Philip at once collapsed.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But if you only knew what being engaged —’
‘Get out,’ said Everard.
It was some time before he could compose himself enough to get on with the General Knowledge paper. To have put into words his conviction that Noel Merton would not wish to visit the Rectory had made him feel even more certain that Kate was only waiting for Noel to speak. He had deliberately said what he did, partly to comfort Philip, partly to have the bitter pleasure of telling himself what a fool he was. Not much better than Philip in fact, though one learnt, thank God, a little more self-control as one got older.
‘To which University, or Universities, would you say the following belong, and how would you pronounce them?’ he wrote. ‘Caius, Trinity, Merton,’ – on an impulse he ran his pen heavily through Merton, laughed at himself, and went on – ‘Merton, Magdalene…’
Philip did not resign his post. He took some of Everard’s advice and threw himself into his work for the last fortnight, coached the Classical Fourth and his own form to breaking-point, corrected examination papers with feverish energy, worked on his book till the small hours of the morning, harried the school orchestra, and put his own misfortunes in the background as much as he could; by which means life became much more agreeable for the other inmates of Mr Carter’s house. Philip found that the less time he had to think of Rose, the happier he was, and blamed himself severely for this, without drawing any of the right conclusions. Mr Lorimer, thinking well of Philip’s work, offered to submit his manuscript, with a strong personal recommendation, to the Oxbridge University Press before he went to Scotland for his holiday, an additional reason for getting it into final shape by the end of the term.
Colin found this chastened Philip a pleasant companion in his few spare moments, and when neither of them was correcting examination papers, or studying Horace, or the law, they dropped into each other’s rooms for a goodnight drink. Colin planned in his mind to get Philip over to Northbridge without Rose, where Lydia would supply a wholesome corrective to Rose’s atmosphere.
Colin had an interview with Mr Birkett, in the course of which he learned, without much surprise, that he had given satisfaction in his temporary work, but would not be needed after that term.
‘If you were really determined to make this your profession, I would do my best to find room for you,’ said Mr Birkett, ‘but I don’t think your heart is in it. Harrison will be back next term and, unless there were some very strong reason, I wouldn’t be justified in keeping you on.’
‘It’s awfully good of you, sir,’ said Colin, ‘and I’ve enjoyed the work most awfully, but I don’t think I’d ever get quite used to boys.’
‘You look well,’ said Mr Birkett, eyeing Colin’s neck absent-mindedly. ‘Have you put on weight here?’
‘I don’t think so, sir,’ said Colin, surprised at the Head’s sudden interest in his physical welfare. The Head then said a few words about the pleasure of seeing the Keiths in the holidays, and the interview terminated.
Mr Birkett’s next interview was with Everard, to discuss some school changes.
‘I don’t want to interfere, sir,’ said Everard, ‘but if you haven’t decided about the Mixed Fifth yet, I hope you’ll consider giving Winter a trial. He has come well on the whole through what has been a very trying term, and if other things go well I believe you’ll find him a success. I don’t think Harrison would mind going to the Classical Fourth for a bit. It has always been a subject of his.’
‘I might try it,’ said Mr Birkett, ‘if you really recommend it, but only for a term, on approval. He must either settle down or go. I know the fault is largely in my own family, and heartily wish the situation had never arisen, but there it is. It couldn’t be more awkward for everyone. If it weren’t for these domestic complications I like Winter very much, and I don’t like the way he is treated here. Our Polly is a sad slut, nor heeds what we have taught her. Well, next term will decide what I shall have to do. Now, about that boy in the Army Sixth —’
At last the exams sweltered to an end. Hacker got the Latin Prize, the Greek Prize, the Eleanor Cobbley Special Prize for Latin verse, the Featherstonehaugh Special Prize for Greek verse (given by an uncle of the Captain of Rowing, who became horribly embarrassed whenever he heard of it), and only missed the Lorimer Prize for Greek declamation because he found himself unable to speak until after the examiners’ patience was exhausted.
