Chapter 1

It was the opening night of London's new National Opera House and
consequently an occasion. Royalty was there. The Press were there. The
fashionable were there in large quantities. Even the musical, by hook
and by crook, had managed to be there--mostly very high up in the final
tier of seats under the roof.

The musical composition given was _The Giant_, a new work by a
hitherto unknown composer, Boris Groen. In the interval after the first
part of the performance a listener might have collected the following
scraps of conversation:

"Quite divine, darling." "They say it's simply the--the--_the_
latest!! Everything out of tune on purpose ... and you have to read
Einstein in order to understand it...." "Yes, dear, I shall tell
everyone it's too marvellous. But, privately, it does make one's head
ache!"

"Why can't they open a British opera house with a decent British
composer? All this Russian tomfoolery!" Thus a peppery colonel.

"Quite so," drawled his companion. "But, you see, there are no British
composers. Sad, but there it is!"

"Nonsense--don't tell me, sir. They just won't give them a
chance--that's what it is. Who is this fellow Levinne? A dirty foreign
Jew. That's all he is!"

A man near by, leaning against the wall half concealed by a curtain,
permitted himself to smile--for he was Sebastian Levinne, sole owner of
the National Opera House, familiarly known by the title of the World's
Greatest Showman.

He was a big man, rather too well covered with flesh. His face was
yellow and impassive, his eyes beady and black, two enormous ears stood
out from his head and were the joy of caricaturists.

The surge of talk eddied past him.

"Decadent ... morbid ... neurotic ... childish...."

Those were critics.

"Devastating ... too divine ... marvellous, my dear...."

Those were women.

"The thing's nothing but a glorified revue." "Amazing effects in the
second part, I believe. Machinery, you know. This first part, 'Stone,'
is only a kind of introduction. They say old Levinne has simply gone
all out over this. Never been anything like it." "Music's pretty weird,
isn't it?" "Bolshy idea, I believe. Noise orchestras, don't they call
them?"

Those were young men, more intelligent than the women, less prejudiced
than the critics.

"It won't catch on. A stunt, thath all. Yet, I don't know--there's a
feeling for this cubist thtuff." "Levinne's shrewd." "Dropths money
deliberately thometimes--but getth it back." "Cost...?" The voices
dropped, hushed themselves mysteriously as sums of money were mentioned.

Those were members of his own race. Sebastian Levinne smiled.

A bell rang--slowly the crowd drifted and eddied back to their seats.

There was a wait, filled with chattering and laughter--then the lights
wavered and sank. The conductor mounted to his place. In front of him
was an orchestra just six times as large as any Covent Garden orchestra
and quite unlike an ordinary orchestra. There were strange instruments
in it of shining metal like misshapen monsters, and in one corner an
unaccustomed glitter of crystal. The conductor's baton was stretched
out, then fell, and immediately there was a low rhythmic beating as of
hammers on anvils. Every now and then a beat was missed--lost--and then
came floating back taking its place out of turn, jostling the others.

The curtain rose....

At the back of a box on the second tier Sebastian Levinne stood and
watched.

This was no opera, as commonly understood. It told no story, featured
no individuals. Rather was it on the scale of a gigantic Russian
ballet. It contained spectacular effects. Strange and weird effects
of lighting--effects that were Levinne's own inventions. His revues
had for long been proclaimed as the last word in sheer spectacular
sensation. Into this, more artist than producer, he had put the whole
force of his imagination and experience.

The prologue had represented Stone--Man's infancy.

This--the body of the work--was a supreme pageant of
machinery--fantastic, almost awful. Power houses, dynamos, factory
chimneys, cranes, all merging and flowing. And men--armies of men--with
cubist robot faces--defiling in patterns.

The music swelled and eddied--a deep sonorous clamour came from the new
strangely shaped metal instruments. A queer high sweet note sounded
above it all, like the ringing of innumerable glasses.

There was an Episode of Skyscrapers--New York seen upside down as from
a circling aëroplane in the early dawn of morning. And the strange
inharmonious rhythm beat ever more insistently, with increasing
menacing monotony. It drew on through other episodes to its climax:
a giant-seeming steel erection--thousands of steel faced men welded
together into a Giant Collective Man.

The Epilogue followed immediately. There was no interval, the lights
did not go up.

Only one side of the orchestra spoke. What was called in the new modern
phrase "the Glass."

