Читать книгу Apples of Gold - Warwick Deeping - Страница 4

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They christened the boy Jordan March, Jordan after Nando's Cromwellian father, March because he had come to them on a March night. Their tale was that he was a foundling, that they had heard a knock, and on going to the door had found the child lying on the step. Meg, the maid, spread the gossip among the neighbours, for she had returned to find Nando nursing the child wrapped up in a blanket, while his wife sat stitching at an extemporized frock. They had burned the clothes in which the boy had been brought to them.

Meg was a huge, square creature with black eyebrows meeting over the root of her snub nose, the ugliest and the most sentimental thing in petticoats within a mile of the Bagnio in Long Acre.

"Poor lamb—poor innocent!"

She fell at once to the child, and became his slave and champion; and so devoted were these two women that as the years went by Tom Nando took it upon himself to see that they did not spoil the boy. He thrashed him when necessary, but always with an air of solemn kindness; he taught him that it was infamous for a stout fellow to lie or to shed tears, so much so that when Jordan fell down and blooded his knees he came laughingly to show them to his father. He looked on Nando as his father and on Mary as his mother. They had decided to leave him in that simple faith until he should grow older.

At the age of seven Jordan was a big boy for his years, a frank but rather silent child with a pair of steady grey eyes and a sudden and happy smile. He loved Mary Nando, and he treated Meg with the didactic serenity of a young emperor. His love for Thomas Nando was steeled through with a young male thing's admiration and respect. His father was a wonderful man, and he—Jordan March Nando—was going to try and be just such another man as his father. Already he had his little wooden sword and cudgel, and in the evenings—between lessons in reading and writing—he and Tom Nando would play together the great game of the sword. The boy was happy and frank and courageous. He ran free, and could look to himself, and he was known to all the chairmen who waited with their sedan-chairs in the Piazza of Covent Garden. There was hardly a street he did not explore. He was hail-fellow-well-met with all the hawkers, the sausage and small-coal sellers, the basket-makers, the vendors of old hats and clothes. He had two or three carter friends who gave him rides on their wagons. Tom Birch—the fighting waterman—was his devoted crony. No one ever thought of hurting the boy or of teaching him vicious things; his grey eyes looked straight at you without any fear; he was a stout child, but no prig.

His memories of those days were many and vivid. He had a child's delight in colour and pageantry, in the great gilded coaches, in the fine gentlemen in their huge periwigs, in the pretty ladies of Pall Mall and St. James's. He loved the river, especially when it rained and the watermen put up the blue tilts on their boats. On Sundays the Nandos went to church at St. Paul's, Covent Garden, and Jordan sat between Thomas and Mary Nando and watched everybody and everything. There were the days when his father took him fishing, for Nando was a great fisherman. He had his fights, infant affairs, and at the end of one of them, in the neighbourhood of Drury Lane, a big, dark, saucy orange-girl picked him up in her arms and kissed him.

"Hey, my little buck, you'll be a boy for the women."

Jordan's dignity was so little offended that he hugged her hard round the neck.

"I'll marry you," said he.

"Will you, indeed!" said she, laughing and kissing him full on the mouth.

But his most vivid memories were of the fencing-school and of Thomas Nando, its master. The high, open-roofed room lay beyond the kitchen, and was entered from Spaniards Court by a broad doorway. It had a gallery at one end of it, reached by a winding stair, and here pretty ladies would sometimes sit and watch the work below. Mary Nando and her girl would carry up cups of chocolate to them, for "Nando's" had ways of its own and a fashionable reputation. There were benches round the room, and in one corner pegs on which the gentlemen could hang their hats and coats, also a shelf upon which they could lay their wigs if they so chose. The walls were decorated with weapons, huge old-fashioned rapiers, daggers, falchions, back-swords, and targets. Everything was very clean. The walls were freshly whitewashed each year.

