Complete Stories of Eveyln, Page 36

  Curtis-Dunne pointed a toe shod in shabby, soft black leather; a laced shoe without a toecap, in surface like the cover of a well-worn Bible. “Ah, you have observed my labour-saving device. I wear them night and morning. They are a constant perplexity to those in authority. When questioned, as happened two or three times a week during my first term, I say they are a naval pattern which my father, on account of extreme poverty, has asked me to wear out. That embarrasses them. But I am sure you do not share these middle-class prejudices. Dear boy, your name, please, to this subversive manifesto.”

  Still Charles hesitated. The suggestion outraged Spierpoint taste in all particulars. Whatever intrigues, blandishments and self-advertisements were employed by the ambitious at Spierpoint were always elaborately disguised. Self-effacement and depreciation were the rule. To put oneself explicitly forward for preferment was literally not done. Moreover, the lead came from a boy who was not only in another house and immeasurably Charles’s inferior, but also a notorious eccentric. A term back Charles would have rejected the proposal with horror, but today and all this term he was aware of a new voice in his inner counsels, a detached, critical Hyde who intruded his presence more and more often on the conventional, intolerant, subhuman, wholly respectable Dr. Jekyll; a voice, as it were, from a more civilized age, as from the chimney corner in mid-Victorian times there used to break sometimes the sardonic laughter of grandmama, relic of Regency, a clear, outrageous, entirely self-assured disturber among the high and muddled thoughts of her whiskered descendants.

  “Frank’s all for the suggestion, you know,” said Curtis-Dunne. “He says the initiative must come from us. He can’t go pushing reforms which he’ll be told nobody really wants. He wants a concrete proposal to put before the library committee.”

  That silenced Jekyll. Charles signed.

  “Now,” said Curtis-Dunne, “there should be little difficulty with the lad Mercer. He said he’d sign if you would.”

  By lunchtime there were twenty-three signatories, including the prefect-in-charge.

  “We have this day lit a candle,” said Curtis-Dunne.

  There was some comment around Charles in Hall about his conduct in the library.

  “I know he’s awful,” said Charles, “but he happens to amuse me.”

  “They all think he’s barmy in Brent’s.”

  “Frank doesn’t. And anyway I call that a recommendation. As a matter of fact, he’s one of the most intelligent men I ever met. If he’d come at the proper time he’d probably be senior to all of us.”

  Support came unexpectedly from Wheatley. “I happen to know the Head took him in as a special favour to his father. He’s Sir Samson Curtis-Dunne’s son, the Member for this division. They’ve got a big place near Steyning. I wouldn’t at all mind having a day’s shooting there next Veniam day.”

  On Sunday afternoons, for two hours, the House Room was out of bounds to all except the Settle; in their black coats and with straw hats under their arms the school scattered over the countryside in groups, pairs and occasional disconsolate single figures, for “walks.” All human habitations were barred; the choice lay between the open down behind Spierpoint Ring and the single country road to the isolated Norman church of St. Botolph. Tamplin and Charles usually walked together.

  “How I hate Sunday afternoons,” said Charles.

  “We might get some blackberries.”

  But at the door of the house they were stopped by Mr. Graves.

  “Hullo, you two,” he said, “would you like to make yourselves useful? My press has arrived. I thought you might help put it together.” He led them into his room, where half-opened crates filled most of the floor. “It was all in one piece when I bought it. All I’ve got to go on is this.” He showed them a woodcut in an old book. “They didn’t change much from Caxton’s day until the steam presses came in. This one is about a hundred years old.”

  “Damned sweat,” muttered Tamplin.

  “And here, young Ryder, is the ‘movable type’ you deplore so much.”

  “What sort of type is it, sir?”

  “We’ll have to find out. I bought the whole thing in one lot from a village stationer.”

  They took out letters at random, set them, and took an impression by pressing them, inked, on a sheet of writing paper. Mr. Graves had an album of typefaces.

  “They all look the same to me,” said Tamplin.

  In spite of his prejudice, Charles was interested. “I’ve got it, I think, sir; Baskerville.”

  “No. Look at the serifs. How about Caslon Old Style?”

