The Complete Stories (63 page)

  He hated the corps and all the more now that he had to take it seriously. He was seventeen and a half; next year, if the war was still on, as it showed every sign of being, would see him fighting. It brought everything terribly near. He had learnt much of what it was like over there from his brother, but Ralf saw everything so abstractedly with such imperturbable cynicism. Peter flattered himself that he was far more sensitive and temperamental. He was sure that he would not be able to stand it; Ralf had won the D.S.O. some months ago.

  He collected his thoughts with a start and looked at his time table. He had to finish the chapter of Economics which he had left the evening before. The book was lying where he had tossed it and, like everything that morning, looked singularly uninviting. It was bound in a sort of greasy, limp, oil cloth, "owing," a label half scraped off the back proclaimed, "to shortage of labour"; it was printed crookedly on a thin greyish paper with little brown splinters of wood in it; it was altogether a typical piece of wartime workmanship. He took it up with listless repulsion and began to read.

  "From considerations of this nature," he read, "which, while not true of every person, taken individually, are yet on the average true, it may be inferred, with approximate accuracy, that by adding to the wealth of the poor, something taken, by some recognised and legal process, from the wealth of the rich, while some dissatisfaction as well as satisfaction is inevitably caused, yet, provided that the poor be greater in number than the rich, the satisfaction is greater than the dissatisfaction. Inequality of wealth, insofar as ..."

  It was all ineffably tedious. He tossed the book on to the table in the corner and taking up a novel passed the next half hour in dissatisfied gloom.

  II

  The clock in the quad struck quarter to eight and voices and shuffling sounded across the gravel as the forms began emptying. The door of his study was burst open and Bellinger came in.

  "Edifying spectacle of history specialist at work! Here have I been doing geography with the ‘door mouse' for three mortal quarters of an hour, while you read low novels."

  Bellinger was in the army class, a cheery soul, athletic, vacant, with an obsession for clothes. This was the only subject about which he could talk; he was always perfectly dressed himself and had earned something of a reputation by it. People would bring him patterns of cloth and consult him when they were getting suits, which was complimentary, although they never took his advice. It was said of him that he had once cut the headmaster in London because he met him wearing a brown overcoat with evening dress.

  Peter turned down the corner of his page—a pernicious habit even in a wartime "Outlines of Economics" of which he could never cure himself—and got up.

  "Come across to hall, you silly old ass, and tell me the latest bulletins from Sackville Street."

  "Nothing doing," said Bellinger with the self righteous gloom of one whose religion has been insulted and pulled at the points of his waistcoat, "nothing doing at all. It's the curse of this infernal war. While all the best people are in uniform they don't pay any attention to civilian fashions. Thank the Lord I shall be in khaki in a couple of months."

  They linked up and walked down to hall, Bellinger earnestly enlarging upon the advantages of the R.A.F. over the ordinary uniform.

  When they arrived at the "pits-table," where people with studies sat, a heated discussion was going on. The head, Peter gathered, had proposed to the Games Committee the night before that none of the house cups should be competed for until after the war and that the time saved should be devoted to more parades and longer digging upon the house potatoe plots. Cook, the captain of Lane's, had apparently been the only one with the courage to hold out against him. Lane's were certain to get the open football and stood a good chance for the Five Mile.

  Beaton, a small science specialist, was voluble in the head's defence.

  "After all," he was saying, "what effects has the war had on us here? We've had a little less food and coal, people have been leaving a little earlier, the young masters have gone and these antiquated old fools like Boyle have taken their places, parades have become a bit longer, but is this enough? Has anything been done to make us realize that we are in the middle of the biggest war in history?"

  "Everything has been done," said Peter, "to make school life excessively unpleasant—after you with the bread, please Travers—what little of the old life does remain, is what keeps it just tolerable. Good God, isn't it bad enough for you. I pity the men who've come during the last year and know only this side of Selchurch. I hate school, now, and shall be only too glad to get away; why utterly spoil it for the ‘underschools'?"

