Chapter XIV

It was one of Jim’s greatest puzzles—accustomed as he was to outbursts of tyranny, or the sharp expression of tortured nerves, forced from human beings by the pressure of work and the absence of privacy—to see the way in which people at Warren Manor kept their tempers.

He missed the skipper’s expletives; and he was conscious of his own streak of bad temper, like something moving about wild and dissatisfied inside him. He was like a hard-shelled crab in the society of soft ones.

To be rough-tongued at Warren Manor was considered bad manners, and when Jim spoke his mind he was not holding his own as he had always supposed, but he was rudely shaking the social ease which hung about them all like sunshine.

Jim was not very sensitive himself—it was not easy to hurt him; but when he was hurt, he was hurt deeply. These people, on the contrary, seemed extremely sensitive. He often saw by their pained glances that he had struck one of the hidden rocks of their submerged dislikes, though they weren’t hurt very much; if they had been hurt very much their dislikes would have remained submerged. As to their religion—and Jim at once set himself to discover it—there seemed nothing which they were more determined to hide. Only Mr. Bligh professed his with perpetual outspokenness, and Jim decided after a month’s study that Mr. Bligh’s religion was an imaginary affair. He was an ardent socialist, but he had never altered any of his habits for his creed. Mr. Bligh had his meals, his servants, his luxuries, precisely as if no passion for general sharing had ever shaken his soul. Mrs. Bligh went to church every morning at eight o’clock and three times on Sundays, but she never mentioned anything about it. She kept her secret source of life as private as if it had been a disgrace.

Of course all three of the boys belonged to the Church of England—or would have said so if you had asked them. They went to church when they had to. But that was not their real creed.

Ainley’s religion was success. Every nerve of his being responded to that stimulus only. He was so ambitious that he never spoke of it. All day long his mind was preoccupied with the great shipping interests of his father, into which he hoped to pass. Huge schemes of business adventure kept him awake at night. He studied with a conscientious fervour, over which he spread a kind of indolent banter; but the banter was his only indolence. Ainley’s God was power, and there is no harder master.

Pritchard worshipped form. To be exactly like a certain small and select herd of people, who never thought too much, felt too deeply, or made any flagrant social mistakes, absorbed his entire vision. He had the type of nature which exults in following a flock of sheep through a gap in a hedge; he would have preferred a path with a lion in it to straying over an open space.

Jim had seen the same type of mind in men of his own class, men who followed their unions without even attempting to understand their leaders’ reasons. Of all powerful human instincts probably that of the herd is hardest to break. The centre of the herd instinct is panic acting upon stupidity. Only those who are content to stand alone can preserve the race courage and mercy for the race.

But Pritchard differed from the type of working men Jim knew, because he was less independent. If you are near enough to reality to be a prey to accident, you can not always resemble other people, because accidents prevent uniformity. Pritchard was padded from reality.

It would have pierced him to the heart to wear the wrong kind of tie, but nothing else was at all likely to pierce him.

Wivvle’s religion was the most frank; he wasn’t in the least afraid of being pagan, and he would have granted immediately that, on the whole, what he most believed in was doing what he liked.

Wivvle was a more bewildering character to Jim’s awakening mind than either of the other two boys, and he was a great deal more attractive.

Neither Pritchard nor Ainley changed their attitude toward Jim. Pritchard always disliked him as a class, and Ainley resented him as a person. But Wivvle was intermittently friendly.

He couldn’t be Jim’s champion because it was too much bother, but he couldn’t be a brute because being a brute was almost more of a bother than being a champion.

Wivvle noticed Jim only when there was no one else to notice; but when he was aware of him he gave him a flattering amount of his confidence.

He behaved as if Jim were his intimate friend, and spoke to him with a slangy nonchalance which took no account of any difference between them, unless indeed the differences were superiorities on the part of Jim. Wivvle acknowledged Jim’s superiorities very handsomely, and profited by them. Jim could work, and Wivvle wouldn’t. He really wanted to get into the army, if it wasn’t too much of a grind, and by helping to make awkward problems easy for him Jim became a slight convenience to Wivvle.

