"The Fernhurst postmark, my dear," he said. "I wonder what this can be about. The headmaster's writing!"
He tore open the envelope eagerly and began to read.
"Well, dear?" said his wife.
He said nothing, but handed the letter across to her. She read it through and then sat forward in her chair, her hands lying on her knees.
"Poor darling," she said. "So that's why he saw so little of April last holidays."
"Yes, I suppose that's the reason."
"Do you think he was in love with her?"
"With April?"
"No, of course not, dear. With this girl at Fernhurst?"
"I don't know. How could I tell?"
And again they sat in silence. It was such a long while since they had been called upon to face a serious situation. For many years now they had lived upon the agreeable surface of an ordered life. They were unprepared for this disquieting intrusion.
"And what's going to happen now?" she said at last. "I suppose you'll have to go down and see him."
"Yes, I think so. Yes, certainly. I ought to go down to-morrow."
"And what will you say to him?"
"I don't know. What is it the headmaster says?"
She handed him the letter and he fumbled with it. "Here it is. 'I do not see myself why this should prejudice in any way his going up to the University.' That's what the headmaster says. But I don't really see how we could manage it. After all, what would happen? He would have to go to a crammer's and everyone would ask questions. We have always said how good the Fernhurst education is, and now they'll begin to wonder why we've changed our minds. If we take Roland away and send him to a crammer's they would be sure to think something was up. You know what people are. It would never do."
"No, I suppose not. But it seems rather hard on Roland if he's got to give up Oxford."
"Well, it will be his own fault, won't it?"
"We haven't heard the whole story yet."
"I know; but what's the good of discussing it. He knew he was doing something he ought not to be doing. He can't expect not to have to pay for it."
And there was another pause.
"He was doing so well, too," she said.
"He would have been a prefect after the summer. He would have been captain of his house. We should have been so proud of him."
"And it's all over now."
They did not discuss the actual trouble. He knew that on the next day he would have to go over the whole thing with Roland, and he wanted to be able to think it out in quiet. They were practical people, who had spent the last fifteen years discussing the practical affairs of ways and means. They had come nearest to each other when they had sat before their account-books in the evening, balancing one column with another, and at the end of it looking each other in the face, agreeing thatthey would have to "cut down this expense," and that they could "save a little there." The love of the senses had died out quickly between them, but its place had been taken by a deep affection, by the steady accumulation of small incidents of loyalty and unselfishness, of difficulties faced and fought together. They had never ventured upon first principles. They had fixed their attention upon the immediate necessities of the moment.
And now, although Roland's moral welfare was a deep responsibility to them, they spoke only of his career and of how they must shape it to fit the new requirements. Mr Whately thought that he might be able to find a post for him in the bank. But his wife was very much against it.
"Oh, no, dear, that would be terrible. Roland could never stand it; he's such an open-air person. I can't bear to think of him cooped up at a desk all his days."
"That's what my life's been."
"I know; but, Roland. Surely we can find something better for him than that."
"I'll try. I don't know. Things like the Civil Service are impossible for him now, and the Army's no use, and I've got no influence in the City."
"But you must try, really, dear. It's awful to think of him committed to a bank for the rest of his life just when he was doing so well."
"All right. I'll do my best."
A few minutes later he said that he was tired and would go to bed. At the door he paused, walked back into the room and stood behind his wife. He wanted to say something to show that he appreciated her sympathy, that he was glad she was beside him in this disappointment, this hour of trouble. But he did not know what to say. He stretched out a hand timidly and touched her hair. She turned and looked up at him, and without a word said put her arms slowly about his neck, drew his hand down to her and kissed him. For a full minute he was pressed against her. "Dear," he murmured, and though he mounted the stairssadly, he felt strengthened by that embrace of mutual disappointment.
He set off very early next morning, for he would have to go down to the bank and make arrangements for his absence. He had hoped that Roland would have written to them, but the post brought only a circular from a turf accountant.
"Have you decided what you are going to say to him?" his wife asked.
"Not yet. I shall think it out in the train. I shall be able to say the right thing when the time comes."
"You won't be hard to him. I expect he's very miserable."
It was a bad day for Mr Whately. During the long train journey through fields and villages, vivid in the bright June sunlight, he wondered in what spirit he should receive his son. Roland would be no doubt waiting for him at the station. What would they say to each other? How would they begin? He would have lunch, of course, at the Eversham Hotel, and then, he supposed, he would have to see the headmaster. That would be very difficult. He always felt shy in the headmaster's presence. The headmaster was such an aristocrat; he was stamped with the hall-mark of Eton and Balliol, while he himself was the manager of a bank in London. He was always aware of his social inferiority in that book-lined study, with the five austere reproductions of Greek sculpture. The interview would be very difficult. But the headmaster would at least do most of the talking; whereas with Roland.... Mr Whately shifted uneasily in his corner seat. What on earth was he going to say? Something, surely, about the moral significance of the act. Roland must realise that he was guilty of really immoral conduct, and yet how was he to be made to realise it? What arguments must be produced? Wherein lay the harm of calf love? And looking back over his own life Mr Whately could not see that there was any particular vice attached to it. It was absurd andpreposterous, but it was very pleasant. He remembered how he had once fancied himself in love with his grandmother's housemaid. He used to get up early in the morning so that he could sit with her while she laid the grate, and he had knelt down beside her and joined his breath with hers in a fierce attempt to kindle the timid flame. He had never kissed her, but she had let him hold her hand, and the summer holidays had passed in delicious reveries. He remembered also how, a little later, he had fallen desperately in love with the girl at the tobacconist's, and he could still recall the breathless excitement of that morning when he had come into the shop and found it empty. For a second she had listened at the door leading to the private part of the house and had then leant forward over the counter: "Quick," she had whispered.
Mr Whately smiled at the recollection and then remembered suddenly for what cause he was travelling down to Fernhurst. "I must say something to him. What shall I say?" And for want of any better argument he began to adapt a speech that he had heard spoken a few weeks earlier in a melodrama at the Aldwich. The hero, a soldier, had come home from the war to find his betrothed in the arms of another, and she had protested that it was him alone she loved, and that she was playing with the other; but the returned warrior had delivered himself of an oration on the eternal sanctity of love. "Love cannot be divided like a worm and continue to exist. It is not a game." There was something in that argument, and Mr Whately decided to tell Roland that love came only once in a man's life, and that he must reserve himself for that one occasion. "If you make love to every girl you meet, you will spoil yourself for the real love affair. It will be the removal of a shovelful of gravel from a large pile. One shovelful appears to make no difference, but in the end the pile of gravel disappears." That is what he would say to Roland. And because the idea seemed suitable, he did not pause to consider whetheror not it was founded upon truth. He lay back in his corner seat and began to arrange his ideas according to that line of persuasion.
