A variety of hindrances prevented Forrester from revisiting Kenyon's
father until August in the following year, when he arrived in the
grey evening of a repulsive day. As before, he came straight from the
Nottingham match; he had started his school, but was getting as much
cricket as he could in the holidays. It was raining heavily when he
jumped out of the carriage which had been sent to meet him. Mr. Harwood
shook his hand in the cold twilight of the hall. House and host seemed
silent and depressed. Forrester looked for Kenyon--for his hat, for
some sign of him--as one searches for a break in the clouds.
"Where's the boy?" was his first question. "Where's Kenyon?"
"Kenyon? In bed."
"Since when?"
"The beginning of last month."
Forrester looked horrified; his manner seemed to irritate Mr. Harwood.
"Surely I wrote and told you; have you forgotten? I wrote to say he
couldn't come last term, that he had fallen off during the winter, and
was limping badly. Didn't you get the letter? But you did; you answered
it."
"Yes, yes. I know all that," said Forrester, still bewildered. "I
answered, and you never answered me. Then the term came on, and you
don't know what it was. I had all my time taken up, every moment. And
I have been playing cricket ever since we broke up. But--the truth is,
I've been having the most cheerful letters from Kenyon all the time!"
"That's it; he _is_ cheerful."
"He never said he was in bed."
"You weren't to know of it on any account. But I thought you would be
prepared for it."
"Not with those letters. I can hardly believe it. Will he--won't he be
able----"
"No, never; but you will find him as keen about it as ever, and as mad
on cricket. He tells me, by the way, you've been doing great things
yesterday--in fact I read him the report--and he's wild with delight
about it. Come up and see him. You'll get another ovation."
Forrester nodded, setting his teeth. While they were conversing Ethel
had entered the hall, shaken hands with him, and vanished up the
shallow stairs, leaving the hall more gloomy than before. He remembered
this presently; also that Ethel, in a single year, seemed changed
from a child to a woman. But at the time he could see one thing only,
a vision, a memory. The peculiar sadness in Mr. Harwood's tones, the
tenderness which was still untender, though very different from last
year's note, was yet to strike him. He could think only of Kenyon as
he best remembered him, playing cricket with a sunburnt face, ardent,
triumphant, angry, penitent, ashamed--and of Kenyon as he dreaded to
look upon him now.
Mr. Harwood stopped on the stairs.
"I wish you could help me in one thing, Charlie. He is still counting
on your school, and now he can never go. He needn't know this; but
could you--I do so wish you could make him think less about it!"
Forrester coloured a little. "I wish I could," he said, thoughtfully;
"and perhaps I can, for somehow I myself am less anxious to have him
than I was last year. I have often been thankful he wasn't one of the
boys this last term. I couldn't have borne to pitch into him as I have
had to pitch into most of them. When I was here before I only looked
on the pleasant side of it all.... Yes, I can tell him there's another
side."
Kenyon looked a great length as he lay stretched out in bed; he
seemed to have grown a good deal. His thin face was flushed with
anticipation; his fine eyes burnt eagerly; he had heard the wheels in
the wet gravel under his window, and C. J.'s voice in the hall and on
the stairs. A thin white arm lay over the counterpane, the fingers
clasping a newspaper. As Forrester entered, with a trepidation of which
he was ashamed, the thin arm flourished the newspaper wildly.
"Well played, sir!" thundered Kenyon from his pillow, "Your score won
the match; come and shake hands on it!"
Forrester, who had certainly troubled the Nottingham bowlers this time,
was more taken aback than he had ever been on the cricket-field where
astonishing things do happen. He went to the bedside and sat down
there, and pressed the small boy's slender hands; but he had not a
thing to say.
"The _Sportsman_," continued Kenyon, beating the bed with that paper,
"says it was a fine display of cricket, and that you're in splendid
form just now. So you are. Look what you did against Surrey! Do you
remember how that match came _after_ Notts last year, and you left here
to play in it? I'm glad it was the other way round this season; and oh,
I say, how glad I am you've come!"
"Dear old boy! But--look here--don't you think you might have told me
you were like this, old fellow?"
Kenyon tossed his head on the pillow.
"I couldn't. It was too sickening. Besides, I thought----"
"Well?"
"You mightn't be awfully keen to come, you know."
"You needn't have thought that, Kenyon. I can't believe you did think
it."
"Well, I won't swear that I did. Anyhow I didn't want you to know
before you must--for lots of reasons."
