And perhaps (who knows?) the child’s sufferings might in some mysterious way infect himself. He did not even wish to hear of the boy. Except for that single brief enquiry at lunch-time, he never alluded to him and whenever someone else spoke of him, he either changed the subject of conversation (surreptitiously touching wood as he did so) or else withdrew out of earshot. After a few days the others learned to understand and respect his weakness. Moved by that sentiment which decrees that condemned criminals shall be treated with a special kindness, they were careful, in his presence, to avoid any allusion to what was happening upstairs.
Philip, meanwhile, hovered uneasily about the house. From time to time he went up to the nursery; but after having made an always vain attempt to persuade Elinor to come away, he would go down again in a few minutes.
He could not have borne to sit there for long at a time. The futility of Elinor’s helpless vigil appalled him; he had at all times a dread of doing nothing and in circumstances like these a long spell of mental disoccupation would have been a torture. In the intervals between his visits to the sickroom, he read, he tried to write. And then there was that affair of Gladys Helmsley to be attended to. The child’s illness had made a journey to London impossible and so absolved him from the necessity of personally interviewing Gladys. It was to Willie Weaver—Willie, who was a solicitor as well as the most reliable of friends—that he delegated the business. With what immense relief! He had really dreaded the encounter with Gladys. Willie, on the contrary, seemed to enjoy the business. ‘My dear Philip,’ he wrote, ‘I have been doing my best for your Aged Parent; but even my best promises to be somewhat expensive.
The lady has all the endearing young charms (only professional etiquette prevented me from attempting a little playful superfoetation on my own account); but she is also a business woman. Moreover, her feelings about the Aged P. are ferocious. Rather justifiably so, I must confess to thinking, after what I heard from her. Do you know where he feeds his paramours? Chez Lyons. The man must be a barmecidal maniac, as I said to the young lady when she told me. (Needless to say, she didn’t understand the witticism; so I offer it to you, on the basis of a five per cent. commission on all royalties accruing from the sales of any work or works into which you may introduce it.) Tell the Aged P. that, next time, he must really spend a little more on his amusements; it’ll probably be cheaper in the long run. Advise him to indulge his gulosity as well as his lubricity; bid him control his thrift and temperance. I return to the attack to-morrow, when I hope to get the terms of the peace treaty set down in black and white. So sorry to hear your offspring’s not well. Yours, W. W.’
Philip smiled as he read the letter, and ‘Thank goodness,’ he thought, ‘that’s settled.’ But the last phrase made him feel ashamed of his amusement and his sense of relief. ‘What bottomless selfishness’ he reproached himself. And as though to make some amends, he limped upstairs to the nursery to sit for a while with Elinor. Little Phil lay in a stupor. His face was almost unrecognizably fleshless and shrunken, and the paralysed side of it was twisted into a kind of crooked grin. His little hands plucked unceasingly at the bedclothes. He breathed now very quickly, now so slowly that one began to wonder whether he was breathing at all.
Nurse Butler had gone to take a nap; for her nights were half sleepless. They sat together in silence. Philip took his wife’s hand and held it. Measured by that light irregular breathing from the bed, time slowly passed.
In the garden John Bidlake was painting—his wife had finally induced him to make the experiment—for the first time since his arrival at Gattenden. And for the first time, forgetting himself and his illness, he was happy. What an enchantment! he was thinking. The landscape was all curves and bulges and round recessions, like a body. Orbism, by God, orbism! The clouds were cherubic backsides; and that sleek down was a Nereid’s glaucous belly; and Gattenden Punch Bowl was an enormous navel; and each of those elms in the middle distance was a paunchy great Silenus straight out of Jordaens; and these absurd round bushes of evergreen in the foreground were the multitudinous breasts of a green Diana of the Ephesians. Whole chunks of anatomy in leaves and vapour and swelling earth. Marvellous! And by God, what one could make of it! Those seraphic buttocks should be the heavenly reflection of Diana’s breasts; one orbic theme, with variations; the buttocks slanting outwards and across the canvas towards the surface of the picture; the breasts slanting inwards, towards the interior.
