CHAPTER XXIII

THE GLITTERING NET

‘O Rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm, That flies in the night, In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy; And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.’

――_Blake._

‘And all my days are trances, And all my nightly dreams Are where thy dark eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams―― In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams.’

――_Edgar Poe._

If, as he walked home that night, Doctor O’Neill felt any misgivings concerning the part he and Palmer had played in relation to Mr. Bradley, and the possible effect their action might have had in bringing about the subsequent tragedy, he kept them to himself; yet undoubtedly he was relieved when, two days later, he learned that the boy’s reading of the case had been singularly accurate. A telegram to the address discovered by Palmer had brought over a friend of Mr. Bradley’s by the next boat, and the whole story was then revealed. It was an unpleasant story, in substance very much what Grif had listened to on that Sunday afternoon when he lay sick in bed, but the fact that it so justified himself and his young companion made it welcome to the doctor.

Only he and the canon heard the full details, though the doctor afterwards shared them with Palmer. They now learned of the homicide, which had been followed by Mr. Bradley’s detention for a period of several years in a lunatic asylum. Then, apparently cured, and on his father’s guaranteeing to look after him, he had been released; but after his father’s death, possibly fearing that he might be put again under restraint, possibly only to escape from those who knew his story, Mr. Bradley had disappeared. It was now that he dropped the name of Tennant, keeping only his two Christian names, and that he came as organist to Ballinreagh church. The only person belonging to the past with whom he kept in touch was this friend who related the history. Sometimes they met and stayed for a week together, but Mr. Bradley would never visit at his friend’s home, nor allow him to come to Ballinreagh. And of late certain rather ominous signs, which might prelude a relapse, had begun to loom like warning lamps through the darkness:――for instance, that matter of mysterious letters, letters which never arrived, letters which would confirm a claim to some fantastic title or fortune....

Doctor O’Neill at this point could not help casting a meaning glance at the canon, but the canon was absorbed in the story, and though, later on, he admitted that he had judged Palmer over-hastily, both he and Miss Annesley, to the very end, refused to believe that the organist had been in any way responsible for Grif’s illness.

The doctor threw out a question or two on the subject of Mr. Bradley’s delusions, and himself described Palmer’s curious experiment, while the canon fidgeted uneasily....

And the matter dropped.... It cannot be denied that, as time passed, the progress of a fund for rebuilding the church occupied more of Canon Annesley’s thoughts than the memory of his organist; and those with whom that memory remained greenest were Grif and Doctor O’Neill.

But for very different reasons. The doctor was interested entirely on Grif’s account. That is to say, he still puzzled over the unfortunate Mr. Bradley, because he was still puzzled as to the nature of the hold he had obtained upon his patient. Nothing had been revealed as to that, and nothing now seemed ever likely to be revealed. What caused the matter to linger in the doctor’s mind was the simple fact that Grif was not making the progress he had expected. The little boy had been what was called ‘better’ for some weeks now, but the doctor did not believe he was well. He ran about more or less as he had done before his illness; Miss Annesley and his grandfather seemed quite satisfied as to his health:――and in spite of this the doctor knew, and Palmer knew, that he was not the boy he had been....

* * * * *

August crept on, and with September the deeper golden tones of autumn began to steal into the summer. Here and there a fallen leaf, here and there a sign of over-ripeness, betokened that approaching weariness which, once a year, drops slowly down upon nature, as sleep, once a day, upon the eyes of a tired child. And Grif, to the doctor’s keen vision, seemed a little weary too. He watched him closely; watched the bright eyes and sallow face, the slender form and listless movements; and a deep pity for this strange, quiet, little chap grew up within him.

One morning Aunt Caroline spoke to him about Grif’s going to school, and the doctor stared in sheer amazement. He could hardly believe his ears. “But the thing’s absurd!” he said, trying to keep the irritation he felt out of his voice. “Can’t you see that it is?” And when Aunt Caroline did not see, he shrugged his shoulders impatiently. In the end he got angry. “It would be a positive cruelty to send him as he is now. I never saw a boy less fitted for a public school in my life. You’re simply condemning him to a life of misery.”

