Эдвард Бенсон
David Blaize

“I’m afraid you mean me,” suggested David modestly.

Maddox looked up at him over his shoulder.

“Well, I don’t,” he said. “And there’s a bit of an arch. Perhaps that came from the temple where P. Aelius put his altar.”

Maddox asked for (and was given) another look at the Keats before he left, and proposed to David that he should walk with him as far as the old palace.

“Best afternoon I’ve spent for ages,” said the Idol, as they parted. “I wish I wasn’t going away to-morrow, or I should ask to be allowed to come again. Anyhow, we meet at Adams’s in September.”

A haunting doubt had been present in David’s mind at intervals all that heavenly afternoon. Now it had to find expression.

“I say, I hope it hasn’t been awful cheek of me to have asked you to have tea, and all that?” he said.

“I can stand lots of that sort of cheek,” said the other.

CHAPTER VIII

It was the afternoon of such a November day as the pessimistic call typical: a cold, south-westerly gale drove streaming flocks of huddled cloud across the sky, like some fierce and boisterous shepherd, and the whole of the great court at Marchester stood ankle-deep in gravelly pools of wind-flecked, rain-beaten water. The gale had stripped bare of their few remaining leaves the avenue of lime-trees which ran between the gate and the in-boarders’ house at the far end of the court, and to-day they stood, stark pyramids of dripping branches and twigs, that whistled as the wind hissed through them. Though the day was Saturday, and in consequence a half-holiday, there were but few signs of outdoor animation, for the conditions of the weather were sufficiently diabolical to tinge with some touch of respect the contempt in which healthy boys hold the vagaries of climate. One occasionally, with collar turned up, fled splashing across the court from one house to another, or now and then a small company of drenched enthusiasts would trot in, in dripping shorts and sweaters, from their training run along the London Road, or a couple of figures, with racquets protected under their coats, would dash across from the racquet-court. But football had been officially announced to be “off,” since the field was neither more nor less than a morass, and without doubt the most comfortable conditions of life were to-day to be obtained in front of a fire with a novel to read, or, under stress of necessity, arrears of work to be overhauled and demolished.

There was, however, in one of the open five-courts near the porter’s lodge a notable exception to this indoor tendency. There two boys, capless and streaming with water, were absorbingly engaged in playing squash, a most apt occupation, since they and the earth and the sky generally seemed to be in a condition of squash. Even in the drier parts of the court the ball, as it bounced, sent up a squirt of water; at other times it pitched in more definite puddles, and so did not bounce at all. But the two, David and Bags, were quite undeterred by such small drawbacks, and David talked without the least intermission.

“Six all,” he said; “and, as I gave you six, I’ve caught you up before you’ve scored. Have some more points, won’t you? Very well, if you’re proud, you needn’t, but if I played squash at all like you, I should be damned humble. O Bags, you ass, I don’t believe you’ll ever be the slightest good. Why can’t you hit the ball with the middle of your racquet for a change? There, look at that: exactly one-eighth of an inch above the line. I like them like that. Seven, six. Oh, good shot, jolly well got up, but observe! You can’t get that, so what’s the use of throwing yourself against the wall? Eight, six.. oh, damn! Puts you in: six, eight… I’ll give you two hands if you like. Oh, you’ll take that, will you?.. one hand out then… Oh, do get on: run, can’t you? it’s raining. There; suck it! You expected it the other side of the court, and that’s exactly why I didn’t send it there. Puts me in… I’ll play you for sixpence if you like, next game, and give you eight and two hands… No? Prudent fellow. I wish the rain wouldn’t get into my eyes, though it’s sweat as well, I expect. Lord, I am hot! Isn’t it ripping?”

David paused a moment both from talk and athletics, a truce gladly accepted by the panting Bags, and pushed his dripping hair out of his eyes. He was a completely dishevelled and yet a very jolly object, and was quite altogether wet, his knickerbockers clinging like tights to his thighs, the skin of which showed pink through them, while the water trickled steadily down his bare calves into the dejected socks that lay limply round the tops of his shoes. They and his legs were stained with splashes of watery gravel, his shirt, open at the neck and slightly torn across the shoulder, lay like a wet bag glued to his back, and his hair was a mere yellow plaster from which the water could have been wrung in pints. Bags was in similar plight, except that he wore a thick woollen jersey over his shirt, which gave him a slightly less drowned aspect.

