said the telegram.
“No!” cried Aunt Phœbe sharply.
Then as the little servant-maid was on the point of closing the door, “Tell Miss Jepson,” Aunt Phœbe commanded....
Miss Jepson found Aunt Phœbe out of bed and dressing with a rapid casualness. It was manifest that some great crisis had happened. “An outrage upon all women,” said Aunt Phœbe. “I have been outraged.”
“My dear!” said Miss Jepson.
“Read that telegram!” cried Aunt Phœbe, pointing to a small ball of pink paper in the corner of the room.
Miss Jepson went over to the corner with a perplexed expression, and smoothed out the telegram and read it.
“A Bradshaw and a hansom!” Aunt Phœbe was demanding as she moved rapidly about the room from one scattered garment to another. “No breakfast. I can eat nothing. Nothing. I am a tigress. A maddened tigress. Maddened. Beyond endurance. Oh! Can you reach these buttons, dear?”
Miss Jepson hovered about her guest readjusting her costume in accordance with commonplace standards while Aunt Phœbe expressed herself in Sibylline utterances.
“Children dedicated to the future.... Reek of ancient corruptions.... Abomination of desolation.... The nine fifty-three.... Say half an hour.... Remonstrance.... An avenging sword.... The sword of the Lord and of Gideon.”
“Are you going to this Mr. Sycamore?” asked Miss Jepson suddenly.
Aunt Phœbe seemed lost for a time and emerged with, “Good God!—No! This is an occasion when a woman must show she can act as a man. This tries us, Amanda. I will have no man in this. No man at all! Are women to loll in hareems for ever while men act and fight? When little children are assailed?...”
“Chastlands,” said Aunt Phœbe to the cabman, waving Miss Jepson’s Bradshaw in her hand.
The man looked stupid.
“Oh! Charing Cross,” she cried scornfully. “The rest is beyond you.”
And in the train she startled her sole fellow-traveller and made him get out at the next station by saying suddenly twice over in her loud, clear contralto voice the one word “Action.” She left Miss Jepson’s Bradshaw in the compartment when she got out.
She found Chastlands far gone in packing for Lady Charlotte’s flight abroad. “I demand Lady Charlotte,” she said. She followed up old Cashel as he went to announce her. He heard her coming behind him, but his impression of her was so vivid that he deemed it wiser not to notice this informality. And besides in his dry, thin way he wanted to hear why she demanded Lady Charlotte. He perceived the possibilities of a memorable clash. He was a quiet, contemplative man who hid his humour like a miser’s treasure and lived much upon his memories. Weeks after a thing had happened he would suddenly titter, in bed, or in church, or while he was cleaning his plate. And none were told why he tittered.
For a moment Aunt Phœbe hovered on the landing outside the Chastlands drawing-room.
“I can’t see her,” she heard Lady Charlotte say, with something like a note of terror. “It is impossible.”
“Leave her to me, me Lady,” said a man’s voice.
“Tell her to wait, Cashel,” said Lady Charlotte.
Aunt Phœbe entered, trailing her artistic robes. Before her by the writing-table in the big window stood Lady Charlotte, flounced, bonneted, dressed as if for instant flight. A slender, fair, wincing man in grey stood nearer, his expression agitated but formidable. They had evidently both risen to their feet as Aunt Phœbe entered. Cashel made insincere demonstrations of intervention, but Aunt Phœbe disposed of him with a gesture. A haughty and terrible politeness was in her manner, but she sobbed slightly as she spoke.
“Lady Charlotte,” she said, “where are my wards?”
“They are my wards,” said Lady Charlotte no less haughtily.
“Excuse me, Lady Charlotte. Permit me,” said Mr. Grimes, with soothing gestures of his lean white hands.
“Please do not intervene,” said Aunt Phœbe.
“Mr. Grimes, madam, is my solicitor,” said Lady Charlotte. “You may go, Cashel.”
Cashel went reluctantly.
Mr. Grimes advanced a step and dandled his hands and smiled ingratiatingly. Italian and Spanish women will stab, he had heard, and fishwives are a violent class. Otherwise he believed all women, however terrible in appearance, to be harmless. This gave him courage.
“Miss Stubland, I believe,” he said. “These young people, young Stubland and his foster-sister to wit, are at present in my charge—under instructions from Lady Charlotte.”
“Where?” asked Aunt Phœbe.
“Our case, Miss Stubland, is that they were not being properly educated in your charge. That is our case. They were receiving no sound moral and religious training, and they were being brought up in—to say the least of it—an eccentric fashion. Our aim in taking them out of your charge is to secure for them a proper ordinary English bringing up.”
“Every word an insult,” panted Aunt Phœbe. “Every word. What have you done with them?”
“Until we are satisfied that you will consent to continue their training on proper lines, Miss Stubland, you can scarcely expect us to put it in your power to annoy these poor children further.”
Mr. Grimes’ face was wincing much more than usual, and these involuntary grimaces affected Aunt Phœbe in her present mood as though they were deliberate insults. He did not allow for this added exasperation.
“Annoy!” cried Aunt Phœbe.
“That is the usual expression. We are perfectly within our rights in refusing you access. Having regard to your manifest determination to upset any proper arrangement.”
“You refuse to let me know where those children are?”
“Unless you can get an order against us.”
“You mean—go to some old judge?”
Mr. Grimes gesticulated assent. If she chose to phrase it in that way, so much the worse for her application.
“You won’t—— You will go on with this kidnapping?”
“Miss Stubland, we are entirely satisfied with our present course and our present position.”
Lady Charlotte endorsed him with three great nods.
Aunt Phœbe stood aghast.
Mr. Grimes remained quietly triumphant. Lady Charlotte stood quietly triumphant behind him. For a moment it seemed as if Aunt Phœbe had no reply of any sort to make.
Then suddenly she advanced three steps and seized upon Mr. Grimes. One hand gripped his nice grey coat below the collar behind, the other, the looseness of his waistcoat just below the tie. And lifting him up upon his toes Aunt Phœbe shook him.
Mr. Grimes was a lean, spare, ironical man. Aunt Phœbe was a well-developed woman. Yet only by an enormous effort did she break the instinctive barriers that make a man sacred from feminine assault. It was an effort so enormous that when at last it broke down the dam of self-restraint, it came through a boiling flood of physical power. It came through with a sort of instantaneousness. At one moment Mr. Grimes stood before Lady Charlotte’s eyes dominating the scene; at the next he was, as materialists say of the universe, “all vibrations.” He was a rag, he was a scrap of carpet in Aunt Phœbe’s hands. The appetite for shaking seemed to grow in Aunt Phœbe as she shook.
