For with that laugh they began to love him. They did not--or at any
rate Miss Bracy 'did not--know it at the time. For some days they
watched him; and he, the unsuspicious one, administered a score of
shocks as again and again he took them neatly and decisively at
unawares. He had accepted them at once and in entire good faith.
They were (with just the right recognition of their seniority) good
comrades in this jolliest of worlds. They were his holiday hosts, and
it was not for the guest to hint (just yet) at the end of the holiday.
He surprised them at every turn. His father's canvases filled him with
admiring awe. "Oh, but I say--however is it done?" As he stood before
them with legs a trifle wide, he smoothed the top of his head with a
gesture of perplexity. And Mr. Frank, standing at his shoulder with
legs similarly spread, used the same gesture--as Miss Bracy had seen him
use it a thousand times. Yet the boy had no artistic talent--not so
much as a germ. For beauty of line and beauty of colour he inherited an
impeccable eye; indeed his young senses were alive to seize all innocent
delight,--his quickness in scenting the lemon-verbena bush proved but
the first of many instances. But he began and ended with enjoyment; of
the artist's impulse to reproduce and imitate beauty he felt nothing.
Mr. Frank recognised with a pang that he had failed not only in keeping
his torch bright but in passing it on; that the true self which he had
missed expressing must die with him barren and untransmitted.
The closer he drew in affection, the farther this son of his receded,--
receded in the very act of acknowledging his sonship--with a gesture,
smilingly imprehensible; with eyes which allured the yearning he
baffled, and tied it to the hopeless chase.
Mr. Frank, who worshipped flowers, was perhaps the most ineffective
gardener in England. With a trowel and the best intentions he would do
more damage in twenty minutes than Miss Bracy could repair in a week.
She had made a paradise in spite of him, and he contented himself with
assuring her that the next tenant would dig it up and find it paved with
good intentions. The seeds he sowed--and he must have sown many pounds'
worth before she stopped the wild expense--never sprouted by any chance.
"Dormant, my dear Laura--dormant!" he would exclaim in springtime,
rubbing his head perplexedly as he studied the empty borders.
"When I die, and am buried here, they will all sprout together, and you
will have to take a hook and cut your way daily through the vegetation
which hides my grave." But Victor, who approached them in the frankest
ignorance, seemed to divine the ways of flowers at once. In the autumn
he struck cuttings of Miss Bracy's rarest roses; he removed a sickly
passion-flower from one corner of the cottage to another and restored it
to health within a fortnight. Within a week after his coming he and
Miss Bracy were deep in cross-fertilizing a borderful of carnations she
had raised from seed. He carried the same natural deftness into a score
of small household repairs. He devised new cradles for Miss Bracy's
cats, and those conservative animals at once accepted the improvement;
he invented a cupboard for his father's canvases; he laid an electric
bell from the kitchen beneath the floor of the dining-room, so that Miss
Bracy could ring for Deborah by a mere pressure of the foot; and the
well-rope which Deborah had been used to wind up painfully was soon
fitted with a wheel and balance-weight which saved four-fifths of the
labour.
"It beats me where you learned how to do these things," his father
protested.
"But it doesn't want learning; it's all so simple--not like painting,
you know."
Mr. Frank had been corresponding with the boy's headmaster. "Yes, he is
a good fellow," said one of the letters; "just a gentle clear-minded
boy, with courage at call when he wants it, and one really remarkable
talent. You may not have discovered it, but he is a mathematician; and
as different from the ordinary book-made mathematician--from the dozens
of boys I send up regularly to Cambridge--as cheese is from chalk.
He has a sort of passion for pure reasoning--for its processes.
Of course he does not know it; but from the first it has been a pleasure
to me (an old pupil of Routh's) to watch his work. 'Style' is not a
word one associates as a rule with mathematics, but I can use no other
to express the quality which your boy brings to that study. . . ."
"Good Lord!" groaned Mr. Frank, who had never been able to add up his
washing bills.
He read the letter to Miss Bracy, and the pair began to watch Victor
with a new wonder. They were confident that no Bracy had ever been a
mathematician; for an uncle of theirs, now a rector in Shropshire and
once of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where for reasons best known to
himself he had sought honours in the Mathematical Tripos and narrowly
missed the Wooden Spoon, had clearly no claim to the title. Whence in
the world did the boy derive this gift? "His mother--" Miss Bracy
began, and broke off as a puff of smoke shot out from the fireplace.
It was late September; Deborah had lit the fire that morning for the
first time since May, and the chimney never drew well at starting.
