Chapter XXV: Part 25

"I've decided to behave. I'd like something to eat, please."

Lady Wychcote could have shouted with relief and joy. She would have kissed him, but he fended her off.

"Please ... I feel rather un-affectionate," he said. Something in his voice and look put the old lady at her proper distance. She could not meet the boy's eyes comfortably.

She said with great meekness for her: "Very well, Robert. But I am pleased to see you act like a man."

Anna opened the luncheon hamper and he ate a sandwich and drank some coffee and milk. The food sickened him suddenly. He could not eat more though he tried. He then sat quietly looking out of window till they reached London. Mr. Surtees met them at the station. He looked very much surprised when he saw Bobby. Lady Wychcote made him a significant gesture, and he did not express the surprise he felt. Also he thought that the boy looked ill. Bobby walked around and slipped his hand in the old solicitor's. He and Mr. Surtees had not seen each other often but they liked each other. Bobby's brain was racing. "Shall I tell him? Shall I tell him?" he was thinking. Then something in him said, "No." That Mr. Surtees would have to do as his grandmother wished him to--at least now. Perhaps later he could see him alone. They went to Claridge's. His grandmother and Mr. Surtees were alone together for a long time. Bobby was left upstairs in another room with Anna. She tried to coax him to talk with her but he had relapsed again into resolute silence. Then his grandmother came up, and told him that they were going to Dynehurst at once, and that he should have a new pony, and any kind of dog that he liked.

He said, "Thank you," civilly, but nothing more. His face had reddened as his grandmother spoke--with pleasure she thought. Yes ... ponies and dogs were a sure way to a boy's heart. She felt quite complacent and encouraged. The boy would be easier to manage than she had dared hope, after the frightful incidents of the journey.

Bobby had flushed because when she said that they were going to Dynehurst that afternoon, the thought had leaped to him: "I can get out of the house to-night, and buy a ticket to London at the station." Once in London he thought that it would be easy to get back to Venice. Perhaps Mr. Surtees would be his friend. Yes, he had better trust Mr. Surtees. But again, no--he was not sure about that. What he was sure about was that he could get out of the house that night and find his way to the station. It did not occur to him that the station-master might be unwilling to sell him a ticket to London.

That same night--the night that Sophy spent so miserably on the express that was taking her to him--he managed to dress himself and find his way out of the huge house without rousing any one. One of the housemaids had been sent to stay in the dressing-room next his, but she was a sound, healthy sleeper, and did not hear the boy's cautious movements. He crept downstairs in his stocking-feet, boots in hand. His overcoat had been put away. He went out into the dark, chill, misty night, dressed only in thin serge. At first he could see nothing, then bit by bit the shrubbery and trees revealed themselves ink on inky-grey. The crunching of the gravel helped him to find his way. His heart thumped sickeningly but high. He was free, free! On his way back to his mother. When he had groped some fifty yards from the house, he sat down on the ground to put on his boots. As he laced them he looked wrathfully back at the black mass of the grim old house. Two lighted hall windows in the floor above, and the lighted glass above the front door, gave it the appearance of a huge staring face, with luminous mouth and eyes. It seemed glowering at him like an ogre. He scrambled up, feeling rather queer and little in the lap of the dark, empty night, then trudged sturdily on, guided by the crunching of the gravel, as he strayed to right or left.

All at once, the trees began to sigh and creak--big drops struck his face--at first spatteringly, then thicker together. Within half an hour of his leaving the house, a heavy, wind-swept rain was pelting down; ten minutes more and he was soaked to the skin.

Now it was that he began to fear for his money, which was more than half in notes. He clenched his hands tightly over as much of it as he could grasp, and plodded on determinedly. But the steady pelting of the rain bewildered him. He wandered from the driveway--tried to find it again, with hands and feet this time. Blown twigs and leaves began to strike him. He walked against a tree--clung to it a moment, panting. Then groped his way on again. But now he was hopelessly lost in the big Park. A great, soggy mass of bracken stopped him. He skirted it--walked against more trees. He would not admit in his fierce, dogged little heart that he was lost. He kept rehearsing what he would say to the station-master: "A first-class ticket to London, please. Here's the money."

For nearly three hours the boy groped and stumbled in that maze of trees through the driving rain. For some time he had been saying earnest little prayers:

"Our Father who art in heaven ... please help me to get back to my mother. Our Father ... please. Our Father ... please...."

* * * * *

When they found him he was lying unconscious on the sodden grass under an elm--both hands clenched fast upon as much of the notes and silver in his pockets as he could grasp.

When he had been put to bed, and roused at last he was delirious. He began calling frantically, "My money! my money!" They gave it to him. Then had begun that monotonous chant of: "A first-class ticket to London, please.... A ticket to London.... Here's the money.... I've got the money."

This was why Bellamy did not wonder that Lady Wychcote fainted when he told her that Bobby might die.

LVIII

And now Sophy descended into the darkness of darkness where death and remorse sit brooding together--that vasty cavern of uttermost black gloom which underlies the Valley of the Shadow. Faith does not walk there nor hope. There a thousand years seem not as a day, but a day seems as a thousand years.

As she watched beside her son, she felt a more rending anguish than when she had given him birth, for now her soul was in travail of him. She who had given him life might now have given him death. If he died it would be she who had killed him. "Happiness hunter ... happiness hunter...." her own phrase rang in her mind.

