Читать книгу The Life and Exploits of the Scarlet Pimpernel - Emmuska Orczy - Страница 23

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The winter term proved to be a happy one for Blakeney in spite of its inauspicious beginning. The only favouritism he never won was that of his tutors. They tried to cram him with knowledge, without, however, the slightest success. In point of fact, he was straightaway put under special supervision and extra studies in order to catch up arrears of work. And, strange to say, Percy managed to accomplish the effort demanded of him for, after a short month, he was put back in his own class and allowed to resume normal studies.

From the first, Percy took a great liking to the headmaster, a sort of sympathy having sprung up between them. The boy saw in the strict disciplinarian a human being who, beneath the outward guise of authority, knew every boy’s failings and weaknesses. Face to face with any of them, the cold dictatorial exterior would drop and the mask of sternness replaced by one of infinite understanding. Percy, throughout his Harrow career, never came to grips or at cross purposes with the Doctor, nor did the latter ever have cause to repent his seeming laxness as far as Percy was concerned.

With regard to the under-masters, all the boys treated them with that tolerant contempt which characterizes the English public schoolboy. Percy saw no reason to diverge from this attitude and ragged, skimped impositions and was inattentive with the rest, there being little or no contact with the masters outside the class-rooms. Percy disliked the maths “beak” and aped his drawly and pompous voice to the vast amusement of the boys; he tolerated the Latin master because he was sorry for the obviously earnest and seriously minded man; he openly laughed at the French master for his utter ignorance of that language. Only towards his erstwhile tutor, Horace Webley, who had now obtained a post as assistant theological master, did Percy show open hostility, never having forgotten their previous relationship.

Otherwise his life was no different nor yet more exciting than that of any other Harrovian in the year of grace 1772. Percy at this time had no feeling for tradition and was indifferent to the past, since his father had not been in the school before him, and he cared little for the future in his relation to Harrow as he was too young to visualize the inner significance of the great school or its influence upon the minds of its scholars.