The Complete Stories Of Evelyn Waugh

I

There was a scent of dust in the air; a thin vestige surviving in the twilight from the golden clouds with which before chapel the House Room fags had filled the evening sunshine. Light was failing. Beyond the trefoils and branched mullions of the windows the towering autumnal leaf was now flat and colourless. All the eastward slope of Spierpoint Down, where the College buildings stood, lay lost in shadow; above and behind, on the high lines of Chanctonbury and Spierpoint Ring, the first day of term was gently dying.

In the House Room thirty heads were bent over their books. Few form-masters had set any preparation that day. The Classical Upper Fifth, Charles Ryder’s new form, were “revising last term’s work” and Charles was writing his diary under cover of Hassall’s History. He looked up from the page to the darkling texts which ran in Gothic script around the frieze. “Qui diligit Deum diligit et fratrem suum.”

“Get on with your work, Ryder,” said Apthorpe.

Apthorpe has greased into being a house-captain this term, Charles wrote. This is his first Evening School. He is being thoroughly officious and on his dignity.

“Can we have the light on, please?”

“All right. Wykham-Blake, put it on.” A small boy rose from the under-school table. “Wykham-Blake, I said. There’s no need for everyone to move.”

A rattle of the chain, a hiss of gas, a brilliant white light over half the room. The other light hung over the new boys’ table.

“Put the light on, one of you, whatever your names are.”

Six startled little boys looked at Apthorpe and at one another, all began to rise together, all sat down, all looked at Apthorpe in consternation.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

Apthorpe leaned over their heads and pulled the chain; there was a hiss of gas but no light. “The bye-pass is out. Light it, you.” He threw a box of matches to one of the new boys who dropped it, picked it up, climbed on the table and looked miserably at the white glass shade, the three hissing mantles and at Apthorpe. He had never seen a lamp of this kind before; at home and at his private school there was electricity. He lit a match and poked at the lamp, at first without effect; then there was a loud explosion; he stepped back, stumbled and nearly lost his footing among the books and ink-pots, blushed hotly and regained the bench. The matches remained in his hand and he stared at them, lost in an agony of indecision. How should he dispose of them? No head was raised but everyone in the House Room exulted in the drama. From the other side of the room Apthorpe held out his hand invitingly.

“When you have quite finished with my matches perhaps you’ll be so kind as to give them back.”

In despair the new boy threw them towards the house-captain; in despair he threw slightly wide. Apthorpe made no attempt to catch them, but watched them curiously as they fell to the floor. “How very extraordinary,” he said. The new boy looked at the matchbox; Apthorpe looked at the new boy. “Would it be troubling you too much if I asked you to give me my matches?” he said.

The new boy rose to his feet, walked the few steps, picked up the matchbox and gave it to the house-captain, with the ghastly semblance of a smile.

“Extraordinary crew of new men we have this term,” said Apthorpe. “They seem to be entirely half-witted. Has anyone been turned on to look after this man?”

“Please, I have,” said Wykham-Blake.

“A grave responsibility for one so young. Try and convey to his limited intelligence that it may prove a painful practice here to throw matchboxes about in Evening School, and laugh at house officials. By the way, is that a workbook you’re reading?”

“Oh, yes, Apthorpe.” Wykham-Blake raised a face of cherubic innocence and presented the back of the Golden Treasury.

“Who’s it for?”

“Mr. Graves. We’re to learn any poem we like.”

“And what have you chosen?”

“Milton-on-his-blindness.”

“How, may one ask, did that take your fancy?”

“I learned it once before,” said Wykham-Blake and Apthorpe laughed indulgently.

“Young blighter,” he said.

Charles wrote: Now he is snooping round seeing what books men are reading. It would be typical if he got someone beaten his first Evening School. The day before yesterday this time I was in my dinner-jacket just setting out for dinner at the d’Italie with Aunt Philippa before going to The Choice at Wyndhams. Quantum mutatus ab illo Hectore. We live in water-tight compartments. Now I am absorbed in the trivial round of House politics. Graves has played hell with the house. Apthorpe a house-captain and O’Malley on the Settle. The only consolation was seeing the woe on Wheatley’s fat face when the locker list went up. He thought he was a cert for the Settle this term. Bad luck on Tamplin though. I never expected to get on but I ought by all rights to have been above O’Malley. What a tick Graves is. It all comes of this rotten system of switching round house-tutors. We ought to have the best of Heads instead of which they try out ticks like Graves on us before giving them a house. If only we still had Frank.

