by Forrest Reid
“Well, I haven’t any longer, “Tom said, “so it doesn’t matter. . . . There’s the gong,” he continued with relief, as the sound came up to them, faint and muffled, from the hall below. “Doctor Macrory must have come back, so we’d better go down.”
The interruption was welcome. His proposed experiment had faded out so flatly that it could not even be said to have ended, since it had never begun. Or rather, what had faded out was his own enthusiasm, his own responsiveness. His present reaction almost amounted to a feeling of disillusionment, and as they retraced their steps along the passage, and he locked the door behind them, he half made up his mind never to open it again.
To come downstairs was to come at once into a comfortable prosaic world where, if nothing was particularly enthralling, all was safe and familiar. Mother, Doctor Macrory, and Granny had already begun tea when he and Pascoe entered, Granny presiding at the table. The sunshine streaming through the open windows made the room attractively gay, but it was gay also with that general atmosphere of cheerfulness and geniality which this most informal and conversational of meals seems particularly to promote. Moreover, whether by previous arrangement or not, evidently it had been decided to regard Tom’s visit to Granny, not as the result of home complications, but as a perfectly ordinary one. Granny herself made this doubly clear, when, after urging Pascoe to try Cook’s slim-cakes, she invited him to stay for a day or two to keep Tom company.
For some private reason this appeared to amuse Doctor Macrory. “What about the Dogs’ Club?” he suggested. “That is, if you want to do the thing really in style. I think I can accept so far as Barker is concerned.”
It was a very transparent joke; nevertheless Mother, knowing both Tom and Granny, thought it prudent to intervene. “I fancy if she has two gentlemen to look after her that will be sufficient.”
Tom and Doctor Macrory laughed, but Granny had never heard of the Dogs’ Club, and Pascoe saw nothing to laugh at. Granny had turned again to him, this time to inquire if they had a telephone at home. “If so, you could ring your mother up after tea. That is, if you think you’d like to stay.”
Pascoe thought he would like it very much, but on the other hand, supposing he got his mother and she gave him permission, wouldn’t he still have to go home first to get pyjamas and other necessaries; and he had left his bicycle at Tom’s house.
“I’m sure Tom can lend you all you need for to-night,” Granny declared. “And you can get anything else to-morrow.”
Doctor Macrory, with his customary good nature, endorsed this view. “His best plan will be to come with us now in the car. I’ll have to be going in a few minutes anyhow. Afterwards he can ride back here on his bicycle, and I dare say you’ll forgive him if he’s a little late for dinner.”
Mother alone, for a moment looked doubtful: but seeing Pascoe getting up to put Granny’s suggestion into execution, she left her misgivings unspoken, and after a brief hesitation said: “In the meantime, while Clement is telephoning, I think Tom and I will take a stroll in the garden. You’ll find us there when you’re ready to start.”
She rose from her chair as she spoke, and Tom followed her, not surprised, for he had known she would want to speak to him by himself before leaving, but wondering a little what she was going to tell him.
She began at once. “I saw Miss Sabine this morning: in fact I had a long talk with her. I don’t know whether you realize what a good friend you have in Miss Sabine. Nobody could have been kinder or nicer about this whole unfortunate business than she was, and I think you might do something in return—something to please her, to please Daddy, and to please me.”
Tom desired nothing more than to please Miss Sabine and to please Mother; about Daddy he felt less keen. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“To write a little note to Mr. Sabine; that is all.”
Tom hesitated, his face clouding. Mother might pretend it wasn’t much, but she must know it meant abandoning his whole position, and admitting he was wrong when he wasn’t. “To tell him I’m sorry?” he muttered unwillingly.
“Yes. Remember this is entirely between ourselves: I purposely said nothing to Daddy about it in case you might refuse.”
He waited a moment, Mother’s hand on his shoulder. He felt that by putting the matter in this way she was somehow imposing on him, but he knew she would be deeply hurt if he were to tell her so. All the same, he could not help looking at her reproachfully before, with a faint sigh, he submitted. “All right,” he said. “But I won’t really be sorry—I mean in the way he’ll think—not about him and Max.”
Mother did not press this point: she drew a breath of relief. “I’m sure if you write the note and show it to Granny before sending it, you will be doing what is right, and will never regret it afterwards.”
