A number of circumstances favoured the development of the unfortunate gentleman’s obsession. In the last Easter holidays he had attended a conference of assistant masters in London, at which the whole question had been discussed with the greatest solemnity, and plans had been formulated for the stamping out of “impurity” in every public school in England. The speeches of the delegates had convinced him of his own blindness. It was impossible that St. Luke’s should be so very different from any other public school, yet other people had assured the meeting that in their own schools the disease was “rampant,” and Mr. Leeming had returned to his summer duties convinced that if only he looked with sufficient care more ills than he had ever suspected might be found. He had become a man with a mission.
For a crusade of this kind St. Luke’s was not by any means an ideal field. The head-master, for all his imposing presence, was not a practical man. He was intolerant of enthusiasms in his staff, not so much because they were symptomatic of ill-breeding, but because they tended to disturb the pleasant ordered tenor of his life. Croquet and botany were sciences of more interest to him than education. He believed in hard games, corporal punishment, nature study, and the classics. He hated extremes. The golden mean was his creed, his weakness, and his apology. He hadn’t any use for Mr. Leeming’s intensities. He could even be picturesque on occasion. “If you are going to appoint yourself inspector of our dirty linen, Leeming,” he said, “you really mustn’t expect me to do the washing.”
“I don’t think you understand me, sir,” Mr. Leeming began. . . .
“Oh, don’t I?” said the Head. The word Impurity formed voicelessly on Mr. Leeming’s lips.
“It is a scandalous thing . . . scandalous . . .” he complained to the common-room, “that a man who knows what is right and is determined to follow it shouldn’t be properly backed by the headmaster. The matter is vital. It is the most important . . . by far the most important problem in modern education. Any means are justified to purge the schools of this sort of thing. . . .”
“I can see you, Leeming,” drawled Selby, “in the rôle of agent provocateur.” The common-room exploded.
“What is wanted in the public schoolmaster is a higher sense of seriousness,” Leeming spluttered. “You have no sense of suspicion.”
“What is more wanted in the public schools,” said Cleaver, “is a suspicion of sense—common sense.”
“All you fellows talk,” said Dr. Downton, “as if the whole thing were a problem for the public schools purely and simply. It’s nothing of the kind. It’s not the ignorance of the average schoolmaster as much as the ignorance of the average parent. I mean ignorance of the nature of boys . . . lack of sympathy, lack of responsibility. And when ugly things happen they shove it on to us.”
“That’s what they pay a hundred and fifty a year for,” said Cleaver.