Tell England Part 23

"You've got to play at the nets, do you hear?"

My friend simulated anger. Struggling to get free, he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed:

"I'll not be ordered about by an Iguanodon. I'm not that sort of man. O, White, I said I was--he, he, ha!--sorry. I didn't mean to be rude. I didn't see it in that light--"

"Whack" came the books gently on his back.

"Oh, please, Moles White, please stop. There's a dear old Iguanodon.

Ow--Ow--Ow!"

By this time Doe was much out of breath, and his sentences were short and broken: "It doesn't hurt. It's lovely! Ray, don't stand there grinning like this chimpanzee, White."

Suddenly at an upward swing the slender strap broke, and the books crashed through the window.

"d.a.m.n!" said White.

Doe, flushed and dishevelled, picked himself out of his chair.

"That's what comes of bullying, Moles White. I'll pay for it. It was my beastly fault!"

"No, you won't," said White.

"Don't presume to contradict me, Moles White, or I'll lick you! I have stated that I'll pay for it."

"No," White decided. "We'll split the difference and go s.h.a.gs."

I felt the old fellow was not displeased at this compromise, for his purse had its limitations. He withdrew from the scene and left us to our confidential chat.

When he had gone, there set in a reaction from the excited liveliness of his visit. Doe looked sadly through the broken pane and said:

"Isn't Moles a corking old thing? The sort of chap who's naturally good, and couldn't be anything else if he tried."

Something wistful in the words caused me to see a vision of the gravel-path sweeping to the doorway of the baths.

"I say, Doe," I began, "have you ever felt that you'd like to be--something different from the ordinary run?"

Doe swung round on me.

"Have I ever? Why, you know, Rupert, that I'm the most ambitious person in the world. And, by Jove! I believe I might have done something great--"

"_Might_ have done!" interrupted I, surprised that he should have decided at sixteen that his life was earmarked for a failure.

"You'll probably live quite ten years more, so there's still time."

Doe turned again and sent his gaze through the broken window, replying in a little while:

"Oh, I've lived long enough to know that I'm the sort that's destined to make a mess of his life. I--oh, hang it, you wouldn't understand..."

Evidently in Doe, as in me, his manhood had come down the corridor of the future and met his childhood face to face. One minute before this he was an irresponsible baby "cheeking" Moles White; now he was the germinal man, borne down with the weight of life. He paused for me to plead my understanding, and invite his confidence. But an awkwardness held me dumb, and he was obliged to continue:

"I wish you could understand, because--Do you know, Rupert, why I made it up with you this afternoon?" He came away from the window and sat in a chair opposite me. "It was because I was glowing with a new resolution. It was the rippingest feeling in the world. I--I had just decided to cut with Freedham."

Up to this point I had been looking into his face, but now I turned away. Instinctively I felt that, if he were going to, speak of his transactions with Freedham, he would be abashed by my gaze. He rested his elbows on his knees, and began to tie knot after knot in a piece of string.

"Freedham's an extraordinary creature," he proceeded. "He first got hold of me when I was at the Nursery. He would get me in a dark corner, and alternately pet and bully me. I remember his once holding me in a frightful grip and saying: 'You're so--' (I'm only telling you what he said, Rupert)--'You're so pretty that I'd love to see you cry.' He's _that_ type, you know."

For a while Doe, whose cheeks and neck were crimson, knotted his string in silence.

"Then he used to give me money to encourage me to like him, and dash it, Ray! I _do_ like him. He's got such weird, majestic ideas that are different from anyone else's,--and he attracts me. His great theory is that Life is Sensation, and there must be no sensation--a law, or no law--which he has not experienced. I believed him to be right (as I do still, in part) and we--we tried everything together.

We--we got drunk on a beastly occasion in his room. We didn't like it, but we pushed on, so as to find out what the sensation was. And then--oh! I wish I'd never started telling you all this--"

He tied a knot with such viciousness that few would have had the patience to untie it.

"Go on, old chap," I said encouragingly. I was proud of playing the sympathetic confidant; but, less natural than that, a certain abnormality in the conversation had stimulated me; I was excited to hear more.

"Well, he told me that years before he had wanted to see what taking drugs was like, and he had been taking them ever since. He was mad keen on the subject and had read De Quincey and those people from beginning to end. I've tried them with him.... There are not many things we haven't done together."

Doe tossed the string away.

"I know I might have done well in cricket, but Freedham used to say that excelling in games was good enough for Kipling's 'flannelled fools' and 'muddied oafs.' We thought we were superior, chosen people, who would excel in mysticism and intellectualism."

As he said it, Doe looked up and smiled at me, while I sat, amazed to discover how far he, with his finer mind, had outstripped me in the realms of thought. I had no idea what mysticism was.

"And I still think," he pursued, "that Freedham's got hold of the Truth, only perverted; just as he himself is a perversion. Life _is_ what feeling you get out of it; and the highest types of feeling are mystical and intellectual. I only knew yesterday what a perversion he really was. I saw something that I'd never seen before--he had a sort of paroxysm--like a bad _rigor_; something to do with the drug-habit, I s'pose--"

A powerful desire came over me to say: "I knew all about his fits years ago," but it melted before the memory of a far-away promise.

At this point, too, I became perfectly sure that, although Doe's sudden self-revelation was an intense and genuine outburst, yet he was sufficiently his lovable self to feel pride in his easy use of technical terms like _paroxysm_ and _rigor_.

"It frightened me," continued he. "It's only cowardice that's made me cut with him. I know my motives are all rotten, but no matter; I was gloriously happy half-an-hour ago, when I had made the resolution. And now I'm melancholy. That's why I'm talking about being a great man. You must be melancholy to feel great."

As he said the words, Doe leapt to his feet and unconsciously struck his breast with a fine action.

"And I sometimes _know_ I could be great. I feel it surging in me.

But I shall only dream it all. I haven't the cold, calculating power of Penny, for instance. He's the only one of us who'll set the Thames on fire. At present, Rupert, I've but one goal; and that is to win the Horace Prize before I leave. If I can do that, I'll believe again in my power to make something of my life."

--2

I fear I'm a very ign.o.ble character, for this conversation, instead of filling me with pain at Doe's deviations, only gave me a selfish elation in the thought that I had utterly routed my shadowy rival, Freedham, and won back my brilliant twin, who could talk thus familiarly about mysticism. And now there only remained the very concrete Fillet to be driven in disorder from the field.

CHAPTER IX

WATERLOO OPENS

--1