A Student in Arms Part 11

SUN. Good-night, brave lad. (_To_ MOTHER EARTH) I can hardly bear to look on so sad a sight.

CECIL. Good-night, Ragged Robins; good-night, Poppies. You have played your game, and I mine. Only they are different because we are different.

CHORUS OF FLOWERS. Good-night, dear Cecil. We are so very sorry that you are hurt.

(_Enter the_ MASTER, _flowers shyly following him._ HONOUR _and_ DUTY _raise_ CECIL _gently to a standing position._)

THE MASTER (_extending his arms with a loving smile_). "Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

(CECIL, _with a look of wonder and joy, is borne forward._)

(_Curtain._)

XV

MY HOME AND SCHOOL[3]

A FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY

I

MY HOME

What is one to say of home? It is difficult to know. I find that biographers are particular about the date of birth, the exact address of the babe, the social position and ancestry of the parent. I suppose that it is all that they can learn. But as an autobiographer I want to do something better; to give a picture of the home where, as I can now see, ideals, tastes, prejudices and habits were formed which have persisted through all the internal revolutions that have since upheaved my being.

[Footnote 3: "A Student" left a great deal of ma.n.u.script, among which this fragment of autobiography is not the least interesting.]

I try to form the picture in my mind, and a crowd of detail rushes in which completely destroys its simplicity and harmony. How hard it is to judge, even at this distance, what are the salient features.

I must try, but I know that from the point of view of psychological development I may easily miss out the very factors which were really most important.

I remember a big house, in a row of other big houses, in a side street leading from the East Cliff at Brighton right up to the edge of the bare rolling downs. It was exactly like almost every other house in that part of Brighton--stucco fronted, with four stories and a bas.e.m.e.nt, three windows in front on each of the upper stories, and two windows and a door on the ground floor and bas.e.m.e.nt. At the back was a small garden, with flower beds surrounding a square of gravel, and a tricycle house in one corner. There was a back door in this garden, which gave on to a street of cottages. This back door was a point of strategic importance.

But I need not describe the house in detail. It was exactly like thousands of other houses built in the beginning of the nineteenth century. High, respectable, ugly and rather inconvenient, with many stairs, two or three big rooms, a lot of small ones and no bathroom.

It was essentially a family house, intended for people of moderate means and large families. Nowadays they build houses which are prettier, and have bathrooms; but they are not meant for large families.

We were a large family, and a fairly noisy one. Moreover, we were singularly self-sufficing. We hadn't many friends, we didn't entertain much, we had dinner in the middle of the day, and supper in the evening.

There was my father who was a recluse, my mother who was essentially our mother, the two girls and four boys. I was an afterthought, being seven years younger than my next brother, who for seven years had been called B. (for baby), and couldn't escape from it even after my appearance.

In addition to these, B. and I both had inseparable friends, who lived within a stone's throw. Ronnie was my _alter ego_ till I was fourteen: so much so that I had no other friend. Even now, though our ways have kept us apart, and our interests and opinions are fundamentally different, we can sit in each other's rooms with perfect content. We know too much of each other for it to be possible to pretend to be what we are not. We sit and are ourselves, naked and unashamed so to speak, and it is very restful.

Pictures float before my mind. Let me select a few. I see a rather fat, stolid little boy in a big airy nursery at the top of the house, sitting in the middle of the floor playing with bricks. Outside it is gusty and wet, and the small boy hopes that he will be allowed to stay in all the afternoon, and play with bricks. But that is not to be. A small thin man, with gentle grey eyes, short curly beard, an old black greatcoat and a black square felt hat, comes in. The child must have some air. The child is resentful, but resigned, is wrapped up well, put in his pram and wheeled up and down the Madeira Road.

"Pa" didn't appear very much except on some such errand; but "Ma" was in and out all the time. "Ma" was everything, the only woman who has ever had my whole love, my whole trust and has made my heart ache with the desire to show my love.

A later picture. The boy is bigger, and not so fat. He no longer has a nurse. He has vacated the nursery, which is now tenanted by his big sisters. He has a little room all his own: a very small room, looking west. The south-west gales beat upon the window in the winter, and not so far away is the roar of the sea. It is good to curl up in a nice warm little bed, and listen to the howling of the wind and the waves.

