: I couldn’t eat anything.’ Tom lifted his head, his eyes still a little troubled. ‘But I’d like you to come up with me.’
‘To sit with you?’
‘Yes: you won’t have to wait long: I’ll go to sleep awfully soon if I know you’re there… . And—and—you won’t think any the less of me because of this, will you?’
‘No, I won’t think any the less.’
‘I hope you won’t,’ Tom said ruefully. ‘Though I don’t see how you can very well help it. I’m not like Philip, am I? He doesn’t mind being all by himself at night in that other house, and it must be frightfully lonely and queer.’
‘I don’t want you to be like Philip.’
‘All the same, I’d hate him to know about this. He wouldn’t be as kind as you are.’
‘Perhaps not. But don’t get it into your head that because he’s not afraid to sleep by himself in an empty house he’s a wonderful person. I’ve a very good idea of what he is.’
They went out of the room and along the passage, Uncle Stephen holding the candle. In his own room Tom undressed quickly, and his spirits rose more quickly still, so that by the time he was safely in bed he was his normal, by no means melancholy self.
‘Now, you’re not to talk,’ said Uncle Stephen, for Tom had already begun to chatter.
‘But you won’t go away till you’re sure I’m asleep?’
‘No; not if you keep quiet and try to go to sleep.’
There was a silence. The door was ajar, and presently from down below came the soft deep chiming of the hall clock. ‘Dickory,’ said Tom.
‘I thought you weren’t to talk.’
Tom said no more, until he murmured, ‘Uncle Stephen, I’m getting sleepy now: will you say good night.’
CHAPTER XIV
‘My dearest Tom,
‘What on earth did you say or do to poor Uncle Horace? None of us can quite make out, though he has talked of precious little else ever since he got back. He came round that very night foaming at the mouth with rage, and there was a most awful scene—entirely apart from you—because he barked his shin against Leonard’s
bicycle in the hall. You see, it was late and darkish and he was in such a hurry to get in. At first we thought the ceiling had come down; but it was Uncle Horace and the bicycle. However, that doesn’t concern you, and I’d better tell you what does.
‘To begin with, Uncle Horace says U.S. pretended to be too busy to receive him and that he wouldn’t have got into the house at all if you hadn’t turned up just as he was going away. Then, after he did manage to get in, there was still no sign of U.S., though really he was hiding all the time and listening, so that, when Uncle Horace had at last persuaded you to come home, he was able to upset everything by appearing suddenly through a trap-door. This is the part where Uncle Horace gets so feverish that we simply daren’t ask questions, and Tom dear, though awfully thrilling of course, don’t you think it was a little eccentric too? But perhaps you don’t, for Uncle Horace says you’ve become the âme damnée of U.S. (I’ve been dying to bring that in—it’s a lovely expression—and it really is what Uncle Horace means.)
‘What he says is that you’re being hopelessly spoiled and that mother isn’t to send on your clothes or your books or anything. They sit talking about it together by the hour. At first we were sent out of the room, but now they’ve got reckless and discuss everything openly. Uncle Horace is angrier with U.S. than with you, though he’s pretty angry all round and says you both insulted him and that your manner, once you had U.S. there, became insolent to the last degree. He also says it’s mother’s duty to get you out of U.S.‘s clutches, though when she asked him if any wickedness was actually going on in the house he told her not to be a fool. That’s the sort of temper he’s in: poor mother has her head bitten off about fifty times an evening. And the worst of it is, it brings him round here every evening—simply the pleasure of abusing U.S. He hasn’t missed once since he got back, and he finds fault with all of as nearly as much as with you. Everything in the house annoys him, but particularly the drawing-room clock, which at nine and ten has taken to striking, thirteen and fourteen, and mother always forgets to have it fixed. They’ve both been to see lawyers, but I didn’t hear what happened, and I don’t think you need worry, because Uncle Horace knows he’d have to pay all the expenses if they went to law.
‘I got your two postcards, but would much rather have had one letter. By the way, you’d better disguise your handwriting when you reply to this, as I’ve been forbidden to hold any communication with you. I hope you’re having a good time—it sounds as if you were—and send you my love. To U.S., at present, only kind regards.
‘Ever your affectionate friend,
“JANE GAVNEY.
‘P.S.—Is U.S. a magician, and can you bring rabbits out of a hat yet?
‘P.P.S.—It would be better if you addressed your letter c/o Miss Margaret Stanhope, The Limes, Dunmore Park.’
Tom refolded this epistle and put it back in his pocket. They had heard neither from Uncle Horace nor his step-mother, but he had ceased to care whether his clothes came on or not. His measurements had been sent to Uncle Stephen’s own tradesmen, and a complete outfit had arrived several days ago, to the delight of Mrs. Deverell and Sally, who had made out a list of his requirements, had gone over everything carefully, had marked his linen and superintended the tryings-on of his suits, while Tom strutted in front of them, endeavouring to appear indifferent to criticism and admiration. Sally had made jokes. She had pretended he must be going to get married, and all questions of taste were referred to a mysterious ‘She’. Mrs. Deverell was not given to joking, but it was clear to Tom that they both enjoyed having him at the Manor and enjoyed even the extra work it gave them. It was Master Tom this, and Master Tom that, while George McCrudden and Robert docilely had fallen in with the feminine view. The only drawback was that the women were too inclined to forget he wasn’t a small boy. He liked being made much of, but—
He glanced at Philip lying on his back under a beech-tree, and the contrast struck him. It was impossible to imagine anybody treating Philip as he was treated by Sally and Mrs. Deverell. Yet Philip was only a year older. It was the self-reliance of his nature, more really than any physical qualities he possessed, that made the difference—though the physical qualities were there too, and Tom was sure the roughest kind of life would not alarm him. He would be able to hold his own either on board a ship or anywhere else; nothing short of positive ill-treatment could injure him; and he was strong enough to stand even a good deal of that… .
