My father never asked me why I had run away or where I had gone. His tongue was ever stubborn at loving with words. With Hetty it was different. When my father had wakened and let me out of his arms to go upstairs and dress, she caught me into her bosom and half-smothered me, scolding and comforting by turns. Her corsets hurt me and her starched print-dress was harsh; I was glad when she left off and set me down on the bed.
“And who ever ’eard the likes o’ that,” she said: “a little boy to run away from his dear Pa and take with ’im a little sweet-’eart as we never knew ’e ’ad. Oh, the deceit of children for all they looks so h’innercent! And ’ere was your dear Pa a-tearin’ all the ’air out of ’is ’ead. And ’ere was me and John—we couldn’t do no work and we couldn’t do nothin’ for thinkin’ where you’d went. And there was you a-livin’ with those dirty gipsies and wearin’ their dirty rags———”
“They’re not dirty,” I interrupted, “and I shan’t like you if you talk like that.”
“Well, I’m only tellin’ you the truth; you was always perwerse and ’eadstrong.”
“You didn’t tell me the truth when you told me about marriage,” I said. “Everything’s just the same as when we left. We ar’n’t any taller, and we hav’n’t got a little house, and——”
She sat back on her heels and stared at me. “Oh, Lor,” she burst out, “was that why you did it?” And then she began to laugh and laugh. Her face grew red and again she fell upon me, until her corsets cut into me to such an extent that I called to her to leave off.
“What I told you was gorspel true,” she said solemnly, “but you didn’t understand. That’s wot ’appens to wimmen when they goes away with men. I wasn’t speakin’ of little boys and girls. But it’ll never ’appen to you when you grow up if you tell anybody wot I said.”
That morning after breakfast, instead of going into his study to work, my father led me round to the Favarts’. As we came up the path I saw Ruthita at the window watching for us. Monsieur Favart opened the door to our knock. He said something to my father in French, shook me by the hand gravely, and led the way upstairs. We entered a room at the back of the house, overlooking the garden. A lady, almost as small as Ruthita, was lying on a couch with cushions piled behind her head. She was dressed completely in white; she had dark eyes and white hair, and a face that somehow surprised you because it was so young and little. From the first I called her the Snow Lady to myself.
She held out her hand to me and then, instead, put her arm about my waist, smiling up at me. “So you are Dante, the little boy who wanted to marry my little girl?”
Her voice was more soft and emotional than any voice I had ever heard. It held me, and kept me from noticing anything but her. It seemed as though all the eagerness of living, which other people spend in motion, was stored up in that long white throat of hers and delicate scarlet mouth.
“You can’t marry Ruth yet, you know,” she said; “you hav’n’t any money. But if you like, you may go and kiss her.”
She turned me about and there was Ruthita standing behind me. I did what I was told, shyly and perfunctorily. There was no sense of pleasure in doing what you were ordered to do just to amuse grown people. The Snow Lady laughed gaily. “There, take him out into the garden, Ruthita, and teach him to do it properly.”
As I left the room, I saw that my father had taken my place by the couch. Monsieur Favart was looking out of the window, his hands folded on the head of his cane and his chin resting on them.
We played in the garden together, but much of the charm had gone out of our playing now that it was allowed. The game we played was gipsies in the forest. We gathered leaves and made a fire, pretending we were again in camp. I was G’liath; Ruthita was sometimes the gaudy woman and sometimes Lilith telling fortunes. But the pretense was tame after the reality.
“Ruthie,” I said, “we ar’n’t married. What Hettie told me was all swank. It’s only true of men and women, and not of boys and girls.”
“But we can grow older.”
“Yes. But it’ll take ages.”
She folded her hands in her pinafore nervously.
“We can go on loving till then,” she said.
On the way home my father told me that he liked Ruthita—liked her so much that he had arranged with Madam Favart to have a door cut in the wall between the two gardens so that we could go in and out. I didn’t tell him that I preferred climbing over; he could scarcely guess it for himself. There was no excitement in being pushed into the open and told to go and play with Ruthita. It was all too easy. The fun had been in no one knowing that I did play with such a little girl—not even knowing that there was a Ruthita in the world. We tried to overcome this by always pretending that we were doing wrong when we were together. We would hide when we heard anybody coming. I despised the door and only went through it when a grown person was present, otherwise I entered by way of the apple-tree and the wall. My father caught me at it, and couldn’t understand why I did it. Hetty said it was because I liked being grubby.
Through the gray autumn months I wandered the garden, listening to the dead leaves whispering together. “They’ll take you from me, but your heart will never be theirs,” Lilith had said, and I tried to fancy that the rustling of leaves was Lilith’s voice calling. It was curious how she had plucked out my affections and made them hers.
Often I would steal into the tool-house and tell the white hen all about it. But she also was a source of disillusionment. After long waiting I found one egg in her nest. I thought she must be as glad about it as I was, so left it there a little while for her to look at. I thought the sight of it would spur her on to more ambitious endeavors. But when I came back her beak was yellowy and the egg had vanished. After this unnatural act of cannibalism I told her no more secrets; she had proved herself unworthy. Shortly afterwards she died—perhaps of remorse. I made my peace with her by placing her in a cardboard shoe-box for a coffin and giving her a most handsome funeral.
