David returned from the station on Monday morning, where he had been
permitted to go, in order to see his father off, in extremely good
spirits, with his straw hat, trimmed with the school eleven colours,
well back on his head, his hands in his pockets, where one caressed five
distinct shillings, the other the travelling-carriage of the Monarch,
while fragments of cheerful tunes came piercingly forth from the
aperture caused by his broken tooth. The shape of this orifice no doubt
had something to do with the deafening quality of his whistle, which
went through the head of the hearer like the chirping of a canary in a
circumscribed room, and when deeds of infamy, such as illicit feasts,
were going on in the bushes at the far end of the second-club field, he
was often suitably bribed to keep watch at the railings nearest the
school buildings, for his whistle carried that distance quite easily.
There was therefore, when his melodies were heard, time to remove all
traces of debauch before Dubs or any other incarnation of danger could
arrive. So desirable, indeed, was the gift of a really resonant whistle
that Ferrers had at one time begun operations on one of his own front
teeth with the file on his nail-scissors in order to get a similar
configuration, but increasing tenderness had made him desist before he
had got far.
David was conscious of a great many things that made for cheerfulness.
His father, to begin with, had put himself gloriously right with the
school, and had, very wisely, left in the hour of supreme popularity, so
that there was no fear of his forfeiting, by gaiters or Christian names
or flat headers at the bathing-place, or any such tragic follies, the
esteem he had won. For, greatly daring, as it seemed to the boys, he had
asked the Head to grant an extra half-holiday, and the announcement that
it would be given this afternoon, “in honour of his visit,” had duly
appeared on the school notice-board. It was supposed by some one who had
seen his flat header that the phrase “in honour of his visit” must mark
a sarcastic intention on the part of the Head, but whether that was so
or not there was no doubt about the half-holiday, which was all that
mattered. Even David, when quite respectfully appealed to, had no clear
idea as to why his father’s visit was an honour, but supposed it must
have something to do with the books he wrote, which were printed by the
Clarendon Press at Oxford. In any case, he felt quite certain now that
all the errors of which his father had been guilty would be pardoned and
forgotten, and that he would never hear any more of his hat or his
gaiters, of his excruciating performance at the cricket-nets, of his
belly-floppers into the bathing-place, of his betrayal of his own son’s
Christian name, or finally of the disastrous discourse he had
unfortunately delivered at school-chapel on Sunday evening. For the
moment, as he remembered that, David’s whistle ceased, and he clutched
at the five shillings and the Monarch’s travelling-carriage for comfort.
It had been too awful: not only had he talked the most dreadful rot
about the joy and peace of the chapel services (same as last year, only
worse) under the influence of which all troubles and anxiety melted
away, but he had gone on and on and on in a manner quite unparalleled.
For forty stricken minutes he had detained them (Stone said forty-two),
which beat all known records by at least nine minutes, and it was no
wonder that the boy next David had written “AND NOW” in capital letters
on the fly-leaf of his hymn-book and passed it to him. . . . But that
was all over; he had made the most honourable amends, and David knew
that his father would be considered a credit to him. Indeed that “he was
a first-rate old buffer” was quite a moderate estimate of him, and one
given by the most critical.
There were other satisfactory points about him also. He had asked that
David should be allowed to see him off at the station, so that he could
have a further talk with him. This meant missing half an hour (or more,
if he lingered on his way back, as he was doing) of repetition of Latin
prose. David had not been certain, at starting, that he would not sooner
do prose repetition than have more “jaw”; but the “jaw,” when it came,
was of the most delightful kind. Not only was he certainly to go to
Marchester in September, but, after consultation with the Head, it had
been settled that he was to go there next week to try for one of the
scholarships, a wholly lovely adventure. Apparently—this was news to
David—his work had shown great improvement during this last term; it
showed signs of perception and taste, and, though greatly wanting in
accuracy, which, the Archdeacon reminded him, could always be attained
by the industrious and painstaking, it might prove up to
scholarship-level. David did not attend much to these generalities: the
point was that he would go to Marchester for a three-days’ examination
next week.
Finally, as a cause of happiness, his father had on the platform
presented him with the five shillings that now he clutched in his
pocket, to commemorate his having got into the school eleven. That
presentation had been so sheer a surprise that David could have fallen
flat on his face with astonishment. He would have expected, if the fatal
topic of cricket was to occur again, to be reminded that it was only a
game, and to be bidden to take thought of it just as such and no more;
but to be tipped on such a scale had not entered into his most sanguine
calculations. Then the train had come in, and David submitted to be
kissed publicly without shying, even though a small vendor of papers,
with whom he had slight differences before this, ceased shouting “Dily
Mile,” and squeaked “Kiss me, ducky,” in perfectly audible tones. He
could be dealt with after the train had gone. . . .
