Kitabı oku: «The Gods and Mr. Perrin», sayfa 12

CHAPTER XIII—MR. PERRIN LISTENS WHILE THEY ALL MAKE SPEECHES

I

THE next day, its brilliant sun and hard, shining cold, brought in its train great things.

The last day of the Christmas term was in some ways greater than the last day of the summer term, because it was a more private family affair.

One addressed one’s ancestors, one arrayed one’s traditions, one fashioned one’s history, with flags and flowers and orations, but it was in the midst of the family that it was done.

Parents—mothers and fathers and cousins—were indeed there, but they, too, must recognize that it was not for their immediate individual Johnny or Charles that these things were done, but rather for the great worship and recognition of Sir Marmaduke Boniface.

Sir Marmaduke Boniface has hitherto received no mention in this slender history, but his importance in any chronicle of Moffatt’s cannot be over-estimated. He was a Cornish; magnate, living and dying some hundred years ago, growing rich in the pursuit of jam, building large stone mansions out of that same delicacy, fat, pompous, and fading at last into a heavy stone monument in the corner of the church at the bottom of the Brown Hill—a great man in his day and in his place, amongst other things the founder of Moffatt’s.

It was not very long ago; outside the confines of Cornwall he had been perhaps but vaguely recognized—perchance, perchance, the surest foundation of an extravagant record.... No matter, here we have our tradition, and let us make the best possible use of it.

But this Marmadukery—a hideous word, but it serves—spread far beyond that stout originator. It was the spirit of the public school, the esprit de corps signified by the School song (it began “Procul in Cornubia,” and was violently shouted at stated intervals during the year), the splendid appeal “to our fathers who have played in these fields before us”—this was the cry that these banners and orations signified. Moffatt’s was not a very old school, true—but shout enough about some founder or other and the smallest boy will have tears in his eyes and a proud swelling at his breast. Sir Marmaduke becomes medieval, mystic, “the great, good man” of history, and Moffatt’s is “one of our good old schools. There’s nothing like our public school system, you know—has its faults, of course; but tradition—that ‘s the Thing.”

The stout figure of Sir Marmaduke hangs heavy over the day. Everyone feels it—everyone feels a great many other things as well, but Sir Marmaduke is the Thing.

He was the Thing in some vague, blind way even to Mrs. Comber, so that he kept coming into the confused but happy conversation to which she treated anxious parents on the morning of this great day. Mothers arrived in great numbers on these occasions, and these three great days of the three terms were to Mrs. Comber the happiest and most confused events in the year. They marked an approaching freedom, they marked the immediate return of her own children, and they marked an amazing number of things that ought to be done at once, with the confusing feeling about Sir Marmaduke also in the air.

But to-day she was happy; this horrible, terrible term was almost over. She had been so sure that something dreadful was going to happen, and nothing dreadful had happened, after all. They were safe—or almost safe—and her dear Isabel and Isabel’s young man would be out of the place before they knew where they were. Then her own Freddie had last night, suddenly, before going to bed, taken her in his arms and kissed her as he had never kissed her before. Oh! things were going to be all right… they were escaping for a time at any rate. In the thought of the holidays, of a month’s freedom, everything that had happened during the term was swiftly becoming faint and vague and distant.

Now she was smiling in her sitting-room with four mothers about her, one very fat and one very thin, one in blue and one in gray, and they all sat very stiff in their chairs and listened to what she had to say.

She had a great deal to say, because she was feeling so happy, and happiness always provoked volubility, but she made the mistake of talking to all four of them at once, and they, in vain, like anglers at a pool, flung, desperately, hurried little sentences at her, but secured no attention. Beyond and above it all was the shadow of Sir Marmaduke.

But her happiness, when she drove them at length from her, caught at the advancing figure of Isabel, with a cry and a clasp of the hand: “My dear!—no, we ‘ve only got a minute, because lunch is early—one o’clock, and cold—you don’t mind, do you, dear; but there’s to be such a dinner to-night, and I’ve just had four mothers, and wise is n’t the word for what I’ve been, although I confused all their children as I always do, bless their hearts. But, oh! the term’s over, and I could go on my knees and thank Heaven that it is, because I ‘ve never hated anything so much, and if it had lasted another week I should have struck off Mrs. Dormer’s head for the way she’s treating you, for dead sure certain—”

“Archie’s not coming back, you know,” Isabel interrupted.

