Читать книгу Harmer John - Hugh Walpole - Страница 15

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However tightly I stretch out the quivering elastic of my memories, I can summon up no vision of a time when I was not conscious of our Cathedral.

When I was very small it came to me with two quite separate personalities, the distant, magical, mysterious one, an animal with grey ears, a ship with silver masts, a box ruby-coloured, a net salmon-tinted, always above the town, separated from it, swinging with its own life in space—the other the long shining distending nave with its slippery floor, down which our family, always late, would self-consciously clatter, the heads on either side turning as we moved, the verger undoing the cord for us, the pause, the choir slipping past, the cold clear voice of the Precentor.

It was not until I was much older that the inside of the church approached me—and that on a never-forgotten day when, having nothing to do, urged by the lovely evening to wait a moment before going home, I slipped in, was caught by the grey cloud of the dusky walls and pillars, and then saw, suddenly flaming, the windows near the King’s Chapel, all six of them, the windows known as “the Virgin and the Children.” These were, with the exception of the great Rose window at the East end, the oldest in the Cathedral. In one of them the Virgin Mary, in a purple gown, bent down over a field of lilies to watch the baby Christ at play; in another the Christ and St. John paddled in a stream while Mary watched them from the windows of a crooked house set in a cup of hills; in another children were running in a crowd after a white kid and Mary held back her Son, who stretched out his arms after his playmates; in another Joseph was in the workshop, Jesus was sitting on the floor looking up, and the Virgin, in a dress of vivid green, stood over him, guarding him; in another they were walking, Father, Mother and Child, up the steps of the Temple, watched by a group of grave old men; in another Jesus was playing at his Mother’s feet, while an ox, an ass and three strange dogs with large black eyes seemed to be protecting them.

On this late afternoon the sun lit the windows with a rage of colour, and every detail of colour was visible to me. More than the central figures the detail of the backgrounds fascinated me, the little roads winding into purple hills, the stiff trees so vividly green, the white castles like toys on craggy rocks, little boys with networks of shipping, and then suddenly the colour was so intense—the purple, the green, the crimson, the pale silver white, the dark ruby red—that I lost the detail and seemed to swim through the dusk of the darkening church on a jewelled carpet to heaven.

From that day the Cathedral was mine; I seemed to know it all, from the Black Bishop’s tomb with its wonderful green stone to the smallest babyest cherub hiding in the right-hand corner of the monument to Henry, eighth Marquis of Brytte.

The history of that monument was a strange one. Henry, eighth Marquis of Brytte, the last of his family, the oldest perhaps of all Glebeshire’s great families, spent the last years of his long life at Brytte Court, ten miles from Polchester, and died in 1735. He had done many things during his lifetime for our town, which he loved, and, of course, we gave him a monument. A curious thing happened. A local artist was discovered, a young man Simon Petre, a protégé of the old Marquis, who, learning of the boy’s talent, had sent him to London, Paris and finally to Italy. He came back a sculptor of fine promise. His benefactor’s monument was his first public commission. He worked at it for a year and a half and died of some queer fever a week or two after finishing it. He was a poet too, young Simon Petre, and a writer of no mean prose. After his death a little memoir with some poems and an Italian diary were published. The book has vanished now, but I have a copy, The Life and Remains of Simon Petre, London, 1739—a small brown book stamped in thin gold. There are some curious things in that Italian diary and one little section—“A Florentine Adventure”—that may one day be republished—curious and unusual at least, saturated with the decadent colour of that place at that period.

I, of course, had never been to Italy when I decided that for myself the “Virgin and Children” windows and the Brytte Monument were the loveliest things in our Cathedral. It is certain, though, that Mino da Fiesole himself would not disdain the babies crowding at the head and feet of the recumbent figure—the loveliest babies, some laughing, some grave, one with his finger on his lips, one looking back, calling to his friend, two bending forward, their chubby fingers on one another’s shoulders—adorable, adorable babies making perfect the delicacy of the lace-like background, the strength and dignity of the simple figure, the symmetry and pattern of the wings of the guarding Angel.

In this thing at least Johanson and I were one—it was this monument that at once won his heart.