One evening, when I had been put to bed, I stole to the window to gaze into the blackness. I saw a man with a lantern go across our lawn and disappear by the apple-tree through the door in the wall. After that I watched. Nearly every night it happened. I was always too sleepy to stay awake to see at what hour he came back. But I knew that he did come back, for with the first fall of snow I traced his returning footsteps. They came from Monsieur Favart’s door and entered in at our study-window. So I guessed that the man was my father.
Madam Favart seemed to be growing stronger; she was able to get up and walk about. Sometimes I would go into her house for tea, and she would sit by the firelight and tell Ruthita and myself stories. She used to try and get me to climb on her knee while she told them. I always refused, because my mother used to do that. The Snow Lady used to laugh at me and say, “Ruthita, Dante won’t make love to Mother. Isn’t he silly?” Then I would grow sulky and sit as far off as I could.
When Christmas came round, the Favarts were invited over to spend it with us. The Snow Lady brought a bunch of misletoe with her and hung it about our house. After dinner the General fell asleep in his chair, and we children played hide and seek together. I wanted to hide so securely that Ruthita would never catch me. It was getting dark, and I knew that she wouldn’t hunt for me in my father’s study. I was a little awed myself at going there. I pushed open the door. The room was unlighted. I entered, and then halted at the sound of voices whispering. Standing in the window, silhouetted against the snow, were my father and Madam Favart. He was holding a sprig of misletoe over her; his arm was about her, and they were leaning breast to breast. She saw me first and started back from him, just as Hetty had done when I found her with John. Then my father, turning sharply, saw me. He called to me sternly, “Dante, what are you doing, sir?” He sounded almost afraid because I had been watching. Then he called again more softly, “Dante, my boy, come here.”
But a strange rebellious horror possessed me. It seemed as though something were tearing out my heart. I was angry, fiercely angry because he had been disloyal to my mother. At that moment I hated him, but hated Madam Favart much worse. I knew now why she had told me stories, and why she had wanted me to climb on her knee, and why she had tried to force me to make love to her. I rushed from the room and down the passage. Ruthita ran out laughing to catch me, but I pushed her aside roughly and unjustly. I wanted to get away by myself and fled out into the snow-covered garden. My father came to the door and called. But Madam Favart was with him; I could see by the gaslight, which fell behind them, the way she pressed towards him. I could hear her merry contralto laugh, and refused to answer.
“He’ll come by himself,” she said.
When the door closed and they left me, I felt miserably lonely. They had been wicked and they were not sorry. Hetty said that God was twice as angry with you for not being sorry as He was with you for doing wrong. Hetty knew everything about God; she used to hold long conversations with Him every night in her gray flannel nightdress. Soon the snow began to melt into my shoes and the frost to nip my fingers. I wished they would come out again and call me.
I became pathetic over the fact that it was Christmas. I pictured to myself a possible death as a result of exposure. I saw myself dying in a beautiful calm, forgiving everybody, and with everybody kneeling by my bedside shaken with sobbing; the sobs of Madam Favart and my father were to be the loudest. I was to be stretching out long white hands, trying to quiet them; but their sense of guilt was to have placed them beyond all bounds of consolation. Every time I tried to comfort them they were to cry twice as hard. Then I saw my funeral and the big lily wreaths: “From his broken-hearted father”; “From Madam Favart with sincere regrets”; “From Hetty who told God untruths about him”; “From Ruthita who loved him.” And in the midst of these tokens of grief I lay fully conscious of everything, arrayed in a gray flannel nightshirt, opening one eye when no one was looking, and winking at Uncle Obad.
I began to feel little pangs of hunger, and my pride gave way before them. Reluctantly I stole nearer the house and peeked into the study. They were all there seated round the fire, callously enjoying themselves. The secret was plainly out—my father was holding Madam Favart’s hand. Ruthita was cuddled against my father’s shoulder; she was evidently reconciled rather more than stoically. I tapped on the pane. The old General saw me. He signed to the others to remain still. He threw up the window and lifted me into the warmth. I believe he understood. Perhaps he felt just as I was feeling. At any rate, when it was decreed that I should go to bed at once and drink hot gruel, he slipped a crown-piece into my hand and looked as though he hadn’t done it.
Within a month the marriage was celebrated, my father being a methodical man who hated delays and loved shortcuts. It was a vicarious affair; Ruthita and I had taken the honeymoon, and our parents were married. If Uncle Obad hadn’t given me the white hen, and the hen hadn’t flown over the wall, and I hadn’t followed, these things would never have happened.
I grew to admire the Snow Lady immensely. She always called me her little lover. She never ordered me to do anything or played the mother, but flirted with me and trusted to my chivalry to recognize her wants. We played a game of pretending. It had only one disadvantage, that it shut Ruthita out from our game, for one couldn’t court two ladies at once. I learnt to kiss Ruthita as a habit and to take her, as boys will their sisters, for granted. It is only on looking back that I realize how beautiful and gentle she really was, and what life would have been without her.
