Читать книгу The Battle Within - Philip Gibbs - Страница 10

Table of Contents

Many people—including his son Peter, now flying a Liberator—thought that Dr. Haddon was wasted as a general practitioner in a country district. He had distinguished degrees in medicine and surgery which might have taken him to Harley Street where he would have made a lot of money. But Dr. Haddon did not think much of money and was very careless in sending in his bills in the course of his practice. He liked trees and flowers and birds and so preferred a country life. A big burly man, very direct in speech and manner, he was thought to be a trifle rough by new and timid patients until they discovered his patience and kindness. His big hands were as gentle and sensitive as those of a woman—a gentle woman—and he was wonderfully quick to get at the troubles of the mind which were often at the back of physical disorders. He himself had a well-ordered and philosophical mind through which gleamed a sense of humour. He had three hobbies which he said might have wrecked his career as a medical man unless he had exercised a rigid self-denial. One was for Bach and Handel, which he played on an eighteenth-century flute—to the distress of his son and daughter; another was for golf, which he had had to abandon in war time; and the third was for chess, which he played too well for anyone who could give him a game in his neighbourhood, with the exception of Mr. Marlow, the Vicar of Ashleigh Heath. He seldom had time for a game after his attendance at Farningham Hospital and the Convalescent Home on the hill above Ashleigh, and his round of calls covering a fairly wide area in this corner of Surrey—mostly to those women and children whose menfolk were away in the war. But the vicar came in now and again after supper, when Dr. Haddon could hope to have an hour or two of peace unless the telephone rang with an urgent summons.

They were playing after supper one evening at the end of May, when double summer-time abolished the need of any black-out until half an hour before midnight. Mrs. Haddon and Pearl were in the garden—Pearl reading a book in a deck-chair, while her mother was clipping some over-grown bushes. The two chess players were in the study with open windows, through which there was a play of sunlight on their board.

“You’re playing a damn bad game tonight, vicar,” exclaimed Dr. Haddon, with a good-natured laugh. “That’s the second time you have put your old lady into jeopardy. Don’t you see I can take her with the pawn?”

“So you can,” answered Mr. Marlow, withdrawing his queen by the courtesy of this opponent who never played a game of grab. They played on silently, the doctor whistling a bit of Bach between his teeth while he waited for the next move. Through the window came the song of an exultant thrush, very pleased with life and himself, and the snip-snip of Mrs. Haddon’s shears and the distant noise of village children playing before bedtime, long overdue.

Presently, after two games which Dr. Haddon won, there was another sound, so usual and familiar that the doctor did not pay attention to it, but he noticed that the vicar’s hand trembled slightly as he moved a piece.

He wondered whether the vicar’s nerves were getting frayed, and looked at his face for a moment as he bent over the chess-board. It was a fine face, finely cut with a delicate, sensitive mouth and deep-set eyes. He was hardly past middle age, but his brown hair was already touched with the white above the temples. The man is all spirit, thought Dr. Haddon. He suffers too much because of the cruelties of life, and his wife gives him a hell of a time.

“Your move,” said Dr. Haddon presently.

“Oh, yes. Excuse me. I was listening to those bombers up there. I hate the sound of it.”

“I should hate the sound of it if I didn’t know they were ours,” answered Dr. Haddon with a laugh. “But, my dear fellow, do pull yourself together. You are playing a very poor game. What’s the matter with you tonight?”

The vicar laughed and pushed the chess-board away from him.

“I resign,” he said. “I can’t concentrate. I apologize for playing so badly.”

“Something on your mind, old man?” asked Dr. Haddon. “Some of your female congregation plaguing you?”

“Not that,” answered the vicar with a smile.

The doctor answered cheerily. “I saw how you were waylaid on Fallow Green by that hysterical young woman, Angela Dunne. Is she suffering from a hopeless passion for you?”

“I am sorry for her,” said the vicar. “She’s one of the lonely women. Her husband was taken prisoner before Dunkirk.”

“Oh, well,” said the doctor, “some of these lonely ladies must have a man to love and you’re an easy victim. Your intense sympathy sends them into a dither. They look into the loving-kindness of your eyes and are lost. You’re a spiritual Don Juan.”

“I know you like pulling my leg,” said the vicar good-naturedly. “But it’s the pot calling the kettle black. You know your women patients adore you.”

“Don’t you believe it,” answered the doctor. “I treat ’em rough. I have a rough tongue, old boy.”

“And a soft heart,” answered the vicar. “You go about doing good, while I go about conscience-stricken.”

The doctor looked at his friend sharply. He didn’t quite like the look of him. There was something uneasy in his eyes. His hand had trembled over the chess-table. His mind hadn’t been on the game. He looked sorry for himself.

“Had a row with your wife?” asked Dr. Haddon. “You told me once you hated rows because they shake you to pieces.”

Mr. Marlow laughed.

“I have had an argument with Gladys. But it’s not that entirely. It’s what lies behind it which makes me uneasy. I walk about the lanes like a haunted man or like Eugene Aram.”

