Well, there it was; and we saw in a moment that you can’t escape the horrors of war, even though you are on an island with the Grand Fleet between you and the foe.
When it came to the point, the Doctor was fairly friendly, but there was always something about him that was awful and solemn and very depressing to the mind. You could crib easily enough with him, for he had a much more trustful disposition than Hutchings, or Brown, or Fortescue, and was also short-sighted at near range; but the general feeling with the Doctor was a sense of weariness and undoubted relief when it was over. It was as near like being in church as anything could be.
Beginning at the beginning of subjects bored him. In fact, he often found, when he went back to the very start of a lesson, he’d forgotten it himself, moving for so many years on only the higher walks of learning; and then, finding that he had forgotten some footling trifle on the first page of a primer, he became abstracted and lost heart about it, and seemed more inclined to think than to talk.
Another very curious habit he had was to start on one thing--say Latin--and then drift off into something else--say geography. Or he might begin with algebra and then something would remind him of the procession of the equinoxes, or the nebula in Orion, and he would soar from earth and wander among the heavenly bodies until the class was over. And if he happened to be very much interested himself, he wouldn’t let it be over; and then we had to sit on hearing the Doctor maundering about double stars, or comets perhaps, while everybody else was in the playground.
I think he got rather sick of the Lower School after about a month of it, and Fortescue took over a good many of the classes in his normal style, which was more business-like than the Doctor and more punctual in its working. Fortescue was cold and hadn’t much use for us in school or out, but he was just, and we liked him pretty well until the mystery began. Then we gradually got to dislike him, and then despise him, and then hate him.
He was rather out of the common in a way, being an Honourable and related to the famous family of Fortescue, which has shone a good deal in history off and on. And, of course, when the war broke out, we naturally expected that the Honourable Howard Fortescue would seize the opportunity to shine also, which he could not do as an undermaster at Merivale. He was a big, fine man, six feet high, with a red complexion and a Roman nose. Certainly, he did not play games, but he was all right in other ways, and had been a lawn-tennis player of the first-class in past times at Oxford, and, in fact, got his half-blue for playing at that sport against Cambridge.