General Favart lived in the other house through the door in the wall. He came to visit us rarely. He leant more heavily on his cane, and his cloak seemed to have become blacker, his hair whiter, and his scar more prominent. He could scarcely speak a word of English, so I never knew what he thought. But it seemed to me he was sorrowing. One day we children were told that he was dead; after that the door between the two gardens was taken down and the hole in the wall bricked up.
And man returned to the ground out of which he was taken, and his wife bare children and he builded walls. But thou shalt think an evil thought and say, “I will go up to the land of unwalled villages.”
Dante, it’s time you went to school.”
For the past three years, since he had married the Snow Lady, my father had given me lessons in his study for the last hour of every morning before lunch. It had been the Snow Lady’s idea; she said I was growing up a perfect ignoramus.
My father tilted up his spectacles to his forehead, and gazed across the table at me thoughtfully. “Yes,” he repeated, “I’ll be sorry to lose you, my boy; but it’s time you went to school.”
He was to lose me; then I was to go away! My heart sank, and leapt, and sank again with a dreadful joy of expectation. In my childish way I had always been impatient of the present—a Columbus ceaselessly watching for the first trace of seaweed broken loose from the shores of the unknown. Change, which at mid-life we so bitterly resent, was at that time life’s great allurement.
The school selected was one of the smaller public-schools, lying fifteen miles distant from Stoke Newington. It was called the Red House and stood on Eden Hill. It was situated in lovely country, so my father said, and had for its head-master a man with whom he was slightly acquainted, whose name was the Reverend Robert Sneard.
For the next few weeks I was a semi-hero. Ruthita regarded me with the kind of pitying awe that a bullock inspires in children, when they meet it being driven lowing along a road to be slaughtered. Everyone became busy over preparations for my departure—even the Snow Lady, who seldom worked. I was allowed to sit up quite late, watching her pretty fingers flashing the needle in and out the flannel that grew into shirts for me to wear. Ruthita would snuggle up beside me, her long black curls tickling my cheek. There were lengthy silences. Then Ruthita would look up at her mother and say, “Mumsie, I don’t know whatever we shall do without him.” And sometimes, when she said it, the Snow Lady would laugh in her Frenchy way and answer, “Why, Ruthita, what’s one little boy? He’s so tiny; he won’t leave much empty space.” But once, it was the night before I left, she choked in the middle of her laughing and took us both into her arms, telling us that she loved us equally. “I can’t think what I’ll do without my little lover,” she said.
Of a sudden I had become a person of importance. The servants no longer made a worry of doing things for me. They watched me going about the house as though it were for the last time, and spoke of me to one another as, “Poor little chap.” I had only to express a want to have it gratified. I was treated as the State treats a condemned criminal on the day of his execution, when they let him choose his breakfast. I gloried in my eminence.
It was arranged that my uncle should drive me to the Red House. Before I went, I was loaded with good advice. My father sent for me to his study one night and, with considerable embarrassment, alluded to subjects of which I had no knowledge, imploring me to listen to no evil companions but to keep pure. His language was so delicately veiled that I was none the wiser. I thought he referred to such boyish peccadilloes as jam stealing and telling lies. Even the Snow Lady, who took delight in being frivolous, read me a moral story concerning the rapid degeneration, through cigarettes and beer-drinking, of a boy with the face of an angel. Neither of these temptations was mine, and I had never regarded myself as particularly angelic in appearance. They beat about the bush, hunting ghostly passions with allegories.
I noticed that Ruthita would absent herself for an hour or more at a stretch. When I followed her up to her room the door was locked, and she would beseech me with tears in her voice not to peek through the key-hole. The mystery was explained when she presented me with a knitted muffler, the wool for which she had purchased from her own savings. I came across it, moth-eaten and faded, in my old school play-box the other day. It was cold weather when she made it, for a little girl to sit in a bedroom without a fire. I hope I thanked her sufficiently and did not accept her surprise as though it were expected.
On an afternoon in January I departed. Then I realized for the first time what going away from home meant. The horror of the unknown, not the adventure, pressed upon me. We all pretended to be very gay—all except Hetty, who threw her apron over her head and, in the old scripture phrase, lifted up her voice and wept. They accompanied me out of the garden, down Pope Lane, to where the dog-cart was tethered. I mounted reluctantly, stretching out the last moment to its greatest length, and took my place beside Uncle Obad. My father had his pen behind his ear, I remember. It seemed to me as though the pen were saying, “Hurry up now and get off. Your father can’t waste all day over little boys.” Dollie lifted her head and began to trot. The Snow Lady waved and waved, smiling bravely. Then Ruthita broke from the group and ran after us down the long red street for a little way. We turned a corner and they were lost to sight.
I drew nearer to my uncle, pressing Ruthita’s muffler to my lips and gazing straight before me.
“What—what’ll it be like?”
He shook his head. “Couldn’t say,” he muttered huskily.
