CHAPTER V.



IN WHICH THERE COMES BY ONE BENT UPON PURSUING HIS OWN WAY.



"Correct" is, I think, the adjective by which I can best describe

Doctor Florret and all his attributes. He was a large man, but not

too large--just the size one would select for the head-master of an

important middle-class school; stout, not fat, suggesting comfort, not

grossness. His hands were white and well shaped. On the left he wore

a fine diamond ring, but it shone rather than sparkled. He spoke of

commonplace things in a voice that lent dignity even to the weather.

His face, which was clean-shaven, radiated benignity tempered by

discretion.



So likewise all about him: his wife, the feminine counterpart of

himself. Seeing them side by side one felt tempted to believe that

for his special benefit original methods had been reverted to, and she

fashioned, as his particular helpmeet, out of one of his own ribs.

His furniture was solid, meant for use, not decoration. His pictures,

following the rule laid down for dress, graced without drawing

attention to his walls. He ever said the correct thing at the correct

time in the correct manner. Doubtful of the correct thing to do, one

could always learn it by waiting till he did it; when one at once felt

that nothing else could possibly have been correct. He held on all

matters the correct views. To differ from him was to discover oneself

a revolutionary.



In practice, as I learned at the cost of four more or less wasted

years, he of course followed the methods considered correct by English

schoolmen from the days of Edward VI. onwards.



Heaven knows I worked hard. I wanted to learn. Ambition--the all

containing ambition of a boy that "has its centre everywhere nor cares

to fix itself to form" stirred within me. Did I pass a speaker at

some corner, hatless, perspiring, pointing Utopias in the air to

restless hungry eyes, at once I saw myself, a Demosthenes swaying

multitudes, a statesman holding the House of Commons spellbound, the

Prime Minister of England, worshipped by the entire country. Even the

Opposition papers, had I known of them, I should have imagined forced

to reluctant admiration. Did the echo of a distant drum fall upon my

ear, then before me rose picturesque fields of carnage, one figure

ever conspicuous: Myself, well to the front, isolated. Promotion in

the British army of my dream being a matter purely of merit, I

returned Commander-in-Chief. Vast crowds thronged every flag-decked

street. I saw white waving hands from every roof and window. I heard

the dull, deep roar of welcome, as with superb seat upon my snow-white

charger--or should it be coal-black? The point cost me much

consideration, so anxious was I that the day should be without a

flaw--I slowly paced at the head of my victorious troops, between wild

waves of upturned faces: walked into a lamp-post or on to the toes of

some irascible old gentleman, and awoke. A drunken sailor stormed

from between swing doors and tacked tumultuously down the street: the

factory chimney belching smoke became a swaying mast. The costers

round about me shouted "Ay, ay, sir. 'Ready, ay, ready." I was

Christopher Columbus, Drake, Nelson, rolled into one. Spurning the

presumption of modern geographers, I discovered new continents. I

defeated the French--those useful French! I died in the moment of

victory. A nation mourned me and I was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Also I lived and was created a Duke. Either alternative had its

charm: personally I was indifferent. Boys who on November the ninth,

as explained by letters from their mothers, read by Doctor Florret

with a snort, were suffering from a severe toothache, told me on

November the tenth of the glories of Lord Mayor's Shows. I heard

their chatter fainter and fainter as from an ever-increasing distance.

The bells of Bow were ringing in my ears. I saw myself a merchant

prince, though still young. Nobles crowded my counting house. I lent

them millions and married their daughters. I listened, unobserved in

a corner, to discussion on some new book. Immediately I was a famous

author. All men praised me: for of reviewers and their density I, in

those days, knew nothing. Poetry, fiction, history, I wrote them all;

and all men read, and wondered. Only here was a crumpled rose leaf in

the pillow on which I laid my swelling head: penmanship was vexation

to me, and spelling puzzled me, so that I wrote with sorrow and many

blots and scratchings out. Almost I put aside the idea of becoming an

author.



But along whichever road I might fight my way to the Elysian Fields of

fame, education, I dimly but most certainly comprehended, was a

necessary weapon to my hand. And so, with aching heart and aching

head, I pored over my many books. I see myself now in my small

bedroom, my elbows planted on the shaky, one-legged table, startled

every now and again by the frizzling of my hair coming in contact with

the solitary candle. On cold nights I wear my overcoat, turned up

about the neck, a blanket round my legs, and often I must sit with my

fingers in my ears, the better to shut out the sounds of life, rising

importunately from below. "A song, Of a song, To a song, A song, 0!

song!" "I love, Thou lovest, He she or it loves. I should or would

love" over and over again, till my own voice seems some strange

buzzing thing about me, while my head grows smaller and smaller till I

put my hands up frightened, wondering if it still be entire upon my

shoulders.



