Читать книгу The Island Providence - Frederick Niven - Страница 7

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The old man of the bees, he who, years before, had arrived at his cot so auspiciously to save a child from apoplexy, was journeying homewards, twirling in his hand a wind-cast twig and turning over in his mind his own foreign thoughts. Already, though he was five miles from where the honey-makers and he dwelt, laden and homing bees were settling one by one on him to have what is called "a lift home." So he plodded gently, evading brushing branches, mouthing to himself some Latin about a hill-top, murmuring trees and murmuring bees. I could not say that his pronunciation was collegiate, for he had taught himself Latin from the Aldines and the Elzevirs that he had sold, time was, in his little shop in Bristol, little shop long since sold; and he had never possessed the assurance to admit his knowledge even to his most friendly of scholarly customers; though many a hint he had culled from them and digested in secret for his further relish of the Latin and the Greek and the old French. But he made a music of the Latin lines, with a difference; and assuredly he enjoyed what he read. He was a lover of rich phrases and of simple. At times, when the humour was on him, he spoke with the rich utterance of the Irish, then coming in numbers to Bideford. That was only his whim, he finding something pleasant to the ear in the accent of these immigrants. In this late day the careful-eared stranger can still hear that Irish blend in the Devon speech.

I need not here give our old man's history, nor the explanation, in so many words, for the book-worm's presence there on the sea-echoing slopes of North Devon: it will leak out en route, as do all histories more or less.

When the bees rose from him with parting buzz it was sign that he was come near home, and he arrived there soon after them, his face, ugly and fascinating, a replica of that of Socrates, suddenly brightening in welcome as he saw two lads squatted beside his dwelling, John Upcott and his friend Ravenning.

"Good morning, lads," he said.

"Good morning, sir," said Upcott.

"Good morning, Uncle," said Ravenning. "Did you hear about our dog, stung to death by bees up near to the Hoops?"

"They'd be swarming," said the old man complacently.

"Iss, swarming; and he went nozing and looking on."

"Ah well; bees are just the same as human beings, with times you must either leave them alone or handle them with discernment," said Uncle.

Upcott looked on the philosopher with interest. He frequently experienced a sense as of being near the fount of all wisdom, or knowledge, when the old man spoke. Ravenning twinkled up bantering. It was not native in him to give much respect, chiefly because of lack of discernment also. The brain cells where wisdom goes were not developed in him, perhaps, and he was not aware of the deficiency. He liked the old man; but liked him in the romping way of youth: ready to listen to what he found wise as he conceived wisdom; more ready to listen, a joyous leer spreading on his face, to what he considered hints, at times, that the old man was human and that, even with his wisdom and his years he appreciated the view of life that the cavalier vicar of Dean Prior, by Totnes Town, had put in his "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may"—not that he knew Herrick, though Uncle did.

But when Ravenning would be gone, into what further realms did not the old man lead the Upcott boy, and the boy conduct the old man! Something pathetic, or awakening a sympathy for one knew not what, indicated but unspoken, woke in Upcott's heart sometimes as he watched his Socrates pottering agitated in the wild garden or ferreting in his library; for the old man had books in one of his rooms, books brought hither from the shop in Bristol that was but a memory. Especially did the narration of voyages collected by Richard Haklyut interest Upcott, and he passed many a spare hour bent to their pages, sitting on the stool before the rough shelves. And sometimes the old man, remarking the boy's interest, for which indeed he had hoped, would draw forth other books and read words well-timed for the hour, whose music then, more than their meaning, moved the boy's soul: but the meaning was borne on the music like pollen on the wind; and there would yet be seed take root and flowers bloom next year.

So, one late afternoon, clover-scented, and murmurous with bees and the farther murmur of the sea, there entered his soul these random words: "Pious spirits, who possessed their days in raptures of futurity, made little more of this world than the world that was before it, while they lay obscure in the chaos of preordination and night of their fore-being." And I need hardly tell you that the reading of these words was suggested to the old man as he sat listening to the boy's babel and thinking of those from whom he had sprung, natures so strangely assorted; thinking of them both, but thinking of the mother with reverence.

John Upcott interested him; and in the boy's great brown liquid eyes that started to all manner of suggestions of terror, or were bright to a tale of daring and courage, Uncle saw indication of the Spanish blood, the story of the coming of which to Devon he knew so well. For the old man knew "a mort o' things." His spirit lived much among fables of the immortal dead and the forgotten dead, forgotten only by reason of being nameless, but known of him who wanders into the past. He lived among the splendid ruins of his illusions, carrying his lamp, whose name I cannot tell.

