Young Phillip Maddison by Henry Williamson Page A

door bell. He started.
    â€œHullo, what have you been up to now?” said Richard, jokingly, seeing the start. “What’s in the wind this time?”
    Hetty saw the boy’s pale face.
    â€œIs there anything the matter, dear?” she said. “Tell Father if there is,” as she opened the sitting room door.
    â€œOh, be quiet!” exclaimed Richard, in mild exasperation. “Let the boy speak for himself.”
    Hetty went up the stairs to the front door. With beating heart, Phillip listened.
    â€œThere’s nothing to tell, Father.”
    â€œOh, I see.”
    Richard picked up his newspaper, seated himself in his armchair, and looked again at what he had already read—the words of a big-moustached man whose photograph appeared in the middle of the article designed to rouse an apathetic nation against the danger of the projected Kiel Canal from Baltic to North Sea. They mean war, these people, who rejoice under the heel of militarism, wrote the prophet, Robert Blatchford. Richard wondered why he wrote in The Daily Trident, since this ex-sergeant of the army was supposed to be a Socialist. However, there was some sense in what Robert Blatchford now wrote.
    Richard had never forgotten what his mother, of a Bavarian family destroyed in Bismarck’s war of federation, had always said about the Prussians. Sitting in the chair, his thoughts reverted to what his sister Theodora had recently written to him in a letter containing what he considered to be a farrago of nonsense about the wrongness of England generally, and in particular in the Englishman’s attitude to the subject races of the Empire. And this was the very same Dora who was making a nuisance of herself in the agitation for the franchise to women. Dora, more of a crank than ever! A woman without a true vocation. She had never grown up.
    But Theodora Maddison had not written to her brother what she had written to her sister-in-law. Dora had written to Hetty, among other things, these words:
    I do not think that I have ever known such an unhappy little boy as
Phillip used to be. It is so strange, Hetty, that history in our family, as among the nations, seems to be repeating itself. “There is nothing new under the sun”—yes, I know what the old biblical poet says—but surely signs are not wanting of a revival of ancient Truth, of a spiritual awareness in the world, which shall bring Light anew into our struggling humanity, and fulfil the dreams of the artists and poets of the ancient world.
    Be gentle with my brother, dear Hetty. He is a lonely man, very proud, and has suffered much from the previous generation, more perhaps than we shall ever know. Cause and effect, effect and cause: only God can, with His infinite mercy, see beyond the dark forces which beset us all, the misunderstandings which isolate all of us, each in their different perplexities. Be patient, dear friend; and never cease to believe in the ultimate goodness of mankind.
    When Richard looked up from his paper again, a few moments later, and turned in his chair to look at Phillip, an incredulous expression came over his face. The boy’s neck was bent, his face hidden; a slight choking noise came from him. Tears were dropping upon the plush table-cloth!
    â€œGood heavens, what’s the matter now? Why are the waterworks turned on?”
    Phillip hid his face the more.
    â€œWell, I’m blowed!” said Richard. “You are a most extraordinary cuss!”
    â€œWhat’s the matter, Sonny, don’t you feel well?” asked Hetty, returning to the room, an envelope in her hand. “What has happened, Dickie?”
    â€œI’m blest if I can understand any of you!” cried Richard, seeing tears in his wife’s eyes. “You are a weepy lot, all of you! Come on, Phillip, chuck it! Be a man! You really must learn to cease taking refuge in tears if anything goes wrong! What you will do when you grow up, and go out