Happy places have grown holy;
If we went where once we went,
Only tears would fall down slowly
As at solemn sacrament.
MRS. BROWNING.
It is not my intention to trace in detail Tim’s career at school, which,
after all, presents few points of interest. His first two years were
certainly not a period of unmixed enjoyment; but other boys before and
after him have gone through much the same experience without taking much
harm from it. And after a time boys get tired of persecution, as of
other pursuits. It is not worth their while to continue to bully, unless
there is some special reason for it, and in Tim’s case there was none;
his offences were all purely negative, sins of omission, absence of
qualities decreed to be necessary to salvation by the _Vehm-gericht_ of
collective boyhood through many generations.
Villidge was right to a certain extent in his prophecy of the good
effects likely to spring from the patronage of Tommy. There is little or
no doubt that Tim’s ultimate admission to a recognised social standing
owed its first small beginnings to his intimacy with that eccentric
youth. Boys go in flocks; and if it is the fashion to treat one of their
number with unkindness, while the active throw each his little stone,
the passive turn aside and stop their ears to the victim’s groans. We
are not all thieves, and are in the habit of returning thanks for that
fact, but when a fellow-traveller has fallen in with a band of these
gentry, the proportion of Samaritans to priests and Levites is not
large, and nowhere smaller than among boys. But when the tide turns, and
some one with more character than the rest picks up the wounded comrade
and gives him a word of encouragement, pronouncing him ‘not such a very
bad lot,’ the rest veer round, and peace is restored. It is impossible
to fix the exact date of the change; the deliverance is as intangible as
the persecution. To Tim it came far more slowly than Villidge, with his
happy knack of establishing coincidence between his wishes and
probability, had foretold for the comfort of Darley’s uneasy conscience.
It is true that Weston was popular among his contemporaries, but at the
time of the Ditton expedition he was still in Fourth Form, and the
Remove little boys, though they frequented him freely and to a certain
extent admired him, would not have accepted his opinion of a third
person where it differed in any way from their own. But a young man who
had been for almost two years in Fifth Form could not be expected to
recollect these subtle distinctions of lower-boy life.
The leaven was working surely, however. Tommy stuck staunchly to his
protégé, as they mounted the lowest rungs in the ladder together, and by
Tim’s third summer-half, when he had been two years at Eton, had learnt
to keep his fingers freer from ink, and to wear hats that fitted him, he
stood firmly on a platform from which he could look back with tolerable
equanimity on his past troubles. This half Fifth Form would open its
portals to him, and he would cease to be a lower boy; but, alas! this
was also Carol’s last half at school, and little as had come of his
dreamed-of companionship, that was a thought on which Tim could hardly
trust himself to dwell. He had made a few little acquaintanceships since
it had become the fashion to find good in him, and was no longer
desolate, but he did not make friends readily, and these new connections
with the world around him left quite untouched the old ruling devotion
of his life whose roots were very deep in him indeed. Carol was almost
more his hero than ever. The very separateness of their respective
positions served to enhance his devotion. It seemed quite right and
natural that Carol should be a king among men, should stand at the
corner of the street with other godlike beings, his peers--yet how
immeasurably below him in the estimation of his faithful admirer--should
carry a cane (badge of the greatest honour!) at football matches in the
winter, and play cricket for the eleven in summer. His walls were
decorated with caps of many colours--the eleven, the ‘Field,’ the house
cap, and many more. Pewter cups won in athletic contests occupied little
carved brackets over his chimney-piece, and the rules of ‘Pop’ framed in
pale blue ribbon sprawled over half the available space on one side of
his little room. In short, he was the typical ‘swell’ or successful
public-school boy, and a very kindly, gentle, magnanimous fellow into
the bargain, as became his greatness.
Tim used to trot off to the playing-fields in those long hot days, and
lie there under the trees, watching the light athletic figure clad in
white flannel springing hither and thither in the game, till the other
boys, knowing his indifference to their sports, wondered sometimes at
the regularity of his attendance at all the cricket matches.
