CHAPTER I
TWO HAPHAZARDS

IT began, I suppose, on a certain September afternoon, when Roland Whately traveled back to school by the three-thirty train from Waterloo. There were two afternoon trains to Fernhurst: one left London at three-thirty and arrived at a quarter to six; the other left at four-eighteen, stopped at every station between Basingstoke and Salisbury, waited twenty-five minutes at Templecombe for a connection, and finally reached Fernhurst at eight-twenty-three. It is needless to state that by far the greater part of the school traveled down by the four-eighteen—who for the sake of a fast train and a comfortable journey would surrender forty-eight minutes of his holidays?—and usually, of course, Roland accompanied the many.

This term, however, the advantages of the fast train were considerable. He was particularly anxious to have the corner bed in his dormitory. There was a bracket above it where he could place a candle, by the light of which he would be able to learn his rep. after “lights out.” If he were not there first someone else would be sure to collar it. And then there was the new study at the end of the passage; he wanted to get fresh curtains and probably a gas mantle: when once the school was back it was impossible, for at least a week, to persuade Charlie, the school custos, to attend to an odd job like that. And so he traveled back by a train that contained, of the three hundred boys who were on the Fernhurst roll, only a dozen fags and three timid Sixth-Formers who had distrusted the animal spirits of certain powerful and irreverent Fifth-Formers. On the first day, as on the last, privilege counts for little, and it is unpleasant to pass four hours under the seat of a dusty railway carriage.

It was the first time that Roland had been able to spend the first evening of a term in complete leisure. He walked quietly up to the house, went down to the matron’s room and consulted the study and dormitory lists. He found that he was on the Sixth-Form table, had been given the study for which he had applied, and was in the right dormitory. He bagged the bed he wanted, and took his health certificate round to the Chief’s study.

“Ah, Whately, this is very early. Had a good holiday?”

“Yes, thank you, sir.”

“Feeling ready for football? They tell me you’ve an excellent chance of getting into the XV.?”

“I hope so, sir.”

He went over to the studies and inspected the gas fittings. Yes, he would certainly need a new mantle, and he must try to see if Charlie couldn’t fit him up with a new curtain. After a brief deliberation Charles decided that he could; a half crown changed hands, and as Roland strolled back from the lodge the Abbey clock struck half-past six. Over two hours to prayers. He had done all his jobs, and there didn’t seem to be a soul in the place. He began to wonder whether, after all, it had been worth his while to catch that early train: it had been a dull journey, two hours in the company of three frightened fags, outhouse fellows whom he didn’t know, and who had huddled away in a corner of the carriage and talked in whispers. If, on the other hand, he had waited for the four-eighteen he would at that moment be sitting with five or six first-class fellows, talking of last year’s rags, of the new prefects, and the probable composition of the XV. He would be much happier there. And as for the dormitory and study, well, he’d have probably been able to manage if he had hurried from the station. He had done so a good many times before. Altogether he had made a bit of an ass of himself. An impetuous fool, that was what he was.

And for want of anything better to do, he mouched down to Ruffer’s, the unofficial tuck-shop. There was no one he knew in the front of the shop, so he walked into the inside room and found, sitting in a far corner, eating an ice, Howard, one of the senior men in Morgan’s.

“Hullo!” he said. “So you’ve been ass enough to come down by the early train as well?”

“Yes, I was coming up from Cornwall, and it’s the only way I could make the trains fit in. A bad business. There’s nothing to do but eat; come and join me in an ice.”

Howard was only a very casual acquaintance; he was no use at games; he had never been in the same form as Roland, and fellows in the School house usually kept pretty much to themselves. They had only met in groups outside the chapel, or at roll-call, or before a lecture. It was probably the first time they had ever been alone together.

“Right you are!” said Roland. “Mr. Ruffer, bring me a large strawberry ice and a cup of coffee.”

But the ice did not last long, and they were soon strolling up the High Street, with time heavy on their hands. Conversation flagged; they had very little in common.

“I know,” said Howard. “Let’s go down to the castle grounds; they’ll probably have a band, and we can watch the dancing.”

Halfway between the station and the school, opposite the Eversham Hotel, where parents stopped for “commem” and confirmation, was a public garden with a band stand and well-kept lawns, and here on warm summer evenings dances would promote and encourage the rustic courtships of the youthful townsfolk. During the term these grounds were strictly out of bounds to the school; but on the first night rules did not exist, and besides, no one was likely to recognize them in the bowler hats and colored ties that would have to be put away that night in favor of black poplin and broad white straw.

It was a warm night, and they leaned against the railing watching the girls in their light print dresses waltz in the clumsy arms of their selected.

“Looks awfully jolly,” said Howard. “They don’t have a bad time, those fellows. There are one or two rippingly pretty girls.”

“And look at the fellows they’re dancing with. I can’t think how they can stand it. Now look there, at that couple by the stand. She’s a really pretty girl, while her man is pimply, with a scraggy mustache and sweating forehead, and yet look how she’s leaning over his shoulder; think of her being kissed by that.”

“I suppose there’s something about him.”

“I suppose so.”

There was a pause; Roland wished that difference of training and position did not hold them from the revel.

“By Jove!” said Roland, “it would be awful fun to join them.”

“Well, I dare you to.”

“Dare say you do. I’m not having any. I don’t run risks in a place where I’m known.”

As a matter of fact, Roland did not run risks anywhere, but he wanted Howard to think him something of a Don Juan. One is always ashamed of innocence, and Howard was one of those fellows who naturally bring out the worst side of their companions. His boisterous, assertive confidence was practically a challenge, and Roland did not enjoy the rÔle of listener and disciple, especially as Howard was, by the school standards, socially his inferior.

At that moment two girls strolled past, turned, and giggled over their shoulders.

“Do you see that?” said Roland.

“What about it?”

“Well, I mean....”

The girls were coming back, and suddenly, to Roland’s surprise, embarrassment and annoyance, Howard walked forward and raised his hat.

“Lonely?” he said.

“Same as you.”

“Like a walk, then?”

“All right, if your friend’s not too shy.”

And before Roland could make any protest he was walking, tongue-tied and helpless, on the arm of a full-blown shop girl.

“Well, you’re a cheerful sort of chap, aren’t you?” she said at last.

“Sorry, but you see I wasn’t expecting you!”

“Oh, she didn’t turn up, I suppose?”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Oh, get along, I know you; you’re all the same. Why, I was talking to a boy last week....”

To save her the indignity of a confession, Roland suggested that they should dance.

“All right, only don’t hold me too tight—sister’s looking.”

There was no need to talk while they were dancing, and he was glad to be able to collect his thoughts. It was an awkward business. She wasn’t on the whole a bad-looking girl; she was certainly too plump, but she had a nice smile and pretty hair; and he felt no end of a dog. But it was impossible to become romantic, for she giggled every time he tried to hold her a little closer, and once when his cheek brushed accidentally against hers she gave him a great push, and shouted, “Now, then, naughty!” to the intense amusement of another couple. Still, he enjoyed dancing with her. It would be something to tell the fellows afterwards. They would be sitting in the big study. Gradually the talk would drift round to girls. He would sit in silence while the others would relate invented escapades, prefaced by, “My brother told me,” or, “I saw in a French novel.” He would wait for the lull, then himself would let fall—oh! so gently—into the conversation, “a girl that I danced with in the castle grounds....”

The final crash of the band recalled him to the requirements of the moment, and the need for conversation. They sat on a seat and discussed the weather, the suitability of grass as a dancing floor, the superiority of a band over a piano. He introduced subject after subject, bringing them up one after another, like the successive waves of infantry in an attack. It was not a success. The first bars of a waltz were a great relief.

He jumped up and offered her his arm.

“From the school, aren’t you?” she said.

“How did you guess?” he asked. She answered him with a giggle.

It was a blow, admittedly a blow. He had not imagined himself a shining success, but he had not thought that he was giving himself away quite as badly as that. They got on a great deal better though after it. They knew where they were, and he found her a very jolly girl, a simple creature, whose one idea was to be admired and to enjoy herself, an ambition not so very different from Roland’s. It was her sense of humor that beat him: she giggled most of the time; why he could not understand. It was annoying, because everyone stared at them, and Roland hated to be conspicuous. He was prepared to enjoy the illusion but not the reality in public. He was not therefore very sorry when the Abbey clock warned him that in a few minutes the four-eighteen would have arrived and that the best place for him was the School house dining room.

On the way back he met Howard.

“I say, you rather let me in for it, you know,” he said.

“Oh, rot, my dear chap; but even if I did, I’ll bet you enjoyed yourself all right.”

“Perhaps I did. But that makes no difference. After all, you didn’t know I was going to. I’d never seen the girl before.”

“But one never has on these occasions, has one? One’s got to trust to luck; you know that as well as I do.”

“Of course, of course, but still....”

They argued it out till they reached the cloisters leading to the School house studies, exchanged there a cheery good-night and went their way. Five minutes later the four-eighteen was in; the study passages were filled with shouts; Roland was running up and down stairs, greeting his old friends. The incident was closed, and in the normal course of things it would never have been reopened.

That it was reopened was due entirely, if indirectly, to Roland’s laziness on a wet Sunday afternoon, halfway through October. It was a really wet afternoon, the sort of afternoon when there is nothing to be done but to pack one’s study full of really good chaps and get up a decent fug. Any small boy can be persuaded, with the aid of a shilling, to brew some tea, and there are few things better than to sit in the window-seat and watch the gravel courts turn to an enormous lake. Roland was peculiarly aware of the charm of an afternoon so spent as he walked across to his study after lunch, disquieted by the knowledge that his football boots wanted restudding and that the night before he had vowed solemnly that he would take them down to the professional before tea. It would be fatal to leave them any longer, and he knew it. The ground on Saturday had been too wet for football, and the whole house had gone for a run, during which Roland had worn down one of his studs on the hard roads, and driven a nail that uncomfortable hundredth of an inch through the sole of his boot. If he wore those boots again before they had been mended that hundredth of an inch would become a tenth of an inch, and make no small part of a crater in his foot. It was obviously up to him to put on a mackintosh and go down to the field at once. There was no room for argument, and Roland knew it, but....

It was very pleasant and warm inside the study and damnably unpleasant anywhere else. If only he were a prefect, and had a fag, how simple his life would become. His shoes would be cleaned for him, his shaving water would be boiled in the morning, his books would be carried down to his classroom, and on this rain-drenched afternoon he would only have to put his head outside the study door and yell “Fag!” and it would be settled. But he was not a prefect, and he had no fag. It was no use growling about it. He would have to go, of course he would have to go, then added as a corollary—yes, certainly, at three o’clock. By that time the weather might have cleared up.

But it had not cleared up by three o’clock, and Roland had become hopelessly intrigued by a novel by Wilkie Collins, called The Moonstone. He had just reached the place where Sergeant Cuff looks up at Rachel’s window and whistles The Last Rose of Summer. He could not desert Sergeant Cuff at such a point for a pair of football boots, and at three o’clock, with the whole afternoon before him. At half-past there would be tons of time. But by half-past three it was raining in the true Fernhurst manner, fierce, driving rain that whipped across the courts, heavy gusts of wind that shrieked down the cloisters. Impossible weather, absolutely impossible weather. No one but a fool would go out in it. He would wait till four, it was certain to have stopped a bit by then.

And by four o’clock it certainly was raining a good deal less, but by four o’clock some eight persons had assembled in the study and a most exciting discussion was in progress. Someone from Morgan’s had started a rumor to the effect that Fitzgerald, the vice-captain of the XV., was going to be dropped out of the side for the Tonwich match and his place given to Feversham, a reserve center from James’s. It was a startling piece of news that had to be discussed from every point of view.