Was I more stupid than the average, or is a boy's brain physically

incapable of the work our educational system demands of it?



"Latin and Greek" I hear repeating the suave tones of Doctor Florret,

echoing as ever the solemn croak of Correctness, "are useful as mental

gymnastics." My dear Doctor Florret and Co., cannot you, out of the

vast storehouse of really necessary knowledge, select apparatus better

fitted to strengthen and not overstrain the mental muscles of

ten-to-fourteen? You, gentle reader, with brain fully grown, trained

by years of practice to its subtlest uses, take me from your

bookshelf, say, your Browning or even your Shakespeare. Come, you

know this language well. You have not merely learned: it is your

mother tongue. Construe for me this short passage, these few verses:

parse, analyse, resolve into component parts! And now, will you

maintain that it is good for Tommy, tear-stained, ink-bespattered

little brat, to be given AEsop's Fables, Ovid's Metamorphoses to treat

in like manner? Would it not be just as sensible to insist upon his

practising his skinny little arms with hundred pounds dumb-bells?



We were the sons of City men, of not well-to-do professional men, of

minor officials, clerks, shopkeepers, our roads leading through the

workaday world. Yet quite half our time was taken up in studies

utterly useless to us. How I hated them, these youth-tormenting

Shades. Homer! how I wished the fishermen had asked him that absurd

riddle earlier. Horace! why could not that shipwreck have succeeded:

it would have in the case of any one but a classic.



Until one blessed day there fell into my hands a wondrous talisman.



Hearken unto me, ye heavy burdened little brethren of mine. Waste not

your substance upon tops and marbles, nor yet upon tuck (Do ye still

call it "tuck"?), but scrape and save. For in the neighbourhood of

Paternoster Row there dwells a good magician who for silver will

provide you with a "Key" that shall open wide for you the gates of

Hades.



By its aid, the Frogs of Aristophanes became my merry friends. With

Ulysses I wandered eagerly through Wonderland. Doctor Florret was

charmed with my progress, which was real, for now, at last, I was

studying according to the laws of common sense, understanding first,

explaining afterwards. Let Youth, that the folly of Age would

imprison in ignorance, provide itself with "Keys."



But let me not seem to claim credit due to another. Dan it was--Dan

of the strong arm and the soft smile, Dan the wise hater of all

useless labour, sharp-witted, easy-going Dan, who made this grand

discovery.



Dan followed me a term later into the Lower Fourth, but before he had

been there a week was handling Latin verse with an ease and dexterity

suggestive of unholy dealings with the Devil. In a lonely corner of

Regent's Park, first making sure no one was within earshot, he

revealed to me his magic.



"Don't tell the others," he commanded; "or it will get out, and then

nobody will be any the better."



"But is it right?" I asked.



"Look here, young 'un," said Dan; "what are you here for--what's your

father paying school fees for (it was the appeal to our

conscientiousness most often employed by Dr. Florret himself), for you

to play a silly game, or to learn something?



"Because if it's only a game--we boys against the masters," continued

Dan, "then let's play according to rule. If we're here to

learn--well, you've been in the class four months and I've just come,

and I bet I know more Ovid than you do already." Which was true.



So I thanked Dan and shared with him his key; and all the Latin I

remember, for whatever good it may be to me, I take it I owe to him.



And knowledge of yet greater value do I owe to the good fortune that

his sound mother wit was ever at my disposal to correct my dreamy

unfeasibility; for from first to last he was my friend; and to have

been the chosen friend of Dan, shrewd judge of man and boy, I deem no

unimportant feather in my cap. He "took to" me, he said, because I

was so jolly green"--"such a rummy little mug." No other reason would

he ever give me, save only a sweet smile and a tumbling of my hair

with his great hand; but I think I understood. And I loved him

because he was big and strong and handsome and kind; no one but a

little boy knows how brutal or how kind a big boy can be. I was still

somewhat of an effeminate little chap, nervous and shy, with a pink

and white face, and hair that no amount of wetting would make

straight. I was growing too fast, which took what strength I had, and

my journey every day, added to school work and home work, maybe was

too much for my years. Every morning I had to be up at six, leaving

the house before seven to catch the seven fifteen from Poplar station;

and from Chalk Farm I had to walk yet another couple of miles. But

that I did not mind, for at Chalk Farm station Dan was always waiting

for me. In the afternoon we walked back together also; and when I was

tired and my back ached--just as if some one had cut a piece out of

it, I felt--he would put his arm round me, for he always knew, and oh,

how strong and restful it was to lean against, so that one walked as

in an easy-chair.