After about an hour’s driving, he broke the silence with a kindly effort to make conversation. He told me that we were on the Great North Road, where there used to be highwaymen. He spoke of Dick Turpin and some of his exploits. He pointed out a public-house at which highwaymen used to stay. He could not stir my imagination—it was otherwise occupied. I was wondering why I should be sent to school, if my going made everyone unhappy. I was picturing the snug nursery, with the lamp unlighted, and the fire burning, and Ruthita seated all alone on the rug before the fire.
We left the Great North Road, striking across country, through frosty lanes. My uncle ceased speaking; he himself was uninterested in what he had been saying. We passed groups of children playing before clustered cottages, and laborers plodding homeward whistling. It seemed strange to me that they should all be so cheerful and should not realize what was happening inside me.
We came in sight of the Red House. It could be seen at a great distance, for it stood out gauntly on the crest of Eden Hill, and the sunset lay behind it. In the lowlands night was falling; lights were springing up, twinkling cheerfully. But the Red House did not impress me as cheerful—it had no lights, and struck me with the chill and repression that one feels in passing by a prison.
“Well, old chap, we’re nearly there,” said my uncle with a futile attempt to be jolly.
I darted out my hand and dragged on the reins. “Don’t—don’t drive so fast. Let Dollie walk.”
He looked down at me slantwise. “You’ve got to be brave, old chap. Nothing’s as bad as it seems at the time. Nothing’s so bad that it can’t be lived through. Why, one day you’ll be looking back and telling yourself that these were your happiest days.”
Despite his optimisms, he did as I requested and let Dollie walk the rest of the way. While she climbed the hill, we got out and walked beside her. My uncle put his hand in his pocket, and drew out a half-crown. He balanced it in his palm; tossed it; put it back into his pocket; drew it out again. “Here, Dante,” he said at last, “see what I’ve found. You’d best take it.”
As we approached nearer, he was again moved to generosity. He was moved three times, to be exact; each time he considered the matter carefully, then rushed the coin at me. He gave me seven shillings in all. I am sure he could ill afford them.
At the top of the hill he beckoned me to jump into the trap. It was fitting, I suppose, that we should drive up to my place of confinement grandly. Then a great idea seized me. My box was under the seat behind. I had all my belongings with me. There were no walls to restrain us now.
“Uncle,” I whispered, “I don’t want to go there. You once said you were tired of houses. Why shouldn’t we run away?”
He heard the tremble in my voice. He lifted me in beside him and drove along the outside of the school-walls, not entering at the gate.
“It’s beastly hard,” he said, “and the trouble is that I can’t explain it. All through life you’ll be wanting to run away, and all through life, if you’re not a coward, you won’t be able. You see, people have to earn a living in this world, and to earn a living they must be educated. Your father’s trying to give you the best education he can, and he means to be kind. But it’s a darned shame, this not being able to do what you like. I can’t run away with you, old chap. There’s nothing for it; you’ve just got to bear it.”
He stopped, searching for words. He wanted to tell me something really comforting and wasn’t content with what he had said. He found it. Turning round in the dogcart, he threw his arm about my shoulder and pointed above my head, “Look up, there.” I raised my eyes and saw the blue black sky like an inverted cup, with a red smudge round the western rim where a mouth of blood had stained it. One by one the silver stars were coming out and disappearing, like tiny bubbles which break and form again. As I looked, night seemed to deepen; horizons dropped back; the earth fell away. The sky was no longer a cup; it was nothing measurable. It was a drifting sea of freedom, and I was part of it.
“They can rob you of a lot of things,” my uncle said, “but they can never take that from you. It’s like the world of your imagination, something that can’t be stolen, and that you can’t sell, and that you can’t buy. It’s always yours.”
We drove through the gate to the main entrance. My box was deposited in the hall. My uncle shook hands with me in formal manner when he said good-by, for the school-porter was present. He turned round sharply to cut proceedings short, and disappeared into the night. I listened to his wheels growing fainter. For the first time I was utterly alone.
In delicate schoolboy slang, I was a new-bug—a thing to be poked and despised, and not to be spoken to for the first few days. There were other new-bugs, which was some consolation; but we were too shy to get acquainted. We moped about the playground sullen and solitary, like crows on a plowed field. Every now and then some privileged person, who was not a new-bug, would bang our shins with a hockey-stick; after which we would hop about on one leg for a time, looking more like crows than ever.
The Snow Lady had packed fifty oranges in my box. I made holes in the tops of them with my thumb and rammed in lumps of sugar, sucking out the juice. Not because I was greedy, but because there seemed nothing else to do, I ate every one of the fifty the first day. The following night I was ill, which did not help my popularity. One dark-haired person, about my own age, with a jolly freckled face, took particular offense at my misdemeanor. His real name was Buzzard, but he was nicknamed the Bantam because of his size and his temper. He never said a word about the oranges, but he punished me for having been ill by stamping on my toes. He did this whenever he passed me, looking in the opposite direction in an absent-minded fashion. My quietness in putting up with him seemed to irritate him.