From the moment when Aunt Phœbe gripped him until she had done shaking him nobody except Lady Charlotte made an articulate sound. And all that Lady Charlotte said, before astonishment overcame her, was one loud “Haw!” The face of Mr. Grimes remained set, except for a certain mechanical rattling of the teeth in a wild stare at Aunt Phœbe; Aunt Phœbe’s features bore that earnest calm one may see upon the face of a good woman who washes clothes or kneads bread. Then suddenly it was as if Aunt Phœbe woke up out of a trance.
“You make—you make me forget myself!” said Aunt Phœbe with a low sob, and after one last shake relinquished him.
Mr. Grimes gyrated for a moment and came to rest against a massive table. He was still staring at Aunt Phœbe.
For a moment the three people remained breathing heavily and contemplating the outrage. At last Mr. Grimes was able to raise a wavering, pointing finger to gasp, “You have—you have—yes—indeed—forgotten yourself!”
Then, as if he struggled to apprehend the position, “You—you have assaulted me.”
“Let it be—let it be a warning to you,” said Aunt Phœbe.
“That is a threat.”
“Agreed,” panted Aunt Phœbe with spirit, though she had not meant to threaten him at all.
“If you think, madam, that you can assault me with impunity——”
“I shouldn’t have thought it—before I took hold of you. A bag of bones.... Man indeed!” And then very earnestly—“Yes.”
She paused. The pause held all three of them still.
“But why—oh, why!—should I bandy words with such a thing as you?” she asked with a sudden belated recovery of her dignity. “You—”
She sought her word carefully.
“Flibber-gib!”
And forgetting altogether the mission upon which she had come, Aunt Phœbe turned about to make her exit from the scene. It seemed to her, perhaps justly, that it was impossible to continue the parley further. “Legalized scoundrel!” she said over her shoulder, and moved towards the door. In that first tremendous clash of the New Woman and the Terrific Old Lady, it must be admitted that the New Woman carried off, so to speak, the physical honours. Lady Charlotte stood against the fireplace visibly appalled. Only when Aunt Phœbe was already at the door did it occur to Lady Charlotte to ring the bell to have her visitor “shown out.” Her shaking hand could scarcely find the bell handle. For the rest she was ineffective, wasting great opportunities for scorn and dignity. She despised herself for not having a larger, fiercer solicitor. She doubted herself. For the first time in her life Lady Charlotte Sydenham doubted herself, and quailed before a new birth of time.
Upon the landing appeared old Cashel, mutely respectful. He showed out Aunt Phœbe in profound silence. He watched her retreating form with affectionate respect, stroking his cheek slowly with two fingers. He closed the door.
He stood as one who seeks to remember. “Flibber-jib,” he said at last very softly, without exultation or disapproval. He simply wanted to have it exactly right. Then he went upstairs to have a long, mild, respectful look at Mr. Grimes, and to ask if he could do anything for him....
§ 8
Aunt Phœbe’s return to The Ingle-Nook blended triumph and perplexity.
“I could never have imagined a man so flimsy,” she said.
“But where are the children?” asked Aunt Phyllis.
“If all men are like him—then masculine ascendancy is an imposture.”
(“Yes, but where are the children?”)
“So a baulked tigress might feel.”
Aunt Phyllis decided to write to Mr. Sycamore.
§ 9
Mr. Mainwearing was the proprietor of a private school for young gentlemen, not by choice but by reason of the weaknesses of his character. It was card-playing more than anything else that had made him an educator. And it was vanity and the want of any sense of proportion that had led to the card-playing.
Mr. Mainwearing’s father had been a severe parent, severe to the pitch of hostility. He had lost his wife early, and he had taken a grudge against his only son, whose looks he did not like. He had sent him to Cambridge with a bitter assurance that he would do no good there; had kept him too short of money to be comfortable, spent most of his property—he was a retired tea-broker—in disappointing and embittering jaunts into vice, and died suddenly, leaving—unwillingly, but he had to leave it—about three thousand pounds to his heir. Young Mainwearing had always been short of pocket-money, and for a time he regarded this legacy as limitless wealth; he flashed from dingy obscurity into splendour, got himself coloured shirts and remarkable ties, sought the acquaintance of horses, slipped down to London for music-halls and “life.” When it dawned upon him that even three thousand pounds was not a limitless ocean of money, he attempted to maintain its level by winning more from his fellow undergraduates. Nap and poker were the particular forms of sport he affected. He reckoned that he was, in a quiet way, rather cleverer than most fellows, and that he would win. But he was out in his reckoning. He left Cambridge with a Junior Optime in the Mathematical Tripos and a residuum of about seven hundred pounds. He was a careful cricketer, and he had liked football at school in his concluding years when he was big enough to barge into the other chaps. Surveying the prospect before him, he decided that a school was the best place for him, he advertised himself as “of gentlemanly appearance” and “good at games,” and he found his billet in a preparatory school at Brighton. Thence he went to a big grammar school, and thence came to the High Cross School to remain first as assistant, then as son-in-law and partner, and now as sole proprietor. Mrs. Mainwearing was not very useful as a helpmeet, as she was slightly but not offensively defective in her mind; still one must take life as one finds it. She was, at any rate, regular in her habits, and did not interfere with the housekeeper, a worthy, confidence-creating woman, much tipped by the tenderer sort of parent.
Of course Mr. Mainwearing had no special training as a teacher. He had no ideas about education at all. He had no social philosophy. He had never asked why he was alive or what he was up to. Instinct, perhaps, warned him that the answer might be disagreeable. Much less did he inquire what his boys were likely to be up to. And it did not occur to him, it did not occur to any one in those days, to consider that these deficiencies barred him in any way from the preparation of the genteel young for life. He taught as he had been taught; his teachers had done the same; he was the last link of a long chain of tradition that had perhaps in the beginning had some element of intention in it as to what was to be made of the pupil. Schools, like religions, tend perpetually to forget what they are for. High Cross School, like numberless schools in Great Britain in those days, had forgotten completely; it was a mysterious fated routine; the underlying idea seemed to be that boys must go to school as puppies have the mange. Certain school books existed, God alone knew why, and the classes were taken through them. It was like reading prayers. Certain examination boards checked this process in a way that Mr. Mainwearing felt reflected upon his honour, and like all fundamentally dishonest people he was inclined to be touchy about his honour. But parents wanted examination results and he had to give in. Preparation for examinations dominated the school; no work was done in the school that did not lead towards an examination paper; if there had been no examinations, no work would have been done at all. But these examinations might have been worse than they were. The examiners were experienced teachers and considerate for their kind. They respected the great routine. The examiners in classics had, at best, Babu Latin and less Greek, and so they knew quite well how to set a paper that would enable the intelligent candidate to conceal an entire incapacity for reading, writing, or speaking a classical language; the examiners in mathematics knew nothing of practical calculations, and treated the subject as a sort of Patience game; the foreign language examiners stuck loyally to the grammar; in drawing the examiners asked you to copy “copies,” they did not, at any rate, require you to draw things; and altogether the “curse of examinations” might have pressed on Mr. Mainwearing harder than it did. Suppose the language papers had been just long passages to translate into and out of English, and that the mathematical test had been all problems, and the drawing test had been a test of drawing anything! What school could have stood the strain?
