Читать книгу The Man Who Went Back - Warwick Deeping - Страница 5

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I was, indeed, what we moderns describe as “A Case.” My white-headed master might call upon his gods, but I was to discover in him that universality which is the prerogative of all fine and intuitive intelligences in all ages. Somehow, great minds do not date, and I suspect that Plato and Einstein could have strolled together up and down some portico and discussed the eternal mysteries and the manifestations of that otherness that we call God. Stone images are for the crowd and the conventions. My Romano-British philosopher and autocrat understood the uses and the significance of such conventions, but his spirit both accepted and transcended them. He would have said that man must have his Book of the Law, and a conviction that the simple verities matter. Let there be fruitful earth under man’s feet, not a cloud of sophistry. Faith must leap over the eternal cliff, while the sophists pelt it with words like peas thrown at a wall. He would have said—and did say—that a people began to slip back into the morass of decadence and pessimism when the clever little apes began to chatter too cleverly. He was to say to me: “Words, my son, may be man’s undoing, little bright pebbles with which we play. Look at the sun and the moon and the stars, and marvel.”

I often wonder what was at the back of those bright and infinitely sage old eyes. He treated me with great gentleness and understanding. I had lost my memory. Such an erasing of the pattern on the tablets of the mind must have been known to him. I was a case, not a mental one, but a clean slate that had been sponged. I must have interested him, and profoundly so. He treated me rather like a lost child. I was to remain in the great house for that night, and not return to the empty house of my father, that other house further up the valley. I was to eat, sleep, and be rested. He himself saw me settled in a dim little room like a cell where a narrow window showed me the green of the valley. I was given bread and meat, a cup and a jug of water. There was a bed in the room, and a basin and a ewer on a kind of tripod stand.

“Eat and sleep, my son,” and he closed the door, and left me.

It grew dark, and very silent, and with the darkness despair came to lie with me in that narrow room. Never have I known such misery. It was more than mere desolation. I felt like a man buried alive in the body of some stranger. I could not sleep. I tried to lie still and face this horror, and to reason it out, and to assure myself that I was dreaming. I kept on saying to myself: “You will wake up, you will wake up.” But so acute did this anguish of loneliness become that I left the bed and walked up and down my cell. If I tired myself out, if I slept, I might wake up and find myself back in my old familiar world, that mechanical, noisy, confused and half crazy world to which I had been born. I was frightened, most terribly frightened. So desperate and terrified did I become, that I remember cracking my head against the wall in the hope that the jolt might jar me back into sanity. It did nothing of the kind. The crack left me sick and dizzy, and I had to lie down on the bed.

I lay and listened. The house and the valley had become immensely still. They and I might have been fathoms deep in dark water. There was no moon. Was I dead, and the whole world with me? Had my dream ended in nothingness? I felt my heart beating. And then I thought I heard footsteps in the corridor. They seemed to come to my door and pause there. Someone was listening. I sat up and swung my legs over the edge of the bed, for my impulse was to rush out and seize that listener, and cry out fiercely: “Am I alive? Am I dreaming? Who am I? Who are you?” I sat and shook like a poor, palsied, panic-stricken thing. I heard the footsteps fade away. I lay down again, prone, and drove my face into the pillow. It was soft and warm, and must have been stuffed with down. I wanted either to die or to wake up.

When I opened my eyes again, I was in that half-way-house state between sleeping and waking. It was my twentieth-century self that lay and sleeked itself in that feeling of lazy relaxation. What was the day? Oh, Monday, and no black Monday for me, for I was interested in my job, especially so in the job that was mine at the moment. Moreover, Lucy was coming back to-morrow. What time was it? Time for early morning tea? The room seemed darker than usual, and I turned on my side and reached for my watch which spent the night on the table beside my bed. There was no table, no watch. And then, the horror rushed back on me. I sat up, stark yet shivering. I saw the narrow window, and the green woods streaked with early sunlight, and the red tesseræ of the floor, and the pale ochre-coloured walls, and that strange tripod stand with its basin and ewer. My God, I was still in this other world, imprisoned in the body of another man!

