Part 3 (1/2)
And his task is not altogether thankless. Just as the sun never sets upon the British Empire, so it never sets upon all the Old Boys of a great public school at once. They are gone out into all lands: they are upholding the honour of the School all the world over. And wherever they are--London, Simla, Johannesburg, Nairobi, or Little Pedlington Vicarage--they never lose touch with their old Housemaster. His correspondence is enormous; it weighs him down: but he would not relinquish a single picture postcard of it. He knows that wherever two or three of his Old Boys are gathered together, be it in Bangalore or Buluwayo, the talk will always drift round in time to the old School and the old House. They will refer to him by his nickname--”Towser,” or ”Potbelly,” or ”Swivel-Eye,”--and reminiscences will flow.
”Do you remember the old man's daily gibe when he found us chucking bread at dinner? 'Hah! There will be a bread pudding tomorrow!'”
”Do you remember the jaw he gave us when the news came about Macpherson's V.C.?”
”Do you remember his Sunday trousers? Oh, Lord!”
”Do you remember how he tanned Goat Hicks for calling The Frog a _cochon_? Fourteen, wasn't it?”
”Do you remember the grub he gave the whole House the time we won the House-match by one wicket, with Old Mike away?”
”Do you remember how he broke down at prayers the night little Martin died?”
”Do you remember his apologising to that young swine Sowerby before the whole House for losing his temper and clouting him over the head? That must have taken some doing. We rooted Sowerby afterwards for grinning.”
”I always remember the time,” interpolates one of the group, ”when he scored me off for roller-skating on Sunday.”
”How was that?”
”Well, it was this way. I had got leave of morning Chapel on some excuse or other, and was skating up and down the Long Corridor, having a grand time. The old man came out of his study--I thought he was in Chapel--and growled, looking at me over his spectacles--you remember the way?----”
”Yes, rather. Go on!”
”He growled:--'Boy, do you consider roller-skating a Sunday pastime?' I, of course, looked a fool, and said, 'No, sir.' 'Well,' chuckled the old bird, 'I do: but I always make a point of respecting a man's religious scruples. I will therefore confiscate your skates.' And he did! He gave them back to me next day, though.”
”I always remember him,” says another, ”the time I nearly got sacked. By rights I ought to have been, but I believe he got me off at the last moment. Anyhow, he called me into his study and told me I wasn't to go after all. He didn't jaw me, but said I could take an hour off school and go and telegraph home that things were all right. My people had been having a pretty bad time over it, I knew, and so did he. I was pretty near blubbing, but I held out. Then, just as I got to the door, he called me back. I turned round, rather in a funk that the jaw was coming after all. But he growled out:--
”'It's a bit late in the term. The exchequer may be low. Here is sixpence for the telegram.'
”This time I did blub. Not one man in a million would have thought of the sixpence. As a matter of fact, fourpence-halfpenny was all I had in the world.”
And so on. His ears--especially his right ear--must be burning all day long.
Of course all Housemasters are not like this. If you want to hear about the other sort, take up The _Lanchester Tradition_, by Mr. G. F. Bradby, and make the acquaintance of Mr. Chowdler--an individual example of a great type run to seed. And there is Dirty d.i.c.k, in _The Hill_.
When he has fulfilled his allotted span as a Housemaster, our friend retires--not from school-mastering, but from the provision trade. With his hardly-won gains he builds himself a house in the neighbourhood of the school, and lives there in a state of _otium c.u.m dignitate_. He still takes his form: he continues to do so until old age descends upon him, or a new broom at the head of affairs makes a clean sweep of the ”permanent” staff.
He is mellower now. He no longer washes his hands of all responsibility for the methods of his colleagues, or thanks G.o.d that his boys are not as other masters' boys are. He does not altogether enjoy his work in school: he is getting a little deaf, and is inclined to be testy. But teaching is his meat and his drink and his father and his mother. He sticks to it because it holds him to life.
Though elderly now, he enjoys many of the pleasures of middle age. For instance, he has usually married late, so his children are still young; and he is therefore spared the pain, which most parents have to suffer, of seeing the brood disperse just when it begins to be needed most. Or perhaps he has been too devoted to his world-wide family of boys to marry at all. In that case he lives alone; but you may be sure that his spare bedroom is seldom empty. No Old Boy ever comes home from abroad without paying a visit to his former Housemaster. Rich, poor, distinguished, or obscure--they all come. They tell him of their adventures; they recall old days; they deplore the present condition of the School and the degeneracy of the Eleven; they fight their own battles over again. They confide in him. They tell him things they would never tell their fathers or their wives. They bring him their ambitions, and their failures--not their successes; those are for others to speak of--even their love-affairs. And he listens to them all, and advises them all, this very tender and very wise old Ulysses. To him they are but boys still, and he would not have them otherwise.
”The heart of a Boy in the body of a Man,” he says--”that is a combination which can never go wrong. If I have succeeded in effecting that combination in a single instance, then I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain.”
CHAPTER THREE