XVI
In three years Mr. Pembroke had done much to solidify the day-boys
at Sawston School. If they were not solid, they were at all events
curdling, and his activities might reasonably turn elsewhere. He had
served the school for many years, and it was really time he should be
entrusted with a boarding-house. The headmaster, an impulsive man who
darted about like a minnow and gave his mother a great deal of trouble,
agreed with him, and also agreed with Mrs. Jackson when she said that
Mr. Jackson had served the school for many years and that it was really
time he should be entrusted with a boarding-house. Consequently, when
Dunwood House fell vacant the headmaster found himself in rather a
difficult position.
Dunwood House was the largest and most lucrative of the
boarding-houses. It stood almost opposite the school buildings.
Originally it had been a villa residence—a red-brick villa, covered
with creepers and crowned with terracotta dragons. Mr. Annison, founder
of its glory, had lived here, and had had one or two boys to live
with him. Times changed. The fame of the bishops blazed brighter, the
school increased, the one or two boys became a dozen, and an addition
was made to Dunwood House that more than doubled its size. A huge
new building, replete with every convenience, was stuck on to its
right flank. Dormitories, cubicles, studies, a preparation-room, a
dining-room, parquet floors, hot-air pipes—no expense was spared, and
the twelve boys roamed over it like princes. Baize doors communicated
on every floor with Mr. Annison’s part, and he, an anxious gentleman,
would stroll backwards and forwards, a little depressed at the hygienic
splendours, and conscious of some vanished intimacy. Somehow he had
known his boys better when they had all muddled together as one family,
and algebras lay strewn upon the drawing room chairs. As the house
filled, his interest in it decreased. When he retired—which he did
the same summer that Rickie left Cambridge—it had already passed the
summit of excellence and was beginning to decline. Its numbers were
still satisfactory, and for a little time it would subsist on its past
reputation. But that mysterious asset the tone had lowered, and it
was therefore of great importance that Mr. Annison’s successor should
be a first-class man. Mr. Coates, who came next in seniority, was
passed over, and rightly. The choice lay between Mr. Pembroke and Mr.
Jackson, the one an organizer, the other a humanist. Mr. Jackson was
master of the Sixth, and—with the exception of the headmaster, who was
too busy to impart knowledge—the only first-class intellect in the
school. But he could not or rather would not, keep order. He told his
form that if it chose to listen to him it would learn; if it didn’t,
it wouldn’t. One half listened. The other half made paper frogs, and
bored holes in the raised map of Italy with their penknives. When the
penknives gritted he punished them with undue severity, and then forgot
to make them show the punishments up. Yet out of this chaos two facts
emerged. Half the boys got scholarships at the University, and some of
them—including several of the paper-frog sort—remained friends with
him throughout their lives. Moreover, he was rich, and had a competent
wife. His claim to Dunwood House was stronger than one would have
supposed.
The qualifications of Mr. Pembroke have already been indicated. They
prevailed—but under conditions. If things went wrong, he must promise
to resign.
“In the first place,” said the headmaster, “you are doing so splendidly
with the day-boys. Your attitude towards the parents is magnificent.
I—don’t know how to replace you there. Whereas, of course, the parents
of a boarder—”
“Of course,” said Mr. Pembroke.
The parent of a boarder, who only had to remove his son if he was
discontented with the school, was naturally in a more independent
position than the parent who had brought all his goods and chattels to
Sawston, and was renting a house there.
“Now the parents of boarders—this is my second point—practically
demand that the house-master should have a wife.”
“A most unreasonable demand,” said Mr. Pembroke.
“To my mind also a bright motherly matron is quite sufficient. But that
is what they demand. And that is why—do you see?—we _have_ to regard
your appointment as experimental. Possibly Miss Pembroke will be able
to help you. Or I don’t know whether if ever—” He left the sentence
unfinished. Two days later Mr. Pembroke proposed to Mrs. Orr.
He had always intended to marry when he could afford it; and once he
had been in love, violently in love, but had laid the passion aside,
and told it to wait till a more convenient season. This was, of course,
the proper thing to do, and prudence should have been rewarded. But
when, after the lapse of fifteen years, he went, as it were, to his
spiritual larder and took down Love from the top shelf to offer him to
Mrs. Orr, he was rather dismayed. Something had happened. Perhaps the
god had flown; perhaps he had been eaten by the rats. At all events, he
was not there.
Mr. Pembroke was conscientious and romantic, and knew that marriage
without love is intolerable. On the other hand, he could not admit that
love had vanished from him. To admit this, would argue that he had
deteriorated.
Whereas he knew for a fact that he had improved, year by year. Each
year be grew more moral, more efficient, more learned, more genial. So
how could he fail to be more loving? He did not speak to himself as
follows, because he never spoke to himself; but the following notions
moved in the recesses of his mind: “It is not the fire of youth. But
I am not sure that I approve of the fire of youth. Look at my sister!
Once she has suffered, twice she has been most imprudent, and put me to
great inconvenience besides, for if she was stopping with me she would
have done the housekeeping. I rather suspect that it is a nobler, riper
emotion that I am laying at the feet of Mrs. Orr.” It never took him
long to get muddled, or to reverse cause and effect. In a short time he
believed that he had been pining for years, and only waiting for this
good fortune to ask the lady to share it with him.
Mrs. Orr was quiet, clever, kindly, capable, and amusing and they were
old acquaintances. Altogether it was not surprising that he should ask
her to be his wife, nor very surprising that she should refuse. But
she refused with a violence that alarmed them both. He left her house
declaring that he had been insulted, and she, as soon as he left,
passed from disgust into tears.
He was much annoyed. There was a certain Miss Herriton who, though far
inferior to Mrs. Orr, would have done instead of her. But now it was
impossible. He could not go offering himself about Sawston. Having
engaged a matron who had the reputation for being bright and motherly,
he moved into Dunwood House and opened the Michaelmas term. Everything
went wrong. The cook left; the boys had a disease called roseola;
Agnes, who was still drunk with her engagement, was of no assistance,
but kept flying up to London to push Rickie’s fortunes; and, to crown
everything, the matron was too bright and not motherly enough: she
neglected the little boys and was overattentive to the big ones.
She left abruptly, and the voice of Mrs. Jackson arose, prophesying
disaster.
Should he avert it by taking orders? Parents do not demand that a
house-master should be a clergyman, yet it reassures them when he is.
And he would have to take orders some time, if he hoped for a school
of his own. His religious convictions were ready to hand, but he spent
several uncomfortable days hunting up his religious enthusiasms.
It was not unlike his attempt to marry Mrs. Orr. But his piety was
more genuine, and this time he never came to the point. His sense
of decency forbade him hurrying into a Church that he reverenced.
Moreover, he thought of another solution: Agnes must marry Rickie in
the Christmas holidays, and they must come, both of them, to Sawston,
she as housekeeper, he as assistant-master. The girl was a good worker
when once she was settled down; and as for Rickie, he could easily
be fitted in somewhere in the school. He was not a good classic, but
good enough to take the Lower Fifth. He was no athlete, but boys might
profitably note that he was a perfect gentleman all the same. He had
no experience, but he would gain it. He had no decision, but he could
simulate it. “Above all,” thought Mr. Pembroke, “it will be something
regular for him to do.” Of course this was not “above all.” Dunwood
House held that position. But Mr. Pembroke soon came to think that
it was, and believed that he was planning for Rickie, just as he had
believed he was pining for Mrs. Orr.
Agnes, when she got back from the lunch in Soho, was told of the
plan. She refused to give any opinion until she had seen her lover.
A telegram was sent to him, and next morning he arrived. He was very
susceptible to the weather, and perhaps it was unfortunate that the
morning was foggy. His train had been stopped outside Sawston Station,
and there he had sat for half an hour, listening to the unreal noises
that came from the line, and watching the shadowy figures that worked
there. The gas was alight in the great drawing-room, and in its
depressing rays he and Agnes greeted each other, and discussed the most
momentous question of their lives. They wanted to be married: there was
no doubt of that. They wanted it, both of them, dreadfully. But should
they marry on these terms?
“I’d never thought of such a thing, you see. When the scholastic
agencies sent me circulars after the Tripos, I tore them up at once.”
“There are the holidays,” said Agnes. “You would have three months in
the year to yourself, and you could do your writing then.”
“But who’ll read what I’ve written?” and he told her about the editor
of the “Holborn.”
She became extremely grave. At the bottom of her heart she had always
mistrusted the little stories, and now people who knew agreed with
her. How could Rickie, or any one, make a living by pretending that
Greek gods were alive, or that young ladies could vanish into trees?
