GIANTS' BREAD
A NOVEL OF ROMANCE AND SUSPENSE BY
MARY WESTMACOTT
ALSO KNOWN
AS
AGATHA CHRISTIE
Copyright 1930 by Doubleday, Doran & Company
* * * * *
_Books by Mary Westmacott_
GIANTS' BREAD
UNFINISHED PORTRAIT
ABSENT IN THE SPRING
THE ROSE AND THE YEW TREE
A DAUGHTER'S A DAUGHTER
THE BURDEN
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
Book I ABBOTS PUISSANTS
Book II NELL
Book III JANE
Book IV WAR
Book V GEORGE GREEN
GIANTS' BREAD
Prologue
It was the opening night of London's new National Opera House and
consequently an occasion. Royalty was there. The Press were there. The
fashionable were there in large quantities. Even the musical, by hook
and by crook, had managed to be there--mostly very high up in the final
tier of seats under the roof.
The musical composition given was _The Giant_, a new work by a
hitherto unknown composer, Boris Groen. In the interval after the first
part of the performance a listener might have collected the following
scraps of conversation:
"Quite divine, darling." "They say it's simply the--the--_the_
latest!! Everything out of tune on purpose ... and you have to read
Einstein in order to understand it...." "Yes, dear, I shall tell
everyone it's too marvellous. But, privately, it does make one's head
ache!"
"Why can't they open a British opera house with a decent British
composer? All this Russian tomfoolery!" Thus a peppery colonel.
"Quite so," drawled his companion. "But, you see, there are no British
composers. Sad, but there it is!"
"Nonsense--don't tell me, sir. They just won't give them a
chance--that's what it is. Who is this fellow Levinne? A dirty foreign
Jew. That's all he is!"
A man near by, leaning against the wall half concealed by a curtain,
permitted himself to smile--for he was Sebastian Levinne, sole owner of
the National Opera House, familiarly known by the title of the World's
Greatest Showman.
He was a big man, rather too well covered with flesh. His face was
yellow and impassive, his eyes beady and black, two enormous ears stood
out from his head and were the joy of caricaturists.
The surge of talk eddied past him.
"Decadent ... morbid ... neurotic ... childish...."
Those were critics.
"Devastating ... too divine ... marvellous, my dear...."
Those were women.
"The thing's nothing but a glorified revue." "Amazing effects in the
second part, I believe. Machinery, you know. This first part, 'Stone,'
is only a kind of introduction. They say old Levinne has simply gone
all out over this. Never been anything like it." "Music's pretty weird,
isn't it?" "Bolshy idea, I believe. Noise orchestras, don't they call
them?"
Those were young men, more intelligent than the women, less prejudiced
than the critics.
"It won't catch on. A stunt, thath all. Yet, I don't know--there's a
feeling for this cubist thtuff." "Levinne's shrewd." "Dropths money
deliberately thometimes--but getth it back." "Cost...?" The voices
dropped, hushed themselves mysteriously as sums of money were mentioned.
Those were members of his own race. Sebastian Levinne smiled.
A bell rang--slowly the crowd drifted and eddied back to their seats.
There was a wait, filled with chattering and laughter--then the lights
wavered and sank. The conductor mounted to his place. In front of him
was an orchestra just six times as large as any Covent Garden orchestra
and quite unlike an ordinary orchestra. There were strange instruments
in it of shining metal like misshapen monsters, and in one corner an
unaccustomed glitter of crystal. The conductor's baton was stretched
out, then fell, and immediately there was a low rhythmic beating as of
hammers on anvils. Every now and then a beat was missed--lost--and then
came floating back taking its place out of turn, jostling the others.
The curtain rose....
At the back of a box on the second tier Sebastian Levinne stood and
watched.
This was no opera, as commonly understood. It told no story, featured
no individuals. Rather was it on the scale of a gigantic Russian
ballet. It contained spectacular effects. Strange and weird effects
of lighting--effects that were Levinne's own inventions. His revues
had for long been proclaimed as the last word in sheer spectacular
sensation. Into this, more artist than producer, he had put the whole
force of his imagination and experience.
The prologue had represented Stone--Man's infancy.
This--the body of the work--was a supreme pageant of
machinery--fantastic, almost awful. Power houses, dynamos, factory
chimneys, cranes, all merging and flowing. And men--armies of men--with
cubist robot faces--defiling in patterns.
The music swelled and eddied--a deep sonorous clamour came from the new
strangely shaped metal instruments. A queer high sweet note sounded
above it all, like the ringing of innumerable glasses.
There was an Episode of Skyscrapers--New York seen upside down as from
a circling aëroplane in the early dawn of morning. And the strange
inharmonious rhythm beat ever more insistently, with increasing
menacing monotony. It drew on through other episodes to its climax:
a giant-seeming steel erection--thousands of steel faced men welded
together into a Giant Collective Man.
The Epilogue followed immediately. There was no interval, the lights
did not go up.
Only one side of the orchestra spoke. What was called in the new modern
phrase "the Glass."
Clarion ringing notes.
The curtain dissolved into mist ... the mist parted ... the sudden
glare made one wish to shield one's eyes.
Ice--nothing but ice ... great bergs and glaciers ... shining.
And on the top immense pinnacle a little figure--facing away from the
audience toward the insufferable glare that represented the rising of
the sun....
The ridiculous puny figure of a man.
The glare increased--to the whiteness of magnesium. Hands went
instinctively to eyes with a cry of pain.
The glass rang out--high and sweet--then crashed--and broke--literally
broke--into tinkling fragments.
The curtain dropped and the lights rose.
Sebastian Levinne with an impassive face received various
congratulations and side hits.
"Well, you've done it this time, Levinne. No half measures, eh?"
"A damned fine show, old man. Blessed if I know what it's all about,
though."
"The Giant, eh? That's true, we live in an age of machinery all right."
"Oh! Mr. Levinne, it's simply too frightening for words! I shall dream
of that horrid steel Giant."
"Machinery as the Giant that devours, eh? Not far wrong, Levinne. We
want to get back to Nature. Who's Groen? A Russian?"
"Yes, who's Groen? He's a genius, whoever he is. The Bolshevists can
boast they've produced one composer at last."
"Too bad, Levinne, you've gone Bolshy. Collective Man. Collective
Music, too."
"Well, Levinne, good luck to you. Can't say I like this damned
caterwauling they call music nowadays, but it's a good show."
Almost last came a little old man, slightly bent, with one shoulder
higher than the other. He said with a very distinct utterance:
"Like to give me a drink, Sebastian?"
Levinne nodded. This little old man was Carl Bowerman, the most
distinguished of English musical critics. They went together to
Levinne's own sanctum.
In Levinne's room they settled down in two armchairs. Levinne provided
his guest with a whisky and soda. Then he looked across at him
inquiringly. He was anxious for this man's verdict.
"Well?"
Bowerman did not reply for a minute or two. At last he said slowly:
"I am an old man. There are things in which I take pleasure; there
are other things--such as the music of to-day--which do not give me
pleasure. But all the same I know genius when I meet it. There are a
hundred charlatans--a hundred breakers down of tradition who think
that by doing so they have accomplished something wonderful. And there
is the hundred and first--a creator, a man who steps boldly into the
future."
He paused, then went on:
"Yes, I know genius when I meet it. I may not like it--but I
recognize it. Groen, whoever he is, has genius.... _The music of
to-morrow...._"
Again he paused, and again Levinne did not interrupt, but waited.
"I don't know whether your venture will succeed or fail. I think
succeed--but that will be mainly because of your personality. You have
the art of forcing the public to accept what you want them to accept.
You have a talent for success. You've made a mystery about Groen--part
of your press campaign, I suppose."
He looked at Sebastian keenly.
"I don't want to interfere with your press campaign, but tell me one
thing--Groen's an Englishman, isn't he?"
"Yes. How did you know, Bowerman?"
"Nationality in music is unmistakable. He has studied in the Russian
revolutionary school, yes--but--well, as I said nationality is
unmistakable. There have been pioneers before him--people who have
tried tentatively the things he has accomplished. We've had our English
school--Holst, Vaughan Williams, Arnold Bax. All over the world
musicians have been drawing nearer to the new ideal--the Absolute in
Music. This man is the direct successor of that boy who was killed in
the war. What was his name? Deyre--Vernon Deyre. He had promise." He
sighed. "I wonder, Levinne, how much we lost through the war."
"It's difficult to say, sir."
"It doesn't bear thinking of. No, it doesn't bear thinking of." He
rose. "I mustn't keep you. You've a lot to do, I know." A faint smile
showed on his face. "_The Giant!_ You and Groen have your little
joke all to yourselves, I fancy. Everyone takes it for granted the
Giant is the Moloch of Machinery. They don't see that the real Giant
is that pigmy figure--man. The individualist who endures through Stone
and Iron and who, though civilization crumble and die, fights his way
through yet another Glacial Age to rise in a new civilization of which
we do not dream."
