VERY RAW MATERIAL
It was all but a summer morning when Jan got back into the trousers
without pockets and the black jacket and tie ordained by the school
authorities. Peculiarly oppressive to Jan was the rule about trouser
pockets; those in his jacket were so full in consequence that there was
barely room for his incriminating belt, which he rolled up as small as
it would go, and made into a parcel to be hidden away in his study when
he had one. This was his last act before leaving the dormitory and
marching downstairs at an hour when most of the household were
presumably still in bed and asleep; but Jan was naturally an early
riser, and he had none of the scruples of conventionality on the score
of an essentially harmless act. He was curious to see something of his
new surroundings, and there was nothing like seeing for oneself.
At the foot of the lead-lined stairs, worn bright as silver at the
edges, there was a short tiled passage with a green baize door at one
end and what was evidently the boys’ hall at the other. The baize door
communicated with the master’s side of the house, for the new boys had
come through it on their way up to dormitory. The hall was a good size,
with one very long table under the windows and two shorter ones on
either side of the fireplace. On the walls hung portraits of the great
composers, which Jan afterwards found to be house prizes in part-singing
competitions discontinued before his time; at the moment, however, he
took no kind of interest in them, and but very little in the two
challenge cups under the clock. What did attract him was the line of
open windows, looking like solid blocks of sunlight and fresh air. On
the sill of one a figure in print was busy with her wash-leather, and
she accosted Jan cheerily.
“You _are_ down early, sir!”
“I always am,” remarked Jan, looking for a door into the open air.
“You’re not like most of the gentlemen, then,” the maid returned, in her
cheerful Cockney voice. “They leaves it to the last moment, and then
they 'as to fly. You should 'ear ’em come down them stairs!”
“Is there no way out?” inquired Jan.
“You mean into the quad?”
“That’s the quad, is it? Then I do.”
“Well, there’s the door, just outside this door; but Morgan, 'e keeps
the key o’ that, and I don’t think 'e’s come yet.”
“Then I’m going through that window,” announced the new boy, calmly; and
carried out his intention without a moment’s hesitation.
Had his object been to run away on his very first morning, before his
house-master was astir, as the maid seemed to fear by the way she leant
out of her window to watch him, the next step would have taxed all Jan’s
resources.
Heriot’s quad was a gravel plot very distinctively enclosed, on the left
by the walls of buildings otherwise unconnected with the house, on the
right by the boys’ studies. At the further extremity were twin gables
over gothic arches which left the two interiors underneath open at one
end to all the elements; never in his life had Jan beheld such
structures; but he had picked up enough from his tutor to guess that
they were fives-courts, and he went up to have a look into them. To the
right of the fives-courts was an alley ending at a formidable spiked
gate which was yet the only obvious way of escape, had Jan been minded
to make his. But nothing was further from his thoughts; indeed, there
was a certain dull gleam in his eyes, and a sallow flush upon his face,
which had not been there the previous evening. At all events he looked
wider awake.
The studies interested him most. There was a double row of little
lattice windows, piercing a very wall of ivy, like port-holes in a
vessel’s side. Not only were the little windows deep-set in ivy, but
each had its little window-box, and in some of these still drooped the
withered remnant of a brave display. Jan was not interested in flowers,
or for that matter in anything that made for the mere beauty of life;
but he peered with interest into one or two of the ground-floor studies.
There was little to be seen beyond his own reflection broken to bits in
the diamond panes. Between him and the windows was a border of shrubs,
behind iron palings bent by the bodies and feet of generations, and
painted green like the garden seats under the alien walls opposite. On
the whole, and in the misty sunlight of the fine September morning, Jan
liked Heriot’s quad.
“You’re up early, sir!”
It was not the maid this time, but a bearded man-servant whom the boy
had seen the previous night. Jan made the same reply as before, and no
sort of secret of the way in which he had got out into the quad. He
added that he should like to have a look at the studies; and Morgan,
with a stare and a smile quite lost on Jan, showed him round.
