A Child of the Age (Adams)/Chapter 3
III
The next midsummer holidays, to which I had looked forward eagerly, were a disappointment. The weather was bad, chill, windy, and rainy. I forsook my boating at last: took to long walks over the wet fields, with sadness through all my thoughts. In the end, dreams became almost nightly, fantastic dreams, never quite nightmares, although the shadow of nightmare was often in them like a polyp in a dim submarine water. I wrote odd things about this, fragments, half-understood by myself, almost always torn up after a few lines had been put down, and then I sat bent over the table, the end of the pen or pencil in my mouth and my eyes staring at nothing, till the fit passed. The dull or rainy weather held on almost uninterruptedly. I was somewhat relieved when the holidays were over.
With the new term came finer weather. September, the end of it, and half October were soft and beautiful. Then two or three wind-gales blew, whirling all the leaves and many twigs, and even boughs off the roaring trees: nay, pulling some trees, and not small ones, to the earth. These gales past, the 'Challenge Matches' between the several 'houses' began. I got my School House 'colours' all right, as 'three-quarters back.' I enjoyed those games. The excitement of the fellows over the stiff tussles we, School House, had with Gough's and Mason's thrilled me every now and then. A sort of viciousness and devilry came into me. I remember well how once, when Harper, after a grand run down the left side of the Mere field (we had the wall goal), got past first one back and then the other and came on at full speed, the ball not two yards before him, hurrying to pass me—the short run I took, so as to poise myself, and then how I went straight as an arrow for the ball and him. We met violently. I, half spun round: tottered: recovered myself: saw the ball, just turning, a yard or so to the right: leaped to it: kicked: saw it go right up, round, through the air, on over the heads of the yelling crowd of fellows a quarter way up the field, and then turned, to see Harper get up off his knee and move away. I could have given a shout of delight. That swift rush and violent meeting had gone into my heart and head like strong wine.
Just for the two weeks we wanted fine cold dry weather (for the Challenge Matches I mean), we had it. Then it broke up: rain took the place of the sun and warm damp the place of the cold dry. The effect upon me was evil. The sadness through all my thoughts was with me again.
One night, hot, feverish even, unable to work, I could not get myself and present sayings and doings out of dream-land. My throat was sore too, as if I had an inflammation there. Preparation and prayers over, I went up to the bedroom; undressed, and lay in the cool sheets, thinking in a vague way about death coming to me sometime soon. The thought was, like everything this evening, in dream-land. I spent a hot sleepless night.
Next morning I went from bad to worse. It was a Saturday. I felt like what I thought a melancholy bird felt, moping with a malady. I went up to my room and lay on my bed till, after about an hour, being thirsty and getting up for some water, I saw my face in the glass over the washing-stand, a scarlet patch upon my right forehead; so bright a scarlet that I wondered a little. I had scarcely lain down again when there was a knock at the door. 'Come in,' I said, and entered—Clayton. I made a dissatisfied noise to myself.
Then he began to ask if I didn't feel well? could he do anything for me? would I like any books from the library? (he could easily get the key from 'monitors' room,' you know), and the rest of it. In the end he went off, and I thought that that was the end of him.
I was dozing when there came a knock again. 'Come in,' angrily from me, and there was Clayton with a pile of books in one hand and a bulging paper-bag in the other.
'I thought you might like some oranges,' he said, putting the books down on the next bed and opening the bag's mouth. I wished him at the devil.—Why can't people leave you alone when you're moping?
After a little:
'You'd better skip first lesson to-morrow.' he said, 'and go æger. You look as though you were sickening for something or other. There's a lot of measles about in the town.'
Another pause. Then up he rose, and saying: 'Well I see you're tired, I won't stay any longer'—had passed the second bed, going for the door, before I got out:
'Thank you for the oranges, but I don't want them, thank you; and for the books too.' I forget the rest of it. Somehow he came back for the bag, and took it away, and the door shut, and I turned round to the wall and fell into a doze.
The next morning I lay still. When Mother McCarthy came her rounds at about half-past eight to see who'd skipped 'first lesson,' she recognised the fact that I had scarlet fever. I didn't care much.
