When the summer holidays came round he brought his companion home with
him. Hot and dusty after their journey and the long drive from the
station, they were glad enough to catch a glimpse of the house when
yet some distance away. And as the evening sun, washing the beeches
with soft red-gold, fell obliquely on the upper windows, the effect for
the young visitor was one of a singularly peaceful beauty, such as he
had never before known. Standing back among the trees in the midst of
that green terraced garden――a house of stillness and of charm――to him
it appeared to be, as indeed it was, cut off completely from the outer
world――the world, at least, as it had been for him; a London life, a
hurried, anyhow existence when he joined his people in the holidays.
For Graham, also, to be home here once more was very pleasant. They
dined in the great oak dining-room――the light of sunset streaming in
across the table, catching the whiteness of damask, the deep crimson
of roses half buried in their dark green leaves, the gleam of glass
and old silver, and making the shaded candles to be but ornamental. On
the dark panelled walls hung a few choice Dutch ‘genre’ paintings:――an
‘Interior,’ by Pieter de Hooch; a ‘Music Lesson,’ by Gerard Terburg; a
‘Frost Scene,’ by Adriaen van de Velde; a ‘Portrait,’ by Gerard Dou;
but no picture, Graham thought, could ever be half so charming as the
young boy sitting opposite him, the softly blended light playing upon
his beautiful face, his delicate hands. Graham watched him with a
curious feeling of pride. He noticed his delightful courteousness, his
perfect breeding, his wonderful distinction. Yes, there was a great
deal in birth, in blood! For even in his short experience of school
life he had learned something of the hopelessness and vulgarity of a
spreading democracy. And he saw with pleasure that his father had taken
to the boy, that he was not insensible to the deference of Harold’s
manner, his efforts to please, his easy grace.
* * * * *
After dinner the two boys wandered out of doors again, but went no
further than the porch. Both were a little tired. Brocklehurst sat on
one of the steps, and Graham half sat, half lay, a little below him,
tracing with the point of a stick fantastic lines and figures in the
gravel of the carriage sweep. The quiet of evening, of the perfect
ending of a day, was all about them; and they sat in silence, that
strange silence which seems to listen for the faint footfall of the
hour that is approaching, the hour that is to be, the hour as yet so
full of mystery, of hope, of the unknown.
The lawn stretched below them, smooth, greyish in the waning light.
Upon its shaven surface clumps of laurel, barbary, and rhododendron
stood out as darker, bordering patches――stood out a little stiffly in
the nearly windless air; and against the clear pale sky the trees of
the avenue were still.
‘How close that cloud is!’ Graham murmured. ‘Isn’t it almost as if we
ourselves were floating up to it?’
Yet notwithstanding the dreaminess of his mood, his senses were
curiously alert. Remote sounds and faint perfumes reached him, which
at another hour he would not have been conscious of. And he noticed
Brocklehurst’s hands as they rested on the stone step: he noticed the
fineness of the skin, darkened to a rich golden-brown by the sun; the
tapering fingers; the tiny blue vein, scarce visible, on the inside
of the wrist. His hands were extraordinarily living, extraordinarily
sensitive, expressive. They seemed made to touch the strings of musical
instruments, to play upon some delicate lute or viol. He imagined that
they must have some power in them to allay pain; he imagined them, cool
and soothing, laid softly upon his own forehead, or over his mouth and
eyes.
And suddenly Harold began to speak. ‘It is very quiet here....
How strange you must have found everything when you first came to
school!――after having been accustomed to this for so long.’
Graham smiled lazily. He felt very happy. It was as though a day he
had long awaited had at last begun to break within his spirit, as
though some perfect hour of life were here. And his present gladness
was mingled somehow with all the happiness that had been before; with
all the happiness he had ever known. He watched the dark leaves scarce
tremulous against the sky; he watched the dark grass, the gathering
dusk everywhere; the night wind was soft upon his face.
The light grew more and more subdued; the outlines of things vaguer and
vaguer.
‘I cannot tell you how glad I am to have you here, Harold,’ he
whispered shyly.
‘It was very good of your father to ask me.’
‘To ask you! But it all belongs to you! It has all been waiting
for you for so long――and now, at last, you have come.’ He spoke
half-laughingly, but all his childish imaginings and dreams were
stirring within him.
‘How dark it is getting!’
The last glimmer of twilight had in truth died out of the sky, and
only a dim pallor seemed to hang in the air, a faint reflection from
the hidden moon.
‘Listen!’
‘It is my father. He plays to himself every evening; he is very fond of
music.’
The soft, clear notes of a violin were drawn out slowly across the
stillness. The darkness, the charm of the night, helped to make them
wonderfully expressive, and Brocklehurst almost held his breath to
listen. When a pause came he gave a little sigh. ‘Why is beautiful
music always so sad?’ he wondered; ‘so much sadder than anything else?’
‘Is it?’ Graham asked. ‘And yet you like it!’
‘Yes; there is nothing else I like so well.... I used to sing in the
choir at school until my voice broke; but I have never learned very
much.’
Graham raised himself a little. He leaned his chin on his companion’s
shoulder and looked out into the darkness. And he felt Brocklehurst’s
soft, warm cheek against his own.
‘You went to school when you were very young, Harold, didn’t you?’ he
murmured.
‘No younger than most fellows. You, you know, came peculiarly late.’
‘My father liked to have me here ... I have not been at school a year
yet ... but all those other years before I went seem very far away.
I can look back at the past as if it had only been a single hour.
Everything slips together into one golden point.... I wonder if, when
a man is dying, it is like that――if, when he looks back, all his life
gathers together into one long, long day――if all seems but a summer
day――yesterday between sunrise and sunset――――’