“Misery?”

“Yes,” snapped the doctor, “misery:――none the less real because he won’t be able to account for it satisfactorily, and I dare say won’t mention it at all. He’s _bound_ to be unhappy, and if he is unhappy he won’t live. You may think that a ridiculous exaggeration, but I’ll stake any medical reputation I may possess on its truth.”

Aunt Caroline said she would write to her sister, though there was hardly time to get an answer now. Grif’s father, in particular, was very keen that at the beginning of the autumn term he should go to school with Edward. “It’s not as if he were to go alone,” Aunt Caroline added. “He will have his brother there to look after him, and Palmer.”

“His brother can’t look after him,” replied the doctor bluntly. “Palmer might be able to do a little, but you must remember that at school it’s quite impossible for big boys and little boys to chum together. What’s more, they are utterly different in temperament, in everything. Even if they were of the same age, it would be impossible for Palmer to make a close friend of Grif.”

Aunt Caroline was nettled. “You seem to have a wonderful opinion of Palmer――especially in contrast to my nephews!”

“I _have_ a good opinion of him,” the doctor answered. “Do you think I am mistaken?”

“I should be sorry to say that.”

“I really believe――considering all things――that you ought to be.... But I should like to know just this. Will you ever ask Palmer to stay here again?”

Aunt Caroline shook her head. “I didn’t ask him this time,” she mentioned quietly. “He came as a friend of Edward’s.”

“And what have you against him?”

“I have nothing at all against him.” She paused, and then went on: “You have evidently formed an idea, doctor, that papa and I have taken a dislike to Palmer. Papa _does_ dislike him, I admit; but for myself, all I can say is, that he is not a companion I should naturally choose for the other boys. I may be wrong:――if I am, you will at least give me credit for not having interfered up to the present. What it really amounts to, I suppose, is that somehow I don’t feel perfectly sure that he is a _good_ boy. Don’t look so disgusted! After all, you asked me what I thought. I don’t know Palmer; none of us do:――I don’t know a thing more about him at this moment than I did on the day he arrived here; and I can’t look upon that as an encouraging sign.”

She smiled a sort of challenge, which the doctor failed to take up.

“I know what _you_ like about him,” she went on, “and of course all the children like him too:――Ann simply says her prayers to him. But do you think he likes _them_? He likes Ann, I dare say, and, though you mightn’t expect me to admit this, I also think he likes Grif a little, in his own way. But do you really believe he cares for Edward, who is his particular friend?... Not one little bit. Nor for any of the rest of us. Oh, I know: I am quite sure. He could watch us all drown without raising a hand to throw us a rope that might be lying at his feet.”

“I’m sorry you find him so vindictive,” said the doctor, taking up his hat.

“I don’t. He doesn’t strike me as being in the least vindictive. I simply think he is callous. All you imagine to have been done for Grif was really done for sport. I’m quite willing to grant that he is very clever and brave:――but I doubt if he has any conscience, or any moral sense.”

The doctor was silent. He knew that to argue would be only waste of breath. But his own opinion of Miss Annesley dropped there and then to zero. Her whole attitude, where Palmer was concerned, seemed to him, like her father’s, stupid, ungrateful, unfair. To the doctor’s mind, Edward was just an average boy, perfectly commonplace; Jim was simply mischievous, though a nice little chap, and quite bright and intelligent; while Grif was intelligent too, and rather babyish for his age. To compare any of them with Palmer was ridiculous. From a Sunday-school, or an ‘aunt’ point of view, they might be better or they might not; but, considered as the stuff of which a man is made, they simply, in comparison, did not count.

So he put it to himself, disgustedly, while he drove down the avenue, and along the road, in the direction of the now ruined church. As he passed by the graveyard he caught sight of Grif and stopped the car.

“Like to come for a drive?” he suggested. “I’ll be able to bring you back in time for lunch.”

Grif got in beside him, but his action was marked by that strange docility which the doctor did not care to see, for he could not help feeling that any other suggestion he might have made would have been followed in exactly the same way. In the doctor’s eyes such amenability too nearly resembled apathy.

