Читать книгу Mr. Gurney and Mr. Slade - Warwick Deeping - Страница 4

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“Mon Repos” had become “Sea View”, and Mr. Slade, confronting all scandal, had gone to live there with his daughter, and now walked daily to his shop in the High Street. Mr. Slade’s Pot of Basil had not concealed a human head, nor had the plant endured, but had withered and been thrown upon the rubbish heap, for those who had mattered in Southfleet had refused to recognize any odour of decay. Mr. Chatterway had retained Mr. Slade as a sidesman; Mr. Golightly’s Sunday suppers had continued; the old sinner could sometimes be seen taking tea with Mrs. Richmond upon her balcony. And “Slade’s” was “Slade’s”, a super-shop, an institution, yet somehow retaining a Lowther Arcade flavour, and offering to Southfleet books, stationery, leather goods, and fancy work as well as toys. The saying was, “You can get it at Slade’s”. Phoebe was a partner, and a very capable one at that. Eliza, growing white of head, still cooked for Mr. Slade and his daughter, and was tart with the tradesmen as the autocrat of the kitchen should be. Master George was at Merchant Taylors’ School, and boarding with a master. A euonymus hedge had been replanted, for, though Sea View was Sea View, James Slade liked to sit in his chair and go to sleep after Sunday dinner, with a handkerchief over his head, and his privacy respected.

Mr. Slade paid off the cabbie and opened the green iron gate of Sea View. Home! Yes, it was good to have a home to return to in the November of your years, and to know that one was not spoken of as “He”. There was no third person about James Slade. He was father, grandpa, the master, and the lips of women did not tighten when he came into the house. There was his chair under the green roof of the veranda, complete with cushions, table and books. Cushions! Comfortable things cushions when they were provided by love and not by fear.

Mr. Slade toddled across the lawn towards the inevitable chair. The french window stood open. For the moment it was empty, and then it framed a figure.

His daughter. She stood there, the mature young matron, strangely serene and to James Slade still strangely mysterious. Why this mystery, why this serenity? Rose Hallard had had many bitter things to bear, and yet they had not soured her as they had soured her mother. How incalculable were the complexities of the human soul! Was it that Rose was just supremely healthy, and had a son who was not like his father? Surely, there was more to it than that. Sows and cows, human and otherwise, could be healthy, but the soul of a sow did not transcend the trough, and his daughter was the child of her father.

Mr. Slade and his daughter smiled at each other. Had her father had his tea? Yes, a cup and a slice of cake at Fenchurch Street Station. Mrs. Hallard had seen her father arrive in a cab, which was unusual, and caused her to look at him consideringly.

“Ah, that needs explaining it, doesn’t it?”

He could suggest a wink, somehow without closing an eye.

“But I’ll sit down. It must be eighty in the shade. Bring out a chair, my dear.”

He sat down, and his daughter regarded him much as a woman regards a lovable infant.

“Now, what have you been doing?”

“ ‘You naughty old man!’ ”

“Yes, sometimes—you are very naughty.”

“Thank you, my dear. That is a sign of grace. I think I’d like a glass——”

“Eliza’s iced lemonade?”

“No, a mild whisky, but you can include the ice.”

His daughter bent down and kissed the top of his head.

“Pet, you shall have your whisky.”

She brought him his drink, and it was a good one, nor did it cause her to remember that other man whose drinks had been of a stiffer order. She fetched a chair, and sat down beside him.

“Now, why the cab?”

Mr. Slade chuckled. “No need to send for Dr. Richmond. My heart’s as it should be. Do you know the difference between man and woman?”

“Is that a riddle?”

“Human nature is a riddle, my dear, a fact that the fervid gentlemen who wear red ties never remember. A woman likes to be asked questions; a man hates it.”

“Guilty conscience?”

“Not always. It is the nature of the beast. Well, I’ll answer your question. I took a cab for the benefit of the new curate.”

Rose Hallard could not confess to any interest in curates, nor was she interested in any man as a creature of romance. She had suffered such a surfeit of the male, and was so absorbed in her son, that even the strange loyalty of Dr. Charles Richmond had failed to move her. Moreover, her father was always picking up lame dogs, or stray cats, or woeful children, and bringing them in to be cosseted and comforted, and the new curate might be included in that category. And if he was to serve under the Rev. Egbert Jones and the Vicaress, he deserved to be pitied. Master George, who had shown promise as a mimic, had appeared before them one evening in his white nightshirt, with a scarf draped over his shoulders, and holding a book, had given them a rendering of the Rev. Egbert Jones.