The game, and with it David’s running comments, were resumed after a minute or two, and neither of the two saw a figure with trousers much turned up and a large golfing umbrella who had paused on his way to the gate, just behind them.

“Yes, I’m going to play racquets for the school some time next century,” David was saying, “and squash is jolly good practice. Nine, six: that’s rather a sell, Bags! Oh, I say, look at that for a half-volley. Just a shade Maddoxy, I don’t think.”

The half-volley in question, that clung close to the left wall of the court, finished the rally, and David turned to run to pick it up, and found that Maddox was the spectator.

“David, you juggins, why haven’t you got a sweater on?” asked he.

“Hullo!” said David. “Oh, because I couldn’t find mine. Some brute’s collared it, I suppose.”

“Well, by rights you ought to get pneumonia, and be prayed for in chapel, and die in spite of it.”

David pushed back his hair again and laughed.

“Thanks awfully, but otherwise engaged,” he said.

“Are you going up to house after you’ve finished being drowned?” asked Maddox.

“No, I was going to have tea with a fellow in college,” said David. “But I’m rather wet, I’m afraid.”

“You’ll go up to house and change first, do you see?” said Maddox. “And you might bring up a parcel there will be for me at the lodge. Hasn’t come yet, but it’ll come any minute.”

“Right,” said David.

The game was resumed, but Maddox still lingered. Both boys played with redoubled keenness before so honourable a spectator, but David’s artless and incessant conversation was felt by him to be unsuitable. Maddox watched in silence for a minute.

“No, let the ball drop more,” he said, Bags having made an egregiously futile return. “Don’t take an easy ball like that till it’s quite low. David, you play with your whole arm like a windmill, whereas you only want your wrist. Just keep flicking it: look here.”

Maddox gave David the large umbrella to hold and, taking his racquet, knocked up down the left-hand wall of the court, sending each ball parallel and close to it, with easy accuracy. “Like that more or less,” he said. “Now I’m wet, blast you both.”

He took his umbrella again, reminded David of the parcel, and splashed off across the quadrangle.

Familiarity and closer acquaintance had not in the least made David get over the glory and wonder of Maddox.

“By gad,” he said, “fancy his taking the trouble to coach two scugs like you and me. Isn’t he a ripper? Come on, let’s have one more game.”

“Oh, I vote we stop,” said Bags. “It’s too wet for anything.”

“Rot! We can’t possibly get wetter than we are.”

David, of course, had his way, and it was not till twenty minutes later that they trotted off down the Bath Road, on their way to Adams’s, David going by preference through the larger puddles. Bags’s mind, and no doubt David’s also, still ran upon Maddox.

“Does he always call you David?” he asked at length.

“Lord, yes, when we’re alone,” said David, “and I suppose he thought you didn’t count. I remember how sick I was when my father called me ‘David’ at Helmsworth. Sort of disgrace to have your Christian name known. What beastly little scugs we were, with smoking and keeping stag-beetles!”

“I never did either,” said Bags, in a rather superior manner.

David jumped with both feet in a particularly large puddle, and covered Bags with splashed water.

“I know you didn’t,” he said. “You were such a scug, you see, that you didn’t do those things when it was scuggish not to. But now, when it’s scuggish to do them, I believe you do. I bet you smoke. You and Plugs went out smoking yesterday after hall.”

“Well, what if I did?” said Bags. “And how did you know?”

“Because I stunk you when you came back, Simple. What a funny chap you are! You never smoked at Helmsworth where it was the right thing, and yet you do here where it’s the wrong thing.”

Bags plodded on for a little while in silence.

“Adams doesn’t really mind our smoking,” he said. “He chiefly wants not to have it brought to his notice.”

“Yes, but Maddox does,” said David. “I wish he’d catch you at it. You wouldn’t sit comfortable for a week or two.”

David pranced into the footpath; there was a limit to the amount of mud that it was convenient to carry on your shoes.

