Читать книгу Time and the Hour - Howard Spring - Страница 30

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Mr. Septimus Pordage was waiting for them at Smurthwaite station. He was wearing a tweed suit and a wideawake hat, which he took off with a flourish to Aunt Jessie. He was a surprising creature to be the brother of Harry. They might have stood, side by side, as contrasting pictures of famine and plenty. Septimus’s head was crowned with shining white hair, and his neat moustache was white, too. His cheeks were two little chubby pink hams, squeezing in upon two little blue eyes, and between the rounded chin and the white moustache two little lips pouted prettily.

Aunt Jessie shook his hand, which was a warm little pink cushion, and said simply: “Well, Mr. Pordage, this is the lad.”

The lad stood beside his brown-enamelled tin trunk and looked non-committally at Mr. Pordage. He was acquainted with Pordage’s First French Course, and said, in deference to its author: “Voilà ma malle, monsieur.”

Aunt Jessie regarded him proudly. “You’ll find, Mr. Pordage, that he chatters the French lingo like a monkey.”

Mr. Pordage spoke for the first time, ingratiatingly as a small mouse thankful for cheese. “I trust not, madam. If he does, our first necessity will be a set of remedial exercises.” He struck the malle a smart blow with his ash stick whose end was as hairy as his tweeds. “To the transport wagon,” he commanded, as though an army were about to march. Anthony took the handle at one end and Mr. Pordage hooked his stick through the handle at the other end, and they walked through the booking-office of the sleepy station to where, outside, the transport wagon was waiting. It won Anthony’s heart at once, for it was a cosy little contraption, its upper-works all plaited yellow cane and red cushions, and in its shafts stood a fat white pony, sound asleep on his legs. He, rather than Harry, might have been Mr. Pordage’s brother. Mr. Pordage chucked him familiarly under the chin and said: “Awake, Valpy, awake!”

Valpy awoke, and looked as soundly asleep as ever. His skin rippled at the intrusion of a few untimely flies. But for that, his head might have been on a pillow. “Why do you call him Valpy, sir?” Anthony asked.

Mr. Pordage dropped his end of the trunk on to the cobblestones and looked about him at this blue and white April morning across whose sky a few swifts were skating. He seemed in no hurry to put the trunk aboard, and he seemed in no hurry to answer Anthony’s question. In fact, he and Valpy seemed in no hurry at all. “Valpy,” he said at last. “Why do I call him Valpy? Why, boy, in pure derision.”

He contemplated the morning once more, and then said: “Well, now, Darton-in-Craven. We must get to Darton-in-Craven. But not immediately. We can wait for Darton, and I am sure Darton will wait for us. Compose yourself to slumber for yet awhile, O Valpy.”

Valpy had already done so.

“Coffee,” said Mr. Pordage, and they set off, leaving the trunk on the cobbles. They entered the main street of Smurthwaite, with its grey shops, its grey-stoned roofs, its plane-trees opening their leaves in new green. “Will my trunk be all right, sir?” Anthony asked.

Mr. Pordage considered this as he rolled along without haste. “It is impossible to say yes or no, my dear boy. It is an experimental matter. If, when we return, we find your trunk safe and sound, we shall have demonstrated that our faith in Smurthwaite’s honesty was not misplaced. If it is gone, we shall have learned a lesson, and next time we shall post sentries to the north, south, east and west of your malle. The chances are that we shall never find this necessary. Smurthwaite is not Babylon.”

“Then you think the trunk is safe, sir?”

“I have said so as simply as possible.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Well, here we are. There are fine sugar-coated buns to be had with our coffee in this place. We must take a few back for Valpy.”

“Why do you call him Valpy in derision?” Anthony asked when Mr. Pordage had consumed four sugar-coated buns and two cups of coffee.