Clarion ringing notes.

The curtain dissolved into mist ... the mist parted ... the sudden
glare made one wish to shield one's eyes.

Ice--nothing but ice ... great bergs and glaciers ... shining.

And on the top immense pinnacle a little figure--facing away from the
audience toward the insufferable glare that represented the rising of
the sun....

The ridiculous puny figure of a man.

The glare increased--to the whiteness of magnesium. Hands went
instinctively to eyes with a cry of pain.

The glass rang out--high and sweet--then crashed--and broke--literally
broke--into tinkling fragments.

The curtain dropped and the lights rose.

Sebastian Levinne with an impassive face received various
congratulations and side hits.

"Well, you've done it this time, Levinne. No half measures, eh?"

"A damned fine show, old man. Blessed if I know what it's all about,
though."

"The Giant, eh? That's true, we live in an age of machinery all right."

"Oh! Mr. Levinne, it's simply too frightening for words! I shall dream
of that horrid steel Giant."

"Machinery as the Giant that devours, eh? Not far wrong, Levinne. We
want to get back to Nature. Who's Groen? A Russian?"

"Yes, who's Groen? He's a genius, whoever he is. The Bolshevists can
boast they've produced one composer at last."

"Too bad, Levinne, you've gone Bolshy. Collective Man. Collective
Music, too."

"Well, Levinne, good luck to you. Can't say I like this damned
caterwauling they call music nowadays, but it's a good show."

Almost last came a little old man, slightly bent, with one shoulder
higher than the other. He said with a very distinct utterance:

"Like to give me a drink, Sebastian?"

Levinne nodded. This little old man was Carl Bowerman, the most
distinguished of English musical critics. They went together to
Levinne's own sanctum.

In Levinne's room they settled down in two armchairs. Levinne provided
his guest with a whisky and soda. Then he looked across at him
inquiringly. He was anxious for this man's verdict.

"Well?"

Bowerman did not reply for a minute or two. At last he said slowly:

"I am an old man. There are things in which I take pleasure; there
are other things--such as the music of to-day--which do not give me
pleasure. But all the same I know genius when I meet it. There are a
hundred charlatans--a hundred breakers down of tradition who think
that by doing so they have accomplished something wonderful. And there
is the hundred and first--a creator, a man who steps boldly into the
future."

He paused, then went on:

"Yes, I know genius when I meet it. I may not like it--but I
recognize it. Groen, whoever he is, has genius.... _The music of
to-morrow...._"

Again he paused, and again Levinne did not interrupt, but waited.

"I don't know whether your venture will succeed or fail. I think
succeed--but that will be mainly because of your personality. You have
the art of forcing the public to accept what you want them to accept.
You have a talent for success. You've made a mystery about Groen--part
of your press campaign, I suppose."

He looked at Sebastian keenly.

"I don't want to interfere with your press campaign, but tell me one
thing--Groen's an Englishman, isn't he?"

"Yes. How did you know, Bowerman?"

"Nationality in music is unmistakable. He has studied in the Russian
revolutionary school, yes--but--well, as I said nationality is
unmistakable. There have been pioneers before him--people who have
tried tentatively the things he has accomplished. We've had our English
school--Holst, Vaughan Williams, Arnold Bax. All over the world
musicians have been drawing nearer to the new ideal--the Absolute in
Music. This man is the direct successor of that boy who was killed in
the war. What was his name? Deyre--Vernon Deyre. He had promise." He
sighed. "I wonder, Levinne, how much we lost through the war."

"It's difficult to say, sir."

"It doesn't bear thinking of. No, it doesn't bear thinking of." He
rose. "I mustn't keep you. You've a lot to do, I know." A faint smile
showed on his face. "_The Giant!_ You and Groen have your little
joke all to yourselves, I fancy. Everyone takes it for granted the
Giant is the Moloch of Machinery. They don't see that the real Giant
is that pigmy figure--man. The individualist who endures through Stone
and Iron and who, though civilization crumble and die, fights his way
through yet another Glacial Age to rise in a new civilization of which
we do not dream."

His smile broadened.

"As I grow older I am more and more convinced that there is nothing so
pathetic, so ridiculous, so absurd, and so absolutely wonderful as Man."

He paused by the doorway, his hand on the knob.

