The Journeying Boy by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online Page B

But there it is.’
    Humphrey shot out a finger and pointed at the clerk behind the counter. The whole scene was uncomfortably dramatic, and there was now a little crowd to watch it. ‘Do you think he would like it? He could sell it and buy toys for his children.’
    Mr Thewless smiled. ‘I don’t think he would be allowed to take it, just like that. But if you don’t want it we can leave it here and make some arrangement when we get back.’
    ‘I don’t know that we shall get back.’ Humphrey’s glance as he uttered this dark absurdity was travelling rapidly over the people round about. ‘We’ll take it,’ he said abruptly. ‘Come on.’ And he tucked the shot-gun under his arm and strode forward.
    Mr Thewless, had there been leisure for the action, might have paused to mop his brow. As it was, he hurried after the porter, who was trotting in sinister haste far in front of them. Their coach was A3, which meant right at the front of the interminable train. They gained it, however, with a good half-minute to spare. The man piled their luggage on the racks. Mr Thewless handed him a shilling and then, after rapid calculation, a further sixpence. The train was moving.
    ‘We’ve done it!’
    Humphrey’s voice had rung out surprisingly. So might the earth’s first space-traveller exclaim as his rocket took off for the moon. The two other occupants of the compartment looked up, smiling. One was a bearded man with pebbly glasses. The other was the elderly lady who had been in the taxi behind Humphrey’s. On one side a towering brick wall was gliding past them; on the other were lines of sleeping-cars, themselves apparently fast asleep in the afternoon sunshine. Presently the whole sprawl of North London would be hurtling southwards. Then the Midlands. There would be no pause till Crewe.
    Mr Thewless, tucking his gloves into a crevice on the rack above his head, heard a sigh behind him, and when he turned to his pupil it was to observe that some quick reaction had seized the boy. Humphrey was curled up in the corner seat opposite, his head just above the level of the window-frame, staring out with unseeing eyes. He had grown to a casual seeming smaller and younger, and yet at the same time he appeared to be supporting some unnatural burden of years. His brow was slightly puckered and for the first time Mr Thewless noticed that there were dark lines under his black eyes.
    In fact, Humphrey Paxton had retired into a sort of infantile privacy, like some unhappy small boy being taken to his first private school. And into that privacy it was necessary to intrude. That, Mr Thewless saw with some misgiving, was a condition of getting anywhere. Somehow – and the sooner the better – he had to rap firmly on the door and walk in.
    But it would assuredly be useless to force the lock. For the moment at least it might be best to leave Humphrey alone. Mr Thewless, therefore, got out his book – it was a volume of verse – and opened it. He read a page with reasonable concentration – it would never do to let his professional problem of the moment obsess him – and turned over to the next. And here his mind must a little have wandered, for it was some moments before the oddity of what had occurred came home to him. What he had stumbled on was in the form of a rhetorical question; and it was substantially the question that he now realized to be forming itself with some urgency in his own mind about his new pupil. Acting on impulse, he leant forward and handed Humphrey the book. ‘Do you know this?’ he asked. ‘The one called “Midnight on the Great Western”.’ And he pointed to the place on the page.
     
    What past can be yours, O journeying boy,
    Towards a world unknown,
    Who calmly, as if incurious quite
    On all at stake, can undertake
    This plunge alone?
     
    Humphrey read the lines, frowning. He read them again and abruptly sat up. ‘Is that by Shelley?’ he demanded.
    ‘No; it’s by Thomas Hardy.’
    ‘Was he