She might have seen a flash of horror pa.s.s over Rickie"s face. The horror disappeared, for, thank G.o.d, he was now a man, whom civilization protects. But he and Gerald had met, as it were, behind the scenes, before our decorous drama opens, and there the elder boy had done things to him--absurd things, not worth chronicling separately. An apple-pie bed is nothing; pinches, kicks, boxed ears, twisted arms, pulled hair, ghosts at night, inky books, befouled photographs, amount to very little by themselves. But let them be united and continuous, and you have a h.e.l.l that no grown-up devil can devise. Between Rickie and Gerald there lay a shadow that darkens life more often than we suppose. The bully and his victim never quite forget their first relations. They meet in clubs and country houses, and clap one another on the back; but in both the memory is green of a more strenuous day, when they were boys together.
He tried to say, "He was the right kind of boy, and I was the wrong kind." But Cambridge would not let him smooth the situation over by self-belittlement. If he had been the wrong kind of boy, Gerald had been a worse kind. He murmured, "We are different, very," and Miss Pembroke, perhaps suspecting something, asked no more. But she kept to the subject of Mr. Dawes, humorously depreciating her lover and discussing him without reverence. Rickie laughed, but felt uncomfortable. When people were engaged, he felt that they should be outside criticism. Yet here he was criticizing. He could not help it. He was dragged in.
"I hope his ankle is better."
"Never was bad. He"s always fussing over something."
"He plays next week in a match, I think Herbert says."
"I dare say he does."
"Shall we be going?"
"Pray go if you like. I shall stop at home. I"ve had enough of cold feet."
It was all very colourless and odd.
Gerald returned, saying, "I can"t stand your cook. What"s she want to ask me questions for? I can"t stand talking to servants. I say, "If I speak to you, well and good"--and it"s another thing besides if she were pretty."
"Well, I hope our ugly cook will have lunch ready in a minute," said Agnes. "We"re frightfully unpunctual this morning, and I daren"t say anything, because it was the same yesterday, and if I complain again they might leave. Poor Rickie must be starved."
"Why, the Silts gave me all these sandwiches and I"ve never eaten them.
They always stuff one."
"And you thought you"d better, eh?" said Mr. Dawes, "in case you weren"t stuffed here."
Miss Pembroke, who house-kept somewhat economically, looked annoyed.
The voice of Mr. Pembroke was now heard calling from the house, "Frederick! Frederick! My dear boy, pardon me. It was an important letter about the Church Defence, otherwise--. Come in and see your room."
He was glad to quit the little lawn. He had learnt too much there. It was dreadful: they did not love each other. More dreadful even than the case of his father and mother, for they, until they married, had got on pretty well. But this man was already rude and brutal and cold: he was still the school bully who twisted up the arms of little boys, and ran pins into them at chapel, and struck them in the stomach when they were swinging on the horizontal bar. Poor Agnes; why ever had she done it?
Ought not somebody to interfere?
He had forgotten his sandwiches, and went back to get them.
Gerald and Agnes were locked in each other"s arms.
He only looked for a moment, but the sight burnt into his brain. The man"s grip was the stronger. He had drawn the woman on to his knee, was pressing her, with all his strength, against him. Already her hands slipped off him, and she whispered, "Don"t you hurt--" Her face had no expression. It stared at the intruder and never saw him. Then her lover kissed it, and immediately it shone with mysterious beauty, like some star.
Rickie limped away without the sandwiches, crimson and afraid. He thought, "Do such things actually happen?" and he seemed to be looking down coloured valleys. Brighter they glowed, till G.o.ds of pure flame were born in them, and then he was looking at pinnacles of virgin snow.
While Mr. Pembroke talked, the riot of fair images increased.
They invaded his being and lit lamps at unsuspected shrines. Their orchestra commenced in that suburban house, where he had to stand aside for the maid to carry in the luncheon. Music flowed past him like a river. He stood at the springs of creation and heard the primeval monotony. Then an obscure instrument gave out a little phrase.