Jordan had a stool of his own in the gallery. He liked to watch Bertrand, the assistant, and Thomas Nando giving their lessons. Particularly he admired his father, the poise and dignity of him, his grave skilfulness, his sudden smile when something amused him. Jordan never quite lost the thrill of seeing Nando putting himself on guard with a quiet "Now, sir." It always seemed to Jordan that his father was the greatest gentleman of them all.

Sometimes one of the pretty ladies would make eyes at the boy and let him share her chocolate.

"What is your name, my dear?"

Jordan always gave it with great solemnity.

"Jordan March Nando, your ladyship."

He would have his shoulder patted with a fan.

"That's right. You will do well for yourself," one of them deigned to tell him, and she was a famous and experienced judge of men, especially of men as lovers.

There was one day in the year that always puzzled Jordan. He had his hair brushed by Mary Nando, was dressed in his best suit, and made to sit by himself on a stool at the back of the fencing-room. He was not allowed to go into the gallery on that day. But what he did learn to notice was that a pretty, pale lady in black sat in one corner of the gallery with her face half hidden by a fan. Jordan found that her eyes remained fixed on him. She did not watch the fencing. And somehow, her eyes so troubled him that he would fidget on his stool.

One day, after his eighth birthday, he asked Mary Nando who the lady was.

"Mother, who is the lady with the eyes?"

"What lady, poppet?"

"The one who comes and stares at me on the day I wear my Sunday suit and sit in the room."

Mary Nando laughed it off.

"O, nobody in particular, my dear. Perhaps you make her think of a boy of her own."

"She looks as though she had lost her boy," said, Jordan.

It was during the June after his eighth birthday that Jordan made his first visit to the St. Croix's house, not far from the church of St. Pancras. It lay among fields where men and women were tossing hay, and at the end of a lane where tall elms made a coolness. Thomas Nando and his wife were in their best clothes, and Jordan was wearing his suit of black fustian.

"Are we going to church, father?"

Nando told him that they were going to the christening of Mr. Sylvester St. Croix's baby daughter. Jordan had heard of Sylvester St. Croix. He was a Frenchman and a Protestant who had come to live in England many years ago, and had married an English wife. Nando and the Frenchman had made their friendship over a fishing-rod. So far as Jordan could understand it, Mr. St. Croix was a kind of clergyman in charge of a small meeting-house to which French people came. Nando spoke of him as being a very learned man, a divine.

"You must be very respectful, my lad."

"Of course he will be," said Mrs. Mary; "did you ever see him show bad manners?"

The house was very old, built of timber and plaster, with queer little blinking windows, and two tall octagonal chimneys rising out of its roof. A shaggy thorn hedge surrounded the garden, which was badly kept, being a waste of grass and fruit trees and unpruned roses, a green and tangled place with the grass standing as high as a man's knees. A brick path, full of weeds, led up to the oak door, and on either side of the door a yew tree stood stiff and solemn.

The house, too, was solemn, and severely sad. In the badly lit oak-panelled parlour a number of people were assembled, people who wore black, and whose faces made Jordan think that he was in church. A thin man with a long and compressed face was seated in a chair. He had a very high forehead, a hooked nose, and pale eyes that never changed their expression.

The Nandos spoke very kindly to him.

"Mr. Sylvester, I could not sleep for thinking of your loss."

"It is very hard, my friend, very hard."

Mr. St. Croix's face seemed to grow more cold and severe.

"Shall I question the ways of the Almighty?" he asked.

Jordan was staring at him, and Mr. St. Croix's eyes suddenly met the boy's.

"Who is this?"

"This is Jordan," said Mrs. Mary.

The man in the chair frowned. There was something disapproving in his eyes, a look of displeased pity. Jordan felt that Mr. St. Croix did not like him, though what he had done to deserve that dislike he did not know.

"Poor child!" said the Frenchman.

Jordan saw Mrs. Mary colour up, and a swift light came into her brown eyes. She put her arm over Jordan's shoulders, and, drawing him to the window, sat down in the window-seat. Jordan leaned against her knees and looked up into her face.

