Читать книгу The Island Providence - Frederick Niven - Страница 5

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Upcott's father, to come straight to the point, was a loathly drunkard; and his mother was a saint of that order whose martyrdom is the smiling martyrdom of life.

The churches were then full of petty bickerings; and around the Book then, as always, was seething all manner of talk quite bye the point. One fancies, reading the records of the time, that to the disputants there must have come moments when, withdrawn from the tumult and pondering alone, they looked inwards on themselves with doubting, even with sardonic eye. But Mrs. Upcott, thanks to her clarity of mind and capacity for retaining hold of the main issue, was little troubled with what one might call party-religion. With her melting grey eyes she read the old heart-finding sentences at dusk, by the low lamplight, when Upcott lay snoring in bed, the pigs grunting in the sty; and there would be a peaceful gleam on her face as she read. That gleam of calm would fade suddenly at times, the eyes harden, the form, once lissome, be drawn up stately, in a blending of pain and dignity at a grunt of part-awakening in the room above and a thick voice as of a somnabulist crying out, "Moll! Dolly! Bridget!" For Mrs. Upcott's Christian name was Grace.

"I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world seeth me no more; but you see me.... If a man love me he will keep my words and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him.... Ye have heard how I said unto you I go away and come again unto you...."

So she gained courage to live, the words falling gently on her soul, a spiritual febrifuge; and one requisite; for her soul was often fevered by self-criticism.

She had other ghostly consolations: thoughts of loved ones of her people—-her maiden surname was Smith, her father being the noted Thomas Smith, silk-weaver, of Bideford, an honoured name in North Devon. Her mother had been a holy woman, lived honourably and gone hence calmly.

Mrs. Upcott was possessor of "the lively hope;" but life is long, and to aid her in the smiling business of the days, when her broken spirit spent half the night in tears, she would ponder these words and others, with their mysterious, delectable peace. She craved forgiveness for herself and enlightenment on the duties of a wife; she craved forgiveness for her husband and a new life. Never a soul durst sympathise with her. She met the folk that looked on her, pondering words of sympathy, with a barrier of smiles. Her mask was one of innocence-—she who knew all that is to be known. So her neighbours stood almost in awe of her. All they could say of her was that she had a touch of "gentrice," and they bowed to it with no jealousy.

These prayers by the way, of which I speak, she ever sternly informed herself were heard, such was her indomitable sophistry. But for some reason, beyond a mortal mind to dare, the prayers were not answered, she would say simply, (amazed at her own faith at times) as the maker of the prayer desired. Such was the high, blind faith of these lost days.

If she had not thought her children old enough to know all the mightiness and mystery of God she had not kept them ignorant of certain holy and joyous things. And as there is sophistry in the minds of the aged, trying to make things fit, so are distortions in the minds of children trying to make things comprehensible. So you see her more clearly now, also her son. Without knowing the mother how can one ever wholly understand her son?

Over at Hartland her brother had spoken his last word. He would come not again to the Abbotsham farm until he came in black, to see lowered down from sight and mind the ruination of his sister's life. For only thus could he look on the matter, loving onlooker; and only mysterious God knew, and visionary Grace at times perceived, what a rare thing, like an eternal flower, blossomed in her bosom amidst that "ruination."

My words are faulty. They are material and not fit to tell of the vague anodynes, the more than anodynes, of the Mrs. Upcotts of past or present. Most of us look on these lives with the eyes of—-Grace's brother.

"If ever he comes to Hartland I'll set him on the broad of his back," said he, and her face was peaked. "That is all," he cried; "it taxes me too much to come to see you, Grace." And she kissed him fondly as he went; and he remembered how her hand plucked his shoulder.

Now and then, it is true, when neighbours met and, talking the talk of the countryside, "turned over," as the phrase goes, the Upcott household, some shaggy one might suggest (perhaps more from contrariety than belief) that a wife could do a deal to keep a husband straight. But such suggestions either fell flat as though unheard or were violently repudiated. And a fate seemed to follow those who made such suggestions: the ordinaries would presently claim their more frequent presence, and the midnight ditch.

