530
PARTISAN REVIEW
That, too, was terrible. Ronald was one of these little ones;
we had offended
him;
it were better that a millstone were hanged
about our necks and that we were drowned in the depth of the
sea.
"Have you thought about that, Heath-have you thought
wha~
it means?" Bingo said. And Heath broke down into tears.
Another boy, Beacham, whom I have mentioned already, was
similarly overwhelmed with shame by the accusation that he "had
black rings round his eyes."
"Have you looked in the glass lately, Beacham?" said Bingo.
"Aren't you ashamed to go about with a face like that? Do you
think everyone doesn't know what it means when a boy has black
rings round
his
eyes?"
Once again the load of guilt and fear seemed to settle down
upon me. Had
I
got black rings round my eyes? A couple of years
later I realized that these were supposed to be a symptom by which
masturbators could be detected. But already, without knowing this,
I accepted the black rings as a sure sign of depravity,
some
kind of
depravity. And many times, even before I grasped the supposed
meaning, I have gazed anxiously into the glass, looking for the first
hint of that dreaded stigma, the confession which the secret sinner
writes upon his own face.
These terrors wore off, or became merely intermittent, without
affecting what one might call my official beliefs. It was still true
about the madhouse and the suicide's grave, but it was no longer
acutely frightening. Some months later it happened that I once
again saw Horne, the ringleader who had been flogged and ex–
pelled. Home was one of the outcasts, the son of poor middle-class
parents, which was no doubt part of the reason why Sim had handled
him
so roughly. The term after his expulsion he went on to South
Coast College, the small local public school, which was hideously
despised at Crossgates and looked upon as "not really" a public
school at all. Only a very few boys from Crossgates went there, and
Sim always spoke of them with a sort of contemptuous pity. You
had no chance if you went to a school like that: at the best your
destiny would be a clerkship. I thought of Home as a person
who at thirteen had already forfeited all hope of any decent future.
Physically, morally and socially he was finished. Moreover I assumed