It is difficult to say what Wivvle became to Jim, because Jim had no standard of comparison. He did not know what a friend of his own age was like. Boys in the penitentiary had confederates, not friends, and those Jim had met on the river he had usually fought, either with his fists or his tongue or both. Wivvle smiled at him, chaffed him—and let him run his errands.

If the opportunity had occurred Jim would have died for Wivvle, but he didn’t altogether respect him.

Wivvle was not what Jim wanted to be like. He had no firmness in him, and he took what he wanted and never paid for it. He was so much accustomed to the untaxed gifts of the gods—his good looks and his general fascination, his independence of means and the ease of his social position—that it never occurred to him to take any trouble for his friends.

He broke engagements whenever it suited him, and he took for granted a continual series of services which he would never have dreamed of reciprocating.

Nobody ever asked Wivvle to post their letters, buy their stamps, or exercise their bull terriers; but every one took it as a matter of course that these little services should be performed for Wivvle. He could appear late for meals and be as untidy as a wind in a wood, but housemaids only smiled, and housekeepers raised tolerant eyebrows.

Jim’s clear eyes, unobscured by his deepening affection, saw that Wivvle’s carelessness was selfishness, and that half his charm was due to his inability to face anything uncomfortable. To save the _amour propre_ of his friends, he would risk their security. But Jim preserved a belief in Wivvle’s curious honour.

Somewhere or other, he was certain, his friend _was_ a hero. You couldn’t, Jim reflected, be a hero all round, but you could be one in a flash, when the pinch came. Jim felt sure that some day he should see the gleam of a sword drawn out of its scabbard, and Wivvle earning for himself an imperishable glory.

Wivvle did not give Jim all his confidence, but he liked talking about his difficulties to Jim; it seemed, in a way, to solve them, and he had a great many difficulties. His people were extraordinarily stupid about his allowance, and then there were Jews and mysterious men on the turf, born solely to irritate and confuse Wivvle because he didn’t like accounts, and naturally had to bet on horses. His worst bother was what would happen if he didn’t pass for Sandhurst.

‘My people will mind,’ Wivvle would say, wrinkling his charming chestnut eyebrows and looking for a moment like a butterfly at bay; but butterflies seldom remained at bay. Wivvle’s casual wings let him through in a moment into wider air. It was Jim who remembered permanently that Wivvle’s people would mind.

It did not occur to Jim to tell Wivvle of his own difficulties, even if there had ever been time for them in their haphazard moments of confidence between the importances of games; but there never was any time.

Jim’s difficulties were very much his own affair, and didn’t concern other people.

He had to live through black and heavy hours when the work of the day was over and the next day lay before him colourless and blind—heavy with the unaccomplished. At these moments every little baffling disaster of the day, his awkward speech his small social blunders, rose up and tortured him.

He would not have felt them so unbearable but for the loneliness. On the barge he had always had Cadger and the river. The skipper was not a talker, but he smoked, spat and grunted in a companionable way—it was not like sitting on the edge of a chair by your window and hearing other people laughing in the garden.

Jim generally stayed on the edge of his chair, because if he went out the laughter stopped.

Mr. and Mrs. Bligh sometimes made him come, and that was worse—what he wanted was to be with the other boys, and for everybody to go on talking just the same.

One evening, when Jim knew the Blighs were dining out, the longing for companionship became too strong for him. The boys were just below him in the dark; they were strolling about on the lawn, lighting cigarettes and letting them go out again in the interest of their holiday experiences.

Jim had had no summer holidays; he had gripped his task unrelentingly. But it struck him now that to hear about their experiences would be a kind of a holiday.

After all, Wivvle was Jim’s friend; he wouldn’t let the other fellows shut him out completely. Perhaps they would be nice to him—it was quite a long time since he had dropped any of his _h’s_.

Jim flung aside his books and ran downstairs to join them.

