FIRST EXPERIENCES
There was once a certain person called Procrustes who is said, in
his reception of his visitors, to have adopted a simple and uniform
procedure. He invited or compelled each one of them to pass a night in
his house. He offered each a bed. He offered them all the same bed; he
insisted upon their occupying it. It was a bed so constructed as to
suit a man of mediocre size and stature. If any guest of Procrustes
was too long for the bed, the superfluity of his limbs was lopped
off. If any one was too short, his limbs were stretched to the proper
length. It was only the guest whose stature exactly corresponded to the
dimensions of the bed that escaped without mutilation.
The modern bed of Procrustes is or was a public school. Nowhere in the
world is there so keen an appreciation of those who adapt themselves
to local tone, temper, and custom. But nowhere is departure, however
slight, from the recognised standard of propriety, visited with
consequences so unfailing. The society of a public school is a world
in itself, self-centred, self-satisfied. It takes but slight account
of the principles and practices which obtain in the world of men. It
has its own laws, its own fashions, its own accepted code of morals. To
these all persons must submit, or the penalty of resistance is heavy.
Its virtues are not altogether those of men and women, nor are its
vices. Some actions of which the world thinks comparatively little, it
honours with profound admiration. To others, which the world thinks
much of, it is indifferent. Mere physical courage, for instance, is
esteemed too highly. Self-repression is depreciated. Hypocrisy is
loathed. But the inverted hypocrisy--the homage which virtue pays to
vice--or, in other words, the affectation of being worse than one
really is, is common among boys and is thought to be honourable. Truth,
again, is not esteemed as a virtue of universal application, but is
relative to particular persons, a falsehood, if told to a schoolfellow,
being worse than if told to a master. Nobody can be intimate with a
community of schoolboys and not feel that a morality so absolute, yet
so narrow, and in some ways so perverted, bears a certain resemblance
to the morality of a savage tribe. It is rather the germ of morals than
morality itself.
It is true that the general softening of manners, which is the one
clear gain that the world seems to make as it grows older, has in
some degree affected even schoolboys. Public school life is not what
it was in the days of ‘Tom Brown.’ Thirty years ago, at the epoch of
this story, a boy who entered a public school was sure to suffer a
certain number of annoyances, if not of positive hardships. To-day,
it is probable that the only boys who are actual sufferers are those
shy, delicate, sensitive creatures who do not understand the rough
give-and-take of life, who imagine injuries and brood upon them, who
have no sense of humour nor any such companionableness as is necessary
in a society of human beings. Public school life is milder than it
was. The sum of happiness in it is increasing, the sum of misery is
diminishing or disappearing. But this story relates to thirty years
ago; things were rougher then than they are now. Still it is not
difficult even now to discuss the traces of what may be called the
uncivilised or unsoftened spirit in public school life. It is seen in
the homage paid among public school boys to physical faculties and
performances. Of the achievements of the intellect, if they stand
alone, public school opinion is still, as it has always been, slightly
contemptuous. But strength, speed, athletic skill, quickness of eye
and hand, still command universal applause among schoolboys as among
savages.
It is this uncivilised character of the young which accounts for the
lack of sympathy--nay, the positive indignation and contempt--with
which they regard anything like eccentricity or individualism. Science
teaches that the progress of the species depends upon the preservation
and improvement of varieties. Perhaps the reason why schools have
made so little progress is that they have never encouraged variation,
but have suppressed it. The bed of Procrustes is not favourable to
varieties. Individualism among the young is looked upon as a form of
conceit. Far stricter, and enforced by far more terrible penalties
than the rules which masters make for boys, are the rules which boys
make for themselves and for each other. Woe to him who consciously or
unconsciously transgresses them! Their absurdity is itself the measure
of their severity. It is not long since a mother, walking with her boy
through the muddy streets of St. Anselm’s after a thaw in mid-winter,
suggested to him that it would be a good thing to turn up his trousers
at the bottom, and he told her with a biting scorn (which was provoked
not by the rule but by her ignorance in needing to be informed of it),
that the turning up of trousers was a privilege reserved to the select
mysterious beings who are known as ‘swells.’
