The Tree of Heaven Part 13

"Certainly not if the Boers won," said Anthony.

"You'll say next there'd be no glory if there was war between England and Ireland and the Irish won. And yet there would be glory."

"Would there? Go and read history and don't talk rot."

"I have read it," said Michael.

Frances thought: "He doesn't know what he's talking about. Why should he? He's barely thirteen. I can't think where he gets these ideas from.

But he'll grow out of them."

It was not Maurice that she saw in Maurice's war-pictures. But he had made them realize what war was; and they vowed that as long as they lived not one of their sons should have anything to do with it.

In the spring of nineteen-one Anthony sent Maurice out to California.

The Boer War was ended.

Another year, and the vision of war pa.s.sed from Frances as if it had never been.

IX

Michael was unhappy.

The almond trees flowered in front of the white houses in the strange white streets.

White squares, white terraces, white crescents; at the turn of the roads the startling beauty of the trees covered with pink blossoms, hot against the hot white walls.

After the pink blossoms, green leaves and a strange white heat everywhere. You went, from pavements burning white, down long avenues grey-white under the shadows of the limes.

A great Promenade going down like a long green tunnel, from the big white Hotel at the top to the High Street at the bottom of the basin where the very dregs of the heat sank and thickened.

Promenade forbidden for no earthly reason that Michael could see, except that it was beautiful. Hotel where his father gave him dinner on his last day of blessed life, telling him to choose what he liked best, as the condemned criminal chooses his last meal on the day they hang him.

Cleeve Hill and Battledown and Birdlip, and the long rampart of Leckhampton, a thin, curling bristle of small trees on the edge of it; forms that made an everlasting pattern on his mind; forms that haunted him at night and tempted and tormented him all day. Memory which it would have been better for him if he had not had, of the raking open country over the top, of broad white light and luminous blue shadows, of white roads switchbacking through the sheep pastures; fields of bright yellow mustard in flower on the lower hills; then, rectangular fir plantations and copses of slender beech trees in the hollows. Somewhere, far-off, the Severn, faint and still, like a river in a dream.

Memory of the round white town in the round pit of the valley, s.h.i.+ning, smoking through the thick air and the white orchard blossoms; memory saturated by a smell that is like no other smell on earth, the delicate smell of the Midland limestone country, the smell of clean white dust, and of gra.s.s drying in the sun and of mustard flowers.

Michael was in Cheltenham.

It was a matter of many unhappinesses, not one unhappiness. A sudden intolerable unhappiness, the flash and stab of the beauty of the almond-flowers, seen in pa.s.sing and never seized, beauty which it would have been better for him if he had not seen; the knowledge, which he ought never to have had, that this beauty had to die, was killed because he had not seized it, when, if he could but have held it for one minute, it would have been immortal. A vague, light unhappiness that came sometimes, could not for the life of him think why, from the sight of his own body stripped, and from the feeling of his own muscles. There was sadness for him in his very strength. A long, aching unhappiness that came with his memory of the open country over the tops of the hills, which, in their incredible stupidity and cruelty, they had let him see. A quick, lacerating unhappiness when he thought of his mother, and of the garden on the Heath, and the high ridge of the Spaniards'

Road, and London below it, immense and beautiful.

The unhappiness of never being by himself.

He was afraid of the herd. It was with him night and day. He was afraid of the thoughts, the emotions that seized it, swaying, moving the mult.i.tude of undeveloped souls as if they had been one monstrous, dominating soul. He was afraid of their voices, when they chanted, sang and shouted together. He loathed their slang even when he used it. He disliked the collective, male odour of the herd, the brus.h.i.+ng against him of bodies inflamed with running, the steam of their speed rising through their hot sweaters; and the smell of dust and ink and india-rubber and resinous wood in the warm cla.s.s-rooms.

Michael was at school.

The thing he had dreaded, that had hung over him, threatening him for years before it happened, had happened. Nothing could have prevented it; their names had been down for Cheltenham long ago; first his, then Nicky's. Cheltenham, because Bartie and Vera lived there, and because it had a college for girls, and Dorothy, who wanted to go to Roedean, had been sent to Cheltenham, because of Bartie and Vera and for no other reason. First Dorothy; then, he, Michael; then, the next term, Nicky.

