The Elderbrook Brothers (11 page)

‘Yes, sir,' said Mr Groves. It was not the first time he had taken part in this ceremony: he had the document ready in his hand. ‘You sign here,' he said to Guy.

‘But not before you have read what you are signing,' said Mr Deverill.

Having written his name Guy perceived with discomfort that his signature lacked style. He resolved to see to that.

‘Can you spell?' said the Manager abruptly.

‘Yes, sir.'

‘How do you spell
limited?'

‘L, I, M——'

‘No, no, no,' cried Mr Deverill. ‘Tell him, Mr Groves.'

‘L, T, D,' said Groves. ‘Saves time,' he explained.

‘Followed by a full-stop?' asked Mr Deverill.

‘Yes, sir,' said Guy.

A brief exclamation of agony escaped the Manager. He screwed up his face, as though he had been stung by a wasp.

‘There is no full-stop,' he said, with patient exasperation. ‘And why is there no full-stop? Because the last letter of the short form is the last letter of the word when spelt in full. Do you see?'

‘Yes, sir,' said Guy.

‘Then how do you spell
company?'

Guy glanced at Mr Groves, but nothing could be learned from that impassive face.

‘C, O,' said Guy, taking a chance.

‘And what else?'

‘Nothing else, sir.'

‘What, no full-stop, sir?' cried the Manager.

‘No, sir.' Guy was not to be had a second time.

‘Wrong, wrong, wrong,' said Mr Deverill. ‘C, O, spells company, yes. But because O is
not
the last letter of the word when spelt in full, it
is
followed by a full-stop. Is that perfectly clear to you, Mr Elderbrook?'

‘Perfectly, sir,' said Guy.

‘Mr Groves. You will be so good as to show Mr Elder-brook his duties.'

Mr Groves, however, had other plans. He delegated that office to his junior, Mr Elcott, now tardily arrived. Guy was
reassured to see that Elcott, though clad in black, had not yet risen to the dignity of tails. He was a plump cheerful youth not many years older than himself. He led Guy to a humble desk situated near the stairhead, sat him down, and began his instructions.

‘My name's Elcott. I'm the Red Waste. That's Montagu over there, complete with moustache. He looks after the clearing slips.'

‘What are they?'

‘You'll know soon enough. One thing at a time, old lad. See that tray? It's empty at the moment, but presently, when people begin to pay in, it'll fill up with notes and postal orders.'

‘Notes?'

‘Bank of England notes,' said Elcott patiently. ‘Anything from five-pounders to five-hundreds,' he added airily. ‘What do you do with them, and with the postal orders? You don't pinch them. You don't hide ‘em in your boots and do a bunk. You enter them in this book, giving all particulars. Number, denomination, and so on and what not. See? I'll show you how, presently. Another of your jobs will be copying letters. William sometimes gives a hand with that when there's a rush. You copy them into that damn great book over on the press.' He fetched the damn great book and opened it. ‘Flimsy paper, see? Wonderful invention: old Noah had one in the Ark. We do the letters in copying ink, and you shove 'em in the book like this, and take an impression or copy or facsimile on a carefully wetted leaf or page. The water is applied with this damn great paint brush. You're certain to make a muck of it at first, and get sworn at by old Liverish. But you'll soon get the knack. Then another of your jobs-'

‘How many more?' asked Guy. Mr Elcott seemed the kind of chap you could unbend with.

‘Dozens, my lad. I haven't begun yet. Another of your jobs is addressing envelopes. And, of course, you have to keep the stamps and account for them.
And
enter up all outgoing
letters in a book. Sounds a lot, but it's wonderful what you can get used to. Your chief trial will be dear Mr Liverish. He's always hot on the junior.'

‘Mr Deverill, do you mean?'

‘As you please,' said Elcott. ‘He's got several names, but there's only one of him, thank the Lord.'

‘Is he always like that?' Guy asked.

‘Like what?'

‘Well …' Guy hesitated. The word
balmy
presented itself but seemed a little too free. ‘He seemed a bit strict, I thought.'

‘Strict?' said Elcott. ‘Strict isn't in it. You don't know old Liverish yet. He's straight from the Loony Bin.'