But all this fine flow of wit and logic was dispelled when the train drew up at Fernhurst station and Mr Whately descended from the carriage to find Roland waiting for him on the platform.
"Hullo! father," he said, and the two of them walked in silence out of the station, and turned into the Eversham Rooms.
"I've booked a table at the hotel," said Roland.
"Good."
"I expect you're feeling a bit hungry after your journey, aren't you, father?"
"Yes, I am a bit."
"Not a bad day for travelling, though?"
"No, it was very jolly. The country was beautiful all the way down. It's such a relief to be able to get out of London for a bit."
"I expect it must be."
"It's quite a treat to be able to come here"; and so nervous was he that he failed to appreciate the irony of his last statement.
By this time they had reached the hotel. Roland walked with a cheerful confidence into the entrance, nodded to the porter, hung his straw hat upon the rack, and suggested a wash.
Mr Whately looked at himself in the glass as he dried his hands. It was a withered face that looked back at him; the face of a bank clerk who had risen with some industry and much privation to a position of authority; a face that was lined and marked and undistinguished; the face of a man who had never asserted himself. Mr Whately turned from his own reflection and looked at his son, so strong, and fresh and eager; unmarked as yet by trouble and adversity. Who was he, a scrubby, middle-aged little man, emptied of energy and faith, with his life behind him—who was he to impose his will on anyone?
"Finished, father?"
He followed his son into the dining-room and picked up the menu; but he did not know what to choose, and handed the card across to Roland. Roland ordered the meal; the waiter rubbed his hands, and father and son sat opposite each other, oppressed by a situation that was new to them. Roland waited for his father to begin. During the last thirty-six hours he had been interviewed by three different masters, all of whom had, in their way, tried to impress upon him the enormity of his offence. He was by now a little tired of the subject. He wanted to know what punishment had been fixed for him. He had heard enough of the moral aspect of the case. "These people treat me as though I were a fool," he had said to Brewster. "To hear the way they talked one would imagine that I had never thought about the damnable business at all. They seem to expect me to fall down, like St Paul before Damascus, and exclaim: 'Now, all is clear to me!' But, damn it all, I knew what I was doing. I'd thought it all out. I'm not going to do the conversion stunt just because I've been found out." He expected his father to go over the old ground—influence, position, responsibility. He prepared himself to listen. But as his father did not begin, and as the soup did not arrive, Roland felt it was incumbent upon him to say something.
"A great game that against Yorkshire?" he said.
"What! Which game?"
"Don't you remember, about a fortnight ago, the Middlesex and Yorkshire match? Middlesex had over two hundred to get and only three hours to get them in. They're a fine side this year."
And within two minutes they were discussing cricket as they had discussed it so often before. At first they talked to cover their embarrassment, but soon they had become really interested in the subject.
"And what chance do you think you have of getting in the XI.? Surely they ought to give you a trial soon."
"Oh, I don't know, father; I'm not much class, andthere are several old colours. I ought to get my seconds all right, and next season...."
He stopped, realising suddenly that he did not as yet know whether there would be any next season for him, and quickly changed the conversation, telling his father of a splendid rag that the Lower Fourth had organised for the last Saturday of the term.
Sooner or later the all-important question had to be tackled, but by the time lunch had finished, son and father had established their old intimacy of quiet conversation, and they were ready to face and, if need be, to dismiss the violent intrusion of the trouble. They walked up and down the hotel grounds, Mr Whately wondering at what exact point he should dab in his carefully constructed argument. There was a pause, into which his voice broke suddenly:
"You know, Roland, about this business...."
"Yes, father."
"Well, I mean, going out with a girl in the town. Do you think it's...." He paused. After all, he did not know what to say.
"I know, father. I know." And looking at each other they realised that it would be impossible for them to discuss it. Their relationship was at stake. It had no technique to deal with the situation. And Roland asked, as his mother had asked, "What's going to happen, father?"
For answer, Mr Whately put his hand into his pocket, took out the headmaster's letter and gave it to Roland. Roland read it through and then handed it back. "Not a bad fellow, the Chief," he said, and they walked up and down the path in silence.
"It's a disappointment," said Roland.
"For all of us."
"I suppose so."
And after another pause: "What's going to happen to me at the end of the term?"
"That's what I've got to decide. I suggested a bank, but your mother was very much against it."
"Oh, not the bank, father!"
"Well, I'll do my best for you, but it'll be difficult. Oxford's out of the question. You can see that, can't you? I should have to send you to a crammer, and everyone would talk. It would be sure to leak out. And we don't want anything like that to happen, because they would be sure to think it was something worse than it really was. I'm afraid Oxford's got to go. Your mother agreed with me about that."
"I'm sure you're right, father."
"But I don't know what else there is, Roland. I shall have to ask the headmaster."
But the headmaster was not very helpful. He was kind and sympathetic. He spoke of the moral significance of the situation and the eventual service that this trouble might prove to have been. He wished Roland the very best of luck. He didn't agree with Mr Whately about the impossibility of Oxford, but he appreciated Mr Whately's point of view. After all, Mr Whately knew his own son better than he did. Was there anything more Mr Whately would wish to ask him? He would be always very glad to give Mr Whately any advice or help that lay within him. He hoped Mr Whately would have a pleasant journey back to town.
"Dorset's at its best in June," he said, as he escorted Mr Whately to the door.
There was an hour to put in before the departure of the London train, and Roland and his father walked down to the cricket field. They sat on the grass in the shade of the trees that cluster round the pavilion, and watched the lazy progress of the various games that were scattered round the large high-walled ground. It was a pretty sight—the green fields, the white flannels, the mild sunshine of early summer. It was bitter to Mr Whately that he would never again see Fernhurst. For that was what Roland's trouble meant to him. And the reflection saddened his last hour with his son.