Young Holinshed got C minus in the General Knowledge paper, a mark richly deserved by one who had written that Caius and Magdalene were pronounced Cholmondeley and Marjori-banks. Swan and Morland came near the top of their form, and Swan disgraced the house by getting a reading prize given by the Chaplain.
‘I only went in to please Holy Joe,’ he complained to the prep room, ‘and look what it’s brought on me.’
He held up a copy of Sartor Resartus.
‘Let’s play football with it,’ said Featherstonehaugh. ‘Nobody’ll mind on the last night.’
He gave the book a kick and it went right through the glass ventilator into the passage. Everyone was filled with pleasurable horror. Everard came in, holding the book.
‘Any explanation?’ he said.
‘That’s Swan’s prize, sir,’ said Morland.
‘Well?’
‘It’s the reading prize, sir. He couldn’t help it. Mr Smith made him go in for it. We were just looking at it and it got through the ventilator.’
‘Four and six,’ said Everard, who knew the price of every breakage in the house, ‘settle it among you.’
Featherstonehaugh then did the one daring and romantic deed of a dull and blameless (except for inability to pass any examination) school career by asking Everard if he had change for ten shillings. Everard took the note and counted out five and sixpence.
‘Here you are,’ he said, ‘and now the ventilator is broken, you might as well go on using it. What with Hacker winning the Consolation Race and Swan the Reading Prize, this house has come pretty low.’
This kind advice was acted upon with such spirit that Sartor Resartus came to pieces in ten minutes and was thrown into the waste-paper basket. Featherstonehaugh announced that Mr Carter was a sportsman, and in honour of this, and to celebrate the end of his career as Captain of Rowing, he was going to break training. He then went down to the village, out of bounds, drank a pint of beer, and was found by the school waterman, crying gently over the heavy punt used for rush-cutting, under the impression that it was the first eight, and he had grown too old and weak to move it. He was got back into the house at a late hour by the fire escape, and though he went to bed in his trousers and shoes, no one in authority ever heard of it.
Hacker made everyone very uncomfortable by insisting on shaking hands and saying goodbye, but at this Swan and Morland protested.
‘Hang it all, Hack, we’re all going to the Keiths for Bank Holiday,’ said Swan.
‘It won’t be the same,’ said Hacker.
‘If you think you’re grown-up just because you’ve got a mouldy scholarship, you’re wrong,’ said Morland. ‘You aren’t at Oxford yet, and I bet you won’t be able to pass the Thirty-nine Articles. Many a stronger faith than yours has split on that rock, my boy. Go away and say goodbye to matron. She’s waiting.’
Hacker went off in offended dignity to matron, who said she would never forget the night he set the house on fire, adding that he had never given any trouble from the day he came into the House. She then, her custom with departing boarders, kissed him goodbye, thus causing him to leave school with even less regret than he would otherwise have felt.
Everard was doing reports in his study when Mr Lorimer, carrying an untidy brown-paper parcel with great care, dropped in to have a talk, or rather, as it soon appeared, to let off a grievance.
‘I suppose you know what has happened, Carter,’ he said. ‘You housemasters always know these things first. The Head is thinking of trying Winter for the M
ixed Fifth. The one good Junior Classical Master I’ve had since poor Turnbull was killed in 1915. If the Press don’t take his Horace I’ll have it published myself. I suppose that means I’ll have Harrison, who has no imagination, or some new man with no background, which is worse. One of these confounded clever boys from a secondary school, who come up with State Aid to ruin our Universities. London or Leeds would be good enough for them,’ said Mr Lorimer, to whom the word University had only two meanings in English, ‘but they needs must come and ruin what is left of our civilisation. Well, it may last my time, but no longer. I’ve brought you some good port.’
He undid the parcel, produced a bottle, demanded a corkscrew and carefully uncorked it. Everard got two glasses out of his cupboard, when Colin came in.
