Yet Mr. Horbury had been right in one matter, if not in all. That
evening was a turning-point in Meyrick's life. He had felt the utmost
rage of the enemy, as it were, and he determined that he would be a funk
no longer. He would not degenerate into the state of little Phipps, who
had been bullied and "rockered" and beaten into such a deplorable
condition that he fainted dead away while the Headmaster was operating
on him for "systematic and deliberate lying." Phipps not only fainted,
but, being fundamentally sensible, as Dr. Johnson expressed it, showed a
strong disinclination to return to consciousness and the precious balms
of the "dear old Head." Chesson was rather frightened, and the school
doctor, who had his living to get, said, somewhat dryly, that he thought
the lad had better go home for a week or two.
So Phipps went home in a state which made his mother cry bitterly and
his father wonder whether the Public School system was not over-praised.
But the old family doctor went about raging and swearing at the
"scoundrels" who had reduced a child of twelve to a nervous wreck, with
"neurasthenia cerebralis" well on its way. But Dr. Walford had got his
education in some trumpery little academy, and did not understand or
value the _ethos_ of the great Public Schools.
Now, Ambrose Meyrick had marked the career of wretched Phipps with
concern and pity. The miserable little creature had been brought by
careful handling from masters and boys to such a pitch of neurotic
perfection that it was only necessary to tap him smartly on the back or
on the arm, and he would instantly burst into tears. Whenever anyone
asked him the simplest question he suspected a cruel trap of some sort,
and lied and equivocated and shuffled with a pitiable lack of skill.
Though he was pitched by the heels into mucker about three times a week,
that he might acquire the useful art of natation, he still seemed to
grow dirtier and dirtier. His school books were torn to bits, his
exercises made into darts; he had impositions for losing books and
canings for not doing his work, and he lied and cried all the more.
Meyrick had never got to this depth. He was a sturdy boy, and Phipps had
always been a weakly little animal; but, as he walked from the study to
the schoolroom after his thrashing, he felt that he had been in some
danger of descending on that sad way. He finally resolved that he would
never tread it, and so he walked past the baize-lined doors into the
room where the other boys were at work on prep, with an air of unconcern
which was not in the least assumed.
Mr. Horbury was a man of considerable private means and did not care to
be bothered with the troubles and responsibilities of a big House. But
there was room and to spare in the Old Grange, so he took three boys
besides his nephew. These three were waiting with a grin of
anticipation, since the nature of Meyrick's interview with "old Horbury"
was not dubious. But Ambrose strolled in with a "Hallo, you fellows!"
and sat down in his place as if nothing had happened. This was
intolerable.
"I say, Meyrick," began Pelly, a beefy boy with a red face, "you _have_
been blubbing! Feel like writing home about it? Oh! I forgot. This is
your home, isn't it? How many cuts? I didn't hear you howl."
The boy took no notice. He was getting out his books as if no one had
spoken.
"Can't you answer?" went on the beefy one. "How many cuts, you young
sneak?"
"Go to hell!"
The whole three stared aghast for a moment; they thought Meyrick must
have gone mad. Only one, Bates the observant, began to chuckle quietly
to himself, for he did not like Pelly. He who was always beefy became
beefier; his eyes bulged out with fury.
"I'll give it you," he said and made for Ambrose, who was turning over
the leaves of the Latin dictionary. Ambrose did not wait for the
assault; he rose also and met Pelly half-way with a furious blow, well
planted on the nose. Pelly took a back somersault and fell with a crash
to the floor, where he lay for a moment half stunned. He rose staggering
and looked about him with a pathetic, bewildered air; for, indeed, a
great part of his little world had crumbled about his ears. He stood in
the middle of the room, wondering what it meant, whether it was true
indeed that Meyrick was no longer of any use for a little quiet fun. A
horrible and incredible transmutation had, apparently, been effected in
the funk of old. Pelly gazed wildly about him as he tried to staunch the
blood that poured over his mouth.
"Foul blow!" ventured Rawson, a lean lad who liked to twist the arms of
very little boys till they shrieked for mercy. The full inwardness of
the incident had not penetrated to his brain; he saw without believing,
in the manner of the materialist who denies the marvellous even when it
is before his eyes.
"Foul blow, young Meyrick!"
