The passionate year — A Reader’s Guide

There was fascination of a sort in the whole impression; one felt that the man might be almost physically a part of the dark study, indissolubly one with the leather-bound books and the massive mahogany pedestal-desk; a Pope, perhaps, in a Vatican born with him. And when he moved his finger to push a bell at his elbow Speed started as if the movement had been in some way sinister.

"Ah yes, that will be all right--um--music and drawing. Perhaps--um--commercial geography for the--um--lower forms, eh?"

"I'm afraid I don't know much about commercial geography."

"Oh, well--um yes--I suppose not. Still--easy to acquire, you know. Oh yes, quite easy... Come in...."

This last remark, uttered in a peculiar treble wail, was in response to a soft tap at the door. It opened and a man stepped into the shadows and made his way to the desk with cat-like stealthiness.

"Light the gas, Potter... And by the way, Mr. Speed will be in to dinner." He turned to the young man and said, as if the enquiry were merely a matter of form: "You'll join us for dinner to-night, won't you?"

Speed replied: "I shall be delighted."

He wondered then what it was in the dark study that made him feel eerily sensitive and observant; so that, for instance, to watch Potter standing on a chair and lighting the incandescent globes was to feel vividly and uncannily the man's feline grace of movement. And what was it in the Headmaster's quivering blade-like eyes that awakened the wonder as to what these dark book-lined walls had seen in the past, what strange, furtive conversations they had heard, what scenes of pity and terror and fright and, might be, of blind suffering they had gazed upon?

The globes popped into yellow brilliance. The dark study took sudden shape and coherence; the shadows were no longer menacing. And the Headmaster, the Reverend Bruce Ervine, M.A., D.D., turned out to be no more than a plump apoplectic-looking man with a totally bald head.

Speed's eyes, blinking their relief, wandered vacantly over the bookshelves. He noticed Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" in twelve volumes, the Expositor's Bible in twenty volumes, the Encyclopædia Britannica in forty volumes, a long shelf of the Loeb classical series, and a huge group of lexicons surmounting like guardian angels a host of small school text-books.

"Dinner is at seven, then Mr. Speed. We--we do not dress--except for--um yes--for special occasions.... If you--um--have nothing to do this afternoon--you might find a stroll into the town interesting--there are some Roman--um--earthworks that are extremely--um yes--extremely fascinating. Oh yes, really... Harrington's the stationers will sell you a guide.... I don't think there are any--um--duties we need trouble you with until to-morrow ... um yes ... Seven o'clock then, Mr. Speed..."

"I shall be there, sir."

He bowed slightly and backed himself through the green-baize double doors into the stone corridor.

He climbed the stone flights of steps that led to the School House dormitories and made his way to the little room in which, some hours earlier, the school porter, squirming after tips, had deposited his trunks and suit-case. Over the door, in neat white letters upon a black background, he read: "Mr. K. Speed."--It seemed to him almost the name of somebody else. He looked at it, earnestly and contemplatively, until he saw that a small boy was staring at him from the dormitory doorway at the end of the passage. That would never do; it would be fatal to appear eccentric. He walked into the room and shut the door behind him. He was alone now and could think. He saw the bare distempered walls with patches of deeper colour where pictures had been hung; the table covered with a green-baize cloth; the shabby pedestal-desk surmounted by a dilapidated inkstand; the empty fire-grate into which somebody, as if in derision, had cast quantities of red tissue-paper. An inner door opened into a small bedroom, and here his critical eye roved over the plain deal chest of drawers, the perfunctory wash-hand stand (it was expected, no doubt, that masters would wash in the prefects' bathroom), and the narrow iron bed with the hollow still in it that last term's occupant had worn. He carried his luggage in through the separating door and began to unpack.