His smile broadened.
"As I grow older I am more and more convinced that there is nothing so
pathetic, so ridiculous, so absurd, and so absolutely wonderful as Man."
He paused by the doorway, his hand on the knob.
"One wonders," he said, "what has gone to the making of a thing like
the Giant? What produces it? What feeds it? Heredity shapes the
instrument--environment polishes and rounds it off--sex wakens it....
But there's more than that. There's its food.
"_Fee, fie, fo, fum,
I smell the blood of mortal Man.
Be he alive or be he dead,
I'll grind his bones to make my bread._
"A cruel giant, genius, Levinne! A monster feeding on flesh and blood.
I know nothing about Groen, yet I'd swear that he's fed his Giant with
his own flesh and blood and perhaps the flesh and blood of others
too.... Their bones ground to make the Giant's bread....
"I'm an old man, Levinne. I have my fancies. We've seen the end
to-night--I'd like to know the beginning."
"Heredity--environment--sex," said Levinne slowly.
"Yes. Just that. Not that I have any hopes of your telling me."
"You think I--know?"
"I'm sure you know."
There was a silence.
"Yes," said Levinne at last, "I do know. I would tell you the whole
story if I could ... but I cannot. There are reasons."
He repeated slowly: "There are reasons."
"A pity. It would have been interesting."
"I wonder...."
Book I
ABBOTS PUISSANTS
chapter 1
There were only three people of real importance in Vernon's world:
Nurse, God, and Mr. Green.
There were, of course, the nursemaids. Winnie, the present one, and
behind her Jane and Annie and Sarah and Gladys. Those were all the ones
that Vernon could remember, but there were lots more. Nursery maids
never stayed long because they couldn't get on with Nurse. They hardly
counted in Vernon's world.
There was also a kind of twin deity called Mummy-Daddy mentioned by
Vernon in his prayers and also connected with going down to dessert.
They were shadowy figures, rather beautiful and wonderful--especially
Mummy--but they again did not belong to the real world--Vernon's world.
The things in Vernon's world were very real indeed. There was the
drugget on the nursery floor, for instance. It was of green and white
stripes and rather scrubbly to bare knees, and in one corner of it was
a hole which Vernon used surreptitiously to make bigger by working
his fingers round in it. There were the nursery walls where mauve
irises twined themselves interminably upward round a pattern that was
sometimes diamonds and sometimes, if you looked at it long enough,
crosses. That seemed very interesting to Vernon and rather magical.
There was a rocking horse against one wall, but Vernon seldom rode on
it. There was a basket-work engine and some basket-work trucks which he
played with a good deal. There was a low cupboard full of more or less
dilapidated toys. On an upper shelf were the more delectable contents
that you played with on a wet day or when Nurse was in an unusually
good temper. The Paint Box was there and the Real Camel Hair Brushes
and a heap of illustrated papers for Cutting Out. In fact, all the
things that Nurse said were "that messy she couldn't abear them about."
In other words, the best things.
And in the centre of this realistic nursery universe, dominating
everything, was Nurse herself. Person No. 1 of Vernon's Trinity. Very
big and broad, very starched and crackling. Omniscient and omnipotent.
You couldn't get the better of Nurse. She knew better than little boys.
She frequently said so. Her whole lifetime had been spent looking after
little boys (and incidentally little girls, too, but Vernon was not
interested in them) and one and all they had grown up to be a Credit
to her. She said so and Vernon believed her. He had no doubt that he
also would grow up to be a Credit to her, though sometimes it didn't
seem likely. There was something awe-inspiring about Nurse, but at the
same time infinitely comfortable. She knew the answer to everything.
For instance, Vernon propounded the riddle about the diamonds and the
crosses on the wall paper.
"Ah! well," said Nurse, "there's two ways of looking at everything. You
must have heard that."
And as Vernon had heard her say much the same to Winnie one day, he was
soothed and satisfied. On the occasion in question Nurse had gone on to
say that there were always two sides to a question and in future Vernon
always visualized a question as something like a letter A with crosses
creeping up one side of it and diamonds going down the other.
After Nurse, there was God. God was also very real to Vernon, mainly
because he bulked so largely in Nurse's conversation. Nurse knew most
things that you did, but God knew _everything_, and God was, if
anything, more particular than Nurse. You couldn't see God, which,
Vernon always felt, gave him rather an unfair advantage over you,
because he could see you. Even in the dark he could see you. Sometimes,
when Vernon was in bed at night, the thought of God looking down at him
through the darkness used to give him a creepy feeling down the spine.
But on the whole, God was an intangible person compared with Nurse.
You could conveniently forget about him most of the time. That was,
until Nurse lugged him deliberately into the conversation.
Once Vernon essayed revolt.
"Nurse, do you know what I shall do when I'm dead?"
Nurse, who was knitting stockings, said: "One, two, three, four--there
now, I've dropped a stitch. No, Master Vernon, I'm sure I don't."
"I shall go to Heaven--I shall go to Heaven--and I shall go right up to
God--right up to him I shall go, and I shall say: 'You're an 'orrible
man and I 'ate you!'"
Silence. It was done. He had said it. Unbelievable, unparalleled
audacity! What would happen? What awful punishment terrestrial or
celestial would descend upon him? He waited--breathless.
Nurse had picked up the stitch. She looked at Vernon over the top of
her spectacles. She was serene--unruffled.
"It's not likely," she remarked, "that the Almighty will take any
notice of what a naughty little boy says. Winnie, give me those
scissors, if you please."
Vernon retired crestfallen. It was no good. You couldn't down Nurse. He
might have known.
_2_
And then there was Mr. Green. Mr. Green was like God in that you
couldn't see him, but to Vernon he was very real. He knew, for
instance, exactly what Mr. Green looked like--of middle height, rather
stout, a faint resemblance to the village grocer who sang an uncertain
baritone in the village choir, bright-red cheeks and mutton-chop
whiskers. His eyes were blue, a very bright blue. The great thing about
Mr. Green was that he played--he loved playing. Whatever game Vernon
thought of, that was just the game that Mr. Green loved to play. There
were other points about him. He had, for instance, a hundred children.
And three others. The hundred, in Vernon's mind, were kept intact, a
joyous mob that raced down the yew alleys behind Vernon and Mr. Green.
But the three others were different. They were called by the three most
beautiful names that Vernon knew: Poodle, Squirrel and Tree.
Vernon was, perhaps, a lonely little boy, but he never knew it.
Because, you see, he had Mr. Green and Poodle, Squirrel, and Tree to
play with.
_3_
For a long time Vernon was undecided as to where Mr. Green's home was.
It came to him quite suddenly that of course Mr. Green lived in the
Forest. The Forest had always been fascinating to Vernon. One side of
the Park bordered on it. There were high green palings and Vernon used
to creep along them hoping for a crack that would let him see through.
There were whisperings and sighings and rustlings all along, as though
the trees were speaking to each other. Halfway down there was a door,
but alas, it was always locked, so that Vernon could never see what it
was really like inside the Forest.
Nurse, of course, would never take him there. She was like all nurses
and preferred a good steady walk along the road, and no messing your
feet up with them nasty damp leaves. So Vernon was never allowed to go
in the Forest. It made him think of it all the more. Some day he would
take tea there with Mr. Green. Poodle and Squirrel and Tree were to
have new suits for the occasion.
_4_
The nursery palled on Vernon. It was too small. He knew all there
was to know about it. The garden was different. It was really a very
exciting garden. There were so many different bits of it. The long
walks between the clipped yew hedges with their ornamental birds, the
water garden with the fat goldfish, the walled fruit garden, the wild
garden with its almond trees in springtime and the copse of silver
birch trees with bluebells growing underneath, and best of all the
railed-off bit where the ruins of the old Abbey were. That was the
place where Vernon would have liked to be left to his own devices--to
climb and explore. But he never was. The rest of the garden he did
much as he liked in. Winnie was always sent out with him, but since by
a remarkable coincidence they always seemed to encounter the second
gardener, he could play his own games unhindered by too much kind
attention on Winnie's part.
_5_
Gradually Vernon's world widened. The twin star, Mummy-Daddy,
separated, became two distinct people. Daddy remained nebulous, but
Mummy became quite a personage. She often paid visits to the nursery to
"play with my darling little boy." Vernon bore her visits with grave
politeness, though it usually meant giving up the game that he himself
was engaged upon and accepting one which was not, in his opinion,
nearly so good. Lady visitors would sometimes come with her, and then
she would squeeze Vernon tightly (which he hated) and cry.
"It's so wonderful to be a mother! I never get used to it! To have a
darling baby boy of one's very own!"
Very red, Vernon would extricate himself from her embrace. Because he
wasn't a baby boy at all. He was three years old.