It seems to me, remembering how I would walk thus by his side, looking

up shyly into his face, thinking how strong and good he was, feeling

so glad he liked me, I can understand a little how a woman loves. He

was so solid. With his arm round me, it was good to feel weak.



At first we were in the same class, the Lower Third. He had no

business there. He was head and shoulders taller than any of us and

years older. It was a disgrace to him that he was not in the Upper

Fourth. The Doctor would tell him so before us all twenty times a

week. Old Waterhouse (I call him "Old Waterhouse" because "Mister

Waterhouse, M.A.," would convey no meaning to me, and I should not

know about whom I was speaking) who cordially liked him, was honestly

grieved. We, his friends, though it was pleasant to have him among

us, suffered in our pride of him. The only person quite contented was

Dan himself. It was his way in all things. Others had their opinion

of what was good for him. He had his own, and his own was the only

opinion that ever influenced him. The Lower Third suited him. For

him personally the Upper Fourth had no attraction.



And even in the Lower Third he was always at the bottom. He preferred

it. He selected the seat and kept it, in spite of all allurements, in

spite of all reproaches. It was nearest to the door. It enabled him

to be first out and last in. Also it afforded a certain sense of

retirement. Its occupant, to an extent screened from observation,

became in the course of time almost forgotten. To Dan's philosophical

temperament its practical advantages outweighed all sentimental

objection.



Only on one occasion do I remember his losing it. As a rule, tiresome

questions, concerning past participles, square roots, or meridians

never reached him, being snapped up in transit by arm-waving lovers of

such trifles. The few that by chance trickled so far he took no

notice of. They possessed no interest for him, and he never pretended

that they did. But one day, taken off his guard, he gave voice quite

unconsciously to a correct reply, with the immediate result of finding

himself in an exposed position on the front bench. I had never seen

Dan out of temper before, but that moment had any of us ventured upon

a whispered congratulation we would have had our head punched, I feel

confident.



Old Waterhouse thought that here at last was reformation. "Come,

Brian," he cried, rubbing his long thin hands together with delight,

"after all, you're not such a fool as you pretend."



"Never said I was," muttered Dan to himself, with a backward glance of

regret towards his lost seclusion; and before the day was out he had

worked his way back to it again.



As we were going out together, old Waterhouse passed us on the stairs:

"Haven't you any sense of shame, my boy?" he asked sorrowfully, laying

his hand kindly on Dan's shoulder.



"Yes, sir," answered Dan, with his frank smile; "plenty. It isn't

yours, that's all."



He was an excellent fighter. In the whole school of over two hundred

boys, not half a dozen, and those only Upper Sixth boys--fellows who

came in top hats with umbrellas, and who wouldn't out of regard to

their own dignity--could have challenged him with any chance of

success. Yet he fought very seldom, and then always in a bored, lazy

fashion, as though he were doing it purely to oblige the other fellow.



One afternoon, just as we were about to enter Regent's Park by the

wicket opposite Hanover Gate, a biggish boy, an errand boy carrying an

empty basket, and supported by two smaller boys, barred our way.



"Can't come in here," said the boy with the basket.



"Why not?" inquired Dan.



"'Cos if you do I shall kick you," was the simple explanation.



Without a word Dan turned away, prepared to walk on to the next

opening. The boy with the basket, evidently encouraged, followed us:

"Now, I'm going to give you your coward's blow," he said, stepping in

front of us; "will you take it quietly?" It is a lonely way, the

Outer Circle, on a winter's afternoon.



"I'll tell you afterwards," said Dan, stopping short.



The boy gave him a slight slap on the cheek. It could not have hurt,

but the indignity, of course, was great. No boy of honour, according

to our code, could have accepted it without retaliating.



"Is that all?" asked Dan.



"That's all--for the present," replied the boy with the basket.



"Good-bye," said Dan, and walked on.



"Glad he didn't insist on fighting," remarked Dan, cheerfully, as we

proceeded; "I'm going to a party tonight."



Yet on another occasion, in a street off Lisson Grove, he insisted on

fighting a young rough half again his own weight, who, brushing up

against him, had knocked his hat off into the mud.



"I wouldn't have said anything about his knocking it off," explained

Dan afterwards, tenderly brushing the poor bruised thing with his coat

sleeve, "if he hadn't kicked it."



On another occasion I remember, three or four of us, Dan among the

number, were on our way one broiling summer's afternoon to Hadley

Woods. As we turned off from the highroad just beyond Barnet and

struck into the fields, Dan drew from his pocket an enormous

juicy-looking pear.