In the morning come lessons from his eldest sister G. The schoolroom has rings and a trapeze, a bookshelf full of boys' books, and cupboards full of stone bricks, cannon and soldiers. The boy's mind is set on bricks and soldiers. Lessons and walks with "Ma" and his sisters or Ronnie and his nurse down the town are a nuisance. They interfere with the building of cathedrals and the settling of the destinies of nations by the arbitrament of war.

It was a stolid, placid boy, intensely wrapt up in his cathedrals and his generals, intensely devoted to "Ma," and regarding all else as rather a nuisance. Ronnie he liked. He liked going to tea with him, and going walks with him and his nurse; but they didn't have much in common except cricket. Ronnie had big soldiers which could not be knocked down by cannon b.a.l.l.s, and which couldn't make history because they were few in number, and nearly all English. Mine were of every European power, and many Asiatic ones. They were diminutive and numerous, could take shelter in a forest of pine cones and were admirably suited to be mown down at the cannon's mouth. The King of England was a person with a fine figure. He had one leg and one arm, and the plume of his dragoon's helmet was shorn off; but his slight, erect figure still looked n.o.ble on a stately white palfrey. The French armies were usually commanded by Marshal Pet.i.t, a gay fellow with his full complement of limbs, who sat a horse well. He had a younger brother almost equally distinguished. I have no recollection of a King of France. He must have been a poor fellow. The Sultan of Turkey, the Khedive, and Li Hung Chang still live in my memory as persons of distinction; but I have no personal recollection of the Tsar, or the Emperors of Germany or Austria, or of the King of Italy, though I know they existed.

Into this placid existence turmoil would enter three times a year. The elder brothers, Hugh, Tommy and B., would come home for the holidays from Sandhurst and Rugby, and R. would appear, and become almost one of the family. Then would occur troublous times, with a few advantages and many disadvantages.

"Tommy" was a curiously solitary youth as I remember him, who played the 'cello with great perseverance and considerable success. At soldiers he was something of a genius, though his games were of an intricacy which failed to commend itself to me altogether. In his great soldier days he not only made history, but wrote it--a height to which I never attained.

In the holidays, cricket in the back garden became a great feature, and Tommy was a demon bowler. I fancy, too, that the very elaborate but highly satisfactory form of the game must have originated with him. In the back garden we not merely played cricket, but made history--cricket history. Two county sides were written out, and we batted alternately for the various cricketers, doing our best to imitate their styles. We bowled also in a rough imitation of the styles of the county bowlers whom we represented. This arrangement secured us against personal rivalry, kept up a tremendous interest in first-cla.s.s cricket and enabled matches to continue, if necessary, for weeks at a time. It encouraged, too, a fair, impersonal and unprejudiced view of outside events.

In cricket, war and music we undoubtedly benefited by the holidays, especially in the summer, when we used to go to the country, often occupying a school-house with gym, cricket nets and a fair-sized garden. Ecclesiastical architecture suffered, however....

Hugh was a great and glorious person, a towering beneficent despot when he did appear.... As for me I adored him with whole-hearted hero-worship. He was the "protector of the poor," who kept the rest of us in order. He was a magnificent person who revolutionized the art of war by the introduction of explosives. He was a tremendous walker, and first taught me to love great tramps over the downs, to sniff appreciatively the glorious air and to love their bare, storm-swept outlines. Hugh stood for all that is wholesome, strenuous, out of doors in my life. Without him I should have been a mere sedentary.

Among other things he was an enthusiastic boxer and gymnast. For these pursuits I st.u.r.dily feigned enthusiasm and suppressed timidity.

A few more pictures. First, Sunday morning. Gertrude goes off to Sunday School. She likes teaching and bossing. Hilda and Hugh, who are greater pals than brother and sister can often be, go off to St.

James', where there will be good music and an interesting sermon.

Tommy goes to St. Mark's, a good Protestant place, or to the beach, where curious and recondite doctrines are weekly disputed. B. goes to St. George's, protesting. There is plenty of room for his hat, there is a congenially aggressive spirit against Rome and it slightly irritates Ma. Pa is not up yet. Ma and I go to All Souls', because it is the nearest poor church, and Ma finds it easier to worship where there are no pew rents, and the seats are uncushioned, and there are few rich people. I am ever loyal to Ma.

I often wonder whether the reason why my family are all Churchgoers now is not that at that time we could choose our church.