So his father waved his shovel-hat from the window and David his straw
hat from the platform, after which he twitched off the paper vendor’s
cap and rubbed his face upwards with it, and hit him on the hands so
that he dropped all his papers and strolled back to school again in the
highest spirits. And not only were his spirits high, but, for the first
time in his life, he was conscious of how happy he was, instead of just
being happy. This morning he seemed to stand away from himself and envy
the boy (only it was himself) who was going to try for a Marchester
scholarship next week, and was certainly going there in September, and
had five shillings and two stag-beetles in his pocket, and was in the
school eleven. Child though he was, consciousness of self had come to
him: he knew that his head was full of delightful plans, that his limbs
were taut and strong, that he was set in the enchanted garden of the
world. He said, “By Gosh!” and saluted the discovery by kicking an empty
tobacco-tin that lay in the road with such firm accuracy that it flew
with a whirring, gong-like sound over the fence of the house where the
assistant masters of the school lodged, and David thought it wise to go
swiftly away, and not look behind.
He dropped to a sober pace again after putting a corner between himself
and the masters’ house into the garden of which the empty tin had so
pleasantly flown, and from mere happiness made a quantity of good
resolutions, one of which he immediately put into effect by not going
into the tobacco-shop where he had originally intended to buy a packet
of cigarettes as a present for the Smoking Club. Just now the solid
satisfaction of life rendered unnecessary such minor adjuncts, and,
since he did not like smoking, it was convenient that it happened to be
contrary to school rules. There were such hosts of things pleasant and
not against school rules, that he wished, by way of a thank-offering for
them, to resolve on a virtuous life. He really would get up at the sound
of the first bell in the morning for the future, he would not smoke any
more, he would not look up the answers to sums before he wrestled with
them, nor copy out on his shirt-cuff the principal rivers of Russia.
They were there now in fact, and in this sudden access of being good
because he was happy, he stopped then and there, and, with a piece of
india-rubber, expunged the Volga and the Vistula and the Don and the
Dnieper. And, as if to reward him, just as he got to the school-gate
eleven o’clock sounded, which meant that Latin prose repetition was
over, and since to-day was a half-holiday, there was only one more hour
of school, and that was English literature, the one lesson of the week
which he actively enjoyed, and, though the Head usually took it, was not
in the least terrifying. He asked but few questions, or sometimes there
were no questions at all, but he would read to them a poem, with
explanations of difficult words or sentences, so that any one could
understand it, and then perhaps shut the book and repeat it very slowly
in his deep, smooth voice, so that the magic of beautiful words wove its
spell round David’s wondering mind.
To-day, on his way to the museum, just as David passed the long French
windows of the Head’s study, he stepped out and called him.
“So you’ve seen your father off, Blaize?” he asked.
“Yes, sir; thank you, sir,” said David, beaming.
“Ah! Well, we’ll take a little stroll across the field, you and I,
before we begin our English literature.”
It was one of those days when Rhadamanthus unbent, when the man who
could be so terrible became wholly enchanting, a man not to fear but to
love. These days were not common, but when they came they were golden.
And now that tremendous person, who had been a rowing-blue at Oxford,
who was the incarnation of fate and retribution, laid his arm over
David’s shoulder and put aside his terrors.
“I had a long talk to your father, David,” he said. “No, no one can hear
me call you David; don’t be alarmed; and no doubt he has told you part
of what we said, that you are to go up for a scholarship at Marchester
next week. Do your best, won’t you, and be a credit, not to me, which
doesn’t matter so much, but to yourself. And I told your father I was
proud of you, and I meant it. You and I have had what they call words
before now, haven’t we? In fact, I’m afraid that sometimes it has come
to blows. You have often been most unsatisfactory, idle and careless and
disobedient; I dare say there’s not a single school rule that you
haven’t broken. But I told your father that I had never found you mean
nor bestial. I look upon you as a boy I can trust.”
David’s young skin flushed with pleasure, and then went white again with
a resolution that frightened himself.
“I—I’ve done lots of things you don’t know about, sir,” he said. “I
don’t think it’s right you should think me good—I’ve——”
The Head stopped, and David’s heart sank into his boots. What an ass he
had been to say that! Why not have received this handsome tribute,
however undeserved, without disturbing the misplaced faith that prompted
it? And yet he knew that he had done it deliberately and because he had
to.
“Do you wish to tell me about them?” asked the Head. But his voice was
still quiet and kind. David seemed to himself to be going mad. He just
heard his voice in a quaking whisper say:
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, then, David, I don’t want to hear about them,” said this
astounding man, “though I thank you for wishing to tell me. I feel sure
you have broken rules of school often enough, but I don’t think you have
broken rules of character. They are much more important, though school
rules have got to be kept as well.”
Suddenly his grip on David’s shoulder tightened, and his eye fixed
itself on the back of a small boy who was sitting on the wire railing at
the edge of the field, unconscious of their approach.
