St. Winifred's; or, The World of School

by F. W. Farrar

  CHAPTER FIVE.

  SCHOOL TROUBLES.

  The sorrows of thy youthful day Shall make thee wise in coming years! The brightest rainbows ever play Above the fountains of our tears.

  Mackay.

  Walter jumped up and began to dress at once; Eden, still looking paleand frightened, soon followed his example, and recognised him with asmile of gratitude. None of the other five boys who occupied the roomthought of stirring until the chapel-bell began to ring, which left themthe ample space of a quarter of an hour for their orisons, ablutions,and all other necessary preparations!

  Walter, who was now half-dressed, glanced at them as they got up, todiscover the owner of the slipper, which he still kept in hispossession. He watched for the one-sandalled enemy as eagerly as Peliasmay be supposed to have done. First Jones tumbled out of bed, not evendeigning a surly recognition, but Jones had his right complement ofslippers. Then two other fellows, named Anthony and Franklin, not quiteso big as Jones; their slippers were all right. Then Cradock, wholooked a little shyly at Eden, and, after a while, told him that he wasonly playing a joke the night before, and was sorry for havingfrightened him; and last, Harpour, the biggest of the lot. Harpour wasone of those fellows who are to be found in every school, and who arealways dangerous characters: a huge boy, very low down in the forms,very strong, very stupid in work, rather good-looking, generally cut bythe better sort, unredeemed by any natural taste or accomplishment,wholly without influence except among little boys (whom he alternatelybullied and spoilt), and only kept at school by his friends, becausethey were rather afraid of him, and did not quite know what to do withhim. They called it "keeping him out of mischief," but the mischief hedid at school was a thousandfold greater than any which he could havedone elsewhere; for, except at school, he would have been comparativelypowerless to do any positive harm.

  By the exhaustive process of reasoning, Walter had already concludedthat Harpour must have been his nocturnal disturber; and, accordingly,after thrusting a foot into a slipper, Harpour began to exclaim, "Hallo!where's my other slipper? Confound it, I shall be late; I can't dress;where's my other slipper?"

  Wishing to leave him without escape from the necessity of betrayinghimself to have been the author of last night's raid, Walter made nosign, until Harpour, who had not any time to lose, said to him--

  "Hi! you new chap, have you got my slipper?"

  "I've got _a_ slipper," said Walter, blandly.

  "The deuce you have. Then give it here, this minute."

  "I captured it off someone's leg, who was under my bed last night," saidWalter, giving it into Harpour's hand.

  "The deuce you did!"

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

  "The deuce you will! Then take that for your impudence," said Harpour,intending to bring down the slipper on his shoulder; but Walter dodgeddown, and parrying the blow with his arm, sent the slipper in a gracefulparabola 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 forchapel. But--"

  A significant pantomime explained the remainder of the sentence, andthen Harpour, standing in his one slipper, hastily adjourned to histoilet. Walter, being dressed in good time, knelt down for a fewmoments of hearty prayer, helped poor Eden, who was as helpless asthough he had been always dressed by a servant, to finish dressing, andran across the court into the chapel just as the bell stopped. Therewere still two minutes before the door was shut, and he occupied them bywatching the boys as they streamed in, many of them with theirwaistcoats only half buttoned, and others with the water-drops stilldangling from their hastily combed hair. He saw Tracy saunter in veryneat, but with a languid air of disapprobation, blushing withal as heentered; Eden, whose large eyes looked bewildered until he caught sightof Walter and sat down beside him; Kenrick, beaming as ever, who noddedto him as he passed by; Henderson, who, notwithstanding the time andplace, found opportunity to whisper to him a hope that he had washed hisdesirable person in clear water; Plumber looking as if his credulity hadbeen gorged beyond endurance; Daubeny, with eyes immovably fixed in thedetermination to know his lessons that day; and lastly, Harpour, who hadjust time to scuffle in hot, breathless, and exceedingly untidy, as thechaplain 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 MrRobertson?--this fellow's tutor and mine."

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

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

  "Nettles?" suggested Kenrick.