Charles’s handwriting had lately begun to develop certain ornamental features—Greek E’s and flourished crossings. He wrote with conscious style. Whenever Apthorpe came past he would turn a page in the history book, hesitate and then write as though making a note from the text. The hands of the clock crept on to half past seven when the porter’s handbell began to sound in the cloisters on the far side of Lower Quad. This was the signal of release. Throughout the House Room heads were raised, pages blotted, books closed, fountain pens screwed up. “Get on with your work,” said Apthorpe; “I haven’t said anything about moving.” The porter and his bell passed up the cloisters, grew faint under the arch by the library steps, were barely audible in the Upper Quad, grew louder on the steps of Old’s House and very loud in the cloister outside Head’s. At last Apthorpe tossed the Bystander on the table and said “All right.”

The House Room rose noisily. Charles underlined the date at the head of his page—Wednesday Sept. 24th, 1919—blotted it and put the notebook in his locker. Then with his hands in his pockets he followed the crowd into the dusk.

To keep his hands in his pockets thus—with his coat back and the middle button alone fastened—was now his privilege, for he was in his third year. He could also wear coloured socks and was indeed at the moment wearing a pair of heliotrope silk with white clocks, purchased the day before in Jermyn Street. There were several things, formerly forbidden, which were now his right. He could link his arm in a friend’s and he did so now, strolling across to Hall arm-in-arm with Tamplin.

They paused at the top of the steps and stared out in the gloaming. To their left the great bulk of the chapel loomed immensely; below them the land fell away in terraces to the playing fields with their dark fringe of elm; headlights moved continuously up and down the coast road; the estuary was just traceable, a lighter streak across the grey lowland, before it merged into the calm and invisible sea.

“Same old view,” said Tamplin.

“Give me the lights of London,” said Charles. “I say, it’s rotten luck for you about the Settle.”

“Oh, I never had a chance. It’s rotten luck on you.”

“Oh, I never had a chance. But O’Malley.”

“It all comes of having that tick Graves instead of Frank.”

“The buxom Wheatley looked jolly bored. Anyway, I don’t envy O’Malley’s job as head of the dormitory.”

“That’s how he got on the Settle. Tell you later.”

From the moment they reached the Hall steps they had to unlink their arms, take their hands out of their pockets and stop talking. When Grace had been said Tamplin took up the story.

“Graves had him in at the end of last term and said he was making him head of the dormitory. The head of Upper Dormitory never has been on the Settle before last term when they moved Easton up from Lower Anteroom after we ragged Fletcher. O’Malley told Graves he couldn’t take it unless he had an official position.”

“How d’you know?”

“O’Malley told me. He thought he’d been rather fly.”

“Typical of Graves to fall for a tick like that.”

“It’s all very well,” said Wheatley, plaintively, from across the table; “I don’t think they’ve any right to put Graves in like this. I only came to Spierpoint because my father knew Frank’s brother in the Guards. I was jolly bored, I can tell you, when they moved Frank. I think he wrote to the Head about it. We pay more in Head’s and get the worst of everything.”

“Tea, please.”

“Same old College tea.”

“Same old College eggs.”

“It always takes a week before one gets used to College food.”

“I never get used to it.”

“Did you go to many London restaurants in the holidays?”

“I was only in London a week. My brother took me to lunch at the Berkeley. Wish I was there now. I had two glasses of port.”

“The Berkeley’s all right in the evening,” said Charles, “if you want to dance.”

“It’s jolly well all right for luncheon. You should see their hors d’oeuvres. I reckon there were twenty or thirty things to choose from. After that we had grouse and meringues with ices in them.”

“I went to dinner at the d’Italie.”

“Oh, where’s that?”

“It’s a little place in Soho not many people know about. My aunt speaks Italian like a native so she knows all those places. Of course, there’s no marble or music. It just exists for the cooking. Literary people and artists go there. My aunt knows lots of them.”

“My brother says all the men from Sandhurst go to the Berkeley. Of course, they fairly rook you.”

