Tempest-Tost

by Robertson Davies

  Indeed, if he had not been a sturdy child he might have succumbed to his mother’s determination that he should linger close to death’s door. When he grew out of babyhood she dosed him for constipation. This was a bugbear of the Reverend John’s, and she was convinced that Hector had inherited it. Her husband took a large dose of castor oil every Saturday in order that his brain might be at its keenest on Sunday. But it was clear to her that such weekly dosing was not enough for a child, and Hector was plagued with syrups, pellets, suppositories and nastiness of every kind all the week through, and because his young bowels were never permitted to have a mind of their own, they behaved whimsically and he often had pains. Nor was constipation all. His mother believed that whenever a child had a white ring around its mouth, it was suffering from worms. Hector, whose inside was continually being churned with cathartics, very often had this symptom, and the worm powder was poured from its pink tissue wrapper upon his tongue, followed by a gobbet of jam which only made the dose more gritty and nauseous.

  Because Hector was a growing boy, he was encouraged and indeed compelled by his mother to stuff himself, and though constipated and supposedly wormy he grew into a hearty lump of a lad, with thick, curly black hair, long eyelashes, solemn grey eyes and ruddy cheeks. When he was disturbed a dark flush crept over his face. It was this high colour, as much as anything, which made other boys dislike him. The children of Canada are not, in general, ruddy; hot summers, bitter winters and the heat of winter houses all combine to make them pale, though it is a healthy pallor. Church mothers agreed that “that young one of Reverend Mackilwraith’s looked as if he was going to have apoplexy any time”, and their sons resented and bullied Hector as something different from themselves.

  He bore this bullying with stoicism. He felt that he was picked on because he was better than the others. There was no snobbery in this thought; it was the way of the world that a minister’s son should be better than other boys. He was even good-natured about it. But once he lost his temper.

  He was being baited by a rat-faced boy, a Baptist—Hector knew the religious denomination of every child in the school, as a matter of course—who had brought a gang of his companions along to see the fun.

  “Say fork,” said the Baptist, menacingly.

  “Why?” asked Hector, backing against the wall of the school.

  “Because I’ll soak yuh if yuh don’t,” said the tormentor, squinting and twisting his face menacingly. “G’wan, say fork.”

  “Oh all right; fork,” said Hector.

  “Got a hole in yer pants as big as New York,” screamed the Baptist. His admirers roared with laughter, but there was no mirth in it; under the microscope the meanness in the soul of a little boy cannot be distinguished from that in the heart of an adult fascist jailer.

  “Now: say spoon.”

  “Spoon.”

  “Yah! Suck yer mother’s teat all afternoon!”

  This Hector could not bear. Not for himself, but for his mother, he was suddenly possessed by anger. That this rat-face should speak of her so! He had but the dimmest notions about sex, and his mind shrank from the smutty, ignorant talk of the schoolyard, but he knew that his mother had been spoken of in a way which he could not tolerate, and live. His face turned its darkest red, and he went for Rat-face with both fists flying.

  “Fight! Fight!” The schoolyard cry went up and in a few seconds there was a crowd around the two boys.

  Rat-face fancied himself as a fighter. He was the sort of boy who moves from group to group in a playground, dancing and striking the air, and asking in a menacing voice if anybody wants a fight. Such boys rarely find anyone who dares to take the challenge. Hector knew nothing of fighting, but he was a heavy, powerful boy and he was angry as Highlanders are angry, with blood hissing in his head, and throbbing behind his eyes. Rat-face attempted to dance and feint, but Hector rushed in upon him, caring nothing for his blows, and hammered him until the astonished Rat-face gave up any pretence of fighting and tried to run away. But Hector seized him and swung him around with his back to the wall of the school. And there he punched and pummeled him until Rat-face, who was a puny child, fell down in a faint.

