Part 22 (1/2)
_Elsie has gone to bed. I found her writing this letter, and she showed it to me quite frankly. As the child seemed really eager to write to you, I have undertaken to finish her letter and explain the circ.u.mstances. I feel sure you will understand, and pardon the liberty. Do not trouble to reply._
_Yours faithfully_ _Ellen Wardale._
Mr. Mablethorpe laid down the letter.
”Ellen Wardale is a good sort,” he said. ”As for Elsie Hope, she has not asked me to write to her, so I shall do so. Now, Philip, get out ”The Lost Legacy,” and we will have a go at Chapter Fourteen. It is going to be a difficult bit. The hero, who is the greatest nincomp.o.o.p that I have yet created, finds himself suspected by the heroine of having transferred his affections to another lady. (Between ourselves, it would have been a very sensible thing if he had done so, but, of course, he is incapable of such wisdom.) As the story is not half over, we can't afford to get him out of the mess just yet; so this morning I want him to make an even greater a.s.s of himself than before, and so prolong the agony to eighty thousand words. Here goes!”
After this they would work steadily until lunchtime.
II
Philip had other duties to perform. He attended to the wants of Boanerges, and in time reduced that unreliable vehicle to quite a surprising degree of docility.
He became gradually infected with the Romance of our mechanical age. He saw himself, a twentieth-century Galahad, roaming through the land in a hundred-horse-power armoured car, seeking adventure, repelling his country's invaders, carrying despatches under cover of night, and conveying beauteous ladies to places of safety. He spent much of his spare time seated upon the garden wall, watching for the motors that whizzed north and south along the straight white road. (It is regrettable to have to record that many of these disregarded Dumps's notice-board.) He saw poetry in the curve of a radiator, and heard music in the whirring of a clutch.
One day, in an expansive moment, he confided these emotions to Mr.
Mablethorpe. That many-sided man did not laugh, as Philip had half-feared he would, but said:--
”_Romance brought up the nine-fifteen_--eh? I must introduce you to a kindred spirit.”
And he led Philip to a shelf filled with a row of books. Some were bound in dark blue, and consisted mainly of short stories; the others, smaller and slimmer, were dark red, and contained poetry.
”There,” said Mr. Mablethorpe, ”are the works of the man whom I regard as the head of our profession. Wire in!”
Philip spent the next three days learning ”MacAndrew's Hymn” by heart.
There were many other books in the library, upon which Philip browsed voraciously. Uncle Joseph's selection of literature had been a little severe, but here was far richer fare. Philip discovered a writer called Robert Louis Stevenson, but though he followed his narratives breathlessly found him lacking in feminine interest. The works of Jules Verne filled him with rapture; for their peculiar blend of high adventure and applied science was exactly suited to his temperament. He had other more isolated favourites--”The Wreck of the Grosvenor”; ”Lorna Doone”; ”The Prisoner of Zenda”; and ”To Have and to Hold,” which latter he read straight through twice. But he came back again and again to the shelf containing the red and blue volumes, and the magician who dwelt therein never failed him. There were two fascinating stories called ”The s.h.i.+p that Found Herself,” and ”.007.” After reading these Philip ceased to regard Boanerges as a piece of machinery; he endowed him with a soul and a sense of humour. There was a moving tale of love and work called ”William the Conqueror”; there was a palpitating drama of the sea called ”Bread upon the Waters”; and there was one story which he read over and over again--it took his thoughts back in some hazy fas.h.i.+on to Peggy Falconer and Hampstead Heath--called ”The Brushwood Boy.”
Only one book upon this shelf failed to please him. It was a complete novel, and dealt with a love affair that went wrong and never came right. The hero, a cantankerous fellow, became blind, and the unfeminine independent heroine never knew, so went her own way and left him to die.
This tragic tale haunted Philip's dreams. It shocked his innate but unconscious belief in the general tendency of things to work together for good. He considered that the author should have compelled these two wrong-headed people to ”make allowances for one another,” and so come together at the last. He even took the opinion of Mr. Mablethorpe on the subject. Mr. Mablethorpe said:--
”His best book, Philip. But--I read it less than any of the others.”
Then he introduced Philip to ”Brugglesmith,” and the vapours were blown away by gusts of laughter.
III
Philip's orthodox education was not neglected. After a year's attendance as a day-boy at the establishment near St. Albans he was sent to Studley, a great public school in the south of England.
Here many things surprised him.
Having spent most of his life in the company of grown men, he antic.i.p.ated some difficulty in rubbing along with boys of his own age.
Master Philip at this period of his career was surprisingly grownup: in fact he was within a dangerously short distance of becoming a prig. But he went to school in time. In three weeks the latent instincts of boyhood had fully developed, and Philip played Rugby football, indulged in unwholesome and clandestine cookery, rioted noisily when he should have been quiescent, and generally tumbled in and out of sc.r.a.pes as happily and fortuitously as if he had been born into a vigorous family of ten.
He achieved a respectable position for himself among his fellows, but upon a qualification which would have surprised an older generation. The modern schoolboy is essentially a product of the age he lives in, and the G.o.ds he wors.h.i.+ps are constantly adding to their number. Of what does his Pantheon consist? Foremost, of course, comes the athlete. He is a genuine and permanent deity. His wors.h.i.+ppers behold him every day, excelling at football and cricket, lifting incredible weights in the dormitory before going to bed, or running a mile in under five minutes.
His qualifications are written on his brow, and up he goes to the pinnacle of Olympus, where he endures from age to age. Second comes the boy whose qualifications are equally good, but have to be accepted to a certain extent upon hearsay--the sportsman. A reputed good shot or straight rider to hounds is admitted to Olympus _ex officio_, and is greatly in request, in the role of Sir Oracle, during those interminable discussions--corresponding to the symposia in which those of riper years indulge in clubs and mess-rooms--which invariably arise when the rank and file of the House are a.s.sembled round a common-room fire, in the interval, say, between tea and preparation.
There are other and lesser lights. The wag, for instance. The scholar, as such, has no seat in the sun. His turn comes later in life, when the athletes are licking stamps and running errands.
But the Iron Age in which we live has been responsible for a further addition to the scholastic aristocracy--the motor expert. A boy who can claim to have driven a Rolls-Royce at fifty miles an hour is accorded a place above the salt by popular acclamation. No one with any claim to social distinction can afford to admit ignorance upon such matters as high-tension magnetos and rotary valves. The humblest f.a.g can tell at a glance whether a pa.s.sing vehicle is a Wolseley or a Delaunay Belleville.
Science masters, for years a despised--or at the best a tolerated--race, now achieve a degree of popularity and respect hitherto only attainable by Old Blues, because they understand induced currents and the mysteries of internal combustion. Most curious portent of all, a boy in the Lower School, who cannot be trusted to work out a sum in simple arithmetic without perpetrating several gross errors, and to whom physics and chemistry, as such, are a sealed book ent.i.tled ”Stinks,” will solve in his head, readily and correctly, such problems as relate to petrol-mileage or the ratio of gear-wheels, and remedy quite readily and skilfully the ticklish troubles that arise from faulty timing-wheels and short circuits.