Fortitude

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He turned round when he heard them enter and watched them for a moment as
they stood by the door.

"Well, boys" (his voice came from somewhere near his watch chain), "come
and shake hands. How are you all?"

Some eager boy in the front row, with a pleasant smile and a shrill piping
voice said, "Very well, thank you, sir," and Peter immediately hated him.

Then they shook hands and their names were written in a book. The stout
gentleman said, "Well, boys, here you all are. Your first term, you
know--very important. Work and play--work and play. Work first and play
afterwards, and then we'll be friends. Oh, yes! Supper at nine. Prayers at
nine-thirty."

They were all bundled out, and the tall man with pince-nez said: "Now,
boys, you have an hour before supper," and left them without another word
in a long dark passage. The passage was hung with greatcoats and down each
side of it were play-boxes. At the other end, mistily and vaguely, figures
passed.

Peter sat down on one of the play-boxes and saw, to his disgust, that the
eager boy with the piping voice sat down also.

"I say," said the piping boy, "don't you like school awfully?"

"No, I hate it," said Peter.

"Oh, I say! What's your name?"

"Peter."

"Peter! Oh! but your other name. The fellows will rag you most awfully if
you tell them your Christian name."

"Westcott, then."

"Mine's Cheeseman. I'm going to like everybody here and get on. I say,
shall we be chums?"

"No."

"Oh, I say! Why not?"

"Because I don't like you."

"Oh, I say!"

"In another minute I'll break your neck."

"Oh! I say!" The piping boy sprang up from the play-box and stood away.
"All right, you needn't be ratty about it! I'll tell the fellows you said
your name was Peter! They'll give it you."

And the piping boy moved down the passage whistling casually.

After this, silence, and only all the greatcoats swaying a little in the
draught and bulging out and then thinning again as though there were two
persons inside them. Peter sat quite motionless for a long time with his
face in his hands. He was very tired and very cold and very hungry.

A crowd advanced towards him--five or six boys, and one large fat boy was
holding the piping one by the ear.

"Oh, I say! Let me go! Let me go! I'll do your boots up, really I will.
I'll do whatever you like! Oh! I say! There's a new boy. He says his name
is Peter!"

So did the wretched piping one endeavour to divert attention from his own
person. The fat boy, accompanied by a complacent satellite, approached
Peter.

"Hullo, you. What's your name?"

"Westcott."

"'Tisn't. It's Peter."

"Peter Westcott."

"Well, Mr. Peter Westcott, stand up when you're spoken to by your betters.
I say, hack him up, you fellows."

Peter was "hacked" up.

"Now, what do you mean by not speaking when you're spoken to?"

Peter stood square and faced him.

"Oh! you won't speak, won't you? See if this will do it."

Peter's arm and ear were twisted; he was also hit in the mouth.

He was still silent.

Some one in the back of the crowd said, "Oh, come on, you chaps--let's
leave this kid, the other fellow's more fun."

And they passed on bearing the piping one with them.

Peter sat down again; he was feeling sick and his head ached. He buried his
head in the greatcoat that hung above him, and cried quite silently for a
very long time.

A bell rang, and boys ran past him, and he ran with them. He found that it
was supper and that he was sitting with the other new boys at the bottom of
the table, but he could not eat and his head was swimming. Then there were
prayers and, as he knelt on the hard floor with his head against the form,
some one stuck a pin into the soft part of his leg and gave him great pain.

Then at last, and all this time he had spoken to no one, upstairs to bed. A
tall, thin woman in shining black was at the head of the stairs--she read
out to the new boys the numbers of their dormitories in a harsh, metallic
voice. Peter went to his, and found it a long room with twenty beds, twenty
washing basins, and twenty chairs.

One last incident.

He slept and was dreaming. He was climbing the Grey Hill and Stephen was
following him, calling on him. He remembered in his dream that he had not
written Stephen the letter that he had promised, and he turned back down
the hill. Then suddenly the ground began to toss under his feet, he cried
for Stephen, he was flung into the air, he was falling....

He woke and found that he was lying on the floor amongst the tumbled sheets
and blankets. In the distance he could hear stifled laughter. The terror of
that awful wakening was still upon him, and he thought for a moment that he
would die because his heart would never beat again.

Then slowly he gathered his clothes together and tried to arrange them on
the bed. He was dreadfully cold and his toes stuck out at the end of the
bed. He could not cover them.