You will gather that Upcott's was no common backsliding. Even those who loved to be "merry," or, as they said in quay parlance, "half-caulked," had a loathing for the man who would throw his money into the tavern tills, hunt all the loose petticoats of the back streets, be none so drunk but he recollected to save horseflesh going up hill home, and then, at the turn off from Abbotsham Hill, start bellowing to the night so that he raised the roosted crows: "Put the pan on the fire; I'm a-coming hoom." You begin to feel the atmosphere at the Upcott farm; and if the place was always clean as a new pin and wore a smiling air that meant very much just what the smile of the mistress meant, you have guessed whose mind directed it and in what a quiet way. There the two boys and the sister grew up. Another child there had been; but—-well, the mother's prayer in her prison of circumstance was: "Lord, if this child I am about to bear be not such as will lead a noble and clean life, may the child, I pray thee, O God, in Thy mercy, be born still, and its soul never leave thy sanctuary."

So there were but the three.

Tom, sullen, morose, answering his father in monosyllables, contrived to work away from home as much as possible. Of what service could he be at home when his mother counselled, ever and ever, the bearing of the yoke?

The girl was the mother's right hand. You could not say that she was a pretty child. A late greater beauty came to her with years, just when people had come to think she was to be a plain, sadly sweet reminder to them of how Upcott had ruined more lives than his own. But that is by the way; as a child—-no, I think you could not call her pretty, though you would be drawn to her more than to prettiness. She had a wide wonder in her eyes, great brown eyes of the father's hue but of the melting fashion of the mother's grey. The sordid things she saw, the gross things she heard, were never taken for granted, never accepted as being things that are even in merely normal conditions. Not from words of her mother's, but from her mother's manner she understood that this condition of things was accidental. So, when she came to the age of long frocks she saw what she had thus the eye to see in mortals; and while Miss Go-lightly would be met with a sidewise waggle of the head, a half-wink, or leer, to Sis there would be respect tendered as matter of course and accepted so. The lascivious, healthy, robust young stable boy, a great blade, who was on terms familiar with many scattered maids, had been seen to come to Sis with a spray of white heather one morning when the hills were aflame and present it to her in silence and with a bow that was greater than an achievement. Something in the morning hills with the spray of white among the purple, something in that Devon sky, or out of the Devon spaces had granted the stable Don Juan entrance into, for him, another world; and he had in him, it would appear, the native greatness to at least visit that world. So he brought the heather to Sis.

John was learning life in many ways, and some of his lessons were taught then, as you might say, and learnt afterwards.

One day in the autumn of 1685 the pony was put into the shafts and, as Upcott had several calls to make in town, John went with him to play groom. These were great days for John, for there was always stir in Bideford. In the river would be ships from Newfoundland, ships from Spain with wool. There would be tobacco ships, ships from Raleigh's colony.

There were men to be found who had been with Blake and could acknowledge it. There were men who durst not tell the names of captains they had served. There were those who had been to and fro in the West Indies and the Caribbean Sea among the islands, carrying to them much needed merchandise which they sold at rates far below those that could be offered by law-abiding Spanish merchants handicapped by Spain's taxes and duties-—rollicking smugglers. There were those who had hung about the far Atlantic like gentlemen-of-the-road lurking on a common, waiting the coming of the galleons on the wide sea highways.

To boys they did not talk much of their doings, nor even to their peers, the tendency amongst them rather being to hint darkly that men must be men indeed to do some things that had to be done in these far sea-fields. But they lounged on the quay and watched the tides come and go, spitting into the river; and criss-crossed to and from the water-front ordinaries. Still, their tales, though the half were never told, were in the air. They made an atmosphere around them. Faces and gait spoke. Their tales exuded from them. And the things they brought home, as sailors always do, spoke—-aye, some spoke literally; for they had a great fancy, when they could, to fetch home parrots, till nearly every ordinary had its "pretty Poll." And the parrots would let out a deal, one way or another. There was one, at "The Dolphin," that would cry: "Prepare to meet thy God. The ship's going down."

