St. Winifred's Part 4

"The deuce you did!"

"Yes; and I smacked the fellow with it, as I will do again, if he comes again."

"The deuce you will! Then take that for your impudence," said Harpour, intending to bring down the slipper on his shoulder; but Walter dodged down, and parrying the blow with his arm, sent the slipper in a graceful parabola across the wash-hand-stand into Jones's basin.

"So, so," said Harpour, "_you're_ a pretty cool hand, you are! Well, I've no time to settle accounts with you now, or I should be late for chapel. But--"

A significant pantomime explained the remainder of the sentence, and then Harpour, standing in his one slipper, hastily adjourned to his toilet. Walter, being dressed in good time, knelt down for a few moments of hearty prayer, helped poor Eden, who was as helpless as though he had been always dressed by a servant, to finish dressing, and ran across the court into the chapel just as the bell stopped. There were still two minutes before the door was shut, and he occupied them by watching the boys as they streamed in, many of them with their waistcoats only half b.u.t.toned, and others with the water-drops still dangling from their hastily combed hair. He saw Tracy saunter in very neat, but with a languid air of disapprobation, blushing withal as he entered; Eden, whose large eyes looked bewildered until he caught sight of Walter and sat down beside him; Kenrick, beaming as ever, who nodded to him as he pa.s.sed by; Henderson, who, notwithstanding the time and place, found opportunity to whisper to him a hope that he had washed his desirable person in clear water; Plumber looking as if his credulity had been gorged beyond endurance; Daubeny, with eyes immovably fixed in the determination to know his lessons that day; and lastly, Harpour, who had just time to scuffle in hot, breathless, and exceedingly untidy, as the chaplain began the opening sentence.

"Where am I to go now?" asked Eden, when chapel was over.

"Well, Eden, I know as little as you. You'd better ask your tutor.

Here, Kenrick," said Walter, "which of those black gowns is Mr Robertson?--this fellow's tutor and mine."

Kenrick pointed out one of the masters, to whom Eden went; and then Walter asked, "Where am I to go to Mr Paton's form?"

"Here, let me lead the victim to the sacrifice," said Henderson. "O for a wreath of cypress or funeral yew, or--"

"Nettles?" suggested Kenrick.

"Observe, new boy," said Henderson, "your eternal friend's delicate insinuation that you are a donkey. Here, come with me and I'll take you to be patted on." Henderson's exuberant spirits prevented his ever speaking without giving vent to slang, bad puns, or sheer good-humoured nonsense.

"Aren't you in that form, Kenrick?" asked Walter, as he saw him diverging to the right.

"Oh no! dear me, no!" said Henderson. "_I_ am, but the eternal friend is at least two forms higher; he, let me tell you, is a star of no ordinary magnitude; he's in the Thicksides"--meaning the Thucydides'

cla.s.s. "You'll require no end of sky-climbing before you reach _his_ alt.i.tude. And now, victim, behold your sacrificial priest," he said, placing Walter at the end of a table among some thirty boys who were seated in front of a master's desk in the large schoolroom, in various parts of which other forms were also beginning work under similar superintendence. When all the forms were saying lessons at the same time it may be imagined that the room was not very still, and that a master required good lungs who had to teach and talk there for hours.

Not that Mr Paton's form contributed very much to the quota of general noise. Although Henderson had chaffed Daubeny on his virtuous stillness, yet all the boys sat very nearly as quiet as Dubbs himself during school hours. Even Henderson and such mercurial spirits were awed into silence and sobriety. You would hardly have known that in that quarter of the room there _was_ a form at all. Quicksilver itself would have lost its volatility under Mr Paton's manipulation.

It was hard at first sight to say why this was. Certainly Mr Paton set many punishments, but so did other masters, who had not half his success. The secret was that Mr Paton was something of a _routinier_, and that was the word which, if he had known it, Kenrick would have used to describe him. If he set an imposition, the imposition must be done, and must be done at a certain time, without appeal, and _causa indicta_.

Mr Paton was as deaf as Pluto to all excuses, and as inexorable as Rhadamanthus in his retributive dispensations. Neither Orpheus nor Amphion would have moved him. Orpheus might have made all the desks and forms dance round as they listened to his song, but he could never have got Mr Paton to let off fifty lines; and Amphion would have been equally unsuccessful even if the walls of the court had come as pet.i.tioners in obedience to his strains. As for remitting a lesson, Mr Paton would not have done it if Saint Cecilia had offered him the whole wreath of red and white roses which the admiring angels twined in her golden hair.

