GRIF FALLS ASLEEP
‘What peace doth now
Rock him asleep.’
――_Vaughan._
Owing to what the doctor had said it was decided that Grif was not
to go to school till an answer should have been received to Aunt
Caroline’s letter:――Edward and Palmer would be returning next week.
It was on a morning towards the end of September that he wandered away
by himself, and his feet of their own accord seemed to take, as they
very often did just now, the direction of the churchyard.
The rebuilding of the church had not yet been begun, though the canon
hoped to see it well in progress before the year was out. Grif’s head
was bent, and there was a certain drag in his walk, as if all volition
had gone out of it, and he were merely obeying a summons. As he reached
the low wall he paused and a look of aversion came into his eyes.
Pouncer was with him, and Pouncer, too, appeared to feel his master’s
depression. A heaviness of autumn was over them, and in the grey
stagnant air each sound――the rattle of a passing cart, the cry of a boy
driving sheep――dropped like a stone into a pond, became lost in the
silence which spread above it again, sending only a faint ripple out to
some eternal shore.
He looked at the reddening blackberry-leaves; he stroked them softly:
and, had anyone been there to see it, there must have seemed something
peculiarly pathetic in that simple action. Then, in the distance, he
heard the hoot of an approaching motor. It told him that the doctor
was coming, and for some obscure reason he was seized by a desire to
hide. He climbed the wall and crouched down below it on the other
side, holding Pouncer close to him till the car had passed. Then he
wondered why he had hidden. He did not know why; only from day to day
the instinct was growing stronger and stronger within him to hide from
everything.
The passing of the doctor reminded him of the drive they had taken
together, and of the promise he had then made to go to see the Batts.
He had not kept his promise: he had not been able to keep it; for it
seemed to require an almost impossible effort of will now to do even
the simplest things.
At length he conquered his listlessness and climbed back into the road.
He actually ran for a little way, trying to get out of sight of the
churchyard as quickly as possible, as if he feared to walk on and on,
as he sometimes did in a nightmare, and still find it close beside him.
Even Pouncer appeared to be affected by the same idea, for he raced
ahead, barking and puffing, spreading out his legs in a clumsy gallop.
Gradually Grif’s feet began to move more slowly, and at last he came to
a complete standstill in the middle of the road. Pouncer looked back at
him anxiously, still keeping a little in front, but the boy remained
motionless, his eyes half shut. He wanted to go on, yet something
called him back. In a vague way he realized that he had reached a sort
of crisis, and that defeat, should it occur again, would this time be
permanent....
He felt Pouncer beside him, licking his hand. He moved on blindly. A
dead stillness seemed to have fallen over everything, and the very air
appeared to push him back, to bar his progress, to be like the dense
and clinging weeds which thicken a stagnant pool.
He stumbled on, and presently the old garden wall rose before him, and
with that his pace quickened. He reached the gate and pushed it open.
He found Captain Narcissus at work, clipping one of the box-trees,
which was cut into the shape of a bird; but Grif did not stay long with
him, for the captain told him to run on in and see Miss Nancy.
Leaving Pouncer outside, he entered the house, and there a servant
told him that Miss Nancy was up in her own room. He went upstairs, and
as he pushed open the door he saw her seated near the window, hemming
curtains; but as soon as he entered she put down her work and caught
him in her arms. She did not ask him why he had not come to them for
so long; she did not ask about his illness, though she was shocked at
the change in his appearance; she simply accepted him as he was. After
a little she took up her work again, and Grif, sitting on a stool at
her feet, leaned against her knee. And presently of his own accord
he told her why he had not been, or tried to tell her, for his chief
explanation was that something had prevented him from coming. “I have
not been very well,” he said.
“But you must get quite strong before you go home,” Miss Nancy smiled.
She looked down at him, as he sat gazing far away out of the window,
and a dimness rose in her eyes as she stroked his hair.
“Yes. I think――I think I could get well here.”
The dreamy words seemed to her to have a strange meaning, and she bent
a little lower. “What is it, Grif?” she asked gently. “Won’t you tell
me what it is?”
