Читать книгу Undertow - Arthur Hamilton Gibbs - Страница 6

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The school building was of brick,—not the warm red that takes on mellowness with age, but a nondescript, musty, yellow-grey, such as one associates with institutions, homes for the aged, reformatories. Not even a Virginia creeper covering most of the south wall could temper its unloveliness.

In shape the building was a double L. The center consisted of classrooms, dormitory and refectory for the boys. One wing, which had its own entrance, was given over to the apartments of the Headmaster, Mr. Hemingway, his wife, the matron, the chapel and the sickroom. The other wing had a gymnasium on the ground floor, and over it the bedrooms of the three assistant masters who all shared a common bathroom at the end of the passage. Their windows faced the opposite L, so that it was only by leaning out that anything green was visible,—a group of elms, and through them a stretch of ragged grass that was the football field in winter and the cricket field in summer. If they didn’t lean out, their view was nothing but the bilious brick.

In the last analysis, the school was Mrs. Hemingway’s. It was her brain which had conceived it and her money which had bought it when, for Heaven knows what reason, she had met and married the figurehead of the school. Whether it was through boredom, or a lust for power, or whether she had been really attracted by him as a younger man, it would be hard to say. She met him when he had been down some years from Balliol and, armed with a first-class honors degree, was in the full flush of pedantic English at Cheltenham school. He might have remained there if she had not looked upon him with a favorable eye; and if, also, it had not been common knowledge that her financial position was most enviable: for she was, even then, an ample maiden with what are called billiard table legs, necessitated, presumably, by her volume of buttock and general girth. Without the checkbook, her will power, indomitable as it was, might not have achieved success: but Balliol has long been famed as the Alma Mater of illustrious politicians, and it is the part of a politician not to overlook the beckoning finger of opportunity. James Truslow Hemingway said “Yes,” and with that one brief monosyllable hoisted himself up all the intervening rungs of a long and arduous ladder. It had been in some deep recess of his mind that he might sit back and enjoy the spectacle of life with dignity and benevolent neutrality. But beneath the all too generous flesh of his lady lay a driving force that in another frame might have ruled nations. She turned it upon her academic windbag, her good-looking phrase-monger,—and the school at Uxminster came into being; and while her better half most picturesquely, and not without a certain megalomaniacal enjoyment, disported his M.A. gown and his Latin tags among the boys, it was she who procured the boys, who laid down the rules, who saw that they were obeyed, who hired and fired the less fortunate fag-ends of scholasticism of whom Philip Jocelyn had stuck it out the longest.

On this particular evening, as Philip hurried through the school door and stepped into the economically lit hall, cold and gloomy, with a stone floor, the usual food smells came at him like an offence, tepid and slightly sour. From the corridor that led to what the Headmaster insisted should be called the refectory, came the subdued vibrating hum of a human dynamo,—the clamor of a hundred spoons digging into a hundred plates, restless young feet kicking the supports of long benches, shrill voices all talking at once.... Nice youngsters, thought Philip, poor little devils, planted there by shirking parents who, fooling themselves that their children were receiving an education, thanked their gods that they were relieved of damned little nuisances around the house. They neither knew nor cared that many a pillow was wet with tears night after night, that the iron was entering into their small souls.... It would make them manly, forsooth! God, if ever he had a son, there would be no preparatory school in his life!

As he stood unbuttoning his raincoat, Philip sighed. In his mind’s eye the picture into which he was about to plunge was indelibly engraved. As soon as he opened the refectory door, the smell would be worse and the clamor would become a frightful din. Eyes would be raised from the tables along the walls, the boys would nudge each other and giggle, and from the door he would see the Headmaster’s fantastic eyebrows go up while he walked the length of the room to make an unnecessary apology.... Those eyebrows! If some Delilah were to cut them off, the school would have to close. They were a part of his capital. He made play with them, used them as marks of exclamation, quotation marks, dashes and parentheses. Probably he practised with them each morning before the glass, like an actor rehearsing the smile that is to captivate the flappers.... Unfortunately there was little chance of a Delilah with a pair of shears. Mrs. Hemingway was too alert.... If ever the Head knew that “Le Roi Pausole” was within the four walls of the school—presuming that he had ever heard of it—his eyebrows would go up so far that they would probably stick; he would be permanently disabled.... The idea made Philip chuckle as he put his coat and hat on a peg. “It tempts me to show it to him!” he muttered. “And I swear he would want to borrow it at that!”