To assist him in the work of his school Mr. Mainwearing had gathered about him a staff of three. He had found a young man rather of his own social quality, but very timid, a B.A. Cantab. by way of the botanical special; then there was Noakley, a rather older, sly creature, with a large overbalancing nose, who had failed to qualify years ago as an elementary assistant schoolmaster and so had strayed into the uncharted and uncertificated ways of a private school; and finally there was Kahn, an Alsatian, who taught languages and the piano. With these three and the active assistance of Mrs. Rich, the housekeeper, the school maintained its sluggish routines.
The boys slept in two long rooms that had been made by knocking through partitions in the two upper floors, and converted into dormitories by the simple expedient of crowding them with iron bedsteads and small chests of drawers. It was the business of Noakley—who had a separate room on the top floor—to arouse the boys at seven with cries and violence for the business of the day. But there was a tacit understanding between him and the boys not to molest each other until about twenty minutes past.
It was a rule, established by Mr. Mainwearing in a phase of hygienic enthusiasm some years before, that on fine mornings throughout the year the boys should go for a sharp run before breakfast. It was a modern and impressive thing to do and it cost him nothing. It was Noakley’s duty to accompany them on this run. He was unable to imagine any more loathsome duty. So that he had invented a method of supplementing the rains of heaven by means of a private watering-pot. His room was directly above Mr. Mainwearing’s, and Mr. Mainwearing slept with his window shut and his blinds down, and about seven-fifteen or so every morning the curious passer-by might have seen a lean, sly man with an enormous nose, his mouth wide open and his tongue out with effort, leaning far out of an upper bedroom of High Cross School and industriously and carefully watering the window and window-sill of the room two storeys below him. Later, perhaps, a patient observer might have been rewarded by the raising of Mr. Mainwearing’s blind and a glimpse of Mr. Mainwearing, unshaven and in a white cotton nightgown, glancing out at the weather....
So generally the morning began with a tedious, sticky, still sleepy hour called Early Prep. in the schoolroom on the ground floor. It was only during Kahn’s alternate week of morning duty that the run ever occurred. Then it wasn’t a run. It began as a run and settled down as soon as it was out of sight of the school to a sulky walk and a muttered monologue by Kahn in German—he never spoke any language but German before breakfast—about his “magen.”
Noakley’s method in early prep. was to sit as near to the fire as possible in the winter and at the high desk in summer, and to leave the boys alone so long as they left him alone. They conversed in undertones, made and threw paper darts at one another, read forbidden fiction, and so forth. Breakfast at half-past eight released them, and there was a spell of playground before morning school at half-past nine. At half-past nine Mr. Mainwearing and Mr. Smithers, the botanical Cantab, appeared in the world, gowned and a little irritable, and prayers and scripture inaugurated the official day. Mr. Mainwearing’s connexion was a sound Church connexion, and he opened the day with an abbreviated Matins and the collect and lessons for the day. Then the junior half of the school went upstairs to the second class-room with Mr. Smithers, while Mr. Mainwearing dealt tediously with Chronicles or Kings. Meanwhile Kahn and Noakley corrected exercise-books in the third class-room, and waited their time to take up their part in the great task of building up the British imperial mind. By eleven o’clock each of the four class-rooms was thoroughly stuffy and the school was in full swing; Mr. Mainwearing, who could not have translated a new satire by Juvenal to save his life, was “teaching” Greek or Latin or history, Mr. Smithers was setting or explaining exercises on the way to quadratic equations or Euclid Book II., which were the culminating points of High Cross mathematics; Kahn, hoarse with loud anger, was making a personal quarrel of the French class; and Noakley was gently setting the feet of the younger boys astray in geography or arithmetic or parsing. This was the high-water mark of the day’s effort.
After the midday dinner, which was greasy and with much too much potato in it, came a visible decline. In the afternoon Mr. Mainwearing would start a class upon some sort of exercises, delegate Probyn to keep order, and retire to slumber in his study; Smithers and Kahn, who both suffered from indigestion, would quarrel bitterly with boys they disliked and inflict punishments; Noakley would sleep quietly through a drawing class on the tacit understanding that there was no audible misbehaviour, and that the boys would awaken him if they heard Mr. Mainwearing coming.
Mr. Mainwearing, when he came, usually came viciously. He would awaken in an evil temper and sit cursing his life for some time before he could rouse himself to a return to duty. He would suddenly become filled with suspicions, about the behaviour of the boys or the worthiness of his assistants. He would take his cane and return with a heavy scowl on his face through the archway to his abandoned class.
He would hear a murmur of disorder, a squeak of “cavé!” and a hush.
Or he would hear Probyn’s loud bellow: “Shut up, young Pyecroft. Shut it, I say!—or I’ll report you!”
He would appear threateningly in the doorway.
“What’s he doing, Probyn?” he would ask. “What’s he doing?”
“Humbugging about, Sir. He’s always humbugging about.”
The diffused wrath of Mr. Mainwearing would gather to a focus. If there were no little beasts like young Pyecroft he wouldn’t be in this infernal, dull, dreary hole of a school.
“I’ll teach you to humbug about, Pyecroft,” he would say. “Come out, Sir!”
“Please, Sir!”
Roar. “Don’t bandy words with me, you little Hound! Come out, I say!”
“Please——!” Young Pyecroft would come out slowly and weeping. Mr. Mainwearing would grip him hungrily.
“I’ll teach you to humbug about. (Cut.) I’ll teach you! (Cut.) I can’t leave this class-room for a moment but half a dozen of you must go turning it upside down.” (Cut.)
