CHAPTER V—THE AWAKENING

At a distance I had been sorry for the Bantam, but at close quarters his hopeless passion for Ruthita bored me. On my return to the Red House he overwhelmed me with a flood of maudlin confessions. There was nothing pleased him better than to get me alone, so that he could outline to me his impossible plans for an early marriage. He talked of running away to sea and making his fortune in a distant land. It sounded all very easy. His only fear was that in his long absence Ruthita might be forced to marry some other fellow. “Dante,” he would say, “you’re a lucky chap to have been always near her.”

This kind of talk irritated me, partly because I was jealous of an ecstasy which I could not understand, and partly because I had known Ruthita so many years that I thought I knew her exact value a good deal better than the Bantam. There was something very absurd, too, in the contrast between this gawky boy, with his downy face and clumsy hands, and these exaggerated expressions of sentiment. I began to avoid him; at that time I did not know why, but now I know it was because of the herd spirit which shuns abnormality.

Nevertheless he had stirred something latent within me. My days became haunted with alluring conjectures; beneath the cold formality of human faces and manners I caught glimpses of a boisterous ruffianly passion. Sometimes it would repel me, making me unspeakably sad; but more often it swept me away in a torrent of inexplicable riotous happiness. I had come to an age when, shut him up as you may in the garden of unenlightenment, a boy must hear from beyond the walls the pagan pipes and the dancing feet of Pan.

Of nights I would lie awake, still and tense, reasoning my way forward and forward, out of the fairy tales of childhood into reality. Sometimes I would bury my face in my pillow, half glad and half ashamed of my strange, new knowledge. Now all the glory of the flesh in the Classics, which before had slipped by me when encountered as a schoolboy’s task, burned in my brain with the vehement fire of immemorial romance.

Old Sneard had a terrifying sermon, which he was fond of preaching on Sunday evenings when the chapel was full of shadows. His heated face, startlingly illumined by the pulpit-lamps, would take on the furious earnestness of an accusing angel as he leant out towards us describing the spiritual tortures of the damned. He spoke in symbolic language of the causes which led up to damnation. Until quite lately I had wondered what in the world he could be driving at. His text was, “Son of man, hast thou seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in his chambers of imagery?” The grotesque unreality of likening a group of school-boys to the elders of Israel never occurred to me; I was too carried away by the reality of sin itself and the terror of what was said. When service was ended I would steal up the stone stairway to the dormitory in silence, almost fearful that my guilt might be betrayed by my shadow....

It was summer-time. Those of us who professed an interest in entomology were permitted during the hour between prep and supper to rove the country with butterfly-nets. The results of these expeditions were given to the school natural history museum; most of the boys hunted in pairs. Things being as they were between myself and the Bantam, I preferred to go by myself.

All day it had been raining. The sky was still damp with heavy clouds and the evening fell early. I slipped out into the cool wet dusk, eager to be solitary. Some boys were kicking a ball and called to me to come and play with them. In my anxiety not to be delayed, I doubled up my fists and ran. They followed in pursuit, but soon their shouts and laughter grew fainter, till presently I was alone in a dim, green world. The air was exquisitely fragrant with earth and flower smells. Far away between the trees of Eden Hill a watery sunset faded palely. Nearer at hand dog-roses and convolvuli glimmered in the hedges.

I threw myself down in the dripping grass, lying full-length on my back, so that I could watch the stars struggle out between the edges of clouds. Oh, the sense of freedom and wideness, and the sheer joy of being at large in the world! I listened to the stillness of the twilight, which is a stillness made up of an infinity of tiny sounds—birds settling into their nests, trees whispering together, and flowers drawing closer their fragile petals to shut out the cold night air. I told myself that all the little creatures of the fields and hedgerows were tucking one another safe in bed. Then, as if to contradict me, the sudden passion of the nightingale wandered down the stairway of the silence, each note separately poignant, like glances of a lover who halts and looks back from every step as he descends. From far away the passion was answered, and again it was returned.

A great White Admiral fluttered over my head. I picked up my net and was after it. So, in a second, the boy within me proved himself stronger than the man. But the butterfly refused to let me get near it and would never settle long enough for me to catch it.

