Читать книгу The Impudence of Youth - Warwick Deeping - Страница 3

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They had climbed one of the deep trackways under the beech trees, a track that was as old as time. The trees were in spring leaf, and green with that strange and luminous greenness that is like light caught and transformed into one of the garments of God. The grey trunks rose out of the chalky soil in which flints lay amid the bronze of last year's leaves. The sky was invisible above the massed canopies, but there was the other blueness of bluebells pouring down the slopes. There was a great stillness here, supreme peace.

The tall woman paused. Her eyes were dreamy and tender, and she was smiling as a woman smiles when she looks at some very beautiful thing, or at a very young child.

"Oh, this England! There is almost a pang in such loveliness."

Her friend, who was dark and more silent, looked up into the greenish light amid the leaves.

"After London, yes."

"What do they call this place?"

"Monk's Wood."

"How utterly right. Where do we come to? Nowhere, and everywhere?"

"Yatley Heath. But it isn't quite a heath."

"Let's go on."

The hollow way led them to a little plateau on the summit of the chalk ridge, a wild place where bracken was crooking up amid thorns and yews. Grass tracks ran hither and thither, or spread into lagoons of brilliant rabbit-nibbled turf. The old thorns were in flower, and looking like green tents that had been snowed upon. The smell of them was stronger than the more subtle scent of the bluebells. Here and there, a great tree, beech or oak, raised a dome above the wild tangle. To the north a wood of pines built a barrier of impenetrable gloom. Westwards a grove of birches fluttered their green lace above the silver trunks. The sky was profoundly blue and brilliant with piled up clouds.

Just ahead of them as they reached the edge of the plateau a vast beech, dwarfed as to trunk, trailed its lower branches on the ground. They were in the shadow of the tree, and half concealed by it when the fair woman touched her friend's arm.

"Look!"

Beyond the beech tree and surrounded by flowering thorns lay a little circle of grass. A small, naked, Pan-like creature was dancing there. He had a willow twig in his hands, one end of the twig in his mouth, and his fingers were playing on this mock-pipe. Almost, his head was the head of a faun, black and big for his small body. Near one of the thorn trees his clothes lay in a neat pile, with a pair of very modern shoes set neatly on the summit of the little heap.

The two women stood close together, watching the boy footing it over the turf. He did not see them. He was absorbed in his dancing, in the wild fancy of his small Puckish soul. So, John Keats might have danced on his little short legs, even in fancy, if not among the thorns on Hampstead Heath.

They turned to look into each other's eyes, and each understood the look in the eyes of the other. This was a vision of Greek phantasy, the Spring dance of a wild thing out of the woods. Pan and his flute? Mere mortals should not disturb him, nor should he be seen by them. They drew back step by step and side by side, still watching that little white figure with its dark and faunlike head, brilliant as an ivory cameo set in a case of green velvet. An old thorn offered its shelter and they slid behind it, and so away by a path that flowed into the wilderness.

The tall woman spoke in a whisper as though she had seen a vision.

"Who——?"

"Little John Pope, the village oddity."

"So, he is real?"

"Very. He lives with his aunt who keeps the village shop."

"An orphan?"

"Yes."

"I have never seen anything like it. Quite lovely, and so unselfconscious. But, what on earth does the village make of such a child?"

"It doesn't. Little John Pope does what he pleases."

"They think him nicely mad, perhaps?"

"Hardly that. John, at ten, is top of the village school. Our schoolmaster must be posed. Four more years in which to teach him more than he knows himself."

"That sounds absurd. Surely, such a child ought to——My dear, I feel as though we had been present at the birth of a genius. Am I being silly?"

"Not at all. I believe his aunt rather thinks as you do. She has plans."

"Can one plan for a child like that?"

Can one plan for genius? Can genius plan for itself? Had Miss Jane Pope been asked that question while she was issuing you a postal order or weighing you out a pound of cheese, her broad, austere and somewhat enigmatic face might have suggested that you should mind your own business. John James had been Miss Pope's business for the last seven years, John and the village shop, and the shop was a means to an end. Miss Pope was one of those large, solid and black-browed women who may appear formidable to the world, but who, having seen the light, follow it with a quiet and implacable patience that leaves the gabblers breathless on life's doorstep.