“Let’s walk a bit,” he said; “I’m blown.”

They moderated their pace to a walk, and David squeezed his hands into his pockets – a difficult operation as they were glued together with wet.

“Several fellows have asked me about Maddox,” he said, “and I don’t know that the deuce they’re after. Hughes has, for instance. Hughes used to be a ripper, but he’s different somehow now. He asked me the other day if Maddox had become a saint, and if I’d converted him. What the devil was he talking about? I don’t like Hughes as much as I used. He told some filthy tale in dormitory the other night, and some of the fellows laughed. I laughed too: I supposed it was polite, but I didn’t see a hang what it all meant.”

“What was it?” asked Bags.

“God knows; some awful piffle. Sounded filthy, too. He wanted to explain it to me; came and sat on my bed and wanted to explain. But just then Maddox came to bed: he’d been sitting up late working, and he hoofed Hughes out again in less than no time. It was the day after that that Hughes asked me if Maddox had become a saint. Lord, wait a minute.”

For some inconjecturable reason known only to the feline mind, Mrs. Adams’s cat had thought good to sit out in the rain this afternoon, on the top of one of the brick pilasters which stood at the entrance of the passage up to the house. There she sat unconscious of David and Bags, contemplating the scenery. With infinite craft David, having picked up a small pebble, threw it with such accuracy of aim that it passed through the fur at the top of her head between her ears. She threw up her paws and looked wildly round in startled dismay, and was there no more.

“Slap between her ears!” shrieked David. “Lord, didn’t she look funny when she threw her hands up! Blow, I’ve forgotten Maddox’s parcel. What an ass you are not to have reminded me! Hot bath, anyhow. Then I’ll go back to college and fetch it.”

This cloud-laden gale had caused the dusk of evening to close in very early, and the passage leading from the dormitories to the big room with its rows of baths was already nearly dark. On either side of the passage were the studies of the prefects, and David had to tiptoe delicately through the danger-zone, since he owed fifty lines to Cruikshank, and had not yet written them though they were overdue. But he reached the bath-room without encountering the enemy, and wallowed in a heaven of water so hot that if he moved he must almost scream. Bags was in a neighbouring bath, but finished his washing first, and left David intent, as the water cooled a little, on matters of soap and mud between his toes. Then his rain-soaked head did not seem satisfactory, and he washed the showers out, emerging eventually, towel-girt, to rub his head into a semblance of dryness. This was a tingling, exhilarating affair, and he accompanied it by bouts of piercing whistlings.

Next door to the bath-room was Maddox’s study, and about this time he perceived that David had not filled his kettle for tea. Since David – for his whistle betrayed him – was next door, it was simpler to go and fill his kettle himself, rather than go in to fetch David to do it. There, on the end of the bench below the steam-clouded windows, was David sitting, his head enveloped in a towel, violently scrubbing, and whistling whenever the towel was not in actual contact with his mouth. He had not noticed his entry, and Maddox thought it would be rather amusing to sit down without speech close beside him, holding out, in mute reproach, the empty kettle that David should have filled. This he did.

In a minute David’s head was sufficiently dry to satisfy him, and it emerged from its towel. He looked round astonished to find any one there, for Bags had gone.

“Hullo, Maddox!” he said.

“Yes: got to fill my kettle myself,” he said.

David jumped up.

“I say, I’m awfully sorry,” he said. “I bang forgot. Give it me!”

But Maddox still held it, looking at him.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “Just having a bath, were you?”

David paused. There was Maddox only looking at him, only smiling. But instantly he had some sense of choking discomfort. He looked back at him, frowning and puzzled, and his sense of discomfort hugely increased. He merely wanted to get away.

“Oh then, I think I’ll go and dress,” he said hurriedly, and, picking up his sponge, left the room and ran away down the dark passage to his dormitory.

David sat down on his bed for a minute, feeling as if he had escaped from some distant nightmare that had vaguely threatened to come near him. Then, very sensibly, running away from it instead of thinking about it, he began to dress in a great hurry. He washed his hands over again, went on rubbing his hair, did anything to occupy himself. In a few minutes Bags came in dressed from his dormitory next door, but David had no voluble conversation on hand, as he had half an hour ago in the fives-court, and continued dressing in silence. Bags tried a few amiable topics, but got no more response than grunts and monosyllables, which were quite unlike David’s usually rampageous loquacity. After three or four thwarted attempts it was borne in upon his lucid mind that there was something the matter.

