The Young Desire It (21 page)

In that way he did not change; but a striving for tolerance towards others, unnatural and rather too solemn at his age, proved his growth and hinted at decisions not yet faced. He was new to the action of objective reasoning, and spent time trying to put the increasing complexity of his feelings into some ordered arrangement of thought, because he felt, with a blind instinct still, that only from conscious and clear thought could clear action spring. Already, being in the dawn of manhood and guessing at manhood's responsibilities of choice, he was forcing himself to abandon instinct for reason as the one guide to action. How it would have pleased Mr. Jolly to observe this effect which life at the School was having upon his mind, no one can now know; without doubt he would have applauded Charles's intention even while he deprecated the young man's seriousness.

Serious he must have been in the ultimate privacy of his mind, but he was gay and happy enough during those days of early July sunshine, full of hopes about the progress of work and still intoxicated at times with the old wine of learning. Penworth was among those who remained at the School, and he came out one afternoon and joined this promenade, bare-headed in the sun like Charles, blinking and smiling as he swung along leisurely. The misted softness of the landscape spreading out beyond the red height of the slope moved him like a gentle intellectual laxative, mildly, and as he looked at Charles shining in the sun with a fire of youth and beauty he talked of his own boyhood, and made a loose enchanting picture of lanes and woods wet with spring rain and brilliantly in leaf again, and went over the names of the flowers he knew caressingly; or there would come into his mind some almost undiscovered inn come upon during a summer walking tour, where in good self-conscious undergraduate style he had eaten bread and cheese, drunk red wine, and composed carefully impassioned verses, imagining himself as fine a fellow any day as Parson Herrick snoring over an empty claret jug in the half-light of a summer dawn, with a guttering candle on the table by him. Talking of Herrick took his mind to Parson's Pleasure…it was unlikely that Herrick ever swam in anything as weak as water…in those days they left water to its proper function, which was chiefly to define the outlines of land, good and firm beneath the feet, or to make pleasant sounds of exhortation when one was courting a lass; they had no far-fetched, pagan bathing-cult nonsense…

Charles suggested the Greeks, a civil and civilized people who bathed continually. By the droop of Penworth's eyelids he knew he had reminded him of his own words, in the choir loft, that hot summer afternoon. Penworth was smiling, and began to set upon him with apparent seriousness, arguing that a nation could be highly cultured without taking to water.

‘Like the English,' Charles said delightedly.

That, of course, was different. That was a matter of latitude and longitude; this climate, now, was a purely Greek climate, different altogether from England's. It was a Greek country, probably; some thought the immortal gods had taken refuge here. After what? After Rome and Egypt invaded Greece and set the seeds of a crop of fruit-vendors and professional immigrants who would possess this country as they had possessed America.

‘There's for you, my red-headed acolyte.'

The air grew colder. They walked up and down more quickly. Over beyond the dark trees of the river channel the sun had gone down; from the edge of the slope it seemed as though the far horizon was raised in air by the pale force of light beneath it. The shadows disappeared. Charles, in the quiet melancholy of that hour, remembered the hills of home, shadowless and mysterious as the last light of evening swam up to their crests and swept on into the high sky of dusk. He remembered telling the girl about it; and his heart beat heavily with happiness at the thought of being there with her, standing invisible on the hill-side together, while from the darkening depth of the valley a night chorus of frogs froze the chill air.

‘You're very quiet,' Penworth said. ‘Want to go in?'

‘No, sir,' Charles said.

‘What were you thinking of? Or,' he added with an effort at jocularity, ‘ought I to have said, “Who are you thinking of?”'