“Ferrers Minor, I think,” he called out in an awful voice.
The Head thought right, and Ferrers Minor presented his startled and
dejected countenance.
“Did you, or did you not, know the rule about sitting on the railings?”
demanded the Head.
“Yes, sir,” said Ferrers Minor.
“Then this is wilful disobedience,” thundered the Head. “I will not be
bullied by you, Ferrers Minor, nor have you disregard the rules with
which you are perfectly well acquainted. I suppose you wish to make a
fool of me, to hold me up to ridicule for having the impertinence to
frame rules which Mr. Ferrers Minor keeps or not, as he finds
convenient. Was that your plan?”
“N-no, sir,” said Ferrers Minor.
“Then I will make a plan for you instead, and it is that you write out
in your best copy-hand ‘I will not sit on the railings like an ass’ a
hundred times. You may go, Ferrers Minor.”
But Rhadamanthus, the inexorable terror, had only mounted his judgment
throne for a moment, and came down off it again. His grip relaxed, and
he patted David’s shoulder.
“And now for our literature lesson,” he said. “It’s too hot to hold it
in the museum, isn’t it, Blaize, when we can sit under the trees
instead. Let’s have it out here: go in, will you, and tell the class to
come out. And, personally, I shall take my coat off, and anybody else
who likes to do the same of course may.”
The boys trooped out at David’s summons, peeling off their coats, and
grouped themselves in the shade of the four big elms that stood in a
quadrilateral clump at the edge of the field. The Head had taken off his
coat, and, leaning on his elbows, lay on that part of his person which
in ordinary mortals is called the stomach, with a book or two in front
of him.
“All comfortably settled?” he said. “That’s all right. Now to-day I’m
going to talk to you about a man whom very likely you have never heard
of, and read you something he wrote. His name was Keats, John Keats. Has
anybody heard of him?” Nobody had.
“He was a chemist’s assistant,” said the Head, “and if some ninety or a
years ago, you, Stone, or you, Blaize, had gone into a doctor’s little
dispensary near Hampstead to get a dose because you had a pain in your
inside, from eating too many strawberries, or from having shirked into
Richmond and devoured more than a sufficiency of Maids of Honour you
might have had your medicine given you by one of the greatest lyrical
poets who ever lived. The doctor’s assistant, a pale young man with a
bad cough, might perhaps have mixed it for you, and if you were wide
awake you might have seen that when he got up to give you your pill or
your powder, he laid down a pencil and a piece of paper on which he was
scribbling. Stone, if you leave that wasp alone he will not get angry
and sting you, or lose his head and think it was me who was annoying
him. Yes, and then when you had paid your twopence and gone away with
your pill, you may be sure he would have taken up his pencil and paper
again. No doubt, if you had asked him, he would have copied out for you
what he was writing on another piece of paper, in which he was
accustomed to wrap up parcels, and wondered that you cared to pay
another twopence for it. But if you sold that piece of paper to-day you
would get, not twopence, but hundreds of pounds for it. For on it would
be written lines by John Keats, in his own hand. And what you might have
found on that piece of paper is this:
“My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
A minute since, and Lethe wards have sunk.
“Lethe we had in our Homer not long ago. Lethe, the water of
forgetfulness. Sometimes I think Blaize and others of you have drunk it.
“’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness
That thou, light-wingèd dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Dreamest of summer in full-throated ease.”
He read on, occasionally stopping to explain a word; once and again his
voice trembled, as it did sometimes when he preached; once it nearly
stopped altogether as he came to the lines:
“Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn.
“In tears amid the alien corn,” he repeated.
The entire informality of these proceedings, the absence of the sense
that they were being taught and had got to learn, disarmed the boys, and
before this stanza was reached the fact that it was the portentous Head
who was reading to them had quite vanished. They were all sitting or
lying about at ease on the grass, one or two of them listening intently,
the others, for the most part, feeling just lazy and soothed and
comfortable. But among the intent listeners was David, and as the Head
paused and repeated “alien corn,” he rolled over on to his back,
absorbed and lost.
“Golly,” he said quietly to himself. “Oh Golly!” Then he became aware
that he had spoken aloud, but scarcely wondered whether the Head had
heard or not, so completely did the magic of the words possess him. And
in some mysterious way they added to his store of happiness: they became
part of him, and thus part of the fact that he was going to Marchester
next week, and would see Hughes, that there was a half-holiday this
afternoon, that he was in the eleven. Keats’s poem was part of the whole
joy of life, it, and its music, and the sense of longing for something
he did not know about, which it produced in him. Then his attention was
completely diverted by the feeling of a slight vibration in his
trouser-pocket, caused by the movements of the Monarch and his wife who
were there in their travelling-carriage, and, now that he recollected
them, became part of the beneficent joy of things in general. So for
fear of their not getting their proper share of the oxygen of the world,
he withdrew the box from his pocket, laid it on the grass, and forgot
about them again, in hearing of the “foam of perilous seas.”
