Henry and Cato by Iris Murdoch Page A

donned his hat and brushed down his suit and his unbuttoned macintosh. He picked up his suitcase and pushed the gate. It clanked back a little way, then checked. He looked more closely and saw that it was chained and padlocked. He pulled vainly at the padlock, then stepped back.
    He could see now that the drive beyond the gate was slightly overgrown with weeds, and a line of young nettles and docks were growing just beyond the bars. They must have changed the entrance. Now they probably used the short drive from the other road, not troubling to keep up the long drive, letting it fall into disuse. Henry hesitated, began to walk off, then came back. This was his way. Like a ghost, he felt he must walk his own path. He swung his light suitcase and sent it flying over the top to land among the nettles. He debated whether it would be easier to climb the gate or the wall and decided on the gate. The first bit was easy, just a matter of hauling himself up onto the transverse bar which ran across level with his chest. The next bit seemed impossible until he found some crumbling footholds in the wall at the side, and, holding onto some ivy, managed to swing one leg over the spikes at the top, then lower his dabbing foot gingerly until he could reach the bar. His hat had fallen off again, fortunately inside onto the drive. His body recorded for him that he was no longer twenty.
    Henry resumed his damp and slightly muddy hat, picked up his suitcase and began to walk as quietly as he could along the drive, his trouser legs gently swished by the weeds which were growing in the gravel. The motionless evening air was softly exuding a faint almost tangible darkness which seemed to reveal, to body forth, rather than to conceal the masses of shrubs and trees on either side. The grass had been roughly mown, not shorn, and gleamed wet and faintly grey. Some distance away a blackbird was singing a long complicated passionate song. There was a very quiet persuasive sound of dripping. Henry breathed in the cool rainy earthy smell. He had not smelt this particular smell for nine years. It was the smell of England. He had forgotten it all. He had forgotten the unnerving uncanny atmosphere of the English spring. How it smelt, how it dripped. The drive curved and the trees receded. A blackness upon the left, like a huge wall, was a yew hedge where there had once been statues, only they seemed to have gone. A patch of radiant sky opened ahead, dark through a saturation of powdery blueness as if the night were suspended, not yet precipitated, in tiny invisible particles. One large light yellow star was blazing, and round about it, as Henry looked, searching, were other stars, tiny pinpoints hardly able to pierce through the radiance of the twilight blue. Blinking, he looked away across the widening expanse of grass. There were scattered patches of glowing paleness here and there at which he looked for a moment puzzled, then knew of course the daffodils, all of them white, since his father would only tolerate white daffodils. The blackbird had fallen silent. The stars were brighter. The drive curved again and he was within sight of the house. Henry stopped.
    The Hall was L-shaped, the foot of the L being a remnant of a brick-built Queen Anne house onto which about 1740 a longer slightly lower stone house had been added at right angles. This long façade now faced towards Henry, several lighted windows, making pale milky rectangles in its uncertain form. Against the dark blue sky the darker outline of the shallow roof seemed to creep a little. Beyond the house, invisible, the land sloped to the lake. There was more light. A bright half moon was now making its presence felt from behind the grove of conifers, shining over Henry’s shoulder, silverpointing the slates and making pendant shadows beneath the far-projecting eves. The mown grass ahead, shaven here to a level carpet, was grey, heavy with moisture.
    Something moved, just ahead of him, and