I went flat, closed my eyes, and tried to reason the thing out. I wasn’t awake; I was still dreaming. Lucy was coming home to-morrow. In five minutes I should hear Mary’s knock, and her correct voice saying: “Your early tea, sir.” I lay and listened, with my eyes closed. I swore to myself that I could not be in this Roman house; it was a nightmare, a preposterous illusion. When I opened my eyes again I should see all the familiar things about me, Lucy’s dressing-table, her wardrobe, her bed with the rose-coloured quilt. I lay in the darkness, and willed myself back into sanity. I had to will myself into opening my eyes. I was cold with fear. I opened my eyes, and saw that damned window, and the green hill-side, and the strange furniture.

I turned over and wept.

How long that frightened-child phase lasted I do not know. Daylight came about four, and it must have been about six o’clock when I pulled myself out of that pit of despair. I felt that I must do something, escape from this place, thrash my way back to that grassy space in the heather where I had been born into this other world. I was obsessed by the childish hope that if I went to sleep on that hill-side I might sleep myself back into my own world. Moreover, this dream-valley was coming to life. I could remember hearing the birds singing up the sun. A bell began to clang as though calling the valley to its labour. I heard stirrings in the house, a woman’s voice, the shuffle of feet.

I rose, and pouring water into the basin, sluiced my hands and face. There was no mirror in the room, but my fingers told me of all that stubble on my chin. I was touched by a twinge of vanity. Was it possible to get a shave in this damned place? I did not want to meet Meona, looking like a tramp. But, good God, did it matter? I was going to shake the dust off my shoes.

I plastered my hair down with water, opened the door, it had a queer wooden latch, and looked out into the corridor. I saw a woman on her hands and knees swabbing down the tesselated floor. She raised her head and looked at me, and her eyes were round and unfriendly. Confound the jade! I was moved by a sudden passionate petulance. Was I such a scarecrow? I would try English on her, and see how she reacted. My other self asked that question: “What time is breakfast?” I remembered feeling astonished when I heard my voice asking her in the Latin tongue at what hour we broke our fast.

She stared at me, muttered something, and went on with her work. I think I laughed, as much at myself as at anything, and it was not pleasant laughter. The woman kept her head down as though she had no desire to meet my eyes. I walked past her and found myself in the vestibule with its mocking, Bacchic face. The doors were open, and I saw two pillars of the loggia, and the courtyard, the cistern and clipped trees. The courtyard seemed empty, and the gates were open. My mood was to make a dash for it.

I had reached the loggia when I heard those voices, a sudden ominous clamour. There were the deep voices of men, angry, sullen men. A woman’s shrill cry rose in a kind of siren note. Another voice, a woman’s, set up a wild wailing. I felt scared, penetrated by a premonition of evil. Good God, what now?

They marched into the courtyard, those returning warriors, surrounded, so it seemed to me, by all the women and old men and children in the village. Four of them carried a litter upon which lay a man who was wounded. They looked a dirty and unshaven and desperate lot of blackguards, a veritable Treasure Island crowd, and yet there was a fierce, wild-eyed impressiveness about them that was to make the approaching scene all the more bitter for me. Their weapons were broken, their harness dusty, scarred, and splashed with blood. One fellow’s face was all red bandage; another had his arm lashed to his body. These men had fought and been beaten, but they were not mere cowed fugitives.

I saw a woman in the crowd pointing at me, but there was no need for her to point me out. These fierce, weary and bloody men saw me, and their eyes flashed and their mouths spewed scorn. They shouted at me.

“Hail, coward.”

“Hail, the cur who turned his tail.”

A horror of this new horror seemed to paralyse me. Had I inherited, not only the body of another man, but his frailties, his poltroonery, his panic in the face of the enemy? I stood, leaning against a pillar, and looking into these fierce faces of these survivors. I made myself confront them. Whatever my fate might be, I felt I had to grasp it.

The four men set the litter down near the cistern. There was one old fellow who appeared to be the leader, a grim, thick-set boar of a man. His name was Constantine, and I was to learn that he was an old soldier, a legionary, a veteran who had remained behind upon his farm when Rome had abandoned the island. He had teeth like tusks, and a bristling black beard. He marched up to the loggia steps, stared me in the face and spat.

“Hail, coward! There was valour in your legs!”

The crowd howled.

“Yah, coward.”

“He left his father to die.”

“The good Gerontius.”

“Yes, neighbours, one clip on the head, and he ran. I saw it. He had a face like a frightened girl.”

How ironic was all this! I suppose I should have been stricken with shame, but the mockery of the thing began to fill me with fury. I wanted to fly in the face of my own fate as it was expressed by the faces of these other men. I believe I folded my arms, and stood up straight, and tried to look haughty.