But, tired as he was, he dared not fall asleep again, lest there should
come once more that dreadful wakening.

CHAPTER V

DAWSON'S, THE GATE INTO HELL

I

A letter from Peter to Stephen:

_Dear, dear Steve,

There's a noise going on and boys are throwing paper and things and there's
another boy jogging my elbows so that I can't hold my pen. Dear Steve, I
hope that you are very, very happy as I am. I am very happy here. I am in
the bottom form because my sums are so awful and my master beat me for
them yesterday but he is nothing to father. I was top in the essay. I like
football--I have a friend who is called Galion (I don't think that is the
right way to spell it. He says that it is like a treasure-ship). He is a
nice boy and Mrs. Trussit was his father's housekeeper once; his father
writes stories. There is a boy I hate called Cheeseman, and one called
Pollock. Please give my love to Mrs. Brant, the cows, Mollie and the pigs,
Mr. and Mrs. Figgis, Mr. Tan and all my friends. Dear Steve, I love you
very, very, very much. I am very happy.

Your loving friend,

Peter Westcott._

A letter from Stephen to Peter:

_Dear Mr. Peter,

I have thought every day of you and I was mighty glad to get your bit of a
letter fearing that, maybe, thiccy place in Devon might have driven your
old friends out of your head. I am no hand with a pen and it is taking me a
time to write this so I will just say that I'm right glad you're happy and
that I'll greet the day I see you again, and that's it's poor trade here
without you.

I am always, your friend,

Stephen Brant._

But Peter had lied in his letter. He was not in any way happy at all. He
had lied because he knew that it would have hurt Stephen if he had told him
the truth--and the truth was something that must be met with clenched teeth
and shoulders set back.

Taking him at the end of the first week one finds simple bewilderment and
also a conviction that silence is the best policy. He was placed in the
lowest form because of his ignorance of Latin and Mathematics, and here
every one was younger and weaker. During school hours there was comparative
peace, and he sat with perplexed brow and inky fingers, or was sent down to
the bottom for inattention. It was not inattention but rather a complete
incapacity for grasping the system on which everything worked. Meanwhile
in this first week he had earned a reputation and made three friends, and
although he did not know it that was not a bad beginning.

On the day after his arrival Peter, after midday dinner, standing
desolately in the playground and feeling certain that he ought to be
playing football somewhere but completely ignorant as to the place where
lists commonly hung, saw another new boy and hailed him. This boy he had
noticed before--he was shapeless of body, with big, round, good-tempered
eyes, and he moved more slowly than any one whom Peter had ever seen.
Nothing stirred him; he did not mind it when his ears were pulled or his
arms twisted, but only said slowly, "Oh, drop it!" To this wonderful boy
Peter made approach.

"Can you tell me where the lists are for football? I ought to have been
playing yesterday only I didn't know where to look."

The slow boy smiled. "I'm going to look myself," he said, "come on."

And then two things happened. First sauntering down the playground there
came a boy whom Peter had noticed on that first morning in school--some one
very little older than Peter and not very much bigger, but with a grace,
a dignity, an air that was very wonderful indeed. He was a dark boy with
his hair carelessly tossed over his forehead; he was very clean and he had
beautiful hands. To Peter's rough and clumsy figure he seemed everything
that a boy should be, and, in his mind, he had called him "Steerforth." As
this boy approached there suddenly burst into view a discordant crowd with
some one in their midst. They were shouting and laughing, and Peter could
hear that some one was crying. The crowd separated and formed a ring and
danced shouting round a very small and chubby boy who was standing crying
quite desperately, with his head buried in his arm. Every now and then the
infant was knocked by one boy in the ring into another boy's arms, and so
was tossed from side to side.