He was a man to whom the boy could unburden himself of his woes. And had these woes been selfish the old man had been the first, I surmise, to alter subtly the trend of thought. But the woes were seldom so.

One day Upcott sat, his hand bound up, for he had been grievously cut when wrenching a knife from the grasp of his delirious progenitor, sat in melancholy mood; but the mood of the most happily circumstanced youth is often so; for youth is melancholy. Upcott had been speaking sorrowfully of his mother, he being old enough now to grieve for her beauty so abused. And the old man took his favourite book and turned the leaves, and found and read: "I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and worldly way of union." And then said the old man:

"'Tis not but what, taking things all round, life is none so bad. Believe me, boy, the love of man and woman is a holy thing. And after all, in his best hours, when the man thinks of the moments when he does get the knife in his hand, he arranges things so that he will be punished for his lapses. Don't you forget that, lad; don't you get a wrong view of life. There are many happy homes in North Devon where the man and woman are both taking their own parts in the life—happy homes——" and behold, the old man was wandered in silence into a day dream, so that he hardly heard the boy's cry:

"Oh, I know that. I think they are all happy but ours." Then in a little while: "What book is that you read from?" asked John.

"Ssh!" said the old man, raising his great hand. "It is best you should not know, for so there will be for you a great joy in after years, when you come on it again unawares, and open it, and the sentences murmur to you again like voices of old friends. Then you will remember these sad hours of your youth as far off, perhaps even remember them as happy in their own way. You will remember the sound of the bees in this garden, the far hum of your youth. You will remember that sunlight floating there on the floor, cut clean by the door-post; and the dusty motes there: and you will see yourself sitting here disconsolate and smile to yourself; read again these words, and you will be happy in a way no man can prevent, with a happiness of which no man may rob you. I would not now rob you of that future accidental joy."

Upcott frowned and thought the old man odd; but, owing so much to him, he humoured him, sought not to persuade him from what he thought a foible.

Strange things would his Socrates say too, that Upcott had some inner warning it were better not to repeat to Ravenning, held silent as it were by some modesty of soul. Such a thing was said one memorable night.

Upcott, come over on that night of full moon, when the very stars were blinded in the blue summer heaven, had found the old man with radiant eyes sitting before his house and been bidden gently to come some other time.

"I would be alone," said the old man.

And as Upcott turned impressed and softly away he heard Uncle's voice again, speaking as it were to the loneliness then settling again after the faint ruffling by the youth; heard the words spoken to the loneliness and to the glittering night: "No one knows all that the moon has meant to me."

Sometimes the old man of the bees and of the moon would mention his shop in Bristol.

It was one afternoon of rising storm when, under flying black clouds, over dull hills lit wierdly by a light that glowed from the meeting of land and cloud, sea and cloud, Upcott had gone, a-tilt against the gale, to see his Socrates, his old man of the bees. Said he:

"Why did you leave your book-shop, Uncle?"

"Because the money went," was the reply; and Upcott had a suspicion of another disaster of the bottle. It struck him that the evil, if yet beloved, aspect of his old friend's face might be the souvenir of Bristol bottles; but the old man went on: "My sister was taken with a grievous illness and the physicians required money to heal her." He paused. "She was never healed; but so long as I had the money I paid the best of them to tend her. And then came her deliverance. Oh! there have been nights when the bravery of her stifling her moans took me with such a pride of the invincible soul of the woman that my heart could have burst. There have been nights when she has had ease and I have thought to rest, relaxed, and forget the hardship of things—-her ill, and the shop doing poorly; but I could not rest and I have fetched home for a lonely debauch a bottle of brandy that I could ill spare the money to buy, and seeing her sleeping her exhausted sleep I have drunk all at a gulp and sat on the bed edge in my own room watching the walls spin round and laughing low to myself to see the window flashing past; and the chairs would wave their legs at me and I would wave to them; and the moon would look in like a face at the window and wink on me and I'd wink back on it and fall drunk in bed. Ah, there have been nights I have sat up with her: she never knew of these diversions, and me sitting holding her hand she would talk to me in the dark—nights I can never forget."

It is the way of youth, hearing another speak of himself, to reply also with personal talk, instead of being pleased to be auditor. But then for sure he cannot be counsellor, hardly even impersonal sympathiser.

"I know," said John. "I can remember mother coming up to me sometimes at night, on nights that she had not seen me when I went up the ladder to bed because of——"

"I understand, yes, yes," said Uncle on the pause, his mood wholly sympathetic now, his subjective fit gone on the instant.

