W HEN at the beginning of term a melancholy senior boy, meeting
Michael in one of the corridors during the actual excitement of
the move, asked him what form he was going into and heard he
was on the road to Caryll’s, this boy sighed, and exclaimed:
“Lucky young devil.”
“Why?” asked Michael, pushing his way through the diversely flowing
streams of boys who carried household gods to new class-rooms.
“Why, haven’t you ever heard old Caryll is the greatest topper that
ever walked?”
“I’ve heard he’s rather a decent sort.”
“Chaps have said to me—chaps who’ve left, I mean,” explained the
lantern-jawed adviser, “that the year with Caryll is the best year of
all your life.”
Michael looked incredulous.
“You won’t think so,” prophesied Lantern-jaws gloomily. “Of
course you won’t.” Then with a sigh, that was audible above the
shuffling feet along the corridors, he turned to enter a
mathematical class-room where Michael caught a glimpse of
trigonometrical mysteries upon a blackboard, as he himself
hurried by with his armful of books towards Caryll’s
class-room. He hoped Alan had bagged two desks next to each
other in the back row; but unfortunately this scheme was upset
by Mr. Caryll’s proposal that the Upper Fourth A should for the
present sit in alphabetical order. There was only one unit
between Michael and Alan, a persevering
and freckled Jew called Levy, whose life was made a burden to
him in consequence of his interposition.
Mr. Caryll was an old clergyman reputed in school traditions to
be verging on ninety. Michael scarcely thought he could be so
old, when he saw him walking to school with rapid little steps
and a back as straight and soldierly as General Mace’s. Mr.
Caryll had many idiosyncrasies, amongst others a rasping cough
which punctuated all his sentences and a curious habit of
combining three pairs of spectacles according to his distance
from the object in view. Nobody ever discovered the exact range
of these spectacles; but, to reckon broadly, three pairs at
once were necessary for an exercise on the desk before him and
for the antics of the back row of desks only one. Mr. Caryll
was so deaf, that the loudest turmoil in the back row reached
him in the form of a whisper that made him intensely suspicious
of cribbing; but, as he could never remember where any boy was
sitting, by the time he had put on or taken off one of his
pairs of glasses, the noise had opportunity to subside and the
authors were able to compose their countenances for the sharp
scrutiny which followed. Mr. Caryll always expected every pupil
to cheat and invented various stratagems to prevent this vice.
In a temper he was apparently the most cynical of men, but as
his temper never lasted long enough for him to focus his vision
upon the suspected person, he was in practice the blandest and
most amiable of old gentlemen. He could never resist even the
most obvious joke, and his form pandered shamelessly to this
fondness of his, so that, when he made a pun, they would rock
with laughter, stamp their feet on the floor and bang the lids
of their desks to express their appreciation. This hullabaloo,
which reached Mr. Caryll in the guise of a mild titter,
affording him the utmost satisfaction, could be heard even in
distant class-rooms, and sometimes serious mathematical masters
in the
throes of algebra would send polite messages to beg Mr. Caryll
kindly to keep his class more quiet.
Michael and Alan often enjoyed themselves boundlessly in Mr.
Caryll’s form. Sometimes they would deliberately misconstrue
Cicero to beget a joke, as when Michael translated ‘abjectique
homines’ by ‘cast-off men’ to afford Mr. Caryll the chance of
saying, “Tut-tut. The great booby’s thinking of his cast-off
clothing.” Michael and Alan used to ask for leave to light the
gas on foggy afternoons, and with an imitation of Mr. Caryll’s
rasping cough they would manage to extinguish one by one a
whole box of matches to the immense entertainment of the Upper
Fourth A. They dug pens into the diligent Levy: they stuck the
lid of his desk with a row of thin gelatine lozenges in order
that, when after a struggle he managed to open it, the lid
should fly up and hit him a blow on the chin. They loosed
blackbeetles in the middle of Greek Testament and pretended to
be very much afraid while Mr. Caryll stamped upon them one by
one, deriding their cowardice. They threw paper darts and paper
pellets with unerring aim: they put drawing-pins in the seat of
a fat and industrious German called Wertheim: they filled up
all the ink-pots in the form with blotting-paper and crossed
every single nib. They played xylophonic tunes with penholders
on the desk’s edge and carved their initials inside: they wrote
their names in ink and made the inscription permanent by
rubbing it over with blotting-paper. They were seized with
sudden and unaccountable fits of bleeding from the nose to gain
a short exeat to stand in the fresh air by the Fives Courts.