The hopeless sound of the chubby one's crying caused Peter suddenly to
go red hot somewhere inside his chest, and like a bullet from a gun he
was into the middle of the circle. "You beasts! You beasts," he sobbed
hysterically. He began to hit wildly, with his head down, at any one
near him, and very soon there was a glorious melee. The crowd roared
with laughter as they flung the two small boys against one another, then
suddenly one of the circle got a wild blow in the eye from Peter's fist and
went staggering back, another was kicked in the shins, a third was badly
winded. Peter had lost all sense of place or time, of reason or sanity; he
was wild with excitement, and the pent-up emotions of the last five days
found magnificent overwhelming freedom. He did not know whether he were hit
or no, once he was down and in an instant up again--once a face was close
to his and he drove hard at the mouth--but he was small and his arms and
legs were short. Indeed it would have gone badly with him had there not
been heard, in all the roar of battle, the mystic whisper "Binns," and in
an instant, as the snow flies before the sun, so had that gallant crowd
disappeared. Only the small cause of the disturbance and Peter remained.
The tall form of a master passed slowly down the playground, but it
appeared that he had seen nothing, and he did not speak. The small boy was
gazing at Peter with wide-opened eyes, large in a white face on which were
many tear stains. Peter, who was conscious now that blood was pouring from
a cut in his cheek, that one of his teeth was missing and that one of his
eyes was fast closing, was about to speak to him when he was aware that his
"Steerforth" had sprung from nowhere and was advancing gracefully to meet
him. Peter's heart beat very fast.

The boy smiled at him and held out his hand.

"I say, shake hands. You've got pluck--my eye! I never saw such a rag!"

Peter shook hands and was speechless.

"What's your name?"

"Westcott."

"Mine's Cardillac. It isn't spelt as it's spoken, you know.
C-a-r-d-i-l-l-a-c. I'm in White's--what do you say to places next each
other at table?"

"Rather." Peter's face was crimson. "Thanks most awfully." He stammered in
his eagerness.

"Right you are--see you after chapel." The boy moved away.

Peter said something to the infant whom he had delivered, and was
considering where he might most unobtrusively wash when he was once more
conscious of some one at his elbow. It was the slow boy who was smiling at
him.

"I say, you're a sight. You'd better wash, you know."

"Yes, I was just thinking of that only I didn't quite know where to go."

"Come with me--I'll get round Mother Gill all right. She likes me. You've
got some cheek. Prester and Banks Mi, and all sorts of fellows were in that
crowd. You landed Prester nicely." He chuckled. "What's your name?"

"Westcott."

"Mine's Galleon."

"Galleon?" Peter's eyes shone. "I say, you didn't ever have a housekeeper
called Mrs. Trussit?"

"Trussit? Yes, rather, of course I remember, when I was awfully small."

"Why, she's ours now! Then it must be your father who writes books!"

"Yes, rather. He's most awfully famous!"

Peter stopped still, his mouth open with excitement.

Of all the amazing things! What doesn't life give you if you trust it!

II

But before it became a question of individuals there is the place to be
considered. This Dawson's of twenty years ago does not exist now nor, let
us pray the Fates, are there others like it. It is not only with bitterness
that a boy whom Dawson's had formed would look back on it but also with
a dim, confused wonder that he had escaped with a straight soul and a
straight body from that Place. There were many, very many indeed, who did
not escape, and it would indeed have been better for them all had they died
before they were old enough to test its hospitality. If any of those into
whose hands this story of Peter may fall were, by the design of God,
themselves trained by the place of which I speak, they will understand that
all were not as fortunate as Peter--and for those others there should be
sympathy....

To Peter indeed it all came very slowly because he had known so little
before. He had not been a week in the place before there were very many
things that he was told--there were other things that he saw for himself.

There is, for instance, at the end of the third week, the incident of
Ferris, the Captain of the School. He was as a God in Peter's eyes, he was
greater, more wonderful than Stephen, than any one in the world. His word
was law....

One late afternoon Peter cleaned plates for him in his study, and Ferris
watched him. Ferris was kind and talked about many things out of his great
wisdom, and then he asked Peter whether he would always like to be his fag,
and Peter, delighted, said "Yes."

Then Ferris smiled and spoke, dropping his voice. Three weeks earlier Peter
would not have understood, but now he understood quite well and he went
very white and broke from the room, leaving the plates where they were--and
Cheeseman became Ferris' fag--

This was all very puzzling and perplexing to Peter.

But after that first evening when he had hidden his head in the greatcoat
and cried, he had shown no sign of fear and he soon found that, on that
side of Life, things became easy. He was speedily left alone, and indeed he
must have been, in spite of his small size, something of a figure even
then.

His head was so very firm on his shoulders, his grey eyes were so very
straight, and his lip curled in a disagreeable way when he was displeased;
he was something of the bulldog, and even at this early period the First
and Second forms showed signs of meek surrender to his leadership. But he
was, of course, not happy--he was entirely miserable. He would be happier
later on when he had been able to arrange all these puzzling certainties so
different from those dazzling imaginations that he had painted. How strange
of him to have been so glad to leave Stephen and the others--even old
Curtis! What could he have thought was coming!

