THE LONELY UNICORN

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

• FICTION
• THE LOOM OF YOUTH
• PLEASURE
• 
  
• STUDIES
• THE PRISONERS OF MAINZ
• PUBLIC SCHOOL LIFE
• [In September
• 
  
• VERSE
• RESENTMENT: POEMS
• [Out of Print
• 
  

THE
LONELY UNICORN

A NOVEL

BY
ALEC WAUGH

AUTHOR OF "THE LOOM OF YOUTH"

LONDON
GRANT RICHARDS LTD.
ST MARTIN'S STREET
MDCCCCXXII

Printed in Great Britain by the Riverside Press Limited
Edinburgh

TO MY FRIEND
CLIFFORD BAX

[CONTENTS]

[PART I]

THE OPENING ROUND

[CHAPTER I]

TWO HAPHAZARDS

It began, I suppose, on a certain September afternoon, when Roland Whately travelled 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 travelled 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 travelled 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."

Half-way 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 recognise them in the bowler hats and coloured ties that would have to be put away that night in favour 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 moustache 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 humour 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, half way 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 rumour 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 centre 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 colours. 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 not 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 realised 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 Harbour. 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'ld 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 programme. It had all seemed jolly enough up at the sanatorium, but when he was back in the house, and life re-established 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 piest 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 realise 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 learnt his words; when he had learnt the rules it was great fun; kisses were pleasant things. He wrote a letter to his friend, Ralph Richmond, acquainting him of this fact.

My Dear Ralph,—Why haven't you written to me, you lazy swine? I suppose you will say that you're awfully hard worked, getting ready for Smalls. But I don't believe it. I know how much I do myself.

It's been quite a decent term. I got my colours and shall be captain of the house after the summer if the people I think are going to leave do leave. Think of me as a ruler of men. I'm having a pretty good slack in form and don't have to do any work, except in French, where a fellow called Carus-Evans, an awful swine, has his knife into me and puts me on whenever we get to a hard bit. However, as I never do much else I'm able to swot the French all right.

The great bit of news, though, is that I've met a girl in the town who I go out for walks with. I'm not really keen on her, and I think I prefer her friend, Betty (we go in couples). Betty's much older and she's dark and she makes you blush when she looks at you. Still, Dolly's very jolly, and we go out for walks every Sunday and have great times. She lets me kiss her as much as I like. Now what do you think of it? Write and tell me at once. Yours ever,

Roland.

Two days later Roland received the following reply:—

My Dear Roland,—So glad to hear from you again, and many congratulations on your firsts. I had heard about them as a matter of fact, and had been meaning to write to you, but I am very busy just now. April told me about it; she seemed awfully pleased. I must say she was looking jolly pretty; she thinks a lot of you. Sort of hero. If I were you I should think a bit more about her and a little less about your Bettys and Dollys.

I'm looking forward to the holidays. We must manage to have a few good rags somehow. The Saundersons are giving a dance, so that ought to be amusing. Ever yours,

Ralph.

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 centre 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-bye" 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-bye." 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' colours.

[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 realising 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 theatre 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 armour 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 armour and an unstained sword. At the time he did not fully appreciate the application of this image: he soon learnt, 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 learnt 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 colours, 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 theatre 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 theatre, 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. Himself was the central point.

Five minutes later he came down stairs 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 hat-rack 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-bye." 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 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 harbouring 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 tranquillised 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 colour, 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 colour, 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 coloured 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 programme 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 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 leant 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 leant 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 woke 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 behaviour 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, a 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 realised 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 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 colour 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 colours. 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 that Howard had told him. It was 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 coloured, 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 skilfully; 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 favourite 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 coloured curtains in their bedrooms and the right coloured 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 moustache, 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 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 colours 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 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 dare say, 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 rôle 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-coloured 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 fervour 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 woke 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 gaily, "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 woke 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 behaviour, 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 for ever. 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 tuck-shop 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 realise 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 realised 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 favour 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 coloured 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 colour 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 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 realised 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 realise the hypocrisy of your behaviour 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 endeavoured 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.

This letter arrived at Hammerton by the evening post. Mr Whately had that morning received a letter from Roland, written before the row, with an account of a house game in which he had made 59 runs and taken 3 wickets. Mr Whately was most excited.