They built up ramparts of dictionaries in the forefront of
their desks to play noughts and crosses without detection: they
soaked with ink all the chalk for the blackboard and divested
Levy of his boots which they passed round the form during
‘rep’: they made elaborate jointed rods with foolscap
to prod otherwise unassailable boys at the other end of the
room and when, during the argument which followed the mutual
correction by desk-neighbours of Mr. Caryll’s weekly
examination paper, they observed an earnest group of
questioners gathered round the master’s dais, they would
charge into them from behind so violently that the front row,
generally consisting of the more eager and laborious boys, was
precipitated against Mr. Caryll’s chair to the confusion of
labour and eagerness. Retribution followed very seldom in the
shape of impots; and even they were soon done by means of an
elaborate arrangement by which six pens lashed together did
six times the work of one. Sometimes Michael or Alan would be
invited to move their desks out close to Mr. Caryll’s dais of
authority for a week’s disgrace; but even this punishment
included as compensation a position facing the class and
therefore the opportunity to play the buffoon for its benefit.
Sometimes Michael or Alan would be ejected with vituperation
from the class-room to spend an hour in the corridor without.
Unfortunately they were never ejected together, and anyway it
was an uneasy experience on account of Dr. Brownjohn’s habit
of swinging round a corner and demanding a reason for the
discovery of a loiterer in the corridor. The first time he
appeared, it was always possible by assuming an air of
intentness and by walking towards him very quickly to convey
the impression of one upon an urgent errand; but when Dr.
Brownjohn loomed on his return journey, it was necessary to
evade his savage glance by creeping round the great cast of
the Antinous that fronted the corridor. On one of these
occasions Michael in his nervousness shook the statue and an
insecurely dependent fig-leaf fell with a crash on to the
floor. Michael nearly flung himself over the well of the main
staircase in horror, but deaf Dr. Brownjohn swung past into a
gloom beyond, and presently Michael was relieved by the
grinning face of a
compatriot beckoning permission to re-enter the class-room.
Safely inside, the fall of the fig-leaf was made out by
Michael to be an act of deliberate daring on his part, and
when at one o’clock the form rushed out to verify the boast,
his position was tremendously enhanced. The news flew round
the school, and several senior boys were observed in
conversation with Michael, so that he was able to swagger
considerably. Also he turned up his trousers a full two inches
higher and parted his hair on the right-hand side, a mode
which had long attracted his ambition.
Now, indeed, were Michael and Alan in the zenith of boyhood’s
glory. No longer did they creep diffidently down the corridors;
no longer did they dread to run the gauntlet of a Modern class
lined up on either side to await the form-master’s appearance.
If some louts in the Modern Fourth dared to push them from side
to side, as they went by, Michael and Alan would begin to fight
and would shout, ‘You stinking Modern beasts! Classics to the
rescue!’ To their rescue would pour the heroes of the Upper
Fourth A. Down went the Modern textbooks of Chemistry and
Physics, and ignominiously were they hacked along the corridor.
Doubled up by a swinging blow from a bag stood the leader of
the Moderns, grunting and gasping in his windless agony. Back
to the serenity of Virgilian airs went the Upper Fourth A, with
Michael and Alan arm in arm amid their escort, and most
dejectedly did the Modern cads gather up their scientific
textbooks; but during the ‘quarter’ great was the battle waged
on the ‘gravel’—that haunt of thumb-biting, acrimonious and
uneasy factions. Michael and Alan were not yet troubled with
the fevers of adolescence. They were cool and clear and joyous
as the mountain torrent: for them life was a crystal of
laughter, many-faceted to adventure. Theirs was now that
sexless interlude before the Eton collar gave way to the ‘stick
up’ and before the Eton jacket, trim and jaunty,
was discarded for an ill-fitting suit that imitated the dull
garb of a man. No longer were Michael and Alan grubby and inky:
no longer did they fill their pockets with an agglomeration of
messes: no longer did their hair sprout in bistre sparseness,
for now Michael and Alan were vain of the golden lights and
chestnut shadows, not because girls mattered, but because like
Narcissus they perceived themselves in the mirror of popular
admiration. Now they affected very light trousers and very
broad collars and shoes and unwrinkling socks and cuffs that
gleamed very white. They looked back with detestation upon the
excesses of costume induced by the quadruple intrigue, and they
congratulated themselves that no one of importance had beheld
their lapse.