  At last it was identified. Then Charles found a box full of ornamental initials, menu headings of decanters and dessert, foxes’ heads and running hounds for sporting announcements, ecclesiastical devices and monograms, crowns, Odd Fellows’ arms, the wood-cut of a prize bull, decorative bands, the splendid jumble of a century of English job-printing.

  “I say, sir, what fun. You could do all sorts of things with these.”

  “We will, Charles.”

  Tamplin looked at the amateurs with disgust. “I say, sir, I’ve just remembered something I must do. Do you mind awfully if I don’t stay?”

  “Run along, old Tamplin.” When he had gone, Mr. Graves said, “I’m sorry Tamplin doesn’t like me.”

  “Why can he not let things pass?” thought Charles. “Why does he always have to comment on everything?”

  “You don’t like me either, Charles. But you like the press.”

  “Yes,” said Charles, “I like the press.”

  The type was tied up in little bags. They poured it out, each bagful into the tray provided for it in the worn oak tray.

  “Now for the press. This looks like the base.”

  It took them two hours to rebuild. When at last it was assembled, it looked small, far too small for the number and size of the cases in which it had travelled. The main cast-iron supports terminated in brass Corinthian capitals and the summit was embellished with a brass urn bearing the engraved date 1824. The common labour, the problems and discoveries, of erection had drawn the two together; now they surveyed its completion in common pride. Tamplin was forgotten.

  “It’s a lovely thing, sir. Could you print a book on it?”

  “It would take time. Thank you very much for your help. And now,” Mr. Graves looked at his watch, “as, through some grave miscarriage of justice, you are not on the Settle, I expect you have no engagement for tea. See what you can find in the locker.”

  The mention of the Settle disturbed their intimacy. Mr. Graves repeated the mistake a few minutes later when they had boiled the kettle and were making toast on the gas-ring. “So at this moment Desmond O’Malley is sitting down to his first Settle tea. I hope he’s enjoying it. I don’t think somehow he is enjoying this term very much so far.” Charles said nothing. “Do you know, he came to me two days ago and asked to resign from it? He said that if I didn’t let him he would do something that would make me degrade him. He’s an odd boy, Desmond. It was an odd request.”

  “I don’t suppose he’d want me to know about it.”

  “Of course he wouldn’t. Do you know why I’m telling you? Do you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I think you could make all the difference to him, whether his life is tolerable or not. I gather all you little beasts in the Upper Dormitory have been giving him hell.”

  “If we have, it’s because he asked for it.”

  “I dare say, but don’t you think it rather sad that in life there are so many different things different people are asking for, and the only people who get what they ask for are the Desmond O’Malleys?”

  At that moment, beyond the box-room, the Settle tea had reached its second stage; surfeited with crumpets, five or six each, they were starting on the éclairs and cream-slices. There was still a warm, soggy pile of crumpets left uneaten and according to custom O’Malley, as junior man, was deputed to hand them round the House Room.

  Wheatley was supercilio
us. “What is that, O’Malley? Crumpets? How very kind of you, but I am afraid I never eat them. My digestion, you know.”

  Tamplin was comic. “My figure, you know,” he said.

  Jorkins was rude. “No, thanks. They look stale.”

  There was loud laughter among the third-year men and some of their more precocious juniors. In strict order of seniority, O’Malley travelled from boy to boy, rebuffed, crimson. All the Upper Dormitory refused. Only the fags watched, first in wonder that anyone should refuse crumpets on a cold afternoon, later with brightening expectancy as the full plate came nearer to them.

  “I say, thanks awfully, O’Malley.” They soon went at the under-school table and O’Malley returned to his chair before the empty grate, where he sat until chapel silently eating confectionery.

  “You see,” said Mr. Graves, “the beastlier you are to O’Malley, the beastlier he’ll become. People are like that.”