A sparkling society tale, full of verve and pathos, would have been
another thing, and the editor might have been convinced by it.
“But what does he _mean_?” Rickie was saying. “What does he _mean_ by
life?”
“I know what he means, but I can’t exactly explain. You ought to see
life, Rickie. I think he’s right there. And Mr. Tilliard was right when
he said one oughtn’t to be academic.”
He stood in the twilight that fell from the window, she in the twilight
of the gas. “I wonder what Ansell would say,” he murmured.
“Oh, poor Mr. Ansell!”
He was somewhat surprised. Why was Ansell poor? It was the first time
the epithet had been applied to him.
“But to change the conversation,” said Agnes.
“If we did marry, we might get to Italy at Easter and escape this
horrible fog.”
“Yes. Perhaps there—” Perhaps life would be there. He thought of
Renan, who declares that on the Acropolis at Athens beauty and wisdom
do exist, really exist, as external powers. He did not aspire to beauty
or wisdom, but he prayed to be delivered from the shadow of unreality
that had begun to darken the world. For it was as if some power had
pronounced against him—as if, by some heedless action, he had offended
an Olympian god. Like many another, he wondered whether the god might
be appeased by work—hard uncongenial work. Perhaps he had not worked
hard enough, or had enjoyed his work too much, and for that reason the
shadow was falling.
“—And above all, a schoolmaster has wonderful opportunities for doing
good; one mustn’t forget that.”
To do good! For what other reason are we here? Let us give up our
refined sensations, and our comforts, and our art, if thereby we can
make other people happier and better. The woman he loved had urged him
to do good! With a vehemence that surprised her, he exclaimed, “I’ll do
it.”
“Think it over,” she cautioned, though she was greatly pleased.
“No; I think over things too much.”
The room grew brighter. A boy’s laughter floated in, and it seemed to
him that people were as important and vivid as they had been six months
before. Then he was at Cambridge, idling in the parsley meadows, and
weaving perishable garlands out of flowers. Now he was at Sawston,
preparing to work a beneficent machine. No man works for nothing, and
Rickie trusted that to him also benefits might accrue; that his wound
might heal as he laboured, and his eyes recapture the Holy Grail.
XVII
In practical matters Mr. Pembroke was often a generous man. He offered
Rickie a good salary, and insisted on paying Agnes as well. And as he
housed them for nothing, and as Rickie would also have a salary from
the school, the money question disappeared—if not forever, at all
events for the present.
“I can work you in,” he said. “Leave all that to me, and in a few days
you shall hear from the headmaster. He shall create a vacancy. And once
in, we stand or fall together. I am resolved on that.”
Rickie did not like the idea of being “worked in,” but he was
determined to raise no difficulties. It is so easy to be refined and
high-minded when we have nothing to do. But the active, useful man
cannot be equally particular. Rickie’s programme involved a change in
values as well as a change of occupation.
“Adopt a frankly intellectual attitude,” Mr. Pembroke continued. “I do
not advise you at present even to profess any interest in athletics or
organization. When the headmaster writes, he will probably ask whether
you are an all-round man. Boldly say no. A bold ‘no’ is at times the
best. Take your stand upon classics and general culture.”
Classics! A second in the Tripos. General culture. A smattering of
English Literature, and less than a smattering of French.
“That is how we begin. Then we get you a little post—say that of
librarian. And so on, until you are indispensable.”
Rickie laughed; the headmaster wrote, the reply was satisfactory, and
in due course the new life began.
Sawston was already familiar to him. But he knew it as an amateur, and
under an official gaze it grouped itself afresh. The school, a bland
Gothic building, now showed as a fortress of learning, whose outworks
were the boarding-houses. Those straggling roads were full of the
houses of the parents of the day-boys. These shops were in bounds,
those out. How often had he passed Dunwood House! He had once confused
it with its rival, Cedar View. Now he was to live there—perhaps for
many years. On the left of the entrance a large saffron drawing-room,
full of cosy corners and dumpy chairs: here the parents would be
received. On the right of the entrance a study, which he shared with
Herbert: here the boys would be caned—he hoped not often. In the hall
a framed certificate praising the drains, the bust of Hermes, and a
carved teak monkey holding out a salver. Some of the furniture had come
from Shelthorpe, some had been bought from Mr. Annison, some of it was
new. But throughout he recognized a certain decision of arrangement.
Nothing in the house was accidental, or there merely for its own sake.
He contrasted it with his room at Cambridge, which had been a jumble
of things that he loved dearly and of things that he did not love at
all. Now these also had come to Dunwood House, and had been distributed
where each was seemly—Sir Percival to the drawing-room, the photograph
of Stockholm to the passage, his chair, his inkpot, and the portrait of
his mother to the study. And then he contrasted it with the Ansells’
house, to which their resolute ill-taste had given unity. He was
extremely sensitive to the inside of a house, holding it an organism
that expressed the thoughts, conscious and subconscious, of its
inmates. He was equally sensitive to places. He would compare Cambridge
with Sawston, and either with a third type of existence, to which, for
want of a better name, he gave the name of “Wiltshire.”
It must not be thought that he is going to waste his time. These
contrasts and comparisons never took him long, and he never indulged
in them until the serious business of the day was over. And, as time
passed, he never indulged in them at all. The school returned at the
end of January, before he had been settled in a week. His health had
improved, but not greatly, and he was nervous at the prospect of
confronting the assembled house. All day long cabs had been driving
up, full of boys in bowler hats too big for them; and Agnes had been
superintending the numbering of the said hats, and the placing of
them in cupboards, since they would not be wanted till the end of the
term. Each boy had, or should have had, a bag, so that he need not
unpack his box till the morrow. One boy had only a brown-paper parcel,
tied with hairy string, and Rickie heard the firm pleasant voice say,
“But you’ll bring a bag next term,” and the submissive, “Yes, Mrs.
Elliot,” of the reply. In the passage he ran against the head boy,
who was alarmingly like an undergraduate. They looked at each other
suspiciously, and parted. Two minutes later he ran into another boy,
and then into another, and began to wonder whether they were doing it
on purpose, and if so, whether he ought to mind. As the day wore on,
the noises grew louder—trampings of feet, breakdowns, jolly little
squawks—and the cubicles were assigned, and the bags unpacked, and the
bathing arrangements posted up, and Herbert kept on saying, “All this
is informal—all this is informal. We shall meet the house at eight
fifteen.”
And so, at eight ten, Rickie put on his cap and gown,—hitherto symbols
of pupilage, now to be symbols of dignity,—the very cap and gown that
Widdrington had so recently hung upon the college fountain. Herbert,
similarly attired, was waiting for him in their private dining-room,
where also sat Agnes, ravenously devouring scrambled eggs. “But you’ll
wear your hoods,” she cried. Herbert considered, and them said she was
quite right. He fetched his white silk, Rickie the fragment of rabbit’s
wool that marks the degree of B.A. Thus attired, they proceeded
through the baize door. They were a little late, and the boys, who
were marshalled in the preparation room, were getting uproarious. One,
forgetting how far his voice carried, shouted, “Cave! Here comes the
Whelk.” And another young devil yelled, “The Whelk’s brought a pet with
him!”
“You mustn’t mind,” said Herbert kindly. “We masters make a point of
never minding nicknames—unless, of course, they are applied openly, in
which case a thousand lines is not too much.” Rickie assented, and they
entered the preparation room just as the prefects had established order.
Here Herbert took his seat on a high-legged chair, while Rickie, like a
queen-consort, sat near him on a chair with somewhat shorter legs. Each
chair had a desk attached to it, and Herbert flung up the lid of his,
and then looked round the preparation room with a quick frown, as if
the contents had surprised him. So impressed was Rickie that he peeped
sideways, but could only see a little blotting-paper in the desk. Then
he noticed that the boys were impressed too. Their chatter ceased. They
attended.
The room was almost full. The prefects, instead of lolling disdainfully
in the back row, were ranged like councillors beneath the central
throne. This was an innovation of Mr. Pembroke’s. Carruthers, the
head boy, sat in the middle, with his arm round Lloyd. It was Lloyd
who had made the matron too bright: he nearly lost his colours in
consequence. These two were grown up. Beside them sat Tewson, a saintly
child in the spectacles, who had risen to this height by reason of
his immense learning. He, like the others, was a school prefect. The
house prefects, an inferior brand, were beyond, and behind came the
indistinguishable many. The faces all looked alike as yet—except the
face of one boy, who was inclined to cry.
