Читать книгу The Counterplot - Hope Mirrlees - Страница 10

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Dick moved his chair beside David’s, and talked to him a little about the prospects of sugar, and whether the Cuban planters were going to “down” all the others; but, finding him unresponsive, he turned eagerly to Arnold, saying, “I say! I lunched with Paget-Clark the other day, and he told me this year’s Rugby fifteen will be one of the strongest we’ve ever had. There’s a chap called Girdlestone who, they say, is a perfect genius as half-back, and they’ve got a new beak who’s an international and a marvellous coach. He says....”

“Anyhow, their eleven was jolly good this year. They did extraordinary well at Lord’s.” There was a slightly reproving note in Arnold’s voice, as if it were sacrilege to talk about football when one might talk about cricket. As a matter of fact, he was much more interested in football, but he resented that his father should be able to give him any information about Rugby.

David smiled to himself as he thought of his own school—the Inverness Academy.

They had thought themselves very “genteel” with their school colours and their Latin song beginning:

Floreat Academia

Mater alma, mater pia.

And indeed this gentility had been rubbed into them every morning on their way to school by bare-footed laddies, who shouted after them:

“Gentry puppies, ye’re no verra wice,

Ye eat your parritch wi’ bugs an’ lice.”

“I doubt it wouldn’t seem very genteel to them,” he thought, without, however, a trace of bitterness.

They began to talk about the prospects of the Cambridge Boat, and Guy, who prided himself on being able to talk knowledgeably on such matters, eagerly joined in with aphorisms on “form.”

“I say, Munroe, we’re nowhere in this show, are we?” said Rory, with a friendly grin; then suddenly remembering that he had no legitimate cause for assuming that David was not a University man (Rory prided himself on his tact), he added hastily, “mere sodgers like you and me.”

“I—I understand that the late Dr. Arnold sent his son to Oxford instead of Cambridge, because—because at the latter University they didn’t study Aristotle,” said David.

He genuinely wanted to know about this, because recently his own thoughts—by way of St. Thomas Aquinas—had been very much occupied with Aristotle; but, being shy, his voice sounded aggressive.

“Arnold would,” said the other Arnold coldly.

“But—but Dr. Arnold was surely a great man, wasn’t he?”

This time David’s voice was unmistakably timid.

The others exchanged smiles.

“Was he? That’s the question,” said Arnold.

A few years ago Dick would have had no hesitation in exclaiming indignantly, “A great man? I should just think he was!” Why, he had called his only son after him, in spite of the Doña’s marked preference for Maria-José. But recently his children had insisted on his reading a small biography of Dr. Arnold that has since become a classic; very unwillingly had he complied, as he had expected it to be like Carlyle’s Heroes and Hero-Worship, which his sister, Joanna, had made him read in his youth, and which he had secretly loathed; but he had been pleasantly surprised, and had found himself at the end in complete agreement with the writer.

One of Dick’s virtues was an open mind.

“Well, I think old Arnold was quite right,” laughed Rory. “I’m sure it’s most awfully important to read ... who did you say, Munroe? Aristotle? Fancy not reading Aristotle! Rotten hole, Cambridge!”

David grinned with such perfect good-nature at this chaff, that the atmosphere perceptibly warmed in his favour.

“Oh, well; I dare say there’s a good deal to be said for Oxford,” said Dick magnanimously.

“Oh, of course! Oxford shoes; Morris-Cowley cars, summing up the whole of the Oxford movement ... namely, Cowley Fathers and the Preraphaelites!” shrieked Guy.

“Boar’s Hill!” screamed back Arnold.

“Or the ‘Oxford’—the music-hall, you know,” suggested Rory.

Then port wine began to come into its own.

There is a certain type of story with but little plot and the crudest psychology, to appreciate which—as in the case of the highest poetry—one must have a love of words—for their own sake.

“... and she thought the toast was ‘Church and Birmingham’!” ended Guy in a shrill scream.

