The Burberry

I

A FEW hundred yards short of the school gates Hester Osborne slowed down the car and pulled in under the elms at the side of the road. There she took her comb and powder box out of her purse, and carefully tidied up her face and hair, peering into the car mirror now and then, a little anxiously, to get the general effect. She was always very anxious to look as nice as possible when she went to see Dickie, so as not to do him dishonor in the public opinion of the world in which he lived. Dickie was rather sensitive to opinion, perfectly loyal and darling as he always was.

She always wished, for his sake, when she went to Roke, and parked her modest little Riley among the Rollses, the Bentleys, and Daimlers by the playing fields, that she had a larger car, shiny and huge — wished that she herself were taller, more imposing, better-dressed. Even her nicest clothes were not of the imposing and proclamatory sort, and she herself, she felt, was not of the imposing sort either; house masters did not walk about with her among the old buildings, smiling and inclining, as she saw them do occasionally with other mothers — she, nervously, did the smiling, as she made her modest inquiries, proffered her timid requests. If only Richard had been alive, it would all have been so much easier! He would have strolled masterfully about, with a pipe and tweeds, as the fathers did, clapping masters familiarly on the back and saying, ‘Look here, old fellow,’ when he wanted anything. It was terribly hard on Dickie, Hester thought, that his father should have died when he was seven. The sting had slowly been deadened for her, but the dull sense of loss was always reawakened when she went to see Dickie, especially on the boy’s account. Boys at public school needed a father — badly.

However, she must n’t be late — and with a last peep into the mirror she started the car and drove on. Her new hat, anyhow, looked very nice. She had worn it the last time she lunched with Arnold, — as a matter of fact, she had bought it for the last time she lunched with Arnold, — and he had said when she came in, ‘You’re looking very richly dressed, Hester!’ Arnold, who never noticed one’s clothes! That lunch — it had had a curious quality altogether; it had somehow prevented her from asking Arnold to come down with her to-day and see his godson. She had let him know afterward that she was going, but he had not suggested coming, though he had sent a note for Dickie — and some new shyness, new between her and Arnold, had hindered her from doing anything more.

At the top of the drive she left her car and got out. Dickie was not in sight. She stood peering at the groups of boys who passed to and fro on the graveled roads among the buildings, with rackets, with bicycles. In the still October sunshine the playing fields stretched out beyond the archway; in the distance was a crowd, and glimpses of colored figures running, and occasional bursts of cheering — a match, no doubt. Perhaps Dickie was watching it. Nervously, she wondered if she ought to go and look for him there; it would be difficult to find him in the crowd of boys at the touch line. But at that moment round the corner of a building Dickie appeared, hurrying, carrying his coat and hat; his nice rough hair oiled down smoothly, his small well-known face faintly drawn with some minor worry. ‘There you are,’ she murmured, as Dickie, saluting a passing master, came up to her, his face relaxed now into a shy welcome.

II

When Dickie had struggled into his rather outgrown overcoat and flung his burberry into the back of the car, they set off, Hester studying her son’s face under the absurdly grown-up felt hat which custom decreed for these occasions only. She always rather resented the guinea for that hat, worn twice a term; he never wore it at school otherwise, and he never wore it at home at all. And because it was so big and so utterly incongruous above his small face, somehow it looked vulgar; that really was the word, ludicrous as it was to think of vulgarity in connection with a brow as shapely, with a mouth as shockingly sensitive, as Dickie’s.

At the drive gate a boy was hanging about — a boy with red hair and freckles and greenish, rather cruel eyes. There was a vulgar face if you like, thought Hester, glancing at the pug nose, receding forehead, and full greedy lips, as the boy raised his hat. As the car passed through the gate she had a slight shock — they turned to the right, and in the mirror she happened to see the red-haired boy make a repulsive face and gesture after them. Horrible! She turned to Dickie, meaning to ask who it was; but Dickie, though he could not have seen what she had seen, had that taut, rather worried look again, and she changed her mind. ‘There’s a note for you from Uncle Arnold in my purse,’ she said. ‘Will you get it out?’

‘Oh, thank you. How is Killarney?’ asked Dickie, very politely; but she noticed with pleasure that he used the old baby name for his godfather. ‘Unclearnie’ he used to call him, all in one word — and then it had turned to ‘Killarney,’ for short.

‘He’s very well — I had lunch with him the week before last,’ she said, driving swiftly along the winding road; it gave her pleasure merely to talk of that lunch with Arnold, though she said nothing to give any hint of its special strange disquieting delightfulness.

