Читать книгу Jeremy at Crale - Hugh Seymour Walpole - Страница 9

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1

Jeremy played in the Possibles v. Probables game and did not in any particular way distinguish himself.

Nobody was distinguished. It was a mild and spiritless affair.

This was partly the result of the weather, which also was mild and spiritless, a thin, grey mist hanging over sea and land with no wind to blow it away.

It was also spiritless because of the new School Rugby Captain, Beltane. Beltane was a giant, six-foot-two in his socks and fourteen stone. He was to Jeremy and Jeremy's generation a grown man; he was, in their opinion, considerably further advanced in man's estate than many of the old boys who came down on festival occasions.

Huge in bulk, he had a jolly, humorous and exceedingly intelligent face. He was intelligent, extremely so, and was expected to win magnificent University scholarships during this, his last year at Crale. It was whispered that already he wrote for the London papers and was earning a fine income by so doing.

He was also an excellent Rugby forward, of a rather old-fashioned and shoving type, but he was too good-natured to make a good captain.

Priestley, last year's captain, a swift and lean three-quarter like a greyhound, had been a magnificent leader, cursing, encouraging, relentless, ubiquitous. Now, in the first game of the new season, everyone felt the difference. Beltane shoved well enough in the scrum and cursed volubly those near to him, but for some mysterious reason no one was afraid of him--and everyone was languid.

Jeremy was not happy with his partner half-back, who was never there to take a pass and, if he did have the ball on any occasion, always stuck to it too long. So, although Jeremy showed apparently any amount of energy, shouting in his funny, husky voice, "Coming in on the right, Possibles," and "Ball away!" and "Break! Break!" (like the pessimist in Lord Tennyson's poem); and although he fell on the ball in the most determined fashion, was kicked in every tender spot and had again and again to extricate himself from piles of bodies, he knew very well that he was not playing with his whole heart and soul.

He was in that state, only too well known to him, of divided interests, so that while his whole mind seemed to be on the game, half of it was away somewhere on a holiday of its own, considering the other game of Whites and Colours playing on a neighbouring field, considering the thin vapours of mist behind which the trees stood with twisted arms like paralysed old men, considering tea and food and Parlow and Paddy--things and people that should have been far, far from his mind.

And at half-time he was irritated by Bunt, who had been one of the linesmen and now came hustling across the field to tell everyone what they ought to do. What he told Jeremy was that the main business of the scrum-half was to get the ball away to the stand-off-half and "see that he got his passes."

That's all very well, thought Jeremy, kicking his heels into the muddy ground, but what are you to do if the stand-off-half can't take a pass and if he's never in the position he ought to be in? And it was then that, turning round to gaze into distance at the other game, veiled in mist and played by shadows, the thought came to him (whence, how, why, he was never afterwards able to determine), "Steevens and I would play jolly well together." Now this was odder in that he had hardly ever seen Steevens (who was playing stand-off-half that afternoon in Colours v. Whites), had never played in a game with him, nor even spoken to him, Steevens being in Bunt's House. He was, moreover, a comparatively new boy, having come rather late to Crale.

Jeremy knew nothing whatever about him save that there had been a rumour towards the end of the preceding season that he played "rather a decent game."

And yet suddenly this thought came: "I'd play well with Steevens."

In later years, when the Cole-Steevens combination was England's hope at half-back for five successive years, Jeremy sometimes looked back to that afternoon and saw himself--small, filthy, plastered with mud, standing on that misty field, and behold, out of heaven as it were, Steevens descended upon him! Strange!

A sort of miracle!

2

After the game in the long changing-room Beltane spoke to Jeremy.

The changing-room was a dim, passage-like place, with hot and cold showers and rows and rows of lockers and bare benches. It was dim because of clouds of steam, and in and out of the steam naked shoulders and thighs and buttocks, staring red faces matted with hair, white legs and arms like separate, animated automata protruded, flashed and vanished again.

