Читать книгу The Impudence of Youth - Warwick Deeping - Страница 4

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Miss Jane Pope was picking apples on that September day. Keswick Codlings, great balls of condensed sunlight that were beautiful for baking. Miss Jane Pope liked a baked apple or an apple dumpling, and now that her head was white she was even more apple minded. Miss Pope's mother would have worn a lace cap, but Miss Pope scorned such proofs of feminine surrender to age and convention. Was she not very much a person in the village, a part of the Trinity formed by the Squire and the Parson, though Miss Jane was much more modern in her outlook than either of those gentlemen. The Squire was Old Port, the Parson, Old Testament, but Miss Jane Pope was almost New Psychology, the aunt of a very notable lad, who in educating himself, had carried Miss Pope along with him.

Miss Pope might be picking apples, but her mind was elsewhere, in her ears rather than in her fingers. She was expecting a telegram, and though she stubbornly assured herself that she knew what the message would be, her pride and her affection were in travail. John James was in search of a scholarship at Cambridge, and if brains could win honour, then John James was safe. Miss Pope had become a doubter of things as they were. She had had her old eyes opened to various hypocrisies. England was supposed to be a democratic country, but it was permeated with prerogative and prejudice. Not that Miss Jane Pope believed in democracy. Therefore, she was in the unfortunate position of a woman whose cream had gone sour on her, while the cream of to-morrow was still in the making.

Did brains count in England?

Would those eminent gentlemen who guarded the gates of Learning favour a head-piece that was considerable, and overlook a body that was not? If competition was keen, might not convention choose the blood-horse rather than the shaggy little pony? Appearances were so important, a Rowing Blue more potent than a scholar. Just because Miss Pope was posed by these problems, it may be gathered that she was a very unusual woman, because she was the friend and confidante of a very unusual young man.

Miss Pope had a particularly large apple in her hand, and was meditating upon it as though the golden fruit was somehow symbolical, when the back door opened, and a voice hailed her.

"It's come."

Miss Pope did not run and snatch the telegram from the girl's hand. She placed the apple with deliberation in the basket, and looked up at the tree as though to select the next victim.

"Put it on the table."

She was not going to display haste and flurry in confronting her crisis. When life challenged you, it behoved you to counter it by remaining calm, or by maintaining an appearance of calmness. She waited until the door had closed before carrying her basket of apples to the garden table and exchanging it for the telegram. There was a moment's pause before she opened the envelope. How one swift moment of suspense could make you realise how deeply your affection and your prides and prejudices were involved.

Miss Pope did not need to put on spectacles. She spread the form, and read: "I have it. Love. John."

Miss Pope stood very still for some seconds. In her austere world exultation had been a rare bird, but suddenly it was in full song like a thrush on a May morning. "I have it, I have it, I have it. Love, love, love. John." And Miss Jane Pope laughed, which was unusual, and her laughter was not thrush, but more like a rook's cawing. How like John was his message. She could see that ironic, glittering smile of his, the cool gaiety of his handsome head, and the way he carried it, not cockily, but with a combative confidence. Miss Pope drew a long deep breath. So, the learned world's favour had gone to Head, not Legs. What a pity that John James was short in the leg! As a child his little legs had appeared normal, but something had seemed amiss with the lad's growth-centre. He had gone all to the head, and his legs had remained almost infantile. Legs were so important in England, the paradise of the game-player.

Miss Pope laid the telegram down on the table. What she would have liked to have done would have been to have posted it up in the shop-window, but that would not have been quite seemly, and John James was not that sort of lad. She stood and stared at the piece of paper. Then, she gathered it, folded it up, and tucked it into her apple-basket.

Miss Jane Pope could not say just when and how the thought came to her. Probably, it had been there in her subconscious for quite a long time, and had popped up suddenly like a ghost at the foot of her bed. She had allowed herself a glass of stout at supper, but whether it was the stout or the news of John's triumph that had caused the secret fear to materialise she could not say. Perhaps, it was a combination of the physical and the mental.

Miss Pope found herself staring at the moonlit blind. She had been picturing John James in a mortar-board and gown. John was a scholar of St. Jude's. John was to receive eighty pounds a year. John was a young gentleman to be waited on, a member of a memorable college, and the Grammar School's particular star.

What if John James should be ashamed of her?