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

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

  "Oh no! dear me, no!" said Henderson. "_I_ am, but the eternal friendis at least two forms higher; he, let me tell you, is a star of noordinary magnitude; he's in the Thicksides"--meaning the Thucydides'class. "You'll require no end of sky-climbing before you reach _his_altitude. And now, victim, behold your sacrificial priest," he said,placing Walter at the end of a table among some thirty boys who wereseated in front of a master's desk in the large schoolroom, in variousparts of which other forms were also beginning work under similarsuperintendence. When all the forms were saying lessons at the sametime it may be imagined that the room was not very still, and that amaster 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 generalnoise. Although Henderson had chaffed Daubeny on his virtuousstillness, yet all the boys sat very nearly as quiet as Dubbs himselfduring school hours. Even Henderson and such mercurial spirits wereawed into silence and sobriety. You would hardly have known that inthat quarter of the room there _was_ a form at all. Quicksilver itselfwould have lost its volatility under Mr Paton's manipulation.

  It was hard at first sight to say why this was. Certainly Mr Paton setmany punishments, but so did other masters, who had not half hissuccess. 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 usedto 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 asRhadamanthus in his retributive dispensations. Neither Orpheus norAmphion would have moved him. Orpheus might have made all the desks andforms dance round as they listened to his song, but he could never havegot Mr Paton to let off fifty lines; and Amphion would have beenequally unsuccessful even if the walls of the court had come aspetitioners in obedience to his strains. As for remitting a lesson, MrPaton would not have done it if Saint Cecilia had offered him the wholewreath of red and white roses which the admiring angels twined in hergolden 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 ofindividual character, but was a rule iron and inflexible, which appliedequally to all. His measure was that of Procrustes; the cleverest boyscould not stretch themselves beyond it, the dullest were mechanicallypulled into its dimensions. Hence some fared hardly under it; yet letme hasten to say that, on the whole, with the great number of averageboys, it was a success. The discipline which he established wasperfect, and though many boys winced under it at the time, it wasvaluable to all of them, especially to those of an idle or sluggishtendency; and as it was rigid just as
well as severe, they often learnedto look back upon it with gratitude and respect.

  After a time the form went up to say a lesson. Each boy was put on inturn. When it came to Walter's turn Mr Paton first inquired his name,which he entered with extreme neatness in his class-book--a book inwhich there was not a single blot from the first page to the last. Hethen 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 youhaven't learnt the lesson."

  "Yes, sir."

  "A bad beginning, Evson; bring me no excuses in future. You must writethe lesson out." And an ominous entry implying this fact was written byWalter's freshly-entered name. Most men would have excused the firstpunishment, and contented themselves with a word of admonition; but thiswasn'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 themas first cousins to lies, and he determined never again to render to MrPaton any reason which could by any possibility be construed into anexcuse. He therefore had to undergo a large amount of punishment, whichhe flattered himself could not by any possibility have been avoided.

  On this occasion Henderson was also turned, and with him a boy namedBliss. It was quite impossible for Henderson to be unemployed on somenonsense, and heedless of the fact that he was himself Bliss's companionin misfortune, he opened a poetry-book, and taking Lycidas as his model,sat unusually still, while he occupied himself in composing a "Lamentfor 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 glass 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, shakinghis 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 MrPaton; and so on this, his first morning in school, a second punishmentwas entered against Walter's name.

  "Whew-w-w... abomination of... spoken of by... hush!" was Henderson'swhispered comment. "I call that hard lines." But he continued his"Lament for Blissidas" notwithstanding, introducing Saint Winifred andother mourners over Bliss's fate, and ending with the admonition that inwriting 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 hispunishment, Mr Robertson said to him, "Already, Evson!" in a tone ofdispleasure, and with a sarcasm hardly inferior to that of Talleyrand'scelebrated "Deja." "Two hundred lines and a lesson to write out_already_!" Bitter; with no sign of sympathy, without one word ofinquiry, of encouragement for the future, or warning about the past; noadvice given, no interest shown; no wonder that Walter never got on withhis tutor.

