A Difficult Young Man (13 page)

‘My darling boy, what is the matter?' she exclaimed.

‘He's run away from school,' said Steven grimly, but when he saw my face in the light, his expression changed.

‘Oh!' Laura was dismayed. ‘Why?'

‘Why did you run away?' asked Steven.

I told them what happened up to the ‘eight of the best,' but omitting the prefect's advances. Just
as Steven was reluctant to tell me the facts of life, I showed an equal reserve in giving him parallel information.

‘Why didn't you tell him you didn't do it?' asked Steven.

‘I hadn't time. Anyhow they found out, but afterwards. Mr Trend invited me to a terrific supper with lobster.'

‘The whole thing is shocking. Still they tried to make up for it,' said Laura.

‘When did you have the supper?' asked Steven.

‘I didn't have it. I said he could eat his beastly lobsters himself.'

‘That wasn't very polite, darling,' said Laura.

I began to tremble again.

‘It wasn't very polite of him to make my behind bleed,' I said, trying to preserve my composure.

‘He was quite right not to eat the supper,' said Steven. ‘If an injustice is done it should be remedied in a proper fashion, not by the gratification of physical appetites. But you shouldn't have run away.'

‘That beating was disgusting,' said Laura, her Irish eyes flashing.

They discussed the ethics of the case between themselves for a while. Steven said to me:

‘Why did you run away? The beating was over. You hadn't got to eat that supper.'

‘I don't know,' I said. ‘I hated the place. I just couldn't stay. Anyhow,' I added indignantly, ‘you don't
mind when Dominic runs away.'

‘Don't mind!' Steven gave a bitter laugh. ‘What makes you think that?'

‘You never sent him back.'

‘What educational establishment would take any of my children back?' he exclaimed, and went on ironically: ‘that is if I could find one where I really want to send 'em.'

Laura said I must not wait up a minute longer. We went into the dining-room where she gave me a glass of burgundy and some biscuits, and then to the linen cupboard for sheets, and together we made up my bed.

‘Mum, I shan't have to go back, will I?' I asked, as she kissed me goodnight.

‘We'll talk about it in the morning,' she said.

Strangely, before, soothed by the burgundy I fell asleep, I felt that Steven was more on my side than Laura, because he had understood, and shown me the reasons underlying my refusal of the supper, and had believed that they were good. If he said I need not go back it would be an endorsement of my ideas of justice, and this would give me more satisfaction than Laura's disgust at Mr Trend's brutality.

Whether I would have been sent back if Colonel Rodgers had not called the following morning, I do not know. I have mentioned that he had some effect on our family, and inadvertently he may at this juncture have
changed the course of my life. This may be the point at which to introduce him.

He was a brother-in-law of the reigning Lady Dilton's, and had come to live in the neighbourhood to receive the reflected glory of the relationship. He was a strange looking man, tall, with a small bony head, and thick-lensed glasses. He wore very tight-fitting clothes of a sporting style, but they did not look vulgar or ‘bounderish' as they were in drab tones. His body, under his tight clothes, appeared to be devoid of any soft human contours, and with his narrow waist he suggested a large insect. He could not be compared with any animal, as in every animal is some affinity with mankind. In the lioness and the female panther is mother's milk. He was much concerned with correct upper-class activity, and in pursuit of it had killed one zulu, three ‘fuzzy-wuzzies,' fourteen Afghans, a zebra, a leopard, 6,053 pheasants, 8,029 partridge, 2,076 grouse, 98 woodcock, a seagull and a badger, and had been in at the death of innumerable foxes and 14 stags, as he sometimes visited in Devonshire. He kept these records in a book which he showed me, though it is possible that, like the lawyer's clerk with Aunt Diana's income, I have left some noughts off the end. In spite of all this, he looked more odd than distinguished, partly because he had no visible eyelids, which is is apt to give an ignoble appearance. Through his thick lenses one saw only the diminished black prunes of his eyes, so
that he looked like an ant, or some Asiatic rat.

