Читать книгу "C" - Maurice Baring - Страница 7

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C.'s earliest recollections were centered round the nursery in Portman Square, which was presided over by a brisk and rather sharp-tongued Nanny called Mrs. Brimstone, whom the children called Brinnie. With the help of two nursery-maids, Jessie and Eliza, she ruled over the nursery and the washing and dressing of C. and Harry. Brinnie shared Lady Hengrave's preference for Harry, but in reality she cared nothing for the younger children compared with what she had felt for the elder boys, especially for Master Gilbert. She was fond of Harry because he was the youngest and the last baby she had had charge of. She was old, and her temper was worn out. C., she considered, as did the rest of the household, to be an irreclaimable young ruffian, and if ever Harry was naughty she said that it was Master C. who had led him into mischief.

C. learnt to read in the nursery when he was six, and at the age of seven he was soon promoted to lessons in the schoolroom, but he continued to be taken for the morning walk in the park, or to play in the square with Brinnie and Harry after the promotion had taken place.

C. used to look forward to his birthday throughout the year. It was the only day in the year on which he seemed to play a part of any importance in the family. Lady Hengrave recognised birthdays and encouraged the celebration of each of her children's birthdays with undemonstrative impartiality. There was a birthday cake at the schoolroom tea, with candles on it, and generally his aunt, Mrs. Roden, who was also his godmother, would come to luncheon and bring him a present. C.'s eighth birthday, which occurred in March, when the family were in London, began auspiciously. He was given some toys in the morning, and a new shilling by his father. He was allowed a holiday in the schoolroom, and all went well till luncheon-time. Just before luncheon Brinnie and Jessie scrubbed Master C. and Master Harry with extra vigour, and extra time was spent in curling Master C.'s curls with a tail comb and in sprinkling them with rose-water, and Brinnie was more than usually caustic in her comments on those curls, which were always refractory, and more than usually gloomy in her forebodings as to the immediate fate of the clean starched pinafore that she tied round him. She hoped, to be sure, he would be good, as his aunt, and his godmother into the bargain, Mrs. Roden, was coming to luncheon. Her ladyship had sent up word to say so. C.'s heart leapt when he heard this news, as this would be sure to mean a present. Brinnie had no fear of Master Harry behaving badly: he was always good, "and it is a pity," said Brinnie to Harry, "that she isn't your godmother instead of Master C.'s. Master C. doesn't really deserve a godmother, what with his naughtiness and his leading others into mischief who are too young to know any better."

Brinnie ignored the fact that Harry had a godmother of his own.

Punctually at two o'clock a loud bell rang through the house up the reverberating back staircase, and C. and Harry, under a volley of final exhortations, ran downstairs, joining up on their way with their two sisters, Julia and Marjorie, who came down from the upper floor in charge of Mademoiselle.

The children trooped down to what was called the blue room, on the ground floor, and which was next to the dining-room. It was a comfortable room, full of prints, and their father used it as a smoking-room and study, but it was there guests were received before going into the dining-room.

Lord Hengrave was out to luncheon. He only had luncheon at home on certain days of the week, and this was not one of them. Lady Hengrave was standing up in front of the fireplace talking to Mr. Dartrey, who always came to luncheon twice a week. He was an M.P. and the director of a railway company, and the children thought him inexpressibly dreary, especially as, being friendly and well disposed towards them, yet at the same time completely removed from the world of childhood, he thought it necessary to make conversation with them. C. was always scolded after his visits for having been rude to Mr. Dartrey.

Lady Hengrave shot an enveloping glance at the children and at Mademoiselle as they came into the room, and asked in French after the lessons.

"On a été suffisament sage," Mademoiselle said laconically. She was not the least afraid of Lady Hengrave, as so many other people were. The girls were frightened of her, and she maltreated them and made them, obstinate as they were, learn their lessons and speak French. She preferred the boys to the girls, and she thought C. showed promise of intelligence. This made her none the less severe. She rapped the children's knuckles with a ruler till they were sore, but neither the girls nor C. ever complained to their parents. They had already had a long and eventful experience of different governesses--French, German, Swiss and English--and they knew now that their present lot might be exchanged for a worse one.

Harry alone of the family was well treated by Mademoiselle, but he did not return her affection, and he bitterly resented her treatment of his elder brother.

Lady Hengrave asked whether C. had been behaving properly.

"Il perd son temps, comme toujours; il pourrait travailler très bien s'il voulait," said Mademoiselle.