‘He’s sent me a pound!’ said Dickie suddenly, having opened his note.

‘Oh, darling, how lovely!’ She glowed with pleasure at his pleasure, with pleasure at Arnold’s generosity. ‘How lovely!’ she said again, and leaned across and kissed her son, his cheek so cool and soft. Heavenly Dickie, she thought, worshiping him in her heart.

Talking, however, was not easy — it never was, at the beginning. Dickie was terribly grown-up, terribly polite. ‘Yes, I see—I quite see,’ he said, when she explained apologetically that she would n’t be able, to-morrow, to stay to evening chapel, because Aunt Maud had people to dine. ‘Oh no, I see — I quite see.’ Heartbreakingly polite, and disappointed. She kept on glancing at him, as they drove between the frost-bronzed hedges and under the nearly leafless elms which stood round the brown fields, seeing two Dickies — the tidy boy with the sleeked hair and rather vulgar hat, and a little, quite little, boy in a blue smock with rough curls. That little eager creature was close behind the person who now began to talk about Disarmament.

They followed their usual routine. They drove up on to the high ground above Milford, left the car in a lane’s mouth, and walked for an hour or so before going down to tea. To-day they walked in Armlea woods. The tops of the beeches were almost bare, stripped by frost and winds; the fallen leaves spread like stretches of burnished copper beneath their feet. They watched for birds, and came on a gamekeeper’s mortuary, which had three kestrels, five jays, and half a dozen stoats in it. There were other and more ancient corpses of malefactors, hanging black, stiff, and withered from the boughs of a bush. Dickie spent some time trying to identify these by their size and the shape of their skulls, the feathers having vanished. During this gruesome excursion into natural history his mother sat at the foot of a tree, looking on; smiling, answering his running fire of comments. She could feel the currents of feeling, of ease and intimacy, beginning gradually to flow between them again through this mutual concern with simple, impersonal things.

Dickie had put on his burberry to walk in, leaving his coat in the car; she noticed that it was exceedingly stained and dirty, and presently she said, ‘ Dickie darling, your burberry is dirty. What have you done to it?’ She could venture on this now, safely.

‘I know, Mummie — it’s awful,’ said Dickie ruefully, turning from some operations with a penknife to stare down at his person. ‘It’s the rowing,’ he said.

‘Why, you don’t row in your burberry?’

‘No, but when I cox for the second four I wear it, and I have to grease their oars, and the grease makes it filthy. I am sorry, Mummie.’ His face was rueful, but it was n’t taut or worried any more.

‘I think you must have another,’ said Hester. She said it very cheerfully, though her mind gave a little interior sigh; it was dreadful the way one had to spend and spend on school clothes.

‘Well, it would be a good thing; this is pretty frightful,’ said Dickie. ‘But not if you can’t run to it. Are they awfully expensive? It ought to be a real burberry, like this one, if it could.'

Oh yes, it should be a real one, Hester said.

‘And darkish, Mummie — they have dark brown ones, and they don’t show so.’

Hester agreed. As they walked back to the car she was thinking that if she went to London to buy the burberry it would be a chance to see Arnold again. She would have to write to him anyhow to thank him for Dickie’s pound, and she could say that she was coming up; and then probably he would ask her to lunch.

They had tea in Milford at the Rotunda, which Dickie loved — hot and stuffy, with a band, and lots of chocolaty creamy cakes. At tea — ‘ How much does a secondhand gramophone cost?’ Dickie asked suddenly.

‘Oh, I don’t know — a lot, I expect,’ his mother answered. ‘Do you want a gramophone?’

‘Oh, I don’t know — well, it would be rather sound to have one,’ said Dickie, looking apologetic. ‘ It’s something on wet days. I thought perhaps with Killarney’s pound, and seven bob I’ve got in the bank, I could get one.’

Hester thought this extravagant of Dickie. She did not say so, but tried to find out why he wanted the gramophone. This sealed book of school life, immature male life, was always baffling her; there were always elements in it that meant nothing, however hard she tried to understand. ‘Well, it would be quite a good thing to have a thing like a gramophone in Evening Hall,’ was all Dickie would say.

In the end she promised that when she went to London to buy the burberry she would find out about secondhand gramophones. But Dickie had fallen gloomy. This often happened toward the end of the day, when he began to think of his return to Roke. Hester was again aware of being baffled. The free flow of intimacy between them was held back, dammed up by something; but she was not sure if it was her unspoken disapproval of the gramophone that had done it, or some trouble that Dickie was only half willing to reveal. She tried a question or two, but it was no good. However, with the purchase of some lobster patties for supper in Hall, and a grapefruit for breakfast, Dickie began to cheer up again, and by the time she dropped him at Roke, full of plans for to-morrow, he seemed quite cheerful once more.