The quiet student had gone back to his place and was again handling his
dictionary. It was a hard, compact volume, rebound in strong boards, and
the edge of these boards caught the unfortunate Rawson full across the
eyes with extraordinary force. He put his face in his hands and
blubbered quietly and dismally, rocking to and fro in his seat, hardly
hearing the fluent stream of curses with which the quiet student
inquired whether the blow he had just had was good enough for him.
Meyrick picked up his dictionary with a volley of remarks which would
have done credit to an old-fashioned stage-manager at the last dress
rehearsal before production.
"Hark at him," said Pelly feebly, almost reverently. "Hark at him." But
poor Rawson, rocking to and fro, his head between his hands, went on
blubbering softly and spoke no word.
Meyrick had never been an unobservant lad; he had simply made a
discovery that evening that in Rome certain Roman customs must be
adopted. The wise Bates went on doing his copy of Latin verse, chuckling
gently to himself. Bates was a cynic. He despised all the customs and
manners of the place most heartily and took the most curious care to
observe them. He might have been the inventor and patentee of rocker, if
one judged him by the fervour with which he played it. He entered his
name for every possible event at the sports, and jumped the jumps and
threw the hammer and ran the races as if his life depended on it. Once
Mr. Horbury had accidentally over-head Bates saying something about "the
honour of the House" which went to his heart. As for cricket, Bates
played as if his sole ambition was to become a first-class professional.
And he chuckled as he did his Latin verses, which he wrote (to the awe
of other boys) "as if he were writing a letter"--that is, without making
a rough copy. For Bates had got the "hang" of the whole system from
rocker to Latin verse, and his copies were much admired. He grinned that
evening, partly at the transmutation of Meyrick and partly at the line
he was jotting down:
"_Mira loquor, coelo resonans vox funditur alto._"
In after life he jotted down a couple of novels which sold, as the
journalists said, "like hot cakes." Meyrick went to see him soon after
the first novel had gone into its thirtieth thousand, and Bates was
reading "appreciations" and fingering a cheque and chuckling.
"Mira loquor, populo, resonans, _cheque_ funditur alto," he said. "I
know what schoolmasters and boys and the public want, and I take care
they get it--_sale espece de sacres cochons de N. de D._!"
The rest of prep. went off quite quietly. Pelly was slowly recovering
from the shock that he had received and began to meditate revenge.
Meyrick had got him unawares, he reflected. It was merely an accident,
and he resolved to challenge Meyrick to fight and give him back the
worst licking he had ever had in his life. He was beefy, but a bold
fellow. Rawson, who was really a cruel coward and a sneak, had made up
his mind that he wanted no more, and from time to time cast meek and
propitiatory glances in Meyrick's direction.
At half-past nine they all went into their dining-room for bread and
cheese and beer. At a quarter to ten Mr. Horbury appeared in cap and
gown and read a chapter from St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, with one
or two singularly maundering and unhappy prayers. He stopped the boys as
they were going up to their rooms.
"What's this, Pelly?" he said. "Your nose is all swollen. It's been
bleeding, too, I see. What have you been doing to yourself? And you,
Rawson, how do you account for your eyes being black? What's the meaning
of all this?"
"Please, Sir, there was a very stiff bully down at rocker this
afternoon, and Rawson and I got tokered badly."
"Were you in the bully, Bates?"
"No, Sir; I've been outside since the beginning of the term. But all the
fellows were playing up tremendously, and I saw Rawson and Pelly had
been touched when we were changing."
"Ah! I see. I'm very glad to find the House plays up so well. As for
you, Bates, I hear you're the best outside for your age that we've ever
had. Good night."
The three said "Thank you, Sir," as if their dearest wish had been
gratified, and the master could have sworn that Bates flushed with
pleasure at his word of praise. But the fact was that Bates had
"suggested" the flush by a cunning arrangement of his features.
The boys vanished and Mr. Horbury returned to his desk. He was editing a
selection called "English Literature for Lower Forms." He began to read
from the slips that he had prepared:
"_So all day long the noise of battle roll'd
Among the mountains by the winter sea;
Until King Arthur's table, man by man,
Had fallen in Lyonnesse----_"
He stopped and set a figure by the last word, and then, on a blank slip,
with a corresponding letter, he repeated the figure and wrote the note:
Lyonnesse--the Sicilly Isles.
