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The Secret Glory

by Arthur Machen · English · Gutenberg #35637 · 384,331 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Secret Glory

Author: Arthur Machen


        
Release date: March 20, 2011 [eBook #35637]
                Most recently updated: January 7, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET GLORY ***




Produced by Malcolm Farmer, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)









                          The Secret Glory

                          By Arthur Machen


    New York
    Alfred A Knopf
    Mcmxxii

    COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
    ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

    _Published August, 1922_


    _Set up and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y._
    _Paper furnished by W. F. Etherington & Co., New York, N. Y._
    _Bound by the H. Wolff Estate, New York, N. Y._


    MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

    TO
    VINCENT STARRETT




Note


_One of the schoolmasters in "The Secret Glory" has views on the subject
of football similar to those entertained by a well-known schoolmaster
whose Biography appeared many years ago. That is the only link between
the villain of invention and the good man of real life._




PREFACE


_Some years ago I met my old master, Sir Frank Benson--he was Mr. F. R.
Benson then--and he asked me in his friendly way what I had been doing
lately._

_"I am just finishing a book," I replied, "a book that everybody will
hate."_

_"As usual," said the Don Quixote of our English stage--if I knew any
nobler title to bestow upon him, I would, bestow it--"as usual; running
your head against a stone wall!"_

_Well, I don't know about "as usual"; there may be something to be said
for the personal criticism or there may not; but it has struck me that
Sir Frank's remark is a very good description of "The Secret Glory," the
book I had in mind as I talked to him. It is emphatically the history of
an unfortunate fellow who ran his head against stone walls from the
beginning to the end. He could think nothing and do nothing after the
common fashion of the world; even when he "went wrong," he did so in a
highly unusual and eccentric manner. It will be for the reader to
determine whether he were a saint who had lost his way in the centuries
or merely an undeveloped lunatic; I hold no passionate view on either
side. In every age, there are people great and small for whom the times
are out of joint, for whom everything is, somehow, wrong and askew.
Consider Hamlet; an amiable man and an intelligent man. But what a mess
he made of it! Fortunately, my hero--or idiot, which you will--was not
called upon to intermeddle with affairs of State, and so only brought
himself to grief: if it were grief; for the least chink of the door
should be kept open, I am inclined to hold, for the other point of view.
I have just been rereading Kipling's "The Miracle of Purun Bhagat," the
tale of the Brahmin Prime Minister of the Native State in India, who saw
all the world and the glory of it, in the West as well as in the East,
and suddenly abjured all to become a hermit in the wood. Was he mad, or
was he supremely wise? It is just a matter of opinion._

_The origin and genesis of "The Secret Glory" were odd enough. Once on a
time, I read the life of a famous schoolmaster, one of the most notable
schoolmasters of these later days. I believe he was an excellent man in
every way; but, somehow, that "Life" got on my nerves. I thought that
the School Songs--for which, amongst other things, this master was
famous--were drivel; I thought his views about football, regarded, not
as a good game, but as the discipline and guide of life, were rot, and
poisonous rot at that. In a word, the "Life" of this excellent man got
my back up._

_Very good. The year after, schoolmasters and football had ceased to
engage my attention. I was deeply interested in a curious and minute
investigation of the wonderful legend of the Holy Grail; or rather, in
one aspect of that extraordinary complex. My researches led me to the
connection of the Grail Legend with the vanished Celtic Church which
held the field in Britain in the fifth and sixth and seventh centuries;
I undertook an extraordinary and fascinating journey into a misty and
uncertain region of Christian history. I must not say more here,
lest--as Nurse says to the troublesome and persistent child--I "begin
all over again"; but, indeed, it was a voyage on perilous seas, a
journey to faery lands forlorn--and I would declare, by the way, my
conviction that if there had been no Celtic Church, Keats could never
have written those lines of tremendous evocation and incantation._

_Again; very good. The year after, it came upon me to write a book. And
I hit upon an original plan; or so I thought. I took my dislike of the
good schoolmaster's "Life," I took my knowledge of Celtic mysteries--and
combined my information._

_Original, this plan! It was all thought of years before I was born. Do
you remember the critic of the "Eatanswill Gazette"? He had to review
for that admirable journal a work on Chinese Metaphysics. Mr. Pott tells
the story of the article._

_"He read up for the subject, at my desire, in the Encyclopaedia
Britannica ... he read for metaphysics under the letter M, and for China
under the letter C, and combined his information!"_




The Secret Glory




I


A heavy cloud passed swiftly away before the wind that came with the
night, and far in a clear sky the evening star shone with pure
brightness, a gleaming world set high above the dark earth and the black
shadows in the lane. In the ending of October a great storm had blown
from the west, and it was through the bare boughs of a twisted oak that
Ambrose Meyrick saw the silver light of the star. As the last faint
flash died in the sky he leaned against a gate and gazed upward; and
then his eyes fell on the dull and weary undulations of the land, the
vast circle of dun ploughland and grey meadow bounded by a dim horizon,
dreary as a prison wall. He remembered with a start how late it must be;
he should have been back an hour before, and he was still in the open
country, a mile away at least from the outskirts of Lupton. He turned
from the star and began to walk as quickly as he could along the lane
through the puddles and the sticky clay, soaked with three weeks' heavy
rain.

He saw at last the faint lamps of the nearest streets where the
shoemakers lived and he tramped hurriedly through this wretched
quarter, past its penny shops, its raw public-house, its rawer chapel,
with twelve foundation-stones on which are written the names of the
twelve leading Congregationalists of Lupton, past the squalling children
whose mothers were raiding and harrying them to bed. Then came the Free
Library, an admirable instance, as the _Lupton Mercury_ declared, of the
adaptation of Gothic to modern requirements. From a sort of tower of
this building a great arm shot out and hung a round clock-face over the
street, and Meyrick experienced another shock when he saw that it was
even later than he had feared. He had to get to the other side of the
town, and it was past seven already! He began to run, wondering what his
fate would be at his uncle's hands, and he went by "our grand old parish
church" (completely "restored" in the early 'forties), past the remains
of the market-cross, converted most successfully, according to local
opinion, into a drinking fountain for dogs and cattle, dodging his way
among the late shoppers and the early loafers who lounged to and fro
along the High Street.

He shuddered as he rang the bell at the Old Grange. He tried to put a
bold face on it when the servant opened the door, and he would have gone
straight down the hall into the schoolroom, but the girl stopped him.

"Master said you're to go to the study at once, Master Meyrick, as soon
as ever you come in."

She was looking strangely at him, and the boy grew sick with dread. He
was a "funk" through and through, and was frightened out of his wits
about twelve times a day every day of his life. His uncle had said a few
years before: "Lupton will make a man of you," and Lupton was doing its
best. The face of the miserable wretch whitened and grew wet; there was
a choking sensation in his throat, and he felt very cold. Nelly Foran,
the maid, still looked at him with strange, eager eyes, then whispered
suddenly:

"You must go directly, Master Meyrick, Master heard the bell, I know;
but I'll make it up to you."

Ambrose understood nothing except the approach of doom. He drew a long
breath and knocked at the study door, and entered on his uncle's
command.

It was an extremely comfortable room. The red curtains were drawn close,
shutting out the dreary night, and there was a great fire of coal that
bubbled unctuously and shot out great jets of flame--in the schoolroom
they used coke. The carpet was soft to the feet, and the chairs promised
softness to the body, and the walls were well furnished with books.
There were Thackeray, Dickens, Lord Lytton, uniform in red morocco,
gilt extra; the Cambridge Bible for Students in many volumes, Stanley's
_Life of Arnold_, Coplestone's _Praelectiones Academicae_, commentaries,
dictionaries, first editions of Tennyson, school and college prizes in
calf, and, of course, a great brigade of Latin and Greek classics. Three
of the wonderful and terrible pictures of Piranesi hung in the room;
these Mr.

Horbury admired more for the subject-matter than for the treatment, in
which he found, as he said, a certain lack of the _aurea
mediocritas_--almost, indeed, a touch of morbidity. The gas was turned
low, for the High Usher was writing at his desk, and a shaded lamp cast
a bright circle of light on a mass of papers.

He turned round as Ambrose Meyrick came in. He had a high, bald
forehead, and his fresh-coloured face was edged with reddish
"mutton-chop" whiskers. There was a dangerous glint in his grey-green
eyes, and his opening sentence was unpromising.

"Now, Ambrose, you must understand quite definitely that this sort of
thing is not going to be tolerated any longer."

Perhaps it would not have fared quite so badly with the unhappy lad if
only his uncle had not lunched with the Head. There was a concatenation
accordingly, every link in which had helped to make Ambrose Meyrick's
position hopeless. In the first place there was boiled mutton for
luncheon, and this was a dish hateful to Mr. Horbury's palate. Secondly,
the wine was sherry. Of this Mr. Horbury was very fond, but
unfortunately the Head's sherry, though making a specious appeal to the
taste, was in reality far from good and teemed with those fiery and
irritating spirits which make the liver to burn and rage. Then Chesson
had practically found fault with his chief assistant's work. He had not,
of course, told him in so many words that he was unable to teach; he had
merely remarked:

"I don't know whether you've noticed it, Horbury, but it struck me the
other day that there was a certain lack of grip about those fellows of
yours in the fifth. Some of them struck me as _muddlers_, if you know
what I mean: there was a sort of _vagueness_, for example, about their
construing in that chorus. Have you remarked anything of the kind
yourself?"

And then, again, the Head had gone on:

"And, by the way, Horbury, I don't quite know what to make of your
nephew, Meyrick. He was your wife's nephew, wasn't he? Yes. Well, I
hardly know whether I can explain what I feel about the boy; but I can't
help saying that there is something wrong about him. His work strikes
me as good enough--in fact, quite above the form average--but, to use
the musical term, he seems to be in the wrong key. Of course, it may be
my fancy; but the lad reminds me of those very objectionable persons who
are said to have a joke up their sleeve. I doubt whether he is taking
the Lupton stamp; and when he gets up in the school I shall be afraid of
his influence on the other boys."

Here, again, the master detected a note of blame; and by the time he
reached the Old Grange he was in an evil humour. He hardly knew which he
found the more offensive--Chesson's dish or his discourse. He was a
dainty man in his feeding, and the thought of the great fat gigot
pouring out a thin red stream from the gaping wound dealt to it by the
Head mingled with his resentment of the indirect scolding which he
considered that he had received, and on the fire just kindled every drop
of that corrosive sherry was oil. He drank his tea in black silence, his
rage growing fiercer for want of vent, and it is doubtful whether in his
inmost heart he was altogether displeased when report was made at six
o'clock that Meyrick had not come in. He saw a prospect--more than a
prospect--of satisfactory relief.

Some philosophers have affirmed that lunatic doctors (or mental
specialists) grow in time to a certain resemblance to their patients,
or, in more direct language, become half mad themselves. There seems a
good deal to be said for the position; indeed, it is probably a more
noxious madness to swear a man into perpetual imprisonment in the
company of maniacs and imbeciles because he sings in his bath and will
wear a purple dressing-gown at dinner than to fancy oneself Emperor of
China. However this may be, it is very certain that in many cases the
schoolmaster is nothing more or less than a bloated schoolboy: the
beasts are, radically, the same, but morbid conditions have increased
the venom of the former's sting. Indeed, it is not uncommon for
well-wishers to the great Public School System to praise their favourite
masters in terms which admit, nay, glory in, this identity. Read the
memorial tributes to departed Heads in a well-known and most respectable
Church paper. "To the last he was a big boy at heart," writes Canon
Diver of his friend, that illiterate old sycophant who brought up the
numbers of the school to such a pitch by means of his conciliator policy
to Jews, Turks, heretics and infidels that there was nothing for it but
to make him a bishop. "I always thought he seemed more at home in the
playing fields than in the sixth-form room.... He had all the English
boy's healthy horror of anything approaching pose or eccentricity....
He could be a severe disciplinarian when severity seemed necessary, but
everybody in the school knew that a well-placed 'boundary,' a difficult
catch or a goal well won or well averted would atone for all but the
most serious offences." There are many other points of resemblance
between the average master and the average boy: each, for example, is
intensely cruel, and experiences a quite abnormal joy in the infliction
of pain. The baser boy tortures those animals which are not _mechants_.
Tales have been told (they are hushed up by all true friends of the
"System") of wonderful and exquisite orgies in lonely hollows of the
moors, in obscure and hidden thickets: tales of a boy or two, a lizard
or a toad, and the slow simmering heat of a bonfire. But these are the
exceptional pleasures of the _virtuosi_; for the average lad there is
plenty of fun to be got out of his feebler fellows, of whom there are
generally a few even in the healthiest community. After all, the weakest
must go to the wall, and if the bones of the weakest are ground in the
process, that is their fault. When some miserable little wretch, after a
year or two of prolonged and exquisite torture of body and mind, seeks
the last escape of suicide, one knows how the Old Boys will come
forward, how gallantly they will declare that the days at the "dear old
school" were the happiest in their lives; how "the Doctor" was their
father and the Sixth their nursing-mother; how the delights of the
Mahomedans' fabled Paradise are but grey and weary sport compared with
the joys of the happy fag, whose heart, as the inspired bard of Harrow
tells us, will thrill in future years at the thought of the Hill. They
write from all quarters, these brave Old Boys: from the hard-won
Deanery, result of many years of indefatigable attack on the fundamental
doctrines of the Christian faith; from the comfortable villa, the reward
of commercial activity and acuteness on the Stock Exchange; from the
courts and from the camps; from all the high seats of the successful;
and common to them all is the convincing argument of praise. And we all
agree, and say there is nothing like our great Public Schools, and
perhaps the only dissentient voices are those of the father and mother
who bury the body of a little child about whose neck is the black sign
of the rope. But let them be comforted: the boy was no good at games,
though his torments were not bad sport while he lasted.

Mr. Horbury was an old Luptonian; he was, in the words of Canon Diver,
but "a big boy at heart," and so he gave orders that Meyrick was to be
sent in the study directly he came in, and he looked at the clock on the
desk before him with satisfaction and yet with impatience. A hungry man
may long for his delayed dinner almost with a sense of fury, and yet at
the back of his mind he cannot help being consoled by the thought of how
wonderfully he will enjoy the soup when it appears at last. When seven
struck, Mr. Horbury moistened his lips slightly. He got up and felt
cautiously behind one of the bookshelves. The object was there, and he
sat down again. He listened; there were footfalls on the drive. Ah!
there was the expected ring. There was a brief interval, and then a
knock. The fire was glowing with red flashes, and the wretched toad was
secured.

"Now, Ambrose, you must understand quite definitely that this sort of
thing isn't going to be tolerated any longer. This is the third time
during this term that you have been late for lockup. You know the rules:
six o'clock at latest. It is now twenty minutes past seven. What excuse
have you to make? What have you been doing with yourself? Have you been
in the Fields?"

"No, Sir."

"Why not? You must have seen the Resolution of the Sixth on the
notice-board of the High School? You know what it promised any boy who
shirked rocker? 'A good sound thrashing with tuds before the First
Thirty.' I am afraid you will have a very bad time of it on Monday,
after Graham has sent up your name to the Room."

There was a pause. Mr. Horbury looked quietly and lengthily at the boy,
who stood white and sick before him. He was a rather sallow, ugly lad of
fifteen. There was something of intelligence in his expression, and it
was this glance that Chesson, the Headmaster, had resented. His heart
beat against his breast, his breath came in gasps and the sweat of
terror poured down his body. The master gazed at him, and at last spoke
again.

"But what have you been doing? Where have you been all this time?"

"If you please, Sir, I walked over to Selden Abbey."

"To Selden Abbey? Why, it's at least six miles away! What on earth did
you want to go to Selden Abbey for? Are you fond of old stones?"

"If you please, Sir, I wanted to see the Norman arches. There is a
picture of them in _Parker's Glossary_."

"Oh, I see! You are a budding antiquarian, are you, Ambrose, with an
interest in Norman arches--eh? I suppose we are to look forward to the
time when your researches will have made Lupton famous? Perhaps you
would like to lecture to the school on St. Paul's Cathedral? Pray, what
are your views as to the age of Stonehenge?"

The wit was heavy enough, but the speaker's position gave a bitter sting
to his lash. Mr. Horbury saw that every cut had told, and, without
prejudice to more immediate and acuter pleasures, he resolved that such
biting satire must have a larger audience. Indeed, it was a long time
before Ambrose Meyrick heard the last of those wretched Norman arches.
The method was absurdly easy. "Openings" presented themselves every day.
For example, if the boy made a mistake in construing, the retort was
obvious:

"Thank you, Meyrick, for your most original ideas on the force of the
aorist. Perhaps if you studied your Greek Grammar a little more and your
favourite _Glossary of Architecture_ a little less, it would be the
better. Write out 'Aorist means indefinite' five hundred times."

Or, again, perhaps the Classic Orders were referred to. Mr. Horbury
would begin to instruct the form as to the difference between Ionic and
Doric. The form listened with poor imitation of interest. Suddenly the
master would break off:

"I beg your pardon. I was forgetting that we have a great architectural
authority amongst us. Be so kind as to instruct us, Meyrick. What does
Parker say? Or perhaps you have excogitated some theories of your own? I
know you have an original mind, from the extraordinary quantities of
your last copy of verse. By the way, I must ask you to write out 'The
_e_ in _venio_ is short' five hundred times. I am sorry to interfere
with your more important architectural studies, but I am afraid there is
no help for it."

And so on; while the form howled with amusement.

But Mr. Horbury kept these gems for future and public use. For the
moment he had more exciting work on hand. He burst out suddenly:

"The fact is, Ambrose Meyrick, you're a miserable little humbug! You
haven't the honesty to say, fair and square, that you funked rocker and
went loafing about the country, looking for any mischief you could lay
your hands on. Instead of that you make up this cock-and-bull story of
Selden Abbey and Norman arches--as if any boy in his senses ever knew or
cared twopence about such things! I hope you haven't been spending the
afternoon in some low public-house? There, don't speak! I don't want to
hear any more lies. But, whatever you have been doing, you have broken
the rules, and you must be taught that the rules have to be kept. Stand
still!"

Mr. Horbury went to the bookshelf and drew out the object. He stood at a
little distance behind Meyrick and opened proceedings with a savage cut
at his right arm, well above the elbow. Then it was the turn of the left
arm, and the master felt the cane bite so pleasantly into the flesh that
he distributed some dozen cuts between the two arms. Then he turned his
attention to the lad's thighs and finished up in the orthodox manner,
Meyrick bending over a chair.

The boy's whole body was one mass of burning, stinging torture; and,
though he had not uttered a sound during the process, the tears were
streaming down his cheeks. It was not the bodily anguish, though that
was extreme enough, so much as a far-off recollection. He was quite a
little boy, and his father, dead long since, was showing him the western
doorway of a grey church on a high hill and carefully instructing him in
the difference between "billetty" and "chevronny."

"It's no good snivelling, you know, Ambrose. I daresay you think me
severe, but, though you won't believe me now, the day will come when you
will thank me from your heart for what I have just done. Let this day be
a turning-point in your life. Now go to your work."


II

It was strange, but Meyrick never came in the after days and thanked his
uncle for that sharp dose of physical and mental pain. Even when he was
a man he dreamed of Mr. Horbury and woke up in a cold sweat, and then
would fall asleep again with a great sigh of relief and gladness as he
realised that he was no longer in the power of that "infernal old
swine," "that filthy, canting, cruel brute," as he roughly called his
old master.

The fact was, as some old Luptonians remarked, the two had never
understood one another. With the majority of the boys the High Usher
passed for a popular master enough. He had been a distinguished athlete
in his time, and up to his last days at the school was a football
enthusiast. Indeed, he organised a variety of the Lupton game which met
with immense popularity till the Head was reluctantly compelled to stop
it; some said because he always liked to drop bitter into Horbury's cup
when possible; others--and with more probability on their
side--maintained that it was in consequence of a report received from
the school doctor to the effect that this new species of football was
rapidly setting up an old species of heart disease in the weaker
players.

However that might be, there could be no doubt as to Horbury's intense
and deep-rooted devotion to the school. His father had been a Luptonian
before him. He himself had gone from the school to the University, and
within a year or two of taking his degree he had returned to Lupton to
serve it as a master. It was the general opinion in Public School
circles that the High Usher had counted for as much as Chesson, the
Headmaster, if not for more, in the immense advance in prestige and
popularity that the school had made; and everybody thought that when
Chesson received the episcopal order Horbury's succession was a
certainty. Unfortunately, however, there were wheels within wheels, and
a total stranger was appointed, a man who knew nothing of the famous
Lupton traditions, who (it was whispered) had been heard to say that
"this athletic business" was getting a bit overdone. Mr. Horbury's
friends were furious, and Horbury himself, it was supposed, was bitterly
disappointed. He retreated to one of the few decent canonries which have
survived the wave of agricultural depression; but those who knew him
best doubted whether his ecclesiastical duties were an adequate
consolation for the loss of that coveted Headmastership of Lupton.

