ERNEST HENRY
I
Young Ernest Henry Wilberforce, who had only yesterday achieved his
second birthday, watched, with a speculative eye, his nurse. He was
seated on the floor with his back to the high window that was flaming
now with the light of the dying sun; his nurse was by the fire, her
head, shadowed huge and fantastic on the wall, nodded and nodded and
nodded. Ernest Henry was, in figure, stocky and square, with a head
round, hard, and covered with yellow curls; rather light and cold blue
eyes and a chin of no mean degree were further possessions. He was
wearing a white blouse, a white skirt, white socks and shoes; his legs
were fat and bulged above his socks; his cold blue eyes never moved from
his nurse's broad back.
He knew that, in a very short time, disturbance would begin. He knew
that doors would open and shut, that there would be movement, strange
noises, then an attack upon himself, ultimately a removal of him to
another place, a stripping off him of his blouse, his skirt, his socks
and his shoes, a loathsome and strangely useless application of soap and
water--it was only, of course, in later years that he learned the names
of those abominable articles--and, finally, finally darkness. All this
he felt hovering very close at hand; one nod too many of his nurse's
head, and up she would start, off she would go, off _he_ would go.... He
watched her and stroked very softly his warm, fat calf.
It was a fine, spacious room that he inhabited. The ceiling--very, very
far away--was white and glimmering with shadowy spaces of gold flung by
the sun across the breast of it. The wallpaper was dark-red, and there
were many coloured pictures of ships and dogs and snowy Christmases, and
swans eating from the hands of beautiful little girls, and one garden
with roses and peacocks and a tumbling fountain. To Ernest Henry these
were simply splashes of colour, and colour, moreover, scarcely so
convincing as the bright blue screen by the fire, or the golden brown
rug by the door; but he was dimly aware that, as the days passed, so
did he find more and more to consider in the shapes and sizes between
the deep black frames.... There might, after all, be something in it.
But it was not the pictures that he was now considering.
Before his nurse's descent upon him he was determined that he would
walk--not crawl, but walk in his socks and shoes--from his place by the
window to the blue screen by the fire. There had been days, and those
not so long ago, when so hazardous an Odyssey had seemed the vainest of
Blue Moon ambitions; it had once been the only rule of existence to
sprawl and roll and sprawl again; but gradually some further force had
stirred his limbs. It was a finer thing to be upright; there was a finer
view, a more lordly sense of possession could be summoned to one's
command. That, then, once decided, upright one must be and upright, with
many sudden and alarming collapses, Ernest Henry was.
He had marked out, from the first, the distance from the wall to the blue
screen as a very decent distance. There was, half-way, a large
rocking-chair that would be either a danger or a deliverance, as Fate
should have it. Save for this, it was, right across the brown, rose-strewn
carpet, naked country. Truly a perilous business. As he sat there and
looked at it, his heart a little misgave him; in this strange, new world
into which he had been so roughly hustled, amongst a horde of alarming and
painful occurrences, he had discovered nothing so disconcerting as that
sudden giving of the knees, that rising of the floor to meet you, the
collapse, the pain, and above all the disgrace. Moreover, let him fail
now, and it meant, in short,--banishment--banishment and then darkness.
There were risks. It was the most perilous thing that, in this new
country, he had yet attempted, but attempt it he would.... He was as
obstinate as his chin could make him.
With his blue eyes still cautiously upon his nurse's shadow he raised
himself very softly, his fat hand pressed against the wall, his mouth
tightly closed, and from between his teeth there issued the most distant
relation of that sound that the traditional ostler makes when he is
cleaning down a horse. His knees quivered, straightened; he was up. Far
away in the long, long distance were piled the toys that yesterday's
birthday had given him. They did not, as yet, mean anything to him at
all. One day, perhaps when he had torn the dolls limb from limb, twisted
the railways until they stood end upon end in sheer horror,
disembowelled the bears and golliwogs so that they screamed again, he
might have some personal feeling for them. At present there they lay in
shining impersonal newness, and there for Ernest Henry they might lie
for ever.
