The Journeying Boy (25 page)

It was certainly true that Ivor, in spite of his competence as an entertainer, was unable to keep some part of his thoughts from straying elsewhere. It was as if he felt intermittently impelled to fine calculation on some state of affairs altogether unforeseen. Perhaps Humphrey had indeed told him a vast deal of nonsense and he was debating with himself whether the boy’s tutor was likely to have received the same absurd confidences; and, if not, whether he was the sort of man with whom a difficult situation might usefully be discussed. And this reading of the matter Mr Thewless was for a time the more inclined to in that he had very markedly the sense of being appraised. Miss Liberty herself in fact, fixing upon him her wholly enigmatical eye, had scarcely given him this uncomfortable feeling more strongly. He was reminded that he was, after all, a mere substitute for Captain Cox, that favoured young man whom some intimate bereavement had removed at the last moment from the scene. It was natural that his hosts should be disposed to wonder whether Sir Bernard Paxton’s second choice was a reliable man for his job.

But this chastening reflection was presently replaced by another. It became evident as Mr Thewless’ perceptions sharpened themselves under the material recruitment afforded by Mr Bolderwood’s table that if considerations of this sort were active in Ivor’s mind so too were others of a different order. To what might be termed the atmospheric effects of Killyboffin – the genius of the place for disconcerting suggestions of murmured colloquy, stealthy movement, and all the imponderables commonly associated with edifices of much greater antiquity – the young man must be abundantly inured. It was natural, when the night wind, flapping the worn carpets in remote corridors or tinkling somewhere in abandoned candelabra, suggested the rapid tread and clinking accoutrements of some army of invading dwarves, or the rattle of some mouldering upper casement sounded like a discharge of small arms, that Mr Thewless himself should feel a certain irrational disposition to glance over his shoulder. But it was surprising that Ivor Bolderwood should indefinably betray a similar tendency, or convey, by a certain wariness of regard upon door and window, an obscure apprehension of physical insecurity. A poet, Humphrey had declared, should keep a sword upstairs; Ivor’s manner, even as he conversed absorbingly about the Sahara and the Caribbean, betrayed some sense that it might be useful to have one under the table. And at this a horrid doubt came to Mr Thewless. He feared that Ivor – whose talk, after all, hinted at an imagination romantic in cast – might, despite his appearance of eminent good sense, prove to be such another as Miss Liberty – one with whom he would have to wrestle in the task of keeping cobweb and chimera out of Humphrey’s head.

But at least it was different with the elder Mr Bolderwood. Despite the strain of fancy revealed in his manner of life at Killyboffin, his mind appeared to be of a reassuringly solid cast, and the only disturbance to which it was at present subject was one still connected with his recalcitrant poultry. A fourth glass of hock had produced in this matter something like the dawn of illumination, and it was becoming clear to him that he was confronted, not with an unnatural and unseasonable continence on the part of the creatures concerned, but simply with a new and monstrous instance of the worthlessness and dishonesty of his retainers. It was his misfortune to be subjected by these to every species of robbery and extortion, and now they were taking the very eggs out of his guests’ mouths – doubtless to sell them at unreasonable prices to the black marketeers, smugglers, and bandits by whom the whole countryside was now overrun. Not since the heyday of the Troubles, indeed, had a wellnigh universal. lawlessness so prevailed; housebreaking had become common and arson might be expected to spring up again at any time. For two pins he would return to South America or settle in some atrocious part of Surrey.

This comparatively harmless talk was for the most part directed to Mr Thewless. Humphrey, engaged with Ivor, clearly gave no heed to it. And thus dinner passed comfortably enough. It was followed, as a preliminary to packing Humphrey off to bed, by a stroll upon the terrace. Mr Thewless found the ritual a trifle chilly, and he judged that the tumbledown statuary, dimly revealed by a moon now in its last quarter, was depressing rather than picturesque. Behind the house the sough of the ocean could be faintly heard; sparsely on the hillsides, and to an effect of great loneliness, there gleamed a yellow light from cottage windows; periodically the beam from a lighthouse on some adjacent headland swept over the uppermost story of the house and passed on like a hunter’s noose that has failed to snare its prey. Humphrey was delighted with the effect, and at this Mr Thewless found himself being foolishly relieved. The truth was, he realized, that he had fallen into the way of being unnecessarily apprehensive as to what might alarm his pupil’s sensibilities and precipitate undesirable imaginative repercussions. He was the more startled, therefore, at the sudden starting up of what might well have proved disastrous in this regard.

