"Remain in, sir, till perfect, and repeat to Mr. Manners, without a mistake--Mr. Manners, you will be kind enough to see, without a mistake! Boys!" (with another rap of the cane) "school's up." March locks his desk with a bang, and retires. Mr. Manners puts on his hat. Forty boys burst instantaneously into tumultuous uproar, forty pairs of feet scuffle along the dusty boards, forty voices break into song and jest and glee, forty spirits are emancipated from the prison-house into freedom and air and sunshine--forty, all save one.
So again I turn to the infandum Eegina Jubes, and sit me down and cry.
I had gone late to school, but I was a backward child in everything save my proficiency in modern languages. I had never known a mother, and the little education I had acquired was picked up in a desultory manner here and there during my travels with my father, and afterwards in a gloomy old library at Alton Grange, his own place in the same county as Mr. March's school. My father had remained abroad till his affairs made it imperative that he should return to England, and for some years we lived in seclusion at Alton, with an establishment that even my boyish penetration could discover was reduced to the narrowest possible limits. I think this was the idlest period of my life. I did no lessons, unless my father's endeavour to teach me painting, an art that I showed year after year less inclination to master, could be called so. I had but few ideas, yet they were very dear ones. I adored my father; on him I lavished all the love that would have been a mother's right; and having no other relations--none in the world that I cared for, or that cared for me, even nurse Nettich having remained in Hungary--my father was all-in-all. I used to wait at his door of a morning to hear him wake, and go away quite satisfied without letting him know. I used to watch him for miles when he rode out, and walk any distance to meet him on his way home. To please him I would even mount a quiet pony that he had bought on purpose for me, and dissemble my terrors because I saw they annoyed my kind father. I was a very shy, timid, and awkward boy, shrinking from strangers with a fear that was positively painful, and liking nothing so well as a huge arm-chair in the gloomy oak wainscoted library, where I would sit by the hour reading old poetry, old plays, old novels, and wandering about till I lost myself in a world of my own creating, full of beauty and romance, and all that ideal life which we must perforce call nonsense, but which, were it reality, would make this earth a heaven. Such was a bad course of training for a boy whose disposition was naturally too dreamy and imaginative, too deficient in energy and practical good sense. Had it gone on I must have become a madman; what is it but madness to live in a world of our own? I shall never forget the break-up of my dreams, the beginning, to me, of hard practical life.
I was coiled up in my favourite attitude, buried in the depths of a huge arm-chair in the library, and devouring with all my senses and all my soul the pages of the Morte d'Arthur, that most voluminous and least instructive of romances, but one for which, to my shame be it said, I confess to this day a sneaking kindness. I was gazing on Queen Guenever, as I pictured her to myself, in scarlet and ermine and pearls, with raven hair plaited over her queenly brow, and soft violet eyes, looking kindly down on mailed Sir Launcelot at her feet. I was holding Arthur's helmet in the forest, as the frank, handsome, stalwart monarch bent over a sparkling rill and cooled his sunburnt cheek, and laved his chestnut beard, whilst the sunbeams flickered through the green leaves and played upon his gleaming corslet and his armour of proof. I was feasting at Camelot with the Knights of the Round Table, jesting with Sir Dinadam, discussing grave subjects of high import with Sir Gawain, or breaking a lance in knightly courtesy with Sir Tristram and Sir Bore; in short, I was a child at a spectacle, but the spectacle came and went, and grew more and more gorgeous at will. In the midst of my dreams in walked my father, and sat down opposite the old arm-chair.
"Vere," said he, "you must go to school."
The announcement took away my breath: I had never, in my wildest moments, contemplated such a calamity.
"To school, papa; and when?" I mustered up courage to ask, clinging like a convict to the hope of a reprieve.
"The first of the month, my boy," answered my father, rather bullying himself into firmness, for I fancy he hated the separation as much as I did; "Mr. March writes me that his scholars will reunite on the first of next month, and he has a vacancy for you. We must make a man of you, Vere; and young De Rohan, your Hungarian friend, is going there too. You will have lots of playfellows, and get on very well, I have no doubt; and Everdon is not so far from here, and--and--you will be very comfortable, I trust; but I am loth to part with you, my dear, and that's the truth."
I felt as if I could have endured martyrdom when my father made this acknowledgment. I could do anything if I was only coaxed and pitied a little; and when I saw he was so unhappy at the idea of our separation, I resolved that no word or look of mine should add to his discomfort, although I felt my heart breaking at the thoughts of bidding him good-bye and leaving the Grange, with its quiet regularity and peaceful associations, for the noise and bustle and discipline of a large school. Queen Guenever and Sir Launcelot faded hopelessly from my mental vision, and in their places rose up stern forms of harsh taskmasters and satirical playfellows, early hours, regular discipline, Latin and Greek, and, worst of all, a continual bustle and a life in a crowd.
There were two peculiarities in my boyish character which, more than any others, unfitted me for battling with the world. I had a morbid dread of ridicule, which made me painfully shy of strangers. I have on many an occasion stood with my hand on the lock of a door, dreading to enter the room in which I heard strange voices, and then, plunging in with a desperate effort, have retired again as abruptly, covered with confusion, and so nervous as to create in the minds of the astonished guests a very natural doubt as to my mental sanity. The other peculiarity was an intense love of solitude. I was quite happy with my father, but if I could not enjoy his society, I preferred my own to that of any other mortal. I would take long walks by myself--I would sit for hours and read by myself--I had a bedroom of my own, into which I hated even a servant to set foot--and perhaps the one thing I dreaded more than all besides in my future life was, that I should never, never, be alone.