I
When I left home to go to boarding-school for the first time I did
not cry like the little boys in the story-books, though I had never
been away from home before except to spend holidays with relatives.
This was not due to any extraordinary self-control on my part, for I
was always ready to shed tears on the most trivial occasion. But as a
fact I had other things to think about, and did not in the least
realise the significance of my journey. I had lots of new clothes and
more money in my pocket than I had ever had before, and in the
guard's van at the back of the train there was a large box that I had
packed myself with jam and potted meat and cake. In this, as in other
matters, I had been aided by the expert advice of a brother who was
himself at a school in the North, and it was perhaps natural that in
the comfortable security of the holidays he should have given me an
almost lyrical account of the joys of life at a boarding-school.
Moreover, my existence as a day-boy in London had been so unhappy;
that I was prepared to welcome any change, so at most I felt only a
vague unease as to the future.
After I had glanced at my papers, I sat back and stared at my eldest
brother, who had been told off to see me safely to school. At that
time I did not like him because he seemed to me unduly insistent on
his rights and I could not help wondering at the tactlessness of the
grown-up people in choosing him as my travelling companion. With any
one else this journey might have been a joyous affair but there were
incidents between us that neither of us would forget, so that I
could find nothing better than an awkward politeness with which to
meet his strained amiability. He feigned an intense interest in his
magazine while I looked out of window, with one finger in my
waistcoat pocket, scratching the comfortable milled edges of my
money. When I saw little farm-houses, forgotten in the green dimples
of the Kentish hills, I thought that it would be nice to live there
with a room full of story-books, away from the discomforts and
difficulties of life. Like a cat, I wanted to dream somewhere where
I would not be trodden on, somewhere where I would be neglected by
friends and foes alike. This was my normal desire, but side by side
with my craving for peace I was aware of a new and interesting
emotion that suggested the possibility of a life even more
agreeable. The excitement of packing my box with provender like a
sailor who was going on a long voyage, the unwonted thrill of having
a large sum of money concealed about my person, and above all the
imaginative yarns of my elder brother, had fired me with the thought
of adventure. His stories had been filled with an utter contempt for
lessons and a superb defiance of the authorities, and had ranged
from desperate rabbit-shooting parties on the Yorkshire Wolds to
illicit feasts of Eccles cakes and tinned lobster in moonlit
dormitories. I thought that it would be pleasant to experience this
romantic kind of life before settling down for good with my dreams.
The train wandered on and my eldest brother and I looked at each
other constrainedly. He had already asked me twice whether I had my
ticket, and I realised that he could not think of any other neutral
remark that fitted the occasion. It occurred to me to say that the
train was slow, but I remembered with a glow of anger how he had once
rubbed a strawberry in my face because I had taken the liberty of
offering it to one of his friends, and I held my peace. I had prayed
for his death every night for three weeks after that, and though he
was still alive the knowledge of my unconfessed and unrepented
wickedness prevented me from being more than conveniently polite, he
thought I was a cheeky little toad and I thought he was a bully, so
we looked at each other and did not speak. We were both glad,
therefore, when the train pulled up at the station that bore the name
of my new school.
My first emotion was a keen regret that my parents had not sent me
to a place where the sun shone. As we sat in the little omnibus
that carried us from the station to the town, with my precious
boxes safely stored on the roof, we passed between grey fields
whose featureless expanses melted changelessly into the grey sky
overhead. The prospect alarmed me, for it seemed to me that this
was not a likely world for adventures; nor was I reassured by the
sight of the town, whose one long street of low, old-fashioned
houses struck me as being mean and sordid. I was conscious that
the place had an unpleasant smell, and I was already driven to
thinking of my pocket-money and my play-box--agreeable thoughts
which I had made up my mind in the train to reserve carefully for
possible hours of unhappiness. But the low roof of the omnibus was
like a limit to my imagination, and my body was troubled by the
displeasing contact of the velvet cushions. I was still wondering
why this made my wrists ache, when the omnibus lurched from the
cobbles on to a gravel drive, and I saw the school buildings
towering all about me like the walls of a prison. I jumped out and
stretched my legs while the driver climbed down to collect the
fares. He looked at me without a jot of interest, and I knew that
he must have driven a great many boys from the station to the
school in the course of his life.
