Shame and Consciences
adapted by Mihangel
30. His last fling
Jan turned back to the bedroom window and looked out with eyes that saw less than ever. The window was open, and though he stood a discreet distance back he might have seen the pavement opposite being dappled by a sudden shower. In fact he saw nothing until the slam of the front door below made him pop his head out without thinking. Then he saw that it was raining, because Mr Heriot had emerged from the house and broken into a run instead of returning for his umbrella.
Jan felt a twinge of wonder that he could dash out so briskly while the virtual head of his house was lying under sentence of expulsion in the spare room. But then Heriot was mighty keen on his house as a house. While he appreciated every fellow in it, he was keener still on it as a corporate body, independent of the individuals who made it up. Jan too had felt like that about the Eleven. If your best batsman got measles, it was no good giving him another thought, for it was the Eleven that mattered. Yet somehow it made him feel bitterly small to see Heriot gadding off like that without giving him another thought.
Otherwise the sight did him good. It broke the log-jam of new ideas that blocked his mind. Old Chips had told him so much and so fast that it was impossible to keep all the items distinct from each other. They were like the splotches of rain on the pavement, spreading, joining, overlapping into a featureless whole. But even as Jan looked down, the shower stopped and the pavement began to dry before all the splotches had lost their individuality. Likewise the fresh ideas in his mind stopped fusing with each other.
Evan dried by himself ...
Jan took a chair to the window and sat down to think about Evan, to be fair to old Evan at all costs. It was easy to be hard on him, to feel he had been guilty of unpardonable treachery. But had he? Was there any great reason why he should not have told Chips -- Chips whom he knew of old, and whom he had seen with Jan? Surely it was the most natural thing in the world. And he had told nobody else. Even Chips thought that, though Jan suddenly recalled the tone of doubt in his voice. Yes, he now saw what Chips might have been wondering. He recalled the scorn of Sandham and some others in the Eleven -- their indistinguishable whispers and their unmistakable looks -- and wondered too. Was that because they had been told of his secret shame?
But, even so! Had he ever asked Evan to keep his secret? And had not Evan kept it on the whole unasked ? Was it not due to him, first and last, that the whole school had not got hold of it? Chips might say what he liked about Heriot, but no master could impose secrecy on a boy against the boy's will. Evan's will towards Jan must always have been of the best. It was Jan's own fault to have imagined himself under that massive obligation. It only showed what a simpleton he had always been about Evan Devereux. That was it! He was far too simple altogether. Even now he could not shake off all his unreasonable disappointment because Evan had been a trifle less loyal to him than he had chosen to believe.
It was a comfort to turn to the other side of the account. Thank goodness he had been able to do something for Evan at last! He did owe it to him, whatever Chips chose to think. Chips was a jealous old fool -- there was no getting away from that. Jan only hoped he had not given him an inkling of the real facts. He did not think he had. It had been a happy thought to pretend that Evan was no more than a feeble accomplice and that it was he himself, not Sandham, who had led him astray. That really made expulsion too good for him, so Chips would not be tempted to let it out or to drag in Evan's name at all. In any case he had promised. He was a man of his word. He was the soul of honour and integrity, old Chips ... or so Jan had always thought him down to this very afternoon. Simpleton again!
Chips, of all people, not always any better than he should have been ... Jan could not get that out of his head. He was so simple he had got it wrong again. He had thought he knew the worst of Chips, his touchiness, his jealousy, taking too much notice of himself and sometimes thinking that other people did not take enough. A bit weak-headed and excitable, Jan would have called him, recalling the emotion his friend had just displayed. But what enthusiasm, what a heart, and what a head! It only showed that you knew very little about anybody else, even your closest house-mate.
It might also have shown that Jan was slow to think evil, slow to perceive the worst in others, that he was not only simple but pure in heart, despite all those menial years in the stables. But he did not see that.
What he did see, ever more clearly as he wrestled with his demons, was that he was slow to think good, slow to perceive the best in others, that he was not only simple but blindly ungrateful -- was it because of all those menial years in the stables? Back in those years he had been blinkered like a restive horse. All he had seen was what lay straight in front of him. All he had seen was Evan. He had seen one person, and one only, as worthy of his respect and his admiration and his envy and -- yes -- his distant love. And that person was Evan. Throughout his four years at school those blinkers had remained firmly in place. Now at last he made himself take them off, and for the first time he had a full view of Chips as well as of Evan.
Here were the three of them, as far apart as the points of an equilateral triangle, his two friends as opposite to each other as they were to him. It did not take Jan a minute to recognise Chips as by far the sounder of the two.
Chips the charitable, who had not hesitated, despite his knowledge, to befriend the coachman's uncouth son and had been totally scrupulous in keeping his shameful secret. Chips the loyal and unswerving, who not only bore a friend's infirmities but blew his trumpet as few would blow their own. Chips the buttress, without whose oh-so-lightly regarded support Jan would many a time have crashed to perdition. Chips the honest and honourable, who was yet capable of leaving his straight and narrow path of rectitude and following a friend into what authority decreed was sin. Chips the jealous friend ...