A public school, then, is the home of the commonplace. It is there that
mediocrity sits upon her throne. There the spirit which conforms to
custom is lauded to the skies. There the spirit which is independent
and original is apt to be crushed. And yet to these public schools
of England come boys of all sorts, conditions and characters, strong
boys, delicate boys, rough boys, impudent boys, sensitive boys, unhappy
boys, boys who have many friends, boys who have no friends, boys who
are capable of fighting their way against odds, and boys to whom every
harsh or inconsiderate word is a pang; they are all sent without
discrimination to live as they may, and to shape their own characters
or the characters of others by the simple primitive process of rubbing
down inequalities through constant friction. Parents and schoolmasters
often assume that the English system of public school life is suited to
all boys, and that, if boys dislike it, it is all the better for them.
It is forgotten how many boys of highest temper and keenest feeling
have derived not benefit but injury from their school. There is no
reason to deny that the public school system is good for the majority
of boys. But it has its victims. How often has it happened that the
boys, whose names have in after life been the glory and pride of their
schools, have been ignored, depreciated, persecuted in their school
lives! It is not needless--it cannot be wrong--to plead for a kindly
sympathetic forbearance from masters and boys, yes, from masters as
much as from boys, towards the stricken, suffering, despised members of
the flock. For of these was Gerald Eversley.
It will, perhaps, be thought that the masters of a public school, as
being presumably men of wisdom and experience, should correct the
sympathies and prejudices of their pupils. But to think so is to
exaggerate the power of masters. Masters have less influence upon
a school than is sometimes supposed, perhaps than they themselves
suppose. They do not always create public opinion, and often they
follow it. They take their tone from the boys, as well as the boys
from them. Sometimes they admire the boys whom the boys themselves
admire; they ignore those whom the boys ignore. It is only here and
there that a master has the courage and the self-denial to leave the
popular, pleasant, responsive boys to themselves and seek those who are
destitute and out of the way. There are masters who do this, and they
deserve great credit for it. But too often masters waste their favours
upon those who do not need them, and the misunderstood boys whom their
schoolfellows neglect are equally neglected by their masters.
Mr. Brandiston, in whose house Gerald Eversley had been placed, was
what is sometimes called ‘a master of the old school.’ It does not
exactly appear what is the meaning of the phrase, though it may be
presumed that the master, who is so described, does not altogether
belong to the present school of masters. He was a tall and handsome
man; in youth he must have been very handsome. Even now, when his hair
was silvered and his figure a little bent, it would have been difficult
to pass him without tacitly complimenting him on his appearance. He
had held a boarding house at St. Anselm’s for over twenty years. It
was a very popular house, and if Mr. Brandiston had a weakness, it
lay in his belief that all the virtue and all the distinction of the
school were centred in that one house. That a considerable part of
the virtue and distinction were centred in it was undeniable. Mr.
Brandiston’s critics (who were rather numerous) were wont to say of
him that he did not care for any boy who was not either an aristocrat
or a scholar. He would have admitted a weakness or predilection for
scholars, but he would have said that the aristocrats came to his house
of themselves. At all events they came. Mr. Brandiston was so upright
a man that his word, especially in regard to his own house, deserved to
be accepted unhesitatingly. There was only one reason--and it might not
occur to everybody--for harbouring a suspicion that he would perhaps
not altogether shrink from a purely accidental connection with the
aristocracy. Mr. Brandiston was in politics a Radical.
But there can be no doubt that the boys in Mr. Brandiston’s house were
proud of their house and of him. The conversation which Gerald Eversley
heard on the first night of his school life exhibited that pride. If
Mr. Brandiston’s boys found fault occasionally with him themselves,
they never suffered a boy who was in any other house to find fault
with him. It was the general fashion of the house to assume that its
traditions and its methods were the best possible. This fashion the
boys derived from Mr. Brandiston. They went so far as to maintain that
the food provided by Mrs. Brandiston was superior to the food provided
elsewhere. It was not so, and boys are critical of their food, however
excellent it may be; but loyalty to the house and to Mr. Brandiston
forbade the admission that other boys ate as good bread and butter as
his. A master who excites this kind of loyalty is not an unsuccessful
schoolmaster.
