Читать книгу Despair's Last Journey - David Christie Murray - Страница 12

‘Why, all is happy! Not a worm that crawls,

Or grasshopper that chirps about the grass,

Or beetle basking on the sunny walls,

Or mail-clad fly that skims the face of glass

The river wears in summer;—not a bird

That sings the tranquil glory of the fields,

Or single sight is seen or sound is heard,

But some new pleasure to my full soul yields!’

Paul, standing there in the darkness, whispered this many times as if struck with awe by it, and indeed the boy wondered, and thought it an inspiration.

‘That is poetry,’ said Paul ‘I am a poet—a poet—a poet!’

He fell on his knees, with his face on his hands in the open quoin drawer, feeling as if he had uttered a blasphemy. How long he was there he never knew, but he was disturbed by the grating of a door below, and his father’s voice called up the stairs:

‘Paul! Where are ye?’

‘Here, father,’ Paul answered

A sob met his voice half-way, and Armstrong came stumbling up the stairs.

‘What’s the matter, lad?’ he asked, in a tone between concern and impatience.

‘Nothing,’ said Paul.

‘Why is’t ye’re here alaun?’ his father demanded ‘And whaur have ye been the livelong day? And what are ye cryin’ for?

‘Nothing,’ said Paul again.

‘Ye’re not such a fule,’ said Armstrong, ‘as to be cryin’ an’ hidin’ for naething, an’ I’m not such a fule as to believe it.’

He paused, but Paul made no reply. The old man struck a lucifer match and lit the gas. The boy stood blinking in the light, his face stained with tears, his eyelids red and a little swollen. To the father’s eye he looked sullen and defiant Of course he was neither, but he was entirely hopeless of being understood, and therefore helpless to explain.

‘Noo, Paul,’ said Armstrong, with a severity which he felt to be justified, ‘I’m goin’ to the bottom o’ this business. Ye’ve absented yourself the haul day from the House o’ God. Ye’ve not been seen since morning’s light, and it’s nigh-hand on midnight Whaur have ye been? Answer me that at once, sir.’

‘In the Hoarstone Fields,’ said Paul.

‘And wha’s been with ye, helping ye to desecrate God’s day?’

‘Nobody, father. I’ve been by myself all the while.’

‘And what’s been your work, my lad?’ There was silence, and the silence began to have a threat in it ‘I’m goin’ to the bottom o’ this affeer, Paul,’ said the father. He meant that honestly, but he was not taking the right way. ‘I’m not to be put off by ony lies or inventions. Ye’ve been alaun in the Hoarstone Fields all day? What took ye there? And hoo have ye passed the time? I’ll know!’ he added, after another long pause.

Perhaps there was nobody in the world who stood less chance of knowing, but how should Armstrong have guessed that? He was a just man, and as kind-hearted a father as might have been found within a hundred miles. If he could have known the truth, he would not only have been disarmed, but proud and glad. But Paul at this time had a holy terror of him. It grew to a close and reverent affection later on, and there was such a confidence between this pair as is not often found. But now? Paul would have suffered anything rather than tell the truth. It was not that he would not. He could not His tongue was fettered.

‘Noo, Paul,’ said Armstrong. ‘Let’s have a luik at this. Ye’re not supposin’ in your inmost mind that I’m in the least small degree likely to believe the yarn ye’ve tauld me. Ye’ve been in the lonely fields all day, doing naething and speaking to naebody. And for that ye’ve stayed away from your meals, an’ noo ye’re in hiding like a creminal? It hasn’t an air o’ pro-babeelity, Paul; it has no air o’ pro-babeelity. You see that?

Paul saw it—quite as clearly as his father. But how was it to be explained? Could Paul say, ‘My good sir, I am a boy of genius. I have been filled with the Divine afflatus, and have been driven into solitude by my own thoughts. I have been so held by dreams of beauty that I have forgotten everything’? Could Paul offer that intolerable cheeky boast? And yet to offer to explain was to do that, and nothing less than that.

‘Vary well,’ said Armstrong. ‘Ye’ll go to your bed, and I’d advise ye to thenk the matter over. I’ll gev ye till morning. But I’ll have the truth, or I’ll know the reason why.’

The gas went out under Armstrong’s thumb and finger on the tap, and in the sudden darkness the gray, patient, reproachful face still burned in the boy’s eyes.

‘Father!’ said Paul, and stretching out both hands, he caught hold of him by the sleeve.

‘Well!’ answered Armstrong sternly.

He thought it his duty to be stern, but the tone killed the rising impulse of courage in Paul’s heart He could have stammered a hint of the truth then, and the darkness would have been friendly to him. A caress, a hand on head or shoulder, would have done the business, but caresses were not in fashion in the Armstrong household. There was another silence, and Armstrong said:

‘I gev ye till morning, and then Paul, my lad, ye’ll have yourself to thank for what may happen. I’ll be at the bottom o’ this matter, or I’ll know the reason why. I’m no friend to the rod, but I’ll not stand by open-eyed an’ see you walkin’ straight to the deevil without an effort to turn ye. An’ I’ll have naething less than a full confession. Ye may luik for a flogging if I don’t get it, and a daily flogging till I do. For, my lad, if I flay your back, and break my heart to do it, I’ll win at the truth.’

They went down the long dark garden together, and at the kitchen-door Armstrong paused.

