The Dangerous Years (23 page)

John helped her in this, though unconsciously. His delight over the return to the mountains was infectious because it was so unquestioning. He had apparently forgotten all grievances, all marital complications and the shortcomings which had started them. He treated both Joan and the child alike, as companions in this all-important adventure of winter sport. It might be doubted who was the younger and more innocent of the two males, he or Adrian. They frolicked through the days, and Joan had to follow, less sedate in her efforts than in her mind. It is difficult to be concerned with emotional and moral
problems while sitting on a bob-sleigh, and rushing down the run at sixty miles an hour.

At first the weather held, and the snow was firm. Day after day passed with the sun rising at one end of the valley and setting at the other, after eight hours of blazing light that chased all disease and misery, of body and soul, out of mortal flesh. Joan found herself curiously divided. Everything about her, including the two with whom she had come to St. Moritz, conspired to fill her with
joie de vivre
. The air, the light, the exercise and intoxication of movement, lifted her up to a physical delight. Behind this immediate well-being, to which she had been forced by her own good health to surrender, there lurked the distress about her marriage, and the anger over recent happenings in Paris.

Snow fell toward the end of the first week, and overnight the etchings of pleasure were covered up. Adrian, who by now had learned to skate with grace and sureness, was sadly disappointed on the morning after the snowfall, because the surface was still not swept. He came back to the hotel, flung his skates down on his bed, and sulked. Snow fell again after breakfast, and the valley darkened under thunder-clouds.

“What are we to do with him?” demanded Joan, discussing the problem with John. She followed Adrian up to his room to plead with him. Her kindness only reduced him to tears, and she was afraid to try other methods. Retreating, she went into John's room, two doors along the corridor, and again appealed to him. He was busy at work on some mathematical papers connected with his research at the laboratory.

“Smack his bottom,” he said testily. But Joan detected a new note in his voice. It betrayed that the boy's personality had captured him.

“Be realistic,” she answered, surprisingly cheered by her discovery.

“Well, we'll wait a bit to see what the weather does. If this means a change, we shall get a lot of wind, and warmer weather. That will upset things all round. However, it may not turn out that way. Let's hope for a good freeze-up during the day. Then we can get out. I don't see why we can't take him down the toboggan run, eh. What d'you say to that?”

“It's impossible. A child of nine?” Joan almost sighed with satisfaction over this fresh demonstration of boyishness. “Besides, there's the extra responsibility. He's not an ordinary child, remember.”

“Oh, forget that,” retorted John. “He's an English kid after all, and we ought not to encourage precocity. It's like giving him a liqueur with his dinner. Isn't that our reason for bringing him away from the influence of that bounder of an uncle, and the wily American who wants to make a music-hall turn of him?”

Joan could not deny that. But she had to point out again that the boy was oddly endowed with this gift for music, and that he had brought this attribute with him.

“I was thinking of his hands,” she said. “It's a practical matter, really.”

“Good God, the poor little wretch. He can't be deprived of everything else in life because of this bit of out of the ordinary cleverness. He'll grow up warped, a self-conscious little prig. Isn't that what his father wants to avoid? Damned sensible of him, I think. But the boy must learn to live as other people live, and take the same risks. Otherwise, he'll begin to believe he is specially privileged, and that the world is made solely for his benefit.”

“Well, in a way, he
is
privileged.”

“Maybe, but he mustn't be allowed to realise it. Thank God he's a decent little fellow. The way he's taken to the skates is first class. No end of pluck and a wonderful sense of balance.”

“That may be the music.”

John looked at her curiously. She could see the interest in his eyes. It was a light that she had never seen there before: an extension beyond his former self.

“You may be right,” he said, slowly, pondering the words. “You may be right.”

He scribbled on the margin of a sheet of calculations, still thinking about the connection between mind and muscle. Then suddenly he returned to himself, jumping up and going to the window.