“And now—to Gud the Father—Gud the Son, and Gud the Hooly Ghu-ust——”

His grandfather had smothered a chuckle, and reproved him.

“There are some things you must not mock at, my child.”

“But, Grandpa——”

“Mr. Jones is doing his best.”

So, Mrs. Hallard just sat and asked the necessary question, and threw the ball to her father. “Is he—old?”

“Thirtyish, my dear, but somehow—not quite grown up.”

“I forget the name.”

“The Rev. John Gurney.”

“Oh—yes. And will he suit—Mrs. Egbert?”

Mr. Slade sipped his whisky, and gave his daughter a puckish look.

“Who’s being naughty—now? I must confess, my dear, that Gurney causes me to wonder.”

“Just—how?”

Mr. Slade had decided that he would smoke a pipe, and while he filled it his daughter sat and watched his firm old fingers: no tremor there—as yet. Her father’s touch had grown so sure in its humanity. Well, and what had he discovered in John Gurney that was singular?

“You know the kind of questions children ask.”

“Have I asked that kind of question?”

“No, my dear. I mean those questions that can be so embarrassing to the cynical and the selfish. Occasionally one meets a grown-up child—who can ask——”

“Awkward questions?”

“Exactly.”

“And your Gurney——”

Mr. Slade lit his pipe, and when it was burning nicely, he became philosophical.

“Life’s a funny business. You may think you have got it pat, and the whole house in order, and then half a sackful of soot drops down the chimney. No, my dear, Gurney is not soot. I may be wrong, but I do have a feeling about things.”

“And about new curates.”

“Tut-tut. This may be a very serious—development. I shall be very interested to listen to Gurney’s first sermon.”

“You mean—he may say things.”

“He might, my dear. He’s got it in his eyes. The guileless passion for truth. Most disconcerting, you know.”

“Not to you, father.”

“I don’t know about that. I’m often a very naughty old man. But imagine the Lord Jesus Christ appearing in the pulpit of St. Jude’s and talking like Christ, in contrast to the careful and pew-persuading Egbert.”

“Awkward things.”

“For some of us. No names, no scandal, my dear. But Southfleet is growing rather full of mere money changers. Gurney might not be popular.”

“With—everybody?”

“No, not quite—everybody. Business men are not all just business, and justice may come before business.”

“And what will you do, father, if Gurney makes people uncomfortable? Get up and walk out?”

“Think so?”

“Of course not.”

“I think I shall just sit and chuckle.”

John Gurney had been given high-tea, which meant an egg to it, but the egg itself was not high. It might be a little hard-boiled, if produced by the most respectable of hens in a house that was ordered by the same most respectable breed of women.

Said Miss Caroline to Miss Euphemia: “Well, what do you think of him?”

Miss Euphemia’s verdict was that Gurney was a perfect little gentleman, rather shy. There had been days when the Misses Plimsoll had been coy with their curates, but such dreams and simperings had fallen like shrivelled fruit, and both ladies were prim and a little severe, and more interested—so they assumed—in the doctrine than in the man. Miss Euphemia’s description of the Rev. John Gurney was—in its superficial aspect—apposite. Shy he was with certain people, sensitive and self-effacing, but this very self-effacement could become a veritable suit of shining armour. He had the supreme courage of his guilelessness and of his Credo. But was it courage—when he was not conscious of it?

He had questioned Miss Euphemia about his new friend. “Do you know a Mr. Slade?”

Of course Miss Euphemia knew Mr. Slade, but she could not accept any social connection. The Misses Plimsoll might let rooms to the elect, but they considered themselves to be gentlewomen.

“Slade? Oh, yes, he keeps a shop in the High Street.”

“A very kind old man.”

Miss Euphemia stood erect, but her lips were prim. The Misses Plimsoll might swallow all the commandments, including the seventh, but their nostrils became pinched over Mr. Slade’s past.

“Yes, quite a character. It used to be a toy shop.”

“Has it ceased to be——?”

“No, Slade’s still sell toys, and other things. I’m afraid we do not deal there.”

