THE RECOGNITION
‘Like a vapour wan and mute,
Like a flame, so let it pass.’
――_Rossetti._
Grif, clutching his Bible under one arm, ran across the graveyard, but
Palmer was already speeding down the road like a hunted deer, while
Mr. Bradley leaned over the gate waving his ebony stick, his white
hair loose, his face flushed with anger. He presented at that moment a
formidable enough appearance, and Grif could perfectly understand young
Dorset’s having taken to flight: what perplexed him was how Palmer had
got there at all. He waited, a little awe-struck, till Mr. Bradley
turned round.
“What was he doing?” Grif asked wonderingly.
“Doing! He was spying――watching me. And when I caught him at it he had
the impudence to tell me he had come to listen to the organ! A lot he
cares about the organ! I don’t think he’ll want to listen to it again!”
“But what was there for him to spy?” Grif ventured gently. “What harm
could he do?”
“He came to ask questions――to find out things. I didn’t see what he
was up to till I had been talking to him for five minutes or more. But
when I did――――” He broke off abruptly to throw a threatening look over
his shoulder at the fugitive, who, some fifty yards or so down the
road, had come to a standstill, and was watching them with irritating
composure.
Grif did his best to pacify the organist, but so long as Palmer
remained in sight this was not easy. “I’m annoyed,” Mr. Bradley said,
with a curious mixture of malignity and childishness, “very seriously
annoyed:――so much annoyed that I won’t be able to give you a lesson――if
you came for a lesson.” Then he suddenly remembered that Grif had been
lost, and asked: “What happened to you? Your grandfather came to me
last night, looking for you, saying you had disappeared.”
“I came back to-day,” Grif told him.
“And where have you come from now? You weren’t hiding in the church,
were you? _You_ had nothing to do with this?”
“No,” Grif hastened to reply, seeing him ready to flare out again.
“I was asleep till I heard the noise.... I was reading, and I fell
asleep――over there, under the wall.”
The organist looked in the direction he pointed to. “Oh,” he said
more mildly. “Well, well: and now, I suppose you want to have a
singing-lesson?”
“I don’t think so,” Grif answered. “I’m――I feel rather lazy to-day. Of
course if you’d like me to――――”
“No, no. Tell me where you’ve been to. We’ll go and sit down where you
were sitting.”
Grif left the Bible back in the church and rejoined Mr. Bradley under
the wall. There they sat side by side, while the little boy related his
adventure, and his companion nodded his head and said “hum――hum” at
various places. Grif could talk to him easily, because he somehow felt
that there was not really very much difference between them in point of
age. That is to say, Mr. Bradley gave him the impression of looking at
the world from much the same angle as he himself looked at it. He was
serious over the same kind of things, and he had none of that wisdom
which freezes up the flow of confidences, and makes one feel that they
are rather silly and that one ought to have grown out of them. What
Grif felt was that Mr. Bradley himself had _not_ grown out of them,
and even if he had had a great deal of experience, it was for the most
part experience of a similar kind. He was not, for instance, nearly so
grown-up as Edward or Palmer. If he had told Edward or Palmer about
hearing the flute they would have made him feel he was babyish, made
him feel ashamed, whereas Mr. Bradley never for a moment doubted the
truth of his story, merely grew interested and began to ask questions.
“What was the tune you heard?――can you remember it?”
Grif hesitated. “I think so.”
“Sing it――sing it,” the organist urged him with a curious eagerness,
and Grif sang the tune in an undertone.
The effect upon Mr. Bradley was remarkable. His eyes seemed to light up
with that strange, cat-like, amber-coloured light which now and then
came into them, and the expression of mysterious expectation upon his
face changed to one of certainty. “You had never heard it before? You
are quite sure you had never heard it before?”
“No, I don’t think so,” answered Grif, in surprise. “What is it? Is it
a real tune?”
“It is the tune I taught him,” Mr. Bradley whispered, laying his hand
on the little boy’s arm. “It is the last tune I taught him. He was to
have played it at the village concert.”
“Who?” asked round-eyed Grif.
Mr. Bradley pointed with his ebony stick to the grave beside them, and
somehow Grif did not need to be told any more.
Yet the knowledge came to him with a kind of shock, and a little shiver
passed through his body. He felt suddenly that he was alone here with
Mr. Bradley, and that he wanted to go home.
“It is the tune I was playing when I saw him――when he came back that
night in the church,” the organist went on in a low confidential voice,
his long thin fingers still clutching Grif tightly by the arm. “An old
Italian tune that I don’t suppose half a dozen people, apart from a
few musicians, have ever heard. It was written by an Italian organist
called Gian Peruzzi, nearly two hundred years ago. I got it along with
a heap of old church music.... You had better not talk about it.”
“Talk about it!”
“Don’t tell anybody about it;――even about hearing the flute at all.
Captain Batt would be very angry if he got to know. He would be angry
with me, and perhaps with you too, even though he wouldn’t believe you.
