in it, came a visible decline. In the afternoon Mr. Mainwearing would
start a class upon some sort of exercises, delegate Probyn to keep
order, and retire to slumber in his study; Smithers and Kahn, who both
suffered from indigestion, would quarrel bitterly with boys they
disliked and inflict punishments; Noakley would sleep quietly through a
drawing class on the tacit understanding that there was no audible
misbehaviour, and that the boys would awaken him if they heard Mr.
Mainwearing coming.
Mr. Mainwearing, when he came, usually came viciously. He would awaken
in an evil temper and sit cursing his life for some time before he could
rouse himself to a return to duty. He would suddenly become filled with
suspicions, about the behaviour of the boys or the worthiness of his
assistants. He would take his cane and return with a heavy scowl on his
face through the archway to his abandoned class.
He would hear a murmur of disorder, a squeak of “cavé!” and a hush.
Or he would hear Probyn’s loud bellow: “Shut up, young Pyecroft. Shut
it, I say!—or I’ll report you!”
He would appear threateningly in the doorway.
“What’s he doing, Probyn?” he would ask. “What’s he doing?”
“Humbugging about, Sir. He’s _always_ humbugging about.”
The diffused wrath of Mr. Mainwearing would gather to a focus. If there
were no little beasts like young Pyecroft he wouldn’t be in this
infernal, dull, dreary hole of a school.
“_I’ll_ teach you to humbug about, Pyecroft,” he would say. “Come out,
Sir!”
“Please, Sir!”
Roar. “Don’t _bandy_ words with me, you little Hound! Come out, I say!”
“Please——!” Young Pyecroft would come out slowly and weeping. Mr.
Mainwearing would grip him hungrily.
“_I’ll_ teach you to humbug about. (Cut.) I’ll teach you! (Cut.) I can’t
leave this class-room for a moment but half a dozen of you must go
turning it upside down.” (Cut.)
“Wow!”
“Don’t answer _me_, Sir!” (Cut.) “Don’t answer me.” (Cut.) “_Now_, Sir?”
Pyecroft completely subdued. Pyecroft relinquished.
“Now, are there any more of you?” asked Mr. Mainwearing, feeling a
little better.
Then he would hesitate. Should he take the set work at once, or should
he steal upstairs on tiptoe to catch out one of the assistants? His
practice varied. He always suspected Noakley of his afternoon sleep, and
was never able to catch him. Noakley slept with the class-room door
slightly open. His boys could hear the opening of the class-room door
downstairs. When they did they would smack down a book upon the desk
close beside him, and Noakley would start teaching instantly like an
automaton that has just been released. He didn’t take a second to
awaken, so that he was very hard indeed to catch.
The school remained a scene of jaded activities until four, when a bell
rang for afternoon prayers under Mr. Mainwearing in the main schoolroom.
Then the boys would sing a hymn while Kahn accompanied on a small
harmonium that stood in the corner of the room. While prayers were going
on a certain scattered minority of the boys were speculating whether
Kahn or Smithers would remember this or that task that had been imposed
in a moment of passion, weighing whether it was safer to obey or forget.
Kahn and Smithers would return to the class-rooms reluctantly to gather
in the harvest of their own wrath, but now for a little time Noakley was
free to do nothing. Noakley hardly ever imposed punishments. When he was
spoken to upon the subject he would put his nose down in a thoughtful
manner and reply in a tone of mild observation: “The boys, they seem to
_mind_ me somehow.”
Meanwhile the released boys dispersed to loaf about the playground and
the outhouses and playing-field until tea at five. Sometimes there was a
hectic attempt at cricket or football in the field in which Mr.
Mainwearing participated, and then tea was at half-past five. When Mr.
Mainwearing participated he liked to bat, and he did not like to be
bowled out. Noakley was vaguely supposed to superintend tea and evening
prep., and the boys, after a supper of milk and biscuits, were packed
off to bed at half-past eight. It was much too early to send the bigger
boys to bed, but “Good God!” said Mr. Mainwearing; “am I to have _no_
peace in my day?” And he tried to ease his conscience about what might
go on in the dormitories after bedtime by directing Noakley to “exercise
a general supervision,” and by occasionally stealing upstairs in his
socks.