When Roland had left him at the station he walked up and down the platform in the grip of a deep melancholy. On such an afternoon, five years ago, he hadseen Fernhurst for the first time. He had brought Roland down to try for a scholarship and they had stayed for three days together at the Eversham Hotel. Fernhurst had been full of promise for them then. He had not been to a public school himself. When he was a boy the public school system had indeed hardly begun to impose its autocracy on the lower middle classes, and he had always felt himself at a disadvantage because he had been educated at Burstock Grammar School. He had been desperately anxious for Roland to make a success of Fernhurst. He had looked forward to the day when his son would be an important figure in the school, and when he himself would become important as Whately's father. How proud he would feel when he would walk down to the field in the company of a double first. He would come down to "commem" and give a luncheon party at the Eversham Hotel, and the masters would come and speak to him and congratulate him on his son's performance: "A wonderful game of his last week against Tonwich." And during the last eighteen months it had indeed seemed that these dreams were to be realised. Roland had his colours at football, he was in the Sixth, a certainty for his seconds at cricket: after the summer he would be a prefect and captain of games in the house. And now it was all over. As far as he was concerned, Fernhurst was finished. His life would be empty now without the letter every Monday morning telling of Roland's place in form, of his scores during the week, and all the latest news of a vivid communal life. That was over. And as Mr Whately mounted the train, closed the door and sat back against the carriage, he felt as though he were undergoing an operation; a part of his being was being wrenched from him.
Roland felt none of this despondency. After saying good-bye to his father he walked gaily up the Eversham Road. The brown stone of the Abbey tower was turning to gold in the late sunlight, a cool wind was blowing, the sky was blue. What did this trouble matter to him? Had he not strength and faith and timein plenty to repair it? He had wearied of school, he reminded himself. He had felt caged this last year; he had wanted freedom; he had outgrown the narrow discipline of the field and classroom. Next term he would be a man and not a schoolboy. He flung back his shoulders as though he were ridding them of a burden.
There was still three-quarters of an hour to put in before lock-up, and he walked up past the big school towards the hill. He thought he would like to tell Brewster what had happened. He found him in his study, and with him an old boy, Gerald Marston, who had been playing against the school that afternoon.
"Hullo!" he said. "So here's the criminal. I've just been hearing all about you. Come along and sit down."
Roland was flattered at Marston's interest in his escapade. He had hardly known him at all when he had been at Fernhurst. Marston had been in another house, was two years his senior, and, in addition, a double first. Probably it was the first time they had even spoken to each other.
"Oh, yes, we've been having an exciting time," laughed Roland.
"And what's going to be the end of it?"
"Well, as far as I can gather, the school will meet without me next September."
"The sack?"
"Well, hardly that; the embroidered bag."
They talked and laughed. Marston was very jolly; he gave himself no airs, and Roland could hardly realise that three years ago he had been frightened of him, that when Marston had passed him in the cloister he had lowered his voice, and as often as not had stopped speaking till he had gone by.
"And what's going to happen to you now?" asked Marston.
"That's just what I don't know. My pater talked about my going into a bank."
"But you'd hate that, wouldn't you?"
"I'm not too keen on it."
"Lord, no! I should think not. And there's no real future in it. You ought to go into the City. There's excitement there, and big business. You don't want to waste your life like that."
It happens sometimes that we meet a person whom we seem to have known all our life, and by the time the clock began to strike the quarter, Roland felt that he and Marston were old friends.
"A good fellow that," said Marston, after he had gone, "and a bit of a sport too, by all accounts. I must try and see more of him."
And in his study Roland had picked up a calendar and was counting the days that lay between him and Freedom.
THE RIVAL FORCES
A FORTUNATE MEETING
Mr Whately'sone idea on his return to Hammerton was to hide the fact that Roland's sudden leaving was the result of a scandal. He wished the decision in no way to seem unpremeditated. Two days later, therefore, he went round to the Curtises' and prepared the way by a discussion of the value of university training.
"Really, you know, Mrs Curtis," he said, "I very much doubt whether Oxford is as useful as we sometimes think it is. What will Roland be able to do afterwards? If I know Roland he will do precious little work. He is not very clever; I doubt if he will get into the Civil Service, and what else is there open to him? Nothing, perhaps, except schoolmastering, and he would not be much use at that. I am not at all certain that it is not wiser, on the whole, to take a boy away at about seventeen or eighteen, send him abroad for a couple of months and then put him into business."
Mrs Curtis was not a little surprised. For a good sixteen years Mr Whately had refused to consider the possibility of any education for Roland other than Fernhurst and Brasenose.
"But you are not thinking of taking him away from Fernhurst and not sending him to Brasenose?" she said.
"Oh, no, Mrs Curtis, but I have been thinking that if we could do things all over again I am not at all sure but that's not the way I should have arranged his education."
That was the first step.
A few nights later he came round again, and again talked of the value of two or three months in France.
"What does Roland think about it, Mr Whately?" she asked.
"As a matter of fact, I only heard from Roland on the subject to-day; he seems quite keen on it. I just threw it out as a suggestion to him. I pointed out that most of his friends will have left at the end of the term, that next year he would be rather lonely, and that there would not be anything very much for him to do when he came down from Oxford. He seemed to agree with me."
Mrs Curtis, however, was no fool. She had spent the greater part of her middle age sitting in front of a fire watching life drift past her, and her one amusement had been the examination of the motives and actions of her friends.
"There is something rather curious here," she said that evening to her husband. "As long as we have known the Whatelys they have insisted on the value of public school and university education. Now, quite suddenly, they have turned round, and they are talking about business and commerce and the value of French."
Mr Curtis, who was a credulous creature, saw no reason why they should not change their minds if they wanted to.
"After all," he said, "it is quite true that Latin and Greek are of very little use to anyone in the City."
But Mrs Curtis refused to be convinced.
"I do not care what you say," she said. "You just wait and see."
And, sure enough, within a week Mr Whately had confessed his intention of taking Roland away from Fernhurst at the end of the term.
"And you are going to send him to France?" said Mrs Curtis.
"I am not quite certain about that," he said. "I am going to look round first to see if I can't get him a job at once. We both agree that another year at Fernhurst would be a waste of time."
Mrs Curtis smiled pleasantly. As soon as he had gone she expressed herself forcibly.