“Oh, my dear, I knew. He went and saw Moy-Thompson last week, and of course it’s the wisest thing, and I only wish my Freddie was as young and we’d be off from here tomorrow.” She stopped and sighed a little and looked through the window at the hard, shining ground, the stiff, bare trees, the sharp outline of the buildings. “But it’s no use wishing,” she went on cheerfully enough, “and we won’t any of us think of next term at all but only of the blessed month of freedom that’s in front of us.” Her voice softened; she put her hand on Isabel’s arm. “All the same, my dear, I’m glad you and Archie are getting away from it all. It was touching him, you know.”

“Yes, I saw it,” the girl answered. “And I don’t want him to schoolmaster again if he can help it. I think with father’s help he ‘ll be able to get a Government office of some sort.” She hesitated, then said, smiling a little, “Are you and Mr. Comber—” She stopped.

“Yes, my dear,” said Mrs. Comber bruskily, “we are—and there ‘s no doubt that things are better than they have been. I suppose marriage is always like that: there ‘s the thrilling time at first, and then you find it is n’t there any longer and you’ve got to make up your mind to getting along. Things rub you up, you know, and I’m sure I ‘ve been as tiresome as anything, and then there’s a good big row and the air’s cleared—and shall I wear that big yellow hat or the black one this afternoon?”

“The black one fits the day better,” said Isabel absent-mindedly. She was wondering whether the time would ever come when she and Archie would feel ordinary about each other.

“But isn’t it funny,” she went on, “that here we are at the end of the term, and already, with the holiday beginning, all our quarrels and fights about things like that silly umbrella are seeming impossible? It was all too absurd, and yet I was as angry as anyone.”

“It all comes,” said Mrs. Comber, “of our living too close. Now that we’re going to spread out over the holidays, we ‘re as friendly as anything, although really, my dear, I hate Mrs. Dormer as much as ever”—which was difficult to believe when that lady arrived at a quarter-past two to pick up Mrs. Comber and Isabel and to go with them to the prize-giving.

Her dress was obviously very stiff and difficult, with a high, black neck to it, with little ridges of whalebone all around it, and out of this she spoke and smiled. The two ladies were very pleasant to one another as they walked down the path to the school hall.

“And where are you going for your Christmas vacation, Mrs. Comber?”

“I really don’t know. It depends so much on the boys and the housemaid. I mean the housemaid’s given notice, you know, because I had to speak to her about breathing when handing round the vegetables; and she gave notice on the spot, as they all do when I speak to them, and unless I can get another, I really don’t think I shall ever be able to get away.”

“Really, what servants are coming to!” Mrs. Dormer was struggling with her collar like a dog. “Poor Mrs. Comber, I am so sorry—of course management’s the thing, but we haven’t all the gift and can’t expect to have it.”

“And Mrs. Dormer, I do hope that you are going to be here over Christmas, so that we can keep each other company. It would be so nice if you and Mr. Dormer would come to us on Boxing evening, even if I have n’t got a housemaid, and I heard of a very likely one from Mrs. Rose yesterday—quite a nice girl she sounded—who’s been under-parlormaid at Colonel Forster’s now for the last five years, and never a fault to find with her except a tendency to catching cold, which made her sniff at times.”

“Oh, thank you, dear Mrs. Comber; but my husband and I are hoping to spend a few days in London about that time. Otherwise we should have loved—”

For so much charity is the presence of Sir Marmaduke Boniface responsible.

II

Sir Marmaduke, and all that his coming signified, was also responsible for clearing the air in other directions. Young Traill found, on this morning, that people were very much pleasanter to him than they had hitherto been. The coming holidays were obviously to be a truce, and, as he was not returning next term, it was an end of things so far as he was concerned. He could not feel proud of it all. The events of the term had shown him that he was not nearly so fine a fellow as he had thought himself. His pride, his temper, his irritation—all these things were lions with which he had never fought before: now they must always, for the future, be consciously kept in check.

He was tired, exhausted, worn-out. He was very glad that he was going away—now he would be able to have Isabel to himself, and they might, together, forget this horrible nightmare of a term. He looked on the buildings of Moffatt’s as the iron prison of some hideous dream. He could not sleep for the thought of it. Last night he had had some bad dream… he could not remember now what it had been, but he had wakened suddenly in a great panic, to imagine that someone was closing his door. Of course it had only been the wind, but he hoped that he would sleep properly to-night.