It was Saturday after-twelve, and Tim was occupying his usual corner,
with his rug spread on the edge of the shadow, and a half-eaten bag of
cherries beside him. The first innings was just over, and Carol,
released from his duties in the field, came sauntering round the ground
arm-in-arm with another magnificent young cricketer like himself. Tim
was turning his attention, no longer claimed by the game, to the firm
red fruit, when he heard his name spoken in the voice that never failed
to make his nerves thrill.
‘Hulloa, Ebbesley!’ said his lord and fag-master loftily, but not
unkindly, ‘what are you up to? Wasting your time as usual, eh?’
‘I was looking at you,’ answered the little boy simply and truthfully,
wholly unaware that his reply partook of the nature of repartee. Carol
flushed and looked a little annoyed; then he laughed.
‘That’s one for me, anyhow,’ he said, as he resumed his walk.
‘Who’s your young friend?’ asked his companion.
‘My fag; he’s one of the queerest little beggars I ever saw; I know him
at home, and am supposed to look after him. I’ve been trying for two
years to discover the meaning of the term, and the duties connected with
it.’
‘You’ve some cheek, answering Darley like that,’ said the stout
Sawnders, who, too lazy to bring down a rug, and having neither money
nor credit wherewith to obtain cherries, had decided to bestow his
company on Tim in return for a share of those luxuries.
‘I didn’t mean to be cheeky,’ said Tim, aghast; ‘do you suppose he was
angry?’
‘I don’t believe he half liked it, before another swell; he got very
red.’
‘Oh dear me!’ said Tim wearily, ‘I seem always to say the wrong thing.’
‘Well, you’d better come back to my tutor’s now, anyway,’ said Sawnders;
‘it’s a quarter to two, and they won’t begin the next innings before
dinner.’
As they went towards College, Tim, whose mind was busy with the thought
that he had offended Carol, felt himself taken by the scruff of the
neck, and turning to expostulate, found himself in the grasp of his
tutor, who regarded him with keen friendly eyes. ‘Well, little boy,’ he
said, ‘have you been looking at the match?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘All after twelve?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And you mean to come back after four?’
‘Yes, I think so, sir.’
‘Have you done all your work?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then I think you had much better come out with me. You don’t care a rap
about cricket, I know, and only come here to loaf. Mr. ---- and I are
going to drive to Burnham Beeches this afternoon, and walk back after
tea. You and Sawnders can come too, and when you see Weston, you may
request the pleasure of his company, if his engagements in Sixpenny and
his numerous punishments will permit.’
‘Oh, thank you, sir; that will be jolly!’
So the little boys scudded off in search of Tommy, whom they found with
his head in a basin of water, preparing for dinner. They communicated
their tutor’s message, while he sputtered in his towel. Tommy was
already relatively for his age a celebrity in the cricketing world, and
doubted if a whole after-four could be spared from that game.
‘As to the pœnas, to-morrow’s Sunday, and I shall have lots of time to
do them. I’ve only got the eleven o’clock lesson to write out and
translate four times, and a hundred lines, and three copies of extra
work. Well, hang Sixpenny for once; I’ll devote this afternoon to the
beauties of nature.’
‘I like tea at that cottage,’ said Sawnders meditatively. ‘They have
such good bread and butter, and real cream, and I shouldn’t wonder if
tutor took a cake.’
‘Sawnders, you’re a white hog,’ said Tommy; ‘Skinny and I are above such
trifles. I hope there’ll be jam.’
It was a lovely afternoon in the late hay-harvest, and the drive was
delightful. The last of the wild roses still lingered in the hedges, and
the little grass that remained uncut was starred with great white field
daisies. The boys on the back seat of the fly, in change coats and straw
hats, were in a holiday mood, and full of silly talk. Tommy had mounted
the box, and sat beside the driver, of whom he was an old friend, and it
was not till the vehicle very nearly carried away the gate-post on
Dorney Common that he was discovered to be in possession of the reins.