These seamen did their best to make Bideford not tedious during their spells ashore, and Bideford did its best to amuse them. Some might go to church or meeting-house, and the meeting-house had so large a following in Bideford that the bishops were moved to be broad-minded and speak of meeting-houses with leniency. But to hear William Bartlett on the text: "They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters," was, if for the moment it touched the religious emotion, a dry entertainment, despite the text, to seamen who had dabbled in buccaneering. Many had more than dabbled. To listen to much of that and take it home to one's heart, one would resolve to leave the kicking tiller for the kicking ploughshaft: scuppers sometimes spouted blood into the Caribbean Sea.

Into Bideford then, drove the Upcotts, father and younger son. John was now fifteen years of age and a boy by that age is well advanced with his note-book, packing it with suggestions of things that he will examine in due course.

As they entered the town a party of soldiers were digging in the road-side at the top of the High Street. John remarked their uniforms, their swagger, and took special notice of how the officer stood, wrist on hip, head flung back, looking on his men with insolent eyes.

They drove slowly there, partly for the sudden declivity, partly because of the men's tools being thrown on the road and the men giving no heed to passage-way for others; so John had opportunity to note that the men, exchanging speech at their work-—they were dropping a long beam into the hole that had been dug—-looked at each other with the same insolent blankness of countenance that their leader wore on his, and spoke short and rasping. He took note of this as a thing to be cultivated by soldiers, but by way of a fashion, not surely so vindictive as it looked, telling more what might be of fierceness rather than of what constantly was. Imagine one always looking so! He had no idea that if one of these men smiled at his work, or dropped that mask a moment, the others would leap straightway upon him and rend him limb from limb—-with no change of expression.

At the quay they alighted and, the horse being led into the yard, sat down on the bench before the door of "The Ship" to grow acclimatised to the town before proceeding to business.

Now it chanced that two girls had been seated there, had but newly risen, were still indeed in view, swinging along, heads in air stiffly, but eyes glinting sidewise across to the expectorating mariners. Down then clapped father, and John also subsided, gaze roving over the shipping. Upcott called for a refresher (a humble beginning for the fray) of bread and cheese and ale. Then up he jumped suddenly. Here is an incident I do not care to tell; but it has to be told, as it gives you, once and for all and done with it, an idea of the kind of father John had.

"God, John," said he, "there's warmth i' they maids," and nudged fifteen-year-old in the ribs and then sat with eyes twinkling over the only pleasantry he had ever passed with his son, waiting for the ale. And fifteen-year-old, rightly or wrongly, had a sense of the unfitness of the jest between father and son, to say the least. He was old enough to see both sides of the coin, if not quite to understand the full significance of all the stampings.

Another glimpse he was to be given of the creature his father was, when in the Gunstone Lane up came a villainous, cross-eyed man with a nose into the nostrils of which one could look, the impudent way it was set on his face, and began: "Iss, there ye be, Upcott o' Abbotsham come down along to Bideford to carry on your capers and thinks we don't know you. I know you——"

Upcott hastened his steps, his son, shamed, at his side, until they found refuge in a shop where Upcott made a pretence of looking over some goods. But the short-nosed man was dancing at the door, yahing and booing and making sounds like a monkey from Madagascar.

A crowd was gathering. Within was Upcott trembling over the goods and the shopman eyeing him and then eyeing the crowd at the door, beginning to discern the subterfuge of Upcott's entrance. His brusque manner put a period to Upcott's slinking there.

Shame was in John's heart at his father's cowardice, whatever the cause, real or imagined, of this man's animosity.

John was glad to see a sign of fight and a masterly look come on his father's face as they emerged again into the clamant street. But it signified little of action, for again the father sought to make a way for himself.

"You and your gentrice wife!" cried the man for ending to another taunt.

John looked to his father and saw the blood in his face. He assuredly appeared then as though he had an intention to make an end of the weazel hanging to his neck; but some other thought came to him and (though now with clenched fists) he plodded nervously on afresh, in a new resolve. But now, to be sure, his bearing was such that the crowd stayed aside from him, gave him passage freely.