Looking across the room one day, just after a scene like the above,
he saw his father standing by the nursery door with sardonic eyes,
watching him. Their eyes met. Something seemed to pass between them:
comprehension--a sense of kinship.
His mother's friends were talking.
"Such a pity, Myra, that he doesn't take after you. Your hair would be
too lovely on a child."
But Vernon had a sudden feeling of pride. He was like his father.
_6_
Vernon always remembered the day that the American lady came to lunch.
To begin with, because of Nurse's explanations about America which, as
he realized later, she confused with Australia.
He went down to dessert in an awe-stricken state. If this lady had been
at home in her own country she would be walking about upside down with
her head hanging down. Quite enough, this, to make him stare. And then,
too, she used odd words for the simplest things.
"Isn't he too cute? See here, honey, I've gotten a box of candy for
you. Won't you come and fetch it?"
Vernon came gingerly; accepted the present. The lady clearly didn't
know what she was talking about. It wasn't candy, but good Edinburgh
Rock.
There were two gentlemen there also, one the husband of the American
lady. This one said:
"Do you know half a crown, my boy, when you see it?"
And it presently turned out that the half crown was to be for his very
own to keep. Altogether it was a wonderful day.
Vernon had never thought very much about his home. He knew that it was
bigger than the Vicarage where he sometimes went to tea, but he seldom
played with any other children or went to their homes. So it came to
him with a shock of wonder that day. The visitors were taken all over
the house, and the American lady's voice rose ceaselessly.
"My, if that isn't too wonderful! Did you ever see such a thing? Five
hundred years, you say? Frank, listen to that. Henry the Eighth--if
it isn't just like listening to English history. And the Abbey older
still, you say?"
They went everywhere, through the long picture gallery where faces
strangely like Vernon's, with dark eyes set close together and narrow
heads, looked out from the painted canvas arrogantly or with cold
tolerance. There were meek women there in ruffs or with pearls twisted
in their hair--the Deyre women had done best to be meek, married to
wild lords who knew neither fear nor pity--who looked appraisingly at
Myra Deyre, the last of their number, as she walked beneath them. From
the picture gallery they went to the square hall, and from there to the
Priest's Chamber.
Vernon had been removed by Nurse long since. They found him again in
the garden feeding the goldfish. Vernon's father had gone into the
house to get the keys of the Abbey ruins. The visitors were alone.
"My, Frank," said the American lady, "isn't it _too_ wonderful?
All these years. Handed down from father to son. Romantic, that's what
I call it, just too romantic for anything. All these years. Just fancy!
How is it done?"
It was then that the other gentleman spoke. He was not much of a
talker, so far Vernon had not heard him speak at all. But he now
unclosed his lips and uttered one word--a word so enchanting, so
mysterious, so delightful that Vernon never forgot it.
"Brumagem," said the other gentleman.
And before Vernon could ask him (as he meant to do) what that marvelous
word meant, another diversion occurred.
His mother came out of the house. There was a sunset behind her--a
scene painter's sunset of crude gold and red. Against that background
Vernon saw his mother--saw her for the first time--a magnificent woman
with white skin and red-gold hair--a being like the pictures in his
fairy book; saw her suddenly as something wonderful, wonderful and
beautiful.
He was never to forget that strange moment. She was his mother and
she was beautiful and he loved her. Something hurt him inside, like a
pain--only it wasn't a pain. And there was a queer booming noise inside
his head--a thundering noise that ended up high and sweet like a bird's
note. Altogether a very wonderful moment.
And mixed up with it was that magic word _Brumagem_.
chapter 2
Winnie the nursemaid was going away. It all happened very suddenly. The
other servants whispered together. Winnie cried. She cried and cried.
Nurse gave her what she called a Talking To and after that Winnie cried
more than ever. There was something terrible about Nurse; she seemed
larger than usual and she crackled more. Winnie, Vernon knew, was going
away because of Father. He accepted that fact without any particular
interest or curiosity. Nursemaids did sometimes go away because of
Father.
His mother was shut in her room. She too was crying. Vernon could hear
her through the door. She did not send for him and it did not occur to
him to go to her. Indeed he was vaguely relieved. He hated the noise
of crying, the gulping sound, the long-drawn sniffs, and it always
happened so close to your ears. People who were crying always hugged
you. Vernon hated those kinds of noises close to his ears. There was
nothing in the world he hated more than the wrong sort of noise. It
made you feel all curled up like a leaf in your middle. That was the
jolly part about Mr. Green. He never made the wrong kind of noise.
Winnie was packing her boxes. Nurse was in with her--a less awful Nurse
now--almost a human Nurse.
"Now you let this be a warning to you, my girl," said Nurse. "No
carryings on in your next place."
Winnie sniffed something about no real harm.
"And no more there wouldn't be, I should hope, with Me in charge,"
said Nurse. "A lot comes, I dare say of having red hair. Red-haired
girls are always flighty, so my dear mother used to say. I'm not saying
you're a bad girl. But what you've done is Unbecoming. Unbecoming--I
can't say more than that."
And, as Vernon had often noticed after using this particular phrase,
she proceeded to say a good deal more. But he did not listen, for he
was pondering on the word "unbecoming." Becoming, he knew, was a thing
you said about a hat. Where did a hat come in?
"What's unbecoming, Nurse?" he asked later in the day.
Nurse, with her mouth full of pins, for she was cutting out a linen
suit for Vernon, replied:
"Unsuitable."
"What's unsuitable?"
"Little boys going on asking foolish questions," said Nurse with the
deftness of a long professional career behind her.
_2_
That afternoon Vernon's father came into the nursery. There was a queer
furtive look about him--unhappy and defiant. He winced slightly before
Vernon's round interested gaze.
"Hullo, Vernon."
"Hullo, Father."
"I'm going to London. Good-bye, old chap."
"Are you going to London because you kissed Winnie?" inquired Vernon
with interest.
His father uttered the kind of word that Vernon knew he was not suppose
to hear--much less ever repeat. It was, he knew, a word that gentlemen
used but little boys didn't. So great a fascination did that fact
lend it that Vernon was in the habit of sending himself to sleep by
repeating it over to himself in company with another forbidden word.
The other word was Corsets.
"Who the devil told you that?"
"Nobody told me," said Vernon, after reflecting a minute.
"Then how did you know?"
"Didn't you, then?" inquired Vernon.
His father crossed the room without answering.
"Winnie kisses me sometimes," remarked Vernon. "But I don't like it
much. I have to kiss her, too. The gardener kisses her a lot. He seems
to like it. I think kissing's silly. Should I like kissing Winnie
better if I was grown up, Father?"
"Yes," his father said deliberately, "I think you would. Sons, you
know, sometimes grow up very like their fathers."
"I'd like to be like you," said Vernon. "You're a jolly good rider.
Sam said so. He said there wasn't your equal in the county and that a
better judge of horse flesh never lived." Vernon brought out the latter
words rapidly. "I'd rather be like you than Mummy. Mummy gives a horse
a sore back. Sam said so."
There was a further pause.
"Mummy's gotaheadacheanlyingdown," proceeded Vernon.
"I know."
"Have you said good-bye to her?"
"No."
"Are you going to? Because you'll have to be quick. That's the dogcart
coming round now."
"I expect I shan't have time."
Vernon nodded wisely.
"I dare say that would be a good plan. I don't like having to kiss
people when they're crying. I don't like Mummy kissing me much anyway.
She squeezes too hard and she talks in your ear. I think I'd almost
rather kiss Winnie. Which would you, Father?"
He was disconcerted by his father's abrupt withdrawal from the room.
Nurse had come in a moment before. She stood respectfully aside to let
the Master pass, and Vernon had a vague idea that she had managed to
make his father uncomfortable.
Katie, the under-housemaid, came in to lay tea. Vernon built bricks in
the corner. The old peaceful nursery atmosphere closed round him again.
_3_
There was a sudden interruption. His mother stood in the doorway. Her
eyes were swollen with crying. She dabbed them with a handkerchief. She
stood there theatrically miserable.
"He's gone," she cried. "Without a word to me. Without a word. Oh! my
little son. My little son."
She swept across the floor and gathered Vernon in her arms. The tower,
at least one story higher than any he had ever built before, crashed
into ruins. His mother's voice, loud and distraught, burrowed into his
ear.
"My child--my little son--swear that you'll never forsake me. Swear
it--swear it."
Nurse came across to them.
"There, ma'am, there, ma'am, don't take on so. You'd better get back to
bed. Edith shall bring you a nice cup of hot tea."
Her tone was authoritative--severe.
His mother still sobbed and clasped him closer. Vernon's whole body
began to stiffen in resistance. He could bear it a little while
longer--a very little while longer--and he'd do anything Mummy wanted
if only she'd let go of him.
"You must make up to me, Vernon--make up to me for the suffering your
father has caused me. Oh! my God, what shall I do?"