"Here, Stocky Cole, rub me down!" Beltane shouted. He was standing under the shower, his thick, black hair tangled over his forehead, his great body strangely smooth and white in the shadow, the water hissing and splashing over him with a jerking fury as though it enjoyed its job. Jeremy, who had been dancing about waiting for his chance to dash in under a shower, took a towel and, as tradition had for a thousand years dictated, rubbed down his master's back and thighs. By rights he was now free of this service, but not for the worlds of Paradise would he have claimed his rights.

"You're a rum-looking kid," said Beltane, surveying him. "You're as broad as you're long." He condescended to feel his muscles. "Not bad. Not much fat." He punched Jeremy's belly and nearly drove the wind out of him. "Not bad," he repeated. Then, stretching his great arms and yawning, he said: "You and Abbott weren't much use this afternoon. What was the matter with you?"

"I don't think we suit each other very well."

"No, I don't think you do."

Jeremy pulled himself together, looked into Beltane's good-natured face; then said, marvelling at his own cheek:

"I believe I'd fit in very decently with Steevens."

"Steevens!" Beltane said, pulling his shirt over his head. "Why Steevens?"

"I don't know," said Jeremy, his voice suddenly deserting him and sounding like a frog's croak. "I'd like to try, though."

But Beltane said no more. His friend Mulligan was shouting to him and he shouting back again.

Jeremy was forgotten.

3

But Jeremy didn't forget. While he was dressing he thought of it; then as he strolled up to Leeson's to find Jumbo Payne; then as the two of them turned lazily, luxuriously (to-day was a blessed half-holiday) towards Garrett's, the Tuck-Shop:

"I say, Jumbo, I think I'd play awfully decently with Steevens."

A word about Jumbo Payne. He was a boy of no distinction whatever, still in Lower School although older than Jeremy, podgy in build, hair so fair that it was almost white, an amiable, sleepy countenance, in character silent and apparently somnolent.

He was, however, Jeremy's best friend. They had been friends now for three years. He had stayed with Jeremy's people at Polchester and Jeremy had stayed with Jumbo's aunt in Colchester (Jumbo was an orphan).

Theirs was not in any way a sentimental or romantic friendship. They simply liked being together, trusted one another completely; Jeremy talked and Jumbo listened. It might to a casual observer have seemed a one-sided friendship, because Jeremy was certainly the star and Jumbo the silent worshipper. Everything that Jeremy did seemed right to Jumbo, but he never flattered him or indulged his vanity. Jumbo, indeed, said very little at any time and dealt largely in monosyllables; but when he did give an opinion it was a startlingly honest one. Honesty was his supreme characteristic. He had no imagination and when Jeremy swung into dreams he was simply bewildered and uncomprehending, but he was a gentleman according to the code taught him by his father, a retired captain, a rolling stone, reckless and blundering but adored by his small son. Both the father and mother had died during an influenza epidemic when Jumbo, their only child, was six.

So much for Jumbo Payne, whom nobody in the school ever noticed save Jeremy. There was no reason why you should notice him. His fat soft body, his mild round face seemed to melt into air as you watched it. He was distinguished in nothing, either in work or games. He never spoke unless he was spoken too. He had no hobbies, did not collect stamps or white mice, had apparently no enthusiasms and no regrets. He was Stocky Cole's friend. Otherwise he had no visible existence.

"Why Steevens?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Jeremy. "I suddenly thought of him at half-time."

"You weren't much good to-day," said Jumbo, who had watched the game.

"I know," said Jeremy. "But what can you do with an ass like Abbott? He can't hold the ball if you give it to him."

"Some of Staire's pals were standing near me," Jumbo went on dreamily. "They weren't half pleased at your playing so rottenly."

"I didn't play rottenly."

"Yes, you did."

"No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did. Everyone said you did."

Jeremy sighed. "Yes, I know. Beltane said so. I told him I ought to play with Steevens."

Jumbo showed mild surprise. "That was some cheek. What did he say?"

