I proved to my own
intense astonishment to be rather good at lessons, so that I got on
well with the masters, and the boys were kind enough in their
careless way. I had plenty of pocket-money, and though I did not
shine at Association football, for in London I had only watched the
big boys playing Rugby, I was not afraid of being knocked about,
which was all that was expected of a new boy. Most of my
embarrassments were due to the sensitiveness that made me dislike
asking questions--a weakness that was always placing me in false
positions. But my efforts to make myself agreeable to the boys were
not unsuccessful, and while I looked in vain for anything like the
romantic adventures of which my brother had spoken, I sometimes found
myself almost enjoying my new life. And then, as the children say in the streets of London, I woke
up, and discovered that I was desperately home-sick. Partly no
doubt this was due to a natural reaction, but there were other
more obvious causes. For one thing my lavish hospitality had
exhausted my pocket-money in the first three weeks, and I was
ashamed to write home for more so soon. This speedy end to my
apparent wealth certainly made it easier for the boys to find
out that I was not one of themselves, and they began to look at
me askance and leave me out of their conversations. I was made
to feel once more that I had been born under a malignant star
that did not allow me to speak or act as they did. I had not
their common sense, their blunt cheerfulness, their complete
lack of sensibility, and while they resented my queerness they
could not know how anxious I was to be an ordinary boy. When I
saw that they mistrusted me I was too proud to accept the crumbs
of their society like poor mother F----, and I withdrew myself into
a solitude that gave me far too much time in which to examine my
emotions. I found out all the remote corners of the school in
which it was possible to be alone, and when the other boys went
for walks in the fields, I stayed in the churchyard close to the
school, disturbing the sheep in their meditations among the
tomb-stones, and thinking what a long time it would be before I
was old enough to die. Now that the first freshness of my new environment had worn off, I
was able to see my life as a series of grey pictures that repeated
themselves day by day. In my mind these pictures were marked off
from each other by a sound of bells. I woke in the morning in a bed
that was like all the other beds, and lay on my back listening to
the soft noises of sleep that filled the air with rumours of healthy
boys. The bell would ring and the dormitory would break into an
uproar, splashing of water, dropping of hair-brushes and shouts of
laughter, for these super-boys could laugh before breakfast. Then we
all trooped downstairs and I forced myself to drink bad coffee in a
room that smelt of herrings. The next bell called us to chapel, and
at intervals during the morning other bells called us from one class
to another. Dinner was the one square meal we had during the day,
and as it was always very good, and there was nothing morbid about
my appetite, I looked forward to it with interest. After dinner we
played football. I liked the game well enough, but the atmosphere of
mud and forlorn grey fields made me shudder, and as I kept goal I
spent my leisure moments in hardening my æesthetic impressions. I
never see the word football today without recalling the curious
sensation caused by the mud drying on my bare knees. After football
were other classes, classes in which it was sometimes very hard to
keep awake, for the school was old, and the badly ventilated
class-rooms were stuffy after the fresh air. Then the bell summoned
us to evening chapel and tea--a meal which we were allowed to
improve with sardines and eggs and jam, if we had money to buy them
or a hamper from home. After tea we had about two hours to ourselves
and then came preparation, and supper and bed. Everything was
heralded by a bell, and now and again even in the midst of lessons
I would hear the church-bell tolling for a funeral. I think my hatred of bells dated back to my early childhood, when the
village church, having only three bells, played the first bar of
"Three Blind Mice" a million times every Sunday evening, till I could
have cried for monotony and the vexation of the thwarted tune. But at
school I had to pay the penalty for my prejudice every hour of the
day. Especially I suffered at night during preparation, when they
rang the curfew on the church bells at intolerable length, for these
were tranquil hours to which I looked forward eagerly. We prepared
our lessons for the morrow in the Great Hall, and I would spread my
books out on the desk and let my legs dangle from the form in a
spirit of contentment for the troubled day happily past. Over my head
the gas stars burned quietly, and all about me I heard the restrained
breathing of comrades, like a noise of fluttering moths. And then,
suddenly, the first stroke of the curfew would snarl through the air,
filling the roof with nasal echoes, and troubling the quietude of my
mind with insistent vibrations. I derived small satisfaction from
cursing William the Conqueror, who, the history book told me, was
responsible for this ingenious tyranny. The long pauses between the
strokes held me in a state of strained expectancy until I wanted to
howl. I would look about me for sympathy and see the boys at their
lessons, and the master on duty reading quietly at his table. The
curfew rang every night, and they did not notice it at all. The only bell I liked to hear was the last bell that called us to our
brief supper and to bed, for once the light was out and my body was
between the sheets I was free to do what I would, free to think or to
dream or to cry. There was no real difference between being in bed at
school or anywhere else; and sometimes I would fill the shadows of
the dormitory with the familiar furniture of my little bedroom at
home, and pretend that I was happy. But as a rule I came to bed
brimming over with the day's tears, and I would pull the bedclothes
over my head so that the other boys should not know that I was
homesick, and cry until I was sticky with tears and perspiration. The discipline at school did not make us good boys, but it made us
civilised; it taught us to conceal our crimes. And as home-sickness
was justly regarded as a crime of ingratitude to the authorities and
to society in general, I had to restrain my physical weakness during
the day, and the reaction from this restraint made my tears at night
almost a luxury. My longing for home was founded on trifles, but it
was not the less passionate. I hated this life spent in walking on
bare boards, and the blank walls and polished forms of the school
appeared to me to be sordid.