Читать книгу Ploughman of the Moon - Robert William Service - Страница 5

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After the dour Sabbath came six days of joy. My grandfather and aunts must have been very kind to me, for I never remember being afraid of them. Aunt Jeannie was cross sometimes and shook me, but only once did she want me whipped. I cannot recall what I had done, though no doubt I deserved punishment. However, she had not the heart to do it herself, so she begged Grandfather to take action. He complied with bad grace. Calling me into his room and shutting the door he swung a heavy strap.

"Bend over," he told me sternly. I was trembling but I would not beg for mercy. I presented my little buttocks expecting to feel the tang of the strap. I was determined not to cry. To my amazement he began to belabor the cushion of his chair.

"Greet, ye wee deevil," he hissed in my ear. "Pretend ye're greetin'."

So I bawled for all I was worth, while he whacked the cushion till the dust flew. Outside the door Aunt Jeannie was begging him to stop.

"The laddie's had enough," she shrieked.

"Dinna tell," said Grandfather; "but don't do it again. Next time I'll give ye a proper leatherin'."

I promised, and Aunt Jeannie greeted me with a look of commiseration. "Ye needna hae been sae brutal aboot it," she said to Grandfather, caressing my small posterior affectionately. But though they were gentle, my aunts were never demonstrative. Kissing was rarely practised. Sweethearts kissed and mothers kissed; but outside of that, osculation was taboo. I never saw any kissing in my family. If I had, I think I would have been shamed, for any show11 of emotion embarrassed me. We Scotch are a gritty race, with a habit of reserve.

I had another aunt who died when I was very young. She was little more than a girl, and I only remember her vaguely. I was always told not to go too near her. "Puir Aggie, she's got the consumption," they would whisper, but I couldn't understand. To me she was the loveliest of the family. She had such a waxen complexion and such pink cheeks. She never did any work and often sat apart, brooding sadly. In these moods she would repulse me when I tried to caress her; but I think it was more from a fear of infecting me than from any irritation she felt. Sometimes, however, as if yielding to an uncontrollable tenderness, she would hug me to her, and once she brought out some delicately written poems and read them to me. She said they were her own and I thought them beautiful.

To the others it must have been agony to see her fading away. Perhaps a southern climate would have helped her, but in our harsh Scotland she had not a chance. However, I doubt if we had the means to send her to Italy or Switzerland; and in any case such a thing was simply not done in our humble circles. She was regarded as doomed; we just waited for her to die. It was decided that she had better live in the little summer-house, and there a bed was installed for her. I remember I thought it was a jolly idea and I envied her, but she wept bitterly. From then on I would see little of her; though sometimes, through the black-currant bushes, I would glimpse her watching me haggardly. I tried to get in to her but the door was barred.

Soon after that she died. They took her into the house towards the end and put her in the best bedroom. It had one of those stuffy enclosed beds; and there she sat, smoking some herbal cigarettes that were supposed to help her breathing. I laughed delightedly to see her smoking, but the others did not share my mirth. I recall the unearthly brightness of her eyes and the burning glow in her cheeks. She smoked her cigarettes like a real lady. Then, after a little, she asked if she might kiss me, and hugged me ever so tightly to her night-dress. And that night she died....12

As she lay in the best parlour we waited for the undertaker to screw her down. But before they closed the coffin I saw Grandfather rise and put his hand on her waxen brow, saying:

"Puir lassie ... My wee Aggie ... She's cauld, sae cauld."

Yet she lay there, indifferent to us all, victim of a sad destiny. She had not asked for life, and what a fate had been forced on her! What a burden she had borne so patiently! Oh, that one could make up to her for what she suffered! And there are so many like her. I did not understand then, but now I realize how stoically she awaited death who had never really known life.

When I was five I was sent to the parish school, because there was no other. Even the Minister's son went there. And this brings me to the matter of social standing in the Long Grey Town. First, there was the Earl in his castle; but he and his family were spoken of with bated breath. They were seen only on the rarest of occasions and spent most of their time in London or Cannes. To them our town was almost non-existent. Then there was the Quality—landed gentry who rode to hounds and treated us with disdain. Next came the professional class, our doctors, bankers, lawyers, who held themselves aloof from the common tradesmen. The latter, with the office men, the shopkeepers and employers of labour, formed a large middle class to which we belonged. Below them were the skilled workers, and last of all, the unskilled labourers.

Each of these sections looked down upon the one immediately below, while they accepted the patronage of the class above. It was quite in the order of things. We were told: "Keep in your place and don't try to imitate your betters." But, besides this social demarcation, the town was notable for three types of citizens ... First came the weavers, working in their low cottages, their hand-looms visible through the small windows. They were pale and inclined to be intellectual. They were of Huguenot origin, responsible for the town's foundation, and its most worthy citizens. By contrast there were the farmers, ruddy and intelligent, but hardly well-read. They too were a fine type.... Lastly, about two miles out of town, were the coal pits and iron works, but the colliers and13 furnacemen were regarded as beyond the pale. When they came into town on Saturday night, to drink their pay, they seemed a race apart. The pitmen, especially, were pallid, stunted creatures, and to me in my childish days a source of fear and repulsion.

In school there were all classes, from Willie Lamb, the Minister's son, to Nellie Purdie, whose mother was in the almshouse. In summer all of us went barefoot, except Willie, whom we twitted on having to wear boots. He was a poor spindling, but he looked enviously at our bare feet. However, on the sharp gravel of the playground, he had the best of us. In winter, too, many of the pupils went barefoot, because their parents were too poor to buy them shoes. I have seen them coming to school when the ground was hard with frost, their feet cracked and purple with cold. But they were spartan about it and scorned our pity. Nay, they rather claimed our admiration. On winter days we would huddle outside the school door, crying:

"Teacher, teacher, let me in;

My hands are cold, my shoes thin."