To quote the memoir which appeared in the _Guardian_ soon after his
death, over some well-known initials:

"His friends were shocked when they saw him at the Residence. He seemed
no longer the same man, he had aged more in six months, as some of them
expressed themselves, than in the dozen years before. The old joyous
Horbury, full of mirth, an apt master of word-play and logic-fence, was
somehow 'dimmed,' to use the happy phrase of a former colleague, the
Dean of Dorchester. Old Boys who remembered the sparkle of his wit, the
zest which he threw into everything, making the most ordinary form-work
better fun than the games at other schools, as one of them observed,
missed something indefinable from the man whom they had loved so long
and so well. One of them, who had perhaps penetrated as closely as any
into the _arcana_ of Horbury's friendship (a privilege which he will
ever esteem as one of the greatest blessings of his life), tried to
rouse him with an extravagant rumour which was then going the round of
the popular Press, to the effect that considerable modifications were
about to be introduced into the compulsory system of games at X., one of
the greatest of our great Public Schools. Horbury flushed; the old light
came into his eyes; his friend was reminded of the ancient war-horse who
hears once more the inspiring notes of the trumpet. 'I can't believe
it,' he said, and there was a tremor in his voice. 'They wouldn't dare.
Not even Y. (the Headmaster of X.) would do such a scoundrelly thing as
that. I _won't_ believe it.' But the flush soon faded and his apathy
returned. 'After all,' he said, 'I shouldn't wonder if it were so. Our
day is past, I suppose, and for all I know they may be construing the
Breviary and playing dominoes at X. in a few years' time.'

"I am afraid that those last years at Wareham were far from happy. He
felt, I think, out of tune with his surroundings, and, _pace_ the
readers of the _Guardian_, I doubt whether he was ever quite at home in
his stall. He confessed to one of his old associates that he doubted the
wisdom of the whole Cathedral system. 'What,' he said, in his old
characteristic manner, 'would St. Peter say if he could enter this
building and see that gorgeous window in which he is represented with
mitre, cope and keys?' And I do not think that he was ever quite
reconciled to the daily recitation of the Liturgy, accompanied as it is
in such establishments by elaborate music and all the pomp of the
surpliced choir. 'Rome and water, Rome and water!' he has been heard to
mutter under his breath as the procession swept up the nave, and before
he died I think that he had the satisfaction of feeling that many in
high places were coming round to his views.

"But to the very last he never forgot Lupton. A year or two before he
died he wrote the great school song, 'Follow, follow, follow!' He was
pleased, I know, when it appeared in the _Luptonian_, and a famous Old
Boy informs me that he will never forget Horbury's delight when he was
told that the song was already a great favourite in 'Chantry.' To many
of your readers the words will be familiar; but I cannot resist quoting
the first verse:

    "I am getting old and grey and the hills seem far away,
      And I cannot hear the horn that once proclaimed the morn
        When we sallied forth upon the chase together;
      For the years are gone--alack!--when we hastened on the track,
      And the huntsman's whip went crack! as a signal to our pack
        Riding in the sunshine and fair weather.
          And yet across the ground
          I seem to hear a sound,
        A sound that comes up floating from the hollow;
          And its note is very clear
          As it echoes in my ear,
        And the words are: 'Lupton, follow, follow, follow!'

    _Chorus._

        "Lupton, follow away!
      The darkness lies behind us, and before us is the day.
        Follow, follow the sun,
        The whole world's to be won,
      So, Lupton, follow, follow, follow, follow away!

"An old pupil sang this verse to him on his death-bed, and I think,
perhaps, that some at least of the readers of the _Guardian_ will allow
that George Horbury died 'fortified,' in the truest sense, 'with the
rites of the Church'--the Church of a Great Aspiration."

Such was the impression that Mr. Horbury had evidently made upon some of
his oldest friends; but Meyrick was, to the last, an infidel. He read
the verses in the _Guardian_ (he would never subscribe to the
_Luptonian_) and jeered savagely at the whole sentiment of the memoir,
and at the poetry, too.

"Isn't it incredible?" he would say. "Let's allow that the main purpose
of the great Public Schools is to breed brave average boobies by means
of rocker, sticker and mucker and the rest of it. Still, they do
acknowledge that they have a sort of _parergon_--the teaching of two
great literatures, two literatures that have moulded the whole of
Western thought for more than two thousand years. And they pay an animal
like this to teach these literatures--a swine that has not enough
literature of any kind in him to save the soul of a louse! Look at those
verses! Why, a decent fourth form boy would be ashamed to put his name
to them!"

He was foolish to talk in this fashion. People merely said that it was
evident he was one of the failures of the great Public School system;
and the song was much admired in the right circles. A very well-turned
_idem Latine_ appeared in the _Guardian_ shortly after the publication
of the memoir, and the initials at the foot of the version were
recognised as those of a literary dean.

And on that autumn evening, far away in the 'seventies, Meyrick, the
boy, left Mr. Horbury's study in a white fury of grief and pain and
rage. He would have murdered his master without the faintest
compunction, nay, with huge delight. Psychologically, his frame of mind
was quite interesting, though he was only a schoolboy who had just had a
sound thrashing for breaking rules.

For the fact, of course, was that Horbury, the irritating influence of
the Head's conversation and sherry apart, was by no means a bad fellow.
He was for the moment savagely cruel, but then, most men are apt to be
savagely cruel when they suffer from an inflamed liver and offensive
superiors, more especially when there is an inferior, warranted
defenceless, in their power. But, in the main, Horbury was a very decent
specimen of his class--English schoolmaster--and Meyrick would never
allow that. In all his reasoning about schools and schoolmasters there
was a fatal flaw--he blamed both for not being what they never pretended
to be. To use a figure that would have appealed to him, it was if one
quarrelled with a plain, old-fashioned meeting-house because it was not
in the least like Lincoln Cathedral. A chimney may not be a decorative
object, but then it does not profess to be a spire or a pinnacle far in
the spiritual city.

But Meyrick was always scolding meeting-houses because they were not
cathedrals. He has been heard to rave for hours against useful,
unpretentious chimney-pots because they bore no resemblance to celestial
spires. Somehow or other, possibly by inheritance, possibly by the
influence of his father's companionship, he had unconsciously acquired a
theory of life which bore no relation whatever to the facts of it. The
theory was manifest in his later years; but it must have been
stubbornly, if vaguely, present in him all through his boyhood. Take,
for instance, his comment on poor Canon Horbury's verses. He judged
those, as we have seen, by the rules of the fine art of literature, and
found them rubbish. Yet any old Luptonian would have told him that to
hear the whole six hundred boys join in the chorus, "Lupton, follow
away!" was one of the great experiences of life; from which it appears
that the song, whatever its demerits from a literary point of view,
fully satisfied the purpose for which is was written. In other words, it
was an excellent chimney, but Meyrick still persisted in his easy and
futile task of proving that it was not a bit like a spire. Then, again,
one finds a fallacy of still huger extent in that major premiss of his:
that the great Public Schools purpose to themselves as a secondary and
minor object the imparting of the spirit and beauty of the Greek and
Latin literatures. Now, it is very possible that at some distant period
in the past this was an object, or even, perhaps, _the_ object of the
institutions in question. The Humanists, it may be conjectured, thought
of school and University as places where Latin and Greek were to be
learned, and to be learned with the object of enjoying the great thought
and the great style of an antique world. One sees the spirit of this in
Rabelais, for example. The Classics are a wonderful adventure; to learn
to understand them is to be a spiritual Columbus, a discoverer of new
seas and unknown continents, a drinker of new-old wine in a new-old
land. To the student of those days a mysterious drowned Atlantis again
rose splendid from the waves of the great deep. It was these things that
Meyrick (unconsciously, doubtless) expected to find in his school life;
it was for the absence of these things that he continued to scold the
system in his later years; wherein, like Jim in _Huckleberry Finn_, he
missed the point by a thousand miles.

The Latin and Greek of modern instruction are, of course, most curious
and interesting survivals; no longer taught with any view of enabling
students to enjoy and understand either the thought or beauty of the
originals; taught rather in such a manner as to nauseate the learner for
the rest of his days with the very notion of these lessons. Still, the
study of the Classics survives, a curious and elaborate ritual, from
which all sense and spirit have departed. One has only to recollect the
form master's lessons in the _Odyssey_ or the _Bacchae_, and then to view
modern Free-masons celebrating the Mystic Death and Resurrection of
Hiram Abiff; the analogy is complete, for neither the master nor the
Masons have the remotest notion of what they are doing. Both persevere
in strange and mysterious actions from inveterate conservatism.

Meyrick was a lover of antiquity and a special lover of survivals, but
he could never see that the round of Greek syntax, and Latin prose, of
Elegiacs and verbs in [Greek: mi], with the mystery of the Oratio
obliqua and the Optative, was one of the most strange and picturesque
survivals of modern life. It is to be noted, by the way, that the very
meaning of the word "scholar" has been radically changed. Thus a
well-known authority points out that "Melancholy" Burton had no
"scholarship" in the real sense of the word; he merely used his vast
knowledge of ancient and modern literature to make one of the most
entertaining and curious books that the world possesses. True
"scholarship," in the modern sense, is to be sought for not in the
Jacobean translators of the Bible, but in the Victorian revisers. The
former made the greatest of English books out of their Hebrew and Greek
originals; but the latter understood the force of the aorist. It is
curious to reflect that "scholar" once meant a man of literary taste and
knowledge.

Meyrick never mastered these distinctions, or, if he did so in later
years, he never confessed to his enlightment, but went on railing at the
meeting-house, which, he still maintained, _did_ pretend to be a
cathedral. He has been heard to wonder why a certain Dean, who had
pointed out the vast improvements that had been effected by the
Revisers, did not employ a few young art students from Kensington to
correct the infamous drawing of the fourteenth-century glass in his
cathedral. He was incorrigible; he was always incorrigible, and thus, in
his boyhood, on the dark November evening, he meditated the murder of
his good master and uncle--for at least a quarter of an hour.

His father, he remembered, had always spoken of Gothic architecture as
the most wonderful and beautiful thing in the world: a thing to be
studied and loved and reverenced. His father had never so much as
mentioned rocker, much less had he preached it as the one way by which
an English boy must be saved. Hence, Ambrose maintained inwardly that
his visit to Selden Abbey was deserving of reward rather than
punishment, and he resented bitterly, the savage injustice (as he
thought it) of his caning.


III

Yet Mr. Horbury had been right in one matter, if not in all. That
evening was a turning-point in Meyrick's life. He had felt the utmost
rage of the enemy, as it were, and he determined that he would be a funk
no longer. He would not degenerate into the state of little Phipps, who
had been bullied and "rockered" and beaten into such a deplorable
condition that he fainted dead away while the Headmaster was operating
on him for "systematic and deliberate lying." Phipps not only fainted,
but, being fundamentally sensible, as Dr. Johnson expressed it, showed a
strong disinclination to return to consciousness and the precious balms
of the "dear old Head." Chesson was rather frightened, and the school
doctor, who had his living to get, said, somewhat dryly, that he thought
the lad had better go home for a week or two.

So Phipps went home in a state which made his mother cry bitterly and
his father wonder whether the Public School system was not over-praised.
But the old family doctor went about raging and swearing at the
"scoundrels" who had reduced a child of twelve to a nervous wreck, with
"neurasthenia cerebralis" well on its way. But Dr. Walford had got his
education in some trumpery little academy, and did not understand or
value the _ethos_ of the great Public Schools.

Now, Ambrose Meyrick had marked the career of wretched Phipps with
concern and pity. The miserable little creature had been brought by
careful handling from masters and boys to such a pitch of neurotic
perfection that it was only necessary to tap him smartly on the back or
on the arm, and he would instantly burst into tears. Whenever anyone
asked him the simplest question he suspected a cruel trap of some sort,
and lied and equivocated and shuffled with a pitiable lack of skill.
Though he was pitched by the heels into mucker about three times a week,
that he might acquire the useful art of natation, he still seemed to
grow dirtier and dirtier. His school books were torn to bits, his
exercises made into darts; he had impositions for losing books and
canings for not doing his work, and he lied and cried all the more.

Meyrick had never got to this depth. He was a sturdy boy, and Phipps had
always been a weakly little animal; but, as he walked from the study to
the schoolroom after his thrashing, he felt that he had been in some
danger of descending on that sad way. He finally resolved that he would
never tread it, and so he walked past the baize-lined doors into the
room where the other boys were at work on prep, with an air of unconcern
which was not in the least assumed.

Mr. Horbury was a man of considerable private means and did not care to
be bothered with the troubles and responsibilities of a big House. But
there was room and to spare in the Old Grange, so he took three boys
besides his nephew. These three were waiting with a grin of
anticipation, since the nature of Meyrick's interview with "old Horbury"
was not dubious. But Ambrose strolled in with a "Hallo, you fellows!"
and sat down in his place as if nothing had happened. This was
intolerable.

"I say, Meyrick," began Pelly, a beefy boy with a red face, "you _have_
been blubbing! Feel like writing home about it? Oh! I forgot. This is
your home, isn't it? How many cuts? I didn't hear you howl."

The boy took no notice. He was getting out his books as if no one had
spoken.

"Can't you answer?" went on the beefy one. "How many cuts, you young
sneak?"

"Go to hell!"

The whole three stared aghast for a moment; they thought Meyrick must
have gone mad. Only one, Bates the observant, began to chuckle quietly
to himself, for he did not like Pelly. He who was always beefy became
beefier; his eyes bulged out with fury.

"I'll give it you," he said and made for Ambrose, who was turning over
the leaves of the Latin dictionary. Ambrose did not wait for the
assault; he rose also and met Pelly half-way with a furious blow, well
planted on the nose. Pelly took a back somersault and fell with a crash
to the floor, where he lay for a moment half stunned. He rose staggering
and looked about him with a pathetic, bewildered air; for, indeed, a
great part of his little world had crumbled about his ears. He stood in
the middle of the room, wondering what it meant, whether it was true
indeed that Meyrick was no longer of any use for a little quiet fun. A
horrible and incredible transmutation had, apparently, been effected in
the funk of old. Pelly gazed wildly about him as he tried to staunch the
blood that poured over his mouth.

"Foul blow!" ventured Rawson, a lean lad who liked to twist the arms of
very little boys till they shrieked for mercy. The full inwardness of
the incident had not penetrated to his brain; he saw without believing,
in the manner of the materialist who denies the marvellous even when it
is before his eyes.

"Foul blow, young Meyrick!"

The quiet student had gone back to his place and was again handling his
dictionary. It was a hard, compact volume, rebound in strong boards, and
the edge of these boards caught the unfortunate Rawson full across the
eyes with extraordinary force. He put his face in his hands and
blubbered quietly and dismally, rocking to and fro in his seat, hardly
hearing the fluent stream of curses with which the quiet student
inquired whether the blow he had just had was good enough for him.

Meyrick picked up his dictionary with a volley of remarks which would
have done credit to an old-fashioned stage-manager at the last dress
rehearsal before production.

"Hark at him," said Pelly feebly, almost reverently. "Hark at him." But
poor Rawson, rocking to and fro, his head between his hands, went on
blubbering softly and spoke no word.

Meyrick had never been an unobservant lad; he had simply made a
discovery that evening that in Rome certain Roman customs must be
adopted. The wise Bates went on doing his copy of Latin verse, chuckling
gently to himself. Bates was a cynic. He despised all the customs and
manners of the place most heartily and took the most curious care to
observe them. He might have been the inventor and patentee of rocker, if
one judged him by the fervour with which he played it. He entered his
name for every possible event at the sports, and jumped the jumps and
threw the hammer and ran the races as if his life depended on it. Once
Mr. Horbury had accidentally over-head Bates saying something about "the
honour of the House" which went to his heart. As for cricket, Bates
played as if his sole ambition was to become a first-class professional.
And he chuckled as he did his Latin verses, which he wrote (to the awe
of other boys) "as if he were writing a letter"--that is, without making
a rough copy. For Bates had got the "hang" of the whole system from
rocker to Latin verse, and his copies were much admired. He grinned that
evening, partly at the transmutation of Meyrick and partly at the line
he was jotting down:

    "_Mira loquor, coelo resonans vox funditur alto._"

In after life he jotted down a couple of novels which sold, as the
journalists said, "like hot cakes." Meyrick went to see him soon after
the first novel had gone into its thirtieth thousand, and Bates was
reading "appreciations" and fingering a cheque and chuckling.

"Mira loquor, populo, resonans, _cheque_ funditur alto," he said. "I
know what schoolmasters and boys and the public want, and I take care
they get it--_sale espece de sacres cochons de N. de D._!"

The rest of prep. went off quite quietly. Pelly was slowly recovering
from the shock that he had received and began to meditate revenge.
Meyrick had got him unawares, he reflected. It was merely an accident,
and he resolved to challenge Meyrick to fight and give him back the
worst licking he had ever had in his life. He was beefy, but a bold
fellow. Rawson, who was really a cruel coward and a sneak, had made up
his mind that he wanted no more, and from time to time cast meek and
propitiatory glances in Meyrick's direction.

At half-past nine they all went into their dining-room for bread and
cheese and beer. At a quarter to ten Mr. Horbury appeared in cap and
gown and read a chapter from St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, with one
or two singularly maundering and unhappy prayers. He stopped the boys as
they were going up to their rooms.

"What's this, Pelly?" he said. "Your nose is all swollen. It's been
bleeding, too, I see. What have you been doing to yourself? And you,
Rawson, how do you account for your eyes being black? What's the meaning
of all this?"

"Please, Sir, there was a very stiff bully down at rocker this
afternoon, and Rawson and I got tokered badly."

"Were you in the bully, Bates?"

"No, Sir; I've been outside since the beginning of the term. But all the
fellows were playing up tremendously, and I saw Rawson and Pelly had
been touched when we were changing."

"Ah! I see. I'm very glad to find the House plays up so well. As for
you, Bates, I hear you're the best outside for your age that we've ever
had. Good night."

The three said "Thank you, Sir," as if their dearest wish had been
gratified, and the master could have sworn that Bates flushed with
pleasure at his word of praise. But the fact was that Bates had
"suggested" the flush by a cunning arrangement of his features.

The boys vanished and Mr. Horbury returned to his desk. He was editing a
selection called "English Literature for Lower Forms." He began to read
from the slips that he had prepared:

    "_So all day long the noise of battle roll'd
    Among the mountains by the winter sea;
    Until King Arthur's table, man by man,
    Had fallen in Lyonnesse----_"

He stopped and set a figure by the last word, and then, on a blank slip,
with a corresponding letter, he repeated the figure and wrote the note:

     Lyonnesse--the Sicilly Isles.

Then he took a third slip and wrote the question:

     Give the ancient name of the Sicilly Isles.

These serious labours employed him till twelve o'clock. He put the
materials of his book away as the clock struck, and solemnly mixed
himself his nightly glass of whisky and soda--in the daytime he never
touched spirits--and bit the one cigar which he smoked in the
twenty-four hours. The stings of the Head's sherry and of his
conversation no longer burned within him; time and work and the bite of
the cane in Meyrick's flesh had soothed his soul, and he set himself to
dream, leaning back in his arm-chair, watching the cheerful fire.