At any rate he was glad that people were going to be pleasant to him on this last day of the term. The stout Miss Madder, Dormer, Clinton—they all seemed to be sorry that he was going, in spite of all the trouble that he had made. He did not think of Perrin....

Then he suddenly remembered Birkland. He would go and say good-by to him.

He climbed the steep stairs and found the little man busily packing. The floor was covered with packing cases, books lay about in piles, and the air was full of dust.

“Hullo!” said Traill, coughing in the doorway, “what’s all this?”

“Hullo!” said Birkland, looking up. “I’m glad you ‘ve come. I was coming round to see you, if you hadn’t. I’m off for good.”

“Off for good!” Traill stared in astonishment.

“Well, for good or bad. The things that have happened this term have finally screwed me up to a last attempt. One more struggle before I die—nothing can be worse than this—I gave notice last week.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Traill.

“I don’t know—it’s mad enough, I expect. But I’ve saved a tiny hit of money that will keep me for a time. I shall have a shot at anything. Nothing can he as bad as this—nothing!”

He stood up, looking grim and scant enough in his shirt-sleeves with dust on his cheeks and his hair on end.

“Well, I’m damned!” said Traill. “Well, after all, I’m on the same game. I don’t know what I’m going to do either. We ‘re both in the same box.”

“Oh!” said Birkland, “you’ve got youth and a beautiful lady to help you. I’m alone, and most of the spirit’s knocked out of me after twenty years of this; but I’m going to have a shot—so wish me luck!”

“Why, of course I do,” said Traill, coming up to him. “We ‘ll do it together—we ‘ll see heaps of each other.”

“Ah! heaps!” said Birkland, shaking his head. “No, I’m too dry and dusty a stick by this time for young fellows like you. No, I’m better alone. But I ‘ll come and see you one day.”

“You were quite right,” said Traill suddenly, “in what you said about the place the evening at the beginning of the term when I came in to see you. You were quite right.”

“Poor boy,” said Birkland, looking at him affectionately, “you had a hard dose of it. Perhaps it was all for the best, really. It drove you out. If I’d been treated to that kind of row at the beginning, I mightn’t have been here twenty years. And, after all, you met Miss Desart here.”

“Yes,” said Traill, “that makes it worth it fifty times over.”

“And now,” went on Birkland grimly, “this afternoon you shall see the closing scene of our pageant. You shall see our glory, our tradition. You will hear the head of our body state his satisfaction with the term’s work, proclaim his delight at the friendly spirit that pervades the school, allude, through the great Sir Marmaduke Boniface, maker of strawberry jam, to our ancient and honorable tradition in which we all, from the eldest to the youngest, have our humble share.” He spread his arms. “Oh! the mockery of it! To get out of it!—to get out of it! And now, at last, after twenty years, I’m going. If it hadn’t been for you, Traill, I believe I’d be here still. Well, perhaps it’s to breaking stones on a road that I’m going… at any rate, it won’t be this.”

And so here, too, Sir Marmaduke Boniface is remembered and has his influence.

III

But with all these fine spirits, with all this stir and friendly feeling, with all this preparation for a great event, Mr. Perrin had little to do. This morning had, in no way, been for him a reconciling or a triumph at approaching freedom. After some three or four hours’ troubled and confused sleep he awoke to the humiliating, maddening consciousness that he had again, now for the second time, missed his chance.

This one thing that he had thought he could do he had missed once more; not even at this last, blind vengeance was he any good.

To-morrow it would be too late; Traill, his enemy, would be gone, they would all be gone, and he would return, next term, the same insignificant creature at whom they had all laughed for so long; and then it would be worse than ever, because Traill would have escaped him, and in the distant ages it would be told how once there had been a young man, straight from the University, who had flung him to the ground and trampled on him, and beaten him, in all probability, with his own umbrella....

Ah, no! it was not to be borne—the thing must be done; there must be no missing of an opportunity this third time.

He heard the Repetition that morning with a vacant mind. Somerset-Walpole knew nothing about it, but for once in his life he suffered no punishment. Perrin thought afterwards that Garden Minimus had looked at him as though he would like to speak to him, but he could not think of Garden Minimus now—there were other more important things to think about.