Forrester let the reasons alone: he could divine one of them: the boy
had hoped to be up and well before he came. Forrester wondered whether
that hope held yet, and if it did, whether he honestly could share
it any longer. He looked at Kenyon as he confronted this question:
the flush of pleasure and excitement had subsided from the young wan
face, which had now an unhealthy pallor. His face had been the best
thing about Kenyon last year, the thing that inspired confidence and
faith. Forrester strove to talk more cricket. Kenyon had a hundred pet
cricketers, his favourites and friends on paper, whom he spoke of by
their initials and knew intimately on the cricket-fields of his fancy,
as formerly he had known and spoken of C. J. himself. C. J. tried to
tell him of those he had met lately; but the young fellow was all
distraught, he could not think of the right men, and took the newspaper
to his assistance.
"So John still gets you the _Sportsman_!"
"No, John doesn't."
"You don't mean that he's left?"
"Rather not! He comes up to see me every day; the governor fetches him;
and it's the governor who brings me the _Sportsman_."
"Really?"
"Yes, and _Cricket_ and the _Field_, and all the other papers that you
see all over the shop."
"It's too dark to see all over the shop," said Forrester, throwing the
_Sportsman_ aside. "I call it very good of your father, though."
"He _is_ good. He's awfully good to me since I've been lying-up, the
governor. He sits with me a lot, and reads and talks to me; he reads
awfully well. But he doesn't understand much about cricket, doesn't
care for it. He reads me the full account of the play when I've looked
at the score; but I'd as soon read them to myself if it wasn't for
offending him. You see, he can't be interested, though he says he is. I
should think he'd be very glad if you did it for him--if you would."
Forrester was thinking. Mr. Harwood had left him alone with Kenyon,
hardly entering the room himself; he had turned away with a look which
Forrester happened to see, but failed to understand. Now he had a
clue: perhaps Kenyon had greeted him as he never greeted his father,
that father who by the boy's own showing was trying at the last to
be his friend. The thought troubled Forrester. He had been touched
by a something in Mr. Harwood's manner, in the hall, on the stairs,
and still more by what Kenyon had just told him; he was pleased with
Kenyon's evident appreciation of his father's kindness; but--there were
more buts than he could sort or separate now and here. What he did feel
instantly, and acutely, was a premonition of involuntary intervention,
on his own part, between father and child. In his difficulty he pushed
the long brown hair from Kenyon's forehead, and looked gently into the
eager eyes.
"We'll see, old fellow," he said at last; "your father mightn't quite
like it, I think; and of course, as you say, you must take care not to
offend him. Stick to that, Kenyon; always be good to your father and
Ethel."
"They're awfully good to me, certainly," said Kenyon, with a sigh.
"Dear old Ethel! Have you seen her with her hair up, C. J.?"
"I just saw her in the hall; she is quite grown up."
"She's a brick.... Do you really think the governor would mind--you
reading the cricket, I mean? It _must_ bore him, no matter what he
says; how can it help doing?"
"It might bore him to read it to himself; it may delight him to read it
to you."
Kenyon turned his cheek to the pillow, and stared at the dismal evening
sky. No doubt he was wondering, in his small way, if he was a very
ungrateful, unnatural son; and trying to account for it, if it was so;
and wishing he were comfortably certain it was not so.
"Besides," added Forrester, "I shall not be able to stay many days,
you know." Indeed it seemed to him that he had better not stay; but
Kenyon's eyes were on him in a twinkling.
"How many?" he asked, almost with a gasp.
"A week at the outside; it's the Lancashire match the week after next."
Again Kenyon turned, and his sharp profile looked sharper than before
against the pillow. "Of course you must play against Lancashire--and
make your century," he said, with such a hollow heartiness that,
first-class cricketer as he was, and few as were his present
opportunities for first-class cricket, C. J. instantly resolved to
cancel all remaining engagements.
Kenyon went on:
"I'm hoping to get up, you know, before long. Surely I've been here
long enough? It's all rot, _I_ say, keeping you in bed like this; you
get as weak as a cat. I believe the governor thinks so too. I know
they're going to have a doctor down from London to see me. If he lets
me get up, and you come back after you've made that century, we might
have some more cricket, mightn't we? I'd give anything to have some
before the term begins. I want another of those leg-hits! I say, they
think I might be able to go to St. Crispin's next term, don't they?"