I followed from field to field, till at last it came to the cricket-ground and made a final desperate effort to escape me by flying over the hedge into the private garden of Sneard’s house. His garden was forbidden territory, but the twilight made me bold to forget that. Breaking through the hedge I followed, running tiptoe down a path which ended in a summer-house. The White Admiral settled on a rosebush; I was in the act of netting it when I heard someone stirring. Standing in the doorway of the summerhouse was a girl about as tall as myself. We eyed one another through the dusk in silence. Her face was indistinct and in shadow.

“You don’t know how you frightened me.”

Directly she spoke I knew that she was not Beatrice Sneard, as I had dreaded. Her voice was too friendly; it had in it the lazy caressing quality of a summer’s afternoon when bees are humming in and out of flowers. Her way of pronouncing words was halting and slightly foreign. In after years I came to know just how much power of temptation her voice possessed.

“I suppose you’re not allowed in here,” she said; “but you needn’t worry—I shan’t tell.”

The boy in me prompted me to answer, “You can tell if you care to.”

She gave a secret little laugh. “But I shan’t.”

After all my gallant imaginings of what I would do on a like occasion, I stood before her awkwardly, tongue-tied and ungracious—so far removed are dreams from reality. The White Admiral, tired with the long pursuit, still clung to the rose’s petals. Across misty fields nightingales called, casting the love-spell, and the moon, in intermittent flashes, caused the dripping foliage to glisten.

She rested her hand on my arm—such a small white hand—and drew me into the seclusion of the summerhouse.

“You’re not afraid of girls, are you?” she questioned, and then inconsequently, “I’m awfully lonely.”

There was a note of appeal in her tones, so I found my tongue and asked why she was lonely.

“Because I quarrel with Beatrice—we don’t get on together. Do you know, she thinks all you boys are simply horrid persons?”

“Perhaps we are,” I said. “Most people think that.”

“But I don’t,” she answered promptly.

Gradually my constraint left me. She had an easy kindness and assurance in her manner that I had never found in any other girl. She slipped her hand into mine; made bold by the darkness of the summer-house, I held it tightly.

“I like you. I like you very much,” she whispered.

“But you’ve never spoken to me before. Why should you like the?”

She turned her face to mine, so that our lips were quite near together. “I suppose because I’m a girl.”

The bell for supper began to ring. I pretended not to hear it. Through the roses across the lawn I saw Sneard stand in his study-window, struggling into his gown. Then the window became dark and I knew that he had gone to read evening prayers.

“The bell is ringing,” she said at last. “If you don’t go, you’ll get punished.”

“If it’s for your sake, I don’t care.”

She pushed me gently from her. “Go away now. If you get into trouble, you’ll not be able to come back tomorrow.”

She ran down the path with me as far as the hedge. The bell was at its last strokes, swinging slower and slower. At the hedge we halted. I knew what I wanted to do; my whole body ached to take her in my arms and kiss her. But something stronger than will—the habit of restraint—prevented. Some paces away on the other side of the hedge I remembered that I did not even know her name. Without halting I called back to her questioning, and as I ran the answer followed me through the shadows, “Fiesole.”

After the monitors had come up and the lights had been put out, I waited for an hour till all the dormitory was sleeping; then, very stealthily, I edged myself out of bed. Standing upright, I listened to make sure that I was undetected. I stole out into the corridor bare-foot. I feared to dress lest anyone should be aroused. In my long linen night-gown I tiptoed down the corridor, down the stairs, and entered the fifth-form class-room. Throwing up the window I climbed out.

An English summer’s night lay before me in all its silver splendor—huge shadows of trees, scented coolness of the air, and damp smoothness of turf beneath my tread. The exultation of life’s bigness and cleanness came upon me. I knew now that it was right to be proud of the body and to love the body. Oh, why had it been left to a glimpse in the dusk of a young girl’s face to teach me that? At a rush I had become possessed of all the codes of mediaeval chivalry. Every woman, however old or unpleasing, was for Fiesole’s sake most perfect—a person to be worshiped; for in serving her I should be serving Fiesole. What a name to have! How all her perfectness was summed up in the beauty of those full vowel sounds, Fi-es-sol-le.

I trespassed again in the garden. In the quiet of the rose-scented night I entered the summer-house.

Far away the nightingales sang on. There were words to their chanting now and their song was no, longer melancholy. And these were the words as I heard them: “Fiesole—Fiesole—Fiesole. Love in the world. Love in the world. Glad—glad—glad.”