“School,” said Mr. Pembroke, slowly closing the lid of the
desk,—“school is the world in miniature.” Then he paused, as a man
well may who has made such a remark. It is not, however, the intention
of this work to quote an opening address. Rickie, at all events,
refused to be critical: Herbert’s experience was far greater than his,
and he must take his tone from him. Nor could any one criticize the
exhortations to be patriotic, athletic, learned, and religious, that
flowed like a four-part fugue from Mr. Pembroke’s mouth. He was a
practised speaker—that is to say, he held his audience’s attention. He
told them that this term, the second of his reign, was _the_ term for
Dunwood House; that it behooved every boy to labour during it for his
house’s honour, and, through the house, for the honour of the school.
Taking a wider range, he spoke of England, or rather of Great Britain,
and of her continental foes. Portraits of empire-builders hung on the
wall, and he pointed to them. He quoted imperial poets. He showed how
patriotism had broadened since the days of Shakespeare, who, for all
his genius, could only write of his country as—
“This fortress built by nature for herself Against infection and the
hand of war, This hazy breed of men, this little world, This precious
stone set in the silver sea.”
And it seemed that only a short ladder lay between the preparation room
and the Anglo-Saxon hegemony of the globe. Then he paused, and in the
silence came “sob, sob, sob,” from a little boy, who was regretting a
villa in Guildford and his mother’s half acre of garden.
The proceeding terminated with the broader patriotism of the school
anthem, recently composed by the organist. Words and tune were still a
matter for taste, and it was Mr. Pembroke (and he only because he had
the music) who gave the right intonation to
“Perish each laggard!
Let it not be said
That Sawston such within her walls hath bred.”
“Come, come,” he said pleasantly, as they ended with harmonies in the
style of Richard Strauss. “This will never do. We must grapple with the
anthem this term. You’re as tuneful as—as day-boys!”
Hearty laughter, and then the whole house filed past them and shook
hands.
“But how did it impress you?” Herbert asked, as soon as they were back
in their own part. Agnes had provided them with a tray of food: the
meals were still anyhow, and she had to fly at once to see after the
boys.
“I liked the look of them.”
“I meant rather, how did the house impress you as a house?”
“I don’t think I thought,” said Rickie rather nervously. “It is not
easy to catch the spirit of a thing at once. I only saw a roomful of
boys.”
“My dear Rickie, don’t be so diffident. You are perfectly right. You
only did see a roomful of boys. As yet there’s nothing else to see.
The house, like the school, lacks tradition. Look at Winchester. Look
at the traditional rivalry between Eton and Harrow. Tradition is of
incalculable importance, if a school is to have any status. Why should
Sawston be without?”
“Yes. Tradition is of incalculable value. And I envy those schools that
have a natural connection with the past. Of course Sawston has a past,
though not of the kind that you quite want. The sons of poor tradesmen
went to it at first. So wouldn’t its traditions be more likely to
linger in the Commercial School?” he concluded nervously.
“You have a great deal to learn—a very great deal. Listen to me. Why
has Sawston no traditions?” His round, rather foolish, face assumed the
expression of a conspirator. Bending over the mutton, he whispered, “I
can tell you why. Owing to the day-boys. How can traditions flourish in
such soil? Picture the day-boy’s life—at home for meals, at home for
preparation, at home for sleep, running home with every fancied wrong.
There are day-boys in your class, and, mark my words, they will give
you ten times as much trouble as the boarders, late, slovenly, stopping
away at the slightest pretext. And then the letters from the parents!
‘Why has my boy not been moved this term?’ ‘Why has my boy been moved
this term?’ ‘I am a dissenter, and do not wish my boy to subscribe
to the school mission.’ ‘Can you let my boy off early to water the
garden?’ Remember that I have been a day-boy house-master, and tried to
infuse some _esprit de corps_ into them. It is practically impossible.
They come as units, and units they remain. Worse. They infect the
boarders. Their pestilential, critical, discontented attitude is
spreading over the school. If I had my own way—”
He stopped somewhat abruptly.
“Was that why you laughed at their singing?”
“Not at all. Not at all. It is not my habit to set one section of the
school against the other.”
After a little they went the rounds. The boys were in bed now.
“Good-night!” called Herbert, standing in the corridor of the cubicles,
and from behind each of the green curtains came the sound of a voice
replying, “Good-night, sir!” “Good-night,” he observed into each
dormitory.
Then he went to the switch in the passage and plunged the whole house
into darkness. Rickie lingered behind him, strangely impressed. In the
morning those boys had been scattered over England, leading their own
lives. Now, for three months, they must change everything—see new
faces, accept new ideals. They, like himself, must enter a beneficent
machine, and learn the value of _esprit de corps_. Good luck attend
them—good luck and a happy release. For his heart would have them
not in these cubicles and dormitories, but each in his own dear home,
amongst faces and things that he knew.
Next morning, after chapel, he made the acquaintance of his class.
Towards that he felt very differently. _Esprit de corps_ was not
expected of it. It was simply two dozen boys who were gathered together
for the purpose of learning Latin. His duties and difficulties would
not lie here. He was not required to provide it with an atmosphere.
The scheme of work was already mapped out, and he started gaily upon
familiar words—
“Pan, ovium custos, tua si tibi Maenala curae Adsis, O Tegaee, favens.”
“Do you think that beautiful?” he asked, and received the honest
answer, “No, sir; I don’t think I do.” He met Herbert in high spirits
in the quadrangle during the interval. But Herbert thought his
enthusiasm rather amateurish, and cautioned him.
“You must take care they don’t get out of hand. I approve of a lively
teacher, but discipline must be established first.”
“I felt myself a learner, not a teacher. If I’m wrong over a point, or
don’t know, I mean to tell them at once.” Herbert shook his head.
“It’s different if I was really a scholar. But I can’t pose as one, can
I? I know much more than the boys, but I know very little. Surely the
honest thing is to be myself to them. Let them accept or refuse me as
that. That’s the only attitude we shall any of us profit by in the end.”
Mr. Pembroke was silent. Then he observed, “There is, as you say, a
higher attitude and a lower attitude. Yet here, as so often, cannot we
find a golden mean between them?”
“What’s that?” said a dreamy voice. They turned and saw a tall,
spectacled man, who greeted the newcomer kindly, and took hold of his
arm. “What’s that about the golden mean?”
“Mr. Jackson—Mr. Elliot: Mr. Elliot—Mr. Jackson,” said Herbert, who
did not seem quite pleased. “Rickie, have you a moment to spare me?”
But the humanist spoke to the young man about the golden mean and
the pinchbeck mean, adding, “You know the Greeks aren’t broad church
clergymen. They really aren’t, in spite of much conflicting evidence.
Boys will regard Sophocles as a kind of enlightened bishop, and
something tells me that they are wrong.”
“Mr. Jackson is a classical enthusiast,” said Herbert. “He makes the
past live. I want to talk to you about the humdrum present.”
“And I am warning him against the humdrum past. That’s another point,
Mr. Elliot. Impress on your class that many Greeks and most Romans were
frightfully stupid, and if they disbelieve you, read Ctesiphon with
them, or Valerius Flaccus. Whatever is that noise?”
“It comes from your class-room, I think,” snapped the other master.
“So it does. Ah, yes. I expect they are putting your little Tewson into
the waste-paper basket.”
“I always lock my class-room in the interval—”
“Yes?”
“—and carry the key in my pocket.”
“Ah. But, Mr. Elliot, I am a cousin of Widdrington’s. He wrote to me
about you. I am so glad. Will you, first of all, come to supper next
Sunday?”
“I am afraid,” put in Herbert, “that we poor housemasters must deny
ourselves festivities in term time.”
“But mayn’t he come once, just once?”
“May, my dear Jackson! My brother-in-law is not a baby. He decides for
himself.”
Rickie naturally refused. As soon as they were out of hearing, Herbert
said, “This is a little unfortunate. Who is Mr. Widdrington?”
“I knew him at Cambridge.”
“Let me explain how we stand,” he continued, after a pause.
“Jackson is the worst of the reactionaries here, while I—why should
I conceal it?—have thrown in my lot with the party of progress. You
will see how we suffer from him at the masters’ meetings. He has no
talent for organization, and yet he is always inflicting his ideas on
others. It was like his impertinence to dictate to you what authors you
should read, and meanwhile the sixth-form room like a bear-garden, and
a school prefect being put into the waste-paper basket. My good Rickie,
there’s nothing to smile at. How is the school to go on with a man
like that? It would be a case of ‘quick march,’ if it was not for his
brilliant intellect. That’s why I say it’s a little unfortunate. You
will have very little in common, you and he.”
