When at last the eve of the holidays was at hand he saw nothing all day, as it happened, of Dakyn. Each time he went to the study, it chanced that Dakyn was not there, and when at last Adrian settled himself to read there in the desperate hope that Dakyn would come in, the hateful footsteps of Ellenger sounded in the passage, and Adrian, with black disappointment in his heart, fled disconsolate to Common-room. Could it possibly be that he would leave Charminster without a few last moments in the study with Ronny, moments which would probably, as so often, bring nothing but a casual cheerful phrase or two from Ronny and a shy answer from Adrian, but precious moments, for all that? Adrian caught a brief glimpse of him at prayers, and went miserable to bed.
Perhaps Dakyn would want him to do something for him next morning before they started, or even if not, surely he would send for him to say good-bye. But next morning came and there was no summons. Adrian had stubbornly set his heart on a last glimpse of Dakyn, a last word from him. It had become a sheer necessity to his peace of mind. If he failed of these, he told himself, his whole holiday would be ruined.
When the moment to start for the station had almost arrived, he ran in despair to the study. What excuse he would make when he got there he did not know and in his misery he hardly cared. The door was half open. Timidly, with his heart in his mouth, he looked in. His eyes met the smouldering brown eyes of Ellenger, raised at the sound of his step from a bag in which he was packing something.
“I … I … I looked in,” Adrian stammered, “to see if Dakyn wanted me for anything.”
“I don’t think so,” said Ellenger.
Adrian, crestfallen and forlorn, hesitated for a moment and then turned to go, casting a mute, helpless glance at his enemy.
To his amazement Ellenger’s face was suddenly transformed, illuminated. “Good-bye,” he said, and for the first time there was no hostility in his voice. “I’ll tell him you came.”
Adrian ran downstairs in astonishment. “Why, he might easily have been quite a decent sort of chap,” he thought to himself.
The rush to the station, the scramble for a seat in the special for Waterloo, the hubbub in the crowded carriage that persisted throughout the journey almost made Adrian forget his heartache. But as the train ran into Waterloo, it suddenly flared up inside him, a keen inner wound. “This is the end,” he thought. “I shan’t see him now.”
On the platform, Aunt Clara, majestic and smiling, was waiting for him. She spotted him as he got out of the carriage. They walked together in the stream of boys and parents, towards the van, followed by a porter whom Aunt Clara, in her cool, practical way had secured before the train came in. They stood together on the outskirts of the crowd that seethed about the luggage van, Adrian glancing anxiously among the crowd. But there was no sign of Ronny. The porter had found Adrian’s portmanteau and they followed him to the barrier. As they stood together beside the portmanteau while their porter went to secure a cab, Adrian felt a smart tap on his shoulder, and, turning his head, saw Dakyn with Ellenger on the far side of him. They were already past him, but Dakyn was looking back, and now he waved his hand. “Good-bye, little man,” he shouted. “Have a good time.”
Adrian, getting into the cab, felt himself plunged in a warm ocean of happiness.
“Who is your handsome friend, Adrian?” Aunt Clara asked as they drove off.
“He’s called Dakyn,” Adrian replied.
“He looks a nice fellow,” said Aunt Clara.
“He is,” said Adrian coolly and judicially; “quite.”
XII
More than a fortnight before the beginning of the holidays Clara had written to her sister-in-law. She sat at the writing-desk in the morning-room at Yarn while Bob read the newspaper on the sofa near the window.
“I’m afraid we must ask her,” she said, “for Adrian’s sake.”
“For Adrian’s sake?” Bob looked up in surprise from the newspaper. “You’ll get precious little thanks from Adrian for asking her.”
“I know that, my dear; but if we don’t ask her, she may insist on his joining her somewhere else.”
“I don’t think she will.”
“Neither do I. She will doubtless remember what happened when she insisted on his going with her to the Crowhursts. But still …!”
Bob chuckled. “Young monkey! You know, I should never have believed he had it in him.”
Clara smiled grimly. “Needs must,” she said, “when the devil drives. You might not have thought, either, that Minnie had it in her to be a first-rate educator of backward youth; and yet—in perfect innocence, it’s true—she did more for Adrian last holidays than Waldo did in four years.”
“She taught him, you mean, to stand on his own feet.”
“Not only that. She also taught him to tread on her toes when she kicked his shins. No, I don’t think Minnie will come. I hope not, because I’ve not had long enough yet to recover from her last visit to feel inclined for her again so soon. But after all, what are we to do? Our position is equivocal.”
“Not at all. Adrian writes to say he’s coming for the holidays, and what can we do but welcome him?”
Clara thought for a moment,” H … m. Yes!” she said. “That sounds simple. Unless, of course, Minnie writes to him and insists on his going somewhere else.”
“Well, Adrian would refuse.”
“Yes, in the way he refused last time. But this time he would probably flee not to Father, but to us here, and that would be extremely awkward.”
“It would if Minnie cut up rough, but not if she took it lying down as she did the Crowhurst business.”
