In these days every landmark is like Alice’s
flamingo-croquet-mallet--when you refer to it, the creature curls
up into an interrogation mark and looks into your face; and every
cornerstone resembles her hedgehog-croquet-ball, which, just before you
can use it, gets up and walks away. The old flavours of life are out
of fashion, the old scents considered stale; ‘gentleman’ is a word to
sneer at, and ‘form’ a sign of idiocy.
And yet there are families in the British Isles in which gentility
has persisted for hundreds of years, and though you may think me
old-fashioned and romantic, I am convinced that such gentlefolk often
have a certain quality, a kind of inner pluck bred into them, which is
not to be despised at all.
This is why I tell you my recollections of Miles Ruding.
My first sight of him--if a new boy may look at a monitor--was on my
rather wretched second day at a Public School. The three other pups who
occupied an attic with me had gone out, and I was ruefully considering
whether I had a right to any wall-space on which to hang two small
oleographs depicting very scarlet horsemen on very bay horses, jumping
very brown hedges, which my mother had bought me, thinking they might
be suitable to the manly taste for which Public Schools are celebrated.
I had taken them out of my playbox, together with the photographs of my
parents and eldest sister, and spread them all on the window-seat. I
was gazing at the little show lugubriously when the door was opened by
a boy in ‘tails.’
“Hallo!” he said. “You new?”
“Yes,” I answered in a mouselike voice.
“I’m Ruding. Head of the House. You get an allowance of two bob weekly
when it’s not stopped. You’ll see the fagging lists on the board. You
don’t get any fagging first fortnight. What’s your name?”
“Bartlet.”
“Oh, ah!” He examined a piece of paper in his hand. “You’re one of
mine. How are you getting on?”
“Pretty well.”
“That’s all right.” He seemed about to withdraw, so I asked him
hastily: “Please, am I allowed to hang these pictures?”
“Rather--any pictures you like. Let’s look at them!” He came forward.
When his eyes fell on the array, he said abruptly, “Oh, sorry!” and,
taking up the oleos, he turned his back on the photographs. A new boy
is something of a psychologist, out of sheer fright, and when he said
“Sorry!” because his eyes had fallen on the effigies of my people, I
felt somehow that he couldn’t be a beast. “You got these at Tomkins’,”
he said. “I had the same my first term. Not bad. I should put ’em up
here.”
While he was holding them to the wall I took a ‘squint’ at him. He
seemed to me of a fabulous height--about five feet ten, I suppose; thin
and bolt upright. He had a stick-up collar--‘barmaids’ had not yet come
in--but not a very high one, and his neck was rather long. His hair was
peculiar, dark and crisp, with a reddish tinge; and his dark-grey eyes
were small and deep in, his cheekbones rather high, his cheeks thin
and touched with freckles. His nose, chin, and cheekbones all seemed a
little large for his face as yet. If I may put it so, there was a sort
of unfinished finish about him. But he looked straight, and had a nice
smile.
“Well, young Bartlet,” he said handing me back the pictures, “buck up,
and you’ll be all right.”
I put away my photographs, and hung the oleos. Ruding! The name was
familiar. Among the marriages in my family pedigree, such as ‘daughter
of Fitzherbert,’ ‘daughter of Tastborough,’ occurred the entry,
‘daughter of Ruding,’ some time before the Civil War. Daughter of
Ruding! This demigod might be a far-off kinsman. But I felt I should
never dare to tell him of the coincidence.
Miles Ruding was not brilliant, but pretty good at everything. He
was not well dressed--you did not think of dress in connection with
him either one way or the other. He was not exactly popular--being
reserved, far from showy, and not rich--but he had no ‘side,’ and
never either patronised or abused his juniors. He was not indulgent to
himself or others, but he was very just; and, unlike many monitors,
seemed to take no pleasure in ‘whopping.’ He never fell off in ‘trials’
at the end of a term, and was always playing as hard at the finish
of a match as at the start. One would have said he had an exacting
conscience, but he was certainly the last person to mention such a
thing. He never showed his feelings, yet he never seemed trying to hide
them, as I used always to be. He was greatly respected without seeming
to care; an independent, self-dependent bird, who would have cut a
greater dash if he hadn’t been so, as it were, uncreative. In all those
two years I only had one at all intimate talk with him, which after all
was perhaps above the average number, considering the difference in
our ages. In my fifth term and Ruding’s last but one, there had been
some disciplinary rumpus in the house, which had hurt the dignity of
the captain of the football ‘torpid’ eleven--a big Irish boy who played
back and was the mainstay of the side. It happened on the eve of our
first house match and the sensation may be imagined when this important
person refused to play; physically and spiritually sore, he declared
for the part of Achilles and withdrew to his tent. The house rocked
with pro and con. My sympathies, in common with nearly all below the
second fifth, lay with Donelly against the sixth form. His defection
had left me captain of the side, so that the question whether we could
play at all depended on me. If I declared a sympathetic strike, the
rest would follow. That evening, after long hours of ‘_fronde_’ with
other rebellious spirits, I was alone and still in two minds, when
Ruding came into my room. He leaned against the door, and said: “Well,
Bartlet, _you’re_ not going to rat?”
“I--I don’t think Donelly ought to have been--been whopped,” I
stammered.
“That as may be,” he said, “but the house comes first. You know that.”
Torn between the loyalties, I was silent.
“Look here, young Bartlet,” he said suddenly, “it’ll be a disgrace to
us all, and it hangs on you.”
“All right,” I said sulkily, “I’ll play.”
“Good chap!”
“But I don’t think Donelly ought to have been whopped,” I repeated
inanely; “he’s--he’s too big.”
Ruding approached till he looked right down on me in my old ‘froust,’
as we called arm-chairs. “One of these days,” he said slowly, “you’ll
be head of the house yourself. You’ll have to keep up the prestige of
the sixth form. If you let great louts like Donelly cheek little weak
six-formers with impunity,” (I remember how impressed I was by the
word) “you’ll let the whole show down. My old governor runs a district
in Bengal, about as big as Wales, entirely on prestige. He’s often
talked to me about it. I hate whopping anybody, but I’d much rather
whop a lout like Donelly than I would a little new chap. He’s a swine
anyway for turning the house down because his back is sore!”
“It isn’t that,” I said, “it--it wasn’t just.”
“If it was unjust,” said Ruding, with what seems to me now
extraordinary patience, “then the whole system’s wrong, and that’s a
pretty big question, young Bartlet. Anyway, it’s not for me to decide.
I’ve got to administer what is. Shake hands, and do your damndest
to-morrow, won’t you?”