And the sleek belly should be a transverse and horizontal reconciliation of the two diagonal movements, with the great Sileni, zigzagging a little, disposed in front of it. And in the foreground on the left there’d be the silhouetted edge of the Wellingtonia, imaginatively transplanted there to stop the movements from running right out of the picture; and the stone griffon would come in very nicely on the right—for this was to be a closed composition, a little universe with boundaries beyond which the imagination was not to be allowed to stray. And the eye was to gaze as through an imaginary tunnel, unable to stray from the focal point in the middle of the great navel of Gattenden Punch Bowl, round which all the other fragments of divine anatomy would be harmoniously grouped. ‘By God,’ John Bidlake said to himself, swearing aloud in pure satisfaction of spirit, ‘by God! And he began to paint with a kind of fury.
Wandering through the garden in her endless crusade against weeds, Mrs. Bidlake halted for a moment behind him and looked over his shoulder.
‘Admirable,’ she said, as much in comment on her husband’s activity as on its pictorial results.
She moved away and, having uprooted a dandelion, paused and, with eyes shut, began to repeat her own name, ‘Janet Bidlake, Janet Bidlake, Janet Bidlake,’ again and again, until the syllables had lost all significance for her and had become as mysterious, meaningless and arbitrary as the words of a necromancer’s spell. Abracadabra, Janet Bidlake—was she really herself? did she even exist? and the trees? and people? this moment and the past? everything….?
Meanwhile, in the nursery, an extraordinary thing had happened. Suddenly and without warning, little Phil had opened his eyes and looked about him. They met his mother’s. As well as his twisted face would permit him, he smiled.
‘But he can see!’ cried Elinor. And kneeling down by the bed, she put her arms round the child and began to kiss him with a love that was quickened by an outburst of passionate gratitude. After all these days of squinting blindness, she was thankful to him, she was profoundly grateful for that look of answering intelligence in his eyes, that poor twisted essay at a smile. ‘My darling,’ she repeated and, for the first time for days, she began to cry. She averted her face, so that the child should not see her tears, got up and walked away from the bed. ‘Too stupid,’ she said apologetically to her husband, as she wiped her eyes. ‘But I can’t help it.’
‘I’m hungry,’ said little Phil suddenly.
Elinor was down on her knees again beside the bed. ‘What would you like to eat, my darling?’ But the child did not hear her question.
‘I’m hungry,’ he repeated.
‘He’s still deaf,’ said Philip.
‘But he can see again, he can speak.’ Elinor’s face was transfigured. She had known all the time, in spite of everything, that it was impossible he shouldn’t get well. Quite impossible. And now she was being proved right. ‘Stay here,’ she went on. ‘I’ll run and get some milk.’ She hurried out of the room.
Philip remained at the bedside. He stroked the child’s hand and smiled. Little. Phil smiled back. He too began to believe that there really might have been a miracle.
‘Draw me something,’ the child commanded.
Philip pulled out his fountain pen and, on the back of an old letter, scribbled one of those landscapes full of elephants and airships, trains and flying pigs and steamers, for which his son had’such a special partiality. An elephant came into collision with a train. Feebly, but with a manifest enjoyment, little Phil began to laugh. There could be no doubt of it; the miracle had really happened.
Elinor returned with some milk and a plate of jelly. There was colour in her cheeks, her eyes were bright and the face which, all these days, had been drawn and rigidly set had in a moment recovered all its mobility of expression. It was as though she had suddenly come to life again.
‘Come and look at the elephants,’ said little Phil. ‘So funny!’ And between each sip of milk, each spoonful of jelly, Philip had to show him the latest additions to his crowded landscape—whales in the sea, and divers being pinched by lobsters, two submarines fighting and a hippopotamus in a balloon; a volcano in eruption, cannons, a lighthouse, a whole army of pigs.
‘Why don’t you ever say anything?’ the child suddenly asked.
They looked at one another.
