So he was a friend.  A powerful friend.  But not powerful enough.  No one looked at Robert again.  And yet he knew, with all the certainty of inherited instinct, that they were waiting for him.

4

He went out into the school-yard like an early Christian into the arena.  He knew exactly what to expect.  It was just the Terrace over again.  He would have to fight them all until they learnt to leave him alone.  Somehow he knew for certain that to be left alone was the best he could expect.  They would never really forgive him for being different from themselves.  It was very mysterious.  It couldn’t be his father or the unpaid bills any more.  It seemed that if you were born different you remained different, however hard you tried.  He had wanted so much to go to school, to run with a band again, to play games with them and have them call out, “Hallo, Stonehouse!” as he heard other boys call to each other across the street.  He had meant to be exactly like them at all costs.  It had seemed so easy, since his father was dead and Christine paid the butcher.  But at once he had been found out, a marked man.  He hadn’t got a father and mother like ordinary people, he didn’t go to church, he didn’t say his prayers, he couldn’t read, and he didn’t know who God was—­or even Christine——­

There was a moment of suspense before the attack opened.  Like an old, experienced general he made his way with apparent indifference towards the wall.  But he was not quite quick enough.  Someone prodded him sharply in the back.  Someone hissed in mocking imitation: 

“I don’t know—­I don’t know!”

He was too cunning to retaliate.  He waited till he had reached his chosen ground, then he turned with his fists clenched.  The storm had already gathered.  It was only a little school, and the story of the new boy’s “break” with old Jaegers had reached even the big louts who lingered on in Form VI.  They made a rough half-circle round their intended victim, only partially malevolent in their intentions.  The fact that he had bearded a contemptible old beast like Jaegers was rather in his favour than otherwise, but his assertion that he did not say his prayers and knew nothing about God smacked of superiority.  He had to be taken down.  And, anyhow, a new boy was an object of curiosity and his preliminary persecution a time-honoured custom.  A fight was not in their calculations—­the very idea of a new boy venturing to fight beyond their imaginations.  And Robert did not want to fight.  He felt oddly weary and disinclined.  But to him there was no other outcome possible.  It was his only tradition.  It blinded him to what was kindly or only mischievous in the faces round him.  He had a momentary glimpse of the red-headed boy who stood just outside the circle, munching an apple and staring at him with astonished blue eyes, and then his attention fixed itself on his enemy-in-chief.  There was no mistaking him.  He was a big, lumpy fellow, fifteen years of age, with an untidy mouth, the spots of a premature adolescence and an air of heavy self-importance.  When he spoke, the rest fell into awed attention.