The thought was so poignant that Miss Pope sat up in bed. Her large white face, her white head and white night-dress belonged to a rather frightened old child. She felt cold. Something seemed to have dropped inside her. She was a woman of courage, and not given to moods, but this horrid thought was like the first stab of pain that heralds the presence of some fell disease.

Miss Pope got out of bed, pulled up the blind, and looked at the moon. It was the same old moon, and yet different. There was something sinister and cat-faced about it. The luminary glared at her. Miss Pope gripped her night-dress between her two breasts, and in that moment of doubt and of dismay, dared confession of faith.

"No, he won't be. I tell you he won't be."

Maybe it was perversity or pride that made Miss Pope put on her apron next morning, and go behind the counter. During the last two years she had ceased from active service, for she had Florrie, and a bright lad, William, to serve, and her part had been played in the little post office where she would sit in austere black behind the brass grill, very much a person. Moreover, she was a heavy woman, and her feet had come to resent too much standing. But this day was to be different, the day of John James' return, and no moral cowardice could be sanctioned. Once again she would be the keeper of a shop, slicing bacon, and cutting up cheese, and passing packets of shag across the counter to labouring men.

"You can take the post office, Florrie."

Miss Pope had passed the great news to Florrie and William, and within an hour it seemed to have travelled all over the village, and though Miss Pope was more respected than loved, quite a number of people came in to congratulate her. They found her behind the counter, the Jane Pope of tradition, aproned, and busy, her large and deliberate hands capable as ever.

The Squire was one of the first visitors.

"Well, Jane, the lad has brought it off, I hear. Congratulations."

Mr. Peter Larcombe was rather like a very vigorous ram togged up in riding breeches and boxcloth leggings, a yellow waistcoat, yellow tie and fleece-coloured coat. Almost, he was the Squire of Musical Comedy, but he was far less stupid than his ram's head suggested. His bulging stone-blue eyes saw many things, especially a pretty face, and scandal had it that at least half-a-dozen of the village children could claim Mr. Larcombe as their sire.

Miss Pope bent her head to him. Her austerity had never had to counter the squire's passion.

"Thank you, sir. It is quite true."

"Wonderful head-piece, that lad. Well, I'll have a bottle of whisky on the strength of it."

"I'll send it up, sir."

Mr. Larcombe winked at her.

"No, you don't. Here and now. I'll borrow a glass."

"As a magistrate you should know, sir. Well, I'll bring in the whisky myself, and perhaps you will go into the garden and honour me by taking a glass."

Mr. Larcombe smacked his leg with his cane.

"Jane, you're coming out these days. Damn it, we'll have to find you a husband."

Miss Pope picked up a knife and began to cut rashers of bacon.

"If you'll excuse me, sir, I prefer——Florrie, will you please take a bottle of whisky and a syphon and a glass into the garden."

"Come on, Jane, join me in drinking the lad's health."

"Thank you, sir, but I must not leave the shop."

The Squire had his whisky and five minutes' meditation. He was something of a humanist and a rustic philosopher, and if he kept his bluffness for the village, he could and did divine reactions that were more subtle. Great woman, Miss Pope, in her own particular way; never had been the sort of wench whom you persuaded to share a haycock. Rather on her dignity too on this particular morning. Well, if that funny little fellow was something of a genius, Miss Pope had planted the ladder, and ladders were apt to be precarious perches. John James might climb it, and then kick it down when he was up on the roof. But would he? That would be a cad's gesture, and though Mr. Larcombe had been the village Juan, there was nothing mean in his make-up.

Having drunk his whisky, he passed out again through the shop. He raised his hat to Miss Pope.

"You've every right to be a proud woman, Jane."

"I hope so, sir."

"And if I were John James I should be damned proud of you."

He passed out, and Miss Pope heaved a large and profound sigh.

Regular customers came in, women of the village, and as Miss Pope would have described it, clucked or giggled at her. She did not take their felicitations very seriously, knowing that when they were out of the shop they might share confidences that were less kindly. Miss Jane had detected surprise on one or two of the faces, especially so upon the narrow and malicious countenance of Miss Euphemia Lardner. Miss Lardner's oblique eyes had leered at her. "What, behind the counter! I wonder why?" and Miss Lardner had gone away with two reels of cotton and certain reflections that had secret venom in them. Was Miss Pope playing the snob about snobbery? Young John James was, in Miss Lardner's opinion, a disgustingly conceited young man. Miss Jane Pope had better be careful; ambitious young men did not favour aprons. Or, was it true that Miss Jane Pope had a secret authority over her supposed nephew. Young John was an orphan, was he? His origin had been provokingly mysterious, and Miss Lardner was inclined to believe that the boy was no orphan, but the product of a concealed indiscretion on the part of his hypothetical aunt.

