Читать книгу The Man Who Went Back - Warwick Deeping - Страница 6

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An hour or more must have passed while I sat on that bed, trying to remember the little I knew of the history of Roman Britain, to make some sort of pattern of the world in which I found myself. I had read Haverfield and other experts on the subject, and I did know that the period intervening between the passing of Rome and the dominance of the Saxons was obscure, a wilderness of legend and conjecture. Still, the Roman cult had flowered in the island for nearly four hundred years, and that is a long time. I had read that the level of civilization was higher then until, perhaps, the period of the Jacobeans. Nor had the Romano-British culture tumbled after the passing of the legions. It had fought, and often successfully so, for two hundred years, only gradually to be dispossessed of the fertile, civilized south, and driven into Cornwall, Wales, and Strathclyde.

But where was I in this ancient pattern? In the house of a Romano-British notable, one Aurelius Superbus, who might be an uncle, a brother or a cousin of that other Aurelius who had rallied Britain and driven back the sea-rovers, and the Scotch and Irish? The barbarians had invaded Kent. I remembered the stories of Vortigern and Hengist and Horsa. Had I, as Pellias, marched to repulse one of these many raids? Who had led us? Had the disaster been utter? Would those blond savages come ravaging along the Downs and the Valley of the Thames, and pour with fire and sword into this Surrey valley? The Weald, I supposed, was a wilderness. Londinium might be too tough a nut for them. Silchester or Calleva, that rich little town amid the woods, might prove a lure. There were villas and manors to be plundered in West Sussex and on the Hampshire borders. And this valley? Had the Jutes occupied Kent? Was this a mere raid, or a deliberate advance, a conquering and settling of new lands?

Good God, but what a strange way of learning history, to be tumbled back into it, to live it with every sort of emotion tearing out one’s vitals! I was history in the making. I was a blood-stained and desperate participator in one of those dim tragedies of which the learned write with tepid and dispassionate detachment. Maybe I was to listen to the wailing of women, and see houses and cities go up in flames, know fear in the dark woods. Maybe I was to go down to my death in shame and anguish. Maybe, I was to look into the scornful eyes of a girl. Damnation, if I was to share, even dreamfully, in these confused and poignant happenings, was I to play the part of coward? Was this the Roman fatum? Was I a ghost following a pre-ordained path, walking some prescribed gallery, or was the part mine, to play it as I pleased, even in a dream?

Free Will and Destiny, one can argue those problems interminably, but my furious groping into the past and into the future was broken by a sound. I heard footsteps in the corridor. Someone was coming to my door.

There was a click of the wooden latch, and a face looked in, a face I had not seen before, a moon face fringed with pale hair. It lisped at me. This was a mannerish person, affected, precise, inadequately supercilious, and I seemed to divine the scribe.

“My lord awaits you.”

I followed this gentleman’s gentleman along the corridor to the summer-room, noting the baldish head and the finnicky movements of the creature. He walked like a woman. There was no stride about him. This was Gildas, my lord’s secretary. He drew the curtain aside, and I saw that he wore a signet ring, a most Byzantine-looking ring. He announced me.

“The man Pellias, my lord.”

The man, indeed! Damn him! I felt more than man to this blow-fly.

Aurelius was sitting in his chair. His eyes seemed to remain fixed upon me from the moment that I entered, but, somehow, the depth and steadfastness of that gaze did not vex me. I bent my head and shoulders to him, and there was a naturalness in the homage that I gave him. This old man was a serene and princely person. Master Gildas placed himself beside his lord’s chair, and produced his tablets and a style. The occasion was to be official so far as this scribbling functionary was concerned.

The old man raised a hand, but without taking his eyes off me.

“You can leave us, Gildas.”

The secretary bowed, and looking primly peeved, shuffled out of the room. The door closed, and there was silence. I waited, only to hear Aurelius say a most unexpected thing to me, and to say it with a smile that was like the touch of a friend’s hand.