First of all, would the side be improved? A doubtful matter. Fitzgerald had certainly been out of form this season, and he had played miserably in the last two matches, but he had experience; he would not be likely to lose his head in a big game, and Feversham, well, it would be his first school match. Altogether a doubtful issue, and, granted even that Feversham was better than Fitzgerald, would it be worth while in the long run to leave out the vice-captain and head of Buxton’s? Would it be doing a good service to Fernhurst football? Buxton’s was the athletic house; it had six school colors. The prestige of Fernhurst depended a good deal on the prestige of Buxton’s. Surely the prestige of Buxton’s was more important than a problematic improvement in the three-quarter line.

They argued it out for a quarter of an hour and then, just when the last point had been brought forward, and Roland had begun to feel that he was left with no possible excuse for not going down to the field, the tea arrived; and after that what chance did he stand? By the time tea was over it was nearly five o’clock. Choir practice would have started in a quarter of an hour: if he wanted to, he could not have gone down then. A bad business. But it had been a pleasant afternoon; it was raining like blazes still; very likely the ground would be again too wet for play to-morrow, and he would cut the walk and get his boots mended. No doubt things would pan out all right.

Things, however, did not on this occasion adapt themselves to Roland’s wishes. The rain stopped shortly after eight o’clock; a violent wind shrieked all night along the cloisters; next morning the violent wind was accompanied by bright sunshine; by half-past two the ground was almost dry. Roland played in his unstudded boots, and, as he had expected, the projecting hundredth of an inch sank deeply into his toe. Three days later he was sent up to the sanatorium with a poisoned foot.

And in the sanatorium he found himself in the same ward and alone with Howard, who was recovering from an attack of “flu” that had been incorrectly diagnosed as measles.

It was the first time they had met since the first evening of the term.

CHAPTER II
THE OUTCOME

WHEN two people are left alone together all day, with no amusement except their own conversation, they naturally become intimate, and as the episode of the dance was the only bond of interest between Howard and Roland, they turned to it at once. As soon as the matron had gone out of the room Howard asked if he had been forgiven.

“Oh, yes, a long time ago; it was a jolly rag.”

“Seen anything of your girl since then?”

“Heavens! no. Have you?”

“I should jolly well think so; one doesn’t let a thing like that slip through one’s fingers in a hurry. I go out with her every Sunday, and as likely as not once or twice during the week.”

Roland was struck with surprise and admiration.

“But how on earth do you manage it?”

“Oh, it’s quite easy: in our house anyone can get out who wants to. The old man never spots anything. I just heave on a cap and mackintosh, meet her behind the Abbey and we go for a stroll along the Slopes.”

Roland could only ask too many questions and Howard was only too ready to answer them. He had seldom enjoyed such a splendid audience. He was not thought much of in the school, and to tell the truth he was not much of a fellow. He had absorbed the worst characteristics of a bad house. He would probably after he had left spend his evenings hanging about private bars and the stage doors of second-class music halls. But he was an interesting companion in the sanatorium, and he and Roland discussed endlessly the eternally fascinating subject of girls.

“The one thing that you must never do with a girl is to be shy,” Howard said. “That’s the one fatal thing that she’ll never forgive. You can do anything you like with any girl if only you go the right way about it. She doesn’t care whether you are good-looking or rich or clever, but if she feels that you know more than she does, that she can trust herself in your hands.... It’s all personality. If a girl tries to push you away when you kiss her, don’t worry her, kiss her again; she only wants to be persuaded; she’d despise you if you stopped; girls are weak themselves, so they hate weakness. You can take it from me, Whately, that girls are an easy game when you know the way to treat them. It would surprise you if you could only know what they were thinking. You’ll see them sitting at your father’s table, so demure, with their, ‘Yes, Mr. Howard,’ and their ‘No, Mr. Howard.’ You’d think they’d stepped out of the pages of a fairy book, and yet get those same girls alone, and in the right mood, my word....”

Inflammatory, suggestive stuff: the pimp in embryo.

And Roland was one of those on whom such persons thrive. He had always kept straight at school; he was not clever nor imaginative, but he was ambitious: and he had realized early that if he wanted to become a power in the school he must needs be a success at games. He had kept clear of anything that had seemed likely to impair his prowess on the field. But it was different for him here in the sanatorium, with no exercise and occupation. In a very little while he had become thoroughly roused. Howard had enjoyed a certain number of doubtful experiences; had read several of the books that appear in the advertisements of obscure French papers as “rare and curious.” He had in addition a good imagination. Within two days Roland’s one idea was to pick up at the first opportunity the threads of the romance he had so callously flung aside.

“There’ll be no difficulty about that, my dear fellow,” said Howard. “I can easily get Betty to arrange it. We meet every Sunday, and we have to walk right out beyond Cold Harbor. She says she feels a bit lonely going out all that way by herself. Now suppose she went out with your girl and you went out with me—that’d be pretty simple, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, that would be splendid. Do you think you could fix it up?”

“As easy as laughing.”

“But I shall feel an awful fool,” Roland insisted. “I shan’t know what to say or anything.”

“Don’t you worry about that, my dear fellow; you just look as if you did and keep your eyes open, and you’ll soon learn; these girls know a lot more than you would think.”

So it was arranged. Roland found by the time his foot was right again that he had let himself in for a pretty exacting program. It had all seemed jolly enough up at the sanatorium, but when he was back in the house, and life reËstablished its old values, he began to regret it very heartily. He didn’t mind going out with the girl—that would be quite exciting: besides it was an experience to which everyone had to come some time or other—but he did not look forward to a long walk with Howard every Sunday afternoon for the rest of the term.

“Whately, old son,” he said to his reflection in the glass as he shaved himself on the next Sunday morning, “you’ve made a pretty sanguinary fool of yourself, but you can’t clear out now. You’ve got to see it through.”

It was very awkward though when Anderson ran up to him in the cloisters with “Hullo, Whately, going out for a stroll? Well, just wait half-a-sec, while I fetch my hat.” Roland had an infernal job getting rid of him.

“But, my dear man,” Anderson had protested, “where on earth are you going? I’ve always thought you the most pious man in the house. But if it’s a smoke I’ll watch you, and if it’s a drink I’ll help you.”

“Oh, no, it’s not that. I’m going out with a man in Morgan’s.”

Anderson’s mouth emitted a long whistle of surprise.

“So our Whately has deserted his old friends? Ah, well, when one gets into the XV., I know.”

Roland could see that Anderson was offended.

But it was even worse when he came back to find his study full of seven indignant sportsmen wanting to know why on earth he had taken to going out for walks with “a dirty tick in Morgan’s, who was no use at anything and didn’t even wash.”

“He’s quite a decent chap,” said Roland weakly. “I met him in the san.”

“I dare say you did,” said Anderson; “we’re not blaming you for that. You couldn’t help it. But those sorts of things, one does try to live down.”

For days he was ragged about it, so much so that he hadn’t the face to say he had been going out with a girl. Such a statement should be a proud acknowledgment, not a confession. If ever he said he couldn’t go anywhere, or do something, the invariable retort was, “I suppose you’re going out for a walk with Howard.”

The School house was exclusive; it was insular; it was prepared to allow the possibility of its members having friends in the outhouses; there were good men in the outhouses, even in Morgan’s. But one had to be particular, and when it came to Whately, a man of whom the house was proud, deserting his friends for a greasy swine in Morgan’s who didn’t wash, well, the least one could do was to make the man realize that he had gone a little far.

It was a bad business, altogether a bad business, and Roland very much doubted whether the hour and a half he spent with Dolly was an adequate recompense. She was a nice girl, quite a nice girl, and they found themselves on kissing terms quickly enough. There were no signs of their getting any further, and, as a matter of fact, if there had been, Roland would have been extremely alarmed. He objected to awkward situations and intense emotions: he preferred to keep his life within the decent borders of routine. He wanted adventure certainly, but adventure bounded by the limits of the society in which he lived. He liked to feel that his day was tabulated and arranged; he hated that lost feeling of being unprepared; he liked to know exactly what he had to say to Dolly before he could hold her hand and exactly what he had to say before she would let him kiss her. It was a game that had to be rehearsed before one got it right; no actor enjoys his part before he has learned his words; when he had learned the rules it was great fun; kisses were pleasant things. He wrote a letter to his friend, Ralph Richmond, acquainting him of this fact.

Two days later Roland received the following reply:

Roland’s comment on this letter was “Jealous little beast.” He wished he hadn’t written to him. And why drag April in? He and April were great friends; they always had been. Once they had imagined themselves sweethearts. When they went out to parties they had always sat next each other during tea and held hands under the table; in general post Roland had often been driven into the center because of a brilliant failure to take the chair that was next to hers. They had kissed sometimes at dances in the shadow of a passage, and once at a party, when they had been pulling crackers, he had slipped on to the fourth finger of her left hand a brass ring that had fallen from the crumpled paper. She still kept that ring, although the days of courtship were over. Roland had altered since he had gone to Fernhurst. But they were great friends, and there was always an idea between the two families that the children might eventually marry. Mr. Whately was, indeed, fond of prefacing some remote speculation about the future with, “By the time Roland and April are married——”

There was no need, Roland felt, for Ralph to have dragged April into the business at all. He was aggrieved, and the whole business seemed again a waste and an encumbrance. Was it worth while? He got ragged in the house, and he had to spend an hour in Howard’s company before he met Dolly at all. Howard was really rather terrible; so conceited, so familiar; and now that he had found an audience he indulged it the whole time. He was at his worst when he attempted sentiment. Once when they were walking back he turned to Roland, in the middle of a soliloquy, with a gesture of profound disdain and resignation.

“But what’s all this after all?” he said. “It’s nothing; it’s pleasant; it passes the time, and we have to have some distractions in this place to keep us going. But it’s not the real thing; there’s all the difference in the world between this and the real thing. A kiss can be anything or nothing; it can raise one to—to any height, or it can be like eating chocolates. I’m not a chap, you know, who really cares for this sort of thing. I’m in love. I suppose you are too.”

And Roland, who did not want to be outdone, confessed that there was someone, “a girl he had known all his life.”

“But you don’t want a girl you’ve known all your life; love’s not a thing that we drift into; it must be sudden; it must be unexpected; it must hurt.”

Howard was a sore trial, and it was with the most unutterable relief that Roland learned that he was leaving at Christmas to go to a crammer’s.

“We must keep up with one another, old fellow,” Howard said on their last Sunday. “You must come and lunch with me one day in town. Write and tell me all about it. We’ve had some jolly times.”

Roland caught a glimpse of him on the last day, resplendent in an O.F. scarf, very loud and hearty, saying “good-by” to people he had hardly spoken to before. “You’ll write to me, won’t you, old fellow? Come and lunch with me when you’re up in town. The Regent Club. Good-by.” Since his first year, when the prefect for whom he had fagged, and by whom he had been beaten several times, had left, Roland had never been so heartily thankful to see any member of the school in old boys’ colors.

CHAPTER III
RALPH AND APRIL

RALPH RICHMOND was the son of an emotional woman and he had read too many novels. He took himself seriously: without being religious, he considered that it was the duty of every man to leave the world better than he found it. Such a philosophy may be natural to a man of thirty-six who sees small prospect of realizing his own ambition, and resorts to the consolation of a collective enthusiasm, but it is abnormal in a boy of seventeen, an age which usually sees itself in the stalls of a theater waiting for the curtain to rise and reveal a stage set with limitless opportunities for self-development and self-indulgence.

But Ralph had been brought up in an atmosphere of ideals; at the age of seven he gave a performance of Hamlet in the nursery, and in the same year he visited a lenten performance of Everyman. At his preparatory school he came under the influence of an empire builder, who used to appeal to the emotions of his form. “The future of the country is in your hands,” he would say. “One day you will be at the helm. You must prepare yourselves for that time. You must never forget.” And Ralph did not. He thought of himself as the arbiter of destinies. He felt that till that day his life must be a vigil. Like the knights of Arthurian romance, he would watch beside his armor in the chapel. In the process he became a prig, and on his last day at Rycroft Lodge he became a prude. His headmaster gave all the boys who were leaving a long and serious address on the various temptations of the flesh to which they would be subjected at their Public Schools. Ralph had no clear idea of what these temptations might be. Their results, however, seemed sufficient reason for abstention. If he yielded to them, he gathered that he would lose in a short time his powers of thought, his strength, his moral stamina; a slow poison would devour him; in a few years he would be mad and blind and probably, though of this he was not quite certain, deaf as well. At any rate he would be in a condition when the ability of detecting sound would be of slight value. These threats were alarming: their effect, however, would not have been lasting in the case of Ralph, who was no coward and also, being no fool, would have soon observed that this process of disintegration was not universal in its application. No; it was not the threat that did the damage: it was the romantic appeal of the headmaster’s peroration.