III

As she swung out of the avenue and began the sixteen-mile run across to Aunt Maud’s, Hester began, as she usually did on these occasions, to take stock of her afternoon: to assess, as it were, her impressions of Dickie and his state generally. Yes, he certainly looked well — that was the main thing; and on the whole he seemed reasonably happy. And except in the matter of the gramophone he had shown himself the good, considerate, frugal boy he usually was. Good — she did so greatly desire her son to be that. But it was hard for a mother alone to inculcate male virtue. Arnold of course did help — and with that reflection her mind turned hesitatingly, shyly almost, to Arnold.

She was now swinging smoothly along the main Milford-London road, under a bright moon; there were few other cars about, and her headlights were good — she needed to give only the slightest instinctive attention to driving. Her thought was free. But she did not really think much. Her consciousness was just aware, at first, of the mere name — Arnold, Arnold — making a little tune in her mind. She had dropped back the head of the coupé for their drive in the afternoon, and had not raised it again, it was such a lovely night; the air rushed upon her face, sideways, intoxicating; the whole shining span of the sky, the whole shadowy spread of landscape on all sides, met her vision. She opened the throttle, in a strange exhilaration, and the car flew between the great misty fields.

She came presently to the turning where a byroad led across toward Greenstead, and took it. Now she must drive with more care, for the little road was narrow and wound unexpectedly; her mind, called back to a concern with practical things after that sudden delirium on the highroad, became gradually aware of the content of the delirium itself. Shyly, still, she toyed with her consciousness; slowing down, she drove along very gently, the altered speed of the car according with the delaying action of her secret self. And at last an instinct prompted her to stop — to stop, and taste the moment, and the consciousness that was invading her. She looked at her watch; there was no hurry. Why should one always move so fast from place to place, from occupation to occupation? Why not, sometimes, simply be still, and see things? She drew in close to the hedge and switched off the headlights and the engine. In a moment the purring companionship ceased, and silence surrounded her.

She had drawn up at a place where the road crossed a piece of rising ground. There was no hedge on her right, and the line of the field cut the sky sharply — five haystacks stood on it in a row; beyond, far away, faint and misty under the October moon, stretched the great sweep of hills which cut off all the Milford country from the home counties. At first Hester sat in a sort of enchantment, staring at them, and at the tights of cars which appeared from time to time on two points of the shining, transparent, confused horizon, marking the course of invisible roads as they sped wavering down into the unseen plain.

Presently, with a peculiar sharpened intensity, she became aware of other things, still external. The silence was not silence at all. The hedge beside her, so close that her hand could touch it, every polished leaf and twig still and stiff in the breathless moonlight, was full of small sounds. Grass rustled as something moved through it; a bird shifted on a twig, clapping its feathers, and settled again; the minute voices of mice squeaked among the rustling stems. This hedge contained a whole world of life of its own; it had a sudden, breathing, living significance. She looked across the road — the five haystacks, shapely and silvered, made a sharp impact on her vision. It was as if she had never heard or seen anything before, so new, so intense, was the reality of all these things — so passionate their beauty, so acute their perfection. And her awareness of them was a breathless delight that was almost pain. As in waves, her consciousness of it intensified, returning again and again, the very beating of the wings of bliss.

And now no longer to be withstood, stealing through all the rest with the conviction of a melody, came the relation of it to Arnold. With a stupefying sweetness the thought of him invaded her — all this meant him, to him she owed this new vision; and gazing at the haystacks, tremulous, she surrendered to a new wonder. It spread, it filled, it blinded; and like a secret tune within a tune, once or twice, turning her dizzy, chimed the thought — if it should be the same with him! But that, still, she turned from. And presently she switched on the engine and the headlights once more, and drove on to Aunt Maud’s.

IV

Sunday was a good day too, before the evening turned it to panic. She fetched Dickie in the morning and they drove to Greenstead slowly, in a damp blanketing fog, and lunched. Dickie behaved admirably. ’Oh yes, definitely,’ he said, when Aunt Maud asked for the third time if he liked rowing. Then, because it was too foggy to tempt them out, they sat in the little morning room and played bezique till tea, and the moment after, because of the fog, set off for Roke again, with the orange caps that Dickie had given her on the headlights.