“I always think the Berkeley’s rather rowdy,” said Wheatley. “We stayed at Claridges after we came back from Scotland because our flat was still being done up.”

“My brother says Claridges is a deadly hole.”

“Of course, it isn’t everyone’s taste. It’s rather exclusive.”

“Then how did our buxom Wheatley come to be staying there, I wonder?”

“There’s no need to be cheap, Tamplin.”

“I always say,” suddenly said a boy named Jorkins, “that you get the best meal in London at the Holborn Grill.”

Charles, Tamplin and Wheatley turned with cold curiosity on the interrupter, united at last in their disdain. “Do you, Jorkins? How very original of you.”

“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.”

“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.”

II

Thursday, September 25th, 1919. Peacock began well by not turning up for early school so at five past we walked out and went back to our House Rooms and I read Fortitude by Walpole; it is strong meat but rather unnecessary in places. After breakfast O’Malley came greasing up to Tamplin and apologized. Everyone is against him. I maintain he was in the right until he reported him late to Anderson. No possible defence for that—sheer windiness. Peacock deigned to turn up for Double Greek. We mocked him somewhat. He is trying to make us use the new pronunciation; when he said o’ú there was a wail of “ooh” and Tamplin pronounced subjunctive soo-byoongteeway—very witty. Peacock got bored and said he’d report him to Graves but relented. Library was open 5–6 tonight. I went meaning to put in some time on Walter Crane’s Bases of Design but Mercer came up with that weird man in Brent’s called Curtis-Dunne. I envy them having Frank as house-master. He is talking of starting a literary and artistic society for men not in the Sixth. Curtis-Dunne wants to start a political group. Pretty good lift considering this is his second term although he is sixteen and has been at Dartmouth. Mercer gave me a poem to read—very sloppy. Before this there was a House Game. Everyone puffing and blowing after the holidays. Anderson said I shall probably be centre-half in the Under Sixteens—the sweatiest place in the field. I must get into training quickly.

Friday 26th. Corps day but quite slack. Reorganization. I am in A Company at last. A tick in Boucher’s called Spratt is platoon commander. We ragged him a bit. Wheatley is a section commander! Peacock sent Bankes out of the room in Greek Testament for saying “Who will rid me of this turbulent priest” when put on to translate. Jolly witty. He began to argue. Peacock said, “Must I throw you out by force?” Bankes began to go but muttered “Muscular Christianity.” Peacock: “What did you say?”; “Nothing, sir”; “Get out before I kick you.” Things got a bit duller after that. Uncle George gave Bankes three.

Saturday 27th. Things very dull in school. Luckily Peacock forgot to set any preparation. Pop. Sci. in last period. Tamplin and Mercer got some of the weights that are so precious they are kept in a glass case and picked up with tweezers, made them red hot on a Bunsen burner and dropped them in cold water. A witty thing to do. House Game—Under Sixteen team against a mixed side. They have put Wykham-Blake centre-half and me in goal; a godless place. Library again. Curtis-Dunne buttonholed me again. He drawled “My father is in parliament but he is a very unenlightened conservative. I of course am a socialist. That’s the reason I chucked the Navy.” I said, “Or did they chuck you?” “The pangs of parting were endured by both sides with mutual stoicism.” He spoke of Frank as “essentially a well-intentioned fellow.” Sunday tomorrow thank God. I may be able to get on with illuminating “The Bells of Heaven.”

III

Normally on Sundays there was a choice of service. Matins at a quarter to eight or Communion at quarter past. On the first Sunday of term there was Choral Communion for all at eight o’clock.

The chapel was huge, bare, and still unfinished, one of the great monuments of the Oxford Movement and the Gothic revival. Like an iceberg it revealed only a small part of its bulk above the surface of the terraced down; below lay a crypt and below that foundations of great depth. The Founder had chosen the site and stubbornly refused to change it so that the original estimates had been exceeded before the upper chapel was begun. Visiting preachers frequently drew a lesson from the disappointments, uncertainties and final achievement of the Founder’s “vision.” Now the whole nave rose triumphantly over the surrounding landscape, immense, clustered shafts supporting the groined roof; at the west it ended abruptly in concrete and timber and corrugated iron, while behind, in a wasteland near the kitchens, where the Corps band practised their bugles in the early morning, lay a nettle-and-bramble-grown ruin, the base of a tower, twice as high as the chapel, which one day was to rise so that on stormy nights, the Founder had decreed, prayers might be sung at its summit for sailors in peril on the sea.