One of the most mysterious elements in the whole of his story is his connection with the Cathedral. After tradition had set to work and had piled absurdity on absurdity it became the habit to acclaim him a kind of St. George defending the Cathedral from its many foes. I believe the truth to be exactly the opposite. His religion was Protestant of the plainest, simplest kind; he repeatedly exclaimed against what seemed to him the falseness and flummery of the Cathedral life, but what caught him, I fancy, was its Past, its beautiful, romantic, fighting, poignant Past.

He found here, as he had found nowhere in his own Scandinavia, the work of the craftsman, striving with his hands to make Beauty for the World that he loved. He found it in the floor, in the roof, in the pillars, in the windows, in the Cloisters, in the Bishop’s tomb, in the Brytte Monument—in the Brytte Monument above all. That must have been, at his first vision of it, as though it had stepped straight out of his beloved “Donatello” book (Donatello, by Lord Balcarres, Duckworth, 1903). And then when behind the sight of it he learnt the history of young Simon Petre, it must have seemed to him as though here, right before his eyes, was the very example of native craftsmanship for which he had been longing ever since he set foot in our town. A boy of the town, born and bred here, returning to it, doing his first work in the heart of it and for very love of it, and doing it so beautifully too! I believe that from the moment when he heard the history of young Simon Petre he felt that that same boy was at his side, caring for him, encouraging him, urging him on.... Something that he said afterwards, just before the end, to Mary Longstaffe ... but that is a later story.

On a certain day he lunched with the Rev. Thomas at St. Paul’s Rectory and went with him afterwards to a football match—a day that they were never, either of them, to forget.

Leaving the Choir School, where he had been drilling the choir boys for a most strenuous hour, he looked into the Cathedral for one moment before going on to the Rectory.

The nave was deserted save for three visitors, who were being conducted by Cobbett, the Verger, seventy years of age now, as brisk as a young bee, but with some of the pomposity proper to his office.

He knew Johanson by this time and greeted him with fitting dignity. He liked Johanson. The fellow made no fuss, was always cheery and respected Cobbett’s office. Moreover, Cobbett’s youngest was at the Choir School and was already ecstatic over Johanson’s physical prowess.

“This,” he said to the three visitors, a burly man, a timid woman and a little girl with creaking shoes, “is known as the Brytte Monument. A work in commemoration of Henry, eighth Marquis of Brytte....”

They gaped, gasped, and moved on. Soon the only sound was the creaking shoes of the little girl. A faint, very faint, breeze seemed to whisper round the dim corners of the distant pillars. The floor was like a lake, the colours from the “Virgin” windows faintly staining it. Johanson held his breath, staring up at the clustering babies until they seemed to move, to turn towards him, smiling, inviting him.

Oh! if only things turned out as he hoped, what would he not do here, for the town, for the Cathedral, perchance for England! It had all begun so marvellously, he coming as a stranger, swept into the town, as it were, by a torrent of rain—

He drew himself up and a prayer formed in his heart, a prayer without words, and he felt again an ecstatic vision, of worship towards the beauty that he felt in the world, of humility in the face of his own capacities, of happiness because every one was so good to him. He liked to be liked, he liked to have friends, he liked to be moving in tune with the life around him; he felt an intense gratitude because of the love in the world.

“I’ll do my best,” the words formed in his heart. “I’ll work as I have never worked before—I’ll spare nothing—I’ll give myself utterly. I have found at last the work that I was put into the world to do.”

And before he turned away he seemed to hear the friendly voice in his ear of that strange young man, and to see at his side the thin face, the burning eyes....

He left the Cathedral and went through Bodger’s Street and Green Lane to St. Paul’s.

Old Hephzibah looked after Tom Longstaffe like a cat after her only kitten. She was a short stout woman with the coal-black hair that one so often finds in Glebeshire people, an inheritance from those ancestors who once invaded the Glebeshire shores in their pirate ships and put the Glebeshire wastes to fire and sword and then settled there and begat children of the women they spared.

Warm of heart, irascible, impetuous and untidy, Hephzibah made of the Rectory a haystack. Nothing was in its right place, and Tom was too busy to care. The two men sat down to a meal that was dumped down on the table anyhow. They didn’t notice. They had other things to think about. Tom was in tremendous spirits and very soon he gave his friend the reason.

