Читать книгу "C" - Maurice Baring - Страница 9

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When C. attained his eighth birthday his childhood had become crystallised, and the main facts of it were these.

He was frightened of his father and never knew what to say to him. He did not get on with his mother, who did not like him and did not understand him. He was a nervous child, frightened of intangible things, and reckless and over-bold in the daylight.

Prematurely intelligent in some ways, but in great need of direction, and since he received just the very guidance that was ill-suited to him, he became rebellious and sullen.

He was an outcast in the nursery, and a rebel in the schoolroom. In none of the governesses who looked after him did he find a friend or a companion, and his relations with his two sisters were perpetually strained, and often violently explosive. His sister Julia was four years and his sister Marjorie two years older than he was. Julia was a model of convention and propriety, but she was capable of great naughtiness. She was small, she had tight thin features, a clear complexion and flaxen hair. Marjorie was larger and darker, and had fine grey eyes. She was completely self-possessed and brimful of assurance. In reality she was just as conventional as her sister, but she had wilder spirits. She was musical and had a natural sense of rhythm. The two sisters spent all their time quarrelling, and sometimes they beat each other with umbrellas, but they always combined against C.

There were brief interludes of neutrality, as, for instance, when C. invited his sisters to join in his surreptitious games of cricket, which they managed to do when Mademoiselle was on her holidays, until Colonel Calhoun intervened with his professionalism. The most violent rupture between C. and his sisters occurred at Bramsley during the Christmas holidays, after his eighth birthday.

Mrs. Roden had sent all the children a Christmas present. To Julia, Marjorie and C. she had sent the same present, namely, the materials in a large cardboard box for making out of paper a model farmyard. Christmas went off quietly enough, devastated for the children by Aunt Fanny, Uncle Cuthbert, Aunt Louisa and Uncle George. After the New Year the guests departed, and the children felt they might play with their toys without fear of criticism.

One evening, after tea, they settled down to undertake to construct Aunt Rachel's, otherwise Mrs. Roden's, model farmyards.

The lamps had been brought to the schoolroom; Mademoiselle was engrossed in a French novel which had a white paper cover shrouding its title and yellow cover from inquisitive eyes, and which happened to be Zola's Germinal. The children sat round the large tea-table which had been cleared for games. They opened the red cardboard boxes and read carefully the printed sheet of directions which they found in the box. After so doing they each of them went in search of starch and scissors. The problem was to make a model farmyard, including buildings, outhouses, cows, poultry, trees, pig-styes and pigs, in three dimensions. The means were a large sheet of paper on which the houses, animals and other accessories were printed in colour. You had to cut out the house, tree, animal, or implement, and fold it till it assumed a concrete shape; then stick the folded edges together and stick the base of the object in question, so that it stood upright on a solid board. That evening all went well. They did not get beyond cutting out. Mademoiselle, who was finding Zola's new book engrossing, complimented them on their quiet, and blessed Mrs. Roden for having given them so absorbing a present.

Each of the girls and C. were engaged in making a rival farmyard. The second evening they reached the sticking stage. The great silence of the night before was punctuated on this second evening by fragments of absent-minded, disconnected talk, such as "Your tree's crooked," "Which tree?"; "Your wall's too large," "What wall?" but everything passed off quietly, and Mademoiselle was not interrupted in her reading. She was getting more and more interested in Germinal. The farms had progressed. All of the children had got the walls up and the trees, and several of the animals, but as yet not one of them had succeeded in sticking on a roof to the walls of the farm building itself. This was an operation which required peculiar dexterity, and when clearing-up time came they had not one of them succeeded in achieving it. The two girls railed at C. for being clumsy; nevertheless, they had not themselves been successful in dealing with the difficult problem of the roof.

The third evening was almost entirely consecrated to the roof problem. Mademoiselle had reached the most enthralling part of Zola's book, and the children were silent from the intense effort of trying to stick on the recalcitrant roofs. But their tempers were on edge. The girls had tried and failed over and over again, and every now and then they jeered at C.'s efforts. Suddenly C. gave a wild shriek. Mademoiselle dropped her book and lost the place, and breaking into English, which she only did under the stress of strong emotion, she said:--

"You naughty boy, what do you make such a noise?"

"I've done it," said C. "Look, look, Mademoiselle, my roof is on! The whole house is there! It's finished!"

There was no gainsaying the fact. There was the farmhouse solidly established, stuck firmly on the cardboard, and perfectly roofed. The girls looked at each other with silent stupor, and black jealousy entered into Marjorie's heart. She said nothing. C. danced round the room, clapping his hands, till Mademoiselle said:--

"Veux-tu te taire, vill you be quiet? Je te mettrai au pain sec."