Mr. Brandiston excited loyalty by two qualities. One was a certain
bluff straightforwardness of manner; to use the boys’ phrase, ‘there
was no humbug about old Brandiston.’ Boys do not mind bluffness,
roughness, or even gruffness of manner; what they hate is humbug. And
they are apt to assume that anyone whose manner is at all effusive or
demonstrative is a humbug. They do not, as a rule, themselves indulge
in forcible eulogistic expressions; ‘not bad’ is one of their strongest
forms of eulogy. It is somewhat curious that boys, whose expressions of
censure or condemnation are so vehement, should be so moderate in their
expressions of approval. But so it is, and they are often distrustful
of anyone whose words or actions go beyond their own usual practice.
But Mr. Brandiston was admitted to be as good as his word.
And he was just. Boys admire justice, and Mr. Brandiston was just. It
may be that he plumed himself a little upon his justice. If so, the
boys were not unwilling to forgive him. Boys despise weakness, and are
wholly unmerciful in taking advantage of it. But they do not resent
severity, so long as it is impartial. They are strangely impatient of
undeserved punishment, forgetting how often they escape punishment
which is richly deserved; but if they have done wrong, and are fairly
detected in doing wrong, they do not mind being punished, they expect
punishment, and rather like it.
One point in Mr. Brandiston’s favour it would be unfair to pass over.
It is that he was generally called ‘old Brandiston.’ The epithet ‘old’
is apt to be taken as descriptive of age. It may denote age, but it may
denote something quite different. There are some persons who in the
vocabulary of boys are always ‘old,’ and always were ‘old.’ They are
persons varying in age, character, and experience. But I do not recall
any instance of a man or boy being known in a school as ‘old,’ if he
was permanently unpopular among the boys. Mr. Brandiston was just, and
he was called ‘old Brandiston.’ More fortunate than Aristides in the
ancient story, he did not forfeit his popularity by his justice.
Mr. Brandiston, or ‘old Brandiston,’ if for once it may be permitted to
call him so, took a definite and precise view of the duties of school
life. His formality of view was rather like his formal manner of going
round his house at night. He held that boys ought to work and ought
to play. If a boy both worked well and played well, he set him on a
pedestal in his affections. If he either worked well or played well,
he regarded him as a not unworthy member of his house. But if a boy was
not distinguished in work or in play, it was Mr. Brandiston’s opinion
that he ought to have gone to some other house. Yet even this is not
a complete exposition of Mr. Brandiston’s educational theory. For he
expected his athletes to work with sufficient assiduity to obtain
respectable places in the school, and he expected his scholars to
follow the regular recognised lines of public school education. He had
no idea of any athletes who were not cricketers or football players. He
had no idea of any scholars who were not good at Latin and Greek, or at
mathematics; he was sometimes suspected of not setting much store even
by mathematics. It would have been as disagreeable to him that any of
his pupils should achieve distinction in Chemistry or German as that
they should achieve it at hoops or marbles. He was a worshipper of the
_mens sana in corpore sano_. The thing which he disliked most cordially
was ‘loafing;’ but under ‘loafing’ he included not only idling about
the street or lolling in the confectioners’ shops, but the irregular
studious habits of boys who sat reading books in their rooms or in the
library, instead of taking part in the games.
Such being Mr. Brandiston’s theory of school life, it is easy to
imagine what sort of language he would address to his two pupils, Harry
Venniker and Gerald Eversley, when they were successively called into
his study on the morning after the first night which they had spent
as schoolfellows and companions in the same room. He had purposely
placed them together, not so much from the love of paradox as on
principle, because it was a fixed article of his belief that boys of
widely different characters and antecedents, by being placed together,
did each other good, rubbing off angles (as he said), the shy scholar
becoming more a man of the world, and the athletic aristocrat imbibing
a qualified love of learning.