The afternoon was frosty; I was hobbling miserably about the playground with Ruthita’s muffler round my throat. It was a delicate baby-pink, and the Bantam easily caught sight of it. He came up and jerking it from me, trod on it. I had never fought in my life, but my wretchedness made me reckless. I thought of little Ruthita and the long cold hours she had spent in making it. It seemed that he had insulted her. I hit him savagely on the nose.
Immediately there were cries of, “A fight! A fight!” Games were stopped. Boys came running from every direction. Even the new-bugs lifted up their heads and began to take an interest in the landscape.
“Now you’ve done it,” the Bantam shouted.
He started out, accompanied by the crowd to the bottom of the playground. I followed. The laboratory, a long black shed, stood there, with a roof of galvanized iron and rows of bottles arranged in the windows. Behind it we were out of sight of masters, unless they happened to be carrying on experiments inside.
A ring was formed. The Bantam commenced to take off his coat and collar. I did likewise. A horrid sickening sense of defenselessness came over me. I experienced what the early Christians must have felt when they gazed round the eager amphitheatre, and heard the lions roaring.
A big fellow stepped up. “Here, new-bug, d’you know how to fight?”
When I shook my head, he grinned at me cheerfully. “Hold your arms well up, double your fists, and go for him.”
The advice was more easy to give than to put into action. The Bantam was on top of me in a flash. He made for my face at first, but I lowered my head and kept my arms up, so he was content to pummel me about the body. He hurt, and hurt badly; I had never been treated so roughly.
Something happened. Perhaps it was a fierce realization of the injustice of everything—the injustice of being sent there by people whom I loved, the injustice of not being spoken to, the injustice of the boys jeering because I was getting thrashed. I felt that I did not care how much I got damaged if only I might kill the Bantam. He thumped me on the nose as I looked up; my eyes filled with tears. I dashed in at him, banging him about the head. I heard his teeth rattle. I heard the shouting, “Hurrah! Go it, new-bug. Well done, new-bug.” In front of me the wintry sunset lay red. I remember wondering whether it was sunset or blood. Then the Bantam tried to turn and run. I caught him behind the ear. He tripped up and fell. I stood over him, doubtful whether he were dead. Just then the door of the laboratory opened. The boys began to scatter, shouting to one another, “The Creature! Here he comes. The Creature!” The Bantam picked himself up and followed the crowd.
A man came round the side of the shed. He looked something like Dot-and-Carry-One, only he was smaller. His hair was the color of a badger’s, shaggy and unbrushed. His face was stubbly and besmirched with different colored chalks from his fingers. His clothes were stained and baggy. He approached sideways, crabwise, in a great hurry, with one hand stretched out behind and one in front, like flappers. His gestures were those of a servant in a Chinese etching; they made him absurdly conspicuous by their self-belittlement. Beyond everything, he was dirty.
“What they been beating you for?” he inquired in his shorthand way of talking. “You hit him first! What for?” He pulled a stump of a pencil out of his mouth as though he were drawing a tooth. After that I could hear him more clearly. “A muffler? He trod on it? Well, that’s nothing to fight about. Oh, your sister gave it you? That’s different.”
The last two sentences were spoken very gently—quite unlike the rest, which had been angry. “Humph! His sister gave it him!”
He took me by the hand and led me into the shed, closing the door behind him. An iron stove was burning. The outside was red hot; it glowered through the dusk. Running round the sides of the room were taps and basins, and above them bottles. Ranged on the table in the middle were stands, bunsen-burners and retorts. He went silently about his work. He was melting sulphur in a crucible.
Every now and then the sulphur caught and burnt with a violet flame; and all the while it made a suffocating smell.
I felt scared. I didn’t know what he was going to do with me. The boys had called him The Creature, which sounded very dreadful. He had dragged me into his den just like the ogres the Snow Lady read about.
Presently his experiment ended. He gave me a seat by the stove, and came and sat beside me. He didn’t look at all fierce now. He struck me as old and discouraged.
“Always fight for your sister,” he said. Then after a pause, “What’s she called?”
I found myself telling him that she wasn’t really my sister, that her name was Ruthita, and that she had knitted me the muffler. He patted me on the knee as I talked. He might almost have been The Spuffler.
“Boys are horrid beasts,” he said. “They don’t mean to be unkind. They don’t think—that’s all. Soon you’ll be one of them.”
He led the way out of the laboratory, turning the key behind him. The bell in the tower was ringing for supper. The school was all lit up. He climbed the railing which divided the playground from the football field, telling me to follow. We passed across the meadows to the village, which lay on the northward side of Eden Hill; it snuggled among trees. The cottages were straw-thatched. Frost glistened on the window-panes, behind which lamps were set. Unmelted snow glimmered here and there in the gardens in patches among cabbage stumps. We turned in at a gate. The Creature raised the latch of the door and we entered.
How cozy the little house was after the bare stone corridors and cold, boarded dormitories. All the furnishings of the room into which he led me were worn and out-of-date; but they had a homelike look about them which atoned for their shabbiness. The walls bulged. Pictures hung awry upon them. The springs of the sofa had burst; you sank to an unexpected depth when you sat upon it. The carpet was threadbare; patch-work rugs covered the worst places. Yet for all its poverty, you knew that it was a room in which people had loved and been kind to one another. An atmosphere of memory hung about it.
