Part 13

I have just been reading F. R. G. Duckworth's "Leaves from a Pedagogue's Sketch-Book." I wish I had his gift for writing. I could a tale unfold of life at a Public School which would dispel a few hundred of the fatuous superstitions that have grown, I know not how, round our ancient homes of learning. But if I did even so much as reveal this diary I should be out of a job in a week.

We are in the middle of one of the more delectable sorts of row. A few days ago a field-day was fixed against Blowborough, but it had to be scratched owing to disease on their part. A House match was hastily substituted and duly posted at 12.45 on the day. One of the Houses refused to turn out because they were not given longer warning. Hallows is in a fine state of frenzy. What will happen to the captain of the offending House I can't think. Games "bloods" do occasionally get obstreperous, but do not often care to risk Hallows' wrath. I shall be interested to see the _dénouement_.

I have been into Scarborough with Pollock to see _Passers-By_ and _Hindle Wakes_. Houghton's play seems to me to be epoch-making. Quite apart from its merits as a play the subject was (to me) so novel. It expresses so much of the new spirit, the spirit that refuses to be limited by the narrow conventions of its fathers and carves out a new line for itself regardless of public opinion. It seems to me that Fanny Hawthorn was quite justified in refusing to marry the man she went off with. He was just an amusement, an adventure. Two wrongs can never make a right. She wanted a week-end of liberty, excitement--call it what you will, and took it, ready to pay her part of the damage.... The evil certainly does not lie in her refusal to marry the man, but, if there is any (which I take leave to doubt), in going off with him in the first place. There are people who have to learn what life means by getting burnt: she was lucky enough only to get singed and not ruined for life. Her sort does not go on the streets. She probably settled down to married life with a man after her own heart very soon. But does the quiet humdrum pleasure of safe marriage ever give the golden ecstatic moments that come from dangerous romantic passionate episodes of a day? The audience made me acutely sick. They shivered with delight at the "daring" of it--though what there is "daring" in it I don't know. It is more like a sermon than a play.

We are acting _The Great Adventure_ at Radchester: just half a dozen of us in Common Room suddenly hit upon the idea. We have the new Bursar for stage manager, a fellow called Harding. He has been all sorts of things, including music-hall proprietor, actor and stage manager of a suburban theatre. He does not find it easy to fall into line with our rigid conventions. Outwardly he conforms rather well, being a born actor, but he manages to live two quite distinct lives, one which pleases the heart of the Head Master, energetic at his work, asking no questions and simply doing his duty, the other, lighthearted and gay away in the town where he spends a great deal of his time. In conjunction with one of the music masters he is writing a musical comedy: they practise scenes every night. It is most ludicrously silly, but certainly not worse than 90 per cent. of the musical comedies I have seen. Harding has a distinct turn for witty lyrical writing, built on a lifelong devotion to W. S. Gilbert.

The "club" has improved since I first joined it: we all now try to improvise something to earn our cake and whisky. Harding writes songs, Benson puts them to music, Jimson and I dance or tell stories, some one plays a banjo or a violin, and we rouse the night air with a catch. I don't altogether like even all the members of the club, but when I get very lonely or depressed in my own rooms I go there, in order to forget myself awhile. I don't seem able to make any close friend on the staff. There is no one there, for instance, who matters to me half so much as Tony, and at times I doubt whether I ought to take up so much of his attention. After all, a boy at school comes to play and work among his equals, not to mix with grown-ups. Tony has too many advanced ideas, owing, I suppose, to the books I lend him and the talks we have so frequently together. I must try to deny myself the pleasure of his society more than I do. Of late I have been extraordinarily pleased at some of the work which several boys have shown up. Really quite a number of the short stories and verses I get are worthy of publication in some magazines. I try to encourage boys to submit their best stuff after I have sub-edited it to various editors with whom I have dealings. Tony has already had one poem accepted by the _Monthly Magazine_.

I find that the average boy drinks in Swinburne, Morris and Henley with extraordinary relish when he won't look at Keats and Shelley. The first business is to get him really interested in anything: the decadent phase will soon pass. I tried "The Dynasts" on them and failed miserably. The really good stuff is utterly beyond them--perhaps they'll remember later on and come back to it with proper understanding. I must share my own great joys and discoveries in literature: I can't keep a really fine thing like "The Dynasts" to myself. Common Room won't listen: they think I'm crazy on the moderns for whom they have no use--not that they read the ancients, but they do allow them a place in education. The moderns they abuse as mere wasters of time. I have been trying for various Head Masterships and been offered that of Chipping Campden. I was particularly tempted to accept it at first, because of the beauty of the place. Mais, Stapleton, and I used to walk out there from Oxford on Sundays: it is one of the most perfect mediæval towns I know, but it is probably too remote from the bustle of life for a man like myself. Anyway I refused it.

