Noble in Reason (15 page)

During the next few days, before my mother left us, I spent much time with her. If her temptation was like mine, I reasoned, the presence of a companion would keep it at bay. That I was right in this, I judged when I saw the faint frown of weariness which appeared on her forehead after a few minutes of my company; like me, she wished to be alone so as to sink into her consoling world.

My father took her away, and I embarked on one of the sternest struggles of my life. My diary reveals it clearly enough. February 20:
I therefore decided to cut out dreams for good.
February 23:
So far have kept off dreams.
March 2:
Being without dreams gives me a strained and homesick feeling.
March 3:
Awoke early and dreamed a little.
April 10:
In the
night dreams to an increasing degree. It won't do. I must pull up. Perhaps if I began to write something?
May 3:
Made an effort to check dreams again.
May 10:
Have now been without dreams for a week. I am pleased with my firmness but the loneliness and unhappiness which result are almost more than I can bear.
May 12:
Alas, I gave in and dreamed at the mill to-day.

This last occasion I recall only too well. I had been sent on a message of rebuke down to our firer in the yard, and on my return heard, from outside the office, my father talking within in the kind of voice he kept for customers. Not wishing to disturb the interview, particularly as the firer's message, about the quality of the coal supplied him, was not one to arouse confidence in a customer, I waited outside, leaning against the wall in an attitude of weariness and dejection. I was indeed desperately tired, for my mental fight was most exhausting— and most difficult to terminate; no sooner had I expelled temptation from one corner of my mind than it sneaked back in another. Each night I read far into the early hours until fatigue should overpower me and leave me no time to succumb to temptation; in the day, I rushed about hither and thither, learned and repeated poems, read the stiffest works of history and economics I could find, so as to obtain a sense of relaxation and enjoyment when I turned in the late evening to poetry and fiction. As I leaned there, then, tired, lonely and wretched, the insidious temptation yet again attacked me. “O God,” I cried silently, recognizing it, “let father finish with this man soon!” But this petition was not answered; the voices in the office continued to sound; suddenly, with a rush of exquisite delight, a delight that was almost bodily, I flung wide the gates of Northchester and stepped within.

The battle continued for eighteen months, and I must admit that I lost it. For God, whom I often, humbly and seriously and intensely, invoked, was not, it seemed, on my
side. He sent no help. He did not terminate my father's conversation that afternoon a moment sooner, though it would have saved me from relapse. I prayed:
Deliver me from temptation,
but temptation continued thickly to strew my path. God often contrived that my father should stay late at the mill, talking to John, and when I hung around, waiting for him so as not to meet the temptation of walking home alone, urged my father to say testily: “Be off with you, Chris! Surely you can take yourself to Walker Lane without getting lost!” One should never, I knew, pray for release from ills but only for strength to conquer them. I kept all the rules, I only asked to be strengthened in my fight for my soul; but the heavens remained silent to my plea, grey and chilly like the West Riding sky, and no God-given strength was forthcoming.

One evening in the early autumn of that year I put God to a final test. After a night and day of sickening struggle, I found myself alone in the house, my father having gone to fetch my mother home. Once my mother returned, I felt that my struggle would be eased; she would be present in the house, I could seek her company when the battle pressed too hardly on me. I had only to hold out till the morrow, I told myself, and all would be well. Unluckily it was the closing half-day at the Municipal Library, and unluckily also I soon finished the book I was reading—a bibliography at the end had deceived me into thinking I had more pages to read than in fact remained. But why say “unluckily”? Could not God have arranged otherwise? Of course He could, and if He were both all-powerful and all-benevolent, He undoubtedly would have done so. This led me into the old argument about free will; still, if God were all-powerful, I thought stubbornly, He could easily have arranged a little matter like free will—even I, Chris Jarmayne, could think of a solution or two to the old problem. However, if God were not all-powerful, if, though all-benevolent, He was engaged in a life-and-death struggle against the
powers of evil, my sympathies were certainly engaged on His side and I was ready to help Him in the fight. This thought being reinforced by the old saying that
God helps those who help themselves,
which came into my mind just then, I resolved to struggle on unremittingly, and cast round for some means of occupying my mind so that it should not lie empty for the seven devils of daydream to enter. One should not despise simple means, I reflected; so I took a couple of racquets and a tennis ball and going out into the yard knocked at the Darrells' back door.