They were absurdly, deliciously, inconceivably tiny, the studies at
Heriot’s; each was considerably smaller than a dormitory “tish,” and the
saddle-room of Jan’s old days would have made three or four of them. But
they were undeniably cosy and attractive, as compact as a captain’s
cabin, as private as friar’s cell, and far more comfortable than either.
Or so they might well have seemed to the normal boy about to possess a
study of his own, with a table and two chairs, a square of carpet as big
as a bath-sheet, a book-shelf and pictures, and photographs and
ornaments to taste, fretwork and plush to heart’s content, a flower-box
for the summer term, hot-water pipes for the other two, and above all a
door of his own to shut at will against the world! But Jan Rutter had
not the instincts of a normal schoolboy, nor the temperament favourable
to their rapid growth. He had been brought up too uncomfortably to know
the value of comfort, and too much in the open air to appreciate the
merits of indoor sanctuary. Artistic impulse he had none; and the
rudimentary signs of that form of grace, to be seen in nearly all the
studies he was shown, left him thoroughly unimpressed.
“Is it true,” he asked, “that every boy in the school has one of these
holes?”
“Quite true,” replied Morgan, staring. “You didn’t say 'holes,’ sir?”
“I did,” declared Jan, enjoying his accidental hit.
“You’d better not let Mr. Heriot hear you, sir, or any of the gentlemen
either!”
“I don’t care who hears me,” retorted Jan, boastfully; but it must not
be forgotten that he had come to school against his will, and that this
was his first opportunity of airing a not unnatural antagonism.
“You wait till you’ve got one of your own,” said the well-meaning man,
“with a nice new carpet and table-cloth, and your own family portraits
and sportin’ picters!”
“At any rate I should know a horse from a cow,” returned Jan, examining
something in the nature of a sporting print, “and not hang up rot like
that!”
“You let Mr. Shockley hear you!” cried Morgan, with a laugh. “You’ll
catch it!”
“I’ve no doubt I shall do that,” said Jan, grimly. He followed Morgan
into an empty study, and asked if it was likely to be his.
“Not unless you take a pretty high place in the school. It’s only the
top dozen in the house that get these front studies upstairs. You can
make up your mind to one at the back, and be glad if it’s not
downstairs, where everybody can see in and throw in stones.”
Jan felt he had not made a friend of Morgan; and yet in his heart he was
more favourably impressed with what he had seen than his peculiar
temperament permitted him to show. Little as their adventitious
attractions might appeal to him, there was something attractive to Jan
about this system of separate studies. It appealed, and not without
design, to that spirit of independence which happened to be one of his
stronger points. Moreover he could conceive a very happy intimacy
between two real friends in one of these little dens; and altogether he
brought a brighter face to the breakfast-table than he had shown for an
instant overnight. Heriot glanced at it with an interested twinkle, as
though he had been at the explorer’s elbow all the morning; but whatever
he might have known, he betrayed his knowledge neither by word nor sign.
After breakfast the two boys sallied forth with orders signed by Heriot
for a school cap apiece; and saw the long old-fashioned country street
for the first time in broad daylight. It gave the impression of a street
with nothing behind it on either side, the chance remnant of a vanished
town. Nothing could have been more solid than the fronts of the drab
stone houses, and nothing more startling than the glimpses of vivid
meadowland like a black-cloth close behind. The caps were procured from
the cricket professional, a maker of history whose fame provided
Carpenter with a congenial topic on the way, but sat sadly on the
failing giant who was there to serve them in the little shop. The caps
were black but not comely, as Carpenter more than once remarked; they
were a cross between a cricket-cap and that of a naval officer, with the
school badge in red above the peak. Jan chose the biggest he could find,
and crammed it over his skull as though he was going out to exercise a
horse.