"And she would sit," said Upcott, "and talk to me in a whisper, till I couldn't abide the whisper in the dark for all I liked her to come there that way. I could have wept hearing her voice in the dark and would crave her to light the candle. I think she wondered why."

The old man nodded.

"Aye, I understand, I know the darkness and the voices in the dark," said he suddenly and impulsively, and rose agitated and made some needless arrangements in his small demesne and sat again perturbed. Here, on this subject, it would appear, he could not get far from himself. Then he came back to the boy.

"And yet the things she would be saying were not fearsome in themselves?"

"Oh, no, not fearsome at all, for she does not hold by telling fearsome tales. We had an old woman who used to come round and sometimes tell us tales of pirates that came to Lundy in the night and killed the fathers and mothers of all the children; and she would tell tales of the plague being in Bideford and how the children that had been playing round the quay, where the Spanish wool lay, took ill suddenly and all died; and how the people were all afraid; and how the mayor ran away in a rare fantod. But mother would have none of that. She never held by making children afraid. 'There's plenty to shake one in the world, she says, 'without telling fearsome tales for the joy of seeing the child's flesh creep.' But us were always afraid. There seemed always something hanging over we—aye, still."

"Yes," said Uncle, remembering the day on which the child had cried out: "Oh, Uncle, we're left—have you got a musket and a cutlass?" And the old man thinking over the matter decided it was not from the mother the child had learnt terror, but from the father. What he had learnt from the mother bore a better name. And more that Upcott had to tell confirmed his view.

"There's one thing I cannot abide yet," said the lad, "and that is when anyone knocks on a door so," and he gave a quick couple of loud taps and a following blow on the wall. "Father has always made a knock like that when——" he paused.

"Yes, I know; I know, lad."

"Sometimes he comes home quiet, steals up without anyone being aware that he is near; then he thinks to himself we should all be out waiting for him, loose his coat, pull off his boots; and without even trying to see if the door is bolted he knocks like that. Mother used to open herself always. She would have no one else run the risk of his first fury. I remember the night I opened for the first time, jumping there before she could put aside her terror and look not quite afraid. I gave en a look," cried the boy, lapsing in his English as he did in agitation. "'What do you open for?' says he. And before I knew, with mother there, and Sis too, I says: 'Easy now! There's no need to shout for food here the way you wouldn't dare do in an ordinary—' 'What do you mean, you brat, you whelp?' says he and he made at me. And—and, by God, sir, I made to strike en. A man shouldn't strike his father. I think when he saw me ready to do that he took a new thought. Sure enough 'twas a lot quieter that night, and when mother got flustered, and flustered Sis too when 'em was getting more and more cooked for en, I said: 'All right, mother, don't you fret. Let him wait. I'm here.' Oh, us have a happy life up to Abbotsham." Upcott laughed a cheerless laugh. "Mind me," he said, "you won't tell no one, I know—I was but eleven years old then; he had hit me over the head, kicked me out o' the door, cursed at my mother; I mind he cried to en from up over, coming down along holloing so's half Devon could hear en: 'Put the pan to the fire, woman; I've a leary belly. None o' your zamzoaky stuff for me; I'm a-comin'. I took a billet of oak up to his room to study how the bed lay and think how I'd be doing a service all round to hit him over the head, and him lying there one night blind, babbling drunk.

"Well, sir, I was looking, you might say, how the land lay, and planning how to brain him and that's the plain truth, and I know it was but a boy's folly that would never have been carried out. And I thought then I could maybe roll him off the bed so as he'd look as if he had fallen; and I took the billet and gave a whack on the pillow. And there he is suddenly up the trap, him leaping through the house, chasing me with some idea he had. 'What in hell,' he says, 'be you a-doin' of?' 'Boardin' ship,' I says. 'What?' he says, coming close with his swollen hands. 'Playin' at boardin' ship,' I says. 'By God!' he says, 'I'll make 'e walk the plank for boardin' ship on my bed,' he says and took me by the back and hove me over the window—frame and all. I struggled, and with me struggling I kicked him under the chin as he shoved me over; that maddened him so that he came down over for me again to chase me with the billet. I heard him cursing, coming down; and so, sprained ankle and all, and the window frame round my middle, I crawled away and lay in the hedge. Hunted me all night, he did. Oh! we've had a happy home up to Abbotsham. Then I got older. But about that way he knocks ... I always hasten to once now and throw the door wide open to him. 'Tis a knock that gives your heart a leap. I've seen mother catch her breast when it comes and seen her mouth twitch a-sudden with dread. The only way to do with fear of that kind is to face it—set the door open wide and give en a look that says: 'What be you a-trying to do?'" Then the hobble-de-hoy bowed his head in his hands.

