The Clean Heart

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

The trial week, indeed, is not many days old before Mr. Wriford obtains a pretty clear comprehension of the state of affairs at the Tower House and the reputation of its Headmaster. "Pennyquick! Whiskyquick, I call him," says Essie; and though her mother reproves this levity, and though ill-natured gossip has no exercise in the Bickers' establishment, even the cert. plumber and his wife admit that the school is not what it was, and speak of a time when there were forty or fifty boys and several resident masters. There are only twenty-four boys now—all boarders. There are no day-boarders. The town knows its Mr. Pennyquick; and the time cannot be far distant when the tradesmen in different parts of the county, now attracted by the past reputation of this "School for the Sons of Gentlemen," also will know him for what he is. Six boys left the Tower House at the end of the previous term; five are leaving at the end of this. They are sorry to go, Mr. Wriford finds, and at first rather wonders at the fact. But the reason is clear before even the trial week is out. The reason is that these twenty-four young Sons of Gentlemen, dejected-looking as he had seen them at play when he accosted Mr. Pennyquick, are dejected also in spirit—morally abased, that is to say, partly as coming from homes too snobbish to commit them to the rough and tumble of local elementary or grammar schools, and partly as being received into the atmosphere emanated by their Headmaster at the Tower House. They like the school. It suits them, and therefore, wiser than they should be, they carry no tales to their parents. They like the school. They like the utter slackness and slovenliness of the place. There is no discipline. There is scarcely a pretence of education. They wash in the mornings not till after they are dressed, Mr. Wriford finds, and they do not appear to wash again all day. They are thoroughly afraid of Mr. Pennyquick, but he scarcely ever visits them, leaving them now entirely to Mr. Wriford as formerly he left them to Mr. Wriford's predecessors who seemed to have been much of a habit of mind and character with themselves. Domestic arrangements are looked after by Mr. Pennyquick's mother who is a little, frightened grey wisp of a woman with hands that shake like her son's, but shake for him and because of him, Mr. Wriford discovers, not as a result of similar ailment and remedy. She adores her son. She is terrified of him. She is terrified for him. She sees his livelihood and his manhood crumbling away, simultaneously and disastrously swift, and what she can do, by befoolment of parents in correspondence relative to her son's ill-health and their own son's happiness and success, by pathetic would-be befoolment of Mr. Wriford on the same counts, and by lenient treatment of the pupils, that does she daily and hourly to avert the doom she sees.

III

Within the first days of the trial week Mr. Wriford's duties fall into a regular routine. This is his trial week, his temporary week, a week in which he comes to his duties overwrought, shaken, uncertain and, thus conditioned, is wretched in his performance of them. Shortly before nine he presents himself at Tower House. The boys are wandering dejectedly about the playground. He passes nervously through them—they do not raise their caps—and hides from them in the schoolroom till the hour strikes on a neighbouring church clock. Then Mr. Wriford rings a large hand-bell, and the boys drift in at their leisure and take their places on the benches. Sometimes, before Mr. Wriford has finished ringing, Mr. Pennyquick, in gown and untasselled mortar-board, comes charging across the playground from the house, and there is then an alarmed stampede on the part of the boys to get in before him or to crowd in immediately upon his heels. Sometimes there is a very long wait before the appearance of the Headmaster; and Mr. Wriford, nervously irresolute as to whether to ring again or to begin school without him, stands wretched and self-conscious at his raised desk while the boys titter and whisper, or throw paper pellets, or look at him and—he knows—titter and whisper at his expense. This is his trial week, his temporary week. He is much overwrought in body and in mind. He does not know what authority he should show or how to show it. He hesitates till too late to interfere with one outburst of horse-play or of giggling. At the next he hesitates in doubt as to whether, having overlooked the former, he can attempt to subdue this. While he hesitates, and while the noise increases, and while the humiliation and wretchedness it causes him increase—in the midst of all this Mr. Pennyquick charges in. Mr. Pennyquick is either unshaved and looking the worse for it; or he has shaved and has cut himself and dabs angrily at little tufts of cotton wool that decorate his chin.