  IV

  Sunday, Sept. 28th. Choral. Two or three faints otherwise uneventful. Tried to do the initial and border for “The Bells of Heaven” but made a mess of it. Afterwards talked to Curtis-Dunne in the library. He intrigues me. With Frank’s approval we are agitating for library privileges. I don’t suppose anything will come of it except that everyone will say we are above ourselves. After luncheon Tamplin and I were going for a walk when Graves called us in and made us help put up his printing press. Tamplin escaped. Graves tried to get things out of me about ragging Dirty Desmond but without success. In the evening we had another rag. Tamplin, Wheatley, Jorkins and I hurried up to the dormitory as soon as the bell went and said our prayers before Dirty D. arrived. Then when he said, “Say your dibs” we just sat on our beds. He looked frightfully bored and said “Must I repeat my instructions?” As the other men were praying we said nothing. Then he said, “I give you one more chance to say your dibs. If you don’t I’ll report you.” We said nothing so off Dirty D. went in his dressing gown to Anderson who was with the other house-captains at hot-air with Graves. Up came Anderson. “What’s all this about your prayers?” “We’ve said them already.” “Why?” “Because Tamplin got a late for taking too long so we thought we’d better start early.” “I see. Well we’ll talk about it tomorrow.” So far nothing has been said. Everyone thinks we shall get beaten but I don’t see how we can be. We are entirely in our rights. Geoghegan has just been round to all four of us to say we are to stay behind after First Evening so I suppose we are going to be beaten.

  After First Evening, when the House Room was clear of all save the four and the bell for Hall had died away and ceased, Geoghegan, the head of the house, came in carrying two canes, accompanied by Anderson.

  “I am going to beat you for disobeying an order from the head of your dormitory. Have you anything to say?”

  “Yes,” said Wheatley. “We had already said our prayers.”

  “It is a matter of indifference to me how often you pray. You have spent most of the day on your knees in chapel, praying all the time, I hope. All I am concerned about is that you obey the orders of the head of the dormitory. Anyone else anything to say? Then get the room ready.”

  They pushed back the new men’s table and laid a bench on its side across the front of the fireplace. The routine was familiar. They were beaten in the House Room twice a term, on the average.

  “Who’s senior? You, I think, Wheatley.”

  Wheatley bent over the bench.

  “Knees straight.” Geoghegan took his hips and arranged him to his liking, slightly oblique to the line of advance. From the corner he had three steps to the point of delivery. He skipped forward, struck and slowly turned back to the corner. They were given three strokes each; none of them moved. As they walked across the Hall, Charles felt the slight nausea turn to exhilaration.

  “Was he tight?”

  “Yes, he was, rather. And damned accurate too.”

  After Hall, in the cloisters, O’Malley approached Charles.

  “I say, Ryder, I’m frightfully sorry about tonight.”

  “Oh, push off.”

  “I had to do my duty, you know.”

  “Well, go and do it, but don’t come and bother me.”

  “I’ll do anything you like to make up. Anything outside the House, that is. I’ll tell you what—I’ll kick anyone else in another house, anyone you care to choose. Spratt, if you like.”

  “The best thing you can do is to kick yourself, Dirty Desmond, right round the cloisters.”

  SCOTT-KING’S

  MODERN EUROPE

  Mariae Immaculatae Antoniae

  Coniugis Prudentioris

  Audaci Coniugi

  I

  In 1946 Scott-King had been classical master at Granchester for twenty-one years. He was himself a Granchesterian and had returned straight from the University after failing for a fellowship. There he had remained, growing slightly bald and slightly corpulent, known to generations of boys first as “Scottie,” then of late years, while barely middle-aged, as “old Scottie”; a school “institution,” whose precise and slightly nasal lamentations of modern decadence were widely parodied.

  Granchester is not the most illustrious of English public schools but it is, or, as Scott-King would maintain, was, entirely respectable; it plays an annual cricket match at Lord’s; it numbers a dozen or so famous men among its old boys, who, in general, declare without apology: “I was at Granchester”—unlike the sons of lesser places who are apt to say: “As a matter of fact I was at a place called —. You see at the time my father . . .”

  When Scott-King was a boy and when he first returned as a master, the school was almost equally divided into a Classical and a Modern Side, with a group of negligible and neglected specialists called “the Army Class.” Now the case was altered and out of 450 boys scarcely 50 read Greek. Scott-King had watched his classical colleagues fall away one by one, some to rural rectories, some to the British Council and the BBC, to be replaced by physicists and economists from the provincial universities, until now, instead of inhabiting solely the rare intellectual atmosphere of the Classical Sixth, he was obliged to descend for many periods a week to cram lower boys with Xenophon and Sallust. But Scott-King did not repine. On the contrary he found a peculiar relish in contemplating the victories of barbarism and positively rejoiced in his reduced station, for he was of a type, unknown in the New World but quite common in Europe, which is fascinated by obscurity and failure.

