The reason of my quarrel with him was Daventry. Daventry is in his House and in my form and is the most astonishing youth I have yet come across. He has a fertile brain and his sole object in life is "to do every one down": he will probably end in prison or Park Lane. He is quite unscrupulous (I have already found him rummaging among my letters and this diary to find out things about masters and boys): he finds me useful just at present, because he can sponge on me for food and books: he reads and eats omnivorously. He has decided gifts and is safe for a good scholarship at Oxford unless he gets sacked first, which is exceedingly likely. Somehow he has the trick of getting out of all the scrapes he finds himself in: he has the power of making people believe him, even after he has deceived them before. He haunts my rooms night and day. Marshall resented this and forbade him to come except on business. He immediately invented business by writing verses and essays, which he produced for my inspection at the rate of about two a day.
After all it hurt me to be told by Marshall that my influence on the boy was bad. I am afraid Daventry is bad through and through, but I'm going to make a big effort to cast out the devils in him before he leaves. There are signs of grace certainly: he is very emotional and is passionately fond of reading and music. I have lately bought a gramophone, and any records that he wants to hear I buy for him at once; consequently, I find him in my rooms when I come in from games with a rapt expression on his face, having spent the entire afternoon by himself, giving himself up to the joy of hearing good music. He cuts games with impunity—if there is any likelihood of trouble he forges a "leave"; he is disconcertingly open with me in these things. Having put me in a difficult position by relying on me not to give him away, he divulges one scheme after another for outwitting authority. That he needs very careful handling I naturally see, but why Marshall should have taken it for granted that I only do the boy harm I don't know. Anyway, Marshall did his best to prevent my seeing Daventry at all. That naturally only piqued the boy to try to circumvent him in every possible way. Things came to such a pass that I had to let Marshall know that he was driving the boy to extremities which he might regret. It was rather silly of me. He rated me loudly before all Common Room for interfering in another man's business. He then launched into a diatribe against the uppishness and "infallibility" of the junior masters, and declared that the school was quickly being ruined by the new blood. He ranted at some length and for a wonder I kept silent and listened to it all without comment.
And now this awful thing has happened. Daventry kept away from me when I told him that there was no other course open. He went about threatening vengeance on Marshall, and even started writing to me by post. He was badly "hipped" at being deprived of music and books and food. I don't believe he cares a tuppenny curse about me.... Then came that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday morning when I found him in my rooms after breakfast with a small, untidy fag in tow. They both looked as though they had been condemned to the guillotine.
"Hello, Daventry," I began, "what on earth are you doing here? Don't you know——" He cut me short.
"Erskine has something very important to say to you, sir," he broke in, in a voice I scarcely recognized as his.
"All right; fire away, my son," I replied. "Get it off your chest, whatever it is—all the same I don't quite see what Daventry is doing."
"He—he made me come, sir," said Erskine.
He then told his story. It was so revolting that I first refused to believe it; I thought it was some damnable scheme of Daventry's, got up to ruin his House-master—I nearly kicked both of them downstairs without hearing them to a finish. Instead of which I went straight to the Head and took them with me.
Marshall went on Tuesday. Every one believes that he is seriously ill: after this term they will give out that he has retired. I have lately wondered whether I ought not to have gone to see him and told him that I knew: couldn't it have been possible to keep him on at his post? Never again shall I move a finger towards the undoing of any man, however much an enemy of mine he may be. All Marshall's interest in life was bound up in Radchester. I am daily assaulted by fears lest he should commit suicide: his blood will be on my head if he does.
Expulsion is no cure either in man or boy. It's a frightful confession of our own weakness. It's our fault that Marshall went wrong: Common Room ought to have sweetened his life so that such malpractices would have been impossible to him; instead of that the ugliness and pettiness of the life he led there, the miserable lack of real friendliness all combined to undo him. There are men here who can extract sweetness from their life. What could be finer than the devotion of Patterson to Northcote? Both these men have been on the staff for years. Neither would accept any job, however lucrative, unless he could take the other with him. They live in each other's pockets: they are as close as man and wife: their friendship is strong enough to survive any momentary difference of opinion. They discuss their methods of education, the boys they take, the games they play, the books they read—everything together. They spend all their holidays in each other's company and it is impossible to know the one without the other. Neither of them would be capable of a mean action—they are a beacon-light to all the rest of us.