Читать книгу The Interpreter - George J. Whyte-Melville - Страница 16

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I must skip a few years; long years they were then to me; as I look back upon them now, they seem to have fleeted away like a dream. Victor and I are still at Everdon, but we are now the two senior boys in the school. De Rohan has grown into one of the handsomest youths you will often see. His blue eye is as clear and merry as ever, but the chestnut curls have turned dark and glossy, and the light, agile form is rapidly developing itself into a strong, symmetrical young man. He is still frank, gay, and unsophisticated; quick enough at his studies, but utterly without perseverance, and longing ardently for the time when he shall be free to embark upon a course of pleasure and dissipation. I am much altered too. With increasing growth and the assumption of the toga virilis, or that manly garment which schoolboys abruptly denominate "tails," I have acquired a certain degree of outward equanimity and self-command, but still suffer much from inward misgivings as to my own appearance and personal advantages. Hopelessly I consult the glass in our joint bed-room—the same glass that daily reflects Victor's handsome face and graceful figure—and am forced unwillingly to confess that it presents to me the image of a swarthy, coarse-featured lad, with sunken eyes and scowling eyebrows, sallow in complexion, with a wide, low forehead overhung by a profusion of bushy black hair; this unprepossessing countenance surmounting a short square figure, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, and possessed of great physical strength. Yes, I was proud of my strength. I shall never forget the day when first I discovered that nature had gifted me with one personal advantage, that I, of all others, was disposed most to appreciate. A lever had been left in the playground, by which the workmen, who were repairing the wall, intended to lift the stem of the well-known tree which had formerly constituted what we called "The Club." We boys had come out of school whilst the men were gone to dinner. Manners, the muscular, was delighted with such an opportunity of displaying his prowess; how foolish he looked when he found himself incapable of moving the huge inert mass—he said it was impossible; two boys attempted it, then three, still the great trunk remained motionless. I asked leave to try, amidst the jeers of all, for I was usually so quiet and undemonstrative that no one believed Egerton had, in schoolboy parlance, either "pith or pluck" in him. I laid my weight to it and heaved "with a will"; the great block of timber vibrated, moved, and rolled along the sward. What a triumph it was, and how I prided myself on it. I, too, had my ideal of what I should like to be, although I would not have confessed it to a soul. I wished to be like some preux chevalier of the olden time; my childish longing to be loved had merged into an ardent desire to be admired; I would have been brave and courteous and chivalrous and strong. Yes, in all the characters of the olden time that I so loved to study, strength was described as one of the first attributes of a hero. Sir Tristram, Sir Launcelot, Sir Bevis, were all "strong," and my heart leapt to think that if the opportunity ever arrived, my personal strength might give me a chance of distinguishing myself, when the beautiful and the gallant were helpless and overcome. But there was another qualification of which in my secret soul I had hideous misgivings,—I doubted my own courage: I knew I was nervous and timid in the common every-day pursuits of a schoolboy's life; I could not venture on a strange horse without feeling my heart in my mouth; I did not dare stop a ball that was bowled swiftly in to my wicket, nor fire a gun without shutting both eyes before I ventured to pull the trigger. What if I should be a coward after all? A coward! the thoughts of it almost drove me mad; and yet how could I tell but that I was branded with that hideous curse? I longed, yet dreaded, to know the worst.

In my studies I was unusually backward for a boy of my age. Virgil, thanks to the picture of Dido, never to be forgotten, I had completely mastered; but mathematics, arithmetic—all that are termed the exact sciences—I appeared totally incapable of learning. Languages I picked up with extraordinary facility, and this alone redeemed me from the character of an irreclaimable dunce.

"You can learn, sir, if you will," was March's constant remark, after I had arrived at the exalted position of a senior boy, to whom flogging and such coercive measures were inappropriate, and for whom "out of bounds" was not. "You can learn, or else why do I see you poring over Arabic and Sanscrit during play-hours, when you had much better be at cricket? You must have brains somewhere, but to save my life I can't find them. You can speak half-a-dozen languages, as I am informed, nearly as well as I can speak Latin, and yet if I set you to do a 'Rule of Three' sum, you make more blunders than the lowest little dunce in the school! Egerton, I can't make you out."

It was breaking-up day at Everdon. Victor and I walked with our arms over each other's shoulders, up and down, up and down, in the old playground, and as we paced those well-worn flags, of which we knew every stone, my heart sank within me to think it was for the last, last time. What is there that we are not sorry to do for the last time? I had hated school as much as any schoolboy could; I had looked forward to my emancipation as the captive looks forward to the opening of his prison-door; and now the time was come, and I felt grieved and out of spirits to think that I should see the old place no more.

"You must write to me constantly, Vere," said Victor, with an affectionate hug, as we took our hundredth turn. "We must never forget each other, however far apart, and next winter you must come again to Edeldorf; I shall be there when the shooting begins. Oh, Vere, you will be very dull at home."

"No," I replied; "I like Alton Grange, and I like a quiet life. I am not of your way of thinking, Victor; you are never happy except in a bustle; I wish I were more like you;" and I sighed as I thought of the contrast between us.

