It was a Saturday afternoon in June. St. James’s School was playing a
cricket match against Chippenfield’s. The whole school, which consisted
of forty boys, with the exception of the eleven who were playing in the
match, were gathered together near the pavilion on the steep, grassy
bank which faced the cricket ground. It was a swelteringly hot day. One
of the masters was scoring in the pavilion; two of the boys sat under
the post and board where the score was recorded in big white figures
painted on the black squares. Most of the boys were sitting on the grass
in front of the pavilion.
St. James’s won the toss and went in first. After scoring 5 for the
first wicket they collapsed; in an hour and five minutes their last
wicket fell. They had only made 27 runs. Fortune was against St. James’s
that day. Hitchens, their captain, in whom the school confidently
trusted, was caught out in his first over. And Wormald and Bell minor,
their two best men, both failed to score.
Then Chippenfield’s went in. St. James’s fast bowlers, Blundell and
Anderson minor, seemed unable to do anything against the Chippenfield’s
batsmen. The first wicket went down at 70.
The boys who were looking on grew listless: three of them, Gordon,
Smith, and Hart minor, wandered off from the pavilion further up the
slope of the hill, where there was a kind of wooden scaffolding raised
for letting off fireworks on the 5th of November. The headmaster, who
was a fanatical Conservative, used to burn on that anniversary effigies
of Liberal politicians such as Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Chamberlain,
who was at that time a Radical; while the boys whose politics were
Conservative, and who formed the vast majority, cheered, and kicked the
Liberals, of whom there were only eight.
Smith, Gordon, and Hart minor, three little boys aged about eleven, were
in the third division of the school. They were not in the eleven, nor
had they any hopes of ever attaining that glory, which conferred the
privilege of wearing white flannel instead of grey flannel trousers, and
a white flannel cap with a red Maltese cross on it. To tell the truth,
the spectacle of this seemingly endless game, in which they did not
have even the satisfaction of seeing their own side victorious, began to
weigh on their spirits.
They climbed up on to the wooden scaffolding and organised a game of
their own, an utterly childish game, which consisted of one boy throwing
some dried horse chestnuts from the top of the scaffolding into the
mouth of the boy at the bottom. They soon became engrossed in their
occupation, and were thoroughly enjoying themselves, when one of the
masters, Mr. Whitehead by name, came towards them with a face like
thunder, biting his knuckles, a thing which he did when he was very
angry.
“Go indoors at once,” he said. “Go up to the third division school-room
and do two hours’ work. You can copy out the Greek irregular verbs.”
The boys, taken completely by surprise, but accepting this decree as
they accepted everything else, because it never occurred to them
it could be otherwise, trotted off, not very disconsolate, to the
school-room. It was very hot out of doors; it was cool in the third
division school-room.
They got out their steel pens, their double-lined copy books, and began
mechanically copying out the Greek irregular verbs, with which they were
so superficially familiar, and from which they were so fundamentally
divorced.
“Whitey,” said Gordon, “was in an awful wax!”
“I don’t care,” said Smith. “I’d just as soon sit here as look on at
that beastly match.”
“But why,” said Hart, “have we got to do two hours’ work?”
“Oh,” said Gordon, “he’s just in a wax, that’s all.”
And the matter was not further discussed. At six o’clock the boys
had tea. The cricket match had, of course, resulted in a crushing and
overwhelming defeat for St. James’s. The rival eleven had been asked to
tea; there were cherries for tea in their honour.
When Gordon, Smith, and Hart minor entered the dining-room they at once
perceived that an atmosphere of gloom and menacing storm was overhanging
the school. Their spirits had hitherto been unflagging; they sat next to
each other at the tea-table, but no sooner had they sat down than they
were seized by that terrible, uncomfortable feeling so familiar to
schoolboys, that something unpleasant was impending, some crime, some
accusation; some doom, the nature of which they could not guess,
was lying in ambush. This was written on the headmaster’s face. The
headmaster sat at a square table in the centre of the dining-room. The
boys sat round on the further side of three tables which formed the
three sides of the square room.
The meal passed in gloomy silence. Gordon, Smith and Hart began a fitful
conversation, but a message was immediately passed up to them from Mr.
Whitehead, who sat at the bottom of one of the tables, to stop talking.
At the end of tea the guests filed out of the room.