The Head finished the Ode, and invited questions. Stone wanted to know
what Hippocrene was, thinking this an intelligent question, but
Ferrers’s inquiry as to what the “magic casements” were earned stronger
approbation from the Head, who mysteriously told him that no one could
tell till they looked out on to the “perilous seas.” It was not like the
“Commentaries” of Julius Cæsar, this which he had read them, because it
could mean different things to different people. Each sentence of the
“Commentaries” meant one thing and it was the business of boys to find
out, with the aid of a dictionary, what it was. But music and poetry
were altogether different: they meant to you what you were capable of
finding in them. Then he turned to David, who alone of the class had not
asked any questions, intelligent or otherwise.
“Nothing you want to know, Blaize?” he asked.
“No, thank you, sir,” said David. “But would you read it us again, sir,
as you do sometimes?”
The Head sat up, clasping his knees with his arms, and without answering
David began the Ode again in that extraordinary voice of his, this time
not looking at his book. He began in tones so low that it needed an
effort to hear him; it boomed out over “charioted by Bacchus and his
pards”; it sounded like a breeze at night in the stanza “I cannot see
what flowers are at my feet”; again it shook with emotion over the “sad
heart of Ruth,” and David felt a lump rise in his throat, a mysteriously
blissful misery took possession of him. And when the Head finished he
found himself smiling at him with mouth that trembled a little.
There was silence a moment.
“That will do for to-day,” said the Head. “You can go.”
The group rose from the grass with alacrity, for though Keats was all
very well, an extra half-hour at the bathing-place, for the lesson had
been very short, was even better. But in spite of the permission David
lingered.
“Did he write much else, sir?” he said.
The Head handed him the volume.
“You may see for yourself,” he said. “Give it me back when you’ve
finished with it.”
David deposited this in his desk in the museum, and then ran after the
others to the bathing-place, with lines still ringing in his head, but
untying and unbuttoning as he went so as to lose as few seconds as
possible before the first heavenly plunge out of the heat and baking
sunlight into the cool arms of the water. That, too, on this morning of
vivid life was more consciously delicious than ever before, when with a
long run he sprang, an arrow of gleaming limbs, off the header-board
which he left vibrating with his leap, and burrowed into the cool
embrace of the water. Some flower must have opened in his brain to-day,
quickening his sense of living, and though no whit less boyish than
before, he was far more conscious of the water and the sun, and above
all of himself.
He swam and floated and dived, came swiftly up behind Stone, who swam in
rather a water-logged manner, and with a firm hand placed suddenly on
the top of his head sent him down to the bottom of the bath, and before
he came up again, spluttering and more water-logged than ever, was
floating with arms and legs spread star-fish fashion, gazing serenely
and unconsciously into the sky. Stone concluded mistakenly that it was
Ferrers who had done this thing, and raised a storm of splashing in his
indignant face, and got ducked again for that, and so precisely flicked
with a wet towel when he came out that he cried on the name of his Maker
and danced with the shrewdness of the touch. Upon which David,
forgetting that his mouth was submerged, laughed, and thereon swallowed
so much water that he had to come out and lie face downwards on the
grass in order to disgorge it. That was pleasant also, and he lay there
on the grass with his forehead on his arms till his back was dry and
baked. Then, making a compact parcel of himself with his hands clasped
round his ankles, two friends lifted him and swung him into the water
again.
Bags the unbathed had brought down some strawberries and newly baked
buns, and David, having filled himself up with those things, took to the
water again in spite of Ferrers’s warning that if you bathed directly
after a heavy meal you got cramp in your stomach and sank like a stone
to rise no more. It was necessary to test the truth of this remarkable
legend, and it was found to be wholly untrustworthy. . . . And all the
time the magic casements and the alien corn wandered fragmentarily in
his head.
The first eleven played the next sixteen that afternoon, and still that
happy tide of the consciousness of life and the beautiful jolly things
of life bore David along. He made a catch of an unparalleled order off
his own bowling from a hit so smart that he had only meant to put up his
hands to protect his face, and the ball stuck in them to his great
surprise and hurt more than anything had ever hurt. Subsequently he made
thirty runs after being missed three times, which added zest to the
performance, and took the Head’s volume of Keats up to bed with him.
But, Glanders being ill, and the dormitory unpatrolled, he had a
wonderful pillow-fight with Bags instead of reading, and did not, as his
custom was, go instantly to sleep when at length he got into bed.
Instead he lay in a lump with his hands round his knees saying “Jolly
happy, jolly, jolly happy! By Gad, ‘fairy lands forlorn! Fairy lands
forlorn.’ Gosh, how that catch hurt! but what frightful sport!
Marchester next week too . . . five bob. . . .”