Tom was very far from sure, but since he would be doing it to please Mother and Miss Sabine, not Mr. Sabine or Max, and since he could make the note extremely cold and formal—in fact thoroughly unconvincing—he promised; nor was there time for much more before the others appeared, and Mother, Doctor Macrory, and Pascoe got into the car.
Tom and Granny saw them off, standing side by side; and when the car had disappeared and they had re-entered the house, he told Granny of his promise. She, too, seemed relieved, and between them, and with many consultations and fresh starts, they proceeded to compose the momentous letter, not without some chuckles from the old lady, though Tom could see nothing funny in his efforts to keep his word to Mother and at the same time not to encourage Mr. Sabine to imagine he had really changed his mind or regarded him with anything but the most frigid and distant politeness. The task was difficult, but Granny, entering into the spirit of it, was very helpful; and the rough draft at last completed, he copied it out, addressed the envelope, and left it on the hall table for the postman to collect.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
GRANNY was much surprised when after dinner her guests, instead of going out to the garden as she had expected them to do, suggested playing a game of Pelmanism, or, as they called it, Twos. Still, if that was what they wanted she was quite agreeable, and anyhow, after last night’s performance, she had decided to send Tom to bed early. Granny, however, entirely mistook the situation, and this because she knew nothing of a private consultation in which the question of her own entertainment had been very carefully weighed. It never crossed her mind that the game of Twos might have been proposed for her benefit, nor did it subsequently strike her that, with her rather dim old eyes and their remarkably bright ones, it was, to say the least, surprising that she should win. Nevertheless, win she did; and the game over, and the card-table put away, good-nights were said—with final injunctions from Granny that there was to be no dawdling, and no talking after they were in bed.
But such instructions are received as a matter of course, as part of a conventional formula, and enter in at one ear straightway to go out at the other. Once in bed, Pascoe had a number of things to relate about his visit to Aunt Rhoda in Donegal, and from these, by easy transitions, the conversation drifted, first to their present visit, and next to Tom’s previous visits at Tramore. Following on the activities of a very crowded day, the darkness and stillness and sense of comfort and privacy induced a mood of confidence, and without being questioned, without indeed remembering his earlier uncommunicativeness, Tom found himself telling Pascoe why he had taken him up to the deserted wing, and what had happened there on a former occasion. The story came at first fluently, but, as it proceeded, more and more brokenly and with increasingly longer pauses, though Pascoe continued to listen attentively—so attentively that he made neither a movement nor a sound to interrupt it. Even after it was finished the silence still persisted, and it was only then that Tom, growing suspicious, discovered him to be sound asleep.
He was not offended; he had been talking really, towards the end, as much to himself as to his companion; and now he felt too drowsy to wonder at what point Pascoe had ceased to hear him. That, he would learn to-morrow, and
in the meantime he was content to lie in dreamy contemplation of a world shifting uncertainly between recollection and imagination. Nor was he surprised to see, amid drifting scenes and faces, Ralph himself standing between the window and the bed. By that time, too, he must have forgotten Pascoe, or surely he would have awakened him, whereas all he did was to murmur sleepily; “Why have you come?”
The voice that answered him was faint and thin as the whisper of dry corn. “I don’t know. I don’t think I have come. I don’t think this is real. . . . Or perhaps I can only come when you are dreaming, for I think you are dreaming now. . . .”
There was a silence—deep, wonderful, unbroken—as if all the restless murmuring whispers of earth and night were suddenly stilled. . . .
“Listen!”
Tom listened, but somehow Ralph was no longer there; and far, far away he could hear the sound of waves breaking, and surely he had heard that low distant plash before—many times perhaps, though when and where he had forgotten. Next moment the darkness vanished, and he had a vision of a wide, curving beach of yellow sand, where children were playing in the sunlight at the edge of a timeless sea. They were building castles on the sand, and their happy voices reached him—gay, innocent, laughing. Vision or memory, the scene brought with it no feeling of strangeness, only the sense of returning to a lovely and familiar place, which would always be there, though at times it might be hidden from him. . . .
The dark blue water stretched out and out under a golden haze, till it met the softer, paler blue of the sky. That happy shore he knew—and it was drawing closer, it seemed very near, already less dream than reality. For he could feel the warm sun on his hands and face, and he had to step back quickly as a small wave curled over and broke, melting and hissing, in a thin line of foam at his feet. . . .
November 1942.
October 1943.
—oOo—