"One wonders," he said, "what has gone to the making of a thing like
the Giant? What produces it? What feeds it? Heredity shapes the
instrument--environment polishes and rounds it off--sex wakens it....
But there's more than that. There's its food.

"_Fee, fie, fo, fum,
I smell the blood of mortal Man.
Be he alive or be he dead,
I'll grind his bones to make my bread._

"A cruel giant, genius, Levinne! A monster feeding on flesh and blood.
I know nothing about Groen, yet I'd swear that he's fed his Giant with
his own flesh and blood and perhaps the flesh and blood of others
too.... Their bones ground to make the Giant's bread....

"I'm an old man, Levinne. I have my fancies. We've seen the end
to-night--I'd like to know the beginning."

"Heredity--environment--sex," said Levinne slowly.

"Yes. Just that. Not that I have any hopes of your telling me."

"You think I--know?"

"I'm sure you know."

There was a silence.

"Yes," said Levinne at last, "I do know. I would tell you the whole
story if I could ... but I cannot. There are reasons."

He repeated slowly: "There are reasons."

"A pity. It would have been interesting."

"I wonder...."

Book I

ABBOTS PUISSANTS

chapter 1

There were only three people of real importance in Vernon's world:
Nurse, God, and Mr. Green.

There were, of course, the nursemaids. Winnie, the present one, and
behind her Jane and Annie and Sarah and Gladys. Those were all the ones
that Vernon could remember, but there were lots more. Nursery maids
never stayed long because they couldn't get on with Nurse. They hardly
counted in Vernon's world.

There was also a kind of twin deity called Mummy-Daddy mentioned by
Vernon in his prayers and also connected with going down to dessert.
They were shadowy figures, rather beautiful and wonderful--especially
Mummy--but they again did not belong to the real world--Vernon's world.

The things in Vernon's world were very real indeed. There was the
drugget on the nursery floor, for instance. It was of green and white
stripes and rather scrubbly to bare knees, and in one corner of it was
a hole which Vernon used surreptitiously to make bigger by working
his fingers round in it. There were the nursery walls where mauve
irises twined themselves interminably upward round a pattern that was
sometimes diamonds and sometimes, if you looked at it long enough,
crosses. That seemed very interesting to Vernon and rather magical.

There was a rocking horse against one wall, but Vernon seldom rode on
it. There was a basket-work engine and some basket-work trucks which he
played with a good deal. There was a low cupboard full of more or less
dilapidated toys. On an upper shelf were the more delectable contents
that you played with on a wet day or when Nurse was in an unusually
good temper. The Paint Box was there and the Real Camel Hair Brushes
and a heap of illustrated papers for Cutting Out. In fact, all the
things that Nurse said were "that messy she couldn't abear them about."
In other words, the best things.

And in the centre of this realistic nursery universe, dominating
everything, was Nurse herself. Person No. 1 of Vernon's Trinity. Very
big and broad, very starched and crackling. Omniscient and omnipotent.
You couldn't get the better of Nurse. She knew better than little boys.
She frequently said so. Her whole lifetime had been spent looking after
little boys (and incidentally little girls, too, but Vernon was not
interested in them) and one and all they had grown up to be a Credit
to her. She said so and Vernon believed her. He had no doubt that he
also would grow up to be a Credit to her, though sometimes it didn't
seem likely. There was something awe-inspiring about Nurse, but at the
same time infinitely comfortable. She knew the answer to everything.
For instance, Vernon propounded the riddle about the diamonds and the
crosses on the wall paper.

"Ah! well," said Nurse, "there's two ways of looking at everything. You
must have heard that."

And as Vernon had heard her say much the same to Winnie one day, he was
soothed and satisfied. On the occasion in question Nurse had gone on to
say that there were always two sides to a question and in future Vernon
always visualized a question as something like a letter A with crosses
creeping up one side of it and diamonds going down the other.

After Nurse, there was God. God was also very real to Vernon, mainly
because he bulked so largely in Nurse's conversation. Nurse knew most
things that you did, but God knew _everything_, and God was, if
anything, more particular than Nurse. You couldn't see God, which,
Vernon always felt, gave him rather an unfair advantage over you,
because he could see you. Even in the dark he could see you. Sometimes,
when Vernon was in bed at night, the thought of God looking down at him
through the darkness used to give him a creepy feeling down the spine.

But on the whole, God was an intangible person compared with Nurse.
You could conveniently forget about him most of the time. That was,
until Nurse lugged him deliberately into the conversation.

