Nothing to go home to--nothing to come back to. The Christmas holidays over
he returned to the Easter term with an eager determination to improve
matters.
It was geniality that he lacked: he knew that that was the matter with him,
and he felt a kind of despair about it because he seemed to return at the
end of every holiday from Cornwall with that old conviction in his head
that the easiest way to get through the world was to stand with your back
to the wall and say nothing ... and if these fellows, who thought him so
pleasant last year, thought him pleasant no longer, well, then he must put
up with it. He had not changed--there he was, as ever.
But the Easter term was a chronicle of mistakes. He could not be genial to
people who defied and mocked him; he found, dangerously, that they could
all be afraid of him. When his face was white and his voice very quiet and
his whole body tense like a bow, then they feared him--the biggest and
strongest of those criminals obeyed. He was sixteen now and he could when
he liked rule them all, and gradually, as the term advanced, he used his
strength more and more and was more and more alone. Days would come when he
would hate his loneliness and would rush out of it with friendly advances
and always he would be beaten back into his reserve again. Had only Cards
been there!...
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