“Because,” said Mr. Pordage, accepting Aunt Jessie’s suggestion that she should order more buns, “Valpy was a grammarian who composed a Gradus ad Parnassum or, shall we optimistically say, a Stairway to the Stars. My Valpy, alas, will never make the grade, as you will discover for yourself. Give him a gradient of one in a hundred, and he’ll expect you to get out and walk, and, what is more, carry your malle.”

“Why do you call a trunk a malle?” Aunt Jessie demanded. “I carted that thing about for years on end and never called it anything but my old tin trunk.”

“Now, Mrs. Pickersgill, you have embarked us on deep water that will wash us back to the Tower of Babel. It was there, I believe, that a beneficent providence conceived the idea of earning a living for the likes of me: a dispensation that I shall be the last to quarrel with. I beg you never to mention to me the word Esperanto. There are few ditches that a grammarian would shed his blood in; but my last drop would ooze in any ditch embattled against the hosts of Esperanto. However, that is for the future. Let us take some buns to Valpy.”

The trunk was where they had left it. Valpy was asleep in the shafts. A sheepdog that had been dozing in a patch of sunshine was still dozing in the patch of sunshine. Aunt Jessie said: “Things seem quiet like round here.”

“Yes, Mrs. Pickersgill. It is a virtue of Smurthwaite that it does not harass its carcase. The passage of the year is recorded by the flowers growing in the station beds. You will notice that they are now daffodils. In course of time they will become chrysanthemums and dahlias. In between, this and that. Out at Darton, I often forget what month I am living in. I then ring up the station and ask what flowers are in bloom. It is as simple as that.”

Valpy whinnied, and the sheepdog woke up. Observing these signs of activity, Mr. Pordage said: “Civilisation has struck its tents and is once more on the march. Heave the malle aboard, my boy.”

Anthony did so. Aunt Jessie and Mr. Pordage went aboard, too, and Septimus said: “A walk will do you good, boy, but don’t leave us too far in the lurch.” The cavalcade set out for Darton-in-Craven.

It was not difficult for Anthony to keep up, and he was glad to be on his legs, for it was a wonderful day. Impossible to imagine that about a month ago he had been shooting down the snowy slope of Ackroyd Park, with the cold tweaking his ears and numbing his nose. Lambs everywhere, tottering about the fields and absurdly frisking. Green stuff frothing up in all the hedges and ditches as the yeast of the year began to make its ferment felt.

“This dog is following us, sir,” Anthony said.

“And why should not the dog follow us, seeing that he is my dog? His name is Cerberus.”

“Do you call him Cerberus, sir, in derision because he has only one head?”

“This is a bright boy,” Septimus said to Aunt Jessie. “He begins to understand the Minoan Labyrinth of my mind. Well, boy, that is one reason. Another is that those who wanted to go to hell could get in by offering Cerberus a cake. That would still work; though it is my observation that those who want to go to hell can do it easily enough, without bothering about cake.”

Cerberus was not a haystack sheepdog of the old English breed. He was a Welsh sheepdog with a short grey coat, one wall-eye, and one eye of dazzling blue. He knew that he was being talked about, and gave a self-conscious cough. Anthony, who shared Aunt Jessie’s fear that famine might overtake one at any moment, and had prepared accordingly, took a sugar bun from his pocket and held it out to the dog, who consumed it with amused insouciance. “Yes, sir, it works,” he said; and Septimus said: “Yes. But don’t forget, boy, that if Hesiod is right Cerberus had fifty heads, and you would have your work cut out handling fifty sugar buns.”

“I think,” said Aunt Jessie, “that fifty mouths to be fed would make hard work for a dog with only one stomach,” and Septimus conceded: “Yes, Mrs. Pickersgill; it is one advantage of a classical education that it can lead to fascinating by-ways of speculation.”

