Shame and Consciences

adapted by Mihangel

1. Behind the scenes

There were two new boys this term in Robert Heriot's house. Over dinner, and afterwards in his study, he encouraged them both to talk. The results could hardly have been more different. One said too much, while the other kept a stubborn mouth tight shut. The garrulous one paraded, as well as an exuberant knowledge of cricket, all the signs of a careful upbringing -- he cracked polite little jokes with Miss Heriot, he opened the door for her after dinner, and he thanked her for the evening when it was over. His companion, by contrast, uttered no more than morose monosyllables, and finally beat a sullen retreat without a word.

Heriot saw the pair to the boys' side of the house. He was filling his pipe as he returned to the jumble of books and papers and the paraphernalia of many hobbies that reduced his study to a box-room in which it was difficult to sit down and impossible to lounge. His sister, perched on a stool, was busy mounting photographs at a worm-eaten bureau.

"I do hate our rule that a man mayn't smoke in front of a boy!" exclaimed Heriot, gratefully puffing his pipe. "And I do wish we didn't have the new boys on our hands a whole day before the rest!"

"I'd have thought there was a good deal to be said for that."

"You mean from the boys' point of view?"

"Exactly. It must be such a plunge for them as it is, poor things."

"It's the greatest plunge in life. But here we don't let them make it. We think it kinder to put them in an empty bath and then turn on the cold tap -- after first warming them at our own fireside! It's always a relief when these evenings are over. The boys are never themselves, and I'm no better. We begin by getting a false impression of each other."

Heriot was keeping a narrow eye on his sister. He was a lanky man, many years her senior. whose beard had turned grey in his profession, and his shoulders round. But there was still a restless energy about him. Spectacles in steel rims twinkled at every abrupt turn of his grizzled head; and the sharp look through the spectacles was kindly rather than kind, just rather than compassionate. He could see further than most through a brick wall, his boys agreed, and not one of them ever contemplated taking liberties with him.

"I liked Carpenter," said Miss Heriot as she spread paste on the back of a print.

"I like all boys until I have reason to dislike them."

"Carpenter had something to say for himself."

"There's far more character in Rutter."

"He never opened his mouth."

"It's his mouth I go by, as much as anything."

Miss Heriot laid her print carefully on the album page and smoothed it with an unfeminine handkerchief. She did not reply.

"You didn't think much of Rutter, Milly?" he pressed.

"I thought he had a bad accent and --"

"Go on."

"Well, to be frank, worse manners!"

"Milly, you're right, and I'm going to be frank with you. Let the next print wait a minute. I like you to see something of the fellows in my house, and it's only right that you should know something about them first -- in this case, what I don't intend another soul in the place to know."

His sister turned to look at him as he planted himself in typical British attitude, back to the fireplace.

"You can trust me, Bob."

"I know I can. That's why I'm going to tell you what neither boy nor man shall learn through me. What type of lad does this poor Rutter suggest to your mind?"

There was a pause.

"I hardly like to say."

"But I want to know."

"Well then. I'm sure I couldn't tell you why, but he struck me as more like a lad from the stables than anything else."

"What on earth makes you think that?" Heriot spoke quite sharply in annoyed surprise.

"I said I couldn't tell you, Bob. I suppose it was an association of ideas. For one thing, when I first saw him he had his hat on, and it was far too large for him, and crammed down almost to those dreadful ears! I never saw any boy outside the stable yard wear his hat like that. Then your hunting was the one thing that seemed to interest him at all. And I certainly thought he called a horse a 'hoss'!"

"So he put you in mind of a stable-boy, did he?"

"Well, not exactly at the time, but the more I think about him, the more he does."

"That's very clever of you, Milly. Because it's just what he is!"

"Of course you don't mean it literally?"

"Literally."

"I thought his grandfather was a country parson?"

"So he is. A rural dean, in fact, in Norfolk. But the boy's father was a coachman, and the boy himself was brought up in the stables until six months ago."

"The father's dead, then?"

"He died in the spring. The mother died giving birth to the boy. It's the old, old story. She ran away with the groom."

"But her people have taken an interest in the boy?"

"They cut her off when she eloped. They never set eyes on him till his father died."

"Then how can he know enough to come here?"

Heriot smiled as he pulled at his pipe. His sister, as he had hoped, was showing the same sympathetic interest as he felt himself. There was nothing sentimental about the Heriots; they could discuss most things frankly on their merits, and the school was no exception. It was wife and child to Robert Heriot, it was the vineyard in which he had laboured lovingly for thirty-five years. But he could still smile as he smoked his pipe.