"Where did you get that from?" inquired one, Dudley.



"From that big greengrocer's opposite Barnet Church," answered Dan.

"Have a bit?"



"You told me you hadn't any more money," retorted Dudley, in

reproachful tones.



"No more I had," replied Dan, holding out a tempting slice at the end

of his pocket-knife.



"You must have had some, or you couldn't have bought that pear,"

argued Dudley, accepting.



"Didn't buy it."



"Do you mean to say you stole it?"



"Yes."



"You're a thief," denounced Dudley, wiping his mouth and throwing away

a pip.



"I know it. So are you."



"No, I'm not."



"What's the good of talking nonsense. You robbed an orchard only last

Wednesday at Mill Hill, and gave yourself the stomach-ache."



"That isn't stealing."



"What is it?"



"It isn't the same thing."



"What's the difference?"



And nothing could make Dan comprehend the difference. "Stealing is

stealing," he would have it, "whether you take it off a tree or out of

a basket. You're a thief, Dudley; so am I. Anybody else say a

piece?"



The thermometer was at that point where morals become slack. We all

had a piece; but we were all of us shocked at Dan, and told him so.

It did not agitate him in the least.



To Dan I could speak my inmost thoughts, knowing he would understand

me, and sometimes from him I received assistance and sometimes

confusion. The yearly examination was approaching. My father and

mother said nothing, but I knew how anxiously each of them awaited the

result; my father, to see how much I had accomplished; my mother, how

much I had endeavoured. I had worked hard, but was doubtful, knowing

that prizes depend less upon what you know than upon what you can make

others believe you know; which applies to prizes beyond those of

school.



"Are you going in for anything, Dan?" I asked him. We were discussing

the subject, crossing Primrose Hill, one bright June morning.



I knew the question absurd. I asked it of him because I wanted him to

ask it of me.



"They're not giving away anything I particularly want," murmured Dan,

in his lazy drawl: looked at from that point of view, school prizes

are, it must be confessed, not worth their cost.



"You're sweating yourself, young 'un, of course?" he asked next, as I

expected.



"I mean to have a shot at the History," I admitted. "Wish I was

better at dates."



"It's always two-thirds dates," Dan assured me, to my discouragement.

"Old Florret thinks you can't eat a potato until you know the date

that chap Raleigh was born."



"I've prayed so hard that I may win the History prize," I explained to

him. I never felt shy with Dan. He never laughed at me.



"You oughtn't to have done that," he said. I stared. "It isn't fair

to the other fellows. That won't be your winning the prize; that will

be your getting it through favouritism."



"But they can pray, too," I reminded him.



"If you all pray for it," answered Dan, "then it will go, not to the

fellow that knows most history, but to the fellow that's prayed the

hardest. That isn't old Florret's idea, I'm sure."



"But we are told to pray for things we want," I insisted.



"Beastly mean way of getting 'em," retorted Dan. And no argument that

came to me, neither then nor at any future time, brought him to right

thinking on this point.



He would judge all matters for himself. In his opinion Achilles was a

coward, not a hero.



"He ought to have told the Trojans that they couldn't hurt any part of

him except his heel, and let them have a shot at that," he argued;

"King Arthur and all the rest of them with their magic swords, it

wasn't playing the game. There's no pluck in fighting if you know

you're bound to win. Beastly cads, I call them all."



I won no prize that year. Oddly enough, Dan did, for arithmetic; the

only subject studied in the Lower Fourth that interested him. He

liked to see things coming right, he explained.



My father shut himself up with me for half an hour and examined me

himself.



"It's very curious, Paul," he said, "you seem to know a good deal."



"They asked me all the things I didn't know. They seemed to do it on

purpose," I blurted out, and laid my head upon my arm. My father

crossed the room and sat down beside me.



"Spud!" he said--it was a long time since he had called me by that

childish nickname--"perhaps you are going to be with me, one of the

unlucky ones."



"Are you unlucky?" I asked.



"Invariably," answered my father, rumpling his hair. "I don't know

why. I try hard--I do the right thing, but it turns out wrong. It

always does."



"But I thought Mr. Hasluck was bringing us such good fortune," I said,

looking up in surprise. "We're getting on, aren't we?"



"I have thought so before, so often," said my father, "and it has

always ended in a--in a collapse."



I put my arms round his neck, for I always felt to my father as to

another boy; bigger than myself and older, but not so very much.



"You see, when I married your mother," he went on, "I was a rich man.

She had everything she wanted."



"But you will get it all back," I cried.



