Read Online Honorable Men by Louis Auchincloss - Free Book Online

I like, sir, to be taken out of myself for a bit.”
    â€œWell, that’s understandable. A school is so full of ringing bells and barking masters that a boy must wish to get away from time to time. But stories can be an evasion. They can even be a kind of drug. I don’t suggest that in your case they are. I simply put the idea on the table.”
    â€œMr. Terhune, in English class last week, described Saint Luke as our first novelist. He said he was the author of the Acts as well as of his own Gospel.”
    Mr. B seemed to weigh this. “That is believed by many scholars. The style is similar and certainly very beautiful. But I trust Mr. Terhune did not suggest that Saint Luke
invented
his Gospel.”
    â€œOh, no, sir! He said it was more like an historical novel.”
    â€œOh, I see.”
    Chip had had a vague notion that if he could find a novel in the New Testament, it might bring Gospels into a relation with the fiction that he was reading and that this relation might somehow be used to bridge the gap between his grandfather’s pure visions and the boys in the locker room. But now he saw that Mr. B was not going to allow this. There was no bridging that gap. It yawned like outer space between the sun and bipeds on the earth’s surface.
    And then there occurred a violent episode that emphasized even more strongly the separate worlds in which he and his grandfather were destined to move. Chip was too strong and agile to have much trouble with boys who liked to implement even a passing hostility with their fists, and on the rare occasions when he had been so challenged he had acquitted himself in a manner that did not invite others. Indeed, it was felt by some that he did too well. The moment he realized that the wrong was on the other side, he gave in to a sudden eruption of violent rage that had a kind of joy to it. On one occasion he even had to be pulled off his opponent by the alarmed spectators. But in the Stratton affair he was not challenged, personally. He was a volunteer.
    It happened in the gymnasium shower room. Stratton, a shy, inhibited boy who too obviously destested public nudity, was being made cruel fun of by a rowdy group of his formmates, who pretended to see in him a naked female intruding on the scene of their ablutions. When the intensity of his embarrassment caused him to have an erection, which he sought desperately to cover, his towel was snatched away, and he was pelted with bars of soap. At this point Chip intervened. By the end of the scuffle one boy, whose head Chip had bashed against the tile wall of the shower room, had to be taken to the infirmary, and Chip that evening found himself alone with his grandfather in the latter’s study.
    â€œI am sure you will be relieved to hear, Charles, that Johnson has not had a concussion. Will you tell me, please, how this unseemly brawl began?”
    â€œThey were being mean to Stratton, sir. I thought I’d better help him.”
    â€œHow were they being mean to Stratton?”
    â€œI’m afraid I can’t tell you, sir.”
    â€œI see.” How those pale gray eyes stared! Was it conceivable that Mr. B could visualize such things? No, it was not conceivable. “Why, Charles, did you feel that you had to help him?”
    â€œThey were being very bad, sir.”
    â€œBut is it your function to correct badness? Shouldn’t you have called a prefect or master?”
    â€œBut that would have been snitching!”
    â€œSometimes it may be manly to snitch.”
    â€œAnyway, sir, there wasn’t time.”
    After a considerable silence Mr. B continued gravely, “Why is it, my boy, that you feel compelled to correct so violently the badness in others?”
    â€œI don’t know, sir.”
    â€œIs it possible, do you suppose, that you may be seeking to correct some badness in yourself?”
    â€œI don’t know, sir,” Chip repeated, miserably.
    Mr. B’s sigh