‘It’s a sore thing,’ he said, ‘for a man to have to misuse his ain flesh an’ blood. But ye’re not of an age to understand that. Remember, Paul, this is not my seeking; but I’ll have the truth by foul means or fair. And it’s just you to choose.’

Paul entered the kitchen, and his mother was for instant justice, as she saw it, but Armstrong intervened.

‘This matter is in my hands,’ he said.

He was a very quiet and yielding man in many things, but when he chose to speak in that way he made his word law.

Then came the lonely night. The wretched poet, a weedy lad who had overgrown his strength, lay in bed and cried in anguish. He topped his father by a head already, though he was but three months beyond his fifteenth birthday, and if he had chosen to fight he might perhaps have held his own. But a thought so impious never entered his mind. He was helpless, and he lay blubbering, undignified, with a breaking heart. He did not think much or often of the coming pain, but he brooded on the indignity and injustice until he writhed with yelps of wrath and hatred and agony of heart, and awoke Dick, who wanted to know what was the matter, and was roughly sympathetic for a time, until, finding he could make out nothing, he turned and went to sleep again.

There were black looks in the morning everywhere, for Paul was known to be in deep disgrace again. He swallowed a cup of the thin, washy coffee—its flavour of chicory and coarse brown sugar was nauseous on the palate of the man at the tent door—and then his father, pale as himself, rose amidst the affrighted boys and girls, and motioned him silently to the sitting-room. This was a sort of family vault, with its scanty furniture in grave-clothes, and a smell of damp disuse about it always, even in summer-time.

‘Are ye ready with the truth?’ asked Armstrong. Paul looked at him like a dumb thing in a trap, but said never a word. ‘Very well,’ The gray man’s hands shook and his voice, and his face was of the colour of gray paper. ‘Go to the back-kitchen and strip.’

Paul, dry-eyed, gloomy, and desperate, walked before, and his father followed. The girls clung to each other. There had been no such scene as this in the house for years. The tawse had hung idle even for Paul for many and many a day. Armstrong took the instrument of justice from its hook, and laid it on the table He took off his coat, and rolled up his left shirt-sleeve. He was left-handed. The arm he bared was corded and puny. It shook as if he had the palsy. His wife had a sudden pity for him, and ran at him with a gush of tears.

‘William,’ she said, ‘don’t break your heart for the young vil’in; he isn’t worth it Oh, God! I wish he was no child o’ mine.’

She dropped into a chair and cried. Armstrong passed out of the kitchen. The girls listened, and Dick, chalky white, with his mouth open, as Paul had seen him on his way through. They heard the swish, swish, swish of the tawse, and not another sound but hard breathing for a full minute; then Paul began to groan, and then to shriek.

‘Now,’ panted Armstrong, ‘shall I have the truth?’

There was no answer, and he fell to again; but Paul turned and caught his arm, and after an ineffectual struggle, the old man dropped the tawse and walked into the kitchen. Paul dressed and sat on the table, quivering all over. He sat there for hours, and nobody approached him until at last the servant, with frightened eyes, came to make ready for dinner; then he got up and went to his old refuge in the lumber-room. One of his sisters brought him food after the family dinner-hour, but he refused it passionately.

‘Oh, Paul,’ she said, clinging to him till he shook her from his writhing shoulders, ‘why don’t you confess?’

‘Confess what? snarled Paul. ‘Confess I was born into a family of fools and nincompoops? That’s all I’ve got to confess.’

He was left to himself all day, and at night he went un-chidden to the larder, and helped himself to bread and cheese. He took a jug to the pump, and coming back, ate his meal, standing amongst his people like an outlaw.

‘Well, Paul,’ said his father, ‘are ye in the mind to make a clean breast of it?’

‘No,’ said Paul, ‘I’m not.’

The defiance fell like a thunderbolt, and eyes changed with eyes all round the room in horror and amazement.

‘We’ll see in the morning,’ Armstrong said.

‘All right,’ answered Paul; and so finished his meal, and took his cap from its hook behind the door.

‘Where are you going?’ cried his mother.

‘That’s my business,’ said Paul, breaking into sudden passionate defiance. ‘What am I flogged like a dog for? You don’t know. There isn’t one of you, from father down to George, who knows what I’ve been doing. I can’t remember an hour’s fair play from the day that I was born. Look here, father: you may take another turn at me to-morrow and next day, you can come on every morning till I’m as old as you are, but you’ll never get a word out of me. I’ve done no harm, and anybody with an ounce of justice in him would prove something before he served his own flesh and blood as you’ve served me.’

He was in a rage of tears again, and every word he spoke was tuned to the vulgar accent of his childhood. ‘Father’ was ‘feyther’ and ‘born’ was ‘boorn.’ He did not speak like a poet, or look like one to whose full soul all things yielded pleasure. These thoughts hit Paul, and he laughed loud and bitterly, and went his way into the street.

The upshot of it was that Paul was flogged no more. Armstrong sickened of the enterprise, and gave it up.

The lonely man was thinking of it all, seeing it all. Suddenly a voice seemed to speak to him, and the impression was so astonishingly vivid that before he knew he had answered it aloud. He started awake at the sound of his own voice, and his skin crisped from head to heel.

‘There’s no rancour, Paul, lad?’ the voice had said, or seemed to say.

‘Rancour?’ he had answered, with a queer tender laugh. ‘You dear old dad!’

For the first time the sense of an actual visitation rested with him, and continued real. He felt, he knew, or seemed to know, that his father’s soul was near.