Читать книгу The Impudence of Youth - Warwick Deeping - Страница 8

Table of Contents

J.J.'s third year at Cambridge was without any very dramatic happenings. Crewdson and his crowd had gone, and the college came to accept J.J. Pope as an oddity, and perhaps as a somewhat significant oddity. He was classed with James Jellaby, the mathematical genius who was fore-doomed to be senior wrangler. This funny little fellow Pope was no ordinary undergrad. Rumour had it that Sir Humphrey Porson had marked him down, and that J.J. Pope was working under Sir Humphrey upon the bio-chemistry of colloidal matter. This—for a man who was not yet a bachelor of arts or of science! The college accepted J.J. Pope as a person. It was even a little proud of him as an eccentric creature with a phenomenal head, who, if you were friendly, could talk upon the possibilities of science with a fascinating and provoking fancy. Men quoted him.

"Gosh, that fellow Pope says that we shall soon know how to arrange for a kid to be a girl or a boy."

"Have you heard Pope on the segregation of the germ plasm?"

"What the devil's that?"

"Oh, some German fellow has an idea that we carry our ancestors about with us in the sex cells, and pass 'em on like registered letters to our kids."

One or two of the intellectual cliques in the college even cultivated J.J. Pope. They discussed Jude the Obscure, and Bergson, and the new decadence, and Stephen Phillips, and the Fabian Society, and Havelock Ellis. Some of the brighter spirits read "Papers," and the society debated the subject afterwards. J.J. Pope read a paper on "The Significance of Carbon in Organic Evolution," but though he tried to popularise the theme it was above the heads of his contemporaries, some of whom had very vague ideas upon protoplasm. It was a sort of strange jelly that somehow had come alive.

J.J. did make a friend who, in later years, was to become of peculiar significance to him, one Peter Pratten—the only son of Thomas Pratten who had made a fortune in selling pills. "Pratten's Pills" were known all over the Empire, and you could not pick up a paper without finding them advertised. They were as famous as Pear's Soap. Nor could you miss the picture of a rubicund and smiling old gentleman popping a pill into his mouth and telling you "I'm seventy-nine and I take one every day." J.J. Pope may have felt an infinite contempt for Tom Pratten's Tonic Pills, but the son was a stimulating person with ideas beyond out-riggers and girls, and rather unusual and precocious views upon chemistry and its financial significance.

Peter Pratten had not, like so many sons of successful and vulgar fathers, protested against the parental crudeness by developing a greenery-yallery hyper-refinement. Peter's hobby was boxing, and since he weighed nearly fifteen stone, and was the best heavyweight either university had known for a quarter of a century, he commanded respect. He might be a fighting man, but he had a most sweet temper. Actually, his child's face had been used to help in the pushing of the Pratten Pills, and he had been as lovely and as pink as "Bubbles." He had been known as "The Pratten Pill Child." Assuredly, this was a form of fame that might take a lot of living down at Winchester and St. Jude's, but Peter's smile, his large and handsome face, and his fists had smothered prejudice. It was not good to quarrel with a large and benign lion who, with one pat of the paw, could knock you head over heels across a sofa. Crewdson had tried it during his second year when the spiteful wit in him had not learnt caution. That, apparently, had been the one rare occasion when Peter had lost his temper.

"Well, Pratten, how are pills? Using much paper?"

Crewdson had been invisible for three days, and the nice and symmetrical blood-smudge round his eyes had lasted for a week.

But Peter had a head as well as fists. Such supreme contrasts were he and J.J. that the big young man seemed to find his opposite in J.J. Pope's physical insignificance. J.J.'s head was a very different proposition. Peter had also been to Germany and absorbed some of that country's genius for organisation. The pater's show had been a supreme success so far as publicity and profits were concerned, but Peter had a more dignified attitude to life than had his father. Old Pratten might say with grim jocosity: "Half the game's faith-healing, my lad, so why worry about the doctors?" Old Tom was a very colourful person in language, clothes and domestic decoration. He had a place in Berkshire, and kept a yacht, and—it was said—pretty ladies. In appearance he was rather like a wart-hog, and very red at that. How he had helped to produce Peter God alone knows. That must have been Polly Pratten's privilege. She had been a beauty, a big blonde creature, and the daughter of a gentleman who had run the most exciting of the Maidenhead week-end hotels. Polly had been the particular attraction to the polygamous male, but Tom Pratten had carried her off, and she had made him a most admirable wife. He had been a very miserable man for six months after her death, and had even eschewed canary-coloured waistcoats.