“What’s up, Blazes?” he inquired.

“Nothing. Why?” said David savagely.

“Oh, I don’t know. You haven’t got as much to say as usual.”

“Well, who wants to talk to a chap like you?” asked David, getting his tie in a knot, and venting himself in irritation.

Bags felt slightly hurt, for he was unaware how he could have caused this, but since David did not want to talk to “a chap like him,” the most rudimentary sense of self-respect forbade the “chap like him” to make any further overtures.

David cracked his nail over his collar-stud, failed to get any sort of parting in his hair, and broke a bootlace. These material adversities somehow sobered him, and he began faintly to see that really Bags had nothing to do with his own mood.

“Sorry, Bags,” he said at length, having tied the ends of the broken bootlace together.

Bags was the most amiable of mankind, and besides, this was David.

“Right oh,” he said at once. “But do tell me what’s up, if I can be of any use.”

“Good old Bags, but you can’t; thanks awfully. Don’t ask me anything about it, if you don’t mind.”

Suddenly the fact of the parcel at the lodge which he had forgotten to bring down for Maddox presented itself. He felt that he couldn’t see Maddox again just at once.

“I say, there is one thing you might do,” he said. “I wish you’d come up to college with me, and get that parcel of Maddox’s. I should be frightfully obliged if you would. I’m going to tea with a fellow there, and I should have to go up and down twice.”

Bags felt that, if David offered this as an explanation of his ill-humour, it was a pretty thin one.

“Oh, is that all you’re so sick about?” he asked.

David’s irritability returned.

“All right, don’t come then,” he said.

David was ready by now, and without another word he marched to the door. He would have to bring the parcel up himself, but he was determined to get somebody else to take it to Maddox’s study.

“Wait a second,” said Bags in a slightly injured tone. “Of course I’ll come up with you.”

David took his arm.

“You are a brick,” he said. “But don’t ask me anything more. It isn’t anything. I expect I’ve made a fool of myself.”

“Shouldn’t wonder a bit,” said Bags pacifically.

“Funny fellow! Don’t strain yourself.”

Maddox had gone straight back from the bath-room to his study, without filling his kettle. He sat for ten momentous minutes in front of his fire without doing anything, without thinking even, but looking with open eyes, so to speak, on himself. All these weeks that intense friendship which was springing up between himself and David had been splendidly growing, and till now his influence over him had been exerted entirely for David’s good. He had constantly shielded him, as on the night when he had found Hughes sitting on his bed, from all that could sully him, he had checked any hint of foul talk in David’s presence, for, of all his lovable qualities, there was none so nobly potent to the elder boy than David’s white innocence, his utter want of curiosity about all that was filthy. It didn’t exist for him, but the danger of it (though, thank God, it was passed) he knew that he himself had brought near to him… Then he got up and looked at himself in the mirror above his mantel-piece, hating himself.

“You damned beast,” he said. “You deserve to be shot.”

Presently there came a tap at his door, and he remembered that he had told David to bring up a parcel for him. Probably this was not David, for he usually whistled and hardly ever tapped. On his answer Bags entered.

“Oh, it’s your parcel, Maddox,” he said. “Blaize forgot to bring it down after we finished playing squash, and so I went back with him and brought it.”

Maddox held out his hand for it.

“Thanks,” he said. “Did – did Blazes ask you to bring it me?”

“Yes, he was having tea in college.”

“Has he gone there?”

“Yes, we went up together.”

Maddox got up.

“Right,” he said. “But he’s forgotten to fill my kettle. Would you mind, please?”

That was exactly like Maddox. He always thanked fags who did things for him, and treated them politely. Bags, in consequence, retired with pleased alacrity, and returned.

“Getting on all right, Crabtree?” asked Maddox. “No troubles?”

“Oh no, thanks. I like it all awfully.”

“That’s right. I forget who your fag-master is.”

“Cruikshank.”