For an instant, his hand against the wall, he was straight and
motionless; then he took his hand away, and his journey began. At the
first movement a strange, an amazing glory filled him. From the instant,
two years ago, of his first arrival he had been disturbed by an
irritating sense of inadequacy; he had been sent, it seemed, into this
new and tiresome condition of things without any fitting provisions for
his real needs. Demands were always made upon him that were, in the
absurd lack of ways and means, impossible of fulfilment. But now, at
last, he was using the world as it should be used.... He was fine, he
was free, he was absolutely master. His legs might shake, his body lurch
from side to side, his breath come in agitating gasps and whistles; the
wall was now far behind him, the screen most wonderfully near, the
rocking-chair almost within his grasp. Great and mighty is Ernest Henry
Wilberforce, dazzling and again dazzling the lighted avenues opening now
before him; there is nothing, nothing, from the rendings of the toys to
the deliberate defiance of his nurse and all those in authority over
him, that he shall not now perform.... With a cry, with a wild wave of
the arms, with a sickening foretaste of the bump with which the gay
brown carpet would mark him, he was down, the Fates were upon him--the
disturbance, the disrobing, the darkness. Nevertheless, even as he was
carried, sobbing, into the farther room, there went with him a
consciousness that life would never again be quite the dull,
purposeless, monotonous thing that it had hitherto been.
II
After a long time he was alone. About him the room, save for the yellow
night-light above his head, was dark, humped with shadows, with grey
pools of light near the windows, and a golden bar that some lamp beyond
the house flung upon the wall. Ernest Henry lay and, now and again,
cautiously felt the bump on his forehead; there was butter on the bump,
and an interesting confusion and pain and importance round and about it.
Ernest Henry's eyes sought the golden bar, and then, lingering there,
looked back upon the recent adventure. He had walked; yes, he had
walked. This would, indeed, be something to tell his Friend.
His friend, he knew, would be very shortly with him. It was not every
night that he came, but always, before his coming, Ernest Henry knew of
his approach--knew by the happy sense of comfort that stole softly about
him, knew by the dismissal of all those fears and shapes and terrors
that, otherwise, so easily beset him. He sucked his thumb now, and felt
his bump, and stared at the ceiling and knew that he would come. During
the first months after Ernest Henry's arrival on this planet his friend
was never absent from him at all, was always there, drawing through his
fingers the threads of the old happy life and the new alarming one,
mingling them so that the transition from the one to the other might not
be too sharp--reassuring, comforting, consoling. Then there had been
hours when he had withdrawn himself, and that earlier world had grown a
little vaguer, a little more remote, and certain things, certain foods
and smells and sounds had taken their place within the circle of
realised facts. Then it had come to be that the friend only came at
night, came at that moment when the nurse had gone, when the room was
dark, and the possible beasts--the first beast, the second beast, and
the third beast--began to creep amongst those cool, grey shadows in the
hollow of the room. He always came then, was there with his arm about
Ernest Henry, his great body, his dark beard, his large, firm hands--all
so reassuring that the beasts might do the worst, and nothing could come
of it. He brought with him, indeed, so much more than himself--brought a
whole world of recollected wonders, of all that other time when Ernest
Henry had other things to do, other disciplines, other triumphs, other
defeats, and other glories. Of late his memory of the other time had
been untrustworthy. Things during the day-time would remind him, but
would remind him, nevertheless, with a strange mingling of the world at
present about him, so that he was not sure of his visions. But when his
friend was with him the memories were real enough, and it was the
nurse, the fire, the red wallpaper, the smell of toast, the taste of
warm milk, that were faint and shadowy.
His friend was there, just as always, suddenly sitting there on the bed
with his arm round Ernest Henry's body, his dark beard just tickling
Ernest Henry's neck, his hand tight about Ernest Henry's hand. They told
one another things in the old way without tiresome words and sounds;
but, for the benefit of those who are unfortunately too aged to remember
that old and pleasant intercourse, one must make use of the English
language. Ernest Henry displayed his bump, and explained its origin; and
then, even as he did so, was aware that the reality of the bump made the
other world just a little less real. He was proud that he had walked and
stood up, and had been the master of his circumstance; but just because
he had done so he was aware that his friend was a little, a very little
farther away to-night than he had ever been before.
"Well, I'm very glad that you're going to stand on your own, because
you'll have to. I'm going to leave you now--leave you for longer, far
longer than I've ever left you before."
"Leave me?"
"Yes. I shan't always be with you; indeed, later on you won't want me.
Then you'll forget me, and at last you won't even believe that I ever
existed--until, at the end of it all, I come to take you away. _Then_ it
will all come back to you."