  Then the cry went up! Hector Mackilwraith had killed Rat-face! Hector Mackilwraith was a brutal bully who had defied the conventions of dodging and feinting and pawing the air so dear to little boys, and had unfairly hit his opponent as hard as he could! Nobody dared to touch him, but they all screamed abuse. Shortly a teacher arrived, who shrieked when she saw blood running from Rat-face’s nose and mouth, and sent a boy to fetch the principal. The principal came on the run, and Hector was sent to his office to wait, while Rat-face was restored to such limited consciousness as his heredity and his fate permitted him to enjoy.

  THE PRINCIPAL WAS A JUST AND MILD MAN, who did not want to beat Hector if he could find a way out of it; Hector had never sinned before, and it was plain that there had been some unusual reason for his fury. But when he asked Hector to explain why he had beaten Rat-face into insensibility the boy would give no answer. How could he repeat, to an adult, those shameful words about his mother? How could an adult understand them? The disgrace, the filthiness of what Rat-face had said was linked with dark mysteries of which Hector had little knowledge, but an infinity of disgusted, fascinated surmise. It was clear that adults did not want children to know of these mysteries, for they never mentioned them. How, then, could Hector mention the unmentionable to the principal? How could he ever mention it to anyone who would understand? He knew that there was no way out of his predicament, and he stubbornly held his tongue.

  The principal had no alternative but to beat him. Rat-face’s parents would expect it, and if he could not suggest to them that there had been fault on both sides they might complain to the school trustees. As beatings go, it was a mild affair. The principal got out the special strap authorized by the provincial Department of Education for the purpose, and gave Hector four strokes on each hand. But both the principal and Hector knew what was happening; a reputation was falling to ruin; Hector Mackilwraith, a preacher’s son, was Getting The Strap, and the shadow of corporal punishment had fallen across a pulpit. In such a community as that, the preachers formed a Sanhedrin, and as they were severe towards others, they were harshly judged when disgrace touched them.

  It was thus that Hector, as a boy of eleven, brought his family into disgrace which lasted for perhaps a fortnight. It was agreed in the village that it had always been plain that the boy would break out, some day; it was agreed that his parents had done a poor job of bringing-up, and that if there had been more beating at home this public disgrace might have been avoided; it was agreed that preachers’ young ones were always the worst. And then a dark suspicion arose that somebody’s hired girl was carrying on with a married man who worked in the woodyard, and Hector’s fall from virtue was forgotten. But he did not forget it. His mother had wept over him, loving him the more in his disgrace; and he, knowing that it was because of her that he had fought, and knowing the utter impossibility of ever explaining to her why he had fought, loved her and grieved with an intensity which unobservant people would have supposed to be beyond his years.

  Nobody at that school ever provoked him to fight again, and Rat-face became his toady and trumpeter. Thus Hector learned about one kind of love, and a valuable lesson about the way of the world, into the bargain.

  WHEN HECTOR WAS FOURTEEN his father died. He wet his feet at a Spring funeral, his cold in the head became a cold in the chest, and that in turn became pneumonia. He was a disappointment to the last. It was the habit of people in that district to set great store by the last words of those who died; the last words of a Presbyterian minister would be of particular interest, for he might reasonably be supposed to tarry for a moment on the brink of eternity, and make some helpful comment upon it, before breaking finally with this world. A pious boy, dying of a ruptured appendix (diagnosed as “inflammation of the bowels”) earlier that same year, had distinguished himsel
f by exclaiming “I see the light” (printed in the local paper’s obituary notice as “I see The Light!”) in his latter moments. It was confidently expected that a minister of the Gospel would better this. But the Reverend John lay in a coma for several hours before his death, and expired without saying anything at all.

  He left his widow and son very badly off, for he had never received more than enough for bare livelihood at any time in his life. His estate amounted to about thirty-five dollars in cash, which was found in a tin box in his desk, and the furnishings of the manse. His congregation, with one of those warm impulses which restore faith in mankind, made a hasty collection, paid for the funeral and handed over two hundred and fifty dollars to his widow. They did more; after several ministers had preached for the “call” in their church, they took care to call a young man just ordained, and unmarried, and gave him to understand that he was to have the manse, but with Mrs. Mackilwraith as his housekeeper, and that this arrangement was to last for at least one year.

