She saw the dark flush come under his skin, and she knew that he was controlling his feelings, but he tried to accept the news that she was going away, as if it was an every-day matter. She knew he hated to be looked upon as an autocrat, and therefore he would make no actual objection to her plans; but it was obvious that he thought she was trying him rather unfairly. Think as he might, Alethea had made up her mind. She left for Bavaria the next morning.
Chapter Seventeen
IT WAS a marvel to be back again at Friedenbach, and to find the wide circle of the valley still ringed round with the unchanging peace which flowed down from the mountain summits. Alethea felt herself plunged into another element.
Tante Helena and Hans were waiting for her at the door, and it was with a chill at the heart that Alethea saw that the little boy was shy of her when he first saw her. He held on to Tante Helena’s hand, looking very demure, and smiling very sweetly though rather artificially. As she ate her breakfast, he stood a little way off, and peeped at her round the corner of a chair. Alethea felt that she had lost him for ever. But in less than an hour, he was as easy with her as if she had never gone away. He dragged her about by the hand, showing her all his new possessions—his goldfish, his new shoes, and the coloured pebbles which he had found in the stream. He quite ignored Tante Helena, and was anxious that the Friedenbachs should understand that Alethea was his property, and that they had no rights in her at all.
But that first half-hour had confirmed Alethea in an intention which had been at the back of her mind. She must take Hans away from Bavaria, and she herself must be cut off from what had come to exist in her mind as a hidden fairyland to which she held a key. It was however a key which she could use too seldom, as she lived too far from the lock into which it fitted. She knew by now that she could never be more than a very rare visitor to her son while the journey to see him took over two days. They must, in time, become strangers to each other, and this she could not contemplate.
And as she travelled across Europe, she had been realizing what it must mean to her if Hans should ever be ill. The thought that he would then be divided from her by those miles of railway seemed to stop the beating of her heart.
Yes. Hans must come to England; but where could he live? She saw that Brokeyates was impossible as yet, and indeed she saw very little prospect of Nicholas ever becoming normal enough to be willing to see his son living in his house.
She talked a great deal with Countess Friedenbach about her husband’s obsession as to the dwarf’s blood in his own veins.
‘If he’s right in thinking that he has got the mind, though not the body, of a dwarf (and I am beginning to agree with him) I don’t see that there can be any hope. He will always have this antagonistic attitude towards the world,’ she said.
‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ Countess Friedenbach declared. ‘It has nothing to do with anything born in him. It merely means that his mother was unkind to him when he was a child, and that his schoolfellows teased him about her when he was at school. It got on his nerves. He will forget it in time.’
‘If you are right, it is not hopeless. But how can I tell that you are right? That you know more about Nicholas than he knows himself?’
‘Because his theory is merely paralysing. It would mean that there was no scope for human effort, and that is against Nature. If we are human beings at all, and I really believe we are, there’s no such thing as predestination where we are concerned.’
‘You are more optimistic than the scientists.’
‘Scientists? My dear, there’s only one thing that the honest ones will agree upon, and that is, that as yet they know nothing at all about life. That’s where their science stops, and where we come in.’
‘Who do you mean by “ we”?’
‘Those of us who are up against life where it is most difficult.’
‘But don’t you believe in heredity?’
‘Yes, I do believe in it, but that’s all I can say about it. It seems impossible to forecast its vagaries. Look, for instance, at Nicholas, and his mother and his son. Could there be three more different people? And yet, I suppose, he will say that they all have what he calls dwarf’s blood. Well, if they have, it varies as much as any other kind of blood.’
When Tante Helena spoke, she made Alethea feel as if she was speaking out of a deep store of wisdom and knowledge; and whether this were true or not, she made an impossibility of the word impossibility.
She agreed with Alethea that Hans must go to England, for she saw that life would be too hard for the mother if she saw her child so seldom. It was very difficult to think of a home for him, and they went round and round this problem for a long time. Then, all at once, they both thought of the same person. Simultaneously the name came from each of their lips. Miss Nash. Of course. They stared at each other, Convinced that this was an inspiration. There was no doubt about it. Miss Nash had been created to give a home to Hans. It was the vocation for which she had waited for forty years.
Miss Nash had been Alethea’s governess—a small, fair woman, alert and sparkling, original and conscientious. She had always been devoted to Alethea, and had only had one complaint against her pupil—the fact that she was not a boy, for Miss Nash liked boys better than girls. Still, she had admitted that there were compensations for this error of Alethea’s in the choice of her sex; as if she had been a boy, she would have been sent to school as soon as her governess had grown fond of her. But here was a boy about whom there was no such disadvantage. Miss Nash need not fear that Hans would be taken from her when he was nine.
She was now settled in a cottage on the Cornish coast, where she bred goats and chickens, pigeons, cats, and dogs, having developed a genius for persuading the lion and the lamb to lie down amicably together. Countess Friedenbach had not heard of her since she was with Alethea, and when she was told of this houseful of pets, she was the more delighted.
‘It is the ideal place for Hans,’ she said. ‘His power with animals is almost uncanny. You remember the doe and her fawn? Things like that are always happening. Any bird will perch beside him, and even the squirrels don’t scuttle away.’