Michael and Alan were lords of Little Side football and in
their treatment of the underlings stretched the prerogatives of
greatness to the limit. They swaggered on to the field of play,
where in combination on the left wing they brought off feats of
astonishing swiftness and agility. Michael used to watch Alan
seeming very fair in his black vest and poised eagerly for the
ball to swing out from the half-back. Alan would take the
spinning pass and bound forward into the stink-stained Modern
juniors or embryo subalterns of Army C. The clumsiest of them
would receive Alan’s delicate hand full in his face and, as
with revengeful mutterings the enemy bore down upon him, Alan
would pass the ball to Michael, who with all his speed would
gallop along the touch-line and score a try in the corner.
Members of Big Side marked Michael and Alan as the two most
promising three-quarters for Middle Side next year, and when
the bell sounded at twenty minutes to three, the members of Big
Side would walk with Michael and Alan towards the changing room
and encourage them by flattery and genial ragging. In the
lavatory, Michael and Alan would souse with water all the kids
in reach, and
the kids would be duly grateful for so much acknowledgment of
their existence from these stripling gods. In the changing
room they would pleasantly fling the disordered clothes of
trespassers near their sacred places on to the floor or kick
the caps of Second-Form boys to the dusty tops of lockers, and
then just as the clock was hard on three, they would saunter
up the School steps and along the corridor to their
class-room, where they would yawn their way through Cicero’s
prosy defence of Milo or his fourth denunciation of Catiline.
At home Michael much enjoyed his mother’s company, although he
was now in the cold dawn of affection for anything save Alan.
He no longer was shocked by his mother’s solicitude or
demonstrativeness, fearful of offending against the rigid
standards of the private school or the uncertain position of a
new boy at a public school. He yielded gracefully to his
mother’s pleasure in his company out of a mixture of politeness
and condescension; but he always felt that when he gave up for
an hour the joys of the world for the cloister of domesticity,
he was conferring a favour. At this period nothing troubled him
at all save his position in the School and the necessity to
spend every available minute with Alan. The uncertainty of his
father’s position which had from time to time troubled him was
allayed by the zest of existence, and he never bothered to
question his mother at all pertinaciously. In every way he was
making a pleasant pause in his life to enjoy the new emotion of
self-confidence, his distinction in football, his popularity
with contemporaries and seniors and his passion for the
absolute identification of Alan’s behaviour with his and his
own with Alan’s. At home every circumstance fostered this
attitude. Alone with his mother, Michael was singularly free to
do as he liked, and he could always produce from the past
precedents which she was unable to controvert for any whim he
wished to establish as a custom. In any case,
Mrs. Fane seemed to enjoy spoiling him, and Michael was no
longer averse from her praise of his good looks and from the
pleasure she expressed in the company of Alan and himself at a
concert or matinée. Another reason for Michael’s nonchalant
happiness was his normality. Nowadays he looked at himself in
the old wardrobe that once had power to terrify him with
nocturnal creakings, and no longer did he deplore his thin
arms and legs, no longer did he mark the diffidence of the
sensitive small boy. Now he could at last congratulate himself
upon his ability to hold his own with any of his equals
whether with tongue or fist. Now, too, when he went to bed, he
went to bed as serenely as a kitten, curling himself up to
dream of sport with mice. Sometimes Alan on Friday night would
accompany him to spend the week-end at Carlington Road, and
when he did so, the neighbourhood was not allowed to be
oblivious of the event. In the autumnal dusk Michael and he
would practise drop-kicks and high punts in the middle of the
street, until the ball had landed twice in two minutes on the
same balcony to the great annoyance of the ‘skivvy,’ who was
with debonair assurance invited to bung it down for a mere
lordly ‘thank you’ from the offenders. Sometimes the ball
would early in the afternoon strike a sun-flamed window, and
with exquisite laughter Michael and Alan would retreat to
Number 64, until the alarmed lady of the house was quietly
within her own doors again. Another pleasant diversion with a
football was to take drop-kicks from close quarters at the
backs of errand-boys, especially on wet days when the ball
left a spheroid of mud where it struck the body.