The headmaster stood up and rapped on his table with a knife.
“The whole school,” he said, “will come to the library in ten minutes’
time.”
The boys left the dining-room. They began to whisper to one another with
bated breath. “What’s the matter?” And the boys of the second division
shook their heads ominously, and pointing to Gordon, Smith, and Hart,
said: “You’re in for it this time!” The boys of the first division were
too important to take any notice of the rest of the school, and retired
to the first division school-room in dignified silence.
Ten minutes later the whole school was assembled in the library, from
which one flight of stairs led to the upper storeys. The staircase was
shrouded from view by a dark curtain hanging from a Gothic arch; it was
through this curtain that the headmaster used dramatically to appear on
important occasions, and it was up this staircase that boys guilty of
cardinal offences were led off to corporal punishment.
The boys waited in breathless silence. Acute suspense was felt by the
whole school, but by none so keenly as by Gordon, Smith, and Hart minor.
These three little boys felt perfectly sick with fear of the unknown and
the terror of having in some unknown way made themselves responsible for
the calamity which would perhaps vitally affect the whole school.
Presently a rustle was heard, and the headmaster swept down the
staircase and through the curtain, robed in the black silk gown of an
LL.D. He stood at a high desk which was placed opposite the staircase in
front of the boys, who sat, in the order of their divisions, on rows of
chairs. The three assistant masters walked in from a side door, also in
their gowns, and took seats to the right and left of the headmaster’s
desk. There was a breathless silence.
The headmaster began to speak in grave and icily cold tones; his face
was contracted by a permanent frown.
“I had thought,” he said, “that there were in this school some boys
who had a notion of gentlemanly behaviour, manly conduct, and common
decency. I see that I was mistaken. The behaviour of certain of you
to-day--I will not mention them because of their exceeding shame, but
you will all know whom I mean. . . .” At this moment all the boys turned
round and looked hard at Gordon, Smith, and Hart minor, who blushed
scarlet, and whose eyes filled with tears. . . . “The less said about
the matter the better,” continued the headmaster, “but I confess that it
is difficult for me to understand how any one, however young, can be so
hardened and so wanton as to behave in the callous and indecent way in
which certain of you--I need not mention who--have behaved to-day. You
have disgraced the school in the eyes of strangers; you have violated
the laws of hospitality and courtesy; you have shown that in St. James’s
there is not a gleam of patriotism, not a spark of interest in the
school, not a touch of that ordinary common English manliness, that
sense for the interests of the school and the community which makes
Englishmen what they are. The boys who have been most guilty in this
matter have already been punished, and I do not propose to punish them
further; but I had intended to take the whole school for an expedition
to the New Forest next week. That expedition will be put off: in fact
it will never take place. Only the eleven shall go, and I trust that
another time the miserable idlers and loafers who have brought this
shame, this disgrace on the school, who have no self-respect and no
self-control, who do not know how to behave like gentlemen, who are
idle, vulgar and depraved, will learn by this lesson to mend their ways
and to behave better in the future. But I am sorry to say that it is
not only the chief offenders, who, as I have already said, have been
punished, who are guilty in the matter. Many of the other boys, although
they did not descend to the depths of vulgar behaviour reached by the
culprits I have mentioned, showed a considerable lack of patriotism by
their apathy and their lack of attention while the cricket match was
proceeding this afternoon. I can only hope this may be a lesson to
you all; but while I trust the chief offenders will feel specially
uncomfortable, I wish to impress upon you that you are all, with the
exception of the eleven, in a sense guilty.”
With these words the headmaster swept out of the room.
The boys dispersed in whispering groups. Gordon, Smith, and Hart minor,
when they attempted to speak, were met with stony silence; they were
boycotted and cut by the remaining boys.
Gordon and Smith slept in two adjoining cubicles, and in a third
adjoining cubicle was an upper division boy called Worthing. That night,
after they had gone to bed, Gordon asked Worthing whether, among all the
guilty, one just man had not been found.
“Surely,” he said, “Campbell minor, who put up the score during the
cricket match, was attentive right through the game, and wouldn’t he be
allowed to go to the New Forest with the eleven?”
“No,” said Worthing, “he whistled twice.”
“Oh!” said Gordon, “I didn’t know that. Of course, he can’t go!”