INTRODUCTION
LAST AUGUST one of my colleagues, examining the Evelyn Waugh file for 1970 in a search for evidence bearing on a contractual negotiation with his publishers Eyre Methuen, came upon a thirty-four-page typescript entitled Charles Ryder’s Schooldays. There was nothing to show why this piece had been put in the 1970 file. It was a good carbon bearing the stamp of Alex McLachlan, literary type-copying specialist of St Leonards-on-Sea, described by Professor Robert Murray Davis in his book Evelyn Waugh, Writer as ‘Waugh’s long-suffering typist’. It was apparently intended for submission, since it bore on the title page the label of A. D. Peters, Literary Agent.
The manuscript could be read as a self-contained short story about the young Charles Ryder at public school. But the Evelyn Waugh diaries for 1945 suggest a different history. On 25 September 1945 he wrote: ‘Yesterday I read my Lancing diaries through with unmixed shame.’ Then on 2 October he wrote:‘...my life seems more placid and happy than ever. I have begun a novel of school life in 1919— as untopical a theme as could be found.’ On 28 October: ‘The last three weeks have been happy and uneventful: Laura cooking better, wine lasting out, weather splendid. I have written more of the school story ...’ This is the last mention of the enterprise in the diary entries, and there is no hint in the 1945 A. D, Peters file, now at the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, of what passed between Waugh and A. D Peters on the subject
I sought help from two authorities. Colonel Don Mac-Namara, late of the U.S. Marine Corps and now writing a thesis at the University of Texas on the relationship between Waugh and A. D. Peters, drew a blank in the 1945 files, but was able to report that the original manuscript of the piece was conveyed to Texas with the rest of the Waugh material. I asked Donat Gallagher of the University of North Queensland, who is in London editing The Complete Essays and Articles of Evelyn Waugh for publication by Eyre Methuen in 1983, what he made of it. He has a photo-copy of the original manuscript and pointed out a large number of literals (which have been corrected for printing here), at variance with Waugh’s correct spellings in manuscript, which suggest that Waugh may have been as long-suffering in his relationship with McLachlan as the latter was with him. Gallagher points out that in many respects Charles Ryder’s Schooldays picks up detail and incident from the Lancing diaries. He makes two further observations. First, that the manuscript of Brideshead Revisited contains a considerable amount of material about Charles Ryder’s early life and family background which does not appear in the published version of the novel. Second, he would expect Waugh to want to emphasize clearly something that does not come out in the published version of Brideshead: the contrast between the family backgrounds of Sebastian and Ryder. Perhaps this helps to explain Waugh’s settling down, in an apparently happy and relaxed frame of mind, to embark on a novel on this subject.
What happened then has to be conjecture. We have no evidence that the piece was submitted to any magazine, and it would be surprising if any ensuing rejection letters had not been kept in the Waugh file. Perhaps Waugh and Peters agreed that the time wasn’t ripe for submitting this fragment; perhaps Peters, after reading it, talked Waugh out of proceeding with the novel. My guess is that the typescript went into Peters’s desk drawer and that when he was going through his desk in 1970 he found it and put it in the current file. Maybe publication here will flush out an editor who wrote a careful rejection letter in the autumn of 1945.
Charles Ryder’s Schooldays, with an Introduction by Michael Sissons, was first published in the Times Literary Supplement on 5 March 1982.
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.”