Читать книгу Roper's Row - Warwick Deeping - Страница 35

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Christopher and his mother drove to the hospital in a cab, both of them in black, and Hazzard wearing a new bowler hat that had been bought for the occasion, and were silent, but Mary Hazzard’s silence was different from the silence of her son. For her the day had no shadows save the shadow of the afterwards, but to Christopher had come the thought of hostile faces, and how they would appear to his mother, and she to them. Would she see and understand that at “Bennet’s” he was something of an outcast?

His courage quivered in him. He did not want her to be hurt. She had been hurt sufficiently because of him.

When the cab turned into Snow Street his silence was abruptly broken.

“You’ll meet Moorhouse, Mother, to-day.”

“Yes, you told me.”

“He’s my friend. They’re not all my friends.”

She felt the tenseness of him, that quivering sensitive courage, just as she had felt it in the old days when he had kissed her before going to school. She understood. And something was embattled in her, a tender and scornful wrath, a devotion that stood fast.

“Jealous some of them. Never you mind. One friend is worth it.”

Hazzard glanced for a moment at his mother.

“Yes—you—you and Moorhouse. The rest can go to hell.”

The forecourt at “Bennet’s” seemed very full of cabs and of carriages and when their own particular cab drew up outside the great grey portico Hazzard got out and held the door open for his mother. She stepped out of the cab like the woman she was, deliberate, dark-eyed, faintly smiling, but with a smile that had a glint of scorn. She knew her people, and she knew her son. She was just as conscious as he was of all those faces beyond the doors, of young men in black coats, and grey heads, and mothers and aunts and sisters, and the animation and the silence and the stares. She had no need to gather herself to meet that crowd in the corridor, all those Sabbath people in their proper clothes. She was herself, and her son was a prizeman. She entered, wearing the pallor of her pride.

Moorhouse was waiting. He met them with his air of easy, indolent kindness. He was not a prizeman, but he was something else.

“This is splendid, Mrs. Hazzard.”

And Christopher’s mother and Christopher’s friend looked into each other’s eyes, and knew each other for what they were.

“It’s a great day for me, Mr. Moorhouse.”

He smiled at her and gazed.

“Oh, you’ll have others, plenty. Let’s go and get our seats.”

It was undoubtedly a parental day; it rustled; it combined the atmospheres of a church service, a garden party, and an Extension lecture. Moorhouse and the Hazzards, crossing the hospital quadrangle with its black asphalt and its grim poplars, were three figures apart. Moorhouse’s people did not come to these shows. Why should they? And as they skirted a rockery that some bemused enthusiast had caused to be made out of old bricks and black clinkers, Moorhouse thought of the Avon valley, and wondered what Mrs. Hazzard would make of a rockery like that. In fact he discovered her glancing at it as they passed. But other petticoats were sweeping down on them, sails that had been spread in Highbury Grove or Holland Park, and the theatre doorway was an open mouth swallowing Victorianism.

He said, “Shall I lead the way?”

Christopher’s mother answered with a movement of the head. She was neither Highbury Grove nor Holland Park, but Sisbury Hill or a tall tree in leaf, while these good ladies were like their houses, great white or stuccoed façades, full of windows and little bits of twisted iron railing, and gate pillars with urns or plaster pineapples perched on them. They were pouring in to listen to an oration, a little crowd of suburban villas gathering to hear Big Ben.

The lecture theatre was like a great grey bubble. It had a glass eye above like the eye of the Pantheon. Moorhouse chose a tier not too high up the bank of seats, and stood until Mary Hazzard was seated. These shows amused him, but he understood that to the Hazzards the day was more serious than amusing. He dug Kit gently in the ribs, and they looked at each other and smiled, and Moorhouse’s brown face made Hazzard look even more white than he was feeling. The great ones were arriving. They sat on chairs in the well of the theatre, begowned and hooded, the high priests of the profession, facing all that mock reverent youth and its solid parentage.

Mary Hazzard sat very straight and still between Julian Moorhouse and her son. She might have been on Sisbury Hill, looking down upon the Doctors and Fellows in their gowns and hoods, eminent sheep penned up in the well of the lecture theatre. She studied the faces of those men, for she supposed that in their hands they held the future of her son, for kissing goes by favour, and honours may be like kisses. She asked a few questions, and asked them of Moorhouse. Would he point out Sir Dighton Fanshawe to her?

Moorhouse pointed out Sir Dighton.

“In the middle there—next to the empty chair.”

She studied Sir Dighton. She saw him as a handsome and elegant old rascal, very much at his ease, and liking this feminine crowd and its glances. The eminent physician! And she was still observing Sir Dighton when the day’s great man arrived, and there were applause and flutterings and rustlings. All that solid femininity seemed to breathe more heavily and to settle its solemn skirts.

There were speeches. The Dean of the Hospital, a shy, thin, swarthy man stood up for three minutes and sat down again with evident relief. Old Sir Dighton came next, smiling and roguish and debonair, twiddling an eye-glass, and somehow managing to flatter himself and all the women. He was flowery and humorously sententious. Mrs. Mary did not like Sir Dighton.

Then came the oration. It proved to be as original and as unusual as the man who delivered it, a soldier, but not society’s idea of the soldier. He was shy, but not with a shyness that lacked dignity. Looking that middle-class audience full in the face, and with the little white tuft of hair on his chin catching the light, he delivered an address that was both unacademic and startling. In brief, he mounted a horse and pointed a spear, and tilted at the thing we call Humbug.

Moorhouse, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, watched the little soldier’s benign, blue-eyed, weather-beaten face, and rejoiced and chortled inwardly. He did dare to whisper, “This—is great,” and caught Mrs. Mary’s eye. For the theme was so unexpected, so unprofessional; it called itself Sincerity, but like an uncompromising sword it dealt out blows impartially. It was probable, and evident, that a portion of the academic world was a little startled and shocked. Who was it who had suggested that this elderly fire-eater should be asked to address these young men? Sir Dighton, with a smirk of self-conscious and cynical amusement, played with his monocle and observed the ladies. Humbug? Well, of course! Feeling a pulse is not like handling a battery.

Christopher, a shepherd boy sitting stone-still upon a hillside, listened as to a prophet. A man of war spoke to the men of peace, and yet he spoke as that most peaceable and humane of men—the soldier who has no illusions. He did not refer to the Noblest and the Greatest of the Professions. He seemed to imply that the man and not the profession should be great and noble, simply by being sincere.

The rest followed. Obviously. He rapped out his verities in the face of youth. “Gentlemen, it is good business when you realize that you must do good business with yourself. The hardest person to convince—should be yourself. No strategy is of any use—unless you have your guns. Keep your eye on the target and shoot straight. And shoot at humbug.” Yes, a great oration and yet not an oration. It did not rise nicely to the serene and soapy heights; it was not mellifluous; it matched neither Sir Dighton’s eye-glass nor his smile. Some superior person described it later as “like listening to a little terrier dog barking through a fence.” But somehow it captured youth.

It brought applause. It had struck sparks from all that was virile in the crowded theatre.

Moorhouse answered it with deliberate and resonant clappings of his big, brown hands.

“Great stuff!”

He leaned across to Christopher.

“Old Fanny is looking down his nose.”