“Yah, you think yourselves—funny,” the errand-boy would growl.
“We do. Oh, rather,” Michael and Alan would reply and with
smiling indifference defeat their target still more
unutterably.
When dusk turned to night, Michael and Alan would wonder what to do
and, after making themselves unbearable in the kitchen, they would
sally out into the back-garden and execute some devilry at the expense
of neighbours. They would walk along the boundary walks of the
succeedant oblongs of garden that ran the whole length of the road; and
it was a poor evening’s sport which produced no fun anywhere. Sometimes
they would detect, white in the darkness, a fox-terrier, whereat they
would miaow and rustle the poplar trees and reduce the dog to a state
of hysterical yapping which would be echoed in various keys by every
dog within earshot. Sometimes they would observe a lighted kitchen with
an unsuspicious cook hard at work upon the dinner, meditating perhaps
upon a jelly or flavouring anxiously the soup. Then if the window were
open Michael and Alan would take pot-shots at the dish with blobs of
mould or creep down into the basement, if the window were shut, and
groan and howl to the cook’s pallid dismay and to the great detriment
of her family’s dinner. In other gardens they would fling explosive
‘slap-bangs’ against the wall of the house or fire a gunpowder train or
throw gravel up to a lighted bath-room window. There was always some
amusement to be gained at a neighbour’s expense between six and seven
o’clock, at which latter hour they would creep demurely home and dress
for dinner, the only stipulation Mrs. Fane made with Michael in
exchange for leave to ask Alan to stay with him.
At dinner in the orange glow of the dining-room, Michael and
Alan would be completely charming and very conversational, as
they told Mrs. Fane how they rotted old Caryll or ragged young
Levy or scored two tries that afternoon. Mrs. Fane would seem
to be much interested and make the most amusing mistakes and
keep her son and her guest in an ecstatic risibility. After
dinner they would sit for a while in the perfumed drawing-room,
making themselves agreeable
and useful by fetching Mrs. Fane’s novel or blotting-pad or
correspondence, or by pulling up an arm-chair or by
extricating a footstool and drawing close the curtains. Then
Michael and Alan would be inclined to fidget, until Michael
announced it was time to go and swat. Mrs. Fane would smile
exquisitely and say how glad she was they did not avoid their
home work and remind them to come and say good night at ten
o’clock sharp. Encouraged by Mrs. Fane’s gracious dismissal,
Michael and Alan would plunge into the basement and gain the
sanctity of Michael’s own room. They would elaborately lay the
table for work, spreading out foolscap and notebooks and
Cicero Pro Milone and Cicero In Catilinam and Thucydides IV
and the green-backed Ion of Euripides. They would make
exhaustive researches into the amount of work set to be shown
up on Monday morning, and with a sigh they would seat
themselves to begin. First of all the Greek Testament would be
postponed until Sunday as a more appropriate day, and then
Michael would feel an overpowering desire to smoke one
cigarette before they began. This cigarette had to be smoked
close to the open window, so that the smoke could be puffed
outside into the raw autumnal air, while Alan kept ‘cavé,’
rushing to the door to listen at the slightest rumour of
disturbance. When the cigarette was finished they would
contemplate for a long time the work in front of them, and
then Michael would say he thought it rather stupid to swat on
Friday night with all Saturday and Sunday before them, and who
did Alan think was the better Half-back—Rawson or Wilding?