"Oh, but that's absurd!" Ernest Henry said confidently. Nevertheless, in
his heart he knew that, during the day-time, other things did more and
more compel his attention. There were long stretches during the day-time
now when he forgot his friend.
"After your second birthday I always leave you more to yourselves. I
shall go now for quite a time, and you'll see that when the old feeling
comes, and you know that I'm coming back, you'll be quite startled and
surprised that you'd got on so well without me. Of course, some of you
want me more than others do, and with some of you I stay quite late in
life. There are one or two I never leave at all. But you're not like
that; you'll get on quite well without me."
"Oh, no, I shan't," said Ernest Henry, and he clung very tightly and
was most affectionate. But he suddenly put his fingers to his bump, felt
the butter, and his chin shot up with self-satisfaction.
"To-morrow I'll get ever so much farther," he said.
"You'll behave, and not mind the beasts or the creatures?" his friend
said. "You must remember that it's not the slightest use to call for me.
You're on your own. Think of me, though. Don't forget me altogether. And
don't forget all the other world in your new discoveries. Look out of
the window sometimes. That will remind you more than anything."
He had kissed him, had put his hand for a moment on Ernest Henry's
curls, and was gone. Ernest Henry, his thumb in his mouth, was fast
asleep.
III
Suddenly, with a wild, agonising clutch at the heart, he was awake. He
was up in bed, his hands, clammy and hot, pressed together, his eyes
staring, his mouth dry. The yellow night-light was there, the bars of
gold upon the walls, the cool, grey shadows, the white square of the
window; but there, surely, also, were the beasts. He knew that they were
there--one crouching right away there in the shadow, all black, damp;
one crawling, blacker and damper, across the floor; one--yes, beyond
question--one, the blackest and cruellest of them all, there beneath the
bed. The bed seemed to heave, the room flamed with terror. He thought of
his friend; on other nights he had invoked him, and instantly there had
been assurance and comfort. Now that was of no avail; his friend would
not come. He was utterly alone. Panic drove him; he thought that there,
on the farther side of the bed, claws and a black arm appeared. He
screamed and screamed and screamed.
The door was flung open, there were lights, his nurse appeared. He was
lying down now, his face towards the wall, and only dry, hard little
sobs came from him. Her large red hand was upon his shoulder, but
brought no comfort with it. Of what use was she against the three
beasts? A poor creature.... He was ashamed that he should cry before
her. He bit his lip.
"Dreaming, I suppose, sir," she said to some one behind her. Another
figure came forward. Some one sat down on the edge of the bed, put his
arm round Ernest Henry's body and drew him towards him. For one wild
moment Ernest Henry fancied that his friend had, after all, returned.
But no. He knew that these were the conditions of this world, not of
that other. When he crept close to his friend he was caught up into a
soft, rosy comfort, was conscious of nothing except ease and rest. Here
there were knobs and hard little buttons, and at first his head was
pressed against a cold, slippery surface that hurt. Nevertheless, the
pressure was pleasant and comforting. A warm hand stroked his hair. He
liked it, jerked his head up, and hit his new friend's chin.
"Oh, damn!" he heard quite clearly. This was a new sound to Ernest
Henry; but just now he was interested in sounds, and had learnt lately
quite a number. This was a soft, pleasant, easy sound. He liked it.
And so, with it echoing in his head, his curly head against his father's
shoulder, the bump glistening in the candle-light, the beasts defeated
and derided, he tumbled into sleep.
IV
A pleasant sight at breakfast was Ernest Henry, with his yellow curls
gleaming from his bath, his bib tied firmly under his determined chin,
his fat fingers clutching a large spoon, his body barricaded into a high
chair, his heels swinging and kicking and swinging again. Very fine,
too, was the nursery on a sunny morning--the fire crackling, the roses
on the brown carpet as lively as though they were real, and the whole
place glittering, glowing with size and cleanliness and vigour. In the
air was the crackling smell of toast and bacon, in a glass dish was
strawberry jam, through the half-open window came all the fun of the
Square--the sparrows, the carts, the motor-cars, the bells, and
horses.... Oh, a fine morning was fine indeed!
Ernest Henry, deep in the business of conveying securely his bread and
milk from the bowl--a beautiful bowl with red robins all round the
outside of it--to his mouth, laughed at the three beasts. Let them show
themselves here in the sunlight, and they'd see what they'd get. Let
them only dare!