Somewhere, in the back of his mind, Vernon was aware of Katie, silent,
ecstatic, enjoying the scene.
"Come along, ma'am," said Nurse. "You'll only upset the child."
The authority in her voice was so marked this time that Vernon's mother
succumbed to it. Leaning weakly on Nurse's arm, she allowed herself to
be led from the room.
Nurse returned a few minutes later very red in the face.
"My," said Katie, "didn't she take on? Regular hysterics--that's what
they call it! Well, this has been a to-do! You don't think she'll do
a mischief to herself, do you? Those nasty ponds in the garden. The
Master is a one--not that he hasn't a lot to put up with from Her. All
them scenes and tantrums----"
"That'll do, my girl," said Nurse. "You can get back to your work, and
under-servants discussing a matter of this kind with their betters is
a thing that I've never known take place in a gentleman's house. Your
mother ought to have trained you better."
With a toss of her head, Katie withdrew. Nurse moved round the nursery
table, shifting cups and plates with unwonted sharpness. Her lips
moved, muttering to herself.
"Putting ideas into the child's head. I've no patience with it...."
chapter 3
A new nursemaid came, a thin white girl with protruding eyes. Her name
was Isabel, but she was called Susan as being More Suitable. This
puzzled Vernon very much. He asked Nurse for an explanation.
"There are names that are suitable to the gentry, Master Vernon, and
names that are suitable for servants. That's all there is to it."
"Then why is her real name Isabel?"
"There are people who when they christen their children set themselves
up to ape their betters."
The word "ape" had a distracting influence on Vernon. Apes were
monkeys. Did people christen their children at the Zoo?
"I thought people were christened in church."
"So they are, Master Vernon."
Very puzzling. Why was everything so puzzling? Why were things more
puzzling than they used to be? Why did one person tell you one thing
and another person something quite different?
"Nurse, how do babies come?"
"You've asked me that before, Master Vernon. The little angels bring
them in the night through the window."
"That Am-am-am----"
"Don't stammer, Master Vernon."
"Amenkun lady who came--she said I was found under a gooseberry bush."
"That's the way they do with American babies," said Nurse serenely.
Vernon heaved a sigh of relief. Of course! He felt a throb of gratitude
to Nurse. She always knew. She made the unsteady swaying universe stand
still again. And she never laughed. His mother did. He had heard her
say to other ladies: "He asks me the quaintest questions. Just listen
to this.... Aren't children funny and adorable."
But Vernon couldn't see that he was funny or adorable at all. He just
wanted to know. You'd got to _know_. That was part of growing up.
When you were grown up you knew everything and had gold sovereigns in
your purse.
_2_
The world went on widening.
There were, for instance, uncles and aunts.
Uncle Sydney was Mummy's brother. He was short and stout and had rather
a red face. He had a habit of humming tunes and of rattling the money
in his trouser pockets. He was fond of making jokes, but Vernon did
not always think his jokes very funny.
"Supposing," Uncle Sydney would say, "I were to put on your hat. Hey?
What should I look like, do you think?"
Curious, the questions grown-up people asked! Curious--and also
difficult, because if there was one thing that Nurse was always
impressing upon Vernon, it was that little boys must never make
personal remarks.
"Come now," said Uncle Sydney perseveringly. "What should I look like?
There--" he snatched up the linen affair in question and balanced it on
top of his head--"what do I look like, eh?"
Well, if one must answer, one must. Vernon said politely and a little
wearily:
"I think you look rather silly."
"That boy of yours has no sense of humour, Myra," said Uncle Sydney to
his mother. "No sense of humour at all. A pity."
Aunt Nina, Father's sister, was quite different.
She smelt nice, like the garden on a summer's day, and she had a soft
voice that Vernon liked. She had other virtues--she didn't kiss you
when you didn't want to be kissed, and she didn't insist on making
jokes. But she didn't come very often to Abbots Puissants.
She must be, Vernon thought, very brave, because it was she who first
made him realize that one could master the Beast.
The Beast lived in the big drawing room. It had four legs and a shiny
brown body. And it had a long row of what Vernon had thought, when
he was very small, to be teeth. Great yellow shining teeth. From
his earliest memory Vernon had been fascinated and terrified by the
Beast. For if you irritated the Beast it made strange noises, an angry
growling or a shrill angry wail--and somehow those noises hurt you more
than anything in the world could. They hurt you right down in your
inside. They made you shiver and feel sick, and they made your eyes
sting and burn, and yet by some strange enchantment you couldn't go
away.
When Vernon had stories read to him about dragons he always thought of
them as like the Beast. And some of the best games with Mr. Green were
where they killed the Beast--Vernon plunging a sword into his brown
shining body whilst the hundred children whooped and sang behind.
Now that he was a big boy he knew better, of course. He knew that the
Beast's name was Grand Piano, and that when you deliberately attacked
its teeth, that was called "playingthepiano"! and that ladies did
it after dinner to gentlemen. But in his inmost heart he was still
afraid and dreamed sometimes of the Beast pursuing him up the nursery
stairs--and he would wake up screaming.
In his dreams the Beast lived in the Forest, and was wild and savage,
and the noises it made were too terrible to be borne.
Mummy sometimes did "playingthepiano," and that Vernon could just bear
with difficulty. The Beast, he felt, would not really be waked up by
what she was doing to it. But the day Aunt Nina played was different.
Vernon had been conducting one of his imaginary games in a corner. He
and Squirrel and Poodle were having a picnic and eating lobsters and
chocolate éclairs.
His Aunt Nina had not even noticed that he was in the room. She had sat
down on the music stool and was playing idly.
Fascinated, Vernon crept nearer and nearer. Nina looked up at last to
see him staring at her, the tears running down his face and great sobs
shaking his small body. She stopped.
"What's the matter, Vernon?"
"I 'ate it," sobbed Vernon. "I 'ate it. I 'ate it. It hurts me
_here_." His hands clasped his stomach.
Myra came into the room at that minute. She laughed.
"Isn't it odd? That child simply hates music. So very queer."
"Why doesn't he go away if he hates it?" said Nina.
"I can't," sobbed Vernon.
"Isn't it ridiculous?" said Myra.
"I think it's rather interesting."
"Most children are always wanting to strum on the piano. I tried to
show Vernon chopsticks the other day, but he wasn't a bit amused."
Nina remained staring at her small nephew thoughtfully.
"I can hardly believe a child of mine can be unmusical," said Myra in
an aggrieved voice. "I played quite difficult pieces when I was eight
years old."
"Oh! well," said Nina vaguely. "There are different ways of being
musical."
Which, Myra thought, was so like the silly sort of thing the Deyre
family would say. Either one was musical and played pieces, or one was
not. Vernon clearly was not.
_3_
Nurse's mother was ill. Strange unparalleled nursery catastrophe.
Nurse, very red-faced and grim, was packing with the assistance of
Susan Isabel. Vernon, troubled, sympathetic, but above all interested,
stood near by, and out of his interest asked questions.
"Is your mother very old, Nurse? Is she a hundred?"
"Of course not, Master Vernon! A hundred indeed!"
"Do you think she is going to die?" continued Vernon, longing to be
kind and understand.
Cook's mother had been ill and died. Nurse did not answer. Instead she
said sharply:
"The boot bags out of the bottom drawer, Susan. Step lively now, my
girl."
"Nurse, will your mother----"
"I haven't time to be answering questions, Master Vernon."
Vernon sat down on the corner of a chintz-covered ottoman and gave
himself up to reflection. Nurse had said that her mother wasn't a
hundred, but she must, for all that, be very old. Nurse herself he
had always regarded as terribly old. To think that there was a being
of superior age and wisdom to Nurse was positively staggering. In a
strange way it reduced Nurse herself to the proportions of a mere human
being. She was no longer a figure secondary only to God himself.
The universe shifted--values were readjusted. Nurse, God, and Mr.
Green--all three receded, becoming vaguer and more blurred. Mummy, his
father, even Aunt Nina--they seemed to matter more. Especially Mummy.
Mummy was like the princesses with long beautiful golden hair. He
would like to fight a dragon for Mummy--a brown shiny dragon like the
Beast.
What was the word--the magic word? Brumagem--that was it--Brumagem.
An enchanting word! The Princess Brumagem! A word to be repeated over
to himself softly and secretly at night at the same time as Damn and
Corsets.
But never, never, never must Mummy hear it, because he knew only too
well that she would laugh--she always laughed, the kind of laugh that
made you shrivel up inside and want to wriggle. And she would say
things--she always said things, just the kind of things you hated.
"Aren't children too _funny_?"
And Vernon knew that he wasn't funny. He didn't like funny
things--Uncle Sydney had said so. If only Mummy wouldn't....