The Bolderwoods, father and son, had fallen behind together for domestic discussion, and Mr Thewless was about to make some remark to Humphrey about the possibility of one day visiting the lighthouse that was at play above them, when the voice of the elder Mr Bolderwood was heard clearly behind them in tones of characteristic incautious exasperation.

‘Bless my soul, Ivor! You don’t mean to tell me that the imbeciles have put the boy in the haunted room?’

Mr Thewless, appalled by this luckless stroke of fate, glanced swiftly at Humphrey and saw that mischief had indeed been done. The boy looked thoroughly alarmed. But in a second Ivor had overtaken them, and laid his hand on Humphrey’s shoulder with a cheerful laugh. ‘Humphrey,’ he said, ‘would give quite a lot for the chance of sleeping in a haunted room! But, as a matter of fact, I rather want to move him to the one next my own. Shall you mind, Humphrey? It means that we can slip out quite early with the guns, and nobody need be disturbed.’

‘Excellent!’ Mr Thewless had the wit instantly to back up this deft sparing of his pupil’s
amour propre
. ‘I should hate to be wakened up by Humphrey and his gun bumping about together next door to
me
. And perhaps you will be able to bring something back for breakfast.’

Ivor laughed again. ‘To eke out the skirlie-mirlie? Perhaps we shall. Well, come along, and we’ll make the move now.’

And at this the party returned to the house and, without calling upon menial assistance, transferred an evidently relieved Humphrey to his new quarters. There he was bidden good night, and Mr Thewless was carried off by his hosts to desultory conversation and a generous provision of Irish whiskey in Mr Bolderwood’s study. At eleven o’clock Mr Bolderwood announced that he proposed to lock up the house.

This proved to be an occupation of some labour, and began with the securing of a door which shut off the servants’ quarters – an out-of-the-way proceeding sufficiently explained by Mr Bolderwood’s whimsical conviction of the unreliability and dishonesty of those who attended him. There was then much bolting of other doors and securing of windows – and this again was unremarkable in one who believed the countryside to be alive with robbers. Mr Thewless, however – although by this time thoroughly sleepy, slightly fuddled and only intermittently attentive – was mildly surprised when his host proceeded to make a thorough search of the house. In this operation, which was rendered considerably more troublesome by the fact that the only artificial light at Killyboffin was supplied by oil lamps and candles, Mr Bolderwood was assisted by his son with rather more vigour than was necessary simply for the purpose of humouring an eccentric parent. Whether the proceeding was customary, and with a rational basis in the apprehension of robbery, or whether it was a matter of the tiresome imaginative aura of Humphrey Paxton at work once more, was a question that Mr Thewless was now much too tired to entertain. When the Bolderwoods had satisfied themselves that reasonable security reigned at Killyboffin he took up his candle, bade his hosts good night, and took himself thankfully to bed.

It was the healthful custom of Mr Thewless to sleep with his window open to its fullest extent. When he had undressed, therefore, he extinguished the lamp which had been burning in his room, drew back his curtains, and threw open the casement. The waning moon was hidden in cloud and the night was almost completely dark; he had the sense, rather than the perception, of standing at a considerable elevation, and he remembered that what was commanded from this aspect of the house must be a view of the sea. A single light was visible at a distance not easy to determine, presently he distinguished that this was faintly reflected in water; and it occurred to him that it might well represent a riding-light on the motor cruiser noticed by Humphrey before dinner. There was still a chilly breeze, and Mr Thewless climbed without more ado into bed. He had been not without fears, reasonably bred by the marked unreliability of the furniture around him, that the night might bring discomforts of its own. He found, however, that the bed was in excellent order and soothingly sheeted in the finest linen. As he tumbled in, he became aware of a dim radiance gliding smoothly across the ceiling of his room. It must be the faint reflection of the beam from the lighthouse that he had previously remarked as touching the upper part of the house. The effect was too slight to be disturbing. Within a minute Mr Thewless was asleep.