  “Dim” is the epithet for Scott-King and it was a fellow-feeling, a blood-brotherhood in dimness, which first drew him to study the works of the poet Bellorius.

  No one, except perhaps Scott-King himself, could be dimmer. When, poor and in some discredit, Bellorius died in 1646 in his native town of what was then a happy kingdom of the Hapsburg Empire and is now the turbulent modern state of Neutralia, he left as his life’s work a single folio volume containing a poem of some 1500 lines of Latin hexameters. In his lifetime the only effect of the publication was to annoy the Court and cause his pension to be cancelled. After his death it was entirely forgotten until the middle of the last century when it was reprinted in Germany in a collection of late Renaissance texts. It was in this edition that Scott-King found it during a holiday on the Rhine, and at once his heart stirred with the recognition of kinship. The subject was irredeemably tedious—a visit to an imaginary island of the New World where in primitive simplicity, untainted by tyranny or dogma, there subsisted a virtuous, chaste and reasonable community. The lines were correct and melodious, enriched by many happy figures of speech; Scott-King read them on the deck of the river steamer as vine and turret, cliff and terrace and park, swept smoothly past. How they offended—by what intended or unintended jab of satire, blunted today; by what dangerous speculation—is not now apparent. That they should have been forgotten is readily intelligible to anyone acquainted with the history of Neutralia.

  Something must be known of this history if we are to follow Scott-King with understanding. Let us eschew detail and o
bserve that for three hundred years since Bellorius’s death his country has suffered every conceivable ill the body politic is heir to. Dynastic wars, foreign invasion, disputed successions, revolting colonies, endemic syphilis, impoverished soil, masonic intrigues, revolutions, restorations, cabals, juntas, pronunciamentos, liberations, constitutions, coups d’état, dictatorships, assassinations, agrarian reforms, popular elections, foreign intervention, repudiation of loans, inflations of currency, trades unions, massacres, arson, atheism, secret societies—make the list full, slip in as many personal foibles as you will, you will find all these in the last three centuries of Neutralian history. Out of it emerged the present republic of Neutralia, a typical modern state, governed by a single party, acclaiming a dominant Marshal, supporting a vast ill-paid bureaucracy whose work is tempered and humanized by corruption. This you must know; also that the Neutralians being a clever Latin race are little given to hero-worship and make considerable fun of their Marshal behind his back. In one thing only did he earn their full-hearted esteem. He kept out of the Second World War. Neutralia sequestered herself and, from having been the cockpit of factious sympathies, became remote, unconsidered, dim; so that, as the face of Europe coarsened and the war, as it appeared in the common-room newspapers and the common-room wireless, cast its heroic and chivalrous disguise and became a sweaty tug-of-war between teams of indistinguishable louts, Scott-King, who had never set foot there, became Neutralian in his loyalty and as an act of homage resumed with fervour the task on which he had intermittently worked, the translation of Bellorius into Spenserian stanzas. The work was finished at the time of the Normandy landings—translation, introduction, notes. He sent it to the Oxford University Press. It came back to him. He put it away in a drawer of the pitch-pine desk in his smoky gothic study above the Granchester quadrangle. He did not repine. It was his opus, his monument to dimness.

  But still the shade of Bellorius stood at his elbow demanding placation. There was unfinished business between these two. You cannot keep close company with a man, even though he be dead three centuries, without incurring obligations. Therefore at the time of the peace celebrations Scott-King distilled his learning and wrote a little essay, 4000 words long, entitled The Last Latinist, to commemorate the coming tercentenary of Bellorius’s death. It appeared in a learned journal. Scott-King was paid twelve guineas for this fruit of fifteen years’ devoted labour; six of them he paid in income tax; with six he purchased a large gun-metal watch which worked irregularly for a month or two and then finally failed. There the matter might well have ended.