Knight Without Armour

Sir Henry had begotten no children; he took Ainsley in the spirit of a martyr bearing his cross, and in the same spirit engaged a German governess. This capable person added history and music to the list of things the boy was supposed to have been taught; later on a beginning was made with French and German. The great Sir Henry rarely saw either him or her; sometimes, however, Ainsley was conducted into the library ‘to see the books’ and to be called ‘my little man’ and smiled at. “These,” explained Sir Henry, on more than one such occasion, sweeping his arm towards the rows of shelves, “are my best friends, and some day you will find them your best friends also.” Ainsley was never quite certain whether this was a promise or a threat.

When he was twelve, Sir Henry sent him to Barrowhurst.

Barrowhurst was not a very old foundation; Liberal and Evangelical in tendency, it had several times entertained Sir Henry as its Speech Day guest of honour. Situated in wild moorland country, it provided a vast change from the atmosphere of governesses and Bloomsbury gardens. At first Ainsley revelled in the freedom suddenly offered him; for the first time in his life he could walk about on his own, read books of his own choosing, and make friends without the frosty surveillance of grown-ups. He did not, however, make many friends. He was rather shy and reserved in manner; amongst the school in general he was for a long time hardly known, and the masters did not care for him, because he soon displayed that worst sin of the schoolboy—an indisposition to fit into one or other of the accepted classifications. He was not exactly troublesome, and his work was always satisfactory; only, somehow or other, he was difficult to get on with; he was apt to ask questions which, though hardly impertinent, were awkwardly unanswerable; he wouldn’t respond, either, to the usual gambits of schoolmasterly approach. For some reason he hated games, yet he wasn’t by any means the too brainy, bookish youngster; on the contrary, he was physically strong and sturdily built, and soon became actually the best swimmer and gymnast the school had known for years.

There was another Fothergill at the school, of a different family, and Ainsley, to avoid mistakes, always signed his papers with a very large and distinguishable ‘A.J.’ This became such a characteristic that he began to be called ‘A.J.’ by his friends, and the initials finally became an accepted nickname.

In his third year he suddenly startled everybody by leading a minor rebellion. There was a master at the school named Smalljohn who had a system of discipline for which A.J. had gradually conceived an overmastering hatred. The system was this: Smalljohn stood in front of the class, gold watch in hand, and said, “If the boy who did so-and-so does not declare himself within twenty-five seconds, I shall give the whole form an hour’s detention.” One day, after confessing himself, under such threat of vicarious doom, the author of some trivial misdeed, A.J. calmly informed his fellows that it was the last time he ever intended to do such a thing. Couldn’t they see that the system was not only unfair but perfectly easy to break down if only they all tackled it the right way? And the right way was for no one ever to confess; let them put up with a few detentions—Smalljohn would soon get tired of it when he found his system no longer worked. There are a few Barrowhurst men who will still remember the quiet-voiced boy arguing his case with an emphasis all the more astonishing because it was the first case he had ever been known to argue.

He carried the others with him enthusiastically, and the next day came the test. He was whispering to a neighbour; Smalljohn heard and asked who it was. Silence. Then: “If the person who whispered does not confess within twenty-five seconds, the whole form will be detained for an hour.” Silence. “Fifteen seconds more….Ten seconds…Five…Very well, gentlemen, I will meet the form at half-past one in this room.”

After that afternoon’s detention Smalljohn announced: “I am sorry indeed that thirty-three of your number have had to suffer on behalf of a certain thirty-fourth person, whose identity, I may say, I very strongly suspect. I can assure him that I do not intend to let a coward escape, and I am therefore grieved to say that until he owns up I shall be compelled to repeat this detention every day.”