All the same, he arranged his coat so that the pocket containing the book hung inside, invisible.

Then he strode down the corridor; and, as he pushed open the refectory door, received the familiar nauseating smell full in the face. Without a flicker of expression he ran the gauntlet of the boys’ tables, catching here and there a quick excited whisper: “Old Jocelyn late again! Watch him get it now from the Head!”

By the time he reached the high table where the masters ate, commanding the room, there was a faint smile around his eyes. Those kids were right. He would “get it” in one way or another. The Head never missed a chance.... He paused behind the Headmaster’s chair and mumbled the accustomed formula, “Sorry to be late, sir!” Then he passed on and sat down next to Davies-Jones, the “math” master, who, as usual, was inhaling his food, solids as well as liquids, beneath a difficult moustache.

As was the custom, each course when it came had been left at the unoccupied place. The soup was stone cold, scummy with floating globules of iridescent grease. As he pushed it silently away and pulled a plate of meat and vegetables towards himself, he glanced at his neighbor to see how far they had got. Jones was sawing with a spoon at a rubbery suet pudding decorated with a trickle of thin red jam. Philip looked away quickly before it made him sick; and then, in some ways mercifully, his attention was caught by the unctuous voice of the Headmaster.

The “Head” was leaning forward with what was intended to be a whimsical smile. “It is, I presume, a fair assumption, Mr.—er—Jocelyn, that your somewhat tardy advent was occasioned by your recognized devotion to the billiard cue?”

A sycophantic grin appeared on the faces of the two other masters. Philip hastily swallowed a piece of underdone beef.... Damn the man! He was always trying to keep tabs on everybody. “No, sir,” he said. “I didn’t play to-night.”

The bushy eyebrows were raised and lowered twice. “Indeed! I was unaware that our fair city of Uxminster offered other dissipations,—saving only the ubiquitous cinema! And I can hardly be discourteous enough to entertain even the thought that one of your caliber would indulge in what one might reasonably call ‘housemaid amusement’?”

Philip could feel himself getting angry. As a rule he swallowed it, but to-night that feeling of unrest made him choke with rage. The man wouldn’t “entertain the thought” but he deliberately put a question mark at the end of his sentence, all the same! And then too, “our fair city of Uxminster!” That might go well with visiting parents, but not night after night to them! “You’re quite right, sir,” he snapped. “I wasn’t with the housemaids. If you must know, I was doing nothing more exciting than browse among the old books at Sampson’s.”

Mr. Hemingway smoothed the folds of his M.A. gown. “Ah!” he said, and nodded with satisfaction at having made his point. “What is it our Horace says ... Haud ignara ac non incauta futuri. ... Of course, friend Sampson’s collection can hardly rival the Bodleian ...” He paused to savor the too ready snicker from his two underlings. “But, after all, if you will permit me a mixture of metaphor, lilies may be found on dunghills.”

The “math” master choked. Food was egurgitated from beneath his moustache.

The “Head’s” eyes grew round. For a moment he was undecided as to whether to take it as a compliment to his wit or whether it was a local misfortune that had befallen his Welsh colleague. He decided to ignore it; and so, glancing from right to left, as always, said, “Well, gentlemen ...” and picked up the small wooden mallet which was always laid with his dessert spoon and fork. With it he rapped smartly on the table, thrice.

The shrill voices trailed off into silence. Every face was turned towards the high table. After a due pause, so that his features might shed the alertness proper to social intercourse and take on the solemnity becoming to prayer, the “Head” rose to his feet. Masters and boys rose with him. Every head was bent. Then the sonorous voice of the Headmaster rolled down the room. “Benedicus benedicat!”

Not speaking, as was the school rule, but far from silently, the boys filed out of the refectory, along the corridor, and into their respective study rooms.

No longer hungry, but certainly ill-nourished, Philip followed them out. It was his turn of duty that evening. The hardship was not in going without such a meal—he would brew himself some cocoa later—but in being denied tobacco until the end of the evening study. Oh, well, it was all a part of it.... But at the hatrack he paused. “Le Roi Pausole” was swiftly tucked under his arm,—like a file smuggled in to a prisoner.