“My girl’s coming home next week,” he said. He paused, suddenly looking sharply at Johanson. This was the first time that he had mentioned his girl to his friend. Johanson must have heard some gossip. This thing was nearer to his heart than anything else in the world. What would Johanson say?

Johanson had heard nothing. His face lit up.

“You have a daughter? You never told me.”

“I was waiting until we had a time really alone. My girl is more to me than all the rest of the world put together. She’s been living in London for seven years. She’s very clever. She’s a journalist and makes a good income.”

“She’s all alone in London?”

“She has a boy of six.”

“What does her husband do?”

“She’s not married.”

The colour rose in Longstaffe’s face. “I’m prouder of her, Johanson, than I can ever say. Don’t you make any mistake about that. She lived here with me, of course. We were splendid together, never a cross word, perfect confidence, love such as father and daughter can seldom have had. She met a young fellow, son of an Army officer here. She told me something about it. I was pleased because I liked the boy. But his father had great ambitions for him, and wouldn’t consent to an engagement. I should have stopped her then perhaps seeing him, but I couldn’t. She loved him so, and I thought the old man was coming round. He was, I think. No one could resist Mary once they knew her. Then the boy was killed in an accident. A month later Mary told me that she was going to have a baby.”

“Poor girl, poor girl!” said Johanson.

“Then we had our first difference—the first in all our lives together. Mary was happy. She stayed on here, not caring what any one said or thought. She said she was glad that he had left something of himself that she could keep. That he would always be with her through the child.... The people here, of course, were very hostile. I had my own struggle. She had committed, by my own lights of everything in which I had been taught to believe, a great sin. I tried to speak to her of that, but I broke down. She seemed suddenly to know so much more of life than I. And if you love some one truly, how can you change, especially if they are in trouble and disgrace?

“But she felt after a time that she was doing me harm here, my church and my congregation. So she went away. Her baby was born, a boy. She lived in London and began to write, and, as I say, has been very successful. I needn’t tell you, Johanson, how I’ve missed her—it’s been an agony sometimes—but I wouldn’t press her to come back. I couldn’t, when I knew of the way they might treat her here. But at last she has insisted. She is coming back with the boy next week.”

The look that the two men exchanged settled their friendship. It had its birth in that first moment of meeting, that misty day in the Cathedral Precincts, it had had its growth through their happy and easy comradeship of the last few weeks, now it was certain. No separation of time or place could change it.

“My heartliest thanks for telling me,” Johanson said. “It will be fine to know her.”

After the meal Longstaffe took his friend over the house. It was one of those old rambling spidery houses that are so especially English, and then still more especially Glebeshire. In the upper rooms there was a smell of apples and candle-grease. In the attics there were torn wall-papers and supplements from the Christmas numbers tacked on to the walls, and out of the attic windows there were views of Polchester, smoky orange in the spring weather, with the Cathedral sailing through the air. The house was a mess. Fine though Hephzibah was, the house was a mess. Longstaffe’s bedroom was sad to see—drawers were half opened, ties like tongues, collars like yawns hanging from them. Over the back of the chair clothes were tumbled, shaving things, the brush soapy, the razor gaping for a fresh victim, were lying loosely on the dressing-table.

“I beg your pardon,” said Tom Longstaffe, “I oughtn’t to have brought you in here.”

Instantly Johanson was busy. The drawers were closed, the clothes were folded and put away, the shaving things were in their case.

He stopped in the middle of the room, his face flushed. “I do beg your pardon. I had no right to do that. I could not bear to see that confusion. It hurts. How can you live like that?”

Longstaffe looked rather like a scolded school-boy. Then suddenly he roared with laughter.

“Fancy you,” he cried, “a man of your size putting those things away. You’re right, of course. I’ve lived in the most awful mess here for years. I’ve never thought about it. But it’s the last thing I expected you to do.”

Johanson suddenly came across to Longstaffe and putting his hands under his shoulders lifted him into the air.

“You’re getting fat,” he said. He put him down. “You’re having stomach.”

Longstaffe shook himself. “By Jove, you’re strong—and yet you put those clothes away like a fussy old bachelor.”

