During those holidays a master at his old preparatory sent me a letter he had received from Tintinnabulum (whom he called Neil), saying that as it was about me he considered I ought to read it. But I had not the courage to do so. Quite likely it was favourable, but suppose it hadn’t been. Besides, it was not meant for me to see, and I cling to his dew-drop about my being mad. On the whole, I think he is still partial to me. Corroboration, I consider, was provided at our parting, when he so skilfully turned what began as a tear into a wink and gazed at me from the disappearing train with what I swear was a loving scowl.
What will become of Tintinnabulum? There was a horror looking for him in his childhood. Waking dreams we called them, and they lured Neil out of bed in the night. It was always the same nameless enemy he was seeking, and he stole about in various parts of the house in search of it, probing fiercely for it in cupboards, or standing at the top of the stairs pouring out invective and shouting challenges to it to come up. I have known the small white figure defend the stair-head thus for an hour, blazing rather than afraid, concentrated on some dreadful matter in which, tragically, none could aid him. I stood or sat by him, like a man in an adjoining world, waiting till he returned to me, for I had been advised, warned, that I must not wake him abruptly. Gradually I soothed him back to bed, and though my presence there in the morning told him, in the light language we then adopted, that he had been “at it again” he could remember nothing of who the enemy was. It had something to do with the number 7; that was all we ever knew. Once I slipped from the room, thinking it best that he should wake to normal surroundings, but that was a mistake. He was violently agitated by my absence. In some vague way he seemed on the stairs to have known that I was with him and to have got comfort from it; he said he had gone back to bed only because he knew I should be there when he woke up. I found that he liked, “after he had been an ass,” to wake up seeing me “sitting there doing something frightfully ordinary, like reading the newspaper,” and you may be sure that thereafter that was what I was doing.
After he had been a year or two at his preparatory, Neil did a nice thing for me; one of a thousand. I had shaken my head over his standing so low in Maths, though he was already a promising classic, and had said that it was “great fun to be good at what one was bad at.” A term or two later when he came home he thrust the Maths prize into my hand. “But it wasn’t fun,” he growled. (It was Neil’s growl before it was Tintinnabulum’s.) He came back to blurt out, “I did it because in those bad times you were always sitting there with the newspaper when I woke.”
By becoming Tintinnabulum he is not done with his unknown foe, though I think they have met but once. On this occasion his dame had remained with him all night, as he had been slightly unwell, and she was amused, but nothing more, to see him, without observing her, rise and search the room in a fury of words for something that was not there. The only word she caught was “seven.” He asked them not to tell me of this incident, as he knew it would trouble me. I was told, and, indeed, almost expected the news, for I had sprung out of bed that night thinking I heard Neil once again defending the stair. By the time I reached Tintinnabulum it had ceased to worry him. “But when I woke I missed the newspaper,” he said with his adorable smile, and again putting his hand on my shoulder. How I wished “the newspaper” could have been there. There are times when a boy can be as lonely as God.
“I DID IT BECAUSE YOU WERE ALWAYS SITTING THERE WITH THE NEWSPAPER WHEN I WOKE”
What is the danger? What is it that he knows in the times during which he is shut away and that he cannot remember to tell to himself or to me when he wakes? I am often disturbed when thinking of him (which is the real business of my life), regretting that, in spite of advice and warnings, I did not long ago risk waking him abruptly, when, before it could hide, he might have clapped seeing eyes upon it, and thus been able to warn me. Then, knowing the danger, I would for ever after be on the watch myself, so that when the moment came, I could envelop him as with wings. These are, of course, only foolish fears of the dark, and with morning they all fly away. Tintinnabulum makes very merry over them. I have a new thought that, when he is inside me, he may leave them there deliberately to play upon my weakness for him and so increase his sock allowance. Is the baffling creature capable of this enormity? With bowed head I must admit he is. I make a note, to be more severe with him this half.
The Dream
Herbert Asquith