Читать книгу Sonia: Between Two Worlds - Stephen McKenna - Страница 8

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The morrow of the Regatta was a Sunday. I spent the morning dutifully writing to my mother in Ireland and in the afternoon suggested to Loring that if he wished to preserve his figure he had better come for a walk with me. The bait was taken. He had a horror of becoming fat, and, though in fact no heavier than was to be expected of a man with his frame, could usually be roused from his Sunday occupation of pasting book-plates into large-paper éditions-de-luxe by a hint that his weight was rising visibly.

We crossed Great Court, span a coin at Big Gateway and chose the Forest road in the direction of Crowley. As bounds—for all but monitors—ended at the far side of the cricket ground, we anticipated an uninterrupted walk. It was a mild afternoon for the end of October, and we went at an easy pace through the town and into the half-mile belt of trees that screened Melton from the south-west wind and marked the beginning of the long hill which sloped down and down past Crowley Court and Bishop's Cross to Southampton. Mr. Gladstone had died in the May of that year, and Loring, fresh from some hasty, ill-written memoir, was full of the dream once dreamt by the youthful Gladstone in the shadow of St. Peter's, that the world might one day see again the union of all Christian Churches. The traditional and picturesque had captured his imagination as they were to capture it throughout life. He re-created the dream with rare enthusiasm until we were brought to a standstill on the farther fringe of Swanley Forest.

Anyone who is familiar with the neighbourhood of Melton knows that the Southampton road takes a sharp turn to the right at the second milestone on leaving the Forest. We had pushed our way through the fallen leaves and rounded the bend, when I noticed a figure seated on the milestone. The back was turned to us, and the head was bowed as though in sleep.

Loring paused to inhale the sweet, heavy air of the pine woods.

"Humpty Dumpty will have a great fall," he remarked, "if he goes to sleep on milestones."

"It's somebody from the school," I said.

On the ground by the side of the stone lay a straw hat such as—for no conceivable reason—we were compelled to wear in all weathers. Loring moved forward and then stopped suddenly.

"Oh, my Lord!" he exclaimed. "As if we hadn't thrashed the fellow till we were tired of it!"

I took a second look. The back was bowed till the shoulder-blades stood out in two sharp points, the chin rested on the knees and two thin hands were clasped round two thinner ankles. The attitude was unmistakable, even if I had not recognized the silky black hair floating back from the forehead as the wind blew softly inland from the sea. We walked on and stopped beside him; his eyes were gazing far out over the distant Channel, and he failed to observe our approach.

"A good view," said Loring.

"She's a Royal Mail boat. Lisbon, Gib., Teneriffe, B.A., Rio." I could hardly see the ship, but a wreathing spiral of smoke, mingling with the low clouds, gave me her position. "There's been a home-bound Orient, and two P. and O.'s, and a D.O.A., oh, and one British India. Two a minute, and steaming, steaming to the uttermost parts of the earth."

He spoke in a dreamy, sing-song voice, and his soul was five thousand miles from Melton.

"Is this a usual pitch of yours?" Loring asked.

"It is. When a man wants to think and be alone with no one but his own self by.... There's days you can smell the sea, and days when the air's so clean and clear you could put out your hand and touch one of the little ships...." His voice sank almost to a whisper, " ... to show the love you have for her, and the lonely, cold sea she's ploughing up into white foam."

Loring looked at me in amazement and shook his head helplessly. To him, who had at that time never set foot in Ireland, the soft and unexpected Irish intonation of O'Rane's voice conveyed nothing; he was as yet unacquainted with the Celtic luxuriance of misery.

"O'Rane!" I said.

His head turned slowly, and, as his eyes met ours, their expression was transformed. Dreaminess and melancholy rushed out of him as his spirit returned from afar; in less than a second he was English again—with occasional lapses into the cadence and phraseology of America.

"Guess I'm up against another of your everlasting rules, Loring," he said.

"The rules aren't mine," Loring returned pleasantly. "I found 'em here—five years ago. I only have to see they're kept."

"And, if I try to break them, you'll try to break me? Do you think you'll succeed?" he demanded defiantly.

Loring laughed, and by the narrowing of O'Rane's eyes I could see he did not relish laughter at his own expense.

"I've never given the matter a thought."

"In ten—in eight days' time you'll thrash me for walking two miles through Swanley Forest?"

"No—for breaking bounds. If I do thrash you. Frankly, I'm getting rather sick of it. Probably you are too. I'm going to suggest that you should accompany Oakleigh and me back to school; you're not breaking bounds if you're with us."