Wivvle was telling the other two that he knew ‘a delicious little dream’ who danced at the Gaiety, ‘a most ripping little kid with her hair down her back, but there wasn’t much she wasn’t on to.’ He offered to introduce Ainley and Pritchard to this delectable vision but his invitation stopped at Jim. You couldn’t very well ask a ‘delicious little dream’ to meet a boy off a barge.

Jim was brought up short by the hedge of their evasive manners. He wanted to ask them to go on talking about the ‘delicious little dream’ but he couldn’t find words for it.

Wivvle didn’t stop talking, but he switched the subject off on to an obvious makeshift. The interest of all of them died down into pauses.

Jim felt a wave of rage pass over him.

He did not want to slip back into games and chaff; he wanted to talk, as they had been talking before he came, about their real pursuits. He wanted particularly to know what these other men thought about women. He did not realise that it was precisely on this subject that none of the three would ever communicate their thoughts to him. You could talk only to your own sort about what concerned you most.

Jim felt his physical strength stand out in him like the exaggerated muscles of one of Canova’s athletes. His body responded to the sharp rebellion of his mind; a savage instinct rose in him to use his physical power against them.

If they wouldn’t allow him ordinary companionship why shouldn’t he show them who was after all the better man?

Jim had made no study of scientific fighting, and all the other three were proficient in it, but he counted on his strength.

It was Ainley’s single eyeglass which most infuriated Jim; but he held his fury back, and looked at Wivvle. If he could have a word or a glance from his friend half his anger would drop, for half his anger was jealousy.

But Wivvle withheld his conciliatory power. Jim was out of place, and Wivvle never helped people to get into places when they were out of them.

Jim took a few steps with the others in sullen silence. Then Ainley said in his careless, impertinent drawl,—

‘I say, you two fellows, would you like a cigarette in my room? We can talk in peace there.’

And Pritchard said quickly,—

‘I was just thinking it would be rather jolly.’

Wivvle did not say anything, but he turned his step toward the house with the others.

The blood rushed to Jim’s head. He was as conscious of his anger as if it were some animal behind bars trying to get out. He spoke thickly and in jerks.

‘By God,’ he said, turning to face them. ‘I’ve had enough of this! I’ve had enough of this!’

‘It’s curious,’ said Ainley in a light, bantering voice, ‘how fond people of the lower classes are of repetition; especially as one fails to see anything at all profound in their remarks.’

Pritchard giggled weakly.

Jim struck at Ainley automatically, as if his mind had abandoned volition.

‘Hullo, you two chaps!’ Pritchard cried, aghast, and then seemed to melt away into the darkness.

Wivvle said quietly,—

‘Let them fight it out—why not?’

Ainley returned Jim’s blow with interest; his eyeglass was off, and he set his mind on the fight with cool intensity.

The man in front of him was simply a savage, and Ainley trusted implicitly in his superior science.

Perhaps he trusted too much in his expertness; or perhaps that strange, blind rage of Jim’s could have broken through any expert’s guards; but from the first Ainley stood no chance, except of defence. He warded off Jim’s first attempt to close with him, but Jim came on again like a bull in a series of blind, formidable, frontal attacks, disregarding any check.

Jim was conscious that Ainley saved himself repeatedly, and that his light strokes got home, here and there; but his blows might have been the taps of a child for all Jim noticed them.

He felt no sensation at all beyond his rage. He was lost in his anger, as men are lost in love, or when fear has pierced them to the core. In these wild, breathless minutes one of his terrible blows got home.

Ainley reeled backward, caught feebly at the air as if it were something he could hold on to, and crumpled up in a heap on the lawn.

For a moment nothing stirred; then Pritchard screamed,—

‘By God—you brute—you’ve killed him!’

Pritchard had come back again with a contorted face like a doll’s, and stood shakily in a patch of moonlight. Nobody took any notice of him. Wivvle knelt down over Ainley’s body and felt for his heart.

Jim stood still; he heard Pritchard say, ‘Murderer,’ and saw him walk rapidly out of the patch of moonlight toward the house.