_December 20, 1912_

We have had some good sermons this term from visitors. One man on the Beauty of Holiness tried to make us see what there was of beauty in even this arid wilderness: he succeeded rather well--but then, of course, he doesn't have to live here. He vainly imagines that we consider the sea to be the real sea instead of a waste of grey water, ugly and cruel. Then we had a most famous man, who tried to make all the school go and confess their vices to him: his mistake was to imagine that there was but one vice and that one practised by 90 per cent. of the school. You can't do much with a man who has got a bee in his bonnet to that extent. Although he was sincere and obviously affected many of the boys, he rather irritated me. I wish I could settle in my mind what is the sort of sermon boys ought to have. The one we had last term on keeping the Divine spark alive was certainly the best I have ever heard, but that may be because I agreed with every word about the necessity of cultivating individuality and imagination. In some ways it would be good for us to hear more about Church doctrine: we are really rather vague about our beliefs.

I am afraid the "ragging" of Koenig is not confined to the boys: he has lately been elected to the "club," and we do our level best to make him drunk: we tell him the tallest of yarns about impossible old customs which we celebrate for his benefit. He must think us--oh, I don't know what he makes of us. In my heart I am really sorry for him. Of late I have taken to going to see him by myself. Of course by now he sees that he has been hopelessly "ragged" ever since he came, but he has a wonderful belief that in the end he will settle down. When this generation has passed on, he will be stricter and the younger boys will reverence him. Poor devil, he doesn't realize that his name is already a byword and that it will become a standing tradition to "rag" him for all time. There is the case of old "Parsnips" Askew: he has been here for thirty years and not a day passes without some silly trick being passed upon him. Sometimes his form will come clad as if for amateur theatricals with the excuse that they hadn't time to change, and they will go on with their (imagined) rehearsal while he tries in vain to teach. On other occasions they come in in uniform and drill; there are endless variants: four or five will faint and the rest of the form rush about in all directions for water or carry the "bodies" out and never return.

I don't envy Askew his life at all. Boys are merciless devils when they find they have a master in their power. It is all very well to say that a man must have the whip-hand of his class. Once he has lost it he stands precious little chance of ever regaining it. Koenig is pathetically anxious to make good. For some obscure reason he loves the life here and dreads every day lest he should receive notice to quit. I suppose this love of "ragging" is ingrained. Although I sympathize with and quite like the poor old ass, yet I am as bad as anybody at pulling his leg. About three weeks ago four of us all pretended to be as drunk as man can be and we knocked him about in a most shameful manner and kicked up the devil of a row in his rooms, half wrecking the place. In the end he had to put each of us to bed.

After _The Great Adventure_, in which I was too nervous to be much good, I got bitten with the craze of acting, and made my Saturday evening juniors prepare two short plays for the last night of term. That has taken up every hour of my spare time lately and most of my hard-earned salary, for I have to feed the whole cast at every rehearsal.

We've got a wonderful new parson master this term who has any amount of originality and cares for no authority. He preached the other day on the text of "a _man_ bearing a pitcher of water," emphasizing the need for _men_ to take upon themselves the duty of bearing religion into the home and not leaving it to the women. I rather think that he fulfils my ideal of a school preacher. He never has any notes, but simply talks in a most personal way about the difficulties that beset him, problems of public interest, even controversial topics. He, at any rate, tries to rouse the intellectual and æsthetic faculties and he is inordinately cheerful always in spite of wretched health.

Boys crowd to his rooms for spiritual advice. He is almost the perfect mediator that a priest should be: his own devotion to God irradiates from him at all times and in all places. He is ever gay and sunny, and refuses resolutely ever to be drawn into the thousand little petty quarrels in which the rest of us indulge: his own forms worship him.

I have made friends with several outcasts this term, boys who don't fit into the scheme of things and are as a consequence morose, irritable and unhappy. I try my best to make them see the point of school rules and all the rest of the red tape against which they rebel, but I do so in such an unconvincing, lukewarm way that I might just as well keep silence. At any rate they have a refuge in my rooms and thank God they take it. I have had a very good offer made me by the Head Master of Welborough. He wants me at once. When I went to see the Head Master about it he refused to let me go.

"Of course," said he, "if you choose to pay the school a term's salary for breach of contract, I cannot prevent you from leaving but----"

I can't see myself able to forfeit a whole term's salary at any period of my career.

So that's that! Of course I am not anxious to leave because of my innumerable friends among the boys: I am rather like a cat in some ways. If I had any sense I should take no notice of the Head, who really loathes me, and go.

