Читать книгу Uncle Stephen - Forrest Reid - Страница 3

Table of Contents

Beyond the iron wicket-gate stretched an avenue of yew-trees with, at the end of it, four wide shallow steps, dark and mossy, descending in a terrace to the graves. This avenue was straight as if marked out with a ruler. The yew-trees were straight, trim, and sombre, of a dull bluish-green that was not so dark as the shadows they threw on the unmown grass. They stood up stiffly against a deep ultramarine sky, and composed a picture at once formal and intensely romantic.

That is, if it happened to burst upon your vision unexpectedly, as it did upon Tom Barber’s, flooded with a light from Poe’s Ulalume. Young Tom in his new and ill-fitting suit of rough black cloth, beneath which he had sweated freely during the long drive, was for a minute or two rapt by that instant recognition into forgetfulness of the business that had brought him here. It was but a brief respite, however, and he awakened from it guiltily. Certain muffled and sliding sounds caused him to shrink back. This was not like Ulalume—this ugly varnished brass-handled box covered with flowers. For the flowers somehow increased its ghastliness. Shoulder-high his father’s coffin was carried through the narrow gate and down the avenue, while he followed with Eric and Leonard—the chief mourners.

A feeling of resentment arose unhappily in his mind against everything and everybody connected with the funeral. The solemn wooden faces, the formal clothes, the secret indifference which had allowed hired men to bear the burden, depressed and exasperated him. If anyone had really cared! But all this, and particularly those hideous wreaths with the cards of their donors carefully attached to them, suggested neither grief nor affection, but only the triumph of clay and worms, and the horrors that were already at work out of sight.

The burial service began. Mr. Carteret in his starched yet ghostly surplice stood by the grave slightly apart from the bare-headed group who watched and listened to him. It was as if everything for the moment had passed into his hands, and he were, by some mysterious incantation, sending forth the soul which till now had lingered near its old dwelling on a perilous and distant journey. Tom felt a sudden desire to weep.

He turned away. Deliberately he fixed his attention on a creamy, black-spotted butterfly who had entered the avenue. The butterfly’s wavering flight as he flickered in and out of the bands of shadow and sunlight barring the green path seemed purposeless as that of a leaf in the wind. He, too, was like a little soul newly exiled from the body and not knowing whither to fly. The soul of an infant, perhaps. Then suddenly he alit on a stalk of foxgloves and became at once a comfortable earthly creature, warm with appetites, eager, impatient, purposeful, as he explored cave after purple cave, forcing an entrance, greedy, determined. Tom smiled: he very nearly laughed.

His smile faded and he blushed hotly as he encountered the rather dry and speculative gaze of Dr. Macrory. Dr. Macrory looked away, but Tom knew he had been caught. He felt ashamed and miserable. Furtively he glanced round the little group of mourners of whom he was the smallest and youngest, but every face was still drawn to an appropriate expression of apathetic decorum. Only his mind had wandered, and yet it was his father they were burying. He was only Eric’s and Leonard’s step-father; only Uncle Horace’s brother-in-law: as for the rest, there were even several persons there whose names Tom did not know.

He heard a faint cawing of rooks, like sleepy distant music. If he could slip away now, away from that raw red gaping hole.... He heard Mr. Carteret’s voice: ‘to raise us from the death of sin into the life of righteousness; that when we shall depart this life, we may rest in him, as our hope is this our brother doth; and that, at the general Resurrection in the last day....’ The words fell with a solemn cadence, but for Tom they had neither more nor less meaning than the cawing of the rooks. Any gentler feelings he might have had about death were at present obliterated by its unsightliness. The ugliness of death had been revealed suddenly, much as if he had come on an obscene inscription or picture chalked up on a wall. You didn’t hang wreaths of flowers round that, or put on your best clothes to mope or to gloat over it. And supposing it was somebody you loved who had died—then all this kind of thing would be doubly revolting....

Uncle Horace and Eric and Leonard:—he found himself staring at them with hostility. And at home there was his step-mother, and Jane his step-sister—Jane, who among all these ‘steps’ was the only one he really liked. He had liked Eric—liked him more than he would ever like Jane—but it is impossible to go on caring for a person who shows you he doesn’t want to be cared for. Eric did not like him, and Leonard did not like him, and his step-mother did not like him. The only difference was that he could see Mrs. Gavney—now Mrs. Barber—trying to like him, an effort that faintly tickled his sense of humour, which was as odd as everything else about him. Of course, both Eric and Leonard were older than he was—though Leonard was only a year older, and for that matter Tom knew the question of age had nothing to do with it. They did not despise him because he was young but because he was different. And the worst of it was that in all on which they set the slightest value they were his superiors....

Tom’s eyes closed for a moment at the sound of the shovelling of earth—the first dull thuds on hollow wood. It was horrible, but it passed quickly: once the coffin was covered there was only a scraping, scuffling noise. And all this squeamishness was not really sorrow for his father. Was he sorry—even a little? While his father had been alive he had never felt much affection for him: an atmosphere of coldness and remoteness had, as far back as he could remember, surrounded him. His father had never been unkind, but he had been extraordinarily unapproachable. And after his second marriage—his marriage with Mrs. Gavney, the mother of Eric and Leonard and Jane—he had seemed to think Tom must now have everything he needed—a second mother, companions of his own age. This last advantage had actually been mentioned—during a painfully embarrassing conversation from which Tom had escaped as soon as he could. Well, they needn’t think he intended to go on living in that house in Gloucester Terrace, because he didn’t. Not without a struggle at any rate! If only he were his own master how easy it would be! In that case he would simply pack up and go; for though he knew nothing of his father’s affairs, he knew his mother had left him plenty to live on. His mouth pouted in the incipient and repressed grimace inspired by Uncle Horace’s solemn and proprietary gaze at that moment directed full upon him. Uncle Horace! All this ‘uncleing’ and ‘mothering’ had been from the beginning their idea! Uncle Horace was merely his step-mother’s brother, Mr. Horace Pringle—no relation whatever. If it came to that, he had only one true relation in the world, or at least there was only one he had ever heard of, his mother’s uncle—Uncle Stephen....