But when the interest of seeing how well the orange lights pierced the fog had failed, that baffling gloom of Dickie’s appeared again. And with it the subject of the gramophone. Did she really think she could get one for twenty-seven bob? A decent one? Both the urgency and the gloom were more pronounced than last night, and Hester felt that she must somehow make the necessary effort to discover what was troubling her son. They were quite near to Roke by this time, and it was still early. ‘Let’s stop here a bit, shall we?’ said Hester. She made a cigarette an excuse, and, pulling in to the side of the road, she summoned her forces. ‘Darling, don’t unless you want to, but could n’t you tell me why you are n’t quite happy?’

The answer was unexpected. ‘Jimson is so boring!’ — and then a burst of tears. Dickie rarely cried, and Hester was terrified. ‘Boring in what way?’ she asked, as soberly, as steadyingly as she could, and released a long recital of Jimson’s petty tyrannies. None of it amounted to real bullying, as far as she could see, but — ‘It makes me so tired, always having him at me,’ Dickie said. ‘He hunts me out of Evening Hall, whenever he chooses, and that’s not much fun, when it’s cold, and there’s only out of doors to go to.’ Hester, baffled again by this strange world which she could never penetrate, asked if he could n’t go to his cubicle? ‘Not early, Mummie! No one’s allowed in dorm before chapel.’ And he apologized earnestly for his breakdown. ‘ It’s all right, really — it’s quite all right.’ But then the truth came out. ‘You see, if I had a decent gramophone, Jimson could n’t hunt me out, because the others would n’t let him. He has one, quite a potty one, really, and he does swank so over it.’

Hester pondered rapidly over all this. She did her best to cheer Dickie up, promised to look at gramophones, gave him advice that seemed to her wise and right — but would it be any good to Dickie? And suddenly, ‘Has Jimson red hair?’ she asked.

‘Yes — like Judas Iscariot, exactly!’ said Dickie, with healthy venom. ‘He was at the gate as we came out yesterday — did you see him?’

Hester said that she did — and then they kissed and said their real good-bye there by the roadside under the elms, and parted quite formally and nearly composed at the head of the drive. ‘Good-bye, darling.’

‘Good-bye, Mummie. Be careful in this fog.’

But Hester drove home to Greenstead by the long way round, on the two highroads. She was too disturbed and unhappy to bear the little road by the five haystacks. Her son was suffering, and she did n’t know what to do. If she spoke of it to his house master she might only make matters worse, and the very thought filled her with dread; she knew the cold, amused, faintly contemptuous politeness with which doting, fussing mothers were treated. And perhaps Dickie was exaggerating. But the thought of Jimson’s green cruel eyes filled her with little shudders. That such a creature should be in a position of power over her son!

V

Because of all this, the first possible free day found her entering the spacious soft-carpeted warmth of Burberry’s. She was already tired and dispirited. She had spent the whole morning looking at secondhand gramophones in various noisy and chilly shops, and there seemed nothing to be bought for less than two pounds ten that was not ‘potty’ to a degree. It was really against her principles to put up the extra money herself, and in any case she could not easily afford it — that horrid company had passed its autumn dividend, and really she did n’t know quite how she was going to manage the burberry, let alone anything else.

She wished she had not bought that hat a month ago — but, catching sight of it in a mirror just then, she felt that it was a reassuring hat, and cheered up her last winter’s coat, which was still her best and only London one. She had put it on in case she should see Arnold. She had written to say she was going to be up, but no answer had come to her letter, nor had there been any message from him when she called at her rather poky club. She had not arranged to lunch with anyone else, so as to leave the meal free; but there had not been the common sudden invitation, and she had eaten a dismal egg in a dismal tea shop at two, when she was too faint and hungry to go on any longer. And all the time she was wondering why Arnold had made no sign. She was wondering this still as she went up in the lift to ‘Men’s Weatherproofs.’ Had he been away? Had her letter miscarried? He could not surely have taken it amiss — it was perfectly natural to write and thank him for his gift to Dickie, and report on him, and then mention her visit to London.

‘About my own size,’ she said to the shopman, standing between flattened ghostly rows of burberries hanging on brass rails — ‘and a darkish one.’ But while she looked at darkish burberries a sort of desperation was growing in her; she felt that she could not leave London without seeing Arnold, or at least speaking to him, and suddenly an impulse seized her to telephone to him at the office. It was nearly three — he would be back from lunch. ‘Can I telephone from here?’ she asked the assistant. He was all courtesy — she could, but unfortunately it was one floor down. Could they get any number for her? Hester gave Arnold’s number, and turned again to the coats — ‘I think I had better try one on.’