Sitting on the slippery chintz he frowned perplexedly. He had a sudden
imperfect glimpse of two Mummies. One, the princess, the beautiful
Mummy that he dreamed about, who was mixed up for him with sunsets and
magic and killing dragons--and the other, the one who laughed and who
said, "Aren't children too _funny_?" Only, of course, they were
the same....
He fidgeted and sighed. Nurse, flushed from the effort of snapping to
her trunk, turned to him kindly.
"What's the matter, Master Vernon?"
"Nothing," said Vernon.
You must always say, "Nothing." You could never tell. Because, if you
did, no one ever knew what you meant....
_4_
Under the reign of Susan Isabel the nursery was quite different. You
could be, and quite frequently were, naughty. Susan told you not to do
things and you did them just the same! Susan would say: "I'll tell your
mother." But she never did.
Susan had at first enjoyed the position and authority she had in
Nurse's absence. Indeed, but for Vernon, she would have continued
to enjoy it. She used to exchange confidences with Katie, the
under-housemaid.
"Don't know what's come over him, I'm sure. He's like a little demon
sometimes. And him so good and well behaved with Mrs. Pascal."
To which Kate replied:
"Ah! she's a oner, she is! Takes you up sharp, doesn't she?"
And then they would whisper and giggle.
"Who's Mrs. Pascal?" Vernon asked one day.
"Well, I never, Master Vernon! Don't you know your own nurse's name?"
So Nurse was Mrs. Pascal. Another shock. She had always been just
Nurse. It was rather as though you had been told that God's name was
Mr. Robinson.
Mrs. Pascal! Nurse! The more you thought of it, the more extraordinary
it seemed. Mrs. Pascal--just like Mummy was Mrs. Deyre and Father was
Mr. Deyre. Strangely enough, Vernon never cogitated on the possibility
of a Mr. Pascal. (Not that there was any such person. The Mrs. was a
tacit recognition of Nurse's position and authority.) Nurse stood alone
in the same magnificence as Mr. Green, who in spite of the hundred
children (and Poodle, Squirrel, and Tree) was never thought of by
Vernon as having a Mrs. Green attached to him!
Vernon's inquiring mind wandered in another direction.
"Susan, do you like being called Susan? Wouldn't you like being called
Isabel better?"
Susan (or Isabel) gave her customary giggle.
"It doesn't matter what I like, Master Vernon."
"Why not?"
"People have got to do what they're told in this world."
Vernon was silent. He had thought the same until a few days ago. But he
was beginning to perceive that it was not true. You needn't do as you
were told. It all depended on who told you.
It was not a question of punishment. He was continually being sat on
chairs, stood in the corner, and deprived of sweets by Susan. Nurse, on
the other hand, had only to look at him severely through her spectacles
with a certain expression on her face, and anything but immediate
capitulation was out of the question.
Susan had no authority in her nature, and Vernon knew it. He had
discovered the thrill of successful disobedience. Also, he liked
tormenting Susan. The more worried and flustered and unhappy Susan got,
the more Vernon liked it. He was, as was proper to his years, still in
the Stone Age. He savoured the full pleasure of cruelty.
Susan formed the habit of letting Vernon go out to play in the garden
alone. Being an unattractive girl, she had not Winnie's reasons for
liking the garden. And besides, what harm could possibly come to him?
"You won't go near the ponds, will you, Master Vernon?"
"No," said Vernon, instantly forming the intention to do so.
"You'll play with your hoop like a good boy?"
"Yes."
The nursery was left in peace. Susan heaved a sigh of relief. She
took from a drawer a paper-covered book entitled _The Duke and the
Dairymaid_.
Beating his hoop, Vernon made the tour of the walled fruit garden.
Escaping from his control, the hoop leaped upon a small patch of earth
which was at the moment receiving the meticulous attentions of Hopkins,
the head gardener. Hopkins firmly and authoritatively ordered Vernon
from the spot, and Vernon went. He respected Hopkins.
Abandoning the hoop, Vernon climbed a tree or two. That is to say, he
reached a height of perhaps six feet from the ground, employing all due
precautions. Tiring of this perilous sport, he sat astride a branch and
cogitated as to what to do next.
On the whole, he thought the ponds. Susan having forbidden them, they
had a distinct fascination. Yes, he would go to the ponds. He rose, and
as he did so another idea came into his head, suggested by an unusual
sight.
_The door into the Forest was open!_
_5_
Such a thing had never happened before in Vernon's experience. Again
and again he had secretly tried that door. Always it was locked.
He crept up to it cautiously. The Forest! It stood a few steps away
outside the door. You could plunge straightway into its cool green
depths. Vernon's heart beat faster.
He had always wanted to go into the Forest. Here was his chance. Once
Nurse came back, any such thing would be out of the question.
And still he hesitated. It was not any feeling of disobedience that
held him back. Strictly speaking, he had never been forbidden to go
into the Forest. His childish cunning was all ready with that excuse.
No, it was something else. Fear of the unknown--of those dark leafy
depths. Ancestral memories held him back.
He wanted to go--but he didn't want to go. There might be Things
there--Things like the Beast. Things that came up behind you--that
chased you screaming....
He moved uneasily from one foot to the other.
But Things didn't chase you in the daytime. And Mr. Green lived in
the Forest. Not that Mr. Green was as real as he used to be. Still,
it would be rather jolly to explore and find a place where you would
pretend Mr. Green did live. Poodle, Squirrel, and Tree would each have
a house of his own--small leafy houses.
"Come on, Poodle," said Vernon to an invisible companion. "Have you got
your bow and arrow? That's right. We'll meet Squirrel inside."
He stepped out jauntily. Beside him, plain to Vernon's inner eye, went
Poodle dressed like the picture of Robinson Crusoe in his picture book.
It was wonderful in the Forest--dim and dark and green. Birds sang and
flew from branch to branch. Vernon continued to talk to his friend--a
luxury he did not dare to permit himself often, since someone might
overhear and say, "Isn't he too _funny_? He's pretending he's got
another little boy with him." You had to be so very careful at home.
"We'll get to the Castle by lunch time, Poodle. There are going to be
roasted leopards. Oh! Hullo, here's Squirrel. How are you, Squirrel?
Where's Tree?
"I tell you what. I think it's rather tiring walking. I think we'll
ride."
Steeds were tethered to an adjacent tree. Vernon's was milk white,
Poodle's was coal black--the colour of Squirrel's he couldn't quite
decide.
They galloped forward through the trees. There were deadly dangerous
places, morasses. Snakes hissed at them and lions charged them. But the
faithful steeds did all their riders required of them.
How silly it was playing in the garden--or playing anywhere but
_here_! He'd forgotten what it was like, playing with Mr. Green
and Poodle, Squirrel, and Tree. How could you help forgetting things
when people were always reminding you that you were a funny little boy
playing make-believe?
On strutted Vernon, now capering, now marching with solemn dignity. He
was great, he was wonderful! What he needed, though he did not know it
himself, was a tom-tom to beat whilst he sang his own praises.
The Forest! He had always known it would be like this, and it was! In
front of him suddenly appeared a crumbling moss covered wall. The wall
of the Castle! Could anything be more perfect? He began to climb it.
The ascent was easy enough really, though fraught with the most
agreeable and thrilling possibilities of danger. Whether this was Mr.
Green's Castle, or whether it was inhabited by an Ogre who ate human
flesh, Vernon had not yet made up his mind. Either was an entrancing
proposition. On the whole, he inclined to the latter, being at the
moment in a warlike frame of mind. With a flushed face he reached the
summit of the wall and looked over the other side.
And here there enters into the story, for one brief paragraph, Mrs.
Somers West, who was fond of romantic solitude (for short periods)
and had bought Woods Cottage as being "delightfully remote from
anywhere and really, if you know what I mean, in the very heart of the
Forest--at one with Nature!" And since Mrs. Somers West, as well as
being artistic, was musical, she had pulled down a wall, making two
rooms into one, and had thus provided herself with sufficient space to
house a grand piano.
And at the identical moment that Vernon reached the top of the
wall, several perspiring and staggering men were slowly propelling
the aforesaid grand piano toward the window, since it wouldn't go
in by the door. The garden of Woods Cottage was a mere tangle of
undergrowth--wild Nature, as Mrs. Somers West called it. So that all
Vernon saw was the Beast! The Beast, alive and purposeful, slowly
crawling toward him, malign and vengeful....
For a moment he stayed rooted to the spot. Then, with a wild cry, he
fled. Fled along the top of the narrow crumbling wall. The Beast was
behind him, pursuing him.... It was coming, he knew it. He ran--ran
faster than ever. His foot caught in a tangle of ivy. He crashed
downward--falling--falling....
chapter 4
Vernon woke, after a long time, to find himself in bed. It was, of
course, the natural place to be when you woke up, but what wasn't
natural was to have a great hump sticking up in front of you in the
bed. It was whilst he was staring at this that someone spoke to him.