I was put into hospital, and the days passed dimly. But, on the seventh or eighth morning, when the rash was all but gone. Mother McCarthy told me as she brought in my breakfast, that 'Mr. Clayton had taken it.' That set me off laughing: not that I wanted him to have it (I did not care a jot about him one way or the other), but it struck me as not bad sport in the abstract, that Clayton should have it and be cooped up here with me.
They soon got him into bed, wrapped up in flannels and the rest of it. I couldn't help laughing to see his face, so elongated, as solemn as if at the celebration of a rite. The idea of what he would look like later on, red all over and his tongue like a white strawberry, quite overcame me. I believe he thought he was not far from death. He closed his eyes with a resignation that was not without sweetness and his lips moved, as if in prayer, I thought. Such a fit of laughter came into me that I had to stuff a piece of the sheet into my mouth. I ended by being rather ashamed of myself.
But later on he cheered up amazingly. His attack was a slight one. Despite my eight days' start he was convalescent before me; for one night I, impatient at my itching hide, got out of bed and took to stalking up and down the length of the room in my nightshirt, despite his assurances that I should catch cold and have dropsy and inflammation of the kidneys and the brain, with convulsions, and God knows what besides. Sure enough I did get something rheumatic in my joints and I was told by the doctor that some inflammation of the eyes I had had not been improved by a chill I must have taken somehow. I kept silence, and made the best of it.
Later on, one day when my eyes were still too weak to see to read well, Clayton insisted on reading aloud to me, and a half week's insisting turned it almost into a habit. The fact was I had rather begun to like the fellow.
At last he was well enough to bear the journey home. I remember that last evening, or rather afternoon, we spent together well.
We had been playing draughts by the window, while the sun set in veins of gold and red-hued light, visible to us as we looked out in the pauses of the game. Then it had become too dark for my weak eyes to see well, and we did not care to have the gas lit. We went and sat by the fire, I lying back in the large, cane easy-chair, he beside me bent forward with his hand twirling a little piece of paper in the fingers resting on the wicker arm. We had been talking about different things that had taken place in the school and gradually dropped into silence.
All at once:
'Leicester,' he said, making a movement.
'Well.'
'Why are you such an odd sort of fellow?'
I answered nothing.
'Now don't scowl,' he said. 'You are, you know. . . . Do you know, I think you're very unjust to yourself? almost as unjust to yourself as you are to other people.'
'Yes?' I said.
'You're such a porcupine! You're always putting up your quills at people. Why do you do it?'
'Do I?' I said.
'Now you know quite well you do.'
I answered nothing.
He went on:
'If I were you, I'd give it up: I would indeed! Where's the fun in living day and night with your own sulky self? Don't you ever feel as if you'd give a great deal to laugh and—and amuse yourself (you know what I mean) like other fellows?. . . Instead of brooding over your wrongs in a corner . . . Eh?'
I kept silence.
'Now answer me, do!. . . Come, now don't you often feel as if you'd very much like to have friends like other fellows have?'
'No,' I said, 'not like other fellows have.'
Another pause.
Then he, with a loud sigh:
'Friends, then? You'd like to have friends, wouldn't you?'
'One 'ud be enough,' I said.
Another pause and another loud sigh as he said:
'You're in one of your bad humours to-night.'
Then he burst out:
'Upon my word, Leicester, you're a confounded fool! There you sit, like a miserable old cynic, hugging your conceit, as full of morbid nonsense as you can well hold, a fool . . . a . . . a . . .' He stammered.
'Well.?'
Then he came to a full stop: made another movement in his chair, and began again, with some resolution:
'Now look here. There you are: a fellow who might be as liked as any one in the school, if you only cared.—Instead of that, you're the most disliked in the school, and all on account of your confounded conceit! You think everyone else is a fool but yourself: and you think you think it doesn't matter in the least what they think,—about you or anything else either! Now that's rot!'
'I don't see it,' I said. 'In two years, who will know whether I was liked or disliked at a school called Glastonbury? Of course I don't care about it! Who would?'
'You do care, you care a great deal!'