“No, I’m not fussy. But untidiness, I hate it. It makes dirt. This house, I should wash it all down with soap and water.” He suddenly looked anxiously at Longstaffe. “You aren’t angry? I don’t think first. I do something and then I think afterwards. I will be in trouble one day for that.” He put his hands on Longstaffe’s shoulders: “You’re not angry?”

“Angry?” said Longstaffe. “Why, I think you’re the best fellow I ever met.”

They started off for the football match. Johanson and Tom Longstaffe were both very simple men. Longstaffe had that simplicity that is often to be met with in clergymen who have lived good and pure lives, and who are not mentally very subtle, who believe utterly in the dogmas of their religion, who have lived for a long period in a rather remote place. They are moved by feeling rather than thought, and their feelings are direct, honest, and, as a rule, uncomplicated.

The problems that Longstaffe had hitherto in his life been compelled to face, his problems of love, friendship and belief, would have soon been constructed into complicated shapes had a subtle brain worked on them, but Longstaffe’s brain was not subtle. He had that confidence in God which a small child feels for his mother, and so all his earthly life was simplified.

Johanson was like Longstaffe in many ways, the reason perhaps of the beginning of their friendship, and was unlike him in many more, the reason undoubtedly of its continuance. In some things he had not developed since he was a boy of fifteen, in his faith in human nature, in his naïve pleasure in his physical strength, in his sudden angers and instant after-forgetfulness of any grudge, in his impetuous enthusiasms, in his generosity, in his sudden distresses and equally sudden joys—in all these things he was a boy. But he had a nature capable of far deeper complications than his friend’s. He had the soul of the artist, and therefore would know suffering, failure, strange longing, deep loneliness, passionate regret, exquisite happiness as Longstaffe would never know them. He had in him the artist’s complex of woman and man, masculine absolutely in his physical self and its nature, feminine often in comprehension, sympathy, and the longing for something that he would never attain. His mixed blood, too, had flooded him with an imagination that Longstaffe’s English blood would never know. There were also his dreams.

The two men moved up the hill, past the Monument, out on to the road above the town. The day was one of a little group that marked the end of winter and the beginning of spring. The trees were yet bare, but from their heart there seemed to steal a faint pink flush as though the sap that throbbed in their veins prompted them already to some timid expression of their approaching beauty. They stretched out their arms to a sky of blue washed with water, and in this lake of thin colour shapes of cloud-like swans floated gently, aimlessly, now in concert, now singly, now fading, with an almost audible whisper of farewell, into some farther silence. The fields and the grass and moss in the hedges were of a bright sharp colour, not yet fully green, but accentuated as though painted on china. Here and there a primrose, a yellow eye, peeped out, wondering whether the world were yet ready for its full approach. The road was hard and rang beneath the men’s feet, but here, too, there was promise of warmth and running sap beneath the yielding frost.

When they reached the turn of the road both men instinctively looked back. Polchester, like a child’s collection of coloured bricks huddled into a green basket, lay below them; from its heart, a pennon of blue, the Pol streamed out to the hills and the Cathedral rode over all.

“You wouldn’t believe,” said Longstaffe, “how I love that place! After Mary, it is everything in this world to me. And you wouldn’t believe either,” he added, “the intrigues and plots and cabals that are going on there.”

“You see it too close,” Johanson said. “Look at it from above and get your real picture. You must not be too near to a man, you see only his waistcoat buttons. How beautiful that place is! I am a man in luck to have found my home at last.”

“And do you really feel this town in which you have been only a few weeks to be your home more than the country in which you have spent all your life?”

“I do so. We have all of us a dream-town, and my one was to be always in England. You see, I loved my mother, and she, because she were an exile, would always talk of England as of Paradise, and it was this England that she talked about, the high deep hedges, the grey cottages hanging with their toes to the sliding hills, the sea on both sides, so narrow that one big wave could sweep the country, the salt smell in the breeze, the women with their black hair.... And my father was a bad man, so that his country seemed unkind to me and unfriendly. He were bad because he could not help himself; his lusts was so strong. He must have a woman every minute, and always a new one, never the same one twice. He did not care what he did to them, and yet my mother loved him, always, to the very last of his life. She said she liked him bad better than other men good. It were well, she said sometimes, that he was so bad, because if he were good she would die at once of such happiness. She said he was good, an angel, just for two weeks after their marriage—wonderful—and those two weeks was enough to have made living worth while. English-women, I am sure, are very patient.”

