Kemster, as county tradition pronounced what was spelt Kenminster, a name meaning St. Kenelms minster, had a grand collegiate church and a foundation-school which, in the hands of the Commissioners, had of late years passed into the rule of David Ogilvie, Esq., a spare, pale, nervous, sensitive-looking man of eight or nine and twenty, who sat one April evening under his lamp, with his sister at work a little way off, listening with some amusement to his sighs and groans at the holiday tasks that lay before him.
Heres an answer, Mary. What was Magna Charta? The first map of the world.
Whos that ingenious person?
Brownlow Major, of course; and heres French, who says it was a new sort of cow invented by Henry VIII.a happy feminine, I suppose, to the Papal Bull. Heres a third! The French fleet defeated by Queen Elizabeth. Most have passed it over entirely.
Well, you know this is the first time you have tried such an examination, and boys never do learn history.
Nor anything else in this happy town, was the answer, accompanied by a ruffling over of the papers.
For shame, David! The first day of the term!
It is the dead weight of Brownlows, my dear. Only think! Theres another lot coming! A set of duplicates. They havent even the sense to vary the Christian names. Three more to be admitted to-morrow.
That accounts for a good deal!
You are laughing at me, Mary; but did you never know what it is to feel like Sisyphus? Whenever you think you have rolled it a little way, down it comes, a regular dead weight again, down the slope of utter indifference and dulness, till it seems to crush the very heart out of you!
Have you really nobody that is hopeful?
Nobody who does not regard me as his worst enemy, and treat all my approaches with distrust and hostility. Mary, how am I to live it down?
You speak as if it were a crime!
I feel as if it were one. Not of mine, but of the pedagogic race before me, who have spoilt the relations between man and boy; so that I cannot even get one to act as a medium.
That would be contrary to esprit de corps.
Exactly; and the worst of it is, I am not one of those genial fellows, half boys themselves, who can join in the sports con amore; I should only make a mountebank of myself if I tried, and the boys would distrust me the more.
Quite true. The only way is to be oneself, and ones best self, and the rest will come.
Im not so sure of that. Some people mistake their vocation.
Well, when you have given it a fair trial, you can turn to something else. You are getting the school up again, which is at least one testimony.
David Ogilvie made a sound as if this were very base kind of solace, and his sister did not wonder when she remembered the bright hopes and elaborate theories with which he had undertaken the mastership only nine months ago. He was then fresh from the university, and the loss of constant intercourse with congenial minds had perhaps contributed as much as the dulness of the Kenminster youth to bring him into a depressed state of health and spirits, which had made his elder sister contrive to spend her Easter at the seaside with him, and give him a few days at the beginning of the term. Indeed, she was anxious enough about him, when he went down to the old grammar-school, to revolve the possibility of acceding to his earnest wish, and coming to live with him, instead of continuing in her situation as governess.
He came back to luncheon next day with a brightened face, that made his sister say, Well, have you struck some sparks?
Ive got some new material, and am come home saying, Whats in a name?
Eh! Is it those very new Brownlows, that seemed yesterday to be the last straw on the camels back?
I wish you could have seen the whole scene, Mary. There were half-a-dozen new boys to be admitted, four Brownlows! Think of that! Well, there stood manifestly one of the old stock, with the same oval face and sleepy brown eyes, and the very same drawl I know so well in the Noa to the vain question, Have you done any Latin? And how shall I do justice to the long, dragging drawl of his reading? Aye, heres the sentence I set him on: TheGowlshadconsentedtoacceptasumofgoldandretire. They were engaggedinwagging out the sumrequired, and I had to tell him what to call Brennus, and he proceeded to cast the sword into the scale, exclaiming, just as to a cart-horse, Woh! To the Worsted (pronounced like yarn). After that you may suppose the feelings with which I called his ditto, another Joseph Armine Brownlow; and forth came the smallest sprite, with a white face and great black eyes, all eagerness, but much too wee for this place. Begun Latin? Oh, yes; and he rattled off a declension and a tense with as much ease as if he had been born speaking Latin. I gave him Phaedrus to see whether that would stump him, and I dont think it would have done so if he had not made os a mouth instead of a bone, in dealing with the Wolf and the Lamb. He was almost crying, so I put the Roman history into his hand, and his reading was something refreshing to hear. I asked if he knew what the sentence meant, and he answered, Isnt it when the geese cackled? trying to turn round the page. What do you know about the geese? said I. To which the answer was, We played at it on the stairs! Jock and I were the Romans, and Mother Carey and Babie were the geese.
Poor little fellow! I hope no boys were there to listen, or he will never hear the last of those geese.
I hope no one was within earshot but his brothers, who certainly did look daggers at him. He did very well in summing and in writing, except that he went out of his way to spell fish, p h y c h, and shy, s c h y; and at last, I could not resist the impulse to ask him what Magna Charta is. Out came the answer, It is yellow, and all crumpled up, and you cant read it, but it has a bit of a great red seal hanging to it.
What, he had seen it?
Yes, or a facsimile, and what was more, he knew who signed it. Whoever taught that child knew how to teach, and it is a pity he should be swamped among such a set as ours.
I thought you would be delighted.
I should be, if I had him alone, but he must be put with a crew who will make it their object to bully him out of his superiority, and the more I do for him, the worse it will be for him, poor little fellow; and he looks too delicate to stand the ordeal. It is sheer cruelty to send him.
Hasnt he brothers?
Oh, yes! I was going to tell you, two bigger boys, another Robert and John Brownlowabout eleven and nine years old. The younger one is a sort of black spider monkey, wanting the tail. We shall have some trouble with that gentleman, I expect.
But not the old trouble?
No, indeed; unless the atmosphere affects him. He answered as no boy of twelve can do here; and as to the elder one, I must take him at once into the fifth form, such as it is.
Where have they been at school?
At a day school in London. They are Colonel Brownlows nephews. Their father was a medical man in London, who died last summer, leaving a young widow and these boys, and they have just come down to live in Kenminster. But it cant be owing to the school. No school would give all three that kind ofwhat shall I call it?culture, and intelligence, that they all have; besides, the little one has been entirely taught at home.
I wonder whether it is their mothers doing?