From outside the windows had a deep, submarine tinge, but from inside they were clear white, and the morning sun streamed in over the altar and the assembled school. The prefect in Charles’s row was Symonds, editor of the Magazine, president of the Debating Society, the leading intellectual. Symonds was in Head’s; he pursued a course of lonely study, seldom taking Evening School, never playing any game except, late in the evenings of the summer term, an occasional single of lawn tennis, appearing rarely even in the Sixth Form, but working in private under Mr. A. A. Carmichael for the Balliol scholarship. Symonds kept a leather-bound copy of the Greek Anthology in his place in chapel and read it throughout the services with a finely negligent air.

The masters sat in stalls orientated between the columns, the clergy in surplices, laymen in gowns. Some of the masters who taught the Modern Side wore hoods of the newer universities; Major Stebbing, the adjutant of the O.T.C., had no gown at all; Mr. A. A. Carmichael—awfully known at Spierpoint as “A. A.,” the splendid dandy and wit, fine flower of the Oxford Union and the New College Essay Society, the reviewer of works of classical scholarship for the New Statesman, to whom Charles had never yet spoken; whom Charles had never yet heard speak directly, but only at third hand as his mots, in their idiosyncratic modulations, passed from mouth to mouth from the Sixth in sanctuary to the catechumens in the porch; whom Charles worshipped from afar—Mr. Carmichael, from a variety of academic costume, was this morning robed as a baccalaureate of Salamanca. He looked, as he stooped over his desk, like the prosecuting counsel in a cartoon by Daumier.

Nearly opposite him across the chapel stood Frank Bates; an unbridged gulf of boys separated these rival and contrasted deities, that one the ineffable dweller on cloud-capped Olympus, this the homely clay image, the intimate of hearth and household, the patron of threshing-floor and olive-press. Frank wore only an ermine hood, a B.A.’s gown, and loose, unremarkable clothes, subfusc today, with the Corinthian tie which alternated with the Carthusian, week in, week out. He was a clean, curly, spare fellow; a little wan for he was in constant pain from an injury on the football field which had left him lame and kept him at Spierpoint throughout the war. This pain of his redeemed him from heartiness. In chapel his innocent, blue eyes assumed a puzzled, rather glum expression like those of an old-fashioned child in a room full of grown-ups. Frank was a bishop’s son.

Behind the masters, out of sight in the side aisles, was a dowdy huddle of matrons and wives.

The service began with a procession of the choir: “Hail Festal Day,” with Wykham-Blake as the treble cantor. At the rear of the procession came Mr. Peacock, the Chaplain and the Headmaster. A week ago Charles had gone to church in London with Aunt Philippa. He did not as a rule go to church in the holidays, but being in London for the last week Aunt Philippa had said, “There’s nothing much we can do today. Let’s see what entertainment the Church can offer. I’m told there is a very remarkable freak named Father Wimperis.” So, together, they had gone on the top of a bus to a northern suburb where Mr. Wimperis was at the time drawing great congregations. His preaching was not theatrical by Neapolitan standards, Aunt Philippa said afterwards; “However, I enjoyed him hugely. He is irresistibly common.” For twenty minutes Mr. Wimperis alternately fluted and boomed from the pulpit, wrestled with the reading-stand and summoned the country to industrial peace. At the end he performed a little ceremony of his own invention, advancing to the church steps in cope and biretta with what proved to be a large silver salt cellar in his hands. “My people,” he said simply, scattering salt before him, “you are the salt of the earth.”

“I believe he has something new like that every week,” said Aunt Philippa. “It must be lovely to live in his neighbourhood.”

Charles’s was not a God-fearing home. Until August 1914 his father had been accustomed to read family prayers every morning; on the outbreak of war he abruptly stopped the practice, explaining, when asked, that there was now nothing left to pray for. When Charles’s mother was killed there was a memorial service for her at Boughton, his home village, but Charles’s father did not go with him and Aunt Philippa. “It was all her confounded patriotism,” he said, not to Charles but to Aunt Philippa, who did not repeat the remark until many years later. “She had no business to go off to Serbia like that. Do you think it my duty to marry again?”

