§ 7
Young Winterbaum was another of Miss Murgatroyd’s pupils who made a lasting impression on Peter. He was dark-eyed and fuzzy-haired, the contour of his face had a curious resemblance to that of a sheep, and his head was fixed on in a different way so that he looked more skyward and down his face at you. His expression was one of placid self-satisfaction; his hands twisted about, and ever and again he pranced as he walked. He had a superfluity of gesture, and his voice was a fat voice with the remotest possible hint of a lisp. He had two little round, jolly, frizzy, knock-about sisters who ousted Joan and Peter from their position as the little darlings of the school. The only boy in the school who at all resembled him was young Cuspard, but young Cuspard had not the same bold lines either in his face or conduct; he was red-haired, his nose was a snout instead of a hook, and instead of rather full, well-modelled lips he had that sort of loose mouth that blows. Young Winterbaum said his nose had the Norman arch, and that it showed he was aristocratic and one of the conquerors of England. He was second cousin to a peer, Lord Contango. It was only slowly that Peter came to apprehend the full peculiarity of young Winterbaum.
The differences in form and gesture of the two boys were only the outward and visible signs of profound differences between their imaginations. For example, the heroes of Peter’s romancings were wonderful humorous persons, Nobbys and Bungo Peters, and his themes adventures, struggles, quests that left them neither richer nor poorer than before in a limitless, undisciplined, delightful world, but young Winterbaum’s hero was himself, and he thought in terms of achievement and acquisition. He was a King and the strongest and bravest and richest of all Kings. He had wonderful horses, wonderful bicycles, wonderful catapults and an astonishing army. He counted these things. He walked from the other direction to school, and though no one knew it but himself, he walked in procession. Guards went before him and behind him, and ancient councillors walked beside him. And always he was going on to fresh triumphs and possessions.
He had a diplomatic side to him. He was prepared to negotiate upon the matter of kingship. One day he reached the crest above the school while it was still early, and found Joan and Peter sitting and surveying the playground, waiting for the first bell before they ran down. He stood beside Peter.
“All this is my Kingdom,” he said, waving both his arms about over the Weald. “I am King of all this, I have a great army.”
“Not over this part,” said Peter modestly but firmly.
“You be King up to here,” said young Winterbaum. “You have an army too.”
“I want a kingdom too,” said Joan.
Young Winterbaum proposed a fair division of Peter’s kingdom between Joan and Peter.
Peter let Joan have what young Winterbaum gave her. It took some moments to grasp this new situation. “My kingdom,” he said suddenly, “goes right over to those ponds there and up to the church.”
“You can’t,” said young Winterbaum. “I’ve claimed that.”
Peter grunted. It did not seem worth while to have a kingdom unless those ponds were included.
“But if you like I’ll give your people permission to go over all that country whenever they like.”
Peter still felt there was a catch in it somewhere.
“I’ve got a hundred and seven soldiers,” said young Winterbaum. “And six guns that shoot.”
Joan was surprised and shocked to hear that Peter had five hundred soldiers.
“Each of my soldiers, each one, counts as a thousand men,” said young Winterbaum, getting ahead again.
Then the first bell rang and suspended the dispute. But Peter went down to the school with a worried feeling. He wished he had thought of claiming all Surrey as his kingdom first. It was a lamentable oversight. He was disposed to ask the eldest Sheldrick girl whether young Winterbaum really had a right to claim all the Weald. There was a reason in these things....
Young Winterbaum had an extraordinary knack of accentuating possessions. Joan and Peter were very pleased and proud to have bicycles; the first time they arrived upon them at the school young Winterbaum took possession of them and examined them thoroughly. They were really good bicycles, excellent bicycles, he explained, and new, not second-hand; but they were not absolutely the best sort. The best sort nowadays had wood rims. He was going to have a bicycle with wood rims. And there ought to be a Bowden brake in front as well as behind; the one in front was only a spoon brake. It was a pity to have a spoon brake; it would injure the tyre. He doubted if the tubing was helical tubing. And the bell wasn’t a “King of the Road.” It was no good for Peter to pretend it had a good sound, “the King of the Road” had a better sound. When young Winterbaum got his bicycle his bell was going to be a “King of the Road, 1902 pattern.”...
Young Winterbaum was always doing this with things, bringing them up into the foreground of life, grading them, making them competitive and irritating. There was no getting ahead of him. He made Peter feel that the very dust in the Winterbaum dustbin was Grade A. Standard I. while The Ingle-Nook was satisfied with any old makeshift stuff.
Young Winterbaum’s clothes were made by Samuelson’s, the best boys’ tailor in London; there was no disputing it because there was an advertisement in The Daily Telegraph that said as much; he was in trousers and Peter had knickerbockers; he wore sock suspenders, and he had his name in gold letters inside his straw hat. Also he had a pencil-case like no other pencil-case in the school. He was always proposing a comparison of pencil-cases.
His imagination turned precociously and easily to romance and love and the beauty of women. He read a number of novelettes that he had borrowed from his sister’s nurse. He imparted to Peter the idea of a selective pairing off of the species, an idea for which A Midsummer Night’s Dream had already prepared a favourable soil. It was after he had seen Joan dance her dance when that play was performed and heard the unstinted applause that greeted her, that he decided to honour her above all the school with his affections. Previously he had wavered between the eldest Sheldrick girl because she was the biggest, tallest and heaviest girl in the school (though a formidable person to approach) and little Minnie Restharrow who was top in so many classes. But now he knew that Joan was “it,” and that he was in love with her.
