Complete Stories of Eveyln, Page 34

  “Do you always say that, Jorkins? Don’t you sometimes get tired of always saying the same thing?”

  “There’s a four-and-sixpenny table d’hôte.”

  “Please, Jorkins, spare us the hideous details of your gormandizing.”

  “Oh, all right. I thought you were interested, that’s all.”

  “Do you think,” said Tamplin, confining himself ostentatiously to Charles and Wheatley, “that Apthorpe is keen on Wykham-Blake?”

  “No, is he?”

  “Well, he couldn’t keep away from him in Evening School.”

  “I suppose the boy had to find consolation now his case Sugdon’s left. He hasn’t a friend among the under-schools.”

  “What d’you make of the man Peacock?” (Charles, Tamplin and Wheatley were all in the Classical Upper Fifth under Mr. Peacock.)

  “He’s started decently. No work tonight.”

  “Raggable?”

  “I doubt it. But slack.”

  “I’d sooner a master were slack than raggable. I got quite exhausted last term ragging the Tea-cake.”

  “It was witty, though.”

  “I hope he’s not so slack that we shan’t get our Certificates next summer.”

  “One can always sweat the last term. At the University no one ever does any work until just before the exams. Then they sit up all night with black coffee and strychnine.”

  “It would be jolly witty if no one passed his Certificate.”

  “I wonder what they’d do.”

  “Give Peacock the push, I should think.”

  Presently Grace was said and the school streamed out into the cloisters. It was now dark. The cloisters were lit at intervals by gaslamps. As one walked, one’s shadow lengthened and grew fainter before one until, approaching the next source of light, it disappeared, fell behind, followed one’s heels, shortened, deepened, disappeared and started again at one’s toes. The quarter of an hour between Hall and Second Evening was mainly spent in walking the cloisters in pairs or in threes; to walk four abreast was the privilege of school prefects. On the steps of Hall, Charles was approached by O’Malley. He was an ungainly boy, an upstart who had come to Spierpoint late, in a bye-term. He was in Army Class B and his sole distinction was staying-power in cross-country running.

  “Coming to the Graves?”

  “No.”

  “D’you mind if I hitch on to you for a minute?”

  “Not particularly.”

  They joined the conventional, perambulating couples, their shadows, lengthened before them, apart. Charles did not take O’Malley’s arm. O’Malley might not take Charles’s. The Settle was purely a House Dignity. In the cloisters Charles was senior by right of his two years at Spierpoint.

  “I’m awfully sorry about the Settle,” said O’Malley.

  “I should have thought you’d be pleased.”

  “I’m not, honestly. It’s the last thing I wanted. Graves sent me a postcard a week ago. It spoiled the end of the holidays. I’ll tell you what happened. Graves had me in on the last day last term. You know the way he has. He said, ‘I’ve some unpleasant news for you, O’Malley. I’m putting you head of the Upper Dormitory.’ I said, ‘It ought to be someone on the Settle. No one else could keep order.’ I thought he’d keep Easton up there. He said, ‘These things are a matter of personality, not of official position.’ I said, ‘It’s been proved you have an official. You know how bolshie we were with Fletcher.’ He said, ‘Fletcher wasn’t the man for the job. He wasn’t my appointment.’ ”

  “Typical of his lip. Fletcher was Frank’s appointment.”

  “I wish we had Frank still.”

  “So does everyone. Anyway, why are you telling me all this?”

  “I didn’t want you to think I’d been greasing. I heard Tamplin say I had.”

  “Well, you are on the Settle and you are head of the dormitory, so what’s the trouble?”

  “Will you back me up, Ryder?”

  “Have you ever known me back anyone up, as you call it?”

  “No,” said O’Malley miserably, “that’s just it.”

  “Well, why d’you suppose I should start with you?”

  “I just thought you might.”

  “Well, think again.”

  They had walked three sides of the square and were now at the door of Head’s House. Mr. Graves was standing outside his own room talking to Mr. Peacock.

  “Charles,” he said, “come here a minute. Have you met this young man yet, Peacock? He’s one of yours.”

