Chương Chương 30 · 第30章

. Next morning Theobald and Christina arose feeling a little tired from

their journey, but happy in that best of all happiness, the approbation

of their consciences. It would be their boy’s fault henceforth if he

were not good, and as prosperous as it was at all desirable that he

should be. What more could parents do than they had done? The answer

“Nothing” will rise as readily to the lips of the reader as to those of

Theobald and Christina themselves.

A few days later the parents were gratified at receiving the following

letter from their son—

“My Dear Mamma,—I am very well. Dr Skinner made me do about the horse

free and exulting roaming in the wide fields in Latin verse, but as I

had done it with Papa I knew how to do it, and it was nearly all right,

and he put me in the fourth form under Mr Templer, and I have to begin

a new Latin grammar not like the old, but much harder. I know you wish

me to work, and I will try very hard. With best love to Joey and

Charlotte, and to Papa, I remain, your affectionate son,

ERNEST.”

Nothing could be nicer or more proper. It really did seem as though he

were inclined to turn over a new leaf. The boys had all come back, the

examinations were over, and the routine of the half year began; Ernest

found that his fears about being kicked about and bullied were

exaggerated. Nobody did anything very dreadful to him. He had to run

errands between certain hours for the elder boys, and to take his turn

at greasing the footballs, and so forth, but there was an excellent

spirit in the school as regards bullying.

Nevertheless, he was far from happy. Dr Skinner was much too like his

father. True, Ernest was not thrown in with him much yet, but he was

always there; there was no knowing at what moment he might not put in

an appearance, and whenever he did show, it was to storm about

something. He was like the lion in the Bishop of Oxford’s Sunday

story—always liable to rush out from behind some bush and devour some

one when he was least expected. He called Ernest “an audacious reptile”

and said he wondered the earth did not open and swallow him up because

he pronounced Thalia with a short i. “And this to me,” he thundered,

“who never made a false quantity in my life.” Surely he would have been

a much nicer person if he had made false quantities in his youth like

other people. Ernest could not imagine how the boys in Dr Skinner’s

form continued to live; but yet they did, and even throve, and, strange

as it may seem, idolised him, or professed to do so in after life. To

Ernest it seemed like living on the crater of Vesuvius.

He was himself, as has been said, in Mr Templer’s form, who was

snappish, but not downright wicked, and was very easy to crib under.

Ernest used to wonder how Mr Templer could be so blind, for he supposed

Mr Templer must have cribbed when he was at school, and would ask

himself whether he should forget his youth when he got old, as Mr

Templer had forgotten his. He used to think he never could possibly

forget any part of it.

Then there was Mrs Jay, who was sometimes very alarming. A few days

after the half year had commenced, there being some little extra noise

in the hall, she rushed in with her spectacles on her forehead and her

cap strings flying, and called the boy whom Ernest had selected as his

hero the “rampingest-scampingest-rackety-tackety-tow-row-roaringest boy

in the whole school.” But she used to say things that Ernest liked. If

the Doctor went out to dinner, and there were no prayers, she would

come in and say, “Young gentlemen, prayers are excused this evening”;

and, take her for all in all, she was a kindly old soul enough.

Most boys soon discover the difference between noise and actual danger,

but to others it is so unnatural to menace, unless they mean mischief,

that they are long before they leave off taking turkey-cocks and

ganders _au sérieux_. Ernest was one of the latter sort, and found the

atmosphere of Roughborough so gusty that he was glad to shrink out of

sight and out of mind whenever he could. He disliked the games worse

even than the squalls of the class-room and hall, for he was still

feeble, not filling out and attaining his full strength till a much

later age than most boys. This was perhaps due to the closeness with

which his father had kept him to his books in childhood, but I think in

part also to a tendency towards lateness in attaining maturity,

hereditary in the Pontifex family, which was one also of unusual

longevity. At thirteen or fourteen he was a mere bag of bones, with

upper arms about as thick as the wrists of other boys of his age; his

little chest was pigeon-breasted; he appeared to have no strength or

stamina whatever, and finding he always went to the wall in physical

encounters, whether undertaken in jest or earnest, even with boys

shorter than himself, the timidity natural to childhood increased upon

him to an extent that I am afraid amounted to cowardice. This rendered

him even less capable than he might otherwise have been, for as

confidence increases power, so want of confidence increases impotence.

After he had had the breath knocked out of him and been well shinned

half a dozen times in scrimmages at football—scrimmages in which he had

become involved sorely against his will—he ceased to see any further

fun in football, and shirked that noble game in a way that got him into

trouble with the elder boys, who would stand no shirking on the part of

the younger ones.

He was as useless and ill at ease with cricket as with football, nor in

spite of all his efforts could he ever throw a ball or a stone. It soon

became plain, therefore, to everyone that Pontifex was a young muff, a

mollycoddle, not to be tortured, but still not to be rated highly. He

was not however, actively unpopular, for it was seen that he was quite

square _inter pares_, not at all vindictive, easily pleased, perfectly

free with whatever little money he had, no greater lover of his school

work than of the games, and generally more inclinable to moderate vice

than to immoderate virtue.

These qualities will prevent any boy from sinking very low in the

opinion of his schoolfellows; but Ernest thought he had fallen lower

than he probably had, and hated and despised himself for what he, as

much as anyone else, believed to be his cowardice. He did not like the

boys whom he thought like himself. His heroes were strong and vigorous,

and the less they inclined towards him the more he worshipped them. All

this made him very unhappy, for it never occurred to him that the

instinct which made him keep out of games for which he was ill adapted,

was more reasonable than the reason which would have driven him into

them. Nevertheless he followed his instinct for the most part, rather

than his reason. _Sapiens suam si sapientiam nôrit_.