The day was fully occupied with the rather exhaustive examination
designed to put the right boy in the right form. There were no fewer
than three papers in the morning alone. There was, however, a short
break between each, which Carpenter was inclined to spend in boring
Rutter with appreciative comments upon the striking mural decorations of
the great schoolroom in which the examination was held. There were
forty-two new boys, some of them hulking fellows of fifteen or more,
some quite small boys in Eton jackets; and the chances are that none
among them was more impressed than Carpenter by the reproductions of
classical statuary hung upon the walls of Pompeian red, or by the frieze
of ancient and modern authors which a great mind had planned and a
cunning hand had made; but it is certain that none thought less of them
than Jan Rutter. To pacify his companion he did have a look at the
frieze, but it was exactly the same look as he had cast into the studies
before breakfast. The two had more in common when they compared notes on
the various papers.
“I didn’t mind the Latin grammar and history,” said Jan. “I’ve had my
nose in my grammar for the last six months, and you only had to answer
half the history questions.”
Jan’s spirits seemed quite high.
“But what about the unseen?” asked Carpenter.
“I happened to have done the hardest bit before,” said Jan, chuckling
consumedly; “and not so long since, either!”
Carpenter looked at him.
“Then it wasn’t unseen at all?”
“Not to me.”
“You didn’t think of saying so on your paper?”
“Not I! It’s their look-out, not mine,” chuckled Jan.
The other made no comment. It was the long break in the middle of the
day, and the pair were on their way back to Heriot’s for dinner.
“I wish they’d set us some verses,” said Carpenter. “They’d be _my_ best
chance.”
“Then you’re a fool if you take it,” put in a good-humoured lout who had
joined them in the street.
“But it’s the only thing I can do at all decently,” explained the
ingenuous Carpenter. “I’m a backward sort of ass at most things, but I
rather like Latin verses.”
“Well, you’re another sort of ass if you do your best in any of these
piffling papers.”
“I see! _You_ mean to make sure of a nice easy form?”
“Rather!”
“There’s no fagging over the Upper Fourth, let me tell you, even for
us.”
“Perhaps not, but there’s more kinds of fagging than one, you take my
word for it; and I prefer to do mine out of school,” said the big new
boy, significantly, as their ways parted.
Carpenter wanted to discuss his meaning, but Jan took no interest in it,
and was evidently not to be led into any discussion against his will. He
had in fact a gift of silence remarkable in a boy and not a little
irritating to a companion. Yet he broke it again to the extent of asking
Heriot at table, and that _à propos_ of nothing, when the other boys
would “start to arrive.”
“The tap will be turned on any minute now,” said Heriot, with a look at
his sister. “In some houses I expect it’s running already.”
“Which house is Devereux in?” asked Rutter, always direct when he spoke
at all.
“Let me think. I know—the Lodge—the house opposite the chapel with the
study doors opening into the quad.”
Carpenter’s silence was the companion feature of this meal.
The boys had time for a short walk afterwards, and more than a hint to
take one. But they only went together because they were thrown together;
these two had obviously as little else in common as boys could have; and
yet, there was something else, and neither dreamt what a bond it was to
be.
“Do you know Devereux?” Carpenter began before they were out of their
quad.
“Why? Do you know him?”
Jan was not unduly taken aback; he was prepared for anything with regard
to Devereux, including the next question long before it came.
“We were at the same preparatory school, and great pals there,” replied
Carpenter, wistfully. “I suppose you know him at home?”
“I used to, but only in a sort of way,” said Jan, warily. “I don’t
suppose we shall see anything of each other here; he mayn’t even
recognise me, to start with.”
“Or me, for that matter!” cried Carpenter, with less reserve. “He’s
never written to me since we left, though I wrote to him twice last
term, and once in the holidays to ask him something.”