  “Yes, I think so,” said Mr. Peacock doubtfully.

  “He’s one of my problem children. Come in here, Charles. I want to have a chat to you.”

  Mr. Graves took him by the elbow and led him into his room.

  There were no fires yet and the two armchairs stood before an empty grate; everything was unnaturally bare and neat after the holiday cleaning.

  “Sit you down.”

  Mr. Graves filled his pipe and gave Charles a long, soft and quizzical stare. He was a man still under thirty, dressed in Lovat tweed with an Old Rugbeian tie. He had been at Spierpoint during Charles’s first term and they had met once on the miniature range; in that bleak, untouchable epoch Charles had been warmed by his affability. Then Mr. Graves was called up for the army and now had returned, the term before, as House Tutor of Head’s. Charles had grown confident in the meantime and felt no need of affable masters; only for Frank whom Mr. Graves had supplanted. The ghost of Frank filled the room. Mr. Graves had hung some Medici prints in the place of Frank’s football groups. The set of Georgian Poetry in the bookcase was his, not Frank’s. His college arms embellished the tobacco jar on the chimneypiece.

  “Well, Charles Ryder,” said Mr. Graves at length, “are you feeling sore with me?”

  “Sir?”

  Mr. Graves became suddenly snappish. “If you choose to sit there like a stone image, I can’t help you.”

  Still Charles said nothing.

  “I have a friend,” said Mr. Graves, “who goes in for illumination. I thought you might like me to show him the work you sent in to the Art Competition last term.”

  “I’m afraid I left it at home, sir.”

  “Did you do any during the holidays?”

  “One or two things, sir.”

  “You never try painting from nature?”

  “Never, sir.”

  “It seems rather a crabbed, shut-in sort of pursuit for a boy of your age. Still, that’s your own business.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Difficult chap to talk to, aren’t you, Charles?”

  “Not with everyone. Not with Frank,” Charles wished to say; “I could talk to Frank by the hour.” Instead he said, “I suppose I am, sir.”

  “Well, I want to talk to you. I dare say you feel you have been a little ill-used this term. Of course, all your year are in rather a difficult position. Normally there would have been seven or eight people leaving at the end of last term but with the war coming to an end they are staying on an extra year, trying for University scholarships and so on. Only Sugdon left, so instead of a general move there was only one vacancy at the top. That meant only one vacancy on the Settle. I dare say you think you ought to have had it.”

  “No, sir. There were two people ahead of me.”

  “But not O’Malley. I wonder if I can make you understand why I put him over you. You were the obvious man in many ways. The thing is, some people need authority, others don’t. You’ve got plenty of personality. O’Malley isn’t at all sure of himself. He might easily develop into rather a second-rater. You’re in no danger of that. What’s more, there’s the dormitory to consider. I think I can trust you to work loyally under O’Malley. I’m not so sure I could trust him to work under you. See? It’s always been a difficult dormitory. I don’t want a repetition of what happened with Fletcher. Do you understand?”

  “I understand what you mean, sir.”

  “Grim young devil, aren’t you?”


  “Sir?”

  “Oh, all right, go away. I shan’t waste any more time with you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Charles rose to go.

  “I’m getting a small hand printing-press this term,” said Mr. Graves. “I thought it might interest you.”

  It did interest Charles intensely. It was one of the large features of his daydreams; in chapel, in school, in bed, in all the rare periods of abstraction, when others thought of racing motor-cars and hunters and speed-boats, Charles thought long and often of a private press. But he would not betray to Mr. Graves the intense surge of images that rose in his mind.

  “I think the invention of movable type was a disaster, sir. It destroyed calligraphy.”

  “You’re a prig, Charles,” said Mr. Graves. “I’m sick of you. Go away. Tell Wheatley I want him. And try not to dislike me so much. It wastes both our time.”

  Second Evening had begun when Charles returned to the House Room; he reported to the house-captain in charge, despatched Wheatley to Mr. Graves and settled down over his Hassall to half an hour’s daydream, imagining the tall folios, the wide margins, the deckle-edged mould-made paper, the engraved initials, the rubrics and colophons of his private press. In Third Evening one could “read”; Charles read Hugh Walpole’s Fortitude.