Bemusing the way with such enchanting conversation, they covered the few miles between Smurthwaite and Darton, and came at last to a water-splash, a stream flowing from one field to another and crossing the road on its way. It was a gay, impetuous stream, not more than six feet wide, but full of life and sparkle. Had it been Euphrates or Mississippi in flood, it could not more dramatically have pulled Valpy to a stop. Cerberus had leapt into the middle, rolled luxuriously, and now, on the other side, was shaking an iridescent halo, a shining spectral extension of his own outline, into the bright air. But water was something Valpy did not take so lightly. “And now what?” Aunt Jessie demanded.

Septimus took up a wooden ball from the floor of his chariot. One end of a thin rope passed through it. The other end was attached to Valpy’s collar. “This predicament,” he said, “is not a new one. Science has dealt with it, as you shall see.”

He threw the ball across the stream, descended from the trap, and crossed on the stepping-stones at the side of the road. Then he took up the rope and gently heaved upon it. Valpy immediately crossed the water which hardly wetted his hoofs. But if he had induced a herd of wild stallions to cross a torrent Septimus could not have been more complacently self-conscious of mastery. He walked the rest of the way home, which wasn’t much to do, for the stream was one boundary mark of his little property. “The stream here belongs to me,” he explained as proudly as though he owned a mile or two of the Volga, complete with basso profundo boatmen. “And that’s my house.”

It was a good-sized cottage, long, low, white, with a stone-tiled roof and all the paintwork green. A lawn lay between it and the road, and on one side of the lawn the stream chuckled over its golden pebbles. On the other grew an untrimmed hawthorn hedge which would soon be in bloom. As lawns go, this was something that no horticulturalist would write home about. It was untended and full of weeds, but it was also full of daffodils. They grew in clumps all over the place and marched in a procession of swaying singing gold along the margin of the stream. Anthony thought it the most enchanting lawn he had ever seen.

Away to the left of the cottage was a big stone barn. Telling Aunt Jessie to sit down on the bench in front of the house, Mr. Pordage led Valpy towards it. Anthony went along to help the unharnessing. The trap was left in the barn, but Valpy was shoo’d out into a paddock behind the cottage. The paddock, the cottage, the barn, the lawn, with the stream and the hawthorn hedge, composed Mr. Pordage’s property—not more than a couple of acres, but encompassed by infinity.

Septimus and Anthony had rejoined Aunt Jessie on the lawn when the sound of a horn was heard and a pony came spanking down the road, drawing a trap in which the horn-blower was sitting. Mr. Pordage signalled with his hand, and went indoors as the trap pulled up. He returned carrying a letter which he handed to Anthony. “That is the postman,” he said, “take him this.” Anthony took the letter and read the address: “Septimus Pordage, Esq., D.Litt., M.A., Easter How, Darton-in-Craven, W. Yorks.”

“You have made a mistake, sir,” he said. “This letter is for you.”

Septimus waved a chubby fist. “Do not keep His Majesty’s mails waiting,” he commanded.

Anthony took the letter to the postman, who gave him one in return, tootled on his horn, and drove away. The handwriting was identical with that on the letter Mr. Pordage had brought from the house: “Septimus Pordage, Esq., D.Litt., M.A., Easter How, Darton-in-Craven, W. Yorkshire.” Mr. Pordage put it in his pocket. “I shall read this later,” he said. “It’s only a letter. The real fun is when I send myself a parcel for my birthday or Christmas. Last Christmas I did me remarkably well: a box of excellent cigars and a dozen pocket handkerchiefs. I think I shall write a novel about me some day. It would make the oddest reading.” He consulted his watch. “I sent me this for my birthday three years ago. An excellent present, I thought. One o’clock. Well, let’s go in now and see what Mrs. Toplis has managed to do for us.”

Mrs. Toplis had done saddle of mutton and the trimmings appropriate thereto, with apple-pie to follow; and after that there was cheese and coffee. “The lad won’t starve,” said Aunt Jessie.

“Not so long as I am his stable companion,” Septimus agreed. “Valpy, Cerberus and I are among the best-fed beasts in the West Riding. Your nephew has come to a good manger.”

