SETTLING IN
Jan’s impressions were not the less vivid for his determination not to
be impressed at all; for no attitude of mind is harder to sustain than
one of deliberate indifference, which is not real indifference at all,
but at best a precarious pose. Jan was really indifferent to a large
extent, but not wholly, and the leaven of sensibility rendered him
acutely alive to each successive phase of his experience; on the other
hand, the fact that he was not too easily hurt was of immense value in
keeping his wits about him, and his whole garrison of senses at
attention. Sensitive he was, and that to the last degree, on a certain
point; but it was a point no longer likely to arise that night. And
meanwhile there was quite enough to occupy his mind.
There was the long-drawn arrival of the house, unit by unit, in bowler
hats which changed as if by magic into old school caps, and even in
“loud” ties duly discarded for solemn black. Then there was tea, with
any amount of good cheer in hall, every fellow bringing in some delicacy
of his own, and newcomers arriving in the middle to be noisily saluted
by their friends. Nobody now took the slightest notice of Jan, who
drifted into a humble place at the long table, which was still far from
full, and fell to work upon the plain bread and butter provided, until
some fellow pushed a raised pie across the table to him without a word.
The matron dispensed tea from a gigantic urn, and when anybody wanted
another cup he simply rattled it in his saucer. Jan could have made even
more primitive use of his saucer, for the tea was hot if not potent. But
fortunately there were some things it was not necessary for Carpenter to
tell him, for that guide and counsellor was not in hall; he had gone out
to tea with another new boy and his people, who knew something about him
at home.
Jan was allowed to spend the evening in an empty study which he might or
might not be able to take over next day, according to the place assigned
to him in the school; meanwhile the bare boards, table, Windsor chair,
and book-shelf, with an ironically cold hot-water pipe, and the nails
with which the last occupant had studded the walls, looked dismal enough
in the light of a solitary candle supplied by Morgan. The narrow passage
resounded with shouts of laughter and boyish badinage from the other
studies; either the captain of the house had not come back, or he was
not the man to play the martinet on the first night of the term; and
Jan, left as severely alone as even he could have wished, rose with
alacrity when one in passing pounded on his door and shouted that it was
time for prayers. He was in fact not sorry to mingle with his kind again
in the lighted hall, where the fellows were already standing in their
places at table, armed with hymn-books but chatting merrily, while one
of the small fry stood sentinel in the flagged passage leading to the
green baize door. Jan had scarcely found a place when in flew this
outpost with a sepulchral “hush!” In the ensuing silence came Miss
Heriot followed by her brother, who began by giving out the hymn which
she played on the piano under the shelf with the cups, and which the
house sang heartily enough.
It was one of the many disadvantages of Jan’s strange boyhood that he
had been brought up practically without religion. Mention has been made
of an eccentric clergyman who was the first to take an interest in Jan’s
intellectual welfare; unhappily, his eccentricities had been of such a
character as almost to stultify his spiritual pretensions; and in his
new home the boy had encountered another type of clerical example which
had been but little better in its effect upon his mind. Prayer had never
been to him the natural practice which it is to young English schoolboys
of all shades of character and condition. So he paid very little
attention to the prayers read by Heriot, at this first time of hearing;
but even so the manly unaffected voice, and a few odd phrases on which
it dwelt in gentler tones, were not altogether lost upon Jan.
Nevertheless, when he went up to dormitory, after biscuits (which he
heard called “dog-rocks”) and milk, and another dreary half-hour in the
empty study, the last thing he feared or thought about was the kind of
difficulty which had beset little Arthur in a certain chapter of _Tom
Brown_ which had not appealed to Jan. And all this may be why he was so
much impressed by what happened in the little dormitory at the top of
the house, when he and his three companions were undressing for bed.
Joyce, the captain of the dormitory, who proved to be a rather delicate
youth with a most indelicate vocabulary, suddenly ceased firing, as it
were, and commanded silence for “bricks.”
“Know what 'bricks’ are?” asked Bingley, who occupied the “tish”
adjoining Jan’s, and turned out to be a boy of his own age, instead of
the formidable figure of his imagination.
“It’s your prayers,” said Joyce, with such an epithet that Jan could not
possibly believe him.
“You _are_ a brute, Joyce!” cried Crabtree, poking a clever red head
through his curtains.
“Nevertheless, my boy,” rejoined Joyce, imitating a master through his
nose, “I know what bricks are, and I say them.”
“Obvious corruption of _prex_,” began Crabtree, in didactic fashion,
when Joyce cut him short with a genial malediction, and silence reigned
for the best part of a minute.
