Free Sirius by Olaf Stapledon Page A

children, were kept completely in the dark about their children's love affairs, They scarcely guessed that such things occurred!
    I am inclined to think that there was another reason why Thomas was reluctant to send Plaxy away from home, a reason which, I suspect, Thomas himself did not recognize. Perhaps my guess is wrong, but on the few occasions when I saw father and daughter together, I felt that behind his detached and ostentatiously "scientific" interest in her lay a very strong feeling for his youngest child. And I suspect that he could not bring himself to face week-ends at Garth in her absence. Plaxy, on her side, was always rather aloof from her father, though quite friendly with him. She sometimes teased him about his mannerisms, for instance his habit of pursing his lips when he was puzzled. She was never infected by his passion for science, but when he was criticized she sometimes defended him with surprising ardour. For this reason, and in the light of subsequent events, it may be inferred that Thomas's submerged passion for her was reciprocated. Yet many years later, when Plaxy and I were married, and I was planning out this biography of Sirius with her, she ridiculed my suggestion that there was any strong feeling between her and her father, arguing that, like so many amateur psychologists, I was "always looking for a par ent complex."
    This book is about Sirius, not Plaxy. I should not mention the problem of Plaxy's relation with Thomas did I not feel that it may throw some light on her extraordinarily deep, though conflicting, feelings about Sirius, who was Thomas's crowning work, and the apple of his eye.
    However this may be, Thomas was not easily persuaded to let Plaxy go to boarding school. When at last he agreed in principle, and both parents began to search for a suitable school, he found weighty objections against all of them, However, in the end he accepted a certain co-educational and temperately modern establishment, situated conveniently near Cambridge.
    The whole matter had, of course, been discussed with Plaxy herself, who was not easily reconciled to the prospect of what she called "going to prison." So great an upheaval in her life was bound to intimidate her. Moreover the thought came to her, "What will Sirius do without me?"
    As though answering this unexpressed question, her mother said, "We think it's time for Sirius to get away for a bit too. He is to begin learning to be a sheep-dog."
    Plaxy was in the end reconciled to going; and once she had made up her mind to it, she found herself sometimes strangely eager. This eagerness she could not help tracing to the prospect of being wholly a normal girl among other girls and boys. Evidently she was already suffering from a serious conflict over Sirius.
    It was Thomas who talked to Sirius about the great change that was being planned. He began by saying that the time seemed to have come for Sirius to have an active life away from home. "I know quite well, of course, that I have no right to treat you as a mere dog, and that you yourself must settle your career; but you are young. In physical and mental growth, as in years, you are level with Plaxy, about sixteen. So the advice of an older mind may be helpful. Naturally I have my own ideas about your future. You are quite as intelligent as most human adolescents, and you have special advantages. I see you becoming one of the world's great animal psychologists and working with my crowd at Cambridge. But you mustn't get into the limelight yet. It would be very bad for you; and anyhow you have not had the right training yet, and of course mentally you are still too young. I think what you need now is a whole-time job as a sheep-dog, say for a year. I'll put you across as my 'super-super-sheep-dog." I think I can fix you up with Pugh, and he will certainly treat you decently. You'll have a hard life, of course, but you need that. And the whole experience should be interesting, and very useful to you