THE FREEDHAM REVELATIONS
§1
The next half-holiday I was walking towards the tuck-shop and gloomily deciding that Doe's wilful estrangement from me was fast being frozen into tacit enmity, when I felt an arm tucked most affectionately into mine. It was done so quietly and quickly that I nearly leapt a yard at the shock. The arm belonged to Doe.
"Ray, you old ass," he began.
Doe, now sixteen, was not so very different from the small fawning creature of three years before. Although the perfect curve of the cheek-line had given place to a perceptible depression beneath the cheek-bone; although the usual marks of a boy's adolescence—the slight pallor, the quick blush of diffidence, the slimness of limb—were all very noticeable in Doe, there was yet much of the original Baby about his appearance. It could be marked in his soft, indeterminate mouth, whose flower-like lips seemed always parted; in his inquiring eyes and unkempt hair; and, at the present moment, in an artless excitement that I had not seen for many a day.
I tried to drag my arm away, but he held it too tight, and proceeded to make the remarkable statement:
"You old ass! Surely you've been sulking long enough."
"Well, I like that," replied I, with an empty laugh. "You drop me, sulk like a pig, and then say it's the other way round—"
"Rot!" he interrupted. "Didn't you deliberately cut me out with Radley?"
"I don't know what you mean," I said, although the hint that I was Radley's favourite always gave me a flush of pleasure.
"And haven't you been hanging on to Penny, just to make me jealous?"
"Never entered my head," I replied promptly, and with truth. "I leave that sort of thing to schoolgirls like you. But it evidently did make you jealous."
"Yes, it did," he admitted with an engaging smile. This softened me; and my affection for him began at once to throb into activity.
"Yes, it did; and now that you've said you're sorry, I feel frightfully lively. Let's go and smash a window or something."
His spirits were infectious, and he dragged me off to the study which his intellectual eminence had recently secured for him. When we arrived there, he tossed me a bag of sweets, which had clearly been bought as a means to sugar the reconciliation, and, dropping into his armchair, stretched his legs in front of him, and said:
"Let's talk as we used to."
I was relieved from the necessity of finding some opening remark by the bursting into the room of "Molés" White.
If you look up the Latin word "Molés" in the dictionary, you will find that it means "a huge, shapeless mass"; and all of us had been very quick to see that this was an excellent description of our junior house-prefect, White. Moles White was as enormous and ugly in his dimensions as he was genial and simple in face. You saw at a glance that he possessed all the traditional kindliness and generosity of the giant. As he crashed into Doe's study, he was swinging some books on the end of a strap.
"Found you, Doe," said he. "Look here, Bramhall's got to make the best house-team it can, which means you must give up slacking at cricket. You'll play at the nets this evening."
"Heavens! Ray," Doe murmured in mock dismay, as he stared out of eyes that sparkled with impudence at White's huge frame, "what on earth is this coming in?"
White smiled meaningly.
"Don't be cheeky now, Doe," he suggested. "No lip, please."
Doe's reply was a laugh, and the question addressed to me:
"I say, Ray, do you think it's an Iguanodon?"
"Well," said White, striding forward and beginning to swing his books ominously, "if you're asking for trouble, you shall have it."
Doe ducked down and raised his right hand to protect his head.
"I never said it, White," he affirmed, giggling. "Really, I didn't. You thought I did. I never called you an Iguanodon—I've too much respect for you."
"Yes, you did. Take your hand away. I'm determined to swing these books on to your head."
"Ray," shouted Doe between his giggles, "take him away. Don't bully, Moles! You great beast! Ray, he's bullying me."
White paused. Bullying, even in fun, was a horrible idea. The books fell limply to his side.
"Be sensible, if you can, Doe. You've got to play this evening."
The change in White's voice prompted Doe to raise his head and look up from under his arm at his attacker.
"Great Scott, Ray," he blurted out. "If it's not an Iguanodon, it's a prehistoric animal of some sort."
"My hat!" exclaimed White. "You young devil! Put that hand down while I smite you over the head with these books." And he made as though to execute his threat. Doe accordingly retired still further down into his chair, and placed his elbow to ward off the swinging books.
"I didn't say it, White, you liar! Shut up, will you? You might hurt me seriously. Go away. I hate you! Oh, hang it!"—(this was when the books struck him on the elbow),—"it hurts, Moles. Leave off, while I rub my elbow."
The gentle giant responded to this reasonable request; the books dropped; and Doe, looking reproachfully at his executioner, set about massaging his elbow.
"Ray," he said, when the operation was complete, "is there any known means of removing this nightmare?"
Immediately his uplifted arm was seized in White's huge paw. Doe's eyes were sparkling, his cheeks red, and his hair tumbled. His right arm being now held, he laughed more loudly and nervously and raised his left.
"By Jove, White," he cried, "if you rouse my ire, I'll get up and lick you. Let go of my hand—it's not yours. Oh, shut up, you great swine! Hang it, Ray"—(this with a shriek, half of laughter, half of anticipation)—"he's got my left hand as well—O, White, I'm sorry."
White held both his victim's wrists in one hand. Too honourable to take advantage of this, he swung his books at a distance and said:
"You've got to play at the nets, do you hear?"
My friend simulated anger. Struggling to get free, he ejaculated:
"I'll not be ordered about by an Iguanodon. I'm not that sort of man. O, White, I said I was—he, he, ha!—sorry. I didn't mean to be rude. I didn't see it in that light—"
"Whack" came the books gently on his back.
"Oh, please, Moles White, please stop. There's a dear old Iguanodon. Ow—Ow—Ow!"
By this time Doe was much out of breath, and his sentences were short and broken: "It doesn't hurt. It's lovely! Ray, don't stand there grinning like this chimpanzee, White."
