Short Stories 1927-1956 (16 page)

One particular catechism of this kind remained vividly in Cecil’s memory, and Grummumma had been present at it, sitting with her back to the
window
, and drinking it all in. There was a particular large rose of many
graduated
reds in the beautiful carpet upon which he remembered he had then been standing. Two large bony hands had been holding his elbows, but only the extreme edges of the canon’s dark, wide, dinted chin were visible as it gently wagged up and down.

‘You know well, my dear boy,’ the voice had assured him, ‘how much we all have your happiness at heart. And if
we urge you to things even a little painful in themselves, it is only for your good. And now I am told you
refuse
to speak sometimes when you are spoken to. Why is that?’

At the moment Cecil had no wish to refuse to speak, but his mouth was dry, he felt extremely uncomfortable, and what he most wanted to do
was
to look up into Canon Bagshot’s face – though only to see if it resembled what was suggested by the tones of his voice. He meant to explain too that it was useless to ask him the same question again and again when he had already answered it. Instead of this, he at last managed to mutter: ‘I don’t want to.’

‘But then, you see, my dear boy,’ Canon Bagshot had replied firmly, ‘it’s just those
don
’
t
wants
that harass and impede us in life’s pilgrimage. It is not what we want or don’t want to do, but what we ought to do that
matters
. Your dear grandmamma wishes only for your
good.
“Ah,” you may
say, “I can’t be like other boys.” And that, of course, in its degree is
perfectly
true. God’s will be done. But it doesn’t mean that in many other things you cannot be
better
than other boys, setting them an example which should shame them, knowing what advantages they have, while at the same time you yourself should realize the many, many advantages denied to them which have
not
been denied to you. Do you follow me?’

The canon’s voice, its mere accents, somehow reminded Cecil of an
illustration
in one of his story books – the picture of an Alpine guide, brass horn to lip, just vanishing round an incredibly precipitous bluff of snow and rock. It invited one on.

Cecil indeed had in actual fact been a long way in front throughout this speech. He now had to hasten back in order to nod and shake his head. This contradictory gesture was a little instinctive device of his own. If he
had
been able to raise his eyes, he might, with the same end in view, have opened them wider, then shut them.

‘Precisely!’ cried the canon. ‘And examples are better than precepts. Are they not? You would hardly believe it, perhaps, but there is a poor old woman living in Fish Street, not a mile from here, who is compelled to lie on her back day in, day out, in one dingy little room into which I should hesitate to take a dog. She knows absolutely nothing of the gentle
circumstances
that surround
you
.
Only one dingy old blanket to cover her; only one window, cracked and grimed, to look out of all day long. And I ask you, is she unhappy?’

‘She must be very stupid if she is not,’ had been Cecil’s first thought. What he said was: ‘I hate old women in Fish Street.’

‘You will please, Cecil,’ came a voice from Grummumma’s bow-window, ‘you will please, when you are addressing Canon Bagshot, leave off these sullen manners. Those who live with you may be accustomed to them; visitors are not. Besides, it is
very
irreverent.’

‘Well, my dear boy,’ continued the canon magnanimously, ‘whatever you may think, you are mistaken. That poor, miserable old woman is as happy as the days are long.’ The last part of the remark on this bleared winter afternoon was perhaps less appropriate than it seemed on the surface. But Cecil made no comment.

‘Now to have to use physical persuasion in your case,’ the canon
continued
, ‘is the last thing anyone could wish. All that I want you to remember is this: Humility, Trust, Gratitude. Say these words over to yourself night and morning. Say them now. No,’ the canon rapidly added,
remembering
similar adjurations in the past, ‘say them over when you are alone. For it is not, dear boy, as if we could plead ignorance. We
know
our duty. It is in black and white. “I must order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters.” What does that mean? Surely, no scowling looks, no
dumb-doggedness
.
Friends are constantly praying for you; sympathy is being poured out for your affliction. But though it is your lot in life to be
compelled
to be unable to face the world boldly, as Christian faced Apollyon, in
spirit
you can, like all of us, at least learn to look up. And I, as one of the humblest of spiritual pastors and masters, if you remain recalcitrant, must find some means of insisting upon your making the attempt. No sullenness, now, no dark clouds!
What
were our Gentle Three? – Humility, Trust, Gratitude.’