I do not know what brought it to my mind, but I thought of Constance Beverley, and the first time we saw her when we were all children together at Beverley Manor. Since then our acquaintance had indeed progressed but little; we scarcely ever met except on certain Sundays, when we took advantage of our liberty as senior boys to go to church at Fleetsbury, where from the gallery we could see right into the Beverley pew, and mark the change time had wrought on our former playfellow. After service, at the door we might perhaps exchange a stiff greeting and a few words before she and her governess got into the carriage; and this transcendent pleasure we were content to purchase with a broiling walk of some five miles on a dusty high-road, and a patient endurance of the longest sermon from the worthy rector of Fleetsbury, an excellent man, skilled in casuistry, and gifted with extraordinary powers of discourse. Victor, I think, took these expeditions in his own good-natured way, and seemed to care but little whether he went or not. One hot Sunday, I recollect he suggested that we should dispense with afternoon church altogether, and go to bathe instead, a proposal I scouted with the utmost indignation, for I looked forward to our meetings with a passionate longing for which I could not account even to myself, and which I never for an instant dreamed of attributing to the charms of Miss Beverley. I know not now what tempted me to ask the question, but I felt myself becoming bright scarlet as I inquired of my school-fellow whether he had not otherfriends in Somersetshire besides myself whom he would regret leaving. His reply ought to have set my mind at ease, if I was disturbed at the suspicion of his entertaining any penchant for Miss Beverley, for he answered at once in his own off-hand way—"None whatever that I care a sixpence about, not even that prim little girl and her governess, whom you drag me five miles every Sunday to see. No, Vere, if I could take you with me, I should sing for joy the whole way from here to London. As it is, I shall not break my heart: I am so glad to get away from this dull, dreadful place."

Then he did not care for Miss Beverley, after all. Well, and what difference could that possibly make to me? Certainly, I was likely to see her pretty constantly in the next year or two, as our respective abodes would be but a short distance apart; but what of that? There could be nothing in common between the high-born, haughty young lady, and her awkward, repulsive neighbour. Yet I was glad, too, that Victor did not care for her. All my old affection for him came back with a gush, and I wrung his hand, and cried like a fool to think we were so soon to be parted, perhaps for years. The other boys were singing Dulce domum in the schoolroom, hands joined, dancing round and round, and stamping wildly with the chorus, like so many Bacchanals; they had no regrets, no misgivings; they were not going to leave for good. Even Manners looked forward to his temporary release with bright anticipations of amusement. He was to spend the vacation with a clerical cousin in Devonshire, the cousin of whom we all knew so much by report, and who, indeed, to judge by his relative's account, must have been an individual of extraordinary talents and attainments. The usher approached us with an expression of mingled pleasure and pain on his good-looking, vacant countenance. He had nearly finished packing his things, and was now knocking the dust out of those old green slippers I remembered when first I came to Everdon. He was a good-hearted fellow, and was sorry to lose his two old friends.

"We shall miss you both very much next half," said he; "nothing but little boys here now. Everdon is not what it used to be. Dear me, we never have such a pupil as Ropsley now. When you two are gone there will be no one left for me to associate with: this is not a place for a man of energy, for a man that feels he is a man," added Manners, doubling his arm, and feeling if the biceps was still in its right place. "Here am I now, with a muscular frame, a good constitution, a spirit of adventure, and a military figure" (appealing to me, for Victor, as usual, was beginning to laugh), "and what chances have I of using my advantages in this circumscribed sphere of action? I might as well be a weak, puny stripling, without an atom of nerve, or manliness, or energy, for all the good I am likely to do here. I must cut it, Egerton; I must find a career; I am too good for an usher—an usher," he repeated, with a strong expression of disgust; "I, who feel fit to fight my way anywhere—I have mistaken my profession—I ought to have been an officer—a cavalry officer; that would have suited me better than this dull, insipid life. I must consult my cousin about it; perhaps we shall meet again in some very different scenes. What say you, De Rohan, should you not be surprised to see me at the head of a regiment?"

Victor could conceal his mirth no longer, and Manners turned somewhat angrily to me. "You seem to be very happy as you are," I answered, sadly, for I was contrasting his well-grown, upright figure and simple fresh-coloured face, with my own repulsive exterior, and thinking how willingly I would change places with him, although he was an usher; "but wherever we meet, I am sure I shall be glad to see you again." In my own heart I thought Manners was pretty certain to be at Everdon if I should revisit it that day ten years, as I was used to these visionary schemes of his for the future, and had heard him talk in the same strain every vacation regularly since I first came to school.

But there was little time now for such speculations. The chaises were driving round to the door to take the boys away. March bid us an affectionate farewell in his study. Victor and I were presented respectively with a richly-bound copy of Horatius Flaccus and Virgilius Maro—copies which, I fear, in after life, were never soiled by too much use. The last farewell was spoken—the last pressure of the hand exchanged—and we drove off on our different destinations; my friend bound for London, Paris, and his beloved Hungary; myself, longing to see my father once more, and taste the seclusion and repose of Alton Grange. To no boy on earth could a school-life have been more distasteful than to me; no boy could have longed more ardently for the peaceful calm of a domestic hearth, and yet I felt lonely and out of spirits even now, when I was going home.