‘We had better leave Eton by the quiet way,’ his tutor had said; ‘there
are so many of the authorities who have just claims on Weston’s leisure,
that we shall never get him safe out of the place if we attempt to drive
through College.’
Of this delightful man’s pleasant relations with his pupils I have
spoken elsewhere. Mr. Ebbesley, who had been brought up at a private
school, and in the good old days when boys regarded their schoolmaster
as their natural enemy, had looked forward, not, it is to be feared,
with unmixed dissatisfaction, to the idea that his son would turn to him
for sympathy and help in the inevitable scrapes which official severity
was apt to magnify into crimes. He had made his first visit to Eton
after Tim’s admission prepared of course to uphold authority and do all
that was right and proper, but determined not to be too severe with the
boy for his transgressions of the rigid letter of school law; he was
going to be very large-minded and understanding. And behold! there had
been nothing to sympathise about; above all, nothing to condone. The
little boy was so law-abiding that he could have lived without
transgression under a far stricter code, and whereas he had been cold
and somewhat uncommunicative on several other points, he kindled into
something very like enthusiasm when he spoke of his tutor’s kindness to
him. Mr. Ebbesley told himself that he was very glad it was so, but it
seemed to him hard to be the only person without the power of awakening
his son’s affection.
Is it not significant that this chapter, which is the happiest in my
story, should be one of the shortest? This was a day in Tim’s life in
which birds sang and flowers bloomed for him, and for twelve hours the
murmur of the sad undercurrent that flows all through his history had
faded from the ear. For my part, I am so glad to think of this
afternoon’s pleasure that he had, that I cannot refrain from leaving it
on record, though it does not advance the action of my drama, a
consideration which I am well aware a writer is bound to respect. I have
been to Burnham at all seasons of the year, from earliest spring, when
there is hardly a wash of green on the noble trees, to latest autumn,
when the ground is ankle-deep in glorious colour, and it would be hard
to say when there is most beauty there. I have never visited the spot in
midwinter, but I am quite sure that if one did the familiar glades would
have some appropriate charm for his delight, so regularly does each
season lend its own especial gifts to deck that favoured place. At Tim’s
age, as a rule, a love of nature for her own sake is a rare possession;
it is a compensation kept to console older people for the loss of so
many other enjoyments that then made the world bright to them. But
perhaps it was because his young life was so lacking in the ordinary
elements of boyish happiness, that this gift of later age was vouchsafed
to our little lad. Certainly the sunlight on the smooth gray trunks,
and the peculiar dappled shadows on the sward that only beech-leaves can
cast, had a secret to tell him on this blest half-holiday, which would
have been Hebrew and Greek to his two playmates. I think it must have
been this knowledge of the country as the anodyne for bruised hearts,
which made _As You Like It_ his favourite play, for Tim read
Shakespeare, in Mr. Bowdler’s edition with which his father had taken
care to provide him. Burnham was Tim’s Ardennes, and it would hardly
have surprised him to come on the cousins walking in the wood while
Touchstone lay hard by among the bracken.
By this time, however, he knew too much to communicate such fancies as
these to his companions. The three ran down steep places, jumped off
banks into heaps of last year’s leaves that still lay piled in some of
the hollows, and climbed the trees, on one of which Tommy, who was
certainly very unlike Orlando in other respects, inscribed his own
initials and those of the party, including his tutor, who is ignorant to
this day of the liberty taken with his signature.
Tim ran, climbed, and shouted like the others, and enjoyed himself
amazingly. He and Sawnders entrenched themselves in a hollow tree which
Tommy was to carry by assault armed with a long stick he had found; but
the game had to be abandoned on account of Sawnders’s not unnatural
objection to being hit really hard, which Tommy treated with the most
withering scorn.