“Go to the door and look. Go softly.”

I went and opening it, found our friend, half smothered up in the curtain, waiting to play the interested listener. I smiled at him, and he snapped a vicious look at me, and assuming the attitude of a man who was about to draw the curtain across the door, did so, and minced off.

My lord’s eyes were jocund.

“A man’s affairs, my son, may become the property of his servant. Gildas was there?”

“He was, sir.”

My lord did not laugh, but his eyes enjoyed the joke. Thank the lord, my Roman master had a sense of humour and a taste in wit. I was conscious of a strange sense of relief, in that I was in touch with a personality, and a mind that had a modern flavour, which, God forgive me, sounds like priggery. I had a feeling that there was greatness and wisdom and a calm courage in this magnificent old man. He was both timeless and dateless. He was Jove and Jehovah, and Aristotle and Galileo, Walt Whitman and Lloyd George. Something seemed to laugh in me as those names poured out, and God knows, I needed laughter.

He bent his brows on me.

“There is something strange in you to me, my son.”

My heart gave a leap. Should I tell him? Could I tell him? I was wild to unburden myself to some human soul, and after all, he could only think me mad.

“You have great wisdom, sir.”

He smiled at me almost roguishly. I was not to flatter.

“I know what I do not know. The gods are figures on a curtain and beyond that lies mystery. But let us remember that the mystery must have meaning. No Euclidian figure that, my son, but divination.”

I looked him straight in the face.

“My lord divines something.”

He was silent, surveying me.

“My son, you have not the eyes of a coward.”

I moistened my lips. The confession was on my tongue.

“My lord, I am no coward.”

“You do not remember?”

“I am not that Pellias who fled.”

He leaned forward, and his face was like white light.

“Who are you?”

I wanted to blink under his gaze.

“You would not believe, lord. It is not credible.”

He answered me sharply.

“Granted that there is mystery, everything is credible. Who are you?”

I felt my legs trembling under me. Should I tell him? And if I did confess, would he think me some evil spirit, a thing to be cast out? Would he have my body crucified, torn asunder, burnt and thrown to the winds? I felt I had to dare it.

“Lord, I will tell you. I am a man yet to be born. I am a man who lived hundreds of years hence. I am a ghost out of the future, somehow thrown back into the body of your steward’s son.”

His hands gripped the chair arms. I could hear his breathing in that supernatural silence. His eyes seemed to look right through me.

“A ghost out of the future! Poor ghost.”

There was such gentleness, such understanding in those two words that suddenly I fell on my knees before him. I stretched out my hands.

“Master, I am lost, bear with me. I dream, and yet my dream is real. I am alone, ye Gods, how alone. And yet, to you, this must seem madness.”

He put out his hands and drew me to him.

“My son, I too have dreamed dreams. There is more in this strange world than one wots of. I believe souls pass. But in dreaming one thinks of souls as passing on, not back. How did it begin with you?”

I raised my face to his.

“Is it possible that you believe me?”

“My son, I listen. One can do no more than listen, and marvel, and ask of The Mystery questions it will not answer. How did it begin with you?”

I told him.

“In the year nineteen hundred and thirty-nine I drove out in the horseless chariot we use in those days. I remember no more. I woke up in the heather, wearing strange clothes. I was afraid. I looked for the things I know, and they were not there. I saw things that were strange to me, a temple, your daughter, a landscape that was the same and yet different.”

He continued to look steadily into my eyes like some diviner gazing into a crystal.

“Are such things possible, or is the man moon-struck? And where, my son, is the spirit of that other Pellias, my Pellias?”

That was a problem that had puzzled me. If I had stolen the body of that other man, where was his spirit?

“Who knows? If I am a ghost——”

He laid his hands on my shoulders, and bore heavily on them.

“It is a very solid ghost. But this is beyond human understanding. Do you remember the life in the world from which you came?”

“Everything. That is the strangest part of it. I am a new man in the body of one——” And then I paused, remembering Berkeley Square, and the way the long-since dead had flinched from the ghost unborn.