Wednesday and Saturday were half-holidays, and in the afternoon the boys
wore flannels or shorts, according to the season, and played pick-up
cricket or football or hockey in a well-worn field at the back of the
school, or they went for a walk with Noakley or Smithers. On Sundays
they wore top hats and pseudo-Eton jackets, and went to church in the
morning and the evening. In the afternoon Smithers took Scripture
wearily for an hour, and then went for a walk with Noakley. And on
Sunday evening they wrote home carefully supervised letters saying how
happy they were and how they were all in the best of health and about
“examinational prospects,” and how they hoped they were making
satisfactory progress and suchlike topics. But they never gave any
account of the talk that went on during the playground loafing, nor of
the strange games and ceremonies over which Probyn presided in the
dormitories, nor of the exercises of Mr. Mainwearing’s cane. There was
no library, and the boys never read anything except school books and
such printed matter as they themselves introduced into the school. They
never read nor drew nor painted nor made verses to please themselves.
They never dreamt of acting or singing. Their only training in the use
of their hands was at cricket, and they never looked at a newspaper.
Occasionally Smithers gave a lesson in botany, but there was no other
science teaching. Science teaching requires apparatus and apparatus
costs money, and so far as the prospectus went it was quite easy to call
the botany “science.”...
§ 10
In this manner did High Cross School grind and polish its little batch
of boys for their participation in the affairs of the greatest, most
civilized and most civilizing empire the world has ever seen.
It was, perhaps, a bad specimen of an English private school, but it was
a specimen. There were worse as well as better among the schools of
England. There were no doubt many newer and larger, many cleaner, many
better classified. Some had visiting drill-sergeants, some had chemistry
cupboards, some had specially built gymnasia, some even had school
libraries of a hundred volumes or so.... Most of them had better housing
and better arranged dormitories. And most of them were consistently
“preparatory,” stuck to an upward age-limit, and turned out a boy as
soon as he became a youth to go on to business or medicine or the public
schools. Mr. Mainwearing’s school was exceptional in this, that it had
to hold on to all it could get. He had a connexion with one or two
solicitors, an understanding—Mr. Grimes was one of his friends—and his
school contained in addition to Peter several other samples of that
unfortunate type of boy whose school is found for him by a solicitor.
Some stayed at Windsor with Mr. Mainwearing during the holidays. In that
matter High Cross School was exceptional. But the want of any
intellectual interest, of any spontaneous activities of the mind at all
in High Cross School, was no exceptional thing.
Life never stands altogether still, but it has a queer tendency to form
stationary eddies, and very much of the education of middle-class and
upper-class youth in England had been an eddy for a century. The still
exquisite and impressionable brains of the new generation came tumbling
down the stream, curious, active, greedy, and the eddying schools caught
them with a grip of iron and spun them round and round for six or seven
precious years and at last flung them out....
§ 11
Into this vicious eddy about Mr. Mainwearing’s life and school came the
developing brain of Master Peter Stubland, and resented it extremely. At
first he had been too much astonished by his transfer from Limpsfield to
entertain any other emotion; it was only after some days at High Cross
School that he began to realize that the experience was not simply
astonishing but uncongenial, and indeed hateful.
He discovered he hated the whole place. Comprehended within this general
hatred were particular ones. He hated Newton. The fight remained in
suspense, neither boy knew anything of scientific fisticuffs, neither
had ever worn a boxing-glove, and both were disposed to evade the hard,
clear issue of the ring. But Newton continued to threaten and grimace at
him, and once as he was passing Peter on the staircase he turned about
and punched him in the back.
For Newton Peter’s hatred was uncomplicated; for Probyn and a second boy
nearly as big, a fair, sleepy boy named Ames, Peter had a feeling that
differed from a clear, clean hatred; it had an element of disgust and
dread in it. Probyn, with Ames as an accessory and Newton as his pet
toady, dominated the school. It is an unnatural and an unwholesome thing
for boys and youths of various ages to be herded as closely together as
they were in High Cross School; the natural instinct of the young is
against such an association. In a good, big school whose atmosphere is
wholesome, boys will classify themselves out in the completest way; they
will not associate, they will scarcely speak with boys outside their own
year. There is a foolish way of disposing of this fact by saying that
boys are “such Snobs.” But indeed they are kept apart by the fiercest
instinct of self-preservation. All life and all its questions are
stirring and unfolding in the young boy; in every sort of young creature
a natural discretion fights against forced and premature developments.