He was thinking of what he would do when he succeeded to the
Headmastership. Already there were rumours that Chesson had refused the
Bishopric of St. Dubric's in order that he might be free to accept
Dorchester, which, in the nature of things, must soon be vacant. Horbury
had no doubt that the Headmastership would be his; he had influential
friends who assured him that the trustees would not hesitate for an
instant. Then he would show the world what an English Public School
could be made. In five years, he calculated, he would double the
numbers. He saw the coming importance of the modern side, and especially
of science. Personally, he detested "stinks," but he knew what an effect
he would produce with a great laboratory fitted with the very best
appliances and directed by a highly qualified master. Then, again, an
elaborate gymnasium must be built; there must be an engineer's shop,
too, and a carpenter's as well. And people were beginning to complain
that a Public School Education was of no use in the City. There must be
a business master, an expert from the Stock Exchange who would see that
this reproach was removed. Then he considered that a large number of the
boys belonged to the land-owning class. Why should a country gentleman
be at the mercy of his agent, forced for lack of technical knowledge to
accept statements which he could not check? It was clear that the
management of land and great estates must have its part in the scheme;
and, again, the best-known of the Crammers must be bought on his own
terms, so that the boys who wished to get into the Army or the Civil
Service would be practically compelled to come to Lupton. Already
he saw paragraphs in the _Guardian_ and _The Times_--in all the
papers--paragraphs which mentioned the fact that ninety-five per cent of
the successful candidates for the Indian Civil Service had received
their education at the foundation of "stout old Martin Rolle."
Meanwhile, in all this flood of novelty, the old traditions should be
maintained with more vigour than ever. The classics should be taught as
they never had been taught. Every one of the masters on this side should
be in the highest honours and, if possible, he would get famous men for
the work--they should not merely be good, but also notorious scholars.
Gee, the famous explorer in Crete, who had made an enormous mark in
regions widely removed from the scholastic world by his wonderful book,
_Daedalus; or, The Secret of the Labyrinth_, must come to Lupton at any
price; and Maynard, who had discovered some most important Greek
manuscripts in Egypt, he must have a form, too. Then there was Rendell,
who had done so well with his _Thucydides_, and Davies, author of _The
Olive of Athene_, a daring but most brilliant book which promised to
upset the whole established theory of mythology--he would have such a
staff as no school had ever dreamed of. "We shall have no difficulty
about paying them," thought Horbury; "our numbers will go up by leaps
and bounds, and the fees shall be five hundred pounds a year--and such
terms will do us more good than anything."

He went into minute detail. He must take expert advice as to the
advisability of the school farming on its own account, and so supplying
the boys with meat, milk, bread, butter and vegetables at first cost. He
believed it could be done; he would get a Scotch farmer from the
Lowlands and make him superintendent at a handsome salary and with a
share in the profits. There would be the splendid advertisement of "the
whole dietary of the school supplied from the School Farms, under the
supervision of Mr. David Anderson, formerly of Haddanneuk, the largest
tenancy in the Duke of Ayr's estates." The food would be better and
cheaper, too; but there would be no luxury. The "Spartan" card was
always worth playing; one must strike the note of plain living in a
luxurious age; there must be no losing of the old Public School
severity. On the other hand, the boy's hands should be free to go into
their own pockets; there should be no restraint here. If a boy chose to
bring in _Dindonneau aux truffes_ or _Pieds de mouton a la Ste
Menehould_ to help out his tea, that was his look-out. Why should not
the school grant a concession to some big London firm, who would pay
handsomely for the privilege of supplying the hungry lads with every
kind of expensive dainty? The sum could be justly made a large one, as
any competing shop could be promptly put out of bounds with reason or
without it. On one side, _confiserie_; at the other counter,
_charcuterie_; enormous prices could be charged to the wealthy boys of
whom the school would be composed. Yet, on the other hand, the
distinguished visitor--judge, bishop, peer or what not--would lunch at
the Headmaster's house and eat the boys' dinner and go away saying it
was quite the plainest and very many times the best meal he had ever
tasted. There would be well-hung saddle of mutton, roasted and not
baked; floury potatoes and cauliflower; apple pudding with real English
cheese, with an excellent glass of the school beer, an honest and
delicious beverage made of malt and hops in the well-found school
brewery. Horbury knew enough of modern eating and drinking to understand
that such a meal would be a choice rarity to nine rich people out of
ten; and yet it was "Spartan," utterly devoid of luxury and ostentation.

Again, he passed from detail and minutiae into great Napoleonic regions.
A thousand boys at L500 a year; that would be an income for the school
of five hundred thousand pounds! The profits would be gigantic, immense.
After paying large, even extravagant, prices to the staff, after all
building expenses had been deducted, he hardly dared to think how vast a
sum would accrue year by year to the Trustees. The vision began to
assume such magnificence that it became oppressive; it put on the
splendours and delights of the hashish dream, which are too great and
too piercing for mortal hearts to bear. And yet it was no mirage; there
was not a step that could not be demonstrated, shown to be based on
hard; matter-of-fact business considerations. He tried to keep back his
growing excitement, to argue with himself that he was dealing in
visions, but the facts were too obstinate. He saw that it would be his
part to work the same miracle in the scholastic world as the great
American storekeepers had operated in the world of retail trade. The
principle was precisely the same: instead of a hundred small shops
making comparatively modest and humdrum profits you had the vast
emporium doing business on the gigantic scale with vastly diminished
expenses and vastly increased rewards.

Here again was a hint. He had thought of America, and he knew that here
was an inexhaustible gold mine, that no other scholastic prospector had
even dreamed of. The rich American was notoriously hungry for everything
that was English, from frock-coats to pedigrees. He had never thought of
sending his son to an English Public School because he considered the
system hopelessly behind the times. But the new translated Lupton would
be to other Public Schools as a New York hotel of the latest fashion is
to a village beer-shop. And yet the young millionaire would grow up in
the company of the sons of the English gentlemen, imbibing the unique
culture of English life, while at the same time he enjoyed all the
advantages of modern ideas, modern science and modern business training.
Land was still comparatively cheap at Lupton; the school must buy it
quietly, indirectly, by degrees, and then pile after pile of vast
buildings rose before his eyes. He saw the sons of the rich drawn from
all the ends of the world to the Great School, there to learn the secret
of the Anglo-Saxons.

Chesson was mistaken in that idea of his, which he thought daring and
original, of establishing a distinct Jewish House where the food should
be "Kosher." The rich Jew who desired to send his son to an English
Public School was, in nine cases out of ten, anxious to do so precisely
because he wanted to sink his son's connection with Jewry in oblivion.
He had heard Chesson talk of "our Christian duty to the seed of Israel"
in this connection. The man was clearly a fool. No, the more Jews the
better, but no Jewish House. And no Puseyism either: broad, earnest
religious teaching, with a leaning to moderate Anglicanism, should be
the faith of Lupton. As to this Chesson was, certainly, sound enough. He
had always made a firm stand against ecclesiasticism in any form.
Horbury knew the average English parent of the wealthier classes
thoroughly; he knew that, though he generally called himself a
Churchman, he was quite content to have his sons prepared for
confirmation by a confessed Agnostic. Certainly this liberty must not be
narrowed when Lupton became cosmopolitan. "We will retain all the
dignified associations which belong to the Established Church," he said
to himself, "and at the same time we shall be utterly free from the
taint of over-emphasising dogmatic teaching." He had a sudden brilliant
idea. Everybody in Church circles was saying that the English bishops
were terribly overworked, that it was impossible for the most strenuous
men with the best intentions to supervise effectually the huge dioceses
that had descended from the sparsely populated England of the Middle
Ages. Everywhere there was a demand for suffragans and more suffragans.
In the last week's _Guardian_ there were three letters on the subject,
one from a clergyman in their own diocese. The Bishop had been attacked
by some rabid ritualistic person, who had pointed out that nine out of
every ten parishes had not so much as seen the colour of his hood ever
since his appointment ten years before. The Archdeacon of Melby had
replied in a capital letter, scathing and yet humorous. Horbury turned
to the paper on the table beside his chair and looked up the letter.
"In the first place," wrote the Archdeacon, "your correspondent does not
seem to have realised that the _ethoes_ of the Diocese of Melby is not
identical with that of sacerdotalism. The sturdy folk of the Midlands
have not yet, I am thankful to say, forgotten the lessons of our great
Reformation. They have no wish to see a revival of the purely mechanical
religion of the Middle Ages--of the system of a sacrificing priesthood
and of sacraments efficacious _ex opere operato_. Hence they do not
regard the episcopate quite in the same light as your correspondent
'Senex,' who, it seems to me, looks upon a bishop as a sort of
Christianised 'medicine-man,' endowed with certain mysterious
thaumaturgic powers which have descended to him by an (imaginary)
spiritual succession. This was not the view of Hooker, nor, I venture to
say, has it ever been the view of the really representative divines of
the Established Church of England.

"Still," the Archdeacon went on, "it must be admitted that the present
diocese of Melby is unwieldy and, it may be fairly said, unworkable."

Then there followed the humorous anecdote of Sir Boyle Roche and the
Bird, and finally the Archdeacon emitted the prayer that God in His own
good time would put it into the hearts of our rulers in Church and
State to give their good Bishop an episcopal curate.

Horbury got up from his chair and paced up and down the study; his
excitement was so great that he could keep quiet no longer. His cigar
had gone out long ago, and he had barely sipped the whisky and soda. His
eyes glittered with excitement. Circumstances seemed positively to be
playing into his hands; the dice of the world were being loaded in his
favour. He was like Bel Ami at his wedding. He almost began to believe
in Providence.

For he was sure it could be managed. Here was a general feeling that no
one man could do the work of the diocese. There must be a suffragan, and
Lupton must give the new Bishop his title. No other town was possible.
Dunham had certainly been a see in the eighth century, but it was now
little more than a village and a village served by a miserable little
branch line; whereas Lupton was on the great main track of the Midland
system, with easy connections to every part of the country. The
Archdeacon, who was also a peer, would undoubtedly become the first
Bishop of Lupton, and he should be the titular chaplain of the Great
School! "Chaplain! The Right Reverend Lord Selwyn, Lord Bishop of
Lupton." Horbury gasped; it was too magnificent, too splendid. He knew
Lord Selwyn quite well and had no doubt as to his acceptance. He was a
poor man, and there would be no difficulty whatever in establishing a
_modus_. The Archdeacon was just the man for the place. He was no
pedantic theologian, but a broad, liberal-minded man of the world.
Horbury remembered, almost with ecstasy, that he had lectured all over
the United States with immense success. The American Press had been
enthusiastic, and the First Congregational Church of Chicago had
implored Selwyn to accept its call, preach what he liked and pocket an
honorarium of twenty-five thousand dollars a year. And, on the other
hand, what could the most orthodox desire safer than a chaplain who was
not only a bishop, but a peer of the realm? Wonderful! Here were the
three birds--Liberalism, Orthodoxy and Reverence for the House of
Lords--caught safe and secure in this one net.

The games? They should be maintained in all their glory, rather on an
infinitely more splendid scale. Cricket and sticker (the Lupton hockey),
rackets and fives, should be all encouraged; and more, Lupton should be
the only school to possess a tennis court. The noble _jeu de paume_, the
game of kings, the most aristocratic of all sports, should have a worthy
home at Lupton. They would train champions; they would have both French
and English markers skilled in the latest developments of the _chemin
de fer_ service. "Better than half a yard, I think," said Horbury to
himself; "they will have to do their best to beat that."

But he placed most reliance on rocker. This was the Lupton football, a
variant as distinctive in its way as the Eton Wall Game. People have
thought that the name is a sort of portmanteau word, a combination of
Rugger and Soccer; but in reality the title was derived from the field
where the game used to be played in old days by the townsfolk. As in
many other places, football at Lupton had been originally an excuse for
a faction-fight between two parishes in the town--St. Michael's and St.
Paul's-in-the-Fields. Every year, on Shrove Tuesday, the townsfolk,
young and old, had proceeded to the Town Field and had fought out their
differences with considerable violence. The field was broken land: a
deep, sluggish stream crossed one angle of it, and in the middle there
were quarries and jagged limestone rocks. Hence football was called in
the town "playing rocks," for, indeed, it was considered an excellent
point of play to hurl a man over the edge of the quarry on to the rocks
beneath, and so late as 1830 a certain Jonas Simpson of St. Michael's
had had his spine broken in this way. However, as a boy from St. Paul's
was drowned in the Wand the same day, the game was always reckoned a
draw. It was from the peculiarities of this old English sport that the
school had constructed its game. The Town Field had, of course, long
been stolen from the townsfolk and built over; but the boys had,
curiously enough, perpetuated the tradition of its peculiarities in a
kind of football ritual. For, besides the two goals, one part of the
field was marked by a line of low white posts: these indicated the
course of a non-existent Wand brook, and in the line of these posts it
was lawful to catch an opponent by the throat and choke him till he
turned black in the face--the best substitute for drowning that the
revisers of the game could imagine. Again: about the centre of the field
two taller posts indicated the position of the quarries, and between
these you might be hit or kicked full in the stomach without the
smallest ground of complaint: the stroke being a milder version of the
old fall on the rocks.

There were many other like amenities in rocker; and Horbury maintained
it was by far the manliest variant of the game. For this pleasing sport
he now designed a world-wide fame. Rocker should be played wherever the
English flag floated: east and west, north and south; from Hong Kong to
British Columbia; in Canada and New Zealand there should be the
_Temenoi_ of this great rite; and the traveller seeing the mystic
enclosure--the two goals, the line of little posts marking "brooks" and
the two poles indicating "quarries"--should know English soil as surely
as by the Union Jack. The technical terms of rocker should become a part
of the great Anglo-Saxon inheritance; the whole world should hear of
"bully-downs" and "tokering," of "outsides" and "rammers." It would
require working, but it was to be done: articles in the magazines and in
the Press; perhaps a story of school life, a new _Tom Brown_ must be
written. The Midlands and the North must be shown that there was money
in it, and the rest would be easy.

One thing troubled Horbury. His mind was full of the new and splendid
buildings that were to be erected, but he was aware that antiquity still
counted for something, and unfortunately Lupton could show very little
that was really antique. Forty years before, Stanley, the first
reforming Headmaster, had pulled down the old High School. There were
prints of it: it was a half-timbered, fifteenth-century building, with a
wavering roof-line and an overhanging upper story; there were dim,
leaded windows and a grey arched porch--an ugly old barn, Stanley called
it. Scott was called in and built the present High School, a splendid
hall in red brick: French thirteenth-century, with Venetian detail; it
was much admired. But Horbury was sorry that the old school had been
destroyed; he saw for the first time that it might have been made a
valuable attraction. Then again, Dowsing, who succeeded Stanley, had
knocked the cloisters all to bits; there was only one side of the
quadrangle left, and this had been boarded up and used as a gardeners'
shed. Horbury did not know what to say of the destruction of the Cross
that used to stand in the centre of the quad. No doubt Dowsing was right
in thinking it superstitious; still, it might have been left as a
curiosity and shown to visitors, just as the instruments of bygone
cruelty--the rack and the Iron Maid--are preserved and exhibited to
wondering sightseers. There was no real danger of any superstitious
adoration of the Cross; it was, as a matter of fact, as harmless as the
axe and block at the Tower of London; Dowsing had ruined what might have
been an important asset in the exploitation of the school.

Still, perhaps the loss was not altogether irreparable. High School was
gone and could not be recovered; but the cloisters might be restored and
the Cross, too. Horbury knew that the monument in front of Charing Cross
Railway Station was considered by many to be a genuine antique: why not
get a good man to build them a Cross? Not like the old one, of course;
that "Fair Roode with our Deare Ladie Saint Marie and Saint John," and,
below, the stories of the blissful Saints and Angels--that would never
do. But a vague, Gothic erection, with plenty of kings and queens,
imaginary benefactors of the school, and a small cast-iron cross at the
top: that could give no offence to anybody, and might pass with nine
people out of ten as a genuine remnant of the Middle Ages. It could be
made of soft stone and allowed to weather for a few years; then a coat
of invisible anti-corrosive fluid would preserve carvings and imagery
that would already appear venerable in decay. There was no need to make
any precise statements: parents and the public might be allowed to draw
their own conclusions.

Horbury was neglecting nothing. He was building up a great scheme in his
mind, and to him it seemed that every detail was worth attending to,
while at the same time he did not lose sight of the whole effect. He
believed in finish: there must be no rough edges. It seemed to him that
a school legend must be invented. The real history was not quite what he
wanted, though it might work in with a more decorative account of
Lupton's origins. One might use the _Textus Receptus_ of Martin Rolle's
Foundation--the bequest of land _c._ 1430 to build and maintain a school
where a hundred boys should be taught grammar, and ten poor scholars and
six priests should pray for the Founder's soul. This was well enough,
but one might hint that Martin Rolle really refounded and re-endowed a
school of Saxon origin, probably established by King Alfred himself in
Luppa's Tun. Then, again, who could show that Shakespeare had not
visited Lupton? His famous schoolboy, "creeping like snail unwillingly
to school," might very possibly have been observed by the poet as he
strolled by the banks of the Wand. Many famous men might have received
their education at Lupton; it would not be difficult to make a plausible
list of such. It must be done carefully and cautiously, with such
phrases as "it has always been a tradition at Lupton that Sir Walter
Raleigh received part of his education at the school"; or, again, "an
earlier generation of Luptonians remembered the initials 'W. S. S. on
A.' cut deeply in the mantel of old High School, now, unfortunately,
demolished." Antiquarians would laugh? Possibly; but who cared about
antiquarians? For the average man "Charing" was derived from "_chere
reine_," and he loved to have it so, and Horbury intended to appeal to
the average man. Though he was a schoolmaster he was no recluse, and he
had marked the ways of the world from his quiet study in Lupton; hence
he understood the immense value of a grain of quackery in all schemes
which are meant to appeal to mortals. It was a deadly mistake to
suppose that anything which was all quackery would be a success--a
permanent success, at all events; it was a deadlier mistake still to
suppose that anything quite devoid of quackery could pay handsomely. The
average English palate would shudder at the flavour of _aioli_, but it
would be charmed by the insertion of that _petit point d'ail_ which
turned mere goodness into triumph and laurelled perfection. And there
was no need to mention the word "garlic" before the guests. Lupton was
not going to be all garlic: it was to be infinitely the best scholastic
dish that had ever been served--the ingredients should be unsurpassed
and unsurpassable. But--King Alfred's foundation of a school at Luppa's
Tun, and that "W. S. S. on A." cut deeply on the mantel of the vanished
High School--these and legends like unto them, these would be the last
touch, _le petit point d'ail_.

It was a great scheme, wonderful and glorious; and the most amazing
thing about it was that it was certain to be realised. There was not a
flaw from start to finish. The Trustees were certain to appoint him--he
had that from a sure quarter--and it was but a question of a year or
two, perhaps only of a month or two, before all this great and golden
vision should be converted into hard and tangible fact. He drank off his
glass of whisky and soda; it had become flat and brackish, but to him
it was nectar, since it was flavoured with ecstasy.

He frowned suddenly as he went upstairs to his room. An unpleasant
recollection had intruded for a moment on his amazing fantasy; but he
dismissed the thought as soon as it arose. That was all over, there
could be no possibility of trouble from that direction; and so, his mind
filled with images, he fell asleep and saw Lupton as the centre of the
whole world, like Jerusalem in the ancient maps.

A student of the deep things of mysticism has detected a curious element
of comedy in the management of human concerns; and there certainly seems
a touch of humour in the fact that on this very night, while Horbury was
building the splendid Lupton of the future, the palace of his thought
and his life was shattered for ever into bitter dust and nothingness.
But so it was. The Dread Arrest had been solemnly recognised, and that
wretched canonry at Wareham was irrevocably pronounced for doom.
Fantastic were the elements of forces that had gone to the ordering of
this great sentence: raw corn spirit in the guise of sherry, the
impertinence (or what seemed such) of an elderly clergyman, a boiled leg
of mutton, a troublesome and disobedient boy, and--another person.




II


I

He was standing in a wild, bare country. Something about it seemed
vaguely familiar: the land rose and fell in dull and weary undulations,
in a vast circle of dun ploughland and grey meadow, bounded by a dim
horizon without promise or hope, dreary as a prison wall. The infinite
melancholy of an autumn evening brooded heavily over all the world, and
the sky was hidden by livid clouds.

It all brought back to him some far-off memory, and yet he knew that he
gazed on that sad plain for the first time. There was a deep and heavy
silence over all; a silence unbroken by so much as the fluttering of a
leaf. The trees seemed of a strange shape, and strange were the stunted
thorns dotted about the broken field in which he stood. A little path at
his feet, bordered by the thorn bushes, wandered away to the left into
the dim twilight; it had about it some indefinable air of mystery, as if
it must lead one down into a mystic region where all earthly things are
forgotten and lost for ever.

He sat down beneath the bare, twisted boughs of a great tree and watched
the dreary land grow darker and yet darker; he wondered,
half-consciously, where he was and how he had come to that place,
remembering, faintly, tales of like adventure. A man passed by a
familiar wall one day, and opening a door before unnoticed, found
himself in a new world of unsurmised and marvellous experiences. Another
man shot an arrow farther than any of his friends and became the husband
of the fairy. Yet--this was not fairyland; these were rather the sad
fields and unhappy graves of the underworld than the abode of endless
pleasures and undying delights. And yet in all that he saw there was the
promise of great wonder.