But no threats could overcome C.'s soaring ecstasy, the rapture of the successful creative artist. The girls went on working sullenly.

"We shall do it presently," said Marjorie. "It's quite easy really."

But they knew in their hearts this was not so. They worked on for a few moments in silence and then Marjorie said:--

"Aunt Rachel gave C. that one because it's the easiest. It's not a grown-up one like ours!"

"They're all exactly the same," said C.

Marjorie chuckled almost inaudibly.

"We were quite right," she said in a just audible aside to Julia, "to let him do his first, and to think it's the same as ours."

"Quite right," said Julia.

"It is the same," said C.

"Oh, yes," said Marjorie, with great and exasperating calm. "Just the same."

C. felt a wild wave of passion surging within him.

"At any rate," he said slowly, "Aunt Fanny said she was afraid you were going to take after Aunt Maria."

Aunt Maria was a great-aunt who for some reason unknown to the children was a black sheep, and whom they imagined to be ugly, but who in reality, merely had the drawback of being old. Marjorie affected not to listen.

"We won't do ours till to-morrow," said Marjorie to Julia, ignoring C. "It would spoil the poor little boy's pleasure."

"Well, at any rate, I don't cry when I'm bowled at cricket," said C.

It was an undeniable fact, and one of the bitterest recollections in Marjorie's life, that she had cried publicly at a cricket match on being bowled out first ball. The shaft went home. She said nothing. C., satisfied with his triumph, left the schoolroom. Mademoiselle had finished Germinal and at once violently urged the children to tidy the schoolroom. She left the schoolroom herself. While Julia was putting her box away Marjorie took C.'s handiwork and tore his farmhouse from the board. A few minutes later C. entered the room.

"Mademoiselle says you're to tidy," said Marjorie, "and you didn't do the farmhouse after all."

C. looked at his devastated handiwork and said nothing. For the moment he was completely stunned; then his thoughts slowly moved towards revenge. Marjorie had a doll she was particularly fond of. It was called Joséphine, and it was respected by the whole household. It was a china doll and opened and shut its eyes. Even Lady Hengrave recognised the existence of Joséphine and tolerated Marjorie's affection for it. C. tidied his toys, put them back in the cupboard, and left the schoolroom in silence. He then went upstairs to the girls' bedroom and took Joséphine from her bed, where she had already been put to sleep, and shattered her head against the coal scuttle. Marjorie was unaware of the tragedy till she went to bed, although C.'s apparent calm frightened her. When she went to bed and realised what had happened, her screams re-echoed through the house and brought Lady Hengrave from her bedroom, where she had gone to dress for dinner. She was put in possession of the facts, or rather of a one-sided version of the facts, by Marjorie. Mademoiselle Walter, who was appealed to, said she had not witnessed the incident as she had been in her room at the time, but remarked icily that Marjorie was "très taquine." The calamity of the death of Josephine was thought too awful for punishment or even for comment. C. was treated like a murderer. Even Miss Hackett said to him:--

"You've never been and killed Joséphine."

C. felt that he had indeed committed murder. Nobody sympathised with him; everyone shunned him. Lady Hengrave said:--

"I shall have to tell your father, and I don't know what he will say, and I shall tell your brother Edward as well."

This last threat was the worst of all, for, although in their experience their brother Edward had never once intervened in the domestic affairs of the schoolroom, the children were frightened of him, and C. felt overcome with shame at his being told of his deed. Nobody mentioned the ruined farmyard; nobody could see that the two acts were on a par. The farmyard, in the eyes of the grown-ups, was simply a bit of paper. They did not realise the triumph C. had felt in his effort of successful creation; the intense mortification he had experienced when his handiwork had been destroyed--the result of so much painful labour of so sudden a final inspiration. All that was swallowed up by the more prodigious fact that Joséphine was no more. His sisters would not speak to him. Mademoiselle merely said, "Voilà ce que c'est que d'être méchant," and Harry was at that time too young to sympathise. Mrs. Brimstone not only gave him a long preliminary scolding, but brought the subject up on every fresh occasion, and C. was a pariah in the household. Lady Hengrave promised Marjorie a new doll, but Marjorie was inconsolable. Joséphine was taken to the toy shop and a new head was given to her, but Joséphine's original head had been made in Paris, and her new head, which was bought in Sloane Street, was a different affair altogether, besides being slightly too small. Josephine had lost her elegance for ever, and Marjorie never forgave C.

Curiously enough, C. did not feel that he was in any way justified by Marjorie's destructive act. He shared the view of the family that the two acts were altogether disproportionate, and he felt that he was indeed a criminal and had committed an act which would certainly never be forgiven in this life, and probably not in the next.