Mr Paton's rule was not the leaden rule of Lesbos [Aristophanes, Nic.

Eth., v. 14.]; it could not be bent to suit the diversities of individual character, but was a rule iron and inflexible, which applied equally to all. His measure was that of Procrustes; the cleverest boys could not stretch themselves beyond it, the dullest were mechanically pulled into its dimensions. Hence some fared hardly under it; yet let me hasten to say that, on the whole, with the great number of average boys, it was a success. The discipline which he established was perfect, and though many boys winced under it at the time, it was valuable to all of them, especially to those of an idle or sluggish tendency; and as it was rigid just as well as severe, they often learned to look back upon it with grat.i.tude and respect.

After a time the form went up to say a lesson. Each boy was put on in turn. When it came to Walter's turn Mr Paton first inquired his name, which he entered with extreme neatness in his cla.s.s-book--a book in which there was not a single blot from the first page to the last. He then put him on as he had put on the rest.

"I had no book, sir, and didn't know what the lesson was," said Walter.

"Excuses, sir, excuses!" said Mr Paton sternly. "You mean that you haven't learnt the lesson."

"Yes, sir."

"A bad beginning, Evson; bring me no excuses in future. You must write the lesson out." And an ominous entry implying this fact was written by Walter's freshly-entered name. Most men would have excused the first punishment, and contented themselves with a word of admonition; but this wasn't Mr Paton's way. He held with Escalus that--

"Mercy is not itself that oft looks so!

Pardon is still the nurse of second woe."

[Measure for Measure, act two, scene 1.]

Now it happened that Walter hated excuses, and had always looked on them as first cousins to lies, and he determined never again to render to Mr Paton any reason which could by any possibility be construed into an excuse. He therefore had to undergo a large amount of punishment, which he flattered himself could not by any possibility have been avoided.

On this occasion Henderson was also turned, and with him a boy named Bliss. It was quite impossible for Henderson to be unemployed on some nonsense, and heedless of the fact that he was himself Bliss's companion in misfortune, he opened a poetry-book, and taking Lycidas as his model, sat unusually still, while he occupied himself in composing a "Lament for Blissidas," beginning pathetically--

"Poor Blissidas is turned; turned ere his prime Young Blissidas, and hath not left his peer; Who would not weep for Blissidas? He knew Himself to say his Rep.--but give him time-- He must not quaff his gla.s.s of watery beer Unchaffed, or write, his paper ruled and lined, Without the meed of some melodious jeer."

"I'll lick you, Flip, after school," said the wrathful Bliss, shaking his fist, as Henderson began to whisper to him this monody.

"Why do they call you Flip?" asked Walter laughing.

"Short for Flibberty-gibbet," said Bliss.

"Bliss, Henderson, and Evson, do me two hundred lines each," said Mr Paton; and so on this, his first morning in school, a second punishment was entered against Walter's name.

"Whew-w-w... abomination of... spoken of by... hush!" was Henderson's whispered comment. "I call that hard lines." But he continued his "Lament for Blissidas" notwithstanding, introducing Saint Winifred and other mourners over Bliss's fate, and ending with the admonition that in writing the lines he was--

"To touch the tender tops of various quills, And mind and dot his quaint enamelled i's."

When Walter asked his tutor for the paper on which to write his punishment, Mr Robertson said to him, "Already, Evson!" in a tone of displeasure, and with a sarcasm hardly inferior to that of Talleyrand's celebrated "Deja." "Two hundred lines and a lesson to write out _already_!" Bitter; with no sign of sympathy, without one word of inquiry, of encouragement for the future, or warning about the past; no advice given, no interest shown; no wonder that Walter never got on with his tutor.

The days that began for Walter from this time were days of darkness and disappointment. He was not deficient in natural ability, but he had undergone no special training for Saint Winifred's School, and consequently many things were new to him in which other boys had been previously trained. The practice of learning grammar by means of Latin rules was particularly trying to him. He could have easily mastered the facts which the rules were intended to impress, but the empirical process suggested for arriving at the facts he could not remember, even if he could have construed the crabbed Latin in which it was conveyed.

His father, too, had never greatly cultivated his powers of memory, and hence he felt serious difficulty at first with the long lessons that had to be learnt by heart.