But this was not enough for John.

For himself he could, all his life, stand a deal of abuse and smile on the giver. But a word against family, a word against his secretly beloved, and John was neither to hold nor bind.

"No word of that!" he cried, wheeling and leaping.

White and glaring-eyed he smote the weazel under the chin, following the blow, the only way one can describe his attack seems to be by saying, with himself; hurled himself on the man as he staggered back, falling down in the crowd that parted and then encircled.

I am painting the picture of no hero of melodrama, whatever I may be painting, and I have to tell you the truth.

"I will have no word of my——"

The crowd heard John cry so much in a voice that appalled with its blent, youthful timbre and its madness. He had flung himself on the fallen man, and they both were now struggling and smiting. Either the weazel did, or Upcott imagined that he did, while cuffing and gripping, try to bite his hand. And even as he cried the words, John Upcott, at the hint, and feeling his antagonist's strength, set his teeth in the man's throat. His own ribs were cracking, for the weazel was a man grown, an ugly devil too.

Then he found himself (it was the next thing he knew) standing cold in the street, glaring down on a gulping man, and hands were pulling him back; voices, almost caressing for some reason, saying: "All right, sonny. All right. But that's not an Englishman's way."

The man on the causey was struggling to his feet as the crowd thrust John and father away. The whole thing had not lasted long, the climax not a minute.

They went on in silence, long after they had passed from range of the immediate and curious eyes, the father now and then looking down on the boy, and John, with the tail of his eye, as the phrase is, aware of the frequent scrutiny, though he would not meet it. It was nothing to him, condemnatory or appreciative. Something had come between father and son for ever.

Upcott had several calls to make, many of them with a side-issue of liquidation in the nearest ordinary. Once said Upcott to his son, smiling fatherly on him:

"Now, John, there's no need for you to hang round with me seeing us have put up the nag. You can run off and see the ships, or what you fancy."

But John announced, with something of the aspect of the soldiers on the hill, that he would prefer to stay with his father.

"Ha, ha," laughed the father's then fellow tippler, "an exemplary boy, a good lad, fond o' his father." And Upcott appeared a trifle annoyed at the words, reading, doubtless, in the twinkle of the man's eye, an irony more keen than was intended.

There were two or three such episodes. The father gave permission to his boy to go if he so desired; then he suggested that he should go; and all the while, as ballads have it, "the wine was birling." Then came the command:

"Get out of it now, John, and meet me to the Ship a couple of hours from now."

The eyes of father and son met. They understood each other in that gaze—and there was more than the barrier between.

"Yes, that's me," said the father's eye. "You're getting years, and you can understand things a bit. Well, that's me, so now you know."

And the lad's eye said: "So be it. And I am growing older every day!"

But he obeyed, and gave his father his absence.

In the streets as he strolled round, his face no very placid face then, he encountered a man that he remembered—he having a distinctive, superlative air of vagabondage—as one of the crowd in the Gunstone Lane fight.

This man merits description. He wore, a-cock, a fine hat with braid, and round his pow, beneath the hat, was a red handkerchief with blue and yellow spots, coming down to near his ears, which were long and narrow and ran down in the line of his slanting jaw, with hardly any tendency toward the erect. He was clean-shaven, long of nose, close of brow, had a chin that announced a mixture of strength and weakness. His hair stuck out behind, from under the kerchief, in a tuft. He wore a long gallant coat that had seen some salt service, the buttons, of gold, all there, but many hanging loosely. A fancy waistcoat looked out brazenly and a little worn from the sagging coat, yellow lace from his sleeves, on the brown wrists, and silver buckles shone on his heavy shoes. John gathered him together with his eye, felt himself in the presence of an extreme devil and yet, evil as the man looked, terribly evil, his face wearing the sear of a knife and all the sears of debauchery, found him attractive. His mother could never have seen the man attractive—-nor could his father; and he should not perhaps have been attractive from any standpoint. From the romantic standpoint of youth he was. There was in his evil eyes a glitter of comradeship.

