Part 10 (1/2)

He had always believed that, had his father lived, he would never have been so forgotten; just as he had always believed that his father would never have allowed one of his pack to be bundled into the solicitor's office. For that he had to thank, he felt sure, not only Sylvia's negative solicitude, but his mother's active indifference. Between them both they had done it to him.

And he never felt so to the full his dispossession as in thinking of Robert. He had always intensely feared and admired Robert. He did not know what he feared, for Robert was never unkind. But Robert was everything that he was not: tall and gay and competent, and possessing everything needful, from the very beginning, for the perfect fulfilment of his type. The difference between them had been far more than the ten years that had made of Robert a man when he was still only a little boy.

There had been, after all, a time when they had been a very big and a very little boy together, with Austin in between; yet the link had seemed always to break down after Austin. Robert, in this retrospect, had always the air of strolling away from him--for Robert, too, was a stroller. Not that he himself had had the air of pursuit; he had never, he felt sure, from the earliest age, lacked tact; tact and reticence and self-effacement had been bred into him. But his relations.h.i.+p with Robert had seemed always to consist in standing there, hiding ruefulness, and gazing at Robert's strolling back.

The difference from Austin had perhaps been as great, but it had never hurt so much, for Austin, though with his share of the Follett charm, had never had the charm of Robert. A clear-voiced and clear-eyed, masterful boy, Austin's main contact with others was in doing things with them, and that sort of contact did not mean congeniality. Austin had made use of him; had let him hold his ferrets and field for him at cricket; and a person whom you found useful did not, for the time being, bore you.

But he had bored Robert always--that was apparent; and beautiful Griselda, who was older than either of them, and Amy, who was younger.

Griselda had gazed rather sadly over his head; and Amy had smiled and teased him so that he had seldom ventured on a remark in her presence.

Even fat little Sylvia, the baby, had always preferred any of the others to him as she grew up; had only not been bored because, while she was good-humoured, she was also rather dull. And at the bottom of his heart, rueful always, sore, and still patiently surprised, he knew that, while he found them all a little brutal, he could not admire them the less because of it. It was part of the Follett inheritance to be able to be brutal, unconsciously, and therefore with no loss of bloom.

And now, at last, he was not to bore them any longer; at last, he was not to be forgotten. How could he not be happy,--it brought back every blissful thrill of boyhood, his father's smile, the daffodil woods in spring, heightened to ecstasy,--when he had at last made of himself one of the Folletts who were remembered? He would have his place in the history beside the Follett who fell at Naseby. No family but is glad of a V.C. in its annals. They could no longer stroll away. They would be proud of him; he had done something for all the Folletts forever.

II

The nice young nurse came in. She closed the door gently, and, with her smile, calm before accustomed death, and always, as it were, a little proud of him,--that was because they were both English,--she took his wrist and felt his pulse, holding her watch in the other hand, and asked him, presently, how he felt. Only after that did she say, contemplating him for a moment,--Marmaduke wondered how many hours--or was it perhaps days?--she was giving him to live,--

”A gentleman has come to see you. You may see him if you like. But I've told him that he is only to stay for half an hour.”

The blood flowed up to Marmaduke's forehead. He felt it beating hard in his neck and behind his ears, and his heart thumped down there under the neatly drawn bed-clothes.

”A gentleman? What's his name?”

Was it Robert?

”Here is his card,” said the nurse.

She drew it from her pocket and gave it to him. It couldn't have been Robert, of course. Robert would only have had to come up. Yet he was dizzy with the disappointment. It was as if he saw Robert strolling away for the last time. He would never see Robert again.

Mr. Guy Thorpe was the name. The address was a London club that Marmaduke placed at once as second-rate, and ”The Beeches, Arlington Road,” in a London suburb. On the card was written in a neat scholarly hand: ”May I see you? We are friends.”

It was difficult for a moment to feel anything but the receding tide of his hope. The next thing that came was a sense of dislike for Mr. Guy Thorpe and for the words that he had written. Friends? By what right since he did not know his name?

”Is he a soldier?” he asked. ”How did he come? I don't know him.”

”You needn't see him unless you want to,” said the nurse. ”No; he's not a soldier. An elderly man. He's driving a motor for the French Wounded Emergency Fund, and came on from the Alliance because he heard that you were here. Perhaps he's some old family friend. He spoke as if he were.”

Marmaduke smiled a little. ”That's hardly likely. But I'll see him, yes; since he came for that.”

When she had gone, he lay looking again at the blue bands across the window. A flock of sea-gulls flew past--proud, swift, and leisurely, glittering in the sun. They seemed to embody the splendour and exultation of his thoughts, and, when they had disappeared, he was sorry, almost desolate.

Mr. Guy Thorpe. He took up the card again in his feeble hand and looked at it. And now, dimly, it seemed to remind him of something.

Steps approached along the pa.s.sage, the nurse's light footfall and the heavier, careful tread of a man. An oddly polite, almost a deprecating tread. He had gone about a great many hospitals and was cautious not to disturb wounded men. Yet Marmaduke felt again that he did not like Mr.

Guy Thorpe, and, as they came in, he was conscious of feeling a little frightened.

There was nothing to frighten one in Mr. Thorpe's appearance. He was a tall, thin, ageing man, travel-worn, in civilian clothes, with a dingy Red-Cross badge on the sleeve of his waterproof overcoat. Baldish and apparently near-sighted, he seemed to blink towards the bed, and, as if with motoring in the wind, his eyelids were moist and reddened. He sat down, murmuring some words of thanks to the nurse.

A very insignificant man, for all his height and his big forehead.

Altogether of The Beeches, Arlington Road. Had he turned grey, he might have looked less shabby, but dark thin locks still cl.u.s.tered above his high crown and behind his long-lobed ears. His eyes were dark, his moustache drooped, and he had a small, straight nose. Marmaduke saw that he was the sort of man who, in youth, might have been considered very handsome. He looked like a seedy poet and some sort of minor civil servant mingled, the civil servant having got the better of the poet.