Mr Paton's system was simply this. If a boy failed in a lesson from any mundane cause whatever, he had to write it out; if he failed to bring it written out, he had to write it twice; if he was turned in a second lesson he was sent to detention, _i.e._, he was kept in during play hours; if this process was long-continued he was sent to the headmaster in disgrace, and ran the chance of being flogged as an incorrigible idler. Mr Paton, who was devoted to a system, made no allowance for difference of ability, or for idiosyncrasies of temperament; he was a truly good man, at bottom a really kind-hearted man, and a genuine Christian; but the system which he had adopted was his "idol of the cave," and, as we said before, the _Kavwv molubdinos_ was unknown to him.

Now, the way the system worked on Walter was this: he failed in lessons because they were so new to him that he found it impossible to master them. He was not accustomed to work in such a crowded and noisy place as the great schoolroom, and the early hour for going to bed left little time for evening work. Accordingly he often failed, and whenever he did, the impositions, or detentions, or both, took away from his available time for mastering his difficulties, and as this necessitated fresh failures, every single punishment became frightfully acc.u.mulative, and, alas! before three weeks were over, Walter was "sent up for bad" to the headmaster. By this he felt degraded and discouraged to the last degree. Moreover, harm was done to him in many other ways. Conscious that all this disgrace had come upon him without any serious fault of his own, and even in spite of his direct and strenuous efforts, he became oppressed with a sense of injustice and undeserved persecution.

The apparent uselessness of every attempt to shake himself free from these trammels of routine rendered him desperate and reckless, and the serious diminution of his hours for play and exercise made him dispirited and out-of-sorts. And all this brought on a bitter fit of homesickness, during which he often thought of writing home and imploring to be removed from the school, or even of taking his deliverance into his own hands, and running away himself. But he knew that his father and mother were already distressed beyond measure to hear of the mill-round of punishment and discredit into which he had fallen, and about which he frankly informed them; so for their sakes he determined to bear-up a little longer.

Walter was getting a bad name as an idler, and was fast losing his self-respect. And when that sheet-anchor is once lost, anything may happen to the ship; however gay its trim, however taut its sides, however delicate and beautiful the curve of its prow, it may drive before the gale, it may be dashed pitilessly among the iron rocks, or stranded hopelessly upon the harbour bar. A little more of this discipline, and a boy naturally n.o.ble-hearted and capable, might have been transformed into a mere moon-calf, like poor Plumber, or a cruel and vicious bully, like Harpour or Jones.

Happily our young Walter was saved by other influences from losing his self-respect. He was saved from it by one or two kindly and genial friendships; by success in other lines, and by the happy consciousness that his presence at Saint Winifred's was a help and comfort to some who needed such a.s.sistance with sore need.

One afternoon he was sitting disconsolately on a bench which ran along a blank wall on one side of the court, doing absolutely nothing. He was too disgusted with the world and with himself even to take up a novel.

It was three o'clock, and the court was deserted for the playground, as a match had been announced that afternoon between the sixth-form and the school, at which all but a very few (who never did anything but loaf about), were either playing or looking on. To sit with his head bent down, on a bench in an empty court doing nothing while a game was going on, was very unlike the Walter Evson of six weeks before; but at that moment Walter was weary of detention, which was just over; he was burdened with punishments, he was half sick for want of exercise, and he was too much out of spirits to do anything. Kenrick and Henderson had noticed and lamented the change in him. Not exactly knowing the causes of his ill-success, they were astonished to find so apparently clever a boy taking his place among the sluggards and dunces. With this, however, they concerned themselves less than with the settled gloom which was falling over him, and which rendered him much less available when they wanted to refresh themselves by talking a little nonsense, or amusing themselves in any other way. On this day, guessing how it was likely to be, Kenrick had proposed not to join the game until detention was over, and then to make Evson come up and play; and Henderson had kindly offered to stay with him, and add his persuasions to his friend's.

As they came out ready dressed for football, they caught sight of him.

"Come along, old fellow; you're surely going to fight for the school against the sixth," said Kenrick.

"Isn't it too late?"

"No; anyone is allowed a quarter of an hour's grace."

"Excuse number one bowled down," said Henderson.

"But I'm not dressed; I shan't have time to put on my Jersey."

"Never mind, you'll only want your cap and belt, and can play in your shirt-sleeves."