I can testify to the hands, for often I returned home with fingers frozen; and, oh, how bitterly I wept as they thawed out!

One incident of my school I recall vividly. Seated at the desk near me was the girl Nellie, whose mother was on the parish. She was a frail lass, with bare feet and ragged gown, but she had a mass of pale gold hair that I admired in spite of its untidiness. Then one day the teacher stooped over her and said in a tone of disgust:

"Nellie, you're a dirty girl. You have beasties in your hair."

Nellie hung her head and began to cry. I felt sorry for her, so I rose, holding up my hand.

"Please, Teacher, Auntie Jeannie caught ten in my head last night."

The teacher said: "No doubt you got them from Nellie."

"Oh, no," I said chivalrously, "I'm sure she got them from me."

Our teacher told me to hush and retired behind her desk to laugh chokingly. When I got home that night I told the family of the14 incident. Aunt Jeannie went as red as a beet, but the others laughed a lot. Then she got out the small-tooth comb and gave me a thorough going-over. I enjoyed seeing the little beasties drop on the paper and hearing them crack under my thumb-nail.

I do not remember much more about this school except that one day the Head Master stopped me on the playground. He was a bearded man, as all Heads were in those days.

"What are you going to be when you grow up?" he asked.

"A philosopher," I said gravely.

He laughed heartily and told the story to the family, confirming their belief in my originality. Years after, Aunt Jeannie wrote to me: "You did not become a philosopher, but you became a poet, which is much better." I rather doubted it, but I was pleased that she was pleased.

Once I heard my grandfather remark: "Yon's a queer wee callant. He's sooner play by himsel' than wi' the other lads." This was true. Rather than join the boys in the street I would amuse myself alone in the garden, inventing imagination games. I would be a hunter in the jungle of the raspberry canes; I would be an explorer in the dark forest of the shrubbery; I would squat by my lonely campfire on the prairie, a little grass plot where the family washing was spread. I was absorbed in my games, speaking to myself or addressing imaginary companions. No wonder the others thought me a queer one. I looked forward to bedtime; for then, about half an hour before dropping off to sleep, I had the most enchanting visions. Shining processions of knights and fair ladies passed before my eyes: warriors, slaves and pages emerged and faded. I did not seem to imagine them. They just presented themselves, a radiant pageantry. They gave me a rare delight, and I was loath to fall asleep. But all at once this gift of visioning left me, and, alas! it has never returned.

I used to sleep with Aunt Jeannie, who cuddled me a lot. Every Saturday night she would change her chemise and tell me not to look while she was doing it. But one night I dared to peep. What I saw made me duck my head under the blankets. "If women15 undressed are as ugly as that," I pondered, "I never want to get married."

Aunt Jeannie was housekeeper; Aunt Bella liked to scrub and work in the open air; but Aunt Jennie was accounted the literary one of the family, because she read books. The others only read papers. She encouraged me to learn poetry from the school primers. These selections were mostly from Campbell and Longfellow. So standing on a chair I would spout: "The boy stood on the burning deck," or "It was the schooner Hesperus." The more I ranted and gestured, the more they applauded. In those days I was not troubled by an inferiority complex, and to outsiders must have been an egregious little pest. I was undoubtedly precocious, but if they spoiled me it was not my fault. There was, in fact, quite a literary tradition in our family. My great-grandfather had been a crony of Robert Burns and claimed him as a second cousin. One of our parlour chairs had often been warmed by the rump of the Bard; for, besides being a rhymster, my ancestor had been a toper; so I expect if that chair could have talked it could have told of wild nights with John Barleycorn. To my folks anything that rhymed was poetry, and Robbie Burns was their idol.

Perhaps something of this atmosphere affected me; but poetry attracted me from the first—largely, I suppose, because of the rhyming. So one day I astonished the family by breaking into verse. It was the occasion of my sixth birthday and the supper table was spread like a feast. The centrepiece was a cold boiled ham, a poem in coral and ivory. Flanking it in seductive variety were cookies, scones and cakes. For a high tea it was a tribute even to a pampered brat like myself. As I looked at it in eager anticipation, an idea came into my head. Grandfather was sharpening the knife to cut the ham, when suddenly he remembered he had forgotten to say grace. It was then I broke in.

"Please, Grandpapa, can I say grace this time?"

All eyes turned to me, and I could see disapproval shaping in their faces. But I did not give them a chance to check me. Bowing my head reverently I began:16

"God bless the cakes and bless the jam;

Bless the cheese and the cold boiled ham;

Bless the scones Aunt Jeannie makes,

And save us all from belly-aches. Amen."

I remember their staring silence and my apprehension. I expected to be punished, but I need not have feared. There was a burst of appreciation that to-day seems to me incredibly naïve. For years after they told the story of my grace till it ended by enraging me.

This was my first poetic flutter, and to my thinking it suggests tendencies in flights to come. First, it had to do with the table, and much of my work has been inspired by food and drink. Second, it was concrete in character, and I have always distrusted the abstract. Third, it had a tendency to be coarse, as witness the use of the word "belly" when I might just as well have said "stomach." But I have always favoured an Anglo-Saxon word to a Latin one, and in my earthiness I have followed my kinsman Burns. So, you see, even in that first bit of doggerel there were foreshadowed defects of my later verse.