‘Oh, excuse me,’ he said, ‘I’ve brought the rest of those French marks.’
‘Come and drink Lorimer’s port,’ said Everard. ‘Get a glass for yourself.’
‘So you’re leaving us,’ said Mr Lorimer.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Colin.
‘Quite right. Better get out before you are caught in the machinery. Look at me. Thirty-five years I’ve been at this job, and no one has ever heard of me.’
‘There is your Latin Grammar, sir, and that book of unseens. Heaps of schools use them,’ said Colin.
‘BAH!’ said Mr Lorimer with extreme violence. ‘Catchpennies. All classical masters write grammars, and exercise a sort of moral blackmail till the school makes it a standard book. Twelve first-class schools use my grammar and unseens. Do you know what that means?’
He put the question in so terrifying a manner that Everard and Colin judged, rightly, that he was prepared to supply the answer himself, and would indeed resent any effort on their part to do so.
‘It means,’ said Mr Lorimer, ‘about five thousand boys, taking the very lowest figure, say between five and seven thousand boys per annum who loathe me, who wish I had never been born, who draw insulting pictures of me in the flyleaves of my books. And I get older and more stupid, and when I get a good classic like Winter, he goes to the Mixed Fifth, a bastard growth which tries to pander to the modern taste for learning a little ignorance of most subjects. And when I retire I shall be quite forgotten. I shall probably sign away my pension to a landlady, and live, a debauched, inebriate old man, on her charity, occasionally begging by letter from old boys who, for very shame, will have to help the master they once held in awe, if not in respect. God help me!’
‘It sounds pretty awful, sir,’ said Colin sympathetically, and noticing that Mr Lorimer was already well into his fourth glass of port, while he and Everard had not finished their first.
‘Awful?’ said Mr Lorimer angrily. ‘You don’t know what you are talking about! Obscure as the schoolmaster’s life may seem, depressed, degraded, we bear the torch for each new generation, we follow the gleam. Not all of us. I have followed, I have borne my light, nobly, for thirty-five years. Carter, though his whole span of life is no longer than my years of work, has the holy flame. You, young man, for I have no recollection of your name and very little of your face, have not the sacred fire.’
‘That’s what Mr Birkett said, sir,’ said Colin, respectful to age and learning. ‘He said he didn’t think I was the sort and —’
‘Lorimer has gone to sleep,’ said Everard. ‘He often does at the end of term. Well, Colin, we shall be meeting again at the weekend, I’m glad to say. I won’t make a speech like poor Lorimer’s, but I would like to say that you have been a real help, and I’ll miss you.’
‘Thanks awfully, sir,’ said Colin. ‘And I had a letter from Kate, and she said to give you her love and say they were all looking forward to seeing you.’
Everard fell into such a muse that Colin thought he was going to sleep too, and got up softly to go.
‘All right, Colin,’ said Everard, in a low voice. ‘Don’t turn the light on. I’ll let Lorimer have his sleep out – and I rather want to think.’
‘Can I do the reports for you then, sir?’ said Colin, also hushing his voice.
‘Oh, the reports,’ said Everard. ‘Yes. I had almost forgotten about them. No, I’ll have to do them myself, thank you. You go to bed.’
Everard got up, went to his desk, turned his reading-lamp away from the sleeping Mr Lorimer, switched it on and settled to his work.
8
A Glimpse of Freedom
On the following day everyone went home. Mrs Keith sent the car to fetch Colin, asking him to pick Lydia up in Barchester, as she would have a good many books to bring back. Rose Birkett, who was exercising her dog in the school yard, or rather dragging it about on a lead to draw the attention of the junior masters to her fondness for animals, came up to look.
‘Oh Colin, you have got a car,’ she said.
‘It’s not mine, it’s my people’s,’ said Colin.
‘Will they let you take me out in it?’ said Rose, picking up her dog and holding it to her cheek.
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Colin, unmoved by her charms. ‘I can’t drive it, and the chauffeur is usually doing odd jobs when he isn’t driving the parents.’