When he had finished his tea Gurney stood at the window and looked across Cashiobury Terrace to the sea. He had a curiously long head, one of those heads that seem to be drawn upwards and forwards by visionary things. His black hair fitted it like a skull-cap. His face had a peculiar and perpetual radiance, as though his inward self was always smiling. His profile would have delighted the numismatic artist who wished to decorate a coin, clear-cut, serene, and somehow joyous. Even the sulkiest and most stupid of children seemed to come to life when Gurney looked at them.

There were still a few children playing out there on the grass. Gurney put on his hat and left the decorative dreariness of the Plimsoll domestic art. The Misses Plimsoll had remained in the antimacassar, Pampas grass era. They draped things as they draped their persons and their souls.

Cashiobury Terrace could not be described as a place of beauty. It suggested a Union Jack laid out in grass and gravel, with a border of euonymus hedge and iron railings mounted upon a low brick wall. The Victorian passion for property seemed to express itself in railings, nor was their iron-work that of the Georgian and the smith. It was a cast-iron age even in its new, dogmatic, scientific cockiness. Gurney entered by one of the iron gates, and straightway was confronted with rebellious youth, a truculent small boy who was defying his nurse, and was refusing to go home and to bed.

“Now, come along, Master Harold, come along and be good.”

Master Harold had no intention of being good, and his nurse was a delicate and gentle young woman who easily could be bullied. Master Harold would grow up into the sort of man who enjoyed bullying women. He had a large, white, stubborn face, and expressionless blue eyes.

“I want you to be good.”

“I don’t want to be good.”

“Come along, do.”

“I’m not going to bed. You’re a silly fool.”

The little nurse laid hold of Master Harold’s left arm, and he promptly punched her in the bosom. The blow hurt her, and she winced. And then a surprising thing happened to Master Harold. Someone smacked his head, and taking him by the collar, turned him round. The boy was astonished. He looked up into a face that smiled down at him, and smack and smile were both most strangely persuasive.

“Yes, Harold, you are going to bed.”

The boy stared. “Why should I?”

“Because God says so—and because I’m asking you to. You won’t be unkind to me, will you, Harold?”

A sudden smile spread over the boy’s sullen little face. “I’ll go—if you’ll come too.”

Gurney took his hand. “Yes, I’ll come, but not to bed.”

“Thank you, sir,” said the nurse.

When Gurney had shed Harold at the gate of “Balmoral”, he raised his hat to the nurse, and turned to follow his own inclinations. Both duty and courtesy demanded that he should call at the vicarage and report his arrival to the Rev. Egbert Jones, but Gurney felt moved to explore his new cure before interviewing that formalist, his vicar. So, Gurney wandered down Cliff Parade to Caroline Terrace and the gardens. Gurney paused by the posts and chains outside No. 19. The prospect pleased him, these sedate and sun-steeped houses, the little gardens, the green shrubbery, the sea. No. 19 had become the Richmond house, for the Hallards, husband and wife, lay in St. Jude’s churchyard. Gurney could see the church at the end of the vista, its squat white timber spire catching the sunlight, its porch dwarfed in perspective by the great holly hedges which flanked the approach. Gurney wandered along Caroline Terrace to Pier Hill, to find himself part of a cockney crowd that was flowing homewards towards the station. It was a characteristic crowd, and suddenly Gurney’s bowels yearned in him, for he knew his cockney from A to Z, and his curacies had included parishes in Stepney and Whitechapel. He had been sorry to leave those parishes, but fate and a secret, and his superiors had forced an exodus. Yes, Gurney, like Mr. Slade, had come to Southfleet with a secret. He stood and smiled upon the passing crowd. It was a warm and cheerful and common crowd. It sang, it played upon concertinas, it carried bags of shrimps and jars full of cockles. It tugged children along by the hand, or bore them on shoulders. It laughed, and joked, and was healthily vulgar, and indulged in back-chat, and was big with beer. You could smell the crowd, and to Gurney there was something moving and familiar in this human smell.

“ ‘Ello, what price the Sky Pilot!”

“Blimey, don’t ‘e look a treat!”

Gurney smiled upon these irreverent souls. Had not they and their like been good friends of his? Had he not married them, and baptized their children, and condoned black eyes and Saturday night celebrations? He could not be put out of countenance by their badinage. Stand up to the common man and smile at him as though you loved him, and he is yours.

Came another voice: “Blimey, if it ain’t Mr. Gurney!”

A little, swarthy coster broke step and left the procession. His eyes were bright.

“Gawd, what a surprise!”