  It seemed as though the death of the Reverend John, who attracted misfortune, released a sudden run of luck in favour of Hector and his mother. He set out at once to find a job which he could do after school hours and on Saturdays, and found one quickly at a village grocery which paid him a dollar and a half a week. And within two months an old and forgotten aunt of the Reverend John’s died, leaving six hundred dollars which came to Mrs. Mackilwraith. Everybody in the village knew of this, and was pleased by her good fortune. They did not even complain very much when she immediately spent one hundred and fifty dollars of it on a brass memorial plaque which was fastened to the wall of the church, to the right of the pulpit, and which declared that John Mackilwraith had been beloved not only by his wife, but by themselves. It was ironical that the topmost ornament on this plaque was the device IHS, with the letters so curiously interwoven that they looked like nothing so much as a dollar sign.

  Nobody ever knew whether the young minister who consented to take on Mrs. Mackilwraith as part of his manse regretted his bargain. But when the year which had been agreed upon was finished another year began without any offer to leave on the part of the widow-housekeeper. She and Hector lived on at the manse, and when the old caretaker of the church died within a year of the Reverend John, Hector asked for his job, and got it by agreeing to take less money than his predecessor. This meant that he worked hard at school, ran to the grocer’s and delivered parcels and moved boxes and barrels until six o’clock, and worked hard at his lessons until nine. On Saturdays he worked at the grocer’s all day. On Sundays he was in the church by seven o’clock to light the stove and sweep the building. At eleven o’clock he solemnly placed the big Bible on the pulpit cushion, and held open the door of the vestry while the young minister made his solemn march to the pulpit. He then retired and pumped the organ. During the afternoon he prepared the Sunday School room for use, and cleaned it when the school was over. At seven o’clock he repeated his morning’s duties, and after evening service he closed the church. On communion Sundays he was helped by his mother in cutting bread into cubes, and in washing the two hundred little wineglasses which were used in that ceremony. If the Sunday School room was wanted during the week, which usually happened two or three times, it was his work to see that it was heated and ready. He performed all these duties well and thoroughly.

  The fact is that Hector was as great a success as his father had been a failure. Not only was he strong and willing; he was also intelligent. He organized his time carefully, and if any direction was given to him which lay outside the ordinary realm of duty, he made a note of it in a little book. He was solemn and silent, and the boys and girls at the continuation school called him “Saint Andrew”, from the name of the church where he was beadle. But other people liked him because he was trustworthy and thriving, and because it was plain that he was capable of looking after his mother, who might otherwise have been a reproach to them.

  IT WAS IN THE THIRD SPRING after his father’s death that the young minister, the Reverend James McKinnon, asked Hector to come to see him in his study one evening after supper. The study was much as the Reverend John Mackilwraith had left it, except for some pipes and a tobacco jar, and a framed photograph of Mr. McKinnon’s graduating class. When Hector went into the study his mother slipped through the door after him, and settled herself with an air of expectancy in the only chair other than the one occupied by the minister. This meant that Hector had to sit on a low leather-covered couch, with broken springs, and placed him at a psychological disadvantage.

  “Hector,” said the Reverend Mr. McKinnon, “your mother has asked me to speak to you on a matter of grave concern. In June you will complete your schooling here. What lies before you? It is your mother’s wish, as it was the wish of your late father, that you should enter the service of God. As the son of a minister there are scholarships open to you at one or two universities. Your school record suggests that you might fittingly aspire to one of them.”

