“It was very kind of you,” said my mother, “I would do anything to give him pleasure, anything—I could. He knows that. He understands.”
My mother's hand, I knew, was seeking mine, but I was angry and would not see; and without another word she left the room.
My mother did not allude again to the subject; but the very next afternoon she took me herself to a hall in the neighbourhood, where we saw a magic-lantern, followed by a conjurer. She had dressed herself in a prettier frock than she had worn for many a long day, and was brighter and gayer in herself than had lately been her wont, laughing and talking merrily. But I, nursing my wrongs, remained moody and sulky. At any other time such rare amusement would have overjoyed me; but the wonders of the great theatre that from other boys I had heard so much of, that from gaudy-coloured posters I had built up for myself, were floating vague and undefined before me in the air; and neither the open-mouthed sleeper, swallowing his endless chain of rats; nor even the live rabbit found in the stout old gentleman's hat—the last sort of person in whose hat one would have expected to find such a thing—could draw away my mind from the joy I had caught a glimpse of only to lose.
So we walked home through the muddy, darkening streets, speaking but little; and that night, waking—or rather half waking, as children do—I thought I saw a figure in white crouching at the foot of my bed. I must have gone to sleep again; and later, though I cannot say whether the intervening time was short or long, I opened my eyes to see it still there; and frightened, I cried out; and my mother rose from her knees.
She laughed, a curious broken laugh, in answer to my questions. “It was a silly dream I had,” she explained “I must have been thinking of the conjurer we saw. I dreamt that a wicked Magician had spirited you away from me. I could not find you and was all alone in the world.”
She put her arms around me, so tight as almost to hurt me. And thus we remained until again I must have fallen asleep.
It was towards the close of these same holidays that my mother and I called upon Mrs. Teidelmann in her great stone-built house at Clapton. She had sent a note round that morning, saying she was suffering from terrible headaches that quite took her senses away, so that she was unable to come out. She would be leaving England in a few days to travel. Would my mother come and see her, she would like to say good-bye to her before she went. My mother handed the letter across the table to my father.
“Of course you will go,” said my father. “Poor girl, I wonder what the cause can be. She used to be so free from everything of the kind.”
“Do you think it well for me to go?” said my mother. “What can she have to say to me?”
“Oh, just to say good-bye,” answered my father. “It would look so pointed not to go.”