“Wow!”
“Don’t answer me, Sir!” (Cut.) “Don’t answer me.” (Cut.) “Now, Sir?”
Pyecroft completely subdued. Pyecroft relinquished.
“Now, are there any more of you?” asked Mr. Mainwearing, feeling a little better.
Then he would hesitate. Should he take the set work at once, or should he steal upstairs on tiptoe to catch out one of the assistants? His practice varied. He always suspected Noakley of his afternoon sleep, and was never able to catch him. Noakley slept with the class-room door slightly open. His boys could hear the opening of the class-room door downstairs. When they did they would smack down a book upon the desk close beside him, and Noakley would start teaching instantly like an automaton that has just been released. He didn’t take a second to awaken, so that he was very hard indeed to catch.
The school remained a scene of jaded activities until four, when a bell rang for afternoon prayers under Mr. Mainwearing in the main schoolroom. Then the boys would sing a hymn while Kahn accompanied on a small harmonium that stood in the corner of the room. While prayers were going on a certain scattered minority of the boys were speculating whether Kahn or Smithers would remember this or that task that had been imposed in a moment of passion, weighing whether it was safer to obey or forget. Kahn and Smithers would return to the class-rooms reluctantly to gather in the harvest of their own wrath, but now for a little time Noakley was free to do nothing. Noakley hardly ever imposed punishments. When he was spoken to upon the subject he would put his nose down in a thoughtful manner and reply in a tone of mild observation: “The boys, they seem to mind me somehow.”
Meanwhile the released boys dispersed to loaf about the playground and the outhouses and playing-field until tea at five. Sometimes there was a hectic attempt at cricket or football in the field in which Mr. Mainwearing participated, and then tea was at half-past five. When Mr. Mainwearing participated he liked to bat, and he did not like to be bowled out. Noakley was vaguely supposed to superintend tea and evening prep., and the boys, after a supper of milk and biscuits, were packed off to bed at half-past eight. It was much too early to send the bigger boys to bed, but “Good God!” said Mr. Mainwearing; “am I to have no peace in my day?” And he tried to ease his conscience about what might go on in the dormitories after bedtime by directing Noakley to “exercise a general supervision,” and by occasionally stealing upstairs in his socks.
Wednesday and Saturday were half-holidays, and in the afternoon the boys wore flannels or shorts, according to the season, and played pick-up cricket or football or hockey in a well-worn field at the back of the school, or they went for a walk with Noakley or Smithers. On Sundays they wore top hats and pseudo-Eton jackets, and went to church in the morning and the evening. In the afternoon Smithers took Scripture wearily for an hour, and then went for a walk with Noakley. And on Sunday evening they wrote home carefully supervised letters saying how happy they were and how they were all in the best of health and about “examinational prospects,” and how they hoped they were making satisfactory progress and suchlike topics. But they never gave any account of the talk that went on during the playground loafing, nor of the strange games and ceremonies over which Probyn presided in the dormitories, nor of the exercises of Mr. Mainwearing’s cane. There was no library, and the boys never read anything except school books and such printed matter as they themselves introduced into the school. They never read nor drew nor painted nor made verses to please themselves. They never dreamt of acting or singing. Their only training in the use of their hands was at cricket, and they never looked at a newspaper. Occasionally Smithers gave a lesson in botany, but there was no other science teaching. Science teaching requires apparatus and apparatus costs money, and so far as the prospectus went it was quite easy to call the botany “science.”...
§ 10
In this manner did High Cross School grind and polish its little batch of boys for their participation in the affairs of the greatest, most civilized and most civilizing empire the world has ever seen.
It was, perhaps, a bad specimen of an English private school, but it was a specimen. There were worse as well as better among the schools of England. There were no doubt many newer and larger, many cleaner, many better classified. Some had visiting drill-sergeants, some had chemistry cupboards, some had specially built gymnasia, some even had school libraries of a hundred volumes or so.... Most of them had better housing and better arranged dormitories. And most of them were consistently “preparatory,” stuck to an upward age-limit, and turned out a boy as soon as he became a youth to go on to business or medicine or the public schools. Mr. Mainwearing’s school was exceptional in this, that it had to hold on to all it could get. He had a connexion with one or two solicitors, an understanding—Mr. Grimes was one of his friends—and his school contained in addition to Peter several other samples of that unfortunate type of boy whose school is found for him by a solicitor. Some stayed at Windsor with Mr. Mainwearing during the holidays. In that matter High Cross School was exceptional. But the want of any intellectual interest, of any spontaneous activities of the mind at all in High Cross School, was no exceptional thing.
Life never stands altogether still, but it has a queer tendency to form stationary eddies, and very much of the education of middle-class and upper-class youth in England had been an eddy for a century. The still exquisite and impressionable brains of the new generation came tumbling down the stream, curious, active, greedy, and the eddying schools caught them with a grip of iron and spun them round and round for six or seven precious years and at last flung them out....
§ 11
Into this vicious eddy about Mr. Mainwearing’s life and school came the developing brain of Master Peter Stubland, and resented it extremely. At first he had been too much astonished by his transfer from Limpsfield to entertain any other emotion; it was only after some days at High Cross School that he began to realize that the experience was not simply astonishing but uncongenial, and indeed hateful.
He discovered he hated the whole place. Comprehended within this general hatred were particular ones. He hated Newton. The fight remained in suspense, neither boy knew anything of scientific fisticuffs, neither had ever worn a boxing-glove, and both were disposed to evade the hard, clear issue of the ring. But Newton continued to threaten and grimace at him, and once as he was passing Peter on the staircase he turned about and punched him in the back.