Three members of the staff are leaving. No one stays here long, and really I don't wonder. There seems very little point in cutting oneself right off from human life, or the chance of ever making any money or any good thing out of life.

And yet I stay ... I am very like a cat.

XII

_December 31, 1912_

My form play was a great success on the last night of term: boys really are far better actors than grown-up people as a rule. They enter into the spirit of the part more quickly.

I spent Christmas quietly at home, reading, overeating myself, writing letters, dispatching Christmas cards, attending a vast number of church services, visiting the cottagers, dancing in the village schoolroom, and gossiping with my father and mother. On the 27th I came down to Bath for the Christmas dances. That night, at the first one, I found to my intense disappointment that Ruth was unable at the last minute to come. That young ass Conyngham arrived just after me. I therefore dashed into the vestibule as quickly as I could to see if Elspeth Tetley was there. To my great joy she was, and alone, and (woman-like) as different as possible in her behaviour from last year. She smiled cordially as I bore down upon her.

"H'lo, Mr. Traherne; it's a long time since we last saw you in Bath."

"Yes, and the last time I saw you you cut me: you cut my dances, you cut me in the street--you----"

"All right, don't get peevish: how many do you want to-night?"

"None, if you're going to cut them all."

"Come now, let's bury the hatchet; you'll have to hurry. I see half the earth waiting to wring your neck because you won't say what dances you want."

"Well, how many are booked?"

"I've only just come."

"Yes, but that means nothing."

"Well, tell me how many you want."

"As many as you can jolly well let me have."

"Here's my card, fill it up as you like."

"Do you really mean that?"

"I do: for goodness' sake hurry up. How many have you taken? Oh! stop, stop, you can't have them all."

"Well, I've only taken eleven as yet."

"Eleven! we shall set the whole of Bath talking."

"Who cares?"

"Oh! it's all jolly fine for you, but what about me, the poor defenceless maiden? Where's the little girl you usually dance with all night?"

"Ruth? She's not coming."

"Oh, that's why---- You must go--here's Mr. Conyngham and all the gang."

"You'll really keep those eleven?"

"Wait and see. Yes, yes, of course I will. Go away!"

So I have got to know Elspeth after all. I never spent such a night in my life. She beats every girl I have ever met in every possible way--she's prettier, more talkative, more seductive, more lovable, more--more everything. She wanted to know all about me and told me all her life history: we fixed up all sorts of meetings and grew more and more pleased with each other as the evening went on. She is the best dancer I ever struck and likes my style of dancing better than the more fantastic and modern methods of Conyngham, against whom she seems to harbour a pretty active dislike, to my great astonishment. I wonder what's happened. They were as thick as thieves all last year.

The next day I met her again for a few minutes. I tramped up and down Milsom Street until I saw her. I took Ruth to the pantomime at Bristol in the afternoon and to _Gypsy Love_ in Bath at night. Elspeth was also there. Yesterday I went to the rink with Ruth and saw Elspeth again, and this afternoon I managed to get away from all my crowd and have tea with Elspeth at the rink: so ends the year 1912.

I seem to be getting fonder of the other sex and not to be quite so nervous and hoydenish in their presence as I used to be a year ago. Bath has educated me a good deal. I am much more the normal man of society than I ever thought I was going to be.

_January 1, 1913_

Life has moved since yesterday. To-night was the Lansdown Cricket Club Ball. I divided my programme equally between Ruth and Elspeth. Elspeth was looking wonderful in a filmy sort of pink strawberry frock. Everything went quite normally and gaily until number fifteen, after which Elspeth and I found a sitting-out room in inky darkness. Suddenly she leant over, my arms were about her neck, we kissed ... and now I live in a different world. Even now I can't believe it. It seems impossible that she should love me. Yet she has promised to marry me.

I never dreamt such luck could be mine. She seemed so far above me, so obviously a match for the best of men and not for a poor drudge of a schoolmaster. She says that for a whole year she has been thinking about me and meant to marry me all along, only she was afraid I was already engaged or about to be. We sat out all the rest of the dances. I am living on air. I am much too cheerful and can't sleep at all. I want to go out and shout my good fortune to the skies. What are we going to live on I wonder? What will my people or hers say about it? I only know that nothing will induce me to give her up. I seem to be a quite different person from what I was this time yesterday. I know that then I never thought that I should have the ghost of a chance of even knowing Elspeth well, and now she is willing and anxious to live with me for the rest of my life.

