Читать книгу Sonia: Between Two Worlds - Stephen McKenna - Страница 14

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Winter softened into spring, and spring lengthened into the summer that was to be my last at Melton. The few remaining months are engraved deeply on my memory as though I lived an intenser life to capture the last shreds of heritage that the school held out to me. As in a sudden mellowing I found myself on terms of unexpected friendliness with people I had previously disliked or despised. Beresford—lank disciplinarian—invited me to dine in College, and revealed himself unwontedly human and well-informed on Rudyard Kipling; Ponsonby, whom I had lightly written of as a pretentious ass, proved on better acquaintance to be a man of self-paralysing shyness who lived in almost physical dread of his form; Grimshaw, most stolid of men in official life, shone without warning as a raconteur and mimic of his colleagues. I dined or breakfasted with them all, not excluding little Matheson with his unwieldy tribe of children, and we talked unbroken "shop" and disinterred old scandals and parted with a sentimental, "You'll be sorry to leave Melton?" "Very sorry, sir."

The vanity of eighteen is long dead, and I can recall with amusement that I had serious misgivings for the school's future after I should have left. For five years and more it had been all my world. I remembered the veneration with which, as a fag, I had gazed on the gladiators of the Eleven and the Witan of the Sixth—gazed and flushed with self-consciousness and shy gratification when one of them ordered me to carry his books across Great Court. In time I too had made my way into the Sixth; there was at first nothing very wonderful or dignified about the position, but by no immoderate stretch of imagination I could fancy myself venerated as I had venerated the heroes of five years before. And without doubt I looked proudly on my work in the Monitorial Council: we had been strict but not harsh, reserved but not aloof, reformers but not iconoclasts—statesmen to a man. At every point we seemed superior to our immediate predecessors, and the only bitterness in our cup was brought by the reflection that this Golden Age would so soon pass away. It was inconceivable that youngsters like Marlowe, Clayton or Dennis could fill our shoes. They were boys. I remember that Loring and I took Clayton on one side and revealed some few of the secrets of our successful rule; I remember, too, how extraordinarily Clayton resented our patronage....

The recorded history of the last two terms is meagre, but I recollect that O'Rane came twice into conflict with authority before we parted. The first time was an unhappy occasion when the May-Day celebrations of the Melton carpet-makers coincided with one of his periodical outbursts. A plethoric meeting of somnolent workmen was being somewhat furtively held in the more somnolent market square; moist, earnest speakers declaimed under a hot sun to a listless audience. When Dainton and I passed through the square, oratory was getting worsted, and the meeting was summoning resolution to spend the rest of the warm May afternoon in sleep. Then O'Rane appeared galvanically from the West. And soon afterwards from the East, with dragging steps and eyes glued to his book, came Burgess in cap and cassock, his pockets swollen with the books he had bought in Grantham's.

That night O'Rane spent forty-five minutes in the Head's house—an unusual time for anything but sentence of expulsion. Loring and I were walking up and down Great Court with our watches in our hands, prepared to intercede with speeches of incredible eloquence if the worst came to the worst. Through the bright, unblinded library windows we could see Raney pleading; the back of Burgess's white head was visible above his chair, motionless, and seemingly inexorable.

"What's happened?"

The door had opened slowly and shut with a clang. O'Rane was walking towards us with a white face that belied his jaunty step.

"It's not to occur again." The anticlimax was an unintentional trick of phrasing. "Well, it won't. I can't work that lay a second time. D'you know he sacked me within five seconds of my entering the room? I—had—to—fight—for—very—life." He breathed hard, linked arms and marched us off for a walk around the Cloisters.

"Drive ahead," said Loring.