For Newton Peter’s hatred was uncomplicated; for Probyn and a second boy nearly as big, a fair, sleepy boy named Ames, Peter had a feeling that differed from a clear, clean hatred; it had an element of disgust and dread in it. Probyn, with Ames as an accessory and Newton as his pet toady, dominated the school. It is an unnatural and an unwholesome thing for boys and youths of various ages to be herded as closely together as they were in High Cross School; the natural instinct of the young is against such an association. In a good, big school whose atmosphere is wholesome, boys will classify themselves out in the completest way; they will not associate, they will scarcely speak with boys outside their own year. There is a foolish way of disposing of this fact by saying that boys are “such Snobs.” But indeed they are kept apart by the fiercest instinct of self-preservation. All life and all its questions are stirring and unfolding in the young boy; in every sort of young creature a natural discretion fights against forced and premature developments. “Keep to your phase,” says nature. The older boys, perplexed by novel urgencies and curiosities, are embarrassed by their younger fellows; younger boys are naturally afraid of older ones and a little disposed to cringe. But what were such considerations as these to a man like Mainwearing? He had never thought over, he had long since forgotten, his own development. Any boy, old or young, whose parents could pay the bill, was got into the school and kept in the school as long as possible. None of the school work was interesting; there were constant gaps in the routine when there was nothing to do but loaf. It was inevitable that the older boys should become mischievous louts; they bullied and tormented and corrupted the younger boys because there was nothing else to do; if there had been anything else to do they would have absolutely disregarded the younger boys; and the younger boys did what they could to propitiate these powerful and unaccountable giants. The younger boys “sucked up” to the bigger boys; they became, as it were, clients; they were annexed by patrons. They professed unlimited obedience in exchange for protection. Newton, for instance, called himself Probyn’s “monkey”; Pyecroft was Ames’s. Probyn would help Newton with his sums, amuse himself by putting him to the torture (when Newton was expected to display a doglike submission) or make him jealous by professing an affection for other small boys.
Peter came into this stuffy atmosphere of forced and undignified relationships instinct, though he knew it not, with a passionate sense of honour. From the very beginning he knew there was something in these boys and in their atmosphere that made them different from himself, something from which he had to keep himself aloof. There was a word missing from his vocabulary that would have expressed it, and that word was “Cad.” But at the School of St. George and the Venerable Bede they were not taught to call any people “cads.”
He was a boy capable of considerable reserve. He did not, like young Winterbaum, press his every thought and idea upon those about him. He could be frank where he was confident, but this sense of difference smote him dumb. Several of his schoolfellows, old Noakley, and Mr. Mainwearing, became uncomfortably aware of an effect of unspoken comment in Peter. He would receive a sudden phrase of abuse with a thoughtful expression, as though he weighed it and compared it with some exterior standard. This irritated a school staff accustomed to use abusive language. Probyn, after Peter had hit Newton, took a fancy to him that did not in the least modify Peter’s instinctive detestation of the red nostrils and the sloppy mouth and the voluminous bellow. Peter became rapidly skilful in avoiding Probyn’s conversation, and this monstrously enhanced his attraction for Probyn. Probyn’s attention varied between deliberate attempts to vex and deliberate attempts to propitiate. He kept alive the promise of a fight with Newton, and frankly declared that Peter could lick Newton any day. Newton was as distressed as a cast mistress.
One evening the cadaverous boy discovered Peter drawing warriors on horseback. He reported this strange gift to Ames. Ames came demanding performances, and Peter obliged.
“He can draw,” said Ames. “George and the Dragon, eh? It’s good.”
Probyn was shouted to, and joined in the admiration.
Peter drew this and that by request.
“Draw a woman,” said Ames, and then, as the nimble pencil obeyed, “No—not an old woman. Draw—you know. Draw a savage woman.”
“Draw a girl bathing—like they are in Ally Sloper’s Half-Holiday,” said Probyn. “Just with light things on.”
“Draw a heathen goddess,” said Ames. “With nothing on at all.”
Peter said he couldn’t draw goddesses.
“Go on,” said Ames. “Draw a savage woman.”
Peter, being pressed, tried a negress. They hung over him insisting upon details.
“Get out, young Newton!” cried Probyn. “Don’t come hanging round here. He’s drawing things.”
Ames pressed further requests.
“Shan’t draw any more,” said Peter with a sudden disinclination.
“Go it, Simon Peter,” said Ames, “don’t be a mammy-good.”
“Gaw! if I could draw!” said Probyn.
But Peter had finished drawing.
§ 12
No further questions were asked Peter about his father, but on Sunday night, when home-letter time came round, any doubt about the soundness of his social position was set at rest by Mr. Mainwearing himself. Home-letters from High Cross School involved so many delicate considerations that the proprietor made it his custom to supervise them himself. He distributed sheets of paper with the school heading, and afterwards he collected them and addressed them himself in his study. “You, Stubland, must write a letter to your aunt,” he said loudly across the room, “and tell her how you are getting on.”
“Aunt Phyllis?” said Peter.
“No, no!” Mr. Mainwearing answered in clear tones. “Your aunt, Lady Charlotte Sydenham.”
Respectful glances at Peter, and a stare of admiration from Probyn.
After a season of reflection Peter held up his hand. “Please, Sir, I don’t write letters to Lady Charlotte.”
“You must begin.”
Still further reflection. “I want to write to my Aunt Phyllis.”
“Nonsense! Do as I tell you.”
Peter reflected again for some minutes. He was deeply moved. He controlled a disposition to weep. (No one was going to see Peter blub in this school—ever.) Then Mr. Mainwearing saw him begin to write, with intervals of deep thought. But the letter was an unsatisfactory one.
“Dear Aunt Phyllis,” it began—in spite of instructions.
“This is a very nice school and I like it very much. I have no pocket-money. We eat Toke. Please come and take me away now. Your affectionate nephew
Then Peter rubbed his eyes and it made his finger wet, and there was a drop of eye wet fell on the paper, but he did not blub. He did not blub, he knew, because he had made up his mind not to blub, but his face was flushed almost like that of a boy who has been blubbing.
Mr. Mainwearing came and read the letter. “Come, come,” he said, “this won’t do,” which was just what Peter had expected. “This is obstinacy,” said Mr. Mainwearing.
He got Peter a fresh sheet of paper and stood over him. “Write as I tell you,” said Mr. Mainwearing.
The other boys listened as this letter was dictated to a quiet but obedient Peter:
“I arrived safely on Wednesday at High Cross School, which I like very much. I had a long ride in an automobile. Mr. Grimes bought me a splendid bat. Mr. Mainwearing has examined me upon my attainments, and believes that with effort I shall make satisfactory progress here. We play cricket here and do modern science as well as our classical studies. I hope you may never be disappointed by my efforts after all your kindness to me.
In the night Peter woke up out of an ugly and miserable dream, and his eyes were wet with tears. He believed he was caught at High Cross School for good and all. He believed that all the things he hated and dreaded were about him now for ever.
§ 13
From the first Mr. Mainwearing had been prepared for Peter’s antagonism. He had been warned by Mr. Grimes that Peter might prove “a little difficult.” The letter to Aunt Phyllis confirmed this impression he had already formed of a fund of stiff resistance in his new pupil. “I shall have to talk to that young man,” he said.
