Ivy Compton-Burnett - Two Worlds and Their Ways

Sefton found the problem within his powers, looked up the answer and found it correct, and awaited and obtained approval.

“Try the next kind, and I shall begin to see what you are. I did not know what you might be. Do not look at the answers. They are to help me, not you. We both need them, and I am to have them. In future you will use a book without them.”

Sefton followed directions and again attained success, was put on to a further chapter and pursued his way. In the fourth he was less sure of himself, consulted the answer and worked at the question until the result tallied with it. Mr. Spode saw the erasures.

“You were less sure of your ground?”

“Yes, sir. I saw the mistake myself. I thought the sum was wrong, and looked for it.”

“Well, who else was there to see it? Now I am here to teach you, and I do not ask that the cup shall pass from me. Do another of the same kind, and take your time.”

Sefton did so, protected by glances at Mr. Spode, and by means of his last method again achieved success. Then he went further, and finding a problem beyond his powers, appended the answer at a distance from it, filled in the intervening space with attempts at working, and achieved a plausible effect and another triumph. One more problem dealt with in this way, and the lesson ended, and he put his work into his desk in relief and exultation. He was too young to see his danger and joined his companions without misgiving.

“Who taught you arithmetic at home?” said Holland.

“Miss Petticott, my governess, my sister’s governess.”

“She must have kept your nose to the grindstone,” said Bacon.

“Women do that,” said Holland. “They are known to be harder than men.”

“I don’t think they are,” said Sturgeon.

“Oh, your sickness is not the whole of life,” said Bacon.

“No, but it is a part of it,” said Sturgeon, betraying some feeling.

“There is not so much in early success,” said Bacon. “It may be a bad sign. But you need not look disturbed, Shelley. I daresay you will not have much of it.”

Sefton was silent, knowing he must have it, if he could.

“We have Latin after the break. We have it with Mr. Bigwell,” said Holland. “Bigwell wastes his time and ours with it.”

“He takes Greek too, for the boys who learn it,” said Bacon. “I shall have enough of Bigwell, and he of me.”

“I am not to learn Greek,” said Holland. “I am not supposed to be clever. Are you, Sturgeon?”

“Yes. So I am to learn Greek, to let people know about it.”

“Now what is this, boys?” said Miss James, appearing from no particular direction. “You do not want so much to eat in the middle of the morning. You have fetched enough from your boxes to last you all day. Anyone would think you had never had a meal before.”

The boys, who had seen their appetites as casting an aspersion on the school fare, were silent as the slur was transferred to their home provision.

“No wonder you do not enjoy your meals, if you overeat between them.”

The boys grinned at each other, Sefton feeling shame for the first time that day, and repaired before they needed, to Mr. Bigwell’s class.

“Well, I hope you are ready to face the term,” said the latter, hitching his gown on to his shoulders as a hardly natural appendage. “I confess I am still inclined to indulge in the backward glance.”

“It is easier for you. You have not anything to learn,” said Holland.

“Have I not? Make no mistake,” said Mr. Bigwell, who made none himself, and attended to his needs.

“I mean, you know all you have to teach. You don’t have to keep on learning, as we do.”

“Well, once I was in your pristine state,” said Mr. Bigwell, giving further adjustment to the outward sign of his present one.

He set the boys to construe from a book of selections, to gauge their knowledge. The book was in common use, and Sefton had read it with his tutor, and obtained easy credit.

“Have you read that passage before, Shelley? Do you know this book?”

“No, sir. But I have read Latin something like it.”

“Try this passage on the opposite page.”

Sefton did so, with similar result.

“And now this harder one some pages further.”

Sefton just managed it, or gave the impression that he did, making one or two false moves, and rectifying them in a manner of sudden perception.

“That is above the average. You may have a gift for languages. If so, you must see it as a responsibility. It is not a matter of credit for yourself.”

“No, sir,” said Sefton, who had no personal concern with it.

“We shall have our textbooks next week, and shall see how you manage then. That will be more of a test, but I do not think you will fail.”

“I think you know more Latin than Bigwell,” said Holland, when the latter had withdrawn. “He is supposed to buy cribs for every book, and keep them in his desk. The boys have seen them when he opens it. But he did not give himself away when I set a trap for him.”

“It would hardly do to borrow them,” said Bacon. “It would leave him without the means of taking his classes. He would have to take to his bed.”

“And then we could not show off before him. So it would be no good,” said Sturgeon. “And it would be beyond human courage.”

“Yes,” said Sefton, feeling that this might be the case, but that the matter could remain in the balance.

The rest of the morning was given to Mr. Dalziel, who taught Scripture, history and English, regarded as kindred subjects and appropriate to his gentler nature. Sefton did well without great effort, and saw these things would present no problem, a matter for relief, as problems gathered.

The dinner bell rang, and the four took their seats about Miss James in an uncertain spirit, feeling that a poor appetite would recall their gluttony, and a good one establish it. Miss James had forgotten the incident, or rather had got out of the way of remembering incidents, to avoid the strain on her memory.

Sefton’s life thickened about him. Success was his, but success with a crumbling basis. He followed it along a way that wound hard and steep. Strategy and courage were demanded of him; danger claimed him for its own. Envy of his comrades, with their open and ordinary lives, filled his heart and looked from his eyes. By night he crept down to Mr. Bigwell’s desk, to read translations, with his ear alert for sound; broached the desk of Mr. Spode for the answers to the problems to be faced by day. A visit from Maria, urgent and exultant, confirmed him in this course. More than once catastrophe dogged him, barely passed him by. He was heard, followed, all but seen. A reputation for sleep-walking arose and saved him for the time. He was discussed, questioned, physicked by Miss James. His lapses from his standard, when his strategy failed, were ascribed to improper sleep, and he bore the symptoms of it.

He settled down to the routine, almost coming to find it such, received his mother’s letters with their pride and praise, wept over his father’s simple words, and pressed forward on his path, resolved to sustain its rigours for his parents’ sake. He longed for the end of the term; never forgot, as others did, to mark off the days; felt he could hold out so far and no further, shrank from imagining an extra day. He fancied the masters grew guarded in their praise, that their eyes rested on him in doubt and question, but was too young to know how far he was self-betrayed. If he could reach the end of the term, his troubles would end. The next term lay beyond his sight. Here his childhood protected him; it was part of the formless future.

The end of the term approached, and with it the examinations. He heard them discussed without any real conception of them, hardly knew the threat they carried. When they came, it emerged that his house was founded upon the sand. Elemental forces beat upon that house, and it fell. He was confronted by problems without an answer, by passages he had not seen. His place in the subjects passed without question, either from masters or boys. This was ill-omened, but the threat was not defined. The end was at hand; the hard road lay behind; enough success was assured to him to carry him home. He no longer envied boys who slept in their beds, slept himself in a delusive peace.