Then he took a third slip and wrote the question:
Give the ancient name of the Sicilly Isles.
These serious labours employed him till twelve o'clock. He put the
materials of his book away as the clock struck, and solemnly mixed
himself his nightly glass of whisky and soda--in the daytime he never
touched spirits--and bit the one cigar which he smoked in the
twenty-four hours. The stings of the Head's sherry and of his
conversation no longer burned within him; time and work and the bite of
the cane in Meyrick's flesh had soothed his soul, and he set himself to
dream, leaning back in his arm-chair, watching the cheerful fire.
He was thinking of what he would do when he succeeded to the
Headmastership. Already there were rumours that Chesson had refused the
Bishopric of St. Dubric's in order that he might be free to accept
Dorchester, which, in the nature of things, must soon be vacant. Horbury
had no doubt that the Headmastership would be his; he had influential
friends who assured him that the trustees would not hesitate for an
instant. Then he would show the world what an English Public School
could be made. In five years, he calculated, he would double the
numbers. He saw the coming importance of the modern side, and especially
of science. Personally, he detested "stinks," but he knew what an effect
he would produce with a great laboratory fitted with the very best
appliances and directed by a highly qualified master. Then, again, an
elaborate gymnasium must be built; there must be an engineer's shop,
too, and a carpenter's as well. And people were beginning to complain
that a Public School Education was of no use in the City. There must be
a business master, an expert from the Stock Exchange who would see that
this reproach was removed. Then he considered that a large number of the
boys belonged to the land-owning class. Why should a country gentleman
be at the mercy of his agent, forced for lack of technical knowledge to
accept statements which he could not check? It was clear that the
management of land and great estates must have its part in the scheme;
and, again, the best-known of the Crammers must be bought on his own
terms, so that the boys who wished to get into the Army or the Civil
Service would be practically compelled to come to Lupton. Already
he saw paragraphs in the _Guardian_ and _The Times_--in all the
papers--paragraphs which mentioned the fact that ninety-five per cent of
the successful candidates for the Indian Civil Service had received
their education at the foundation of "stout old Martin Rolle."
Meanwhile, in all this flood of novelty, the old traditions should be
maintained with more vigour than ever. The classics should be taught as
they never had been taught. Every one of the masters on this side should
be in the highest honours and, if possible, he would get famous men for
the work--they should not merely be good, but also notorious scholars.
Gee, the famous explorer in Crete, who had made an enormous mark in
regions widely removed from the scholastic world by his wonderful book,
_Daedalus; or, The Secret of the Labyrinth_, must come to Lupton at any
price; and Maynard, who had discovered some most important Greek
manuscripts in Egypt, he must have a form, too. Then there was Rendell,
who had done so well with his _Thucydides_, and Davies, author of _The
Olive of Athene_, a daring but most brilliant book which promised to
upset the whole established theory of mythology--he would have such a
staff as no school had ever dreamed of. "We shall have no difficulty
about paying them," thought Horbury; "our numbers will go up by leaps
and bounds, and the fees shall be five hundred pounds a year--and such
terms will do us more good than anything."
He went into minute detail. He must take expert advice as to the
advisability of the school farming on its own account, and so supplying
the boys with meat, milk, bread, butter and vegetables at first cost. He
believed it could be done; he would get a Scotch farmer from the
Lowlands and make him superintendent at a handsome salary and with a
share in the profits. There would be the splendid advertisement of "the
whole dietary of the school supplied from the School Farms, under the
supervision of Mr. David Anderson, formerly of Haddanneuk, the largest
tenancy in the Duke of Ayr's estates." The food would be better and
cheaper, too; but there would be no luxury. The "Spartan" card was
always worth playing; one must strike the note of plain living in a
luxurious age; there must be no losing of the old Public School
severity. On the other hand, the boy's hands should be free to go into
their own pockets; there should be no restraint here. If a boy chose to
bring in _Dindonneau aux truffes_ or _Pieds de mouton a la Ste
Menehould_ to help out his tea, that was his look-out. Why should not
the school grant a concession to some big London firm, who would pay
handsomely for the privilege of supplying the hungry lads with every
kind of expensive dainty? The sum could be justly made a large one, as
any competing shop could be promptly put out of bounds with reason or
without it. On one side, _confiserie_; at the other counter,
_charcuterie_; enormous prices could be charged to the wealthy boys of
whom the school would be composed. Yet, on the other hand, the
distinguished visitor--judge, bishop, peer or what not--would lunch at
the Headmaster's house and eat the boys' dinner and go away saying it
was quite the plainest and very many times the best meal he had ever
tasted. There would be well-hung saddle of mutton, roasted and not
baked; floury potatoes and cauliflower; apple pudding with real English
cheese, with an excellent glass of the school beer, an honest and
delicious beverage made of malt and hops in the well-found school
brewery. Horbury knew enough of modern eating and drinking to understand
that such a meal would be a choice rarity to nine rich people out of
ten; and yet it was "Spartan," utterly devoid of luxury and ostentation.
