"I would rather he did not go," repeated my mother, and her voice sounded harsh and grating. "When he is older others must judge for him, but for the present he must be guided by me--alone."
"I really don"t think there could be any harm, Maggie," urged my father.
"Things have changed since we were young."
"That may be," answered my mother, still in the same harsh voice; "it is long ago since then."
"I didn"t intend it that way," said my father with a short laugh.
"I merely meant that I may be wrong," answered my mother. "I seem so old among you all--so out of place. I have tried to change, but I cannot."
"We will say no more about it," said Mrs. Teidelmann, sweetly. "I merely thought it would give him pleasure; and he has worked so hard this last term, his father tells me."
She laid her hand caressingly on my shoulder, drawing me a little closer to her; and it remained there.
"It was very kind of you," said my mother, "I would do anything to give him pleasure, anything-I could. He knows that. He understands."
My mother"s hand, I knew, was seeking mine, but I was angry and would not see; and without another word she left the room.
My mother did not allude again to the subject; but the very next afternoon she took me herself to a hall in the neighbourhood, where we saw a magic-lantern, followed by a conjurer. She had dressed herself in a prettier frock than she had worn for many a long day, and was brighter and gayer in herself than had lately been her wont, laughing and talking merrily. But I, nursing my wrongs, remained moody and sulky. At any other time such rare amus.e.m.e.nt would have overjoyed me; but the wonders of the great theatre that from other boys I had heard so much of, that from gaudy-coloured posters I had built up for myself, were floating vague and undefined before me in the air; and neither the open-mouthed sleeper, swallowing his endless chain of rats; nor even the live rabbit found in the stout old gentleman"s hat--the last sort of person in whose hat one would have expected to find such a thing--could draw away my mind from the joy I had caught a glimpse of only to lose.
So we walked home through the muddy, darkening streets, speaking but little; and that night, waking--or rather half waking, as children do--I thought I saw a figure in white crouching at the foot of my bed. I must have gone to sleep again; and later, though I cannot say whether the intervening time was short or long, I opened my eyes to see it still there; and frightened, I cried out; and my mother rose from her knees.
She laughed, a curious broken laugh, in answer to my questions. "It was a silly dream I had," she explained "I must have been thinking of the conjurer we saw. I dreamt that a wicked Magician had spirited you away from me. I could not find you and was all alone in the world."
She put her arms around me, so tight as almost to hurt me. And thus we remained until again I must have fallen asleep.
It was towards the close of these same holidays that my mother and I called upon Mrs. Teidelmann in her great stone-built house at Clapton.
She had sent a note round that morning, saying she was suffering from terrible headaches that quite took her senses away, so that she was unable to come out. She would be leaving England in a few days to travel. Would my mother come and see her, she would like to say good-bye to her before she went. My mother handed the letter across the table to my father.
"Of course you will go," said my father. "Poor girl, I wonder what the cause can be. She used to be so free from everything of the kind."
"Do you think it well for me to go?" said my mother. "What can she have to say to me?"
"Oh, just to say good-bye," answered my father. "It would look so pointed not to go."
It was a dull, sombre house without, but one entered through its commonplace door as through the weed-grown rock into Aladdin"s cave. Old Teidelmann had been a great collector all his life, and his treasures, now scattered through a dozen galleries, were then heaped there in curious confusion. Pictures filled every inch of wall, stood propped against the wonderful old furniture, were even stretched unframed across the ceilings. Statues gleamed from every corner (a few of the statues were, I remember, the only things out of the entire collection that Mrs.
Teidelmann kept for herself), carvings, embroideries, priceless china, miniatures framed in gems, illuminated missals and gorgeously bound books crowded the room. The ugly little thick-lipped man had surrounded himself with the beauty of every age, brought from every land. He himself must have been the only thing cheap and uninteresting to be found within his own walls; and now he lay shrivelled up in his coffin, under a monument by means of which an unknown cemetery became quite famous.
Instructions had been given that my mother was to be shown up into Mrs.
Teidelmann"s boudoir. She was lying on a sofa near the fire when we entered, asleep, dressed in a loose lace robe that fell away, showing her thin but snow-white arms, her rich dark hair falling loose about her. In sleep she looked less beautiful: harder and with a suggestion of coa.r.s.eness about the face, of which at other times it showed no trace.
My mother said she would wait, perhaps Mrs. Teidelmann would awake; and the servant, closing the door softly, left us alone with her.
An old French clock standing on the mantelpiece, a heart supported by Cupids, ticked with a m.u.f.fled, soothing sound. My mother, choosing a chair by the window, sat with her eyes fixed on the sleeping woman"s face, and it seemed to me--though this may have been but my fancy born of after-thought--that a faint smile relaxed for a moment the sleeping woman"s pained, pressed lips. Neither I nor my mother spoke, the only sound in the room being the hushed ticking of the great gilt clock.
Until the other woman after a few slight movements of unrest began to talk in her sleep.
Only confused murmurs escaped her at first, and then I heard her whisper my father"s name. Very low--hardly more than breathed--were the words, but upon the silence each syllable struck clear and distinct: "Ah no, we must not. Luke, my darling."
My mother rose swiftly from her chair, but she spoke in quite matter-of-fact tones.
"Go, Paul," she said, "wait for me downstairs;" and noiselessly opening the door, she pushed me gently out, and closed it again behind me.
It was half an hour or more before she came down, and at once we left the house, letting ourselves out. All the way home my mother never once spoke, but walked as one in a dream with eyes that saw not. With her hand upon the lock of our gate she came back to life.
"You must say nothing, Paul, do you understand?" she said. "When people are delirious they use strange words that have no meaning. Do you understand, Paul; you must never breathe a word--never."
