Читать книгу Malice of Men - Warwick Deeping - Страница 7

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hose were difficult days for me.

My young urges and ambitions could strut only upon a dream stage, and at No. 42 I lived in a little prison house of secrecy and suppression.

I had no one to whom I could pour out my soul. I admit that the confessions of youth must be infinitely embarrassing to the mind that has concealed itself in the clothes of convention, and had I tried to display my nakedness to my mother, she would have been shocked by it. None of the St. John’s masters invited our confidences; in fact, they avoided adding any such complexities to the curriculum. I suppose the attempt to stuff mathematics into unmathematical heads was sufficiently boring, without the business of inculcating morals.

I was not what the Victorian world might have dubbed me, a disreputable lout. I was torn and troubled by the eternal negation in a world that seethed with positive and natural urges. I wanted someone to tell me about things, to explain why so many of the normal functions of one’s body should be regarded as obscene and disgraceful. Why this, why that? I did make one attempt to confide in my mother, and I can recall the shocked dignity with which she seemed to stiffen in her armchair. My mother shut my troubles up in a cupboard and turned the key on them. I realize now that the poor soul had no solution to offer me save the dreary “Thou shalt not” of the Old Men whom age had made bitter against youthful things. My questions terrified her. It was as though the Serpent himself had come crawling up the stairs and across her nice Kidderminster carpet.

It occurred to me that Mr. Sweeting might be able to help me. We were sitting on the warm shingle together, sketching a fishing-boat which lay at anchor. Two young women carrying parasols and walking with Victorian self-consciousness, passed between us and the sea. One of them glanced at us. I met her eyes, and she looked quickly away with fluttering eyelashes. I heard the girls giggling.

I said suddenly to Mr. Sweeting: “Why should it be sinful to think about women?”

Had I upset a pot of paint over his trousers he could not have been more flustered. He drew up his long legs and seemed to cringe. His face, with its fair fluff of beard and whiskers, grew small and prim.

“One does not discuss that sort of thing, my dear boy.”

He seemed almost as shocked as my mother, and ready to regard me as a sizzling bomb on the point of exploding.

“Just the Ten Commandments, sir?”

He seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

“Exactly, John. Self restraint. A Christian gentleman does not let himself think of what is vulgar and carnal.”

“But if one can’t help asking questions?”

He had resumed his sketching with eager concentration.

“Don’t ask questions. Read your Bible, John. What did our Lord say? To dally with such curiosity is to be tempted.”

I left it at that. I realized that my probing of the problem was rendering Mr. Sweeting acutely uncomfortable, and that he might accuse me of behaving like a nasty, inquisitive child. But why this starched terror, this panic in the presence of natural things? I think it was then that the sinister suspicion first entered my mind. Was it possible that all these respectable people were humbugs, and that, like creatures who were shamefully and secretly infected by sin, they carefully concealed it, and became shocked and indignant when some faint odour of fleshliness threatened to betray them?

I clung to the Ivanhoe inspiration, the Tennysonian dream. I too would be a Galahad, and not the unclean-minded little wretch who was an offence to his elders. I tried to suppress both my sex and my suspicions, for I did so want to believe in the sincerity of the Edith Lancasters and the Sweetings of this world. My experiences at school had taught me that sex sometimes had an ugly and an obscure face, and emotion could move me to swear that my elders were wise and good people who knew that if life was to be lived with dignity, the body must be brought into subjection. I had been confirmed at school, and in my struggle to conform to the ideals of my generation I became for a while a religious child. I went to Communion with my mother, and kneeling beside her took the sacrament with inward thrills and passion. Surely, this Mystery would sustain me, and in bringing me into the presence of the Unseen God, conjure away my young urges?

I did not betray my piety to the other boys at St. John’s College. I knew that most of them would have mocked me, and I was no little St. Paul. My exaltation was secret and individual, a mysterious lamp of my own which I carried concealed within me. I said my prayers night and morning, kneeling beside my bed.

But those lapses!

I used to be shaken with remorse and shame. I would get out of my bed at night, and kneel and abase myself before God.

