Читать книгу The Short Stories of John Buchan (Complete Collection) - Buchan John - Страница 11

Three years later I found myself in England, a bronzed barbarian fresh from wild life in north Finland, and glad of a change to the pleasant domesticity of home. It was early spring, and I drifted to my cousin’s house of Heston, after the aimless fashion of the wanderer returned. Heston is a pleasant place to stay in at all times, but pleasantest in spring, for it stands on the last ridge of a Devon moor, whence rolls a wide land of wood and meadow to a faint blue line of sea. The hedgerows were already bursting into leaf, and brimming waters slipped through fresh green grasses. All things were fragrant of homeland and the peace of centuries.

At Heston I met my excellent friend Wratislaw, a crabbed, cynical, hard- working, and sore-battered man, whose excursions in high politics had not soothed his temper. His whole life was a perpetual effort to make himself understood, and as he had started with somewhat difficult theories his recognition had been slow. But it was sure; men respected him sincerely if from afar; in his own line he was pre-eminent, and gradually he was drawing to himself the work in a great office of State where difficulty was equally mated with honour.

“Well, you old madman,” he cried, “where have you been lost all these months? We heard marvellous stories about you, and there was talk of a search-party. So you chose to kill the fatted calf here of all places. I should have gone elsewhere; it will be too much of a show this week.”

“Who are coming?” I groaned resignedly.

“Lawerdale for one,” he answered. I nodded; Lawerdale was a very great man in whom I had no manner of interest. “Then there are Rogerson, and Lady Afflint and Charlie Erskine.”

“Is that the lot?”

“Wait a moment. Oh, by Jove, I forgot; there’s Layden coming, the great Layden.”

“I once met a Layden; I wonder if it’s the same man.”

“Probably,—cousin of Urquhart’s.”

“But he wasn’t commonly called ‘great’ then.”

“You forget, you barbarian, that you’ve been in the wilderness for years. Reputations have come and gone in that time. Why, Layden is a name to conjure with among most people,—Layden, the brilliant young thinker, orator, and writer, the teacher of the future!” And Wratislaw laughed in his most sardonic fashion.

“Do you know him?” I asked.

“Oh, well enough in a way. He was a year below me at Oxford,—used to talk in the Union a lot, and beat me hollow for President. He was a harebrained creature then, full of ideals and aboriginal conceit; a sort of shaggy Rousseau, who preached a new heaven and a new earth, and was worshipped by a pack of schoolboys. He did well in his way, got his First and some ‘Varsity prizes, but the St. Chad’s people wouldn’t have him at any price for their fellowship. He told me it was but another sign of the gulf between the real and the ideal. I thought then that he was a frothy ass, but he has learned manners since, and tact. I suppose there is no doubt about his uncommon cleverness.”

“Do you like him?”

Wratislaw laughed. “I don’t know. You see, he and I belong to different shops, and we haven’t a sentiment in common. He would call me dull; I might be tempted to call him windy. It is all a matter of taste.” And he shrugged his broad shoulders and went in to dress.

At dinner I watched the distinguished visitor with interest. That he was very much of a celebrity was obvious at once. He it was to whom the unaccountable pauses in talk were left, and something in his carefully modulated voice, his neatness, his air of entire impregnability, gave him a fascination felt even by so unemotional a man as I. He differed with Lawerdale on a political question, and his attitude of mingled deference and certainty was as engaging to witness as it must have been irritating to encounter. But the event of the meal was his treatment of Lady Afflint, a lady (it is only too well known) who is the hidden reef on which so many a brilliant talker shipwrecks. Her questions give a fatal chance for an easy and unpleasing smartness; she leads her unhappy companion into a morass of “shop” from which there is no escape, and, worst of all, she has the shrewdness to ask those questions which can only be met by a long explanation and which leave their nervous and short-winded victim the centre of a confusing silence. I have no hesitation in calling Layden’s treatment of this estimable woman a miracle of art. Her own devices were returned upon her, until we had the extraordinary experience of seeing Lady Afflint reduced to an aggrieved peace.

But the man’s appearance surprised me. There was nothing of the flush of enthusiasm, the ready delight in his own powers, which are supposed to mark the popular idol. His glance seemed wandering and vacant, his face drawn and lined with worry, and his whole figure had the look of a man prematurely aging. Rogerson, that eminent lawyer, remarked on the fact in his vigorous style. “Layden has chosen a damned hard profession. I never cared much for the fellow, but I admit he can work. Why, add my work to that of a first-class journalist, and you have an idea of what the man gets through every day of his life. And then think of the amount he does merely for show: the magazine articles, the lecturing, the occasional political speaking. All that has got to be kept up as well as his reputation in society. It would kill me in a week, and, mark my words, he can’t live long at that pitch.”

