Roland Whately - Alec Waugh

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in the middle of a soliloquy, with a gesture of profound disdain and resignation.

      “But what’s all this after all?” he said. “It’s nothing; it’s pleasant; it passes the time, and we have to have some distractions in this place to keep us going. But it’s not the real thing; there’s all the difference in the world between this and the real thing. A kiss can be anything or nothing; it can raise one to—to any height, or it can be like eating chocolates. I’m not a chap, you know, who really cares for this sort of thing. I’m in love. I suppose you are too.”

      And Roland, who did not want to be outdone, confessed that there was someone, “a girl he had known all his life.”

      “But you don’t want a girl you’ve known all your life; love’s not a thing that we drift into; it must be sudden; it must be unexpected; it must hurt.”

      Howard was a sore trial, and it was with the most unutterable relief that Roland learned that he was leaving at Christmas to go to a crammer’s.

      “We must keep up with one another, old fellow,” Howard said on their last Sunday. “You must come and lunch with me one day in town. Write and tell me all about it. We’ve had some jolly times.”

      Roland caught a glimpse of him on the last day, resplendent in an O.F. scarf, very loud and hearty, saying “good-by” to people he had hardly spoken to before. “You’ll write to me, won’t you, old fellow? Come and lunch with me when you’re up in town. The Regent Club. Good-by.” Since his first year, when the prefect for whom he had fagged, and by whom he had been beaten several times, had left, Roland had never been so heartily thankful to see any member of the school in old boys’ colors.

       RALPH AND APRIL

       Table of Contents

      RALPH RICHMOND was the son of an emotional woman and he had read too many novels. He took himself seriously: without being religious, he considered that it was the duty of every man to leave the world better than he found it. Such a philosophy may be natural to a man of thirty-six who sees small prospect of realizing his own ambition, and resorts to the consolation of a collective enthusiasm, but it is abnormal in a boy of seventeen, an age which usually sees itself in the stalls of a theater waiting for the curtain to rise and reveal a stage set with limitless opportunities for self-development and self-indulgence.

      But Ralph had been brought up in an atmosphere of ideals; at the age of seven he gave a performance of Hamlet in the nursery, and in the same year he visited a lenten performance of Everyman. At his preparatory school he came under the influence of an empire builder, who used to appeal to the emotions of his form. “The future of the country is in your hands,” he would say. “One day you will be at the helm. You must prepare yourselves for that time. You must never forget.” And Ralph did not. He thought of himself as the arbiter of destinies. He felt that till that day his life must be a vigil. Like the knights of Arthurian romance, he would watch beside his armor in the chapel. In the process he became a prig, and on his last day at Rycroft Lodge he became a prude. His headmaster gave all the boys who were leaving a long and serious address on the various temptations of the flesh to which they would be subjected at their Public Schools. Ralph had no clear idea of what these temptations might be. Their results, however, seemed sufficient reason for abstention. If he yielded to them, he gathered that he would lose in a short time his powers of thought, his strength, his moral stamina; a slow poison would devour him; in a few years he would be mad and blind and probably, though of this he was not quite certain, deaf as well. At any rate he would be in a condition when the ability of detecting sound would be of slight value. These threats were alarming: their effect, however, would not have been lasting in the case of Ralph, who was no coward and also, being no fool, would have soon observed that this process of disintegration was not universal in its application. No; it was not the threat that did the damage: it was the romantic appeal of the headmaster’s peroration.

      “After all,” he said, after a dramatic pause, “how can any one of you who has been a filthy beast at school dare to propose marriage to some pure, clean woman?”

      That told; that sentiment was within the range of his comprehension; it was a beautiful idea, a chivalrous idea, worthy, he inappropriately imagined, of Sir Lancelot. He could understand that a knight should come to his lady with glittering armor and an unstained sword. At the time he did not fully appreciate the application of this image: he soon learned, however, that a night spent on one’s knees on the stone floor of a draughty chapel is a cold and lonely prelude to enchantment: a discovery that did not make him the more charitable to those who preferred clean linen and soft down.

      It was only to be supposed, therefore, that he would receive Roland’s confidences with disgust. He had always felt a little jealous of April’s obvious preference for his friend, but he had regarded it as the fortune of war and had taken what pleasure he might in the part of confidant. To this vicarious excitant their intimacy indeed owed its strength. His indignation, therefore, when he learned of Roland’s rustic courtship was only exceeded by his positive fury when, on the first evening of the holidays, he went round to see the Curtises and found there Roland and his father. It was the height of hypocrisy. He had supposed that Roland would at least have the decency to keep away from her. It had been bad enough to give up a decent girl for a shop assistant, but to come back and carry on as though nothing had happened. … It was monstrous, cruel, unthinkable. And there was April, so clean and calm, with her thick brown hair gathered up in a loop across her forehead; her eyes, deep and gentle, with subdued colors, brown and a shade of green, and that delicate smile of simple trust and innocence, smiling at him, ignorant of how she had been deceived.

      It must be set down, however, to Roland’s credit that he had felt a few qualms about going round at once to see the Curtises. Less than twenty-four hours had passed since he had held Dolly’s hand and protested to her an undying loyalty. He did not love her; the words meant nothing, and they both knew it; they were merely part of the convention of the game. Nor for that matter was he in love with April— at least he did not think he was. He owed nothing to either of them. But conscience told him that, in view of the understanding that was supposed to exist between them, it would be more proper to wait a day or two. After all, one did not go to a theater the day after one’s father’s funeral, however eagerly one’s imagination had anticipated the event.

      Things had, however, turned out otherwise. At a quarter to six Mr. Whately returned from town. He was the manager of a bank, at a salary of seven hundred and fifty pounds a year, an income that allowed the family to visit the theater, upper circle seats, at least once every holidays and provided Roland with as much pocket money as he needed. Mr. Whately walked into the drawing-room, greeted his son with the conventional joke about a holiday task, handed his wife a copy of The Globe, sat down in front of the fire and began to take off his boots.

      “Nothing much in the papers to-day, my dear. Not much happening anywhere as a matter of fact. I had lunch to-day with Robinson and he called it the lull before the storm. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if he wasn’t right. You can’t trust these Radicals.”

      He was a scrubby little man: for thirty years he had worked in the same house; there had been no friction and no excitement in his life; he had by now lost any independence of thought and action.

      “I’ve just found a splendid place, my dear, where you can get a really first-class lunch for one-and-sixpence.”

      “Have you, dear?”

      “Yes; in Soho, just behind the Palace. I went there to-day with Robinson. We had four courses, and cheese to finish up with. Something like.”

      “And was it well cooked, dear?”

      “Rather; the plaice was beautifully fried. Just beginning to brown.”

      His face flushed with a genuine animation. Change of food was the only adventure that life brought to him. He rose slowly.

      “Well,

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