To Harry Venniker, who entered the study with his usual sunny smile,
Mr. Brandiston expressed the hope that his mother, whose delicacy he
had heard of, was better; he alluded to his father and other members of
his family who had been at St. Anselm’s; then he added: ‘I dare say you
will soon make friends, or find them ready made in the house. I shall
expect you to work and get up the school, for the credit of the house.
I hear you are a good cricketer, a lefthand bowler; is that true?’
Harry said ‘Yes, sir, I bowl a little,’ with a flush of pleasure
mantling upon his cheek.
Well, you must get into the Eleven,’ continued Mr. Brandiston, ‘and I
shall look to you to win the great match.’
It was in a different spirit, timid and trembling, that Gerald Eversley
entered the study. A _tête-à-tête_ with his house master was to him
like the ancient ordeal of fire or water. He did not venture to lift
his eyes from the floor until he heard Mr. Brandiston say kindly:
‘Well, Eversley, and how do you like St. Anselm’s?’ A pause. ‘But it
is too early to ask that yet. Rather strange, is it not? You have not
finished unpacking yet, I see,’ looking, as he spoke, at Gerald’s neck
and chin, so Gerald thought. ‘Your father tells me you have not been at
school before. All the more credit to you,’ he added, seeing the boy’s
look of pain, ‘to have won a scholarship straight from home. You must
try for some of the classical prizes soon. I hope you will do the house
credit. I shall expect you to be captain of the school some day. Now
you may go and get your books from Arkwright’s.’
Harry Venniker, who had been waiting for his companion in the passage
outside the study, prevented the possibility of any remark that Gerald
might have wished to make by his rapid questions. ‘What did you think
of him? Not a bad sort, is he? He asked me if I wasn’t a bowler, and
told me he hoped I should get into the Eleven. What did he say to you?’
It was not necessary for Gerald to reply to the question respecting his
opinion of his house master, for Harry ran on with his sentences like
a mountain-stream flowing over the pebbles in its bed but not delayed
by them; but he thought of Mr. Brandiston as the incarnation of law and
order and felt disposed to worship him accordingly.
They went off to Arkwright’s, the bookseller’s shop.
‘I say, Arbuthnot,’ cried a little red-haired boy named Thornton, who
had been watching the two new boys as they rounded the corner of the
passage leading from the boys’ entrance of the boarding house into the
street, ‘here’s a new chap come who has got “stick-ups” and a jacket.’
Thornton, as having been exactly one term in the school, had arrogated
to himself the position of an authority upon scholastic etiquette.
Seniority soon confers authority at a public school. It may be
necessary to explain that the social solecism of which Gerald Eversley
was thus pronounced to be guilty consisted in wearing the ‘stick-up’
collars which are at St. Anselm’s the traditional accompaniments of
a tailcoat, instead of the smooth flat-lying collars--sometimes known
as the Eton collars--with a jacket. His costume had thus become a
curious blending of the dress of the senior and the junior boys at St.
Anselm’s. It offended the sentiments of both classes of boys.
Arbuthnot opened his eyes in astonishment. It seemed impossible to
believe that any boy, however ‘green,’ would be ignorant of the
immemorial laws of dress at St. Anselm’s.
‘No,’ he said; ‘that’s too rich.’
‘I swear he is though,’ was Thornton’s reply; ‘he’s just come out of
Brandiston’s study. I wonder what the old ’un said to him.’
The impeachment of Gerald Eversley’s costume was unfortunately true.
Mr. Eversley, knowing nothing of public schools, had not imagined that
it could matter what kind of collars a boy in jackets might wear.
‘Well, he _must_ be a “green,”’ said Arbuthnot.
‘I believe you,’ answered Thornton. ‘I took a wink at him this morning
in Hall, and, my eye, if he hadn’t been blubbing all night! We’ll have
some fun out of him when the fag-spotting’s over.’
