A Christmas Visitor Read Free Page A

son, but Oliver was a grown man, one of London’s most distinguished barristers, well known for his brilliance in the criminal court. Henry could hardlyremember now what Oliver had been like at nine years old. He too had been intelligent, certainly, precocious in his ability to read, and as far as Henry could remember, in his taste in books. He had been inquisitive, and profoundly argumentative. He could recall that clearly enough! But that was nearly thirty years ago, and the rest was hazy.
    He wanted to speak to Joshua, so as not to appear to ignore him.
    “Your mother says you composed a piece of music that the violinist at the recital played,” he observed. “That is very fine.”
    Joshua regarded him soberly. He was a handsome child with wide, dark eyes like Antonia’s, but his father’s brow and balance of head.
    “It did not sound exactly how I meant it to,” he replied. “I shall have to work harder at it. I think it ends a little soon … and it’s too quick.”
    “I see. Well, knowing what is wrong with a thing is at least halfway toward putting it right,” Henry replied.
    “Do you like music?” Joshua asked.
    “Yes, very much. I can play the piano a little.” Actually, he was being quite modest. He had a certain flair for it. “But I cannot write for it.”
    “What can you do?”
    “Joshua!” Antonia remonstrated.
    “It’s quite all right,” Henry said quickly. “It is a fair question.” He turned to the boy. “I am good at mathematics, and I like to invent things.”
    “You mean arithmetic?”
    “Yes. And algebra and geometry.”
    Joshua frowned. “Do you like it, or is it that you have to do it?”
    “I like it,” Henry replied. “It makes a very beautiful kind of sense.”
    “Like music?”
    “Yes, very much.”
    “I see.”
    And then the conversation rested, apparently to Joshua’s satisfaction.
    After a postprandial half hour by the fire, Henryexcused himself, saying that he wanted to take a walk and stretch his legs. He did not ask Antonia where Judah had died, but when he had his coat and boots on, and a hat and scarf as well, he inquired from Wiggins, and was given directions to the stream nearly a mile away.
    It was nearly half past eight, and outside the night was dense black, apart from the lantern he was holding, and the few lights he could see from the village a couple of miles away. The sound of his feet on the gravel was loud in the cloaking silence.
    He moved very slowly, uncertain of his way, wary of tripping over the edge of the lawn, or even of bumping into the drive gates. It took a few minutes for his eyes to become sufficiently accustomed to see ahead of him by starlight, and make out the black tracery of bare branches against the sky. Even then it was more by the blocking of the pinpricks of light than the line of a tree. A sickle moon made little difference, just a silver curve like a horn.
    Why on earth had Judah Dreghorn walked so farlate on a night like this? The cold stung the skin. The wind was from the north, off the snows of Blencathra. Here in the valley the ground was frozen like rock, but there was no gleaming whiteness to reflect back the faint light. He wound his scarf more tightly around his neck and a trifle higher about his ears, and moved forward on what he hoped was the way Wiggins had told him.
    Judah had not simply gone for a walk. Henry felt it was stupid to persist in believing that. The recital had been splendid, a triumph for Joshua. Why would a man leave his wife and son after such an event, and go feeling each footstep over the frozen ground in the pitch dark?
    Except, of course, it was more than a week ago now, so the moon would have been almost half full and there would have been more light. Still, it was a strange thing to go out at all, even with a full moon, and why so far?
    Judah had gone to the stream, and tried to cross over it. So he had intended going even farther. To where? Henry should have asked Antonia where