After a pause, it was opened by Beatrice. She looked a little pale, a trifle thin and worn, I thought, and she was wearing a brown dress which did not suit her.

“Come and play racquets with me, Beatrice,” said I.

Beatrice smiled and shook her head.

“Oh, come on! Do, Beatrice. It would give me very great pleasure if you would,” I said with much sincerity. “It's only a child's game, of course,” I continued, blushing and feeling very young and awkward: “But the air and exercise would do you good.”

“It's sweet of you, Chris dear,” said Beatrice, smiling again. “But I can't, you see; I'm in alone with mother and she might need me.”

I went off and played racquets by myself, indulging the while in the most lurid of my fantasies, for I had given God up from that moment. There was neither truth nor help in Him.

Strangely enough, as it seemed to me then, the moment I abandoned God my problem became easier. I had now so much to think about that my fantasies, though they persisted and were always indulged in when I was feeling particularly wretched or particularly excited, lost their overpowering necessity. As soon as the element of divine revelation was removed, all the old Hebrew stories struck me as superb
human revelations of insight and poetry; I re-read the Bible as a collection of human works of art and marvelled at its beauty and truth. The stories of Cain and Abel, of Jacob and Esau, struck me particularly; the antagonism between blood-brothers was evidently very ancient, I reflected. I went on naturally enough to extend the idea of “brothers” to all the members of the human race, and to wonder why human beings alone in creation fought wars with their own kin. Animals and birds of the same species did not fight each other except when mating, I recalled. These musings were particularly relevant to, perhaps even they were partly caused by, the prevailing atmosphere of unease and unrest about the aims of Germany, from whom an aggressive war was then freely prognosticated.

This idea of human brotherhood, and my own sense of being despised, rejected, tyrannized over, suddenly sprang together and exploded into a burning political conviction, one Sunday afternoon when I was reading Hardy's
Dynasts,
then recently published. I read that wonderful Chorus of the Pities:

We would establish those of kindlier build,
In fair Compassions skilled,
Men of deep art in life-development;
Watchers and warders of thy varied lands.
Men surfeited of laying heavy hands
Upon the innocent,
The mild, the fragile, the obscure content
Among the myriads of thy family.
Those, too, who love the true, the excellent,
And make their daily moves a melody.

And immediately I took the mild, the fragile, the obscure content, everyone who was exploited, everyone who was dominated, everyone who was constrained by heavy hands
and afraid, to my heart; I stood beside them, I was one of them. That is to say, all my political sympathies rushed towards the Labour party. My father and John were strongly Conservative, my uncle Alfred was a Liberal of the old-fashioned kind. From that day onwards it gave me a fierce pleasure to read in the papers about every political and economic phenomenon of which they strongly disapproved; a strike, a fiery speech, a Labour gain in municipal or by-election, made me happy for the day. When my relations discussed these matters, since I never expressed my opinions or put them into action, they took my agreement for granted—though John would occasionally give me an uneasy glance, as if he sensed that the ground felt warm beneath his feet, there was fire down below. For example: in company with John and Edie I remember seeing a film of
A Tale of Two Cities.
When the Bastille fell my emotion was so strong at this blow to all tyranny that my body trembled and my teeth chattered. John, sitting beside me, when the lights went up gave me a curious look; I dissembled as usual and forced a ghastly smile.

It was part of this political feeling that I chose to be slovenly in my dress. My father was a natty dresser; John, for business reasons if no other, was always admirably clad in dark well-tailored suits of our own good worsted cloth. I took a pleasure in being unbrushed and down-at-heel; I thought this showed my revolt against bourgeois convention, my sympathy with the downtrodden poor.

