He hated it as a lady hates coarseness in a pantomime; it made him
want to hide himself. Just that feeling of impersonal ignominy
which most of us have when some one betrays indecent ignorance,
Simmons had when some one betrayed special knowledge. He writhed
and went red in the face; he used to put up the lid of his
desk to hide his blushes for human dignity, and from behind
this barrier would whisper protests which had the hoarse emphasis
of pain. "O, shut up, I say. .. O, I say, shut up. ... O, shut
it, can't you?" Once when a little boy admitted that he had
heard of the Highland claymore, Simmons literally hid his head
inside his desk and dropped the lid upon it in desperation;
and when I was for a moment transferred from the bottom of the form
for knowing the name of Cardinal Newman, I thought he would have
rushed from the room.
His psychological eccentricity increased; if one can call
that an eccentricity which was a wild worship of the ordinary.
At last he grew so sensitive that he could not even bear any question
answered correctly without grief. He felt there was a touch
of disloyalty, of unfraternal individualism, even about knowing
the right answer to a sum. If asked the date of the battle of Hastings,
he considered it due to social tact and general good feeling
to answer 1067. This chivalrous exaggeration led to bad feeling
between him and the school authority, which ended in a rupture
unexpectedly violent in the case of so good-humoured a creature.
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