They were moving now between thick, high hedges that hid all the world from them.

“Tell me,” said Longstaffe, “did you always, since you were very small, mean to come to England?”

“Yes, always. I cannot remember the time when I did not dream of it. I used to lead always two lives: the one that had my father in it and earning my living, and all the daily Stockholm life—that was fun, especially when we went out to the Islands, and in the summer when we was all day in the water ... and the other when I would try to draw and paint and make things out of coloured paper and ask my mother questions, and then at night I’d dream!”

“So you’re a painter too?” Longstaffe asked.

“No. I hadn’t any gift. It was because I had not that I determined to do what I might with my body. My strength seemed the best thing I had. First, I was a model for artists, and then a painter took interest in me and paid for my lessons in massage and gymnastics. But it was not until I went to Copenhagen that I saw really what I wanted.”

“Don’t the Danes hate the Swedes?” asked Longstaffe.

“Oh, hate! No. That’s too much of a thing. But you know what it is when people lives close to one another—they see the spots. But they was kind to me in Copenhagen. Very kind. The Danes are jolly people—they drink and laugh and make love all the time. I soon had plenty of work—much as I could do. And good work. The doctors they liked me and sent me their patients. And I had work with the schools, too. And many friends. I was very happy.”

“And, if it isn’t impertinent, how was it you didn’t marry?” Longstaffe asked.

“I was too busy. Always I wanted to make enough to come to England and see the place where mother was born. I hadn’t time to be in love. There was the beginnings, yes, of course. The Danish women are very jolly, and they understand love, but when it came to something serious—I had no time. I had a nice flat out in Amager, and I worked from six in the morning until eleven at night. I can tell you I was tired sometimes.

“Then one day a strange thing occurred. One day I was walking by the shops and I saw a blue plate—one of those deep blues like the sea. I thought it was the most beautiful colour I’d ever seen. It wasn’t glass, it were some sort of clay. I bought it and took it home.

“I put it on the mantelpiece of my sitting-room, and before it had been there half an hour the mantelpiece looked shabby, so I went out and bought two pictures—prints of Copenhagen. In the evening I was looking up at that plate, and the rug in front of the fire were so faded I was properly ashamed of it. So in the morning I went out and bought a new rug, a good one, purple colour to go with the plate. Then I had a terrible time. Everything in the room looked wrong by that rug—old shabby things, no sort of use. I cleared them all out. The room was bare. I whitewashed the walls. I put my money together and bought a Zorn etching. It was like a fever, then. It spread to my other rooms, then my clothes, then the view out of my windows. My flat looked on to a blank wall. I changed the flat and got another that looked over the water and the trees. Then one day in a bookshop window I saw a book open, and one page had Donatello’s ‘David,’ and the other one of his prophets for the Florence Cathedral. I couldn’t forget that prophet all day. I went back the next morning and bought the book. That morning my life changed. I said, why shouldn’t it be now once again in the world as it was then—why shouldn’t we build towns in which everything was beautiful, lovely streets, wonderful statues?

“And I thought of England and that town my mother had talked about with the Cathedral, and I swore that one day I would go there and would live there and work there, and—and—here I am!”

He stretched out his arms. “And I’m happy. I’ve found my work and my life, and every one are kind to me, and already I make a living. Oh! how fortunate I have been!”

“And you don’t feel,” Longstaffe asked, “any sense of exile? You’re not home-sick?”

“No; how can I be? Is not this my home? Was not my mother born here? And for that is not the world my home? Will I not go afterwards to Italy and China and Spain and see all the wonderful things men before me have made? All the world is my home.”

Once again Longstaffe felt as he had done when first he had heard his friend talking to Ronder—a wish to warn him that this place into which he had come was not so simple and that these people with whom he had chosen to live were neither so straightforward nor so unsophisticated. But he could not. He could say nothing. It might be that after all Johanson was seeing them more truly than he. He had lived in the place so long. He had his prejudices; especially he had them since Mary’s disgrace. What if Johanson after all did make the place different, the place and every one in it? Did not people become what you thought them? And might not some one as genuine and sincere as this man ... ?