And Nicky had been sent (a whole year before his time) because of Michael, in the hope that Michael would settle down better if he had his brother with him. It didn't seem reasonable.

Not that either Dorothy or Nicky minded when they got there. All that Nicky minded was not being at Hampstead. Being at Cheltenham he did not mind at all. He rather liked it, since Major Cameron had come to stay just outside it--on purpose to annoy Bartie--and took them out riding.

Even Michael did not mind Cheltenham more than any other place his people might have chosen. He was not unreasonable. All he asked was to be let alone, and to have room to breathe and get ahead in. As it was, he had either to go with the school ma.s.s, or waste energy in resisting its poisonous impact.

He had chosen resistance.

TUDOR HOUSE.

CHELTENHAM, _Sunday_.

DEAREST MOTHER:

I've put Sunday on this letter, though it's really Friday, because I'm supposed to be writing it on Sunday when the other fellows are writing.

That's the beastly thing about this place, you're expected to do everything when the other fellows are doing it, whether you want to or not, as if the very fact that they're doing it too didn't make you hate it.

I'm writing now because I simply must. If I waited till Sunday I mightn't want to, and anyhow I shouldn't remember a single thing I meant to say. Even now Johnson minor's digging his skinny elbows into one side of me, and Hartley major's biting the feathers off his pen and spitting them out again on the other. But they're only supposed to be doing Latin verse, so it doesn't matter so much. What I mean is it's as if their beastly minds kept on leaking into yours till you're all mixed up with them. That's why I asked Daddy to take me away next term. You see--it's more serious than he thinks--it is, really. You've no idea what it's like. You've got to swot every blessed thing the other fellows swot even if you can't do it, and whether it's going to be any good to you or not. Why, you're expected to sleep when they're sleeping, even if the chap next you snores. Daddy _might_ remember that it's Nicky who likes mathematics, not me. It's all very well for Nicky when he wants to go into the Army all the time. There are things _I_ want to do. I want to write and I'm going to write. Daddy can't keep me off it. And I don't believe he'd want to if he understood. There's nothing else in the world I'll ever be any good at.

And there are things I want to know. I want to know Greek and Latin and French and German and Italian and Spanish, and Old French and Russian and Chinese and j.a.panese, oh, and Provencal, and every blessed language that has or has had a literature. I can learn languages quite fast. Do you suppose I've got a chance of knowing one of them--really knowing--even if I had the time? Not much. And that's where being here's so rotten. They waste your time as if it was theirs, not yours. They've simply no notion of the value of it. They seem to think time doesn't matter because you're young. Fancy taking three months over a Greek play you can read in three hours. That'll give you some idea.

It all comes of being in a beastly form and having to go with the other fellows. Say they're thirty fellows in your form, and twenty-nine stick; you've got to stick with them, if it's terms and terms. They can't do it any other way. It's _because_ I'm young, Mummy, that I mind so awfully.

Supposing I died in ten years' time, or even fifteen? It simply makes me hate everybody.

Love to Daddy and Don.

Your loving MICK.

P.S.-I don't mean that Hartley major isn't good at Latin verse. He is.

He can lick me into fits when he's bitten _all_ the feathers off.

TUDOR HOUSE.

CHELTENHAM, _Tuesday_.

DARLING MUMMY:

Daddy _doesn't_ understand. You only think he does because you like him.

It's all rot what he says about esprit de corps, the putridest rot, though I know he doesn't mean it.

And he's wrong about gym, and drill and games and all that. I don't mind gym, and I don't mind drill, and I like games. I'm fairly good at most of them--except footer. All the fellows say I'm fairly good--otherwise I don't suppose they'd stick me for a minute. I don't even mind Chapel.

You see, when it's only your body doing what the other chaps do, it doesn't seem to matter. If esprit de corps _was_ esprit de corps it would be all right. But it's esprit d'esprit. And it's absolutely sickening the things they can do to your mind. I can't stand another term of it.

Always your loving MICK.

P.S.-How do you know I shan't be dead in ten or fifteen years' time? It's enough to make me.

P.P.S.-It's all very well for Daddy to talk--_he_ doesn't want to learn Chinese.

TUDOR HOUSE.