The Creature appeared to be his own house-keeper. He left me alone while he went somewhere into the back to get things ready. I could hear him striking matches and jingling cups against saucers.
As I sat looking curiously round at wax-fruit in glass-cases and a stuffed owl on the mantel-shelf, the door was pushed open gently. An old lady entered. She trod so lightly, gliding her feet along the floor, that I should not have heard her save for the turning of the handle. She was dressed from head to foot in clinging muslin. Her face and hands were so frail and white that you could almost see through them. Her faded hair fell disordered and scanty about her shoulders. Her eyes were unnaturally large and luminous. She showed no surprise at seeing me. She looked at me so stealthily that she seemed to establish a secret. Crossing her hands on her breast she courtesied, and then asked me as odd a question as was ever addressed to a little boy. “Are you my Lord?”
“If you please, mam,” I faltered, “I’m Dante Cardover.”
Her look of intense eagerness faded, and one of almost childish disappointment took its place. She moved slowly about the room, from corner to corner, bowing to people whom I could not see and whispering to herself.
My host came shuffling along the passage. He was carrying a tea-tray. When he saw the woman, he set it hurriedly down on the table and went quietly towards her. “Gipie,” he said, “Egypt, we’re not alone; we have a guest. Tell them to go away.”
He spoke to her soothingly, as though she were a child. Her eyes narrowed, the strained far-away expression left her face. She made a motion with her hand, dismissing the invisible persons. He led her to me. It was strange to see a grown woman follow so obediently.
“Gipie,” he said, “I want you to listen to me. This boy is my friend. They were fighting him up there,” jerking his head in the direction of the school. “He’s lonely; so I brought him to you. Tell him that you care.”
The old lady lifted her hands to my shoulders—such pale hands. “I’m sorry,” she said. It was like a child repeating a lesson.
He introduced us. “This is my sister, Egypt; and this is Dante Cardover.”
I don’t know what we talked about. I can only remember that the little old man and woman were kind to me and gave me courage. There are desolate moments in life when one hour of sympathy calls out more gratitude than years of easy friendship.
That night as the Creature walked back with me from his cottage, he told me to come to him whenever I was lonely. At the Red House he explained my absence to the house-master. I went upstairs to the dormitory, with its rows of twelve white beds down either side, feeling that I had parted from a friend.
As I undressed in the darkness the Bantam spoke to me. “Didn’t mean to fight you, Cardover. Make it up.”
So I made it up that night with the boy whose nose I had punched. He was a decent little chap when off his dignity. We began to make confidences in whispers; I suppose the darkness helped us. He told me that his father was in India and that he hadn’t got a mother. I told him about the Snow Lady, and Hetty, and Uncle Obad; I didn’t tell him about Ruthita because of the muffler. Then I began to ask him about the Creature. I wanted to know if that was his name. The Bantam laughed. “Course not. He’s Murdoch the stinks’ master. We call him the Creature ’cause he looks like one. Weren’t you funky when he took you to his rabbit-hutch? Was Lady Zion there?”
“Lady Zion?”
“Yes. Lady Zion Holy Ghost she calls herself. She’s his sister, and she’s balmy.”
He was going to enter into some interesting details about her, when the monitor and the elder boys came up. He hid his face in the pillow and pretended to be sleeping soundly.
“The Bantam needs hair-brushing,” the monitor announced. “Here you, wake up. You’re shamming.” He pulled the clothes off the Bantam’s bed with one jerk. The Bantam sat up, rubbing his eyes with a good imitation of having just awakened.
“Out you come.”
One boy held his hands and another his legs, bending his body into a praying attitude. He fought like a demon, but to no purpose. They yanked his night-shirt up, while the monitor laid into him with the bristly side of a hairbrush. He addressed him between each blow. “That’s one for bullying a new-bug. And that’s another for fighting. And that’s another for being licked and getting in a funk, etc.” By the time they had done he was sobbing bitterly. Then the light went out.
I suppose I ought to have been glad at being avenged; but I wasn’t. Somehow I felt that the big boys had punished him not from a sense of justice, but only because they were big and wanted to amuse themselves. Then I got to thinking what a long way off India was, and how dreadful it must make a boy feel never to see his father. It had been a long while dark in the dormitory and almost everyone was breathing heavily. I stretched out my hand across the narrow alley which separated me from the Bantam.
“Bantam,” I whispered.
He snuffled.
“Bantam.”
I felt his fingers clutch my hand. I crept out and put my arms about him. Then I got into his bed and curled up beside him, and so we both were comforted.
The Bantam and I became great friends. He was a brave daredevil little chap, prematurely hardened by the absence of home influences to make the best of life’s vicissitudes. Within an hour of having been beaten, he would be gay again as ever. He was a soldier’s son, and never wasted time in pitying himself. He was greedy for joy, as I am to this day, and we contrived to find it together.