Again, he passed from detail and minutiae into great Napoleonic regions.
A thousand boys at L500 a year; that would be an income for the school
of five hundred thousand pounds! The profits would be gigantic, immense.
After paying large, even extravagant, prices to the staff, after all
building expenses had been deducted, he hardly dared to think how vast a
sum would accrue year by year to the Trustees. The vision began to
assume such magnificence that it became oppressive; it put on the
splendours and delights of the hashish dream, which are too great and
too piercing for mortal hearts to bear. And yet it was no mirage; there
was not a step that could not be demonstrated, shown to be based on
hard; matter-of-fact business considerations. He tried to keep back his
growing excitement, to argue with himself that he was dealing in
visions, but the facts were too obstinate. He saw that it would be his
part to work the same miracle in the scholastic world as the great
American storekeepers had operated in the world of retail trade. The
principle was precisely the same: instead of a hundred small shops
making comparatively modest and humdrum profits you had the vast
emporium doing business on the gigantic scale with vastly diminished
expenses and vastly increased rewards.
Here again was a hint. He had thought of America, and he knew that here
was an inexhaustible gold mine, that no other scholastic prospector had
even dreamed of. The rich American was notoriously hungry for everything
that was English, from frock-coats to pedigrees. He had never thought of
sending his son to an English Public School because he considered the
system hopelessly behind the times. But the new translated Lupton would
be to other Public Schools as a New York hotel of the latest fashion is
to a village beer-shop. And yet the young millionaire would grow up in
the company of the sons of the English gentlemen, imbibing the unique
culture of English life, while at the same time he enjoyed all the
advantages of modern ideas, modern science and modern business training.
Land was still comparatively cheap at Lupton; the school must buy it
quietly, indirectly, by degrees, and then pile after pile of vast
buildings rose before his eyes. He saw the sons of the rich drawn from
all the ends of the world to the Great School, there to learn the secret
of the Anglo-Saxons.
Chesson was mistaken in that idea of his, which he thought daring and
original, of establishing a distinct Jewish House where the food should
be "Kosher." The rich Jew who desired to send his son to an English
Public School was, in nine cases out of ten, anxious to do so precisely
because he wanted to sink his son's connection with Jewry in oblivion.
He had heard Chesson talk of "our Christian duty to the seed of Israel"
in this connection. The man was clearly a fool. No, the more Jews the
better, but no Jewish House. And no Puseyism either: broad, earnest
religious teaching, with a leaning to moderate Anglicanism, should be
the faith of Lupton. As to this Chesson was, certainly, sound enough. He
had always made a firm stand against ecclesiasticism in any form.
Horbury knew the average English parent of the wealthier classes
thoroughly; he knew that, though he generally called himself a
Churchman, he was quite content to have his sons prepared for
confirmation by a confessed Agnostic. Certainly this liberty must not be
narrowed when Lupton became cosmopolitan. "We will retain all the
dignified associations which belong to the Established Church," he said
to himself, "and at the same time we shall be utterly free from the
taint of over-emphasising dogmatic teaching." He had a sudden brilliant
idea. Everybody in Church circles was saying that the English bishops
were terribly overworked, that it was impossible for the most strenuous
men with the best intentions to supervise effectually the huge dioceses
that had descended from the sparsely populated England of the Middle
Ages. Everywhere there was a demand for suffragans and more suffragans.