  “There is more to being a minister, however, than education, noble though the pursuit of learning is. The gown and bands may mark the teacher, but it is the working of God’s spirit in the heart and mind which marks the minister. It is not too soon, now, to ask God what His will is for you. We need have no fear, I think, as to what His answer will be. It is not impossible that He has spoken to you already, in the watches of the night, though I doubt if you would have concealed the fact from your dear mother, or perhaps from myself, if that had been the case. Supposing, therefore, that you have not heard the call already, I offer myself, at your mother’s request, as your guide and mentor in this all-important matter. Let us pray, therefore, for guidance.”

  Mr. McKinnon said all of this with great earnestness and sober kindness, and before he had quite finished Mrs. Mackilwraith was on her knees, with her face in the seat of her chair. The minister rose, and as Hector did not at once follow his mother’s lead, he gestured to him to kneel by the couch. But Hector remained seated, and spoke in a low, clear voice.

  “Thank you sir, for your kindness,” said he, “but I have already made up my mind that I am going to be a schoolteacher.”

  “It is not for any man to say that he has made up his mind on such a matter until he has first taken some account of God’s mind for him,” said Mr. McKinnon.

  “The call to the ministry is not the only call,” said Hector. “I feel the call to teach.”

  “It is doubtful whether at your age you have heard the call in all its plenitude,” said Mr. McKinnon. “The minister also wears the gown of the teacher, and I think that that is all of the vision that you have permitted yourself to see. The rest will come. Now let us pray.”

  “No,” said Hector. “I’m not going to be pushed into the ministry. I’ve no mind for it at all.”

  “Are you refusing to pray with your mother and me?”

  “Yes,” said Hector loudly, and the dark flush spread over his face.

  Mr. McKinnon sat down. He was only ten years older than Hector, and although he could keep up his ministerial dignity under most circumstances, he still, at times, suffered from a mortifying sense of insufficiency. Mrs. Mackilwraith, who had been kneeling with her head twisted around toward them during this conversation, with an expression of maternal misery on her face, now climbed painfully to her feet and sat down again, weeping softly and unbecomingly. After a few false starts she found herself able to utter.

  “It’s a mercy your father didn’t live to see this day,” she quavered. “It was his dearest wish that you should follow him in The Work.”

  “I never heard him say so,” said Hector. Because he was young and fighting for his life, he gave unnecessary vehemence to this speech; his mother took this to mean that he thought that she was lying (which she was, for the Reverend John had never made any plan or expressed any wish for Hector’s future) and wept the more. For the three years past she had been romanticising the Reverend John, and she clearly remembered his saying a good many fine things which
had never, in fact, entered his mind or passed his lips.

  The Reverend Mr. McKinnon decided to have another try. “Hector,” said he, “It grieves me to see you being both cruel and foolish. Your mother knows what your father wished for you. She knows what she wishes for you. In a decision of this kind you must not think only of yourself. The sacrifices demanded by the ministry are numberless. But its glories, too, are numberless. To be counted among the ministers of God is to be used for the highest purpose God has designed for man. The fleshpots of this world are superficially attractive; I will confess to you that there was a period of my own life when I seemed to see the beckoning finger of pharmacy luring me toward a life of worldly ease and pleasure. But I would not retrace my steps now. Nor will you wish to do so, when once you have submitted yourself to the Will of God. His yoke is easy, and His burthen light; your father found it so, and so will you.”

  “You never knew my father,” said Hector. “I don’t think anything was easy for him. And I’m telling you now that I will not be a minister. I’ll have to live my own life and make my own way, and it’ll not be in the church. I told you I’d make up my mind.”

  “Have you no consideration whatever for your mother?”

  “Yes. I’m going to support her. It is my duty, and I’ll do it. But I’ll do it as a schoolteacher.”

  “I see that it is a waste of time to argue with you while you are in this frame of mind,” said Mr. McKinnon. “I shall leave you with your mother, and if you have a spark of manhood in you, her tears, if not her arguments, will prevail with you.”

  He left the room, and went to his bedroom, where he sat uncomfortably on the edge of his bed and thought the thoughts of a man who is not master in his own manse, and who has been worsted by a boy of seventeen.