"I do not believe for a moment," she insisted, "that Mr Whately has changed his mind without some pretty strong reason. He was frightfully anxious to see Roland captain of his house. He was so proud of everything he did at Fernhurst. There must be a row or something; unless, of course, he has lost his money."
But that idea Mr Curtis pooh-poohed.
"My dear Edith," he said, "that is quite impossible. You know that Whately's got a good salaried post in the bank. He has got no private means to lose and he is not the sort of man to live above his income. It is certainly not money. I don't see why a man should not change his mind if he wants to."
Mrs Curtis again refused to be convinced.
"You wouldn't," she said.
April was of the same opinion. She knew perfectly well that Roland, of his own free will, would never have agreed to such a plan. There must be trouble of some sort or other, she said to herself, and Roland instantly became more interesting in her eyes. She wondered what he had done. Her knowledge of school life was based mainly upon the stories of Talbot Baines Reid, and she began to picture some adventure in which he had taken the blame upon his own shoulders. A friend of his had contracted liabilities at the Eversham Arms and Roland had become involved; or perhaps someone had endeavoured to steal the papers of a Scholarship examination and Roland had been falsely accused. She could not imagine that Roland had himself done anything dishonourable, and she could not be expected to know the usual cause for which boys are suddenly removed from their school. Ralph Richmond was the only person who was likely to know the true story, and to him she went.
Now, there is in the Latin Grammar a morality contained in an example of a conditional sentence which runs in the following words:—"Even though they are silent they say enough." In spite of Ralph's desperateefforts to assume ignorance it was quite obvious to April that he knew all about it, also that it was something that Roland would not want her to know. She was puzzled and distressed. If there had been no embarrassment between them during the holidays she would probably have written to Roland and asked him about it, but under the conditions she felt that this was impossible.
"I shall have to wait till he returns," she said. "Perhaps he will tell me of his own accord."
But when Roland came home he showed not the slightest inclination to tell her anything. If he were acting a part he was acting it extraordinarily well. He told her how glad he was that he was leaving Fernhurst. "One outgrows school," he said. "It is all right for a bit. It is great fun when you are a fag and when you are half-way up; but it is not worth it when you have got responsibilities. And as I went there at thirteen—a year earlier than most people—nearly all my friends will have left. I should have been very lonely next term. I think I am well out of it."
April reminded him of his eagerness to go to Oxford. That objection, too, he managed to brush aside.
"Oxford," he said; "that is nothing but school over again. It is masters and work and regulations. I am very glad it is over."
For a while she was almost tempted to believe he was telling her the truth, but as August passed she noticed that Roland seemed less satisfied with his prospects. He spoke with diminishing enthusiasm of the freedom of an office. Indeed, whenever she introduced the subject he changed it quickly.
"I expect father will find me something decent soon," he would say, and began to talk of cricket or of some rag that he remembered.
But Mr Whately was not finding it easy to procure a post for his son. Roland, after all, possessed no special qualifications. He had been in the Sixth Form of a public school, but he had not been a particularly brilliant member of it. He had passed no standardexaminations. He was too young for any important competitive work and Mr Whately had very few influential friends. Roland began to see before him the prospect of long days spent in a bank—a dismal prospect. "What will it lead to, father?" he used to ask, and Mr Whately had not been able to hold out very much encouragement.
"Well, I suppose in time if you work well you would become a manager. If you do anything brilliant you might be given some post of central organisation."
"But it is not very likely, is it, father?" said Roland.
"Not very likely; no."
The years seemed mapped out before him and he found it difficult to maintain his pose of complacent satisfaction, so that one evening, when he felt more than ordinarily depressed, and when the need of sympathy became irresistible, he found himself telling April the story of his trouble.
She listened to him quietly, sitting huddled up in the window-seat, her knees drawn up towards her, her hands clasped beneath them. She said nothing for a while after he had finished.
"Well," he said at last, "that's the story. You know all about it now."
She looked up at him. There was in her eyes neither annoyance nor repulsion nor contempt, but only interest and sympathy.
"Why did you do it, Roland?" she asked.
"I don't know," he said. And because this happened to be the real reason, and because he felt it to be inadequate, he searched his memory for some more plausible account.
"I don't know," he said. "It seemed to happen this way. Things were awfully dull at school, and then, during the Christmas holidays, we had that row. If it hadn't been for that I think I should have chucked it up altogether. But you didn't seem to care for me; it didn't seem to matter much either way; and—well one drifts into these things."
There was another pause.
"But I don't understand, Roland. Do you mean to say if we hadn't had that row at Christmas nothing of this would have happened?"
Because their disagreement had not been without its influence on Roland's general attitude towards his school romance, and because Roland was always at the mercy of the immediate influence, and in the presence of April was unable to think that anything but April could have influenced him, he mistook the part for the whole, and assured her that if they had not had that quarrel at the dance he would have given up Dolly altogether. And because the situation was one they had often met in plays and stories they accepted it as the truth.
"It's all my fault," she said, "really all my fault." And turning her head away from him she allowed her thoughts to travel back to that ineffectual hour of loneliness and resignation. "I can do nothing, nothing myself," she said. "I can only spoil things for other people."
At the time Roland was disappointed, but two hours later he decided that he was, on the whole, relieved that Mrs Curtis should have chosen that particular moment to return from her afternoon call. In another moment he would have been saying things that would have complicated life most confoundedly. April had been very near to tears; he disliked heroics. He would have had to do something to console her. He would probably have said to her a great many things that at the time would have seemed to him true, but which afterwards he would have regretted. He had sufficient worries of his own already.
At home life was not made easy for Roland. He received little sympathy. Ralph told him that he deserved all he had got and had been lucky to get off so cheaply. His father repeated a number of moral platitudes, the source of which Roland was able to recognise.
"After all," said Mr Whately, "I have been in a bank all my life; I have not done badly in it, and you,with your education and advantages, should be able to do much better."
This was a line of argument which did not appeal to Roland. He was very fond of his father, but he had always regarded his manner of life as a fate, at all costs, to be avoided. And though his mother in his presence endeavoured to make him believe that all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds, when she was alone with her husband she saw only her son's point of view.
"If this is all we have got to offer him," she said, "all the money and time we have spent will be wasted. If a desk at a bank is going to be the end of it, he might just as well have gone to a day school, and all the extra money we have spent could have been put away for him in a bank."