It was a long time, a long time that is to say measured by the standards of childhood--in reality about a fortnight, and morally about an æon--before C. lived down the murder of Joséphine, for, after the subject had been dropped at Bramsley, it cropped up again when the family returned to London and Joséphine was taken to Sloane Street for her new head, which proved, alas! to be so poor a substitute.

Although C. preferred the country to London, he often experienced a feeling of relief when the family returned to London, because life in London, on the whole, was freer and less exposed to the criticism of relations and neighbours, or, rather, outside criticism was less permanent and less intimate. He did not mind the comments of the guests who came to luncheon as much as the more prolonged criticism of the neighbours and relations whom he endured at Bramsley. Besides which some of the guests who came to luncheon from the outside world were entertaining and amiable.

There was Countess Felseck, a Swedish lady, who had something pleasantly frivolous about her as well as radiant and apparently un-aging hair. She used to come to luncheon very often, but, curiously enough, never when Lord Hengrave was at home.

In addition to Mr. Dartrey there was another regular and constantly recurring luncheon guest, who came to luncheon once a week, but never on the same day as Mr. Dartrey. This was Mr. Cecil Whitelaw, who owned racehorses and wore clothes subtly different from those of other people, talked in a loud voice, and was often sulky; but he took little notice of the children.

As far as other children were concerned, Aunt Louisa's boys were older than C., and were already at a public school when he was in the schoolroom. Aunt Fanny had one overgrown, red-haired, spectacled boy who, she said, whenever he was left in a room, "snatched at a Shakespeare." He despised C., and C. kicked his shins whenever he had the opportunity. The Roden children were not encouraged. Harry was two years younger than C., but he was big for his age and was as tall as C. He was the favourite of the nursery and the drawing-room, and the various governesses into whose orbit he was attracted were all of them fond of him. C. was not in the least jealous of Harry. He accepted the fact that Harry found greater favour as a natural thing that could not well be otherwise, as Harry was obviously more amiable, so much better behaved, and so much nicer. Everyone admired him and said, "What a pretty boy!" C. was considered to be the ugly duckling. Their companionship was the main factor of the inside life of his childhood, and they kept the full quality of it a secret. The various governesses and Mrs. Brimstone used to see them play together and witness their noisy fun and their frequent quarrels, but what was kept from the world was that C. told Harry all the stories he read in story books and invented others of his own, which Harry listened to with breathless interest, especially as he was no reader himself. The stories were translated into action, and took the shape of exciting and dramatic games. So completely did Lady Hengrave misread the situation with Harry that she thought the boys got on badly together, and imagined them to be living in a state of perpetual feud. She was perpetually scolding C. for being rough, one of the reasons of this being that, whenever they suggested they should do anything together, C. used always to make a pretence of indifference, and the keener he was to do the thing the more indifferent he pretended to be, because he feared that any treat might share the fate of single-wicket cricket.

As to treats, Lady Hengrave never took the children to the play or to any entertainment--not on principle, but from economy--although C. and his sisters were sometimes allowed to go to tea at the Rodens' house in Kensington. Julia and Marjorie had plenty of girl friends, who used to be asked to tea in the schoolroom, but on these occasions they never let C. join in their games, especially after the murder of Joséphine. Sometimes all of them went to children's parties, but C., rightly or wrongly, acquired the reputation of being rough, and after a time the girls were more often asked by themselves. The net result of this was that, until he went to school, C. had no friends and no companions, either at home or outside, with the exception of his brother Harry and Miss Hackett. The only happy hours he spent were in the housekeeper's room, where he played cribbage and Old Maid with Miss Hackett and the housekeeper, and sometimes long whist with the butler and others, or playing with Harry, or reading a book by himself in the nursery. He never read in the schoolroom, as he did not like his sisters to see him reading. He pretended to them and to the world in general that books were babyish things, and fit only for girls. In reality he was passionately fond of fairy tales and all stories of adventure.

On Sunday afternoons Mr. Dartrey sometimes took the children to the Zoo, and once a year a friend of the family, a quaint old man with a beady eye, called Mr. Short, whom they all adored, took them to the circus, and sometimes to the pantomime. As Edward, the eldest son, had been in the Eton eleven, the Eton and Harrow match was considered a function that could not be missed, and they went to Lord's every year. This was the greatest treat of the year for C.

When the family returned to London after the memorable Christmas holidays, which were dated in C.'s mind by the murder of Joséphine, C. was not far off from his ninth birthday. His birthday was in March. It was settled that he was to go to school in September, and during the last lap of his pre-schoolday life, two events of importance happened to him.

