CHAPTER XXII

Two months went by in this fashion, and I had begun to look forward to Christmas and to count the weeks that separated me from the holidays, when an incident occurred which was the means of my forming an acquaintance that was to develop into the most intimate friendship of my life. It befell in this way.

A series of thefts had been committed, thefts of school-books. A boy would leave his books down on a window-sill, or even in a class-room, and when he came to get them again, one would perhaps be missing. I had never lost anything myself, and knew nothing of what was going on till the afternoon when the matter was divulged to the entire school.

It was not far from three o’clock, I remember, the hour when we broke up for the day, and I was in one of the English class-rooms, where, every Monday, if you liked to pay half-a-crown a term extra, you had the advantage of a lesson in elocution from Mr. (or was it Professor?) Lennox. Professor Lennox was a fat, pale, absurd little man, with a high-pitched tenor voice that struck against the drum of your ear like the blow of a stick. He waxed his moustache, and greased his hair into carefully arranged, solid-looking locks, while his skin, by some natural process, greased itself. Professor Lennox was an amateur of fancy trousers, of coloured waistcoats, of large breast-pins, of spats with pearl buttons, and of rings more striking than precious. To-day the whole class――some fifty or sixty boys――was reading after him, line by line, a poem from Bell’s “Elocution.”

“In arms, / the Aust / rian phal / anx stood, A liv / ing wall, / a hum / an wood. Impreg / nable / their front / appears, All hor / rent with / project / ing spears.”

Or, as it sounded according to local pronunciation, shared impartially by the professor and the majority of his pupils:

“In arms, / the Orst / rian phah / lanx stude, Ah liv / ing wall, / ah hue / man wude. Imprag / nable / their front / appears, All hoar / rent with / projact / ing spears.”

We had just reached “projacting spears,” when Dr. Melling, better known by the name of Limpet, came in, followed by an old woman, who paused on the threshold. Limpet turned round and waved her forward impatiently, but a couple of yards from the door she stopped again, and all the time she stared hard at us with small, sharp, gray eyes. Her bright little eyes and hooked nose, taken with her air of timidity, gave her the appearance of an innocent and frightened witch who has been dragged out of her lair very much against her will. I wondered who she was, but Limpet did not leave us long in doubt. It appeared that some boy had stolen a number of school-books, the property of various other boys, and had sold them to this woman, who was now here to identify him. Limpet explained the situation with an air of wishing to get a disagreeable duty over as quickly as possible, but to us it was quite exciting. Each of us in turn stood up to undergo the witch’s scrutiny. She had already, as I afterwards learned, been round the other classes, and Limpet, who had accompanied her on this voyage of discovery, was by now in rather a bad temper. Evidently he found the whole business singularly distasteful, and as one boy after another received her head-shake, he fidgeted and frowned nervously. She herself looked frightened and bewildered; I expect she was secretly worried about her own share in the matter, and considering how she could make the best of it. As for me, I felt for the first time as if school-life really bore some faint resemblance to the tales of the _Boy’s Own Paper_. Here was one of the pet adventures actually taking place, except that the old woman should have been a man with a small fur cap. When it came to my turn to stand up, I had an extraordinary wish that she would pick me out as the culprit. Sure of my innocence, I had a mind to be the hero of this adventure, and I stood so long, waiting to be identified, that Limpet told me sharply to sit down, and I could see had it on the tip of his tongue to give me an imposition. My neighbour tugged me by the jacket, and I resumed my seat abruptly amid suppressed laughter. One by one each boy rose in his place and sat down again, and then, in the back row of all, a boy stood up who _was_ identified. This boy I did not know except by name, though he was in all my classes. He was called Gill, and I had always looked upon him as rather odd and unapproachable. When his turn came, he stood up indifferently, glancing out through the window at the clock, which could only be seen when you were on your feet. But next moment I saw the old woman say something to Limpet, and the latter instantly told Gill to stand out.

Gill stood out, his indifference gone, his face flushed and angry.

“Is that the boy?” Limpet asked, as if daring her to say “Yes,” but the old woman mumbled out an affirmative.

“Do you know anything of this, Gill?”

“No.”

I was somehow pleased that he had not added the customary “Sir.” He stood with his head up and gazed straight at Limpet and the old woman, with a kind of contemptuous wrath, his gray eyes dark and very bright, a frown on his face.

The old woman was so obviously uncertain and uncomfortable that the whole thing appeared to me ridiculous, and I impulsively gave voice to this impression. “She doesn’t know anything about it,” I called out. “Anybody could see she’s only trying it on.”

Limpet on the spot gave me two hundred of Sir Walter Scott’s bad verses to write out. My remark had the effect, nevertheless, of drawing a wavering expression of uncertainty from the old woman herself, which, in his now undisguised irritability, Limpet pounced on, as a cat pounces on a mouse. “Why did you point to him, if you don’t know?” he whipped out, frightening her nearly out of her wits. “Don’t you understand that it’s a serious thing to bring an accusation of theft against a boy? Sit down, Gill. I want to see you after school.”