The old man rose.

"You've had a sad life," he said, "but it will all pass—for you. Also, there are consolations, lad," he cried, fumbling in his shelves, and reached down another book. One wonders how much of this was due to a desire to relieve the lad in the only way of which he could immediately think, how much was due to the fact that the world of books and of the great tales of the past, historical and imaginative, was for the old man a world more real perhaps than his present world, assuredly as real as this present in which he dwelt.

"See," said he, "how much better fit you are now to relish this," and he fell to reading in the tragedy of Macbeth, that masterpiece of terror, so great that to this day there are superstitious persons who fear the very name of the mighty work:

"'Lady Macbeth:	What do you mean?
Macbeth:	Still it cried, Sleep no more! To all the house: Glamis hath murdered sleep: and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more,—Macbeth shall sleep no more!
Lady Macbeth:	Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy thane You do unbend your noble strength to think So brain-sickly of things. Go get some water And wash this filthy witness from your hand. Why did you bring these daggers from the place? They must lie there: go carry them, and smear The sleepy grooms with blood.
Macbeth:	I'll go no more; I am afraid to think what I have done; Look on't again I dare not.
Lady Macbeth:	Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures; 'tis the eye of childhood fears a painted devil. If he do bleed, I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal For it must seem their guilt.'"

Uncle had read thus far when he raised his head and looked under his rough brows on the intent face of the boy. The temptation was too great for him; he smote, as the boy had smitten on the wall, in the three knocks of terror, and on the very knocking went on:

"'Whence is that knocking? How is't with me when every noise appals me? What hands are here?Ha! they pluck out mine eyes! Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine Making the green one red.'"

The old man of the bees stopped, to relish these lines for himself again, and the house was not in silence, but surrounded with the moaning of the rising storm.

John Upcott felt his eyes hot. The old man went on again:

"'Lady Macbeth:

My hands are of your colour; But I shame To wear a heart so white——'"

And then again the old man smote sudden on the wall by which he stood, his hand by his side, and declaimed in a strained voice: "'I hear a knocking,'" and so he read on to the end of that part; and as he closed the book indeed there was an ominous "rat-tat-tat!" at the door of the cot.

Old man and young man looked on each other with something very like terror. Then the young man leapt to his feet and unlatched the door. The old man was by his side and both were flung together backward, so fiercely was the door, unlatched, thrust against them.

But there was no one there. It was but the wind that had rattled so at the door.

They went out of one accord into the blustering, belligerent afternoon. The wind rushed into their lungs at its first onslaught and they bowed their heads against it to regulate their breathing. Indoors their voices had been unconsciously raised because of the slapping of the wind on the walls, the rattle of the sudden rain on the window, cry of wind in the narrow chimney. Now, without, to be heard one would have had to shout.

The sea made one ceaseless roar. For the background of all its sound there was not now the sigh as of silk drawn through the hand, but roar and bellow as of bellowing and roaring of a mighty herd. That for groundwork; and above that, and through it, crash and cannonade, and also, what was awesome to hear, a sound like volley on volley of musketry of an immense army: that was when, in the "mouths," the waves would swing back and rake the pebbles down; and these volleys, harsh, grating, kept on at various points far and nigh.

The old man flung up his head and Upcott saw it splashed with the rain and shining with a strange light.

"Oh God of the Sea! Oh God of the Sea!" cried the old man in a rapture; and his hat, that he had clutched to his head on coming out, was now in his hand, his forehead bare to the keen wind.

Then suddenly, in the white seas over which the spindrift made a haze, under a blackening sky, they saw a ship tacking in the bay.

It was under a flying sail, and a close-reefed main, bearing away to where one knew that Lundy lay hid in the smoking seas; then it would tack and go bravely staggering and the two watchers were proud of the inanimate thing. And then they would feel a pity for its endeavours when suddenly it would fail, go back like a fluttered bird; and after all the arduous tack there it was again (surely with a mortified heart!) back again to well-nigh the same spot of the clamant, gesticulating sea.

Then, ere the darkness of night fell on the storm-lit dusk of day, they saw, as it emerged again from the haze, that the bobbing craft had made some headway out yonder in the wet battle, after so many endeavours; beheld it dimly, fluttering far out, but nigher home, in the "Golden Bay," name then how ironic!

But Upcott did not know, being no necromancer like one who was to meet him on the miry turnpike way to-morrow, that with the coming of that ship (daring so valiantly to round Hartland Point that day of gale against the cliffs) was to come something new and strange into his life.