Part 2 (1/2)

'He didn't tell you what had hurt him?' she interrupted.

'Oh, I didn't ask him. He'd have shut up like a clam. Tommy likes to deal with things alone in his own way. He just wanted to know if his way was--well, _my_ way.'

There fell a pause between them; then Mother, without looking up, enquired: 'Have you noticed Lettice lately? She's here a good deal now.'

But her husband only smiled, making no direct reply. 'Tommy will have a hard time of it when he falls in love,' he remarked presently.

'He'll know the real thing and won't stand any nonsense--just as I did.'

Whereupon his wife informed him that if he was not careful he would simply ruin the boy--and the brief conversation died away of its own accord.

As she was leaving the room a little later, unsatisfied but unaggressive, he asked her: 'Have you left the picture books, my dear?' and she pointed to an ominous heap upon the table in the window, with the remark that Jane had 'unearthed every book that Tommy had set eyes upon since he was three.

You'll find everything that's ever interested him,' she added as she went out, 'every picture, that is--and I suppose it is the pictures that you want.'

For an hour and a half the great specialist turned pages without ceasing-- well-thumbed pages; torn, crumpled, blotted, painted pages. It was easy to discover the boy's favourite pictures; and all were commonplace enough, the sort that any normal, adventure-loving boy would find delightful.

But nothing of special significance resulted from the search; nothing that might account for the recurrent nightmare, nothing in the way of eyes or wave. He had already questioned Jane as to what stories she told him, and which among them he liked best. 'Hunting or travel or collecting,' Jane had answered, and it was about 'collecting that he asks most questions.

What kind of collecting, sir? Oh, treasure or rare beetles mostly, and sometimes--just bones.'

'Bones! What kind of bones?'

'The villin's, sir,' explained the frightened Jane. 'He always likes the villin to get lost, and for the jackals to pick his bones in the desert----'

'Any particular desert?'

'No, sir; just desert.'

'Ah--just desert! Any old desert, eh?'

'I think so, sir--as long as it _is_ desert.'

Dr. Kelverdon put the woman at her ease with the humorous smile that made all the household love--and respect--him; then asked another question, as if casually: Had she ever told him a story in which a wave or a pair of eyes were in any way conspicuous?

'No, never, sir,' replied the honest Jane, after careful reflection.

'Nor I wouldn't,' she added, 'because my father he was drowned in a tidal wave; and as for eyes, I know that's wrong for children, and I wouldn't tell Master Tommy such a thing for all the world----'

'Because?' enquired the doctor kindly, seeing her hesitation.

'I'd be frightening myself, sir, and he'd make such fun of me,' she finally confessed.

No, it was clear that the nurse was not responsible for the vivid impression in Tommy's mind which bore fruit in so strange a complex of emotions. Nor were other lines of enquiry more successful. There was a cause, of course, but it would remain unascertainable unless some clue offered itself by chance. Both the doctor and the father in him were pledged to a persistent search that was prolonged over several months, but without result. The most perplexing element in the problem seemed to him the whiff. The a.s.sociation of terror with a wave needed little explanation; the introduction of the eyes, however, was puzzling, unless some story of a drowning man was possibly the clue; but the addition of a definite odour, an Eastern odour, moreover, with which the boy could hardly have become yet acquainted,--this combination of the three accounted for the peculiar interest in the doctor's mind.

Of one thing alone did he feel reasonably certain: the impression had been printed upon the deepest part of Tommy's being, the very deepest; it arose from those unplumbed profundities--though a scientist, he considered them unfathomable--of character and temperament whence emerge the most primitive of instincts,--the generative and creative instinct, choice of a mate, natural likes and dislikes,--the bed-rock of the nature. A girl was in it somewhere, somehow. . . .

Midnight had sounded from the stable clock in the mews when he stole up into the boys' room and cautiously approached the yellow iron bed where Tommy lay. The reflection of a street electric light just edged his face.

He was sound asleep--with tear-stains marked clearly on the cheek not pressed into the pillow. Dr. Kelverdon paused a moment, looked round the room, shading the candle with one hand. He saw no photograph, no pictures anywhere. Then he sniffed. There was a faint and delicate perfume in the air. He recognised it. He stood there, thinking deeply.

'Lettice Aylmer,' he said to himself presently as he went softly out again to seek his own bed; 'I'll try Lettice. It's just possible. . . . Next time I see her I'll have a little talk.' For he suddenly remembered that Lettice Aylmer, his daughter's friend and playmate, had very large and beautiful dark eyes.

CHAPTER III

Lettice Aylmer, daughter of the Irish Member of Parliament, did not provide the little talk that he antic.i.p.ated, however, because she went back to her Finis.h.i.+ng School abroad. Dr. Kelverdon was sorry when he heard it. So was Tommy. She was to be away a year at least.

'I must remember to have a word with her when she comes back,' thought the father, and made a note of it in his diary twelve months ahead.