  Wheatley did not return until the bell was ringing for the end of Evening School.

  Tamplin greeted him with “Bad luck, Wheatley. How many did you get? Was he tight?”; Charles with “Well, you’ve had a long hot-air with Graves. What on earth did he talk about?”

  “It was all rather confidential,” said Wheatley solemnly.

  “Oh, sorry.”

  “No, I’ll tell you sometime if you promise to keep it to yourself.” Together they ascended the turret stair to their dormitory. “I say, have you noticed something? Apthorpe is in the Upper Anteroom this term. Have you ever known the junior house-captain anywhere except in the Lower Anteroom? I wonder how he worked it.”

  “Why should he want to?”

  “Because, my innocent, Wykham-Blake has been moved into the Upper Anteroom.”

  “Tactful of Graves.”

  “You know, I sometimes think perhaps we’ve rather misjudged Graves.”

  “You didn’t think so in Hall.”

  “No, but I’ve been thinking since.”

  “You mean he’s been greasing up to you.”

  “Well, all I can say is, when he wants to be decent, he is decent. I find we know quite a lot of the same people in the holidays. He once stayed on the moor next to ours.”

  “I don’t see anything particularly decent in that.”

  “Well, it makes a sort of link. He explained why he put O’Malley on the Settle. He’s a student of character, you know.”

  “Who? O’Malley?”

  “No, Graves. He said that’s the only reason he is a schoolmaster.”

  “I expect he’s a schoolmaster because it’s so jolly slack.”

  “Not at all. As a matter of fact, he was going into the Diplomatic, just as I am.”

  “I don’t expect he could pass the exam. It’s frightfully stiff. Graves only takes the Middle Fourth.”

  “The exam is only to keep out undesirable types.”

  “Then it would floor Graves.”

  “He says schoolmastering is the most human calling in the world. Spierpoint is not an arena for competition. We have to stop the weakest going to the wall.”

  “Did Graves say that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I must remember that if there’s any unpleasantness with Peacock. What else did he say?”

  “Oh, we talked about people, you know, and their characters. Would you say O’Malley had poise?”

  “Good God, no.”

  “That’s just what Graves thinks. He says some people have it naturally and they can look after themselves. Others, like O’Malley, need bringing on. He thinks authority will give O’Malley poise.”

  “Well, it doesn’t seem to have worked yet,” said Charles, as O’Malley loped past their beds to his corner.

  “Welcome to the head of the dormitory,” said Tamplin. “Are we all late? Are you going to report us?”

  O’Malley looked at his watch. “As a matter of fact, you have exactly seven minutes.”

  “Not by my watch.”

  “We go by mine.”

  “Really,” said Tamplin. “Has your watch been put on the Settle, too? It looks a cheap kind of instrument to me.”

  “When I am speaking officially I don’t want any impertinence, Tamplin.”

  “His watch has been put on the Settle. It’s the first time I ever heard one could be impertinent to a watch.”

  They undressed and washed their teeth. O’Malley looked repeatedly at his watch and at last said, “Say your dibs.”

  Everyone knelt at his bedside and buried his face in the bedclothes. After a minute, in quick succession, they rose and got into bed; all save Tamplin who remained kneeling. O’Malley stood in the middle of the dormitory, irresolute, his hand on the chain of the gas-lamp. Three minutes passed; it was the convention that no one spoke while anyone was still saying his prayers; several boys began to giggle. “Hurry up,” said O’Malley.

  Tamplin raised a face of pained rebuke. “Please, O’Malley. I’m saying my dibs.”

  “Well, you’re late.”

  Tamplin remained with his face buried in the blanket. O’Malley pulled the chain and extinguished the light, all save the pale glow of the bye-pass under the white enamel shade. It was the custom, when doing this, to say “Good-night”; but Tamplin was still ostensibly in prayer; in this black predicament O’Malley stalked to his bed in silence.

