Wilfrid Cumbermede. George MacDonald
my own nature, with which even I was poorly enough acquainted.
CHAPTER VIII. I GO TO SCHOOL, AND GRANNIE LEAVES IT
It is an evil thing to break up a family before the natural period of its dissolution. In the course of things, marriage, the necessities of maintenance, or the energies of labour guiding ‘to fresh woods and pastures new,’ are the ordered causes of separation.
Where the home is happy, much injury is done the children in sending them to school, except it be a day-school, whither they go in the morning as to the labours of the world, but whence they return at night as to the heaven of repose. Conflict through the day, rest at night, is the ideal. A day-school will suffice for the cultivation of the necessary public or national spirit, without which the love of the family may degenerate into a merely extended selfishness, but which is itself founded upon those family affections. At the same time, it must be confessed that boarding-schools are, in many cases, an antidote to some of the evil conditions which exist at home.
To children whose home is a happy one, the exile to a school must be bitter. Mine, however, was an unusual experience. Leaving aside the specially troubled state in which I was when thus carried to the village of Aldwick, I had few of the finer elements of the ideal home in mine. The love of my childish heart had never been drawn out. My grandmother had begun to do so, but her influence had been speedily arrested. I was, as they say of cats, more attached to the place than the people, and no regrets whatever interfered to quell the excitement of expectation, wonder, and curiosity which filled me on the journey. The motion of the vehicle, the sound of the horses’ hoofs, the travellers we passed on the road—all seemed to partake of the exuberant life which swelled and overflowed in me. Everything was as happy, as excited, as I was.
When we entered the village, behold it was a region of glad tumult! Were there not three dogs, two carts, a maid carrying pails of water, and several groups of frolicking children in the street—not to mention live ducks, and a glimpse of grazing geese on the common? There were also two mothers at their cottage-doors, each with a baby in her arms. I knew they were babies, although I had never seen a baby before. And when we drove through the big wooden gate, and stopped at the door of what had been the manor-house but was now Mr Elder’s school, the aspect of the building, half-covered with ivy, bore to me a most friendly look. Still more friendly was the face of the master’s wife, who received us in a low dark parlour, with a thick soft carpet and rich red curtains. It was a perfect paradise to my imagination. Nor did the appearance of Mr Elder at all jar with the vision of coming happiness. His round, rosy, spectacled face bore in it no premonitory suggestion of birch or rod, and although I continued at his school for six years, I never saw him use either. If a boy required that kind of treatment, he sent him home. When my uncle left me, it was in more than contentment with my lot. Nor did anything occur to alter my feeling with regard to it. I soon became much attached to Mrs Elder. She was just the woman for a schoolmaster’s wife—as full of maternity as she could hold, but childless. By the end of the first day I thought I loved her far more than my aunt. My aunt had done her duty towards me; but how was a child to weigh that? She had taken no trouble to make me love her; she had shown me none of the signs of affection, and I could not appreciate the proofs of it yet.
I soon perceived a great difference between my uncle’s way of teaching and that of Mr Elder. My uncle always appeared aware of something behind which pressed upon, perhaps hurried, the fact he was making me understand. He made me feel, perhaps too much, that it was a mere step towards something beyond. Mr Elder, on the other hand, placed every point in such a strong light that it seemed in itself of primary consequence. Both were, if my judgment after so many years be correct, admirable teachers—my uncle the greater, my school-master the more immediately efficient. As I was a manageable boy to the very verge of weakness, the relations between us were entirely pleasant.
There were only six more pupils, all of them sufficiently older than myself to be ready to pet and indulge me. No one who saw me mounted on the back of the eldest, a lad of fifteen, and driving four of them in hand, while the sixth ran alongside as an outrider—could have wondered that I should find school better than home. Before the first day was over, the sorrows of the lost watch and sword had vanished utterly. For what was possession to being possessed? What was a watch, even had it been going, to the movements of life? To peep from the wicket in the great gate out upon the village street, with the well in the middle of it, and a girl in the sunshine winding up the green dripping bucket from the unknown depths of coolness, was more than a thousand watches. But this was by no means the extent of my new survey of things. One of the causes of Mr Elder’s keeping no boy who required chastisement was his own love of freedom, and his consequent desire to give the boys as much liberty out of school hours as possible. He believed in freedom. ‘The great end of training,’ he said to me many years after, when he was quite an old man, ‘is liberty; and the sooner you can get a boy to be a law to himself, the sooner you make a man of him. This end is impossible without freedom. Let those who have no choice, or who have not the same end in view, do the best they can with such boys as they find: I chose only such as could bear liberty. I never set up as a reformer—only as an educator. For that kind of work others were more fit than I. It was not my calling.’ Hence Mr Elder no more allowed labour to intrude upon play, than play to intrude upon labour. As soon as lessons were over, we were free to go where we would and do what we would, under certain general restrictions, which had more to do with social proprieties than with school regulations. We roamed the country from tea-time till sun-down; sometimes in the Summer long after that. Sometimes also on moonlit nights in Winter, occasionally even when the stars and the snow gave the only light, we were allowed the same liberty until nearly bedtime. Before Christmas came, variety, exercise, and social blessedness had wrought upon me so that when I returned home, my uncle and aunt were astonished at the change in me. I had grown half a head, and the paleness, which they had considered a peculiar accident of my appearance, had given place to a rosy glow. My flitting step too had vanished: I soon became aware that I made more noise than my aunt liked, for in the old house silence was in its very temple. My uncle, however, would only smile and say—
‘Don’t bring the place about our ears, Willie, my boy. I should like it to last my time.’
‘I’m afraid,’ my aunt would interpose, ‘Mr Elder doesn’t keep very good order in his school.’
Then I would fire up in defence of the master, and my uncle would sit and listen, looking both pleased and amused.
I had not been many moments in the house before I said—
‘Mayn’t I run up and see grannie, uncle?’
‘I will go and see how she is,’ my aunt said, rising.
She went, and presently returning, said
‘Grannie seems a little better. You may come. She wants to see you.’
I followed her. When I entered the room and looked expectantly towards her usual place, I found her chair empty. I turned to the bed. There she was, and I thought she looked much the same; but when I came nearer, I perceived a change in her countenance. She welcomed me feebly, stroked my hair and my cheeks, smiled sweetly, and closed her eyes. My aunt led me away.
When bedtime came, I went to my own room, and was soon fast asleep. What roused me I do not know, but I awoke in the midst of the darkness, and the next moment I heard a groan. It thrilled me with horror. I sat up in bed and listened, but heard no more. As I sat listening, heedless of the cold, the explanation dawned upon me, for my powers of reflection and combination had been developed by my enlarged experience of life. In our many wanderings, I had learned to choose between roads and to make conjectures from the lie of the country. I had likewise lived in a far larger house than my home. Hence it now dawned upon me, for the first time, that grannie’s room must be next to mine, although approached from the other side, and that the groan must have been hers. She might be in need of help. I remembered at the same time how she had wished to have me by her in the middle of the night, that she might be able to tell me what she could not recall in the day. I got up at once, dressed myself, and stole down the one stair, across the kitchen, and up the other. I gently opened grannie’s door and peeped in. A fire was burning in the room. I entered and approached the bed. I wondered how I had the courage; but children more than grown people are moved by unlikely