his ability at games. He did not pretend also that he was not flattered by Peter's attentions. Curiously, for so young a boy, he had a satirical irony that showed him the world very much in the light that he was always afterwards to see it. To Cards the world was a show, a Vanity Fair—a place where manner, savoir-faire, dignity, humour and ease, mattered everything; he saw also that there was nothing by which people are so easily deceived.
Peter had none of these things; he would always be rough, he would never be elegant, and afterwards, in life, Cards did not suppose that he would see very much of Peter, their lives would be along different paths; but now, more genuinely perhaps than ever again, Cards was to admire that honest bedrock of feeling, of sentiment, of criticism, of love and anger, that gave Peter his immense value.
“There is a fellow here,” wrote Cards to his mother, “whom I like very much. He's got a most awful lot of stuff in him although he doesn't say much and he looks like nothing on earth sometimes. He's very good at football, although he's only been here a year. His name is Westcott—Peter Westcott. I expect I'll bring him back one holiday.”
But, of course, he never did. Peter, when it came to actuality, wouldn't look right at home. It was during Peter's second year that these things were happening, and, all this time, Peter was climbing slowly to a very real popularity. Cards was leaving at the end of this second year—had he stayed until the end of the third his superficialities would have been most severely tested.
To him Peter gave all that whole-hearted love and devotion that only Stephen had known before. He gave it with a very considerable sense of humour and with no sentiment at all. He saw Cards quite clearly, he watched his poses and his elaborate pretences, and he laughed at him sometimes and called him names.
Cards' pride was, on several occasions, distinctly hurt by this laughter, but his certain conviction of his own superiority always comforted him. Nor was Peter ever sentimental in his attitude. He never told Cards that he cared for him, and he even hung back a little when Cards was in a demonstrative mood and wanted to be told that he was “wonderful.” Cards sometimes wondered whether Peter cared for him at all and whether he wasn't really fonder of that “stupid ass Galleon” who never had a word to say for himself. Peter's grey eyes would have told Cards a great deal if he had cared to examine them, but he did not know anything about eyes. Peter noticed, a little against his will, that as he advanced up the school so Cards cared increasingly about him. He grasped this discovery philosophically; after all, there were many fellows who took their colour from the world's opinion, and it was natural enough that they should. He himself regarded his growing popularity as a thing of no importance whatever; it did not touch him anywhere at all because he despised and hated the place. “When the time does come,” he said once to Cards, “and one is allowed to do things, I'll stop a lot of this filth.”
“You'll have your work cut out,” Cards told him. “What does it all matter to us? Let 'em wallow—and they'll only hate you.”
Cards added this because he knew that Peter had a curious passion for being liked. Cards wanted to be admired, but to be liked! … what was the gain? But that second year was, in spite of it all, the best time that Peter had ever had. There was warmth of a kind in their appreciation of him. He was only fifteen and small for his age, but his uncompromising attitude about things, his silence, his football, gave him a surprising importance—but even now it was respect rather than popularity. He was growing more like a bull-dog than ever, his hair was stiff and short, rather shaggy eyebrows, a square jaw, his short legs rather far apart, a broad back and thick strong arms.
Now that Stephen had slipped so sadly into the background he built up his life about Cards. He put everything into that room—not the old room that had held Stephen, but a new shining place that gained some added brilliance from the fact that its guest realised so little the honour that was done him. He would lie awake at night and think about Cards, of the things that he would do for him, of the way that he would serve him, of the guardian that he would be.
And then, as that summer term, at the end of the second year, wore on the pain of Cards' departure grew daily more terrible. He didn't know, as the days advanced, how he would be able to bear that place without Cards. There would be no life, no interest, and all the disorganisation, the immorality, the cruelty would oppress him as they had never oppressed him before. Besides next year he would be a person of some importance—he would probably be Captain of the Football and a Monitor … everything would be terribly hard. Of course there was old Bobby Galleon, who was a very good chap and really fond of Peter, but there was no excitement about that relationship. Bobby was quite ready to play servant to Peter's master, and Peter could never respect any one very much who did that. Beside Cards, so brilliant, so handsome, with such an “air,” old Bobby really didn't come off very well.
Bobby also at times was inclined to be a little sentimental. He used to ask Peter whether he liked him—whether he would miss him if he died—and he used to tell Peter that he would very gladly die for him. There were things that one didn't—if one had self-respect—say.
That year the summer was of a blazing heat. Every morning saw a sky of steely blue, the corn stood like a golden band about the hills, and little clouds like the softest feathers were blown by the Gods about the world. A mist clung about the distant hills and clothed them in purple grey. As the term grew to its close Peter felt that the world was a prison of coloured steel, and that Dawson's was a true Hell … he would escape from it with Cards. And then when he saw that such an escape would be running away and a confession of defeat—he turned back and held his will in command.
Cards looked upon his approaching departure as a great deliverance. He was to be a man immediately; not for him that absurdly dilatory condition of pimples and hobbledehoy boots that mark a transition period. Dawson's had been the most insignificant sojourn in the tent of the enemy, and the world, it was implied, had lamented his enforced absence. But, as the end of term flung its shadows in front of it in the form of examinations, and that especial quality of excited expectancy hovering about the corridors, Cards felt, for the first time in his existence, a genuine emotion. He minded, curiously, leaving Peter. He felt, although in this he wrongly anticipated the gods, that he would never see him again, and he calculated perhaps at the little piece of real affection and friendship that stood out from the Continental Tour that he wished Life to be, like a palm tree on the limitless desert. And yet it was characteristic of them both that on the last day when, seated under a hedge at the top of the playing fields, the school buildings a grey mist below them and the air tensely rigid with heat, they said good-bye to one another, it was Cards who found all the words.
Peter had nothing to say at all; he only clutched at tufts of grass, lugged them from the earth and flung them before him. But Cards, as usual, rose to the occasion.
“You know, Peter, it's been most splendid knowing you here. I don't think I'd ever have got through Dawson's if it hadn't been for you. It's a hell of a place and I suppose if the mater hadn't been abroad so much I should never have stayed on. But it's no use making a fuss. Besides, it's only for a little while—one will have forgotten all about it in a year's time.”
Peter smiled. “You will, I shan't.”
“Why, of course you will. And you must come and stay with us often. My mother's most awfully anxious to know you. Won't it be splendid going out to join her in Italy? It'll be a bit hot this time of year I expect.”
Peter seemed to struggle with his words. “I say—Cards—you won't—altogether—forget me?”
“Forget you! Why, good Lord, I'll be always writing. I'll have such lots to tell you. I've never liked any one in all my life (this said with a great sense of age) as I've liked you!”
He stood up and fumbled in his coat. Peter always remembered him, his dark slim body
