Word Of Honor

Kim du Toit
April 3, 2007
9:30 AM CDT

The purest treasure mortal times afford, is spotless reputation. (Richard II, Act I Sc.1)

If I look back, the greatest punishments of my childhood occurred not when I was being naughty, but when I tried to lie my way out of trouble.  Indeed, among the most savage thrashings I ever got from my Dad was when I broke a windowpane in the French door with a cricket ball, and then invented some nonsense to explain it away.  I was told, in no uncertain terms, that breaking a window was an accident—anyone could break a window without meaning to—but that lying about it, especially to escape punishment, was a crime far worse than the original transgression.

It was a lesson I took with me then, and still remember today.  What my parents, and for that matter all our parents were doing, was to instill in us a sense of honor.  (Why we would need a sense of honor was not explained, of course, because we were children, and therefore brain-dead.)

What was instilled in us, therefore, was a by-rote lesson:  Don’t lie, and by extension:  Don’t be dishonest. 

It was a lesson which stuck, by and large, but what we didn’t know at the time was that honesty, and apparent honesty, was the way in which one gained a reputation for honesty.

I found out why this was so important during my final year in high school. 

I was going steady with a girl (whom I’ll call V.) whose own high school was just over the road from St. John’s College.  She used to walk up the road past our school to attend private music lessons.  Of course, once I knew her schedule, it was a simple matter for us to meet at the lowest edge of our school property, and coo, hold hands, kiss, and all that wonderful stuff one does as a teenager.

Nothing more serious took place, of course.  As it was, we were breaking the rules just by seeing each other where we did—strangers were only allowed on school property on days when sports matches were being played, and we were not allowed to have any visitors whatsoever during the week, except our parents.  But to be caught in this transgression was a minor one, and might result only in a beating or detention—neither of which held any terror for me.  But to be caught having sex on the school property� oy, it didn’t bear thinking about.

One day, V. asked me to help her with her Latin homework.  I was an ace at Latin, so I readily agreed.  This particular passage from Cicero, however, contained a few words which I didn’t know.  In a moment of extreme stupidity, I suggested that we go up to my dorm room and get my Latin dictionary.  In a ditto moment, she agreed, so we stole up the terraces to my dorm room, consulted the dictionary, and then raced back downstairs and out to the boundary fence.

Those two moments of extreme stupidity were accompanied by a third: she forgot her school uniform hat on my bed.

And of course, while I was gone, our housemaster found occasion to come into the dorm room, and discovered the hat, which, helpfully, bore V.’s name and telephone number.

I had been in trouble before, but this was a different league altogether.

Not only did I face summary expulsion:  so did V.  If my housemaster were to contact V.’s school and tell her that there was evidence she’d been in a boy’s dorm room, she’d be out of her school quicker than light.

What my housemaster did was interesting:  rather than inform V.’s school, he called her father.

Now, V.’s father was no ordinary man.  He was a jurist of considerable reputation, and would later go on to become a Supreme Court judge.  (In an American context, this episode would have been the equivalent of being caught out with Judge Antonin Scalia’s teenage daughter.)

After the discovery of the hat, I spent the following day in the most terrified state.  I couldn’t concentrate on my studies, of course, and all I wanted was for the ground to open up and swallow me whole.

The next night, I was summoned to the housemaster’s office, and there I found: V.’s father.

In a long and storied judicial career, this man had delivered verbal admonishments to many hardened criminals, so a trembling schoolboy was easy meat.  Despite my age, however, I got the Full Adult Deluxe Bollocksing, and let me tell you, by the time the Judge was done with me, I was a quivering puddle on the floor.

Mostly, of course, I was trying my best to influence both the Judge and my housemaster not to let the business reach V.’s school authorities—as I’ve said, she’d have been expelled in an instant—and I figured, from their attitude, that I was a goner.  So I spent no time pleading my own case, and even said that I could face my own expulsion, but that I could never face V.’s expulsion.  My only goal, therefore, was to prevent her getting into trouble.  Of course, the Judge would have concurred with me (or maybe not—he was a judge, after all), but there was no guarantee that my housemaster would have cared about her, and may even have thought that both guilty parties deserved equal punishment.

So there I was, groveling and negotiating for all I was worth, despite having absolutely nothing to negotiate with.

The climax of the whole affair, however, came when the Judge asked me a simple question:  “What assurance can you give to me that you will never dishonor my daughter again?”

My response was, “You have my word, sir.”

“And why should I trust your word, Master du Toit?”

I thought for a moment.  “Because it’s all I have, sir.”

He looked at me dubiously.  “Not much, is it?”

At that point, I felt lower than any creature on the face of the planet.  “No, sir.  But I can’t offer you anything more, or anything more valuable to me.”

I was dismissed, to await my sentencing.

The following evening (!), I got my punishment:  nothing.

Of greater importance, V. likewise escaped punishment.  Oh, we were forbidden to see each other for a month, but it was approaching time for finals anyway, so I wouldn’t have been able to see her.  And a ban on seeing each other, compared to all the potential alternatives, was less than nothing.

A long time afterwards, V. told me what had transpired in my housemaster’s office after I’d been tossed out.

Firstly, the Judge had been highly impressed by my attitude through all the grilling and scolding.  He’d told V. that I had stood up to him manfully, and with dignity. (If he could have seen inside me, he’d have been somewhat less impressed, I think.  All I could think was:  Don’t start crying.  Because believe me, I’d felt like doing so several times during that interview.)

Secondly, he’d asked my housemaster afterwards whether I had a reputation as a liar—and my housemaster had told him that despite all my many transgressions over the years, he’d never caught me in a lie.  Whenever I’d been caught doing something wrong, I’d always owned up, confessed, and taken my punishment.  (Thank you, Mom and Dad.)

Thirdly, the Judge was impressed by the fact that I had been prepared to sacrifice myself, as long as his daughter was spared punishment—and my housemaster, amazingly, had concurred with that impression.

Finally, the Judge had been impressed by my emphasis on my word of honor—that it was all I had to persuade him not to allow such a dreadful punishment to befall his daughter, even though I was careless about my own future.

To be fair, however, I had amassed a couple of other career highlights which may have helped:  First XI hockey, school springboard diving champ, member of the winning Inter-School Quiz Team, and, of course, I was expected to get a first-class graduation later that year.  Maybe all that stuff helped ameliorate the issue, I don’t know.

All I could think of was to thank my lucky stars that V. and I hadn’t availed ourselves of my bed when she’d come up to the dorm with me (and yes, we had briefly toyed with the notion).  From my housemaster’s perspective, finding evidence of a girl in the dorm was one thing � especially when she corroborated my story about Latin dictionaries—but catching us in flagrante delicto?  We’d both have been out of our respective schools before dinner.

One learns from one’s mistakes, of course, and this was a good mistake to learn from.

I wasn’t interested in the superficial lessons, of course (don’t take your girlfriend into your dorm, don’t break the rules blah blah blah).

What I learned was the truth:  that without your good name, and without your honor, you are worth nothing.

So when I betrayed my word of honor many years later, it caused me guilt which I live with every single day, and will live with for the rest of my life; but that sorry tale will have to wait until later.