And these images lost their outline, and became blurred with the
approach of sleep.
* * * * *
One of the house-masters at Marchester was an old friend of the
Archdeacon, and it had been arranged that David should stay with Mr.
Adams when he went up for his scholarship examination. Hughes, David’s
great chum of a year ago, was in Adams’s house, and by permission met
him at the station, and, after the first greetings, looked David over
with an eye made critical by the adamantine traditions that bind junior
boys at public schools. Hughes was extremely glad to see him, but he had
certainly been very anxious to get an early and private view of him to
see if he came up to the standards and ordinances then prevailing, and
make such corrections in his bearing and attire as were necessary. It
would be an awful thing, for instance, if David turned up in a straw hat
with his school eleven colours, as those were identical with the Rugby
fifteen colours at Marchester, and to be seen walking about with a small
alien boy in fifteen colours was a nightmare possibility. But there was
a lot, as he saw at once, to be said in David’s favour: his clothes were
neat, he looked exceedingly clean (not grubby, a thing which Hughes,
from his faded reminiscences of Helmsworth, was dismally afraid of), his
hair was short behind and well inside his collar, and he stood straight.
On the other hand, there were certain details that must be altered.
“I say, have you been travelling in a smoker?” he asked. “Second, too.”
David wished he had spent his last shilling in going first.
“Yes, first was so frightfully expensive,” said David.
“Oh, I didn’t mean that: all the fellows go third. Yes, the bus will
take your luggage up, and we’ll walk, shall we? It’ll take the fug of
the smoking-carriage out of your clothes.”
David marvelled at this: he had thought a smoking-carriage must be the
manly thing. He had a packet of cigarettes also in his coat-pocket.
“Don’t fellows smoke here?” he asked, looking up in timid admiration at
Hughes, who had grown enormously.
“Oh yes, in some scuggy houses,” he said, “but not in Adams’s. It’s
thought frightfully bad form in Adams’s!”
David fingered his packet of cigarettes nervously, conscious suddenly of
the enormous gulf that yawned between a private and a public school, and
yearning to bridge it over by every means in his power.
“I’ve got some cigarettes in my pocket,” he said.
“Oh, chuck them away,” said his friend, “or give them to a porter. It
would be a rotten affair if any of the fellows in the house knew. You’d
come here with a bad name.”
David’s face fell for a moment, for those were gold-tipped cigarettes,
which he had thought would probably be so exceedingly the right thing.
Hughes noticed this, and gave consolation, for really Blaize was
extremely presentable.
“I say, Blazes,” he said, “I’m awfully glad to see you, and we’ll have a
ripping time. But it’s best to tell you what’s the right thing and what
isn’t, don’t you think?”
David responded cordially to this.
“Rather,” he said, “and it’s jolly good of you. Thanks, awfully. Do tell
me if there’s anything else.”
Hughes gave him another critical glance, as solemn as a tailor’s when
looking at the fit of a coat that he wants to be a credit to him.
“Oh well, that buttonhole,” he said. “I think I should take that out.
Only tremendous swells wear them, and even then it’s rather ‘side.’”
David instantly plucked out the offending vegetable. He probably would
have torn out a handful of his hair, if crisp yellow locks showed
“side.” Hughes nodded at him approvingly.
“Now you’re first-rate,” he said. “Oh, just send your stick up with your
luggage. Now come on. You look just as if you were at Marchester
already. You see I got leave for you to come and brew—have tea, you
know—in my study this afternoon, and it would have been beastly for
both of us, if you weren’t up to Adams’s form, and it turned out that
you smoked or kept white mice, or something hopeless.”
The two handsome boys went on their way up to the Mecca of David’s
aspirations, and he thought with the deepest relief of his decision not
to bring the Monarch and his wife with him. It had been a wrench to part
with them even for a few days, and an anxiety to leave them even in the
care of the assiduous Bags, to whom he had given a paper of directions
about diet and fresh air. But if it was hopeless to keep white mice, how
much more dire would have been his position if he had been found
possessed of stag-beetles, or if, as might easily have happened without
this oblique warning, he had incidentally mentioned to some of Hughes’s
friends that his tastes lay in those verminous directions! And Hughes
proceeded, inspired by that authoritative conventionality which public
schools so teach, that every well-bred junior boy of fifteen or sixteen
in any house is in characteristics of behaviour exactly like every
other. At one time buttonholes and smoking are _de rigueur_, at another
they are quite impossible; at one time it is the fashion to be
industrious, and every one works, at another to be as idle as is
possible. Morals are subject to the same strict but changeable
etiquette; for years perhaps the most admirable tone characterises a
house, then another code obtains, and Satan himself might be staggered
at the result.
