Shame and Consciences
adapted by Mihangel
6. Boy to boy
The match on the Upper was exciting great interest. It was between the champion house at cricket and the best side that could be got together from all the other houses. Boys were lying round the ground on rugs, expressing their feelings after almost every ball, when Chips and Jan crept shyly upon the scene. But within five minutes the bell had tinkled on top of the pavilion and three or four hundred boys converged for roll-call. It so happened that Heriot was the master in charge. He stood in a weather-beaten straw hat, rapping out the names in his abrupt voice, with a lightning glance at every atom that said "Here, sir!" and detached itself from the mass. The mass was rapidly dwindling, and Jan was moistening his lips before opening them for the first time in public, when a reddish head not far in front of him suddenly caught his eye.
"Shockley."
"Here, sir."
"Nunn minor."
"Here, sir."
"Carpenter."
"Here, sir."
"Rutter."
No answer. Heriot looked up with pencil poised.
"Rutter?"
"Here, sir."
Out slipped Jan in dire confusion, to join Carpenter on the outskirts of the throng, to be cursed under Shockley's breath, and just to miss the stare of the boy with reddish hair who turned a jovial face on hearing the name for the second time.
"I say, Carpenter! Did you see who that was in front of us?"
"You bet! And they said he wasn't coming back till half term! I'm going to wait for him."
"Then don't say anything about me -- see? I'm not sure he saw me, so don't say anything about me."
Off went Jan to watch the match, more excited than when he had lost control in the quad. The difference was that he did not lose it for a moment now. He heard the name of Devereux called over in its turn. He knew that a moment later Carpenter had joined Devereux. He wondered whether Devereux had seen him too -- seen him from the first and pretended not to see him -- or only this minute while talking to Chips? Was he questioning Chips, or telling him everything in a torrent? Jan felt them looking at him, felt their glances like fire upon his neck and ears, as one told and the other listened. But he did not turn round. He swore that nothing would induce him to turn round. And he kept his vow for minutes and minutes that seemed like hours and hours.
It was just as well, for he would have seen with his eyes exactly what he saw in his mind. And there was something else that he must have seen -- and might have seen through -- had his will failed him. That was the speed with which Heriot swooped down upon Devereux and Carpenter. He laid his hand upon the shoulder of the boy who had won his last term's prize. He stood chatting energetically with them both, chatting almost sharply, and then he left them in his abrupt way with a nod and a smile.
But Jan stood square as a battalion under fire, watching a game in which he did not follow a single ball. As he stood, his mind changed. He wanted to speak to Evan Devereux now. Or rather he wanted Evan to come and speak to him. But no Evan came. And when at last he did turn round, there was no Evan in sight, and no Chips either.
The game was in its last and most exciting stage when Jan took himself off the ground. Feeling was running high upon the rugs and expressing itself more shrilly than before. Such a storm of cheering chanced to follow him into the narrow street that two boys quite a long way ahead looked back. They did not see Jan, for they were on the sunny side and he was in the shade. But he followed them, because their way was his. In the market place they separated, obviously against Carpenter's will. Carpenter made off to Heriot's. Devereux turned left into the shadow of the old grey church with the dominant spire, with the blue-faced clock that struck in the night, and so by way of the short cut to the school buildings and his own quad. Jan dogged him, lagging behind when he stopped to greet a friend or to look at a fives game in the School House court. He finally saw Devereux enter his study and close the door. He followed and gave a knock.
The door opened, and Evan stood lit up by the sun against the dark background of his tiny den in a frame of cropped ivy. It was an effective setting. His hair was not red but a pale auburn. Jan remembered it in long curls, and somebody saying, "What a pity he's not a girl!" Under this striking hair there had always been the delicate and transparent skin that goes with the colour, there had nearly always been laughing eyes and a cheerful mouth. It was a face to die for, and here it was again, with hardly any of the differences that Jan had dreaded. Yet the smile was not quite the old smile, and a flush came first, and Evan looked past Jan into the quad before inviting him in, and even then he did not shake hands as he had often done on getting home for the holidays, when Jan's hand was not fit to shake.
But when the door was shut he laughed quite merrily. Jan remembered that ready laugh of old, and how little it had ever needed to prompt it. He saw nothing forced about it now, and joined in himself with a shamefaced chuckle.
"It's funny, isn't it?" he mumbled. "Me being here!"
"I know!" Evan's laughing eyes were none the less fixed curiously on Jan.
"When did you get back?" asked Jan, already embarrassed by the humour of it.
"Only just this afternoon. I went and had mumps at home."
"That was a bad job. It must have spoiled your holidays."
"It did, rather."
"You didn't expect to find me here, I suppose?"
"Never thought of it till I heard your name called over and saw it was you. I hear you're in Bob's house?"
"In Mr Heriot's," agreed Jan, respectfully.
