第89章 THE SILENCE(6)

The secretary frowned."Ah, Pippin! We asked you to come on his account.Pippin is giving us a lot of trouble.We have not had a single line from him for just two years!" He spoke with such a sense of personal grievance that Scorrier felt quite sorry for him."Not a single line," said Hemmings, "since that explosion--you were there at the time, I remember! It makes it very awkward; I call it personal to me.""But how--" Scorrier began.

"We get--telegrams.He writes to no one, not even to his family.

And why? Just tell me why? We hear of him; he's a great nob out there.Nothing's done in the colony without his finger being in the pie.He turned out the last Government because they wouldn't grant us an extension for our railway--shows he can't be a fool.Besides, look at our balance-sheet!"It turned out that the question on which Scorrier's opinion was desired was, whether Hemmings should be sent out to see what was the matter with the superintendent.During the discussion which.

ensued, he was an unwilling listener to strictures on Pippin's silence."The explosion," he muttered at last, "a very trying time!"Mr.Booker pounced on him."A very trying time! So it was--to all of us.But what excuse is that--now, Mr.Scorrier, what excuse is that?"Scorrier was obliged to admit that it was none.

"Business is business--eh, what?"

Scorrier, gazing round that neat Board-room, nodded.A deaf director, who had not spoken for some months, said with sudden fierceness: "It's disgraceful!" He was obviously letting off the fume of long-unuttered disapprovals.One perfectly neat, benevolent old fellow, however, who had kept his hat on, and had a single vice--that of coming to the Board-room with a brown paper parcel tied up with string--murmured: "We must make all allowances," and started an anecdote about his youth.He was gently called to order by his secretary.Scorrier was asked for his opinion.He looked at Hemmings."My importance is concerned," was written all over the secretary's face.Moved by an impulse of loyalty to Pippin, Scorrier answered, as if it were all settled: " Well, let me know when you are starting, Hemmings--I should like the trip myself."As he was going out, the chairman, old Jolyon Forsyte, with a grave, twinkling look at Hemmings, took him aside."Glad to hear you say that about going too, Mr.Scorrier; we must be careful--Pippin's such a good fellow, and so sensitive; and our friend there--a bit heavy in the hand, um?"Scorrier did in fact go out with Hemmings.The secretary was sea-sick, and his prostration, dignified but noisy, remained a memory for ever; it was sonorous and fine--the prostration of superiority; and the way in which he spoke of it, taking casual acquaintances into the caves of his experience, was truly interesting.

Pippin came down to the capital to escort them, provided for their comforts as if they had been royalty, and had a special train to take them to the mines.

He was a little stouter, brighter of colour, greyer of beard, more nervous perhaps in voice and breathing.His manner to Hemmings was full of flattering courtesy; but his sly, ironical glances played on the secretary's armour like a fountain on a hippopotamus.To Scorrier, however, he could not show enough affection:

The first evening, when Hemmings had gone to his room, he jumped up like a boy out of school."So I'm going to get a wigging," he said;"I suppose I deserve it; but if you knew--if you only knew...! Out here they've nicknamed me 'the King'--they say I rule the colony.

It's myself that I can't rule"; and with a sudden burst of passion such as Scorrier had never seen in him: "Why did they send this man here? What can he know about the things that I've been through?" In a moment he calmed down again."There! this is very stupid; worrying you like this!" and with a long, kind look into Scorrier's face, he hustled him off to bed.

Pippin did not break out again, though fire seemed to smoulder behind the bars of his courteous irony.Intuition of danger had evidently smitten Hemmings, for he made no allusion to the object of his visit.

There were moments when Scorrier's common-sense sided with Hemmings--these were moments when the secretary was not present.

'After all,' he told himself, 'it's a little thing to ask--one letter a month.I never heard of such a case.' It was wonderful indeed how they stood it! It showed how much they valued Pippin! What was the matter with him? What was the nature of his trouble? One glimpse Scorrier had when even Hemmings, as he phrased it, received "quite a turn." It was during a drive back from the most outlying of the company's trial mines, eight miles through the forest.The track led through a belt of trees blackened by a forest fire.Pippin was driving.The secretary seated beside him wore an expression of faint alarm, such as Pippin's driving was warranted to evoke from almost any face.The sky had darkened strangely, but pale streaks of light, coming from one knew not where, filtered through the trees.No breath was stirring; the wheels and horses' hoofs made no sound on the deep fern mould.All around, the burnt tree-trunks, leafless and jagged, rose like withered giants, the passages between them were black, the sky black, and black the silence.No one spoke, and literally the only sound was Pippin's breathing.What was it that was so terrifying? Scorrier had a feeling of entombment; that nobody could help him; the feeling of being face to face with Nature; a sensation as if all the comfort and security of words and rules had dropped away from him.And-nothing happened.They reached home and dined.