And this was what her son had come to, while she was absorbed in hunting happiness....

She would not leave him now even long enough to change her clothes. Nurse Fleming brought her some fresh linen and a dressing-gown to the bedside, and put them on her as if she had been a child. She submitted quietly. The nurse unbound her hair, brushed and plaited it, then made her take an easy chair that she rolled up.

When Bellamy entered again Sophy roused from her tranced watching long enough to ask him to get Anne Harding if it were possible. He went at once to do so.

There was no night or day to Sophy now. The grim, candle-lit hours went by monotonous as a linked chain paid out of darkness into darkness by invisible hands.

Then came intervals of horror--struggles for breath. Wild shadows on the ceiling as nurse and doctor fought together with that other Shadow.

Anne Harding came. Sophy stared at her blindly, and said: "I thought you'd come, Cecil...."

Then after many days, each as a thousand years, a voice came through the smothering blackness in her mind. It said:

"He will live.... He's past the crisis...."

The blackness closed in again.

She came to herself on the bed in Cecil's dressing-room. There was an old etching of Magdalene Tower on the wall at the bed's foot.

She thought: "What a pity to call it 'Maudlin' instead of Magdalene...." Then everything weltered in on her at once--waves, wreckage, as of a world after flood. She was on her feet. She was in the other room. Anne Harding and Bellamy had hold of her. Her head felt hollow and very light. Her voice sounded light and piping in her own ears.

"Tell ... tell...." she was saying.

Anne Harding put her finger to her lips--glanced towards a smooth white bed. There was a little round of sunlight dancing on it. "Ssssh...." whispered Anne. "He's asleep.... We mustn't wake him. You've been very ill yourself, but our little man's doing finely."

They helped her to a chair beside the bed--Cecil's old leather armchair. Anne Harding could see his huge form in it as he used to sit glowering at her between the reduced doses of morphia. It gave her an odd feeling to put Sophy in that chair, and tuck a rug about her.

They all three sat in silence watching the sleeping child.

Sophy whispered once, with her avid eyes on the little, sunken face:

"Is he really only ... asleep?"

For answer, Bellamy lifted one of Bobby's hands and laid it in hers.

"He's so sound it won't wake him," he reassured her, smiling.

And for Sophy the warmth of that little hand was as the warmth of her own soul's blood.

* * * * *

For a long, long time she sat there with inner vision fixed on the beautiful and terrible star that had risen in the dark night of her soul--the star of a destiny as stern and far more ancient than that foretold at Bethlehem: the star of primordial and eternally recurrent sacrifice ... of the crucifixion of the mother for the child. And a woman if she be so lifted up shall draw all women to her and to each other--for this is the dark yet shining law, whereby the individual's loss is the gain of the whole race.

When Bobby at last opened his eyes they rested on his mother's face. She hardly dared to breathe, it was so wonderful to see those grey eyes looking into hers with recognition. And the boy, too, was afraid to stir or speak lest his mother's face should vanish or change into some dreadful difference as it had vanished and changed in the dreams of fever. But as she knelt, holding his hand against her breast, gazing at him out of the eyes that meant all love to him--a little stiff, wistful smile parted his lips.

"Mother ... dear...." he whispered.

Then Sophy put her cheek to his. He felt the soft glow of her sheltering breast.

"Hold me fast ... don't leave me...." he murmured.

"Never, my darling ... my only man ... never, never again...."

"Our Father...." stumbled Bobby, ".... thank you ... _ever_ so much...."

Then he drowsed off again.

* * * * *

A week later Sophy was sitting beside him as usual, and again he was sleeping. It was drawing towards sunset. A lovely glow filled the sky and lighted the yellowing trees in the Park.

Bobby waked suddenly and, gazing out of the window near his bed, pleaded:

"Mother ... I _do_ so want to smell the out of doors.... Couldn't you open this window?"

Sophy called Anne Harding, who was in the next room.

"Do you think we might open it?" she asked, after telling her what Bobby wanted. "It's so mild to-day--like St. Martin's summer.... He wants it so much...."

"Of course we can," Anne answered cheerfully. "Dr. Fresh Air's the best doctor of 'em all."

She raised the sash and went back into the other room. Doctors and nurses left those two alone together as much as possible.

The mild air, sweet with fading leaves and bracken, stole softly into the room.

"How jolly...." breathed the boy. "It's like fairies touching me...."

He turned his face towards his mother.

"Come lie by me, mother ... like that night in Venice," he said.

Sophy lay down beside him and took his head upon her arm. Bobby sighed deep in the fulness of his content. "I feel so jolly safe this way," he murmured. They rested quietly in each other's arms, looking up at the soft gold of the September sky. As on that day, nearly eight years ago, when Cecil had been laid in the chapel crypt, the yellow leaves drifted down, gently turning in the delicate air. The fallowed earth gave forth a fresh, pleasant smell. From the pasture lands below came the lowing of the Wychcote herd. Now a flight of homing rooks streamed across the sky.

"Oh, how jolly ... how jolly it all is," breathed the boy. "I'm glad I didn't die.... What a jolly noise the rooks make, don't they, mother?"

"Yes, darling," she answered him.

But what she heard and saw, high, high above their clamorous winging, was the ecstatic shrilling of the Venice swifts, and their impassioned arabesques of flight like joy made visible--like a joy above, beyond--far, far removed....

THE END