It may be that a readjustment of one's standards is a healthy experience. But that is hardly the attitude that officials could safely adopt. The public school system is supposed to produce trained citizens, who are in harmony with their environment. And that is exactly what the public school boy is not. He tries to tackle life with the scale of values that he learnt to apprehend at school. And it is not an easy task. Some, indeed, never accomplish it. They never readjust themselves. They surround themselves with old friends, revisit their old schools, endeavour to recapture the old atmosphere. They regret vaguely that something has passed. Like Jurgen, they return in quest of their youth, but the distorted shadow of Sereda prevents them from entering completely their former selves. In _The Harrovians_ Arnold Lunn makes two of his characters discuss this question.
'There's West, for example,' Peter said, 'he'll never be such a blood again. He hasn't any brains. He couldn't even struggle into the Upper School, but he's a mighty man here. Rather a pity, I think, that life should reach its highest point at nineteen. This ought only to be a beginning.'
Fears for the future and regrets for the past are alike forgotten during the last week. There are sad moments, but, as Arnold Lunn remarked, 'there is a world of difference between the pleasant sorrow of sentiment and the more real depression that coincides with an overdraft at the bank.' The last week is passed in a mood that I once heard described as 'happy-sad.' On the last Sunday in chapel the boy who is leaving endeavours to summon the appropriate emotion. He knows how he ought to feel. He has been instructed by so many stories. He is, in a way, an actor in a drama. He knows that the fag on the other side of the aisle is looking at him, is saying to himself: 'This is Jones's last chapel. What is he feeling?' And, like an actor, Jones does not want to disappoint his audience. He feels as he should feel. There is a lump at the back of his throat. But, on the whole, leaving is an exciting experience.
There is the auction of study furniture, when pictures that cost five shillings when they were new, fetch seven and six in their fourth year of service. There are the calls to be paid to masters, the 'good-byes' and 'good lucks.' It is the abdication of office when one is at the height of one's authority. It is a fine gesture that 'immeasurable power, unsated to resign,' to be able to step straight out from the lighted room, before the corroding forces of change have begun to work, and before habit has dulled applause. The exit is made at exactly the right moment. The curtain falls on a dramatic climax. And how rarely that happens.