Rory and Arnold chuckled; Dick shook convulsively, and a little sheepishly. After all, he was much older than the others; besides, he was afraid that his plate might slip down. He was very fond of his plate, and much enjoyed clicking it into place, like the right piece in a jig-saw puzzle; nevertheless, he would die of humiliation if it slipped down before Arnold.

Story followed story; with each one, the laughter growing louder and more satyr-like (even David was smiling gravely); and it was on the best of terms that the five entered the billiard-room, where, if there were men, it was the custom at Plasencia to assemble after dinner.

Arnold immediately organised a game of Snooker between Dick, Concha, Rory, Guy, and himself; and the Doña, who was not completely free from a social conscience, invited David to come and sit beside her on the sofa.

What on earth was she going to talk to him about? It had been difficult enough at dinner. Ah, of course! There was always the War; though there were few subjects that bored her more.

Though she was as ignorant as the Australian aborigines of the world’s organisation and configuration, and of the natural and economic laws by which it is governed, yet, like an exceptionally gifted parrot, she was able to manipulate the current clichés, with considerable tact and dexterity.

For instance, on her annual visit to Wales, she would say, quite correctly, “Snowdon is very clear to-day, isn’t it?” And that, though she had not the slightest idea which of the many peaks on the horizon happened to be called Snowdon.

Nor did she ever talk about a barrage in connection with motor-cars, or a carboretto in connection with guns; though, if asked to define these two words, she would have been hard put.

So David talked about the War, and she purred or sighed or smiled, as the occasion required, and did not listen to a word.

She noticed that Guy’s eyes kept wandering towards the chair where Teresa sat motionless. Well, he, at any rate, had always preferred Teresa to Concha. Why was she jealous of Concha? It must be Concha’s beauty that was the trouble.... Teresa, of course, was more distinguished looking, but Concha was like a Seville Purissima—infinitely more beautiful.

On and on went David’s voice; Concha, looking across from the billiard-table, whispered to Arnold, “No one talks so much really as a ‘strong, silent man.’”

“Yes; it was a queer time—the War. Things happened then that people had come to look upon as impossible—as old wives’ tales. But you’ll hardly meet a fellow who has been through the War who hasn’t either himself had some queer sort of experience, or else had a chum who has. It was a queer time ... there—there ... were things....”

“Be a sportsman—double the black!” shouted Rory from the billiard-table.

Teresa, sitting silent in her corner, found herself muttering:

Then old songs waken from enclouded tombs;

Old ditties sigh about their fathers’ graves;

Ghosts of melodious prophecyings rave

Round every spot where trod Apollo’s foot;

Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit,

Where long ago a giant battle was....

Jollypot looked up eagerly from her crochet and said:

“Oh, do tell us more about it, Mr. Munroe.”

“Oh, well, it’s only that at times like these ... things are more ... more naked, maybe,” and he laughed apologetically. Then he added, as if to himself, “One sees the star.”

Jollypot murmured something inaudible, and her eyes filled with sympathetic tears; she was not certain of what he meant, but was sure it was something beautiful and mystical.

The Doña wondered if he had had shell-shock.

But Teresa turned in her chair and scrutinised him. What exactly did he mean? Not, she felt sure, what she herself would have meant, if she had used these words, namely, that, during the five years of the War, one had been continually, or so it seemed in retrospect, in that Apolline state of intoxication into which she had fallen that very night at dinner; no, not quite the same; for that had been purely Apolline, while during the War it had been at once Apolline and Dionysiac, in that it was oneself that one was looking at from these cool heights—oneself, a blind, deaf, dusty maniac, whirling in a dance.

And, if one liked, one might call such times “heliacal periods”—a time when the star is visible ... whatever the star may be.

But David, she felt sure, meant something concrete.

“Now, then, Concha, cut that red and come back on the blue ... ve-e-ry pree ... oh, hard luck!”

