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By Root 1512 0

upon one she blushed or turned pale. He soared into dreams of elaborate adventure all dimly associated with art but culminating in a fancy that culminated all his daydreams. There was a great hall lit by chandeliers and floored with marble and with a vast staircase at the end rising into the dark of a starless sky. On each side of the hall stood all the women he had loved or who had loved him, all the men they had loved and married, everyone superbly evil, virtuous, wise, famous and beautiful and all magnificently dressed. Then he himself, alone and in ordinary clothes, walked down the centre of the hall and started unhurriedly climbing the staircase toward some huge and ultimate menace at the top. This menace overhung all humanity but only he was fit to encounter it, although it was an encounter from which he would not return. He climbed to a tragic crescendo in which organs, solo voices and orchestras blended in a lament which combined the most impressive effects of Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner and Puccini.

He got home after dark. Mr. Thaw said, “What kept you?” “I walked back.”

“Did they let you join the life class?”

“I’m not sure. The registrar asked me a lot of questions. He thought I should join the day school. I told him it was impossible. He asked for your office telephone number.”

Thaw spoke expressionlessly. Mr. Thaw said, “Well, well.”

They ate supper in silence.

Mr. Thaw came home next day slightly earlier than usual and slightly breathless. He sat facing Thaw across the living-room hearth rug and said, “He phoned me this morning— Peel, the registrar, I mean. He asked me if I could call and see him. I’d been talking over this business with Joe McVean, and Joe said, ‘Duncan, you take the afternoon off. I’ll manage fine here myself.’ So I went and saw Peel there and then.” Mr. Thaw brought out his pipe and pouch and began filling one from the other.

“You seem to have made an impression on that man. He said your work was unusually good. He said it was rare for the art school authorities to persuade someone to join. It had only happened once in the last ten years. He said the director agreed with him that you would be wasted as a librarian, and that you could get a grant from the Corporation of a hundred and fifty pounds a year. I said to him,’ Mr. Peel, I know nothing about art. I do not appreciate my son’s work. However, I can vouch for his sincerity, and I accept your opinion as an expert when you vouch for his ability. But tell me one thing: what prospects has he when he finishes this four-year course of yours?’ “Well, he hummed and hawed a bit at that, then told me that for someone of your talent there might well be a chance of teaching in the art school when you had qualified. ‘However,’ he said, ‘the boy will be unhappy anywhere else, Mr. Thaw. Let him decide himself what to do when the four years are up. Don’t rush him into a job he’ll hate at this stage.’ I said I would think it over and tell him tomorrow. I went straight from the art school to Whitehill and saw your headmaster. Do you know what I found? Peel had phoned him and had a talk with him. McEwan said to me, ‘Mr. Thaw, that man is better equipped to decide Duncan’s future than you or I.’ So I phoned the art school and said you could join.”

“Thanks,” said Thaw, and left the room. A minute later Mr. Thaw came to him in the front bedroom, kneeling by the bed with his face pushed into the coverlet. Indrawn moans came from his muffled face and his back shuddered spasmodically. Mr. Thaw said in a puzzled voice, “What’s wrong, Duncan? Don’t you want to go to the art school? Aren’t you glad?”

“Yes. Very glad.”

“Then why are ye greeting?”

Thaw stood up and dried his face with a handkerchief.

“I don’t know. Relief, mibby.”

Mr. Thaw patted his son affectionately under the chin with his clenched fist. “Cheer up!” he said. “And if you don’t make another Picasso of yourself, I’ll—I’ll—I’ll knock your block off so I will.”

One hot afternoon Thaw and Coulter came down a woodland path veined by tree roots and freckled with sunlight. Birds called in the