Could anything, God himself, give me strength to chasten my insurgent flesh?

I had miserable days, and then, somehow, I would forgive myself, swear that I had renounced such shameful things, and relight my little glimmering lamp, and feel full of hope.

But the persecutions of the flesh gave me no peace. There was a curate at St. Jude’s, a dark, intense, eloquent man whose sermons were as handsome and reassuring as his person. It seemed to me that the Rev. Mr. Harting was the very friend I needed. He was a bachelor, and I found out where he lodged, and plucking up my courage I dared to call on him one evening.

“Can I see Mr. Harting, please.”

His landlady let me in, and leaving me in the passage, went upstairs. I heard Mr. Harting’s deep, rich voice in conversation with her.

“Send the boy up.”

I ascended like a trembling child about to be ushered into the presence of some mysterious and enlightened seer. Mr. Harting’s room was full of tobacco smoke, and I remember noticing an empty glass on the sideboard. Mr. Harting was sitting in an armchair by the window, wearing a shabby black coat, and a collar that looked a little soiled.

“Well, my lad, what can I do for you?”

I stood there fidgeting with my cap, and feeling horribly embarrassed and self-conscious. My courage and my desire to confess to him seemed to ooze away. I felt ashamed. Could I expose my wretched nakedness to this great man?

Let me be honest, I funked it. There was something in the atmosphere of the room that confounded me, and Mr. Harting’s buxom and confident cheerfulness made my secret shame appear so poor and shabby. I prevaricated.

“I wonder if you can help me, sir.”

He smiled at me.

“Sit down. I know your face. Mrs. Lancaster’s son?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What is your trouble?”

I sat down on the edge of a chair, with my school cap in one hand.

“I’ve had doubts, sir.”

He had put his pipe aside, and he sat easily in his chair, observing me carefully.

“Doubts, about religion, Lancaster?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That happens to all of us, my dear boy.”

“Even to you, sir?”

His face seemed to close up for a moment.

“It did. But prayer, prayer brings back one’s faith. Do you say your prayers, Lancaster?”

“O, yes, sir.”

His face opened out again.

“That’s as it should be. These doubts will dissolve. It is a sign of grace, my dear boy, that doubts should come to you. It is a trial sent by God.”

“Is that really so, sir?”

“Believe me, it is. Pray for faith, and faith will be yours.”

And then I became dreadfully embarrassed, perhaps because I divined a bland uneasiness in him. Somehow, neither his voice nor his words convinced me. Was it that a kind of studied and defensive unctuousness repulsed my young soul? I have wondered since whether he was afraid that I might splurge into a sex confession. I think I did realize in a vague sort of way that even in this sanctum certain subjects might be taboo. Sex was a thing you did not talk about even to the Mr. Hartings of that Victorian world. It was lumped vaguely and conveniently into the syllabus of sin.

I fidgeted with my cap, blurted out my thanks to Mr. Harting, blushed and got up.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Come to me again, my boy, if you are troubled.”

“I will, sir.”

I escaped with a strange feeling of relief. I can postulate now an equal relief in the Rev. Mr. Harting. How long it was to take me to learn that the sex problem is insoluble, save by the compassionate wisdom of a supreme love, and that even then there may be lapses. Does a woman understand and forgive? This organic grit can be so trivial and evanescent. And then, in the serenity of a comprehending comradeship such little turgid disharmonies cease from vexing one’s colour-loving soul. A greater and more creative kindness comes to man, and little greeds are chastened by compassion.

I became very restless about this time. There was a spirit in me that cried out and would not be appeased. The school was boring me very badly, and so was No. 42 Regal Terrace. I was in the sort of mood when a lad runs away to sea, or becomes the little amateur burglar or thug. But always there was a passion for beauty at the back of my restlessness, and it was to save me from the extravagances of mere loutishness. On half holidays I walked miles into the country, to Ringwood Castle, Winchfield or Rudlake. Ringwood fascinated me. One could climb up the old grey black towers where the jackdaws built, and look down the Rote Valley to the marshes and the sea. There was one occasion, when, greatly daring, I climbed the most ruinous of the towers, to find that the return journey was more desperate than the upward climb. I hung over the verge, feeling for a place on which to plant a foot, and for a while I clung there in palsied terror.