Tom’s expression altered. The freckled face—redeemed from marked plainness by a pair of singularly honest and intelligent grey eyes—became stilled as the water of a pool is stilled. He might have been listening intently, or merely dreaming on his feet. Probably the latter, for when he awakened it was as if the hands of the clock had suddenly jumped on, leaving a little island of submerged time unaccounted for. It was strange: a few minutes had been lost for ever: he had been here and yet he had not been here! ... Could you be in two times at once? Certainly your mind could be in one time and your body in another, for that was what had happened—he had been back in last night. But suppose his body had gone back too! Then he would have vanished! Uncle Horace would have said, ‘Where is Tom?’ and somebody would have answered, ‘He was here a minute ago: he was standing over there: he can’t be far away.’ Only, he had been far away. As far away as last night—and in his bedroom. This odd experience seemed to make all kinds of things possible. Somebody might come to you out of his time into yours. You might, for instance, come face to face with your own father as he was when he was a boy. Of course you wouldn’t know each other: still, you might meet and become friends, the way you do with people in dreams. The idea seemed difficult and involved, but doubtless it could be straightened out. Dreams themselves were so queer. When he had dreamed last night, for example, he was almost sure he had been awake. What he wasn’t so sure of was that it had been a dream at all, or at any rate his dream....

Abruptly he became aware of a movement around him—an involuntary communication, as of so many simultaneously-drawn breaths of relief—and next moment he found himself shaking the damp hand of a stout elderly gentleman who seemed to know him. Tom’s own hand was damp, with little beads of sweat on it, and his shirt felt moist and sticky against his body. Several other people shook hands with him: Mr. Carteret placed his arm round his shoulder.... And the midsummer sun beat down on the hard earth.

Eric and Leonard had put on their black bowler hats, and Tom put on his. They began to retrace their path, walking in twos and threes along the yew-tree avenue, at the end of which the cars were drawn up in a line. Tom came last; he did not want to walk with anybody; but Dr. Macrory waited for him.

Coming out of the gate, Tom halted, moved by a sudden desire of escape. The ruins of the Abbey stood grey and ivy-creepered on a low hill, and down below was the lake, its water a steel-blue, broken by immense beds of green rushes. He heard the thin cry of a snipe. Rooks were still cawing in the distant trees, which stretched away in sunshine on the right; and beyond the lake the ground rose gradually in cornfields and pasture. The thridding of grasshoppers sounded like the whir of small grind-stones. Tom instantly saw them as tiny men dressed in green who went about sharpening still tinier knives and scissors for the other insects. A blue dragon-fly, like a shining airman, flashed by in the sun. There were lots of these small airmen, he knew, among the reeds on the lake, where they bred. He had an impression of emerging from some choking stagnant valley of death into the world of life.

Suddenly he whispered to Dr. Macrory, ‘Let’s go down to the lake. Couldn’t we? You say we’re going. Tell Uncle Hor—; tell Mr. Pringle.’

Dr. Macrory glanced at the smooth back of Uncle Horace’s morning coat, at his beautifully creased trousers and glossy silk hat. His own coat, like Tom’s, appeared to be the handiwork of a distinctly inferior tailor, and the collar showed specks of dandruff. ‘I don’t think it would do,’ he said. ‘You know what they are.’

But he rested a friendly hand on Tom’s shoulder which the boy impatiently tried to shake off. His face suddenly flushed and lowered. ‘Oh, damn,’ he muttered. ‘I’m going anyway.’

The doctor’s hand closed on the collar of his jacket and grasped it firmly, while at the same moment the clear voice of Uncle Horace inquired, ‘Where’s Tom?’ He turned round to look for his nephew, standing by the big Daimler, holding the door open. Eric and Leonard had already taken their seats at the back.

‘He’s coming with me,’ called out Dr. Macrory, pushing the small chief mourner, whose face was like a thundercloud, towards his own two-seater; and when he had him safely inside, ‘That’s all right,’ he murmured. ‘They’ll probably take your behaviour for a sign of grief.’

Tom stared straight before him through the windscreen. For all his attitude of friendliness, the doctor, he felt, had let him down. He had wanted to talk to somebody: if they had gone to the lake he could have talked—sitting by the edge of the water. But he did not want to talk now. The kind of things he had to say were not to be said in a motor car and to a person half of whose attention was given to the road before him. He might just as well be in the other car with Eric and Leonard and Uncle Horace. For a moment, among all those people who so definitely were not his people, who were and always would be strangers, he had felt drawn to Dr. Macrory. Now he felt completely indifferent to him: Dr. Macrory, though he looked unconventional and adopted a free-and-easy manner, was really just the same as the rest. Tom with a little shrug settled down in his seat.