“I expect that was because you were so good, Auntie.”
“Hssh! Jo. You mustn’t make fun of me. I was the only one old enough to talk to when our mother died.”
“I thought you said my father was my age.”
“Yes but in those days people did not talk to children as they do now.”
Young Jolyon did not reply, but he tilted his chin slightly. Children!
“How much money did he leave, Auntie, after all that?”
“Thirty thousand pounds, dear, divided equally amongst the ten of us—he was very just.”
Young Jolyon took out his watch; it was an old one of his father’s, and he liked to take it out.
“I must go now, Auntie; I’m meeting a man at Madame Tussaud’s. Oh! might I have those buckles?”
Aunt Ann’s eyes lingered on him; he was her favourite, though to admit it was not in her character.
“Are you to be trusted with them, dear?”
“Of course I am.”
“They’re an heirloom, Jo. Don’t you think we’d better wait till you’re older?”
“Oh! Auntie, as if I wasn’t—!”
Aunt Ann’s fingers rummaged in the little drawer.
“Well, on condition that you take the greatest care of them. And you mustn’t ever wear them, until you go to Court.”
“Do they wear buckles at Court?”
“I believe so, dear. I have never been. Here they are.”
From folds of tissue paper she took them out—of old blackish paste set in silver. Very discreetly, on the bit of black velvet to which they were attached, the two buckles gleamed.
Young Jolyon took them in his hand. Into which of his pockets would they go without spoiling a man’s figure?
“I like them, Auntie.”
“Yes, dear, they are genuine old paste. Have you somewhere safe to keep them?”
“Oh! yes, I’ve got lots of drawers.” He placed the buckles in his tail coat pocket, and bent over to kiss his Aunt.
“You won’t sit on them, Jo?”
“We never sit on our tails, Auntie.”
His Aunt’s eyes followed him wistfully to the door, where he turned to wave his hand. Dear Jo! He WAS growing up! Such a pleasure to see him always. He would be quite a distinguished-looking man some day, like his dear father, only with more advantages. But had she done right to give him the buckles? Was he not too young to realise the responsibility? She closed the little drawer whence she had taken them, and before her eyes there passed the pageant of old days—days of her childhood and her womanhood with no youth in between. Days of her own responsibility—mother to all the family from the age of twenty on! Just that one abortive courtship—‘a lick and a promise,’ Swithin would call it—snuffed out by sea water and her father’s reputation. Did she regret it? No! How could she? If her father had not been honest about those houses—a man of his word—then, why then she could not have given his buckles to dear Jo, as symbols of headship and integrity. Edward! Well, he had married very happily after all. She had not grudged him the pleasure; his wife had soon had twins. Perhaps it was all for the best: they were always very good to her, her brothers and sisters that she had been a mother to, and it was such a pleasure to see their dear little children growing up. Why, Soamey would be coming in directly on his way back from the Zoo; it was his eighth birthday and she had his present ready; a box of bricks, so that he could build himself a house—like his grandfather, only not—not with sea water… Ah!… Um!… Just a little nap, perhaps, before the dear little chap came—perhaps a little—um—ah!—
The thin lips, so generally compressed, puffed slightly in their breathing above that square chin resting on her cameo. The delicious surge of slumber swayed over the brain under the corkscrewed curls; the lips opened once and a word came forth: “Bub—Buckles.”
SANDS OF TIME, 1821–1863
In the Spring of 1860, on the afternoon of the last day before his son went to Eton, old Jolyon hung up his top hat on a wooden antler in the hall at Stanhope Gate and went into the dining-room. Young Jolyon, who had hung up his top hat on a lower wooden antler, followed, and so soon as his father was seated in his large leather chair, perched himself on the arm thereof. Whether from the Egyptian mummies they had just been seeing in the British Museum, or merely because the boy’s venture to a new school, and a Public school at that, loomed heavy before them, they were both feeling old, for between the ages of fifty-four and thirteen there is not, on occasions like this, a great gulf set. And that physical juxtaposition, which, until he first went to school at the age of ten, had been constant between young Jolyon and his sire, was resumed almost unconsciously under the boy’s foreboding that tomorrow he would be a man. He leaned back until his head was tucked down on his father’s shoulder. To old Jolyon moments like this, getting rarer with the years, were precious as any that life afforded him—an immense comfort that the boy was such an affectionate chap.