What a fool I had been to climb this crumbling wall! And then I heard a strangely familiar voice below me.

“Hallo! Got stuck?”

I scrambled back on to a ledge and looking down, saw Lugard there and a girl, a pretty fair creature carrying her hat in her hand.

“Hallo! It’s young Lancaster.”

My courage came back to me under Lugard’s eyes. I remembered that the Lugard farm was beyond the river. I threw my cap down and laughed.

“I just felt a bit giddy. I’ll come down now.”

But Lugard would not have it. “Wait a moment, my lad.” He came climbing up, and bracing himself against the wall, guided my foot to a projecting stone. “Now, then, a bit at a time.” It seemed easy to descend with big Lugard guiding me, and in a few seconds I was on the grass and brushing the knees of my trousers. The girl was looking at Lugard with sparkles of light in her eyes, and I saw Lugard glance at her, and their secret was revealed to me. It was beautiful the way they looked at each other, and I felt some deep emotion stirring in me.

Lugard had found out the secret of self-appeasement. His eyes and face and voice seemed those of a man who had discovered some inward strength. Lugard was in love. Lugard was happy.

They took me back to tea at Rote Farm, and all the while that I was with him I wanted to watch these two comely creatures who could not keep their eyes from each other’s faces. Their love seemed so good and clean and inevitable. It both soothed and hurt me. I was only a boy, but I understood, and I wanted to be Lugard, and to love as he did.

On my way home I passed along the grey wall of Beaulieu Park. It was about six o’clock on a June evening; and the sun was shining through the trees. I had climbed one wall already, and somehow this park wall piqued me. That it was forbidden country to me made it all the more alluring, and the temptation to trespass was so strong that I scaled the wall and dropped down amid the trees. Beaulieu Park was surrounded by this belt of trees, save where three broad vistas had been left on the southward side so that the eyes of the house could look over the rolling country to the sea.

I remember the thrill with which I found myself among those trees. This was adventure. I felt that I was challenging the Bullstrode pride, and revenging myself upon those three young men for the affair of the Sandbourn beach. The “cad” had climbed their sacred wall and was flouting the Bullstrode arrogance. But no sooner had I penetrated beyond the belt of trees, and gained my first glimpse of that glorious parkland, than the little petty self in me was dissolved in an almost breathless wonder at the place’s beauty.

It was the heaven-ordained hour for the lovely stateliness of Beaulieu, early evening when the sun was sending great slants of light over this green world. The ground fell away into a deep valley, or rather, into a series of little valleys, secret spaces padded with sweet turf or feathery with fern. There was a kind of crumpled duskiness about the great woods spreading along the ridges. They seemed to touch the sky. Here and there thickets of gnarled old thorns and yews suggested the tents and pavilions of an army. Beeches and oaks rose dome upon dome, with the sunlight on their tops, and a mysterious gloom hanging like a curtain between their crowded trunks. The place had for me so wild and strange a beauty that I could have dreamed myself into the world of Arthur and of Guinevere, or sworn that in the shade of one of those thorn trees Tristan and Iseult had stood gazing upon each other.

I forgot the Bullstrode family in the splendour of their towering trees. I went down into the valley, and up the further slope to a wood of beeches. Never before had I seen such trees. Their great, grey, smooth-skinned trunks stood like pillars, and overhead the foliage spread and met in a canopy of green leaves and glimmers of sky. The light that filtered through seemed to have a greenish tinge. The floor of this great wood, carpeted with patches of moss and the brown litter of last year’s leaves, seemed to go on and on into infinity. I could see nothing but tree-trunks and green foliage. The silence was utter. The mystery of the place both scared me and lured me on, and I would stand quite still, and look about me and listen. Presently, like rents in a curtain, streaks of light showed between the tree-trunks, and I found myself looking down into another valley. It was broader and less deep than the previous one, and on the further hill I saw two clumps of Scotch firs, and between them and standing higher than the trees, a little circular temple. The sunlight was shining upon its white dome and pillars. The hollow of the valley was patched with fern, and in the distance deer were feeding.