It would have been no more than fair had his late vicissitudes earned him a full night’s oblivion. But his undisturbed sleep was of short duration, and was succeeded by uneasy and perplexing dreams. In these he was himself at first the only living participant and he moved amid a décor which his waking consciousness – as we have seen, nicely informed in such matters – would have assured him reflected the alarms and dismays which had attended a singularly frightening episode of his career undertaken jointly with his mother some fifty years before. Painful progressions through narrow tunnels, terrifying drops through space, sudden assaults upon eye and ear by unanalysable lights and sounds, the dread presage of unknown modes of being: all these things, in a confusion somewhat suggestive of the best modern music, formed as it were the overture to his nocturnal drama. And then it was as if the curtain rose and slowly, with a careful regard for the sluggish understanding of the audience, the actors appeared one by one. The first of these was Mr Thewless himself, aware – and surprised, but only mildly so, at his awareness – that he was no longer very substantially Mr Thewless, since he had assumed the vastly more distinguished role or identity of Sir Bernard Paxton. Mr Thewless having become Sir Bernard, and having gained thereby an insight into Sir Bernard, remarked that Sir Bernard (who was himself) was by no means so impressive a spectacle when viewed from within as he (Mr Thewless, that was to say) had found him when viewed from without. In particular he was prone to behave in an indecisive and timorous fashion when confronted by heights. And this was the position now. In a vast, void darkness Thewless-Paxton trod falteringly the brink of some unimaginable precipice. Far below shone a single light dimly reflected in dreadful waters; to a sickening plunge towards this he felt himself irresistibly impelled; his head swam, his knees gave way beneath him and he fell. But from the darkness a strong arm stretched out and held him and, turning in air, he recognized that his preserver was Humphrey Paxton, who was his son. Again he trod the precipice, the boy holding his hand and guiding him as he went, and presently their path through darkness began to rock and pulse beneath them. It was a path no longer, but the corridor of an express train, its outer side cut away to expose them to the hurtling night, its inner giving upon a series of compartments through the glass of which there gibbered and mowed monsters and prodigies in endless sinister diversity. But in every compartment too sat Ivor Bolderwood – always in the same corner an Ivor Bolderwood, his glance composed and direct through his large round glasses, in his lap a bowl of boxty from which he ceaselessly fed the horrors around him with a long-handled wooden spoon. But whether Ivor was master of the rout or whether he was in their thrall Mr Thewless could by no means determine as the boy hurried him onwards down the interminable train, his lips parted and his eyes, bright with challenge, fixed upon some distant and shrouded goal.

The dream seemed interminable: always the monsters, always an Ivor, always the swaying corridor beneath the feet. Once Mr Thewless turned his head and behind him saw the bearded man with pebble glasses, in his hand a bludgeon raised and prepared to strike. But even as Mr Thewless shrank in anticipation of the blow the bearded man was transformed into Mr Wambus, swathed and powerless in his bandages, like a corpse in some old picture. Once – and once only – the dread monotony of the teeming compartments was varied, and Mr Thewless glimpsed the solitary figure of Miss Liberty, a volume by Sapper in her lap. But her face was blank and sightless; or rather – he realized with a chill of sudden horror – it was no face at all, but simply the dial of a clock from which the hands had been wrenched so as to render it useless.

And now the unending train was devouring not only space but time as well; it was hurtling at such speed through aeons of time that Mr Thewless recognized in a rhythmic sweep of light and darkness about him an actual procession of nights and days. And suddenly he knew the destination of the train. It was hurtling towards the sun. This was the goal upon which the eyes of the boy who still guided and supported him were set; ahead was nothing but empty space, with that vast conflagration at the end. And then it was before him – burning, incandescent light. Mr Thewless felt the leap and lick of its vast tongues of flame upon his brow. He woke up.

Mr Thewless woke up and on his retina there glowed and swam a single orb of orange fire. He stared at it and instantly, from its voyaging place a thousand million miles away, his mind made a wonderful leap at objective fact. Somebody had shone an electric torch in his face. Hence the sun as terminus to that unending journey; hence now this fading spot of colour on his brain. And this realization was followed by another almost as immediate. The swift procession of nights and days through which his dream had moved as over a chequer-board of darkness and light had also been physically determined. It was dark now; presently there would pass over his ceiling the faint illumination from the lighthouse. In this illumination it would be possible to
see
.