In the last week's _Guardian_ there were three letters on the subject,
one from a clergyman in their own diocese. The Bishop had been attacked
by some rabid ritualistic person, who had pointed out that nine out of
every ten parishes had not so much as seen the colour of his hood ever
since his appointment ten years before. The Archdeacon of Melby had
replied in a capital letter, scathing and yet humorous. Horbury turned
to the paper on the table beside his chair and looked up the letter.
"In the first place," wrote the Archdeacon, "your correspondent does not
seem to have realised that the _ethoes_ of the Diocese of Melby is not
identical with that of sacerdotalism. The sturdy folk of the Midlands
have not yet, I am thankful to say, forgotten the lessons of our great
Reformation. They have no wish to see a revival of the purely mechanical
religion of the Middle Ages--of the system of a sacrificing priesthood
and of sacraments efficacious _ex opere operato_. Hence they do not
regard the episcopate quite in the same light as your correspondent
'Senex,' who, it seems to me, looks upon a bishop as a sort of
Christianised 'medicine-man,' endowed with certain mysterious
thaumaturgic powers which have descended to him by an (imaginary)
spiritual succession. This was not the view of Hooker, nor, I venture to
say, has it ever been the view of the really representative divines of
the Established Church of England.
"Still," the Archdeacon went on, "it must be admitted that the present
diocese of Melby is unwieldy and, it may be fairly said, unworkable."
Then there followed the humorous anecdote of Sir Boyle Roche and the
Bird, and finally the Archdeacon emitted the prayer that God in His own
good time would put it into the hearts of our rulers in Church and
State to give their good Bishop an episcopal curate.
Horbury got up from his chair and paced up and down the study; his
excitement was so great that he could keep quiet no longer. His cigar
had gone out long ago, and he had barely sipped the whisky and soda. His
eyes glittered with excitement. Circumstances seemed positively to be
playing into his hands; the dice of the world were being loaded in his
favour. He was like Bel Ami at his wedding. He almost began to believe
in Providence.
For he was sure it could be managed. Here was a general feeling that no
one man could do the work of the diocese. There must be a suffragan, and
Lupton must give the new Bishop his title. No other town was possible.
Dunham had certainly been a see in the eighth century, but it was now
little more than a village and a village served by a miserable little
branch line; whereas Lupton was on the great main track of the Midland
system, with easy connections to every part of the country. The
Archdeacon, who was also a peer, would undoubtedly become the first
Bishop of Lupton, and he should be the titular chaplain of the Great
School! "Chaplain! The Right Reverend Lord Selwyn, Lord Bishop of
Lupton." Horbury gasped; it was too magnificent, too splendid. He knew
Lord Selwyn quite well and had no doubt as to his acceptance. He was a
poor man, and there would be no difficulty whatever in establishing a
_modus_. The Archdeacon was just the man for the place. He was no
pedantic theologian, but a broad, liberal-minded man of the world.
Horbury remembered, almost with ecstasy, that he had lectured all over
the United States with immense success. The American Press had been
enthusiastic, and the First Congregational Church of Chicago had
implored Selwyn to accept its call, preach what he liked and pocket an
honorarium of twenty-five thousand dollars a year. And, on the other
hand, what could the most orthodox desire safer than a chaplain who was
not only a bishop, but a peer of the realm? Wonderful! Here were the
three birds--Liberalism, Orthodoxy and Reverence for the House of
Lords--caught safe and secure in this one net.
The games? They should be maintained in all their glory, rather on an
infinitely more splendid scale. Cricket and sticker (the Lupton hockey),
rackets and fives, should be all encouraged; and more, Lupton should be
the only school to possess a tennis court. The noble _jeu de paume_, the
game of kings, the most aristocratic of all sports, should have a worthy
home at Lupton. They would train champions; they would have both French
and English markers skilled in the latest developments of the _chemin
de fer_ service. "Better than half a yard, I think," said Horbury to
himself; "they will have to do their best to beat that."
But he placed most reliance on rocker. This was the Lupton football, a
variant as distinctive in its way as the Eton Wall Game. People have
thought that the name is a sort of portmanteau word, a combination of
Rugger and Soccer; but in reality the title was derived from the field
where the game used to be played in old days by the townsfolk. As in
many other places, football at Lupton had been originally an excuse for
a faction-fight between two parishes in the town--St. Michael's and St.