_I_ believe you, because I heard it myself, and because I know such
things happen.” He gave a strange low laugh, and his eyes slid away
from Grif to the grave, and back to Grif again.
“And did――he not play it at the concert?” Grif faltered, suddenly
feeling a peculiar reluctance to pronounce the player’s name.
Mr. Bradley shook his head. His eyes now gazed straight into Grif’s,
and they seemed to grow larger and brighter, so that the little boy
could not look away from them. “He died a week before the concert was
to have taken place.... But,” he added with a quick sly smile, “you
must promise me that you won’t mention this to anyone.”
Grif promised, and Mr. Bradley went on, speaking in the same low
stealthy voice which, though it was hardly raised above a whisper,
seemed to vibrate in Grif’s soul, clear and penetrating as the note of
a violin. “I wouldn’t have told you about it if it had not been that I
think you must be in danger, and that I ought to warn you, to put you
on your guard.”
“What danger?” Grif breathed nearly inaudibly.
Mr. Bradley’s eyes narrowed to two shining slits. “From him: it was you
he was playing to. And if he did that, don’t you see it can only be
because he wants to get at you in some way?”
“But――he is dead!” Grif whispered, trying to draw his arm from the
organist’s grip.
The long slender fingers held him like a steel trap. “There is no such
thing as death. The soul does not die. It goes away from the body, but
it does not go far. It comes back.”
“Why should he want to get at me?” Grif quavered uncertainly.
The organist cast a quick glance over his shoulder and laughed again.
“He wants you. You must have put yourself in touch with him in some
way. He wants you to go away and play with him――where he is now. He
finds it hard to come to you, and perhaps he can only do so at certain
times. For that matter, the dead are always trying to reach the living.
Sometimes they make use of dreams, sometimes they find other ways. He
is trying to lure you to him by the sound of his flute, and the more
you listen to him the closer he will come to you and the more power he
will get over you.”
“But――what does he want?” poor Grif asked again.
“I have told you what he wants,” said Mr. Bradley, impatiently. “He
wants you to be his playmate: he wants to take you into his country.
It is not anything dreadful. His country is really here, all around
us. Probably he feels lonely.... If you are frightened to go with him
you must be careful. There is danger everywhere. There is danger in
mirrors; there is danger in still water; there is danger at this moment
in sitting talking about him. Do you see how your shadow is lying just
across his grave?” (Grif drew back hastily.) “The soul and the shadow
are united very closely――far more closely than most people think. The
shadow is not really the image of the body at all. I will tell you some
day all about it, for I know――yes, I know.”
Grif was silent. He felt all at once quite weak and helpless, and he
no longer tried to draw away his arm. He wished now that he had not
promised to keep this unwelcome secret, but when he begged the organist
to let him off his promise he refused to do so.
“It wouldn’t do any good if you _did_ tell,” he repeated. “I have tried
to help you, but nobody can really help you. All depends upon yourself.”
“But I don’t want to die,” said Grif, tremulously.
Mr. Bradley received this remark with surprise. “Death is nothing,”
he declared. “All music is a preparation for death. It is a foretaste
of it. In music you live as you will live then, not as you live now
at ordinary times; and you are fond of music. All that you see about
you is only the reflection of the other world.” He took Grif’s hand
and patted it gently. “This hand here is nothing,” he said. “All it
can do is to feel pain. It is not _you_, it is not even a part of
you, it is no more a part of you than those old stones are. When you
are dreaming and happy do you ever miss your body? You have forgotten
about it, though it may be lying there, tossing a poor aching head upon
your pillow. Yet when you are dreaming you are alive, and playing in
beautiful meadows, and bathing in rivers, or singing music, or doing
any of the things you like to do at ordinary times――only far more
perfectly, and without any effort or tiredness. When you look at me now
I can see your spirit peeping out of your eyes. It is like you, but it
is brighter, gayer; it is laughing and merry, while you are frightened
and sad. If I called to it, ‘Grif! Grif!’ it would try to jump out and
scamper away over the fields. It would stand there for a moment on your
forehead while it shook out its wings: then――pouff!――it would be gone,
and I should see it glistening like a rainbow in the sunlight, and
dancing over the old graves and over the wall and over the church tower
and over the tops of the trees. And I should hear it singing, away――up,
up in the air, like a little brown lark.”
Grif began to laugh, and Mr. Bradley seeing him laugh laughed too,
though his eyes still shone with their strange yellow light.
“What time is it, please?” the little boy asked, and Mr. Bradley looked
at his watch.
“Ten minutes to six. Time is another nuisance you would be rid of.”
But Grif, finding himself free, had jumped to his feet. “I must go,”
he said quickly. “Tea is at six and I promised not to be late. I hate
promising things, because it makes you break your word when you don’t
mean to. Good-bye.”
He was gone before Mr. Bradley could even take a pinch of snuff.