Читать книгу Cardboard Castle - Percival Christopher Wren - Страница 4

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No one, not even his parents, knew and understood young Anthony Calderton better than I did, and I very much doubt if anyone understood him nearly as well.

And yet, as will be seen, this may not be saying a very great deal. I knew him because, as his tutor, I spent practically the whole of every day with him for several years. For Anthony being what he was, and I taking the view of my duties and responsibilities that I did, I was not content merely to spend lesson-time with him. In point of fact, I regarded lesson-time as perhaps the least valuable part of the day. Certainly far less important than the leisure time we spent together—talking, walking, riding, reading, pursuing our hobbies and, more particularly, young Anthony’s amazing hobby of dramatization.

Doubtless you will at once think—a thing that was often actually said to me—that the boy would be only too glad to get away from his tutor as soon as lessons were over, and that if he worked with me from ten till one and again from five till six, he would see and hear as much of me as he wanted, or more, and be only too thankful to get away from me for the rest of the time.

This, however, was not the case, as it would have been with the normal boy.

But Anthony was not a normal boy.

He loathed my leaving him, as sometimes I was compelled to do, even for an hour, much less for a day or a week-end. He hated saying good night and going to bed; and he knocked at my bedroom door—a quaint little figure with tousled hair and big haunted eyes—in his pyjamas, dressing-gown and bedroom slippers, in the early morning, when the footman brought my tea.

Doubtless you will also think—a thing which, on more than one occasion, was also said to me—that I should have got sick, sorry and tired of the sight and sound of the boy, and been only too glad to leave him to his devices for the afternoon, and again as soon as his evening lesson was completed.

But neither was that the case; for on the rare occasions when Anthony was not with me, I missed him, found myself at a loose end, and much as a dog-lover feels who has to take his usual country walk without his dog.

Not that there was that sort of relationship between the boy and myself; no throwing of metaphorical sticks or stones for him to run after; no benevolent or condescending pats upon the head; no talking down; no sitting upon stiles while the less intelligent animal gambolled about my feet. Nothing of that sort. I merely mean that when he wasn’t with me, I missed him so much that the walk was a lonely grind taken conscientiously for fresh air and exercise.

Not only did I miss his company but his conversation; his unusual, remarkable and most interesting thoughts, ideas and fancies—especially fancies—expressed in that somewhat old-fashioned but charming and delightful way that was the result of years of unguided browsing in his father’s library, and the reading of books that rarely come the way of boys of his age.

He had had an admirable governess, of whom more anon, whose excellent influence upon his then baby mind had given it a noticeable twist and, in one minor direction, a strange little kink. I think that is the best word, for it would give a wrong impression if I said that she had warped his mind.

And what an amazing and hugely disproportionate effect, not only upon his own life, but upon those of others, was that strange little kink to have.

What she had done, in point of fact, was to give his perfectly sound mind a “King Charles’s head”—more than figuratively. To the extent that she had done this, young Anthony departed from the normal, though when he came into my hands, at the age of fourteen years or so, it was some time before I discovered this curious idiosyncrasy which was to have such dramatic and far-reaching consequences.

Now I have already, and before mentioning this peculiarity, admitted that Anthony was not normal.

How difficult it is to say exactly what one means. If there be a true word in the jest that speech is given us for the concealment of our thoughts, there is a far truer one in the statement that speech is a most inadequate vehicle for the exact conveyance of our meaning.

How shall I express the state and condition of Anthony’s mentality? Sane but abnormal? Normal enough, but most unusual? A mind so unusual as to be remarkable; and therefore not a normal mind?

Anyhow, what I can say without danger of being misunderstood, is that Anthony had a beautiful, a lovely mind; that he was brilliantly clever, though I hate the word, for any fool can be “clever”; that he had an acute perceptive brain; that he had a most charming, delightful and engaging nature; that he was infinitely attractive, amusing and intriguing; that he was, with one exception, altogether the nicest, the most lovable personality I have ever known.

Though I am slow in the matter of liking and disliking, cautious in summing up and deciding about a person, I liked him the first time I saw him; liked him very much within a month; soon became exceedingly fond of him; and within the first year of our association, freely and fully admitted that I loved him.

And that was the first time in my life I had admitted such a thing, save for one or two members of my own family.

It is a thing for which I thank God, that Anthony Calderton had wise parents; that his father, albeit a fine flower of the Public School, Sandhurst and Army system, was sufficiently intelligent, broad-minded and perceptive to realize that there are certain rare spirits for whom that system is not suitable; also that his mother had sufficient love, understanding and unselfishness to realize and accept the fact that, greatly as she desired it, Anthony could not and would not go to school.

It must have been a real grief to her, as well as to her husband, that the boy should not follow in the footsteps of his ancestors, sit literally in the seats they had occupied, and emulate their successes or failures in class-room and playing-field.

It was breaking a tradition very dear to them both.

What would have happened to Anthony had his father taken the line that so many soldiers would have taken, and shouted,

“What the Devil! Of course the boy’ll go to Eton. Never heard such damn’ rubbish in my life. They’ll soon knock the nonsense out of him,” I shudder to think, especially had such an attitude been encouraged by a high-spirited, never-heard-such-bosh type of mother, with a yelp of,

“My son? Of course he’ll go; and I shall tell his House Master to stand no nonsense. Put him through it. Make a man of him.”