That someone was Dr. Coles, whom Vernon knew quite well.
"Well, well," said Dr. Coles, "and how are we feeling?"
Vernon didn't know how Dr. Coles was feeling. He himself was feeling
rather sick and said so.
"I dare say, I dare say," said Dr. Coles.
"And I think I hurt somewhere," said Vernon. "I think I hurt very much."
"I dare say, I dare say," said Dr. Coles again--not very helpfully,
Vernon thought.
"Perhaps I'd feel better if I got up," said Vernon. "Can I get up?"
"Not just now, I'm afraid," said the doctor. "You see, you've had a
fall."
"Yes," said Vernon. "The Beast came after me."
"Eh? What's that? The Beast? What Beast?"
"Nothing," said Vernon.
"A dog, I expect," said the doctor. "Jumped at the wall and barked. You
mustn't be afraid of dogs, my boy."
"I'm not," said Vernon.
"And what were you doing so far from home, eh? No business to be where
you were."
"Nobody told me not to," said Vernon.
"Hum, hum, I wonder. Well, I'm afraid you've got to take your
punishment. Do you know, you've broken your leg, my boy?"
"Have I?" Vernon was gratified--enchanted. He had broken his leg. He
felt very important.
"Yes, you'll have to lie here for a bit, and then it will mean crutches
for a while. Do you know what crutches are?"
Yes, Vernon knew. Mr. Jobber, the blacksmith's father, had crutches.
And he was to have crutches! How wonderful!
"Can I try them now?"
Dr. Coles laughed.
"So you like the idea? No. I'm afraid you'll have to wait a bit. And
you must try and be a brave boy, you know. And then you'll get well
quicker."
"Thank you," said Vernon politely. "I don't think I do feel very well.
Can you take this funny thing out of my bed? I think it would be more
comfortable then."
But it seemed that the funny thing was called a cradle, and that it
couldn't be taken away. And it seemed, too, that Vernon would not be
able to move about in bed because his leg was all tied up to a long
piece of wood. And suddenly it didn't seem a very nice thing to have a
broken leg after all.
Vernon's underlip trembled a little. He was not going to cry--no, he
was a big boy and big boys didn't cry. Nurse said so. And then he
knew that he wanted Nurse--wanted her badly. He wanted her reassuring
presence, her omniscience, her creaking rustling majesty.
"She'll be coming back soon," said Dr. Coles. "Yes, soon. In the
meantime, this nurse is going to look after you--Nurse Frances."
Nurse Frances moved into Vernon's range of vision and Vernon studied
her in silence. She too was starched and crackling; that was all to the
good. But she wasn't big like Nurse. She was thinner than Mummy--as
thin as Aunt Nina. He wasn't sure....
And then he met her eyes--steady eyes, more green than gray, and he
felt, as most people felt, that with Nurse Frances things would be "all
right."
She smiled at him--but not in the way that visitors smiled. It was a
grave smile, friendly but reserved.
"I'm sorry you feel sick," she said. "Would you like some orange juice?"
Vernon considered the matter and said he thought he would. Dr. Coles
went out of the room and Nurse Frances brought him the orange juice
in a most curious-looking cup with a long spout. And it appeared that
Vernon was to drink from the spout.
It made him laugh, but laughing hurt him, and so he stopped. Nurse
Frances suggested he should go to sleep again, but he said he didn't
want to go to sleep.
"Then I shouldn't go to sleep," said Nurse Frances. "I wonder if you
can count how many irises there are on that wall? You start on the
right side, and I'll start on the left side. You can count, can't you?"
Vernon said proudly that he could count up to a hundred.
"That is a lot," said Nurse Frances. "There aren't nearly as many
irises as a hundred. I guess there are seventy-five. Now what do you
guess?"
Vernon guessed that there were fifty. There couldn't, he felt sure,
possibly be more than that. He began to count, but somehow, without
knowing it, his eyelids closed and he slept....
_2_
Noise ... noise and pain. He woke with a start. He felt hot, very
hot, and there was a pain all down one side. And the noise was coming
nearer. It was the noise that one always connected with Mummy.
She came into the room like a whirlwind, a kind of cloak affair
she wore swinging out behind her. She was like a bird--a great big
bird--and like a bird, she swooped down upon him.
"Vernon--my darling--Mummy's own darling! What have they done to you?
How awful! How terrible! My child!"
She was crying. Vernon began to cry too. He was suddenly frightened.
Myra was moaning and weeping.
"My little child. All I have in the world. God, don't take him from me.
Don't take him from me! If he dies I shall die too!"
"Mrs. Deyre----"
"Vernon--Vernon--my baby----"
"Mrs. Deyre--please!"
There was crisp command in the voice rather than appeal.
"Please don't touch him. You will hurt him."
"Hurt him? I? His mother?"
"You don't seem to realize, Mrs. Deyre, that his leg is broken, I must
ask you, please, to leave the room."
"You're hiding something from me. Tell me--tell me--will the leg have
to be amputated?"
A wail came from Vernon. He had not the least idea what "amputated"
meant, but it sounded painful--and more than painful, terrifying. His
wail broke into a scream.
"He's dying!" cried Myra. "He's dying--and they won't tell me. But he
shall die in my arms."
"Mrs. Deyre----"
Somehow Nurse Frances had got between his mother and the bed. She was
holding his mother by the shoulder. Her voice had the tone that Nurse's
had had when speaking to Katie, the under-housemaid.
"Mrs. Deyre, listen to me. You must control yourself. You _must_!"
Then she looked up. Vernon's father was standing in the doorway. "Mr.
Deyre, please take your wife away. I cannot have my patient excited and
upset."
His father nodded--a quiet understanding nod. He just looked at Vernon
once and said: "Bad luck, old chap. I broke an arm once."
The world became suddenly less terrifying. Other people broke legs and
arms. His father had hold of his mother's shoulder, he was leading her
toward the door, speaking to her in a low voice. She was protesting,
arguing, her voice high and shrill with emotion.
"How can you understand? You've never cared for the child like I have.
It takes a mother. How can I leave my child to be looked after by a
stranger? He needs his mother.... You don't understand. I _love_
him. There's nothing like a mother's care--everyone says so."
"Vernon darling"--she broke from her husband's clasp, came back toward
the bed--"you want me, don't you? You want Mummy?"
"I want Nurse," sobbed Vernon. "I want Nurse."
He meant his own Nurse, not Nurse Frances.
"Oh!" said Myra. She stood there quivering.
"Come, my dear," said Vernon's father gently. "Come away."
She leaned against him, and together they passed from the room. Faint
words floated back into the room.
"My own child, to turn from me to a stranger."
Nurse Frances smoothed the sheet and suggested a drink of water.
"Nurse is coming back very soon," she said. "We'll write to her to-day,
shall we? You shall tell me what to say."
A queer new feeling surged over Vernon--a sort of odd gratitude.
Somebody had actually understood....
_3_
When Vernon, later, was to look back upon his childhood, this one
period was to stand out quite clearly from the rest. "The time I broke
my leg" marked a distinct era.
He was to appreciate, too, various small incidents that were accepted
by him at the time as a matter of course. For instance, a rather stormy
interview that took place between Dr. Coles and his mother. Naturally
this did not take place in Vernon's sick room, but Myra's raised voice
penetrated closed doors. Vernon heard indignant exclamations of "I
don't know what you mean by upsetting him.... I consider I ought to
nurse my own child.... Naturally I was distressed--I'm not one of these
people who simply have no heart--no heart at all. Look at Walter--never
turned a hair!"
There were many skirmishes too, not to say pitched battles, fought
between Myra and Nurse Frances. In these cases Nurse Frances always
won, but at a certain cost. Myra Deyre was wildly and furiously jealous
of what she called "the paid nurse." She was forced to submit to Dr.
Coles's dictums, but she did so with a bad grace and with an overt
rudeness that Nurse Frances never seemed to notice.
In after years Vernon remembered nothing of the pain and tedium that
there must have been. He remembered only happy days of playing and
talking as he had never played and talked before. For in Nurse Frances
he found a grown-up who didn't think things "funny" or "quaint."
Somebody who listened sensibly and who made serious and sensible
suggestions. To Nurse Frances he was able to speak of Poodle, Squirrel,
and Tree, and of Mr. Green and the hundred children. And instead of
saying "What a _funny_ game!" Nurse Frances merely inquired
whether the hundred children were girls or boys--an aspect of the
matter which Vernon had never thought of before. But he and Nurse
Frances decided that there were fifty of each, which seemed a very fair
arrangement.
If sometimes, off his guard, he played his make-believe games aloud,
Nurse Frances never seemed to notice or to think it unusual. She had
the same calm comfortableness of old Nurse about her, but she had
something that mattered far more to Vernon: the gift of answering
questions--and he knew, instinctively, that the answers were always
true. Sometimes she would say, "I don't know that myself," or, "You
must ask someone else. I'm not clever enough to tell you that." There
was no pretense of omniscience about her.
