II

After the opening of the term, it took Keith only a day or two to realize that, literally, he had entered a new world, quite different, in spirit as well as in appearance, from anything previously experienced.

The first shock came as soon as he had taken his place in the class and the first lesson had begun.  He was no longer Keith.  Christian names were not at all in use.  Everybody was addressed by his family name both by the teachers and by his fellow pupils.  Keith had become Wellander, and the first time he heard himself called by that name he blushed as deeply as if his most intimate privacy had suddenly been violated.  In a few hours, however, the unfamiliarity of the name as a standing appellation had worn off, and then the pride of the thing sent a pleasant glow through his whole body, making him for a brief, dizzy moment glimpse the glory of manhood.

His next discovery went far deeper.  He had attended school four years in succession, but only as you drop into a strange room on a visit.  He had never belonged in or to the school, and the school had neither limited nor extended his individuality.  Now he found himself completely taken possession of and made a part of something larger than himself, a carefully correlated and guarded system of ranks and rules and traditions.  In retrospect the former school seemed as accidental and fleeting as a street crowd, while the new one was an institution with a jealously preserved and deeply revered history to which each new pupil was expected to add more lustre.  But most remarkable of all seemed the fact that this collective body added something to the stature of every boy that became a part of it.

Membership was as onerous as it was honourable, not only within the school precints but anywhere.  To belong to “Old Mary” was to carry a sacred duty along wherever one went.  She was like an ambitious parent, never jealous of the reputation of her children.  Mostly it was a question of refraining from this or that thing which less conspicuously placed boys might venture at will, but at times it might imply the performance of fierce deeds of bravery in the face of overwhelming odds.  There was the rival school of St. Catherine and several “popular” schools that had no social standing whatsoever, but contained pupils with harder fists and less generous ideas of fighting than any boy within Old Mary.  When certain words of derision were flung upon the air by members of those inferior institutions, there was nothing left for a pupil of St. Mary’s but to fight.