‘How sickening,’ said Rose. ‘Oh Colin, will you write your name in my birthday book?’
She held up an oblong book bound in pink leather. Colin turned the pages to the third of November and wrote his name.
‘Oh,’ said Rose, ‘that’s only a month before mine!’
Simnet appeared, to say goodbye in a respectful way.
‘But I believe, sir, that we may have the honour of meeting in the near future,’ said Simnet, ‘as I understand that the Rectory where we propose to spend the Long Vacation – I beg pardon, sir, it is an old habit, the holidays I should say – is in the vicinity of Northbridge Manor.’
Colin said it was, and gave Simnet ten shillings.
‘Thank you, sir. You can go on now,’ Simnet said to Sanders, the chauffeur, who at once hated him from the bottom of his heart.
Colin was driven off to Barchester, where Sanders was to fetch Lydia from school. As the car stopped before the large Georgian house where Miss Pettinger held sway, he was appalled to see what looked like hundreds of girls clustered on the steps in all stages of unattractiveness. All were carrying satchels, suitcases, cricket bats, pads, violin cases, or some form of luggage. A particularly loud hubbub in the centre of the group directed Colin’s attention to his sister Lydia, talking to her more intimate friends. She beckoned imperiously to Colin to come and speak to her. He shook his head, tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible, and hoped she wouldn’t be long. Presently the crowd parted and Miss Pettinger herself came down the steps. She spoke to Lydia, who reluctantly led her towards the car.
‘Miss Pettinger wants to speak to you,’ said Lydia, making a hideous face at Colin, who half rose in his seat, nervously.
‘Don’t get up,’ said Miss Pettinger to Colin, though that would have been impossible in the car, where he could only have crouched. ‘This is Lydia Keith’s brother, isn’t it? So you have been at Southbridge. How do you like it?’
‘Very much, thank you,’ said Colin.
‘That’s right,’ said Miss Pettinger, with the gracious smile that caused some of her pupils to become her slaves and the larger number to call her Old Kit Bag. ‘I wish you every success in an honourable profession.’
‘I’ve left the school,’ said Colin rashly. ‘I’m going to do law.’
‘Oh,’ said Miss Pettinger, in the voice with which she reduced girls to tears when they had stained the honour of the school by not hanging their coats on the right pegs in the cloakroom. ‘Well, I only wanted to send a message to your mother, Mr Keith. Will you tell her that I hope very much to come over to tea on Sunday, as she suggests. I would have written, but I am very busy and she kindly added that a verbal message by you would be enough. Goodbye, Lydia.’
‘Goodbye, Miss Pettinger,’ said Lydia, bending her legs ungraciously.
‘What on earth did you do that
for?’ said her brother as they drove away.
‘What?’
‘Well, what you did when you said goodbye to Miss Pettinger. I thought you were going to fall down.’
‘She makes us curtsy,’ said Lydia. ‘Geraldine Birkett always says she won’t, but she does. It’s a kind of moral compulsion, if you get the idea. Why on earth does Mother want to ask her to tea on Sunday when the boys will be here? They’ll talk about people’s first cousins once removed, and I shan’t know which way to look I shall be so ashamed of them both. I shall clean the pond that day, and then the Pettinger won’t be able to get at me.’
For the next few days Lydia was fully engaged in unpacking, getting her own room into the state of confusion that she preferred, and defeating Kate’s efforts to tidy her person or belongings. Her mother took her into Barchester one day to replenish her wardrobe, but the only result was that Lydia forced her mother to buy her a red velvet evening dress, in which she looked so magnificent as to be almost improper. When Mr Keith saw it he said he forbade her to wear it again, but no one took any notice of him, owing to Mrs Keith telling a long story about a yellow shawl that her Uncle Oswald had once given to Lady Sibyl Carter, of which Lydia’s dress had somehow reminded her.
Summer Half: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC) Page 17