‘It isn’t funny to hurt people,’ said the injured defender of the tree,
ruefully caressing his wounded member; and this led to a discussion on
the nature of true wit, which lasted till their tutor came to call them
to tea, and inform them parenthetically that they had made themselves
look ‘even more disgusting objects than usual.’
Then for the first time Tim noticed with some surprise how tired he
felt; indeed for a few moments he was so white that the other master
who accompanied them, observing him, thought he was going to faint.
‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ said Tim; ‘I suppose I’ve done more than usual
to-day. I didn’t feel tired till we stopped.’
Sawnders at once discovered that he was quite used up too, but was
promptly snubbed by his tutor.
‘That little Ebbesley does not look at all strong,’ said the other
master, when the two men were for a little out of earshot of their young
companions; ‘are you not anxious about him?’
‘He is certainly delicate,’ Tim’s tutor answered thoughtfully; ‘but I
hope he may outgrow it in time,’ and on the homeward drive he was very
careful of Tim.
So happy had the boy been in the guileless amusements of the afternoon
that for the time he actually forgot to think of Carol. But as they
neared Eton on their return the recollection of their encounter of the
morning and the possibility that he had offended him came back with a
sudden pang to his mind--a pang which was proved to be quite superfluous
the very next day.
It was Sunday morning, an ideal bright summer Sunday, and Carol was
standing at his tutor’s door in rather a chastened frame of mind. The
bells were ringing for service, and from out the houses the boys were
issuing, each in his best clothes and with a generally brushed-up
appearance. The sun shone upon the house opposite, and made little
silver shields of the leaves of the magnolia that was trained against
it. Carol was thinking regretfully how few more Sundays he should sit in
the dear familiar chapel, a boy among boys; and looking back across the
happy years of his school-life,--hardly a cloud had dimmed their
brightness;--in retrospect they seemed one unbroken march of
friendliness, gaiety, pleasure, and modest triumph. Eton had treated him
very kindly, and he was sorry to leave. Just then who should come out
but little Tim. He had recovered to some extent from his fatigue of the
day before, and had refused to stay out, though his tutor had suggested
the legitimacy of such a course if he were so inclined.
As it chanced, the two were alone. Carol laid a kind hand upon him and
called him ‘Tim.’ The old nickname brought a quick flush of pleasure
into the colourless face; at Eton Carol always called him ‘Ebbesley.’
‘It’s a great pity, Tim,’ the big boy was saying, ‘that we’ve seen so
little of one another; that’s the worst of this place, everything goes
in layers. If a fellow isn’t in your division, with the best will in the
world you can never see anything of him.’
‘You’ve always been very good to me, Darley,’ Tim answered gratefully.
‘You won’t have to call me “Darley” any more now I’m leaving. I say,
Tim, will you write to me sometimes next half and tell me all about the
old place? All my friends of my own standing are leaving too; and after
all, you know, you are really the oldest friend of them all.’
‘Oh, Carol, may I?’ cried Tim; but just then an eruption of other boys
occurring from the narrow doorway, he departed to chapel without
expressing himself further. He trod upon air; Carol had called him by
his old name, and bade him do the like by him, had spoken of their long
friendship, had asked him to write to him. And he had been thinking he
had offended him! Tim offered up genuine thanksgivings in the old
chapel, where so many generations of boys have knelt on the threshold of
life, as he and Carol were kneeling then.
It happened that morning that the first lesson was the beautiful lament
of David over his dead friend Jonathan; and Tim, listening to the
history of those two friends long ago, felt his love for his friend
almost a religion to him. ‘Thy love to me was wonderful,’ said the voice
of the reader, ‘passing the love of woman.’ ‘What woman could ever love
him as I do?’ thought Tim, as he looked naturally to the seat where
Carol sat. At that moment a sunbeam from some hole high in the roof fell
on the golden curly head which seemed transfigured; and as Tim’s hungry
eyes rested on the face of his friend, he turned towards him and smiled
upon him in his place.