Now she began to be frightened, to regret her idea of telephoning; but it was too late — a youth had been dispatched to get the number. She put on a dark burberry, and stared at it in a mirror. Yes, that was about the length — ‘I think I will have that one,’ she said. And then the youth came back; her number was ‘on the line.’ ‘This way, madam — by the lift,’ and still wearing the burberry, in her hurry, she was taken down. In the lift she found herself trembling, partly with embarrassment, — what should she say? — partly with a suffusion of painful delight at the thought, now, of hearing his voice.

She was led into a neat little cubbyhole and left alone with the instrument. She lifted the receiver. ‘ Could I speak to Mr. Richmond? ’ But it was Arnold’s own ‘Hullo,’ and he knew her voice at once. ‘Oh, it’s you!’ He was glad to get hold of her — he had rung up her club at one-thirty, expecting her to be lunching there. ‘I’ve got some news for you.’

A sickening pang of senseless terror ran through her at the word ‘news,’ but she ruled it out, quickly, in her mind. Absurd! She was all nerves to-day. What was the news? she asked him. Oh, but what was this that he was saying? Someone he wanted her to meet? ‘Funnily enough, her name is Hester, too ’ — why did it all seem to make no sense?

‘I can’t hear very well,’ she faltered; ‘say it again.’ She must take it in this time. And she did. Arnold was engaged— ‘Time I settled down, is n’t it?’ The girl was really rather superlative — ‘I think she’s quite your cup of tea, and I want you to be great friends with her.’

‘Oh yes, I’m sure I shall be,’ Hester heard her voice saying thinly. ‘I — I’m terribly glad, Arnold. It’s—’ She actually said, ‘It’s absurd,’ but managed to change it to ‘It’s absurdly lovely.’

‘What a darling you are, Hester!’ Arnold said then, with warmth, moved by the odd phrase. ‘I knew you’d be glad.’

Somehow she managed to finish this appalling conversation, and replaced the receiver. Slowly she got up and walked out into the shop; she was halfway down the next flight of stairs when, in a glass, she saw a woman with a white face, wearing a burberry over London clothes. She recognized herself, and, embarrassed, hurried up to ‘Men’s Weatherproofs’ again.

The courteous assistant was waiting. ‘Did you get your call all right, madam?’ With a sort of dreary practicalness Hester finished her business, paid for the burberry, took the parcel, the receipt — no, she would name it at home, thank you.

VI

It was when all that was done and she was leaving the building that realization began. What was she to do next? A clock up the street said threefifteen, and the thought darted across her mind, ‘At three I was still happy!’ A drizzling rain was beginning to fall; she stood on the steps in the shelter of the porch for a moment. It was too late for a matinée, and she had not the heart for it anyhow; she had no urgent shopping, and no one but Arnold knew that she was in London. There was really nothing for her to do! Nothing to do, and no one she wanted to see. She had better go home. In a blind and inexpressible desolation she tiptoed across the muddy Haymarket to St. James’s Square, got into the car, and set out.

While she was in the thick of the traffic she was only aware of a sort of dark stiffening misery through which, mechanically, she made the right gear changes and allowed for the slippery surface when using the brake. But even there blinding flashes of painful thought began to pierce her unwilling consciousness, and once she was out on the by-pass they assailed her like a troop of wolves. And then the windscreen wiper stuck. Angrily, with incompetent fingers, she examined it and fiddled with it, but it was no good; she could not make it work. For the first time, then, tears sprang to her eyes, at this cussedness of mechanical things. The rain had now become a downpour. There was nothing for it but to raise the wind-screen; and then she would be soaked! And she was wearing her best coat, the coat and hat idiotically put on to please Arnold, whom only the other Hester could ever please! Oh! With a sob, she cast round for some way out of her difficulty, and remembered Dickie’s burberry. She would wear that — and, undoing the parcel, she put it on, threw her hat into the back of the car, and drove off again.

But the check, the defeat she had suffered at the hands of the windscreen wiper had got past her guard; the self-control which had seen her safely out of London deserted her now. The cold rain, beating in under the raised glass, mixed with the tears which ran down her face, blinding her. All the shy sweet hopes, the beating vivid happiness which she had allowed herself in the last few days, since that moment of realization by the five haystacks, came back at her now, blackened and poisoned; humiliation and misery flooded her. She looked suddenly at her life, seeing it from outside — the house, gardening, dogs, uninteresting neighbors, village good works; a dull, lonely, middle-class, profitless existence! How could she ever have dreamed that Arnold would link his full, interesting life to such a one? There was nothing in it but Dickie that was worth having.