This question led to a long argument before Rawson was
adjudged to be the better of the two. Then Alan would bet
Michael he could not write down from memory the
Nottinghamshire cricket team, and Michael would express his
firm conviction that Alan could not possibly name the winners
of the Oxford and Cambridge quarter-mile for the last three
years. Finally
they would both recur to the problem ever present, the best
way to obtain two bicycles and, what was more important, the
firm they would ultimately honour with their patronage. The
respective merits of the Humber, the Rover, the Premier, the
Quadrant, the Swift and the Sunbeam created a battleground for
various opinions, and as for the tyres, it seemed impossible
to decide between Palmers, Clinchers and Dunlops. In the
middle of the discussion the clock in the passage would strike
ten, at which Michael and Alan would yawn and dawdle their way
upstairs. Perhaps the bicycle problem had a wearing effect,
for Mrs. Fane would remark on their jaded appearance and hope
they were not working too hard. Michael and Alan would look
particularly conscious of their virtue and admit they had had
a very tiring week, what with football and Cicero and
Quadratic Equations; and so after affectionate good nights
they would saunter up to bed. Upstairs, they would lean out of
the bedroom window and watch the golden trains go by, and
ponder the changing emeralds and rubies of the signal-box
farther along the line: then after trying to soak a shadowy
tomcat down below with water from the toilet-jug Michael and
Alan would undress.
In the darkness Michael and Alan would lie side by side secure
in a companionship of dreams. They murmured now their truly
intimate thoughts: they spoke of their hopes and ambitions, of
the Army with its glories of rank and adventure, of the Woods
and Forests of India, of treasure on coral islands and fortunes
in the cañons of the West. They spoke of the School Fifteen and
of Alan’s probable captaincy of it one day: they discussed the
Upper Sixth with its legend of profound erudition: they
wondered if it would be worth while for Michael to swat and be
Captain of the School. They talked again of bicycles and
decided to make an united effort to secure them this ensuing
Christmas
by compounding for one great gift any claims they possessed on
birthday presents later in the year. They talked of love, and
of the fools they had been to waste their enthusiasm on Dora
and Winnie. They made up their minds to forswear the love of
women with all its humiliations and disappointments and
futilities. Through life each would be to the other enough.
Girls would be for ever an intrusion between such deathless
and endeared friends as they were. Michael pointed out how
awkward it would be if he and Alan both loved the same girl
and showed how it would ruin their twin lives and wreck their
joint endeavour; while Alan agreed it would be mad to risk a
separation for such froth of feminine attractiveness. The two
of them vowed in the darkness to stick always together, so
that whatever fate life held for either it should hold for
both. They swore fidelity to their friendship in the silence
and intimacy of the night; and when, rosy in the morning, they
stood up straightly in the pale London sunlight, they did not
regret the vows of the night, nor did they blush for their
devotion, since the world conjured a long vista of them both
arm in arm eternally, and in the immediate present all the
adventurous charm of a Saturday’s whole holiday.
If there was a First Fifteen match on the School ground,
Michael and Alan honoured it with their attendance and liked
nothing so well as to elbow their way through a mob of juniors
in order to nod familiarly to a few members of the Fifteen. The
School team that year was not so successful as its two
predecessors, and Michael and Alan were often compelled to
voice their disdain to the intense disgust of the juniors
huddled about them. Sometimes they would hear an irreverent
murmur of ‘Hark at sidey Fane and sidey Merivale,’ which would
necessitate the punching of a number of heads to restore the
disciplinary respect they demanded. On days when the School
team was absent
at Dulford or Tonbury or Haileybridge, Michael and Alan would
scornfully glance at the Second Fifteen’s desolate encounter
with some other Second Fifteen, and vote that such second-rate
football was bally rot. On such occasions the School ground
used to seem too large and empty for cheerfulness, and the two
friends would saunter round West Kensington on the chance of
an adventure, ending up the afternoon by laying out money on
sweets or on the fireworks now displayed in anticipation of
the Fifth of November. Saturday evening would be spent in
annoying the neighbours with squibs and Chinese crackers and
jumping crackers and tourbillons and maroons and Roman candles
and Bengal lights, while after dinner the elaborate
preparations for home work would again be made with the same
inadequate result.