Rickie did not answer. He was very fond of Widdrington, who was a
quaint, sensitive person. And he could not help being attracted by
Mr. Jackson, whose welcome contrasted pleasantly with the official
breeziness of his other colleagues. He wondered, too, whether it is so
very reactionary to contemplate the antique.
“It is true that I vote Conservative,” pursued Mr. Pembroke, apparently
confronting some objector. “But why? Because the Conservatives, rather
than the Liberals, stand for progress. One must not be misled by
catch-words.”
“Didn’t you want to ask me something?”
“Ah, yes. You found a boy in your form called Varden?”
“Varden? Yes; there is.”
“Drop on him heavily. He has broken the statutes of the school. He is
attending as a day-boy. The statutes provide that a boy must reside
with his parents or guardians. He does neither. It must be stopped. You
must tell the headmaster.”
“Where does the boy live?”
“At a certain Mrs. Orr’s, who has no connection with the school of any
kind. It must be stopped. He must either enter a boarding-house or go.”
“But why should I tell?” said Rickie. He remembered the boy, an
unattractive person with protruding ears, “It is the business of his
house-master.”
“House-master—exactly. Here we come back again. Who is now the
day-boys’ house-master? Jackson once again—as if anything was
Jackson’s business! I handed the house back last term in a most
flourishing condition. It has already gone to rack and ruin for the
second time. To return to Varden. I have unearthed a put-up job. Mrs.
Jackson and Mrs. Orr are friends. Do you see? It all works round.”
“I see. It does—or might.”
“The headmaster will never sanction it when it’s put to him plainly.”
“But why should I put it?” said Rickie, twisting the ribbons of his
gown round his fingers.
“Because you’re the boy’s form-master.”
“Is that a reason?”
“Of course it is.”
“I only wondered whether—” He did not like to say that he wondered
whether he need do it his first morning.
“By some means or other you must find out—of course you know already,
but you must find out from the boy. I know—I have it! Where’s his
health certificate?”
“He had forgotten it.”
“Just like them. Well, when he brings it, it will be signed by Mrs.
Orr, and you must look at it and say, ‘Orr—Orr—Mrs. Orr?’ or
something to that effect, and then the whole thing will come naturally
out.”
The bell rang, and they went in for the hour of school that concluded
the morning. Varden brought his health certificate—a pompous document
asserting that he had not suffered from roseola or kindred ailments
in the holidays—and for a long time Rickie sat with it before him,
spread open upon his desk. He did not quite like the job. It suggested
intrigue, and he had come to Sawston not to intrigue but to labour.
Doubtless Herbert was right, and Mr. Jackson and Mrs. Orr were wrong.
But why could they not have it out among themselves? Then he thought,
“I am a coward, and that’s why I’m raising these objections,” called
the boy up to him, and it did all come out naturally, more or less.
Hitherto Varden had lived with his mother; but she had left Sawston at
Christmas, and now he would live with Mrs. Orr. “Mr. Jackson, sir, said
it would be all right.”
“Yes, yes,” said Rickie; “quite so.” He remembered Herbert’s dictum:
“Masters must present a united front. If they do not—the deluge.” He
sent the boy back to his seat, and after school took the compromising
health certificate to the headmaster. The headmaster was at that time
easily excited by a breach of the constitution. “Parents or guardians,”
he repeated—“parents or guardians,” and flew with those words on his
lips to Mr. Jackson. To say that Rickie was a cat’s-paw is to put it
too strongly. Herbert was strictly honourable, and never pushed him
into an illegal or really dangerous position; but there is no doubt
that on this and on many other occasions he had to do things that
he would not otherwise have done. There was always some diplomatic
corner that had to be turned, always something that he had to say
or not to say. As the term wore on he lost his independence—almost
without knowing it. He had much to learn about boys, and he learnt not
by direct observation—for which he believed he was unfitted—but by
sedulous imitation of the more experienced masters. Originally he had
intended to be friends with his pupils, and Mr. Pembroke commended the
intention highly; but you cannot be friends either with boy or man
unless you give yourself away in the process, and Mr. Pembroke did not
commend this. He, for “personal intercourse,” substituted the safer
“personal influence,” and gave his junior hints on the setting of
kindly traps, in which the boy does give himself away and reveals his
shy delicate thoughts, while the master, intact, commends or corrects
them. Originally Rickie had meant to help boys in the anxieties that
they undergo when changing into men: at Cambridge he had numbered
this among life’s duties. But here is a subject in which we must
inevitably speak as one human being to another, not as one who has
authority or the shadow of authority, and for this reason the elder
school-master could suggest nothing but a few formulae. Formulae, like
kindly traps, were not in Rickie’s line, so he abandoned these subjects
altogether and confined himself to working hard at what was easy. In
the house he did as Herbert did, and referred all doubtful subjects to
him. In his form, oddly enough, he became a martinet. It is so much
simpler to be severe. He grasped the school regulations, and insisted
on prompt obedience to them. He adopted the doctrine of collective
responsibility. When one boy was late, he punished the whole form. “I
can’t help it,” he would say, as if he was a power of nature. As a
teacher he was rather dull. He curbed his own enthusiasms, finding that
they distracted his attention, and that while he throbbed to the music
of Virgil the boys in the back row were getting unruly. But on the
whole he liked his form work: he knew why he was there, and Herbert did
not overshadow him so completely.
What was amiss with Herbert? He had known that something was amiss,
and had entered into partnership with open eyes. The man was kind and
unselfish; more than that he was truly charitable, and it was a real
pleasure to him to give—pleasure to others. Certainly he might talk
too much about it afterwards; but it was the doing, not the talking,
that he really valued, and benefactors of this sort are not too
common. He was, moreover, diligent and conscientious: his heart was in
his work, and his adherence to the Church of England no mere matter
of form. He was capable of affection: he was usually courteous and
tolerant. Then what was amiss? Why, in spite of all these qualities,
should Rickie feel that there was something wrong with him—nay, that
he was wrong as a whole, and that if the Spirit of Humanity should ever
hold a judgment he would assuredly be classed among the goats? The
answer at first sight appeared a graceless one—it was that Herbert was
stupid. Not stupid in the ordinary sense—he had a business-like brain,
and acquired knowledge easily—but stupid in the important sense: his
whole life was coloured by a contempt of the intellect. That he had
a tolerable intellect of his own was not the point: it is in what we
value, not in what we have, that the test of us resides. Now, Rickie’s
intellect was not remarkable. He came to his worthier results rather by
imagination and instinct than by logic. An argument confused him, and
he could with difficulty follow it even on paper. But he saw in this
no reason for satisfaction, and tried to make such use of his brain
as he could, just as a weak athlete might lovingly exercise his body.
Like a weak athlete, too, he loved to watch the exploits, or rather the
efforts, of others—their efforts not so much to acquire knowledge as
to dispel a little of the darkness by which we and all our acquisitions
are surrounded. Cambridge had taught him this, and he knew, if for no
other reason, that his time there had not been in vain. And Herbert’s
contempt for such efforts revolted him. He saw that for all his fine
talk about a spiritual life he had but one test for things—success:
success for the body in this life or for the soul in the life to come.
And for this reason Humanity, and perhaps such other tribunals as there
may be, would assuredly reject him.
XVIII
Meanwhile he was a husband. Perhaps his union should have been
emphasized before. The crown of life had been attained, the vague
yearnings, the misread impulses, had found accomplishment at last.
Never again must he feel lonely, or as one who stands out of the broad
highway of the world and fears, like poor Shelley, to undertake the
longest journey. So he reasoned, and at first took the accomplishment
for granted. But as the term passed he knew that behind the yearning
there remained a yearning, behind the drawn veil a veil that he could
not draw. His wedding had been no mighty landmark: he would often
wonder whether such and such a speech or incident came after it or
before. Since that meeting in the Soho restaurant there had been so
much to do—clothes to buy, presents to thank for, a brief visit to
a Training College, a honeymoon as brief. In such a bustle, what
spiritual union could take place? Surely the dust would settle soon: in
Italy, at Easter, he might perceive the infinities of love. But love
had shown him its infinities already. Neither by marriage nor by any
other device can men insure themselves a vision; and Rickie’s had been
granted him three years before, when he had seen his wife and a dead
man clasped in each other’s arms. She was never to be so real to him
again.