“After all,” he said, after a dramatic pause, “how can any one of you who has been a filthy beast at school dare to propose marriage to some pure, clean woman?”

That told; that sentiment was within the range of his comprehension; it was a beautiful idea, a chivalrous idea, worthy, he inappropriately imagined, of Sir Lancelot. He could understand that a knight should come to his lady with glittering armor and an unstained sword. At the time he did not fully appreciate the application of this image: he soon learned, however, that a night spent on one’s knees on the stone floor of a draughty chapel is a cold and lonely prelude to enchantment: a discovery that did not make him the more charitable to those who preferred clean linen and soft down.

It was only to be supposed, therefore, that he would receive Roland’s confidences with disgust. He had always felt a little jealous of April’s obvious preference for his friend, but he had regarded it as the fortune of war and had taken what pleasure he might in the part of confidant. To this vicarious excitant their intimacy indeed owed its strength. His indignation, therefore, when he learned of Roland’s rustic courtship was only exceeded by his positive fury when, on the first evening of the holidays, he went round to see the Curtises and found there Roland and his father. It was the height of hypocrisy. He had supposed that Roland would at least have the decency to keep away from her. It had been bad enough to give up a decent girl for a shop assistant, but to come back and carry on as though nothing had happened.... It was monstrous, cruel, unthinkable. And there was April, so clean and calm, with her thick brown hair gathered up in a loop across her forehead; her eyes, deep and gentle, with subdued colors, brown and a shade of green, and that delicate smile of simple trust and innocence, smiling at him, ignorant of how she had been deceived.

It must be set down, however, to Roland’s credit that he had felt a few qualms about going round at once to see the Curtises. Less than twenty-four hours had passed since he had held Dolly’s hand and protested to her an undying loyalty. He did not love her; the words meant nothing, and they both knew it; they were merely part of the convention of the game. Nor for that matter was he in love with April—- at least he did not think he was. He owed nothing to either of them. But conscience told him that, in view of the understanding that was supposed to exist between them, it would be more proper to wait a day or two. After all, one did not go to a theater the day after one’s father’s funeral, however eagerly one’s imagination had anticipated the event.

Things had, however, turned out otherwise. At a quarter to six Mr. Whately returned from town. He was the manager of a bank, at a salary of seven hundred and fifty pounds a year, an income that allowed the family to visit the theater, upper circle seats, at least once every holidays and provided Roland with as much pocket money as he needed. Mr. Whately walked into the drawing-room, greeted his son with the conventional joke about a holiday task, handed his wife a copy of The Globe, sat down in front of the fire and began to take off his boots.

“Nothing much in the papers to-day, my dear. Not much happening anywhere as a matter of fact. I had lunch to-day with Robinson and he called it the lull before the storm. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if he wasn’t right. You can’t trust these Radicals.”

He was a scrubby little man: for thirty years he had worked in the same house; there had been no friction and no excitement in his life; he had by now lost any independence of thought and action.

“I’ve just found a splendid place, my dear, where you can get a really first-class lunch for one-and-sixpence.”

“Have you, dear?”

“Yes; in Soho, just behind the Palace. I went there to-day with Robinson. We had four courses, and cheese to finish up with. Something like.”

“And was it well cooked, dear?”

“Rather; the plaice was beautifully fried. Just beginning to brown.”

His face flushed with a genuine animation. Change of food was the only adventure that life brought to him. He rose slowly.

“Well, I must go up and change, I suppose. I’ve one or two other things to tell you, dear, later on.”

He did not ask his wife what she had been doing during the day; it was indeed doubtful whether he appreciated the existence of any life at 105 Hammerton Villas, Hammerton, during the hours when he was away from them. He himself was the central point.

Five minutes later he came downstairs in a light suit.

“Well, who’s coming out with me for a constitutional?”

Roland got up, walked into the hall, picked up his hat and stick.

“Right you are, father; I’m ready.”

It was the same thing every day. At eight-thirty-five Mr. Whately caught a bus at the corner of the High Street. He had never been known to miss it. On the rare occasions when he was a few seconds late the driver would wait till he saw the panting little figure come running round the corner, trying to look dignified in spite of the top hat that bobbed from one side of his head to the other. From nine o’clock till a quarter-past five Mr. Whately worked at a desk, with an hour’s interval for lunch. Every evening he went for an hour’s walk; for half an hour before dinner he read the evening paper. After dinner he would play a game of patience and smoke his pipe. Occasionally a friend would drop in for a chat; very occasionally he would go out himself. At ten o’clock sharp he went to bed. Every Saturday afternoon he attended a public performance of either cricket or football according to the season. Roland often wondered how he could stand it. What had he to look forward to? What did he think about when he sat over the fire puffing at his pipe? And his mother. How monotonous her life appeared to him. Yet she seemed always happy enough; she never grumbled. Roland could not understand it. Whatever happened, he would take jolly good care that he never ran into a groove like that. They had loved each other well enough once, he supposed, but now—oh, well, love was the privilege of youth.

Father and son walked in silence. They were fond of each other; they liked being together; Mr. Whately was very proud of his son’s achievements; but their affection was never expressed in words. After a while they began to talk of indifferent things, guessing at each other’s thoughts: a relationship of intuitions. They passed along the High Street and, turning behind the shops, walked down a long street of small red brick villas with stucco fronts.

“Don’t you think we ought to go in and see the Curtises?” Mr. Whately asked.

“I don’t know. I hadn’t meant to. I thought....”

“I think you ought to, you know, your first day; they’d be rather offended if you didn’t. April asked me when you were coming back.”

And so Roland was bound to abandon his virtuous resolution.

It was not a particularly jolly evening before Ralph arrived. Afterwards it was a good deal worse.

In the old days, when father and son had paid an evening visit, Roland had run straight up to the nursery and enjoyed himself, but now he had to sit in the drawing-room, which was a very different matter. He did not like Mrs. Curtis; he never had liked her, but she had not troubled him in the days when she had been a mere voice below the banisters. Now he had to sit in the small drawing-room, with its shut windows, and hear her voice cleave through the clammy atmosphere in languid, pathetic cadences; a sentimental voice, and under the sentiment a hard, cold cruelty. Her person was out of keeping with her voice; it should have been plump and comfortable looking; instead it was tall, thin, angular, all over points, like a hatrack in a restaurant: a terrible bedfellow. And she talked, heavens! how she talked. It was usually about her children.

“Dear Arthur, he’s getting on so well at school. Do you know what his headmaster said about him in his report?”

“Oh, but, mother, please,” Arthur would protest.

“No, dear, be quiet; I know Mr. Whately would like to hear. The headmaster said, Mr. Whately....” Then it was her daughter’s turn. “And April, too, Mr. Whately, she’s getting on so well with her drawing lessons. Mr. Hamilton was only saying to me yesterday....”

It was not surprising that Roland was less keen now on going round there. It was little fun for him after all to sit and listen while she talked, to see his father so utterly complacent, with his “Yes, Mrs. Curtis,” and his “Really, Mrs. Curtis,” and to look at poor April huddled in the window seat, so bored, so ashamed, her eyes meeting his with a look that said: “Don’t worry about her, don’t take any notice of what she says. I’m not like that.” Once or twice he tried to talk to her, but it was no use: her mother would interrupt, would bring them back into the circle of her own egotism. In her own drawing-room she would tolerate nothing independent of herself.

“Yes, Roland; what was it you were saying? The Saundersons’ dance? Of course April will be going. They’re very old friends of ours, the Saundersons. Mr. Saunderson thinks such a lot of Arthur, too. You know, Mr. Whately, I met him in the High Street the other afternoon and he said to me, ‘How’s that clever son of yours getting on, Mrs. Curtis?’”

“Really, Mrs. Curtis.”

“Yes, really, Mr. Whately.”

It was at this point that Ralph arrived.

His look of surprised displeasure was obvious to everyone. But knowing Ralph, they mistook it for awkwardness. He did not like company, and his shyness was apparent as he stood in the doorway in an ill-fitting suit, with trousers that bagged at the knees, and with the front part of his hair smarmed across his forehead with one hurried sweep of a damp brush, at right angles to the rest of his hair, that fell perpendicularly from the crown of his head.

“Come along, Ralph,” said April, and made room for him in the window-seat. She treated him with an amused condescension. He was so clumsy; a dear fellow, so easy to rag. “And how did your exam. go?” she asked.

“All right.”

“No; but really, tell me about it. What were the maths like?”

“Not so bad.”

“And the geography? You were so nervous about that.”

“I didn’t do badly.”

“And the Latin and the Greek? I want to know all about it.”

“You don’t, really?”

“Yes, but I do.”

“No, you don’t,” he said impatiently. “You’d much rather hear about Roland and all the things he does at Fernhurst.”

There was a moment of difficult silence, then April said quite quietly:

“You are quite right, Ralph; as a matter of fact I should”; and she turned towards Roland, but before she could say anything, Mrs. Curtis once more assumed her monopoly of the conversation.

“Yes, Roland, you’ve told us nothing about that, and how you got your firsts. We were so proud of you, too. And you never wrote to tell us. If it hadn’t been for your father we should never have known.” And for the next half hour her voice flowed on placidly, while Ralph sat in a frenzy of self-pity and self-contempt, and Roland longed for an opportunity to kick him, and April looked out between the half-drawn curtains towards the narrow line of sky that lay darkly over the long stretch of roofs and chimney-pots, happy that Roland’s holidays had begun, regretting wistfully that childhood was finished for them, that they could no longer play their own games in the nursery, that they had become part of the ambitions of their parents.

When at last they rose to go, Ralph lingered for a moment in the doorway; he could not go home till April had forgiven him.

She stood on the top of the step, looking down the street to Roland, her heart still beating a little quickly, still disturbed by that pressure of the hand and that sudden uncomfortable meeting of the eyes when he had said “Good-by.” She did not notice Ralph till he began to speak to her.

“I am awfully sorry I was so rude to you, April. I’m rather tired. I didn’t mean to offend you. I wouldn’t have done it for worlds.”

She turned to him with a quiet smile.

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” she said, “that’s nothing.”

And he could see that to her it was indeed nothing, that she had not thought twice about it, that nothing he said or did was of the least concern to her. He would much rather that she had been angry.

Next day Ralph came round to the Whatelys’ soon after breakfast.

“Well, feeling more peaceful to-day, old friend?”

Ralph looked at Roland in impotent annoyance. As he knew of old, Roland was an impossible person to have a row with. He simply would not fight. He either agreed to everything you said or else brushed away your arguments with a good-natured “All right, old man, all right!” On this occasion, however, he felt that he must make a stand.

“You’re the limit,” he said; “the absolute limit.”

“I don’t know about that, but I think you were last night.”

“Oh, don’t joke about it. You know what I mean. I think it’s pretty rotten for a fellow like you to go about with a shop assistant, but that’s not really the thing. What’s simply beastly is your coming back to April as though nothing had happened. What would she say if she knew?”

Roland refused to acknowledge omniscience. “I don’t know,” he said.

“She wouldn’t be pleased, would she?” Ralph persisted.

“I don’t suppose so.”

“No; well then, there you are; you oughtn’t to do anything you think she mightn’t like.”

Roland looked at him with a sad patience, as a preparatory schoolmaster at a refractory infant.

“But, my dear fellow, we’re not married, and we’re not engaged. Surely we can do more or less what we like.”

“But would you be pleased if you learned that she’d been carrying on with someone else?”

Roland admitted that he would not.