On Sunday Michael and Alan used to brush their top-hats and
button their gloves and tie their ties very carefully and,
armed with sticks of sobriety and distinction, swagger to
whatever church was fashionable among their friends. During the
service they would wink to acquaintances and nudge each other
and sing very loudly and clearly their favourite hymns, while
through the dull hymns they would criticize their friends’
female relations. So the week would fulfil its pleasant course
until nine o’clock on Monday morning, when Michael and Alan
would run all the way to school and in a fever of industry get
through their home work with the united assistance of the rest
of the Upper Fourth A, as one by one the diligent members
arrived in Hall for a few minutes’ gossip before Prayers.
During Prayers, Michael and Alan would try to forecast by
marking off the full stops what paragraph of Cicero they would
each be called upon to construe; finally, when old Caryll named
Merivale to take up the oration’s thread, Michael would hold
the crib on his knees and over Levy’s laborious back whisper in
the voice of a ghoul the meaning.
At Christmas, after interminable discussion and innumerable catalogues,
the bicycles were bought, and in the Lent term with its lengthening
twilights Michael and Alan devoted all their attention to bicycling,
except in wet weather, when they played Fives, bagging the covered
courts from small boys who had waited days for the chance of playing in
them. Michael, during the Lent term, often rode back with Alan after
School to spend the week-end at Richmond, and few delights were so rare
as that of scorching over Barnes Common and down the Mortlake Road with
its gardens all a-blow with spring flowers and, on the other bank of
the river over Kew, the great spring skies keeping pace with their
whirring wheels.
Yet best of all was the summer term, that glorious azure summer term of
fourteen and a half, which fled by in a radiancy. Michael and Alan were
still in the Upper Fourth A under Mr. Caryll: they still fooled away
the hours of school, relying upon the charm of their joint personality
to allay the extreme penalty of being sent up to the Headmaster for
incorrigible knavery. They were Captain and Vice-Captain of the
Classical Upper Fourth Second Eleven, preferring the glory of
leadership to an ambiguous position in the tail of the First Eleven.
Michael and Alan were in their element during that sunburnt hour of
cricket before afternoon school. They wore white felt hats, and Michael
in one of his now rare flights of imagination thought that Alan in his
looked like Perseus in a Flaxman drawing. Many turned to look at the
two friends, as enlaced they wandered across the ‘gravel’ on their way
to change out of flannels, Michael nut-brown and Alan rose-bloomed like
a peach.
At five o’clock they would eat a rowdy tea in the School
Tuckshop to the accompaniment of flying pellets of bun, after
which they would change again for amber hours of cricket, until
the sun made the shadow of the stumps as
long as telegraph poles, and the great golden clock face in
the School buildings gleamed a late hour. They would part from
each other with regret to ride off in opposite directions.
Michael would linger on his journey home through the mellow
streets of Kensington, writing with his bicycle wheels lazy
parabolas and curves in the dust of each quiet road. Twilight
was not far off, the murmurous twilight of a London evening
with its trancéd lovers and winking stars and street-lamps and
window-panes. More and more slowly Michael would glide along,
loath to desert the dreaming populations of dusk. He would
turn down unfrequented corners and sail by unfamiliar
terraces, aware of nothing but the languors of effortless
motion. Time, passing by in a sensuous oblivion, made Michael
as much a part of the nightfall as the midges that spun
incessantly about his progress. Then round a corner some
night-breeze would blow freshly in his face: he would suddenly
realize it was growing late and, pressing hard the pedals of
his bicycle, he would dart home, swift as a bird that crosses
against the dying glow of the sunset.
Michael’s mother was always glad to see him and always glad
when he sat with her on the balcony outside the drawing-room.
If he had wanted to cross-examine her he would have found an
easy witness, so tranquil and so benignant that year was every
night of June in London. But Michael had for the time put aside
all speculation and drugged his imagination with animal
exercise, allowing himself no time to think of anything but the
present. He was dimly aware of trouble close at hand, when the
terminal examinations should betray his idleness; but it was
impossible to worry over what was now sheerly inevitable. This
summer term was perfect, and why should one consider ultimate
time? Even Stella’s holiday from Germany had been postponed, as
if there were a veritable conspiracy by circumstance to wave
away the least element of disturbance.