‘I don't know, quite…'

He felt inclined to tell him about that day in the grove, to see what he would say, yet for some reason he hesitated. As he looked back now on it, the whole adventure, which no amount of work nor stress of subsequent experience could cause to fade in any remembered detail, became startlingly clear in its beauty. He heard the wind sigh and toss in the pine needles, and as he watched her bending towards the little perfumed fire, towards him, in a still pose revealing her breasts' warm and secret pallor, the heavy drops from the wet leaves above still fell like little animals on the dead leaves beneath. Things he now remembered surprised him, for he had not known he saw them. The growth of manhood, becoming stronger in him, sought them out as tangible things on which to spend its adoration. He was suddenly conscious of the strength of his desire. The white fullness of her two knees, where the stretched skin shone dully over the flesh beneath as she leaned back from looking into his face; and the brownish smoothness of the backs of her hands closed and twisted towards the licking taper flames—unbelievable nakedness in such outstretched hands, and in her knees like ivory cut across by the green hem of the skirt. The fire was mirrored minutely upon her eyes, hiding whatever might have been passing across their depths; in the dry, healthy paleness of her lips quiet lay, and slept there. He tried to imagine what they would look like when she herself was asleep; but all he could see was their upward urgency and softness, as they would be beneath his own when she desired him to kiss her.

A wedge of restless pain was hammered between his ribs by the insistence of such thoughts; he flung his arms wide, presently helpless, and the back of one hand struck Penworth lightly.

‘What now?' Penworth said, and in the dusk his voice sounded strange, as though he had been uneasy in thought since he last spoke.

‘Oh, I am sorry,' Charles cried, embarrassed by what he had done, surprised not to be alone.

‘Well, you didn't do me much harm. What made you do that, child?'

Charles said dully, ‘I don't mean to be childish,' which made Penworth laugh and put his arm round his shoulders, leaning no weight.

‘Perhaps you're not so childish after all,' he said soberly. ‘I gather you were thinking of some young person, like yourself; and your own inability to come, as it were, to grips with the more difficult noumena of loving made you fling your arms out—throwing the problems away, to enjoy the joys.'

Charles looked round at him, but could not see any expression on his face in that dark light, though the ironic disapproval in his voice was clear. During his disturbed silence they heard the lowing of cows down below them in the milking shed, and a man's voice, as quiet as the light of his lantern, speaking to the beasts as he clapped the bails to behind their horns. An occasional clatter of cans made the evening seem more still; a train had rounded the bend beyond the station, and silence came down conclusively after it.

‘Now,' said Penworth sharply, listening to sounds and silence. ‘Was I right? Here is the only perfect moment for a confession. Speak now or be silent for ever.'

His voice had a light sting of sarcasm whipping his words.

Charles laughed nervously; it died in his throat before it could reach the stillness in which they were.

‘I didn't think of it as love,' he said.

‘All the more reason why you will now that I've suggested it,' Penworth said lightly and with a faint note of scorn. ‘That is part of my duty, you remember—to crystallize emotions into thoughts; to tidy up thoughts that have been allowed to grow too long without pruning; to focus the eye of reason…'

Charles described how he went home, and told him of the grove and the mushrooms and the day, stumbling often at having to speak for so long without pause and the quick stimulus of reply. When he told how he had seen the girl suddenly, Penworth was more attentive, and he could feel him listening; but in his own growing preoccupation the other's lack of sympathy was not apparent to him.

‘She was wet, so I made a fire. She thought I shouldn't—she didn't know, you see, that it was my own place. So I told her. And then she said perhaps she'd better go, she had no right there; but it was raining. She couldn't go. So I—I made her sit by the fire, and she kept looking at me in a very strange way, as though I'd done something to her.'

‘Perhaps you had,' Penworth murmured, tightening his arm to make him walk more slowly; for as he had spoken his steps quickened with his heart under the sharp reality of words.

‘Well, we sat there till the rain stopped, and then we went away; we went home.'

‘Did you tell each other your names and talk about yourselves?'

Charles remained oblivious to that faint, disappointed scorn.

‘No—well, I asked her her name. But we didn't talk much.'

‘Silence speaking more than words, eh?'

‘It wasn't exactly that, you see. But you can't go asking a—another person questions and poking about and—can you? when you don't know them…'

‘“Her”. Mind your grammar, you young ass, or you'll be at the mercy of any intelligent female.'