Jan went on his knees with the others, though he had not done so the
night before, and his lips moved through the Lord’s Prayer; but in his
heart he was marvelling at the language of the nice tall fellow in the
far corner. It was the kind of language he had often heard in the
stables, but it was the last kind that he had expected to hear in a
public school; and somehow it shocked him, for the first time in his
life. But on the whole he was thankful to find himself in such pleasant
company in dormitory, and it came to him to express his thankfulness
while he was on his knees.
Nothing occurred, as they lay talking in the dark, to modify the new
boy’s feeling on this point; nor had he subsequent occasion to revise a
triple opinion which might well have proved premature in one case or the
other. It revealed on the contrary an unusually sound instinct for
character. Joyce’s only foible was his fondness for free language. He
had a redeeming sense of humour, and it was in treatment rather than in
choice of subject that he erred. Crabtree was irreproachable in
conversation, and a kindly creature in his cooler moods; but he suffered
from the curse of intellect, was precociously didactic and dogmatic, and
had a temperament as fiery as his hair. Bingley was a lively,
irresponsible, curly-headed dog, who enjoyed life in an insignificant
position both in and out of school. The other two had nicknames which
were not for the lips of new boys; but Jan called Bingley “Toby” after
the first night.
Prayers were in houses on the first morning of the term, and nothing
else happened before or after breakfast until the whole school assembled
in the big schoolroom at ten o’clock to hear the new school order. Jan
pulled his cap over his eyes as he found himself wedged in a crowd from
all the houses, converging at the base of the worn stone spiral stair up
and down which he had trotted at his ease between the papers of the
previous day. Now he was slowly hoisted in the press, the breath crushed
from his body, his toes only occasionally encountering a solid step, a
helpless atom in a monster’s maw. At the top of the stone stairs,
however, and through the studded oak door, there was room for all; but
here it was necessary to uncover face and head; and yet none that he
knew of old was revealed to Jan’s close though furtive scrutiny.
Carpenter, who had come with him, and squeezed into the next seat,
watched the watcher in his turn, and then whispered:
“He’s not come back yet.”
“Who’s not?”
“Evan Devereux. I asked a fellow in his house.”
“What made you think of him now?”
“Oh, nothing. I only thought you might be looking to see if he was
here.”
“Well, perhaps I was,” said Jan, with grumpy candour. “But I’m sure I
don’t care where he is.”
“No more do I, goodness knows!” said Carpenter.
And between three and four hundred chattered on all sides with subdued
but ceaseless animation; the præpostors keeping order more or less, but
themselves chatting to each other as became the first morning of the
term. Then suddenly there fell an impressive silence. The oak door
opened with a terrible click of the latch, like the cocking of a huge
revolver, and in trooped all the masters, cap in hand and gown on
shoulders, led by a little old man with a kindly, solemn, and imperious
air. And Jan felt that this could only be Mr. Thrale, the Head Master,
but Carpenter whispered:
“That’s Jerry!”
“Who?”
“Old Thrale, of course, but everybody calls him Jerry.”
And Jan liked everybody’s impudence as Mr. Thrale took his place behind
a simple desk on the dais, and read out the new list, form by form, as
impressively as Holy Writ.
The first names that Jan recognised were those of Loder, the captain of
his house, and Cave _major_, its most distinguished representative on
tented field; they were in the Upper and Lower Sixth respectively. Joyce
was still in the Remove, as captain of the form, but Crabtree had gained
a double remove from the Lower to the Upper Fifth. Next in Jan’s ken
came Shockley—the fellow who had threatened to make him wish he was
dead—and then most thrillingly—long before either expected
it—Carpenter’s name and his own in quick succession.
“What form will it be?” whispered Jan into the other’s ear.
“Middle Remove,” purred Carpenter. “And we don’t have to fag after all!”
Devereux was the next and the last name that Jan remembered hearing: it
was actually in the form below his!
The new boys had already learnt that it was customary for the masters to
take their forms in hall in their own houses; they now discovered that
Mr. Haigh, the master of the Middle Remove, had just succeeded to the
most remote of all the hill houses—the one house in fact on the further
slope of the hill. Thither his new form accordingly repaired, and on the
good ten minutes’ walk Carpenter and Rutter had their heads violently
knocked together by Shockley, for having the cheek to get so high and to
escape fagging their first term.
“But you needn’t think you have,” he added, ominously. “If you young
swots come flying into forms it takes the rest of us two years to get
to—by the sweat of our blessed brows—by the Lord Harry you shall have
all the swot you want! You’ll do the construe for Buggins and me and
Eyre _major_ every morning of your miserable lives!”
Buggins (who rejoiced in a real name of less distinction, and a strong
metropolitan accent) was climbing the hill arm-in-arm with Eyre _major_
(better known as Jane), his echo and his shadow in one distended skin.
Buggins embroidered Shockley’s threats, and Eyre _major_ contributed a
faithful laugh. But Jan heard them all unmoved, and thought the less of
Carpenter when his thinner skin changed colour.