In a word, I spent these years in a deep and passionate resentment against my family, who (as I thought) chained me to this dreary West Riding life in which I could not hope to succeed.

One other matter added to my unhappiness at this time. My diary confirms what I remember only too well, that during these years I caught severe head-colds every few weeks. Sniffling and snuffling about the house with raw nose and
watery eyes and congested throat, shrinking from the harsh West Riding winds, the dank fogs, the smoke-laden air so irritating to my sensitive mucous membrane, I suffered such misery that the approach of a fresh cold made me almost hysterical with despair. I knew the chronology of every symptom—the mental irritation, the roving headache, the sore throat, the spinal shivers, the rising temperature, the onset of sneezes—and watched their advance with the helpless frenzy of a shipwrecked seaman on a raft driven by a swift current towards a foaming reef. Remedies proved ineffective, precautions useless. For while if I omitted a precaution and braved the West Riding climate between October and March with bared head or unmuffled throat, I caught cold at once, the taking of precautions, the muffler, the cap, the ammoniated quinine, seemed powerless to withstand the omnipotent germ. Dr. Darrell could make nothing of me. The prescription I longed for him to give never seemed to enter his head, and of course I never mentioned it: namely that I ought to winter in the south. Not that I particularly wished to live in the south: to be away from my family was the bliss I desired.

As I look back at this young Chris Jarmayne just growing out of his teens into his twenties, I cannot forbear to smile. I smile at his intense seriousness about himself, his morbid youthful melancholy, his jejune ambitions. But it is rather a sad smile too, for I pity the lad (and all others like him) deeply. He has a generous loving heart, a not unintelligent mind, a yearning for the good, a real desire to serve his fellowmen. No wish for power, no cruelty of any kind, no cunning device, ever enters his simple young head. But how cowardly the lad is in action! Why on earth doesn't he speak out? How does he expect his family to guess his wishes? And how
self-centred he is! Note how he waits and longs for someone to love and rescue him, instead of going out and loving and rescuing somebody himself! Of course the young Chris that was once me didn't understand the first thing about himself, though during this period he made some tentative steps forward.

Take the young Chris's appearance, for example. In those days, how I admired my shabby clothes, my thin drooping shoulders, especially the lock of hair falling over my forehead. It seemed to express something about me, something about my view of life. And so it did, of course. But later this lock— often seen on young lads of this age—came to appear to me the hall-mark of the self-pitying, the unadjusted, the neurotic, and Hitler's famous lock confirmed me in this view. Is it a concealment from the world, this drooping curl? A shrinking behind a curtain? At any rate, like other forms of exhibitionism such as zoot suits, “Teddy” suits, “Oxford bags” and so on, it usually indicates a certain self-consciousness, a certain pretence, even a certain mingled feeling of inferiority and conceit; its owner is to be pitied, encouraged, loved, but not quite trusted.

Or take the colds which caused me such protracted wretchedness. Partly, no doubt, they were due to a physical cause, some slight malformation perhaps in my crooked nose, some weakness of the throat, for even to-day I am somewhat subject to them. But mainly, of course, their reason was psychological. They were retreats into which I retired when the world became really too intolerable. I am surprised that I did not realize this at the time, for I certainly often experienced a real joy as, released from my father's presence on account of my sneezing and sniffing, I snuggled down into my warm bed, book in hand, with several long hours of easeful solitude before me.

Loss of religious faith is a common phenomenon in adolescence,
but I still find the young Chris's arguments in this respect sound; after all I laid my finger then on the great difficulty of believing in a just, loving and omnipotent God: the existence of unhappiness and evil. Nor have I faltered from my young belief in the brotherhood of man, though I do not nowadays find its noble tenets, or rulers in
fair compassions skilled,
the exclusive property of any one political party. That my political convictions sprang partly from a desire to differ from my father and elder brother, I am of course aware—at this stage I even hated certain patterns of fabric, for example the pine-cone, because my father liked them!—but to identify oneself with the cause of the injured and oppressed is never a mistake. As the Abbé Jeanne says in Romains'
Les Hommes de Bonne Volonté
(I translate).