Читать книгу The Impudence of Youth - Warwick Deeping - Страница 6

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John James Pope, sitting at breakfast in that stately room, was very conscious of an atmosphere of sympathy. Fine, courteous creatures, these. But sympathy! How near was it to pity? For, in J.J. Pope the faintest breath of pity blew his secret anger into flame. He had far more courage in his small body than had most of these physical young men, a quality of courage that might appear insolent and bare-faced to those of little understanding. He had marched through the Great Gate that morning, carelessly carrying those enormous trousers, sweater and slippers bound about with the master's antimacassar, and under the eyes of Sykes the head porter. Sykes considered himself a very important person. His top hat had a perpetual and superlative polish. He had eyed J.J. Pope's bundle with invisible scorn, and he had not wished Mr. Pope good morning.

J.J. had remedied the omission.

"Good morning, Sykes."

"Oh, good morning, sir."

Breakfast with the master and his wife could be a dreadful meal to those who were self-consciously conscious of the occasion, for, though Mrs. Mary had the serenest of blue eyes she was "Blue," and almost as noted a classicist as her husband. Nor did the young world understand the great man's supreme naturalness. He appeared odd and baffling to the conventional just because he was so lucidly natural. His air of transcendental innocence reduced the little clever people to baffled voicelessness. What could you say to a great scholar who appeared to be ignorant of the subtleties of slang, and who, like a child, might ask you to explain Rahab's profession and the implications of the genus "Cad." Why, cad? Well, if a man did not know what a cad was, how could you converse with him?

But to J.J. Pope the master was Plato to Galen. He did not quote Theocritus, nor did his wife mention Pythagoras. The master could say, and did say "In Natural Science, Pope, I am as a child unborn. I can speak of protoplasm. I have read Darwin. But just what are the implications of chemical biology as it concerns the cell?" What a subject to broach over bacon and eggs at breakfast, and how did the great man know that the exploration of the cell, its microscopic structure and its chemistry was J.J. Pope's passion?

"The significance is infinite, sir."

"The secret places of the soul's cell."

What a phrase, and how comprehensive and comprehending! J.J. Pope's face was alive. The blind was up, the window open.

"That's the very inwardness of it, sir."

"Mystery plus mechanism. I like to think that mystery is more inevitable than mechanism. We are being given so much mechanism."

Pope smiled.

"I'd give you both, sir. The microscope——"

"And the inward eye," said the lady.

Almost, J.J. Pope bent his head to her.

"In all humility, yes, but the eye must be ruthless."

"In the quality of its vision. Take plenty of marmalade, Pope. Why do they call it 'Squish'?"

"Perhaps, to save time and tissue, sir."

"Ah, the reduction of the absolute to the obvious!"

It was nearly half past ten when J.J. Pope left the master's lodge, after smoking a pipe with him, for Pope's asceticism did not eschew tobacco. Maybe, most men would have shirked facing the publicity of the Great Court after the night's adventure, but Pope confronted it and the two separate men whom he met, one near the fountain, the other by the Great Gate. The first, a fairish, freckled child named Lister, hovered in front of J.J. Pope, and blushing, addressed him.

"I say, I want to apologise for last night."

The little man looked him straight in the eyes.

"That's all right."

"I was a bit blotto, or——"

"Thanks, Lister, I'll forget it."

His second meeting was with Crewdson, depraved mortar-board on head, his gown disgracefully and self-consciously curt. Crewdson was looking liverish.

"Morning, Tad, recovered from your bath?"

The retort was obvious.

"Yes, Crewdson, thanks to the master."

Crewdson cocked his head.

"Oh, I see, been sneaking?"

"No, having breakfast at the Lodge. Some things are beyond you, Crewdson. Bad luck!"

They passed, each upon his way, but Crewdson's face was balked and evil, J.J. Pope's somehow triumphant. That hour with a great man had given him a new serenity.

Surely, this was to be no day of labour? It had been a late, cold spring, but this particular morning had the suddenness of summer in its breath. John Pope's mood was for escape, to enjoy inward celebration, not with women or wine, but in the open country and under the spacious sky. He did not ask for casual faces and the casual streets, or the Senate House doors where groups of interested young men crowded to gaze upon the examination lists. Anxious faces would float away from those fatal doors, suddenly happy or suddenly sad. There were those who smirked at fate. "Ploughed! Well, who cares a damn?" J.J. Pope, like those rare few who explore, and create, and decipher, was a separative creature, destined by temperament and his very urges to walk apart, for, apartness is the privilege of the singular.

He met Mrs. Barter, his bed-maker, on the stairs, a stuffy black bundle of a woman who was motherly to her young gentlemen, but not to J.J. Pope. She thought him a mean, queer, ironic little rat. He had no glamour, and pickings were poor.

"Morning, Mrs. Barter."

"Morning," said the lady, "you've gone and locked your door again. How can I make a bed when——"

"Never mind. I'll leave it open now. I shan't be in to lunch."

Did that matter when sardines and bread and cheese were on the menu, and sardines were oily, friable things that did not encourage pilfering.