Understandably jealous, yes, but why so deeply jealous? He saw Evan as a rival to his friendship, no doubt of that. But did he see Evan as a rival in something deeper? Jan's jaw metaphorically dropped as he called back to mind an occasion, another occasion, a whole host of occasions when he had heard and had seen and had not really noticed, let alone understood. Now, his blinkers off at last, he began to understand. Not only to understand Chips, but to understand himself. Things were not as they seemed. That thought brought back to him, ludicrous and unbidden, another song from that opera they had been to.
Things are seldom what they seem;
Skim milk masquerades as cream;
Pigeons strut in peacock's feathers ...
That was Evan to a T, wasn't it, even down to the pigeon's strut? Chips was the other way round. He came across as the skim milk, unrecognised for the cream that he really was.
In a lightning-flash of revelation, Jan saw that his yearnings had been misdirected. He still owed Evan a debt for his relative silence, he must not forget that. But all these years, within arm's reach but wholly unappreciated, there had been a boy vastly more worthy of his love, a boy who had loved him all along, if only he had had the wits to perceive it. But it was too late now, for he would never see Chips again. Idiot simpleton once more!
He sat in the turbulence of despair, his mind seething like a pan of water left on the stove. He could see nothing for the steam. With a monstrous effort he clapped the lid on it, and sat in listless apathy instead. The mossy wrinkled roofs of the old tiled houses opposite stood out once more against a cloudless sky, the pavement underneath was dry as a bone, the little town was basking in the sleepy sunshine of the Sunday afternoon, but of all that he saw nothing until he was shaken out his lethargy by those irrepressible chapel bells breaking out with all their boyish clangour.
They ring in the veins, those bells. They make old blood pelt like young. Now they revived Jan. They got into his blood. He was leaving next morning and would never, never be able to come down as an authorised Old Boy. He would never be allowed in chapel again, unless he stole in some day when nobody was about, a bearded bush-whacker home for a spell. It seemed hard. They might have let him obey the call of the bells for the last time. It might have made some difference to his life.
But how could they stop him? Could they stop him? Would they if they could? The questions pealed as fast as the bells, and they too got into his blood, which was by nature impulsive. That was something else that Jan had not recognised, though all his escapades arose from that hereditary drop of pure recklessness. It did not often show itself, but when it did it resulted in some hasty act.
Already the street was alive with boys and masters, masters in silken hoods, masters in humble rabbit-skins, boys in cut-away coats, boys in Eton jackets. Jan had put on his Sunday tails that morning as usual. It had never occurred to him not to dress as a member of the school still subject to the rules. His cap was already packed, a sad memento filled with collars. He had it out in an instant, and the collars strewed the floor, for he was going to chapel whether they liked it or not. They would never make a scandal by turning him out, but he must slip in at the last moment after everyone else, and the last bell had not yet begun. Jan was waiting for it in excitement, touching up his hair in the dressing-room, when the landing shook to a hurried stride and the bedroom door was unceremoniously flung open for the second time that afternoon.
"Rutter! Where are you, Rutter?"
Heriot, of course, when he was least wanted! Jan watched him through the crack of the dressing-room door. Luckily there was no time for an exhaustive search. Heriot gave up, the opening strokes of the last bell were drowned by the slam of the front door, and before they stopped Jan had shut it softly behind him.
He timed things so as to enter chapel in the wake of the last drove of boys. Not being in the choir, his place was mercifully unexposed -- the seats were allotted on a principle unknown to the boys -- and he reached it with no worse sign than a surprised and whispered welcome from his immediate neighbours. A congregation of four hundred absorbs even a Captain of Cricket more effectively than he thinks. Luckily, perhaps, he could not see Chips. And the voluntary, bright and exhilarating as all the music in that chapel, gave him heart until the arrival of Mr Thrale and his chaplain brought an ineffable sense of security and relief.
Jan stood up with the rest, not quite at his full height, yet with his eyes turned in sheer fascination towards the little old Headmaster. He looked very pale and stern, his eyes fixed as firmly in front of him as if he were marching to his doom. In his left hand he held something that Jan was glad to see: his purple and embroidered sermon-case, a gift no doubt, yet almost an incongruous vanity in that uncompromising hand.
Jan sank down and breathed his thanks to gods unnamed for the last mercy of this service, for his escape from open humiliation and public shame. He was composed enough and his relief did not show, but a glow filled his heart. He had never sung the psalms with such zest, or with more distress to his neighbours. There could not have been much wrong with Rutter, they decided, either physically or morally; or else he had been let off, and was already wallowing in an indecent odour of sanctity.