The next picture is Sunday night. "Pa" and I, and perhaps some of the other boys, set out for St. Paul's, at the other end of the town.

Then, after the service, follows an immense walk all through the slums of the town. We talk of Australia, where Pa once had a sheep run; of theology, of the past and the future. This weekly walk is something of a privilege, and rather solemn. It makes me feel older.

It is spring. I am at Rugby, and in the "San" with ophthalmia. The South African war is raging. Hugh is there. I am told that Hugh is dead. He has been shot in a glorious but futile charge at Paardeberg.

I can't realize it. I am an object of interest, of envy almost, to the whole school. The flag is half-mast because my brother is dead. Every one is kind, touched. I put on an air as of a martyr.

I get a heartbroken letter from my mother. Will I come home? Or hadn't I better go to Uncle Jack's? If I go home we shall make each other worse. It is better for me than for Maurice, who is with the fleet in the Mediterranean with no one to comfort him.

Ma has had a great shock. She feels it desperately. She thinks all the others feel it as much. Except Hilda, we don't. There is a huge piece taken out of Ma's life and Hilda's life, because they were so unselfishly devoted to Hugh. Pa, also, has lost much, but he is a philosopher.

I go to Uncle Jack's and shoot rabbits. The holidays come and go.

Tommy is at Oxford; I am at Rugby. Pa is immersed in theological speculation about the next world; B. is in the Mediterranean. Ma sends Gertrude and Hilda away for a long change. They go, and come back.

Something about Ma frightens them. She and Pa come near Rugby and stay with Uncle Jack. The holidays come. I learn that for the first time for about twenty years Ma is to go away without Pa. I am to meet her at Hereford, and we are to go to Wales. Ma forgets things. She is more loving than ever, but her memory is going. We go to communion together in the little village church.

A few weeks later. We are back in Brighton. An Australian uncle and family are staying with us. Ma is ill in bed. I get up at 6 A.M., tramp over the downs and in a place I wot of, some five miles away, I gather heather for Ma. I run. I get back by 8.30. I find my uncle and cousins getting into a cab. Some one says, "How lovely! Are these for me?" I grip them in despair. They are for Ma. "Quite right," says someone. A day or two later my heather was placed, still blooming, on Ma's grave.

I was sixteen then. Six years later I return home from abroad. Within a few weeks of my return I am sitting in Pa's room in agony, listening to him fight for breath. The fight at last weakens. I hear him whisper, "Help! help!" I set my teeth. The others come in. There is silence. All is over. I am given my father's ring. It is my most treasured possession.

Henceforth all I have left of home is Hilda, for she alone is unmarried. Ever since my mother's death she has been my confidante.

As far as was possible she has taken Ma's place in my life, and I have taken Hugh's place in hers. We are subst.i.tutes. For that reason as we get older we get to know each other better, and to know better how much we can give to each other. There is more criticism between us than there would have been between Ma and me, and Hilda and Hugh. But it has its advantages. We live apart, but we correspond weekly, and holiday together. It is all that is left of home, and it is infinitely precious.

Now that I have written these pages I can see as I have never seen before how much the child was father of the man. Since those home days I have had more variety of experience perhaps than falls to the lot of most men, and I would almost say more varied and more epoch-making friendships. Yet in these pages that I have written I seem to see all the essential and salient features of my character already mirrored and formed.

I am still by nature lethargic and placid. I could still occupy myself contentedly With bricks and soldiers, art and history, and trouble no one. But there is still that other element, instilled by Hugh--a love of the open air, of struggle with the elements, in lonely desert places.

I have never lost the craving for true religion, which induced my mother to go to a poor church to worship, and to visit the drunken and helpless in their slums. I have never lost the desire for her singleness of mind, and simple loyalty to Christ and His Church. At the same time I have never lost my father's inquiring spirit, broad view, love of doctrine tempered by reason and founded on history and tested by human experience. When these two beloved ones pa.s.sed from this world I learnt the meaning of the text, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." My heart has never been wholly in this world.

So, too, I have always been a man of few friends. Ronnie has had many successors; but seldom more than one at a time. I have never cared much for society. My father and mother neither of them attached much importance to conventions, or to the fict.i.tious values which society puts on clothes or money or position. I have always looked rather for some one to admire, some one whose ideals and personality were congenial, whatever their position or occupation. I have also, on the whole, always preferred comfort to show, simple to elaborate living.