As I was very polite he thought that I was a nice boy, and that he could make a gentleman of me, so that in time I might have as many corpses to my credit as himself. He thought that he might even make gentlemen of all of us, in spite of our being Australian, and he told the vicar that he was taking us under his wing, but it was not a comfortable wing, lined with soft feathers, but like that of a flying ant or a bat, or a bombing aeroplane. He wanted to cure us of any Australian habits we might have, such as not changing for dinner in the summer if we wanted to play outdoor games afterwards, but he took advantage of one Australian habit, our easy informal hospitality, to be present at rather too many meals. At first he had come up every morning to be helpful, and to show defects in the house which needed repair. But after a while his possessive advice became tiresome to Steven, who felt he should be allowed to know what to do to his own house. Although we had been at Waterpark since A.D. 1184, a fact which both gratified and irritated him, he implied that we could not expect to be received by the county until we had shown ourselves civilized, by which he meant skilled in killing animals and completely ignorant of art and music. Like him we had some connection with the Diltons, but it was faintly discreditable, as he reminded us.

Steven did not find him quite intolerable, as he was amused by him. The Langtons could not really dislike anyone who amused them. Our Uncle Walter could
come home from sentencing a burglar to ten years' imprisonment and chuckle over his port saying: ‘You know that fellow was an amusing dog.' Also, which made him acceptable, Colonel Rodgers had himself a touch of ‘culture,' given by his passionate interest in insects. He tried to draw them, and wanted Steven to give up his useless pastime of painting landscapes, which would not bring him good marks from the county, to illustrate a monograph he was writing on wasps, and Steven good-naturedly obliged him. He had, as well, written a monograph to prove that Lord Nelson did not ask Captain Hardy to kiss him.

On the morning after I had run away from school, immediately after breakfast, I went into the library with Steven and Laura for a further discussion of my situation, when Colonel Rodgers was shown in, bringing some dead insects for Steven to draw. He had already given up his hopes of making a gentleman of me, as I had told him I was not fond of shooting, and had suggested that he should put on his mantelpiece a pair of flowered Dresden vases instead of the pair of shrunken and mummified heads of two African natives, which were his proudest ornaments, as he had killed them himself.

When he saw me sitting on the library sofa he said: ‘Hullo, what's this? Not at school? Measles, eh?'

‘No, sir,' I said and blushed, as although it was nothing to do with Colonel Rodgers, he behaved in our house as if he were the orderly officer doing his
rounds.

‘He is at home for the present,' said Laura.

‘For the present, why?' asked the Colonel. ‘When is he going back?'

‘We have not yet decided,' said Steven, becoming annoyed.

Laura looked at me and then out into the garden. I took her hint and left the room. If they had to snub Colonel Rodgers they did not think it right to do so in the presence of a boy of fourteen, a delicacy which the Colonel hardly showed to them. When I had gone she told him what had happened, and he said:

‘The boy must learn to take his beating.'

Steven said that I had taken my beating, but that what had driven me away was the insult of being offered food to compensate for an injustice. If I had been condemned before the school, I should have been reinstated before the school.

‘Couldn't do that. Bad for discipline,' said Colonel Rodgers.

‘If discipline is tied to injustice, they'd be better without it,' said Steven. He had become so heated in his discussion with the Colonel, that he convinced himself that I was absolutely in the right, and fortunately for me at the height of his indignation the footman came in with a telegram from the headmaster, saying that I had disappeared from the school the previous night, and that only if I returned immediately would he be willing to take me back. Steven scribbled a reply, ‘My son not
returning. Langton.' He told Jonas, as the footman was called, to send it off at once, at which Colonel Rodgers snorted and left the house. He evidently thought I was little better than the savage llama in Paris, which I have mentioned. And yet it is probably owing to him that I was not sent back to receive further attentions from the prefect and Mr Trend. As we look back it is surprising to see the number of people whom we have disliked, who have indirectly benefited us.

Although the Colonel departed so rudely, he left his insects behind for Steven to draw, and Steven did not neglect to do them. In his mind things were kept in their proper compartments. The fact that Colonel Rodgers had been impertinent did not alter the fact that his book might be of use to naturalists. To refuse to illustrate it because of the Colonel's rudeness in other ways would, he thought, be childish and anti-social. This habit of thinking laid him open to a good deal of exploitation.