“Then why should you think you owe nothing to her?”

“It’s different, my dear Ralph; it’s really quite different.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Yes, it is. Boys can do things that girls can’t. A flirtation means very little to a boy; it means a good deal to a girl—at least it ought to. If it doesn’t, it means that she’s had too much of it.”

“But I don’t see——” began Ralph.

“Come on, come on; don’t let’s go all over that again. We shall never agree. Let me go my way and you can go yours. We are too old friends to quarrel about a thing like this.”

Most boys would have been annoyed by Ralph’s attempt at interference, but it took a great deal to ruffle Roland’s lazy, equable good nature. He did not believe in rows. He liked to keep things running smoothly. He could never understand the people who were always wanting to stir up trouble. He did not really care enough either way. His tolerance might have been called indifference, but it possessed, at any rate, a genuine charm. The other fellow always felt what a thundering good chap Roland was—so good-tempered, such a gentleman, never harboring a grievance. People knew where they were with him; when he said a thing was over it was over.

“All right,” said Ralph grudgingly. “I don’t know that it’s quite the game——”

“Don’t worry. We’re a long way from anything serious. A good deal’s got to happen before we’re come to the age when we can’t do what we like.”

And they talked of other things.

CHAPTER IV
A KISS

APRIL sat for a long while before the looking-glass wondering whether to tie a blue or a white ribbon in her hair. She tried one and then the other and paused irresolute. It was the evening of the Saundersons’ dance, to which for weeks she had been looking forward, and she was desperately anxious to look pretty. It would be a big affair: ices and claret cup and a band, and Roland would be there. They had seen a lot of each other during the holidays—nearly every day. Often they had felt awkward in each other’s company; there had been embarrassing silences, when their eyes would meet suddenly and quickly turn away; and then there would come an unexpected interlude of calm, harmonious friendship, when they would talk openly and naturally to each other and would sit afterwards for a long while silent, softened and tranquilized by the presence of some unknown influence—moments of rare gentleness and sympathy. April could not help feeling that they were on the edge of something definite, some incident of avowal. She did not know what, but she felt that something was about to happen. She was flustered and expectant and eager to look pretty for Roland on this great evening.

She had chosen a very simple dress, a white muslin frock, that left bare her arms and throat, and was trimmed with pale blue ribbon at the neck and elbow; her stockings, too, were white, but her shoes and her sash a vivid, unexpected scarlet. She turned round slowly before the glass and smiled happily at her clear, fresh girlhood, tossing back her head, so that her hair was shaken out over her shoulders. Surely he would think her beautiful to-night. With eager fingers she tied the blue ribbon in her hair, turned again slowly before the glass, smiled, shook out her hair, and laughed happily. Yes, she would wear the blue—a subdued, quiet color, that faded naturally into the warm brown. She ran downstairs for her family’s approval, stood before her mother and turned a slow circle.

“Well, mother?”

Mrs. Curtis examined her critically.

“Of course, dear, I’m quite certain that you’ll be the prettiest girl there whatever you wear.”

“What do you mean, mother?”

“Well, April dear, of course I know you think you know best, but that white frock—it is so very simple.”

“But simple things suit me, mother.”

“I know they do, dear; you look sweet in anything; but at a big dance like this, where there’ll be so many smart people, they might think—well, I don’t know, dear, but it is very quiet, isn’t it?”

The moment before April had been happy and excited, and now she was crushed and humiliated. She sat down on the edge of a chair, gazing with pathetic pity at her brilliant shoes.

“You’ve spoilt it all,” she said.

“No, dear. I’m sure you’ll be thankful to me when you get there. Now, why don’t you run upstairs and put on that nice mauve frock of yours?”

April shook her shoulders.

“I don’t like mauve.”

“Well then, dear, there’s the green and yellow; you always look nice in that.”

It was a bright affair that her mother had seen at a sale in Brixton and bought at once because it was so cheap. It had never really suited April, whose delicate features needed a simple setting; but her mother did not like to feel that she had made a mistake, and having persuaded herself that the green and yellow was the right color, and matched her daughter’s eyes, had insisted on April’s wearing it as often as possible.

“Yes, my dear, the green and yellow. I’m sure I’m right. Now hurry up; the cab will be here in ten minutes.”

April walked upstairs slowly. She hated that green and yellow; she always had hated it. She took it down from the wardrobe and, holding the ends of the sleeves, stretched out her arms on either side so that the green and yellow dress covered her completely, and then she stood looking at it in the glass.

How blatant, how decorative it was, with its bows and ribbons and slashed sleeves. There were some girls whom it would suit—big girls with high complexions and full figures. But it wasn’t her dress; it spoilt her. She let it slip from her fingers; it fell rustling to the floor, and once again the glass reflected her in a plain white frock, and once again she tossed back her head, and once again the slow smile of satisfaction played across her lips. And as she stood there with outstretched arms, for one inspired moment of revelation, during which the beating of her heart was stilled, she saw how beautiful she would one day be to the man for whom with such a gesture she would be delivered to his love. A deep flush colored her neck and face, a flush of triumphant pride, of wakening womanhood. Then with a quick, impatient movement of her scarlet shoes she kicked the yellow dress away from her.

Why should she wear it? She dressed to please herself and not her mother. She knew best what suited her. What would happen if she disobeyed her? Would anyone ever know? She could manage to slip out when no one was looking. Annie would be sent to fetch her, but they would come back after everyone had gone to bed.

She sat on the edge of her bed and toyed with the thought of rebellion. It would be horribly exciting. It would be the naughtiest thing she had done in her life. She had never yet disobeyed deliberately anyone who had authority over her. She had lost her temper in the nursery; she had been insolent to her nurses; she had pretended not to hear when she had been called; but never this: never had she sat down and decided in cold blood to disregard authority.

There was a knock at the door.

“Yes. Who’s that?”

“It’s only me—mother. Can I help you, dear?”

“No, thank you, mother; I’m all right.”

“Quite sure?”

“Quite.”

April heard her mother slowly descend the stairs, then heaved a sigh of half-proud, half-guilty relief. She was glad she had managed to get out of it without actually telling a lie. She sat still and waited, till at last she heard the crunch of a cab drawing up outside the house. She wrapped herself tightly in her coat, tiptoed to the door, opened it and listened. She could hear her mother’s voice in the passage. Quietly she stole out on to the landing, quietly ran downstairs and across the hall, fumbled for the door handle, found it, turned it, and pulled it quickly behind her. It was done; she was free. As she ran down the steps she heard a window open behind her and her mother’s voice:

“Who’s that? What is it? Oh, you, April. You might have come to see me before you went. A happy evening to you.”

April could not trust herself to speak; she ran down the steps, jumped into the cab and sank back into the corner of the cushioned seat. Her breath came quickly and unevenly, her breasts heaved and fell. She could have almost cried with excitement.

It had been worth it, though. She knew that beyond doubt a quarter of an hour later, when she walked into the ballroom and saw the look of sudden admiration that came into Roland’s eyes when he saw her for the first time across the room. He came straight over to her.

“How many dances may I have?” he asked.

“Well, there’s No. 11.”

“No. 11? Let me have a look at your card.”

“No, of course you mustn’t.”

“Yes, of course. Why, I don’t believe you have got one!”

“Yes, I have,” she said, and held it up to him. In a second it was in his hand, as indeed she had intended that it should be.

“Well, now,” said Roland, “as far as I can see you’ve got only Nos. 6, 7, 14 and 15 engaged; that leaves fourteen for me.”

“Well, you can have the four,” she laughed.

In the end she gave him six. “And if I’ve any over you shall have them,” she promised.

“Well you know there won’t be,” and their eyes met in a moment of quiet intimacy.

As soon as he had gone other partners crowded round her. In a very short while her program was filled right up, the five extras as well. She had left No. 17 vacant; it was the last waltz. She felt that she might like Roland to have it, but was not sure. She didn’t quite know why, but she felt she would leave it open.

It was a splendid dance. As the evening passed, her face flushed and her eyes brightened, and it was delightful to slip from the heat of the ballroom on to the wide balcony and feel the cool of the air on her bare arms. She danced once with Ralph, and as they sat out afterwards she could almost feel the touch of his eyes on her. Poor Ralph; he was so clumsy. How absurd it was of him to be in love with her. As if she could ever care for him. She felt no pity. She accepted his admiration as a queen accepts a subject’s loyalty; it was the right due to her beauty, to the eager flow of life that sustained her on this night of triumph.

And every dance with Roland seemed to bring her nearer to the wonderful moment to which she had so long looked forward. When she was dancing with Ralph, Roland’s eyes would follow her all round the room, smiling when they met hers. And when they danced together they seemed to share a secret with one another, a secret still unrevealed.

Through the languid ecstasy of a waltz the words that he murmured into her ear had no relation with their accepted sense. He was not repeating a piece of trivial gossip, a pun, a story he had heard at school; he was wooing her in their own way, in their own time. And afterwards as they sat on the edge of the balcony, looking out over the roofs and the lights of London, she began to tell him about her dress and the trouble that she had had with her mother. “She said I ought to wear a horrid thing with yellow and green stripes that doesn’t suit me in the least. And I wouldn’t. I stole out of the house when she wasn’t looking.”

“You look wonderful to-night,” he said.

He leaned forward and their hands touched; his little finger intertwined itself round hers. She felt his warm breath upon her face.

“Do I?” she whispered. “It’s all for you.”

In another moment he would have taken her in his arms and kissed her, and she would have responded naturally. They had reached that moment to which the course of the courtship had tended, that point when a kiss is involuntary, that point that can never come again. But just as his hands stretched out to her the band struck up; he rested his hand on hers and pressed it.

“We shall have to go,” he whispered.

“Yes.”

“But the next but one.”

“No. 16.”

But the magic of that one moment had passed; they had left behind them the possibility of spontaneous action. They were no longer part of the natural rhythm of their courtship. All through the next dance he kept saying to himself: “I shall have to kiss her the next time. I shall. I know I shall. I must pull myself together.” He felt puzzled, frightened and excited, so that when the time came he was both nervous and self-conscious. The magic had gone, yet each felt that something was expected of them. Roland tried to pull himself together; to remind himself that if he didn’t kiss her now she would never forgive him; that there was nothing in it; that he had kissed Dolly a hundred times and thought nothing of it. But it was not the same thing; that was shallow and trivial; this was genuine; real emotion was at stake. He did not know what to do. As they sat out after the dance he tried to make a bet with himself, to say, “I’ll count ten and then I’ll do it.” He stretched out his hand to hers, and it lay in his limp and uninspired.

“April,” he whispered, “April.”

She turned her head from him. He leaned forward, hesitated for a moment, then kissed her awkwardly upon the neck. She did not move. He felt he must do something. He put his arm round her, trying to turn her face to his, but she pulled away from him. He tried to kiss her, and his chin scratched the soft skin of her cheek, his nose struck hers, her mouth half opened, and her teeth jarred against his lips. It was a failure, a dismal failure.

She pushed him away angrily.

“Go away! go away!” she said. “What are you doing? What do you mean by it? I hate you; go away!”

All the excitement of the evening turned into violent hatred; she was half hysterical. She had been worked up to a point, and had been let down. She was not angry with him because he had tried to kiss her, but because he had chosen the wrong moment, because he had failed to move her.

“But, April, I’m sorry, April.”

“Oh, go away; leave me alone, leave me alone.”

“But, April.” He put his hand upon her arm, and she swung round upon him fiercely.

“Didn’t I tell you I wanted to be left alone? I don’t know how you dared. Do leave me.”

She walked quickly past him into the ballroom, and seeing Ralph at the far end of it went up and asked him, to that young gentleman’s exhilarated amazement, whether he was free for No. 17, and if he was whether he would like to dance it with her. She wore a brave smile through the rest of the evening and danced all her five extras.