The occasion was not long in coming.
It came next morning in the general Scripture lesson. The boys were reading the Gospel of St. Matthew verse by verse, and in order to check inattention Mr. Mainwearing, instead of allowing the boys to read in rotation, was dodging the next verse irregularly from boy to boy. “Now, Pyecroft,” he would say; “Now—Rivers.”
He was always ready to pick up a nickname and improve upon it for the general amusement. “Now, Simonides,” he said.
No answer.
“Simonides!”
Peter, with his New Testament open before him, was studying the map of Africa on the end wall. That was Egypt and that was the Nile, and down that you went to Uganda, where all the people dressed in white and Nobby walked fearlessly among lions.
Peter became aware of a loud shout of “Sim-on-i-des!”
It was apparently being addressed to him by Mr. Mainwearing. He returned at a jump to Europe and High Cross School.
“Wool-gathering again,” said Mr. Mainwearing. “Thinking of the dear old Agapemone, eh? We can’t have that here, young man. We can’t allow that here. We must quicken that proud but sluggish spirit of yours. With the usual stimulus. Come out, sir.”
He moved towards the cane, which hung from a nail beside the high desk.
Obliging schoolfellows explained to Peter. “He spoke to you three times.” “He’s going to swish you.” “You’ll get it.”
Peter went very white and sat very tight.
“Now, young man,” said Mr. Mainwearing, flicking the cane. “Step out, please....
“Come out here, sir.”
No answer from Peter.
“Stubland,” roared Mr. Mainwearing. “Come out at once.”
There came a break in the traditions of High Cross School.
Peter rose to his feet. It seemed he was going to obey. And then he said in a voice, faint and small but perfectly clear, “I ain’t going to be caned. No.”
There was a great pause. There was as it were silence in Heaven. And then, his footsteps echoing through that immensity of awe, Mr. Mainwearing advanced upon Peter. Peter with a loud undignified cry fled along the wall under the map of Palestine towards the door.
“Stop him there, Ames!” cried Mr. Mainwearing.
Ames was slow to understand.
Mr. Mainwearing put down the cane on the mantelshelf and became very active; he leapt a desk clumsily, upset an inkpot, and collided with Ames at the door a moment after Peter had vanished. On the landing outside Peter hesitated, and then doubled downstairs to the boot-hole. For a moment Mr. Mainwearing was at fault. “Hell!” he said. All the class-room heard him say “Hell!” All the school treasured that cry in its heart for future use. “Young—,” said Mr. Mainwearing. It was long a matter for secret disputation in the school what particularly choice sort of young thing Mr. Mainwearing had called Peter. Then he heard a crash in the boot-hole and was downstairs in a moment. Peter was out in the area, up the area steps as quick as a scared grey mouse, and then he made his mistake. He struck out across the open in front of the house. In a dozen strides Mr. Mainwearing had him.
“I’ll thrash you, Sir,” said Mr. Mainwearing, swinging the little body by the collar, and shaking him as a dog might shake a rat. “I’ll thrash you. I’ll thrash you before the whole school.”
But two people had their blood up now.
“I’ll tell my uncle Nobby,” yelled Peter. “I’ll tell my uncle Nobby. He’s a soldier.”
Thus disputing they presently reappeared in the lower class-room. Peter was tremendously dishevelled and still kicking, and Mr. Mainwearing was holding him by the general slack of his garments.
“Silence, Sir, while I thrash you,” said Mr. Mainwearing, and he was red and moist.
“My uncle, he’s a soldier. He’s a V.C. You thrash me and he’ll kill you. He’ll kill you. He’ll kill you.”
“Gimme my cane, some one,” said Mr. Mainwearing.
“He’ll kill you.”
Nobody got the cane. “Probyn,” cried Mr. Mainwearing, “give me my cane.”
Probyn hesitated, and then said to young Newton, “You get it.” Young Newton had been standing up, half offering himself for this service. He handed the cane to Mr. Mainwearing.
“You touch me!” threatened Peter, “you touch me. He’ll kill you,” and taking advantage of the moment when Mr. Mainwearing’s hand was extended for the cane he scored a sound kick on the master’s knee. Then by an inspired wriggle he sought to involve himself with Mr. Mainwearing’s gown in such a manner as to protect his more vulnerable area.
But now Mr. Mainwearing was in a position to score. He stuck his cane between his teeth in an impressive and terrible manner, and then got his gown loose and altered his grip on his small victim. Now for it! The school hung breathless. Cut. Peter became as lively as an eel. Cut.
There were tears in his voice, but his voice was full and clear.
“He’ll kill you. He’ll come here and kill you. I’ll burn down the school.”
“You will, will you?”
Cut. A kick. Cut. Silent wriggles.
“Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten,” counted Mr. Mainwearing and stopped, and let go his hold with a shove. “Now go to your place,” he said. He was secretly grateful to Peter that he went. Peter had a way at times of looking a very small boy, and he did so now. He was tearful, red and amazingly dishevelled, but still not broken down to technical blubbing. His face was streaked with emotion; it was only too manifest that the routines of High Cross had reduced his private ablutions to a minimum. He glanced over his shoulder to see if he was still pursued. He could still sob, “My uncle.”
But Mr. Mainwearing did not mean this to be the close of the encounter. He had thought out the problems of discipline according to his lights; a boy must give in. Peter had still to give in.
“And now Stubland,” he proclaimed, “stay in after afternoon school, stay in all tomorrow, and write me out five hundred times, ’I must not sulk. I must obey.’ Five hundred times, Sir.”
Something muffled was audible from Peter, something suggestive of a refusal.
“Bring them to me on Wednesday evening at latest. That will keep you busy—and no time to spare. You hear me, Sir? ’I must not sulk’ and ’I must obey.’ And if they are not ready, Sir, twelve strokes good and full. And every morning until they are ready, twelve strokes. That’s how we do things here. No shirking. Play the fool with me and you pay for it—up to the hilt. This, at any rate, is a school, a school where discipline is respected, whatever queer Socialist Agapemone you may have frequented before. And now I’ve taken you in hand, young man, I mean to go through with you—if you have a hundred uncles Nobchick armed to the teeth. If you have a thousand uncles Nobchick, they won’t help you, if you air your stubborn temper at High Cross School....”
Perhaps Peter would have written the lines, but young Newton, in the company of two friends, came up to him in the playground before dinner. “Going to write those lines, Simon Peter?” asked young Newton.
What could a chap do but say, “No fear.”