“Don’t tell me you have committed a murder, old man,” said the doctor, striking a match to light his pipe. “I wouldn’t believe it even if they told me you had murdered that alarming young woman Angela Dunne, who well deserves to die. Keep your sense of humour, vicar.”

A sense of humour was not the vicar’s strongest quality, though he could tell a quiet joke of his own now and again.

“It’s like this, doctor,” he said. “I’m supposed to be a Christian. I am a priest in Holy Orders. I am under vows to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

The doctor puffed at his pipe as he sat in a deep leather chair, smiling at the vicar.

“Nobody does it better, I expect,” he said. “I don’t come to hear you much because I’m a bit of an agnostic and can’t abide village hymn-howling, but I’m sure you’re a very good Christian.”

“I can’t reconcile this war with the teaching of Christ,” said the vicar. “I cannot reconcile the bombing and blasting of German cities and the inevitable massacre of women and children with the words which Christ spoke to the multitude. ‘Love one another ... Love them that persecute you ... Forgive thine enemy.’ ... The whole of Christ’s message was one of love, mercy and pity. This war is murderous in its hatred on both sides, ruthless in its lack of pity. Our scientists and our best brains are working ceaselessly improving the machinery of slaughter, and if women and children are in the way of the bombs and the guns they are blown to bits, blasted off the earth, buried under the ruins of their houses. How can we reconcile that with Christianity? Every night I hear our bombers go out and I shudder at the work they have to do with their four-thousand pounders. It’s a terrible way of warfare. It’s utterly unchristian. But none of us clergy has the courage to say so. Perhaps few of them think so.”

Dr. Haddon was thoughtful and did not turn this off with a flippant remark. He could see that this clergyman was distressed by a spiritual or moral dilemma. It was disturbing his inmost faith and sense of integrity.

“My dear fellow,” said the doctor, “I can see your position is pretty difficult as a Christian idealist. The clergy as a whole just agree to shirk the issue. ‘Lift up your heart’ before the eight o’clock news makes me smile sometimes. They get off some pretty good stuff—I like the Dean of St. Paul’s—though I can’t think how they know so much about God. But all their talk is of a God of mercy and a God of love and a God of infinite compassion and so forth. I daresay they’re right. I should like to think so, and, in a way, I do think so—using the word God as a Spirit which raises man from the beast-like state and illuminates human intelligence at its best. Bach, Handel, Mozart—the great poets and painters have some touch of divinity. I think the Christian ideal is as high as we can get, and few of us can get as high as that. But those fellows on the B.B.C. think they can back up the bombing of German babies while they tell the public that Christ taught the gospel of love and mercy. It seems to be irreconcilable. I can find no sense in it. But then I don’t worry about it. I just wonder how it’s all going to work out and, meanwhile, I do my job and hope for the best—a quick ending to this war and the slaughter of youth, a more intelligent planning of human life so that the humble folk get a fair deal. To do this we’ve got to beat Hitler and his gang first.”

“We must get right with ourselves,” said the vicar. “We must be honest with ourselves, and I find myself torn to pieces between patriotism—of course I want England to win—of course I want Hitler to be beaten—and my faith as a Christian.”

The doctor laughed slightly.

“My son Peter doesn’t worry about all that, and yet he’s a more spiritual fellow than I am. I fancy many of our boys who go out to face death every night and every day are on a higher spiritual plane than their elders. They have better values of life, I believe, than some of us. They are more careless of money and material conditions. They want the other fellows to have the same chance as themselves in education and upbringing. Peter is a bit of an idealist. So is young Fellowes, who has gone missing.”

“I know,” said the vicar. “Young Fellowes was a very fine type. And when I think of all the heroism our boys have shown in this war, the heights of courage to which they rise, careless of death or mutilation, I marvel at them. Their self-sacrifice has no limit. But we older men are guilty of having led them into this way by failing to prevent it.”

The doctor shrugged his shoulders.

“Our elder statesmen made a mess of it, certainly. But we tried to keep the peace. We went into this war almost unarmed. Hitler asked for it. Now’s he got it. His bombing aeroplanes blasted Warsaw and Rotterdam and a thousand cities without mercy. Now the Germans are whining when we pay them back tenfold before the end comes, and the oppressed peoples are liberated. After all, we are fighting the spirit of Evil.”

“With the weapons of evil,” said the vicar. “With hatred everywhere. Some of my ladies make me shudder because they are so drenched in hatred, so greedy for death and vengeance upon the enemy. My own wife—”

He sighed heavily and did not echo the doctor’s laugh.

“Oh, Gladys believes in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But it’s mostly verbal violence, my dear fellow. Don’t let it disturb your domestic happiness.”

“It does disturb it,” said the vicar. “My house is a battleground. I am rather unhappy about it.”

The doctor put his hand on his friend’s shoulder and spoke with kindly words.

“Take it all more lightly, my dear vicar. You are too sensitive. Laugh it off. Cultivate a sense of humour and keep your ideals for private meditations.”

“Not good enough,” said the vicar. “One cannot laugh Christ out of one’s heart or betray His message by a joke across the breakfast-table.”

“Well, here comes Irene with the coffee,” said Dr. Haddon.