Читать книгу Slade - Warwick Deeping - Страница 20

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The children of St. John’s Sunday School sat in the gallery with their teachers, and when the organ had ceased to play the children would come clattering down the gallery stairs, and out into the evening sunlight. Mr. Slade would walk out with a nod to Mr. Munday the verger, and join the crowd of children, who, released from the solemnity of the service, became like a flight of chirruping sparrows. Inevitably, James Slade was drawn towards children, having become something of a child himself. To a man who was labelled “Failure” these young things seemed to symbolize a beginning over again, spring, eggs in a nest, primroses, fairy stories. He understood their mischief and their naughtinesses, their little woes, their tears, their tantrums. He too was beginning over again, and in the world of children he felt at ease. He would like to have given them toys and sweets, but he had nothing to give but smiles, yet his smiles seemed to be sufficient. Often he would walk between the glistening holly hedges towards the setting sun holding two young things by the hand. He could talk child’s talk without self-consciousness or affectation, and his small friends would look up at him and ask him simple questions.

“Mr. Slade, what—is—a harlot?”

This from a small girl, and Mr. Slade, somehow without embarrassment, would propound some sort of answer.

“A pretty lady, my dear, who is pleasant to the gentlemen.”

“Like—like Mrs. Else—or——?”

“No, my dear, not quite like that. I don’t think we have any such ladies here.”

Yet, loving children as he did, as his Lord Jesus loved them, it was all the more tantalizing to James Slade to have to watch the particular child growing up like a tree in someone else’s garden. He might look over the wall, but only surreptitiously so. That which was so humanly his could never be his, as he might dream of and desire it. To Rose he was just Old Slade, an odd man about the place whom her mother scolded, and to whom she herself might in the future issue orders. For those were days when James Slade seemed to avoid the child, smile at her in a queer and poignant way, and slip away round corners. Maybe she thought him a funny, silent old man, and perhaps, for that very reason, the illusive shadowiness of him attracted her. She was still young enough to dash down the kitchen stairs to escape from the austere atmosphere of alert respectability.

There came a day when James Slade discovered that the child had a temper, and a wilfulness that rebelled against her world’s “Thou shalt not”. James Slade happened to be polishing the brass stair-rods, kneeling on the stairs and removing the rods one by one when he heard footsteps in the passage. Rose came up and past him, brushing by with an air of guilty haste. She had something in her hand, a bag of sweets. She had been out with Mrs. Else, and a certain person was jealous of that lady. How puzzling such emotional prejudices must be to a child! James Slade, holding a stair-rod in both hands like a Galahad’s sword, watched her legs disappearing. She was creeping up now, step by step, to slip past the maternal door. Mr. Slade had seen the bag of sweets, the gift of that other woman of whom Rose’s mother jealously disapproved. A small hand clutching a bag! “That which I hold I keep.” It was the maternal motto. Like mother—like child?

But Rose was out of luck. That bag was not to be smuggled into the little back room that was hers. Maybe her mother had been watching from the window, and had waited, her firm fingers on the door handle. It opened upon Rose like the door of some jealous Jehovah.

“Where have you been?”

“Only in the gardens.”

“That is not true. How dare you lie to me? What is that you are hiding?”

There seemed to be a resentful silence on the part of Rose.

“What have you got there——?”

“Only—a——”

“Give it to me at once.”

“I won’t.”

“You won’t! How dare you——”

There was the sound of a scuffle.

“Sweets! I thought so. Haven’t I told you——?”

“Don’t, mother, they’re mine. Why shouldn’t Mrs. Else give me——”

“Give me that bag.”

“I won’t. They’re mine.”

Seemingly there was a struggle for the bag, and in the struggle the paper burst, and the confectionery was scattered on the carpet. Also, Mr. Slade heard a sound that suggested a crisp smack upon soft flesh.

“Now, pick them up, pick them all up.”

“I won’t.”

“You will.”

Sudden tears and angry, rebellious sobbings. The child came running down the stairs, her mother following. James Slade was kneeling there, head bowed, and leaning upon the stair-rod as upon a sword.

“Slade, stop the child.”

James Slade did not move. He let her go past him, weeping bitterly and noisily, down the stairs and to the door. Mrs. Pomeroy was in pursuit, and suddenly James Slade held the rod crosswise against her, his face stricken but determined.

“No, madam.”

The door was open and the child gone, to hide herself somewhere in the gardens.

“How dare you? Get out of my way.”

“Please, madam.”

Her hand swept out. Her impulse was to strike him, but suddenly she grew rigid, nostrils pinched, lips thin and bloodless.

“Very well. Go up and clear up—that mess, Slade.”

“Yes, madam.”

“You can collect them in a coal-shovel, and put them on the kitchen fire.”

James Slade obeyed her. She stood over him relentlessly while he picked up the sweets. She seemed to tower like Retribution over the figure of the kneeling sinner.

“Now, go and put them on the fire.”

“Yes, madam.”

“And come back and tell me that you have done it.”