Читать книгу Uncle Stephen - Forrest Reid - Страница 4

Table of Contents

The others had arrived before him, and as he came downstairs after removing the dust of his journey he could hear them talking. They were in the dining-room, so he supposed tea was ready. But the moment he opened the door the voices ceased, and in the sudden silence he stood motionless on the threshold, with heightened colour, his eyes fixed on the assembled faces all turned in his direction. Then the flash of Uncle Horace’s smile, and his rather strident welcome, broke a pause which threatened to become awkward, for Tom still hovered by the door, unconscious of the curious effect his reserve and shyness were creating. His step-mother, looking blonde, resigned, and expansive, in her deep mourning, murmured that everything was ready, that they had only been waiting for Tom, and she told Leonard to ring the bell. ‘It’s raining,’ Jane announced from the window.

He suspected, and the impression deepened when they took their seats round the table, that a definite policy in regard to himself must in his absence have been argued out and settled. Leonard actually of his own accord passed him the butter:—‘Butter?’ he murmured languidly:—and Eric asked him what he thought of Dr. Macrory’s Citröen. Tom had not thought of it at all; he hadn’t even known it was a Citröen; but he produced what he hoped might be a satisfactory answer; and the conversation drifted to and fro, superficially normal, though with occasional pauses betraying an underlying constraint.

It was during one of these that he made up his mind to risk the question which all day had been in his thoughts, but which, he knew not why, he had felt a strange reluctance to ask. Even now he spoke in a low voice and without raising his eyes. ‘Was Uncle Stephen told?’ he said.

Nobody answered.

Tom recollected that possibly they did not know who Uncle Stephen was. ‘My Uncle Stephen—Uncle Stephen Collet,’ he explained. Then, as the silence continued, he glanced up.

What had he said?—for he saw at once that it must have been the wrong thing. His step-mother’s hands, grasping the hot-water jug and the lid of the tea-pot, were arrested in mid air, and Uncle Horace was looking at her warningly. Tom stared at them in astonishment, but next moment Uncle Horace replied. ‘I didn’t think it necessary to tell him. The announcement was in the papers. As a matter of fact it never occurred to me to write. Perhaps I should have done so.’

Mrs. Barber put the lid back on the tea-pot without having filled it. ‘Why?’ she asked stiffly. ‘Why should you write?’

‘Well, I suppose, as the only blood relation——’ And again, it seemed to Tom, he flashed his signal of danger.

Mrs. Barber ignored it. ‘He was no relation of Edgar’s, and there had never been any communication between them.’

‘I meant of Tom’s,’ Uncle Horace murmured.

‘He never took the slightest interest in Tom. He cut himself off entirely from his family years before Tom was born; in fact when he was not much more than Tom’s own age.’

‘Oh, I don’t for a moment suppose he would have come. Still——’

‘I think it is much better as it is,’ Mrs. Barber said, with an air of closing the subject.

For Tom she had merely opened it. ‘Why?’ he asked in his turn, flushing a little.

Mrs. Barber took no notice, and it was Leonard who spoke, fixing his eyes on Tom’s puzzled face in a faintly cynical enjoyment. ‘That’s the magician, isn’t it? It would have been rather sport if he——’

‘Be quiet, Leonard!’ his mother checked him sharply.

Tom felt the colour deepening in his cheeks. Enough had been said to show him that Uncle Stephen had been discussed before, and unfavourably. What right had they to discuss him! Nevertheless, he was more bewildered than offended. Leonard’s mysterious allusion in particular left him in the dark. He knew it was meant to be sarcastic and to annoy him; but why should Uncle Stephen be called a magician? Where did the sarcasm come in? It was at this point that Jane kicked him under the table—a hint, he supposed, that he was to say no more. He obeyed it. After all, what did it matter what they thought! And he dropped into a detached contemplation of the whole Gavney family, induced by the secret knowledge that he would not often again be seated at their table....

They certainly were a remarkably good-looking lot:—Jane, dark and vivacious, singularly unlike her large-limbed, fair-haired brothers; his step-mother, handsome too, in an opulent full-blown way; Uncle Horace, vivid, sleek, and immaculate, like the men in the pictures in American magazines. He wondered why he had got on so badly with them—or at least with his step-mother and the boys—if it had been as much his fault as theirs? Of course, he had nothing in common with them, but then he hadn’t really very much in common with Jane either, yet Jane and he were friends. They quarrelled; they quarrelled frequently; but they always made it up again—and sometimes he thought Jane quarrelled on purpose, just for the pleasure of making it up....

