"Sad story," said John, staring at the distant Spire.
Desmond hesitated. At times he revealed (to John alone) a curious melancholy.
"Sad," he repeated. "I don't know about that. Sad for the father, of course, but perhaps the son is well out of it. Don't look so amazed, Jonathan. Most fellows seem to make awful muddles of their lives. You won't, of course. I see you on pinnacles, but I——" He broke off with a mirthless laugh.
John waited. The air about them was soft and moist after a recent shower. The south-west wind stirred the pulses. Earth was once more tumid, about to bring forth. Already the hedges were green under the brown; bulbs were pushing delicate spears through the sweet-smelling soil; the buds upon a clump of fine beeches had begun to open. In this solitude, alone with teeming nature, John tried to interpret his friend's mood; but the spirit of melancholy eluded him, as if it were a will-o'-the-wisp dancing over an impassable marsh. Suddenly, there came to him, as there had come to the quicker imagination of his friend, the overpowering mystery of Spring, the sense of inevitable change, the impossibility of arresting it. At the moment all things seemed unsubstantial. Even the familiar Spire, powdered with gold by the slanting rays of the sun, appeared thinly transparent against the rosy mists behind it. The Hill, the solid Hill, rose out of the valley, a lavender-coloured shade upon the horizon.
"He came here," continued Desmond, dreamily—John guessed that he was speaking of the father—"a rich, prosperous man. I dare say he worked like a slave in the city. And he wanted peace and quiet after the Stock Exchange. Who wouldn't? And he planted out these gardens, thinking that every plant would grow up and thrive, and his son with them. And then the boy died; and the wife followed; and the enchanted castle became a place of horror; and now it is a wilderness. Haunted? I should think it was—haunted! I wish we'd never set foot in it. There's a curse on it."
"Let's go," said John.
"Too late. We'll stay now, and we'll come again, every Sunday. Wild and desolate as things look, they will be lovely when we get back in summer. Don't talk. I'm going to light a pipe."
Through the circling cloud of tobacco-smoke John stared at the face which had illumined nearly every hour of his school-life. Its peculiar vividness always amazed John, the vitality of it, and yet the perfect delicacy. Scaife's handsome features were full of vitality also, but coarseness underlay their bold lines and peered out of the keen, flashing eyes. When the Caterpillar left Harrow he had said to John—
"Good-bye, Jonathan. Awful rot your going to such a hole as Oxford! One has had quite enough schooling after five years here. It's settled I'm going into the Guards. My father tells me that old Scaife tried to get the Demon down on the Duke's list. But we don't fancy the Scaife brand."
Often and often John wondered whether Desmond saw the brand as plainly as the Caterpillar and he did. Sometimes he felt almost sure that a word, a look, a gesture betraying the bounder, had revolted Desmond; but a few hours later the bounder bounded into favour again, captivating eye and heart by some brilliant feat. And then his brains! He was so diabolically clever. John could always recall his face as he lay back in the chair in No. 15, sick, bruised, befuddled, and yet even in that moment of extreme prostration able to "play the game," as he put it, to defeat house-master and doctor by sheer strength of will and intellect. It was Scaife who had persuaded Desmond to smoke.... Cæsar's voice broke in upon these meditations.