I promised, and we entered the house; and from that day my mother"s whole manner changed. Not another angry word ever again escaped her lips, never an angry flash lighted up again her eyes. Mrs. Teidelmann remained away three months. My father, of course, wrote to her often, for he was managing all her affairs. But my mother wrote to her also--though this my father, I do not think, knew--long letters that she would go away by herself to pen, writing them always in the twilight, close to the window.
"Why do you choose this time, just when it"s getting dark, to write your letters," my father would expostulate, when by chance he happened to look into the room. "Let me ring for the lamp, you will strain your eyes." But my mother would always excuse herself, saying she had only a few lines to finish.
"I can think better in this light," she would explain.
And when Mrs. Teidelmann returned, it was my mother who was the first to call upon her; before even my father knew that she was back. And from thence onward one might have thought them the closest of friends, my mother visiting her often, speaking of her to all in terms of praise and liking.
In this way peace returned unto the house, and my father was tender again in all his words and actions towards my mother, and my mother thoughtful as before of all his wants and whims, her voice soft and low, the sweet smile ever lurking around her lips as in the old days before this evil thing had come to dwell among us; and I might have forgotten it had ever cast its blight upon our life but that every day my mother grew feebler, the little ways that had seemed a part of her gone from her.
The summer came and went--that time in towns of panting days and stifling nights, when through the open window crawls to one"s face the hot foul air, heavy with reeking odours drawn from a thousand streets; when lying awake one seems to hear the fitful breathing of the myriad ma.s.s around, as of some over-laboured beast too tired to even rest; and my mother moved about the house ever more listlessly.
"There"s nothing really the matter with her," said Dr. Hal, "only weakness. It is the place. Cannot you get her away from it?"
"I cannot leave myself," said my father, "just yet; but there is no reason why you and the boy should not take a holiday. This year I can afford it, and later I might possibly join you."
My mother consented, as she did to all things now, and so it came about that again of afternoons we climbed--though more slowly and with many pauses--the steep path to the ruined tower old Jacob in his happy foolishness had built upon the headland, rested once again upon its topmost platform, sheltered from the wind that ever blew about its crumbling walls, saw once more the distant mountains, faint like spectres, and the silent ships that came and vanished, and about our feet the pleasant farm lands, and the grave, sweet river.
We had taken lodgings in the village: smaller now it seemed than previously; but wonderful its sunny calm, after the turmoil of the fierce dark streets. Mrs. Fursey was there still, but quite another than the Mrs. Fursey of my remembrance, a still angular but cheery dame, bent no longer on suppressing me, but rather on drawing me out before admiring neighbours, as one saying: "The material was unpromising, as you know. There were times when I almost despaired. But with patience, and--may I say, a natural gift that way--you see what can be accomplished!" And Anna, now a buxom wife and mother, with an uncontrollable desire to fall upon and kiss me at most unexpected moments, necessitating a never sleeping watchfulness on my part, and a choosing of positions affording means of ready retreat. And old Chumbley, still cobbling shoes in his tiny cave. On the bench before him in a row they sat and watched him while he tapped and tapped and hammered: pert little shoes piping "Be quick, be quick, we want to be toddling. You seem to have no idea, my good man, how much toddling there is to be done." Dapper boots, sighing: "Oh, please make haste, we are waiting to dance and to strut. Jack walks in the lane, Jill waits by the gate. Oh, deary, how slowly he taps." Stout sober boots, saying: "As soon as you can, old friend. Remember we"ve work to do." Flat-footed old boots, rusty and limp, mumbling: "We haven"t much time, Mr. Chumbley.
Just a patch, that is all, we haven"t much further to go." And old Joe, still peddling his pack, with the help of the same old jokes. And Tom Pinfold, still puzzled and scratching his head, the rejected fish still hanging by its tail from his expostulating hand; one might almost have imagined it the same fish. Grown-up folks had changed but little. Only the foolish children had been playing tricks; parties I had left mere sucking babes now swaggering in pinafore or knickerbocker; children I had known now mincing it as men and women; such affectation annoyed me.
One afternoon--it was towards the close of the last week of our stay--my mother and I had climbed, as was so often our wont, to the upper platform of old Jacob"s tower. My mother leant upon the parapet, her eyes fixed dreamingly upon the distant mountains, and a smile crept to her lips.
"What are you thinking of?" I asked.
"Oh, only of things that happened over there"--she nodded her head towards the distant hills as to some old crony with whom she shares secrets--"when I was a girl."
"You lived there, long ago, didn"t you, when you were young?" I asked.
Boys do not always stop to consider whether their questions might or might not be better expressed.
"You"re very rude," said my mother--it was long since a tone of her old self had rung from her in answer to any touch; "it was a very little while ago."
Suddenly she raised her head and listened. Perhaps some twenty seconds she remained so with her lips parted, and then from the woods came a faint, long-drawn "Coo-ee." We ran to the side of the tower commanding the pathway from the village, and waited until from among the dark pines my father emerged into the sunlight.
Seeing us, he shouted again and waved his stick, and from the light of his eyes and his gallant bearing, and the spring of his step across the heathery turf, we knew instinctively that trouble had come upon him.
He always rose to meet it with that look and air. It was the old Norse blood in his veins, I suppose. So, one imagines, must those G.o.dless old Pirates have sprung to their feet when the North wind, loosed as a hawk from the leash, struck at the beaked prow.
We heard his quick step on the rickety stair, and the next moment he was between us, breathing a little hard, but laughing.
He stood for awhile beside my mother without speaking, both of them gazing at the distant hills among which, as my mother had explained, things had happened long ago. And maybe, "over there," their memories met and looked upon each other with kind eyes.
"Do you remember," said my father, "we climbed up here--it was the first walk we took together after coming here. We discussed our plans for the future, how we would retrieve our fortunes."