  The days that began for Walter from this time were days of darkness anddisappointment. He was not deficient in natural ability, but he hadundergone no special training for Saint Winifred's School, andconsequently many things were new to him in which other boys had beenpreviously trained. The practice of learning grammar by means of Latinrules was particularly trying to him. He could have easily mastered thefacts which the rules were intended to impress, but the empiricalprocess suggested for arriving at the facts he could not remember, evenif he could have construed the crabbed Latin in which it was conveyed.His father, too, had never greatly cultivated his powers of memory, andhence he felt serious difficulty at first with the long lessons that hadto be learnt by heart.

  Mr Paton's system was simply this. If a boy failed in a lesson fromany mundane cause whatever, he had to write it out; if he failed tobring it written out, he had to write it twice; if he was turned in asecond lesson he was sent to detention, _i.e._, he was kept in duringplay hours; if this process was long-continued he was sent to theheadmaster in disgrace, and ran the chance of being flogged as anincorrigible idler. Mr Paton, who was devoted to a system, made noallowance for difference of ability, or for idiosyncrasies oftemperament; he was a truly good man, at bottom a really kind-heartedman, and a genuine Christian; but the system which he had adopted washis "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 lessonsbecause they were so new to him that he found it impossible to masterthem. He was not accustomed to work in such a crowded and noisy placeas the great schoolroom, and the early hour for going to bed left littletime for evening work. Accordingly he often failed, and whenever hedid, the impositions, or detentions, or both, took away from hisavailable time for mastering his difficulties, and as this necessitatedfresh failures, every single punishment became frightfully accumulative,and, alas! before three weeks were over, Walter was "sent up for bad" tothe headmaster. By this he felt degraded and discouraged to the lastdegree. Moreover, harm was done to him in many other ways. Consciousthat all this disgrace had come upon him without any serious fault ofhis own, and even in spite of his direct and strenuous efforts, hebecame oppressed with a sense of injustice and undeserved persecution.The apparent uselessness of every attempt to shake himself free fromthese trammels of routine rendered him desperate and reckless, and theserious diminution of his hours for play and exercise made himdispirited and out-of-sorts. And all this brought on a bitter fit ofhomesickness, during which he often thought of writing home andimploring to be removed from the school, or even of taking hisdeliverance into his own hands, and running away himself. But he knewthat his father and mother were already distressed beyond measure tohear of the mill-round of punishment and discredit into which he hadfallen, and about which he frankly informed them; so for their sakes hedetermined to bear-up a little longer.

  Walter was getting a bad name as an idler, and was fast losing hisself-respect. And when that sheet-anchor is once lost, anything mayhappen to the ship; however gay its trim, however taut its sides,however delicate and beautiful the curve of its prow, it may drivebefore the gale, it may be dashed pitilessly among the iron rocks, orstranded hopelessly upon the harbour bar. A little more of thisdiscipline, and a boy naturally noble-hearted and capable, might havebeen transformed into a mere moon-calf, like poor Plumber, or a crueland vicious bully, like Harpour or Jones.

  Happily our young Walter was saved by other influences from losing hisself-respect. He was saved from it by one or two kindly and genialfriendships; by success in other lines, and by the happy consciousnessthat his presence at Saint Winifred's was a help and comfort to some whoneeded such assistance with sore need.

  One afternoon he was sitting disconsolately on a bench which ran along ablank wall on one side of the court, doing absolutely nothing. He wastoo 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, asa match had been announced that afternoon between the sixth-form and theschool, at which all but a very few (who never did anything but loafabout), were either playing or looking on. To sit with his head bentdown, on a bench in an empty court doing nothing while a game was goingon, was very unlike the Walter Evson of six weeks before; but at thatmoment Walter was weary of detention, which was just over; he wasburdened with punishments, he was half sick for want of exercise, and hewas too much out of spirits to do anything. Kenrick and Henderson hadnoticed and lamented the change in him. Not exactly knowing the causesof his ill-success, they were astonished to find so apparently clever aboy taking his place among the sluggards and dunces. With this,ho
wever, they concerned themselves less than with the settled gloomwhich was falling over him, and which rendered him much less availablewhen they wanted to refresh themselves by talking a little nonsense, oramusing themselves in any other way. On this day, guessing how it waslikely to be, Kenrick had proposed not to join the game until detentionwas over, and then to make Evson come up and play; and Henderson hadkindly offered to stay with him, and add his persuasions to hisfriend'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 schoolagainst 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 yourshirt-sleeves."