Once Vernon essayed revolt.

"Nurse, do you know what I shall do when I'm dead?"

Nurse, who was knitting stockings, said: "One, two, three, four--there
now, I've dropped a stitch. No, Master Vernon, I'm sure I don't."

"I shall go to Heaven--I shall go to Heaven--and I shall go right up to
God--right up to him I shall go, and I shall say: 'You're an 'orrible
man and I 'ate you!'"

Silence. It was done. He had said it. Unbelievable, unparalleled
audacity! What would happen? What awful punishment terrestrial or
celestial would descend upon him? He waited--breathless.

Nurse had picked up the stitch. She looked at Vernon over the top of
her spectacles. She was serene--unruffled.

"It's not likely," she remarked, "that the Almighty will take any
notice of what a naughty little boy says. Winnie, give me those
scissors, if you please."

Vernon retired crestfallen. It was no good. You couldn't down Nurse. He
might have known.

_2_

And then there was Mr. Green. Mr. Green was like God in that you
couldn't see him, but to Vernon he was very real. He knew, for
instance, exactly what Mr. Green looked like--of middle height, rather
stout, a faint resemblance to the village grocer who sang an uncertain
baritone in the village choir, bright-red cheeks and mutton-chop
whiskers. His eyes were blue, a very bright blue. The great thing about
Mr. Green was that he played--he loved playing. Whatever game Vernon
thought of, that was just the game that Mr. Green loved to play. There
were other points about him. He had, for instance, a hundred children.
And three others. The hundred, in Vernon's mind, were kept intact, a
joyous mob that raced down the yew alleys behind Vernon and Mr. Green.
But the three others were different. They were called by the three most
beautiful names that Vernon knew: Poodle, Squirrel and Tree.

Vernon was, perhaps, a lonely little boy, but he never knew it.
Because, you see, he had Mr. Green and Poodle, Squirrel, and Tree to
play with.

_3_

For a long time Vernon was undecided as to where Mr. Green's home was.
It came to him quite suddenly that of course Mr. Green lived in the
Forest. The Forest had always been fascinating to Vernon. One side of
the Park bordered on it. There were high green palings and Vernon used
to creep along them hoping for a crack that would let him see through.
There were whisperings and sighings and rustlings all along, as though
the trees were speaking to each other. Halfway down there was a door,
but alas, it was always locked, so that Vernon could never see what it
was really like inside the Forest.

Nurse, of course, would never take him there. She was like all nurses
and preferred a good steady walk along the road, and no messing your
feet up with them nasty damp leaves. So Vernon was never allowed to go
in the Forest. It made him think of it all the more. Some day he would
take tea there with Mr. Green. Poodle and Squirrel and Tree were to
have new suits for the occasion.

_4_

The nursery palled on Vernon. It was too small. He knew all there
was to know about it. The garden was different. It was really a very
exciting garden. There were so many different bits of it. The long
walks between the clipped yew hedges with their ornamental birds, the
water garden with the fat goldfish, the walled fruit garden, the wild
garden with its almond trees in springtime and the copse of silver
birch trees with bluebells growing underneath, and best of all the
railed-off bit where the ruins of the old Abbey were. That was the
place where Vernon would have liked to be left to his own devices--to
climb and explore. But he never was. The rest of the garden he did
much as he liked in. Winnie was always sent out with him, but since by
a remarkable coincidence they always seemed to encounter the second
gardener, he could play his own games unhindered by too much kind
attention on Winnie's part.

_5_

Gradually Vernon's world widened. The twin star, Mummy-Daddy,
separated, became two distinct people. Daddy remained nebulous, but
Mummy became quite a personage. She often paid visits to the nursery to
"play with my darling little boy." Vernon bore her visits with grave
politeness, though it usually meant giving up the game that he himself
was engaged upon and accepting one which was not, in his opinion,
nearly so good. Lady visitors would sometimes come with her, and then
she would squeeze Vernon tightly (which he hated) and cry.

"It's so wonderful to be a mother! I never get used to it! To have a
darling baby boy of one's very own!"

Very red, Vernon would extricate himself from her embrace. Because he
wasn't a baby boy at all. He was three years old.

Looking across the room one day, just after a scene like the above,
he saw his father standing by the nursery door with sardonic eyes,
watching him. Their eyes met. Something seemed to pass between them:
comprehension--a sense of kinship.