He became aware that Mrs. Barber, after a glance round the table to make sure everybody had finished, was rising slowly to her feet. All her movements were slow. They were like the movements of a cow—heavy, indolent, yet not ungraceful. She even suggested milk! This last reflection was quite free from irony; it simply came to him as he watched her standing by her chair in ample profile. Next moment she turned to her brother: ‘I think Eric wants to have a little “confab” with you, Horace. Perhaps you would rather talk here, and join us later.’

‘Not at all,’ Uncle Horace answered dryly. ‘I don’t suppose Eric has any secrets to tell.’

Mrs. Barber did not press the point, and they adjourned to the drawing-room, Tom loitering behind the others in the hall, for he felt tempted to go to his own room. He wondered if it would do? The fact that Uncle Horace had not gone home to dine, but had returned with them and was evidently going to spend the evening with them, seemed to show that the occasion was regarded as a special one. It was to be a family gathering, a kind of continuation of the funeral. Therefore it mightn’t look very civil if he were to disappear, and indeed most likely somebody would be sent to bring him back. Besides, if they were going to discuss Eric’s affairs, he supposed he would be allowed to read, or play a game of bezique with Jane.

One glance at the assembled company removed all hope of games. His step-mother looked mournful, Jane and Leonard bored, Eric sulky, and Uncle Horace cross. Not exactly cross, perhaps, but ready to become so. ‘Well, what is this important news of Eric’s?’ he asked, and Mrs. Barber, to whom the question was addressed, glanced encouragingly at her son.

‘It’s about the bank,’ she prompted him. ‘Eric has been thinking things over.’

Uncle Horace eyed the thinker impassively. ‘I understood all that had been settled months ago and that he was now working for his examination.’

Eric blushed, cleared his throat, and suddenly glared at his uncle. ‘I’m going into the motor trade,’ he announced in a tone which nervousness rendered alarmingly final.

‘It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate the interest you have taken in him,’ Mrs. Barber hastened to explain. ‘But you know he’s always had this taste for mechanics, and——’

‘I know nothing of the sort,’ Uncle Horace interrupted. ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever heard of his having a taste for anything but cricket and football.’

Mrs. Barber looked hurt, but she continued patiently, though with an implied reproach. ‘He put in your wireless set for you. And when the electric light goes wrong, or the bells, as they’re always doing——’

‘A child of six could put in a wireless set. He did it very badly, too; brought down most of the plaster, and the thing never worked from the beginning.’

Mrs. Barber coloured. ‘I’m sure the poor boy did his best, and you seemed quite pleased at the time.’

‘Well, I’m not pleased now,’ Uncle Horace snapped. ‘The thing’s absurd! Everybody knows the motor trade is overcrowded—all sorts of twopenny-halfpenny firms springing up daily and cutting each other’s throats. I’ve offered to use my influence as a director of the bank, and if he gets in I can look after him and help him.’

‘I know that, Horace. But you won’t listen——’

‘Who’s going to pay his premium?’ Uncle Horace asked bluntly.

‘Surely, if the boy has a special talent——’

‘Special fiddlesticks! It was a taste a minute ago. Anybody has only to look at him to see he hasn’t a special talent. If he has brains enough to pass his bank examination it will surprise most of us.’

And in truth at that moment Eric did look a good deal more angry and obstinate than talented. He had risen to his feet and now stood before his uncle, with a frown on his handsome, sulky face, and his head lowered, rather like a young bull meditating a charge. Yet it was just this vision of him which moved Tom. Forgotten were all the slights and rebuffs he had received. ‘He does know about motors and things,’ he burst in impulsively. ‘He helped Dr. Macrory to take his old car to pieces and put it together again. And the other day——’

‘Oh, shut your mouth,’ said Eric roughly. ‘I can look after myself without your interfering.’

Tom walked to the window, where he remained with his back to the room, looking out into the wet street.

‘You are a beast, Eric,’ Jane informed him dispassionately. ‘I wonder Tom ever speaks to you.’

‘Nobody was speaking to you anyway,’ retorted her brother.

Mrs. Barber rose hurriedly from her chair. ‘You’re not going, Horace!’ she exclaimed, for Uncle Horace was already half way to the door.

‘The children will be able to talk more freely when I’m gone.’

‘Surely you needn’t mind about the children!’ At the same time she embraced the entire group in one imploring glance. ‘It was Tom who started it, though I dare say he meant very well. And Jane said she wanted to show you her poem in the school magazine.’

‘Mother, what a whopper!’