It was the humane and merciful rule of Mr. Brandiston’s house
that a new boy might not be molested or persecuted by impertinent
interrogations until twenty-four hours after his entering the house.
The reason of it was that on the evening of the second day of the term
all the boys liable to fagging (including, of course, all the new boys)
were divided by a long-established principle of selection among the
Sixth Form, and after that time, but not before, a new boy was felt to
possess a natural patron or protector, and therefore to be a legitimate
victim for the shafts of his natural enemies.
The ceremony of choosing the fags, or, as it was technically
designated, ‘fag-spotting,’ deserves something more than a passing
notice. It was a strange and almost barbarous ceremony. In some
respects the nearest parallel to it may be said to have been the sale
of slave girls in the market at Constantinople. The fags, or rather
the boys liable to fagging, were marshalled after supper at one end of
the Hall, and the Sixth Form boys stood at the other. Between them,
seated at the different tables and turning their faces now to one end
of the Hall and now to the other, according as they were interested in
the deliberations of the Sixth Form or in the behaviour of the various
candidates for their favour, were the mass of boys in the house, who
had risen, by seniority or by position in the school, above the
obligation of fagging, but were still below, and some of them much
below, the dignity of the Sixth Form who were alone entitled to choose
or ‘spot’ fags. These boys constituted what may perhaps be called a
neutral or buffer state between the fagmasters and their fags. The
Sixth Form boys chose fags in turn according to an order of precedence
which depended upon their rank in the school, and the choice might be
made either by calling a boy’s name, or, if his name were not known,
by walking up to him and laying a hand upon his shoulder. When every
Sixth Form boy had chosen a fag, the choice began over again, and so
continued until the number of the fags was exhausted, every one of
them having now received his fagmaster. It was open to any Sixth Form
boy to inspect these candidates (if they may be so called) for the
privilege of waiting upon him, for cleanliness was a recommendation
in a fag as well as attractiveness of appearance or alacrity, and it
would happen not unfrequently that one Sixth Form boy, acting the part
of the _Præpostor Immundorum_ or Præpostor of the Dirty Boys in the
ancient days of English public school life, would cause a boy, whom he
thought of choosing, to hold out his hands amidst the critical applause
and laughter of his schoolfellows. With the fags it was a point of
honour to be chosen early. Happy indeed was he who was so fortunate
as to obtain the suffrage of the head of the house. Sometimes a fag
was chosen on grounds of personal friendship, or of domestic interest,
if a Sixth Form boy ‘knew him at home’ or had been specially asked to
select him as a fag; but in general the choice was determined by the
superficial merits or demerits of the fags themselves.
It was rumoured among the smaller boys of the house (though with what
truth was not known) that Stanley, the captain of the Eleven, had
announced his intention of making Harry Venniker his fag, and had in
fact used his personal influence to prevent his being chosen by any
Sixth Form boy higher in the school than himself. Whether that was so
or not, it turned out that Harry had not yet been chosen when it came
to Stanley’s turn to make his choice, and he uttered the momentous
words ‘I’ll have that chap, Venniker.’ Meanwhile, as the choosing of
the fags proceeded, it became probable that Gerald Eversley would be
left to the last. No Sixth Form boy knew him or was interested in
choosing him. He saw one companion after another named and taken from
his side. He was left. The ignominy of being constantly passed over was
like ‘the iron entering into his soul.’ He hoped, he ardently prayed,
that he might not be left to the very last. But still the election went
on, and still his name was not called. At length came the terrible
moment when he remained alone. All eyes in the Hall were fixed on him.
It fell to a Sixth Form boy named Browne--a boy who was not in any way
conspicuous--to ‘spot’ the last fag.
‘I suppose I must have this fellow,’ he said contemptuously. ‘What’s
your name--you in the “stick-ups”?’
There was a momentary profound silence in the Hall. The attention of
all the boys had been called to the disgrace which Mr. Eversley’s
ignorance of the rules of dress had brought upon his son. A boy in the
fourth form whispered to his neighbour, who was also in the fourth
form, that his nickname was sure to be ‘Stick-ups.’