He remembered as though it had been another life that Christmas Eve, the
fight, the beating, the carols....

And yet, with it all, with the dreariness and greyness and fierceness and
dirtiness of it all, he would not change it for those earlier things--this
was growing, this was growing up!

He was certainly happier after his meeting with Cardillac--"Cards" as he
was always called. Here was a hero indeed! Not to displace, of course,
Stephen, who remained as a stained-glass window remains, to be looked at
and treasured and remembered--but here was a living wonder! Every movement
that Cards made was astounding, and not only Peter felt it. Even the
masters seemed to suggest that he was different from the rest and watched
him admiringly. Cards was only fourteen, but he had seen the world. He had
been with his mother (his father was dead) about Europe, he knew London, he
had been to the theatres; school, he gave them all to understand, was an
interim in the social round. He took Peter's worship very easily and went
for walks with him and talked in a wonderful way. He admired Peter's
strength.

Peter found that Galleon--Bobby Galleon--was disappointing, not very
interesting. He had never read his father's books, and he couldn't tell
Peter very much about the great man; he was proud of him but rather
reserved. He had not many ideas about anything and indeed when he went
for a walk with Peter was usually very silent, although always in a good
temper. Cards thought Galleon very dull and never spoke to him if he could
avoid doing so, and Peter was sometimes quite angry with Galleon because he
would "turn up so" when one might have had Cards to oneself.

Peter's main feeling about it all when half term arrived was that one must
just stand with one's back to the wall if one was to avoid being hurt. He
did not now plunge into broils to help other people; he found that it did
not in reality help them and that it only meant that he got kicked as well
as the other boy. One's life was a diligent watchfulness with the end in
view of avoiding the enemy. The enemy was to be found in any shape and
form; there was no security by night or day, but on the whole life was
safer if one spoke as little as possible and stuck to the wall. There were
Devils--most certainly Devils--roaming the world, and as he watched the
Torture and the Terror and then the very dreadful submission, he vowed with
clenched lips that he would never Submit...and so gradually he was learning
the truth of that which Frosted Moses had spoken...

Cornwall, meanwhile--the Grey Hill, Scaw House, the hills above
Truro--remained to him during these weeks, securely hidden.

III

There remains to be chronicled of that first term only the Comber Fight
and, a little conversation, one windy day, with Galleon. The small boy, by
name Beech Minimus, whom Peter had defended on that earlier occasion, had
attached himself with unswerving fidelity to his preserver. He was round
and fat, and on his arrival had had red cheeks and sparkling eyes--now he
was pale and there were lines under his eyes; he started if any one spoke
to him, and was always eager to hide when possible. Peter was very sorry
for him, but, after a month of the term had passed he had, himself,
acquired the indifference of those that stand with their backs to the wall.
Beech would go on any kind of errand for him and would willingly have died
for him had it been required of him--he did indeed during the hours that he
was left in peace in his dormitory, picture to himself wonderful scenes in
which he saved Peter from horrible deaths and for his own part perished.

It may have been that he clung to Peter partly because there was more
safety in his neighbourhood, for amongst the lower school boys at any rate,
very considerable fear of Peter was to be noticed, but Beech's large eyes
raised to the other boy's face or his eager smile as he did something that
Peter required of him, spoke devotion.

Beech Minimus was forced, however, for the good of his soul, to suffer
especial torture between the hours of eight and nine in the evening. It was
the custom that the Lower School should retire from preparation at eight
o'clock, it being supposed that at that hour the Lower School went to bed.
But Authority, blinded by trustful good nature and being engaged at that
hour with its wine and dinner, left the issue to chance and the Gods, and
human nature being what it is, the Lower School triumphed in freedom. There
was a large, empty class room at the back of the building where much noise
might safely be made, and in this place and at this hour followed the
nightly torture of Beech and his minute companions--that torture named by
the Gods, "Discipline," by the Authorities, "Boys will be Boys," by the
Parent, "Learning to be a Man," and by the Lower School "A Rag." Beech and
his companions had not as yet a name for it. Peter was, as a rule, left to
his own thoughts and spent the hours amongst the greatcoats in the passage
reading David Copperfield or talking in whispers to Bobby Galleon. But
nevertheless he was not really indifferent, he was horribly conscious even
in his sleep, of Beech's shrill "Oh! Comber, don't! Please, Comber, oh!"
and Beech being in the same dormitory as himself he noticed, almost against
his will, that shivering little mortal as he crept into bed and cowered
beneath the sheets wondering whether before morning he would be tossed in
sheets or would find his bed drenched in water or would be beaten with hair
brushes. Peter's philosophy of standing it in silence and hitting back if
he were himself attacked was scarcely satisfactory in Beech's case, and,
again and again, his attention would be dragged away from his book to that
other room where some small boys were learning lessons in life.