He surveyed, with pleased anticipation, the probable progress of his
day. He glanced at the pile of toys in the farther corner of the room,
and thought to himself that he might, after all, find some diversion
there. Yesterday they had seemed disappointing; to-day in the glow of
the sun they suggested, adventure. Then he looked towards that stretch
of country--that wall-to-screen marathon--and, with an eye upon his
nurse, meditated a further attempt. He put down his spoon, and felt his
bump. It was better; perchance there would be two bumps by the evening.
And then, suddenly, he remembered.... He felt again the terror, saw the
lights and his nurse, then that new friend.... He pondered, lifted his
spoon, waved it in the air; and then smiling with the happy recovery of
a pleasant, friendly sound, repeated half to himself, half to his nurse:
"Damn! Damn! Damn!"
That began for him the difficulties of his day. He was hustled, shaken;
words, words, words were poured down upon him. He understood that, in
some strange, unexpected, bewildering fashion he had done wrong. There
was nothing more puzzling in his present surroundings than that
amazingly sudden transition from serenity to danger. Here one was, warm
with food, bathed in sunlight, with a fine, ripe day in front of one....
Then the mere murmur of a sound, and all was tragedy.
He hated his toys, his nurse, his food, his world; he sat in a corner of
the room and glowered.... How was he to know? If, under direct
encouragement, he could be induced to say "dada," or "horse," or
"twain," he received nothing but applause and, often enough, reward.
Yet, let him make use of that pleasant new sound that he had learnt, and
he was in disgrace. Upon this day, more than any other in his young
life, he ached, he longed for some explanation. Then, sitting there in
his corner, there came to him a discovery, the force of which was never,
throughout all his later life, to leave him. He had been deserted by his
friend. His last link with that other life was broken. He was here,
planted in the strangest of strange places, with nothing whatever to
help him. He was alone; he must fight for his own hand. He would--from
that moment, seated there beneath the window, Ernest Henry Wilberforce
challenged the terrors of this world, and found them sawdust--he would
say "damn" as often as he pleased. "Damn, damn, damn, damn," he
whispered, and marked again, with meditative eye, the space from wall to
screen.
After this, greatly cheered, he bethought him of the Square. Last night
his friend had said to him that when he wished to think of him, and go
back for a time to the other world, a peep into the Square would assist
him. He clambered up on to the window-seat, caught behind him those
sounds, "Now, Master Ernest," which he now definitely connected with
condemnation and disapproval, shook his curls in defiance, and pressed
his nose to the glass. The Square was a dazzling sight. He had not as
yet names for any of the things that he saw there, nor, when he went out
on his magnificent daily progress in his perambulator did he associate
the things that he found immediately around him with the things that he
saw from his lofty window; but, with every absorbed gaze they stood more
securely before him, and were fixed ever more firmly in his memory.
This was a Square with fine, white, lofty houses, and in the houses were
an infinite number of windows, sometimes gay and sometimes glittering.
In the middle of the Square was a garden, and in the middle of the
garden, very clearly visible from Ernest Henry's window, was a fountain.
It was this fountain, always tossing and leaping, that gave Ernest Henry
the key to his memories. Gazing at it he had no difficulty at all to
find himself back in the old life. Even now, although only two years had
passed, it was difficult not to reveal his old experiences by means of
terms of his new discoveries. He thought, for instance, of the fountain
as a door that led into the country whose citizen he had once been, and
that country he saw now in terms of doors and passages and rooms and
windows, whereas, in reality, it had been quite otherwise.
But now, perched up there on the window-sill, he felt that if he could
only bring the fountain in with him out of the Square into his nursery,
he would have the key to both existences. He wanted to understand--to
understand what was the relation between his friend who had left last
night, why he might say "dada," but mustn't say "damn," why, finally, he
was here at all. He did not consciously consider these things; his brain
was only very slightly, as yet, concerned in his discoveries; but, like
a flowing river, beneath his movements and actions, the interplay of
his two existences drove him on through, his adventure.
There were, of course, many other things in the Square besides the
fountain. There was, at the farther corner, just out of the Square, but
quite visible from Ernest Henry's window, a fruit-shop with coloured
fruit piled high on the boards outside the windows. Indeed, that side
street, of which one could only catch this glimpse, promised to be most
wonderful always; when evening came a golden haze hovered round and
about it. In the garden itself there were often many children, and for
an hour every afternoon Ernest Henry might be found amongst them. There
were two statues in the Square--one of a gentleman in a beard and a
frock-coat, the other of a soldier riding very finely upon a restless
horse; but Ernest Henry was not, as yet, old enough to realise the
meaning and importance of these heroes.