"Oh, we don't 'mister' them behind their backs," said Evan, laughing again. "It is funny," he explained, "but I'm awfully glad to see you."
"Thanks. But it's not such fun for me, you know."
"I should have thought you'd like it awfully," remarked Evan, still cheerfully looking the new Jan up and down.
"After the stables, I suppose you mean?"
Evan turned serious in a moment, and flushed indignantly. "I wasn't thinking of them."
"But I was! And I'd give something to be back in them!"
"You won't feel like that long."
"Won't I!"
"Why should you?"
"I never wanted to come here, for one thing."
"You'll like it well enough, now you're here."
"I hate it!"
"Only to begin with. Lots of chaps do at first."
"I always shall. I never wanted to come here. It wasn't my doing, I can tell you."
Evan stared, but did not laugh. His look and his words were kind, but there was something about both that strangely angered Jan. They seemed too deliberate, and the kindness was perfunctory if not exactly condescending. They were not a conscious reminder of past inequality, yet there was just as little to show that Evan was now prepared to treat Jan as an equal. On their former footing he had been far more friendly. To judge by his present manner, he was to be neither the friend of Jan's hopes nor the foe of his fears. And this middle ground was confusing and exasperating because Jan was confused and exasperated without quite knowing why.
"You needn't think I came because you were here," he added suddenly, aggressively, "because I thought you were at Winchester."
"I didn't flatter myself. But I would be there if I hadn't got a scholarship here."
"So I suppose."
"And yet I'm in the form below you!" Evan was once more openly amused, and perhaps not so secretly annoyed as he imagined.
"I know. That wasn't my fault either. I reckon they've placed me far too high."
"But how did you manage to get half so high?" asked Evan, artlessly revealing what was in his mind.
"Well, there was the vicar, to begin with."
"That old sinner!"
"I used to go to him three nights a week."
"I remember now."
"Then you heard what happened when my father died?"
"Yes."
"It would be a surprise to you, Master Evan?"
It had been on the tip of his tongue more than once, but he had had no difficulty in keeping it there. Yet once they got back to the old days, out it slipped without warning.
"You'd better not call me that again," said Master Evan, dryly.
"I won't."
"Unless you want the whole school to know!"
"You see, my mother's family ..."
"I know. I've heard all about it. I always had heard -- about your mother."
Jan had only heard about that pitiful romance from his father's dying lips, when he had promised to obey her family in all things. His coming here was the first of those things. He said as much in words which were bald and broken, though by awkwardness rather than emotion. Then Evan asked questions craftily designed to find out if Jan's mother's people really were gentlefolk as alleged. Did they, he ended, have a "nice place"?
"Oh, nice enough."
Jan pointed to a framed photograph of the ironmaster's house, a mansion reflected in a little artificial lake, with a slate roof, an ornamental tower, and immature trees.
"That's a nicer place," he said with a sigh.
"I daresay." Evan was coldly complacent.
"There's nothing like that in Norfolk. Do you remember the first time you took me up the tower?"
"I can't say I do."
"What! Not when we climbed out on the roof?"
"I've climbed out on the roof so often."
"And there's our cottage chimney. And just through that gate we used to pay 'snob'."
Evan did not answer. He had looked at his watch and was taking down a book. The hint could not be ignored.
"Well, I only came to say it wasn't my fault," said Jan. "I never knew they were going to send me to the same school as you, or they'd have had a job to get me to come." That was both true and false, at the same time.
"Why?" asked Evan, more stiffly than he had spoken yet. "I shan't interfere with you."
"I'm sure you won't," cried Jan with the bitterness which had been steadily gathering in his heart.
"Then what's the matter with you? Do you think I'm going to tell the whole school all about you?"
Jan felt he was somehow being put in the wrong, and rubbed it in by becoming his most sullen self.
He hung his head. "I don't know."
"You don't know! Do you think I'd think of such a thing?"
"I think a good many would."
"You think I would?"
"I don't say that."
"But you think it?"
"I don't think anything. And I don't care what anybody thinks of me, or what anybody knows!" cried Jan, not lying, but speaking as he had suddenly begun to feel.
"Then I don't know why on earth you came to me."
"No more do I," muttered Jan. He went out into the quad and crossed it with a flaming face, but at the far side he turned back again. Evan's door was still open. Jan found him standing as he had left him, the book he had taken down still unopened in his hand, a troubled frown on his face.
"What's the matter now?"
"I'm sorry -- Devereux."
"So am I."
"I might have known you wouldn't tell a soul."
"I think you might."
"And of course I don't want a soul to know. A minute ago I thought I didn't care. But I do care, more than enough."
"Well, no one shall hear from me. I give you my word about that."
"Thank you!"
"Oh, that's all right."
Jan was holding out his hand. "Won't you shake hands?"
"Oh, with pleasure, if you like."
But the grip was all on one side.
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