For, could anything have been more unexpected than John James?

He was unlike any other child, and yet other children did not bully him.

Miss Pope was taking tea, while Florrie, her understudy, looked after the shop and the post office. John James had not appeared for tea, but Jane Pope was not worried by his absence. Her unfussy tranquillity and confidence in the essential orderliness of things was comforting to the soul of John James Pope. On such a day as this she liked to take her tea in the back garden under the old Blenheim Orange. She was a great gardener was Aunt Jane, and her garden was like herself, of a large simplicity.

Miss Pope sat in a basket chair beside her little old round oak table. The tea service was Willow Pattern. Jane Pope, as she crumbled her cake, held in her left hand a little buff-coloured book. It was her P.O. Savings Deposit Book. Not that she was unfamiliar with all its figures. She knew just how much she had put by each year, and what the interest amounted to. She enjoyed poring over the figures like an enthusiast over a seed-catalogue, and secretly gloating over the power it gave her to plant and sow in human soil.

One thousand, three hundred and thirteen pounds, three shillings and three pence.

Gracious, what a lot of threes, The Trinity in excelsis! God the Father, God the Son, and little wee threepence—God the Holy Ghost! Miss Pope did not quite know which member of the Trinity she favoured, but she rather suspected that the Holy Ghost was a very potent influence. He even insinuated himself into a Post Office Savings Book, and spread a luminous joy over two-and-a-half per cent. Thirty-two pounds ten a year, or thereabouts, in interest. And the profit on the shop, after deducting all expenses, public and personal, amounted to about two hundred and seventy pounds. Well, well, well! Yatley had taught John James all that it could teach him in the academic sense. John James should go to Southbourne Grammar School. He could catch a train each morning and evening. And after Southbourne? Miss Pope cut herself a second slice of cake. Yes, after Southbourne all sorts of wonderful things might be possible. A scholarship? Why not?

The savings book was reposing on Miss Pope's stout stomach, and her mouth was full of cake, when a small boy crept stealthily over the grass like some light-footed little faun, and put his hands over Miss Pope's eyes.

"Who's there, auntie?"

"As if I didn't know, you bit of mischief! I've nearly finished tea."

John James withdrew his hands, and skipped round to face his aunt. He saw the little book in her lap. He knew that book so well by sight. Miss Pope picked up the teapot.

"You'll have to drink stewed tea, young man."

John James smiled at her with affectionate shyness.

"I've been dancing on Yatley Heath. I took my clothes off."

His aunt added two lumps of sugar.

"What! Going about naked? Shocking!"

"Why? The Greeks didn't wear clothes, Auntie, when they danced."

"Greeks, indeed! Supposing——"

"But one takes off one's clothes when one bathes in the river."

"That's different."

"How?"

"Well, you're in the water."

"Why shouldn't one be in the sunlight? Besides, there wasn't anybody there."

"I'm glad to hear it. The next thing will be your taking up some of the other children."

"No, I won't, Auntie. I like to dance with myself."

"Well, you sit down and have your tea, young man."

He cocked his head at her.

"You're not shocked, really. You're just pretending."

"Oh, am I? I've got something serious to talk to you about."

There was an old milking-stool by the table, and John James sat down on it with sudden solemnity.

"What's it about, Auntie?"

"I'm going to send you to Southbourne Grammar School."

He sat and stared at her.

"Not to live there, Auntie?"

"Don't you want to?"

"I don't want to leave Yatley, and you."

His aunt cut him a slice of cake.

"You'll always get round people, my lad."

"Oh, no," said the child, "only the ones one wants to get round. We're different, Auntie."

"Bless us, so we are. Well, you'll go in and out by train."

"But won't it cost you an awful lot."

"I can stand it," said Miss Pope, picking up her savings book and fanning herself with it.