Outside the Square there were many dogs, and even now as he looked down
from his window he could see a number of them, black and brown and
white.
The trees trembled in a little breeze, the fountain flashed in the sun,
somewhere a barrel-organ was playing.... Ernest Henry gave a little
sigh, of satisfaction.
He was back! He was back! He was slipping, slipping into distance
through the window into the street, under the fountain, its glittering
arms had caught him; he was up, the door was before him, he had the key.
"Time for you to put your things on, Master Ernest. And 'ow you've
dirtied your knees! There! Look!"
He shook himself, clambered down from the window, gave his nurse what
she described as "One of his old, old looks. Might be eighty when he's
like that.... They're all like it when they're young."
With a sigh he translated himself back into this new, tiresome
existence.
V
But after that morning things were never again quite the same. He gave
himself up deliberately to the new life.
With that serious devotion towards anything likely to be of real
practical value to him that was, in his later years, never to fail him,
he attacked this business of "words." He discovered that if he made
certain sounds when certain things were said to him he provoked instant
applause. He liked popularity; he liked the rewards that popularity
brought him. He acquired a formula that amounted practically to "Wash
dat?" And whenever he saw anything new he produced his question. He
learnt with amazing rapidity. He was, his nurse repeatedly told his
father, "a most remarkable child."
It could not truthfully be said that during these weeks he forgot his
friend altogether. There were still the dark hours at night when he
longed for him, and once or twice he had cried aloud for him. But slowly
that slipped away. He did not look often now at the fountain.
There were times when his friend was almost there. One evening, kneeling
on the floor before the fire, arranging shining soldiers in a row, he
was aware of something that made him sharply pause and raise his head.
He was, for the moment, alone in the room that was glowing and quivering
now in the firelight. The faint stir and crackle of the fire, the rich
flaming colour that rose and fell against the white ceiling might have
been enough to make him wonder. But there was also the scent of a clump
of blue hyacinths standing in shadow by the darkened window, and this
scent caught him, even as the fountain had caught him, caught him with
the stillness, the leaping fire, the twisted sense of romantic
splendours that came, like some magician's smoke and flame, up to his
very heart and brain. He did not turn his head, but behind him he was
sure, there on the golden-brown rug, his friend was standing, watching
him with his smiling eyes, his dark beard; he would be ready, at the
least movement, to catch him up and hold him. Swiftly, Ernest Henry
turned. There was no one there.
But those moments were few now; real people were intervening. He had no
mother, and this was doubtless the reason why his nurse darkly addressed
him as "Poor Lamb" on many occasions; but he was, of course, at present
unaware of his misfortune. He _had_ an aunt, and of this lady he was
aware only too vividly. She was long and thin and black, and he would
not have disliked her so cordially, perhaps, had he not from the very
first been aware of the sharpness of her nose when she kissed him. Her
nose hurt him, and so he hated her. But, as he grew, he discovered that
this hatred was well-founded. Miss Wilberforce had not a happy way with
children; she was nervous when she should have been bold, and secret
when she should have been honesty itself. When Ernest Henry was the
merest atom in a cradle, he discovered that she was afraid of him; he
hated the shiny stuff of her dress. She wore a gold chain that--when you
pulled it--snapped and hit your fingers. There were sharp pins at the
back of her dress. He hated her; he was not afraid of her, and yet on
that critical night when his friend told him of his departure, it was
the fear of being left alone with the black cold shiny thing that
troubled him most; she bore of all the daylight things the closest
resemblance to the three beasts.
There was, of course, his nurse, and a great deal of his time was spent
in her company; but she had strangely little connection with his main
problem of the relation of this, his present world, to that, his
preceding one. She was there to answer questions, to issue commands, to
forbid. She had the key to various cupboards--to the cupboard with
pretty cups and jam and sugar, to the cupboard with ugly things that
tasted horrible, things that he resisted by instinct long before they
arrived under his nose. She also had certain sounds, of which she made
invariable use on all occasions. One was, "Now, Master Ernest!" Another:
"Mind-what-you're-about-now!" And, at his "Wash dat!" always
"Oh-bother-the-boy!" She was large and square to look upon, very often
pins were in her mouth, and the slippers that she wore within doors
often clipclapped upon the carpet. But she was not a person; she had
nothing to do with his progress.