‘Eversley, sir,’ he replied at last amidst a general outburst of
laughter; for in his confusion he had addressed Browne as if he were a
master. ‘Well,’ said Browne, ‘I see I’m reduced to you,’ then turning
with a smile to his colleagues in the Sixth Form, he added, ‘Eversley’s
my horse--rather a dark one.’
In this way Gerald Eversley became a fag. The ‘spotting’ of the fags
being now concluded, and their social destiny decided for the term,
the Sixth Form, according to custom, left the Hall.
The boys who were not in the Sixth Form stayed behind, according
to custom, for a second ceremony in which (as may be supposed) the
inherent dignity of the Sixth Form forbade them to participate. It was
called the ‘trying of voices.’ Like the ‘fag-spotting’ it always took
place in the Hall on the second evening of the term. It was customary
that the boy highest in the school below the Sixth Form, who was known
as the captain of Hall, should choose a song: it was played by some
boy who possessed sufficient musical knowledge to accomplish a tune on
the piano, then the new boys sang it, or some verses of it, in turn.
On this occasion the captain of Hall was a boy named Tracy, not a
boy who enjoyed a very admirable reputation among his schoolfellows.
He had brought down a comic song called ‘Uncle Sam’ which had
lately acquired a certain popularity in the London music halls. It
described, in language not particularly coarse, but on the other hand
not particularly refined, how the hero of the song, Uncle Sam, had
maintained an imperturbable demeanour amidst a variety of trials,
partly financial, partly social, and partly conjugal, which were
related with a good deal of detail. Like most songs of similar nature
it contained a chorus, sung at the end of every verse by the soloist
and then taken up by all the boys. The chorus was in these words:
You may laugh, said Uncle Sam,
But I do not care a d--n;
I’ll be jolly, jolly, jolly as I am.
It is possible that the song is still remembered in some quarters.
The new boys were called upon to sing it, one after another. There
were eight new boys in all. The first three of them sang it with more
or less success, the second, indeed, less successfully than the other
two; for he had no ear, and the sounds which issued from his lips bore
at the best a dim and distant resemblance to the tune that was being
played on the piano. But he persevered to the end, and was loudly
cheered. Then the captain of Hall called ‘Venniker.’ Harry Venniker
had a good voice; his appearance and manner were prepossessing, and
he sat down amidst general applause. The same fourth form boy, who
had whispered to his neighbour before, remarked now, though in a less
audible tone, that he seemed ‘rather a good sort.’
All this time Gerald Eversley, holding the words of the song in his
hand, was in agony of mind. It was not that he could not sing, as he
was fond of music, and possessed some little skill upon the organ. But
there was a word in the chorus which his scrupulous conscience felt to
be wicked. It was not a word that he had known to be used, except once,
on a very hot day, by a labourer at Kestercham. But he conceived it to
be an offence against God. He had heard his father speak of its solemn
and terrible meaning in preaching upon the text--‘He that believeth not
shall be damned.’ It was one of the words that he had promised never to
use. No doubt he magnified the sinfulness of using it, if sinfulness
there were. You who read this story are wiser than he was; you use it,
perhaps, and think nothing of it. But would it not be better for you,
in the presence of the angels, if your conscience were as pure and
sensitive as his?
Another boy was called upon to sing after Harry Venniker; then Gerald.
He hesitated a little, and did not begin when the pianist began.
‘Look sharp, I say,’ said Tracy; ‘we can’t wait here all night.’
In a low tone, rather tremulously, he sang a verse; then, as he
approached the words of the chorus, his voice showed signs of
faltering. At the second line he stopped; the pianist left him behind
again. The boys all looked at him in surprise.
‘I tell you what it is, youngster,’ said Tracy, ‘every new chap has got
to sing a verse; that’s the rule of the house; and if you don’t choose
to sing, it will be the worse for you.’
Gerald looked round the Hall as the victim at an auto-da-fé may often
have cast his eyes around the ring of spectators without discerning a
movement of sympathy on any face; the boys did not even understand what
his difficulty was.