The little temple fascinated me. I wanted to climb up and explore it. I think I must have forgotten that I was a trespasser in this romantic wilderness, and I left the shelter of the beech trees and went down into the valley. I must have been half way across it when I saw three figures on horseback come suddenly over the opposite hill. For a second or two I stood staring.

There was a patch of fern not twenty yards away, and I made a dash for it and dived in, and then, raising my head among the fern fronds, looked towards the slope of the hill. Had they seen me? I had heard a shout, and seen one of the riders waving an arm. They had seen me. They were trotting down the hill towards my patch of fern.

I decided to make a dash for it, and I got up, left my cover, and ran. If I could reach the beechwood ahead of them, I could dodge in among those crowded trunks and fool them. They would have to leave their horses and hunt me on foot, and in those days I was pretty quick on my feet.

I ran. But I could hear the thudding of hoofs coming nearer. The Bullstrodes had put their horses into a gallop, and looking back over my shoulder, I realized that they would be on me before I could reach the trees. I was a little scared, and out of breath for the slope of the hill was against me. Why should I run like a frightened kid, and give them the pleasure of chasing me? This was God’s earth, even though it lay within the Bullstrode wall. My pursuers could not eat me.

I turned about to face them.

Beverley had outdistanced his brothers, just as he had out-ridden them on the sands. He came straight at me as though he would ride me down. I did not flinch. I remember looking straight into his eyes, and feeling relieved and a little exultant when he had to pull his horse aside. He overshot me, and I turned to face him as he came about.

He rode up to me and stopped his horse so that the beast’s nose was within a foot of my face. We were so close that I could see the peculiar blueness of his eyes. They were of an intense, hard blueness, and streaked with rays of darker pigment that seemed to intensify their blue glare. His red skin had a polished glow. It was one of those coarse skins, which, in later life would look blotched and inflamed, the skin of a man whose turgid appetites had become smeared upon the surface. He had very large front teeth, the kind of teeth that grow long, and turn yellow. His lips were thick and pink, and ribbed with faint, vertical lines.

“What do you think you are doing here?”

He had a riding-crop in one hand, and he threatened me with it, but his riding-crop moved me far less than did his voice. The insolvent self-sureness of it made me hate him.

“Looking at the landscape,” and I added: “You didn’t make it.”

I had cheeked him, and he raised his crop, as though to lay it across my shoulders, but the other two had come up. It was Gavin of the sleepy and insolent face who intervened in my favour.

“Hold hard, Bill. Let’s hear what the cad has to say.”

The three horses were ranged round me like the rays of a star, and as each Bullstrode spoke to me I turned and faced him.

“Why, cad?”

This was to Gavin, and it seemed to amuse him.

“Genus, cad. But the creature has a school cap. I seem to recognize it.”

Fitzroy guffawed. He was a smaller edition of Beverley, but without Beverley’s cleverness or his grand manner.

“St. John’s College; not Isis or Cam, but Sandbourn.”

I was facing Fitzroy now.

“Eton or Harrow, I presume?”

Again he guffawed at me.

“It’s a cheeky little cad. What’s its name? What’s your name, fellah?”

“That’s no business of yours.”

“Oh, isn’t it? Poaching, and a case for the police. Let him turn out his pockets. What’s your name?”

I did not answer Fitzroy, and again Beverley took charge.

“What do you mean by trespassing? We have a right to demand your name and address. Out with it.”

His eyes threatened me and I hated him.

“You won’t make me answer questions.”

“Is that so?”

“I’m ready to fight any one of you.”

He swung off his horse, and still holding the bridle, stood over me contemptuously. He seemed to tower. The very bulk of him was contemptuous.

“Don’t be silly. We don’t fight with cads. We may lick them.”

“If you touch me, I’ll—”

He let his bridle go and got me suddenly and roughly by the collar.

