“I had no idea.”

“Yes. Lucy never saw her, of course. It’s why she’s anxious about Julia.”

“Is she anxious about Julia?”

“Who wouldn’t be?”

“How soon can you tell if they’re blind?”

“Not for weeks, I believe. I asked Sister Kemp. She said, ‘The very idea,’ and whisked the baby off as if I wanted to injure it, poor little brute. D’you know what Lucy calls Sister Kemp now? — Kempy.”

“It’s not possible.”

It was true. I went in to see her for five minutes and twice during that time she said “Kempy.” When we were alone for a minute I asked her why. “She asked me to,” said Lucy, “and she’s really very sweet.”

“Sweet?”

“She was absolutely sweet to me yesterday.”

I had brought some flowers, but the room was full of them. Lucy lay in bed; slack and smiling. I sat down by her and held her hand. “Everyone’s been so sweet,” she said. “Have you seen my baby?”

“No.”

“He’s in the dressing room. Ask Kempy to show you.”

“Are you pleased with him?”

“I love him. I do really. I never thought I should. He’s such a person.”

This was incomprehensible.

“You haven’t gone bald,” I said.

“No, but my hair’s terrible. What did you do yesterday?”

“I got drunk.”

“So did poor Roger. Were you with him?”

“No,” I said, “it was really very amusing.” I began to tell her about Atwater, but she was not listening.

Then Sister Kemp came in with more flowers—from Mr. Benwell.

“How sweet he is,” said Lucy.

This was past bearing—first Sister Kemp, now Mr. Benwell. I felt stifled in this pastry-cook’s atmosphere. “I’ve come to say good-bye,” I said. “I’m going back to the country to see about my house.”

“I’m so glad. It’s lovely for you. I’m coming to see it as soon as I’m better.”

She did not want me, I thought; Humboldt’s Gibbon and I had done our part. “You’ll be my first guest,” I said.

“Yes. Quite soon.”

Sister Kemp went with me to the landing.

“Now,” she said, “come and see something very precious.”

There was a cradle in Roger’s dressing room, made of white stuff and ribbons, and a baby in it.

“Isn’t he a fine big man?”

“Magnificent,” I said, “and very sweet… Kempy.”

There was a scent of dust in the air; a thin vestige surviving in the twilight from the golden clouds with which before chapel the House Room fags had filled the evening sunshine. Light was failing. Beyond the trefoils and branched mullions of the windows the towering autumnal leaf was now flat and colourless. All the eastward slope of Spierpoint Down, where the College buildings stood, lay lost in shadow; above and behind, on the high lines of Chanctonbury and Spierpoint Ring, the first day of term was gently dying.

In the House Room thirty heads were bent over their books. Few form-masters had set any preparation that day. The Classical Upper Fifth, Charles Ryder’s new form, were “revising last term’s work” and Charles was writing his diary under cover of Hassall’s History. He looked up from the page to the darkling texts which ran in Gothic script around the frieze. “Qui diligit Deum diligit et fratrem suum.”

“Get on with your work, Ryder,” said Apthorpe.

Apthorpe has greased into being a house-captain this term, Charles wrote. This is his first Evening School. He is being thoroughly officious and on his dignity.

“Can we have the light on, please?”

“All right. Wykham-Blake, put it on.” A small boy rose from the under-school table. “Wykham-Blake, I said. There’s no need for everyone to move.”

A rattle of the chain, a hiss of gas, a brilliant white light over half the room. The other light hung over the new boys’ table.

“Put the light on, one of you, whatever your names are.”

Six startled little boys looked at Apthorpe and at one another, all began to rise together, all sat down, all looked at Apthorpe in consternation.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

Apthorpe leaned over their heads and pulled the chain; there was a hiss of gas but no light. “The bye-pass is out. Light it, you.” He threw a box of matches to one of the new boys who dropped it, picked it up, climbed on the table and looked miserably at the white glass shade, the three hissing mantles and at Apthorpe. He had never seen a lamp of this kind before; at home and at his private school there was electricity. He lit a match and poked at the lamp, at first without effect; then there was a loud explosion; he stepped back, stumbled and nearly lost his footing among the books and ink-pots, blushed hotly and regained the bench. The matches remained in his hand and he stared at them, lost in an agony of indecision. How should he dispose of them? No head was raised but everyone in the House Room exulted in the drama. From the other side of the room Apthorpe held out his hand invitingly.

“When you have quite finished with my matches perhaps you’ll be so kind as to give them back.”

In despair the new boy threw them towards the house-captain; in despair he threw slightly wide. Apthorpe made no attempt to catch them, but watched them curiously as they fell to the floor. “How very extraordinary,” he said. The new boy looked at the matchbox; Apthorpe looked at the new boy. “Would it be troubling you too much if I asked you to give me my matches?” he said.

The new boy rose to his feet, walked the few steps, picked up the matchbox and gave it to the house-captain, with the ghastly semblance of a smile.

“Extraordinary crew of new men we have this term,” said Apthorpe. “They seem to be entirely half-witted. Has anyone been turned on to look after this man?”

“Please, I have,” said Wykham-Blake.

“A grave responsibility for one so young. Try and convey to his limited intelligence that it may prove a painful practice here to throw matchboxes about in Evening School, and laugh at house officials. By the way, is that a workbook you’re reading?”

“Oh, yes, Apthorpe.” Wykham-Blake raised a face of cherubic innocence and presented the back of the Golden Treasury.

“Who’s it for?”

“Mr. Graves. We’re to learn any poem we like.”

“And what have you chosen?”

“Milton-on-his-blindness.”

“How, may one ask, did that take your fancy?”

“I learned it once before,” said Wykham-Blake and Apthorpe laughed indulgently.

“Young blighter,” he said.

Charles wrote: Now he is snooping round seeing what books men are reading. It would be typical if he got someone beaten his first Evening School. The day before yesterday this time I was in my dinner-jacket just setting out for dinner at the d’Italie with Aunt Philippa before going to The Choice at Wyndhams. Quantum mutatus ab illo Hectore. We live in water-tight compartments. Now I am absorbed in the trivial round of House politics. Graves has played hell with the house. Apthorpe a house-captain and O’Malley on the Settle. The only consolation was seeing the woe on Wheatley’s fat face when the locker list went up. He thought he was a cert for the Settle this term. Bad luck on Tamplin though. I never expected to get on but I ought by all rights to have been above O’Malley. What a tick Graves is. It all comes of this rotten system of switching round house-tutors. We ought to have the best of Heads instead of which they try out ticks like Graves on us before giving them a house. If only we still had Frank.

Charles’s handwriting had lately begun to develop certain ornamental features—Greek E’s and flourished crossings. He wrote with conscious style. Whenever Apthorpe came past he would turn a page in the history book, hesitate and then write as though making a note from the text. The hands of the clock crept on to half past seven when the porter’s handbell began to sound in the cloisters on the far side of Lower Quad. This was the signal of release. Throughout the House Room heads were raised, pages blotted, books closed, fountain pens screwed up. “Get on with your work,” said Apthorpe; “I haven’t said anything about moving.” The porter and his bell passed up the cloisters, grew faint under the arch by the library steps, were barely audible in the Upper Quad, grew louder on the steps of Old’s House and very loud in the cloister outside Head’s. At last Apthorpe tossed the Bystander on the table and said “All right.”