He tried to tell her, but the story, which had never passed his lips
till then, seemed loth to pass them now.
She listened, but it was not at once that she understood the meaning of
his words. When it did come to her, it came in a single illuminating
flash, and she saw it all from the beginning. She saw it, and she saw
its horror; and what made its horror was that he himself did not, or
could not, perceive it in the light of delusion. She felt an infinite
compassion for him, but she said nothing, letting him finish out his
tale to the end.
His head leaned against her lap, and his eyes were nearly closed.
She held his hand in hers, his brown thin hand, which seemed dry and
fragile as a winter leaf.
“But that was not Billy,” she said to him, in a low voice. “He was not
like that: he never could be like that. It is some cruel falsehood
which has been dropped into your mind, and grown up there.... Come
with me to Billy’s room now, and I will show you his things, and tell
you about him.”
She got up, and, holding Grif’s hand, took him into a bright still room
overlooking the garden. A robin was chirping on the window-sill, but he
did not fly away when they entered.
“See, these are his toys,” she said. “He was just an ordinary boy.
This is his stamp-book; this is the museum he made with things his
grandfather gave him; these are his soldiers, and this is the boat he
used to sail on the pond and on the river. These are his skates, and
these are his books――I expect you have read most of them――_Huckleberry
Finn_, _Twenty-thousand Leagues under the Sea_, _The Young Fur
Traders_, _Nat the Naturalist_.... And this is his picture hanging on
the wall.”
Grif looked at the laughing, merry face, and as he did so something
which had been coiled about his mind ever since the afternoon before
his illness, seemed to drop away. It was as if a window had been opened
into his soul, letting in the fresh clean air and the sunshine, letting
in the song of the robin and the blue sky and the wind. He shuddered
for a moment, as a kind of ecstasy of relief swept up through him. He
gave a little sharp cry as he buried his face against Miss Nancy. “I
know now――I know now,” he whispered. “It is all different.”
The rapture of freedom, of happiness, seemed to beat upon his heart,
and he sobbed with the joy of its healing, cleansing waves, which
rushed over him and through him. He had turned very white, and Miss
Nancy, leading him to the big rocking-chair by the window-seat, sat
down there and drew him to her. He was so light that she scarcely felt
his weight as she held him in her arms, held him closely, his dark head
pillowed on her breast. The white face sank lower on her shoulder, and
in a little while he became very quiet, so that she knew, looking down
at his shut eyes, that he had fallen asleep. “He will get well now,”
she whispered to herself. “He is well already.” And her lips moved in a
silent prayer. “When he wakens up he will be happy. All this will have
passed from him, and he will be well and strong.”
Outside, the robin continued to sing, and a low, sweet, humming noise
told her that Captain Narcissus had begun to cut the grass. The sound
of the lawn-mower rose, monotonous and pleasant, a pleasant soothing
music, which seemed to bring back the spirit of the dying summer. She
sat on, listening to it, and thinking of the boy lying so quietly in
her arms. At last the noise ceased, and she guessed that the Captain
was coming indoors. Probably it was nearly lunch-time.
“Shall we go downstairs?” Miss Nancy whispered, for Grif was sleeping
now so lightly that she could not hear his breathing, could not even
hear it when she bent her head till her lips touched his hair.
But Grif slept on.
THE END.
_Printed by_ Butler & Tanner _Frome and London_
SELECTIONS FROM
MR. EDWARD ARNOLD’S
LIST OF
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Verdun to the Vosges. Impressions of the War on the Fortress Frontier
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“A deeply impressive, well-informed book. Mr. Campbell’s book will well
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A French Mother in War time. By MADAME E. DRUMONT. Translated by MISS
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With Our Army in Flanders, 1915. By G. VALENTINE WILLIAMS.
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The Capture of De Wet. Including a Short Account of the Conquest of
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“_I have perused the work with interest, and must congratulate you on
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Eye-Witness’s Narrative of the War. From the Marne to Neuve Chapelle,
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LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 & 43, MADDOX STREET, W.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_); text in
bold by “equal” signs (=bold=).
――Printer’s, punctuation, and spelling inaccuracies were silently
corrected.
――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.