Only one thing was clear to him. He knew that he was Ambrose, that he
had been driven from great and unspeakable joys into miserable exile and
banishment. He had come from a far, far place by a hidden way, and
darkness had closed about him, and bitter drink and deadly meat were
given him, and all gladness was hidden from him. This was all he could
remember; and now he was astray, he knew not how or why, in this wild,
sad land, and the night descended dark upon him.

Suddenly there was, as it were, a cry far away in the shadowy silence,
and the thorn bushes began to rustle before a shrilling wind that rose
as the night came down. At this summons the heavy clouds broke up and
dispersed, fleeting across the sky, and the pure heaven appeared with
the last rose flush of the sunset dying from it, and there shone the
silver light of the evening star. Ambrose's heart was drawn up to this
light as he gazed: he saw that the star grew greater and greater; it
advanced towards him through the air; its beams pierced to his soul as
if they were the sound of a silver trumpet. An ocean of white splendour
flowed over him: he dwelt within the star.

It was but for a moment; he was still sitting beneath the tree of the
twisted branches. But the sky was now clear and filled with a great
peace; the wind had fallen and a more happy light shone on the great
plain. Ambrose was thirsty, and then he saw that beside the tree there
was a well, half hidden by the arching roots that rose above it. The
water was still and shining, as though it were a mirror of black marble,
and marking the brim was a great stone on which were cut the letters:

     "FONS VITAE IMMORTALIS."

He rose and, bending over the well, put down his lips to drink, and his
soul and body were filled as with a flood of joy. Now he knew that all
his days of exile he had borne with pain and grief a heavy, weary body.
There had been dolours in every limb and achings in every bone; his feet
had dragged upon the ground, slowly, wearily, as the feet of those who
go in chains. But dim, broken spectres, miserable shapes and crooked
images of the world had his eyes seen; for they were eyes bleared with
sickness, darkened by the approach of death. Now, indeed, he clearly
beheld the shining vision of things immortal. He drank great draughts of
the dark, glittering water, drinking, it seemed, the light of the
reflected stars; and he was filled with life. Every sinew, every muscle,
every particle of the deadly flesh shuddered and quickened in the
communion of that well-water. The nerves and veins rejoiced together;
all his being leapt with gladness, and as one finger touched another, as
he still bent over the well, a spasm of exquisite pleasure quivered and
thrilled through his body. His heart throbbed with bliss that was
unendurable; sense and intellect and soul and spirit were, as it were,
sublimed into one white flame of delight. And all the while it was known
to him that these were but the least of the least of the pleasures of
the kingdom, but the overrunnings and base tricklings of the great
supernal cup. He saw, without amazement, that, though the sun had set,
the sky now began to flush and redden as if with the northern light. It
was no longer the evening, no longer the time of the procession of the
dusky night. The darkness doubtless had passed away in mortal hours
while for an infinite moment he tasted immortal drink; and perhaps one
drop of that water was endless life. But now it was the preparation for
the day. He heard the words:

    "_Dies venit, dies Tua
    In qua reflorent omnia._"

They were uttered within his heart, and he saw that all was being made
ready for a great festival. Over everything there was a hush of
expectation; and as he gazed he knew that he was no longer in that weary
land of dun ploughland and grey meadow, of the wild, bare trees and
strange stunted thorn bushes. He was on a hillside, lying on the verge
of a great wood; beneath, in the valley, a brook sang faintly under the
leaves of the silvery willows; and beyond, far in the east, a vast wall
of rounded mountain rose serene towards the sky. All about him was the
green world of the leaves: odours of the summer night, deep in the
mystic heart of the wood, odours of many flowers, and the cool breath
rising from the singing stream mingled in his nostrils. The world
whitened to the dawn, and then, as the light grew clear, the rose
clouds blossomed in the sky and, answering, the earth seemed to glitter
with rose-red sparks and glints of flame. All the east became as a
garden of roses, red flowers of living light shone over the mountain,
and as the beams of the sun lit up the circle of the earth a bird's song
began from a tree within the wood. Then were heard the modulations of a
final and exultant ecstasy, the chant of liberation, a magistral _In
Exitu_; there was the melody of rejoicing trills, of unwearied, glad
reiterations of choirs ever aspiring, prophesying the coming of the
great feast, singing the eternal antiphon.

As the song aspired into the heights, so there aspired suddenly before
him the walls and pinnacles of a great church set upon a high hill. It
was far off, and yet as though it were close at hand he saw all the
delicate and wonderful imagery cut in its stones. The great door in the
west was a miracle: every flower and leaf, every reed and fern, were
clustered in the work of the capitals, and in the round arch above
moulding within moulding showed all the beasts that God has made. He saw
the rose-window, a maze of fretted tracery, the high lancets of the fair
hall, the marvellous buttresses, set like angels about this holy house,
whose pinnacles were as a place of many springing trees. And high above
the vast, far-lifted vault of the roof rose up the spire, golden in the
light. The bells were ringing for the feast; he heard from within the
walls the roll and swell and triumph of the organ:

    _O pius o bonus o placidus sonus hymnus eorum._

He knew not how he had taken his place in this great procession, how,
surrounded by ministrants in white, he too bore his part in endless
litanies. He knew not through what strange land they passed in their
fervent, admirable order, following their banners and their symbols that
glanced on high before them. But that land stood ever, it seemed, in a
clear, still air, crowned with golden sunlight; and so there were those
who bore great torches of wax, strangely and beautifully adorned with
golden and vermilion ornaments. The delicate flame of these tapers
burned steadily in the still sunlight, and the glittering silver censers
as they rose and fell tossed a pale cloud into the air. They delayed,
now and again, by wayside shrines, giving thanks for unutterable
compassions, and, advancing anew, the blessed company surged onward,
moving to its unknown goal in the far blue mountains that rose beyond
the plain. There were faces and shapes of awful beauty about him; he saw
those in whose eyes were the undying lamps of heaven, about whose heads
the golden hair was as an aureole; and there were they that above the
girded vesture of white wore dyed garments, and as they advanced around
their feet there was the likeness of dim flames.

The great white array had vanished and he was alone. He was tracking a
secret path that wound in and out through the thickets of a great
forest. By solitary pools of still water, by great oaks, worlds of green
leaves, by fountains and streams of water, by the bubbling, mossy
sources of the brooks he followed this hidden way, now climbing and now
descending, but still mounting upward, still passing, as he knew,
farther and farther from all the habitations of men. Through the green
boughs now he saw the shining sea-water; he saw the land of the old
saints, all the divisions of the land that men had given to them for
God; he saw their churches, and it seemed as if he could hear, very
faintly, the noise of the ringing of their holy bells. Then, at last,
when he had crossed the Old Road, and had gone by the Lightning-struck
Land and the Fisherman's Well, he found, between the forest and the
mountain, a very ancient and little chapel; and now he heard the bell of
the saint ringing clearly and so sweetly that it was as it were the
singing of the angels. Within it was very dark and there was silence. He
knelt and saw scarcely that the chapel was divided into two parts by a
screen that rose up to the round roof. There was a glinting of shapes
as if golden figures were painted on this screen, and through the
joinings of its beams there streamed out thin needles of white splendour
as if within there was a light greater than that of the sun at noonday.
And the flesh began to tremble, for all the place was filled with the
odours of Paradise, and he heard the ringing of the Holy Bell and the
voices of the choir that out-sang the Fairy Birds of Rhiannon, crying
and proclaiming:

     "_Glory and praise to the Conqueror of Death: to the Fountain
     of Life Unending._"

Nine times they sang this anthem, and then the whole place was filled
with blinding light. For a door in the screen had been opened, and there
came forth an old man, all in shining white, on whose head was a gold
crown. Before him went one who rang the bell; on each side there were
young men with torches; and in his hands he bore the _Mystery of
Mysteries_ wrapped about in veils of gold and of all colours, so that it
might not be discerned; and so he passed before the screen, and the
light of heaven burst forth from that which he held. Then he entered in
again by a door that was on the other side, and the Holy Things were
hidden.

And Ambrose heard from within an awful voice and the words:

     _Woe and great sorrow are on him, for he hath looked unworthily
     into the Tremendous Mysteries, and on the Secret Glory which is
     hidden from the Holy Angels._


II

"Poetry is the only possible way of saying anything that is worth saying
at all." This was an axiom that, in later years, Ambrose Meyrick's
friends were forced to hear at frequent intervals. He would go on to say
that he used the term poetry in its most liberal sense, including in it
all mystic or symbolic prose, all painting and statuary that was worthy
to be called art, all great architecture, and all true music. He meant,
it is to be presumed, that the mysteries can only be conveyed by
symbols; unfortunately, however, he did not always make it quite clear
that this was the proposition that he intended to utter, and thus
offence was sometimes given--as, for example, to the scientific
gentleman who had been brought to Meyrick's rooms and went away early,
wondering audibly and sarcastically whether "your clever friend" wanted
to metrify biology and set Euclid to Bach's Organ Fugues.

However, the Great Axiom (as he called it) was the justification that
he put forward in defence of the notes on which the previous section is
based.

"Of course," he would say, "the symbolism is inadequate; but that is the
defect of speech of any kind when you have once ventured beyond the
multiplication table and the jargon of the Stock Exchange. Inadequacy of
expression is merely a minor part of the great tragedy of humanity. Only
an ass thinks that he has succeeded in uttering the perfect content of
his thought without either excess or defect."

"Then, again," he might go on, "the symbolism would very likely be
misleading to a great many people; but what is one to do? I believe many
good people find Turner mad and Dickens tiresome. And if the great
sometimes fail, what hope is there for the little? We cannot all
be--well--popular novelists of the day."

Of course, the notes in question were made many years after the event
they commemorate; they were the man's translation of all the wonderful
and inexpressible emotions of the boy; and, as Meyrick puts it, many
"words" (or symbols) are used in them which were unknown to the lad of
fifteen.

"Nevertheless," he said, "they are the best words that I can find."

As has been said, the Old Grange was a large, roomy house; a space
could easily have been found for half a dozen more boys if the High
Usher had cared to be bothered with them. As it was, it was a favour to
be at Horbury's, and there was usually some personal reason for
admission. Pelly, for example, was the son of an old friend; Bates was a
distant cousin; and Rawson's father was the master of a small Grammar
School in the north with which certain ancestral Horburys were somehow
connected. The Old Grange was a fine large Caroline house; it had a
grave front of red brick, mellowed with age, tier upon tier of tall,
narrow windows, flush with the walls, and a high-pitched, red-tiled
roof. Above the front door was a rich and curious wooden pent-house,
deeply carven; and within there was plenty of excellent panelling, and
some good mantelpieces, added, it would seem, somewhere about the Adam
period. Horbury had seen its solid and comfortable merits and had bought
the freehold years before at a great bargain. The school was increasing
rapidly even in those days, and he knew that before long more houses
would be required. If he left Lupton he would be able to let the Old
Grange easily--he might almost put it up for auction--and the rent would
represent a return of fifty per cent on his investment. Many of the
rooms were large; of a size out of all proportion to the boys' needs,
and at a very trifling expense partitions might be made and the nine or
ten available rooms be subdivided into studies for twenty or even
twenty-five boys. Nature had gifted the High Usher with a careful,
provident mind in all things, both great and small; and it is but fair
to add that on his leaving Lupton for Wareham he found his anticipations
more than justified. To this day Charles Horbury, his nephew, a high
Government official, draws a comfortable income from his uncle's most
prudent investment, and the house easily holds its twenty-five boys.
Rainy, who took the place from Horbury, was an ingenious fellow and hit
upon a capital plan for avoiding the expense of making new windows for
some of the subdivided studies. After thoughtful consideration he caused
the wooden partitions which were put up to stop short of the ceiling by
four inches, and by this device the study with a window lighted the
study that had none; and, as Rainy explained to some of the parents, a
diffused light was really better for the eyes than a direct one.

In the old days, when Ambrose Meyrick was being made a man of, the four
boys "rattled," as it were, in the big house. They were scattered about
in odd corners, remote from each other, and it seemed from everybody
else. Meyrick's room was the most isolated of any, but it was also the
most comfortable in winter, since it was over the kitchen, to the
extreme left of the house. This part, which was hidden from the road by
the boughs of a great cedar, was an after-thought, a Georgian addition
in grey brick, and rose only to two stories, and in the one furnished
room out of the three or four over the kitchen and offices slept
Ambrose. He wished his days could be as quiet and retired as his nights.
He loved the shadows that were about his bed even on the brightest
mornings in summer; for the cedar boughs were dense, and ivy had been
allowed to creep about the panes of the window; so the light entered dim
and green, filtered through the dark boughs and the ivy tendrils.

Here, then, after the hour of ten each night, he dwelt secure. Now and
again Mr. Horbury would pay nocturnal surprise visits to see that all
lights were out; but, happily, the stairs at the end of the passage,
being old and badly fitted, gave out a succession of cracks like pistol
shots if the softest foot was set on them. It was simple, therefore, on
hearing the first of these reports, to extinguish the candle in the
small secret lantern (held warily so that no gleam of light should
appear from under the door) and to conceal the lantern under the
bed-clothes. One wetted one's finger and pinched at the flame, so there
was no smell of the expiring snuff, and the lantern slide was carefully
drawn to guard against the possibility of suspicious grease-marks on the
linen. It was perfect; and old Horbury's visits, which were rare enough,
had no terrors for Ambrose.

So that night, while the venom of the cane still rankled in his body,
though it had ceased to disturb his mind, instead of going to bed at
once, according to the regulations, he sat for a while on his box
seeking a clue in a maze of odd fancies and conceits. He took off his
clothes and wrapped his aching body in the rug from the bed, and
presently, blowing out the official paraffin lamp, he lit his candle,
ready at the first warning creak on the stairs to douse the glim and
leap between the sheets.

Odd enough were his first cogitations. He was thinking how very sorry he
was to have hit Pelly that savage blow and to have endangered Rawson's
eyesight by the hard boards of the dictionary! This was eccentric, for
he had endured from those two young Apaches every extremity of
unpleasantness for upwards of a couple of years. Pelly was not by any
means an evil lad: he was stupid and beefy within and without, and the
great Public School system was transmuting him, in the proper course and
by the proper steps, into one of those Brave Average Boobies whom
Meyrick used to rail against afterwards. Pelly, in all probability (his
fortunes have not been traced), went into the Army and led the milder
and more serious subalterns the devil's own life. In India he "lay
doggo" with great success against some hill tribe armed with
seventeenth-century muskets and rather barbarous knives; he seems to
have been present at that "Conference of the Powers" described so
brightly by Mr. Kipling. Promoted to a captaincy, he fought with
conspicuous bravery in South Africa, winning the Victoria Cross for his
rescue of a wounded private at the instant risk of his own life, and he
finally led his troop into a snare set by an old farmer; a rabbit of
average intelligence would have smelt and evaded it.

For Rawson one is sorry, but one cannot, in conscience, say much that is
good, though he has been praised for his tact. He became domestic
chaplain to the Bishop of Dorchester, whose daughter Emily he married.

But in those old days there was very little to choose between them, from
Meyrick's point of view. Each had displayed a quite devilish ingenuity
in the art of annoyance, in the whole cycle of jeers and sneers and
"scores," as known to the schoolboy, and they were just proceeding to
more active measures. Meyrick had borne it all meekly; he had returned
kindly and sometimes quaint answers to the unceasing stream of remarks
that were meant to wound his feelings, to make him look a fool before
any boys that happened to be about. He had only countered with a mild:
"What do you do that for, Pelly?" when the brave one smacked his head.
"Because I hate sneaks and funks," Pelly had replied and Meyrick said no
more. Rawson took a smaller size in victims when it was a question of
physical torments; but he had invented a most offensive tale about
Meyrick and had told it all over the school, where it was universally
believed. In a word, the two had done their utmost to reduce him to a
state of utter misery; and now he was sorry that he had punched the nose
of one and bombarded the other with a dictionary!

The fact was that his forebearance had not been all cowardice; it is,
indeed, doubtful whether he was in the real sense a coward at all. He
went in fear, it is true, all his days, but what he feared was not the
insult, but the intention, the malignancy of which the insult, or the
blow, was the outward sign. The fear of a mad bull is quite distinct
from the horror with which most people look upon a viper; it was the
latter feeling which made Meyrick's life a burden to him. And again
there was a more curious shade of feeling; and that was the intense
hatred that he felt to the mere thought of "scoring" off an antagonist,
of beating down the enemy. He was a much sharper lad than either Rawson
or Pelly; he could have retorted again and again with crushing effect,
but he held his tongue, for all such victories were detestable to him.
And this odd sentiment governed all his actions and feelings; he
disliked "going up" in form, he disliked winning a game, not through any
acquired virtue, but by inherent nature. Poe would have understood
Meyrick's feelings; but then the author of _The Imp of the Perverse_
penetrated so deeply into the inmost secrets of humanity that
Anglo-Saxon criticism has agreed in denouncing him as a wholly "inhuman"
writer.

With Meyrick this mode of feeling had grown stronger by provocation; the
more he was injured, the more he shrank from the thought of returning
the injury. In a great measure the sentiment remained with him in later
life. He would sally forth from his den in quest of fresh air on top of
an omnibus and stroll peacefully back again rather than struggle for
victory with the furious crowd. It was not so much that he disliked the
physical contest: he was afraid of getting a seat! Quite naturally, he
said that people who "pushed," in the metaphorical sense, always
reminded him of the hungry little pigs fighting for the largest share of
the wash; but he seemed to think that, whereas this course of action was
natural in the little pigs, it was profoundly unnatural in the little
men. But in his early boyhood he had carried this secret doctrine of his
to its utmost limits; he had assumed, as it were, the role of the
coward and the funk; he had, without any conscious religious motive
certainly, but in obedience to an inward command, endeavoured to play
the part of a Primitive Christian, of a religious, in a great Public
School! _Ama nesciri et pro nihilo aestimari._ The maxim was certainly in
his heart, though he had never heard it; but perhaps if he had searched
the whole world over he could not have found a more impossible field for
its exercise than this seminary, where the broad, liberal principles of
Christianity were taught in a way that satisfied the Press, the public
and the parents.

And he sat in his room and grieved over the fashion in which he had
broken this discipline. Still, something had to be done: he was
compelled to stay in this place, and he did not wish to be reduced to
the imbecility of wretched little Phipps who had become at last more
like a whimpering kitten with the mange than a human being. One had not
the right to allow oneself to be made an idiot, so the principle had to
be infringed--but externally only, never internally! Of that he was
firmly resolved; and he felt secure in his recollection that there had
been no anger in his heart. He resented the presence of Pelly and
Rawson, certainly, but in the manner with which some people resent the
presence of a cat, a mouse, or a black-beetle, as disagreeable objects
which can't help being disagreeable objects. But his bashing of Pelly
and his smashing of Rawson, his remarks (gathered from careful
observation by the banks of the Lupton and Birmingham Canal); all this
had been but the means to an end, the securing of peace and quiet for
the future. He would not be murdered by this infernal Public School
system either, after the fashion of Phipps--which was melancholy, or
after the fashion of the rest--which was more melancholy still, since it
is easier to recover from nervous breakdown than from suffusion of cant
through the entire system, mental and spiritual. Utterly from his
heart he abjured and renounced all the horrible shibboleths of the
school, its sham enthusiasm, its "ethos," its "tone," its "loyal
co-operation--masters and boys working together for the good of the
whole school"--all its ridiculous fetish conventions and absurd
observances, the joint contrivances of young fools and old knaves. But
his resistance should be secret and not open, for a while; there should
be no more "bashing" than was absolutely necessary.

And one thing he resolved upon--he would make all he could out of the
place; he would work like a tiger and get all the Latin and Greek and
French obtainable, in spite of the teaching and its imbecile pedantry.
The school work must be done, so that trouble might be avoided, but
here at night in his room he would really learn the languages they
pottered over in form, wasting half their time in writing sham
Ciceronian prose which would have made Cicero sick, and verse evil
enough to cause Virgil to vomit. Then there was French, taught chiefly
out of pompous eighteenth-century fooleries, with lists of irregular
verbs to learn and Babylonish nonsense about the past participle, and
many other rotten formulas and rules, giving to the whole tongue the air
of a tiresome puzzle which had been dug up out of a prehistoric grave.
This was not the French that he wanted; still, he could write out
irregular verbs by day and learn the language at night. He wondered
whether unhappy French boys had to learn English out of the _Rambler_,
Blair's _Sermons_ and Young's _Night Thoughts_. For he had some sort of
smattering of English literature which a Public School boy has no
business to possess. So he went on with this mental tirade of his: one
is not over-wise at fifteen. It is true enough, perhaps, that the French
of the average English schoolboy is something fit to move only pity and
terror; it may be true also that nobody except Deans and schoolmasters
seems to bring away even the formulas and sacred teachings (such as the
Optative mystery and the Doctrine of Dum) of the two great literatures.
There is, doubtless, a good deal to be said on the subject of the Public
Schoolman's knowledge of the history and literature of his own country;
an infinite deal of comic stuff might be got out of his views and
acquirements in the great science of theology--still let us say,
_Floreat_!

