SUCH, SUCH WERE THE JOYS
531
that his parents had only sent him to South Coast College because
after
his
disgrace no "good" school would have him.
During the following term, when we were out for a walk, we
passed Horne in the street. He looked completely normal. He was
a strongly built, rather good-looking boy with black hair. I immedi–
ately noticed that he looked better than when I had last seen him-his
complexion, previously rather pale, was pinker-and that he did
not seem embarrassed at meeting us. Apparently he was not ashamed
either of having been expelled, or of being at South Coast College
If
one could gather anything from the way he looked at us as we
filed past, it was that he was glad to have escaped from Crossgates.
But the encounter made very little impression on me. I drew no
inference from the fact that Horne, ruined in body and soul, ap–
peared to be happy and in good health. I still believed in the sexual
mythology that had been taught me by Bingo and Sim. The mys–
terious, terrible dangers were still there. Any morning the black
rings might appear round your eyes and you would know that you too
were among the lost ones. Only it no longer seemed to matter very
much. These contradictions can exist easily in the mind of a child,
because of its own vitality.
It
accepts-how can it do otherwise?–
the nonsense that its elders tell it, but its youthful body, and the
sweetness of the physical world, tell it another story. It was the same
with Hell, which up to the age of about fourteen I officially believed
in.
Almost certainly Hell existed, and there were occasions when a
vivid sermon could scare you into fits. But somehow it never lasted.
The fire that waited for you was real fire, it would hurt in the same
way as when you burnt your finger, and
forever,
but most of the
time you could contemplate it without bothering.
v
The various codes which were presented to you at Cross–
gates-religious, moral, social and intellectual--contradicted one
another if you worked out their implications. The essential conflict
was between the tradition of nineteenth-century asceticism and the
actually existing luxury and snobbery of the pre-1914 age. On the
one side were low-church Bible Christianity, sex puritanism, in–
sistence on hard work, respect for academic distinction, disapproval of