"Hullo, shipmate. You're the bloody boy," the piratical person hailed him. "Shaken the da' off, have you?"

Upcott for some reason laughed recklessly.

"Yes," said he.

"That's the bold lad. Come and have a tot of brandy, lad."

"No, thank you, sir," said Upcott, casting off the recklessness.

"Eh? Oh, you are still on clotted cream. Well, I forgive the insult, for you're a well plucked un. Bit of a rat you be, when your blood's up. That ain't English, they said! Damn England, say I. What's English way? I know your breed. If you don't go in over the bulwarks amidships you'll wriggle through by the anchor chains. You'd scuttle your boats, you would, afore you went in over one of them fortified galleons, scuttle your boats, you would, so as when you got in amidships you'd ha' no place to go back to and you just 'ud have to get in on 'em either in the forecastle or the sterncastle. I know you. You're English enough for me. I see your future on the high seas, lad. Never you go to Bristol into no business man's house. Pack o' pimps, them Bristol merchants. I know." And then at the thought of Bristol merchants he fell into the most blasphemous language that Upcott had ever heard. The horror of it prompted flight beyond earshot. And the man's keen preoccupation with his thoughts (he staring ahead with contorted face, seeing some memory-created Bristol merchant, it would appear, on whom he breathed his brimstone) gave Upcott the opportunity. The lad took two tentative steps away, and then, the mariner still swearing, a third; then his steps quickened and he whisked around the corner and ran from the echo of that voice.

But he was to see the mariner of the crimson speech again and hear the tale of Bristol merchants told coherently. At the moment came other matters, for now he met his father rolling and spluttering inn-ward and fell in step with him.

"Supper," growled Upcott at the inn; and so they both were seated. John munched slowly at first and, despite his hunger, soon forebore to eat at all. His stomach turned seeing his father sitting opposite him at that board. Sitting? Nay, lying over his plate, scooping the contents into his mouth held low over it, and then bawling for more.

John slipped into the stuffy passage and saw himself to the stowing of the goods, then arriving at the inn, in the bottom of the cart, also to the harnessing. A little shamefaced he bade the boy who waited on his father to ply him speedily with all the viands for which he might call. The more the father ate here the less he would need at home, and the mother might have a less terrible night of it; for John knew too well the scene that would ensue if, as she cooked and the husband swallowed, there came a too lengthy pause with empty plate.

Here, in the Bideford inn, alone with his father, instead of at home, John felt first and in a superlative, heartbreaking degree, sympathy with his mother.

At last they were in the cart and away, homeward bound.

As they crawled up High Street, perhaps it was due to the meal (or meals) that Upcott had just swallowed, the drunkard began to perceive and have a kind of clearer vision of his surroundings. Now they came upon a ghastly spectacle. The horse, despite the hill-climb, swerved to the side, but Upcott checked the curse on his tongue, risen at his son's faulty driving, for he, too, jibbed that moment, like the horse, seeing what it had seen.

High overhead dangled from a gibbet a thing that was a man and not a man, not only for its broken, twisted state, but by the reason of the droppings from it. The figure, headless, armless, was naked you might say, but bound in what might have been mud, some thick substance that hanged like black icicles from the dead, drooping feet.

"God forgive me!" cried Upcott. "What's this I see?" And he called on the Maker three times in a loathsome voice.

And a soldier, passing on the causey, answered him and said: "A warning to the people of Bideford. The man was a rebel and so are rebels served. Pass on, old hogshead. The devil will boil you in brandy, not in tar. That man was boiled in tar."

John imitated the stare he had seen and practised in the morning, looking down on the soldier from his vantage with an expression like a house-gable, and drove on. But the sight of that pitiable figure sent a gripe through his midriff and the pendant broken thing that had once been a man was before his eyes all the way. And his father, sagging down in the cart, muttered: "Buried in tar, boiled in tar. God deliver me!"

The father was snoring in the bottom of the tail-cart and the son weeping on the seat, weeping for that dying and desolate day, when they drove into Abbotsham as lights were being lit in windows and stars being lit on high.