One of them was the departure of Mademoiselle Walter. This was a dramatic event which was brought about by the unconscious intervention of Harry.

It was a rainy day in February. There was no question of going out, and C. and Harry had planned and had arranged with the cook to make toffee in the kitchen, and possibly a gingerbread cake. Just before luncheon C. committed some minor fault in the schoolroom, for which he had been told by Mademoiselle that he must write out the phrase "Je suis un enfant désobéissant et mal élevé," twelve times before tea. Soon after luncheon C. and Harry went down to the kitchen and became engrossed in the manufacture of toffee and treacle, and assisted in the making of a gingerbread cake which proved to be successful, save for a large damp hole in the centre of it.

C. forgot all about his punishment, and when Mademoiselle asked him for it at tea-time, he was silent. Mademoiselle, who had been severely tried by the girls all the afternoon, was in the worst of tempers. She rapped him on the knuckles with a ruler and sent him to bed. C. bore this with stoicism. Not so Harry, who considered that he was to blame. After he had spent the first fury of his grief in a paroxysm of tears, he rushed downstairs to Lady Hengrave, who was giving tea to Mr. Whitelaw, and declared dramatically that he wanted to go to school. When pressed for his reasons the whole story came out, and Lady Hengrave drew the conclusion from it that not only C. and the girls were maltreated by Mademoiselle, but that possibly Harry was liable to the same treatment, although he had made no such accusation. The result was that Mademoiselle Walter left the house.

She was replaced by a kindly German, Fräulein Setzer, a South German, with a passion for children and a great talent for teaching them. Julia and Marjorie took advantage of her kindness and teased her unmercifully, but she was quite indifferent to this and went on steadily through the routine of lessons, and in spite of everything managed to teach the children something. C. liked her, but he knew in his heart that she was far less interesting than Mademoiselle Walter, who had been so unkind to him.

After Easter, in the summer of the same year, another treat came for an all too brief period into his life.

Ever since his eighth birthday and the incident of the nigger's head, although he no longer walked in his sleep, he had frequently been tormented by nightmares, and especially by the recurring dream of the ship and the mist and the fog horn. Something now happened which drove these nightmares away for ever. C. conceived one of those romantic adorations that children sometimes have for grown-ups, love for a girl some years older than himself. This is how it came about.

He was allowed for the first time to join his sisters when they went in the evenings to play games with other children in Hamilton Gardens. The children were nearly all of them older than C., and the contemporaries of his sisters. There were not many boys. It was considered a great favour that he should be admitted to the games, and his sisters were opposed to it. Kind Miss Setzer, however, insisted on C. being allowed to go. C. enjoyed himself for the first time with other children, and made friends with two girls. One was called Freda; she was very dark and had large black eyes. The other, Leila, was fairer, with a promise of great beauty and melting violet eyes. They were both of them several years older than he was. For about a month everything went smoothly. C. enjoyed himself ecstatically, and his sisters were forced to admit that he was an asset on whoever's side he played, as he ran faster than any of the other boys. Leila and Freda were not always there together, and he got to know both of them intimately. But it was Leila he loved best. He confided everything to her. He thought her the most ravishing creature who had ever been born, and the vision of her face and of her violet eyes banished the nightmare from the limbo in which his mind wandered just before dropping off to sleep.

One evening, it was a radiant evening towards the end of June, and the Park was crowded with people, C. was looking forward more than he had ever done to the game of flags and to a meeting with Leila. The children arrived in Hamilton Gardens. On the way they had passed their brother Edward, who was on horse-back on his way to Rotten Row. A band somewhere was playing Estudiantina, a valse. Sides for flags were picked. Freda was on the same side as C., and Leila was on the opposite side. Never had the game been more exciting. At one moment Freda was captured by the enemy, and C. raced across the lawn and succeeded in rescuing her. As they ran back together C. said something to Freda and laughed.

At that moment Leila rushed past them.

When the game was over C. walked up to Leila, whom he had not seen for some time, and spoke to her. Leila looked at him and turned away.

"What is the matter?" asked C.

"Nothing," she said, "only you had better go and talk to Freda as you like her so much better," and she turned away and wouldn't speak to him again.

"I thought you were her best friend," he said.

So she was. C. never forgot that moment. It was connected in his mind with the strains of the Estudiantina valse and the ringing clatter of hansom cabs, and the intoxicating atmosphere of gaiety that hung about evenings of the London season.

The next day Leila's governess complained to her mother that Caryl Bramsley spoilt the games by his roughness. Leila's mother complained to Lady Hengrave. Lady Hengrave said it was high time he was going to school, and forbade him ever to be taken to Hamilton Gardens again. That was the bitterest moment in C.'s life before he went to school.