Mr Whately reminded her that the change in their plans was due entirely to Roland.
"Oh, yes, yes, yes," she said, "that is all very well. But it is a cruel shame that a boy's whole life should depend on a thing he does when he is seventeen years old."
Mr Whately murmured something about it being the way of the world, adding he himself had been in a bank now for thirty years.
"Which is the very reason," said Mrs Whately, "that I don't want my son to go into one"—an argument that did not touch her husband.
But talk how they might, and whatever philosophic attitude they might adopt, the practical position remained unchanged. Roland had been offered a post in a bank, which he could take up at the beginning of October. Three weeks were left him in which he might try to find something better for himself; but of this there seemed little prospect.
And as he sat in the free seats at the Oval, on an afternoon of late September, Roland had to face his position honestly, and own to himself there was no alternative to the bank.
He was lonely as he sat there in the mild sunshinewatching the white figures move across the grass. That evening school would be going back and he would not be with them. It was hard to realise that in four hours' time the cloisters would be alive with voices, that feet would be clattering up and down the study steps, that the eight-fifteen would have just arrived and the rush to the hall would have begun.
The play became slow; two professionals were wearing down the bowling. He began to feel sleepy in the languid atmosphere of this late summer afternoon. He could not concentrate his attention upon the cricket. He could think only of himself, and the river that was bearing him without his knowledge to a country he did not know.
It was not merely that he had left school, that he had exchanged one discipline for another; he had altered entirely his mode of life, and for this new life a new technique would be required. Up till now everything had been marked out clearly in definite stages; he had been working in definite lines. It was not merely that the year was divided into terms, but his career also was so divided. There had been a gradation in everything. It had been his ambition to get his firsts at football, and the path was marked out clearly for him—house cap., seconds, firsts: in form he had wanted to get into the Sixth, and here again the course had been clear—Fourth, Fifth, Sixth: he had wanted to become a house prefect; the process was the same—day room table, Lower Fourth table, Fifth Form table, Sixth Form table. He had known exactly what he was doing; everything had been made simple for him. His ambitions had been protected. It was quite different now: nothing was clearly defined. He would have to spend a certain number of hours a day in an office. Outside of that office he would be free to do what he liked. He could choose his own ambition, but as yet he could not decide what that would be. He was as dazed by the imminence of this freedom as a mortal man whose World is ordered by the limits of time and space when confronted suddenly with the problem of infinity.Roland could not come to terms with a world in which he would not be tethered to one spot by periods of three months. His reverie was interrupted by a hand that descended heavily on his shoulder and a voice he recognised, that addressed him by his name. He turned and saw Gerald Marston standing behind him.
"So you are a free man at last," he said. "How did the rest of the term go?"
It was a pleasant surprise; and Roland welcomed the prospect of a cheery afternoon with a companion who would soon dispel his melancholy.
"Oh, not so badly," he said. "I lay pretty quiet and saw as little of Carus Evans as I could."
"And how is the amiable Brewster?" asked Marston.
"He's all right, I suppose. He won't have much of a time this year, though, I should think. He ought to have been captain of the XI., but they say now he is not responsible enough, and Jenkins, a man he absolutely hates, is going to run it instead."
"So you're not sorry you have left?"
Roland shrugged his shoulders.
"In a way not; if there hadn't been a row, though, I should have had a pretty good time this term."
"Well, you can't have things both ways. What's going to happen to you now?"
With most people Roland would have preferred to pass the matter off with some casual remark about his father having got him a good job in the City. He liked sympathy, but was afraid of sympathy when it became pity. He did not want the acquaintances who, six months ago, had been talking of him as "that lucky little beast, Whately," to speak of him now as "poor old Whately; rotten luck on him; have you heard about it?" But it is always easier to make a confession to a stranger than to a person with whom one is brought into daily contact. Marston was a person with whom he felt intimate although he knew him so little; and so he found himself telling Marston about the bank and of the dismal future that awaited him.
Marston was highly indignant.
"What a beastly shame," he said. "You will simply hate it. Cannot your father get you something better?"
"I don't think so. He has always lived a very quiet life; he has not got any influential friends—but really, what's the good of talking about it? Something may turn up. Let's watch the cricket."
"Oh, rot, man!" expostulated Marston. "You can't let the thing drop like this. After all, my father is rather a big pot in the varnish world; he may be able to do something."
"But I don't know anything about varnish."
"You don't need to, my dear fellow. The less you know about it the better. All you've got to do is to believe that our kind of varnish is the best." And as they walked round the ground during the tea interval a happy idea occurred to Marston.
"I've got it," he said. "We have got a cricket match on Saturday against the village; we're quite likely to be a man short; at any rate we can always play twelve-a-side. You come down and stay the week-end with us. The pater's frightfully keen on cricket. If you can manage to make a few he's sure to be impressed, and then I'll tell him all about you. You will get a pleasant week-end and I expect quite a good game of cricket."
Roland naturally accepted this proposal eagerly. He did not, however, tell his people of the prospect of a job in Marston & Marston, Limited; he preferred to wait till things were settled one way or another. If he were to be disappointed, he would prefer to be disappointed alone. He did not need any sympathy at such a time.
But when he went round to the Curtises' April could tell, from the glow in his face, that he was unusually excited about something. She did not have a chance to speak to him when he was in the drawing-room. Her mother talked and talked. Arthur had just gone back to school and she was garrulous about his outfit.
"It is so absurd, you know, Mr Whately," she said, "the way people say women care more about clothes than men. There is Arthur to-day; he insisted on having linen shirts instead of woollen ones, although woollen shirts are much nicer and much warmer. 'My dear Arthur,' I said, 'no one can see your shirt; your waistcoat hides most of it and your tie the rest.' But he said that all the boys wore linen shirts instead of flannel. 'But, my dear Arthur,' I said, 'who is going to see what kind of a shirt you are wearing if it is covered by your waistcoat and tie? And I can cut your sleeves shorter so that they would not be seen beneath your coat.' And do you know what he said, Mr Whately? He said, 'You don't understand, mother; the boys would see that I was wearing a flannel shirt when I changed for football, and I would be ragged for it.' Well, now, Mr Whately, isn't that absurd?"
She went on talking and talking about every garment she had bought for her son—his ties, his boots, his socks, his coat.
