Читать книгу Stretton - Henry Kingsley - Страница 10

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There seemed some difficulty about the person who knocked at the door coming in, as indeed there was. There was a curious pegging sound, then a gentle turning at the door-handle, and then a heavy fall. The Dean dashed out, and found a little cripple lying on his back on the landing, laughing.

"I shall do it once too often," said the cripple. "My servant puts me into bed, but I direct my energies to tumbling out of it. I live in the gate which is called Beautiful, and am happy there but St. John and St. Paul are in Heaven, and have never said to me, 'What we have, we give thee.' Will you help up a poor little cripple, and set him on his legs, and give him his crutch, Dean? Be St. John to me, Dean?

"Sir Jasper Meredith!" exclaimed the Dean.

"I thought I should creep so nicely up, and I came one stair a time. And I made fair weather of it until I tried to turn the handle, and then I lost my balance, and fell on my back."

The Dean had never seen anything like this. He was a man of the cloister, and had heard of human ills, and of baronets with 14,000 acres, and of cripples also. But to find a feeble cripple, with 14,000 acres, flat on his back before his own door, on the landing, was a sensation for the good Dean. "And he is from Shropshire also," he considered. "Shropshire will do for us in time."

He picked the little cripple up very carefully, and brought him in. "What can I do for you, Meredith?" he said, gently.

"Give me leave to get my breath, my dear sir," began the little man. "Thank ye. Oh! that's better. I can't get on anyhow. The doctors say that it is my spine, and I say it's my legs, and I expect that I know as much about it as they do. My legs have separate individualities; in fact, I have named them differently--Libs and Auster--and they always want to go in different directions, which brings me to grief--don't you see? I suppose you have never noticed the same thing with regard to your legs, for instance, have you?"

"No," said the Dean, glancing complacently at his well-formed legs. "I never experienced anything of that kind--lately."

"No," said Meredith; "your legs do look like a pair. Now mine, you will perceive, if you will do me the goodness to look at them, most distinctly are not."

"You are certainly afflicted," said the kind Dean, "and I am sorry for it."

"We will speak of that on some future occasion," said the little man. "I am not at all sure that I am. Being afflicted in this manner, do you see, brings you so many kind friends, and such sympathy, that I am not sure that I would change it even to be Roland Evans. Well, that is not what I came to speak about. I came on a matter of business, and I am taking up your valuable time in talking of myself. Cripples will talk about themselves, you know."

"My time is yours, Meredith," said the Dean, pleased by the kindly little ways of the cripple.

"Now that is very kind of you. May I take a liberty? I have been a petted boy, and am used to take liberties. May I hav one little sprig of that Wustaria which is hanging your window with imperial purple? I half live in flowers, Dean. They are the purest forms of mere physical beauty which can be brought to me, and I cannot travel in search of beauty, you know."

The Dean got him one at once, saying, "There is one form of physical beauty which comes to you very often, I fancy--Roland Evans."

"Yes," said Meredith; "I believe that he is very beautiful. But I, for my part, having known him so long, have lost the power of seeing that. If he were a cripple, or a leper, it would make no difference to me."

"You like him, then?" said the Dean.

Meredith laughed quietly, and very absently, looking at the carpet.

"The brain is always affected in these spine diseases," said the Dean to himself. "The poor little fellow is wool-gathering."

Then he added, emphatically, "We were speaking of Roland Evans, Sir Jasper Meredith. You like him, do you not?"

In an instant one of the keenest, shrewdest faces he had ever seen was turned up to his, and he stood astounded.

"Like him!" said the cripple. "Yes, I like him very much indeed. You know that you yourself would like a noble young man like that (supposing that you were a cripple, which you are not) who left habitually his own amusements, in which he excelled, to attend to you; who could put you in the best place to see his innings at cricket, and come running to you after a race to tell you about it. You would like such a man as that, would you not?"

The Dean, interested, said "Yes!"

"Ah! So I like him. And in a similar way, I like his sister, who is Viola to Sebastian. And I like the whole lot of them--the two Mordaunts, Maynard, and Eddy Evans. They are all good. I came here on a point with regard to them. I am afraid they have been behaving very badly?"

"They have been quarrelling so dreadfully," said the Dean.

"They always do in class," said Meredith. "It is an old Gloucester dodge for spinning out the work, if one of the set has not got up enough lines."

"If that is the case," said the Dean, angrily, "I must request you to tell your friends that I will not suffer it again."

"It will not happen again," said Meredith. "They thought--I declare they did--that you would set them impositions. They are on their honour now."

"They are an extraordinary lot of greenhorns."

"They are," said Meredith, "with the exception of shrewd old Mordaunt. I suppose you know that none of them have ever been to London?"

"I know nothing about them," said the Dean, "except that K. sent them here. I never saw such an extraordinary lot of fellows in my life. But you must tell them that I will not stand disturbances in lecture-time. You said that you came here to speak to me about them."

"True," said Meredith. "I ought to have had notice to quit before. I will do my business. The butler tells me that, as a fellow-commoner, I must sit at the high table with you. Do relax your rule, and let me sit at the Freshman's table, with the Evanses and the Mordaunts. They help me in a hundred ways. Do let a poor cripple have his dinner among his kind at the Freshman's table."

"Your request is granted, certainly," said the Dean, laughing. "But you must tell your friends not to be so turbulent. We were told last night that the younger Mordaunt and the younger Evans fought for a plate of meat, which both claimed, and were fined by the senior man at the table."

"My groom told me this morning," said Meredith, quietly, "that the Bible clerk had sneaked. Young Evans certainly ordered the chicken, but then young Mordaunt, as senior boy, considered that he had a right to change dinners, not liking his mutton when he saw it. I am sorry that they fought over it, but boys will fight over their victuals, you know. I daresay you have done it yourself."

There rose suddenly on the mind of the Dean the ghost of a certain Bath bun which he had struggled for at a certain lodge at a certain school nearly twenty years before, and which had ended in a great fight in the playground with a certain great general, who was just now engaged in the reduction of Sebastopol. The Dean had the best of it, as did not the general.

"But," said he, "they behave like schoolboys. They are ranked as men here."

"They were schoolboys yesterday, and are schoolboys still," said Meredith. "It rests with you to make them men. What sort of men you are going to make of them is more in your line of business than mine. Lord help you through it! for they are a rough lot. It rests with you to take up Dr. K.'s work where he left off. He has sent them here in trust to you."