"Anderson!" barks Mr. Pennyquick, seizing the roll-call book and a pencil but not looking at the one or using the other. "Adsum," responds Anderson; and Mr. Pennyquick barks through the roll, which he knows by heart, much as if he were a sheep-dog with each boy a sheep and each name a bark or a bite in pursuit of it. He does not wait for responses. He barks along in a jumble of explosions, interspersed with a jumble of squeaked replies; punctuated at intervals, as if it were part of the roll, by a very much louder bark in the form of a fierce "SPEAK UP!" and concluded by a rush without pause into prayers—Mr. Pennyquick plumping suddenly upon his knees, much as if the sheepdog had suddenly hurled itself upon the flock, and the first portion of the devotions being lost in the din of his pupils extricating themselves from their desks in order to follow his example, much as if the flock had responded by a panic stampede in every direction.

"Samuel Major," barks Mr. Pennyquick, as if he were biting that young gentleman. "'Sum!" squeaks Samuel Major, as if he were bitten. "Minorsum - Smithsum - Stoopersum - Taylorsum—SPEAK UP!—Tooveysum - Westsum - Whitesum—SPEAK UP!—Williamssum - Wintersum - Woodsum - Ourfatherchartinheavenhallo'edbeth'name ... Amen—SPEAK UP!—mightyanmosmercifulfatherwethynunworthyservants ... Amen—SPEAK UP!"

The schoolroom is divided by a red baize curtain into two parts. The scholars are divided into three forms of which Form One is the highest. Mr. Pennyquick, who knows the time-table of lessons by heart just as he knows the roll-call, follows the last Amen with a last "SPEAK UP!" and is himself followed in haste and trepidation by the members of Form One as he jumps from his knees and charges through the curtain barking "Form One. Thursday. Euclid. Blackboard. Come round the blackboard. Last night's prep?"

"Twelfth proposition, sir," squeaks the boy whose eye he has caught.

This—or the same point in whatever else the subject may be—invariably marks the end of Mr. Pennyquick's early morning energy. He begins to draw on the blackboard or to find the place in a text-book. The energy goes, or the recollection of his medicine begins, and he changes his mind and barks: "Revise last night's prep!" There is a stampede to the desks and a burying in books. The Headmaster paces the room between the wall and the curtain, barking a "WORK UP!" at intervals and hesitating a little longer each time he turns at the curtain. "WORK UP!" and he comes charging through towards Mr. Wriford and the door. "Keep an eye on Form One, Wriford. Draw the curtain. I'm not quite the thing this morning. Take them on for me if I'm not back in ten minutes, will you? I ought to be in bed, you know. I shan't be long. WORK UP!"

He is gone. He rarely appears again. If he appears it is when clearly he is not quite the thing and is only to skirmish a few times up and down the schoolroom to the tune of "WORK UP! WORK UP!" or to show himself on the playing-field, bellow "PLAY UP!" and betake himself again to the treatment of his complaint.

He is gone. Mr. Wriford is left with all the three forms in his charge. It is his trial week. He does not know what authority he should show or how to show it. He does not know what has been learnt or what is being learnt, and he is cunningly or cheekily frustrated at every attempt to discover it. In whatever way he attempts to set work afoot an excuse is found to stop him. By one boy he is told that "please, sir," they do not do this, and by another that "please, sir," they have never done the other. He has neither sufficient strength of himself nor sufficient certainty of his position to insist. Without advice, without support, he is left very much at the mercy of the three forms, and they show him none. While he tries to settle one form it is under the distractions and the interruptions of the other two. When he turns to one of these the first joins the third in idleness and disorder. At eleven o'clock he is informed "Please, sir, we have our break now," and there is a stampede for the door without awaiting his assent. Similarly at half-past twelve, when morning school ends, and similarly again at four and at half-past seven, which are the terminations of afternoon school and of evening preparation. There is no asking his permission. His position is exactly summarised by this—that the boys know the rules and customs, he does not; and further by this—that while he remains miserably uncertain of the extent of his authority and of how he should assert it, they, by that very uncertainty, well estimate its limits and hourly, with each advantage gained, more narrowly confine it, more openly defy him.