The person who had to do with it was, of course, his father. That night
when his friend had left him had been, indeed, a crisis, because it was
on that night that his father had come to him. It was not that he had
not been aware of his father before, but he had been aware of him only
as he had been aware of light and heat and food. Now it had become a
definite wonder as to whether this new friend had been sent to take the
place of the old one. Certainly the new friend had very little to do
with all that old life of which the fountain was the door. He belonged,
most definitely, to the new one, and everything about him--the
delightfully mysterious tick of his gold watch, the solid, firm grasp of
his hand, the sure security of his shoulder upon which Ernest Henry now
gloriously rode--these things were of this world and none other.
It was a different relationship, this, from any other that Ernest Henry
had ever known, but there was no doubt at all about its pleasant
flavour. Just as in other days he had watched for his friend's
appearance, so now he waited for that evening hour that always brought
his father. The door would open, the square, set figure would appear....
Very pleasant, indeed. Meanwhile Ernest Henry was instructed that the
right thing to say on his father's appearance was "Dada."
But he knew better. His father's name was really "Damn."
VI
The days and weeks passed. There had been no sign of his friend.... Then
the crisis came.
That old wall-to-screen marathon had been achieved, and so
contemptuously banished. There was now the great business of marching
without aid from one end of the room to the other. This was a long
business, and always hitherto somewhere about the middle of it Ernest
Henry had sat down suddenly, pretending, even to himself, that his shoe
_hurt_, or that he was bored with the game, and would prefer some other.
There came, then, a beautiful spring evening. The long low evening sun
flooded the room, and somewhere a bell was calling Christian people to
their prayers, and somewhere else the old man with the harp, who always
came round the Square once every week, was making beautiful music.
Ernest Henry's father had taken the nurse's place for an hour, and was
reading a _Globe_ with absorbed attention by the window; Mr.
Wilberforce, senior, was one of London's most famous barristers, and the
_Globe_ on this particular afternoon had a great deal to say about this
able man's cleverness. Ernest Henry watched his father, watched the
light, heard the bell and the harp, felt that the hour was ripe for his
attempt.
He started, and, even as he did so, was aware that, after he had
succeeded in this great adventure, things--that is, life--would never be
quite the same again. He knew by now every stage of the first half of
his journey. The first instalment was defined by that picture of the
garden and the roses and the peacocks; the second by the beginning of
the square brown nursery table; and here there was always a swift and
very testing temptation to cling, with a sticky hand, to the hard and
shining corner. The third division was the end of the nursery table
where one was again tempted to give the corner a final clutch before
passing forth into the void. After this there was nothing, no rest, no
possible harbour until the end.
Off Ernest Henry started. He could see his father, there in the long
distance, busied with his paper; he could see the nursery table, with
bright-blue and red reels of cotton that nurse had left there; he could
see a discarded railway engine that lay gaping there half-way across,
ready to catch and trip him if he were not careful. His eyes were like
saucers, the hissing noise came from between his teeth, his forehead
frowned. He passed the peacock, he flung contemptuously aside the
proffered corner of the table; he passed, as an Atlantic liner passes
the Eddystone, the table's other end; he was on the last stretch.
Then suddenly he paused. He lifted his head, caught with his eye a pink,
round cloud that sailed against the evening blue beyond the window,
heard the harpist, heard his father turn and exclaim, as he saw him.
He knew, as he stood there, that at last the moment had come. His friend
had returned.
All the room was buzzing with it. The dolls fell in a neglected heap,
the train on the carpet, the fire behind the fender, the reels of cotton
that were on the table--they all knew it.
His friend had returned.
His impulse was, there and then, to sit down.
His friend was whispering: "Come along!... Come along!... Come along!"
He knew that, on his surrender, his father would make sounds like,
"Well, old man, tired, eh? Bed, I suggest." He knew that bed would
follow. Then darkness, then his friend.
For an instant there was fierce battle between the old forces and the
new. Then, with his eyes upon his father, resuming that hiss that is
proper only to ostlers, he continued his march.
He reached the wall. He caught his father's leg. He was raised on to his
father's lap, was kissed, was for a moment triumphant; then suddenly
burst into tears.
"Why, old man, what's the matter?"
But Ernest Henry could not explain. Had he but known it he had, in that
rejection of his friend, completed the first stage of his "Pilgrimage
from this world to the next."