“Look! It's clearing. And the wind has dropped. The hill-tops are showing. We'll be out after lunch, Joan! Good! And forget about that cautiousness, my dear. The boy will be safe enough. We'll keep him between us, so that if we spill it won't matter. Joan, what a thought! The toboggan run, my old dear. What a sport you have been, too, this holiday. Let's forget things, Joan. Let's look forward again …”

But Joan had fled. She could not face
that
yet. Her resolutions had been weakened already, and she was not prepared to surrender. She did not know what she wanted. Life was moving a little too fast. She returned to Adrian's room, to tell him about John's proposal, but the boy had disappeared.

After Joan had left him, he removed his skates from the bed, took off his windjacket, and lingered disconsolately for a few minutes, at a loss what to do with himself, and bored by inaction. Then he went along the corridor to the main staircase. Suddenly he heard the sound of a pianoforte, in a distant room. It was muffled, but his abnormal hearing caught the sound and recognised something that pleased him. He had never heard such precision as that.

He crept down the stairs to the floor below, and along that corridor, the music faintly increasing in volume as he proceeded. He stopped outside a door three rooms along.
That was it! He crouched, with his ear to the panel. He knew the sonata. It was the Mozart which he had played in Paris for that nice old American gentleman. His pleasure could not be contained. Quietly he opened the door, and peered in. He saw a small sitting-room, furnished in hotel baroque, and against a wall stood an upright piano, and seated at it was the stout grey-haired man who had spoken to him a few days ago in the
salon
downstairs.

At the sound of the door opening, the pianist paused, with one hand raised. He switched round, saw Adrian, and stared at him.

“Well?” he demanded. “This is a private room.”

Adrian ignored this rebuff. Fixing his eyes on the fierce stranger, he advanced into the room.

“I know that,” he whispered.

“Then why do you intrude?”

Still single-minded, Adrian continued:

“Yes, it is the sonata I played to the man at home.”

The stranger got up, seized the child by the arm, and marched him to the door. Then he recollected that this was the infant whom he had seen before, whom he had called an intelligent boy.

“Ah! I remember you! We met downstairs. But what is this? You say you know the sonata? Then you are already …” He did not finish his remark. Instead, he shut the door, and still with his grip on Adrian's arm, led the way back to the piano.

Some kind of subconscious understanding had taken place between the elderly man and the infant, for neither said another word during the next stage in their acquaintance. The stranger put a large volume, an atlas, on the chair, and a cushion on top of that, then lifted the boy on to this improvised piano-stool. He put a stubby hand on the young shoulder, his fingers kneading the immature bone, flesh and muscle. His grey eyes, cool but friendly,
studied the whole figure of the child. “Yes,” he muttered once or twice, “yes! Intelligent!” He nodded, as though engaged in a conversation, or argument, with the ugly instrument.

Meanwhile, little Adrian stared at the name of the maker,
Bord
of Paris, and at the black strip of ebony behind the yellowing keys. An old-fashioned smile fleeted across his face.

“We've got a Bord at school,” he said, confiding the joke to this old man who presumably knew much about such matters.

They both laughed, and that reduced the years between them by at least a decade.

“Good for practising,” said Adrian: and he played a few chords, with a trill or two, on this distant cousin Of the school piano in the Rue Notre Dame des Champs. The old man's laugh faded out instantly. His gaze was now fixed more intently on the boy's hands; cold, penetrating.

“Commence!” he ordered, turning back the pages to the beginning of the sonata. Adrian saw that the score was decorated with small marginal notes, but he ignored those. He began to play, and the listener sat down beside him, quietly attentive, his massive, square head nodding from time to time, gravely, slowly. Watching the tiny fingers, he frowned slightly, but this did not indicate a loss of interest. It increased it. He was intimately concerned. Once or twice he raised his left hand, or his right, making tiny motions in the air with his fingers—shadowplaying.

Adrian came to the legato passage where, at home, he had exaggerated the composer's direction. He glanced quickly round, a sly smile on his lips. He saw the heavy face near him, leaning forward and daring him to something which he instantly interpreted. He slight increased the pace of the passage, but contriving, without the
sustaining pedal, to give the legato impression over the long phrases that could be accepted as a prophecy of the pianistic innovations of Schumann.