"I try to think so," he answered. "I do think so--generally speaking.

But there are times--you would not understand--they come to you."



"But she is happy," I persisted; "we are all happy."



He shook his head.



"I watch her," he said. "Women suffer more than we do. They live

more in the present. I see my hopes, but she--she sees only me, and I

have always been a failure. She has lost faith in me.



I could say nothing. I understood but dimly.



"That is why I want you to be an educated man, Paul," he continued

after a silence. "You can't think what a help education is to a man.

I don't mean it helps you to get on in the world; I think for that it

rather hampers you. But it helps you to bear adversity. To a man

with a well-stored mind, life is interesting on a piece of bread and a

cup of tea. I know. If it were not for you and your mother I should

not trouble."



And yet at that time our fortunes were at their brightest, so far as I

remember them; and when they were dark again he was full of fresh

hope, planning, scheming, dreaming again. It was never acting. A

worse actor never trod this stage on which we fret. His occasional

attempts at a cheerfulness he did not feel inevitably resulted in our

all three crying in one another's arms. No; it was only when things

were going well that experience came to his injury. Child of

misfortune, he ever rose, Antaeus-like, renewed in strength from

contact with his mother.



Nor must it be understood that his despondent moods, even in time of

prosperity, were oft recurring. Generally speaking, as he himself

said, he was full of confidence. Already had he fixed upon our new

house in Guilford Street, then still a good residential quarter; while

at the same time, as he would explain to my mother, sufficiently

central for office purposes, close as it was to Lincoln and Grey's Inn

and Bedford Row, pavements long worn with the weary footsteps of the

Law's sad courtiers.



"Poplar," said my father, "has disappointed me. It seemed a good

idea--a rapidly rising district, singularly destitute of solicitors.

It ought to have turned out well, and yet somehow it hasn't."



"There have been a few come," my mother reminded him.



"Of a sort," admitted my father; "a criminal lawyer might gather

something of a practice here, I have no doubt. But for general work,

of course, you must he in a central position. Now, in Guilford Street

people will come to me."



"It should certainly be a pleasanter neighbourhood to live in," agreed

my mother.



"Later on," said my father, "in case I want the whole house for

offices, we could live ourselves in Regent's Park. It is quite near

to the Park."



"Of course you have consulted Mr. Hasluck?" asked my mother, who of

the two was by far the more practical.



"For Hasluck," replied my father, "it will be much more convenient.

He grumbles every time at the distance."



"I have never been quite able to understand," said my mother, "why Mr.

Hasluck should have come so far out of his way. There must surely be

plenty of solicitors in the City."



"He had heard of me," explained my father. "A curiou[s] old

fellow--likes his own way of doing things. It's not everyone who

would care for him as a client. But I seem able to manage him."



Often we would go together, my father and I, to Guilford Street. It

was a large corner house that had taken his fancy, half creeper

covered, with a balcony, and pleasantly situated, overlooking the

gardens of the Foundling Hospital. The wizened old caretaker knew us

well, and having opened the door, would leave us to wander through the

empty, echoing rooms at our own will. We furnished them handsomely in

later Queen Anne style, of which my father was a connoisseur, sparing

no necessary expense; for, as my father observed, good furniture is

always worth its price, while to buy cheap is pure waste of money.



"This," said my father, on the second floor, stepping from the bedroom

into the smaller room adjoining, "I shall make your mother's boudoir.

We will have the walls in lavender and maple green--she is fond of

soft tones--and the window looks out upon the gardens. There we will

put her writing-table."



My own bedroom was on the third floor, a sunny little room.



"You will be quiet here," said my father, "and we can shut out the bed

and the washstand with a screen."



Later, I came to occupy it; though its rent--eight and sixpence a

week, including attendance--was somewhat more than at the time I ought

to have afforded. Nevertheless, I adventured it, taking the

opportunity of being an inmate of the house to refurnish it, unknown

to my stout landlady, in later Queen Anne style, putting a neat brass

plate with my father's name upon the door. "Luke Kelver, Solicitor.

Office hours, 10 till 4." A medical student thought he occupied my

mother's boudoir. He was a dull dog, full of tiresome talk. But I

made acquaintanceship with him; and often of an evening would smoke my

pipe there in silence while pretending to be listening to his

monotonous brag.



The poor thing! he had no idea that he was only a foolish ghost; that

his walls, seemingly covered with coarse-coloured prints of

wooden-looking horses, simpering ballet girls and petrified

prize-fighters, were in reality a delicate tone of lavender and maple

green; that at her writing-table in the sunlit window sat my mother,

her soft curls curtaining her quiet face.