Mr. Haigh gave his new form a genial welcome, vastly reassuring those
who knew least about him by laughing uproariously at points too subtle
for their comprehension. He was a muscular man with a high colour and a
very clever head. His hair was turning an effective grey about the
temples, his body bulging after the manner of bodies no longer really
young and energetic. Energy he had, however, of a spasmodic and
intemperate order, though he only showed it on this occasion by savagely
pouncing on a rather small boy who happened to be also in his house. Up
to that moment Carpenter and Rutter were ready to congratulate
themselves and each other upon their first form-master; but, though he
left them considerately alone for a day or two, they were never sure of
Mr. Haigh again.
This morning he merely foreshadowed his scheme of the term’s work, and
gave out a list of the new books required; but some of these were enough
to strike terror to the heart of Jan, and others made Carpenter look
solemn. Ancient Greek Geography was not an enticing subject to one who
had scarcely beheld even a modern map until the last six months; and to
anybody as imperfectly grounded as Carpenter declared himself to be, it
was an inhuman jump from somebody’s _Stories in Attic Greek_ to
Thucydides and his Peloponnesian War.
“I suppose it’s because I did extra well at something else,” said
Carpenter with unconscious irony on their way down the hill. “What a
fool I was not to take that fat chap’s advice! Why, I’ve never even done
a page of Xenophon, and I’m not sure that I could say the Greek alphabet
to save my life!”
“I only hope,” rejoined Jan, “that they haven’t gone and judged me by
that unseen!”
But their work began lightly enough, and that first day the furnishing
of their studies was food for much more anxious thought, with Carpenter
at any rate. As for Jan, he really was indifferent to his surroundings,
but the excitable enthusiasm of his companion made him feign even
greater indifference than he felt. He was to retain the back upstairs
study in which he had spent the previous evening, and Carpenter had the
one next it; after dinner Heriot signed orders for carpet, curtains,
candles and candlesticks, a table-cloth and a folding arm-chair apiece,
as well as for stationery and a quantity of books; and Carpenter led the
way to the upholsterer’s at a happy trot. He was an age finding
curtains, carpet and table-cloth, of a sufficiently harmonious shade of
red; and no doubt Jan made all the more point of leaving the choice of
his chattels entirely to the tradesman.
“Send me what you think,” he said. “It’s all one to me.”
Carpenter rallied him in all seriousness on their way back to the house.
“I can’t understand it, Rutter, when you have an absolute voice in
everything.”
“I hadn’t a voice in coming here,” replied Rutter, so darkly as to close
the topic.
“I suppose I go to the other extreme,” resumed Carpenter, with a
reflective frankness which seemed a characteristic. “I shall have more
chairs than I’ve room for if I don’t take care. I’ve bought one already
from Shockley.”
“Good-night!” cried Jan. “Whatever made you do that?”
“Oh, he would have me into his study to have a look at it; and there
were a whole lot of them there—that fellow Buggins, and Jane Eyre, and
the one they call Cranky—and they all swore it was as cheap as dirt.
There are some beasts here!” added Carpenter below his breath.
“How much was it?”
“Seven-and-six; and I didn’t really want it a bit; and one of the legs
was broken all the time!”
“And,” added Jan, for his only comment, “the gang of them are in our
form and all!”
They met most of the house trooping out of the quad, with bats and pads,
but not in flannels. They were going to have a house-game on the Middle
Ground, as the September day was warmer than many of the moribund
summer, and there was no more school until five o’clock. Nor did it
require the menaces of Shockley to induce the new pair to turn round and
accompany the rest; but their first game of cricket was not a happy
experience for either boy. Cave _major_, who was in the Eleven, was
better employed among his peers on the Upper. Loder, who was no
cricketer, picked up with a certain Shears _major_, who was not much of
one. Nobody took the game in the least seriously except a bowler off
whom the unlucky Carpenter managed to miss two catches. The two new men
were chosen last on either side. They failed to make a run between them,
and of course had no opportunity of showing whether they could bowl.
Both were depressed when it was all over.
“It served me right for dropping those catches,” said Carpenter,
however, with the stoicism of a true cricketer at heart.
“I only wish it was last term instead of this!” muttered Jan.
There was another thing that disappointed both boys. The Lodge happened
to be playing a similar game on an adjacent pitch. But Devereux was not
among the players, and Carpenter heard somebody say that he was not
coming back till half-term. Jan’s heart jumped when he heard it in his
turn: by half-term he would have settled down, by half-term many things
might have happened. Yet the deferred meeting was still fraught in his
mind with opposite possibilities, that swung to either extreme on the
pendulum of his mood; and on the whole he would have been glad to get it
over. At one moment this half-term’s grace was a keen relief to him; at
another, a keener disappointment.