His mother's friends were talking.

"Such a pity, Myra, that he doesn't take after you. Your hair would be
too lovely on a child."

But Vernon had a sudden feeling of pride. He was like his father.

_6_

Vernon always remembered the day that the American lady came to lunch.
To begin with, because of Nurse's explanations about America which, as
he realized later, she confused with Australia.

He went down to dessert in an awe-stricken state. If this lady had been
at home in her own country she would be walking about upside down with
her head hanging down. Quite enough, this, to make him stare. And then,
too, she used odd words for the simplest things.

"Isn't he too cute? See here, honey, I've gotten a box of candy for
you. Won't you come and fetch it?"

Vernon came gingerly; accepted the present. The lady clearly didn't
know what she was talking about. It wasn't candy, but good Edinburgh
Rock.

There were two gentlemen there also, one the husband of the American
lady. This one said:

"Do you know half a crown, my boy, when you see it?"

And it presently turned out that the half crown was to be for his very
own to keep. Altogether it was a wonderful day.

Vernon had never thought very much about his home. He knew that it was
bigger than the Vicarage where he sometimes went to tea, but he seldom
played with any other children or went to their homes. So it came to
him with a shock of wonder that day. The visitors were taken all over
the house, and the American lady's voice rose ceaselessly.

"My, if that isn't too wonderful! Did you ever see such a thing? Five
hundred years, you say? Frank, listen to that. Henry the Eighth--if
it isn't just like listening to English history. And the Abbey older
still, you say?"

They went everywhere, through the long picture gallery where faces
strangely like Vernon's, with dark eyes set close together and narrow
heads, looked out from the painted canvas arrogantly or with cold
tolerance. There were meek women there in ruffs or with pearls twisted
in their hair--the Deyre women had done best to be meek, married to
wild lords who knew neither fear nor pity--who looked appraisingly at
Myra Deyre, the last of their number, as she walked beneath them. From
the picture gallery they went to the square hall, and from there to the
Priest's Chamber.

Vernon had been removed by Nurse long since. They found him again in
the garden feeding the goldfish. Vernon's father had gone into the
house to get the keys of the Abbey ruins. The visitors were alone.

"My, Frank," said the American lady, "isn't it _too_ wonderful?
All these years. Handed down from father to son. Romantic, that's what
I call it, just too romantic for anything. All these years. Just fancy!
How is it done?"

It was then that the other gentleman spoke. He was not much of a
talker, so far Vernon had not heard him speak at all. But he now
unclosed his lips and uttered one word--a word so enchanting, so
mysterious, so delightful that Vernon never forgot it.

"Brumagem," said the other gentleman.

And before Vernon could ask him (as he meant to do) what that marvelous
word meant, another diversion occurred.

His mother came out of the house. There was a sunset behind her--a
scene painter's sunset of crude gold and red. Against that background
Vernon saw his mother--saw her for the first time--a magnificent woman
with white skin and red-gold hair--a being like the pictures in his
fairy book; saw her suddenly as something wonderful, wonderful and
beautiful.

He was never to forget that strange moment. She was his mother and
she was beautiful and he loved her. Something hurt him inside, like a
pain--only it wasn't a pain. And there was a queer booming noise inside
his head--a thundering noise that ended up high and sweet like a bird's
note. Altogether a very wonderful moment.

And mixed up with it was that magic word _Brumagem_.

chapter 2

Winnie the nursemaid was going away. It all happened very suddenly. The
other servants whispered together. Winnie cried. She cried and cried.
Nurse gave her what she called a Talking To and after that Winnie cried
more than ever. There was something terrible about Nurse; she seemed
larger than usual and she crackled more. Winnie, Vernon knew, was going
away because of Father. He accepted that fact without any particular
interest or curiosity. Nursemaids did sometimes go away because of
Father.

His mother was shut in her room. She too was crying. Vernon could hear
her through the door. She did not send for him and it did not occur to
him to go to her. Indeed he was vaguely relieved. He hated the noise
of crying, the gulping sound, the long-drawn sniffs, and it always
happened so close to your ears. People who were crying always hugged
you. Vernon hated those kinds of noises close to his ears. There was
nothing in the world he hated more than the wrong sort of noise. It
made you feel all curled up like a leaf in your middle. That was the
jolly part about Mr. Green. He never made the wrong kind of noise.