I saw him no more that night, but every paper I picked up was full of him. It was “Mr. Layden interviewed” here, and “Arnold Layden, an Appreciation” there, together with paragraphs innumerable, and the inscrutable allusions in his own particular journal. The thing disgusted me, and yet the remembrance of that worn-out face held me from condemning him. I am one whose interest lies very little in the minute problems of human conduct, finding enough to attract me in the breathing, living world. But here was something which demanded recognition, and in my own incapable way I drew his character.

I saw little of him during that week at Heston, for he was eternally in the train of some woman or other, when he was not shut up in the library turning out his tale of bricks. With amazing industry he contrived to pass a considerable portion of each day in serious labour, and then turned with weary eyes to the frivolity in which he was currently supposed to delight. We were the barest acquaintances, a brief nod, a chance good-morning, being the limits of our intimacy; indeed, it was a common saying that Layden had a vast acquaintance, but scarcely a friend.

But on the Sunday I happened to be sitting with Wratislaw on an abrupt furze- clad knoll which looks over the park to meadow and sea. We had fallen to serious talking, or the random moralising which does duty for such among most of us. Wratislaw in his usual jerky fashion was commenting on the bundle of perplexities which made up his life, when to us there entered a third in the person of Layden himself. He had a languid gait, partly assumed no doubt for purposes of distinction, but partly the result of an almost incessant physical weariness. But to-day there seemed to be something more in his manner. His whole face was listless and dreary; his eyes seemed blank as a stone wall.

As I said before, I scarcely knew him, but he and Wratislaw were old acquaintances. At any rate he now ignored me wholly, and flinging himself on the ground by my companion’s side, leaned forward, burying his face in his hands.

“Oh, Tommy, Tommy, old man, I am a hopeless wreck,” he groaned.

“You are overworking, my dear fellow,” said Wratislaw; “you should hold back a little.”

Layden turned a vacant face toward the speaker. “Do you think that is all?” he said. “Why, work never killed a soul. I could work night and day if I were sure of my standing-ground.”

Wratislaw looked at him long and solemnly. Then he took out a pipe and lit it. “You’d better smoke,” he said. “I get these fits of the blues sometimes myself, and they go off as suddenly as they come. But I thought you were beyond that sort of thing.”

“Beyond it!” Layden cried. “If I had had them years ago it might have saved me. When the Devil has designs on a man, be sure that the first thing he does is to make him contented with himself.”

I saw Wratislaw’s eyebrows go up. This was strange talk to hear from one of Layden’s life.

“I would give the world to be in your place. You have chosen solid work, and you have left yourself leisure to live. And I—oh, I am a sort of ineffectual busy person running about on my little errands and missing everything.”

Wratislaw winced; he disliked all mention of himself, but he detested praise.

“It’s many years since I left Oxford; I don’t remember how long, and all this time I have been doing nothing. Who is it talks about being ‘idly busy ‘? And people have praised me and fooled me till I believed I was living my life decently. It isn’t as if I had been slack. My God, I have worked like a nigger, and my reward is wind and smoke! Did you ever have the feeling, Tommy, as if you were without bearings and had to drift with your eyes aching for solid land?”

The other shook his head slowly, and looked like a man in profound discomfort.

“No, of course you never did, and why should you? You made up your mind at once what was worth having in the world and went straight for it. That was a man’s part. But I thought a little dazzle of fame was the heavenly light. I liked to be talked about; I wanted the reputation of brilliance, so I utilized every scrap of talent I had and turned it all into show. Every little trivial thought was stored up and used on paper or in talk. I toiled terribly, if you like, but it was a foolish toil, for it left nothing for myself. And now I am bankrupt of ideas. My mind grows emptier year by year, and what little is left is spoiled by the same cursed need for ostentation. ‘Every man should be lonely at heart;’ whoever said that said something terribly true, and the words have been driving me mad for days. All the little that I have must be dragged out to the shop-window, and God knows the barrenness of that back-parlour I call my soul.”

I saw that Wratislaw was looking very solemn, and that his pipe had gone out and had dropped on the ground.

“And what is the result of it all?” Layden went on. “Oh, I cannot complain. It is nobody’s fault but my own; but Lord, what a pretty mess it is!” and he laughed miserably. “I cannot bear to be alone and face the naked ribs of my mind. A beautiful sight has no charms for me save to revive jaded conventional memories. I have lost all capacity for the plain, strong, simple things of life, just as I am beginning to realise their transcendent worth. I am growing wretchedly mediocre, and I shall go down month by month till I find my own degraded level. But thank God, I do not go with my eyes shut; I know myself for a fool, and for the fool there is no salvation.”

Then Wratislaw rose and stood above him. I had never seen him look so kindly at any one, and for a moment his rough, cynical face was transfigured into something like tenderness. He put his hand on the other’s shoulder. “You are wrong, old man,” he said; “you are not a fool. But if you had not come to believe yourself one, I should have had doubts of your wisdom. As it is, you will now go on to try the real thing, and then—we shall see.”