Next Saturday he and Alan were going to spend the day in
Richmond Park; and when it came in its course what a day it
was. The boys set out directly after breakfast and walked
through the pungent bracken, chasing the deer and the
dragonflies as if there were nothing to distinguish them. Down
streamed the sun from the blue July heavens: but Michael and
Alan clad in white went careless of the heat. They walked over
the grass uphill and ran down through the cool dells of oak
trees, down towards the glassy ponds to play ‘ducks and
drakes’ in the flickering weather. They stood by the
intersecting carriage-roads and mocked the perspiring
travellers in their black garments. They cared for nothing but
being alive in Richmond Park on a summer Saturday of London.
At last, near a shadowy woodland where the grasses grew very
tall, Michael and Alan, smothering the air with pollen, flung
themselves down into the fragrancy and, while the bees droned
about them, slept in the sun. Later in the afternoon the two
friends sat on the Terrace among the old ladies and the old
gentlemen, and the nurserymaids and the children’s hoops. Down
below, the Thames sparkled in a deep green prospect of
England. An hour went by; the old ladies and the old gentlemen
and the nurserymaids and the hoops faded away one by one under
the darkling trees. Down below, the Thames threaded with
shining curves a vast and elusive valley of azure. The Thames
died away to a sheen of dusky silver: the azure deepened
almost to indigo: lights flitted into ken one by one: there
travelled up from the river a sound of singing, and somewhere
in the houses behind a piano began to tinkle. Michael suddenly
became aware that the end of the summer term was in sight. He
shivered in the dewfall and put his arm round Alan’s neck
affectionately and intimately: only profound convention kept
him from kissing his friend and by not doing so he felt
vaguely that something was absent from this perfection of
dusk. Something in
Michael at that moment demanded emotional expression, and from
afternoon school of yesterday recurred to his mind a note to
some lines in the Sixth Æneid of Virgil. He remembered the
lines, having by some accident learned his repetition for that
day:
_Huc omnis turba ad ripas effusa ruebat,_
_Matres atque viri defunctaque corpora vita_
_Magnanimum heroum, pueri innuptœque puellœ,_
_Impositique rogis juvenes ante ora parentum;_
_Quam multa in silvis auctumni frigore primo_
_Lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab alto_
_Quam multœ glomerantur aves ubi frigidus annus_
_Trans pontum fugat et terris immittit apricis._
Compare, said the commentator, Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I.
_Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks_
_In Vallombrosa._
As Michael mentally repeated the thunderous English line, a surge of
melancholy caught him up to overwhelm his thoughts. In some way those
words expressed what he was feeling at this moment, so that he could
gain relief from the poignancy of his joy here in the darkness close to
Alan with the unfathomable valley of the Thames beneath, by saying over
and over again:
_Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks_
_In Vallombrosa._
“Damn, damn, damn, damn,” cried Alan suddenly. “Exams on Monday! Damn,
damn, damn, damn.”
“I must go home and swat to-night,” said Michael.
“So must I,” sighed Alan.
“Walk with me to the station,” Michael asked.
“Oh, rather,” replied Alan.
Soon Michael was jolting back to Kensington in a stuffy
carriage of hot Richmond merrymakers, while
all the time he sat in the corner, saying over and over again:
_Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks_
_In Vallombrosa._
All Saturday night and all Sunday Michael worked breathlessly for those
accursed examinations: but at the end of them he and Alan were
bracketed equal, very near the tail of the Upper Fourth A. Dr.
Brownjohn sent for each of them in turn, and each of them found the
interview very trying.
“What do you mean by it?” roared the Headmaster to Michael. “What do
you mean by it, you young blackguard? Um? Look at this list. Um? It’s a
contemptible position for a Scholar. Down here with a lump of rabbit’s
brains, you abominable little loafer. Um? If you aren’t in the first
five boys of the Lower Fifth next term, I’ll kick you off the
Foundation. What good are you to the School? Um? None at all.”
As Dr. Brownjohn bellowed forth this statement, his mouth opened so
wide that Michael instinctively shrank back as if from a crater in
eruption.