But some instinct told him that Peter had to be dealt with.
He approached Peter in this manner.
“Who’s your girl, Peter?” said young Winterbaum. “Who is your own true love? You’ve got to have some one.”
Peter drew a bow at a venture, and subconscious processes guided the answer. “Sydney Sheldrick,” he said.
Young Winterbaum seemed to snatch even before Peter had done speaking. “I’m going to have Joan,” he said. “She dances better than any one. She’s going to be, oh!—a lovely woman.”
Peter was dimly aware of an error. He had forgotten Joan. “I’m going to have Joan too,” he said.
“You can’t have two sweethearts,” said young Winterbaum.
“I can. I’m going to. I’m different.”
“But Joan’s mine already.”
“Get out,” said Peter indignantly. “You can’t have her.”
“But she’s mine.”
“Shut it,” said Peter vulgarly.
“I’ll fight you a duel for her. We will fight a real duel for her.”
“You hadn’t better begin,” said Peter.
“But I mean—you know—a duel, Peter.”
“Let’s fight one now,” said Peter, “’f you think you’re going to have Joan for your girl.”
“We will fight with swords.”
“Sticks.”
“Yes, but call them swords. And we shall have to have seconds and a doctor.”
“Joan’s my second.”
“You can’t have Joan. My second’s the Grand Duke of Surrey-Sussex.”
“Then mine’s Bungo-Peter.”
“But we’ve got no sticks.”
“I know where there’s two sticks,” said Peter. “Under the stairs. And we can fight in the shrubbery over by the fence.”
The sticks were convenient little canes. “They ought to have hilts,” said young Winterbaum. “You ever fenced?”
“Not much,” said Peter guardedly.
“I’ve often fenced with my cousin, the honourable Ralph—you know. Like this—guard. One. Two. You’ve got to have a wrist.”
They repaired to the field of battle. “We stand aside while the seconds pace out the ground,” explained young Winterbaum. “Now we shake hands. Now we take our places.”
They proceeded to strike fencer-like attitudes. Young Winterbaum suddenly became one of the master swordsmen of the world, but Peter was chiefly intent on where he should hit young Winterbaum. He had got to hit him and hurt him a lot, or else he would get Joan. They crossed swords. Then young Winterbaum feinted and Peter hit him hard on the arm. Then young Winterbaum thrust Peter in the chest, and began to explain at once volubly that Peter was now defeated and dead and everything conclusively settled.
But nobody was going to take away Peter’s Joan on such easy terms. Peter, giving his antagonist no time to complete his explanation, slashed him painfully on the knuckles. “I’m not dead,” said Peter, slashing again. “I’m not dead. See? Come on!”
Whereupon young Winterbaum cried out, as it were with a trumpet, in a loud and grief-stricken voice. “Now I shall hurt you. That’s too much,” and swiped viciously at Peter’s face and raised a weal on Peter’s cheek. Whereupon Peter, feeling that Joan was slipping from him, began to rain blows upon young Winterbaum wherever young Winterbaum might be supposed to be tender, and young Winterbaum began to dance about obliquely and cry out, “Mustn’t hit my legs. Mustn’t hit my legs. Not fair. Oo-oh! my knuckles!” And after one or two revengeful slashes at Peter’s head which Peter—who had had his experiences with Joan in a rage—parried with an uplifted arm, young Winterbaum turned and ran—ran into the arms of Miss Murgatroyd, who had been attracted to the shrubbery by his cries....
It was the first fight that had ever happened in the school of St. George and the Venerable Bede since its foundation.
“He said I couldn’t fight him,” said Peter.
“He went on fighting after I’d pinked him,” said young Winterbaum.
Neither of them said a word about Joan.
So Miss Murgatroyd made a great session of the school, and the two combatants, flushed and a little heroic, sat on either side of her discourse. She said that this was the first time she had ever had to reprove any of her pupils for fighting. She hoped that never again would it be necessary for her to do so. She said that nothing we could do was quite so wicked as fighting because nothing was so flatly contradictory to our Lord’s commandment that we should love one another. The only fight we might fight with a good conscience was the good fight. In that sense we were all warriors. We were fighters for righteousness. In a sense every one was a knight and a fighter, every girl as well as every boy. Because there was no more reason why girls should not fight as well as boys. Some day she hoped this would be recognized, and girls would be given knighthoods and wear their spurs as proudly as the opposite sex. Earth was a battlefield, and none of us must be dumb driven cattle or submit to injustice or cruelty. We must not think that life was made for silken ease or self-indulgence. Let us think rather of the Red Indian perpetually in training for conflict, lean and vigorous and breathing only through his nose. No one who breathed through his or her open mouth would ever be a fighter.
At this point Miss Murgatroyd seemed to hesitate for a time. Breathing was a very attractive topic to her, and it was drawing her away from her main theme. She was, so to speak, dredging for her lost thread in the swift undertow of hygienic doctrine as one might dredge for a lost cable. She got it presently, and concluded by hoping that this would be a lesson to Philip and Peter and that henceforth they would learn that great lesson of Prince Kropotkin’s that co-operation is better than conflict.
Neither of the two combatants listened very closely to this discourse. Peter was wrestling with the question whether a hot red weal across one’s cheek is compatible with victory, and young Winterbaum with the still more subtle difficulty of whether he had been actually running away or merely stepping back when he had collided with Miss Murgatroyd, and what impression this apparently retrograde movement had made on her mind and upon the mind of Peter. Did they understand that sometimes a swordsman had to go back and could go back without the slightest discredit?...