Paul's-in-the-Fields. Every year, on Shrove Tuesday, the townsfolk,
young and old, had proceeded to the Town Field and had fought out their
differences with considerable violence. The field was broken land: a
deep, sluggish stream crossed one angle of it, and in the middle there
were quarries and jagged limestone rocks. Hence football was called in
the town "playing rocks," for, indeed, it was considered an excellent
point of play to hurl a man over the edge of the quarry on to the rocks
beneath, and so late as 1830 a certain Jonas Simpson of St. Michael's
had had his spine broken in this way. However, as a boy from St. Paul's
was drowned in the Wand the same day, the game was always reckoned a
draw. It was from the peculiarities of this old English sport that the
school had constructed its game. The Town Field had, of course, long
been stolen from the townsfolk and built over; but the boys had,
curiously enough, perpetuated the tradition of its peculiarities in a
kind of football ritual. For, besides the two goals, one part of the
field was marked by a line of low white posts: these indicated the
course of a non-existent Wand brook, and in the line of these posts it
was lawful to catch an opponent by the throat and choke him till he
turned black in the face--the best substitute for drowning that the
revisers of the game could imagine. Again: about the centre of the field
two taller posts indicated the position of the quarries, and between
these you might be hit or kicked full in the stomach without the
smallest ground of complaint: the stroke being a milder version of the
old fall on the rocks.
There were many other like amenities in rocker; and Horbury maintained
it was by far the manliest variant of the game. For this pleasing sport
he now designed a world-wide fame. Rocker should be played wherever the
English flag floated: east and west, north and south; from Hong Kong to
British Columbia; in Canada and New Zealand there should be the
_Temenoi_ of this great rite; and the traveller seeing the mystic
enclosure--the two goals, the line of little posts marking "brooks" and
the two poles indicating "quarries"--should know English soil as surely
as by the Union Jack. The technical terms of rocker should become a part
of the great Anglo-Saxon inheritance; the whole world should hear of
"bully-downs" and "tokering," of "outsides" and "rammers." It would
require working, but it was to be done: articles in the magazines and in
the Press; perhaps a story of school life, a new _Tom Brown_ must be
written. The Midlands and the North must be shown that there was money
in it, and the rest would be easy.
One thing troubled Horbury. His mind was full of the new and splendid
buildings that were to be erected, but he was aware that antiquity still
counted for something, and unfortunately Lupton could show very little
that was really antique. Forty years before, Stanley, the first
reforming Headmaster, had pulled down the old High School. There were
prints of it: it was a half-timbered, fifteenth-century building, with a
wavering roof-line and an overhanging upper story; there were dim,
leaded windows and a grey arched porch--an ugly old barn, Stanley called
it. Scott was called in and built the present High School, a splendid
hall in red brick: French thirteenth-century, with Venetian detail; it
was much admired. But Horbury was sorry that the old school had been
destroyed; he saw for the first time that it might have been made a
valuable attraction. Then again, Dowsing, who succeeded Stanley, had
knocked the cloisters all to bits; there was only one side of the
quadrangle left, and this had been boarded up and used as a gardeners'
shed. Horbury did not know what to say of the destruction of the Cross
that used to stand in the centre of the quad. No doubt Dowsing was right
in thinking it superstitious; still, it might have been left as a
curiosity and shown to visitors, just as the instruments of bygone
cruelty--the rack and the Iron Maid--are preserved and exhibited to
wondering sightseers. There was no real danger of any superstitious
adoration of the Cross; it was, as a matter of fact, as harmless as the
axe and block at the Tower of London; Dowsing had ruined what might have
been an important asset in the exploitation of the school.
Still, perhaps the loss was not altogether irreparable. High School was
gone and could not be recovered; but the cloisters might be restored and
the Cross, too. Horbury knew that the monument in front of Charing Cross
Railway Station was considered by many to be a genuine antique: why not
get a good man to build them a Cross? Not like the old one, of course;
that "Fair Roode with our Deare Ladie Saint Marie and Saint John," and,
below, the stories of the blissful Saints and Angels--that would never
do. But a vague, Gothic erection, with plenty of kings and queens,
imaginary benefactors of the school, and a small cast-iron cross at the
top: that could give no offence to anybody, and might pass with nine
people out of ten as a genuine remnant of the Middle Ages. It could be
made of soft stone and allowed to weather for a few years; then a coat
of invisible anti-corrosive fluid would preserve carvings and imagery
that would already appear venerable in decay. There was no need to make
any precise statements: parents and the public might be allowed to draw
their own conclusions.