His face seemed to grow very old. I think he had caught my meaning.

“So, to you, my son, I have been dead a thousand and a half years. And to you, our little tragedies and wars and terrors must be the dust of history. You know what we fear, the to-morrow.”

He gripped my shoulders and stared me in the face.

“Does Rome still stand?”

I nodded.

“And Byzantium?”

“Yes, master. But——”

I felt his fingers pressing into my flesh. If he was afraid of me, as well he might be, he feared other things, the horror of knowing that which might be to him disaster, and to me, mere history. He rose, and going to the window looked right and left, and then he closed the lattice. He passed to the door, opened it, pulled the curtain aside, and stood listening. Then he closed the door, and began to walk up and down. I felt his eyes upon me as upon some fatal thing. I might be a lantern in a dark house, or a cup of poison. I felt accursed.

Presently, he came and stood over me.

“In your days do you speak the Latin tongue, my son?”

“No. We learn it in our schools, as a——”

I caught myself up. Nearly had I said: “A dead language.”

“And yet you speak it.”

“That is part of the strangeness.”

He looked hard at me, walked to the alcove, and stood before his gods. Mystery! Those little stone busts were impotent, mute, helpless. He came back and stood over me again, as though reflecting fiercely upon this problem.

“Is the lad possessed? Is it a dream? Ye Gods, but there is peril in such dreaming.”

I understood him.

“You would have me dead and silent, master.”

“Not dead, my son, but silent. My soul is torn by a dreadful curiosity, but even I do not dare——”

I looked up at him as a gentle ghost might look at a mortal and apologize for haunting him.

“I will be silent.”

“Is there that strength in you?”

“I will attempt it.”

“That is well, my son. Otherwise, even we might will you to be dead. Words can slay; words can make men mad. We have other things to fear.”

I nodded at him, for I understood. Violence might be very near to this valley and its ordered life, and my lord was no man to quail or to surrender to a crowd of savages. But how ironical it all was, for I was a descendant of the savages! None the less, his need was courage, courage for his people if they were to defend what was theirs and make head against invasion.

He was still standing over me.

“By the Gods, my son, it puzzles me what to do with you. Are you a meteor, heralding disaster? Or have you been sent to succour us? I must think, I must think.”

He tossed his great white mane, and I, still kneeling there, was moved by his emotion.

“Master, some strange turn of time’s wheel has brought you and me together. What is there to do but accept the mystery. I will swear silence. I will answer no questions save the questions that you ask me.”

He looked hard at me again.

“My son, I will trust you. Stand up, and come with me before my gods, and swear by the God behind the gods that you will be silent.”

I stood with him in the little sanctuary, raised my arms, and swore, and then, holding me by the shoulders, he kissed me upon the forehead.

“There is my seal, Pellias. You and I must keep faith with each other.”

Having put me upon my honour he straightway treated me as a man of honour. He told me that I should remain in his house for the next few days, and eat at his table. His kindness both comforted and disarmed me, though I did suspect that were I to break faith with him he could be ruthless. He asked me whether I wished to be alone and to shape myself in solitude for the strange part I had to play, and I, remembering my foul face, asked if I could be barbered. He was amused, and he was Roman in his cleanliness. A barber should be sent to me; I should be shown the bath.

In fact he treated me like a privileged guest. I was shaved by a fat little man who served me with circumspection; and who seemed to fear that I might try and snatch the razor from him and cut my throat or his. The fine temper of the razor surprised me. I was given a robe and taken to the bath, a fair chamber off the east wing. It had a hot bath and a cold plunge, and the water had been heated for me. The floor and the lining of the baths were of mosaic, white and slate-blue tesseræ, the walls distempered yellow. I bathed, and my barber friend dealt with me, planking me on a marble slab, and massaging me and rubbing in perfumed oil. He examined my cracked head, washed away the clotted blood, and applied some ointment to the wound which had sealed itself up cleanly. When I went back to my sleeping cell I found clean clothes laid out on the bed, a white tunic, a kind of purple cloak, new shoes, and a green girdle. I put them on and rather wished I had a mirror to see how I shaped as a Roman Briton.