"He's really doing remarkably well," he said, after dinner. "He says that he's pretty certain for his second XI. colours, and I can't think why they don't give him a trial for the first. I know that Fernhurst have a pretty strong side this year, but they ought to try all the men they've got."

"He ought to get in next year at any rate," said his wife.

"Next year! Of course there should be no doubt about that at all. But I should like to see him get in this. It will make a big difference to his last term if he knows he's safe for his place. It's always a little worrying having to play for one's colours, and I should like him to have a really good last term. He's deserved it; he's worked hard; he's been a real success at Fernhurst."

His soliloquy was at this point interrupted by the double knock of the postman. Mr Whately jumped up at once.

"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 that they 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 stairs sadly, 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 and preposterous, 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 whether or 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, and there 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 had seen 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 time in 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.

[PART II]

THE RIVAL FORCES

[CHAPTER VIII]

A FORTUNATE MEETING

Mr Whately's one 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 desperate efforts 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 standard examinations. 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 sunshine watching 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.

[CHAPTER IX]

HOGSTEAD

It was 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 been spent 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 hair scattered 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 for the 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-footed drive 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 of reach 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 remain in 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 sort of 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.

[CHAPTER X]

YOUNG LOVE

Roland said nothing to his people of Mr Marston's conversation with Gerald. He disliked scenes and an atmosphere of expectation. When everything was settled finally he would tell them, but he would not risk the exposure of his hope to the chill of disappointment. He could not, however, resist the temptation to confide in April. She was young; she could share his failures as his successes. Life was before them both.

No sooner had he turned the corner of the road than he saw the door of the Curtises' house open. April was in the porch waiting for him. "She must have been looking for me," he thought. "Sitting in the window-seat, hoping that I should come." His pride as well as his affection was touched by this clear proof of her interest in him.

"Well?" she said.

"I made a duck," he answered; and his vanity noted that her brown eyes clouded suddenly with disappointment. "But that was only in the first innings," he added.

"Oh, you pig!" she said, "and I thought that after all it had come to nothing."

Roland laughed at the quick change to relief.

"But how do you know that I did do anything in the second innings?"

"You must have."

"But why?"

"'Cos—oh, I don't know. It's not fair to tease me, Roland; tell me what happened." They had passed into the hall, shutting the door behind them, and she pulled impatiently at his sleeve: "Come on, tell me."

"Well, as a matter of fact, I made forty-eight not out."

"Oh, how ripping, how ripping! Come and tell me all about it," and catching him by the hand she led him to the window-seat, from which, on that miserable afternoon, she had gazed for over an hour down the darkening street. "Come on, tell me everything."

And though he at first endeavoured to assume an attitude of superior indifference, he soon found himself telling the story of the match eagerly, dramatically. Reticence was well enough in the presence of the old and middle-aged—parents, relatives and schoolmasters—for all those who had put behind them the thrill of wakening confidence and were prepared to patronise it in others, from whose scrutiny the young had to protect their emotions with the shield of "it is no matter." But April's enthusiasm was fresh, unquestioning and freely given; he could not but respond to it.

She listened to the story with alert, admiring eyes. "And were they awfully pleased with you?" she said when he had finished.

"Well, it was pretty exciting."

"And did Mr Marston say anything to you?"

"Rather! Quite a lot. He was more excited than anyone."

"Oh, yes, but I didn't mean the cricket. Did he say anything about the business?"

Roland nodded.

"Oh, but, Roland, what?"

"Well, I'm not quite certain what, but I think he's going to let me have a shot at some sort of foreign representative affair."

"But, how splendid!" She felt that she shared, in a measure, in his success. It was in her that he had confided his hopes; it was to her that he had brought the news of his good fortune. Her face was flushed and eager, its expression softened by her faith in him. And Roland who, up till then, had regarded her as little more than a friend, her charm as a delicate, elusive fragrance, was unprepared for this simple joy in his achievement. The surprise placed in his mouth ardent, unconsidered words.

"But I shouldn't have been able to do anything without you," he said.

"What do you mean?" she asked, feeling herself grow nervous, taut, expectant.