Horbury was neglecting nothing. He was building up a great scheme in his
mind, and to him it seemed that every detail was worth attending to,
while at the same time he did not lose sight of the whole effect. He
believed in finish: there must be no rough edges. It seemed to him that
a school legend must be invented. The real history was not quite what he
wanted, though it might work in with a more decorative account of
Lupton's origins. One might use the _Textus Receptus_ of Martin Rolle's
Foundation--the bequest of land _c._ 1430 to build and maintain a school
where a hundred boys should be taught grammar, and ten poor scholars and
six priests should pray for the Founder's soul. This was well enough,
but one might hint that Martin Rolle really refounded and re-endowed a
school of Saxon origin, probably established by King Alfred himself in
Luppa's Tun. Then, again, who could show that Shakespeare had not
visited Lupton? His famous schoolboy, "creeping like snail unwillingly
to school," might very possibly have been observed by the poet as he
strolled by the banks of the Wand. Many famous men might have received
their education at Lupton; it would not be difficult to make a plausible
list of such. It must be done carefully and cautiously, with such
phrases as "it has always been a tradition at Lupton that Sir Walter
Raleigh received part of his education at the school"; or, again, "an
earlier generation of Luptonians remembered the initials 'W. S. S. on
A.' cut deeply in the mantel of old High School, now, unfortunately,
demolished." Antiquarians would laugh? Possibly; but who cared about
antiquarians? For the average man "Charing" was derived from "_chere
reine_," and he loved to have it so, and Horbury intended to appeal to
the average man. Though he was a schoolmaster he was no recluse, and he
had marked the ways of the world from his quiet study in Lupton; hence
he understood the immense value of a grain of quackery in all schemes
which are meant to appeal to mortals. It was a deadly mistake to
suppose that anything which was all quackery would be a success--a
permanent success, at all events; it was a deadlier mistake still to
suppose that anything quite devoid of quackery could pay handsomely. The
average English palate would shudder at the flavour of _aioli_, but it
would be charmed by the insertion of that _petit point d'ail_ which
turned mere goodness into triumph and laurelled perfection. And there
was no need to mention the word "garlic" before the guests. Lupton was
not going to be all garlic: it was to be infinitely the best scholastic
dish that had ever been served--the ingredients should be unsurpassed
and unsurpassable. But--King Alfred's foundation of a school at Luppa's
Tun, and that "W. S. S. on A." cut deeply on the mantel of the vanished
High School--these and legends like unto them, these would be the last
touch, _le petit point d'ail_.
It was a great scheme, wonderful and glorious; and the most amazing
thing about it was that it was certain to be realised. There was not a
flaw from start to finish. The Trustees were certain to appoint him--he
had that from a sure quarter--and it was but a question of a year or
two, perhaps only of a month or two, before all this great and golden
vision should be converted into hard and tangible fact. He drank off his
glass of whisky and soda; it had become flat and brackish, but to him
it was nectar, since it was flavoured with ecstasy.
He frowned suddenly as he went upstairs to his room. An unpleasant
recollection had intruded for a moment on his amazing fantasy; but he
dismissed the thought as soon as it arose. That was all over, there
could be no possibility of trouble from that direction; and so, his mind
filled with images, he fell asleep and saw Lupton as the centre of the
whole world, like Jerusalem in the ancient maps.
A student of the deep things of mysticism has detected a curious element
of comedy in the management of human concerns; and there certainly seems
a touch of humour in the fact that on this very night, while Horbury was
building the splendid Lupton of the future, the palace of his thought
and his life was shattered for ever into bitter dust and nothingness.
But so it was. The Dread Arrest had been solemnly recognised, and that
wretched canonry at Wareham was irrevocably pronounced for doom.
Fantastic were the elements of forces that had gone to the ordering of
this great sentence: raw corn spirit in the guise of sherry, the
impertinence (or what seemed such) of an elderly clergyman, a boiled leg
of mutton, a troublesome and disobedient boy, and--another person.