But when she was home again, had climbed the silent stairs, and turning up the light in her bedroom saw, lying on the floor, the discarded green and yellow dress, she broke down, and flinging herself upon the bed sobbed long and bitterly. She was not angry with Roland, nor her mother, nor even with herself, but with life, with that cruel force that had filled her with such eager, boundless expectation, only in the end to fling her down, to trample on her happiness, to mock her disenchantment. Never as long as she lived would she forget the shame, the unspeakable shame, and degradation of that evening.

CHAPTER V
A POTENTIAL DIPLOMAT

ROLAND returned to school with the uncomfortable feeling that he had not made the most of his holidays. He had failed with April; he had not been on the best of terms with Ralph; and he had found the last week or so—after the Saundersons’ dance—a little tedious. He was never sorry to go back to school; on this occasion he was positively glad.

In many ways the Easter term was the best of the three; it was agreeably short; there were the house matches, the steeplechases, the sports and then, at the end of it, spring; those wonderful mornings at the end of March when one awoke to see the courts vivid with sunshine, the lindens trembling on the verge of green; when one thought of the summer and cricket and bathing and the long, cool evenings. And as Howard had now left, there was nothing to molest his enjoyment of these good things.

He decided, after careful deliberation, to keep it up with Dolly. There had been moments during the holidays when he had sworn to break with her; it would be quite easy now that Howard had left. And often during an afternoon in April’s company the idea of embracing Dolly had been repulsive to him. But he had been piqued by April’s behavior at the dance, and his conduct was not ordered by a carefully-thought-out code of morals. He responded to the atmosphere of the moment; his emotion, while the moment that inspired it lasted, was sincere.

And so every Sunday afternoon he used to bicycle out towards Yeovil and meet Dolly on the edge of a little wood. They would wheel their machines inside and sit together in the shelter of the hedge. They did not talk much; there was not much for them to discuss. But she would take off her hat and lean her head against his shoulder and let him kiss her as much as he wanted. She was not responsive, but then Roland hardly expected it. His small experience of the one-sided romances of school life had led him to believe that love was a thing of male desire and gracious, womanly compliance. He never thought that anyone would want to kiss him. He would look at his reflection in the glass and marvel at the inelegance of his features—an ordinary face with ordinary eyes, ordinary nose, ordinary mouth. Of his hair certainly he was proud; it was a triumph. But he doubted whether Dolly appreciated the care with which he had trained it to lie back from his forehead in one immaculate wave. She had, indeed, asked him to give up brilliantine.

“It’s so hard and smarmy,” she complained; “I can’t run my fingers through it.”

The one good point about him was certainly lost on Dolly. He wondered whether April liked it. April and Dolly! It was hard to think of the two together. What would April say if she were to hear about Dolly? It was the theme Ralph was always driving at him like a nail, with heavy, ponderous blows. An interesting point. What would April say? He considered the question, not as a possible criticism of his own conduct, but as the material for an intriguing, dramatic situation. It would be hard to make her see the difference. “I’m a girl and she’s a girl and you want to kiss us both.” That was how she would look at it, probably—so illogical. One might as well say that water was the same thing and had the same effect as champagne. Ridiculous! But it would be hard to make April see it.

And there was a difference, big difference; he felt it before a fortnight of the new term had passed. In spite of the kisses he was never moved by Dolly’s presence as he was by April’s. His blood was calm—calmer, far calmer, than it had been last term. He never felt now that excitement, that dryness of the throat that used to assail him in morning chapel towards the end of the Litany. Something had passed, and it was not solely April, though, no doubt, she had formed a standard in his mind and had her share in this disenchantment. It was more than that. In a subtle way, although he had hardly exchanged a dozen words with her in his life, he missed Betty. He had enjoyed more than he had realized at the time those moments of meeting and parting, when the four of them had stood together, awkward, embarrassed, waiting for someone to suggest a separation. It had always been Betty who had done it, with a toss of her head: “Come on, Dolly, time to be getting on”; or else: “Now, then, Dolly, isn’t it time you were taking your Roland away with you?” And what a provocative, infinitely suggestive charm that slow smile of hers had held for him. The thrill of it had borne him triumphantly over the preliminaries of courtship. He missed it now, and often he found himself talking of her to Dolly.

“Did she really like Howard?” he asked her once.

“Yes, I think so; in fact, I know she did. Though I couldn’t see what she saw in him myself. I suppose there was something about him. She misses him quite a lot, so she says.”

This statement Roland considered an excellent cue for an exchange of gallantries.

“But wouldn’t you miss me if I went?”

Dolly, however, was greatly interested in her own subject.

“Yes,” she went on, “she seems really worried. Only the other day she said to me: ‘Dolly, I can’t get on without that boy. There’s nothing to look forward to of a Sunday now, and I get so tired of my work.’ And when I said to her: ‘But, my dear Betty, there’s hundreds more fish in the sea. What about young Rogers at the post office?’ she answers: ‘Oh, him! my boy’s spoilt me for all that. I can’t bear the sight of young Rogers any more.’ Funny, isn’t it?”

Roland agreed with her. To him it was amazing.

“Well,” Dolly went on, “I saw quite clearly that there was nothing for it but that she must get hold of another young chap like your friend. And I asked her if there was anyone else up at the school she fancied, and she said, yes, there was; a boy she’s seen you talking to once or twice; a young, fair-haired fellow with a blue and yellow hat ribbon. That’s the best I can do. Is that any help to you? Would you know him?”

A blue and yellow hat ribbon limited the selection to members of the School XI., and there was only one old color who answered to that description—Brewster in Carus Evans’.

“Oh, yes, I know him.”

“Well, now, don’t you think you could arrange it? Do, for my sake.”

“But I don’t know him well enough. I don’t see how I could.”

“Oh, yes, you do. Haven’t I seen you talking together, and he would be only too pleased. I am sure he would. Betty’s such a nice girl. Now, do try.”

Roland promised that he would do his best, though it was not a job he particularly fancied. Brewster was the youngest member of the XI. He had been playing on lower side games all the season without attracting any attention and had then surprised everyone by making a century in an important house match. He was immediately transplanted to the first, and though he played in only two matches he was considered to have earned his colors. He was not, however, in any sense of the word a blood. He was hardly known by men of Roland’s standing in other houses. He was low in form and not particularly brilliant at football. Roland knew next to nothing about him. Still it was a fascinating situation—a girl like Betty, who must be a good three years older than Dolly, getting keen on such a kid. Was she in love, he wondered. He had never met anyone who had enjoyed the privilege of having a girl in love with him. For towards the end he had believed very little of all that Howard had told him. This was distinctly an intriguing affair. And so he set himself to his task.

The difficulty, of course, was to find the auspicious moment. He hardly ever saw Brewster except when there were a lot of other people about, and he didn’t want to ask him across to his study. People would talk; and, besides, it would not do to spring this business on him suddenly. He would have to lead up to it carefully. For a whole week he sought, unsuccessfully, for an opportunity, and on the Sunday he had to confess to Dolly that he was no nearer the attainment of her friend’s desires.

“It’s not as easy as you seem to think it is. We are not in the same house, we are not in the same form, and we don’t play footer on the same ground. In fact, except that we happen to be in the same school——”

“Now! now! now! Haven’t I seen you talking to him alone twice before I even mentioned him to you? And if you could be alone with him then, when you had no particular reason to, surely you can manage to be now, when you have.”

“But, my dear Dolly——”

“There’ve not got to be any buts. Either you bring along your friend or it’s all over between us.”

It was not a very serious threat, and at any other stage of their relationship Roland, considering the bother that the affair involved, might have been glad enough to accept it as an excuse for his dismissal. But he had determined to bring this thing off. He thought of Betty, large, black-haired, bright-eyed, highly colored, her full lips moistened by the red tongue that slipped continually between them, and Brewster, fair-haired and slim and shy. It would be amusing to see what they would make of one another. He would carry the business through, and as a reward for this determination luck, two days later, came his way. He drew Brewster in the second round of the Open Fives.

On the first wet day they played it off, and as Roland was a poor performer and Brewster a tolerably efficient one the game ended in under half an hour. They had, therefore, the whole afternoon before them, and Roland suggested that as soon as they had changed they should have tea together in his study.

For Roland it was an exciting afternoon; he was playing, for the first time in his life, the part of a diplomat. He had read a good many novels in which the motive was introduced, but there it had been a very different matter. The stage had been set skillfully; each knew the other’s thoughts without being sure of his intention; there was a rapier duel of thrust and parry. But here the stage was set for nothing in particular. Brewster was unaware of dramatic tension; his main idea was to eat as much as possible.

With infinite care Roland led the conversation to a discussion of the mentality of women. He enlarged on a favorite theme of his—the fact that girls often fell in love with really ugly men. “I can’t understand it,” he said. “Girls are such delicate, refined creatures. They want the right colored curtains in their bedrooms and the right colored cushion for their sofas; they spend hours discussing the right shade of ribbon for their hair, and then they go and fall in love with a ridiculous-looking man. Look at Morgan, now. He’s plain and he’s bald and he’s got an absurd, stubby mustache, and yet his wife is frightfully pretty, and she seems really keen on him. I don’t understand it.”

Brewster agreed that it was curious, and helped himself to another cake.

“I suppose,” said Roland, “that a fellow like you knows a good deal about girls?”

Brewster shook his head. The subject presented few attractions to him.

“No,” he said, “I don’t really know anything at all about them. I haven’t got a sister.”

“But you don’t learn about girls from your sister.”

“Perhaps not. But if you haven’t got a sister you don’t run much chance of seeing anyone else’s. We don’t know any decent ones. A few of my friends have sisters, but they seem pretty fair asses. I keep out of their way.”

“That’s rather funny, you know, because you’re the sort of fellow that girls run after.”

As Roland had been discussing for some time the ugliness of the type of man that appealed most to girls, this was hardly a compliment. Brewster did not notice it, however. Indeed, he evinced no great interest in the conversation. He was enjoying his tea.

“Oh, I don’t think I am,” he said. “At any rate none of them have run after me, so far.”

“That’s all you know,” said Roland, and his voice assumed a tone that made Brewster look up quickly.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Well, I know someone who is doing their best to.”

Brewster flushed; the hand that was carrying a cream cake to his mouth paused in mid air.

“A girl! Who?”

“That’s asking.”

Roland had at last succeeded in arousing Brewster’s curiosity, and he was wise enough to refrain from satisfying it at once. If he were to tell him that a girl down town had wanted to go for a walk with him, Brewster would have laughed and probably thought no more about it. He would have to fan his interest till Brewster’s imagination had had time to play upon the idea.

“She’s very pretty,” Roland said, “and she asked me who you were. She was awfully keen to meet you, but I told her that it was no good and that you wouldn’t care for that sort of thing. She was very disappointed.”

“Yes, but who is she?”

“I’m not going to tell you that. Why should I give her away?”

“Oh, but do tell me.”

Roland was firm.

“No; I’m jolly well not going to. It’s her secret. You don’t want to meet her, do you?”

“No,” Brewster grudgingly admitted; “but I’d like to know.”

“I daresay you would, but I’m not going to give away a confidence. Suppose you told me that you were keen on a girl and that you’d heard she wouldn’t have anything to do with anyone, you wouldn’t like me to go and tell her who you were, would you?” “No.”

“Of course you wouldn’t. That’s the sort of thing one keeps to oneself.”

“Yes; but as I shall never see her——”

Roland adopted in reply the stern tone of admonition, “Of course not; but if I told you, you’d take jolly good care that you did see her, and then you’d tell someone else. You’d point her out and say, ‘That girl wanted me to come out for a walk with her.’ You know you would, and of course the other fellow would promise not to tell anyone and of course he would. It would be round the whole place in a week, and think how the poor girl would feel being laughed at by everyone because a fellow that was four years younger than herself wouldn’t have anything to do with her.”

“What! Four years older than me?”

“About that.”

“And she’s pretty, you say?”

“Jolly.”

There was a pause.

“You know, Whately,” he began, “I’d rather ...” then broke off. “Oh, look here, do tell me.”

Roland shook his head.

“I don’t give away secrets.”

“But why did you tell me anything about it at all?”