Sometimes, after tea, she would tell Vernon stories. The stories were
never the same two days running--one day they would be about naughty
little boys and girls, and the next day they would be about enchanted
princesses. Vernon liked the latter kind best. There was one in
particular that he loved, about a princess in a tower with golden hair
and a vagabond prince in a ragged green hat. The story ended up in a
forest, and it was possibly for that reason that Vernon liked it so
much.
Sometimes there would be an extra listener. Myra used to come in and
be with Vernon during the early afternoon when Nurse Frances had her
time off, but Vernon's father used sometimes to come in after tea when
the stories were going on. Little by little it became a habit. Walter
Deyre would sit in the shadows just behind Nurse Frances's chair, and
from there he would watch, not his child, but the story-teller. One
day Vernon saw his father's hand steal out and close gently over Nurse
Frances's wrist.
And then something happened which surprised him very much. Nurse
Frances got up from her chair.
"I'm afraid we must turn you out for this evening, Mr. Deyre," she said
quietly. "Vernon and I have things to do."
This astonished Vernon very much, because he couldn't think what those
things were. He was still more puzzled when his father got up also and
said in a low voice:
"I beg your pardon."
Nurse Frances bent her head a little, but remained standing. Her eyes
met Walter Deyre's steadily. He said quietly:
"Will you believe that I am really sorry, and let me come to-morrow?"
After that, in some way that Vernon could not have defined, his
father's manner was different. He no longer sat so near Nurse Frances.
He talked more to Vernon and occasionally they all three played a
game--usually Old Maid, for which Vernon had a wild passion. They were
happy evenings enjoyed by all three.
One day, when Nurse Frances was out of the room, Walter Deyre said
abruptly:
"Do you like that nurse of yours, Vernon?"
"Nurse Frances? I like her lots. Don't you, Father?"
"Yes," said Walter Deyre, "I do."
There was a sadness in his voice which Vernon felt.
"Is anything the matter, Father?"
"Nothing that can be put right. The horse that gets left at the post
never has much chance of making good--and the fact that it's the
horse's own fault doesn't make matters any better. But that's double
Dutch to you, old man. Anyway, enjoy your Nurse Frances while you've
got her. There aren't many of her sort knocking about."
And then Nurse Frances came back and they played Animal Grab.
But Walter Deyre's words had set Vernon's mind to work. He tackled
Nurse Frances next morning.
"Aren't you going to be here always?"
"No. Only till you get well--or nearly well."
"Won't you stay always? I'd like you to."
"But, you see, that's not my work. My work is to look after people who
are ill."
"Do you like doing that?"
"Yes, very much."
"Why?"
"Well, you see, everyone has some particular kind of work that they
like doing and that suits them."
"Mummy hasn't."
"Oh, yes, she has. Her work is to look after this big house and see
that everything goes right, and to take care of you and your father."
"Father was a soldier once. He told me that if ever there was a war
he'd go and be a soldier again."
"Are you very fond of your father, Vernon?"
"I love Mummy best, of course. Mummy says little boys always love their
mothers best. I like _being_ with Father, of course, but that's
different. I expect it's because he's a man. What shall I be when I
grow up, do you think? I want to be a sailor."
"Perhaps you'll write books."
"What about?"
Nurse Frances smiled a little.
"Perhaps about Mr. Green, and Poodle and Squirrel and Tree."
"But everyone would say that that was silly."
"Little boys wouldn't think so. And besides, when you grow up you will
have different people in your head--like Mr. Green and the children,
only grown-up people. And then you could write about them."
Vernon thought for a long time, then he shook his head.
"I think I'll be a soldier like Father. Most of the Deyres have been
soldiers, Mummy says. Of course you have to be very brave to be a
soldier, but I think I would be brave enough."
Nurse Frances was silent a moment. She was thinking of what Walter
Deyre had said of his small son:
"He's a plucky little chap--absolutely fearless. Doesn't know what fear
is! You should see him on his pony."
Yes, Vernon was fearless enough in one sense. He had the power of
endurance, too. He had borne the pain and discomfort of his broken leg
unusually well for so young a child.
But there was another kind of fear. She said slowly after a minute or
two:
"Tell me again how you fell off the wall that day."
She knew all about the Beast, and had been careful to display no
ridicule. She listened now to Vernon, and as he finished she said
gently:
"But you've known for quite a long time, haven't you, that it isn't a
real Beast? That it's only a thing made of wood and wires."
"I do _know_," said Vernon. "But I don't dream it like that. And
when I saw it in the garden coming at me----"
"You ran away--which was rather a pity, wasn't it? It would have been
much better to have stayed and _looked_. Then you'd have seen the
men, and would have known just what it was. It's always a good thing to
_look_. Then you can run away afterward if you still want to--but
you usually don't. And Vernon, I'll tell you something else."
"Yes?"
"Things are never so frightening in front of you as they are behind
you. Remember that. Anything seems frightening when it's behind your
back and you can't see it. That's why it's always better to turn and
face things--and then very often you find they are nothing at all."
Vernon said thoughtfully: "If I'd turned round I wouldn't have broken
my leg, would I?"
"No."
Vernon sighed.
"I don't mind having broken my leg very much. It has been very nice
having you to play with."
He thought Nurse Frances murmured "Poor child" under her breath, but
that, of course, was absurd. She said smiling:
"I've enjoyed it too. Some of my ill people don't like to play."
"You really do like playing, don't you?" said Vernon. "So does Mr.
Green."
He added rather stiffly, for he felt shy:
"Please don't go away very soon, will you?"
_4_
But as it happened, Nurse Frances went away much sooner than she
might have done. It all happened very suddenly, as things in Vernon's
experience always did.
It started very simply--something that Myra offered to do for Vernon
and that he said he would rather have done by Nurse Frances.
He was on crutches now for a short and painful time every day, enjoying
the novelty of it very much. He soon got tired, however, and was ready
to go back to bed. To-day his mother had suggested his doing so, saying
she would help him. But Vernon had been helped by her before. Those big
white hands of hers were strangely clumsy. They hurt where they meant
to help. He shrank from her well-meant efforts. He said he would wait
for Nurse Frances, who never hurt.
The words came out with the tactless honesty of children, and in a
minute Myra Deyre was at white heat.
Nurse Frances came in two or three minutes later to be received with a
flood of reproach.
Turning the boy against his own mother--cruel--wicked. They were all
alike--everyone was against her. She had nothing in the world but
Vernon and now he was being turned against her too.
So it went on--a ceaseless stream. Nurse Frances bore it patiently
enough, without surprise or rancour. Mrs. Deyre, she knew, was that
kind of woman. Scenes were a relief to her. And hard words, Nurse
Frances reflected with grim humour, can only harm if the utterer is
dear to you. She was sorry for Myra Deyre for she realized how much
real unhappiness and misery lay behind these hysterical outbursts.
It was an unfortunate moment for Walter Deyre to choose to enter
the nursery. For a moment or two he stood surprised, then he flushed
angrily.
"Really, Myra, I'm ashamed of you. You don't know what you're saying."
She turned on him furiously.
"I know what I'm saying well enough. And I know what you've been doing.
Slinking in here every day--I've seen you. Always making love to some
woman or other. Nursemaids, hospital nurses--it's all one to you."
"Myra--be quiet!"
He was really angry now. Myra Deyre felt a throb of fear. But she
hurled her last piece of invective.
"You're all alike, you hospital nurses. Flirting with other women's
husbands. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Before the innocent
child too--putting all sorts of things into his head. But you'll go out
of my house. Yes, you'll go right out--and I shall tell Dr. Coles what
I think of you."
"Would you mind continuing this edifying scene elsewhere?" Her
husband's voice was as she hated it most--cold and sneering. "Hardly
judicious in front of your innocent child, is it? I apologize, Nurse,
for what my wife has been saying. Come, Myra."
She went--beginning to cry--weakly frightened at what she had done. As
usual, she had said more than she meant.
"You're cruel," she sobbed. "Cruel. You'd like me to be dead. You hate
me."
She followed him out of the room. Nurse Frances put Vernon to bed. He
wanted to ask questions but she talked of a dog, a big St. Bernard that
she had had when she was a little girl, and he was so much interested
that he forgot everything else.
Much later that evening Vernon's father came to the nursery. He looked
white and ill. Nurse Frances rose and came to where he stood in the
doorway.
"I don't know what to say. How can I apologize--the things my wife
said----"
Nurse Frances replied in a quiet matter-of-fact voice:
"Oh! it's quite all right. I understand. I think, though, that I had
better go as soon as it can be arranged. My being here makes Mrs.
Deyre unhappy, and then she works herself up."