How odd a paradox. It was this Gentle Three that poor Cecil in later life had most to contend against; if, at least, there was to be any hope of
his
becoming the Happy Warrior.

But these were far-away days. Sunday by Sunday Cecil had continued to sit beside Mrs le Mercier in her pew at St Peter’s and St Paul’s. But the canon’s sermons on these occasions were of a more general application. And since they differed as little in form as they did in matter and Cecil knew their trend by heart, much of this edifying half-hour was spent in
daydreaming
. Here he had an advantage over his neighbours. For not only were the mean decorations of the Corinthian pillar and of the pitch-pine roof over his head, and the utterly dehumanized saints depicted in the stained-glass chancel windows – mustard green, blue, and crushed strawberry – out of his range, but no one could judge from his downcast eyes on what his attention
was
fixed.

But on the whole his relations with Grummumma were friendly enough, and, when visitors were present, even cordial. Then, indeed, if only in a negative sort of way, he
might
be said to look up to her, though it was
difficult
to tell exactly to what extent. And partly because he could not help himself and partly because of a natural indolence, he had just gone his own way – the way within, that is – without saying very much about it and
without
deliberately setting his will against hers.

Cecil, however, could hardly be said to be thinking of this
auld
lang
syne
as he gently pushed on round the crescent this particular sunny morning, one hand clasping the derelict glove in his jacket pocket. Only the faintest nebulous incubus of it hung in his mind. Meanwhile his eyes wandered
restlessly
and heedlessly over the ground at his feet. He had long been an
expert
in his own orbit. Quite apart from such manageable refuse as cigar and cigarette ends, dead matches, hairpins, footprints, pavement weeds, moss, the laying of asphalt, puddles, mud, dogs, cats, pebbles, straw, and so on, not to mention the lovely way of the wind in withered leaves or drifting snow – concerning which he was probably the only expert for miles around, he was also a connoisseur of horses’ hoofs, boots and shoes, socks and laces, of the nether portion of trouser-legs, and of feminine skirts, shoes, and ankles. He was an expert, that is, without in the least being aware of it.

He had long enjoyed the habit, too, of steadily scrutinizing what
happened
to interest him indoors as well as out. Reading desperately tired his eyes, and so, even apart from the books his Grummumma kept out of his way, his literary range was decidedly narrow. But while he looked and read, he usually thought. He was indeed a master of his own exceedingly small fraction of the complete human range of consciousness – a range fairly
considerable
in itself and one which, of course, if only in the world of matter, is being steadily amplified.

But this fine morning he was anxious, uneasy, and sick at heart. His eyes wandered vacantly, his attention was elsewhere: simply because his one and only desire was to return the rather dingy glove in his pocket to its owner. He just wanted to say: ‘You will forgive me for intruding, but I picked this up, you see. And you may have missed it perhaps.’

It was never very easy to raise his hat when his Grummumma whispered: ‘Ssh, Cecil, there’s Mrs Shrub, or Lady Linsey, or Miss Bolsover,’ mainly
because
he got so nervous and usually hit with his knuckles the shade over his eyes before his fingers reached the brim above.

But this time he was going to do it very carefully, and then take his leave. It seemed to him a small glove compared with Eirene’s, with Mrs le Mercier’s, or even with that of their parlour-maid, Janet, which he had seen by accident hanging beside her skirt (its hand within it), at the area gate but a few weeks ago, after one of her ‘afternoons out’.