Of course it must be done that night—there was only one night left. Afterwards he thought that he would go down to the sea and drown himself. He had heard that drowning was rather pleasant.

His mind was busy, all that morning, with the things that everyone would say afterwards. He wished very much that he could stay behind in some way that he might hear what they said. At any rate, they would be able to laugh at him no longer; he would appear to all of them as something terrible, portentous, awful… that, at any rate, was a satisfaction. Miss Desart, of course, would be sorry. That was a pity, because he did not wish to hurt Miss Desart; but, in the end, it would be all for the best, because she was much too good for a man like Traill and would only be unhappy if she married him.

What a scene there would be when they found Traill in bed with his throat cut!—no, they would not laugh at him again!

He spoke to nobody that morning; but, when Repetition was over, he went back to his room and sat there, quite still, in his chair, looking in front of him, with the door closed.

And then Traill came up and spoke to him just as he was on his way up to the school for the speeches.

He smiled and said, “Oh! I say, Perrin, do let us make it all up—now that term is over, and I ‘m not coming back. I do hate to think that we should not part friends—it’s all been my stupid fault, and I am so very sorry.”

But Perrin did not stop, nor answer. He walked straight up the path with his eyes looking neither to the left nor the right. After all, you couldn’t shake hands with a man whose throat you were going to cut in the evening. He heard Traill’s exasperated “Oh! very well,” and then he passed into Big School.

He stepped into the hall as unobtrusively as possible. The boys were always there first, and it was their way to cheer the masters as they came in. If you were very popular, they cheered you loudly; if you were unpopular, they cheered you not at all. Perrin had no illusions about his popularity, and the silence on his entrance did not therefore surprise him, but matters were not improved by the roar of cheering that greeted Traill. Ah, well! they would never cheer him again.

The boys were placed in rows down the room according to their forms, and the masters sat where they pleased. Perrin stationed himself in a corner by the wall at the back; he fastened his eyes on the platform and kept them there until the end of the ceremonies—no one noticed him—no one spoke to him—not for him were their songs and festivals.

The raised platform at the end of the hall was surrounded with flowers, and ranged against the wall, seated on hard, uncertain chairs were the Governing Body, or as many of the Governing Body as had spared time to come.

These were for the most part large, serious, elderly gentlemen, with stout bodies, and shining, beady eyes; their immovability implied that they considered that the business would be sooner over were they passive and as nonexistent as possible—they all wore a considerable amount of watch-chain.

In front of them was a long, black table, and on this were ranged the prizes—a number of impossibly shiny volumes that might have been biscuit-tins, for all the reading that they seemed to contain. Beside them in a wooden armchair was seated a little man like a sparrow, in patent leather boots and a high, white collar, whose smile was intermittent, but regular.

This was Sir Arthur Spalding, who had been asked to give away the prizes, because ten other gentlemen had been invited and refused. On the other side of the table the Rev. Moy-Thompson tried to express geniality and authority by the curves of his fingers and the bend of his head; he stroked his beard at intervals. In the front rows the ladies were seated: Mrs. Comber, large and smiling, in purple; Mrs. Moy-Thompson, endeavoring to escape her husband’s eye, but drawn thither continually as though by a magnet; the Misses Madder, Mrs. Dormer, Isabel, and many parents.

The proceedings opened with a speech from the Rev. Moy-Thompson. He alluded, of course, in the first place to Sir Marmaduke Boniface, “our founder, hero, and example”; then by delicate stages to Sir Arthur Spalding, whose patent leather boots simply shone with delight at the pleasant things that were said. This preface over, he dilated on the successes of the term. K. Somers had been made a Commissioner of Police in Orang-Mazu-Za (cheers); W. Binnors had been fifteenth in an examination that had something to do with Tropical Diseases (more cheers); M. Watson had received the College Essay Prize at St. Catherine’s College, Cambridge; and C. Duffield had obtained a second class in the first part of the Previous Examination at the same university (frantic cheering, because Duffield had been last year’s captain of the Rugby football.) All this, Mr. Moy-Thompson said, was exceedingly encouraging, and they could not help reflecting that Sir Marmaduke Boniface, were he conscious of these successes, would be extremely pleased (cheers). Passing on to the present term, he was delighted to be able to say that never, in all his long period as headmaster, could he remember a more equable and energetic term (cheers). As a term it had been marked perhaps by no events of special magnitude, but rather by the cordial friendliness of all those concerned. Masters and boys, they had all worked together with a will. It was a familiar saying that “a nation was blessed that had no history”—well, that applied to such a term as the one just concluded (cheers). If he might allude once more to their excellent Founder, he was quite sure that Sir Marmaduke Boniface was precisely the kind of man to rejoice in this spirit of friendship (cheers). He must here allude for a moment to his staff. Surely a headmaster had never been surrounded with so pleasant a body of men—men who understood exactly the kind of esprit de corps necessary if a school’s work were to be properly carried on; men who put aside all private feelings for the one great purpose of making Moffatt’s a great school—that was, he truly believed, the one aim and object of every man and boy in Moffatt’s—they might be sure that was the one and only aim and object that he ever kept before him. He had nothing more to do but introduce Sir Arthur Spalding, who would give away the prizes.