“It would be awkward in either case, because, even though she took it lying down, she would bear us a grudge for it, and for Adrian’s sake I don’t want to get on the wrong side of Minnie.”
Bob burst out laughing. “That, Clara,” he said, “is very difficult for anyone to believe who had the privilege of overhearing one or two of your conversations with her last August.”
Clara smiled broadly. “There are times,” she said, “when my principles break down.”
“And the cat takes over?”
“Yes, the starved cat allows itself a square meal. But that’s quite against my principles, and at the moment, my dear, I’m applying my principles. I think, in fact, that I’d better invite her.”
“Yes, I suppose you had.” Bob resumed his newspaper. Then he laid it down to add: “And don’t let it be for nothing, Clara, that you’re the daughter of a distinguished writer. Turn her out a cordial invitation which she will somehow feel unwilling to accept. Put your heart into it, my dear. I know I can trust you.”
Again he retired behind the newspaper, and Clara, with eyebrows thoughtfully raised and the expression of a fastidious poet engaged upon a masterpiece, lifted her pen.
Apparently her labours were successful, since for a fortnight they produced no reply. Then she received a letter from Paris. She read it to Bob in the morning-room interjecting glosses of her own:
“Dearest Clara, What will you think of me? A dangerous question, my dear Minnie. I received your letter in Ireland, where I was staying with the Trevises, and not a moment could I get to myself to write and thank you for your very kind invitation. We lived in a whirl, my dear; hunting, shooting, luncheons, and never less than twelve at dinner, not to mention bridge at all hours. Alas, poor harassed Minnie! I was to have left there on the 12th, but Sir George insisted on me staying another week, and I felt it would really be too bad to break up the party by refusing. Beware, Bob, of the crushing responsibilities incurred by charm. Now, as you see, I am here in Paris, I came over three days ago with Letty Finsbury, to do some shopping before I sail next month. The latest modes are simply incredible, my dear. I shall hardly dare to wear some of the dresses I have got. However, they will expect it of me in India, I suppose. They always rather look to me, you know, and I owe it to Archie not to fall short. You see, Bob? A martyr to duty, as ever! Once more, thank you for so kindly inviting me. Pra
y don’t mention it, Minnie. But, after all, you didn’t, for a fortnight. If I hadn’t been so fearfully rushed, I need not say how delighted I should have been to accept. Best Xmas wishes to you and Bob.
“Yours affectly
“Minnie Clandon.
“P.S.—How sad not to see Adrian. Give him his mother’s best wishes.”
“That was a near thing,” said Bob, “a very near thing. I wonder if she had to open the envelope to put in that postscript.”
Clara glanced again at the letter. “Astonishing, chattering little person!” she said reflectively and with a faint tinge of tenderness in her voice. “Don’t you feel shaken and deafened. Bob, by the breathless, purposeless energy of it all?”
“Minnie certainly puts herself into her letters,” said Bob.
Clara nodded eloquently. “She does,” she said; “but she very nearly forgot to put Adrian into this one.”
As Clara drove from Waterloo to Liverpool Street with Adrian, he asked her suddenly: “Aunt Clara, is Mother going to be at Yarn?”
Clara, who had been watching with sad, reflective eyebrows the dome of St. Paul’s swelling portentously above the huddle of buildings that clustered beneath it along the river, brought her gaze back into the cab. “Your mother? No, my dear, She’s in Paris. Are you disappointed?”
“Not exactly,” said Adrian with a dry smile. “What has she gone to Paris for?”
“To buy dresses to take back to India. She gives me to understand that she is a leader of fashion in India. She sails next month.”
“For India?”
“Yes, to resume the leadership of fashion there. Where does she lead it to, I wonder?”
“Not to the Crowhursts, I suppose?” said Adrian. He blushed a little at his boldness, and they both burst out laughing.
“No,” said Clara, “presumably not to the Crowhursts but”—she sighed wearily—“round and round in an elegant spiral, I suppose, ending at last in stark nakedness, which is the apotheosis, the heaven, of fashion.”
Adrian could not follow Aunt Clara into these metaphysical realms, but he was accustomed to similar flights of hers which, he supposed, were not really nonsense. She, meanwhile, had fallen into her reverie again, but she disturbed it to remark, as if to herself:
“Judging by evening dresses I have seen lately, I gather that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”
As they approached Liverpool Street she said: “We are driving over to Abbot’s Randale next Thursday for Christmas. We shall be there only three or four days, because your grandfather is hard at work on a masterpiece and cannot long be interrupted.”
Adrian thought that there was a tinge of sarcasm in her tone and was somewhat shocked. “Aren’t they masterpieces, then?” he asked.
“Aren’t what masterpieces, my dear?”
“Grandfather’s poems.”
“Oh, certainly they are. Do you doubt it?”
“I thought, from your voice, that you doubted it,” said Adrian.
Aunt Clara pursed her lips and thought for a moment. “If I have doubts,” she said, “they are that any poetry is a masterpiece. I prefer my bread and butter thin, you see, and without jam. But, as poetry goes, your grandfather’s is good—oh, extremely good.” She sighed regretfully. “But what prose he would have written,” she said.