"'Laddie, thy portion is with the malefactors. Get thee gone, and walk henceforth in outer darkness.' I say, the old man's formidable when he's angry. I said nothing, and he waved me to the door. I didn't move. 'Get thee gone, laddie,' he thundered, 'and let not the sun of to-morrow rise to find thee in this place.' I asked him what I'd done; he sort of suggested that I really knew all the time. I told him my version." O'Rane stopped and drew back a step with arms outstretched. "I told him I'd found that sweet May-Day meeting with potbellied whimperers gassing over an Eight Hour Day and drinking enough beer to drown 'emselves in. The May-Days I know were the ones where the mob broke up half Turin and were shot down by the soldiery: they were men with something to fight for—and ready to fight for it. These sodden voter vermin! If they'd organize with their cursed votes—if they'd fight—if they'd do anything—if they were in earnest——! My God, your English Labour!" His utterance quickened and his voice grew animated to the point of passion. "I told these scabrous dogs to put their lousy shoulders to the wheel. God knows what I didn't call 'em, but they were too sodden to mind, and I found I was speaking in French half the time. Then they got an idea I'd come over from Paris to champion them, and they cheered no end. So I taught 'em the 'Marseillaise,' and half-way through the second verse Burgess drifted into view. I told him in his library as I'm telling you here...."

"I hope to the Lord you didn't!" Loring interjected.

"I told him every last word." The Cloisters echoed with his excitement. "You bat-ears, you don't understand! He did!"

"What did he say?" I asked.

O'Rane hesitated. "He hinted that I wasn't accountable for my actions."

I burst out laughing. The words were so obviously inadequate.

"That's a curious reason for not sacking you," was Loring's comment.

O'Rane's black eyes, seemingly fixed on a gargoyle over Chapel door, were gazing into infinity.

"He said it was the Call of the Blood. And I—I—I just said nothing." His voice sank to a whisper. "I hardly understood."

The vision was for his eyes alone, and to us, uncomprehending, the rapt expression of his face and tense poise of the body was curiously disconcerting. Awkwardly self-conscious, Loring stepped forward and thrust his arm through O'Rane's.

"Pull yourself together, my son," he said.

O'Rane shook free of his arm. "You don't understand! But he did. He knew it all. There was one crossed to France in the Revolution, and him they guillotined because he was too powerful. And two died for Greece, and one went fighting for the North and the slaves. And one died by the wayside as the king's troops entered Rome. And one tended lepers in a South Pacific island." He strode up to Loring and stared him defiantly in the face. "And some day men will follow me as they never followed one of the others!"

"Come to earth, you lunatic," said Loring; and I was grateful to him for the chill banality of the words.

O'Rane turned disgustedly on his heel.

"You wouldn't understand if you lived to be a thousand," he flung back over his shoulder.

"Come back!" Loring called. "There's nothing to get shirty about."

"You've the soul of a flunkey!"

"All right; so much the worse for me."

"And anyone who's not got your own servants' half spirit you call a lunatic!"

Loring sat down on the stone seat that ran round the inner wall of Cloisters and beckoned to O'Rane to join him.

"Come and cool down a bit, Raney," he urged. "And for the Lord's sake don't make such a row or you'll bring Linden and Smollet out of their rooms."

"You've got a bourgeoise mind, Loring," said O'Rane reflectively.

"Agreed, but don't shout," Loring returned imperturbably. "I want you to tell me—quite quietly—how you prove your nobility of soul by running the risk of getting sacked for the sake of making an idiotic speech to a mob of workmen who didn't particularly want to hear you? You tell me I shall never understand, but do at least tell me what I've missed."

"A soul," O'Rane answered simply.

"It's like trying to argue with a woman," said Loring in despair.

The prayer-bell began to ring in the distance, and we made our way out of the Cloisters and across Great Court. O'Rane, at the last moment, decided to stay behind, and we left him curled up on the stone seat, his thin, clean features white in the moonlight and his great deep-set eyes gazing abstractedly across Fighting Green. He was back in Matheson's for Roll Call and sauntered into my study with his hands in his pockets and a straw in his mouth. The flame of emotion had burnt itself out, and he seemed cold, tired, and a little melancholy.

