The Secret Journey by James Hanley Read Free Book Online

found its roots in her own strange action, when she had freed herself from his grasp and turned to gaze with uncomprehending tensity at the cold yard in which they sat.
    â€˜Is that what you want me to do, then?’ she asked, and his fear found voice at last.
    â€˜I understand,’ he said. ‘I understand much more than you think. You don’t love my brother, or you would not be here. Won’t you at least let me love you? Sheila! What is all this nonsense we are talking? It’s as though we were both filled with a fear for each other. Forget it. Come! Let’s get out. I’ll see you home. We’ll talk on the way. We’ll talk sensibly, honestly. But, please, let me have my say first. I have so much to say. My—I’m bursting, bursting to tell you—oh, lots of things—piles of things. Now kiss me.’
    It was a command. He held out his face and she took it between her cold hands.
    â€˜Dear Peter. You darling—you are such a boy. It is hard for me to make you understand.’ She drew back quickly, as though that livid face had scorched her.
    â€˜Stop it! Stop that! It only makes me angry, Sheila. I am only a boy. You say that. Everybody says it. “You are only a boy.” Isn’t that parading an indifference to my real feelings? Listen, darling, I am quite in earnest. Yes, in earnest. And when I hear people saying, “Oh yes. But he’s only a boy,” it makes me angry. And now you say it. You are no different from the others. You say I don’t understand. It’s you , it’s all the other people who don’t understand. Well—all right, I am a boy. How does that sound to you? I am a boy. None the less, it doesn’t affect my real feeling for you. I love you. Love coming to see you, looking at you, being near you, hearing you speak. Is there any falsity about such feelings? I am happy now. Happier than I have ever been in my whole life. Do you understand that? Do you, Sheila?’
    Again she would have spoken, but he crushed her head against his breast, saying:
    â€˜Don’t say it, don’t. I know you do understand. You are not like those other people. My mother, my father, my sister and brothers, my teachers, the priests, my shipmates; they don’t understand anything. I’ll tell you more—listen.’ He put his mouth to her ear. ‘You don’t know how much I have longed—simply longed —to grow up. Do you see now? I look back on my boyhood—call it babyhood if you like—well, my schooldays then—I look back without envy, without any malice. I wouldn’t like to begin all over again. Oh no! Youth isn’t everything. It isn’t all the jolly romantic thing that grown-ups say it is. Not by far. It’s not youth—it’s the grown-ups who don’t—or won’t—understand. I know that as well as anybody. Oh no! God!… I was glad to escape—yes, glad. I longed to grow so that I could get free of that prison. That’s all it was and ever is. Well, I have grown, and all those bottled-up feelings are free now. Free, all those things one had to smother at home, in school. Worse, but I won’t talk about that. No! I’ll talk about you. I don’t care what you say. I love you. You just don’t know what it means. When I was eight years old I was glad to leave home, and now I’m nearly eighteen, and the desire is still there. To satisfy some strange—no, strange is hardly the word—to satisfy some extraordinary idea—an ambition that Mother had, I went to college when I was just eight years old. My future was assured. Certain. Nothing more certain. I was to be a priest. No question asked—feelings had no voice at all—no question, not the slightest suspicion that I might one day upset all the logic of her illogicalness. That’s Mother all the way through. Well, I saw in the end it was crazy—but to be perfectly