Peter spoke of J.J. to his father.

"We have a chap up at St. Jude's who is a bit of a genius."

"What sort?"

"Chemistry and biology."

"Any use to us? I haven't got much use for the stuff they call pure science."

"He might be, Pater. You see, I have ideas."

"Go along, young fellah m'lad! Want to outdo your father!"

"Other days, other ways, Pater. The public is becoming more educated."

"Fudge, my child. Same old stuff, though you may have to serve it up differently. Shove a nice scientific label on the bottle, what! You rather fancy this fellow?"

"I'm pretty sure he has a future."

"Well, snaffle him."

"He's not quite that sort. He's——"

"Highfalutin."

"You might call it that. I'd like him to come and stay."

"That's easy. What's he going to be?"

"A doctor."

"Poor pigeon!"

Peter laughed. He knew his father's jocund cynicism, and that it concealed some humanity and much sound sense.

"Never give anything to hospitals, Pater, do you?"

"Just plunder, my lad; placating the public. I'm after a knight-hood. That's why I gave ten thousand to the Prime Minister's pet——"

"Rot," said his son, "you always pretend to be just an old filibuster."

It may be gathered that a peculiar frankness characterised the relations between Pratten father and son. Peter had a punch, old Tom an irreverent and irrepressible tongue. Peter had had the education which his father had lacked, but he had inherited some of the old man's pushfulness, and an urge that was to function on a somewhat higher plane.

J.J. was invited to Pollards for a week during the Easter vac. He accepted. He was met at the Berkshire station by the latest sensation on wheels, an early model of the motor car, shaped like a four-wheeled gig, and steered with a tiller. Old Pratten was a man who would be one of the first to possess anything new. Peter was in charge of the machine. J.J.'s bag was shoved under the seat, and he took his place beside his friend.

"Pater's latest toy."

The thing lurched out of the station yard, and nearly swerved into a well.

"Hi, hold up, you! She's a bit tricky on the steering."

J.J. had clutched a rail.

"Seems so."

"This is only my second try-out. Think I'd better attend to business."

They bumped and swayed along the country road at the immense speed of fourteen miles an hour. The solid wheels jarred on the macadam. Now and again the machine showed an inclination to diverge towards the ditch.

"Bit heavy on the road."

"Why not pneumatics?"

"Yes, why not? I suppose they got stuck with the carriage idea. Funny how slowly ideas come."

"Or, in a flash."

Peter smiled at his friend.

"Yes, I bet yours do. Here, hold up, you!"

"Pollards" was red brick Gothic, with immensely tall and self-conscious chimneys and high gables, and in colour rather like its master, but the house was beautifully set on its terrace, with views over wooded and blue hilled country. Old Pratten was waiting for them on the terrace, very much the country gentleman with a gun under his arm. An austere man-servant took J.J.'s bag, and instantly it seemed to become a thing of scorn. Strange, how underlings are so superior to their masters! Old Pratten put out a pink fist to J.J. and his little pig's eyes twinkled.

"Glad to see you, my lad."

He was. T.P. was a very vital creature who enjoyed every day in the trough. He looked at his son, and J.J. understood that old Tom was most furiously proud of Peter, as well he might be.

"Glad the rascal didn't spill you in the road, Mr. Pope. How do you fancy my oil horse?"

J.J. liked old Pratten. There might be ostentation here, and chuckles of vulgarity, but it was hearty and good English vulgarity. Old Tom was Music Hall not Albert Hall, and J.J. preferred the former.

"It's the new idea, sir."

"Ha," said old Tom, "so are you, from what my lad tells me."

Jackie Pope, as Mr. Pratten called him, enjoyed his week at Pollards, in spite of the attentions of the superior person who valeted him. Life at Pollards was country, and the kind of country that J.J. loved; the difference was that he was seeing it from the mansion instead of from the shop. He and old Tom Pratten struck up quite a friendship, for Tom was a wart-hog with ideas. He had a kind of genius for rooting up reality. They had arguments together, rather mordantly so, but with mutual good-humour.