"Humble apologies and all that sort of thing," he began, holding out his hand to Loring.

"You haven't told us why you did it?" I reminded him.

He wrinkled his brow and shook his head in perplexity.

"Didn't seem as if I could help it. 'Man was born free and is everywhere in chains.' I've been through a bit—trying to get enough to feed and clothe myself—and it was hell. And sometimes it all comes back to me and I want to blow the whole world up.... And sometimes I dream what a glorious thing we could make of life, even for the men who sweep the chimneys and mend the sewers.... To-day...." He shrugged his shoulders. "I'd forgotten the everlasting Press. After the kings, the nobles; after the nobles, the people; and after the people, the Press. So Burgess says. And Melton's not strong enough to stand the racket if every beach-comber with a halfpenny in his pocket can read that a Melton boy led the 'Marseillaise' in Market Square."

"Quite right, too. It gives the school a dam' bad name."

"Oh, I agree—now," he answered limply. "He told me to choose my punishment."

"And what did you say?" I asked.

"I said, 'You aren't sacking me then, sir?' He said, 'Sacking, laddie? What strange tongue is this?' And then I knew I was all right. Clayton'll be captain next year. He'd have made me, otherwise. Can't be helped. And I guess I got Melton in my vest pocket most ways. Good-night, bat-ears. I'm going to bed."

As the door closed behind him Loring sighed to himself.

"If he isn't sacked for this, he'll be sacked for something else," he predicted. "I hope it won't be till I'm gone, because he refreshes me. D'you remember his first term?"

"He's extraordinarily popular now," I said.

"He's the most fearless little beast I ever met. And there's such a glorious uncertainty about him. One moment he's your long-lost brother, the next he's slanging you like a pickpocket in about six languages, the next he's apologizing and shaking hands. I suppose he'll be captain the year after next. It'll be an eventful time for the school."

O'Rane's other conflict with authority was less impassioned and on a smaller scale. He had absented himself from Chapel for the better part of the term, and Burgess one day inquired the reason.

"I don't believe all the stuff they hand out there, sir."

"Have I asked thee to believe it, laddie?" demanded Burgess, who had almost ceased to expect polished diction from O'Rane.

"Well, sir, if I pretend to believe it...."

"Have I asked thee to pretend, laddie?"

"But if I go, sir, people naturally assume...."

"And how long has David O'Rane given ear to the vain repetitions of the Synagogue and Market-place?"

For the moment Raney experienced some difficulty in finding an answer. Then he said:

"I'll go if you want me to, sir."

"Laddie, thou art of an age to determine this for thyself. I am an old man, broken with the cares and sorrows of this life. Peradventure the wisdom and truth that were taught me while I hanged yet upon my mother's breast no longer charm the ears of the younger men. Peradventure

"The Saints and Sages that discussed

Of the two Worlds so learnedly are thrust

Like Foolish Prophets forth; their words to scorn

Are scattered, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust."

Herein thou must walk thine own road, laddie.

"Certain points, left wholly to himself,

When once a man has arbitrated on,

We say he must succeed there or go hang.

. . . . he must avouch,

Or follow, at the least, sufficiently,

The form of faith his conscience holds the best,

Whate'er the process of conviction was:

For nothing can compensate his mistake

On such a point, the man himself being judge:

He cannot wed twice, nor twice lose his soul."

An thou thinkest thou canst learn aught from the life of the man Christ Jesus, laddie, thy time will not be lost."

Thereafter O'Rane attended Chapel with assiduity until the breaking-up service on the last day.

For weeks we had been saying good-bye to Melton, dismantling our studies, packing our books, seeking our porters and groundmen to press upon them our last tip. The final morning saw us seated betimes at Leaving Breakfast—a quaint Saturnalia whereat all discipline departed and every junior in Hall was compelled to read a rimed criticism of the departing monitors. I recall that Tom Dainton, who had almost single-handed won the Cricket Shield and established Matheson's in a tenth year of unbroken tenure, received a rousing send-off; Loring and I were let down lightly, while Draycott was pointedly informed that his hair was unduly long and his clothes an eyesore.