Parting with Hans was made much easier for Alethea now she had this plan in her mind. She was even anxious to be off, so as to lose no time in seeing Miss Nash, and beginning to arrange for the little boy’s journey back.
Nicholas made no reply when Alethea told him that she was going to bring Hans back to England. His attitude was that the child belonged to Alethea, and she must do with him as she thought best. His only stipulation was that the little boy was not to live at Brokeyates, and he did not even ask where the money came from which would pay for his living elsewhere.
Colonel Bracton had left Alethea all that he had. This was not much, as the greater part of his income had been a pension, but Alethea possessed enough to pay all that was required for Hans. As for Nicholas, he had never concerned himself over his wife’s money, but had left it all in her hands. In the old days, it had been too small a sum to think of in comparison with his own riches, and now he had probably forgotten that she had any money at all.
A telegram to Miss Nash a few days later, announced a visit from Alethea.
Cairn Gorm was a very amusing little cottage in a delightful situation about half a mile from the sea. Round it were concentrated all the features which are recalled to the mind by the sound of the word Cornwall. Rocks and ferns, fuschias and camellias, sunshine and a glittering sea, a ruined chapel, and in the distance, a disused mine shaft—all of these came into view from the windows of Miss Nash’s irregular little house, which was built so crookedly on the side of the cliff that it was a wonder how it was kept in position. Miss Nash’s garden had no end, for she allowed her plants to stray wherever they would, upon the rough ground about her; and she planted rose bushes wherever there was the smallest foothold for their roots. Her azalias burnt brilliantly quite a quarter of a mile from her door, and her bulbs sprang up as far away as she could ca
rry her trowel. There was no season of the year when she had not flowers in sight. Miss Nash hid her chickens behind the walls of the ruined chapel, as she did not think their manners either decorative or decent; but their cluckings could be heard at all hours of the day, proving that they were busy laying eggs. The pigeons crooned about their dovecote, or flew in and out of the cottage door, which was always open; and a line of straw-thatched beehives stood along the garden path.
Miss Nash must have had many more hours in her day than are marked upon the clocks of the rest of the world, for, in spite of the care of her many animals, she had time for a succession of hobbies. Her house overflowed with them. At one time, she had collected shells and pebbles of exquisite colours, and now upon the many little tables which crowded her rooms, she had placed shallow glass dishes filled with shells or stones lying transfigured under clear sea water. Then, all through her life, Miss Nash had made a practice of picking up on her walks, curiously shaped pieces of wood, fragments from the boughs of trees, or crooked sections of their roots; for in them she detected what looked to her like the shapes of prehistoric animals, goblins, or mythical creatures. When she got home, she would break off a piece here and there from her finds, and give a little twist to what remained, and so she would set free the strange being whose existence she had divined. These oddly contorted wooden imps stood about the house in various attitudes, leaning against walls, propped against the legs of cabinets, or perched upon mantelpieces. They filled the rooms with a droll life.
And now Miss Nash had painted water colour portraits of these wooden pets of hers—drawings full of character and individuality; but there was no space for them on the already crowded walls of the rooms. They stood in their frames, stacked upon the floors. Portfolios held Miss Nash’s collection of skeleton leaves, and her pressed flowers; while three or four flower pieces carried out in feathers and hung on the wall, showed that she possessed delicacy of craftsmanship as well as a rare sensitiveness to beauty.
Alethea had forgotten how much space in the house was taken by all these treasures; but now, as she sat talking with Miss Nash and eating a homemade scone filled with Cornish cream, she wondered if there was room among the collections for even so small a person as Hans. And yet, how he would love them! And how he and Miss Nash would love each other! She was the perfect companion for a child, for she had never left behind her own childish wonder at the beauty and the strangeness of the world.
There was something very gladdening to Alethea in the delight with which Miss Nash received her proposal. She welcomed it with shining eyes. Alethea told her that the child was very small for his age, and that she hoped that his growth would be helped by the sea air, and the simple outdoor life; but as she talked, she was wondering whether she had not been too hasty. She looked round at the thousands of objects which crowded every table in the house, and she wondered whether the dust which must surely collect beneath them might not counteract the effect of the fresh air which blew so freely outside the cottage.
But even as she talked, there came into her mind a solution of this difficulty; and she found herself proposing to Miss Nash that she should build on to the cottage two large new rooms for Hans. He should have his playroom on the ground floor, its windows opening to the ground so that he could run in and out; while above this room would be his bedroom, free from the accumulations of Miss Nash’s freaks of fancy. Alethea could do this by selling out a few hundred pounds of her capital, and thus she would make an ideal home for Hans in Miss Nash’s house, but away from too immediate a contact with her treasures.
The scheme was practically settled before Alethea left that evening, and her one regret was that it meant a certain delay before Hans could arrive. But it was worth waiting for.
Miss Nash was delighted at the thought of the addition to her house, and she at once recognized that the walls of Hans’ playroom would be the ideal place on which she could hang the portraits of her wooden people. Alethea agreed that they would be pictures after Hans’ own heart.