He was so angry that he forgot all about the half-dozen remaining boys, and conducted his companion unceremoniously from the room.

Gill sat staring straight in front of him. Certainly he did not look guilty. He had a dark, narrow face, with a bright complexion. His thick, rough, black hair grew low on an oval, narrow forehead, and between his clear gray eyes there started a high-bridged, somewhat aggressive-looking nose, the most striking feature of his rather striking face. He had the reputation of being a peculiar kind of chap, and he was sometimes made fun of――mildly, for he was extremely quick-tempered and very strong――but anybody could see that he was a fine fellow, and that an accusation such as had just been brought against him would require a great deal of proof.

When the bell rang he remained on in his seat while the rest of us went out, I hung about the porch watching two little fellows playing chestnuts, and when they stopped playing I still hung about with nothing to watch, and with, indeed, no very definite purpose in view. Presently Gill emerged, but whether he saw me or not, he took no notice, as he walked on swiftly down toward the gate.

Since I had flung about him the mantle of my protection, however, I had begun to take a lively interest in him, and before he had gone fifty yards I made up my mind and hurried in pursuit. He looked round at the sound of my footsteps and waited, but without smiling. I had an idea he had passed me deliberately in the porch, and now he received me coldly enough. As we walked along together he made no attempt to defend himself against the charge that had been brought against him; he did not even refer to it, nor to what had taken place during his subsequent interview with Limpet, from whom, nevertheless, he received next morning a public apology. Though I was simply dying to hear what had happened I couldn’t very well ask, and as we proceeded I had to talk about other things. Then, quite suddenly, some change seemed to take place within him, and he inquired abruptly if I had read any of the writings of Count Tolstoy. I had never even heard of Count Tolstoy, but I was not to remain much longer in ignorance. I like enthusiasm, and I got it now. Gill had just finished “Anna Karénine,” and offered to lend it to me, adding that it was in French. I had been learning French in the way one did in those days, and perhaps does still; that is to say, I had been learning it for six or seven years, and was now obliged to confess I couldn’t read it.

“Aren’t you coming out of your way?” he demanded with the queer abruptness that characterized him.

“Oh, no.”

“Do you live up the Malone way?”

“No; I live in the town.”

“Then why isn’t it out of your way?”

“That is only my fashion of telling you I want to come with you,” I answered meekly. “Pure politeness.”

He did not smile. “You haven’t been at school long?” he asked. His manner was the oddest mixture of stiffness and shyness, and sometimes he frowned portentously, while at the slightest thing he blushed.

“No,” I answered. “Have you?”

“Yes――all my life――ever since I was a kid.” He spoke quickly, one would have imagined impatiently.

“Have you? I thought, somehow, you hadn’t.”

I don’t know why I should have made this wise remark, nor, apparently, did Gill.

“Why?” he asked me at once.

I laughed. “You don’t seem to have very many friends.”

He coloured, and I realized that my remark had been lacking in tact.

“I have as many friends as I want,” he answered shortly.

I saw I had touched him on a tender spot. “Does that mean you don’t want any new ones?” I ventured, half-laughing, though I was serious enough.

His answer was startling. “Perhaps you think you are doing me a favour by walking home with me?”

I did not say anything, but I looked at him with some astonishment. He was so odd that his manner had the effect of divesting me of all the shyness I usually suffered from myself on making a new acquaintance, nor did I even feel angry at his rebuff.

“I came with you,” I said at length, “to please myself.”

He turned crimson, began to speak, was silent, and then apologized.

At the garden gate I would have left him, but he insisted on my coming up to the door. “I will get you ‘Anna Karénine’; then we can talk about it together――if we’re going to be friends.” He spoke the last words shyly, and I knew that he had found a difficulty in saying them at all.

“But I told you I couldn’t read French.”

“You can if you like. Don’t try to translate it; read straight ahead.”

He came back with two books bound in gray-blue paper, which he handed to me. “It doesn’t matter if the covers get torn or the books come to pieces. My father gets them all rebound in any case. By the way,” once more he blushed, “you needn’t bother about those lines Limpet gave you.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ll be doing them.”

“Oh, rot.”

He frowned. “You can do them if you like, but it will be a waste of time.”

“I know that.”

“I mean, I’m going to do them in any case, whether you do or not.”

I laughed. “Couldn’t we each do half?”

“I’m going to do them all.”

“All right.”

He strolled back down the garden path with me. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Waring.”

“I know that. I mean your first name.”

“Peter.”

“Mine is Owen. I’ll come part of the way back with you: I told them inside.”

“Shall I call you Owen?”

“I don’t care,” he answered quickly, without looking at me. But before we had gone another hundred yards he said: “That isn’t the truth. I told you my name because I wanted you to call me by it.”

“All right,” I said, smiling.