  "Yes," said Travers a large, sad "historian" on the other side of the table, "You seem to be one of the maniacs who believe in making themselves wretched because other people are. It's only by the misery of three quarters, that life can be even tolerable for a quarter of society. It's unjust but it's better than the whole show being miserable. It's a fundamental principle of political science"—any particularly sweeping cynicism was a "fundamental principle" with Travers.

  "My pater had that craze badly in 1914," said Garth, a pleasant, spotty youth, next to Peter, "he dug up the tennis court to grow vegetables when there was plenty of waste ground behind the stable yard."

  "And the mater makes me wear old clothes," said Bellinger, "because she thinks it looks bad to wear new ones in war time."

  "Everyone is quite imbecile about the war"—Travers loved dismissing subjects—"they don't realize that it is a natural function of development. It's a fundamental principle that society can only remain normal if it is decimated at regular periods."

  The "paper boy" came to the table. Every day it was the duty of one of the fags to fetch the house papers from the porter's lodge, as soon as he came out of early school, and bring them up to hall. They were supposed to go to the people who had bought them at the "paper auction" at the beginning of term, but in practice they went first to the high table where the prefects sat with the housemaster; when they had made their choice, he took them to the "pits-table" and distributed what were left as he liked.

  "Times, please" said Peter over his shoulder.

  "I'm sorry, Audley, that's gone."

  "All right, Morning Post. Thanks."

  He spread it out over the table and glanced down the columns. It was full of the usual war news (Peter wondered vaguely what they managed to put in the papers in peace time); there were rumours of preparations for a big German offensive, factious political questions in the house, pages of minor engagements in the East. He folded it and passed it on to Bellinger.

  III

  It was a gloomy morning; gloomy even for the Easter term 1918. For half an hour after breakfast he sat in his study cleaning his uniform; in chapel he could smell the cleaning stuff up his nails. After chapel he had to go in for a double period of European History. He went into school profoundly depressed.

  The "historians" were now taken by one Boyle. He had been, until the outbreak of war, the headmaster of a prosperous preparitory school on the East coast and had lived a life of lucrative dignity, making himself agreeable to distinguished parents and employing a large and competent staff to do the teaching. For two years he had kept doggedly on, feeling that it would be a surrender to the barbarian enemy if he left, but the numbers steadily sank, until one night a bomb was actually dropped onto the gymnasium breaking every frame of glass in the house. Then he realized that he must give it up, "St. Pendred's" was commandeered to house a garrison staff, and Mr. Boyle set about finding other employment. The head forced to choose between Mr. Boyle and a mistress, to his eternal discredit chose Mr. Boyle and in less than a year the Senior History Specialist Set had sunk from the intellectual mekka of the school to the haven which sheltered those who considered that the work they had had to do to pass the School Certificate absolved them from any further exertions, at any rate, while they were at Selchurch. Not that he was ragged—that would have been beneath the dignity of a Sixth Form set—They merely sat through his hours in complete apathy. His predecessor had been a young man fresh from Cambridge and had made his history extremely entertaining, they had held debates, read each other papers and discussed current politics, but now there were no Varsity scholarships, the battle clouds of France shut out all but the immediate future and no one had any particular motive for, or interest in, working. Mr. Boyle certainly had not and Youth, far from being the time of burning quests and wild, gloriously vain ideals beloved of the minor poets, is essentially one of languor and repose. Every hour he dictated notes, from a large leather bound note book, which most people took; every week he set an essay which several people wrote; every month he gave out a syllabus of books for out of school study, which nobody read. He asked for little and was content with far less but the Senior History Specialist set often seemed unsatisfactory even to Mr. Boyle.

  He came into the class room smiling a dignified welcome all round, laid his note book on one side of the high oak desk, his mortar board on the other, and sat down smoothing out his gown.