  "There goes excuse number two; so cut along," said Henderson, "and getyour belt. We'll wait for you here. Why, the eternal friend's gettingas wasted with misery as the daughter of Babylon," said Henderson, asWalter ran off.

  "Yes," said Kenrick. "I don't like to see that glum look instead of themerry face he came with. Never mind; the game'll do him good; I neversaw such a player; he looks just like the British lion when he gets intothe middle of the fray; plunges at everything, and shakes his mane.Here he is; come along."

  They ran up and found a hotly-contested game swaying to and fro betweenthe goals; and Walter, who was very active and a first-rate runner, wassoon in the thick of it. As the evenness of the match grew moreapparent the players got more and more excited. It had been alreadyplayed several times, and no base had been kicked, except once by eachside, when the scale had been turned by a heavy wind. Hence theyexhibited the greatest eagerness, as school and sixth alike held it astrong point of honour to win, and a shout of approval greeted anysuccessful catch or vigorous kick.

  Whenever the ball was driven beyond the bounds, it was kicked straightin, generally a short distance only, and the players on both sidesstruggled for it as it fell. During one of these momentary pausesKenrick whispered to Walter, "I say, Evson, next time it's drivenoutside I'll try to get it, and if you'll stand just beyond the crowdI'll kick it to you, and you can try a run."

  "Thanks," said Walter eagerly, "I'll do my best." The opportunity soonoccurred. Kenrick ran for the ball; a glance showed him where Walterwas standing; he kicked it with precision, and not too high, so thatthere was no time for the rest to watch where it was likely to descend.Walter caught it, and before the others could recover from theirsurprise, was off like an arrow. Of course, the whole of the oppositeside were upon him in a moment, and he had to be as quick as a deer, andas wary as a cat. But now his splendid running came in, and he was,besides, rather fresher than the rest. He dodged, he made wide detours,he tripped some and sprang past others, he dived under arms and throughlegs, he shook off every touch, wrenched himself free from one capturerby leaving in his hands the whole shoulder of his shirt, and got nearerand nearer to the goal. At last he saw that there was one part of thefield comparatively undefended; in this direction he darted likelightning--charged and spilt, by the vehemence of his impulse, twofellows who stood with outstretched arms to stop him--seized thefavourable instant, and by a swift and clever drop-kick, sent the ballflying over the bar amid deafening cheers, just as half the other sideflung him down and precipitated themselves over his body.

  The run was so brilliant and so plucky, and the last burst so splendid,that even the defeated side could hardly forbear to cheer him. As forthe conquerors, their enthusiasm knew no bounds; they shook Walter bythe hand, patted him on the back, clapped him, and at last lifted him ontheir shoulders for general inspection. As yet he was known to veryfew, and "Who's that nice-looking little fellow who got the school abase?" was a question which was heard on every side.

  "That's Evson; Evson; Evson, a new fellow," answered Kenrick, Henderson,and all who knew him, as fast as they could, in reply to the generalqueries. They were proud to know him just then, and this little triumphoccurred in the nick of time to raise poor Walter in his own estimation.

  "Thanks, Kenrick, thanks," he said, warmly grasping his friend's hand,as they left the field. "They ought to have cheered _you_, not me, forif it hadn't been for you I should not have got that base."

  "Pooh!" was the answer; "I couldn't have got it myself under anycircumstances; and even if I could, it is at least as much pleasure tome that _you_ should have done it."

  Of all earthly spectacles few are more beautiful, and in some respectsmore touching, than a friendship between two boys, unalloyed by anytaint of selfishness, indiscriminating in its genuine enthusiasm,delicate in its natural reserve. It is not always because the hearts ofmen are wiser, purer, or better than the hearts of boys, that "summaepuerorum amicitia: saepe cum toga deponuntur."