Wallowing he was, but for once only in the present, without dwelling on old days or on the wrath already come. This was not a house of wrath, but of brightness and light, and he was not going to darken it with cheap memories and easy phantoms. Any fool could think of his first Sunday, and recall his first impression of chapel. Jan wanted, rather, a last impression to recall all the days of his life. But even that was a vague and secondary consideration. His present reward was certain, vivid, and acute.
One wonders whether any fellow ever loved a public-school chapel as much as Jan loved his that afternoon, certainly not from any promptings of reverence and piety, but purely as a familiar place of peace and comfort which he might never see again. He saw it with that new eye for an old haunt which had been opened on the Upper the day before. But then he had been a dying man, and now he was the dead come sneaking back to life for an hour. Defiant enjoyment of forbidden fruit added to his exaltation.
The great east window rose before him. He had not been at the school four years, on a cricketer's easy footing with so many of the masters, without hearing that window frankly disparaged, but it was light and bright, and good enough for Jan. Then there were the huge brass candelabra in the chancel, pyramids of light on winter evenings, trees of gold this golden afternoon as the summer sun came slanting in over everybody's right shoulder. Tablets to Old Boys who had lived great lives or died gallant deaths brought a sigh of envy to him. They were the only sight that reminded Jan sorely of himself, until he looked up and for the last time saw dear old Jerry standing in his marble pulpit. The hymn ended. The organ purred like a cat until the last stop had been driven in. A sparrow chirped outside, and Mr Thrale pronounced the invocation in that voice which knew no lip-service, but prayed and preached as it taught and thundered, from the heart.
"He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it."
That was his text. Many there were present, boys and Old Boys, masters and masters' wives, who revered the preacher before all living men, yet knew what was coming and faced it with something akin to resignation. Life was the first word in his language, if not his last. He never used it in the narrow sense. True Life was his simple watchword. Where the noun was, the adjective was never far away, and together the two rolled out like noble thunder. The corporate life, the life of a nation, the life of that school, it was into those great streams that he sought to pour the truth that was in him -- sometimes at the expense of the individual ripple. Boys do not listen to abstractions. Abstract truths are better read than heard by boy or man. Mr Thrale was too elusive, perhaps too deep, for ordinary ears. In his daily teaching he was direct, concrete, and dramatic, but from his pulpit he soared above heads of all ages. Yet that earnest voice and upright manner, which had so impressed Jan on his very first Sunday in the school, were the voice from Sinai and the face of God to him to-day.
He began by drinking in every syllable, but before long it was the look and tone rather than the words that thrilled him. He began listening with eyes glued to that noble face in its setting of silver hair, but soon they drooped to the edge of the purple sermon-case, to the pages that rose and fell at regular intervals under that strong, unrelenting, and yet most tender hand. Jan could feel its farewell grip again, he was back in the study full of garden smells and midges in the lamplight ... He really had been back there for a moment. It was the old problem of keeping awake at this time of the afternoon. It had astonished him to see it in others on his very first Sunday, but often since he had felt it himself, especially after a long walk. And he simply could not help feeling it after an almost sleepless night and that condemned man's allowance of beer ...
It was contemptible, it was unpardonable in Jan of all the congregation that sunny afternoon. But it would not happen again, for something had awakened him once and for all.
It was something in the old man's voice. His voice had changed, his manner had changed, he was no longer reading from the purple case, but speaking directly and dramatically as he did elsewhere. His hands were clasped over his manuscript. He was looking steadfastly before him -- just a trifle downward -- looking Jan's way, in clear-sighted criticism, in gentle and yet strong rebuke.
"There is the life of the individual too. 'He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.' But let him be sure for whose sake he would lose his life. Let him not take his own life, on any provocation or under any temptation whatsoever -- not even to save his dearest friend. No soldier can die by his own hand, not even to save his comrade. He must think of the army, think of those to whom his own life is valuable and dear, before he throws it away from a mistaken or unbalanced sense of sacrifice. I will have no false or showy standards of self-sacrifice in this school. I will have no moral suicides. Suicide is a crime, no matter what the motive. Evil is evil, good cannot come of it, and to step in between a friend and his folly is to stand accessory after the fact.
"And yet -- humanum est errare! And he who errs only to save an erring brother has the divine spark somewhere in his humanity. May it light his brain as well as fire his heart, give him judgement as well as courage, and burn out of him the cancerous growth of wrong-headed self-sacrifice. You cannot rob Peter to pay Paul, just because you happen to be Peter yourself. Has Paul the first or only claim upon you? Yet my heart goes out to the boy or man who can pick his own pocket, or shed his own blood for his friend! Blame him I do, but I honour him. And I forgive him."
In such parables spake their Master to those who sat daily at his feet; not often so to the school in chapel, nor was it to them that he was speaking now. Yet few knew that he was addressing Jan Rutter, who sat spellbound in his place, rebuked and yet absolved, head and heart throbbing in a flood of light and warmth.
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