“I’d advise you to be a little less cocky. Fitz, take my crop, while I turn the fellow up.”

I struggled, but he was ever so much stronger than I was, and in a second or two he had me trussed up, with my face about a foot from the grass.

I heard Gavin’s voice.

“Hold on, Bill. I have a much more subtle notion.”

“What?”

“Let’s take off the little cad’s trousers and send him home without them.”

Fitzroy’s laughter was like the exulting of some monstrous bird.

“Great idea! Hold on, Bill.”

I struggled, but Beverley held me flat on my face while the other two dealt with my buttons. I felt my legs being skinned of their breeches. Something tore as they were peeled over my boots. I kicked and squirmed, for I was like a mad thing quivering with impotent fury.

“You cads.”

Beverley let me go, and I scrambled up and confronted those three laughing faces. Fitzroy had my trousers in his hand. I made a dash at him, but he put out a big brown hand, and catching me in the chest, sent me staggering.

“Run home to mother, my lad.”

I stood in the white kilt of my shirt, while they got on their horses. I can remember Fitzroy shaking my trousers at me, and a faint clink of metal coming from them.

“Hallo, the cad has some cash. We don’t take money, do we, Bill?”

He felt in the pockets, found three pennies, and tossed them to me, and they rode off and up the hill, while I stood in my shirt and watched them. I saw them pause on the skyline. Fitzroy waved my poor trousers like a trophy. Then, the three of them disappeared, and I was left looking at that little temple, and the two groups of Scotch firs. Twenty minutes ago I had been conscious of nothing but the beauty of this English scene; now I was a little human vessel filled to the brim with bitter feeling. The ignominy of it! I was just a cad left minus his trousers, but they had stripped me of something that was far more precious, the illusion of myself as a little romantic hero. I looked down at my bare legs, and saw that in the rape of my trousers my socks had been turned down over the tops of my boots. I bent down and pulled them up.

How was I to regain No. 42 Regal Terrace without betraying my shame to all the world? How was I to explain the loss of my nether garments to my mother? Could I call at some cottage, and try to borrow a pair of pants? I was in a ridiculous dilemma, and feeling stung with shame, which goes to show how the conventions of civilization can make cowards of us over a few square inches of bare flesh. I decided to hide until darkness came, and then to sneak home as best I could. I knew of a field path that would take me down to the Rudlake Road, and that an old grass track skirted round Pink Farm, and through some market gardens to the western outskirts of Sandbourn.

I hid in the belt of trees by the stone wall until it was dark, and in climbing the wall I barked my bare knees against the stone. I remember running down the road until I found the gate leading to the field path, and from the high ground I saw the lights of Sandbourn pricking the darkness. Those lights scared me. I told myself that I could not venture into the town until all blinds were decently drawn and the lamps extinguished. But what if I should find myself locked out in my shirt-tails? Surely, an anxious mother would be sitting up for me? More humiliation? I should have to confess to my mother. A light breeze was coming off the sea, and I began to feel chilly on these uplands, and with my white shirt blowing I carried my ridiculous and shameful flight across the Rudlake Road and along the grass track skirting Pink Farm. I met no one, but I was still afraid of all those lights and of the people who might be strolling along the Parade. I sat in a ditch, feeling cold and miserable, and nursing a hatred of the whole Bullstrode clan. If only I had had Lugard’s strength and could have smashed the face of the man I hated most, that burly brute, Beverley. I heard a clock strike eleven before I ventured out of my ditch, and sneaking into Cliff Road made for the flight of steps that led down to Regents Parade. I poked my head round a pillar and peered. The Parade appeared deserted, and I decided to cut short my anguish. I sprinted along the pavement.

Just where The Ascent separated Regents Parade from Regal Terrace I nearly blundered into a police constable who was strolling down the Ascent on patrol. I dodged past him and fled.

“Hallo, my lad, what’s on?”

I ran, for that was my trouble and my inspiration, the lack of something on. He did not bother to follow me, and I imagine that with a large and human tolerance he must have stood there chuckling. I was flying like winged death for No. 42. I gained the gate, flung it back, and bolted up the three steps to the door.

