Part 14 (1/2)

As Ishmael drove him from Penzance through the warm, clear May afternoon Killigrew waxed enthusiastic with appreciation of what he saw.

”Anyone living here should be perfectly happy,” he declared. ”I don't wonder you've never wanted to leave. It has more to it, so to speak, than our old country round St. Renny.”

For a moment Ishmael made no reply; it was the first time it had occurred to him it would be possible to leave Cloom, and though he knew that up to now he had not wanted to, yet he was not quite pleased that Killigrew should take it so for granted. He sent his mind back over the years since he had seen his friend, comparing what had happened to himself with all that happened to Killigrew as far as he could imagine it--which was not very far. Killigrew was the more changed; his beard and the lines of humour--and other things--round his eyes, made him seem older than his twenty-two years, but it was more the growth in him mentally that had been so marked as to suggest that he had changed. This was not so, as the alterations had all marched in inevitable directions--it could not have been otherwise in one who lived so by his instincts as Killigrew, and held them so sacred. He had not changed, but he had developed so far that to Ishmael he seemed disconcertingly altered.

”It's all right for me,” said Ishmael at last, ”but I expect you'll find it dull after Paris. It must all be so different over there.”

”Oh, Paris is Paris, of course, and unlike anything else on earth. It is not a place as much as a state, which is one of its resemblances to heaven. You see I haven't forgotten all my theology.”

”I sometimes think,” announced Ishmael, firmly believing what he was saying, ”that it's time I went about a bit. To London and Paris ... the place can get on quite well without me for a bit.”

”My son, be advised by me,” said Killigrew gaily; ”for good little boys like you this is a better place than gay, wicked cities. Of course, I'm not good--or bad either; it's a distinction that doesn't mean anything to me--but I have to be in Paris for my painting. Can you imagine it, I've been with Diaz and Rousseau? And there's a young fellow who's coming on now that I've seen a lot of called Lepage--Bastien Lepage, who's going to be a wonder. I can tell you, sometimes when I think of the dear old Guv'nor's business, and how he had set his heart on my going into it, I can hardly believe it's true that I've been there, free to do my own work, with those men....”

Killigrew's voice sounded younger in its enthusiasm, more as it had in the old days when he used to speak of Turner.

”I'll bet you're going to be as great as any,” cried Ishmael, the old sense of potencies that Killigrew's bounding vitality had always stirred in him awaking again. ”How we all used to talk at St. Renny about what we'd do ... d'you remember?”

”Rather. And it's most of it coming true. I was to be a painter and old Carminow a surgeon. I've just heard he's at the Charing Cross hospital.”

”And Polkinghorne major? D'you know anything about him? Did he get into his Highland regiment?”

”I heard about him at St. Renny from the old bird. I stopped there last night, you know, to break this devil of a journey. I tell you, Ishmael, it's less of a business getting over to Paris than down here.”

”What did Old Tring say about everyone? How was he?”

”Just the same, only thinner on top and fatter below. He told me about Polkinghorne. He went to Italy the year you left, you know. Well, Old Tring told me while he was still there the war broke out, and he enlisted under Garibaldi and was killed in a skirmish just when peace was settled.”

There was a second of silence--not because Ishmael had any feeling for Polkinghorne beyond a pleasant liking, but because it was the first time the thought of death as an actuality instead of a dreamlike hypothesis had ever struck home to him. Then he said: ”Poor old Polkinghorne ... but he was hardly older than us. It doesn't seem possible anyone like us can be dead....”

He pushed the thought away from him and soon was listening to Killigrew's tales of Paris, some of which were so obviously meant to startle him that he kept to himself the fact that they succeeded.

Awkwardness died between them, and when he turned in up the new drive--still only half-made, but the whole scheme of it clear--Ishmael could glow at the other's admiration of his home.

If he could show off Cloom without a qualm, however, it was not the same when it came to displaying his family, and never had he been so thankful for Va.s.sie's beauty as when he saw Killigrew's notice of it. And how that beauty glowed for Killigrew! Even a brother's eyes could not but admire. Phoebe sat unnoticed, her charm swamped in that effulgence.

Annie's querulous remarks faded through sheer pride into silence. The Parson, a welcome addition, arrived for supper; greasy Tonkin, inevitable though not so greatly a source of pleasure, drove over from Penzance and sat absorbing Va.s.sie, so to speak, at every pore.

Supper was going off well, thought Ishmael, as he watched Killigrew eat and laugh, and listened to his talk that could not have been more animated--so reflected Ishmael in his relief--if Va.s.sie had been a d.u.c.h.ess. Under the brightness the tension, so common to that room that it had become part of it, evaporated, and yet what, after all, was it that achieved this miracle? Nothing in the world but ordinary social intercourse between young and gay people who met as equals, intercourse such as poor Ishmael had never known under his own roof before.... And they all made a fuss of him: John-James actually said something approving, if difficult to follow, about his farming; Va.s.sie beamed on him not only for his friend's sake; the Parson drew him out--he felt himself a host, and responded to the sensation.

Killigrew was just drawing upon the tablecloth, unreproved of Annie, a sketch of a fas.h.i.+onable Parisian lady for Va.s.sie's instruction when the door opened to admit of Tom, a very rare visitor at Cloom nowadays. He was in sleek black broadcloth and looked almost as ecclesiastical as Tonkin, and much more so than Boase. Tom wore a handsome white cravat beneath his narrow, clean-shaved chin, which was decorated on either side with whiskers whose fiery hue made Killigrew's seem but tawny. Tom wore also a curious smile on his thin lips, but Ishmael was forced to admit, as he watched him shake hands quietly with Killigrew, that this dreaded and disliked brother had given the most unexceptional greeting of any of his family.

Tom sat down, but refused food. He had only come out to see his mother, and because it was Ishmael's birthday, or so he said.

”Is anything the matter, Tom?” asked Annie artlessly.

”No, what should there be?” demanded Tom in a slightly contemptuous fas.h.i.+on. ”Can't I want to see you without that? Don't give me away before the visitor, especially as Ishmael's such an attentive son.”

Annie began to sniff, and Va.s.sie bade him, in an angry undertone, be quiet. Tom obeyed, but it was an odd quietness as of something waiting its time. Conversation drooped as though a blight had fallen upon it, and once or twice Tom might have been observed to glance towards the window.

”I'll have a drink if I won't eat,” he declared at last. ”I must drink the young un's health on an occasion like this, after all. Here, mother, fill up.”