“No,” said Aunt Philippa.

“Nothing would induce me to—least of all my duty.”

The service followed its course. As often happened, two small boys fainted and were carried out by house-captains; a third left bleeding at the nose. Mr. Peacock sang the Gospel over-loudly. It was his first public appearance. Symonds looked up from his Greek, frowned and continued reading. Presently it was time for Communion; most of the boys who had been confirmed went up to the chancel rails, Charles with them. Symonds sat back, twisted his long legs into the aisle to allow his row to pass, and remained in his place. Charles took Communion and returned to his row. He had been confirmed the term before, incuriously, without expectation or disappointment. When, later in life, he read accounts of the emotional disturbances caused in other boys by the ceremony he found them unintelligible; to Charles it was one of the rites of adolescence, like being made, when a new boy, to stand on the table and sing. The Chaplain had “prepared” him and had confined his conferences to theology. There had been no probing of his sexual life; he had no sexual life to probe. Instead they had talked of prayer and the sacraments.

Spierpoint was a product of the Oxford Movement, founded with definite religious aims; in eighty years it had grown more and more to resemble the older Public Schools, but there was still a strong ecclesiastical flavour in the place. Some boys were genuinely devout and their peculiarity was respected; in general profanity was rare and ill-looked-on. Most of the Sixth professed themselves agnostic or atheist.

The school had been chosen for Charles because, at the age of eleven, he had had a “religious phase” and told his father that he wished to become a priest.

“Good heavens,” his father said; “or do you mean a parson?”

“A priest of the Anglican Church,” said Charles precisely.

“That’s better. I thought you meant a Roman Catholic. Well, a parson’s is not at all a bad life for a man with a little money of his own. They can’t remove you except for flagrant immorality. Your uncle has been trying to get rid of his fellow at Boughton for ten years—a most offensive fellow but perfectly chaste. He won’t budge. It’s a great thing in life to have a place you can’t be removed from—too few of them.”

But the “phase” had passed and lingered now only in Charles’s love of Gothic architecture and breviaries.

After Communion Charles sat back in his chair thinking about the secular, indeed slightly anti-clerical, lyric which, already inscribed, he was about to illuminate, while the masters and, after them, the women from the side aisles, went up to the rails.

The food on Sundays was always appreciably worse than on other days; breakfast invariably consisted of boiled eggs, over-boiled and lukewarm.

Wheatley said, “How many ties do you suppose A. A.’s got?”

“I began counting last term,” said Tamplin, “and got to thirty.”

“Including bows?”

“Yes.”

“Of course, he’s jolly rich.”

“Why doesn’t he keep a car, then?” asked Jorkins.

The hour after breakfast was normally devoted to letter-writing, but today a railway strike had been called and there were no posts. Moreover, since it was the start of term, there was no Sunday Lesson. The whole morning was therefore free and Charles had extracted permission to spend it in the Drawing School. He collected his materials and was soon happily at work.

The poem—Ralph Hodgson’s “’Twould ring the bells of Heaven The wildest peal for years, If Parson lost his senses And people came to theirs…”—was one of Frank’s favourites. In the happy days when he had been House Tutor of Head’s, Frank had read poetry aloud on Sunday evenings to any in Head’s who cared to come, which was mostly the lower half of the House. He read “There swimmeth One Who swam e’er rivers were begun, And under that Almighty Fin the littlest fish may enter in” and “Abou Ben Adhem, may his tribe increase” and “Under the wide and starry sky” and “What have I done for you, England, my England…..?” and many others of the same comfortable kind; but always before the end of the evening someone would say “Please, sir, can we have ‘The Bells of Heaven’?” Now he read only to his own house but the poems, Frank’s pleasant voices, his nightingales, were awake still, warm and bright with remembered firelight.