"Oh, nothing. I was rubbing him down. He didn't know I'd got a Study and I wasn't going to tell him. I like Beltane, only I don't think he'll make much of a captain. He's too soft. Chaps don't mind what he says. He says I haven't got any fat, and I haven't either. Lucky he didn't see you stripped."

"I'm not fat," Jumbo said indignantly. This was the one reproach that he could never endure.

"Of course you are. Fat as an old hen! I say, what a scrum! Golly! Hullo, Swipes! . . . No, I didn't. Anyway, that was last term, and I bet one ginger-beer . . ."

Garrett's was swimming with heat and company.

What Jeremy liked about Garrett's, although he couldn't have told you so, was the colour. It gleamed and glittered and glowed. Partly this was so because when it was filled with boys a sort of warm, misty steam was generated, so that you saw everyone in a haze. Through this haze the rows of tinned things, fruits and potted meats and jams, with all their bright-coloured labels of rosy apples and crimson strawberries and Californian harvests and marvellous amber-shining pears, shone like jewels. Mother Garrett herself had cheeks as rosy as any apple and a bosom like a downy pillow. She was occupied, with two hand-maidens to help her, as surely no human being has ever been occupied before. She must not only answer the shouts and cries and appeals, but rebuke the forward, correct the dishonest, chasten the proud, collect the money and put on record all the involving debts. Tick was allowed, but only to a certain amount, and no recognized field of official diplomacy could place on record such attempts at passing the forbidden limit!

She made strange noises of excitement, commiseration, indignation and humour. The most fantastic and indecent tales were told of her, creating her the Dame Quickly of her place and period. Heaven knows whether any of them were true. She had never been seen off duty. She lived in the village at the bottom of the hill--Pleasant Cove. She was reputed immensely rich. It was said that Bunt, who was known to have a Rabelaisian turn, when bored with Mrs. Bunt and all the little Bunts, would hie him to her cottage and there at her abounding fireside spin bawdy tales with her.

The uproar was titanic. "Mrs. Garrett, two Devonas. . . . Four bars chocolate-cream. . . . No, I swear I didn't. . . . It's a new term, isn't it? Well, then . . . Look out, Sweaty, who are you barging? Five apples, two pine-apple squares. That's sixpence and two doughnuts tenpence and . . ."

The heat rose in a mist and a great, pulsing conviction of well-being and healthy satisfaction rose with it. About the counter itself boys were packed four deep, bodies pressed into bodies, excited crimson faces leaning forward, small boys trying to edge their way through big ones, and all the while Mrs. Garrett's rich deep voice: "Now, Mr. Chanter, that's only ninepence you give me! Yes, it is now! One at a time now! Can't 'ear oneself breathe!"

It was now, at this precise moment, that occurred the first incident--minute enough, as are many first incidents in great affairs--in that great and even now, after thirty years, although-traditional-yet-remembered battle with which Jeremy and this story have so much to do.

Jeremy was not so happy as he should be; Jumbo's remarks about the football were rankling. He had known that he had not distinguished himself that afternoon, but he had not realized, until Jumbo put it so brutally, that his game had been rotten. He could trust Jumbo for the truth, but ere now he had noticed that Jumbo also, in a sort of excess of friendship, was given at times to an exaggeration of frankness. He thought that that had been the case now. After all, he couldn't have played so very badly. It wasn't his fault if Abbott couldn't hold a pass. . . . Nevertheless, he was sensitive. As he glanced about him he fancied that fellows were looking at him and whispering (they were, of course, doing nothing of the kind), "Stocky Cole's no good this year. He played a rotten game this afternoon. . . ."

The ginger-beer was as sawdust in his mouth, the doughnuts heavy and jamless. He was in the general press, and someone was breathing stertorously down his ear, and someone else was digging a sharp elbow into his back. He was stiff and sore after the game. Someone that afternoon had kicked him on the back of his head.

Then he heard, quite plainly, so that it was impossible to mistake it, the opprobrious epithet, "Farmer! Farmer!" and then, also unmistakable: "Who has to get up early to milk the cows?"