I heard a knock at my door.

“My lord awaits you in the garden.”

I followed the barber. He led me to a little door at the end of the corridor, and passing through it, I found myself in the garden. And what a garden! It astonished me. It seemed so English. It had a high flint wall, and gravel paths, and box edging, and a pergola covered with vines and roses and wild clematis. Fruit trees were trained against the high grey walls. There were few flowers in it as yet, for the year was young, but some of the fruit trees were still in blossom. At the end of the pergola I saw a great stone seat set in an arbour made of clipped yews. Aurelius was sitting there, leaning upon his stick, his white head looking as though it carried a garland.

I could see his eyes studying me as I walked up under the vines. The garden backed upon a steep meadow and the high woods, and I was to learn that the high wall was to keep out the deer. There were wild boars and wolves in the Weald, but the wolves were not many, and were dangerous only in winter. I am something of a gardener, and a garden is always associated in my mind with a pipe, but my hand did not go into a non-existent pocket for the ghost of a pipe and pouch. I had not smoked, for how long was it? God knows! But in this other man’s body the craving was unborn in me. I think I smiled. No nicotine, no tea, no coffee! In heaven, it is suggested, one gets one’s whisky and one’s cigar, if one needs them, but in this dream-world my drink was to be wine and water, and a home-made brew like beer.

We men are vain creatures, and I was no weed. I had fancied myself in football togs, and the body of Pellias was that of a tough fellow. My lord was eyeing me with approval. I was shaved and washed and dressed, and my new girdle was tight round tough loins. Was my spirit tougher than my double’s, and capable of making more use of a comely body? I must have smiled at my master, and perhaps swaggered just a little. He bade me stand before him, and I did.

“You have not the eyes of a coward, my son.”

“That is to be proved.”

“Tell me, do you new men carry swords?”

“No, sir. We go unarmed, save for the professional soldiers.”

“Your legions. So it was in this island until recently. No man was allowed to bear arms unless he was a soldier. That has been one of our misfortunes. We had the Roman peace, but when the legions left us we were tame, untrained men. Our young men had not been hardened to war.”

How strange was this! It put me back into my other life and our reaction to the German menace and the sudden awakening to it of an unarmed England. Here was yet another German menace, for the Saxons were of the same stock. I could have pushed a platitude at him, and observed that history repeated itself, but with bombs and poison-gas and propaganda, instead of with swords and spears.

He bade me sit down beside him.

“How like you this garden, Pellias?”

I did not say that its beauty and order surprised me, but he must have divined my thought, for he spread a hand as though blessing the sacred and secret place.

“We of the Roman spirit love beauty and order, or the beauty of order. We ask to control what is round us, either as peasant or as prince. An old man must cultivate his garden. So, have we cultivated this valley. And now we have these half-naked savages let loose on us. Attila scourges the world, and these sea-wolves, escaping from the greater beast, fall upon us.”

Had we in my England not confronted the same spectre of ruin, cities blown to pieces, houses wrecked, women and children lying dead in the streets? The order and the liberty and the happy, playful fancy of a free man’s life sacrificed to a booted fanaticism!

I said: “Such good things should not pass.”

I felt him watching me.

“And what would you do, my son?”

“Fight.”

He laid a hand upon my shoulder.

“You are not that other Pellias, it seems. And yet his fate is upon you. Consider what was, what is, and what might be. Can a ghost out of the future strive to serve the past?”

His words moved me very strangely.

“My fate, perhaps, is now and here.”

“Consider it, my son. I make you free of my garden, and my trust.”

He rose, and I stood beside him.

“Master, that which was—is, and yet perhaps differently so.”

He left me to walk in his garden and to meditate upon these things.