‘Now, then,’ said Tracy; and the boy at the piano began the chorus once
more.
Gerald repeated the words:--
‘You may laugh ... said Uncle Sam,
But ... I ... do not ... care;’
then he broke down, hid his face in his hands, and rushed from the Hall.
The boys sat gazing at each other. Nobody spoke.
‘What the devil is the matter with the young fool?’ said Tracy at last.
‘Don’t you see?’ suggested another fifth form boy, Coleridge by name,
next in seniority to Tracy, and of higher character, ‘he didn’t like
the little word--d, a, m, n. That’s the fence which he refused.’
Immediately there was an outburst of discordant voices expressing
astonishment, doubt, indignation, anger, and some few compassion, the
boys all talking at once, and eagerly discussing the procedure to
be adopted. Some boys (among whom Tracy was conspicuous) urged that
Gerald ought to be brought back at once perforce, and made to sing,
being subjected to corporal chastisement if he refused; others that his
behaviour, as being an unprecedented violation of the rules and customs
of the house, should be referred to the Sixth Form; others, again, that
he should be sent to Coventry for a month; others, that he should incur
a double measure of fagging. But there were not a few boys--and some of
these the most influential--who felt in their hearts, and after a time
began to express the feeling, that Tracy had made a mistake alike of
taste and of judgment in choosing a song which contained any word of a
questionable nature, even though it was one that boys used habitually
without much thinking of it; it was a shame (they said) to compel ‘a
kid like that’ to use the word at all, and the incident, if it got
abroad in the school, would reflect no great credit on the house. The
one point, therefore, upon which the whole house agreed was that the
incident must not be allowed to get abroad. For the rest, as generally
happens when a multitude of counsellors deliberate upon a plan of
action, it was resolved to take no action at all. But the ‘trying of
voices’ was at an end for that night. The meeting broke up, and the
boys stood in knots in the passages or outside the rooms, discussing
what had taken place. It was universally felt that Gerald was ‘not up
to snuff,’ and that the sooner he was initiated into that mystery, the
better; but opinion was in favour of letting the initiation be effected
by the gradual and subtle awakening process of school life, rather
than by the searching test of the ‘trying of voices.’ This opinion
was confirmed when it became known that the Sixth Form, who were
the supreme arbiters of all moral or social questions in the house,
had decided against inflicting any pains and penalties upon Gerald
Eversley, and that the particular member of the Sixth Form who had
chosen him, or had been reduced to taking him as a fag, had pronounced
the treatment which he had experienced to be a shame.
When Harry Venniker returned to his room, he found Gerald Eversley
weeping by the fireside.
‘Well, you young fool,’ he said, ‘you’ve made a pretty shindy. The
whole house is talking about what’s to be done to you.’
Gerald was silent.
‘You don’t mean to say,’ continued Harry, ‘that you object to saying
_damn_. Why, it’s what everybody says.’
‘But I promised I wouldn’t say it,’ replied Gerald amidst his tears.
‘Why not?’
‘My father says it’s a wicked word,’ was the answer.
It was an answer which Harry Venniker found some difficulty in meeting,
for it was an article of his moral code that parental authority ought
to be respected, however irrational it might be.
‘All I can say is,’ he continued after an interval, ‘that I don’t see
how you are to get on if you are always thinking things wrong.’
‘But isn’t it wrong?’ said Gerald.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ replied Harry; ‘I suppose it is, if you look at it
in that way; but it’s what everybody does, and, upon my word, I don’t
see the harm of it.... However, if you object to it,’ he added, when
he had meditated upon the problem for a few moments, ‘I suppose you
are right, and if fellows try to bully you, I’ll let them know what I
think, only you can’t exactly wear a pinafore in a house like this.’
And that was the limit of the sympathy which Gerald experienced in his
first protest against public opinion.