“You’ll write ’em all right,” said Newton, and turned scornfully. So Peter sat in the stuffy schoolroom during detention time, and drew pictures of soldiers and battles and adventures and mused and made his plans.
He was going to run away. He was going to run right out of this disgusting place into the world. He would run away tomorrow after the midday meal. It would be the Wednesday half-holiday, and to go off then gave him his very best chance of a start; he might not be missed by any one in particular throughout the afternoon. The gap of time until tea-time seemed to him to be a limitless gap. “Abscond,” said Peter, a beautiful, newly-acquired word. Just exactly whither he wanted to go, he did not know. Vaguely he supposed he would have to go to his Limpsfield aunts, but what he wanted to think he was doing was running away to sea. He was going to run away to sea and meet Nobby very soon; he was going to run against Nobby by the happiest chance, Nobby alone, or perhaps even (this was still dreamier) Daddy and Mummy. Then they would go on explorations together, and he and Nobby would sleep side by side at camp fires amidst the howling of lions. Somewhere upon that expedition he would come upon Mainwearing and Probyn and Newton, captives perhaps in the hands of savages.
What would he and Nobby and Mummy and Daddy and Bungo Peter and Joan do to such miscreants?...
This kept Peter thinking a long time. Because it was beyond the limits of Peter’s generosity just now to spare Mr. Mainwearing. Probyn perhaps. Probyn, penitent to the pitch of tears, might be reduced to the status of a humble fag; even Newton might go on living in some very menial capacity—there could be a dog with the party of which Newton would always go in fear—but Mr. Mainwearing had exceeded the limits of mercy....
A man like that was capable of any treason....
Peter had it!—a beautiful scene. Mr. Mainwearing detected in a hideous conspiracy with a sinister Arab trader to murder the entire expedition, would be captured redhanded by Peter (armed with a revolver and a cutlass) and brought before Nobby and Bungo Peter. “The man must die,” Nobby would say. “And quickly,” Bungo Peter would echo, “seeing how perilous is our present situation.”
Then Peter would step forward. Mr. Mainwearing in a state of abject terror would fling himself down before him, cling to his knees, pray for forgiveness, pray Peter to intercede.
Yes. On the whole—yes. Peter would intercede.
Peter began to see the scene as a very beautiful one indeed....
But Nobby would be made of sterner stuff. “You are too noble, Peter. In such a country as this we cannot be cumbered with traitor carrion. We have killed the Arab. Is it just to spare this thousand times more perjured wretch, this blot upon the fair name of Englishman? Mainwearing, if such indeed be your true name, down on your knees and make your peace with God.”...
At this moment the reverie was interrupted by Mr. Mainwearing in cricketing flannels traversing the schoolroom. He was going to have a whack before tea. He just stood at the wickets and made the bigger boys bowl to him.
Little he knew!
Peter affected to write industriously....
§ 14
After the midday meal on Wednesday Peter loafed for a little time in the playground.
“Coming to play cricket, Simon Peter?” said Probyn.
“Got to stay in the schoolroom,” said Peter.
“He’s going to write his five hundred lines,” said young Newton. “I said he would.”
(Young Newton would know better later.)
Peter went back unobtrusively to the schoolroom. In his desk were two slices of bread-and-butter secreted from the breakfast table and wrapped in clean pages from an exercise-book. These were his simple provisions. With these, a pencil, and a good serviceable catapult he proposed to set out into the wide, wide world. He had no money.
He “scouted” Mr. Mainwearing into his study, marked that he shut the door, and heard him pull down the blind. The armchair creaked as the schoolmaster sat down for the afternoon’s repose. That would make a retreat from the front door of the school house possible. The back of the house meant a risk of being seen by the servants, the playground door or the cricket-field might attract the attention of some sneak. But from the front door to the road and the shelter of the playground wall was but ten seconds dash. Still Peter, from the moment he crept out of the main class-room into the passage to the moment when he was out of sight of the windows was as tightly strung as a fiddlestring. Never before in all his little life had he lived at such a pitch of nervous intensity. Once in the road he ran, and continued to run until he turned into the road to Clewer. Then he dropped into a good smart walk. The world was all before him.
The world was a warm October afternoon and a straight road, poplars and red roofs ahead. Whither the road ran he had no idea, but in the back of his mind, obscured but by no means hidden by a cloud of dreams, was the necessity of getting to Ingle-Nook. After he had walked perhaps half a mile upon the road to Clewer it occurred to Peter that he would ask his way.
The first person he asked was a nice little old lady with a kind face, and she did not know where the road went nor whence it came. “That way it goes to Pescod Street,” she said, “if you take the right turning, and that way it goes past the racecourse. But you have to turn off, you know. That’s Clewer Church.”
No, she didn’t know which was the way to Limpsfield. Perhaps if Peter asked the postman he’d know.
No postman was visible....
The next person Peter asked was as excessive as the old lady was deficient. He was a large, smiling, self-satisfied man, with a hearty laugh.
“Where does the road go, my boy?” he repeated. “Why! it goes to Maidenhead and Cookham. Cookham! Have you heard the story? This is the way the man told the waiter to take the underdone potatoes. Because it’s the way to Cookham. See? Good, eh? But not so good as telling him to take peas that was. Through Windsor, you know. Because it’s the way to Turnham Green. Ha, ha!
“How far is Maidenhead? Oh! a tidy bit—a tidy bit. Say four miles. Put it at four miles.”
When Peter asked for Limpsfield the large man at once jumped to the conclusion he meant Winchfield. “That’s a bit on your left,” he said, “just a bit on your left. How far? Oh! a tidy bit. Say five miles—five miles and a ’arf, say.”
When he had gone on a little way the genial man shouted back to Peter: “Might be six miles, perhaps,” he said. “Not more.”
Which was comforting news. So Peter went on his way with his back to Limpsfield—which was a good thirty miles and more away from him—and a pleasant illusion that Aunts Phyllis and Phœbe were quite conveniently just round the corner....
About four o’clock he had discovered Maidenhead bridge, and thereafter the river held him to the end. He had never had a good look at a river before. It was a glowing October afternoon, and the river life was enjoying its Indian summer. High Cross School was an infinite distance away, and all its shadows were dismissed from his mind. Boats are wonderful things to a small boy who has lived among hills. He wandered slowly along the towing-path, and watched several boats and barges through the lock. In each boat he hoped to see Uncle Nobby. But it just happened that Uncle Nobby wasn’t there. Near the lock some people were feeding two swans. When they had gone through the lock Peter went close down to the swans. They came to him in a manner so friendly that he gave them the better part of his provisions. After that he watched the operations of a man repairing a Canadian canoe beside a boat-letting place. Then he became interested in the shoaling fish in the shallows. After that he walked for a time, on past some little islands. At last, as he was now a little foot-sore, he sat down on the bank in the lush grass above some clumps of sweet rush.
