  W 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, 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. 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 ‘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——’ |
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