He tried to turn round sharply to confront the insulter, but he could not shake himself free. When at last, all the angrier because of the delay, he worked his body about and glared on every side, no one seemed to be looking his way.

But there, not far from him, were Crumb and Baldock, two of Staire's most devoted adjutants. He stared at them, waiting for them to take up his challenge, but they were busied with ginger-beer. He fancied that they were laughing at him, but he could prove nothing.

Longing to be enraged with something or somebody, he grunted to Payne:

"I'm sick of this; I'm going"; and slipped away.

4

This anger of his had a strange result. He went to the Study and found no one there. It was as cold and desolate as the grave. He looked at his table, and a dreary, naked and ink-soiled affair it was. He felt an urgent need to assert himself, to do something aggressive and defiant. He'd give them "Farmer," and show them how much he cared for their opinion! The back of his head ached and he had eaten too many doughnuts too quickly. So he went to his play-box and fetched out Uncle Samuel's picture.

He felt an instant's dismay when he looked at it. It certainly was rum. He turned it up and turned it down. He brushed the glass with his hand and dusted the frame with his very dirty handkerchief. It was a nice frame. That was, on the whole, the best thing that you could say about it. Why did Uncle Samuel paint like that? He couldn't really think that that was the way things looked. After all, sheep had tails and legs; and why was the field so red and the trees so purple, and what was that violet splodge right in the picture's middle?

Looking at it, he nearly returned it to the play-box. Then his obstinacy supported him. There was no other fellow in the whole school had a picture like that.

So he came with it and set it up on the table.

Somehow, there in the room, it didn't look so bad. It made a nice spot of bright colour. Then he saw, propped up in a corner, two letters. One was from his mother and the other, by a strange coincidence, was from Uncle Samuel himself. Uncle Samuel wrote to him often. Very odd letters, if you could call them letters; they were more like diaries, or yet more as though Uncle Samuel was talking there in the room. They were written on rough bits of paper and began in the middle instead of like most letters at the beginning. As did this one:

Because I have a cold is no reason why your sister Helen should interrupt my work by offering me quinine. Your sister Helen is always doing things for other people that she may add to her own glory. Mind you, I don't say that that isn't the reason that most people do things for other people; but Helen is, at present, young and hasn't yet learnt to hide her motives. I have one of those dripping colds and I hate being asked as to how it is getting on--which your mother, kind soul, is for ever doing.

Your mother, I may tell you, is missing you, and I suggest that next Sunday you write a little more than your usual blotty scribble with no news in it. You cling too nakedly to bald facts. Facts are nothing. Any fact, if stared bravely in the face, will turn out not to be a fact at all. Believe me. Your uncle knows. Anyway, try and write to your mother as though you were a human being and not a jam-eating, football-playing automaton.

How are you enjoying yourself? Are you proud of your Study? Shall I send you a picture for it? I have three. You can choose. One is of your sister Mary reading a book. No one thinks it a good likeness, but I don't mind that because Mary is not actually in the picture; but she would be reading a book if she were. So that's all right. The second one is of "Cattle Drinking." One of my best. A nice arrangement in greens and blues. The cattle are blue and what they are drinking is green--not very healthy for them, but then cattle, I understand, can drink anything. The third is simply called "Sunrise." As you've always been too lazy to get up when the sun is rising, your criticisms will be meaningless to me. Your father thinks it's a football match, but as your father has never seen a football match, that's an easy mistake for him to make. Just write and say which you'd like.

Now I must tell you that your uncle is going to show his pictures all by himself in London. The London swells have invited him to do so and are taking all the risks, and people will pay sixpence to come in. Just think! You've been able to see all these pictures for nothing for ever so long and now everyone is going to pay sixpence! There's glory for you! Your father can't understand it. He'd pay sixpence not to see them. But there it is. It's an odd world and there are a great many different coloured fish in the sea.