Meyrick turned from his review of the wisdom of his elders and
instructors to more intimate concerns. There were a few cuts of that
vigorous cane which still stung and hurt most abominably, for skill or
fortune had guided Mr. Horbury's hand so that he had been enabled here
and there to get home twice in the same place, and there was one
particular weal on the left arm where the flesh, purple and discoloured,
had swelled up and seemed on the point of bursting. It was no longer
with rage, but with a kind of rapture, that he felt the pain and
smarting; he looked upon the ugly marks of the High Usher's evil humours
as though they had been a robe of splendour. For he knew nothing of that
bad sherry, nothing of the Head's conversation; he knew that when Pelly
had come in quite as late it had only been a question of a hundred
lines, and so he persisted in regarding himself as a martyr in the cause
of those famous "Norman arches," which was the cause of that dear dead
enthusiast, his father, who loved Gothic architecture and all other
beautiful "unpractical" things with an undying passion. As soon as
Ambrose could walk he had begun his pilgrimages to hidden mystic
shrines; his father had led him over the wild lands to places known
perhaps only to himself, and there, by the ruined stones, by the smooth
hillock, had told the tale of the old vanished time, the time of the
"old saints."


III

It was for this blessed and wonderful learning, he said to himself, that
he had been beaten, that his body had been scored with red and purple
stripes. He remembered his father's oft-repeated exclamation, "cythrawl
Sais!" He understood that the phrase damned not Englishmen _qua_
Englishmen, but Anglo-Saxonism--the power of the creed that builds
Manchester, that "does business," that invents popular dissent,
representative government, adulteration, suburbs, and the Public School
system. It was, according to his father, the creed of "the Prince of
this world," the creed that made for comfort, success, a good balance at
the bank, the praise of men, the sensible and tangible victory and
achievement; and he bade his little boy, who heard everything and
understood next to nothing, fly from it, hate it and fight against it as
he would fight against the devil--"and," he would add, "it _is_ the
only devil you are ever likely to come across."

And the little Ambrose had understood not much of all this, and if he
had been asked--even at fifteen--what it all meant, he would probably
have said that it was a great issue between Norman mouldings and Mr.
Horbury, an Armageddon of Selden Abbey _versus_ rocker. Indeed, it is
doubtful whether old Nicholas Meyrick would have been very much clearer,
for he forgot everything that might be said on the other side. He forgot
that Anglo-Saxonism (save in the United States of America) makes
generally for equal laws; that civil riot ("Labour" movements, of
course, excepted) is more a Celtic than a Saxon vice; that the penalty
of burning alive is unknown amongst Anglo-Saxons, unless the provocation
be extreme; that Englishmen have substituted "Indentured Labour" for the
old-world horrors of slavery; that English justice smites the guilty
rich equally with the guilty poor; that men are no longer poisoned with
swift and secret drugs, though somewhat unwholesome food may still be
sold very occasionally. Indeed, the old Meyrick once told his rector
that he considered a brothel a house of sanctity compared with a modern
factory, and he was beginning to relate some interesting tales
concerning the Three Gracious Courtesans of the Isle of Britain when the
rector fled in horror--he came from Sydenham. And all this was a nice
preparation for Lupton.

A wonderful joy, an ecstasy of bliss, swelled in Ambrose's heart as he
assured himself that he was a witness, though a mean one, for the old
faith, for the faith of secret and beautiful and hidden mysteries as
opposed to the faith of rocker and sticker and mucker, and "the thought
of the school as an inspiring motive in life"--the text on which the
Head had preached the Sunday before. He bared his arms and kissed the
purple swollen flesh and prayed that it might ever be so, that in body
and mind and spirit he might ever be beaten and reviled and made
ridiculous for the sacred things, that he might ever be on the side of
the despised and the unsuccessful, that his life might ever be in the
shadow--in the shadow of the mysteries.

He thought of the place in which he was, of the hideous school, the
hideous town, the weary waves of the dun Midland scenery bounded by the
dim, hopeless horizon; and his soul revisited the faery hills and woods
and valleys of the West. He remembered how, long ago, his father had
roused him early from sleep in the hush and wonder of a summer morning.
The whole world was still and windless; all the magic odours of the
night rose from the earth, and as they crossed the lawn the silence was
broken by the enchanted song of a bird rising from a thorn tree by the
gate. A high white vapour veiled the sky, and they only knew that the
sun had risen by the brightening of this veil, by the silvering of the
woods and the meadows and the water in the rejoicing brook. They crossed
the road, and crossed the brook in the field beneath, by the old
foot-bridge tremulous with age, and began to climb the steep hillside
that one could see from the windows, and, the ridge of the hill once
surmounted, the little boy found himself in an unknown land: he looked
into deep, silent valleys, watered by trickling streams; he saw still
woods in that dreamlike morning air; he saw winding paths that climbed
into yet remoter regions. His father led him onward till they came to a
lonely height--they had walked scarcely two miles, but to Ambrose it
seemed a journey into another world--and showed him certain irregular
markings in the turf.

And Nicholas Meyrick murmured:

    "The cell of Iltyd is by the seashore,
    The ninth wave washes its altar,
    There is a fair shrine in the land of Morgan.

    "The cell of Dewi is in the City of the Legions,
    Nine altars owe obedience to it,
    Sovereign is the choir that sings about it.

    "The cell of Cybi is the treasure of Gwent,
    Nine hills are its perpetual guardians,
    Nine songs befit the memory of the saint."

"See," he said, "there are the Nine Hills." He pointed them out to the
boy, telling him the tale of the saint and his holy bell, which they
said had sailed across the sea from Syon and had entered the Severn, and
had entered the Usk, and had entered the Soar, and had entered the
Canthwr; and so one day the saint, as he walked beside the little brook
that almost encompassed the hill in its winding course, saw the bell
"that was made of metal that no man might comprehend," floating under
the alders, and crying:

    "_Sant, sant, sant,
    I sail from Syon
    To Cybi Sant!_"

"And so sweet was the sound of that bell," Ambrose's father went on,
"that they said it was as the joy of angels _ym Mharadwys_, and that it
must have come not from the earthly, but from the heavenly and glorious
Syon."

And there they stood in the white morning, on the uneven ground that
marked the place where once the Saint rang to the sacrifice, where the
quickening words were uttered after the order of the Old Mass of the
Britons.

"And then came the Yellow Hag of Pestilence, that destroyed the bodies
of the Cymri; then the Red Hag of Rome, that caused their souls to
stray; last is come the Black Hag of Geneva, that sends body and soul
quick to hell. No honour have the saints any more."

Then they turned home again, and all the way Ambrose thought he heard
the bell as it sailed the great deeps from Syon, crying aloud: "Sant,
Sant, Sant!" And the sound seemed to echo from the glassy water of the
little brook, as it swirled and rippled over the shining stones circling
round those lonely hills.

So they made strange pilgrimages over the beloved land, going farther
and farther afield as the boy grew older. They visited deep wells in the
heart of the woods, where a few broken stones, perhaps, were the last
remains of the hermitage. "Ffynnon Ilar Bysgootwr--the well of
Saint Ilar the Fisherman," Nicholas Meyrick would explain, and then
would follow the story of Ilar; how no man knew whence he came or who
his parents were. He was found, a little child, on a stone in a river in
Armorica, by King Alan, and rescued by him. And ever after they
discovered on the stone in the river where the child had lain every day
a great and shining fish lying, and on this fish Ilar was nourished.
And so he came with a great company of the saints to Britain, and
wandered over all the land.

"So at last Ilar Sant came to this wood, which people now call St.
Hilary's wood because they have forgotten all about Ilar. And he was
weary with his wandering, and the day was very hot; so he stayed by this
well and began to drink. And there on that great stone he saw the
shining fish, and so he rested, and built an altar and a church of
willow boughs, and offered the sacrifice not only for the quick and the
dead, but for all the wild beasts of the woods and the streams.

"And when this blessed Ilar rang his holy bell and began to offer, there
came not only the Prince and his servants, but all the creatures of the
wood. There, under the hazel boughs, you might see the hare, which flies
so swiftly from men, come gently and fall down, weeping greatly on
account of the Passion of the Son of Mary. And, beside the hare, the
weasel and the pole-cat would lament grievously in the manner of
penitent sinners; and wolves and lambs together adored the saint's
hierurgy; and men have beheld tears streaming from the eyes of venomous
serpents when Ilar Agios uttered 'Curiluson' with a loud voice--since
the serpent is not ignorant that by its wickedness sorrow came to the
whole world. And when, in the time of the holy ministry, it is necessary
that frequent Alleluyas should be chanted and vociferated, the saint
wondered what should be done, for as yet none in that place was skilled
in the art of song. Then was a great miracle, since from all the boughs
of the wood, from every bush and from every green tree, there resounded
Alleluyas in enchanting and prolonged harmony; never did the Bishop of
Rome listen to so sweet a singing in his church as was heard in this
wood. For the nightingale and thrush and blackbird and blackcap, and all
their companions, are gathered together and sing praises to the Lord,
chanting distinct notes and yet concluding in a melody of most ravishing
sweetness; such was the mass of the Fisherman. Nor was this all, for one
day as the saint prayed beside the well he became aware that a bee
circled round and round his head, uttering loud buzzing sounds, but not
endeavouring to sting him. To be short; the bee went before Ilar, and
led him to a hollow tree not far off, and straightway a swarm of bees
issued forth, leaving a vast store of wax behind them. This was their
oblation to the Most High, for from their wax Ilar Sant made goodly
candles to burn at the Offering; and from that time the bee is holy,
because his wax makes light to shine upon the Gifts."

This was part of the story that Ambrose's father read to him; and they
went again to see the Holy Well. He looked at the few broken and uneven
stones that were left to distinguish it from common wells; and there in
the deep green wood, in the summer afternoon, under the woven boughs, he
seemed to hear the strange sound of the saint's bell, to see the
woodland creatures hurrying through the undergrowth that they might be
present at the Offering. The weasel beat his little breast for his sins;
the big tears fell down the gentle face of the hare; the adders wept in
the dust; and all the chorus of the birds sang: "Alleluya, Alleluya,
Alleluya!"

Once they drove a long way from the Wern, going towards the west, till
they came to the Great Mountain, as the people called it. After they had
turned from the high road they went down a narrow lane, and this led
them with many windings to a lower ridge of the mountain, where the
horse and trap were put up at a solitary tavern. Then they began to toil
upward on foot, crossing many glistening and rejoicing streams that
rushed out cold from the limestone rock, mounting up and up, through the
wet land where the rare orchis grew amongst the rushes, through hazel
brakes, through fields that grew wilder as they still went higher, and
the great wind came down from the high dome above them. They turned, and
all the shining land was unrolled before them; the white houses were
bright in the sunlight, and there, far away, was the yellow sea and the
two islands, and the coasts beyond.

Nicholas Meyrick pointed out a tuft of trees on a hill a long way off
and told his son that the Wern was hidden beyond it; and then they began
to climb once more, till they came at last to the line where the fields
and hedges ended, and above there was only the wild mountain land. And
on this verge stood an old farmhouse with strong walls, set into the
rock, sheltered a little from the winds by a line of twisted beeches.
The walls of the house were gleaming white, and by the porch there was a
shrub covered with bright yellow flowers. Mr. Meyrick beat upon the oak
door, painted black and studded with heavy nails. An old man, dressed
like a farmer, opened it, and Ambrose noticed that his father spoke to
him with something of reverence in his voice, as if he were some very
great person. They sat down in a long room, but dimly lighted by the
thick greenish glass in the quarried window, and presently the old
farmer set a great jug of beer before them. They both drank heartily
enough, and Mr. Meyrick said:

"Aren't you about the last to brew your own beer, Mr. Cradock?"

"Iss; I be the last of all. They do all like the muck the brewer sends
better than _cwrw dda_."

"The whole world likes muck better than good drink, now."

"You be right, Sir. Old days and old ways of our fathers, they be gone
for ever. There was a blasted preacher down at the chapel a week or two
ago, saying--so they do tell me--that they would all be damned to hell
unless they took to ginger-beer directly. Iss indeed now; and I heard
that he should say that a man could do a better day's work on that
rot-belly stuff than on good beer. Wass you ever hear of such a liarr as
that?"

The old man was furious at the thought of these infamies and follies;
his esses hissed through his teeth and his r's rolled out with fierce
emphasis. Mr. Meyrick nodded his approval of this indignation.

"We have what we deserve," he said. "False preachers, bad drink, the
talk of fools all the day long--even on the mountain. What is it like,
do you think, in London?"

There fell a silence in the long, dark room. They could hear the sound
of the wind in the beech trees, and Ambrose saw how the boughs were
tossed to and fro, and he thought of what it must be like in winter
nights, here, high upon the Great Mountain, when the storms swept up
from the sea, or descended from the wilds of the north; when the shafts
of rain were like the onset of an army, and the winds screamed about the
walls.

"May we see It?" said Mr. Meyrick suddenly.

"I did think you had come for that. There be very few now that
remember."

He went out, and returned carrying a bunch of keys. Then he opened a
door in the room and warned "the young master" to take care of the
steps. Ambrose, indeed, could scarcely see the way. His father led him
down a short flight of uneven stone steps, and they were in a room which
seemed at first quite dark, for the only light came from a narrow window
high up in the wall, and across the glass there were heavy iron bars.

Cradock lit two tall candles of yellow wax that stood in brass
candlesticks on a table; and, as the flame grew clear, Ambrose saw that
he was opening a sort of aumbry constructed in the thickness of the
wall. The door was a great slab of solid oak, three or four inches
thick--as one could see when it was opened--and from the dark place
within the farmer took an iron box and set it carefully upon the floor,
Mr. Meyrick helping him. They were strong men, but they staggered under
the weight of the chest; the iron seemed as thick as the door of the
cupboard from which it was taken, and the heavy, antique lock yielded,
with a grating scream, to the key. Inside it there was another box of
some reddish metal, which, again, held a case of wood black with age;
and from this, with reverent hands, the farmer drew out a veiled and
splendid cup and set it on the table between the two candles. It was a
bowl-like vessel of the most wonderful workmanship, standing on a short
stem. All the hues of the world were mingled on it, all the jewels of
the regions seemed to shine from it; and the stem and foot were
encrusted with work in enamel, of strange and magical colours that shone
and dimmed with alternating radiance, that glowed with red fires and
pale glories, with the blue of the far sky, the green of the faery seas,
and the argent gleam of the evening star. But before Ambrose had gazed
more than a moment he heard the old man say, in pure Welsh, not in
broken English, in a resonant and chanting voice:

"Let us fall down and adore the marvellous and venerable work of the
Lord God Almighty."

To which his father responded:

"Agyos, Agyos, Agyos. Mighty and glorious is the Lord God Almighty, in
all His works and wonderful operations. Curiluson, Curiluson,
Curiluson."

They knelt down, Cradock in the midst, before the cup, and Ambrose and
his father on either hand. The holy vessel gleamed before the boy's
eyes, and he saw clearly its wonder and its beauty. All its surface was
a marvel of the most delicate intertwining lines in gold and silver, in
copper and in bronze, in all manner of metals and alloys; and these
interlacing patterns in their brightness, in the strangeness of their
imagery and ornament, seemed to enthral his eyes and capture them, as it
were, in a maze of enchantment; and not only the eyes; for the very
spirit was rapt and garnered into that far bright world whence the holy
magic of the cup proceeded. Among the precious stones which were set
into the wonder was a great crystal, shining with the pure light of the
moon; about the rim of it there was the appearance of faint and feathery
clouds, but in the centre it was a white splendour; and as Ambrose gazed
he thought that from the heart of this jewel there streamed continually
a shower of glittering stars, dazzling his eyes with their incessant
motion and brightness. His body thrilled with a sudden ineffable
rapture, his breath came and went in quick pantings; bliss possessed him
utterly as the three crowned forms passed in their golden order. Then
the interwoven sorcery of the vessel became a ringing wood of golden,
and bronze, and silver trees; from every side resounded the clear
summons of the holy bells and the exultant song of the faery birds; he
no longer heard the low-chanting voices of Cradock and his father as
they replied to one another in the forms of some antique liturgy. Then
he stood by a wild seashore; it was a dark night, and there was a
shrilling wind that sang about the peaks of the sharp rock, answering to
the deep voices of the heaving sea. A white moon, of fourteen days old,
appeared for a moment in the rift between two vast black clouds, and the
shaft of light showed all the savage desolation of the shore--cliffs
that rose up into mountains, into crenellated heights that were
incredible, whose bases were scourged by the torrents of hissing foam
that were driven against them from the hollow-sounding sea. Then, on the
highest of those awful heights, Ambrose became aware of walls and
spires, of towers and battlements that must have touched the stars; and,
in the midst of this great castle, there surged up the aspiring vault of
a vast church, and all its windows were ablaze with a light so white and
glorious that it was as if every pane were a diamond. And he heard the
voices of a praising host, or the clamour of golden trumpets and the
unceasing choir of the angels. And he knew that this place was the
Sovereign Perpetual Choir, Cor-arbennic, into whose secret the deadly
flesh may scarcely enter. But in the vision he lay breathless, on the
floor before the gleaming wall of the sanctuary, while the shadows of
the hierurgy were enacted; and it seemed to him that, for a moment of
time, he saw in unendurable light the Mystery of Mysteries pass veiled
before him, and the Image of the Slain and Risen.

For a brief while this dream was broken. He heard his father singing
softly:

"Gogoniant y Tad ac y Mab ac yr Yspryd Glan."

And the old man answered:

"Agya Trias eleeson ymas."

Then again his spirit was lost in the bright depths of the crystal, and
he saw the ships of the saints, without oar or sail, afloat on the faery
sea, seeking the Glassy Isle. All the whole company of the Blessed
Saints of the Isle of Britain sailed on the adventure; dawn and sunset,
night and morning, their illuminated faces never wavered; and Ambrose
thought that at last they saw bright shores in the dying light of a red
sun, and there came to their nostrils the scent of the deep apple-garths
in Avalon, and odours of Paradise.

       *       *       *       *       *

When he finally returned to the presence of earthly things he was
standing by his father; while Cradock reverently wrapped the cup in the
gleaming veils which covered it, saying as he did so, in Welsh:

"Remain in peace, O holy and divine cup of the Lord. Henceforth I know
not whether I shall return to thee or not; but may the Lord vouchsafe
me to see thee in the Church of the Firstborn which is in Heaven, on the
Altar of the Sacrifice which is from age unto ages."

Ambrose went up the steps and out into the sunshine on the mountain side
with the bewilderment of strange dreams, as a coloured mist, about him.
He saw the old white walls, the yellow blossoms by the porch; above, the
wild, high mountain wall; and, below, all the dear land of Gwent, happy
in the summer air, all its woods and fields, its rolling hills and its
salt verge, rich in a golden peace. Beside him the cold water swelled
from the earth and trickled from the grey rock, and high in the air an
exultant lark was singing. The mountain breeze was full of life and
gladness, and the rustling and tossing of the woods, the glint and
glimmer of the leaves beneath, made one think that the trees, with every
creature, were merry on that day. And in that dark cell beneath many
locks, beneath wood and iron, concealed in golden, glittering veils, lay
hidden that glorious and awful cup, glass of wonderful vision, portal
and entrance of the Spiritual Place.

His father explained to him something of that which he had seen. He told
him that the vessel was the Holy Cup of Teilo sant, which he was said to
have received from the Lord in the state of Paradise, and that when
Teilo said Mass, using that Chalice, the choir of angels was present
visibly; that it was a cup of wonders and mysteries, the bestower of
visions and heavenly graces.

"But whatever you do," he said, "do not speak to anyone of what you have
seen to-day, because if you do the mystery will be laughed at and
blasphemed. Do you know that your uncle and aunt at Lupton would say
that we were all mad together? That is because they are fools, and in
these days most people are fools, and malignant fools too, as you will
find out for yourself before you are much older. So always remember that
you must hide the secrets that you have seen; and if you do not do so
you will be sorry."

Mr. Meyrick told his son why old Cradock was to be treated with
respect--indeed, with reverence.

