he had led hitherto, not because the school was at all luxurious or riotous, but because his life, even at the Vicarage, had been of an unusual austerity.  This new world held at once greater restrictions and more liberty of spirit, for at school every boy works out his own salvation or the reverse.  Not being shy, Ishmael had no inner terrors to overcome—­only a feeling for self-defence which was the outcome of his anomalous position.  The Parson hoped and thought there would be no disagreeables about that at St. Renny; the headmaster, of course, knew of it, but of the boys, those adepts at torture, none happened to be from the furthest West.  For St. Renny still bore the reputation it had attained under a famous headmaster, when the best known of West Country novelists had been a scholar there, and parents from right up the country, even from London itself, if they had the blood of Devon or Cornwall in their veins, sent their sons to grey St. Renny.  It was with a London boy, son of a one-time Plymouth merchant who had become an alderman and a shining light of Bloomsbury, that Ishmael’s fortunes were to be most closely linked.

In spite of his pose of self-sufficiency—­so ingrained as to deceive himself—­Ishmael’s heart beat fast as he followed the Parson through the arched doorway of grey granite that was to open so often for him in the years to follow.  He was filled with an inarticulate wonder at the knowledge that it was to be so, and it occurred to him for the first time—­for children, like animals, accept what comes to them very naturally—­that it was odd one could be so completely disposed of by grown-up people, even for one’s undoubted good....

Of the interview with the headmaster, so square of jowl and brow and yet so kindly, Ishmael remembered little in after years; for it became blurred by all he grew to know of “Old Tring” during the long though intermittent association of school.  Old Tring rang a bell, after a gruff sentence of welcome, and, apparently as glad as Ishmael for an excuse to part, told him he should be shown round by one Killigrew.  Old Tring added that he, Ishmael Ruan, would be sure to like Killigrew.  Ishmael doubted this; somehow, waiting there in that still room, whose tranquillity seemed so much of its essence as to be more than a mere absence of noise, waiting and gazing at the strip of sunlit High Street that seemed lambent by contrast with the dimness within, Ishmael conceived a dislike to Killigrew.  The name sounded brisk, brutal even; Ishmael was unaware that it was the fact that he had been told he would like Killigrew which awaked his antagonism.  Unconsciously he resented that this old man should take advantage of knowing more of books to think that therefore he knew what he, Ishmael, would and would not like.