Читать книгу Roper's Row - Warwick Deeping - Страница 20

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The smashing of Hazzard’s violin was one of those minor tragedies which can cause as much heartburn and contriving as do life’s greater catastrophes. Moreover, his unfortunate felt hat, victim of many assaults, was fit for nothing but the dustbin, and the procuring of a new violin and of a new hat on one and the same moment propounded a problem.

Thanks to Ruth his coat was but little the worse, and he found it hanging on the handle of his door.

But there were other problems, and as he held the coat up to the light and examined it, his thoughts went to his mother and to a particular and cherished plan he had conceived. His mother was coming up to London for “Bennet’s Day,” when the hospital and its relations and friends gathered in the lecture theatre, and some great man delivered an oration, and prizes were presented. “Bennet’s Day” was six weeks hence, and Christopher’s plan necessitated the collecting of every possible penny. He had imagined it as one of life’s great occasions, and on this August morning he was viewing it across the wreckage of a fiddle and a hat.

“Beasts!”

Yet, even in his bitterness he knew that he was not the victim of mere venom, but of childishness, of youth’s proud flesh and turgid organs, of a young savagery that lusts to hunt and kill. Always he had hidden these persecutions from his mother, for he was not proud of being hated. The dog may be capable of despising the pursuing urchins, but he cannot help but feel ashamed of the tin tied to his tail.

The needs of the moment were another hat and another violin. He could not go hatless to the hospital, because his very hatlessness would be a cause of joy, nor could he afford to sacrifice the half-crowns at the “Bunch of Grapes.” Getting out his stove and lighting it, he became the financier considering ways and means, and comparing the respective values of capital and income. He would have to pawn something, and he had only one article that was worth pawning, his particular treasure, a microscope that had cost him months of self-denial. It lived in a little mahogany case under his bed.

Over a breakfast of bread and margarine and tea he faced the situation. He knew that when his mother came to London she could not be kept from Roper’s Row, and he did not intend her to see his room as it was, but as the son in him wished her to see it. In a sense—he was a devoted snob, not for his own sake but for hers. He had contemplated hiring some furniture and a carpet, and dressing up his back room so that it might appear more as a mother might wish to see it. Not that there was anything in Mary Hazzard that would quarrel with her son’s room as it was, but Christopher, with those memories of her many devoted years behind him, had vanity of a sort, a sensitive child’s scheming. He wanted his mother to have a memory to take back with her to Melfont, one of those mementoes that women treasure, especially when they speak with other women at their gates.

He supposed that the microscope would have to go into temporary retirement, and that he would be able to raise three or four pounds on it, and recover the instrument when he received a cheque for the Angus Sandeman Prize. He knew of a pawn-broker’s shop in Holborn that had assisted him through other crises, and when he had washed up his breakfast things, he extracted the mahogany case from under the bed. He would raise his money, buy a new hat, and arrive at the hospital as usual. But when he thought of “Bennet’s” and the humiliations of the previous night he was conscious of qualms. He knew that he would have to brave the Bullard crowd, and that the face of “Bennet’s” would be large with laughter.

On that August morning the doors of Ruth and Christopher opened simultaneously. The microscope cabinet was matched by the cheap little attaché-case she carried, but whereas she had no reason to conceal her case, Hazzard had proposed to sneak forth without publicity.

He said, “You’re early.”

She had come out to meet him with a smile, counting upon friendliness after those ministrations to his coat, but he hung back and waited for her to go down the stairs. Her smile died away.

“Yes, I’m a little early.”

She took to the stairs, and Hazzard, after a moment’s hesitation, followed her. She had seen the microscope cabinet, but there was no need for him to assume that she knew that he was bound for the sign of the Three Golden Balls.

“Thank you for cleaning my coat.”

Her smile returned, but he was not aware of it because he was behind her.

“Oh, that’s nothing. I hope it’s dry?”

“Quite.”

From the shop came sounds of activity, the thuddings of bundles of papers, and the voices of Mrs. Bunce and her daughter checking the morning’s stock.

“Two dozen Daily G.s.”

“Two dozen Daily G.s.”

“Fifty Telegraphs.”

“I ’aven’t counted ’em yet. Hold on a moment. Drat it, if I didn’t forget to order those bottles of gum.”