Mr. Moy-Thompson sat down, hot and inspired, amidst a burst of frantic cheering and clapping, but was suddenly chilled by the consciousness of Mr. Perrin’s eyes glaring at him in the strangest manner across the room. He shifted his chair a little to the left, so that a boy’s head intervened. The Governing Body at the conclusion of his speech moved their heads to the right, then to the left, smiled once, and resumed their immovability.

Sir Arthur Spalding was nervous, but found courage to say that he believed in our public schools—that was the thing that made men of us—he should never forget what he himself owed to Harrow. He should like to say one thing to the boys—that they were not to think that winning prizes was everything. We couldn’t all win prizes; let those who failed to obtain them remember that “slow and steady wins the race.” It wasn’t always the boys who won prizes who got on best afterwards. No—um—ah—he never used to win prizes at school himself. It wasn’t always the boys—here he pulled himself up and remembered that he had said it before. There was something else that he’d wanted to say, but he’d quite forgotten what it was. Here he was conscious of Mr. Perrin’s eyes and thought that he’d never seen anything so discouraging. He did not seem to be able to escape them. What a dangerous-looking man!

So he hurriedly concluded. Just one word he’d like to leave them from our great poet Tennyson—! He looked for the little piece of paper on which he had written the verse. He could not find it; he searched his pockets—no—where had he put it? Lady Spalding, in the third row, suffered horrible agonies. He recovered himself and was vague. He would advise them all to read Tennyson, a fine poet, a very fine poet—yes—and now he would give away the prizes.

IV

Meanwhile, Mr. Perrin up to the commencement of Mr. Moy-Thompson’s speech, had been merely conscious that a period of waiting had, so to speak, “to be put in.” He was not aware, in the very least, that his eyes were causing both Sir Arthur Spalding and Mr. Moy-Thompson acute discomfort; he was not aware that boys were looking at him, watching him with eager curiosity and nudging one another, speculatively. He was not aware that Isabel’s eyes were upon him, eyes of pity “because he looked so queer, as though he had a headache.”

He stood there, beside the small round-eyed boys of the First and Second Forms, staring in front of him, without moving. The first words of Moy-Thompson’s speech fell upon his ears unconsciously. It did not matter what they said, it did not matter what they thought, the case at issue was between himself and Traill and he faced that with an irritated impatience at these tiresome hours that kept him from his eager realization.

He began slowly to understand the things that Moy-Thompson was saying. And suddenly it was as though he had, morally and mentally, taken himself, forcibly, out of one room into another—out of a room in which there was only Traill’s figure, gray, shadowy, by the door, otherwise dark, obscured by a clinging mist… a dangerous place… into a place that had for its furniture tangible things, things like this speech that Moy-Thompson was making, things that had to do with no especial figure, but rather with a vast, intolerable condition, with a system.

What was he saying?… How dare he? Perrin moved impatiently in his place. He looked at the row of faces raised to the platform, the silly, stupid faces. That Mrs. Thompson in her thin black dress with her bony neck; that silly, cheerful Mrs. Comber in her bulging, flaming garments; that Lady Spalding, so stiff and sharp, as though she were of any importance to anyone—all of them listening to these things that Moy-Thompson was saying, and believing them, believing these… Lies!

