Bayes! Standing by my desk!
I handed him the drawing.
He studied it for some little time, while I realised the staggering fact that I was alone with the idolised Bayes.
At last he said:
“What’s your name?”
“Arnold. Max Arnold.”
Then, indicating the drawing, he asked:
“Can I have this for a few days?”
“Of course. Keep it, if you want to.”
“I’m going home this week-end and I’d like to show it to my people.”
As he turned away, I exclaimed:
“You won’t tell the others!”
He laughed, then said:
“All right. But they’ll know one day. A lot of people will know—one day.”
A week later, a unique sensation electrified the Lower School. Bayes’s people had asked Arnold to spend the half-term holiday with them! And Arnold was going! It was unheard-of, unbelievable! Then it came out that I had done a drawing of Bayes and that his people thought it a “masterpiece.” My stock rocketed heavens high. Sticky sweets were passed to me during the Scripture class. The head master became a visible mortal, instead of a misty Olympian. The matron suddenly decided that I needed scalding cocoa every night before going to bed.
During the days before my visit, I made many discoveries about the Bayes family. Ronald was the only child; his father was the twelfth baronet; his mother was very beautiful. Their place was Manor Hall, an historic Tudor house, about twenty miles from the school. It was all rather overwhelming, but what particularly disturbed me was the matron’s concern about my underwear—a concern so frenzied that I imagined I should appear in those somewhat undignified garments.
The day arrived. The head master saw us off. A large car was waiting. Bayes drove and I sat by his side—an immaculate young chauffeur having been relegated to a back seat.
We shot along country roads—raced through monumental gates—flashed past a lodge—streaked up a long drive, with a never-ending park on either side, until a sudden bend revealed a house like a medieval castle enclosed by a moat and a wall.
On arrival, so many things claimed my attention simultaneously that all became merged in a blur, and it was only in retrospect that various incidents became detached, like individuals leaving a crowd.
Not only had I never entered a house like Manor Hall, but I had never met any one like Sir Ronald Bayes or his lovely wife. Perhaps it was their directness, their simplicity, and the way in which they invested everything they said or did with an air of inevitability, that distinguished them. I realised, years afterwards, that they on their side had not encountered any one like me, but I did not suspect this at the time because neither showed any hint of surprise or trace of curiosity. What I did find rather embarrassing was their enthusiasm for my drawing which occupied a prominent place in Sir Ronald’s study and which, he told me, he was going to show to Oswald Otway, the art critic.
But even while I talked to them, my imagination was actively trying to assess what it must be like to live in a house like this. I felt surrounded by history—which was a very different sensation from that caused by reading it! When I explored the extraordinary collection of halls and small rooms, which had been enlarged, as necessity or the personal whims of former occupants had decreed, I had the strange feeling that it would be difficult to return to the modern world. I stayed so long in the gallery with its rows of family portraits and famous pictures that eventually a footman appeared to tell me that luncheon was served. I went to the dining-room and, for the first time, encountered a butler. An experience which necessitated certain changes in my conception of the Almighty.
The next afternoon, when Ronald was out riding with his father, I had tea alone with Lady Bayes, who encouraged me to talk about myself, so I told her that I had been born in Paris and had spent the first seven years of my life travelling all over Europe with my parents. Then I described our home in Kent and although she showed no surprise I felt that she was surprised. She became even kinder and her grey eyes had a new expression which made me very happy to be with her.
“So you did not go to a preparatory school?”
“No. I had a tutor. Perhaps that was because I used to walk in my sleep.”
“That must have been very disturbing for your parents. Did you often walk in your sleep?”
“Oh yes, often—till I was eight. Sometimes I only went to the stables to pat a puppy I liked very much, but once I walked in my sleep to a house near ours—an empty house.”
“How very alarming! I can understand your walking in your sleep to the stables, as you were so fond of the puppy, but you couldn’t have cared about an empty house.”
“But I did! I loved it—more than anything. And I still do.”
After a silence, she asked about my drawing and I told her that I could draw before I could write and that my father knew a lot about art and had taken me to all the famous galleries in Europe. I also told her that, from the age of eight till I went to school, I had studied with Michael Drake, the artist, who lived near us. And then I told her that, when I left school, I wanted to go to Paris to study painting.
When I finished, she did not say anything, but looked at me with a speculative expression as if she were trying to visualise my future. I can see her now as she was then, in the mellow maturity of her remarkable beauty.
That was my first visit.
Ronald left at the end of the term, went up to Oxford, and I did not see him again till I spent a week-end at Manor Hall in July, 1914. When war broke out, Ronald obtained a commission in a famous regiment. I dined with him in London just before he went into training.
Nothing could indicate the quality of his personal magnetism more plainly than the fact that he was remembered by all the boys who had known him at school. Even the excitement caused by the war did not obliterate memories of Bayes and every one of us was convinced that he would have an exceptional and a brilliant career.
I remember the day when we heard he had gone to the front. I remember the day when we heard that he had been decorated for valour. And I remember the day when we heard that he had been killed in action.
I was in the senior quadrangle. A boy in the fifth form ran up and said breathlessly:
“Heard about Bayes?”
“No—what?”
“Killed in action.”
Everything became very still. Everything was listening. Something slowly collapsed in me, leaving a great emptiness.
Then I discovered that I hated this boy in the fifth form. I hated him for being alive. And I hated him for the way he had said: “Killed in action.”
I left him without a word, but before I had gone a hundred yards I came to a standstill.
It was only old people who died! Bent, mouldering, tired, old people, who went to sleep one day—and did not wake. Not Bayes. Not the swift slender Bayes, with the flourish of youth on his brow and worlds of expectation in his eyes! What had death to do with him?
Suddenly, gratitude overwhelmed every other emotion. He had transformed my life at school—he had deepened my confidence—he had revealed new horizons by taking me to his home. I vowed never to forget him. Never! Even if I lived to be a hundred!
Two days later, the head master sent for me.
I no longer regarded his austere study as the ante-room of doom. He no longer seemed a superman figure of obliterating majesty. I now saw an ageing lonely man of rigid principles and static opinions, who was as incapable of change as a monument.
He recognised my presence with ponderous formality, then told me that something most unusual had occurred which would involve me in an undertaking demanding tact and delicacy. He hoped I possessed those rare qualities.