“I don’t know; it just cropped up, didn’t it? I thought it might amuse you.”

“Well, I think it’s rotten of you. I shan’t be able to think of anything else until I know.”

Which was, of course, exactly what Roland wanted. He knew how Brewster’s imagination would play with the idea. Betty would become for him strange, wistful, passionate. Four years older than himself he would picture her as the Lilith of old, the eternal temptress. In herself she was nothing. If he had met her in the streets two days earlier he would have hardly noticed her. “A pleasant, country girl,” he would have said, and let her pass out of his thoughts. But now the imagination that colors all things would make her irresistible, and when he met her she would be identified with his dream.

Next morning Brewster ran across to him during break.

“I say, Whately, do tell me who she is.”

“No; I told you I wasn’t going to.”

“Well, then. Oh, look here! Is it Dorothy Jones?” Dorothy Jones was the daughter of the owner of a cycle shop and was much admired in the school.

“Would you like it to be?” Roland asked.

“I don’t know. Perhaps. But is it, though?”

“Perhaps.”

“It is Dorothy Jones, isn’t it? It is her?”

“If you know, why do you ask me?”

“Oh, don’t be a fool! Is it Dorothy Jones?”

“Perhaps.”

“Well, if it isn’t her, is it Mary Gardiner?”

“It is Mary Gardiner,” Roland mocked. “It is she, isn’t it?”

“Oh, you’re awful,” said Brewster, and walked away.

But that evening he came over to the School house studies and, just before Hall, a small boy ran across to the reading-room to tell Roland that Brewster was waiting in the cloisters and would like to speak to him.

“Well,” said Roland, “and what is it?”

“It’s about the girl.”

Roland affected a weary impatience.

“Oh, Lord, but I thought we’d finished with all that. I told you that I wasn’t going to give her away.”

“Yes, I know; but ... ah, well, look here, I must know who the girl is. No, don’t interrupt. Will you tell me if I promise to come out with her once?” Roland thought for a moment. He had his man now, but it would not do to hurry things. He must play for safety a little longer.

“Oh, yes, I know that game,” he said. “I shall tell you her name and then you’ll wish you hadn’t promised and you’ll get frightened, and when the time comes you will have sprained an ankle in a house match and won’t be able to come for a walk. That won’t do at all.”

“But I swear I wouldn’t do that,” Brewster protested. “Really, I wouldn’t.”

“Yes, and I promised that I wasn’t going to tell.”

“But that’s so silly. Suppose now that I was really keen on her. For all you know, or I, for that matter, I may have seen her walking about the town and thought her jolly pretty without knowing who she was.”

“And I’m damned certain you haven’t. You told me that you didn’t take any interest in girls.”

“No, but really, honest, man, I may have seen her. Only this morning as I was going down to Fort’s after breakfast I saw an absolutely ripping girl, and I believe it was me she smiled at. It’s very likely her.”

“Yes, yes, I daresay, but——”

“Oh, come on, do tell me, and I promise you I’ll come and see her; honest, I will.”

But at that moment the roll-bell issued its cracked summons.

“If you don’t run like sin you’ll be late for roll-call, and that’ll finish everything,” Roland said, and Brewster turned and sprinted across the courts.

Roland walked back to his study in a mood of deep self-satisfaction. He was carrying an extremely difficult job to a triumphant close. It did not occur to him that the role he filled was not a particularly noble one and that an unpleasantly worded label could be discovered for it. He was living in the days of unreflecting action. He did, or refrained from doing, the things he wanted to do, without a minute analysis of motive, but in accordance with a definite code of rules. He lived his life as he played cricket. There were rewards and there were penalties. If you hit across a straight long hop you ran a chance of being leg before, and if the ball hit your pad you went straight back to the pavilion. You played to win, but you played the game, provided that you played it according to the rules. It did not matter to Roland what the game was. And the affair of Betty and Brewster was a game that he was winning fairly and squarely.

Next morning he achieved victory. He met Brewster during break and presented his ultimatum.

“I won’t tell you her name,” he said. “I promised not to. It wouldn’t be the game. But I tell you what I will do, though. If you’ll promise to come out for a walk with me on Sunday I’ll arrange for her to meet us somewhere, and then you can see what you think of each other. Now, what do you say to that?”

Brewster’s curiosity was so roused that he accepted eagerly, and next Sunday they set out together towards Cold Harbour.

About a mile and a half from the school a sunken lane ran down the side of a steep hill towards the railway. The lane could be approached from two sides, and from the shelter of a thick hedge it was possible to observe the whole country-side without being seen. It was here that they had arranged their meeting.

They found the two girls waiting when they arrived. Betty looked very smart in a dark blue coat and skirt and a small hat that fitted tightly over her head. She smiled at Roland, and the sight, after months, of her fresh-colored face, with its bright eyes and wide, moist mouth, sent a sudden thrill through him—half fear, half excitement.

“So you’ve managed to arrange it,” said Dolly. “How clever of you.”

“Very nice of him to come,” said Betty, her eyes fixed on Brewster, who stood awkwardly, his hands in his pockets, kicking one heel against the other.

For a few minutes they talked together, stupid, inconsequent badinage, punctuated by giggles, till Betty, as usual, reminded them that they would only have an hour together.

“About time we paired off, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” said Roland. “Come along, Dolly,” and they began to walk down the lane. At the corner they turned and saw the other two standing together—Betty, taller, confident and all-powerful; Brewster, looking up at her, scared and timid, his hands clasped behind him.

“He looks a bit shy, doesn’t he?” said Dolly.

Roland laughed.

“He won’t be for long, I expect.”

“Rather not. He’ll soon get used to her. Betty doesn’t let her boys stop shy with her for long. She makes them do as she wants them.”

And when they returned an hour later they saw the two sitting side by side chatting happily. But as soon as they reached them Brewster became silent and shy, and looked neither of them in the face.

“Had a good time?” asked Dolly.

“Ask him,” she answered.

And they laughed, all except Brewster, and made arrangements to meet again, only a little earlier the next week.

“Well,” said Roland, as soon as they were out of earshot, “and how did you enjoy yourself?”

Brewster admitted that it had been pretty good.

“Only pretty good?”

“Well, I don’t know,” he said, “it was all right. Yes, it was ripping, really; but it was so different from what I had expected.”

“How do you mean?”

“Oh, well, you know. I felt so awkward; she started everything. I didn’t have any say in it at all. I had thought it was up to me to do all that.”

“Betty’s not that sort.”

“No, but it’s a funny business.”

“You are coming out next week, though?”

“Rather!”

And next week Dolly, as soon as she was alone with Roland, began to ask him questions about Brewster: “What did he say to you? What did he think of her? Was she nice to him? You must tell me all about it.”

“Oh, I think he enjoyed himself all right. She startled him a bit.”

“Did she? What did he say? Do tell me.”

She asked him question after question, and he had to repeat to her every word he could remember of Brewster’s conversation. Did he still feel shy? Did he think Betty beautiful? Was he at all in love with her? And then Roland began to ask what Betty had thought of Brewster. Had she preferred him to Howard? She wasn’t disappointed in him? Did she like him better than the other boys? They talked eagerly.

“Wouldn’t it be fun to go back and have a look at them?” said Dolly. “I’d give anything to see them together.”

Their eyes met, and suddenly, with a fervor they had never reached before, they kissed.

CHAPTER VI
APRIL’S LOOKING-GLASS

FOR April the term which brought Roland so much excitement was slow in passing. In spite of the disastrous evening at the ball, Roland’s return to school left a void in her life. When she awoke in the morning and stretched herself in bed before getting up she would ask herself what good thing she could expect that day to bring her. When she felt happy she would demand the reason of herself. “Over what are you happy?” she would ask herself. “In five minutes’ time you will get up. You will put on your dressing-gown and hurry down the corridor to the bathroom. You will dress hurriedly, but come down all the same a little late for breakfast. You will find that your father has eaten, as is his wont, more than his share of toast, which will mean that you, being the last down, will have to go without it. You will rush down to school saying over to yourself the dates of your history lesson. You will hang your hat and coat on the fourth row of pegs and on the seventh peg from the right. From nine o’clock to ten you will be heard your history lesson. From ten o’clock till eleven you will take down notes on chemistry. From eleven to a quarter past there will be an interval during which you will try to find a friend to help you with the Latin translation, of which you prepared only the first thirty lines last night. From a quarter-past eleven till a quarter-past twelve you will be heard that lesson. At a quarter-past twelve you will attend a lecture on English literature, which will last till one o’clock. You will then have lunch, and as to-day is Tuesday you know that your lunch will consist of boiled mutton and caper sauce, followed by apple dumpling. In the afternoon you will have gymnastics and a music lesson, after which there will be an hour of Mademoiselle’s French conversation class. You will then come home. You will hurry your tea in the hope of being able to finish your preparation before your father comes back from the office at twenty minutes to seven, because when once he is back your mother will begin to talk, and when she begins to talk work becomes impossible. You will then dine with your parents at half-past seven. You will sit perfectly quiet at the table and not say a word, while your mother talks and talks and father listens and occasionally says, ‘Yes, mother,’ or ‘No, mother.’ After dinner you will read a book in the drawing-room till your mother reminds you that it is nine o’clock and time that you were in bed. You have, in fact, before you a day similar in every detail to yesterday, and similar in every detail to to-morrow. If you think anything different is going to happen to you, then you are a little fool.” And April would have to confess that this self-catechism was true. “Nothing happens,” she would say. “One day is like another, and I am a little fool to wake up in the morning excited about nothing at all.”

But all the same she was excited and she did feel, in spite of reason, that something was bound to happen soon. “Things cannot go on like this for ever,” she told herself. And, looking into the future, she came gradually to look upon the day of Roland’s return from school as the event which would alter, in a way she could not discern, the whole tenor of her life. It was not in these words that the idea was presented to her. “It may be different during the holidays when Roland is here.” That was her first thought, from which the words “when Roland is here” detached themselves, starting another train of thought, that “Life when Roland is here is always different”; and she began to look forward to the holidays, counting the days till his return. “Things will be different then.”

It was not love, it was not friendship; it was simply the belief that Roland’s presence would be a key to that world other than this, of which shadowy intimations haunted her continually. Roland became the focus for her disquiet, her longing, her vague appreciation of the eternal essence made manifest for her in the passing phenomena of life.

“When Roland comes back....” And though she marked on the calendar that hung in her bedroom April 2, the last day of her own term, with a big red cross, it was April 5 that she regarded as the real beginning of her holidays. And when she came down to breakfast and her father said to her, “Only seven more days now, April,” she would answer gayly, “Yes, only a week. Isn’t it lovely?” But to herself she would add, “Ten days, only ten days more!”

And so she missed altogether the usual last day excitement. She did not wake on that first morning happy with the delicious thought that she could lie in bed for an extra ten minutes if she liked. She had not yet begun her holidays.

But two days later she was in a fever of expectation. In twenty-four hours’ time Roland would be home. How slowly the day passed. In the evening she said she was tired and went to bed before dinner, so that the next day might come quickly for her. But when she got to bed she found that she could not sleep, and though she repeated the word “abracadabra” many hundred times and counted innumerable sheep passing through innumerable gates, she lay awake till after midnight, hearing hour after hour strike. And when at last sleep came to her it was light and fitful and she awoke often.

Next day she did not know what to do with herself. She tried to read and could not. She tried to sew and could not. She ran up and down stairs on trifling errands in order to pass the time. In vain she tried to calm herself. “What are you getting so excited about? What do you think is going to happen? What can happen? The most that can happen is that he will come round with his father in the evening, and you know well enough by now what that will mean. Your mother will talk and his father will say, ‘Yes, Mrs. Curtis,’ and ‘Really, Mrs. Curtis,’ and you and Roland will hardly exchange a word with one another. You are absurdly excited over nothing.”

