I saw him immediately, slouching disconsolately beside the Founder’s statue, and knew that it was my new neighbour in Long Chamber. He stood, hands in pockets, occasionally kicking the ground, and looking about him purposelessly. He was a little shorter than me, but a well-formed boy, with dark hair, like mine. None of the other boys had noticed him, and no one seemed inclined to go over to him. So I did. He was my neighbour, after all; and, as Fordyce Jukes was to point out to me many years later, neighbours should be neighbourly.
And so it was in this friendly spirit that I walked towards him with outstretched hand.
‘Are you Daunt?’
He looked at me suspiciously from beneath the crown of a new hat that allowed a little too much for future growth.
‘And if I am?’ he said, with a surly pout.
‘Well then,’ said I cheerfully, still holding out my hand, ‘we are to be neighbours – friends too, I hope.’
He accepted the proffered greeting at last, but still said nothing. I encouraged him to come over and join the others, but he was unwilling to leave the little patch of territory beneath the statue of King Henry in his Garter robes that he appeared to feel he had secured for his private use. But by now it was time for dinner in Hall and, gracelessly, he finally relinquished his place, dragging himself along beside me like some reprimanded but still defiant puppy.
Over our first meal together, I coaxed some hesitant conversation out of him. I learned that he had been taught at home by his father; that his mamma was dead, though he had a step-mamma who had been very kind to him; and that he did not much like his new surroundings. I ventured to say that I supposed he was naturally a little homesick, like several of the other new boys. At this, something like a spark of life arose in his pale blue eyes.
‘Yes,’ he said, with a curious sigh, ‘I do miss Evenwood.’
‘Do you know Miss Lamb?’ I asked.
He thought for a moment. ‘I know a Miss Fox,’ he replied, ‘but not a Miss Lamb.’ At which he giggled.
This exchange seemed to encourage him to greater intimacy, for he leaned forward and, lowering his voice to a whisper, said: ‘I say, Glyver. Have you ever kissed a girl?’
Well, the truth was, that I had known very few girls of my own age, let alone any whom I might have wanted to kiss.
‘What a question!’ I replied. ‘Have you?’
‘Oh yes. Many times – I mean I’ve kissed the same girl many times. I believe she is the most beautiful girl in the world, and I intend to marry her one day.’
He went on to describe the incomparable virtues of his ‘little princess’, whom I gathered was a neighbour of his at Evenwood; and soon the sulky reticence that he had earlier displayed had been replaced by excited volubility, as he spoke of how he intended to be a famous writer and make a great deal of money, and live at Evenwood with his princess for ever and a day.
‘And Uncle Tansor is so kind to me,’ he said, as we made our way from Hall back to Long Chamber, in which Collegers were then shut up for the night. ‘Mamma says that I am almost like a son to him. He is a very great man, you know.’
A little later he came and stood by my bed.
‘What’s that you have there, Glyver?’ he asked.
I was holding the rosewood box in which my sovereigns had been placed, and which my mother had insisted I take with me to Eton to remind myself of my benefactress, whom I continued to believe had been Miss Lamb.
‘It’s nothing,’ I replied. ‘Just a box.’
‘I’ve seen that before,’ he said, pointing to the lid. ‘What is it?’
‘A coat of arms,’ I replied. ‘It’s only a decoration, nothing more.’
He continued to stare at the box for some moments before returning to his own bed. Later, in the darkness he whispered:
‘I say, Glyver, have you ever been to Evenwood?’
‘Of course not,’ I whispered back crossly. ‘Go to sleep. I’m tired.’
Thus I became the friend and ally of Phoebus Rainsford Daunt – his only friend and ally, indeed, for he showed no inclination to seek out any other. The ways of the School appeared to mystify and disgust him in equal measure, making him the inevitable target of the natural vindictiveness of his fellows. He should have been well able to withstand such assaults, being, as I say, a well-made boy, even strong in his way; but he was completely disinclined to offer up any physical resistance to his tormentors whatsoever, and it often fell to me to rescue him from real harm, as when he was set upon, soon after our arrival in Long Chamber, and assailed with pins in the initiatory operation known as ‘Pricking for Sheriff’. New Collegers were expected to display cheerfulness and equanimity in the face of such ordeals, and even to embrace them merrily. But I fear that Daunt, KS, was somewhat girlishly vocal in his complaints, in consequence of which he attracted even more unwelcome attention from that class of boy who is ever ready and eager to make the lives of his compatriots thoroughly miserable. I myself was never subjected to such troubles after I shut the head of one of the chief tormentors, a grinning oaf by the name of Shillito, in the door to Long Chamber, refusing to release him until his face had near turned blue. I had declined to take part in some piece of horseplay, and he had tipped a jug of cold water over me. He did not do it again. Mine is not a forgiving nature.
Daunt calls it ‘thraldom’, this friendship of ours; but it was a strange kind of slavery in which no submission was asked of the enslaved. As time went by, his dependence on me became an increasing irritation. He was free to do what he wished, make friends with whom he chose; but he did not. He seemed willingly to embrace his dependent state, though I would encourage him to find wings of his own. Despite this adhesiveness, I found him an able and lively debater on topics of which I was surprised he had any knowledge at all, and soon I began to discover an elasticity of mind and comprehension, and also a sort of energetic cunning, that sat strangely with the strain of moping dullness that so often characterized his company.
I saw, too, the solid academic grounding that he had received under his father; but with this went a fatal