This glove was scented, too, though not quite so delicately as would seem to make it impossible for Grummumma to detect it even though it lay in his pocket. Grummumma’s gloves were also scented, but rather with herself than with anything else. He had deduced, too, that this specimen of a glove cannot have been an expensive one. Yet the fact that it had a tiny hole in its first finger only made him the more anxious to return it to its owner. But – his heart had come into his mouth once more – how on earth was he to recognize her unless she happened to be wearing the same blue serge skirt, and the same stockings and shoes as when she had come his way and had gone?

Never had there been such a fool as he was – he knew that well enough. But to be a fool in public is one thing, to be a fool in one’s own private soul is another. And that was what he was being now. He was being timid and ashamed simply because there was the faintest possibility that
Grummumma
might herself be abroad that morning in her soft glacé kid shoes, or that Canon Bagshot might come treading along in his stout parochials, or spry, odious, mincing Miss Bolsover, with her ringing voice and
old-fashioned
springsiders. All three of them would realize at once that he was not merely enjoying his morning walk, but hanging about, loafing. They would watch him; their gaze would bore into his back; and by that time it
might be – well, too late. That the sun was scorchingly hot and the
pavement
a continuous glare, with its sharp-cut shadows here and there and its steady, pungent, broiling odour, was, however, a joy rather than a
martyrdom
.

Cecil had by this time not only turned the corner of the crescent but was approaching the first of a row of shops. Their window-blinds hung dazzling in the sunshine, casting delightful shadows. A medley of noises zigzagged across the air. The whole vista of High Street, he knew, was steadily
effervescing
with traffic of matutinal gaiety and business. It was odd how one’s mind roved to and fro from point to point in memory without once
realizing
its direction, or what had intervened. He had suddenly become a little boy again, his right hand tenaciously clutching the iron handle of a
perambulator
, which a plump young nursemaid, named Annie, in a stiff print gown, was pushing in front of her. At the same moment a grocer’s assistant had come back to mind, a young man with a voice almost as rich in flavours as the inside of the shop in which he served. On the morning in memory he had slipped out of the shop to talk to Annie. And though Cecil could not recall any of the pleasantries they had actually exchanged, he could remember how double-voiced the young man with the frayed white apron and corrugated button-boots had seemed to be – just as if what he was
saying
had two meanings, one for Annie and one for himself.

And Annie had giggled on, while her cotton-gloved hand stroked gently the iron handle of the perambulator above Cecil’s dumpy thumb. He hadn’t liked the young man, and had even attempted to lift his young eyes just to give him a stare, to show it. The pain had dreadfully frightened him. And he was glad Annie had afterwards married a strange postman who had come to help in the district during the Valentine season.

This romantic little recollection for some reason made him still more ill at ease, and once again he reassured himself by clutching at the glove in his pocket. He hated the shops in this busier time of the day. He hated all crowds, ‘gatherings’, congregations. He could tell by the legs and feet
of the people thronging the street and its shop windows that from their upper parts they were also curiously examining this green-shaded stranger in their midst.

‘What the devil!’ he would now and then quietly mutter to himself. And then perhaps: ‘Oh, mind your eye!’ These hardly refined exclamations, picked up he knew not whence, were part of the life Grummumma knew nothing about. And still he held on, with that gentle antenna-like movement of his ivory-headed cane, and with rapid searching glances from under his shade at every human extremity that came into view.

This was his sixth similar excursion, and today he pushed on still farther – three more shops: an ironmonger’s, with lawn mowers, syringes,
pruning-knives,
and slug-traps in the low window, all well within view; a
tobacconist’s
– but Cecil had not been taught to smoke – and a tailor’s and outfitter’s.

Here for a moment he came to a pause. For a moment even his mission edged a little out of his mind. He adored clothes. Apart from his little
collection
of unframed prints and engravings and postage stamps, and apart of course from the plate on Sundays, they were all but his only means of being extravagant. In blind furious moments he had, it is true, more than once given every penny he had in his pocket to some dog-guarded ‘blind man’, or paralytic, or forlorn-looking shrew selling matches in the street. This was not exactly charity, even though his heart seemed to gulp in his body at sight of them. It was a hostage to fortune, a clumsy attempt to call quits, perhaps.