They had indeed often discussed it. It had been perpetually there――a
source of wonder and many questions――a thing which hovered and danced,
drew near and retreated, a thing which could be referred to at any
moment without notice or introduction, a kind of enchanted castle which
grew up into the sky with lightning-like rapidity, and as quickly
vanished. It had not been, however, until he was close on sixteen that
the decisive step had been actually taken, that the vision had given
place to reality.
His father brought him and departed again, leaving Graham with a
sinking heart in the midst of his new world. How dreadfully different
from anything he had ever known it was all going to be! For the first
time in his life he felt thoroughly miserable.
Yet, in a way, he was to be singularly fortunate. Far sooner than
might have been expected he dropped into his new life. He had never,
of course, played either cricket or football, but he was naturally
strong and agile, and in the former game he now made rapid progress. It
was then that he learned how ready his new companions were with their
praise and encouragement. If he had known more of the world, indeed, he
might have marvelled not a little at his almost immediate popularity,
for doubtless, at first, he could not but have seemed ‘rather queer’ to
the others. Nevertheless they liked him, liked to be with him, and if
they occasionally found him alarmingly innocent――well! somehow, it was
only charming that he should be so. To be sure he _was_, now and again,
made fun of in a way; but that way was quite the kindliest in the
world, the very opposite from the way they might have taken had they
been so minded, had their desire been to hurt, to torment him.
All this, however, the fact that his new friends had so at once and
unreservedly welcomed him, had made it so tremendously easy for him,
seemed to Graham to be merely natural, and thus, in a sense, it
probably defeated his father’s main object in sending him to school at
all; that object being, presumably, to familiarise him with the ways of
actual life. From Graham, somehow, actual life was as far away as ever.
It was all so bright, so charming; every one was so ‘decent’ to him, so
nice; how in the world was he to know that ‘niceness’ wasn’t a thing to
be counted upon; and that he, Graham Iddesleigh, wonderfully had been
made an exception of? There seemed in fact to be hardly a boy who was
not anxious to help him, who did not take a pleasure in watching him
drop into the ways of the place; while such things as he really did
do well――swimming, diving, running, leaping, translating Greek――were
elaborately overpraised. The masters liked him also; and, what was more
significant, the older boys, who ignored his contemporaries, took an
interest in him, asked him to their studies, looked after him, wanted
him to do the school credit.
He was happy. The days passed very quickly. Nevertheless, he had not
quite learned to live the life the others lived, and there were times
when he felt homesick. One thing in particular he noticed (though he
had made too many new friends to find much leisure for regret), and
that was just that the old playmate of his dreams had ceased to visit
him, that he could no longer even call up very clearly his image,
remember what he was like. It was as if the change which had come into
his everyday world had extended on into the dusky ways of sleep, and
though he did not dwell upon it at all, yet he felt, obscurely, that
something that had been had ceased to be, and that there was a blank,
a void in his existence, which none of the many new pleasures and
interests in his life would ever be able to fill.