In a minute or two he would go in again. Michael Meade had asked him to wait for a while until someone was free to take him down to the Lodge. He looked about him in the moonlight, getting his bearings. Over there behind the house must be the market garden. Toby was a town boy, and everything to do with the countryside had for him a profound, almost spiritual significance. Of sun and wind and hard physical work and human companionship he felt he could never have too much. Given a spade and told to dig up an entire field he would think himself in heaven. He stretched out both his arms above his head, extending his body to test its elasticity. He remembered being told that one never sufficiently realizes at the time the wonder of being young. This was not true in his case. He was privileged to be aware of his youth and to enjoy it in a series of present moments crammed full with intense experience.
He looked in the other direction across the lake. His eyes followed the Abbey wall away to the right where it seemed to end or perhaps turned backward into the trees. To his left he could see the old brick-built causeway across the water and the dark hole of the Abbey gateway under its great arch. The moonlight made the high wall look insubstantial and yet somehow alive, with that tense look of deserted human places at night. Toby, as a Londoner, was not used to moonlight, and marvelled at this light which is no light, which calls up sights like ghosts, and whose strength is seen only in the sharpness of cast shadows. He studied the Abbey wall. All was still over there, yet he knew that the Abbey was eternally wakeful. He wondered what the relations were between the Abbey and the Court. He had gathered that the nuns belonged to a strictly enclosed Benedictine order and had very limited dealings with the outside world; but though exceedingly curious, he had not liked to ask more about this for fear of displaying ignorance.
He ought to go in now; and at the thought a shyness overwhelmed him again. He reviewed his day. He had felt rather alarmed at being alone with James Tayper Pace, but thought that he had after all managed all right. James was so simple and gay and easy to talk to. Toby’s admiration for him was confirmed. Toby was at an age when he needed to admire, and when admiration was absolute. About Michael Meade, whom he had much looked forward to seeing, he still felt rather uncertain. He had been a little disappointed by Michael’s appearance. There was something tired and weedy about him, he lacked the conspicuously manly look of James, and was not so obviously a leader. Toby was rather disappointed too to discover that the community had women members. That, somehow, was not quite right. Still, everyone appeared to be extremely nice, except that that Dr Greenfield man was a trifle rébarbative. (This was a word which Toby had recently learnt at school and could not now conceive of doing without.) It was odd that they should have sat opposite to his wife in the train. His wife was not beautiful, like Catherine Fawley, but she was awfully pretty and rather sort of mischievous. Remembering the train journey Toby felt a slight embarrassment, partly on her behalf and partly on his own. Her husband had not seemed very pleased to see her. But then the behaviour of married people was so unaccountable. Contrary to what Tolstoy seems to maintain in the first sentence of Anna Karenina there are a great many different ways in which marriages can succeed. Toby had of late become vaguely aware of this and this new knowledge made him feel sophisticated. He turned back towards the house.
He had come out to the lake by the front way down the steps, and had walked round to the side where the second stretch of water divided the house from the Abbey. He now faced the side of the house and saw that there was a large window illuminated on the ground floor. There was a stone wall which jutted out a little way beyond the window, dividing it from the front of the house, and as Toby approached he saw that there was a rectangle of cobbles and a side door. This must be the old servants’ quarters, he decided, and that bright room must be the kitchen. Toby had always been keen on scouting and tracking, and some instinct now made him approach quietly, padding with caution onto the round hard cobble stones and keeping well in the shadow as he came up close to the window. He had been right, it was the kitchen, a huge old kitchen with rough blackened walls and an immense open fireplace, now filled by an Aga cooker. The Aga must be working, since a hot blast of air came out of the open window, perceptible even in the warm night.
A man came into view. It was Michael Meade, dressed in a blue and white striped apron. Toby was shocked at the apron, and conscience-stricken when he saw that Michael was stacking up cups and saucers in a tall wooden rack. He had quite forgotten to offer to wash up. At that moment the inner door opened and James Tayper Pace came in.
“Where’s the boy now?” asked Michael.
“He’s up on the balcony,” said James.
Toby held his breath.
“Will you take him down?” said Michael.
“I’d rather you did,” said James. “You know what I think of this idea!”
“I’m sorry, James, I ought to have consulted you,”said Michael, “but last week was frantic and it went right out of my head. In any case, I still think it’s worth trying. We needn’t make heavy weather of it. If the boy hates being there, or Nick is unpleasant to him, we’ll move him back to the house. But I’m certain it’ll be O.K. And it would relieve my mind if someone was there with Nick.”
“Why not send one of ourselves to keep an eye on Nick?” said James.
“Precisely for that reason,” said Michael, “that he’d know he was being kept an eye on. If we send the boy, Nick’ll feel responsible for him.”
“You think too well of Nick, and that’s the plain truth,” said James. “If you’d seen as much as I have of that type of person you’d be more suspicious.”
“I don’t think too well of him,” said Michael, “I don’t think well of him at all, and I certainly know him better than you do. I think he’s a poor fish. I’m afraid of his melancholy, that’s all.”
“I’m not afraid of his melancholy,” said James, “I’m afraid of his capacity to make mischief. The more I think of it, Michael, the more I’m sure we made a mistake when we took him in. I know how one feels about such a case, and I think I agreed with you at the time, at least I let you talk me round. I admit too that I don’t really understand his background. But it’s obviously a complex business, a bad history there. I doubt if we can do him any good, and meanwhile he can do us plenty of harm.”
“Anyhow, we’ve got him”, said Michael, “for better or worse, and we can’t chuck him out, just now especially, because of Catherine.”
“I know, I know,” said James. “It’s most unfortunate. All the same, I wish I had your faith. I know faith in people, or perhaps one should say faith for people, works miracles. And a miracle’s what’s needed here. Still, to come down to the common sense level, I’d rather have kept the boy in the house. We’re responsible for him too, you know.”
“He’ll take no harm,” said Michael. “He’s got his head screwed on. I liked him very much, by the way; you were quite right. That sort of youthful integrity is proof against infections. He’ll be working hard anyway, he won’t actually be in the Lodge very much – and he may provide just that link with Nick that we haven’t managed to make so far.”
Toby began to walk backwards very quietly. When he got off the cobble stones onto the grass he began to run back toward the front of the house. The grass was longish and he had to go leaping through it. He hoped he was not making too much noise. When he reached the terrace he slowed down and walked slowly across the gravel, getting his breath, and up the steps to the balcony. The lights were still on in the hall and in the common room, and the doors stood open, but there seemed to be nobody there. Toby stood still on the balcony, tense and irresolute. He was extremely disturbed by what he had overheard and by having overheard it. The simplicity and curiously pure charm of the scene had disappeared in an instant. He now felt extreme disquietude at the thought of living in the Lodge. On the other hand, he felt very flattered as well as startled at the confidence that was being shown in him, and excited as at the prospect of an adventure. His thoughts were in a turmoil.