“Hallo, Alf.”

“What, takin’ an ‘oliday, sir?”

They shook hands vigorously.

“No, this is my new home. How’s Ethel, and the missus?”

“Fine, sir. Wish you was comin’ back with us, sir.”

“So do I, Alf, in a way.”

“Well—in a sense—this ‘ere place is ‘ome from ‘ome. Got a train to catch, sir. My missus and the kids are on a’ead somewhere with old Bert Bailey. Remember Bert, sir?”

“Of course I do. I hope he hasn’t punched any more policemen?”

“Not ‘alf. Well, good-bye, sir, and the best o’ luck.”

“Good-bye, Alf, and God bless you.”

For that London crowd had made Gurney realize that he was feeling lonely. Here was this new township, with all its strange people to whom he was nothing but a strange new curate. He felt rather like a small boy turned loose in a new and unfriendly school, nor were his responsibilities those of a small boy. He knew what he knew. He was to be a public figure, a little fellow who had to get up in a pulpit and preach—to what? Not to sinners such as Alf and Bert, but to a respectable and perhaps critical congregation, successful people who might regard him with hostile eyes were he to utter the words that his credo made inevitable. You could crucify yourself upon the cross of truth. Did he not know! And suddenly he wished to be alone, and, threading through the crowd, he made his way to the iron gates and the holly hedges of St. Jude’s. The sun was shining on the west window, and almost it smiled at him like the eyes of Bert, that vulgar, sinful, warm-hearted child. Gurney tried the porch door, and found it unlocked. He entered. He heard someone playing upon the organ, softly and with cunning fingers. It was the organist’s son, young Bellamy, lame and separative, who had found music comforting to his soul. Gurney tip-toed in and sat down in a very humble seat to listen. He did not know that this had been James Slade’s seat in the days when he had cleaned boots and carried up coals.

Young Bellamy was playing Handel. Gurney could just see his fair head swaying slightly to the rhythm like corn in a wind. The funny old church’s throat seemed to swell. The music rolled along the roof and into the gallery, and Gurney got on his knees and fixed his eyes upon the pulpit. Some day soon he would be up there, and looking down upon strange and perhaps unfriendly faces! Would he flinch from the message that was in him? Would he turn, and walk delicately like Agag, and bow down to the top hats and the bonnets? No, by the Lord God Almighty he would not. The music, swelling suddenly, seemed to carry his spirit up on glorious and insurgent wings. His face lit up. He blessed the fair-haired maker of music.

Gurney explored the Old Town before paying his formal visit to the Rev. Egbert Jones. The Old Town was somehow Alf, and Bill and Bert. Here were old-fashioned lodging-houses and tea-gardens, roistering pubs, watermen in blue jerseys, a black jetty which suggested that Southfleet’s famous pier had dropped a pup, rival pleasure-yachts the Skylark and the Conqueror referred to by some as “Sixpenny Sickers”. The tide was in, and Gurney was not presented with a picture of a mile of mud, but mud that was washed twice daily by the insurgent sea. Here, too, was that East End crowd, still flowing stationwards, and enjoying life as the common folk can enjoy it. Children might be a little tired and peevish, and too full of shrimps and cockles, but it had been a great day, oh—yes, a great day. The crowd had washed its feet in Jordan.

Gurney strolled as far as the old black jetty. He could feel himself part of this crowd, and warmed by it. Here was human nature in the rough, unvexed by snobbery, and unseduced by Pharisees and Sadducees. Good brown soil—this, not some little prig of a front garden prim with pelargoniums. The old Ship Inn thrust out its white bow windows as though it too was full of beer and bonhomie. Its flagstaff flew the Union Jack. Gurney felt cheered and comforted, and reinforced for his interview with the Rev. Egbert Jones. Southfleet was not all Cliff Parade and Cashiobury Terrace. It could sing and dance and be happily vulgar, and not expect you to live in a pulpit and utter prim phrases that would not be offensive to pious pockets.

Gurney rang the vicarage bell. It was one of those grey houses, stucco, with a slate roof, and its windows, somehow, were correct and cold. The doorstep was immaculate, the brass door-fittings perfectly polished. It was a house that expected you to wear gloves and a very clean collar, and to wipe your feet on the mat before you entered.