Lady Hengrave gave an almost inaudible sigh. Mr. Dartrey tactfully changed the conversation by saying that the trains on the line of which he was a director reached a greater pitch of perfection in punctuality every day.

At that moment Mrs. Roden was announced.

Mrs. Roden was Lord Hengrave's sister. She had married a partner of a large City firm, who was extremely well off and fond of modern pictures. Mrs. Roden was fond of artists, and this was a characteristic that Lady Hengrave deplored. Mrs. Roden was a handsome, picturesque woman, who had been painted by several of the most famous painters of the day. She was amiable to the extent of being gushing. C. preferred her to all his relations. Lady Hengrave never took any of the children with her when she stayed with her sister-in-law, as she feared the effect on them of what she considered to be a Bohemian atmosphere.

Mrs. Roden swept into the room, pouring out apologies for being late. She kissed C. and gave him her present, large wooden nut-crackers. The two crackers as they shut formed a black nigger's head, and as you shut them small white teeth opened and shut, and the empty sockets revealed two gleaming eyes.

"Thank your aunt Rachel," Lady Hengrave said to C., and, addressing the company in general, "He's had too many presents already."

Just before they went into luncheon another guest was announced. This was Lady Hengrave's brother, Captain Farringford, whom the children knew as Uncle William. He was a sailor.

They went into luncheon, and, as usual, the children's physical characteristics were discussed as if they had not been there.

"Harry grows more and more like Charles every day," said Mrs. Roden. Charles was Lord Hengrave. "He's grown so much; so have the girls."

"Do you see a look of Aunt Jessica in Julia?" Lady Hengrave asked.

Aunt Jessica was a great-aunt of the children. Mrs. Roden, after a careful scrutiny of Julia's face, said, yes, she could just detect in it a distinct look of Aunt Jessica. Julia blushed. But as it was C.'s birthday, he became, for the time, the centre of the conversation.

"What are you going to be when you grow up?" Mr. Dartrey asked him point-blank.

C. blushed scarlet and was about to stammer something when his uncle William, who was loud-voiced, breezy and boisterous, answered for him. "He's going to be a sailor, of course; and that's why I've brought him this knife." And he produced from his pocket a large clasp-knife, which he said he would give to C. after luncheon.

"Would you like to be a sailor?" asked his godmother.

Lady Hengrave answered for him. "We have settled," she said, "to send him into the Navy if he can pass into the Britannia."

C. was conscious that he had no voice in the matter of the choice of his profession.

"The examinations are so difficult now," said Mrs. Roden.

"Yes, very difficult," said Lady Hengrave, shutting her eyes as if to rid herself of such a disagreeable vision.

And thus it was that C.'s career was settled for the time being. Apart from wearing a sailor's suit and from having been violently sick on a penny steamer, he had not yet shown signs of any particular vocation for the sea.

C.'s birthday, for a birthday, passed off fairly calmly. The children did not break all his toys, and Mademoiselle quelled one or two incipient quarrels between C. and his sisters.

As C. was eight years old, Lady Hengrave had settled that he was no longer to sleep in the night nursery with Harry, but in a little room by himself on the floor above. As he was to go to school next year, it was time, she said, that he should get used to sleeping by himself.

C. was a nervous child, afraid of the dark, and prone to nightmare. He often talked, and sometimes walked, in his sleep, but Brinnie would not admit this, and Lady Hengrave was told nothing about it. Nor, if she had been told, would she have understood. She did not like C., and she did not understand him.

The chief excitement of C.'s birthday had been Mrs. Roden's present. It was the most exciting present that any of the children had ever yet received, even from Mrs. Roden, who was famous in the schoolroom and the nursery for the unexpectedness and the glamour of her presents. The girls were, of course, agreed that C. was too young for such a present, and that he would break it before it had lasted a day, and they were well in the way of breaking it themselves when C. snatched it from them and rushed upstairs with it to his room.

Tea went off quietly; the birthday cake was satisfactory, and all went well till bedtime came, and for the first time C. was to sleep by himself in his lonely little bedroom.

Eliza, the nursery-maid, undressed him and put him to bed, and then he was left alone. A night-light was burning on the washing-stand.

C. was still excited after the events of his birthday, and he did not feel sleepy. The incidents of the day began to flit before him, like pictures on the slide of a magic lantern, slightly distorted as they are apt to be when the brain is on its way to sleep. He thought about his uncle and the clasp-knife, and whether he would ever be a sailor, and whether he wanted to be one. He was not at all sure he had any such wish. Then everything else was blotted out by the sudden thought of his godmother and of her startling present, the nigger nut-crackers. They were in the room now, in the corner of the room near the washing-stand, where he had hidden them from his sisters.