Just now he was asleep, or seemed so. Both boys had taken off their jackets, and Philip had rolled his up to make a pillow of it. Tom sat beside him, leaning against the broad trunk of the tree, and still holding in his hand a branch of syringa he had broken off to drive away flies while they were walking through the bracken. Their beech was on the slope of a hill overlooking the river valley. Between banks of reed-grass, sedges, and wild parsnip, the sluggish water wound in and out, sometimes hidden by overhanging bushes and pollard willows, but its course always visible as far as Tom’s sight could reach. The air was heavy, and there was a dark, threatening line of clouds on the horizon… .
He closed his eyes. For a minute or two perhaps he actually lost consciousness, but the sudden nodding of his head was sufficient to awaken him. The fire they had lit had not quite gone out; he could still see the red glow of the sticks beneath a covering of grey ashes. He felt a tickling sensation below his knee. He pulled up the leg of his trousers and discovered a furry caterpillar—a Hairy Willie was his name for it… . Philip really was asleep, he thought… .
Tom picked up the caterpillar with the intention of placing it on the sleeper’s nose, but instantly it curled into a tight ring in his hot hand, pretending to be dead. He laid it on the moss and looked down at his friend.
His first thought was that if he himself had been dressed as Philip was dressed he would have looked like a boy out of one or Dr. Barnardo’s Homes. Yet Philip didn’t: his clothes didn’t matter. There was a triangular rent in his crumpled trousers; he had no waistcoat, no collar, and his shirt, open on his sun-browned chest, required both washing and mending:—and none of these things mattered. Tom bent down till he could see on the sleeping boy’s cheeks and upper lip a faint down composed of minute silken hairs, invisible at a distance, but which now showed like a velvet film on the smoothness of his skin. With the tip of his finger he tested his own skin, brushing it lightly to and fro. He held the syringa over Philip’s mouth, but, though he touched him with the utmost carefulness, the blossom left a golden stain of pollen. Tom moistened his finger and tried to remove it without wakening him.
A lazy voice grumbled, ‘What are you doing?’ Philip had only half opened his eyes, and in the narrow ellipse the dark-blue iris acquired a strange depth into which Tom gazed. As he did so his lips parted and a thrill passed through him. Two words he whispered involuntarily, though it was only after he had spoken them that they reached his consciousness, producing a slight shock.
‘ You were asleep,’ he said hurriedly.
‘I wasn’t, but you must have been: you called me Uncle Stephen.’
‘I didn’t… . At least, I did,’ stammered Tom. ‘I mean, I didn’t mean to.’
‘I hope not. Are we going in for a swim?’
Tom hesitated. He put up his hand and began to loosen the knot of his tie: then stopped. ‘ There’s no hurry,’ he said.
This reluctance was unusual. Every afternoon during the past fortnight they had bathed: the mornings Tom spent with Uncle Stephen. He was not to begin work with Mr. Knox till September, and it was hardly work he did with Uncle Stephen. They read together, and talked of what they had read, but it was more than anything else an introduction into the beauty of a creed, outmoded perhaps, but not outworn, rejuvenescent as the earth’s vegetation… . And when he read in Homer of boys building their sand castles on the shores of the Aegean, it seemed to Tom as if all time had been only one long summer day… .
He looked up to find Philip watching him. ‘Will you promise to answer me truthfully if
I ask you a question?’
‘How can I promise before I know what the question is?’ Tom said. But he added immediately, ‘Yes.’
‘Why did you call me Uncle Stephen—because you did, you know?’
‘I told you why: it just slipped out. Besides, I wasn’t really calling you Uncle Stephen: it was only that for a moment something made me think of him.’ To avoid further discussion he began to strip off his clothes as quickly as possible. Then he ran down the hill, and was splashing in the shallows at the edge before Philip had unlaced his boots.
He waited until Philip joined him. Neither boy was a good swimmer, though both, with some puffing and blowing, could manage fifty yards or so, and at its widest the channel actually out of their depth was not more than ten yards across. ‘This is great!’ spluttered Tom. ‘I wonder how far the river goes?’
‘Oh, for miles and miles: they always do. Right up into the hills somewhere.’
‘Sally says you ought to be careful when you bathe in fresh water, or you may swallow something that will go on living inside you. She says you shouldn’t lie on the grass, because an earwig may creep into your ear, and if it once gets in, it will eat your brains. She says a cat should never be left alone with a baby, or it will suck its breath and kill it. She says a drowned woman always floats face downward and a drowned man on his back… . I say, suppose we got a canoe and discovered the source of the river! The raft would be no good for that. I expect Uncle Stephen would get me one if I asked him.’
‘We could go by land.’
‘When?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why don’t you know? I hate putting off things, if I’m going to do them at all.’
‘It’s you who will have to get permission, not me.’
‘Yes, but there’s no use in my asking till we’ve settled when we want to do it.’
These last remarks were made on the bank and while Philip squeezed the juice of a dock leaf on to his ankle, where he had been stung by a nettle. Tom was pulling his shirt over his head when another thought occurred to him. It had occurred to him several times before, though he had said nothing about it, nor was it without a struggle that he brought himself to mention it now. ‘You did Greek at school, didn’t you?’ he began.