The head of this pleasant sport was one Comber, a large, pale-faced boy,
some years older than his place in the school justified, but of a crass
stupidity, a greedy stomach and a vicious cruelty. Peter had already met
him in football and had annoyed him by collaring him violently on one
occasion, it being the boy's habit, owing to his size and reputation, to
run down the field in the Lower School game, unattacked. Peter's hatred
of him grew more intense week by week; some days after Mid-Term, it had
swollen into a passion. He finally told Bobby Galleon one day at luncheon
that on that very evening he was going to defy this Comber. Galleon
besought him not to do this, pointing out Comber's greater strength and the
natural tendency of the Lower School to follow their leader blindly. Peter
said nothing in reply but watched, when eight o'clock had struck and the
Lower School had assembled in the class room, for his moment. It was a
somewhat piteous spectacle. Comber and some half a dozen friends in the
middle of the room, and forty boys ranging in years from eight to twelve,
waiting with white faces and propitiatory smiles, eager to assist in the
Torture if they only might themselves be spared.

"Now you chaps," this from Comber--"we'll have a Gauntlet. I votes we make
young Beech run first."

"Rather! Come on, Beech--you've jolly well got to."

"Buck up, you funk!" from those relieved that they were themselves, for the
instant, safe.

Peter was sitting on a bench at the back of the room--he stood on the bench
and shouted, "You're a beast. Comber."

There was immediate silence--every one turned first to Comber, and then
back to Peter. Comber paused in the preparation of the string whip that he
was making, and his face was crimson.

"Oh, it's you, you young skunk, is it? Bring him here some of you fellows."

Eager movements were made in his direction, but Peter, still standing on
his bench, shouted: "I claim a fight."

There was silence again--a silence now of incredulity and amazement. But
there was nothing to be done; if any one claimed a fight, by all the rules
and traditions of Dawson's he must have it. But that Westcott, a new boy
and in the bottom form should challenge Comber! Slowly, and as it were
against their will, hearts beat a little faster, faces brightened. Of
course Westcott would be most hopelessly beaten, but might not this prove
the beginning of the end of their tyrant?

Meanwhile, Comber between his teeth: "All right, you young devil, I'll give
you such a hiding as you damned well won't forget. Then we'll treat you
properly afterwards."

A ring was made, and there was silence, so that the prefects might not
be attracted, because fighting in the Lower School was forbidden. Coats
were taken off and Peter faced Comber with the sensation of attacking a
mountain. Peter knew nothing about fighting at all, but Comber had long
subsisted on an easy reputation and he was a coward at heart. There swung
into Peter's brain the picture of The Bending Mule, the crowding faces, the
swinging lamp, Stephen with the sledge-hammer blow...it was the first time
for weeks that he had thought of Treliss.

He was indifferent--he did not care; things could not be worse, and he did
not mind what happened to him, and Comber minded very much indeed, and he
had not been hit in the face for a long time. His arms went round like
windmills, and the things that he would like to have done were to pull
Peter's hair from its roots and to bite him on the arm. As the fight
proceeded and he knew that his face was bleeding and that the end of
his nose had no sensation in it at all he kicked with his feet and was
conscious of cries that he was not playing the game. Infuriated that his
recent supporters should so easily desert him, he now flung himself upon
Peter, who at once gave way beneath the bigger boy's weight. Comber then
began to bite and tear and scratch, uttering shrill screams of rage and
kicking on the floor with his feet. He was at once pulled away, assured
by those dearest friends who had so recently and merrily assisted him in
his "rags" that he was not playing the game and was no sportsman. He was
moreover a ludicrous sight, his trousers being torn, one blue-black eye
staring from a confused outline of dust and blood, his hair amazingly on
end.

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