"Our standard isn't high," he said. "To some critics it's the scorn of the public-school world. We don't go in for making scholars. We go in for making men. Give us the raw material, and we won't reject it because it doesn't know the Greek alphabet, not even if it was fifteen on its last birthday! That's our system, and I support it through thick and thin. But it lays us open to worse types than escaped stable-boys."

"This boy doesn't look fifteen."

"Nor is he, quite. But he has a head on his shoulders, and something in it too. Apparently the vicar near Middlesbrough, where he came from, took an interest in him and got him as far as Caesar and Euclid, for pure love."

"That speaks well for the lad."

"It appealed to me, I must say. Then he's had a tutor for the last six months; and neither Yorkshire vicar nor Norfolk tutor has a word to say against his character. He should be placed quite high in the school. I'd be glad to have him in my own form, to see what they've taught him between them. I'm interested in him, I confess. His mother was a lady, but he never saw her in his life. Yet it's the mother who counts in the making of a boy. Has the gentle blood been hopelessly poisoned by the stink of the stables, or is it going to run clean and sweet? It's a big question, Milly, and it's not the only one."

Through the summer tan of Heriot's face, in the eager eyes behind the glasses, shone the zeal of that rare expert to whom boys are dearer than men or women.

"I'm glad you told me," said Miss Heriot at last. "I might have been prejudiced if you hadn't."

"My one excuse for telling you. No one shall ever know through me. Not even Mr Thrale, unless some special reason should arise. The boy shall have every chance. He doesn't even know that I know, and I don't want him ever to suspect. It's quite a problem, for I must keep an eye on him more than on most, yet I daren't be down on him, and I daren't stand up for him. He must sink or swim for himself."

"I'm afraid he'll have a bad time."

"I don't mind betting Carpenter has a worse."

"But he's so enthusiastic about everything!"

"That's a quality we appreciate. Boys don't, unless there's prowess behind it. Carpenter talks cricket like a Lillywhite, but he doesn't look a cricketer. Rutter doesn't talk about it, but his tutor says he's a bit of a bowler. Carpenter beams because he's got to his public school at last. He's got illusions to lose. Rutter knows nothing about us, and probably cares less. He's here under protest. You can see it in his face, and the chances are that he'll be pleasantly disappointed."

Miss Heriot returned to her photographs, her mind full of the two boys who, for good or ill, had come to live under their roof. Was her brother right? She had heard him sum up characters before, on equally brief acquaintance, and had never known him wrong. He had a wonderfully fair mind. Yet the active boy who might be stimulated into thought was always nearer his heart than the thoughtful boy who needed goading into physical activity. Now, she felt, he was being unsympathetic to the one who had more in him than most small boys did, and biased in favour of the other by his romantic history and social handicap. To him, this material was novel as well as raw, and so doubly welcome to the craftsman's hand. To her, a sulky lout never appealed, however cruel his background.

But she would really see very little of them until they rose to the Sixth Form table over which she presided in hall. Now and then they might have headaches and be sent to the private side for rest and quiet. But she would never be in real touch with them until they were at the top of the house, shy and correct, with few words (but not too few) and none too much enthusiasm, like all the other big boys. That drew a sigh from her.

"What's the matter?"

"I was thinking that both these boys have more individuality than most. How much of that will be left when we turn them out of the mould in five years' time?"

"I know where you get that from!" Heriot sounded almost exasperated. "You've been reading these trashy articles that every wiseacre who wasn't at a public school thinks he's qualified to write! That we melt boys down and turn them all out of the same mould, like bullets. That we destroy individuality, that we reduplicate a type which thinks the same and speaks the same, which has all the same virtues and the same vices. As if character really could be changed! As if we could boil away a strong will or an artistic bent, a mean soul or a saintly spirit, even in the crucible of a public school!"

She had her own views on that. Not every boy who passed through the house was the better for it. She had seen the weak go under, into depths she could not plumb, and the selfish ride serenely on the crest of a wave. She had seen an unpleasant urchin grow into a more unpleasant youth. She had seen inferiority made doubly inferior when it wore that precious but misleading label, "Product of a public school."

"But you admit it's a crucible. And what's a crucible but a melting-pot?"

"A melting-pot for characteristics, but not for character! Take the two boys upstairs. In four or five years one will have more to say for himself, I hope, and the other will leave more unsaid. But each will be the same self, even though we've turned a first-rate groom into a second-rate gentleman."

He gave the sudden infectious laugh which his house and form were never sorry to hear. Knocking out his pipe into a Kaffir bowl, the gift of some exiled Old Boy, he went off to bid the two new boys good-night.