"I'm a plain man, but I've got a philosophy. Now, what does the public want, Jackie?"

"Corn and games, sir."

"That's the tradition. Fact is, in nine cases out of ten the public doesn't know what it wants. All that it knows is that it wants something, usually the thing the other fellow has, and it hasn't."

"Just blind urge?"

"You've said it. Give it beer and butter, and a certain amount of copulation, and the right to grumble, what then? Just a blind crave. You have it; I have it. Your crave is to find things out. Most men ask God to spare 'em any such trouble. Well, what then?"

"I'm listening, sir."

"Teach 'em to want something. Rub it into their eyes and ears. Advertise, shout. It doesn't matter much whether it is my pills or a piano or a porcupine. You've got to create the crave, and then satisfy it. Why, my office is stacked with letters from grateful purchasers of Pratten Pills."

Yes, old Tom was a buccaneer in his realism. He asserted that ninety-nine men out of a hundred desired to make money, and he was one of the ninety-nine. Most people weren't honest about it. They palavered; they put on the Sunday hats and black kid gloves of social smuggery, and pretended that their hearts were in some sort of other worldliness. Just highfalutin, and keeping in with God. He, Tom Pratten, doubted whether any live man, however elevated his soul, failed to find money interesting. And what about the one in a hundred? J.J.'s host did allow that there were such people, fellows who were so passionately married to their job or some cause that they forgot all about value for service. Fine, and altruistic and all that, but rather bad luck on their wives and families, if they had them. And then, Mr. Pratten winked at J.J. Pope.

"You might be one of 'em, you know."

"I might. What's in your pills, Mr. Pratten?"

"Ah, wouldn't you like to know! And I guess it wouldn't take you long to find out. You're too clever by half, young man. But there's another side to the question."

"There always is, sir."

"Young Peter. Hasn't it been a pleasure to me to give him all the opportunities I didn't get? He is Pratten's Pills—grown up. Whether it's wise to give a young fellow too much is a thing I'm not quite sure about. You take away the stimulus. Depends on the lad, I suppose, and Peter's a good lad. He's got ideas."

J.J. happened to know something of Peter's ideas. He appeared to have inherited from his father a passion for selling things, but they were to be different things, and of otherness in conception and in value. That crude, experimental petrol-carriage was the symbol. Here was a vision of provoking progress, a new source of power, transport, speed. Peter's urge was to be a developer and a manufacturer of motor cars.

He was a little sensitive on the subject of his father's pills.

"I don't want to crab the old man's show, or quarrel with his philosophy. I know some people might call it a swindle, even though the pater's pills do contain something which bucks up the brain and the bowels. After all, people wouldn't buy them if they didn't feel better for them. That's the point of his philosophy."

"And not a bad one, either."

"Well, I want to make cars. I'm fey about cars. It's the game of the future. I have talked it over with the pater."

"I suppose he'd like you——?"

"In the pill game? Well, yes, in a way, but he is a great old sport. He's willing to finance me."

They were idling in the "Pollards" garden, and suddenly Peter laid a very large hand on J.J.'s shoulder.

"I've had another idea. You are the sort of fellow, who, if you went in with the pater, might make a much more significant business of the show."

J.J. smiled up at him.

"And how?"

"Well, research, you know, new products."

"Professional etiquette would forbid."

"So, you still mean to go through with the doctoring?"

"If I don't know my sick, I shan't be a judge of my remedies. The human body isn't just a test tube."

"Yes, I see your point of view. I suppose it's the same with me. When I go down I shall spend two years in an engineering shop."

"The hospital will be my shop."

J.J. Pope was walking along King's Parade when facetious youth challenged him.

"Hallo, Tad, lists are up."

"Are they?"

"You're pilled."

J.J. gave the jester an ironic smirk and continued upon his way to Cavendish Street and the day's work. It was not arrogance but certitude which inspired him. Not for him was the ordeal of the Senate House door. Had he prepared the Tripos papers for himself they could not have suited him more admirably. He took his lunch with him to the lab. and sat and ate bread and cheese like any working man. There was no better food than this, and you did not tire of it as you tired of kickshaws, provided both temperament and tummy were in health. J.J. sometimes wondered whether old Tom Pratten hankered after his bread and cheese days, and those strenuous and struggling years when work could be a frenzy. He did realise that Peter's father had offered him a unique opportunity as advisory and research expert to a company whose ramifications spread all over the world, but J.J. Pope had not yet reached that cynical phase when a man throws pious protestations into the washing-basket, and sallies forth with a new nakedness into the jungle. J.J. was still what old Pratten would have called highfalutin and high headed. He believed that the quest was the serious business, and that a man could be a kind of Galahad in the scientific wilderness, seeking the sacred flame.