“You lie.”

That enraged them. They shouted at me. I was bold enough among the women and children, was I? They came crowding to the steps as though they would pull me down and savage me. I suppose no man can say how stout he is or what stuff he has in him until he finds himself in a tight corner, but I had boxed for my school, and until my marriage I had played pretty rough rugby football. I put up my fists and dared them to touch me, but I was to be rescued in a way that was not pleasing to my pride.

There was sudden silence. I saw all those faces lose much of their anger. Their eyes were looking at something behind me. And then I heard her voice, and turned and saw her. She had come to the top of the steps, and stood there confronting these angry men. She looked very pale, and to me very lovely, though there was a fierceness about her beauty, a tinge of scorn that was not comforting to my soul. I should have said that her sign was fire, a pale and stinging flame that made one’s pride wince, and one’s heart beat hard and harshly.

“Constantine, you shall speak.”

She looked them over, forlorn and fierce as they were. She seemed to be counting them. Her eyes rested for a moment on the stretcher and its burden. I saw her lips move.

“Who lies there?”

“The smith’s son, lady.”

“So, Gerontius fell.”

“Yes, lady, and seven others. We were too few. It was a battle with wild beasts.”

She turned and looked at me, and my humiliation was complete. I, the son of Gerontius, had fled the fight. I had left my father to die, and deserted these other men. Ye Gods, how was one to confront such shame, especially when one was innocent? I felt like going berserk and fighting the crowd to show her I was no coward.

“What has Pellias to say?”

What could I say? Every eye was watching me. I was a thing to be scorned and mocked at.

“Have you forgotten?”

Her irony scourged me, and I was mute, but the crowd was not mute, and the women were more bitter than the men. She held up a hand for silence, but I was to be given nothing but sarcasm.

“It seems that Pellias has forgotten. It is sometimes easy to forget. You, Constantine, will tell us what happened to this young man.”

The old soldier glared at me.

“Lady, he ran away.”

“Without a blow at those wild beasts?”

“Lady, those sea-rovers have fierce faces. They fight like the mad. It takes a brave man to look them in the eyes without flinching.”

“And Pellias flinched.”

“He had one blow on the head, lady. He fought next me. I stabbed the man who slashed him. But when I looked to my right, Pellias had gone. We fought in two ranks, lady, the spears behind and thrusting through to break the rush for us swordsmen.”

Another man broke in, the one with the bandaged arm.

“I was behind Pellias, lady. He pushed me aside and ran. I saw his white face, and blood.”

“Yes,” said another, “he ran.”

There was silence, and she turned again and looked at me, and my face must have been as stark and as white as the face of the man who had fled in panic.

“Have you forgotten that, also?”

I felt sullen. The injustice of the thing was too damnable.

“Yes, I have forgotten.”

The crowd laughed, and its laughter was not pleasant to my pride.

“Let him be put into women’s clothes and wash floors.”

But a woman in the crowd protested.

“No, no, we women are not like that. Let him go naked and feed the swine.”

Meona raised her hand again.

“People, go about your labours. Constantine, and you, Felix, you will stand before my father. And you——”

I drew myself up to meet that blow.

“And you, Pellias, will go to your room and stay there until Aurelius Superbus, my father, chooses to speak with you. Go.”

Her voice was a whip, and for a moment I was moved to flout her, to leap down and charge through the crowd, and run for the woods, but I smothered that impulse. Those fierce men would stop me. I could see that they were lusting to lay hands upon the coward. I should be ducked, beaten, pelted, thrown upon a dungheap, and I had had as much shame as I could stomach. I turned and walked into the house. No one spoke or jeered, and the silence was more bitter than any mocking or cursing. I passed up the corridor, and into my cell, and closed the door, and sat down on the bed.

What a bloody riddle had I to solve!

Was this dream to persist, and was I to be a shameful ghost in the centre of the picture?

And what would Aurelius make of it?

Aurelius? Aurelius Ambrosius was a great name shining strangely out of those dim, old, tragic days. Was my white-maned philosopher a member of that notable Romano-British clan. I felt myself enveloped in those twilight idylls, and sharing in the sunset cries of conquered Kings. Aurelius Ambrosius, Uther Pendragon, Arthur, Guinevere! I sat on my bed with my head in my hands, and my blood felt like water in me.