“Jove, it was a good thing I came to the station,” he said, “and I
wanted to, too. Else you might have appeared with a stick and a
buttonhole and a cigarette, and a slow-worm for all I knew. Do you
remember we had a slow-worm, you and I, at Helmsworth? Of course some
fellows go in for natural history, and Maddox, who’s the head of our
house, collects butterflies. But then, he’s such a swell, he can do just
what he likes. I’m his fag, you know, and he’s awfully jolly to me.
Damned hot it is; let’s walk slower.”
David was extremely quick at picking up an atmosphere and he made the
perfectly correct conclusion that, though smoking was bad form, swearing
was not. But the mention of Maddox roused the thrill and glamour of
hero-worship—a hero-worship more complete and entire than is ever
accorded by the world of grown-up men and women to their most august
idols.
“Oh go on, tell me about Maddox,” he said.
“I dare say you’ll see him. Sure to, in fact. He’s not very tall, but
he’s damned good-looking. He’s far the finest bat in the eleven, and the
funny thing is he says cricket’s rather a waste of time, and hardly ever
goes up to a net. He’s editor of the school-paper, and played racquets
for us at Queen’s last year. But what he likes best of all is reading.”
“That’s queer,” said David.
“’Tis rather. He makes all our juniors work too, I can tell you. But
he’ll help anybody, and he’ll always give you a construe of a bit you
don’t understand, if you’ve looked out all the words first. And he’s
only just seventeen, think of that, so that he’ll have two more years
here. He never plays footer, though he can run like hell, and says Rugby
is a barbarous sport; and in the winter, when he’s not playing racquets,
he just reads and reads. His mother was French, too; rum thing that, and
the point is that H. T. (that’s Hairy Toe, an awful ass) who teaches
French, is English, and Maddox knows about twice as much as he. He makes
awful howlers, Maddox says, and pronounces just as if he was a cad. But
that’s all right, because he is.”
David skipped with uncontrollable emotion.
“Oh, I say, how ripping!” he said. “But I wish Maddox liked cricket and
footer.”
“Well, footer he detests; but he only means that thinking of nothing but
cricket is a waste of time. By the way, you’re in luck: there’s a
two-days’ match begins to-morrow against Barnard’s team. Friday’s a
whole holiday; some frowsy saint. They say Jessop’s coming. Wouldn’t it
be sport to see him hit a dozen sixes, and then be clean-bowled by
Cruikshank?”
“Oh, and who’s Cruikshank?” asked David.
“Well, that’s damned funny not to have heard of Cruikshank. Fastest
bowler we’ve ever had, and he’s in Adams’s too. He and Maddox don’t get
on a bit, though of course they’re awfully polite to each other.
Cruikshank’s awfully pi: fit to burst. Here we are.”
Hughes again cast an anxious eye over David, for the moment was
momentous, as the whole school would be about. But he really felt that
David would do him credit. They paused a moment in the gateway.
“If you like we’ll stroll round the court,” he said, “before we go down
to house. There’s chapel, you see, and hall next beyond it; foul place,
stinks of mutton. Then two more college boarding-houses—what?”
“But which is Adams’s?” asked David.
“Oh, that’s not here. These are all college houses, in-boarders, and
rather scuggy compared to out-boarders. Then there’s fifth form
class-room and sixth form class-room, and school library up on top. I
dare say Maddox is there now. Big school behind, more class-rooms and
then the fives-court. Like to walk through?”
No devout Catholic ever went to Rome in more heart-felt pilgrimage than
was this to David. It was the temple of his religion that he saw, the
public school which was to be his home. His horizon and aspirations
stretched no farther than this red-brick arena, for, to the eyes of the
thirteen-year-old, those who have finished with their public school and
have gone out from it to the middle-aged Universities, are already past
their prime. They are old; they are done with, unless the fact that they
play cricket for Oxford or Cambridge gives them a little longer lease of
immortality. But to be a great man, a Maddox or a Cruikshank in this
theatre of life which already his feet trod, was the utmost dream of
David’s ambitions, and if at the hoary age of eighteen he could only
have played a real part in the life of the scenes that were now
unrolling to him he felt that an honoured grave would be the natural
conclusion. Everything that might happen after public school was over
seemed a posthumous sort of affair. You were old after that, and at this
moment even the Head, for all his terror and glamour, appeared a
tomb-like creature.
Hughes exchanged “Hullo” with a friend or two, and said “Right:
half-past four” to one of them, which made David long to know what
heroic thing was to happen then, and took him past the east end of
chapel without further comment. David, quickly and quite mistakenly,
drew a conclusion based on his private school experience.
“I suppose chapel’s pretty good rot,” he said.
This was worse than buttonholes.
“Chapel rot?” said Hughes. “Why, it’s perfectly ripping. Maddox’s uncle
was the architect. It’s the finest school-chapel in England, bar Eton
perhaps. You’ll see it to-night. You never saw anything so ripping.”
“Oh, sorry,” said David, flushing; “but I didn’t know.”