We were allowed no reply to the chastening criticism, but acerbity was forgotten when we joined hands and sang "Auld Lang Syne" with one foot on the table. For five years to my certain knowledge the long table had collapsed annually under the unwonted strain; to break at least one leg was now part of the accepted ritual, and, though Matheson had spent money and thought on a cunning scheme of underpinning, by dint of concerted rocking and a sword-dance executed by Dainton, we wrung a groan from the ill-used board and doubled all four legs into the attitude of a kneeling camel before the bell sounded for first Roll Call.

My last Chapel was Loring's first. Catholic or no he felt the service was not to be missed. We sat side by side, and determined there should be none of the foolish weakness exhibited by other generations of leaving monitors. Yet as the organ started to play the last hymn, he failed to rise, and, as voices all around me began to sing, "Lead, Kindly Light," I found I could not join in.

From Chapel we went to Big School for our last Roll Call. The prize compositions of the year were read aloud, and the scholarship results at Oxford and Cambridge announced. There followed a long distribution of gilt-edged, calf-bound books; three malefactors were led to Bishop Adam's Birch Table and flicked publicly across the back of the hand; there remained but one thing more.

"School Monitors!" Burgess called out.

All ten of us lined up facing the Council with our backs to the school. The birch was handed to Sutcliffe, who reversed it restored it to Burgess and returned—divested of authority—to Second Monitor's seat. The ritual was repeated with the other nine, and Burgess called up the new monitors. To each of them the birch was handed and by each returned. Then Clayton, the Captain-Elect, rose from Sutcliffe's old seat, advanced to the edge of the dais, knelt down in front of the Birch Table, facing the school, and read the old Latin prayers that—despite their taint of popery—Queen Elizabeth had authorized us to continue, always provided we dropped the monkish pronunciation.

The last scene was laid in Burgess's library, where each of us was presented with a copy of Browning's "Men and Women."

"Peradventure ye have heard his words upon my lips ere now," he said. "Laddie, these partings like me not. I am an old man, broken with the cares and sorrows of this world, yet it may be that in this transitory life an old man's counsel may avail you in the dark places of the earth. Come to me, laddies, if ye judge not an old man's arm to be too weak to help you. At this time and in this place will I say but this: Sutcliffe, thou wilt consume thy days weighing the jots and tittles of learning. Therein is thine heart buried, and I do not gainsay thee. Dainton, thou shalt be known in Judah as a mighty man of valour. Thou art ceasing to be a child and must put away childish things. Hearken no more to the voice of children playing in the market-place; gird thee for battle to be a soldier of the Lord. Oakleigh, thine heart melteth away and becometh water all too easily. Thou hast riches and learning, but little singleness of purpose. Not for thee the dust of the arena—thou art too prone to hesitate and weigh thy doubt. Best canst thou serve thy neighbour by girding on the harness of others; thou hast friends and kinsmen in the first places of the Synagogue: succour them."

He looked at Loring and paused. "Laddie, I could have made of thee a scholar, but thou wouldst not. Thou canst be a statesman, but thou wilt not. The illusion of a great position surrounds thee, and thou art content to gather in thy vessels of gold and silver, thine ivory and peacocks, thy choice books and paintings. Anon thou wilt awaken and question thyself, saying, 'Wherefore have I lived?' Ere that day come I counsel thee to journey to a far country on an embassage from thy soveran lord. I charge thee to scorn the delights of Babylon lest, in the empty show of Kingship, the vanity of gorgeous apparel, the uttering of words in thy Council of Elders, thou conceive that thy duty to God and to thy neighbour hath been fulfilled. Laddies, an old man's blessing goeth with you."