II

Mr. Horbury had suffered from one or two slight twinges of conscience

for a few days after he had operated on his nephew. They were but very

slight pangs, for, after all, it was a case of flagrant and repeated

disobedience to rules, complicated by lying. The High Usher was quite

sincere in scouting the notion of a boy's taking any interest in Norman

architecture, and, as he said to himself, truly enough, if every boy at

Lupton could come and go when and how he pleased, and choose which rules

he would keep and which disobey--why, the school would soon be in a

pretty state. Still, there was a very faint and indistinct murmur in his

mind which suggested that Meyrick had received, in addition to his own

proper thrashing, the thrashings due to the Head, his cook and his wine

merchant. And Horbury was rather sorry, for he desired to be just

according to his definition of justice--unless, indeed justice should be

excessively inconvenient.

But these faint scruples were soon removed--turned, indeed, to

satisfaction by the evident improvement which declared itself in Ambrose

Meyrick's whole tone and demeanour. He no longer did his best to avoid

rocker. He played, and played well and with relish. The boy was

evidently all right at heart: he had only wanted a sharp lesson, and it

was clear that, once a loafer, he was now on his way to be a credit to

the school. And by some of those secret channels which are known to

masters and to masters alone, rather more than a glimmering of the truth

as to Rawson's black eyes and Pelly's disfigured nose was vouchsafed to

Horbury's vision, and he was by no means displeased with his nephew. The

two boys had evidently asked for punishment, and had got it. It served

them right. Of course, if the swearing had been brought to his notice by

official instead of by subterranean and mystic ways, he would have had

to cane Meyrick a second time, since, by the Public School convention,

an oath is a very serious offence--as bad as smoking, or worse; but,

being far from a fool, under the circumstances he made nothing of it.

Then the lad's school work was so very satisfactory. It had always been

good, but it had become wonderfully good. That last Greek prose had

shown real grip of the language. The High Usher was pleased. His sharp

lesson had brought forth excellent results, and he foresaw the day when

he would be proud of having taught a remarkably fine scholar.

With the boys Ambrose was becoming a general favourite. He learned not

only to play rocker, he showed Pelly how he thought that blow under the

ear should be dealt with. They all said he was a good fellow; but they

could not make out why, without apparent reason, he would sometimes

burst out into loud laughter. But he said it was something wrong with

his inside--the doctors couldn't make it out--and this seemed rather

interesting.

In after life he often looked back upon this period when, to all

appearance, Lupton was "making a man" of him, and wondered at its

strangeness. To boys and masters alike he was an absolutely normal

schoolboy, busy with the same interests as the rest of them. There was

certainly something rather queer in his appearance; but, as they said,

generously enough, a fellow couldn't help his looks; and, that curious

glint in the eyes apart, he seemed as good a Luptonian as any in the

whole six hundred. Everybody thought that he had absolutely fallen into

line; that he was absorbing the _ethos_ of the place in the most

admirable fashion, subduing his own individuality, his opinions, his

habits, to the general tone of the community around him--putting off, as

it were, the profane dust of his own spirit and putting on the mental

frock of the brotherhood. This, of course, is one of the aims--rather,

_the_ great aim--of the system: this fashioning of very diverse

characters into one common form, so that each great Public School has

its type, which is easily recognisable in the grown-up man years after

his school days are over. Thus, in far lands, in India and Egypt, in

Canada and New Zealand, one recognises the brisk alertness of the

Etonian, the exquisite politeness of Harrow, the profound seriousness of

Rugby; while the note of Lupton may, perhaps, be called finality. The

Old Luptonian no more thinks of arguing a question than does the Holy

Father, and his conversation is a series of irreformable dogmas, and the

captious person who questions any one article is made to feel himself a

cad and an outsider.

Thus it has been related that two men who had met for the first time at

a certain country house-party were getting on together capitally in the

evening over their whisky and soda and cigars. Each held identical views

of equal violence on some important topic--Home Rule or the Transvaal or

Free Trade--and, as the more masterful of the two asserted that hanging

was too good for Blank (naming a well-known statesman), the other would

reply: "I quite agree with you: hanging is too good for Blank."

"He ought to be burned alive," said the one.

"That's about it: he ought to be burned at the stake," answered the

other.

"Look at the way he treated Dash! He's a coward and a damned scoundrel!"

"Perfectly right. He's a damned cursed scoundrel!"

This was splendid, and each thought the other a charming companion.

Unfortunately, however, the conversation, by some caprice, veered from

the iniquities of Blank and glanced aside to cookery--possibly by the

track of Irish stew, used metaphorically to express the disastrous and

iniquitous policy of the great statesman with regard to Ireland. But, as

it happened, there was not the same coincidence on the question of

cookery as there had been on the question of Blank. The masterful man

said:

"No cookery like English. No other race in the world can cook as we do.

Look at French cookery--a lot of filthy, greasy messes."

Now, instead of assenting briskly and firmly as before the other man

said: "Been much in France? Lived there?"

"Never set foot in the beastly country! Don't like their ways, and don't

care to dine off snails and frogs swimming in oil."

The other man began then to talk of the simple but excellent meals he

had relished in France--the savoury _croute-au-pot_, the _bouilli_--good

eating when flavoured by a gherkin or two; velvety _epinards au jus_, a

roast partridge, a salad, a bit of Roquefort and a bunch of grapes. But

he had barely mentioned the soup when the masterful one wheeled round

his chair and offered a fine view of his strong, well-knit figure--as

seen from the back. He did not say anything--he simply took up the paper

and went on smoking. The other men stared in amazement: the amateur of

French cookery looked annoyed. But the host--a keen-eyed old fellow with

a white moustache, turned to the enemy of frogs and snails and grease

and said quite simply: "I say, Mulock, I never knew you'd been at

Lupton."

