“I didn’t want you to think I’d been greasing. I heard Tamplin say I had.”

“Well, you are on the Settle and you are head of the dormitory, so what’s the trouble?”

“Will you back me up, Ryder?”

“Have you ever known me back anyone up, as you call it?”

“No,” said O’Malley miserably, “that’s just it.”

“Well, why d’you suppose I should start with you?”

“I just thought you might.”

“Well, think again.”

They had walked three sides of the square and were now at the door of Head’s House. Mr. Graves was standing outside his own room talking to Mr. Peacock.

“Charles,” he said, “come here a minute. Have you met this young man yet, Peacock? He’s one of yours.”

“Yes, I think so,” said Mr. Peacock doubtfully.

“He’s one of my problem children. Come in here, Charles. I want to have a chat to you.”

Mr. Graves took him by the elbow and led him into his room.

There were no fires yet and the two armchairs stood before an empty grate; everything was unnaturally bare and neat after the holiday cleaning.

“Sit you down.”

Mr. Graves filled his pipe and gave Charles a long, soft and quizzical stare. He was a man still under thirty, dressed in Lovat tweed with an Old Rugbeian tie. He had been at Spierpoint during Charles’s first term and they had met once on the miniature range; in that bleak, untouchable epoch Charles had been warmed by his affability. Then Mr. Graves was called up for the army and now had returned, the term before, as House Tutor of Head’s. Charles had grown confident in the meantime and felt no need of affable masters; only for Frank whom Mr. Graves had supplanted. The ghost of Frank filled the room. Mr. Graves had hung some Medici prints in the place of Frank’s football groups. The set of Georgian Poetry in the bookcase was his, not Frank’s. His college arms embellished the tobacco jar on the chimneypiece.

“Well, Charles Ryder,” said Mr. Graves at length, “are you feeling sore with me?”

“Sir?”

Mr. Graves became suddenly snappish. “If you choose to sit there like a stone image, I can’t help you.”

Still Charles said nothing.

“I have a friend,” said Mr. Graves, “who goes in for illumination. I thought you might like me to show him the work you sent in to the Art Competition last term.”

“I’m afraid I left it at home, sir.”

“Did you do any during the holidays?”

“One or two things, sir.”

“You never try painting from nature?”

“Never, sir.”

“It seems rather a crabbed, shut-in sort of pursuit for a boy of your age. Still, that’s your own business.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Difficult chap to talk to, aren’t you, Charles?”

“Not with everyone. Not with Frank,” Charles wished to say; “I could talk to Frank by the hour.” Instead he said, “I suppose I am, sir.”

“Well, I want to talk to you. I dare say you feel you have been a little ill-used this term. Of course, all your year are in rather a difficult position. Normally there would have been seven or eight people leaving at the end of last term but with the war coming to an end they are staying on an extra year, trying for University scholarships and so on. Only Sugdon left, so instead of a general move there was only one vacancy at the top. That meant only one vacancy on the Settle. I dare say you think you ought to have had it.”

“No, sir. There were two people ahead of me.”

“But not O’Malley. I wonder if I can make you understand why I put him over you. You were the obvious man in many ways. The thing is, some people need authority, others don’t. You’ve got plenty of personality. O’Malley isn’t at all sure of himself. He might easily develop into rather a second-rater. You’re in no danger of that. What’s more, there’s the dormitory to consider. I think I can trust you to work loyally under O’Malley. I’m not so sure I could trust him to work under you. See? It’s always been a difficult dormitory. I don’t want a repetition of what happened with Fletcher. Do you understand?”

“I understand what you mean, sir.”

“Grim young devil, aren’t you?”

“Sir?”

“Oh, all right, go away. I shan’t waste any more time with you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Charles rose to go.

“I’m getting a small hand printing-press this term,” said Mr. Graves. “I thought it might interest you.”

It did interest Charles intensely. It was one of the large features of his daydreams; in chapel, in school, in bed, in all the rare periods of abstraction, when others thought of racing motor-cars and hunters and speed-boats, Charles thought long and often of a private press. But he would not betray to Mr. Graves the intense surge of images that rose in his mind.

“I think the invention of movable type was a disaster, sir. It destroyed calligraphy.”

“You’re a prig, Charles,” said Mr. Graves. “I’m sick of you. Go away. Tell Wheatley I want him. And try not to dislike me so much. It wastes both our time.”

Second Evening had begun when Charles returned to the House Room; he reported to the house-captain in charge, despatched Wheatley to Mr. Graves and settled down over his Hassall to half an hour’s daydream, imagining the tall folios, the wide margins, the deckle-edged mould-made paper, the engraved initials, the rubrics and colophons of his private press. In Third Evening one could “read”; Charles read Hugh Walpole’s Fortitude.

Wheatley did not return until the bell was ringing for the end of Evening School.

Tamplin greeted him with “Bad luck, Wheatley. How many did you get? Was he tight?”; Charles with “Well, you’ve had a long hot-air with Graves. What on earth did he talk about?”

“It was all rather confidential,” said Wheatley solemnly.

“Oh, sorry.”

“No, I’ll tell you sometime if you promise to keep it to yourself.” Together they ascended the turret stair to their dormitory. “I say, have you noticed something? Apthorpe is in the Upper Anteroom this term. Have you ever known the junior house-captain anywhere except in the Lower Anteroom? I wonder how he worked it.”

“Why should he want to?”

“Because, my innocent, Wykham-Blake has been moved into the Upper Anteroom.”

“Tactful of Graves.”

“You know, I sometimes think perhaps we’ve rather misjudged Graves.”

“You didn’t think so in Hall.”

“No, but I’ve been thinking since.”

“You mean he’s been greasing up to you.”

“Well, all I can say is, when he wants to be decent, he is decent. I find we know quite a lot of the same people in the holidays. He once stayed on the moor next to ours.”

“I don’t see anything particularly decent in that.”

“Well, it makes a sort of link. He explained why he put O’Malley on the Settle. He’s a student of character, you know.”

“Who? O’Malley?”

“No, Graves. He said that’s the only reason he is a schoolmaster.”

“I expect he’s a schoolmaster because it’s so jolly slack.”

“Not at all. As a matter of fact, he was going into the Diplomatic, just as I am.”

“I don’t expect he could pass the exam. It’s frightfully stiff. Graves only takes the Middle Fourth.”

“The exam is only to keep out undesirable types.”

“Then it would floor Graves.”

“He says schoolmastering is the most human calling in the world. Spierpoint is not an arena for competition. We have to stop the weakest going to the wall.”

“Did Graves say that?”

“Yes.”

“I must remember that if there’s any unpleasantness with Peacock. What else did he say?”

“Oh, we talked about people, you know, and their characters. Would you say O’Malley had poise?”

“Good God, no.”

“That’s just what Graves thinks. He says some people have it naturally and they can look after themselves. Others, like O’Malley, need bringing on. He thinks authority will give O’Malley poise.”

“Well, it doesn’t seem to have worked yet,” said Charles, as O’Malley loped past their beds to his corner.