It had suddenly occurred to Pritchard that this was the usual thing to do.

The word ‘murderer’ came to Jim as if it had travelled from a long way off, and rang on in his mind like the reverberation of a bell.

‘Murderer’—surely he had heard it before—the whole thing had happened before—or was it still happening?—and was the rest of life blotted out, and nothing left but a figure lying in front of him with the soul knocked out of it by his hand?

The moon rose slowly behind the trees; the patch on the lawn widened till the whole garden was flooded with pale clear light. Jim was not hot any more; he felt curiously relieved physically, as if a weight had been taken off him. But he wasn’t quite sure what he had done. He tried to speak, but his throat was dry, and he found he could not swallow.

Ainley, that lover of power, looked a very frail and little thing lying there quite still on the grass. Jim found himself feeling very sorry for him, because Ainley had mattered, and now he didn’t matter any more.

Wivvle looked up at Jim reassuringly.

‘It’s all right, old man,’ he said; ‘I can feel his heart now. You only knocked the wind clean out of him. But by Jove! You went at it like a madman. You’d kill a fellow as like as not with that style of fighting.’

Jim began to shake with relief. He had not known he was anxious before, but relief was terrible. He wanted to shout out loud and cry like a child.

‘Gawd!’ he muttered, falling back in his old habits of speech. ‘I thought I’d done ’im in! Like my father—I knocked the life out of ’im—as you might out of a cat! And I didn’t mean for to do it. It’s so damned easy to ’it too ’ard!’

Wivvle glanced up again horrified.

‘My dear old chap, you’re out of your head!’ he said quickly. ‘Killed your father?’

Jim looked gloomily down at him.

‘Yus,’ he said. ‘You can give me away if yer like. Parson said as ’ow I wasn’t ter say nuffin about it. I served three years for it—but that don’t seem ter make no difference. Like as not I’d have swung for this!’

Wivvle straightened himself up.

‘Hold your tongue about it anyway, now,’ he said under his breath. ‘I’ve told you before—you don’t give people away. Ainley’s coming round. You all right, old man?’

Ainley smiled feebly.

Mrs. Bligh spoke close to them; very quietly, as if someone had only dropped a thimble.

‘I am so sorry,’ she said gently, ‘to hear that there has been an accident. Is he badly hurt? No? Then help him in, will you? Drink this brandy first, Mr. Ainley. I will stay out here and talk to you, Mr. Barton. He must lie on the sofa till I come in, and then I will see if it is necessary to send for the doctor.’

‘I had no idea you were in,’ Wivvle said remorsefully. ‘What an ass Pritchard was to bother you!’

‘No one is going to be bothered,’ said Mrs. Bligh, putting her firm, small hand under Ainley’s elbow.

Ainley rose painfully to his feet; he looked as if he might collapse again at any moment; but he was a plucky fellow, and, refusing any help but Wivvle’s, staggered back into the house.

Jim hardly dared to look at Mrs. Bligh. What would she say to him now they were alone?

She hated violence, and he had done what she hated.

For a time she said nothing. She was dressed for her dinner party in a filmy gray dress—everything about her was soft and gleamed.

She moved to a seat and motioned to Jim to sit down beside her.

‘I think you had better tell me how it happened,’ she said at last.

She showed neither anger nor disgust; but there was an arrest of friendliness in her voice as if she had suspended feeling until after she had judged.

Jim gave her the bare facts; he told her what he had said, and what Ainley had said. He did not say what he had felt.

‘Then I hit him,’ he finished shamefacedly. ‘It seemed as if I had to hit him.’

Mrs. Bligh’s silence robbed his action of all significance He saw now that he hadn’t proved anything by hitting Ainley, except that he couldn’t control his own temper.

‘You haven’t told me why you did it?’ she said after a pause. ‘I think there is something more, something in your mind—isn’t there?—which made you feel upset Perhaps you were lonely?’

Jim hesitated. Should he tell her about his hours of darkness; would she understand the cramping temptations of his lonely youth? He could not see her eyes, and her voice still withheld its personal kindliness.