“Keep to your phase,” says nature. The older boys, perplexed by novel
urgencies and curiosities, are embarrassed by their younger fellows;
younger boys are naturally afraid of older ones and a little disposed to
cringe. But what were such considerations as these to a man like
Mainwearing? He had never thought over, he had long since forgotten, his
own development. Any boy, old or young, whose parents could pay the
bill, was got into the school and kept in the school as long as
possible. None of the school work was interesting; there were constant
gaps in the routine when there was nothing to do but loaf. It was
inevitable that the older boys should become mischievous louts; they
bullied and tormented and corrupted the younger boys because there was
nothing else to do; if there had been anything else to do they would
have absolutely disregarded the younger boys; and the younger boys did
what they could to propitiate these powerful and unaccountable giants.
The younger boys “sucked up” to the bigger boys; they became, as it
were, clients; they were annexed by patrons. They professed unlimited
obedience in exchange for protection. Newton, for instance, called
himself Probyn’s “monkey”; Pyecroft was Ames’s. Probyn would help Newton
with his sums, amuse himself by putting him to the torture (when Newton
was expected to display a doglike submission) or make him jealous by
professing an affection for other small boys.
Peter came into this stuffy atmosphere of forced and undignified
relationships instinct, though he knew it not, with a passionate sense
of honour. From the very beginning he knew there was something in these
boys and in their atmosphere that made them different from himself,
something from which he had to keep himself aloof. There was a word
missing from his vocabulary that would have expressed it, and that word
was “Cad.” But at the School of St. George and the Venerable Bede they
were not taught to call any people “cads.”
He was a boy capable of considerable reserve. He did not, like young
Winterbaum, press his every thought and idea upon those about him. He
could be frank where he was confident, but this sense of difference
smote him dumb. Several of his schoolfellows, old Noakley, and Mr.
Mainwearing, became uncomfortably aware of an effect of unspoken comment
in Peter. He would receive a sudden phrase of abuse with a thoughtful
expression, as though he weighed it and compared it with some exterior
standard. This irritated a school staff accustomed to use abusive
language. Probyn, after Peter had hit Newton, took a fancy to him that
did not in the least modify Peter’s instinctive detestation of the red
nostrils and the sloppy mouth and the voluminous bellow. Peter became
rapidly skilful in avoiding Probyn’s conversation, and this monstrously
enhanced his attraction for Probyn. Probyn’s attention varied between
deliberate attempts to vex and deliberate attempts to propitiate. He
kept alive the promise of a fight with Newton, and frankly declared that
Peter could lick Newton any day. Newton was as distressed as a cast
mistress.
One evening the cadaverous boy discovered Peter drawing warriors on
horseback. He reported this strange gift to Ames. Ames came demanding
performances, and Peter obliged.
“He _can_ draw,” said Ames. “George and the Dragon, eh? It’s _good_.”
Probyn was shouted to, and joined in the admiration.
Peter drew this and that by request.
“Draw a woman,” said Ames, and then, as the nimble pencil obeyed,
“No—not an old woman. Draw—you know. Draw a savage woman.”
“Draw a girl bathing—like they are in _Ally Sloper’s Half-Holiday_,”
said Probyn. “Just with light things on.”
“Draw a heathen goddess,” said Ames. “With nothing on at all.”
Peter said he couldn’t draw goddesses.
“Go on,” said Ames. “Draw a savage woman.”
Peter, being pressed, tried a negress. They hung over him insisting upon
details.
“Get _out_, young Newton!” cried Probyn. “Don’t come hanging round here.
He’s drawing things.”
Ames pressed further requests.
“Shan’t draw any more,” said Peter with a sudden disinclination.
“Go it, Simon Peter,” said Ames, “don’t be a mammy-good.”
“Gaw! if I could draw!” said Probyn.
But Peter had finished drawing.
§ 12
No further questions were asked Peter about his father, but on Sunday
night, when home-letter time came round, any doubt about the soundness
of his social position was set at rest by Mr. Mainwearing himself.
Home-letters from High Cross School involved so many delicate
considerations that the proprietor made it his custom to supervise them
himself. He distributed sheets of paper with the school heading, and
afterwards he collected them and addressed them himself in his study.
“You, Stubland, must write a letter to your aunt,” he said loudly across
the room, “and tell her how you are getting on.”
“Aunt Phyllis?” said Peter.
“No, no!” Mr. Mainwearing answered in clear tones. “Your aunt, Lady
Charlotte Sydenham.”
Respectful glances at Peter, and a stare of admiration from Probyn.
After a season of reflection Peter held up his hand. “Please, Sir, I
don’t write letters to Lady Charlotte.”
“You must begin.”
Still further reflection. “I want to write to my Aunt Phyllis.”
“Nonsense! Do as I tell you.”
