Noble in Reason by Phyllis Bentley

thought their offspring safely and hygienically occupied, exercising in the fresh air with contemporaries of the same sex.
    My father after a good deal of pressure had presented John with a bicycle when he reached the appropriate age; Henry’s machine followed rapidly after—my father always favoured Henry. A bicycle for me lay in the future as yet and there was a wounding doubt in the family as to my ability to ride one. I was indeed uncertain on a bicycle as yet; still I had learned to stand on the “step” in the rear and ride behind Henry or John on the not very frequent occasions when they would condescend to take me.
    That night, longing for some reassurance, some cheering occupation, I went out into our back porch and watched my brothers wistfully as they gave their machines a polish. I yearned for an invitation but had not the courage to ask for one. John glancing up from his work with a wash-leather and seeingme standing there, no doubt looking decidedly woebegone after the wretched experience of the day, frowned and said:
    â€œTake Chris with you on your step, Henry.”
    â€œTake him on yours!” flashed Henry.
    My brothers glared into each other’s eyes for a long moment.
    Then John flung the leather across into its box with one of his careless clumsy movements, applied his trouser-clips to his ankles, mounted his bicycle and without a word rode away. Henry with compressed lips continued to polish his handlebars. By this time I had set my heart on going with Henry; I clung desperately to the project because the alternative was an evening of brooding over Graham’s hatred. I screwed myself to the sticking-point—on these occasions my heart beat fast, my throat contracted.
    â€œI wish you would take me, Henry,” I managed to utter at last in a thin constrained tone.
    â€œI can’t take you to-night, Christopher,” replied Henry gravely.
    He rode off.
    Choking with disappointment, I felt I could not bear to meet my parents just yet—Netta was in bed. Accordingly I went into the drawing-room, opened the piano and began to play a little piece by Grieg in which Henry was instructing me. The strong vibrant chords of this
Väterlandisches Lied,
with their emotional appeal, expanded my bruised heart—perhaps one day I should be a great musician and everyone, even Graham, would admire me! I was playing the piece for the third time with immense “expression” when my father put his head round the door.
    â€œDo stop that awful
row,
Christopher,” he said irritably. “Your mother has a headache.”
    Evidently I was not to become a great musician. ... If ever a child felt despised and rejected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, I felt so then.
4
    Looking back on these wretched schooldays—they did not last very long; Graham was sent away to boarding-school after the summer holidays that year, and I myself left the school shortly afterwards—but looking back on them now, I perceive of course, that, again, their troubles were not peculiar to Christopher Jarmayne; they were common to all boys (and girls too, I shouldn’t wonder) of my type. The weakling is a continual temptation to the streak of cruelty which lies in all of us, and the artist is always disliked, for he is not committed to the battle as are his fellows; he stands aside and watches. (Nobody likes to be watched by a critical intelligence, for nobody likes to be judged.) But it was certainly a great relief and stimulus when in my later teens I discovered from my reading that sufferings of this kind occur frequently in the biographies of men who have later made their mark. Indeed a very macabre story which I read quite recently—
The Playground
by Ray Bradbury—seems to postulate these youthful agonies for ail children. (One wonders about animals in the same stage. I have sometimes believed I could discern a wounding ostracism of one lamb by its fellows in