Back at Brokeyates, Alethea found it hard to resist talking to Nicholas about her plans, but she saw that he was already inclined to be suspicious and jealous over the time she had lately given to Hans. She therefore shut her secret into the back of her mind, to be played with when she was alone. Outwardly, she was entirely occupied by her life at Brokeyates, but during the next two months, her heart was living in those two spacious empty rooms, the walls of which were rising in that cottage on the coast of Cornwall as a home for her child. She planned every detail, and saw each piece of furniture in its place. It became for her a fairy palace to which she flew on a magic carpet, when life at Brokeyates became more than usually difficult.
Chapter Eighteen
THE MONTH was February, and Hans was nearly three years old, when he came to live at Cairn Gorm. Miss Nash had called her house after a favourite brooch which she had inherited from her grandmother, and the name was oddly appropriate. No other could so completely have expressed the character of that amazing collection of treasures. The new rooms were spacious and airy, and Alethea felt very happy about her little boy when she left him and his merry Bavarian nurse, playing together in the sun-filled nursery.
She now made a rule of going to Cornwall for a few days every month. The rest of her time was given to Nicholas and Portia, and to Brokeyates. She gardened with Nicholas, did lessons with Portia; she made jam; she bottled gooseberries. It was an even uneventful life.
As long as they saw no one from outside, Nicholas was easy to live with; but visitors generally aroused in him that suspicious antagonism which meant that he thought they despised him. When people had been to the house, he was often morose and depressed for hours afterwards. People sometimes questioned Alethea about her little boy and she told them that his delicacy obliged them to send him to the sea till he was older; but if these questions were asked when Nicholas was in the room, then Alethea knew that she had a difficult evening before her. Not that her husband ever spoke of what had been said; but he sat gloomily, absorbed in the train of thought which it was her life’s work to banish from his mind.
Life at Brokeyates was lived in a grave atmosphere. It was a place for hard work. It called for courage, and a high sense of duty. Nicholas was always busy on the estate, and Alethea was equally so with things in the house. There would have been little time for gaiety and laughter even if Nicholas had been a man who took things less seriously than he did. Alethea sometimes longed for a world where life was not so unfailingly lived upon the high level of those grand words of Longfellow’s: ‘ Life is real. Life is earnest.’
Such a world she found at Cairn Gorm. Every one of Miss Nash’s multifarious hobbies had been begun solely as an enterprise of pleasure. It was true that she carried them out with great thoroughness, working at them with whole-hearted zest and devotion; but she was one of those happy people who have never learnt that there can be a difference between working and playing. She was as light-hearted over her work as if it was nothing but a game: and she played with the earnestness which most people reserve for a solemn piece of work.
Hans trotted about with her, watching all she did, and sharing all her occupations. He fed the chickens, took the goats for walks, and poured water over the shells and the pebbles. He gathered pieces of wood to make his own collection of curious beasts, and he planted flowers and potatoes in his own corner of the garden. He was immensely busy, and wonderfully well. But he did not grow. He was a perfect child in miniature.
Cairn Gorm was a very laughing house. Peels of laughter were heard in it from morning to night. Miss Nash laughed, Hans laughed, Greta, the Bavarian nurse, laughed, and the Cornish maid-of-all-work laughed louder than any of them. And all this laughter was accompanied by the songs of birds, the cooing of pigeons, the hum of bees, and the various noises made by all the animals. It was a house full of merry clatter.
When Alethea came back to Brokeyates after her visits to Cairn Gorm, she was every time struck by the grave sile
nce of the house. Even Portia was portentously solemn. She looked with pompous scorn at her mother, when, as sometimes happened, she came back from Cornwall with some wisps of the irresponsible laughter of Cairn Gorm tossing about her. Such follies had quickly to be tidied away.
So life ran on in its groove, and while it remained there, it was equable and placidly happy. Nicholas had fewer bouts of melancholy, and Alethea began to think that Tante Helena was going to be right in her prediction that he would grow out of them. Yet, she knew that she was acquiescing in a maimed life for them all. If Nicholas would only have had the courage to break free from what he called the ‘trap’ which held him, he would have found that the morbid fear which poisoned his life, might have become instead its joy. Alethea dared not urge him to make the effort; it would have meant raising the forbidden question of Hans. Instead, she divided her own life into two parts, and in spite of her love for Nicholas and of his for her, it was inevitable that the Brokeyates part was the sombre one. And all the time, Nicholas had no idea that he was missing anything. Alethea made him as completely happy as he knew how to be.
So it would have continued indefinitely, if the war had not come to break the grooves which held so many lives, and theirs among the rest. Nicholas, who for so long had shunned his fellow men, was now sufficiently stirred to join the army without hesitation. Something had entered his life which was bigger than his pre-occupation with dwarfs.
Alethea at once decided that she could not remain at Brokeyates alone with Portia. She shut up the house, and enrolled herself as a V.A.D., finding work in a country house in Cornwall, which had been converted into a hospital. Cairn Gorm was less than two miles away, and Portia was sent to a school which had migrated from the east coast, to find a temporary shelter in Penzance, so she too was within reach.
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