She ran about the house looking handsomer than ever. Her cheerful
voice gave orders to the servants. As he sat in the study correcting
compositions, she would dart in and give him a kiss. “Dear girl—” he
would murmur, with a glance at the rings on her hand. The tone of their
marriage life was soon set. It was to be a frank good-fellowship, and
before long he found it difficult to speak in a deeper key.
One evening he made the effort. There had been more beauty than was
usual at Sawston. The air was pure and quiet. Tomorrow the fog might
be here, but today one said, “It is like the country.” Arm in arm they
strolled in the side-garden, stopping at times to notice the crocuses,
or to wonder when the daffodils would flower. Suddenly he tightened his
pressure, and said, “Darling, why don’t you still wear ear-rings?”
“Ear-rings?” She laughed. “My taste has improved, perhaps.”
So after all they never mentioned Gerald’s name. But he hoped it was
still dear to her. He did not want her to forget the greatest moment in
her life. His love desired not ownership but confidence, and to a love
so pure it does not seem terrible to come second.
He valued emotion—not for itself, but because it is the only final
path to intimacy. She, ever robust and practical, always discouraged
him. She was not cold; she would willingly embrace him. But she hated
being upset, and would laugh or thrust him off when his voice grew
serious. In this she reminded him of his mother. But his mother—he had
never concealed it from himself—had glories to which his wife would
never attain: glories that had unfolded against a life of horror—a
life even more horrible than he had guessed. He thought of her often
during these earlier months. Did she bless his union, so different to
her own? Did she love his wife? He tried to speak of her to Agnes,
but again she was reluctant. And perhaps it was this aversion to
acknowledge the dead, whose images alone have immortality, that made
her own image somewhat transient, so that when he left her no mystic
influence remained, and only by an effort could he realize that God had
united them forever.
They conversed and differed healthily upon other topics. A rifle corps
was to be formed: she hoped that the boys would have proper uniforms,
instead of shooting in their old clothes, as Mr. Jackson had suggested.
There was Tewson; could nothing be done about him? He would slink away
from the other prefects and go with boys of his own age. There was
Lloyd: he would not learn the school anthem, saying that it hurt his
throat. And above all there was Varden, who, to Rickie’s bewilderment,
was now a member of Dunwood House.
“He had to go somewhere,” said Agnes. “Lucky for his mother that we had
a vacancy.”
“Yes—but when I meet Mrs. Orr—I can’t help feeling ashamed.”
“Oh, Mrs. Orr! Who cares for her? Her teeth are drawn. If she chooses
to insinuate that we planned it, let her. Hers was rank dishonesty. She
attempted to set up a boarding-house.”
Mrs. Orr, who was quite rich, had attempted no such thing. She
had taken the boy out of charity, and without a thought of being
unconstitutional. But in had come this officious “Limpet” and upset
the headmaster, and she was scolded, and Mrs. Varden was scolded, and
Mr. Jackson was scolded, and the boy was scolded and placed with Mr.
Pembroke, whom she revered less than any man in the world. Naturally
enough, she considered it a further attempt of the authorities to snub
the day-boys, for whose advantage the school had been founded. She and
Mrs. Jackson discussed the subject at their tea-parties, and the latter
lady was sure that no good, no good of any kind, would come to Dunwood
House from such ill-gotten plunder.
“We say, ‘Let them talk,’” persisted Rickie, “but I never did like
letting people talk. We are right and they are wrong, but I wish the
thing could have been done more quietly. The headmaster does get so
excited. He has given a gang of foolish people their opportunity. I
don’t like being branded as the ‘day-boy’s foe’, when I think how
much I would have given to be a day-boy myself. My father found me
a nuisance, and put me through the mill, and I can never forget
it—particularly the evenings.”
“There’s very little bullying here,” said Agnes.
“There was very little bullying at my school. There was simply the
atmosphere of unkindness, which no discipline can dispel. It’s not what
people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Physical pain doesn’t hurt—at least not what I call hurt—if a man
hits you by accident or play. But just a little tap, when you know it
comes from hatred, is too terrible. Boys do hate each other: I remember
it, and see it again. They can make strong isolated friendships, but of
general good-fellowship they haven’t a notion.”
“All I know is there’s very little bullying here.”
“You see, the notion of good-fellowship develops late: you can just see
its beginning here among the prefects: up at Cambridge it flourishes
amazingly. That’s why I pity people who don’t go up to Cambridge: not
because a University is smart, but because those are the magic years,
and—with luck—you see up there what you couldn’t see before and
mayn’t ever see again.
“Aren’t these the magic years?” the lady demanded.
He laughed and hit at her. “I’m getting somewhat involved. But hear me,
O Agnes, for I am practical. I approve of our public schools. Long may
they flourish. But I do not approve of the boarding-house system. It
isn’t an inevitable adjunct—”
“Good gracious me!” she shrieked. “Have you gone mad?”
“Silence, madam. Don’t betray me to Herbert, or I’ll give us the sack.
But seriously, what is the good of throwing boys so much together?
Isn’t it building their lives on a wrong basis? They don’t understand
each other. I wish they did, but they don’t. They don’t realize that
human beings are simply marvellous. When they do, the whole of life
changes, and you get the true thing. But don’t pretend you’ve got it
before you have. Patriotism and _esprit de corps_ are all very well,
but masters a little forget that they must grow from sentiment. They
cannot create one. Cannot—cannot—cannot. I never cared a straw for
England until I cared for Englishmen, and boys can’t love the school
when they hate each other. Ladies and gentlemen, I will now conclude my
address. And most of it is copied out of Mr. Ansell.”
The truth is, he was suddenly ashamed. He had been carried away on the
flood of his old emotions. Cambridge and all that it meant had stood
before him passionately clear, and beside it stood his mother and the
sweet family life which nurses up a boy until he can salute his equals.
He was ashamed, for he remembered his new resolution—to work without
criticizing, to throw himself vigorously into the machine, not to mind
if he was pinched now and then by the elaborate wheels.
“Mr. Ansell!” cried his wife, laughing somewhat shrilly. “Aha! Now I
understand. It’s just the kind of thing poor Mr. Ansell would say.
Well, I’m brutal. I believe it _does_ Varden _good_ to have his ears
pulled now and then, and I don’t care whether they pull them in play or
not. Boys ought to rough it, or they never grow up into men, and your
mother would have agreed with me. Oh yes; and you’re all wrong about
patriotism. It can, can, create a sentiment.”
She was unusually precise, and had followed his thoughts with an
attention that was also unusual. He wondered whether she was not right,
and regretted that she proceeded to say, “My dear boy, you mustn’t talk
these heresies inside Dunwood House! You sound just like one of that
reactionary Jackson set, who want to fling the school back a hundred
years and have nothing but day-boys all dressed anyhow.”
“The Jackson set have their points.”
“You’d better join it.”
“The Dunwood House set has its points.” For Rickie suffered from the
Primal Curse, which is not—as the Authorized Version suggests—the
knowledge of good and evil, but the knowledge of good-and-evil.
“Then stick to the Dunwood House set.”
“I do, and shall.” Again he was ashamed. Why would he see the other
side of things? He rebuked his soul, not unsuccessfully, and then they
returned to the subject of Varden.
“I’m certain he suffers,” said he, for she would do nothing but laugh.
“Each boy who passes pulls his ears—very funny, no doubt; but every
day they stick out more and get redder, and this afternoon, when he
didn’t know he was being watched, he was holding his head and moaning.
I hate the look about his eyes.”
“I hate the whole boy. Nasty weedy thing.”
“Well, I’m a nasty weedy thing, if it comes to that.”
“No, you aren’t,” she cried, kissing him. But he led her back
to the subject. Could nothing be suggested? He drew up some new
rules—alterations in the times of going to bed, and so on—the effect
of which would be to provide fewer opportunities for the pulling of
Varden’s ears. The rules were submitted to Herbert, who sympathized
with weakliness more than did his sister, and gave them his careful
consideration. But unfortunately they collided with other rules, and
on a closer examination he found that they also ran contrary to the
fundamentals on which the government of Dunwood House was based. So
nothing was done. Agnes was rather pleased, and took to teasing her
husband about Varden. At last he asked her to stop. He felt uneasy
about the boy—almost superstitious. His first morning’s work had
brought sixty pounds a year to their hotel.