O'Rane looked at him for a moment, and his lip curled.

"Mediaevalism tempered by Jesuitism."

Loring smiled good-humouredly. "Not very gracious, is it? And we probably shan't agree over Jesuits."

O'Rane, to his credit, blushed.

"I apologize. I forgot you were a...."

Loring waved away the apology.

"That's all right," he said. "But why come to the oldest school in England if you object to mediaevalism? Possibly you weren't consulted, but, as you are here, why not take the place as you find it, or else clear out?"

O'Rane's grip tightened on his ankles.

"I shall stay here till I'm ready for Oxford and I shall stay at Oxford till I've got everything this country can give me. Guess I've knocked about a bit in my time and somehow I was always on the underneath side. Greasy Levantines, Chinese storekeepers, American-German-Jews. I'm a bit tired of it. I want to get on top. I've seen Englishmen in most parts of the world—mostly on top—I'm going to join 'em, and get some of my own back grinding other people's faces."

Loring looked at his watch.

"If you don't want to be late for Chapel, it's time we started back. Look here, grinding other people's faces is a laudable ambition so far as it goes, but it's rather remote. How old are you? Fifteen? Well, you've got another three years here, and you can spend 'em in one of two ways. We can go on thrashing you this term at the rate of once in ten days; then you'll get into the Sixth, there won't be many rules to break, and, if you break 'em, Burgess'll sack you. That apart, you can go on living your present life, without a friend in the school, taking no share in the school, no use to man or beast. Or, on the other hand, you can make the best of a bad job and live on decent terms with your neighbours. I make no suggestion. I only ask if there's any particular point in regarding everyone as your natural enemy?"

We walked for a hundred yards or so in silence. Then O'Rane said:

"It doesn't occur to you that every man is the natural enemy of every other man?"

Loring flicked a stone out of the road with the point of his stick.

"Because it isn't true," he said.

"When there are two men and only food for one? You'd fight me to the death for that one loaf."

"In practice, yes. Theoretically, I should halve it with you. That's the sort of public-school idea."

"And it doesn't square with the practice. I'm out for the loaves before someone else gets them."

"Always assuming he isn't stronger than you," said Loring.

"Then I'll try and make myself stronger than him."

"And the end of the world will come when the strongest man has starved everyone else. A happy world, O'Rane, a happy end to it, and a glorious use of physical strength."

"That's been the world's rule so far."

"Utter bunkum!" Loring stopped and faced his antagonist. We had reached the cricket ground and the beginning of bounds, so that O'Rane no longer needed a convoy. "For the first years of your life you were so weak that it took one woman to feed you and another to put your clothes on so that you shouldn't die of exposure. On your theory there wouldn't be a woman left alive, far less a child. You must find some other answer to the riddle of existence. You can't do much with all-round hate and promiscuous throat-cutting."

"If someone takes a knife to me, I'll try to get in first blow," O'Rane persisted obstinately.

"Well, that's a slight improvement on knifing at sight. The next discovery for you to make is that your neighbours don't all want to trample on you."

O'Rane's eyes fired with sudden, vengeful passion.

"Guess you were born on top, Loring."

"Yes, I've had a very easy time." He swung his stick thoughtfully and looked up the hill at the school buildings aglow in the light of the setting sun. "But it hasn't made me want to walk on other people's faces. You see, one day the positions might be reversed, so why make enemies? Besides, there's enough misery in the world without adding to it unnecessarily. If I had any energy to spare, I might even try to reduce it. Overhaul your philosophy a bit, O'Rane." A child, bowling a hoop, ran down the road and narrowly avoided treading on my toes. Loring pressed the incident into service. "On your showing, Oakleigh ought to have brained that kid, instead of which he moved politely out of the way. The strong yielding to the weak. Think it over, and you'll find life isn't a bit clear cut. It's full of inconsistencies and oppositions and compromises; we do things for the most illogical reasons. Well, you're back in bounds, and, if you like to stay, you can, and, if you prefer to go on by yourself, we shan't be offended. You're going on? All right; good-bye."

As O'Rane strode away in the twilight I complimented Loring on his discourse.

"The heavy father," he muttered. "And a fat lot of good it's done. You know, that fellow's three parts mad. What were his people thinking about, sending him here?"

"I don't think he's got any," I said.

Loring linked arms with me, and we returned to the school without the exchange of a word. As we entered Big Gateway, he observed:

"He must have been pretty well hammered by someone to get into this state."

And half-way across Great Court I heard him murmur:

"Lonely little devil."