I must also tell you that there's been a strange dog haunting our house and he's very like that late lamented hound Hamlet. He's just as ugly, but seems to have less conceit. He has appeared now three times, looking in at us through the gate. Your sister Mary has tried to lure him in with a bone, but it's you that he's looking for, I imagine. If I get a chance to speak to him, I'll tell him where you are, and perhaps he'll come along and see you.

Canon Ronder condescended to come and have a meal with us the other day. You should have seen the fuss! He's very fat and enjoys his food. He even drank your father's dreadful wine with gusto. He invited himself in to see my pictures and said he liked them, but I don't think he's a sincere man. The women all adore him, but you can take it from me that there's something wrong with a man whom women adore. He's a great swell with us now--ever since Brandon died. You can see that I don't like him. He's too neatly dressed for me.

And what else is there? Nothing, I think. My cold is dripping all over the paper. Now see that you write your mother a nice letter. And you can write me a short one, too. I say a short one because I've no time to read a long one. If your sister Helen offers me quinine again I shall strike her. Your sister Mary is writing a story and is turning blue all over because she licks her pencil so often.

Your loving Uncle

SAMUEL.

Jeremy had a spasm of homesickness when he read this letter. Lots of fellows he knew would think that an exceedingly silly letter, but for himself it had the effect of drawing him straight as though with a magnet into the scene that in spite of its many drawbacks he loved so well, the steep incline of Orange Street, the statue with its coat-tails, the green and leafy lanes leading right and left into the country, the cathedral towers with the sun on them, the house with the gate, and the conservatory with the coloured glass, the hall, and then Uncle Samuel's bare, sunlit room and himself, stubby and thick in his blue painting smock. . . .

Four or five boys burst in shouting and laughing, Gauntlet, Staire's friends Crumb and Baldock and--good heavens!--Staire himself!

Jeremy realized at once that he was in the presence of the enemy, and he stiffened and bristled all over like a dog.

"Hullo, Cole!" Then they busied themselves with something that Gauntlet had to show them. Jeremy sat at his table, pretending to read, but in reality alert, vibrating with wariness.

Gauntlet talked with the voice that he always used for those whom he wished to please--a little self-deprecatory, a little flattering, a little eagerly pleasant.

"Oh, it isn't much," he was saying. "I've got better than that at home, but of course, Staire, you'd know more about that kind of thing. My governor collected drawings. He did really. He used to have ever so many, then he got tired of them and sold them."

Jeremy wasn't looking, but he knew that Staire was as conscious of himself as he was of Staire.

He could tell this by the pitch of Staire's voice. And although he wasn't looking, yet he could tell just how Staire was standing there, aloof, condescending, patronizing them all. How he loathed him!

Staire talked about his father rather as though no one had ever had a father before. He gave Gauntlet's possessions his benevolent blessing.

Then they turned round and considered Marlowe's marvellous desk. Staire didn't think much of it. He'd seen many better. Still, it wasn't bad. Pretty swanky a fellow like The Sheep bringing a thing like that. Who did he think he was? Followed anecdotes about The Sheep, humorous and very unkind.

Then they turned to Jeremy. "Hullo, Cole--working?"

"Yes," said Jeremy.

"Resting after your football labours?" said Staire, and Crumb and Baldock tittered. Jeremy read on.

"Play a decent game this afternoon?" Staire inquired politely.

"Oh, shut it!" Jeremy growled. "Clear out, can't you?"

"Clear out!" said Staire. "Sorry we're in the way, but Gauntlet happened to have asked us in. His study as well as yours, I believe."

Jeremy said nothing.

"How did our young half play this afternoon?" Staire went on.

Crumb and Baldock, who wanted to hang on to the outskirts of the fray rather than figure as its centre, giggled again but said nothing.

"I'm told he was not so good," Staire continued. "Rather mucked the thing up, I'm told. Of course, if a scrum-half funks going down to the ball . . ."

"I didn't funk," Jeremy growled.

"My mistake. I wasn't there, of course. Only what I was told." Then he saw the picture.

