Later, when Mrs. Trenchard took him over the house, his sight of the nursery was more moving to him than any of his old memories. She unlocked the door with a sharp turn of the wrist and showed him the wide sun-lit room, still with fresh curtains, with a wall-paper of robins and cherries, with the toys--dolls, soldiers, a big dolls"-house, a rocking-horse, boxes of bricks.
"Our two children, who died five years ago," she said in her quiet, calm voice, "this was their room. These were their things. I haven"t been able to change it as yet. Mr. Lasher," she said, smiling up at him, "had no children, and you were too old for a nursery, I suppose."
It was then, as he stood in the doorway, bathed in a shaft of sunlight, that he was again, with absolute physical consciousness, aware of the children"s presence. He could tell that they were pressing behind him, staring past him into the room, he could almost hear their whispered exclamations of delight.
He turned to Mrs. Trenchard as though she must have perceived that he was not alone. But she had noticed nothing; with another sharp turn of the wrist she had locked the door.
IV
To-morrow was Christmas Eve: he had promised to spend Christmas with friends in Somerset. Now he went to the little village post-office and telegraphed that he was detained; he felt at that moment as though he would never like to leave Clinton again.
The inn, the "Hearty Cow," was kept by people who were new to him--"foreigners, from up-country." The fat landlord complained to Seymour of the slowness of the Clinton people, that they never could be induced to see things to their own proper advantage. "A dead-alive place _I_ call it," he said; "but still, mind you," he added, "it"s got a sort of a "old on one."
From the diamond-paned windows of his bedroom next morning he surveyed a glorious day, the very sky seemed to glitter with frost, and when his window was opened he could hear quite plainly the bell on Trezent Rock, so crystal was the air. He walked that morning for miles; he covered all his old ground, picking up memories as though he were building a pleasure-house. Here was his dream, there was disappointment, here that flaming discovery, there this sudden terror--nothing had changed for him, the Moor, St. Arthe Church, St. Dreot Woods, the high white gates and mysterious hidden park of Portcullis House--all were as though it had been yesterday that he had last seen them. Polchester had dwindled before his giant growth. Here the moor, the woods, the roads had grown, and it was he that had shrunken.
At last he stood on the sand-dunes that bounded the moor and looked down upon the marbled sand, blue and gold after the retreating tide. The faint lisp and curdle of the sea sang to him. A row of sea-gulls, one and then another quivering in the light, stood at the water"s edge; the stiff gra.s.s that pushed its way fiercely from the sand of the dunes was white with h.o.a.r-frost, and the moon, silver now, and sharply curved, came climbing behind the hill.
He turned back and went home. He had promised to have tea at the Vicarage, and he found Mrs. Trenchard putting holly over the pictures in the little dark square hall. She looked as though she had always been there, and as though, in some curious way, the holly, with its bright red berries, especially belonged to her.
She asked him to help her, and Seymour thought that he must have known her all his life. She had a tranquil, restful air, but, now and then, hummed a little tune. She was very tidy as she moved about, picking up little sc.r.a.ps of holly. A row of pins shone in her green dress. After a while they went upstairs and hung holly in the pa.s.sages.
Seymour had turned his back to her and was balanced on a little ladder, when he heard her utter a sharp little cry.
"The nursery door"s open," she said. He turned, and saw very clearly, against the half-light, her startled eyes. Her hands were pressed against her dress and holly had fallen at her feet. He saw, too, that the nursery door was ajar.
"I locked it myself, yesterday; you saw me."
She gasped as though she had been running, and he saw that her face was white.
He moved forward quickly and pushed open the door. The room itself was lightened by the gleam from the pa.s.sage and also by the moonlight that came dimly through the window. The shadow of some great tree was flung upon the floor. He saw, at once, that the room was changed. The rocking-horse that had been yesterday against the wall had now been dragged far across the floor. The white front of the dolls"-house had swung open and the furniture was disturbed as though some child had been interrupted in his play. Four large dolls sat solemnly round a dolls"
tea-table, and a dolls" tea service was arranged in front of them. In the very centre of the room a fine castle of bricks had been rising, a perfect Tower of Babel in its frustrated ambition.
The shadow of the great tree shook and quivered above these things.
Seymour saw Mrs. Trenchard"s face, he heard her whisper:
"Who is it? What is it?"
Then she fell upon her knees near the tower of bricks. She gazed at them, stared round the rest of the room, then looked up at him, saying very quietly:
"I knew that they would come back one day. I always waited. It must have been they. Only Francis ever built the bricks like that, with the red ones in the middle. He always said they _must_ be...."
She broke off and then, with her hands pressed to her face, cried, so softly and so gently that she made scarcely any sound.
Seymour left her.
V
He pa.s.sed through the house without any one seeing him, crossed the common, and went up to his bedroom at the inn. He sat down before his window with his back to the room. He flung the rattling panes wide.
The room looked out across on to the moor, and he could see, in the moonlight, the faint thread of the beginning of the Borhaze Road. To the left of this there was some sharp point of light, some cottage perhaps. It flashed at him as though it were trying to attract his attention. The night was so magical, the world so wonderful, so without bound or limit, that he was prepared now to wait, pa.s.sively, for his experience. That point of light was where the Scarecrow used to be, just where the brown fields rise up against the horizon. In all his walks to-day he had deliberately avoided that direction. The Scarecrow would not be there now; he had always in his heart fancied it there, and he would not change that picture that he had of it. But now the light flashed at him. As he stared at it he knew that to-day he had completed that adventure that had begun for him many years ago, on that Christmas Eve when he had met Mr. Pidgen.
They were whispering in his ear, "We"ve had a lovely day. It was the most beautiful nursery.... Two other children came too. They wore _their_ things...."
"What, after all," said his Friend"s voice, "does it mean but that if you love enough we are with you everywhere--for ever?"
And then the children"s voices again:
"She thought they"d come back, but they"d never gone away--really, you know."
He gazed once more at the point of light, and then turned round and faced the dark room....
THE END