"You encouraged me when I was depressed," he said. "You believed in me. You told me that things would come right. And because of your belief they have come right. If it hadn't been for you I shouldn't have worried; I should have resigned myself to the bank. As likely as not I shouldn't have gone down to the Marstons' at all. It's all you."

There was a pause. And when at last she spoke, the intonation of her voice was tender.

"Is that true, Roland, really true?"

And as she looked at him, with her clear brown eyes, he believed implicitly that it was true. He was not play-acting. His whole being was softened and made tender by her beauty, by the sight of her calm, oval face and quiet colour, her hair swept in a wide curve across her forehead, gathered under the smooth skin of her neck. His manhood grew strong through her belief in him. She was the key that would open for him the gate of adventure. He leant forward, took her hands in his, and the touch of her fingers brought to his lips an immediate avowal.

"It's quite true, April, every word of it. I shouldn't have done anything but for you." Her brown eyes clouded with a mute gratitude. Gently he drew her by the hand towards him, and she made no effort to resist him. "April," he murmured, "April."

It was the first real kiss of his life. His mouth did not meet hers as it had met Dolly's, in a hungry fierceness; he did not hold her in his arms as he had held Dolly; did not press her to him till she was forced, as Dolly had, to fling her head back and gasp for breath. For an instant April's cheek was against his and his mouth touched hers: nothing more. But in that cool contact of her lips he found for the first time the romance, poetry, ecstasy, what you will, of love. And when his arms released her and she leant back, her hand in his, a deep tenderness remained with them. He said nothing. There was no need for words. They sat silent in face of the mystery they had discovered.

Roland walked home in harmony with himself, with nature; one with the rhythm of life that was made manifest in the changing seasons of the year; the green leaf and the bud; the flower and the fruit; the warm days of harvesting. Hammerton was stretched languid beneath the September sunshine. The sky was blue, a pale blue, that whitened where it was cut by the sharp outline of roof and chimney-stack. The leaves that had been fresh and green in May, but had grown dull in the heat and dust of summer, were once more beautiful. The dirty green had changed to a shrivelled, metallic copper. A few mornings of golden mist would break into a day of sultry splendour; then would come the first warning of frost—the chill air at sundown, the grey dawn that held no promise of sunshine. Oh, soon enough the boughs would be leafless, the streets bare and wintersome. But who could be sad on this day of suspended decadence, this afternoon laden with the heavy autumn scents. Were not the year's decay, the lengthening evenings, part of the eternal law of nature—birth and death, spring and winter, and an awakening after sleep? The falling leaves suggested to him no analogy with the elusive enchantments of the senses.

Two days later he received a letter from Mr Marston offering him a post of a hundred and fifty pounds a year, with all expenses found.

"You will understand, of course," the letter ran, "that at present you are on probation. Our work is personal and requires special gifts. These gifts, however, I believe you to possess. For both our sakes I hope that you will make a success of this. Gerald is sailing for Brussels at the end of October, and I expect that you will be able to arrange to accompany him. He will tell you what you will need to take out with you. We usually make our representative an allowance of fifteen pounds for personal expenses, but I daresay that we could in your case, if it is necessary, increase this sum."

Roland handed the letter to his father.

Mr Whately, as usual in the morning, was in a state of nervous excitement. He was always a considerable trial to his family at breakfast. And as often as possible Roland delayed his own appearance till he had heard the slam of the front door. It is not easy to enjoy a meal when someone is bouncing from table to sideboard, reading extracts from the morning paper, opening letters, running up and down stairs, forgetting things in the hall. Mr Whately had never been able to face the first hour of the morning with dignity and composure. When Roland handed him Mr Marston's letter he received it with the impatience of a busy man, who objects to being worried by an absurd trifle.

"Yes, what is it? What is it?"

"A letter from Mr Marston, father, that I thought you might like to read."

"Oh, yes, of course; well, wait a minute," and he projected himself out of the door and up the stairs. He returned within a minute, panting and flustered.

"Yes; now what's the time? Twenty-five past eight. I've got seven minutes. Where's this letter of yours, Roland? Let me see."

He picked up the letter and began to read it as he helped himself to another rasher of bacon. His agitation increased as he read.

"But I don't understand," he said impatiently. "What's all this about Mr Marston offering you a post in his business?"