  “Aren’t you going to say ‘Good-night’ to us?” asked Charles.

  “Good-night.”

  A dozen voices irregularly took up the cry. “Good-night, O’Malley . . . I hope the official watch doesn’t stop in the night . . . happy dreams, O’Malley.”

  “Really, you know,” said Wheatley, “there’s a man still saying his prayers.”

  “Stop talking.”

  “Please,” said Tamplin, on his knees. He remained there for half a minute more, then rose and got into bed.

  “You understand, Tamplin? You’re late.”

  “Oh, but I don’t think I can be, even by your watch. I was perfectly ready when you said ‘Say your dibs.’ ”

  “If you want to take as long as that you must start sooner.”

  “But I couldn’t with all that noise going on, could I, O’Malley? All that wrangling about watches?”

  “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

  “Good-night, O’Malley.”

  At this moment the door opened and the house-captain in charge of the dormitory came in. “What the devil’s all this talking about?” he asked.

  Now, O’Malley had not the smallest intention of giving Tamplin a “late.” It was a delicate legal point, of the kind that was debated endlessly at Spierpoint, whether in the circumstances he could properly do so. It had been in O’Malley’s mind to appeal to Tamplin’s better nature in the morning, to say that he could take a joke as well as the next man, that his official position was repugnant to him, that the last thing he wished to do was start the term by using his new authority on his former associates; he would say all this and ask Tamplin to “back him up.” But now, suddenly challenged out of the darkness, he lost his head and said, “I was giving Tamplin a ‘late,’ Anderson.”

  “Well, remind me in the morning and for Christ’s sake don’t make such a racket over it.”

  “Please, Anderson, I don’t think I was late,” said Tamplin; “it’s just that I took longer than the others over my prayers. I was perfectly ready when we were told to say them.”

  “But he was still out of bed when I put the light out,” said O’Malley.

  “Well, it’s usual to wait until everyone’s ready, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Anderson. I did wait about five minutes.�
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  “I see. Anyhow, lates count from the time you start saying your dibs. You know that. Better wash the whole thing out.”

  “Thank you, Anderson,” said Tamplin.

  The house-captain lit the candle which stood in a biscuit-box shade on the press by his bed. He undressed slowly, washed and, without saying prayers, got into bed. Then he lay there reading. The tin hid the light from the dormitory and cast a small, yellow patch over his book and pillow; that and the faint circle of the gas-lamp were the only lights; gradually in the darkness the lancet windows became dimly visible. Charles lay on his back thinking; O’Malley had made a fiasco of his first evening; first and last he could not have done things worse; it seemed a rough and tortuous road on which Mr. Graves had set his feet, to self-confidence and poise.

  Then, as he grew sleepier, Charles’s thoughts, like a roulette ball when the wheel runs slow, sought their lodging and came at last firmly to rest on that day, never far distant, at the end of his second term; the raw and gusty day of the junior steeplechase when, shivering and half-changed, queasy with apprehension of the trial ahead, he had been summoned by Frank, had shuffled into his clothes, run headlong down the turret stairs and with a new and deeper alarm knocked at the door.

  “Charles, I have just had a telegram from your father which you must read. I’ll leave you alone with it.”

  He shed no tear, then or later; he did not remember what was said when two minutes later Frank returned; there was a numb, anaesthetized patch at the heart of his sorrow; he remembered, rather, the order of the day. Instead of running he had gone down in his overcoat with Frank to watch the finish of the race; word had gone round the house and no questions were asked; he had tea with the matron, spent the evening in her room and slept that night in a room in the Headmaster’s private house; next morning his Aunt Philippa came and took him home. He remembered all that went on outside himself, the sight and sound and smell of the place, so that, on his return to them, they all spoke of his loss, of the sharp severance of all the bonds of childhood, and it seemed to him that it was not in the uplands of Bosnia but here at Spierpoint, on the turret stairs, in the unlighted box-room passage, in the windy cloisters, that his mother had fallen, killed not by a German shell but by the shrill voice sounding across the changing room, “Ryder here? Ryder? Frank wants him at the double.”