Roland hardly talked at all. His father mentioned that he was going down for the week-end to stay with some friends and take part in a cricket match.
"So that is what you are so excited about!" April had interposed. And Roland had laughed and said that that was it.
But she would not believe that he could be so excited about a game of cricket, and in the hall she had pulled him by his coat sleeve.
"What is it?" she had whispered. "Something has happened. It is not only a cricket match."
And because he wanted to share his enthusiasm with someone, and because April looked so pretty, and because he felt that courage would flow to him from her faith in him, he confided in her his hope.
"Oh, that would be lovely," she said. "I do hope things will turn out all right. I've felt so guilty all along about it; if it hadn't been for me none of this would ever have happened."
"Don't worry about that," said Roland. "Things are beginning to turn right now."
There was no time for further conversation; Mrs Curtis had completed her doorstep homily to Mr Whately. April pressed Roland's hand eagerly as she said good-bye to him.
"Good luck!" she whispered.
HOGSTEAD
Itwas a glorious week, and through Thursday and Friday Roland watched in nervous anticipation every cloud that crossed the pale blue sky. Sooner or later the weather must break, he felt; and it would be fatal for his prospects if it rained now. It is miserable to sit in a pavilion and watch the wicket slowly become a bog: cheeriness under such conditions is anti-social. Mr Marston would be unable to work up any sympathy for him, and would remember him as "that fellow who came down for the cricket match that was such a fiasco"—an unfortunate association.
Everything went well, however. Roland travelled down on the Friday night, and as he got out of the train at Hogstead station he saw the spire of the church black against a green and scarlet sky. "With such a sky it can hardly be wet to-morrow," he said.
The Marstons were a rich family and it was the first time Roland had seen anything of the life of really wealthy people. He was met at the station and was driven up through a long, curving drive to a Georgian house surrounded by well-kept lawns. Marston received him in a large, oak-panelled hall, and although at first Roland was a little embarrassed by the attentions of the footman, who took his hat and coat and bag, within five minutes he found himself completely at his ease, sitting in a deep arm-chair discussing with Mr Marston the prospects of a certain young cricketer who had made his first appearance that summer at the Oval.
Mr Marston was a fine healthy man, in the autumn of life. The enthusiasm of his early years had beenspent in a bitter struggle to build up his business and he had had very little time for amusement. During the long hours at his desk and the long evenings with ledgers and account-books piled before him he had looked forward to the days when he would be able to delegate his authority and spend most of his time in the country, within the sound of bat and ball. Having had little coaching he was himself a poor performer; for which reason he was the more kindly disposed to anyone who showed promise. It was a rule of his estate that, winter as well as summer, every gardener, groom and servant should spend ten minutes each morning bowling at the nets. He lived in the hope that one day an under-gardener would be deemed worthy of transportation to the county ground.
"My son tells me you are a great performer," he said to Roland.
"Oh, no, sir; only very moderate. I did not get into the first XI. at Fernhurst."
"They had an awfully strong XI.," interposed Marston. "And he had a blooming good average for the second. Didn't you make a century against the town?"
Roland confessed that he had, but remarked that with such bowling it was very hard to do anything else.
"Well, ten other people managed to," said Marston.
"And a century is a century whoever makes it," said his father, who had never made as many as fifty in his life. "You've got to make a lot of good shots to make a hundred."
"At any rate," said Marston, "I don't mind betting he gets a few to-morrow."
And for half-an-hour they exchanged memories of the greatest of all games.
Roland found his evening clothes neatly laid out on his bed when he went up to change for dinner; and when he came down the whole family was assembled in the drawing-room. There were Mrs Marston, a large rather plump woman of about fifty years old; her daughter Muriel, a small and pretty girl, with her light hairscattered over her shoulders; and two or three other members of the next day's side. There was an intimate atmosphere of comfort and well-being to which Roland was unaccustomed. At home they had only one servant, and had to wait a good deal upon themselves. He enjoyed the silent, unobtrusive methods of the two men who waited on them. He never needed to ask for anything; as soon as he had finished his bread another piece was offered him; his glass was filled as it began to empty; and the conversation was like the meal—calm, leisured, polished.
Roland sat next to Muriel and found her a delightful companion. She was at an age when school and games filled her life completely. She told Roland of a rag that they had perpetrated on their French mistress, and he recounted her the exploits of one Foster, who used to dress up at night, go down to the Eversham Arms, sing songs and afterwards pass round the hat.
Roland had his doubts as to the existence of Foster; he had become at Fernhurst one of those mythical creatures which every school possesses—a fellow who took part in one or two amusing escapades, and around whose name had accumulated the legends of many generations. His story was worth telling, none the less.
After dinner they walked out into the garden, with the chill of the autumn night in the air. It reminded Roland that his sojourn in that warmly coloured life was only temporary, and that outside it was the cold, cheerless struggle for existence.
"It is so ripping this," he said to Muriel, "and it is so rotten to think that in a few weeks I shall be sitting down in front of a desk and adding up figures." He told her, though she was already acquainted with the facts, of how he had left Fernhurst at the end of the term, and in a few weeks would be going into a bank.
"Oh, how beastly," she said. "I suppose you will have rotten short holidays?"
"A fortnight a year."
"I think it is a shame," she said. "I am sure a boy like you ought to be leading an open-air life somewhere."
And that night, before he fell asleep, Roland thought wistfully of the company he had met that day. It was marvellous how money smoothed everything. It was the oil that made the cogs in the social machine revolve; without it there was no rhythm or harmony, but only a broken, jarring movement. Without money he felt life must be always in a degree squalid. He remembered his own home and the numerous worries about small accounts and small expenses; he knew how it had worn down the energy of his father. He knew that such worries would never touch a girl like Muriel. How easy and good-natured all these people were; they were flowers that had been grown in a fertile soil. Everything depended upon the soil in which one was planted; the finest plants would wither if they grew far from the sunshine in a damp corner of a field.
Next day Roland awoke to a world heavy with a dripping golden mist, that heralded a bright hot day. There had been a heavy dew, and after breakfast they all walked down to the ground to look at the wicket.
"If we win the toss to-day, Gerald," said Mr Marston to his son, "I think we had better put them in first. It is bound to play a bit trickily for the first hour or so."
There was no need for such subtlety, however, for the village won the toss, and, as is the way with villagers, decided to go in first.