But by this time she was struggling in the depths of one of those spiritual crises where the soul rejects its own salvation, and she pushed the thought of Dickie from her. No — nothing was any good, nothing; she was a useless mother to Dickie, she could not cope with his problems, could not even get him his gramophone. She would be better out of the way — his, Arnold’s, everyone’s! A furious resentment against her life now invaded her, pouring like a poison through her whole being. She would end it — end everything! End it now! Her tears ceased as this resolution hardened in her. Tight-lipped, she drove furiously along the wet road, taking the water splashes with complete indifference. She knew where she would end it, too. That very blind turn at the bridge over the river — the parapet stopped short there, and a careless driver might easily make a mistake; a lorry had gone in there three years ago. No one would know that it was not an accident; her son would not carry the stigma of a suicide’s child. Her mind worked rapidly now as she settled all the details, with a sort of maniacal clearness. It was only three miles ahead — it would soon be over. The river was deep there, at the bend; once she was in, in the coupé, no eleventh-hour falterings would avail her, she thought with savage satisfaction. She need not be afraid of her own weakness — she could never get out alive. She savored the thought of the cold water, the deep oozy mud, the green snaky weeds. Deep, deep, cold and quiet! And it was only a mile now. In the madness of her resolve she exulted in the nearness of death, silence, and cold stillness.

Pop! The car swerved violently, and then moved in a series of sagging bumps. A tire must have gone. Automatically, she pulled in to the side of the road and got out to look. Yes, the near back tire. Well, she must change it, that was all. The modern habit of obedience to the needs of mechanical things was strong in her — for the moment it overcame all other considerations. She never stopped to think that she might just as well have driven on to the river with her flat tire, that it would have been an excellent piece of evidence. A tire was flat; she must put on the spare wheel.

But, oh, what messy, horrible things cars were! As she got out the jack it occurred to her that she would dirty Dickie’s new burberry; it had stopped raining for the moment, and she took off both it and her coat, and cautiously set to work. Incompetently, she wrestled with the jack, with the wheel brace; she got hot, she struggled, she even swore a very little. At last she got the wheel off. Mrs. Osborne was no mechanic — flushed and triumphant, eventually she got the spare wheel on, and strapped the flat one in its carrier.

And then, instinctively, she lit a cigarette, and wished she could get a cup of tea. Suddenly she thought of the tea tray waiting for her at home, the firelight gleaming on the silver and pretty china, the hot toast on the hearth stand. Doubtfully, she shook the wet off Dickie’s burberry and laid it in the back of the car, and as she did so she thought of Dickie — of his pleasure in the new garment, his troubles, his need of her; his face rose up before her, and tears started to her eyes again, but they were tears of tenderness, not of angry and humiliated despair. The black desperate madness had passed, as swiftly as it came, and she was left shuddering at the edge of the abyss into which she had so nearly plunged. Suicide while temporarily insane! In her case, thought Hester, as she drove carefully over the bridge, it would have been true. Perhaps it was always nearly true.

VII

Dickie was lying in his cubicle at Roke. It was twenty past seven — in ten minutes he would have to get up. He snuggled down contentedly under his red blankets, wishing that he could get really quite warm before he left his bed. His gaze traveled round the small space, vaguely and pleasurably reviewing his possessions: his mother’s photograph and some snaps of the dogs on the chest of drawers, and his new torch; his blazer, his overcoat, the hat Hester so much disliked, and the two burberries, hanging on the pitch-pine walls. His eyes came to rest on the new burberry, and a frown of distaste clouded his face. What a beastly color it was! He’d wanted a dark one, but Mum need not have got that ghastly chocolate thing! Whoever saw such a color? He wished she’d got a gramophone instead — there must be cheapish gramophones.

Yells, protests, and laughter along the corridor told of a rag in progress. Grunting, Dickie got up, stretched, yawned, put on his dressing gown, and, picking up his enamel can, shuffled off to the tap to collect his ration of warm water. Going before time, he might get it hotter. He had returned to his cubicle and made some progress with his toilet when a small youth called Hewett poked his head in at the curtained doorway.

‘I say, Osborne, can I borrow your dressing gown? Someone has thrown mine out of the window, and it’s stuck in the tree, and it’s my bath morning!’ His voice was high-pitched and squeaky with excitement, his eyes dancing, his mouth wide agrin.

‘No,’ said Dickie curtly, ‘I’m wearing it myself.’ He was cutting his toenails, and paused to survey his handiwork with an artist’s pride, his head on one side.