"What's that, dear?" said Mrs Whately quickly. "Isn't Roland going into the bank after all?"

"Yes, of course he is going into the bank," her husband replied hastily. "It's all settled. Don't interrupt me, Roland. I can't understand what you've been doing!"

And he flung the back of his hand against his forehead, a favourite gesture when the pressure of the conversation grew intense.

"I don't know what it's all about, Roland," he continued. "I don't know anything about this man. Who he is, and what he is. And I don't know why you've been arranging all these things behind my back."

Roland expressed surprise that his father had not welcomed the offer of so promising a post. But Mr Whately was too flustered to consider the matter in this light. "It may be a better job," he said, "I don't know. But the bank has been settled and I can't think why you should want to alter things. At any rate, I can't stop to discuss it now," and a minute later the front door had banged behind a querulous, irritable little man, who considered no one had any right to disturb—especially at the breakfast-table—the placid course of his existence. As he left the room he flung the letter upon the table, and Mrs Whately snatched it up eagerly. Roland watched carefully the expression of her face as she read it. At first he noted there only a relieved happiness, but as she folded the letter and handed it back he saw that she was sad.

"Of course it's splendid, Roland," she said. "I'm delighted, but.... Oh, well, I do think you might have told us something about it before."

"I wanted to, mother, but one doesn't like to shout till one's out of the wood."

"With friends, no, but with one's parents—surely you might have confided in us."

There was no such implied disapproval in April's reception of the news. He had not seen her since the afternoon when he had kissed her, and he had wondered in what spirit she would receive him. Would there be awkward stammered explanations? Would she be coy and protest "that she had been silly, that she had not meant it, that it must never happen again?" He had little previous experience to guide him and he was still debating the point when he arrived at No. 73 Hammerton Rise.

What April Curtis did was to open the door for him, close it quickly behind him as soon as he was in the porch, take him happily by both hands and hold her face up to be kissed. There was not the least embarrassment in her action.

"Well?" she said, on a note of interrogation.

For answer he put his hand into his pocket, drew out Mr Marston's letter and gave it to her.

April pulled it out of the envelope, hurriedly unfolded it, and ran an engrossed eye over its contents.

"Oh, but how splendid, Roland; now it's all right. Now there's no need to worry about anything. Come at once and tell mother. Mother, mother!" she shouted, and catching Roland by the hand dragged him after her towards the drawing-room.

Mrs Curtis had, through the laborious passage of fifty-two uneventful years, so trained her face to assume on all occasions an expression of pleasant sentimental interest in the affairs of others that by now her features could not be arranged to accommodate any other emotion. She appeared therefore unastonished when her name was called loudly in the hall, when the drawing-room door was flung open and a flushed, excited April stood in the doorway, grasping by the hand an equally flushed but embarrassed Roland. Mrs Curtis laid her knitting in her lap; a kindly smile spread over her glazed countenance.

"Well, my dear, and what's all this about?" she said.

"Oh, it's so exciting, mother. Roland's not going into a bank after all."

"No, dear?"

"No, mother. A Mr Marston, you know the man whom Roland went to stay with last week, has offered him a post in his firm. It's a lovely job. He'll be travelling all over the world and he's going to get a salary; of how much is it—yes, a hundred and fifty pounds a year and all expenses paid. Isn't it splendid?"

Mrs Curtis purred with reciprocated pleasure: "Of course it is, and how pleased your parents must be. Come and sit down here; yes, shut the door, please. You know I always said to Mr Whately, 'Roland is going to do something big; I'm sure of it.' And now you see my prophecy has come true. I shall remind Mr Whately of that next time he comes round to see me, and I shall remind him, too, that I said exactly the same thing about Arthur. 'Mr Whately,' I said," and her voice trailed off into reminiscences.