Winnie was packing her boxes. Nurse was in with her--a less awful Nurse
now--almost a human Nurse.

"Now you let this be a warning to you, my girl," said Nurse. "No
carryings on in your next place."

Winnie sniffed something about no real harm.

"And no more there wouldn't be, I should hope, with Me in charge,"
said Nurse. "A lot comes, I dare say of having red hair. Red-haired
girls are always flighty, so my dear mother used to say. I'm not saying
you're a bad girl. But what you've done is Unbecoming. Unbecoming--I
can't say more than that."

And, as Vernon had often noticed after using this particular phrase,
she proceeded to say a good deal more. But he did not listen, for he
was pondering on the word "unbecoming." Becoming, he knew, was a thing
you said about a hat. Where did a hat come in?

"What's unbecoming, Nurse?" he asked later in the day.

Nurse, with her mouth full of pins, for she was cutting out a linen
suit for Vernon, replied:

"Unsuitable."

"What's unsuitable?"

"Little boys going on asking foolish questions," said Nurse with the
deftness of a long professional career behind her.

_2_

That afternoon Vernon's father came into the nursery. There was a queer
furtive look about him--unhappy and defiant. He winced slightly before
Vernon's round interested gaze.

"Hullo, Vernon."

"Hullo, Father."

"I'm going to London. Good-bye, old chap."

"Are you going to London because you kissed Winnie?" inquired Vernon
with interest.

His father uttered the kind of word that Vernon knew he was not suppose
to hear--much less ever repeat. It was, he knew, a word that gentlemen
used but little boys didn't. So great a fascination did that fact
lend it that Vernon was in the habit of sending himself to sleep by
repeating it over to himself in company with another forbidden word.
The other word was Corsets.

"Who the devil told you that?"

"Nobody told me," said Vernon, after reflecting a minute.

"Then how did you know?"

"Didn't you, then?" inquired Vernon.

His father crossed the room without answering.

"Winnie kisses me sometimes," remarked Vernon. "But I don't like it
much. I have to kiss her, too. The gardener kisses her a lot. He seems
to like it. I think kissing's silly. Should I like kissing Winnie
better if I was grown up, Father?"

"Yes," his father said deliberately, "I think you would. Sons, you
know, sometimes grow up very like their fathers."

"I'd like to be like you," said Vernon. "You're a jolly good rider.
Sam said so. He said there wasn't your equal in the county and that a
better judge of horse flesh never lived." Vernon brought out the latter
words rapidly. "I'd rather be like you than Mummy. Mummy gives a horse
a sore back. Sam said so."

There was a further pause.

"Mummy's gotaheadacheanlyingdown," proceeded Vernon.

"I know."

"Have you said good-bye to her?"

"No."

"Are you going to? Because you'll have to be quick. That's the dogcart
coming round now."

"I expect I shan't have time."

Vernon nodded wisely.

"I dare say that would be a good plan. I don't like having to kiss
people when they're crying. I don't like Mummy kissing me much anyway.
She squeezes too hard and she talks in your ear. I think I'd almost
rather kiss Winnie. Which would you, Father?"

He was disconcerted by his father's abrupt withdrawal from the room.
Nurse had come in a moment before. She stood respectfully aside to let
the Master pass, and Vernon had a vague idea that she had managed to
make his father uncomfortable.

Katie, the under-housemaid, came in to lay tea. Vernon built bricks in
the corner. The old peaceful nursery atmosphere closed round him again.

_3_

There was a sudden interruption. His mother stood in the doorway. Her
eyes were swollen with crying. She dabbed them with a handkerchief. She
stood there theatrically miserable.

"He's gone," she cried. "Without a word to me. Without a word. Oh! my
little son. My little son."

She swept across the floor and gathered Vernon in her arms. The tower,
at least one story higher than any he had ever built before, crashed
into ruins. His mother's voice, loud and distraught, burrowed into his
ear.

"My child--my little son--swear that you'll never forsake me. Swear
it--swear it."

Nurse came across to them.

"There, ma'am, there, ma'am, don't take on so. You'd better get back to
bed. Edith shall bring you a nice cup of hot tea."

Her tone was authoritative--severe.

His mother still sobbed and clasped him closer. Vernon's whole body
began to stiffen in resistance. He could bear it a little while
longer--a very little while longer--and he'd do anything Mummy wanted
if only she'd let go of him.