"He is just what he looks," he said, "an old farmer with a small
freehold up here on the mountain side; and, as you heard, his English is
no better than that of any other farmer in this country. And, compared
with Cradock, the Duke of Norfolk is a man of yesterday. He is of the
tribe of Teilo the Saint; he is the last, in direct descent, of the
hereditary keepers of the holy cup; and his race has guarded that
blessed relic for thirteen hundred years. Remember, again, that to-day,
on this mountain, you have seen great marvels which you must keep in
silence."

Poor Ambrose! He suffered afterwards for his forgetfulness of his
father's injunction. Soon after he went to Lupton one of the boys was
astonishing his friends with a brilliant account of the Crown jewels,
which he had viewed during the Christmas holidays. Everybody was deeply
impressed, and young Meyrick, anxious to be agreeable in his turn, began
to tell about the wonderful cup that he had once seen in an old
farmhouse. Perhaps his manner was not convincing, for the boys shrieked
with laughter over his description. A monitor who was passing asked to
hear the joke, and, having been told the tale, clouted Ambrose over the
head for an infernal young liar. This was a good lesson, and it served
Ambrose in good stead when one of the masters having, somehow or other,
heard the story, congratulated him in the most approved scholastic
manner before the whole form on his wonderful imaginative gifts.

"I see the budding novelist in you, Meyrick," said this sly master.
"Besant and Rice will be nowhere when you once begin. I suppose you are
studying character just at present? Let us down gently, won't you? [To
the delighted form.] We must be careful, mustn't we, how we behave? 'A
chiel's amang us takin' notes,'" etc. etc.

But Meyrick held his tongue. He did not tell his form master that he was
a beast, a fool and a coward, since he had found out that the truth,
like many precious things, must often be concealed from the profane. A
late vengeance overtook that foolish master. Long years after, he was
dining at a popular London restaurant, and all through dinner he had
delighted the ladies of his party by the artful mixture of brutal
insolence and vulgar chaff with which he had treated one of the waiters,
a humble-looking little Italian. The master was in the highest spirits
at the success of his persiflage; his voice rose louder and louder, and
his offensiveness became almost supernaturally acute. And then he
received a heavy earthen casserole, six quails, a few small onions and a
quantity of savoury but boiling juices full in the face. The waiter was
a Neapolitan.

The hours of the night passed on, as Ambrose sat in his bedroom at the
Old Grange, recalling many wonderful memories, dreaming his dreams of
the mysteries, of the land of Gwent and the land of vision, just as his
uncle, but a few yards away in another room of the house, was at the
same time rapt into the world of imagination, seeing the new Lupton
descending like a bride from the heaven of headmasters. But Ambrose
thought of the Great Mountain, of the secret valleys, of the sanctuaries
and hallows of the saints, of the rich carven work of lonely churches
hidden amongst the hills and woods. There came into his mind the
fragment of an old poem which he loved:

    "In the darkness of old age let not my memory fail,
    Let me not forget to celebrate the beloved land of Gwent.
    If they imprison me in a deep place, in a house of pestilence,
    Still shall I be free, when I remember the sunshine upon Mynydd
       Maen.
    There have I listened to the singing of the lark, my soul has
      ascended with the song of the little bird;
    The great white clouds were the ships of my spirit, sailing to the
      haven of the Almighty.
    Equally to be held in honour is the site of the Great Mountain,
    Adorned with the gushing of many waters--
    Sweet is the shade of its hazel thickets,
    There a treasure is preserved, which I will not celebrate,
    It is glorious, and deeply concealed.
    If Teilo should return, if happiness were restored to the Cymri,
    Dewi and Dyfrig should serve his Mass; then a great marvel would
      be made visible.
    O blessed and miraculous work, then should my bliss be as the bliss
      of angels;
    I had rather behold this Offering than kiss the twin lips of dark
      Gwenllian.
    Dear my land of Gwent, _O quam dilecta tabernacula_!
    Thy rivers are like precious golden streams of Paradise,
    Thy hills are as the Mount Syon--
    Better a grave on Twyn Barlwm than a throne in the palace of the
      Saxons at Caer-Ludd."

And then, by the face of contrast, he thought of the first verse of the
great school song, "Rocker," one of the earliest of the many poems which
his uncle had consecrated to the praise of the dear old school:

        "Once on a time, in the books that bore me,
        I read that in olden days before me
        Lupton town had a wonderful game,
        It was a game with a noble story
        (Lupton town was then in its glory,
        Kings and Bishops had brought it fame).
        It was a game that you all must know,
        And 'rocker' they called it, long ago.

    _Chorus._

        "Look out for 'brooks,' or you're sure to drown,
        Look out for 'quarries,' or else you're down--
        That was the way
        'Rocker' to play--
        Once on a day
        That was the way,
        Once on a day,
    That was the way that they used to play in Lupton town."

Thinking of the two songs, he put out his light and, wearied, fell into
a deep sleep.


IV

The British schoolboy, considered in a genial light by those who have
made him their special study, has not been found to be either observant
or imaginative. Or, rather, it would be well to say that his powers of
observation, having been highly specialised within a certain limited
tract of thought and experience (bounded mainly by cricket and
football), are but faint without these bounds; while it is one of the
chiefest works of the System to kill, destroy, smash and bring to
nothing any powers of imagination he may have originally possessed. For
if this were not done thoroughly, neither a Conservative nor a Liberal
administration would be possible, the House of Commons itself would
cease to exist, the Episcopus (var. Anglicanus) would go the way of the
Great Bustard; a "muddling through somehow" (which must have been _the_
brightest jewel in the British crown, wrung from King John by the
barons) would become a lost art. And, since all these consequences would
be clearly intolerable, the great Public Schools have perfected a very
thorough system of destroying the imaginative toxin, and few cases of
failure have been so far reported.

Still, there are facts which not even the densest dullards, the most
complete boobies, can help seeing; and a good many of the boys found
themselves wondering "what was the matter with Meyrick" when they saw
him at Chapel on the Sunday morning. The news of his astounding
violences both of act and word on the night before had not yet
circulated generally. Bates was attending to that department, but hadn't
had time to do much so far; and the replies of Pelly and Rawson to
enquiries after black eyes and a potato-like nose were surly and
misleading. Afterwards, when the tale was told, when Bates, having
enlarged the incidents to folk-lore size, showed Pelly lying in a pool
of his own blood, Rawson screaming as with the torments of the lost and
Meyrick rolling out oaths--all original and all terrible--for the space
of a quarter of an hour, then indeed the school was satisfied; it was no
wonder if Meyrick did look a bit queer after the achievement of such an
adventure. The funk of aforetime had found courage; the air of rapture
was easily understood. It is probable that if, in the nature of things,
it had been possible for an English schoolboy to meet St. Francis of
Assisi, the boy would have concluded that the saint must have just made
200 not out in first-class cricket.

But Ambrose walked in a strange light; he had been admitted into worlds
undreamed of, and from the first brightness of the sun, when he awoke in
the morning in his room at the Grange, it was the material world about
him, the walls of stone and brick, the solid earth, the sky itself, and
the people who talked and moved and seemed alive--these were things of
vision, unsubstantial shapes, odd and broken illusions of the mind. At
half-past seven old Toby, the man-of-all-work at the old Grange banged
at his door and let his clean boots fall with a crash on the boards
after the usual fashion. He awoke, sat up in bed, staring about him. But
what was this? The four walls covered with a foolish speckled paper,
pale blue and pale brown, the white ceiling, the bare boards with the
strip of carpet by the bedside: he knew nothing of all this. He was not
horrified, because he knew that it was all non-existent, some plastic
fantasy that happened to be presented for the moment to his brain. Even
the big black wooden chest that held his books (_Parker_, despised by
Horbury, among them) failed to appeal to him with any sense of reality;
and the bird's-eye washstand and chest of drawers, the white water-jug
with the blue band, were all frankly phantasmal. It reminded him of a
trick he had sometimes played: one chose one's position carefully, shut
an eye and, behold, a mean shed could be made to obscure the view of a
mountain! So these walls and appurtenances made an illusory sort of
intrusion into the true vision on which he gazed. That yellow washstand
rising out of the shining wells of the undying, the speckled walls in
the place of the great mysteries, a chest of drawers in the magic garden
of roses--it had the air of a queer joke, and he laughed aloud to
himself as he realized that he alone knew, that everybody else would
say, "That is a white jug with a blue band," while he, and he only, saw
the marvel and glory of the holy cup with its glowing metals, its
interlacing myriad lines, its wonderful images, and its hues of the
mountain and the stars, of the green wood and the faery sea where, in a
sure haven, anchor the ships that are bound for Avalon.

For he had a certain faith that he had found the earthly presentation
and sacrament of the Eternal Heavenly Mystery.

He smiled again, with the quaint smile of an angel in an old Italian
picture, as he realized more fully the strangeness of the whole position
and the odd humours which would relieve to play a wonderful game of
make-believe; the speckled walls, for instance, were not really there,
but he was to behave just as if they were solid realities. He would
presently rise and go through an odd pantomine of washing and dressing,
putting on brilliant boots, and going down to various mumbo-jumbo
ceremonies called breakfast, chapel and dinner, in the company of
appearances to whom he would accord all the honours due to veritable
beings. And this delicious phantasmagoria would go on and on day after
day, he alone having the secret; and what a delight it would be to "play
up" at rocker! It seemed to him that the solid-seeming earth, the dear
old school and rocker itself had all been made to minister to the
acuteness of his pleasure; they were the darkness that made the light
visible, the matter through which form was manifested. For the moment he
enclosed in the most secret place of his soul the true world into which
he had been guided; and as he dressed he hummed the favourite school
song, "Never mind!"

      "If the umpire calls 'out' at your poor second over,
    If none of your hits ever turns out a 'rover,'
    If you fumble your fives and 'go rot' over sticker,
    If every hound is a little bit quicker;
    If you can't tackle rocker at all, not at all,
    And kick at the moon when you try for the ball,
      Never mind, never mind, never mind--if you fall,
    Dick falls before rising, Tom's short ere he's tall,
      Never mind!
    Don't be one of the weakest who go to the wall:
      Never mind!"

Ambrose could not understand how Columbus could have blundered so
grossly. Somehow or other he should have contrived to rid himself of his
crew; he should have returned alone, with a dismal tale of failure, and
passed the rest of his days as that sad and sorry charlatan who had
misled the world with his mad whimsies of a continent beyond the waters
of the Atlantic. If he had been given wisdom to do this, how great--how
wonderful would his joys have been! They would have pointed at him as he
paced the streets in his shabby cloak; the boys would have sung songs
about him and his madness; the great people would have laughed
contemptuously as he went by. And he would have seen in his heart all
that vast far world of the west, the rich islands barred by roaring
surf, a whole hemisphere of strange regions and strange people; he would
have known that he alone possessed the secret of it. But, after all,
Ambrose knew that his was a greater joy even than this; for the world
that he had discovered was not far across the seas, but within him.

Pelly stared straight before him in savage silence all through
breakfast; he was convinced that mere hazard had guided that crushing
blow, and he was meditating schemes of complete and exemplary
vengeance. He noticed nothing strange about Meyrick, nor would he have
cared if he had seen the images of the fairies in his eyes. Rawson, on
the other hand, was full of genial civility and good fellowship; it was
"old chap" and "old fellow" every other word. But he was far from
unintelligent, and, as he slyly watched Meyrick, he saw that there was
something altogether unaccustomed and incomprehensible. Unknown lights
burned and shone in the eyes, reflections of one knew not what; the
expression was altered in some queer way that he could not understand.
Meyrick had always been a rather ugly, dogged-looking fellow; his black
hair and something that was not usual in the set of his features gave
him an exotic, almost an Oriental appearance; hence a story of Rawson's
to the effect that Meyrick's mother was a nigger woman in poor
circumstances and of indifferent morality had struck the school as
plausible enough.

But now the grimness of the rugged features seemed abolished; the face
shone, as it were, with the light of a flame--but a flame of what fire?
Rawson, who would not have put his observations into such terms, drew
his own conclusions readily enough and imparted them to Pelly after
Chapel.

"Look here, old chap," he said, "did you notice young Meyrick at
breakfast?"

Pelly simply blasted Meyrick and announced his intention of giving him
the worst thrashing he had ever had at an early date.

"Don't you try it on," said Rawson. "I had my eye on him all the time.
He didn't see I was spotting him. He's cracked; he's dangerous. I
shouldn't wonder if he were in a strait waistcoat in the County Lunatic
Asylum in a week's time. My governor had a lot to do with lunatics, and
he always says he can tell by the eyes. I'll swear Meyrick is raging
mad."

"Oh, rot!" said Pelly. "What do you know about it?"

"Well, look out, old chap, and don't say I didn't give you the tip. Of
course, you know a maniac is stronger than three ordinary men? The only
thing is to get them down and crack their ribs. But you want at least
half a dozen men before you can do it."

"Oh, shut up!"

So Rawson said no more, remaining quite sure that he had diagnosed
Ambrose's symptoms correctly. He waited for the catastrophe with a
dreadful joy, wondering whether Meyrick would begin by cutting old
Horbury's throat with his own razor, or whether he would rather steal
into Pelly's room at night and tear him limb from limb, a feat which, as
a madman, he could, of course, accomplish with perfect ease. As a matter
of fact, neither of these events happened. Pelly, a boy of the bulldog
breed, smacked Ambrose's face a day or two later before a huge crowd of
boys, and received in return such a terrific blow under the left ear
that a formal fight in the Tom Brown manner was out of the question.

Pelly reached the ground and stayed there in an unconscious state for
some while; and the other boys determined that it would be as well to
leave Meyrick to himself. He might be cracked but he was undoubtedly a
hard hitter. As for Pelly, like the sensible fellow that he was, he
simply concluded that Meyrick was too good for him. He did not quite
understand it; he dimly suspected the intrusion of some strange forces,
but with such things he had nothing to do. It was a fair knock-out, and
there was an end of it.

Bates had glanced up as Ambrose came into the dining-room on the Sunday
morning. He saw the shining face, the rapturous eyes, and had silently
wondered, recognising the presence of elements which transcended all his
calculations.

Meanwhile the Lupton Sunday went on after its customary fashion. At
eleven o'clock the Chapel was full of boys. There were nearly six
hundred of them there, the big ones in frock-coats, with high, pointed
collars, which made them look like youthful Gladstones. The younger boys
wore broad, turn-down collars and had short, square jackets made
somewhat in the Basque fashion. Young and old had their hair cut close
to the scalp, and this gave them all a brisk but bullety appearance. The
masters, in cassock, gown and hood, occupied the choir stalls. Mr.
Horbury, the High Usher, clothed in a flowing surplice, was taking
Morning Prayer, and the Head occupied a kind of throne by the altar.

The Chapel was not an inspiring building. It was the fourteenth century,
certainly, but the fourteenth century translated by 1840, and, it is to
be feared, sadly betrayed by the translators. The tracery of the windows
was poor and shallow; the mouldings of the piers and arches faulty to a
degree; the chancel was absurdly out of proportion, and the pitch-pine
benches and stalls had a sticky look. There was a stained-glass window
in memory of the Old Luptonians who fell in the Crimea. One wondered
what the Woman of Samaria by the Well had to do either with Lupton or
the Crimea. And the colouring was like that used in very common, cheap
sweets.

The service went with a rush. The prayers, versicles and responses, and
psalms were said, the officiant and the congregation rather pressing
than pausing--often, indeed, coming so swiftly to cues that two or three
words at the end of one verse or two or three at the beginning of the
next would be lost in a confused noise of contending voices. But
_Venite_ and _Te Deum_ and _Benedictus_ were rattled off to frisky
Anglicans with great spirit; sometimes the organ tooted, sometimes it
bleated gently, like a flock of sheep; now one might have sworn that the
music of penny whistles stole on the ear, and again, as the organist
coupled up the full organ, using suddenly all the battery of his stops,
a gas explosion and a Salvation Army band seemed to strive against one
another. A well-known nobleman who had been to Chapel at Lupton was
heard to say, with reference to this experience: "I am no Ritualist,
heaven knows--but I confess I like a hearty service."

But it was, above all, the sermon that has made the Chapel a place of
many memories. The Old Boys say--and one supposes that they are in
earnest--that the tall, dignified figure of the Doctor, standing high
above them all, his scarlet hood making a brilliant splash of colour
against the dingy, bilious paint of the pale green walls, has been an
inspiration to them in all quarters of the globe, in all manner of
difficulties and temptations.

One man writes that in the midst of a complicated and dangerous deal on
the Stock Exchange he remembered a sermon of Dr. Chesson's called in the
printed volume, "Fighting the Good Fight."

"You have a phrase amongst you which I often hear," said the Head. "That
phrase is 'Play the game,' and I wish to say that, though you know it
not; though, it may be, the words are often spoken half in jest; still,
they are but your modern, boyish rendering of the old, stirring message
which I have just read to you.

"Fight the Good Fight.' 'Play the Game.' Remember the words in the storm
and struggle, the anxiety and stress that may be--nay, must be--before
you--etc., etc., etc."

"After the crisis was over," wrote the Stock Exchange man, "I was
thankful that I _had_ remembered those words."

"That voice sounding like a trumpet on the battle-field, bidding us all
remember that Success was the prize of Effort and Endurance----" So
writes a well-known journalist.

"I remembered what the Doctor said to us once about 'running the race,'"
says a young soldier, recounting a narrow escape from a fierce enemy,
"so I stuck to my orders."

Ambrose, on that Sunday morning, sat in his place, relishing acutely all
the savours of the scene, consumed with inward mirth at the thought that
this also professed to be a rite of religion. There was an aimless and
flighty merriment about the chant to the _Te Deum_ that made it
difficult for him to control his laughter; and when he joined in the
hymn "Pleasant are Thy courts above," there was an odd choke in his
voice that made the boy next to him shuffle uneasily.

But the sermon!

It will be found on page 125 of the _Lupton Sermons_. It dealt with the
Parable of the Talents, and showed the boys in what the sin of the man
who concealed his Talent really consisted.

"I daresay," said the Head, "that many of the older amongst you have
wondered what this man's sin really was. You may have read your Greek
Testaments carefully, and then have tried to form in your minds some
analogy to the circumstances of the parable--and it would not surprise
me if you were to tell me that you had failed.

"What manner of man was this? I can imagine your saying one to another.
I shall not be astonished if you confess that, for you at least, the
question seems unanswerable.

"Yes; Unanswerable to you. For you are English boys, the sons of English
gentlemen, to whom the atmosphere of casuistry, of concealment, of
subtlety, is unknown; by whom such an atmosphere would be rejected with
scorn. You come from homes where there is no shadow, no dark corner
which must not be pried into. Your relations and your friends are not of
those who hide their gifts from the light of day. Some of you, perhaps,
have had the privilege of listening to the talk of one or other of the
great statesmen who guide the doctrines of this vast Empire. You will
have observed, I am sure, that in the world of politics there is no vain
simulation of modesty, no feigned reluctance to speak of worthy
achievement. All of you are members of this great community, of which
each one of us is so proud, which we think of as the great inspiration
and motive force of our lives. Here, you will say, there are no Hidden
Talents, for the note of the English Public School (thank God for it!)
is openness, frankness, healthy emulation; each endeavouring to do his
best for the good of all. In our studies and in our games each desires
to excel to carry off the prize. We strive for a corruptible crown,
thinking that this, after all, is the surest discipline for the crown
that is incorruptible. If a man say that he loveth God whom he hath not
seen, and love not his brother whom he hath seen! Let your light _shine_
before men. Be sure that we shall never win Heaven by despising earth.

"Yet that man hid his Talent in a napkin. What does the story mean? What
message has it for us to-day?

"I will tell you.

"Some years ago during our summer holidays I was on a walking tour in a
mountainous district in the north of England. The sky was of a most
brilliant blue, the sun poured, as it were, a gospel of gladness on the
earth. Towards the close of the day I was entering a peaceful and
beautiful valley amongst the hills, when three sullen notes of a bell
came down the breeze towards me. There was a pause. Again the three
strokes, and for a third time this dismal summons struck my ears. I
walked on in the direction of the sound, wondering whence it came and
what it signified; and soon I saw before me a great pile of buildings,
surrounded by a gloomy and lofty wall.

"It was a Roman Catholic monastery. The bell was ringing the Angelus, as
it is called.

"I obtained admittance to this place and spoke to some of the unhappy
monks. I should astonish you if I mentioned the names of some of the
deluded men who had immured themselves in this prison-house. It is
sufficient to say that among them were a soldier who had won distinction
on the battle-field, an artist, a statesman and a physician of no mean
repute.