“Now, then ... all eyes on Captain Dundas!... Captain Dundas pots the black. Well, a very good game.”

Whereupon the Snooker party broke up; the men wriggling into their dinner-jackets, and Concha standing by the gramophone and swaying up and down as she hummed the latest jazz tune.

Guy came up to Teresa. “About Oscar Wilde—I do want to have a talk to you about him. Do you think—well, brilliancy—it has a certain literary value, don’t you think?”

“Yes; I suppose so,” she answered absently; she was watching Concha and Rory giggling by the gramophone.

“Well, I am going to bed,” said the Doña, and, kissing her hand to Arnold, who was still knocking about the balls, she left the room, followed by Jollypot.

“Well, that was a very successful game,” said Dick.

“What about another one? You’ve got to play this time, Munroe.”

“Yes, another game. I’ve never seen a game of Snooker over so quickly ... owing to the amazing brilliance of our Captain Dundas,” cried Arnold.

So they started another game, this time including David; and as it had been decided that Rory was too good for parlour-billiards, he sat down on the sofa beside Teresa.

They began to talk—about the War, of course: all the old platitudes—the “team-spirit,” for instance. “It’s football, you know, that makes us good fighters. It’s about the only thing we learn at school—the team-spirit. It teaches us to sacrifice stunts and showy play and that sort of thing to the whole.”

Then there was the Horse. “It’s extraordinary how chivalry and ... and ... decent behaviour ... and everything should be taught us by that old creature with his funny, long face—but it’s true all the same. It’s only because we use horses so little in fighting now that ‘frightfulness’ has begun.”

Teresa felt disappointed; but, after all, what had she expected?

“But it was a funny time—the old War. All these tunes—rag-times and Violet Lorraine’s songs—hearing them first at the Coliseum or Murray’s, and then on one’s gramophone in the trenches ... it gave one a feeling ... I don’t know!” and he broke off with a laugh.

“I know! Tunes ... it is very queer,” murmured Teresa.

It struck her with a stab of amusement that her tone of reverent sympathy was rather like Jollypot’s—always agog to encourage any expression of the pure and poetical spirit that she was sure was burning in every young male bosom.

“Yes, it was ... an extraordinary time—for all of us; but for you in the trenches! And all that death—I’ve often wondered about that; how did it strike you?”

“Oh, well, that was nothing new to me—I mean some people hadn’t realised till the War that there was such a thing; but my old Nanny died when I was nine—and then, there was my mother.”

He paused; and then in quite a different tone he said:

“Did it used to scare you stiff when you were a child if you heard the clock strike midnight?”

“Oh, yes—did it you?”

“Rather. And could you scare yourself stiff by staring at your own reflection in a mirror?”

“Oh, yes.”

They laughed.

But Teresa felt the presence of the angel Intimacy—a presence which, when it comes between a man and a woman, shuffles the dreams and, so it seems, causes the future to stir in its sleep.

“I say! Isn’t this extraordinary? We are getting on well, aren’t we? One doesn’t often talk to a person about these sort of things the first time one meets them,” and Rory gave a light, mocking laugh.

Teresa felt absurdly, exaggeratedly disappointed; and why did he use such a strongly scented hair-wash?

The second game of Snooker came to an end, David, this time, potting the black.

“Well, Munroe, what about a ‘wee doch-an-doris’?” said Dick, opening the tantalus.

Concha stretched her soft, supple mouth in an enormous yawn, rubbed her head on Dick’s shoulder, and said, “Dad always talks to the Irish in a brogue and to the Scotch like Harry Lauder—it’s his joke.”

“And theirs, I suppose, is to answer in English,” said Rory, getting up from the sofa and merging at once into the atmosphere of the Snookerites.

Teresa wondered if it were consciously that Concha was always more affectionate to their father when she had strange men for an audience. Then, seeing in Guy’s eye that he wanted to continue his idiotic talk about Oscar Wilde and brilliance, she slipped away to bed.