Had such a line been taken with Anthony, it is much more likely that they’d have made a corpse or an idiot of him.

Anthony was fortunate; indeed, he was singularly blessed, in his parents.

Nor, I am glad to say, did he himself, ever, in later life, inveigh against the Public School system simply because it was not the right system for him. He did not proclaim to the world that his was a rotten Public School because it didn’t amend and adapt its system to his peculiar requirements; he didn’t proclaim, for example, that because he was taught French by an Englishman whose accent was not pure Parisian, the Public School system is an abominable one and stands thereby self-condemned; he did not declare that it is a soul-destroying, character-crushing machine that casts all those unfortunates committed to its care into one uniform mould and, while they are malleable, stamps them with one uniform pattern.

Incidentally I might mention that I heard this view expressed by a visitor on learning that Anthony had been educated by a governess and then by a tutor; and that Anthony thereupon promptly observed that, so long as the mould and the pattern were excellent, admirable and serviceable to their purpose, it did not seem to matter how many people were stamped by it. In fact, the more the merrier.

Such was Anthony’s considered opinion; and upon every conceivable subject mentioned by me and other ordinary people in ordinary conversation, he seemed to have a considered opinion, so widely had he read and so incorrigibly was he given to the habit of forming opinions.

At the risk of displaying myself as completely obsessed by the subject of Anthony, I wish to give you a very clear and accurate picture of him, before telling the story in which he played a part so strange, so decisive, so final.

I am describing him at such length because it is important that you should realize not only the fact but the degree, the extent, and the nature of his abnormality.

What is a lunatic, a person who is permanently so “queer” as to be described as insane?

Speaking succinctly and accurately, it is a person who is incapable of distinguishing between fact and fancy.

Personally, I think we sane people are all a little mad; or, to express it otherwise and better, there is some subject on which everyone is more or less mad, generally very much less; and the extent to which we are mad is the extent to which we are unable to differentiate between the facts and our fancies on that particular subject.

Now, how far was Anthony unable to distinguish between reality and make-believe? That was one of the first questions that I asked myself about him; for quite early, indeed by the day after my coming to Calderton, I was struck by his ability to lose himself in the part that he was playing. And Anthony, in spite of all I have said about him, was almost always playing a part and dramatizing himself or the situation.

Doubtless this tendency had been strengthened and increased by the methods followed by his excellent governess who was, very rightly, a great believer in the encouragement of self-expression, and in the use of a child’s natural bent and tastes for the furtherance and encouragement of its activities and the development of its abilities. He loved charades, plays, and make-believe, and she encouraged him to act. He had more than the average child’s love of dressing-up, impersonation, dramatization—acting, in short—and this had been, as I say, definitely encouraged.

One had to know Anthony well before one knew what he was up to, in what rôle he was behaving; whom he was impersonating, in fact. And one always had a sense of having failed him, of having fallen short of his high expectation and, indeed, trust, if one were stupid, missed one’s cue, and responded wrongly, or not at all.

Nor am I in the slightest degree praising myself—indeed I am probably laying myself open to the accusation of being queer and abnormal myself—when I say that Anthony’s luck held, at any rate to a small degree, when his parents selected me as his tutor. He would have been nearly as badly off with a bluff, blunt, bulldog-pipe-and-no-nonsense fellow who completely failed to understand him, as he would have been at a Public School with young barbarians at play, and harassed pre-occupied form-masters at work.

The ministrations of the cold-bath-every-morning, sweat-run-every-afternoon, come-off-that-imagination-tripe young man, whether Muscular Christian curate or Rugger Blue and recent graduate, would have reduced Anthony to sullenness—no, never that—but to a withdrawn aloofness and a polite, easy, yet incredibly stubborn refusal to conform.

For, though I never found him so myself, I do not deny that Anthony could be very difficult, nor that, quite frequently, he actually was extremely difficult with people who did not understand him, and whom he did not like.

This naturally led to there being two opinions about him, the opinions of those who really knew him, and of those who thought they did; and from this fact arises the implicit commendation that those who knew him best loved him most. Inevitably, the better one knew young Anthony Calderton, the more one loved him—loved his very faults.

For he was no angel-child, no adolescent saint. He had a temper; and, personally, I have no use for anybody who hasn’t one somewhere concealed about him or her.

He was impish, and could be exceedingly annoying to people who were fools enough to be annoyed by his little jokes at their expense. These amusingly mischievous tricks were often very carefully thought out and most ingenious; and, in conversation, he would often lead one on to commit oneself to some untenable and indefensible statement or theory. I always found these verbal fencing-matches very diverting, and encouraged them, both for Anthony’s amusement and my own. At first I was a little puzzled, but soon came to understand that a series of Socratic questions was leading up to some absurd, whimsical, or fantastic conclusion.

And undeniably Anthony was sly; sly in the way that an elf, a gnome, a fairy, is sly, partly self-protectively and partly for secret and inward amusement, the gratification of a love of subtlety and trickery, a baffling but innocent and harmless deviousness.

And now, perhaps, I have given you a pretty fair idea of the complex character of Anthony Calderton, and equally perhaps, I have completely failed to do so; failed to give you an adequate and faithful portrait of a most delightful and charming boy, attractive, original and engaging beyond the ordinary.

I hope I have not quite failed, for I should like you to be in a position to form your own opinion as to the answer to the question concerning him that even now obsesses, intrigues and troubles me.