Mulock gazed. The other men held their breath for a moment as the full

force of the situation dawned on them, and then a wild scream of

laughter shrilled from their throats. Yells and roars of mirth resounded

in the room. Their delight was insatiable. It died for a moment for lack

of breath, and then burst out anew in still louder, more uproarious

clamour, till old Sir Henry Rawnsley, who was fat and short, could do

nothing but choke and gasp and crow out a sound something between a

wheeze and a chuckle. Mulock left the room immediately, and the house

the next morning. He made some excuse to his host, but he told enquiring

friends that, personally, he disliked bounders.

The story, true or false, illustrates the common view of the Lupton

stamp.

"We try to teach the boys to know their own minds," said the Headmaster,

and the endeavour seems to have succeeded in most cases. And, as Horbury

noted in an article he once wrote on the Public School system, every boy

was expected to submit himself to the process, to form and reform

himself in accordance with the tone of the school.

"I sometimes compare our work with that of the metal founder," he says

in the article in question. "Just as the metal comes to the foundry

_rudis indigestaque moles_, a rough and formless mass, without the

slightest suggestion of the shape which it must finally assume, so a boy

comes to a great Public School with little or nothing about him to

suggest the young man who, in eight or nine years' time, will say

good-bye to the dear old school, setting his teeth tight, restraining

himself from giving up to the anguish of this last farewell. Nay, I

think that ours is the harder task, for the metal that is sent to the

foundry has, I presume, been freed of its impurities; we have to deal

rather with the ore--a mass which is not only shapeless, but contains

much that is not metal at all, which must be burnt out and cast aside as

useless rubbish. So the boy comes from his home, which may or may not

have possessed valuable formative influences; which we often find has

tended to create a spirit of individualism and assertiveness; which, in

numerous cases, has left the boy under the delusion that he has come

into the world to live his own life and think his own thoughts. This is

the ore that we cast into our furnace. We burn out the dross and

rubbish; we liquefy the stubborn and resisting metal till it can be run

into the mould--the mould being the whole tone and feeling of a great

community. We discourage all excessive individuality; we make it quite

plain to the boy that he has come to Lupton, not to live his life, not

to think his thoughts, but to live _our_ life, to think _our_ thoughts.

Very often, as I think I need scarcely say, the process is a somewhat

unpleasant one, but, sooner or later, the stubbornest metal yields to

the cleansing, renewing, restoring fires of discipline and public

opinion, and the shapeless mass takes on the shape of the Great School.

Only the other day an old pupil came to see me and confessed that, for

the whole of his first year at Lupton, he had been profoundly wretched.

'I was a dreamy young fool,' he said. 'My head was stuffed with all

sorts of queer fancies, and I expect that if I hadn't come to Lupton I

should have turned out an absolute loafer. But I hated it badly that

first year. I loathed rocker--I did, really--and I thought the fellows

were a lot of savages. And then I seemed to go into a kind of cloud. You

see, Sir, I was losing my old self and hadn't got the new self in its

place, and I couldn't make out what was happening. And then, quite

suddenly, it all came out light and clear. I saw the purpose behind it

all--how we were all working together, masters and boys, for the dear

old school; how we were all "members one of another," as the Doctor said

in Chapel; and that I had a part in this great work, too, though I was

only a kid in the Third. It was like a flash of light: one minute I was

only a poor little chap that nobody cared for and who didn't matter to

anybody, and the next I saw that, in a way, I was as important as the

Doctor himself--I was a part of the failure or success of it all. Do you

know what I did, Sir? I had a book I thought a lot of--_Poems and Tales_

of Edgar Allan Poe. It was my poor sister's book; she had died a year

before when she was only seventeen, and she had written my name in it

when she was dying--she knew I was fond of reading it. It was just the

sort of thing I used to like--morbid fancies and queer poems, and I was

always reading it when the fellows would let me alone. But when I saw

what life really was, when the meaning of it all came to me, as I said

just now, I took that book and tore it to bits, and it was like tearing

myself up. But I knew that writing all that stuff hadn't done that

American fellow much good, and I didn't see what good I should get by

reading it. I couldn't make out to myself that it would fit in with the

Doctor's plans of the spirit of the school, or that I should play up at

rocker any better for knowing all about the "Fall of the House of

Usher," or whatever it's called. I knew my poor sister would

understand, so I tore it up, and I've gone straight ahead ever

since--thanks to Lupton.' _Like a refiner's fire._ _I_ remembered the

dreamy, absent-minded child of fifteen years before; I could scarcely

believe that he stood before--keen, alert, practical, living every

moment of his life, a force, a power in the world, certain of successful

achievement."

Such were the influences to which Ambrose Meyrick was being subjected,

and with infinite success, as it seemed to everybody who watched him. He

was regarded as a conspicuous instance of the efficacy of the system--he

had held out so long, refusing to absorb the "tone," presenting an

obstinate surface to the millstones which would, for his own good, have

ground him to powder, not concealing very much his dislike of the place

and of the people in it. And suddenly he had submitted with a good

grace: it was wonderful! The masters are believed to have discussed the

affair amongst themselves, and Horbury, who confessed or boasted that he

had used sharp persuasion, got a good deal of _kudos_ in consequence.