516
PARTISAN REVIEW
how I could not start, and by the end of the holidays I would only
have sent Mr. Batchelor fifty or a hundred lines. Undoubtedly part
of the reason was that Sim and his cane were far away. But in
term-time, also, I would go through periods of idleness and stupidity
when I would sink deeper and deeper into disgrace and even achieve
a sort of feeble defiance, fully conscious of my guilt and yet unable
or unwilling-I could not be sure which-to do any better. Then
Bingo or Sim would send for me, and this time it would not even be
a caning.
Bingo would search me with her baleful eyes. (What color were
those eyes, I wonder? I remember them as green, but actually no
human being has green eyes. Perhaps they were hazel.) She would
start off in her peculiar, wheedling, bullying style, which never
failed to get right through one's guard and score a hit on one's better
nature.
"I don't think it's awfully decent of you to behave like this,
is it? Do you think it's quite playing the game by your mother and
father to go on idling your time away, week after week, month after
month? Do you
want
to throw all your chances away? You know
your people aren't rich, don't you? You know they can't afford the
same things as other boys' parents. How are they to send you to
a public school if you don't win a scholarship? I know how proud
your mother is of you. Do you
want
to let her down?"
"I don't think he wants to go to a public school any longer,"
Sim would say, addressing himself to Bingo with a pretense that I
was not there. "I think he's given up that idea. He wants to be a
little office boy at forty pounds a year."
The horrible sensation of tears-a swelling in the breast, a
tickling behind the nose-would already have assailed me. Bingo
would bring out her ace of trumps:
"And do you think it's quite fair to
us,
the way you're behaving?
After all we've done for you? You
do
know what we've done for you,
don't you?" Her eyes would pierce deep into me, and though she
never said it straight out, I did know. "We've had you here all
these years- we even had you here for a week in the holidays so
that Mr. Batchelor could coach you. We don't
want
to have to send
you away, you know, but we can't keep a boy here just to eat up
our food, term after term.
I
don't think it's very straight, the way
you're behaving. Do you?"
