The Tree of Heaven Part 8

Dorothy tried to console him.

"Jerry's eyes would have turned green, if he had lived, Nicky. They would, really."

"I wouldn't have minded. They'd have been Jerry's eyes."

"But he wouldn't have looked like Jerry."

"I wouldn't have cared what he looked like. He'd have _been_ Jerry."

"I'll give you Jane, Nicky, and all the kittens she ever has, if that would make up."

"It wouldn't. You don't seem to understand that it's Jerry I want. I wish you wouldn't talk about him."

"Very well," said Dorothy, "I won't."

Then Grannie tried. She recommended a holy resignation. G.o.d, she said, had given Jerry to Nicky, and G.o.d had taken him away.

"He didn't give him me, and he'd no right to take him. Dorothy wouldn't have done it. She was only ragging. But when G.o.d does things," said Nicky savagely, "it isn't a rag."

He hated Grannie, and he hated Mr. Parsons, and he hated G.o.d. But he loved Dorothy who had given him Jerry.

Night after night Frances held him in her arms at bed-time while Nicky said the same thing. "If--if I could stop seeing him. But I keep on seeing him. When he sat on the mustard and cress. And when he bit me with his sleep-bites. And when he looked at me out of the tree of Heaven. Then I hear that little barking grunt he used to make when he was playing with himself--when he dashed off into the bushes.

"And I can't _bear_ it."

Night after night Nicky cried himself to sleep.

For the awful thing was that it had been all his fault. If he had kept Jerry's weight down Boris couldn't have caught him.

"Daddy said so, Mummy."

Over and over again Frances said, "It wasn't your fault. It was Don-Don's. He left the door open. Surely you can forgive Don-Don?" Over and over again Nicky said, "I do forgive him."

But it was no good. Nicky became first supernaturally subdued and gentle, then ill. They had to take him away from home, away from the sight of the garden, and away from Mr. Parsons, forestalling the midsummer holidays by two months.

Nicky at the seaside was troublesome and happy, and they thought he had forgotten. But on the first evening at Hampstead, as Frances kissed him Good-night, he said: "Shall I have to see Mr. Parsons to-morrow?"

Frances said: "Yes. Of course."

"I'd rather not."

"Nonsense, you must get over that."

"I--can't, Mummy."

"Oh, Nicky, can't you forgive poor Mr. Parsons? When he was so unhappy?"

Nicky meditated.

"Do you think," he said at last, "he really minded?"

"I'm sure he did."

"As much as you and Daddy?"

"Quite as much."

"Then," said Nicky, "I'll forgive him."

But, though he forgave John and Mr. Parsons and even G.o.d, who, to do him justice, did not seem to have been able to help it, Nicky did not forgive himself.

Yet Frances never could think why the sight of mustard and cress made Nicky sick. Neither did Mr. Parsons, nor any schoolmaster who came after him understand why, when Nicky knew all the rest of the verb [Greek: erchomai] by heart he was unable to remember the second aorist.

He excellent memory, but there was always a gap in it just there.

VI

In that peace and tranquillity where nothing ever happened, Jerry's violent death would have counted as an event, a date to reckon by; but for three memorable things that happened, one after another, in the summer and autumn of 'ninety-nine: the return of Frances's brother, Maurice Fleming, from Australia where Anthony had sent him two years ago, on the express understanding that he was to stay there; the simultaneous arrival of Anthony's brother, Bartholomew, and his family; and the outbreak of the Boer War.

The return of Morrie was not altogether unforeseen, and Bartholomew had announced his coming well beforehand, but who could have dreamed that at the end of the nineteenth century England would be engaged in a War that really _was_ a War? Frances, with the _Times_ in her hands, supposed that that meant more meddling and muddling of stupid politicians, and that it would mean more silly speeches in Parliament, and copy, at last, for foolish violent, pathetic and desperate editors, and breach of promise cases, divorces and fires in paraffin shops reduced to momentary insignificance.

But as yet there was no war, nor any appearance that sensible people interpreted as a sign of war at the time of Morrie's return. It stood alone, as other past returns, the return from Bombay, the return from Canada, the return from Cape Colony, had stood, in its sheer awfulness.

To Frances it represented the extremity of disaster.

They might have known what was coming by Grannie's behaviour. One day, the day when the Australian mail arrived, she had subsided suddenly into a state of softness and gentleness. She approached her son-in-law with an air of sorrowful deprecation; she showed a certain deference to her daughter Louie; she was soft and gentle even with Emmeline and Edith.

Mrs. Fleming broke the news to Louie who broke it to Frances who in her turn broke it to Anthony. That was the procedure they invariably adopted.

"I wonder," Grannie said, "what he can be coming back for!" Each time she affected astonishment and incredulity, as if Morrie's coming back were, not a recurrence that crushed you with its flatness and staleness, but a thing that must interest Louie because of its utter un-likeliness.

"I wonder," said Louie, "why he hasn't come before. What else did you expect?"

"I'm sure I don't know," said Grannie helplessly. "Go and tell Frances."

Louie went. And because she knew that the burden of Morrie would fall again on Frances's husband she was disagreeable with Frances.

"It's all very well for you," she said. "You haven't got to live with him. You haven't got to sleep in the room next him. You don't know what it's like."

"I do know," said Frances. "I remember. You'll have to bear it."

"You haven't had to bear it for fourteen years."

"You'll have to bear it," Frances repeated, "till Anthony sends him out again. That's all it amounts to."

She waited till the children were in bed and she was alone with Anthony.

"Something awful's happened," she said, and paused hoping he would guess.