Hughes paused a moment and looked at him again.
“I say, Blazes, it’s awful sport your coming down like this,” he said.
“Do sweat your eyes out over this exam. It would be ripping if you got a
scholarship. We’re all working like beans in the house: that’s Maddox’s
doing. Work’s quite different, if you take an interest in it, you know.
Yes, that path goes down to the bathing-place, and there are
nightingales in the trees. Then hall: fuggy spot, we all have dinner
there, both out-boarders and in-boarders. See that don there in cap and
gown? He takes the fifth form. He’s frightfully polite, and is learning
to ride a bicycle. Consequently you always touch your cap to him as he
goes wobbling along, and he takes a hand off to return your chaste
salute, and falls off. Good rag. There’s his class-room, with the
library up above. We’ll just go down there, and I’ll answer to
name-calling on my way.”
They turned out of the big court into an asphalted square full of boys.
A master was standing on a raised dais at one end, calling out names
with extreme deliberation.
“Oh, damn, he’s only just begun,” said Hughes, after listening a moment.
“We won’t wait.”
He touched another boy on the shoulder.
“I say, answer for me, Plugs,” he said. “You owe me one.”
“Right oh! What’s your voice now, Topknot? Treble or bass?”
“‘Bout midway. Something with a crack in it. Thanks, awfully.”
Plugs, whoever Plugs was, saw Hughes’s companion.
“Who’s your friend?” he asked.
“Scholarship-chap from my t’other school. Decent!”
That was an aside, but clearly audible, and David swelled with pride,
and tried to look abnormally decent. . . .
They made their way through the crowd that was collecting and dispersing
as the roll-call proceeded, and went back down the long, empty passage
past the steps leading up to the school library. Even as they approached
them there was a clatter of feet on the concrete floor above, and a boy
came flying down them four steps to his stride. Beneath one arm he
carried a sheaf of books, and his straw hat was in the other hand.
“Maddox,” said Hughes quietly, and on the moment Maddox took his last
six steps in one leap, and nearly fell over them both.
All the hero-worship of which David was capable flared up: never did
hero make a more impressive entrance than in that long, lithe jump that
landed him in the passage. He nearly knocked Hughes down, and dropped
all his books, but caught him round the shoulders and steadied him
again. There was a splendid crisp vigour about every line of his body,
his black, short hair, his dark, full-blooded face.
“Topknot, you silly owl!” he said. “Don’t get in a man’s light when he’s
in a hurry. Haven’t hurt you, have I? I’d die sooner than hurt you.”
David picked up the scattered books, and Maddox turned to him.
“Oh, thanks awfully!” he said. “You’re Topknot’s pal, I suppose, come up
for the scholarship-racket. Good luck!”
He nodded to David, flicked the end of Hughes’s nose, and went off down
the passage to the sixth-form room, whistling louder than even David
thought possible.
“Gosh!” said David. There was really nothing more to be said.
“Oh, he’s always like that,” remarked Hughes, feeling that the meeting
could not have been more impressive.
“And he wished me good luck,” said David, still feeling dazzled. “Wasn’t
that awfully jolly of him? And he flicked your nose, same as you might
flick mine.”
“Oh, Lord, yes,” said Hughes.
After this all that immediately followed seemed but the setting and
stage from which the chief actor had departed, for that glimpse of
Maddox had been to David like some appearance of the spirit itself of
public school. Soon they left the college buildings and walked down some
quarter of a mile to where the red roofs of Adams’s rose between
full-foliaged elms. They had to cross a broad, swift-flowing
chalk-stream where rushes twitched in the current, and cushions of
star-flowered water-weed waved, and Hughes pointed out the wagging tail
of a great fat trout who was supposed to have baffled the wiles of all
fishermen from time immemorial. Arrived at the house, they had to part,
for David, as a guest, must present himself formally at the front door
while Hughes went round through the yard, where stump-cricket was going
on, to the boys’ quarters. There were cheerful cries of “Hullo, Topknot”
and David, waiting for the bell to be answered, thrilled again at the
thought of being part of all this. The idea of Mr. Adams was no longer
formidable, though he had pictured him as being rather taller than the
Head.
He was shown through a big oak-panelled hall, into Mr. Adams’s study,
and even if he had entered in trepidation, his fears would have been at
once set at rest. In a long chair by the open window, with a pipe in his
mouth, while two boys were leaning over the back of his chair, sat his
master, clerical as to collar, but with a blazer on instead of a black
coat. Just as David entered, one of the two boys, scarcely older than
himself to all appearance, and with a shrill voice yet unbroken, was
expostulating with him.
“Oh, I say, do go back and construe that again, sir,” he said. “I wasn’t
attending. Sorry.”
Adams held out a hand to David.
“That’s right,” he said. “Delighted to see you. Just wait half a moment.
Now, Ted, if you don’t attend this time, I will not go over it again.”