"If she knew how wide of the mark her wild accusations are. That she
should insult _you_----"
Nurse Frances laughed--not, perhaps, very convincingly.
"I always think it's absurd when people complain about being insulted,"
she said cheerfully. "Such a pompous word, isn't it? Please don't worry
or think I mind. You know, Mr. Deyre, your wife is----"
"Yes?"
Her voice changed. It was grave and sad.
"A very unhappy and lonely woman."
"Do you think that is entirely my fault?"
There was a pause. She lifted her eyes--those steady green eyes.
"Yes," she said, "I do."
He drew a long breath.
"No one else but you would have said that to me. You----I suppose
it's courage in you that I admire so much----your absolutely fearless
honesty. I'm sorry for Vernon that he should lose you before he need."
She said gravely: "Don't blame yourself for things you needn't. This
has not been your fault."
"Nurse Frances." It was Vernon, eagerly from bed. "I don't want you to
go away. Don't go away, please--not to-night."
"Of course not," said Nurse Frances. "We've got to talk to Dr. Coles
about it."
Nurse Frances left three days later. Vernon wept bitterly. He had lost
the first real friend he had ever had.
chapter 5
The years from five to nine remained somewhat dim in Vernon's memory.
Things changed--but so gradually as not to matter. Nurse did not
return to her reign over the nursery. Her mother had had a stroke and
was quite helpless and she was obliged to remain and look after her.
Instead, a Miss Robbins was installed as nursery governess. A creature
so extraordinarily colourless that Vernon could never afterward even
recall what she looked like. He must have become somewhat out of hand
under her régime for he was sent to school just after his eighth
birthday. On his first holidays he found his cousin Josephine installed.
On her few visits to Abbots Puissants, Nina had never brought her
small daughter with her. Indeed her visits had become rarer and rarer.
Vernon, knowing things without thinking about them, as children do, was
perfectly well aware of two facts. One, that his father did not like
Uncle Sydney but was always exceedingly polite to him. Two, that his
mother did not like Aunt Nina and did not mind showing it. Sometimes,
when Nina was sitting talking to Walter in the garden, Myra would join
them, and in the momentary pause that nearly always followed she would
say:
"I suppose I'd better go away again. I see I'm in the way. No, thank
you, Walter [this in answer to a protest, gently murmured], I can see
plainly enough when I'm not wanted."
She would move away, biting her lip, nervously clasping and unclasping
her hands, tears in her brown eyes. And, very quietly, Walter Deyre
would raise his eyebrows.
One day Nina broke out: "She's impossible! I can't speak to you for
ten minutes without an absurd scene. Walter, why did you do it? Why
_did_ you do it?"
Vernon remembered how his father had looked round, gazing up at the
house, then letting his eyes sweep far afield to where the ruins of the
old Abbey just showed.
"I cared for the place," he said slowly. "In the blood, I suppose. I
didn't want to let it go."
There had been a brief silence and then Nina had laughed--a queer short
laugh.
"We're not a very satisfactory family," she said. "We've made a pretty
good mess of things, you and I."
There was another pause and then his father had said: "Is it as bad as
that?"
Nina had drawn in her breath with a sharp hiss. She nodded.
"Pretty well. I don't think, Walter, that I can go on much longer. Fred
hates the sight of me. Oh! we behave very prettily in public--no one
would guess--but my God, when we're alone!"
"Yes, but my dear girl...."
And then, for a while, Vernon heard no more. Their voices were lowered,
his father seemed to be arguing with his aunt. Finally his voice rose
again.
"You can't take a mad step like that. It's not even as though you cared
for Anstey. You don't."
"I suppose not--but he's crazy about me."
His father said something that sounded like Social Ostriches. Nina
laughed again.
"That? We'd neither of us care."
"Anstey would in the end."
"Fred would divorce me--only too glad of the chance. Then we could
marry."
"Even then----"
"Walter on the social conventions! It has its humorous side!"
"Women and men are very different," said Vernon's father dryly.
"Oh! I know--I know. But anything's better than this everlasting
misery. Of course, at the bottom of it all is that I still care for
Fred--I always did. And he never cared for me."
"There's the kid," said Walter Deyre. "You can't go off and leave her?"
"Can't I? I'm not much of a mother, you know. As a matter of fact, I'd
take her with me. Fred wouldn't care. He hates her as much as he hates
me."
There was another pause, a long one this time. Then Nina said slowly:
"What a ghastly tangle human beings can get themselves into. And in
your case and mine, Walter, it's all our own fault. We're a nice
family! We bring bad luck to ourselves and to anyone we have anything
to do with."
Walter Deyre got up. He filled a pipe abstractedly, then moved slowly
away. For the first time Nina noticed Vernon.
"Hullo, child," she said. "I didn't see you were there. How much did
you understand of all that, I wonder?"
"I don't know," said Vernon vaguely, shifting from foot to foot.
Nina opened a chain bag, took out a tortoise-shell case, and extracted
a cigarette which she proceeded to light. Vernon watched her,
fascinated. He had never seen a woman smoke.
"What's the matter?" said Nina.
"Mummy says," said Vernon, "that no nice woman would ever smoke. She
said so to Miss Robbins."
"Oh! well," said Nina. She puffed out a cloud of smoke. "I expect she
was quite right. I'm not a nice woman, you see, Vernon."
Vernon looked at her, vaguely distressed.
"I think you're very pretty," he said rather shyly.
"That's not the same thing." Nina's smile widened. "Come here, Vernon."
He came obediently. Nina put her hands on his shoulders and looked him
over quizzically. He submitted patiently. He never minded being touched
by Aunt Nina. Her hands were light--not clutching like his mother's.
"Yes," said Nina, "you're a Deyre--very much so. Rough luck on Myra,
but there it is."
"What does that mean?" said Vernon.
"It means that you're like your father's family and not like your
mother's--worse luck for you."
"Why worse luck for me?"
"Because the Deyres, Vernon, are neither happy nor successful. And they
can't make good."
What funny things Aunt Nina said! She said them half laughingly, so
perhaps she didn't mean them. And yet, somehow, there was something in
them that, though he didn't understand, made him afraid.
"Would it be better," he said suddenly, "to be like Uncle Sydney?"
"Much better. Much much better."
Vernon considered.
"But then," he said slowly, "if I was like Uncle Sydney----"
He stopped, trying to get his thoughts into words.
"Yes, well?"
"If I was Uncle Sydney I should have to live at Larch Hurst--and not
here."
Larch Hurst was a stoutly built red brick villa near Birmingham where
Vernon had once been taken to stay with Uncle Sydney and Aunt Carrie.
It had three acres of superb pleasure grounds, a rose garden, a
pergola, a goldfish tank, and two excellently fitted bathrooms.
"And wouldn't you like that?" asked Nina, still watching him.
"No!" said Vernon. A great sigh broke from him, heaving his small
chest. "I want to live _here_--always, always, always!"
_2_
Soon after this something queer happened about Aunt Nina. His mother
began to speak of her and his father managed to hush her down with a
sideways glance at himself. He carried away only a couple of phrases:
"It's that poor child I'm so sorry for. You've only got to look at Nina
to see she's a Bad Lot and always will be."
The poor child, Vernon knew, was his cousin Josephine, whom he had
never seen, but to whom he sent presents at Christmas and duly
received others in return. He wondered why Josephine was "poor" and
why his mother was sorry for her, and also why Aunt Nina was a Bad
Lot--whatever that meant. He asked Miss Robbins, who got very pink and
told him he mustn't talk about "things like that." Things like what?
Vernon wondered.
However, he didn't think much more about it till four months later,
when the matter was mentioned once more. This time no one noticed
Vernon's presence--feelings were running too high for that. His mother
and father were in the middle of a vehement discussion. His mother, as
usual, was vociferous, excited. His father was very quiet.
"Disgraceful!" Myra was saying. "Within three months of running away
with one man to go off with another. It shows her up in her true light.
I always knew what she was like. Men, men, men, nothing but men!"
"You're welcome to any opinion you choose, Myra. That's not the point.
I knew perfectly how it would strike you."
"And anyone else too, I should think! I can't understand you, Walter.
You call yourself an old family and all that----"
"We are an old family," he put in quietly.
"I should have thought you'd have minded a bit about the honour of your
name. She's disgraced it--and if you were a real man you'd cast her off
utterly as she deserves."
"Traditional scene from the melodrama, in fact."
"You always sneer and laugh! Morals mean nothing to you--absolutely
nothing."
"At the minute, as I've been trying to make you understand, it's not
a question of morals. It's a question of my sister being destitute.
I must go out to Monte Carlo and see what can be done. I should have
thought anyone in their senses would see that."
"Thank you. You're not very polite, are you? And whose fault is it
she's destitute, I should like to know? She had a good husband----"
"No--not that."
"At any rate, he married her."
It was his father who flushed this time. He said, in a very low voice: