Fathers of Men

“Won’t I!”

“Why should you?”

“I never wanted to come here, for one thing.”

“You’ll like it well enough, now you are here.”

“I hate it!”

“Only to begin with; lots of chaps do at first.”

“I always shall. I never wanted to come here; it wasn’t my doing, I can tell you.”

Evan stared, but did not laugh; he was now studiously kind in look and word, and yet there was something about both that strangely angered Jan. Look and word, in fact, were alike instinctively measured, and the kindness perfunctory if not exactly condescending. There was, to be sure, no conscious reminder, on Evan’s part, of past inequality; and yet there was just as little to show that in their new life Evan was prepared to treat Jan as an equal; nay, on their former footing he had been far more friendly. If his present manner augured anything, he was to be neither the friend nor the foe of Jan’s extreme hopes and fears. And the unforeseen mien was not the less confusing and exasperating because Jan was confused and exasperated without at the time quite knowing why.

“You needn’t think it was because you were here,” he added suddenly, aggressively – “because I thought you were at Winchester.”

“I didn’t flatter myself,” retorted Evan. “But, as a matter of fact, I should be there if I hadn’t got a scholarship here.”

“So I suppose,” said Jan.

“And yet I’m in the form below you!”

Evan was once more openly amused at this, and perhaps not so secretly annoyed as he imagined.

“I know,” said Jan. “That wasn’t my fault, either. I doubt they’ve placed me far too high.”

“But how did you manage to get half so high?” asked Evan, with a further ingenuous display of what was in his mind.

“Well, there was the vicar, to begin with.”

“That old sinner!” said Evan.

“I used to go to him three nights a week.”

“Now I remember.”

“Then you heard what happened when my father died?”

“Yes.”

“It would be a surprise to you, Master Evan?”

It had been on the tip of his tongue more than once, but until now he had found no difficulty in keeping it there. Yet directly they got back to the old days, out it slipped without a moment’s warning.

“You’d better not call me that again,” said Evan, dryly.

“I won’t.”

“Unless you want the whole school to know!”

“You see, my mother’s friends – ”

“I know. I’ve heard all about it. I always had heard – about your mother.”

Jan had only heard that pitiful romance from his father’s dying lips; it was then the boy had promised to obey her family in all things, and his coming here was the first thing of all. He said as much in his own words, which were bald and broken, though by awkwardness rather than emotion. Then Evan asked, as it were in his stride, if Jan’s mother’s people had a “nice place,” and other questions which might have betrayed to a more sophisticated observer a wish to ascertain whether they really were gentlefolk as alleged. Jan answered that it was “a nice enough place”; but he pointed to a photograph in an Oxford frame – the photograph of a large house reflected in a little artificial lake – a house with a slate roof and an ornamental tower, and no tree higher than the first-floor windows.

“That’s a nicer place,” said Jan, with a sigh.

“I daresay,” Evan acquiesced, with cold complacency.

“There’s nothing like that in Norfolk,” continued Jan, with perfect truth. “Do you remember the first time you took me up to the tower?”

“I can’t say I do.”

“What! not when we climbed out on the roof?”

“I’ve climbed out on the roof so often.”

“And there’s our cottage chimney; and just through that gate we used to play 'snob’!”

Evan did not answer. He had looked at his watch, and was taking down some books. The hint was not to be ignored.

“Well, I only came to say it wasn’t my fault,” said Jan. “I never knew they were going to send me to the same school as you, or they’d have had a job to get me to come.”

“Why?” asked Evan, more stiffly than he had spoken yet. “I shan’t interfere with you.”

“I’m sure you won’t!” cried Jan, with the bitterness which had been steadily gathering in his heart.

“Then what’s the matter with you? Do you think I’m going to tell the whole school all about you?”

Jan felt that he was somehow being put in the wrong; and assisted in the process by suddenly becoming his most sullen self.

“I don’t know,” he answered, hanging his head.

“You don’t know! Do you think I’d think of such a thing?”

“I think a good many would.”

“You think I would?”

“I don’t say that.”

“But you think it?”

Evan pressed him hotly.

“I don’t think anything; and I don’t care what anybody thinks of me, or what anybody knows!” cried Jan, not lying, but speaking as he had suddenly begun to feel.