The lab. served an improvised tea to its special students, and not till the day's work was done, and J.J. set out to dine in hall, did he receive a particular message. The porter on duty at the Great Gate accosted him.

"Mr. Pope."

"Yes."

"Mr. Ward left word that he wants to see you. He'll be in his rooms after hall."

"Very good," said J.J. and passed on to his dinner.

Mr. Ward was his tutor, and there had been occasional passages of arms between them over hall and attendance at chapel. Mr. Ward was large and sonorous and bald, with a sense of duty to the young that was almost biblical, and if he tended to impose upon his world a paternal sympathy, it was done, at times, with too much unction. The college called him "Sappolio," but he was, in fact, a very benign person, lavish with breakfasts, and also with avuncular hints as to behaviour. Pope climbed Mr. Ward's stairs, knocked, and was told in a resounding voice to enter.

Mr. Ward was at his desk, making notes upon a book by the latest German philosopher.

"Ah, Mr. Pope. Come in, sit down. I am glad you received my message."

J.J. sat down on a hard Victorian chair, and was silent.

"I must congratulate you, Mr. Pope. Of course you have seen the Tripos lists."

"Not yet, sir."

Mr. Ward's eyebrows went up. He was an authority on psychology and sociology, but J.J. Pope puzzled him. To let a whole day go by without visiting the Senate House door! What was the inference? That Pope was scared, or——?

"Indeed! Is it that you doubted your capacity?"

"No, sir."

Again Mr. Ward raised bushy eyebrows.

"Supreme confidence, Mr. Pope?"

"I know my work, sir."

"Well, your confidence is justified. A first class, Mr. Pope." J.J. nodded.

"And more than that. As you probably know, places are recorded, unofficially. I have been informed that your name heads the list. I congratulate you."

A faint smile spread over J.J.'s face. He looked out of the Tudor window and saw the cusped cupola of the fountain. He had not forgotten that incident of a year ago, but the smart of it was passing.

"Thank you, sir."

Mr. Ward sat back, put his fingers together, and became paternal.

"May I ask you a few questions, Mr. Pope?"

"Of course, sir."

"What of the future? Do you contemplate following an academic career, or——?"

"You mean, sir——"

"Well, a post graduate course, a demonstratorship, and ultimately, a——"

But there Mr. Ward paused. He had been about to say "Fellowship," but as a member of a famous fraternity his mellow humanism recoiled from a suggestion that might imply a social misalliance. J.J. Pope was not quite the person for the jocund conventions of a college Common Room. You could not see him drinking port, and enjoying a witty and slightly smutty story. He was a burr, not a round and sun-warmed apple. So, Mr. Ward, who was proud of himself as a man of the world and no mere donnish person, paused and reflected, and was wise as to possible incompatibilities. This little man might be exceedingly able, but he was the sort of fellow who made you feel uncomfortable, like a paragraph that would not come out nicely on paper. The silence was momentary, but J.J. Pope's acute self had divined some of its implications. Even his seniors might be a little shy of him.

"Research, sir, I think."

"Ah, Pope, pure science. Do you propose to——?"

"In London, sir. I shall go to one of the hospitals."

"I see. Healing as well as research. What about the Fellowship?"

"You mean—the examination, sir, not the post?"

Mr. Ward pressed his finger-tips and his lips together. Damn the little fellow! Had he read his thoughts?

"The examination, Mr. Pope."

"I'm not a surgeon, sir."

"Surgery not sufficiently subtle?"

If there was irony in the remark Pope ignored it.

"Limited, sir. The surgeon comes in at the end; my idea is to begin at the beginning."

"Quite so, Mr. Pope. And can you manage in London? I mean——"

Pope's face seemed to become brightly hard and austere.

"Yes. I can always manage. I am not quite without friends."