Peter reflected again for some minutes. He was deeply moved. He
controlled a disposition to weep. (No one was going to see Peter blub in
this school—ever.) Then Mr. Mainwearing saw him begin to write, with
intervals of deep thought. But the letter was an unsatisfactory one.
“_Dear Aunt Phyllis_,” it began—in spite of instructions.
“_This is a very nice school and I like it very much. I have no
pocket-money. We eat Toke. Please come and take me away now. Your
affectionate nephew_
“PETER.”
Then Peter rubbed his eyes and it made his finger wet, and there was a
drop of eye wet fell on the paper, but he did not blub. He did not blub,
he knew, because he had made up his mind not to blub, but his face was
flushed almost like that of a boy who has been blubbing.
Mr. Mainwearing came and read the letter. “Come, come,” he said, “this
won’t do,” which was just what Peter had expected. “This is obstinacy,”
said Mr. Mainwearing.
He got Peter a fresh sheet of paper and stood over him. “Write as I tell
you,” said Mr. Mainwearing.
The other boys listened as this letter was dictated to a quiet but
obedient Peter:
“_Dear Lady Charlotte_,
“_I arrived safely on Wednesday at High Cross School_, _which I like
very much. I had a long ride in an automobile. Mr. Grimes bought me
a splendid bat. Mr. Mainwearing has examined me upon my attainments,
and believes that with effort I shall make satisfactory progress
here. We play cricket here and do modern science as well as our
classical studies. I hope you may never be disappointed by my
efforts after all your kindness to me._
“_Your affectionate nephew_,
“PETER STUBLAND.”
In the night Peter woke up out of an ugly and miserable dream, and his
eyes were wet with tears. He believed he was caught at High Cross School
for good and all. He believed that all the things he hated and dreaded
were about him now for ever.
§ 13
From the first Mr. Mainwearing had been prepared for Peter’s antagonism.
He had been warned by Mr. Grimes that Peter might prove “a little
difficult.” The letter to Aunt Phyllis confirmed this impression he had
already formed of a fund of stiff resistance in his new pupil. “I shall
have to talk to that young man,” he said.
The occasion was not long in coming.
It came next morning in the general Scripture lesson. The boys were
reading the Gospel of St. Matthew verse by verse, and in order to check
inattention Mr. Mainwearing, instead of allowing the boys to read in
rotation, was dodging the next verse irregularly from boy to boy. “Now,
Pyecroft,” he would say; “Now—Rivers.”
He was always ready to pick up a nickname and improve upon it for the
general amusement. “Now, Simonides,” he said.
No answer.
“Simonides!”
Peter, with his New Testament open before him, was studying the map of
Africa on the end wall. That was Egypt and that was the Nile, and down
that you went to Uganda, where all the people dressed in white and Nobby
walked fearlessly among lions.
Peter became aware of a loud shout of “Sim-on-i-des!”
It was apparently being addressed to him by Mr. Mainwearing. He returned
at a jump to Europe and High Cross School.
“Wool-gathering again,” said Mr. Mainwearing. “Thinking of the dear old
Agapemone, eh? We can’t have that here, young man. We can’t allow that
here. We must quicken that proud but sluggish spirit of yours. With the
usual stimulus. Come out, sir.”
He moved towards the cane, which hung from a nail beside the high desk.
Obliging schoolfellows explained to Peter. “He spoke to you three
times.” “He’s going to swish you.” “You’ll get it.”
Peter went very white and sat very tight.
“Now, young man,” said Mr. Mainwearing, flicking the cane. “Step out,
please....
“Come out here, sir.”
No answer from Peter.
“Stubland,” roared Mr. Mainwearing. “Come out at once.”
There came a break in the traditions of High Cross School.
Peter rose to his feet. It seemed he was going to obey. And then he said
in a voice, faint and small but perfectly clear, “I ain’t going to be
caned. No.”
There was a great pause. There was as it were silence in Heaven. And
then, his footsteps echoing through that immensity of awe, Mr.
Mainwearing advanced upon Peter. Peter with a loud undignified cry fled
along the wall under the map of Palestine towards the door.
“Stop him there, Ames!” cried Mr. Mainwearing.
Ames was slow to understand.
Mr. Mainwearing put down the cane on the mantelshelf and became very
active; he leapt a desk clumsily, upset an inkpot, and collided with
Ames at the door a moment after Peter had vanished. On the landing
outside Peter hesitated, and then doubled downstairs to the boot-hole.