  "Good morning, gentlemen," he began in his usual formula, "What are we doing this morning? European history, isn't it Travers? Thank you. Ah yes, well I don't think we can do better than go on with our notes for a little. Now let me see where was it we had got to. Alberoni? Yes I see I have the place marked. The last thing I gave you was ‘willing to cede Sardinia to secure her nephew's succession to the Duchy of Parma' wasn't it? Well then, head this ‘D. Alberoni's third coalition.'" For two hours he dictated an essay on XVIIth diplomacy.

  Peter had reduced the taking of notes to an entirely subconscious exercise. He could now sit schooled by long practice, with his mind completely blank or filled with other things while his pen wrote out pages of notes industriously and quite correctly. Sometimes he would be woken from his reverie by a pause over some proper name, but often on looking them through he would find names which he had no recollection of having heard before. He sat writing out,

  "... invited ‘pretender' to Spain and arranged with Görz a northern alliance with Sweden and Russia to support the Stuart claims, while at the same time he entered into correspondence with Polignac and the Duchess of Main, to overthrow the Regency. The death of Charles XII, however....."

  Mr. Boyle's notes did not elucidate any difficult problems or sift the important facts of history from the trivial. They merely stated things in direct paraphrase of Lodge; for the whole double period Peter steadily took them down.

  At last the clock chimed and Mr. Boyle stood up, shut his note book and took up his mortar board. "That will be enough for this morning, I think. Remember that I want the essays on ‘The Freedom of the civilized State' by Monday evening, without fail this time please. I will ask you to read up Catherine the Great for next Tuesday, if you will—I recommend Lecky. Thank you, good morning."

  Wearily they filed out for break. In the war time efficiency mania P.T. had been innovated which effectually took up all the break—ten minutes in which to change and twenty minutes drill. Peter hurried to the changing room and began undressing; he suddenly remembered that he had broken the lace of his gym shoe the day before. He succeeded in borrowing another and then realized that he had forgotten to get a new hat for parade as he had been told to last time. Everything seemed to be conspiring against him this morning.

  "You never lose a stud but you lose the lot," sighed Bellinger, "Hullo, what the devil does he want."

  Peter looked round and saw the porter's burly figure framed in the doorway.

  "Telegram for Mr. Audley, sir."

  "Hullo, what?" Peter tore open the orange envelope and hurriedly took out the telegram; it was getting late for P.T.

  "Ralf on leave," it ran, "return home wiring head will meet 4:52 Bulfrey."

  IV

  One of the awfully clever things that Ralf had said was that life should be divided into water tight compartments and that no group of friends or manner of living should be allowed to encroach upon any other. Peter lay back and compared the day with the prospects early that morning.

  As soon as he had got the telegram he had put on his shoes and told the porter to 'phone for a taxi. After a frantic search for his house master and an incoherent but convincing explanation to him and a hurried interview with the matron about his bag, he had managed to get away in time to catch the 11:12 to Victoria. There he had had a hasty but excellent lunch at the Grosvenor and had dashed across to Paddington and got into the train just as it was starting.

  He now had a clear two hours run to Bulfrey. He lay back and took a cigarette from the box he had bought at lunch. Very contentedly he watched the telegraph wires rising falling and recrossing each other, mile after mile.

  He had not had time in the rush of half packed pyjamas, moving trains and lost tickets, to think of what it all meant; now in the empty first class carriage with magazines and cigarettes he began to shake off the shadows of the prison house. He looked at his watch. At the very time that he was swaying into the country through the short wayside stations, Bellinger and Beaton and Garth and everyone else with whose lives his own had seemed so inextricably bound that morning were marching about on the downs. It was very cold at Selchurch, he reflected and the sea mist was lying in the valleys; he was warm with the close atmosphere of the carriage and the glass of port he had had after lunch and with a deep inward content.

  Mile succeeded mile through the avenue of telegraph poles. Outside the weather was clearing up and a bright cool sun came out. He watched the fields reeling by and began to pass the landmarks which had grown familiar through many home comings, an imposing patent medicine factory, the neat beds of a large market garden, an Elizabethan farmhouse.