“Did Father like poetry?” Adrian enquired.
“Yes, Adrian. Your father, as a boy and a young man, used to read a great deal of poetry. If he had read less, he might… perhaps … have …” Her voice died away; her eyes studied the passing shops.
“He might have …?” Adrian prompted.
Aunt Clara suddenly woke up. “… have avoided your mother, my dear, to put it flat.”
“And that would really have been better,” Adrian, to her surprise, asserted seriously. Then he added: “But in that case I wouldn’t be here.”
Clara glanced round at him. “No, my dear, I suppose you wouldn’t; and that,” she said, taking his hand, “would have been a great pity.”
It had seemed natural to Adrian that Aunt Clara did not care for poetry. He could not have explained why he thought it natural, but it fitted in, in his unreflecting knowledge of her, both with the charming and amusing qualities she possessed and those she lacked. He had discovered early that there were things which it was useless to demand of her, and after a few early failures he had ceased to demand them. That no doubt was the secret of the excellent terms they were on.
Minnie Clandon was different. Of her too there were things that it was useless to demand, but they were the things that every child demands of its mother, and Adrian had not been able until a few months ago to cease to demand them of her. But apart from the fact that Minnie was his mother, Adrian would have found it much more difficult to cease to demand them of her than it had been in the case of Aunt Clara, because there was this profound difference between them, that Clara’s instinctive honesty compelled her to discourage such demands, whereas Minnie Clandon, with that perverse duplicity found in frivolous and flirtatious women, did her best to force everyone she met to demand of her the very things that she was unable or unwilling to give, not only to her child, but to anyone.
Adrian’s processes as regards the two women were entirely unconscious, for his self-awareness was still almost exclusively emotional: there was little or nothing of explicit intelligence in it. He would have been amazed and puzzled if he had been informed of the fact that he had a very clear notion of his aunt’s limitations. But Clara had been right when she told Bob that Minnie had done wonders to develop Adrian during the summer holidays, for he was now beginning consciously to use his intellect, and the first person he was focusing it upon was Minnie herself. His remark to Clara in the cab, the remark in reply to her indiscreet reference to his father and mother, was the first outward evidence of it.
But Clara herself was still free from his conscious scrutiny. He knew at once, for instance, that it was natural to her to dislike poetry, and her confession of that dislike did not have the smallest influence on his own attitude. But he had not achieved this through conscious thought. His own attitude to poetry was governed by his attitude to his grandfather. His grandfather attracted and interested him enormously. His grandfather had told him a mysterious, absorbing story, a story which threw a revealing light on all sorts of hidden feelings, and had told him that this story was poetry. That was enough to assure him of poetry’s supreme value. And if it had not been enough, Aunt Clara’s statement that his father used to read poetry would have completed his conviction. Her corollary that poetry had been responsible for his father’s unfortunate marriage had left him entirely unaffected. He had never himself read poetry: the poetry he had been made to learn and say by heart at Waldo and Charminster he had looked upon and still looked upon merely as a part of school and therefore as quite separate from this other poetry, this mysterious thing into which his grandfather had given him an exciting glimpse. Having heard from Aunt Clara on the drive to Liverpool Street that his grandfather was engaged on what she had with a faint ironic tinge called “a masterpiece,” Adrian on the first occasion that he found himself alone with the old man asked him whether it was the story of the old Chinese and the crystal tank.
“Yes,” said Oliver, “it is; but the working out of the story took me much further than I had expected. It is turning into a great long business about man’s search for wisdom. But how did you know I was working on a poem at present?”
“From Aunt Clara,” said Adrian, “she said you were engaged on a masterpiece.”
“‘Engaged on a masterpiece,’ she said, did she? But your Aunt doesn’t care much about poetry.”
“No,” said Adrian, “she prefers prose.”
Oliver looked at the boy with an amused twinkle in his eye. “And which do you prefer?” he asked.
Adrian blushed. “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about either,” he said. “Of course I’ve had to learn poetry for repetition at school, but when it’s work i
t’s different somehow.”
“But don’t you read books for your own amusement?”
“Oh, yes,” said Adrian.
“And what do you read?”
“Oh, just anything I come across. I read Bulldog Drummond last term, and Mr. Polly.”
“Mr. Polly? Wells! H … m! I suppose you might do worse. And what else?”
“Oh, Treasure Island.”
“And did you like Treasure Island?”
“Not much,” said Adrian, and then added: “it wasn’t bad.”
“Perhaps,” said his grandfather, “you found it too exciting. I used to love exciting books when I was your age, but now I simply can’t endure them. The novel of adventure, in which there is a rapid succession of exciting events, is to me insufferably tedious. I yawn and yawn. The only way an author can entice me into enduring the monotony of it is to butter it liberally with psychology. What I mean is that all I care about is the adventures that happen inside people, adventures of the mind, adventures of the soul. If the writer will give me plenty of that I’ll be content to swallow his action. Do you see what I mean?”
Adrian Glynde Page 12