‘ But I say — it’s my bath morning — ‘

‘You can take my burberry,’ said Dickie loftily, and Hewett, grabbing the new burberry and still squeaking about the rag, departed.

He came back presently, dressed, and flung the burberry into Dickie’s cubicle. Hewett seemed rather chastened by his bath; the grin had gone, and he was shivering a little. ‘I say,’ he observed to Dickie as they clattered downstairs to early school, ‘has it ever struck you how easily one could be drowned in those baths?’ Dickie said what rot. ‘ ’T is n’t rot — it struck me this morning. Anyone ragging just tip up your heels when your mouth was open and there you are. Your lungs fill, and those sides are damned high — you could n’t pull up. Made me feel all beastly to think of it — I was jolly glad to get out.’ Dickie said what fool did he suppose would want to tip his fatted heels up? ‘Well, it was a beastly feeling — I feel beastly still,’ Hewett persisted, and he continued to expatiate on death by drowning till the form room imposed silence on them.

VIII

The following Sunday Dickie set out for a walk in the afternoon. He thought the fieldfares might be in, and started off in rather unusually good spirits for the piece of high ground where, if anywhere, they were usually to be found. He carried his burberry, beastly brown thing, to crouch on while he watched the birds, and his father’s old field glasses hung at his side. It was cloudy but fine when he set out, and he whistled as he walked, trying to get the sweet smooth winter call of the golden plover, on two semitones.

But presently a fine rain began to fall, and he put on his burberry. And gradually the current of his thoughts changed. He stopped whistling, stopped thinking about birds, and began instead to meditate on his troubles. He was lower in form this week, five places down, and Mum would be disappointed. He could n’t help it — he was simply too tired to work after nine at night, and Jimson had been worse than ever this last week; he had harried him out of Hall three times, and how could he do prep then? Oh, it was all so beastly! And Jimson had hit him on his chilblain, and broken it — on purpose, the beast! Sucking his broken chilblain, clumsily retying the rather grubby piece of rag round it, all the misery and helplessness of the weaker against odds too heavy for him surged up in Dickie’s heart in a hot flood. He was by this time on the high field, but the rain was driving with force on a cold wind, and blurred his vision — he could see no birds, and turned down again toward the river to go back, aimless and wretched.

And now, as he neared the bathing place, he experienced something he had never known before. A swift impulse leaped into his mind, clear and sharp as a call or a pistol shot, to put a short end to his troubles. Before him lay the river, deeper below the bathing place — if anyone were to tie a scarf round his ankles and pitch in, there, it would all be done with. Dickie had never in his life given suicide a moment’s thought, save to dismiss the press accounts of it as an incomprehensible madness, but now he welcomed this insidious impulse without any astonishment. It seemed natural, inevitable. He walked down to the river bank and stood for a moment, considering what would be the best place to take a header from. There was a high projecting piece of turf, above the deepest part — that would do, and, as though acting under some compulsion, he went over to it and stood staring at the water. Deep, deep — cold and quiet! The words seemed to come into his mind of themselves. Yes! With a sort of sob he unwound the scarf from his neck, and stood holding it, still staring as if hypnotized at the twisting weeds. And then something gave a tug at the scarf in his hand.

Dickie started violently. The music master’s wire-haired terrier was greeting him with warm affection. And looking round, guiltily, he saw Mr. Truslove himself approaching. He hurriedly put the scarf in his pocket and began to pat the little dog. ‘Hullo, Osborne!’ said Mr. Truslove heartily as he came up. ‘What are you doing? Meditating suicide?’

‘Oh no, sir,’ said Dickie, smiling the usual polite smile at the official joke.

‘Filthy day,’ observed Mr. Truslove. ‘You’d better get along in and change quick. And what about a dish of tea with me, Osborne, and having a stab at those new madrigals afterward ? ’

Dickie, tramping beside him, accepted with alacrity — Mr. Truslove always had Sally Lunns for tea, and singing was one of his own greatest delights. As he flung off his burberry, indoors, and changed as fast as he could, he wondered, shiveringly, if he had dreamed all that about drowning, out there by the river. And when he slipped into chapel two hours later, gorged with tea cake and intoxicated with Byrd’s funny rhythms, he was almost sure that he had.

IX

Punctually at eight-thirty, as usual, Mrs. Osborne came down to breakfast and, pouring out her coffee, began to open her letters. The post brought no more the dancing thrill it used to, now that a letter from Arnold gave her as much pain as pleasure — brought, in fact, only a dull ache; but there was a letter from her son, and her face quickened into a little glow as she opened it.