But it was as if with this too emphatic denial the scene had culminated. There followed an uneasy silence, and as it drew out Tom realized that, like himself, everybody had forgotten and everybody now remembered his father. Uncle Horace returned sulkily to his armchair; his step-mother’s face reflected an odd mingling of consternation and bereavement.

‘Show him your poem,’ said Tom under his breath; and Jane went meekly to fetch the magazine.

‘Oh, Leonard, do stop!’ cried Mrs. Barber tremulously.

The feeble tune, played with one finger, which had begun to tinkle falteringly from the piano, instantly ceased. Leonard got up from the music-stool and he and Eric retired into a corner, where they began to converse together in an undertone. Tom sat upright in his chair. And the minutes grew longer and longer, stretching out till they seemed like hours. Where on earth had Jane gone to? Was she never coming back?

The silence was at last broken by Mrs. Barber, speaking in a half-whisper which perhaps he was not intended to overhear. ‘Do you think I ought to write to Mr. Collet?’

Tom pricked up his ears, but no reply came from Uncle Horace.

Once more his step-mother spoke, and this time her voice had sunk lower still. ‘The only thing I’m afraid of is that he may say or do something.’

‘Say or do what?’ Uncle Horace grunted irritably, as if he had not yet got over the matter of Eric and the bank.

‘Well—you never know. And if he gets any encouragement.... Suppose he were to take it into his head that he wanted to see Tom!’

‘About as likely as that he’ll take it into his head he wants to see you.’

‘You’re so rude, Horace, when you’re cross! Yet you complain of the children’s manners!’

‘I haven’t complained of anything. Even supposing he did want to see Tom——’

‘Well, you know the stories there were——’

‘I don’t.’

‘And I told you what Elsie said.’

Uncle Horace made a gesture of fatigue. ‘Elsie! Who’s Elsie? If you’re referring to a lot of servant’s gossip—gossip in this case even more nauseating than usual——’

‘Nauseating!’

‘Well, imbecile then—and libellous—for it was both.’

‘Elsie wasn’t an imbecile. She came from Kilbarron, too.’

‘Naturally she came from Kilbarron, or she couldn’t have picked up the gossip.’

But Mrs. Barber was not easily silenced. ‘Some of it may have been gossip,’ she pursued with a quiet stubbornness. ‘All the same, there’s no smoke without a fire, and you can’t deny that he disappeared for years. That at least is true, for Edgar told me so himself.’ She paused, to make her next words more impressive. ‘What was he doing all those years? Even now nobody knows. There was a scandal of some sort, though it happened abroad and was hushed up, so of course at this time it is hard to say to what extent he was mixed up in it. But he seems to have had some very queer friends, and when he came back it was to shut himself up in that house.’

Uncle Horace had closed his eyes. He now half opened them. ‘All this, I suppose, is on the authority of Elsie. I wonder you ever brought yourself to part with her. She must have been singularly ungifted in other directions.’

‘It isn’t on the authority of Elsie. I told you I heard it from Edgar.’

‘Then you might have kept it to yourself instead of bringing out ridiculous tales before the children.’

‘The children—I’m sure I’ve never uttered a word to the children,’ Mrs. Barber was beginning, when she caught sight of Tom’s solemn gaze fixed upon her, and stopped.

‘You’ve uttered a good many in the past five minutes,’ Uncle Horace dropped acidly. ‘Where do you think Leonard’s remark at tea came from? Or was Elsie allowed to unbosom herself to the family in general?’ He turned to Tom. ‘Your mother thinks you’ve got an uncle out of a fairy tale, Tom, but I shouldn’t advise you to build a romance on that. Mr. Stephen Collet is simply a recluse—which is all we know about him.’

Mrs. Barber looked first at her step-son and then at her brother. ‘In my opinion a person who avoids his fellow creatures must be——’

But what such a person must be, Tom, to his regret, never learned, for at that moment Jane came back, having found her magazine, and Uncle Horace stretched forth a languid hand to take it. He put on a pair of gold-rimmed eye-glasses, read the poem, and returned it to the authoress without comment.

Jane began to giggle.

‘What is there to laugh at, Jane?’ her mother inquired severely.

‘Uncle Horace thinks it’s no good,’ said Jane.

‘And why should you laugh at that? I suppose you wrote the poem to give pleasure.’

‘Well, I’m not going to cry if it doesn’t,’ Jane retorted. ‘For one thing, I never imagined Uncle Horace would like it, and for another, I don’t expect he knows about poetry:—do you, Uncle Horace dear?’

Uncle Horace, however, without even glancing at her, had again risen from his chair, and this time with an air no one ventured to oppose.