He was just opposite the autumnal fires of the Cleveden woods, amidst which he could catch glimpses of Italian balustrading. The water was a dark mirror over which hung a bloom of mist. Now and then an infrequent boat would glide noiselessly or with a measured beat of rowlocks, through the brown water. Afar off was a swan....
Presently he would go on to Ingle-Nook. But not just yet. When his feet and legs were a little rested he would go on. He would ask first for Limpsfield and then for Ingle-Nook. It would be three or four miles. He would get there in time for supper.
He was struck by a thought that should have enlightened him. He wondered no one had ever brought him before from Ingle-Nook to this beautiful place. It was funny they did not know of it....
Above that balustrading among the trees over there, must be a palace, and in that palace lived a beautiful princess who loved Peter....
§ 15
It seemed at the first blush the most delightful accident in the world that the man with the ample face should ask Peter to mind his boat.
He rowed up to the wooden steps close by where Peter was sitting. He seemed to argue a little with the lady who was steering and had to back away again, but at last he got the steps and shipped his oars and held on with a boat hook and got out. He helped the lady to land.
“Here, Tommy!” he shouted, tying up the boat to the rail of the steps. “Just look after this boat a bit. We’re going to have some tea.”
“We shall have to walk miles,” said the lady.
“Damn!” said the man.
Something seemed to tell Peter that the man was cross.
Peter doubted whether he was properly Tommy. Then he saw that there was something attractive in looking after a boat.
“Don’t let any one steal it,” said the man with the ample face, with an unreal geniality. “And I’ll give you a tanner.”
Peter arose and came to the steps. The lady and the gentleman stood for a time on the top of the bank, disputing fiercely—she wanted to go one way and he another—and finally disappeared, still disputing, in the lady’s direction. Or rather, the lady made off in the direction of Cookham and the gentleman followed protesting. “Any way it’s miles,” she said....
Slowly the afternoon quiet healed again. Peter was left in solitude with the boat, the silvery river, the overhanging woods, the distant swan.
At first he just sat and looked at the boat.
It had crimson cushions in it, and the lady had left a Japanese sunshade. The name of the boat was the Princess May. The lining wood of the boat was pale and the outer wood and the wood of the rowlocks darker with just one exquisite gold line. The oars were very wonderful, but the boat-hook with its paddle was much more wonderful. It would be lovely to touch that boat-hook. It was a thing you could paddle with or you could catch hold with the hook or poke with the spike.
In a minute or so the call of the boat-hook had become irresistible, and Peter had got it out of the boat. He held it up like a spear, he waved it about. He poked the boat out with it and tried to paddle with it in the water between the boat and the bank, but the boat swung back too soon.
Presently he got into the boat very carefully so as to paddle with the boat-hook in the water beyond the boat. In wielding the paddle he almost knocked off his hat, so he took it off and laid it in the bottom of the boat. Then he became deeply interested in his paddling.
When he paddled in a certain way the whole boat, he found, began to swing out and round, and when he stopped paddling it went back against the bank. But it could not go completely round because of the tight way in which the ample-faced man had tied it to the rail of the steps. If the rope were tied quite at its end the boat could be paddled completely round. It would be beautiful to paddle it completely round with the waggling rudder up-stream instead of down.
That thought did not lead to immediate action. But within two minutes Peter was untying the boat and retying it in accordance with his ambitions.
In those days the Boy Scout movement was already in existence, but it had still to disseminate sound views about knot-tying among the rising generation. Peter’s knot was not so much a knot as a knot-like gesture. How bad it was he only discovered when he was back in the boat and had paddled it nearly half-way round. Then he saw that the end of the rope was slipping off the rail to which he had tied it as a weary snake might slink off into the grass. The stem of the boat was perhaps a yard from shore.
Peter acted with promptitude. He dropped his paddle, ran to the bows, and jumped. Except for his left leg he landed safely. His left leg he recovered from the water. But there was no catching the rope. It trailed submerged after the boat, and the boat with an exasperating leisureliness, with a movement that was barely perceptible, widened its distance from the bank.
For a time Peter’s mind wrestled with this problem. Should he try and find a stick that would reach the boat? Should he throw stones so as to bring it back in shore?
Or perhaps if he told some one that the boat was adrift?
He went up the steps to the towing-path. There was no one who looked at all helpful within sight. He watched the boat drift slowly for a time towards the middle of the stream. Then it seemed to be struck with an idea of going down to Maidenhead. He watched it recede and followed it slowly. When he saw some people afar off he tried to look as though he did not belong to the boat. He decided that presently somebody would appear rowing—whom he would ask to catch his boat for him. Then he would tow it back to its old position.
Presently Peter came to the white gate of a bungalow and considered the advisability of telling a busy gardener who was mowing a lawn, about the boat. But it was difficult to frame a suitable form of address.
Still further on a pleasant middle-aged woman who was trimming a privet hedge very carefully with garden shears, seemed a less terrible person to accost. Peter said to her modestly and self-forgetfully; “I think there’s a boat adrift down there.”
The middle-aged woman peered through her spectacles.
“Some one couldn’t have tied it up,” she said, and having looked at the boat with a quiet intelligence for some time she resumed her clipping.
Her behaviour did much to dispel Peter’s idea of calling in adult help.
When he looked again the boat had turned round. It had drifted out into the middle of the stream, and it seemed now to be travelling rather faster and to be rocking slightly. It was not going down towards the lock but away towards where a board said “Danger.” Danger. It was as if a cold hand was laid on Peter’s heart. He no longer wanted to find the man with the ample face and tell him that his boat was adrift. The sun had set, the light seemed to have gone out of things, and Peter had a feeling that it was long past tea-time. He wished now he had never seen the man with the ample face. Would he have to pay for the boat? Could he say he had never promised to mind it?
But if that was so why had he got into the boat and played about with it?
His left shoe and his left trouser-leg were very wet and getting cold.
A great craving for tea and home comforts generally arose in Peter’s wayward mind. Home comforts and forgetfulness. It seemed to him high time that he asked some one the way to Limpsfield....