The Lucky Number. Ian Hay

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ aye; I was coming to her. She came along aboot five years ago, long after the old man had settled into yon wee hoose where he stays now. She just appeared. Naebody could ever find oot where from, although Mistress Corby's dochter asked Baxter to tea in her own hoose twice and called on him herself three times. Baxter is as close as an oyster, and as for the lassie”—McAndrew shuddered slightly—“she has an ill tongue tae provoke.”

      Thirdly, chez Baxter.

      As already indicated, it was the old gentleman's custom of an evening to receive visitors in the front room and discourse to them on literature, poetry, history, and science. Light refreshments—very light refreshments—were handed round by Miss Weeks; but these were a mere appendage to the literary provender supplied. I formed the habit of joining this symposium upon one evening every week—at first out of idle curiosity (and perhaps with the pardonable desire of indulging in one of the few forms of advertisement open to a struggling physician), but subsequently through sheer interest in the academy itself and the amazingly sure touch with which the master handled his disciples.

      They were a motley crew. There were socially ambitious young shop-assistants, anxious to acquire a literary polish likely to impress the opposite sex. There were artisans who wished to advance them selves in the technique of their profession. There were heavy-handed, heavy-shouldered, rather wistful men, with muscles made lusty by hard physical labour, conscious of minds grown puny and attenuated for lack of intellectual nourishment. There were humble folk with genuine literary leanings, who came to consult Mr. Baxter's poems and essays, and sometimes shyly proffered compositions of their own for perusal and comment. There were men—uneducated men—dimly conscious of the fact that they possessed immortal souls, who had waded into the deep waters of theological speculation, and got out of their depth. For each and all Mr. Baxter had a word of welcome and counsel.

      “I am very happy to see you, Mr. Wright. And your friend, Mr.—? Mr. Dennis. Thank you. We are going to read and discuss a passage from ‘The Tempest’ presently. Shakespeare, you know. Be seated, and my granddaughter will offer you a little refreshment. … I have been consulting various authorities on statical electricity for you, Mr. Armitage. I have marked a few passages in my Encyclopædia, Volume Twenty in my library, which seem to me to treat the subject most lucidly. You might also derive some information from the life of Mr. Faraday–Volume Eighteen. My grand daughter will look up the passage for you presently. … Ah, Mr. Jobson! How are they down at the factory to-day? You are just in time. We are about to read and discuss a passage from ‘The Tempest.’ Shakespeare, of course. Be seated, pray. … For me to read, Mr. Penton? Thank you: that indeed will be an intellectual treat. I will peruse your manuscript at leisure, and comment upon it at our next meeting. … The Agnostics still bothering you, Mr. Clamworthy? Well, I am no theologian; but for sheer old fashioned common sense I don’t think you can beat Paley's ‘Evidences of Christianity.’ The late Archdeacon used to say that he always came back to Paley in the end. Ada, my dear, that passage I marked in Volume Forty-Seven! Now friends, “The Tempest’ ”

      After that the Presentation Shakespeare would be opened, and Mr. Baxter would declaim selected passages. His voice was mellow, and his manner ecclesiastical; plainly his whole deportment was moulded, to the last gesture and inflexion, on one unvarying model. A discussion would follow—a quite naïve and rather pathetic discussion, sometimes. Ultimately Mr. Baxter would sum up, generally with extracts from other Shakespearian passages, which he turned up with great readiness and dexterity, rolling them from off his tongue with obvious relish. Occasionally he would ask Ada for some other volume, and read from that. There were great moments when he would actually call for Homer or Horace and, with apologies for rusty scholarship, offer to our respectful ears a quite coherent rendering of some famous passage.

      Finally, at a moment selected by herself, the vigilant Ada Weeks would terminate the proceedings with the curt announcement that her grandfather was tired. The precious volumes were locked in the library again, and we were bidden, without ceremony, to say good-night to our host and not to bang the street door. Both of which commands we obeyed promptly and reverently, and departed homeward.

      IV

       Table of Contents

      Possibly it may have occurred to the reader to wonder whether in a community at once so erudite and progressive as Broxborough—it possesses both a Cathedral Close and a Linoleum Factory, you will remember—there can have been no official alter native to Twenty-One, The Common—no Public Library, no Public Lecture Courses, no Municipal Oracle, as it were.

      In truth Broxborough once had all these things. Before the War there existed an institution known as Broxborough Pantheon. Here was an excellent library of reference; lectures and classes, too, were constantly in operation throughout the winter months. In its lighter moments the Pantheon lent itself to whist drives. But the entire building had been destroyed by fire in Nineteen Fifteen, and had never been rebuilt, for the good and sufficient reason that during those days there were other things to do. After the Armistice money was scarce and rates were high. Moreover, that shrinking sensitive-plant, the British bricklayer, had been instructed by his Union to limit his professional activities to a tale of bricks so tenuous that his labours for the day were completed, without undue strain, by the time that he knocked off for breakfast. The months passed; such constructive energy as the district could compass was devoted to Government housing schemes, and still the Pantheon lay in ruins.

      But one day a man from Pittsburgh, who had been born in Broxborough nearly forty years previously, and had relinquished his domicile and civil status therein by becoming an American citizen at the age of three, returned, rugged, prosperous, and beneficently sentimental, to revisit the haunts of his youth, and refresh his somewhat imperfect memories of his birthplace.

      Naturally he found the place profoundly changed. The Cathedral organ-bellows were now inflated by a gas-engine, and the nine-Seventeen up-train did not start until nine-forty-two. And—where the Broxborough Pantheon had once reared its stucco pseudo-Doric façade upon the market-square, there was nothing but an untidy hoarding masking a heap of charred débris, and labelled, “Site of proposed new premises of the Broxborough Pantheon.” The label appeared to have been there for some years.

      John Crake of Pittsburgh made inquiries, and the truth was revealed. The old Pantheon had ceased to exist for nearly five years, and the new Pantheon, in the present condition of the rate-payers' pockets, seemed unlikely ever to exist at all. So John Crake, having pondered the matter in his large and sentimental heart, put his hand into his own capacious pocket, and lo! the new Pantheon arose. The plasterers had wreaked their will upon the donor's bank account, and were making sullen way for the plumbers and electricians, about the time when I first encountered Mr. Baxter outside the second-hand bookshop.

      And now the building was ready for occupation, and the exact procedure at the opening ceremony was becoming a matter of acute recrimination at the Council meetings. So that genial gossip the Rector informed me, as we encountered one another one afternoon on our professional rounds.

      “Things are more or less arranged,” he said, “so far as our city fathers are capable of arranging anything. The place is to be called Crake Hall, which I think is right, and Crake himself is coming over from America for the opening, which I call sporting of him. Old Broxey” (The Most Noble the Marquis of Broxborough, the Lord Lieutenant of our County) “will perform the opening ceremony. That is to say, he will advance up the steps in the presence of the multitude and knock three times upon the closed doors of the Hall. A Solemn pause will follow, to work up the excitement. Then the donor, who will be standing inside, wearing a top-hat for the first time in his life—”

      “Rector, I have frequently warned you that your ribald tongue will some day lose you your job.”

СКАЧАТЬ