"Good," said Mr Marston, "and if we have not got eight of them out by lunch I shall be very surprised."
And, sure enough, eight of the village were out by lunch, but the score had reached one hundred and five. This was largely due to three erratic overs that had been sent down by an ecclesiastical student from Wells who had bowled, perhaps in earnest of future compromise, on the leg theory, with his field placed upon the off.
The local butcher had collected some thirty runs off these three overs, and thirty runs in a village match when the whole score of a side does not usually reach more than fifty or sixty is a serious consideration.
At lunch-time Mr Marston was most apologetic. "I had heard he was a good bowler," he said to Roland,"and I thought it would be a good thing to give him a chance to bowl early on; and then when I saw him getting hit all over the place I imagined he was probably angling for a catch or something; and then after he had been hit about in the first two overs I had to give him a third for luck."
"An expensive courtesy," said Roland.
"Perhaps it was; but, after all, a hundred and five is not a great deal, and we have a good many bats on our side."
Within half-an-hour's time a hundred and five for eight had become a hundred and fifty. Under the kindly influence of his excellent champagne-cup Mr Marston had decided to give the ecclesiastical student another opportunity of justifying his reputation. He did not redeem that reputation. He sent down two overs, which resulted—in addition to three wides and a "no ball"—in twenty-five runs; and a hundred and fifty would take a lot of getting. Indeed, Mr Marston's XI. never looked at all like getting them.
Roland, who was sent in first, was caught at short leg in the second over; it was off a bad ball and a worse stroke—a slow, long hop that he hit right across, and skied. He was bitterly disappointed. He did not mind making ducks; it was all in the run of a game, and he never minded if he was got out by a good ball. But it was hard on such a day to throw away one's wicket.
"Very bad luck indeed," said Muriel, as he reached the pavilion.
"Not bad luck, bad play!" he remarked good-humouredly. Having taken off his pads he sat down beside her and watched the game. It was not particularly exciting; wickets fell with great regularity. Mr Marston made a few big hits, and his son stayed in for a little while without doing anything much more than keep his end up. In the end the total reached a hundred and thirteen, and in a one-day match a first innings result was usually final. But Mr Marston was not at all despondent. He refused to wait forthe tea interval and led his side straight on to the field.
"We don't want any rest," he said. "Most of us have rested the whole afternoon, and those of the other side who are not batting can have tea."
It was now four-thirty; two hours remained before the drawing of stumps, and from now on the game became really exciting. Marston took two wickets in his first over, and at the other end a man was run out. Three wickets were down for two runs: a panic descended upon the villagers. The cobbler was sent in to join the doctor, with strict instructions not to hit on any account. The cobbler was not used to passive resistance; he played carefully for a couple of overs, then a faster ball from Marston found the edge of the bat. Short slip was for him, providentially, asleep, and the umpire signalled a four. This seemed to throw him off his balance.
"It is no good," he said. "If I start mucking about like that I don't stand the foggiest chance of sticking in. I'm going to have a hit."
At the next ball he did have a hit—right across it, and his middle stump fell flat.
After this there was no serious attempt to wear down the bowling. Rustic performers—each with a style more curious than the last—drove length balls on the off stump in the direction of long on. Wickets fell quickly. The score rose; and by the time the innings was over only an hour was left for play, and ninety-two runs were required to win—ninety-two runs against time in a fading light, on a wicket that had been torn up by hob-nailed boots, was not the easiest of tasks.
"Still, we must have a shot for it," Mr Marston said. "We cannot be more than beaten, and we are that already."
And so Gerald Marston and Roland went in to open the innings with the firm intention of getting on or getting out.
The start was sensational. Marston had few pretensions to style; and indeed his unorthodox, firm-footeddrive had been the despair of the Fernhurst Professional. The ball, when he hit it, went into the air far more often than along the ground. And probably no one was more surprised than he was when he hit the first two balls that he received right along the ground to the boundary, past cover-point. The third ball was well up: he took a terrific drive at it, missed it, and was very nearly bowled. Roland, who was backing up closely, called him for a run, and if surprise at so unparalleled an example of impertinence had not rendered the wicket-keeper impotent, nothing could have saved him from being run out. A fever entered into Roland's brain. He knew quite well that he ought to play carefully for a few balls to get his eye in, but that short run had flung him off his balance. The first ball he received he hit at with a horizontal bat, and it sailed, fortunately for him, over cover-point's head for two. He attempted a similar stroke at the next ball, was less fortunate, and saw cover-point prepare himself for an apparently easy catch. But there is a kindly Providence which guards the reckless.
Cover-point was the doctor, and probably the safest man in the whole field to whom to send a catch. He was not, however, proof against the impetuous ardour of mid-off. Mid-off saw the ball in the air and saw nothing else. He rushed to where it was about to fall. He arrived at the spot just when the doctor's hands were preparing a comfortable nest for the ball, and the doctor and mid-off fell in a heap together, with the ball beneath them!
Twelve runs had been scored in the first five balls; there had been a possible run out; a catch had been missed at cover-point. It was a worthy start to a great innings.
After that everything went right with Roland. He attempted and brought off some remarkably audacious shots. He let fly at everything that was at all pitched up to him. Sometimes he hit the ball in the centre of the bat, and it sailed far into the long field; but even his mishits were powerful enough to lift the ball out ofreach of the instanding fieldsman: and fortune was kind. By the time Marston was caught at the wicket the score had reached fifty-seven, and there were still twenty-five minutes left for play. At the present rate of scoring there would be no difficulty in getting the runs. At this point, however, a misfortune befell them.
In the first innings the ecclesiastical student had made a duck; he had not, indeed, received a single ball. His predecessor had been bowled by the last ball of an over, and off the first ball of the next over the man at the other end had called him for an impossible run and he had been run out. To recompense him for this ill luck Mr Marston had put him in first wicket down. "After all," he had said, "we ought to let the man have a show, and if he does make a duck it won't make any difference." He was not prepared, however, for what did occur. The ecclesiastical student was a left-handed batsman, and a sigh of relief seemed to go up from the fielding side at the revelation. They were sportsmen; they were prepared to run across in the middle of the over; but even so, the preparation of a field for a left-hander was a lengthy business.
A grey gloom descended on the pavilion.
"Well, I declare!" said Mr Marston. "First of all he bowls on the leg theory, with his field placed on the off, and then at a moment like this he doesn't let us know that he's a left-hander!"