A middle-aged maid in cap and apron answered the bell. Mr. Egbert Jones was at home, and in the study preparing his Sunday sermon. Gurney had met his new vicar on a previous occasion, and been catechized and inspected, and accepted. Mr. Jones had described him to Mrs. Jones as, “a rather shy little person, but—I think—quite suitable.”

Mr. Egbert Jones rose from behind his desk, and stretched out a large pink hand to his curate. Mr. Jones himself was large and pink and sententious. He had manners. He was very much the gentleman, going bald, but expert in making the most of such hair as he possessed. His handshake was flabby, his voice refined to the level of affectation. The Rev. Egbert Jones had prospects, and his rather protuberant blue eyes were fixed upon a canonry. It was rumoured, too, that he would be appointed Rural Dean. He was carefully impressive, concealing behind a fine façade a certain flabbiness and a culture that was compromise. Mr. Jones was careful not to offend his congregation. He was, in every sense, a comfortable man, vain, self-satisfied, well soaped and scented, but prone to jealousy.

“Ah—Gurney, glad to see you. I hope you find the accommodation I recommended—suitable.”

Mr. Jones could never quite get away from the lectern. Even at a garden party he behaved as though he were baptizing infants. He was a fine figure of a man, and he towered over Gurney as a master dwarfs a small boy, and that too was his inward attitude to his new curate. Here was a harmless little fellow who would trot about Southfleet, dutifully performing parochial acts that were boring to The Rev. Egbert.

Gurney was quite sure that he would find his lodgings comfortable. The Misses Plimsoll appeared to be——

“Admirable women, Gurney, and gentlewomen—if a little decayed. Sit down, Gurney, sit down.”

He resumed his own seat, and John Gurney took the edge of a hard chair and nursed his hat. That hard chair was not there by chance. Mr. Jones kept it there to chasten the posteriors of parishioners who could be too confessional.

“Perhaps you would like—a’hem—a little counsel from me, Gurney. This—is a somewhat—peculi-ar parish. It is, if I may say so, a test of a man’s tact.”

Gurney sat very still, with his eyes on that large, bland face, and Mr. Jones continued. He boomed. He was of the opinion that he had a very beautiful voice.

“Tact, Gurney. One must not offend childish minds. Humanity can be so very childish. And this place, if I may say so, is like hymns—ancient and modern.”

Gurney smiled. “The new and the old, sir.”

“Quite so. One has to cherish the old, and cultivate the new. New wine and old, Gurney. I have always held it to be my duty to persuade—without offending.”

Gurney’s smile had died away. He was wondering whether the Rev. Egbert Jones attempted persuasion upon Southfleet’s old town, and upon the persons of such children as Bert, Alf, and Bill. Your cockney could be a very irreverent creature, and quite capable of dealing with any braying ass. Also, Gurney was feeling troubled, and discovering in his vicar a problem that loomed and boomed like some large light-ship warning adventurous sailors off the shoals. Tact? Would it be part of his profession to exercise tact in his subordination to Mr. Jones? The prospect did not please him.

“I presume that you prepare your sermons, Gurney?”

“Prepare, sir?”

“Yes, write them. I rather mistrust the extempore. One may say——”

“What the spirit urges.”

“Oh, quite so, but sometimes—too much emotion can be unwise. Do you prepare——?”

“I do, sir, at times.”

“I presume you have copies that you could submit to me?”

Gurney’s smile was sudden and a little strange. “I have, sir. Do I understand that you would like a sample sermon upon which you can act as censor?”

Mr. Jones put his fingers together. “I hope I am no censorious soul, Gurney, but—I—have had experience. I—know—my congregation. Perhaps, it may be of assistance to you to hear me preach——”

“I have no doubt that it will.”

“Excellent. There is no need for haste. When you have savoured the flavour of our township you will be able to adapt—yourself.”

Gurney was fidgeting with his hat. He wanted to say: “The flavour of Sunday dinner, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and no forward and truthful phrases that might cause indigestion.” He fiddled with his hat, and glanced at Mr. Jones’s manuscript.

“I am very grateful, sir, for your advice. And—now—I realize that I must not trespass upon your time. Your sermon—I think.”

Mr. Jones beamed upon him. “Thank you, Gurney. I do take my sermons very seriously. Supposing you call upon me to-morrow about ten. We can go into some of our parochial duties—Sunday School, our obligations to the poor and the sick and the aged. And I must introduce you to my wardens.”

Gurney rose, and Mr. Jones, without rising, graciously shook hands across his desk.