But instead of being pleasantly thrilling as they had been all day, and an object of delightful interest, the nut-crackers now seemed to be a very different thing. First of all, they had become much larger; he knew this without looking at them, for he dared not look even in the direction where they were hidden. Also, the nigger's head was alive, the eyes had returned to the sockets without any one touching the crackers, and the jaws were opening and shutting, and showing their gleaming teeth. He hid his head under the bed-clothes and prayed for the vision to depart, but it did not depart; it became more and more portentous. He thought the nigger was now walking across the room, and now bending over his bed. The nigger's head had become enormous. His eyes were glowing like live coals. C. shook with terror. How could he escape from this awful thing? At last he made a great effort and crept out of bed, and ran blindly to the door, which had been left ajar. What was he to do next? He dared not go to the nursery, where Brinnie and the nursery-maids were having their supper, as he knew Brinnie would be extremely cross and pack him off to bed again. Downstairs there was company. The children had watched the guests arriving through the banisters of the staircase. He knew vaguely it was about nursery supper-time, between nine and half-past. He decided to try the housekeeper's room, and he ran right down the stone back staircase to the basement, to the housekeeper's room, where he found Mrs. Oldfield, the housekeeper, a stately figure in large swishing skirts, having supper with the upper servants. There, too, was Miss Hackett, Lady Hengrave's maid, who was a friend of C.'s. Brinnie was jealous of Miss Hackett and detested Mrs. Oldfield, so C. felt a fearful joy at being safe in the enemy's camp.

"Well, I never!" said Miss Hackett. "Whatever is the little boy going to do next?"

Miss Hackett took him on her lap; Mrs. Oldfield gave him a sponge cake, some white grapes, and said:

"A glass of ginger wine will do the child no harm. His feet and hands are as cold as ice."

"And to run all that way without his dressing-gown and slippers! Whatever will Mrs. Brimstone say?" said Miss Hackett.

"Don't tell Brinnie," said C. "Please, Hacky, don't tell her."

Miss Hackett promised not to tell; she saw that he had been frightened by something, and it was settled that she had better take him upstairs again before his flight should be discovered. She took him upstairs, and when she had put him to bed C. confided to her the cause of his fears: the nutcrackers; the nigger's head. She took the nut-crackers away and put them in her own room. She then went back and stayed by his bed till he fell asleep, which he soon did, as he was very tired.

Nothing was discovered, but the next night the same thing happened again. C. was put to bed and fell asleep almost immediately. He was then visited by a nightmare in which the black head played a large part, and before he was awake he was half-way downstairs. He was again welcomed in the housekeeper's room and received comfort and refreshment, and he was again taken back to bed by Miss Hackett. C. now made a regular practice of visiting the housekeeper's room at night, although he was not conscious of wishing to do so, or even of starting to do so. He was urged on by the vision of the nigger's head, although he had not set eyes on the nut-crackers for some days. One night Eliza met him on the staircase as he was returning from one of his expeditions, and the secret was out. A battle royal ensued between Miss Hackett and Mrs. Brimstone.

"The poor child is frightened out of his wits by that nigger's head," said Miss Hackett.

"Nigger's head and fiddlesticks!" said Mrs. Brimstone. "I shall go straight to her ladyship." And straight to her ladyship she went.

Lady Hengrave was annoyed, and said gravely that if ever C. was to run downstairs again he would be whipped. Nobody, not even Miss Hackett, realised that when he started on these expeditions he was still asleep and did not know what he was doing, nor that he was being urged by the spurs of a nightmare. In spite of all Lady Hengrave said, and of an icy threat from Mademoiselle, C. did the very same thing the next night. Fortunately, Mrs. Brimstone was out. Miss Hackett took him back to bed and soothed him (he was in a flood of tears), and, what is more, promised to destroy the nut-crackers. The nigger's head was destroyed the next day, and its destruction seemed to break the spell, for after this his nightmares took a less active form, although he still suffered from one recurrent dream. He dreamt he was alone on the deck of a derelict vessel which was buffeting the waves without progress in a blanket of mist. He was aware of a waste of bleak, desolate and moaning waters, and somewhere in the thick salt mist a fog-horn was sounding dolefully. He could taste the salt in the air and feel the sting of the fog, and what sounded like a foghorn was really the cry of some one or something in gigantic pain. Yet he had only rarely seen the sea. He had once been taken to Ryde, and he had spent a week with Mademoiselle and the girls at Broadstairs to recover from the chickenpox.