It was on the tip of Jan’s tongue to defend the absent Evan with
injudicious warmth; but he remembered what he had just said, and held
his tongue as he always could. Carpenter, on the other hand, apparently
regretting his little show of pique, changed the subject with ingenuous
haste and chattered more freely than ever about the various school
buildings that they passed upon their way. There was a house at the end
of the street with no fewer than three tiers of ivy-covered study
windows; but it had no quad. There were other houses tucked more out of
sight; but Carpenter knew about them, and which hero of the Cambridge
eleven had been at this, that, or the other. His interest in his school
was of the romantic and imaginative order; it contrasted very favourably
with Jan’s indifference, which grew the more perversely pronounced as
his companion waxed enthusiastic. It appeared that Carpenter was
following a number of youths from his part of the world, who had been
through the school before him, and from whom he had acquired a
smattering of its lore. The best houses of all, he had heard, were not
in the town at all, but on the hill a quarter of a mile away. The pair
went to inspect, and found regular mansions standing back in their own
grounds, their studies and fives-courts hidden from the road; for the
new boys trespassed far enough to see for themselves; and Rutter at once
expressed a laconic preference for the hill houses, whereat Carpenter
stood up as readily for the town.
“There’s no end of rivalry between the two,” he explained, as they
trotted down into the valley, pressed for time. “I wouldn’t be in a hill
house for any money, or in any house but ours if I had my choice of all
the lot.”
“And I wouldn’t be here at all,” retorted Jan, depriving his companion
of what breath he had as they hurried up the hill towards the town. By
turning to the left, however, in the wake of other new boys in a like
hurry, they found themselves approaching the chapel and the great
schoolroom by a shorter route. It led through a large square quad with
study doors opening upon it down two sides, and nothing over these
studies but their own roof.
“There’s plenty of time,” said Jan, with rather a furtive look at a
little gold lady’s watch that he pulled out in his fist. “I wonder if
this is the Lodge?”
“No—it’s the next—opposite the chapel. This is the School House. Do
come on!”
The School House and the Lodge were like none of the other houses.
Instead of standing by themselves in the town or on the hill, each
formed a part of the distinctive group of which the chapel and the great
schoolroom were the salient features. Their quadrangles not only
adjoined, but there was no line of demarcation to show where one began
or the other ended. In both the study doors opened straight into the
fresh air; but in neither was a boy to be seen as Carpenter and Rutter
caught up the flying remnant of the forty-two.
“Let’s go back by the Lodge,” said Jan, when at last they were let out
for good. But now the scene was changing. Groups of two and three were
dotted about in animated conversation, some still in their journey hats,
others in old school caps with faded badges, but none who took the
smallest notice of the new boys with the new badges, which they had
still to learn to crease correctly over the peak.
And now it was that Rutter horrified his companion by accosting with
apparent coolness a big fellow just emerged from one of the Lodge
studies.
“Do you mind telling us if a boy they call Devereux has got back yet?”
asked Jan, with more of his own idioms than he had often managed to
utter in one breath.
“I haven’t seen him,” the big fellow answered civilly enough. But his
stare followed the retreating couple, one of whom had caught the other
by the arm.
“I shouldn’t talk about 'a boy,’ if I were you,” Carpenter was saying as
nicely as he could.
But Rutter was quite aware of his other solecisms, though not of this
one, and was already too furious with himself to brook a gratuitous
rebuke.
“Oh! isn’t it the fashion? Then I’ll bet you wouldn’t!” he cried, as he
shook off the first arm which had ever been thrust through his by a
gentleman’s son.
A ball like a big white bullet was making staccato music in Heriot’s
outer fives-court; two school caps were bobbing above the back wall; and
a great thick-lipped lad of sixteen or seventeen, who was hanging about
the door leading to the studies, promptly asked the new boys their
names.
“What’s your gov’nor?” he added, addressing Carpenter first.
“A merchant.”
“A rag-merchant, I should think! And yours?”
Jan was not embarrassed by the question; he was best prepared at all his
most vulnerable points. But his natural bluntness had so recently caused
him such annoyance with himself, that he replied as politely as he
possibly could:
“My father happens to be dead.”
“Oh, he does, does he?” cried the other with a scowl. “Well, if you
happen to think it funny to talk about 'happening’ to me, you may jolly
soon happen to wish you were dead yourself!”
The tap had indeed been turned on, and the water was certainly rather
cold; the more fortunate for Rutter that his skin was thick enough to
respond with a glow rather than a shiver.