§ 5
Meanwhile Mr. Grimes, with a cheerful kindliness that Peter perceived to be assumed, conveyed that young gentleman first to an outfitter, where he was subjected to nameless indignities with a tape, and finally sent behind a screen and told to change out of his nice, comfortable old clothes and Heidelberg sandals into a shirt and a collar and a grey flannel suit, and hard black shoes. All of which he did in a mute, helpless rage, because he did not consider himself equal to Mr. Grimes and the outfitter and his staff (with possibly the chauffeur thrown in) in open combat. He was then taken to a hairdresser and severely clipped, which struck him as a more sensible proceeding; the stuff they put on his head was indeed pleasingly aromatic; and then he was bought some foolery of towels and things, and finally a Bible and a prayer-book and a box. With this box he returned to the outfitter’s, and was quite interested in discovering that a pile of things had accumulated on the counter, ties, collars and things, and were to be packed in the box for him forthwith. A junior assistant was doing up his Limpsfield clothes in a separate parcel. So do we put off childish things. That parcel was to go via Mr. Grimes to The Ingle-Nook.
A memory of certain beloved sea stories came into Peter’s head. “This my kit?” he asked Mr. Grimes abruptly.
“You might call it your kit,” said Mr. Grimes.
“Am I going on a battleship?” asked Peter.
Mr. Grimes—and the two outfitting assistants in sympathy—were loudly amused.
“You’re going to High Cross School,” said Mr. Grimes, emerging from his mirth. “Firm treatment. Sound Church training. Unruly boys not objected to.”
“I didn’t know,” said Peter.
They returned to the automobile, and after a mile or so of roads and turnings stopped outside a gaunt brace of drab-coloured semi-detached villas standing back behind a patch of lawn, and having a walled enclosure to the left and an overgrown laurel shrubbery to the right. “Here’s High Cross School,” said Mr. Grimes, a statement that was rendered unnecessary by a conspicuous black and gold board that rose above the walled enclosure. They descended.
“Wonther which ithe houth,” mused Mr. Grimes, consulting his teeth, and then suddenly decided and led Peter towards the right hand of the two associated doors. “This,” said Mr. Grimes, as they waited on the doorstep, “is a real school.... No nonsense about it,” said Mr. Grimes.
Peter nodded with affected intelligence.
They were ushered by a slatternly maid-servant into the presence of a baldish man with a white, puffy face and pale grey eyes, who was wearing a university gown and seemed to be expecting them. He was standing before the fireplace in the front parlour, which had a general air of being a study. There were an untidy desk facing the window and bookshelves in the recess on either side of the fireplace. Over the mantel was a tobacco-jar bearing the arms of some college, and reminders of Mr. Mainwearing’s university achievements in the form of a college shield and Cambridge photographs.
“Well,” said Mr. Grimes, “here’s your young man,” and thrust Peter forward.
“So you’ve come to join us?” said Mr. Mainwearing with a sort of clouded amiability.
“Join what?” said Peter.
Mr. Mainwearing raised his eyebrows. “High Cross School,” he said.
“I’m at the School of St. George and the Venerable Bede,” said Peter. “So how can I?”
“No,” said Mr. Grimes; “you’re joining here now.”
“But I can’t go to two schools.”
“Consequently you’re coming to this one,” said Mr. Grimes.
“It’s very sudden,” said Peter.
“What’s this about the School of Saint What’s-his-name?” asked Mr. Mainwearing of Mr. Grimes.
“It’s just a sort of fad school they’ve been sending him to,” Mr. Grimes explained. “We’re altering all that. It’s a girls’ school, and he’s a growing boy. It’s a school where socialism and play-acting are school subjects, and everybody runs about with next to nothing on. So his proper guardians have decided that’s got to stop. And here we are.”
Mr. Mainwearing regarded Peter heavily while this was going on.
“Done any square root yet?” he asked suddenly.
Peter had not.
“Know the date of Magna Carta?”
Peter did not. “It was under John,” he said.
“I wanted the date,” said Mr. Mainwearing. “What’s the capital of Bulgaria?”
Peter did not know.
“Know any French irregular verbs?”
Peter said he didn’t.
“Got to begin at the beginning,” said Mr. Mainwearing. “Got your outfit?”
“We’ve just seen to that,” said Mr. Grimes. “There’s one or two things I’d like to say to you—”
He glanced at Peter.
Mr. Mainwearing comprehended. He came and laid one hand on Peter. “Time you saw some of your schoolfellows,” he said.
Under his guiding pressure Peter was impelled along a passage, through an archway, across an empty but frowsty schoolroom in which one solitary small boy sat and sobbed grievously, and so by way of another passage to a kind of glass back-door from which steps went down to a large gravelled space, behind the high wall that carried the black and gold board. In the corner were parallel bars. A group of nine or ten boys were standing round these bars; they were all clad in the same sort of grey flannels that Peter was wearing, and they had all started round at the sound of the opening of the door. One shock-headed boy, perhaps a head taller than any of the rest, had a great red mouth beneath a red nose.
“Boys!” shouted Mr. Mainwearing; “here’s a new chum. See that he learns his way about a bit, Probyn.”
“Yessir!” said the shock-headed boy in a loud adult kind of voice.
Mr. Mainwearing gave Peter a shove that started him down the steps towards the playground, and slammed the door behind him.
Most of these boys were bigger than any boys that Peter had ever known before. They looked enormous. He reckoned some must be fifteen or sixteen—quite. They were as big as the biggest Sheldrick girl. Probyn seemed indeed as big as a man; Peter could see right across the playground that he had a black smear of moustache. His neck and wrists and elbows stuck out of his clothes.
Peter with his hands in his new-found pockets walked slowly towards these formidable creatures across the stony playground. They regarded him enigmatically. So explorers must feel, who land on a strange beach in the presence of an unknown race of men.