About half past eleven the rector sidled in, long, pallid and hirsute, like a melancholy Christ. Ethics appeared to have no joy for the Rev. Matthew Cock. His name belied him; for he was no chanticleer, but the father of six unmarried daughters, and the husband of a lady who wore the trousers. It was Mrs. Cock who ran the parish, and preached everywhere, save the pulpit. The vulgar asserted that poor Mr. Cock had gone into moult a year after the marriage ceremony, and had never recovered either his voice or his feathers.

Mr. Cock stood rather helplessly in front of the counter. He had been so snubbed by the seven members of the other sex with whom he lived that there were occasions when he became completely mute. In his hairiness and his melancholy he reminded Miss Pope of a tired old horse hanging its head over a gate.

"What can I do for you, sir?"

Mr. Cock looked startled. A direct question always appeared to shake him out of deep brooding and a consciousness of miserable sin.

"I'm out of tobacco, Miss Pope."

Miss Jane knew his particular brand. He had smoked it for years, and report had it that he was not allowed to smoke in the rectory, but had to retire to the greenhouse or the stable. She reached for a packet. Mr. Cock took it, fumbled, brought out four pennies and a halfpenny, and a characteristic and inopportune remark.

"I am very glad to hear of your nephew's success. Ah, hum, a most surprising career before him. He will come back to us quite the young gentleman."

If Mr. Cock could say the wrong thing, he said it, and with a mild innocence that may have explained the family scorn. Miss Pope, accepting his coppers, appeared to grow taller and more formidable behind her counter.

"He will come back what he has always been, a scholar."

Mr. Cock blinked. He felt that somehow he had been reproved. He was forever being reproved, and his poor old stupid soul never grew the wiser.

Yatley had no railway station. You walked or drove to Medhurst if you were travelling to Southbourne or London. J.J. Pope, arriving at Medhurst by the 2.15, set out on the three-mile walk to Yatley, carrying a small black Gladstone bag which looked as though it might soon be delivered of a number of baby bags, all of them black. J.J. Pope wore a black jacket, a bowler hat, and pepper and salt trousers. So short were his little legs that the bag he carried seemed to slide along less than a foot from the ground.

He took the familiar short cuts, over stiles and along field paths, and the way was as familiar to him as his own separative self. Day in, day out, in bleak disappointing springs, variable summers, and sodden winters he had followed this path to and fro on his way to or home from Southbourne Grammar School. The Forest Ridge lay before him spired and domed with trees, and it had to be climbed before Yatley was seen in its sheltered valley.

He came down into Yatley village by the steep path under the beech trees by the church. It had been his favourite track, for it brought him suddenly and sharply into the village close to the Green and Miss Pope's shop, and if he were in a mood to avoid the obvious both in the flesh and the spirit, and Yatley was full of such obviousness, this shaded path smuggled him past humanity. J.J. was in such a mood. His return to Yatley might have been cocky and triumphant; in fact, it was secretive and serious.

Miss Pope was weighing out an ounce of shag for old Peters the sexton. She happened to glance at the doorway; it was open and empty. A moment later, just as she was passing the paper of tobacco to old Peters, she looked again, and John James was there, suddenly and surprisingly so, like a picture flashed upon a screen. He stood looking in, holding his bag. He seemed to be sensing all the familiar outlines and objects, and savouring the smells that had been his from boyhood, cheese, bacon, tea, butter, onions, shoe-leather. Old Peters, having put four pennies on the counter, turned and saw him. Old Peters grinned; he was both a servile and a surly old man.

"Why, if it be'nt young John come back a scholar!"

John James gazed at the old man as though he saw in him something sinister and symbolical. It was a strange, soul-revealing stare. Then he gave the faintest of nods, walked past the sexton, that digger of graves, and leaning over the counter put up a face that was almost a child's face to his aunt.

She kissed him. Old Peters had paused by the door, puzzled and vaguely hostile. Unfriendly young tyke, John James, grown a bit above himself with all this book-learning. Those two seemed to be waiting for him to remove his shadow from the floor. Florrie, behind the brass grill, was staring and sucking a pencil.