'Yes, Clayton?'
'I know it. If you didn't care, would you take the trouble to tell yourself so a hundred times a day like you do, and make yourself miserable about it?. . . Pooh-h! You do care, right enough.'
I kept silence.
He proceeded:
'Leicester, you're a fool. And it's all the worse because you needn't be one without you liked. You might be a very nice fellow. You can be—when you like.'
A pause.
'Well?' asked he.
'Well,' I said.
'Then I hope it may do you good then!' he cried, 'I am only saying it in that hope. I think too well of you to believe that you're blind to your own faults: and it may do you some good to see yourself as others see you.—And that's all I've got to say.'
A pause.
At last he, slowly and not unsoftly:
'I'm going away this evening. . . . Mother McCarthy told you p'r'aps?. . . For good. . . . I shall be sorry to go. . . . My father is a silk merchant, and he wants me to enter his office. He's come up here to take me home. . . . The dear old dad!. . . Well (he gave his shoulders a little shrug) . . . I suppose I shall be going abroad soon. There's a branch out in China he wants me to go to . . . or something like that'
Another pause.
Then:
'Do you want to go?' I said.
'No,' he said. 'No, I don't,' (He made a movement in his chair.) 'It's the last thing I should choose myself. But only one man in a thousand in this world can choose the profession he likes. . . . I'm my father's only son, you see,' he added.
'Well?' I said.
'Well, the long and the short of it is . . . that I wish you wouldn't . . . You know what I mean, Leicester. I don't want to preach to you, but I somehow think you really might . . . might do so much better, if you liked. You'll be a great man some day . . . if you live, that is, and God wills it.'
'What?' said I.
'Did you ever know a man called Blake?' he asked.
'Yes,' I said, 'I did. Why?'
'Did you know he was dead?'
I was startled. I looked at him sharply.
'Dead?' I said.
'Yes. He died a little while ago.'
'How?'
'It was an accident. He fell off a ladder somehow, and his head struck upon a stone, and it gashed a great hole into the brain. A piece of the brain was hanging out over his eye when they found him. It was in his garden. He had been training up a rose-tree that had been blown down by the wind. That about the piece of the brain hanging out over his eye has haunted me ever since I heard it. . . . Those clear steadfast eyes! It is horrible!'
I kept silence, scarcely thinking.
He went on in a low voice:
'. . . The night before he left I was in his rooms, talking with him. He was heavy about leaving the old place. He said he felt somehow as if he were going away from the grave of some one he loved. I remembered that—afterwards. Well, among other things he spoke about you. He had seen you at some school he had been to examine, I forget the name now. You had recited a poem of Longfellow's, "The Psalm of Life," I think. He seemed very much struck with you. He said he thought you would be a great man some day. He said some other things about you, and asked me to look after you when you came here. He told me you were coming here soon . . . Well, so I did, as much as I thought I ought to, for, don't you see, it's not good for a fellow high up in the school to do much for a small boy. It's not good for the small boy. It's better for him to fight out his battles alone. And I didn't think I was likely to leave—for some time at any rate. But my brother died: and my father, whose whole heart's in his business, asked me to—to give up my plan, and help him with it. So—I did.'
'What did you want to be, Clayton?' I said.
'Oh I'd a foolish idea of my own' (with a smile), 'about going up to the 'Varsity and studying Hebrew and science and all sorts of things and then going out to Palestine. You see I should have liked to have helped Blake if I could, and, when he died—why, the idea came into my head of trying to do what he hadn't been able to do. You know he was poor . . . And he gave such a lot of what he had away. I believe he kept his mother and sister, too. I always thought so.—Any how (with another smile), there's an end to all those ideas of mine!'
'Will you tell me what you wanted to do?' I said.