The curtain rises on a new scene; for Felix in his young twenties found himself at Stanton Wold, a broad undulating valley on the south-western border of his native shire and some seventy or eighty miles from Upmarden. Stanton, a Georgian house standing amid terraced lawns and tree-shaded walks, with a high-walled orchard at one extremity and a paddock for pony-riding at the other, combined comeliness and good sense in equal proportions. In the shelter of its urbane dignity dwelt Daniel Williams, his son Tom, his new young wife and her children, his assistant master Felix Elderbrook, sundry domestic servants, and some thirty-five boys of varying ages. Two unresolved questions were in the habit of drifting in and out of Felix's mind. About the one, Mr Williams's peremptory resignation from the headmastership of St Swithins, he confessed himself curious; but from the other he averted his eyes, for to ask why Faith had consented to marry Dan Williams would have been to explore a region distasteful to him.

This morning had a special colour and quality. It was the first day of the Easter vacation. The clearing-up, the calculation of marks, the helping to pack, the farewells, the triumphant dispatch of the boys to their several homes, all those things belonged to yesterday. Today was blessedly empty. Presently there would be the reports to think about; but not today, for it was a tradition at Stanton House that this first day after the end-of-term frenzy should be a day of relaxation, a feast of indolence, for all who chose to make it so. Among such were Tom Williams certainly, and Felix scarcely less so. The headmaster, an incorrigibly early riser, was already re-immersed in his history of heresy, at which lifelong pedestrian enterprise, as the day wore on, he would be frequently interrupted, and to his great satisfaction, by one or the other of his infant daughters,
the delight of his late middle age. Mrs Williams, in the intervals of pursuing and admiring those same daughters, would as usual spend the day supervising or conferring with her domestic staff; but at this moment she was pouring out coffee for the two young men. She too was agreeably conscious that term was over.

‘Make a good breakfast, boys,' she said. ‘I expect you're worn out after yesterday.'

Tom and Felix could not claim to be worn out; but Felix at any rate was ready to savour and enjoy the quietness of a house no longer infested with boys, and Tom took everything as it came. Felix liked the boys, or most of them; there was not one he actively disliked; but this very liking levied an undue tax on his sympathy. He was in some danger, through good nature and inexperience, of taking their individual concerns too much to heart. Tom Williams was in no such danger: he rode life with a looser rein. He was a big, ruddy, redheaded fellow, with no particular talent for teaching and no wish to teach, unless games were in question, and even then, not unnaturally, he preferred doing to discoursing. He owed his place at Stanton first to being his father's son, the only one available now that his brother Stephen had gone to a job in London, and second to his having rowed in the University Eight, in return for which service Alma Mater had conferred on him, with some misgiving, a pass degree. His qualifications looked well enough in the prospectus of this highly selective little academy, which, as its Principal would have you know, combined the best ingredients of the great Public School tradition with the educational virtues of private and individual tuition. Boys were received at the age of ten or upwards, but in no case after fourteen, and it was expected that they would stay till the end of their seventeenth year and proceed, by way of scholarship or otherwise, to one or another of the older universities. The whole enterprise was carried through with something of the ease and grace and leisurely precision which the house and its setting inevitably suggested to a discerning eye; and the fees were not inconsiderable.

‘Would you like some more eggs and bacon, Tom? Cook'll do you some in no time.'

If Faith had a fault, which Felix would scarcely admit, it was her slight excess of sympathy, her over-eagerness to be of service. There could be no doubt that she was a good wife, and a happy, if anxious, mother. She was still in her early thirties, and the ordeal of motherhood had left her figure still slim and youthful; but her sense of responsibility, her gentle unhumorous conscientiousness, made her seem older than her years and not ill-matched, in point of age, with Dan Williams. She was several inches taller than her short, sturdy, broad-girthed husband; but this disparity too she was in process of correcting, for she had already a slight habitual stoop.

Tom, idly occupied with yesterday's newspaper (today's would not arrive till the afternoon), glanced across at her with half a grin.

‘No, thanks, Mrs Williams.' It amused him to tease her by calling her that, now and again. ‘My inner man is appeased.'

‘What are you going to do with yourselves today?' Faith asked.

