how on earth do you manage it?”
“Oh, it’s quite easy: in our house anyone can get out who wants to. The old man never spots anything. I just heave on a cap and mackintosh, meet her behind the Abbey and we go for a stroll along the Slopes.”
Roland could only ask too many questions and Howard was only too ready to answer them. He had seldom enjoyed such a splendid audience. He was not thought much of in the school, and to tell the truth he was not much of a fellow. He had absorbed the worst characteristics of a bad house. He would probably after he had left spend his evenings hanging about private bars and the stage doors of second-class music halls. But he was an interesting companion in the sanatorium, and he and Roland discussed endlessly the eternally fascinating subject of girls.
“The one thing that you must never do with a girl is to be shy,” Howard said. “That’s the one fatal thing that she’ll never forgive. You can do anything you like with any girl if only you go the right way about it. She doesn’t care whether you are good-looking or rich or clever, but if she feels that you know more than she does, that she can trust herself in your hands. … It’s all personality. If a girl tries to push you away when you kiss her, don’t worry her, kiss her again; she only wants to be persuaded; she’d despise you if you stopped; girls are weak themselves, so they hate weakness. You can take it from me, Whately, that girls are an easy game when you know the way to treat them. It would surprise you if you could only know what they were thinking. You’ll see them sitting at your father’s table, so demure, with their, ‘Yes, Mr. Howard,’ and their ‘No, Mr. Howard.’ You’d think they’d stepped out of the pages of a fairy book, and yet get those same girls alone, and in the right mood, my word. …”
Inflammatory, suggestive stuff: the pimp in embryo.
And Roland was one of those on whom such persons thrive. He had always kept straight at school; he was not clever nor imaginative, but he was ambitious: and he had realized early that if he wanted to become a power in the school he must needs be a success at games. He had kept clear of anything that had seemed likely to impair his prowess on the field. But it was different for him here in the sanatorium, with no exercise and occupation. In a very little while he had become thoroughly roused. Howard had enjoyed a certain number of doubtful experiences; had read several of the books that appear in the advertisements of obscure French papers as “rare and curious.” He had in addition a good imagination. Within two days Roland’s one idea was to pick up at the first opportunity the threads of the romance he had so callously flung aside.
“There’ll be no difficulty about that, my dear fellow,” said Howard. “I can easily get Betty to arrange it. We meet every Sunday, and we have to walk right out beyond Cold Harbor. She says she feels a bit lonely going out all that way by herself. Now suppose she went out with your girl and you went out with me—that’d be pretty simple, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, that would be splendid. Do you think you could fix it up?”
“As easy as laughing.”
“But I shall feel an awful fool,” Roland insisted. “I shan’t know what to say or anything.”
“Don’t you worry about that, my dear fellow; you just look as if you did and keep your eyes open, and you’ll soon learn; these girls know a lot more than you would think.”
So it was arranged. Roland found by the time his foot was right again that he had let himself in for a pretty exacting program. It had all seemed jolly enough up at the sanatorium, but when he was back in the house, and life reëstablished its old values, he began to regret it very heartily. He didn’t mind going out with the girl—that would be quite exciting: besides it was an experience to which everyone had to come some time or other—but he did not look forward to a long walk with Howard every Sunday afternoon for the rest of the term.
“Whately, old son,” he said to his reflection in the glass as he shaved himself on the next Sunday morning, “you’ve made a pretty sanguinary fool of yourself, but you can’t clear out now. You’ve got to see it through.”
It was very awkward though when Anderson ran up to him in the cloisters with “Hullo, Whately, going out for a stroll? Well, just wait half-a-sec, while I fetch my hat.” Roland had an infernal job getting rid of him.
“But, my dear man,” Anderson had protested, “where on earth are you going? I’ve always thought you the most pious man in the house. But if it’s a smoke I’ll watch you, and if it’s a drink I’ll help you.”
“Oh, no, it’s not that. I’m going out with a man in Morgan’s.”
Anderson’s mouth emitted a long whistle of surprise.
“So our Whately has deserted his old friends? Ah, well, when one gets into the XV., I know.”
Roland could see that Anderson was offended.
But it was even worse when he came back to find his study full of seven indignant sportsmen wanting to know why on earth he had taken to going out for walks with “a dirty tick in Morgan’s, who was no use at anything and didn’t even wash.”
“He’s quite a decent chap,” said Roland weakly. “I met him in the san.”
“I dare say you did,” said Anderson; “we’re not blaming you for that. You couldn’t help it. But those sorts of things, one does try to live down.”
For days he was ragged about it, so much so that he hadn’t the face to say he had been going out with a girl. Such a statement should be a proud acknowledgment, not a confession. If ever he said he couldn’t go anywhere, or do something, the invariable retort was, “I suppose you’re going out for a walk with Howard.”
The School house was exclusive; it was insular; it was prepared to allow the possibility of its members having friends in the outhouses; there were good men in the outhouses, even in Morgan’s. But one had to be particular, and when it came to Whately, a man of whom the house was proud, deserting his friends for a greasy swine in Morgan’s who didn’t wash, well, the least one could do was to make the man realize that he had gone a little far.
It was a bad business, altogether a bad business, and Roland very much doubted whether the hour and a half he spent with Dolly was an adequate recompense. She was a nice girl, quite a nice girl, and they found themselves on kissing terms quickly enough. There were no signs of their getting any further, and, as a matter of fact, if there had been, Roland would have been extremely alarmed. He objected to awkward situations and intense emotions: he preferred to keep his life within the decent borders of routine. He wanted adventure certainly, but adventure bounded by the limits of the society in which he lived. He liked to feel that his day was tabulated and arranged; he hated that lost feeling of being unprepared; he liked to know exactly what he had to say to Dolly before he could hold her hand and exactly what he had to say before she would let him kiss her. It was a game that had to be rehearsed before one got it right; no actor enjoys his part before he has learned his words; when he had learned the rules it was great fun; kisses were pleasant things. He wrote a letter to his friend, Ralph Richmond, acquainting him of this fact.
My Dear Ralph—Why haven’t you written to me, you lazy swine? I suppose you will say that you’re awfully hard worked, getting ready for Smalls. But I don’t believe it. I know how much I do myself.
It’s been quite a decent term. I got my colors and shall be captain of the house after the summer if the people I think are going to leave do leave. Think of me as a ruler of men. I’m having a pretty