Aunt Jessie said she would give Mrs. Toplis a hand with the washing-up, and Septimus encouraged her in this, saying that the virtues of any civilisation could be gauged by the willingness of women to oil the domestic wheels, so that their smooth running was imperceptible to the creative half of the race. “Meanwhile,” he said, “Anthony and I will inspect the scene of his own creative labours and deposit there the contents of his malle.”

“Why, sir,” said Anthony, “shall I not live in the house?” and Mr. Pordage replied: “God forbid. You will be abundantly educated by the mere superflux and waste product of my ego, a matter of contagion in such times as we are together. We shall be like two stars whose orbits occasionally bring them near enough for salutation. They exchange a celestial wink and set out on a few more million years of travel through inter-stellar space. If this proposition does not please you, say so, and let’s have done with it.”

Anthony said it sounded all right to him. His experience of schoolmasters suggested the ample joys of mere nodding acquaintance.

“Very well,” said Septimus. “Let us beat the bounds.”

They walked gravely round the property, keeping along the stream so far as it was Mr. Pordage’s frontier, then turning left along the hedge of the paddock, and so coming at last to a big stone barn in which the trap had been housed. Septimus went in, exclaiming: “Cherchons la malle.”

They brought it out, each taking a handle, and carried it round to a flight of stone steps. “Is there a room up there?” Anthony asked.

“Well,” said Septimus, “I do not perceive that these steps vanish, like Jacob’s ladder, into an infinity of aggressive angels. So we may safely assume some material destination.”

To Anthony, the destination, though material, was enchanting. The oaken door was hung on strong wrought-iron hinges, and into the lock was inserted a big iron key. Mr. Pordage took it out and handed it to him. “This,” he said, “is the key to your place. Remember that no one—not even I—may come in without your consent. Always, my boy, whatever life may do to you, keep a private place. It is not for nothing that at our older universities a man may sport his oak, which is a phrase whose meaning you may learn in time.”

They stood there, Anthony holding the massive key in his hand. After a moment, Septimus said: “I hesitate even to suggest that you should ask me in.”

Anthony came to. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said. “Please come in.”

He unlocked the door, and Mr. Pordage bowed, took up his end of the trunk, and they entered together. “Forgive me,” Septimus said, “for banishing you to this place. I was brought up at Halifax, in the family sitting-room. How I longed for such banishment as this!”

Anthony cried with enthusiasm: “But it’s lovely, sir! Thank you.”

“You mustn’t thank me. You must thank the previous owner of the property who had the sense to turn this loft into what you see. I will leave you to your exploration.”

Anthony watched him toddle down the steps, then turned back into his lovely room. This floor of foot-wide oaken planks must have been put in centuries after the barn was built, but whoever did that had had the sense not to put in also a ceiling. And so springing up and interlacing above Anthony’s head was a wonder of woodwork, and round him was the grey stone of the walls that had never been plastered. A semi-circular arch of stone was the fireplace, where a fire was laid, and on either side of the arch was a generous pile of billets ready for burning. The room was oblong, and in each of the longer walls was a tall round-headed window. The boy stood at one, and then at the other, and from each the view was much the same: white roads and pastures and the little stream and the rhythmic line of fells and sheep abundantly concerned with maternity and placid cattle browsing on the green spring grass. Brought up as he had been, it seemed incredible to Anthony that he could look so far and see nowhere the smoking chimneys of a mill. Blue sky, unsullied, arched over the full reach of vision.