"Why did the man call me a poor child, mother? We are not poor, are we?"

She bent down and whispered:

"No, my dear, but Mr. St. Croix is unhappy."

"Why is he unhappy?"

"Because Mrs. St. Croix died just a week ago."

Presently a woman came into the room with a baby in her arms. The people gathered round and began to make a fuss of the child, though Sylvester St. Croix continued to sit in his chair with an air of cold and severe detachment. Mrs. Mary took the baby in her arms, and talked mother nonsense to it.

Jordan, standing by, asked to be allowed to hold the child.

"Why, to be sure; be very careful, Dan."

Jordan was very solemn and very careful.

"Why, it's got red hair," he said.

"Yes, my dear."

"Isn't it ugly!"

"Tsh, tsh!" said several voices.

"But I like it," quoth he; "what's its name?"

"She is going to be called Douce Jeanne."

"What does Douce mean?"

"'Gentle,' my dear."

Jordan kissed Miss St. Croix, and the baby began to cry. She was taken quickly out of his arms, and Jordan, feeling a little hurt, turned about and found Mr. St. Croix's eyes fixed on him with an expression of angry disapproval.

"Why does he look at me like that?" the boy wondered.

On the way home he asked Mrs. Mary the same question, but Mrs. Mary put him off.

When he was ten, Jordan was sent to a school kept by Mr. Peregrine in an old house on the way to St. Giles'-in-the-Fields. Nando's fencing-school had increased its reputation, and Mary and her man were determined that the boy should know his Latin and Greek as well as any gentleman. Jordan trudged off each morning with his strap of books, after a breakfast of small beer, bread and bacon, and a kiss from Mrs. Mary. He had ceased to be kissed by sentimental Meg; his dignity had grown beyond it.

He was not a bookish boy, and it may be that he learnt more from his fights and his friendships than from Mr. Peregrine and his two ushers, but at the age of twelve he had a piece of knowledge forced upon him which he was never to forget. One May day, in the dinner-hour, he had a battle with a boy a year older than himself, an evil lout, the son of a brewer in the city. Jordan beat the brewer's son, but his victory left him cold.

About five o'clock he walked into the fencing-school, where the last gentlemen were putting on their coats. Nando was polishing a foil, and Jordan walked straight up to him. He had a split lip and a lump on his forehead.

"Father."

Nando looked at him, and something in his man's love for the lad was challenged by the boy's serious face.

"Hallo, Dan! What, another fight?"

"I beat Bob Dunnage—I beat him till he howled. He called me a bastard."

Straightway, Nando put down the foil, and taking Jordan by the shoulder led him out of the fencing-school and into the parlour. It was empty, and Thomas Nando closed the door, saying within himself, "I ought to have told him before."

"Lad," he said, "I want to talk to you."

He sat down in his leather chair and took Jordan on his knee. The boy's frank eyes looked at him with steady seriousness.

"Why did Dunnage call me a bastard?"

"Dan," said Nando, with his hands on the boy's shoulders, "God forgive me, but I ought to have told you of this before."

Very gently he told Jordan the truth, and never in his life had Jordan seen this man so moved. He sat solemnly on Thomas Nando's knee, a little pucker of a frown on his forehead, his young eyes strangely grim. There was no quivering of his mouth. He stared steadily out of the window.

"So you are not my father?"

"No, Dan, save that——"

"And mother is not my mother?"

"By God, boy, but she is—in everything that matters. She loves you better than she loves herself."

And suddenly the boy clasped him about the neck, and Nando's arms went round him and held him very firmly.

"There, there, old lad, you are a real son to us, and we're proud of you, mighty proud."

In a little while Jordan sat up very straight and grave.

"I'll call you father—still."

"Of course."

"And mother."

"And mother."

Jordan smiled faintly.

"It seems, father, that I owe you more than if I'd been a real son."

"God forgive me," said Nando, "but mother herself could not have given me a son more after my own heart."