Florrie saw J.J. kiss his aunt.

"Thank you, my dear."

He was looking at her white head.

"For what?"

"Everything. The old woman is proud to-day."

How some of his boy-moods had puzzled her, his sensitive shrinkings and nauseas, his puckish perversities, his peculiar and ridiculous terrors! Strange, shy, fastidious creatures, some children. It was useless to scold, or preach, or pull a long face over some fantastic fancy. John James had had a horror of fat and of women with red hair. Now why? Miss Pope had found life breaking down under the law of causation. There was something more whimsical and mysterious about it. Two and two did not always make four. That Miss Jane Pope should have made such a discovery, marked her as a remarkable woman. And here was John James hesitant behind her chair, and not wanting to be looked at for the moment, just like the child who had been hurt and perplexed by some stupid or cruel act.

They had retired to the garden. J.J. came round the table and stood in front of her. She glanced up at him for a second, and then let her eyes drop to her work. John James was staring over the top of her head like a young man looking into the future. Or was it into the past? She knew that look so well, a narrowing of the eyes, a kind of darkening of the whole face as though a cloud covered his inner consciousness, faint lines of stress about the mouth and on the forehead. Miss Pope had grown very wise as to such moods and manifestations. Her love was not blind. It had learned to wait in silence upon a silence that questioned and calculated and divined. Life could be a sort of jig-saw puzzle, and J.J. was trying to get some of the pieces identified and placed.

"Feel like talking, Auntie?"

"I feel like listening, my dear."

Oh, wise woman! J.J. gave her a look of profound faith and affection. He sat down on the grass, with his back to the trunk of the apple tree; it had been a favourite place of his as a small boy, and the slope of the tree's trunk took both your back and your head.

"Ever visited one of the seats of learning, Auntie?"

"No, my dear."

"Wonder how you would react? My first night there. A sort of dream. Gothic mysteries, and all that. Tennyson's immemorial elms, willows weeping by the river. A sleepiness, a peace, the suggestion of profound wisdom. Sounds quite lyrical!"

She had taken her knitting with her and she glanced from her needles to his face. She knew this mood of mockery.

"Were you frightened, my dear?"

He gave a quick frown. Frightened! Now, how did she know that?

"Yes, I was. Next day. I felt rather like an anonymous ant crawling about that great court. Besides——"

"Besides, what, my dear?"

"My clothes were all wrong and my hair and my cap. That's not your responsibility, Auntie."

"Well, that's easily put right."

"Is it? Should it be put right? There are the clothes one wears inside one, as well as the outer togs."

Her needles clicked away steadily.

"Different, my dear?"

"Yes. Non-conformity, horrid word!"

He put his head back and laughed. His little legs were drawn up, and his hands clasped round them.

"You see, I shan't play games. I shall just be a little swat. Maybe I shan't learn to crease my trousers and pull my cap well forward. Funny how these things seem to matter. I didn't foresee them until I found myself with those other fellows who were up for scholarships. Southbourne isn't Eton, Winchester, or Repton. Atmosphere, Auntie, the polish of a particular convention."

She was silent for a moment, and then she looked at him with a curious steadfastness.

"Afraid, my dear?"

His head gave a little toss.

"Yes and no. It's not nice to be a sort of foreign body in any community."

"Need you be?"

"I don't quite know yet. I'm not going to shirk things. I shall just laugh. Even if I get ragged they shan't get more than a smile from me."

Miss Pope nodded.

"Yes, go on smiling, my dear. And don't be bitter. The world can't get at you if you smile in its face. But, after all, you got on with the lads and children here."

"Different, Auntie."

"How?"

"Oh, well, we've grown up together, and maybe I have been just the village oddity. I have the same smell. But these class feelings. I don't think one realises how strong they are until you find fellows looking at you as though you were a Hottentot."

"Do they?"

"Some. Not all. I do count on making a few friends, fellows who are more head than leg. But I have made up my mind to it. To most of these men I shall be an outsider."

Miss Pope laid her knitting on the table.

"So was Christ, my dear. So was Napoleon, and dear old Cobbett. So was your great man Darwin, so far as the bishops were concerned."

J.J. looked at her whimsically, and then jumped up and kissed her on the forehead.

"Well, we'll laugh together over it all, you and I."

"And the laugh will be all yours, my dear, when you are Professor Pope, or something."

"Doubt whether I shall ever be that. I'm too much of a Mayflower person."