A man appeared in shirt-sleeves of grey flannel and wheeled my boxes
away on a little truck, and after a while a master came down and
showed us, in a perfunctory manner, over the more presentable
quarters of the school. My brother was anxious to get away, because
he had not been emancipated long enough to find the atmosphere of
dormitories and class-rooms agreeable. I was naturally interested,
in my new environment, but the presence of the master constrained
me, and I was afraid to speak in front of this unknown man whom it
was my lot to obey, so we were all relieved when our hurried
inspection was over. He told me that I was at liberty to do what I
pleased till seven o'clock, so I went for a walk through the town
with my brother.
The day was drawing to a chill grey close, and the town was filled
with a clammy mist tainted with the odour of sewage, due, I
afterwards discovered, to the popular abuse of the little stream
that gave the place its name. Even my brother could not entirely
escape the melancholy influence of the hour and the place, and he
was glad to take me into a baker's shop and have tea. By now the
illusion of adventure that had reconciled me to leaving home was in
a desperate state, and I drank my tea and consumed my cakes without
enjoyment. If life was always going to be the same--if in fleeing
one misfortune I had merely brought on myself the pain of becoming
accustomed to another--I felt sure that my meagre stoicism would not
suffice to carry me through with credit. I had failed once, I would
fail again. I looked forward with a sinking heart to a tearful and
uncomfortable future.
There was only a very poor train service, so my brother had plenty of
time to walk back to the station, and it was settled that I should go
part of the way with him. As we walked along the white road, that
stretched between uniform hedgerows of a shadowy greyness, I saw that
he had something on his mind. In this hour of my trial I was willing
to forget the past for the sake of talking for a few minutes with
some human being whom I knew, but he returned only vague answers to
my eager questions. At last he stopped in the middle of the road, and
said I had better turn back. I would liked to have walked farther
with him, but I was above all things anxious to keep up appearances,
so I said goodbye in as composed a voice as I could find. My brother
hesitated for a minute; then with a timid glance at heaven he put his
hand in his pocket, pulled out half a crown which he gave me, and
walked rapidly away. I saw in a flash that for him, too, it had been
an important moment; he had tipped his first schoolboy, and
henceforth he was beyond all question grown up.
I did not like him, but I watched him disappear in the dusk with a
desolate heart. At that moment he stood for a great many things that
seemed valuable to me, and I would have given much to have been
walking by his side with my face towards home and my back turned to
the grey and unsavoury town to which I had to bear my despondent
loneliness. Nevertheless I stepped out staunchly enough, in order
that my mind should take courage from the example of my body. I
thought strenuously of my brother's stories, of my play-box packed
for a voyage, of the money in my pocket increased now by my eldest
brother's unexpected generosity; and by dint of these violent mental
exercises I had reduced my mind to a comfortable stupor by the time I
reached the school gates. There I was overcome by shyness, and
although I saw lights in the form-rooms and heard the voices of boys,
I stood awkwardly in the playground, not knowing where I ought to go.
The mist in the air surrounded the lights with a halo, and my
nostrils were filled with the acrid smell of burning leaves.
I had stood there a quarter of an hour perhaps, when a boy came up
and spoke to me, and the sound of his voice gave me a shock. I think
it was the first time in my life a boy had spoken kindly to me. He
asked me my name, and told me that it would be supper-time in five
minutes, so that I could go and sit in the dining-hall and wait.
"You'll be all right, you know," he said, as he passed on; "they're
not a bad lot of chaps." The revulsion nearly brought on a
catastrophe, for the tears rose to my eyes and I gazed after him with
a swimming head. I had prepared myself to receive blows and insults
with a calm brow, but I had no armour with which to oppose the noble
weapons of sympathy and good fellowship. They overcame the stubborn
hatred with which I was accustomed to meet life, and left me
defenceless. I felt as if I had been face to face with the hero of a
dream.
As I sat at supper before a long table decorated with plates of
bread-and-butter and cheese I saw my friend sitting at the other end
of the room, so I asked the boy next to me to tell me his name. "Oh,"
he said, looking curiously at my blushes, "you mean old mother F----.
He's pious, you know; reads the Bible and funks at games and all
that."
There are some things which no self-respecting schoolboy can afford
to forgive. I had made up my mind that it was not pleasant to be an
Ishmael, that as far as possible I would try to be an ordinary boy at
my new school. My experiences in London had taught me caution, and I
was anxious not to compromise my position at the outset by making an
unpopular friend. So I nodded my head sagely in reply, and looked at
my new-discovered hero with an air of profound contempt.