The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [144]
“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.”
CHARLES RYDER’S
SCHOOLDAYS
I
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