But Ronder. And Bentinck-Major. And the Bishop. And men in the town like that rogue Hogg. He would wait. At least Johanson had made a good beginning. The Town, conservative to its core about foreigners, nevertheless liked him. He heard nothing but good reports of him. Every one seemed to be glad that he had come. He would leave it alone and wait.

They had walked on a little while in silence when Johanson said:

“Do you ever dream?”

“Dream?” Longstaffe laughed. “Too busy.”

“No, but I mean at night. Do you ever have the same dream again and again?”

“Why, I have a nightmare sometimes if I’ve been working too late or eating something.”

“No, not a nightmare. A happy dream. The vision of a place—a house, a garden. Always the same house, very quiet, very beautiful. Somewhere that is yours more than anything in real life is, something so quiet and so still—”

Their road suddenly joined the other road from the town, the St. Mary’s Road, and they were caught in a throng of men and boys who were going up to the football. Some one spoke to Longstaffe. They were no longer alone.

They arrived at the field where the game was, passed through the gate, paid their sixpences and walked forward.

Along the centre of one side there was a rough-and-ready stand, but most of the company were lining up beside the ropes and Johanson and Longstaffe did the same. They had scarcely taken their places when the teams ran out on to the field.

“It’s South versus North Glebeshire,” Longstaffe explained. “A very important game. It’s the last of the season, a return match. The North won in the game before Christmas, but only just, twelve points to nine, so we’re bent on winning this time.”

Johanson had never seen a game of Rugby football before. They played plenty of Association in Scandinavia, and he was himself a good player. At once, when the Southern forwards had kicked off and charged down the field, he sniffed the air, his heart began to pound and his fingers to twitch. It was always so when he watched any game. It was the same, too, with Longstaffe, and it was as though the one electric current ran through the bodies of the two men, eagerly hanging forward over the rope, pressed shoulder to shoulder.

Johanson very quickly picked up the main points of the game, helped by Longstaffe. The principle was the same as in all the other games in the world. At first the frequent blowing of the referee’s whistle and the many ensuing “scrums” troubled him, but from the moment, about ten minutes after the start, when the Southern three-quarters started down the field slinging the ball from man to man, his excitement knew no bounds. He stamped with his feet and shouted, crying, “Splendid! Splendid! Good! Very good! Bravo!”

Longstaffe too was shouting like a man possessed, his little twisted face purple: “Go on! Run yourself! Don’t pass, Coppy! Keep it! Keep it, you fool ...” and then his voice suddenly dropping, “What did he pass for? He’d have got in if he’d held on!”

“Yes, damned fool,” said a youth next to Longstaffe, sucking a straw. “It was young Coppy let us down the last blasted time. Got a match, mister?”

“That was fine,” Johanson cried, his face flushed, his feet still tapping the ground.

“We ought to get over now,” Longstaffe said excitedly, “we’re right on their line.”

Johanson felt, as he had felt so often before in his life, that surge of vitality that almost forbade him to stand where he was.

As he stared at the straining backs and thighs of the pushing, struggling scrums he wanted to rush into the field and shove too. Several boys and young men were running up to the far end of the field to see better what was occurring, and his impulse was to run with them. But he held on to the ropes, leaning forward, the men on either side of him yelling, “Shove them over! Shove the b——s over! You’ve got them! You’ve got them, by G——!”

But the South had not got them. The Northern back ran in and relieved by a long kick into touch, and the men came streaming down the field.

As the players came towards mid-field Johanson noticed in the Northern team one of the three-quarters—the merest boy—and suddenly he was deeply sympathetic to him. He looked younger and slighter than any other man on the ground, and in his face was a look of eager, almost bitter, determination which Johanson understood exactly.

This was perhaps his first important game, it meant almost everything to him, and so far not a chance had come his way. It might be that he had been put into the team at the last moment as a substitute and was being watched and criticised by the men behind the rope and knew that it was so. He was outside wing on the far side of the field and the ball would not come his way. Then suddenly it was swinging in his direction. The inside wing, getting it, seemed to hesitate as to whether he would go on himself, then, a Southern three-quarter coming for him, at the last moment, before he fell, slung it out to the boy.

