who had been strangely pretty and gay of late, was at the piano, sometimes singing, sometimes murmuring with Roger, who was leaning above her. Sylvia, three years old, was running back and forth in the pleasant soft light that shimmered with the reflected motion of the sunset on the sea.

[19]That was the last of domestic peace and happiness at Wastewater for a long time. For it was only a week after that that young Tom ran away from school, and Roger was dragged from the bedside of his wife, just facing another operation, to go in search of his boy.

[19]

Tom, a sturdy, self-confident boy, now past fourteen, had indeed often threatened this; he was no student; his only books were sea tales; his one thought was of the open sea. He had picked up enough sea talk in Keyport, the straggling village of fishermen’s huts halfway between Crowchester and Wastewater, to pass for a sailor anywhere; he left for his father a smudged and misspelt but unmistakably gay letter, assuring him that he would be back by Christmas, anyway, and love to everybody, and tell Sylvia that he would bring her a doll, maybe from China, and not to worry about him, because——!

Eighteen long years ago now, but they had never seen Tom since. That had been the beginning of Roger’s long cruises, always seeking his son, always returning to Wastewater with the hope of word from him. He had come back that same winter from the first search to find Cecily dying, sinking under heavy narcotics, but knowing that he was there, they thought, and happier when he was beside her. And twice there had been word, a scratched letter from Tom in Pernambuco three years after he went away, and another several years later from Guam. Both contained love, casual greeting; Tom was on an interesting trip now, but immediately after it he was coming home.

So Roger travelled, hoped, came and went untiringly, and Flora kept Wastewater open, ready for the runaway’s[20] return, and meanwhile a home, a headquarters for all the other members of the family. Here David himself came for all his vacations, here Lily crept back, crushed, almost vacant-minded, deserted by her “travelling agent,” and with a tawny-headed baby girl something a little worse than fatherless.

[20]

Will Fleming, who had protested for cheerful idle years that office work would kill him, had proved his words when Sylvia was only four by quite simply dying of pneumonia during a long absence in the West, and so Flora and Lily 

 Prev. P 13/230 next