CHAPTER I—THE RED HOUSE

Dante, it’s time you went to school.”

For the past three years, since he had married the Snow Lady, my father had given me lessons in his study for the last hour of every morning before lunch. It had been the Snow Lady’s idea; she said I was growing up a perfect ignoramus.

My father tilted up his spectacles to his forehead, and gazed across the table at me thoughtfully. “Yes,” he repeated, “I’ll be sorry to lose you, my boy; but it’s time you went to school.”

He was to lose me; then I was to go away! My heart sank, and leapt, and sank again with a dreadful joy of expectation. In my childish way I had always been impatient of the present—a Columbus ceaselessly watching for the first trace of seaweed broken loose from the shores of the unknown. Change, which at mid-life we so bitterly resent, was at that time life’s great allurement.

The school selected was one of the smaller public-schools, lying fifteen miles distant from Stoke Newington. It was called the Red House and stood on Eden Hill. It was situated in lovely country, so my father said, and had for its head-master a man with whom he was slightly acquainted, whose name was the Reverend Robert Sneard.

For the next few weeks I was a semi-hero. Ruthita regarded me with the kind of pitying awe that a bullock inspires in children, when they meet it being driven lowing along a road to be slaughtered. Everyone became busy over preparations for my departure—even the Snow Lady, who seldom worked. I was allowed to sit up quite late, watching her pretty fingers flashing the needle in and out the flannel that grew into shirts for me to wear. Ruthita would snuggle up beside me, her long black curls tickling my cheek. There were lengthy silences. Then Ruthita would look up at her mother and say, “Mumsie, I don’t know whatever we shall do without him.” And sometimes, when she said it, the Snow Lady would laugh in her Frenchy way and answer, “Why, Ruthita, what’s one little boy? He’s so tiny; he won’t leave much empty space.” But once, it was the night before I left, she choked in the middle of her laughing and took us both into her arms, telling us that she loved us equally. “I can’t think what I’ll do without my little lover,” she said.

Of a sudden I had become, a person of importance. The servants no longer made a worry of doing things for me. They watched me going about the house as though it were for the last time, and spoke of me to one another as, “Poor little chap.” I had only to express a want to have it gratified. I was treated as the State treats a condemned criminal on the day of his execution, when they let him choose his breakfast. I gloried in my eminence.

It was arranged that my uncle should drive me to the Red House. Before I went, I was loaded with good advice. My father sent for me to his study one night and, with considerable embarrassment, alluded to subjects of which I had no knowledge, imploring me to listen to no evil companions but to keep pure. His language was so delicately veiled that I was none the wiser. I thought he referred to such boyish peccadilloes as jam stealing and telling lies. Even the Snow Lady, who took delight in being frivolous, read me a moral story concerning the rapid degeneration, through cigarettes and beer-drinking, of a boy with the face of an angel. Neither of these temptations was mine, and I had never regarded myself as particularly angelic in appearance. They beat about the bush, hunting ghostly passions with allegories.

I noticed that Ruthita would absent herself for an hour or more at a stretch. When I followed her up to her room the door was locked, and she would beseech me with tears in her voice not to peek through the key-hole. The mystery was explained when she presented me with a knitted muffler, the wool for which she had purchased from her own savings. I came across it, moth-eaten and faded, in my old school play-box the other day. It was cold weather when she made it, for a little girl to sit in a bedroom without a fire. I hope I thanked her sufficiently and did not accept her surprise as though it were expected.

On an afternoon in January I departed. Then I realized for the first time what going away from home meant. The horror of the unknown, not the adventure, pressed upon me. We all pretended to be very gay—all except Hetty, who threw her apron over her head and, in the old scripture phrase, lifted up her voice and wept. They accompanied me out of the garden, down Pope Lane, to where the dog-cart was tethered. I mounted reluctantly, stretching out the last moment to its greatest length, and took my place beside Uncle Obad. My father had his pen behind his ear, I remember. It seemed to me as though the pen were saying, “Hurry up now and get off. Your father can’t waste all day over little boys.” Dollie lifted her head and began to trot. The Snow Lady waved and waved, smiling bravely. Then Ruthita broke from the group and ran after us down the long red street for a little way. We turned a corner and they were lost to sight.