Miss Bracy took the tongs in hand, but she was not thinking of the
smoke; neither was Mr. Frank, while he watched her. They were both
thinking of the dead woman. The thought of her--the ghost of her--was
always rising now between them and her boy; _she_ was the impalpable
screen they tried daily and in vain to pierce; to _her_ they had come to
refer unconsciously all that was inexplicable in him. And so much was
inexplicable! They loved him now; they stretched out their hands to
him: behind _her_ he smiled at them, but through or across _her_ their
hands could never reach.
As at first they had avoided all allusion to her, and been thankful that
the boy's reticence made it easy, so now they grew almost feverishly
anxious to discover how he felt towards his mother's memory.
They detected each other laying small traps for him, and were ashamed.
They held their breath as with an air of cheerful unconsciousness he
walked past the traps, escaping them one and all. At first in her
irritation Miss Bracy accused him of what she (of all women!) called
false pride. "He is ashamed of her. He wishes to forget, and is only
too glad that we began by encouraging him." On second thoughts she knew
the charge to be undeserved and odious. His obvious simplicity gave it
the lie. Moreover she knew that a small water-colour sketch of her in
her youth--a drawing of Mr. Frank's--stood on the table in the boy's
bedroom. Miss Bracy often dusted that room with her own hands.
"And, Frank," she confessed one day, "he kisses it! I know by the
dullness on the glass when I rub it." She did not add that she rubbed
it viciously. "I tell you," she insisted, almost with a groan,
"he lives with her. She is with him in this house in spite of us; she
talks with him; his real existence is with her. He comes out of it to
make himself pleasant to us, but he goes back and tells her his
secrets."
"Nonsense, Laura," Mr. Frank interrupted testily. "For some reason or
other the boy is getting on your nerves. It is natural, after all."
"Natural? Yes, I see: you mean that I'm an old maid, and it's a case of
crabbed age and youth."
"My dear Laura, I mean nothing so rude. But, after all, we have been
living here a great many years and it _is_ a change."
"Frank, you can be singularly dense at times. Must I tell you in so
many words that I am fond of the boy, and if he'd be only as fond of me
he might racket the house down and I'd only like him the better for it?"
Mr. Frank rubbed his head, and then with sudden resolution marched out
of the house in search of Victor. He found the boy on the roof removing
a patent cowl which the local mason had set up a week before to cure the
smoky chimney.
"My dear fellow," the father cried up, "you'll break your neck!
Come down at once--I have something particular to say to you."
Victor descended with the cowl under his arm. "Do be careful. . . .
Doesn't it make you giddy, clambering about in places like that?"
Mr. Frank had no head at all for a height.
"Not a bit. . . . Just look at this silly contrivance--choked with soot
in three days! The fellow who invented it ought to have his head
examined."
"It has made you in a horrible mess," said his father, who took no
interest in cowls, but lost his temper in a smoky house.
"I'll run in and have a change and wash."
"No; put the nasty thing down and come into the garden." He opened the
gate, and Victor followed, after dipping his hands in the waterfall.
"The fact is, my boy, I've come to a decision. This has been a pleasant
time--a very pleasant time--for all of us. We have put off speaking to
you about this, but I hope you understand that this is to be your home
henceforward; that we wish it and shall be the happier for having
you . . ."
Victor had been gazing out over the cove, but now turned and met his
father's eyes frankly. "I have a little money," he said.
"Mother managed to put by a small sum from time to time, enough to start
me in life. She did not tell me until a few days before she died: she
knew I wanted to be an engineer."
He said this quite simply. It was the first time he had mentioned his
mother. Mr. Frank felt his face flushing.
"But your headmaster tells me it will be a thousand pities if you don't
go to Cambridge. I am proposing that you should go there--should
matriculate this term. My dear boy"--he laid a hand on Victor's arm--"
don't refuse me this. I have no right--perhaps--to insist; but I
daresay you can guess what your acceptance would mean to me. You can
choose your own career when the time comes. For your sake your mother
would have liked this: ask yourself if she would not."
Mr. Frank had not looked forward to pleading like this; yet when it came
to the point this seemed his only possible attitude. Victor had removed
his gaze, and his eyes were resting now on the green sunny waves rolling
in at the harbour's mouth. For almost a minute he kept silence; then--
"Yes, she would advise it," he said. It was as though he had laid the
case before an unseen counsellor and waited submissively for the answer.
Mr. Frank had gained his end and without trouble: yet he felt a
disappointment he could not at once explain. He was the last man in the
world to expect a gratitude which he did not deserve; but in the
satisfaction of carrying his point he missed something, and surmised
what he missed. The boy had not turned to _him_ for the answer, but had
turned away and brought it to him. Father and son would never have the
deeper joy of taking counsel together heart to heart.