The next morning Steven came out on to the lawn between the modest classical front of the house and the stream, and crossed to where I was standing on the meadow bridge, watching for trout. The three oak trees on the bank of the stream, and the clump of elms across the meadow, from which rose the square church tower, were beginning to turn brown and yellow and to shed their leaves. The place was secluded and peaceful and I did not want to leave it, but I was afraid from the look
of purpose with which Steven came towards me, that he was about to announce some new disagreeable plan for my education, so I was very relieved when he said:

‘You can't hang about here doing nothing, you know. It's too late to send you to another school this term. Mr Woodhall is willing to give you lessons for the rest of the year. Would you like that?' Mr Woodhall was the vicar, a silver-haired elderly man, with finely cut features, a quiet gentle manner, and a pleasant smile. He looked both scholarly and extremely well-bred, and I could not imagine him using violence upon me.

‘Yes, I would, very much,' I said, and Steven looked relieved, which surprised me. I did not realize how much he wanted our approval of the plans he made for us.

‘I don't want you to think,' he went on, ‘that it doesn't matter your running away from school, simply because Dominic makes a habit of it. If the circumstances had been different we should have had to send you back for your own sake. You'll have to earn your living, you know.'

‘Yes, of course,' I said, but it was only the intellectual acceptance of an idea. I did not feel in my bones that it would be so, as I had never seen any of the family doing such a thing, except Uncle Bertie, who was different from us, rich and strange. Even our Byngham uncles who had no money spent their time riding about on sheep stations or fishing at Malacoota.
It is hard to believe what we have not seen, so when Steven at intervals repeated this to me, and I dutifully replied, ‘Yes, of course,' it was like saying Amen at the end of a prayer in Latin, and Steven's repetition of this theme was itself like those litanies mentioned by Samuel Butler, and addressed by Italian exiles to the false teeth in a dentist's showcase, which they imagine are the relics of a saint.

When towards Christmas Steven and Laura began to talk about another school for me, I made such a fuss that they allowed me to stay on with Mr Woodhall. It may appear very negligent of them to have allowed me this kind of education, but they put on us a degree of responsibility for our own actions. Mr Woodhall, who liked teaching me, and who welcomed the little extra money it brought him, told Steven that he thought it the education most suited to my nature, and mentioned an impressive list of great men who had been educated at the local vicarage. Also, as I have mentioned, Steven did not imagine that one's school could either affect one's social status or open the doors in the world which would otherwise remain closed. He did not think that people of old families could be socially elevated by an old Brockhurstian tie, or even that of some more famous school.

So thanks to Colonel Rodgers I did not become a public schoolboy, which is relevant to this story, as if I had I would probably not have written it. I lived instead for four years in a poetic dream of medievalism,
which I shall describe presently, and which will be more shocking to the right-minded than my escape without retribution from Brockhurst. But I do not know that I should blame Steven for this. It may have done me no harm. Such good manners as I have learned from my parents have not been overlaid by a ‘public-school manner,' like a real Chippendale chair covered with varnish to make it indistinguishable from the reproductions. If you bring up a litter of puppies together, they may be happier, but if you single one out and bring it up in the society of human beings it becomes a more intelligent dog. Because of this it seems odd to me to regard public schools as aristocratic institutions, as where a uniform standard is required of a number of people, it can only be that of which the lowest is capable. As it is I am grateful rather than otherwise that I was brought up as a puppy amongst adults, that cricket scores were not the major part of my intellectual fodder, and that if it is necessary for boys of the English governing classes to be inculcated with certain vices, that my own anatomy was not used for the purpose.

Incidentally, the by-passing of a public-school education probably affected Dominic more than myself, and at a deeper level. Dr Arnold, presumably the father of the modern public school, stated that evil is most powerful in the Spirit of Chivalry, as it places honour above duty. Dominic had little sense of duty, but an out-sized and impassioned sense of honour, and this order was not reversed nor even modified by
his education. His honour demanded allegiance to the god within him, whereas duty merely demands obedience to authority, which in the modern world is often diabolical.