Suddenly at an upward swing the slender strap broke, and the books crashed through the window.
"Damn!" said White.
Doe, flushed and dishevelled, picked himself out of his chair.
"That's what comes of bullying, Moles White. I'll pay for it. It was my beastly fault!"
"No, you won't," said White.
"Don't presume to contradict me, Moles White, or I'll lick you! I have stated that I'll pay for it."
"No," White decided. "We'll split the difference and go shags."
I felt the old fellow was not displeased at this compromise, for his purse had its limitations. He withdrew from the scene and left us to our confidential chat.
When he had gone, there set in a reaction from the excited liveliness of his visit. Doe looked sadly through the broken pane and said:
"Isn't Moles a corking old thing? The sort of chap who's naturally good, and couldn't be anything else if he tried."
Something wistful in the words caused me to see a vision of the gravel-path sweeping to the doorway of the baths.
"I say, Doe," I began, "have you ever felt that you'd like to be—something different from the ordinary run?"
Doe swung round on me.
"Have I ever? Why, you know, Rupert, that I'm the most ambitious person in the world. And, by Jove! I believe I might have done something great—"
"Might have done!" interrupted I, surprised that he should have decided at sixteen that his life was earmarked for a failure. "You'll probably live quite ten years more, so there's still time."
Doe turned again and sent his gaze through the broken window, replying in a little while:
"Oh, I've lived long enough to know that I'm the sort that's destined to make a mess of his life. I—oh, hang it, you wouldn't understand..."
Evidently in Doe, as in me, his manhood had come down the corridor of the future and met his childhood face to face. One minute before this he was an irresponsible baby "cheeking" Moles White; now he was the germinal man, borne down with the weight of life. He paused for me to plead my understanding, and invite his confidence. But an awkwardness held me dumb, and he was obliged to continue:
"I wish you could understand, because—Do you know, Rupert, why I made it up with you this afternoon?" He came away from the window and sat in a chair opposite me. "It was because I was glowing with a new resolution. It was the rippingest feeling in the world. I—I had just decided to cut with Freedham."
Up to this point I had been looking into his face, but now I turned away. Instinctively I felt that, if he were going to, speak of his transactions with Freedham, he would be abashed by my gaze. He rested his elbows on his knees, and began to tie knot after knot in a piece of string.
"Freedham's an extraordinary creature," he proceeded. "He first got hold of me when I was at the Nursery. He would get me in a dark corner, and alternately pet and bully me. I remember his once holding me in a frightful grip and saying: 'You're so—' (I'm only telling you what he said, Rupert)—'You're so pretty that I'd love to see you cry.' He's that type, you know."
For a while Doe, whose cheeks and neck were crimson, knotted his string in silence.
"Then he used to give me money to encourage me to like him, and dash it, Ray! I do like him. He's got such weird, majestic ideas that are different from anyone else's,—and he attracts me. His great theory is that Life is Sensation, and there must be no sensation—a law, or no law—which he has not experienced. I believed him to be right (as I do still, in part) and we—we tried everything together. We—we got drunk on a beastly occasion in his room. We didn't like it, but we pushed on, so as to find out what the sensation was. And then—oh! I wish I'd never started telling you all this—"
He tied a knot with such viciousness that few would have had the patience to untie it.
"Go on, old chap," I said encouragingly. I was proud of playing the sympathetic confidant; but, less natural than that, a certain abnormality in the conversation had stimulated me; I was excited to hear more.
"Well, he told me that years before he had wanted to see what taking drugs was like, and he had been taking them ever since. He was mad keen on the subject and had read De Quincey and those people from beginning to end. I've tried them with him.... There are not many things we haven't done together."
Doe tossed the string away.
"I know I might have done well in cricket, but Freedham used to say that excelling in games was good enough for Kipling's 'flannelled fools' and 'muddied oafs.' We thought we were superior, chosen people, who would excel in mysticism and intellectualism."
As he said it, Doe looked up and smiled at me, while I sat, amazed to discover how far he, with his finer mind, had outstripped me in the realms of thought. I had no idea what mysticism was.
"And I still think," he pursued, "that Freedham's got hold of the Truth, only perverted; just as he himself is a perversion. Life is what feeling you get out of it; and the highest types of feeling are mystical and intellectual. I only knew yesterday what a perversion he really was. I saw something that I'd never seen before—he had a sort of paroxysm—like a bad rigor; something to do with the drug-habit, I s'pose—"
A powerful desire came over me to say: "I knew all about his fits years ago," but it melted before the memory of a far-away promise. At this point, too, I became perfectly sure that, although Doe's sudden self-revelation was an intense and genuine outburst, yet he was sufficiently his lovable self to feel pride in his easy use of technical terms like paroxysm and rigor.
"It frightened me," continued he. "It's only cowardice that's made me cut with him. I know my motives are all rotten, but no matter; I was gloriously happy half-an-hour ago, when I had made the resolution. And now I'm melancholy. That's why I'm talking about being a great man. You must be melancholy to feel great."
As he said the words, Doe leapt to his feet and unconsciously struck his breast with a fine action.
"And I sometimes know I could be great. I feel it surging in me. But I shall only dream it all. I haven't the cold, calculating power of Penny, for instance. He's the only one of us who'll set the Thames on fire. At present, Rupert, I've but one goal; and that is to win the Horace Prize before I leave. If I can do that, I'll believe again in my power to make something of my life."
§2
I fear I'm a very ignoble character, for this conversation, instead of filling me with pain at Doe's deviations, only gave me a selfish elation in the thought that I had utterly routed my shadowy rival, Freedham, and won back my brilliant twin, who could talk thus familiarly about mysticism. And now there only remained the very concrete Fillet to be driven in disorder from the field.