They drove in silence, and as the little boy sat there beside him, bare-headed and bare-kneed, Doctor O’Neill was struck anew by that peculiar expression of a kind of patient sweetness in his eyes, and by the lightness and slenderness of his body. It somehow touched him acutely, and he swore below his breath as he recalled Miss Annesley’s remarks about school. The doctor liked Grif. Since he had begun to look after him professionally he had even grown fond of him; but the interest he felt was very different from the interest he took in Palmer, and that difference seemed accounted for by the way Grif sat beside him now, sat there as quiet as a little mouse, not saying a word, but just nestling up to him confidingly. He felt really an affection for the little fellow, but his affection was mingled with, if not based on, pity, and the doctor was a man who naturally preferred those whom there was no need to pity.

It was after he had paid his call, and when they were on their way home, that he said, “Why don’t you ever go to see Captain Batt and Miss Nancy now? They were asking me about you the other day, and saying you hadn’t been there for ever so long.”

Grif coloured. “I’ll go and see them,” he answered softly.

As a matter of fact, he felt rather guilty towards the Batts. He did not understand why it was that he should no longer be eager to go there; he even felt ashamed of his lack of enthusiasm; but some shadowy barrier seemed to have grown up between him and his friends. He had been conscious of it the last time he had gone. The place had not been the same, nothing had been the same; he had lost touch, he was a stranger there; and as he had wandered about, blind and baffled, turning this way and that in a fruitless endeavour to get back, he had known that it was useless. Something had happened; he had been cut off; he was like a dog who has lost a scent; and he had wanted to run away and be alone with the tears which kept rising to his eyes....

He had lost touch with everything now. All the things he used to care for were fast slipping from him――even their meaning. Sometimes, in a kind of reaction or despair, he would rush back into the past, enter feverishly into what the others were doing; but these reactions grew from day to day more feeble, and he seemed, like a sinking ship, to be settling down before the final plunge, that would carry him into the darkness and the cold.

And the doctor, though dimly, was aware of all this. He was aware, for Palmer had told him, that Grif, who used always to be singing about the house and out of doors, now never sang; he knew there was something against which his tonics were of no avail; and from Grif himself he could get no guidance as to what it was, for the little boy’s very gentleness made it but more difficult to do anything with him.

What the doctor did not know was that the sound of the Spring Song sang now in Grif’s ears from morning till night. What he did not know was that it sang through his dreams, and that Grif, awakening, would sit up in his bed to listen to it. And he would wander off alone to listen to it; he had been listening to it to-day when the doctor had driven up in his car. And sometimes he felt that the player on the flute was very near, sometimes he seemed to see him. Mingled with this fascination was a fear. He had hours now when he saw, with a curious and terrible insight, whither he was being drawn. He had written down pledges on paper, and signed them――only to break them: and his will was getting weaker. He knew that in yielding to this half-dreaded, and of late more than half-dreaded spell, he was injuring himself and all those who loved him. He could hear, far away, the low roar of the whirlpool into which he was being sucked; he could feel the overpowering drag of those dark frozen waters.

He knew that the things he had once cared for were becoming less and less able to hold him, even for a moment. He knew that he was becoming more and more absorbed in one feeling, one languid listless passion, which seemed strong now only because all other things were weak, which was able to fascinate him without bringing him happiness, or even a passing pleasure. At times he longed, with a hopeless despairing crying of his soul, to tell somebody, to ask for help; but he felt there was no one he could speak to, no one he could tell.

He could not tell Aunt Caroline. He knew that if he did she would not be able to do anything for him; he knew just what she would say, how she would get him to make a promise. A promise! He had promised so often already, and had so often broken his word....

The doctor set him down at the Glebe gate, and Grif thanked him. Then he turned and walked up the avenue to the house. He walked slowly, listlessly. And the doctor knew that three months ago he would have been running and shouting, shouting to the others, beginning to tell them about his drive while he was still fifty yards off. To-day he doubted very much if he would even mention the matter.