Pope kept a bicycle stored at a local cycle shop in Bridge Street. He went out to collect it, wearing trouser clips and a cap that was slightly too much on the back of his head, yet another proof of his origin.

J.J. Pope wheeled his bicycle out into Bridge Street. Should it be chalk or green meadows, the Gogmagogs or the Fen Country. He chose the meadows, and taking the Ely road, pedalled off into the sunlit morning.

So late was the season that some of the great thorn hedges were still fragrant and in flower. Here was a green solitude under the vast blue bowl of the sky. A field-gate welcomed his mood. He dismounted, and leaning the machine against the gate, climbed it. The great green field, starred with buttercups, seemed to stretch into infinity, for the distant hedges merged into its greenness. Pope waded in. The fen country could be so like the great lagoons from which it had been recovered. The hedge near to him was smelling sweet, and he pulled down a spray and put his face to it. How bitter-sweet could the scents of nature be when you were feeling rather lonely and starved of love.

The master had spoken of the unwisdom of bitterness, and though there had been assuagement in the great man's words, J.J. Pope cherished the tang of the sweet venom of hatred under his tongue. He knew, and he was right in knowing, that when a certain name cropped up, someone would say: "Oh, Pope, the fellow who was ducked in the Great Court fountain." That might be his label. It would adhere to him, even were he to occupy the Woolsack, or preside over the deliberations of The General Medical Council. He accepted that label. Or, rather, it should be a smarting wound over his heart, urging him to implacable effort and serene gaiety. Jealousy! Man and Jehovah were jealous beasts.

He rolled on his back and stared at the sky. The great blue bowl upturned above the green world was immense and soothing. The sun warmed him; the smell of the mayflower was in the air. It brought to his mind the name of that memorable ship in which men had escaped from oppression into a new and adventurous world. He had read of their sufferings and their struggles, pests, marauding birds, savages. But what other world was there into which he could escape, save a world of his own?

It was one of his last evenings of the May term, and a strange restlessness possessed him. He went out and wandered, for the evening was sheer summer, golden and serene. Passing a house in Jesus Lane he heard young men singing:

"For she is the Jewel of Asia—The Geisha, The Geisha."

There had been a champagne party, and young men were warm with wine. Two of them, leaning, singing out of a window, with champagne glasses in their hands, raised those glasses with merry irony to Pope.

"Hallo, there's Tad."

"Salutations, Tad."

Pope walked on without looking up at them. Oh, the young! Would he ever be young? Had he ever been young? There were times when he desired passionately to be as those others, comely, and attractive to women. The genus girl was strange to him, and on those rare occasions when he met it, he did not know what to say to the creature.

At Mortimer Street he turned right and wandered circuitously to the Backs. Trees, the willows, Tennyson's immemorial elms might be more friendly, but he found no assuagement here. Even the beauty of this golden evening tantalised him, the still water, the sleek grass, the shadows, the great grey buildings. Oh, the stateliness of King's, the lovely leap of Clare bridge, the rich russet sadness of John's! Yes, all this vexed him, for it had not accepted him. He was an alien. He could not play. Laughter had not come into his life. It was time for him to go elsewhere into some other and shabbier world.

Even his clothes would be less noticeable in London. He would be part of an obscure crowd, and mere poverty would be no stigma. He crossed the college bridge into the Cloister Court, passed round the arcade into the next court, and came to a narrow slype. He had forgotten a certain thing, or perhaps it had not penetrated his consciousness. It was the night of the college ball when that other world drifted into this supposedly celibate community. Eve was here, Eve and the apples and the serpent.

This sudden picture patterned upon his consciousness was to remain with him all his life, the dark passage closed with a curtain of amber light, steps going up, and standing upon them like young princes, Hereward Gains, the rowing-blue and Selby Lowndes, the stroke of the first boat. They were in evening dress, tall, fine young men; Gains wore a broad light blue ribbon diagonally across his shirt-front, Lowndes the colours of the Club. From somewhere came the sound of music, a waltz of Strauss's. Great and stately young men, these stewards in the world of muscle and panache. Standing on the steps there they seemed high above J.J. Pope on his puny legs.

Then, suddenly there stepped into that arch of light three figures like figures in a coloured window, a woman, a young man and a girl. It was the girl upon whom J.J. Pope gazed. Her dress was the colour of the evening light, and she had a little cape of black fur over her shoulders. She was supremely dark and slender, and of a pure loveliness that caused Pope to stand and stare like a boy at a puppet-show. She had one of those warm white skins, a perfect profile, serene lips, eyes so brown that they looked black. Moreover, there was a young stateliness about her, a quality of limpid pride that put passion at her feet.

The two young men became alive. They seemed to descend from pedestals in the presence of this Eve. They were smiling, flexible, eager. The woman passed up the steps, the girl and the young men following her. They disappeared, and to J.J. Pope she became a memory and music.

What he did realise was that not one of those people had appeared to notice him. He might have been the invisible man, or just a sack of coal left there to be collected.