The river continued unheeding. The phrase was repeated and a listener might know it was a fragment of the Tune of tunes. n.o.bler instruments accepted it, the clarionet protected, the bra.s.s encouraged, and it rose to the surface to the whisper of violins. In full unison was Love born, flame of the flame, flushing the dark river beneath him and the virgin snows above. His wings were infinite, his youth eternal; the sun was a jewel on his finger as he pa.s.sed it in benediction over the world.
Creation, no longer monotonous, acclaimed him, in widening melody, in brighter radiances. Was Love a column of fire? Was he a torrent of song?
Was he greater than either--the touch of a man on a woman?
It was the merest accident that Rickie had not been disgusted. But this he could not know.
Mr. Pembroke, when he called the two dawdlers into lunch, was aware of a hand on his arm and a voice that murmured, "Don"t--they may be happy."
He stared, and struck the gong. To its music they approached, priest and high priestess.
"Rickie, can I give these sandwiches to the boot boy?" said the one. "He would love them."
"The gong! Be quick! The gong!"
"Are you smoking before lunch?" said the other.
But they had got into heaven, and nothing could get them out of it.
Others might think them surly or prosaic. He knew. He could remember every word they spoke. He would treasure every motion, every glance of either, and so in time to come, when the gates of heaven had shut, some faint radiance, some echo of wisdom might remain with him outside.
As a matter of fact, he saw them very little during his visit. He checked himself because he was unworthy. What right had he to pry, even in the spirit, upon their bliss? It was no crime to have seen them on the lawn. It would be a crime to go to it again. He tried to keep himself and his thoughts away, not because he was ascetic, but because they would not like it if they knew. This behaviour of his suited them admirably. And when any gracious little thing occurred to them--any little thing that his sympathy had contrived and allowed--they put it down to chance or to each other.
So the lovers fall into the background. They are part of the distant sunrise, and only the mountains speak to them. Rickie talks to Mr.
Pembroke, amidst the unlit valleys of our over-habitable world.
IV
Sawston School had been founded by a tradesman in the seventeenth century. It was then a tiny grammar-school in a tiny town, and the City Company who governed it had to drive half a day through the woods and heath on the occasion of their annual visit. In the twentieth century they still drove, but only from the railway station; and found themselves not in a tiny town, nor yet in a large one, but amongst innumerable residences, detached and semi-detached, which had gathered round the school. For the intentions of the founder had been altered, or at all events amplified, instead of educating the "poore of my home,"
he now educated the upper cla.s.ses of England. The change had taken place not so very far back. Till the nineteenth century the grammar-school was still composed of day scholars from the neighbourhood. Then two things happened. Firstly, the school"s property rose in value, and it became rich. Secondly, for no obvious reason, it suddenly emitted a quant.i.ty of bishops. The bishops, like the stars from a Roman candle, were all colours, and flew in all directions, some high, some low, some to distant colonies, one into the Church of Rome. But many a father traced their course in the papers; many a mother wondered whether her son, if properly ignited, might not burn as bright; many a family moved to the place where living and education were so cheap, where day-boys were not looked down upon, and where the orthodox and the up-to-date were said to be combined. The school doubled its numbers. It built new cla.s.s-rooms, laboratories and a gymnasium. It dropped the prefix "Grammar." It coaxed the sons of the local tradesmen into a new foundation, the "Commercial School," built a couple of miles away. And it started boarding-houses.
It had not the gracious antiquity of Eton or Winchester, nor, on the other hand, had it a conscious policy like Lancing, Wellington, and other purely modern foundations. Where tradition served, it clung to them. Where new departures seemed desirable, they were made. It aimed at producing the average Englishman, and, to a very great extent, it succeeded.
Here Mr. Pembroke pa.s.sed his happy and industrious life. His technical position was that of master to a form low down on the Modern Side. But his work lay elsewhere. He organized. If no organization existed, he would create one. If one did exist, he would modify it. "An organization," he would say, "is after all not an end in itself. It must contribute to a movement." When one good custom seemed likely to corrupt the school, he was ready with another; he believed that without innumerable customs there was no safety, either for boys or men.