_January 23, 1913_

The day after I was engaged I took Elspeth up to London with the idea of going to see the South Africans play footer at Richmond. When we got to Paddington we decided to "do" two theatres instead, so we lunched in the Haymarket and went to see _The Dancing Mistress_, which was rotten, and _Doormats_ at night. We didn't get back till half-past three the next morning.

It was on that day that I was formally introduced to her people, who were most kind and asked me to stay, which invitation I naturally accepted. So I moved my belongings up to the Crescent where they live, and in two or three days I began to receive telegrams and letters by the hundred congratulating me.

Every day we took the dogs for walks, played billiards or went out with the beagles. Old General Tetley, Elspeth's father, is a dear, very kind to me and quite willing to allow us to be engaged and even talked of our being married in a year if I could get a better job than my present one at Radchester. Mrs. Tetley gave us the run of the house and we were left pretty well to our own devices. Elspeth's brothers and sisters (she has two of each) all appeared to congratulate us at one time or another: they are an extremely cheery family and I love them all. After a week of bliss at the Tetley's I took Elspeth up to see my father and mother, in order to let her see our part of the country. She took to them at once as they did to her. The rest of the holidays passed like lightning: so long as Elspeth was with me I was perfectly happy, doing nothing at all but listening to her play and sing or talk--the thought of having to separate, however, went near to driving me mad.

When the time came for me to return here, I simply could not face it. That last morning we walked over the moor and talked about anything to keep our minds off the afternoon and then at 1.48 I took her south as far as Derby, where she caught the Bath express and left me standing, absolutely lifeless, waiting for the train to take me back to Scarborough and Radchester. The pain of parting is the most excruciating agony that I have ever undergone in my life. I had often imagined that it must be awful for lovers to have to part, but I had no idea it meant all this. I wanted to throw myself under the train rather than put any more miles between us. I tried to read: I had bought every kind of interesting magazine: it was all no use. I tried to talk to people in the train: they bored me to distraction. By the time I got to Leeds I was joined by a crowd of boys whom normally I am only too glad to see. I couldn't find a word to say to them. "Elspeth--Elspeth--Elspeth"--the one word throbbed through my head the whole way back. I kept on wondering what she was doing at each moment of the journey. I started to pour out my soul on paper. I want to go on writing to her all day. Nothing else interests me. I can't work. I take no interest in anything. I can't possibly face a year of this cruel agony. I'd far rather die.

_February 2, 1913_

I have tried in every sort of direction to find another job. I can't possibly torture Elspeth by bringing her here even if I could afford to keep her, which I can't. I answer advertisements of every kind. I think I must have approached every Head Master in the kingdom.

One business firm wrote from the City and asked me to go down to see their directors, and I did, but all they could offer me was a sort of glorified commercial traveller's job, my income to be solely on commission, which isn't good enough.

I saw _The Younger Generation_ while I was in London, which pleased me a good deal, but London without Elspeth is as hopeless as anywhere else. My pangs are just as acute. I'm working like the devil and playing games every day, but at night I'm so homesick or rather so sick with longing for Elspeth that I don't know what to do. If only I'd got some long-suffering friend in whom to confide, but even Tony can't fill her place!

_March 2, 1913_

I've applied for educational posts in Egypt, India, Bangkok, all over the world. I've been collecting testimonials from my colleagues. I suppose all testimonials are the same, but I'd no idea I was such a wonderfully gifted teacher as all my Dons and Senior Colleagues make me out to be. It's good of them to lie on my behalf like this when I've behaved so rottenly to them. I was getting on well with my continued bombardment at every door of employment and working like a nigger, when suddenly I got a really bad bout of "flu": it left me a complete wreck. I had to get up before I was really fit in order to go to interview the Colonial Office about a job in Nigeria. I felt properly seedy, but I kept the appointment, and then suddenly lost all control of myself. I couldn't face the prospect of going back to Radchester, so I just took a train for Bath, telegraphed to Elspeth and arrived. She was a good deal surprised and upset. I was put straight to bed for ten days and now I'm recovering from bronchitis. I never enjoyed a disease before, but it was sheer Heaven to have Elspeth nursing me. I felt serenely contented and didn't care what happened to me.

Of late I have been very carefully considering whether or not I ought to be ordained. Periodically I get what seems to me a clear call. Elspeth is against it. I don't quite know why.... She came to see me off at Bristol when I was convalescent. Again the agony of parting was almost unendurable. I clung to her like a small baby until the very last moment, utterly regardless of the other passengers. All the way up in the North Express I suffered horrors of nightmares. The hills and towns looked for the first time in my life cold and hostile. It was all I could do to keep myself from jumping out and taking the next train back. I know Elspeth does not suffer quite so acutely as I do. I'm glad. It's too terrible a strain on the nervous system.

_April 3, 1913_