XIX
They did not get to Italy at Easter. Herbert had the offer of some
private pupils, and needed Rickie’s help. It seemed unreasonable
to leave England when money was to be made in it, so they went to
Ilfracombe instead. They spent three weeks among the natural advantages
and unnatural disadvantages of that resort. It was out of the season,
and they encamped in a huge hotel, which took them at a reduction. By a
disastrous chance the Jacksons were down there too, and a good deal of
constrained civility had to pass between the two families. Constrained
it was not in Mr. Jackson’s case. At all times he was ready to talk,
and as long as they kept off the school it was pleasant enough. But
he was very indiscreet, and feminine tact had often to intervene. “Go
away, dear ladies,” he would then observe. “You think you see life
because you see the chasms in it. Yet all the chasms are full of female
skeletons.” The ladies smiled anxiously. To Rickie he was friendly and
even intimate. They had long talks on the deserted Capstone, while
their wives sat reading in the Winter Garden and Mr. Pembroke kept an
eye upon the tutored youths. “Once I had tutored youths,” said Mr.
Jackson, “but I lost them all by letting them paddle with my nieces.
It is so impossible to remember what is proper.” And sooner or later
their talk gravitated towards his central passion—the Fragments of
Sophocles. Some day (“never,” said Herbert) he would edit them. At
present they were merely in his blood. With the zeal of a scholar and
the imagination of a poet he reconstructed lost dramas—Niobe, Phaedra,
Philoctetes against Troy, whose names, but for an accident, would have
thrilled the world. “Is it worth it?” he cried. “Had we better be
planting potatoes?” And then: “We had; but this is the second best.”
Agnes did not approve of these colloquies. Mr. Jackson was not a
buffoon, but he behaved like one, which is what matters; and from the
Winter Garden she could see people laughing at him, and at her husband,
who got excited too. She hinted once or twice, but no notice was taken,
and at last she said rather sharply, “Now, you’re not to, Rickie. I
won’t have it.”
“He’s a type that suits me. He knows people I know, or would like to
have known. He was a friend of Tony Failing’s. It is so hard to realize
that a man connected with one was great. Uncle Tony seems to have been.
He loved poetry and music and pictures, and everything tempted him to
live in a kind of cultured paradise, with the door shut upon squalor.
But to have more decent people in the world—he sacrificed everything
to that. He would have ‘smashed the whole beauty-shop’ if it would help
him. I really couldn’t go as far as that. I don’t think one need go as
far—pictures might have to be smashed, but not music or poetry; surely
they help—and Jackson doesn’t think so either.”
“Well, I won’t have it, and that’s enough.” She laughed, for her voice
had a little been that of the professional scold. “You see we must hang
together. He’s in the reactionary camp.”
“He doesn’t know it. He doesn’t know that he is in any camp at all.”
“His wife is, which comes to the same.”
“Still, it’s the holidays—” He and Mr. Jackson had drifted apart in
the term, chiefly owing to the affair of Varden. “We were to have the
holidays to ourselves, you know.” And following some line of thought,
he continued, “He cheers one up. He does believe in poetry. Smart,
sentimental books do seem absolutely absurd to him, and gods and
fairies far nearer to reality. He tries to express all modern life in
the terms of Greek mythology, because the Greeks looked very straight
at things, and Demeter or Aphrodite are thinner veils than ‘The
survival of the fittest’, or ‘A marriage has been arranged,’ and other
draperies of modern journalese.”
“And do you know what that means?”
“It means that poetry, not prose, lies at the core.”
“No. I can tell you what it means—balder-dash.”
His mouth fell. She was sweeping away the cobwebs with a vengeance. “I
hope you’re wrong,” he replied, “for those are the lines on which I’ve
been writing, however badly, for the last two years.”
“But you write stories, not poems.”
He looked at his watch. “Lessons again. One never has a moment’s peace.”
“Poor Rickie. You shall have a real holiday in the summer.” And she
called after him to say, “Remember, dear, about Mr. Jackson. Don’t go
talking so much to him.”
Rather arbitrary. Her tone had been a little arbitrary of late. But
what did it matter? Mr. Jackson was not a friend, and he must risk the
chance of offending Widdrington. After the lesson he wrote to Ansell,
whom he had not seen since June, asking him to come down to Ilfracombe,
if only for a day. On reading the letter over, its tone displeased him.
It was quite pathetic: it sounded like a cry from prison. “I can’t
send him such nonsense,” he thought, and wrote again. But phrase it
as he would the letter always suggested that he was unhappy. “What’s
wrong?” he wondered. “I could write anything I wanted to him once.” So
he scrawled “Come!” on a post-card. But even this seemed too serious.
The post-card followed the letters, and Agnes found them all in the
waste-paper basket.
Then she said, “I’ve been thinking—oughtn’t you to ask Mr. Ansell
over? A breath of sea air would do the poor thing good.”
There was no difficulty now. He wrote at once, “My dear Stewart, We
both so much wish you could come over.” But the invitation was refused.
A little uneasy he wrote again, using the dialect of their past
intimacy. The effect of this letter was not pathetic but jaunty, and he
felt a keen regret as soon as it slipped into the box. It was a relief
to receive no reply.
He brooded a good deal over this painful yet intangible episode.
Was the pain all of his own creating? or had it been produced by
something external? And he got the answer that brooding always
gives—it was both. He was morbid, and had been so since his visit to
Cadover—quicker to register discomfort than joy. But, none the less,
Ansell was definitely brutal, and Agnes definitely jealous. Brutality
he could understand, alien as it was to himself. Jealousy, equally
alien, was a harder matter. Let husband and wife be as sun and moon,
or as moon and sun. Shall they therefore not give greeting to the
stars? He was willing to grant that the love that inspired her might be
higher than his own. Yet did it not exclude them both from much that is
gracious? That dream of his when he rode on the Wiltshire expanses—a
curious dream: the lark silent, the earth dissolving. And he awoke from
it into a valley full of men.
She was jealous in many ways—sometimes in an open humorous fashion,
sometimes more subtly, never content till “we” had extended our
patronage, and, if possible, our pity. She began to patronize and pity
Ansell, and most sincerely trusted that he would get his fellowship.
Otherwise what was the poor fellow to do? Ridiculous as it may seem,
she was even jealous of Nature. One day her husband escaped from
Ilfracombe to Morthoe, and came back ecstatic over its fangs of
slate, piercing an oily sea. “Sounds like an hippopotamus,” she said
peevishly. And when they returned to Sawston through the Virgilian
counties, she disliked him looking out of the windows, for all the
world as if Nature was some dangerous woman.
He resumed his duties with a feeling that he had never left them. Again
he confronted the assembled house. This term was again _the_ term;
school still the world in miniature. The music of the four-part fugue
entered into him more deeply, and he began to hum its little phrases.
The same routine, the same diplomacies, the same old sense of only
half knowing boys or men—he returned to it all: and all that changed
was the cloud of unreality, which ever brooded a little more densely
than before. He spoke to his wife about this, he spoke to her about
everything, and she was alarmed, and wanted him to see a doctor. But he
explained that it was nothing of any practical importance, nothing that
interfered with his work or his appetite, nothing more than a feeling
that the cow was not really there. She laughed, and “how is the cow
today?” soon passed into a domestic joke.
XX
Ansell was in his favourite haunt—the reading-room of the British
Museum. In that book-encircled space he always could find peace. He
loved to see the volumes rising tier above tier into the misty dome.
He loved the chairs that glide so noiselessly, and the radiating
desks, and the central area, where the catalogue shelves curve, round
the superintendent’s throne. There he knew that his life was not
ignoble. It was worth while to grow old and dusty seeking for truth
though truth is unattainable, restating questions that have been
stated at the beginning of the world. Failure would await him, but not
disillusionment. It was worth while reading books, and writing a book
or two which few would read, and no one, perhaps, endorse. He was not a
hero, and he knew it. His father and sister, by their steady goodness,
had made this life possible. But, all the same, it was not the life of
a spoilt child.
In the next chair to him sat Widdrington, engaged in his historical
research. His desk was edged with enormous volumes, and every few
moments an assistant brought him more. They rose like a wall against
Ansell. Towards the end of the morning a gap was made, and through it
they held the following conversation.
“I’ve been stopping with my cousin at Sawston.”
“M’m.”
“It was quite exciting. The air rang with battle. About two-thirds of
the masters have lost their heads, and are trying to produce a gimcrack
copy of Eton. Last term, you know, with a great deal of puffing and
blowing, they fixed the numbers of the school. This term they want to
create a new boarding-house.”
“They are very welcome.”