DEAR MUM [Dickie wrote], —
I don’t know what you will say, but I have got a gramophone. Last Wednesday. It’s not a fearfully good one, but it’s quite all right, and there are fourteen records with it. I swapped it with a boy for my burberry. I don’t know what you wall say, but I really did want a gramophone, and somehow I did n’t like that burberry very much. I did n’t like the color. And I have got the other. I don’t know what Miss Morton will say. I have n’t told her yet. I hope you won’t mind much. It will be rather fun to have a gramophone. Our first XV won their match against Sandhurst yesterday.
Love from
DICKIE

P. S. Jimson wanted the burberry because he got his all filthy working the steam roller after the men had gone, and he could n’t tell Miss Morton and he had to have a burberry.

Hester sat appalled after reading this. What could Dickie have been thinking of? Such wicked self-indulgence and extravagance! Heavyhearted, she finished her breakfast, took her letters into the morning room, and began to water the flowers. She would have to write to Dickie and remonstrate with him. But not now; she must try first to understand what had prompted him to such an extraordinary act. Remonstrance was never any good unless you understood. Of course she knew why he wanted a gramophone, but surely there must have been some more desperate reason to make him do anything so reckless and unconscientious as to barter away his new expensive burberry.

She worried over it all day, but she was very busy, and there was a Women’s Institute committee in the afternoon which lasted longer than usual, so that she had no chance to write by the evening post. She sat miserably by the fire that night, a writing pad on her knees, the dogs at her feet, trying to draft a letter, but hung up all the time by her vain search for a motive to account for Dickie’s crime. He was a good boy, a frugal boy; there must be something behind it. But what? But what? He ‘did n’t like the color,’ — she was sadly reading from the letter again, — but that was simply absurd! He’d asked for a dark one. And suddenly remembering her own misery when the burberry was bought, how she was actually wearing it when Arnold spoke to her, all her sense of loss returned in full force. The letter was still unwritten when she went to bed.

Next morning there was another envelope with Dickie’s writing. This was most unusual — his one Sunday communication usually sufficed him for the week, and she opened it with nervous fingers.

DEAR MUM, -
A terrific thing has happened. Jimson is dead — drowned in the river. A groundsman found him among the reeds below the bathing place, floating about. Is n’t it terrific? We’ve only just been told. No one knows how it happened. He was n’t really a bad chap, in a way. I think he was nervous, in a way, and that made him do things. I don’t know quite what I ’m to do about the gramophone.
Love from
DICKIE

Mrs. Osborne sat staring at the letter. What a fearful thing! And yet — she thought this before she could stop herself — what a relief! Ashamed of this thought, she put it from her. How strange it was that the burberry, so connected with her own unhappiness, should no sooner come into the possession of the unfortunate Jimson than he died. Slow, faint, uncertain, like a tune one cannot fully remember, the first vague inkling of a theory almost too wild for the reason to accept it began to dawn in her mind. Drowned! She too had wished to drown, as she drove home that day, wearing the burberry to save her coat. There was a word — what did they call it? — when some garment, some object, held as it were the imprint of some former owner’s strong emotion. Psycho — something. Oh, but that was too far-fetched! Puzzled, still uncertain, she turned back to Dickie’s letter, and now noticed that there was a second sheet. She took it up.

P. S. What do you think? Jimson was wearing my burberry when it happened. Mr. Rush has just had me up and asked me about it. So I had to tell him about the swap. They will look at it at the inquest, Dodgson says.

And then a further scrawl: —

P. P. S. Miss Morton says the burberry will be quite all right when it’s dried, and she does n’t see why I should n’t use it again, as it’s brand-new, and what do you say? But then, could I keep the gramophone? Definitely, Mummie, I’d rather have the gramophone. I did n’t much care about that burberry.
D.

Mrs. Osborne put down the letter, and sat gazing out of the window, in a strange clarity of mind. Far-fetched? No — it was clear, it was plain; she saw, as in a series of pictures, her own misery and despair in that coat, and the garment carrying thereafter an invisible infection, to which the wretched Jimson had succumbed. Her instinct, in those sharpened moments, pictured her son struggling with this poison of her own creation; by what miracle he had escaped she could not tell, but the deep reason for his dislike of the burberry, the hidden motive for his childish crime, lay bare to her. Snatching up a pen, she sat down at her table and wrote to the matron.

DEAR MISS MORTON, -
After this tragic affair I do not wish anyone to wear that burberry again. Please send it to me and I will have it destroyed.
Yours very truly,
H. OSBORNE

And then, having stamped the envelope, she began to write to her son: —

‘My darling boy.’