Yet, when I look back, the making of happiness at the Red House seems to me to have been very much like manufacturing bricks without straw. I am amazed at our success. Very slight provision was made for our comfort. Our daily routine was in no way superior to that of a barrack; the only difference was that they drilled our heads instead of our arms and legs. The feminine influence was entirely lacking, and a good deal of brutality resulted. If the parents could have guessed half the shocking things that their fresh-faced innocent looking darlings did and said in the three months of each term that they were away from home, they would have been broken-hearted. And yet they might have guessed. For here were we, young animals in every stage of adolescence, herded together in class-rooms and dormitories, uninformed about ourselves, with only paid people to care for us.
Apart from the masters we governed ourselves by a secret code of honor. One of the favorite diversions, when things were dull, was to find some boy who was unpopular, in a breach of schoolboy etiquette. He would then be led into a class-room, held down over a desk, and thrashed with hockey-sticks. I have seen a boy receive as many as ninety strokes, laid on by various young barbarians who took a pride in seeing who could hit hardest. Usually at the end of it the victim was nearly fainting, and would be lame for days after. The masters knew all about such proceedings, but they were too indifferent to interfere. They boasted that they trusted to the school’s sense of justice.
A boy, who was at all sensitive, went about in a state of terror. If you escaped hockey-sticks by day, there was always the dormitory and hair-brush to be dreaded. The way to get beyond the dread of such possibilities was to make yourself popular, and the easiest way to become popular was to play ingenious pranks on the masters.
The glorious hours of liberty that broke up the monotonous round of tasks stand out in vivid contrast to the discipline. We lived for them and kept charts of the days, because this seemed to bring them nearer. There were two half-holidays a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays, on which, if sufficient excuse were given, we were allowed to go out of the school-grounds. If the permission were withheld, we broke bounds and took the risk of discovery and consequent thrashings. These stolen expeditions had a zest about them that made them the more pleasurable.
The Bantam and I did most things together. We had a common fund of money. His memories of India lent a touch of romance to our friendship. He would spin long yarns of man-eating tigers and terrible battles with hill-tribes. He had a lurid imagination and added some fresh detail each time he told his tales. Not to be behindhand, I narrated my escape to the forest—leaving out the Ruthita part of it—and how Lilith had made me a gipsy.
These stories became a secret between us which we shared with no one. We created for ourselves a mirage world which we called IT. In IT we had only to speak of things and they happened. In IT there were man-eating tigers to whom we threw our masters when they had been unpleasant to us. We would drag them by their feet through the jungle, and then let out a low blood-thirsty wailing sound. Immediately we had done it, we would drop our victim and climb trees, for we could hear the tigers coming. The victim was bound so he couldn’t run away and while he lay there “in the long rank grass with bulging eyes,” we would remind him of his crimes committed at the Red House. The account of his tortures and dying words would become a dialogue between the Bantam and myself.
“Then the tiger seized him by the arm and chawed him,” the Bantam would say.
“And the other tiger seized him by the leg, pulling in an opposite direction,” said I.
“Then old Sneard looked up at me, with imploring eyes. ‘I’ve been a beast,’ he moaned, ‘and you were always a good boy. Call them off for the sake of my little girl.’ But I only laughed sepulchrally,” said the Bantam.
“Your little girl will be jolly well glad when you’re dead,” said I.
“Everybody will be glad,” said the Bantam. “And then a third tiger crept out of the bushes and bit off his head, putting an end to his agony.”
“You needn’t have killed him so soon,” I would expostulate discontentedly. “I’d got something else I wanted to do to him.”
“All right,” the Bantam would assent cheerfully; “let’s kill him again.”
So real was this land of IT to us, that we would shout with excitement as we reached the climax of our narrations. The English fields through which we wandered became swamps, deserts, and forests at will.
It became part of our game to pretend that we might meet Lilith any day. Often we would break bounds, stealing down country lanes and peering through hedges, hoping that at the next turn we should discover her seated before her camp-fire. Hope deferred never curbed our eagerness; we always believed that we should meet her next time.
If we did not meet Lilith, we met someone equally strange—Lady Zion, the Creature’s sister. It was the Bantam who told me all about her. “She’s wrong up there,” he said, tapping his forehead. “She thinks she’s something out of the Bible; that’s why she calls herself Lady Zion Holy Ghost. She goes about the country dressed in white, riding on a donkey, muttering to herself, looking for someone she can never find. She thinks that she’s in love with old Sneard, and that he don’t care for her. They say that once he was going to marry her and then threw her over. That’s what sent her balmy.”
When I grew older I learnt the truth about the Creature and his sister. He became a firm friend of mine before schooldays were ended. He was a man who possessed a faculty for not getting on in the world which, had it been of value, would have amounted to genius. Anyone else with his brains and instinct for daring guess-work in scientific experiment, would have made a reputation. Instead of which he pottered his life out at the Red House, defending his sister and allowing himself to be imposed on both by boys and masters.
Popularity was the armor which permitted you to do almost anything with impunity. A boy would take almost any chance to get it. Very early in my school experience the Bantam thought out a plan which he invited me to share—with the dire result that I was brought into intimate contact with Mr. Sneard.