"Now do you understand? Ah! a day will come--you know, I think, what
that day is called--when these poor men will have to answer the
question: 'Where is the Talent that was given to you?'

"'Where was your sword in the hour of your country's danger?'

"'Where was your picture, your consecration of your art to the service
of morality and humanity, when the doors of the great Exhibition were
thrown open?'

"'Where was your silver eloquence, your voice of persuasion, when the
strife of party was at its fiercest?'

"'Where was your God-given skill in healing when One of Royal Blood lay
fainting on the bed of dire--almost mortal--sickness?'

"And the answer? 'I laid it up in a napkin.' And now, etc., etc."

Then the whole six hundred boys sang "O Paradise! O Paradise!" with a
fervour and sincerity that were irresistible. The organ thundered till
the bad glass shivered and rattled, and the service was over.


V

Almost the last words that Ambrose had heard after his wonderful awaking
were odd enough, though at the time he took little note of them, since
they were uttered amidst passionate embraces, amidst soft kisses on his
poor beaten flesh. Indeed, if these words recurred to him afterwards,
they never made much impression on his mind, though to most people they
would seem of more serious import than much else that was uttered that
night! The sentences ran something like this:

"The cruel, wicked brute! He shall be sorry all his days, and every blow
shall be a grief to him. My dear! I promise you he shall pay for
to-night ten times over. His heart shall ache for it till it stops
beating."

There cannot be much doubt that this promise was kept to the letter. No
one knew how wicked rumours concerning Mr. Horbury got abroad in Lupton,
but from that very day the execution of the sentence began. In the
evening the High Usher, paying a visit to a friend in town, took a short
cut through certain dark, ill-lighted streets, and was suddenly
horrified to hear his name shrieked out, coupled with a most disgusting
accusation. His heart sank down in his breast; his face, he knew, was
bloodless; and then he rushed forward to the malpassage whence the voice
seemed to proceed.

There was nothing there. It was a horrid little alley, leading from one
slum to another, between low walls and waste back-gardens, dismal and
lampless. Horbury ran at top speed to the end of it, but there was
nothing to be done. A few women were gossiping at their doors, a couple
of men slouched past on their way to the beer-shop at the corner--that
was all. He asked one of the women if she had seen anybody running, and
she said no, civilly enough--and yet he fancied that she had leered at
him.

He turned and went back home. He was not in the mood for paying visits.
It was some time before he could compose his mind by assuring himself
that the incident, though unpleasant, was not of the slightest
significance. But from that day the nets were about his feet, and his
fate was sealed.

Personally, he was subjected to no further annoyance, and soon forgot
that unpleasant experience in the back-street. But it seems certain that
from that Sunday onwards a cloud of calumny overshadowed the High Usher
in all his ways. No one said anything definite, but everyone appeared to
be conscious of something unpleasant when Horbury's name was mentioned.
People looked oddly at one another, and the subject was changed.

One of the young masters, speaking to a colleague, did indeed allude
casually to Horbury as Xanthias Phoceus. The other master, a middle-aged
man, raised his eyebrows and shook his head without speaking. It is
understood that these muttered slanders were various in their nature;
but, as has been said, everything was indefinite, intangible as
contagion--and as deadly to the master's worldly health.

That horrible accusation which had been screamed out of the alley was
credited by some; others agreed with the young master; while a few had a
terrible story of an idiot girl in a remote Derbyshire village. And the
persistence of all these fables was strange.

It was four years before Henry Vibart Chesson, D. D., ascended the
throne of St. Guthmund at Dorchester; and all through those four years
the fountain of evil innuendo rose without ceasing. It is doubtful how
far belief in the truth of these scandals was firm and settled, or how
far they were in the main uttered and circulated by ill-natured people
who disliked Horbury, but did not in their hearts believe him guilty of
worse sins than pompousness and arrogance. The latter is the more
probable opinion.

Of course, the deliberations of the Trustees were absolutely secret, and
the report that the Chairman, the Marquis of Dunham, said something
about Caesar's wife is a report and nothing more. It is evident that the
London press was absolutely in the dark as to the existence of this
strange conspiracy of vengeance, since two of the chief dailies took the
appointment of the High Usher to the Headmastership as a foregone
conclusion, prophesying, indeed, a rule of phenomenal success. And then
Millward, a Winchester man, understood to be rather unsound on some
scholastic matters--"not _quite_ the right man"; "just a _little_ bit of
a Jesuit"--received the appointment, and people did begin to say that
there must be a screw loose somewhere. And Horbury was overwhelmed, and
began to die.

The odd thing was that, save on that Sunday night, he never saw the
enemy; he never suspected that there was an enemy; And as for the
incident of the alley, after a little consideration he treated it with
contempt. It was only some drunken beast in the town who knew him by
sight and wished to be offensive, in the usual fashion of drunken
beasts.

And there was nothing else. Lupton society was much too careful to allow
its suspicions to be known. A libel action meant, anyhow, a hideous
scandal and might have no pleasant results for the libellers. Besides,
no one wanted to offend Horbury, who was suspected of possessing a
revengeful temper; and it had not dawned on the Lupton mind that the
rumours they themselves were circulating would eventually ruin the High
Usher's chances of the Headmastership. Each gossip heard, as it were,
only his own mutter at the moment. He did not realize that when a great
many people are muttering all at once an ugly noise of considerable
volume is being produced.

It is true that a few of the masters were somewhat cold in their manner.
They lacked the social gift of dissimulation, and could not help showing
their want of cordiality. But Horbury, who noticed this, put it down to
envy and disaffection, and resolved that the large powers given him by
the Trustees should not be in vain so far as the masters in question
were concerned.

Indeed, C. L. Wood, who was afterwards Headmaster of Marcester and died
in Egypt a few years ago, had a curious story which in part relates to
the masters in question, and perhaps throws some light on the
extraordinary tale of Horbury's ruin.

Wood was an old Luptonian. He was a mighty athlete in his time, and his
records for the Long Jump and Throwing the Cricket Ball have not been
beaten at Lupton to this day. He had been one of the first boarders
taken at the Old Grange. The early relations between Horbury and himself
had been continued in later life, and Wood was staying with his former
master at the time when the Trustee's decision was announced. It is
supposed, indeed, that Horbury had offered him a kind of unofficial, but
still important, position in the New Model; in fact, Wood confessed over
his port that the idea was that he should be a kind of "Intelligence
Department" to the Head. He did not seem very clear as to the exact
scope of his proposed duties. We may certainly infer, however, that
they would have been of a very confidential nature, for Wood had jotted
down his recollections of that fatal morning somewhat as follows:

"I never saw Horbury in better spirits. Indeed, I remember thinking that
he was younger than ever--younger than he was in the old days when he
was a junior master and I was in the Third. Of course, he was always
energetic; one could not disassociate the two notions of Horbury and
energy, and I used to make him laugh by threatening to include the two
terms in the new edition of my little book, _Latin and English
Synonyms_. It did not matter whether he were taking the Fifth, or
editing Classics for his boys, or playing rocker--one could not help
rejoicing in the vivid and ebullient energy of the man. And perhaps this
is one reason why shirkers and loafers dreaded him, as they certainly
did.

"But during those last few days at Lupton his vitality had struck me as
quite superhuman. As all the world knows, his succession to the
Headmastership was regarded by everyone as assured, and he was,
naturally and properly, full of the great task which he believed was
before him. This is not the place to argue the merits or demerits of the
scheme which had been maturing for many years in his brain.

"A few persons who, I cannot but think, have received very imperfect
information on the subject, have denounced Horbury's views of the modern
Public School as revolutionary. Revolutionary they certainly were, as an
express engine is revolutionary compared to an ox-waggon. But those who
think of the late Canon Horbury as indifferent to the good side of
Public School traditions knew little of the real man. However, were his
plans good or bad, they were certainly of vast scope, and on the first
night of my visit he made me sit up with him till two o'clock while he
expounded his ideas, some of which, as he was good enough to say, he
trusted to me to carry out. He showed me the piles of MS. he had
accumulated: hundreds of pages relating to the multiple departments of
the great organisation which he was to direct, or rather to create;
sheets of serried figures, sheaves of estimates which he had caused to
be made out in readiness for immediate action.

"Nothing was neglected. I remember seeing a note on the desirability of
compiling a 'Lupton Hymn Book' for use in the Chapel, and another on the
question of forming a Botanical Garden, so that the school botany might
be learned from 'the green life,' as he beautifully expressed it, not
from dry letterpress and indifferent woodcuts. Then, I think, on a
corner of the 'Botany Leaf' was a jotting--a mere hasty scrawl, waiting
development and consideration: 'Should we teach Hindustani? Write to
Tucker _re_ the Moulvie Ahmed Khan.'

"I despair of giving the reader any conception of the range and
minuteness of these wonderful memoranda. I remember saying to Horbury
that he seemed to be able to use the microscope and the telescope at the
same time. He laughed joyously, and told me to wait till he was really
at work. 'You will have your share, I promise you,' he added. His high
spirits were extraordinary and infectious. He was an excellent
_raconteur_, and now and again, amidst his talk of the New Lupton which
he was about to translate from the idea into substance, he told some
wonderful stories which I have not the heart to set down here. _Tu ne
quaesieris._ I have often thought of those lines when I remember
Horbury's intense happiness, the nervous energy which made the delay of
a day or two seem almost intolerable. His brain and his fingers tingled,
as it were, to set about the great work before him. He reminded me of a
mighty host, awaiting but the glance of their general to rush forward
with irresistible force.

"There was not a trace of misgiving. Indeed, I should have been utterly
astonished if I had seen anything of the kind. He told me, indeed, that
for some time past he had suspected the existence of a sort of cabal or
clique against him. 'A. and X., B. and Y., M. and N., and, I think, Z.,
are in it,' he said, naming several of the masters. 'They are jealous,
I suppose, and want to make things as difficult as they can. They are
all cowards, though, and I don't believe one of them--except, perhaps,
M.--would fail in obedience, or rather in subservience, when it comes to
the point. But I am going to make short work of the lot.' And he told me
his intention of ridding the school of these disaffected elements. 'The
Trustees will back me up, I know,' he added, 'but we must try to avoid
all unnecessary friction'; and he explained to me a plan he had thought
of for eliminating the masters in question. 'It won't do to have
half-hearted officers on our ship,' was the way in which he put it, and
I cordially agreed with him.

"Possibly he may have underrated the force of the opposition which he
treated so lightly; possibly he altogether misjudged the situation. He
certainly regarded the appointment as already made, and this, of course,
was, or appeared to be, the conviction of all who knew anything of
Lupton and Horbury.

"I shall never forget the day on which the news came. Horbury made a
hearty breakfast, opening letters, jotting down notes, talking of his
plans as the meal proceeded. I left him for a while. I was myself a
good deal excited, and I strolled up and down the beautiful garden at
the Old Grange, wondering whether I should be able to satisfy such a
chief who, the soul of energy himself, would naturally expect a like
quality in his subordinates. I rejoined him in the course of an hour in
the study, where he was as busy as ever--'snowed up,' as he expressed
it, in a vast pile of papers and correspondence.

"He nodded genially and pointed to a chair, and a few minutes later a
servant came in with a letter. She had just found it in the hall, she
explained. I had taken a book and was reading. I noticed nothing till
what I can only call a groan of intense anguish made me look up in
amazement--indeed, in horror--and I was shocked to see my old friend,
his face a ghastly white, his eyes staring into vacancy, and his
expression one of the most terrible--_the_ most terrible--that I have
ever witnessed. I cannot describe that look. There was an agony of grief
and despair, a glance of the wildest amazement, terror, as of an
impending awful death, and with these the fiercest and most burning
anger that I have ever seen on any human face. He held a letter clenched
in his hand. I was afraid to speak or move.

"It was fully five minutes before he regained his self-control, and he
did this with an effort which was in itself dreadful to contemplate--so
severe was the struggle. He explained to me in a voice which faltered
and trembled with the shock that he had received, that he had had very
bad news--that a large sum of money which was absolutely necessary to
the carrying out of his projects had been embezzled by some unscrupulous
person, that he did not know what he should do. He fell back into his
chair; in a few minutes he had become an old man.

"He did not seem upset, or even astonished, when, later in the day, a
telegram announced that he had failed in the aim of his life--that a
stranger was to bear rule in his beloved Lupton. He murmured something
to the effect that it was no matter now. He never held up his head
again."

This note is an extract from _George Horbury: a Memoir_. It was written
by Dr. Wood for the use of a few friends and privately printed in a
small edition of a hundred and fifty copies. The author felt, as he
explains in his brief _Foreword_, that by restricting the sale to those
who either knew Horbury or were especially interested in his work, he
was enabled to dwell somewhat intimately on matters which could hardly
have been treated in a book meant for the general public.

The extract that has been made from this book is interesting on two
points. It shows that Horbury was quite unaware of what had been going
on for four years before Chesson's resignation and that he had entirely
misinterpreted the few and faint omens which had been offered him. He
was preparing to break a sulky sentinel or two when all the ground of
his fortalice was a very network of loaded mines! The other point is
still more curious. It will be seen from Wood's story that the terrific
effect that he describes was produced by a letter, received some hours
before the news of the Trustees' decision arrived by telegram. "Later in
the day" is the phrase in the Memoir; as a matter of fact, the final
deliberation of the Lupton Trustees, held at Marshall's Hotel in
Albemarle Street, began at eleven-thirty and was not over till
one-forty-five. It is not likely that the result could have reached the
Old Grange before two-fifteen; whereas the letter found in the hall must
have been read by Horbury before ten o'clock. The invariable breakfast
hour at the Old Grange was eight o'clock.

C. L. Wood says: "I rejoined him in the course of an hour," and the
letter was brought in "a few minutes later." Afterwards, when the fatal
telegram arrived, the Memoir notes that the unfortunate man was not
"even astonished." It seems to follow almost necessarily from these
facts that Horbury learnt the story of his ruin from the letter, for it
has been ascertained that the High Usher's account of the contents of
the letter was false from beginning to end. Horbury's most excellent and
sagacious investments were all in the impeccable hands of "Witham's"
(Messrs. Witham, Venables, Davenport and Witham), of Raymond Buildings,
Gray's Inn, who do not include embezzlement in their theory and practice
of the law; and, as a matter of fact, the nephew, Charles Horbury, came
into a very handsome fortune on the death of his uncle--eighty thousand
pounds in personality, with the Old Grange and some valuable ground
rents in the new part of Lupton. It is as certain as anything can be
that George Horbury never lost a penny by embezzlement or, indeed, in
any other way.

One may surmise, then, the real contents of that terrible letter. In
general, that is, for it is impossible to conjecture whether the writer
told the whole story; one does not know, for example, whether Meyrick's
name was mentioned or not: whether there was anything which carried the
reader's mind to that dark evening in November when he beat the
white-faced boy with such savage cruelty. But from Dr. Wood's
description of the wretched man's appearance one understands how utterly
unexpected was the crushing blow that had fallen upon him. It was a
lightning flash from the sky at its bluest, and before that sudden and
awful blast his whole life fell into deadly and evil ruin.

"He never held up his head again." He never lived again, one may say,
unless a ceaseless wheel of anguish and anger and bitter and unavailing
and furious regret can be called life. It was not a man, but a shell,
full of gall and fire, that went to Wareham; but probably he was not the
first of the Klippoth to be made a Canon.

As we have no means of knowing exactly what or how much that letter told
him, one is not in a position to say whether he recognised the
singularity--one might almost say, the eccentricity--with which his
punishment was stage-managed. _Nec deus intersit_ certainly; but a
principle may be pushed too far, and a critic might point out that,
putting avenging deities in their machines on one side, it was rather
going to the other extreme to bring about the Great Catastrophe by means
of bad sherry, a trying Headmaster, boiled mutton, a troublesome
schoolboy and a servant-maid. Yet these were the agents employed; and it
seems that we are forced to the conclusion that we do not altogether
understand the management of the universe. The conclusion is a dangerous
one, since we may be led by it, unless great care is exercised, into the
worst errors of the Dark Ages.

There is the question, of course, of the truthfulness or falsity of the
various slanders which had such a tremendous effect. The worst of them
were lies--there can be little doubt of that--and for the rest, it may
be hinted that the allusion of the young master to Xanthias Phoceus was
not very far wide of the mark. Mrs. Horbury had been dead some years,
and it is to be feared that there had been passages between the High
Usher and Nelly Foran which public opinion would have condemned. It
would be difficult to tell the whole story, but the girl's fury of
revenge makes one apt to believe that she was exacting payment not only
for Ambrose's wrongs, but for some grievous injury done to herself.

But before all these things could be brought to their ending, Ambrose
Meyrick had to live in wonders and delights, to be initiated in many
mysteries, to discover the meaning of that voice which seemed to speak
within him, denouncing him because he had pried unworthily into the
Secret which is hidden from the Holy Angels.




III


I

One of Ambrose Meyrick's favourite books was a railway timetable. He
spent many hours in studying these intricate pages of figures, noting
times of arrival and departure on a piece of paper, and following the
turnings and intersections of certain lines on the map. In this way he
had at last arrived at the best and quickest route to his native
country, which he had not seen for five years. His father had died when
he was ten years old.

This result once obtained, the seven-thirty to Birmingham got him in at
nine-thirty-five; the ten-twenty for the west was a capital train, and
he would see the great dome of Mynydd Mawr before one o'clock. His fancy
led him often to a bridge which crossed the railway about a mile out of
Lupton. East and west the metals stretched in a straight line, defying,
it seemed, the wisdom of Euclid. He turned from the east and gazed
westward, and when a red train went by in the right direction he would
lean over the bridge and watch till the last flying carriage had
vanished into the distance. He imagined himself in that train and
thought of the joy of it, if the time ever came--for it seemed long--the
joy in every revolution of the wheels, in every whistle of the engine;
in the rush and in the rhythm of this swift flight from that horrible
school and that horrible place.

Year after year went by and he had not revisited the old land of his
father. He was left alone in the great empty house in charge of the
servants during the holidays--except one summer when Mr. Horbury
despatched him to a cousin of his who lived at Yarmouth.

The second year after his father's death there was a summer of dreadful
heat. Day after day the sky was a glare of fire, and in these abhorred
Midlands, far from the breath of the sea and the mountain breeze, the
ground baked and cracked and stank to heaven. A dun smoke rose from the
earth with the faint, sickening stench of a brick-field, and the
hedgerows swooned in the heat and in the dust. Ambrose's body and soul
were athirst with the desire of the hills and the woods; his heart cried
out within him for the waterpools in the shadow of the forest; and in
his ears continually he heard the cold water pouring and trickling and
dripping from the grey rocks on the great mountain side. And he saw that
awful land which God has no doubt made for manufacturers to prepare
them for their eternal habitation, its weary waves burning under the
glaring sky: the factory chimneys of Lupton vomiting their foul smoke;
the mean red streets, each little hellway with its own stink; the dull
road, choking in its dust. For streams there was the Wand, running like
black oil between black banks, steaming here as boiling poisons were
belched into it from the factory wall; there glittering with iridescent
scum vomited from some other scoundrel's castle. And for the waterpools
of the woods he was free to gaze at the dark green liquor in the tanks
of the Sulphuric Acid factory, but a little way out of town. Lupton was
a very rising place.

His body was faint with the burning heat and the foulness of all about
him, and his soul was sick with loneliness and friendlessness and
unutterable longing. He had already mastered his Bradshaw and had found
out the bridge over the railway; and day after day he leaned over the
parapet and watched the burning metals vanishing into the west, into the
hot, thick haze that hung over all the land. And the trains sped away
towards the haven of his desire, and he wondered if he should ever see
again the dearly loved country or hear the song of the nightingale in
the still white morning, in the circle of the green hills. The thought
of his father, of the old days of happiness, of the grey home in the
still valley, swelled in his heart and he wept bitterly, so utterly
forsaken and wretched seemed his life.