“But the more boarding-houses they create, the less room they leave
for day-boys. The local mothers are frantic, and so is my queer
cousin. I never knew him so excited over sub-Hellenic things. There
was an indignation meeting at his house. He is supposed to look after
the day-boys’ interests, but no one thought he would—least of all
the people who gave him the post. The speeches were most eloquent.
They argued that the school was founded for day-boys, and that it’s
intolerable to handicap them. One poor lady cried, ‘Here’s my Harold
in the school, and my Toddie coming on. As likely as not I shall be
told there is no vacancy for him. Then what am I to do? If I go, what’s
to become of Harold; and if I stop, what’s to become of Toddie?’ I
must say I was touched. Family life is more real than national life—at
least I’ve ordered all these books to prove it is—and I fancy that
the bust of Euripides agreed with me, and was sorry for the hot-faced
mothers. Jackson will do what he can. He didn’t quite like to state
the naked truth-which is, that boarding-houses pay. He explained it
to me afterwards: they are the only future open to a stupid master.
It’s easy enough to be a beak when you’re young and athletic, and can
offer the latest University smattering. The difficulty is to keep your
place when you get old and stiff, and younger smatterers are pushing
up behind you. Crawl into a boarding-house and you’re safe. A master’s
life is frightfully tragic. Jackson’s fairly right himself, because he
has got a first-class intellect. But I met a poor brute who was hired
as an athlete. He has missed his shot at a boarding-house, and there’s
nothing in the world for him to do but to trundle down the hill.”
Ansell yawned.
“I saw Rickie too. Once I dined there.”
Another yawn.
“My cousin thinks Mrs. Elliot one of the most horrible women he has
ever seen. He calls her ‘Medusa in Arcady.’ She’s so pleasant, too. But
certainly it was a very stony meal.”
“What kind of stoniness”
“No one stopped talking for a moment.”
“That’s the real kind,” said Ansell moodily. “The only kind.”
“Well, I,” he continued, “am inclined to compare her to an electric
light. Click! she’s on. Click! she’s off. No waste. No flicker.”
“I wish she’d fuse.”
“She’ll never fuse—unless anything was to happen at the main.”
“What do you mean by the main?” said Ansell, who always pursued a
metaphor relentlessly.
Widdrington did not know what he meant, and suggested that Ansell
should visit Sawston to see whether one could know.
“It is no good me going. I should not find Mrs. Elliot: she has no real
existence.”
“Rickie has.”
“I very much doubt it. I had two letters from Ilfracombe last April,
and I very much doubt that the man who wrote them can exist.” Bending
downwards he began to adorn the manuscript of his dissertation with a
square, and inside that a circle, and inside that another square. It
was his second dissertation: the first had failed.
“I think he exists: he is so unhappy.”
Ansell nodded. “How did you know he was unhappy?”
“Because he was always talking.” After a pause he added, “What clever
young men we are!”
“Aren’t we? I expect we shall get asked in marriage soon. I say,
Widdrington, shall we—?”
“Accept? Of course. It is not young manly to say no.”
“I meant shall we ever do a more tremendous thing,—fuse Mrs. Elliot.”
“No,” said Widdrington promptly. “We shall never do that in all our
lives.” He added, “I think you might go down to Sawston, though.”
“I have already refused or ignored three invitations.”
“So I gathered.”
“What’s the good of it?” said Ansell through his teeth. “I will not put
up with little things. I would rather be rude than to listen to twaddle
from a man I’ve known.”
“You might go down to Sawston, just for a night, to see him.”
“I saw him last month—at least, so Tilliard informs me. He says
that we all three lunched together, that Rickie paid, and that the
conversation was most interesting.”
“Well, I contend that he does exist, and that if you go—oh, I can’t be
clever any longer. You really must go, man. I’m certain he’s miserable
and lonely. Dunwood House reeks of commerce and snobbery and all the
things he hated most. He doesn’t do anything. He doesn’t make any
friends. He is so odd, too. In this day-boy row that has just started
he’s gone for my cousin. Would you believe it? Quite spitefully. It
made quite a difficulty when I wanted to dine. It isn’t like him—either
the sentiments or the behaviour. I’m sure he’s not himself. Pembroke
used to look after the day-boys, and so he can’t very well take the
lead against them, and perhaps Rickie’s doing his dirty work—and has
overdone it, as decent people generally do. He’s even altering to talk
to. Yet he’s not been married a year. Pembroke and that wife simply run
him. I don’t see why they should, and no more do you; and that’s why I
want you to go to Sawston, if only for one night.”
Ansell shook his head, and looked up at the dome as other men look at
the sky. In it the great arc lamps sputtered and flared, for the month
was again November. Then he lowered his eyes from the cold violet
radiance to the books.
“No, Widdrington; no. We don’t go to see people because they are happy
or unhappy. We go when we can talk to them. I cannot talk to Rickie,
therefore I will not waste my time at Sawston.”
“I think you’re right,” said Widdrington softly. “But we are bloodless
brutes. I wonder whether—if we were different people—something might
be done to save him. That is the curse of being a little intellectual.
You and our sort have always seen too clearly. We stand aside—and
meanwhile he turns into stone. Two philosophic youths repining in the
British Museum! What have we done? What shall we ever do? Just drift
and criticize, while people who know what they want snatch it away from
us and laugh.”
“Perhaps you are that sort. I’m not. When the moment comes I shall hit
out like any ploughboy. Don’t believe those lies about intellectual
people. They’re only written to soothe the majority. Do you suppose,
with the world as it is, that it’s an easy matter to keep quiet? Do
you suppose that I didn’t want to rescue him from that ghastly woman?
Action! Nothing’s easier than action; as fools testify. But I want to
act rightly.”
“The superintendent is looking at us. I must get back to my work.”
“You think this all nonsense,” said Ansell, detaining him. “Please
remember that if I do act, you are bound to help me.”
Widdrington looked a little grave. He was no anarchist. A few plaintive
cries against Mrs. Elliot were all that he prepared to emit.
“There’s no mystery,” continued Ansell. “I haven’t the shadow of a plan
in my head. I know not only Rickie but the whole of his history: you
remember the day near Madingley. Nothing in either helps me: I’m just
watching.”
“But what for?”
“For the Spirit of Life.”
Widdrington was surprised. It was a phrase unknown to their philosophy.
They had trespassed into poetry.
“You can’t fight Medusa with anything else. If you ask me what the
Spirit of Life is, or to what it is attached, I can’t tell you. I only
tell you, watch for it. Myself I’ve found it in books. Some people find
it out of doors or in each other. Never mind. It’s the same spirit, and
I trust myself to know it anywhere, and to use it rightly.”
But at this point the superintendent sent a message.
Widdrington then suggested a stroll in the galleries. It was foggy:
they needed fresh air. He loved and admired his friend, but today he
could not grasp him. The world as Ansell saw it seemed such a fantastic
place, governed by brand-new laws. What more could one do than to
see Rickie as often as possible, to invite his confidence, to offer
him spiritual support? And Mrs. Elliot—what power could “fuse” a
respectable woman?
Ansell consented to the stroll, but, as usual, only breathed
depression. The comfort of books deserted him among those marble
goddesses and gods. The eye of an artist finds pleasure in texture and
poise, but he could only think of the vanished incense and deserted
temples beside an unfurrowed sea.
“Let us go,” he said. “I do not like carved stones.”
“You are too particular,” said Widdrington. “You are always expecting
to meet living people. One never does. I am content with the Parthenon
frieze.” And he moved along a few yards of it, while Ansell followed,
conscious only of its pathos.
“There’s Tilliard,” he observed. “Shall we kill him?”
“Please,” said Widdrington, and as he spoke Tilliard joined them. He
brought them news. That morning he had heard from Rickie: Mrs. Elliot
was expecting a child.
“A child?” said Ansell, suddenly bewildered.
“Oh, I forgot,” interposed Widdrington. “My cousin did tell me.”
“You forgot! Well, after all, I forgot that it might be. We are indeed
young men.” He leant against the pedestal of Ilissus and remembered
their talk about the Spirit of Life. In his ignorance of what a child
means he wondered whether the opportunity he sought lay here.
“I am very glad,” said Tilliard, not without intention. “A child will
draw them even closer together. I like to see young people wrapped up
in their child.”
“I suppose I must be getting back to my dissertation,” said Ansell.
He left the Parthenon to pass by the monuments of our more reticent
beliefs—the temple of the Ephesian Artemis, the statue of the Cnidian
Demeter. Honest, he knew that here were powers he could not cope with,
nor, as yet, understand.