Ruth opened the street door. The passage was very badly lit, and the sudden change of light was like the withdrawing of a veil from a face that resembled the face of a flower. She glanced round at Hazzard with a little, amused glimmer of the eyes.

“I hear that every morning. Do you?”

“Those voices?”

“Yes. It always makes me think of people saying their prayers.”

But he did not respond. His sense of humour—such as it was—hung in abeyance. Possibly he had a sense of life’s grotesqueness, and failed—because of his own concentrated gravity—to appreciate the comic. Also, he was wondering which way she was going, and how he could manage to escape. He was most absurdly conscious of being without a hat. His self-consciousness made the little problems of life so much more vexatious.

He said, “I am just going down to Holborn.”

Her response was instant and sanguine.

“So am I. I walk down Holborn and Newgate and Cheapside. Unless—it rains—pours——”

He closed the door. He was aware of her glancing at the mahogany cabinet. He romanced.

“My microscope. Taking it to an optician’s. Something’s wrong with the condenser.”

She said, “Oh,” and neither caring nor knowing about condensers, or the subtleties of oil immersion, waited with a little air of expectancy for him to place himself at her side. Her animation made other men look at her. She was wearing a red hat and a black blouse and skirt, and the red hat seemed to give a glow to her pale face. She had one of those pearly skins with a soft tinge of brown in it. She was a pretty creature, a woman unaccountably interested in a man who was of no interest to most women. She moved beside Hazzard with a face of expectancy. Other men looked at her.

Hazzard did not look. It was not that he was afraid to look. Other realities absorbed him. In a sense he was sex blind, a little celibate with eyes that saw nothing in woman save a creature anatomically different from man. Almost he had the mentality of a child where woman was concerned, that—and the attitude of the priest. It was part of a doctor’s profession to minister to women, and woman had her own problems which became the problems of the accoucheur and the physician. Woman, as a piece of human symbolism, had remained for him the mother creature, and at that very moment he was thinking of his mother.

For to Hazzard his mother remained the tall, dark woman standing at the cottage gate and watching him set off down the lane for Melfont school. He still was supported by their mutual pride, their common aloofness. She was the figure to whom he returned, carrying his persecutings and his shames into the shadow of her wise and silent compassion, made brave by her bravery, stiffening his lip at the thought of her. She was his Dea Matrix, a figure of beautiful and reassuring permanency, courageous, beneficent, serene, like some primeval figure watching him from the shadow of one of those old Wiltshire sarsen stones. How deeply she inspired him he both knew and did not know. For to many a man such a woman is his secret self, challenging more than the mere sex in him, animating those sublimations of his manhood, the creative urge, the passion to accomplish, the courage to advance in the face of prejudice.

And he was thinking, “She must never know about Bullard and those fellows.”

Meanwhile he was walking down Red Lion Street with Ruth Avery, who was puzzling herself over the aggressive cock of his head, and his dour, self-absorbed silence. Her eyes threw little oblique glances. His face gave her the impression of combat.

She said, “I’m going for my holiday next month. A whole week.”

Hazzard came out of his combative stare. Holidays? He took no holidays, save those occasional week-ends with his mother.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t quite know yet. When’s your holiday?”

He appeared to be looking intently at a yellow van that was crawling down the street. He avoided a stout woman with a basket, limping down into the gutter and back again to the pavement.

“When are you going?”

She flushed faintly.

“The last week in September.”

“You’ll be leaving your room empty?”

“Why—yes.”

He was smiling, but not at her.

“That might be useful. Would you mind my having your room for the week? My mother is coming up from the country.”

He was not aware of her face closing up like one of those sensitive flowers that fold their petals when touched or when the sun ceases to shine.

“Your mother——? Oh, of course not. I dare say Mrs. Bunce would let you.”

They had reached Holborn. He paused on the edge of the pavement and looked at her with impartial friendliness.

“It’s very good of you. I’m going this way—now.”

Her smile puzzled him a little. She had the air of an impulsive child who has been rebuffed, and who smiles to cover up the confusion of a little innocent and secret shame.

“I hope they will soon put your microscope right.”

“Oh, easily. Good-bye.”