And the prospective divine appeared to be quite unconscious of the situation. He had come out to enjoy himself; so far he had not enjoyed himself greatly. He had taken no wickets, and had been responsible for the loss of some fifty runs. This was his last chance, and he was not going to hurry himself. He played his first three balls carefully, and placed the last ball of the over in front of short leg for a single. During the next four overs only eight runs were scored; four of these were from carefully placed singles, off the fifth and sixth balls in the over. Roland only had three balls altogether, and off one of these he managed to get a square leg boundary.
The total had now reached sixty-five, twenty-eight runs were still wanted, and only a quarter of an hour remained. Unless the left-hander were got out at once there seemed to be no chance of winning; this fact the village appreciated.
One would not say, of course, that the bowlers did not do their best to dismiss the ecclesiastical student; they were conscientious men. But it is very hard to bowl one's best if one knows that one's success will be to the eventual disadvantage of one's side; a certain limpness is bound to creep into the attack. And if Roland had received the balls that were being sent down to his partner, there is little doubt that a couple of overs would have seen the end of the match.
Roland realised that something desperate must be done. Either the left-hander must get out, or he himself must get down to the other end; and so off the first ball of the next over Roland backed up closely. He was half-way down the pitch by the time the ball reached the batsman. It was a straight half-volley, which was met with a motionless, if perpendicular, bat. The ball trickled into the hands of mid-off.
"Come on!" yelled Roland.
It was an impossible run, and the left-hander stood, in startled dismay, a few steps outside the crease.
"Run!" yelled Roland. His partner ran a few steps, saw the ball was in the hands of mid-off, and prepared to walk back to the pavilion. Mid-off, however, was in a highly electric state. He had already imperilled severely the prospects of his side by colliding with cover-point, and was resolved, at any rate, not to make a second blunder. He had the ball in his hands. There was a chance of running a batsman out; he must get the ball to the unprotected wicket as soon as possible, and so, taking careful aim, he flung the ball at the wicket with the greatest possible violence. It missed the wicket; and a student of the score-book would infer that, after having played himself in carefully and scoring four singles, F. R. Armitage opened his shoulders in fine form. He might very well remainin this illusion, for there is no further entry in the score-book against that gentleman's name. There are just four singles and a five. He did not receive another ball.
Off the next four balls of the over Roland hit two fours and a two; off the last ball he got another dangerously close single. Only ten more runs were needed: there was now ample time in which to get them. Roland got them indeed off the first four balls of the next over.
At the end of the match there was a scene of real enthusiasm, in which Mr Armitage was the only person who took no part. He was still wondering what had induced Roland to call him for those absurd singles. He indeed took Mr Marston aside after dinner and pointed out to him that that young man should really be given a few lessons in backing up.
"My dear sir," he said, "it was only the merest fluke that saved my wicket—another inch and I should have been run out."
"Well, he managed to win the match for us," replied Mr Marston.
"Perhaps, perhaps, but he nearly ran me out."
Mr Armitage was, however, the only one of the party at all alarmed by Roland's daring. That evening Roland was a small hero. Mr Marston could find no words too good for him.
"A splendid fellow," he said to Gerald afterwards. "A really splendid fellow—the sort of friend I have always wanted you to make—a first-class, open, straight fellow."
Marston thought this a good opportunity to drop a hint about Roland's position.
"Yes—a first-class fellow," he said. "Isn't it rotten to think a chap like that will have to spend the whole of his life in a bank, with only a fortnight's holiday a year, and no chance to develop his game!"
Mr Marston's rubicund face expressed appropriate disapproval.
"That fellow going to spend all his life in a bank?Preposterous! He will be simply ruined there—a fellow who can play cricket like that!"
Mr Marston, having spent his own life at a desk, was anxious to save anyone else from a similar fate, especially a cricketer.
"Well, it seems the only thing for him to do, father; his people haven't got much money and have no influence. I know they have tried to get him something better, but they haven't been able to."
"My dear Gerald, why didn't you tell me about it? If I had known a fellow like that was being tied up in a bank I'd have tried to do something to help him."
"Well, it's not too late now, is it?"
"No, but it's rather short notice, isn't it? What could he do?"
"Pretty well anything you could give him, father. He is jolly keen."
"Um!" said Mr Marston; and Gerald, who knew his father well, recognised that he was about to immerse himself in deep thought, and that it would be wiser to leave him alone.
By next morning the deep thought had crystallised into an idea.
"Look here, Gerald," said Mr Marston. "I don't know what this young man is worth to me from a business point of view—probably precious little at present. But he is a good fellow, the sort of young chap we really want in the business. None of us are any younger than we were. As far as I know, you are the only person under thirty in the whole show. Now, what we do want badly just now are a few more foreign connections. We have got the English market pretty well, but that is not enough. We want the French and Belgian and German markets, and later on we shall want the South American markets. Now, what I suggest is this: that when you go out to France in November you should take young Whately with you, show him round, and see what he is worth generally; and then we will send him off on a tour of his own and see how many clients he brings us. He is just the sortof fellow I want for that job. We don't want the commercial traveller type at all; he is very good at small accounts, but he does not do for the big financiers. I want a man who is good enough to mix in society abroad—whom big men like Bertram can ask to their houses. A man like that would always have a pull over a purely business man. Now, if your young friend would care to have a shot at that, he can; and if he makes good at it he will be making more at twenty-five with us than he would be at a bank by the time he was fifty."
Marston carried the news at once to Roland.
"My lad," he said, "that innings of yours is about the most useful thing that has ever happened to you in your life. The old man thinks so much of you he is prepared to cut me out of his will almost; at any rate, as far as I can make out, he is going to offer you a job in our business."
"What?"
"You will have to fix it up with him, of course, but he suggested to me that you and I should go out together to France in November, and you will be able to see the sort of way we do things, and then he will give you a shot on your own as representative. If you do well at it—well, my lad, you will be pretty well made for life!"
It was wonderful news for Roland. Life, at the very moment when it had appeared to be closing in on him, had marvellously broadened out. He returned home on the Monday morning, not only excited by the prospect of a new and attractive job, but moved irresistibly by this sudden vision of a world to which he was unaccustomed—by the charm, the elegance and the direct good-naturedness of this family life.