XXI
The mists that had gathered round Rickie seemed to be breaking. He had
found light neither in work for which he was unfitted nor in a woman
who had ceased to respect him, and whom he was ceasing to love. Though
he called himself fickle and took all the blame of their marriage on
his own shoulders, there remained in Agnes certain terrible faults of
heart and head, and no self-reproach would diminish them. The glamour
of wedlock had faded; indeed, he saw now that it had faded even before
wedlock, and that during the final months he had shut his eyes and
pretended it was still there. But now the mists were breaking.
That November the supreme event approached. He saw it with Nature’s
eyes. It dawned on him, as on Ansell, that personal love and marriage
only cover one side of the shield, and that on the other is graven the
epic of birth. In the midst of lessons he would grow dreamy, as one who
spies a new symbol for the universe, a fresh circle within the square.
Within the square shall be a circle, within the circle another square,
until the visual eye is baffled. Here is meaning of a kind. His mother
had forgotten herself in him. He would forget himself in his son.
He was at his duties when the news arrived—taking preparation. Boys
are marvellous creatures. Perhaps they will sink below the brutes;
perhaps they will attain to a woman’s tenderness. Though they despised
Rickie, and had suffered under Agnes’s meanness, their one thought this
term was to be gentle and to give no trouble.
“Rickie—one moment—”
His face grew ashen. He followed Herbert into the passage, closing
the door of the preparation room behind him. “Oh, is she safe?” he
whispered.
“Yes, yes,” said Herbert; but there sounded in his answer a sombre
hostile note.
“Our boy?”
“Girl—a girl, dear Rickie; a little daughter. She—she is in many ways
a healthy child. She will live—oh yes.” A flash of horror passed over
his face. He hurried into the preparation room, lifted the lid of his
desk, glanced mechanically at the boys, and came out again.
Mrs. Lewin appeared through the door that led into their own part of
the house.
“Both going on well!” she cried; but her voice also was grave,
exasperated.
“What is it?” he gasped. “It’s something you daren’t tell me.”
“Only this”—stuttered Herbert. “You mustn’t mind when you see—she’s
lame.”
Mrs. Lewin disappeared. “Lame! but not as lame as I am?”
“Oh, my dear boy, worse. Don’t—oh, be a man in this. Come away from
the preparation room. Remember she’ll live—in many ways healthy—only
just this one defect.”
The horror of that week never passed away from him. To the end of his
life he remembered the excuses—the consolations that the child would
live; suffered very little, if at all; would walk with crutches; would
certainly live. God was more merciful. A window was opened too wide on
a draughty day—after a short, painless illness his daughter died. But
the lesson he had learnt so glibly at Cambridge should be heeded now;
no child should ever be born to him again.
XXII
That same term there took place at Dunwood House another event.
With their private tragedy it seemed to have no connection; but in
time Rickie perceived it as a bitter comment. Its developments were
unforeseen and lasting. It was perhaps the most terrible thing he had
to bear.
Varden had now been a boarder for ten months. His health had broken
in the previous term,—partly, it is to be feared, as the result of
the indifferent food—and during the summer holidays he was attacked
by a series of agonizing earaches. His mother, a feeble person,
wished to keep him at home, but Herbert dissuaded her. Soon after
the death of the child there arose at Dunwood House one of those
waves of hostility of which no boy knows the origin nor any master
can calculate the course. Varden had never been popular—there was
no reason why he should be—but he had never been seriously bullied
hitherto. One evening nearly the whole house set on him. The prefects
absented themselves, the bigger boys stood round and the lesser boys,
to whom power was delegated, flung him down, and rubbed his face
under the desks, and wrenched at his ears. The noise penetrated the
baize doors, and Herbert swept through and punished the whole house,
including Varden, whom it would not do to leave out. The poor man was
horrified. He approved of a little healthy roughness, but this was pure
brutalization. What had come over his boys? Were they not gentlemen’s
sons? He would not admit that if you herd together human beings before
they can understand each other the great god Pan is angry, and will
in the end evade your regulations and drive them mad. That night the
victim was screaming with pain, and the doctor next day spoke of an
operation. The suspense lasted a whole week. Comment was made in the
local papers, and the reputation not only of the house but of the
school was imperilled. “If only I had known,” repeated Herbert—“if
only I had known I would have arranged it all differently. He should
have had a cubicle.” The boy did not die, but he left Sawston, never to
return.
The day before his departure Rickie sat with him some time, and tried
to talk in a way that was not pedantic. In his own sorrow, which he
could share with no one, least of all with his wife, he was still alive
to the sorrows of others. He still fought against apathy, though he was
losing the battle.
“Don’t lose heart,” he told him. “The world isn’t all going to be like
this. There are temptations and trials, of course, but nothing at all
of the kind you have had here.”
“But school is the world in miniature, is it not, sir?” asked the
boy, hoping to please one master by echoing what had been told him by
another. He was always on the lookout for sympathy—: it was one of the
things that had contributed to his downfall.
“I never noticed that myself. I was unhappy at school, and in the world
people can be very happy.”
Varden sighed and rolled about his eyes. “Are the fellows sorry for
what they did to me?” he asked in an affected voice. “I am sure I
forgive them from the bottom of my heart. We ought to forgive our
enemies, oughtn’t we, sir?”
“But they aren’t your enemies. If you meet in five years’ time you may
find each other splendid fellows.”
The boy would not admit this. He had been reading some revivalistic
literature. “We ought to forgive our enemies,” he repeated; “and
however wicked they are, we ought not to wish them evil. When I was
ill, and death seemed nearest, I had many kind letters on this subject.”
Rickie knew about these “many kind letters.” Varden had induced the
silly nurse to write to people—people of all sorts, people that he
scarcely knew or did not know at all—detailing his misfortune, and
asking for spiritual aid and sympathy.
“I am sorry for them,” he pursued. “I would not like to be like them.”
Rickie sighed. He saw that a year at Dunwood House had produced a
sanctimonious prig. “Don’t think about them, Varden. Think about
anything beautiful—say, music. You like music. Be happy. It’s your
duty. You can’t be good until you’ve had a little happiness. Then
perhaps you will think less about forgiving people and more about
loving them.”
“I love them already, sir.” And Rickie, in desperation, asked if he
might look at the many kind letters.
Permission was gladly given. A neat bundle was produced, and for about
twenty minutes the master perused it, while the invalid kept watch on
his face. Rooks cawed out in the playing-fields, and close under the
window there was the sound of delightful, good-tempered laughter. A boy
is no devil, whatever boys may be. The letters were chilly productions,
somewhat clerical in tone, by whomsoever written. Varden, because he
was ill at the time, had been taken seriously. The writers declared
that his illness was fulfilling some mysterious purpose: suffering
engendered spiritual growth: he was showing signs of this already. They
consented to pray for him, some majestically, others shyly. But they
all consented with one exception, who worded his refusal as follows:—
Dear A.C. Varden,—
I ought to say that I never remember seeing you. I am sorry that you
are ill, and hope you are wrong about it. Why did you not write before,
for I could have helped you then? When they pulled your ear, you
ought to have gone like this (here was a rough sketch). I could not
undertake praying, but would think of you instead, if that would do. I
am twenty-two in April, built rather heavy, ordinary broad face, with
eyes, etc. I write all this because you have mixed me with some one
else, for I am not married, and do not want to be. I cannot think of
you always, but will promise a quarter of an hour daily (say 7.00-7.15
A.M.), and might come to see you when you are better—that is, if you
are a kid, and you read like one. I have been otter-hunting—
Yours sincerely,
Stephen Wonham
XXIII
Rickie went straight from Varden to his wife, who lay on the sofa in
her bedroom. There was now a wide gulf between them. She, like the
world she had created for him, was unreal.
“Agnes, darling,” he began, stroking her hand, “such an awkward little
thing has happened.”
“What is it, dear? Just wait till I’ve added up this hook.”
She had got over the tragedy: she got over everything.
When she was at leisure he told her. Hitherto they had seldom mentioned
Stephen. He was classed among the unprofitable dead.
She was more sympathetic than he expected. “Dear Rickie,” she murmured
with averted eyes. “How tiresome for you.”
“I wish that Varden had stopped with Mrs. Orr.”
“Well, he leaves us for good tomorrow.”
“Yes, yes. And I made him answer the letter and apologize. They had
never met. It was some confusion with a man in the Church Army, living
at a place called Codford. I asked the nurse. It is all explained.”
“There the matter ends.”
“I suppose so—if matters ever end.”
“If, by ill-luck, the person does call. I will just see him and say
that the boy has gone.”