"Good heavens! What's that?" They all crowded forward.

"Is this a picture that I see before me?" Staire stood back and struck an attitude. "Certainly it's got a frame, but otherwise . . . Dear me, Cole, is that your effort?"

"Oh, shut up!" Jeremy, red with anger, swung round. "You think you're awfully funny, don't you, Staire? Well, you aren't. Not funny at all."

But the picture was delighting them all.

"And what is this picture of?" Staire inquired politely. "I ought to know, but I don't. Perhaps it's the wrong way up!"

Jeremy then made a mistake. "It's sheep in a field," he said suddenly, seeing Uncle Samuel standing there at his side, close to him.

Roars of delight greeted this remark. "Sheep! Oh, I say. Look at the sheep! Come and look at the sheep!"

Jeremy sprang round upon them. He was angry enough anyway, but especially he was angry because it seemed that Uncle Samuel was standing there, hair dishevelled, paint on his cheek and saying to his young nephew: "That's a pretty good picture. You'll know one day. . . ."

"Look here! You leave this alone. What business is it of yours? Who asked your opinion?"

But it had gone beyond the private view.

"Sheep! Sheep! Come and look at Stocky's sheep! Anyone want some sheep! Baa! Baa! Sheep! Sheep!"

Baldock was closest, so Jeremy gave him a shove. Crumb made a snatch at the picture, and Jeremy made for him, hurling his body at him like a catapult.

Crumb fell over Jeremy, on top of him.

The Study door was open, and because it was approaching First Prep. multitudes of boys were thronging the passage.

Voices were shouting, "Sheep! Sheep! Baa! Baa! Baa!" Jeremy's table went over with a crash, then Gauntlet's. Faces were crowding the doorway. "What's up? What's the matter?"

Jeremy had pulled himself up from the floor, and, feeling now nothing but a Berserk rage, seeing only blindly in a confusion of dust and clothes and hair, seeking for Staire that he might pound his body into a fine jelly, hysterically shouted:

"Yah! Yah! Goats! Goats! Who's a dirty goat! Yak! Yak! Yak!"

This "Yak!" (destined to become so famous a war-cry) was evolved on the spur of the occasion and was compounded of anger, breathlessness, dust in the mouth, and once again, anger.

"What's up? What's the matter! . . . Come on, Stocky Cole's being murdered! Baa! Baa! Baa!"

Bodies tumbled, hurtling into the passage. Boys, passing, were carried into the conflict before they knew where they were. Others, attracted by the splendid noise, hurried up. It had been a day on the whole inclining to dullness. "Look out where you're going! Who are you barging? Sheep! Sheep! Goats! Goats! . . . What is it? What's the game? Baa! Baa! Baa!"

And now the passage, narrow and straitened as it was, held a fighting, struggling mass. Like the lovers at the close of the second act of the "Meistersinger," Baldock and Crumb and Gauntlet had crept away, but Staire, who, to do him justice, loved a fight, was in full, struggling glory, shrieking curses, and Jeremy, fighting his way to him, his collar waving like a flag, was hitting right and left, shouting his battle-cry.

The noise was fearful. Behind the battle the Study, deserted and peaceful as a tomb, surveyed the evening sky.

The dust rose, the clamour echoed to the sky; small boys were trodden upon, big peace-loving boys were struck in the wind and fell gasping against the wall; warriors strode forward not knowing why they fought, but loving the conflict for its own good sake; buttons flew, collars erupted, shirts were rent, private feuds received a new lease of splendid life. "Baa! Baa! Baa! Yak! Yak! Yak!"

Shrieking voices carried the challenges, knowing nothing of what they conveyed.

Then a stronger cry than all arose.

"Paddy! Paddy! 'ware Paddy!"

In an instant of time figures were fleeing in every direction. In another instant the passage was empty. Carrying forward once again the Meistersinger's story, Leeson, his own Nightwatchman, appeared.

Not a soul to be seen.

Silence!

The bell clanged out for First Prep.