Ted took an injured tone.
“Well, there was a wasp,” he said. “It wasn’t my fault. Please get on
quick, sir.”
David thought he had never seen so pleasant a room, nor one which less
suggested “school” as he had known it. The windows looked out on to a
big lawn, in the centre of which two boys and a tall, black-haired girl,
whom he conjectured to be Adams’s daughter, were playing croquet. Round
the edge were cut five or six golf-holes where other boys were putting,
slightly to the derangement of geranium beds, and half a dozen more were
sitting in the shade of lime-trees reading and talking. Here inside, two
occupied the sofa, and, as David waited for Ted to be construed to,
another tall fellow strolled in and lay down on the hearthrug with an
illustrated paper. The walls were lined with low bookshelves, on the top
of which were strewn cricket-balls, books, and straw hats, while on the
table in the centre was a litter of papers, and in the middle a great
bowl of roses. Honeysuckle trailed trumpeted sprays over the spaces of
open window, and the dark-stained floor was bright with Persian rugs.
The construing was soon over, and Adams gave the book back to one of the
boys. Then he who had lain down on the hearthrug looked up from the
paper.
“Sir, Jessop’s coming down,” he said.
Adams got up from his chair.
“Then get him out at once with the very fastest ball ever bowled,
Crookles,” he said.
Some one from the sofa joined in.
“Oh, don’t be too hard on him, Crookles,” he said. “Let him hit you over
the pavilion a bit first.”
David’s eyes took on their most reverential roundness. Without doubt
this must be Cruikshank, the fastest bowler the school had ever had. And
yet he had a casual private life of his own, and was called Crookles.
“And here’s Blaize come down on purpose to see it all,” said Adams, “and
incidentally to get a scholarship—eh, David?”
Horrors! The Christian name again! But nobody appeared to think it the
least ridiculous, any more than that Ted, who was climbing out of the
window, should be known as Ted.
Adams looked rather unfavourably at one of the two boys on the sofa.
“Ozzy, go and wash your hands at once,” he said. “I won’t have fellows
in here with dirty paws.”
“Sir, mayn’t I just finish——” began Ozzy.
“No: finish when you’re clean. Come out into the garden, David. How’s
your father? Topknot met you at the station, didn’t he, and you’re going
to have tea with him. We might find some strawberries.”
* * * * *
David was packed off early to bed that night in order that his brain
might be in its most efficient mood for his examination next day, in a
whirl of happy excitement. Never in all his day-dreams had he conceived
that Adams’s could be like this. It was not like a school, it was like
some new and entrancing kind of home, with the jolliest man he had ever
seen as a master and father, and for family these friendly boys, and the
black-haired girl, Adams’s daughter, whom everybody called by her
Christian name. And yet the glamour of public school lay over it, and
among this happy family there moved, like ordinary mortals, the great
ones of the earth, Maddox and Cruikshank, and Westcott, captain of the
school fifteen, behaving like everybody else and seemingly unconscious
of their divinity. And these heroes had been seen with his mortal eyes,
and he had been taken by Hughes into Maddox’s study after tea, where he
had been permitted to help in washing up his tea-things. That to him was
the Vatican, a room some twelve feet by ten in material dimensions, but
a shrine, a centre. There were books everywhere—not school-books
merely, but novels, books of poetry, books in French which Maddox read
for his own amusement. Cricket-bats and a press of rackets were piled in
the corner, and such space on the walls as was not filled with books was
a mosaic of school photographs. And, perhaps most astounding of all,
though Maddox had his school cricket colours, his racket and five
colours, there was no trace of those glories anywhere; instead, on a
nail behind the door, was hung a straw hat with just the house-colours
on it, which David himself would be allowed to wear next September.
Somehow that was tremendously grand: it was like a king who had the
right to cover himself with stars and garters, preferring to go out to
dinner in ordinary evening dress. . . .
David’s bedroom was in the private part of the house, but next door was
one of the boys’ dormitories. Merry, muffled noises leaked through the
walls, and from the open window of the dormitory there came into his
room whistlings and cheerful riot, and from time to time the clump of
boots kicked off on to the floor. By degrees these sounds grew quiet,
but he still lay in wide-eyed contemplation and expectancy. The most
trifling preoccupation was always sufficient to make him forget to say
his prayers, and to-night he had got into bed without their ever
occurring to him. But, as he lay awake, among the million surmises that
came to him about life in this enchanted place, he wondered whether
fellows in the house said their prayers, since chapel apparently was a
thing to be proud of, and on the moment he tumbled out of bed and knelt
down. But only one petition seemed possible, and he made it.
“O Lord, let me get a scholarship and come to Adams’s,” he said very
fervently.
He thought for a moment, but really there seemed to be nothing else that
his heart desired.
“Amen,” he said, and, jumping into bed again, fell asleep.