‘Her, then. Well, you can't do that. At least, not all at once. Anyhow, I didn't want to; I didn't want to know anything, not then. It was just something very surprising, that's all, and strange, too, to see her come in like that, not knowing I was there, and not minding. Of course, it was my mother's country; I mean the Far Field is hers, and the grove and all—oh, I'm so glad. Life is wonderful when you're there. Anyhow, I said she might get a cold and die, and she said she wouldn't mind. She would though…'

Penworth's prompt laughter had almost a sneer in it.

‘Of course she would. Well, what then?'

Aware now of the unsympathetic effect of his words on Penworth, who appeared not to approve of the idea of girls, Charles kept his silence while they turned at the far end of the field. Against the dark sky the scattered lights of high windows were golden and arid, suggesting to their minds the emptiness within those walls.

‘Come on,' Penworth said impatiently. ‘Tell me the rest. We shall have to go in to tea in a few minutes.'

‘Well,' Charles said slowly, ‘that is all, really. We looked at each other for a long time.'

Penworth let out his breath most dramatically, in a whisper which Charles did not hear.

‘So at last the rain stopped, and we went home. The fields were all wet, and you've no idea how good they smelt.'

They walked very slowly, in silence. Charles felt the warm weight of Penworth's arm about his shoulders, and could smell the faint tobacco-smell quietly treasured in the rough cloth. He wanted to move away from that manly arm, but did not like to seem willing to break the spell of silence borne on by the slow rhythm of their steps.

Penworth had been deeply and curiously affected by the simplicity of Charles's words. ‘We looked at each other for a long time.' The thought irritated him strangely as though this boy were deliberately frustrating some ambition of his. He knew of such looks. He had once seen a great writer at a crowded undergraduate party in Oxford. There was a girl at the party, someone strange to him. She sat on one side of the room, and the poet, the lion of that gathering of young
illuminati
, was against the other wall, with young men and women about him, chirping and chattering like a lot of birds; but once their eyes had met they could not look away from one another. So lively was the talk, so young and important that gathering, that for a long time nobody noticed; but the poet became more silent, and though he smiled and seemed to listen to what they were eager to say about his work and his ideals, he now looked like a man burningly athirst who sees a pool springing in clear silver from the rocks of barrenness, where he dare not try to reach it because of the spell of weakness its presence put upon his flesh. And she, too, felt the anguish of such an ecstasy; her face leaned towards him, and in that crowded room she leapt to be possessed.

But in the picture which Charles's words had brought into his mind there was a troubling element of innocence. Perhaps, he thought, these two children, opening like flowers together in the sunshine of the body's life, had already taken each from each a virginal purity which, if they were to adore one another with their bodies also, would make such an act binding not only upon the flesh but upon that high spirit which suffers earthly experience both as an ennoblement and as a bondage of chains until death. He knew that in its first surrender of self an immaculate body has put upon it a mark as deep as a brand to the very bone; a mark which no later surrenders, even without number and to the whole fullness of variety, can erase or alter.

The thought of such a surrender, with its appearance of triumph, now discomforted him greatly. God knows, he thought distractedly, why I should worry. It's none of my business. The boy's an impetuous fool, like everybody else in this damned place.

He repeated that to himself, and removed his arm from about Charles's shoulders, expressing to himself by that gesture of renunciation a disinterest in which he had not the power now to believe. Here was this youth, beautiful, conscious, almost his own creature, intellectually at all events, and apparently ready to fall happily in love with a girl. He felt, suddenly, the danger of defeat in what had seemed to him a contest where his own triumph was sure; and from silent condemnation of Charles his mind turned to exercise itself bitterly in generalizations condemning mankind; until finally it returned to Charles.

‘Well, I dare say you'll get over it, Fox.'

Charles heard the bitterness in his voice, and instinctively added to it the removal of that manly arm from his shoulders; but the sum of this addition he could not see, though he felt its content of disapproval.