'Oh!' he said, 'it wasn't so much me: it was Blake. He put the idea into my head. He thought that the great need that the Church has at this present moment is some man who would devote his life to a real patient study of the origins of Christianity; so that it might be shown forth, once and for all, that Christianity has for its foundation no vain legend, but events as historically true, and as capable of being shown to be historically true, as anything that has happened within the boasted ages of science. That this might be done, could be done, and would be done, he felt sure, and so do I. But you see, at present, they all seem so taken up with themselves, with their miserable grains of sectarian sand I mean, that such a man is not to be found, or if he is to be found . . . Well, God only understands these things! It does seem hard, at times, that all should be so against us!—They all seem to think it's not worth the trouble! or it can't be done! or that there's no need for it! O fools! fools! fools! Can't you see by the shore of what flood we are standing? Can't you read the signs of the times? Can't you see an Art that becomes day by day more and more of a drug, less and less of a food for men's souls. A misty dream floating around it, a faint reek of the east and strange unnatural scents breathing from it; but underneath mud, filth, the abomination of desolation, the horror of sin and of death! O my God, sometimes, thinking of it, my brain turns and I fear I shall go mad. And to be able to do nothing! To see these devils in human shape'
Suddenly he stopped short: swallowed: put the back of his fingers to his lips, and with a smile said quietly:
'Nay, he was right! There is no need for me, or God would let me go, in such a crisis as this is. Yet there come these moments when I seem to hear his voice as from behind, coming down through the thick clouds, saying to me: 'Go forth.' It may be delusion. I'm not sure. I don't know. It is terrible to be so tossed in opinion!' (He was beginning to grow troubled: paused a little, and then with the same smile, his eyes all the while looking brightly before him, went on.) 'Nay he was right! And what should I have learnt from him if I could not . . . To leave my post!. . .' (Smiling again. Then, after a moment's rest:) '. . . I remember it so well! I can hear his voice now.
"Where-ever any man shall take his place, either because he has thought it better that he should be there, or because his captain has put him there—there, as it seems to me, should he remain to face the danger, and take no account of death or of anything else in comparison with disgrace!"—And my captain is God,' he said. And with that he bent forward a little with a faint light in his face and round his lips as of a bright smile that seemed to grow deeper and deeper in a dim dream that lacked not sweetness. I sat for a time watching him; till I too grew into a dream, a dim one, but it had no forms or shapes nor any sweetness.
Suddenly I started up and out of it. Looking at him, and perceiving no gap in our talk:
'Who says that?' I said.
He answered slowly as if unaware of me:
'Plato makes Sokrates say it. . . . But I was thinking of a particular occasion.'
The door was unlatched: opened, and Mother McCarthy put in her head, to say that the doctor had come up to say good-bye and shake hands with Mr. Clayton.
'It's very good of him!' cried Clayton, jumping up. 'Isn't he afraid? Although,' he added, turning back a little to me from half-way down the room, 'there's not much fear of us two, anyway. I'll be back in a sec.!'
He nodded: turned, and went out. The door closed: up went the latch: fell: steps crossed the planks: another door opened, and closed. Silence.
I sat thinking vaguely about what he had been saying: vaguely, till my eyelids began to droop, and head to nod, and at last I must have fallen fast asleep.
I woke up with a start. The fire was almost out. I was full of sleep: got off my things somehow: dropped into bed, the cool clean sheets: into sleep again, and slept soundly till morning.
Mother McCarthy woke me bringing in breakfast. The gold sunshine was pouring through the window. Her tongue was stirring already.—Mr. Clayton came in last night, but found I was asleep and wouldn't have me woke. But he left a note for me.
I got it and opened it at once:
'Good-bye, my dear fellow! I am sorry our conversation was interrupted, or rather, I should say my monologue: your part of it would have come in later p'r'aps! Write to me at 21 Norfolk Square, London, whenever you care to. I shall always be glad to hear from you. Indeed I do hope we shan't lose sight of one another altogether. At present my plans are vague in the extreme. I'll write again soon. I'm afraid I must have seemed rather a fool to you an hour ago? at any rate, very confused and peculiar? I was stirred, you see. I feel strongly about those things. And believe me, my dear fellow, those things are the only things in the world worth feeling strongly about. You'll think so too some day.—But I must dry up now. Excuse paper, also almost illegible pencil, also this final scribble into a corner. And believe me that I am now, as always, truly yours,
'P.S.—Don't be a porcupine!'