“Well, Jo,” he said, “what did you think of the mummies?”
“Horrible things, Dad.”
“Um—yes. Still, if we hadn’t got ’em, somebody else would. They say they’re worth a lot of money. Queer thing, Jo, to think there are descendants of those mummies still living, perhaps. Well, you’ll be able to say you’ve seen them; I don’t suppose many other boys have. You’ll like Eton, I expect.” This he said because he was afraid his boy would not. He didn’t know much about it, but it was a great big place to send a little chap to. The pressure of the boy’s cheek against the hollow between chest and arm was increased; and he heard the treble voice, somewhat muffled, murmur:
“Tell me about YOUR school, Dad.”
“My school, Jo? It was no great shakes. I went to school at Epsom—used to go by coach up to London all the way from Bosport, and then down by post-shay—no railways then, you know. Put in charge of the guard, great big red-faced chap with a horn. Travel all night—ten miles an hour—and change horses every hour—like clockwork.”
“Did you go outside, Dad?”
“Yes—there I was, a little shaver wedged up between the coachman and a passenger; cold work—shawls there were in those days, over your eyes. My mother used to give me a mutton pie and a flask of cherry brandy. Good sort, the old coachman, hoarse as a crow and round as a barrel; and see him drive—take a fly off the leader’s ear with his whip.”
“Were there many boys?”
“No; a small school, about thirty. But I left school at fifteen.”
“Why?”
“My mother died when your Aunt Susan was born, so we left Bosport and came up to London, and I was put to business.”
“What was your mother like, Dad?”
“My mother?” Old Jolyon was silent, tracing back in thought through crowded memories.
“I was fond of her, Jo. Eldest boy, you know; they say I took after her. Don’t know about that; she was a pretty woman, refined face. Nick Treffry would tell you she was the prettiest woman in the town—good woman, too—very good to me. I felt her death very much.”
A little more pressure of the head in the hollow of his arm. All that he felt for the boy and that, he hoped and believed, the boy felt for him, he had felt for his own mother all that time ago. Only forty-one when she had died bearing her tenth child. Tenth! In those days they made nothing of that sort of thing till the pitcher went once too often to the well. Ah! Losing her had been a bitter business.
Young Jolyon got off the arm of the chair, as if he were sensing his father’s abstraction.
“I think I’d better go and pack, Dad.”
“All right, my boy! I shall have a cigar.”
When the boy had gone—graceful little chap!—old Jolyon went to the Chinese tea chest where his cigars reposed, and took one out. He listened to it, clipped its end, lighted and placed it in his mouth. Drawing at the cigar, he took it out of his mouth again, held it away from him between two rather tapering-nailed fingers, and savoured with his nostrils the bluish smoke. Not a bad weed, but all the better for being smoked! Returning to his chair, he leaned back and crossed his legs. A long time since he’d thought of his mother. He could see her face still; yes, could just see it, the clear look up of her eyes from far back under the brows, the rather pointed chin; and he could hear her voice—pleasant, soft, refined. Which of them took after her? Ann, a bit; Hester, yes; Susan, a little; Nicholas, perhaps, except that the fellow was so sharp; he himself, they said—he didn’t know, but he’d like to think it; she had been a gentle creature. And, suddenly, it was as if her hand were passed over his forehead again, brushing his hair up as she had liked to see it. Ah! How well he could remember still, coming into his father’s house at Bosport after the long cold coach drive back from school—coming in and seeing his father standing stocky in the hallway, with his legs a little apart and his head bowed, as if somebody had just hit him over it—standing there and not even noticing him, till he said: “I’ve come, Father.”