“Stop!” said the terrible figure beside him. Adrian stopped, his hands raised above the keys, the mischievous smile still on his lips. “You monkey! You small monkey!” A finger and thumb twitched him by the ear. “What tricks are you playing on me, eh? What do you know of the future? Who told you of his influence on Schumann? Who is your master?”

This amused Adrian so much that he began to laugh, rocking himself to and fro with his arms folded over his stomach. He was joined by the stranger, who did not appear to be anxious to have an answer to his volley of questions.

When this shower of mirth had passed, they looked at each other again, one step nearer in mutual confidence.

“Start that movement again,” said the master. “And I will talk to you when you have finished.” He cogitated for a moment, nodding his head vigorously and flexing his fingers, which he studied as he spoke. “Yes, and I will talk to your father and mother too. They must come up to see me. I will ask the manager to speak to them. What is that you say…?”

But Adrian, slyly withdrawing himself again, stopped short of the explanation that Mr. and Mrs. Boys were not his parents. Instead, he began to play, and went on without further interruption until he reached the end of the sonata.

They sat silent for a while, the stranger, who was now no stranger, studying the boy sitting quietly in front of him.

“You are no larger than a maggot; so!” And the master demonstrated by measuring a half-finger length on his own hand. Adrian leaned over to examine this, as interested as though it were a scientific fact. Then the
old man added, almost reluctantly, fearing the responsibility, “But you are a musician, my child, a musician. Do you know what I mean by that?”

Adrian did not reply, for his interest had moved on to a pair of climbing boots standing on a newspaper on the floor, with a bottle of oil and a saturated rag.

“What are you doing to your boots?” he asked.

This change of attention, though so abrupt, did not startle the old man. He followed suit, as agile in mind as the child.

“That's to keep the snow out. Snow is a powerful chemical, my son. It is like the general public.”

“And should I oil my skates too?” asked Adrian. “They are new. The American gave them to me. Mr. Sturm, in Paris.”

This intelligence made the old man start.

“What!” he snapped. “Sturm? Sturm? You live in Paris? What is your name? You do not look like a French boy. And Sturm, eh, Sturm—that old rogue!” He chuckled, then grew suddenly serious. “That can't be! No. It must not be allowed! Tell me, boy, what has he been saying to your parents? What does he …?”

But Adrian had left his perch and picked up one of the boots, soiling his fingers with the oil which covered it. He answered absently, his interest concentrated on the studs in the boot.

“My father is an English doctor, but we live in Paris. And Mr. Sturm wants me to play in Brussels, and London and New York. So does Uncle Tom, and my father says …”

What his father had said, however, was not disclosed, for a tall, large-framed lady entered, and put her hand on the gentleman's shoulder, while she looked with kindly surprise at the small boy.

“Ah! That may explain it,” she said. “There is a hue and cry downstairs. Some English visitors have lost their
little son. This may be the reason. They had feared he had gone out without his jacket and gloves. The lady was particularly distressed and the manager has sent out a general appeal to guests and staff.”

She shook the gentleman playfully.

“Oh, Artur! You have frightened so many people! Now you do it again!”

As she spoke in German, the child could not understand. He began to grow restless. There was not much else here to amuse him, and the conversation that followed bored him. Quietly he tiptoed to the door, and let himself out, shutting it behind him discreetly, while the lady continued her guttural but tender remarks.

He returned somewhat guiltily to the
salon
, where he found Joan sitting pale and agitated. Immediately he appeared, she hurried him away from the crowd, who had been warned of his disappearance. In the corridor leading to the dining-room, she expostulated with him, but without anger.

Adrian looked at her meanwhile, a crafty gleam in his eye. Something had been suggested to him by the mistake made over his parentage by the stranger upstairs. His unaccountable temperament was making full use of this experience; digesting it, registering it. His attraction to Joan was increased under this process. He clasped her round the thigh, and reached up to draw her face down to his.