But some barrier had broken down in Jim. He knew he could tell her everything now. It was that moment in a man’s life when he has for one woman the stored-up completed confidence of all his years. He moved a little so that the pale light rested on his tortured face.

‘It’s a pull,’ he said at last slowly, ‘being alone, and with people different like. Seems as if they didn’t know what was inside you—nor you what was inside them.

‘I want to keep clear of things—old things that catch a hold on me sometimes; but I don’t know how—I’m afraid I’ll get caught out one of these days. To-night I thought if I could talk like the other fellows, I’d forget—it would ease me up inside like; and when I saw they were all against me I got sort of wild. You see, I want to keep straight—it’s—it’s one of the things I’d like——’

He looked at her wistfully—would she understand what he meant? That he was on his knees to her, in his heart—and that all the reverence he had never had, came to him for her sake, and gave him strength to resist temptation. Only not even this was enough—not quite enough against the awful driving force of desire. But if she understood, perhaps it would be enough.

To his surprise she made a quick movement to stop him, as if her silvery dress were too near something that might soil it. She was afraid of his sins. Mrs. Bligh had that habit of self-preservation which is fatal to all real confidence. She knew that she could not go on liking people if they were not quite nice.

‘No! No!’ she said hurriedly. ‘You need not tell me! I understand! It is better not to speak of one’s temptations. They are very terrible. I wish I could help you—but there is strength, strength enough and to spare, only we have not got it in ourselves. God can perform miracles if we give Him the chance.’

Mrs. Bligh was eager to put Jim’s troubles on to God; it would save her from any personal contact with them.

Jim listened, but he felt discouraged. He had already tried God.

‘I am not a clever woman,’ Mrs. Bligh went on, ‘and I have no arguments to give you—I know you are fond of arguments, Jim; perhaps too fond. Faith is very simple.

‘I will tell you a little about my own if it will help you?’

Jim nodded; he was still surprised that she had checked his confidence, but he was not at all hurt. He was convinced that she was too beautiful not to do right.

‘I find all my strength in prayer,’ Mrs. Bligh murmured. ‘I pray always before I speak. I feel the Presence, the Divine Presence, on the altar of my church. I take from it every day my courage and my will to live, and every day it is new, because what is Eternal is always new.’

‘But you’re happy,’ Jim faltered, ‘and you’re good. I think God made you good. You can’t have any temptations.’

Mrs. Bligh did not answer. She liked Jim to think her perfect.

The moonlight shone hard on the lawn and whitened all the grass. There was a curious sense of suspension in the air, as if some secret stood close behind the pallid light in the shelter of the dark.

‘Now, I wanted to kill Ainley just now,’ Jim continued. ‘I was hot like to get to the end of him. It was luck I didn’t.’

Mrs. Bligh gave a curious little sigh as if she too understood the pressure of hate.

‘You are so strong,’ she said, when Jim paused, ‘and strength can be so terrible if it is used against God, and so beautiful if it is used for Him. Put away all that idea of anger and killing—and even loneliness, because we are never unbefriended—use your strength for life.’

‘I’d like to do that,’ said Jim humbly; ‘that’s what I’m getting educated for—but I don’t know how. I got a cruel temper.’

‘The church will teach you all you need to know,’ Mrs. Bligh said quickly; ‘let the vicar prepare you for confirmation. Confirmation means strengthening. Remember the church is very old and wise. She knows what is good for us. What does it matter if our finite minds rebel sometimes against her laws? It is your heart that guides your actions, not your mind—and laws are for the heart.’

Jim was in the mood for an immediate sacrifice. He would gladly have cut off his hand and entered the kingdom of Heaven maimed, but he was not prepared for this wholesale abdication of the intellect.

‘But you got to see things clear,’ he objected.

‘Not always,’ said Mrs. Bligh decisively, rising to her feet to end the interview.

It was Jim’s initiation into the sacramental system. He bowed his head and agreed to give up seeing things clear.