Traill was almost forgotten as Perrin stepped a little forward from the wall in order that he might hear better. The sight of Moy-Thompson’s face up there on the platform smiling, so complacent, patriarchal with that white beard wagging at the end of it, brought the blood to his head. He clenched his thin hands. What were the other men doing that they could stand there and listen to these lies? Why did they not step forward and tell the truth to all those stupid women and those fat governors, to the little man with the shining boots on the platform? They knew that these thing were lies. Had not this term been hell, had it not been slow torture for them all, had not that man with the white beard full knowledge of these lies that he was telling? What was his private quarrel with Traill as compared with this monstrous injustice? He was pale now, with a long red mark against the white of his cheek. He had stepped right away from the wall and the small boys of the First and Second Forms were watching him.

It came upon him suddenly, like a flash from the lightning of heaven, that it was for him to escape these things. He had suffered more than the others, he knew better than they the things that were done in this place! Something was going round in his head like a red-hot wire, but he remembered, even at that confused moment, that scene a few days before in the common room, when they had all been so nearly stirred to revolt by Birkland. What if he were to break the bonds?… What rot! what rot! what rot! He could have shouted it to the roof—“Lies! Lies! Lies!”

There was a little stir and rustle as Moy-Thompson finished his speech—ladies’ dresses moved against the chairs, boots slipped along the floor—and then a burst of cheering and clapping. Perrin rubbed his hands against one another—they were hot and dry and something rather like a bobbin on a latch went up and down in his throat—his eyes were burning. He moved a little further from the wall and a little nearer to the central gangway between the blocks of boys.

And now Sir Arthur Spalding stood nervously behind the glittering copies of “Tennyson’s Poems,” Sir Robert Ball’s “Wonders of the Heavens,” “The Works of Spencer,” and other volumes of our admirable classics. They began with the bottom of the school, and a small fat boy with a crimson face, boots that creaked like a badly-oiled door and were shaped like Chinese boats, staggered up to the platform. A lady, prominent for her size and large picture hat moved eagerly in her chair, clapped vehemently with her white gloves and so proclaimed herself a mother.

Sir Arthur Spalding had every intention of making a pleasant speech to each prizewinner—“something that they could remember afterwards, you know”—and began to say something to the small and red-faced boy, but was startled by the sound of eager, anticipatory breathing close to his ear. Turning round, he discovered that three more small boys were waiting anxiously for their turn and that others were coming up the room. He therefore hurried along with “Here you are, my boy. Remember that prizes aren’t everything in life—hope you ‘ll read it—delightful book.”

Mr. Perrin watched these boys passing up and down with eager eyes. He must wait—now was not the time, but soon there would be another speech to thank the absurd man with the boots for giving the prizes away. To his excited fancy it seemed to him now that the rest of the staff were looking at him as though they knew what he was going to do. They must have felt as indignant as he did at those lies that this man had been telling them. But those governors should know the truth for once at any rate and in a way that they should not forget… strangely, in the back of his mind he wished that his mother could be present....

The senior boys were going up for their prizes now and were cheered according to their popularity. The Cricket captain, an enormous fellow, had secured something for Mathematics, and the room burst into a tempest of applause as he moved heavily up to the platform. He seemed very pleased with it all, Mr. Perrin thought, and received his prize with a flushed face and a friendly smile, and yet he had always been one of the leading rebels in the school. How easily these people were subdued, with a book and a few pleasant words—fool! Mr. Perrin’s breath came quicker as he watched the boy stumble back to his seat.

Then, the prizes delivered, Mr. Moy-Thompson rose to say a few words. It had been very gratifying, he said, to all of them to have so distinguished a visitor as Sir Arthur Spalding amongst them that afternoon. It must have been difficult for Sir Arthur to have found time amongst so many engagements to come and spend an afternoon with them. (Cheers—Sir Arthur conveys a sense of hurry and confusion and looks at his shirt cuffs as though his engagements were written down there.) They on their part were greatly the gainers because there was no one in the room, however young, however inexperienced, who would not remember, as long as he lived, those words of encouragement and cheer. Indeed, it was not only for the winners of prizes that life was intended (here Mr. Moy-Thompson repeated many of Sir Arthur Spalding’s remarks and the governors moved restlessly in their chairs), but (and here Mr. Moy-Thompson started on a new note) it might not be, perhaps, presumptuous of him to hope that it was not only for them that afternoon might have pleasant memories. For Sir Arthur Spalding also, he might hope, there would be times in the future when he would look back and remember that he had seen, for an instant at least, one of our British public schools in one of its happiest and most prosperous phases. He might flatter himself—