But though Mrs Curtis was in many—and indeed in most—ways a troublesome old fool, she was not unobservant. She knew that a young girl does not rush into a drawing-room dragging a young man by the hand simply because that young man has obtained a lucrative post in a varnish factory. There must be some other cause for so vigorous an ebullition. And as Mrs Curtis's speculation was unvexed by the complexities of Austrian psychology, she assumed that Roland and April had fallen in love with each other. She was not surprised. She had indeed often wondered why they had not done so before. April was such a dear girl, and Roland could be trained into a highly sympathetic son-in-law. He listened to her conversation with respect and interest, whereas Ralph Richmond insisted on interrupting her. Roland would make April a good husband. Certainly she had been temporarily disquieted by Mr Whately's sudden decision to remove his son from school; but no doubt he had had this post in his mind's eye and had not wished to speak of it till everything had been fixed.

Mrs Curtis's reverie traversed into an agreeable future; she pictured the wedding at St Giles; they would have the full choir. There would be a reception afterwards at the Town Hall. April would look so pretty in orange blossom. Arthur would be the best man. He would stand beside the bridegroom, erect and handsome. "What fine children you have, Mrs Curtis!" That's what everyone would say to her. It would be the prettiest wedding there had ever been at St Giles.... She collected herself with a start. She must not be premature. Nothing was settled yet; they were not even engaged. And of course they could not be engaged yet. They were too absurdly young. Everyone would laugh at her. Still, there might be an understanding. An understanding was first cousin to an engagement; it bound both parties. And then April and Roland would be allowed to go about together. It would be so nice for them.

When Roland had gone, she fixed on her daughter a deep, questioning look, under which April began to grow uncomfortable.

"Well, mother?" she said.

"You like Roland very much, don't you, dear?"

"We're great friends."

"Only friends?"

April did not answer, and her mother repeated her question. "But you're more than friends, aren't you?" But April was still silent. Mrs Curtis leant forward and took April's hand, lifted for a moment out of her vain complacency by the recollection of herself as she had been a quarter of a century ago, like April, with life in front of her. Through placid waters she had come to a safe anchorage, and she wondered whether for April the cruise would be as fortunate, the hand at the helm as steady. Her husband had risked little, but Roland would scarcely be satisfied with safe travel beneath the cliffs. Would April be happier or less happy than she had been? Which was the better—blue skies, calm water, gently throbbing engines, or the pitch and toss and crash of heavy seas?

"Are you very fond of him, dear?" she whispered.

"Yes, mother."

"And he's fond of you?"

"I think so, mother."

"Has he told you so, dear?"

"Yes."

A tear gathered in the corner of her eye, stung her, welled, fell upon her cheek, and this welcome relief recalled her to what she considered the necessities of the moment.

"Of course I shall have to speak to the Whatelys about it."

A shocked, surprised expression came into April's face.

"Oh, but why, mother?"

"Because, my dear, they may have other plans for Roland."

"But ... oh, mother, dear, there's no talk of engagements or anything; we've just ... oh, why can't we go on as we are?"

Mrs Curtis was firm.

"No, my dear," she said, "it would be fair neither to you nor to them. It's not only you and Roland that have to be considered. There's your father and myself and Mr and Mrs Whately. We shall have to talk it over together."

And so when Roland returned that evening from an afternoon with Ralph he found his father and mother sitting in the drawing-room with Mrs Curtis.

"Ah, here's Roland," said Mrs Curtis. "Come along, Roland, we've just been talking about you."

Roland entered and sat on the chair nearest him. He looked from one to the other, and each in turn smiled at him reassuringly: their smile said, "Now don't be nervous. We mean you well. You've only got to agree to our conditions and we'll be ever so nice to you." In the same way, Roland reflected, the Spanish Inquisitors had recommended conversion to the faith with a smile upon their lips, while from the adjoining room sounds came that the impenitents would be wise to associate with furnaces and screws and pliant steel.

"Yes, Roland," said Mr Whately, "we've been talking about you and April."

"Damn!" said Roland to himself. It was like that ridiculous Dolly affair all over again. It was useless, of course, to be flustered. He was growing accustomed to this sort of scene. He supposed that April had got frightened and told her mother, or perhaps the maidservant had seen them kissing in the porch. In any case it was not very serious. They would probably forbid him to see April alone. It would be rather rotten; but the world was wide. In a few weeks' time he would be going abroad; he could free himself of these entanglements, and when he returned he would decide what he should do. He would be economically independent. In the meantime let them talk. He settled himself back in his chair and prepared to hear at least, with patience, whatever they might have to say to him. What they did have to say came to him as a surprise.