When next I looked up, darkness seemed appreciably nearer and so, of course, did the car. I had got quite close to it when, to my horror, the indistinct shape of the owner himself loomed up before me. Again seized by an impulse of flight, involuntarily, I turned away, then, disgusted by my cowardice, forced myself to confront him.
In the dusk, he looked to me larger and heavier, somehow menacing, indefinably changed, the same and yet not the same. I suppose my long acquaintance with the idea of magic gave me the notion that he must be two people at once, passing from one personality to the other as I moved between my two worlds. The idea itself alarmed me less than the obscure perception of characteristics not exactly benevolent in the second strange self, by which it seemed I might have been used for unimaginable ends. Yet my feeling for the man as a whole was unaffected or, if anything, heightened by the new factor of his dual being, which established, I felt, a more personal private bond between us. My greatest wish was to receive his forgiveness, and I immediately told him exactly what had occurred. I needn’t have worried about not being brave enough to confess, for confession seemed my one hope. I completed the agitated account for my own sake, convinced now that I’d been right in suspecting he’d known about my deceit all along. I told him everything and became silent; there was no more I could do. I had thrown myself on his mercy and must await the verdict. If only he would forgive me and take me back into favour again! If he were to remain alienated from me I felt I couldn’t bear it, as if our relationship meant more to me than anything in the world.
It can only have been for a very few seconds that he gazed at me after I’d finished speaking. But an eternity of silent twilight seemed to elapse, while I felt his unseen eyes delving into me with their strange penetrating intensity, exploring depths of the very existence of which in my childish being I wasn’t aware, as though he were investigating me, not only as the child I was now but as the potential being liable to appear at subsequent stages of my development. But, when he finally spoke, he said only, ‘I’m glad you told me; otherwise …’ leaving the phrase incomplete, with a slightly menacing sound. Long afterwards, it struck me that the situation could have been one of his mysterious tests, and I wondered, if so, whether I’d failed completely or, to a limited extent, redeemed myself by confessing, as I was inclined to hope might have been the case.
He moved his hand then, I remember, and a small light came on in the car among the dials and switches, casting a weird upward glow on his face, which, against the dusk, appeared larger than life, indestructible-looking and not quite human; a graven-image effect, lasting only an instant, before some slight change of attitude restored the Mr Spector I’d always known.
The formidable stranger had vanished without a trace, and, at the sight of my genial friend, unable to contain myself, I sprang towards him and grasped his hand, so overjoyed to feel his goodwill that I kept babbling promises, explanations, apologies, hardly knowing what I was saying, only delighted because I wasn’t rebuffed. My overwhelming gratitude for forgiveness would, with the slightest encouragement, have led me into some fantastic extravagance — I’d have gone down on my knees before him or burst into tears kissing his hand — but, since I saw that any such demonstration would be unwelcome, these confused protestations were my only emotional outlet.
Though my thoughts were in a whirl, I knew I was speaking the absolute truth when I said that, whatever might happen in future, even if he were to change entirely one day, I would always, under all circumstances, remain loyal to him. What I envisaged by such a drastic change I don’t know. But the fact was, I could do nothing else, for I felt bound to him by some tie stronger than love or blood. Suddenly I’d become conscious of his dual power over me and a little afraid of it, not altogether certain of its benevolence. But, though an element of fear and suspicion might henceforth be present in my feelings for him, it only seemed to increase my admiration, loyalty and attachment. At the same time, I recognized these feelings as being of a different quality from my former unthinking childish affection and trust, to which I knew I could never return.
Though my actual thoughts were much less lucid and precise, I was even then conscious of some new awareness, marking the end of my childish relationship to him. It didn’t matter that everything was confused in my head, for I knew he would sort it all out for me. Now I had no secrets from him, and never could have, having submitted to a form of enslavement. It was an oddly relaxed and comfortable feeling, as though I’d opened myself like an untidy drawer and could sit back peacefully while he arranged the contents.
And he at once indicated his knowledge of the obscure processes going on in me by saying almost wistfully, ‘Don’t be in too great a hurry to grow up, Marko’, using the diminutive of my name for the first and only time — strange that it should have sounded touching from him yet, when my mother used it, it only annoyed me. Recalling at this distance of time the regret in his voice, I sometimes wonder if one might presume to suspect that, for all his power, wealth and importance, he lacked something that could be found in the simplicity of a child’s affection, but such speculations are unprofitable and lead nowhere. He said no more to me then but encircled me with his hard strong arm, and intimately entwined thus we went indoors together.
The rest of the evening, as I recollect it, was devoted to hurried arrangements, for it was decided that he should stay the night and drive me to school the next day, stopping at a largish town we passed through to buy me the necessary outfit.
Notwithstanding all the excitement, as soon as I was in bed I fell sound asleep. Yet, at some time in the night, I seemed to become aware of the familiar room, not quite dark, as if light from the passage were coming in through the open door, and of my mother standing beside me, a shadowy form, as I’d seen her on so many nights. I seem to think that, neither quite awake nor quite asleep, I reached up automatically as I used to do long ago and that she laid her head beside mine and whispered loving words, asking me to forgive her for not being a good mother and hoping I would be very happy at school. All the cold melted out of me in the warmth of her arms, and I felt we were just as close to each other as we’d ever been and that tomorrow everything would be different. It had all been a misunderstanding, a mistake.
But tomorrow was the day when I was going away, and, in the bright daylight, the night’s shadowy happenings became so remote and vague that I couldn’t be sure I hadn’t dreamed them.
Looking back from the car, I suddenly seemed to see the cottage as it would be after we’d gone, and the thought of my mother left alone there made me feel guilty and sad. I remembered that my father had told me to take care of her, and my heart sank because I was abandoning her instead. There she stood at the door, waving, and already she was no larger than the painted lady who came out of the carved Swiss chalet when the summer weather was set fair. Next moment, both she and the cottage were out of sight. As the car rushed on, carrying me further and further away, I knew with curious certainty that I’d looked at her for the last time with the eyes of a child, that it was my childhood I was leaving behind me and that I’d never see anything in quite that same way again.
These thoughts are hard to describe. Not exactly melancholy, they produced rather a sense of pressure and transience. Once more I was going out into the world unsupported to fend for myself, as when I went for my holiday in the summer. But now, though there was some relationship still between us, I was no longer the child that had played with the orphans on the seashore. And, by the time I next saw my home, the relationship would have terminated completely; I should have changed into someone else, and the world would have changed, too, seen through those other eyes.