I drew nearer to my uncle, pressing Ruthita’s muffler to my lips and gazing straight before me.

“What—what’ll it be like?”

He shook his head. “Couldn’t say,” he muttered huskily.

After about an hour’s driving, he broke the silence with a kindly effort to make conversation. He told me that we were on the Great North Road, where there used to be highwaymen. He spoke of Dick Turpin and some of his exploits. He pointed out a public-house at which highwaymen used to stay. He could not stir my imagination—it was otherwise occupied. I was wondering why I should be sent to school, if my going made everyone unhappy. I was picturing the snug nursery, with the lamp unlighted, and the fire burning, and Ruthita seated all alone on the rug before the fire.

We left the Great North Road, striking across country, through frosty lanes. My uncle ceased speaking; he himself was uninterested in what he had been saying. We passed groups of children playing before clustered cottages, and laborers plodding homeward whistling. It seemed strange to me that they should all be so cheerful and should not realize what was happening inside me.

We came in sight of the Red House. It could be seen at a great distance, for it stood out gauntly on the crest of Eden Hill, and the sunset lay behind it. In the lowlands night was falling; lights were springing up, twinkling cheerfully. But the Red House did not impress me as cheerful—it had no lights, and struck me with the chill and repression that one feels in passing by a prison.

“Well, old chap, we’re nearly there,” said my uncle with a futile attempt to be jolly.

I darted out my hand and dragged on the reins. “Don’t—don’t drive so fast. Let Dollie walk.”

He looked down at me slantwise. “You’ve got to be brave, old chap. Nothing’s as bad as it seems at the time. Nothing’s so bad that it can’t be lived through. Why, one day you’ll be looking back and telling yourself that these were your happiest days.”

Despite his optimisms, he did as I requested and let Dollie walk the rest of the way. While she climbed the hill, we got out and walked beside her. My uncle put his hand in his pocket, and drew out a half-crown. He balanced it in his palm; tossed it; put it back into his pocket; drew it out again. “Here, Dante,” he said at last, “see what I’ve found. You’d best take it.”

As we approached nearer, he was again moved to generosity. He was moved three times, to be exact; each time he considered the matter carefully, then rushed the coin at me. He gave me seven shillings in all. I am sure he could ill afford them.

At the top of the hill he beckoned me to jump into the trap. It was fitting, I suppose, that we should drive up to my place of confinement grandly. Then a great idea seized me. My box was under the seat behind. I had all my belongings with me. There were no walls to restrain us now.

“Uncle,” I whispered, “I don’t want to go there. You once said you were tired of houses. Why shouldn’t we run away?”

He heard the tremble in my voice. He lifted me in beside him and drove along the outside of the school-walls, not entering at the gate.

“It’s beastly hard,” he said, “and the trouble is that I can’t explain it. All through life you’ll be wanting to run away, and all through life, if you’re not a coward, you won’t be able. You see, people have to earn a living in this world, and to earn a living they must be educated. Your father’s trying to give you the best education he can, and he means to be kind. But it’s a darned shame, this not being able to do what you like. I can’t run away with you, old chap. There’s nothing for it; you’ve just got to bear it.”

He stopped, searching for words. He wanted to tell me something really comforting and wasn’t content with what he had said. He found it. Turning round in the dogcart, he threw his arm about my shoulder and pointed above my head, “Look up, there.” I raised my eyes and saw the blue black sky like an inverted cup, with a red smudge round the western rim where a mouth of blood had stained it. One by one the silver stars were coming out and disappearing, like tiny bubbles which break and form again. As I looked, night seemed to deepen; horizons dropped back; the earth fell away. The sky was no longer a cup; it was nothing measurable. It was a drifting sea of freedom, and I was part of it.

“They can rob you of a lot of things,” my uncle said, “but they can never take that from you. It’s like the world of your imagination, something that can’t be stolen, and that you can’t sell, and that you can’t buy. It’s always yours.”

We drove through the gate to the main entrance. My box was deposited in the hall. My uncle shook hands with me in formal manner when he said good-by, for the school-porter was present. He turned round sharply to cut proceedings short, and disappeared into the night. I listened to his wheels growing fainter. For the first time I was utterly alone.