‘I shall ride,' said Tom, yawning. ‘Over the hills and far away,' he added, smothering the yawn with a lean brawny hand. ‘And I shall take Felix with me.'

‘No, you won't,' said Felix.

‘There's gratitude for you!' Tom said. ‘Well, what's your programme, my dear step-uncle?'

‘Me? Oh … I shall drift around.' It was a favourite formula with him.

‘Will you be going to see the Meldreths?' Faith asked him.

‘Perhaps,' said Felix. ‘Who knows? How are my nieces this morning, Fay?'

It was a well-timed question, as he knew. Felix suspected Faith of thinking that if it was children's company he wanted there was no need to cross the road for it, since no little girls could be more enchanting than five-year-old Mifanwy and her baby-sister Claribel. Felix agreed with this judgment, so far as it went: he enjoyed the little Williamses' company and they
his: yet he knew it to be probable that sooner or later, and perhaps before the morning was out, his feet would carry him, almost unbidden, to the house where for some reason undefined he was most at home. Why, he did not know. It was one of the many things he did not know. He did not know how he proposed to spend the Easter vacation, and he did not know what he wanted to do with his life as a whole, except just live it. Perhaps that was enough: perhaps it would be meddlesome to inquire too deeply into the future or to make plans far ahead. But he could not quite rest in that conclusion. There were moments of disquiet in which he was conscious, with a pang that was almost fear, of a deep discontent with himself and his aimless existence. Why am I here, and what does it mean? Here and now, at this point of time and no other, this I in this local and perishable body: why and to what end? These were hardly the kind of questions to trouble a vigorous young man on a bright March morning, and indeed they did not so much trouble Felix as lurk in the background of his mind and call attention to themselves at intervals: they were like the letters a man will put aside, not knowing quite how to answer them, and half-hoping, against reason, that they will somehow, some day, ‘answer themselves'.

The scene of this belated breakfast was the room known as the morning room, and at this moment the morning filled it, entering by the large low south-east window beyond which, coming right up to the wall of the house, lay a smooth stretch of lawn whose greenness had been renewing itself for more than a hundred years. The lawn was enclosed on two sides by a beech hedge, still rusty with last year's leaves, and a pair of thrushes, coming from the direction of a group of young chestnut trees at the far end, alighted at intervals on the grass, to find provender, to flutter their wings in the shallow stone bird-bath, or merely to stand, in a miracle of stillness, listening and looking. They at least, thought Felix watching them, had no lack of purpose; nor did they ask that life should have a ‘meaning'.

‘Well, I mustn't sit here gossiping,' said Faith, after a prolonged and comfortable silence, ‘or you won't get any luncheon.'

‘How's that?' said Felix blandly. ‘Has Cook been gathered to her fathers? It must have been very sudden.'

‘I,' remarked Tom, ‘shall not be in to lunch.'

‘Thank you for condescending to tell me,' said Faith tartly. She rose from the table, softening the asperity with a smile. ‘If you've both finished I'll ring for Minnie to clear away.'

But I am not a thrush, said Felix. Old Matthew is, almost. I'm not contented, like Matthew. And I'm not ambitious, like Guy. What am I then? Perhaps (his thoughts ran on) perhaps if I'd done a bit better at Cambridge …

That Felix should go to Cambridge was a matter of surprise to everyone in the family except Felix himself. Not that he had expected any such thing, or had given it till his last school year any serious thought; but his abrupt translation from Up-marden to St Swithins had made him almost immune to further surprises, and he could hardly be blamed, moreover, if it had suggested to him that he was marked down for some unusual destiny. For Joe, who had to find the money for it, it followed with a certain inevitability: it was part of that hastily conceived plan which Joe, imprisoned in his own defiant resolution, would not or could not modify. At St Swithins Felix had neither distinguished nor disgraced himself. He was up to the average in school knowledge, but no more, except in a few subjects that happened to interest him. He did not win a university scholarship, and there was nothing Joe could do about it except abandon his plan or pay the full fees. It was more than he could comfortably afford, but pay he did, and without reproaches. You could put it either that Joe was a good loser or that he would never admit himself beaten. Whichever it was, Emily for one was grateful to him for it.