For a moment Mr. Mainwearing was at fault. “Hell!” he said. All the
class-room heard him say “Hell!” All the school treasured that cry in
its heart for future use. “Young—,” said Mr. Mainwearing. It was long a
matter for secret disputation in the school what particularly choice
sort of young thing Mr. Mainwearing had called Peter. Then he heard a
crash in the boot-hole and was downstairs in a moment. Peter was out in
the area, up the area steps as quick as a scared grey mouse, and then he
made his mistake. He struck out across the open in front of the house.
In a dozen strides Mr. Mainwearing had him.
“I’ll thrash you, Sir,” said Mr. Mainwearing, swinging the little body
by the collar, and shaking him as a dog might shake a rat. “I’ll thrash
you. I’ll thrash you before the whole school.”
But two people had their blood up now.
“I’ll tell my uncle Nobby,” yelled Peter. “I’ll tell my uncle Nobby.
He’s a soldier.”
Thus disputing they presently reappeared in the lower class-room. Peter
was tremendously dishevelled and still kicking, and Mr. Mainwearing was
holding him by the general slack of his garments.
“Silence, Sir, while I thrash you,” said Mr. Mainwearing, and he was red
and moist.
“My uncle, he’s a soldier. He’s a V.C. You thrash me and he’ll kill you.
He’ll kill you. He’ll _kill_ you.”
“Gimme my cane, some one,” said Mr. Mainwearing.
“He’ll _kill_ you.”
Nobody got the cane. “Probyn,” cried Mr. Mainwearing, “give me my cane.”
Probyn hesitated, and then said to young Newton, “You get it.” Young
Newton had been standing up, half offering himself for this service. He
handed the cane to Mr. Mainwearing.
“You touch me!” threatened Peter, “you _touch_ me. He’ll kill you,” and
taking advantage of the moment when Mr. Mainwearing’s hand was extended
for the cane he scored a sound kick on the master’s knee. Then by an
inspired wriggle he sought to involve himself with Mr. Mainwearing’s
gown in such a manner as to protect his more vulnerable area.
But now Mr. Mainwearing was in a position to score. He stuck his cane
between his teeth in an impressive and terrible manner, and then got his
gown loose and altered his grip on his small victim. Now for it! The
school hung breathless. _Cut._ Peter became as lively as an eel. _Cut._
There were tears in his voice, but his voice was full and clear.
“He’ll kill you. He’ll come here and kill you. I’ll burn down the
school.”
“You will, will you?”
_Cut._ A kick. _Cut._ Silent wriggles.
“Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten,” counted Mr. Mainwearing and
stopped, and let go his hold with a shove. “Now go to your place,” he
said. He was secretly grateful to Peter that he went. Peter had a way at
times of looking a very small boy, and he did so now. He was tearful,
red and amazingly dishevelled, but still not broken down to technical
blubbing. His face was streaked with emotion; it was only too manifest
that the routines of High Cross had reduced his private ablutions to a
minimum. He glanced over his shoulder to see if he was still pursued. He
could still sob, “My uncle.”
But Mr. Mainwearing did not mean this to be the close of the encounter.
He had thought out the problems of discipline according to his lights; a
boy must give in. Peter had still to give in.
“And now Stubland,” he proclaimed, “stay in after afternoon school, stay
in all tomorrow, and write me out five hundred times, ’_I must not sulk.
I must obey._’ Five hundred times, Sir.”
Something muffled was audible from Peter, something suggestive of a
refusal.
“Bring them to me on Wednesday evening at latest. That will keep you
busy—and no time to spare. You hear me, Sir? ’_I must not sulk_’ and ’_I
must obey_.’ And if they are not ready, Sir, twelve strokes good and
full. And every morning until they _are_ ready, twelve strokes. That’s
how we do things here. No shirking. Play the fool with me and you pay
for it—up to the hilt. This, at any rate, is a school, a school where
discipline is respected, whatever queer Socialist Agapemone you may have
frequented before. And now I’ve taken you in hand, young man, I mean to
go through with you—if you have a hundred uncles Nobchick armed to the
teeth. If you have a thousand uncles Nobchick, they won’t help you, if
you air your stubborn temper at High Cross School....”
Perhaps Peter would have written the lines, but young Newton, in the
company of two friends, came up to him in the playground before dinner.
“Going to write those lines, Simon Peter?” asked young Newton.
What could a chap do but say, “No fear.”
“You’ll write ’em all right,” said Newton, and turned scornfully. So
Peter sat in the stuffy schoolroom during detention time, and drew
pictures of soldiers and battles and adventures and mused and made his
plans.