The young fellow was off. He had slipped his opposing “three” and now had a clear course, running like slipping water, just inside the touch line. Oh, he could run! and Johanson was glad. Five minutes before he had been shouting for the Southerners, but now, although it was a Northern three-quarter who had the ball, once again, crimson in the face, he was shouting, “Well done! Bravo! Splendid! Splendid!”

The Southern full-back was after him, made a dash for his knees, missed them, went sprawling. The boy was over and, unopposed, touched the ball down between the posts.

There was a roar from the Northern supporters. Johanson roared too.

“Well, you’re a nice one,” said Longstaffe. “You’re a Southerner. What are you shouting North for?”

“I’m very sorry,” said Johanson, “I couldn’t help it. He wanted his chance and he could run. Oh, he could! Bravo! Bravo!”

The kick for goal failed: the game went on for a while in the middle of the field, the whistle blew and it was halftime. The teams moved about sucking lemons, lying on their backs, kicking the lemon-peel....

There was a hush, and the sun, and the pale sky, and a March wind blowing across the ground suddenly seemed to enter the field like new spectators.

Longstaffe put his hand through Johanson’s arm:

“Enjoying yourself?”

“Should just think so.”

“That’s right. We’ll come to lots more games together. I am glad you’ve come to this town. It’s not that I’ve been lonely exactly these last years. Oh, well I have, if you want to know. It’s strange, but I can talk to you more easily than to most of my own countrymen.”

“Yes. I can to you.”

“It’s as though we had known one another all our lives.”

Johanson pressed Longstaffe’s arm. “We’ll stick together always—just like this. It don’t matter what shall happen. I have always thought it should be the finest thing in the whole world to have a man friend whom nothing can alter. Love—that is something different. It comes—it goes. Now it is up, now it is down. But friendship is a steady thing. It is always there. You must not for ever be looking to see whether it grows or dies. I have never had a real man friend before.”

It seemed to him as he looked across the field that everything had suddenly been given to him. Home, ambition, work, friendship—and love? At that he caught his breath. The figures, talking their places for the second half, were blurred. Was that the true reason for all his happiness to-day? Was he at last, after all these years, in love? He saw the girl moving before him with that tantalising glance, that eye suddenly soft and appealing, the yellow hair.... His happiness was suddenly confused. He did not know that he wanted to be in love. Work and friendship, those were straightforward things that he understood. But this—there was some hint of danger in it. It seemed suddenly to thicken the pure austerity of the work that he had before him. But could he deny it? If it came to him, could he refuse it? And why should he? Would not a home and children be the best thing for him?

His happiness was changed. His eyes were no longer on the game. He did not notice that, as is the way with March weather, a little wind had come up and with it a flurry of thin rain driving in thin silver lines about the field. A cloud reached out and caught the sun. Men on every side were turning up their coat collars.

He realised that some one was speaking to Longstaffe, and, turning, saw that it was that stout, red-faced fellow who had come in on that first evening at Mrs. Penethen’s. He was smiling. He stretched out his hand.

“Good-day, Mr. Johnson. You won’t remember me. We met some weeks ago. Seen you about the streets occasionally.”

“How do you do?” Johanson shook his hand, which was soft and warm.

“Fine game!”

“Yes, it is.”

“Ever seen our Rugby before?”

“No, never.”

“Ah! must be interesting for you?”

“Yes, very.”

“Glad to hear you’re doing so well. Must come in one day and ’ave some exercises. Take down some of my fat.”

Johanson said nothing. The man nodded and moved on.

Johanson said to Longstaffe, “That man came into Mrs. Penethen’s the first night I arrived. What’s his name?”

“Hogg—Samuel Hogg.”

“I don’t like him.”

Longstaffe dropped his voice. “No, he’s a bad lot. Was a publican once. Now he owns most of the Polchester slums. He’s behind most of the rotten things in the town. He’s a bad hat.”

“He’s a friend of a man at Mrs. Penethen’s who helped me about getting my rooms.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Longstaffe said. “Have as little to do with him as you can.”

They turned back to the game. The misty rain made it difficult to see. There was no more scoring, however, and just as the whistle blew for “time” the storm drove across the field in torrents.