There appeared to be no lights in the house. My knees were shaking under my shirt as I rang the bell and waited. I wanted that door to open. It did not occur to me to wonder at the moment who might open it.

The glass panel above the door grew bright. I heard footsteps. Bolts were withdrawn, and the door opened. I saw Mary standing there in the hall, with a white gas-globe inconsiderately brilliant behind her.

I shall never forget her face.

“Bless us, Master John!”

I suppose I must have looked a funny object, but it took me a long while to forgive her for laughing, though her laughter was as transient as my skirts. She must have been touched by my poor, stricken, shameful face, for she drew me in and gently closed the door.

“O, my dear, what have you been doing?”

I could not tell her. I could not even find a lie.

“Someone stole my trousers.”

I was to discover that Mary was not shocked by things as my mother was shocked by them. Mary might put on a starched frock and a staid appearance in the presence of her so-called betters, but she came from the soil and was a human and honest creature.

“My dear, your mother’s sitting up in her room.”

“Is she very upset, Mary?”

Mary reached up and turned down the gas. She put her arm round me, and I felt myself in contact with a soft, warm shape.

“Just a little. You must be cold.”

“Yes, Mary.”

“Had any supper?”

“No.”

She gave me a human hug, and suddenly I turned and kissed her, and found her strangely pleasant to kiss.

“There, there, my dear. Martha’s gone to bed. You run along into the kitchen, and I’ll find you something.”

“Mary.”

“Yes.”

“You couldn’t get me my Sunday trousers, could you?”

“Of course I can. I’ll just drop in and tell your mother you are safe home.”

“Don’t tell her anything else, Mary.”

This time she kissed me, and I felt suddenly warmed by her kiss. Somehow, I had never appreciated Mary as woman, and suddenly I seemed to sense her as a comely, lovable creature. I caught her hand and squeezed it, and she went running up the stairs. I heard her go into my mother’s room, emerge a moment later, and cross the landing into mine. Soon I was sitting clothed at the kitchen table, while Mary put some cold meat, etc., in front of me.

“I just told your mother that you had been out in the country bird-nesting.”

She was sitting opposite me, her elbows on the table, and her broad face cupped in her hands. It occurred to me that Mary had beautiful eyes.

“You needn’t tell me anything if you don’t want to.”

I looked at my plate.

“I got caught trespassing in Beaulieu.”

“Beaulieu! By the keepers?”

“No, the Bullstrodes. It was they who—”

“The young blackguards! If I were you, Master John, I’d say nothing about it to your mother.”

“No?”

“She gets so upset about things.”

“But, my trousers, Mary?”

Mary was looking at me with very steady, round blue eyes.

“I’d say you tore them so badly that you gave ’em to me to mend. Have you got any money, Master John?”

“Twopence.”

“I’ll give you some money. And I’ll say I gave the old ones away to the dustman. You can buy another pair on the way to school.”

Mary’s sympathetic arguments did not convince me. Perhaps I felt that I knew my mother better than she did, and that a complete confession would be less embarrassing.

“It’s awfully kind of you, Mary, but I think I’ll tell her. She might find out.”

Tell her I did. I found my mother sitting up in bed in a night-cap, reading the parish magazine. I stood at the bottom of the bed in my Sunday trousers, and made my confession. My mother was angry. I had never seen her so angry before.

“You came here with bare legs?”

“Yes, I couldn’t help it. No one—”

“It’s disgraceful. I’ll have the law against the Bullstrodes over this. I will go and see Mr. Gregson to-morrow. And they call themselves gentlemen!”

I was growing very sleepy, and I yawned.

“Yes, go to bed, dear. What a horrid experience for a nice boy.”

I went and kissed my mother. I had reached the door when she asked me that sudden question.

“Did Mary see you, like that?”

“Yes, Mater.”

My mother’s face seemed to grow sharp and thin.

“How, how abominable! Most certainly I will go and see Mr. Gregson to-morrow.”