“Oh, yes. He’ll look after you. Thanks for filling my kettle.”

Bags went delicately and rather proudly away. Cruikshank never thanked him.

Maddox put his heel into the fire to make a level place for his kettle, and sat down again to work. But other thoughts kept interposing themselves between him and his books, claiming precedence. He knew from David’s abrupt exit just now that he scented danger, or, if that was too strong an image, just turned his back on the miry road that had been in Maddox’s mind, and his getting Bags to do the forgotten errand confirmed that. Vaguely, perhaps, David had guessed something of the nature of that muddy place, and had gone clean-footed from it. With much greater sureness Maddox saw that, if their friendship was to continue, he must turn his back on it too, and convince David that he had done so. He was ashamed: he hated himself.

The kettle boiled over, sending a puff of steam and light ash into the grate, and he took it off and put it in the fender. And still he sat there, looking backwards into his life and finding no comfort there; and then looking forwards, seeing a gleam of saving hope. At last outside his study there came a familiar step, but there was no whistling, and after the step paused there came a tap at his door. David entered, looking shy and frightened.

“Oh, I came to clear your things away and wash up,” he said hurriedly.

Maddox did not want to shirk what lay before him. The friendship that had become so intimately dear to him was at stake.

“Will you shut the door a minute, David?” he said, rising and standing by the mantel-piece, with his face turned away.

David did so, and remained by the door.

“I want to say just one thing,” said Maddox. “I’m damned sorry, and I apologise. You needn’t be frightened of me. It shan’t happen again. That’s all. There’s nothing to wash up: I haven’t had tea.”

Some subconscious horror still lingered in David’s mind. He had been obliged to come back here, to see to Maddox’s washing-up, else perhaps Maddox would have sent for him, and that would have been worse. At the moment he had no other desire, in spite of what Maddox had said, but to get away.

“I’ll go then,” he said quickly.

“All right.”

David left the room, but he had gone only a little way down the passage outside, when his feet simply refused to carry him any farther, or to allow him to leave Maddox like this. All his love and his loyalty insisted that he was wrong not to trust the regret and the assurance that had been given him, that he was doing a mean and cowardly thing to retreat like that. But the talk that he had had with the Head on his last day at Helmsworth was very vivid in his mind; the Head had told him there was no use in arguing about certain things, and his instinct, in spite of his innocence, told him that such, vaguely and distantly, were the things about which the Head had spoken. But the Head had never told him to turn his back on a friend, or to refuse to trust that which his heart knew was sincere. And so once more from inside Maddox heard a familiar step return and once more David tapped and entered.

“I don’t know why I went away,” he said, “or why I was frightened when you said I needn’t be. So – so I came back. Sorry.”

Then he had the instant reward of his confidence. He saw Maddox look up at him with unshadowed eyes of affection. He came and stood close to him.

“It’s bang all right,” he said. “I’m – I’m awfully glad it’s all right.”

Then a positive inspiration seized him. There was nothing more to be said on this subject, and the sooner it was dismissed the better. He instantly became Maddox’s fag again.

“I say, you’re awfully late having tea,” he said. “Why, your kettle’s not boiling any longer.”

Maddox followed his lead.

“No, I took it off and forgot,” he said. “Put it on again. And there’s a cake in the parcel Bags brought. Take it out, will you?”

David tore open the bag. “Two cakes,” he said. “Which do you want now?”

“Either. You can stop and have tea with me if you like.”

“Thanks awfully, but I had tea with a chap in college.”

“Well, have another.”

David considered this proposition simply on its own merits.

“Well, I think I will,” he said. “But you’ve got a rotten fire. Shan’t I take your kettle to the gas-stove?”

“Yes; good egg. Pour a little into the teapot first, though. Hi! Not over my fingers.”

“Sorry. It didn’t really touch you, did it?”

Maddox laughed.

“No, of course not. I should have smacked your head if it had. Thought it was going to.”

“Just for safety,” said David. “I always swear before I’m hurt. Then they take more care.”

“Yes; stick my kettle bang in the middle of the gas-stove. Say it’s mine if any one objects.”

“Right,” said David. “It’ll be boiled in two shakes.”