But logic was of no avail, and all the afternoon she fidgeted with impatience. By tea-time she was in a state of repressed hysteria. She sat in the window-seat looking down the road in the direction from which he would have to come. “I wonder if he will come without his father. It would be so dear of him if he would, but I don’t suppose he will. No, of course he won’t. It’s silly of me to think of it. He’ll have to wait for his father; he always does. That means he won’t be here at the earliest till after six. And it’s only ten minutes to five now.”

And to make things worse, seldom had she found her mother more annoying.

“Now, why don’t you go for a walk, April, dear?” she said. “It’s such a lovely evening and you’ve been indoors nearly all day. It isn’t good, and I was saying to your father only the other day, ‘Father, dear, I’m sure April isn’t up to the mark. She looks so pale nowadays.’”

“I’m all right, mother.”

“No, but are you, dear? You’re looking really pale. I’m sure I ought to ask Dr. Dunkin to come and see you.”

“But I’m all right—really, I’m all right, mother. I know when anything is wrong with me.”

“But you don’t, April, dear. That’s just the point. Don’t you remember that time when you insisted on going to the tennis party and assured us that you were quite well, and when you came back we found you had a temperature of 101° and that you were sickening for measles? I was saying to Dr. Dunkin only this morning: ‘Dr. Dunkin, I’m really not satisfied about our little April. I think I shall have to ask you to give her a tonic’; and he said to me: ‘Yes, that’s right, Mrs. Curtis; you bring me along to her and I’ll set her straight.’”

April put her hands up to her head and tried not to listen, but her mother’s voice flowed on:

“And now, dear, do go out for a walk—just a little one.”

“But, mother, dear, I don’t want to, really, and I’m feeling so tired.”

“There, what did I say? You’re feeling tired and you’ve done nothing all day. There must be something wrong with you. I shall certainly ask Dr. Dunkin to come and see you to-morrow.”

“Oh, yes, yes, yes, mother. I’ll do anything you like to-morrow. If you’ll only leave me alone to-night.”

But Mrs. Curtis went on talking, and April grew more and more exasperated, and the minutes went past and Roland did not come. Six struck and half-past six, and a few minutes later she heard her father’s latch-key in the door. And then the whole question of her health was dragged out again.

“I was saying to you only yesterday, father, that our little April wasn’t as well as she ought to be. She has overworked, I think. Last night she went to bed early and to-day she looks quite pale, and she says that she feels tired although she hasn’t really done anything. I must send for Dr. Dunkin to-morrow.”

It seemed to April that the voice would never stop. It beat and beat upon her brain, like the ticking of the watch that reminded her of the flying moments. “He won’t come now,” she said; “he won’t come now.” Seven o’clock had struck, the lamps were lit, evening had descended upon the street. He had never come as late as this before. But she still sat at the window, gazing down the street towards the figures that became distinct for a moment in the lamplight. “He will not come now,” she said, and suddenly she felt limp, tired, incapable of resistance. She put her head upon her knees and began to sob.

In a moment her mother’s arms were round her. “But, darling, what is it, April, dear?”

She could not speak. She shook her head, tried desperately to make a sign that she was all right, that she would rather be left alone; but it was no use. She felt too bitterly the need for human sympathy. She turned, flung her arms about her mother’s neck, and began to sob and sob.

“Oh, mother, mother,” she cried. “I’m so miserable. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.”

Next morning Dr. Dunkin felt her pulse, prescribed a tonic and told her not to stay too much indoors.

“Now, you’ll be all right, dear,” her mother said. “Dr. Dunkin’s medicines are splendid.”

April smiled quietly. “Yes, I expect that was what was wanted. I think I worked a little too hard last term.”

“I’m sure you did, my dear. I shall write to Mrs. Clarke about it. I can’t have my little girl getting run down.”

And that afternoon April met Roland in the High Street. It was the first time that she had seen him alone since the evening of the dance, and she found him awkward and embarrassed. They said a few things of no importance—about the holidays, the weather and their acquaintances. Then April said that she must be going home, and Roland made no effort to detain her—did not even make any suggestion about coming round to see her.

“So that is what you have been looking forward to for over a month,” she said to herself, as he passed out of sight behind an angle of the road. “This is the date you wanted to mark upon your calendar with a red cross. Little fool. What did you think you were doing? And what has it turned out to be in the end? Five minutes’ discussion of indifferent things. A fine event to make such a fuss about; and what else did you expect?”

She was not bitter. It was one of those mild days that in early spring surprise us with a promise of summer, on which the heart is stirred with the crowded glory of life and the sense of widening horizons. The long stretch of roofs and chimney stacks became beautiful in the subdued sunlight. It was an hour that in the strong might have quickened the hunger for adventure, but that to April brought a mood of chastened, quiet resignation. She appreciated, as she had not done before, the tether by which her scope was measured. For the last month she had made Roland’s return a focus for the ambitions and desires and yearnings towards an intenser way of living, for which of herself she had been unable to find expression. This, in a confused manner, she understood. “I can do nothing by myself. I have to live in other people. And what I am now I shall be always. All my life I shall be dependent on someone else, or on some interest that is outside myself. And whether I am happy or unhappy depends upon some other person. That is my nature, and I cannot go beyond my nature.” When she reached home she sat for a long time in the window-seat, her hands folded in her lap. “This will be my whole life,” she said. “I am not of those who may go out in search of happiness.” And she thought that if romance did not come to her, she would remain all her life sitting at a window. “Of myself I can do nothing.”

CHAPTER VII
A SORRY BUSINESS

APRIL did not see very much of Roland during the holidays, and was not, on the whole, sorry. Now that the hysterical excitement over his return had passed, she judged it better to let their friendship lapse. She did not want any repetition of that disastrous evening, and thought that it would be easier to resume their friendship on its old basis after the long interval of the summer term. Roland was still a little piqued by what he considered her absurd behavior, and had resolved to let the first step come from her.

This estrangement was a disappointment to his people.

“Have you noticed, my dear, that Roland’s hardly been round to the Curtises’ at all these holidays?” Mr. Whately said to his wife one evening. “I hope there has not been a row or anything. I rather wish you’d try and find out.”

And so next day Mrs. Whately made a guarded remark to her son about April’s appearance: “What a big girl she’s getting. And she’s prettier every day. If you’re not careful you’ll have all the boys in the place running after her and cutting you out.”

Roland answered in an off-hand manner, “They can for all I care, mother.”

“Oh, but, Roland, you shouldn’t say that; I thought you were getting on so well together last holidays. We were even saying——”

But Roland never allowed himself to be forced into a confidence.

“Oh, please, mother, don’t. There was nothing in it; really, there wasn’t.”

“You haven’t had a row, have you, Roland?”

“Of course not, mother. What should we have a row about?”

“I don’t know, dear. I only thought——”

“Well, you needn’t worry about us, mother; we’re all right.”

Roland was by no means pleased at what seemed to him a distinct case of interference. It arrived, too, at a most inopportune moment, for he had been just then wondering whether he ought not to forget about his high-minded resolves and try to make it up with April. His mother’s inquiries, however, decided him. He was not going to have others arranging that sort of thing for him. “And for all I know,” he said to himself, “Mrs. Curtis may be at the back of this. I shan’t go round there again these holidays.” And this was the more unfortunate, because if the intimacy between Roland and April had been resumed, it is more than likely that Roland, at the beginning of the summer term, would have decided to give up Dolly altogether. Both he and Brewster were a little tired of it; the first interest had passed, and they had actually discussed the wisdom of dropping the whole business.

“After all,” said Brewster, “it can’t go on forever. It’ll have to stop some time, and next term we shall both be fairly high in the school, house prefects and all that, and we shall have to be pretty careful what we do.”

Roland was inclined to agree with him, but his curiosity was still awake.

“It’s not so easy to break a thing like this. Let’s wait till the end of the term. The summer holidays are a long time, and by the time we come back they’ll very likely have picked up someone else.”

“All right,” said Brewster, “I don’t mind. And it does add an interest to things.”

And so the affair went on smoothly and comfortably, a pleasant interlude among the many good gifts of a summer term—cricket and swimming and the long, lazy evenings. Nothing, indeed, occurred to ruffle the complete happiness of Roland’s life, till one Monday morning during break Brewster came running across to the School house studies with the disastrous news that his house master had found out all about it. It had happened thus:

On the previous Saturday Roland had sent up a note in break altering the time of an appointment. It was the morning of a school match and Brewster received the note on his way down to the field. He was a little late, and as soon as he had read the note he shoved it into his pocket and thought no more about it. During the afternoon he slipped, trying to bring off a one-handed catch in the slips, and tore the knee of his trousers. The game ended late and he had only just time to change and take his trousers round to the matron to be mended before lock-up. In the right-hand pocket the matron discovered Roland’s note, and, judging its contents singular, placed it before Mr. Carus Evans.

As Roland walked back with Brewster from the tuckshop a small boy ran up to tell him that Mr. Carus Evans would like to see him directly after lunch.

Roland was quite calm as he walked up the hill three hours later. One is only frightened when one is uncertain of one’s fate. When a big row is on, in which one may possibly be implicated, one endures agonies, wondering whether or not one will be found out. But when it is settled, when one is found out, what is there to do? One must let things take their course; nothing can alter it. There is no need for fret or fever. Roland was able to consider his position with detached interest.

He had been a fool to send that note. Notes always got lost or dropped and the wrong people picked them up. How many fellows had not got themselves bunked that way, notes and confirmation? They were the two great menaces, the two hidden rocks. Probably confirmation was the more dangerous. On the whole, more fellows had got the sack through confirmation, but notes were not much better. What an ass he had been. He would never send a note again, never; he swore it to himself, and then reflected a little dismally that he might very likely never have the opportunity.

Still, that was rather a gloomy view to take. And he stood more chance with Carus Evans than he would have done with any other master. Carus Evans had always hated him, and because he hated him would be desperately anxious to treat him fairly. As a result he would be sure to underpunish him. It is always safer to have a big row with a master who dislikes you than with one who is your friend. And from this reflection Roland drew what comfort he might.

Mr. Carus Evans sat writing at his desk when Roland came in. He looked up and then went on with his letter. It was an attempt to make Roland feel uncomfortable and to place him at the start at a disadvantage. It was a characteristic action, for Carus Evans was a weak man. His house was probably the slackest in the school. It had no one in the XV., Brewster was its sole representative in the XI. and it did not possess one school prefect. This should not have been, for Carus Evans was a bachelor and all his energies were available. He had no second interest to attract him, but he was weak when he should have been strong; he chose the wrong prefects and placed too much confidence in them. He was not a natural leader.

For a good two minutes he went on writing, then put down his pen.

“Ah, yes, yes, Whately. Sit down, will you? Now then, I’ve been talking to one of the boys in my house and it seems that you and he have been going out together and meeting some girls in the town. Is that so?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the suggestion came from you, I gather?”

“Yes, sir.”

“This is a very serious thing, Whately. I suppose you realize that?”

“I suppose so, sir.”

“Of course it is, and especially so for a boy in your position. Now, I don’t know what attitude the headmaster will adopt, but of this I am quite certain. A great deal will depend on whether you tell me the truth. I shall know if you tell me a lie. You’ve got to tell me the whole story. Now, how did this thing start?”

“On the first night of the Christmas term, sir.”

“How?”

“I met them at a dance in the pageant grounds.”

“The pageant grounds are out of bounds. You ought to know that.”

“It was the first night, sir.”

“Don’t quibble with me. They’re out of bounds. Well, what happened next?”

“I danced with her, sir.”

“Were you alone?”

“No, sir.”

“Who was with you?”

“I can’t tell you, sir.”

“If you don’t tell me——”

“He’s left now, sir. It wouldn’t be fair.”

They looked each other in the face and in that moment Carus Evans realized that, in spite of their positions, Roland was the stronger.

“Oh, well, never mind that; we can leave it till later on. And I suppose you made an appointment?”

“No, sir.”

“What?”

“You asked me if I made an appointment, sir. I answered I didn’t.”

