The Journeying Boy Read Free

followed. When the voice of genius did eventually reach him with any clarity it seemed to come, at first, from a long way off.
    ‘One way and another, my son has been unlucky for a number of years. I am afraid that his teaching has been something worse than indifferent. Wartime conditions, no doubt.’
    Mr Thewless blinked. These were words extremely familiar to him. They might almost be described as standard at this stage of such an interview. Quite automatically, Mr Thewless looked judicial and nodded as does one man of superior understanding to another. But within him he was immediately aware of the impertinence of this when such a one as Paxton was in question.
    ‘A sensitive and slightly nervous boy. He has been judged unruly at times – and it is certainly true that he is not very amenable to discipline of the ordinary sort.’
    ‘Quite so.’ Mr Thewless’ tone conveyed complete understanding of the situation and complete confidence in his own power to deal with it. Mr Thewless was in fact (as an inward voice told him) going through his tricks. ‘Special arrangements may well be necessary in such a case, Sir Bernard. But they should be made with as little fuss as possible. The danger of too much indulgence should be frankly faced. It is no kindness to cocker and coddle a lad who will be obliged to face the world on his own one day. The advantage of a public school lies in its being, roughly speaking, a microcosm of that world. It reproduces that world’s rough-and-tumble, among other things. If a boy can stick it, he should. We must not be too quick to think in terms of guarding the young nerves from shock. On the other hand, when a sensitive child…’
    Mr Thewless was eyeing Sir Bernard Paxton firmly and his voice did not falter. Nevertheless, he was keenly aware of the fatuity of presenting this shallow and platitudinous chatter to a man whose views must necessarily be both extensive and profound. Nor was his uneasiness diminished by the observation that Sir Bernard was responding much as commonplace parents did; that is to say, he was slightly disconcerted, slightly hostile, and more than a little impressed. And by the time Mr Thewless had reached the conclusion of his remarks (this conclusion being to the effect that, all things considered, young Paxton might well be delivered over to him for just so much modified cockering as a ripe experience should endorse) – by the time Mr Thewless got so far, Sir Bernard showed every sign of eating out of his hand.
    For some moments Mr Thewless was triumphant. He had successfully presented just that air of professional severity upon which he had resolved while in the library, and the consequence was that the job appeared as good as his. With Sir Bernard Paxton he had kept his end up; he had been abased by neither his intellectual eminence nor the splendours of his way of living. And this was very satisfying to the ego.
    These feelings on the part of Mr Thewless are so natural as scarcely to be worthy of record. More important is the fact that he had other feelings as well. In all this he saw himself as about one millimetre high. Of course Sir Bernard Paxton could be scored off; genius always can. And perhaps this genius was more vulnerable than many – for Mr Thewless had come to discern the weakness in the man before him. His will by no means matched his intellect. The creaking magnificence of this great London house attested it, for here was simply the issue of an irrelevant part of himself – his wealth – which he had been unable to resist. But more striking than this was what was already discernible of the relationship between Sir Bernard and his son. The father doted on the son, the son pushed the father around, and now the father was seeking extraneous aid. To Mr Thewless, who contrived to manage boys simply by taking his ability to do so for granted, this was a familiar situation in which there was always something slightly ridiculous. And the absurdity