A touching account, is it not? And I am naturally sensible of the encomia that he has seen fit to bestow on me. We were friends for a time; I acknowledge it. But he comes the littérateur too much – seeing significance where none existed, making much of nothing, dramatizing the mundane: the usual faults of the professional scribbler. This is memory scrubbed and dressed up for public consumption. Worse, he exaggerates our intimacy, and his claims on the matter of our respective intellectual characters are also false, for I was the careful scholar, he the gifted dabbler. I had many other friends in College besides him, and amongst the Oppidans too – Le Grice in particular; and so I was very far from depending solely on Master Phoebus Daunt for company. A dull dog, indeed, I would have been, had that been the case! Finally, he omits to say – though perhaps this is understandable in the light of what happened – that the friendship that we enjoyed when we were first neighbours in Long Chamber had, by the end of our time at Eton, through his perfidy, crumbled to dust.
Yet this was the estimation of my character and abilities that Phoebus Daunt claims to have formed after our first meeting in School Yard, and which he saw fit to lay before the British reading public in the pages of the Saturday Review. But what was my estimation of him; and what was the true nature of our relation? Let me now place the truth before you.
My old schoolmaster, Tom Grexby, had accompanied me from Sandchurch to Windsor. He saw me down to the School, and then put himself up at the Christopher* for the night. I was glad to know that the dear fellow was close by, though he left early for Dorset the next day, and I did not see him again until the end of the Half.
I did not feel in the least nonplussed by my new surroundings, unlike several of the other new inmates of College, whom I encountered standing or nervously scuffing around their allotted places in Long Chamber, some looking pale and withdrawn, others with affected swaggers that only served to show up their discomfort. I was strong in both body and mind, and knew that I would not be intimidated or hounded by any boy – or master, come to that.
The bed next to mine was empty, but a valise and canvas bag stood on the floor. Naturally, I bent down to look at the handwritten label pasted on the side of the former.
The name of Evenwood, though not of my as yet unseen neighbour, was instantly familiar to me. ‘Miss Lamb has come from Evenwood to see your mamma’; ‘Miss Lamb wishes to kiss you, Eddie, before she leaves for Evenwood’; ‘Miss Lamb says you must come to Evenwood one day to see the deer’. The echoes came ringing back across the years, faint but clear, of the lady in grey silk who had visited my mother when I was young, and who had looked down so sadly and sweetly at me, and had stroked my cheek with her long fingers. I found that I had not thought about her all this time, until the name of this place – Evenwood – had brought her misty image to my mind. Miss Lamb. I smiled fondly at the memory of her name.
Despite my sequestered upbringing at Sandchurch, without many friends to speak of, beyond a few desultory playmates amongst the local boys, I had, and have, a natural gregariousness, though I rarely exercise it. I soon made the acquaintance of my new neighbours in Long Chamber, and accounted for their names and places; together, we then clattered down to take the air in School Yard before dinner.
I saw him immediately, slouching disconsolately beside the Founder’s statue, and knew that it was my new neighbour in Long Chamber. He stood, hands in pockets, occasionally kicking the ground, and looking about him purposelessly. He was a little shorter than me, but a well-formed boy, with dark hair, like mine. None of the other boys had noticed him, and no one seemed inclined to go over to him. So I did. He was my neighbour, after all; and, as Fordyce Jukes was to point out to me many years later, neighbours should be neighbourly.
And so it was in this friendly spirit that I walked towards him with outstretched hand.
‘Are you Daunt?’
He looked at me suspiciously from beneath the crown of a new hat that allowed a little too much for future growth.
‘And if I am?’ he said, with a surly pout.
‘Well then,’ said I cheerfully, still holding out my hand, ‘we are to be neighbours – friends too, I hope.’
He accepted the proffered greeting at last, but still said nothing. I encouraged him to come over and join the others, but he was unwilling to leave the little patch of territory beneath the statue of King Henry in his Garter robes that he appeared to feel he had secured for his private use. But by now it was time for dinner in Hall and, gracelessly, he finally relinquished his place, dragging himself along beside me like some reprimanded but still defiant puppy.
Over our first meal together, I coaxed some hesitant conversation out of him. I learned that he had been taught at home by his father; that his mamma was dead, though he had a step-mamma who had been very kind to him; and that he did not much like his new surroundings. I ventured to say that I supposed he was naturally a little homesick, like several of the other new boys. At this, something like a spark of life arose in his pale blue eyes.
‘Yes,’ he said, with a curious sigh, ‘I do miss Evenwood.’
‘Do you know Miss Lamb?’ I asked.
He thought for a moment. ‘I know a Miss Fox,’ he replied, ‘but not a Miss Lamb.’ At which he giggled.
This exchange seemed to encourage him to greater intimacy, for he leaned forward and, lowering his voice to a whisper, said: ‘I say, Glyver. Have you ever kissed a girl?’
Well, the truth was, that I had known very few girls of my own age, let alone any whom I might have wanted to kiss.
‘What a question!’ I replied. ‘Have you?’