“You don’t come here to swagger about,” growled the Headmaster. “You
come here to be a credit to your school. You pestilent young
jackanapes, do you suppose I haven’t noticed your idleness? Um? I
notice everything. Get out of my sight and take your hands out of your
pockets, you insolent little lubber. Um?”
Michael left the Headmaster’s room with an expression of tragic injury:
in the corridor was a group of juniors.
“What the devil are you kids hanging about here for?” Michael demanded.
“All right, sidey Fane,” they burbled. Michael dashed into the
group and grabbed a handful of caps which he tossed into the
dusty complications of the Laocoön. To their lamentations he
responded by thrusting his hands deep down into his pockets and
whistling ‘Little Dolly
Daydreams, pride of Idaho.’ The summer term would be over in a
few days, and Michael was sorry to say good-bye to Alan, who
was going to Norway with his father and mother and would
therefore not be available for the whole of the holidays.
Indeed, he was leaving two days before School actually broke
up. Michael was wretched without Alan and brooded over the
miseries of life that so soon transcended the joys. On the
last day of term, he was seized with an impulse to say
good-bye to Mr. Caryll, an impulse which he could not
understand and was inclined to deplore. However, it was too
strong for his conventions, and he loitered behind in the
confusion of merry departures.
“Good-bye, sir,” he said shyly.
Mr. Caryll took off two pairs of spectacles and examined Michael
through the remaining pair, rasping out the familiar cough as he did
so.
“Now, you great booby, what do you want?” he asked.
“Good-bye, sir,” Michael said, more loudly.
“Oh, good-bye,” said Mr. Caryll. “You’ve been a very idle
boy”—cough—cough—“and I”—cough—cough—“I don’t think I ever knew such an
idle boy before.”
“I’ve had a ripping time in your class, sir,” said Michael.
“What do you mean?”—cough—cough—“are you trying to be impudent?”
exclaimed Mr. Caryll, hastily putting on a second pair of spectacles to
cope with the situation.
“No, sir. I’ve enjoyed being in your class. I’m sorry I was so low down
in the list. Good-bye, sir.”
Mr. Caryll seemed to realize at last that Michael was being sincerely
complimentary, so he took off all the pairs of spectacles and beamed at
him with an expression of the most profound benignity.
“Oh, well”—cough—cough—“we can’t all be top”—cough—cough—“but
it’s a pity you should be so very low down”—cough—cough—“you’re
a Scholar too, which makes it much worse. Never mind. Good boy
at heart”—cough—
cough—“better luck in your next form”—cough—cough. “Hope you’ll
enjoy yourself on your holidays.”
“Good-bye, sir. Thanks awfully,” said Michael. He turned away from the
well-loved class-room of old Caryll that still echoed with the laughter
of the Upper Fourth A.
“And don’t work too hard”—cough—cough, was Mr. Caryll’s last joke.
In the corridor Michael caught up the lantern-jawed boy who had
prophesied this year’s pleasure at the beginning of last autumn.
“Just been saying good-bye to old Christmas,” Michael volunteered.
“He’s a topper,” said Lantern-jaws. “The best old boy that ever lived.
I wish I was going to be in his form again next term.”
“So do I,” said Michael. “We had a clinking good time. So long. Hope
you’ll have decent holidays.”
“So long,” said the lantern-jawed boy lugubriously, dropping most of
his mathematical books. “Same to you.”
When Michael was at home, he took a new volume of Henty into
the garden and began to read. Suddenly he found he was bored by
Henty. This knowledge shocked him for the moment. Then he went
indoors and put For Name and Fame, or Through Afghan Passes
back on the shelf. He surveyed the row of Henty’s books
gleaming with olivine edges, and presently he procured brown
paper and with Cook’s assistance wrapped up the dozen odd
volumes. At the top he placed a slip of paper on which was
written ‘Presented to the Boys’ Library by C. M. S. Fane.’
Michael was now in a perplexity for literary recreation, until
he remembered Don Quixote. Soon he was deep in that huge
volume, out of the dull world of London among the gorges and
chasms and waterfalls of Castile. Boyhood’s zenith had been
attained: Michael’s imagination was primed for strange
emotions.