Perhaps he is right, and always will be right. Perhaps each of us would go to ruin if for one short hour we acted as we thought fit, and attempted the service of perfect freedom. The school caps, with their elaborate symbolism, were his; his the many-tinted bathing-drawers, that showed how far a boy could swim; his the hierarchy of jerseys and blazers. It was he who inst.i.tuted Bounds, and call, and the two sorts of exercise-paper, and the three sorts of caning, and "The Sawtonian," a bi-terminal magazine. His plump finger was in every pie. The dome of his skull, mild but impressive, shone at every master"s meeting. He was generally acknowledged to be the coming man.
His last achievement had been the organization of the day-boys. They had been left too much to themselves, and were weak in esprit de corps; they were apt to regard home, not school, as the most important thing in their lives. Moreover, they got out of their parents" hands; they did their preparation any time and some times anyhow. They shirked games, they were out at all hours, they ate what they should not, they smoked, they bicycled on the asphalt. Now all was over. Like boarders, they were to be in at 7:15 P.M., and were not allowed out after unless with a written order from their parent or guardian; they, too, must work at fixed hours in the evening, and before breakfast next morning from 7 to 8. Games were compulsory. They must not go to parties in term time.
They must keep to bounds. Of course the reform was not complete. It was impossible to control the dieting, though, on a printed circular, day-parents were implored to provide simple food. And it is also believed that some mothers disobeyed the rule about preparation, and allowed their sons to do all the work over-night and have a longer sleep in the morning. But the gulf between day-boys and boarders was considerably lessened, and grew still narrower when the day-boys too were organized into a House with house-master and colours of their own.
"Through the House," said Mr. Pembroke, "one learns patriotism for the school, just as through the school one learns patriotism for the country. Our only course, therefore, is to organize the day-boys into a House." The headmaster agreed, as he often did, and the new community was formed. Mr. Pembroke, to avoid the tongues of malice, had refused the post of house-master for himself, saying to Mr. Jackson, who taught the sixth, "You keep too much in the background. Here is a chance for you." But this was a failure. Mr. Jackson, a scholar and a student, neither felt nor conveyed any enthusiasm, and when confronted with his House, would say, "Well, I don"t know what we"re all here for. Now I should think you"d better go home to your mothers." He returned to his background, and next term Mr. Pembroke was to take his place.
Such were the themes on which Mr. Pembroke discoursed to Rickie"s civil ear. He showed him the school, and the library, and the subterranean hall where the day-boys might leave their coats and caps, and where, on festal occasions, they supped. He showed him Mr. Jackson"s pretty house, and whispered, "Were it not for his brilliant intellect, it would be a case of Quickmarch!" He showed him the racquet-court, happily completed, and the chapel, unhappily still in need of funds. Rickie was impressed, but then he was impressed by everything. Of course a House of day-boys seemed a little shadowy after Agnes and Gerald, but he imparted some reality even to that.
"The racquet-court," said Mr. Pembroke, "is most gratifying. We never expected to manage it this year. But before the Easter holidays every boy received a subscription card, and was given to understand that he must collect thirty shillings. You will scarcely believe me, but they nearly all responded. Next term there was a dinner in the great school, and all who had collected, not thirty shillings, but as much as a pound, were invited to it--for naturally one was not precise for a few shillings, the response being the really valuable thing. Practically the whole school had to come."
"They must enjoy the court tremendously."
"Ah, it isn"t used very much. Racquets, as I daresay you know, is rather an expensive game. Only the wealthier boys play--and I"m sorry to say that it is not of our wealthier boys that we are always the proudest.
But the point is that no public school can be called first-cla.s.s until it has one. They are building them right and left."
"And now you must finish the chapel?"
"Now we must complete the chapel." He paused reverently, and said, "And here is a fragment of the original building." Rickie at once had a rush of sympathy. He, too, looked with reverence at the morsel of Jacobean brickwork, ruddy and beautiful amidst the machine-squared stones of the modern apse. The two men, who had so little in common, were thrilled with patriotism. They rejoiced that their country was great, n.o.ble, and old.
"Thank G.o.d I"m English," said Rickie suddenly.