It happened towards the end of that dreadful August that one night he
had tossed all through the hours listening to the chiming bells, only
falling into a fevered doze a little while before they called him. He
woke from ugly and oppressive dreams to utter wretchedness; he crawled
downstairs like an old man and left his breakfast untouched, for he
could eat nothing. The flame of the sun seemed to burn in his brain; the
hot smoke of the air choked him. All his limbs ached. From head to foot
he was a body of suffering. He struggled out and tottered along the road
to the bridge and gazed with dim, hopeless eyes along the path of
desire, into the heavy, burning mist in the far distance. And then his
heart beat quick, and he cried aloud in his amazed delight; for, in the
shimmering glamour of the haze, he saw as in a mirror the vast green
wall of the Great Mountain rise before him--not far, but as if close at
hand. Nay, he stood upon its slope; his feet were in the sweet-smelling
bracken; the hazel thicket was rustling beneath him in the brave wind,
and the shining water poured cold from the stony rock. He heard the
silver note of the lark, shrilling high and glad in the sunlight. He saw
the yellow blossoms tossed by the breeze about the porch of the white
house. He seemed to turn in this vision and before him the dear,
long-remembered land appeared in its great peace and beauty: meadows and
cornfield, hill and valley and deep wood between the mountains and the
far sea. He drew a long breath of that quickening and glorious air, and
knew that life had returned to him. And then he was gazing once more
down the glittering railway into the mist; but strength and hope had
replaced that deadly sickness of a moment before, and light and joy came
back to his eyes.

The vision had doubtless been given to him in his sore and pressing
need. It returned no more; not again did he see the fair height of
Mynydd Mawr rise out of the mist. But from that day the station on the
bridge was daily consecrated. It was his place of refreshment and hope
in many seasons of evil and weariness. From this place he could look
forward to the hour of release and return that must come at last. Here
he could remind himself that the bonds of the flesh had been broken in a
wonderful manner; that he had been set free from the jaws of hell and
death.

Fortunately, few people came that way. It was but a by-road serving a
few farms in the neighbourhood, and on the Sunday afternoon, in
November, the Head's sermon over and dinner eaten, he betook himself to
his tower, free to be alone for a couple of hours, at least.

He stood there, leaning on the wall, his face turned, as ever, to the
west, and, as it were, a great flood of rapture overwhelmed him. He sank
down, deeper, still deeper, into the hidden and marvellous places of
delight. In his country there were stories of the magic people who rose
all gleaming from the pools in lonely woods; who gave more than mortal
bliss to those who loved them; who could tell the secrets of that land
where flame was the most material substance; whose inhabitants dwelt in
palpitating and quivering colours or in the notes of a wonderful melody.
And in the dark of the night all legends had been fulfilled.

It was a strange thing, but Ambrose Meyrick, though he was a public
schoolboy of fifteen, had lived all his days in a rapt innocence. It is
possible that in school, as elsewhere, enlightenment, pleasant or
unpleasant, only comes to those who seek for it--or one may say
certainly that there are those who dwell under the protection of
enchantments, who may go down into the black depths and yet appear
resurgent and shining, without any stain or defilement of the pitch on
their white robes. For these have ears so intent on certain immortal
songs that they cannot hear discordant voices; their eyes are veiled
with a light that shuts out the vision of evil. There are flames about
these feet that extinguish the gross fires of the pit.

It is probable that all through those early years Ambrose's father had
been charming his son's heart, drawing him forth from the gehenna-valley
of this life into which he had fallen, as one draws forth a beast that
has fallen into some deep and dreadful place. Various are the methods
recommended. There is the way of what is called moral teaching, the way
of physiology and the way of a masterly silence; but Mr. Meyrick's was
the strange way of incantation. He had, in a certain manner, drawn the
boy aside from that evil traffic of the valley, from the stench of the
turmoil, from the blows and the black lechery, from the ugly fight in
the poisonous smoke, from all the amazing and hideous folly that
practical men call life, and had set him in that endless procession that
for ever and for ever sings its litanies in the mountains, going from
height to height on its great quest. Ambrose's soul had been caught in
the sweet thickets of the woods; it had been bathed in the pure water of
blessed fountains; it had knelt before the altars of the old saints,
till all the earth was become a sanctuary, all life was a rite and
ceremony, the end of which was the attainment of the mystic
sanctity--the achieving of the Graal. For this--for what else?--were
all things made. It was this that the little bird sang of in the bush,
piping a few feeble, plaintive notes of dusky evenings, as if his tiny
heart were sad that it could utter nothing better than such sorry
praises. This also celebrated the awe of the white morning on the hills,
the breath of the woods at dawn. This was figured in the red ceremony of
sunset, when flames shone over the dome of the great mountain, and roses
blossomed in the far plains of the sky. This was the secret of the dark
places in the heart of the woods. This the mystery of the sunlight on
the height; and every little flower, every delicate fern, and every reed
and rush was entrusted with the hidden declaration of this sacrament.
For this end, final and perfect rites had been given to men to execute;
and these were all the arts, all the far-lifted splendour of the great
cathedral; all rich carven work and all glowing colours; all magical
utterance of word and tones: all these things were the witnesses that
consented in the One Offering, in the high service of the Graal.

To this service also, together with songs and burning torches and dyed
garments and the smoke of the bruised incense, were brought the incense
of the bruised heart, the magic torches of virtue hidden from the world,
the red dalmatics of those whose souls had been martyred, the songs of
triumph and exultation chanted by them that the profane had crushed into
the dust; holy wells and water-stoups were fountains of tears. So must
the Mass be duly celebrated in Cor-arbennic when Cadwaladr returned,
when Teilo Agyos lifted up again the Shining Cup.

Perhaps it was not strange that a boy who had listened to such spells as
these should heed nothing of the foolish evils about him, the nastiness
of silly children who, for want of wits, were "crushing the lilies into
the dunghill." He listened to nothing of their ugly folly; he heard it
not, understood it not, thought as little of it as of their everlasting
chatter about "brooks" and "quarries" and "leg-hits" and "beaks from the
off." And when an unseemly phrase did chance to fall on his ear it was
of no more import or meaning than any or all of the stupid jargon that
went on day after day, mixing itself with the other jargon about the
optative and the past participle, the oratio obliqua and the verbs in
[Greek: mi]. To him this was all one nothingness, and he would not have
dreamed of connecting anything of it with the facts of life, as he
understood life.

Hence it was that for him all that was beautiful and wonderful was a
part of sanctity; all the glory of life was for the service of the
sanctuary, and when one saw a lovely flower it was to be strewn before
the altar, just as the bee was holy because by its wax the Gifts are
illuminated. Where joy and delight and beauty were, there he knew by
sure signs were the parts of the mystery, the glorious apparels of the
heavenly vestments. If anyone had told him that the song of the
nightingale was an unclean thing he would have stared in amazement, as
though one had blasphemed the Sanctus. To him the red roses were as holy
as the garments of the martyrs. The white lilies were pure and shining
virtues; the imagery of the _Song of Songs_ was obvious and perfect and
unassailable, for in this world there was nothing common nor unclean.
And even to him the great gift had been freely given.

So he stood, wrapt in his meditations and in his ecstasy, by the bridge
over the Midland line from Lupton to Birmingham. Behind him were the
abominations of Lupton: the chimneys vomiting black smoke faintly in
honour of the Sabbath; the red lines of the workmen's streets advancing
into the ugly fields; the fuming pottery kilns, the hideous height of
the boot factory. And before him stretched the unspeakable scenery of
the eastern Midlands, which seems made for the habitation of English
Nonconformists--dull, monotonous, squalid, the very hedgerows cropped
and trimmed, the trees looking like rows of Roundheads, the farmhouses
as uninteresting as suburban villas. On a field near at hand a
scientific farmer had recently applied an agreeable mixture consisting
of superphosphate of lime, nitrate of soda and bone meal. The stink was
that of a chemical works or a Texel cheese. Another field was just being
converted into an orchard. There were rows of grim young apple trees
planted at strictly mathematical intervals from one another, and grisly
little graves had been dug between the apple trees for the reception of
gooseberry bushes. Between these rows the farmer hoped to grow potatoes,
so the ground had been thoroughly trenched. It looked sodden and
unpleasant. To the right Ambrose could see how the operations on a
wandering brook were progressing. It had moved in and out in the most
wasteful and absurd manner, and on each bank there had grown a twisted
brake of trees and bushes and rank water plants. There were wonderful
red roses there in summer time. Now all this was being rectified. In the
first place the stream had been cut into a straight channel with raw,
bare banks, and then the rose bushes, the alders, the willows and the
rest were being grubbed up by the roots and so much valuable land was
being redeemed. The old barn which used to be visible on the left of the
line had been pulled down for more than a year. It had dated perhaps
from the seventeenth century. Its roof-tree had dipped and waved in a
pleasant fashion, and the red tiles had the glow of the sun in their
colours, and the half-timbered walls were not lacking in ruinous brace.
It was a dilapidated old shed, and a neat-looking structure with a
corrugated iron roof now stood in its place.

Beyond all was the grey prison wall of the horizon; but Ambrose no
longer gazed at it with the dim, hopeless eyes of old. He had a Breviary
among his books, and he thought of the words: _Anima mea erepta est
sicut passer de laqueo venantium_, and he knew that in a good season his
body would escape also. The exile would end at last.

He remembered an old tale which his father was fond of telling him--the
story of Eos Amherawdur (the Emperor Nightingale). Very long ago, the
story began, the greatest and the finest court in all the realms of
faery was the court of the Emperor Eos, who was above all the kings of
the Tylwydd Teg, as the Emperor of Rome is head over all the kings of
the earth. So that even Gwyn ap Nudd, whom they now call lord over all
the fair folk of the Isle of Britain, was but the man of Eos, and no
splendour such as his was ever seen in all the regions of enchantment
and faery. Eos had his court in a vast forest, called Wentwood, in the
deepest depths of the green-wood between Caerwent and Caermaen, which is
also called the City of the Legions; though some men say that we should
rather name it the city of the Waterfloods. Here, then, was the Palace
of Eos, built of the finest stones after the Roman manner, and within it
were the most glorious chambers that eye has ever seen, and there was no
end to the number of them, for they could not be counted. For the stones
of the palace being immortal, they were at the pleasure of the Emperor.
If he had willed, all the hosts of the world could stand in his greatest
hall, and, if he had willed, not so much as an ant could enter into it,
since it could not be discerned. But on common days they spread the
Emperor's banquet in nine great halls, each nine times larger than any
that are in the lands of the men of Normandi. And Sir Caw was the
seneschal who marshalled the feast; and if you would count those under
his command--go, count the drops of water that are in the Uske River.
But if you would learn the splendour of this castle it is an easy
matter, for Eos hung the walls of it with Dawn and Sunset. He lit it
with the sun and moon. There was a well in it called Ocean. And nine
churches of twisted boughs were set apart in which Eos might hear Mass;
and when his clerks sang before him all the jewels rose shining out of
the earth, and all the stars bent shining down from heaven, so
enchanting was the melody. Then was great bliss in all the regions of
the fair folk. But Eos was grieved because mortal ears could not hear
nor comprehend the enchantment of their song. What, then, did he do?
Nothing less than this. He divested himself of all his glories and of
his kingdom, and transformed himself into the shape of a little brown
bird, and went flying about the woods, desirous of teaching men the
sweetness of the faery melody. And all the other birds said: "This is a
contemptible stranger." The eagle found him not even worthy to be a
prey; the raven and the magpie called him simpleton; the pheasant asked
where he had got that ugly livery; the lark wondered why he hid himself
in the darkness of the wood; the peacock would not suffer his name to be
uttered. In short never was anyone so despised as was Eos by all the
chorus of the birds. But wise men heard that song from the faery regions
and listened all night beneath the bough, and these were the first who
were bards in the Isle of Britain.

Ambrose had heard the song from the faery regions. He had heard it in
swift whispers at his ear, in sighs upon his breast, in the breath of
kisses on his lips. Never was he numbered amongst the despisers of Eos.


II

Mr. Horbury had suffered from one or two slight twinges of conscience
for a few days after he had operated on his nephew. They were but very
slight pangs, for, after all, it was a case of flagrant and repeated
disobedience to rules, complicated by lying. The High Usher was quite
sincere in scouting the notion of a boy's taking any interest in Norman
architecture, and, as he said to himself, truly enough, if every boy at
Lupton could come and go when and how he pleased, and choose which rules
he would keep and which disobey--why, the school would soon be in a
pretty state. Still, there was a very faint and indistinct murmur in his
mind which suggested that Meyrick had received, in addition to his own
proper thrashing, the thrashings due to the Head, his cook and his wine
merchant. And Horbury was rather sorry, for he desired to be just
according to his definition of justice--unless, indeed justice should be
excessively inconvenient.

But these faint scruples were soon removed--turned, indeed, to
satisfaction by the evident improvement which declared itself in Ambrose
Meyrick's whole tone and demeanour. He no longer did his best to avoid
rocker. He played, and played well and with relish. The boy was
evidently all right at heart: he had only wanted a sharp lesson, and it
was clear that, once a loafer, he was now on his way to be a credit to
the school. And by some of those secret channels which are known to
masters and to masters alone, rather more than a glimmering of the truth
as to Rawson's black eyes and Pelly's disfigured nose was vouchsafed to
Horbury's vision, and he was by no means displeased with his nephew. The
two boys had evidently asked for punishment, and had got it. It served
them right. Of course, if the swearing had been brought to his notice by
official instead of by subterranean and mystic ways, he would have had
to cane Meyrick a second time, since, by the Public School convention,
an oath is a very serious offence--as bad as smoking, or worse; but,
being far from a fool, under the circumstances he made nothing of it.
Then the lad's school work was so very satisfactory. It had always been
good, but it had become wonderfully good. That last Greek prose had
shown real grip of the language. The High Usher was pleased. His sharp
lesson had brought forth excellent results, and he foresaw the day when
he would be proud of having taught a remarkably fine scholar.

With the boys Ambrose was becoming a general favourite. He learned not
only to play rocker, he showed Pelly how he thought that blow under the
ear should be dealt with. They all said he was a good fellow; but they
could not make out why, without apparent reason, he would sometimes
burst out into loud laughter. But he said it was something wrong with
his inside--the doctors couldn't make it out--and this seemed rather
interesting.

In after life he often looked back upon this period when, to all
appearance, Lupton was "making a man" of him, and wondered at its
strangeness. To boys and masters alike he was an absolutely normal
schoolboy, busy with the same interests as the rest of them. There was
certainly something rather queer in his appearance; but, as they said,
generously enough, a fellow couldn't help his looks; and, that curious
glint in the eyes apart, he seemed as good a Luptonian as any in the
whole six hundred. Everybody thought that he had absolutely fallen into
line; that he was absorbing the _ethos_ of the place in the most
admirable fashion, subduing his own individuality, his opinions, his
habits, to the general tone of the community around him--putting off, as
it were, the profane dust of his own spirit and putting on the mental
frock of the brotherhood. This, of course, is one of the aims--rather,
_the_ great aim--of the system: this fashioning of very diverse
characters into one common form, so that each great Public School has
its type, which is easily recognisable in the grown-up man years after
his school days are over. Thus, in far lands, in India and Egypt, in
Canada and New Zealand, one recognises the brisk alertness of the
Etonian, the exquisite politeness of Harrow, the profound seriousness of
Rugby; while the note of Lupton may, perhaps, be called finality. The
Old Luptonian no more thinks of arguing a question than does the Holy
Father, and his conversation is a series of irreformable dogmas, and the
captious person who questions any one article is made to feel himself a
cad and an outsider.

Thus it has been related that two men who had met for the first time at
a certain country house-party were getting on together capitally in the
evening over their whisky and soda and cigars. Each held identical views
of equal violence on some important topic--Home Rule or the Transvaal or
Free Trade--and, as the more masterful of the two asserted that hanging
was too good for Blank (naming a well-known statesman), the other would
reply: "I quite agree with you: hanging is too good for Blank."

"He ought to be burned alive," said the one.

"That's about it: he ought to be burned at the stake," answered the
other.

"Look at the way he treated Dash! He's a coward and a damned scoundrel!"

"Perfectly right. He's a damned cursed scoundrel!"

This was splendid, and each thought the other a charming companion.
Unfortunately, however, the conversation, by some caprice, veered from
the iniquities of Blank and glanced aside to cookery--possibly by the
track of Irish stew, used metaphorically to express the disastrous and
iniquitous policy of the great statesman with regard to Ireland. But, as
it happened, there was not the same coincidence on the question of
cookery as there had been on the question of Blank. The masterful man
said:

"No cookery like English. No other race in the world can cook as we do.
Look at French cookery--a lot of filthy, greasy messes."

Now, instead of assenting briskly and firmly as before the other man
said: "Been much in France? Lived there?"

"Never set foot in the beastly country! Don't like their ways, and don't
care to dine off snails and frogs swimming in oil."

The other man began then to talk of the simple but excellent meals he
had relished in France--the savoury _croute-au-pot_, the _bouilli_--good
eating when flavoured by a gherkin or two; velvety _epinards au jus_, a
roast partridge, a salad, a bit of Roquefort and a bunch of grapes. But
he had barely mentioned the soup when the masterful one wheeled round
his chair and offered a fine view of his strong, well-knit figure--as
seen from the back. He did not say anything--he simply took up the paper
and went on smoking. The other men stared in amazement: the amateur of
French cookery looked annoyed. But the host--a keen-eyed old fellow with
a white moustache, turned to the enemy of frogs and snails and grease
and said quite simply: "I say, Mulock, I never knew you'd been at
Lupton."

Mulock gazed. The other men held their breath for a moment as the full
force of the situation dawned on them, and then a wild scream of
laughter shrilled from their throats. Yells and roars of mirth resounded
in the room. Their delight was insatiable. It died for a moment for lack
of breath, and then burst out anew in still louder, more uproarious
clamour, till old Sir Henry Rawnsley, who was fat and short, could do
nothing but choke and gasp and crow out a sound something between a
wheeze and a chuckle. Mulock left the room immediately, and the house
the next morning. He made some excuse to his host, but he told enquiring
friends that, personally, he disliked bounders.

The story, true or false, illustrates the common view of the Lupton
stamp.

"We try to teach the boys to know their own minds," said the Headmaster,
and the endeavour seems to have succeeded in most cases. And, as Horbury
noted in an article he once wrote on the Public School system, every boy
was expected to submit himself to the process, to form and reform
himself in accordance with the tone of the school.

"I sometimes compare our work with that of the metal founder," he says
in the article in question. "Just as the metal comes to the foundry
_rudis indigestaque moles_, a rough and formless mass, without the
slightest suggestion of the shape which it must finally assume, so a boy
comes to a great Public School with little or nothing about him to
suggest the young man who, in eight or nine years' time, will say
good-bye to the dear old school, setting his teeth tight, restraining
himself from giving up to the anguish of this last farewell. Nay, I
think that ours is the harder task, for the metal that is sent to the
foundry has, I presume, been freed of its impurities; we have to deal
rather with the ore--a mass which is not only shapeless, but contains
much that is not metal at all, which must be burnt out and cast aside as
useless rubbish. So the boy comes from his home, which may or may not
have possessed valuable formative influences; which we often find has
tended to create a spirit of individualism and assertiveness; which, in
numerous cases, has left the boy under the delusion that he has come
into the world to live his own life and think his own thoughts. This is
the ore that we cast into our furnace. We burn out the dross and
rubbish; we liquefy the stubborn and resisting metal till it can be run
into the mould--the mould being the whole tone and feeling of a great
community. We discourage all excessive individuality; we make it quite
plain to the boy that he has come to Lupton, not to live his life, not
to think his thoughts, but to live _our_ life, to think _our_ thoughts.
Very often, as I think I need scarcely say, the process is a somewhat
unpleasant one, but, sooner or later, the stubbornest metal yields to
the cleansing, renewing, restoring fires of discipline and public
opinion, and the shapeless mass takes on the shape of the Great School.
Only the other day an old pupil came to see me and confessed that, for
the whole of his first year at Lupton, he had been profoundly wretched.
'I was a dreamy young fool,' he said. 'My head was stuffed with all
sorts of queer fancies, and I expect that if I hadn't come to Lupton I
should have turned out an absolute loafer. But I hated it badly that
first year. I loathed rocker--I did, really--and I thought the fellows
were a lot of savages. And then I seemed to go into a kind of cloud. You
see, Sir, I was losing my old self and hadn't got the new self in its
place, and I couldn't make out what was happening. And then, quite
suddenly, it all came out light and clear. I saw the purpose behind it
all--how we were all working together, masters and boys, for the dear
old school; how we were all "members one of another," as the Doctor said
in Chapel; and that I had a part in this great work, too, though I was
only a kid in the Third. It was like a flash of light: one minute I was
only a poor little chap that nobody cared for and who didn't matter to
anybody, and the next I saw that, in a way, I was as important as the
Doctor himself--I was a part of the failure or success of it all. Do you
know what I did, Sir? I had a book I thought a lot of--_Poems and Tales_
of Edgar Allan Poe. It was my poor sister's book; she had died a year
before when she was only seventeen, and she had written my name in it
when she was dying--she knew I was fond of reading it. It was just the
sort 

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