Stackpole spoke to the Doctor and I got a seat by myself in his classroom and only went to the form-master for special lessons;
Stackpole became more than ever my teacher and friend. When Jones first appeared in the school, we met in the sixth room while waiting for the Doctor to come in. I was talking with Herbert; Jones came in and nodded to me: I went over and held out my hands but said nothing.
Herbert's nod and smile showed me I had done right. «Bygones should be bygones,» he said in English fashion. I wrote the whole story to Vernon that night, thanking him, you may be sure, and Raleigh for the training and encouragement they had given me. My whole outlook on life was permanently altered: I was cock-a-hoop and happy. One night I got thinking of E… and for the first time in months practiced onanism. But next day I felt heavy and resolved that belief or no belief, self-restraint was a good thing for the health. All the next Christmas holidays spent in Rhyl I tried to get intimate with some girl, but failed. As soon as I tried to touch even their breasts, they drew away. I liked girls fully formed and they all thought, I suppose, that I was too young and too smalclass="underline" if they had only known! One more incident belongs in this thirteenth year and is worthy perhaps of record. Freed of the bullying and senseless cruelty of the older boys who for the most part, still siding with Jones, left me severely alone, the restraints of school life began to irk me. «If I were free,» I said to myself, «I'd go after E… or some other girl and have a great time; as it is, I can do nothing, hope for nothing.» Life was stale, flat and unprofitable to me. Besides, I had read nearly all the books I thought worth reading in the school library, and time hung heavy on my hands; I began to long for liberty as a caged bird.
What was the quickest way out? I knew that my father as a captain in the navy could give me or get me a nomination so that I might become a midshipman. Of course I'd have to be examined before I was fourteen; but I knew I could win a high place in any test. The summer vacation, after I was thirteen on the fourteenth of February, I spent at home in Ireland, as I have told, and from time to time bothered my father to get me the nomination. He promised he would, and I took his promise seriously. All the autumn I studied carefully the subjects I was to be examined in, and from time to time wrote to my father, reminding him of his promise. But he seemed unwilling to touch on the matter in his letters, which were mostly filled with Biblical exhortations that sickened me with contempt for his brainless credulity. My unbelief made me feel immeasurably superior to him.
Christmas came and I wrote him a serious letter. I flattered him, saying that I knew his word was sacred: but the time-limit was at hand and I was getting nervous, lest some official delay might make me pass the prescribed limit of age. I got no reply: I wrote to Vernon, who said he would do his best with the governor. The days went on, the fourteenth of February came and went: I was fourteen. That way of escape into the wide world was closed to me by my father. I raged in hatred of him. How was I to get free? Where should I go? What should I do? One day in an illustrated paper in '68 I read of the discovery of diamonds in the Cape, and then of the opening of the diamond fields. That prospect tempted me and I read all I could about South Africa, but one day I found that the cheapest passage to the Cape cost fifteen pounds and I despaired. Shortly afterwards I read that a steerage passage to New York could be had for five pounds; that amount seemed to me possible to get; for there was a prize of ten pounds for books to be given to the second in the mathematical scholarship exam that would take place in the summer. I thought I could win that, and I set myself to study mathematics harder than ever. The result was-but I shall tell the result in its proper place. Meanwhile I began reading about America and soon learned of the buffalo and Indians on the Great Plains, and a myriad entrancing romantic pictures opened to my boyish imagining. I wanted to see the world and I had grown to dislike England; its snobbery, though I had caught the disease, was loathsome, and worse still, its spirit of sordid self-interest. The rich boys were favored by all the masters, even by Stackpole; I was disgusted with English life as I saw it. Yet there were good elements in it which I could not but see, which I shall try to indicate later. Towards the middle of this winter term it was announced that at midsummer, besides a scene from a play of Plautus to be given in Latin, the trial scene of The Merchant of Venice would also be played-of course, by boys of the fifth and sixth form only, and rehearsals immediately began. Naturally I took out The Merchant of Venice from the school library and in one day knew it by heart. I could learn good poetry by a single careful reading; bad poetry or prose was much harder. Nothing in the play appealed to me except Shylock and the first time I heard Fawcett of the sixth recite the part, I couldn't help grinning. He repeated the most passionate speeches like a lesson, in a singsong, monotonous voice.
For days I went about spouting Shylock's defiance and one day, as luck would have it, Stackpole heard me. We had become great friends: I had done all algebra with him and was now devouring trigonometry, resolved to do conic sections afterwards, and then the calculus. Already there was only one boy who was my superior and he was captain of the sixth, Gordon, a big fellow of over seventeen, who intended to go to Cambridge with the eighty pound mathematical scholarship that summer.
Stackpole told the head that I would be a good Shylock; Fawcett to my amazement didn't want to play the Jew: he found it difficult even to learn the part, and finally it was given to me. I was particularly elated, for I felt that I could make a great hit.
One day my sympathy with the bullied got me a friend. The vicar's son, Edwards, was a nice boy of fourteen who had grown rapidly and was not strong. A brute of sixteen in the upper fifth was twisting his arm and hitting him on the writhen muscle and Edwards was trying hard not to cry. «Leave him alone, Johnson,» I said. «Why do you bully?» «You ought to have a taste of it,» he cried, letting Edwards go, however.