He turned back into the room. A bed was near the fireplace, and a comfortable wicker chair. There was a table to write at, and there was a stored book-case. He looked at the titles. All of Pordage’s three-in-hands were there, as well as what seemed to him, who had been brought up almost bookless, an immense array of reading matter. A washstand with a large basin upon it stood in a corner at the end of the room away from the fireplace, and there was a bucket on the floor. A letter addressed to Anthony Bromwich, Esquire, was propped against the wash-basin. Anthony Bromwich, Esquire, filled with pride at his grand appellation, took the letter to a window-seat, sat down and opened it. The paper of both envelope and letter was of a richness to impress: it soothed the fingers like vellum:

The Sunday next before Easter,

1912

Dear Mr. Bromwich,

The utilitarian object to which this is attached is a wash-basin, satisfactory to the needs of countless generations of our ancestors. But in such places as Halifax, where I was brought up, and Bradford, where you were brought up, civilisation has richly advanced, befouling earth, air and water, and making necessary a recurring de-grimation of the human face and figure. To achieve this end, baths, wash-basins in bedrooms, and all sorts of sanitary knick-knackery have been invented ad majoram gloriam plumborum. If you expect anything of this sort here, you are going to have the shock of your life. Cast down your eyes, and you will see a silly bucket on your deck. Take it in your hand, walk to my stream, and fill it. That should supply your casual ablutionary needs. For the morning bath, betake you to my Parson’s Pleasure, which is where, on either bank of the stream, alders afford a privacy. Clothe yourself in a bathing suit if you like. For all I care, clothe yourself in a morning suit, violet suede gloves and top-hat, or, cap-à-pie, in medieval armour. But it is better to wallow as Adam did in the river that flowed through Eden. That is what I do. Take no soap to the stream. Adverting to the civilised cities that heard our earliest pipes, I am aware that they have learned to put rivers to their proper use as receptacles of industrial and human filth and sludge, summarised enchantingly as effluents. In these more backward parts, we think that in our streams elvers are better than effluents and cresses than creosote. You must bear with these old-fashioned notions and foul not our fountains.

As for our studies ... A-ha! There is no time like the present for deferring painful considerations.

Written with a goose-quill, and given under the hand of

Septimus Pordage, pedagogue.

Anthony had been taught by Aunt Jessie that letters should be answered. Not that he often received letters, and not that those which he did receive called for much to be said. But it was good manners, Aunt Jessie told him, to send some sort of answer. Perhaps, Anthony thought, Mr. Pordage shared Aunt Jessie’s views, and how to answer this letter was a puzzler. Happily the solving of the puzzle was deferred. Sounds coming up through the floor suggested that Valpy had been led into the barn and was being harnessed to the trap. He went down to give a hand, but Mr. Pordage waved him away. “It is not my business,” he said, “to invite Mrs. Pickersgill to invade your private quarters. Perhaps it will occur to you that it is yours. There is not much time if we are to catch the train, for I have no doubt that Valpy will be in a resentful mood. He dislikes doing two jobs in one day.”

So Anthony took Aunt Jessie up to his room, and she looked about her, disturbed by its almost unfurnished space, which made it look different from anything she had understood as a room to be lived in. “Well,” she said, “it’s a bit bleak like, but you can’t have everything in this world.” She kissed the boy, and said: “Be a good lad now, and do what Mr. Pordage tells you. Mrs. Toplis says he’s all right when you get used to his little ways. Still, that goes for men everywhere. You’d better not come to the station. Best to make a clean break.”

Anthony felt he ought to send messages to someone, so he said: “Remember me to Chris Hudson and Lottie.”

“If I see ’em. What about your uncle?”

“Oh, yes. Remember me to Uncle. I hope he keeps well.”

“When he does, Ah’ll begin to think there’s summat the matter with him,” Aunt Jessie said, establishing her cheerful grin. And off she went, for through the window they could see Mr. Pordage coaxing Valpy over the stream with the heaving-line. Anthony watched Aunt Jessie cross on the stepping-stones, climb in beside Mr. Pordage, and disappear round a bend in the road.

That night, as he was falling asleep, he did not feel that his room was bleak. After sunset the day had gone cold. He had put a match to his log fire, and the fireplace was still glowing, filling the room with pulsations of warm light. There were no curtains to his windows. He could see the stars, and on his feet he could feel the weight of Cerberus, who knew a good thing when he found it.