Roland was not going to give him the least assistance. Indeed, in the joy of being able to play once again the old game of baiting masters, that had delighted him so much when he had been in the middle school and that he had to abandon so reluctantly when he attained the dignity of the Fifths and Sixths, he had almost forgotten that he was in a singularly difficult situation. He would make “old Carus” ask him a question for every answer that he gave. And he saw that for the moment Carus had lost his length.

“Well, then, let me see. Yes, well—er—well, where did you meet her next?”

“In a lane beyond Cold Harbour, sir.”

“Did you go there alone?”

“No, sir.”

“You were with this other fellow?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what did you do?”

“Do, sir?”

“Yes, do. Didn’t you hear me?”

“Yes, sir, but, Do? I don’t quite understand you. What exactly do you mean by the word ‘do’?”

“You know perfectly well what I mean, Whately. You flirted, I suppose?”

“Yes, sir. I suppose that’s what I did do. I flirted.”

“I mean you held her hand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you kissed her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Disgusting! Simply disgusting! Is this place a heathen brothel or a Christian school?” Carus’ face was red, and he drove his fingers through the hair at the back of his neck. “You go out on a Sunday afternoon and kiss a shop-girl. What a hobby for a boy in the XV. and Sixth!” And he began to stamp backwards and forwards up and down the room.

This fine indignation did not, however, impress Roland in the least. Carus appeared to him to be less disgusted than interested—pruriently interested—and that he was angry with himself rather than with Roland, because he knew instinctively that he was not feeling as a master should feel when confronted with such a scandal. It was a forced emotion that was inspiring the fierce flow of words.

“Do you know what this sort of thing leads to?” he was saying. “But, of course, you do. I could trust you to know anything like that. Your whole life may be ruined by it.”

“But I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Perhaps you didn’t, not this time, though I’ve only your word for it; but you would have, sooner or later, under different conditions. There’s only one end to that sort of thing. And even if you were all right yourself, how did you know that Brewster was going to be? That’s the beastly part of it. That’s what sickens me with you. Your own life is your own to do what you like with, but you’ve no right to contaminate others. You encourage this young fellow to go about with a girl four years older than himself, about whom you know nothing. How could you tell what might be happening to him? He may not have your self-control. He’d never have started this game but for you, and now that he’s once begun he may be unable to break himself of it. You may have ruined his whole life, mayn’t you?”

Roland considered the question.

“I suppose so, but I didn’t look at it that way.”

“Of course, you didn’t. But it’s the results that count. That’s what you’ve got to keep in mind; actions are judged by their results. And now, what do you imagine is going to happen to you? I suppose you know that if I go across and report you to the headmaster that it’ll mean the next train back to London?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And if I did, you’d have no cause for complaint. It would be what you’d deserved, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

There was a pause. They looked at each other. Carus Evans hoped that he had frightened Roland, but he had not. Roland knew that Carus did not intend to get him expelled. He would not have talked like that if he had. He was trying to make Roland feel that he was conferring a favor on him in allowing him to stop on.

“There’s no reason why I should feel kindly disposed towards you,” Carus said. “We’ve never got on well together. You’ve worked badly in my form. I’ve never regarded you as a credit to the school. When you were a small boy you were rowdy and bumptious, and now that you have reached a position of authority you have become superior and conceited. There’s no reason why I, personally, should wish to see you remain a member of the school. As regards my own house, I cannot yet judge what harm you may have done me. You’ve started the poison here. Brewster will have told his friends. One bad apple will corrupt a cask. I don’t know what trouble you may have laid up for me.”

“No, sir.”

“But all the same, I know what it means to expel a boy. He’s a marked man for life. I’m going to give you another chance.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“But you’ve got to make this thing good first. You’ve got to go to the headmaster yourself and tell him all about it—now, at once. Do you see?”

“Yes, sir.”

It was going to be an awkward business, and Roland made no attempt to conceal it from himself. It was just on the half-hour as he walked across the courts. Afternoon school was beginning. Groups had collected round the classrooms, waiting for the master to let them in. Johnson waved to him from a study window and told him to hurry up and help them with the con.

“Don’t wait for me,” Roland called back. “I’ve got one or two things to do. I shall be a little late.”

“Slacker,” Johnson laughed.

It was funny to see the machine revolving so smoothly, with himself, to all outward appearance, a complacently efficient cog in it. He supposed that a criminal must feel like this when he watched people hurry past him in the streets; all of them so intent upon their own affairs and himself seemingly one with them, but actually so much apart.

He knocked at the headmaster’s door.

“Come in.”

The headmaster was surprised to see Roland at such an hour.

“Yes, Whately?” he said, and then appeared to remember something, and began to fumble among some papers on his desk. “One moment, Whately; I knew there was something I wanted to speak to you about. Ah, yes, here it is. Your essay on Milton. Will you just come over here a minute? I wanted to have a few words with you about it. Sit down, won’t you? Now, let me see, where is it? Ah, yes, here it is: now you say, ‘Milton was a Puritan in spite of himself. Satan is the hero of the poem.’ Now I want to be quite certain what you mean by that. I’m not going to say that you are wrong. But I want you to be quite certain in your own mind as to what you mean yourself.”

And Roland began to explain how Milton had let himself be carried away by his theme, that his nature was so impregnated by the sense of defeat that defeat seemed to him a nobler thing than victory. Satan had become the focus for his emotions on the overthrow of the Commonwealth.

“Yes, yes, I see that, but surely, Whately, the Commonwealth was the Puritan party. If Milton was so distressed by the return of the Royalists, how do you square this view with your statement, ‘Milton was a Puritan in spite of himself’? Surely if his Puritanism was only imposed, he would have welcomed the return of the drama and a more highly colored life.”

Roland made a gallant effort to explain, but all the time he kept saying to himself, “I came here for a confessional, and yet here I am sitting down in the Chief’s best arm-chair, enjoying a friendly chat. I must stop it somehow.” But it was excessively difficult. He began to lose the thread of his argument and contradicted himself; and the Chief was so patient, listening to him so attentively, waiting till he had finished.

“But, my dear Whately,” the Chief said, “you’ve just said that Comus is a proof of his love of color and display, and yet you say in the same breath....”

Would it never cease? And how on earth was he at the end going to introduce the subject of his miserable amours? He had never anticipated anything like this. But at last it was finished.

“You see what you’ve done, Whately? You’ve picked up a phrase somewhere or other about the paganism of Milton and the nobility of Satan and you have not taken the trouble to think it out. You’ve just accepted it. I don’t say that your statement could not be justified. But it’s you who should be able to justify it, not I. You should never make any statement in an essay that you can’t substantiate with facts. It’s a good essay, though, quite good.” And he returned to his papers. He had forgotten altogether the fact that Roland had come unasked to see him.

It was one of the worst moments of Roland’s life. He stood silent in the middle of the room while the Chief continued his letter, thinking the interview was at an end.

“Sir,” he said at last.

The headmaster looked up quickly and said a little impatiently, for he was a busy man and resented interruption, “Well, Whately? Yes; what is it?”

“I came to see you, sir.”

“Oh, yes, of course you did. I forgot. Well, what is it?”

“Sir, I’ve come to tell you that Mr. Carus Evans told me to come and report myself to you and say that—well, sir—that I’ve been going out for walks with a girl in the town.”

“What!”

“Yes, sir, a girl in the town, and that I’d asked a boy in his house to come with me, sir.”

The Chief rose from his chair and walked across to the mantelpiece. There was a long pause.

“But I don’t quite understand, Whately. You’ve been going out with some girl in the town?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you’ve encouraged some boy in Mr. Carus Evans’ house to accompany you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And he, I suppose, has been going for walks with a girl as well?”

“Yes, sir.”

There was another long pause, during which Roland realized that he had chosen the worst possible moment for his confession. Whatever decision the Chief might arrive at would be influenced, not only by his inevitable disappointment at the failure of a boy in whom he had trusted, but by its violent contrast with the friendly discussion over the essay and the natural annoyance of a busy man who has been interrupted in an important piece of work to discuss an unpleasant situation that has arisen unexpectedly. When the Chief at last began to speak there was an impatience in his voice that would have been absent if Roland had tackled him after dinner.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I am tempted sometimes to give up faith in you fellows altogether. I never know where I am with any of you. I feel as though I were sitting upon a volcano. Everything seems quiet and satisfactory and then suddenly the volcano breaks out and I find that the boys in whom I have placed, or am thinking of placing, responsibility have deceived me. Do you realize the hypocrisy of your behavior during the last year? You have been meeting Mr. Carus Evans and myself on friendly, straightforward terms, with an open look on your face, and all the time, behind our backs, you’ve been philandering with girls in the town. I haven’t asked you for any details and I am not going to; that doesn’t enter into the question at all. You’ve been false and doublefaced. You’ve been acting a lie for a year. It’s the sort of thing that makes me sick of the whole lot of you. You can go.”

Roland walked back to the studies, perplexed and miserable. The word “deceit” had cut hard into him. He loathed crookedness and he had always considered himself dead straight. It was a boast of his that he had never told a lie, at least not to a boy; masters were different. Of course they were, and it was absurd to pretend they weren’t. Everyone did things that they wouldn’t care to tell the Chief. There was a barrier between. The relationship was not open like friendship. He saw the Chief’s point of view, but he did not consider it a sound one. He disliked these fine gradations of conduct, this talk of acting a lie; things were either black or white. He remembered how the Chief had once come round the upper dormitories and had endeavored to persuade him that it was acting a lie to get into bed without cleaning his teeth. He had never understood why. An unclean act, perhaps, but acting a lie! oh, no, it wouldn’t do. It was an unfair method of tackling the problem. It was hitting a man in the back, this appeal to a better nature. Life should be played like cricket, according to rules. You could either play for safety and score slowly, or you could run risks and hit across straight half-volleys. If one missed it one was out and that was the end of it. One didn’t talk about acting a lie to the bowler because one played at the ball as though it were outside the leg stump. Why couldn’t the Chief play the game like an umpire? Roland knew that he had done a thing which, in the eyes of authority, was wrong. He admitted that. He had known it was wrong all the time. He had been found out; he was prepared for punishment. That was the process of life. One took risks and paid the penalty. The issue was to Roland childishly simple, and he could not see why all these good people should complicate it so unnecessarily with their talk of hypocrisy and deceit.

That evening the headmaster wrote to Roland’s father:

Dear Mr. Whately,—I write to inform you of a matter that will cause you, I fear, a good deal of pain. I have discovered that for the last year Roland has been in the habit of going out for walks on Sunday afternoons with a young girl in the town, and that he has encouraged another and younger boy to accompany him. These walks resulted, I am sure, in nothing beyond a little harmless flirtation, and I do not regard the actual issue as important. I do consider, however, and I think that in this you will agree with me, that Roland’s conduct in the matter is most reprehensible. It has involved a calculated and prolonged deception of you, his parent, and of us, his schoolmasters, and he has proved himself, I fear, unworthy of the responsibility of prefectship that I had hoped to place in him next term. If he were a younger boy the obvious course would be a sound thrashing. But Roland is too old for that. Perhaps he is too old to be at school at all. The leaving age of nineteen is arbitrary. Boys develop at such different ages; and though I should not myself have thought so before this affair arose, it may very well be that Roland has already passed beyond the age at which it is wise and, indeed, safe to keep him any longer at a school. For all we know, this trouble may prove to have been a blessing in disguise, and will have protected him from more serious difficulties. At any rate, I do not feel that I should be doing my duty by you or by the other parents who place the welfare of their boys in my hands if I were to keep Roland here after the summer. There is, of course, in this not the least suggestion of expulsion. Roland will leave at the end of the term with many of his contemporaries in the ordinary course of events. And he will become, if he wishes, as I hope he will wish, a member of the old Fernhurstian Society. Perhaps you may yourself decide to come down and have a talk with Roland. If so, perhaps we might discuss his future together. I do not myself see why this should prejudice in any way his going up to the University in a year’s time. Of course he could not go up now as he has not yet passed responsions.

I very much hope that you will come down and that we shall be able to discuss the whole matter from every point of view. Sincerely yours,

J. F. Harrison.