But every chimney in our town
Starts to breathe when the cold comes down.”
Some safe-guarding astuteness prevented him from showing his weakness at the Red House; and I was too fond of him to tell. To the rest of the boys he was only the grubby, somewhat eccentric little “stinks” master. Nevertheless, sane or insane, it was through the Creature’s efforts that, after a year of coaching, I won a history scholarship at Lazarus for eighty pounds.
Still, eighty pounds would not carry me to Oxford. It became a worrying problem to my family exactly what my grandfather, if he were my benefactor, had meant by “undertaking the expenses of my education.” His generosity might be co-terminous with my school-days. A month after the winning of the scholarship the lawyers wrote, setting our minds at rest and congratulating me on my success in the name of their client. This letter was gratifying in more than a monetary sense—it was a sign that the anonymous friend was keeping a close watch on my doings.
Since the interview at Chelsea there had been no intercourse between my father and Uncle Obad. I had once contrived to see my uncle by stealth, but the first question he had asked me was, did I come with my father’s knowledge. When I could not give him that assurance, he had sorrowfully refused to have anything to do with me. At the time I shrank from mentioning the matter to my father; so for a year and a half my uncle and his doings had dropped completely out of my life.
But my treatment of him weighed on my conscience. My last term at school had ended. It was August, and in October I expected to go up to Oxford. With my scholarship and the money the lawyers sent me I should soon be a self-supporting person. Already I thought myself a man. I felt that on the whole my father’s quarrel with my uncle was reasonable, but I could not see why I should be made to share it. So one day as I got up from breakfast, I mentioned casually that I was going to run over to Charity Grove.
It was just such another golden morning as the one of ten years earlier, when I had driven for the first time across London behind Dollie. What a big important person the Spuffler had seemed to me then! How wonderful that he, a grown-up, should take so much trouble to be friendly to a little chap! Then my mind wandered back over all his repeated kindness—all that he had stood for in the past as a harbor of refuge from the stormy misunderstandings of childhood. He and the Creature, both failures and generally despised, were two of the best men that I had ever met. Whatever his faults, he still was splendid.
I came to the Christian Boarding House, and passed up the driveway shut in with heavy evergreens. Caroline, tousled of hair, all loose ends, girt about her middle with a sackcloth apron, was on her knees bricking the steps. She did not recognize me. The Mistress was out shopping, she said, but the Master was in the paddock. “Ah, yes,” I thought, “feeding the fowls.”
I passed through the decayed old rooms, with their heavy shabby furniture, so evidently picked up cheap at auctions; then I passed out through the French windows into the cool garden, where sunshine dappled the lawn, struggling with difficulty through the crowded branches. At the gate into the paddock I halted. There he was with a can of water in his hand, fussing, in and out his coops and hutches, so extremely busy, as though the future of the world depended on his efforts. I suppose he was still evolving that strain of perpetually laying hens, The Spreckles, which was to bring him fame and fortune.
I called to him, “Uncle Obad.”