Every night between seven and eight the lower forms assembled to prepare their next day’s lessons. The Creature usually presided, chiefly because he was good-natured and the other masters were lazy. It was part of his penance. The room in which we assembled was illumined by oil-lamps, which hung low on chains from the ceiling. If the chimney of one of these broke, the light became so bad in that quarter that work was suspended until it had been replaced. The Bantam conceived the happy idea of persuading them to break in an almost undiscoverable manner. It was simplicity itself—to spit across the room so skilfully as to hit the chimney, whereupon the moisture on the hot glass would cause it to crack. We practised at sticks and gate-posts in the fields at first; having become more or less proficient, we practised aiming at objects above our heads. This was more difficult. Our progress was slow; it was dry work. Still, within a month we considered ourselves adepts.
One night in prep we put our plan to the test. The Creature was seated at his raised desk, absorbed in some scientific work. The Bantam, judging his distance carefully, took aim and the chimney cracked. As soon as the lamp-boy had been sent for and the chimney had been replaced, it was my turn. I was no less successful. For a week prep was disorganized; every night the same thing happened. I felt secretly ashamed of myself, for I knew that I was behaving meanly to a man who had always been kind in his dealings with me; but I was intoxicated with popularity. The Bantam and I were the heroes of the hour. Boys who had never condescended to speak to us, now offered us their next week’s pocket-money to instruct them in an art in which we excelled. Games were abandoned. All over the play-ground groups of young ruffians might be seen industriously spitting at some object by the hour together.
I suppose the Creature must have watched us from the laboratory and put two and two together. One night, when three chimneys had broken in succession, he caught me in mid-act. I say he caught me, but he did not so much as look up from the book he was reading. He just said, without raising his head, “Cardover, you must report yourself to Mr. Sneard to-morrow.”
To have to report oneself to Mr. Sneard was the worst punishment that an under-master could measure out. Somehow it had never entered my head that the Creature would be so severe as that. Why, I might get expelled or publicly thrashed! My imagination conjured up all sorts of disgraces and grisly penalties.
That night in the dormitory the Bantam told me of a way in which I might save myself; it was my first lesson in the value of diplomacy in helping one out of ticklish situations. It appeared that Mr. Sneard was always lenient with a boy who professed conversion.
Next day as I was hesitating outside his private room, screwing up my courage to tap, the Bantam sidled up behind me. “I’m going too,” he said. Before I could dissuade him, he had turned the handle.
Sneard was a sallow cadaverous person; he affected side-whiskers and had red hair. He wore clerical attire, the vest of which was very much spotted through his nearsightedness when he ate at table. He was probably the least scholarly master in the school, but he owed his position to his manners. They were unctuous, and had the reputation of going down with the parents. I suppose that was how he caught my father. He composed hymns, which he set to music and compelled us to sing on Sundays. They were mostly of the self-abasement order, in which we spoke of ourselves as worms and besought the Almighty not to tread on us. For years my mental picture of God was that of a gigantic school-master in holy orders, very similar in appearance to Sneard himself.
When we entered, he was seated behind his desk writing. He prolonged our suspense by pretending not to see us for a while. Suddenly he cast aside his pen and wheeled round in a storm of furious anger. When he spoke, it sounded like a dog yapping.
“You young blackguards, what’s this I hear about you?”
He forced us to tell him the stupid details of our offense. He could have had no sense of humor, for while we were speaking he covered his eyes with his hand as though staggered with horror at the enormity of our depravity. Later experience has taught me that what he meant us to believe was that he was engaged in prayer.
When in small throaty whispers we had finished our confession, he looked up at us. “Your poor, poor fathers,” he said, “one in India and one my friend! What shall I tell them? How shall I break this news to them?”
Then he straightened himself in his chair. “There’s nothing else for it; Cardover, it’s over there. Will you please fetch it?”
He pointed to a cane in the corner, which leant against a book-shelf. It was at this crisis that the Bantam made use of his stratagem.
“If you please, sir, I’ve been troubled about my soul again.” Then he added loyally, “And Cardover’s been lying awake of nights thinking about hell.”
If the truth be told I had been lying awake imagining Sneard being bled to death very slowly, and very torturingly, by a hill-tribe. But Sneard caught at the bait. “I am glad to hear it. Cardover, before I cane you, come here and tell me about your views on hell.”
Before we left him, great crocodile tears were streaming from our eyes by reason of knuckles rubbed in vigorously. We were not punished. The last sight I had of Sneard he was gazing with holy joy at a great oil-painting of himself which hung above his desk.
Most of the boys in the Red House were converted many times—as often as they came within reach of the birch. Sneard made much coin out of referring to these touching spiritual experiences in public gatherings of parents. I have never been able to decide whether we really did fool him. I am inclined to believe that his eyes were wide open to our hypocrisy, but that he found it paid to encourage it. Part of his salary was derived from percentages on the tuition fees of all boys over a certain number. He found that the best card to play with parents for the attracting of new pupils, was a statement of the numerous conversions which were brought about through his influence.