Charles did not question whether the poem was not perfectly suited to the compressed thirteenth-century script in which he had written it. His method of writing was first to draw the letters faintly, freehand in pencil; then with a ruler and ruling pen to ink in the uprights firmly in Indian ink until the page consisted of lines of short and long black perpendiculars; then with a mapping pen he joined them with hair strokes and completed their lozenge-shaped terminals. It was a method he had evolved for himself by trial and error. The initial letters of each line were left blank and these, during the last week of the holidays, he had filled with vermilion, carefully drawn, “Old English” capitals. The T alone remained to do and for this he had selected a model from Shaw’s Alphabets, now open before him on the table. It was a florid fifteenth-century letter which needed considerable ingenuity of adaption, for he had decided to attach to it the decorative tail of the J. He worked happily, entirely absorbed, drawing in pencil, then tensely, with breath held, inking the outline with a mapping pen; then, when it was dry—how often, in his impatience, he had ruined his work by attempting this too soon—rubbing away the pencil lines. Finally he got out his watercolours and his red sable brushes. At heart he knew he was going too fast—a monk would take a week over a single letter—but he worked with intensity and in less than two hours the initial with its pendant, convoluted border was finished. Then, as he put away his brushes, the exhilaration left him. It was no good; it was botched; the ink outline varied in thickness, the curves seemed to feel their way cautiously where they should have been bold; in places the colour overran the line and everywhere in contrast to the opaque lithographic ink it was watery and transparent. It was no good.

Despondently Charles shut his drawing book and put his things together. Outside the Drawing School, steps led down to the Upper Quad past the doors of Brent’s House—Frank’s. Here he met Mercer.

“Hullo, been painting?”

“Yes, if you can call it that.”

“Let me see.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“It’s absolutely beastly. I hate it, I tell you. I’d have torn it up if I wasn’t going to keep it as a humiliation to look at in case I ever begin to feel I know anything about art.”

“You’re always dissatisfied, Ryder. It’s the mark of a true artist, I suppose.”

“If I was an artist I shouldn’t do things I’d be dissatisfied with. Here, look at it, if you must.”

Mercer gazed at the open page. “What don’t you like about it?”

“The whole thing’s nauseating.”

“I suppose it is a bit ornate.”

“There, my dear Mercer, with your usual unerring discernment you have hit upon the one quality that is at all tolerable.”

“Oh, sorry. Anyway, I think the whole thing absolutely first-class.”

“Do you, Mercer. I’m greatly encouraged.”

“You know you’re a frightfully difficult man. I don’t know why I like you.”

“I know why I like you. Because you are so extremely easy.”

“Coming to the library?”

“I suppose so.”

When the library was open a prefect sat there entering in a ledger the books which boys took out. Charles as usual made his way to the case where the Art books were kept but before he had time to settle down, as he liked to do, he was accosted by Curtis-Dunne, the old new boy of last term in Brent’s. “Don’t you think it scandalous,” he said, “that on one of the few days of the week when we have the chance to use the library, we should have to kick our heels waiting until some semi-literate prefect chooses to turn up and take us in? I’ve taken the matter up with the good Frank.”

“Oh, and what did he say to that?”

“We’re trying to work out a scheme by which library privileges can be extended to those who seriously want them, people like you and me and I suppose the good Mercer.”

“I forget for the moment what form you are in.”

“Modern Upper. Please don’t think from that I am a scientist. It’s simply that in the Navy we had to drop Classics. My interests are entirely literary and political. And of course hedonistic.”

“Oh.”

“Hedonistic above all. By the way, I’ve been looking through the political and economic section. It’s very quaintly chosen, with glaring lacunae. I’ve just filled three pages in the Suggestions Book. I thought perhaps you’d care to append your signature.”

“No thanks. It’s not usual for people without library privileges to write in the Suggestions Book. Besides, I’ve no interest in economics.”

“I’ve also written a suggestion about extending the library privileges. Frank needs something to work on, that he can put before the committee.”

He brought the book to the Art bay; Charles read “That since seniority is no indication of literary taste the system of library privileges be revised to provide facilities for those genuinely desirous of using them to advantage.”

“Neatly put, I think,” said Curtis-Dunne.

“You’ll be thought frightfully above yourself, writing this.”

“It is already generally recognized that I am above myself, but I want other signatures.”

Charles hesitated. To gain time he said, “I say, what on earth have you got on your feet? Aren’t those house shoes?”

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 supercilious. “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.”