Still, it soon became known in the house that Harry Venniker, while
regarding his room-fellow as ‘rather a muff, don’t you see?’ was not
disposed to see him the victim of systematic persecution. He was
reported to have ‘punched’ the red head of the boy Thornton, who had
intruded with malicious purpose into the room, whistling the tune of
the song which had proved fatal to poor Gerald’s peace of mind, and
making two or three mimetic pauses in the first lines of the chorus.
This tacit championship was of the highest value to Gerald Eversley.
For boys possess a singular faculty (if they care to exercise it) of
making other boys’ lives intolerable. They are masters of the art of
annoyance and irritation. They understand how by speech, and still more
by silence, to convey the killing sense of their displeasure. I will
undertake to say that half a dozen small boys, without committing any
such action as could bring them within reach of the law, will drive
a schoolfellow to the verge of despair. But against this organised,
though indeterminate, persecution, the voice of one boy, if clear and
courageous, possesses great weight. Gerald Eversley owed more than he
was aware of to the stalwart, if somewhat unsympathetic, defence of
Harry Venniker. But for that, it is probable that his social error in
coming to school with ‘stick-up’ collars, and his moral error (for so
it was widely considered) in refusing to sing a song selected in due
order by the captain of Hall, would have brought him into considerable
trouble. As it was, however, the boys did nothing worse than leave him
very much to himself; they would look at one another in a knowing way,
and perhaps shrug their shoulders, when he passed, or one of them would
nudge his arm at dinner to prevent his eating with absolute equanimity,
or ask him the Latin for a saint, or inquire if his mother or his
sisters knew that he was out; once or twice he found his boots filled
with water in the morning, or a blot of ink upon his carefully written
exercise; or his hat was hidden away, to make him late for chapel; or
he received on the first of April a packet of ‘stick-up’ collars as a
present.
Boys’ memories are generally short-lived. Nine days’ wonders do not
last nine days in a school. Events follow each other with such rapidity
and variety that neither successes nor defeats are long remembered. The
nickname ‘Stick-ups’ adhered to Gerald Eversley for about five weeks,
and then, as the original cause of it had disappeared after the first
two or three days of the term, it dropped. The incident of the song
was remembered a little longer; but its only permanent result was that
the Sixth Form decided not to leave the choice of songs to the captain
of Hall, but to prescribe a song of which a verse should be sung by
all new boys, and after much consideration the ‘March of the Men of
Harlech’ was adopted for this purpose as being at once simple, moral,
and inspiriting.
There came to be a tacit understanding among the boys in Mr.
Brandiston’s house that Gerald Eversley was not altogether like others,
and that it was necessary to treat him differently from them, that he
was a fair subject for good-humoured chaff, but that it was a ‘chouse’
to bully him, and that as Venniker (who was admitted to be a downright
good fellow) could put up with him in his room, the boys generally
could put up with him in the house.
Harry Venniker wrote home to his father a long letter telling him that
the ‘chap’ whom they had seen on the platform was in his house and in
his room, that he was ‘awfully pious,’ and Harry doubted if he had
ever been out of his nursery; that he had got himself into trouble by
refusing to sing a song in which the word ‘damn’ occurred, and that
Harry did not know what a boy was to do ‘with notions like that;’ but,
added Harry at the end of his letter, ‘he is not such a bad fellow,
though a terrible milksop, and if other boys are down upon him, I mean
to stick up for him as well as I can.’ In addition, Harry said that he
was ‘getting on all right,’ and life at St. Anselm’s was ‘good fun on
the whole.’
Gerald Eversley, in writing to his father, made no allusion to the
‘trying of voices;’ he did not know whether he ought not to tell his
father about it, but he could not make up his mind how to describe
it, though he began it several times, but after fully describing the
other incidents of his first days at St. Anselm’s, and especially his
association with Venniker, he went on to say that he found school-life
very different from his expectation, a great many things of which he
had had no experience were said and done in it; he could not say he
liked it at present, but he hoped he should come to like it better
as time went on. Mr. Eversley read the letter more than once, then
wrote _Gerald, No. 1_, on the envelope, and put it away in his desk by
itself.