The Longest Journey (22 page)

“Think it over,” she cautioned, though she was greatly pleased.

“No; I think over things too much.”

The room grew brighter. A boy’s laughter floated in, and it seemed to him that people were as important and vivid as they had been six months before. Then he was at Cambridge, idling in the parsley meadows, and weaving perishable garlands out of flowers. Now he was at Sawston, preparing to work a beneficent machine. No man works for nothing, and Rickie trusted that to him also benefits might accrue; that his wound might heal as he laboured, and his eyes recapture the Holy Grail.

In practical matters Mr. Pembroke was often a generous man. He offered Rickie a good salary, and insisted on paying Agnes as well. And as he housed them for nothing, and as Rickie would also have a salary from the school, the money question disappeared—if not for ever, at all events for the present.

“I can work you in,” he said. “Leave all that to me, and in a few days you shall hear from the headmaster. He shall create a vacancy. And once in, we stand or fall together. I am resolved on that.”

Rickie did not like the idea of being “worked in,” but he was determined to raise no difficulties. It is so easy to be refined and high-minded when we have nothing to do. But the active, useful man cannot be equally particular. Rickie’s programme involved a change in values as well as a change of occupation.

“Adopt a frankly intellectual attitude,” Mr. Pembroke continued. “I do not advise you at present even to profess
any interest in athletics or organization. When the headmaster writes, he will probably ask whether you are an all-round man. Boldly say no. A bold ‘no’ is at times the best. Take your stand upon classics and general culture.”

Classics! A second in the Tripos. General culture! A smattering of English Literature, and less than a smattering of French.

“That is how we begin. Then we get you a little post—say that of librarian. And so on, until you are indispensable.”

Rickie laughed; the headmaster wrote, the reply was satisfactory, and in due course the new life began.

Sawston was already familiar to him. But he knew it as an amateur, and under an official gaze it grouped itself afresh. The school, a bland Gothic building, now showed as a fortress of learning, whose outworks were the boarding-houses. Those straggling roads were full of the houses of the parents of the day-boys. These shops were in bounds, those out. How often had he passed Dunwood House! He had once confused it with its rival, Cedar View. Now he was to live there—perhaps for many years. On the left of the entrance a large saffron drawing-room, full of cosy corners and dumpy chairs: here the parents would be received. On the right of the entrance a study, which he shared with Herbert: here the boys would be caned—he hoped not often. In the hall a framed certificate praising the drains, the bust of Hermes, and a carved teak monkey holding out a salver. Some of the furniture had come from Shelthorpe, some had been bought from Mr. Annison, some of it was new. But throughout he recognized a certain decision of arrangement. Nothing in the house was accidental, or there merely for its own sake. He contrasted it with his room at Cambridge, which had been a jumble of things that he loved dearly and of things that he did not love at all. Now these also had come to Dunwood House, and had been distributed where each
was seemly—Sir Percival to the drawing-room, the photograph of Stockholm to the passage, his chair, his inkpot, and the portrait of his mother to the study. And then he contrasted it with the Ansells’ house, to which their resolute ill-taste had given unity. He was extremely sensitive to the inside of a house, holding it an organism that expressed the thoughts, conscious and subconscious, of its inmates. He was equally sensitive to places. He would compare Cambridge with Sawston, and either with a third type of existence, to which, for want of a better name, he gave the name of “Wiltshire.”

It must not be thought that he is going to waste his time. These contrasts and comparisons never took him long, and he never indulged in them until the serious business of the day was over. And, as time passed, he never indulged in them at all.

The school returned at the end of January, before he had been settled in a week. His health had improved, but not greatly, and he was nervous at the prospect of confronting the assembled house. All day long cabs had been driving up, full of boys in bowler hats too big for them; and Agnes had been superintending the numbering of the said hats, and the placing of them in cupboards, since they would not be wanted till the end of the term. Each boy had, or should have had, a bag, so that he need not unpack his box till the morrow. One boy had only a brown-paper parcel, tied with hairy string, and Rickie heard the firm pleasant voice say, “But you’ll bring a bag next term,” and the submissive, “Yes, Mrs. Elliot,” of the reply. In the passage he ran against the head boy, who was alarmingly like an undergraduate. They looked at each other suspiciously, and parted. Two minutes later he ran into another boy, and then into another, and began to wonder whether they were doing it on purpose, and if so, whether he ought to mind. As the day wore on, the
noises grew louder—trampings of feet, breakdowns, jolly little squawks—and the cubicles were assigned, and the bags unpacked, and the bathing arrangements posted up, and Herbert kept on saying, “All this is informal—all this is informal. We shall meet the house at eight fifteen.”

And so, at eight ten, Rickie put on his cap and gown,—hitherto symbols of pupilage, now to be symbols of dignity,—the very cap and gown that Widdrington had so recently hung upon the college fountain. Herbert, similarly attired, was waiting for him in their private dining-room, where also sat Agnes, ravenously devouring scrambled eggs. “But you’ll wear your hoods,” she cried. Herbert considered, and then said she was quite right. He fetched his white silk, Rickie the fragment of rabbit’s wool that marks the degree of B.A. Thus attired, they proceeded through the baize door. They were a little late, and the boys, who were marshalled in the preparation room, were getting uproarious. One, forgetting how far his voice carried, shouted, “Cave! Here comes the Whelk.” And another young devil yelled, “The Whelk’s brought a limpet with him!”

“You mustn’t mind,” said Herbert kindly. “We masters make a point of never minding nicknames—unless, of course, they are applied openly, in which case a thousand lines is not too much.” Rickie assented, and they entered the preparation room just as the prefects had established order.

Here Herbert took his seat on a high-legged chair, while Rickie, like a queen-consort, sat near him on a chair with somewhat shorter legs. Each chair had a desk attached to it, and Herbert flung up the lid of his, and then looked round the preparation room with a quick frown, as if the contents had surprised him. So impressed was Rickie that he peeped sideways, but could only see a little blotting-paper
in the desk. Then he noticed that the boys were impressed too. Their chatter ceased. They attended.

The room was almost full. The prefects, instead of lolling disdainfully in the back row, were ranged like councillors beneath the central throne. This was an innovation of Mr. Pembroke’s. Carruthers, the head boy, sat in the middle, with his arm round Lloyd. It was Lloyd who had made the matron too bright: he nearly lost his colours in consequence. These two were grown up. Beside them sat Tewson, a saintly child in the spectacles, who had risen to this height by reason of his immense learning. He, like the others, was a school prefect. The house prefects, an inferior brand, were beyond, and behind came the undistinguishable many. The faces all looked alike as yet—except the face of one boy, who was inclined to cry.

“School,” said Mr. Pembroke, slowly closing the lid of the desk,—“school is the world in miniature.” Then he paused, as a man well may who has made such a remark. It is not, however, the intention of this work to quote an opening address. Rickie, at all events, refused to be critical: Herbert’s experience was far greater than his, and he must take his tone from him. Nor could any one criticize the exhortations to be patriotic, athletic, learned, and religious, that flowed like a four-part fugue from Mr. Pembroke’s mouth. He was a practised speaker—that is to say, he held his audience’s attention. He told them that this term, the second of his reign, was
the
term for Dunwood House; that it behooved every boy to labour during it for his house’s honour, and, through the house, for the honour of the school. Taking a wider range, he spoke of England, or rather of Great Britain, and of her continental foes. Portraits of empire-builders hung on the wall, and he pointed to them. He quoted imperial poets. He showed how patriotism had broadened since the days of Shakespeare, who, for all his genius, could only write of his country as—

And it seemed that only a short ladder lay between the preparation room and the Anglo-Saxon hegemony of the globe. Then he paused, and in the silence came “sob, sob, sob,” from a little boy, who was regretting a villa in Guildford and his mother’s half acre of garden.

The proceeding terminated with the broader patriotism of the school anthem, recently composed by the organist. Words and tune were still a matter for taste, and it was Mr. Pembroke (and he only because he had the music) who gave the right intonation to

“Come, come,” he said pleasantly, as they ended with harmonies in the style of Richard Strauss. “This will never do. We must grapple with the anthem this term. You’re as tuneful as—as day-boys!” Hearty laughter, and then the whole house filed past them and shook hands.

“But how did it impress you?” Herbert asked, as soon as they were back in their own part. Agnes had provided them with a tray of food: the meals were still anyhow, and she had to fly at once to see after the boys.

“I liked the look of them.”

“I meant rather, how did the house impress you as a house?”

“I don’t think I thought,” said Rickie rather nervously. “It is not easy to catch the spirit of a thing at once. I only saw a roomful of boys.”

“My dear Rickie, don’t be so diffident. You are perfectly right. You only did see a roomful of boys. As yet there’s nothing else to see. The house, like the school, lacks tradition.
Look at Winchester. Look at the traditional rivalry between Eton and Harrow. Tradition is of incalculable importance, if a school is to have any status. Why should Sawston be without?”

“Yes. Tradition is of incalculable value. And I envy those schools that have a natural connection with the past. Of course Sawston has a past, though not of the kind that you quite want. The sons of poor tradesmen went to it at first. So wouldn’t its traditions be more likely to linger in the Commercial School?” he concluded nervously.

“You have a great deal to learn—a very great deal. Listen to me. Why has Sawston no traditions?” His round, rather foolish, face assumed the expression of a conspirator. Bending over the mutton, he whispered, “I can tell you why. Owing to the day-boys. How can traditions flourish in such soil? Picture the day-boy’s life—at home for meals, at home for preparation, at home for sleep, running home with every fancied wrong. There are dayboys in your class, and, mark my words, they will give you ten times as much trouble as the boarders,—late, slovenly, stopping away at the slightest pretext. And then the letters from the parents! ‘Why has my boy not been moved this term?’ ‘Why has my boy been moved this term?’ ‘I am a dissenter, and do not wish my boy to subscribe to the school mission.’ ‘Can you let my boy off early to water the garden?’ Remember that I have been a dayboy house-master, and tried to infuse some
esprit de corps
into them. It is practically impossible. They come as units, and units they remain. Worse. They infect the boarders. Their pestilential, critical, discontented attitude is spreading over the school. If I had my own way—”

He stopped somewhat abruptly.

“Was that why you laughed at their singing?”

“Not at all. Not at all. It is not my habit to set one section of the school against the other.”

After a little they went the rounds. The boys were in
bed now. “Good-night!” called Herbert, standing in the corridor of the cubicles, and from behind each of the green curtains came the sound of a voice replying, “Good-night, sir!” “Good-night,” he observed into each dormitory. Then he went to the switch in the passage and plunged the whole house into darkness. Rickie lingered behind him, strangely impressed. In the morning those boys had been scattered over England, leading their own lives. Now, for three months, they must change everything—see new faces, accept new ideals. They, like himself, must enter a beneficent machine, and learn the value of
esprit de corps
. Good luck attend them—good luck and a happy release. For his heart would have them not in these cubicles and dormitories, but each in his own dear home, amongst faces and things that he knew.